if it's tuesday, states and cities are instituting new restrictions as the virus rages out of control. cases now rising in all 50 states. plus, the white house is not coordinating with the biden transition on vaccine distribution. it's not talking to capitol hill about financial relief. it isn't warning americans about gatherings during the holidays. just what is this white house doing at all? are they doing anything? and a ballot snafu. republican infighting and allegations of interference.

we'll have the very latest out of georgia and the recount, the runoffs and the reported republican concern that the president, the current one, not the president-elect, will cost the gop control of the senate. welcome to tuesday. it's "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. there are two highly promising vaccines in the pipeline. finally it seems there's a glimmer of light at the end of this tunnel. this actually should be a moment of national celebration. but case numbers are exploding, rising in all 50 states. hospitals are overwhelmed by the current surge. with record numbers of seriously ill patients each day. more than 1,000 people are dying every day, a number which is rising. we're almost at 250,000 deaths. hospitalizations are through the roof.

there have been no public task force briefings, zero, zilch, none. nothing at all from vice president pence who is supposed to be leading the task force. he's apparently meeting behind closed doors with the task force this afternoon. but we've yet to see a national mitigation strategy at all implemented arguably since july. officials in pennsylvania are about to announce new measures to slow the spread in that state after philadelphia imposed sweeping new restrictions. we'll speak with the city's mayor. california's governor yesterday said he's having to pull the emergency brake on its own state's reopening. local officials across the country have been forced to shut down their economies, again. but there is no financial relief in sight for these communities. we're headed towards a fiscal cliff of expiring subsidies and expiring tax cuts. there's been no apparent effort by this white house to engage with capitol hill to remedy that piece of this crisis. there has been no vaccine distribution plan communicated to the public by this administration at all. and they have not begun coordinating with the biden transition on what's going to be

one of the biggest logistical challenges our government has ever faced. unfortunately for many americans, the hope of tomorrow is being consumed by the fear and chaos and dysfunction of today. and so much of that dysfunction, as we've seen time and again during this pandemic, starts with one single individual. president donald john trump. mike memoli is in wilmington for us following president-elect joe biden. monica alba is outside of the white house and garrett haake is on capitol hill to try to get some sense of where we're headed with -- here. mike, i first want to play an update on the transition and vaccine process. and i want to use the words of dr. fauci. take a listen. >> you were on a call, as i understand it, with the coronavirus task force, a two-hour call with governors to review distribution plans of the vaccine. vice president mike pence chaired that. was there anyone from the biden transition team on that call?

>> no, there was not, to my knowledge. >> do you find that to be a problem? >> well, i mean, i would like to see the interaction with people who might be coming in and be doing the things that are being done now by the task force and by the people in the health system. obviously, there's no doubt that it is better to have a smooth transition. >> so those are the words of dr. fauci, mike, and i know we had the president-elect say yesterday that essentially more people are going to die because of this decision by the white house or lack of decision or pa l paralysis or whatever we want to call it. any update today? any inkling that things are creeping into transition process? >> frankly, chuck, no. you think about what we just heard from dr. fauci. remember ojune 30th, during the peak of the summer campaign season, joe biden issued a promise. he said that one of the very

first phone calls he was going to make as a president-elect once the election was declared was to anthony fauci to send a signal about his service and how important defeating the pandemic was going to be to his administration. i think we have no sooner than projected pennsylvania and thus the presidency for joe biden when i began asking the biden team, has he called dr. fauci yet? and i think part of the reason why we haven't seen that is because they want to protect, frankly, dr. fauci from what would certainly happen with this president if he were to hear that. especially given what we saw in the closing weeks of the campaign. but i think -- think about what the general posture has been from joe biden about these delays in the transition happening. it's been a what, me worry approach? it would be nice to have access to the presidential daily brief but it's one president at a time. it's not a problem at this point. generally, he's been saying that it's more embarrassing for the country than it is as he said yesterday, debilitating for me, in terms of being able to move forward with a transition. when asked a very good pointed question by geoff bennett, he

