tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC November 11, 2020 9:00pm-10:00pm PST
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slide as the bush girls caught the obama girls, as the biden grandkids will pass on to the next occupants because that's how graciousness works. and that is our broadcast on this wednesday night. thank you so much for being here with us. on behalf of all my colleagues at the networks of nbc news, good night. we do have breaking news on the covid front. we have just learned that 144,000 people, new cases, have been reported in the united states. that is by far a record for new infections. 144,000. more than that actually. that's just our rough initial count that we've got. rachel once again has the night off as she continues to quarantine after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. she is fine. but, again, she's quarantining as anyone should under these
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circumstances. we've got lots to get to on this veterans day. the banner headline at the top of today's printed edition of "new york times." election officials nationwide find no fraud. "the new york times" called election officials in every single state. what did they find? no evidence of voter fraud. rather, quote, top election officials across the country said in interviews and statements that the process had been remarkably successful despite record turnout and the complications of a dangerous pandemic. "the new york times" was joined by the associated press, whose journalists spread out across the country and came to the same conclusion. their headline, quote, state cites smooth election despite trump's baseless claims. know, election experts told the associated press that the increase in early voting with 107 million people voting early, in person, and by mail helped take pressure off election day operations. the a.p. also noted that there were no incidents of violence at the polls or voter intimidation.
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quote, the 2020 general election was one of the smoothest and most well-run elections that we have ever seen, and that is remarkable considering all the challenges. and that was said, by the way, by a trump-appointed democrat on the election assistance commission. and if you stop to think about it for a minute, it is remarkable that this election went so smoothly in the middle of a raging, out-of-control pandemic and amid constant haranguing from the president about a rigged result. also amid the ever-present and worrying specter of foreign interference. also considering the record-shattering turnout that we saw in this election. 152 million voters and counting. there's a reason for that. the legions of election workers from coast to coast who worked on the polls and for early voting, tabulated the ballots under the constant watchful glare of the entire world. young, old, from every walk of
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life. rather than being accused of engaging in some massive vote-rigging conspiracy, they should be lauded as the true heroes of democracy that they are. nobody thanks the poll workers. we owe these election workers an enormous debt of gratitude for making the impossible possible and putting up with the nonsense that they're listening to now. as one election official in madison, wisconsin, said, many of these volunteer workers made all the difference. >> the other major benefit was the army of poll workers at their disposal to count a record number of absentee ballots. >> that was a key difference for us on election day. if we didn't have as many election officials and we didn't have as much space as we did, it would have been a really late night. >> so if you are an election worker yourself or you know someone who is or answered your state's call for volunteers during this extraordinary time, thank you. now that over a week has passed, the broad picture is coming into
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view, and it is this. despite what the president and his allies might tell you, there was no wide-scale fraud. the president and his allies may claim voter fraud occurred, but that is simply not what is being reported across the country. in fact, the exact opposite is true. the president's claims are not backed by any election officials, including republican officials in philadelphia, in arizona, who continue to pour cold water on what the president is tweeting. in georgia, the state's republican lieutenant governor says there are simply, quote, no substantial instances, end quote, of voter fraud in his state. in philadelphia today, the city's top election official, a republican, called claims of voter fraud, quote, completely ridiculous, end quote, and denied reports pushed by the president's lawyer, rudy giuliani, and others that dead people had voted. city officials have not found one single instance of that
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happening. today the republican attorney general explained what happened in his state, and the answer is simple. there was no fraud. voters just didn't like trump. >> the reality is right now there's, you know, less than 50,000 votes to count, and the president would have to get about 65% of them to win arizona. so it does appear that joe biden will win arizona. there was a time not that long ago we as republicans talked about we need to make sure the rule of law means something. we don't want anarchy. we want the rule of law. if there was conspiracy it doesn't apparently work. what really happened it came down, people split their ticket. people votes for republicans down ballot, but they didn't vote for president trump and martha mcsally. that's the reality. just because that happened, it doesn't mean it's fraud. >> that's the reality. just because that happened doesn't mean it's fraud.
