and a good saturday morning to you. craig melvin here, it is 5:00 a.m. on the east coast, 2:00 a.m. out west, and at this hour, texas is now the first state to pass 1 million coronavirus cases, and the white house chief of staff just tested positive, and we are also still counting votes in america.

joe biden still leading the vote total in some tight races, but we're waiting for an answer to that question that everyone in america wants to know this morning, who will reach the 270 electoral vote threshold and when will they reach that threshold. here's where things stand in four key states early on this saturday morning, we'll start in the keystone state. as you can see, still too close to call. the difference between the two candidates, 28,833 vote, mr. biden with a slight lead there. from pennsylvania to nevada, in nevada still waiting for votes to come in from clark county specifically, but right now mr. biden ahead by almost 2 percentage points with 93% of the votes in. the difference between the two candidates there, 22,657 votes. from nevada south to arizona, in arizona mr. biden still with the lead, but it's too close to

call, 97% of the precincts reporting the difference between the former vice president and president trump almost 30,000 votes. and in georgia, where we are expe expecting more ballots to be counted today, more vote totals to be revealed in just a few hours, right now in georgia still too close to call, but 99% of the vote there has been tallied. the difference in georgia, just 7,248 votes. there will, in fact, be a recount there in georgia because it is so tight, that coming from the secretary of state. according to nbc's count, joe biden's electoral vote count stands at 253, president trump 214. we've got our team fanned out in each of these key states that we're watching, but we start with the latest on the count itself. richard lui is back at the big board, senior political editor

mark murray standing by. richard, how many outstanding ballots actually remain? what should we be watching for this morning? >> good morning to you, craig, again, millions, by the way, just to answer your question here. at the moment joe biden in terms of where he stands, 4.1 -- he's over 4.1 million votes ahead of donald trump. your question, how many unreported votes do we have so far? about 12.2 million, but that's the entire country. the four states that you brought up when we just look at them, they only constitute 500 roughly, and 80,000 unreported votes so far in the four states you just mentioned. that's an expansive number, although we are projecting the other states, those four states, we're watching this number super carefully. craig, one of the states that we're getting votes -- you just mentioned georgia and the recount here -- 7,248 votes is

the difference. you know, we went to sleep last night if you did, the difference was like 4,300, so we just got in some votes. they are counting overnight. i mean, we got the report from fulton about three hours ago, that means it's about 2:00 a.m. our time on the east coast. the recount number, and i'll send it back to you by the way. this number here is 0.1% of a difference. the recount happens if it is less than 0.5. now, according to nbc news, when you look at how recounts generally happen, they don't change the initial count. so for instance, bush v gore, that difference was about 1,200 votes, on average according to 538, recounts result in about a 0.2% difference. still clears here, if we do finish in georgia with this

number, a recount probably won't change the outcome. >> all right. it's also very clear that your vote matters. >> yeah. >> it matters clearly. mark, you know, one of the things that's been revealed here over the past few days, the interest in this election, by all accounts there will have been more people who have voted in this presidential election than any election in more than a century, which is commendable regardless of party. in pennsylvania turnout also pretty spectacular. provisional ballots there in the keystone state, mark, what are you paying closest attention to right now? >> yeah, just kind of how they break, craig, and again, there's been a whole lot of uncertainty in this election. we've seen certain patterns play out where the mail-in ballots look good for joe biden whether you're in blue areas in pennsylvania or even red ones, and just democrats by and large wanted to vote by mail,

republicans by and large wanted to vote on election tday. the people who cast provisional ballots, you want to make sure they were eligible to vote, and could they end up being a person who decided, hey, i have a mail-in ballot but i want to vote on election day. maybe you're a republican who wanted to do that. maybe you're a democrat who had a mail-in ballot, and said i want to voe on electite on elec. the different motivation on how someone ends up becoming a provisional voter, i do think there's some uncertainty there. we believe there's some 100,000 provisional ballots still remaining in pennsylvania. not sure that all of them will end up counting at the end of the day, but it becomes important at this stage, particularly given the margins just to actually know how those provisional ballots are breaking, where they're coming from, and i think that's just going to give us a whole lot

