hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. as president-elect joe biden starts to maneuver the levers of the federal government he's about to control with the confidence and knowledge that has always alluded donald trump and his team of misfits trump's effort at obstructing democracy and turning america into a banana republic in the world's eyes by baselessly claiming massive voter fraud gets an assist from the sitting attorney general. today the paper of record for conservatives obliterates the president's big lie, "the wall

street journal report"ing today about america in a way typically used to describe young, fragile democracies writing this, quote, a team of international observers invited by the trump administration has issued a preliminary report giving high marks to the conduct of last week's elections and it criticized president trump for making baseless allegations that the outcome resulted from systematic fraud with the international rebuke of the president's attempt to steal an election he lost, bill barr enters the grift with a move that resulted in another high level departure last night. "the new york times" reporting, quote, barr made clear in a carefully worded memo the prosecutors have the authority to investigate but he warned that fanciful or farfetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries. the directive ignored the justice department's longstanding policies intended to keep law enforcement from

affecting the outcome of an election and it followed a move weeks before the election in which the department lifted a prohibition on fraud invests before a collection. doj's election crimes chief resigned after barr allowed prosecutors to probe voter fraud claims. "the washington post" reporting that the white house has ordered agencies to rebuff the biden transition team. and "the new york times" adds that the president's obstruction of the transition could have serious national security implications with this new reporting, quote, president trump's refusal to concede the election to president-elect joe biden has already affected mr. biden's transition, particularly on national security issues. mr. biden has yet to receive a presidential daily briefing, and it was unclear whether his team would have access to classified information, the most important pipeline for them to learn about the threats facing the u.s.

combined with a startling sound bite from donald trump's secretary of state today brings the united states to the brink of a constitutional emergency of authoritarian proportions. here's mike pompeo suggesting amid donald trump's efforts to undermine the election results that biden's victory could somehow be overturned. >> is the state department currently preparing to engage with the biden tradition team? if not, at what point does it pose a risk to national security? >> there will be a smooth transition to a second trump administration. >> there may be a solve however for the chill that might have just run down your spine. it is the president-elect. and his confidence in a prez conference this afternoon that the transition is under way and democratic institutions are holding. here's joe biden and the come demonstrate nation of the trump administration. >> i just think it's an

embarrassment, quite frankly. how can i say this tactfully? i think it will not help the president's legacy. i know from my discussions with foreign leaders thus far that they are hopeful that the united states democratic institutions are viewed once again as being strong and enduring. >> how do you expect to work with republicans if they won't acknowledge you as president-elect? >> they will. >> they will. that's where we begin some of our favorite reporters and friends. and "the new york times" washington correspondent and msnbc contributor mike schmidt is here. we'll start with you. talk about these two pressures,

the justice department sort of letting loose prosecutors to investigate unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. chris christie out there skeptical. neil cavuto at fox news yesterday pulled away when these questions were posed and then the national security implications of the denial that the president is in. >> well, we are trying to do in your coverage today is basically show that the president's unwillingness to accept biden as the president-elect has had a significant trickle down effect. >> we lost mike schmidt. frank, can you pick up on this? from both the law enforcement perspective that what bill barr did resulted in a high level departure, the gentleman's name is richard pilger left as the head of election crimes at doj

over bill barr unleashing prosecutors to go investigate voter fraud seemingly at the president's behest and then this i think what mike was getting at more serious implication without acknowledgi acknowledging joe biden's win and donald trump's defeat the national security agencies are not engaged in a transition of power to the biden administration. >> right. so so far we have seen a wholesale buyingi in to the president's state of denial to include no surprise our own attorney general, earlier today we saw secretary pompeo joking about the stability of our peaceful transition process and none of this should surprise us but it should deeply concern us. with regard to the president-elect's comments today and comments specifically about the fact that he still isn't getting the presidential daily brief, duntsds have the funds for transition and meeting and

planning with the various agencies, i have two thoughts on this. you have been kinds always in the past to let me harken back to my fbi days and i will do that again if you'll allow me. >> please. >> we are coming very close to having what the bureau calls a barricaded subject, it is in the white house. what we saw the president-elect do today is right on the money with regard to initial negotiation with a barricaded subtsds. we saw a very calm joe biden, we saw him essentially shrugging off that he doesn't have the money or the keys to open transition offices, he is not getting the classified briefing. the staff isn't getting access to briefings from the various agencies. that is exactly what you do in the initial stages, whoever is advising him is doing it right. you want to let that barricaded subject know that this is going to be okay. i'm going to listen to what you

have to say. you can vent and vent and vent and call me names and not acknowledge my authority but eventually we'll get this done and eventually in this case there's going to be a time where joe biden calls the s.w.a.t. team. may be a legal challenge to the gsa refusal to acknowledge him as winner, may be that u.s. marshals have to come take the president out and as we say to a barricaded subject we can do this hard way or the easy way but so far so good with the way that joe biden is handling this. >> he is not individual number one anymore? he is a barricaded subject? what does that mean? sounds like a hostage situation. >> it means there's a way to handle this from a psychological standpoint, from a behavioral standpoint and all of the last four years tell a great deal about how the president reacts to loss, to being perceived as a loser and needs time to process

this and the reality is that joe biden's got this right. this is going to happen. we're going to acknowledge joe biden as the winner. the rest of the world has done it already and the republican people around the president need to do this, as well. lest they become jokes as secretary of state did today. now, for people worried about the briefings and what's not happening, look, i don't mean to demean this. i was part of a transition briefings as assistant director at fbi. they are serious briefings but there's something else to acknowledge. trump doesn't have biden do have briefings because it acknowledges that he won and a finer, more subtle layer to this because once they get to hear realtime threat information and may well discover hypothetically from the cia, the following intel on the russian threat is

suppressed. mr. biden, we have to tell you that the various threats and indications of wrongdoing that we can't get out to anybody right now and biden learns what trump doesn't want him to learn and may be part of the suppression effort, as well. >> mike, it is your reporting that -- from which we learn bill barr's moves being so alarming that the person in charge of election crimes resigned and learned of other barr moves that resulted in high level dep departures. talk about this. >> look. bill barr had been very quiet in the weeks before the election, after really helping the president beat the drum about election fraud during the cam pane. barr had gone silent in the days after the election as trump was looking for someone to help him push the narrative that there's election fraud. barr still did not say anything.

but -- >> we have lost mike again. yamesh, pick up the thread of donald trump maybe finally activating all of the most high profile levers of laumw enforcement and national security. you have big barr issuing this memo to all prosecutors in this country, from coast to coast, the national security agencies as been reported refusing to share classified information from the homeland security department to the fbi to the cia to the state department to the pentagon i would imagine that would really hinder joe biden's ability to transition into any of those agencies and we have new reporting that the budget forwarded to congress in february is donald trump's budget. >> this is in some ways gearing

up to be a constitutional crisis but joe biden doesn't want do lean into that. people i talk to close to the biden campaign say they are realizing that the clock is ticking and things need to be get done but joe biden wants to exude optimism and that he will be in control and that things will be okay because he wants to address the idea that americans are on edge and they want civility in this country. i think the things that are happening in this country, the things that you just laid out, happening in any other country we would be alarmed and looking and saying they're in chaos but in the united states i think republicans and democrats say this can't happen to us. america's a miracle. we continue to be smooth even when the elected officials do things that are erratic and including president trump but in some cases joe biden is in this position where he has a lot of government experience and wants

to not poke the bear, wants to do what frank said, doesn't want to at all antagonize prmpb anymore than he has to. president trump has done the thing he fears which is lose and republicans say let him process and maybe he'll never actually concede in a normal way but leave office saying the election was stolen from him but i'm going. >> i'm surprised by the brazen 2020 politics at play. mike pompeo is a whole lot of things and i'll restrain myself here but stupid isn't one of them. to stand at that state department podium, to step behind that podium and spread the lie, not just disseminate it here but around the world and again "the wall street journal report"s today no evidence of systematic fraud in u.s. elections, international observer mission reports.

