it's 4:00 in the east as we continue our coverage of a truly historic election in america. we will be with you every step of the way, so settle in. joe biden is set to address the nation at any moment from his campaign headquarters in delaware. he's expected to be joined by his running mate, kamala harris. in the last couple hours nbc news named biden the apparent winner in the crucial battleground state of wisconsin. that means joe biden has the most votes with just about every vote counted there but the trump administration is always requesting a recount which could in theory still impact the final result. still, wisconsin represents a major step forward in the count and psychologically for joe biden's effort to the race to 270 electoral votes, now in the hands of a shrinking number of key battlegrounds. officials continuing to tally

absentee and mail-in ballots in michigan and pennsylvania, which along with wisconsin, make up what's known as the blue wall for democrats. up until 2016 at least that was. it's in those states that joe biden trained almost all of his attention in the final days and weeks of the race, tight races, all outstanding this hour include arizona, nevada, georgia and north carolina, all of those states still separated by narrow margins and both campaigns have acknowledged privately and publicly just how close this race has become. but joe biden at this hour has more pathways to 270 electoral votes than donald trump does and that mathematical reality has only served to intensify donald trump's threats of a legal battle to stop votes from being counted in some of the states still too close to call or too early to call. of course, trump's legal avenue is emerging after his baseless attempts at lying his way to

victory last night by falsely claiming victory in states he had not won. donald trump is also tweeting misinformation about alleged fraud, lies so flagrant they're almost difficult to find amid the warnings and flags the social media companies have placed on and around them. for that reason we're certainly not going to amplify them but showing them to you on television either. trump's campaign is telegraphing court fights over mail-in ballots in some of the closest states, fights trump vowed he will take all the way to the supreme court. in response the biden campaign, a bold and confident bring it on if you will. biden campaign senior adviser bob barr tells nbc news today, quote, trump will be in for one of the most embarrassing defeats a president has ever suffered before the highest court in the land. and that is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. nbc's mike memoli is live in

wilmington, delaware, for us. also with us are msnbc contributor and former acting solicitor general and senior columnist from bloomberg opinion, our resident trump whisperer and jason johnson, politics and journal ifl profess area at morgan state university and msnbc contributor. i want to warn everyone and mike memoli, maybe you can give us more specificity on the timing, as soon as joe biden begins his remarks, we're going to go to them. mike memoli, what do we expect to hear from joe biden this afternoon? >> yeah, nicolle, he should be taking the stage any moment now. as far as what we expect to hear clearly over the last five years we have heard a lot of talk about building walls, haven't we? the pathway involved rebuilding the blue wall through the midwest that donald trump stormed through to get to the white house four years ago. the call for wisconsin, with nbc news declaring biden as

important winner there, is a very important first step. if you look at the battleground map, other than nevada, the biden campaign believes they're on track to win as well. the rest of the states are all states donald trump won and biden campaign thinks they have chances as well. the problem with the blue wall path for the biden campaign is it's also the one that induces the most heartburn for democrats. in a tight result, which wearily we're in because of the late count and mail ballot issues. that's why the former vice president, like he did last night, is trying to set the tone of patience, of confidence and speaking to the american people to try to instill confidence in this process. you're well aware among those veterans of this biden team is somebody who is familiar with an election that was contested all the way to the supreme court, and that's ron klain. the former vice president joined by kamala harris, his running mate, the opportunity to give longer remarks than what we saw last night, a very brief expression of confidence in the

outcome. but as for the biden team looking at the legal strategy playing out on the other side, they want biden to be above the fray but also speak directly to president trump and what we heard from him last night. and then bob barr and the other lawyers involved in the biden campaign get ready to go, as they say, ready within the hour to challenge any effort by the trump team to challenge outcomes across the state still with votes coming in. >> mike memoli, can you play the role of mood ring? what was the sort of process? i was stunned by just how clear-eyed the biden campaign was and how similar their view of the race was, really, all the way back to sunday morning to the trump campaign. they saw biden's clearest path as you said, three states, i started talking about the three states while everyone was hanging on every zip code in florida, i said this is not their plan. their plan was always wisconsin, michigan, p.a. and they're really optimistic about arizona.

can you talk about everything that sort of swirled around them as the night seemed to break some democratic hearts but really didn't seem to knock this campaign off their game? >> obviously in the final weeks of a campaign, it's obviously hard to separate the spin from the confidence of reality. it was a week or two ago the biden campaign released a memo saying we should not be complacent, donald trump has a chance to win this election. they always felt confident in what they saw as the 2018 model for a huge turnout for democrats, especially suburban women, the obama coalition, as you would call it, african-americans, latino voters, which other than south florida, did turn out in big ways for joe biden. but there was also an awareness you could see a little bit of 2016 at the same time. a hidden vote, larger-than-expected vote on behalf of president trump. and that i think was what was guiding the cautious we were

hearing from biden advisers throughout this all, even as they expressed confidence. i think obviously last night everyone hoped for a quick and convincing and clear victory. as the night went along they were all talking about the word slog, the long slog mentality, as somebody else has put it, my conversations with the biden campaign. nothing is ever easy for joe biden and nothing is going to be easy for anybody in 2020. so very clear-eyed about this and they remain so even as a lot of democrats are obviously rightfully concerned about what could be a protracted fight in the courts. >> neil cottial, can you pick up that threat that at this point seems like saber rattling from the trump campaign. if you listen to bob barr, he's projecting almost complete confidence the legal position of counting every legally cast vote, which is what most absentee ballots represent, is waning legal argument. how do you see it?

>> exactly like that. if i'm joe biden right now, i'm feeling really good before where things are. it is always, if you look over the course of american history, always a losing strategy in the united states to try to block the counting of votes. that's really been the central republican strategy, nicolle, for the last several weeks. su can't vote bhal. can't make it easy to vote. toss out anything without a perfect signature, on and on and on. bunch of delay tactics to stall what is the inevitable, chicanery is not going to work here. it is disturbing to see president go the effective full putin here and claim victories on places like georgia on white house grounds, when he may lose places like that. i was glad to see people like rick santorum and ben shapiro, who was not exactly people who criticize the president, saying don't behave in this way. this is deeply irresponsible. but when it comes to the litigation, right now the biden folks are in a really good

position. trump has just said he's going to file two lawsuits in pennsylvania. they contradict each other. the first one, he says is to stop the counting the votes because he claims to be ahead and he doesn't like the trend lines. the second one is a complaint that the counting of ballots is causing too much delay. he's complaining about the delay in the counting of ballots, which makes no sense. one says stop. the other says go quicker. it's a ham-handed effort here. so bob barr i think is absolutely right. make my day, file these lawsuits. they're legally very dubious. >> i want to ask you if you have any inkling -- oh, joe biden is coming out. let's listen and pick up this conversation with all of you with other side after remarks from joe biden, accompanied there by his running mate kamala harris. >> kamala and i are here to make a brief statement, and i'm sure we'll have more to say later,

and tonight or tomorrow. but let me begin by thanking the press for being here and thanking everyone else. my fellow americans, yesterday once again proved democracy is the heartbeat of this nation. just as it has been the heartbeat of this nation for two centuries. even in the face of pandemic, more americans voted this election than ever before in american history. over 150 million people cast their votes. i think that's just extraordinary. if we had any doubts, we shouldn't have any longer about a government of, by and for the people. it's very much alive, very much alive in america. here the people rule. power can't be taken or asserted. it flows from the people. it's their will that determines

