have my properaccreditation, so i will not be allowed to ask a question. but, listen, i'm really counting on my colleagues out there, both western and russian to ask the president about this team of operatives and about the poisoning of alexei navalny and to get people in power here to answer for this. >> appreciate it. thank you. check out our full report online. don't miss full circle. you can catch it streaming live at 6:00 p.m. eastern. the news continues. let's hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time." thank you, anderson. i am chris cuomo, and welcome to "prime time." i want you to think about this. in america, we refer to our highest officials as honorable. an example. >> the honorable ron johnson, senator from the state of wisconsin. >> the honorable mitch mcconnell, senator from the commonwealth of kentucky. >> the honorable rand paul, senator from the commonwealth of

kentucky. >> i picked those three cats for a reason, and i'll get to it in a second. but this matters, okay? all over the world, this term is used. they spell it differently, but it's the same word, okay? different languages, same meaning. very specific choices of who gets called "honorable." it is precious and prized. i remember as a kid asking my mom why pop's mail said honorable on it or hon period. she said, because pop works very hard helping people, so people respect and look up to him. i was swelled with pride about that. is it still true? is it honorable to ignore the pandemic? they did. is it honorable to now spend time doing this, where that roll call came from, the senate homeland security committee holding a hearing about irregularities that johnson and the other retrumplicans amount

to nothing. how do we know? johnson said as much. so why do it? >> i don't see anything dangerous about evaluating information, about doing legitimate congressional oversight. nothing dangerous about that whatsoever. >> i mean did you mean to have that trace of irony in what you were saying? if you're confident enough, senator johnson, why don't you give me the honor of you coming on this show and explain to me what you learned from your hearing and what made itworth while and what you know about the election. how doing it on tv would be dangerous, let alone in a congressional hearing. and remember these hearings are planned. they know what's going to be offered largely. there are no real surprises. so he knew nothing was going to come up that would change the results. is that honorable?

is this honorable? >> the fraud happened. the election in many ways was stolen. >> in many ways was stolen, but none that you can articulate with any proof, anything beyond the logic that's as twisted as your hair. and while they do this, what are they not doing? no hearing about russia's suspected hacking of our homeland security department. you know, that's the committee that is the homeland security committee. russia reportedly, according to intel sources, hacked that agency and other federal agencies like never before. is it honorable to avoid that in lieu of something you know the answer to already? is that worthy of respect? and of course they're merely seconding the efforts of the most honorable mitch mcconnell. mcconnell holding up relief for months until companies getting a pass from sick workers was made

as much an emergency as hungry kids. christmas is nine damnable days away. where is your honor? how can we call you honorable when we now know the reason you're making a deal right now, if it happens after months, is not because of your recognition of the needy but of your political needs. my proof -- cnn has learned on a call with other retrumplicans, mcconnell said time to make a deal. no relief is hurting our candidates in the georgia senate runoff, because that's the right reason to do it, right? no honor, and they know it. isn't that sad? not only did they stall relief for no reason, but they did it for bad reason, and, in fact, they may well have had bad intentions all along. what's my proof? we now know a former top trump

appointee repeatedly urged other top health officials to adopt a herd immunity strategy. that would mean intentionally allowing millions to be sickened by covid. here's the full-screen quote. put it up. infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions, et cetera, have zero to little risk. so we use them to develop herd immunity. we want them infected. really? because none of them died, right? they didn't get sick in a horrible way. there are no long-lasting, long-haul effects all over this country, but here's the troubling -- troubling? here's the more troubling aspect. if that's what they wanted, is that the reason behind what they did? ignoring the reality of the pandemic. telling you it wasn't real.

mocking masks. telling people to come together. holding the rallies. it's the stuff of a horror film. did trump and co really sabotage safety because they wanted people sick? it's not me saying it. it's one of theirs. it sure does explain the reaction trump had. do you remember the shockingly cold reaction he had to the new death toll at the time? remember this? >> 1,000 americans are dying a die. >> they are dying, that's true. it is what it is. >> you know, at the time, i was like he's going to correct that, right? why would he? why -- he didn't want to have empathy. he wasn't just incompetent. he was okay with letting people die in some kind of darwinian perversion. it is what it is, meaning it's part of a means to an end.

