unthajable omable. unthajable "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening rachel. good evening. we are following a number of developing stories tonight, including one story derived from these court documents that were just unsealed in federal court in washington, d.c. tonight. and i will tell you in advance, i will tell you right up front that the story that is derived from these newly unsealed documents, the story itself is still sort of shielded in a t lot of mystery tonight in part because these documents that were just released are still almost totally redacted, right? all those black bars on the pages really brings back memories. this, for me, forever is going to be the sense memory of the donald j. trump administration. redacted, redacted, redacted. what this is is a 20-page long order from the top judge in the federal court in d.c., chief judge barrel howell, judge howell issued this order in late august. she only made it public today.

and i say she made it public, as i snowed you, a whole bunch is blacked out. but what we can see in the parts that aren't blacked out is sort of show stopping. what this document reveals is that federal prosecutors at the u.s. department of justice have been actively investigating what the judge describes here as a, quote, bribery-for-pardon scheme, a quote, secret lobbying scheme and bribery conspiracy by which some number of people were suspected of arranging bribes to the president. in the form of, quote, substantial political contributions. the substantial political contributions would be the bribe. the official act they wanted from the president in return for that bribe was alleged, quote, a presidential pardon or a reprieve of sentence for person whose name is blacked out. so, this document unsealed today, although still heavily redacted, what it shows, technically, the work of the

court that is revealed of this document is that judge howell approved a request from these federal prosecutors back in august when the prosecutors were asking to look at stuff that had been seized under a search warrant as part of this criminal investigation. some office was raided this past summer. and from that office, what was seized were apparently more than 50 electronic devices, computer drives, laptops, ipads, iphones, thumb drives. they were all seized as part of this criminal investigation as to whether trump presidential pardons were for sale in exchange for cash contributions. the judge looking at that evidence, looking at the circumstances under which the evidence was collected ruled in this order that we can see today that those materials seized under that search warrant could be handed over to prosecutors to help them build this case. that's what this order is. and -- and -- that's all we know.

this order was unsealed today, still with lots of redactions, by order of the judge who allowed prosecutors to see that material that was seized as part of that investigation. we don't know of anybody being charged in this case. we haven't seen anything that looks like public charges brought against anybody in a case like this, although sometimes in some cases for some amount of time charges like this might be kept under seal until the person is actually brought to court to face these charges. we also don't know who the person is they were allegedly trying to buy a trump pardon for. we don't know about any level of potential involvement by the white house here, other than the fact they were apparently being targeted by this scheme. but behold, this exists, and at least as late as this summer, a trump pardon bribery scheme was under investigation by the u.s. justice department. we're going to get updated reporting on that over the course of the hour tonight. i have to tell you this strange

and largely unexplained development arrived tonight on top of an ongoing avalanche of other news about the election and potential pardons, including late breaking news that the president may be seeking to pardon, jared, ivanka, don junior, eric and rudy giuliani. also news about the justice department and some unexpected hurley burly around the relationship of the justice department and the president. at the time the increasingly unhinged craziness of the president, denying he lost his re-election effort, that continues to escalate to almost unimaginable levels. one of the president's lawyers, although is she still? they kind of tried to disown her this weekend, so i don't know if she's still one of his lawyers. he tweets about her like she's still his lawyer. she put out a statement -- she promoted a statement last night that called on the president to

block the electoral college from convening. she called on the president to declare an insurrection in the country so he could put the u.s. military on the streets. she called on him to call off the biden inauguration for january 20th. and she called on him to install a military commission to investigate the election. the statement also called on president trump to eliminate, to call off, to at least suspend the two u.s. senate elections in georgia next month. okay. sure, seems legit. right? why not? go ahead with all those things. whether or not you are interested in the increasingly insane online musings of one of the president's disowned lawyers, you should know the president did today, after she posted that, the president did today publicly call for the two senate elections in georgia next month to be called off. he's going along with that part of it.

