CHUCK TODD:
This Sunday: The president and the pandemic.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
I didn’t lie.
CHUCK TODD:
Bob Woodward reveals President Trump knew how deadly the coronavirus was.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
What I said is we have to be calm. We can't be panicked.
CHUCK TODD:
At the same time he was saying this:
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Now, you treat this like a flu. One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear.
CHUCK TODD:
Mr. Trump on the defensive.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
They wanted me to come out and scream: people are dying, we're dying.
CHUCK TODD:
And under attack.
JOE BIDEN:
He lied to the American people.
CHUCK TODD:
Even hearing from his own experts.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
When you downplay something that is really a threat, that's not a good thing.
CHUCK TODD:
My guests this morning, Republican National Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm. Plus, the man who led the FBI’s russia investigation until he was taken off the case because of his anti-Trump texts.
PETER STRZOK:
President Trump's counter-intelligence vulnerabilities are exponentially greater than any president in modern history.
CHUCK TODD:
Peter Strzok suspected then and still believes President Trump is compromised by Russia and he joins me this morning. Also, epic wildfires.
FIREFIGHTER:
There is no downtime because mother nature doesn't give us that.
CHUCK TODD:
A deadly wave of fires burning in California, Oregon and Washington State.
HEATHER MARSHALL:
Everything is a total loss.
CHUCK TODD:
Millions of acres burned, thousands evacuated and no end in sight. We'll have the latest from the scene of this latest climate disaster. Joining me for insight and analysis are NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt, editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg and Republican strategist Al Cardenas. Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press.
ANNOUNCER:
From NBC News in Washington, the longest-running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, good Sunday morning. And we're going to get to all the political news of the week -- and boy, is there a lot of it -- in just a moment. But we're going to begin with the epic wildfires out west. Fires burning in California, Oregon and Washington State have now consumed some 4.7 million acres this year alone. At least 33 people have been killed throughout the Pacific region, and with many people missing, officials fear the toll will go much higher. Whole towns have been wiped out by these fires, which have consumed areas the size of some of our smaller states. And the tragedy has renewed warnings that unless we take serious steps to control climate change -- and now -- scenes like these will become more and more common. Perhaps, maybe it is too late that this is the new normal. NBC News' Erin McLaughlin joins us now from hard hit Oroville, California. So, Erin, set the scene. And is any hope here that the weather changes will help firefighters combat these flames?
ERIN McLAUGHLIN:
Hey, Chuck. Well, the president is expected to visit California tomorrow. He's going to meet with fire officials. And scenes of utter devastation await him. As you can see, acre after acre of scorched landscape. Thousands of homes destroyed. Lives lost or forever changed. We were speaking with a single mother of five from Oregon. She lost her home, now staying with her boys in a motel. She said, "At least they have each other. At least they made it out alive, because so many haven't." Now, fire officials say that conditions have improved over the past few days, creating a window of opportunity for firefighters. But winds are expected tonight. And the situation could change very quickly, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
Erin, what about the air quality? I saw -- we've seen reports that maybe even the sporting events, we know the NFL's got a couple of games in the state of California. Is the air -- we know the air quality's bad. Is it so bad that people are going to be told to stay indoors?
ERIN McLAUGHLIN:
Well, you know, Chuck, NFL had been looking at possibly canceling the San Francisco 49er game scheduled for today here in California, but that game is going ahead. They are monitoring the situation very carefully, considering that California Governor Gavin Newsom was here earlier this week. He said that this air is the equivalent to smoking 20 packs of cigarettes.
CHUCK TODD:
Unbelievable. Erin McLaughlin on the ground in Northern California. Stay safe yourself and be careful breathing the air as well. If you want to help the victims of the western fires, here're some of the organizations that we believe are doing some good work. And if you don't have a pen or pencil handy, you can find them on our website, MeetThePress.com and we will also tweet that out. Now to presidential politics. At the very moment President Trump hoped to go on offense against Joe Biden, he found himself playing defense, again. There was the continuing fallout from The Atlantic Magazine story in which he was reported to have called Americans who died in war "losers and suckers." Bigger still was Bob Woodward's latest book, “Rage” and the audiotapes that went with it. We learned that Mr. Trump knew in late January just how deadly the coronavirus was, that it was airborne, knew it was far worse than the flu, but chose to mislead the public for months to avoid panic, so the president claims. Not surprisingly, Joe Biden attacked Mr. Trump for a "life and death betrayal of the American people." Also not surprisingly, some conservatives, but not many elected ones, defended the president for remaining calm, saying, "You don't yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater." It's true, but you do if the theater is actually on fire. Will these latest revelations have any impact on Mr. Trump's loyal followers? Probably not. It's possible the virus is already baked into the polls. But every day spent explaining his silence on the coronavirus is another lost opportunity, another day off the calendar when Mr. Trump could be going after Biden instead of defending himself.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
This whack job that wrote the book, he said, "Well, Trump knew a little bit." They wanted me to come out and scream, "People are dying. We're dying." We have to be calm.
