♪ well, good evening once again as we continue this special extended edition of "the 11th hour" and cross the top of the hour here on the east coast making this now day 1,373 of the trump administration. it also means we are down to just 11 days to go until election day. keep in mind almost 50 million votes are already in, and that's a record. tonight was, of course, the second and final debate between donald trump and joe biden, likely the last time both men will see each other and be able to make their case before such a

large national audience. the evening, which by our eyes expertly and firmly moderated by our colleague kristen welker, was at least marginally more civil than their raucous first time out in september, yet there was still plenty of heat as the candidates sparred over everything from national security to race relations to the pandemic. >> we're fighting it, and we're fighting it hard. we're rounding the corner. it's going away. we're living to live with it, we have no choice. >> learning to live with it, come on. we're dying with it. 220,000 americans dead. anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the united states of america. any country no matter who it is that interferes in american elections will pay a price. i don't know why he hasn't said a word to putin about it. his buddy, rudy giuliani, he's being used as a russian pawn. >> there's been nobody tougher on russia between the sanctions, nobody tougher than me on russia.

all the emails of the kind of money you were raking in, you and your family. >> i have not taken a penny from any foreign source in my life. you have not released a single solitary year of your tax return. what are you hiding? >> we're going to talk about immigration now, gentlemen. and we're going to talk about families within this context. mr. president, your administration separated children from their parents at the border. at least 4,000 kids. you've since reversed your zero-tolerance policy, but the united states can't locate the parents of more than 500 children. >> children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels. they are so well-taken care of. they're in facilities that were so clean. >> those kids are alone, nowhere to go. nowhere to go. it's criminal. it's criminal. abraham lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern history.

>> i am the least racist person in this room. i ran because of you. i ran because of barack obama, because you did a poor job. >> you know who i am, you know who he is. the character of the country is on the ballot. >> that's about how that went tonight. here for our lead off discussion we welcome back several of our favorite guests. robert gibbs, former obama campaign senior advisor, white house press secretary under president obama. elycia menendez, host of american voices weekends at 6:00 p.m. eastern on this network. also host of the podcast latina to latina. robert costa. national political reporter for "the washington post." in his spare time he's moderator of washington week on pbs. and john meacham, presidential historian, also the host of a new excellent podcast series "it was said." it focuses on some of the most impactful and still relevant speeches in history. and only because of his pulitzer prize i'm going to start with

him. so, john, you were there tonight. i want to talk about the two candidates' divergent views of their own relationship to the american people and among the community of american people. have at it. >> well, it was remarkable to watch it in person. i've never seen a general election debate actually in the room. and one man was running for president of the united states, and the other man was auditioning for a show on fox. and that may sound like an attempt at glibness, but it was the innate reaction i had to watching the president who dwells in this wilderness of mirrors to borrow a phrase from the cold war where there are these code words, and it's a language i'm sure makes sense to a certain segment of his base

but doesn't make a lot of sense to anyone who has a nodding acquaintance with the realities of america during this pandemic. and it was one man was willing to take responsibility. biden is willing to offer himself to undertake this task. president trump gave the impression, and here i am borrowing from my 12-year-old daughter who went with me -- she said isn't it right that president trump has been president for four years, right? because he tried to adopt the pose of a challenger. and in fact there was a kind of feel that he felt nostalgic four octobers ago where he could talk about obama and talk about biden and the politicians and the corruption as if he is somehow in no way responsible or hasn't

been a player in the life of the nation since. >> robert costa, to a point john just made, and it came up in our earlier conversations after the debate as well. the president did some deep grabs into the kind of right-wing media world this week. the giuliani laptop caper, only 50% of the reason rudy's been in the news this week. but i mean quotes from these alleged e-mails and texts, and some cases imagined business conspiracies that unless you're following along, and that includes talk radio, you weren't going to get some of those references. >> and what's interesting, brian, in conversations with trump campaign officials and top republicans, they are aware that they're not speaking to swing voters, suburban voters, people who are somewhat low propensity voters with this kind of pitch by focusing on hunter biden or

