Donald is this, use that. Hillary clinton. Donald trump. Donald trump. Donald trump. Donald trump. Donald trump will not become the president. John welcome to the best of with all due respect. The final week before the first president ial debate, the nations attention was focused on the violence in the streets of a major american city. We discussed how the latest Police Shootings in North Carolina and oklahoma and the state of Race Relations in america, and how they impact the 2016 president ial race. Mark yet another Police Shooting that has captured the nations attention. Protests arrested yesterday in charlotte, North Carolina, after police shot and killed 43yearold keith lamont scott. Police say keith emerged from his vehicle with a gun before he was killed. His family has disputed the police account, saying he was unarmed. After all that, demonstrations turned violent last night as protesters vandalized businesses, threw rocks at police, and at one point blocked a highway by looting a truck and setting fire to a pile of boxes. All of this happened of course a day after police in tulsa, oklahoma released that video showing an officer shooting an unarmed africanamerican man, terrence crutcher, who appeared to have his hand in the air when he was shot. At a Campaign Stop in ohio, donald trump was asked about that footage. Mr. Trump to me, it looks like he did everything you were supposed to do, and he looks like a good man. Maybe i am a little clouded because i saw his family talking about him after the fact, so you get a different image, maybe. But to me he looks likes somebody who was doing what they were asking him to do. This young officer, i do not know what she was thinking. I dont know what she was thinking. But i am very, very troubled by that. I am very, very troubled by that, and we have to be very careful. So i mean, these things are terrible. That was, in my opinion, that was a terrible situation. We have seen other swift statements. The police are aware of that. By the way, the police are troubled by it too. Did she get scared, was she choking, what happened . But maybe people like that, people that choke, people that do that, maybe they cant be doing what they do. Mark Hillary Clinton commented on the latest shooting, taking a moment during her speech today in orlando to address the matter as well. Ms. Clinton there is still much we dont know about what happened in both incidents, but we do know that we have two more names to add to a list of africanamericans killed by Police Officers in these encounters. It is unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable. I have spoken to Many Police Chiefs and other Law Enforcement leaders who are as deeply concerned as i am and deeply committed as i am to reform. Why . Because they know it is essential for the safety of our communities and our officers. Mark so john, how do these latest Police Shootings of africanamerican men impact the president ial race, and how are the two candidates handling the situation . John you know, mark, we talked about this yesterday, before the situation in charlotte had unfolded. We were going to do it about the shooting in tulsa at that time. This is the second time where in the Police Shooting and they have broken through in a significant way. Obviously this is a huge problem in cities across the country. And is a real challenge for both candidates. I thought donald trump and Hillary Clinton handled this pretty well today. Donald trump takes a different line that he has taken in the past, different from what his Campaign Manager and Vice President ial running mate took a few hours earlier, expressing more sympathy for the victim in the case in tulsa. And of course, Hillary Clinton talks about it with great fluency. They are both talking about it very well. I do not know what the political influence will be, but it is something that will be a topic of discussion so long as these events keep happening as we head toward election day. Mark no question that Donald Trumps remarks were more striking than clintons, not because he spoke with more compassion than she did by any means, but because they were different than what mike pence talked, but the way he has largely talked about these matters. It is great in the face of tragedy for both to take time to reflect on it and to give us a sense of the kind of leaders they would be if they were president starting in january of how they will deal with this. Because it is pretty clear, although there is something of a National Debate about remedies, this is still a problem that will bedevil the country for some time to come. John if you think this is a systematic problem and one that is related to race and racial bias, it is not a mystery that a lot of the victims in these cases have been africanamerican men, in some cases justified. In many cases, way too many cases, unjustified or apparently unjustified. That qualifies Hillary Clinton to talk about this in a more comprehensive way than donald trump does, but as you point out, trump taking a very different tone today. Interesting to see where it goes. Next up, we check on the state of the president ial race with two reporters from our Nations Capital who have been busy covering it closely. Stay tuned. Mark the best political reporters in america join us now. The chief White House Correspondent and dan of the Washington Post, in the papers newsroom, thank you both for being here. Dan, i will start with you. How do you think, based on the performance of the candidates this past week and into the debate monday, how do they look in terms of fighting form to be ready for that showdown . Dan they both need work and a lot of practice over the next few days and they will do it in their own way. Hillary clinton is going to be down much of that time during the debate going