. hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. the president's refusal to accept his resounding loss to joe biden is now officially a marketing scam with one prom minute trump supporter telling me over the weekend that trump is likely pouting in the white house like a petulant child while he sucks up small dollar donations from his supporters to pay his legal bills. in fact, "the washington post" is reporting that even donald trump is making plans for the biden presidency and plans to find opportunities to, quote, make money for relatively little work, a depressing parallel to his approach to the presidency. according to that "the washington post" article trump's plans include, quote, giving paid speeches to corporate groups or selling tickets to rallies. and maybe even writing a score settling memoir of his time as

president. so with even donald trump eyeing the exits all eyes are today on michigan where drama is unfolding at a meeting to certify its election results with at least one republican member of the board leaning against certifying even though a joe biden win there is legally inevitable. and though it would take two no votes to significantly delay those results it's worth noting the timing of the contentious debate there. its days after trump appealed to local michigan election officials and state legislators apparently as part of his push to disenfranchise michigan voters and overturn joe biden's win there. but even with michigan's move today it is quint essentially trumpian facing certain defeat trump still saw fit to fire a member of his legal team over the weekend. sydney powell along with alleging international conspiracies was evicted from

crazy town with a statement over the weekend that read, quote, sidney powell is practicing law on her own. she is not a member of the trump legal team. powell's ouster notably came after tucker carlson of fox news lam basted her and a federal judge in pennsylvania gave her a scathing rebuke of trump's legal strategy there writing that trump had used, quote, strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations unsupported by evidence in an attempt to throw out millions of votes. the opinion adds, quote, in the united states of america this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter let alone all the voters of its sixth most popular state. all of this inviting scorn from two few elected republicans. but the few that have not minced words. >> i think biden will be sworn in.

i think the real question now is how much damage trump can do before that happens. right now i think trump is throwing rocks through windows. i think he's the political equivalent of a street rioter. >> what's happened here is quite frankly the president's legal team has been a national embarrassment. i've been a supporter of the president's. i voted for him twice, but elections have consequences. and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn't happen. you have an obligation to present the evidence. the evidence has not been presented. >> important condemnations of trump's conduct, the legal shenanigans and a refusal to concede that our current count of current gop senators who have acknowledged joe biden's win remains at just five. the outgoing president and his ongoing campaign to overthrow an election he lost fair and square is where we start today. yamiche alcindor is back, pbs news white house krount and abc

news contributor. also joining us a.b. stoddard, and jim routenberg is back. jim, you've been all over this story since before the election ended which proves the point this was trump's plan all along. they seem to have the ability to pull accurately enough to know they weren't going to win on election day. but the piece they seem to not have in order was that you can't go into court and make things up the way donald trump does on twitter. is that where this is falling short for him? >> i mean, definitely. the courts, these are like evid evidentiary proving grounds. the interesting thing is there's a public case the president is making and that is fraud, fraud, fraud. in the courtroom they're not even often making that case. and when they even flirt with that case the judges say there's just no evidence for this.

but especially when they're asked what they're asking for is the wholesale disenfranchisement of so many americans. >> and i'm glad we're finally calling it what it is, and you have a great piece in "the times" today about not just the wholesale disenfranchisement of americans but largely minority districts. he's seeking to throw out the votes in the parts of the state he lost which happens to be the parts of the states where there are more african-american and latino voters. talk about his effort in michigan and trying to corrupt the process with trying to strong arm people working the phones and having it seems some success at least of intimidating folks but not enough. >> i mean, first of all, to pick up on your earlier point the focus in michigan is where on detroit, which has the highest percentage black population in the country. it's lost on no one in that city

what's going on there. and the argument trump is making on twitter is throw all of detroit's votes out, but he's reached down into the smallest part of the machinery that certifies election results to meddle and put pressure on these very local officials whose sole job is to certify the votes. it's not their job to investigate fraud. it's not their job to deliberate whether they should. their job is to certify the results that have already been certified by all the counties in that state. >> yamiche, jim writes this. this is a moment of truth for the republican party. the country is on a nice edge. with gop officials from the state capitols to congress choosing between the will of the voters and the will of one man. and driving officials like the michigan elections board republican to nervous decision. mr. trump has revealed the fragility of the election system and shaken it. this might be where this was always going to end, yamiche, but in some ways it reveals the

strength of disinformation. if the electoral system has proven too weak to stand up to him maybe that's where we should be focusing our reforms. >> it's the truth decay, not only are we polarized in terms of political views but we're polarized in terms of the facts. and the president has been successful for years now of going after this idea of alternative facts, of doing things what rudy giuliani said of truth isn't truth, having those ideas floating in the atmosphere. and now what you're seeing is the president really use that, weaponize that idea of his truth only being the kind of truth americans should believe it and using it to try and test the american system. i think the polling here is really, i think, something to look at. when you look at it 77% of trump

supporters don't believe that president-elect joe biden won this fair and square, that this was somehow due to fraud. what we are seeing, though, is a republican party that is really hemming and hawing, but you're seeing more and more people with growing criticism of the president. with rob portman, senator from ohio. and pat toomey. they have to face the facts which even if this isn't in our political interest to back this president, we have to say yes we believe in american institutions and speak up now. it's going to be hard to see who else shows up, and i think senator mitch mcconnell, does he feel it's in his interest to speak up and when will he at some point feel the interest to speak up more? that is what i think republicans are waiting on. >> a.b., it's in portman's interest to stand behind the president, it's like saving the food for a town starving with

people that have already died. i think everybody here has probably been tweeted at. we're all still standing. we actually took two names off the list. we're down to five. those five names are mitt romney, lisa murkowski, ben sasse, pat toomey and susan collins. and the rest of them are living in this world where they're fine with -- what is wrong with the rest of them? >> as you started the show what you called this, it's a marketing scam. it's a con. and the longer it lasts the more money president trump raises and the more of the clock he runs out. in this sort of vortex where he's feeling humiliated and trying to find a new way out, a new sort of optic, some shiny metal object, some rudy giuliani world salads while he's really scamming his voters about fraud

that doesn't exist, cases being thrown out, lawyers that are quitting, judges that are laughing at the filings. and hoping that the only thing that these people read are texts from the trump campaign asking them for more money and talking about these scams involving, you know, venezuela. so what's amazing about the comments from the people that you read by senators you read, they're not listed enough. they say things inconsist with our democratic process. they're not actually telling the voters you are being lied to and the fraud doesn't exist. so that's why they're so complicit. and that's why i want to thank writers like the national review and others for literally coming out and saying this man is trying to steal an election where and you have been lied to, and none of this exists. and it's really incumbent not on business leaders or conservative

writers but on mitch mcconnell and the rank and file in the republican party who serve voters in public office to tell them we don't know what you're reading but you are being lied to, and they won't do it. >> well, that's so interesting, a. b. i mean, i played chris christie and john bolten, and i know they don't have a lot of fans among our viewers, but it's important for people to see that chris christie was a close advisor, he's voted for donald trump twice. but he sees what you see, that there is a scam underway. donald trump lost fair and square. rudy giuliani's conduct is abhorrent, and i'm not sure what the line is between rudy giuliani and sidney powell that got sidney fired and rudy still there, but somehow she crossed it. it was probably making tucker carlson mad. a.b., to your point what obligation -- they clearly don't