people die. others won't. not going to be me. is that why the honorable mike pence wrote in june that there isn't a second wave, that we're far better off than the media reported? he knew -- he had no know it was b.s. at the time. just because you have a straight face doesn't mean that you're telling it straight, and he wasn't. but why? was he actually baiting you to be part of a bad result? did he really want you to get sick? we know he was wrong. everybody knows it was wrong, but was it intentional? the exponential growth he denied. more than 306,000 precious lives. they deserve honor. and yet after doing all of these dishonorable things, the real proof of their perfidy is with knowledge of how badly they served or disserved, they

celebrate. >> allow me to give you the opportunity to thank the most pro-life president in american history. in this administration, it's always been about life, and that's been evident in the last year as our nation has passed through this challenging time of a global pandemic. an administration that has counted the lives of every one of our citizens precious and importa important. >> life is winning is the banner behind him. he talks about the pandemic, doesn't talk about the lives lost. how is life winning when we've lost more lives to this modern crisis than at any other point in history? what the hell are you talking about? where is your honor? every life counts? until they're born, sick, hungry. then you lie about it and say maybe it's better if they get sick. that's what your own guy is

saying. you actually want us to believe that you care about life when you do nothing to sustain it? remember to the last moment, trump and co were telling you the pandemic wasn't rail. listen. >> covid, covid, covid, covid, covid. covid, covid, covid, covid. by the way, on november 4th, you won't hear about it anymore. >> i'm not angry. i'm not even outraged. i don't like that the information and reporting has confirmed my and many and your worst suspicions of the lack of honor that is motivating all of this of. the lack of empathy. the lack of humanity. the stories that i have heard. the people whose lives have been ruined. and your response out there in

trump land is, well, you shouldn't have let us have to stay home. it's the only thing that saved you, and they knew it and wanted you to get sick. they had a different strategy. your dear leaders, those you honor, they wanted you to get sick. they lied to you about the reality. they told you it would go away when they knew it wouldn't. it's worse than ever. this isn't wrong. this is a lack of honor, and it hurts. so many are gone. so many lives are forever changed and for what? some seats. some sense of satisfaction in having people divided so you can count on a certain number of votes. there is no honor in this. there is no victory. and now we learn that trump may

finish by doing the last possible thing that he could to make this even worse. let's bring in the better minds to analyze the state of play. dana bash and david gregory. dana, have you heard this notion, which is hopefully just frenzied thinking, that trump muses about maybe not leaving on january 20th? what would happen if i didn't? do you buy that that's actually being bandied about? >> sure. i buy that it's something that is being bandied about. whether or not it is something that we would see come to fruition is a different question. look, this has been the fear of a lot of the president's opponents and frankly even some of his supporters for some time, that if and when he lost, that he would not leave, would not leave willingly. but, look, this is, i think "musing" was the right word that you just used, chris.

i mean this is kind of typical. i mean this is a man who is clearly nowhere near coming to terms with, nor will he ever come to terms with the fact that he lost. and the parts of the hearing today that you played, the people who are still following him and singing from his complete fantasy song sheet is proof of that. >> boy, david, they were strong and wrong today in that hearing. and we know how hearings work. it's not like they're shocked by what's presented in the hearing. you know, this isn't some aha moment for a jury. for ron johnson to say there's nothing wrong with us looking into questions when he knows the answers to them is not going to be something substantial and significant, what's the play? >> i don't want to sound too cynical, but i do think some of the outrage around all of this assumes this is all on the level. i mean it's not. and there's a lot of theater in politics. it's not the first time we've seen it. and these republicans who are, as dana says, playing off this song sheet are going to ride