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republican claims of fraud are going nowhere. one of their signature examples promoted by lindsey graham and others evaporated when a pennsylvania postal worker, who alleged ballot tampering recanted his story, signing an affidavit saying his claims were not true. he now denies doing that. the courts continue to rebuke the president's lawyers at every available opportunity. in texas, i kid you not, the lieutenant governor, a republican, is now resorting to offering a $1 million cash prize, $1 million, to anyone who can come up with an instance of voter fraud, which suggests the desperate lengths the president and his allies will go to in order to keep this election from slipping away even as it becomes clear to anyone living in reality, earth one over here as we've taken to calling it, that there's no "there" there to the president's claims. a new poll suggests nearly 80% of americans think joe biden won the election, which sounds great until you realize that means
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20%, or one in five, are either not sure who won, think the election remains undecided, or believe that trump won. one in five. the markets continue to operate under the assumption that biden will be the next president. the biden campaign also does not appear too worried. it continues to proceed as normal. tonight president-elect biden named his longtime aide and veteran of the 2000 florida recount ron klain as his white house chief of staff. klain was also the ebola czar, which will be useful during this pandemic. the biden transition team continues to act as if this shaky period will eventually end and their candidate will be sworn in on january 20th with certainty. it's a position adopted by the candidate himself and by his senior adviser and renowned election lawyer, who spoke to reporters on a zoom call last night. >> the biden/harris transition is going forward. it's moving along very briskly.
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president biden will take the oath of office on january 20th, 2021, and that's going to be our answer to that. in the meantime, there will be theater, but it will be playing to increasingly light crowds until it empties out completely and joe biden and kamala harris take their oath of office. >> tonight nbc news is reporting that president trump met with top advisers, including jared kushner and campaign manager bill stepien to discuss the path forward. but whatever trump is saying behind closed doors, he's outwardly continuing his verbal assault on the results of the election. and while we may be used to this kind of behavior from this president, one thing bears repeating. this is not normal. lies and attempts to delegitimize an election in the minds of voters by this president and his enablers in congress, his republican enablers in congress, are at best doing massive damage to our democratic process. at worse, they are signs of something far more sinister.
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many stories have been written about republican officials simply humoring the president and that this will all eventually be resolved, and that may very well be true. but as one of our nation's foremost scholars on authoritarianism warns today, we should be very careful about ignoring the president's claims and letting them spread unabated. famed author and yale professor timothy snyder writes in "the boston globe" today that, quote, trump's big election lie pushes america toward autocracy. clinging to power by claiming you are the victim of internal enemies is a very dangerous tactic. don't underestimate where this can go. underestimating donald trump is a mistake that people should not go on making. laughing at him will not make him go away. if it did, he would have vanished decades ago. after all, a claim that an election was illegitimate is a claim to remaining in power. a coup is under way, and the number of participants is not shrinking but growing.
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republican lawmakers find ever new verbal formulations that directly or indirectly support trump's claims. the longer this goes on, the greater the danger to the republic. joining me now, tim snyder, best-selling author of the books "on tyranny" and "our malady." he's a professor of history at yale university. thank you for making time with us this evening. there are a lot of people who don't want to hear what you wrote today in "the boston globe" or what you tweeted yesterday. they want this to be over. they believe, as joe biden constantly says, this will pass and he will be the next president of the united states. but what you write about is something deeper than that. the scar that this will leave on democracy. you actually refer to germany of the 1920s as an example of how dangerous this can be. >> that's right. i mean an election doesn't ordinarily unroll with a story like this. in the united states, usually the story is clear. one person wins, one person
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loses. one person gives a victory speech, one person concedes. what we have to think about looking forward is what it means when a sitting president and many of his important allies, the majority leader in the senate, for example, the secretary of state, for example, take part in what is unequivocally a big lie. all of the evidence is on the other side. there's no reason in the world to think that there was fraud. so when the president injects a big lie like this into the system, he's doing damage. he's doing damage to the way that people remember. he's doing damage to the way that people regard a biden administration. and perhaps what's worse, he's making the claim that since the other side cheats, it's all right for our side to cheat in the future. so that's a bomb laid under the future of democracy, and so this is the kind of talk and the kind of reasoning we have to get behind us as quickly as possible. >> david rohde wrote in "the new
