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

Transcript: The ReidOut, October 15, 2020

Guests: Jason Johnson, Sarah Lenti; Kurt Bardella, Pete Buttigieg, Ashish Jha, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Beto O`Rourke

Summary

America looking for leadership in time of crisis. New Biden campaign ad presents reasons to vote. Trump campaign suffering from lack of focus. Trump focusing on his fame, Hillary Clinton, Nobel Prize. Trump says, U.S. marshals didn't want to arrest slain murder suspect. Trump facing opposition from well-funded outside groups.

Transcript

ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Thanks for THE BEAT with Ari Melber. THE REIDOUT with Joy Reid starts now.

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: OK. Deep breath, America, beep breaths. We are now 19 days away from the day that we begin counting the votes. November 3rd. The country is gripped by a raging pandemic that is killing 800 Americans a day. Nearly 25 million Americans are on some form of unemployment. Millions more are struggling to pay for food, utilities and rent. Protests have to continue across the country over what seems like a unrelenting stream of police brutality against black and brown people.

And with all of that, a wounded but unbroken country is looking for leadership in the guidance. On one side former Vice President Joe Biden has traversed the country arguing that Donald Trump is unfit, unhinged and a danger to American values with no plan to put this country back together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The days of the divisiveness will soon be over.

We can build a more perfect union.

Let's get back up.

We can't believe in him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: And on the other side, Trump is selling a cornucopia of incoherent thoughts strung together by sense of personal grievance, authoritarianism and misogyny.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: How many said to me the other day, you're the most famous person in the world by far. I said, no I'm not. No, I'm not. They said, yes are. I said, nope. I said who's more famous. I said, Jesus Christ.

They talked about the glass ceiling, right, the woman breaking the glass ceiling. And that didn't work out that way. The glass ceiling broke her but there will be a woman that breaks that glass ceiling. It just won't be Hillary.

I told our first lady, darling, we're going to have the greatest publicity I've ever had tonight. I got nominated for the Nobel Prize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: And here is the president promoting the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We send in the U.S. marshals. 15 minutes, it was over. 15 minutes, it was over. We got him. They knew who he was, they didn't want to arrest him, and 15 minutes, that ended.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: You know, there's probably a reason why Trump can't string together a coherent message. According to The Washington Post, a trio of longstanding challenges have converged to create a daunting barrier to Trump's re-election, the inability to drag down Biden's favorability rating, the lack of a clearly articulated second term agenda and a pandemic that continues to upend American live.

15 million Americans have already cast their ballots, 15 million. A new NBC News, Wall Street Journal polls find Biden leading Trump nationally by 11 points. And last night, the Biden campaign announced it raised $383 million last month alone.

Trump is also facing a slew of well-funded outside groups trying to take him down. Take for example the Lincoln Project, which raised to whopping $39.4 million over the past three months. In just a few moments, we'll have a exclusive look at one of their new ads.

And Joining me from the Lincoln Project are Senior Adviser Kurt Bardella, and Executive Director, Sarah Lenti. Also, I'm also joined by Jason Johnson, Professor of Journalism and Politics at Morgan State University. Thank you all for being here.

This has been a very weird, weird set of closing argument that we've seen from these two campaigns, Jason. You know, Biden, has got that Nina Simone, you know track and the, come together message, you know, and Trump is, you know, basically using an argument that may conservative hate the Beatles, saying he's more famous than Jesus. What do you make as a political science point of view of their two closing arguments?

JASON JOHNSON, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAS AND JOURNALISM, MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY: You know, one of the things, Joy, that I always look at is message consistency. There's a joint correlation between message consistency and whether or not you want a campaign. If you don't have a message, if you don't have something coherent, the fact that we can still remember, you know yes, we can eight years from now, I mean it's hey, that was a coherent message and that's what people remembered. Compassion and conservatism from 25 years ago with George Bush, we still remember that message.

Trump hasn't has a message. Some days, the message is Biden's corrupt. Some days the message is Biden is terrible. Some days, the message is, I don't like Senator Harris. Some days, the message is I'm more important than Jesus. Some days, the message is, I'm the miracle worker, I'm superman, I can't get sick. He has no coherent message. You couldn't sell coffee or girl scout cookies with what he is doing right now.

So, unfortunately, it makes it very difficult for Republicans running under him to come up with a coherent message. And all Joe Biden has to do and says, hey, I'm the same one who is going to bring the country back together. So this is arguably the most incompetent presidential campaign I have ever seen or studied in my life. But then, again, he's not running a campaign because he's just trying to consolidate power and steal things by messing up the post office and suppressing the vote in Texas.

