There was a nine second video posted to twitter yesterday. It was not really in the national news. More of a local story. But it was an incredibly revealing moment about how republicans are going about trying to reelect donald trump. Heres what happens. There is a reporter. His name is matt smith with wisntt out of milwaukee, wisconsin, channel 12. He camped out the elections building in madison, and this is what he got. How many signatures did you collect . That video had the feel of a local reporter being somewhere at the right place, the right time and catching someone in the act. That woman who he asked the question of really did not seem to want to be on camera. There is a good reason for that. The woman you see there, right there, giving the no comment, she is a wisconsin lawyer. Her name is lane ruhland. As recently as last week, she was representing Donald Trumps president ial campaign in court. Shes the republican elections lawyer who worked for the Republican National committee during the 2016 recount in wisconsin. Okay . But she was not at the Elections Commission building doing business for the president of the United States or for the Trump Campaign. No. She was dropping off ballot signatures in an effort to get this man on the president ial ballot in wisconsin. Kanye west. One of the most famous people in the country, who is kind of, sort of running for president. Though, he has no real platform and it is unclear if this is a real thing or not. But there was a filing deadline yesterday in wisconsin. And, so, what do you have . You had a republican election lawyer who works for Trumps Campaign who worked on the 2016 election trying to get him elected trying to get kanye west on the ballot. And it was not just her. At least five republicans are involved in trying to get west on the ballot in various state, including a Convention Delegate for donald trump and a guy under consideration to be Trumps Campaign manager in 2015. Basically, most everyone involved in kanye west kind of sort of president ial campaign, if you can call it that, theyre all just republican hacks. Im going to talk to a reporter who has been doing great deep dives on what these people are up to in just a moment. But all this makes something really clear, which is this. Republicans know that donald trump cannot win with the majority of the country. We all know that, right . That ship has sailed. Look at the polls. Trump has not had a 50 Approval Rating at any point in his entire presidency. Hes just a little above 40 right now, down near like the bottom where his score is, around 40 . He is extremely unpopular. Based on the data we have that trumps absolute ceiling in a popular vote is probably around the 46 of the vote he got last time. Like thats the top. Okay . So think about this. How do you become president when you are unpopular . How do you win the presidency . In order to win the presidency, republicans basically need to do a bunch of things. They need to stack up a bunch of things to pull out what they did last time when donald trump won despite losing the popular vote by three million votes. One thing they have to do is try to split the antitrump vote because, remember, thats a majority of the country. Has been since the day he was elected. In 2016 you had jill stein. You had gary johnson, evan mcmullen, among others. Combined they won nearly eight million votes. Now in the absence of any other notable spoiler candidates, republicans are obviously pinning their hopes on kanye west to take enough votes to squeeze donald trump through. But thats just part of the strategy. You also needed to take it hard for people to vote, to suppress the votes of democratic voters, which the Republican Party is aggressively trying to do. Then they also have to hope in the next few months, say, russia delivers or some other foreign adversary. They give them some gift they could use. I dont know. Maybe just something you can use to try to destroy joe biden. And then you also got your attorney general william barr in the department of justice and maybe they could intervene as well. Maybe when you stack all that up, all those sort of dirty tricks, thats enough to get your wildly unpopular candidate over seeing a once in a century catastrophe with 160,000 dead americans elected president. It feels like a totally different strategy for victory than we have ever seen. But part of it is not completely new, right . Back when Richard Nixons hench men, you know, the criminals who helped him who ended up going to jail, they had a name for it. They called rat copulating. Number one operate i in the country who specializes in doing that. Though, they used a more obscene version of that phrase. One of the operatives in the country who specializes in doing that is a guy with a nixon tattoo on his back who lo and behold is a friend of the president and just got his sentence commuted so hes out of jail and free to roam, roger stone. Heres what he was up to back in 2000. Roger stone comes up with the brilliant idea of getting pat buchanan to run for the reform party. Yes. I encourage him to run. But i also, yeah, i have an interest of the reform party imploding at that point. But when he had the political stage to himself, he was trumped. Donald trump announcing he will switch from the gop to the reform party. You see what happened there . Buchanan is a threat to republicans. Roger stone gets him over to the reform party and then gets donald trump to jump in as well. The Republican Party has to do this kind of thing. Its been doing it since nixon probably and before. But particularly now, it is not a majortarian party. It is not even close. And when you start strike that strategizing how to keep the presidency with the minority of voters, when you accept you represent a minority, this is what it starts to look like. Voter suppression and that cynical effort to use kanye west to your