this sunday the threat to democracy. >> we'll find that out. almost 74 million votes. >> president trump and his allies making dangerous claims about nonexistence photo fraud. >> the president now hoping to get republican state legislators to overturn results and choose protrump lek tors. >> it's an assault on our democracy. >> it's hard fathom how that man thinks. >> we'll talk to congressman

cedrick rich b monday of louisiana and republican senator kevin cramer. a covid explosion. >> more sick than i have ever seen in my life. >> they just drop so fast. >> daily case records being set. >> we're in an utter emergency here. >> a quarter million americans now dead. >> the trump administration refusing to confer with the biden team. >> we're in a very serious situation. we can do something about it. >> vaccine help is on the way. >> we had enough vaccine doses between these two vaccines of about 20 million during the month of december. >> this morning you'll hear my conversation with dr. fauci and i'll talk to the head of operation warp speed. join iing me for inside and analysis are hallie jackson, eddie glaude jr. and anna palmer

and john podhoretz. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> is from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >> good sunday morning. in the days immediately following joe biden's victory, it was easy to dismispresident trump's reality of denial as working his base, or just a tantrum or some sort of strategy for his post presidency. but now his antics are looking less like a fit of peek, than an assault on our democracy. in recent days we have seen president trump allies pressure legislators to overturn the election. trump lawyers spin basically conspiracy theories about voting machines, dead dictators in venz way la and a national conspiracy to rig the election that somehow members of both parties participated in.

president trump fired the cyber security head, and he tweeted falsehoods about nonexistent photo fraud including the call to state legislators to overturn the election results. at the same time, the president is denying biden's transition team access to information that would allow the new president's deal with the covid crisis on day one. simply put, that decision could be costing lives in a country where a quarter million have already been lost. trump's efforts to turn a defeat into a fraudulent victory appear headed for failure, but he may succeed in undermining confidence in u.s. elections and in kneecapping the incoming administration and perhaps that's the motive. but ask yourself. is this the 1950s or 1850s? the 1950s when we overcame our crisis and pulled fogt as a country or the 1850s when the nation broke apart. >> i'm confident he knows he

hasn't won. it's just outrageous what he's doing. >> president-elect joe biden stepping up criticism of president trump's effort to overturn the election results. >> big pharma ran millions of dollars of negative advertisements against me during the campaign, which i won by the way. you'll find that out. >> trump's attempts to make his legal efforts appear anything more than a pr campaign aimed at delegitimizing biden's presidency and building his post presidency brand are failing inspe. on friday the secretary of state certify another biden's win after a recount. >> numbers don't lie. as secretary of state, i believe that the numbers that we have presented today are correct. >> though the president summoned michigan lawmakers to the white house on friday, after the meeting they sads in a statement that that they would follow the normal process in certifying the

vote results. >> while the president and his allies are ripping at the fabric of the democracy in any way they can, the fabric is not tearing. it's holding firm. >> also this week trump fired homeland security official chris krebs, who challenged his false claims of voter fraud. >> there's like a loyalty purge going on in the last month in the white house. >> i disagree vehemently with his firing. >> of the 36 election lawsuits the trump campaign and republicans have filed, 24 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn and none has found a single instance of actual fraud. >> most of the republicans i have spoken to including some of the governors think this is debilitating. it's not -- it sends a horrible message about who we are as a country. >> the republican party response has been to largely accept and encourage the president's attempts to overturn the election results. just three republican senators have publicly criticized the president. senator mitt romney, it's difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic act by a

sitting american president. senator ben sass wrote, the president's lawyers have repeatedly refused to actually allege grand fraud because there are legal consequences for lying to judges. and susan collins condemn ed th attempt to pressure state officials. but overwhelmingly, the nation's top republicans have been silent or encouraged the president's unparalleled effort to steal an election he lost by more than 6 million votes and an electoral margin equal to his 2016 win. >> stacey abrams challenged the results. she was a hero. when donald trump is going to court, he's a dictator. i'm tired of this crap. we're going to fight back in georgia. we're going to fight back eve everywhere. >> it's an assault on our democracy. it's outrageous. it's bad for donald trump. it's bad for the republican party. it's bad for the country. and our standing in the world. >> join iing me is the incoming director of the white house office of public engagement is congressman cedrick richmond of