REID: And let's just play another one of his messages, which is basically it's really 2016 and Joe Biden is basically Hillary Clinton. Here is a little montage to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton should not even be allowed to run.

Biden is a corrupt politician who shouldn't be allowed to run for the presidency.

Hillary gets rich, making America poor.

The Biden has got rich while America got robbed.

Hillary Clinton owes all of you an apology.

Vice President Biden, you owe the people of America an apology.

It's like the Hillary stuff, the crooked Hillary and it's the crooked Joe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: I'll note that people who knew Donald Trump from The Apprentice know he can just memorize a few lines. That's what he's actually good at. And he simply does that again.

Let me play that as a contrast. And welcome to the show, Sarah. And, Sarah Lenti, I think I pronounced your name wrong, so I apologize for that. This is the new ad, and I appreciate you guys debuting it tonight on the THE REIDOUT. And here is a part of you guys as new closing argument ad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Imagine a young girl looking in the mirror, searching for role models in the world to give her hope that one day she too can make a difference. Now, imagine how she feels when she watches women being verbally attacked.

TRUMP: What a stupid question that is. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maligned.

TRUMP: This monster that was on stage with Mike Pence who destroyed her.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Belittled.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not thinking Mr. President.

TRUMP: That's OK. I know you're not thinking. You never do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Insulted.

TRUMP: And I look her in that right in that fat ugly face.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your daughters absorbing that message right in front of your eyes.

Now, imagine a different future for her, a future with the president who doesn't just value a female voice but chooses one to be his right-hand woman, a strong woman with compassion, unafraid to take on a bully.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: Sarah, it's a really good ad. It's very moving. It goes on this about 30 second of it. But we have short time, so we can't play it all. But I recall at the close of the 2016 ad, Hillary Clinton's closing argument ad was very similar to that. It was, our children are watching. And she played a lot of little girls listening to Donald Trump insult women, including a part of the now infamous October 16 tape, the, grab them by the, tape. And that was the closing argument ad.

Is this intentional, that this is sort of mirroring that? And if so, how do you think that that argument will ring differently four years later? It didn't, in the end, help Hillary Clinton.

SARAH LENTI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE LINCOLN PROJECT: So, Joy, thanks for having me, first of all. And I just want to say, we want -- we know that women are very important in this election. And we want voters to look at the final days through the eyes and the lens of girls and women. And little girls are watching this election too. To say, as you see in the ad, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and you saw Secretary Rice, who was my first boss and still my political mentor. I mean, these are very important woman.

And, Joy, in our lifetime, the only president who has treated woman with such disdain and disrespect is Donald Trump. And it's not OK. We want voters to know. It's not OK to talk to woman like this. It's not OK as if they don't think, to belittle them, to comment on their appearance. I am a former Republican, I voted for Bush, but I'm voting for Biden this cycle.

And for many of us in the Lincoln Project, this election is about character. When I, with my sons, and, again, they don't have a dad, but when they -- I want them to look at a leader, as a president who embodies integrity, honesty, empathy, sincerity, diligence, morality. Donald Trump is none of those things.

And we want to highlight that we want to show Americans, remind Americans of who Donald Trump is, the example he's setting for our children and juxtapose that with what a Biden/Harris administration would look like.

And we don't know -- we didn't intentionally do this to like mirror what Hillary did in 2016. But we feel that this question of character and morality is important and we need voters.

REID: You know, and, Kurt, thanks for being here. You know, among the women who are criticizing Donald Trump is the daughter of Rudy Giuliani, his besty, bestest as friend, to the extent that he has actual friends, has spoken and said, I may not able to be able to change my father's mind, but together, we can vote out this toxic administration, it's taken persistence and nerve to find my voice in politics. I'm using it now to ask you to stand with me in the fight to end Donald Trump's reign of terror. By the way, her brother, I believe, also works in the Trump administration.

But it's not just women, you know, behind the scenes, some of the people you know very well, Ben Sasse, that I'm sure both of you know, has come out. He did a private call with constituents. Publicly, he's a Trumper. Behind the scene, he excoriated Trump, saying he mishandled the coronavirus response, kisses dictators' butts, sells out our allies, spends like a drunken sailor, mistreats woman and trash talks evangelicals behind their backs. But, publicly, he's still a coward. None of them will say that publicly. Girls will say it, right?

Have we reached the point now where the men of the Republican Party need to just have the courage of Rudy Giuliani's daughter?