advantage. Joining me now is cameron joseph, the senior political reporter of the vice news. He has been doing incredible leg work uncovering the republicans involved in trying to get kanye west on the ballot. Cameron, talk me through how you started looking into this and what you found. Well, honestly, early on i wasnt taking kanye that seriously. He had this random tweet. Dont really know the strategy. I was keeping an eye on it, but not thinking he was engaging that much. Then we saw that rally in South Carolina where it was clear he wasnt exactly a focussed president ial candidate and started to worry about his Mental Health. His own wife put out an Instagram Post talking about his bipolar issues. So, yeah, i was a little skeptical. Then we started seeing folks collecting signatures to get on the ballot, which is the real challenge of running for president and either acting as a spoiler or possibly getting on the debate stage, which i think the former is probably more likely than the latter. And all of a sudden some of it started having success. And it looked pretty messy at first, but things looked like they were firming up. I was keeping an eye on a few of these states. I just had a republican source in wisconsin reach out to me yesterday and say, hey, do you want to know who the woman in this video is . I said absolutely. And it was a senior republican lawyer in the state who, you know, worked for scott walker, was a deputy in the doj in wisconsin. Pretty senior, worked on a lot of campaigns. And, so, it really got me wondering what exactly was going on here. Then i found he was actively working for the Trump Campaign in their ad to get a super pac ad off the air. So its a pretty close link. And then i started sniffing around and figuring out where else that they had to actually submit signatures to, and colorado was next on the list. I had a source there who had been asked or the email was to a source that had been asked and then i got this email that was basically laying out, hey, i am looking to try to get can kanye west on the ballot. It was from a republican strategist connected in colorado. Currently in a very tough uphill battle for reelection. And, so, its all of a sudden a lot of republicans who are not jokes working on this campaign that a lot of people kind of dismissed as a joke initially. Yeah. We just put up that email, the most random favor to ask you and im not joking. There is some more reporting about the number of Wisconsin Republicans that have been helping to get him elected. You have to pledge to been an electoral college. They are basically all republicans. It does seem that this is essentially like a somewhere between a prank by these republican hacks and an actual effort to try to get him on the ballot. I heard someone said reporting today that some source Republican Party was hoping that kanye west could get 100,000 votes, which is what gary johnson got last time around. Yeah. And, look, this is a double bang shot. And donald trump, to mix a couple metaphors, drew up straight last time. He shouldnt have won. Everything fell into place the last week of the election and then he scraped through the last states. Wisconsin is looking like the best chance that he has to win again of those three states right now. And he won by less than the margin his margin was smaller than jill stein of wisconsin last time. She had 30,000 votes. They are hoping to create the magic of those dark arts and make this an again. I dont know his motivation. I dont think anybody knows his motivation right now. It is unclear whether he is actively helping trump. It looks like hes having some Mental Health problems, which is really tragic. Hes talented and creative thinker who might have been convinced or convinced himself that this was a good idea. But it didnt look like there was much happening around him leading to actual success. It wasnt clear anyone serious was working for hip. Frankly the people who are actively involved trying to get him on the campaign right now, it is unclear to me how they got involved. I think thats the next big shoe to drop here. Who is coordinating this . And we dont know right now. We know that in colorado and in wisconsin, in arkansas, which you mentioned earlier was a major gop operative. Very involved in cpac over the years has some trump ties. We saw in ohio he filed today, too. Republican lawyers were involved with that one as well. Kanye west laid out some conservative positions. He showed some friendliness with donald trump. But this is obviously their hope that this is going to ciphon off voters. They are hoping he can ciphon off black voters because obama wasnt on the ballot and Hillary Clinton struggled with turning on younger black voters. So i dont know if this is going to work. This seems like a lot of the things were talking about that trump is trying right now with this, with the actual function of the election, it may not work. But if things get tighter, this could make a difference. Yeah. Its very well said. We dont even know if hes got enough petitions once they get challenged, right . I saw someone reporting that he had, you know, not that many over the minimum you need and often petitions get challenged. This is an age old ritual. You see it in new york all the time. Dogged fights over line by line petitions. So we will see if the signatures actually work, if hes on the ballot. It is unclear how serious it is. The intent of folks like lane rulans. By the way, youre on tv for this. I hope you are proud of what you are doing. Thanks for being with me. For more on the Trump Campaigns strategy, i want to bring in david pluff, Campaign Manager for barack obama in his 2008 run for president. If you had no scruples or morals whatsoever, if you were just a hired gun and you were hired to run a National President ial campaign for someone where you and everyone around you knew there was essentially a 45 ceiling, how do you do that . Like what are your options . Well, chris, i would start off by saying all the campaign stuff is small. So the big problem is hes been a terrible president and hes mishandled the issue that matters most to the american people, which is the pandemic and resulting economic crisis. So, yes, he won. In 16 you mentioned 46. 