Beijing barry. I get that this president wants full credit for the economy he inherited, and zero blame for the pandemic that he ignored. But you know what . The job doesnt work that way. Tweeting at the television doesnt fix things. Making stuff up doesnt make peoples lives better. Donald trump followed up tonight with what has now become routine, a packed rally this time in North Carolina, where he covered a range of topics from boasting about his response to the coronavirus to random broadsides and grievances including a few swipes back at barack obama. That pandemic is rounding the corner. They hate it when i say it. All you hear is covid, covid, covid, covid, covid. Covid. Covid. Covid. They want to scare the hell out of everyone. 60 minutes. Take 60 minutes. She said you are begging for women to love you. You said women, please love you. Youll see, youll see. Wait until you see. We have a little surprise for 60 minutes. Theyve said he is so stupid. Then they say hes not really smart. Then they say hes trying to take over the entire country. You know, obama is now campaigning. There was nobody that campaigned harder for crooked Hillary Clinton than obama. He said he will not be our president. And i won. I think the only one. The only one more unhappy than crooked hillary that night was Barack Hussein obama. While the president was on stage, in a case of curious timing and well say it straight up, possibly dubious motives there was a hastily arranged press conference at fbi headquarters in washington. It was ostensibly about threatening emails that are going around meant to look like they were sent out by the far right group the proud boys. The emails appear to tell democratic voters to switch to the republican party. Some of them threaten them if they dont vote for trump. Well have more on this unusual press conference just ahead in our broadcast tonight. Not long after tonights event, the Washington Post reported trump is considering firing the fbi director chris wray after election day. Paper also says attorney general bill barrs position isnt looking that secure, either, these days. Despite this latest palace intrigue theres still a pandemic and most of the nation is now caught firmly in the grip of this latest wave of infections. Late this afternoon, in fact, the cdc offered this grim assessment. Were seeing a distressing trend here in the United States with covid19 cases increasing in nearly 75 of the country. Weve seen nearly 60,000 cases a day on average as well as 700 deaths. Total confirmed cases in the u. S. Now top 8. 3 million with the death toll now over 223,000. Over 1,000 people died in just the past day alone. In a previously taped town hall event for sinclair broadcasting, trump was again defending his track record in handling this virus. With covid, is there anything that you think you could have done differently if you had a mulligan or doover on one aspect of the way you handled it, what would it be . Not much. Its all over the world. You have a lot of great leaders a lot of smart people. Its all over the world. It came out of china. China should have stopped it. Negotiations over another Coronavirus Relief bill still under way. Senate democrats today blocked republicans effort to pass a 500 billion bill. Over in the House Speaker pelosi still pushing for relief in the 2. 2 trillion range. Trump white house has offered a 1. 8 trillion proposal. Republican senators are also focused on getting judge Amy Coney Barrett confirmed today. She met with senators ahead of tomorrows planned vote to move her nomination out of committee into the full senate. Tonight on this network the minority leader Chuck Schumer confirmed ten democrats on the Judiciary Committee will boycott that vote. Theres also a rather Interesting Development tonight concerning trumps personal lawyer and former mayor of new york city Rudy Giuliani. He had a hand in helping to get the president impeached and appears to be in the lead and pushing the president s latest allegations about his opponent. It turns out rudy also has a cameo in the latest Sacha Baron Cohen borat film. Nbc news has obtained a copy of the film that appears to show juli and an actress playing a reporter going into a Hotel Bedroom for drinks in what may be a compromising few moments. Tonight giuliani called the video a complete fabrication and says a suspiciouslooking screen grab from the scene is simply him tucking in his shirt after removing a microphone following an interview. He says he called the police once he realized Sasha Baron Cohen was behind it. Its a lot but lets bring in our leadoff Discussion Group for this predebate wednesday night. Jonathan lem yooer, White House Reporter for the associated press. Annie karni, White House Reporter for the new york times. Jason johnson, campaign veteran, a journalist, and contributor over at the grio and a professor of politics at morgan state university. Good evening and welcome to you all. Annie, lets see. Were 21 hours and change away from the start of this debate now. Some of our colleagues with a straight face have teased out a plot line that features the president unrolling a new tone tomorrow night. Has he had any debate prep that youve been able to learn . Do you expect anything different tomorrow night . No. There has been no debate prep. There were a few sessions on his calendar, but he did not partake in those. He the hope among his aides is that he will let biden do more talking and that he will lay out a vision for his second term. Its, you know, less than two weeks until