that is straight in what should be pompeo's influence field. for him to stand there and talk about a second trump term, what gives in just how heavily 2024 is weighing on mike pompeo and lindsey graham and all these grown-ups who know -- i get the psychology of donald trump. we have to wait for him to dry his tears and cry it out but what gives with pompeo and people that we know know better? >> republican sources say two things, power hypnotizes and handcuffs so there are a lot of people looking at the republican party realizing that much like president obama had a role to play after he was president, president trump will have a role to play and unlike president obama who in some ways took a backseat, not always trying to suck up the oxygen in the room, letting other democrats rise through the ranks, president trump won't be like that. he is going to want to run again and people say that the

president is murmuring about that and republicans say i need to stay in the good graces lest he take me down. there was reportinging that he was pressuring two senate candidates in georgia to release a statement urging the resignation of secretary in state in that state using the political power critics would say for bad, for evil so the president in some ways is an elephant in the room in all of this and see the jostling going on. look at matt gates going after nikki haley saying we are happy with all that he's done to serve us. matt gates says, oh, she is trying to write an obituary for him. she might be running in 2024. so you already see that jostling coming out and pure politics and people feel like republicans are pushing politics over the country. >> campaigns we called them scorpions in a bowl. mike schmidt, let's try to keep you up long enough to answer

this question for us. andrew weissman of the special counsel's office tweeted this. bill barr's newly professed concern of the elections despite no evidence of material fraud is in stark contrast to the deliberate undermining of the special interference of the 2016 election. you were talking about he maintained a low profile before writing this letter last night that resulted in the departure of a senior doj official from that post. what is sort of a capacity for damage that barr's move has? >> well, third time hopefully the charm here on pandemic. but i think what we're trying to say here in terms of what barr is doing is that the concern is that over many years in justice department there was this norm that you didn't do election fraud investigations until the

results were certified because what would happen is that if you did those investigations and details about them came out it would cast doubt on the result. so here you are having the president's attorney general, someone who has gone to great lengths to do the political things with the justice department that the president has wanted, now going out and basically authorizing the types of investigations that it details come out about them would feed that narrative and if you read the letter from barr that came out last night you'll see that he says i have already authorized some of these investigations. he said that the investigations that he's authorizing are ones that are about substantial allegations so he is saying that there are -- there was enough there to investigate the substantial allegations and throwing the weight behind the narrative that the president is trying to build. and did question has always

been, what would barr do to help the president and last night we saw a peek into that. >> what about the limiting of classified information? what is the aim there other than to slow biden's ability to start winding the gears of the national security agencies once he is president? >> look. i think with the president you have to go to the lowest common denominator and sort of pettiness on the president's behalf. look. i can't imagine it's more sfis kait sophisticated but the president doesn't want to help the man that beat him coming in. he's done things that may not be the most sophisticated but obstacles in front of the people he perceives as opponents or won't go along with what he wants so this fits into that behavior that he would try and throw sand in the gears of an

incoming administration and make it harder to get up to speed and do their job. if you talk to some democrats what they say is what they see going on here is a larger attempt by the republicans to begin to undermine did biden administration, to use this period of the transition to basically start chipping away at what biden, you know, will be able to try to do in the next four years. >> frank, you look at these threads and it is most surring aspect is donald trump figured out how much of the federal government he controls. stopping classified information from being shared with joe biden. sendsing the february budget to congress. are you really reassured 100% by joe biden's posture and tone? are you concerned that if donald trump knows how to press enough

levers of power to stymie a peaceful transfer of power? >> well, i think that -- so the bottom line is i'm confident that on january 20th we'll have a new president of the united states. what i cannot predict with accuracy is how ugly this is going to get. it is already ugly enough and krp certainly looks to get uglier and in large part the attorney general's absence in the last few weeks has been because he's been a large part of this planning process. i think there's a team planning this, reminlding or telling trump you have this thing of the gsa. remember, they're the ones that stopped the fbi headquarters down the street from the trump hotel from moving so you wouldn't have a competitor hotel going? they can control the purse strings on a transition and all played out. now with regard to biden, he has a strategy for this. had equal time to think about

this inevitability and doing the right thing now and will go to court if he feels needs to but they're holding back because it is also fraught with peril. you risk legislate ma mizing the president's refusal to acknowledge you. i think we will get where we need to be but we are in for an ugly time. >> thank you so much for starting us off. frank is sticking around longer. when we come back, donald trump's loyal election deniers going on his sometimes network of choice, fox news, to shout about false stolen election theories but it's the exact opposite they were shouting about in the past, the fox hypocrisy alert on the other side of a break. trump falsely takes credit for a virus vaccine today and claims the news was kept from everyone until after the election. we look at another record number

of coronavirus cases around this country and just imagine how donald trump with access to the nation's top classified secrets and his penchant or bragging and exaggeration could become a massive national security threat once he is out of office. keeping your oysters business growing has you swamped. you need to hire. i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo americans from both parties. turned out to vote in numbers like we haven't seen in a hundred years. and election officials counted those votes carefully, transparently and in accordance with the law.

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the state of play in america in 2020 for republicans is not good. we need to fight back. we win because of our ideas. we lose elections because they cheat us. >> there are serious allegations of violations of law. the right standard is that every single legal vote that was cast should be counted.

but any votes that were illegally cast shouldn't be counted. >> those were lies. they were lying. it is not clear yet why. prominent republicans there making baseless allegations of voter fraud on fox news to back and bolster trump's biggest lie of all, his attempt to contest his loss to president-elect joe biden. the message to the base, the fight's not over. we didn't really lose. remarkable about fast for box because after the 2018 midterms the network was happy to blast democrats for not conceding quickly enough. the hypocrisy from this clip. >> democrats are sore losers, refuse to acknowledge they lost the election and cry malfeasance. fraud. >> democrats more so than republicans seem to have a problem conceding defeat. either the election system broke down or some mystery votes are

hiden somewhere. >> whole series of democrats who have just said bluntly if the candidate doesn't win they stole the election. >> it's like demanding an extra inning a day later. >> the democrats refusing to accept the declared results so how do they do this? lo and behold they find missing ballots. >> the radical left is attacking the sanctity of our votes. >> refusing to accept the midterm election results. what if it's republicans refusing to concede. >> democrats may see how they can in the future to steal elections through lawsuits if they can't win with the voters. >> ramping up election conspiracy theories, accusing republicans of outright stealing the election. kind of rich. you know what? sounds like sore loserish. >> you could re-run that now. joining us is "the washington post" contributing columnist and

political analyst, former congressman donna edwards and marketing expert donny deutsche. donna, the tape i think could go on and on and on. they don't have a capacity for shame. the right. having once worked and rode in that direction doesn't have a capacity for accountability for their own words and they're now so invested in this big lie that donald trump is telling but i just feel like we are entering new a new phase where there's a c concerted effort to brainwash half of the electorate to thinking they didn't actually lose when they did. >> yeah. i think that's right. the danger here is not that we don't believe that donald trump is going to leave the white house. he is going to leave the white house in january 20th is coming. and it's not that there is some sort of miscarriage in terms of falsely cast ballots, illegally