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yorker" today, and he spoke to the idea that humoring the president actually undermines democracy. he was speaking about bill lauer, talking about looking into election fraud. at best, barr is humoring the president, playing for time, and expects state and federal judges to stand up to trump and dismiss his false claims. odds are that the judges, particularly those with lifetime appointments, will do so. still, there is no excuse for allowing a sitting president to flirt with authorityianism. you can't humor the president on something like this. this is the basis of our democracy. >> yeah. i mean for one thing, hours tick by. days go by. now weeks are going by without the white house being able to take a clear stand on what's just happened. for another thing, as you say, mr. barr is supposed to stand for the rule of law. there are few aspects of the rule of law more important than our succession principle. our succession principle, which is that of democratic representation of citizens. by stating even that, the
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department of justice should be investigating what mr. barr surely knows to be outrageously false claims. he's putting the department of justice on the wrong side of the rule of law. like so much else, this puts him and trump's other allies on the wrong side of history. it puts the united states into the group of countries where people don't accept the outcomes of elections. again, humoring or playing along or using the situation for your own personal gain as the georgia senators are doing may seem sensible to you moment to moment. but in the long term, this is bad not just for the republican party. it's clearly bad for the republic as a whole. >> jennifer rubin, conservative commentator in t"the washington pos post", wrote today, it is no consolation, indeed it is worse, that mcconnell and the rest almost certainly know trump's claims are a joke and incapable of overturning an election. they apparently are willing to
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damage democracy. other democracies looking on will be horrified. dictators will find vindication in republicans' refusal to accept the results of an election. so she's also speaking about the longer-term damage and the damage to america's role on the global stage. >> yeah. i mean, look, there's a basic question of principle here. the basic question of principle is that we have a legal and ethical means of changing leaders. this is hard-fought and hard-won. democracy is rare. democracy is fragile. people have made sacrifices over the generations for it. people are still making sacrifices for it. even the poll workers who you've mentioned, you know, thousands and thousands of people who work very hard while taking a lot of flak. they're making sacrifices for this principle. and this principle is one which rises or falls not just in one country but around the world. we are setting an example the
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entire time by our behavior, whether it's a good example or whether it's a bad behavior, bad example. what mr. trump has just done is encouraged tyrants to do what they'll tend to do anyway, which is to ignore election results. we've taken pride in our ability to tell autocrats they should leave when they lose elections. this has been one of the big legacies of american foreign policy since the year 1989. what we're doing now is settinge election. now we are telling tyrants around the world, whoever it might be that this is how presidents normally behind. the sooner this stops, the better. not just for our reputation but for the world. >> and for our democracy. a professor at yale university. professor, thank you for your time this evening. wooey appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> president trump spent time firing top security officials and replacing them with administration loyalists, which
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would be concerning at any point in time, but why now and why the week after losing the election. the house intelligence committee chair adam schiff joins us next. source. acetaminophen blocks pain signals. new advil dual action with acetaminophen. and now your co-pilot. still a father. but now a friend. still an electric car. just more electrifying. still a night out. but everything fits in. still hard work. just a little easier. still a legend. just more legendary. chevrolet. making life's journey, just better.
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new reporting tonight on donald trump's efforts to fire senior pentagon leaders and install stanch loyalists in their place starting when trump announced the firing of defense secretary mark esper. on tuesday the president continued his slew of firings and forced out the pentagon's top policy chief installing a fox news regular to take his place. anthony t tata known as referri to president obama as a terrorist leader. comments that led the administration to withdraw his previous nomination this summer. today trump installed another fox news commentator who like tata holds fringe anti-muslim
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views to the defense department. another one. douglas mcgregor joins the pentagon after criticizing germany for being too welcome to muslim invaders which is not unusual if you live in eighth century europe. the president forced out four senior pentagon officials since monday, esperand senior officials overseeing policy and intelligence. trump elevated a fierce loyalist to the powerful position of general counsel of the national security agency, someone that just so happens to be named in the articles of impeachment against the president. and the concerns do not end there. the daily beast reports trump's national security advisor is enabling trump's post election mayhem by supporting the moves to install loyalists and pushing
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national security officials to publicly endorse trump's claims that the election is not over. there is more. officials tell the daily beast that robert o'brien is actively working against the biden transition. once national security official says tonight if you even mention biden's name, that is a no-go. you would be fired. everyone is scared of even talking about the chance of working with the biden transition. wow. just 70 days to go until inauguration day what does it mean for the country's national security. congressman adam schiff, the chairman of the house intelligence committee. you get the highest intelligence that the country has access to and there are concerns that others raised that this is the moment that america has to be