louisiana. welcome back to "meet the press." tomorrow is certification day in pennsylvania. we got the lawsuit thrown out last night, which basically was the last legal path that he had in pa pennsylvania. if you follow the president's plan to try to get to 20, it doesn't work without pennsylvania. if tomorrow is not the day, what does the biden transition team do, congressman? >> looks like we have an audio issue thewith congressman richm. we'll get that fixed. so we are now going to swap orders here and hopefully my next guest republican senator kevin cramer is ready. senator, as you can tee there, a little bit of issue. >> hope you can hear me. >> i can hear you just fine.

let me start with sort of a form of the same issue here. but i'm going to use senator pat toomey, your colleague from pennsylvania. here's what he said last night after the decision to essentially throw out the lawsuits. with today's dispute, fair and unbiassed jurist to president trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in pennsylvania. congratulate president-elect biden and kamala harris on their victory. do you conquer it's now over? >> chuck, thank you for the opportunity to be with you. i do not. i think it's very likely. that said, i don't know why we're so easily offended by a president that's carrying out all of his legal options in course, not enhancing or encouraging any riots or burnings of buildings or beating

up of democrats coming out of the democratic means or events. it's just a simple legal process and really there's not been a lot of evidentiary hearings that have evolved the trump case. there have been other hearings, i noticed you used a number that was rather large of cases dismissed. but when you look at actual evidence, there have not been many, if any. maybe pennsylvania was the first one. i think everybody ought to calm down. i don't think this is an attack on our democracy. we spent four years listening to new shows and liberals trying to discredit the trump administration to the point of spying on him by the last administration, $40 million spent on a independent council started with no evidence and ended with no evidence and then the crazy impeachment. so everyone just relax and let it play out in a legal way. we'll be just fine. >> you've implied there's no damage being done just now in those comments. >> oh, there was a lot of damage

done in the last four years. >> i want to ask you, the spectacle of rudy giuliani on thursday, using the headquarters of the republican party, i mean, at one point one of the lawyers accused a dead dictator of somehow being a part of this. are you really saying that the president is -- you're out there saying the president is not encouraging somehow any way of sort of being disorderly about this, how is that not encouraging disruption and

disorderly -- he's accusing the entire system of being corrupt. is that not undermining the democracy? >> first of all, what they're claiming is there's a lot of evidence and they're presenting that evidence in cases. now, it's up to them to present that evidence, chuck, obviously. we have yet to see a real hearing where evidence is presented and they're not obligated to present it yesterday or tomorrow, although the sooner the better from my perspective. i'm speaking strictly from this attack on democracy, as you call it. these are legal systems. these are processes in our constitution, in our laws and they're not just appropriate but they're really an obligation, frankly, to the millions of americans that president trump is a reflection of. i know a lot of people like to think we're the reflection of him. he's the reflection of millions of people that want to see him fight this to the end. now there has to be an end, chuck, i agree. there has to be an end. i frankly do think it's time -- well, it was past time to start a transition to cooperate with the transition. i would rather have a president that has more than one day to prepare should joe biden end up winning this. but in the meantime, again, he's just exercising his legal options. >> it i just want to confirm, you believe the head of gsa tomorrow morning at this point ought to say the transition needs to begin, it looks like

joe biden will be the apparent winner. yes, there's more to go through. this is what the head of gsa said. yes, there's still more to go through but it looks like joe biden is the apparent winner. let's allow the transition process to begin. should that be what happens tomorrow morning? >> yeah, it should happen tomorrow morning because it didn't happen last monday morning. i think you have to begin that process, give the incoming administration all the time you need. i will also say this, i think vice president biden has been a bit overdramatic as it relates to operation warped speed and distribution of the vaccines and things. none of those things are a secret. the military is in charge of operation warped speed. the military still will be there after the election. but there are a lot of other things. and i informed my staff well over a week ago they had to cooperate with any transition outreach because we want to be prepared. we have a government to run, regardless of who the president is. >> does it concern you that so many -- and i'm curious what happens when you have your own constituents that say to you, i

