enroll by december 15th. this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on the show, the assassination of a top nuclear scientist in iran, a senior u.s. official says israel was behind it. what really happened on that roadside near tehran? and why did it happen now in the waning lame duck days of the trump administration. also, 2,977. that is how many people were killed on the 9/11 terror

attacks. this week, the daily reported death toll from covid in america was almost as high. on multidays. vaccines are coming soon, but so is a dark and tragic winter. how can we reverse the terrible trends the u.s. is seeing and can we do it before christmas? harvard's michael mina has a plan. finally, the president and his allies continue to spread lies about widespread election fraud. >> at the highest level, it was a rigged election. >> think it's all innocuous? think again. one great political lie helped bring about the downfall of german democracy in the 1930s. the great historian margaret macmillan will explain. but first, here's my take. it's much too soon to be

thinking about a post-trump america. donald trump remains the most popular figure among republicans and he will continue to play a huge role in american politics in the years to come. but it is not too soon to begin thinking about a post-trump democracy. an american political system that learns from the challenges and threats it has endured over the last four years. to those who think this concern is overblown, i would simply say, look out the window. even thousand the president of the united states is attempting to use the powers of his office and public platform to overturn the results of an election. trump's efforts have not born fruit. the courts have refused to bend the rules. even republican-appointed judges have followed the law, local officials did their job. all of this is encouraging. even so, the past month has exposed fundamental weaknesses

in america's electoral system. american elections are mostly run not by apolitical federal officials but by local politicians, elected or appointed, representatives of both parties monitor elections and most collectively sign off on them. the system has worked because both sides have upheld their duty to certify election results that were free and fair, no matter the winner. but, in this election, the republican party, the president, the party's national chair, key senators and state party bosses put unrelenting pressure on these local officials to delay or reject the routine certification of results. in georgia, the state's two current republican senators called on secretary of state brad raffensperger to resign simply because he affirmed the truth, that the state's vote was free and fair. in michigan, which biden won by 150,000 votes, republican party officials hounded the two

republicans on the four-person board of canvassers that certifies results. in the face of this assault, one of the twofolding, it was only because one republican, aaron van langvelde, stood his ground that the results were certified. and the story is not over yet. in all likelihood, donald trump will keep up his attacks on those republican officials in the key swing state who is refuse to do his bidding. if raffensperger and van langvelde are drummed out of politics, the message to republican officials in the next close election will be clear, put party over country or you can say good-bye to your career. the next set of local officials might prove to be less honorable, so might a younger and more partisan batch of judges. america's election arrangements are rooted in a venerable anglo-saxon system in which citizens are called upon to perform official functions.

the anglo-saxon approach contrasts with the french continental system in which the state has more control. but this anglo-saxon system depends on the idea that citizens will place the public interest ahead of their private interest. donald trump has put that assumption to the test, plunging our democracy into crisis. we need a set of post-trump reforms to bolster american democracy. independent, nonpartisan boards should be established to manage elections rather than partisan officials. standardized rules should be set about voter registration, mail-in voting, ballot challenges and the reporting of results. we need a broader set of reforms that draw on the experience of the trump years, ones that codify into law what have been traditions and norms and practices. candidates should have to disclose their tax returns so that the public can be aware of any potential conflicts of interest. winners must be required to place any of their businesses or

assets into genuine blind trusts. we can now see that the lag between the election and inauguration is much too long, far longer than most other countries where it's often a day or two. the incumbent enjoys far too much power during this transition period. the trump administration has made the dangers clear by initially with holding funds for the transition and refusing to provide intelligence briefings to biden. laws should be written to ensure a smooth transition and minimize the possibility that the outgoing president can act to enhance his personal fortunes or cripple his successor. by assaulting american democracy in so many ways, donald trump has shown a light -- shoene a l the weakens. if donald trump himself in four years trying to pervert the system again, american democracy

