It. Imagine where wed be today with a president who practiced social distancing instead of holding super spreader events. Imagine where wed be with a comprehensive system of testing and tracing. Im ready to act. I know what to do. Starting on day one of my presidency, we will do it. Ive talked about the battle for the soul of america since the very beginning of this campaign. And i want to be very clear in these closing days about what i mean and about what i intend to do in that battle, to assure that our better angels prevail over our worst instincts. I believe this election is about who we are as a nation, what we believe, and maybe most importantly, who we want to be. Its about our essence. Its about what makes us americans. Its that fundamental. Joe biden is set to make another appearance at a rally in atlanta about one hour from now. Well take you there when that gets under way. But in the meantime hes leaving it to his former boss, president obama, to draw an even starker distinction between bidens campaign and trumps. Heres obama at a drivein rally today in the critical battleground state of florida. They believe that no one, especially the president , is above the law. They understand the protest isnt unamerican, this country was founding on protesting against injustice. And we dont threaten to throw our political opponents in jail just because we disagree with them. Thats what happens in dictatorships. It doesnt happen in the United States of america. Joe and kamala understand that our building to Work Together to solve big problems like the pandemic depends on more than just photo ops. It depends on applying facts and logic and science and not making things up, not flooding the internet with misinformation. These should not be republican or democratic values. Theyre what we grew up learning from our parents and our grandparents. Theyre not white or black or hispanic or asian or native american. Theyre supposed to be american valu values, and we have to reclaim them right now. And how are we going to do that . By voting. Donald trump was watching that. He lashed out at former president obamas remarks while they were ongoing, which is the clearest evidence you can get that former president obamas final push for joe biden has taken up residence under Donald Trumps skin. Trump himself is on the campaign trail with three large events on the docket, all likely to be free of social distancing, all in states with worsening coronavirus outbreaks. Hes taking a very different approach to the notion of a focused Closing Argument. Trumps attacks of late are spread pretty evenly among a plethora of targets in addition to his predecessor. It includes the governor of pennsylvania, the news media, speaker nancy pelosi, new york city mayor bill de blasio, his opponents son, hunter biden, and yes, as we mentioned, trumps anger and twitter attacks also trained on Sasha Baron Cohen who plays borat. He is out with a new response. Donald trump says im a creep. I say hes an existential threat to democracy. That after cohen offered trump a job on his next movie saying this. Im always looking for people to play racist buffoons and youll need a job after january 20th. Lets talk. Such is the surreal state of the 2020 race for the white house. Joining us with seven days to go until polls close in the United States, some of our most favorite. Reporter reporters and friends. John heilemann, cohost and executive producer of showtimes the circus. Also former congresswoman, Donna Edwards is back and branding and marketing expert Donny Deutsch is in the house. John heilemann, i must start with you because youre now out and about. There is something about president obama on the trail in 2020. There is a feeling of pentup disgust at all of Donald Trumps sort of abdication of any effort to lead this country. There seems to be a pentup desire to whack him in a way that no democrat has been able to do. And donald trump responding in kind, literally live tweeting the obama rally. Yeah, hey, nicolle, good to see you and donny and donna. Its good to be with you one week out. Weve got one week to go, kids. Keep it up, keep it up, keep it up. We can make it altogether. Lets hold hands and stay plug. Im going to plug something but for a good reason. The new episode of my new podcast has me talking to david axelrod, David Plouffe and alyssa mastromonaco. And we were talking about what it was like to see their boss back on the campaign trail. The thing they all pointed to is that alyssa used to occasionally refer to himself when he talked about what it was like when he was pent up for a while and finally liberated, he would say the bear is off the leash. They all cited that line saying the bear is off the leash. He is having a ball to begin with. And one of the other things they pointed out and i chimed in with is obama loves humor. We think of him as this aspirational, inspiring speaker and he was at his best as a president ial candidate and as president , but he knows how to wield the knife. He loves to engage in negative politics when he feels like hes on the call of righteousness and he can be funny as hell. Humor is what he uses in a lot of those cases and you can see when hes delighted with himself with a line that hes written that he knows will nail trump. He smiles and has the sense of delighted selfsatisfaction. He obviously thinks the stakes of the election are as high as they ever could be. He obviously thinks he needs to do something in this election than he did in 2016, though he campaigned forcefully for Hillary Clinton. Hes going to the wall. And the last thing ill say is in order to allow joe biden to continue to pitch the message of unity that we heard from him in warm springs today and weve heard from him throughout the campaign, obama is basically standing in and saying ill be your bad cop. Ill do this work. Ill even let Kamala Harris not have to do it. Im take on the negative messaging because i can do it better than anyone else about this president who i respect so