the president today saying georgia's governor should call those senate elections off. you should also know that the lawsuit the trump folks have filed in georgia includes an affidavit including a fraud, submitted by a guy who is caledd 8kun which used to be 8chan. it carries the qanon conspiracy stuff. his affidavit is included in the trump lawsuit in georgia. he's the same guy who started a new conspiracy theory today attacking a specific young election worker in georgia. that quickly led to all the pro-trump qanon people posting that guy's full name and address and chasing down his family and threatening to kill them. quite an elite strike force team they've got going there working

on behalf of the president of the united states. that all led to this today from republican gabriel sterling. he's the georgia implementation manage for the georgia secretary of state's office. >> i'm going to do my best to keep it together because it has all gone too far. all of it. joe today asked for chris krebs, a patriot who ran cisa to be shot. a 20-something tech in gwinnett county today has a noose saying he should be hung for treason because he was transferring a report on batches from an ems to a county computer so he could read it. it has to stop. mr. president, you have not condemned these actions or this language. senators, you have not condemned

this language or these actions. this has to stop. we need you to step up and take a position of leadership, show some. my boss, secretary raffensperger, his address is out there. they've had people do caravans by their house. they've had people come on to their property. trisha, his wife of 40 years is getting sexualized threats through her cell phone. it has to stop. this election, this is the backbone of democracy and all of you who have not said a damn word are complicit in this. it's too much. yes, fight for every legal vote. go through your due process. we encourage you, use your first amendment. that's fine. death threats, physical threats,

intimidation, it's too much. it's not right. they have lost the moral high ground to claim that it is. i don't have all the best words to do this because i'm angry. the straw that broke the camel's back today, this 20-year-old contractor for a voting system company just trying to do his job, his family's getting harassed now. there's a noose out there with his name on it. it's not right. i've got police protection outside my house. fine. i took a higher profile job. i get it. secretary for office, too. this kid took a job. he just took a job. and it's just wrong. i can't begin to explain the level of anger i have right now over this. and every american, every georgian, republican and democrat alike should have that same level of anger.

mr. president, it looks like you likely lost the state of georgia. we're investigating. there's always a possibility. i get it. you have the rights to go through the courts. what you don't have the ability to do, and you need to step up and say this, stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed and it's not right. i -- it's not right. i don't have anything scripted. this is -- like i said, i'm doing my best to keep it together. all this is wrong. >> all this is wrong. that is the cold hard fury of gabriel sterling, one of the top elections officials, basically the top operations official for the election system in the state of georgia. after he made those remarks, a reporter asked him to clarify what he meant when he said at the outset of his remarks,

senators, you haven't condemned this language or these actions. he clarified he meant republican u.s. senators kelly loeffler and david perdue. they are the two incumbent senators running in those runoff elections to try to hold on to their seats in january. the elections the president now says should be called off. >> [ inaudible ] >> i'm talking about senator david perdue and senator kelly loeffler, two people i still support in the election, but they need to step up on this particular thing. that's me speaking as a republican out of office, i'm probably out of line but i'm kind of pissed. >> i'm kind of pissed he says. they need to step up on this particular thing. that was the state of georgia today. you know, the president and the republican party and the president's lawyers -- is giuliani really getting $20,000 a day?

it's reported that's what he's asked for. it's reported he's getting 20,000 a day. i don't know if that's what giuliani is getting, but financially as a group, they are cleaning up with this act. $170 million they have raised with this act just since the election. now, i know large numbers sometimes all sound comparable, but if you want to put that $170 million in context, it mean that trump and these folks have found a way to use these conspiracy theories about the election to raise money at a way faster clip right now than they were raising money before the election. think about that. turns out they have figured out how to shake more money out of their supporters by losing the election and inventing scare stories about it than they were able to squeeze out of them than just by trying to win the election outright in advance. over $170 million. that's beyond trump's wildest

dreams in terms of how much he can still get out of people. where's that money going? it's not hard to figure out. it turns out that a big chunk of that money is going to the republican party. this will now be the financial dna of the republican party moving forward. it's also true that a small portion of this money may be going to these space alien conspiracy theory lawsuits that they're filing around the country still. but the vast bulk of it is what's called a leadership pack for trump himself. and a leadership back in this instance is basically a slush fund for the president himself that he can use to pay not just for political activity. he can use it to pay for his lifestyle. he can use it to pay for everything up to and including his personal expenses like food and travel and rent and haircuts and makeup and very wide pants and very long ties. i mean, he -- he can even just take the money for himself as income. he can just pay himself from this $170 million slush fund that he is building off of these