the biden family's business ventures in any way. what they try to do, they tell me, what the president is trying to do is get that core trump voter in 2016 who may have sat on the side lines for a long time to come out once again. because they're looking at an erosion of the president's support in the suburbs. they're looking at an erosion even more in urban area areas and increased turnout from early voting and especially from voters in the cities. to counter that the only play many republicans tell me is to try to rally that base by going to issues that are popular in the conservative media starting with this biden issue. >> alicia, especially considering the home state you and i share there were questions and answers at this debate that actually did speak to millions of americans who have been left

out of previous presidential debates. and moments we are left with to think about like hands at 10:00 and 2:00 on the steering wheel, like the family who for economic reasons has to live next to the petrol chemical plant and pays the price in health and security. and knowing you were going to be on tonight i thought it cast in that way. >> and the conversation around family separation. i'm so grateful to kristen welker for making sure immigration was spoken about in this debate. it's kind of wild given how much the president played this card during his run four years ago that we've actually heard very little about immigration this time around, which shows you there's a sense it may not be as popular long-term as the president once believed. and surely not this question of family separation and the zero-tolerance policy.

i'm glad we were talking about those 545 kids. we're still looking for those parents. i thought it was very telling that the president when pressed on this question said we're working on it, this idea of reunifying them. the plan was not to reunify them until they were pushed by courts to do so. that work is not being done by the government. it is in most countries being done by outside groups. and i thought it also gave joe biden an opportunity -- i thought it was interesting he distanced himself a little bit from the immigration policies of the obama years, gave him an opportunity to talk about his commitment to immigration reform in the first 100 days of his administration. to talk about his commitment to dreamers and to also talk about the fact family separation is one piece of the larger trump immigration agenda, that there are also asylum seekers being kept in another country as they seek asylum in the united states. there have been radical changes made to immigration in this country, that all changes the

fabric of who we are as a nation. so when you loop back to this question, which i think is the core question we keep coming back to. who do these arguments appeal to, this animates evangelicals, particularly animates women evangelicals, hispanic evangelicals, a lot of young women, a lot of the suburban moms we've heard so much about. and as one advocate said to me, it really motivates the rage moms who came out for the womens marches. they then came out for the family separation rallies. and now they've been relegated to being zoom teachers. all of these issues -- i'm always suspicious when someone says this is the debate that moved -- whatever. i do think there's the possibility this issue which has not gotten enough attention could definitely capture the attention and motivate some voters. >> robert, i think, a, alicia is absolutely right in the details she just went into. and "b," some of the questions while perhaps not by design were, in effect, empathy checks

and empathy tests tonight on that stage. would you agree? >> absolutely. look, kudos to kristen welker who was a marvelous moderator, and thank goodness for the presidential commission helping her with the mute button. but there's no doubt the group and the community with which vice president biden was talking to tonight versus the community that president trump was talking to, one is just a lot bigger than the other. one is just comprised of a much richer group of people, much larger number of voters. i think, you know, it was pretty stunning to have that first debate given all that had been talked with immigration over the years and donald trump to never have that subject come up. i thought it was great to have it come up tonight. and look, i think joe biden did himself a lot of good in the moments in which -- there's that point in the debate they're both kind of yelling at each other,

and i think it's when people start to zone out and tune out. but biden could sort of turn to the camera and say i'm going to be a president all of america. or he would say this isn't about my family or his family, it's about your family. i think those are the moments particularly where he rose above this and talked directly to the american people. >> and alicia, i just want to scoot back over to you because robert just invoked demographics and numbers. and it's the root of so much anxiety among democrats right now who just want this to be over. they are extremely worried about the result and how much monkey business could transpire between now and election day. is there a favorite state, congressional district, candidate, precinct you are looking at as kind of your sample, your control group on election night? >> i know better than to play