who will be the president of the united states and their will alone. and now after a long night of counting, it's clear that we're winning enough states to reach 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. i'm not here to declare that we've won, but i am here to report when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners. when all of the votes are counted, we have won wisconsin by 20,000 votes, virtually the name margin president trump won that state four years ago. in michigan we lead by over 35,000 votes and is growing. a substantially bigger margin than president trump won michigan in 2016. michigan will complete its vote soon, maybe as early as today. and i feel very good about

pennsylvania. virtually all of the remaining ballots to be counted were cast by mail. and we've been winning 78% of the votes by mail in pennsylvania. we flipped arizona and the second district of nebraska. of special significance to me is that we won with the majority of the american people. and every indication is that the majority will grow. popular vote lead of nearly 3 million votes and every indication is that will grow as well. indeed, senator harris and i are on track to win more votes than any ticket in the history of this country has ever won the presidency and presidency. over 70 million votes. i'm very proud of our campaign. only three presidential

campaigns in the past have defeated an incumbent president. when it's finished, god willing, we'll be the fourth. this is major achievement. this is a major achievement. and it's been a long and difficult campaign but it's been a more difficult time for our country, a hard time. we've had our hard campaigns before. we faced hard times before. so once this election is finalized and behind us, it will be time for us to do what we've always done as americans, to put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us, to lower the temperature, to see each other again, to listen to one another, to hear each other again and respect and care for one another, to unite, to heal, to

come together as a nation. i know this won't be easy. i'm not naive. neither of us are. i know how deep and hard the opposing views are in our country on so many things. but i also know this as well, to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. we are not enemies. what brings us together as americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us apart. so let me be clear, we are campaigning as democrats but i will govern as an american president. the presidency itself is not a partisan institution. it's the one office in this nation that represents everyone. and it demands a duty of care for all americans, and that is precisely what i will do.

i will work as hard for those who didn't vote for me as i will for those who did vote for me. now every vote must be counted. no one is going to take our democracy away from us, not now and not ever. america has come too far, america's fought too many battles, america's endured too much to ever let that happen. we the people will not be silenced. we the people will not be bullied. we the people will not surrender. my friends, i'm confident we'll emerge victorious. but this will not be my victory alone or our victory alone. it will be victory for the american people, for our democracy, for america. and there will be no blue states

and red states when we win. just the united states of america. god bless you all and may god protect our troops. thank you. >> joe biden making remarks there in wilmington, delaware, saying that it is clear that they're winning enough states to reach 270. not declaring victory, as donald trump sought to do last night. but talking about the margins by which he's ahead in the critical states of wisconsin, saying we won wisconsin by 20,000 votes, making the strategic, i think, point to say that that is around the same margin, exceeds the margin donald trump won the state by, saying in michigan we lead by 35,000 votes.

again, bigger than what trump won that state by. interestingly he said, i feel very good about pennsylvania. a lot of questions out there still about pennsylvania. again, it's not joe biden's only path to the presidency, making the point we know drives donald trump kazee, saying we won a majority of the popular vote, that the lead is now 3 million and expected to grow. most importantly though, and should joe biden prevail, i think this is a window into the tone he would try to set in a transi transition, talked about how he's on track to win more votes than any campaign in presidential history, remarks only three candidates ever toppled an incumbent president and saying i will work as hard for those who didn't vote for me as those who did. every vote must be counted. we the people will not be silenced, we the people will not be bullied. neil cottial, are these messages designed to lead, messages

designed to frame a legal challenge, or just messages for this extraordinary moment in the 2020 presidential campaign? >> i think we just heard a message that you are now listening to the next president of the united states. that's how it sounded to me, nicolle. three key moves. first, he begins with the phrase, here the people rule. that echoes our most founding basic values, the declaration of independence. he's harkening back in time. second signaling his humility and respect for the process saying, i believe i'm going to get to 270 votes but i'm not going to rush out and declare victory in the ham-handed way we saw last night. he's saying count every vote. third, this beautiful look to the future, starting with the pass in the speech, ending with a look to the future we respect and care for one another, we're not enemies even if we disagree.

it's a blueprint for governors and behavior and, frankly, the way presidents of the united states have traditionally behaved up until this one. so i thought it underscored the contrast with trump but also showed him as truly presidential. first time i have seen him do something quite like this. >> i have all of the same thoughts about it, but you cannot listen to what we just listened to from joe biden and feel that it was also designed to be a polar extreme opposite from what donald trump did in the east room, where he desecrated a sacred room that belongs to the people, the east room on white house property, he held a fraudulent victory campaign speech there last night. he also though talked about taking his campaign to the supreme court to have them decide. even if his own mind, neil cottier, what does he think he's talking about? what does he take to the supreme

court? >> i have no idea what the heck he's talking about. you can't just make it so and get a supreme court case. i just argued a case at the supreme court this morning that's been two years in the making and that's pretty quick. you have to bring it up in the system, start in the trial court, so on. i think these talking about this other litigation out there and it's certainly possible something ultimately will get to the supreme court but i don't think so far looking at the tapestry of litigation out there, nothing seems to have a tremendous amount of merit or enough to help trump at this point. so i think this is a bunch of saber-rattling right now. >> jason, i want to come to you on what this election says to you about the conversation we have had day after day after day about the vastness of this president's sort of atrocities in terms of his disdain for the office he holds and the way he

has treated people who he views as not his people, and often they are people, voiceless people, migrants that come here, asylum speakers that come here, african-american men and women calling for racial reckoning. what does the election results say to you about the country's disposition around all of those issues? >> well, it says a couple of things. one, trump's reaction in saying he's going to run to the supreme court, which is the equivalent i'm going to call the manager so i can get what i wanted shows his disdain for all people. we have to be clear, donald trump doesn't seem to like anybody. he may have a particular disdain for black people, he may have a particular disdain for children at the border, but, remember, this is a guy who left his own supporters out in the middle of a tarmac and hopped on a plane. there's nobody who donald trump likes. i don't even think he likes his

kids. so the contrast you're seeing here that america by the slightest of disturbing margins decided they wanted to pick somebody who doesn't actively dislike the people who gave him the job. i'm disturbed by the fact not enough americans made that decision. i'm disturbed by the fact you have large numbers of people who are like, yeah, a guy who leaves people out in the cold, quarter million deal dial of covid, harasses women, i want a little bit more than that and i don't know if i want the other guy. this election shows me disturbing things about this country racially and from a gender standpoint. i have to say this, if joe biden becomes president of the united states, and i hope that he does because he's not a dictator in the making, he seems to be a decent guy, i will immediately turn around my hat and be extremely critical of him because you cannot come into this white house with the idea these people aren't the enemy. they are. the people chasing the biden-harris truck out of texas,

they are the enemies of democracy. the people right now attacking vote counters in detroit, they are the enemy. kyle rittenhouse is the enemy. mitch mcconnell is the enemy. if it's one thing they should have figured out in this campaign, you cannot treat the republican party with kit gloves because they won't treat you that way. i hope joe biden gave this speech to sound nice because everything isn't locked down yet. maybe senator harris will have this idea should she become vp but they have to realize they're in a war, the war for the soul of america will not end once he's inaugurated and i hope he remembers that. >> tim o'brien, we should make clear the result is still in the balance. joe biden is -- as we said, in possession of our path to 270. it is unclear donald trump has a path to 270, which is why we are hearing from his side about

legal efforts. what i want to ask you, is it possible it was all on purpose, and by that i mean, enemy of the people? that if you look at the most repeated expressions from donald trump, it's the media was fake, we were enemies of the people. we said to his supporters in the very, very first month of this presidency, don't believe your eyes, don't believe your ears, believe me. is it possible some of what jason is articulating is the feeling i have heard almost universally from both that have this sort of emotional hangover, from not worried that joe biden won't get over the edge but by the closeness of this race, by the numbers of people who came out and thought four more years of a donald trump presidency was a good thing for this country we all love, is it possible that we try to sort of skip past the damage that donald trump had done in terms of contaminating our information stream?

