As the protests sparked by his killing continue in small towns and big cities across america. Undeterr undeterred. In fact, even invigorated by a president who has set himself in opposition to the protesters. The conditions in this country have changed so much in the past couple of weeks, over the past few months. Its almost impossible for us covering it day in and day out, watching the news and headlines, to conceive of where things stand. How much the world and this country changed. Those changes have proven to be a task of a strange nature of Donald Trumps political strength. His ability to hold tightly to his base, despite repeatedly saying and doing terrible things that would sink virtually any other politician. Back in 2016, trump said, you will recall, he could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody and would not lose any voters. He said it sort of surprised and bemused. It surp turns out guiding the economy into recession and standing in opposition to a majority of americans to support the protests and say Police Needed to change, well, it turns out that all does have an effect. Day by day, more data accrues to show how politically weak he is, imperiled and how much the actual crises of the country are overwhelming his ability to manipulate the media. Polling had trump near 46 approval. And hes seep that erode, dropping down to 41 . That may not look like a lot, but keep in mind this is someone whose polling has been stable. The poll suggests donald trump would be absolutely crushed by joe biden if the election were held today. Get this, in just the past week, polls have showed biden up 15 points in michigan, up nine in wisconsin, up two in ohio. Tied in texas. All states trump won in 2016. A cnn poll showed biden up 14 points and trump announced he attained a pollster to analyze the cnn poll. The terrible numbers have taken such a terrible poll, the Trump Campaign has spent more than 400,000 on cable news ads where . Well, in the swing state of washington, d. C. Over the past month, according to the daily beast, even though he has no shot of winning there or in the surrounding states. Its an apparent effort to show the president who appears to spend most of his day, all of his day, Something Like that, watching cable news and tweeting, that theyre running ads for him. They got his back. And then today, amidst a National Conversation thats moved so quickly on Police Reform that even conservative republicans like former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker have placed themselves on the side of reform. Amidst this absolute sea change of pub luck opinion, the president of the United States today took aim at the frail, cancer surviving, 75yearold life long peace activist in buffalo named Martin Gugino, a man who gently approached the cops to talk to them and was shoved to the ground in front of us all, blood pooling next to his head. Mr. Martin gugino, who has advocated for peace and justice, had to spend nearly a week in the icu. The president today suggested the protester could be an antifa provocate provocateur. By the way, he fell harder than was pushed. Could it be a setup . In response to that insane, disgusting conspeary theory, Martin Gugino said he he has no comment other than black lives matter. Just out of the icu, should recover eventually. Thanks. Theres always been this caniness to the way trump plays politics is this man a master manipulator or just the dark talk fantasies that make up his media diet . Right now it sure seems like the latter, doesnt it . The president is slipping in the polls, but he will stop at nothing to hang on to power, which is why hes been trying to whip up the base. Having making it harder for people to vote, either by mail, despite the pandemic or in person. Which brings us to election day. Five states held primaries today, including this was the scene in georgia earlier today. Voters having to wait in hours long line, hours. Many turned away from the polls amid problems with Voting Machines and a lack of available ballots. To come here and you think youre actually taking an active part in bringing about some change, and you get here and its like, i cant vote. You dont know if this is just negligence or if this is deliberate. You dont know where its coming from. Its just really bad all around. It was really a bad experience. Georgias already well known for voter suppression, where the governor won a narrow election over Stacey Abrams in 2018. In 2013, when the Supreme Court invalidated a huge swath of the Voting Rights protections, georgia has closed about 5 of its polling places. Cofounder of black voters matter Latasha Brown said it took three hours to vote today in atlanta. She drove to a white suburb voting place and there was no town. On my side of the town, we brought stadium chairs, said brown. In the polls in the public imagination, in public opinion, the president and his allies are losing. So theyre attempting, really to undermine our elections. Faith in them, the administration of them. And if that fails, the president is starting to make those noises. And what we saw in georgia today, we saw it in wisconsin a short while ago. Is an ominous warning about what is to come. Look at that. Pay attention to that. Because what we saw is close to the Worst Nightmare for citizens who want to vote, who believe in electing representatives for election law experts and for people who study democracy, for all of them. There are people who have started planning for and writing about this kind of thing, including a book out called election meltdown which describes the growing mistrust