Ripping a hole in the pentagon and scarring a rural pennsylvania hillside. Taking the lives of nearly 3,000 people. Today we remember what we must never forgot. This morning you can see the president and first lady there. Thats shanksville, pennsylvania, paying respects to the heros of united flight 93. The men and women who gave their lives in a countryside crash to prevent that plane from flying on and killing more. To every 9 11 member across this nation, the first lady and i come to this hallowed ground, deeply aware that we cannot fill the void in your heart or erase the terrible sorrow of this day. The agony renewed, the nightmare relived, the wound reopened, the last treasured words played over and over again in your minds, but while we cannot erase your pain, we can help to shoulder your burden. We promise that unwavering love that you so want and need, support, devotion and the very special devotion of all americans. The democratic president ial nominee joe biden, you can see him there. He was at the World Trade Center, ground zero, and he took some time to greet the current Vice President mike pence. One annual tradition is reading of the names, the names of those sadly lost in the World Trade Center terror attacks. This, the speaker of the house there in the center on capitol hill this morning, a moment of silence, 8 46 a. M. That was the home the that American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center 19 years ago and at pentagon the defense secretary mark esper laying a crete this morning at the 9 11 pentagon memorial. 184 killed there when American Airlines flight 77 slammed into americas military headquarters. This, of course, the fifth time we mark nevin in the countdown to a president ial election. Like everything else, the ceremonies are different this year because of 2020s coronavirus pandemic. Already with no end in sight, the american death toll from the coronavirus is 60 times, 60 times that of those we lost on 9 11. In recent days weve heard the president in his own voice make clear he understood the threat early on and deliberately played it down and deliberately told you the things the opposite of what he shared with author bob woodward about the gravity of his early briefings and not just misleading words. Public Health Experts say thousands of lives perhaps would have been saved with earlier surges of Testing Capacity or mask use. The United States scored miserably when it compared its Coronavirus Response to other nations yet listen here. President sees himself as a wartime icon. America will prevail over the china virus. As Franklin Delano roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. As the British Government advised the british people in the face of world war ii, keep calm and carry on. Thats what i did when hitler was bombing london, churchill, great leader would oftentimes go to a roof in london and speak, and he always spoke with calmness. He said we have to show calmness. With us to discuss the Washington Bureau chief of the daily beast and jackie atwood. Sometimes you think the tall trump tale cant get any taller. Fdr and churchill told their people the truth in hard times. Right. I think whoever put that in his speech did him a disservice, particularly because of how this president has governed. Fear has been something that he uses all the time, everything from the day before he was president and the day he announced. He was scaring people about mexican immigrants and being rapists. He immigrants in general have been a a group that he uses to try to scare people. He scared people about windmills, that they caused cancer, so that that in particular is just its farfetched, but and particularly when you look back at what he was talking about, he was talking about the markets. He was looking at the stock markets. Again, its a little far frechd to believe that that is why he chose not to tell the American Public the truth and actually put out wrong information about the pandemic. Wrong information about the pandemic. Among those who tend to disagree with the president and how he handled this early on. Listen here, his former National Security adviser john bolton who had left the white house as the coronavirus was starting to accelerate in china, just as the United States was starting to understand we were having a problem john bolton left and heres his take. This is an exception threat to his reelection which i think explains the vehemence of his response to it, and i think its just absolutely striking how clear he is on these tapes to woodward of his appreciation for how dangerous the coronavirus was compared to what he was saying publicly at the time. That coming out of his own mouth. I think i think that this could be nearly the point where the campaign ends. Those are damning words. I know the two had a falling out. Damning words from a veteran National Security hand in the Republican Party who has been around president s at times of crisis. Yeah, and i read john boltons book. He was in the room where President Trump made a lot of his decisions, and his major takeaway, not only concerning the coronavirus but just the year and a half that he wasnt near the president was that the president makes National Security safety decisions based on his own campaign. He doesnt focus on what would be best for the american people. He focuses on what would be best for himself personally to get himself reelected and when you hear these tapes and when you compare what he said to bob woodward in private and publicly about the coronavirus it makes it much easier to follow that line of thinking. Essentially the president was worried about his campaign and his reelection and he did not want people to be panicked or did not want the markets to tank so he told people that everything was going to be fine. He said this was going to be just like a flu season even though he knew it was much more deadly than the