Trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by biden in the coming days. Some of the poll numbers on issues include a 12point advantage for joe biden on coronavirus. A sixpoint advantage for joe biden on choosing the next Supreme Court justice. And a sixpoint edadvantage on w and order. Trump staked his presidency on a miscalculation that voters would share his dark view of law and order and just wouldnt notice that its donald trump who is encouraging felony voter fraud in North Carolina, commuting the sentences of convicted felons and ignoring u. S. Intelligence about bounties being placed on the heads of american soldiers. That conduct coupled with the crippling effects of the pandemic on the economy has left trump with zero structural advantages in this race. With 14 days until voting ends, anything can always happen, but millions of americans have already voted, or are voting right now. And these numbers would be daunting for the most disciplined of campaigns and candidates and we all know by now, trump is not that. He will also face a new limit on his unbridled sell p on thursday in the final debate in the form of a mute button. The commission on president ial debates announcing last night that theyll mute both kpd candidates for periods of time to help mitigate the interruptions, mainly from donald trump, that we saw in the first debate. Its a strategy that the host of fox and friends took out for a spin with trump this morning and sure sounds like trump might not be getting the hang of it yet. Whats going to change for your strategy, regardless of moderator, format, mike . Whats your strategy, are you using anybody different to get you ready and after studying and dueling with joe biden once already, what have you learned . You going to interrupt less . Joe lies and he lies a lot and hell say things that are crazy. So, will you take some of your time to correct him . They will put an ad in about something that never happened and pretend like it happened. Will you take some of your time and answer the previous question, like mike pence did and then answer their question . Well, look, i do my own debating. I do fine. Just a follow up. After that first debate, there are many who suggested if you let joe biden share his ideas, america might not be too keen on those ideas. Will you change your strategy in this last debate from your first debate . Well, i may do that, actually, the interesting thing, they said, if you let him talk, hell lose his train of thought, because hes gonzo, and i understand that, but i also understand that as hes going down the line and issuing lies, you know, generally, its okay to, you know, really attack that. Polls like the ones in todays New York Times tend to focus the minds of president ial candidates, but the new numbers didnt seem to have that effect on donald trump, who in the last 24 hours found time to train his attacks on one tony fauci. Adam schiff, the entire United StatesSupreme Court, joe biden and his son, hunter biden, the commission on president ial debates, our own beloved kristen welker, who will be the moderator of the next debate and, as if its still four years ago, Hillary Clinton. The info us cuinfo us canned ca where we start. Eli stokeles is back, also with us, msnbc contributor and professor and chair of the department of africanamerican studies at princeton university, eddie gloud is here and our friend Donnie Deutsch is here. Eli, i have to start with you, because i know you are reporting on all these threads. I mean, the ffox and friends tape is so instructive. You could see it on their faces. Its jerry maguire, help us help you. Help us convince you that if you stop interrupting and he cant stop interrupting the three anchors of fox and friends. Its unlikely that this debate is going to have a jerry maguireesque ending where the president changing course. He just doesnt change course. I mean, even in the interview, he was talking over the anchos s asking him the questions just as he talked over joe biden in the debate. We know from our reporting that President Trump really just doesnt respect joe biden at all. Even less than he respected Hillary Clinton four years ago. And we saw it come out when he was on the stage next to him in cleveland. We saw the same manic behavior during the nbc town hall last week and, you know, we know he has advisers urging him to let biden, to give biden a little more rope, but whether the president is actually capable of doing that, its unclear. And it certainly doesnt look like he is, based on the kind of increasingly unhinged messaging and rhetoric and attacks that weve been seeing from him. If you had gone back another day, you would have had the graphic about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and leading the lock her up chant against her, though she was the target of a kidnapping plot. The president is just leaning in, exciting his supporters and based on our reporting, turning off a lot of people who are in the middle, who are just exhausted after four years of this and theres just no reason to believe at this point that in the final two weeks of the campaign the president is capable of changing his tone and changing his argument. You know, and thats such an important point, eddie, because i want to lay this out there, we have aired, in talking for four years about the trump voter, and going back to them every time he does something outrageous and after the access hollywood tape, yeah, still with him, afterunties on the heads yeah, we were calling the wrong numbers. The coalition was barely enough to give him the kind of electoral victory he eked out. There were small margins in three states and that left in 2018. And i wonder if we have sort of missed the mark here, i mean, i think the my coverage should have focused on the onces who left in 18 and were any of them coming back instead of the people that go to the rallies maskless and without any