I also would have asked him about his major role on the Coronavirus Task force and vaccine development. Mr. Kushner did at least six other Television Interviews yesterday. He canceled ours only after the president s appearance on that abc town hall last night with George Stephanopoulos during which mr. Trump made this comment, among others, about the coronavirus. It is going to disappear. Its going to disappear. Not if we dont it would go away without the vaccine, george, but its going to go away a lot faster with it. It would go away without the vaccine . So far as a period of time, sure and many deaths youll develop like a herd mentality. Its going to be herd developed and thats going to happen that will all happen we of course do not know why mr. Kushner canceled the appearance at the last moment. He is welcome to join us whenever his schedule permits. And well have a lot more on the fallout from President Trumps town hall in just a few moments. First lets turn to the disastrous, slowmoving storm that is wreaking havoc on the gulf coast officials in several states are urging people to stay vigilant because of the possibility of historic rain, rain totals, extreme flooding Hurricane Sally making landfall as a category 2 hurricane near gulf shores, alabama overnight joining us now, Msnbcs Ali Velshi i hope youve seen the worst of it in neighboring orange beach, alabama. Ali, youve had a rough night. Reporter yeah, andrea, it was a rough night, i have to tell you, i apologize in advance, because these winds are still whipping, hours after this thing, our satellite dish has a hard time staying up we thought this would be a category 1 storm it came ashore around 6 00, just a few miles west of here, between mobile and pensacola, florida, as a category 2 with winds up to 105 miles an hour and it sounded like it it came through like a train and it has done a great deal of damage around here a lot of flooding. There are boats that were in the gulf of mexico that are now inland, in peoples backyards, in the streets of orange beach there are more than half a Million People without power im just hearing a siren right now. We havent heard them for a while, which means there is some ability for emergency crews to move around. This storm is now probably about 25 miles north of me inland. And look at the winds, and its still whipping up. Were well past the rain part of it and its still remarkably heavy surf and heavy winds about a half a Million People, as i said, without power and they cannot, with winds like this, a, you cant start repairing power lines, and b, you dont know whether the trees are done falling yet there was rain since this time yesterday, so its saturated, all day, all night, and again all morning. So we still havent seen the worst of it yet in terms of the damage we also had storm surges here in orange beach we saw two feet of rain by this morning, by the time it made landfall again, andrea, this is the fourth hurricane that has landed in the continental United States this year. We havent seen numbers like that since 2004. Its the eighth named storm to make landfall in the United States this year we havent seen that since 1916, andrea that is just remarkable please stay safe, ali. Thank you so much for braving that for all of us ali velshi in orange beach, alabama. Really, really tough night there. And it is so slowmoving that its going to be a while, indeed President Trump, meanwhile, in that unusual setting last night for him, being questioned at a town hall by undecided voters and moderator George Stephanopoulos on the two issues on which he polls the worst, his handling of the coronavirus and Race Relations if you believe its the president s responsibility to protect america, why would you downplay a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low income families and minority communities . Yeah, well, i didnt downplay it i actually, in many ways i upplayed it in terms of action youve coined the phrase make America Great again. Which has america been great for africanamericans in the ghetto of america are you aware of how tone deaf that comes off to the Africanamerican Community i will say we have tremendous africanamerican support, youve probably seen it in the polls, were doing extremely well with africanamerican, hispanicamerican, at levels that youve rarely seen a republican have. I hope theres not a race problem, i can tell you theres none with me because i have Great Respect for all races, for everybody. This country is great because of it joining me now, nbc political reporter monica alba, nbcs mike memoli, Washington Post bureau chief phil rucker. Phil, we havent seen him like this, an extended 90 minutes with undecided voters, witherao George Stephanopoulos, an experienced correspondent and anchor how would you judge how this event went for him andrea, it was a rare sight to see the president questioned by real ordinary citizens, americans. These are not journalists. And they asked very tough questions. A lot of them followed up with their questions when the president neglected to answer them directly. The president at one point tried to interrupt a woman and she had to say, sir, let me finish my question. These voters were stern with him. And the questions they asked had real urgency