CHUCK TODD:
President Trump doing damage control, defending his choice to mislead the public and knowingly play down the coronavirus for months. At the same time, acknowledging its seriousness to Bob Woodward in private.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
You just breathe the air. That's how it's passed. It's also more deadly than your, you know, your, even your strenuous flus. This is deadly stuff.
CHUCK TODD:
But publicly.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
We're finding very little problem, very little problem. Now, you treat like this a flu.
CHUCK TODD:
To Woodward.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out. It's not just old, older.
BOB WOODWARD:
Yeah, exactly.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Young people too. Plenty of young people.
CHUCK TODD:
But publicly.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Young people are almost immune to this disease. The younger, the better.
CHUCK TODD:
The president admitted to Woodward he intentionally minimized the danger.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
The vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low. I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic.
JON KARL:
Why did you lie to the American people? And why should we trust what you have to say now?
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Such a terrible question and the phraseology. I didn't lie. What I said is we have to be calm. We can't be panicked.
CHUCK TODD:
But as he cautions against panic, this week the president took to Twitter with scare tactics that have animated his campaign. "If I don't win, America's suburbs will be overrun with low income projects, anarchists, agitators, looters. No city, town or suburb will be safe. If Biden gets in, this violence is coming to the suburbs and fast." And as the president strikes an optimistic tone on the virus --
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
We're rounding the turn. And it's happening. I mean, it's happening. You see.
CHUCK TODD:
-- the nation's top infectious disease expert is pushing back.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with that because if you look at the thing that you just mentioned, the statistics, Andrea, they are disturbing. You know, we're plateauing at around 40,000 cases a day. And the deaths are around 1,000.
CHUCK TODD:
Dr. Anthony Fauci says the United States may not get back to normal until the end of 2021.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
There were times when I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we're having a really serious problem. You know, when the president was saying it's something that's going to disappear, which obviously, is not the case. When you downplay something that is really a threat, that's not a good thing.
CHUCK TODD:
And joining me now is the chair of the Republican Party, Ronna McDaniel. Madam Chairwoman, welcome back to Meet the Press.
RONNA McDANIEL:
Thanks for having me. Great to be with you, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
I want to start with the Bob Woodward tapes. And let me play one excerpt of what the president said and ask you about it on the other side. Here it is.
[BEGIN TAPE]
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down.
BOB WOODWARD:
Yes.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Because I don't want to create a panic.
[END TAPE]
CHUCK TODD:
Now, if the president had a history of playing down things, that might be believable. But considering what he did with immigration and the caravans, what he does now about violence in the cities, this isn't a president who shies away from trying to incite panic or trying to fire folks up. This doesn't seem to match that. It looks to a lot of people as if the president didn't want to panic people because he's worried the virus hurts him politically. Why shouldn’t folks view this comment through that lens?
RONNA McDANIEL:
I disagree that the president took political calculations into a global pandemic like we've never seen before that has decimated not just our country but countries across the world. The president was calm and steady and methodical. He canceled travel from China on January 31st. He created the coronavirus task force on February 9th. He created a plan to get the private sector engaged, to ramp up PPE, to get ventilators in place, to slow the spread, to ramp up testing. These are things you want from a president. Think of what would have happened if he'd have gone out and said, "This is awful. We should all be afraid. We don't have a plan." It would have been a run on the banks. It would have been a run on the hospitals. It would have been a run on the grocery stores. As it was, it was already hard to get some of the things we needed in the grocery stores. So the president was calm and steady in a time of unrest and uncertainty. And I think history will look back on him well as how he handled this pandemic.
CHUCK TODD:
The president also fought a mask mandate and sort of was discouraging for people to wear masks. He rushed and encouraged governors to open up states too quickly, causing the second rise of this. So everything you just said there, that was a few actions. But they've not been consistent. I mean, if we had had the president endorsing wearing masks earlier, there's plenty of scientific studies that that would have saved lives. So the president, it's hard to accept what you just said considering how hard he fought mask wearing.
RONNA McDANIEL:
Well, I think 20/20 vision is, in hindsight, is always, you know, perfect, right? But as a new pandemic hit our shores, as a new virus came, we were all being told by Dr. Fauci, by the scientists, "You shouldn't wear masks." In fact, I know I went and donated some masks to a local hospital, some N95 masks that I had at my home. We were all being told that. And then the science came out and said, "Yes, we should be wearing masks." I remember being on airplanes and people weren't sure if we should or shouldn't because it's a new virus like, like we've never seen before. And to say that he should have known then what we know now seven months later isn't really fair. So as the science has come forward, the president has said we should wear masks, we should do the things that the science is telling us to do --
CHUCK TODD:
No, he hasn't. Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
RONNA McDANIEL:
But we can do that and balance --
CHUCK TODD:
He has -- But, Madam Chair --
RONNA McDANIEL:
But we can do that and balance opening --
CHUCK TODD:
-- he didn't say that.
