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ALI VELSHI, MSNBC HOST: Tonight, on ALL IN. It`s a national emergency. New worries about the holiday weekend as COVID cases surge across America. And the President holds a masks optional rally at Mount Rushmore. How we got here and what needs to happen to stop it from getting even worse.
Then new hope in the years-long battle to change the name of a Washington D.C. football team, and why Trump just had a very, very bad month. When ALL IN starts now.
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HAYES: Good evening from Philadelphia, I`m Ali Velshi in for Chris Hayes. It`s the Fourth of July weekend. The weekend when Americans usually traveled to visit family and friends but this year, it is different because we`re in the midst of a raging pandemic.
Experts have concluded that the last major holiday, Memorial Day, which fell on May 25th, coupled with states reopening too soon led to the current spike in Coronavirus cases that we`re seeing across the country. Now here we are just over a month later and with an even bigger holiday, and Coronavirus cases are surging from Florida to California.
The Associated Press warns "Health experts agree this will be a pivotal moment in determining whether the nation slides into a deeper mess. The fear is that a weekend of crowded pool parties, picnics, and parades will fuel the surge." And that fear is not unjustified. The LA Times reports that even though cases are increasing in California, people are less and less afraid.
As the public has become more accustomed to the pandemic, Californians have seemingly become less afraid of the highly contagious virus, even though it is no less infectious than it was in the winter. Now, this is despite a record number of new cases throughout the entire week. Confirmed coronavirus cases are rising in 40 out of the 50 states. 40 out of 50 states.
It`s not just in the hotspots that you keep hearing about like Texas, like Arizona, like Florida, like California. Over the past two weeks, the percentage of positive tests has doubled in Georgia, Kansas, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Ohio. In Nevada, it`s tripled. In Idaho, it is five times higher.
It matters that those positive tests are increasing not just cases because it means that even if more people are being tested, a higher percentage of those people are getting sick. In Arizona, 85 percent of current inpatient beds and 91 percent of ICU beds are in use. They`re running out of space.
Today, Florida fell short of a single-day record for new cases that were sent yesterday, but still saw nearly 9,500 new cases and 65, 67 deaths. Texas Governor Greg Abbott who only yesterday mandated the use of masks across the state said today "people are not comprehending the magnitude of the problem."
Well, maybe people are not comprehending the magnitude of the problem because governors like Abbott plowed ahead with reopening the state, even as new cases continue to increase. Maybe it`s because the White House muzzle the CDC, the people who were supposed to guide us through this crisis.
A CDC spokesperson tells Yahoo News, "we continue to ask for approval from the White House to hold briefings." We were not given approval. Finally, we just stopped asking. We just stopped asking. The very agency tasked with handling the pandemic or maybe people are not comprehending the magnitude of the problem, because important officials in the Trump administration are still having a fundamental misunderstanding of how this virus works. Just today, I spoke with white house trade advisor Peter Navarro. Listen to what he told me.
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PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: I mean, everybody thought, and this was a reasonable resumption that comes summer the heat and humidity would get rid of the virus. It doesn`t look that way. This looks more like a weaponized virus rather, intentionally or unintentionally.
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VELSHI: First of all, nobody thought the disease would just go away in warm weather. And second of all, there`s zero evidence that this disease has been weaponized. No one expert has said that. America simply lost control of the pandemic because of poor leadership right here in America.
Now, NBC News reports that rather than develop a strategy to get rid of the virus-like every other country in the world has done. The new Coronavirus message from the Trump White House is we need to live with it. Considering more than 130,000 Americans have died from the virus, we need to live with it seems a rather cruel response. And right now, if things continue on this path, there is every indication that the outbreak we are experiencing will only get worse.
Joining me now for more on what we are dealing with is Alexis Madrigal, staff writer at the Atlantic and co-creator of the COVID tracking project which collects and publishes Coronavirus data from across the country. His latest piece is titled a dire warning from COVID-19 text providers -- test providers.
Alexis, thank you for joining us. What do you make of this? You were part of the group that started tracking this, and the numbers here are indicating that we do not have a handle on this. But as you know, that`s not the story all over the world. Other economies other advanced societies like ours have managed this curve much better than America has.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL, STAFF WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": The U.S. response has been disastrous. I mean, that`s the only thing to say about it. You know, if you look at the European Union, which ones had about as many cases as the United States, you know, also a complex, diverse, varied geographical unit. You know, they`ve got cases way low and are returning to normal life.
If you look at the United States, and we`re bouncing back. We`re confirming record numbers of cases. We`ve got hospitalizations rising, and I think we can all expect that deaths will turn up in the next couple of weeks.
