a very grim picture heading into the fall. >> all right. nicholas from axios, good to see you. today i'm watching to see if any other senators will join marco rubio or senator lankford, hey, if this administration isn't getting intelligence briefings by friday, we have to do something about it. don't go anywhere. "morning joe" starts right now. i had and i have a good relationship with the previous president. i do not -- the duty of all british prime ministers to have a good relationship with the white house, but i'm delighted to find the many areas in which the biden -- incoming biden/harris administration is able to make common cause with us. >> the quote previous president,

prime minister boris johnson during question time yesterday discussing his call with president-elect biden. yesterday biden added calls with the leaders of australia, japan and south korea. at this rate, more foreign leaders have congratulated joe biden on his election victory than have sitting republican senators. >> well, how really did we expect donald trump's shock opera to end? are you surprised? are any of you surprised that donald trump's shock opera would not have this sort of sad, pathetic finale? i'm not. i'm surprised that you're surprised. i'm surprised by the texts that i'm getting. are we going -- yes, we're going to be okay. you know why? because what i have been saying for four years is playing out in the courts right now. the rule of law is stronger than

any one man or any one woman. and when these scam press conferences turn in to scam pleadings and they go before federal judges or state judges, the state judges asked trump's lawyers under oath whether they have any evidence of foul play and under oath and under the penalty of perjury, they all say, no your honor, and the cases are dismissed. while you're sleeping last night and you probably went to bed concerned about some of the developments that have been going on. while you were sleeping last night, they were counting votes. one by one by one in arizona. finally, after counting one vote

a day, they came to the conclusion, the secretary of state out there, as well as dave wasserman, that arizona is all over. yes, yes, i know, i know, fox news and the associated press called arizona for joe biden in the summer of '76, but now everybody else is doing it. arizona is over and they're doing hand recounts in georgia but as karl rove wrote in "the wall street journal" that race is over. pennsylvania is over. nobody wins recounts when losing by this much. so i just want to say again what we have been saying for years. when you think that donald trump and the republican party is getting away with this, getting away with anything, you have got to avert yourself from the smoke

bombs going off on stage in the shock opera and just look at the data. you want to know what the data shows me? it shows me that after all the failures of the democratic party and congressional races and senate races and state legislative races and after all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth are finished in that area, look at the presidential race. and what historians are going to see when they look at that map is they're going to see a map where democrats rebuilt the blue wall across the upper midwest. they shattered the solid south by going straight to the heart of dixie which is not alabama. but instead, georgia. the peach state. it's the first time the -- it's the first time that a democratic battle candidate who was not a

son of the south won georgia in 60 years. it looks sort of grayish now. it's blue. biden has won georgia and arizona you see arizona, that state, the state of goldwater and mccain not only elected a democrat for president they now have two sitting u.s. senators. something unthinkable in the land of goldwater and mccain. and let me give you a couple of more numbers as people are saying he just barely won. blah blah blah. the shock opera it continues, but let me give you some numbers. do you want to know what the wages of political sin is in america when you're donald trump? here's some numbers to illustrate it.

georgia flipped between 2016 and 2020. georgia flipped by over 200,000 votes. michigan a race donald trump won barely four years ago, flipped by over 150,000 votes. pennsylvania another state. they were supposed to be really close a week ago. the votes have been tallied up and no, joe biden didn't win by the 87 points that media pollsters said he'd win by. still, that state flipped by over 100,000 votes from last election to this. and arizona the land of goldwater also flipped from the republican presidential candidate to a democratic presidential candidate by over 100,000 votes.

there's nothing that donald trump or all of his little minions inside the white house can do to change that fact. and if you don't give a damn about america, if you don't give a damn about america's national security, if you're just a democratic political operative, you should be happy with what's going on in georgia. because they're continuing -- they're continuing to act in the same abhorrent antidemocratic way that they have been doing over the past four years. by the way, if you don't think what they're doing, what kelly loeffler and david -- how do you his name, perdue -- i don't know how to pronounce his name. kamala harris doesn't know how to pronounce his name f you don't think that's not going to

hurt them every day this moves forward, then you just aren't paying close attention, are you? because it is hurting them and not only now, but into the future. this is one of those things that shape a political culture in a state for decades to come and make no mistake of it. i have been saying here, other people have been saying it for years now, even before donald trump. the demographics is destiny. and georgia, texas and arizona, one day are going to flip blue. and when they flip blue, they ain't ever coming back. donald trump and his racism expedited that process this year. make no mistake about it. that's why there were 100,000 votes that flipped in georgia, 100,000 votes that flipped in arizona. but what they're doing now,

willie, is only going to expedite the suburbs fleeing from the democratic party and once they're gone, they never come back. >> yeah. i mean, you can add some more numbers to that 306 electoral votes is where joe biden will end up, he'll have 52% of the popular vote. so it actually is despite the fact that arizona and georgia are tight races, it actually is a decisive win for joe biden. he will have the most votes by a presidential candidate in the history of a presidential election in this country. probably going to get up near 80 million votes. i think the concern right now, joe, you and i hear, is not that he will not eventually become the president of the united states. and not that donald trump eventually will not go away. it's the signal that all this sends to the 71 million people we showed there who voted for donald trump, that donald trump and that republicans are allowing donald trump to go

through the charade in the courts, sending out tweets undermining the election. they believe what it says about the 71 million people, that our process is rigged, that our process has been undermined, that democrats stole this election. it's all wrong, it's all made up as we have been saying for a week and half now. these claims that donald trump are making and the courts are showing that again from pennsylvania and michigan and across the country. as the votes come in, the lead only gets wider in arizona and georgia. but there are an awful lot of people in this country who will believe because of what donald trump is doing and what republicans are doing that yes, this process somehow has been rigged against donald trump and the election. somehow it was taken from him despite all of the numbers you laid out, despite the vote spread we showed right there and despite the fact that yes, this will be a decisive victory for joe biden. >> with the help of fox and facebook. so here's how you know this all is being cherry picked by the trump campaign.

for days, president trump and his allies have been arguing whenever a state was called for joe biden that the media does not decide the election. that it's not up to news organizations to project winners. except apparently it is okay when it comes to states that trump won. yesterday, when the news media announced that alaska has been called for president trump, the trump campaign blasted out a press release, alaska has been called for trump and they're asking for donations and ivanka trump tweeted about alaska. >> i don't understand, mika. we have been hearing for first time that news media calls don't make a difference, but you're telling me that the trump campaign said with alaska and the three electoral votes coming in for trump it's a reason for celebration. >> it's childish. >> it's stupid.

and the people who are blindly following this are stupid. >> or they're influenced by -- >> guess what? stay away from household blenders. if you continue to call me and say that anthony fauci's part of the conspiracy theory, right, don't call me. you're too stupid to talk to me, okay? facebook is antidemocratic, facebook is making a lot of americans dumber by the day. >> but they think it's news. they think it's the same as going -- >> but they know it's not true. they are clinging on to something that they know is a lie. whether it's about masks causing covid, whether it's about, you know, anthony fauci being in the conspiracy theory with gates and soros to make billions. that's a lie. they know it's a lie, but they cling to those lies because it's better than the truth which is they're just being really, really stupid. when they go around and just

parrot these lies. now it's the election. >> yeah. >> they know he's lost. republicans in washington, d.c., know that he's lost. at some point, maybe they want to consider putting their country above their political party. because guess what? this isn't helping either. >> no, it's actually getting dangerous. we'll get to the very latest -- not that it hadn't been -- with joe biden and the latest. he named an operative as his incoming white house chief of staff. but first, willie, staggering new coronavirus numbers. >> okay, wait, here's another thing. i actually have people calling me and coming up to me, mika, saying, oh, well, this coronavirus, it's going to be over by november the 3rd. the media's only propping the coronavirus up because of the election. no, see that's what donald trump

does and other right wing organizations do, facebook does, about caravans from mexico that will bring leprosy to america. that is garbage. the coronavirus sadly, tragically, is still very much with us. despite the lies you have been told by facebook and donald trump. >> thank you, donald trump. willie? >> yeah. you used the right word, staggering. the latest tally shows more than 148,000 covid cases were reported in the united states just yesterday. that beats the previous daily record of nearly 134,000 cases reported on monday. this now marks the eighth straight day that more than 100,000 cases have been reported in the united states. there were another 1,500 deaths reported yesterday as well. texas has become the first day to surpass 1 million coronavirus cases. leaders there have not given any indication of new forthcoming restrictions. meanwhile, hospitals in

massachusetts, other states, canceling elective surgeries to make space for what they expect to be a flood of new covid patients. the hospitals in the northwest region of wisconsin already now have reached capacity. the state of north dakota is so short on staff, the governor is allowing health care workers who tested positive for coronavirus but are asymptomatic to continue working in hospitals. in iowa, a record number of patients are in intensive care. in illinois, a new high of infections again. things are so dire that "the washington post" reports a group of doctors there sent an urgent letter to the governor saying, quote, we're having to almost decide who gets treatment and who does not. rationing care in the state of illinois. a group of health care workers predicts that illinois will surpass the icu bed capacity by thanksgiving. several states are issuing new restrictions amid the surge in cases. new york state will require

restaurants and bars to close at 10:00 p.m. private gatherings must be limited to ten people. the republican governor of ohio reissued a mask order and warned businesses if they don't comply they could be forced to close. utah also issued a mask mandate on monday, meaning 34 states now require people to wear face coverings in public. and the state of maryland urged people to avoid nonessential travel to 35 states that are struggling with the virus. connecticut and maine were added to the travel advise which. so far from going away, far from disappearing after the election. it clears what's happening now is what was exactly signalled to us back in march by people like dr. fauci, this would come back with a vengeance come fall and winter. >> well, you know, it's so important for us to go back because so much is thrown at us in the shock opera.

