♪ ♪ all right. it is 1:00 a.m. on the east coast. we seem to be getting close to

media outlets possibly declaring a winner in the 20 presidential election. we are not there yet, and i have zero control over it as it should be. those calls are made here at nbc by the great people at our decision desk, and separate entities. let me break the fork wall here. if you're watching and you want to find out who is going to be the next president of the united states, and you want the media to make those calls, again, counting the votes is what matters and the results being the results, and i think the prudence and caution being shown i think across the board right now is all to the good of american democracy. we knew this would take a few days. two states are the focus of the moment. the first would be georgia. that's the state a democratic president has not won there in 30 years. joe biden is now within 2,000 votes and he has been gaining steadily on trump. again, 2,000 out of 5 million

cast. biden appears potentially poised to take the lead as those final votes come in, so we're looking at that. now, meanwhile, the sort of all eyes of the nation right now are on those folks, those fine folks who look like they just ran over from an airport where they were, they were directing planes, but they are not doing that. they are counting the votes of the american people who are selecting their leader. and the vote count continues in pennsylvania. they are planning to, god bless them, count through the night. the remaining votes which are vote by mail appear to overwhelmingly favor joe biden based on what we've been seeing two days now. if things go the way they seem to be going, biden could take the lead in that crucial state very soon. and if joe biden wins pennsylvania, he will be the president-elect based on what we have so far, particularly michigan and wisconsin.

right now our characterization of that race with 22,576 vote margin is too close to call, but you don't want to hear me talk about numbers. you want to hear steve kornacki talk about numbers. i'm joined now at the big board by the one and only steve kornacki who has the latest. what's up, what's going on? >> yeah, pennsylvania, there it is, 22,576, that's where it was the last time we checked in. you show the shots there. philadelphia, they're continuing to count those votes. so we're awaiting, as you say, we're at the mercy of them when they decide to report out another batch. we will see what that does to that statewide count. i am also -- i have been monitoring through the internet here, there is a live stream of the delaware county absentee ballot count. but they shut the lights off a few minutes ago so that's not a good sign -- >> steve, i like to think as america has been watching you the last few days with your image burning their retinas, your version of steve kornacki of some guy counting votes in

delaware, you have had your eyes glued on. does that mean delaware county is not going to trort out tonight or we don't know? they're in the dark? >> they have eight, nine camera angles. one might be the cafeteria. not much light in the building. i don't think we're going to get anything more out of delaware county which is right outside of philadelphia. philadelphia, as you can see, the question there is when is the next update and how much is going to be included in it. we saw 13,000 votes in the last one. we're also waiting, there are more votes in bucks county. there are more votes in lehigh county. there are a ton more votes, by the way, 35,000 in allegheny county. if you're wondering why we haven't been talking about allegheny county, it's because they are going to count those and report those out -- i say tomorrow. it's friday, later today. friday is when they're going to do that. there had been an issue involving some of the ballots there. so for a legal reason they

couldn't count them today, so they can resume the counting tomorrow out there. but that's another big batch that nothing is happening on tonight. but still, there may be other votes coming in from other non-philadelphia counties. if they do, we'll see what that does to the margin. if we don't get that, we are still waiting, as we say, on updates from philadelphia throughout the night. we are also awaiting georgia. we mentioned 1709. the big one here, i think there's been a lot of the suspense, clayton county overwhelmingly democratic, sitting on a bunch of ballots. there was a release a few minutes ago here of literally dozens of ballots. they've done this a couple times tonight where they spit out, you know, 35, 50 votes, something like that. we just got one of those. that's the movement -- when the margin is this close and we're down to this few places, we're looking for everything we can find. that's what you got recently out of georgia.

