Well discuss his decades long fight for justice and the incredible legacy he leaves behind first, here are the facts. More than 140,000 americans are dead from the coronavirus pandemic states across the country are seeing record increases in cases and now, some are also setting daily death records. Those, again, are the facts. And this is the president of the United States. I said its going to disappear. Ill say it again, its going to disappear and ill be right. I dont think so i dont think so you know why it doesnt discredit because ive been right probably more than anybody else when you talk about mortality rates, i think its the opposite i think we have one of the lowest mortality rates thats not true, sir. We have 900 deaths on a single day we will take a look. Ready can you please get me the mortality rate kaley is here. I heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate in the world. Do you have the numbers . I heard we had the best mortality rate number one low mortality rate. Sir, testing is up 37 . Thats good. I understand. Cases are up 194 . It isnt just the testing is going up, its that the virus has spread the Positivity Rate has increased. Many of those cases worse than it was. Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Many of them, dont forget, lik 99. 7 people will get better and in many cases they get better very quickly. So, a couple of things. First, as Chris Wallace points out, the u. S. Ranks seventh in mortality rate according to johns hopkins. Second, on that 99 comment from the president , dr. Anthony fauci told the financial times, quote, im trying to figure out where the president got that number. I think what happened is someone told him the general mortality rate is about 1 and he interpreted, therefore, that 99 is not a problem, when of usually, thats not the case regardless, the president says claims he does take responsibility for the response to the pandemic. Shortages of testing and proekt tpr protective equipment from nurses and doctors, a lot of people say this is because we dont have a national plan. You talk about states. We dont have a national plan. Do you take responsibility for that look, i take responsibility always for everything because its ultimately my job, too. I have to get everybody in line. Some governor haves done well. Some governors have done poorly. They are supposed to have supplies i supplied everybody. He takes responsibility for everything really the New York Times is now reporting that in the early stages of the pandemic, the white houses ultimate golfs to quote shift responsibility for the fight against the pandemic from the white house to the states thats the story of how we got here as for what comes next, two republican sources tell me and my colleagues on the hill that Senate Republicans are now pushing back against a white house attempt to block billions of dollars for coronavirus testing and tracing in the next stimulus bill. With that, id like to welcome in my panel, peter baker Associated Press reporter and former rnc chairman Michael Steele all msnbc political analyst. Great to have all of you on board tonight and peter baker, let me start with you. You are a close chronicler of president s for many, many years and you were in the rose garden earlier this week when we heard a rather rambling, you described it i thought very well he talked about china, other things, china again and then we had an interview today with Chris Wallace which was incredibly wide ranging. We played what we thought were a series of highlights but there is so much that we havent shown people what does it say to you about the president s state of mind and his strategy at this point peter . No, not yet. How his staff was feeding him information or false information at times to buttress that allegations or assertions or contentions or believes he wanted to make, right . He wants to say the mortality rate is the lowest in the world and provide a piece of paper that says it all the independent analysis says thats not true when he says biden wants to defund the police, they provide a document that says that biden wants to defund the police, even though thats not true and it makes you wonder about the staffing at this point of a president who is whether hes getting information he really needs to be president or whether hes simply in denial. Things he said in that interview today as Chris Wallace made clear were just riddled with, you know, errors and mischaracterizations and at this point, we have 141,000 people dead there are real consequences to say 99 of the time its not a problem is to not only ignore how many people have died and how many people have suffered as a result, ignored the serious consequences that this virus has for a lot of people who wont die. A lot of people may have a mild case but a lot of people dont we all know them weve all known people who had this case weeks and weeks and weeks going through a pretty miserable ordeal and have even to this day, you know, lasting consequences to that you may recover but it doesnt necessarily mean it was no big deal not all of them are sniffles that the the thing he doesnt want to accept. I think thats an absolutely great point and exactly what dr. Fauci said in that quote from the financial times. Just becausethis 1 number a a you point out is huge and incredibly difficult for the people affected but that doesnt mean 99 are fine. To that idea, Michael Steele, the white house also this week embarked on something of a campaign to discredit dr. Fauci. You had that op ed from Peter Navarro that sort of distanced themselves from that but the president this morning talked about dr. Fauci in the fox news interview and didnt entirely defend him lets watch this and then well talk about it. Dr. Fauci said dont wear