it exists. hans nichols, great to see you. there are millions of americans who are still waiting for relief, but the reality is we have an incredibly unpredictable person still in the white house and there is a lot of concern about whether the government is going to be funded through the fall and headed into the christmas season. perhaps a tougher christmas season than we anticipated. stick around. "morning joe" starts right now. breaking news overnight, nbc news projecting joe biden wins arizona. biden flips the state that hadn't voted for a democrat since 1996 for president, at the same time that state, the home of barry goldwater and john mccain now has two democratic u.s. senators. with this win, president-elect joe biden adds more than -- adds

11 more electoral votes to his total. bringing him currently to 290. north carolina and georgia are now the only states left, but the race is still deemed too close to call. just over 14,000 votes separate biden and trump in georgia where a statewide hand recount has been ordered. but most likely north carolina will go to trump. georgia to biden. and perhaps it was waiting on arizona to be called. also breaking overnight, china congratulated president-elect joe biden on his election victory. a spokesman for the chinese foreign ministry said, quote, we respect the choice of the american people. we congratulate mr. biden and ms. harris, proving once again, willie geist, the old saying that my god, you have heard in political science classes for the past 100 years, as goes

scottsdale so goes beijing. and -- >> joe, beijing traditionally waits for the nbc decision desk before making a congratulatory phone call to the president. so keeping in form. >> no doubt about it. jonathan lemire, as we said yesterday, of course, your news organization, the associated press, called add for biden in the summer of '76. it was a good summer. it was a fine time. fox news i think it was '74 right after craft works' album debuted on casey kasem's top 40. we don't understand why they went so early but i guess all's well that ends well. >> nice of you guys to catch up, frankly. this is a solid win of course for joe biden in arizona.

which let -- >> it was a little early, come on. you can admit it was a little early. like i just bought my pet rock, i was walking around the mall in upstate new york. i'm like who is this biden cat? you guys and fox news went early. but obviously, you saw something that none of us saw for another 30 or so years. >> a.p. ahead and secondly, how about the big red machine. mid '70s, cincinnati reds are going to be a force to be reckoned with. >> yeah. >> certainly, a terrific win for joe biden, flipping it from red to blue. and one that in the current context deals any blow to the slightest of hopes this president has to overturning the election results. as yet another state slips from his grasp and 11 more electoral

college votes end up in joe biden's column. >> and bill clinton won it and before that it was truman. so joe biden's now at 290 electoral votes. there's a hand recount under way in the state of georgia and most people believe it won't overturn the 14,000 lead vote for joe biden. he crossed the 78 million total vote number yesterday. so he's really running up some numbers now as you mentioned. china called. he had a phone call with the pope. everyone knows where this is going. it will be interesting to see now how soon republicans turn that corner as president trump now is all caps tweeting conspiracy theories about voting machines changing votes. that's kind of where we are, but he's still in office for more than two months. >> he's still in office. nobody is really listening to him. certainly judges aren't listening to him. people that matter aren't listening to him. and if you look at the map,

kasie hunt, if you look at the map of where the states went this year, it's easy to forget looking at that map where you have georgia that's going to go blue and you were talking about that for a very long time. as karl rove said, these recounts aren't going to amount to anything. this election's over. they're not going to find 14,000. as rover said in his "wall street journal" editorial, only three count -- three recounts have been successful over the past 25, 30 years and certainly georgia, nothing looking like that. so you're going to have georgia blue. breaking the solid south. you have arizona, of course, that's gone blue. it wasn't so long ago that jared kushner believed they'd win new mexico, blue. colorado, for the first time in

a long time, won in a presidential race by double digits. it wasn't that long ago that colorado was a swing state and yes, democrats had a very bad year, underperformed in the house races, underperformed in senate races. we can talk about that later, but just looking at this map, it actually went as a lot of us have been predicting for several years. that with georgia, texas and arizona all leaning more democratic because of demographic changes and even north carolina coming along too. i say this not because of this year, but just because it's a trend. the next four years are going to be even tougher for republicans in those states especially. >> but you're absolutely right, joe. joe biden ran his campaign if we stick with this map right through the blue wall in the upper midwest. that's in many ways the democratic party's past.

it is pretty clear they'll continue to struggle in those areas if this realignment continues but the future as you point out is right through that sunbelt. and i think you're absolutely right about north carolina. because all of these dynamics are playing out there as well. and to see georgia go really i think underscores that and, you know, you're right. i had a lot of people pointing to me at georgia in final week or so of the campaign because this is another one of the places that consultants say, we're going to flip georgia blue and it never happens but here we are. and the future for the democratic party is really in this realignment and one of the things that people have started to say to me in the last couple of days as which analyze the results more fully and we have a more complete picture of how this happened is that it's unlikely democrats could have won this election with any candidate other than joe biden because he was able to appeal to those voters who in the upper

midwest who either stayed home or voted for trump last time around. >> let's show the map again if we can. and i want to point something out because there's a lot of talk going around about how off the polls were and in fact i tweeted weeks before i don't believe any polls. but let's take a look and it really plays out like dave wasserman had said it was going to play out. that the sunbelt states actually the polls there were more accurate. north carolina, still too close to call, was within two points in most polls. georgia was tied. i mean, it seems like every poll we showed the last month had georgia tied. well, guess what? georgia ended up tied. arizona was always within a point or two. arizona ended up extraordinarily close. texas, there were some polls that showed texas tied for a very long time but as we got closer to the end, we started to

see trump ahead by five points. those polls were pretty accurate too. in pollsters' defense not just publicly but privately we talked to the biden campaign about a month before and they just said outright, texas is gone. that was a month before. so they really weren't surprised by the polls across the sunbelt. i think the shock for most had to do with wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania, which wasserman said weeks before always underreports donald trump's strength in the upper midwest states. so we're talking about polling being worthless, well, it was worthless in the upper midwest, but across the sunbelt, hit it just about right. i have to say also, i tweeted yesterday, demographics is destiny. and a lot of people on the right freaked out. a lot of people on the left freaked out.

i seriously don't understand why they would freak out that's oversimplification, that's what's wrong with politics. no, actually, when you can look at demographic changes and north carolina and georgia are becoming more diverse and texas according to john cornyn, nine hispanic babies are born every day for one caucasian baby and you see the other states continuing to diversify as well, not that hard to figure out. willie, if you want to know how bad republicans are with certain demographic groups, after i said demographics is destiny, a lot of people said donald trump got 12% of the black vote. you're bragging about losing nine out of ten black voters and by the way, it's usually 8%. so we're even within the margin of error if you really believe

these exit polls which may be no more accurate than the overall polls. as far as the hispanic vote, yeah, he did pretty well and in miami-dade he did really well with cuban americans, but he's still got according to these exit polls only 32% of the hispanic vote, which republicans are acting like my gosh, he cracked the code. no. you know, george w. bush in 2004 got 44% of the hispanic vote. when republicans were getting in the low 30s, the party was having after action reports going why did we do so badly with hispanics, how can we do better? guess what, they have not done any better. they're actually 12 points worse than they were in 2004. so for republicans to be running around talking about how they're doing great with blacks and hispanics, that's a party that's

whistling past the graveyard. for them, demographics is destiny and donald trump may have excited a lot of people on the far right, he may have excited david duke, neo-nazis who couldn't praise him enough, huh he wasn't playing the long game. he was playing the short game. and it's republicans who are going to be paying for it for the rest of their political lives. >> you took the thought out of my head about george w. bush, it was less than a generation ago that a republican presidential candidate was up in the 40s with latino voters. by the way, they have looked for the last couple of cycles they thought, boy, could we ever get georgia, if we get georgia we're in the right direction. well, they got georgia. how about arizona, they got arizona. the next target is texas. if you put texas in the democratic column every year, there's nowhere to go. you put california and new york, then it's over. so they need to figure something

out as they said in the 2012 after action report that most people didn't heed in the republican party. i mentioned that donald trump is president for two more months and one week because there is a massive crisis sitting in front of us that's on his watch, another record-setting milestone in the u.s. as the number of new coronavirus cases reached over 159,000 nationwide yesterday. that number surpasses wednesday's single-day record of more than 148,000 new cases and marks the ninth day in a row of over 100,000 cases. california now has reached 1 million coronavirus cases statewide becoming the second state to do that shortly after texas reached that mark. yesterday, also recorded over 1,100 deaths in the country. the cdc now projects over the next four weeks the number of new covid deaths will likely reach 5 500 and it places the

number of deaths 260,000 to 280,000. now in chicago, mayor lightfoot issued a stay at home advisory, put a cap on social gatherings limiting them to ten people. j.b. pritzker hinted at a stay at home order and the counties are beginning to implement an 8:00 p.m. curfew on nonessential issues and stopped short of making the schools go online completely. philadelphia, detroit, minneapolis now all have called for a halt to in-person learning and urged school districts to use online teaching. in the state of utah, that state bringing in nearly 200 out of state nurses to keep the staffing levels up in the

pressed hospitals. in north dakota, after the governor urged asymptomatic nurses to continue working, the north dakota nurses association came out against supporting that move publicly. joining us now, clinical director of the division of infectious diseases dr. paul sacks. i laid out the state by state cases and the measures that are being taken or at least considered to tamp this down as we head into the thanksgiving and holiday season. what's your big-picture assessment of where the country is right now? >> we don't like the numbers, they're going up. this is just a reminder that the virus doesn't care if you're a republican or a democrat and it follows biology and science and it spreads by airborne route. when people are together and especially when people are together in crowded spaces with

poor ventilation, we need to now listen to the cdc which has come out very forcefully and said mask wearing protects you and others and with the bad numbers it is important that we be as responsible as possible during holiday season because i really do believe there's a light at the end of the tunnel and that came earlier this week with the vaccine news. >> there was good vaccine news but that's down the road a little bit from where we are. from where you sit, what needs to this country and what needs to happen state by state to stem these numbers as being projected as possibilities and some unthinkable out of the cdc? >> good morning, willie. the numbers are looking really bad and by mathematical models this season is going to be dire. you know, as dr. sax mentioned i can't repeat this enough, with the holidays coming up, both

thanksgiving and christmas, just look at history. what's happened over memorial day, july 4th. where we saw surges because people gathered. it's really critical that people do not gather and in fact we have cdc data showing that transmission is going on because of small group gatherings. people need to wear masks, maintain physical distancing and gather with the people you have been isolating with over the holidays. it's the only way to contain this pandemic, willie. >> jonathan lemire, this was not only very predictable but it was predicted. in fact, i remember in the middle of march zeke emanuel telling me that it was going to be bad in the spring, but it was going to be worse in the fall. he said look at history. look what happened in 1918. we're going to get -- we're going to get harder hit in the

fall. that's something fauci tried to tell americans when donald trump continued to cut him off and say, no no, it's not coming back in the fall. fauci again had to go up to the microphone and say, yes it's coming back in the fall. we have to prepare now. of course, the white house did nothing to prepare and let me ask you, what's the president doing right now? is he getting briefings? is he taking meetings on this? is he planning to address the american people on this covid crisis? >> the president is missing in action as the coronavirus pandemic surges to intoward heights here in the united states. i mean, we have seen this for weeks now. he's slowly disengaged from many aspects of the day job and in particular battling the virus. during the stretch run of the campaign he would talk about it a at the rally stage, saying that the nation was rounding the corner which is simply not true

and the numbers proved otherwise. he hasn't convened, he hasn't attended a meeting of the coronavirus task force in over a month. and those meetings themselves chaired by the vice president start -- had happened very infrequently in the last few weeks. there was one earlier this week that pence attended, trump did not. the president does today -- is going to get briefed on the latest on operation warp speed which is their vaccine push but he spent most of the week even on that subject complaining, privately and publicly, that pfizer put out the vaccine used, it was getting close to one, believing that was done deliberately, they didn't want it out ahead of the election because that would have helped trump's chances. the company of course has completely denied that. that was a decision that was made, the timing, in tandem with the president's own fda. but he's simply not doing this. he's disengaged from his day job

almost entirely since the election as he huddles with advisers, vacillating between being angry and trying to contest the election results and trying to put life behind the legal challenges that are going nowhere and more calmly recognizing his fate has been sealed and should be looking forward to what the next move is after he leaves the office and declaring the candidacy in 2024 or trying to make some money. right now, the nation is in a crisis and has received no leadership whatsoever. and with the transition slowing down it's now hindering potentially the ability for the incoming president joe biden and his team to do so as well because when they take office in the middle of january, there's no sense that this crisis will be any better. it will be a virus still surging out of control with a vaccine still several months away. >> so kasie, obviously, donald trump and republicans at the white house are asleep at the wheel when it comes to covid.