know this was stolen. i just don't believe it. what is it gonna take to tell those folks, your constituents in north dakota, look, i know you don't like the results but it was fair and square? >> that's a great point. that's where leadership does really have to stp step in and be attentive to them and use your circle of influence. i think what it's going to take, chuck, is for all of the legal avenues to be exhausted. at some point we start preparing for another election. your monologue illustrated a couple of times in our history where there have been challenges. the good news is our republic is very resilient. >> you do realize that in this century, there have been four closer presidential elections. 2000, 2004, 2012, 2016. believe it or not, popular vote win here by biden is even larger than barack obama was over mitt romney. at one point does this

undermine -- you heard governor larry hogan. this is not a member of the media. this is a republican. who thinks this is undermining the look of america to the world. >> yes, i know a lot of people would like a nice, tidy, historically traditional sort of election but we don't have a traditional president. he didn't get there in a traditional way. i never seized being amazed at people like you who you surprised when he doesn't behave the way previous presidents behaved. but i go back just last year, hillary clinton referred to him as an i illegitimate president. we went through four years trying to delegitimize him. having this process is fine. who knows, we also never in this history or any other century, had a massive vote-by-mail balloting where there were things like ballot harvesting, ballot curing, things we never heard of taking place. and frankly, much, much lower rejection rate of ballots than just four years ago. so it's okay to go through this process.

make sure it's being done right. make sure it never happens again if there are irregularities. we can't ignore hundreds of signed affidavits. that's way more evidence than robert mueller had. >> so far it's not the case because the evidence, they have not presented it in court because they don't have it, it appears. we'll see. as you said, if they have the evidence, they should present it. they have yet to present it in a courtroom because you can't lie to a judge. >> i don't know if that's the reason, chuck. >> we don't know but they haven't done it yet. i appreciate you coming on, many of your colleagues. >> my best to you and cedric richmond. >> thank you very much. joining us now, congressman cedric richmond. he's back with us. i hope you can hear some of that interview. i know we had audio issues. on one hand senator cramer said

it's time for the transition to begin, on the other hand wasn't ready to elect president-elect biden biden. is that hopeful or harmful to the cause right now? >> it's harmful to the cause. one, it undermines the confidence of american government. this was a fair election. joe biden won by over 6 million votes in the popular vote. 306 electoral votes, which is exact same number that donald trump had that he called a land slide. joe biden won with a mandate and land slide. now it's time to transition. look, the senator just said he didn't see much harm being done. that's just not true. the one thing that's important about joe biden is he understands the pain of losing loved ones. so when we think about covid-19 that's cost us over 250,000 americans and we're going to have a vaccine, then we need to be meeting, we have to distribute the vaccine to over 300 million people. and that will save lives. so we want to get in there right now, now talk to former

officials but talk to the people that are in there right now doing the job so we can be ready to finish or start distribution of vaccines on day one. and then the last point i'll make is one of the reports of the findings of the 9/11 commission was that because the transition was short and failed, it left us more vulnerable for a 9/11-type attack. we should be getting the national security briefings. we should have access to everything in the federal government that we're supposed to, and we hope that the gsa administrator's going to do that soon. >> i was just goin to say, given all of the things that happened over the last 24 hours, and what's going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow is certification day in pennsylvania. the lawsuit, the one big leaf of a lawsuit tossed out in pennsylvania. if you don't -- if it doesn't start tomorrow, and it certainly seems like there's plenty of reasons why it should, what is

