IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Biden beats Trump TRANSCRIPT: 7/2/20, All In w/ Chris Hayes

Guests: Peter Hotez, Adam Ozimek, Megan Twohey, Rick Wilson, Cornell Belcher

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: That does it for us tonight. "ALL IN" with Chris Hayes is up next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, on ALL IN. Our national tragedy becomes international humiliation as the U.S. breaks new world records on the Coronavirus while Trump tries to spin 11 percent unemployment as a good thing. Then Jeffrey Epstein`s accomplice arrested and charged, the same office whose top prosecutor was just fired by the President.

Plus, the big soft target Trump has made himself this political ad season, but how much can T.V. commercials move the needle? When ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. The crisis that we now find ourselves in is a human tragedy, its economic calamity, but there`s also a singular national humiliation. We`re living through a moment where the U.S. is a laughingstock or the subject of pity around the world.

Look at this chart of daily new confirmed Coronavirus cases. The European Union along with countries like Indonesia, Japan, Australia, they have all gotten their cases down, some are at or near zero. And then there is that dark line going right up. That is us. Our cases are skyrocketing. Our government`s response is a failure. We are living in this tragedy, this national humiliation for all to see.

We keep setting records for new cases in a day five times in the last eight days, we`ve set a new record for cases. And yesterday another record. The U.S. reporting 50,000 new cases in a single day. Only one other country in the world of any size has ever reported more than 50,000 cases in a day, and that is Brazil. The U.S. and Brazil, that`s it.

Now, the first time around back in March, when the virus first hit, it was bad. And both the Trump administration primarily and some local leaders reacted poorly. But it was also the case that so many other countries were getting hit hard too. I mean, Italy was one of the worst-hit countries with the virus just overwhelming hospitals.

It looked like the situation was completely out of control there. They imposed a national lockdown for over two months. But Italy`s come out on the other side, at least for now, with less than 200 new cases a day. They did what they had to do, and now life is getting back to some semblance of normal. The kind of life before the pandemic.

And it`s not just Italy. We are seeing scenes of societies emerging from the pandemic all over the world. In Denmark, high school students just celebrated the end of school. And not virtual school, they have physically been in classes in person. They have the amusement parks open there as well, which this girl appears to be quite happy about.

In Ireland, they have bars back open, along with some movie theaters, museums, and all sorts of other things. In New Zealand where they have almost zero cases, they`re back to playing rugby. In Japan, the malls of Tokyo open, the streets are as crowded as the streets of New York City once were. The only difference being that everyone is wearing masks.

In the Czech Republic, they just had a huge party in Prague to celebrate the easing of Coronavirus restrictions. A massive public dinner on the Charles Bridge with no social distancing required.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Things are going more easy now I think about COVID-19. So, just do enjoy life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just enjoy life. We`ve gotten rid of COVID. It sure looks nice. For some perspective here, consider this. Florida just announced more than 10,000 cases in a single day. By contrast, as writer Matt O`Brien pointed out, with a combined population of 2.6 billion people China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia and the entire European Union are averaging 6,760 new cases a day. Less than Florida, all those countries, the population of 2.6 billion people collectively. They have fewer cases than just Florida, and that is just one state.

In Alabama, the number of patients being treated for Coronavirus surged past 800 for the first time ever today, marking the fourth straight day that they have set record highs for hospitalizations. In Texas, they hit another record-breaking day for cases and hospitalizations. The governor just finally issued a statewide mask ordinance requiring most people to wear masks in public after long resisting that kind of policy.

In California, the number of people hospitalized for the coronavirus has jumped 56 percent in the last two weeks. We are on an island here in the United States. No other country is struggling with the virus like we are in the way we are at this point in the arc of it. It is a global failure as the Biden campaign points out in this new ad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You`re going to be so proud of your country. We`re going to win so much; you may even get tired of winning. And you say please, please, it`s too much winning. We can`t take it anymore. Mr. President, it`s too much. And I will say, no it isn`t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more. We`re going to win more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: The President has this metaphor he likes to use. It`s something that someone must have said to him at some point at some meeting he was half listening to and it got buried in his brain. It`s to talk about the virus like a -- like a dying fire. "We may have some embers or some ashes, or we may have some flames coming, but we`ll put them out. We`ll stomp them out."

It`s the wrong metaphor. Actually, it`s a pretty good one. The idea is that you can suppress the virus enough, then you can just take care of the embers. And that`s actually accurate. That is exactly what all those other countries have done.

