Of the race, 28 days away from the general election, are a few of our favorite reporters and friends. White house reporter for the associated press, jonathan la mere, Donnie Deutsch is back. Were joined by garrett haake, live for us in gettysburg. Donna edwards, i want to first read to you how joe biden described the speech hes about to give. He said im making a speech ive worked and worked and worked on about how the soul of america and racial equality and what significant trouble were in right now. Some people may think its a little dramatic but i think its appropriate. We have to unite this nation and ive decided to do it from gettysburg. Ive worked on this speech very, very hard. Youll see it and know it. I mean, every word of it, he said. What do you think . Im feeling it already and how important and appropriate for him to deliver this speech at gettysburg. Theres nobody who could argue whos ever been to gettysburg that its overwhelming and the prese presence and the importance of history and i think joe biden is saying were in an historic moment that really means that we have to decide where it is were going to go in this country and the choice that people have leading up to and of course november 4, the election. I think that joe biden recognizes the moment and he wants to really speak to the nation and anybody who knows joe biden knows how much he both cares for the country but for individuals, for people, for their families, for workers, and i think that he will deliver that today. Im looking forward to hearing the Vice President speak to our highest ideals because i think that thats what the nation wants. You could hear it in questions at the town hall meetings. You could hear it in his responses at the debate and since then, that america wants to hear from a president whos prepared to put all the little pieces back together again and i think that joe biden is making a commitment to deliver that for the American People. Donnie deutsch, theres so much stage craft into everything donald trump does including being released from the hospital and reentering his home and brian and i were on television for it, and you just felt like these iconic places that belong to all americans were being hijacked for Campaign Video production. It feels like joe biden has not missed an opportunity in every news cycle since his convention ended to bracket donald trump with Something Big when hes small, and you dont get much bigger than gettysburg. What do you think theyre going for, and just talk about all that you achieve by standing in that sacred spot where so Many Americans lost their lives and where we were r so, sort of a cy divided. Joe biden has always staked his candidacy as the one person who can heal the soul of the country. That has always been an evert message and i think subliminal there, but its still a big and bold move and not without risks. I think joe biden from here on in youre going to see him as protector in chief, calmer in chief, and healer in chief. If you want a contrast i think two horrific selfproduced video moments that are going to define the downfall of donald trump, it was the june 1 with the bible upside down at st. Johns church and also i believe yesterday, october 6. You can look at those as two pillars of selfdestructive produced moments by the ultimate reality tv person. Nicolle, youve obviously worked on campaigns. I worked on clintons 92 campaign. I remember four or five days before the end when they really felt like when stephanopoulos, car vil really thought they had it wrapped up and they said you can run all your positive, mushy stuff. It was like they felt victory already. I dont want to get ahead of ourselves but this is what victory feels like. I think when you start to get to the point where you are just coming from such a positive, healing, protecting, you no longer have to fire shots, you feel your job now is to kind of bring everything together. Were four weeks out but it feels just like the great line where Robert Duvall says the smell of napalm smells like victory. This smells like victory. Garrett haake, i would bet my last dollar nobody on the Biden Campaign would dare say that or convey that today. Theyre still very much acting like a campaign in a dog fight. I think most democrats view the polls as unpredictable and they either feel like they were fooled four years ago and they dont want to be fooled again, or they remain concerned about the impact of a pandemic on turnout and the impact of a president who is at war with the legitimacy and the process of voting itself. Talk about the view from the Biden Campaign today ahead of this speech. Thats exactly right. Everybody on the Biden Campaign feels like they need to run through the tape here and thats not just through Election Night by the way. Thats potentially through lawsuits and legal fights and Everything Else that might follow it. So the polls are one thing but making sure all those votes get in and get counted is Something Else all together. I think thats the attitude that pervades the campaign beyond just what the polls show and they show a pretty broadly positive message for the candidate, not just here in pennsylvania where a new monmouth poll out today has him up eight i think but also nationally our nbc average has him up around ten. Thats where you want to be. In terms of the speech today, as you said, there is nothing subtle about coming to gettysburg and giving a speech about the battle of the soul of the nation. Theyre going to hit you over the head with it clearly today. This has been the theme since bidens Campaign Announcement in april of last year. When i talked to a Biden Campaign aid today, they dont want to call this a Closing Argument but they see this speech that hes going to give here this evening as kind of the idealogical framework that they want to set up for the next month of this campaign, the last month. The