pema levy, thank you both for being with me tonight. that is "all in" on this monday evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, my friend. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. got a big show tonight. lots going on. scott atlas, the random radiologist with no public health or infectious disease experience, who was somehow nevertheless leading the coronavirus response at the white house -- scott atlas has just resigned from the white house tonight. that is a big deal. it has occasioned a big sigh of relief across the field of public health. we will have much more on that coming up tonight. we've got laurie garrett here tonight, pulitzer prize-winning science journalist. we'll be talking with her on the scott atlas news and more. we've got nobel prize winning economist paul krugman here tonight to talk about the new economic team just announced by the president-elect, by president-elect biden. so we've got lots going on, a couple of really good guests, big show tonight.

but i want to start tonight in arizona because of a couple of things that happened simultaneously in arizona today. so in arizona today in the state capital, rudy giuliani held another one of these things where he calls it a hearing, but it's really just a bunch of republicans in a hotel room that he's rented. his hearing today was all about how arizona is still very much in play in terms of the presidential election because definitely the presidential election in arizona for some reason doesn't count this year. and by the power vested in him, rudy giuliani, he insists that republicans in the arizona state legislature should never mind what all the votes said in their state. they should -- those republicans in the state legislature should just pick donald trump for president themselves and say that's the election result. that is basically what whatever is left of the trump team is arguing now. this is what they are reduced to. elections don't count anymore.

republicans in all these swing states that just voted for joe biden, republicans in those states should just get to pick that they want trump for president, and they should just forget all the stupid votes counted in those states because the votes shouldn't count. republicans should just seize power and declare trump is going to get a second term. so that little antithesis of school house rock was at play at one of these giuliani things again. this one at the hyatt regency in downtown phoenix today. just to get your bearings a little bit, the hyatt regency in downtown phoenix is there. it's that red dot there. it's right across the street from the parking garage for the phoenix convention center. that's where giuliani was holding his thing today. but meanwhile, simultaneously, about 18 blocks west on west adams street, the actual arizona election results which actually did give the state to joe biden, not donald trump, those results were being finalized for real.

i mean the president's weird after-party following this election has sort of boiled down to this idea that wherever republicans are in charge, if they're in charge of the legislature or the secretary of state's office or the governor's office, republicans should just figure out some way to throw out all the votes, to throw out the election results and instead declare trump the winner. that is what this is boiling down to for them. well, in arizona, the governor is a republican. his name is doug ducey, and just like almost all the other republican governors, doug ducey has gone out of his way to make sure that his state thinks of him as a trump guy, that his state, arizona, thinks of governor ducey as being very, very close to the president. here's arizona governor doug ducey, for example, bragging this summer that president trump and vice president pence call him so often on his cell phone offering the state of arizona help on covid issues -- here's him explaining publicly that he, the governor, had to change the ring tone on his phone so when

the president or the vice president called him on his cell phone, it wouldn't ring normally anymore. when they called, it would play "hail to the chief". so when he heard that in his possibility, he could stop everything and take it because that's would mean it was president trump or vice president pence personally calling him on the line. >> well, first i want to say that i've got a relationship with the president, and when there's a need in arizona, i talk to him directly. i actually -- my senior staff knows this. we've had so much outreach personally from both the president and the vice president that i had to change the ring tone on my phone, and it rings "hail to the chief" because i didn't want to miss another phone call directly from the white house. >> the governor of arizona's cell phone plays "hail to the chief" only when it's a call directly from the white house, directly from vice president pence or president trump. he bragged that he had to make this change because otherwise he

was missing those calls, and they're very important. you have to pick -- well, today while president trump's legal team, rudy giuliani, was at the hyatt arguing that arizona's election doesn't count and republican leaders in the state should just throw out all the votes, throw out the election results and pick trump themselves instead, while that was happening, arizona governor doug ducey was down the block officially certifying the results of the real arizona election, which joe biden won. so he was in the process of assigning the state's electoral votes for joe biden. and guess what happened in the middle of him doing that. you have to turn up the volume here for a second. listen closely. but listen. it's like five or so seconds into this. just listen to what happens in the governor's pocket, and then watch what the governor does. ♪