KURT BARDELLA, SENIOR ADVISOR, THE LINCOLN PROJECT: I tell you, Joy, it is really something when you look at it right now, that women are leading the way here, that women are leading the conversation. And also people of color are also leading the conversation. And it's the white men that we're trying to get to see the light.

And I think that when you talk about that Lincoln Project ad, you've just showed, I don't think anything is more persuasive to a father than seeing the world through his daughter's eyes and the world that that daughter is going to have to live in and move forward and throughout life.

And I think that's why it's such a compelling spot, because it's not just we want women to respond to this, is that we want men, we want this-father-figures to see what the world really looks like, when someone that powerful talks down to you, when someone that powerful says you can't do something, you're not good enough, you're not worthy enough, judges you based on ridiculous things. That's what we're trying to highlight here.

I think it's just -- it tells you everything that you need to women and people of color were there a long time ago, Joy, as you know, as we have talked about many times. They got there a long time ago. And now, we're just trying to get everyone else to catch up.

REID: Well, I mean, we know that we've had a Republican Congressman, I can't remember which one it was, that called AOC the B word, you know? I'm not sure that people look at it that way, but we'll see what happens.

You know, Jason, for black men, there is -- what Donald Trump is doing is that, you know, he's out there begging suburban women, meaning white women, please, please, please vote for me, and say, look, I kept the blacks away from you, what do you want from me.

The end the part of his, I got nominated for a Pulitzer, the next part of that was him to say, but they didn't talk about it. The stuff they're talking about is your stupid farms getting flooded by storms. The storms are taking away by publicity, like two Iowa voters. So he's like insulting seniors and then he say, vote for me. Like it all make no sense.

But with black men, he's doing something slightly different. We've now had Ice Cube, get the leader from many, many playlist and this invited from the Barbeque, for coming out and being like, I'm going to work with Trump. It's a weird last minute play, it's complicated. Can you explain whether it's significant?

JOHNSON: So, Joy, it's significant for two reasons, and one is the larger cultural context and two is a campaign contest. Donald Trump thinks black men are stupid. I'm telling you all. He thinks black guys are stupid. He thinks he can throw out rappers like Kanye and Ice Cubes and that's going to convince black men who are dying at a higher rate than almost that anybody else in this country from COVID-19 that somehow he cares about us. So, as a campaign thing, it's insulting.

But the second thing it shows is this, and we saw this, not just with Ice Cube now, but we saw this with Jim Brown and we've seen this with Steve Harvey, this idea that black celebrity men, some seem to think that if they go and kiss the ring with Donald Trump that something is going to get accomplished.

And Cube, like we have all joked, I'll never had dinner with the president, arrest the president, we've got the evidence but I want to call Cube and say, snitches get stitches. Because you know what happened, Ice Cube met with the Biden campaign, and he met with the Trump campaign. Biden didn't talk about him having a meeting with Ice Cube but Katrina Pierson and the Trump campaign did. They snitched. They put his name out there. And now he's got to do damage control for the last 24 hours Before he looks like a sell-out.

And that's what Donald Trump does to black men. He will use them, take advantage of them, throw them out in the cold and then when he gets in trouble, he has got nothing to say. And that's the lesson ultimately of what Ice Cube did. He has made the same mistake as a lot of people. He can't show up in the last five minutes and expect radical change from a white nationalist president.

REID: And the minute that he is toxic, he will just suddenly remember that he made the song, F the Police. If you're like, I don't know who Ice Cube is, never heard of him. I get a quote, another person from the Lincoln Project and that will be Rick Wilson, the hashtag is ETTD. Look it up. Cube. Look it up, ETTD. Just keep that in mind.

Thank you very much Kurt Bardella, Sarah Lenti, nice to meet you, Jason Johnson, thank you very much.

Up next on THE REIDOUT, as Trump and his lackeys were ensuring Americans that COVID-19 was totally under control, privately, they were telling their rich investors friends a very different story. They cashed in while millions of Americans fell into poverty. Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg joins me. I can't talk on that point, next.

And up next, with a new column -- with a new autumn surge in cases, super-spreader Trump is spreading more egregious and deadly misinformation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Did you see the CDC, that 85 percent of the people wearing the mask catch it, OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: Plus a wake-up call about complacency in this election and what is really at stake. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Beto O'rourke join me back with more on THE REIDOUT, as I re-learn to read after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

REID: Despite Donald Trump's claims that the economy is roaring back, new numbers are painting a bleak picture. Nearly 900,000 Americans, filed an unemployment claims for the first time last week. That is the highest number since mid-August. More than 25 million Americans were still receiving some form of unemployment compensation at the end of September.