masks. Dr. Fauci told me not to ban china, it would be a big mistake. It did it over and above his recommendations. One of your closest aids, righthand man daniel put out this have you seen this this cartoon dr. Faucet shows him as a leaker and an alarmest. I dont know that hes a leaker hes a little alarmest thats okay. Hes a bit of an alarmest a little bit of an alarmest. So Michael Steele, hes still going after fauci calling him a little alarmest and you also have our reporting from last night and this morning that the white house is at the president s behest trying to block money more for testing what is the back what is going on here . Are they trying to lose . [ laughter ] you got me with that one. I didnt expect that to be the end question there you know, looking at it objectively, yeah, i mean, how else can you explain the president allowing Peter Navarro because trust me Peter Navarro isnt going to go after dr. Fauci unless the president is okay with it. When you consider the role he plays in the pandemic story, you just dont go after him unless the president signs off. The president wants other actors to take him down he wants clean hands he wants to maintain clean hands. He cant help himself when confronted with the question this morning, of course, he has to take his zing and ding at the good doctor. That translates, of course, to capitol hill and what you see there are republicans, again, trying to carry as much favor or avoid as much wrath from the president of the United States by using the budget process to effectively go after the American People in terms of the resources that will be made available to them, the information that would be made available to them through cdc and other means. This is a dual action with fauci at the center so to come at him, to take him down a peg for daring to just speak truth i mean, tell me what dr. Fauci has said that has been so wrong and so, you know, abusive of the process for the American People that he received the president feels he has to distance himself. The only thing fauci did was challenge the president s reasoning, lets put it that way on what he was saying. I think other experts have noted that fauci was providing the best guidance that he could at the time and we have since of course, learned quite a bit about the virus. Jonathan lamarre, you were reporting on the Campaign Shakeup that the president has also moved around his aids who are running his president ial campaign as he looks at all of these numbers and realizes that perhaps things are not going the way they should. I mean, is there a strategy to this i mean, Michael Steele suggests there is a plan to take down fauci, this is part of a strategy is that your view in terms of how the president is combining his actions as he tries to govern and lead the country through the pandemic with how hes handling the campaign side of things . It certainly seems like there is a lot of denial and blinders on in terms of the president and his inner circle in terms of the coronavirus pandemic there seems to be a little more acceptance and realization where they are on the campaign they understand they are losing. This change, which well get into in a moment, you know, i dont think it was meant as much to sort of reassure republicans calling for a change and satisfy the president who has had it out for brad for quite sometime. He had grown angry about the attention parascale his former Campaign Manager was getting and the sense he was making a lot of money off the trump name and the president hasnt forgiven him after what happened in tulsa the president s big comeback rally, his first since the onset of the pandemic when they said they received a million or more ticket requests and 6,000 people showed leaving the president staring at a sea of empty seats and raging to what happened. I dont know the day to day operations of the campaign will change much. The gop hand is in and a little less enamored with receiving Media Attention himself and focus on the Battle Ground states where there is an assessment they are losing they believe there is time to turn things around and they believe there is three and a half odd months to go and feel like if the economy picks up and they believe the more america sees of joe biden, the less they will feel comfortable with him being commander in chief these are the points they are trying to push across. It doesnt change the fact with the virus surging and threatening the economic recovery, that is likely going to be the definitive issues in this election and really, the campaign is still controlled by two people in particular Jared Kushner who all along is the defactor Campaign Manager and more than anyone, the whims and impulses of donald trump himself. Peter baker, before we wrap up here, all of this adds up to a very difficult election season, not just for the president but also for republicans in congress and thats why, you know, i find this confrontation over testing money to be so interesting that the president seems to not want more testing because he thinks that shows more cases. On the other hand, Senate Republicans know its the only way to actually solve the problem. How do you see that impasse getting resolved is this something that will threaten this round of Coronavirus Relief as millions of americans are staring at their Unemployment Insurance running out . Yeah, i think its a great question we saw in the report and some of my colleagues did earlier that once the president was told they had passed, you know, 3 million tests or whatever it was and they could say more tests have been done here than anywhere in the world, we can have a talking point that we have tested more than anyone else in the world. That doesnt really answer the question, which is do you have