this time will be better equipped to withstand it. go to cnn.com/fareed to a link to my "washington post" column for this week. let's get started. ♪ israel was behind the assassination of iran's chief nuclear scientist, a senior trump administration official told cnn. that killing was carried out on a road outside teheran last friday and iran's supreme leader, president and other officials have vowed revenge for it. what comes next? joining me now are three experts on these two sworn enemies, dina esfandiary is a fellow at the century foundation. she studies iran's foreign relations. martin indyk was a top diplomat

in the middle east and ronen bergman has filed investigate reports on the assassination for the "new york times." welcome all. let me start with you, ronen. it seems unclear whether or not the most dramatic james bond-like account is correct. that is that the israelis used a robot, no human beings involved, in this assassination. but what i'm struck by is that the iranian revolutionary guard seems to argue or present the case that that was in fact what happened. what do you think is going on? why is the iranian revolutionary guard putting out the story that it was done by robots? >> thank you, fareed, for the invite. the revolutionary guards are spreading stories, the first one to tweet the story is the relative of one of the top commanders of the revolutionary guard that this was a completely

remote controlled assassination that was done with no assassins on site. that can explain part of their security lapse in protecting. they were the ones who were supposed to protect one of the people that were directly threatened by israel and by the united states, a person designated by the united nations. they were supposed to guard him and they fail asked they also failed to kill or harm or arrest anyone of the assassins. if there was only a robot on site, it might explain some of their failures. but this science fiction version, that there was no one and it was just robots controlled, they claim, by satellite from israel, i think nobody in iran really buys that. however, i think that -- hopefully we will be able to report soon on the full details of the assassination and how this was done, this complicated,

there was a nissan parked on site. that nissan indeed had a machine gun control, automatic machine gun controlled by a remote control from somewhere else, possibly a command room. after that being used, the nissan exploded, it was used as a base for the heavy machine gun and then as a car bomb in order to intensify the effect and destroy the evidence. i don't think that anyone would leave such a complicated site just for a remote control sender that would possibly be other posts where most -- more people, more assassins would be present. and yesterday in an interview, the son of the late fakhrizadeh said they are sure that there were assassins on site. the family of the killed scientist do not accept the

version released by his body guards and security details and they say, no, there were assassins implicating, hinting that the revolutionary guard failed to arrest them or kill them on site. >> dina, what do you think this does in iran? i've seen accounts that say this will not display the nuclear program much. it's a 25 year old program, there are hundreds of scientists involved. will iran feel the need to retaliate? >> you're absolutely right, i don't think the effect on the nuclear program is going to be significant at all. this is one man in the nuclear program, as you said, is a massive program with many scientists involved in it. so i don't think that the goal was to have any significant impact on iran's nuclear plan.

i think will have have an impact internally on iran because there's going to be real pressure, particularly from the hardline camps in politics in iran to retaliate, to do something in return. it's going to be difficult for the -- those officials that are in power in the moment under the rouhani administration to hold them back. so i think they will want to because i think they won't want to jeopardize the risk of -- jeopardize any kind of dialogue with the incoming biden administration from january onwards. they don't want escalation at the moment. but it's going to be hard for them to hold those powers back and ignore that pressure that's going to be coming from all quarters in tehran. >> martin, so far it seems the iranians have been restrained in their responses. they didn't really respond to the soleimani assassination. and if you think about the places they could ramp up pressure, the militias in iraq,

yemen, syria, they've been trying to outlast the trump administration. is that the strategy or is there something else going on? >> i think that's very much the strategy. president rouhani has said that they're exercising what he calls strategic patience. and clearly from his point of view, this was designed to provoke them so as to complicate what they hope is their trump card, which is to negotiate with the biden administration, the lifting of sanctions that are having such an impact, profound impact, on the iranian economy. so i think that there's a struggle within iran about how to respond. but those who argue that this would just be playing into the hands of trump and netanyahu,

their efforts to scuttle any potential return to negotiations and the lifting of sanctions i think are likely to prevail. >> stay with us. next i'm going to ask this great panel what happens when joe biden who says he wants to rejoin the iran nuclear agreement takes office. will it work with tensions so high? t with this. and relieve it with this. but new preparation h soothing relief is the 21st century way to do all three. everyday. preparation h. get comfortable with it.