>> the governor is in the process of certifying the election results in the state of arizona for joe biden when the vice president or the president calls him on his cell phone. and we know this because you can hear that it's "hail to the chief" that plays as the ring tone. he pulls the phone out of his pocket, briefly looks at it, silences it, and puts it face down on the table and keeps signing the certification. do you think that they knew that's exactly what he was doing at that moment and that he would send them to voicemail? oh, go away. not now. it has been that kind of day. it's been that kind of a few days frankly. over the weekend, the trump legal beagles also tried to pull this same sort of trick in pennsylvania, trying to get republicans in the state legislature there to again just proclaim that the election never happened in pennsylvania, trying to get them to say that despite the state voting for biden, the republicans in the state legislature were just going to

insist that trump won instead and that they would appoint trump electors instead of biden electors. they tried the same thing that they're trying in arizona. they're trying it in pennsylvania over the last few days. republican leaders in the legislature this weekend put out a statement saying, no, they're not going to do it. lots of stuff they're busy with right now. definitely won't have time to get around ending democracy in their state. no, we are not going to do it. arizona wasn't the only state to certify its election results today. the great state of wisconsin also executed its state version of certifying the vote and officially appointing that state's electoral college votes for biden as well. with arizona and wisconsin both taking this step today, it means that of all the major states where the vote was reasonably close and the trump campaign tried to cast doubt on the results, all of those states have now certified their vote now. they've all certified that biden won. georgia, pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan, nevada, and arizona. biden now has not only one all

of those states. he has officially won all those states. but yet in trumpland, they are persisting with these increasingly not just hopeless but hapless legal claims that just -- i think this is important and maybe sort of isn't being focused on enough. the way these claims keep failing, they keep proving the trump folks wrong, right? these legal efforts that they have mounted and they have lost all of them -- they just keep showing in more and more detail and with more and more granular certainty that they really don't have anything on their side in terms of the facts to back up these wild claims that they're making. after wisconsin certified their vote tonight, that means the trump campaign does have a five-day window under state law in which they can challenge the certification of that wisconsin vote, and they say they will do so in court in wisconsin. but if the past dozens of these things are any prologue, that new challenge that trump is

about to launch in wisconsin will fail quickly and decisively and will show all the more conclusively that the vote was sound and that biden won. just like the wisconsin recounts that trump paid for, that he raised gazillions from his supporters to pay for. those wisconsin recounts in the end showed that biden not only won in wisconsin definitively. those recounts showed that biden's margin of victory was a little larger than had previously been thought. the recount that trump paid for found that biden's victory was larger by 87 votes than what they had thought before the recount was done. so did you get your money's worth there, right? your fixed income great aunt who sends in 10 bucks every time the trump campaign texts her, emails her, and tells her they're desperate for her money so they can litigate the election and win the second term for trump. you think 1450ez she's getting good bang for her buck? does your gullible trump supporting qanon believing cousin get his money's worth

when he pitched in money to help the trumpy lawyers file their new lawsuit challenging the vote in michigan? that's the new lawsuit, the new trump lawyers lawsuit in michigan where their expert testimony they've just filed with the court is all about how there was very clear fraud in edison county in michigan. they say they can prove it, this edison county fraud in michigan. there actually isn't even a county by that name in michigan. there is no edison county, michigan. but this is the trump lawsuit in michigan claiming grave fraud there. yeah, it's very hard to find the fraud there if you can't find the county there because the county doesn't exist. but, hey, you know, looks good in the fund-raising letter. in the long run, the whole idea here and the whole -- you know, the damage that's being done here is that they're creating an impression that republicans and trump in particular have some