flu and he told bob woodward that and now all of those chickens are really coming home to roost as people read and hear what he was saying back in february and march and and in the months since we still have not seen the president take this as seriously as you might expect from a commander in chief. Hes continued to hold major rallies. Hes continued to mock his opponents for Wearing Masks and the idea that the president could have helped his own campaign by taking this more seriously seems to have been lost on him and at this point he seems to just be trying to revise history and say that all he was trying to do was keep people calm when he could have taken a much stronger stance earlier in this pandemic. John harwood, weve covered several president s and covered more campaigns than that. Hyperbole is the oxygen of politics so you expect politicians to inflate their achievements to gloss over their failings, but churchill and fdr at a time when the president is on tape, this is his own voice talking to bob woodward. Plus, the president is once again in complete disconnect from his scientists tweeting this morning about jpmorgan saying its great, you want to get people back in the office when his scientists are either on Television Going around the country saying the coronavirus numbers are a little better but its about to get colder, people are starting to go back into the office. Be worried. The disconnect from reality, the disconnect from the experts is stunning. John, weve never seen hyperbole in our careers like donald trump hyperbole, and it seems that the more political distress hes in the more outlandish his rhetoric, his theatricality and his hyperbole gets. Keep in mind to your point that were experiencing every three days or more than twice a week a loss of more americans that were killed than were killed in 9 11. Were losing 1,000 people a day. We lost around 3,000 on 9 11. Do i think its important also to point out what the political cost of this is for the president. No. Hes not going to lose a substantial share of his political base. Hes running around seven points behind joe biden nationally, about 43 of the vote, but the key point is that 43 of the vote is not enough to win under any scenario. What the president has toss do is expand his base, not hold his base, and what these stories do, both the woodward book, the atlantic article before that is put him on the defensive, pore fray him in an unflattering light for some of the voters he needs to get, not just undecided voters, but people who are now voting for joe biden. Hes got to the claw back votes from joe biden in some of those battleground states and that task is getting more difficult by the day, and the distance of time between now and the election and acknowledging that some voting is already under way is just getting shorter and shorter. Right, and then theres thing he cannot control which is the source of his frustration, the coronavirus, and well continue to track that as well. Appreciate the reporting. Up next, to the point about the coronavirus, dr. Fauci issues new Covid Concerns about whats coming as the temperatures cool and we move into fall and winter. We made usaa insurance for veterans like liz and mike. An army family who is always at the ready. So when they got a little surprise. Two . They didnt panic. They got a bigger car for their soontobebigger family. After shopping around for insurance, they called usaa who helped find the right coverage for them and even some muchneeded savings. That was the easy part. Usaa insurance is made the way liz and mike need it easy. Uwomen with metastatic the wwe breast cancer. Rs. It our time. For more time. Has come. Living longer is possible and proven in postmenopausal women taking kisqali plus fulvestrant. In a clinical trial, kisqali plus fulvestrant helped women live longer with hr , her2 metastatic breast cancer. And it significantly delayed disease progression. Kisqali can cause lung problems or an abnormal heartbeat, which can lead to death. It can cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in severe infections. Tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening symptoms, including breathing problems, cough, chest pain, a change in your heartbeat, dizziness, yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, tiredness, loss of appetite, abdomen pain, bleeding, bruising, fever, chills, or other symptoms of an infection, a severe or worsening rash, are or plan to become pregnant, or breastfeeding. Avoid grapefruit during treatment. Ask your doctor about living longer with kisqali. Who do you trust . Who can you trust sadly is a recurring coronavirus theme. The president today all in on getting people back to work. Not to worry is his take. The president s scientists all until on warning you to expect the change in seasons will bring a covid resurgence. Please worry is the message from the experts. Lets take a look at the numbers and you can decide who you trust. This is an improving map especially if you go back to where we were in july and early august. Eight states right now reporting new Coronavirus Infections now compared to a week ago. Eight states trending up. More new infections up than a week ago. Thats the base Holding Steady and 28 states green and 28 states reporting fewer new infections this week when you compare the data to a week ago. Thats the direction you want to be heading, heading down, so is the map looks better than it has or at least better than it has if you compare it to the summer. However, were still looking at pretty high numbers here. Just in the past week, just shy of 250,000 new infections. Just shy of 5,000 reported deaths, so the numbers are improving but they are improving from the horrific place of the summer surge. Still bad. If you look at the cdc forecast were a little above, a look at the numbers, 191,000 deaths in the United States and the cdc believes