feel an obligation to tell their voters and their supporters the truth. how does that manifest itself as joe biden comes out and if he tries to rollout a vaccine are they going to say i don't know -- that really could have catastrophic consequences for this country. >> right, and i think it already has, and that's why just when you put out a halfway watered down statement like senator lamar alexander who is retiring and free to do whatever he wants not facing trump voters again and saying things like the transition should start. the transition should start? the man is trying to break our democracy. this is a three-week old assault on democracy. but if you count all the months that you and jim are talking about where he telegraphed this was the plan all along, this is months long assault on the system that will have ramifications and catastrophic consequences for decades to come if not forever. we may never recover from this. people pressuring others about

certification and all this stuff. so this is the part that even if you say it's time for a transition or it looks like he'll be inaugurated on january 20th, you're not telling the voters you're being lied to, this was a protected and secure election, nothing bad has happened that would amount to widespread conspiracy fraud. and the president is making this up and he has to stop trashing our system. they refuse to say it, and they're living in the day just like trump thinking that on january 6th if they pick up two senate seats they can somehow back down from this. and i just don't see how they can. >> you know, yamiche, it's a brutal truth, but this is what donald trump has made of the republican party to have diluted them to these spineless jellyfish who can't acknowledge reality. chris krebs has not been quiet though, and he was the official in charge of securing the

election. he has tweeted the election was the most secure in history. it's clear now why donald trump had to fire him. are there more revenge firings or more firings in that spirit of keeping his fiction from having too many holes in it? >> it seems like it. and the reporting is that president trump has a pretty long list of people that he has been angry about, that he has openly lashed out -- chief among them the fbi director christopher wray and others. and there's this feeling the president as he sits and stews and republicans say processes his loss, i mean at some point either concedes or leaves the white house having said the election was stolen from him, he continues to lash out at people. so it would not be very surprising to see him fire other people. we should say of course christopher krebs he knew what he was doing. he knew speaking the truth meant he was going to have give up his job, he would sacrifice the way he was paying his bills,

pursuing his lives dream and career goals in order to tell the truth. and that's the situation president trump has put a lot of people in. republicans right now seem scared of their own voters. when i talk to republicans off-the-record they acknowledge the president has lost, but they are scared of the trump base. they are trying to wiggle their way into trying to balance their need to keep these voters engaged, to keep these voters coming back to the party in 2022 and 2024 because trust and believe people are already thinking about those years. so there's a lot of things on republicans minds, but chief among them is how do we stay in the good grace of these voters while also trying to stay a little bit loyal to american democracy which of course is the pinnacle of society and this miracle we all live in. so there's so much politics handcuffing them, so much politics as they try to stand behind president trump. the president of course is making it harder and harder

because he's just getting more and more brazen, having officials come to it the white house, counting officials to get them to change their minds on certifying the vote. what we're seeing here is very, very dangerous. >> jim, i wonder if you have any sense or any reporting on what kept rudy giuliani alive even though he was the one that did what trump hates. he had the horrific presentation with black something streaking down his faith and sidney powell somehow crossed the line into more absurd than rudy giuliani. how did we end up with just a rudy team? how did they kick sidney off the island which i think still represents mike flynn. >> typical of this administration my reporting plays outright in front of me on television often. and sidney powell made one cardinal sin from what i could

tell that she started in there start of crazy show of a press conference last week. she turned on republicans and said maybe republicans were involved in some of this or were recipients of some of this corruption. and that is now probably just a bridge too far especially in georgia. they've got two recounts -- i'm sorry two revotes coming up -- which also adds the fear of alienating president trump, by the way. once you let this conspiracy spin out of control where does it end? does it end with joe biden? what happens when republican lawmakers start working with the biden administration? this is now in the minds of tens of millions of voters in an alegitimate administration. so that's the main issue there, but we'll keep reporting.

>> a.b., just wrap this up for me. so rudy giuliani who is in a swirl of shady scrutiny himself lands on the right side of whatever standard trump has for legal cases that every judge has just thrown out but has rebuked. some of these opinions are scathing. most judges reaction has been they're making a mockery of the court process. they are fabricating allegations. there is no evidence. they're not even presenting evidence. they're not fabricating evidence because they're fabricating allegations. they're going into courtrooms asking them to turn over the vote. and as jim pointed out in the very beginning those are bodies that require evidence. and since they don't have any i've been basically kicked in the teeth for their conduct inside the courtroom. there are plenty of republicans who have spent their careers thinking of themselves as advocates and protectors of a

strong, independent judiciary. why doesn't that push any of them into the column of accepting reality? >> that's so interesting that their voters -- their voters have been told from the stop the steal slush fund that there's been all this success and that they're amassing, you know, all this evidence and wait until everybody sees it. so they would have to tell their voters they're swallowing a lie and being conned in order to weigh in on the merits of the legal cases. and so sidney powell has brought because of what jim said someone had to go and it's never going to be rudy -- again, rudy giuliani and president trump believe with all this republican lawmaker fear they can continue to convince voters -- >> an unbelievable state of

affairs. thank you for all your incredible reporting on this story. i know you're leaving us to go do more. yamiche and a.b. are sticking around for us. when we come back, brand new reporting on the gop effort to disenfranchise voters of color while at the same time, the very same time president-elect joe biden's early picks to his cabinet showcase the opposite diversity. also ahead for us more promising news about coronavirus from a third company now, but no vaccine will protect americans from the surges that may have been put in motion already by holiday travel this weekend as the country's covid cases surge. and trump's well of support in the business community appears to be drying up with a group of 100 business leaders saying it's time to move onto the biden transition. all those stories coming up. don't go anywhere. e stories com. don't go anywhere. we'll pass many milestones. moments that define you. and drive you.

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it's hot in here. uh, you might be more comfortable if you removed your fur pelt. i already did. oh. in his doom to fail quest to overturn the results of an election in which voters decisively rejected him -- chose the other guy, president-elect biden -- president trump and his campaign have focused on votes in a few key cities. as we've been discussing in michigan team trump is arguing that the entire vote in wayne county which is home to detroit should not count. in wisconsin the trump campaign paid for recounts in just two counties. one of them to milwaukee. and in pennsylvania trump and his attorneys have made baseless allegations of widespread fraud in philadelphia. "the new york times" sums it up this way. mr. trump's fruitless and pyromumichael campaign to

somehow reverse president-elect joe biden's victory in the election rests on the wholesale disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters. a disproportionate number of them black americans living in the urban centers of georgia, pennsylvania, wisconsin, and michigan. joining our conversation the chair of the department of african-american studies at princeton university. yamiche is still here. eddie, there's so much here that represents such a low point, almost a historic low point. and having worked in the republican party and believing that we were trying to do better and be better it is nothing but shame. and i would spend the rest of my life trying to reveal this party for doing this. it is despicable. and the fact that it's out in the open i wonder if that presents an opportunity to point to it and say, look, i mean where do you go from here when one party is openly and brazenly not just suppressing the vote but taking the votes that