righteous beef with democracy, right? that trump deserves to be installed in power again by some means other than an election since elections are bad and can't be trusted, since that's the means by which this was stolen from him when he was going for a second term. in the long run, that's the damage they're doing. this is the latest death of the republic thing that trump is going for here, and he doesn't care. in the short run, though, right -- the long run damage is very dangerous and very bad for the country. but think about how they're making these tactical decisions in the short run, right, in wisconsin, in pennsylvania, in arizona. everything they're doing is just reifying and adding more factual detail to the record, the clear and increasingly inarguable record that trump lost and by how much. that said, even if it's pointless what they're doing or counterproductive to their aims what they're doing in all these other states, in georgia what

they are doing is potentially quite consequential and not in a way that i imagine they like. one of the president's lawyers, the one who was just publicly disowned by the president's other lawyers, in georgia, she's got a new lawsuit going there that is apparently intended to convince all georgia republican voters that there is no point in voting in georgia at all because the whole election system is ri rigged there. the whole system is rigged, and fixed and your votes therefore in georgia don't count. votes that are cast for republicans in georgia all get converted into democratic votes by a system that is totally, totally corrupt. that's the point of that trumpy lawsuit in georgia right now. the president has egged this one on even as he has supposedly disavowed this one lawyer, he has told fox news viewers just this weekend that the georgia runoff elections next month,

those two senate elections that will determine whether democrats or republicans control the u.s. senate, the president has just told fox news viewers that those senate runoffs will be run on the same, quote, garbage machinery that he says was used to fix the presidential election november 3rd, to rig that election. that's the only reason that he lost. so that will be a garbage election run on garbage machines that aren't worth voting on because they'll change your republican votes to democratic votes. you know, that one's going to have consequences because georgia republicans actually need georgia republican voters, including trump-supporting republican voters, to be motivated to turn up and vote in those senate runoffs on january 5th. president trump repeatedly telling them to not bother, that their votes don't count, the fix is in, it's a corrupt system -- i mean that may somehow serve his long-term prospects in terms of how he wants to come back to rule america in the post-election, non-democratic future he imagines for us all.

may be helpful to him, but it is putting the rest of the republican party in a bit of a pickle because they really do need republican voters to go vote in those senate elections. and why would you if donald trump, if you revere and believe, is telling you there's no worth in voting in georgia because it's all rigged? those results can't be trusted. those machines, they steal your vote. this weekend republican party chair ronna romney mcdaniel went to an event in murietta, georgia, where she was shouted at repeatedly by republican voters in the room, demanding she explain to them why they should vote at all when it's all rigged, when alt the votes would be switched from republican to democrat just like trump says and just like the election was rigged against trump in the presidential election earlier this month. cnn's ryan nobles filed this report from murietta. >> reporter: listen to this exchange that we just saw a few minutes ago here in murietta with these supporters of

president trump and the supporters of david perdue and kelly loeffler peppering the gop chairwoman ronna mcdaniel about these allegations of fraud here in georgia and around the country. >> if they're switching the votes and we go there in crazy numbers and they should have won, but then it's still -- >> yeah, we have to -- we didn't see that in the audit, so we've got to just -- that evidence, i haven't seen. so we'll wait and see on that. >> how are we going to money and work when it's already decided? >> it's not decided. this is the key. >> how do we know? >> it's not decided. >> reporter: so the important thing to point out there is someone in the crowd actually asked the chairwoman why should we vote in this election when it's already been decided? that is a lot of impression that a lot of republican voters have here in this state because of president trump's consistent and overwhelming criticism of the way the election was run here. the gop chairwoman took questions for about ten minutes

from these supporters. every single question was about the election that already took place. there were no questions about the election that is still to come. they need the energy and the enthusiasm of these republican supporters that passionately support president trump, but they also need them to have confidence in the system, and right now it is year that there's at least a level of angst with these republican voters and in a close election, that could be a very serious problem for republicans here in georgia. >> there are two u.s. senate elections in georgia on january 5th. if republicans win one of those or both of those, they stay in charge in the u.s. senate. if democrats win beoth of these democrats will be in charge in the u.s. senate. couldn't be more important in terms of what the new administration is going to be able to get done, what's going to happen in the courts, what's going to happen with his appointees and with policy. it's an incredibly, incredibly important thing. and in the lead-up to those two crucial elections on january 5th, president trump's message to republican voters in georgia