so many lies are thrown at us every day by trump and one of the lies it was going away in april and then he started to lie to american saying it wasn't coming back in the fall. dr. fauci said it will come back -- >> right next to him. >> dr. fauci, dr. gottlieb, historians, everybody back in the spring and early summer were begging donald trump to focus on the fall, because they said it's coming back and if it's like the pandemic of 1918, it will be even worse. and willie, it looks like we're headed in that direction so numbers are worse than they have ever been, just like the doctors said even while donald trump was lying to his own supporters. >> yeah. it's maddening and outrageous, you think about how long we have had to prepare for this moment and how little we have done. we have heard the frustration from the doctors who come on our show every day. we have heard the frustration

from people on the task force that hasn't been heard from in several weeks. they knew this was coming, that they predicted this, that they laid it out and the federal government led by the white house didn't do anything about it. we heard donald trump on tape in bob woodward's book, he even knew how this was going to play out, but he infamously said he wanted to play it down for political reasons and not to panic the country. but here we are, exactly where the doctors told us we were going to be. >> it's not good. now to the transition of power which is happening with the coronavirus as the back drop. among the many tasks president-elect is tackling is the need to work around the trump administration's refusal to cooperate with his transition team. "the washington post" reports citing those in knowledge with the situation members of the transition team are under strict orders not to have any contact with current government officials. they are instead obtaining

information from those who have recently departed government. reading from the paper's report, quote, they are relying on a team led by the former senior state department official to handle an influx of calls from foreign leaders all without the benefit of a secure government line or language interpretation services provided by the current state. >> what do republicans think about this? what are republicans across capitol hill thinking about this? what do senate republicans think about this? they're sitting there and they're putting our president-elect and they're putting these conversations in jeopardy all because they know that the person sitting inside the white house is being reckless and irresponsible. and so they're not allowing the

united states of america to have a smooth transition so joe biden the next commander in chief, can be prepared when he goes in to actually protect, not just democrats but democrats, republicans, independents, marxists, anarchists. you name it. 330 million americans. their safety depends on joe biden being able to prepare to be commander in chief and republicans on capitol hill know he's going to be commander in chief. and yet, mitch mcconnell will not step forward and pressure donald trump to do the patriotic thing. why? >> many foreign leaders who have called biden directly have reportedly not been able to rely on the state department to forward the communications. "the post" reports that the state department will not relay them until the general services administration authorizes the

transition which they will not. this is something that -- that agency has so far refused to do, but another republican senator, james lankford of oklahoma is calling for the transition period for joe biden to begin starting with access to intelligence briefings. >> gsa has to certify that election to start turning it around. i'm on the committee of oversight, i started to engage in this area. there's nothing wrong with vice president biden getting the briefings to be able to prepare himself and if that's not occurring by friday i will push it and say it needs to occur. >> marco rubio and mitt romney said it as well. with us we have nbc news capitol hill correspondent, host of "way too early," kasie hunt. politics editorer from the daily beast, sam stein. columnist from "the washington

post," david ignatius. we'll bring in our reporters, mike memoli is covering the biden transition. he is live in wilmington, delaware, and covering the trump white house, nbc news white house correspondent kelly o'donnell. mike memoli, how are they coping with the unnecessary and quite frankly dangerous roadblocks? >> reporter: well, i think what you're seeing is joe biden setting the tone that he has set throughout his career. the way he used to legislate late in the senate, the way he used to conduct foreign policy as the foreign relations chairman and as the vice president, was to try to understand the political pressure points of the other side, to try not to cut off a path for them to get where they need to be in the end. in this case, we're seeing him try to do that with republican senators with the trump administration as well. biden this week saying he was not concerned, he was trying not to make this situation worse.

on the part of his team we see it beginning to take shape with ron klain being announced as chief of staff. i have been told for weeks that he would be the chief of staff but they're focusing on the apolitical positions in government as well. we care deeply about who the fema administrator are, there are deputy undersecretaries in hhs and dhs that will have a significant role in the pandemic and they're focused on it. the problem is they're not able to get the background checks or take stock of what's needed in the agencies. so i'm told that what they have been doing is trying to work it from the outside, talking to outside stakeholders who do business and have worked with these agencies and talking, yes, with former career officials who have left the government. i think what the clain appointment shows, while there's a lot of talk on social media and among democratic circles about the ideology in a biden

administration of what it will tell us about which way they're going to governor, they are focused on being apolitical, making government work again and that's the tone that's being set in the early days by the transition. >> yeah. ron klain, an old hand of the biden campaign and working as chief of staff to vice president biden at the time. and appointed by president obama in 2014 to lead the response to the ebola crisis. thank you so much. meanwhile, president trump met with the campaign manager bill stepian and jared kushner to discuss a path forward after last week's election. several people familiar with the president's thinking say there's a growing expectation he'll never concede that he the election, even after votes are certified. one top aide said do not expect him to concede. more likely the aide said, he'll say something like we can't trust the results but i'm not

contesting them. the associated press reports president trump's moods have someone over recent days. quote, at times he's seethed with anger, fuming he lost to a candidate he does not respect and believing the media including friendly fox news worked against him. but the a.p. notes aides say that the president has been more calm than his tweets suggest, showing greater understanding of his predicament and believing he needs to keep fighting as performance to show the 70 million people who voted for him he is still battling. so kelly o'donnell, take us inside the white house with the reporting. how long will this go on? how are his aides handling him as he pushes through this? they want to wait until the votes are certified. do you have any expectation that at some point the president will acknowledge he lost this election? >> well, certainly the pressure is building and the facts from the outside are closing in on president trump with the reality that joe biden is moving forward

and today it's one example of maybe a small step toward a more typical day in the trump white house where he's having lunch with vice president mike pence and meetings with treasury secretary mnuchin and secretary of state pompeo. there are days and days now with nothing on the president's schedule. he went for the ceremonial laying of the wreath at arlington yesterday in the rain. which created sort of a metaphor moment of a president, soaking wet, carrying out one of the solemn duties of his office. getting that one-on-one time with three of the member he has relied on most heavily over these four years may be another opportunity to try to assess is there a pathway for president trump to try to set some sort of new definition for how he would exit. if he's not going to concede, if he's not going to do the traditional things is there a way to define the next political

step. we have reported about having a pac that the president would be part of, where he could give donations to candidates, try to be a king maker in the party. he talked about wanting to keep mcdaniel in her position. if president trump does not get out of the way, either for joe biden or for that next group of potential candidates, things are sort of paralyzed in a trump world without the power. so it's interesting to see how this is evolving. certainly there are lots of people around the people who recognize the math and then the timing that you described, will it wait till certification, that's one thing we're hearing. but we're hearing different things because there are some different factions of people who want to encourage the president to fight. others who say it's time to move on and sort of others who are saying the legacy building if he

can try to tout the things that he accomplished in office as he sees them and try to create that is something he can carry forward as a tangible result of his time here in washington. >> kelly, we know that presidents are limited to two terms but they do not have to be consecutive terms as we heard from our history with grover cleveland. >> yeah. >> how seriously should we take the idea that president trump wants to run again in 2024? >> well, it's a lifetime we know in politics and it is hard to imagine that he could make that decision now. but wanting to preserve that option, really is a part of this whole ethos of being the fighter and not wanting to give up. normally, presidents who would be leaving offices would be thinking about raising funds for the library, not for a potential run down the line. so perhaps it's part of an elongated trump stages of grief

that perhaps another run comes somewhere between denial and acceptance, but that's something he's talking about and it freezes the field and it may be part of the process or it may be a way for the president to try to say he wants to remain relevant. we have seen some other presidents who have gone from their time in the white house certainly with barack obama and george w. bush not wanting to engage overtly in politics, having other things that occupy their time. we never really thought donald trump would be that kind of president, given his desire to sort of control the message and to do the performance art that we have seen. so it's hard to know if that's really or if it's just about buying himself more time. certainly buying time is certainly he is trying to do since election night. >> i'm stuck on the words performance art. >> yeah. i was going to say, senator marco rubio said earlier this week, look, if president decides to run in 2024 he's not only the

front-runner, he's the likely nominee. nbc's kelly o'donnell in washington, thanks so much. it's quite a performance. all right, stay in place. we want to get to our entire panel including david ignatius' piece in "the washington post." a furious behind the scenes battle to counter president trump's threat to national security. we'll be right back. national security we'll be right back. your journey requires liberty mutual. they customize your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. wow. that will save me lots of money. this game's boring. only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. did you try it yet? comparing plans? oh yeah. they sure can change year to year. i found lower premiums - and lower prescription costs. and those new insulin savings! hundreds of plans, $35 a month. that'll save you money.

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34 past the hour. david ignatius, in the latest piece in "the washington post," entitled the furious behind the scenes battle to counter the national security, the intelligence officials have been

warning thing strongly against declassifying information about russia that would compromise the methods and anger key allies. trump and the allies want the information public because they believe it would rebut claims that russian president vladimir putin supported trump in 2016. that may sound like ancient history, but for trump it remains ground zero. the moment when his political problems began. senate republicans who might stop the post election revenge campaign face a growing tension between trump's demands and the country's interest. the question is how much damage he'll do to national security before he leaves. david, i'll add personal knowledge of donald trump. he doesn't keep secrets. he can't. he doesn't know how. he loves to sort of revel in knowing things and passing it

along. his personality seems to be 100% undisciplined. okay. we need audio. we need audio for the answer. all right. we'll wait on david ignatius and move on now to sam stein. sam, what's your take on -- first of all, this behavior in general. >> well, it's erratic, obviously. it's a tantrum being thrown by a 74-year-old man, but this is sort of what we come to expect with trump at this point. you know, i think people can kind of dismiss it as, well, he'll eventually leave. you have to wait it out. you have to let him get it out of his system, but as david's

column illustrates and as i'm reporting there's tangible real life implications here. the longer that we wait on doing a normal transition, the worse the pandemic will get and the harder it will be for joe biden's team to actually come up with a viable, effective vaccine distribution plan. so more people are going to die because of this. i mean, that's just to put it bluntly. and i think the costs that are associated with this. when the 9/11 commission looked at the failures of the government to predict what was going to happen in september 2001, one of the things that they pointed to was the fact that the transition between bill clinton and george w. bush was delayed because of the florida recount. there wasn't a lot of time -- enough time to do the preparatory work that was needed to get people up to speed. to fill those holes. so, you know, yes, it's -- what was joe's term, opera of the

absurd -- >> shock opera. >> shock opera. i agree with that term. joe's very right. but it's shock opera, you know, with really bad consequences. and, you know, i do think one last thing is you're seeing a lot of hot potato among the republicans, no one wants to step in and say it's over. the campaign is asking bill barr to find material and he's going to the u.s. attorneys to say, help me find the material and the courts say no, come back with something tangible and at some point, someone needs to interject and say, enough, this is over. the problem is there's not enough fortitude to do that. >> well, the shock opera is absolutely exhausting, but i think it continues, david ignatius, i think we have you back right now, and forget you know what fox or facebook is screaming or blaring to get involved in some inappropriate way to, you know, prop up

