Thanks to all of you guys for not minding too much when i need to go turn off my brain for six days and not be here. So it was really, really nice and a real privilege to have that time. I am very grateful for it. But i am back. And honestly now, coming back to this news day, now i am more than ready to turn my brain off again because, you know, you come back. You know, i will just say meher is a think that should never, ever, ever, ever happen from the white house. Not only should this never happen from the white house, it should never happen anywhere anyone is in any position of supposed authority. I mean what happened today shouldnt happen from a white house podium, but it also like shouldnt happen from a teachers desk. It shouldnt happen from the voice of a cop giving you a parking ticket. It shouldnt happen from a p. A. Announcement at a supermarket about which car has its lights on in the parking lot. This shouldnt come from anybody who purports to be giving you any information from any purported position of authority. But here it was today from the mouth of the president of the United States. Him just winging it, just making it up as he goes along because who cares, right . The United States stands ready to assist lebanon. We have a very Good Relationship with the people of lebanon, and we will be there to help. It looks like a terrible attack. It looks like a terrible attack . What . It was an attack, said the president . I mean the news today out of lebanon was actually terrifying, right . This huge, huge blast in the densely packed city of beirut. At least dozens of people killed. Thousands of people known to be injured. A significant area of that big and important city just decimated. It was an attack . I mean the president today speaking from the white house podium called this a, quote, terrible attack. To be clear, before the president said that today from the white house, there had been no public indication at all that this was an attack, that this was some sort of terrorist or military assault on the city of beirut. I mean when the president of the United States speaking from the white house podium says this is an attack, thats a huge piece of news. Thats a huge deal. Thats like announcing the start of a war kind of news from the mouth of the president of the United States except with this president , nah. Turns out, grain of salt, he makes stuff up. He didnt know if it was an attack even when he was saying its an attack. He didnt know. He was just spitballingish. I just want to follow up before i ask the coronavirus question on lebanon. You called this an attack. Are you confident that this was an attack and not an accident . Well, it would seem like it. It would seem like it. I mean it seemed like it. When i announced that huge blast in lebanon today was a terrible attack, i was just you know, it seems like maybe. Dont listen to me on stuff like this. I really do just make things up and then blurt them out as they occur to me. I mean it is very nice to have had a few days away. It is nice to be back from a weeks vacation. Nothing got better while i was gone. That was absolutely atrocious today at the white house. I mean what other president did stuff like that . This one does that as a matter of course. Over the course of the week that i was gone, though, i think that we have a natural whether youre an optimist or a pes mist, i think we have a natural human inclination to believe that longstanding problems that require fixing eventually, over time, get worked on and start to get fixed even if progress is slow and halting. It doesnt work that way with this administration. I mean over the course of the week that i was gone, in fact i think the Coronavirus Response from the president , from this white house, actually got worse. I mean the weird attacks and conspiracy theories about anthony fauci, about the nations top Infectious Disease doctor, those absolutely have continued apace. If anything, they appear to have accelerated over the past week. But now in the past week, those attacks have also extended to the white houses handpicked covid chief, dr. Deborah birx. Shes now getting the same treatment. And with over 157,000 americans dead, with us steaming toward 5 million infections, millions more infections than any other country on earth, the increasing chaos and incoherence and incompetence at the white house matters in life and death terms. I mean it matters for the overall numbers of americans dead and sick and unemployed and infected and scared. It also matters to every single American Family that right now is trying to figure out if theyre going to be working and if their kids are going to be in school. I mean heres dr. Deborah birx. Like her or dont, right, shes the head doctor on the white houses Coronavirus Response team. Heres dr. Deborah birx on cnns state of the union on sunday. Quote. If you have high caseload and active Community Spread, we are asking people to distance learn at this moment so we can get this epidemic under control. Shes saying if you have a lot of cases, if you have the active spread of the virus in your state, well, School Buildings should stay closed for now, and kids should keep doing Distance Learning until that high caseload is brought down, until active Community Spread is stopped. This is not like a mandate from dr. Birx or anything, but shes explaining this as a clear, scientifically grounded principle for how we should think about whether schools can open, how we should think about what criteria should be used to make decisions about schools opening, right . This is her telling us how we should