cast ballots, they are deliberately trying to create this atmosphere in this sort of rampage on the right of people who believe in conspiracy theories as they do that this election was stolen and they're using that to continue fund raising, using it for messaging and i think as a basis of support to continue attacking the biden/harris administration from the beginning in all the way through and it is really, really dangerous. look. i've run elections. i have lost elections. the toughest thing to do is pick up the phone and make that phone call and to stand and say, i lost and congratulations to the other guy but we all have to do it. it feels horrible. this president even if he doesn't do that, joe biden is going to be president come noon on january 20th. and the right unfortunately is going to continue to stir this trouble up so that they can use

it as a base to attack the incoming administration. >> donny, they're going very, very far in this act that what donna says is going to happen and january 20th isn't. vice president pence's message today to republican senate, per source, i want to keep serving with you as president of the senate and i think i will. i mean, have you ever seen this -- i guess kellyanne conway blurted it out when she said alternative facts, alternative reality. >> yeah. it is not hard to figure out why. donald trump will be controlling the 20% that votes in every primary going forward and every politician knows that and this is like the blood identity thing. trump is an idea more than even trump and it is basically you don't want to be in a position

where you weren't part of this club that made the last stand. the bottom line is, everybody needs to relax and frank served this up really well. donald trump will be leaving office january 20 rth and the reason to maybe feel better why this is happening. i talked about this right after a chance to be leaving after the impeachment. donald trump is in pre-production right now. donald trump is going to be starting the trump revolutionary model and trademarked tele-rallies, that term. a subscription model. charge $6, $7 a month and in pre-production for that, what's more compelling if you're a loser and that's the biggest fear or agree that you stole the election and held on to the furniture and dragged you out of the officer?

if you are pre-producing the next act this is what you would be doing. so the republicans and the tv hosts are just toxic recipients of donald trump -- of the residue of donald trump's next act and when you understand why he's doing it he probably doesn't think he's holding on to power. he'll move on to the next venture because that is what it is all about. >> i wish i had your confidence in -- that he is accepted that's what he is moving on to. if i could just press a little further down this road, a trump ally and supporter said to me between election night and the networks calling it that donald trump's greatest pleasure of being president had nothing to do with the presidency or the country but it was the relevance. suddenly he was relevant in a way he had never been able to achieve as sort of a b-level

reality tv figure and a moderately successful real estate guy who squandered a lot of his inheritance so i guess what you're saying is in line with finding a path to hanging on to relevance but my question is, why everyone is going along? why is pence going along with it? he is not getting the 8:00 and trump gets the 9:00 hour. >> pence is going toy a long to run for president some day and gets through the 20% of the fringe of the part and if donald trump said he didn't stand with me he's not getting through the barrier. it is not hard to figure out. donald trump has control. if he stands up at the next primary, forget whether he runs or not saying this guy was not part of the club, he is out. donald trump is like a bully in the movie when they're finally unmasked in the lunchroom and

left by themselves and that sadness and now they look pathetic and defanged, that's the biggest fear and donald trump is not going away, kids. won't have the power but speaking to millions of americans every day and the media, this media, outside of fox has to be disciplined when ratings maybe drop off in march and april and talking about infrastructure, not to put the heroin bathe hero back in. >> it's a good point and you can police that for me, for all of us. donna, i want to ask you something about the senate. i am actually for the first time in many, many months befuddled by the motivation structure behind this outrageous anti-american conduct from all the elected republicans and this is bob costa's reporting that i think seeks to explain mcconnell. based on my conversations with

the republicans over the weekend, it's not about january 20th and working with joe biden but about january 5th, the georgia runoff elections to win the latter republicans believe the base must be stoked, especially in a fast-changing state. so that would suggest that the party and mcconnell knows they lost the state and need to pretend to not participate in a peaceful transfer of power to goose these elections? this is debasement of the senate now in ways i have not seen in my career. >> of the senate and of our democracy. i think one of the things that we haven't accounted for and what the fear is among republicans is they know that if donald trump is not on the ballot maybe in voice and rhetoric that that really hurts their cause in georgia and carrying on this way and all through the shenanigans about

counting votes and whether there's illegal votes cast is all about them trying to keep an engaged base that was only engaged because of the craziness of donald trump and he is no longer there so i think democrats have got to feel good going in to this primary election with a -- i mean, into this runoff election with a lot of juice behind them while republicans are still playing games. these senate candidates are actually running a campaign. >> we'll keep watching. donny, thank you for spending sometime with us today. donna's sticking around. when we come back, claims of politics with the covid-19 vaccine. a look at that and the grim, sad coronavirus headlines.

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startling new numbers today that prove the pandemic is only getting worse. the united states added more than 130,000 new cases yesterday, the sixth consecutive day of more than 100,000 new cases. as of today, there have been more than 10.2 million cases in this country and tragically more than 240,000 souls lost. after pfizer's promising news yesterday that a first analysis proved its vaccine to be more than 90% effective its ceo is spending time defending the

timing because the president desperate for a win says they stalled just to damage him. >> for us, the election day was always an artificial date and not working with the election as a time line. we released a letter to employees if you remember sometime ago saying that the only pressure we feel is the pressure of billions of people hoping on our vaccine and we will follow the speed of science so science spoke and i was predicting that this would happen at the end of october but it happened a week later. >> pfizer's research and development never even a part of the "operation warp speed." let's bring into the conversation from boston medical center dr. badelia. donna is still with us. doctor, talk about the promise

that the pfizer vaccine offers and just any caution about how quickly we'd be able to scale it to a point to safely return to some semblance of pre-pandemic normal. >> good evening. it's definitely good news. we are waiting for details about the data because it's just top line results but the proof of concept that we can build effective vaccines against this virus is important because not only does pfizer have this candidate but moderna, another company with a similar vaccine could potentially have similar results and we could double the number of doses available and definitely a good thing potentially working in our favor. what's not working in our favor is that this is the biggest vaccine campaign, humanity's ever undertaken and will take the kind of not just coordination on local and state level but federal coordination that's so nimble to get the

vaccines where they're needed in a timely manner, maintaining the needs of a sub zero supply chain and making sure that people getting the vaccine at the points of access can access it safely. the questions that we doentds have answer to yet from the data, does it work in well patients who are older? does it work well in children? those studies are still starting. we don't know how long the immunity lasts. that is still pending. another part is does this vaccine just protect you from having similar mattic disease or from getting any kind of infection including asimp mattic. if you get the vaccine but get the infection could it pass on to other people? that's a question we don't have an answer to. >> let me play what dr. olsterholm probed around the 90% figure.

see if you can flesh this out for us. >> i think the challenge that we have yet where i'd be very cautious is what does that 90% mean? prevent 90% of fevers, coughs and chills? 90% of severe disease? hospitalizations and deaths? we doentn't know that yet. another piece of information is how long this vaccine will work. >> along the same lines of what you're underscoring, doctor, 90% of what? of death? >> that's right. >> infection? spread? so at the end of the day do we need more than the pfizer vaccine? do you envision a patchwork? what do you envision an immunized world looks like? >> so my best guess, don't hold me to it, my guess is we will probably have multiple different candidates and we want that.