you know, we're approaching the 250,000 mark for americans killed by covid. are there any republicans on capitol hill that are issuing warnings, that are saying hey, we have to get on top of this? or are they also taking a hands off approach? >> well, joe, i would say it's more that we're just continuing to face a stalemate on the hill. i mean, people in both parties, republicans and democrats are saying that they do need to do something. there needs to be another package, an economic package. a package that deals with testing and some of these other questions that have not been dealt with, but the reality is -- and this is something that i think has been undercovered in terms of the consequences of the election. nancy pelosi went in to election night confident they'd pick up seats in the house potentially win the senate, have joe biden in the white house and that she

would be in the cat bird's seat in terms of being able to drive the next coronavirus package. there was this broad sense that waiting was better for democrats in terms of getting what they wanted, which is a bigger package, more unemployment benefits, and more money for state and local governments but that's not what happened. she's in a tougher position than she was. it's been mentioned to me by a couple of sources, maybe she should have taken the deal that mitch mcconnell offered which was $1.8 trillion before the election because now mcconnell has more power in the negotiations than he did before. now, of course, what's the upshot for that? it means we're likely not going to see something significant from congress during the lame duck session. everyone that i'm talking to is struggling to see how that actually plays out and dr. sax, i'm interested in your take on

this because we know this is largely aimed at the economy, right? trying to inject more money into the economy but there's a significant public health piece as well. we don't have a national testing strategy. there are a lot of holes in the -- in our public health infrastructure that this bill was hopefully going to fill. what do you see as the top line need from congress in terms of what the medical community needs to fight back more aggressively against this virus? >> one of the really exciting areas where science has improved is in the development of testing for covid-19 and it's going on very quietly in the background. a little bit overshadowed by the vaccine news. i would not be surprised if in the next couple of months we have access to rapid covid-19 tests that are accurate enough and potentially usable for home use. that kind of power to be able to know without symptoms whether you're carrying the virus could

help us decrease the spread of the virus to others. now, it won't be perfect. we know that testing is not a perfect strategy. the white house outbreak is an example of that and we're doing reactive testing. reactive testing to those who have symptoms already. i think the reason this has become such a broad pandemic is because it's spread by people who have minimal or no symptoms and we haven't been able to control it because we can't keep track of where it is. >> dr. roy, mayor lightfoot finally came out and said, you can't have thanksgiving with people outside of your house and that's something we're hearing more and more. we have heard that from other officials so i know every state is different, i know every community is different, but for people thinking about the holidays and what the next couple of weeks and months look like, what are some general rules of the road that you'd like to offer? >> yeah. willie, i have been saying this for some time now, 2020 has been one of the write-off kind of years, kale it the covid year.

all of the things we're so accustomed to doing, going to sports games, arenas, going out to eat and especially with thanksgiving it's just not safe to do that this year. you know, joe just pointed out the fact we're approaching 250,000, we're going to blow past that just based on current data. look at the current daily infections, new infections. just to compare this to history, that number exceeds the number of casualties that the united states experienced with world war i, vietnam war and korean war combined. so it's just not safe. i recommend people look at the cdc guidelines for what to do during thanksgiving. small group that you already been isolating with, share recipes online, but avoid large gatherings. at least for this year, willie. >> looks like it's that kind of year. dr. roy and dr. sax, thank you. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll talk to a key voice

on national security, senator duckworth. on his way out the door, trump and his enablers seem determined to destabilize the military and put the country at risk. the retired army pilot joins us ahead. a note that joe's new book, "saving truman and the fight for western civilization" is coming out on november 24th, a week from tuesday. preorder it right now. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ching "morn" we'll be right back. - [announcer] your typical vacuum has bristles that can leave cleaning gaps and wrap hair. so shark replaced them with flexible power fins to directly engage floors and dig deep into carpets. pick up more on every pass with no hair wrap. shark vertex with duoclean power fins. we made usaa insurance for veterans like martin. when a hailstorm hit, he needed his insurance to get it done right, right away.

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you have people out there calling for recounts that are unsubstantiated based on no evidence. this was a legitimate election and no one should question the fact that trump is the president-elect. >> hillary is on the sore loser tour. she needs to get over it. she lost.

get out of the way and let donald trump be president. >> do you think the democrats are sore losers? yeah i do. >> the reality is there's a bunch of spoiled cry babies. >> news flash for those in the mainstream media who try to delegitimize donald trump's win. hillary clinton lost. you have to win 270 electoral college votes and trump got 276. >> the left is going to lie. they'll going to besmirch, they can't accept the election votes. they have to decide if they're going to interfere with him finishing his business, interfere with the transfer of power to trump and pence or be cry babies about about election they can't turn around. >> this is america, we live in the democracy. everybody when they woke up in the morning, registered to vote, could go choose.

how about respecting the majority that also live here and their votes should count. >> brian, they're saying it's rigged. but they have absolutely no evidence that it's rigged. >> i don't think we should give him the time of day. also he's about to win, it's a matter of time -- about to win michigan officially so that would put donald trump over the top with 270 electoral votes. i wonder what the democrats are doing trying to convince the electoral representatives not to vote the way they want them to. >> there are six of them. >> we believe in free speech and we believe in accepting winners. >> they have no proof of voter fraud or any wrongdoing and both the white house and the wisconsin elections commission have said zero evidence whatsoever. what happened to the peaceful transition of power and supporting the incoming administration? >> really, seriously. you have to wonder how they can do that.

that's four years ago. republicans whining, calling democrats sore losers, calling hillary clinton a sore loser. by the way, credit to cnn for putting together the montages, but i don't know if you remember this and i know in the age of trump we have alternative realities and people don't even go back and look at videotape. but hillary clinton conceded the day after the election. she made a call to donald trump early that morning and conceded the day after the election. we can't even get any of those people you just saw to admit the reality, that donald trump lost far worse than hillary clinton.

joe biden won pennsylvania by a much larger margin than donald trump four years ago. won michigan by a larger margin than donald trump did. flipped arizona by 100,000 votes. flipped georgia by 100,000 votes. i mean, again, they're shameless, of course they're shameless. you can look at the clips and see what they said then and see what they're saying now and they're attacking -- they were attacking hillary clinton then for conceding the day after the election. here we are what a week and half past the election. they all know he's lost. and they're all losers, sore losers. we have a lot of people in the 2000 recount carrying around signs that said, sore loserman.

well, if the sign fits republicans should wear it because this was hillary clinton and barack obama actually as hillary was conceding and barack obama was saying, hey, guys, let's move along. take a look. >> we must accept this result and then look to the future. donald trump is going to be our president. we owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. >> so i have instructed my team to follow the example that president bush's team set eight years ago and work as hard as we can and make sure this is a successful transition for the president. >> i wish donald trump well. >> of course we're very disappointed, more than disappointed, hard to accept the results but accept we do.

peaceful transfer of power is what america and our democracy is about. >> i mean, really, i would say isn't it incredible the contrast between the horrific example. i would say the antidemocratic example that a lot of republicans are setting, running around lying, spreading conspiracy theories. trying to undermine if you can believe this, trying to undermine america's confidence in the voting system. well, actually in american democracy despite the fact that the department of homeland security said it was the cleanest election, the safest election, the most secure election ever run. and you go back and you look at barack obama the day after the election and hillary rodham clinton. like barack obama said we're going to work as hard as we can to have a successful transition,

to help donald trump. hillary clinton said the morning -- the afternoon after the election, donald trump is going to be president. we owe him an open mind. so they were doing that the day after the election. and republicans still, donald trump still, will not give the president-elect -- by the way, republicans, the president-elect that is going to be your commander in chief. the president-elect who's going to have to figure out how to handle the crisis in north korea that donald trump left us. made it far worse than it was when we got there. how to handle russia and how to handle china. how to handle isis. there's a re-emergence of isis. reports this week showing that they're regaining strength.

we need our president-elect, the next commander in chief, to get daily intel briefings and he's not getting those daily intel briefings despite the fact every republican in the united states senate knows that donald trump lost. joe biden won. and they're just playing games with your national security. i don't know if you call that un-american, but i do know this. they would be calling democrats un-american if they weren't letting a republican have access to daily intel briefings. by the way, do you republicans really think you'll never be president again, never think you'll be in the white house again, because if you believe you're going to be in the white house again you need to tell

donald trump to stop setting this horrific precedent. we have learned in washington what goes around comes around. so republicans need to wake up. they need to grow up. they need to start the daily intel briefings. they need to start doing what the obama administration did. with the state department, help coordinate those calls with foreign leaders, pass along those messages from foreign leaders. work towards a peaceful transition that sets this country apart from so many others across the globe. the time is now. you have had your week and a half of whining. you have had your week and a half of whimpering. you have had your week and a half of just acting like spoiled little rotten babies. we have a lot more at stake here. we have the security of the

united states of america. brief the incoming president daily. let those briefings begin, just like barack obama did for donald j. trump four years ago. let's bring in former republican chairman of the rnc and a senior adviser to the lincoln project michael steele. republican strat and senior adviser to the lincoln project, susan del percio and michael barnacle. michael steele, people ask me all the time, hey, so after trump leaves washington are you going to change back to being a republican? i go why the hell would i do that? you've got a guy that said he wouldn't guarantee a peaceful transfer of power in the last month of the campaign. you had a guy in the last two weeks of the campaign calling for the arrest of his political opponent who he thought was going to beat him at the polls.

that's what totalitarian leaders do and now he's stopping the president-elect of our united states from getting daily intel briefings, and yes, if barack obama had done this four years ago i would have criticized barack obama and asked the obama administration, i criticize them all the time. if they had been doing this four years ago, i would have gone crazy. so would you. so would every other right-thinking american. so why -- why is my former party acting in a way, after the election's over, that is actually causing grave concern about the security of this country that you have a commander in chief that's basically flying blind right now and they won't give him the daily briefings that he needs to

get in on right now. >> well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they -- they're taking the lead obviously from donald trump. but the fact is that there is no central way to get this president to change his behavior. it's not a question that they may not want to. i have heard from folks and talked to a number of people who are like, yeah, we need to move on. you know, we have got deaths and deficits to deal with, the covid to deal with, the new administration needs to get started but they know saying to the president who is in the white house stewing in his own loss to get out of the funk and actually allow the process to go forward. it's not going to happen until he decides it does. he's right now trying to figure up how to set up his streaming service once he becomes a private citizen. he's trying to figure out how he can put the best face on losing

so it proves the point he doesn't care about the country and what the country is going through. it's about what he's going through. so that's why you had senator lankford saying if they don't get the biden team the briefings he needs, he would take action as the chair committee relevant inside the senate that has to do with national security, et cetera. it will take mcconnell and others to figure out a work around to the extent that they can. the problem still is the president is -- you know, has put the lockdown on gsa. the president has put the lockdown on his cabinet and other agencies. so who gets him to move off of that? because that's what it is. you can have everybody go to the president and say, look, you have to do this. but he -- he doesn't want to give that impression that he's lost. dude, you lost. you know?

you can take those clips from 2016 and just swap out, you know, hillary clinton and put in donald trump and that's where we are. but who's going to get him to move? we're a week and a half into this, so that's where we are right now. until donald trump decides he's going to move on this, because he controls all of the cards here. >> yeah. you know, mike, i remember four years ago -- actually, no, not four years ago, my god. must have been 12 years ago, 2008, you told me about barack obama's briefing and it was called the o -- i'll just say the oh, wow, briefing. it doesn't matter how long you have been in government. until you're read in and you start getting these daily briefings, you don't know just how bad things are out there and barack obama's first briefing in