VELSHI: So I want to ask you about this because you understand the data far better than most of us do. Donald Trump keeps saying -- it`s not like anybody watching this believes it, but Donald Trump keeps on saying, we`re testing more so we`re getting more cases.
Now, in specific instances like Arizona and Texas, what we`re seeing is actually cases increasing at a rate faster than testing is increasing. So that lays waste to that argument. But generally speaking, I don`t really know who buys this argument, the testing is causal. You don`t get more disease because you test more, you find more disease because you test.
MADRIGAL: That`s right. I mean, there are -- here`s where it makes sense. In the early days of this outbreak, testing was so constrained that we caught a very small percentage of tests in the northeast outbreak. So, I believe and I think a lot of epidemiologists that we`ve talked to believe that the outbreak there were more total infections during that early Northeastern outbreak than there are right now, even though there were more confirmed cases now.
However, if we continue along the path that we`re on, and I don`t think anyone has a plan to get us off of that path, then we`ll reach a greater number of infections because the truth is the spring outbreak really only towards the Northeast. And to the contrary, a lot more people remain in serious danger here.
And the governors of many states across the south and southwest, did not take the kind of protective measures and swift action that governors did in the northeast, Democrat and Republican alike. And that`s really what we`re going to see here. There`s -- we`ve already baked in a lot of transmission. We`ve baked in a lot more infections. We`ve baked in more hospitalizations. We`ve baked in more deaths.
So even though I think Governor Abbott is right to do the sorts of things that he`s doing now, you know, two weeks ago, it would have been a lot more effective than it`s going to be right now.
VELSHI: Alexis, I want to get your take on this new messaging from the White House. And I spoke to Peter Navarro today who sort of tested it out and saying, he was telling me that the alcoholism and the depression and the drug abuse that results from being at home is worse than the disease itself.
The new message in the White House is we`re going to have to live with this. This, of course comes after Trump talks about a vaccine being available by the end of the year, and maybe by November, which people say is not possible. So now, they`re shifting, that you`re going to have to need to live with it. Tell me what you think of this?
MADRIGAL: Well, the truth is, we`re not going to be able to live with it. Eventually, every state that has a major outbreak is going to have to take major action. What I hope is that action that can be reasonable and sustainable because it`s going to be with us for a long time because the U.S. allowed this outbreak to get so out of control now twice, we`re going to be living with this for months and months and months.
Does that mean that we can lock down entire state economies? Probably not. I don`t know that we`re going to get the federal backing that we need to sort of induce the comma and the economy that we saw works pretty well in Europe? So, what are we going to have to do? I think we need to get a little bit more comfortable with people being outdoors and moving around. We`re going to have to come up with strategies that are more rear-guard-ism than anything else.
The number one thing on that list is protecting long term care facilities, protecting the most vulnerable people, protecting black communities where people are dying at much, much higher rates and dying much younger.
I think people want to believe that there`s a plan to protect the most vulnerable people in this country, and that there`s money behind that plan, and that there`s logistical support behind that plan, because Americans want to believe that about ourselves that we`re a kind of people that protect the most vulnerable among us. But the truth is, even when there`s plans, there`s no money, and a lot of places there`s no plans.
VELSHI: What -- is there -- given your studies, is there a good example of a country around the world that`s put that plan in place saying, look, we don`t have therapeutics, and we don`t have a vaccine, but here`s how we`re going to try and get through this until we do?
MADRIGAL: Well, you know, most countries in Europe are like that. Most countries in Europe took pretty strong measures. Even though they`re going to continue to have flare-ups like we`ve seen in Germany, they took strong measures.
And because they took strong measures, and because they protected the most vulnerable people among them, and because they didn`t force people to go back to work right away, and because they provided all this sort of societal safety net kind of support, you were able to have situations where you could kind of put the economy on ice, really keep people on lockdown, and then come out all at once.
But that requires a coordinated national response. And really, in the case of the E.U., a coordinated continental response coordinating between governments, and we just haven`t seen that. They had better coordination between nations than we had between states here. You can`t beat this thing, fighting it state by state. And what are we doing? We`re fighting it state by state.
VELSHI: Alexis, thank you for the work that you`ve done. Thank you for joining me tonight. Alexis Madrigal is a staff writer at the Atlantic. Joining me now for more on what needs to be done to slow the spread is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. He served as a health policy adviser in the Obama White House. his new book is titled Which Country Has the World`s Best Health Care. I`m going to guess it`s not us.
Good to see you again. Thank you for being with us. I want to get your take on this because you really, really study this very closely. Given where we are now, and you and I have been talking about this for nine months, given where we are now, I don`t think you and I would have guessed that on July 3rd we would have seen more cases than any day prior in the United States. What is the right thing to do, not what the White House is doing, but what`s the right thing to be doing right now?