really did portray the very really concern about this ongoing delay as it relates to vaccine distribution. and you remember this from covering the transition in 2008, chuck. we were at the peak of a financial crisis at that point. there was hand in glove cooperation between the outgoing bush administration, the incoming obama administration. the bush team offering to make personnel moves, make other decisions that the obama team wanted to get -- hit the ground running even before inauguration day. the fact that that's not happening is very concerning. what the biden team says, they're able to do some degree of this from the outside in. you heard fauci talk about speaking with governors. joe biden has friends in the ranks of governors. there are pieces of this they can pick up from the outside. dr. rick bright, part of the pandemic team. we just heard from him. people with recent experience in government that are able to help. but it's nothing like what they should be getting at this point, and the biden team certainly concerned about that. >> and mike, is it a coincidence that as the biden team waits

donald trump to get through this temper tantrum that he's having, is it just a mere coincidence that word seeped out yesterday that joe biden does not plan on making donald trump investigations a focal point of his administration and in fact, that he may be hesitant to do that? is that supposed to be an olive branch? >> i wouldn't say that, chuck. i think biden has been clear and was asked this throughout the primary, in fact, about what role the justice department under a president biden would play in looking into many of the issues that congress has wanted to with the president, with his allies. and he was pretty clear, consistently, that he did not view the justice department as he believes trump has, as his own personal attorney, as something that can settle political scores. i think this is a lot of good reporting from carol lee, kristen welker as well on this front to lay out how biden's

viewing this now. but it is instructive, one of the rationale we were given as to why he doesn't want to do this. trump got 73 million votes. republicans in the senate and house. he's going to need them to work with them. this is much more about governing than sending any messages to president trump. >> and very quickly, i look at the senior white house team and the west wing team they announced today. it looks a lot like the campaign brain trust. i assume that's not an accident, mike? >> i think one of the most interesting things in looking at how the west wing is being staffed out is seeing some of that very close inner circle that's been with biden for a very long time. opening somewhat. and you see in this initial staff list today, some of those who really quickly earned biden's trust and worked well with his team being among those very first people announced as part of his west wing staff. >> no doubt there, mike memoli. and we know how biden world works. there's always some trust. so it looked like a lot of old mixed in with some of the new.

let me go to monica alba over at the white house. are we going to get any briefing today on the virus, the task force has basically abdicated its public responsibilities of late. we've not heard from dr. birx in an ice age. you hear dr. fauci in separate interviews. then there's dr. atlas, scott atlas who has the president's ear who is giving out conflicting -- are we going to hear anything from the actual task force today, from the scientists or anybody? >> there are no plans for a briefing after they meet today at 3:00 p.m., chuck. that's something that became a near daily presence and custom that we saw in the early months of the pandemic in the spring when dr. anthony fauci and dr. birx were household names because they were the ones communicating to the american public what they should be worried about, what they should be watching for. that's not something we've seen from the briefing room in months and months. and that's exactly because, as you mentioned, dr. scott atlas,

this controversial radioologist who doesn't have a background in infectious diseases is now the one advising the president on the pandemic. he was brought on to the task force in august because the president liked what his appearance has alonged like in fox news. and just last night is one of the best examples. you had dr. atlas saying that seniors who are in isolation, this may be their final thanksgiving so family members should go and see them because of that. that runs completely counter to any advice from public health officials or the experts on the task force who say everybody needs to be extremely careful around the holiday seasons because of all the spikes and the skyrocketing cases. but you talk about that task force meeting. the vice president will be leading it. sometimes they give us paper readouts or photographs. notably absent from those is the president. he hasn't been physically at one of those meetings, according to my reporting, since april or may, and he doesn't have anything at all on his public schedule today. there was talk potentially with this great news on the vaccine progress, is that something he'd want to come out and talk about

again. no indications he'll be doing that. he hasn't taken questions from reporters in two weeks, since election day, and somebody who is quite active on twitter, he fired off 40 or so tweets and retweets yesterday by this point, much of which was full of baseless claims. he hasn't done any so far today, which is quite unusual for him, chuck. >> yeah. and very quickly, monica, the lawsuits keep fizzling day by day. lawyers keep walking away from the trump white house. and it looks like it's nothing but the conspiracy theorists that are in charge of the legal operation with rudy giuliani and jenna ellis. is that what we're staring at now that nobody serious is helping the president anymore on the legal front? it's nothing but these folks? >> it's an absolute bare bones team at this point, chuck. and that's because essentially the trump campaign has folded at this point. you mentioned recounts. wisconsin, which just certified all of their counties, that's a major question.