conspiracy theories and crazy whack job lawsuits. nice work if you can get it, right? i'll tell you though, the whack job lawsuits are not going great. they appear to be devolving over time. there's this new wisconsin one from the trump lawyers that includes demand that trump's lawyers should be given video footage of the vote counting at the tcf center. the tcf center is in detroit. detroit is a nice place, but it is not in wisconsin. detroit is in michigan, and this is supposed to be a wisconsin lawsuit. that wisconsin lawsuit also cites as a named plaintiff in the case a republican congressional candidate who lost his race this year and who had no idea until today that they were going to use his name as the plaintiff in the case. he now wants them to stop. quote, i learned through social media today that my name was included in a lawsuit without my permission. daerk van orderen. to be clear, i am not involved in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the election in

wisconsin. but they're using his name anyway. and they're trying to make detroit, a city in wisconsin, whatever works, whatever works to ring more money out of all the suckers. attorney general william barr gave an interview to the associated press today in which he said this, quote, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election. that's the same kind of proclamation about the election not being rigged but got the cyber security at homeland security chris krebs fired in a tweet from the president. that quickly led to another one of the president's charming lawyers on right wing boston talk radio yesterday that chris krebs should be assassinated for having said that the election was not marred by fraud. the president's lawyer said on talk radio yesterday that chris krebs should be shot, should be murdered. krebs told the "today" show said the president lawyer who said that should have to answer for

that in court soon. chris krebs also published this op- op-ed. trump fired me for saying the this, but i'll say it again: the election wasn't rigged. krebs says, quote on november 17, i was dismissed as director of the cyber security and infrastructure security agency, a senate-confirmed post in a tweet from president trump. that was after my team and other election security experts rebutted claims of hacking in the 2020 election. on monday, meaning yesterday, lawyer for the president's campaign plainly stated i should be executed. krebs said, quote, i am not going to be intimidated by these threats from telling the truth to the american people. he said, quote, the 2020 election was the most secure in american history. the success should be celebrated by all americans, not undermined in the service of a profoundly un-american goal. that's chris krebs. i don't think that attorney general william barr would wear getting fired by president trump as a badge of honor the way that

chris krebs rightfully does here. but in any case, barr knows how to protect himself and how to play the game. just absolutely stunning today from bill barr. today, get the timing of this. even as the associated press was publishing their interview with william barr where he said, it's true, there wasn't any substantial fraud in this election, nothing that would overturn the results, even as the ap was publishing that interview with that quote from barr today, barr was trooping up to the white house personally while simultaneously he and his office revealed for the first time that just before the election he secretly promoted the guy he had assigned to investigate robert mueller and to investigate the fbi for having had the temerity to investigate russia's interference in the 2016

election themselves. the fbi investigated it, mueller investigated whether trump's campaign was in on it. barr then assigned this guy, john durham, to investigate the fbi and robert mueller for having looked into those things. well, today as he went up to the white house upon telling the associated press there was no fraud in the election, barr decided that this might be a good time to reveal that two weeks before election day, he secretly wrote a letter giving john durham the title of special counsel because he wants durham to keep his investigation of mueller and the fbi going into the biden administration even after trump's gone. according to congressman adam schiff, the head of the intelligence committee, this is going to go down as one of those nice try pr moves from william barr, but it's not going to work. schiff saying tonight on msnbc that what barr did here might be good enough pr, might pull the wool over president trump's eyes enough to maybe save bill barr's job for a few more weeks even as barr is no longer going along with the election fraud grift effort that's lining the president's pocket, but the

as schiff points out based on his reading of the statute that allows you to create things like special counsels, what bill barr is doing to try to cover his butt won't actually work beyond that. >> with the initiation of this investigation and now with this, what i think will be an unsuccessful attempt to prolong the investigation through this secret appointment only disclosed now of durham of a special counsel. the appointment is not consistent with the language of the statute he's relying on and can be rescinded i think by the next attorney general. i will presume the next attorney general will look to see whether there's any merit to the work john durham is doing and make a rational decision about whether that should continue at any level. >> in other words, per congressman adam schiff of the intelligence committee, hover joe biden picks to be the next attorney general of the united states, that's who will make a

decision on this, whether the investigation of mueller and the fbi should continue because the russia investigation was so somehow terrible. but still, nice try from attorney general william barr to saddle the biden administration with some sort of investigation that he presumably has told donald trump they won't be able to get rid of. maybe that will make trump not fire you for saying the election wasn't a fraud. good luck, sir. i mean, on top of all of that happening just stacked up today, now there's this breaking now on the front page of the "new york times." trump has discussed with advisers pardons for his three eldest children and rudolph giuliani. oh, jared's not in the headline, but apparently jared's in this too. that story's next. with one of the reporters who just broke that story. what an incredible day of news. we'll be right back. today, we are redefining how we do things.