They`ve suppressed it enough, so they essentially have firefighters running around the country extinguishing each ember as it appears and stopping the country from catching fire, stopping the virus from spreading. But that is not us. No. We are way past the state. The country is on fire, it is in flames. We cannot stump it out. And the rest of the world is looking on in horror.

Joining me now Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist who has been following the surge in cases across the country and the pandemic from the beginning across the world. Is it fair as someone who has been reporting on this from its first appearance in Wuhan and Hubei province in China to say that we are -- this has been a disaster, a global disaster in the context of other countries?

LAURIE GARRETT, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: This is a national humiliation in terms of the rest of the world. Look, the -- Chris, the one that blows my mind is Canada. A new survey of public opinion in Canada finds that only the highest percentage of Canadians willing to allow Americans to come to Canada right now is 24 percent of Quebec was. But out in British Columbia, only six percent of the citizens would allow Americans to come across the border as long as this COVID situation is out of control. Canada wants that border kept tight shut. No Americans allowed.

If you look around the world, the sense of disappointment is so painful to see. I was reading some newspapers in South Africa where they were writing, you know, once you were our beacon, you were what we wanted to emulate. We wanted to be America. And now all we can see is total American failure. We cannot believe it.

You see essays like this in every single language around the world, in newspapers and magazines and in broadcasting. It`s just a sense of all my gosh, how did America fail this deeply? How could this be? The leader of science, the leader of democracy, the leader of the free world, and the number one economy, and it`s the number one complete failure when it comes to this pandemic. It`s astonishing.

And then we add salt to the wound. When we say to the rest of the world Oh, by the way, we`re not going to play nice in the sandbox either, because we`re going to turn around and buy the entire supply of Gilead Remdesivir, the only drug out there that`s been recently shown to be effective in reducing the length of time of illness other than Dexamethasone, and we`re going to buy it all up so the rest of the world can`t get any.

And to the rest of the world, this is viewed as, once again, America saying, it`s us versus all of you. We do what we want. We`re going to take vaccine first. We`re going to take the drugs first. To heck with the rest of you.

HAYES: In identifying the difference, I mean, it seems to me the sort of most clear cut problem when you look at us and other countries that had that outbreak, right, so there`s a whole category of countries that sort of avoided terrible outbreaks to begin with, which is great. That`s what you want to do, right? But then there`s a country that had really bad outbreaks. And that`s Italy, and that`s Spain, and that`s France.

It seems to me the key difference is those countries basically kept things locked down long enough to get down to a possible suppression level, to then do the kind of putting out the embers strategy that we never did. Like we never got it -- we never really actually got it under control in a way that would allow that. And so, when we open back up, it was inevitable we would have this.

GARRETT: Well, we didn`t get it under control in the way that you`re describing nationally. But New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, key states in the northeast did, and made the proper sacrifices and got their epidemics under control.

I think really, Chris, there`s two key things. One, it`s obviously your national leadership question, but It`s also that every single European country you named has a national health system and they -- that means that they have always centralized data, centralized purchasing, centralized policy, so that it would be easy in Paris for Macron to turn to his health minister and say, what do you think we should do? And the Health Minister put some scientists together and says, here`s what we should do. And boom, it happens for the whole country.

Here we have a completely fragmented response. I mean, just today, Representative Andy Biggs in Arizona called upon the White House to shut down the Coronavirus Task Force and get rid of Tony Fauci and Deborah Birx. And you had meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo saying, we`ve done a great job, but we`re not going to allow the following states, big long list, to send any of their people our way because they have too much COVID.

We`re acting more like 50 if we should include great and Puerto Rico and so on so, 50-plus individual nations, than we are like a single national response.

HAYES: One -- the only -- to me, the only sort of moonshot here, as far as I can tell is like a very fast 100 percent mass adoption. The data that`s accrued over the last several months has really suggested that in terms of like, effectiveness versus cost and hassle is it`s the sort of easiest thing we have.

You have Abbott today issuing a mass quarter for any county in the state that has over 20 cases, which is basically the entire state. You`ve got this tweet from the South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, "Let me make it very clear. Wear a mask and social distance now so we can enjoy high school and college football in South Carolina this fall" which is sort of perverse at one level, because there`s other things that are even more important than that, but also may be good for the target audience.