the triumph campaign has about 24 to 26 hours to decide whether they'll formally file for that. they indicated they wanted to do that. that was before they knew the price tag which is a whopping near $8 million, quadruple what it was four years ago. it's unclear whether they want to go down that path given the margin is wide enough there's unlikely anything that would really change the outcome, recount, audit, what have you. that's exactly the message being shown by the trump campaign. outside allies, most of which are going away from this argument of the legal efforts. they continue to fizzle out. >> when fighting reality costs money, donald trump stops fighting reality. that's a pattern that we have learned from him over the years. monica alba at the white house. monica, thank you. let me go to capitol hill. garrett, the laundry list of expiring issues -- expiring acts by congress just with covid relief by the end of the year. emergency unemployment relief. eviction moratorium. rebate checks. student loan forgiveness. small business debt relief.

paid sick leave tax credit. payroll tax deferral. 33 other various tax provisions. that's just what we can fit on one graphic. we know the list is even longer. what is happening? it looks like pelosi and mcconnell don't believe any election happened and they're having the same argument they've been having for five months. >> yeah, chuck, basically nothing is happening. it's wild to watch this. i don't think i've seen anything that both political parties agree is so necessary and so wanted go nowhere for so long. now we've got, you know, steve mnuchin has removed himself from these conversations. the expectation has been a negotiation between speaker pelosi and mitch mcconnell would be more fruitful. they know their conferences, how to get something done. they both agree there's a need to get something done. it's just a question of what and how big. but as best i can tell in all my reporting up to this point indicates those two have not spoken at all yet about covid relief. more than a trillion dollars apart, even a small offer is

something that we're starting to see republicans, some democrats say maybe we take the smallest available offer just to get something. pelosi has held the line on this. small offer is worse than nothing at all. it doesn't tackle the full scale of this problem. we need to get this done. she's gotten a little bit of backup from the biden team, the incoming chief of staff over the weekend. but we're in the same place we were one month, two months, three months ago. you showed that graphic. how many of these other deadlines have we blown through on capitol hill? i wish i could have better news on this. but these two sides are just stuck right now. >> the white house -- when was the last time you saw steve mnuchin on capitol hill, garrett? >> i think the last time he spoke with the speaker was in late aungt. i want to say october 26th or thereabouts. he's removed himself from this entirely. to put a pin back in all of this and relate this together. this is a classic example of an issue on which presidential

leadership and a forceful push from the party in power, which is still the republican party in two out of these three elements that would be necessary here, the senate and the white house, a forceful push from the president could do a lot. and it is -- entirely. >> 100% true. pelosi, mcconnell can sit here and blame each other all day when there's a presidential leadership vacuum which we're sitting in right now. mike, monica, garrett, thank you all for getting us started. joining me now is philadelphia mayor jim kenney. he had to announce new coronavirus restrictions while pleading with congress for financial help. mayor, your comments yesterday inspired how we started this show today. at the end of the day, you're not alone. there's a whole bunch of mayors around this country. frankly, a bunch of governors that would institute a lot more restrictions, a lot faster, if there was some backup from the federal government here. i assume you're in that same