this into exile with former president trump, who is not going away. he knows it's not on the level, and i think a lot of this is part of a political game for him. it's a kind of showmanship of demagoguery, tapping into grievance. it's dangerous. we've said it. we know it. we've lived it. but it's what he does and what his political future looks like, we don't know. we've speculated about it. but he's going to have some impact over how republicans think because they're too afraid to be independent of that at this point. >> mcconnell is supposedly saying, hey, this no relief thing is starting to hurt us in georgia. let's get a deal done. is there motivation right now, and is it true that the democrats are going to give something on corporate liability and there may be checks for individuals, somewhere around $1,200 a family? >> we don't know if they're going to give -- if the democrats are going to give on liability. it will have to be very, very

narrow based on the conversations that i've had and i'm sure you both have had as well with democrats, that liability is -- at least the way it has been written, is a red line because they feel that there's no reason to put these protections in place. having said that, even some of the republicans who are eager for a solution -- mitt romney, for example, who i interviewed yesterday, who by the way is on that ron johnson committee who said there was no way he was stepping foot in that hearing room because he thought it was unproductive in his diplomatic terms. but even republicans like him think that there is room for a place legislatively to put some liability protections in so that when companies want to go back and open up and even, as he said, universities, they don't feel that they have to be worried about a suit. we'll see, though. i mean that and money to states and to local governments, that has been the sticking point for

months. >> right. >> and it continues to zblb be. >> throw up the full screen of what we think the deal is. stimulus checks, $600 to an individual. $1,200 family. find the graphic. put it up. the idea, david, of this being the deal, $600 to $1,200 for a family, no money for state and local aid, which is necessary for the vaccine distribution, that maybe they won't have lawsuit protection this time. additional $300 a week in jobless benefits. $330 billion for small business loans. everyone's unhappy with these amounts, but is that the nature of compromise in this instance, or is it just too little? >> well, i think it's a little complicated here because you've got to do something before the holidays. you know, we're seeing the impact of the pandemic as we get into the winter, and it's so severe, right? we've got to -- we've got a

stock market at record highs, and then you've got record despair. but if you're the biden administration in waiting, you're thinking how many bites at the apple do i have? and so democrats who are representing him at the moment have to be thinking about that as well because do they come back after the first of the year in a new congress and try for a bigger deal? i don't think we can overstate the importance of this runoff in georgia. we all know that. but in terms of the calculation of republicans getting a shorter term deal and how the world can change because of georgia and a bigger deal that you could get down the line. >> biden should do two ways with every state that is hard hit and the governor of those states, saying, they're telling me your representatives here don't need anything. can you take a pass or you want more relief? he should do that in every state that matters and -- >> i also think. >> go ahead. >> an important point about the virus in general. the opportunity for biden to work with the states, some of what you were talking about as you opened the program about the

states kind of going their own way. it wasn't just the trump administration. that has to be shored up. got tow ha have a uniform appro >> dana, thank you so much. i hope you are both having some solace in the festival of lights. nine days before christmas. no deal yet. maybe there's going to be one, but, damn, it took too long, and it is too little. millions of americans had hungry. they're in poverty. everything is getting worse. now, that includes what's happening in the hospitals, and we have to keep our eye there because if that breaks, if those people with their atlas efforts, if they break, we're done. are we taking care of them? no. i want to bring in a big shot senator, a truly honorable senator working hard to rectify that. and we have somebody here who lived the pain of the need of the people who are keeping us

alive, something that really should be in the bill, and i look forward to this advocacy, next. ♪ we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. or psoriatic arthritis, little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats differently. for psoriasis, 75% clearer skin is achievable, with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. for psoriatic arthritis, otezla is proven to reduce joint swelling, tenderness, and pain. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression

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tonight, i'll be eating a veggie cheeseburger on ciabatta, no tomatoes.. [hard a] tonight... i'll be eating four cheese tortellini

with extra tomatoes. [full emphasis on the soft a] so its come to this? [doorbell chimes] thank you. [doorbell chimes] bravo. careful, hamill. daddy's not here to save you. oh i am my daddy. wait, what? what are you talking about? new projects means you need to hire.gers. i need indeed. indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a short list of quality candidates from our resume database. claim your seventy five dollar credit, when you post your first job at indeed.com/home. hamel hamel. all right. the relief bill. is it going to happen in time for people to get the money for christmas? is there something dirty about the timing? it is something really important, certainly more important than non-exist lawsuit protection being left out.