election day and hes still not laid out a clear vision for his second term despite multiple attempts by his friendliest interlocutors like sean hannity asking him to do so. I dont expect it would be surprising if he had something to say on that now. The other thing is, they want him to debut a new tone. He has had no debate prep sessions and over the past few days weve really seen him take on fights with people who are not joe biden. They first there was fauci then it was lesley stahl from 60 minutes. Then it was obama a little bit at the rally. He seems to be looking for other targets when many of his aides just want him to be drawing a contrast with biden. Another thing offered to him as a way to attract some of the voters who might be turned off by his tone and twitter feed is to use humor and say i promise in a second term not to tweet as much. That would also be a new tone we havent seen him do. Hes been given some ideas how to do better in the second debate. But at this point i think your viewers are probably tired of new tone and at this point trump is going to do what he wants to do. Yeah, perhaps. Theyre a pretty savvy bunch. Hey, jason, i want to play for you a little bit more of lets call him joe bidens leading surrogate. With joe and kamala at the helm youre not going to have to think about the crazy things they said every day. Youll be able to go about your lives knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world or that navy s. E. A. L. S didnt actually kill bin laden. Think about that. The president of the United States retweeted that. Imagine. Jason, not unlike a wine review, i found hints of chris rock and seinfeld in todays delivery. Do you think it can be as effective as it was kind of reassuring to democrats in the base . After all, his job was to get out the vote in pennsylvania. Yeah, brian, i thought it was fantastic. In fact, what i heard was a lflt jon lovitz playing Michael Dukakis on snl like 25 years ago. How could i lose to this guy . There was such exasperation in Barack Obamas speech. This guy is clearly incompetent. He tweets insane theories. You cant not vote for him. You know, its red meat for the base. Its catharsis for people who are watching it. But i also think this is really interesting, brian. If you think about it, the biggest, most important surrogate for joe biden would be barack obama. And he hasnt been the point until these last two weeks. That is indicative of a campaign that is very confident. Places like pennsylvania as opposed to ive got to send barack obama there to make shire i secure these location ppz i think this is a good sign strategically for the campaign, a good sign this is the kind of rhetoric theyre on. Theyre selling we already know this guy is competent and the incumbent is terrible as opposed to were desperate and more concerned. And jonathan lemire, take us out on the trail, figuratively, with you. Talk about these trump rallies as events, as performance art. Compared to 2016, how do they compare . Especially in terms of crowds and energy and the like. Well, for the maga set theyre rock concerts. And certainly the president is playing a lot of the greatest hits night after night. I was there last night in erie, pennsylvania. When he spoke for about an hour. But there are some key differences and similarities to 2016. First of all, lets start on the crowd size. They have gotten significantly bigger in recent weeks. We are now approaching 2016 size. After the pandemic, after he scuttled rallies for a while, hes slowly brought them back. And they were significantly smaller. They have now its thousands of people every night. Most evenings very few in masks. Never any social distancing. Lets remember, these are major events being held in the pandemic. So thats different than four years ago. But aides are frustrated at another change, is that four years ago, particularly in the stretch run of the campaign, the president was for him relatively disciplined. He had key issues that he would hammer night after night. Whether it be on immigration or tried alleging Hillary Clinton corruption. Its far more scattershot this time around. Hes not as zeroed in on a message. There is a lot more personal grievance. Certainly there have always been attacks on the media but theyve been escalated even further in these weeks. And last night he did deliver what his aides want to be his closing message. He said look, it was about the economy. And he told the people there, you vote for me, you vote for the economic recovery thats already begun from this pandemic. If you vote for joe biden youll get socialist economic policies, another depression. Thats what his aides want him to say. He did say it. But it was drowned out by, annie said, by feuds with fauci and lesley stahl and other scattershot messaging that his aides are deeply frustrated has blunted the impact of what hes really trying to deliver as a closing message. And annie, back over to you, talk some more about your reporting that for this boss who only likes to hear good news more than most, what these glimmers of hope are that aides are passing along to him these days. There are some better polls. Theyre not great polls but theres a lot of excitement among his aides about an abc poll that came out yesterday that showed a onepoint race in North Carolina. They are saying that theyre seeing his numbers come back from the hit they took after the double whammy of the first debate where his performance was widely panned and then his hospitalization for the coronavirus. It seems like he has