situation. >> yeah, chuck. i mean, we're doing our best here, and we're doing our best to keep people safe and to keep the economy going as best we can. we have 50,000 infections, close to 2,000 deaths, 500 people in the hospital right now and that's doubled over the last 11 days. and we could easily overwhelm our hospitals in the next couple of months if we didn't step in and do some real serious things like banning indoor dining and limiting outdoor and indoor gather,s, giving real strong advice and guidance on, you know, thanksgiving and the christmas holidays and the like. we are serious about it. we've been serious. we've slid back a little bit with people not wearing masks as much as they should. like around 70%. we should be in the 90s. so we really have to bear down now and get through this long, dark winter. >> you know, what do you tell -- i feel for your decision-making here because these -- some of these small business owners have spent some money to put in some

mitigation, you know, whether it's plexiglas, made some efforts if they are a restaurant to try to do business in a safer environment. and they are going to get shut down. and we know that's not your intent. who is going to help them? who helps them? is it the state of pennsylvania? is it the federal government? who is supposed to help them? >> it's both. we've done about $40 million in small business assistance, and about $40 million in rental assistance. and we have the 7 -- we have a $5 billion budget with a $750 million hole. we have money sitting in harrisburg under the c.a.r.e.s. act but only got 6% of that money. so far. the republican legislature will not release any more. the deadline is december 31st. we have 12% of the population of pennsylvania and 20% of the infections. and you just went through the morass in washington that's holding up any kind of help. >> what is your conversation -- you have got some powerful democrats that you know.

what does bob brady tell you? what does bob casey tell you? these are people that can move things. what are they telling you when you say what the hell is going on in congress? >> congressman brady retired this year and mary gay is the new representative. bob casey is a terrific champion for philadelphia and for pennsylvania. we just -- we don't have control of the senate. i hope we don't have to wait as long as georgia to get that back, but if that's the case, that's the case. but i think that mcconnell just won't move anything. there's a bill sitting over there that he could put on the floor, but he won't do it. >> are there restrictions you're not doing simply because it's just not fair to some of these businesses but you would do them if you had some financial -- if you knew they had financial relief? >> yep. we did continue outdoor dining. it's getting -- it's in november and philadelphia gets cold. but outdoor dining is still able to do takeout. pick-up and takeaway is still okay. what we found in addition to the

indoor dining we found gatherings like weddings and baby showers and things like that kind. even people going to each other's houses to watch eagles football has created contact tracing proof that this is the way this virus is being spread now. we really have to put it upon ourselves to be serious and to be mature and put those masks on and distance ourselves. it's just you see too many people not wearing masks and as dr. fauci and others have said, that's the easiest way to stop this from spreading. the thing that upsets me the most, i look at world war ii. we've had about 250,000 people in america die of this. we lost over 400,000 people in world war ii. and we have a president that's basically telling the governors and local officials to strategize to beat the nazis. i can't imagine president roosevelt ever doing that. we're in a war, in a viral war and this president says he was a wartime president. clearly, he's not. >> it isn't how general

eisenhower would have probably run things, that's for sure. >> no. >> philadelphia mayor jim kenney, appreciate you coming on and also delivering a bit of a history lesson for us as well. thank you, sir. hospitals are on the brink. there's growing fear the holidays could make things even worse. we're live at one of the newest field hospitals. plus, the promise of two new covid vaccines and the challenge of getting them to the people who need them. what's the latest timeline? mornings were made for better things than rheumatoid arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz... a pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis when methotrexate has not helped enough. xeljanz can help relieve joint pain and swelling, stiffness, and helps stop further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections. before and during treatment, your doctor should check for infections,

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when we had our surge back in may, we were tired. we were exhausted, and we thought, wow, i don't know how this could get worse. the surge we thought we were having then was really nothing compared to what we're experiencing now. >> we just don't have the capacity soon enough to support

the amount of illness we're going to see. >> this is going to get very bad, very quickly if we don't have something done drastically right now. >> i can't believe that we're here. i can't believe we're here. after all we've learned. and it is frustrating for us, quite frankly. we're exhausted. i am tired. and i am not alone in feeling tired. >> you know, america's health care workers think the rest of us are idiots the way we're going about this. welcome back. health care workers across the country are pleading with us to heed their warnings as their hospitals become overwhelmed with covid patients. and doctors and nurses are clearly reaching a breaking point. the last thing we need is them walking off, folks. why don't we try to wear a mask? cases are climbing everywhere in the united states. and this shows no signs of slowing down as we transition into the winter months. there's no way this plateaus with the lack of mitigation efforts we're making. as bad as the virus surge is right now, though, experts warn

