hi, everyone. it is 4:00 in the east. donald trump swung his wrecking ball at the country's fragile democracy again last night. the mad king firing via tweet the national security official responsible for protecting the american election from foreign interference and fraud. that official, christopher krebs, who declared the 2020 election the most secure in american history wasn't fired for failing at his mission, he was fired by trump for succeeding at it and refusing to lie about the integrity of the american election. it is an eery echo of the situation in georgia where the republican secretary of state is still under fire for standing by the integrity of his state's

election, more ominous because it is an attack within the president's own executive branch of government. "new york times" reports, quote, mr. krebs has been hailed in recent days for his two years spent preparing states for challenges of the vote, hardening systems against russian interference, setting up a rumor control website to guard against disinformation. foreign interference so many feared never materialized. instead, the disinformation ultimately came from the white house. the recriminations of crutrump' revenge firing. of all the things this president has done, this is the worst. to strike at the harlt of the democratic system is beyond anything we have seen from any politician. form former secretary of homeland security michael chertoff said he has done everything you would want a senior official at dhs to do. as far as i'm concerned, this firing is a badge of honor for

chris krebs. krebs has not been silent, telling nbc news i am proud of the work we did at cisa, i am produced of the teammates i had at cisa. we did it right. trump's move to root out from his government and the country the honest brokers that ensure and vouch for integrity of the election he ended up losing fair and square was dealt another blow when the trump supporters on a key michigan election board caved to reality and certified joe biden's win there. getting fired by donald trump is the new resume builder, where we start this hour. elizabeth newman, former assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy at the department of homeland security, now adviser to the republican political alliance for integrity and reform is back. also joining us, jim root enberg, writer for "new york times" and times sunday magazine. he has been all over this story. donald trump's battle against the election results.

and msnbc analyst frank vig lose ee is back. jim, let me start with you. your body of reporting in recent weeks covered all of the things donald trump did ahead of election day to lay the foundation for what turned out to be a failed legal strategy to invalidate the results afterward, but how does the firing of someone like chris krebs fit into that. he already hardened and protected the election. was it simply not going along with the messaging donald trump is selling to his voters, that the election was rigged against him? >> yeah, because what this is now, even the lawsuits at this point of part of that messaging attempt by the president to impugn the election system, and interesting interestingly going back a couple years, the president was pressuring dhs, people close to him, including krebs' part of dhs to protect infrastructure.

pressuring them to come along with the voter fraud idea, the president has been trying to push this out a couple of years in preparation for just this moment, so krebs held the line, held the line for years. finally trump is making a last push, last desperate push and time for krebs to go apparently. >> frank, chris krebs is the sort of quintessential professional in terms of national security, the kind of person that in a normal government you may never have heard of. because donald trump is nothing if not abnormal, he is now thrust into the center of the conversation. in this very up is down, down is up, he was fired for doing such a good job, refusing to lie about the good job that he did. >> i think chris krebs personifies the career professionals who come to work every day doing battle with adversaries we should never hear

about, we don't want to get the anxiety level up that these people live with every day. if we understand we are in a cyber war, the new battlefield is a cyber battlefield, in traditional actions, if you give medals to special ops guys, chris krebs is the modern day equivalent of that. it is not an exaggeration to say he was at war with the adversary, the unwritten story of this election is the silent service that was taking out russian and iranian attempts to hack the election and its systems, and in the case of russia to help clearly, the president, and he destroyed that capability with u.s. cyber command, that's worthy of a medal for military valor, bravery, service. he is not going to get that. he gets fired. >> but frank, what you said is so interesting because i don't

think krebs' adversaries to protect the country from, russia, once again donald trump finds himself aligned with russia's vladimir putin finding one of our own officials who protected the integrity of our election and our vote as someone who worked against him or wasn't on his side. is that a coincidence? >> no. there's no coincidence here. look, the success of putin and success of trump go hand in hand. you need only read that mueller report to figure that out in terms of that kind of collaboration, and the track record is there. so if putin is upset, trump is upset. let's not forget this trump firing is more than just vindictiveness and anger at speaking the truth, there's more to it. it is not trump looking in the rearview mirror at what happened, it is also looking forward. by that, i mean part of krebs' job is to stop the propaganda about how the election is

fraudulent, how there's massive voter fraud. and by the way, that's pumped up by adversaries like russia. you take out that guy, the number two guy resigns, you have no leadership at the helm to stop the propaganda that people are buying into that the whole election was rigged. >> you know, elizabeth newman, tragically there is new polling out that suggests about 30% of the american electorate believes the lies trump is telling them and i want to ask you about something our friend natasha bertrand tweeted. one way this could backfire, as government official, krebs was forbidden speaking to biden transition team, nothing is stopping him from doing so now, he has a lot of institutional knowledge that isn't nationally classified. would the couldnntinuity of thi government and threat prevention be something that would drive him to want to participate and

help with an incoming administration? >> absolutely. chris is all about the mission. when i met him in march of 2017, started about two weeks after i did, he was all about figuring out what went wrong in 2016 and working with our state and local partners, making sure that it never happened again. he was successful in that mission. so i have no doubt that after some rest, he has five young kids, needs to spend time with his family, but i have no doubt he would be more than happy to transfer knowledge and prepare the next team that's ready fo come in and take the helm. i mean, our adversaries are not resting, they're continuing in their efforts to sew disinformation and commit cyber attack. there are amazing men and women throughout cisa, the intelligence community, the military you will never hear

about, doing their jobs every single day, regardless what the president does because they love their country and swore and oath to the constitution. that's the great thing about our country. i am very sad that half our country seems to be believing these lies and we certainly need the president to move on, get to january and february of next year when he is not on the front page every day because he is the president and maybe he is just tweeting but we need to be able to kind of push him aside and be able to reinstitute some normalcy where we are not outraged every hour from something he has done, and maybe then the fog lifts, maybe some part of that electorate that voted for him start to hear the facts. maybe then they can come back to reality with the rest of us and realize that they have been lied to for four years.

>> you know, i mean, that is the question on the table, right? joe biden is the incoming president, donald trump as you said has a future on twitter i suppose. jim, with 30% of the country believing that somehow fraud took place and you've got the most senior official in charge of securing the election saying systemic widespread voter fraud did not take place, neither did election interference, and you've got even this trump friendly election board in michigan that trump got ahead of himself and tweeted his congratulations, they were going to defy the will of the voters of michigan, not certify the vote. even they caved to reality. you covered this space of the intersection between trump and his fixers and national anthem. what does it suggest that he managed to take that model and using as fixer apparatus the next 60 days of the united states federal government, rudy

giuliani's willingness to humiliate himself in courtroom after courtroom after courtroom for the sweet price of $20,000 a day apparently to spread these lives. he leaves having brainwashed 30% of the country. >> well, first of all on the last point, yeah. this is going to be a real issue for joe biden and his incoming administration sort of down plays this, don't think it will be a problem, say they don't. but there are going to be tens of millions of people in this country who will be convinced that this wall an unfair, stolen result and we see it in the polling, we see it playing out on the streets this last weekend, we saw it play out in michigan. but one thing i would say about michigan last night is on one hand, two trump loyalists came around, certified a vote count the president was hoping they wouldn't certify. that said, it was the one moment