1,709, trump's lead statewide. we wonder if there is going to be a significant update on clayton county that would have an effect there. again, we're in the early morning hours of friday morning. we're 8 1/2 hours away from maricopa county out in arizona giving us another big update there that could be clarifying. for the immediate future, it's the city of brotherly love we're all waiting for. >> yeah, on the off chance that anyone had the utter audacity not to be watching us an hour ago and is tuning in now, just to run this math real quick for folks again, you know, the number of votes, mail-in votes outstanding in philadelphia and how those margins have been breaking and what that means for the difference, i think it's pretty clarifying when you get is that in your head about where we are positioned. >> yeah. so, there are basically 59,000 absentee ballots, mail-in ballots that are left to be counted in philadelphia. now, if we look inside philadelphia here, overall joe

biden is getting 80% of the vote in philadelphia. heavily democratic city. biden is doing incredibly well there. but the absentee portion of this, the mail in portion, biden is getting, i'll put it up here, 91%. i think i have to press this. it would be more dramatic if i did that. 91% is what biden has been getting of the mail-in vote. and that's been steady. so 91% of 59,000, if that holds, you know, he's netting more than enough to overtake donald trump statewide. >> just to get that number, that's about 53,690, and then you have to less out the remaining, you know, whatever, 5,000 votes. but you're looking at a net of 48,000 votes. >> right. >> if the outstanding philadelphia -- we're just talking about philadelphia. if the outstanding philadelphia mail-in votes continue to break

in the way they have broken, fairly consistency -- this has not moved up and down a ton -- you're looking at a maybe 48,000 swing towards joe biden, which would, you know, overtake and then put him 26,000 votes up in pennsylvania. again, just philly, just in pennsylvania. and we think we might get a few more bursts of those votes out from that city in the next hour or two, three, right? >> right. that's why we're -- all eyes are kind of on it overnight because we think we will get more updates. it's been -- been frying trying divine kind of a pattern. they do it an hour and a half, two hours apart. sometimes they do it longer apart, 13,000 votes, 14 -- i have no idea what goes into that formula. we just had a big one two hours ago. we're waiting to see if we get another big one. we're also waiting to see other places that have significant outstanding mail-in ballots as i

said. lehigh county, allen county. there's 10,000, 35,000. in pittsburgh, allegheny county, just looking here, the other big ones here. yeah, we've got a couple others, 3, 4,000. actually these are the biggest at this point, i would say. the 59,000 that you got in philadelphia, the 10,000 that you got in lehigh. oh, and then you got 10,000 more as well in bucks county. these are -- the 10,000 and above club, here you go, you're looking at it. >> all right, steve kornacki, thank you for that update. we're all just watching, waiting for some sort of pavlovian ring of the bell for votes out there. we'll come whack to baback to i. what seems like the presidential vote is getting to a finish, we will hear from joe biden. for the latest on the perspective of the biden campaign, mike memoli. what has today been like for the biden camp?

>> well, chris, for the third night in a row, a parking lot that has been staged for a pandemic-appropriate victory celebration did not see one. of course, there was a time during the day thursday where the biden team seemed to think that was possible. all day we were watching as there were sound checks, there were folks walking around on the stage making adjustments with potential remarks last night from the vice-president in mind. the biden team has been confident all along, increasingly so as the day went along, the numbers coming out of pennsylvania was on a track to put him over the top. but that count as we know, anybody still watching knows, slower than anybody was hoping for at this point. so rather early in the night actually, the biden team made the decision to essentially say, not tonight. they do expect by this point tomorrow, perhaps, he will be the president-elect of the united states, and that he will have an opportunity to address the country. but instead what did we see from joe biden on thursday? going about the business of

preparing to govern. he and his running mate senator kamala harris had two briefings, one on the pandemic, one on the economic crisis still unfolding. this as, of course, we had already seen their transition website posted. while his campaign is focused on the data, on the numbers, biden trying to send the message to the country that he is ready to govern at this point, chris. >> we've had some reporting from carolina, "the washington post" here about secret service ramping up their protection of the former vice-president. obviously this is a man who has had a secret service detail for years because he's vice-president of the united states, nominee get secret service details. what's your sense of that? do you know anything more about that? >> no. i mean, there's nothing we've seen. today the security bubble around the area where we are in downtown wilmington seemed a little bit lighter for much of the day, which struck me as a bit odd, but certainly i think over the course of the next 24 hours, if these numbers continue to go in the right direction for