that game especially when i've seen so many people play it and get it wrong. i thought it was really interesting tonight, a moment that happened very early where the president in talking about his handling of the pandemic said i'm going to make sure our seniors are taken care of. part of that is we're watching seniors slip away from him. it could be the first time in i believe 20 years that seniors would turn out for the democratic presidential contender. i think all bets are on the table, so much of this as wave talked about over and over again is going to come down to how people vote and whether or not everyone who wants access to have their voice heard is going to be granted that. >> what an artful answer that was. hey, robert costa, what is your canary in the coal mine? considering your beat, what republicans are you watching to be able to tell or infer from

their actions or words what may be around the corner for them and their party? >> real quickly, brian, i'll answer your former question. one, i'm looking at north eastern pennsylvania, western, central pennsylvania likely to have major turnout for president trump except for pittsburgh, of course. northeast pennsylvania, scranton, joe biden's home turf, that went for president trump in many respects those counties in 2016. if they start to turn to biden, that reagan democrat, that working class democrat, if they start coming back, this is going to be a big night in november for the democrats. the republicans i'm watching very closely. senator john cornyn of texas. i'm told he's seeing some tough numbers in texas. we see him speaking out against the president. does he turn in a more vigorous way in the final few days? >> john meacham, a question i know i've asked you in some form or fashion no fewer than a dozen times. is there any example from

history in the sway a president has over members of his party, duly elected grownups who can bathe and clothes themselves and get a paycheck and a health care plan who have in all other ways signed over their names and reputations and in some cases the public offices they were elected to? >> yeah, i don't know if this is going to happen but all of those relationships, almost all of them are transactional. in the age of trump they are mega-transactional. and so what you're seeing, i think, is the reason for the triumph of the cult of trump in the republican party has been the number that has been showing up for all the people that bob covers so clearly, which is that not just the republicans in

their states or districts that support the president but that strongly support the president. that adverb -- these are adverb republicans i sometimes think of them. they're stunned to see that if you're with trump, by god, you're with him. and i think to go to robert gibbs' point it may just be that demography is destiny here. there aren't enough of them. but i'll say this tonight, and i had this reaction. it may have been watching it in person as opposed to the way it was experienced for the country, there is a lizard brain in this country. donald trump is a product of the white man's, the anguish, nervous white guy's lizard brain. and there could be a twitch there that you know what, we sent this disruptive figure, biden, maybe that 47-year thing

helps a little bit. i don't think there are enough of those folks, but i think just as an observer of this -- i think trump did himself good with his base tonight. the question for america is how big that base is. >> john, on behalf of americans who are at some point going to start trying to go to sleep at 12:17 eastern time, thanks for the late in the evening lizard brain mention to really set viewers off on a glide path to slumberland. i know they all appreciate it though none of them can tell you. spectacular stuff. >> i was going to wear my mr. rogers sweater. i have my mr. rogers sweater if you wanted me to put that on. >> you didn't try that material on your 12-year-old daughter who i happen to know. friends, all of our broadcast, and great stuff. thank you very much for hanging out for us tonight.

coming up, we get a doctor's take on what was said about the coronavirus tonight on that stage in nashville. that is when our extended edition of "the 11th hour" continues.

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i was in the hospital. i had it, and i got better. and i will tell you that i had something that they gave me, a therapeutic i guess they would call it. some people could say it was a cure.

but i was in for a short period of time and i got better very fast or i wouldn't be here tonight. and now they say i'm immune. >> when we heard that we knew we had to ask our next guest a few questions. so back with us tonight is dr. ven gupta. a critical care doc specializing in these kind of illnesses, also an affiliate professor at the university of washington institute for health metrics and evaluation. doc, there were many quotes from the president about this virus. it will go away, quote, we're rounding the corner, quote, it is going away and we're learning to live with it. you heard him declare his own immunity. you heard him declare therapeutics a cure in this wording. please have at what you heard from the stage tonight. >> good evening, brian. good to see you. a lot of things that need strong clarification. i'll begin with by saying there is no cure for high quality

personal protective wear for the people. there just simply is not. let's be clear on that because there's a lot that was said that's going to lower our guard as americans as we enter a really dangerous phase, a dark winter according to the former vice president. i hate to say, but that is a concern amongst all of us in public health, clinicians as well. so there is no cure. there is no high quality ppe. teachers, parents are desperate for that high quality ppe. they don't have access to it. only the chosen few have access to it. that's number one. number two, we're not rounding the corner. actually asks for volunteers to come to south dakota and help out, same thing happening in utah, wisconsin, ohio, highest hospitalization rates in the entire pandemic happening right now, also happening in 15 other states. 39 states seeing increases in hospitalizations. so we're not rounding the corner. number three, i think it's important to say this because we trust him so much.