RONNA McDANIEL:
-- up our economy.
CHUCK TODD:
No, look --
RONNA McDANIEL:
He has said that. Absolutely.
CHUCK TODD:
He never said, he never encouraged mask wearing. He waited months to encourage mask wearing. He defied mask wearing. And finally, he did a tweet about wearing a mask. He refused to wear it in public. And now, you have a political divide in this country. Do you not see the direct correlation between the president not encouraging mask wearing and the fact that fewer Republicans wear masks than Independents or Democrats?
RONNA McDANIEL:
I don't think this is politically dividing at all. I wear masks. My kids wear masks. My husband wears a mask. This isn't a Republican or Democrat thing, whether you wear a mask. What it is --
CHUCK TODD:
I'm talking about the president.
RONNA McDANIEL:
-- is about individual freedom and some -- and the president wears masks, too. I mean, the president has worn this and he has said this. But the reality is it's sad that it's become political. This is a president who's willing to work with every governor, Democrat and Republican. This is an administration that has provided everything the states have needed. States are navigating this differently. The governors have autonomy over their states. But the president has provided the resources and the leadership necessary to lead us through a very difficult time and a virus that none of us could have predicted or been prepared for at the level that this virus has shown to be so strong and virulent in our country and across the world.
CHUCK TODD:
Right. But how do you account for the fact that it's the United States of America that accounts for 25% of the world's deaths?
RONNA McDANIEL:
Well, we have, we do have more testing. And I do think we have, we have, we had hot spots in New York where nursing homes were getting patients put back in who were sick. There were missteps made by the governor there. The same thing happened in Michigan. I'd like to see some transparency on that. But we are seeing the mortality rates go down. We have passed 100 million tests. We just bought 150 million rapid tests from Abbott Labs that are going to change the way we can handle this pandemic and help us get back to work and get our economy going. So the president with what he did with the private sector very quickly made sure that nobody went without a ventilator who needed one, got the PPE at the level that it needed to be, made sure that the ICU beds weren't filled up and that the hospitals were able to deal with the capacity. I feel like we are in the right space and moving forward with this vaccine. And, of course, we all need to remember this is a virus like we've never seen before. And the president has led us through uncertain times with a Democrat party who's politicizing a time of crisis when usually people come together.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, it is -- I think there is a lot of people that take issue with most of what you said there, considering how the president continues to try to downplay the severity of the virus. We’re still have a caseload that is much higher than the Western world. I mean, again, you can say all these things. The results speak for themselves. We, we have -- you compare us to the rest of the Western world, and we have failed. Is there any way to look at this and compare to the Western world and say that we've done better than other countries?
RONNA McDANIEL:
I will just tell you right now if Democrats were in charge, if Joe Biden had his way, go look at his statements in January when he said the president was being xenophobic --
CHUCK TODD:
He's not the president.
RONNA McDANIEL:
-- and hysterical for closing the borders to China --
CHUCK TODD:
He's not the president.
RONNA McDANIEL:
No. No, no. He was running for president, and he had the same data and the same information. And while Democrats were trying to impeach this president, this president was taking decisive action. So I think it's disgusting to take a crisis in our country and try and lay it at the feet of the president. And where is the outrage at China, as we're hearing more and more stories come forward and research coming forward that they knew about it earlier, that they weren't transparent? What about the WHO that had one job, Chuck? One job, to warn the world about a pandemic. And they failed. And this is a president saying, "We're going to hold you accountable. We're not going to give you hundreds of millions of dollars." This is a president who took decisive action early on that was derided by Democrats. So he saved lives with the actions he has taken. And the fact that we've ramped up testing --
CHUCK TODD:
You just, you just --
RONNA McDANIEL:
-- and the fact that we're close to a vaccine is because of this president.
CHUCK TODD:
You just said that the WHO didn’t warn, didn't do enough to warn the world of a pandemic. The president of the United States has admitted that he's purposely downplaying the severity of this virus to not panic the public. So --
RONNA McDANIEL:
No, Chuck, he's not.
CHUCK TODD:
-- both of your statements can't be true --
RONNA McDANIEL:
He's saying he's trying not to panic --
CHUCK TODD:
He said that.
RONNA McDANIEL:
No, he's saying he wasn't going to create a panic. What would it mean if the president came out and said, "The sky is falling and everybody should be panicked"? He presented calm and a steady hand and a plan. And that is what a president should do. You know, we just commemorated 9/11 this week. And I watched Andy Card walk over to George Bush and say, "The second tower has been hit. America is under attack." And George Bush didn't stand up and say, "America's been attacked by terrorists. Everyone panic." They created a plan and they presented calm and certainty in a difficult time. What's different this time is Democrats are politicizing it because we have an election, instead of saying, "Let's work with you, Mr. President, and make sure we're all fighting a virus like we've never seen together."