>> well, i mean, yeah, i think the evidence is in this vote, nicolle. >> tim, let me just give you one more piece of breaking news. you can answer that question and take this. one more time from the control room? nbc news is projecting joe biden the winner of the key battleground state of michigan, all of its 16 electoral votes go to joe biden. as we said, he's the one with the clearest path to 270. let's see where that puts him. another razor-thin margin for joe biden over donald trump. as this vote was coming in, the outstanding vote was clearly by ste steve, another blow to donald trump, delusion i guess at this

point last night he was the winner and it may move us towards what donald trump and his campaign are talking about, which is a legal avenue. once again, joe biden of nbc news is now projecting joe biden to be the winner of the state of michigan. tim? >> well, nicolle, i'll happily take that bit of news. i think it just firms up what we all should i shi have faith in, joe biden will be the next president of the united states. i think he will comfortably get past 270 electoral votes. i suspect he will be somewhere between 280 and 303. i think nevada and aez arizona likely to come in for him. georgia is still up in the air and trending well towards biden possibly as the late votes get counted. i think in the context of the question you just asked me, it's important because a handsome plurality of american voters are doing the right thing here. they're voting for someone who is a responsible and

conscientious leader in the face of a dangerous demagogue and racist who has set out from day one not to unite the country but to divide it. and he's been successful in the context of your previous question. the vote that came in last night just shows how much further this country is divided degraffically, demographically, by race and income. we have a lot of work to do. and trump has been successful in tearing away at people's trust of institutions across the border. not just the media, but the political class, law enforcement and he's now trying to do it with the vote. i don't think he and his team really believe these lawsuits they're filing in the upper midwest are going to be successful. but they will provide trump a handy excuse to be able to say

the vote was fraudulent and we shouldn't trust it. >> i thought exactly that when i heard him last night, at 3:00 or whatever it was in the morning, there goes the trump base already believing if joe biden is the president, it was not a legitimate win. tim and jason are sticking around. this is a conversation, a scab i want to keep picking at. mike memoli had to run off and do reporting. neal, you elevate us and inform us every single time. i'm so grateful to talk to you today, my friend. we will be calling on you early and often. when we come back, the breaking news out of michigan, the state of michigan has been called for joe biden, adding all of its electoral votes to the biden race to 270 will go to the big board. we will look at that and what it means. plus, with wisconsin and michigan now in the biden column, we'll look at how trump appears to have handed back the

rest stop to the democrats. all of those stories coming up. don't go anywhere. one day we'll look back and remember the moment that things, for one strange time in our lives, got very quiet. we worried over loved ones, over money, over our planet, and over takeout. let's remember this time when so many struggled to feel secure, and build a future where everyone can. because when the world seems like it's standing still... that's the perfect time for us to change it.

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with now just six states left to be called by nbc news, a clearly flailing donald trump is asking for a recount in wisconsin, all the while filing a lawsuit in michigan to halt

the counting of ballots there. let's bring in msnbc's ali velshi at the big board for us. ali, i'm so thrilled you and steve kornacki, two of my favorite humans, are both the two big board whisperers. take me through these calls this morning due to this race in wisconsin and michigan. >> it's a very big deal. this is the electoral map. we'll still waiting for alaska, nevada, arizona, georgia, north carolina told us you're not getting any more numbers until november 12th. pennsylvania says everything will be counted by friday night. the secretary of state says earlier. here's what we got now, 253-214. let's look at the paths to victory. joe biden has nine combinations that can happen to get him to 270. donald trump has three left, and one of those paths, by the way, ends up in a tie. let's look at what we're actually worrying about here. i want to go out to what's outstanding in nevada.

you have a situation where we have 86% of the votes in. biden is leading by 7,000 in the entire state but there's 202,000 vol votes outstanding. that is very much in play. let's look at arizona, 86% of the votes in there, biden leading by 93,000 but 432,000 votes are available in arizona. so if you go back to the road to 270, let's just for sake of it, let's leave pennsylvania out of it for a moment and let's say north carolina, because we're not going to hear about it for a while, let's just give that to donald trump. let's even give atlanta to donald trump, with a lot of votes not counted there. these two biden has a statistical advantage in. i will give alaska to donald trump too. let's give biden nevada and arizona. biden gets to 270 without pennsylvania. now, pennsylvania there's a lot of stuff going on. it's going to be hard to figure out. that's just one example of the

type of path that joe biden has. we're going to wait on north carolina for a while and wait -- we may get numbers from georgia later on today. that is how that changes the dynamic. as you've been talking about since yesterday, the outlying places that don't have the votes in nevada, in arizona, in north carolina, in georgia and in pennsylvania are all places that would be heavily favored, that are heavily favoring joe biden. the bottom line is if those trends continue, these two look pretty safe. these two are a little unclear. arizona, north carolina and georgia. pennsylvania remains a very tricky one. as you know, the trump campaign declared victory in pennsylvania. twitter put labels on the tweets to say this has not been called. they're getting involved, as you just discussed with neal, in supreme court matters there. pennsylvania, the issue is, is there a road to victory without pennsylvania being called for a

while, and for biden, the answer is yes. >> ali velshi, you just went the farthest toward explaining trump's legal strategy that i have heard since i was on for 12 hours last night. the remaining vote largely, generally and there are no monolithic counties or monolithic neighborhoods, but by and large, it is by vote. is it your sense the legal strategy of stopping the vote is trump knows this will only get worse? >> the one place that is interesting is the one place i spent a lot of my time is pennsylvania. a lot of the vote in allegheny county, pittsburgh and philadelphia and neighboring counties. look at this one, bucks county, this is kind of unusual, north of philadelphia. this shouldn't be trending this way. 81% is in and donald trump's leading joe biden but there are still 76,000 votes out there. the trump people are saying there's a lot of little pockets of votes in all of this red

stuff that could put them over the top. may be true, may not be true but we need to see allegheny county and we need to see philadelphia county and that's what we're waiting for over the next 48 hours. they're claiming it's all the little places that have 500 votes and 1,000 votes where they can win that adds up to a victory. the fact is we've seen in the election of 2016, in a lot of places, that did make that difference. >> ali velshi at the big board for us, thank you very much, my friend. let's bring in jonathan lemire, associated press white house reporter and lucky for us msnbc political analyst, tim and jason are still here. lemire, take me through what last night was in terms of what your expectations were for it going in. >> i think in many ways, nicolle, it played out as expected. we knew this was going to be a close race. and i think we also knew and had been warning everyone there

could be a scenario where donald trump jumped out ahead on election day. those in-person votes that would be counted first would largely be republican because he had been urging his people, his supporters to come to the polls. and certainly that's that red mirage if you will. and certainly that was the case last night. the biden camp certainly had hopes for florida, which didn't happen. they had grown pessimistic a few days before election day. yes, they tried to push into some states like ohio and iowa and texas to try to deliver that early knockout blow. those weren't meant to be. but they're focused all along and the biden camp deserves credit for this. this is a disciplined campaign. they ignored the noise and twitter and focused on getting 270 and now it seems like they're on the precipice of doing so. they won two of the three former blue wall states that trump won in 2016. they've got wisconsin now. they've got michigan and they're just a victory or two away from claiming the white house. >> you know, and take me