more clarity. and of course to me the most clarity is actually going to be on those mail-in ballots coming from allegheny county, pittsburgh, do they end up growing joe biden's lead to a certain extent that it doesn't even matter what those provisional ballots show. that's what i'm going to be looking for later today. >> mark, of course the question top of mind for everyone watching and listening on sirius satellite radio this morning, time line, what do we think the time line is to have this thing called? >> i wish i had my crystal ball, craig. this election has been unlike any other. i have to have a feeling that we're going to end up having some clarity today, and the reason being is just the point i was mentioning to you earlier, we're now getting more and more votes. if we end up getting the allegheny county ballots, if we end up seeing what provisional ballots look like in pennsylvania -- and again, all eyes are on pennsylvania because joe biden, if he continues to

increase his lead, that would give him the electoral college votes he needs to be able to win this race. and of course we're also seeing in arizona and in nevada more and more vote drops, and so the more that we end up getting and i think we're going to get them today, i do think that we are getting where we can end up seeing the light at the end of this tunnel. >> senior political editor mark murray, thank you, richard lui, both of you do stick around for me if you can. mark just mentioned pennsylvania, dasha burns is in the capital of pennsylvania. she's in harrisburg. dasha, what do we know about when we could expect another update there? >> reporter: i'd love to gif you -- give you a good answer to that, craig, but the reality is we don't know and we likely won't know until we actually get an update. philly has been teasing some drops, but those tend to be delayed, and most counties in the state took a break

overnight, and so it's unlikely we'll see any update or any new numbers until at least mid-morning. it's interesting, craig, i got here yesterday from michigan. i've been covering both of these states. both states have their first presidential election this time around with no reason absentee voting. it's now in both places. in michigan we got those results on wednesday and it's largely because they were able to do what's called free canvassing. they could start opening those envelopes on monday which saved them a whole lot of time. here we are in pennsylvania, still around 100,000 mail-in ballots left in this state. we know those tend to favor joe biden. there's also those 100,000 provisional ballots mark was just talking about. i want to give you a little bit of color on that. a lot of voters i talked to actually did decide, they got their absentee ballot, they wanted to have it just in case they got covid or there was some sort of issue. then they went and voted in person. if they wanted to do that and get a traditional ballot, not a provisional ballot, craig, here's what they had to do. they had to bring the absentee

ballot. they had to bring the secrecy envelope. they had to bring the voter declaration envelope that they would have mailed their absentee ballot in, and they had to bring the envelope in which they received all of these materials. they had to bring every single one of these items to their voting location, they couldn't have a single mark on any one of them. that's the case in which they would be able to spoil their absentee ballot. if they did not do this, that's how they got a provisional ballot and that is why we have so many of those in pennsylvania. most people didn't do this. i was joking with my producer, i lost my hotel room key this morning, i can't keep track of a single hotel room key, much less all of this paperwork. it takes longer to process because there's more steps of verification to ensure people did not vote twice. that is a large chunk of votes we are still waiting on here craig. >> dasha burns, we hope you're

able to get back into your hotel room, but thank you for your reporting there from harrisburg. let's stay in pennsylvania because we're joined now by the lieutenant governor of that state, john fetterman, a democrat. lieutenant governor, thank you for waking up so early with us on a saturday morning. how optimistic are you that today could be the day that we finally find out who wins your state? >> i mean, it's -- there's certainly a chance of that. i'm not going to go on record and say absolutely today, but i just want to say i am confident that the majority of those provisional ballots are going to be for democrats because i think most of them are centered in and around philadelphia and allegheny county, which of course were incredibly strong joe biden strongholds, and a lot of people who had a mail-in ballot were like they were unnerved because there was a

great misinformation campaign by the republicans and the president saying how you can't trust the mail, you can't trust your mail-in ballot, so they changed their mind and they wanted to vote in person, too. so i suspect a lot of those -- ask that bei and that being the case, those skew heavily towards democrats. i think you're going to find that those skew on the same, similar order as many of the traditional mail-in ballots. and even if they don't skew quite as for the vice president, given the lead, i don't see donald trump being able to make up any ground. >> i mean, the president, as you know, mr. lieutenant governor, is signaling they are ready for a drawn out legal fight over votes in a number of states including yours. how concerned are you about what this could mean for the time line in terms of ending this race? >> i mean, i can't believe he's paying good money for the legal strategy we've seen him use so