CHUCK TODD:
All right. You keep accusing the Democrats of politicizing. There's a report overnight in Politico that political operatives in, at HHS are manipulating data and manipulating some of the CDC recommendations before they go public in order to, quote, "fit with the president's positions." That is the definition of politicizing the pandemic. Is it not?
RONNA McDANIEL:
Well we haven’t, there’s -- I haven't seen that. I don't know anything about that. But I do know Nancy Pelosi has called it the Trump virus. How is that not politicization? I mean, how is that not a disgusting thing, to say that people are being killed by the Trump virus? That's disgusting. This is something that's affecting every American, Republican, Democrat. I have lost friends from this virus. The president has lost friends from this virus. This is personal. So to do that is, is not in the best interests of this country. We are already divided. Usually in crisis we come together. Let's show the best of America. The president's willing to work with everyone. Why aren't Democrats passing a fourth stimulus bill? Why aren't they helping small businesses? Why aren't they working with this president?
CHUCK TODD:
All right. Ronna McDaniel, chair of the RNC, I appreciate you taking a few minutes and spending some time and sharing your perspective with us. Thanks very much.
RONNA McDANIEL:
Thanks for having me.
CHUCK TODD:
And joining me now is Dr. Michael Osterholm. He's the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Osterholm, welcome back to Meet the Press. And let me just start with--
MICHAEL OSTERHOLM:
Good morning, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
--sort of the explanation, the explanation that you heard there, you've heard from the president, we heard in the Woodward tapes. This feels like, this looks like revisionist history to a lot of us. The president saying he intentionally played this down, was that a mistake?
MICHAEL OSTERHOLM:
Well, let me just say at the outset here, I'm just going to try to give you a balls and strikes analysis of what happened over the past eight months. Number one is the fact that we know in public health as well as just in general response to crisis, telling the truth never causes panic. If you just tell people the truth, they will respond. And they will trust you to continue to tell them the truth. The great leaders of the world have done that. Number two is the fact that we do have to separate out the early days of what happened, versus what happened after those early days. On January 20th, I issued a statement saying that, in fact, this would cause a pandemic. It was widely circulated. I got a lot of negative feedback from Democrats and Republicans, from my own colleagues saying that “we were scaring the hell out of people, Don't do that, okay?” So I think those early days, many people were confused. But by March, we then began to know what was happening. And if you look at the track record from that time on, when it was clear and compelling that we had a major pandemic, that's where I think we have to hold the record to match up with what we were trying to do to prevent this pandemic. You know, I will just say one last point is that science has to rule the day here. Science is what got us to the moon.
CHUCK TODD:
Right.
MICHAEL OSTERHOLM:
It allowed us to build Medieval cathedrals. It eradicated smallpox and really did -- reduced polio. And so I hope that we stick with the science and not with all this rhetoric that we're hearing right now.
CHUCK TODD:
Speaking of science, walk us through what we're staring at for the next three to six months. Dr. Fauci used a phrase, “We're going to have to hunker down.” But I'd like, I guess, for you to give us a definition of what hunker down means and what -- it certainly looks like a new spike is coming. But what do you see?
DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM:
Yes, you know, looking forward, where we're at right now, I -- Tony and I are completely on the same page. Number one is, we're now leveled off at about 40,000 cases a day, which if you think about that, that’s eight thousand more when the house was on fire back in March, and we will with the colleges and universities openings, with the spillover that's occurring with people experiencing even more pandemic fatigue wanting to be in indoor air spaces with other people as we get into the fall, we're going to see these numbers grow substantially. When the vaccine does become available, it won't be in any meaningful way until the beginning of next year, and then it's still going to take us months to vaccinate the population of just this country. And so I, I agree. We really have another 12 to 14 months have a really hard road ahead of us. And that's what I'm concerned about today. I don't, I don't go back and you know, replay February and March. I play right now. What is our national plan? We don't have one. We have 50 state plans that in many cases are so different, so divided, and not based on necessarily good science. So yeah, we got a long road ahead.
CHUCK TODD:
Dr. Michael Osterholm, it's always the straight talk from you, the bluntness and the reality. And it's why you're on this program as often as we invite you. Sir, thank you for your expertise.
MICHAEL OSTERHOLM:
Thank you. Thanks, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
When we come back, when we come back, the man who led the FBI's Russia investigation and remains convinced that the president of the United States has been compromised by the Russians. Peter Strzok joins me next.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. This past week, we heard from Microsoft that hackers from Iran, China and especially Russia have escalated their attacks on our election system. Then there was President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who found himself playing down his contacts with a Ukrainian lawmaker who is said to be a Russian agent and who the United States government ended up sanctioning. One person who's very familiar with Russian election shenanigans is former FBI counterintelligence officer Peter Strzok. He was in charge of the bureau's Russia investigation until he was removed over personal anti-Trump texts he sent to a colleague with whom he was having an affair. Strzok has just written a book, “Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump.” And Peter Strzok joins me now. Mr. Strzok, welcome to Meet the Press. And let me just start with your theory of the case of why you believe President Trump is compromised.