dr. fauci and the president unfortunately continues to say this. dr. fauci never said not to wear a mask. at the beginning of this he basically said we don't have enough for everyone to wear a mask. he said please be careful of mask usage because we need it for our front line workers. i would say the china ban is this crutch the administration keeps talking about, the american people deserve to know the china ban didn't work. that was not part of the pandemic strategy, brian. 400,000 americans came to the country after the ban was implemented. it is not a pandemic response strategy. i think that's really critical to know. >> and indeed the president used his own case and that of his son, both recovered as far as we can tell, and we're happy for that as part of his argument, doctor.

>> and you know, i mean, to that point, brian, recovery is important. immunity is important. the president now goes on and talks endlessly about immunity. and let's be clear to the american public. we do not know how long immunity lasts after you've been exposed. there was a case of a 25-year-old gentleman otherwise ale thi in nevada, got a reinfection 5 weeks after his initial infection. and that reinfection was more severe symptoms than the first time. sort of threw us for a loop here in public health because we actually thought it was going to be less severe the second time based on what we've learned from infection across the world. the president should not be going on-air suggesting to the american people if you got it once, you're good. that's not true. >> with thanks for the work you do at your day job, thank you further on behalf of our audience for hanging out to talk with us tonight after all we heard about this illness. dr. ven gupta with us.

that is going to do it for our special presidential debate edition of "the 11th hour" tonight. thank you so much for spending time here with us. we're happy to say our special coverage continues with our friend ari melber after a short break. that's right after this.

♪ ♪ i got it all from you ♪ i'm always pushing through ♪ i know we'll make it to the finish line ♪ ♪ i know you're waiting on the other side ♪

♪ i'm like you on-demand glucose monitoring. because they're always on. another life-changing technology from abbott. so you don't wait for life. you live it. good evening to you. i'm ari melber. and our live debate coverage

continues right now. 12:30 a.m. on the east coast, 9:30 outwest. new debate moments, insider reaction and moments already going viral. that's in our next 90 minutes of news coverage in this final debate which caps a bruising election to be sure. new rules and firm leadership by our own colleague kristen welker as donald trump tried to recalibrate from a widely panned first debate. and joe biden found several openings to land punches. hammering the president for ducking responsibility for covid deaths in america. >> he says that we're, you know, learning to live with it. people are learning to die with it. you folks home will have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning, that man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to try to touch their out of habit where their wife or husband was is gone. learning to live with it. come on. we're dying with it. he said it's dangerous, when was

the last time? do you tell the people it's dangerous now, what should they do about the danger, and you say i take no responsibility. >> trump hitting back by arguing joe biden's part of an old set of problems in washington while biden for his part seized on any reference in those obama years of his character. >> i ran because of you. i ran because of barack obama. because you did a poor job. if i thought you did a good job i would have never run. i ran because of you. i'm looking at you now, you're a politician. i ran because of you. >> vice president biden, your response to that, and i do have some questions for both of you. >> i'll tell you what, what's happening here is you know who i am, you know who he is. you know his character, you know my character. you know our reputations for honor and telling the truth. i am anxious to have this race.