through -- i agree with all sorkin script. it wasn't going to be a blue land slide. there are not 49 states that either party will ever win again in this country, and they were almost singularly focused on those three states plus arizona really in the final days of this. will you take me through the trump version of that? because your reporting in "the times" seemed to indicate they were clear-eyed as well and saw a very narrow path to 270 which is why they started conditioning their base for a legal fight. >> that's exactly it. yes, there are some democrats who are a little disappointed today, despite biden seemingly on the verge of a victory. because it looks like they're not going to flip the senate, lost seats in the house. it wasn't a repudiation of trump, thorough rebuke of everything he stood for. that's not happening. but it does look at the end of the day donald trump could very

well be a one-term president. in terms of the president and his supporters, they've known for a while now, specifically since the president's covid diagnosis and his disastrous first debate performance, they had a narrow path to sweep the sunbelt and pick off one of the great lake states. it would have to be pennsylvania to make the math work. they got the win they needed early in the night in florida. they feel good about where they are in georgia, north carolina. more north carolina honestly. both of those are still outstanding. they feel like they can still get those. now, of course, we're hearing the legal challenges. there have been some networks and associated press that have called arizona for joe biden. the trump campaign is furious about that and threatening legal action. the campaign also sued also to try to stop the count in michigan and pennsylvania. the trump campaign declared victory in pennsylvania. that's not how this works. no one declared victory for pennsylvania yet and certainly the trump campaign is not able to do so. yes, the moment we see their

path is exceedingly narrow. there's a sense i talked to some people inside the campaign and there's a degree of frustration, resignation, bit of flailing about as they throw one thread of legal action after another at the wall at the hope something sticks to change the narrative of this race. >> tim o'brien, there's not an older story in the trump repertoire than litigating his way out of battles. i remember being rather amused when i read more recently at one point he wanted to settle with bob mueller, who was investigating, of course, the attack on america's democracy by one of our most brutal adversaries. just talk about how true to form this is that trump wants to sue his way without merit to a second term. >> he learned at roy cohen's knee that you don't need to go to court to weaponize the legal system in your favor. and he spent years threatening people with lawsuits to great

effect, whether they were business competitors or the media. and he's telegraphed his desire to do this for months now. i think both campaigns, whether we are right now today in this campaign, both in this election and both campaigns telegraph where we would be right now. and trump knew once covid hit and the economy started tanking he was in serious trouble and it only got worse as the months went on. we've seen it did not get as bad as we thought it would but we did see it was an existential threat to his presidency and what trump does in situations like this is deny reality, put the responsibility for losing on someone else's shoulder, and try to sow doubt about the legitimacy of everything around him. and he loves to do it through lawsuits. in some ways he's well situated in these states where they're going to contest this. the state legislatures are controlled by republicans. there's divisions with the governors.

the governors are democrats. but i don't think he's going to get anything done in the courts here. as we said before, what this is for him is essentially someone who when he can't get his candy is willing to burn the store down. we've known that about donald trump. he's demonstrating it, and we should just have faith in our institutions to be able to handle this one, which i think they will. >> and jason, i think you can forgive those of us who are nervous for institutions as we watched them be burned down one after another, like dominos falling so fast. it made your head spin. how are you feeling about that scenario tim o'brien just laid out, jason? >> i think that's likely. i think trump sort of -- his legal fight right now, if he wanted to stop the vote, he should have started that yesterday. i really don't think they have much of a path there. i know he tried -- he assumes every single government agency is actually working for him and

they don't. and i think what we'll see, if these counts continue the way they are, with 400,000, 300,000 possibly in georgia, you're going to see trump go through the stages of mourning. they will deny what's going on, be angry, and them people start to bargain. we will leave office if you don't prosecute us. i suspect we're going to see that in the coming weeks if this count continues the way it goes. again, it just goes to show we have so much work to do in this new administration if they come to power in restoring the virtue and integrity of these agencies. we still have a court case that the post office in dejoy with 300,000 ballots sitting in a pile somewhere underneath catalogs and target inserts. we have to go back and repair all of these different institutions the president destroyed. lastly, i think this is key, if there's one thing this entire process has shown, for every person who was upset and

frustrated like you and i, nicolle, everybody last night, oh, my gosh, when are we going to find out, it reminded me of americans who had to wait six, seven hours in line to vote. we're complaining about 24 hours to get an answer about the election, there are americans two spent a quarter of that time just to vote. we have to do something about voting rights and voting suppression in this country because we shouldn't be in this situation. i know the electoral college is a pipe dream but something needs to be done by the kind of voting and counts we've seen across this country. >> it's a travesty there isn't even an expectation that will be among elected officials a bipartisan endeavor. warren, tell me who wrote that speech last night and did everyone think it was a good idea? chris christie blasted it. rick santorum, trumpy, right wing dude on cnn, blasted it. did they think it was good? >> this was the president's idea, of course, the usual team of writers, including stephen

miller and jared kushner had a hand in it as well. he had been telegraphing this for a while, nicolle, he was going to get out there and declare victory. their hope, the trump team was make things close enough to throw it to the courts. let's remember, of course, the president appointed three supreme court justices, including one which took her seat in the last couple of weeks. but, of course, the key was to keep it close enough for that to happen. what we are seeing now are potentially these margins joe biden is putting up may be too significant to overcome. but that's where the trump white house and their campaign is focused right now. they want to stop the courts and feel like they can win these two states in the southeast, maybe pennsylvania, although that looks like an uphill climb, and hope for the best in the courts. but joe biden right now clearly in that speech we just heard, he's projecting. he's ready. he's not declaring it yet but he's ready to be president and start leading. >> i just can't let this end without buttoning it by saying that the fact it goes unremarked that there is a presumption he

has succeeded in corrupting the united states supreme court, that that was the strategy, that i'm just going to take my losing electoral effort to the supreme court which i'm pretty sure i've already corrupted, is so classally disgusting, we'll have to stick a pin in that and untag that another day. whether he wins or loses, they take that taint with them all day every day. jonathan lemire, tim o'brien, jason johnson, thank you so much, my friends, for being here on a day like this. up next for us, we'll go out to michigan, where joe biden has been projected the winner and where some mail-in votes are still being counted by calls from donald trump to stop. we'll look at that next. if you have medicare, listen up.

