people share views with just one click. >> we can create the world we want to live in through representative democracy by making all of our voices heard on the issues. >> want to learn more? go to cnnheroes.com/donate. you'll receive an email confirming your donation, which is tax deductible in the united states. and you can learn more about the organizations, including how to help. just go to cnnheroes.com. don't forget to tune in. it airs a week from this sunday december 13th at 8:00 p.m. eastern. don't miss full circle, our digital live show. watch there on cnn app at any time on demand. news continues. let's hand it over to chris for cuomo prime time. >> thank you, coop. i am chris cuomo. welcome to "prime time." today's giving tuesday. i ask you to reach out in any

way that you can because the need out there is great. i have two important items to give to you. first, breaking tonight, we've just learned who may get the first access to a life-saving vaccine. a cdc advisory panel voting a short while ago 13-1 to recommend health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities be the first in line to get the shots when the fda authorizes one for emergency use. that may be later this month. now, the single vote against the recommendation came from a doctor concerned vaccine effects hadn't been studied yet in residents of long-term care facilities. only one vote. one concerns about the vaccine's safety and readiness are shared by many in this country. most measures say we're about split on taking the vaccine, so there's work to do on proving the safety. however, for those anxious,

according to operation warp speed in a document obtained by cnn, the first shipments of pfizer's vaccine will be delivered on december 15th, and the moderna vaccine's estimated delivery is december 22nd. that's just two and three weeks away. but it will be many months before we have enough herd immunity to make that vaccine really work. the period between now and then could be the worst of this pandemic. cases are only growing. more than a million new cases per week. more than 2,300 deaths. that's from today. 2,300 in a day. remember when 1,000 seemed unimaginable that we had that many. now it's more than double that. forget your fatigue. face the reality. the worst is likely yet to come. what do we need? leaders and money. we need people to be told the truth. that's leadership. they have to be given tests and

resources to stay safe. that's money. but most of all, they need cash in their pocket to survive the rest of this pandemic. can you believe today was the first meeting between lead negotiators on a relief bill for you since october? shame on them all. we pledge on "cuomo prime time" we will stay on this process soup to nuts, most importantly not just big developments, the spaces between. who is resistant and on what basis? is this a good argument or a bad one? this will be the platform for them to make the case to you. here's the offer from the senate. 908 billion. that sounds humungous. but it doesn't include a second round of stimulus checks. why? we have one of the key senators behind the plan in a moment. our president is no longer

tweeting about hunger and poverty and passing, by president i mean president-elect joe biden. he is pushing congress to make a deal while unveiling his team earlier today. >> the full congress should come together and pass a robust package for relief to address these urgent needs. my transition team is already working on what i'll put forward in the next congress to address the multiple crises we're facing. our message to everybody struggling right now is this: help is on the way. >> the scale and the scope is the biggest we've seen since the depression. and i argue to you, the motto of that time, of the new deal, applies every bit as much as today. do you remember? relief, reform and recovery. families need money in pocket in addition to programs. that's the relief. we do need to reform the response to this pandemic. testing. figuring out the best way to keep our kids in school.

it can't be that one class is shut down by one case. it doesn't make sense. there has to be a better, smarter way. nobody's been talking about it. that must be reform. and then and only then will we be able to start recovery once the vaccine cuts the spread. now, what does this take? well, it takes a deal. can there be a deal with the party of trump? re-trumplicans, like mcconnell still won't acknowledge that biden will be president in just 50 days. he literally refused to do so again today and also said this. >> we don't have time for messaging games. we just don't have time to waste time. >> how does he say it with a straight face? that's the part i admire. how? he has done nothing but slow walk the relief, and he knows it. he's told people there would be no deal. and then with a straight face he just lies to you.