weren't suporoused and throwing them away? >> well, hopefully you recognize that party for what it is. you know, the republican party as you know had this dalliance with its far right wing. we know there's been calls around voter fraud or accusations around voter fraud as part of a kind of play book in some ways. but i think you said something really important, nicolle, that we need to emphasize. this is not unique to donald trump insofar as it's a caricature version of it. but america's impulses always evidenced themselves -- we know in some ways it's around the conflicted nature, the conflicted understanding of black citizenship that this -- these illiberal impulses

evidence themselves every generation. here we are in this moment, this inflection point and your passion introducing this segment and really key here. we have to finally call it for what it is and root it out. but i think that's clear. >> yamiche, michael steele quoted in that "the new york times" article as saying four years from now someone in the republican party is going to think that they can make an appeal to black voters. they're going to have an amnesia, they're going to forget they were part of a party. and if it's anyone thinking of running for president they're right now staying totally silent on donald trump's attack on our democracy and this specific effort to disenfranchise black voters. what do you think about the fact you can never go back? this is now -- you have to do away with any attempt by any future chair of the republican party. i think michael steele was involved in these efforts.

ed gulespo was involved in these efforts, reince priebus i think before he was a trump republican was part of these efforts. those efforts can never happen again because this is what the republican party is now and forever. >> they can try, though. you can imagine a republican party that is going to go back in four years or two years and turn around and act like this all didn't happen, that in fact they're very, very thenthusiast and going into detroit or miami-dade, and i think what's most ironic about this is the trump campaign are trying to do two things at once. we got black men behind. oh, by the way those black men in detroit, those black men who voted for joe biden, they should

be disenfranchised. right now they're saying, hey, thank you for giving your vote, by the way your cousins vote who didn't like us, we don't want that person to vote. this is wrapped up in voter suppression, wrapped up in the fact african-americans are some of the most loyal members of the democratic party. so i think this is the republican party and donald trump saying we know exactly where the people who don't like us live, and we want to wipe them off of the map. >> so unbelievable. and joe biden, eddie, creating a contrast not just in words but in deeds, keeping this principle of trying to appoint a diverse cabinet. what do you think of the early selections at the u.s. u.n. which is going to be cabinet level again he's appointed linda

thomas and i think most agree the biggest stain in terms of policy that came out of that department is around the bucket of immigration, and there's already been some reporting joe biden will try to reverse some of those. he's appointed to head the homeland security a cuban american who has experience, helped with daca. it's more than policy reversal. it is important to have a cabinet gnat makes policies for all americans that looks more like america. >> right, it's a stark contrast between those who are clinging to a world that seems to be dying and who are willing to throw away our democracy for it, and those who are trying to transition into a different way of being together. i think representation matters. i think having a diverse cabinet matters. also having diverse policies to speak to the conditions of folk in the country. you know, i was thinking about this, nicolle, as we were

talking about what's going on. black voters sometimes it's like damned if we do, and damned if we don't. if we don't vote at the rate we should, the country ends up voting for donald trump. and if we do vote, they try to take it away from us. i mean, damn. you see what i mean? so here we are. so i'm really excited about the cabinet. it's a great contrast to the world that's dying. let's see what happens once in office, once they get to doing their work. >> and yamiche, just to pick up on eddie's point and not to try to, you know, put a hep end ogen this story because i don't know a diverse cabinet, or what the sense of what the entire republican party is signing onto. i think all the statistics about the impact and the deaths from coronavirus are disproportionately harming communities of color. a lot of economic blows were felt first by people with less economic security.

so it is more than just having people that look like america. it is sort of having people that can reach into these communities that are hurting the most at this genuine crisis moment for our country. >> that's right. and it was not lost on people who supported joe biden that he said to the african-american community you have my back, i'm going to have yours. that line struck a cord for so many people who as you said not only are dying of the coronavirus at higher rates, contracting the coronavirus at higher rates but also don't have the privilege to do things like social distance living in socially distant homes, or more likely to not be able to work from home because they're doing essential work, including not only working at grocery stores but cleaning hospitals and doing all sorts of other things. i think this is the biden administration going to come with a tall order of responsibilities, a tall order of expectations. i have to say we're talking

about now the changing of the guard here. and it always is not lost on me president trump began his career by spreading the racist conspiracy theory that president obama was not born in this country and now he's leaving with a black woman coming into the white house. now, that doesn't mean -- but representation along with a policy and an agenda to really impact african-americans and people of color is critical. and a little bit of poetic justice for critics of president trump. >> yeah, i like that. on days when the news makes me hurt there's no one i would rather talk to about it than the two of you. i think a bunch of birds flew behind my head when we were talking, i don't know if if it's a sign how profound the both of you are. up next positive vaccine news continues. the challenge is how to convince an uncertain and wary public. stay with us. o convince an uncertain and wary public stay with us at t-mobile, we believe you should get more.

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just a lot of grief for us as health care providers when there's just nothing more you can do for somebody. a lot of grief for patients because they're alone. they're scared. they don't know what's going to happen. they don't know if they're going to make it out, and it's a lot of grief for family members for if you know that you're the person who gave your loved one covid or, you know, that you can't be there with them when they're dying.

it's just -- it's tough. >> a first-hand account of the emotional toll this virus is having on the men and women, the heroes working in our hospitals across this country every single day. and that situation only worsening just three days before thanksgiving. coronavirus cases are increasing in all 50 states and spiking in six. fatalities are up to spiking in seven states as well, while 28 states are experiencing an uptick in the lives lost to coronavirus. another grim milestone was passed over the weekend. more than 12 million americans have now been infected with the virus. more than 1 million of them since less than one week ago. so far more than 258,000 americans have died from coronavirus. but today and for the third time this month promising news on the vaccine front. british pharmaceutical giant astrazeneca says its vaccine can be up to 90% effective in preventing the disease. the vaccine candidate expected to be cheaper and easier to

store and distribute will now be submitted to regulators across the world for their review and approval. let's bring in to our conversation nbc contribute, an infectious disease physician and medical pathogens disease expert. a third vaccine candidate. why do they all have their breakthroughs in such a cluster? is it because of the time that the trials they did do take and they've all had adequate time, or why are the breakthroughs -- i guess pfizer went first and now moderna and astrazeneca coming in such a short time period? >> nicolle, good evening. so it is related to when they all started. it's around the same time, and a majority of them have hit their enrollment targets. but what therapy waiting for the fda asked for them to approve a

vaccine they needed to show 50% effacy, at least two months of safety data and oz they're hitting the milestone is how they're releasing that information. it's just how they're wrapping up. astrazeneca is interesting because this is vaccine that uses more traditional vaccine technology as opposed to the moderna and pfizer vaccines that uses emergency rna, this is one that uses a more traditional platform that elicits an immune response and puts in a protein of this virus so your body develops and remembers that memory. so they found they combined two different studies. another one where they gave two full doses, and across both of their studies in the half and full doze they showed 90% efficacy, in the two full doses about 62%. they combined it. and i think the timing here is they knew they didn't have