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which complicates joe biden's life at a time when he's trying to rejoin the iran deal, renegotiate it, perhaps. he's also been fairly straight forward and blatant in opposing things that the biden administration has said even before he's had a chance to talk to the president-elect in any serious depth about this. what is going on and is it worth us noticing that there is a possible election going to take place in israel one more time? >> that's right, fareed. it looks likely that israel will go to a fourth election, fourth in two years, probably in march of next year. and so certainly netanyahu cannot exclude that possibility. and i think he's basically preparing for it. and it seems to me, at least the way he's positioning himself, that he's planning actually to run against biden.

he benefitted in the last three elections, although not sufficiently, from having the support of donald trump, whether it was recognition of israel's annexation of the golan heights or movement of the embassy to jerusalem or the trump deal of the century, all of that advantaged him dramatically. but now he's facing a biden administration that is committed to returning to the jcpoa, the nuclear deal with iran. and for him, that is something that is acceptable. he made it clear in two public statements that he will oppose that just like he opposed the original deal, even by going to a joint session of congress to speak against president obama. so it looks like he's preparing to run against president biden on the issue of iran, which he

enjoys broad support in israel across the political spectrum, there's a feeling that the nuclear deal was a bad deal from israel's perspective. so it's not a bad political tactic for him. but israel's relations with a new american president in his first 100 days in office, if that's what transpires. >> dina, what about in iran? you have potential -- upcoming elections there as well. is it likely that all this tension results in a much more hardline president, does it matter? hard-liners are, in fact, in control anyway. >> yes, the elections in iran are a major issue and there is a lot of tension at the moment

inside iran to figure out which way the elections are going to go or that the hard-liners hold most of the levers of power at the moment. the key issue with the incoming biden administration is going to be however that the iranians know they're going to have to have some kind of dialogue with the united states. the problem that we're going to have is the sequencing of that dialogue. the iranians understand that they were in compliance of the deal and so dialogue must come only once the united states has rejoined the jcpoa first and then the iranians will embark on some kind of engagement and dialogue to talk about a range of issues and return to compliance, of course, with the nuclear deal. whereas i think the biden administration has a different viewpoint. i think what they want is for iran to return to compliance first and then for them to join the nuclear deal after that. of course, how that discussion goes, how they're able to resolve that difference, will have a significant impact on the way the elections go in iran in a few months' time.

>> ronen, all of this assumes that the iranians exercised the strategic patience that they have been exercising. but i assume that in israel, they are on high alert and i wanted to ask you whether you think there are dangers of a retaliation, for example, martin told me before the show began that israelis are planning to go to dubai for the winter break. they think about 50,000 israelis will be in dubai. dubai is a place where there's a large iranian presence. is that a potential area where there's a real vulnerability? >> yes, indeed, fareed. it's going to be less than 50,000 because many of those people, hearing the alerts from the national security council saying there's threat in dubai have canceled their future plans for holy day. the uae is designated as a green

state. no need to go to isolation when coming back to israel. people are planning that and canceling it. the israeli authorities have warned former nuclear scientists to be aware and limit their travel if at all during covid because of the iranian retaliation. but in general, israel doesn't -- israeli intelligence doesn't assess that the iranians are going to retaliate. they think they want to past the next months, a little bit more than a month, in basically maintaining low profile including have their -- the militias that they support in iraq calm down, not doing anything in order to pass the time and not play, according to what they believe, into the president trump's hand, maybe giving him a reason to attack iran. iran has maintained a very, very restrained approach. israel is a little bit concerned

that president-elect biden will call prime minister netanyahu and say whatever you have planned with president trump for the next month, i urge you not to do that. it's not a coincidence that a series of special operations and sabotage has happened in iran in the last year, all attributed to israel or america. and there will be people who might think that there's more to come and maybe people who would think that president biden will try to warn prime minister netanyahu. from the point of view of the iranian, they want to see what the president-elect will bring to the oval office. will he give them the one thing that they want more than anything else, and this is a direct access to the frozen bank accounts that are under sanctions in western banks. they want to see if biden is willing to sign a new jcpoa. i believe that he will be