i'm anxious to see this take place. i am -- the character of the country is on the ballot. >> let's get right to it with professor jason johnson, and democratic strategist iesha mills. good to see you both. jason, that was a key moment for biden, and it looked confident. >> yeah, ari, biden delivered a surprising number of a concise, powerful comments tonight when he said, look, there's me, there's donald trump, there's character. when he talked about covid and he said, look, you know, the american people didn't panic about covid, donald trump did. line after line after line, this was probably the most concise and coherent i've ever heard joe biden in any debate, certainly these presidential debates. and it's interesting because this is the most restrained version of donald trump i think any of us have probably seen in 2 years, but it was too little too late because he faced the

best of joe biden. and the best of joe biden is still 10,000 times better than donald trump who managed to constrain himself and just be obnoxious as opposed to out of control. >> iesha, jason thinks to something i think was clear tonight which was donald trump needed to get away from the way he seemed the first debate. and someone who is famously stubborn, ran away from the style at least, the tactical approach in the first debate. joe biden was similar to his first debate performance and if anything a little tighter or more concise. >> yeah. what's interesting about trump, though, is that it doesn't matter how slow he talks, how he's able to control whether or not his neck turns red or his face turns red, how he scowls or how he doesn't, the man still just can't articulate himself. and i think because he had a slower cadence tonight it was extremely clear he lacked depth in policy analysis.

he still resorted albeit a little more calmly to character assassination, trying to dog biden's family, even throwing up benghazi which felt like he forgot who he was debating, like he thought he was talking to hillary clinton. he still is going at him in a way that is trying to make him look like a crook and look incompetent as opposed to talking about his ideas and what he's actually going to do. and when he talks slower we all realize he's got, you know, the language of a fifth grader, and he says things like big and huge and bestest and greatest, and it's not my fault. and you still don't walk away from the conversation of the debate knowing anything about what he can or will or won't do. and i'm trying to be really generous here by assuming the american public is hip to it at this point. and while we may have scowled so much at his behavior, we still know his brain isn't where it needs to be to be president of the united states. >> and the fact the debate to

iesha's point is more audible means people are going to hear it. they may not be as turned off by stylistic points. it's 90 minutes, there were 70 million plus viewers live last night and plus the internet. people are watching, jason. and i want to play a key exchange on turf donald trump didn't like. there's a lot of covid bad on him for obvious reasons, and there was a lot on race and racism which is one of the key topics of the debate. some important substance on criminal justice but also some of trump flailing. take a look. >> i am the least racist person. i can't even see the audience because it's so dark, but i don't care who's in the audience. i am the least racist person in this room. >> okay, vice president biden, let me ask you very quickly and i have a follow-up question for you. >> abraham lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern american history. he pours fuel on every single one. started the campaign saying he's

going to get rid of those mexican rapists. he's banned muslims because they're muslims. he's moved around and made everything worse across the board. he's said about the poor boys -- last time we were on stage he said i'd tell them to stand down and stand ready. come on, this guy is a dog whistle as big as a foghorn. >> i'm going to give you ten seconds to respond. >> he made a reference about abraham lincoln. where did that come in? >> you said you were lincoln. >> no. i said not since abraham lincoln has anybody done what i've done from the black community. >> jason, i'm going to state the obvious here, but that's sometimes part of my job. that was a horror show list of allegations, and you saw the things trump quibbled with. >> right, right. but he's not mad about the poor boys, which we're going to call them that now here at the organization.

the only thing he sort of responds to is being compared to lincoln. and he sort of doubled down on something that was just supposed to be a joke. here's the other thing i thought was so telling about this and the president's inability to not just stay on message when he's not just attacking but also lay out a vision for the future. the guy is hitting here arguing and saying i'm the least racist president we've ever had, i've done the most for black people. literally 10 minutes earlier in the same debate he said only low iq mexicans come back for asylum hearings. he literally said only the low iq people come back for these asylum hearings at the border. he said that india and russia and other countries are filthy. he basically expanded his s-hole country map, right? it's amazing to me even while trump attempted to be on his best behavior he consistently contradicted himself. neither one of these candidates is particularly adroit when it

comes to issues of race. but at least joe biden at this point has said i screwed up on the crime bill, i should do better, we're talking about the 38,000 people we took out of federal prison. while donald trump is comparing himself to abraham lincoln and calling mexicans rapists. >> jason, when you mentioned being on best behavior makes me think of worst behavior, hold up, hold my phone, they never loved us. and it may be they never loved donald trump. they didn't get more votes last time. iesha, the other piece of all of this, of course, is that it matters who's voting out there. this is not a traditional year, everybody knows that. but typically in the third debate we think of it as before most of the voting. we're getting tens of millions of people voting, and we know from our early numbers african-american turnout is up, female turnout is up. female turnout in some areas of the country we're told there are women voters and moms and people who say, look, they don't like the racism.