is that republicans definitely shouldn't bother voting. and that message is apparently getting through, and you can see the frustration from the republican party chairwoman in the face of that. that said, the president's message now can be a little bit hard to track, and maybe that will help them, his incoherence. the president is also now claiming, for example, that the u.s. department of justice and the fbi were both part of stealing the election from him. he says even, you know, attorney general bill barr and chris wray, the fbi director, both men who he appointed, they're both apparently in on the scheme to steal the election from him. presumably if he's right about that and the justice department and the fbi were part of this scheme, what is -- what's the end game there? in a second trump term when the scheme is finally uncovered, what's he going to do? abolish the justice department and the fbi? have bill barr tried for treason maybe, you know? lock him up? if you think your own justice department and your own fbi set you up and stole the election

from you, what exactly are you planning to do about that after you avenge your loss? you might have heard this weekend after the trump folks got smacked out of court twice in two days in pennsylvania, including an opinion written by a trump-appointed federal judge -- you might have heard at least that case they were going to take all the way to the supreme court. the supreme court would fix it, and the supreme court will make trump a second-term president. well, those election losses were last week. it's monday night now. they still haven't even bothered to try to appeal it to the supreme court. they haven't filed anything with the supreme court. the conservative national review magazine is openly mocking that supreme court prospect from trump now, saying today, quote, the idea, as the trump team stalwartly maintains, that the supreme court is going to take up this case and issue a game-changing ruling is fantastical. conservative judges have consistently rejected trump's flailing legal appeals, and the justices are unlikely to have a different reaction.

but, again, the trump team hasn't actually even asked the supreme court to take up the case except on twitter, right? which doesn't actually count. that's not how you file an appeal with the supreme court. they don't review your tweets to see if that's your intention. there is actually some paperwork you have to do. meanwhile, the transition is happening. you can see it in the fact that the biden/harris team today announced the creation of their new inaugural committee. the inauguration to inaugurate joe biden as the 46th president of the united states. you can see it in the fact that biden and harris both for the first time today received the full highly classified presidents' daily brief, intelligence briefing. they're of course weeks late on that because of trump pretending he won the election for all these weeks, but weeks late is still better than never when it comes to those kinds of briefings. you can also see it in headlines like this one from "the new york times." epa's final deregulatory rush runs into open staff resistance. quote, with the biden administration on the horizon,

career epa employees are becoming emboldened to stymie mr. trump's goals and to do so more openly. scientist who's have been holding on by their fingernails trying to keep the government together for the past four years, now they are refusing to go along with orders from trump appointees to proverbially dynamite these agencies while trump is heading out the door. they are emboldened to say no because they know that trump is heading out the door. that's part of how you know that trump is really heading out the door. here's another way you know. the news breaking late tonight that president trump's disastrous covid adviser, scott atlas, is resigning. this is the adviser with no background in infectious disease or public health. he's a guy who specializes in taking mris of the head and neck. he nevertheless was brought on as a supposed expert guest by the fox news channel to downplay the risks of the coronavirus and to suggest that it's fine. in fact, it's good if everybody

gets it. that was the claims that scott atlas was known for. those were the claims that he was known for when trump decided to scoop him up from fox news and hire him to come in and run the coronavirus response in the white house. that's arguably how the trump white house justified pivoting to the policies we are living under now that were really no longer designed to stop people from getting the virus because scott atlas said it's good if everybody gets the virus. that disaster has now come to an end tonight. at least scott atlas is finally out at the white house. he has posted his resignation letter online. oddly the resignation letter is dated tomorrow, but he released it tonight. never was that good with the numbers. the important thing here, though -- and we're going to talk with pulitzer prize-winning science journalist laurie garrett about this in just a moment. the important thing here is with scott atlas finally resigning,