testing that allows you to reopen the way the president would like to reopen lets talk about schools he wants schools to reopen if you dont have testing that would make parents and teachers feel comfortable in doing it, that makes it that much harder, right . Would be the difference between a test that takes four days, eight days to get a test back versus a test that you get back in 15 pminutes . Remarkable difference. The Senate Republicans are so anxious about it because they understand that they have a lot at stake here, too and they want the country to get back in business and the only way to do it is have a more efficient and effective testing system we dont have it on a national basis. All right peter baker, thank you so much for coming on tonight. Great to have you on a sunday night. Jonathan lamarre, Michael Steele, thanks to you as well. Appreciate you guys on board. Well have much more to come tonight including my conversation with Francis Suarez as his city i merges as the epicenter of the pandemic and congressman a life and legacy of ngcoressman john lewis were back after this. [ engines revving ] its amazing to see them in the wild like th shhh. For those who were born to ride, theres progressive. With spray mopping to lock away debris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. Just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. The shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one pad. I feel lucky and blessed and im serving in the congress. And there are forces today trying to take us back to another time and another dark period weve come so far, weve made so much progress but as a nation and people, we havent got there yet. We have miles to go. We have miles to go those are the words of civil rights icon and congressman john lewis that died friday night at the age of 80. We as a nation have to travel those miles without him. Joining me now, president and ceo of the National Urban league and former mayor of new orleans and president ial historian and msnbc contributor john mecham. John, i want to ask about your final conversations with john lewis. We as a country have been reckoning with these questions of justice, what justice means, how its being meated out, whether we are ready to change in the wake of George Floyds death and we have to answer the questions without the giant that was john lewis he was known as the conscience of the congress. Who do we have to look to and what does this loss mean for all of us . I think its a loss of the conscious of the congress but also the loss of one of the last connections. He and c. T. Vivian and andrew young may be the remaining connection, personal connection today to the period of the 1950s and the 1960s. The living embodiment of the Transformative Movement as a Civil Rights Movement and we have to look to ourselves and we have to look to a new generation of leaders his status was earned over decades. He was a young man, a young man, literally a teenager and then a young man in his 20s who assumed a position of leadership among Martin Luther king and Whitney Young and wilkins Dorothy Height in ev63. Who also continue his advocacy as an e lektlected official. The chance in addition of the elected official the best way to the work of the Civil Rights Movement in his 30 plus years in Congress John lewis was one member of congress when he went to the mic and spoke, the House Chamber fell silent. People would listen on both sides of the isaisle because he spoke with a sense of morality. That absolute that is absolutely correct and it is such a loss for that body that i cover every day. John meacham, take us through how he ended his life and how to chronical it. We wrote an afterward for his book about this political and vision and we did a number of interviews we last spoke a week or so after George Floyds murder and he said he wept after he watched the video and he said keep the faith, keep the faith. I think the story of john lewis is the story of america, both at its best and given the forces he was fighting, at its worst we should be careful not to sentimentalize him too much. He was a living, breathing person who fought the forces of hate and fear with hope and love and he did it against unimaginable odds. Go ahead. Didnt mean to cut you off. It was said he was surprised john survived. Somehow or other, they always went for his head. Diane nash, a Living Legend that continues her work in chicago told me that herm main memory o john is he would show up at meetings with bandages because he was unfolding his lifes drama as a genuine saint that means hes a statute, quite the opposite classic theology is a heroic sinner, a sinner who demonstrates courageous vir twu because of his idea and it was a commitment to the gospel of jesus that the sermon on the mount should not simply be words on a badpage but the motive fors of our hearts and minds and that america was an arena in which those forces could find manifestatio manifestation. I think its an absolutely important reminder not to sent mentalize that time as you put it and focus on the real traumas i inflicted. John, last word. I would add to pay great transcribe by to john lewis there is something we can do to pass a new Voting Rights act, to repair the breach in the Supreme Court of 2013 which was one of his last crew saids to deal with awful suppression and purging and confusion and attacking vote by mail. We need a strong bill and it would be how we can really pay great tribute to a great man of our times. Final thing i would add for many of us in my generation who were too young to participate, john lewis lived, malcolm x did not, whitney king did not we put out arms around him as a connector to the period of the 1960s. What was it truly like so important and we remember those who