2008 was shocking to him, just like it is shocking to every new president that comes in regardless of where they came from and right now, joe biden is not getting the benefit of that doubt to see the briefing and to understand what he's going to have to get to work on immediately. >> yeah. joe, that briefing, it's infamous, famous, actually, in intelligence circles because it took place in chicago. secure facility in chicago and the bet would be what would barack obama's reaction be, the first time he saw the full intelligence briefing that is included in the president's daily brief, that the president of the united states gets. included in the briefing was all of the operations, national security operations, military operations, currently under way around the globe. he flipped over the book, he

began reading and looking at it very thoroughly because he took his time reading up and said, holy, expletive deleted. what we have for us now is that joe biden has the experience, he was vice president of the united states. he's maintained contacts with people around the globe in the interim. so he's not a babe in the woods here. he sort of has a sense of what's going on in the world, but the intelligence briefings are critical to the president. this past week and including yesterday, the president-elect spoke to several leaders around the globe including the pope who called him, but he does this on an unsecured line that under normal circumstances would have been provided to him by the state department. he does it without official translators translating the conversations between the president-elect and world

leaders. that too would have been afforded by the state department under a normal transition. what we do not have is a normal transition. what we do have is a follow-up oddly enough on the incompetence shown by the trump people when the transition between the obama administration and the trump administration took place four years ago. when they were told open doors, come, we'll help you with each department. each agency. you tell us what you want to do and we'll fix you up and the trump people balked at cooperating them with the obama people and now they're interfering with democracy. >> well, of course, they just pushed the covid preparation guide to the side. >> yeah. >> i think barack obama said they may have used it as a doorstep. they came in arrogant, they're leaving arrogant and unfortunately their attitude appears to be america be damned

because they surely aren't preparing the next president of the united states for the challenges that he is going to be left with. i will say this. more republican senators are starting to speak out, not enough. but more are starting to speak out in favor of president-elect joe biden getting that access to classified intel briefings despite the trump administration's unwillingness to do so. but appearing as both a trump campaign surrogate and white house press secretary on fox news, kayleigh mcenany declined to comment on the topic, effectively referring it back to herself. >> senator lankford, he said, listen, give joe biden the presidential daily brief. of all, senator harris -- she's getting -- she has high-level security access. has the president considered that? >> i haven't spoken to the president about that. that would be a question more

for the white house, but i will say that all laws are being followed. >> so, jonathan lemire, if you have any questions for "morning joe" and the operation of "morning joe," you can ask them to me, but i will refer them back to "morning joe." what's going on here? i mean, the president has to know that -- he knows he's lost. he has to know that biden's got to start getting these briefings. is there any suggestion, are any of his advisers, are any of his children trying to broach the topic with him to say, you can't do this. too much is at stake and if you ever want to run for office again, don't gamble with the national security of the united states of america as you're leaving office. >> we are all the way through the looking glass here, joe,

with that clip from her yesterday. the short answer is no. there are some voices in the white house growing louder trying to nudge the president to the graceful exit and perhaps maintaining some sort of fight here as fruitless as it may be on the legal challenges to at least cooperate with the transition. even at the bare minimum authorizing the briefings but no one is doing that, because it would be perceived as a sign of disloyalty. this is a place that's hollowed out because of coronavirus, like mark meadows, who got sick or were exposed to others. it's a small circle of people around the president and we saw from the secretary of state pompeo earlier there week joking allegedly about the transition to a second trump term. there's no appetite at the state department to cooperate whatsoever with the incoming

biden transition. as you note, there are a few more republican senators who suggested at least on this, this briefing should be offered to president-elect biden. but the person of course who could really make this happen could really force -- could build pressure from republicans to make the president cooperate is mitch mcconnell but he's shown no appetite to do so because according to our reporting he's so concerned about keeping the republican base fired up and motivated for the two runoff races in georgia. they're not sure if the president will participate in that at all. but mcconnell is hoping he will. that he doesn't want to be perceived as pushing the president out the door even when national security is clearly at stake. >> so mitch mcconnell -- it's amazing if you think about it.

mitch mcconnell actually thinks that it's a smart political move to block the incoming commander in chief from getting intel briefings that he and every incoming commander in chief desperately need to start preparing, to start -- it's not like you get in to office on january the 20th and i'm going to start to pick up the phone -- no, you start as early as you can making contacts. seeing where the crises are going to be when you get in to office. that's what every president has done. that's what ronald reagan did leading up to being sworn in on january the 20th, 1981. that's what george h.w. bush did in 1989. that's what every president has done. george w. bush. why won't republicans allow america's next commander in chief to do that? it's deeply disturbing that

mitch mcconnell actually is less concerned with america's national security than whether donald trump's going to go down and give a couple of speeches in a campaign. there's also of course a last-minute shakeup going on at the pentagon which is concerning a lot of americans. and national security experts. let's bring in senator tammy duck worth of illinois. she's an iraq war veteran and a purple heart recipient. i wanted to start by talk about a day that just past for you, that's very significant to you. tell us about yesterday and what it meant to you. >> well, thank you for remembering that. yesterday was my alive day, my sweet 16 alive day. it's the anniversary of my being shot down. it's the anniversary of the day that insurgents attacked my helicopter with an rpg and i had lost my legs but it's also a day

that i survived, that my buddy saved my life and chief warrant officer and the specialists carried me to safety. thank you for remembering. >> so tell me 16 years later how obviously -- other than the physical limitations, how that's changed your life. how that's changed the way you look at life. and how that changes the way you do your job every day. >> well, i think like most people who get a second chance at life, that you know you clearly have an incident that gives you that second chance. you wake up grateful. i wake up every day and i say a word of thanks to my buddies who saved my life and the doctors and the nurses and all of those great folks. so for me it's my northstar. i never want to live a day when i would let down the men who saved me. so every day for me is one where i dedicate myself to trying to

give something back in response and -- in return for what they did. i can never repay them, but i can try to do the best i can for the country that we all love. and i try to do the best for you know, my constituents. so every day i get a fresh start. >> kasie hunt is with us and has a question about some of the changes at the pentagon. kasie? >> senator, good morning to you. i mean, as you were just talking about you have such personal investment and understanding of policy decisions and how they impact the men and women that are fighting on the front lines. and clearly, this president has made significant changes at the defense department for these final two months and the way one source put it to me was, well, if he needs people that are more yes men then what is he asking them to say yes to and some seem to be about the troops in syria and afghanistan. what do you think would be the

impact of an abrupt change in america's footprint on the ground in those places or in the middle east more broadly if that is in fact what this president is tracking toward? >> well, it would be incredibly destabilizing. you will see a flaring up again of conflicts all over the key hot spots around the world. and, you know, this is going to happen -- the flaring up of actions by our adversary were going to happen again anyway without this president hollowing out the top officials at the department of defense in order to do what he wants to do. remember, you know, i think joe was just saying that, you know, you don't get a three-month grace period to sort of, you know, stretch your legs and test out your training wheels as president. it happens before day one. and in fact, our adversaries probe us, they probe every new president and they have for decades now. president clinton, the world's trade center attack, it happened

in february of his first year. president bush in february had to enforce a no fly zone because saddam hussein was encroaching and testing it out. april 1st, the chinese shot down our spy plane and captured u.s. personnel in president bush's first year. obama, the north koreans tested a nuclear bomb -- underground nuclear test. that happened in may of 2009. president trump, you know, the syrians conducted their chemical attack. they wanted to see will america respond and they conducted a chemical attack that happened in april. and president trump had to actually do a surgical strike on an airfield. in september, north korea launched another nuclear bombing, underground test, in september of trump's first year. our adversaries are watching and they test us. if trump is hollowing out the pentagon in order to do whatever he wants to do in iraq and

afghanistan, because he wants yes men in the pentagon, he is only going to contribute to the destabilizing effect that happens in the first few months of every president's first term and it's a dereliction of duty. i can't fathom why my republican colleagues have not spoken up. >> susan del percio? >> senator, when you look at the situation at how the president is making these kind of whimsical decisions he's just deciding on a whim to put someone here or there, can you talk about the difficulty of correcting the action? it's not like all of a sudden the president-elect comes in and then puts his own person and everything goes back to the way it was before. can you talk about how it hurts our nation and the instability it creates in the world and that this doesn't get fixed with another hire. >> right.

so we hear about secretary esper fired but what we didn't hear about all of the top people then resigned. so the head of policy resigned, the head of the secretary of defense's personnel resigned. the key staff have all resigned. so it's not just one empty spot but a whole bunch of empty spots, so when policy is happening, real-world things are happening, you need someone to make a decision right away. and there's nobody there or there's somebody there who is absolutely not qualified to be there. and that hurts our national security and it gives an opening to our adversaries. they're watch us, they want to see hey, what can we get away? it may not be a direct attack on americans but a direct attack on america's interests, like turkey, fern. you will see that time and again, our adversaries wait for, you know, when there is chaos,

when there is a weakness -- perceived weakness and they attack or they create, you know, a distraction. and we can't afford to do that. not in the middle of a global pandemic for crying out loud. >> absolutely not. senator tammy duckworth, thank you so much for being with us and thank you so much again, a day after your alive day for yours service to america. we so appreciate it. >> thank you. all right. we'll get back to our political panel in a moment. but first, at the top of the hour now, the latest on another record-setting milestone in the u.s. there's a number of new coronavirus cases reached over 159,000 nationwide yesterday. that number surpasses wednesday's single-day record of over 148,000 new cases and marks the ninth day in a row of over 100,000 cases. california's now reached 1 million coronavirus cases

statewide. becoming the second state to do that. shortly after texas also reached that mark. yesterday, the country also recorded over 1,100 deaths. the cdc now projecting over the next four weeks the number of daily covid deaths will likely reach 5,500 by december 5th which would place the total number of deaths at that time to between 260,000 to 280,000 americans. now let's bring in dr. richard besser. doctor, we were warned early in this pandemic that the fall was going to be difficult. how bad are things on the ground right now when you look at all of the numbers? >> you know, when you look across the country, we are in a really dangerous situation and for many reasons. we predicted that the numbers

would go up. viruses do very well in the winter thanks survive longer. they hang in the air longer. we can't spend as much time outdoors. but you have on top of that people being tired. people being tired of having to socially isolate and wear masks. other people who have run out of money. you know, the support that congress gave people back in the spring is long gone and so you have a situation where people aren't practicing the protective behaviors that they need to and you have millions of people who have to be in the economy to put food on the table and to pay rent. congress has not stepped up and put in place the mortgage foreclosure protection, the eviction protection, they haven't extended the sick leave benefits, the things that government should be doing. you know, you have the holiday season that will bring people from all over the country and

that's a total ticking time bomb. if we don't see a change, if we don't see the country coming together, many of those models are going to be a best case scenario. >> you know, doctor, so interesting you talk about americans being tired. they are so exhausted by this right now. you're right. i had to sit down with my children earlier this week, i said i know you're tired. we're all tired. everybody's tired of this. but if you go back and think about all of the precautions we took in march and april, how extraordinarily careful we were, things are actually so much worse now out there than they were then. so my message to them was be careful, don't let down your guard. things are actually worse now than they were back in the spring when we were being so vigilant. >> yeah. in order for that message -- that is the right message. in order for it to stick, we have to be hearing it across the board, it has to be a unified

national message. as long as that message is aligned which in particular political ideology, we won't get there. if 30% of the country says this isn't real, we should let it run its course, it will run its course. we need everyone to help. you know, the news that really excited me this week it came out of the cdc, it appeared in the middle of the night, but it showed that masks not only protect people from you if you happen to be infected and don't have symptoms but they protect you from other people. they could reduce your risk of infection by up to 70%. and that's huge. that's absolutely huge. that should be something that's on the front page of every paper and hopefully it can motivate people to say look, you may not be motivated to help others around you, but you know, have your loved ones wear masks. this will help protect you. >> doctor, let's talk about one other -- a few of the

differences between what we know about the virus now, what we knew about it in march. yes, things are far worse now if you look at the numbers. at the same time, we understand that this virus for the most part doesn't live on, you know, packages that are shipped to you for three days. we don't have to wipe -- it's more airborne than surface driven. we have also learned how to treat it better at the hospitals. we also -- we have learned an awful lot over the last six months. we have got the possibility of a vaccine. it will go a lot slower than people want it to go, but still we're moving in the right direction there. and also the testing. we may actually move to a rapid test in the next three to six months where we can even do it at home and unlike the rapid test now they can be more accurate. so yes, the numbers are much worse now than they were six months ago, but we have learned a lot, haven't we? >> yeah. you know, all of those things