PETER STRZOK:
Good morning, Chuck. It's great to be here. Look, I think it is clear, I believed at the time in 2016, and I continue to believe, that Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians. And when I say that, I mean that they hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests, the national security ahead of his own. That takes a variety of forms. I worked counterintelligence for over 20 years. And I recruited spies during that time and I defended against those people who were being recruited in our government. One of the largest ways that people, foreign governments, gain leverage, certainly in the case of the president, is through financial entanglements. And I think when you take a look at the Trump financial enterprise, particularly its relationship with Russian, with Russian monies and potentially those related to organized crime and other elements, that those interactions have placed him in a position where the Russians have leverage over him and are able to influence his actions.
CHUCK TODD:
Is your job -- was your job then to figure out if the Russians were using that leverage, or simply to identify the leverage they could have?
PETER STRZOK:
Well, both. I mean, so there are a couple of things I'd point out. When we opened the cases called, commonly known as Crossfire Hurricane in the summer and the fall of 2016, those were not looking at the president. They were not looking at his campaign. They were looking at a very discrete set of individuals based on an allegation we had received that Russia had offered to coordinate the release of information to help the Trump campaign. When we later then, after Director Comey was fired, opened a case onto the president himself, that was a very broad investigation. On the one hand, it incorporated a question of whether or not the president had committed obstruction. But it also had a counterintelligence element to that. And that's very broad in nature. It's looking first and foremost, what the Russians are trying to achieve and the way they're doing it. But that is very broad. And it certainly would include looking at the president's financial entanglements.
CHUCK TODD:
You know one of the -- there've been multiple explanations about the president's behavior with Russia. One is, from him, is he wants to get along with them better. A second simply is, “Hey, people are conflating -- just because he has some views of the world that are similar to Putin, people conflate that.” And then the other argument they'll make is, "Hey, this administration has been tougher on Russia." They'll cite things like sending lethal defensive aid to Ukraine, taking action in Syria and so on. Did any of that give you pause during this opening of this investigation?
PETER STRZOK:
Sure. Of course, it did. Look, the president is in charge of United States foreign policy. He sets the foreign policy agenda of the United States. He had campaigned on wanting to bring the U.S. and Russia closer together. That's not the issue. The issue is all the things that he left unsaid or outright lied about that the Russians knew. When he does those things, when he says things like that he has no financial relationship or dealings with Russia at the same moment his attorney is dealing, trying to make a deal for a Trump Tower Moscow, that lie is known to Vladimir Putin. Trump obviously knows he didn't tell the truth. So things like that. It's not the overt actions towards warming a relationship with Russia. It's the lies, that time and time again, that he tells that Russia also knows that they can use over leverage with him. So we certainly considered deeply, with just argument after argument and soul searching about whether or not we were doing the right thing. But conclusively, the concerns we had about Russia were merited and it was the appropriate thing to do to look into them.
CHUCK TODD:
I'm curious, if you were still in your job today and you look at -- I'm going to issue two sets of facts. Four years ago, the president's personal lawyer was working with the Russians, it turned out in secret, on Trump Tower Moscow. Four years later, the president's personal lawyer -- it's a different individual this time -- Rudy Giuliani, he's been working with folks in, in Ukraine, trying to drum up information that might harm Joe Biden, and it turns out he ends up working with a known Russian operative that ends up being sanctioned by the U.S. government. What do those two facts tell you about the president?
PETER STRZOK:
It tells me that he is surrounded by people who have a pervasive pattern of contact with the Russians. And not only contact, but contact that they're hiding. Broaden it from that, Chuck. Look at 2016. His campaign manager, who pled guilty and was dealing with people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services. One of his foreign policy advisors, who lied to us about his connection to the Russians and pled guilty. His former national security advisor, who didn't tell the truth to me and who pled guilty twice to not telling the truth about his contact with the Russians. If -- and now obviously with Rudy Giuliani, dealing with somebody that the Department of Treasury recently said this last week had been an agent of the government of Russia in their intelligence services for over ten years. And look at that pervasive pattern of contact. It is not without exaggeration that there is no president in modern history who has the same broad and deep connections to any foreign intel service, let alone a hostile government like Russia.
CHUCK TODD:
When you read the Mueller Report, did you conclude no collusion?
PETER STRZOK:
Absolutely not. Look, I concluded the opposite.
CHUCK TODD:
And what --
PETER STRZOK:
So my sense was, when you look at it, I mean, Mueller was focusing on violations of the law. And the standard to be able to establish in a courtroom that something occurred is very, very different from the standard that a counterintelligence expert or intelligence person would look at and judge whether or not that caused them concern. When I read the Mueller Report, and certainly when I looked at the recent bipartisan Senate Intel Committee report, almost 1,000 pages laying out all of these areas of intelligence connections between the Trump and his administration and his campaign and Russia, that's extraordinarily concerning from a counterintelligence perspective because a relationship of counterintelligence concern is a completely different matter from proving something in a court of law.