the biden team, that will change very dramatically. chris, i think as you would understand, this is a good sign, right, for a country that has been seeing norms shattered die during the trump presidency, there are parts of this government that continue a pace that no amount of comments from the president of the united states in the briefing room tonight can do. you know, as i've been talking to biden campaign officials about the transition, this is another thing that they're saying as well, that among the rank and file non-political staff within the agencies of the federal government, there is cooperation. everything that, according to federal law is required of them to be preparing for a transition, is well underway. they're actually pleasantly surprised to see the lack of interference on that level. so perhaps we'll see that continue. then the question is what does the president do because it's all bifurcated at this point. there is everybody else and then there's the president of the united states and how he

responds will be, of course, another big story once we move forward if we can make a call the next few hours or at least days. >> all right. thank you so much, mike memoli, thanks for being here. for more on what's happening in the crucial state of pennsylvania i'm joined now by the former governor of that state, democrat ed rendell also the mayor of philadelphia, the city we're all watching right now. what is your sense offer things right now? >> well, joe biden will carry the state by 60 to 80,000 votes, somewhere in that margin. >> and you're pretty confident of that as you look at the margins, you look at what's coming out from philadelphia and you look at the outstanding areas? >> sure. just philadelphia and allegheny county alone will probably makeup about 50,000 votes margin and the other parts of the state 25 or 30. >> you know, take us back and you look at pennsylvania politics. pennsylvania has been a hotly contested swing state for as long as i have covered politics, you know, the last 20 years or

so. and what do you see when you look at the results as they appear they will be in the end, about this state and this campaign? >> well, you see the deep divisions, some of the similar divisions in the country, chris. we have rural pennsylvania that voted overwhelmingly for donald trump, and a lot of those are white working class folks who used to be democrats, or still are democrats voted for donald trump because they're angry, they're bitter and nothing that he seems to do distracts them from their anger. their anger should be directed at him because he made a ton of promises in 2016 and he hasn't kept any of them, working class pennsylvanians. nonetheless they stuck by him in almost record numbers. i thought we'd win this by 200,000. i predicted we'd dramatically increase our margin in philadelphia, pittsburgh suburbs, and we did. that's the reason we eventually

won the state. but i also predicted that joe biden would do much better in all of the red counties where donald trump beat hillary clinton 70/30 in came bringbria, joe biden would win 65/35. it's joe's home county. the margin went up a little. joe biden is a blue collar guy. i thought he'd cut into the margin that donald trump had achieved, but he didn't. so i think the divisions are deep, and that's why i think joe biden is maybe the best possible human being to be president at this time for this country, because he knows how to bring people together. he knows how to bring republicans and democrats together. he's a good person at a time when we need goodness big time in this country. >> yeah, that point you make, if you talk to democratic politicians in a lot of states and not just pennsylvania, your

home state, but ohio who have been in politics for 20 years, they have seen this sort of gravitational force of the urban/rural divide which always existed to a certain amount just get wider and wider and wider over time, where those margins which, i'm sure when you were running for governor, there's rural counties you maybe weren't carrying, but you weren't losing 55/45 that are now 70/30, 75/25. >> the amazing thing there used to be 18 counties in southwest pennsylvania, democrats carried 15 or 16 of them regularly. we're now carrying two, allegheny, county like west more land used to be a democratic county. now it's one of the best producing republican counties in the state. it's not a little bit rural, but it's more than anything else. mostly white, mostly middle class, mostly non-college

educated. and we used to do well there and we're getting clobbered there, clobbered there. >> that's one of the underlying trends that we've seen throughout the last four years, but even before that, actually, before donald trump. former governor ed rendell, thank you for being with me. appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> still to come, no pressure to those vote counters in pennsylvania. you guys do your thing. accuracy over speed. we are closely monitoring their progress. doesn't seem to be a ton of them in there right now. i'm not judging, i'm just observing as biden inches closer to a victory plus the latest on the tight race in georgia. that is next. wow! a new buick? for me? to james, from james. that's just what i wanted. is this a new buick? i secret santa-ed myself.