so i'm curious how that all plays out tonight because this was clear a moment i've seen where joe biden was in the same room as trump and makes the lists, and some already voting and some about to go out there go, right, all those things happened. >> ari, this is so completely bizarre as jason pointed out the contradictions here. remember in the last debate donald trump got on the stage and said the reason he's getting rid of anti-racist training in the federal government is that it offends white people and that we need to go back to our roots, you know those racist white slave holding roots of america and re-claim that. because white people are real mad we have to be anti-racist. and then he goes on this trope i'm the least racist. fun fact for everybody, when you have to declare yourself not racist, that really means you're racist. and i'm going to quote my friend andrew gillum who said on the campaign trail when he ran for governor while you may not think

you're racist, but the racists think you're racist which is why the proud boys after the last debate got excited and said, look, our hero is giving us marching orders and started printing out badges and whatnot about it. so if the racists think you're racist, then you're racist, period. >> all important points. we've got a lot left to our special coverage. i want to thank you for kicking us off. still to come, the one and only steve schmidt. one-on-one, breaking down everything we just saw right after this. if you have medicare, listen up.

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i'm ari melber, and welcome back to our special coverage. tonight by any standard measure president trump faltered the debate. he repeatedly blatantly false claims. he also struggled to defend his administration's controversies and covid record. all of those are problems for donald trump even if he was less combative than at the first debate. donald trump still went in hard on a controversial strategy. he maligned joe biden's son, tonight invoked unverified allegations against him, doubled down on this narrative against hunter biden which conservatives have been pushing for years and also figured into donald trump's own impeachment. >> his son didn't have a job for a long time, was suddenly no longer in the military service. i won't get into that. and he didn't have a job. as soon as he became vice president, burisma, not the best

reputation in the world. i heard they paid him $183,000 a month. and they give him a $3 million up front payment -- >> no basis for that. everybody investigated that. no one said anything he did was wrong in ukraine. >> that trump line of attack the best closing argument the republicans have? we welcomed steve schmidt from the lincoln project. steve? >> i think this debate elected joe biden to the presidency. it was a very poor performance by donald trump. you saw the lying. you saw the gibberish, but there was this moment in the debate, and it was towards the end where joe biden just looked away, and he just said, oh, god, just oh, god. and it was a perfect summation of the whole debate, the lying, the attacks. it summed up perfectly the four years. and i thought joe biden was

exquisite with his nonverbal language, the way he held himself, comported himself, the way that he looked at the camera when responding to questions, the look of incredulity and disbelief on his face throughout it. looking at him as he heard the strangeness that comes out of donald trump's mouth. so i thought that, you know, donald trump -- if you want to be generous to donald trump, and i'm not particularly in a mood to be, but i suppose that he badgered the vice president enough in the final minutes of the debate that he got a glove on him on some energy issues. but he didn't touch joe biden. if this was to be compared to a boxing match, he didn't touch him until the very end of the debate. so there's no one in this country who went, who turned this debate on, you know, who decided tonight, hey, i'm

switching my vote from joe biden to donald trump. and i thought trump looked particularly pathetic on the covid responses, and i suspect that most people who watch this who were able to stay through it to the end tuned out trump by the time you got to the end of the covid section because you saw trump's lying, his inability to accept responsibility. and you just understood perfectly why the country's in the crisis that it's in. >> and those are important pieces of context the voters bring themselves to their understanding of what they're fighting about, their own lives, their own health care, the covid crisis, the covid, trump recession. you mentioned you're punitive generosity towards donald trump. i wouldn't say our viewers know you be overly generous to donald trump. i think they know you to be somewhat of a critic and based on the evidence. there is this other part of the clash we wanted to show because there are times we reminded