through a rigorous series of mock debates. Donald trump will do it his own way, which will be, i will not call that a relaxed approach, but it will be a different approach. He will not cram himself full of facts and figures. But he will have a sense of strategy that he wants to take into the debate. I think both of them have to be a little bit nervous because this is a more unpredictable environment. The topics are very broad that lester holt has laid out, and we dont quite know what donald trump will be like. There has to be nervousness on both sides. Mark margaret, how do you think they are headed trajectory wise at monday . Margaret what we are seeing with clinton is she is trying to project a calm and prepared approach, sticking to the facts. Her appearance at the u. N. , kind of showing off her statesmanlike credentials. She wants to remain calm and unflappable. I think just as much to convince herself that she can do that on monday as anything else. If she can keep that up and go in there in a i am not going to take the bait kind of mode, that is ideally what she wants. The campaign is afraid of any reason why everybody in the world will tune in to see whether the she can pull that off. John in terms of what you know about how they are dealing with debate prep, this is the biggest topic out there how do you think she is, technically speaking, going about the process of trying to get ready for the unpredictability of donald trump . Margaret in many ways, i will give you some educated guesses because we know a lot more about what she is not doing and what she is doing. They have been careful about not sprinkling in many details as we all wants. We know she is not like off at a resort outside of las vegas in debate camp. She is trying to avoid president obamas kind of ritual and some of his mistakes from 2012. And we know the way she has traditionally done debate prep is to go through kind of everything. She knows what her policies are. But to review her own work, what her opponent has said and done in the past, and to try to be prepared not only to defend her own positions or explain her own positions, but to be able to check him and cross him if either he says something that she knows is not true or if the debate moderator himself fails to go in that direction. I expect that is a lot of what she is doing, but i would love to tell you, is she in a room in her house watching video, that she do it in the kitchen or is there a tent in the backyard, we do not know a lot of those sort of details. The campaign is holding that really tight. John dan, you made a comment when you are answering marks question that you did not want to go quite where donald trump is handling his prep in a relaxed fashion. From what we know, he will be relaxed. What do you think the dangers and the strengths are going about debate prep the way donald trump seems to be, in a much more not nearly as rigorous, lets say, or structured away as Hillary Clinton generally does . Dan lets start with a positive. He is very good on live tv settings. Or very often is, and he demonstrated that in a lot of the republican debates. He is comfortable in that environment. He knows how to make a quick, he knows how to make someone off balance, and he enjoys doing that. In a performance sense, he comes to it with a kind of a naturalness that she might not. He spent many years in reality tv, and he likes and enjoys that environment. The challenge i think obviously or the risk is that this is 90 minutes, there is no break, it can be very substantive depending on how the flow of the debate goes. He will have to produce deeper or more complex answers about some of his policies or more consistent or coherent statements about his policies. He will have a greater difficulty kind of skating across the top of some of those issues that he might have been able to do in a debate with four, five, six, seven, eight people that he did in the republican debate. I think that is the bigger risk for him. Mark margaret, a democrat who supports Hillary Clinton told me today that she thought things were going pretty well. The most recent wave of polling including a new nbc wall street journal poll, better news for clinton than last weeks polling in the wake of the problems she had over the weekend but they also said it could be that this is such an overwhelming change election that there is nothing we can do. We can run a perfect race and donald trump could overwhelm us. Do you get the sense that is a prevailing view within democratic circles, this could be a donald trump year and there is nothing clinton can do . Margaret no, Hillary Clinton and her campaign are dedicated to the proposition that the ground game, the infrastructure, the planning, all that sort of stuff, actually does make a difference, particularly in florida, pennsylvania, ohio, maybe that scenario applies. That is not entirely clear yet. The polling has gotten better since the initial total fallout of pneumoniagate which was a really dumb move on their part. To the extent that she is beginning to put a little space between her and donald trump, these tend to be polls of likely voters. If their presumption is they can actually push that a little bit further because they are doing work to turn out people that polls are not building in in the into the sort of prediction models, then they can feel a little better than they could one week ago. I do not think they think this is a runaway year that they can do nothing about. I think they firmly believe all of the stuff they are doing, the manpower on the ground, Traditional Campaign stuff makes a difference. How much of a difference obviously we do not know yet. Mark dan, analysts and people in the Clinton Campaign say states where donald trump is doing well like iowa and ohio, a lot of white voters there. In