far. i mean, it doesn't make any sense. they're worried about these ballots that have been received after 8:00 p.m. on election day, and you're talking about at best a few thousand ballots in a race that is going to be decided by well more than that. there's really not much he really can do at this point. math is math, and it's going to continue to accumulate for the vice president, and i would just urge the president to accept that reality and do it in a meaningful way that's also dignified because these lawsuits clearly aren't dignified. >> you predicted, i believe it was -- i believe it was on friday you predicted that ultimately mr. biden would be successful in your state by at least 100,000 votes. are you still confident that the vote tally in the end will still put him over 100,000 more than mr. trump. >> you know, certainly that would be the high end of it, but

somewhere, you know, 50,000, 75,000, i mean, well in excess of something that would be changed in a recount or i mean, there's no imaginary pocket of intensely trump votes left out in our commonwealth. there just isn't. you know, at best some of the provisional ballots would be a 50/50 split, which of course is a wash. that's my point. like there is no pocket of pro-trump votes left simply because most of those were counted on election day. >> i saw some of the images friday of folks literally dancing in the streets there in philadelphia. there was quite the coordinated electric slide in the city of brotherly love. what'd you make of the celebrating in the streets already before the race has been called in pennsylvania?

>> they're celebrating math, and the president isn't going to celebrate math in pennsylvania. the inevitability of where this is heading, again, i'm not the expert in terms of, you know, we're going to absolutely call it, but they're dancing in the streets in philly for math because math is not the president's friend in pennsylvania, and it's just a matter of time at this point. like i said, the amount of votes that are outstanding, where those votes came from and what those votes are, i can't etch si -- emphasize enough how predictively democrat any mail-in ballot is in pennsylvania and very likely those provisional ballots will also skew in the vice president's favor. >> it's 5:15 on this saturday morning, lieutenant governor john fetterman, we appreciate you waking up so early. are those kids up early as well? >> no, this is the one time

where i don't have to worry about them hitting me with a football or running through the camera shot. >> be well, thank you, sir, thank you, thank you. >> neither joe biden nor president trump have public events on their schedule today yet, but that does not mean that we won't hear from them again today. just hours ago joe biden addressed the nation with his vice presidential nominee kamala harris. mr. biden urging the american public to be patient as every vote gets counted. president trump did not make a public appearance on friday, but his twitter account was quite active. the president tweeting more false or unsubstantiated claims throughout the day. overnight we learned that his chief of staff mark meadows has tested positive for coronavirus. nbc's josh letterman is in d.c., he's covering the trump campaign, and ali vitali is in

wilmington, delaware, covering the biden campaign. what do we know about what's happening behind the scenes in trump world right now? >> reporter: well, craig, if the president's political outlook were not dire enough, trump world now dealing with a new potential covid outbreak within trump's orbit after his chief of staff and a campaign aide both tested positive for coronavirus. we don't know exactly when mark meadows the chief of staff tested positive, but he has been both at the white house and at the president's campaign headquarters in the last several days. as joe biden's lead over the president in key states continues to grow, craig, the president is turning to the courts with now a half dozen active lawsuits, others in the works as he tries to further this false narrative that he's been pushing about the election somehow being stolen from him when we know, craig, that what's taking place around the country right now is what takes place after every election, which is election officials counting ballots as they receive them. the president did get a partial

victory overnight as justice alito agreed to a request that those ballots arriving after election day in pennsylvania be segregated, put aside. even that seems largely symbolic as pennsylvania officials said they were already doing that anyway. so the president's inability to get traction in these legal cases has him increasingly reliant on recounts, which are now set to take place in georgia, likely to take place in some of these other states as well. as you know well, craig, recounts almost never change enough votes to be substantial. >> more often than not, in fact, recounts just delay the inevitable, ali vitali, when do you think we could hear from joe biden again? how anxious are they for this thing to come to a conclusion? >> reporter: i think it's fair to say they're pretty anxious because yesterday the mood here was jubilation. i think they really thought in my conversations with my sources sort of lead me to this, they

really thought they were going to see former vice president joe biden and senator kamala harris get on the stage and be able to declare victory last night because the networks had called it for him at 270 or above, whatever state would have gotten him there. but i think really the way they're looking at it is that this is an eventuality. when that eventuality comes is unclear. that's why it's a moving target for when we could hear from him next. i would point out we've seen or heard from joe biden in some capacity ever since election night every single day. that is not true for donald trump, but at the same time, joe biden is speaking with a lot of future tense here including last night, when he said he believes that they are going to win the election, urging paring patienc also speaking to the same themes we've heard him speak to the entirety of his presidential campaign. listen. >> we may be opponents, but we're not enemies. we're americans. no matter who you voted for, i'm certain of one thing. the vast majority of the 150