this does mean in the 50-plus remaining days of the trump administration, he at least will not be there every day telling the president that we shouldn't tell people and that everybody should get coronavirus, and more coronavirus is somehow good news for the country. it's been such a perversion and an inversion of public health at the highest levels of this administration. the otherwise disastrous response from this administration to this pandemic was made actively, actively counterproductive in a way that was so insidious with atlas there. atlas is now gone, so perhaps at least that part of the fever will break. again, that breaking news tonight, the random radiologist who president trump hired off fox to be his coronavirus adviser, out tonight, resigning his white house position. meanwhile, the incoming administration has now announced its incoming communications team, which will be an all-star cast of female talent, all female democratic talent at both the president's and the vice

president's communications shops. today the incoming team also announced most of their incoming economic team with janet yellen as treasury secretary and cecilia rouse heading the council of economic advisers. neera tanden to run the office of management and budget even though that choice, for some reason, the neera tanden choice is apparently the one that has republican senators all fired up and upset. it's kind of funny and weird. really? like she's going to be your big fight? really? the grift shop is alive and doing a brisk business on the side of the outgoing administration. the trump folks have sent almost as many fund-raising emails since they lost the election as they sent in the weeks before they lost the election, right? that's the time when they were supposedly trying to win the thing, and so you'd expect them to be sending lots of peoples trying to motivate their greatest supporters, trying to wring as much money out of people as they could. the pace has kept right up since they lost. the grift is strong.

they have turned this whole thing into a weird p.r. campaign for future trump and a financial engine, i guess, for future trump as well. but this will end. the new president is on deck. covid team, communications team, economic team, national security team all getting off the blocks. and lots of news upon us tonight about just how hard the task is ahead for them. stay with us. lots to get to tonight. copd. ♪ birds flyin' high, you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ breeze drifting on by you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ it's a new dawn... if you've been taking copd sitting down, it's time to make a stand. start a new day with trelegy. no once-daily copd medicine has the power to treat copd in as many ways as trelegy. with three medicines in one inhaler, trelegy helps people breathe easier and improves lung function. it also helps prevent future flare-ups.

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the team's been working around the clock.wire, we've had to rethink our whole approach. we're going to give togetherness. logistically, it's been a nightmare. i'm not sure it's going to work. it'll work. i didn't know you were listening.

back in march when cities and states went into shutdowns to try to stop the initial spread of the coronavirus, when businesses and schools and whole industries were shuttered overnight, you might remember that "the new york times" decided to bust out of the confines of their traditional front page layout to try to illustrate the magnitude of the economic crisis with this chart. along the bottom of its march 27th front page, they posted the weekly unemployment numbers from

the year 2000 to the present. and in the final bar there, that's not a margin marker. that's the final bar, reaching almost to the top of the page, representing the unemployment claims filed just that previous week, nearly 3.3 million. that much worse than anything we'd seen in decades. well, soon that number had doubled to nearly 7 million unemployment claims in a week. by may, the unemployment rate was the worst since the great depression with "the times" rolling out another layout-busting chart to prove it. and while unemployment claims in recent weeks have been nowhere near their spring highs, they are still higher than anything seen in pre-pandemic american history week after week after week after week. and as unbelievably bad as all those numbers are, turns out things might be worse than they appear because now we know that states have been so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unemployment claims that they've been pretty inconsistent in

reporting their data. so the gao, the government accountability office, has just reported that the trump administration's weekly reports about unemployment claims, they shouldn't be seen as reliable numbers. if anything, they may have been understating the problem. a top labor department official admitting it's possible his department's reported numbers are understating the number of unemployed americans. as bad as those numbers are, the real numbers may indeed be worse. the gao, the watchdog agency that discovered the flawed numbers, is urging the labor department to fix these problems because, quote, without an accurate accounting of the number of individuals who are relying on unemployment insurance and as close to real time as possible, policymakers may be challenged to respond to the crisis at hand. yes, it would probably help make policy to help unemployed americans if we had some roughly accurate real-time figures on how many unemployed americans there are. yes. that's just one of -- one small