we want to try to get the vaccine in everybody's arms in a timely manner and monitor them for safety but i see if we can't achieve a longer term protection, what we might see is that people get vaccinated annually the way we do with the flu and good do see the level of effectiveness to make it more effective than seasonal flu vaccines for example but what it tells me is we need to potentially look at what it means in terms of revaccination and could we potentially have vaccines down the road that are one-dose vaccines? currently all the ones that are coming up for more advanced trial are two dose vaccines putting a greater pressure on delivery system. to get new generation vaccines that are just one dose maybe reduces another trip to the doctor. >> increases the number of people hopefully fully

vaccinated. donna, this could not come fast enough. this country is being crushed under a weight of new infections. north dakota hospitals are at 100% capacity. covid positive nurses have been told they can stay at work. philadelphia health officials mull a complete lockdown there. in los angeles, the health director urges protesters and people celebrating to get tested after alarming covid-19 increases there. the colorado governor extended the state wide mask man date. in utah, the rolling seven-day average positivity rate is up at a staggering 21.25%. utah's current total is 137,385 cases. 672 deaths. 2,200 new cases in last 24 hours

and i could go on but my question to you is, donna, does this look like a country that gave up or that didn't have faith in the things that we could do which are the low tech, low-cost measure of wearing masks, social distancing and not con agr congregating. >> it looks like a country that didn't have leadership at the top to do the things to prevent the spread of the virus. i look at my home state of maryland. we had actually a few weeks ago gotten down to zero new cases and now we have doubled the number of cases in one month from october to november. and this is happening around the country. when i see that map it is a map of red. all red. because we haven't done the things that it is going to take to stop this spread and even if we have a vaccine and i'm very excited about that we know that

the rollout of that vaccine is going to take sometime to roll across this vast country and so we still have to do the things that keep us from spreading this disease. we're looking at a long-term -- i'm glad joe biden started off even in the transition day one really trying to attack this virus because vaccine or not this is going to be with us for a while and we need leadership at the top doing what joe biden is doing right there wearing a mask. >> donna edwards, doctor, thank you both so much. new projections from the state of north carolina from the nbc news decision desk. in the senate race, gop incumbent thom tillis re-elected and in the presidential contest it is still too close to call with trump leading. we will be right back.

while president trump still has 71 days left into his term, there are already concerns that he'll pose a national security threat once out of office. washington post said he has a history of disclosures and checks the box of a risk. he's angry at the u.s. government, as what he described

is the deep state conspiracy that tried to stop him from winning the white house in 2016 and rob him of re-election. we're back with frank figliuzzi. this is a conversation after the big times reporting about his financial vulnerabilities, his -- all that he owes to the irs, how leveraging his company is came out and you agreed with pete strzok just after the financial picture revealed by the times and you add to that the combustion in which he's refusing to accept the result of the 2020 election and it seems to compound that dynamic. >> yeah, nicolle. we need to ask corporate security directors of major companies around the country about the threat they face from x employees, fired, disgruntled employees, retirees who walk out

of the door with the intellectual property, the trade security, the business strategy and the sales plan and it is a growing threat to corporate america. now imagine a president who essentially is fired an disgruntled and walked out with those crown jewels and in great debt, debt estimated personally from $421 million up to a $1 billion. and what do we learn just prior to the election in we saw reports that deutsche bank that holds much of the president's debt is trying to sell his loans, get rid of them. they're too high risk. so imagine someone coming along and this is how i would do it if i were a foreign intelligence service, through cut out companies and say we'll buy that debt. we'll take that loan. and then later finding out in an approach to trump that, sir, we just bought your debt, we happen to be a foreign intelligence power or state-run power. you need to do the following for

us. you might ask what does the president know that is of value that he would trade for bailing him out financially? a lot. the answer is a lot. we have a president that doesn't read his daily briefing every day, but he understands things like that, the cia recruits a source inside a prime minister's office, there is a bug planted in some ambassador's office and he may understand how fast or slow it could take to respond to missiles or if china invades and all of that could be for sale and that is why i assert that he continues to be a national security threat even after he leaves and that the fbi should continue and restart their counterintelligence assessment of the president of the united states. >> john bolton wrote into in his book that he thought that he was influenced business hi businesses and his financial

interest. how much more dangerous is he untethered from any even sort of fiction that he's trying to lead the country at the same time? >> well, we've talked about the guardrails and the lack of guardrails around this president. but imagine now that he's essentially on that steep mountain road with absolutely no guardrails. and he could go off at any time, right off the side and so he's open to recruitment, coopting, wouldn't understand this is classify and he seems not to have any understanding of what is top secret, what is not, who should get a clearance and who is not. so you could argue he poses an even greater chance and greater threat of compromise when he leaves office. so i think we're looking a question of whether or not we need to continue to investigate and determine whether he has ever posed a threat and poses a continuing threat. >> that is remarkable state of affairs. frank, thank you so much for spending time with us.

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he is for the first time in his life in a situation in which he's lost, he's lost decisively and there is absolutely no way to pretend that that is not the case. unfortunately, 72 days is quite a long time to deal with somebody as unstable as he is in such a position of power and as we've seen over the last couple of days, the republican party,

which in my view has entirely disgraced itself, is willing to go along with his utterly false claims of the election is being illegitimate. >> hi, again. it is 5:00 in new york. what is more dangerous than a donald trump in power, a donald trump who knows he's about to lose that power. just two and a half months until joe biden assumes the presidency, with trump still refusing to accept the results of the election. because as niz heniece adds, it will render him irrelevant which in his eyes is a fate worse than death. mark esper confirms our fears of what an unchallenged trump could do telling the military times a couple days ago, at the end of the day, it is as i said, you have to pick your fights. i could have had a fight over anything and i could make it a big fight and i could live with

that. why? who is going to come in behind me? it is going to be a real yes man and then god help us. a somewhat surprising revelation since his own reputation was that of a yes man. until he rebuked the president over the clearing of peaceful protesters in lafayette square over the summer. but as aaron blake and "the washington post" writes the alarm is significant. quote, that one of trump's cabinet officials would literally say god help us about a situation in which yes now find ourselves should send shock waves. mark esper had a good idea of what his fate would be at the time but this is still trump's defense secretary saying something pretty similar to what jim mattis said. that trump is dangerous, that is a big deal which should escape nobody's notice. as donald trump stairs down the barrel of defeat, republicans in

fealty are selling out our very democracy to stroke trump's eggee. propagating the false claims of a rigged or false election while privately acknowledging his efforts won't change the outcome. one senior republican official told t"the washington post," wht is the down side of humoring him for this little bit of time. he went golfing this weekend and tweeting about filing some lawsuits and those will fail and then he'll tweet some more about how the election was stolen and then he'll leave. what is the down side, just the wrecking ball donald trump is taking to our democracy on the way out of the door. assaulting the fundamentals to not become relevant is where we start. claire mccaskill and phil rucker and our friend tim miller, former rnc spokesperson contributor to the bulwark and republican voters against trump. tim miller, you didn't do

enough. we needed to get into a situation where republicans didn't think they could do this. i mean, he will be gone january 20th, i believe that. but we'll still be stuck with ted cruz and mitch mcconnell. >> well, i take your criticism, nicolle. we did the best that we could. >> we have that kind of relationship now, right? >> we do. we do. this is the second biggest electorate margin of the 2000s. it is bigger than w.'s re-election in 2004 and bigger than the minority vote of last time. i think it doesn't matter how close it is going to be. the republicans were going to act like this and feed his ego and give him a participation trophy and allow him to, as you said, be a wrecking ball on the way out. i think this is a moment, i haven't been back since you since we won last week so this is a moment to appreciate what was accomplished. i think it was not preordained