you say are spot on and they're really important and they should give us hope. another thing that's given me hope is that many places have been able to get children in school learning and haven't seen that relate to a lot of transmission. a lot of colleges and universities have been able to open with in-person learning and yes some of them have seen increases in cases. but once they have gotten on top of that and most of them have been able to provide experiences for students that have been very good, so, you know, there is a lot we're learning. so you're as -- as the states move towards increasing restrictions, they can be based on evidence. we don't need to say you need an entire national shutdown. you can say, okay, here's some activities we're learning that are risky, let's shut down those that are risky and allow people to move into the activities that are much safer. i hope we don't see a reflex

shutting of all schools in america, given there are places that have been able to do education in a good way and we know that lower income children, children of color, children whose school systems are the weakest, those kids need to be in school learning. they're going to suffer the most by these shutdowns. >> i have to say, i have seen one thing we have learned this fall is, yeah, some schools have not done well. some school districts have not done well. but a lot of success stories out there about in-school learning that we have had administrators that have done it well, have kept children safe. when a child gets covid that child is sent home and isolated for a few weeks and we have seen a lot of schools really doing it right. i agree with you, doctor. let's hope that it's not a one size fits all approach. dr. richard besser, thank you for being with us. we always appreciate you being on. let's bring back in now

kasie hunt, mike barnicle, jonathan lemire, michael steele and susan del percio. let's bring in the associated editor of "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson and donny deutsch as well. let's get to the breaking political news from overnight. nbc news is projecting that joe biden wins arizona. he flips a state that hasn't voted for a democratic president since 1996 and before that, since harry truman in 1948. also, the state of arizona the home of barry goldwater conservatism and the home of john mccain sent yet another democrat to the united states senate this year. one in 2018, one in 2020. the era of donald trump has been terrible for republicans in that state. they now have two democratic

u.s. senators and they just gave 11 electoral colleges to joe biden that brings his tally to 290. north carolina and georgia are still out. north carolina still counting through the votes and will likely go to donald trump. georgia has joe biden ahead by 14,000 votes. they're doing a statewide hand recount. it has been ordered. nobody believes -- nobody that knows anything about campaigns believes that's going to change. georgia more than likely going to be in the democratic column. so there we have it. and yet, we have donald trump continuing to ignore the reality that he lost this election. trying to figure out his best exit strategy in a map increasingly blue and against an

opponent who is going to end up with the same 306 electoral votes that he received four years ago against hillary clinton. gene robinson has a new column entitled, republicans are wrong, trump has no right to cause chaos. don't listen to mitch mcconnell who says that president trump has every right to look into allegation in an attempt to overturn the election. trump has no right to file frivolous lawsuits in bad faith and demand recounts that have no chance of changing the outcome. he has no right to make wild claims of fraud without presenting a shred of credible evidence. he has no right to delay and disrupt the most important performative act in our

democracy, the peaceful and orderly transfer of power, but he does have a duty to his country and like with so many other obligations trump is neglecting it to the point of abuse. the symbolism of a graceful concession is more important than the nuts and bolts of a handoff, especially with biden's vast experience and especially in this pandemic, the nuts and bolts do matter. trump is petulantly weakening a divided nation's faith for the hope for and the unseen foundational ideas and all of the terrible things this awful man has done to our country, this could be the worst. but gene, even though we know it's over, even though karl rove has written in "the wall street journal" that it's over that the

recounts won't amount to anything, even though that "the wall street journal" editorial board said the same thing, even though republicans across capitol hill all know he has lost, he's still -- he is still acting petulantly and still not allowing the incoming commander in chief to get his much-needed daily intel briefings. so i guess the question is, what do we do and also is anybody surprised? >> well, i don't think we should be surprised. why should donald trump start acting like a president now? he's had four years to do it and he hasn't done it so why start now. so look, all of the u.s. senators, every single one knows that trump has lost this election. everyone in the house knows it. everybody who's had any experience with elections knows that this is over.

that this wasn't that close an election. that recounts change votes in perhaps in the hundreds one way or the other. as good a chance as adding to biden's total and never in the tens of thousands. it just doesn't happen. so it's over. there's a responsibility -- trump is going to be irresponsible and he should be condemned for that. it's a terrible thing that he's doing, doesn't have a right to do it but -- but the republican party incredibly with a few exceptions is going along with this charade. it's a dangerous charade. this is a moment in our democracy when we peacefully transfer power. sometimes to the other party and it is -- it is the -- in many

ways the best moment of the democracy when we pretend we don't have the bitter ideological and tribal divisions and we pretend that it's more important that we all know and understand, it's more important we're all americans and we all buy into this idea and that keeps us going. it keeps us going until the next time. so you lose this one, you might win the next one and you want the guys to behave in the right way. and that's what trump is disrupting, a tradition that goes back to john adams handing off to thomas jefferson in 1801. and we shouldn't stand for this. he has no right to do this to our democracy. >> no. and republicans that allow him to continue to do it, continue to keep the president-elect, the next commander in chief in the dark on intel matters should be held to account. by the way, one of the reasons why arizona going into the biden

column firmly into the biden column makes such a difference is a few of the remaining trump holdouts told me, well, if he wins north carolina, and then if we can turn around wisconsin which is pretty close, then all we have to do is find massive fraud in georgia and he -- you know, that was never going to happen. but with arizona's additional 11 electoral votes and with their stringent standard for recounts, you have to be within 200 and the candidates can't even request a recount if you're within 200 votes, that 11, that is solidly now in joe biden's column. nothing's going to change that. pennsylvania donald trump is now losing by over 55,000 votes in pennsylvania. that's never going to turn around. he's over 270. there's nothing that a recount anywhere can do. there's nothing that a georgia

recount can do except maybe get it down from 11,000 to 10,000. if he's lucky. it's something that karl rove has been saying. i don't understand also why donald trump continues to let this go on. because as he does, he's only dragging out the bad news every day. you look at the bottom of your screen and you see there's that scoreboard. it's not changing. it's only going up. right now, it's 290-217. after georgia is recounted, it will be 306-217. does donald trump really want to wake up every day and look up on that score board and see how badly he's losing? i mean, i'll get to donny about this in a second. but i can tell you the move is to get it behind it.

get it behind you, get on to other news, turn the news to the transition and if you want to run for president again, go ahead and announce that. start that campaign. but this actually, mike barnicle, not surprising this is shortsighted. i must say too, i was talking to somebody last night, donald trump had to work hard every day to lose this election. every single day, he should have won this election if you look at the numbers at the end, if you look at the economy, if you look at a lot of things that he did, he could have won this election. but he's worked hard every day for four years to divide americans. instead of leading on the coronavirus, he worked hard every day to bungle the coronavirus and to divide americans over something that should have been a unifying war time effort.

he's lost the war -- >> well -- >> now he's losing the peace, mike. again, it makes no sense for whatever he wants to do in the future. >> well, he divided us very successfully. he was very successful on that mission, joe. and as you pointed out, you know, four years ago he became president because he defeated and the theory was then perhaps the only person he could have defeated, hillary clinton. now, you can argue about that both ways. this time out, he was beaten by perhaps the only democratic candidate who could have beaten him and you can argue about that too, but the numbers are pretty solid backing up joe biden's quest. you're also right about the damage he's done in the wake of the virus that's infecting more than 10 million americans and is going coast to coast again. a second wave. and what is donald trump thinking about? well, jonathan lemire from

everything that you have written and reported and other reports and other newspapers, "the washington post," "the new york times" he is thinking about how to revive himself visually with a streaming service in order to make a lot of money. how accurate is that? >> well, streaming services are all the rage right now. mike, he is exploring his options and that is one thing that is on the table. as we have reported. some sort of effort in to the media world. and it's not gone unnoticed. the steady -- yesterday, there was more than a dozen attacks, tweets, from the president against fox news supporting other conservative outlets like newsmax and oan. his anger at fox is in part because on election night they were the first to call arizona for joe biden. followed a short time later by the associated press and now we are seeing other networks including nbc do the same.

the result is the same. joe biden won arizona and that's the final nail in the coffin to thread the needle with recounts. that's simply not going to happen. he's going to lose. but his effort -- his focus now is on not on the transition, his aides have said to me what he's doing right now is figuring out what's the next step for himself. whether it's the media or indeed keeping the idea alive of a political comeback. that he might run again in 2024. and the expectation is that in the coming perhaps even days or week he will announce -- maybe not a full-fledged candidacy which he's thinking about it and it may freeze the republican field in place and it may make investigators a little more reluctant perhaps new york state, other places, to pursue probes into donald trump and his business, his family, so on.

which of course he would be subject to as a private citizen again. so there's a lot at play right now. including the president's need as he's told people to make some money once he leaves office. this is clear, he has no sense, no inclination to cooperate with this transition. this is not what he's looking to do and most agree he'll begrudgingly step aside and leave office in the next few weeks but he won't do it with any formal concession. >> no one should be surprised by that. just be surprised by the republicans who are still going to be around after this is over actually standing in the way of the incoming commander in chief getting daily intel briefings and understanding what he's going to be facing in just a few months. and i'll tell you, they're throwing everything out there. they're making fools of themselves, the republicans are,

in hopes of being noticed by donald trump, supporting his unfounded claims of election fraud. i don't know if you saw senator john cornyn of texas yesterday. he knows better than this. he put out the following tweet. another example of why it's prudent to let the process run its course. he shared the link to a recent "new york times" article titled thousands of uncounted votes found a week after election in puerto rico. a story itself details nearly 200 boxes of uncounted votes have surfaced potentially affecting the outcome of close local elections across the island of puerto rico. now, we're pretty sure that he knows that puerto rico doesn't actually vote in the election. cornyn said he wasn't necessarily referring to the presidential race, though he didn't really explain what other

process he had in mind. and by the way, what puerto rico has to do with georgia or arizona or pennsylvania. and then susan del percio, tommy tuberville, he coached at aub n auburn, i don't expect from him, and other than saying his father fought in europe to defeat socialism which he should read a history book or two about nazis, but he also said that al gore had been president for 30 days in 2000. until the supreme court took it away from al gore and then made george w. bush president of the united states. i mean -- you can't make this stuff up. you really can't make it up.

but the republicans are. it's just -- it's beyond crazy there aren't grown-ups in the party that aren't stopping these people from making fools of themselves. >> yeah. that's just looney tunes, but there's one republican senator i would like to hold up to task and really deserves some real responsibility in how poorly this is going as far as the right transfer of power to the president-elect. and that is marco rubio. marco rubio is the acting chair of the senate intel committee. he knows better. he knows what's on the line. he -- you know, he may be trying to get a nod from donald trump for 2024, but he has to face the voters in 2022. and he has to explain why he did not ensure that the president-elect was properly prepared not just on our foreign issues overseas but domestically and ensuring that he could

tackle the coronavirus. florida as we know is a central spot that's going to need a lot of funding and a lot of attention. and i just think it's disgraceful as the head of the intel committee he has not sought to at least do bipartisan support to recognize the president-elect, call for the general service administration to give him that -- to give him the money so they can operate properly. it is a disgrace and again, he deserves special attention. we know what mitch mcconnell is. but if this is someone who thinks he can run for president, he shows he does not have the depth or the ability to handle the job. i don't think he has the ability the get re-elected in 2022 with this behavior. >> so michael steele, so let's talk about marco rubio. he has said that biden should get briefings. what can he do at this point? maybe get other republicans on

the intel committee to sign a letter and show that the entire intel committee stands -- because susan is right. he does have a re-election in 2022 and he, you know -- the world out of the rubio camp he's expecting to run in 2024. so this wouldn't seem like an ideological thing to do. protecting america's national security and guaranteeing -- so what do you do? maybe he gets elected from everybody -- a letter from everybody on the intel committee, democratic and republican alike. would that be a positive move? >> that would be a positive move and he can join up with chairman lankford, so those senators who touch and lead the relevant committees that he could be the one who spearheads that kind of coordinated effort on behalf of those chairmen to say to the president and to gsa, let's open

this process up. the president-elect was receiving these briefings prior to becoming president-elect. it was a limited form of it, but he was receiving these briefings. so they have since stopped now that he's president-elect when there's the most critical time for him to have it. so yeah, those presidential wanna-bes in leader committee positions can show to susan's point their gravitas and their sort of presidential demeanor if you will, their pre-presidential demeanor and their leadership on this. but they're sycophants for donald trump. they don't want to get on the wrong side of the 30% base. they're so interested in their own self-preservation they don't give a damn about the country and the processes that are required to keep us moving forward. so every voter in florida and