your recourse? what does president-elect biden do next? >> look, we will explore every avenue. we expect it to start. the certification in pennsylvania is a very big step. we're doing everything we can. we've named white house chief of staff, 13 white house senior officials. this coming week, we will start to name the cabinet, people in the cabinet, and we expect the fbi and need the fbi to start background checks into other things that go with transition. we will continue to push it with the trump administration. but we won't take any avenues off the table. >> your friendship with steve scalise, republican from louisiana is known. both of you talk about it because it's so rare to have bipartisan friendships in this town these days. have you talked to him and reached out to him? if relationships matter, his

voice would be a big one if it uttered the phrase president-elect biden. what does he say to you? >> i think he knows that this election is over, and that joe biden will be the 46th president of the united states. it's just amazing to me the grab this president has on the republican party and the reluctance that members have to come out and tell him the hard truth. and that's just not with congressman scalise but it starts with the minority leader mccarthy, goes over to the senate with leader mcconnell. this is the future of our democracy on the line. it was a fair-and-square election. donald trump lost. at this point we have to move on. but this republican has been very reluctant to stand up and tell the emperor that he wears no clothes. >> steny hoyer, the number two leader on the democratic side, said i think it boarders on

treason. he's undermining the democracy that you go to the vote and the people decide. there's no doubt the people decided. those are strong words. do you concur with him? >> look, it's certainly un-american. but remember, we have to all remember who we're dealing with. we're dealing with donald trump, a president that was impeached for withholding foreign aid to ukraine unless they gave him dirt on joe biden's son. there's one thing i do agree with senator cramer on, there's nothing donald trump will do that would surprise me because he's shown exactly who he is, a person who will break the law, ignore the law, to get what he wants. at some point i just hope that the american people understand that this is about them. this is not about an elected official. this is about saving lives. this is about protecting our country. all of these people who are waking up in an economic and financial instability and ruins because of our failed coronavirus response, we need to

be doing something for them right now. >> before i let you go, you have a unique perch. you're the national co-chair for joe biden's campaign. you're a pretty active and high-level democrat in the house. answer me this question, joe biden won the white house but democrats lost a seat in the house. why? >> look, it was a rough-and-tough election. i will go back and look at different things. donald trump increasing a turnout was a big deal. but there's a whole post election audit we should do and analysis to see where we ran didn't run strong. the fact joe biden won georgia and we still have two senate seats in runoff could be a telling tale for what's happening. i do believe as democrats, though, we need to make sure -- i'm a saints' fan, we need to make sure we have a good general manager, good offensive coordinator, good defensive

coordinator and we all run the same plays. it doesn't have to be the exact same route but we should have the exact same goals in mind. i believe that's the case. we should continue to push and let the voters decide. >> senator richmond, for a few more days or weeks you'll be a democratic congressman from louisiana but soon you will be a major player in that west wing with president-elect joe biden. thank you for coming on. apologies for the audio issues at the start. >> thanks for having me, chuck. when we come back, dr. anthony fauci and officials overseeing the efforts to distribute a safe and effective vaccine. when i was in high school, this was the theater i came to quite often. the support we've had over the last few months has been amazing. it's not just a work environment. everyone here is family. if you are ready to open your heart and your home, check us out. we thought for sure that we were done. and this town said: not today. ♪

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don't stop taking brilinta without talking to your doctor, since stopping it too soon increases your risk of clots in your stent, heart attack, stroke, and even death. brilinta may cause bruising or bleeding more easily, or serious, sometimes fatal bleeding. don't take brilinta if you have bleeding, like stomach ulcers, a history of bleeding in the brain, or severe liver problems. slow heart rhythm has been reported. tell your doctor about bleeding, new or unexpected shortness of breath, any planned surgery, and all medicines you take. i take nothing for granted. because i'm a survivor. ask your doctor if brilinta is right for you. if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. welcome back. when it comes to the covid pandemic, we're now setting records on a daily basis. on friday more than 196,000 new cases were recorded in the united states, breaking the