that he be defeated. he ran the most, i would say, criminal campaign in modern american history in order to try to hold on to power. he failed. he was defeated. he will be removed in january. but we have a rocky ten weeks between now and then and i think the fact that the republicans and the senate all but four of them are going along with this charade and allowing him to have a black friday at the department of defense and pretend like our election is fraudulent shows that there aren't greener pastures ahead for the party if there is for the country. >> claire, i'm mostly joking. tim did a whole lot and it turns out every vote mattered. the battlefield in which presidential elections are decided is a narrow one and joe biden did win decisively butef effort mattered, everything you said on the shows mattered, every report phil rucker's by line was on mattered and everything that people learned

about the attacks on government he led mattered because donald trump, i think if we got something wrong, it is the degree to which donald trump and his echo chamber succeeded in selling their lies. and i guess based on the success of their ability to sell lies, this seems like the post dangerous one of all that he didn't actually lose. >> it is the most dangerous one of all. because it is taking, as you said, a wrecking ball to the cornerstone of free and fair elections. people have to believe in the rule of law in this country, which he's done damage to. he's clearly done damage to the press in this country. he's done damage to the intelligence community. he's done damage to the fbi. now easing terrible damage to our elections. but what i'm worried about is what comes next. after he fails in court, which he will because they have no evidence, this is just, you know, as my friend steve schmidt

said, this is a fairy tale. and now he's going after the courts. so he'll go after another institution and convince this group of his supporters that there is no institution left in america that they can trust. and what a legacy for the president of the united states to leave behind. >> you know, claire, let me just challenge you a little bit or push you to say a little bit por. because i think that is precisely the legacy he seeks to leave behind. a trump ally told me that it far -- in his mind it is one wrung above losing fair an square. so his devotion to the fairy tale is deeper than his devotion to any institution he led, deeper than his loyalty to themill who he called suckers and losers and deeper than his commitment to prevent the coronavirus. if you take it as the one thing that trump actually cares about, the fairytale, that is the hill

he's going to die on. >> it is the hill he's going to die on. and what is astounding to me is that his supporters, look at north carolina, it was just called for trump. and for the republican senator. they kept counting votes after election day. i've heard not a peep about fraud today. look at arizona, he keeps gaining votes in arizona. nobody is talking about fraud in arizona. the only place they talk about fraud is where he didn't win. it is absolutely so plain, it just common sense tells you how silly this is. but in a weird way i'm almost grateful, i mean i'm devastated that they got a strong conservative majority on the supreme court. but having said that, what is his excuse going to be when he goes down this rabbit hole of phony lawsuits and they all get thrown out and the supreme court said thanks but no thanks we're not even going to deal with that, what is he going to do

then, go after his own appointees to the supreme court. at least that gives us some ability to stand on a rock of credibility that the courts are adequately protecting fair elections in this country. >> well, i think the sad reality is he'll tell his base of support that they're part of the deep state, too. phil rucker, let's live in the reporting and you and your paper and your colleagues have a ton of greet reporting. you guys brought us this great line from a republican who said, just humor him, let him, you know, desecrate the american presidency for a few more weeks of tweeting and golfing and we'll get him out of there on the 20th. the facts on the legal cases, i think they're 0 for 5 or 0 for 7, as more votes are counting they don't all go one way. it is not like the counting has only helped joe biden. a lot of it has because the mail-in ballots which were counted last because republican legislature made sure that is the case are going for joe

biden. he's widening his lead in pennsylvania. but there is still ballots coming in for donald trump in arizona and north carolina. and we haven't -- nbc hasn't projected him the leader, he still has a lead there. but phil, is there any facts emerged to bolster trump's case or is he widing the co-conspirators in the great lie. >> there is no facts to support his case. we've not seen any evidence come forward from his team or his lawyers about widespread voter fraud as the president alleged. it simply does not exist and it is a continuation of a fantasy here. but the most striking thing that happened in the last 24 hours is this conspiracy has broadened beyond the trump orbit. beyond the immediate aides and advisers and lawyers working on the president's behalf. today with had the secretary of state, mike pompeo vow there would be a peaceful transfer of

power from the first trump administration to the second trump administration. so, you know, clearly ignoring the fact that joe biden won the election. we saw senate republicans including leaders of the republican establishment senator roy blunt, someone senator mccaskill knows well because they both represented missouri. he has a responsibility to ensure a peaceful transfer of power and he today suggested that trump may have actually won the election, that we don't actually know whether biden defeated trump. so again he's buying into the fantasy that the president is trying to project and our reporting, i spent today working with ashley parker on this, our reporting is that the president's advisers recognize the reality here. they know biden won the election. they know there are no plausible path for trump to claim victory but they feel this is their obligation to try to coddle the president, to get him into a better emotional state because

his ego is to fragile right now he can't come to terms with losing so all this is about satisfying one man and his emotions and we'll see how it ends. but it is going to continue on for a few days at least. >> well that is a bleeping tragedy. because let me play for you michelle obama talking about the potential deadly consequences of donald trump's lies about his political opponents. oh, this is her description of it. to think some crazed person might be begined up to think my husband was a threat to the country's security and to know that my children every day had to go to a school that was guarded but not secure, that they had to go to soccer game and parties an travel and go to college, to think this that person would not take into account that was not a game, that something i want the country to understand. i want the country to take this in in a way i didn't say out loud but i'm saying it now it

was reckless and it mutt my family in danger and it wasn't true and he knew it wasn't true. that was michelle obama years after leaving the white house, talking about the consequences to her life. to her safety, to her children's life of donald trump's spreading a big lie. he's president now. and i know a lot of trump people who believe his lie and believe that there is fraud and just no one could find it. do you know how many people look at ballots. trump and biden campaign were observing the counting of ballots. all of the pictures from 2000 of them holding up ballots, that is what it looked like all over the country. there was to fraud. if there was fraud, match shlap and t and the yeah hugh who ran it, they've been looking for fraud. but what michelle obama said, i pray to god doesn't prove true that she feared for the safety and the life of her children and

donald trump is doing that again, tim miller. >> well, i'm so happy you brought up the michelle obama point. we went through this over a decade ago with birtherism. that is what she's talking about. when donald trump pretended like her husband was born in africa to advance a racist lie because the republican base that made them feel better, it ginned them up and what did elected republicans do back then? they did nothing. they were silent. maybe they would say something on background about how they didn't agree. they knew barack obama was born in america and it benefited them politically and they said this is a side show, and he's going to spread this racist lie that barack obama was born in africa and we'll -- and things will go back to normal. well guess that, that guy became the president. he beat them all in a primary. so there are long-term ramifications of playing along

with him and pretending like you also think there might be fraud, letting him go play golf and send some tweets and not correcting him. there are consequences. it means he could hold on to power longer. an the threats to safety are not just to the obama family. right now there are threats to people that are counting these recount ballots and people that work at polling places, there have been threated to these offices, people believe that their stealing the election from their president and it only takes one or two or three radicalized people to take the law in their own hands. this is dangerous. this is really dangerous for real humans and the fact that the republicans are playing along and talking to phil about this on background is unconscionable because we could see what the impact of it is. >> let me play one of those real humans. al schmidt, a pennsylvania elections commissioner.