elsewhere need to check on those things. and susan's right. it's going to be an issue. >> michael steele and susan del percio, thank you both so much. here's hoping that marco rubio does the right thing for the sake of this country and gets the intel committee together, insisting that the president-elect, the man who's going to be commander in chief starts to get the daily intel briefings they know better than anybody on capitol hill he desperately needs. hey, so ten days after election day, house democrats are now starting to take a really hard look at some of the errors they made that left their majority in doubt, this year and in 2022. politico reports that dozens of interviews acknowledge that the party's campaign arm underestimated the trump's popularity, relied too much on

polls and failed to heed the warning of its most vulnerable members. the report continues, many of the party are warning that the biggest priority for the democratic congressional campaign committee must be overhauling its message. they need -- they say it needs to craft a proactive campaign that counteracts on medicare for all to fracking. most struggled to counter the flood of gop ads on the issue. and republicans aired 70 different broadcast ads that mentioned defunding the police. and a staten island based seat, the congressional leadership fund saw democrat congressman max rose's ratings drop 21 points in the months after they began airing defund the police spots. donny, some democrats, a lot of people on twitter that don't want to face the facts and the

facts are, if you listen to the democratic congressmen and women that were running that they were hurt by two things. one, defund the police ads and two, the socialism ads. and you bring that up it's like waving a blood city flag. i'm sorry, i'm not saying it. you're not saying it, the people who almost lost their congressional seats or their congressional seats are saying those are the two issues that killed their candidacies. >> joe, we can say it, it's common sense. as far as socialism, people see socialism as the most un-american word you can use. i want to say that again. i have yet -- other than certain voters behind the ages of 18 and 34 that actually thinks it's a good thing, they're happy to get a small salary and health care for all, but the overwhelming majority that's a verboten

thing. aoc went on and doubled down on it yesterday, and the amount of people, the friends of mine who quote aoc as if she's somehow the voice of the party, she's not. this is -- she represents 100,000 people. the party is not about -- cannot be about defunding the police. that's the most inane, stupid thing in the world. obviously, joe biden who won was explicit about that. you don't win talking about defunding the police or win talking about fracking. if you look at 2018, the 40 seats were all on moderate messages and some of the sexier candidates who went on to national prominence who ran on a much more progressive platform lost. so this country lives just right of center. actually, interestingly enough, your politics is very much where most of the country is. i'm describing it right of

center. that's where these elections are and even with the changing demographics we are still i believe 20 to 30 years away from where messages that have more of what i'll call socialistic overtone would have any resonance. and we're a century away from when defunding the police makes sense. it's idiotic and any democrat who doesn't understand that is a moron, actually. >> let's be simple about it, people come from the northeast of florida because they want to escape taxes for the most part. people come to america for the most part because they want freedom. a lot escaping socialist governments, big governments, that just don't work. and so it didn't work in 2020, and i think i saw even paul krugman said don't use the word. stay away from the word socialism. and on your other point, you're

right. we have some back pinchers who have the right to represent their district and to fight for what they believe but it has to be frustrating for joe biden to say he's against defunding the police. jim clyburn said he was against defunding the police, that it was a stupid thing to say, that it was a bumper sticker and that it would hurt the party. you had nancy pelosi saying the same thing. but obviously, it was a message that really broke through because it's something i heard. i heard about socialism around the clock from my friends, i heard about defunding the police. republicans were able to make these messages stick. democrats just have to figure out how over the next two years to make -- not to defend themselves because that's the problem. that's what the democrats do. we must figure out how to defend -- no, you figure out how to attack the other side. you push them back on their

heels. don't sit and like democrats are -- how do we defend ourselves? no, you figure out how to knock them off balance. now to examples of how presidential transitions are supposed to work. >> as these pictures were taken, carter solicited the advice on the economic summit meeting and he pledged to make the transition smooth. >> it's my judgment that the transition is working smoothly. but we'll continue to maximize our efforts to continue that and it's been a real pleasure and a privilege for mrs. ford and myself to have governor carter and mrs. carter as our guests on this occasion. >> after posing briefly for photographers, president carter and his successor walked to the oval office for private talks.

mrs. carter took mrs. reagan on a tour of the mansion where the reagans will live. the president and mr. reagan spent an hour and a half together. at the end of meeting there was a photo session in the oval office. >> we have a very good working relationship personally and also very fine transition and a commitment which has been in effect for several weeks now. >> outside the president-elect was asked about his thoughts on the meeting. >> the president was most gracious, most helpful and is completely helpful in the transition. all i can say is we're speaking for my own people and myself, nancy, we're deeply grateful. >> so here's the thing. it's never easy. i know it's not easy for donald trump. not easy for anybody. you saw those clips of gerald ford and jimmy carter.

the morning that ford conceded to carter in an extraordinarily close race in 1976, his wife had to speak for him because he was hoarse. i'm sure he was afraid that he might get emotional. it was a heart breaking loss by ford but he got past it. and he worked with president carter and helped president carter get ready. jimmy carter four years later he's written about what a heart broking loss he and his wife rosalyn endured to ronald and nancy reagan but there you saw the images of him being a statesman and being a gentleman and welcoming the reagans even though their hearts were broken. it couldn't have been an easy thing. it had to be one of the most difficult things that these men and their wives endured, but they did it for the good of this country. i wish more republicans looked up to this sort of character and this sort of leadership and

demanded the same from their leaders. but they just don't anymore. it's heart breaking. well, speaking of president carter, the johns hopkins school of advanced international studies is hosting an exclusive conversation online today with zbigniew brzezinski, the late national security adviser to carter and of course mika's dad. with us to talk about it, the author of the forthcoming book on the doctor, ed luce and former u.s. ambassador to sweden, mark brzezinski. he served on the national security staff under president clinton and we have the dean of johns hopkins advanced international studies, eliot cohen. all three will be joining the discussion online later this morning. ed, let's begin with you. first of all, great news about the upcoming biography on dr.

brzezinski. i know you have been a bit preoccupied with this election, but i know the family is so excited about you doing this. >> look, he's one of the great strategic brains of american foreign policy, he'd be up there with henry kissinger, george cannon. but has had far less attention paid to him than those two figures and i think the -- sort of the scope of his brain and the strategic impact of what he did not just for carter as national security adviser, but in setting up the whole debate about how america handled the cold war and what it should do after the cold war is i think a very underappreciated life biography. it's a fascinating life. i'm delighted to be his

biographer. >> and elliott, your school obviously meant a lot to dr. brzezinski and what -- i can't think of a better place to have the brzezinski institute. what are you hoping to happen today? >> well, first thing i want to say is how delighted we are to host this. i'm looking forward to drawing ed out a little bit on what he thinks some of the key themes of his life were and get into a bit on the reflection of life and times. you know, he was a towering figure at the end of the cold war, i want to reflect on that and everything that's happened since. zbig was at johns hopkins and he conducted a famous seminar which you had to apply to get in. that's for the full professors. i was chuffed when he let me

into the room. so he was an active intellect all the way through. one of the things remarkable about him. >> we are seeing pictures of course with president carter, the man who gave dr. brzezinski the honor of working for him, his national security adviser, despite the fact that at times he could be difficult. president carter remained patient with him and actually loved the fact that he spoke his mind, but dr. brzezinski also worked for ronald reagan off line, and our would go in and advise president reagan. george h.w. bush and democrats and republicans alike. we talked about your father's prowess and what he did in the white house not only with jimmy carter but also advising other presidents, republicans and democrats alike. but the thing that surprised me is when mika and i went across the country, different book events, we would always have

people coming up to us and i must say they presented a different picture of your father than you and i often saw. and that was a picture of a professor fully engaged and doting. i say doting, oh, mika, your father was so wonderful and nice. mika would go, was he? it was -- they always had their stories of how what a great professor he was and how selfless he was at columbia, at harvard. of course, at johns hopkins. >> you know, joe, your words capture the many dimensions of my late father and a couple of things. first of all, he always thought that the process, the democratic process was much important than the specific people involved. you showed clips from the carter/reagan transition.

yes, carter's political loss to reagan was tremendously frustrating to the carter team, very saddening. and there were people whispering falsely wrongly that the reagan campaign had colluded not to release the hostages in tehran until after carter had lost the election. and to his credit, president carter absolutely put those rumors to bed and said, dead wrong. i have lost, we're focusing on the transition. and remember, joe, that 22 late years later in 2002, president carter was awarded the nobel peace prize not for his work as president, but for his work as a post president on humanitarian activities around the world. focusing on women's rights and fighting guinea worm in africa and things like that made him

great. i think that's instructive for the current circumstances and to eliot cohen's point, our father was a great teacher. i think that's why president carter wanted him on his team and he was a great teacher for mika and me and i have a personal letter that my father wrote to me. he was fond of writing us letters and in my 20s when i was making all kinds of decisions he wrote me this. this combination of a one dimensiontional focus is a light you should strive to overcome. life has to be a combination of goals pursued with constancy and it should combine career and service and service and a balance provides deep and enduring satisfaction. he was a great teacher.

>> yeah. a great teacher. it's -- it's so interesting, mika actually took out a couple of letters, some correspondence she found yesterday that your father wrote. so impressive. ed, one of the reasons i'm really looking forward to your biography is i don't think a lot of people know the sweeping nature of dr. brzezinski's life. of course, we all have read -- i'm sure you and i and others have read dean attkisson's "present at the creation." and with dr. brzezinski you have a life present at the creation, at least in the world we live in now. his father was in germany. they were in germany as -- during the early rise of hitler. his father then was in the soviet union during the purges and the show trials.

they escaped as did mrs. brzezinski, escaped actually to -- to escape adolph hitler and even that was harrowing at times for them. it really is a remarkable sweeping story and to end up being one of the architects of the anticommunist foreign policy, quite a remarkable arc in his life. >> the sweep of his life is kind of cinematic. i mean, i agree with that. to turn up in north america not speaking a word of english and within a year winning english language prizes at his school in canada. and then to go on to by guess the great rival but also friend of kissinger. also born and raised in europe. also fled the nazi germany, is

an extraordinary testament to what cold war america was like. it was recruiting the best brains and zbigniew brzezinski made mincemeat of the old georgetown set, the traditional foreign policy set. cyrus vance of secretary of state, and he had the trust of jimmy carter. remember nixon never trusted kissinger. they worked together in fascinating ways, but in zbig's case when carter announced that he was running for the presidency, he said i am an eager student of zbigniew brzezinski. i don't think i ever heard -- >> there's mika and the president, by the way. >> -- ever say that. >> yeah. go ahead, ed. >> i don't think i ever heard a

presidential candidate say they're an eager student of their foreign policy adviser. so of course, he really dominated and shaped the carter administration's policy. when carter lost the fascinating footage that you showed, ronald reagan offered the job of national security adviser to brzezinski. again, i don't think that there's ever been a national security adviser who's worked for a democratic and a republican president. so that was sort of how greatly his strategic brain was valued. >> i don't mean this as a negative at all to dr. brzezinski, but you read the history of the carter white house and the history that you are going obviously to be putting together and there were

times that dr. brzezinski was sharp and impatient and it's such a remarkable tribute to jimmy carter's confidence and leadership that he sat there and he listened to advisers that disagreed with him, strenuously. he thanked them, he absorbed it and then he made his own decision. i mean, for me -- for me, that's a mark of a great leader. that jimmy carter wants the best and the brightest around him and actually encouraged the type of tough descent that dr. brzezinski often brought to the table. >> you know, joe, i find myself thinking of course as i'm sure everybody does about the contrast with where we are now. and the truth is that the behavior you're describing is actually a lot more like the norm of simple good leadership,

and great leadership. it's so utterly different of the behavior of the current president who has no interest in that kind of thing. but you know, george w. bush could listen to dissent, barack obama could. ronald reagan could. bill clinton could. what's bizarre and anomalous is what we have got now and the same thing is true of the transitions you were talking about earlier. i worked a bit when i was in government on the george w. bush/barack obama transition and that too was done with a spirit of -- with a public spiritedness and courtesy and professionalism. it's so utterly different from what we're seeing now. >> i know. unfortunately. let's hope we figure out a way back to that place. thank you all so much. you can read ed's latest piece in "the financial times" entitled donald trump is not

done with america yet. make sure to watch today as the life of dr. brzezinski and his work is discussed. coming up after another record breaking day for u.s. covid infections, nbc's richard engel has on the global race to develop the vaccine. "morning joe" is back in a moment. g it ♪ ♪ watch it ♪ sweat it ♪ bend and stretch it ♪ track it ♪ share it ♪ compare it ♪ think it ♪ solve it ♪ try and crack it ♪ breath it ♪ calm it ♪ and renew it renew active from unitedhealthcare gives you so many ways to be healthy. powered by aarp staying sharp and fitbit. and included in unitedhealthcare medicare plans. unitedhealthcare. get medicare with more.