EZEKIEL EMANUEL, FORMER HEALTH POLICY ADVISER, WHITE HOUSE: Well, I think you have to put into place all of the public health measures we`ve talked about. You have to have social distancing, you have to wear face masks in public, you have to have hand hygiene, you have to limit the number of people who can be in a crowd to 10.
You have to put those in place. You have to -- you know, you cannot have indoor dining, bars going on. If you`re going to open up beaches, which I think is actually a very good idea because people do need to get outside, there`s less transmission outside, you have to limit the number of people so you can maintain physical distancing. You have to make sure people are wearing masks when they`re not swimming.
These are the things -- and we know what to do. I mean, look, we saw a very good response in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and a few other states like Pennsylvania and Illinois. It`s not rocket science. We have the same - - I mean, as pointed out by Alexis, you have that in Europe, you have that in Taiwan, South Korea. You know, we do have a playbook. It`s not the case that we don`t have a playbook. We have a playbook. We don`t want --
VELSHI: Well, this is -- this is the interesting thing. Right, so fighting a vaccine is akin to rocket science, and that`s hard work, but this part isn`t. The stuff that we know that public health officials tell us we have to do to stop the spread, which they have done in Europe, which they have done in Canada, is social distancing, masks, hand washing, and then some method of figuring out what public gatherings or people working outside the home do.
I`m not -- I`m having trouble. You`re a guy who`s worked in government. You worked in policy. I`m having trouble understanding where the institutional and political resistance to things like that have come from. In North -- in South Dakota, the governor has said that we`re celebrating freedom.
EMANUEL: This is not -- this is not rocket science. The failure is at the top. It`s called Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and everyone that has taken lessons from them. Greg Abbott, you know, do see the same -- all those people who`ve now had to reverse their "Oh, it`s not here. We don`t have to worry about it" attitude, now understand, oh, yes, we have to worry about it. Oh, yes, these public health measures have to be put in place.
The exact problem is the top of leadership. I mean, what`s Donald Trump doing now? He`s going to Mount Rushmore not requiring -- not wearing a face mask himself not requiring people there to wear a face mask or to physical distance. He is telling you that all the things that we should be doing he`s violating, and that is the fundamental problem as to why we`re here July 4th, July 3rd, and you know, no different than at the end of March. We have squandered the last four months, March, April, May, June.
VELSHI: It`s kind -- it`s kind of unbelievable.
EMANUEL: Yes. And it`s a serious problem --
VELSHI: So, here`s the thing, Zeke.
EMANUEL: -- because there no -- I have no confidence that these guys, you know, if we get a vaccine will actually figure out how to make sure that all Americans can access it, that people will get actually immunized. They are not capable of, you know, organizing a two-man parade for the Fourth of July.
VELSHI: Let me ask you this, because and I`m not speaking out of school, you and I know each other and I think you describe yourself like this. But you guys who work in health and medicine and science and public health are sort of a wonky sort. You probably don`t have a lot of people who dislike you for the work you do.
And yet somehow, we have politicized this to the point that the Lieutenant Governor of Texas is getting into fights with Fauci. Today, I talked to -- I talked to Peter Navarro who says, you know, we shouldn`t be listening to Fauci. He`s wrong. When do we politicize public health?
EMANUEL: Well, I think when they gave us the answers that we didn`t like. The president thought if he ignored this, if he played it out, the stock market would stay up and everything would be fine, he`d be able to ride in the economy into the election, which has been his metric. What`s the stock market and therefore the economy supposedly.
That`s just not the case. You know, biology is not something you can bamboozle with rhetoric and smoke and mirrors. It will come at you. We know how it comes. This is like textbook epidemiology and it really didn`t take, as you pointed out, any rocket science to figure out where this was going, and what we needed to do to respond.
And let me say, way back in March, I and many other people were saying you want to open the economy. That`s great. Let`s put the public health measures into place and we can open up the economy. You can open up the economy and expect people to return without a big flare.
We do know what to do here, and we will get the economy back if we open up carefully. And again, we shouldn`t squander the whole summer because it`s very important. The summer allows us to be outside, it reduces the transmission, we should make sure that people can go outside and, you know, behave safely, not overcrowd.
Unfortunately, the Mount Rushmore event and the big fireworks on the mall are going to do exactly the opposite of what we need. This is a president who doesn`t actually understand what Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt stood for. These people stood for a union. Let`s bring ourselves together.