we have seen where the reality, this unsupported false notion that there was widespread fraud did insert itself into the system of certifying a presidential election and to me that was -- i'm not convinced that's not going to happen one or two more times before this is through. that shows you this is a contest between unreality, i'll call it now, this false notion, and the system that is based on evidence, facts. and so far that system is holding out, but this campaign is relentless and it is definitely not over yet. >> yeah. i mean, let me follow-up with you, jim. it's also 30% is the number of people he's always had, sort of when we talk about the unshakeable trump base, it was never the 44% that got him into the white house, it was always this 30% that he can never shake off. you talk about joe biden having to contend with that, this was the strategy that donald trump

applied to president obama, and i don't want to give him too much credit for having some ideology here, i think he reaches for the gutter and this is where he lands, delegitimizing a president that isn't himself is the reflex, the impulse, it is not thought out. to your point out about what joe biden inherits, is that anything that factors into sort of the shrinking army around donald trump? i mean, the legal operation, you had law firms peel away, folks in states peel away, it is really just rudy. >> that's true. it is rudy. he sure is taking his extra 15 minutes pretty far here. that said, i guess the question i want to see the answer to, and this will take time is, does this minority support that the president manage to continue to apply pressure to the republican party, and i think it certainly will to some extent, the

question is how much. we have state legislatures and legislators that feel pressure now to raise these questions about elections. some cases elections they won. they're having to wonder about results they would like to be solid so they're in good stead, but they are definitely mindful that this trump base, the trump rump, at 30% or whatever it is, can still wield a lot of power and apply a lot of pressure. >> you know, frank, i want to pick up on something jim said. i think it is something people don't want to contemplate, i agree it is something to keep an eye on, when it comes to certifying the votes, again, it is part of the process that usually warrants, is not usually on the front page when it happens, but is another piece of the process that could become harrowing i guess is the right word in some places. i want to read you the secretary

of state, a democrat in arizona said there are those, including the president, members of congress and other elected officials who are perpetuating misinformation and encouraging others to distrust the election results in a manner that violates the oath of office they took. it is well past time they stop. it is not complicated. again, there's not a sneaky strategy to trump, just impulses and reactions. all of the attacks on states and state officials are only in states he lost. the only votes that had integrity and were good were votes for him, and applying this blanket over every state he lost seems like another dangerous phase of the smear campaign against the american election. >> yeah. so one sidedness of this conspiracy theory is so transparently illogical, we can look at it and laugh.

the reality is that this cult of personality that exists with the core of trump followers, the 30%, is extremely dangerous because it is just that. they're adhering not to really an ideology but rather to a personality. we know from history that that is extremely dangerous when personality takes precedence over process. so when i look at the 30% or so through the domestic security lens, through what the future holds for extremists and violent groups and militia, qanon, proud boys, i have to tell you a trump who leaves office under dispute and then launches a media platform with say 10 million followers, then announces promptly that he is a candidate again for 2024, that doesn't bode well for the future of extremism in our country. that core will stay with him, be empowered, there will be no check and balance on what trump says or asserts online in his

own private media platform. >> well, and to pick up on that point, elizabeth, the very first time i talked to you, we talked about trump's role in not creating white supremacy, but making white supremacists great again. let's call this effort what it is, it is racist. what donald trump and rudy giuliani are trying to do is throw out votes from largely minority parts of the tastates they lost. every republican, there are only seven republican senators that acknowledge joe biden's win. all of the rest of them are now part of what essentially amounts to disenfranchising, people that don't vote for donald trump, and you look at the lawsuits, i looked at all of the reporting, they're largely in parts of the country with more diverse populations. so you've taungd about wanting to be part of making conservatism whole and

meaningful again. how do you start when going out with trump means going out with what is largely a racist attempt to take away the votes of the black and brown americans. >> it's a question i spent a lot of time really depressed over the last few weeks. i have been very disheartened to see how there's a lack of leadership for people i used to look up to thinking that now at least they would be free. i understood the political context, now it is the other side of the election, they can speak the truth. they largely refuse to do that. so where do we go from here. i think the first thing that we have to recognize is there is a remnant of a relatively small group of us that used to be part of the republican party. it is less for me about fighting for a party and more about fighting for a conservative or

center right approach to both make sure we balance what i would disagree with on the far left and balance what we disagree with on our right. it might be a hard slog because what trump has effectively done in partnership with conservative infotainment, they believe an entirely different set of facts. if you dig into what they believed, ten years ago those average republicans would have considered those beliefs radical. now they're mainstream. so you have this radicalization factor that's occurred within the republican party and it allows the extreme violent fringes to recruit from what is otherwise normal republicans. and i'm not saying all of them follow a path of violence, but i share frank's concern.

we are in a dangerous setting now when we have a large recruiting pool for people to choose to go a path towards violence. for me, it is less about are we ever going to win an election again and opposing trumpism as much as trying to help what are otherwise very good people in this country who care passionately about this country but have been deceived. how do you approach them, help them see that they have been deceived. you cannot do it from an aggressive talking down to kind of way. you have to understand what their concerns are and you have to approach it with humility. that's not easy to do. we tend to shout at people. we're going to have to find another way to reach out to those that in the past would be seen as normal folks, going through the day, raising kids, earning a living.

i believe hundreds of folks are just deceived, but how do you break into that echo chamber. that's going to be really hard. >> you just got that effort started. you were so effortlessly profound in your diagnose of the contamination of information is spot on. i hope you keep coming here and talking about it. thank you so much. jim, congrats on all your great reporting. thank you for being here. and frank, we are nothing without you. thank you, my friend. when we come back, new york city, the nation's largest school system, 1.1 million students will be fully remote starting tomorrow as another coronavirus wave hits the city. plus, the pressure campaign to turn georgia's republican secretary of state into a trump loyalist has reportedly been a long time coming. our friend steve schmidt on this, how democracy can recover from the past four years. and rudy giuliani in front of a

courtroom judge the first time in decades. as you might guess, didn't go so well. rudy is rusty. the reporting behind this perplexing and incompetent strategy when "deadline white house" continues. don't go anywhere. white house" continues don't go anywhere. good morning, mr. sun. good morning, blair. [ chuckles ] whoo. i'm gonna grow big and strong. yes, you are. i'm gonna get this place all clean. i'll give you a hand. and i'm gonna put lisa on crutches! wait, what? said she's gonna need crutches. she fell pretty hard. you might want to clean that up, girl. excuse us. when owning a small business gets real, progressive helps protect what you built with customizable coverage. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh. -donny, no. -oh.