and they were challenging for the president. He was not able to simply antagonize the questioners and cry fake news as he often does at news conferences, but rather he was sort of scrambling to come up with answers it was very clear, especially on the coronavirus portion of the questioning, that the president was illprepared he still does not have a cohesive argument and narrative to present to the American People to answer some of the deep concerns that many voters have, according to polling, on his management of this crisis. And that has to be a concern for the Trump Campaign, when you consider that the first debate between trump and Democrat Joe Biden is now only 13 days away and there will be a second debate, which in fact is a town hall format with steve scully from cspan. Monica alba, you cover the Trump Campaign let me play one of the questions he was asked about why people arent Wearing Masks this is, again, last nights abc town hall. A lot of people dont want to wear masks there are a lot of people who think that masks are not good. And there are a lot of people that who are those people . Ill tell who you those people are waiters. They come over and they serve you and they have a mask and i saw it the other day where they were serving me and theyre playing with the mask. Im not blame them im just saying what happens theyre playing with the mask. And so the mask is over, and theyre touching it and and then theyre touching the plate. That cant be good monica, is there any reaction today from the campaign to the way this we want down . Yes, andrea, they feel the president was very successful, as they often do when he appears, touting the fact that he committed to this town hall whereas we havent seen democrat former Vice President joe biden do something similar yet he will be, we understand, later in the week. So they are constantly making the argument that the president , while being in office, is trying to campaign on everything that hes done. But so striking and notable, those comments on maskwearing of course what the president failed to mention there is he was somebody who wouldnt wear one publicly for months at the onset of this pandemic and many Health Officials were urging him to do so, to set a good example weve seen him in several instances do it, but its not something that when he gets off a plane in a battleground state, hes not necessarily wearing a Face Covering anymore. You saw him there casting doubt on the efficiency of them. And you just had today his own cdc director, Robert Redfield, saying that in his estimation wearing a face mask could actually protect you better than the Coronavirus Vaccine that has yet to be developed and finalized. That shows you just sort of the mixed messaging that continues to come from the administration. The president is saying there are people who would prefer not to wear them he pointed to waiters in that instance but his own Health Officials have said one of the best things you can do for mitigation is certainly to wear a Face Covering its just not something that he has modelled necessarily i thought it was also quite significant when asked if theres anything he would do differently about his response to the coronavirus pandemic, anything he would change from the last six months. He said simply, no, he was very happy with everything the way it had gone, andrea and in fact, when we look at the events in nevada where he violated the regulations, the state regulations, defied the governor, had an indoor event, very few face masks, if any, were seen, only the people right behind him and the event at the Republican National convention on the south grounds as well as the historic middle east signing ceremonies yesterday, there werent masks to be seen, and people were not socially distanced mike memoli, the Biden Campaign, were expecting remarks from the former Vice President this afternoon and his plan for a Covid Vaccine. Hell be in wilmington, delaware what do we expect to hear and what have they been saying about this town hall yeah, andrea, when you hear monica talking about the mixed messages coming from the president , from his own health advisers, as it relates to the pandemic, you understand why they want to do the event that theyre poised to do here. We expect the Vice President to arrive just in the next few minutes here, at a downtown theater for a briefing from his own team of medical experts, about the focused specifically on one issue, and that is the vaccine. Weve heard an awful lot from joe biden about the pandemic broadly. Hes talked about ways in which if he had been president , steps he would have taken in the early stages to try to prevent it from become eing the kind of widesprd outbreak that it became, steps to mitigate it and prevent the continued spread and of course today focused on the back end part of it, what he would do in terms of making sure the vaccine was guided by the science and not by the politics, which is their view of what is happening here with the administration this has led the Trump Campaign to accuse the Biden Campaign of engaging in an antivaxx langua. The president said he would take it himself even if it cost him the election were seeing it reflected in our nbc news surveymonkey poll, the number of americans saying