CHUCK TODD:
Given what happened to you in this episode, do you look at what happened and say to yourself, "I put myself in a compromising position. I shouldn't have done that. And that's on me"? Or do you believe you were unfairly singled out?
PETER STRZOK:
Well, Chuck, I understand that, you know, people would ask that question. I certainly regret sending the text messages that were absolutely weaponized and used to bludgeon the work of the FBI, the work of the special counsel. I'll always regret that. But at the same time, the way that those were weaponized was unprecedented. And it is certainly part of a pattern of activity where this administration has gone to lengths that no other administration has ever done. That anybody who dares speak the truth or speak out -- whether it is in the impeachment hearings with regard to Ukraine, the whistleblower or anybody in any number of federal government agencies -- if somebody dares speak the truth about this administration, this administration has shown no boundaries in going after people in ways that, frankly, is shocking, are shocking and are inappropriate.
CHUCK TODD:
And are you still confident the FBI's immune from this? That you're not, you’re not used as this, that basically, "Okay, we sent the message. Back off"?
PETER STRZOK:
I think the women and men that I know in the FBI, they are brave and they're fearless and they're dedicated to doing the job and getting to the bottom of whatever lies in front of them. I can't help though that think under an attorney general who is sitting there day after day saying that there was no basis to launch these investigations in 2016, which is clearly demonstrably ludicrous, there's no way that doesn't have a chilling effect on not only the FBI, but all the branches and departments of the executive branch of the government. I think the FBI, the people that I know and knew, are holding. I am deeply concerned though what another four years of President Trump will do to destroy the traditional independence and objectivity of our government.
CHUCK TODD:
Peter Strzok, I have to admit, I have a ton more questions. Thankfully, I have a podcast. I plan on inviting you on to get lengthier. The book is “Compromised.” And by the way, it was very -- it was an easy read as well.
PETER STRZOK:
Good.
CHUCK TODD:
And kudos to your writing abilities. So congratulations on the book. And thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective.
PETER STRZOK:
Chuck, thanks so much for having me.
CHUCK TODD:
You got it. When we come back, the fallout from President Trump's admission that he kept the country in the dark about the coronavirus. The panel is next.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. The panel is joining us. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic Magazine, which is out with its own new book this week, “The American Crisis”; NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent, Kasie Hunt; and Republican strategist, Al Cardenas. And Jeffrey Goldberg, I don't want to demoralize you about The Atlantic's book that's being launched, but I want to put up the Trump book club of this last sort of ten days, that we've seen a deluge of what I would call new information about the president or perhaps information that people feel the need that needed to get out before the election. And I actually, Jeffrey, think that your reporting from last week about what the president has said about those that served in the military fits into this. The Woodward book and the Woodward tapes fits into this. Is that what we're watching going on right now?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:
Yeah, I mean, I think you're seeing more and more information come out about Trump and his views. What's so interesting about this moment is -- well, there's two things. One is that much of the material that's coming out is being provided by Donald Trump himself. That's pretty unusual 60 days or so out from an election, his various confessions to Bob Woodward. And the second, the second thing that's so notable about this moment is that there's an awful lot of shadow boxing going on by Donald Trump. He keeps raising old issues, old meaning a week old, a year old, four years old. With so few days between now and the election, you'd think he would stop arguing with past slights or past stories that he doesn't like. But you know, last night, he was arguing with Hillary Clinton again at a rally. And so it's fascinating to watch how he can't let go of particular issues and then he keeps those issues alive in the news cycle.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, yeah, Jeffrey, you were telling me he has tweeted about The Atlantic story that you wrote over 60 times since it went public.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:
Yeah. Yeah.
CHUCK TODD:
What happens every time he does, to The Atlantic's website?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:
Well, you know, this is an interesting thing, we get more readers to the story every time he talks about it. And so it’s -- if I were advising him, and I'm not, but if I were advising him, I would say, "Stop drawing more attention to these claims." Especially when you're in, when you’re in a very tough race and the American people, at a particularly dire moment — pandemic, fires, and so on — want solutions, want some ideas about where we're going.
CHUCK TODD:
Al Cardenas, you know, you've been in campaigns for years. And I've heard from every campaign operative, the only thing you can't buy is time. And this looks like another lost ten days for Donald J. Trump.
AL CARDENAS:
It is. And every day counts in these races. Although I'll tell you, sadly or tragically, I think lying has become a character defect from the president that's been accepted by many of his supporters. I don't know if 20,000 lies or the many more lies being exposed in these books, as serious as they are, are making a major meaningful impact on the outcome of the race. I think people on his side and the other side have bought into the fact that this huge character defect on the president of the United States and for some reason people are accepting it as a norm. That's a challenge being faced in the election.