in our election. The author joins me now. Rick, its great to get you. Youre sort of one of the top election law experts in the country. Lets start just with the particulars of what we saw in georgia today. You see lines sometimes, theres big turnout, theres lines. Georgia seemed like an absolute disaster in many respects. What happened there today . Well, i dont think it was a single thing. I mean, its the kind of complements of a few factors. Number one, georgia, because it had been sued because it had terrible Voting Machines, had to roll out new Voting Machines and because the state dragged its feet in getting those new machines online, this is the first election they were really in use, the first big election. What that means is that, you know, youre dealing with a situation where you have poll workers, many of whom are not showing up because of covid19, are trying to run these new machines. They dont have a good backup plan. They dont have enough backup ballots for the voters. Theres not enough training of people across the board. And you have a state thats just shown itself time and again to not be interested in putting the voters first. And so i think, you know, georgia is the worst. But we saw problems in wisconsin, maryland, pennsylvania, in washington, d. C. Last week. Were seeing problems in pennsylvania across the board. Its really scary situation right now as we look towards november. Theres two items. In wisconsin, the wisconsin story it seemed to be clearly much of what we saw, a direct product of the pandemic. This is weeks earlier, most of the country was in lockdown. And you had you just didnt have poll workers who wanted to work in the midst of the pandemic, understandably. That shuts down polling places. You had the denial by the state republicans of making absentee balloting easier. What im hearing from you is what were seeing in georgia and other places is just the regular level of Mall Administration of american elections compounded by the factors of the pandemic. Right. But also the fact that you have these brand new machines. Theyre touchscreen machines that produce a piece of paper that produces a code that gets counted. In a lot of places in georgia where they had problems, they couldnt get the machines started, they didnt know how to run them. Part of that is training, because of that is because of the coronavirus, youre not getting people into adequate training. But the state is pointing its fingers at the county, the county is pointing at the state. When you have a fragmented, polarized, decentralized voting system, these problems are bound to happen. The last thing you want to do is go to new rules during a president ial election. But we have to make accommodations so people can vote in conditions of a pandemic. Especially in november, we dont know what things are going to look like. Weve got to have good mailin balloting options and lots of early voting to alleviate the pressure like we saw today in georgia. The disaster scenario are scenes like we saw in georgia playing out across the country, particularly if theyre disproportionate. Sometimes by design, sometimes i think by a sort of cascade effect. I mean, the solution it seems to me is to lift the bottleneck, get out ahead of it. Yet you have the president urging on republicans who generally have been in favor of absentee balloting, trying to make it into some kind of new cultural war enemy. Theres two things going on there. Number one, trump is trying to offer an explanation if he loses, that it must be fraud through these absentee ballots. But number two, my concern is that hes going to try to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election. One thing we know from pennsylvania and from some other states that have got an new flood of absentee ballots, thanks in part to the coronavirus, is it takes a long time to process those ballots and count them. There may be a period, we may have a full week where we dont know who has won in pennsylvania, where the ballots are counted. If trump is ahead, that might be a time to claim im the winner. Even though its too early to call. Ises this is such an important point. Just to focus on this moment. Theres people, democratic right to participate in a way where theyre not unfairly taxed with a poll tax on their time of five hours. The Administration Elections say all people have a right to vote equally and efficiently. Then theres the legitimacy problem, particularly with a president who we know has no guard rails to observe in terms of what hell say. We need to get our act together. That means people need to be requesting absentee ballots as soon as theyre allowed to. We have to flatten the absentee ballot curve. The media needs to educate people, the Election Night, its going to be too early to call for days and days. People will see that. And Election Administrators needed a get funding from states and congress. They need scanners, workers, they need to print ballots. You cant start figuring this out in september. Its going to be too late. Such an important point. We will reiterate that now to election day. Do not expect Election Night like a normal night. Its going to take a while. Rick, thank you very much. Thank you. Joining me now for more on what were witnessing across the country is senator tammy duckworth, democrat from illinois. I was struck today that tim scott, one of your colleagues from South Carolina, a republican senator, with a few other folks, mitt romney, are talking about some kind of Police Reform legislation. I was struck by it because generally theres not a lot from the republicans do in the senate