enough but by combining they could still meet the fda threshold they set apart. so the good things about this similar to pfizer, no severe disease which is what we're looking for. we also know as you said this is much easier to store. you can store it in a regular fridge for up to six months so, so you can transport it anywhere in the world much more easily. and it's only about $3 to $4. and the reason this makes a huge impact globally, nicolle, is the astrazeneca vaccine is one of the main candidates the w.h.o. consortium has invested in to distribute to all parts of the world including limited countries. so this is good news globally. a couple of questions i'm waiting for. one is we're just waiting because it's prelim data we need to see the full data in how this behaves in elderly patients. and the second you and i are had talked about the fact we don't know if vaccines just stop disease or also asymptomatic

infection. so the principle investigator at oxford for this vaccine said they might have some of this data. for this particular candidate they're going to put the data in a peer review journal. as far as this weekend we could figure out if vaccines could prevent asymptomatic infections. >> i know dr. fauci said even if you have a vaccine that's effective if you don't vaccinate the vast majority of a population it's not protective. is that because so much of what we understand now is this asymptomatic spread? >> well, one is you need to get the vaccine in people for it to work, right? there's two different issues. one is that if people don't take this, and even though we've seen the numbers of people who say they will take this vaccine has gone up, there's still some amount of hesitancy. and i think that the vaccine companies coming out and being more transparent about their data is going to help. the other things that my own

personal with experience ebola, you need hard work at the community level. you need to get into places where people have these types of beliefs and potentially have hesitancy and understand where that comes from. and by the way, the cdc actually in september they said that part of the vaccine rollout, the money they would need is about 5.5 to $6 billion where part of it would be vaccine communications. and by the way that funding hasn't come through. they got an additional $200 million at the end of september, but this is why we need to invest in it. if we're the country that has advanced candidates if you have an adver serial country that can put enough confusion about the vaccine there's an uptick, we don't get back to normal and that's why this is important and we need to do that now. >> we've made this such a multilayered challenge for our country, but you're right. that investment does have to be made in the public education and

ensuring the public trust on all ends of the ideological spectrum. doctor, it's great to talk to you about all these topics. stay safe this week. thanks for spending some time with us. when we come back, we have breaking news on the vote in michigan. don't go anywhere. we'll bring it to you after a short break. anywhere. we'll bring it to you after a short break. still fresh unstopables in-wash scent booster

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the state of michigan voting 3-0 to certify joe biden's election victory in michigan. one republican who had been resisting abstained. it's a major blow to president trump who had been pressuring state and local officials in that state to delay certification of joe biden's win there as part of trump's fight against the outcome of the presidential election. i needed you guys back because this is the story we started covering the top of the hour. we now have a result here in michigan. it would appear more spines available than in the united states senate and house of representatives, a. b. >> well, nicolle, we've talked about the georgia secretary of state going up against enormous pressure from not only president trump but the two sitting senators who asked him to resign because of the results of the election they didn't like, began

not providing any evidence to the voters just accusing him of running a crooked election. and these people in michigan who flew to the white house to listen to president trump on friday, and the countless people that we're not talking about that have been involved in these processes that are members of the republican party and are aligned with these election teams or election officials themselves who have done the right thing and defied political pressure. and it proves that the system that we have that is multiple thousands of systems is actually really hard to steal and rig and destroy. and this has been really a signal that the system can work. michigan happens to be the state that biden won the largest margin in. it was never going to be possible to overturn those. but it really needs to be a system that still needs to be shored up and examined in the months to come because you never want to see a situation again where you have someone like

president trump trying to put this pressure on in a razor sharp margin that people could doubt. >> and we should talk a little bit about the human beings because i think that's right. i think corruptible. so far it looks like the systems have not been corrupted at this state level. even under extraordinary pressure. trump worked the phones and personally lobbied, the leaders and the state republican leaders in the legislature there inviting them to the white house, called other elections officials and when the president said your name, or tweets your name, you are suddenly the target of everything from death threats to hate mail. you sometimes have to involve law enforcement, and your life isn't ever the same. so eddie, if that climate, which is the reality of being targeted by and tweeting at by donald

trump, people, elections officials in michigan, doing the right thing. >> absolutely. and we want to lift them up. i mean, this is the front line of our democracy. every day ordinary people, it is us. so these folk are representative of the power that we have. but i wab to emphasize that trump and trumpists are doing what they're doing in order not to transform doubt into hostility. so it is not necessarily about their victory in these instances. it is really about the effect in delegitimizing the process. so we have folk holding the line. but i'm really worried about those other folks who are listening to their -- to trump's cues and the like. and with the certification in pennsylvania and michigan, folk need to begin to put more pressure, bring more pressure to bear so this transition could start happening now. i don't know if that means the biden -- president-elect has to

begin the court process but there needs to be more pressure on getting this transition going at full speed it seems to me. >> a.b., i haven't talked about this on the air but i've been thinking about this. i went to work for george w. bush after a contested election in 2000. and al gore conceded the election after a bruising, brutal process that ended in the supreme court. and i think that what george w. bush came to office having was something he needs after september 11th. he legitimaty and people are angry about the outcome about 2000 and i'll see when i get off the air on twitter that i'm sure they are. and there is something that bestows on an acting president, we have one president at a time in this country, legitimacy they need in a crisis and i'm worried

that if donald trump doesn't concede, that is never to come and that is our understanding of donald trump's plans, that for his millions of voters, they will never view joe biden as the legitimate leader of this country when something terrible happens, if something terrible happens. >> and that is a terrible thing to ponder, nicolle. it is hard enough for him to just get the transition going as he's talking about how essential that is, not only to threats we face with regard to our national security but in terms of the pandemic. and the catastrophic denial that the president has ignored the virus with. so, it is hard to talk about donald trump conceding, nicolle. it is really beyond our imagination. i don't think it is something that we've ever see so that could not be conferred through the process. it is important that the business leaders are standing up today urging the transition to begin, pressuring president trump and those republican

officials. but it is again, it is the burden on the republican officials that we talked about at the start of the show, right. president trump was never going to do the right thing. he was going to steal the election, that is his plan to call it rigged and try to bleck the system and put himself before the presidency and the country and the voters from start to finish. he made it very clear. he was never going to be anybody else. those that are elected republican office holders who serve voters who are being lied to, need to confer that ligt asy on joe biden by saying this election was free and fair and legitimate and the most protected in our lifetime and this con by the president was a fraud. and they haven't said that and we keep wondering when they will. but the idea of president trump conceding is really, to me, it is just i can't even imagine it in any way. >> but it will make him look all the more distant from reality,

the breaking news, state of michigan has certified its results, heidi president bella has been handling this. we've talked about the republicans on the elections boards anz i know the vote was 3-0 with one republican abstaining. talk about how this came down today. heidi, can you hear us? i think we've got some problems with heidi's audio. well try to fix that. eddie, the idea that a.b. stoddard and i are talking about. joe biden is going about the business of governing but without a concession and perhaps without some of donald trump's supporters, many of his supporters recognizing the legitimacy of joe biden's now very sizable win and donald

trump's now very sizable loss. >> and you know, nicolle, i was thinking about it as a.b. was talking. there were a lot of folks who when trump won were committed to democratic norms so resistance took a certain form and it took a certain shape. it happened within the bounds of our policy. the folk who are willing to continue to support donald trump if he does not concede, and who will deny legitimacy to joe biden, i'm not so convinced they are committed to democratic norms. i'm not could convinced that their committed to protesting within the bounds of the policy. so that is my worry. what will he trigger. and i think we need to be concerned about that. >> transparency is the best an dote to all of us. thank you so much for spending the hour with us. it is wonderful to talk to both of you. the next hour of "deadline: white house" starts after a quick break. don't go anywhere. we're just getting started. st gd