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if you had to build a 2020 time capsule in advance, this is probably something you would have invented to put in the 2020 capsule. trump has discussed with his advisers pardons for his three eldest children and also rudy giuliani. just posted tonight at it "the new york times," quote, president trump has discussed with advisers whether to grant preemptive pardons to his children, his son-in-law and to his personal lawyer, rudy giuliani. and talked to mr. giuliani about pardoning him as recently as

last week according to two people briefed on the matter. trump has told others he's concerned that a biden justice department might target the oldest three of five children, don junior, eric and ivanka as well as jared kushner. donald trump jr. has been under investigation by robert mueller the special counsel, for contacts the younger mr. trump had on russians during the 2016 campaign. don junior was never charged. mr. kushner provided false information to authorities about his contact with foreigners for his security clearance but was given security clearance anyway by the president. the nature of mr. trump's concern about any potential criminal exposure of eric trump or ivanka trump is unclear, although an investigation by the manhattan district attorney into the trump organization has expanded to include tax write offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees by the company some of which appear to have gone to ms. ivanka trump.

presidential pardons, however, do not provide protection against state or local crimes. mr. giuliani's potential criminal exposure is also unclear although he was under investigation as recently as this summer by federal prosecutors in new york for his business dealings in ukraine and his role in ousting the american ambassador there. the plot was at the heart of the impeachment of mr. trump. potential legal liability for all of them in addition to the president himself. now the news breaking that trump has discussed with advisers pardoning all his kids and rudy. joining us now is one of the reporters who broke that news tonight, michael schmidt, washington correspondent for "the new york times." and also author of the "the new york times" best-seller, donald trump versus the united states, inside the struggle to stop a president." mr. schmidt, it's nice to see you. thanks for being here tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> so, mike, can i ask you what advisers the president is

talking with this about? is this the sort of thing the white house is handling as the appropriate actions of the president and how this might affect the presidency? or is this the sort of thing the president is calling his buddies and yapping about? >> well, the president will talk to anyone about anything and relies on a range of advisers, lawyers, people inside the white house, people outside the white house, people like chris ruddy who runs a television network. so it's a range of people that the president is always talking to. but specifically on this pardon if he's going to move forward with these pardons, he would have to do it through the white house counsel's office because it's truly the ultimate expression of presidential power to use the pardon, to use the power that legal experts consider to be one of the most sacred ones a president has. even in doing that, granting pardons, preemptive pardons these are because none of these people have been charged, the

president would really need a lawyer to have a delicate look at this. because the language of such a pardon would really matter. does it cover all conduct that someone did over a period of time? does it lay out what the crimes may be that the person committed? this is not just as simply as saying rubber stamp pardon granted and you need lawyers to do that. and like with everything with trump he needs his lawyer. >> mike, one of the things that when you broke the story in the first instance that giuliani and trump as recently as last week were talking about preemptive pardons for giuliani, one of the things you noted in that reporting was that the president would have to at least to a certain degree spell out what crimes rudy might have committed, mr. giuliani, might have committed for which he might have acquired this pardon.

presumably that same sort of careful parsing would have to happen if he did try to pardon his kids as well. >> yes, so we're in sort of like a legal land that is not clearly defined because most pardons of very senior people in government are not tested. so the question would be if you pardon one of these people and the biden justice department wanted to do something, the question would have to be what does the pardon apply to? so what is the wording of the pardon? is it a blanket pardon for all conduct that occurred during mr. trump's presidency? how far does it go back? how specific does it go? does it actually lay out specific crimes like, you know, the numbers and the letters about what they may have done? to be the most insulated some lawyers would say you'd want the specific crimes he may have committed to be laid out, but would that protect that person