remember -- remember -- who did and did not do what mattered in this moment. now, our second big development today may remind mcconnell that he was once a man, not just a mannequin. as we saw in "the lion king" the hyenas are starting to circle president scar. the bs trump is conning you about, be clear that will be a big part of trump's legacy. with this con job to sabotage this transition, that may be solidify his place as arguably the greatest ameri-con president we've ever had. now barr is even trying to resurrect a modicum, no evidence to support the widespread fraud

lie, no evidence that could change the result of the election. attorney general b. barr, defender of this president and every bit of pifal that comes out of his mouth says no evidence of fraud that could have changed the election. do you hear that? on the same day that barr said that, a judge forced his department of justice to tell us something else that he had been keeping quiet. they are investigating allegations of people seeking to bribe their way into pardons. that comes out just as we hear that rudy giuliani and others are asking for exactly that, pardons. question is, for what? talk about a guilty conscience. you want a pardon. you're telling me everything you do is legit but you want a pardon? "the new york times" is reporting tonight along with a potential giuliani pardon, trump has discussed with advisers rather to grant preemptive pardons to his kids ivanka, don,

jr., eric, and his son-in-law jared. what does that say that he wants to excuse them for everything before there's even an investigation. bad news for trump translates to good news for the drama finally ending around this transition so we can now finally focus on the pandemic trump has all but ignored. what do you say? let's get after it. for more on the breaking news from the cdc let's bring in dr. richard besser. the priority going 13 to 1 health care workers and nursing home recipients. that second group knew. we have been told hospital workers, essential workers, then the medically fragile, then them. so, what do you think of those first two decisions? >> i think it makes a lot of sense. i have worked with the advisory committee on immunization

practices, this group that advises cdc on immunizations and who should get them. and as a pediatrician i've always looked to them for guidance. what they've done here in selecting these two groups, the first looking at health care workers, we need to make sure that our health care work force is safe in order to take care of all of the people who are coming down with covid and all of the people with medical issues unrelated to covid who need care. in addition, if you look at who is bourn the greatest burden in terms of mortality, 40% of the deaths in this pandemic have been people in long term care facilities. one of these is helping keep society going, keeping the health care system going, and one is addressing the issue of who is dying from the pandemic. >> one of the 14-person panel, one doctor said we don't know enough about how this works on old people. they are right. we haven't seen testing of any vaccine that we know of on that

population. is a reservation warranted? >> normally, chris, what would happen is the fda would do their work first. they would review all of the data coming in from industry. then their advisory committee would look at the report from fda and make a decision, do we license this or not, in which groups are we going to license this vaccine and then cdc would do their work, their advisory committee. they've reversed that here because states need to know, look, vaccine is likely going to be coming soon. we don't know for sure these are going to get approved, but there's a good chance they will. who should get them. that's what happens here. it may be in the work thatfda does, we think this will be good in this population or they could come back to the companies and say we really want you to conduct additional studies among medically fragile people in

long-term care facilities. >> let's say they do the due diligence the right way, it rolls out, it's fine. now, let's take it a step deeper than we've seen in the coverage of the headline moment about the decision. that is, okay, so that's what the federal guidance is. now you get to state level. i did some digging around in the tri-state area here, new york, new jersey, connecticut because you've had so many cases here. they may well not get enough doses, the expected 40 million doses this month that's enough to immunize 20 million people -- you've got to divide every number because you need two shots here -- that won't be enough to cover the 24 million health care workers and nursing home residents in phase 1a. so, just because we've been given a determination by the cdc who gets it doesn't mean you can fulfill the entire population. what kind of onus does that put on states? what kind of choices do they have to make? >> they have to make tough

choices. there clearly will not be enough vaccine to reach those two high priority groups. states have been working on this now that they have the recommendation from the federal government. it is only a recommendation. there's nothing legally that binds them to that. as we've seen throughout the pandemic there's been a desperate need from leadership from the top. one of the critical things -- i serve on the restart and recovery commission here in new jersey. they're talking about the importance of equity and making sure that as you look at distributing vaccine to people in health care or people in long-term care facilities, are you going to be making sure that it's getting to communities of color that have been hit so incredibly hard by this pandemic? or is it going to be to those health care facilities in the wealthier neighborhoods, those that have better connections? >> we're going to have to keep an eye on that. this is going to be a big reporting job, this vaccine. and you know, on the initial level, i understand operation warp speed is legendary in terms of the speed of doing this and

the commitment by government putting the money up front when it could have failed was a ballsy move to use indelicate language for an indelicate situation. however, there are complaints that the fda is taking too long to approve the vaccine since pfizer applied for theireua, their emergency use authorization on november 20th. what do people have to understand about the timing of authorizations? >> well, you know, the naming of this as operation warp speed may have been a challenging name because a lot of people are concerned that things are going too fast. >> too fast, right. >> and one of the things about fda is that they are known for doing due diligence and really carefully looking through data. a lot of countries will take company data and just go with that on their approval. here in the u.s., fda scientists will do their own analysis of the data, and sometimes they don't agree. we need to let fda do this.