million americans who voted, they want to get the vitriol out of our politics. we're certainly not going to agree on a lot of issues, but at least we can agree to be civil with one another. we have to put the anger and the demonization behind us. it's time for us to come together as a nation to heal. it's not going to be easy. we have to try. we don't have any more time to waste on partisan warfare. >> reporter: craig these themes of unity and division have been the overarching theme of joe biden's entire candidacy, but the specific issues he's drilled down on are the economy and the coronavirus. we know that cases are spiking drastically again across the country. joe biden saying last night that he believes that now is the time to start working on those things so much so that he had a meeting with public health experts as well as economic experts along with his vice presidential running mate kamala harris to talk about what they need to do on these issues in order to

tackle them and get moving on them on day one. craig. >> ali really quickly, hypothetically if the president doesn't offer a traditional concession speech, how is the biden campaign going to determine when they've actually won the race and he's the president-elect? are they waiting for tv news networks to call it? >> reporter: you got to love a hypothetical at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, but i think yours is actually a really important question to ask because that's something that the biden campaign was prebutting yesterday, concessions are not legally mandatory, but they are traditional. this is a white house and a candidate who has bucked tradition at every turn, and so it makes sense why the biden team is coming out the way they are saying that they're ready for that potential for donald trump to not concede the election, and instead they're putting out a statement saying -- yesterday saying that as we said on july 19th the

american people will decide this election, the second sentence of this statement still pretty stunning to me because andrew bates the spokesman said the united states government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the white house. craig. >> okay. ali vitali there in wilmington, delaware, thank you, josh lederman there in d.c. the race narrowing in arizona, but democrats still pretty confident that joe biden's going to pull it out there. we're live on the ground in arizona with the latest on the vote tally there. and all eyes are on georgia where it's likely we'll see not one, but two senate runoffs.

we are expecting an update on a vote count in arizona in just a few hours.

here are where things stand in the race right now in that state. a look at the board in arizona, you see still too close to call. the difference between the candidates roughly 30,000 votes almost. vice president biden, former vice president biden up by almost two percentage points there in arizona. actually, that's terrible math. that's not almost two percentage points. i just confused arizona with nevada, one percentage point, yes, roughly one percentage point. let me stop trying to do math live on television. i'm no steve kornacki. morgan chesky is live in phoenix in arizona where some protests broke out overnight. before we get to the protests, morgan, do we know how many votes are left to count there in arizona? >> reporter: yeah, right, craig, i'll try to do a little bit of math here myself. we know that 70,000 dropped at 7:00, which would now be yesterday evening. we're expecting another about 70,000 to drop here at 9:00 a.m.

local time in arizona. that is going to be the lion's share of the votes here in maricopa county. there will be 15,000 provisional ballots that will also be coming, and then there are 5,000 ballots that still need to be signature verified, but at that ballot drop, if you will, we're going to have a very clear picture as to which way maricopa county could go, and as a result of that, which way arizona could go. there's still going to be more than 100,000 other ballots into other parts of the states that need to be counted but this is the one place, the biggest county in the state of arizona that everyone will be watching. we know that that gap you mentioned, right under 30,000 votes separating president trump from joe biden, if the president wants to catch that, surpass it, he needs to garner about 60% of those 70,000 votes.

now, has he been able to do that so far? we know that yesterday evening he was able to achieve about 54% of that vote, and so that 60% number is what everyone's going to be looking at on behalf of the president when they arrive here in a few hours. craig. >> so we'll get some clarity here, 11:00 a.m. eastern standard time when we see more votes come in from maricopa county. really quickly, morgan, those protesters last night, what were they protesting? >> reporter: we had a chance to speak to several different members here, several hundred people gathered in the parking lot, craig. they said that they wanted a fair election with no voter fraud. when i asked them if there was any specific evidence they had seen, they weren't necessarily able to offer that, but they said that the president's words made them highly uneasy and lacking confidence in, you know, the democrats and republicans who have been inside this building behind me now for days