And a new report from Columbia University has found that eight million Americans fell into poverty since May as a result of Trump's COVID economy, and with federal relief money largely drying up.

But, of course, the rich are still getting richer. "The New York Times" report that, back in February, when Donald Trump was publicly saying the virus was -- quote -- "very much under control," administration officials like Larry Kudlow were privately warning a group of conservative allies, including some big donors, that it was anything but under control, giving them a financial advantage before the stock market cratered shortly thereafter.

Joining me now is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

And, Mayor Buttigieg, I got to tell you, mayors are the closest in a lot of ways to the people in terms of the job that mayors do.

PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), FORMER MAYOR OF SOUTH BEND, INDIANA: That's right.

REID: So, when you think about the fact that people in your town were struggling in February, where COVID was just early hitting, and Donald Trump was saying, it's fine, while briefing his rich donor friends to say, you all better sell, how does that just make you feel, as somebody who has represented people as an elected official?

BUTTIGIEG: It's unconscionable.

And it goes to what Joe Biden's been saying for some time about Scranton vs. Park Avenue, South Bend vs. Park Avenue too, right? The president comes from a world where he lives in a building with his name on it, and he doesn't care how this is going to affect everyday people. He doesn't care, certainly, how it's going to affect people living in poverty.

So, as long as he can figure out a way to make sure that his wealthiest friends do well, he's happy.

Look, this is classic for how this administration behaves. But it is a new layer on it. We already learned from the Woodward book, right, that he knew this disease was serious, but downplayed it to the American people.

Now we have gone another level. We know his administration was warning investors, but he was talking about the economy. And it's one of the reasons why, at this moment, we should not believe what he's saying. And his own administration is putting out data demonstrating that our economy is in trouble, that the pace of people filing for unemployment and slipping into poverty is going up, not down, at the very moment he wants us to believe that we're putting this crisis behind us.

It will not get better until we have a leader who actually acknowledges the scope of the problem. It's one of many, many reasons we have got to elect Joe Biden quick.

REID: You know, and this is not an econ question, but I just have to ask you.

I mean, I don't know if you have seen these Ben Sasse comments, because it's based -- going to what you're talking about...

BUTTIGIEG: Yes.

REID: ... You have Ben Sasse publicly being like Trump, Trump, Trump, and Trump is the greatest, but when he goes behind the scenes, he's telling folks that Trump is selling us out and selling us out to our enemies.

What do you make of somebody like him?

BUTTIGIEG: Well, I think he keeps looking into the future?

Part of me is thinking about that scripture about the sheep and the goats being divided at the end. I think he's picturing a future where Republicans will be divided into two categories, those who found some way to put at least some distance between themselves and the president, however late in the game, and those who insisted on hugging the bomb all the way to the end.

There is panic in the Senate GOP, because they know that this president is poised not only to go down in defeat, but to take down what is left of the Republican Party with him.

Now, I don't know if you can have it both ways, which is what I think a lot of senators, including Senator Sasse, are supposed to be doing, right, or clearly intending to be doing.

REID: Yes.

BUTTIGIEG: And the fact that he kind of put this out low-key, knowing it would be talked about online and on TV, but didn't come out in a speech and say it, right, wouldn't say it to the president's face, kind of like Chris Christie's comments.

He put out a memo that, on its face, reads very thoughtfully. He says that the consequences of the virus -- or I think his words were wildly random and extremely serious or something like that, a lot of commonsense stuff in there...

REID: Yes.

BUTTIGIEG: ... expressing regret about going to the White House unmasked.

But then, at the end, he says, what we really need to do is put partisanship aside, and everybody who is in a position of responsibility needs to tell everybody to practice social distancing, wear a mask, and use common sense.

Well, OK, but has he told the president that? I don't know if Republicans can keep having it both ways.

REID: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I think that's called cowardice generally.

Speaking of hypocrisy, let me play Mitch McConnell. This is Trump and Mitch McConnell both talking about whether or not they should actually pass a bill to help people, to help people get through this economic catastrophe caused by Donald Trump's mishandling of COVID.

Here they are.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STUART VARNEY, FOX BUSINESS: At this point, do you expect to get a stimulus package of any kind before the election?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think there's a chance. I do. The Republicans are willing to do it. I'd like to see more money, because it comes back.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): That's where the administration is willing to go.