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welco♪ welcome to my house live. do you wanna see something really cool? my man cave. another sharma? it's a place to relax. it's hot in here. uh, you might be more comfortable if you removed your fur pelt. i already did. oh. . public schools in new york city, the largest school district expected to close tomorrow after the positivity rate edged above the 3% threshold set by officials. schools were open barely eight weeks with roughly 300,000 children attending in person

classes. at a press conference after new york city's mayor, bill de blasio, announced schools were closing, governor cuomo defended his record, insisted new york is still in good shape. >> the whole world is going up, right? the whole world. every state in the nation is going up, right? so success becomes what, how you're doing relative to everybody else. we are fourth in the united states of america. come to me with anything else that we are fourth in the united states of america after having had the highest infection rate in the united states of america. new yorkers are doing a great job. >> let's get into the conversation, nbc news analyst

dr. irwin redlener. the governor justifiably defensive about how new york and new yorkers are doing. balance that for us against the mayor's decision to shut schools and his analysis that we just inched over the 3% rate. >> you know, nicole, the facts are the facts. we did inch over the threshold that was declared the compromise decision. but a firm decision that new york city took after negotiating with parents, teachers union and others. but all throughout the process there's been this wrangling antipathy between the governor and mayor, far less collaboration between those two people, very influential, than we needed to have. end of the day the mayor said 3%. we reached 3%, we closed the schools.

the problem is for many of the 300,000 children who still have been going at least on hybrid schedule to in person classrooms, this is a tremendous burden for these children and their parents, many of whom have to work. they don't have excellent or appropriate daycare capacity. but more importantly, a lot of the kids were behind anyway educationally before the whole covid thing arrived. now they're going to get more disruption. i am really worried about them. on the other hand, we're not getting the economy back in shape, schools back open permanently until we get this pandemic under control. >> i have about 30 questions for you. i will start with the first two that pop into my brain. seems like part of the problem that both these officials have is we don't get to understand the whole picture. i mean, i think protecting teachers, and i read with horror this news i think in usa today

that mayo clinic has something like 7, 8, 900 infections among their staff. when levels go up, community spread is the threat, teachers have a right to safety, too, that has to be balanced against kids being in school. are those the policies and health considerations they're juggling? >> yeah. so into the pot goes so many considerations, nicolle. first of all, level of community spread, that percentage of 3% threshold we keep talking about. secondly, obviously the tustudes have to be protected, although not many students are getting sick. teachers, not just teachers, bus drivers, school staff, everybody else that makes it possible for school to be open. and they're right to be anxious about all this. the problem is we don't have all of the definitive information we might need in terms of what exactly is the level of risk the teachers are taking. but really, everybody has to be protected in this.

and similar to if you think about it, questions about reopening restaurants. when is it safe. we need them open for the economy to begin thriving, but priority one has to be the safety and health of the community, the city, the country. and those are the factors that make it complicated. we don't have the vaccine yet as you well know. hopefully we will at some point in 2021 for the general population. meantime, we have limited tools in the tool kit which include separation, closing institutions like schools and so on, and we're having to tough it through very complicated battle with not a lot of information. >> what is your sense of what schools, when we look back, will be? will they, i mean, as you said, there's not a lot of spread, not a lot of outbreaks in new york city schools. they turned out to be safer than even the most skeptical folks

thought they might be. do you think there's something about setting up schools in this socially distanced way with masks as policy that might be protective? how do you explain the fact that schools didn't become, ones that did open, didn't become super spreaders that people worried they might. >> i'm among those that did worry about that, nicolle, frankly. one of the things that happened that is very important is that new york city made a very aggressive effort to make sure the ventilation systems were functioning in each classroom and did not open classrooms that they could not make the ventilation systems work, and that's really important. otherwise you have lingering coronavirus in the air, even with separation and all that, still posed a danger. also should be said there have been about 100 schools that have closed in new york city over the last couple weeks because they've had two cases in a

school and that was the trigger to close those particular schools. schools are increasingly closing anyway. now we reach a threshold, we had to stick to our guns about keeping them closed. that said, boy, the mayor has the most unenviable job on the planet, so many factors and forces at work here. i think he is right, the governor is right to the extent they're both focused on getting the pandemic under control. the fact that the governor was saying we're doing better than other places is fine, it is true, but we still have an enormous public health challenge on our hands in new york like everywhere else. >> and i think this is so hard for everyone but of course we don't protect our teachers, there's no one to teach kids remotely either. i think we talked about kids aren't really getting as sick as adults, but there are other folks, janitors, bus drivers and

folks taken into consideration and justifiably so. it is such an emotional and intense issue. you're the most perfect person to talk to about it. thank you so much for jumping on with us today. >> thanks. when we come back, they had their sights set on influencing georgia. the latest reporting on failed attempts to hang onto power there, that's next. onto power there, that's next age plans, you can take advantage of free eye exams and free designer eyewear. ♪ wow ♪ uh-huh free annual eye exams, designer frames and prescription lenses. it's time to take advantage. ♪ wow 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.

if you want to see a single case study in everything that's wrong with the republican party right now, look no further than georgia where republicans there are so desperate to hold onto power, they have been putting intense, unbelievable pressure on one of their own. georgia's republican secretary of state, brad raffensperger. we witnessed trump call the secretary of state a rino. means a republican in name only. refusing to go along with his ploy to undermine the election result there. we have seen two gop senators, both locked in tight runoffs go so far as to demand that he resign. we also know senator lindsey graham, not from georgia, pushed the secretary of state to find a way to toss or lose ballots there. now we know thanks to reporting from propublica, it began months

before election day. raffensperger designed an offer in january to be honorary co-chair of trump campaign in georgia. he later rejected gop requests to support trump publicly. he and his staff said in interviews. raffensperger said he believed because he was overseeing the election, it would be a conflict of interest to take sides. the attacks on his job performance are clear retaliation, raffensperger said. let's bring into our conversation steve sh myth, strategist, co-founder of the lincoln project. i wanted to talk to you yesterday when the unlikeliest of heroes, someone who used to not burst on the national scene, the secretary of state of either party simply doing their job, not being corruptible by lindsey graham or any efforts from the trump campaign, but then trump by tweet fired chris krebs who hardened our election systems,

worked with states and localities to prevent foreign interference. and elizabeth newman said something at the top of the show that struck me at the time as something that's going to haunt the country a long time, not just republicans, but the country. trump and his allies succeeded in doing is contaminating the information ecosystem that up is down, down is up, truth is a lie, lie is the truth, and these two officials seem to epitomize that. what do you think? >> i think you're exactly right, nicolle. look, at the end of the day, democracies are sustained on faith and belief by the people under which they're governed, believe in the legitimacy of the system. what we see is a rare example in trump's america where a republican official with qualities of recognizity tud, somebody discharging public duties in an effective way, honest way, and you can see the smoke coming up from the

decision, right? like it just confuses the trumpian ecosystem built on this foundation of corruption and to see somebody acting in a contrary manner is just pretty remarkable in this moment in time. >> how did the whole party break bad? i find raffensperger exactly the way you describe him, this extraordinary, strong, honest public servant. why is that breaking news these days? how did an entire political party become corrupt? >> become corrupted, become a cult of personality in service to donald trump. now in the end, the chairman of the senate judiciary committee, lindsey graham, making calls to try to intimidate the secretary of state in georgia, asking him to disenfranchise voters, to throw out ballots, trying to undermine the integrity of an