1 national. He won wisconsin with 47. 2 . He won michigan with 47. 5 . So hes not going to get 49. 5 or 50 . Third parties look like theyre not going to get the significant vote they got last time. So, yes, i think you try to suppress democratic vote. You try to juice your own turnout, which is something they are working on, and you need to find a way to get some third party vote, which is what this desperate kanye west thing. If you are joe biden or any campaign you are involved in, you know you sweat everything because every vote counts and while biden has a huge lead now, you know, it is possible that race could tighten. Thats what you are trying to do. The most important thing would be to juice trump turnout beyond what trump thinks is possible. Thats where the big numbers come from. We obviously see all the things hes doing. Weve got foreign interference. Hes engaged in state Voter Suppression from the white house harder. Were going to have organize through that. Again, we just saw an election in 16 decided on the margins. The two elections i was involved with barack obama, we prepared for elections that would be on the margin. I think it is not surprising, they will turn over every seedy rock they can. We will find out whether its Jared Kushner himself, somebody in the close trump circle has been involved in this kanye west thing. Yeah. I want to say two things that you just that i want to emphasized. One, it is my position and it has been the position of folks like yourself that i cant i can think of no election in recent lifetime that turned more on the fundamentals than i anticipate this election will. The country is in the worst state its been in my lifetime and in generations and there is just misery everywhere you look and were all mourning day by day. 1,400 people died today. 10 times as Many Americans died today as were killed in that beirut explosion, today, just a wednesday under donald trump. Thats what were dealing with. I totally agree, thats above all else. It also strikes me, though, it is coming out of a there is a sense of desperation, which is like they will do anything. And i do think there is something dangerous about that, when you mary desperation and sort of an impulse for dirty tricks to state power, which is what we have right now with donald trump. Well, chris, listen, there is an election to win. You know, if you have my point of view. Thats the most important thing. And understand it could get close. But that is the fundamental thing. Using the levers of government to suppress vote, openly trying to, you know, recruit third party candidates. You know, we see what hes doing. He may give his Convention Speech at the white house, which, you know, with everything trump has done that may seem minor. These are norms being shattered all over the place. The question is just his politics going forward. Are there no boundaries and are there no rules. The other thing you will see with this kanye west thing and every other message that trump and his campaign is sending, the foreign powers around the world want to keep him in office. A weak american president if you are in turkey, north korea, russia, china, you couldnt dream of a better scenario. You know, they are sending clear signals. Theyre not smoke signals. You will see a bunch of advertising on his behalf, a bunch of organic content. Right. Trump is sending signals all over the world that hes in desperate shape. Right. And, you know, he may be on the phone with people. I dont know. Yeah, no. Thats exactly right. If you wanted to help donald trump if you were a foreign government, there is all sorts of pathways he highlighted for you. The guy on the runway with the two lipsticks. I dont know what the persons name is. Always great to get your insight on campaigns. Thank you for your time tonight. Thanks, chris. Next, chicago joins the growing list of major School Districts starting the year with entirely Remote Learning as reopened districts are already reporting cases of the virus. Those stories right after this. One of the signature images of the Great Depression were people being thrown out of their homes and living in homeless en campments called hoovervilles. And they were named after president Herbert Hoover and encapsulated everything he did wrong leading up to and through the Great Depression, not acting strongly enough to prevent those images. It might seem like those images are from another era, but unless something is done very quickly, we are about to see something very similar right now. The federal Eviction Moratorium in the Coronavirus Relief act expired last month, along with many state moratoriums. Tomorrow 14,000 evictions can start being served in new york city alone. In houston, courts are overloaded with eviction filings. In new orleans, a grandmother who also lost her job in the pandemic and owes thousands of dollars in back rent told a reporter, i dont have any money coming in. I dont know what to do. What an eviction looks like in his district. Peoples belongings piled up in front of their home. Thats someones life you are looking at. And beyond the cruelty, this is the stupidest thing you can do Public Healthwise in the middle of the pandemic. Forcing people out of their homes to live in increasingly crowded shelters or into crowded houses with other families and friends. And it is something that senator Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell and President Donald Trump and other Senate Republicans could end today by passing the legislation that House Democrats passed months ago and signing