I guess my question to you is like, can we -- can we do it short of massive interventions? If everyone masks up and everyone gets on the same page, can we arrest the growth we`re seeing now?

GARRETT: We`ll look at it this way. The choice mask or not to mask is being described as if it were an economic choice. As if somehow by wearing a mask, you were opposing the opening of the economy, and you were somehow, you know, in favor of lockdown. And that if you didn`t wear a mask, you were somehow gung ho for the economy.

But Goldman Sachs just released a report that says actually, we could save five percent of our GDP loss. I mean, enormous trillions of dollars to the U.S. economy, and that means a lot of jobs if every single person, when they left their home, was wearing a mask at all times. It`s a very simple intervention. It`s cheap. Anybody can do it. It requires no skills whatsoever. Just put the mask on so that it covers your nose and your mouth and you`re set to go.

HAYES: Let`s do it, America. All right, Laurie Garrett, as always, it`s great to talk to you on this topic and thank you for making a little time for us.

GARRETT: Have a great Fourth of July holiday. And to all our viewers, I hope you will be safe, happy with your family, no COVID. Happy Independence Day.

HAYES: Stay safe. For more on what things look like in heart of Texas, I`m joined now by our friend Dr. Peter Hotez. He`s dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. We`ve been talking to you, Doctor, from the very first moments of this pandemic, from the very first confirmed cases. You`ve been talking to us from Texas. It is now in your backyard right now. How are things in Texas right now?

PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yes, it`s been in our backyard for a while, Chris. We`re seeing this dramatic and steep acceleration. It`s very worrisome especially in the metro areas, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Dallas, the numbers have a vertical rise.

And it`s also accompanied by a serious increase in hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions. So we are in a dire public health situation. And now we have some new modeling estimates coming out of the University of Pennsylvania that shows as bad as this is, the numbers could double in Houston and other Texas cities within two weeks, in the middle of July, and then possibly double again by the end of July.

So this is, as I say, a dire situation. Unfortunately, it`s not just happening in Texas. This is happening in Arizona and Florida. It started in Georgia. This is this massive resurgence across the south. And Dr. Fauci now has projected we could reach 100,000 cases per day, double what we`re at now.

If you extrapolate times the population of Texas, Arizona, and Florida we`re already about there. So we`ve already reached his apocalyptic predictions. So clearly, this is not working. We need a new strategy. And ultimately, we now realize there has no -- there has not been any national roadmap or strategy, and now I`ve been calling for it urgently to make it happen.

HAYES: We were just showing some footage inside Houston Methodist Hospital. We`ve been getting reports inside hospitals in Harris County around Houston and in Bear County as well that now it`s almost a familiar genre of B-roll. It is doctors in ICU units in PPE overwhelmed. We`ve seen this footage in in Lombardy, we`ve seen it in Spain, we`ve seen it in New York, we are seeing it in Texas now.

The big question always in these is does the healthcare system have capacity? Is there reason to think that because of surge capacity, because the rise here might be maybe slower than New York because of the testing capacity, that this can be accommodated in Texas?

HOTEZ: Well, you know, here in our Texas Medical Center in Houston, which is the world`s largest with 60 institutions, 100,000 employees, we still have a little bit of room. We still have some I`m room and we`re doing better at ICU care because of all the new interventions, the anti-clotting therapy, the plasma convalescent treatments, the dexamethasone, the remdesivir, so we are getting patients out of the ICU.

But eventually, if those numbers continue to climb as they are by July, we will be in trouble. So the issue is this. We`ve got to stop community transmission. And the question is whether the measures that have been taken on so far are going to be adequate, or do we have to go to the next level?

And we`re going to have to be asking this question all over the United States, because we`re in the same situation Arizona and Florida, and it`s not going to stay in the south. The numbers will start to rise precipitously, again, until there is a coherent national strategy for conducting these interventions with daily messaging, and hopefully, with a greater involvement from this the CDC that can take the lead rather than the White House task force that has mainly their strategy has been let the states lead and we`ll provide FEMA support, PPE, and other -- and supply chain management and other manufacturing and other measures. That strategy is clearly a failure.

And Laurie Garrett kind of pointed that out as well. Without a unified strategy, just this fragmented system, it`s failed us miserably. This is the largest public health collapse in the history of the nation.

HAYES: Final question. When you talk about other interventions, asking that question, what do you mean by that? You mean, places like metropolitan areas going back to shelter in place, closing most businesses, something like that?