let's watch, claire. >> it's people making accusations that we wouldn't count those votes or people are adding fraudulent votes or just coming up with just all sorts of crazy stuff. >> accusations like you are cheating? >> yes. >> you are manipulating the vote? >> yes. or calls to our offices reminding us that, um, this is what the second amendment is for. people like us. >> you're getting calls like that? >> yes. >> that's not so veiled death threat. >> yes. for counting votes. in a democracy. >> it is a travesty. >> it is. it is -- you know, i get so angry. i really have to almost -- i

can't find the words. you know, here is this guy all he's doing is counting the votes like they were counted four years ago. when donald trump won. and by the way, remember he won three states by like 77,000 votes. and hillary clinton conceded. he's going to win those same three states by somewhere ben 200 and 300,000 votes. and we have no concession. and the votes are being counted identically. and the only reason that there aren't a lot of mail-in votes in pennsylvania from republicans is because donald trump told them not to mail in their votes. that is the only reason. there is no plot here. there is nobody behind the curtain trying to mess around with a ballot counts. and these are -- he is a sore loser and what i really don't have patience for is all of these republican officials serving as grief counselors.

you know, we're going to humor him. it is like he's in therapy and they're his therapist and we don't want him to get too upset. give me a break. get real. this is america's democracy. we count the votes and the winner concedes. by the way, nicolle, every single one of the republicans when the media called their races they expected a concession call from their opponent. and all of them got one. so the notion that they're now all down with let's pretend there is a legal challenge, it is disgusting. >> phil, i wonder if you could i illuminate on what is a foot. you have lindsey graham, i'm not going to replay it, but him and ted cruz on tv on fox news furthering these dangerous lies and you have mitch mcconnell on board speaking about the big lie about voter fraud. are they out trying to manufacture -- what is happening. >> -- what are they doing? you have donald trump refusing

to turn over a pdb and classified information from the biden transition and the head of gsa refusing to release transition funds and office space. what is the end game? >> well the question, nicolle, is if we play this out for a few days and more of the legal challenges are rejected in the courts and the trump team realizes they don't have anywhere to go into terms of challenging the results is that the point where the president finally gets real and realized he lost the lost the election and concedes and this game could be over. that is the expectation or the hope at least from a lot of republican officials that that could play out over the next week or so. but it is unclear. it could intensify. the president could dig in. he is a mercurial person who runs on impulse and there is no predicting what he's going to do next. but you mentioned a really important point which is the intelligence and the information for the biden and transition team. that is a deadly serious issue.

it imperils national security for the transition team not to be given access to that information, not to be inside of these agencies with the resources that they've been allocated by congress doing the work that is necessary to get the new government up and running and i talked to some experts on this today, he said it is a really legitimate and serious concern after the september 11th attacks two decades ago it was determined that the transitions of power needed to happen more seamlessly but that the u.s. is at its most vulnerable state whether there is a hand over in administration and the fact that there is a delay with biden is a real cause for concern in national security establishment community. >> phil, i didn't think there was a body of reporting that could be more riveting than what "the washington post" and your friends at times and other places did during the trump transition. so far this is turning out to be a more remarkable period for journalism. thank you for your reporting on this story. really important.

phil and tim, thank you both for starting us off. tim, it is good to see you. claire is sticking around. whether we come back, veterans of the department of justice are blasting attorney general bill barr as he tries to give life to donald trump's baseless claims of election fraud. that is next. plus president-elect joe biden trying to save and expand obamacare just as the u.s. supreme court hears arguments in a case that may tear it down a bit. and it is not just trump, georgia two republican senators are making unfounded claimed about voting in their state. calling on the state's republican secretary of state to resign. as chuck schumer puts it, it is the kind of thing you expect to see in a banana republic. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. don't go anywhere. ok, just keep coloring there...

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as donald trump makes baseless deceitful claims of voter fraud in an election he refused to concede, this morning veterans of the justice department rebuked the sitting attorney general whose latest bidding fuels the unfounded claims. after bill barr released a memo authorizing federal prosecutors to probe specific allegations of voter fraud before the election results are certified, a group of voter protection program members including george h.w. bush's don air and went weinstein wo weinstein wrote, the voters decide and not the president or the attorney general. thanks to a group of experienced officials and poll workers across the country, the states once again ran fair and secure elections.

we have seen absolutely no evidence of anything that should get in the way of certification of the results which is something that the state handle not the federal government. now the country needs to move forward toward a peaceful transfer of power. let's bring in chuck rosenberg and msnbc contributor and claire is still here. and chuck, just more broadly, how does barr getting involved whether, at this point, so many days after the election, it is clear that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud? >> you know what you just said, nicolle, at this point is the key to understanding this. i read the memo that he issued yesterday and i did this little exercise. i made believe that it wasn't issued yesterday and it wasn't issued by him and i just read it. and that talked about opening up investigations where there are substantial and credible evidence, which is something we do all of the time at the

department of justice and it said not to open up cases where the theory is farfetched or speculative or specious. and we don't do that at the department of justice. we avoid those type of cases. and so if you just look at it in that way, from a normal attorney general at a normal time in a normal administration with a normal president, you won't think twice about this. but all of those things are not true. and the fact that this attorney general issued this memo yesterday seems only designed to appease a petulant president and that is the danger. not the substance of the memo so much because, again, it is relatively benign. but it came from this attorney general of all attorney generals, the one that continues to shade facts to please this president, that is the problem at this point. just like you said. >> chuck, i just -- people are scared. and i think one of the signals when we've watched the barr

justice department in terms of gauging how scared we should be is to watch whether steady, steely people like yourself at the department are as offended as we are and leave. and that happened. when bill barr sent out this memo richard pilger left and wrote a resignation letter that said this, having familiarized myself with the new policy and the ramifications in accord with the best tradition of the john c. keeny award for professionalism, my most cherished recognition, i must resign from my role as director of the election crimes branch. i've enjoyed very much working with you for over a decade, over a decade, to aggressively enforce criminalfection law and policy and practice without partisan fear and favor and i thank you for your support in that. how figuring out how bad that was, looking at someone who has been here for a decade and won

awards for integrity and bailed the minute this memo was distributed. >> yeah. and so that you're viewers understand, the name jack keany at the department of justice is like the name joe dimaggio if you're a fan. he was a legend in our department and getting the award is a big deal. now what i don't know is whether he was offended by the substance of the memo. again we should open investigations whether there is special or credible evidence or by the procedure and it woe the procedure because bill barr issued it yesterday and cut the elections crimes branch out of the chain of command for evaluating whether or not the cases should be pursued and what steps we ought to take. and so either way, whether it is just substance or just procedure or both, the timing is deeply troubling to me. although, remember, with a normal attorney general at a

normal time with a normal president, i don't think you could think twice about this but all of those things don't apply here. i'm really sorry that richard stepped down from his post. i believe he remains in the department of justice. but something deeply offended him and whether something deeply offended career prosecutors like those in the flynn prosecution or the stone prosecution, we ought to listen. >> claire, let me just put out there the facts. the facts are that -- here are all of the places where the trump campaign has launched legal efforts and failed because judges have found there is no evidence. so this is the weird thing, too, about barr. judges are looking and claiming there is no evidence. so barr thinks he'll fine something that judges haven't seen. in michigan, a state court judge denied the request that they stop counting. saying that the campaign failed to offer solid evidence. in georgia, the georgia state court judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming late arriving ballots

were mixed in saying there is no evidence. in nevada, there was no evidence to their claims there. in pennsylvania, no evidence. in nevada, there wasn't evidence what they were claiming. in michigan, rnc said there are hundreds of allegations of fraud but did not provide concrete evidence. in arizona trump's campaign said on saturday it had sued alleging maricopa county rejected votes cast on election day has not provided evidence. so i guess the other arrogance of this memo is that they're supporting or they're going to go manufacture evidence that judges in the half dozen states haven't seen. >> yeah, you know, if you look at donald trump's life, he is used litigation as leverage. he is very rarely actually gone into court and actually had a jury trial. he just uses it for positioning and bargaining and negotiations. this is a whole different thing.