election. look, this is an election in the end that republicans did well with in the house of representatives, down ballot legislative races. but donald trump lost and he was delta decisive defeat. the election was fair, the results are clear. in america what we have always done is move on and the efforts to poison faith and belief in the result of this election and the minds of millions of americans which is being stoked by the republican senators like lindsey graham, that's being stoked by other republicans across the country, they're breaking of faith with american democracy, the most american ideas that we decide, the people decide who governs us. we do that through an election process. so this behavior we have seen will usher in a new destructive era in american democracy. we'll be dealing with the aftermath of the weeks that

follow the election for decades. it is as tragic a thing as we have seen in the entirety of the trump era. my personal view, you look at the 567 orphan children, an immoral act, thousands of dead americans that didn't have to be, there's no action this man has taken that's worse than this final one in his defeat of the election because the american system has been sustained on faith and belief in democracy since the 1790s. donald trump is really the first person who is deliberately, premeditated trying to poison it. it is hard to watch republicans go along with it. >> should joe biden be open to investigating those three things, child separation policy, the trump white house conduct in

and around the pandemic, and other alleged crimes he committed? >> i think there are different issues, nicolle. i think the justice department, absent any touch of politics should investigate if there were crimes. follow the evidence. on the question of should there be oversight at the congressional level, executive branch level about what happened to the children's parents, of course there should be. those actions were committed in my name and your name and they are an outrage. they are immoral. i believe the orders that enabled them were illegal. so we should understand and have a full public accounting for all of these things. and everybody who did wrong during this administration, whether thieving from the taxpayers, whether it is other

conduct, in the end there's criminal liabilities attached to that, for sure. last thing we need in this country is a second political party that vefinvests in lockinp political opponents no matter how heinous they may be. don't need a second party going into that space in america. >> steve schmidt, i promise next time we will talk only about the incoming administration, not the outgoing one. wish i had more time to talk to you about that. thank you, my friend, for spending time with us. great to see you. up next, what's your legal strategy when rudy giuliani is the best lawyer you can find. we'll look at rudy's rusty day in court next. day in cou nrtext.

it is sad to watch someone who america looked to at a time of need desend into this type of lunacy, conspiracy theory and fear monger and is not helping the country in any way, is again speaking to an audience f one. i see a man who is sad, a man who clearly forgot what he learned in law school, i see a man who has absolutely no evidence to back up the ridiculous claims his client makes on twitter every day.

>> that was pennsylvania attorney general josh shapiro talking about trump's last ditch effort to overturn joe biden's decisive victory. rudy giuliani has taken over legal efforts, making it clear trump's end game amounts to lunacy and total incompetence. he sought to decertify election results. he claimed widespread voter fraud, said observers were legally denied access to vote counting, even though there's no evidence of that. guilliani's argument is likely to be undercut by the conclusion yesterday by the state supreme court that election officials didn't violate state law in the observation process. joining us, robert costa,

national political reporter for "the washington post," and political reporter for axios. both are msnbc contributors. bob, i am sure you talked to more people than i have, i talked to a long time rudy friend and long-time rudy friend and political ally and said it's sad to watch. who other than donald trump thinks that rudy is doing a good thing for the country? >> the only other people in giuliani's orbit who seem to be encouraging him include steve bannon, the former white house chief strategist and a lot of former allies of mayor giuliani are saying that he's way off the grid here politically speaking, legally speaking, based on his performance in court this week. yet they continue to tell me behind-the-scenes, president trump is listening to rudy giuliani hour by hour, being egged on by giuliani and they both are determined to fight on and try to make it difficult, if not possible, for republican

voters across the country to believe in the integrity of this election. >> and it is impossible to understate the damage being done every single day by i think most elected officials think or want to do some good. they are doing nothing but harm to their own supporters. i mean, is there any evidence anywhere, alexi, that any republicans are trying to gather and create a coalition to accept reality? it sounds so weird to even ask that question. but even in trump's own orbit, chris christie was on television the day after the election basically saying the result is the result, there's no evidence of fraud. this is such a small group of trump loyalists inside the trump orbit contaminating the views and beliefs of millions. >> it's just clear that president trump still has a strong hold over the republican party. i'm thinking about senator marco

rubio earlier this week talking to reporters in which he seemingly accidently referred to joe biden as president-elect and then kind of had to do this mental verbal gymnastics to walk it back as to not anger president trump or step out of line with his party. but the big picture, nicolle, and the man from pennsylvania was just talking about this, it's a perpetuation from trump and his allies on down of this conspiracy theory lifestyle, of this willingness to live in an alternate reality and alternate universe. that was evidenced by the maga rallies in dc last week. those folks obviously are trump supporters but they were protesting the outcome of a legitimate election that trump's dhs said was the most secure in our history. they simply will not accept joe biden as their president and will not accept it as their reality in large part because of the way that president trump has been casting doubt on mail-in balloting on the electoral process and integrity of our election for months before the

actual election and now we see how he's employing these fighters and employing more of a media strategy than a legal strategy like rudy giuliani to further dilute the waters and confuse people and just further divide us. that's the thing, nicolle. joe biden has a high bar when he's inaugurated in january to bring the country together when it's not just republicans who are standing in line with president trump, but it's 70 million americans who think that donald trump deserves to be president still and want to live in this alternate reality. >> robert costa, i'm going to ask you to make a prediction. if donald trump calls on every republican to boycott joe biden's inauguration, do you think they'll listen? >> many of them will. they continue to stand down even though they know better behind the scenes. i was speaking to john bolton, the former national security adviser an hour ago, and he said president trump in his words is living in fantasy land, but many

republicans still fear him, believe he will want to run for president again in 2024. he'll have a say over primary fights in 2022. so as much as many republicans want to be rid of president trump, they also believe he still dominates the party. and so if he makes that command, nicolle, you will see some republicans perhaps stay home, maybe they'll use the pandemic as an excuse. but they still believe, based on my reporting, that he has political capital and they're not standing up, as steve schmidt was saying, at this critical moment in history. >> alexi, let's take it from the other side. joe biden ran as someone who wanted to represent every single american. how do you do that if the latest monmouth poll has 30% of americans who don't believe he won in a legitimate and fair election? >> look, it's a tall order. we've seen the way that joe biden has offered this steady sort of leadership in the transition period so far in spite of being blocked to really

move forward with the transition in a peaceful and orderly way because of the trump administration and the gsa blocking him from those things. but we've seen the way he continues to push the message that he ran as a democrat but wants to represent everyone. i think to bob's point what's really going to be interesting for president-elect joe biden when he becomes president biden is whether and how president trump continues to be a power player in politics and continues to be not just a thorn in his side, but someone who is effectively making the republican party his own still and changing the ways in which they work with joe biden and biden is going to have to rely on the mcconnells and lindsey grahams of tp senate to get anything done, not to mention the division we're seeing among house democrats with the more liberal members and moderate members going at it more publicly lately. he's got a tall order to fulfill and it's going to take time. and the other thing is there are four in ten americans who will cry fake news now to anything they don't want to hear or believe and that has a lasting

effect on society that i don't think joe biden or anyone is going to be able to get rid of on their own. >> it's like a dieter throwing away the scales instead of the potato chips. does anyone ever like lose face? when pompeo is talking about a second trump term or these guys refusing to acknowledge that joe biden won in a free and fair election and that he's the incoming president, do any of them ever drop the act in private conversations and acknowledge reality or are they all in? >> there's a belief inside the republican party that president-elect biden is president-elect and they're preparing to work with him or not work with him in early 2021. but they've been doing for three and a half, nearly four years, this dance with president trump of indulging him at every turn. but in the corporate world, the political world, people will

remember how they handled this. and as much as they believe they're just trying to get by, it's going to be remembered. >> i think ben is right. robert costa, alexi, thank you so much for spending some time with us. the next hour, deadline white house, starts after a quick break. don't go anywhere. ays. advil targets pain at the source... ays. ...while acetaminophen blocks pain signals. the future of pain relief is here. new advil dual action.

