Total anarchy, madness and chaos. Now his party takes to the stage. The choice the American People face. The Gop Convention just 24 hours away. Our special coverage starts this morning with white house chief of staff mark meadows. Biden deputypaaner kate bedingf. Plus, insight and analysis from our powerhouse roundtable. Announcer from abc news, its this week. Here now, chief anchor George Stephanopoulos. Good morning, and welcome to this week. The democrats have wrapped up their First Virtual convention and as we come on the air this morning, our brandnew poll shows it may have done joe biden some good. His favorable rating is up eight points from ten days ago. The gop kicks off monday with President Trump set to appear all four nights. The first lady and the president s Adult Children also slated to speak in primetime. But as we come on the air this morning, a different trump Family Member now in the spotlight. In audiotapes given to the Washington Post by the president s niece mary trump, your hear President Trumps sister, maryanne trump lashing out her brother. Delivering harsh judgments on his conduct in office. [ bleep ]. Oh, my god, im talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. White house chief of staff mark meadows joins us now. Thank you for joining us, mr. Meadows. Have you spoken to the president about those tapes . What is his response . Obviously, hes been public with his response. Just another day and another attack that we continue to see, george, i can tell you that i have never met the judge, i was at the funeral the other day, i was hoping to meet her there, she didnt show up for her brothers funeral, and the president that i have the privilege of serving is not the one thats being described on a 15hour, i guess is what im reading secret tape, i mean, what Family Member tapes another Family Member for 15 hours secretly . I can tell you this, the president is committed to this country, loves this country, in terms of the one principle that he not only morning he talks to me about, what can we do to serve the American People better . Hes been very consistent about that. The president s sister also claims that the president paid someone to take his entrance exams. Lets listen. He went to fordham for one year and then he got into the university of pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams no way. He had someone take his entrance exams . The s. A. T. S or whatever. Yeah. The president has denied it. Why would his sister lie about it . In what she thought was a private conversation. Does the president have any evidence to back up his denial . Pam shriver came out, the person accused of taking the test actually that was a different joe shapiro. Well, it was actually interesting, because it was a joe shapiro at the same school, so when we start to look at that listen, we have the president of the United States, one of only 45 people that have been elected, i can tell you a number of other things that supposedly have been alleged that the president doesnt read much, you may see it when he goes to marine one a Cardboard Box thats back on marine one, whats in there are clippings each and every day, he probably reads more than anyone i know, which causes me to have to read more. Listen, this is politics as usual by a niece that was written out of a will, that would apparently just has an ax to grind because she wants joe biden to be president. I can tell you this that this president each and every day is not only well prepped but does more than any president that i have ever been able to have the privilege of researching and reading about in terms of wanting to make sure that we advance critical, critical agendas for the hardworking American People on main street. Lets turn to the covid crisis. In a tweet yesterday morning, the president leveled a pretty serious charge against the fda. I want to read it. Putting it up on the screen right now. The deep state, whoever, over at the fda is making it very difficult for Drug Companies to orde t test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, theyre hoping to delay the answering until after november 3 rd. Must focus on speed and saving lives. What evidence does the president has that the fda is manipulating this approval process for political reasons . Well, your words are manipulating it, george. I dont think he said they were manipulating. He said obviously hold on. I can help you. I have been personally involved in this. Ill be glad to tell you. Heres what we continue to look at its not the fda, its nih and others, as we look at the protocols and dr. Hahn said were not going to cut any corners. Were not cutting any corners. But what we have, we have a china virus that came here, we got to deliver answers and the president each and every day is saying, why dont we have answer today . Why dont we have answer tomorrow . So what happens is, we continue to look at some of the trials and whats happening, and we want to wear belt and suspenders the way that some of these bureaucrats they want to do things the way theyve always done it. This president is about cutting red tape. Thats what the tweet was all about. I think youre going to hear announcement later today, he had to make sure that they felt the heat. If they dont see the light they need to feel the heat, because the American People are suffering. The president knows it. Hes going to make sure that we deliver on behalf of the American People. His exact words, obviously theyre hoping to delay the answer until after november 3rd. If he believes that the fda is doing that for political reasons, until after the election, why wouldnt he fire the fda commissioner . Weve looked at a number of people that are not being as diligent as they should