that will go up to at least 217,000 by october 3rd, a couple weeks ago so the death toll to continue even by Trump Administration projections there. One of the worries as we head into the fall is that states are starting to say, okay, lets move into the next phase. Next week, for example, nebraska and florida will ease some of their restrictions allowing more movement, allowing more people in a room like a restaurant, for example. Their cases are going down at moment, cases going down at the moment but the experts worry that you ease up and people start to get up and get together. These trends that are positive at the moment can change. Another reason, dr. Anthony fauci is pointing these are six states. Hes issued warnings to in the last week. Some of them case counts going down. Case counts going down, going down, still he says we see things in the positivity rates and your cases that tell us you might have danger around the corner. Get better. This is why dr. Fauci is worried. Yes, come back to this map. This map looks much better than it did if we were having this conversation as we did in late july and in early august. It looks much better now but dr. Fauci says what the United States failed to do is get the number of new infections a day down enough to be ready for the fall. Weve now come down a bit to about 35 to 45 and some days up close to 50,000 cases a day, still, an extraordinarily unacceptable baseline if youre thinking of socalled opening the economy and entering into the fall and relatively soon winter soon. Here to share her expertise and insights is julia markus, assistant professor at harvard medical soon and harvard pilgrim medical school. Thanks so much for being with us. I want you to explain to viewers out there who might not get what dr. Fauci is trying to get. Were still at 35,000 new infections a day on average. Better than the 68,000, 70,000 new infections in july, but as we get to the fall, as people start to move indoors, how low does that baseline need to be in your view to prevent the inevitable, another surge . I think what we need to be thinking about as we go into fall and winter with this high baseline is ways that we can live our lives sustainably while keeping the risk of transmission low, and thats going to look like creative restructuring of environment so that we can actually be outdoors, even in climates where we dont usually do things outdoors in the winter and also thinking about social pods and other ways that we can get through this winter while maintaining some semblance of social connect which i think is clear that people need and needs to be considered essential as we move forward. One of the things that were seeing inevitably because of the political calendar. Were in a president ial calendar year. We can show you some pictures. You mentioned all of us have to choose how to behave at this time. A trump rally last night, a lot of people packed close together not Wearing Masks. Outdoors which is better than indoors, most of the people here but listen to the director of the National Institute of health as part of our cnn town hall last night essentially saying i dont get it. Wearing a mask helps. I see these pictures and i dont get it. How did we get here . Imagine you were an alien who landed on planet earth and you saw that our planet was afflicted by an Infectious Disease and that masks were an effective way to prevent the spread, and yet when you went around you saw some people not wearing them and other people wearing them and youre trying to figure out why and it turned out it was their political party. You would scratch your head and you would think that this is not a planet that has much promise for the future. A pretty harsh statement at the end. Not a planet that the has much promise for the future. How do we fix this . Well, i think with any new Public Health intervention, i mean, think back to set belts and condoms, theres always going to be some resistance so thats pretty par for the course, and i think whats different here is this politicization of science including masks and other aspects of this pandemic that has made it much more difficult for Public Health professionals to do their job, but fact remains that we really need to be thinking about why people are having a hard time Wearing Masks or why people are opting not to wear them and instead of dismissing those reasons really trying to address them directly and work to overcome those barriers without change people or punishing them and really trying to take more of a supportive than a punitive approach. One of the challenges i raised at the top of the segment is who do you trust when youre getting mixed messages from people of authority, whether its the president of the United States or the countrys top Infectious Disease experts, the president tweeting this morning, get back to work, get back to office, praising and overstated what it did, praising a jpmorgan work to get back to work. The president says get back to office, get back to school and get back out there and his top expert says be careful for just whats around the corner. I just think we need to hunker down and get through this fall and winter because its not going to be easy. I dont talk about second surges because were still in the first surge. As people and we try to open up, and if we dont do it correctly well see the surges that weve seen in the southern states, in the midwest and now if you look at the map, its montana, north and south dakota, michigan, minnesota, iowa. Those are the ones that are surging. You mentioned earlier some of the behavioral things that we can do, whether its social pods or even if you go back to work, redesign the work space and be careful with masking, but is some of this, whether its the temperatures and change of seasons, is some of this inevitable . Dr. Fauci says were still in a first wave. Will we see a continued first wave, inevitab