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he couldn't really run on his record. the voters rejected his leadership. a record number of americans rejected the trump presidency and since then donald trump has been rejecting democracy. it is corrosive, it is harmful. but as mitt romney said, it is not going to change the outcome of what happens here. at 12:00 noon on january 20th, joe biden will become the next president of the united states. everything that donald trump is doing now is bad for our democracy. it is bad for our position, our image in the world. but it is not going to change what happens here when we get a

new president next year. >> hi, again. everyone. it is 5:00 in the east. that is ron klain, incoming white house chief of staff for joe biden who despite being deprived of the transition funds and a transition is moving full steam ahead on a transfer of power making key appointments to his foreign policy and national security team. tony blinken will be nominated as secretary of state. jake sullivan, former national security adviser to then vice president biden, will be pointed as national security adviser and linda thomas-greenfield will be named u.s. ambassador to the united nations and it will be restored to a cabinet level position. and that is not all. more picks from biden's new team today include historic first. he has close an the first latino to head the department of homeland security and the first woman director of national intelligence. biden solidified his focus on

climate change announcing that john kerry will serve as a special presidential envoy for climate. and the president-elect is expected to deliver remarks on these picks tomorrow. but did he release a statement which reads, quote, we have no time to lose when it comes to our national security and foreign policy. i need a team ready on day one to help me reclaim america's seat at the head of the table, rally the world to meet the biggest challenges we face and advance our security, prosperity, and values. this is the crux of that team. biden also announced today that he is chosen former federal reserve chair janet yellen to be his treasury secretary. the first woman to have that position. the contrast is stark between the seriousness and the professionalism and experience of the biden team and the outgoing trump team spending its time trying to thwart the incoming team and their

transition. not only by denying biden the legitimacy he deserves with trump's base of voters that comes from a concession, but also through policy hurdles, "new york times" reported this, at a wide range of departments and agencies, mr. trump's political appointees are going to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent mr. biden from rolling back the president's legacy. they are filling vacancies on scientific panels, pushing to complete rules that weak environmental standards, nominationing judges and rushing confirmations through the senate and trying to eliminate health care regulation that have been in place for years. and as a final nod to do the bare minimum. trump is back on the golf course this weekend as the u.s. passed more grim milestones and as public health officials brace for post holiday covid surges that could max out hospital capacity. the president's abdication of leadership invited a stern rebuke from the republican

governor of maryland who said this, if you had done your job, americans governors won't be forced to find tests in the middle of a pandemic as we successfully did in maryland. stop golfing and concede. larry hogan's call to stop golfing and concede is where we start this hour with our favorite reporters and friend. alexi mccannon is back from axios and a msnbc contributor. and eli stokele, from the l.a. times and ben rhodes former security adviser to president obama and msnbc contributor. ben, i want to start with you. you know all of these people, i'm sure. a lot of them your former colleagues from the obama administration. just talk about how president-elect biden knows all of these folks, how he interacts with them, i know some of them go back to his years in the senate where he was on the -- he's been very involved in foreign policy his entire career

so talk about how these people fit into his view. >> this is a team of people that have been close to joe biden. and tony blinkens has been his right-hand man for decades. jake was his national security adviser in the white house. avril haines had relationship back to the hill and also worked closely in our administration. a couple of things jump out. these are people who are relatively current. just a few years ago they were in the presidential briefing and in the thick of it and while damage has been done in four years he clearly wanted people who could step in with some currency and relationships around the world and in u.s. politics so they could hit the ground running as fast as they can on january 20th. these are also people who i think exude a professionalism and competence when it comes to the con duck of our national security. it is a no drama team for a

president who clearly wants to restore a sense of normalcy to the office. >> it strikes me just listening to talk, ben, that one of the most sort of underreported aspects of the trump presidency is how destabilizing his tenure has been on the career professionals at the state department. at the cia and at the pentagon -- these folks i would imagine some of the earliest time will have to be spent restore the stability of the these agencies. i mean, what do you think tony blinken is walking into at the state department? >> i think they're all walking into agencies that had already been broken and that are literally broken as we speak in the transition. hollowed out, people purged and politicization at the highest levels. linda, a career foreign service officer, decades. been around the world. she's make foreign service officers who felt shutout the last few years feel like their

voice is at table at the united nations on the biggest stage for the country. avril haines was director of the intelligence community top to bottom and she'll be able to get in there at dni and figure out how broken this is how do we restore morale and haven't been so badly disrupted under trump. tony blinken saw the interagency work and how the white house interacted with the state department when at the white house and had two years as the number two guy at state department. he's focused on restoring the morale aft building and the human resources and the budget of the building and focused on how could these pieces work together and how could the state department once again have a functional relationship with the white house and the intelligence community. so i think job one for these people is making the u.s. national security apparatus run like it should and jake sullivan is the perfect person to

coordinate that again having been a senior official at both state department and at white house. >> alexi, as ben is talking, i'm just thinking of all of the high level and midlevel and in some instances young career and some political appointee officials at all of these agencies who have been on the receiving ends of harassing tweets from donald trump, ray yovanovitch was a target of a smear campaign and they feared for her life and her safety. you could go through all of the agencies that have new heads as of today. the cia is still under duress are donald trump and i forget the name of his guy who is the new dni, still pressuring gina haspel about russia. you have officials that haven't just had to deal with the hollowing out and the disregard and the policy schizophrenia, they have been targeted and har h

ased by this president. the national security agency and the officials have been trump's prime targets. >> and at a time, nicolle, as we all know well, that national security is critically important to every single thing that we're doing. and to your point, it is not just about returning to stability, but when ben is talking, i'm thinking about the fact that all of these folks that were announced today are going to come in and try to pursue diplomacy home and abroad by building genuine relationships not just with the people working at their agencies but with the folks they have to work with across agencies and around the world. i'm also reminded of covering joe biden during the presidential primary. when he was starting to campaign with john kerry and brings him out on the road and i was there with them and listening to message in the early part of the year about foreign policy and his foreign policy experience and about the people like john kerry and others that he would surround himself with if elected president to return to normal, yes, to yearn to stability and yes, to return america's

standing on the goble stage to where it was in his estimation before president trump took over and that gets back at the idea of relationships that you're speaking about. we've seen president trump not just obliterate the morale through the fraught relationships with folks who work there but the relationships that he's changed fundamentally for the time being with global leaders, with foreign allies and adversaries alike in a way that a president biden is going to to v to repair but in a way that we see the early announcements how that will work with the folks part of the agencies for a long time and now leading them in a way that they bring the wealth of experience with them and the commitment to rebuilding relationships. >> and adding to their responsibility will be undoing some last-minute hurdles that the trump team is intentionally putting in their way based on new reporting in "the new york times." eli, i want to read this to you and ask you to sort of add any of your reporting and thoughts.