are facing immense death and suffering in the coming weeks, and we will be there, but we need to act now, we need to act quickly to protect our health

care workers so that we can save as many lives as possible. thank you. i'm sorry i'm so emotional. >> no, you've got me emotional. >> hi, again. it's 5:00 in the east. it was a sight that we are not used to seeing, right? a president or in this instance a president-elect addressing the issue, the reality of this raging pandemic with compassion and purpose and listening to and leaning on experts and expertise. that was joe biden today speaking with health care workers, getting firsthand accounts and listening to what those on the front line are experiencing and what they need, as the virus continues to shatter record after record after record. case numbers in all 50 states have increased over the last two weeks, that's according to nbc news, with a dozen states seeing a rise of infections of 100% or

more. the u.s. currently stands at more than 11.5 million infections. new york city announced today that it will close its public school system again after the city's positivity rate hit 3%. hospitalizations are also reaching new highs, according to information from the department of health and human services. 22% of the country's hospitals reported this week that they expect to face a staffing short i -- shortage, while we're also forcing health care workers to take time off after being sick or being exposed themselves. here's a chief medical officer at a oklahoma hospital. >> as someone who is an intensive care doctor who has dealt with having to work hard her whole life and being surrounded by people that are in the trenches, we're not unaccustomed to hard work. but this is unlike anything that any of us have seen. >> and sadly, today we passed

the mark of a quarter of a million american lives lost to the coronavirus, plus four weeks saw 42% increase in fatalities. the metrics are trending in all the wrong directions, but there is hope on the horizon. pfizer announced today that its vaccine trial reached its end and is 95% effective at preventing the disease. pfizer says it will submit an application for emergency authorization within days, following moderna's announcement just a few days ago that its vaccine is also nearly 95% effective. the task of distributing these vaccines to more than 300 million americans awaits the incoming biden administration and as more time passes with trump refusing to recognize his own laws and obstructing the biden team's transition, the deadlier the consequences. here is dr. rick bright, a member of the biden coronavirus task force just this morning. >> i want to emphasize this is why it is absolutely critical

that the transition team is able to sit down with the current administration today to be able to discuss the protocols of the trials, to be able to discuss the technical aspects of the vaccine and the rollout and the distribution campaigns. we have been held at an arm's pace. we have no insight to the plans from this current administration. we do not even have direct access to the data. so the csa delay of the ascertainment of this election is causing significant delays with this critical time point with the data and the vaccine availability. we need to sit down immediately. >> a health care system overwhelmed and an incoming president hampered in his effort to save lives by an outgoing lame duck president who won't acknowledge his defeat and commence with the transition is where we start this hour. peter baker, new york times chief white house correspondent and an msnbc political analyst is back and michael steele,

former rnc chairman and a senior adviser to the lincoln project and dr. celine gounder is back. she's a member of the biden/harris transition coronavirus advisory board and an epidemiologist and the most of "american diagnosed", a podcast. welcome back. it's a pleasure to have you back. you were the first person, we were still in the studio so it had to be in february that i last had a chance to talk to you. what about the path this country has taken with this pandemic surprises you most, dr. gounder? >> i think what surprises me most is the story of the south dakota nurse that's been all over the news in the last day or so talking about patients she's caring for who are dying from coronavirus now who refuse to

believe, even now, that this is real, that they are dying from coronavirus and not the flu, not from lung cancer. i have served as an ebola aid worker in west africa where similarly there were issues of mistrust and people said ebola is a hoax, ebola is not real, and yet they got it when they saw their own loved ones dying from this, their own loved ones getting sick. and it's just shocking to me that that message doesn't seem to be getting through, even in the hardest hit areas now. >> and peter baker, the reason that that video went viral, the reason that critical care nurse had that story to tell is because a lot of these people believe their president and the president once called it a hoax, the president refuses to wear a mask, the president refuses to take to the rose garden and call on every american to cancel this

thanksgiving and start planning next year's because help is on the way. there is something for donald trump to do and say if he had any interest in saving any lives, and he refuses to do it. why can't he be convinced to use his final days to protect the people he's supposed to serve? >> well, nicolle, 15 days since the election and probably 15,000, 16,000 americans have died of covid since then. you're right, we haven't seen the president say anything about any of them or say anything about any of this going on, other than to take credit for the vaccine that moderna and pfizer have been working on. it's a remarkable situation. we've basically had the equivalent of five 9/11s since election day and a president who is absent without any discussion of this whatsoever. he's sitting in the white house locked up in his fortress in effect fighting the forces that are going to come and remove him in 60 days and not doing anything to give the american people, as you say, any kind of guidance about what they should be doing to stay safe.

we saw this as a white house that said before the election essentially it's given up on trying to control the virus. mark meadows said that in an interview on tv, he said we're not going to control it. basically they were saying we're waiting for the vaccine. the vaccine isn't going to be widely distributed to everyday americans really until spring and it will take through summer until most people are able to get it. there's a lot of pain and suffering between now and next spring and we don't see a president telling us -- giving us any guidance or leadership about what we can be doing about ourselves and what the government should be doing to help us. >> but, peter, if i could just push you, they're doing the opposite. i mean, scott alice is on tv saying gather with your oldest relatives. i mean, you might kill them. kel kel kelly mca knee is still walking around without a mask. is anyone around there working on the coronavirus crisis or are

they all off spreading trump's -- what is happening in the building? >> yeah, you wouldn't know that there was anything going on about the virus. there are no meetings on the coronavirus task force, certainly none that involve the president or the vice president, who is supposed to be in charge of it. there have been no public briefings of any kind by public health officials. obviously, dr. fauci continues to speak out when he is asked and he is very straightforward and candid about how bad things are right now and what should be doing to fight it. that's sort of on his own, not because the government has done anything to sponsor it or put anybody out there. there's no sense that the white house is in a panic mode or any kind of scramble mode to adapt to these circumstances. hospitalizations are up. we're once again back where we were in the spring where places are overloaded. they need help in terms of equipment and in terms of resources and there's no answer from the white house and no movement, obviously, on capitol hill toward any kind of covid relief bill, which has been sitting there since april unacted on.