convinced most of his supporters that his health is fine. Hes doing multiple rallies a day. So theyve seen their numbers kind of come back from that horrible week for them. And thats a glimmer of hope. And they think this debate is their final chance for a reset. So they think that, you know, i hear a lot of people saying that conceding that the president had a bad debate and his bad debate overshadowed bidens debate which they didnt think was particularly strong. The hope is that if the president can step back it can reset the dynamics a little bit. That being said, early voting is going gangbusters in states like North Carolina and other critical states. So time is of the essence. But they think they i mean, its a tight race. Theyre hoping for tight. Thats and for a reset possibly on election day when a lot of Republican Voters vote. Indeed. Jason, lets talk about the chance of that reset and a question that i hear asked at least once a day now. How much of that obamaBiden Coalition can bidenharris count on turning out . Brian, all the numbers say its not even going to necessarily look like the obama coalition. There is there are two particular groups that biden seems to be doing particularly well with. We havent seen in a long time. Hes doing very well with seniors including white seniors. I mean, hes competitive with workingclass whites, noneducatesed whites, and white seniors in a way that president barack obama always struggled with. Obama made up the numbers from large support from african americans, large support from latin latinos, large support from young people. I think the Biden Coalition might be a bit wider, might be bit older, might be more spread out than we saw from the previous coalition, but a lot of that is sort of a level of frustration with donald trump and his inability to be competitive with independent voters. I think right now if you look at the places that Donald Trumps campaign is excited about or paying attention to, theyre excited that theyre only 1 ahead or theyre doing better in North Carolina, theyre doing better in arizona. These are places that the Biden Campaign would consider the cherry on top. Biden doesnt have to win arizona. Biden doesnt have to win North Carolina. So i think the coalition that biden is putting together is making it much more difficult for republicans to strategize these last two weeks because he seems to have a wider swath of american support than weve seen for a democrat in a long time. Hey, jonathan lemire, in our closing seconds, anytime the fbi has a press conference within two weeks of an election it gets your attention, jim comey or not. As it did tonight. And we should be skeptical because of our times, because of this administration, because nothing greater than the fact that barack obama had a good day, donald trump was on the stage in North Carolina. Im going to quote from garrett graf, one reason youre in a job like dhs secretary or dni, that you dont compromise your integrity and lie badly, is because there are moments like right now when the public needs to trust you. So there was the dni approaching the microphones followed by the head of the fbi. What do you think that was all about tonight . Youre right, brian. Certainly it was a hastily called News Conference. Reporters were only given about a half hours notice and were told it was going to be a significant announcement on election security, which raised all sorts of eyebrows and antennae across washington. Certainly remember the late developments in the 2016 race caused by james comeys letter about the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Its hard to know. The president everything the president in this four years, politics is everywhere. We know that he has touched institutions. He has touched branches of government that have never been political before which now seem to be. Cdc among them. And this is one where i think this announcement had been greeted with some skepticism. The allegations about iran and russia having voter information that largely, at least at first glance, appears to be publicly available. So theres a sense at least among some that this is perhaps an overhyped event to try to change the narrative, to try to change the conversation, and to yes, cast doubt about the integrity of the election. As much as there was reassurances tonight that americans should have faith in their voting, of course allegations of interference allegedly to hurt President Trump although its not clear why that would be. It wasnt spelled out. But it adds to the mix here as americans fear two weeks out that the results on election day and the days that follow are going to be unclear and murky and perhaps undermine the confidence in the results. Yeah, people need to be very sharp consumers. Heres a credibilitychallenged dni choosing to toss Donald Trumps name into that press conference tonight. Great thanks to our big three on a wednesday. Jonathan lemire, annie karni, jason johnson. Greatly appreciated pape break for us. And then coming up, more on the many questions raised by tonights allegations of these foreign efforts to interfere with the election that most of us have known have been going on for quite a while. Well be joined by a former fbi senior official. And later, the name hunter biden just might come up a lot tomorrow night. Will names like ivanka, eric, djtj come up just as often . Should they . The 11th hour just getting under way on this wednesday evening. Wednesday evening. And now your copilot. 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