senator tick cain is here to answer those questions and a special guest is with him. jennifer feist. i introduced you to her sister, dr. lorna breen. she represented everything excellent about being a healer. by all accounts she was a star, personally, as a friend, as a family member, as an athlete, and of course as a clinician. she was in the trenches of a new york city e.r. keeping people alive in a pandemic. grueling hours, surrounded by death, while recovering herself from covid and like so many of our first responders, unsupported. out of nowhere, the anxiety, the stress, the toll took her. she was gone by suicide in april. made no sense because we're not prepared for it. we're not prepared to help the people who are strong at a moment's notice. and so lorna breen's family and a bunch of friends and like-minded individuals are fighting today to get protection for other first responders, and we will discuss that.

jennifer, thank you for being with us today. senator, thank you for fighting for this cause. let's work our way to what will happen with it. one, do you believe you get a bill? is there any way you could get this done in a way that any families would get money for christmas? >> chris, i think we're going to. i started to feel confident maybe just in the last day or so that we're going to get a bill that will help the unemployed, that will help families, help small businesses, put money in the vaccination program, and likely now in the last 24 hours or so, provide stimulus checks to low and moderate income people at a time when they desperately, desperately need it. >> in time for christmas or no? that's too fast to process it? >> i think we're going to likely pass the bill by friday, so december 18th. the process of getting the checks out will be a challenge, but the good news is millions of

people were going to lose unemployment benefits the day after christmas. >> right. >> that's not going to happen. and folks who are, you know, at the very, very edge, facing eviction at the end of the month or food-insecure will know that help is on the way. and i think we'll do that by friday. >> i'm making an executive decision. forget about the timing. if it happens, it happens. jennifer, what did you learn when you took something that is a no-brainer of an idea as your sisters with heralded as a hero, when you tried to get that into a fix in congress? what did you learn? >> interesting question, chris. i actually have -- first of all, let me say thank you for having us. i have a degree in political science, and i'm a lawyer, and i learned that laws don't work the way i thought they did. it's certainly a lot of work. we are so incredibly grateful to senator kaine for supporting this, for proposing this legislation from virginia, and

we've gotten just a ton of bipartisan support for this bill because we believe that providing support to our health care providers is our duty just as they have supported us through this pandemic. it's been crushing to this community. they need our support. they need our -- you know, our belief, and they need it now. >> and you know now, as you're digging into it, that is actually a community -- the doctors and staff. they are prone to neglecting their own mental health more than other groups because they're so focused, and they suffer from the stigma that you can't be a great healer and strong enough to help everybody else if you have a problem yourself. what must this do, and why must it happen? >> well, we believe it's just a great way to start. these people have been working in the front lines for nine months now, not just doctors, nurses, p.a.s, everybody, all the health care providers on the

front lines. this would provide awareness campaigns, education, support for mental health. you know, we know that physicians and nurses in particular are self-reporting rates of burnout in excess of 50% right now. we hear from people every day. every day we hear from people on the front lines saying, you know, this is crushing. this is devastating. what we also know is studies have shown -- of course we learned this from the military. the real mental health toll and the real stress start to show, the cracks really start to show when the crisis begins to end. so this is why we need it now. >> what do you think, senator? what's the chance it finds its way into the bill? >> we're fighting very, very hard to get this in the bill. and, you know, lorna breen, just an amazing, amazing person who in the maelstrom of the first weeks of this unprecedented