trump's pathetic, you know, petering to the end but it's the danger you write about. i would like to add to it that i do think that this president, this man, has the -- not just the ability, but the number one self-focus to use everything that he has in his possession for his financial gain. so it's not just sharing information right now with the biden -- with the biden team and creating a proper transition which should be happening and thank god joe biden knows where the bathroom is. he knows where all of the -- everything -- how the white house works, so a transition will not be as difficult for a joe biden. but when it comes to classified information and relationships with foreign adversaries and friends that need to be had, this is dangerous and i worry

that donald trump takes information out of the white house and i don't know if we have seen someone who wants to abuse information that he took in while in office but he will. okay. we lost him again. this is like one of the most critical questions, by the way, facing our country and david ignatius is like the foremost person who can really talk about it. so we will get his audio back come hell or high water, willie geist. again, i'll just say that donald trump has access to everything. and when he leaves he continues to have a good deal of information he can use to his benefit and his personality has shown that he doesn't have a lot of discipline beyond using information or people or relationships to his financial

gain. it's always about the money. you follow the money, you end up with what the answer is to the question, what's with russia? you look at turkey, you look at his relationship in saudi arabia and how he handled everything. it's all leading to potential past financial transactions that might have been stopped that never came to fruition or future financial transactions and i worry this president will have quite a party with all of this information that he learned as president when he leaves office. that is unless, willie, certain sections of law enforcement come after him. >> yeah. he could find himself in any number of courts but i think you're right to go back to his prepresidency and his personality which is that he likes to be the guy with the information. it was gossip back then, now it's national security secrets. go back to sitting out on the

patio at mar-a-lago with shinzo abe when news of the north korea missile test came out and he shared that not only with the prime minister but with the membership dining at tables around him. you're right to be worried about that. and kasie hunt, as you cover congress, we heard from james lankford, senator from oklahoma, saying if joe biden does not have access to the briefings by friday, tomorrow now, i'm going to push that that happens. are you seeing that behind the scenes they're saying, look, we don't want to go out and publicly acknowledge now that president trump has lost for whatever reasons that we're -- we have for that, but at the very least that the man we know privately is going to be the next president needs to have access to this information. >> willie, i have covered and interviewed actually james lankford several times and he has always been someone who has taken his role on the

intelligence committee, his previous role on the intelligence committee very seriously and he's also been someone who's been willing to say when asked that he doesn't approve of donald trump's personal conduct, which perhaps shouldn't be something that differentiates him from his colleagues but that's the reality of it. and he adds his voice to marco rubio, the acting chairman, and i think that there are a lot of questions here about how many others are going to add their voices and the division really between who are focused on governing and those who are focused first and foremost on politics. this is a test for the republican party that we have been building to for four years. i mean, how many times have we chased the folks down the hallways, i can't tell you how many times i have put microphone in front of a republican senator or member of the house and say

do you approve of what the president has just done? i mean, there are countless examples and every time, either it was dismissed as something that was not necessarily -- shouldn't rise to the level, i mean, the way they would do to do it, i don't do twitter or read tweets. but the question i spent the last two months asking them what are you going to do when it's about our our fundamental trust in our system? and they were saying to me privately, well, we're going to deal with it as it comes but at the end of the day if they exhaust all their legal challenges and it's clear that he lost, we will support that and agree to it. and right now, that's being tested in a way that i don't know that any of us anticipated partly because we still don't know who is going to control the senate. but partly because the president

is, you know, taking this further than anyone you have imagined. i know david ignatius is also reporting on the battles behind the scenes around intelligence sources and methods around russia that there are some in the administration who are trying to keep protected. so there is a lot on the line here and, you know, i can't -- i can't sit here and tell you i know how republicans will handle this test except, you know, i think we can underscore that there is one and this is -- this is the moment that history is going to remember. >> all right. let's bring in nbc news and msnbc news law analyst, and he asks how hard is it to overturn the election? there's the chance that republicans have dug themselves into the trump hole. don't stop digging when the results are certified that they don't know how to back down. there's the chance that the

state legislatures are little more aggressively partisan than i imagined. or that a few courts go off the deep end. there's a chance, in other words, that things spin out of control. this chaos factor is one of the reasons why leadership is so important. and it's why failures of leadership even when they seem to be relatively harmless posturing worth tolerating are so dangerous. ben, i agree with you completely. what legal checks are in place, by the way, for this president to be run out of office, but then to abuse the information that he has and use it for his own benefit and what, by the way, is there anything that can ensure a proper transition while he's still in office? >> so the check on his ability to spill large amounts of classified information for his own benefit when he leaves

office is largely the same as the check on say edward snowden's ability to do that which is the possibility of the criminal law being deployed against him and if it sounds like a crazy, unchartered territory to imagine an indictment or a prosecution or an investigation of the former president of the united states for disclosures of classified information or in your example for selling classified information -- by the way, that's depending on who you sell it to, that's espionage, yeah, that would be wholly unchartered territory and a very hard thing to imagine. say that donald trump forces you to imagine it for precisely the reason that you cited earlier which is that he has -- he does not -- he's not a discreet person. he's not capable of not talking

and so i do think the possibility of major information spillage is a real one that we have to think about and david ignatius' excellent column that you have trying to get him to talk about provides a really important ongoing example of that which is the effort to use the office while he's still in it to spill a lot of information that he thinks would be advantageous to him to have out there. and the entire intelligence community believes would be an unwarranted set of disclosures of unclassified information. so i think that it's a very real question in different ways, both while he's in office and after he's removed. >> ben, let me ask you about some of the lawsuits we are seeing across the country from the trump campaign, most of them dead ends. many of them become dismissed very quickly. most recently in detroit and in the state of michigan where

people have said through hearsay i felt intimidated by a large man, for example, or someone wearing a black lives matter t-shirt. all these examples that have not held up in court as you might imagine. do you see any of these getting traction, somewhere in pennsylvania or arizona, nevada, anywhere where they're filing suit, any merit to any of these lawsuits? >> i have not seen a single lawsuit that has any merit. now, you can never say that some judge somewhere for whatever reasons of persuasion, stupidity, partisanship, bomb throwing might not be persuaded. but i don't think there's any chance that any of these suits will gain any serious traction. the states that are in biden's

camp with -- you know, they're going to remain in biden's camp. the georgia recount is not going to overturn a 14 or 13,000 vote margin in georgia and arizona is not a trump state after all. pennsylvania, the margin keeps widening and in michigan it's pretty wide. it's 120,000 votes. those votes don't fail. so there's no prospect that litigation is going to change any of the results in these states. and what happens is a little bit automatic at this point. people don't understand this, but these states have certification deadlines. and those deadlines are the days when the secretary of state of the state or sometimes or the governor of the state certifies that the election result is final. and some of those dates are coming up.

some states have already certified. i believe that georgia's certification date is november 20th. so some of these states that are supposedly being contested, you know, in just a few days will start certifying their results. it becomes exponentially more difficult to realistically to challenge a result on -- [ indiscernible ]. >> sam stein, jump in. >> sure. first of all, i agree with ben's analysis here, the die has been cast here. and i'm curious to hear your thoughts. the bill barr announcement which told the u.s. attorneys to go and find and investigate serious allegations of voter fraud, was

that announcement significant? did it matter -- was it consequential or was that in your estimation barr saying to trump, look, i'm trying, i'm doing what i can? i have heard arguments both ways. >> i have long since stopped trying tos a person bill barr's motives. my early efforts to understand him and give him the benefit of the doubt, you know, made me look foolish and i'm not going to do -- i'm not going to make that mistake again. so look, i think it is possible that both of the scenarios that you describe are correct. first of all, it is not consequential in the sense that, you know, barr's memo allows for recertification investigations in situations in which the

allegations are nonfrivolous and would if they were true potentially affect the result in a given state. there are no such cases, so he's describing a null set and in that sense there's nothing consequential about the announcement at all. on the other hand, he reversed a justice department policy for no reason other than to make, you know, apparently to humor the president's delusions or fantasy or whatever they are that there's some major voter fraud issue here to confront. he did it over the objection of career officials and in fact in a fashion that led to the resignation or the stepping aside of the senior career election -- of the department. so this is a significant step in

terms of the change of justice department expectations and policies and approach to election-related crimes all done for the purpose -- apparently for the purpose of flattering donald trump's ego and supporting his narrative. it certainly isn't being done because there's substantial voter fraud issues. >> all right. editor-in-chief of lawfare, ben, thank you so much. and sam stein, thank you as well. when we come back, staggering new coronavirus numbers and also icus are getting overrun. coming up, we'll take a look inside an icu that's facing that battle. inside an icu that's facing that battle ll. ll. just pick your protein, select your doneness, and let the grill monitor your food. it also turns into an air fryer. bring outdoor grilling flavors indoors with the grill that grills for you.

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all right. just before the top of the hour, back now to the coronavirus pandemic which is overtaking the u.s. at levels not seen since

the start of the outbreak. as the prediction that the nation would see another spike in hospitalizations and deaths is evident in the icus and county morgues. gabe gutierrez has an inside look at one minnesota hospital dealing with a surge of patients. >> reporter: this is gabe gutierrez in minneapolis where this covid icu is busy. what worries you over the next couple of months? >> having enough beds for the patients. >> reporter: among them is kelly meager a hospitalized a month and a half. she was on a ventilator less than a week ago. >> i was just feeling miserable. i knew something was wrong. i knew i had covid from the very first day that i had symptoms. but i just kept getting worse and worse and i just kept

feeling sicker and sicker. >> reporter: kelly coaches gymnastics, loves her family including her cats. >> i have never been more grateful to be alive. >> reporter: as a mother, how hard is it not to see your daughter in person when she's that sick? >> you can't describe it. you want to be there, that's your job. but you can't. so you're just so helpless. >> reporter: in just the last two weeks minnesota has seen new covid cases spike by more than 125% but that statistic doesn't come close to capturing what the nurse katie o'neill sees every shift. >> i don't think of the numbers. i look at the patients. >> reporter: this hospital has 30 covid icu beds and right now three-fourths of them are full. as we head into the winter the concern is not just space, but staffing. for kelly, each day brings small

victories. she walked for the first time since her coma. what would you say to people who are skeptical about covid? >> i say wear your masks, it is more serious than people think. joining us now president and ceo of the biotech organization dr. michelle mcmurray heath. i mean, doctor, this is the story that is very hard to see across the country because it's so dangerous to get close to these patients. and her story is incredible because she survived. we have got staggering new numbers. is there anything that you see happening from the government on down that is helping stem the tide of this virus? >> well, mika, let's just start by admitting this is a heart breaking loss of life and this has been a tragedy that we could