And if it has to be hard, Washington knew that, Lincoln certainly knew that, if it has to be hard, we can get through it. If we`re all together union was important to them. Donald Trump doesn`t know anything about bringing the country together. He`s a guy who divides the whole country all the time, only for his own advantage. That wasn`t the case with those four presidents under Mount Rushmore. They knew what was important, bringing everyone together to fight a common enemy. That was important and they knew it.
VELSHI: Zeke Emanuel, I know you were talking about ways to creatively and safely open up the economy because we were doing it together on a show that we hosted every week. So hopefully, someone will listen to you at some point. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, thank you for being with me again. Good to see you, my friend.
Coming up next, he was just talking about Keystone, South Dakota, or about Rushmore. That`s right near Keystone. And tonight, there will be four presidents on Mount Rushmore and one impeached president putting thousands of lives at risk with a mask optional, non-social distance event. We`re going to have a live report from my friend Cal Perry when we get back.
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GOV. KRISTI NOEM (R-SD): We will be having celebrations of American independence. We will have a large event July 3rd, we told those folks that have concerns that they can stay home. But those who want to come and join us will be giving out free face masks if they choose to wear one. But we won`t be social distancing. We`re asking them to come. Be ready to celebrate to enjoy the freedoms and liberties that we have in this country.
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VELSHI: Governor South Dakota Republican Kristi Noem has been proudly declaring that there will be no social distancing at the President`s Mount Rushmore independence celebration tonight. More than 7,000 tickets have been issued for the mask optional event, no social distancing and masks optional.
The Republican mayor of the largest nearby city, Rapid City, South Dakota, fears this is going to cause cases in the state to spike. "We`re going to have thousands of people shoulder to shoulder at these events. They are probably not likely to disqualify themselves because they developed a cough for the day or the day before.
Now, the President whose main responsibility is to protect Americans is about to headline Independence Day celebration in just over an hour, with no real attempts at social distancing, and event that has the potential for being a Coronavirus super spreader event.
I want to bring in MSNBC Correspondent Cal Perry. You`re looking at pictures now at Rushmore. Cal is a little bit away from that. He`s in Keystone, South Dakota very close to Mount Rushmore where there are some people protesting this event. Cal, you give us a situation report of where you are right now what the situation is near you?
CAL PERRY, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I`m about a mile and a half from probably the pictures you`re seeing where the Presidents can speak. I`ll get out of the way and let Mark Ringo show you around. Protesters managed to get three vans into the middle of the road. This is one of two entry ways into the park. They were able to disable the three vans and stop all traffic. Traffic has been stopped now for about two hours.
About 45 minutes ago, we saw the National Guard move in. They have arrested a number of people. They`re now going to get those vans out of here. All the while this is going on, you have on the other side of the road, Trump supporters who are mocking the protesters in what I can only describe as a very sad scene where the protesters are screaming at the Trump supporters and Trump supporters are screaming back at the protesters.
This is a Lakota action. Now, the Lakota nation was given these lands, the Black Hills by the U.S. government in 1868. And then years later, that was betrayed, betrayed by people who were mining for gold. And so now we have - - and here we got, Ali, I`ll just show you. As the police move up, you can see the Trump supporters are cheering them on.
PERRY: There are still a few hundred people protesting again in Lakota nation. We`re seeing that red Lakota flag, they`re still protesting. And I have a feeling it`s going to get pretty ugly because they`re going to try to forcibly remove these protesters. The ones who are remaining clearly want to be arrested, they`re trying to block access, they have succeeded in blocking the access, and they will shortly be arrested.
We`ve had the last warning given a number of times. It`s clear that police wanted to get these bands out of the area first, and then move in. And Mark, I`m sorry, if you just want to swing over there, some more members of Lakota Nation. They`re protesting on these rocks. And just to finish the thought, Ali. This is for indigenous peoples who live here, this is a sacred place.
This is a sacred land. They view this as lands lost as a betrayal by the U.S. government. In 1982, the Supreme Court agreed that this was a betrayal by the U.S. government, that this is Lakota land. But it doesn`t change the fact that the President is coming here, that he`s likely going to speak about American history, people here are keenly aware of that, which has only sort of raised tensions.
And again, it`ll be interesting to see how folks are getting into this rally. We`ve seen video and I`m sure you have the pictures where it`s starting to fill up. So I don`t think that this action prevented people from getting in, but this road as I said has been shutting out for about two hours.
VELSHI: So Kyle, I just want to underscore something you just said. In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld the claim that the United States broke its treaty obligations with the Lakota Sioux about Mount Rushmore. And the Lakota Sioux have said that this is illegal. They aren`t -- that Donald Trump is not supposed to be there.
And this is not sort of a fantastical idea. I`ve seen from a lot of people on Twitter. As you know, I didn`t grow up in this country, so I didn`t learn this history, but a lot of people saying they never learned that part of it that this is a treaty violation.