this sounds like a classic trump move. during the past four years trump has not spent much time thinking about policy but he has shown a pen chant for striking back at adversaries and top officials are racing to withdraw troops from afghanistan and secure oil drilling leases in alaska, punish china, carry out executions and thwart any plans mr. biden might have to re-establish the iran nuclear deal. so donald trump isn't just refusing to concede, he isn't just refusing to commence a transition, where joe biden would have access to classified information and office space for all of his teams at these departments to land so they get into the agencies and get ready to take over on day one. he is intentionally undermining his first policy outings. >> and it can't really come as a surprise, nicolle, that there is no bottom to donald trump's pettiness and petulance,

especially after enduring an em bear agos electoral defeat. so it stands to reason that all of the things that were not big enough priorities for his administration up until this point are now things that he's appearing to be motivated to do to put road blocks in front of his successor. it is not surprising, it just add to the difficulty of the job and i think understanding the difficulty of what is in front of president-elect joe biden is pretty much what you could look to to explain the selections today. he's not turning nominations into a pageant at donald trump did, parading job applicants outside of the front door at bedminster. and he's not going to do this to get headlines but to put people in place and who are experiencing and who his team trusts so they could hit the ground running in january because they know they have their work cut out for them and whether donald trump makes their jobs harder over the next two months or not, this is already a very difficult job ahead of this

national security team in repairing the damage that the trump administration has done to these long-standing relationships with allies. these allies, the transatlantic allies, they may trust joe biden and john kerry, but it is hard to convince them that america is stable enough that in four years america won't vote to go right back to donald trump and to trumpism and it is just that much harder to win back that trust that allies have lost in america itself, in america's population, the politics here. knowing that trump was president for four years and could happen again, that makes diplomatic achievements putting in place a new iran deal, repairing the damage done to the paris accord, it makes that job that much harder for this team and think this is why you see a premium placed on experience and continuity out of the gate with the first appointees.

>> you know, eli, you raise such an excellent point and one we're going to have to contend with in the coming days and months. that the current reporting in most news organizations is that trump has planned that privately he acknowledged that he lost and he is planning to make money, trump ally told me he's using the money being raised online and through text messages and campaign like fundraising appeals and likely to use that to pay his legal bills but has not ruled out another run for office. eli, what does that do to the republicans in congress? we've put up a list. we're down to five senate republicans who have acknowledged that joe biden has won. foreign policy, i don't want to be polianish about it but there are sometimes opportunities for bipartisan efforts in this country around foreign policy. do you think that all stays frozen in place with that dynamic hanging over the republican party? >> i don't want to be too

certain about any predictions about where we are going in terms of the possible open door for bipartisanship and what donald trump may want to do. but clearly, when he talks to allies, to friends on the phone and said, yeah i'm going to announce that i'm running in 2024, as soon as i make it clear that i will vacate the white house, obviously he's looking for something to face -- to save face rather. but he is above all, he is trying to freeze this power structure over the republican party in place and trying to freeze the 2024 primary field and put his person atop the rnc because he wants everybody to still have to genuflect before him and take their cues from him. that is what he's having a hard time letting go of and the attention that the presidency attracts. he accident want to lose that. and so even to see he may not acknowledge that he has lost although as he prepares for a post presidential life he's trying to hold on to as much

power and attention as possible. but i don't know that we could predict whether that holdover the republican party will continue once he's out of office xs we may see republicans, you know, looking at 2022 when the house and the senate are both very close, the margins are very narrow, both chambers will be up for grabs, it remains to be seen whether the smarter play is to deliver and to work with a biden administration, or to continue the obstruction and to continue to sort of take orders from donald trump in order to attempt to turn out his coalition of voters. i think we're going to find that out and it is just hard to predict how it plays out at this point. >> i want to come back to you one more time, ben, and just ask you how the pandemic will hang over the national security, not the agenda, because that is set by policies and priorities and beliefs, but the ability to sort of -- i imagine even

interactions are incredibly hampered, putting a president and a white house staff on a plane for -- i don't know what pompeo just did, he went to 10 countries but how do you think real diplomacy, how is it impacted by the pandemic? >> well, i think it is hugely impacted, nicolle. in 2009 when president obama came into the office we went around the world to introduce him and we went to europe and asia and latin america and gave huge speeches and did town hall meetings and in addition to sitting down with world leaders. clearly that will be put on hold for a few months. it will be creativity around virtual diplomacy. and the second thing is the pandemic itself is an issue. so the vaccine globally is a foreign policy issue that team will have to work with hand and glove with people like ron klain who is chief of staff. just to put on something you

said about the republican party, the rest of the world is going to be watching. what is donald trump doing, what does the republican party do because they've negotiated deals with a democratic administration that were just torn up by the incoming administration led by someone like donald trump. that is an extra hurdle this team has to get over and building trust and restoring american credibility and making people think even though the republican part still looks like it is not a responsible opposition party over here, we all have business to do together and the pandemic is the case in point, that we'll have not only pandemic but a economy crisis to deal with globally. >> alexi, and eli and ben are sticking around. whether we come back, the very real consequences of donald trump's attempt to overturn the vote. to over turn the will of the american people. new warnings about the dangerous to our national security and the threats facing the men and women who are just doing their jobs, counting the vote. plus as the coronavirus finects record numbers of americans, it is also making

sick doctors, nurses and other health care workers at a a larming rates, at the absolute worst possible time for this country. and joe biden has said donald trump will go down as one of the most irresponsible presidents ever. that might be generous after the unamerican assault on democrat we're all living there and witnessing from the current president. "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't go anywhere. anywhere. (children laughing) ♪ (music swells) ♪ ♪ (music fades) (exhales) experience the power of sanctuary at the lincoln wish list sales event. sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment.

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as donald trump's fight to overturn the results of the election he lost drags on with more than 30 lawsuits in six

swing states, without a singlin tans of fraud revealed or presented. a group of more than 100 national security officials all republicans some of them having served under donald trump are pressuring congressional republicans to demand that trump concede the election and begin a formal transition. they're statement reads, quote, president trump's refusal to permit the presidential transition also poses significant risk to our national security. at a time when the u.s. confronts a global pandemic and faces serious threats from terrorist groups and other forces. by encouraging president trump's tactics remaining silent, republican leaders put national security at risk. we're back with alexi, eli and ben. ben, i have wondered, all of these voices, from national security circles, they were some of the first republicans to really speak out and before trump became president, during the election a lot of republican

national security focused republicans endorsed hillary clinton, they were some of donald trump's most vocal critics and now this letter pointing to what people like yourself know very well, about but a lot of people don't understand and the national security dangers and brett mcgurk wrote a piece about one of the factors that contributed to 9/11 being that shortened transition. i wonder what you make of this letter or if you think the republicans are beyond repair or remorse for their actions? >> well, i think it speaks to the seriousness of the problem. that these people who are going to be responsible for our national security have no access to the information they need to prepare for their jobs. never mind what we're just talking about which is the rest of the world sees america as badly divided and incapable of following our own democratic norms. the biggest question regarding the national security element of the republican party was a key pillar of republicans for