other than pass judges. It was striking to me that things have changed so much that they suddenly seem interested in legislating a little. Well, its strange, especially since just last week, i asked for unanimous concept to pass my legislation, the independent review act, which is, you know, sets up a Grant Program to help train police, and include a provision for providing independent investigation of Police Involved shootings, and Police Involved killings. And the republicans actually objected to that unanimous consent. So im quite surprised that today theyre interested. I wonder what happened . The president today, i mean, we dont spend a ton of time on the president s tweets on this program. But what he said about this individual, Martin Gugino, i talked to people who are friends with him. Hes a lifelong activist, has been in the streets peacefully advocating for peace and justice for years on this and many other issues. I mean, this is just from some reporting in politico, your colleagues, someone trying to get comment from them. T t from them. T what do you make of that . I mean, this is consistent with where the republicans have been all along. The emperor has no clothes, but now theyre refusing to look at him. They can say i dont know if he has clothes on or not. This is what they do. They enable this president. This is the same president who went down and hid in a bunker at a time when, you know, the Police Forces that he ordered were firing tear gas on peaceful protests. This is the same guy who continued to try to divide us as a nation. And for them to continue to enable him, even to the extent where theyre running away from the truth. Literally youre putting the information in front of him and theyre running away from it is consistent with where republicans have been all along. They have enabled this president and allowed over 110,000 americans to die from covid19, who has continued to divide us instead of bringing us together and heal us when it comes to the issues that people are protesting right now. Im not surprised. But this is what is happening. The bunker was the day before that park cleared people from Lafayette Square just to be clear on that timeline. There was a headline about mark esper. I know you served in iraq, you were also at the Veterans Affairs department. I know you have deep interest in the pentagon and the u. S. Armed forces. And there really does seem there was quite a conflict behind the scenes about the president attempting to use active duty troops on the streets of america. More reporting that trump wanted to fire esper over his balking at the notion. It seems that millie did, as well. Of deploys u. S. Troops on the streets. Theres two ways to interpret this, i guess reassuring they wouldnt go for it, and also terrifying the president wanted to do it. Whats your choice there . Its both. But remember, this president fires anyone who stands up to him. Im glad that mark esper, he got on a phone call with governors and talked about having to dominate the battle space on american soil with American People finally saw the light and im glad he stood up to the president. But, again, the folks around him have continued to be the ones who allow this president to get away with it, and my colleagues in the Senate Continue to enable this president , to show, you know, stick to his very worst instincts. This is a time for us to heal. This is a time to come together and talk about the real issues that black americans face. The system is biased against them. The fact that, you know, this president talked about bringing in not just the military forces, but now the federal Police Forces. We dont even know who they are on the streets, policing against americans. Its very disturbing to me. Final question for you. You were a helicopter pilot and i thought of you when i saw that u. S. Helicopter. We think it was a lakota under the d. C. National guard flying over a protest in what was reported as a show of force kind of flying low, snapping tree branches. What you made of the use of a u. S. Military helicopter over peaceful american civilian demonstrators for that purpose. I was deeply concerned. The lakota is a medevac helicopter. So its a medical helicopter being used to suppress crowds. Ive sent letters to the pentagon asking to who assigned that mission, who did the Risk Assessment and did the pilots do this on their own and why did they not say no . All sorts of faa and Army Regulations about how to fly above crowds and theres some very tight restrictions. So for them to feel free to do that, someone gave them the order to do it and i want to know who. Were going stay on that, because its a sort of small part of this entire story. But there are genuine Unanswered Questions how the orders got communicated and what the chain of command was. I think we all deserve answers on that. Senator tammy duckworth, thank you for making time tonight. Thank you for having me on. Next, warning tines from a state that reopened early. A concerning surge of cases in arizona as hospitals are put on high alert, after this. Ls are p high alert, after this thats why theres otezla. Otezla is not an injection or a cream. Its a pill that treats differently. For psoriasis, 75 clearer skin is achievable, with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. For psoriatic arthritis, otezla is proven to reduce joint swelling, tenderness, and pain. And the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. Dont use if youre allergic to otezla. It may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. 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