PERRY: Yes. And the Supreme Court put money in a trust, $100 million at the time in 1980. Some people say it`s about $1 billion now. And the Lakota nation has always said, we don`t want the money, we want the land. To your point, and this is what I think is incredibly sad. You have Trump supporters, some are saying go home, go home leave, this is not your land.
And you have indigenous members yelling back at them. This is exactly our land. And it has been our land for generations and it was taken from us. There is a lack of understanding. And it doesn`t matter what political side that you`re on, there is a lack of understanding of the history of this place, the history of Native Americans in this country.
And I interviewed somebody yesterday, the head of Indian Collective, which helped organize his protest. And he said, one of the problems here is that there`s over 20 states that just don`t teach this properly. So, I don`t blame people for not being armed with the knowledge.
And actually, when you talk to some of the protesters, they`ll tell you look, Donald Trump coming here we find offensive, but it allows us to have this conversation. And this is the conversation that people here want to have, even though we`re going to hear from the President tonight on a variety of other subjects, Ali.
VELSHI: All right, Cal, we`re going to stay close to you through the course of the evening as this develops. I don`t know -- would you be seeing when the President`s coming in? Is that they getting in a different way or is that the only road in?
PERRY: He`s going to chopper in. He`s going to come in by air.
VELSHI: Got it? OK, we got a picture of Air Force One right now making -- I think it looks like Air Force One. It`s either that or Pan Am jet. My eyesight these days is not very good, but I suspect there aren`t Pan Am 747s in the air right now. So I`m going to bet that that`s Air Force One coming in for a landing right now. I`m going to ask my producers to figure out exactly where that is. I`m sorry, I don`t have that information, but that is Air Force One. I can now say that with certainty.
I want to bring in Barbara Boxer, former Democratic senator from California who serve four terms representing that state. Senator Boxer, good to see you again. Let`s talk to the larger issue. I`ve got -- you know, Cal is going to cover the issue of the Sioux Nation and their concerns about Mount Rushmore, but there are two different things converging tonight. There`s that issue, but there`s the other one.
You`ve got the governor of South Dakota who is saying that we are celebrating our liberty and liberty loving people can come out there and support without a mask and without social distancing. I don`t know when that became a thing. As you know, I`m not from America, so I didn`t really understand that that`s the way you all show your liberty lovingness. But this has become a weird cultural thing tonight that`s more than a celebration of the Fourth of July.
BARBARA BOXER, FORMER SENATOR OF CALIFORNIA: To me, the whole thing is upside down and inside out, because I was raised in America, and I was taught when I was a little kid, if you`re sick, you go to the doctor, and you follow what the doctor says. And what Trump is doing is the opposite, what the governor there is doing is the opposite.
The best way to lose your liberty is to come down with COVID-19. So what he is doing is not only going to a place with very painful memories for a whole minority group -- well actually, we`re looking at Native Americans here who had this painful history, and I regret it all today.
And there he goes again, going there where there`s division, there`s controversy, us versus them like he did in Tulsa, where there was this horrific, horrific massacre of black Americans in the 1900s. So it breaks my heart on this day when we -- when we should be looking at the fact that we`re all created equal, and we all should treat each other with dignity, and he`s doing everything wrong.
Look, he is the worst failure in the world when it comes to handling COVID. I don`t care what party you`re in. Look at the numbers. They don`t lie. We have the worst record here because he`s -- instead of leading the nation -- and I served with five presidents, three Republicans, they would all lead the nation right or wrong, he`s given it to 50 different governors, plus you have the territories, and that is no way to handle this. And Americans are dying. I was thinking -- yes, go ahead.
VELSHI: And you point out very clearly that when you look at all major economies -- countries that first saw Coronavirus at the same time, everybody else has managed some flattening of the curve, including Canada, by the way, so it can`t be geographic, because Canada has done it. Everybody else has managed this, we haven`t. And you would think with 120 days to go until the election, this would be a way for the president to try and find some way to appeal to more people, but when he does what he`s doing tonight, he`s appealing to narrower and narrower constituencies.
BOXER: Well, he`s making a big mistake because if you look at the polling, if you believe the polling, most people think believe it is important to wear a mask, because that`s the only tool we have until we really have a cure or a vaccine, that`s the tool we have.
You know, I was thinking if I was Joe Biden, he has so many slogans, one of them he`s using as, you know, we have to take back the soul of America, that`s beautiful. There is another he could use: vote for me, I won`t kill you. I mean, it`s as simple as that. What this guy is doing is just tragic. And I have never seen, again, anything like it. I unfortunately say that a lot.