crisis in new york just said, all i want to do is help people, and i just -- i don't think i can. i mean she was just avalanched with the scale of suffering. you know, chris, one thing i'll say that i've come to learn over the course of this is we casually say, sincerely, that our health care providers are heroes. but heroes tends to put people up on a pedestal a little bit, and it may even make it harder. they are heroes, but i think healers might even be a more honorific title than heroes, and we shouldn't put them on a pedestal where it's hard to seek help. so we're working very hard to get this bill connected to the end of the year covid and appropriations bill. it will provide, you know, funding for training best evidence searches to find the things that can help our healers stay safe, a national commission to really look at these strategies, and then put them out into the hospitals, medical

schools, nursing programs all across the country. somebody used to tell me when the thing is right, the time is right. and i just -- i think in lorna's honor and in the honor of all these people that we truly, truly are just in awe of right now, we need to do this so that we can keep them healthy and whole and healing and moving forward. >> is there anybody who is a significant block on this, or is it just the process? >> you know, chris, that's a great question. it's just the process. we've got bipartisan support by two lead co-sponsors -- actually -- rhode island. bill cassidy, republican doctor in louisiana. todd young, republican from indiana. we've got the american medical association, american hospital association, emergency room physicians. a lot of the interest groups that have weighed in have weighed in because jennifer and

her husband cory have done such a good job making the case. so it's sort of like when you're making sausage and you're trying to get everything in, can you get it in at the last moment, especially when normally you put bills in at year-end that have been through committee processes. committees haven't been meeting the way they have, you know, because of covid. but i think this -- if we're going to focus on the going forward challenge, the backward-looking challenge has been grim and horrific. but we've got a going-forward challenge. and if we're going to focus on the going-forward challenge, we need the lorna breens of this world to know that they've got support, that they can say, hey, i need some help, and they're not going to suffer by it or have their licensing privileges taken away, but they're going to have a group of people around them saying, great, we've got the support for you. and that's what this bill is about. >> and, chris -- >> jennifer, yes, last word to you. >> thank you. sorry. if i can add to that, this has

been nine months. it's time for this nation to put a flag in the ground and say, we see you. we thank you, and now it's your turn to get the help that you need after helping all of us. >> it seems like every message we send is the opposite. and i'm so sorry for the loss of your family. but i'll tell you something. there are few things that i've seen, and i'm sure the senator would agree with this, that are as powerful in politics as when people put pain to purpose and it becomes their passion. >> thank you. >> and i am not objective about the need or the people who need it, and i am here for you to fight this any step of the way. jennifer feist, senator kaine, thank you for being behind this. and, jennifer, i'm always a call away. you know that. god bless you and your family. >> thank you, chris. >> all right. be well. >> so back to people who are beyond help. trump is in the rearview mirror, but he's as vengeful as ever, and he wants payback, and he wants us angry, and he wants us

at one another. he's saying things that he knows are not true and that he promised he would not say. now he may start getting rid of people to put in special counsels. was he stopped from firing another fbi director in an act of revenge? we're going to bring in a couple of former white house insiders for just a sense of the state of play within their party. does it exist anymore? will it after this? next. go to libertymutual.com to customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need? really? i didn't-- aah! ok. i'm on vibrate. aaah! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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. all right. forget the intro. let's bring in two men who have worked for this president and talk about the state of play. we've got anthony scaramucci and jim schultz. gentlemen, thank you both. shutt schultzy let me start with you about this idea of trump trying to get rid of people to make thing happens that he wants

before he gets out, and they're not good thing. what are your concerns as a legit republican about trump trying to get rid of the head of the fbi or move somebody else out of doj and bring in somebody who will appoint special counsels and the like? >> look, we have a real short window here left, you know, within a month or so left, and there's no reason to jump on the decks at this point in time both for a continuity of government perspective and making sure the government runs correctly and a transition takes place that makes sense. to dismiss the fbi director, we've heard reports the white house counsel's office pushed back against that. if that's true, that's the right thing to do. they should be pushing back against that. there's no reason to be letting the fbi director go at this time. >> what's the message to the president if he wants to spend the rest of his time doing this, jimmy? >> i just -- i say to the president, you know, it's time to start thinking about legacy. it's time to start thinking about what he can do between now and the end of the year in the middle east and other places where he has pretty good stories to tell, and focus on that and