not have imagined our predicted. and it is shameful and sad that we find ourselves at this point. but i do think we need to look towards where there are glimmers of hope and that is where biotechnology has been paving the way for some solutions. we have not employed a lot of the public health control measures that perhaps would have stemmed this tide. but we are seeing great progress coming out of some of the biotechnology companies. this week we have seen three really amazing results released. one by pfizer showing they have great efficacy for the covid vaccine. one for lilly, they can be used to treat people once they have covid and moderna released some preliminary results showing the covid vaccine shows promise. there's reasons to be hopeful, but it is tragic that we find

ourselves in the place we are today. >> doctor, it's willie geist. we heard some optimism from dr. fauci who said with the news from pfizer he could see the most at-risk patients getting a vaccine by the end of the year. and perhaps it being more widespread in spring. do you agree with his time line? i mean, people out there are clinging to any hope they can get. some of the new treatments that you just talked about are hopeful for patients who are hospitalized so they can be treated better and may survive in a way they wouldn't have back in march and april. but what do you see in terms of the vaccine that so many people are counting on? >> yes. well a vaccine is critical and most importantly, more than one vaccine. it will take several for us to really fight this worldwide. we are seeing great signs probably by the end of the year we'll have an emergency use authorization of one or two

vaccines that will help us fight this. we have to realize that the vaccine will be prioritized to be used at those -- for those who are at the greatest risk, for example, the health care workers that were so heroic in the story you showed and those who have conditions that they're more likely to get a serious case of covid. so we have a distribution schedule that is going to prioritize those who need it most first. that's as it should be. now, when we'll see wide distribution of the vaccine, when can you go to your local drugstore to get it that is probably the spring of next year. we have ten vaccines that are in late stage clinical trials, meaning they're nearing the finish line. it is great to see that we continue to see reliable and continual progress towards that end goal. there are over 191 covid vaccines overall being developed. so by this time next year hopefully we'll have a good

ending to this story, but it has been a sad story to date. >> as you say, extraordinary work by doctors and scientists in the race to the vaccine but they need some help in terms of prevention. in you listen to that woman lying in the hospital bed in gabe gutierrez's piece a few moments ago, saying please we a mask this is real, i almost died from this, what is your message not only to the american people, but to leaders and governors, what do they need to do in their states so we can hopefully make this which is what you're seeing it's inevitable, but at least not as bad as it can be? >> well, we have been trying -- we have been speaking with individual governors. we have been talking to leaders, both our current leaders and incoming leaders about what needs to be done. you're absolutely right, willie. we have to wear the masks, social distancing, closing

socialization and travel. this is critically important and more important than ever. we need a smooth and predictable transition of power so we don't see any gaps in the leadership that we need from the u.s. food and drug administration and the centers for disease control and protection because these are so important in making sure that we get these final drugs and vaccines that we need so desperately and that we distribute them in the equitable manner. we sent a letter to secretary azar making sure he prioritizes equity to the drug therapeutics to treat someone after they have covid, because this is key that the american people get trust in the system and know that those who are at greatest need will be first in line. and that everyone who needs covid vaccines and therapeutics will get them. >> dr. michelle mcmurray heath, thank you very, very much for

being on this morning. by the way, two more people who attended the election night party at the white house have tested positive for covid-19. white house political director brian jack and healy baumgartner, a former aid who now works in private equity, she said she tested positive yesterday and two sources familiar with the case confirmed jack's diagnosis. a number of other guests also tested positive including chief of staff meadows and ben carson and david bossie, an adviser who is leading the charge on contesting the election outcome in several states. with the addition of the latest cases, at least 42 campaign officials and contacts have

tested positive for covid-19. i mean, the stupidity is earth shattering and looking at these numbers, these coronavirus numbers, and the trouble that icus are facing as people are going through the horrific, lonely deaths, you just have to wonder, you have to ask the republicans are they going to do this again? are they going to do this again? are they going to allow this president to manage the transition as terribly as he managed the coronavirus and willfully doing nothing, willfully refusing to use the powers of his presidency to do the right thing and help mitigate this pandemic and here we are with so much suffering and many people inside his entire team getting it and still they turn a blind eye to it and now willfully not participating in a transition and exposing our country to great danger? are republicans going to do this to themselves?

let alone not putting their country first. look at this. this isn't a political map. okay? this is the coronavirus map. look at those numbers. 243,000 people are dead from the coronavirus and those are the numbers we know about. look at the states that are the darkest red. that is 300,000 plus cases right now. are republicans really going to follow this man again as we try and have at least a peaceful transition of power so that we don't face threats from the outside as well as the threat from the inside that is imploding the health of this country. truly pathetic and also self-destructive to yourself and your family's future. if you care about anything, care about this country. because your family lives in it. now to the continued aftermath of the election and the trump

campaign's ongoing legal challenges to an election that cannot mathematically be overturned. the campaign yesterday filed a federal lawsuit in michigan seeking to stop the certification of the state's results. it attached almost 250 affidavits as evidence of fraud. but according to "the washington post," the poll watchers' statements contained no evidence of significant fraud, but rather allegations about ballot counting procedures that state election workers have already debunked. meanwhile, a judge in detroit's wayne county announced by friday he'll talk about in-person voters were coached to vote for joe biden. the arizona case alleging that they nullified thousands of votes will be heard today after

a judge denied the motion to seal the evidence presented. in pennsylvania, lawyers for philadelphia told the state supreme court that republican watchers did in fact have adequate access to the vote count. they asked for a ruling even though counting is almost complete. joining us now we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. former u.s. senator now an nbc news and msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill. from "the new york times," mark leibovitz and christina greer. a great panel. claire, i'll start with you. come on, man, you have worked with some of these guys, these republicans in the senate. what in the world at this point is keeping them from asking the president to act like an american citizen and a patriot?

>> well, it's interesting, it appears to me at this point they're not loyal to trump. they're loyal to the lie that trump has fed his base. and that, frankly, is even more concerning because they are clearly looking with a political eye towards the future knowing that trump has successfully sold this lie to millions and millions in their base. what's really astounding, mika, when you think about it is what we have stood for as a nation with robust republican support is kind of one of the world police on free and fair elections. and since 1950, only 12% of the dictators in the world have peacefully left office. we now have diminished our ability to go into the parts of the world where people are being abused, where there is national security threats to the united states, and be able to speak

with clean hands about free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power. i mean, the damage he is doing to our national security goes far beyond the games he's playing with gina haspel and far beyond the ridiculous people he's put in the pentagon. it goes to the heart of who we are and how we have stood on the world stage and that role is what has kept us safe. >> claire, one of the most pathetic things in the whole charade was a couple of days ago when senator chris coons said on tv in an interview, i have had several republicans calling me and saying, please congratulate joe for me because i'm not allowed to. those are united states senators who say that, that they couldn't say that out loud, that they couldn't make the phone call so asking his friend in delaware, chris coons, to relay the message to him. so this obviously has real-world implications. donald trump got 72 million

votes so some large percentage believe because the president is pushing forward this message, because republicans are allowing him to, believe that this election somehow was stolen and will believe that going forward. that there's something corrupt and wrong about our electoral process because of the lies perpetuated by the president of the united states and then james lankford said, look, if we don't give biden intelligence briefings by friday, i'm going to step in. he needs access to the intel briefings do you expect at least even if they don't publicly acknowledge that joe biden won, to at least privately help him get the briefings he should have? >> i think so. last night a fight broke out on twitter between john cornyn and junior where junior was weighing in as if he had some idea how

government works. and the other thing i would say that's on my radar that i'm very worried about is whether or not donald trump will take the wrecking ball to the courts next. in fact, the fact lawyers are trying to hide their claims because they're embarrassed by them. why would you want the evidence sealed if you had any? you want it sealed because it's embarrassing to how bad it is and you don't want fellow lawyers and the judges and the public to realize you brought the frivolous lawsuits. when he's been rejected by the courts and the courts have said, no, this election was determined by the people, will trump go after the courts? will he try to do permanent and lasting damage that the americans have in the faith of the judicial system? stay tuned. i'm really worried about that. >> meanwhile, joe biden is pushing forward with the transition. he has named his long time adviser and a veteran of

washington, ron klain, as his white house chief of staff. he has worked with biden for decades. he was chief of staff when biden was vice president under president obama. and he was by his side for years in the senate. in a statement from the biden/harris transition, the president-elect said it was his work managing the obama's response to the ebola outbreak and the economic recovery plan in 2009 that makes him the right choice for this moment. he served as chief of staff to vice president al gore and later as general counsel of the gore recount committee in 2000. he was attorney general to janet reno and served under the leadership committees. mike barnicle, you know the biden transition well. you know ron klain well. it was interesting to see not only democrats and progressives celebrate this choice, but conservatives celebrate this choice as a man who understands

washington and a man who knows how to get things done. >> you know, willie, ron klain is unique in this conversation that we're having. he's actually competent, he's experienced. he knows what to do. he knows how to use the levers of government to help the people of the united states of america. claire just said something that sort of defines the era, the age, the moment we're living in when last night a fight broke out on twitter between donald jr. and the united states senator john cornyn. that is astounding, because guess what? the virus does not care who the president is. the virus does not care about the vote count in arizona, pennsylvania, or georgia. the virus doesn't care what judge in what court is throwing these cases out. here's the deal on this.

that's an important story, no doubt about it. the vote count to be -- to certify that joe biden is going to be the next president, but the larger story is this i think in my view. we are under assault by a common enemy, a virus that has already killed hundreds of thousands of americans. and yesterday we established a new record for infections. over 140,000 americans were infected by this virus. i challenge you or anybody watching on this network or any other network to go find me some that the president, the sitting president of the united states has said about the impact of this assault on the united states of america by this virus over the last five to ten days. we have heard about the tweets, winning, i'm winning, we're going to win. i have been cheated. i have been taken advantage of.