decades that they were the national security party. people like lind we graham would be associated with those in the list if it is this out of step with this cross section of americans who worked in national security, including for republicans, i think it will lead to serious soul searching within the republican party itself about is this the party that stands for a set of issues on national security and counter-terrorism and is this the party of donald trump and willing to cast aside any norm, even the norms related to our national security, thus far the republican party is failing that test. and we're in a peculiar reversal of rules where the democratic party is establishing itself as the party that cares about national security and puts country first on all issues of national security. i think that could have long lasting implications for how we think about the republican party and our national security. the leaders in the senate and

the house, the elected republicans, they're not only blowing it at this moment of peril for our democracy, they're defining what the republican party will be for a long time and it is not a party that takes national security seriously. >> alexi, it is such a good point and i would add to it the rule of law. this is a party that also no longer stands for the rule of law. republicans traditionally ran on strong national security, the party of law enforcement and the rule of law. they're for neither of those things and my question, you've sat through so many focus groups, i wonder what the voter experience of this is. because sometimes foreign policy could feel like it is not part of folks day-to-day life but the pandemic is a national security threat, climate change has become i think secretary mattis said this and i don't know if it raised eyebrows from trump but it wasn't pursued as a policy goal, climate change is a national security threat. what is the voting experience when 100 republicans from

national security circles come out and rebuke trump? >> well, look, and the focus group that's we do are with unique voter because they're obama voters but a lot of folks before the pandemic did bring up national security and foreign policy as two issues that they were keyed in on. of course that changed with the pandemic, where they're focused more on economy and the health care. but they see the country is change with respect to how foreign leaders see us and operate and move forward on these things. the unfortunate thing is to ben's point about whether and how donald trump continues to be the leader of the party. there are 73 million who thought he should have a second term even after these four years and saw the obliteration of norms here and abroad. and a handful of them still believe in this trumpism in this idea that it is the world against donald trump or democrats against donald trump

or republicans who are deviating from the party against donald trump and what is the big picture here, nicolle, whether we're talking about this issue or anything else with the legal strategies or anything that donald trump is doing, is that he's increasingly on an island politically. he has rudy giuliani in his corner, maybe steve bannon hiding in the shadows supporting him. but his team and the people around him who believe that what he's pushing for is real is increasingly small on the inside and the political world but unfortunately there is still a strong hold on the american electorate reflected in the surge and viewers on news max, the people with a hunger for conspiracy theories that donald trump and again his increasingly small circle like to push. so that is the bigger kind of problem and dangerous reality that we're facing, is how many americans are going to continue to believe in this conspiracy theory lifestyle, alternate reality that donald trump and his small circle want to push and what does this mean for republicans and how they move forward on anything, policy,

personnel, politics, campaigning. the other interesting thing of course is whether and how donald trump campaigned in person or via tweet for or against certain republicans in 2022. that is a cycle starting in just a couple of months and donald trump could use his twitter account to try to keep his thumb on the scale in a way that will throw republicans off course, whether they like it or not. >> eli, i want to show you one of the five republicans who has acknowledged reality. senator toomey from pennsylvania on cnbc this morning. let's watch. >> i have fully supported the president's pursuing every plausible strategy, recounts and litigating irregularities but at some point you exhaust those possibilities, and i think the president has reached that point in pennsylvania. he appears to have reached that point in georgia, michigan wasn't even close. and so now the idea that a sitting president would try to,

i don't know, pressure, cajole, persuade state legislators to dismiss the will of their voters and select their own group of electors and send them to the electoral college, it is completely inconsistent with any kind of truly democratic society. so that shouldn't be going on in my view. >> so i appreciate that senator toomey said that. but what he described in words was a coup. if you are going to come out on the side and condemning what tr donald trump wants, he wants a secure election to be overturned and for people to send him back. that is what he's asking them to do. >> and the majority of the republicans are still indulging this idea that there is even though we've seen no evidence that somehow this election is unsettled. yes, senator toomey said this more than two week after it was

clear that joe biden was called. two weeks later comes out and said this, a lawmaker decided not to run for re-election and we understand has a little more freedom to just accept reality. mike dewine in ohio, he's running for re-election in 2022 and have accepted reality and to alexi's point, trump is badgering him on twitter and talking about primary challenges so you could see where this is going and understand why other republicans have not found the same courage as senator toomey to come out and just acknowledge what we all know to be true. but i think you may see a little more of that over the next few days as we do start to see these votes getting certified in states like georgia and michigan and pennsylvania that may give them an opportunity to jump off. but i don't hold out a whole lot of hope for any emphatic statements or any repudiations of what donald trump has tried to do, which is disenfranchise

black voters in urban areas in swing states based on no evidence of fraud, simply an allegation of fraud to file all of these baseless lawsuits that have been thrown out and repudiated by the judges hearing the arguments. they basically laugh them out of the courtroom here. and yet republicans continue for the most part to indulge this as we go forward. and the early returns on whether donald trump continues to hold power over the republican coalition tell you that he does. >> he does. i'm going to make sure it is call a coup a coup. thank you so much for starting us off this hour. it is wonderful to talk to all three of you. when we come back, with coronavirus cases soaring across this country, hospitals are not only reaching capacity, many are reporting staff shortages as well as medical workers fall ill. "deadline: white house" back with that story after a quick break. r a quick break. t that the dog's towel?

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it strains us, emotionally because that's part of our team. it also affects how we deliver care because we have to be sure where we pull other people to ensure that we're providing and we have done a lot of planning. and that planning has helped a lot but obviously this adds an extra strain to the whole team. >> as patients sickened with the coronavirus fill up hospitals nationwide, the pandemic is also having a dire impact on those health care workers charged with

taking care of them. in ohio, where more than 6,000 have died and nearly 25,000 new infections have been reported since friday, the cleveland clinic tells nbc news nearly 1,000 caregivers there are currently quarantining or out sick with the coronavirus. that is more than triple the number of employees out just two weeks ago. hospitals across the country are dealing with staffing shortages, while the doctors and nurses still working are getting swamped but numbers worse than anything we've seen. today a record more than 83,000 americans are currently hospitalized and a record more than 16,000 of them are in the icu. cases are increasing in all 50 states and spiking in six. so far there have been more than 12.4 million cases and more than 258,000 lives lost. let's bring in nbc news and msnbc contributor dr. vin gupta, also a pulmonologist and global

health policy expert. you always keep it real and practical. i was sad to read how many people are traveled and i get it. i miss my family too. but what should we expect on the other side of the thanksgiving holiday? >> good afternoon, nicolle. for everybody out there that is watching this, and i'm going to cut straight to the chase, we're really struggling with on the health care system side is enough adequately trained icu nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors to care for patients. it is no longer an issue with ventilators or beds but will you get sick will you have adequately trained people to care for you. and that is why we're playing with fire as a country. that is why those people that are going home, 50 million americans traveling, if you have the opportunity to revisit your plans, if haven't traveled already, it is not worth the