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at indeed.com/home. pictures of election workers counting ballots in grand rapid, michigan. the trump campaign says it's filing a lawsuit to stop this, to stop the counting in michigan. trump campaign wants access to all poling locations, even though it's projected that joe biden won the state. michigan's 16 electoral votes will go to joe biden. let's bring into our conversation nbc news

correspondent heidi trebsbella. heidi, what's going on there? has the mood changed in this effort with the call coming in of michigan for joe biden? >> reporter: i'm outside detroit's tcf center where they're tallying the absentee votes. these final numbers are being tallied inside of there. what we see is a contentious scene as earlier today huge groups of self-proclaimed poll watchers, most of them gop, converged on the center, forced their way in and ground things to a halt. some of the official lawyers, the democratic party official poll challenges, themselves couldn't get in, nicolle. i'm here with one of them.

jordan acker is designated to be in there watching what's going on. jordan, what exactly happened in there? >> we came back from lunch and they wouldn't let us in the building at first. it seemed like someone put out the call from the republican side to have everybody, mostly nonlawyers, converge here in order to stop what's normally an orderly professional process of counting votes in detroit. >> reporter: you said they stormed the room. how did that happen? >> they converged all over the building. about a half hour, 40 minutes later probably two dozen came down the escalator. they had on lanyards chanting stop the count, banging on the doors, trying to get the election officials to stop even

when the city attorney said here's why we're doing this. ultimately they still tried to stop detroiters from having here right to vote heard. >> reporter: the police were called in here. did they have any effect on your ability to get the votes counted? >> they haven't. the parties have done a professional job all day counting ballots since the middle of the night last night. i've been here since 6:30 this morning. it hasn't had an impact because the right number of challengers are in there. republicans wanted to stop detroiters from counting and their voices being heard. >> reporter: they're chanting stop the count. of course that's not going to have an impact given all those votes could be tallied within the hour. jordan told me here and wayne county and grand rapids where they had 75,000 absentee ballots

outstanding, we could be getting those results in within the next hour or two, nicolle. >> could you ask jordan if there were divisions among these republicans that were in there? were they all there to sing and chant or were some of them -- were any of them for the purposes you would be there for, the integrity of the vote? was that really just a one-sided endeavor? >> reporter: let me answer that and then i'll ask jordan. we met a lady on the street here who professed to be a republican poll challenger who said she couldn't get in. there's a sense the general chaos created by this crowd, which is all essentially gop self-proclaimed challengers did create this environment where legitimate poll challengers on both sides got crowded out. what do you think about that, jordan? do you think there were others

like you who were blocked from getting in the room? >> absolutely one of michigan's democratic party lawyers was stuck outside with us. we had a 500 sandwich order for the volunteers inside and couldn't get their sandwiches inside. ultimately they kept the doors locked. the police in the city of detroit did a great job making sure the counting continued inside. >> reporter: nick, this entire process was entirely predictable and actually created by the gop legislature here in michigan which declined to give extra time for the pre canvassing that would have been necessary to complete the count on election night. >> it's just amazing, heidi. so many unsung heros just going and making sure the votes that people cast are counted. it's really important reporting.

we're grateful to you. thank you so much. don't go anywhere, folks. the next hour of "deadline white house" is back after a quick break. ♪ [ beeping ] [ engine revs ] ♪ uh, you know there's a 30-minute limit, right? tell that to the rain. [ beeping ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. who've got their eczema under control. with less eczema, you can show more skin. so roll up those sleeves. and help heal your skin from within with dupixent. dupixent is the first treatment of its kind that continuously treats moderate-to-severe eczema, or atopic dermatitis, even between flare ups.

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just like you watch over your best friend. another life-changing technology from abbott, so you don't wait for life. you live it. every vote must be counted. no one's going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever. america's come too far. america's fought too many battles. america's endured too much to ever let that happen.

we, the people, will not be silenced. we, the people, will not be bullied. we, the people, will not surrender. my friends, i'm confident we'll emerge victorious. hi, again, everyone. it's 5:00 in the east. we're continuing our breaking news coverage of the 2020 presidential election. in just the last hour nbc news has projected joe biden the winner of the crucial battle ground state of michigan, following a call earlier that joe biden is the apparent winner of wisconsin. joe biden well on his way to rebuilding the blue wall of mid western states that went for trump four years ago. to be clear, at this point it is abundantly clear that only one of the candidates is for counting all the legally cast votes. >> the other is for falsely declaring victory and calling

for voting to continue where he's behind and stop where he's ahead. the president seeking victory throughout out right lies, legal avenues and voter suppression. the president has not addressed the american people since his remarks very early this morning in which he falsely claimed he already won. trump is spouting disputed claims, some so false that twitter and other sides from flagged them for being false. the results of last night and the vote counts reveal an extraordinary election. americans were desperate for their voices to be heard. the contest saw a record number of votes cast, more than 160 million. in this hour joe biden leads donald trump with the critical states of pennsylvania, nevada, arizona and georgia still up for grabs. we start this hour in

pennsylvania with our friend chris jansing live for us in harrisburg. chris, there's a lot of fire coming out of donald trump and his campaign, his twitter feed about this state. what is the ground truth as you understand it? >> reporter: let's talk about what we know the facts are. the facts are that the results are still coming in. votes are still being counted. some of those mail-in ballots are still coming in. they'll be coming in until friday. we have some new numbers. as we see this race tightening toward joe biden which is why he came out a short time ago and said i feel very good about pennsylvania, the two big areas we're looking at philly and the area around that still 120,000 votes to be counted there and more coming in. around allegheny county, that's philadelphia and that area, two batches came in just this afternoon. 25,000 more votes being counted in addition to 111,000 that

still have to be counted. joe biden says they're running about 78% of the vote in those mail-ins which is why he's feeling good about his chances. it may be why we saw rudy giuliani coming to pennsylvania and filing more lawsuits saying that the democrats are hiding ballots and they're trying to steal this election. let's be clear about what's happening. in philadelphia the major counting center there, we have cameras there. there are poll watchers there. there are lawyers there. no indication of any kind of anything that rudy giuliani is talking about. i was at a vote counting center in lackawanna county. ten lawyers so no irregular

lay before the election six different lawsuits were filed by team trump, all of them rejected. we're waiting to see what's going to happen. we're not going to get these vote counts tonight. there's a huge crowd on the steps of the state capitol. they're saying everyone counts. they're reflecting withhat we'r hearing from joe biden, the governor here and the secretary of state. let's take a breath. let's make sure everybody knows this was done in the proper way. best guess, probably friday for something like a final count. we'll see. they're moving along pretty quickly working 24/7 to get the votes counted, nicolle. >> reporter: chris, i started to despair around 1:00 in the morning that we hadn't done enough story telling for

general -- for audiences from coast to coast about how each state counts the vote. can you explain how pennsylvania counts their vote? what gets counted first and what doesn't get counted until, as you were saying, maybe friday? >> reporter: yeah. so it's different, right? i'll tell you where i was yesterday in scranton. they started at 7:00 in the morning when the polls opened to start counting those mail-in ballots. first they go through a machine. those ballots are opened. there's an interior envelope. then the ballots are taken out by hand and put into a pile. some of those technically to explain to you it takes a while. some have been in the envelope for a long time. it takes a while to get them flattened and fed into a machine. there are large votes that were cast yesterday and they were

brought in. think had little computer chips. they let me in the room. i said to the guys do you feel powerful? they said no, we're just feeding in information. ten lawyers at a fairly small voting place. all of that churning out quickly, but carefully. we're hearing those same reports all around pennsylvania. we have quite a few reporters and camera crews out there. >> msnbc's chris jansing we'll stay in touch with you if anything changes. we'll be talking to you in harrisburg, pennsylvania. joining our conversation now michael steel, senior adviser for the lincoln project, robert gibbs former white house secretary and "washington post" contributing columnist donna edwards. if i had to pick three humans to

talk me through the next hour, you would be those three. michael steel, it cannot be said enough that both campaigns at this point see this the same way. joe biden the person with multiple paths to 270. donald trump it would appear with a legal path to delaying the inevitable, which looks like a very, very long shot chance of hanging on to power. is that how you see it? >> yeah and that's how they've seen it for sometime. this is not like, oh, wow we have other options to get to 270. oh, gee, we have only way way to get to 270. that's been baked into the days leading up to the election when you started to see the huge turnout in early vote and

absentee ballot voting. when you were at the 50 million mark ten days out, you were planning and i know the biden campaign was recalculating what that would mean in states like michigan. you're tracking where that vote is coming from and how it's beginning to settle in the campaign infrastructure. what we're seeing right now is two things happening. one, donald trump having the typical donald trump temper tantrum when he doesn't get his way and, two, his campaign having to respond to that temper tantrum and throw lawyers out like throwing spaghetti up against the wall and hoping a judge somewhere who may be sleepy enough and not paying attention to the law and gives them an opening to cause the havoc they think they can get away with and gum up the works.