>> michael steele, i'm always reluctant to use 9/11 parallels, but it is useful in understanding just the vastness. i think people can't process these numbers anymore. but in terms of the lives lost, if i could just extend the 9/11 analogy to the threat, there's still three planes in the air and they might hit before donald trump leaves office. what do you do about a republican party that has sort of taken donald trump's posture and not caring about loss of life? >> unfortunately, nicolle, there's nothing that can be done in the moment. the elections are over, the american people have spoken in large measure, delivered a verdict, if you will, on everything covid up to this point. so the question becomes is there a sense of accountability that comes later? we don't know. the party, from some of the folks that i've talked to, from, you know, the activist level to

the elected level, sort of do a collective sigh and say the voters gave us more seats in congress and they didn't take the senate away from us, at least not yet. so it's not us. we're not the problem. their problem was with trump. and i don't know if that's quite right. i still think the american people do expect them to at least lead in this moment. look, you've got doctors and nurses and health professionals on this panel as well as, you know, opening scenes that you show us, videotapes, and the last thing they want to do is come to the american people and say, i told you so. they're putting out the warnings, they're giving you the roadmap, they're telling you what needs to be done. you've got the president-elect biden's commission saying to the current commission of president trump, hey, can we at least get in the room and have a conversation about some tactics that we need to be taking before we get to the point where the only thing we can say is, i told

you so. so, you know, the expectation republicans in the senate and the house actually coming out and saying, okay, let's at least move the ball forward on this, i don't hold out hope for that because it hasn't happened so far. so what makes us think it's going to happen any time soon? particularly when it all of a sudden becomes a, quote, win for the newly elected president of the united states, joe biden. and that's the last thing these guys want, is to give him a win. and that's so sad, because this is not about winning and losing politically. nicolle, as you know, it's about saving lives and it's about protecting americans. and i thought that's what our elected officials were sent to washington and to their state capitols to do. >> i'm sure you're right, but it is a sickening state of affairs. dr. gounder, i want to understand you're part of the transition team. what would you be doing if the transition had been authorized

by donald trump's head of gsa? >> well, some of the things that we're planning to do is massively scale up testing, make it possible to get people treated with the new monoclonal antibodies that have been developed by regeneron and eli lilly, and finally prepare for mass vaccination of americans. and these are all massive logistical challenges and we really do need to be in on conversations with local and state health departments, with the retail pharmacy chains, with the manufacturers so that we understand really, you know, where to be deploying our resources and what planning still needs to be done. but we're not being -- we're not privy to those conversations, to those details, so it's going to be very difficult to seamlessly pick up on january 20th without that information. >> so michael steele, knit it altogether, peter baker reports

there's nobody on the white house complex really meeting on masks in a concerted effort to manage the crisis or figure out these things. an incoming president actually does want to take on the role of defeating the virus and i take peter's point that donald trump was looking toward the vaccines the whole time and wants credit now. if he would green light a transition, i would be happy to give him credit for the vaccine. but what good is it if the incoming administration can't get the production -- can't sync up with the cdc and the states and start working for a seamless handover? these are not easy -- this really is like a wartime sort of logistical effort to get vaccines into the arms of 300 million americans. >> it is, it is a massive, massive undertaking, let alone responsibility. it is an incredible degree of coordination and planning, all

the way down the chain. this is not just about what the government will do. it's what hospitals, doctors' offices, cvs, for god's sakes, these locations where the vaccine, for example, can be housed and, you know, this vaccine requires below zero freezing, this vaccine doesn't. there's a massive amount of intelligence and smarts and planning that has to go into this. and what we're getting right now from the current administration is neither intelligence nor smarts in dealing with this. this is a political play, this is a pouting president, this is an elected team of officials who are giving him further license to go forward. so if you're the biden team, what you have to do is stretch as much as you can, given the limited amount of access to information and resources you have, project as much as you can right now, and if between now

and the 19th of january the transition process opens up, okay, run with that. but just plan for just everything starting on january 20th at 12:15 p.m. because that's how i would approach it. so i would just start putting in place all those various pieces, putting the word out on the street with the governors, medical institutions, health care facilities, et cetera, that this is going to be the immediate ramp-up plan because you cannot wait for donald trump to stop pouting and acting like a petulant child because he lost an election. and he wants to prove something that's unprovable. you have to be president and you have to lead in this moment and the country has to get behind that. and those who want to wallow with trump, wallow on, baby. the rest of us are going to heal and move forward and you can catch up later because we don't have time to wait on your crazy. we can't play this game anymore because there are lives at stake, period.

>> i want to associate myself with everything that my friend michael steele just said. dr. gounder, i do want a reality check. what is the consequence in terms of vaccinating more than 300 million americans of having to do that, having to just go in and get started on january 20th? because there is no transition. >> well, the supply chain, the manufacturing, all of that is highly complicated to be managing all of that. we have a vaccine that requires minus 70 celsius deep freezing and another one that also requires freezing, though not as significant. we need to have a better sense of where we are in terms of timelines, in terms of quantity available. we need to be making plans to target these vaccines based on their characteristics to the settings that make the most sense. so you may be gearing up for the pfizer vaccine in urban areas where it's easier to get them to a deep freeze, you might be gearing up for moderna in more

rural parts of the country where they don't have that kind of deep freezing capacity. but then that means you're going to be preparing for that cold chain, that deep freeze capacity, you're going to be preparing for the nursing capacity that you need to deliver these vaccines. so you need to know, okay, this is when we need them, this is where we need them, to be prepared to administer this. so having a vaccine is great. we are not putting pressure on the fda to expedite their approval, their emergency use authorization. we want that to be done rigorously so that people have confidence in the vaccine. but then once we have it, we have to get it in people's arms and that's only going to happen if we have all of those logistics on the ground and ready to go. >> peter baker, i'm just going to ask you to make a quick prediction. is it your sense that there will be no transition, that donald trump won't leave or acknowledge

defeat until january 20th? are we really looking at a transfer with no transition? >> look, i think it's possible there's a transition at some point in the next couple of weeks, especially as these states certify their results and particularly after the electors take their vote. i don't know that we'll see the president actually concede. it's hard for me to imagine him agreeing that he lost an honest, free and fair election. he's going to go, i think, a long time saying this was stolen from him. it is possible that the gsa does ascertain at some point when the states come back with their official certification that it's time to begin the transition process, even if the president doesn't really favor it. >> what a remarkable state of affairs for this country. peter baker, michael steele, dr. celine gounder, thank you all for starting us off. when we come back, donald trump fires the top administration official who refused to go along with his fantasy that the election he lost was rigged against him. now rudy giuliani, the public face of trump's big lie, may

have a big financial incentive to gin up false charges to please his boss. the latest reporting on that story is straight ahead. plus, the trump campaign is throwing another hail mary pass, this time in wisconsin, the state joe biden won handily by roughly the same margin trump won it by four years ago. later, we'll dig into the motives behind all of it, the lies, the refusal to concede, the stonewalling of democracy in a country that has voted to move on. deadline white house continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere.