HOTEZ: That`s right. That`s right. We may have -- we may have to go there at least to get this back under control, because when you`ve got that massive surge, that vertical slope, maybe the -- clearly the intervention today that the governor has demanded of full mask-wearing by the entire population, that will help. Whether it`s going to be enough or whether we`re going to have to go that next measure, I can`t really say.

And again, this is why you need a national strategy because you have the models that you could look at for every metro area. Work with the epidemiologists at the CDC and say, is this enough or do we have to go further?

HAYES: Dr. Peter Hotez, as always, thank you, sir, for your time tonight.

HOTEZ: Thanks so much, Chris. All the best.

HAYES: Ahead, the President used the new jobs numbers today as proof the economy is roaring back, but that just is not the case. There`s a lot more to the story. It`s not good. We`ll explore that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: The President came out today to do a victory lap on the latest jobs report, which at first glance looks pretty good, 4.8 million new jobs and a lower unemployment rate. But I got to say to my ears as I watched him, it sounded a lot like it`s 15 cases, and pretty soon it`s going to go down to zero, but for the economy. Because yes, some jobs are snapping back, but that is the easy part.

Basically, the job gains we saw today are mainly people who were furloughed and went back to work. But when it comes to permanent job losses, that number went up by almost 600,000. And we`re still down 15 million jobs from where we were in February. And crucially, this might be the worst part, today`s data was collected before the Coronavirus surge in mid-June. There`s a lot of reason to be very, very worried about where the economy is headed right now.

Here for more on that, Adam Ozimek. He`s the chief economist of Upwork, a platform that connects businesses with freelancers, and a very vocal member of econ Twitter with lots of thoughts on macro conditions. And Adam, here`s my big thing about this. I am but a humble cable news host with a BA and a few econ classes, and I feel like I`m losing my mind because I look at everything and say, this does not look good. Like, the economy doesn`t look good. And then I look at Wall Street and I look at some, you know, investment bank analysts who seem to think things are pretty good. Am I wrong, am I crazy, or is there a lot to worry about?

ADAM OZIMEK, CHIEF ECONOMIST, UPWORK: I think it`s a particularly misleading labor market right now. Like you said at the open, 4.8 million jobs, that`s a lot of jobs. So, I think that kind of is confusing people because at the end of the day, there`s still 15 million people who`ve lost their jobs. The unemployment rate is bigger than it ever was during the Great Recession. And you know, it`s just way, way too soon to unfurl the mission accomplish banner. We`ve got a long way to go.

HAYES: There`s a little low hanging fruit issue, it seems to me, on the jobs, which is like the jobs to come back first are the easiest ones, and then as you start climbing back up, you`ve got harder and harder ones, right? So, someone who`s like running a nightclub or works on Broadway, they`re not back yet. And I don`t know when they`re going to be back. And there`s a lot of people in industries that might be affected for a very long time.

OZIMEK: Yes. If you have small businesses, the census poll survey looked at how many think they`re going to be back to normal within six months, and food services and accommodation, it`s 75 percent think it`s going to be six months or longer until they`re back from normal. So, a lot of businesses, a lot of industries, they have a very, very long, slow recovery ahead of them.

HAYES: There`s a very perverse political dynamic, which is that there are voices within the Republican Party -- it`s very strange. Basically, Mitch McConnell, a lot of people in the Republican Senate and some advisors of the President want no further rescue money put into the economy, because I think their theory of the case is that you need to smoke people out of their Coronavirus holes and starve them out of there so that they have to go back to work. Because if you make it too possible for them not to work, no one will come back to work, the economy won`t get back together, and the President won`t get reelected, and Republicans will get crushed.

This seems insane to me, but if there is some thinking like that. What do you think? Well, I mean, seems we need rescue money here.

OZIMEK: Yes. I think with unemployment rate still at 12 percent and this many people start to work and we`re this far from recovered, we definitely need more fiscal spending, especially in you know, targeted areas. I think small businesses that are struggling the most are going to continue to fail. I think the unemployment benefits expiring is going to be bad news for households. And I think state and local government needs more money too.

And I understand that`s a lot of money, I understand that we spent a lot of money already, but you know, we`re dealing with a historic economic crisis here. And I don`t think sitting back is going to accomplish what we want. And I don`t think trying to force people back into the labor market by making unemployment benefits cheaper is going to do the job either.