as chuck will tell you, lawyers in this area, whether it is a local prosecutor's office, a state prosecutor's office or a federal prosecutor's office, their reputations, they linger. reputations go on and on. presidents come and go. if a lawyer at doj brings a case in front of a federal judge, that is phony, it permanently impacted how he's viewed. not just by that court. but by his peers. by lawyers on the other side, by lawyers in the community. it impacts his ability to be a good lawyer. so that is why you're beginning to see pressure put on the law firms that are taking the big money and bringing these lawsuits that don't have merit. they should feel the pressure. they should feel the pressure. because there is rules in the court that say you can only bring cases that you bring in good faith. not for a political gain. >> unbelievable state of affairs.

i know i say that too much. chuck, thank you for spending time with us to help explain what is going on. claire is sticking around. when we come back, president-elect joe biden moving forward with his agenda regardless of what donald trump said and does. today's priority, saving obamacare. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. e. i'm thinking about medicare. i know i want coverage that connects all the different parts of my health care to keep me aging actively. keep doing what you love. that's the aetna medicare advantage.

americans from both parties. turned out to vote in numbers like we haven't seen in a hundred years. and election officials counted those votes carefully,

transparently and in accordance with the law. so, no matter who you voted for, if you cast a ballot, or counted them. thank you for showing the world that even in times like these, america is still going strong.

♪ ♪ heart monitors that let your doctor watch over you, just like you watch over your best friend. another life-changing technology from abbott, so you don't wait for life. you live it. president-elect joe biden isn't letting donald trump's antics stop him from pushing ahead with the work of his

transition. today he spoke out in defense of obamacare. today the supreme court heard oral arguments on whether to throw out the act, a decision that could leave 20 million americans uninsured during a pandemic. and if obamacare is wiped out by the cores which does seem increasingly unlikely, testing positive for the coronavirus would become a pre-existing condition. for republicans, the end of obamacare game is a dangerous one to play considering how popular the law has become. in a survey conducted a few weeks ago the kaiser family foundation revealed the a.c.a. is viewed favorably by more than half of the american public. joining us now former campaign manager and msnbc political analyst david fluff. i think once it was passed it would become more and more and more popular among the american people it served and it stuck with me because it seemed like

an admission that the efforts to stop it were against the will of the people and purely political. >> no question, nicolle. if you look at 2010 as claire remembers well, we had a very bad economy. so that is the major reason democrats had tough election. but the a.c.a. passed and people haven't enjoyed any benefits. in 2012 and president obama as election there was something we could take on the offense and this is joe biden's messaging. so what is fascinating to me, you mentioned joe biden sticking to planning for his eventually presidency, which is right. i don't think he should play in the dirty sandbox with donald trump. but you do see most of the pentagon leadership was decapitated today. senior doj officials leaving because of barr, determined to just be henchman for trump. so i would like to see senior democrats in congress be vocal about this. i know congress isn't in session but i think biden is doing the right thing focusing on the

coronavirus task force. from biden's standpoint i would give trump very little oxygen on his antics. >> there is some breaking news. let me bring our viewers up to date on what you just alluded to. trump loyalists are taking powerful positions at the pentagon today as david plouffe just said including an individual named cash patel, chief of staff to chris miller, there are others who are resigned. this is coming amiss mark esper leaving and giving an interview if the military times where he said god help us. he was explaining his philosophy there at the pentagon where he seems to be describing an attempt to pick his battles. i think, david, what is disorienting is that it is reporting that trump planned to

fire gina haspel and chris wray, and never believe the intel whether it suggested that russia was threatening our country and he never trusted christopher wray, but what is afoot at the pentagon? >> well we need to find out. this is not a particularly close presidential race. donald trump doesn't have a legal foot to stand on. all of joe biden's leads in the close battlegrounds would with stand any recount historically. so i'm not worried that joe biden is not going to be the next president. but what is going on here. you've got now mass blood shed at the department of defense, maybe we'll see more firings and donald trump is only our president for the next 70 days. so this is something that i foe journalists will dig into and try to get to motive in what is going on here but i do think democrats in congress need to be more aggressive here about patrols the dwindling days and weeks of the trump

administration. >> well, claire, i will add that republicans should be aggressive as well. this cash patel coming in as chief of staff is a former devin nunes staffer and that is never been a particularly fact oriented orbit if you will. what is your degree of concern over these pretty massive changes at the pentagon here a few days after the election is called? >> well there is also this guy famed ta ta that they're putting in in a very important position in the pentagon. keep in mind that i was nominate the but that was withdrawn because they couldn't get the votes from the republicans who controlled the senate to confirm him. so, yes, the republicans need to step up here. i long for the days when i served on the senate armed services committee for 12 years. the days where it wasn't about partisanship, it was about making sure that there was

adequate over sight of what went on at the military and the pentagon but it was also by a bipartisan effort to do the right thing for the military. this is really dangerous stuff that is going on. and the democrats on the armed services committee need to speak up. but those same republicans who refuse to confirm this guy, you should look at his social media account. he said some things that trump's political enemies should swallow a gun an this is the guy they're putting in in a top position at the pentagon. this is like made for tv movie stuff. this is not something that we would ever expect to happen in our country. and the other people that need to step up are the retired military. they need to step up now and say, we've got to be very diligent over the next 70 days that the commander-in-chief who still has power doesn't do something terrible in terms of our national security. >> and i justed over my phone.

if john kelly or secretary mattis want to call we'll put you on the air. here is what secretary mark esper said to the military times, quote, at the end of the day, it is as i said you've got to pick your fights. i could have a fight over anything and i could live with that. why? who is going to come in behind me? it is going to be a real, quote, yes man. and then got help us. let me read this again. a couple of days ago. who is going to come in behind me? it is going to be a yes man. david plouffe, this is a warning from sort of the political grave of mark esper just a few days ago telling the military times, a paper widely read, read before really anything else, in that building, warning that the person that is going to come in behind him, these people will be yes men. what do you think mark esper was afraid of? obviously exactly this. but what are they up to? >> right. he was afraid of this and it is

coming to fruition. and listen, claire is right to focus on the republicans. but with a few notable exceptions. i think republicans in congress have begin up on our democracies so we can't counts on them to do anything. they're scared of trump and in the fetal position. some know better and some believe this. so the worst case scenario from a conspiracy theory standpoint is he's lining people at the pentagon who will send troops into the streets, i don't think that will happen. but 70 days is a long time. so why is he putting -- is he just upset attes per and he wanted to get rid of everybody close to mark esper and what are they up to and claire mentioned the top policy position at the pentagon is very scary and the question is is this it and this is bad enough but are we going to see removal of the cia and the fbi director? so these are dark days for america. again, the election happened, joe biden won, it wasn't particularly close, there is to

