Flags and thousands expressed their objection to the stay at home orders issued by their governor to try and stop the spread of the coronavirus. Some of the protesters even chanted the maga staple lock her up in reference to the governor who spoke to my colleague about the dangers that the ralliers put their community in. When you see a, you know, political rally, thats what it was yesterday, a political rally like that where people arent Wearing Masks and theyre in close quarters and they are suching one another you know thats precisely what makes this kind of disease drag out and expose more people. And lets be clear. These are organized political rallies. Which like the Old Tea Party protests at the start of president Obamas Administration are magically sprouting up all over the country. The ralliers are physically demonstrating their rejection of social distancing as a way to combat the spread of the coronavirus. Like this group of protesters outside the ohio state house in a photo that went viral for their zombie like fervor. This week after saying he had total authority to reopen the country, a claim that is categorically untrue based on the constitution and federal law, trump on thursday reversed course and said no, no, wait its up to governors to make that call only to take to twitter on friday to call for the quote, liberation of minnesota, michigan and virginia. In his tweet about liberating virginia he ern threw in some gun loving scare tactics saying the states 2nd amendment was quote, under siege. I mean, what is he calling for . Armed maga supporters to defy their governors orders and storm back to their low paid jobs, booming wall street or bust. It sounds a lot like the Brooks Brothers protest during the 2000 election or the tea partys vow to stop the Little People from Getting Health Care and mortgage relief. Full liberty. Right . This thing about insta protests about what really rich people want, but which are cast at regular folks almost all white just happening to show up to defend their freedom, sometimes with their guns and always with their screaming rage is kind of a republican thing. Coincident tally, minnesota, michigan are democratic states and michigan is crucial for reelection. He has found a way to Campaign Amid the coronavirus pandemic after all. His daily pressers have become a daily televised platform for his 2020 campaign. On monday he even played a Government Produced taxpayer funded propaganda ad. And these protests with the maga hats and the confederate flags are all feeling a lot like the previous come pain rallies that trump has been forced to forego. The banner cry is against the backdrop of a horrific american death toll as outbreaks unfold across the country. The virus has killed more than 36,000 people in the United States claiming at least 7,000 lives. Not just in Nursing Homes according to the New York Times including in Nursing Homes across the country and killing people of color, African Americans at a much higher rate including the mother of my next guest. Ellisons mother died on march 26th from complications of covid19, the illness produced by the coronavirus. She was 82. And keith ellison, attorney general of minnesota joins me now. And first i want to start by issuing my condolences and the condolences of our entire team to you for the loss of your mom. I know it is in a hard to recover from loss and im really sorry to hear that that happened. Thank you very much. If you can talk a little bit about the experience that your family went through i want to give you that opportunity. Well, i you know, my heart goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one during this pandemic because you know, you its just difficult to honor them and show them the public demonstration of love and honor that you want to do because the funerals have to be very limited, only a few people, three could be at the actual interment of my mothers casket. And its just strange. You cant hug people, you cant hug your loved ones. You cant lean on their shoulder and cry with them the way that we would ordinarily do for our loved ones and so you know, me and my brothers and my kids and their kids have weve lost the very pillar of our family and you know, its i just my heart goes out to everyone and i guess i can say in my brothers can say and my son can say we know from firsthand experience how absolutely serious coronavirus is. That it is absolutely serious, that if you are not observing social distancing youre putting your loved ones at risk no matter how strong and healthy you think you are. You could be an asymptomatic carrier and so it is essential that we all observe the proper protocols. Physical distancing, quarantine, its life or death. And so when the president defies that, its deeply disturbing to me. Yeah. Your son jeremiah wrote a really moving piece in the New York Times talking about the loss of his grandmother. But also talking about the disparities, the historic disparities that go all the way back, you can go back to enslavement, you can go back to red lining, you can go back to communities of color, black folks in particular happening to live in the last choice communities in a lot of these places whether its in minneapolis or whether its in detroit and you know, white folks being able to escape to the suburbs when the first black family moves in and black people left in a situation where theyre nor vulnerable by default. Jobs where youre closer to people, stuck working next to each other. When you hear donald trump talking in a sort of faux con federal language about these lockdown orders which are meant to save lives and you see people with these insta protests paid for by activists for the super rich, egging on this kind of activity that could get violent, what does that say to you . It says to me that the that the president is willing to risk the lives of people who believe in him so that he can have advantages like reelection and things like that. Hes literally willing to sacrifice the lives of americans for personal gain and thats