less focus on personnel. >> what the hell, might as well do something about the pandemic before you leave. >> that too. >> yeah, that too. >> he's going to have to sign a bill, but that's largely debated in congress at this point, and they're moving along with the -- >> all i'm saying, jimmy, nobody was going to die if we did or didn't build a wall, and it was his obsession every day. anthony, instead, a big reason that we're not seeing that kind of urgency is that nobody's telling him to have that kind of urgency. you saw that with ron johnson today. you gets all upset because he doesn't like people saying he's pushing propaganda. how are they wrong? what came out of that hearing today that changed the feeling that there's nothing significant to investigate? >> listen, it's terrible, you know, and jim knows this because we did work together briefly in the white house. jim was a hockey goalie. he was taking shots on net of all this insanity and blocking them with great diplomacy.

so there's nobody like jim left in the white house right now, and so the president wants to transact. he wants to make money. he does not care about his legacy. he's told people privately, what do i care about my legacy? i'll be dead. why would i need or care about my legacy? and so he's looking at the next two, three weeks, how am i going to make money off this? how is this going to be good for me post-presidency? is there a chance i could still stay in the presidency? apparently ron johnson and rand paul think there was a lot of unproven fraud, so, you know, he's listening to those people, chris. but trust me, this is all about a grift right now, and this is transactional from here until january 20th. >> right. i mean, look, jim, you're a lawyer. i'm a lawyer. anthony's a big shot from harvard and a lawyer. we all know there's no such thing as unproven fraud, right? if you've got fraud, that means it's been proven. they don't have anything here. they've been thrown out of dozens of courts on the basis of

this. when will there start to be some shame in the republicans' game after this? >> you would have thought after this last round where the supreme court chose not even to hear the arguments on it because from wasn't any evidence of widespread fraud put before the court that that would be somewhat of the end of this. i think you're going to see, much like you saw after hillary clinton's loss, folks talking about, you know, the only reason the president won in 2016 was because he cheated, because he colluded with the russians, and in fact he had some folks even at the time of the certification of the electoral college before congress, which is going to happen on january 6th, objecting, you know, members of congress that were objecting to that based upon collusion and russian interference and cheating on the part of the president. i think you're going to see some of that from the republicans at this point. but unless you have a senator and a republican from each state making that argument, it's much ado about nothing. >> anthony, the reporting that came out today that mcconnell was on a call with a caucus saying, listen, we've got to get

the relief done now. it's hurting us in georgia. what does that make you think about as a republican? >> well, listen, you know, he's a cold, hard, calculating pragmatist. i think the republican party has lost its way. i think senator mcconnell would say something different to that. i think he used president trump frankly. he transformed the judicial system at the federal level as a result of that use. and i think out of respect for president trump, he was waiting for the electoral college certification, but he doesn't want any funny business now going into the georgia, you know, runoff or the inauguration. so the big question for senator mcconnell is, how does he feel about president-elect joe biden? is he going to do the same thing to him that he did to president obama? and let's hope not because the country needs relief, chris, and we've got to get a deal done on a bipartisan basis. >> the guy has given us no indication to believe that he will ever change what he is.

jimmy, last word to you. >> look, i think it's, one, very important that we get a deal done. two, i think it's also very important that we move on past this election and get to georgia. all eyes are on georgia right now. i'm bullish about the republican party unlike some other folks. we won 15 seats in congress. nancy pelosi's going to have a five-vote margin. that's it going into this election. i think we're looking pretty good going into 2022, and it's all eyes on georgia. that's the most important thing right now. >> look, in likelihood, you may well win, but, you know, if you're going to use the power to deny relief for five, six months because they won't let you protect companies from a nonexistent legal threat from sick employees, i mean what's the use of the power? but we'll take it one step at a time. let's see what happens with this relief and if they make good on it for whatever the reason. anthony scaramucci, jimmy schultz, thank you very much, both of you. >> thank you. >> thank you. all right. we have vaccine news tonight.