how would you assess president trump's leadership in this time of covid? >> well, i was asked earlier during the pandemic for a specific rating and i gave a d minus as a response, and i would say it hasn't changed. you know, if you're running a company, there's the old add damage of the buck stops here with the ceo. well, the buck stops with the leader of our country, so you lay this at his feet. he could have created a national testing plan with good contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. vietnam did that. look at their numbers. they're outstanding, look at germany. look at new zealand.

we should expect that of our leader, not what we have been getting. >> that was some of nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel's conversation with melinda gates on the fight for a vaccine. it's all part of on assignment with richard engel, race for the vaccine which airs sunday night at 10:00 p.m. eastern here on msnbc. what else can you tell us about the race for a vaccine? >> reporter: well, it has been the greatest journey of scientific discovery of our lifetimes. in many ways, it has been like the space race, the race to put a satellite into space or a man on the moon, except this one has been a race to end the pandemic, and it has taken a year, but finally we are starting to see the goal posts coming closer. there are many companies right now, many research laboratories that are at the end of the race.

they are in phase three trials. they're getting ready to roll out vaccines at the end of this year or early next year, and it's not just one company. there are several in different countries around the world. now, the next stage is going to be if potentially even more difficult and that is distribution, getting the vaccine to the right people all over the world, and there are questions of temperature. there are quest of logistics of political will, but the scientific piece has taken roughly a year, and we're nearly there. so this hour traces how that happened, how it began with genetic code and one of the things that we talk about in this hour, which i think most people don't know, is there was a prototype vaccine within weeks of the outbreak. it's all based on genetic engineering, that right as the outbreak was starting to spread out of china to other parts of the world, china put the genetic formula for the virus online and scientists were able to use that

genetic code to build prototype vaccines, and the vaccines that are about to come to market are almost identical to the ones that they had right in the beginning. so all this time and all the lives that have been lost have gone down to testing because that is what's taken so much time. so we trace this journey, and it has not been an easy road, and it has not been a clean race either. there have been attempts at hacking. there have been attempts to steal research. there have been attempts by russia and china to publish disinformation, and i spoke to the head of counter intelligence in the united states, bill evenina, and he says that there is evidence, according to him, that the chinese at least are using some of the american technology that he believes was taken for their vaccine. >> how successful have they been? how much have they managed to steal? how much have they managed to disrupt, destroy, confuse?

>> i really can't get into what they've potentially stolen or what their operational success is, but let's just say they've been super aggressive. there are some in our community that would say a lot of the work being done in russia and china has already been predicated upon stolen research here in the u.s. >> how do you know that? >> we see a lot of the same i say signatures on our vaccines as we see on their vaccine. there's only one place they could have got it from. >> wow. all right, well, thank you so much, richard, and richard's new reporting airs this sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. thanks so much, richard engel. gene robinson, i wanted to follow up in conversation we were having before we moved to dr. brzezinski, and that is the democrats. how -- you and i both heard jim clyburn and others speak out against defund the police, and yet that attack continued to actually damage democrats as well as the socialism attack. how do they defend themselves better in the coming two years?

>> well, they have a branding problem with, you know, the word socialism is not a good word to use, and so don't use that word. the phrase defund the police is -- is not a good phrase to use. don't use that phrase, and you actually gave the solution. they need to stop defending themselves. they need to attack the republicans. they need to, you know, they had success, for example, going after the republican party on the issue of health care, the fact that republicans have no plan for health care. they need to -- they can't be a one note party. they can't be just about health care, but that's the sort of thing they need to do. they need to move forward rather than sort of backing up and h k hunkering down because that's not going to get them anywhere. >> donny deutsch, how do they get outside the box? i mean, if i were a democrat and somebody were accusing my party of being socialist, i'd go,

wait, wait, wait, are you kidding me? you guys have run up the biggest deficits in the history of america, the biggest federal debt in the history of the world. you've had the biggest, most bloated socialistic budgets over the past four years. your spending so out exceeded whatever barack obama or any democrat ever did. you guys spend like drunken socialists. that sort of attack can't be answered because there is no answer to it. they have been spending like drunken socialists. but democrats seem to be forever on the defensive. >> democrats we are the populist party, we are the party of jobs, we are the party of health care, and continue, continue, continue to say that we are the responsible party for the people. the other party ran amok. just own it. joe biden is the perfect prototype for what this party

should be about. there's a reason he won by 5 million votes. >> yeah, all right. donnie, gene, thank you so guys so much. hope to see you again early next week, and the next hour of "morning joe" starts right now with the overnight breaking news on the election. breaking news overnight, nbc news projecting joe biden wins arizona. biden flips a state that hasn't voted for a democrat since 1996 for president. at the same time, that state, the home of barry goldwater and john mccain now has two democratic u.s. senators. with his win, president-elect joe biden adds more than -- adds 11 more electoral votes to his total bringing him currently to 290. north carolina and georgia are now the only states left, but the race is still deemed too

close to call, just over 14,000 votes separate biden and trump in georgia where a statewide hand recount has been ordered, but most likely north carolina will go to trump. georgia to biden. and perhaps it was waiting on arizona to be called, also breaking overnight, china congratulated president-elect joe biden on his election victory. a spokesman for the chinese foreign ministry today said, quote, we respect the choice of the american people. we congratulate mr. biden and ms. harris proving once again, willie geist, the old saying that my god you've heard in political science classes for the past 100 years, as goes scottsdale, so goes beijing. >> you know, joe, beijing traditionally waits for the nbc decision desk to make a call before making a congratulatory

phone call to the president-elect. so yes, keeping informed. >> no doubt about it, and jonathan lemire, as we said yesterday, of course your news organization "associated press" called arizona for biden in the summer of '76. it was a good summer. it was a fine time. fox news, i think it was '74 right after craft works album debuted on casey kasem's top 40, we don't understand why they went so early, but i guess all's well that ends well. >> nice of you guys to catch up, frankly. this is a solid win, of course, for joe biden in arizona, which let's just very briefly say -- >> come on, you can admit it was a -- it was a little early, like i just bought my pet rock. i was walking around the mall in

upstate new york, and i'm like who's this biden cat? you dpiguys and fox news went early, but obviously you saw something that none of us saw for another 30 or so years. >> ap ahead, and secondly, how about the big red machine, cincinnati, those mid-70s, cincinnati reds, they're going to be a force to be reckoned with. certainly a terrific win for joe biden, that state flipping it from red to blue. and one that in this current context deals yet another blow to any -- even the slightest of hopes this president has of trying to overturn this year's election results as yet another state slips from his grasp and 11 more electoral college votes end up in joe biden's column. >> and joe, let's just underline a democrat has not won arizona since 1996 when bill clinton did it. before that it was truman in 1948. as you mentioned, too, two democratic senators in that

state. joe biden is now at 290 electoral votes. there's a hand recount underway in the state of georgia. most people believe that it's not going to overturn 14,000-vote lead for joe biden, so likely he will end up with 306 electoral votes. he crossed the 78 million total vote number yesterday, so he's really running up some numbers now. china called, he had a phone call with the pope. so everyone knows where this is going. it will be interesting to see now how soon republicans turn that corner as president trump now is all caps tweeting conspiracy theories about voting machines changing votes is kind of where we are. but he's still in office for more than two months. >> he's still in office, nobody's really listening to him, certainly judges aren't listening to him. people that matter aren't listening to him. and if you look at the map, kasie hunt, if you look at the map of where the states went this year, it's easy to forget looking at that map where you

have georgia that's going to go blue, and you were talking about that for a very long time. as carl rove said, these recounts aren't going to amount to anything. this election's over. they're not going to find 14,000. it doesn't -- as rove said in his wall street journal editorial, only three recounts have been successful over the past 25, 30 years, and certainly georgia nothing looking like that, so you're going to have georgia blue breaking the solid south. you have arizona, of course, that's gone blue. it wasn't so long ago that jared kushner and donald trump believed they were going to win new mexico, blue. believed they were going to win minnesota, blue. colorado for the first time in a very long time won in a presidential race by double-digits. it wasn't that long ago that colorado was a swing state, and yes, democrats had a very bad

year, underperformed in house races, underperformed in senate races. we can taunt thlk about that a bit later, but just looking at this map, it actually went as a lot of us have been predicting for several years with georgia, texas, and arizona all leaning more democratic because of demographic changes, and even north carolina coming along, too, and i say this not because of this year but just because it's a trend. the next four years are going to be even tougher for republicans in those states especially. >> you're absolutely right, joe, and joe biden ran his campaign -- if we stick with this map -- right through that blue wall in the upper midwest, and that's in many ways the democratic party's past. it's pretty clear that they're going to continue to struggle in those areas if this realignment continues. but the future, as you point out, is right through that sun belt, and i think you're

absolutely right about north carolina because all of these dynamics are playing out there as well. and to see georgia go really i think jurunderscores that. you're right, i had a lot of people pointing me at georgia in the final week or so of the campaign because this is another one of those places where you feel like strategists and consultants tell you every time, oh, yeah, we're going to win georgia, and then it never really happens, but here we are. and that's also true in arizona. the future for the democratic party is really in this realignment, and in many ways, you know, one of the things people have started to say to me in the last couple of days as we analyze these results more fully and we have a more complete picture of how this happened is that it's unlikely democrats could have won this election with any candidate other than joe biden because he was able to appeal to those voters who in the upper midwest who either stayed home or voted for trump last time around. >> let's show the map again if we can, and i want to point something out because there's a

lot of talk going around about how off the polls were. in fact, i tweeted weeks before i don't believe any polls. but let's take a look, and it really plays out like dave wasserman had said it was going to play out, that the sun belt states actually, the polls there were more accurate. north carolina, still too close to call was within two points in most polls. georgia was tied. i mean, it seems like every poll we showed the last month had georgia tied. well, guess what, georgia ended up tied. arizona was always within a point or two. arizona ended up extraordinarily close. texas, there were some polls that showed texas tied for a very long time, but as we got closer to the end, we started seeing trump ahead by five points. those polls were pretty accurate, too. in the pollster's defense, not just publicly but also privately, we talked to the

biden campaign about a month before, and they just said outright, texas is gone. that was a month before. so they really weren't surprised by the polls across the sun belt. i think the shock for most had to do with wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania, which wasserman said weeks before always underreports donald trump's strength in those upper midwest states. when we're talking about polling being worthless, well, certainly was worthless in the upper midwest, but across the sunbelt, hit it just about right. i've got to say also, i tweeted yesterday demographics is destiny, and a lot of people on the right freaked out. a lot of people on the left freaked out. i really seriously don't understand why they would freak out. that's what's wrong with politics. no, actually, when you can look at demographic changes and north

carolina and georgia are becoming more diverse and texas, according to john cornyn, nine hispanic babies are born every day for one caucasian baby, and then you look at arizona and see that state continuing to diversify as well, not that hard to figure out, and willie, if you want to know how bad republicans are with certain demographic groups, after i said demographics is decembernstiny f people say donald trump got 12% of the black vote. you're bragging about losing about nine out of ten black voters, and by the way, it's usually 8%. so we're even within the margin of error if you really believe these exit polls which may be no more accurate than the overall polls. as far as the hispanic vote, yeah, he did pretty well. in miami-dade he did really well with cuban americans, but he

still got, according to these exit polls only 32% of the hispanic vote, which republicans are acting like, my gosh, he cracked the code. you know, george w. bush in 2004 got 44% of the hispanic vote. when republicans were getting in the low 30s, the party was having after action reports going why do we do so badly with hispanics? how can we do better? guess what, they've not done any better. they're actually 12 points worse than they were in 2004, so for republicans to be running around talking about how they're doing great with blacks and hispanics, that's a party that's whistling past the graveyard. for them, demographics is destiny, and donald trump may have excited a lot of people on the far right. he may have excited david duke who couldn't praise him enough,

neo-nazis who couldn't praise him enough, but he wasn't playing the long game. he was playing the short game, and it's republicans who are going to be paying for it for the rest of their political lives. >> you took the thought out of my head about george w. bush. it was less than a generation ago that a republican presidential candidate was up in the 40s with latino voters, and as democrats look at that map this year -- and by the way, that they've looked for the last couple of cycles, they thought boy, could we ever get georgia. if we get georgia, that would nudge us in the right direction. they got georgia. how about arizona, they got arizona. the next target they'll be looking at in the years to come is texas. if you put texas in the democratic category in that l coc column every year, there's nowhere to go. they do need to figure something out as they said in that 2012 after action report that most people didn't heed in the republican party. still ahead on "morning joe." >> my goal tonight was a simple one, to come up here and at no

point seem like a condescending egomaniacal bully, and i'm going to be honest, i think i nailed it. >> snl alum one time joe biden jason sudeikis joins us to talk about politics, comedy, and his excellent new project. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. right back. an official message from medicare. did you try it yet? comparing plans?