deeply disturbing to me. Its not new. How many people who fought on the confederate side owned massive plantations . Not that many. They bought themselves out of having to fight for their slavery and they let poor whites die for them and so you foe, its not a new story, right . But its disturbing, its sad, and i just i pray for those people because even though i disagree absolutely with these protests and i think that theyre completely and entirely inappropriate, i know that they and their loved ones will pay an awful price. Yeah, earlier velshi was talking about some of the people who were paying for this. The Stephen Moore crowd that are all about the super rich. I think these folks that are out there, i dont know why what got them to turn out but they need to understand that none of these people who are paying for those protests care about them getting sick or not. They care about the economy and their wealth. They care about their stock, they care about themselves. So i guess these folks whatever they want to believe, i guess they believe you are in the midst of a fight right now in your state trying to fight to prevent renters from suffering and being evicted in this crisis. Can you tell us about that fight and how that is going . Yes, weve the governor very wisely issued a prohibition on eviction. The attorney general, thats me, is charged with enforcing this and its very simple. How can you shelter in place with no shelter . You cant stay at home if you have no home so weve got to keep people in the homes that theyre in to maintain safety for them and the entire community and yet weve seen some landlords shut off the peoples water, shut off peoples utilities, do other sort of annoying things to try to push people out of their home at a critical moment when they need a home more than ever. Now, i will say that many landlords have been great, you know, i want to commend all the ones who have done the right thing, but for the few who have not, we have enforced a law against them. We will continue to do so. We you know, we are going to investigate and make sure theres due process, but if we come to the conclusion that you are trying to defacto evict people because the courts will not allow you to, we are going to take civil action against you and you may have to deal with other consequences as well. Its heartless, its wrong, its illegal and were not going to put up with it. And we know that theres a president ial race coming up. Its still coming. What would you say to joe biden who, you know, falls on the other side of the line from donald trump who i guess hes going the old confederacy Jefferson Davis route. Right. You were on the Bernie Sanders sort of spectrum in the spectrum of the democratic and independent democratic leaning side. What should joe biden rethink in your view if you think he should rethink anything about what he wants to do visavis is economy, visavis health care should he become president . Well, i get i believe that joe bidens ears are open and hes listening, but look, this pandemic reveals the ripped social fabric of our society. It refeels the fact that if you dont have health care and you dont have health care for all, many more people are at risk. It shows if we dont have broad band for everybody its very difficult to work remotely, to do distance learning, you have communities that are simply ice lated because they dont have proper internet access. I mean, the fact that we dont we have a housing crisis for low income people shows that if youre homeless and youre very close to the age youre out. The low wages, people dont have any savings to fall back on in a crisis like this and so the fact that we have had 40 years of flat wages and disinvestment in government means that people are more vulnerable than ever. I think that Bernie Sanders and joe biden are talking and im im happy that the conversations are ongoing and i just i really need somebody whos just going to address the inequality that is right now being exposed more than ever to in this next election. I need somebody whos going to say, what can we do to promote prosperity for working people all over again and thats what im focused on and so i think if joe biden is up for that conversation im up for that conversation too. Yeah, indeed. One would hope a president would be talking about liberating people from poverty and want and from disease and fear. That would be nice. Minnesota attorney general, keith ellison, again, condolences to you from our team and thank you so much for being here this morning. From my whole family, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. And joining me now is john meechham, how author of the hope of glory. And also the pod cast hope through history. That seems appropriate, john. Thank you so much for being here this morning. I want to put back up this photo of these ohio protesters that went viral this week. A lot of people said it looked like a zombie movie. Zombie directors also think so too. It looked like a scene out of the walking dead or whatever. Yeah. Exactly. What is this rage that these that these protesters, one of them is running for office, i should note, one of the people in that office. What is it that theyre trying to channel here . Is this sort of knneo confedera and what does that have to do with the pandemic . Thats a great question. It it is the vernacular of fear. General ellison just used that term. We have two tributaries in american life. We have a tributary of hope, of building of a journey toward a more Perfect Union despite our manifest faults and we have a tributary of fear which is they are coming for us. And theres always been a they. Theres been a they since the 1790s when john adams and the federalists passed the alienist acts which gave the United States power to deport immigrants that he just deemed to be undesirable. And to shut down the press. Its a perennial tension between hope and fear. The american story has been noblest when the forces of hope have eked out a victory and its always been a victory thats been eeked out. I think