My members think what we laid out, a half-trillion dollars, highly targeted, is the best way they go.

And so that's what I'm going to put on the floor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: And, Mayor Pete, this is a guy, Mitch McConnell, who laughed in a debate when he was confronted with the fact that they haven't passed a bill since July, when there's one that could have been sitting on his desk to help people economically.

We now know that GOP strategists are talking behind the scenes that have been consulting with Senate campaigns, have said that, per Bloomberg: "Republicans have been carefully laying the groundwork to restrain a Biden administration on federal spending and the budget deficit by talking up concerns about the price tag for another round of virus relief. The thinking, the strategist said, is that it would be very hard politically to agree on spending trillions more now, then in January suddenly embrace fiscal restraint."

They don't think they can get away with yet another bob and weave on that.

What do you make of the fact that it seems that Republicans are trying to not help the economy because they're afraid it would help Biden and would put him in a stronger position economically next year?

BUTTIGIEG: Yes, it's politics first all over again.

Even the George W. Bush administration accepted responsibility during the transition to the Obama administration during those very sensitive months to have some level of collaboration on making sure that stimulus was being prepared and push through.

Here, it is just raw, naked power politics, from people who don't care about how everybody's doing out here in our communities. And it's unconscionable.

As you pointed out, a bill was already sent to McConnell months ago. He could have pushed that through. Now the president doesn't seem to agree with the GOP Senate. The president can't even agree with himself. One minute, he's tweeting -- maybe it was just the dexamethasone talking, but he was tweeting, we're walking away from the talks.

Then he's, go big, but he wants to go smaller than we did.

REID: Yes.

BUTTIGIEG: It's totally incoherent at a moment, when real livelihoods are at stake. And people can't afford for there to be this incoherence in the president or in the GOP.

REID: Really quickly -- we are really out of time.

But I know that you were one of the first people out to say that the Supreme Court should be expanded, that this should happen. Do you think that Joe Biden, is that something that he would support, even though it wouldn't be up to him? It would be up to the Senate if the Senate went Democratic.

BUTTIGIEG: Look, I think my views haven't changed. We have got to continue finding ways to depoliticize the court.

But that's speaking only for myself. And what I know is, right now, we have got a huge fight on our hands to make sure that we protect health care and all the other things that are at stake with this seat that's open right now, that most Americans agree with Joe Biden and me that it ought to be the next president who makes that decision.

That's the fight in front of us. And I have admired the way Senate Democrats have spoken to what's really at issue right now.

REID: Mayor Pete, your region, the sort of Midwest, the whole Midwest, is hot right now. There are a lot of exciting races. I wish I had more time with you. I'd go through each of these races and make you be a pundit, but I have got to let you go and have a life and have an evening.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, thanks very much for being here. Really appreciate your time.

All right, and still ahead on THE REIDOUT: Dr. Anthony Fauci calls the pursuit of herd immunity ridiculous. The World Health Organization calls it unethical. Is that stopping the Trump administration from doing it anyway? Of course not.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: If you talk to anybody who has any experience in epidemiology and infectious diseases, they will tell you that that is risky, and you will wind up with many more infections of vulnerable people, which will lead to hospitalizations and deaths.

So, I think that we just got to look that square in the eye and say it's nonsense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: Today, the U.S. surpassed eight million known coronavirus cases, as Dr. Anthony Fauci joined the chorus of public health experts who are sounding the alarm on herd immunity, a strategy that is reportedly being embraced by some members of the White House, including Trump's coronavirus guru, Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist with zero background in infectious diseases.

This idea, which Trump at one point mistakenly mislabeled herd mentality, basically boils down to the government throwing up its hands and saying, let everybody just catch the rona, the weakest will die, but everybody else will magically become immune.

It's an approach denounced by mainstream health experts, because it would involve millions of deaths. And yet the approach tracks with what we have been seeing from Trump all along, his rejection of science, insistence on herding his fans together, hatred of masks, and apparent contempt for medical experts.

But perhaps what's just as terrifying would be if Trump actually has no strategy at all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VARNEY: What happens if you get a big spike in cases in the United States? And cases are rising? What would you do here?

TRUMP: Right. We're not doing any more lockdowns, and we're doing fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: Joining me now is Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

We have been hitting this a lot lately, Dr. Jha.

And thank you so much for being here.

We had learned last week -- and Rachel Maddow had also reported on this -- that the health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, had done this meeting. And he had put out tweets knowing he had been talking to, he said, three distinguished infectious disease experts to discuss COVID-19 science and data from around the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, tweeted that out, saying this was them putting out strategy, and he named a couple of them.