it's going to get much worse if people continue to ignore the basic guidance that we're getting. not to mention some of the new restrictions and choose to go ahead with their thanksgiving plans. the more selfish you are, the worst for the rest of us. shaquille brewer is at a testing site in madison, wisconsin, where the positivity rate is at 36%. and yasmin vossoughian is in rhode island where the governor is warning the state is at risk of running out of hospital beds. let me start with yasmin. you're inside. we don't like folks spending too much time inside places these days. tell us what you found getting a firsthand look at the hospital crisis in rhode island. >> chuck, let me talk you through some numbers. 600 people in this state currently hospitalized. nine hospitals throughout the state. a million people in this state total. over the weekend, a thousand new positive cases. numbers are continuing to grow. and doctors and nurses and health care workers are worried they'll hit capacity. i want to show you where i am

right now. here's one bed. as if it's a normal hospital bed. let's pull out. i want to give people a real scope of how many beds are in this field hospital. i want to really show you everything that's happening here. there's 300-plus beds in this field hospital as they are preparing for folks to come here, not -- it's not a matter of if, but a matter of when they'll be arriving at this hospital. this is dr. foreman, the director of the field hospital. thank you so much for joining me on this. let's take a walk that way. i want folks to get a scope of this thing. talk me through who you expect to be arriving at this hospital and when you see that happening. >> our plan is to have covid-positive patient comes here. those who are lower acutity and midacutity in terms of medical illness. people who need oxygen and iv fluids. our hope is to not have more severely in order patients here. we don't have the capacity to take care of people here who need an icu level of care though we could transfer them back to a traditional hospital. we set this up back in march during the first surge and we

were concerned we'd need patients then. at this point we're looking at probably two to three weeks before we think we'll need to open given the current trajectory in rhode island. >> how worried are you about what's going on in your state right now? >> i'm very worried. we're really worried about the trajectory we've been on, the number of positive cases. and this hasn't changed behavior in rhode island. we're seeing more and more people who are outside, who are unmasked, who are spending time in small groups together. really worried with the impending holidays that people will be indoors with a lot of other folks who are not within their family group. so that's what concerns us the most. the field hospitals here, the hospitals are here. the staff are ready to take care of patients should we need to but we're really concerned that we'll pretty soon overwhelm the resources of traditional hospitals that need to move here into the field hospital. >> thank you, by the way, for walking us through this. dr. foreman was telling me about the fact that she used to serve in refugee areas. she used to serve in war communities overseas in the early '90s and beginnings of her career. and seeing this is not unlike what she saw overseas in those

situations in those communities. >> yes. >> and it's very terrifying for a lot of medical professionals in this country right now. nurses and doctors having to experience the last nine months of this pandemic. so thank you so much for your work and for spending time with us. we wish you luck. >> thank you very much. >> chuck? >> yasmin, outstanding work there. and i imagine no american medical professional likes to see -- make those comparisons to overseas. we don't ever expect to have americans have to be given medical treatment the way we may be having to do this right now. yasmin, thank you very much. let's go to shaquille brewster. 36% positivity rate in wisconsin. you've been covering the wisconsin political wars and the virus wars all year long. and there's probably been no state where the polarization of the political environment has basically paralyzed the state's

ability to do restrictions. so where does that leave us right now? >> chuck, we have to be really honest about the situation here. and very clear about what's been going on. the governor back in the spring tried to have a safer at home order. that was struck down by the supreme court. he then tried to put occupancy limits on restaurants and bars. that has been held up by an appeals court. just yesterday, his medical officials were in front of the state supreme court trying to uphold and defend a mask mandate and the court signaled that that would likely be going away because that's power for the legislature. the republican-run legislature in this state has simply not met since the start of this pandemic. so that is the reality here on the ground. and what that means is that high positivity rate. i want to give you an example of what a 36% positivity rate means in a state like wisconsin. look at the cars behind me. there's several hundreds of cars here. these cars have been lined up since before this testing facility opened. if you were to just assume that