social distance. Of course theyre still with him. They always will be with him. Right, i mean, you know, when we were trying to do the postmortem on the 2016 election, we knew that he lost the popular vote. We understood that there was the kind of overlap between the Bernie Sanders voter and the trump voter. We understood that there was a suppressed turnout among africanamericans. That the inside straight consisted of a number of different factors. But we read his election, some of us did, as a kind of genius move, as a kind of, you know, assessment of the state of the country and in some ways, it was. But we have seen in special elections, nicolle, as well as in the midterms, that that lucky streak, right, was broken, that it was not it did not hold. And look, in the context of this debate, donald trump is too thinskinned to sit quietly by, as he receives a critique. Hes going to shout, hes going to hes going to act like the spoiled child that he is, even if the mic is muted. So, we should prepare ourselves for the undisciplined man, the spoiled child, the reckless politici politician, that we have seen over the last 3 1 2 years, and i think youre right to say that we perhaps were wrong in our say seszment of what brought him into office, but we know who he is and what hes done while hes been in office, nicolle. And i guess my only point, donnie, and putting this out there, it makes the polls, whats underneath the poll numbers, really important. Because you have been talking for years now about joe bidens imperative strategic need to change this message on the economy. I want to show you some joe biden tape and ask if you think hes succeeded. The polls suggest that he has. Lets watch. Unemployment is up due to the pandemic. An Economic Outlook remains very uncertain and very mishandled. Across ohio, in this country, folks are worried about making their next rent payment or mortgage payment. Whether or not they can purchase a prescription or put food on the table. Worried about school and their kids. They see they see the people at the top doing better and better during this crisis and wondering, who is looking out for me . Thats Donald Trumps presidency. More than 215,000 i think its now 217,000 dead americans because of covid19. Donnie, is that what you were encouraging, this sort of laser focus on the economic despair that accompanies an even wider spread, the physical and the health despair . Yeah, i mean, take back what trump ridiculously stole, which is a populous economic message, which is the farthest thing republicans and trump are about. And bidens done it beautifully. We were all nervous about biden as a campaigner, did he still have it, and hes been pitch perfect. I mean, he early on took away the message of bringing jobs back here, and the fact that trump has not countered on the economy. If i was advising trump, would have been a message saying, look, you cant entrust the economy to biden. Instead, for some bizarre reason, he kind of just handed that to biden and health care, also. And so, when you combine economy plus covid, its a pretty Winning Strategy and i think its one of the reasons were left with trump flailing the way he is. At this point, 14 days before the election, theres nowhere to go except that silly old bag of tricks which feels like the Celebrity Apprentice instead of the apprentice and we know how that did in the ratings. Eli, it really is about that. The trump voters should already be with him. And if he hadnt attacked the mailin vote, they should be banking those votes already. And a losing campaign, i know this, ive been on losing campaigns, a losing campaign spends the final weeks kind of on a hail mary, trying to put back together a Winning Coalition, trying to take vote from the opponent, so, donald trump needs to stop talking to his base, he should only be talking to a biden voter. His only messages should be directed to the lead biden vote, because hes so far behind biden, hes nine points behind nationally, which makes the electoral map very tricky, he needs to pull big chunks of the biden vote in more than a couple of states. And yet today, he was on day two of raging against tony fauci, in a second day of brawl against him, i dont have the tweet, but hes still at it on twitter. Who is it that no one can tell him to stop or does he think this is a winner . Its largely that no one can tell him to stop and also he thinks this is a winner and hes just looking to repeat exactly what he did in 2016, trying to recreate the october surprise instead of comey and the letter. Hes hoping to get some traction about the New York Post story thats been widely disavowed and is very dubious and hes trying to do that. To your point, joe biden is doing exactly what you say the president should be doing, hes airing ads with cindy mccain, talking to undecided voters. Hes trying to offer a moderate message. Then, on the other side, you have the president , who is just, you know, in the recent days gotten even more inward looking, more selfpityselfpitying, morn the stump. The issues you laid out, health care, the coronavirus, the economy, the president has almost avoided talking about those issues to a large degree and spent a lot more time talking about cultural issues. Talking about democrats trying to indoctrinate children through education that talks about slavery. I mean you know, talk about monuments. This is what donald trump is focused on, these sort of divisive things that thrill his base and that give him cheers and applause at rallies. And that feels good for him. But it does feel like his rallies these last few days have been mostly about soothing his our fe own fears rather than the fears of the American People who have their kids at home and cant go back to school, dont know where their next paycheck is coming from, watching congress fumble around, not able to pass another stimulus here. I mean, those are the concerns that the president