HAYES: Yeah. We`re looking at pictures right now at the event at Mount Rushmore where they`re showing Air Force One coming in for a landing, and you can see there is no social distancing, there`s not even going to be an attempt at social distancing there. The seats are next to each other on the stage. The seats in the audience are next to each other, everybody -- it is not even like an airplane, which doesn`t do a good job of social distancing where they leave the middle seat open. They are not even doing that much, but they are gathered right now for the landing of Air Force One.
Former Senator Barbara Boxer, always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for joining us.
Coming up next, a surprise announcement today, the Washington, D.C. NFL team say they are reviewing their name. The growing influence of the national moment of reckoning after this.
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HAYES: Earlier this week, Mississippi retired its state flag, the only state in the country whose banner included the Confederate battle emblem. On Tuesday, the Republican governor of that state, Tate Reeves, signed a law removing the flag from all over the state. That is a flag that Mississippi has flown since 1894. And for more than a century, it seemed improvable, until now.
The huge anti-racist protests across the nation, coupled with growing public pressure, seemed to have provided the momentum for change. And it is not just in Mississippi, as you know, in the last several weeks, racist symbols have been toppled all over the country -- monuments, flags -- and now we are perhaps seeing a similar moment about to take place in the nation`s capital.
After years, decades of pressure, Washington`s NFL team has launched a, quote, thorough review of its racist nickname. NBC`s Geoff Bennett has the latest.
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GEOFF BENNETT, NBC NEWS: Tonight, after mounting pressure, the NFL`s Washington Redskins announcing it will conduct a thorough review of the team name, which has long been condemned as a derogatory slur against Native Americans.
The team owner, Dan Snyder, writing in a statement that he wants input from others while taking into account the proud tradition and history of the franchise. It comes just one day after FedEx, the team`s most prominent sponsor, asked the team to change its name. FedEx owns the naming rights to the field where the team plays in Maryland.
Also on Thursday, Nike appeared to remove the team`s products from its website.
Both the NFL and Snyder had for years defended the team`s controversial name, Snyder vowing never to change it.
DAN SNYDER, WASHINGTON REDSKINS OWNER: The name really means honor, respect.
BENNETT: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell saying today he`s supportive of this important step. A former player for the team also weighing in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I still believe it should be changed. I think there has been enough public outcry from the group that feels like they`re having marginalized as their image as a mascot for an entire cultural identity.
BENNETT: Reaction today on the streets of D.C.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m a Redskins fan for life.
BENNETT: Even with the name?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even with the name.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s offensive, it`s a slur, a racial slur. I mean, that would be like having a team called the N-word.
BENNETT: And tonight, The Wall Street Journal citing two people familiar with the matter who say the team will likely be renamed by the start of the 2020 season.
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VELSHI: What is happening now in America is so big and broad. Things that have been improvable for decades are facing pressure to change, and that pressure appears to have started with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Overwhelmingly, Americans are speaking up, they`re voicing their dissent. And as a result, they`re seeing massive, sometimes symbolic, but important changes.
Our president, though, can`t seem to get on the right side of this thing. Joining me to talk about this is Tatewin Means, executive director of Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. She is the daughter of Russell Means, the renowned activist leader of the American Indian Movement; and Dave Zirin, a sports editor at The Nation, and host of the Edge of Sports podcast.
Thank you both for being with me. Tatewin, I have to say, this feels different. There are protests. For as long as I remember, I recall the sort of conversations about names and symbols, something about right now feels different. And the fact that we`re actually talking about things that affect indigenous people who never get attention in this country indicates to me that something has moved.
TATEWIN MEANS, ADVOCATE, LAKOTA AND DAKOTA NATIONS: I definitely agree that there is a prime opportunity right now to raise the invisibility of indigenous people like myself, like my community, to the public consciousness. And it comes in waves, right? My father was very much a part of the movement in the `60s and `70s that raised the entire world`s consciousness about the plight of the American Indian here.
But it`s something that, you know, the seeds of this country are rotten. And we will always have to fight in waves if we don`t get to the root of the evil of this country, and that goes back to the constitution, it goes back to the papabiles (ph) and the Catholic Church that authorized the doctrine of discovery, it`s repudiating every jurisprudence that pertains to Indian country, Indian communities in this country, it`s a complete reset of the United States government as it exists today.
VELSHI: So what does success look like? Is it symbolic stuff like this? Do you see this as a beginning or an entry point, because clearly it`s not going to change the future of Indian people in America if a team changes its name.