you could end up with a vaccine being approved, but if people think the process has been politicized, no one's going to want the vaccine and it's not going to have any impact. we need the fda to look at it carefully. we need the advisory committee to know the honest truth. if people feel there's additional data needed or other companies can show they're able to manufacture the vaccines to scale in the way that's safe we have to go slower than we're going. >> luckily trump didn't poisen the vaccine the way he did masks. this hasn't been politicized other than some people have misgivings about trump was behind it, can we trust it. this is more about operation warp speed and the fda and we'll take it one step at a time in terms of the data which leads us to the science. in terms of the real challenges, going forward, the idea of great, we'll just distribute it, i keep being told on the state level and even the federal level, yeah we give out about 80

million vaccines a year here. so the government knows how to do things of a certain scale. but we've never done anything like this. what are challenges that come front of mind? >> there are numbers. these vaccines have storage requirements that are very different from the vaccines i give as a pediatrician. the pfizer vaccine requiring temperatures of minus 90, requiring new technology to be able to move those vaccines around in a way so that they say effective. we're going to need to be able to track people to make sure that somebody who starts the pfizer vaccine gets the second dose in four weeks and it's the same vaccine, they're not mistakenly given the moderna vaccine. as you have a population that they may be moving around, logistically that's all really, really challenging in some of the planning that states have to do. as this is going on, there are going to be more vaccines likely that come on market. how do you ensure that people are getting the right products? >> what happens if you get the first one and don't get the second one within the four weeks for whatever live brings? >> well, you know, typically a

company will be able to look at that because they'll have people in vaccine trials who for one reason or another only get one dose and you can look at protective levels. i would expect with one dose there's some level of protection and with the second dose you get more protection that lasts longer. but that's one of those unanswered questions because of how fast these are being done and how short the period of follow-up is. >> last question. >> one of the things i know fda is going to ask for is following people in these trials for many, many months if not years to look for longer term issues and side effects and how long the protection lasts. >> how long the protection lasts, one question. the last question is, how soon does it start working? >> well, you know, the initial results, again, it's company data so we'll be looking to fda. initial results were showing protective levels seven days after your second dose. so, there's probably some level -- >> second dose. >> yeah, second dose. so, there's probably some

protection level after your first dose. but my biggest concern is people are hearing all this news and they're thinking we're out of the woods and the vaccine relief means we don't have to do things that are driving everyone nuts like wear masks and keeping apart from friends and loved ones. i hope it doesn't take pressure off congress. as you remember saying before, if you're not putting money in people's pockets f you're not extending eviction protection and home foreclosure protection and keeping people's utilities on, this pandemic will be an absolute debacle this winter as more and more people get affected and they don't have the supports they need. >> dr. richer besser, thank you very much. >> thanks, chris. a break through on the horizon economically. how about that piece that the doctor was just talking about? relief to millions of americans. remember more people hungry and in fear of going hungry in this country than at any time since the great depression. almost one in six of us, 50 million people.

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we haven't seen anything like it in a generation. i can't believe it's not all that people talk about. look at the number of people that are going hungry in america. i mean, how do you explain it? you can't pass it off as, oh, those poor people, they don't want to work the way we do. it's not what it is. it's families that have been displaced by economic hardship by this pandemic all across the country. red and blue states, white families, every color, every creed, people just like these. >> we're just surviving.

that's all i can say. you just have to survive it. >> i have been working since -- >> can't find a job. they cut off my unemployment. >> we have kids. i don't know how to support them. >> you can't provide for your own family. >> it's like a -- >> it's all of us. for the first time in too long, those elected to take care of the people that you see there are talking about doing something. that includes a word we haven't heard in a while, bipartisanship. you need two sides to make a deal in a culture that seems to reward opposition more than anything else. can they get a deal done. democratic senator joe manchin from west virginia joins us now. good to see you, senator. >> good to see you, chris. how are you? >> better than i deserve. is it true that the lead negotiators here haven't talked since october? >> well, i'm not going to