whatever the feel sorry text is about. find something that the sitting president of the united states has said about an active enemy assaulting the united states of america. >> can't find it. there are some interesting cracks in trump world or at least trump's most er if vent supporters. ronald jeffers is acknowledging that joe biden won the election. he wrote, when joe biden becomes president we should commend him for the things he does right. we should condemn things he does wrong. really, that would be something new, that they would be doing about a president and we must pray for our president. may god bless joe biden and may god bless the united states of america. yahoo news notes that he

traveled with trump and is the senior pastor at the first baptist church and his sermons are carried on 1,200 television stations across the country and is a frequent guest on fox news. so his voice reaches many evangelical trump voters. in his op-ed he also addressed trump supporters who are refusing to accept the results. it is easier to pray for someone when he was our preferred candidate, but the rubber meets the road when we person who takes office is not the one we voted for. help yourself, mark leibovich. >> thank you, mika. i appreciate it. i think it is very telling at this point we're kind of left to parsing -- look, so this pastor

said when, so wait, that signals acknowledge and maybe this will the -- this gets through to the president. and the kind of psychology management going on now within the republican party trying to manage somehow donald trump's feelings through this in a way that won't hurt him in the georgia runoff and doesn't create too many headaches for them as they try to codify their resistance to the biden campaign is fascinating. there are going to be these pretty hard benchmarks where joe biden is going to be certified in any number of ways as the next president of the united states. and what you see here is you just know that donald trump is sitting in the white house and his closest associates probably his family looking for any signs of betrayal from republicans. i think from what i can tell, he's lot less focused now on his political opponents, the

democrats, than on people breaking with him. the allies, the people who are screwing him, basically. again this has real ramifications for the energy of his base in georgia and how, you know, how sustainable his base is going forward for the republican governing or resisting coalition over the next couple of years. especially if you have donald trump as a potential candidate in 2024, you know, we're hearing rumblings about already, it does sort of make you wonder when is this going to be confronted in a real way by the republican party because to this point it's just been about placating him and denial and hoping that the reckoning doesn't come. but you get a sense that the party is closer to the reckoning now than they were a couple of months ago. and this is despite a pretty good performance in the election last week. >> yeah. he's got 72 million votes, the second highest total of any presidential candidate ever, only behind joe biden this year. professor grier, i'm looking at

a column from no less than karl rove, one of the masterminds of the republican party. this election result won't be overturned. he said the president's efforts are unlikely to move a single state from mr. biden's columns and not enough to change the final outcome. you do see slowly but surely some people around the president, who the president may respect, trying to signal to him this is over. you can go out and count the votes and you have the right to do that and if you want to file all these claims in court you may do so, but let's begin the transition because this is how we do it in this country and how we do it safely especially in a time of a global pandemic. >> willie, i mean, sadly i don't think the president respects anyone and i mean, i think that's the dangerous piece. i disagree with karl rove many, many times, however, he and so many members of the bush

administration do respect a peaceful transference of power. this is something as the senator mentioned we are in high alert because what hasn't been discussed yesterday is the money and we know if you know anything about donald trump and his 40 years of doing business, he will sell this country for parts. he will sell it to the lowest bidder, highest bidder, it will be a flash sale that we have seen time and time again when he's picked up his marbles and left that's also what concerns me. and the fact that i'm trying to explain to my students that in recent memory, we have never had a president who has been the victim for every single failure and success he's had. even when he's had successes he's the victim. so we're looking at a quarter million americans dead from the coronavirus, millions more who will never be the same. it's about him. it's all about him. so this idea that he would even respect or care what karl rove

says when he's looking at what his next step looks like, it will be harder. this may have been the grift that takes him a little over the top. he has tish james the attorney general of new york who is waiting for him to be a citizen, right, who is waiting to ask him questions about the fake charities, the businesses that have failed over the years. $400 million that's due. it's pastime for republicans to come together, yes, you may lose georgia and may have to deal with the president on twitter talking about you, but for the good of the country it needs to be done and we need to have a peaceful transference of power so that january 20th, we know he won't attend the inauguration. we know that, right? but the symbolic measure of seeing that helicopter fly away and we have joe biden as our 46th president must happen. for future generations and not just for today. >> all right. up next on "morning joe," the

democratic candidate in one of the two senate runoffs in georgia that will determine which party controls the senate. reverend raphael warnock is our guest next on "morning joe." noc guest next on "morning joe." it's an important time to save. with priceline, you can get up to 60% off amazing hotels. and when you get a big deal...

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raphael warnock eats pizza with a force and knife. warnock once stepped on a crack in the sidewalk, he even hates puppies. >> get ready, georgia. the negative ads are coming. kelly loeffler doesn't want to talk about why she's getting rid of health care in the middle of the pandemic. i'm raphael warnock, i approve of this message because i'm focused on what can do for you. by the way, i love puppies. >> a new ad from raphael warnock campaign getting ready for the january 5th runoff election against senator kelly loeffler for one of the georgia senate

seats and reverend warnock joins us now. great to have you on the show. i like the ad, i'm glad you like puppies. but characterize the state of the race from your campaign's perspective right now. >> mika, great to be with you. we're feeling good and we're thrilled by the enthusiasm. we're feeling it right here on the ground here in georgia, a lot of support for my campaign. you know, i got in the race on january 30th, there were 21 people in my race. ten people with a "d" next to their name, five republicans, we finished first ahead of the incumbent, kelly loeffler. i think it's because when people look at my story and the things i'm working for for years they understand that i'm running for the senate to stand up for ordinary families. centering the issues around access to affordable health care, the dignity of voting

rights, the ability for people to keep the promises that all of us make to our children. that's what my ministry and career have been about and i want to take that same passion and commitment to the united states senate. >> reverend warnock, it's willie geist. so now we're down to the two-person race. the new polling shows it's statistically tied. that you're neck and neck with kelly loeffler. one of the questions out there and one we asked jon ossoff the other day and it's enthusiasm. donald trump is not on the ballot. a lot of people went out to vote for joe biden or against donald trump. how do you get the people back out on january 5th to vote for you? >> i think at the end of the day

the voters don't show up to vote for the politicians. who up is or who's down, i have been moving all across this state and people are concerned about their families and their health care. they are concerned about the fact they don't have a liveable wage, they're not sure they can retire with dignity. they is wondering who is going to get this global pandemic under control so we can reopen the economy safely. give small businesses an opportunity to thrive. i think as i look at the concerns of ordinary people, they are hearing that message and they will turn out not to vote for me, but to vote for themselves. >> so reverend, we have now seen the campaign is coming out with the attacks on you. the most recent ads from yesterday was your relationship with the reverend jeremiah wright, the chicago pastor who we all came to know during the

2008 presidential campaign as he was barack obama's preacher as well. what is your relationship with him? do you believe he's an anti-semite? >> i know reverend wright. i'm not an anti-semite. i have never defended anti-semitic comments from anyone and kelly loeffler knows better. she is trying to engage in the same old washington politics of division and distraction. there's a reason for this. she can't explain why she is for getting rid of health care in the middle of a pandemic. it's reverend raphael warnock who is running for the u.s. senate, and if she wants to know what i think she can find me in the scripture. love your neighbor as yourself and for me on practical terms that means you don't get rid of health care in the middle of a pandemic. >> reverend, claire mccaskill has a question for you.

>> good morning and congratulations on an amazing run. i think the voters are seeing you and that really is a big deal. i'm curious, you have the blessing and the curse of having an election that has national implications. what steps are you going to take to shield your campaign from all of the out of state experts and the out of state license plates that are going to be drawn to georgia? how are you going to keep this focused on georgia which would of course be your easiest path to victory? >> well, there's no question that there's a lot of attention on this race. georgia seems to be on everyone's mind, but i'm georgia through and through. i was born and raised in savannah, georgia. i'm one of 12 children and i'm number 11. clearly my parents read the scripture, be fruitful and multiply. when you look at me, you look at someone who's the product of hard work, grit and

determination. i went on to earn a ph.d. to become the pastor of martin luther king jr.'s ebenezer baptist church and it's also pell grants, low interest student loans and i'm running for tuesday senate because it's harder for kids to grow up in struggling families than it was for me. i want to enable those kids who are coming out of the school with a mortgage before they have a mortgage, i want to stand up for their grandparents who are having to decide between prescription drugs and food. i think as long as i get it, i'm centered on the concerns of the georgia families which is the work i have done for years, the voters will continue to hear me and we will prevail come january 5th. >> reverend warnock, christina greer of fordham university has the next question. >> good morning, reverend. my students have been so galvanized and excited by this

race and you and stacey abrams and all of the work you're building in georgia. what do you say to young people who want to pack up their bags and come down to georgia for the next month and knock on doors and work? should they stay where they are and support in other ways because we're in the middle of a pandemic or come to georgia and assist with the campaign? that's the question i keep hearing? >> i want people to stay safe first and foremost. there are lots of ways to support our effort and the work we have got to do in the moment like this. we have a lot of students right here in georgia who are engaged and i think it's because when they look at me they see someone who understands their struggle. who understands what it's like to be trying to figure out how to pay the tuition. and so i'm always inspired by the idealism of young people. we need that all across this

country now more than ever. our politics has become so hardened by a kind of cynicism that's focused again and again on the politicians rather than the people. and i'm encouraged by the enthusiasm and energy i'm seeing in the campaign and the young people who are working with us right now. >> all right. reverend raphael warnock, the best of luck to you. thank you so much for coming on the show this morning. and coming up, more top pentagon officials have now by replaced by trump loyalists in the twilight of his presidency. the timing is just ridiculous. we'll ask a member of the house armed services committee, congresswoman mikie sherrill of new jersey about all of that and the latest on the coronavirus as the explosion in cases has led to new restrictions across the country. we'll be right back. try. we'll be right back.