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decision desk director steve lapinski is saying it might not be possible to call georgia presidential race for weeks. that's because of how narrow that margin is, and the fact there might be a recount. we do already noga results are getting tighter even as we speak. we may even be tighter than what we're showing now according to the reporting coming out of clayton county. donald trump's lead is shrinking by the hour. you take a step back, we're all following the votes minute by minute. it's hard to get perspective. georgia, georgia being here is an astounding result. not least for a long time georgia was considered a deep red state, not a competitive state. you might remember in 2018 democrat stacey abrams calms -- came within 1 1/2 percentage point of beating brian kemp. he was overseeing the election at the time. he mounted a voter suppression campaign. craig bluestein is a political reporter of the constitution, and he joins me now.

greg, just the latest in terms of the sense you're getting from the elections officials on their projection for time lines and things like that. >> very scattered. we expect more ballots to be counted, absentee ballots to be counted in gwinnett county later this morning. we expect clayton county ballots to be counted now. that is the most democratic couns county in georgia. the most solidly blue county in georgia. so democrats are pretty optimistic still that as those clayton county votes get tallied, it could put them if not over the top, right there. >> it's an astounding thing to consider. it was actually a relatively close race in 2016, i think it was a five-point margin between hillary clinton and donald trump. and then, you know, two years later a 1 1/2-point margin in the gubernatorial. what's the reaction of politicians, political class of

georgia they now find themselves there on a knife's edge? >> yeah, i mean, look, those of us who have been following politics in georgia know this wasn't some sort of electoral switch that flipped overnight. this is probably more than a decade in the making here in georgia. republicans recognize especially after the 2018 midterm with the very close race between stacey abrams and brian kemp that they had to be on the defensive, that it was a wake up call to them. david purdue who looked like he might be in a runoff with jon ossoff said at an airport hangar weeks after the 2018 midterm that republicans have to fortify. they have to double down. they've got to play defense in a state like georgia. they can't be complacent. he was right because right now georgia is about as big of a battleground as you can get as you can see from the results right now. >> you are going to be the center of the political world very shortly, it appears, because georgia state law, you have a regularly scheduled senate race that's between purdue and jon ossoff, the

incumbent. and you've got that open seat that was kelly loeffler was appointed to it. she defended. that open seat is going to a runoff. you're going to have two runoff elections, it looks like, in georgia in january probably to decide who controls the united states senate. it's going to be wild. >> mind blowing, right. if you think about our two senate races up until november, $200 million was spent on ads for those two races. i think that you can come close to maybe doubling that in the next nine weeks. this will go to the holidays, this will go through new year's. it will put attention on georgia. it wasn't hanging in the balance, it was a referendum on president-elect biden and president trump's second term. now the senate control hanging in the balance, it's going to be nuts. >> yeah, every voter -- every

political worker in the country, everyone invested, every donor and every voter in your state, and from other states watching it who wants to send a message post this election, the first big chance they're going to get is in your state of georgia. >> yeah, you're right. you know, it's funny because jon ossoff has been here. >> he sure has. >> in the special election that became a referendum. that took on so many different narratives, on the suburbs, referendum on president trump. now we're coming there over and over again. this time with the statewide race. >> what is your sense of the governor of the state, it they're republicans, the message they're sending about confidence in the votes, confidence of the system as the president calls them quite frequent will you into question without any real evidence, in other states not in georgia so far. i can imagine if biden were to take the lead, that he might

direct his rhetorical fire at them. >> oh, yeah. i mean, if you look at what happened i should say yesterday -- i was about to say today. in georgia you had the secretary of state not one, but two different press conferences to be transparent about vote counting. then you see president trump attacking what he called the democratic administration of voting in georgia when, in fact, there is a republican who oversees elections in georgia, brad roethlisberger. i know privately republicans here are chasing at that. publicly they don't want to distance themselves one iota from president trump. >> that sounds familiar. greg bluestein, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us. i appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> so, one of the individuals who will be on the ballot is reverend raphael war knock. it appears he'll be moving into a runoff with kelly loeffler in january. first of all, congratulations on moving ahead to that runoff.