speculate on what they haven't done or what's happened. nothing has gotten done. we don't have anything in front of us. and about three weeks ago, there was a group of us came together and said, listen, we're not going to go home during the christmas break if we have to face the people who you said are hungry having a hard place keeping a roof over their head, all the hardships they're going through and we've committed ourselves to making a difference and changing things. we sarted working. we didn't condemn or curse the darkness. we said let's start working guys. this is truly an emergency relief package. december 1 through april 1. i think we're entering at the most difficult challenging times of the pandemic we've seen. >> your party says, no, joe, we're only going to get one bite at this apple. even though $900 billion is a ton of money to the rest of us,

it's less than the white house offered in october, it's less than the democrats need, it doesn't have money for checks directly to families. it's not enough and that's why there's only five of you behind this bill and not 45. >> no, no, chris, on the senate side, we have -- we have about 10 senators evenly split. we have many more coming on board that want to be involved. we need everybody. and this thing is getting a lot of momentum because we looked at all the critical needs we have. when you look at all the things people are going to be losing as of december, whether it be unemployment checks, food assistance, all the supports and lifelines we've had, those are eliminated as of december. you tell me someone in their right mind or someone in their heart and soul can go home and their responsible for making a difference and letting people be in that kind of misery. we're not going to do it. if they're telling me it's not enough, we're doing all we can to find that middle ground and

find the necessities we need. $908 billion is what this bill is. we have $26 billion for nutrition. these aren't just the people that are on food stamps or the s.n.a.p. program. these are people you've never seen in a food hunger line before. >> right. >> food bank. look at all -- i've been watching your show. you're showing lines and lines of people. >> yep. >> and these are not your typical people going hungry. they are hungry now. >> why not checks to families? did you did it last time. that worked well. >> and it might work again. the only thing we're doing, we're trying to get something we can get everybody to agree on which is the emergency needs we have right now. joe biden will be our president-elect. he'll be our president as of january 20th and when that happens he can come back and determine we need to do that. but right now we're just trying to get things out the door. we've got republicans stuck around $500 billion repurposing the money that's not been spent from the first c.a.r.e.s.

package, about 560 billion. we're putting another $348 billion to it to make this work, and we have people having a hard time with it. >> why wasn't the money spent? >> $300 billion is what it takes for an extension to the stimulus package as far as checks to everybody. joe biden might decide to do that. right now we're just trying to get a group of democrats and republicans that can meet the emergency needs of americans. >> i hear you. let me just go through the needs so we can understand it. you said there's a lot of money that hasn't been spent. why not? >> well, basically there was $128 billion of what we call ppp money -- >> payroll protection. >> payroll protection. we will reappropriate that. and we've put another, i think, 160 -- the total amount will be 300 billion when we're done. back up to 300 billion. >> you understand what i'm asking, joe?

a lot of people say it was too hard to get that ppp. i tried to get online, the software didn't work, i couldn't get connected, couldn't file it. so, they never got the money. that need still exists. >> a lot of people that didn't but a lot of people did. we're forgiving a lot of loans. next of all what we're doing is we're changing things that we know we made mistakes. we saw the problems people had. we saw the hardships they went through. we saw a lot of people getting money that shouldn't have gotten it. >> there's going to be fraud. there's going to be grifters. you know the pain is real. >> we're basically trying to close all those loopholes, chris. we're doing everything we can to make sure the small, needy businesses. we've got restaurants that can't make it. >> absolutely. >> outdoor dining -- you can't do outdoor dining in the north. >> true, it's too cold. >> we have a lot of people. we've got entertainment. they're not going to make it. >> not going to make it. >> we can't wait until february for joe biden to come in and try

to save us. we can't wait that long. they won't make it. >> agreed. one thing, joe. i respect you trying to get deal done and trying to be a fair broker. but i wouldn't sleep altogether on the shame game because when you say this is an emergency w very to get it done. that's true. but it's been an emergency for months. >> yeah. >> and the head of the senate said we don't have any time to waste. you know he has refused to do anything on it. he's slow walked it all along. 200,000 are dead. crazy unemployment. generational poverty. that wasn't enough. but now it's an emergency? >> well leading up to the election, everything was trump -- forget the pun -- by politics. the election was coming up and everybody was playing okay who does it help more, who does it harm more, maybe i can blame somebody else. people's lives are at stake right now. we haven't done anything for quite a while.