idea here is this isnt specifically going to be about policy although that will be in there. It wont specifically abobe abo the pandemic although that will be in there too. This is about who we are as a country, who do we want to be and what kind of leader does it take to do that. To the degree that its possible for the challenger here when the incumbents Media Presence sometimes blocks out the sun, they want to set up this kind of framework to get voters thinking in this way as we get into this final sprint. Garrett, let me stay with you and let me put up the polls. Monmouth has donald trump behind joe biden 12 points in a high turnout model and eight points only in the low turnout model. So that is a sizable lead there for joe biden in a state that is a senior trump adviser told me that has arizona slips away from them, pennsylvania is a vital importance to them so bad news in that poll. But the lens around this Closing Argument, these are two areas where joe biden is squarely on the offense. Racial inequality, he has an advantage of 26 poenints on the polls. On the coronavirus, an advantage of 11 points. To the degree that the coronavirus leads people to talk about and think about health care, biden is ahead by 20 points there. In the president s post debate collapse, joe biden now is a 12point lead around issues of safety and crime. Most notable though, joe biden isnt just even on the economy, hes ahead two points. It would seem that holding onto the leads around the economy would be the most essential sort of tactical and Strategic Mission of every utterance between now and election day. How do they see their standing in the polls . Look, i think theyre glad to see the changes in the economic handling here. By the way, they got a gift from the president today, this idea that the president is going to claim credit for walking away from coronavirus talks. I cover the capitol in my other job and it was never clear that there was going to be another relief bill that actually got passed, at least not before election day. Just like with the Government Shutdown, here you have the president saying not only are you not going to get help, im the one deciding that youre not going to get help. It will be a while before that kind of thing can be reflected in the polls but thats another thing that could potentially add to a biden advantage on the economy. If youre talking about a biden advantage on the economy, in the same way that were talking about how unusual it is to see biden leading by the margins hes leading among seniors in many places, you have taken away the kind of core crux republican argument for why you even have a republican president or a republican controlled senate. Even more moderate independent voters who might agree with democrats on the other issues you just laid out, might look at that economic number and lean towards republicans. If thats gone, what is donald trump running on . Again, when i talked to the Biden Campaign, they dont want to get overconfident or cocky. They understand this is not an election day finish. This is a sprint through the tape that first week in november at the very least but all of these indicators are moving their way. So jonathan la mere, to you goes the task of the view from the other side. Now, i did also process the news of the white house seeming to, i dont know, take a victory lap around killing Coronavirus Relief talks and plunging the markets. I wondered if it was the steroids talking or if there was anyone talking at all. You have a great piece out about the west wing as a ghost town. Talk about whats going on there. Its a west wing right now that is largely empty and those that are there, according to our reporting, are afraid and confused and uncertain as to whats next. First of all, of course the coronavirus itself is living in the building. The president of course has it, so does the first lady. There have been a number of staffers who have tested positive. The numbers seem to grow by the day. A couple more in the press shop, Deputy Press Secretaries today tested positive. Theres certainly a lack of real direction as to whats next. We of course know the president is calling the shots. There were some aides who hoped, with reason, with some reason, that the thought that the president s battle with the virus himself three days or so in the hospital, he might come out with even just a little more understanding of the virus and perhaps be able to show a little more empathy towards those who have suffered. No one was expecting a personality reboot here. Their expectations were modest but even those were dashed from what weve heard from the president in the last 12 hours that he has said that the virus might be dominated. He has suggested that the nation is around the corner again from the pandemic, a pandemic that is still on some days claiming 1,000 american lives a day. While hospitalized he mentioned not one word of compassion for those that have suffered, and now he comes back plunging into the white house yesterday mind you without a mask and now has blown up these talks which as noted may not have gone anywhere anyway but now he seems to, by doing what he did today, own their failure. Weve seen the market plummet in the immediate aftermath. It may be disarming him of his best possible weapon, best argument for reelection which would be a strong economy. There are so Many Americans who are still suffering economically because of whats happened and theres now great uncertainty as to how hes going to govern and also how can he campaign . Were a month out and hes down, down significantly in a lot of places. Its uncertain whether he will be able to be pronounced fit to resume traveling. He and his team are eyeing that debate next thursday. He made it clear he wants to be there with joe biden but a lot of questions remain whether thats going to be possible. Jonathan, i talked to