HAYES: Yes, that -- I mean, there`s this $600 sort of bonus, which has been a hugely important. I mean, if you look at -- some of the cash flow data is fascinating. Like, I just saw a paper that said that people`s liquid bank balances may year over year up 36 percent. Like more this year because of the success of the unemployment bonus and the $1,200 check that it had actually gotten into people`s bank accounts.

But you take that away in July, and that seems to me like that`s bad, right, that`s bad for the macroeconomy, if that just goes away?

OZIMEK: Yes. With this many people out of work, we still need support. We still need support in the macroeconomy. And look, I get what they`re saying being concerned about labor supply effects. You know, a lot of people are making more on unemployment than they are at their job. But those effects are just swamped right now by the demand effects of this.

And besides, it`s totally irrelevant because you can design a program that incentivizes people to come back from work. Simply let them take some of their $600 with them when they get rehired. And it`s done, you`ve solved the problem.

HAYES: Right. Right. That`s right. You can just -- exactly. You can say, you get to keep it if you go back to work. The bigger problem to me here and I think sometimes economists and the sort of people on Wall Street and the analysts on this are missing this a little bit which is that like, you got to suppress the virus. You can -- you can have all the economic incentives you want in the world, you can try to reopen the Arizona economy, you can try to get nightclub and bar life hopping in Austin again, if you got an outbreak, that`s not going to work.

OZIMEK Yes. I think that there was sort of this idea early on that really the lockdowns were doing all the economic work, and that you could just end the lockdowns and people would go back to normal. But the evidence that we`ve seen so far, you know, some well-done studies and you kind of common sense just suggest that you end lockdowns and people don`t go back to normal. It`s really the virus that`s changing behavior. And quite frankly, if people did go back to normal, that`s going to be even more problematic.

HAYES: That`s right. Adam Ozimek who I follow and read all the time on all these issues, thank you so much for making the time.

OZIMEK: Thanks for having me.

HAYES: Next, a surprise twist in the case of Jeffrey Epstein. His companion and alleged accomplice is under arrest and facing federal charges. Those details after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Today we got a surprise twist in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and rich money manager who rubbed elbows with presidents and celebrities.

Back in July of last year, Epstein of course was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting dozens of under-aged girls, and a month later he was found dead in his prison cell in an apparent suicide.

Now almost a year later, Jeffrey Epstein`s long-time companion and alleged accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been arrested and charged with a variety of crimes, including conspiracy to entice minors to travel and engage in illegal sex acts and perjury.

There are numerous women who have spoken on the record throughout the years, decades about Maxwell recruiting and grooming them and participating in their abuse. Her indictment describes her meeting one victim when she was only 14, taking her to the movies, shopping trips, and roping her into sexualized messaging with Jeffrey Epstein.

It has been a mystery how Ghislaine Maxwell escaped a prosecution as long as she did, but tonight she is in federal custody.

And for more on what she is accused on doing, I am joined by Megan Twohey, investigative reporter for The New York Times. After Jeffrey Epstein`s arrest last summer, she co-authored a profile of Maxwell titled "The Lady of the House Who Was Long Entangled with Jeffrey Epstein."

Megan, what does the charging documents lay out about the case against Maxwell?

MEGAN TWOHEY, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, this is huge. This spells out criminal charges against Maxwell that mirror some of the allegations we had already seen in civil records, basically that in the 1990s when she was at first Epstein`s girlfriend and then just a very close companion of his, lived in his homes, shared the bank accounts, helped run his affairs, that she also participated in helping to lure underage girls into his orbit where they were sexually abused, sexual abuse that she allegedly participated in.

And, so, there are in this criminal case against her, there are three minor girls who were allegedly victimized by her in the course of the 1990s.

HAYES: What`s so crazy about this is that if you followed this case at all for years and, in fact, decades, there are numerous women who when they -- I don`t think there is a single accuser of Jeffrey Epstein who doesn`t mention Maxwell. I mean, it is the case that people on the record, in civil suits and other cases, had said from the beginning consistently story after story after story that Maxwell was working, essentially, as his trafficker, that she would scout girls outside private schools who were 14 in New York City.

I mean, the why now, how did she get away with this for so long hangs over all this.

TWOHEY: Yeah. You`re absolutely right.

And when Epstein was arrested last year, attention pretty quickly shifted to Maxwell as she looked -- she appeared to be the potential biggest co- conspirator in his predation, in his pattern of predation, preying on these young under-aged girls. And there had been these allegations in civil lawsuits, and she had been able to by and large dodge any accountability.