doing their best to count the ballots as efficiently and accurately as possible. >> morgan chesky in phoenix, arizona, for us, 3:30 in the morning there in phoenix. morgan, thank you. richard lui and mark murray are back at the big board where the presidential race is so tight in georgia that state officials have already said there will be a recount. what implications could that have for the country? >> the stakes are high, and the emotions are high on all sides. we will not let those debates distract us from our work. we will get it right, and we'll defend the integrity of our elections.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ overnight, joe biden's lead in georgia ticked up a bit, but georgia's secretary of state says he expects the presidential

race in georgia to head to a recount. msnbc's richard lui is back at that big board. nbc news senior political editor mark murray is back with us as well. richard, let's start there in georgia. what's left to be counted there? >> not much. not a lot here, craig. when you went to bed last night, if you were watching the numbers, a difference here of 7248 in favor of joe biden. that number was 4,300, and as you were mentioning overnight within the last four or five hours, we got 5,000 more votes. now, if you are donald trump, your concern here is because of those 5,000 votes, he only got 21%, and he needs it to be well above the 50s, so that's a problem with druch onald trump look at more votes potentially to come in in georgia. the outstanding number less than 50,000 here, craig, so there's not a lot left in the state. let me just show you where it's at. if you look at fulton county where the majority of the population is here, you can see

less than 500, less than 500 in cobb county, less than 500 in douglas county, so lots of smatterings, and right now because that is where the remaining vote is, it will continue to lean blue. and because we are looking at numbers here, craig, that are so close, the issue is will donald trump ask for a recount? that's north carolina, of course, and he can do that. he has until november 12th. >> okay. mark, as i noted, the secretary of state there in georgia says the race is so close that a recount is inevitable. what does that process look like? what does that timetable look like? >> yeah, so basically the timetable is that the race and the actual vote all has to come in. it needs to be certified, and then after that certification, you end up getting a recount, craig, which could last up to about a week or so. and again, as you were

mentioning earlier, recounts rarely end up reversing races but sometimes there could be a clerical error, so we see joe biden ahead by about 7,000 votes. one clerical error that you could end up having of 4,000 could end up kind of reversing the totals there. so that would be one thing to kind of watch. but you know, as a political junky li junkie like me, craig, with the recount in georgia and the presidential contest, with potentially two senate races going to run off that could control the united states senate, georgia is going to be the epicenter of the political world over the next two months. i think that's going to be fascinating, not only the recount but the senate races we'll be following there. >> yeah, this race is -- races that are so consequential. in fact, they will likely determine which party controls the upper chamber. mark murray, thank you. richard lui, thank you as well. let's turn to catie beck.

catie beck is tracking the count for us in atlanta. any idea, catie when we could hear from state officials again. >> reporter: we don't have a concrete time at this moment. we expect it will be sometime this morning in the 9:00 hour or so to hear an update as to where that vote total stands. it is hard to determine exactly how many votes are left because there has been sort of a slow trickle overnight. as you've said, we've seen those vote totals changing favoring joe biden, but it has been a slow process. that is because they are counting those provisional ballots and that requires an extra layer of scrutiny. they're trying to decide if these provisional ballots should be eligible and should be counted. on top of that, they are counting those military and overseas ballots that were due in yesterday by 5:30 in order to be counted. we know the provisional ballots, the military ballots are what's left and outstanding. when that will wrap up, we have no exact timetable. you would think they're getting down to the bottom, there can't be much left at this point.

they've been at 99% for seems like forever, but for a day or so now as they've taken those votes in, and it seems that this should be getting closer to the end here. craig. >> catie beck there in atlanta for us, thank you. we are also keeping a very close eye on nevada. that's where ballots are still being counted. republicans have filed two lawsuits. we'll get the latest on the ground as we inch closer, inch being the operative word, closer to a winner in this presidential contest. this is msnbc.