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trump's desire to erase the cold hard truth that he lost an election that was free widespread systemic voter fraud, when it was called one of the most secure elections in the nation's history that he took to twitter to fire the official who worked to make sure that there wasn't widespread fraud or foreign medaling in our election. add to that the fact that one man stands alone as the face and legal visionary behind trump's fantasy that voter fraud is to blame for his defeat and you have a day rate of $20,000, which in "new york times," multiple sources say is exactly what rudy giuliani has requested for his legal services. from the times report, quote, some trump allies fear that mr. giuliani is encouraging the president to continue a spurious legal fight because he sees

financial advantage for himself in it. joining our conversation, the aforementioned mike schmidt and clint watts, former fbi special agent and msnbc national security analyst. mike schmidt, the rudy strategy seems to have some echos of the rudy/mueller strategy, which you often described as an effort to throw enough sand into the gears to cast doubt about mueller's efforts that at least trump's own base thought it was an illegitimate investigation. they seem to have transferred that pr strategy to the election, to the american democracy itself. is anyone acknowledging at this point that that's all it is, a pr effort as giuliani racks up defeat after humiliating defeat, after humiliating courtroom appearance after another? >> i think that's a good analogy about how giuliani is acting the same way towards the election

that he did towards mueller. in the case of mueller, the president was able to steamroll that investigation and really gut it of anything that would have damaged the president, and in large part because giuliani had softened the ground and had made sure that there was a lot of information out there in the public -- not information, but, you know, basically baseless accusations that undermined the report and mueller took a back seat to that and was steamrolled by that. in this case it's probably harder to steamroll an election, but what giuliani is doing is that he's really taking the trump base and he's soaking them in this sort of lighter fluid in a sense and stoking these baseless claims about voter fraud and building it up like the election has been stolen. and obviously his efforts have gone nowhere. he's not completely alone, but

he is among a small group of people in trump's orbit that is pushing this. a lot of people in the white house realize that the president did lose the election, even though the president won't acknowledge it. and he has a real hold on it. and our reporting shows maybe one of the reasons why, to get paid 20,000 a day. and as we watch giuliani here, i think we have to consider that as this goes forward giuliani is financially motivated at $20,000 a day to keep this going. >> well, clint watts, this is an attack on our democracy, i mean what is soaked in lighter fluid is the country, is the electorate, is the 30% in the monmouth poll who says they don't think joe biden won in a fair election. the public servant who was fired last night was fired not for failing in his job, but for

succeeding in his job and refusing to lie about it. what do you make -- i mean, it seems like playing with fire is a pretty good analogy here to what trump and giuliani are doing. >> nicolle, if you had told me four years ago that i wouldn't be worried about russian disinformation and mostly be worried about what was coming out of the white house, i wouldn't believe you, because the long run goal was always to erode trust in institutions and democracy, to undermine elected officials and that's really happening now with the way this transition is going and with the allegations with vote rigging or voter fraud or voting machines and these conspiracies. chris krebs, that position was created to fill a hole. there was a giant hole after 2016 where there was nervousness around whose vote counted, was it manipulated, did the russians get into the systems. so this position was created to create the security across all 50 states. it was a tough task, not only

because, yeah, we had to fix the voting machines, yes, we needed to restore confidence, but then the postal service, the pandemic, all of these other complications on top. and you saw bipartisan support for chris krebs whenever he was fired. and instead of confirming those machines, the processes, the people that worked on it, we now are seeing that the white house is the one sowing the doubt about the electoral process, even though we have improved it more in the last four years than at any other time in american history. >> you know, mike, clint makes a good point. four years ago we were talking about russian disinformation and now there's really no use for those trolls or the russian gru or whoever was involved in that effort because the president is doing it all himself. but to that end, rudy giuliani was identified by the american intelligence agencies as a pawn in or a participant of a russian disinformation effort. why is he still and why is he

now the only senior official this close to trump around issues of the election, if that's the case? >> it's not clear. it seems like obviously we know that the president is someone that has never accepted defeat and would never really play by the norms about anything in his presidency and so perhaps it's the combination of the president's personality and giuliani's desires to keep this going that have come together here and are really undermining the election and the democracy and the voting process on a daily basis. and, you know, i don't think this is going to go anywhere, but i don't think that we should downplay the damage that this could have over the long haul and the doubt that it sows in an election and in an election

which they look sort of close, but it wasn't really close at all. and it really remains to be seen what giuliani will do here coming into january 20th and other ways that he will throw sort of a wrench in the transition and the handoff of power. >> clint, what does the fbi and law enforcement in this country do when this sort of dissent is being sown by rudy giuliani and donald trump? and we've had near misses. last weekend in washington there were clashes and protests and counter-protests that came violent. thank god there was no loss of life. but it seems if you take this juiced up, torqued up trump base -- and look, i would be mad if i were being told day after day that an election was stolen from the guy i liked, but it's not true. what does law enforcement do to prepare for a country that is on such hinder hooks about the

results of an election that wasn't actually meddled with? >> under any other circumstance we would be talking about what a wild success we had in terms of stopping foreign interference in an election. everything worked surprisingly well without leadership from the white house. you had cyber command and you had the fbi going out and doing preemptive arrests and you had the dhs securing the election system. so the system worked remarkably well but how much stress can that system take when they are literally fighting themselves when they are fighting up the chain of command? i think that's what we saw over the last week, these conspiracies were undermining the work of a unit that is under trump's command. what you look at in terms of law enforcement as well is one of the key divides that the president is focused on is blue lives matter or law enforcement

or, you know, this idea of local law enforcement versus federal and i think that's the biggest challenge, is you see the fbi doing great preemptive arrests, can they stay in front on the intelligence and stop that worst case scenario from happening. >> it's unbelievable. mike schmidt and clint watts, disinformation, the american version. thank you for spending some time talking about that with us. when we come back, the trump campaign files for a recount in wisconsin, but only in the counts where joe biden won by the biggest margins. we continue after a quick break. don't go anywhere. e.

in the nearly two weeks since joe biden became the president-elect of the united states of america, donald trump has played the part of sore loser very well, unwilling to accept the results, crying about fraud. he's obstructed biden's transition by refusing to concede and by refusing to issue the blanket statement that the election is a fraud. today trump's hangup in a desperate attempt to further or create some evidence of his false claim that he's the winner. nbc news can confirm that the trump campaign is going to spend $3 million to pay for a recount in two counties in wisconsin. the campaign cited what it called illegally altered absentee ballots, illegally issued absentee ballots, and illegal advice allowing the laws

to be circumvented. right now biden's lead over trump stands at over 20,000 votes in wisconsin, just enough for the trump campaign to file a recount. let's bring in nbc's shack brewster live in madison, wisconsin. what is this recount really about? >> reporter: that's the question that many people are asking here in the state of wisconsin. you know, you see the language from the press release and you see the claims that the trump campaign is making and it makes it clear that the strategy here is less about finding new votes for president trump and instead trying to eliminate as much vote as they can from president-elect -- or for president-elect biden at this point. so we'll go through the recount process. the focus are on the two most democratic counties in the state of wisconsin. you're talking about dane county, which is where madison is. biden won this county with 75% of the vote. and then you're talking about milwaukee county, the most

diverse county in the state of wisconsin, where biden won with 69% of the vote. you hear the language from the election officials, the local officials there. they're not holding back and saying that they believe these are outrageous claims that the trump campaign is laying on, but they say they're ready for this recount and they expect it to be wrapped up sometime by the middle of next week, nicolle. >> shaq, let me show you something that took place, a dane county clerk. listen to what he says. let's talk about it on the other side. >> let me ask you quickly about the sheer volume of misinformation coming from the white house about so-called irregularities. how are you dealing with it? >> it's so frustrating. we were trained, george and i trained for a year and a half or more for this kind of disinformation to come from the kremlin. that's what we were trying to figure out how we were going to try to mitigate that, the disinformation and point it out.