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so the shakeup in the pentagon continues after the firing of defense secretary mark esper. the pentagon confirmed yesterday that doug mcgregor will be joining as the senior adviser to the acting secretary of defense chris miller. mcgregor a fox news regular was up for a policy job at the pentagon early this year, but didn't end up getting the nomination because of his history of controversial remarks. axios said that it comes as the donald trump administration wants to accelerate removal of troops from the middle east by the end of this year. joining us is mikie sherrill, a navy veteran and a member of the house armed services committee and she spent the last few months to make sure that a peaceful transfer of power happens in january. we'll start right there.

you understand the difference of a peaceful transfer, but what's happening, for example, in the department of defense alone is concerning because every time a job changes a lot of information sort of gets lost in a vacuum. how concerned are you that this transfer may be very difficult? >> well, mika, i think you have laid out the problem very well. these kind of transfers are critically important. in fact, i served during the bush v gore election and then throughout 9/11 and when you read the 9/11 report you see that even though that 9/11 obviously took place in september, even though, you know, president bush had had that time, they still say that the disruption in the transfer because of that election led to some problems of national security. so here we are with president-elect biden obviously

winning this election and i think at this point he's got five million more votes than president trump. he's won the electoral college and yet, still, you don't see the transfer going on. and this is just another example to me of how this president continues to abdicate his responsibility to the country and settle the score for petty personal reasons. >> mike barnicle? >> to call the new acting secretary of defense inexperienced is a charitable way to begin this conversation but there's a lot on the table at the pentagon. there's armed sales to countries that don't need many more arms, the troop withdrawals either in syria, afghanistan, iraq, perhaps a reshuffling of troops in order to weaken nato. but what is the role -- the

pending role of general milley when you have a new and acting secretary of defense moving parts around the table that are so vital to the defense of the united states of america? >> i think, again, you know, he's so critical. i'll tell you back in the spring, elissa slotkin and i were concerned about what we were seeing and hearing regarding the president's desire to use our military troops in ways that we thought were against the constitutional norms of the country, suggesting even later he might have them at polling places. so in july, we had a house armed services committee meeting where we asked secretary esper and we asked general milley did they understand their constitutional duties and did they understand the uniform code of military justice and general milley is the highest ranking member in

uniform and he was adamant he understood his constitutional responsibilities that our troops should not be used in a partisan election. so i think he is working very hard to uphold these norms and the military has been the one -- the one nut that the president has found hard to crack in co-opting them into going along with his violation of the constitutional norms so i know that general milley is work hard to ensure that the decisions made now don't disrupt the foreign policy for many years to come. >> it's willie, good to see you this morning, congresswoman. i'm curious what leverage you may have in the congress to push this transition along. we heard james lankford say yesterday if something doesn't happen in next day or so on the senate side he'll get joe biden access to intel briefings. how does that work exactly? how would he ensure the biden/harris transition is getting the traditional access

points so they think can begin to think about their own administration? what more can you all do? >> well, i will say having republicans start to push for this transition i think is critically important. we all need to have a unified voice for our country about how important it is that our new president gets briefed. especially given that the current president seems to be again injecting chaos into some of our national security and foreign affairs relationships. but, you know, the one thing i will tell you is there's no one that is going to be more ready on day one of his presidency than joe biden. i think he's expressed a great deal of confidence in his ability to move forward, to get the information he needs, even without this president's compliance. i know he's getting intelligence briefings and congress can help that by ensuring that he gets all the information he needs. you know, for example, on house armed services committee, we have a lot of military

intelligence and military intelligence briefings. i know that we can support what he needs and we have been reaching out to his team to make sure he's getting everything he thinks he needs to understand the lay of the land. but i have to say, this intelligence community and this intelligence operation run by the president has been politicized in ways i have never seen before. i have heard intelligence briefings that were used for political purposes. where the intelligence information which should just be information so that lawmakers can make the best choices. but it was really cracked in a way to try to move forward a political gain and then when congress said this is wrong, you know, this is not what the intelligence says, we have access to intelligence and you are not presenting the full picture and not only are you not printing it to us in this skiff

you're not presenting it to the american people and the response from the administration was we're not going to brief you. >> let me move to the other big story of the day, nearly 150,000 new cases of coronavirus in america yesterday. governor governor in your state, just did an interview a few minutes ago where he said the second wave is upon us. everything is going in the wrong direction. talking about the numbers going up dramatically. where do you think new jersey is and do you see a shutdown coming? will schools be closed? will we be back where we were in march? >> as you know, emergency emergency was one of the first and hardest hit areas of the country. we have been battling this pandemic longer than almost anywhere else in the nation. and what does that mean? it means our businesses are suffering, our school children are suffering. my kids, i have four school age kids, they have not been in person since march 12th. i have a daughter who just

entered high school. if you can think of all the things that entering high school mean to you or what you experience, she's experiencing none of them. she's completely online. it's really impacting our children, i think, almost as much as anyone. it's impacting our working parents who can't get back to work because of this pandemic. i struggle. i have to go down to washington next monday and i'm struggling with how i'm going to make sure my kids are still doing school and that they're able to continue on not even here. i know this is resonating across the country. and the next wave is upon us. we were hoping to avoid this. we worked incredibly hard this summer. we drove the cases down. it's very hard in a state like new jersey to battle this when the rest of the country started to see cases skyrocketing. this requires a national response. and as we heard yesterday, the president hasn't even been to a coronavirus briefing since october 1st. he's abdicated his

responsibility with respect to this virus from day one. and now he's gotten even worse, if it's imaginable. so, we really -- it's great to see joe biden with the coronavirus task force already working to come up with solutions to how we're going to implement a national fix to this horrible pandemic. it's really, at this point, i just can't stress enough how hard this has been on our kids. this is -- a lot of the president's inaction has been on the backs of our children. >> absolutely. congresswoman, couldn't agree with you more about that. thank you so much. a lot of stress. still ahead, the latest reporting on joe biden's presidential transition as the team tries to work around the trump administration's refusal to cooperate and accept defeat. "morning joe" is coming right back. back

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claire mccaskill, this is another question about how the campaign, especially rudy giuliani holding press conferences saying, you shouldn't listen to the press, you shouldn't listen to the press. i wonder how republicans who won feel about that, especially what went down in alaska with ivanka trump suddenly tweeting wildly that the election has been called by the media. >> mika, every single republican elected official on capitol hill expected a concession call from their opponent the minute their race was called by the ap. in 2018 josh holly beat me about about the same number of votes that biden beat trump. i called him and congratulated him and he never said, we're still counting, it must be certified, the media can't call

it. he said, thank you very much and went right on. that's the hypocrisy you're witnessing. >> thank you very much. up next, coronavirus cases soar. hospitals are slammed. and more states are enacting new restrictions in hopes of getting the virus under control. we'll tell you where things stand across the country next on "morning joe." next on "morning joe." no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card.

i had and have a good relationship with the previous president. i do not resolve from that but as prime ministers is have a good relationship with the white house. but i'm delighted to the find the many areas in which the biden -- incoming biden/harris administration is willing to make common cause with us. >> the quote, previous president, prime minister boris johnson during question time at the british parliament yesterday discussing his call with

president-elect joe biden. yesterday biden added calls with the leaders of australia, japan and south korea. at this rate, more foreign leaders have congratulated joe biden on his election victory than have sitting republican senators. >> well, how really did we expect donald trump's shock opera to end? are you surprised? are any of you surprised that donald trump's shock opera would not have this sort of sad, pathetic finale? i'm not. i'm surprised that you're surprised. i'm surprised by the texts that i'm going. oh, are we going -- yes, we're going to be okay. you know why? because what i've been saying for four years is playing out in the courts right now. the rule of law is stronger than any one man or any one woman.

and when these scam press conferences turn into scam pleadings, and they go before federal judges or state judges, the state judges ask trump's lawyers under oath whether they have any evidence of foul play. and under oath and under the penalty of perjury, they all say, no, your honor. and the cases are dismissed. now, listen, while you were sleeping last night, and you probably went to bed if you follow politics closely, concerned about some of the developments going on. while you were sleeping last night, they were counting votes. one by one by one in arizona. and finally after counting one vote a day, they came to the conclusion, the secretary of state out there as well as dave

wasserman, that arizona is all over. yes, yes, i know, i know, fox news and the associated press called arizona for joe biden in the summer of '76. but now everybody else is doing it. arizona is over. and they're doing hand recounts in georgia. as karl rove wrote in "the wall street journal," that race is over. pennsylvania is over. nobody wins recounts when losing. by this much. so, i just want to say again what we've been saying for years. when you think that donald trump and the republican party is getting away with this, getting away with anything, you've got to avert yourself from the smoke bombs going off on stage and the

shock opera, and just look at the data. you want to know what the data shows me? it shows me that after all the failures of the democratic party and congressional races and senate races and state legislative races, and all the gnashing of the teeth are finished in that area, look at the presidential race and what historians are going to see when they look at that map is they're going to see a map where democrats rebuilt the blue wall across the upper midwest. they shattered the solid south by going straight to the heart of dixie, which is not alabama, but, instead, georgia, the peach state. it's the first time the son of the south -- it's the first time that a democratic presidential candidate, who was not a son of the south, won georgia in 60

years. it looks sort of grayish now. it's blue. biden has won georgia. and arizona, you see arizona, that state, the state of goldwater and mccain, not only elected a democrat for presid t president, they now have two u.s. sitting senators, something unthinkable in the land of goldwater and mccain, before donald trump was president of the united states. let me give you a couple more numbers as people say, he just barely won. the shock opera, it continues. let me give you some numbers. do you want to know what the wages of political sin is in america when you're donald trump? here's some numbers to illustrate it. georgia flipped between 2016 and

2020. georgia flipped by over 200,000 votes. michigan, a race donald trump won barely four years ago, flipped by over 150,000 votes. pennsylvania, another state. there was supposed to be really close a week ago. the votes have been tallied up. no it, joe biden didn't win by the 87 points media pollsters said he was going to win by. still, that state flipped by over 100,000 votes from last election to this. and arizona, the land of goldwater, also flipped from a republican presidential candidate to a democratic presidential candidate by over 100,000 votes. there's nothing that donald trump or all of his little

minions inside the white house can do to change that fact. and if you don't give a damn about america, if you don't give a damn about america's national security, if you're just a democratic political operative, you should be happy with what's going on in georgia because they're continuing, they're continuing to act in the same abhorrent anti-democratic way that they've been doing over the past four years. by the way, if you don't think what they're doing, what kelley loeffler and what david perdue, how do you say his name, perdue, i don't know how to pronounce his name, i mean, kamala harris doesn't know how to pronounce his name. what those two people are doing right now, if you don't think that's not going to hurt them every day this moves forward,

then you just aren't paying close attention, are you, because it is hurting them. not only now but into the future. this is one of those things that shape a political culture in a state for decades to come. make no mistake of it, i've been saying it here, other people have been saying it here for years now, even before donald trump, the demographics is destiny. and the georgia, texas and arizo arizona one day are going to flip blue. when they flip blue, they ain't ever coming back. donald trump and his racism expedited that process this year. make no mistake about it. that's why there were 100,000 votes that flipped in georgia, 100,000 votes that flipped in arizona. but what they're doing now, willie, is only going to expedite the suburbs fleeing

from the democratic party. once they're gone, they never come back. >> you can add some more numbers to that. 306 electoral votes is where joe biden is likely to end up. he'll have 51% to 52% of the popular vote. he'll win by between 5 million and 6 million votes. it actually is, despite the fact that arizona and georgia are tight races, it actually is a decisive win for joe biden. he will have the most votes by a presidential candidate in the history of a presidential election in this country. probably going to get up near 80 million votes. i think the concern you hear right now, joe, is not that he will not eventually become president of the united states and not that donald trump will not eventually go away. it's the signal that all this sends to the 71 million people we showed there who voted for donald trump, that donald trump and republicans are allowing donald trump to go through this charade in the courts, sending

out tweets undermining the election. they worry what it says to those 71 million people who believe what donald trump says. which is that our process is rigged, our process has been undermined, that democrats stole this election. it's all wrong. it's all made up, as we've been saying for a week and a half now, these claims donald trump is making and the courts are showing that us again from pennsylvania to michigan and across the country and as these votes come in, the lead only gets wider in arizona and georgia. but there's an awful lot of people in this country who will believe because of what donald trump is doing and what republicans are doing that, yes, this process somehow has been rigged against donald trump and the election was somehow taken from him despite all those numbers you just laid out, despite the vote spread we just showed right there and, yes, this will be a decisive victory for joe biden. ahead, coronavirus cases exploding nationwide and no one can say it's unexpected. will the trump administration make any efforts to slow the