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another record setting milestone in the u.s. as the number of new coronavirus cases reached over 159,000 nationwide yesterday. that number surpasses wednesday's single day record of more than 148,000 new cases and marks the ninth cday in a row o over 100,000 cases. california now has reached 1 million coronavirus cases statewide becoming the second

state to do that shortly after texas reached that mark. yesterday also recorded over 1,100 deaths in the country. the cdc now projects that over the next four weeks the number of new daily covid deaths likely will reach 5,500 to 13,000 by december 5th, which would place the total number of covid-19 deaths at that time to between 260 and 282,000. now several states issuing new restrictions. in chicago mayor lori lightfoot issued a stay-at-home advisory, put a cap on social gatherings limiting them to ten people. statewide illinois governor j.b. pritzker hinted at a potential stay-at-home order saying we are running out of time and running out of options. in new jersey, governor phil murphy signed a rule yesterday allowing counties and towns to begin to implement an 8:00 p.m. curfew on nonessential businesses. governor murphy stopped short of requiring other measures such as making schools go online

completely. however, philadelphia, detroit, indianapolis, is minneapolis now all have called for a halt to in-person learning and urged school districts to use online teaching. in the state of utah, that state bringing in nearly 200 out of state nurses to help keep staffing levels up in their pressed hospitals. and in north dakota after governor doug bergam encouraged asymptomatic nurses to continue working, the north dakota nurse's association came out against supporting that move publicly. joining us now, clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at brigham and women's hospital, dr. paul sax and msnbc and nbc news medical contributor dr. lipi y roy. i laid out the numbers, i laid out the state by state cases and the measures that are being taken or at least considered to tamp this down as we head into the thanksgiving and holiday season. what's your big picture assessment of where the country

is right now? >> we don't like the numbers. they're going up and this is just a reminder that the virus does not care whether you're a republican or a democrat, and that it really follows biology and science. we know how it spreads. it spreads by airborne route, and when people are together and especially when people are together in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, we need to now listen to the cdc, which has come out very forcefully and said mask wearing both protects you and protects others. and i just want to say that with all of these bad numbers, it's very important that we be as responsible as possible during holiday season because i really do believe there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that came earlier this week with the vaccine news. >> dr. roy, there was good vaccine news, but that's sort of down the road a little bit from where we are. from where you sit, what needs to happen in this country, what needs to happen state by state if we can stem some of these numbers that are being projected as possibilities and some of them unthinkable out of the cdc?

>> yeah, good morning, willie. the numbers are looking really, really bad, and by all mathematical models, this winter season is going to be dire. you know, as dr. sax mentioned and i can't repeat this enough, with holidays coming up both thanksgiving and christmas, you know, just look at history over the past eight months, what's happened over memorial day, july 4th, we saw surges because people gathered. it's really critical that people do not gather and, in fact, we have cdc data showing that transmission is increasing because of small group gatherings. we just can't allow that to happen, willie. people need to wear masks, maintain physical distancing and just gather with the people you've already been isolating with over the holidays. it's the only way to contain this pandemic, willie. >> doctors lipi roy and paul

sacks thanks so much for being with us this morning. washington, jefferson, adams and now madison. we will wrap up our week long series with a new look at the nation's fourth president. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ♪ before nexium 24hr, anna could only imagine a comfortable night's sleep without frequent heartburn waking her up. now, that dream... . ...is her reality. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts, for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? for all-day, all-night protection. introducing the iphone 12 pro with 5g. now at t-mobile, unleash the 5g power of the epic iphone 12 pro in more places. get 2 iphone 12 pro max + 2 lines of unlimited 5g for just $100.

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vice president biden, let's start with you. are you at all concerned about your poor performance in iowa? >> well, you know, i'll be honest. losing iowa was a real kick in the nuts, all right? but i am not worried at all because, you know, by the time we get to south kakalacki, joe biden is going to do what joe biden does best, creep up from behind. just when you think your lead is safe, my numbers are going to sneak up and surprise you with a nice, sweet kiss on the neck. >> jason sudeikis reprising his portrayal of joe biden on snl during the primaries earlier this year. and in just a minute jason's going to be our guest. first, the under card, msnbc national affairs analyst, executive editor of "the

recount" and host of hell and high water podcast, john heilemann joins us. arizona, much to the relief of the project toers at fox news a "associated press" went for joe biden last night. obviously that closes, does it not, closes any hope of donald trump having any shot in recounts? >> yeah, that's been closed for a while. i've noted your patience. you've been very patient with the people from arizona. i appreciate that. you've given them the benefit of the doubt when many of us have been more impatient with the folks from that state. but it finally happened, right? yeah, i mean, look, donald trump hasn't had any chance for a while, and it's been clear for a whiles that this is where we were going to end up in arizona. i know you've been making the point correctly all week that ultimately georgia's going to end up in joe biden's column also given the disparity in the vote count there and the fact

that there's never been a recount in the history of american politics, i believe, that's closed a gap of that kind. and since there's no reports of any real widespread fraud in georgia or anyplace else, i don't think there's an audit's going to change anything either. we're looking at joe biden with 306 electoral votes, exactly the same number of electoral votes that donald trump won in 2016, and since donald trump called it a landslide back then, i guess we'll have to call it a landslide now. >> it's very interesting regarding arizona. they dropped 85% of all of their ballots counted on election night, and then they decided they were going to count one ballot at a time. >> one at a time. >> i cannot believe how long it took them to count their ballots. but anyway, let's talk about the fact that more republicans are slowly beginning to acknowledge that donald trump has lost the election. we had mike dewine, of course, the governor of ohio saying i think we need to consider that the former vice president is the

president-elect. joe biden is the president-elect, and he added that the president's campaign has every right to go to court if they want to. the editorial board of the las vegas review, the newspaper owned by gop mega donor and trump supporter sheldon add elson writing the president does a disservice to his more rabid supporters by insisting that he would have won the november 3rd election absent voter fraud. that is simply false. the board went on to say an electoral system that involves the participation of 150 million americans will have its share of issues, but it's an insult to reason and logic to argue that isolated irregularities constitute proof of a grand national conspiracy. ted olson who successfully argued for george w. bush in the 2000 supreme court case bush v gore also said in a panel discussion the federalist society yesterday, i do believe the election is over. we do have a new president, of

course also john karl rove writing in "the wall street journal" saying basically the recounts aren't going to make a difference. this race is over. >> yeah, so a number of things to say about this, right? not interesting and not surprising that the republican are finally coming to this reality, far too late, ridiculously late, they are the ones that have the least proximity to donald trump and the least to fear from donald trump, right? i mean, again, this is not a new -- a novel observation, but it's these washington republicans who continue to fear trump, fear his voters, are worried about the georgia special elections and what trump might do if he decided to turn against them and cause the trump vote in georgia to collapse and potentially the pro-trump vote that they need to vote for those republicans who are on the ballot in the runoffs. you know, so you see governors,

columnists, people with a lot of money, they're getting there faster than elected republicans are in washington, d.c. and again, it's been said 100 times now, it is sort of sad, i mean, that, it's beyond sad. it's sad and dangerous and damaging that you have these republicans in washington who i'm glad that they're acknowledging that joe biden should get intelligence briefings. it's still the case that a lot of those republicans who have said he should get intelligence briefings are still not willing to go quite so far as to acknowledge that he has, in fact, won the election. i think they are continuing to demonstrate their cowardice and continuing to do damage to the integrity of this entire process, and they're continuing to aid and abet donald trump in his kind of constitutional and democratic vandalism. so we'll see how much longer it takes before enough of them get their courage. i don't know when that will be. do you have a prediction when

you think -- is it really going to take donald trump finally acquiescing to this result for elected republicans in the united states senate to acquiesce to this result? it feels like that to me. >> i think you're going to start seeing over the weekend more republicans start to say at least that joe biden needs to get his daily intel briefings because he's going to be commander in chief two months from now. i'm certainly hopeful that they'll start moving in that direction. let's bring in right now jason sudeik sudeikis, tomorrow night jason and his friends are going to present the fourth annual thunder con, the music and comedy benefit that supports the steps of faith foundation, a nonprofit public charity dedicated to providing prosthetic care, hope and comfort to amputees needing financial support. tonight is going to feature, seth meyers, blake shelton, jack johnson along with an appearance by the manager of afc richmond's

ted lasso. joining us now the man who plays that relentlessly optimistic character, star of the run away hit "ted lasso" on apple tv plus, jason sudeikis. jason has bent over backwards to get the best tv studio available. >> yep. >> it's a 1979 chevy van, and we're so glad you upgraded, jason, for us. so let's talk, first of all, about what you're doing tomorrow night. such an important benefit and it's the fourth time you've done it. what's going to be going on there? >> yeah, well, i mean, it's a little different this year because of covid, but yeah, we're putting on a little variety show, some comedy, some music, some comedic music, and you know, yeah, we're just trying to help people -- we're trying to encourage people to help people that they will probably never meet, which is i think a noble act, especially in this day and age.

and yeah, me and my buddy costarted this thing a couple of years ago. he is an amputee himself, a former -- well, still a drummer, b but a former two-legged drummer. now one of his legs is a robot leg. a few years ago we were like how do we help people? and he was like what about this? and i was like oh, yeah, we can do that. so yeah, now we're like pru producing a tv show version of it, which clearly i don't have acumen for if today's venue is any indication. >> seriously, fish out of water. i don't know how you're going to do it. so how are the first three years gone? have you had a good response, and if people are watching today, how do they help out? >> yeah, the first three -- yeah, you don't get to do a fourth one if the first three stink, right? >> right. >> that's the hollywood sequel model, but they've been amazing.