things could be moving faster in nevada this morning. s we're expecting another update there soon. this is where the race stands right now this that state. you can see 93% of the vote's in. it's still too close to call. vice president biden with almost a two percentage point lead

there over president trump, though, the difference between the two candidates 22,657 votes. jake ward is in las vegas. las vegas, of course, the hub of clark county. how many ballots are left in nevada, jake? do we know? >> reporter: you know, craig, at this hour, we're looking at probably something just shy of 100,000 ballots left. we know that at least 30,000 of those are mail-in ballots, and the vast majority of those are going to come from this place, from clark county where las vegas is located, and so, you know, we're going to see these election workers go back to work in a few hours, and around 9:00 a.m. it's projected that it's 9:00 a.m. local, noon your time, it's projected that we'll get another dump of new numbers. we'll have some new numbers to report there. you know, in the meantime, we've also seen, craig, protest activity sort of growing over the past three nights, and in fact, the registrar of voters

here, joe gloria says that, you know, it's not just a time of pressure for his workers being under the media scrutiny and the national scrutiny, but also feeling actual threat from the protesters outside. >> it's just troubling for my employees. i have employees who are nervous leaving the building, and rightfully so. they work late into the night, so we've strongly encouraged all of them not to leave by themselves. they can also request an escort from our security people or law enforcement, so we're doing everything we can to protect our employees. >> reporter: you know, nevada is, of course, an open carry state. several of the protesters we've encountered outside of the election facilities are, in fact, armed. they're carrying firearms openly. law enforcement says that of course raises everybody's sense of alarm and the need for security. the good news is, of course, that law enforcement is out in

force. we have seen an increasing number of police show up each night that we've been here. it is definitely a -- nothing has gone wrong, but certainly a lot of anxiety, a lot of tension as these workers do their jobs, as national scrutiny comes down upon them, and as the protests gather each night watching this crucial count. >> i know you're there for work, but have you had an opportunity to play some blackjack? >> reporter: you know, it is the weirdest thing to be in vegas in a pandemic. i have to say, people are walking around with the big drinks and they're at the table and they're doing the thing, i know that's how it's supposed to be. to see all of that here is pretty shocking, i have to say, but yeah, vegas seems to go on the way vegas does. sin city is still doing its thing very much so even at this late hour, craig. >> let's hope they're wearing masks. jake ward, thank you, sir, thanks as always. more delays could be in store in pennsylvania.

officials there scrambling to handle the flood of provision gnat ballo al ballots, we're going to talk about what those votes may mean for the race and who they could benefit. plus. it's been questioned whether the poll worker featured in the video was discarding one of the ballots. the answer is un -- no. undeni undeniably no. >> things getting so tense in georgia that one poll worker has gone into hiding after being falsely accused of throwing away a ballot.

provisional ballots, that's the latest focus of the race in pennsylvania, but right now it's up in the air which candidate could pick up the net share of those provisional ballots. here's a look at where the numbers stand at this hour in pennsylvania. again, too close to call. the difference between the two candidates almost 29,000 votes. former vice president joe biden with a slight lead that we've seen grow over the past day or so. maura barrett is in pittsburgh for us this morning. maura, we are waiting on votes, as i understand it, from allegheny county, where you are. any idea when we can expect an update there in allegheny county? >> reporter: well, craig, workers here took a break

overnight, and they will be starting up again around 9:00 a.m. this morning to process their final 26,000 mail-in ballots. so, that's what they've got left here in allegheny county. over in philadelphia, we're still waiting for about 20,000 ballots. across the state, 89,000 mail-in ballots, all of which that we have been seeing break for vice president joe biden. so, democrats in the state feeling overwhelmingly confident. take a listen to what senator bob casey said overnight on "lawrence o'donnell" on how he thinks biden's chances fall. >> we're actually coming to the last bit of vote, but i think it's been clear that joe biden just continues to grow his margin. and now it's just inexorable. he's already overtaken the president. he's going to beat him in the unofficial count, when there's a margin for that, and then in the official count that will be the basis for certification.

>> reporter: so, publicly, democrats showing high hopes, privately as well. some impatience. a democratic source texting me yesterday asking when the networks were going to decide so they could pop champagne. but craig, in addition to the mail-in ballots, we're waiting for about 100,000 provisional ballots that you mentioned. and in the early returns we have seen, they have been breaking for trump. so, we are out to the department of state to see where exactly across the state the provisionals are coming from to give us a better picture of who exactly those will be leaning towards and how that will break in pennsylvania overall. craig? >> we'll leave it there. maura barrett for us in pittsburgh. maura, thank you. i'm joined now by susan del percio, republican strategist and senior adviser for the lincoln project. michael star hopkins also with me, founding partner of northern starr strategies. he also worked on the obama and hillary clinton presidential campaigns. thanks for waking up early, both of you. susan, i'll start with you. joe biden's lead there in