legal grounding so we should make clear that this election is going to stand, at least from my standpoint but what is going on could not be more disconcerting. and this is a unstable president preelection and now the man that seems that is a gis graced one term president. i don't think there is any bottom and it is a nerve-wracking 70 days for the country and the world. >> to put a finer point on the two places where mark esper was disparagingly referred to as secretary yes-per inside of that sort of close watchers of the military because of his loyalty to donald trump. but there were two significant instances which he broke with trump over, claire. one was militarizing the response to the protest in lafayette square and the second was donald trump's declaration that he would invoke the

insurrection act to protests so if you pull the thread through what david is saying, he's installed a slew of loyalties and i two pages of folks installed in the last 12 to 24 hours in the pentagon in the wake of mark esper's firing via twitter. what is your degree of concern right now, claire? >> well, keep in mind that we have somewhat of a balance in power in the military between the active military and the civilian military. so where he's done a lot of monkeying around in the last few days is in the civilian part. we still will need to depend on general milley and the active military and the joint chiefs of staff and all of the people who run the various branches of the military to stand up for the rule of law as it relates to the use of thein surection act or

any other oany other order that be unlawful or unethical or moral. that is the three prong test that the military has. i'm going to try to stay as hopeful as possible that the military there will be the check we need for the limited amount ever time that is left, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant and paying very close attention, including everyone in this country who respects the military. >> miss john mccain now more than ever. i'll ask you to stay with us. whether we come back, the latest on the moves at the pentagon. we're getting our pentagon correspondent up as we speak. give us one moment. "deadline: white house" will be back after a very short break. . ♪ (music swells) (dog barking) ♪ (music fades) (exhales)

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learning of trump loyalest and those known to frequent viewers of fox news. former devin nunes taking on a powerful position. anthony who claire referred to earlier taking on an important position and an individual that used to work for mike flynn, what do these people have in common and why are they being installed after trump's defeat? >> so, one thing they have in common is they are loyal to president trump and they are loyal to the administration. i think that big question is policy or something that they all have an agenda on that they could be bringing administration could be bringing them into the pentagon so they can push some agenda item or items in the last 70 days of this administration. it's not really clear on what that is right now. you mentioned that, you know, these individuals are coming in

but we're also seeing the departure of james anderson, who was the under secretary of defense for policy and of joe curnan under secretary of defense for intelligence and they're being replaced by these trump loyalists. so this just raises the alarm bells to another level from where it was yesterday at the pentagon. after the surprise tweet that secretary esper was being terminated immediately, which again, nick coole, that was a surprise to secretary esper and senior leaders in the pentagon. they were not expecting it. secretary esper found out rigeg before the president tweeted it. there was a sense of what is next? else could be disrupted? we've seen is the beginning of the move and again, the big question is there going to be some attempt here to use these trump loyalists to push through

policy items and agendas that have not been able to do during the three and a half years of the trump administration so far. >> well, could it be something proactive but something protective? i mean could it be he's setting up a constitutional crisis? he had the secretary of state from the state department podium today saying he's preparing for a second trump term. what else could the pentagon do for a president that refuses to accept the results of an election? >> it could have something to do with that. i mean, where my head is going with it on this right now is other more d.o.d. and national security related items that perhaps people still at the pentagon after secretary esper left, people would push back on, someone like general millie. things they might push back on we know they have throughout their time here have given

guidance against the president's wishes including pulling all troops out of afghanistan. president trump said he wants them out by christmas, is that an agenda item they could push through? we know patel met with assad not long ago in syria. is there a syria agenda item. does it have to do with the border? again, another common thread here is iran. we know that these are individuals who have very strong feelings about the iranian regime. is there something that would happen here? the other question, i mean, we have a lot of question marks tonight about what could potentially happen here, and another one is candidly is chris miller, he has a long career in special operations and special forces. he's -- i spoke with a number of people who know him well who served with him in the military over the last 24 hours or so and he's well respected but the big

question is he someone who would forcefully push back on president trump and potentially these new individuals who have come into the pentagon or coming into the pentagon, would he push back if they are trying to make radical changes in these last 70days. yesterday after secretary esper was terminated, defense officials assured me that in fact, miller had addressed senior staff already and said look, i'm not planning any wide scale, you know, large changes. we're going to keep the mission going. we're going to keep the trains running as they have been but now with these other potential influencers working in the pentagon, could that change? >> could he fire general milly. he rebuked him on tv. >> president trump could fire general millie at any time. it would be uncommon but he

serves at the pleasure of the president so yes, absolutely. >> what was the reaction to secretary esper's comments to the military times where he said god help us? >> so, that was something -- you know, secretary esper really hated that. it was something that stuck in his crawl. privately, he pushed back. officials around him really pushed back and said you have no idea how much he's actually standing up to president trump behind the scenes. you guys just don't know but the president doesn't listen to him. i wasn't surprised to read that at all. and it was also something last week i was really struck, carol and i put out a story about secretary esper preparing his resignation letter. i was struck by the reaction to the story both doing the reporting on it and after it came out by how much concern there was at very senior levels

of the pentagon for what president trump could do in these last days of the administration. this is before the race, before we knew that president elect biden would win the election. there was a tremendous amount of concern about what president trump could do here. one of the things surrounded the insurrection act and worry there would be violence in the streets depending on the election results, which so far, you know, fortunately have not materialized. i was really struck by the raw concern and fear of what the president could do in his last days of his administration at very senior levels in the pentagon. >> so i just want to crystallize that with you. so concern about what the president could do in the final days of his administration, "new york times" today has a story about what bill bar r is going o do. conduct so, he's going to make

on his podium and say i'll getting ready for the trump transition. isn't it clear what trump is going to do to the members of the military? . he doesn't plan on conceding the election or leaving. >> it's not even just that. remember, he remains the commander in chief for another 70 or so days, and in that time, he has the authority to issue orders to the military and as long as they're not illegal or unethical and immoral which is a separate issue, the general and pentagon have to follow them or they have the option of resigning. so it's not -- i don't get the sense that there is one particular issue. the insurrection act they were worried about last week but the tensions and concern about that has really waned this week. i don't get the sense there is one particular issue. it's almost the absence of one

thing to focus on they seem so concerned about and instead, they're worried about just the sheer possibility of what president trump may do. i mean, you hear everything from he's going to pull the troops out of afghanistan, maybe he'll pull troops off the korean peninsula. he'll pull everyone out of iraq. what will happen with syria? maybe there would be an offensive action. you know, even social policies he's going to start create new policies that would have an impact on the men and women of the military. none of this is backed up so far by any action by the president, but again, what's just so striking to me is that there is this fear and i was struck yesterday after the tweet about secretary esper being terminated was there was almost this desperation in the pentagon to reinforce how everything is fine here, there was no break in power between secretary esper leaving and secretary acting

secretary miller coming in. there was this desperation to ensure that -- to reassure the american public everything at the pentagon was still moving smoothly, nicole. >> thank you so much for jumping on for part of this live coverage. david plouffe, you brought it to our attention. claire, thank you for spending the hour with us. "the beat" with my friend arry be -- ari melber starts now. hello. welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber. here is how the president elect just addressed the president since this weekend and has not conceded. >> i just think it's an embarrassment, quite frankly. the only thing that -- how can i say this tactfully? i think it will not help the president's legacy.