We then later learned that he was meeting with this group from something called Great Barrington Declaration scientists. They had signed this declaration, and lots of strange names and fake names signed it -- Dr. Johnny Bananas, which is my personal favorite, signed it as well -- and that it's all about doing herd immunity.

From what you have seen over the past several months, do you see the administration just actually trying to implement herd immunity, even if just with their own crowds?

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes, so, Joy, thanks for having me on.

What we have seen out of the administration is a pretty consistent pattern of trying to find simple solutions to a complex problem. So, for a little while, it was hydroxychloroquine. Then it was oh, don't worry, these are just cases, but no one's ever going to get sick or die from these things.

And I think the latest one they have hit upon is herd immunity. And that's really because it seems -- it's easy, right? You don't have to work at it. You just let people get infected and hope for the best.

REID: Yes.

JHA: The problem is, it's not going to turn out very well.

We're going to have, as you said, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans dead. And it may not even work, because we don't know how long immunity lasts. So we could have millions of Americans die, and everybody else still be susceptible because immunity doesn't last.

We don't know. So it's a terrible idea. And it may not work.

REID: And this is what is been reported. This is in "The Washington Post."

"A senior administration official told reporters in a background briefing call on Monday that the proposed strategy supports what the Trump has been -- what has been Trump's policy for months. We're not endorsing a plan, they said. The plan is endorsing what the president's policy has been for months., the president's policy, protect the vulnerable," blah, blah.

They basically are sort of talking in circles and not really explaining what they're doing. But what they're actually doing is gathering people together, both in the White House and at these events, without masks on, discouraging the use of masks, mocking people who use masks, even mocking reporters who try to protect themselves, mocking Joe Biden.

And so it is -- it feels like, functionally, that's what they're doing and, at minimum, like you said, that maybe they have just given up, and they have figured this is the way to go.

But let me let you listen to what the World Health Organization's director, whose name is Tedros Ghebreyesus, said -- Ghebreyesus -- said on Monday about this idea of herd immunity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, DIRECTOR GENERAL, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic.

Allowing a dangerous virus that we don't fully understand to run free is simply unethical. It's not an option.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: And this is a map showing where the increases are.

We have 36 states, including D.C., showing increases in cases. Are you concerned that the way we're going now, we're just not going to be able to get out of this vicious cycle, because anyone who listens to Donald Trump, which is about 40 percent of the country, will just refuse to protect themselves and others, and the other 60 percent will try, and then -- but both will come in contact with each other at Target, and then it just keeps going around again?

JHA: Yes, so the misinformation that's been coming out of a lot of sources around this virus, I think, is absolutely, absolutely atrocious.

And I totally agree with Dr. Tedros, by the way. This is unethical. It's awful as a policy idea, and there's no reason we should be pursuing it.

The problem you bring up, Joy, is, unfortunately, a really complicated one, because we do have 40 percent of Americans, or a large chunk, who don't wear masks, who don't believe in the science because the information they're hearing contradicts that.

This is where we need policy-makers to step up. And even if we don't get it from the federal government, this is where we need states to act, right? We need governors and mayors to follow the science and do the right thing, even if not all of their constituents are doing it.

I know it's not going to be easy, but I think it's pretty critical that they at least step in.

REID: Yes.

And not -- a lot of them aren't, I mean, hashtag Florida. I don't even know what else to say.

Dr. Ashish Jha, it's always great talking with you. Thank you very much.

JHA: Thank you.

REID: And, meanwhile, all signs are pointing toward potentially -- thank you -- potentially historic levels of voter engagement.

Can Democrats harness that passion? And is the biggest risk for those who want out of Trumpmerica overconfidence?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's most troubled (ph) election we're going to have. We've got all do our part.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we have seen enough chaos.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think this is our time to get it right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was no way I was going to not vote.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's just part of what we need to be doing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's worth it. It doesn't matter. We have to spend the night. We'll stay out here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have to vote like our life depends on it. This election is for real.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: The passion is real for voters in Texas and Georgia, two states that started in-person early voting this week, joined today by North Carolina. And all that enthusiasm made for long, long lines at the polls.

Nearly 16 million Americans have voted. Wow.