think about schools and whether or not kids are going to be Remote Learning in an ongoing way or whether they can actually go to a physical school building. You cant open schools unless your case numbers are way down and the spread of the virus is under control in your state. Thats dr. Deborah birx speaking, you would think, on behalf of the white house. But then heres the president at 11 30 last night, all caps. Open the schools thats his reasoned, scientifically based argument. Open the schools so thats what weve got as american policy on coronavirus and schools. Good luck, every family in america who is agonizing over this. Good luck and god bless. This is the president who we have for this time. I mean your kids will never again be the age that they are now. They will never again be this age, going into this grade, thinking about this time in their education. But there will always have been this president at this time in their lives, right . Screaming into the void, open the schools even as his own coronavirus coordinator tells the public that we cannot do that until its safe, and heres why. This kind of mishegoss should shape your view of who we have as president in this country, but it also makes a real difference in the way we live and the way we try to handle this, and the way we try to save lives or not. Having bad, incoherent, increasingly insane leadership on this subject screws things up materially in ways large and small every single day, right . And every single day is a now thousand deaths in this country. Every single day is a new 50,000plus cases. Having bad leadership messes things up. Having confused leadership messes things up. Take, for example, the great state of tennessee. The same dr. Deborah birx of the white house has advised tennessee that looking at their numbers and how things are going, they should climb back down on some of their reopening decisions. She has advised tennessee that they should close bars, that they should limit Indoor Dining at restaurants. But, you know, if you run the state of tennessee, why would you think that you should listen to the top doctor tapped to lead the Coronavirus Response for the nation . I mean the president picked her for that job, and he doesnt listen to her. Hes now publicly dragging her the way hes publicly dragging dr. Fauci. Frankly, in tennessee following his lead, republican u. S. Senate candidates are competing with each other during their primary process as to who can rip dr. Fauci with the worst insults and who can more effusively promote that malaria drug the president is still inexappliably saying is a cure for coronavirus even though it is not a cure for coronavirus. And so if youre governor of tennessee, how do you look at that . Well, turns out the way you look at that is who cares if dr. Deborah birx says tennessee should close the bars and roll back Indoor Dining, right . Why would you think that you should follow that advice even though its coming from the top doctor in the Coronavirus Response handpicked for that job by the president . And so governor bill lee of tennessee heard that advice from dr. Deborah birx and said, no. No. You think i should close down the bars and limit Indoor Dining . No, im not going to do it. I dont want to, so im not going to. And whos to tell him any different, really . Whos to tell him . I should tell you that tennessee had a 139 rise in coronavirus cases over the month of july. But now its august, so now maybe august will be great. About two weeks ago, the Trump Administration, specifically the part of the administration that regulates Nursing Homes, an agency called cms, they announced that they would be requiring weekly testing for all nursing home staff. Weekly testing for all nursing home staff in any state where the Positivity Rate was over 5 . Well, thats about twothirds of all u. S. States now, and so what that means in practical terms is that there are thousands of Nursing Homes in the United States, in the more than 30 states where the Positivity Rate is over 5 . Thousands of Nursing Homes that per the Trump Administration are supposed to be testing all of their staff every week, and the Trump Administration says, we are requiring you to do so. Thousands of Nursing Homes in more than 30 states. How many of them do you think are weekly testing their staff right now . How is that going . We are nowhere near able to get every nursing home in every one of those states the acapacicapa tell all of their staff every week. But the Trump Administration says theyre requiring that. Saying theyre requiring that is apparently the Trump Administrations plan for stopping tens of thousands more americans from dying in Nursing Homes, right . Thats their plan, to say that theyre requiring that, which is about as realistic as me flying home from this studio on the back of a giant rainbow sequined unicorn. Ill just say thats what im going to do. Saying that youre requiring something that cant be done and that youre not facilitating so that it can happen doesnt count as a plan. Thats a myth. Its a lie. Its the absence of a plan. It takes up the space where a plan should be. So instead nothing happens. In mississippi, teachers in mississippi are calling for schools in that state to stay on Distance Learning only until the states Positivity Rate is under that same threshold as the Nursing Homes rule. They want 5 positivity or less in mississippi before they open up School Buildings in that state. They want 5 or less. Mississippis Positivity Rate is currently more than quadruple that. Mississippis Positivity Rate right now is currently over 20 . Its