what is your read on the situation in your state, which is going to be the center of the political world? >> thank you so much. it's great to be here with you. listen, georgia is changing. it is the battleground state and this is not something that happened overnight. this is the result of work that -- stacey abrams came within 1.4% of winning, and that's while running against a man who was both her opponent and the umpire. he was calling balls and strikes with his thumb firmly on the scale. he barely slipped past her. since then we registered 800,000 new votes in the state, and you're seeing the fruit of that work tonight. >> are you surprised, i guess, is my question? i know that for people that

don't work in politics, i think it can be very easy to under estimate how hard it is to get the last two points, right? like to get to 48 or to get to 46, it gets harder each inch you climb up to go from that to 50, to 50 plus 1. were you expecting what we saw or are you surprised by it? >> well, i think it's an important lesson, a civics lesson if you will for folks who were paying attention. i've been working in voter registration and mobilization now for years. i was spokesperson and then chair of the board for the new georgia project that registered hundreds of thousands of new voters in this state. and i say to folks who wonder if your vote counts. look at what's happening tonight. your vote absolutely counts. and that's why i think folks in this state have been engaged, quite frankly, in voter suppression. but we're seeing an amazing

turnout by the georgia electorate and i think it's because people understand these are not just names on the ballot. i've been moving across the state in my race. people recognize that health care is on the ballot. i'm in a state where there are 500,000 people in the medicaid gap. 1.8 million georgia i can 1.8 million georgians have preexisting conditions. and leffler thinks it's good to get rid of the affordable care act in the middle of a pandemic. dignity to attend college and not have a mortgage before you have a mortgage, these are the issues that have been driefving voters out and sweeping change. >> reverend warnock who will be in the next round in a remarkable set of events in georgia. we have tracked it here at msnbc for a while. thank you so much for making time. as we've been talking here,

we have new numbers in a couple key states. not necessarily the ones you were thinking of. is that enough of a tease? all right, we're not going to go to break. maybe we do have new numbers. let's go to steve kornacki. what do we have there, steve? >> we just got, chris, some numbers from philadelphia. >> there you go. >> and you can see here, and it's interesting. first of all, donald trump's lead down to 18,229. remember, this had been 22,576 before. it's come down 4300 votes with this update. again, from philadelphia that biden is winning overwhelmingly, also i think, you know, shows philadelphia has been about 2 1/2 hours, i would say 2 1/2 hours since their last update from philadelphia. they get another one out, brings it down to 18,200. they are working overnight. clearly they are still reporting these out and we'll keep looking at this. we'll see what's to come. we're trying to get a sense if

there are any other counties in pennsylvania that are doing this overnight. it may just be philadelphia, but there is a significant update. brings it further down. 18,229. and again, with this update now, the number of ballots we think are left in philadelphia still sits at about 54, 53, a little under 54,000 ballots left still in philadelphia. >> all right. so i'm backing out the math here. that sounds to me like we have a 5,000 vote -- 5,000 votes total and a margin of 4300 votes. >> yeah. in fact, i can get the exact number here. adam, what were the biden/trump splits for this? >> there we go. >> 5,073 for biden and 7,026 for trump. >> this is representative. this is what we were talking about. when we talked to you earlier

tonight we had 59,000 outstanding. >> yeah. >> we get those in. and you're seeing, you know, just an enormous spread that nets 4300 votes for joe biden. and there's still 8 or 9 tranches of about that size left. >> yeah, that size, the one before this, the last update before this, they put 13,000 ballots out. when they did that, that trump lead came down about almost 11,000 votes at once. the pattern is totally consistent here. every single update we get of these absentee ballots, of these mail-in ballots, biden is making gains. every single one we get from philadelphia, the gains are even bigger because biden is just winning the mail-in vote by such an extraordinary margin there. >> do we also have -- do we have any new numbers elsewhere? >> yes, sure. here's the thing on georgia. this happens sometimes with this

system. there are new votes that were just reported out by clayton county. >> i saw that. >> clayton county, we'll remind folks, clayton county right outside of atlanta, hugely, hugely democratic area. they're sitting on a couple thousand, and they seem to be releasing these in very, very small increments. and they just did again, and our system has not actually -- it's not caught up in our system yet. it soon will, but joe biden won 249 votes in the latest update from clayton county. donald trump won 19. so it's a 230-vote difference. so really, what that does is that brings this down to 1,479. that is the new statewide lead for donald trump. that will be reflected in our system i imagine soon because we're getting this directly from clayton county's election website where they report out their vote. that is what they're currently reporting. and it means, again, 1,479 would