into law. And theyre not doing it. Joining me now senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Democrat from new york. Backing legislation to extends the moratorium to march of 2021. Senator, you have 14,000 constituents just in new york city who are eligible for this tomorrow. This seems like utterly unacceptable and depraved. It is. And it shows the sheer lack of empathy that Mitch Mcconnell and President Trump have for people in deep need. I have constituents across my state who are about to be homeless, who arent eligible for food stamps and have nowhere to go. If we dont do something by the end of september, over 20 Million People will be evicted and will be homeless. That is a huge concern for anybody that cares about the public. So we need to get to the table. And unfortunately Mitch Mcconnell let congress go for two weeks. President trump played golf and people arent doing the work we were sent here to do, which is to help the american people. So we need to pass the house passed bill to provide relief. Yeah. I mean, this is not rocket science. Like the problem is people dont have money. They dont have money because the economy is contracting at Great Depression levels. There was i think 175 billion if im not mistaken in the house passed bill in the heroes act for rent support so landlords also will get paid. You cant just interrupt the chain of payments. Right. It is that simple. You just pass that and you can deal with it. It is. What democrats and what the house has done is provide money for states and cities and localities to provide money so people arent homeless, to provide food and food stamps so they dont go hungry. People need basic necessities. We need money for health care. We need money for schools. If you want the schools to reopen safely, you will need to get them resources so they can clean it nightly and get tested regularly, so they can offer overtime pay and have a school nurse. These are the things that would be necessary to open our schools. Unfortunately Mitch Mcconnell and President Trump have been unwilling to move these ideas forward even though they have been sitting there to be voted on for now two months. I just i guess i come on the air every night and say the same thing. I guess i can understand and believe this is happening because i have lived through two decades of american governmental failure, so not that surprising. But i just think what do you think American Society looks like if 50 million, 20 Million People get evicted . Do you think it holds together . No. No. No. People are in the streets protesting now. Protesting injustice, protesting for black lives matter, protesting for what this administration has done to divide this country. And i can tell you that what my state needs, what new york needs is they need help. They need resources. They need money. They need to be able to provide for their kids. If they are able to go back to work, they need a place for their kids. Day care is unbelievably at risk right now. So many Day Care Centers have already closed. For every one child that needs day care, for every one slot of day care, there is eight children that need that slot. It was four before the pandemic. So we are in a tough place, chris. But we know whats needed, and we have a comprehensive piece of legislation to do it. It is the simple things. It is, you know, provide for our first responders. Make sure our firefighters and our emts dont have to be laid off because states and cities have no more money. Make sure the social services dont have to be cut, things like homeless shelters, Domestic Violence shelters, food banks. All of these these discretionary funding that will be cut if we dont give money to states and cities. Those are helping the most at need, most at risk. If you dont help renters in their time of need, you will just amplify that need and it will metastasize. Final question for you about postmaster general and the changes hes instituted in the post office that slowed down mail. I saw reporting that deals with Veterans Issues about veterans experiencing slow downs in their prescription mail, their pills being delayed. There was a reportedly heated meeting that he was present at along with chuck schumer, nancy pelosi and others. You were not at that meeting but i wonder if you have any sense about the postal situation . Any progress . Well, the post office is about to run out of money. The postmaster general is an accolade of trumps and doesnt seem to care. They need to fund the post office and then we need longer term solutions. One solution i wrote about is postal banking. We should be able to use our post office like we did after the Great Depression, after world war i, after world war ii as banks. It would raise 9 billion a year for the post office to sustain it. And, two, it would provide basis Banking Service for the third of americans who are unbanked or underbanked. Meaning they could be a Checking Account or a micro loan at the end of the month for a mortgage. That would help people who need help and support as we begin to get back on our feet. Thats a solution. Certainly the house bill has resources for the post office. I know they are debating what that number should be. But hopefully we will fund the post office because a lot of people are going to want to vote by mail. And we want to have our elections work in november. We want to make sure the post office can do their part by having mailin ballots be counted successfully. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of the state of new york. Thank you so much for making time tonight. Thanks, chris. Coming up, as Chicago Public schools announce they wont be going back into classrooms, a look at why we are headed for chaos in the fall. Audible is my roadtrip companion. Its kind of my quiet, alone time. 