a lot of these, we never thought it would be coming from ourselves, from within the united states. >> shaq, it's so amazing and it's in line with the conversation we just had with clint watts and mike schmidt that four years ago it was a russian attack on our democracy, fast forward four years it's an incumbent president's attack on our democracy. >> reporter: yeah, nicolle. and that direct language, that was exactly what i was talking about. you heard that from the dane county clerk, but you also heard from the milwaukee county clerk in a press conference earlier today. he said the trump campaign's approach is haphazard at best. there's some frustration there about why milwaukee and dane are being targeted. milwaukee county clerk said this is an attempt at voter suppression, targeting the minority neighborhoods in his county. the other thing to note is that the emphasis -- there is an emphasis on transparency during this process. milwaukee county spent more than $400,000 or will be spending

more than $400,000 on av equipment alone just to make sure that people can watch this recount from home, that they can watch a live stream. so you're seeing the response to that be, hey, we're trying to be as transparent as possible and we'll let in as many observers as possible and folks can watch every ballot being kounlted from home. >> that's unbelievable. shaq brewster in madison, wisconsin. thank you for your reporting there. when we come back, it's being called the biggest political scandal we have ever seen and it's playing out right before our eyes. what is really behind donald trump's attempt to overturn an election he clearly lost? deadline white house continues after a quick break. k break. ♪

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with clinically-proven ingredients and his gum problems have vanished. (crowd applauding) therabreath, it's a better mouthwash. at walmart, target and other fine stores. our smart friends at nbc's first read team call it arguably the biggest political scandal we've ever seen in this country. even if donald trump's attempt to overturn an election he lost isn't going well in the court of law, it doesn't mean it hasn't resonated in the court of public opinion, at least among his supporters. a new monmouth poll out today shows almost a third of americans think joe biden only won because of voter fraud. so what's trump's plan here if he has one? joining us is tim o'brien, senior columnist at bloomberg opinion and democratic strategist. my question for you is, does he intend to do as much harm as he's doing?

my sense is yes, but having never grasped the office that he held, i wonder if he grasps how much harm he's doing by contaminating the information stream to his own supporters? >> of course he intends to do a lot of damage, nicolle. and of course he doesn't care about it, which is what makes him so uniquely dangerous. you know, we've had presidents before who have had bad motivations, who have had deep failings. i don't think we've ever had presidents who have had all of these kind of disastrous faults and inadequacies and incompetence, matched against a deep-seeded remorselessness and psychological ineptitude. he enjoys creating chaos in the service of promoting his own ego and every single one of these lawsuits that have been filed across the country now, yes,

they are attempting to try to reverse an election, yes, they know it won't. but the real goal of it is to develop an elaborate crutch for donald trump to lean on after he finally leaves the white house so he can say i didn't lose. donald trump will go to his grave with a gravestone that says i won, even though his business history is littered with failures and his presidency was littered with failures. but what he has done is he has propaganda information to create a strong electoral following for himself at the spence of the public interest and public good. we see it in the efforts to combat the covid-19 outbreak and the war on facts around that, and now he's deploying the same thing in this election. >> tim, you've gone toe-to-toe with him in litigation, you've covered him longer than just about anyone i know.

how does he corrupt the people around him and turn them into accomplices, people outside of his family and news organizations, and i guess rudy doesn't have anything else to do. but how does he create so many accomplices in his destructive and corrupt acts? >> because first and foremost, they're corruptible people. these are people without, i think, moral bearings and who have a need to become part of something larger than themselves and they've got the bad judgment to believe that that person that can achieve that for them is donald trump. and he has been very shrewd throughout his career in attracting third-rate want-to-bes, who want to glom onto this thought of being larger than life. what's amazing to me is the depth in which the republican party has not only enabled his

behavior, but got on board with it, whether that's lindsey graham or mitch mcconnell or any other number of other people, and in other institutions as you've named. i think the thing the american public has to hold onto right now is, despite his attack on our institution, our institutions will remain strong, and despite his idea to throw a temper tantrum over the next 60 days and not leave the white house, he will leave the white house even if he needs to be marched out of the front door. >> turning to what joe biden inherits from donald trump, it won't just be a country that is physically sick and really suffering under the weight of a raging coronavirus pandemic that really didn't have to rage to the degree that it is, but he will lead a country, 30% of which do not believe that he won in a free and fair election, which of course he did. the national security official who made sure that the election was free and fair was fired last night by donald trump so there

wouldn't be anyone that could attest to just how free of fraud it really was. how does joe biden navigate that? >> the reality is the only thing that donald trump has been successful at is getting a couple of people, and i say bec far from the majority but getting a group of americans to distrust the system, to distrust the process. here is the thing, though, there were a lot of americans who distrusted the system and distrusted the process, and distrusted obama when he came into office, too. that didn't stop him from governing and passing measures like the affordable care act. i think how joe biden navigates this is joe biden does his job as the president of the united states of all of the united states and not just a hand full of the people. here is the thing that we all should be a bit empathetic to no matter what side you sit on. our government is in shambles right now. donald trump didn't even fully

staff the government. so let's just start there in terms of the fact that we've had three and a half years where there haven't even been people in place doing the jobs that should have been done on behalf of the american people. in addition to that, his people have gone about dismantling parts of the government and god only knows what else the biden harris crew is going to find when they get in there. there is a lot of work that needs to be done and none of it should be concerned about trump and a hand full of people that still believe his wild conspiracy theories. >> i'm going to associate myself with your optimism, thank you both for spending some time with us today. when we come back, as we do every day, remembering lives well lived. o every da ry,emembering lives well lived right, everyone, we m. my job is to help new homeowners who have turned into their parents. i'm having a big lunch and then just a snack for dinner. so we're using a speakerphone in the store. is that a good idea? one of the ways i do that is to get them out of the home. you're looking for a grout brush, this is -- garth, did he ask for your help?

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her husband said she could spot an underdog from a mile away. students who maybe just needed a little extra help and attention, that's who they were to alexandria chitwood, under dogs deserving time and attention and care just like everybody else. so it's no surprise for two decades, she was a beloved guidance counselor in her pennsylvania school district. she was also happily married. alexandria and her husband kenneth recently bought their first home together. they expected to move in by this christmas but earlier this month, they both tested positive for coronavirus and according to

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these ex ordinaextraordi times. "the beat" with arry mi mel times. "the beat" with arry mi meber starts now. president trump is back to spend what remains as his time as a lame duck president fuming over his loss, a plot to delay the certification of his loss in some states. a revenge campaign against actual non-partisan u.s. officials and what are costly efforts to try to simply recount in certain places where he clearly lost. today the trump campaign, this is new is actually paying $3 million for a partial recount in parts of wisconsin. the biden campaign