record that was set the day before. and over the past seven days, there have been nearly 1.2 million cases, also a record. in a week over a million new cases, folks. as bleak as all of this sounds, there is good news on the horizon, assuming we can get to that horizon. on friday pfizer applied for emergency authorization for its vaccine, kicking off a process in which the fda will determine whether it's safe and effective. and moderna is not far behind. earlier i spoke with dr. anthony fauci, who said yes, help is on the way, but first we also have an obligation to help ourselves. >> we really got to pay attention to the public health measures that we are not uniform uniformly implementing throughout the country. it's dis-pritt. some are doing it, some are not. they're very simple, wearing of masks, physical distancing, avoiding congregate and crowd session activities, particularly indoors. trying where possible to do things outdoors as opposed to

indoors and the frequent washing of hands. they sound so simple, chuck, but they do make a difference. the point i was making is that we're in a very serious situation of we can do something about it. point number one. point number two is that help is on the way. traditionally and historically, highly efficacious and effective vaccines have crushed epidemics like smallpox and polio and measles. we can do that with the vaccines that will be coming online. >> i'm trying to figure out when we're going to plateau before march. there's no mitigating event and there's no evidence we're mitigating a thing. where does this case count escalation stop? when does the hospitalization escalation stop? are we really staring at until the vaccine? >> it doesn't necessarily have

to be that way. we're not going to completely eliminate it and turn it around rapidly and dramatically. but you look at the curve, chuck, it's almost exponential when you compare the curves in the spring and the curves in the summer with the inflection of the curve where we are right now. we should not accept we can't do anything about that. putting vaccines aside for a moment, which will be extraordinarily helpful, if we implement a simple public help measures that i was mentioning to you, we can blunt that inflection. it doesn't have to be as high up. when you think of the holiday season and congregating indoors, what our innocent lovely functions like meals with family and friends, you've got to at least think in terms of evaluating, do you have people in your family that are elderly

that might have underlying conditions, like someone on chemotherapy, or other things that weaken their immune system. do you really want to get a crowd of 10, 15, 20 people, many of whom are coming in from places where they've gone from crowded airports to planes, getting into the house? those are things that have been such joy us things in the past. >> let me ask you about testing. believe it or not -- and i hear the anecdotes, it is still not easy to get a test and it's not easy to get a test quickly. and you've said yourself earlier, you regret, that's one of your early regrets, our testing strategy. explain. >> yes, chuck, what i would have liked to have seen one and i articulated this and it didn't go very far is the idea about testing to determine if a

particular individual is infected so you can identify, isolate and contact trace. i'm all for that. that's fine. but i'm also for what i said months and months ago, that we should be flooding the system with tests to determine the penetrance of the asymptomatic spread. we don't have that availability of tests. we should have now, we should have tests that are point of chair, sensitive, specific. you can do at home. you can get the results yourself, so that you can know when you wake up in the morning when you want to go to work whether or not you are infected, or whether the people you might want to invite over your home for a holiday are infected. we don't have that. we should have that. i hope we do get that. that has been something that's not been within our grasp. i know technically it's not the easiest thing to do, but i wish

we had done that. >> joining me now is moncef slaoui, the head of operation warped speed, the u.s. government's effort to produce a safe and effective vaccine for use as soon as possible. dr. slaoui, welcome to "meet the press." let me start with, look, there's been great news both from moderna and frank figliuzzi. we kn pfizer. we know pfizer applied for this emergency use. so walk me through how warped speed suddenly gets implemented, who gets the first vaccination? >> the second the emergency authorization is proved, the acip and cdc will issue their recommendations for who will get the vaccine on a priority basis. that's very likely to be maybe health care workers, maybe first line workers, maybe individuals that are very high risk, elderly, people with como

comorbidities. we will identify with each state's department of health where they want the vaccines to be located. we cannot move the vaccine doses prior to the emergency use authorization. within 24 hours from approval, the vaccine will be moving and located in the areas where each state will have told us where they want the vaccine doses. and each state will decide specifically, based on the guidance from the ncih and cdc, where they distribute the vaccine. >> is there a point where the government may deploy and say, state x, you're not inoculating enough front line workers. hospitalizations are rising too fast. you need to focus more vaccines there. if you see a state not doing that, is that something you would intervene and tell a