the states where he is doing well, battleground states where hes doing better like ohio and florida where i am, what else is going on . What else is helping donald trump beside white voters . Dan florida, as you know mark, is always close and will be close, it has been a battleground over the last several elections, and i do not think anybody in either campaign thought that one candidate or the other was going to get a big advantage in florida. That was the closest as i recall in 2012, and very well may be the closest this time around. I think the fact that he is doing well there is fine and expected. In other states, it is a function of the percentage of the electorate, the white electorate that has College Degrees or does not have College Degrees. The lower that percentage, the better trump does, the higher that percentage, the more challenged he is, and that is what i think is what we are seeing in some of these battleground states. John you are the dean so i will close with you. In this nbc wall street journal poll it says that people were asked what concerns them most about donald trump. At the very top of the list is him not having the right temperament to be commander in chief. A little further down the list is his comments about women and immigrants. And the bottom of the list, 6 the thing is his failure to release his tax returns. Looking at that poll, can we deduce that there is no way we will see Donald Trumps tax returns before election day . Dan even if that number had been twice or three times that 6 , i do not think we would see them. He has made a decision i think that they will stay hidden as long as possible and well after the november 8 voting. I think it is interesting and reflective that the things we talk about a lot are not that important to a lot of people. He is breaking precedent by not releasing them, no question about that. But is not necessarily going to be a voting issue, and i think he has concluded that more harm could could come from releasing them then not. John anything else about the tax return . Margaret he decided there is more downside in releasing them than ever there could be in making them public. Mark coming up, we get our very own press briefing from white house secretary josh earnest who paid a visit to our studio in new york on monday. John we have a lot to unpack with our next guest. White House Press Secretary josh earnest joins us from our set in new york. Josh, we are sorry we are not there with you, but it is good to have you on the show. Josh i am going to rearrange the books on the shelves while you are gone. John i figured that would be the no good you would be up to. Just give us an update about where the president , what the president thinks in the wake of this weekend. He gave a statement today. Bring us uptodate on where things are. Josh give credit to men and the first thing we have to do is women in Law Enforcement. We saw coordination between local officials and federal officials. You got the Law Enforcement guys on the street walking the beat, doing the Good Police Work to track the individual. You also have fbi experts using their forensic skill and technology to trace this person. In the space of a little over 24 hours ago from a device going off somewhere in manhattan to a name being released by the fbi as a potential suspect and that person just a few hours later being brought into custody. This is really a testament to the heroism of the men and women and lawenforcement. The investigation is continuing, and we obviously want to learn more about this individual, what motivated him, what ties he had to other people who may have been involved, and that work is just beginning. Mark do you agree with the Clinton Campaign that donald trump, through the words he uses can actually hurt americas security . Josh i think the rhetoric we have heard from a lot of republicans including the nominee is contrary to our values and does undermine the argument that we are making against isil. The fact of the matter is the president has organized an International Coalition to go after isil, and we have taken 14,000 airstrikes in iraq and syria combined and had success in taking senior isil officials off the battlefield come into dust including two extra no plotters in the last couple of weeks, and we also know that they are trying to propagate a radical ideology, a bankrupt false mythology, and trying to inspire vulnerable individuals of carrying out acts of violence. We are not just taking the fight to isil on the ground. We are going to destroy this organization, but we will do it with something close to our strategy that does not make the case that they represent true islam in a war against the west. John josh, you made a comment about how the battle between the west and isil was about a battle of narratives. The Donald Trump Campaign said you were out to lunch and out of touch by framing the battle in those terms. How do you respond to that charge . Josh there is no denying we have starkly different views about the way to take on the fight. But the rhetoric we hear from republicans does often undermine the case that we are making against isil. First of all, our first and foremost priority is protecting the American People, and that includes using our military power, our intelligence, our Law Enforcement to keep the American People safe. The president has demonstrated a willingness and a success in making those orders, designing that strategy, and then implementing it. The fact there is a battle that isil wants to wage of narratives. They want to drive the narrative, that they represent islam and are represented islam and the war against the west. That is false. It is not true. There are millions of patriotic muslims in the United States now that are serving in our military, serving in our Law Enforcement