>> yeah. >> last july was the last time we did anything, the c.a.r.e.s. package. all the economists have said it. every bill you've seen introduced since then. the house has passed 3.2 trillion which is the h.e.r.o.e.s. act. they accommodated and went down and adjusted to $2.2 billion. they were negotiating with mnuchin and the white house. they were stuck at 1/8 this and that. mitch mcconnell put the heels down at $1.1 trillion at the end of july. we are excused and go home for august, which we should have never left here, chris. we come back and he starts over at $500 billion. now, you tell me he went from 1.1 to 500 and that's supposed to be in good faith? i don't think so. >> bad faith. >> nothing has happened since then. >> i know. that's why it's all bad faith. >> i've talked to chum schumer about this. chuck says listen, if you can get people together do it.

we're running into an impasse. if you all can do it, do it. i appreciate that and we did. we've got republicans and democrats truly trying to get something done as quickly as we can before the christmas break. >> you've got ten. >> we're not going to home. >> good. you shouldn't go home. they're going to tell you not to travel anyway. it would be good. stay there and do something. senator, i appreciate you do thissing. you're right about the urgency. i make you this offer. i will give you a platform on this show every week until it gets done between now and christmas to come on and tell us the state of play, what's helping, what's hurting, what are the sticking points so people know, okay? >> let me tell you this, chris. for the last three weeks, all through our thanksgiving break, we were on the phone five, six, seven hours a day trying to make something happen. we were trying to work through our differences. it was a monumental task just to get to 908 billion. people were saying it's too small. it should have been 1.2, 1.5, i

know it should have been. it's not enough. you're not taking care of the people that are hungry, people losing their place of inhabitance. they're getting thrown out, eviction, things of this sort. we're trying to bring all of this together to meet the truly suffering and needs of the people of america. >> keep telling them. >> i think we've done it and we need more and more help. >> keep telling them. the numbers are going to be a tough sell on the right. imagine it was your family. keep saying that to them and you'll have this platform every time you want it to tell us the state of play. >> chris -- chris, we're not ruling checks out. hopefully they'll come after joe biden is our president and leads us into a better time. right now we're just trying to get through the most challenging times this country has faced in many, many years. >> on that everybody can agree. again, i will invite you on every week to tell people how it's going. >> i'll come, chris, thank you. >> thank you, sir and be well. zblnc look, you've got to work all

different sides of this situation because you have to give the platform so they can get the attention for what they're trying to motivate. that's okay. somebody has a different deal, better deal, doesn't like the deal. come on. make the case. the status quo is killing us. not enough money. too much money. people are hungry in this country. also developing in washington, an alleged bribery for presidential pardon scheme. did trump -- someone try to pay off the white house? and why did a judge have to force this information out of the hands of the department of justice so the rest could see it? next stretched days for it. juggled life for it. took charge for it. so care for it. look after it. invest with the expertise of j.p. morgan,

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interesting bit of news. the department of justice was forced to tell you about something that is as troubling as it is timely.

the doj is actively investigating a bribery scheme focused on obtaining a pardon from the president. a judge ordered the release of about 20 pages from the case. a lot of it is redacted, but this is a clear indication from the court that people need to know that this is afoot. what can we tell? there is a, quote, secret lobbying scheme and a bribery conspiracy that offered a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence. let's dig into this this with former u.s. attorney preet bharara. this has been going on since the summer and how does this conflate or combine with what we're hearing about rudy and trump's plans for his own family? >> i'd be surprised if they're directly related to rudy. trump has a relationship with rudy giuliani. he has other reasons, perhaps

self-interested reasons why he might want to give a pre-emptive pardon to rudy giuliani, this is on behalf of someone who needs to pay and needs to offer incentive for the thing to get done. as you see from the redacted document, the order from the judge, this thing was written on or about august 28th of this year. i think it's the case that because the department of justice thought it was sensitive and it related to people who had not yet been charged and perhaps -- i don't know because i haven't seen the motion to seal -- perhaps because there was certain that such revelation in days before the election would be bad or violate policy, that convinced the judge to allow this to remain under seal. i think the judge was doing her job. she's a respected judge in d.c. in making sure unless someone's