willing to do so -- >> we have to leave it -- we have to leave it at that, ronen. we will have you back. thank you, all of you, for a fascinating conversation. coming up, how to beat this covid spike when we come back. just like your fingertips, your lips have a unique print. ...and unique needs. your lips are like no others and need a lip routine that's just right for you. chapstick® has you covered. chapstick®. put your lips first®. you can earn your degree faster and for less with relevant life experience and eligible transfer credits. because your experience matters. see how much you can save on your degree at phoenix.edu.

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everyone is getting excited about vaccines but we have many, many months to go before any hope of herd immunity. meanwhile, americans are being warned of an ugly winter filled with illness and death. the country saw 1 million new cases in covid in just the first five days of december.

to put that in context, it took the u.s. around three months to record the first 5 million cases. now we did it in five days. my next guest says it does not have to be this bad. michael mina is an assistant professor of epidemiology at harvard and his recent "time magazine" piece was titled, "how we can stop the spread of covid-19 by christmas." what is the plan that you have in place that would reverse these numbers? >> thanks, fareed. the idea is we have to stop spread. we have to stop one person from transmitting this virus to the next person. we can do that through vaccines once they become available. we can do that through social distancing and physical distancing and masks. but a very powerful way to do it is by giving people the knowledge that they are infected in the first place and empower people in america and across the world to know they're positive. and we can do this with very

simple, cheap, inexpensive tests that can be produced in the millions. these are paper strip tests that everyone could use in the comfort of their own home to indicate if they have coronavirus and if they have it at a level that is transmissible to other people. >> now the key you're describing is what the vice president taiwan told us on this program which was, he said it's not enough to test or trace. the key is that people who have it then have to isolate themselves. and so your plan gives people the knowledge -- obviously, not all of them will do it. but your argument is if enough do it, you break the spread. >> that's right. and the only way to really get people to know that they are infectious before they go on and infect other people is to test frequently. you have to be testing every few days. people will spread this virus before they have any symptoms at

all. so a small test like this one that's many my hand here is a lateral flow antigen test. these can be produced for a dollar or two, sold by $3 by the u.s. government, for example, and people can use them twice a week, for example, and be able to know before they actually transmit to anyone else that they have it, they can then make behavioral changes and modifications to either stay home or if they must go out of the house and must go to work because they need to get paid, which is a big problem right now, then they can make behavioral modifications even in their daily life. >> the biggest obstacle, as i understand it, to what you're describing is not the cost, not the technology. it all exists. the federal government, the fda is not willing to approve these because they don't believe or make them widely available because they don't believe they're as accurate as the pcr nasal test. explain why you think that this is sort of mistaking.

this is using medical thinking when what you're using the public health thinking. >> that's right. i don't necessarily want to put all of the blame on the fda here. the fda is in a position to authorize medical devices. but we are in a public health crisis. we have to use public health tools. as a medical director in a hospital, i wouldn't want to use one of these tests instead of the pcr tests. but as a public health practitioner, i want to do that. >> when you look at this -- this, you know, idea, do you believe that, you know, two tests a week, 10 or 20 million people, and how much time should we begin to see a decline in the covid numbers? >> well, if we could get these tests out to 20 million people a day, get them to deliver them through the u.s. postal service to people's homes, paid for by

the government. they show up in people's mailboxes, for example, we would start to see immediate effects. have half of the people in america use these tests every week. within a week we would -- every week we would see a 30% -- you remove 30% of infected from the population for a numbers of days. the next week you do it again, remove another 30%. it doesn't need to be perfect. but each week you're removing more people who are infectious than are becoming infected and that allows the epidemic to stop its exponential increases that we're seeing and start to go down again and eventually over a number of weeks, three or four, we will start to see massive gains in lower transmission of this virus, lower disease. >> this is very, very important. i hope that people in washington are listening because as you say, the key is giving people the knowledge that they might be infected, which is very easy to give them, even if it's not 99%

accurate. it is accurate enough that it could have a huge public health effect. michael mina, pleasure to have you on. >> thanks. i misspoke at the top, i said it took the u.s. three months to get to it first 5 million cases. i meant it took three months to get to that 1 million cases. next on "gps" donald trump and his allies have been telling te episodes from the last century when political lies like these destroyed democracy.