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strong. our transition process is supposed to guarantee the incoming president does not come in with a weakness, not knowing everything available. we are hearing joe biden is not getting intelligence briefings. >> the transition period is a period of real vulibility if the transition does not go quickly or smoothly and what we have here is anything but. it is not just that the president refuses to concede, but it is a body blow to our democracy. it is not just that the incoming president can't get the intelligence briefings and can't even get calls from foreign leaders or messages from foreign leaders that mike pompeo was withholding from the president-elect. donald trump is punishing enemies by removing them from top positions in the pentagon,
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rewarding people that have no experience or exactly the wrong experience and are merely politically partisan actors to the top positions. they may make decisions in the waning weeks of the administration to put it in a foreign policy crisis. it could not be more debilitating. you can put a finer point on the conversation with president snider. the fact is that the president could not be doing all of this and could not have broken down so many of the norms and the democratic institutions over the last four years. he could not be behaving the way that he is today if there were not leaders in the republican party and elsewhere going along with him. they rationalize it by saying just do it until the courts decide. just do it until the georgia special election is over or just do it until he is out of office or if he will run again, just do
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it for the next four years. this is how a democracy is smothered. it does not always die with a shot in the back. sometimes it dies over slow suffocation. and it is inexcusable what the enablers are doing. >> we have to win and lose and if you cannot do it in an orderly fashion the democracy suffers. i want to talk about something in the "washington post" today about the pentagon. several officials said a group of trump loyalists is seizing the opportunity to purge the pentagon and several other agencies. many officials in the agencies they are taking over are wondering whether the loyalist plan includes helping trump resist leaving office. what do you think about that? >> i do have confidence the military will not go along with
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a -- the president will do whatever he can to cling to power. that is what autocrats do and as you underscored earlier, this is not only so crippling of our democracy and basically creates a group of people going into the next administration around the country who feel that the biden presidency is somehow less than legitimate because the last president was claiming fraud. but it sends the message to other would be autocrats around the world that this is how they should behave. i have confidence that the military will not president in a coup and no matter who they try to stack the pentagon with the leadership of the pentagon won't go along with that.
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>> every last member of the military i have spoken has said the same thing. there is no military officer or member of the military that would go along with something that feels like a coup. adam schiff, thank you for joining us tonight, sir. we appreciate it. all right. tonight nbc is confirming there have been at least 144,000 new cases of covid-19 in the united states today. that completely smashes through any other previous single day record for new infections in this country. a riveting tale from the front lines is next. stay with us. front lines is next. stay with us into a smaller life? are your asthma treatments just not enough? then see what could open up for you with fasenra. it is not a steroid or inhaler. it is not a rescue medicine or for other eosinophilic conditions. it's an add-on injection for people 12 and up
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positive for covid. she was so ill she checked into the hospital. september 28th. this is kelly today. >> reporter: when did you first get covid? >> when did i first get covid? we were just talking about it. that was around september. and i went into the hospital. i went to the e.r. to get fluids and i went back home. and the next day i still had a fever. i wasn't feeling well. i went back to the hospital. and they told me that i had covid pneumonia and ended up transferring me here and putting the tube down the throat. that was in a couple of days of each other. >> when we got to the hospital and you are getting sicker what is going through your head? >> i was just feeling miserable.
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i knew something was wrong. i knew that i had covid from the very first day that i had symptoms. but i just kept getting worse and worse and worse. i just kept feeling sicker and sicker. i just knew that i needed to get some sort of help because it wasn't getting any better. >> reporter: i don't know how much you remember, you were put on a ventilator. that must have been really scary. >> i have just been seeing the picture the past couple of weeks. pretty scary to look at the pictures. i don't like to look at them very much. >> reporter: what would you say to people that think this is something that affects perhaps the elderly or maybe is not as serious because, you know -- what would you say to people that are skeptical that covid is really that serious? >> i would say wear your mask
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because i almost died from it. it is more serious than people think. i just think people aren't taking it serious enough. and they can see my pictures or read my story. it was pretty scary, touch and go for a while. >> you don't remember any of your time on that ventilator? >> no. not while i was in a coma. >> reporter: when you -- when you came out of it, you now are in recovery. you are out of isolation. how amazing is it to see your mom here? >> it is so cool. it is so cool. >> reporter: mom, how tough has it been for you? >> hard. hard. yep. really, really hard. but i cried a lot. but it was tears of joy now. because she is getting better.