from being prosecuted from other things and other criminal furies being pushed for the justice department? it's like many things with the president and the law, it's really unchartered territory. >> mike, one of the things that we tried to follow the threads of and it's been very difficult is the criminal liability for mr. giuliani in this investigation that seems to have derived from the southern district of new york. there was public reporting about subpoenas that went out related to mr. giuliani and his business practices. we certainly saw his associates charged with multiple felonies for the ukraine scheme, for campaign finance violations around that. it really did appear there was an active criminal investigation of rudy giuliani in sdny through a substantial part of last year. and some of the threads of those related investigations are still, you know, lev parnas and igor fruman were both answering

an arraignment this week in new york. from your reporting, can you tell us how live the concern is right now mr. giuliani may be looking at charges whether or not trump chooses to preemptively pardon him? >> we know giuliani was still being investigated as of last summer. so that was still going on as of last summer. it would be hard to believe that the justice department would have indicted giuliani in a leadup to an election. that's sort of the period of time that we talked about, you know, dealing with comey and the past how the justice department doesn't want to take actions around an election that may impact voters. now the question is what are they going to do now? if they wanted to indict giuliani right now my guess is they would probably hold back on doing that. because imagine if giuliani in the middle of questioning this

election, waging this specious campaign in which he's making all these accusations about voter fraud was indicted? if that were to happen then giuliani would claim there's a massive conspiracy and there's all these terrible things going on, and it would look political. so in a sense if the justice department wants to do something in this period of time it would be very -- giuliani's made it hard. >> you want to get away with committing a felony make sure you are leading a parade out in public, some proverbial parade at the time you might end up getting arrested. this is just a remarkable time and remarkable beat. michael schmidt, washington correspondent for "the new york times." thank you for helping us understand your reporting. >> thanks for having me. much more to get to tonight on this kind of amazing night in the news. dona mcneil, long time award winning science reporter from "the new york times" is joining us ahead. stay with us.

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more than 2,400 american deaths from covid have been recorded in the past 24 hours. we are up at 2,400 deaths a day now. and with case numbers looking like they do that will keep climbing in coming weeks. we're due to hit i guess we could think of it as one 9/11's worth of deaths per day soon in short order. part of the story of covid in america, part of the history of this time will have to be about people who made it worse. bad actors handling it terribly, punching above their weight in terms of the amount of damage they were able to do as the country reeled under the onset of this virus. in terms of the spread of the virus the white house as an institution itself has continued to prove it deserves a spot. on the list of bad actors who

have been spreading this thing. after their final holiday season in the white house, the trump administration has announced they're planning not one, not two, but 25 individual holiday parties this month. their parting gift to the nation evidently to seed the entire republican establishment with covid in one go. it's not just what they're doing in public that has a chance of kneecapping the covid response on their way out of the door. today sort of ominous reporting the head of the fda dr. stephen hahn was summoned to the white house by the president's chief of staff reportedly to interrogate him on fda approvals for covid vaccine. dr. hawn immediately signaled he'll not let career scientists in charge of improving the vaccine to be rushed to the white house. he was under quarantine in isolation and said the meeting should happen by phone. the white house insisted he break his quarantine and come to the white house in person. keep your eyes on whether or not dr. hahn keeps his job over the

next few days as vaccines start to arrive. with this crisis continuing to spiral if more than 4 million of us infected last month alone, there will come a time to figure out who is at fault, how we let this happen, who made it worse including when they knew better, but there's also the immediate concern of the overwhelming magnitude of how bad things are right now and how rough the next few weeks really look, what it means for the incoming administration to inherit this mess, what options they will have to turn this around and what's going to happen between now and january 20th when they finally get the reins. one of the first american journalists to report on what was then a brand new respiratory disease coming out of china. a man who's been absolutely ahead of everyone else in predicting how this would go, donald mcneil of "the new york times" is our next guest. stay with us. ings.

we find new ways of speaking, so you're never out of touch. it's seeing someone's face that comforts us, no matter where. when those around us know us, they can show us just how much they care. the first steps of checking in, the smallest moments can end up being everything. there's resources that can inform us, and that spark can make a difference. when we use it to improve things, then that change can last within us. when we understand what's possible, we won't settle for less. the best thing we can be is striving to be at our best. managing heart failure starts now with understanding. call today or go online to understandhf.com for a free hf handbook. they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to