state, look, we left this up to you, but you're not inoculating nearly enough health care workers. >> right, fist of all, the vaccine doses will be distributed on a proportionate basis to the population. and, frankly, i don't see the federal government will intervene on the same decision. now, i assume each state will be acting responsibly based on the guidance from the cdc and also with the label from the vaccine, the fda issued the emergency use authorization on. normally, this is not our intent to intervene at the micro level, if we are acting. >> i have to ask you, how hard will it be to hand off this process that you're overseeing to a new presidential administration? and do you hope to be kept on to continue to oversee this process? >> so, frankly, the operation is -- has been isolated from the

administration, from the political environment and political context. we will work very hard to make sure that's the case. and, therefore, all decisions are made, the train is running, whether one administration or the other, it doesn't frankly make a difference. i hope there's no disruption in any way. my personal role, as you know, i have volunteered for this on a limited basis. my personal agenda is when we have two vaccines approved and two methods improved and the rest of the portfolio we have really well, you know, in good hands, i'll probably move on back to my private life. as you know, i'm highly supportive of the program, which means i work with the new administration, i would be very happy to. >> would you like to start briefing the new administration next week? >> i understand that all of the

information that i make public, of course, i will make public to the new administration. i have been informed i should not be saying anything that's confidential to anybody, including, you know, anybody that's not part of the administration and, therefore, i'll act according to what the legal requirements are. >> dr. moncef slaoui, the good news this week are those vaccines. all we got to do is hope we can get there and start doing mitigation and start doing all of the other things to prevent this from being as bad as it looks right now. dr. slaou, tiank you very much for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. >> thank you for having me. when we come back, president trump is lobbing baseless c ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪ (announcer) once-weekly ozempic® is helping many people with type 2 diabetes like emily lower their blood sugar. a majority of adults who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it.

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welcome back. the panel is with us. it's nbc news white house chief correspondent hallie jackson, anna palmer, the senior washington correspondent for politico, and john horse, editor of "commentary." so i want to start off with a little bit of numbers. hey, that's what i love to do, right? check out what we're seeing now in the 2020 presidential election. i noted there are four closer races just since 2000 then 2020. check this out, it's 2020 versus 2012, obama/romney, 51.01 and popular vote to 57.2. look where the vote is now, 51.0% and 47.2%. those numbers will grow and continue to grow so biden's lead will be larger when all is said and done.

let me show you the popular vote split, by the way. obama won by just over 5 million in the raw vote. joe biden is over 6 million in this raw vote. hallie jackson, it's sort of a reminder, this is the fifth close election we had since 2000, which means it wasn't really that historically close. i heard senator cramer use the impeachment as one of the rationales, lindsey graham say stacey abrams. is this the white house strategy they're basically saying hey, we did it to us, so we're going to do it to them >> >> that reminds us there is a strategy, chuck and it's a sort of broader work in progress. listen, this is about the president. this is about what he wants and he feels and he is feeling angry, obviously, as we know based on this. i have talked to sources over the last 24 hours that know, chuck, the president understands there's an uphill climb ahead. he sees the writing on the wall. the point now is to continue to keep up the fight.

i thought it was interesting senator cramer work to thread the needle, yes, we should start the transition process but, no, it's not president obapresident. i have talked to both sides and they say potentially after tomorrow when the certification process happens, you will see more republicans come out and put the president on an isolated island by saying, yes, we should move forward, joe biden is the president-elect. here's where they disagree, that it's going to matter for president trump. folks on the democratic side thinks that will put pressure on the president. i spoke to someone from the trump administration who said that will probably make very little difference to him. >> arnold palmer, the difference is striking, if there's any chance whatsoever that joe biden will be the next president, continue looks like he has a very good chance, the trump administration should provide him with all necessary materials and meetings to provide he has a smooth transition day one.