be donald trump's lead statewide. and more to come in clayton. more to come in gwinnett, more to come in a lot of these democratic counties. plenty much votes there certainly on paper for biden to catch trump. >> for people to understand the math trajectories here, in some ways there is a kind of -- in both these cases, and i don't think this is true in arizona because it's a much less clear set of votes and what they're doing. in pennsylvania and georgia right now, the sets we're looking at is physics. they're on a trajectory as it were. >> right. >> when you say clayton county is 249 to 19, again, that's giving you a sense of what these margins are in very democratic places using a method of voting that had already been polarized towards democrats. you're getting margins like that. >> right, no, exactly. and it's not quite as -- the difference between georgia and pennsylvania on this, there is a difference i just showed you clayton.

it's already an 80, 85% -- whatever method you're using it's going to be that lopsidedly democratic. the red counties in georgia, when you look at these numbers, some of them trump is not doing that bad when we do the absentee ballots. >> not like pennsylvania. >> right. that was the big thing earlier, i think. here we were looking in forsyth county in georgia, a 2 to 1 margin. they were sitting on 5,000 absentee ballots. gees, is this going to be one of these places where trump actually in the mail adds some vote? and actually there was one recent updates. in one update trump had slightly more than biden. another one biden doing better. in pennsylvania just dominating with it. >> hang on for one more second. i don't know if we have new arizona votes. >> we do. >> we do, right. i think there is a county

outside maricopa that gave us some votes. >> we have good old cocanino county, home of flag staff from the old -- >> and the navajo nation as well. >> what we have here, this is a strongly democratic county, but again, what we've been seeing in arizona is the very specific type of vote that's now being tallied by these counties around the state is clearly favoring trump. so the votes that just came in from flagstaff, they went from biden, but they went from biden 53 to 47%. we're talking here about 6000 votes, little over 6000 votes. 53 to 47% in a county that overall biden is winning 61/37. this actually, even though biden -- this pads biden's statewide lead a little bit in terms of the votes he picked up here, it continues the trend of this late vote that's being counted up in counties in arizona is actually going better

for trump. >> right. >> than the overall vote had been. the big picture question here statewide in arizona is once all of the counties, coconina, maricopa, pima, once they all count up their votes, when you put those all together, does trump get 59% of those from this last group that they're all in the process of counting now? if he does, he may very well erase all of that biden lead and win the state. the number is about 59%. even though he's only getting 47 in this update here, that might actually indicate -- that's ten points better. that's an improvement from baseline for him. it might actually mean he's still on pace for that. >> i know we're getting absurdly technical, but it is 1:38 a.m. so let's do it. vaughn hillyard, one of the fascinating things to the extent stuff is fascinating in arizona, these different kinds of times people are voting. there's different ways to vote in arizona. there's a lot of mail vote, in

person, and people who mail in their vote, deposit in the last few days. they count in categories in terms of ballots. one of the things we'll find out from maricopa is, what, 75,000 votes that are people that dropped them off on election day. and the hope/bet that the biden folks are making is that that kind of behavioral voter, a drop them off on election day voter, is going to be more democratic than the votes that were mailed in the few days ahead of time because democratic messaging was so intense about don't trust the postal service. did i get that right? is that basically -- >> that's it. if you look at it this way, right, there's two buckets here of the vote that's being tallied since -- in the last couple days in arizona. there's two buckets. all of it you could call the late arriving absentee vote, the late arriving mail vote. the first bucket was the saturday, sunday, and i think

some of them monday before the election. but really the weekend before the election. these are votes that were received in the mail then. there donald trump in maricopa county is getting about 59% of the vote. and that puts him, as we say, that puts him right where he wants to be if he wants to overtake him. the new one that vaughn is talking about here is folks who on election day -- i'm not sure what i'm writing here. i'm writing election day. on election day -- i'll drive a picture of a car. got in the car and drove it in. yeah, what we know about these voters, we do have the stats who took these ballots and returned them. it is a more republican group just when you look at it that way. the democrats are making the argument this will be more republican than this if they are correct about that. then, yeah, trump is not going to hit his number, but the republicans are making an argument that, hey, the bottom line here is republicans vote on election day. if folks are holding this mail