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the first time this show switched full-time to covering the novel coronavirus was in february. it was february 28th. our guest that night was donald mcneil, veteran awarding win science reporter at the "new york times." mr. mcneal has since been a guest on the show several times. he's covered epidemics and diseases all over the world for decades. he was the one who was reporting really the first byline in the u.s., reporting early on before covid-19 even had a name, about this strange and very transmissible coronavirus that was emerging out of wuhan in china. he was one of the first to shock everyone in this country with early reporting about how lockdowns and travel restrictions wouldn't just be for china, they would need to be implemented everywhere to control the spread of this thing. his coverage from the outset, i will tell you as a person who digests a lot of this stuff, it was considerably more terrifying than most of what we were hearing at the time. but he really has been proven right over and over again over the course of this thing.

that's why it was sort of shocking and sort of felt like the earth shifted a little bit in october when always-terrifying donald mcneil shifted, himself, to a very uncharacteristic more optimistic tone when he wrote sort of hopeful pieces for the "times" explaining his hopes for the vaccines under development. some of the vaccines are on their way now, and donald mcneil is still quite bullish about them. in today's "times," the top story in the paper, he interviews two dozen public health experts around the world about the vaccines, about how that's going to work when we get them and about what we should expect from now until significant numbers of people are vaccinated. what he's telling us to brace for now is in the headline, the long darkness before the dawn. joining us now is donald mcneil. science and health reporter for t"the new york times." it's a real honor to have you back with us. thanks for making the time. >> thank you for inviting me. and i'm sorry you had your own brush with covid with your

partner. you know, nothing is more terrifying than knowing somebody who has suffered from it. and nothing is more convincing, i hope, than knowing somebody who's come with it and unfortunately there are parts of the country now that are just beginning to feel that. sorry, go on with what you were going to say. >> no, thank you for saying it. i will tell you the reason i talk about it publicly is because i do think that for myself and for a lot of people, it is scary to imagine getting sick. it's scary to imagine having to go to the hospital or potentially dying from some sort of illness. it is considerably more scary to see the person you love most in the world going through it and being helpless to it. for me it was an existential thing, to see it in susan more so than it would have been for myself. and i can't help but think that dynamic you're describing there and that i felt in doing that is a little bit of an important dynamic to understand in terms

of whether or not people feel motivated to personally take action, whether or not they've seen it, whether or not it feels like it threatens the things that most matter to them. >> in every disease i've ever covered, you know, it's the survivors who are the ones who get convinced, true of aids, true of aids in africa, true of polio. it's often when you see your children get infected you begin to realize the disease is terrifying. and when i was a child our parents were terrified of polio, and that's why they accepted that vaccine as readily as they did even though they were disastrous with the polio vaccine. there was even a bad batch that infected 250,000 kids and killed ten of them. so i'm optimistic about the vaccines because they seem to be coming in much quicker time than we expects, you know, six or eight months ago.

i feel like i'm playing both sides of the fence in these -- with these articles. i was actually asked to write the optimistic one because an editor was so shocked when i expressed optimism and he said you've got to write about that. and that was sort of a first person piece about my feelings long-range, but then after the election i was asked to write a piece about they they felt just about this period between the end of the election and when the biden presidency begins, and that's going to be our dark time. >> okay, so one of the things i found very interesting and very constructive in your take on this forthcoming dark time is that it seems to me the experts you talked to and you have confidence in the people who biden has appointed to work on covid, the people who he's been listening to, the people who have been advising him, but you raised the prospect he might need to start thinking about vaccine confidence, he might have to start thinking about disinformation.

he might have to start thinking about other what we think was more social science things or psychological work around getting the american mind-set when it comes to dealing with this vaccine because what we've been through in the past year or so has such a stark psychological component in terms of people either denying what's going on or being unwilling to take steps that the country's is going to need them to take. >> yeah, it's not just for the vaccine but the virus itself. we've really seen three separate waves in this virus. we saw the north eastern wave in the spring. we saw the summer wave which was mostly in the deep south. and now we're seeing along with the wave all around the country we're seeing this wave that's hitting deeply into the red states killing people in states that voted heavily for trump. the dakotas, nebraska, iowa, wyoming, these states are the one being hurt extremely by this virus.

and in effect that rhetoric has killed trump voters, the denialism has killed trump voters and they're now a high risk group. and some people may say, fine, they deserve it, i reject that kind of thinking. they are victims of denialism as anybody else is, and the experts i talked to were doctors, and the doctors ethics is you have and you have to save the patient in front of you. if you're a combat doctor in a m.a.s.h. unit, you have to save the wounded soldier in front of you even if he is an enemy. and we are in a situation like that now where it's important to convince people who have rejected masks to accept masks and social distancing and all the other things that would preserve them until the vaccines get here. and then i hope the vaccines will come as well.