he's retiring, leaving january 2, i believe, his term expires technically and he still couldn't write the phrase president-elect joe biden. >> i think it has a lot to do with where the republican party is and a lot of these lawmakers don't want to get proselytized with trump supporters. he doesn't want to now, even if he's leaving the administration, there's already talk of a 2024 run. you have a lot of republicans not wanting to inflame the president, whether or not they are seeking elected office again. >> eddie, at what point do you think democrats have to fight harder about this? in some ways i think president-elect biden preached public patience. i know behind the scenes they're getting impatient. at what point should they be acting more impatient? >> it seems to me particularly

after pennsylvania is certified, if we still see this going on, they need to put their foot to the pedal, it seems to me, chuck. it's not so much the success of donald trump's efforts with regards to challenging the election, it's sowing the doubt, it's delegitimizing the upcoming administration. and transforming that doubt into outright hostility. i think this is the challenge that we face and senator cramer honestly didn't want to admit, the more donald trump delegitimizes this process, the more he undermines our democratic process and unleashes, in some ways, these forces. i think after pennsylvania certifies, if we see this still happening, we have to press harder, chuck. >> but we will still have millions of people who believe one thing and this newsmax phenomenon we're watching where clearly people don't like what with they're hearing on fox and say no, no, i don't want to hear

an occasional fact or two. i want to go where life is different than election day. let me play a little excerpt from newsmax. >> we're like one of the only major networks not to call the election, and our view, of course, is we're waiting for the states to certify and see what the final result is. and we're also encouraging the president to begin the possibility of a transition even if that's not been certified yet. >> before you respond, john, a little history lesson on christopher ruddy, the founder of newsmax was best known before this cable channel for the chief reporter on a crazy conspiracy that somehow ron brown was murdered seconds before a plane crash, which did kill ron brown. the point is that this is sort of newsmax had its founding by a thr theorist. what is happening to the messaging of the right side of the aisle in this country? >> it's very hard to fathom.

look, i'm a conservative. i got into this fight 40 years ago about smaller government and lower taxes and traditionalist values and a strong military. and 40 years later, i, and people like me, are being put in the position of disloyalty because we do not buy into the notion from his grave seven years ago hugo chavez paid off the governor of georgia of the republican governor of georgia in a pay-or-play scheme to fix voting machines, whose results were just verified by a hand recount that we are somehow being put in the position of having to say, it's okay that this go on this way, because the president has every legal right to contest and we don't really have certification. this is where you get off the train. when you were asked to take the train to crazy town and then

move to crazy town and then send nuclear missiles to strike normal town. >> john, when do we get back to normal town, and what happens on your side of the aisle if this splintering doesn't end? >> you know, people think, as hallie said, trump had a strategy. what sft if the strategy is stupid? i'll give you an example. in 2018 when the midterm elections were coming, if trump instead of pushing a strong economy, went with the message of evil caravans coming from central america and how this would turn the tides and win the democratic house. this slaughtered him. what if he's dumb and he doesn't know how to win and he only really knows how to lose? >> right, he's yet to win the popular vote, lost the popular vote more this time than four

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welcome back. "data download" time and a final look at our county project. each piece told a different story of the trend that would help determine the 2020 election. i think we learned a lot. first up, beaver county near pittsburgh, representing trump's base. he won it big in 2016. won it big again but did lose a point from four years ago and it was the narrow margins that did matter in pennsylvania. let's go to milwaukee county. could mr. biden increase black voter turnout to flip the stage back to blue? the answer, yes. he improved on hillary clinton and more importantly won the state. he netted his 20,000 votes just out of milwaukee. kent county, michigan, home to gerald ford and wealthy

republicans, supported mr. trump barely in 2016 but not 2020, biden flipped the county and state. grand rapids goes blue. maricopa county, home to latino, seniors, 60% of arizona's population. mr. trump barely carried it in 2016. this year biden flipped the county and the state, first time since harry truman, a democrat carried that county. the finally miami-dade in florida. we knew it wouldn't be a swing count but would the charge of the president embracing socialism do it? 2016 it did. this time, 20 points. donald trump got out of florida and cut into the hillary clinton lead is basically how he carried the entire state. these five counties turned out to be crucial in the 2020 election. watch these and others for signals to 2022 and beyond. when we come back, the changi ♪