little and think is a threat to this democracy. Let me in, coach, ill play. And thats what were seeing from barack obama right now. Lets stay with the unleerkd bear, donna. Jared kushner trotted out his extraordinary mix of idiocy, racism and incompetence. I dont want to play it but let me just give folks the gist of what Jared Kushner said. It was along the lines of heres what he said. Theres been a lot of discussion about the issues that were needed in the black community for the last few years but intensified after the george floyd situation. You saw a lot of people who were virtue signaling. Big words for jared. They go on instagram and cry out or, you know, put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court. One thing weve seen a lot of, the black community, which is mostly democrat, is that President Trumps policies are the policies that can help people break out, blah, blah, blah, and then he says something obnoxious about how he says they cant want them to be successful more than they want to be successful. Heres what president obama had to say about that. Lets watch and well talk about it on the other side. His soninlaw says black folks have to want to be successful. Thats the problem. Who are these folks . What history books do they read . Who do they talk to . Dont read, is that what is going on . Black unemployment hit almost 17 during the Great Recession ten years ago. And through a lot of hard work, joe biden and i helped get it down. And it kept on going down, not because trump did anything. And then this year because they screwed up the pandemic response, it soared back up to above 17 here in florida, but it doesnt have to be that way, florida, if you go out and vote. So, donna and donny, i want to get you both in on this on both pieces of that. Obviously the economic fact check was incorporatmportant, b first thing he said, donna, who are these people. I think a lot of republicans who support donald trump think who the hell Jared Kushner is and what hes doing running the government and the campaign. These people are exactly who we think they are and who they have demonstrated themselves to be. You know when, i listen to president obama, first of all, i say hide the leash. We dont want the leash back between now and november 3rd. But i also think that he has a way of saying things, kind of draws you in and draws you in. And then you realize that the knife is being wielded. And i think that makes people think about what this administration has brought on all of us and really inspiring people to go out there and vote. I love i could listen to him all day long. If he could just riff all day long about this administration, i might have to vote several times, although we know we cant do that. You know, nicolle, ive been thinking over these last several days that, you know, we see a campaign where joe biden is allowed to be himself and to be a unifier because he has such a strong ally and surrogate in barack obama. And that has proven even in just a few days more useful than almost anything else that could have been deployed in these last few days, to really make the case against donald trump but really for joe biden. And so, you know, really im taking the leash, im going to bury it so that he can continue to be out there. So, donny, i feel like what has happened is that Michelle Obamas when they go low, we go high, mantra was updated and president obama went to michelle and said, okay, honey, heres the deal. Im going to let joe and kamala go high and ill go a little bit lower than them. I wont go low, just a little lower than joe and kamala. Donna is absolutely right about what that permits a candidate to do. Every campaign divvies this stuff up. Obviously sometimes sarah palin took the low road so senator mccain could deliver the kinds of messages he was comfortable with. George w. Bush relished delivering the barbs and had an ability, but every campaign winning and losing divvies up who sort of delivers the zingers, but what do you make of this division of labor in the final seven acts of the president ial campaign. Do you think its going to work . Yeah. You know, theres a joyousness to obama that you didnt see with Hillary Clinton. You got the feeling in 2016 he was kind of carrying her across the line pushing her, where you get the feeling hes cheering joe biden on. Theres kind of a different essence to whats happening. You got a sense the last time around that she didnt have the chops, he had to do it. Now you just feel like hes congratulating, hes pushing and at the same time throwing those punches. You know, before i came on today, nicolle, i turned on the trump rally in michigan. And while you saw biden talk about unite i had to do it, i just needed some fodder for today. You saw biden talking about the United States of america and then you saw obama. And this is what, literally in seven minutes i watched what trump talked about. It was lock her up. He talked about Gretchen Whitmer and he started giggling, the governor who there was a plot to not only kidnap her but execute her. He talked about lesley stahl. He talked about that he, not the American People, had covid and there were 12 doctors around him just like we all have 12 doctors around us, of course, and the doctors couldnt believe how strong he was and he went like this to the covid, it wasnt about the drugs. Ins insanity. Contrasting you have obama doing the counterpunching and bidening to biden doing we are the United States of america. I think trump knows hes a loser, he feels like a lose. He was just doing his lounge act thing. In kansas and montana, which trump took by 21 points each in the last election, hes up by 6 and 7. So basically biden is closer in kansas and montana than in the battleground states than trump is in michigan and wisconsin. You have to start to look at these numbers and we have to be afraid and we have to be nervous and we cannot take anything for granted. But boy, no matter where you look at the numbers, it really is starting to smell