version of the many, many challenges that will confront president-elect joe biden's economic team when he takes office in 50-ish days. we now know who the president-elect plans to put on that economic team, including former fed chair janet yellen at treasury, princeton economist se he celia rousz, neera tanden heading up the office of management and budget. she was a key architect of the affordable care act during the obama years. jared bernstein will also be on the council of economic advisers. he was a key architect of the stimulus after the economic crash in 2008 and has long been an economic adviser to biden. what do these picks tell us about how the biden administration is going to approach this economic crisis and should we see them as the right team to get the job done? joining us now is nobel prize winning economist paul krugman. mr. krugman, it's really nice to see you this evening. thanks for making time. >> good to be on. >> let me ask you first about these weekly jobless claims, reports in the news that they

may be underestimating the number of americans who are out of work. how consequential is that, and is it fixable? >> well, it's fixable but only if we start taking it serious. the u.s. unemployment insurance system works badly sort of by intent. states deliberately underfunded the whole system. they basically -- it's designed to make it hard for people to get coverage, and then confronted with this magnitude, there was a kind of a scramble to make it work. and of course the numbers didn't keep up. a lot of people didn't get all the money they should have. but, you know, relative to the way the system normally works, we actually for several months did a pretty good job. we got a lot of money out to people, not to everybody who should, not all that they should have gotten. but the really important thing is not that the numbers were off a bit. the really important thing is the expanded benefits were cut off way too soon, and there's a whole bunch of additional benefits they'll cut off in a couple more weeks. so the problem is not some detail about the numbers being

wrong. the problem is that we have not been sustaining aid long enough because the pandemic is still very, very much with us. >> and it does seem like any re-upping of that additional aid, let alone any expansion of the aid that's on offer just feels absolutely dead in terms of washington, mitch mcconnell, the republican leader in the senate. i don't know if he's just waiting to see what the results are going to be of those georgia runoffs or if he's waiting for something else, but he appears to have no fire in the belly to do anything further on covid. do you expect that those programs that will expire at the end of the year on new year's eve will be a big new economic hit, or will that be a more subtle worsening of an already bad situation? >> it will be a significant kick in the ribs to the american people and to the american economy. i actually have some thoughts that mcconnell might actually take a look at this and say, you know, as things are terrible for

the first couple of months of 2021, people are going to blame the outgoing administration, not the incoming administration, and might relent and allow a little bit of money to squeak through. but, you know, it's going to be horrible. it's going to be horrible on the pandemic. it's going to be horrible, but basically it's all just a matter of now surviving until the vaccine comes along and of course waiting to see what happens in georgia. everything -- if the democrats take those two seats, then it's an entirely different universe of economic policy than if they don't. >> what is your reaction to the economic team that's been announced by the biden/harris transition? were those the kind of names that you were looking to see? do you feel like this team is the kind of team that's up to the magnitude of the task that's going to be confronting them? >> i was actually much -- actually i'm a little nervous about my role as commentator and columnist because i actually know all of these people and like them. so can i retain my objectivity,

but, no, it's a fantastic team in terms of smart, qualified, serious progressive credentials as well, and one thing that i was worried about a little bit was that biden was going to turn the clock back to 2013 and be deficit-obsessed, that there were going to be some people still thinking that public debt was the biggest problem out there, and that's not true at all. we have a very good set of people. the only thought i have of this team is it's so good, that they feel overqualified. every member of the council of economic advisers ought to be chair because they're all that good. there's such a depth of the field here that it's really good. i have to say neera tanden, i was expecting office of management and budget to be somebody much less of a progressive advocate, so that's actually -- that surprised me on the upside very much so.