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welcome back. the panel is back. anna palmer, it was election week for congressional leaders this week. and both the house and the senate are being run by the same folks essentially that we've had for quite some time. in fact, take a look what we put together here. nancy pelosi's been leader of the democrats since '03. mitch mcconnell leader since '07. the entire democratic leadership has been there since '03. eight congresses, four presidents, three changes control of the house, two changes of control of the senate, prerunoffs, we could have three, "same as it ever was" to quote david palmer in a quote.

why is it if congress is so unpopular, everybody is so upsit, pelosi and mcconnell have such strangleholds over their caucuses? >> listen, the capitol is all about power, who has it, who wields it. and they are both very good at what they do. they have basically complete control of their caucus and conference. there are a lot of people wondering, particularly on pelosi, is this her last term? she's been asked about it repeatedly. she will stay as long as she wants. she basically flay played a flawless hand for trump's term, where she was able to have impeachment get done, they did a trade deal and all kinds of things as well as hold the president's feet to the fire. while there's frustration certainly about the fact she's 80 and her leadership team is 80, 81, no one is willing to challenge her. you can't win with nobody. that's what she always says. that's a good thing to remember. >> you know, andy, take it from the -- you're theeast

washington of our group here, although john horace will take a little bit of a issue with me on that, how does this look? the congressional leadership really doesn't change in this country. >> well, yeah, in some ways i's a reflection of the problem in some ways. look, chuck, i think it's important for us to know last year millennials outnumbered baby boomers and baby boomers continued to define the kind of broad framework of the country. what we do know clearly is the kind of ideological stream, spectrum, how we think of american politics is much more muddled out in the world than it is d.c. part of what we need to do to get beyond some of the gridlock, get beyond some of the sorts of traditional blockages as it were is to shake up leadership and have that leadership reflect the experiences of the majority of the country. let's see what happens. we have folks on the bench, hakeem jeffries, some folks

coming up, the quad, katie moore. there are young folks in the country who can actually come in and do some really interesting things in terms of pushing the needle forward in what the country needs, chuck. >> john, both pelosi and mcconnell, the reason why i think their colleagues trust them so much is they understand the process and they know how to manipulate the process, but neither of them get praised for passing legislation, if you will. >> right. well, i think one of the things that's going on here is that people don't actually want to do the hard work of being in congressional leadership, which is a grinding, tough, time-consuming, fund-raising, back-scratching job, and because of the nature of the modern media, particularly in the republican party, you can become a celebrity or a star by being on television much more than you can by being the chairman of a committee or being in house

leadership, hoping to rise through the ranks. you can become a alexandria oscasio-cortez without ever having to lift a finger on the house floor, and that's a new thing. and these people are willing to stay until midnight every night to get things through whatever they have to get through. and they don't have to go on tv five times a week. >> excellent point. final question, hallie, is the white house aware mitch mcconnell may hold his perceived fate in their hands if he just utters the words president-elect biden? >> well, he hasn't done it yet, chuck. i think there's certainly an acknowledgment of that, if senator mcconnell does that, watch the dam breaking, right. i think there's a question of when that could happen. our reporting here, sources we talked to, the legal fight and president's insistence on acknowledging will likely go into september, september 14th, the deadline that day. but keep in mind he's hinting at

a run in 2024. >> he'll never stop running. that's my feeling. thank you all for watching. have a safe and socially distanced thanksgiving. we'll be back next week, because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

the pandemic perils of heading home for the holidays. the warnings from health experts for the millions of americans traveling this week. stocking the cabinet president-elect joe biden prepares to name his top advisers this week the front-runner for secretary of state as president trump's legal challenges continue to crumble. the raiders give the chiefs a run for their money in the sunday night thriller. the nail-biter in las vegas, plus the big loss for the bengal "early today" starts right now. thanks for starting your week with us