But with more voting comes more of the predictable chicanery to try and deter and stand in voters' way by Republicans. After initially blaming long lines in Georgia on high turnout alone, the Republican secretary of state acknowledged the computer check in system couldn't handle the load, and said they'll work to improve the speed.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail to limit the number of votes cast. But you already knew that, especially in Harris County, the state's largest, where they challenged every effort to make voting easier and safer in a pandemic.

Today, a Texas state court issued an injunction blocking Governor Greg Abbott's order limiting mail in ballot drop off locations to just one per county.

Governor Abbott has unsurprisingly appealed that decision.

I'm joined by the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and former Texas congressman and former Democratic presidential candidate, Beto O'Rourke.

Thank you both for being here.

Mayor Bottoms, let me go to your first. The excuse that's been given by the secretary of state in Georgia, I think it makes people suspicious, given that the former secretary of state is now the governor, and got there through some -- through a means a lot of people don't think was quite Democratic.

Do you trust the systems that are operating in your state right now for voters?

MAYOR KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS (D), ATLANTA, GEORGIA: Well, thank you for having me, Joy. What I would say is that excuses are tools for the incompetent. These are -- we've been through elections before.

We went through this in the primary season back in June. It was a disaster. We had ample time to be prepared for this election. And even when you think about June, we put off the primary twice, and only to get to June to have it be a complete disaster. And we saw that again on Monday.

Now, thankfully, lines were better and have improved over the past few days. But to open up with early voting and have a glitch that we have across the metro area and the state. It's really unacceptable. And the excuses are just that. They are excuses.

REID: And, Congressman O'Rourke, same thing in Texas. The reason we want you both on tonight is because Texas and Georgia are two of the most important really swing states, and haven't been swing states in a while.

But you're seeing in "Atlanta Journal Constitution", early voting 128,000 people right off the bat in the "Atlanta Journal Constitution". "Houston Chronicle" and we talked about this before, 1 million votes cast on just the first day of early voting in that largest county. In Texas, you see 1.65 million votes cast as of yesterday. Nearly a million votes in Georgia.

So, that is 13.1 percent of the Georgia electorate, already having voted. I don't know what the percentage is in Texas. Same question to you, though, the fight against drop boxes and everything that would make voting easier has been really relentless. You now have been competing court decisions in terms of ballot drop boxes.

Are you confidence the systems will allow everyone who wants to vote to have their vote counted?

BETO O'OROUKE (D-TX), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Here's the telling story, Joy. I just left the phone bank to jump on your show for a young woman named Akilah Bacy who's running for state rep in Harris County. And about half the voters that I called told me they already voted.

It turns out that Harris County on the first day alone had 128,000 votes cast, which was a total for the state of Georgia on that same day. And so, despite the voter suppression tactics of Greg Abbott and the voter ID laws, and the racial gerrymandering and the ballot box closures in Texas, voters are turning out in record numbers. In fact, in Harris County alone, they doubled the 2016 turn out on Monday, and doubled the greatest day of early voting in Harris County history.

So, Chris Hollins, who's the county clerk there, Lina Hidalgo, the county judge, they have invested in access, 24-hour voting, drive through voting, ballot tracking applications, voting super-centers. So, they and the people of Texas are overcoming this voter suppression. That's I think the true story and a really positive exciting story.

REID: And, you know, Mayor Bottoms, I think it's -- I think it is exciting to see people voting. It's also enraging to see people have to stand in line for hours and hours. That's not the way it should be in a -- in a supposed first world country.

We know that in Georgia, Fulton County, Cobb County, DeKalb County and Gwinnett County, which are counties that have a lot of black folks in them are the ones who are seeing the long lines. There have been studies now out that show just being black is the biggest predictor of having to stand in line for a long time.

How are you advising, you know, voters in particular, in your -- in your city. But even the Biden campaign, you're a surrogate, to think about the ways to communicate with African-American voters on how to over come that?

BOTTOMS: Well, Joy, remind people of history, that people died for this right to vote. And people endured so much more than an inconvenience.

We are asking people to make plan for so many people. It's about having to take off work or get child care in order to be able to vote. And on top of that one day voting plan, we are now telling people, make several plans. (AUDIO GAP) things may not work out as you intend the first time you attempt to vote. But we have to still push through it and still go out and vote.

In Atlanta, if you are in Fulton County, one of the counties you mentioned, you can go to State Farm Arena with the help of the Atlanta Hawks, which has been a tremendous benefit to this voting process. People can go and park at the arena. Wait times were pretty short today. Parking is free around the arena.

We're giving city employees up to eight hours off to volunteer at polling places to try to assist. We're just telling people and reminding people, vote if your life depends on it, because our lives do depend on it, our future depends on it. And it's worth everything we have to endure to make sure that our votes are counted.