the worst in the country. Nevertheless, mississippis Republican Governor Tate Reeves as Just Announced that even though he is now willing for there to be a statewide mask rule that was Just Announced today he says there still wont be a statewide delay in school openings, even with Positivity Rates over 20 . I mean the states teachers, the head of the university of Mississippi Medical Center have been calling for that statewide delay. But at least now, he says, no, not willing to do that in mississippi. Hes decided instead he will tell students over grade seven in eight separate counties that they should delay school by two weeks because that sounds like data. I mean, anyway, hes making it up on his own. Whos to tell him different . And if he got advice from the white house on this, even the president wouldnt tell him to follow white house advice. The white house advice comes from doctors, and the president likes dragging the doctors for political effect. I will tell you among mississippis problems right now is not just that theyre approaching the highest per capita infection rate in the nation and their Positivity Rate is over 20 , and their biggest hospitals are full already and they have been full for weeks now. Among mississippis problems right now is so many mississippi residents are dying so fast right now that the morgues in the state are overtopped. You see the headline in the daily beast. Morgues are overflowing in mississippi, and coroners are terrified. The head of the university of Mississippi Medical Center is going to join us live tonight in just a few minutes. Im very much looking forward to that conference. But, you know, i singled out tennessee and mississippi. Even states in other parts of the country that have done relatively well over the last weeks and months in massachusetts, for example, massachusetts brought its case numbers way, way, way down from what had been a scary peak in late april. But in massachusetts, numbers have started going back up as the state has opened back up. And, yeah, the Positivity Rate in massachusetts right now is roughly onetenth the rate theyve got in mississippi, but the trend is in the wrong direction. It is starting to go back up. Positivity rates are starting to rise. Case numbers are starting to rise. Anecdotal information about hospitalizations suggests that the uptick in hospitalizations in massachusetts is starting to become systematic as well. And so epidemiologists in the state of massachusetts are now telling that states republican Governor Charlie Baker that he should go back to what works. He should go back to the socalled phase two operations the state was under before when the case numbers were being held very low and slow and massachusetts looked like a model for the nation. Go back to that. Since governor baker said, no, i want to move forward and go to phase three with Indoor Dining and all the rest of it, well, thats when the numbers have started going back up. So why would you stick with na . One expert from Boston University school of Public Health telling the boston globe now, quote, i would back up to the last level the governor had that we know worked. Somewhere between that and now is the sweet spot. Level two worked. Level three didnt work. Right. When your case numbers are going up, your Positivity Rates going up, your hospitalization numbers and death numbers are going to follow that trajectory too. If thats the trend line youre on, it means what youre doing isnt working and you have to do something else. If you had been doing well before and now youve stopped doing well, go back to what you were doing when you were doing well. Its not rocket science. We dont have a cure. The only interventions we have are these simple, dumb, hard things that we fight over masks and social distancing and keeping schools closing and having rules about gatherings. Thats all weve got. Its not rocket science, but you do the things that work, and when your numbers show you that new things that youre trying dont work, you stop doing them. But, you know, whos to tell you what to do . Whos to say . If you even got advice from the top doctor working at the white house on these issues, should you follow their advice . She was picked for the job by the president. The president says shes terrible now and is disparaging her and dragging her for political effect, so do you listen to her . Whos to tell you what to do . Do you listen to the president . That said, in 91 days, we all get to decide if the guy whos currently in charge of how were responding to this epidemic should stay in the job for four more years or if democratic candidate joe biden would do better at this. Its honestly hard to know what it will be like for a president to stand for reelection with 200,000 dead americans as a key metric from his first term while he asks for a second term. But were going to talk tonight about how some of that is going to work and some of what we can see coming down the pike, and a lot of it is very worrying in terms of the institutions of our democracy and what we count on to keep us a constitutional republic. Were going to be talking tonight, for example, about what appears to be one sort of shocking sign that the white house doesnt expect President Trump to be here for a second term. Back in april, the administration went to congress and told them that because of covid, they were going to need some more time to get the census done. Instead of basically finishing up the census and turning in the results of it by the end of this year, they wanted a few months extension, an extension into next spring to be a