And last year, when he was arrested, I was among the reporters who set off trying to find her. She was not -- she -- you know, her lawyers wouldn`t answer phone calls, she couldn`t be found. She had basically disappeared from New York for several years.

And so over the past year we have all wondered where has she been and is anything going to happen to her? And it was interesting, we now realized in indictment, and the prosecutor is speaking about this today, that she hadn`t, in fact, gone to elaborate means to try to remain in hiding. She had changed her phone numbers. She had changed her addresses, but they had been without her knowing it, it sounds like, had been tracking her every move. And when she finally moved into a mansion in New Hampshire recently, they were able to finally pounce and arrest her and bring her into custody.

HAYES: My understanding, this is from the southern -- out of the Southern District of New York, of course, which was until recently headed up by Geoffrey Berman. He was fired by Barr and the president. He sort of refused until his deputy, who was the head of the criminal division, was allowed to take over as acting.

So -- but just in terms of the time-line, this is a Geoffrey Berman SDNY case, right? I mean, it seems that this case has been in the works for awhile, is it fair to say that?

TWOHEY: That`s right. This case has clearly been in the works for a while. And there were questions of whether or not -- it`s also worth mentioning that there were federal prosecutors in Florida who basically let Epstein flip from their grips in 2009, that there had been investigators both in Florida and FBI officials who had been investigating him for a long time and starting to piece together the puzzle of his predation and other potential co-conspirators in 2009. And the feds in Florida had basically let him slip away, enter into a pretty sweetheart plea deal.

And it was really remarkable to watch New York come back, you know, just last year with a really strong case against him. And it is worth noting that that actually followed some pretty incredible reporting that Julie Brown and her colleagues at the Miami Herald did.

This was another case when the kind of government officials had failed to hold this person accountable, some really talented journalists stepped in and helped expose what had happened behind the scenes.

HAYES: Yeah. In fact, the U.S. attorney who had overseen the office that cut that sweetheart deal was the Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta under Donald Trump, which is part of the newsworthiness of that story, and he ended up leaving that post, resigning in the midst of that because he had overseen that.

The terms of that are almost impossibly gentle given the sort of scope of predation he was accused of.

Of course, then there is Jeffrey Epstein`s apprehension, there`s his death in Department of Justice custody last year, which has spawned a million conspiracy theories and speculation, and so now, of course, the question of Maxwell`s safety, of course, but also like this is now an active case again.

I mean, there is this sort of idea when Epstein died that his secrets went with him. We know that he knows lots of powerful people. We know that he had hobnobbed with powerful people. He had given money to all sorts of institutions, the same is true of Maxwell who you can find the who`s who list of pictures, but she now is there and there is some question about where this might lead, right?

TWOHEY: It is hard to imagine anybody who might know more of Epstein`s secrets and the other people who were involved in his orbit and his pattern of predation than Maxwell. I mean, she was, by his account, the person closest to him, his, you know, not former girlfriend turned best friend, turned house manager, she had access to the bank accounts. She had access to his personal records. She traveled and partied with his friends. She brought powerful people into his orbit. She -- including Prince Andrew, who was another person who appears to be a subject of interest in this investigation.

And so it is pretty remarkable to have her now in federal custody and having to answer questions from the federal prosecutors and investigators. I think there is no limit to what she knows.

HAYES: Yeah. It is a wild turn of events. Megan Twohey, who has done great reporting on this. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

TWOHEY: Yeah. Happy to be here.

HAYES: Coming up, not only is the president falling behind the polls, he`s being out raised by Joe Biden. What`s behind the two month streak and what could be moving the needle ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Putin pays the Taliban cash to slaughter our men and women in uniform and Trump is silent, weak, controlled. Instead of condemnation, he insists Russia be treated as our equal. Instead of retaliation, he invites Putin to America.

(END VIDEO CLIP0

HAYES: Every day brings new reporting about intelligence that Russia secretly offered Taliban fighters bounties to kill American soldiers. For their part, the White House has squirmed itself into a corner, having to basically say the president is just too checked out to care, making this particular story very ripe target for ads, as Politico notes unlike four years ago ad makers are no longer focusing on his character in isolation, rather they`re pouring tens of millions of dollars into ads yoking his behavior substantive policy issues.