rights are being prejudiced or someone's right to a fair trial is being impeded in some way, the documents filed in court are public and get publicly known. i wouldn't read more into it other than she's doing her job defending the openness of our courts. >> barr all but pulled a comey in terms of saying he's opening an investigation in the final weeks and days of it. i don't know how sensitive they are about that. what did you make about his disclosures today? this man has bent over backwards to protect the pifal that came out of trump's mouth and he said no proof of anything that is fraudulent that would have changed the outcome of the election. >> he did two things today. interestingly it was a deliberate choice. he has to have known that the president was not going to like it. you see allies of the president are attacking bill barr all over the place because it's seen as a debraill betrayal. this is the same man, bill barr,

who on cnn with our colleague wolf blitzer said, i expect, because common sense tells me so that thousands and thousands of ballots will be fraudulently filed and sent to the united states from abroad. and for him to say in the face of what the president wants and what the other lawyers are doing, rudy giuliani et al., i think it tells you how weak the president's arguments are about fraud in these states. the other thing was reveal for the first time another thing that was secret before the election, that he has appointed john durham in connecticut to be special counsel status in connection with the origins of the russia investigation, giving him presumably additional ability not to be relieved of that duty when the white house changes hands in january. >> why? why is he not able to be relieved? >> well, i think it makes it a little bit harder. i think people are still trying to figure out exactly if he did

it correctly under the regulations. there's one regulation that appears to have been violated, which is that a special counsel is supposed to dock from outside department of justice. that's what happened with bob mueller. >> this guy's an employee. >> yeah, he was outside the government. i think there are ways in which you can do it this way. i haven't fully nailed down if it was the proper thing to do or not. but it just makes it a little bit harder if it was done appropriately. a special counsel is entitled to remain in office to serve in the job unless there's good cause to remove, and the attorney general would have to give reasons, written reasons, to congress and the public as to why that person is being removed. so, it gives an extra measure of protection presumably in bill barr's head with respect to john durham, which is probably something that makes the president happy. >> is there an innocent reason to ask for a preemptive pardon? >> that's a great question.

presumably somebody like rudy giuliani who has disparaged his former office, also my former office, knows really well that the southern district of new york and its great tradition -- he led it well once upon a time -- is not going to bring some bs charge they can't prove or don't have a good faith reason to believe they can prove. so, someone like giuliani who knows that office and has been a lawyer for a long time and a prosecutor before that has to understand that to have a need for a pardon, a pre-emptive pardon, must mean you feel you're in some jeopardy. if he's doing that analysis, feeling he's in jeopardy, there's something to that. he knows what he's done and knows what kind of peril he's in. knowing those two things if the reporting is correct, he's asking for a pre-emptive pardon from the president of the united states. >> he's asking the right guy. preet brharara, thanks for the analysis. these are remarkable times.

i keep saying #remember because the names of these retrumplicans -- it's not about pull them out and shoot them. save that for them. for the reasonable, i'm just saying if you want things to get better, you can't turn a blind eye to an outgoing president waging war and trying to sabotage democracy. so, what's my job? how do we do this as an agent for you? sam donaldson, my mentor, he has lived through and covered all kinds of catastrophes. i don't know anything like this. let's talk about the right way for us to do the job, next. ♪ you're still the one ♪ that i love to touch ♪ still the one ♪ and i can't get enough ♪ we're still having fun, ♪ and you're still the one applebee's 2 for $20.

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some breaking news out of the white house tonight. outgoing president trump just held a christmas reception during covid. he doesn't care. many attendees not wearing masks. that's going to be his legacy. some were actually coughing, reportedly. that's not even a headline. that's who he is.

now what matters. trump delivered this line to his guests, quote, it's been an amazing four years. we're trying to do another four years. that's the sabotage the election con. otherwise, i will see you in four years. now, that's very important because even if hyperbolic, even if it's a tease, it gives you a window into why these retrumplicans are so afraid to say anything about his con that they all know is exactly that. so, what do we do about that? let's bring in legendary former abc news anchor sam donaldson. how are you, sir? >> i'm fine, chris, as far as i know. a smart alec answer would be in 14 days we'll know. but as far as i know, i'm okay. >> good, i'll take it. so, what are we to do after an unprecedented period of perfidy by people in this party where they sat silent? how do you cover that

>> well, you have to cover it the way good reporter, men and woman, have done the past four year, increasingly towards the ends of the trump era. that is call a lie a lie. ask why he lies and ask him to explain it and to be very aggressive. i was once known as aggressive. i was a pussycat. the presidents that i covered were gentlemen. they never said to my face i should be firped or thought i was a disgrace to the networks. they may have thought it but never said it. but the men and the women that had to deal with donald j. trump had something as unprecedented in our history. i compliment each and every one of them. give it to him and give it to his enablers. they have to come to the lord if the republican party will be reconstituted, and i hope it will be.