there's one person in each car, we know that's not the case, but if you were just to say there's one person in every car there, that means every third car is returning a positive coronavirus case. that is the situation here. that's how widespread the outbreak is here in the state of wisconsin. they are at a record average of new cases. hospital systems are overrun. you hear doctors pleading with people despite what the courts say. despite any restrictions not being upheld or going away. they are pleading with people to just stay home as much as you can, wear your mask all the time. i've spent a lot of time here in wisconsin. that's a plea that has been heard for well over a month, and you see the numbers just continue to rise in this state. people are really at a loss of what more can be done with the current structure that's in place. chuck? >> shaq, do you see a difference in milwaukee and madison versus the other parts of the state? is it a political polarization?

milwaukee and dane county, madison, the bluer areas or do you see that sort of political difference or not anymore? >> you do. and i don't know, not necessarily between madison and milwaukee, but between those counties and other counties around the state. because there is no state level organization, each county, each town, each municipality around this state has the ability to put on their own restrictions. for example, milwaukee right now, their city council is trying to pass higher fees and fines for bars and restaurants that don't comply with that county regulation. but you can cross the line, you know, sometimes it's a matter of just crossing the street, and in other counties, those restrictions aren't there. so there's a mix -- it's very mismatched system here in wisconsin where you have regulations for one place and lack of regulations for the other. chuck? >> and it's all exasperated by

the political polarization of wisconsin. shaquille brewster in wisconsin, yasmin vossoughian in rhode island. thank you both. up ahead, dr. peter hotez on the latest vaccine news. how soon you'll be able to get one and an update on a potential vaccine that he's working on that may help a lot of developing countries as well. plus, why some republicans now fear president trump's failure to concede could end up costing them control of the senate.

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i often said help is on the way, but help is not here yet. so one of the things we need to do is to use the success of the vaccines to get people to be motivated to hang in there a bit longer and double down on the public health measures without necessarily shutting down the country. you can continue to do activities which are good for the economy but still adhering to the public health measures that we're talking about. i just can't understand why there's pushback against that. they're not that difficult to do. >> welcome back. that was dr. fauci this morning saying help is on the way but emphasizing how critical it is not to be complacent despite the promising news on the vaccine front. the pfizer and moderna vaccines which data show more than -- to be more than 90% effective and

this is limited data that's been released for what it's worth, both of them still need fda emergency authorization and it's not clear how quickly that will happen. officials have expressed high hopes of vaccinating 20 million americans before the year but that is just a start. joining me is vaccine expert dr. peter hotez from the baylor school of medicine. he also is part of a team working on a more traditional type vaccine which i do want to ask you about. but let's stay on the vaccine front, dr. hotez. where are we, realistically now on this time line? let's assume emergency authorization use is granted in some time in the next two to four weeks, perhaps before the end of the year. what will that trigger, and what's the realistic expectation here over the next three to four months? >> so, chuck, thanks for having me. the realistic expectation is we're going to see the first two vaccines of operation warp speed, the two mrna vaccines

from mod earn and pfizer released through emergency use authorization starting probably the end of the year, january, february and we'll start vaccinating the american people. what's going to happen after that is i'm kind of optimistic, although i don't have any specific inside information that the do adna-based vaccines will follow along after that. the bottom line is, by the spring, i'm pretty optimistic we'll have a significant percentage of the american population vaccinated. and the reason i'm saying that message really dovetails on what you just reported. that right now, between right now and, say, february, according to the institute for health metrics, 150,000 americans are going to lose their lives. we'll be at 400,000 americans who will perish from this epidemic by early february. and of those, the 150,000 are from now until then, they do not have to die. we could save all of those lives