One Republican, anti-Trump, PAC called The Lincoln Project quickly picked up on this, releasing this ad the day after the Russian bounty story broke.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Now we know Vladimir Putin pays a bounty for the murder of American soldiers. Donald Trump knows, too, and does nothing. When Trump tells you he stands by the troops, he`s right, just not our troops.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: These ads are not limited to Republicans who hate Donald Trump. Just a day after that ad, a progressive veterans PAC known as Vote Vets attack released its own attack on the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: He shakes his hand, an American dies. They pal around, another roadside attack. Intelligence reports on his desk, he says nothing to his Russian master, takes no action to protect us.

If you are going to act like a traitor, you don`t get to thank us for our service.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: What is interesting to see is how Joe Biden`s campaign is responding. There`s new evidence suggesting that positive ads about Joe Biden may be more effective for his campaign this cycle than negative ads about Donald Trump. And in that context, this new ad makes a lot of sense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This job? This job is about protecting Americans. It takes strength, courage, compassion, resilience. That`s a president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Of course, there is another big question looming over all this in what will likely be one of the most expensive presidential races ever: how much do TV ads matter? We are going to talk about that with the Democratic pollster and of the co-funders of the Lincoln Project next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee just out-raised Trump and the Republican National Committee for the second month in a row, beating them in fundraising for the entire second quarter. While the Biden campaign did not disclose how much money they have on hand, the Trump campaign, which has been fundraising obviously since like day one is flush with cash, reporting almost $300 million in the bank, which they`re using for tens of millions of dollars worth of TV ads in key swing states that Trump won in 2016 including a bunch he didn`t think he would have to contest like Ohio and Georgia.

It seems pretty clear as we head into this final stretch here in the next four months that both sides will essentially have unlimited money for advertising. The deeper question is given the state of the country, and its current polarization, just how much can advertising actually move voters` behavior in 2020?

To talk about that, I`m joined by Cornell Belcher, Democratic pollster and strategist, and Rick Wilson, former Republican political strategist, co- founder of The Lincoln Project, a political action committee.

I`ll go to each of you in turn with this question of in the year 2020, in a presidential, right, if you`re running like a state rep race or a congressional where people don`t really know the candidates that well, I think TV ads probably matter a ton, right? There is name recognition, all that. But when we`re talking about in the year 2020 with the country in the state it`s in, with the name recognition almost 100 percent for both candidates, how much ads matter at the margins?

Rick, I`ll start with you.

RICK WILSON, CO-FOUNDER, THE LINCOLN PROJECT: Look, in the words of the great political scientist Depeche Mode, everything counts in large amounts. And so when you`ve got advertising volumes throughout in the tens of hundreds of millions of dollars, they still will move numbers.

But the thing to understand, Chris, is that it`s not just -- you know you can`t look at it just as the TV platform anymore. I am completely platform agnostic when it comes to advertising and have been for a while now. So you`ll see the work we do in The Lincoln Project spanning a whole variety of places where we know we`re going to get eyeballs. We`re going to be digital. We`re going to be on cable. We`re going to be on broadcast. We have got a whole spectrum of choices here.

And look, primarily people have gone increasingly to digital as the first wave of getting a message. They`re going see it on their social media platforms. They`re going see it on their pre-roll videos. So, you know, digital is the primary battlefield. And so when I use the word "television," I don`t care what screen you see the television on.

HAYES: Right.

Cornell, what do you think?

CORNELL BELCHER, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: Well, I`m going to quote another great political philosopher, this one being L.L. Cool Jay, mama said knock you out.

I still think television has a power that the others do not. Now, is television what it was in 1990? No. Is television what it was quite frankly in early 2000 when Obama ran in 2008? No, it`s not. We see diminishing returns on television, because people have so many more platforms, especially younger voters. And that`s why you see a lot of the penetration with digital going to these younger voters.

But still, pound for pound, television is still the best way to convey and reach a broad audience, and quite frankly, to deliver a punch the way my friend at The Lincoln Project has been delivering punches is still a powerful medium for that.

HAYES: So I want to ask you, Rick, like what your theory of the case is here when I think about it. There is one level, which The Lincoln Project is just trolling Donald Trump and inside his head manifestly. I mean, he watches the ads. He gets upset about them. He tweets about them. There is that part of it.