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>> what was the hardest part? >> when we couldn't see her. it was just helpless. you couldn't hold her hand. that was probably the hardest. we did some video calls. that helped. but it was more or less for us to talk and to just look at her. but that was, that was heartbreaking to watch her. i came on october 15th, the first day that we could see you. >> were you able to communicate with the nurses and show you through the video or the zoom? >> we did a few zooms. >> reporter: how hard was it to see your little girl in that condition? >> that was hard. that was hard. yeah. i had to turn away a lot of times. >> reporter: what would you tell people around the country that might not see covid face to face
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quite like you experienced it. what would you tell people around the country? >> it is so scary. you have to be aware. wear your mask for everyone around you. that was long and hard to watch, but it was important. 144,249 new cases have been reported today. abb abbot northwestern hospital. today more than 144,000 americans newly sick with covid tonight. the country set a new record for hospitalizations yesterday as hospitals in iowa, kansas, minnesota, missouri, montana, north dakota, texas, utah and
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wisconsin are on the cusp of being overtopped. the situation is particularly grave in wisconsin where new cases and hospitalizations are at all-time highs. the top health officials say in terms of the numbers of cases we are finding is as bad as the early severe wave in new york city. we are very close to a tipping point. joining us now is the medical director of infection control at the university of wisconsin hospital. doctor, thank you for being here. i am sorry, the second time we have talked and never good news. things are substantially more serious in wisconsin than when we last spoke. >> yeah. it seems like it is just a few weeks ago we talked and mentioned we were at a tipping point and i think the tipping point here. every day it is patients requiring hospitalization because of covid pneumonia and concern patients would require
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hospitalization for many days and has implications for staffings and beds and it is a difficult time for wisconsin for sure. >> let's talk about staffing and beds. if the people get ill at a slower rate the things you need to treat them will be available. we have shown you the people. people like you. the frontline workers and the nurses. we have situations in the country where nurses covid positive are being asked to go back to work because there are no other nurses. you can't move them. we have 44 states setting new records. >> yeah. i think staffing is our biggest concern right now. you know, it is relatively easy to put into a hospital bed or create one out of thin air if you need it but you can't find an icu trained nurse easily when
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a lot of health systems are in the same state as we are. to preserve the capacity of the workforce we have to make sure they don't get infected and that is not what we are seeing in wisconsin with record numbers of infections in employees. >> we are seeing the biden transition team taking this seriously. they are not the administration right now. we still have states where we have insufficient direction to municipalities about basic things like mask-wearing and isolating more or keeping separate. we are still not much further ahead than when we last talked. >> i think one thing that we are noticing is that it is really important to have and still continue to have reverence for the virus. we don't know everything about
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the infections and how quickly they recover. we can't presume to say that since march we have learned enough where we can be dismissive of it and not practice social distancing and not masking. these are fundamental public health measures. i think the time has come to go beyond what they do and don't do and embrace them as the measures that they are intended to be. >> the medical director of infection control at the university of wisconsin hospital. let's hope next time we talk we have better news. thank you for being with us tonight. one more thing on this and it is a piece of good news. the young woman recovering from covid, she took her first steps today since she was first placed on a ventilator all of those weeks ago. i find some hope in that. i find some hope in watching the biden transition team which clearly has covid-19 as their top priority and has put
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with the news out of the biden transition tonight that the president-elect named ron klain, the ebola czar as his chief of staff. we have got that news as we learned the country broke another coronavirus record today recording more than 144,000 new cases. and now there is a risk that the trump administration draggings it heels on letting the biden transition launch could cause major setbacks to the handling of the virus. we need ppe and mask compliance and a well distributed vaccine as early as possible. with the news from pfizer on monday, we are closer than ever to meeting at least one of the goals. this is what the former health and human services secretary
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under president obama had to say about trump gumming up the works "it is only ten weeks and that is not a long time. every delay counts so we are in very unprecedented territory." biden seems to do be doing everything he can to make every day count. political reports biden formed a special covid transition team. the team consists of 52 transition officials, including representatives reviewing nearly every major federal agency with plans to meet by video call as frequently as once per day and dozens of state level health experts and academics who can aid specific policy efforts and is expected biden's 13-member coronavirus task force will be integrated into the covid-19 transition time.