if we just implement aggressive social distancing and masks. and the reason that's important is because we can start vaccinating them. in the past, chuck, when we've been talking all year, there was never any bracket on the right-hand side. we basically say, we're going to have to do this indefinitely until something comes along. now that something is coming along, i can say if you can keep your mother alive, your father alive, your brother, your sister until early spring, they will have a normal life. and we've never been able to say that before. and somehow, we have got to get that message across to the middle of the country. to north dakota, south dakota, iowa -- into texas. just hang on. and it's just so frustrating seeing people lose their lives when we know we can absolutely save them right now. >> just five more months, everybody. five more months. that's what dr. hotez is saying. just stick with this for five more months. let me ask you. you're developing a vaccine that's a more traditional model

scientificallily and i know you're running -- working with an entity in india on this. the two vaccines that moderna and pfizer are touting, is this new technology of rna-based vaccines and something you've been very -- you said this is great technology. you've been -- but at the end of the day we've never done a vaccine this way. is there any nervousness we should have about this? >> well, the nervousness is, i'm less worried about the safety than whether or not how much we can really scale this up. you know, i think we'll be able -- there's commitments there to scale it up for the united states, and we have a pretty elaborate system being put in place by supply chain management of the deep freezers required for the pfizer vaccine and other freezers for moderna. so i think we've got that well in hand for the u.s. but imagine the complexity of trying to bring a minus

100-degree fahrenheit freezer into ethiopia or other low and middle income countries. that's going to be very daunting. it's doable. we did it with the ebola vaccine in congo which required freezing, but it's tough. so that's why we're coming in with a low cost protein vaccine that uses the same technology used to make the hepatitis b vaccine that's been in use for the last 40 years. and that vaccine could be also made locally in places like bangladesh and india and indonesia and brazil. so we are now scaling this up with an organization called biological e, bio-e. one of the largest vaccine producers in the world. 1.2 billion doses now of our vaccine that's in clinical trials across india. we're really excited about it. it also would be really inexpensive, too. some places the hepatitis b vaccine, same technology is made for less than $1 a dose. we're hoping to make a real

contribution to global health. >> reading your update there, it was -- it's always good we have multiple ways we're doing this. your understanding of either the two moderna vaccines or yours, are these going to be annual or one time hits? >> it really depends on the length of the durability of protection. we don't know anything about the durability of the rna vaccines because they're new technologies. we've never vaccinated humans at this scale before. so we don't really know. is it going to protect three months, six months, a year, two years? and that's one of the nice things about the "operation warp speed" program. we're not relying exclusively on these others who will come along. one of the messages i've been giving to people, and i get asked this all the time. they say, dr. hotez, which vaccine are you waiting for? and i say i'm not waiting for any vaccine. i am so worried about going through this winter and spring without having virus

neutralizing antibodies in my system, which is what all of these vaccines work and the rna vaccines and ours, that any vaccine that's authorized by the fda, i will take. and if it turns out that one of these doesn't last very long, you know what? so what. i can get boosted later on. so don't try to overthink this and wait, you know, for a certain vaccine. take what you can get to save your life and your family's life. >> the more vaccines, even if limited, it's better it will be an improvement. dr. peter hohotez, always a pleasure to get your expertise on this program. >> thank you, chuck. i appreciate it. up ahead, president trump's legal troubles. lawsuit after lawsuit challenging the election results is hitting one dead end after another. we'll have the summary after the break. ♪ ah sugar, ♪ ah honey honey ♪ ♪ you are my candy girl

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welcome back. despite repeated setbacks and failures, the trump campaign is keeping a its legal fight offer the election. a federal judge in pennsylvania is holding a hearing on the trump campaign's request to block certifying the election result because of its claims of irrollities. rudy giuliani is listed as one of the attorneys in that case. that's one of at least six active lawsuits brought by the trump campaign or republican groups. four in pennsylvania and two in michigan. the campaign and other republicans have filed 26 election related lawsuits in six battleground states. fewer than half of those cases are still active. at least 15 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn. the judges ruled against the campaign or republican groups in at least nine of those cases. and in at least seven of them, the trump campaign and republicans have ended the case themselves. perhaps the most important number is zero. that's the number of incidents of voter fraud found so far. coming up, we'll turn to the