CHUCK TODD:
Kasie Hunt, this is your beat, Capitol Hill. You deal with this, what Al just described. There’s a whole bunch of elected Republicans -- we said some conservatives have been trying to back up the president on the “no panic,” but we noted not many of them were elected. The elected Republicans are as quiet as they can, they've been, and they're pretty quiet in the Trump era.
KASIE HUNT:
They are, Chuck. And just when you think that you've gotten to the bottom, the worst possible thing you could throw to a member of Congress, a Republican who has to defend the president under something like this, something else happens. And you know, I actually asked Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, about this this week and he didn't want to answer the question. He said, "That's a question for the White House. I don't have anything to add." I mean, he had said at the time that he hadn't seen the Woodward book. Of course, we had read to him out loud the key portion of it that we are now talking about here today. I do think that there is a sense that this particular episode in Woodward's book, and also Jeffrey's reporting, I mean, it was really an aggressive one-two punch. But the sense is that this might actually make a difference. And I know we've said that over and over again and then it never seems to make a difference, starting, you know, with what happened with John McCain back in 2015, but there are more people saying to me privately, "This is really, really difficult to grapple with." And one of the pieces of evidence they point to is the fact that the president is out there trying to explain himself. A lot of times with these controversies, he either just keeps going, keeps making the same claims or he stops mentioning it eventually. This, he clearly is feeling pressure to try and say, "No, I was trying to do the right thing." And I think that's really telling.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, it's interesting, I want to put up -- we've had a ton of battleground state polls. Al, I want to put up -- we noted all the different battleground states. Just the Trump number that I put up here, because there's a pattern, and Al, I think you'll get it, you know, 41, 42, 42, 42, 43, 44. Only in three states, Al Cardenas, is Donald Trump at or above his national number from 2016. It's in Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. By the way, he trails in all of these states, but his number being under 45 in a majority of them, how much of a red flag is that?
AL CARDENAS:
Well, that's a huge red flag. And frankly, with respect to Florida, if the Republicans don't win Florida, the president doesn't win Florida, he doesn't win. There isn't a single model out there that shows the president getting to 270 electoral votes without winning the state of Florida. And the fact that he's under in Florida is quite shocking because historically, if you look at Florida, every incumbent, except one, who won Florida the first election wins it the second time. And you know, the voter registration numbers have narrowed to the Republicans' favor in Florida and so forth. So, if you take Florida and you take the other two states where he's still under, but the other ones where he's at 42 percent, and if the number of undecided voters is so low, that's a real red flag.
CHUCK TODD:
Hey, Jeffrey Goldberg, I wanted you to -- your book -- one of the things you say in the introduction to this book on sort of the best of The Atlantic, I think, over the last four years, is how maybe you, and frankly I think you speak for all the media, we all underestimated how to cover this president and how to cover his mischaracterizations and lies. Tell us a little bit more.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:
Yeah, well, I mean, I think we’re not, we weren't at least trained for such a novel kind of approach to truth and to populism and even to these authoritarian impulses that you see. You know, we've spoken about this in the past. You know, you have somebody who doesn't -- I mean, as Al just mentioned, there's 20,000 or more lies documented by the Washington Post. And usually, until this presidency, when a president is called out for lying, they usually trim their sails a little bit or they apologize or they explain. And what you have here is a new phenomenon for all of us. And we're not sure what to do. It's taken us a long time to call a lie a lie.
CHUCK TODD:
As I've said, the only way to understand this is to realize he doesn't have shame about it. And when we lose our ability to shame a politician, we lose a lot of our power, that's for sure. I'm going to pause the conversation there, everybody. When we come back, what the latest polling is telling us about where the race really stands in two key battleground states.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. Data Download time. As 2016 reminded us, national polls do not tell us as much about who can win the electoral college as battleground state polls do. So let's break down the latest NBC News/Marist numbers in Pennsylvania and Florida. First, Pennsylvania. Mr. Trump won the state narrowly in 2016 by less than a percentage point. In our most recent poll, Biden is up by nine percentage points. So where is that edge coming from? Biden is actually doing worse with non-white voters than Clinton did in the 2016 exit polls, but Biden has made big gains with white college graduates. Clinton and Mr. Trump were tied with those voters four years ago. Now, it's Biden by 25. Many of those white college grads live in the Philadelphia suburbs. Hillary Clinton won those four counties by 14 points in 2016. Now, Biden has doubled that edge. He's up in those counties by 28 points in our poll. Then there's the most conservative central Pennsylvania region of the state. President Trump carried that area by a whopping 28 points in 2016. Well, today, against Biden, Mr. Trump's lead in central Pennsylvania is down to just two in our poll. Now, let's look at the state of Florida. The latest NBC News/Marist poll shows the state is looking, as it usually does, a super-tight battleground where the race is currently tied. Our polls suggest Biden is struggling with Florida's Hispanic voters compared to Hillary Clinton four years ago. But Biden has made up for those losses by doing much better with white voters, particularly white college grads. And the regional breakdown is even more stark than in Pennsylvania. First, the Miami Gold Coast region. Hillary Clinton won those counties, with their large Hispanic population, by 27 points in 2016. But Biden's lead there is now down to 15, which has allowed Mr. Trump to move slightly ahead among Hispanics statewide in our poll. Then there's the area near Tampa, where there are lots of college graduates. Well, Mr. Trump won them by three points in 2016. Today, Biden has flipped that area and is holding an eight-point edge. Remember, the election is less about the national results than it is about the individual voter pools in the states. And even small moves in national polls can reflect pretty profound differences at the state level. When we come back, the voters Joe Biden needs to win, but hasn't yet won over.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. Al Cardenas, Florida, Florida, Florida. That's where I'm going to focus us right now. Michael Bloomberg, the big headline this morning is this one out of The Washington Post. Michael Bloomberg is pledging $100 million just to Democratic PACs and campaigns that are assisting Joe Biden there. We had the numbers from our poll that showed Donald Trump performing very well with Hispanics and Biden only holding his own because he's over performing in the north and with white voters. Al, what is the South Florida Latino problem for Joe Biden and can it be fixed?