>> well, i mean, to that end rudy giuliani fresh off what donald trump describes as the hunter biden flop is there doing what? what is rudy giuliani doing in pennsylvania? >> he's doing rudy. what else is he doing? it ain't law. i mean, it's not -- yeah, he's just doing rudy. next. >> all right. you just made me feel better about not zipping over and taking that live. in all seriousness, i do not -- i can't follow the thread of what in their heads the legal argument is. last night in that atrocity, donald trump going to the east room, further desecrating the premises which i didn't think was possible by declaring fake victory, chris wallace, chris

christie and rick santorum kicked him in the teeth for doing it. he said he wanted voting to continue in arizona. he wanted it to stop in michigan. i don't think what the legal argument is if they have realized the only avenue they have is a legal one. >> okay, so last night was just egregious on all levels. it was a front to everything we stand for as a republic and as a democracy. the reality now is, again, as we saw from last night -- donald trump did not read what was on the teleprompter. that was riffing donald trump. everybody is trying to play clean up to that. the problem is, in order to have a legal challenge, you have to prove that something illegal occurred. you have to prove that there was some type of defect in the law

that requires a remedy by the court and that defect would manifest itself in the process of counting the ballots. well, they haven't finished counting the ballots. so you can't prove a defect until all the ballots are counted. that's where this becomes a joke. >> you make me smile. robert gibbs, i was thinking this last night as i was sitting with my brilliant colleagues rachel maddow and joy reid and brian williams. you can take a girl off the campaign trail, but you can't take the road to 270 off a campaign hack's brain. i was trying to pay attention as florida came in and i was trying to get excited about texas. i was obsessively focussed on the blue wall. i couldn't wait for steve kornacki to start pressing the

counties and to see how the vote started to come in. could you talk about what ended up i think being a psychological divide between what some people's expectations were for last night and the actual political imperative of last night which was to get to 270. joe biden didn't make it a secret in and it travel schedule certainly revealed it was michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. >> yeah, i definitely think for democrats psychologically they thought it would be over by 9:30 or 10:00 at night. it would be a big knock-out in florida. life would be easy and pretty spotless and we would have most of the night to celebrate. that's just generally not how -- campaigns aren't that surgical. there was also a level of disappointment when other sunbelt states didn't go early. texas didn't turn blue.

i travelled to texas and spent six months there in 2002 in the first effort to turn texas blue. that was 18 years ago. what was important was not just that idea of we're going to get to the blue wall and as you said we spent a lot of time there, including that last day, but i think it was also important too when arizona looked like it was going to go for biden and when that second congressional district in nebraska went for biden, all of a sudden that was a big moment as well because it began to open up a second path, right? what happened there is arizona, nevada, nebraska too, three electoral votes, not four from maine all of a sudden meant -- and i tweeted this at 4:00 right before i went to sleep -- that meant wisconsin and michigan could give you exactly 270 votes and all of a sudden georgia and

pennsylvania weren't needed in that scenario. at that moment two scenarios happened for joe biden, two paths. this was always the thing. donald trump didn't need to be good last night. he needed to be perfect. he had to win all of it. when that started to crumble and that second path, even if it wasn't the easy path the democrats wanted, it still meant there were two paths. to summarize the events of today, let's sum it up quickly, the end and defeat of the donald trump campaign is very near. >> you know, donna, this is different from talking about the importance of votes. every single vote matters. everybody didn't just deserve to be heard, but had an obligation to be heard. as joe biden said an hour ago, this country is hurting. no one should be satisfied with 250,000 americans dying. they didn't have to.

the country is being led by someone who doesn't seem to care about the country he leads. i'm not making a point about voting. the popular vote is also not just a right to make our voices heard, but it drives donald trump crazy when he loses the popular vote. it's all vitally important. i guess what i'm getting at is there was somehow disappointment. joe biden -- if you had to be one of these two men, you would want to be joe biden a million times. joe biden and ckamala harris ar on track to be the next president and vice president of the country. joe biden would only be the third person to unseat an incumbe incumbent. what do you make of this universal landslide that would be an obviously moral victory when joe biden needed, which

appears he's about to get, a clear electoral victory? >> last night i decided to do what i've never done on election night. i turned it off and waited. i could see the votes that were outstanding were important votes from detroit and milwaukee and philadelphia that had not been for joe biden. i always believed and clearly the campaign did that the pathway really was through the midwest and those industrial states and that anything else was going to be gravy. i know that on this larger point, you know, joe biden has spoken something today that's really important and that is the importance of counting every vote, of every american being heard and then whomever comes out on top, then you begin the process of governing. i'm convinced that most americans actually believe that

to be true which is why i think these efrforts to monkey around with challenging every vote and every ballot is not going to work, even through the courts. michael steele and i are part of the national council of election integrity. it's bipartisan. the reason is because we believe in our democracy. the first principal of that is that elections take place, you count the votes and then you move on. that's where we are right now. the moving on i believe is going to be with my team. you know what, the importance is getting every single one of those votes counted. >> that is not the view from the white house. robert gibbs i'm reluctant to show this. i'll give you the gist of it. donald trump, just as we were coming on the air, claimed for

electoral vote purposes the commonwealth of pennsylvania, the state of georgia and the state of north carolina. now, he's been there four years. you don't claim states and then move them into your column. phil rucker makes that point saying there's no such thing in an american democracy as candidates announce they hereby claim victories. i looked to see if this was a spoof account. it sounds out of the monty python holy grail of hereby claiming things. what do you make of how the president is acting and the extra challenges he's claiming for what joe biden said his mission was today, which is to be a president for all americans? >> i think this confronts many of the demons that donald trump hoped never to confront and that was losing the white house. as you mentioned, the first

candidate to lose to an -- an incumbent to lose re-election since george h.w. bush in 1992. at some point in the future he's going to have to give a concession speech. those are never fun. most campaigns never write them because they're not great exercises in moral building. i think he's confronting his worst fears. we saw it on the campaign trail. he pledged in states if i don't win here i'll never come back. those worst fears are hours away from being confirmed. he's going to soon be the ex president of the united states and joe biden will be the president elect of the united states. >> are you sure? i mean -- >> i am. >> people need to be reassured. >> i am. >> are you sure? >> i am. >> nicolle, can i just address a

point that robert just made? >> please. >> the concession speech we're looking for is what robert just said that the president said. i lost to him? that's his concession speech. donald trump is not going to stand in front of a bank of microphones and concede this race. i mean, the actions you're seeing now are not the actions of a man who has it in his mind that he's going to concede the race because he's claiming states. he's not conceding the race. i think america needs to brace itself. >> he's claiming them. >> he's claiming states. i think we need to brace for that and as a nation just kind of move on. it's like that child that when you go to the mall and they start stamping their feet and refuse to move you're like okay and just walk and keep going.