>> "new york times" columnist, nobel prize winning economist paul krugman. mr. krugman, it's always great to see you. thanks for making time to be here tonight. really good to have your insights. >> thanks a lot. >> all right. up next here, something that we learned today about the coronavirus pandemic that sort of makes as clear as anything else i've seen where we are headed right now as a country. stay with us for that next. stay with us. to love you. >>oh my gosh you made it! ♪ did you put some ah, kale in the greens? ♪ we didn't forget about you! welcome to the family. thank you. wooooow. ♪ ♪

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covid in the u.s. that month of july. from there, it did kind of level off. it crept back up to peak level in october, around 2 million cases again. but now this is where we are. this is what just happened this month, that big scary bar on the right. that is the number of covid cases recorded in this country this month, just in november. more than 4 million cases in the u.s. in the month of november alone. those are not cumulative numbers. that's the new cases this month. and with new infections rising to a rate that we have never seen before, that of course means patients are flooding into hospitals and out of control numbers too. just in the last 24 hours, ohio, pennsylvania, california, north carolina, indiana, nevada all broke their previous records for covid hospitalizations. nevada broke their hospitalization record today for the seventh day running. the entire st. louis region has now broken their hospitalization record for three days straight. rhode island also set a

hospitalization record today. the state of rhode island has now sent this alert to everybody's cell phone in the state. public safety alert. rhode island government covid alert. hospitals at capacity due to covid. help the front line by staying home as much as possible for the next two weeks. avoid social gatherings. get tested. rhode island going into a two-week pause, they're calling it, asking for everybody to essentially shelter in place for two weeks in rhode island starting today. in minnesota, they've been trying billboards. look at these highway signs in minnesota right now. buckle up. save icu beds for covid-19. that's all over the state in minnesota. in other words, please don't get injured in a car crash right now. there's no spare room for you in our hospitals because they are full because of covid. we are in a critical time right now, a time where the number of hospital beds, the logistical headache of keeping track of where there might be an open bed

for a patient who needs it -- that process is a matter of life and death all across the country. i talk to doctors and nurses and hospital administrator who's are trying to find those beds, and it's not only exhausting. it's terrifying. but that process requires logistical support and real data, and that appears to be something else that the trump administration has made a right hash out of. starting this summer, when inexplicably they decided that they would take away from the cdc the responsibility of keeping track of covid hospitalizations. they took it away from the cdc and, for some reason, decided to give it to alex azar and the health and human services department instead. that decision was widely criticized by public health experts at the time, who warned that it could compromise the accuracy of that incredibly important data. it could also shield it from the public. well, now today there's reporting that those concerns seem to have been borne out, which is very bad, particularly with the crisis that we've got

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it was july when the trump administration inexplicably took away the responsibility of tracking covid hospitalizations from the cdc. what is it about the cdc you don't like so much? they took it away from the cdc. they gave the job instead to the health and human services department, which had no experience tracking that kind of complex and fast-moving data. well, today science magazine did a deep dive look at hhs's covid hospitalization data, such as it is. they compared it to state by state data and other federal databases. basically to check to see if this crucial data collection the trump administration wrestled away from cdc now reflects an accurate picture of covthe covi hospitalization crisis on the ground. the bottom line of what they found is we shouldn't necessarily think of the data from hhs on covid

hospitalizations as, like, science-based tool to track the availability of beds in the u.s. instead we should think of this data as garbage, a random jumbled collection of numbers that doesn't reflect reality at all at a time when it would be really good to have good data on this in particular. the headline at science magazine is a little bit more polite than i'm being. their headline is this. federal system for tracking hospital beds and covid-19 patients provides questionable data. yes. one cdc employee summing it up for the magazine like this. quote, the hhs protect data are poor quality, inconsistent with state reports, and the analysis is slipshod. because this administration has for no reason ruined data collection around covid hospitalizations, part of the challenge now is not just the scale of this problem and the number of states where they're running out of hospital beds and icu beds to treat people. part of the problem now, because