But, you know, The New York Times had this sort of interesting piece the other day in which they polled people who voted for Trump and definitely aren`t going to vote for him again. It`s a small part of the electorate, but they exist. Then there are some set of people who are kind of on the fence. Do you -- is that the people that you want to reach? Like, do you think there are people that are sort of vestigial conservatives or Republicans, who don`t like the guy and are on the fence now and can be pushed?

WILSON: Chris, there are a whole variety of groups, and we know this, the Biden campaign knows this, a lot of other outside groups know this, Donald Trump is losing support among key demographics across the board. He is losing support among -- white -- even among white non-college voters. He has lost a lot of support among white suburban college educated voters, women particularly, men also. Independent men he is losing support with. He is starting to lose support with seniors. And if he treads off low-key bits here and there, you know, the campaigns that are running against him, whether it`s the outside work like The Lincoln Project and other groups or the inside work like Biden`s campaign, yet this is a mathematics problem that Donald Trump will have trouble overcoming in the electoral college calculus.

HAYES: You know, Cornell, there is a bunch of different ways to think about ads, right. One way is there is negative ads. There is positive ads, both of which I think are sort of aimed at persuasion. I thought this ad was interesting, because it`s an ad aimed specifically at people who are already persuaded, but to get them to turn out. I want to play a little bit and get your thoughts on the degree to which that kind of messaging can work, too, in terms of turnout. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, so help me god.

(MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you have been waiting to break glass in case of emergency, we are there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Black voters matter. That fam my spirit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know what? I`m grateful that I came out, because I matter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Like clearly, Cornell, that`s for people that already feel a certain way about the president. But I do wonder like the degree to which what evidence there is, or whether people have run big turnout-focused ads in the past.

BELCHER: Well, I`m going to get campaign nerdy wonk for you. One, people -- when you look at negative ads, really what I look at for the negative ad is really the sort of make voters pause in consideration for that candidate, especially if you`re up against an incumbent, you want to hit that incumbent and make voters sort of pause and maybe pull back.

Then you have to sort of pivot from that and give them some place to rest on, which is the challenger. For a challenger, why challengers struggle so much. So negative ads, you know, we all hate negative ads, but they work, and they bring pause.

When you look at a lot of the ads around I think in the presidential race right now, like some of the stuff that Lincoln Project is doing right now, look, the Monmouth poll just came out I think today and it had the race 53- 41, so there is only a small number of people who are actually undecided.

But Chris, I am really big into this ideal of feeding the flame, right? You want to feed the energy of the base, and you want to feed the energy of your supporters and grow that, because right now it`s not about the length of the number of voters, but it`s about the certainty and strength and enthusiasm of that support, and I think that`s where these ads can be helpful.

HAYES: Also, Rick, it just strikes me -- I mean, everything that I`m reading now, I mean, obviously, I`ve been covering the campaign, as long as it`s been going on, right? But it just seems like everything changes in March. There is a world of historical catastrophe. The country -- you know, we`re going through a governing failure as bad as probably anything since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression probably, I guess. And I guess my feeling is that 90 percent of this is what is happening.

Like and all the campaign discussion. And maybe I`m just being overly reductive, but it does seem to me that the thing that`s driving everything about the numbers right now is the country is objectively on fire.

WILSON: Chris, this is a president who managed to sort of stumble his way through the first three years, and then when true true externalities came, and when COVID appeared on the radar screen in the late fall of 2019 and he chose to do nothing, he chose to deceive the country about the severity of it. He chose to delay taking action to either protect American lives or the economy, and now he is paying the price for it.

And Donald Trump every day continues to believe things like, oh, it`s just going to disappear. What if Roosevelt had said, oh, you know, the Japanese may have bombed Pearl Harbor, but they`ll just go away tomorrow. Don`t worry about it.

This is not the way a president leads, it`s not the way a president behaves. But what we`re seeing here is this magical thinking, this reality bubble around him where he thinks the economy -- you know, Jared yesterday said things are going to come roaring back in July.

Well, it`s July 1, and we are again facing a precipice with this pandemic, and the little financial blip of a few jobs coming back in June is about to flip over again. And he owns all those things. And that`s what is hurting him the most, Chris. He owns all these things. He screwed it up and he owning it.

HAYES: Hi, owns it all.

And he thinks he can -- defending the honor of the confederacy in the wake of the largest social protest over race in a generation is going to be his way forward.

Cornell Belcher and Rick Wilson, thank you both for making time tonight.

WILSON: You bet.

HAYES: That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.

  THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END