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relief from your worst cold and flu symptoms.le so when you need to show your cold who's boss, grab mucinex all-in-one... and get back to your rhythm. feel the power. beat the symptoms fast. as the president continues to refuse to concede the election, lies he tells to justify his actions become more and more corrosive. a few weeks ago in my take i told you about the so-called stab-in-the-back theory, when germans were told their proud country lost world war i not in a military defeat, but because liberals, including socialists and jews, sold them out. it was a lie, but it took firm hold in the minds of many germans of the day.

what was the result? for that let me bring in margaret macmillan, a great historian who studies the international relations of the 19th and 20th centuries. professor at the university of toronto, a professor emeritus at oxford and author of a book "war how conflict shaped us." welcome, professor mcmillian. >> thank you. >> tell us first about that moment in 1919. what actually happened and why did the myth develop that germany had actually not lost? >> i think the myth developed for two reasons. the german public had been kept in the dark how the war was going. from the late spring of 1918, the war had been going badly for germany. its allies were falling way and fell away in september and october 1918. germany was left fighting on its own. its troops were short of supplies.

they were beginning to retreat. throughout august, they were retreating in france, miles back towards the german borders. they couldn't fight on. and they were short of men, short of supplies, short of everything they needed, and so the german government sued for an armistice, which it got on november 1 9, 1918, and the hig commander changed their minds and said we could have fought on. they refused to take responsibility for the loss. that was the beginnings of this conspiracy theory that the germans had never really lost and the military, of course, had every reason to try to foster that theory. >> and when does it start to become something that's politically powerful? because it's part of the german's sort of not wanting to accept the whole settlement after world war i, was it not? >> it becomes part of it. and there were sadly enough germans who were prepared to believe, first, that germany

hadn't lost the war and the only reason it had stopped fighting was because of traitors at home. and those traitors were singled out the as the social democrats who were one of the key parties in the new republic and very sinister jews began to be singled out as having conspired against germany. >> and hitler, by the '20s, starts to talk about the need for revenge, the need to reject that settlement, and the need to recognized that attraction was to former soldiers and servicemen who couldn't accept the defeat either, and he did get support from high-ranking officers. one officer became an early supporter of hitler's. the nazis were a minority party, tiny party, for most of the 1920s. but they began to expand as germany became more troubled with the great depression. they had an appeal because they had a simple message. they blamed others for the problems germany was suffering.

the main people they blamed were the jews and they had a simple solution. and so their use of the past and the use of theories about how germany had not really lost, how germany had never started the war, germany had been unfairly treated, became a powerful mobilizing call. >> do you think there are other places where you see the same phenomenon which is a reluctance to accept the legitimacy of the opposition, the legitimacy of the idea that somebody else can win? i'm thinking of the spanish civil war which starts because franco and the right wing, to put it simply, just never accepted that there could be a democratic socialist government in spain. there must have been something wrong. >> it's very dangerous for societies when this happens. because if you get a large section of society and often a section which has the means to cause trouble as the military can do, then you get a weakened society. you get people who simply will

not accept the legitimate government that is in power and i think that was why franco moved against the spanish republican government in 1936. he had never accepted and there were enough people in spain ready to support him who had not accepted it either. and so it's a mark of a deeply divided society and it's very dangerous, of course, for societies because it can lead to the sorts of things that happened in germany or lead to civil war in the case of spain. >> when you look at what's going on in america today, is it fair to draw this conclusion? i bring it up only because i'm struck by the number of people. you have 78% of republicans, according to some polls, who believe that the election was stolen. you still have the sitting president of the united states concocting these lies and theories. and it seems like this cannot end well because there's -- there's no way they're going to wake up on january 20th and say, oh, right, we were wrong about all of this for all of these months.