MEANS: Absolutely it is an entry point. Every victory is important in the long term fight for our people`s liberation. And in order for our liberation to happen, it has to coincide with the collective liberation of all people, black, brown, indigenous, and even white Americans especially. This nation has to go through a decolonization process where we denounce white settler colonialism and move from there, and that means revamping every system, especially the education systems because that`s where that root that I spoke of before starts, that`s how we raise white supremacists in this country.
So, if we don`t take aim at every system in that manner, we are going to continually have to have these conversation where we`re educating everybody about why a mascot is offensive, that dehumanizes an entire race of people.
And the Redskins is a start, but let`s talk about the Cleveland Indians, let`s talk about the grade school down the street that has Indians as their mascots or warriors or chiefs or all those other things. The Redskins is a start, it is a start of a domino. And I`m excited to see what happens next.
VELSHI: Dave, as Tatewin says, let`s talk about the Cleveland Indians. I have just received a statement from the Cleveland Indians as we were in this conversation, saying, quote, in part "we are committed to engaging our community and appropriate stakeholders to determine the best path forward with regard to our team name."
Give me context here, Dave, because as old as I am I have always remembered conversations about the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins and what Tatewin talked about, every local college and high school team. What`s different now?
DAVE ZIRIN, SPORTS JOURNALIST: Well, what`s different, of course, as you said is this 50 state national uprising against racism and white supremacy, that cannot be discounted. But we also have to speak about the fact that this movement has been going on for over 50 years, since the start of the American Indian movement, there has been this push for the Washington football team to change their name and to end Native American mascotry.
And where I live here in the Washington, D.C. area, for years people like Suzan Harjo -- shout-out to her, of course -- Amanda Blackhorse, people have led the struggle on the ground here to change people`s hearts and minds about the name that represents the city.
So, this is a powerful moment right now. It is a powerful statement about these last couple months of absolutely brilliant and explosive volcanic activism, but it`s also a tribute to people who have been part of this struggle for decades because they understand that a mascot is not just a mascot, this isn`t just a game, this harms children. The American Psychiatric Association has said so, the studies show that mascoting actually harms native children.
And so it`s all about which side of history do you want to be on? For way too long Dan Snyder has been happy to be on the wrong side of history, but, hey, look at what it`s taken, it`s taken a 50 state national uprising to drag him and the National Football League towards a more enlightened view about this racist slur.
HAYES: What`s the proximate cause, Dave? Because when I think about Nascar and I think about Uncle Ben`s and I think about Aunt Jemima, and I think about FedEx talking to the team, is it consumers, is it companies that want to be on the right side of their consumer, because they`re worried about backlash? What is the actual proximate cause of making corporations, these are all corporations, be it the head of this line of change now?
ZIRIN: Well, that`s what`s so interesting is that I mean, the corporations are waking up as if they`re Rip Van Winkle saying, my goodness, this name is racist. Who -- heaven forfend. And we have to understand it is not a case that they have just all of a sudden achieved some level of thinking about this that they didn`t have before, it is because they`re scared, quite frankly. They are scared because a new generation of people are waking up and this generation is -- I mean, by statistics is more left wing, it is less white, and it`s much more serious about organizing for their own liberation.
And so they want to get on the right side of that because they see them as their future consumers. They also understand that if this is going to be a habitable country going forward, it`s not going to work if the football team in the nation`s capital is named after a racial slur.
HAYES: Thanks to both of you for analysis on this. Tatewin, good to see you. Tatewin Means, and Dave Zirin as well, thank you for your analysis.
Still to come, from start to finish, June of 2020 may have been the worst month for the Donald Trump presidency. There was a lot that happened. We`re going to talk about it next.
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VELSHI: Tonight we are exactly four months away from the November 3 presidential election. And today, Donald Trump is coming off one of the worst months of his presidency. It started on June 1 with the tear gassing of protesters in Lafayette Park, exercising their first amendment rights so that the president could have a photo op in front of a church.
Then June got even worse, Donald Trump was doing everything, from setbacks at the Supreme Court to a new surge in coronavirus cases to a recession and record job losses.
Now trump has had bad months before, but this June feels different. This is materially cost him. Instead of broadening his base, he`s deepening his commitment to the American fringe and America is not responding well to that.
Here with me now, two reporters who followed Trump`s terrible month closely. Asawin Suebsaeng of The Daily Beast and Betsy Woodruff Swan of Politico. Thanks to see -- thanks to both of you for being here.
Asawin, let me start with you. You could have taken lots of months in the last four years and said, boy, this is a bad month for Donald Trump. He was impeached, the Mueller report is investigating. But this one is different because all of the polls, including those in swing states, are showing that Americans are departing from his vision of what America needs to be doing right now.