could be talking to. Youre not hearing him put a whole lot of pressure on congress from the rally stage. Yesterday, he said he was pandemic out. Wasnt just attacking fauci, he was basically saying, whatever, im tired of hearing about the pandemic. Just does not seem like a winning message when i talk to republicans and democrats who are running races across the country. They actually agree that what the president has been doing these last couple of days seems more selfdestructive than anything else and liable to really cost republicans down the ballot. You know, eddie, eli makes a brilliant point. Biden is the one running like hes behind. This is something my colleague mike thmemoli talked today. Today in the 2020 race, trump insisting to his team that he can still win, joe biden insisting he can still lose. And some of the state polls are extremely close. North carolina has biden up just one, pennsylvania, which, i think, both campaigns view as essential, probably mustwin for the trump team, there are other paths for biden, but its an important state and there are bragging rights and pride involved, pennsylvania lead for biden is just four. Let me ask you about that and let me add this. Biden, i think, added six points to his lead after the debate. And what do we have this week . What is biden sort of down prepping for . The debate. Stch. I think, you know, i think this is really important. First of all, they learned the lesson of the 2016 election, nicolle. And that is not to take for granted what the polls are saying. To continue to exercise and execute the ground game. To continue to urge democratic voters and to turnout you to continue to urge those who are undecided to decide on behalf of the Biden Campaign. So, theyre out there doing work. Look, the question thats being answered, which fear will win the day . It will be the fear of covid19 . Were on the verge of a quarter of a million americans dead. The fear of economy collapsing or the fear of democracy collapsing or is it the fear of a socialist takeover . Is it the fear of black and brown people invading suburbs . Right . Which fear will win the day . And i think the way in which Vice President biden is on the stump, his messaging, as donnie and eli has said, is right on point. And i think the data that were seeing, the poll data that were seeing, shows that its tighteni tightening. But i dont think its taking into account, nicolle, the excitement among black voters and brown voters and young voters. The turnout game will decide what this election will look like at the end. Donnie, you have, over the last four years, beared your soul. When hes enraged the country or his critics, i think youve sort of channeled that rage. What are you feeling now . Because it seems like you you are seeing him as sort of a flop on the stump, performatively and strategically, but i dont know a democrat or biden supporter that isnt just beyond anxietyridden and fearful about what happens in two weeks. So, how are you feeling . Well, nicolle, as my shrink, as i text and call you in the most heated moments of debate and you talk me off the wall and i talk you off the wall, so only sometimes. You know, i i do feel, look, im nervous like everybody else, but i do feel trump is going to lose. I actually feel hes going to lose significantly. And what were seeing from him now is some of that awareness. Now, trumps life has been in chapters. Hes just been playing a president. He was a real estate developer, he because tv star and hes getting ready, i believe, and ive said this on the show before, for his next act, which is going to be the trump tv network, the subscription model, make a billion dollars a year. In order to set that up, what would he be doing . Hed be doing the red meat stuff that doesnt make sense in an election, but the hunter biden stuff, going after chris cuomo in the media, all the stuff you led with earlier on, is the stuff thats made for tv networks. So, i think whethers conscious or subconscious, hes setting himself up and i think at the debate youre going to see humor from him, still staying on red meat, but youre going to see picture in your mind, is this a guy thats running for another term of president or is this a guy setting himself up for his next act . I think thats a lot of what were seeing right now, actually. Thats so interesting. The conduct and even the performative pieces, certainly make more sense in that vein and well have to save this for next time but i wonder if rudy sees himself as the next roger ails because they certainly seem to be synced up as ever. Donnie, eli, eddie, so watch this space. Well see. When we come back, a victory for Voting Rights in the United StatesSupreme Court thanks to john roberts siding with the liberals on that court. It effects the allimportant state of pennsylvania and well tell you all about it. Plus, trump wants more. More rallies, that is. How running is a tantrumthrowing toddler can imperil your Campaign Strategy exhibit 345. And qanon is here, no longer on the fringes, but comingled with the gop. Well bring you new reporting from the New York Times on that. All those stories when deadline white house continues. Dont go anywhere. E continues dont go anywhere. 133 million americans have preexisting conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and asthma. This administration and Senate Republicans want to overturn laws requiring Insurance Companies to cover people with preexisting conditions. Theyre rushing a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court to change the law through the courts. 70 of americans want to keep protections for preexisting conditions in place. Tell our leaders in washingtn to stop playing games with our healthcare. I try so hard, i cant rise above it dont know what it is get a dozen double crunch shrimp for one dollar with any steak entree. Only at applebees. 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