AL CARDENAS:
Yeah, I think they're committing political malpractice in South Florida. If you just listen to Peter Strzok, and Dan Coats, and others, and military leaders, retired military leaders, to say that Democrats are suspicious and soft on socialism compared to Donald Trump's outright relationships with Putin, North Korea, et cetera. I mean, the Cuban-American community should be on fire with respect to Donald Trump's record with communist leaders. But none of that is being played out as it should. You know, the Woodward book, that's going to resonate big in our military voters in Florida, 22 bases, hundreds of thousands of retirees. That's Biden's advantage, but he's got to fix the problem with the Cuban-American community. And if it's a low turnout in Florida, Republicans have the edge. If it's a high turnout, Democrats historically have the edge. So it’s -- right now, it's turnout and it's also all about fixing the problems with the Hispanic voters in South Florida. And lastly, you know, in six days the ballots go out to the overseas voters from Florida. On the 24th, the absentee ballots go out to all the Floridians. And pretty soon after that, they start early voting. So, if Bloomberg's going to spend that money, he better do it soon.
CHUCK TODD:
Yes, he’s got to do it pretty quick. Hey, Kasie Hunt, so you've got Michael Bloomberg weighing in with money. We also have this from Bernie Sanders. Here's the headline, "Bernie Sanders expresses concerns about Biden campaign." Let me read a Faiz Shakir quote, who is, of course, the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, saying this, "He has been in direct contact with the Biden team and has urged them to put more emphasis on how they will raise wages, create millions of good-paying jobs, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and expand health care coverage." It seems like, translation, ‘Hey, Joe Biden, speak more on economic issues.’
KASIE HUNT:
It does sound that way, Chuck. And that, of course, was at the root of Bernie Sanders' campaigns for president and his focus on really being, and we've talked about this in the past, not management, being kind of on the side of the union worker. It's interesting to me that they're choosing now to put this criticism out there. I mean, they had developed a pretty good rapport in terms of figuring out how to come together as Biden became the clear nominee. So I do have a question about what’s, what more might be going on there, but the reality is that Bernie Sanders is kind of the last person you want in the context of this Florida conversation. I mean, that is kind of why some of that--
CHUCK TODD:
Yeah.
KASIE HUNT:
--message, the Trump campaign message, has gotten a lot of traction.
CHUCK TODD:
There's no doubt. You know, Jeffrey Goldberg, we are in this stage of the campaign where you do have a lot of Democrats starting to second guess some of these Biden decisions. Are they campaigning enough? They're not talking about the economy enough. Look, the polls have held steady, but I mean, I understand the fear, but is it well-placed fear or not?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:
It's probably not entirely well-placed fear in the sense that the polls have been remarkably, unusually steady, and that Trump keeps self-owning in a kind of way. It's not surprising that Bernie Sanders is arguing for what Bernie Sanders is arguing for. The same with other, other people. I think the Biden campaign's advantage right now, or one of their advantages, is that, relatively speaking, they are focused on winning rather than litigating old arguments. And the Trump campaign -- and one of the things they're obviously trying to focus on doing is throwing Trump off his game constantly, and Trump is easily thrown off his game. So, you know, the anxiety is totally natural. The stakes are extremely high.
CHUCK TODD:
Right.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:
But on the other hand, this campaign is not going badly for him so far. But of course, we don't--
CHUCK TODD:
Right.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:
-- know what the next 50 to 60 days hold.
CHUCK TODD:
No, we don't. But as Stuart Stevens says about Donald Trump, "He is the dog that chases every car." Great panel. That's all I have for today. Thank you for watching. We are going to leave you though with some images of how we marked September 11th in this country 19 years later. And we will be back next week because, if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.