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, THE DAILY BEAST: Absolutely. And the problem with the situation like that, when you have a chief executive of the country, and a presidential candidate such as Donald Trump who is basically refusing to be anything other than he is and the MAGA nationalist candidate that he sold his brand on in 2016, and you get into a situation where he`s not willing to readjust to make certain amendments and fixes that certain advisers think he should make to improve his poll numbers against Joe Biden, you get into a situation where a good chunk of his campaign and administration apparatus is actually dominated by trying to comfort their boss, Donald J. Trump instead of actually trying to win, per se.
What I`m talking about is situations where there have been multiple meetings in the West Wing with the president, including some that we reported on back in June where senior advisers on the campaign and in his West Wing would present him with the polling data, both public and the internal surveys that they had with team Trump and the Trump campaign, and there was a lot of data in there that did not look good for the president, but instead of focusing on that and how to fix it, they spent a good deal of time highlighting to his face look at the enthusiasm gap between your base voters and Joe Biden`s voters and also don`t worry necessarily about the public polls, because they don`t necessarily factor in likely voters at this stage of the game, which is a little bit of a weird criticism from an inside baseball perspective.
So when so many of his senior aides are focused on making him feel better about his standing instead of fixing his standing, not all of them, but a lot of them, it`s no surprise that he`s in this ditch that a lot of them aren`t sure he can dig himself out of.
VELSHI: You know, if you look back to the beginning of the coronavirus stuff, when there was just a few cases, a handful of cases, you could see that either Donald Trump or his advisers had told him this is going to be really bad for you if it gets serious, and that`s why he kept down playing it and saying it`s going to go away.
But when the social unrest started after George Floyd, it was clear at that point he`d already lost control of the coronavirus situation, but that is something that he had no actual ability to make the right decisions on. At least with coronavirus, there were other decisions that could have been made, but at this point with the protests and the speed with which they`ve picked up, I don`t know that there was any way that Donald Trump could have recovered from that.
BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN, POLITICO: The other piece of this that`s important when we talk about the protest movement that`s really exploded over the last several weeks, is that Trump simultaneously has decided to jettison any advice that would counter his own instincts. The choice that he`s made is that he`s just going to disregard things that people like Jared Kushner and other criminal justice advocates are pushing him to take even small steps, even symbolic steps. In the coming weeks and months, there is only the most vanishingly small likelihood, if any, that Trump will do anything that could be seen as conciliatory, supportive or friendly to what these protesters are looking for.
Instead, he`s going to move his campaign into a strategy of solely appealing to his base, solely appealing to the very pro-law enforcement, very right wing group of voters who made him president in the first place. It`s going to be a campaign of division. It`s going to be a campaign designed to get those voters angry and excited. We`re not going to see any efforts from the president to reach out to the middle, to reach out to people who have taken to the streets over the last months to protest police brutality and racism.
VELSHI: It is kind of interesting, though, Asawin, the idea that he`s narrowed his base. When he -- the things he`s gotten himself involved in in June, protecting the names of confederate bases, bases that were named after confederate generals, confederate monuments, the changing of cultural icons for which nobody really stands.
I mean, the argument that this is all American heritage, there`s nobody out in America tonight who`s really going to lose it if a couple of sports teams change their names. But he has decided to go deeper with a narrower crowd than go broader with a bigger crowd?
SUEBSAENG: Right, and not to make too much of a Mean Girls references but it is one of the fetches that President Trump is failing to make happen in the final four months of his election, and it`s not just the,oh, protect our beautiful monuments and heritage argument that he keeps throwing out right now, as we reported earlier today at The Daily Beast, one of President Trump`s main gripes behind the scenes over the past month is we have not one, but two positive jobs reports that have gone out. He hasn`t seen the up-tick that he and some of his aides have expected or deeply desired from the American voter populous, and this is something that he really believes if someone like Joe Biden were president they would want to erect statues for this supposed economic rejuvenation as he has spun it in his mind.
So when you mention talk about the statues or the mildly kind of sort of signs of improvement in the U.S. economy, in a situation where Trump keeps wondering why the vast majority of Americans aren`t with him, and it turns out the vast majority of Americans very much are not, at least at this moment in time.
VELSHI: Thank you to the two of you. We appreciate the constant reporting that you provide us with on your beats. Asawin Suebsaeng and Betsy Woodruff Swan, we appreciate your time tonight. We`ll be right back with more of this super sized holiday weekend edition of All In right after this.
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VELSHI: Good evening from Philadelphia, I`m Ali Velshi in for Chris Hayes. Tonight, later this hour, the president is holding an Independence Day celebration in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore. It`s an event where, as you can see from the moment the chairs were laid out earlier today, there`s no real attempt at social distancing.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END