you're like my husband will get you. just keep going. just let it go. >> michael steele, i'll add to that something i heard over the weekend. i reported this on the air sunday night and again yesterday. trump's own advisers did not see a clear path to 270. one of the concerns was that if it got to this point where it was close enough that in his mind trump thought he could pursue a legal avenue that this would be the mindset of a transition where he might consider foregoing some of those traditions of meeting with the president elect. he might consider foregoing attending his successor's inauguration. it's premature to have those conversations, but his own add vie advisers worried that this kind of defeat for donald trump would have the consequence of more sour grape-like performance

because for trump it's all performance in the transition. does that ring true to you michael steele? >> it rings very true to me and confirms what i heard from probably some of the same people. >> yes. >> they're just like, hey, this is it. i think as a nation and certainly for a president elect, joe biden, when that moment comes, you plan accordingly. if he doesn't want to come to the inauguration, it will be a blemish, not on the united states, but on him. if he doesn't want to cooperate on the transition, it won't be a blemish on the united states, but him. we need to stop carrying donald trump's baggage as a country. we need to stop it. we need to now begin to free ourselves of this sickness and begin to heal ourselves and take the risk with someone like joe biden who is prepared to move us

in a different direction and if donald trump wants to be that stubborn little brat standing in the middle of the mall stamping his feet refusing to move, okay. >> i love it. i love it. michael steele going the full opera for us. all three are staying right where they are. when we come back, he might lose the race, but it's clear he's not going quietly. donald trump's false claim of victory as he plans to take his fight all the way to the supreme court, even some of his closest allies calling that a big mistake, huge. our special election coverage continues after we take a quick break. don't go anywhere. locating your parked car with the touch of a button might seem... excessive.

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counted and perhaps a long way to go, a nervous trump's reaction to baselessly claim fraud. today he's asking for a recount in wisconsin. wisconsin and michigan both in joe biden's column as wins for him. it is all forcing republicans and trump allies to contemplate breaking from him, including mitch mcconnell and chris christie a former u.s. attorney who said trump's baseless claims this early on are a telling and bad political move. >> there's no basis to make that

argument tonight. there just isn't. all these votes have to be counted that are in now. in pennsylvania the argument won't even start in pennsylvania until tomorrow or thursday or friday. there comes a point where you have to let the process play itself out before you judge it to have been flawed. i think by prematurely doing this, if there is a flaw in it later, he's undercut his own credibility in calling attention to that flaw. >> let's bring into our conversation joyce vance former u.s. attorney, professor at the university of alabama school of law. michael steele, robert gibbs and donna edwards are still with us. joyce, what chris christie was probably too cerebral for donald

trump to understand. what argument do you think he's making? >> it's clear he's out of arguments, nicolle. if you thought you were winning, the last thing you would do is stop making these frivolous claims, stopping the counts in places you thought would hurt you, challenging other places. you would just let the vote be counted. the biggest argument is the president's own conduct. it reveals he doesn't believe he's the winner in this election. >> what is the end game? i mean, it's clear there's no one around the president willing to say to him in private what chris christie and rick santorum and others are willing to say with some distance from him. i guess for chris christie lets him speak truth to his friend donald trump. i guess my question is what damage can donald trump do with

the levers of the u.s. government. he's shown himself willing to use the white house counsel's office as his own defense attorney, the justice department as his arm of his political efforts. what damage can donald trump do with something you said is meritless? still he's the president. >> if we're talking about challenging the vote, the expectation is that the judiciary will prevent that. he can't simply go into court with bogus claims. he has to have a nonfrivolous claim. i suppose in a larger sense this is the point where we find out if there are any notorious guardrails. we're in a danger moment. there's no doubt the president will continue to try to trash norms and do damage to the country in order to protect himself. it will be up to the three branches of government to muster

some semblance of normalcy to prevent it. >> donna, let me read you something that dan balls wrote, one of the most unflappable and measured political reporters and observers of our presidential politics. a president who respected constitution would let things play out. trump has shown he cares not about the constitution or the stability or well-being of the country or anything like that. what the president did and did from inside the white house itself, rather than from a neutral site, was not an act of a confident leader. it was the sign of the desperation he must feel as he watches his presidency on the brink. do you agree with that, donna? >> i do. i mean, if we saw this behaviors in hungary or nigeria, we would be calling out the observers.

we would be going to the united nations. this kind of behavior is really dangerous. we really are in an inflection point where we make a decision on whether we'll stand on the side of democracy or whether we continue to let one person, one man undermine all our pillars of democracy. i think that, you know, americans even by a slim margin maybe are making that choice. but we have to have it ring out. this really cannot stand. i mean the president is in very dangerous territory. it's not going to take one or two republicans calling it out. it's going to take all of them. >> speaking of calling it out, michael steele, let me read what mike pence said. i have to say, it's too late for mike pence. you know, he can't get off the ship. he tried it would appear with this quote. mike pence overnight, while the votes continue to be counted

we're going to remain vigilant as the president said. the right to vote has been at the center of our democracy since the founding of this nation. we're going to protect the integrity of the vote. first of all, it's pretty pars, but second of all, he's working for a guy trying to do the opposite. protecting the integrity of the vote means not declaring victory. means saying i'm going to make sure every vote is counted before i say or do anything. do you think this was a little bit of legacy protecting, bet hedging? what was that from mike pence? >> yeah, i think it was -- i watched him after he spoke. it really was -- you could tell it was a moment where he was like, why didn't you just read what was on the teleprompter? it was that kind of a moment. he felt like, you know, i got to clean this up.

that's cleaning it up. because he's still -- regardless of how he tries to cut this thing, a part of administration which has been anti-constitutional. it's been anti-dogmatic. it's been anti-traditional and value sets that were articulated by a once proud republican party for over 150 years. what do you say? are you going to stand in that moment and go, well, we have to count every vote when the guy standing next to you just declared i want every vote not to be counted? he has to reconcile that legacy on the other side of this. already ben sasse and others are starting to position themselves for what will be one hell of a fun fight to watch for the

nomination in four years. >> i'm popping popcorn. joyce, let me give you the last word. bob bauer who oversees all legal efforts for the biden campaign has for days and weeks now sounded extremely confident and extremely prepared. some of this might be because donald trump has done this all public publicly. there wasn't a secret plan. is it because the law is on his side or because they've done this before? where does that -- what is your understanding of the legal landscape? what does it tell you about the biden campaign position here? >> bob is not somebody whoever exudes false confidence. he's a pretty straight shooter. this is, i think, the opposite of that old chestnut we talked about. if the facts are on your side, pound the facts. if the law is on your side,

pound the facts. in this setting he's got the facts and the law. there's no need for him to pound. he'll move forward quietly and confidently. he's put together an incredible team of leading experts of people very good working at every level in the courts. this will be a very precise operation. it will be an operation designed to protect the vote, the integrity of the vote to make sure that american's voices are counted. that's the goal here, to let the votes be counted and then let the chips fall where they may. >> it's just extraordinary that one party is for that and the other clearly against. joyce vance, thank you for helping us make sense of this legal phase. michael steele, robert gibbs, donna edwards sticking around. joe biden is rebuilding the democrats blue wall with victories in michigan and wisconsin. our coverage of that continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere.