viewers recently while we are not publishing and posting unverified stories frankly about either candidate as a political matter the top story in america across all of facebook last week was still hunter biden, there is a market for that. but as you say it may be a sub-majority market. another piece of this debate clash on the issues of corruption. take a look. >> the kinds of things you've done and the kind of moneys your family has taken, i mean your brother made money in iraq, millions of dollars. your other brother made a fortune, and it's all through you, joe, and they say you get some of it. you do live very well. and you have houses all over the place. you live very well. >> nothing was unethical. here's the deal. with regard to ukraine, we had this whole question about whether or not because he was on the board i later learned in burisma, a company that somehow i'd done something wrong.

yet every single solitary person when he was going through impeachment, testified under oath for him said i did my job impeccably. i carried out u.s. policy. not one single solitary thing was out of line. >> voters can make up their minds. your view politically, steve, over whether that was enough on that stuff, or what do you say to trump critics who look at this and think how was time even spent litigating someone else's family when you look at the hornet's nest of corruption and pay to play, an indicted campaign chair in steve bannon, record breaking first-term indictments criminally of any president either in history, and you're discussing joe biden's family. >> well, great question. i think the majority of the country thinks it's ludicrous, this is the most corrupt president in the history of the country bar none with the most corrupt family in the history of the presidency. one can look at the awarding of

the trademarks by the chinese government to ivanka trump, or we could look about the disclosure of the chinese bank accounts that donald trump has, the fact he pays more in taxes to the chinese. but the larger point is when you marvel at the corruptness of the trump family, joe biden has been clean. no ones ever made ethics allegations against joe biden. i helped run a campaign against barack obama and joe biden. there's nothing there. clean as a whistle. joe biden was someone who lived a very middle class life, never made more than $167,000 a year in all of his government service. and he was annually ranked as the least wealthy united states senator. it's all complete and total b.s. and i have a bridge to sell you if anybody buys, you know, the idea that donald trump is concerned about corruption. it's absurd.

but it is an alternate reality that comes out of fox news between the end of the debate and coming on with you, i've had a chance to watch the borat movie, and i'll tell you this. rudolph giuliani's career in american life has come to its end. he is disgraced, and he is the architect of the smears against hunter biden as we all know. and the idea that rudy giuliani, and everybody will understand what i'm talking about before very long, is to be taken seriously or credibly, and he shouldn't have been at all for a long time before this moment. but he certainly won't be in the last week of the campaign, which of course will begin with donald trump storming out of the "60 minutes" interview. ari, this is all going down. the poll numbers are collapsing. the stench of defeat lingers all around this. you can look at the sniping, the panic inside republican

washington as they're on the precipice of losing the senate majority and the white house because the bill for trumpism is coming due. and throughout that debate tonight joe biden drew blood and held donald trump accountable for his profound incompetency in his discharging of duties for the united states. >> steve schmidt, with clarity, with bluntness and maybe from three point land if you will with the rudy giuliani borat reference. always good to have you, sir. >> good to see you. we'll fit in a break and we have a lot coming in our next full hour of live coverage. a former chair of the republican party who's coming out for joe biden and a whole lot more. don't go anywhere i should say. we will be right back. robinhood believes now is the time to do money.

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i'm ari melber, and we continue our live special coverage. we have a whole other hour with special guests. so please stick around as our continuing coverage of this final presidential debate of the year 2020 continues right after this break. if you have medicare, listen up.

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♪ good evening. i'm ari melber. welcome to our live coverage on this final debate night. 11:00 p.m. out west, 1:00 a.m. out east, as america's political tension is tracking america's health problems amidst the surging covid cases. any president would presumably be under fire for this record, but especially one who recently caught the virus himself after flouting his own administration's rules. tonight, donald trump's struggling to defend his failure to combat the pandemic. >> if you take a look at what we've done in terms of goggles and masks and gowns and

er