and i hope they'll be, you know, acceptable because people need them, and it may take a lot of convincing, and the experts i talked to say, look, you need people who speak to other than fans of the obama administration, you need people who are credible to conservative republicans who otherwise will see this as the democrats and the doctors getting together again to shut down the economy. and she america, that's the birthright of personal freedom. you have to get people out there and people maybe suggested maybe consulting with sean hannity and tucker carlson and, you know, mehmet oz and other doctors, and marc siegel of fox news, because they're persuaders who can speak to the audience that now needs convincing. >> essentially forming ambassadors to the political right that have been the target of all of this disinformation for political reasons or whatever the reasons were. seeing them as a high risk group to which you need trusted -- for

which you need trusted interloculars. it's very rational. yes. >> you have to get to the imams, you have to get to the local governors, you have to get to the thought leaders. and whoever those thought leaders are you have to reach them and convince them, look, your people will die if you don't do something about this and surely you don't want your people to die. >> donald, do you have confidence in some of the recent steps that have been taken at and around the cdc? we saw the independent panel that advises the cdc today voting to recommend that the first vaccines should go to health care workers and people who live and work at long-term care facilities. we've seen the cdc tweak its guidance around how long people should stay isolated from other people after they have resolved their symptoms from getting covid. obviously the cdc has been put under some real inappropriate political pressure at times by

the trump administration. do you feel like they are regaining their trusted status, that these recent decisions that they're making are sound? >> that's my impression. the cdc is so constrained from talking right now that it's very hard to get anybody there to talk to you. but when you test the advice they give out now against other experts, former cdc experts, independent experts that consult with the cdc, they say most of the time it's good advice, it's getting better. it looks less politically corrupted. doesn't look like anybody's breaking out of the website and making changes the way it used to happen. but that's sort of an outside impression that -- and it's possible to get good advice not just from the cdc but from other medical experts. they're the ones who had to speak up because of the vacuum that existed for so long. >> let me ask you one last thing, just your impression. and it may be your reporting can

add to this, but i also just trust your impression on this if you haven't worked on it specifically. i am very concerned about health care workers right now just because i review a lot of this tape we get and diaries we get from health workers all across the country. and i'm seeing levels of exhaustion and people really at the end of their rope from doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and all sorts of people in the health care environment while i'm looking at these numbers just topping out. obviously we've got hospitalizations being topped all across the country, feels like that number is just going to go up. feels like we're at 3,000 dentals a day before too long. is there something that we can do culturally and just as citizens other than try to reduce the spread of this virus to try to bolster the health care workers that we're going to need to save us? >> remember i said on your show back in march, i think, that maybe we ought to at that time think about importing 40,000 doctors from china who just fought the disease because they

knew the disease, knew how to fight it, i was mocked for that. i don't think that's going to happen. but i don't know what we're going to do. and doctors are being pulled out of retirement and nurses and respiratory technicians being pulled out of retirement from all over the country. when the virus hit new york it was possible for medical professionals from other parts of the country to go to new york and help out, they did in large numbers. but now the virus is everywhere. i suppose some doctors could be spared from new york city because they're -- we're being hit less hard than the rest of the country. and unfortunately in rural hospitals, in small counties across this country if you have one doctor go down with covid, that may be -- your hospital may start falling apart. you've got very small staffs out there. so i do not see a remedy for this unless people, you know, wise up and do what they can to slow down the transmission of the virus. and unfortunately, the advice not to travel on thanksgiving was ignored.

>> yeah. donald mcneil, "the new york times" scientist and health reporter, thank you so much. i really appreciate you being here. >> thank you very much for inviting me on. >> all right, we'll be right back.

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matt. our beloved producer matt and his wife alison very many a baby boy. his parents are flipped out, understandably. can't wait to meet you in person. i will see you tomorrow night. "way too early with kasie hunt" is up next. the future is not rosy for the president. his own attorney general today william barr dropped a december surprise on him. in an interview with the ap, barr said we have not seen fraud on a scale that would have effected a different outcome in the election. barr also appeared to throw a jab at trump saying there's a tendency with fraud with the justice department to investigate something. . so, bill barr is part of