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and growing, a substantially bigger margin that donald trump won in 2016. >> joe biden on the cusp of rebuilding the democratic blue wall that donald trump tore down four years ago. nbc news has declared joe biden the apparent winner in the state of wisconsin which means the result is close enough that it could be affected by a recount or confirmation of the vote. just within the last hour nbc news projected joe biden will be the winner in the state of michigan. let's bring in charlie sykes, michael steele, robert gibbs and donna edwards are back. charlie, you were so zen last night. both the trump campaign and biden campaign has wisconsin going for joe biden. i wonder what you make what the victory looked like. >> one of the reasons why i was

reasonably confident about it i was looking at the votes coming out of dade county, where the city of madison is, and they had a massive turnout. joe biden got a margin of victory from 180,000 votes from this one county. he got 35,000 votes more than hillary clinton. look, 20,000 votes in wisconsin is a lot of vote. the trump folks are talking about a recount. former governor scott walker tweeted out a caution. last time we have had statewide recounts in wisconsin it moved the number of votes by 100, 200, 300 votes. it's not going to wipe out 20,000 votes. everything is close here. trump won by 20,000. scott walker was defeated by 20,000. looks like joe biden has won by

20,000. that's just politics in wisconsin in 2020. >> i want to read the exact quote from scott walker. here's a republican it would seem using the air waves to talk to the trump campaign. scott walker former republican governor saying after a recount in 2011 there was a swing of 300 votes. after 2016, wisconsin trump numbers went up by 131. 20,000 is a high hurdle. it's a nice way of saying buzz off and take your frivolous lawsuit somewhere else. is that what scott walker is saying? >> i think that's what he's basically saying. the strategy of the trump campaign is not necessarily to accomplish anything. it's to sow the chaos. by the way, he's signalled this. his main goal is to make people think he's not a loser, that

this was stolen from him, that he was stabbed in the back somehow. this is crucial for his narrative. it's crucial for his ego. it's also crucial for the narrative of the post-trump presidency, which is, again, that he's the leader of a grievance movement. if this had been fair, he would still be the president . 80% of the voters in wisconsin who voted for trump absolutely believed he was going to be re-elected. he's counting on tens of millions of americans doubting the legitimacy of the election. it's very much on brand. this is who donald trump is. we shouldn't be surprised by this. he has been signaling it for months. >> you know, robert gibbs, shame on donald trump for caring so little about the country that he ostensibly leads and the people who trust him. what extra challenges -- i mean,

joe biden seems acutely aware of what charlie sykes articulated. it's like he watches charlie says these things on tv and that's why he never foregoes the opportunity to say i'm running as a democrat, but will be a president for all americans. >> there's no doubt that former vice president joe biden believes there's some genuine repair work that has to be done to bring this country back together, to repair the norms that have been broken. my hunch is the former vice president will probably tell you that's going to be a work and to-do list that will exceed even his time in the white house. it's going to take a while to repair what's been damaged. it's going to take a while to repair what's been broken. it's always been one of his most effective lines. it's foundational to restoring the soul of america. i do think -- look, the end of this is also the relief from the

exhaustion we've felt for four years. >> yes. >> bringing everybody back together and that desire to be brought back together has catapulted joe biden to this point today and it's what he talked about the very first day of his campaign. >> that's right. charlie sykes, michael steele, robert gibbs, donna edwards, four of you could bring everybody together. thank you for spending time with us today. i'm grateful to talk to you guys. when we come back, a critical piece of joe biden's electoral hopes, and we might not know the latest votes until tomorrow. nevada when we come back. arizona waiting on hundreds of thousands of uncounted ballots. those states, those stories when our coverage continues after a quick break.

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when it works for you, or, you can wait, and pay it off in one lump sum when you leave your home. discover the option that's best for you. call today and find out more. i'm proud to be a part of aag, i trust em, i think you can too. as joe biden inches his way toward 270 electoral votes, there are two states in the southwest that everyone has an eye on. the first is nevada. as we sit here right now, joe biden leads donald trump there by some 8,000 votes. these numbers we're looking at likely won't move until tomorrow. that is when state election officials will update their count. then there is arizona, joe biden man tans his lead there. that situation is reportedly volatile. we understand there are hundreds of thousands of ballots yet to be counted.

joining us now, don editor of the nevada independent and nbc news political correspondent vaughn hillyard. arizona we should say has been called by fox news and ap for joe biden. i'm told anecdotally for republicans, they feel like there is a lot of mcsally trump vote out there. what is going on in arizona, vaughn? >> nicole, there are 600,000, about 600,000 ballots that are still outstanding here in this state and when you look at the margin for joe biden right now, it is just 9300 votes. now, you know, when we were first getting results when we were speaking last night, joe biden had a double digit lead but the expectation was that that margin was going to narrow and right now you're looking at a margin of 3.4% here in the state. that is because in the last several days, the in person

voters as well as early ballots being returned were coming in at a striking rate on behalf of republican registered voters and particularly those voting for donald trump and that is why you saw this margin decrease so starkly. the big question is what does this last bach look like here? you know, if you're doing the mat on a scratch pad, nicole, you're looking at 58% is what donald trump is going to have to win this 600,000 vote allotment by. it takes me back, if i could, to 2018 because there is a lot of question marks what this looks like and whether that's possible. in 2018 there was a senate race here and on election night, martha mcsally won in person voters by .29% and her campaign insisted to me at the time that thely ballots hand delivered at the polling location like the ones we're waiting on here tonight were trending along the lines of those who voted in person. well, ultimately, that wasn't

the case and kirsten ended uptaking the lead two days later and expanding her lead. that's what democrats want this bach to look like. the trump believes they can narrow the margin and pull off a win here in arizona. >> they have 18 to 20% of their elect tret electret is independent. i go to nevada. john rolston, i did not see rachel maddow look forward to an interview as much as she did talking to you last night to ask what is going on in nevada. are there any updates this morning? >> you mentioned that there weren't going to be any more votes counted until tomorrow, nicole. we heard six or seven different stories on that today. there may be some results released here as early as five or ten minutes from now in northern nevada around reno. the clark county votes are the ones that are going to really make the difference, though, nicole.

with that 7500 vote lead that biden has, there are tens of thousands of ballots in clark county that need to be counted. they're not sure how many exactly mail ballots there are because essentially, a whole bunch were dropped off on election day in these drop boxes, which have not been opened yet but the conventional wisdom is there is anywhere from 20 to 50,000 of those. let me tell people las vegas, clark county is a democratic stronghold the voters here in clark county, democrats voted 2-1 in favor of above republicans excuse me in clark county since this began in the mail ballots. so the democrats feel very confident that once those clark county mail ballots are counted, biden will have a decisive lead here. it's been a crazy year and even thought i am not ready to call anything and neither should

anyone else. >> and to your wisdom, nbc news has not, john rolston, vaughn hill yarvaughn, we'll come back to you early and often. thank you for spending time with us in this hour. speaking of early and often, i'll be back one hour from now along with brian williams, rachel maddow, joy reid, steve kornacki for night two of msnbc's special election coverage. we'll be with you through the whole thing. stay with us. pops and popcorn. ari melber picks up our coverage after a short break. don't go anywhere, folks. after a short eabrk. don't go anywhere, folks - [narrator] this is steve. he used to have gum problems. now, he uses therabreath healthy gums oral rinse with clinically-proven ingredients and his gum problems have vanished. (crowd applauding)

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good evening. i'm ari melber anchoring special coverage of this unresolved special election coverage. we have the latest with steve kornacki at the big board and expert gusts will break down this story and reporters on the ground tracking the impact of this rapidly shifting map. see them out there. we'll go there shortly. we have breakthroughs for biden late today. nbc news now projecting joe biden as the winner in wisconsin and the projected winner in michigan. michigan being called as biden's lead to 250 electoral votes for president trump. still counting in pennsylvania. arizona, which would get biden close. biden emphasized in remarks late