the first year my brothers in comedy, will forte, fred armson, they're perennial guests, winona judd and her husband, who is also an amputee drummer, but the year after that, ben harper comes and joins us, chance the rapper, this year, i saw on the list that you've shown we have all those amazing people. yesterday we announced foo fighters are joining us as well. yeah, we've raised up to this point, $850,000. we've helped hundreds of people get back on their feet again, and you know, my, you know, overly clever little line about it is the truth we help people buy arms and legs so they don't cost them an arm and a leg. not everybody has the luxury of an insurance plan, one, and a lot of people don't have a plan that would help cover them if they were to lose a limb. 500 people lose a limb in america every single day, and,

you know, when you lose a limb, you lose a lot more. you lose a way to get to your car, to get to work, a by to wa hit the brake or accelerator, to play hoops with your kids in the front yard. this gives people not just an appendage but also a little hope, a little optimism as well. >> and the event's raised nearly 850,000 for steps of faith, and obviously we encourage everybody to go to steps of faith to see how -- >> yeah, thundergong.org to answer your question. the show is going to be free tomorrow night, yeah, tomorrow night, right? oh, my gosh, and you can watch it free and then you know, give what you can. we'll take a dollar and you know, joe for you we will. we will take $10 million. don't think that you have to just only put one or two zeros on there, let her rip. >> that's fantastic. i'll write that check. thundergong.org. let's talk about ted lasso i

always have people coming up to me, and i don't care what it is because they know i'm a big english premier fan, and anything related to soccer, they say you go the to watch this. and i'm yeah, whatever. so i finally got around about two weeks ago watching "ted lasso", and i think it's one of the only shows, it was on a saturday, mika was out of town visiting her daughters, skand i watched the whole series straight through. it was extraordinary. mika got back and i said i know you hate tv. you hate pop culture. you think the death star was in star trek. you got to watch this series. and you know, you go in thinking it's a comedy, and you keep sort of turning your head and hiding the fact that you're wiping tears from your eyes so many moments. it really is an extraordinary series, and yes, it's a comedy, but it's so moving. what do you think has made this so special? >> i think it's the intention

that we made it with. i mean, it's thrilling that people are picking up exactly what we set down. you know, look, i've got to work in places like snl that have an audience right then and there, so you're just trying to keep up with the legends that were there, you know, the ghosts that walk through those halls. you walk those halls every day, but it's daunting, but what you learn there is just do the work. you just put your head down, do the work, and do stuff that, you know, makes you think, feel, and believe in something. so we just -- we put a lot of that into this show that happened from the writing stage, from the conception stage to be quite honest with you, and through the whole, post production and actual production of it. i really do think having a group mind-set and an intention that we set as a group and just trying to follow through on that. but yeah, i mean, the whole show is a little bit of a rope a dope. i'm glad we, you know, it worked on you because i think that's

part of the fun experience. i know it was in creating it. just being like, okay, we're goi gently going to come in this way, you're going to think it's this thing. everybody thinks ted's going to be a certain person within the show, and then it kind of grows and changes with you. if you spend any time with anyone or anything you get to know more about yourself as well as the thing you're getting to look at. it's really been incredible the response to it. i'm amazed the fact that people are rewatching it, you know, fathers are watching with their sons, families are watching it together. you know, people that don't like tv, that don't like sports that don't know anything about soccer much like me, much like ted, you know, but they're picking it up. it's cool. >> yeah, we were just showing while you were talking the dart scene, which is one of those scenes where you start tearing up up, where i started tearing up. it was such an extraordinary moment.

we want to show people who are watching a quick clip, let's show a clip. >> i've been hearing this phrase you all got over here that i ain't too crazy about. it's the hope that kills you e. you all know that? >> yeah. >> i disagree, you know. i think it's the lack of hope that comes and gets you. see, i believe in hope. i believe in belief. now, where i'm from we got a saying, too, yeah? a question, actually. do you believe in miracles? now, i don't need you all to answer that question for me, but i do want you to answer that question for yourselves right now. do you believe in miracles? and if you do, then i want you

all to circle up with me right now, come on, let's go. get in here. all right, captain, let them know. >> you know, it is -- by the way, that is the attitude of every football, english football fan. it's the hope that kills you. you hear it time and time again, and yet you sort of bridge the cultural divide between sort of that mind-set and american optimism, and we're in such a cynical time right now that it was so refreshing to look at that character, ted lasso and say, hey, wait a second. that's who we are. i guess that's why it was so moving. it really did remind us about

the best of us. >> yeah. i mean, you know, the whole idea for the show, you know, i had in 2015, you know, before black lives matter, before the #metoo movement, before trump was elected, before he even came down the escalator. hope, we might not be in this situation if i wasn't so lazy. >> exactly. >> but man, you know, that doesn't even -- it's like i'm not even watching myself. i love watching people listen and yeah, i mean, the show is everything i believe personally about the world and it's all hidden in there. it's all wired through there, and yes, if we can provide a little bit of that optimism that all of us have inside of us, even if we haven't felt it in four years or 40 years, like it's there, and we got to reach across and, you know, you can't hug people with your arms crossed man. you just can't do it. >> yeah, jason, i know you have to go service your chevy van. i'm going to let you go in one

minute. i just want to talk about your incredible supporting cast, hanna watting ham, brendan hunt, jeremy swift, so many just great actors. and you take hannah's character, for instance, you really -- you see somebody struggling to do the right thing time and time again, and the way you wrote this, it's not just a comedy. the characters are complex, and they have a lot of different sides to them, and that sort of made it special, too. but so many talented people around you. >> i mean, yes, i mean, i've been fortunate from the family that i was born into to the family that i chose including my buddy billy sitting right next to me to the people like at snl. i've been lucky to not truck with trash by good choices on my side, by good fortune, by however the universe presented it to me, and this cast is no different. again, it's just a -- it really

is, it's the sum of all its parts. ted lasso is not a person. it's barely a show. it's a vibe, and yeah, i can't thank you enough for your kind words and for, you know, shining a light on the show and this event because it's all the same thing to me. it really is. so i greatly appreciate that, and you've seen that. because yeah, it's so fun to watch this show for me, even though i talk a bunch in, it, i don't like -- even doing this interview, seeing myself talking, i'm like ayi. it's an exercise in that mark twain quote that every man and living have lived a comedy, a tragedy and a drama, and we have to honor all sides of those. and that's, again, empathy. it's more powerful than shamelessness, i promise you. i promise you. >> all right, thank you so much, jason. episodes of "ted lasso" which

was recently renewed for a third season. you can watch it right now and stream it on apple tv plus. as important as that was, more importantly the fourth annual event thundergong is going to stream free worldwide tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. eastern. for details and more information on how to donate -- and please donate and give -- visit thundergong.org. jas jason sudeikis, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it, and a lot of people want you to come back as joe biden, fyi. everybody wanted me to ask you about joe biden. i wanted to talk about "ted lasso" and thundergong. >> thank you so much for having us. please send jumper cables, i'm going to need a jump now. we're at 95th. >> we've got a guy coming. i know a guy up there. coming up next, the genius of james madison. we continue our conversation with author tom ricks on america's founding fathers. keep it right here on "morning joe."

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♪ all week we've been talking to acclaimed writer and journalist tom ricks and taking a closer look at the impact of the first four presidents. "first principles what america's founders learned from the greeks and romans and how that shaped our country." this morning we close with a focus on james madison. tom joins us along with a professor at harvard university, danielle allen. danielle is a political theorist known for her work on justice and citizenship in ancient athens and modern america and among the many books she's written is her 2014 work titled "our declaration: a reading of the declaration of independence in defense of equality." thank you both for being with us. tom, let me start with you. i can't talk about madison

without going back to george washington because madison along with alexander hamilton were two young, brilliant rising stars that george washington and help them help him create this republic of ours. talk about washington using madison and hamilton to get this country moving. >> well, also i would say madison using washington. if george washington gave us the country by leading the revolution, and i don't think it might -- it might not have succeeded without him, james madison is the most important person i think in then designing that country. okay. washington has led the revolution. what is it going to be? first you get this articles of confederation government, a very weak central government, the states wandering around by

themselves. not unlike the last four years under trump, especially with the virus. james madison is such an extraordinary figure because he doesn't appear like someone who would play such an important role. he is small. he has a weak speaking voice. he suffers from some kind of epilepsy. he's not real social. yet he has brilliant political insights, and he's also a very good politician. a surprising combination. he's the guy who says, you know, we really need to have a constitutional convention. he reads up the four years on ancient greek republics and city states and leagues and confederations to look for why republics sometimes don't last. how can we make a republic that lasts, that is sustainable, that doesn't fall apart. danielle actually in her wonderful book "our declaration"

has the most striking comment i've ever seen on madison. sometimes early american history feels like reading madison, talking to himself, drafting a letter or speech by george washington. sends it to congress. madison then drafts a congressional response. madison then drafts washington's response to congress. >> yeah, and danielle, tom talked about that in the book. and at that point, you look at this man who, really, was so responsible for the framing of the constitution. and then again, writing a letter to congress for washington. writing the response back. at that point, when i was reading tom's book, i was thinking, my gosh, maybe it is james madison who is the indispensable person of the american revolution. even more so than george washington. >> well, i think they all play indispensable roles. you can't take them apart. i think they were a team.

precisely because they have such a different understanding of their functions but they work so well together. so washington was, without any question, the leader. the team captain and established exemplary standards for behavior. one of my favorite bits of the story is letters he wrote to hamilton trying to encourage hamilton out of his impettuousness. so washington was really clear on how people needed to treat each other if they were going to govern despite differences effectively. and he knew madison's intellect was what they needed to map out a broad vision. i like to throw in james wilson, too. he was madison's equal and really underrated. but nonetheless, they understood. they needed that example of character. they needed the forceful competitiveness of a hamilton actually for various purposes but also the broad vision a madison and a wilson provide. >> we have john heilemann with us. he has a question.

john? >> when you think of madison, there's many things you can say, but his presidency is -- the word that comes to mind most frequently is also kind of a restraint. i'm curious if you can talk about what you think the madisonian virtue of restraint in government, what lesson that has as we head into this next period with probably divided government, with an executive that's become incredibly powerful over time. joe biden is someone who knows both the legislative and executive incredibly well, but is walking into an incredibly fraught time for the country and incredibly polarized time for the country. just talk a little bit about that temperamental posture that madison had and what you think joe biden can learn from it. >> well, it's interesting. i kind of shy away from madison's presidency because a lot of people see it as a

fizzled presidency. it just kind of bumps along and not much happens. i think madison took a dim view of human nature and thought that varieties of restraint were important. but the most important restraint was simply balancing self-interest against other self-interest. checks and balances. don't try to rely on public spiritedness. try to disperse power so broadly that if you're going to make any progress, you have to come together in some kind of coalition or alliance. >> again, that's one of the fascinating parts of tom's book which i hope everybody watching will read as george washington's dependence on public virtue. and madison and hamilton brushing that aside basically saying, no, old man, we need checks and balances in this government. and danielle, that's also a wonderful thing i loved about

what tom wrote. i've been talking about madisonian checks and balances now for four years. and in part because i know when i was in congress, a lot of republicans looked up to james madison. so sort of reminding them about those madisonian checks and balances. but tom writes about how those checks and balances, which sometimes create gridlock is not a bug of madison's constitution, but a feature. talk about that and how james madison's drafting of the constitution with those checks and balances have sustained us for over 240 years. >> well, a couple of things. it's true that washington really focused on public virtue, and madison famously wrote men were angels and we wouldn't need government so we need institutions to rein in the bad

influences in our nature. but actually if you read the papers carefully, madison and hamilton put as much emphasis on public spirit as they do on checks and balances. we need both together. we need a culture of democratic restraint, mutual toleration and forbearance at the same time we needed the mechanism. those mechanisms -- your second question, absolutely, they are -- they slow things down without any doubt. and they have, in various ways, produced balance and as our demography has changed, as our country has changed, not all of those mechanisms still work as originally designed. so they never expected that they were designing a kind of windup clock that you wind up and let it run forever without needing change. they understand the mechanisms interact with demography, with social context, with a media ecosystem. and as those things have changed

for us, it has become necessary to pay attention to places where we need to tweak and redesign. >> and we'd love to have you back to talk about that. what we've learned over the past four years. and what needs to be tweaked. what needs to be redesigned. i suspect we're going to be going into a period much like the period after watergate where there was much reflection on what had just passed. tom, we've loved having you this week. any final thoughts before we wrap it up? >> yes, i have so many questions for professor allen. this has been a great week. i've loved the conversations. i've got to ask professor allen, as long as we have her here, talking about like post-watergate reforms. professor allen, would you support having supreme court have terms, say 14 or 18 years? >> i do support 18-year term limits for the supreme court. in fact, i was lucky to co-chair

a recent commission from the american academy of arts and sciences which put a report out in june called our common purpose which has 31 recommendations, and one of them is term limits for the supreme court. the academy, i'd like to remind, was founded among others by john adams. it goes back to before the constitution and was created to help the country -- have the resources it needed for continual adjustment. so in the same spirit as the learning of the people in your book so we worked at the academy, too. >> the book is "first principles." what america's founders learned from the greeks and romans and how that shaped our country. tom ricks, thank you so much. harvard university's danielle allen. thank you as well. please come back. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle.

it's friday, november 13th. friday the 13th. we're beginning with breaking news. overnight nbc projected that former vp, now president-elect joe biden will win the state of arizona and all its 11 electoral votes. that leaves only two states left to be called. north carolina, which is still too close to call, but seems to be inching towards president trump. and the state of georgia, also too close to call. president-elect biden is leading there as the state begins a full recount. of course, even without those states, nbc has projected joe biden as the winner of the election. of course, the other major story we're following this morning, the coronavirus. now escalating to a new level that has not been seen before in this country. if you thought this thing was behind us if you listen to the president say we're turning a corner, we're not. the united states reporting more than 161,000 new infections on thursday. that is a new d