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the latest nbc news tally shows more than 148,000 covid cases were reported in the united states just yesterday. that beats the previous daily record of nearly 134,000 cases reported on monday. this now marks the eighth straight day that more than 100,000 cases have been reported in the united states. there were another 1 50ish,500 reported. texas has become the first state to surpass 1 million covid cases. meanwhile, hospitals in massachusetts, michigan, other states canceling elective

surgeries to make space for what they expect to be a flood of new covid patients. the mayo clinic health system says its hospitals in the northwest region of wisconsin already now have reached capacity. the state of north dakota is so short on staff, the governor is allowing health care workers who have tested positive for coronavirus but who asymptomatic to continue working in hospitals. in iowa, a record number of patients are in intensive care. in illinois, there was a new high of infections again things so dire in that state "the washington post" reports a group of doctors sent an urgent letter to the governor saying, quote, we almost have to decide who gets treatment and who does not, rationing care in the state of illinois. a group of health care workers in that state predicts illinois will surpass its icu bed capacity by thanksgiving. several states are issuing new restrictions.

new york state will require restaurants and bars to close by 10:00 p.m. private gatherings must be limited to ten people. the republican governor of ohio reissued a mask order and warned businesses if they don't comply, they could be forced to close. utah also issued a mask mandate on monday, meaning 34 states now require people to wear face coverings in public. the state of maryland urged people to avoid nonessential travel to 35 states that are struggling with the virus. earlier this week, connecticut added maine and new hampshire to its travel advisory, which now includes 44 states, joe. so far from going away, far from disappearing after the election, it's clear that what's happening now is exactly what was signaled to us even back in march by people like dr. fauci, that this was going to come back with a vengeance come fall and winter. >> and, you know, it's so important for us to go back because so much is thrown at us in the shock opera, so many lies are thrown at us every day by

donald trump, and one of the lies was it was going away in april and then he started lying to americans saying it wasn't coming back in the fall. dr. fauci stood there and said it will come back in the fall. dr. fauci, dr. gottlieb, historians, everybody back in the spring and early summer were begging donald trump to focus on the fall because they said it's coming back. if it's like the pandemic of 1918, it will be even worse. willie, it looks like we're headed in that direction. the numbers are worse than they've ever been just like the doctor said even while donald trump was lying to his own supporters. >> it's maddening and outrageous that you think about how long we've had to prepare for this moment and how listen we've done. we've heard the frustration from the doctors who come on our show every day, we've heard the frustration from the people on the task force that hasn't been

heard from in several weeks that they knew this was coming, they predicted this, they laid it out and that the federal government led by the white house didn't do anything about it. we heard donald trump on tape in bob woodward's book. he knew how serious this was. he even knew how this was going to play out but he infamously said he wanted to play it down for political reasons and not to panic the country. but here we are, exactly where the doctors told us we would be. coming up, americans elected joe biden in part to restore our alliances overseas. yet the incoming president is being blocked by the trump administration on key communications with partners overseas. that's next on "morning joe." - [announcer] your typical vacuum has bristles

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now to the transition of power, which is happening with the coronavirus as the back drop. among the many tasks president-elect biden is tackling is the need to work around the trump administration's refusal to cooperate with his transition team. "the washington post" reports citing those knowledge with the situation that members of the transition team are under strict

orders not to have any contact with current government officials. they are instead obtaining information from those who have recently departed government. reading from the paper's report, quote, they are relying on a team led by a former senior state department official to handle an influx of calls from foreign leaders. all without the benefit of a secure government line or language interpretation services provided by the current statement. that is just -- >> what -- what do republicans think about this? what do republicans across capitol hill think about this? what do house republicans think about this? what do senate republicans think about this? they're sitting there and they're putting our president-elect and they're putting these conversations in jeopardy all because they know that the person sitting inside the white house is being reckless and irresponsible.

so, they're not allowing the united states of america to have a smooth transition so joe biden, the next commander in chief, can be prepared when he goes in to actually protect not just democrats, but democrats, republicans, independents, marxists, anarchists, you name. 330 million americans, their safety depends on joe biden being able to prepare to be commander in chief. and republicans on capitol hill know he's going to be commander in chief. and yet mitch mcconnell will not step forward and pressure donald trump to do the patriotic thing. why? >> many foreign leaders who have called biden directly have reportedly not been able to rely on the state department to forward the communications. the post reports that the state department will not relay them

until the general services administration authorizes the transition, which they will not. this is something that that agency has so far refused to do, but another republican senator, james lankford of oklahoma, is calling for the transition period for joe biden to begin starting with access to intelligence briefings. >> gsa has to certify that election to start turning it around. i'm on a committee of oversight. i've already started engaging in this area. there's nothing wrong with vice president biden getting the briefings to be able to prepare himself. if that's not occurring by friday, i will step in and push him to say, this needs to occur. >> marco rubio has said this and mitt romney has said it as well. obviously, more republicans need to step up. coming up, thomas jefferson at one point said bad men will get into power. we'll talk to two renowned

historians about america's founding principles and where they stand today. "morning joe" is back in a moment. still your best friend. 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.

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♪ revolution there is no status quo ♪ ♪ but the sun comes up ♪ and the world still spins ♪ i have lafayette declaration then i said ♪ ♪ i gotta go got to be in monticello ♪ ♪ now the work at home begins ♪ so what did i miss what did i miss ♪ ♪ virginia my home sweet home i want to give you a kiss ♪ ♪ i have been in paris

meeting a lot of ladies ♪ ♪ i guess i missed the '80s ♪ the wide wide world ♪ and came back to this ♪ there's a letter on my desk from the president ♪ ♪ haven't put my bag down yet ♪ would you open it darling ♪ it says the president is assembling the cabinet ♪ ♪ and i'm to be the secretary of state ♪ ♪ great senate approved ♪ i just got home and now i'm headed up to new york ♪ >> diggs as thomas jefferson and the character's grand entrance in the second act of the hit broadway musical "hamilton." a little confession here, in musicals i usually get through the first act, then the intermission. i'm like, okay, i get it, i get t let's go home. of course, i never go home. i sit through the whole thing. but, wow! so glad i stuck around for the second half because it comes in with the explosion of jefferson.

it's a beautiful moment. so, anyway, our week-long look at the nation's first four presidents continues this morning with thomas jefferson. let's bring in acclaimed writer and journalist tom ricks, his book "first principles," also with us pulitzer prize winning historian and professor at harvard, annette gordon reed, and mike barnicle is back with us as well. tom, you had written in your introduction that your family and you grew up revering thomas jeffers jefferson. the same with me. obviously he's undergone a very, very harsh reassessment over the past 20 to 30 years. i must say after reading your book, jefferson's words are extraordinary.

they have moved the march of freedom along in ways that few other political philosophers ever have in the history of man and womankind. but at the same time, they are connected to a man who was abhorrent, at best at times. >> deeply flawed man. a great man but a deeply flawed man. you mentioned the harsh reassessment of jefferson. i have to say what an honor it is to be on with the person who has led that reassessment, annette gordon reed. i think this is the first time in a long time my family has been impressed. you know, you're going to be on tv with annette gordon reed? she's a rock star in our family. my daughter walked into a starbucks in philadelphia and saw annette gordon reed and nearly dropped her latte. i have a copy of her great book

which our family has read and written notes all over. thomas jefferson, i would say incredibly important. if only for the declaration of independence, a great document, both great literature and a great political document. that said, three things that really bothered me about him and led me to really reassess my opinion of him in my research. first, he was a lousy governor of virginia. he was asleep at the wheel during the revolution. winds up getting chased out of monticello by british troops riding up carter mountain behind him. second, he's kind of a hypocrite about the country. he wants to have the west explored. yet he himself never goes west of the blue ridge. it's not that he doesn't like to travel. when he lives in france, he travels all over. and third, and most of all, worst of all, on slavery.

i wanted to defer to the expert here, but my opinion is he was at best a hypocrite, a man who dreamed of liberty while living on the sweat of others. a man who talked a good game when he was in paris, but toed the slavery power line when he was back in virginia. >> professor, talk about that, the contrast of jefferson, the political philosopher whose words were used not only by mlk and letters from a birmingham jail, but also by frederick douglass, and those words have been used time and again as sword and shield to move forward civil rights in this country, and yet his own personal story was so deplorable on that front. >> well, thank you, first. it's good to be here. tom, thank you for those

wonderful words. i guess i would start by asking, well, what more do you want from a person? you began with a statement about his words moving mankind, bringing things forward. that's a pretty good thing to do. the personal issues are important, but for me historical figures are about how they moved the world, the actions they take that live on and that move us forward, as you said. yes, he was a slave owner. and he wrote some of the most condemning words about slavery that have ever been written but he did not live up to it in his own life. i guess you have to think about what historical figures are about, what use are they. a good person who's ineffectual and feckless? i'm sorry, the militia didn't come out when he called them. he's in monticello and he's supposed to defend himself by himself. patrick henry ran, they all ran. so, no, it wasn't a great show,

but i think you ask me the bigger picture and what historical figures are useful for. the declaration of independence has been used by every group in this country to move -- blacks, womens, gays, you name it, immigrants all over the world, so that measured against his personal weaknesses, to my mind, you know, the ratio doesn't work. it works for me. i think that's what we should be focusing on. history is not about worshipping people. it's about seeing the practical things that people did to move us forward. and i would also say, jefferson has always been up and down in american history. he's a down period now. in the future he'll go back up. >> yeah. we've seen that. of course, we've seen in our lifetime the reassessment of even more recent presidents like harry truman, grant was called a