a trump adviser sort of post debate performance but precovid diagnosis and he said to me, you know, donald trump needed these debate performances to go his way and that meant keeping his mouth shut and sort of hoping for some sort of moment from joe biden. He wasnt capable of keeping his mouth shut. He hasnt been capable of keeping his mouth shut since that debate and he still hasnt cleaned up the problems that his own aides viewed as problematic, the footsie with White Supremacists and just his own conduct and behavior that seem to repel people if you trust those polls. What effort exists to even get him ready for another debate if that should come to pass . Chris christie is at the moment hospitalized and his Campaign Manager is covid positive, his two most Senior Communications advisers, hope hicks and kaley mcen nany also infected with the coronavirus. So much has happened since that debate, its easy to lose sight of the fact that it was just a week ago and easy to lose sight of the fact that the Trump Campaign had put a lot of eggs in that basket. They thought that first debate was going to be the moment with so few set pieces left, very little time remaining in the campaign. They thought thats where they could start to turn things around, that biden would stumble on the stage and the president would overpower him. Instead we know that did not happen. Donald trumps solution to every problem has always been more donald trump. In this case many advisers believe that was a mistake. That was a night where he, instead of constantly interrupting and berating the Vice President needed to sit back. They wanted him to get the Vice President in trouble and overextend himself and create a moment that could be damaging. That didnt happen. In fact, the president s support plummeted after that debate. The debate was a moment that did move the needle and in a bad way for donald trump. To immediately have that followed with this coronavirus pandemic which for so Many Americans is a sense of the president instead of receiving their sympathy for being sick, its almost a sense of, well, he brought this upon himself. It was his recklessness, ignoring the safety guidelines of his own government that put him in this position and therefore may be emblematic of how hes led this nation through the pandemic, a nation thats still suffering so much. As far as the mechanics of the debate prep, thats unclear because most of his debate team is sidelined with the coronavirus and he barely prepared last time anyway. Right now we know thats the date they have circled on the calendar. He wants to go to the debate and resume campaigning even though right now hes not just coronavirus positive, hes still contagious. Donnie deutsch, every time i see the economic numbers tick up for joe biden and down for donald trump i think of you because for years now youve talked about how central it is for any democrat to come out ahead in a general election, a national election. What do you make of the current standing in the polls and the cross tabs, the gains that joe biden has made on what everyone has already said was Donald Trumps strongest argument to the country, the economy . Garrett said it best. If he has the economy, he has nothing. The fact that biden is up between 10 and 20 points and everything from cares about people like me to handling the coronavirus to Race Relations and health care, theres nowhere else to go. I want to circle back to what i said earlier. The last thing i think the Biden Campaign should do is feeling they have it won. I want them to look like a winner but still punching and jabbing on the economy and health care. That one message down the stretch if i was going to give that jab underneath, its dont let them take 100 million Peoples Health care away on preexisting conditions. I said this last week on the show that i thought trump was going to come out like a caged animal because hes never played from two touchdowns down. Going forward i think we can only fathom what hes going to be like in the next debate. I think as much as his people are going to prep him to calm down, to go the opposite way, its going to be more of the same. One other final thought and i know this is crazy, the biggest fear donald trump has of anything in life is losing. His dad said there are losers and killers. We know he thinks hes a killer. If were a week or two before the election and he is down this dramatically, dont throw anything off the table ranging from dropping the mic so he can get pardoned by pence. I think theres a chapter to this story here that we have not even thought about that is going to be as outrageous as the last four years. To align myself with Donnie Deutsch not being crazy, Donna Edwards, a week ago right now i dont think the debate had happened but i want to show you, when a campaign and a candidate gets on offense, it seems to seep into all of their conduct and all the messages. Heres joe biden on offense the moment that trump took off his mask when he got back to the white house covid positive, symptomatic, infectious as we understand the pandemic to render people on day four or five after their diagnosis. Joe biden put up an Instagram Video drawing that contrast, putting his mask on and really i think turning this mask wearing do we have that video . Well try to find it. Trying to take sort of mask wearing out of politics and putting it into what strong people do. It seems as everyone has been remarking that biden is really now on the offense in terms of playing on trumps terrain, making the mask wearing the stronger, more protective thing to do for ones family, for ones country, going into trump turf in terms of polling ahead of him on the economy and being way out ahead of trump in pennsylvania which was here it is. So theres a side by side, donald trump ripping off his mask the minute he got out of the hospital still infected with covid as