ballot and going into poll place election day, that's republican behavior. that's a thing republicans would do. hear the arguments from both sides. >> we will see. obviously people have fights over the forecasting model. we're going to find out. there is a sort of comical characterization of american life. dr. seuss, butter on top and butter on bottom. when you vote having been polarized over the course of this pandemic? steve kornacki, thank you for that update. keep watching those numbers. we will keep you close. i want to bring in sahil kapur, national political reporter for nbc news, dean at the lbj school public affairs at the university of texas. harry litman, former u.s. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general. harry litman, let me start with you, someone who worked both at main justice and as a u.s. attorney.

what is your assessment of the equal parts, to my mind, dangerous and awful but comically inept legal strategy currently being pursued by the trump folks? >> it's really remarkable, chris. they don't seem to have understood. it doesn't matter these sort of ragtag scatter shot claims of this signature doesn't match and here we want to be closer. unless they have a actual claim that would give them a victory, that would change things, they're dead. the strategy here is always, get your guy ahead, and then stop the counting. and, in fact, the ground is shifting out from under them. one quick thing about pennsylvania. there is no suspense here. this is indomitable, this is math. there hasn't been suspense for 36 hours. every 100,000 votes that come in have been 75 to 80% for biden.

this last tranche that steve just talked about was 86%. there is no way -- that means every new 100,000 votes is a 50,000 vote gain for biden. it's been remarkably consistent. he's now down 20,000 or so. the next 40,000 votes are going to put him over the top. and the odd thing about the legal strategy, i mean, trump himself has been fairly quiet for two days, and they have these scatter shot lawsuits, but not a one of them could possibly affect the outcome of the election. and in the meantime, probably by tomorrow, some networks are going to declare that biden is the winner. and what happens then to the lawsuit that says, these 23 votes should be discounted? it dries up and goes away. >> sahil, the president came out today. it was very expected, it was very in line with what he does. it's what he does on twitter. he said a bunch of lies. he floated conspiracy theories that are baseless.

he attacked essentially the underpinning of free and fair elections in the american democratic system which he has been doing. what do you think the effect of that was? i think there's a bunch of different ways you could read it. what was your read? >> well, chris, i think it underscores the extent to which joe biden, if he does become president-elect soon, will still be governing what is effectively in some ways trump's america. this is the first time a president of the united states in any of our lifetimes has approached an election this way, has so directly tried to dee legitimatize the results when they aren't going his way. i mentioned this to you, what was it, 24 hours ago when we last talked. i was in arizona last week talking to the president's supporters and they believe him almost to a person. i spoke to dozens of them if the president loses there will be some fraud or illegality behind this. i emphasize again, there is no evidence of this. but the fact people believe this under scores the challenge joe biden will face as someone who

is coming in and who promised to try to unite this country and be the president of everyone. that is difficult to do when a huge chunk of the country does not believe urjityou are legitiy elected. >> the seating of this, his own pathological narcissism, but also a political tactic, which is to sayd deny legitimacy. he got his start in his current car nation in american national politics de-legitimatizing president obama because he was born abroad, et cetera. this is perfectly a closed narrative art for the president. >> so, basically the claims that he was making about president obama, fast forward, got him elected. so i want to build on sahil's comment.

and i think that what president trump has been doing in the last 48 hours is a short-term and a long-term strategy. i think in the short-term, when the race looked a lot tighter when we went to bed on tuesday night, it was about, you know, if it was going to be super-duper close, then he could drive a wedge. he could try to claim that it was stolen. he was grasping at straws. but i think that there is a longer-term strategy that there is going to be a trump on the 2024 ticket. whether that's donald trump himself, whether that's one of his sons, whether that's ivanka, he is building a base of support. he's already had that base, but he's building that base to letting them know that they have been wronged, and that they need to go and right that wrong in 2024. so i think at this point as the way the numbers are looking, it's with an eye to 2024. >> i think that's almost certainly correct.