be in terms of getting to the bottom of it. Weve actually had people that have been relocated. Youve covered that on your show. When we look its almost impossible to fire a federal employee regardless of what they do wrong. We need real Civil Service reform, but this president wants to make sure that we hold them accountable and i can tell you that secretary azar was on the phone with the president and me yesterday, as we were working through this. Its not just on the announcement thats coming today, its more announcements that are coming this week and the weeks to follow, but we really need to make sure that we have good science and the proper protocol, but we also cant wait around and assume that this virus is going to go away, this president wants real results and thats why he took to twitter, but it wasnt just twitter. I have answered a number of phone calls from the president and had a number of meetings this last week to make sure we move it forward. So he does believe there are those in the fda to delay approvals until after the election dont see the same sense of urgency as he sees, and as we start to look at it, they know that some kind of result today is good for the American People and he just wants to make sure that they feel the same urgency. Lets talk about the post office. The house passed legislation yesterday that would reverse some of the cutbacks at the post office. 25 billion in emergency funding. The president calls this hoax, saying the post office doesnt need any funds. The post office has had a request for these funds since the spring. You offered 10 billion in these negotiations with congress. We offered 10 billion plus some additional reforms that would handle some of the prefunding issues. Listen, the postal system is not sustainable the way it is now. The president knows that. I know that. And as weve offered this money, this money is actually designed to hopefully prop it up while we reform the Postal Service and we allow the hardworking men and women of the Postal Service to continue to do what they do and deliver mail on time. I will say this, though, when you look at the bill that was passed yesterday, that bill was not a serious bill. Its 25 billion, it doesnt do anything to sustain the postal system long term, its going nowhere and my conversations with a lot of the democrats on capitol hill yesterday is, if you want to be serious about it, this president is willing to put forth money and reforms but lets lets attach to Something Else since weve got so many people hurting, why did they come back on a saturday and only deal with postal. Why didnt they deal with enhanced unemployment . Why didnt they extend the ppp program that actually helps Small Businesses . This president is committed to doing that. I believe the republicans in the senate will take this bill and actually make it something that perhaps can be signed into law. I know you stopped by Speaker Pelosis office yesterday, did you get a response . I havent heard from the speaker yet. Im going to make a phone call to her today. I did meet with a number of democrats yesterday on capitol hill, as they were there. Had some very constructive conversations, listen, there are a number of things that we agree on. And my challenge to the speaker this morning would be this if we agree on five or six things, lets go ahead and pass those. Why didnt you do it yesterday. Lets go ahead and pass it. I spoke to the president early this morning, hes willing to sign that including Postal Service reform, making sure that the money is there to make sure that deliveries of first class mail are handled quickly, efficiently and on time. The president put out a tweet this morning, about the drop boxes, saying theyre not covid sanitized. Does he really believe those boxes can spread covid . We know that covid lives on hard surfaces. Whether its there or not, when we look at a particular situation we want to make sure that ballot is sacred. I think thats what he was speaking to, george, when we look at casting a ballot, it should be able to go from your hand to the ballot box with no one else interfering, and even when we use the Postal Service to do that, we have to have those verifications, to make sure that it would be George Stephanopoulos actually sending in his ballot so that we know that someone else is not casting for you. Ive worked in the precincts and when we put ballots in the ballot box, we put on a lock on it and make sure that no one can tamper with it. Its sacred. We need to make sure everybodys vote is cast, but we also need to make sewer that no one else disenfranchising those by creating a fraud on the voting system. Got to talk about qanon. Earlier this week the president had some supportive words for qanon. The fbi says that group poses a domestic terror threat. Top republicans like senator ben sasse and liz cheney call it nuts. No place in american politics. Why wont the president condemn this group . I had to google it, to figure out what it is. You talked about it more, george, than anybody in the white house has talked about it. We look at that there are a number of conspiracies that we should be talking about. We ought to be talking about the fact that we continue to look at why the fbi spied on the Trump Campaign, and what happened there. That was a conspiracy that was real and when we start to look at. The top 20 priority, qanons not on it, its probably not on the top 50. Its time we get serious about questions and move on. I dont think this is a central debate that anybody whos going to decide who the next president of the United States might be. Or where we need to deploy the fbi. Where we need to deploy the fbi is portland and other areas, where we see in realtime whats happening. Not