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That includes los angeles and now chicago, the Third Largest in the country where they Just Announced they are also going to start completely Remote Learning. This comes after saying they were going to have some in person schooling. That leaves new york the only ones sending kids to school for in person learning. Teachers unions arent psyched about them because theyre worried about their members. There is logistical difficulties. The risk to teachers and kids and families, it is no wonder why some schools dont want to open their doors when a huge amount of kids will also not even come in. Right . A lot of parents arent comfortable with sending their kids in. On the other hand, you got some states where schools are being commanded to open. Schools and states with some of the highest level of Ongoing Community transmission in the world right now where schools are being prohibited by the state from preemptively closing out of safety and being threatened with losing their state funding. So you have these two categories, right . Schools that can get away with it are opting to open remotely safely because that seems like the safest way to start the year. And then there is everyone else who is just going to basically see what happens. What that means is fall is going to be total society wide chaos. In both categories. How on earth did we get here . Here to talk with me now is valerie strauss, education reporter of the Washington Post who recently wrote about protesters taking to the streets with fake coffins. Some reopened schools are reporting coronavirus cases. Valerie, we have been covering this for a while. Im also a parent of school age children. Invested in this professionally and personally. I feel like basically six weeks or so when these conversations started to happen, districts started planning, we were in a little bit of a different world and two things happened. An enormous second outbreak in the u. S. With record cases being set every day. And the president coming down hard, youve got to send your kids to school, open the schools. And i feel like that changed the calculation for a lot of places. It pushed them away, essentially from in person learning. Is that your sense having been covering this . Nice to be here with you, chris. Thanks for having me. When President Trump started to politicize the idea of how and when schools should reopen, it did change the calculus for a lot of School Superintendents who were trying to do what was best for the community in terms of covid rates, what local Health Officials were saying. So in some places, the governors, who are Trump Supporters such as texas and florida came down and ordered schools to open fully five days a week for everybody. They have since however backed off as the covid rates have gone up. And of course in miami now is the epicenter of the world for covid. So you have the biggest counties in florida backing down and saying, we cant do this. And the governor has had actually no choice but to allow them to decide to open remotely. So thats interesting. So thats happening in florida. Because what ends up happening is it has become this kind of, you know, crazy demonstration of loyalty where, you know, the president says open the schools and governors that are in line with him politically saying, okay, were going to open the schools. Desantos was saying something like, if we can have home depot open, we can open the schools. So youre saying they have actually pushed back and desantos has okayed that . Yes, he has. Hes had to. Dade county, broward county, orange county, they were all planning to open school buildings, as were pretty much most of the 13,000 plus School Districts in the country. The thought was to open. And as covid as the first wave never stopped or the second wave started other places, the School Superintendent said we cant do this. Local Health Officials said we cant do this. And the governors started to realize that it would be worse for them to overrule all of the local Health Officials than to than to stick with trump. The president today said that something along the lines this morning that children are, quote, basically immune, i think is what he said. In fact, just moments ago, a tweet of that appearance in which he said that has been taken down by twitter as misinformation because they are not, basically. Right. They have lower levels of transmission among young students. But today a second Grade Student in georgia testing positive for coronavirus the first day of school. Even in these places that are open, we are going to see cases, and thats going to mean that, you know, the schools close or they close for periods of time. I mean, thats baked in at this point, right . Absolutely its baked in. And nobody knows for how long these schools are going to have to stay closed. There is a lot of thought that even schools that have opened for some students will wind up sending them home. A lot of schools that have opened for students have given parents options. So a number of parents are still keeping their kids home even while other kids are going to class. Right. In some districts, including chicago, which is one of the reasons that they decided to close, there was a survey of tens of thousands of parents in the district, and very few of them said they were comfortable going back to schools. Many of these schools have facilities issues that make it very hard to socially distance. They dont have airconditioning, heating and ventilation systems that work well. There is a range of problems for School Districts that theyre facing that the president and education secretary betty devos seem not to have considered when they ordered the schools to reopen and then threatened to withhold public funding from them if they dont. Now, it should be noted that they dont have the unilateral powers to do that. But they threatened it anyway. And that has been hanging over the heads. We talked to a superintendent in arizona who is