drunk, a corrupt drunk. grant obviously also on the rise. john adams was on the rise until tom rick's book came out and then, boom, back down. that's a good point. it's interesting, tom, how democrats have especially revered jefferson. fdr obviously revered jefferson as did jfk. but at this point, even the democratic party stopped naming their annual dinners after jefferson. but i wanted you to touch on the professor's comments about the bigger picture as far as his words and the historic impact of thomas jefferson, the declaration of independence and many other things. he's not like adams, a flawed man in a different way, but adams was the first of the

revolutionaries among the four presidents despite his own peculiar flaws. >> as i listen to professor gordon-reed, i felt like the prosecutor who suddenly starts agreeing with the defense attorney. she's absolutely right. i have this ambivalence about jefferson because the words are so great, though. why couldn't he live up to them more? george washington changes. one book i read recently talked about how washington at the end of his life, after the presidency, becomes interested in abolitionism and starts reading a lot of abolition pamphlets. washington, to me, tried to address reality where jefferson seems to constantly be running away from reality. to say one thing but to live a different life, to really not want to be reasonable sometimes in facing the facts of his

existence. >> mike barnicle, let's bring you in. on this note, we came in with "hamilton" and even the narrative of "hamilton" as an abolitionist being challenged now. "the new york times" has touched on some of the scholarship. of course, this is something that has to be debated, but touched on recent scholarship that has looked very closely at alexander hamilton being a slaveholder as well. >> yeah. and i think ron chernow would be ready to take up that debate at any moment, joe. you know, this is a real blessing for us to have two great guests with this topic. professor reed, i'd like to ask you a question framed by my own personal experience within my own family. my wife and i, we have a lot of children. we've seen a lot of grade school education, high school, college educations proceed right in front of us, but it's always

struck me with regard to history, my favorite topic growing up, the only topic i ever paid any attention to in grammar or high school, the teaching of history. we never have taught the whole story to children, starting from first, second grade, the story of america, with all of its flaws, all of its glory, all of its promise, all of its peril. i'm wondering, do you think -- they literally teach it as a cartoon for the first three or four grades, literally cartoons in the history book. do you think it would make any difference to our current discussion, and i'd like tom also to share in your answer, would it make any difference in our current culture if it -- if we had taught and teach history as realistically as history proceeded? >> i think it would make a difference. i am optimistic on that front because i have seen certainly lots of changes from the time i

was a kid back in the dark ages. people are trying to do that now in an age-appropriate way. there are books that are written about jefferson and slavery and monticello for second graders that are totally age appropriate that broached the subject, broached the topic of sally hemmings, broached the topic of slavery in general. i'm optimistic about that. those places are dealing it in ways they weren't dealing with it before. they have lessons for kids. yeah, i think if you give people a different story, if people include the whole story in an age-appropriate way, as i said, i think it would make a difference, definitely. history is very contentious, as you all know. >> yeah. tom, i wanted to ask you about jefferson and his studies because your book is so enjoyable because you look at the first four presidents and you see how they studied and

they focus more on ancient history, and you say that the -- three of the four presidents focused more on roman history. in a way that none of us do, or very few of us do today. instead it was jefferson who studied ancient history with a focus on the focus that we have today, and as you describe in your book, america moves too soon after the founders' time period. explain that. if you can, again, underline the difference that that made in the framing of the declaration of independence in jefferson's view of this new country. >> i would say that jefferson stands out among the four people we've been discussing, the first four presidents. in that, yes, he's deeply focused on the ancient world, but alone in being the one who's

more greek, more focused on greece. greece for them was very much in the background. rome was generally in the forefront. it was the thing they focused on. jefferson, though, was more greek. he reads eripites. when the others are trying to be stoics, to be sort of like what george washington aspired to be, strong, silent, prudent, decisive, frugal, jefferson is an epicurian, he declares at one point, i'm an eupicurian, who is a reference to the greek philosopher. not kind of goofy happiness of just self-indulgence, but avoiding pain is a big part of it and seeking a happy, prudent, just, wise life. and i think that really informs the declaration of independence. so, we are all, without knowing

it, kind of living under this umbrella of epicurianism which is inherent philosophical inheritance i wish would be better recognized. >> the book is "first principles." tomorrow we'll wrap up our week-long series with tom's closer look at james madison's life. pulitzer prize-winning historian and professor at harvard, annette gordon-reed, we want to thank you for being here and he with want to thank you for finally making tom's children proud of him. big, big accomplishment. tom, thank you so much as well. we really appreciate it. coming up next, two years since the most destructive wildfire in california's history, one town attempts to rebuild. our conversation with ron howard on his latest documentary next on "morning joe." the ninja foodi power pitcher,

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paradise high school graduates to rise from the ashes of what life was and take a bold step forward into a new and uncertain future. but with what you've been through, you have what it takes to persevere. congratulations, and good luck. >> that was a clip from a new national geographic documentary "rebuilding paradise." the town of paradise is on the road to recovery two years after a devastating fire storm engulfed the region. the fire killed 85 people, displaced tens of thousands and destroyed 95% local structures marking the deadliest u.s. fire in 100 years and the worst ever in california's history. still, more work needs to be done with only a fraction of the homes having been rebuilt since

the destructive blaze. joining us now is the film's creator, oscar-award winning director ron howard. great to have you back on the show. one of the key issues for a director and producer, of course, is the arc of a story. and for you here, it's the story of a community. >> well, absolutely. and, of course, you know, i've begun delving into documentaries. i've always done a lot of films based on real events. and found that fascinating. i am really enjoying getting a lot out of making documentaries. but this is the first one, you know, where i really didn't know what the outcome would be. it's not a polemic. we didn't go in with an agenda. it's, let's observe this town. my mother-in-law lived the last four or five years of her life in paradise. i knew it was a beautiful community. and that was the question. it was a question.

rebuilding paradise? well, the -- the people that we followed and the citizens actually proved we could take away that question mark because it's ultimately quite remarkable what they've done. but what they had to go through to get there is, you know, is something i learned a lot, and i hope people enjoy it and get something out of it as well. >> and they go through it all as the world moves on and they're literally in the rubble. here's another clip from the national geographic documentary "rebuilding paradise." >> awesome, man. awesome. that's it. yeah. >> we're on, now. this is the beginning. >> exciting. >> yeah. finally caught up with me.

yeah, it's a big deal. >> it is a big deal. >> very big. >> new beginning. oh, wow. i didn't know i had all that going on. >> funny how it catches you, huh? >> yeah, well -- >> it's so hard for us to imagine. growing up on the gulf coast, i have seen people crawling in the sand looking for wedding pictures or lockets or something. it seems even more destructive. it wiped absolutely everything out. mika was talking about the arc, but you talked about the arc of tragedy and resilience and community. and, my god, that must have been -- since this community meant something to you and you were looking at the news as it was happening and horrified, that really -- it had to be special for you.

>> well, it was ultimately special, but it was devastating when i first got there. it's one thing to see the pictures, and it's another thing to stand there to witness people, joe, as you were describing, going through what's now the rubble of their lives. and it also very much, our film follows the cycles of grief. how human beings try to cope with these. it wound up being very much the structure of our film. >> i think you underlined something also that's really important that we in america forget about too much. and reading about you, it sounds like you're a lot like me. if somebody asked me what i've done the last 45 years, i have raised kids and i've worked. i've raised kids, and i've worked. so we've been this sort of self-contained community where there's a lawyer or football coach or whether it was in politics or tv. you are much the same way, but

you said that when you got involved in this project and you got into the community, you realized that, hey, sometimes we need to get out of the bubble of our family and maybe there is a lot more power in unity, a lot more power in community that in this age of social media, we've forgotten about. >> i'm glad you identified that. because of all the surprises, i was relieved by some of the outcomes and i was devastated by some of the others. it's a very dramatic individual story lines along with the story of the community. but the people who showed up for the community were also serving themselv themselves. not always their absolute specific self-interest but their sort of whole being. and, you know, to me what they gave us is a fantastic case study in problem solving. these folks don't all agree on everything. they're not all like-minded.

nooirt a they're not all going to vote the same way, yet they could agree upon these issues and like at the beginning, you showed the high school graduation. you know you say, great. they had their graduation. when you watch the film, it's an amazing achievement that those kids could have that graduation. not just sort of physically, but dealing with the logistics of it all. i was surprised how many barriers there are toward recovery on an emotional and tangible level. and so -- but these people put the differences aside and kept showing up and problem solving. look, as a country, i think we've identified a lot of issues, you know, on -- forget politics. in various pockets of our community, which is this country, we now understand where there is a lot of work to be done. and i, you know, if there's a lesson to be taken in this, i think when people come together and say, let's see what we can

do for the community, we'll grow with that. we'll flourish with that. >> all right. ron howard, thank you so much for being with us. we really, really do appreciate it. the national geographic documentary "rebuilding paradise" is available to stream now on apple tv, amazon prime and google play. let's get final thoughts. willie, first to you. we're talking about the election and the aftermath, talking about a lot of things but, man, covid is really the story that is continuing to grow by the day. >> it is. yesterday, by our nbc news count, nearly 150,000 new cases. that set a new record. and again this morning, we learned more about the follow-on effects that continue to crater the economy. more than 700,000 people filed for unemployment last week. that number is down for a fourth straight week but it's a measure of where we are when we say, well, that's better than last week. it still exceeds the pre-pandemic record of 695,000

that was set back in 1982. so mike barnicle, you have a crisis in the coronavirus that is not just the public health crisis. but it say crisis of loss of jobs and closing schools and all the things you've been talking about for eight months. >> yeah, willie. and it certainly is a crisis of loss and we're about to be led by a president-elect who understands loss better than any human being i've ever met. there's a message for all of us to take from that documentary we just saw clips of. ron howard's documentary. and it is that strength and perseverance and pulling together can raise a city, a town, lake paradise, california, and can and will raise the united states of america. >> thank you so much for watching. we greatly appreciate it. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's thursday, november 12th. here's what's happening now. this morning, we're seeing the

worst numbers since the start of this pandemic and with it, new warnings and new restrictions. the united states recording more than 148,000 new covid cases yesterday topping 100,000 for the eighth straight day. also yesterday, more than 1500 americans lost their lives to the virus. those aren't just numbers. those are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. and reminder, this pandemic is very much still with us. and this is not the flu. this is lethal. as we remain in this pandemic, president-elect joe biden made his first major staffing announcement last night. someone who has handled a public health crisis before. biden tapping ron klain as chief of staff. klain was tasked with controlling the ebola outbreak in 2014 and has been very critical of president trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic for the last six