what were seeing now is the manifestation in this particular moment of pandemic and lets be clear, the pandemic for many people is creating anxiety and a even more distrust of the institutions that one would ideally count on to deliver social order. Right . So in this case, you have folks on the right who are sensing that this is some global force and they dont like things that are outside their borders, America First is a phrase that was used by Charles Lindburg and the nazi sympathizers. It became President Trumps rallying cry. You have that on the right and on the left you have people who are seeing that this pandemic has revealed these enormous holes in our social safety net and so you you have this tension but heres the difference. The folks who are worried about the safety net are taking the science seriously. Theyre taking the facts seriously. And the folks on the right who are storming offices and talking about liberation seem to be living in an alternate reality where science doesnt matter. And i think that in a moment like this, it requires a kind of president ial leadership. Any kind of public leadership to say we have to follow the facts. Yeah. I mean, instead what seems to be happening is that you do have very, very wealthy people who see their own interests as getting as many people back on the cog and the wheel as possible for them, for themselves, who are then paying or you know, creating these these supposed grass roots movements. The devosz family, very, very wealthy family. The secretary of education is probably the most famous member of it is one of the groups promoting this thing called the michigan freedom front. Its run by a long time political advisor to the voss family. He was Campaign Manager for the husband of current u. S. Education secretary betsy devoss. In that family people profited off the war in iraq. Meanwhile, while theyre doing this and getting people to come together in ways that could sicken and kill them so that they can demand to go back to work, the white house as they were discouraging the use of masks and saying theyre o optional its not a big deal, they were scrambling to find masks for themselves, going to taiwan to make sure senior staff in the white house were safe. Your thoughts . Well, we all have a hierarchy of interests. What you end up doing is whatever your interest is, whatever the weight of that is is what you do and there are forces in the country today who in their hierarchy of interests have decided that opening the economy quickly and that scapegoating globalism, china, democratic governors finding a them. Once again, remember, theres always a them. Theres always a finger or the object of a finger to point at. Is somehow more important than a sensible rollout of a rational response to a pandemic that has now killed i think 10 to 12 times as many people as died on september 11th. Think about that for a second. September 11th, 2001, changed our Foreign Policy and our distribution of interests, our view of our role in the world for 20 years. And now ten times, 12 times as many people have died since what, march 1st more or less, february . So whats what worried me at the beginning of this and i think actually we talked about it, is when when the pandemic when it became clear, my anxiety was, is our polarization such that this will become a partisan pandemic . That is, are we so dug in into our different camps and particularly on the right in this case, im not making a false ekwif lquivalent here thae would be interpreted and acted on not rationally but passionately and thats what the American Revolution was about. However imperfect it was. It was about putting reason at the center of the National Enterprise so we would at least give our brains a fighting chance against our guts. And that was the that was part of the Central Force in this. We are now, when you look at those pictures, when you look at people talking about liberation, the president of the United States talking about liberation and then bringing guns into it for gods sake, thats passion. Thats appetite. Thats ideology. Thats not reason and consideration and a kind of balance about what do the facts tell us. And this is not, to be clear, a partisan point. Im not reflexively acting because of a preexisting view of the president. One of the tragedies of the era is that the president manages to fulfill every time ones preexisting view of him. Theres never been a president not never. I cannot think of a president off the top of my head who has so selfevidently failed to learn on the job. Abraham lincoln starts out saying he would protect slavery in Southern States and ends up on january 1st, 1863 with the emancipation proclamation. John kennedy screws up the bay of pigs in 1961. By october 1962 he manages the cuban missile crisis. Ronald reagan comes in talking about the soviet union as an evil empire. By may hes in red square playing with babies. Right . So you have these moments in our history where president s have challenged their bases, not simply coddled them, and learned from experience. And in this case, the president continues to simply coddle his base at a dangerous level and almost willfully doesnt want to learn on the job. Yeah. He just wants to be who he is because he sees that as a way to be a success on television because apparently that is his priority, to be a success on television and get high ratings. Good for him. Always great to talk with you. Thank you for making some time with us this morning. Thanks, joy. Coming up, florida congresswoman joins me live as the governor of her state, get this, opens up the beaches in the middle of a pandemic. Perfect. Wayfair has way more ways to renovate your home, from inspiration to installation. Like way more vanities perfect for you. Nice. Way more unique fixtures and tiles. Pairing. Nice. Way more top brands in sinks and faucets. Way more ways to rule your renovation. Nice on any budget, with free shipping. Wayfair. Way more than furniture. Make it tough to take care of yourself, thats why you can rely on natur