getting threatened by the governor essentially and has to open. Yes, yes. It is insane were opening high schools, which what we know from the Public Health standpoint is that teenagers are definitely carriers and can get sick. Right. Younger kids is a different story and they have a hard time with distance learning. But 17yearolds can distance learn. Yet, high schools are open. Great reporting on this, and thank you for sharing it with us. Thank you for having me. Still ahead, over 130 people are dead. Thousands more injured after that explosion rocked beirut. What were learning about the egregious government failure that may have led to that blast coming up. Around the world, 5 billion people lack access to safe surgery. Children are suffering from treatable causes, living with conditions many have never seen. For more than 40 years, mercy ships has deployed floating hospitals with volunteer doctors who give their time to provide the free surgeries these children desperately need. I feel like my reason for being here is driven by love. I think its the love that changes the patients first. Join us. By calling or going to mercy ships dot org now. 19 a month will give children and families the hope and healing they never thought possible. And turn lives of pain into futures full of potential. Its a mission powered by love. Made possible by you. Call the number on your screen or donate now at mercyships. Org so we started the week with are revelation that the Manhattan District Attorney has an investigation ongoing with the president for fraud. New york times reporting the prosecutors already they subpoenaed Deutsche Bank years ago. It would be the biggest news in the world in other circumstances. We will be paying attention to that story. Then in addition to all that, now we also have news that the securities and Exchange Commission is investigating an enormous transaction that the Trump Campaign put together for impropriety. The deal announced last month it seemed to come out of nowhere. A 765 million loan for kodak to begin producing pharmaceuticals. Now, kodak is a venerable american brand. It has lots of physical capacity. This was a huge amount of money, though. It was for somewhere around 300 jobs. And thats not the half of it. The chief executive officer of kodak got 1. 75 million Stock Options the day before the deal with the government was announced. Options that the stock price of course made much, much more valuable. And even more suspiciously is this graph which really tells a story. The Trading Volume for kodak the company shot up before the deal as well. Thats weird. Kodak was barely holding on to life before this. There were not a ton of investors rushing to buy the stock. For a company that made physical camera and film. So the spike in volume right before this deal gets announced looks pretty wild, which is why you now have the sec investigation. You have lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren pointing out how strange all this looks. We dont know the whole story year. I mean, they could turn out. This is on the up and up. This is all just accidents and coincidences. But donald trump is involved, so im going to go ahead and forgive you if you dont apply that assumption. What if i sleep hot . Or cold . Introducing the new sleep number 360 smart bed. Now temperature balancing, so you can sleep better together. Can it help keep me asleep . Absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both effortlessly comfortable. Can it help with snoring . Ive never heard snoring. Exactly. No problem. And done. Will it help me keep up with mom . Youve got this. 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Im sure youve seen, weve been seeing this insane footage over and over shot from dozens of angles of a terrifying blast rising up in the sky and sending these sort of hollywood movie shock waves through the city. This clip of a bride posing in her Wedding Dress went viral. The videographer capturing the moment that the explosion occurs. Theres a deafening blast blowing out windows on a side street. You can see the destruction and debris left behind. Another stunning moment was caught by this beirut churchs live stream. The room appears to shake and the light goes out as the priest is delivering a service and the explosion hits, breaking glass and sending the priest running. A lot of people understandably saw these videos and leapt to the conclusion it must have been some sort of attack. But as of now it looks like it was actually the result of a complete failure of government. According to reports, seven years ago a ship carrying over 2,700 tons of explosive fertilizer known as Ammonium Nitrate docked, the crew had to get off, the chemicals were taken off the ship and put in storage on that dock. Customs officials warned authorities multiple times about the risk, but nothing was done for seven years. Just think about that. And the Ammonium Nitrate remained at the port yesterday when welders working nearby reportedly accidentally started a fire that ignited it. The lebanese people have been suffering from vast governmental failure for years, most recently dealing with hyperinflation and food insecurity, regular power outages. And of course the coronavirus crisis, which is hitting that country on top of all of that. So this horrific explosion which left 135 dead and 5,000 injured. Latest example of entire government failing its people for years. Here in the u. S. We have 160,000 dead americans, gdp is down over 30 annualized. Were starting to see how failures of leadership can be as destructive as any foreign attack when leaders ignore warnings about the simple pressing dangers on the horizon. Im joined now by someone who has been reporting on the middle east for many years watching this story closely, ayman mohyeldin, soon to be the host of msnbc live at 3 00 p. M. Which is very exciting and starts on august 