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it's made for him a veteran who honorably served and it's made for her she's serving now we also made usaa for military spouses and their kids become a member. get an insurance quote today. welcome back. there is a lot happening in georgia politics as they look at the runoff elections, and in a fight with the republican secretary of state. he accused both of the candidates for the senate about making bold-faced lies about the election he oversaw, an election won by joe biden.

the trump campaign is falsely saying it's right after georgia election officials say they found 2,600 ballots that were not counted on election night. they say this appears to be an isolated event. meanwhile, in the runoff races, according to "the washington post," in a private call they called president trump a burden and david perdue is proceeding as if president trump lost the election. joining me now, robert costa. robert, it seems as if you're finding the same thing i'm finding, which is a lot of republican strategists and republican leaders, they can't win without trump, but the burden of keeping trump engaged is becoming a problem in and of

itself. nu null. >> that's spot on. i love these kind of scoops working with my coworkers because you get a behind the scenes look. senator perdue said, we don't know if president trump will be with us in this race, we could be all alone. he says it's not about persuasion on the call, it's not about eating into the democratic base. it's pulling back voters who may have been anti-trump for some reason, character issues or whatever, and bringing them back into the republican fold. >> it's fascinating. jon ossoff is up with his first ad trying himself to joe biden. nobody wants to be with joe biden and you have perdue trying to peel from trump and jon ossoff with joe biden. the joe biden non-democratic voter appears to be the perceived swing voter of this

race? >> that voter is. perdue and senator kelley loeffler acknowledge on the call with karl rove, they're facing headwinds. a lot of people moving in from the northeast, from the southwest, from california, to the deep south for a lower cost of living. they're diversifying a place like the atlanta area, the suburbs of atlanta, and they're changing the face of the deep south. at the same time, the democrats are much more organized than they have been in the past decades. stacey abrams going back to 2018 and her voting rights groups have changed how democrats are organized. they have to face an electrified democratic electorate as well as a new kind of voter. the biden voter in georgia. >> the recount and awe dit audie challenge, the two republican senators createn an internal feud with the republican secretary of state, is the

republican secretary of state a man on an island now? has the entire georgia republican party abandoned him for political expediency due to the just unfair accusations that are out there? >> it's such a divide right now inside the georgia republican party. this is a party in georgia that's broadly with president trump. they understand his political capital and his power. to have the georgia secretary of stateout there, saying lindsey graham and others are pressuring him, it's created this cleavage in the gop in georgia where senator loeffler and snore perdue are on a limb of a bit, away from their own establishment. they're not going to break with president trump but they know the georgia secretary of state isn't necessarily on an island. in is the gop in georgia that has the trump wing and also an establishment wing.

>> the whole point of kelley loeffler was to appease the establishment wing and then she went in her attempt to win over the trump wing, did she overly play that hand? >> she's in a tough position right now. but she's going to run an incendiary campaign against reverend raphael warnock. she is going to bring up his past calls about jeremiah wright, fidel castro. she's going to try to cast him as a far-left figure and that's the campaign she's going to run. she has a tougher race. she hasn't run statewide like senator perdue and has declined back into this race and to make sure she can win. democrats see a better opportunity against her than senator perdue behind the scenes. >> it says a lot. she wants a debate and perdue doesn't. tells you everything you need to know about what both campaigns think they need. robert costa, as always, sir, thank you for your reporting and

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good afternoon. i'm katy tur. it's 11:00 a.m. out west 2shgs:00 p.m. in the east. the formal transition process has still not started. the president-elect says it is a matter of life and death. patience appears to be wearing thin among biden's team, which is ramping up the pressure. the president-elect will receive a briefing from intelligence and defense experts this hour. though notably accent will be any government officials that is, in part, because biden still does not have access to classified national security information. it will not be a pdb. the transition is