risk. fundamentally it is not worth the risk to get on a flight, a plane, train or automobile, right now, it is just not worth it because right now, and i'll say this from my own personal experience and others, that declined if your asemi-symptomatic and you don't know that you have it, these declines are unexpected, they happen quickly and they often have mortal consequences so none of russ spared. it is the most deepest consequences here. please cancel your plans if you already made them. >> dr. gupta, i want to ask you what people could do if they plan on, even if they're not moving but they think they're going to maybe try to share a meal. should all of those be outside, should masks be worn. because i think everybody, i know everybody watches this show wants to be safe and do the right thing but i think people are confronting loneliness and

sentimentality around the holidays and so i wonder if there is some middle ground where if you're having a small meal or having a neighbor that lives alone over, how do do that safely? >> nicolle, thank you for that question. [ technical difficulties ] first of all, do the meal outside. keep it to five or less individuals. be socially distant around a heater or what have you. don't do it in an indoor tent. i've seen people have heaters with an indoor tent around it and basically it eliminates any utility for being outside. so have adequate ventilation and make sure your masked when you are not eating or drinking and keep socially distant. avoid anybody not in your direct household. that is what we're concerning about here. so please don't do that. for the college students out there, people that are actually

going home for thanksgiving and then going to stay put, until maybe the spring semester, i recognize those individuals will hop on flights regardless of what i say because the college campuses are shutting down. please wear an eye shield, one of these guys, it is going to protect new planes or if you're in the airport terminal, wear at least a three-ply surgical mask and wear this guy. and once you get home to your loved one, wear the three ply mask for at least seven days and then on the back end testing is constrained but try to get tested so you could give yourself and your loved ones peace of mind but masks for seven days and eyeglasses and a mask when you're en route. >> dr. gupta, thank you so much for spending time with us, for i think everyone in their own decisions has a lot of power. i'm cooking a ridiculous amount of food for two other human

beings and it just is what it is. i'll trying to pack up some to-go meals but your advice have had a big impact on me so thank you so much for sharing them with everybody here. when we come back, the assault on democracy is unlike anything we've witnessed. john meacham joins us to talk about that when "deadline: white house" continues. about that when "deadline: white house" continues this week on "the upper hands"...

special guest flo challenges the hand models to show off the ease of comparing rates with progressive's home quote explorer. international hand model jon-jon gets personal.

your wayward pinky is grotesque. then a high stakes patty-cake battle royale ends in triumph. you have the upper hands! it's a race to the lowest rate, and so much more. only on "the upper hands." how do we get back to a place where we share a common conversation and common culture and common set of facts. and that i think is going to be the hardest thing for us to recapture. but we're going to need to figure out ways to recapture it if we want to have less division than we're seeing right now politically. >> that was former president obama an where we are at this

moment right now in the american history. as his successor tries to overturn the 2020 election results and where we have to go and how we get there. joining us to answer that is historian john meacham from vanderbilt university who occasionally advises joe biden. it is wonderful to see you, my friend. a lot of conversations about the book, but to really, i think make sure this gets through, this idea that truth decay, that we no longer have a shared set of facts, a shared diagnosis of our problems so we can't begin a conversation about our solutions is one of the problems with our politics. how does joe biden take that on? >> well, i think that president obama's analysis, his diagnosis is exactly right. and you ask exactly the right question, which is what is the treatment? and to my mind it goes back as

this would not surprise you to saint augustine, because i figure you haven't had saint augusti augu augustine mentioned. he had a best definition of a nation which is that a nation is multitude of rashal beings united by the common objects of their love. multitude of national being united by the common objects of love. there are two elementsch you have to be reasonable and allow data and circumstance and fact to change your mind and love things in common. and what is happened, particularly since really the end of the cold war, has been that in the absence of an existential threat, which tended to keep us together, we loved survival together, right. we loved that idea. but in the absence of that,

there has been this remarkable dispersion of world views. and by all social science measures has gotten worse. richard rov steader wrote in 1964 about the john birchers but the paranoid style has gone wide. and i think it comes down to basically the insistence not just by leaders, but by all of us. i think this is a test not just of leadership but of citizenship. that what we should love in common is that jeffersonny an promise of the quality which was not fulfilled in the beginning should be fulfilled ever more now. and that if we're going to do that, we have to be, to borrow a term from the foreign policy world, we have to be rational actors. and if i am interested in the

equality of somebody else there is a much better chance they'll be interested in mine. and so there is a covenant here that has to be restored. >> but i don't want to be cynical, but we can't even get the current president to accept the reality of the election. and that has consequences. you've not got an entire one of the two parties in our country is now four by staying aligned with him and desecrating our democracy and disenfranchising mostly african-american voters from the states trump lost. we can't get to reality in enough time to get to rational. >> well, it is not cynical. you're just observing reality. you're participating in the enlightenme enlightenment experiment and i think more people need to do that. and politicians are far more often mirrors of who we are than makers. and so if enough of us can

insist on, you know what, democracy is more important than any single one president, which the founders understood, one of the reasons they grounded religious liberty is tolerance suggested there is suggests tha a majority that allows you to believe something, but you might not always be in the majority, and so i would argue that the first step here is the folks who voted for president trump because of an enduring tribal loyalty to republican policies, however oddly warped, et cetera, but we all know that there are a lot of people, you know them, i know them, who, you know, disdain what trump has done personally, but they say i want that policy. those are the kind of folks who have to say, you know what, this is not simply about one person. and we've got to reasonably understand that if we want the

other side to treat us with respect, we need to start doing it ourselves. >> jon meacham, you always make me think, challenge my preconceived notions. we have to keep having this conversation because i think everybody wants to get to a better time and a better state of our politics. thank you so much for spending some time with us, my friend. when we come back, remembering lives well lived. ♪

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her first diagnosis. she made a phone call from the hospital. she had good news for her family. she was coming home. what a happy moment that must have been for her. a woman who adored her five sons. they were her whole world, and now it seemed she'd get to see them once again, but not long after that call home, things got worse. the coronavirus attacked her lungs. doctors put her on a ventilator. her health went into freefall. a short time later she was gone. one of her sons told the nbc station in the dallas-fort worth area that his mom took all the precautions. when she was at work driving a school bus, he said she wore a mask and gloves. all the same, their family had to say good-bye. she was an angel on earth, according to her son, and now he says she's home. we will be right back. we made usaa insurance for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what's right, not what's easy.

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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. thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. we are grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. hi, ari. hi, nicolle, thank you so

much. appreciate it. i want to welcome everyone to "the beat." i am ari melber, and we begin with this breaking news. the state of michigan just formally voted to certify joe biden's win in the state, locking in that outcome with the support of one republican board member while another republican abstained. now, state certifications are usually a formality. they're not breaking news by any standard measure, but michigan took on much greater import after that failed plot by some of these board members attempting to argue that detroit votes should just be tossed. that was followed by the unprecedented act of a sitting president welcoming michigan officials as the president talked up the idea that maybe they could somehow steal the state back from joe biden by trying to override the will of their own voters. this is really happening in america. now, that was, of course, a legally dubious plan that never actually got off the ground, even as we saw those pictures of those officials arriving in d.c. this resolution now in michigan comes as pre