america may have more doses available than we thought. why? well, because pfizer may have not like a bad mistake but made a mistake in terms of being more potent than they even knew, meaning that the vaccine could be distributed in even smaller portions than they knew. is that true? and what about this reporting, that the trump administration was pushing people to push for herd immunity? was that the reason behind all the ignoring of the pandemic and the messaging? were they trying to get you sick? we're going to run it by the chief doctor, sanjay gupta, next. and with free curbside picp at walmart... you can get the perfect gift up until the last minute. let's end the year nailing it. ♪ we look at how much you've saved, how much you'll need, and build a straightforward plan to generate income,

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senator ted cruz, the honorable, from texas. i guarantee after november 4th, they won't even be talking about covid anymore. trump -- it will be gone. it's never been worse. they lied to you to play to advantage, and now we have an even more sinister reason they may have been doing it. but here's the reality, okay? the big three daily coronavirus records all shattered again tonight. deaths, cases, hospitalizations. they're not numbers. they're people. they're families. they're job displacement. they're economic pain. they're hunger. they're sadness. they're mental health. they're anxiety. the need for the vaccine is so urgent, but we will never get to the place where the vaccine can help us if we're not doing the right things until then. we'll lose too many people. there are nearly 3 million doses of pfizer's vaccine doled out

this week. where and to who? i don't know. we're trying to track it. you know, there are people who know. they're just not being transparent. we'll get to that. it's only a sliver of what we need to cover just the first phase. the hope is that hospitals won't need to keep picking and choosing who gets it. when you pick winners and losers, it goes bad fast. as we await more doses, there is news tonight that some of the pfizer vials may contain extra vaccine doses. each vial usually contains five. some pharmacists are finding they can get six, sometimes seven doses out of it, potentially expanding our supply by up to 40%. let's discuss. chief doctor sanjay gupta, how does that happen? >> well, you know, it's iptding, chris. they have these vials. they're supposed to have five doses. it's a frozen liquid that comes in. when they get to the hospital, pharmacy, wherever it's going, they thought and at that point they then take some of the liquid out. they dilute it with saline.

that's what you see in the syringes. that's what you see going into people's arms. that is the vaccine. what they're finding is there's more of the solution in those vials to make up more than five doses of the vaccine. the fda looked at this and said, okay, based on the fact that it's a preservative-free solution, that there does seem to be enough for an additional dose, sometimes two additional doses, given that there's such high demand and such little supply, as you point out, chris, go ahead and do it if you can. basically that's the message they're hearing. you could potentially get an extra 20%. we don't know. but right now the message is it looks like a good strategy to try and get as many doses as you can out of these bottles. if it's more than five, then go for it. >> all right. so now the thing that's just killing me, breaking my heart if it's true, and it sounds like it is, is the reason that they were so quick to shut down pandemic messaging and be nonchalant

about masks and encourage people to come together -- do you buy this information from this email that congress got its hands on from a trump administration hhs official that said, we want to do herd immunity? the young, the strong, you know, that's who we're going to use. we'll get them all sick, do you believe that they were sleeping on the messaging, on purpose, to do this? would that explain why pence would lie, in june, about the second wave not being real? why trump was nonchalant about death tolls? because they wanted them to get us to herd immunity? >> you know, it's interesting, chris. i think, there's no question, there were people that were advocating for herd immunity. how, sort of, strategic they were and how consistent the message was. i mean, it was scatter shock, you know, that's for sure. but i think, there's no question that, if you listen to what they say carefully, they advocated for herd immunity.

the bottom line is, so, if it's more infectious now, the issue is who cares? that's from an official at hhs. scott atlas. he is advocating for herd immunity, chris. he would always say that he wasn't. it was maddening, actually. he was. the exact things he was saying was advocating for herd immunity. so, he would say that. and then, whenever asked, he would say, well, i'm not advocating for it. there was just no way to get at it. but i think the idea of letting the infection run free, which is what herd immunity is, a terrible strategy. right now, there are 16 million or so people that have been infected. the number's probably closer to 50 million people. right? because we still don't have adequate testing. 50 million people. seven times as many people. they all got it. that means 2 million people would die. it -- it's a terrible strategy.