something that may be an internet conspiracy. Congressman meadows. Thank you for joining us. Good luck this week. Thank you. Were joined by the Deputy Campaign manager for the biden campaign, Kate Bedingfield. Kate, thank you for joining us this morning. I want to start out with the tweet from the president that he suggested there are those in the fda trying to hold up the approval process until after november 3rd. You just heard mark meadows say, a number of people at the fda havent shared the same sense of urgency as the president. Your response. The American People need to be confident that the process of getting to vaccine isnt being politically manipulated. And right now, were not getting a whole lot of reason to believe that. Unfortunately, this is consistent with the way the president has approached this crisis from the beginning. He, you know, started out saying the virus will magically disappeared. He has made the response to an almost unprecedented Public Health crisis in this country political. He has used every opportunity to undermine faith in the Public Health officials who should be driving his response to this crisis. And hes, you know, hes used the opportunity to go on tv, turn it into a press conference to, you know, tout his own political success. So i think, as americans are eagerly awaiting a vaccine, they need to feel confident that the process isnt being manipulated and confident that the president will be able to, and this administration, will be able to get the vaccine quickly to everyone. Thats a massive logistically undertaking. It requires organization and execution. I dont think anybody has seen any evidence from this president , or this government, that theyll be able to handle that kind of operation. American people need to have faith in their government, and right now were not getting a whole lot of it. A separate question on covid, on july 28th, joe biden said he hadnt been tested for the coronavirus. Your campaign refused on two occasions to answer the question about whether hes been tested for covid. Hes not had the virus. We have put in place really strict protocols. We put in place incredibly strict protocols to ensure that everybody involved whos around Vice President biden, whos around senator harris is undergoing to appropriate testing. The Vice President has not had the virus. Has he been tested . He has not been tested. However, we have put the strictest protocols in place and moving forward should he need to be tested, he certainly would be. Okay, on the post office, we just heard mr. Meadows say hes willing to negotiate with Speaker Pelosi on more of targeted bill where they can sign something they could all agree on, a lot of House Democrats agree with that, they want more money for small business, theyd like to expand some of the unemployment funding as well, is that something biden would support . He would. Get resources to the post office. You know, delivering ballots is one important piece of their work. Its a fundamental service that gets medicine and checks to people who need them all across the country. Its a vital service. He also believes that we need to get money to people who are hurting now. Hes somebody as president would be able to bring people together, would be able to get to to get to consensus when people are hurting and need action, thats something that hes done his entire life. Thats what people are looking for in a leader. People arent looking for someone to stonewall or sow division in what we see from donald trump in his approach to almost frankly everything. In President Biden would be able to bring people to the table and get relief to people who need it. To the Small Businesses. To the families who are hurting. As president that would be the first thing at the front of his mind every morning when he woke up. We showed at the top of program that our latest poll shows the Vice President got a bounce favorability coming out of the convention. President trump holds an advantage on the economy, how do you respond to the criticism that the democrats didnt do enough of focusing on the working class economics . I think we did. You saw a real distinction between what you saw our convention and i imagine what youll see at the Republican Convention. Almost half of the speakers have the last name trump. At next weeks convention. You saw real people talking about their experiences, talking about how Donald Trumps leadership has impacted their lives and why they believe that joe biden should be president. Youve seen over the course of the summer, youve seen joe biden roll out a really comprehensive, really ambitious economic plan. His agenda to build back better, including things like bringing supply chains back to america, so that were making things here in america, including tax credits for child care, for caregivers, moves to shoreup the caregiving economy and make sure people who are working in these essential jobs have the support that they need. And families are able to afford things like child care that are critical, foundational to them being able to live theirs lives. I think youve heard a lot from joe biden exactly what hell do to build this country back better. Within you talk about those programs, Vice President bidens longtime adviser suggested this week that President Biden might not be able to make good on those promises in the first term. I dont think there will be a big increase in federal spending, basically when we get in that the pantry is going to be bare, this is going to be very difficult. This is going to be very difficult, administration, and one of things there are well have limited funds to do. That drew a very sharp contrast from congresswoman alexandria ocasiocoez. Aid this isxtreme concerning. The pan