pretty good. Well, heilemann, donny raises the attacks on whitmer. Lock her up is now chanted about a democratic governor who trump helped whip up a frenzy of detractors by tweeting liberate michigan. Gretchen whitmer has an oped today where she writes every time the president ramps up this violent rhetoric, and tires up twitter to launch another broadside against me, my family and i see a surge of vicious attacks sent our way. This is so coincidence and the president knows it. Hes so in division and putting leaders, especially Women Leaders at risk, all because he thinks it will help his reelection. The behavior is reprehensible, but the politics are what befuddled me. This is hurting him. Joe bidens speech today was about what donny just described happening at trumps rally today, and this is why suburban women have not walked away, have run away. Why is he still doing this . Well, id be happy to address that, nicolle, but in the same vein i want to actually stick with the earlier example because we didnt really quite get all the way there, because its the same story. So if theres id like to ask you if you could, if you tried, if you tried as hard as you could, if you could think of a stupider thing to do politically in the closing days of a campaign where one of the things that you would be hoping for if you were working for donald trump or supporting donald trump is that you would like to see depressed africanamerican turnout in battleground states, so whats the dumbest thing you could do if youre Jared Kushner, the soninlaw. Go out and make, say, a bunch of racist crap that would not only inflame africanamericans, rightly so, but would give the most powerful motivator of black turnout in the country, barack obama, a talking point as powerful as that one. When you heard obama going after Jared Kushner legitimajust now, today, he was driving the message of raising the stakes for that voting cohort that matters so much is really the dumbest, most suicidal, selfsabotaging piece of politics ive seen and ive seen a lot of dumb, suicidal, selfsabotaging politics on behalf of donald trump and his friends. Its the same thing with whitmer, its not just that it is offensive, but that its dumb. Hes doing things on a daily basis that make it harder for him to contest this election, to find the narrow path that does exist, but to find his way to that narrow path to victory. He continues to throw up obstacles in his own path every single day. The whitmer thing is one example, jared is another, but we could cite 20 more. You know, im glad you came back to that. Donna, i think the larger point that everyone is getting at is that we all became students of how trump won when we all thought he would lose. And it is undeniable that how trump won in 16 is not how trump is acting in 20. Trump won in 16 he actually drove a message. It wasnt perfect. It wasnt traditional by any sense, but it was disciplined. And what is so stunning is that even for trump, who doesnt do any of the normal things, i looked at his twitter feed and this fight with Sasha Baron Cohen is so stunning because its such a sideshow. In the entertainment press, there are dozens of stories about donald trump fighting with borat. I guess the question is did anyone sort of plan for this scenario when at least publicly, and there can be things happening behind the scenes that we dont know about, but publicly as a candidate trump has seemed to fall apart . Well, i mean i think that if you think about 2016, donald trump stayed on the same message coming down the escalator as he ended the campaign. On the other hand, and of course joe biden has stayed on the same message from the time that he started until now as were closing the campaign. And what donald trump is doing is hes actually drawing people to all of the things that people finding most distasteful about him and his presidency from day one. He draws attention to the racism, he draws attention to his inability to combat covid and doing exactly the same things that really spread the virus, he draws attention to his incompetence. He draws attention to his boorishness and to his ability to continue to incite both violence and division. And so all of these things are the things that are making the voters who are kind of in the middle and went with him because he was a novelty, and this year in 2020, hes no longer a novelty. He is a known quantity, and people are rejecting it. The very people he needs, hes doing the things that cause them to reject him. Donny, because you and i have this conversation off tv, i like to have Family Friendly language versions of it on tv. But we always talk about, and try to reassure ourselves about how this is different from 2016. Another way is tomorrow will be the fouryear anniversary of jim comey reopening i think that final stretch of the Hillary Clinton investigation. Tim alberta has done some great reporting and so have my colleagues at nbc and msnbc about all the ways that this isnt different. Another way that this isnt that this isnt the same as 16 is joe biden is not under investigation for anything. And donald trump has harmed himself with his inability to conjure up any new lines of attack. Theyre all the same. Lock her up. Somehow he thinks lock her up about Gretchen Whitmer rubs off on joe biden. Smearing his son whos struggled in his life and suffered extraordinary loss is going to rub off on joe biden. He thinks calling Kamala Harris a monster is going to win back the suburbs. His instincts are so wrong, and but joe biden isnt dealing with all of the challenges Hillary Clinton dealt with four years ago. You know, four years ago joe biden right now is leading 9 and 10 points nationally. Hillary had been around 8 and already dropped to 4. Several huge quantitative differences, basically joe biden is over 50 in a lot of the states. His net favorability according to the New York Times now is plus 5 where trump is minus 15. Thats a 20point favorability difference. Heaves n he was not the outsider anymore. Hes on defen