of this failure by the trump administration, is the fact that the government agency has been put in charge of telling us how big that problem is and where it's the worse, that agency can no longer be trusted to give us sound and useful information. this was a totally avoidable problem trustful information. this is an avoidable problem, and lori called the change in the data collection plans appalling. she said when they tripped the cdc of the information would make the data quote, now useless. she was right. joins you now is lori garrett, a pulitzer prize winning science writer. thank you for being here. >> pleasure. >> so you and a lot of public health experts called it in summer when the white house decided they were going to take

it away from cdc and have the trump administration collect the data. instead, it really does seem to be born out in the months since. how much better off would we be if we had real data we could count on? >> first, rachel, we owe a great debt of gratitude to charles tiller who has covered the story for "science" magazine for three months, and one of the really important things that he has -- sorry. one of the -- all of a sudden, you are coming on my television for which i apologize. but he --. >> i will send you a nielsen box. >> and he one of the things that he revealed was that debra birx was really behind this. she wanted more control of the data. she didn't trust cdc and claimed that data was sloppy.

moving it in hhs, they farmed it out to two private companies. one was a private film called teletracking, biggest client they ever had. and the other was palenteer that was engaged to massage and analyze the data. the result was that the hospitals were thoroughly confused. who do we send the data to? what computers are we supposed to use and for a long time in the summer, we almost had no data to rely upon at all. eventually, the federal starting pushing the hospitals around, and you are going to lose your contract and though them at another hospital if you don't start reporting data to us. and all the hospitals start

flooding data in, and what does ill really mean? and here is where the crux of the problem is. if your job is to decide how much ppe is to go to arkansas or how much dextamethazone needs to go to north dakota, and the shortages of protective gear for nurses, you have to know, what is the trend look like? what is the use like? you don't have data to rely on right now. it's a total mess. there is no -- it's a mess at all levels. the prfederal numbers don't jiv with the state numbers. the state numbers don't jive with the county numbers. the private hospital sector is reporting different. this is just chaos.

>> is this fixable? or how fixable is this as a problem? i know that it was a relief to a lot of people to see the list of names who have been advising the incoming president-elect on covid thus far. and reassuring science-based statements from them in the transition so far. but when they dig in and start to do the work, is it something that can be -- is it something that be unzone? will they have to build it from the ground up? will the cdc be put back in charge and make it useful again? >> well, rachel w reall really anxious to see who biden is going to name as the next cdc director, and also the next hhs director. and that will go a long way to anssing your question. we don't know because the transition team has only had a few days of access to get alongside the cdc. we don't really know what the

state of these kinds of proms is now inside. in other words, is it still in the kpuler? is there personnel there that can reactivate the cdc's tracking system or was it dismantled? we don't know the answer to that question right now. >> lori, i have to p get your reaction that scott atlas has resigned from the white house. i was not shy talking about the fact that i was alarmed to see him in the position he was in the white house, given his stated public views on the virus. what is your reaction that he has now resigned? >> well, i think it's great. i think that he had a very negative impact on affairs inside the white house and on our national response. and i'm not sure he's going to be welcomed back at stanford, the stanford faculty have voted to denounce him, and condoleezza rice, his boss, indicated

dissatisfaction with his performance. what is interesting to me is the timing. why now? why did he put out a statement today dated for tomorrow? and i wonder if it's connected to the fact that anders tegnel, who was the herd immunity approach for sweden, was pushed aside this weekend in sweden as the death toll and case numbers have soared. and in there is a strong belief many factors of the government that listening to anders tegnel was a mistake, and conversely, that boris johnson finally rejected the herd immunity approach that many of his advisers had been advocating and three weeks ago started tough lockdowns and since they have been on three weeks of lockdown, they have seen the case load

plummet by a third. >> lori garrett, health policy analyst, and pulitzer prize winning science journalist. thanksing thanks for being here. >> thanks, rachel. >> we'll be back. >> we'll be back d'shea: i live in south jamaica, queens,

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thanks for joining us. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. we will joined by john osoff later in the hour. because as you know, it's all the up to georgia and what will be recording on in february, march, april, depends on what happens in january and who is in control of the senate. so we are staying with that story. the campaign, because there is nothing more happening out there right no