and yet, i think that they were advocating for it. and now, the people are sort of dancing around this because they have always denied they've advocated for herd immunity. but the kind of e-mails you see from hhs, scott atlas, everything they say is let the infection free, let people get exposed. that's herd immunity. so, i think that was the strategy. >> it doesn't make sense if you want to preserve life. it does make sense, if you want to preserve time. and they wanted this to end as soon as possible by giving them the best chance of winning again. sanjay gupta, thank you very much. appreciate you giving it to us straight. >> you got it, buddy. talk to you soon. >> all right. now, this is good news. squeezing extra doses out of the pfizer vaccine. it's good. we need every one. we don't have enough and we're not going to have enough, for a long time. new, tonight. the iowa department of health says the state is not getting as much of the vaccine as it expected. they may be 30% short.

on top of that, these warnings that pfizer is running into supply issues for future shipments. why? are we doomed? no. this is going to be a hard road. there will be fits and starts. challenges are just that. they're not automatic failure. they're opportunities. you either make something of them, or not. leadership, transparency, and the correction that is necessarily the fruit of accountability, we have to have them. we don't. and it's going to be a problem, in fact, it is. the trump administration wants to say it's not on us. you know, pfizer. you know, we don't know what's going on with them. it is on them. and, look, this isn't about pointing the finger at them. it's about pointing the way forward. we trump denied, and therefore, lied, about access to 100 million more doses. they were offered to the government. they passed. as a result, we're now in a line

that we could have led with pfizer. pfizer's got orders from all over the country -- all over the world, rather. the supply chain is maxed out. why? raw materials are needed. okay. so, now what? what's the fix? the defense-production act could really help. why isn't it being used? ownership, by leadership, is a big reason that it's not being used. they didn't want to do this. and i think this herd-immunity thing may really have been what was shaping their nonchalance. just let them get sick, let them die. it'll be over sooner. now, also, pfizer didn't take operation warp speed money to develop their vaccine. listen. >> they are more secretive with us about their manufacturing capacities and their needs. so, we can't know they have a raw-material problem, until they tell us they have a raw-material problem. >> so, look. it's a leadership issue that you don't have contact with the players. but they weren't part of operation warp speed, so they don't have the same kind of

intimacy with it. but at the end of the day, it's about cash? why? pfizer, unlike johnson & johnson or astrazeneca, they plan to profit off this vaccine. i'm not criticizing that but it's relevant. some estimates are that they make like $19 billion on it. that kind of money necessitates transparency, right? because we got to know to where and for what? right? also, it takes money to make money. we have billions tied up in this pathetic play by mcconnell. for months, months of inaction. haggling over amounts that never concerned mcconnell, when he allowed a tax cut that helped the top, more than the bottom. and it wasn't paid for. but now, in a pandemic, he's cost conscious. this is why we can only know, with this vaccine, what they show. we need to know how much they're buying, for how much money. where is it going? and to whom? and the reality is, and this is why we started this -- this

segment -- we are, largely, in the dark. and that is by design, as much as by dent of not knowing how to do this collectively. the cdc, today, launched a dashboard for tracking what's been shipped but this is basically just a proxy for fedex and ups trucks. you know, this is just their information. so, it's really up to states to make sure that it gets to the people who need it, in the right places, in a fair distribution. but, will they? that's why we have to stay on this and we will. let me take a break. - i didn't know why my body was moving on its own.

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thank you, my brothers and sisters. it's time for the big show, "cnn tonight," with the big star, d lemon. >> big show. right about that. hey. i liked your honorable thing, earlier. you know, i thought it was great. you know what i thought about? nobody is moaning about being called the honorable or honorable. but, they're all, you know, saying that joe biden should not be called -- she needs to get rid of that doctor title, when they love being called honorable.