>> it's playing with fire, in my view. on the positive side, the united states has a very deeply rooted democratic constitutional system and it has strong institutions and i think most americans accept, indeed, are proud of their institutions and their democracy and their republic. but it is dangerous because it turns americans against each other and makes them suspicious of their own institutions. i'm hoping, as a friendly canadian, i'm hoping that american institutions will with stand this storm and perhaps not on january 3rd or 4th, but perhaps in a year, people will say, there wasn't much evidence. there's going to have to be a lot of work. >> how do you approach this problem as a historian? your life's work is devoted to facts, to careful documentation, to proof, and here you have, you know, large -- wide numbers of people who really can, you know, just believe black is white. what is the answer? do you think about, you know, how is it that -- how does

reason conquer unreason and fact conquer lies? >> well, you're asking one of the oldest questions i think in human experience. we all know that it is in a way to believe conspiracy theories, easier to blame somebody else. it's a convenient and easy explanation. in the black death in europe in the 14th century which killed probably half of the population of europe, a number of people believed it must be the jews doing it or foreigners doing it. we search for simple explanations and we shouldn't. we need to understand and remember that the world is a complicated place and i think it's something we should all be thinking about and worrying about. we need to understand it better and understand how we can perhaps begin to counter it. >> margaret macmillan, pleasure to have you on. the book is "war." we will be right back. what? >>shi - or - i adam, emily and then... s-uh um... >>it's shiori.

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which is joseph heinrich's "the weirdest people in the world." this is a fascinating book that seeks to explain why one part of the world first became weird, that is, western, educated, industrial, rich and democratic. actually he explains much more. why the west first moved from kin and clan to individualism and rule-based societies. it is well written, brilliant and ambitious. now for the last look. the u.s. as we talked about earlier, is still failing at its efforts to control covid-19, but at the same time there's another aspect of the crisis has been handled economically well. the gdp is expected to only contract by 3%. it is better than japan's 5.3%

decline, germany's decline or fran's decline. in fact of the other ten largest economies, only china can expect better result than the u.s. as i have reported that's due to how effectively those nations tamped down the virus. so with the crisis out of control, why is the u.s. behind them? a recent article explained it well. the american economy is large and diverse, so growth can be driven by a number of sectors. american exports are less important than in most western countries, so when they dried up, the u.s. did not take the hit that more trade-dependent nations hit, but the fed was able to enact loan programs and drastically lower the interest rates. the c.a.r.e.s. act put cash

directly into the hands of american consumers. despite the reports of corruption and mismanagement of the paycheck protection program, money did get into the economy, cushioning the crisis. congressional economic action was greater as a share of gdp than the initial relief provided by most other advanced nations, according to the ims. the 2009 stimulus by comparison was less than half the size and took three times longer to pass. unfortunately the c.a.r.e.s. act is where it ended. consumer spending leveled out. though unemployment came down from the april peak of 14.7%, it is still at a staggeringly high 6.7%. state and city governments have seen tax revenues crater, through no fault of their own. businesses are at lower

capacity, tourism is almost dead, and people are spending less. experts predict that backslides by the start of the new year. the irony here is during face one of the pandemic, the u.s. handled the public health crisis poorly but the economic one well. in the second face, with therapies improving and vaccines coming, it would be a tragedy if washington reverses that, finally handling the public health crisis well but letting the economy fall into ruin. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. ting cs \s deal. it's historic. that is historic. which means... i'm making history, right? yea, i don't know if i'd exactly sa- wow. me, dave brown. existing customer who got the greatest deal in history. just like every other customer gets... oh that's cool too. it's not complicated. at&t is making history. everyone gets our best smartphone deals.

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hello, everyone. thank you for joining us this sunday. in just hours, the majority of california will be under a new stay-at-home order, set to last until christmas. as the numbers continue to grow and hospital capacity kidwindle new restrictions kick in tonight at midnight, this as the number of cases become so numbing, it's heart to truly understand how