harry, bill bar who rur who run justice department in utterly shameful ways with the power of that justice department has been relatively quiet. there was some reporting about the justice department advising the fbi that they could send armed agents into counting facilities if they needed to. i couldn't quite tell how much that was, you know, a threat or not. what is your read about the role that barr has played three days thus far into this count? >> he has been silent, and he's been silent pretty much the last month. perhaps he just concluded that this was going to be a losing cause, that he didn't want to go down with. although as you say, it hasn't stopped him in the past from championing the president. there was a threat perhaps that there would be people who would -- that the bureau or actually ausas would come in at the time of the vote. none of that materialized.

the department hasn't really been a factor, and it's too late now for it to be a factor. i think he closed up his tent about a month ago. it's logical in a way, although it's inconsistent with how he's been to date. one big point is there's not all that much for him to do, for anyone to do. that's what people kind of don't grasp. there is not really a legal strategy here. that's why they're flailing about. he probably knows that, the white house may not, and he's keeping his distance. >> the margins here are tremendous. there are all kinds of ways you can work the margins of a 1500 vote difference. >> exactly. >> which is what florida was before the recount was shutdown to 537. you can't do that with 60,000 votes, can't do it with 20,000. >> they're going to try that in wisconsin, which will be interesting. can they extend things out as, say, happened in the al

franken/coleman and somehow drag things past december? i don't see it because, again, i think it's going to be a fait accompli late tomorrow, and all of this is just going to see what it really is, which is he's the ultimate sore loser. >> sahil, what do you think about the mitch mcconnell and mcconnellism which to me is actually the kind of core of the modern republican party as much as donald trump is. i think the modern republican party is three men, john roberts, mitch mcconnell and donald trump. the mcconnell part of it would happy to leave the person of donald trump behind although there is a power in his base they would not like to leave behind. >> it's a fascinating point, chris. i feel like you and i could spend all night talking about that. i will make one point about this. mitch mcconnell, as things look, is more likely than not to be the majority leader e. there are two georgia races headed to a

runoff. one we have called, one almost certainly will be. democrats have to win both those two to get themselves to 50, in which case potentially the vice-president will be the tie breaking vote. if it's mitch mcconnell as majority leader, or president-elect joe biden's agenda would be dead. all the things he talked about, health care, immigration, climate change, a big multi-trillion infrastructure bill, that is not getting past mitch mcconnell's desk. so if he is majority leader, it vastly diminishes the window for joe biden not only to get legislation, but to get cabinet appointments there, to get judicial appointments through. he was comfortable block the previous democratic recommendations to the supreme court. a senate led by chuck schumer is the size of the grand canyon. you cannot overestimate how important these two races in georgia are going to be in terms of joe biden, what kind of

president he's going to be, what he can get done for the country if esshe is elected. >> one of the stupidest cycles was court packing, which did not happen yet we all spent a week on it. thanks for making time tonight. don't go anywhere. pennsylvania might not be done tonight. we aren't going anywhere obviously. our coverage continues after this. we all have our own journey ahead of us. our own hopes and dreams. we'll pass many milestones. moments that define you. and drive you. to achieve even more. so, celebrate every one. because success isn't just about where you want to get to. it's also about how you get there the all new 2021 cadillac escalade. never stop arriving.

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about once-weekly ozempic®. all right. so here's where we are right now. there is one state we're watching above all others this evening. it might be the reason you tuned in, which is the state of pennsylvania. the state of pennsylvania shows a margin right now of just 18,229 votes between donald trump and biden. there are over 100,000 votes still out, and those votes have

been coming in at very, very wide margins for joe biden because they are mail-in votes. the president of the united states successfully polarized mail-in voting along party lines. and so we have seen a steady methodical metronomic kind of diminution of the president's lead every hour, two hours as those votes come in. philadelphia, the folks in philadelphia are staying up through the night and they are going to be counting through the night. and we will see where that goes. but the pace is set as is the trajectory of where this ends up. thank you for staying with us. again, tonight katy tur and aman pickup coverage after this. ♪

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