17th. Ayman, its great to have you on. Congratulations on the new show. I want to start with just a little context, which is the lebanese people seem cursed here insofar as the just one problem and tragedy stacking atop itself in terms of even before this moment yesterday. Yeah, absolutely. That is the best way to describe it. Thats actually sometimes exactly how the lebanese describe themselves, as being a cursed population, not because of anything that they have done but because of the region that they have found themselves in and because of the government that has emerged in the wake of Subsequent National tragedies that go back to the 70s since the countrys civil war. The lebanese will be the first to tell you that their country is the proxy theater for so many neighboring countries to carry out their wars. Thats why as you mentioned there in that setup, many of the people who thought this explosion initially was the result of some foreign or nefarious actor operating in that country, because that is the reality of what lebanon has seen over the years. But coupled with that, because the country is so divided, because the country has no Strong Political cohesion, because the country has decades of civil war and sectarian strife, it is essentially governed by sectarian factions, by war lords that have enriched themselves and corruption is rampant. As a result of this government negligence, as you mentioned, this Ammonium Nitrate was sitting in this port. According to the port director, they tried to raise warnings to the judiciary, and the judiciary itself just completely neglected it. Nobody followed up with it, nobody tried to secure the material, nobody secured the facility or the port and nobody bothered to say, hey, we are sitting on a ticking time bomb if we cant get this situation resolved and this dangerous material out of this port, and heres the result. Yeah, we should note that the two tons the 2,700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate was what you had seen exploding there. 2 tons were used in the Oklahoma City truck bombing when Timothy Mcveigh parked that truck outside the federal center, so this is enormous. To me whats so striking about this and i think theres a parallel there when you talk about lebanon being the site of all these proxy wars, has seen tremendous amounts of damage from war, different kinds of war, from civil war. The u. S. Is constantly the biggest military in the world and constantly thinking about terrorists and terrorist attacks. One of the lessons here is that bad governing, government neglect of the most basic functions, like where do you store this Ammonium Nitrate and whos looking after it, do you have enough tests for your coronavirus, are you listening to pandemic experts . That stuff can be more destructive to a population than even the most nefarious foreign actor. And thats exactly what we saw play out in lebanon because theres two components to this. There is, as you mentioned, the situation with Ammonium Nitrate. But there is also the problem with the government in the runup to it and now in the wake of it, because as we have seen, this is a country that like every other country is dealing with a Global Pandemic. Its currency devalued. People are not able to access cash. Hospitals are already strapped for resources. And in the wake of this devastation on tuesday, these hospitals are completely overwhelmed. Two of the major hospitals in beirut and ive been there many times, theyre not far away from that location. Those are two of the best hospitals. And they had to essentially shut down their doors. People were knocked out of their beds. Nurses were killed as a result of this explosion. So people who had to be treated, we spoke to an eyewitness earlier today, they had to be treated out of the capital of beirut. They had to go out of the city. And that obviously just resonates with what were seeing here in the u. S. In the constant debate about whether or not our hospitals and our medical infrastructure can withstand the numbers that were seeing as a result of that pandemic. So imagine a country like lebanon, already limited resources, already under the pressure of economic collapse, coupled with the Global Pandemic that theyre dealing with and then on top of that this catastrophic explosion that has sent 300,000 people into the streets essentially homeless and then thousands of more into hospitals that they simply cannot cope. I dont say this lightly when i say this is a country literally on the brink of governance collapse. The government is feeling the pressure economically, from a health perspective, from a safety perspective and obviously because law and order within that city, within beirut and the country is already weakened by a decentralized government, it is ripe now for more instability. Weve seen that protests have been, you know, rocking beirut for the last several months. Ordinary young lebanese completely disappointed, completely frustrated and angry with their government and their incompetence. It was a perfect recipe and a perfect storm of negligence, incompetence, corruption and this is the result. Ayman mohyeldin whose new show starts august 17th right here on msnbc, you should definitely check that out, i know i will be. Thank you so much. That is a wednesday night. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now. Good evening, rachel. Good evening, chris. Thanks, my friend. Much appreciate it. Thanks for joining us at home, happy to have you here. Today is 90 days until the president ial election on november 3rd. Today was yet another day with more than 50,000 new coronavirus cases reported in the United States in a single day. Today was also yet another day in which more than 1,000 americans died from coronavirus in a single day. According to the New York Times count, we are heading into the tenth straight day in which the average daily death rate fro