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politico reports the team held their first virtual meeting yesterday. secretary, good to see you and thank you for being here tonight. i am heartened by ron klain's exact experience with an outbreak in the past. >> i think ron klain is a terrific choice for chief of staff. one of the most important offices in the federal government with the new president-elect. he knows president joe biden well and he handled big challenges in the past. that kind of confidence and personal connection is what you want in a chief of staff. somebody who can -- does not need training wheels. will actually get the ball moving well before they get to office. i would agree with you, you
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know, the biden team is incredibly impressive, doing everything possible to put mechanics in motion for a transition as smooth as possible. ten weeks from today is the inauguration, as i said that is not a very long time. joe biden knows that. he knows government. he respects government. my concern are things like how hollowed out are the very key health agencies? who is missing in the career staff at the cdc and the fda and the nih that needs to be replaced very quickly. how do we get a handle on the agency by agency look, because it is really the mission of the career staff that carries the ball forward. >> olivia troy who was part of the current covid-19 team wrote today "since the transition
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hasn't been formally approved the vital administration the needs is being shared through unofficial channels or not at all. if this continues that the biden covid-19 response team will have to waste valuable time getting up to speed and retracing the few steps this administration has already taken. your take on that? >> i think that is absolutely right. what would be ideal is that the biden team spends zero time on what has already been done. are there supply chains in place if the ppe situation gets more dire. where in the world did jared kushner purchase the ppe from that he got and who did he turn it over to that sold it to whom? that information might be helpful to know where there might be capacity and where there are supplies of ppe. what is already underway in planning a logistical effort to get vaccine from the
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manufacturing site to the most vulnerable population in the state. that is not an easy task. how does that happen. if there is planning underway that is going on that would be enormously helpful to know. one of the things that we really need is for the president of the united states to be focused on this disease. to be focussed on people dying every day. to be focused on the health crisis at hand where he never paid attention before. maybe he can stop lying to people about the fact that this is a hoax and urge people over the next ten weeks to take it seriously and follow cdc protocol because we are in a very dangerous period of time with the holidays approaching, people wanting to gather and going inside and the virus spiraling all over the country.
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>> yeah. the danger is that the cdc issued new guidance about thanksgiving. folks do not take it seriously anymore. people have doubts about vaccines. the difference here with the way that the biden incoming team is treating this, it seems to be they are approaching it from a whole of government perspective. the team is about policies across government, not a committee that will meet ones it own when the president does not take it seriously. it does not look, and maybe it is ten weeks away. it will hurt a lot. but it may be much more seriously dealt with than the administration has ever chosen to look at this. >> i don't think that there is any question. and incoming president biden has made it clear from the outset that there will be a national plan. let's start from that. there never has been. governors were told in march you are on your own. find your own ppe. find out what your guidance should be. don't follow the cdc guidance, if you do we will send a twitter
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war after you demanding you liberate your state. there never has been a plan and governors never have understood what the federal role will be and how they can collaborate and cooperate. the approach from incoming president biden is not only a much more traditional approach but a very experienced and a very dynamic approach saying we are going to use all of the muscle of the federal government the moment i get there on january 20th to mobilize the resources, to mobilize the logistic capability. to make distribution transparent. to make sure that people understand from the scientists that we do when we have a safe and an effective vaccine and how it will be sdrblted and to whom and under what circumstance. that never has been in place. they can begin doing that right now and it would be enormously
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helpful to have a cooperating partner in the current administration. >> yeah. it can be done. we have the army corps of engineers. we can build to keep the vaccine negative 94 if that is wa is wh need. but we need the federal government in on it. the former health and human services secretary. thank you if are your time. coming up next, one woman's remarkable story. a story that represents many people in this country who have been overlooked for too long. stay with us. overlooked for tog stay with us ♪ since pioneering the suv in 1935, the chevy suburban has carried many things. nothing more important than family. introducing the most versatile and advanced chevy suburban and tahoe ever.
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u.s. army nurse corps and received orders to join the 76th general hospital unit in england and was deployed to france. in the aftermath of d-day first lieutenant ryan cared for the soldiers wounded on omaha beach and served on the front lines in the battle of the bulge and remembers the blasts of german buzz bombs and remembers that terrifying buzzing sound night and day. night and day. after the war marcela ryan married and had eight children. even then she continued to serve. long after being awarded the french legion of honor she continued to work as a nurse in south dakota for 31 years until her retirement. she is 101 years old. her story is part of a long tradition of native american military service that goes back to the foundation of this
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republic. look no further than her own family. as she told npr, my ancestors were warriors who fought in the battle of the little big horn. my father was a spanish/american war veteran. all down the line. many native americans served the country before they were considered citizens or had the right to vote. they did so despite the fact that the united states had signed and broken, nullified or changed all of its treaties with native american tribes. despite a painful history of violence native americans have the highest record of military service per capita compared to other ethnic groups. today a national veterans native american memorial was unveiled a steel ring surrounded by steel
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lances. they are embedded in a wall nearby. for many veterans it is the hard-fought recognition of generations of service. service that has continued all down the line. thank you. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, ali. and thank you very much for that final report in your hour tonight. that is such an important and long overdue recognition. >> thank you, sir. you have a good evening. >> thank you, ali. well, georgia's republican secretary of state ordered a full recount of the presidential vote in georgia while saying that he doesn't expect it to change joe biden's 14,000-vote advantage in georgia and it definitely will not change the results in the senate campaigns because the recount is only of presidential votes.
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