>> when you hear the line from him tonight, i will see you in four years. doesn't that explain why we are just going to be mired in opposition? >> we can't be. first of all, i don't think he will be back. he will be back in talking about the lies that he was neglected this time and he was cheated of it. he may say i am going to run again. don't you think that all of those young men of the party are going to say oh, yes. we will wait. no, no. the republican party can reconstitute itself. i hope it is. because we need two strong parties. the first thing it needs to do is cut ties with donald j. trump. that will be difficult because the republican base is his base though it has to be done delicately. you have to keep the man away from any influence from the standpoint of reconstituting your party. which should go back to its

principles. fiscal integrity. they made sure we didn't spend too much money. they made deals with the democrats. the democrats made deals with them. and moved the country forward. and when jimmy carter left office we had less than $1 trillion of national debt. what do you think has happened since? both party, particularly the republican party in power, have cut the taxes and and the tooth fairy is not available to pay for it. you want highways, bridges, air system and defense, you and i have to pay for it. it is called taxation. but no. the republican party, they are not interested in fiscal integrity. they are interested in wealth, money for the rich. >> sam, don't you see mcconnell in his slow walking right now and not wanting to do rereef, isn't that a nod to not doing anything the boss does not tell him to?

>> i don't think so. i think mcconnell is playing a very interesting game called georgia. called let's get those two republican senators back. if i don't get both back i am no longer the majority leader. that's one of the reasons he is not calming out trump. he is not even acknowledging formally the president is not the president-elect. the same goes for the stimulus. you would think mcconnell would say having a stimulus bill amounting to something, the trump administration is not too bad. that might be my tactic but nobody is asking. >> i asked you because you are the man. sam donaldson, i need you back on a regular basis so people can understand the right way forward. that still matters. doing it the right way. >> i will come when called. i will come when called. >> thank you. be well. we will be right back. really?- aah! ok. i'm on vibrate. aaah!

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today is giving tuesday. more than 50 million americans are going hungry. we have not seen anything like it since the great depression. it is a struggle we are seeing everywhere, all over the country.

in your backyard and mine. let me show you something. in the very church where christina and i got married. in that basement is where heart of the hamptons does it work. it's a nonprofit organization in southampton, where we got married and lived for so many years. volunteers work it and have been hit with need the likes of which never seen. they send food down the chute. i have send food down the chutes. they store all kinds of food, canned goods. 2019, they gave out 65,000 meals. as of this year, right now, they are at 175,000. just imagine how many more need help in the coming weeks with the holidays. along with food, they give them backpacks for school. these nonprofits are being stretched thin and need help from us to give to others.

the executive director from the hamptons sent me a video. i want you to see the work they are doing. music in the background is all part of keeping the spirits up. >> there is so much of a need out here that we are having to purchase a tremendous amount of food. previous to the pandemic, we were serving about 350 unduplicated households. and now we are serving 1100. we have seen a 300% increase in demand for our services. we have not had to turn anybody away that has come for food just yet. the important thing is that we need the funds to be able to keep up the pace for the community. the folks that are getting the food are not, you know, toothless, you know, homeless people or whatever. it is every day americans like us. we are all just one tragedy away from needing services that heart of the hamptons provides.

part of the reason we don't have photography or video of our food lines or drone images because we live in a small community. sometimes it's hard for people to come here. we don't want to have one person think that we would exploit their need to be able to garner more support. so we really support a video like this so that we don't have even one person shy away from our services and suffer more. >> i love that. i love that. he wouldn't put people like that on video. he doesn't want to play a shame game. he doesn't want that stigma. that is my brother from another. hilton crosby. can't fish worth a damn but he is always working, doing god's work in the community. and i tell you what, there are people like him all over the country. learn more about how you can help. go to their website, heartofthehamprg