REID: Yeah. And I'm happy to see we're showing a lot of video of voters. I'm happy to see most of them have on mask. That's very smart.

To go back to Texas, Congressman O'Rourke, there is almost no state that is more aggressive, other than, well, maybe the governor of Georgia, but in terms of voter suppression. It's been epic. There have been lawsuits during the Obama administration.

"The Texas Tribune" is reporting that in Harris County, Harris County actually tried to make it easier during the pandemic for people to vote, and here's what the Republicans did to try to fight it. The battle lines were acknowledged in one of the many lawsuits Republican leaders and activists filed in the past few months, attempting to rein in Harris County's efforts to expand voting access. As Texas goes, so too will the rest of the county, they wrote. As goes Harris County, so too will go Texas. That's part of the GOP lawsuit. If Trump loses Texas, it would be difficult if not impossible for him to be reelected.

So, they're being very open that they're doing this to make sure Donald Trump gets re-elected.

I don't even know how you fight that when the government of your state is fixing all of the rules to make it all but impossible for people of color to vote when that's the rising majority. How do you plan for that? Can you help me out on that?

O'ROURKE: Well, you're absolutely right because in addition to removing the absentee ballot drop off boxes, you have the most aggressive voter ID laws in the country, literally implemented within minutes of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fiery dissent in the 2013 Shelby decisions, which gutted the Voting Rights Act. You have what is described by federal judges as a racial gerrymandering.

And over the last eight years since Shelby, 750 ballot box or polling places have been closed, concentrated in the fastest growing black and Latino neighborhoods.

So, the thing is we as Democrats do not have power to fix this yet, but what we can do is win these statehouse elections, win a majority this year and then have a majority that can dismantle the voter suppression in Texas. That's why these elections are key. That's why we're phone banking, that's why we anybody can call 866-OUR-VOTE and we'll have someone who will help them make sure that their ballot can be cast and that their vote is counted.

So, we're going to do everything we can now, but it's super important that we win these elections so that we have a majority that can make our democracy work.

REID: Yeah, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Beto O'Rourke, thank you very much. Really appreciate you guys. Wishing all of your voters all of the best. Everybody is out there voting, we're really proud of everyone who's doing it. Thank you.

And up next, a cold, hard look at what is really at stake in this election.

And tonight, be sure to tune into THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. This is a big one. Her special guest tonight, Caroline Giuliani in her first interview since writing a piece in "Vanity Fair" in support of Joe Biden. You do not want to miss it.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

REID: So I think you pretty much have gotten the message that there is a lot at stake in this election. As we head towards the end of round one when we start counting votes on November 3rd. Rounds two and maybe three, the undemocratic round that had to do with lawsuits and the Electoral College, well, the more votes that get on the books before November 3rd, the less painful and dangerous those rounds will be.

Literally everything is at stake y'all, literally everything. Our basic right to vote ever again, whether the last shreds of the voting rights act will fall or whether we can rebuild the act that John Lewis bled for. That's at stake.

Whether or not 20 million people and more than 7 million with pre-existing conditions, including everyone who has had coronavirus, whether they'll lose their health care, that's at stake.

Whether or not thousands of little kids who fled here from Central America with their families will ever see their parents again, that's at stake. Whether or not our friends and loved ones' sex marriages will remain legal in all 50 states and LGBT civil rights in general and whether women will lose the right to control what happens to our own bodies is at stake. Whether or not poverty and want will continue to overtake this country with an out of control pandemic wrecking small businesses, driving millions into unemployment and pushing people into the street after losing the roofs over their heads, all at stake.

And our lives, our lives are literally at stake in this election because of COVID.

So go to planyourvote.org and please check your voter registration deadlines. Tomorrow is the last day to register in Nebraska. Sunday is the last day in Illinois. And, Monday, October 19th, is a big one, the last day for voters in South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Alabama to sign up.

If you're more than the one of 15 million people who already voted, God bless you. If you can find the time to be a poll worker or help drive people to the polls, with your mask on please, please do so.

Now most of you who watch this show already know exactly who these candidates are. You don't need more information tonight or any other night. All you need is the will to save this country, so please, please, please vote.

Thanks as always for watching. We'll be back, back at it tomorrow, on THE REIDOUT.

Have a good night.

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

Content and programming copyright 2020 MSNBC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2020 ASC Services II Media, LLC. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of ASC Services II Media, LLC. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.