they would be concerned about whether a vaccine was in fact safe is on the rise, andrea and phil, i also wanted to ask you about Michael Caputo who has been criticized widely for trying, as well as one of his deputies there at the cdc, to try to alter, to change, to censor the scientific weekly reports from the cdc, the morbidity reports that have been critical and are never interfered with, never previously by any political appointees, as well as those very startling comments he made about sedition from inside the cdc insurrection and tell people they have to be ready to use ammunition and arm themselves if the president doesnt win reelection, extraordinary comments on facebook hes now apologized for it, but what are people in the white house saying about it . Yeah, andrea, extraordinary and bizarre comments from Michael Caputo its important to keep in mind that he is a longtime political aide to President Trump. He worked on the 2016 campaign for a period, running communications there hes basically functioning in the bowels of our government to have the president s political interests prioritized throughout this coronavirus response. But he holds a very senior position at the department of health and Human Services. And based on his commentary the past few days as well as the actions that hes overseen at that department in terms of the reports you mentioned, he is clearly trying to politicize this effort and has very little regard for the scientific and medical professionals in the government who are working to try to slow the spread of this virus and end this pandemic. He reportedly apologized to the staff at his department, i believe, yesterday, and has been in conversations with health and Human Services secretary alex azar, his boss, about his future but at this hour im not aware of any sign that he may be fired at anytime soon. We should keep in mind that under any sort of normal presidency, the obama administration, the bush administration, the clinton administration, a senior official in the government acting in that way almost certainly would have been fired on the spot. I also want to ask you about something that Jared Kushner was asked about by wolf blitzer on cnn yesterday, which is the president retweeting a qanon Conspiracy Theory accusing joe biden of being a pedophile lets watch. I was very disturbed earlier today when i saw the president retweet to his 80 million plus followers very, very disturbing, ugly message, accusing the democratic president ial nominee, joe biden, of actually being a pedophile. Is that appropriate, togive publicity to a really disgusting accusation like that i will relay to him your concern. Again, one thing about this president , hes a very transparent president , he lets people know what hes thinking phil, weve covered politics for a long time. And for the incumbent president to be accusing the democratic nominee of Something Like this by retweeting this kind of theory, qanon, no less, doesnt that require more of a response . It should, andrea it certainly is anew low and this is a president who of course has been pretty flagrant over the years with his tweets and retweets of baseless theories we should just remind everybody, by the way, that joe biden is not a pedophile. There is certainly no evidence to support that theory its a completely bunk, false theory thats being spread by social media by the president of the United States. And i found it surprising that Jared Kushner had nothing to say about it to wolf blitzer and maybe if thats something you were going to ask him about today, that might explain why hes not hear talking to you at this hour. Its just pretty extraordinary that qanon gets any, you know, any kind of attention at all from the president of the United States or anyone that works in the white house, since they say this about every democratic figure. This is what they say about everyone it has nothing to do with joe biden at all thank you so much, thanks for being with us, phil and monica and of course mike memoli in wilmington, with the Biden Campaign historic deadly fires raging in the west. New questions about how rollbacks of obama era regulations are worsening the Environmental Crisis lifelong climate advocate, twotime governor of california, jerry brown joins us next here on Andrea Mitchell reports only on msnbc. 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Add the more sports and entertainment package for nfl redzone. Click, call or visit a store today to learn more. Now to the raging fires and the devastation out west at least 36 deaths have been linked to the fires in california, oregon, and Washington State the death toll is expected to climb as the fires are sending Carbon Monoxide into the atmosphere, with smoke and smog all the way to the east coast. These pictures last night from washington hundreds of thousands of people on the west coast have been evacuated from their homes, some now living in tents. Nbcs Steve Patterson joins us from irwindale, california steve, tell us how the firefighters are trying to contain the fires. Reporter this is the bobcat fire, were in l. A. County were at Central Command here. Firefighters have been engaged in a dogfight against this fire because of how explosive and relentless it is it started