pennsylvania, it is growing. the "washington post" reports -- "advisers urge trump to prepare for defeat." but maybe without a concession speech." based on what we've seen over the last four years, even before that, arguably. susan, do you expect this is a president who's just going to accept a loss by january and make some sort of speech acknowledging that? >> no, absolutely not. this president has broken all the norms. he is not gracious. he's shown that he doesn't care about the basic pillars of our democracy by all his outrageous comments over the last couple of days. so, i absolutely do not expect him to be gracious or do the right thing for the nation. he will continue to fight and tweet and yell and scream until it's over. and he just doesn't care about what that means for the country. he doesn't understand what it means to have a peaceful transfer of power. what it means to do the

transition committee, how to work with the incoming president. he doesn't care. so, of course i expect nothing different. as a matter of fact, i expect it to get even uglier. >> how can it get uglier? >> you know what, the next 74 days between today and inauguration day, who knows what executive orders donald trump can write out, actions he can take against people -- i don't know. but all i know is when you think you know the worst of what donald trump can do, he tops it. >> michael, in georgia, meanwhile, there's this poll worker in fulton county who had to go into hiding after being harassed online because of some false claims. he was apparently accused of crumbling up an absentee ballot. the county's director of registration of elections addressed the accusation during a press conference friday evening. here's what they said. >> it's been questioned whether the poll worker featured in the

video was discarding one of those ballots. the answer is un -- is no, undeniably no. at no time was the poll worker able to extract a ballot. i operated one of those machines. only thing you do at that station is separating the envelopes and cutting them. >> michael starr hopkins, how did we get to a point where volunteer poll workers are being harassed? >> this is the problem with the disinformation that's coming not just from the white house but from a lot of the right-wing social media circles. it's putting people's lives in danger. we've seen this before. we saw this with, you know, some of the content that was coming out during the protests during the summer. we've seen the same content coming out about coronavirus. and it's corrosive to our social structure. and so, what we need is some kind of response, other than just the government. we need republicans to come out and, you know, really rein in

the disinformation and rein in kind of the disorganization we're seeing coming from, you know, the white house and from the right wing. >> michael, nbc news has not called this race. joe biden's still sitting at 253 electoral votes. that being said, you tweeted overnight in response to mr. biden's address on friday night -- "tonight was the night that joe biden became president." "this is a victory speech." what was it about that speech that stood out to you so much? >> it was the first time in four years that i felt like we could have some hope again, that the country was going to get back to the business of actually legislating and reaching across the aisle and being america again. and i think that that's something we've really lost. i know a lot of democrats were upset on tuesday evening and they thought that, you know, we hadn't performed as well as we should have. but at the end of the day, democrats are going to be in charge again of the education department, labor department,

homeland security, all these institutions that can really do good again. and so, i think that that's something that all americans should have hope in and faith in and be ready to just get back to being the country that we know and love. >> susan, no public appearances from the president since his news conference on thursday. he has, of course, been very active on twitter. do you expect that we'll see him soon? and what do you make of that strategy? >> well, i think after his appearance, when he held an absurd press conference the other day, he was so panned for it, and people around him know this is over, and they also have to go forward with their lives. the other thing is, is that he doesn't have a very good legal team put together yet for all of these legal fights that he says he's ready to do. i think he is just trying to get his head around the fact that he has lost this. and to michael's comment about joe biden, i'd just like to say, i thought that was a great

speech, because it was so measured. he didn't take a victory lap. he gave us a chance to say, we can come together as a nation, and i will be responsible. and that was a really important point on such an important evening. >> we're going to leave it there. susan del percio, michael sar star hopkins, good to see both of you, even if it is 6:00 a.m. a saturday morning. thank you for watching this special edition of "msnbc live." i'm craig melvin. be sure to catch a special edition of "morning joe" as well. joe, mika, willie, they're getting up early on saturday as well. they'll start at 8:00 a.m. eastern here on msnbc. and, oh, looky, looky who else is up early on a saturday morning. i've never been so excited to see my friend and colleague, stephanie ruhle. >> i was going to say, how about a special edition of this girl, craig? craig, so great to see you. normally, if i was seeing you this late, i would hope that we would be up all night