the public hearings with president trump's lawyers, the rallies that are happening, to add a government veneer to that, could you imagine they're in the rallies and saying not to vote in the special election. i think that's something under consideration. i think it's unlikely to have the government officials participating in that versus some of president trump's private attorneys. >> all right. nicholas johnston, thank you as always. great to have you on here on "way too early." i'm watching to see what rep n republicans will do, about chanting lock up the republican governor of georgia. it's a problem for them. thank you for getting up "way too early." don't go anywhere. "morning joe" starts right now. it is important to know the problems with mail-in balloting.

pennsylvania, michigan, nevada, georgia, arizona. >> do you solemnly swear to protect the country about enemies foreign and domestic? >> there were error messages from tab grulation machines. >> that you take this without any purpose of evasion. >> also in arizona, the attorney general announced that mail-in ballots has been stolen from mailboxes and hidden under a rock. >> well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which you're about to enter so help you god. >> i do. >> congratulations. >> oh, so if the election was rigged in arizona -- >> but it wasn't. >> why did the vice president swear in the state's new senator? i thought it was rigged. >> it seems that people are slowly backing away from the president.

you had the attorney general earlier this week sort of backing up and then you had mitch mcconnell talking about the new administration. his way of backing up. you have the vice president doing the same. so, willie, the situation has gotten so sad for the president, the sitting president. he's now having to record these shock opera tapes that nobody believes or maybe some scattered people still believe it. but i mean, we're reduced now to a lawyer in georgia who was a contributor to barack obama two times shouting lock him up against the governor of georgia. so again, this is -- republicans have to know this is doing nothing but hurting them and,

you know, it's -- you look at the number at the bottom of our screen. yesterday, just about as many people died of covid as died on september 11th and we have our commander in chief saying absolutely nothing about it. that is a one-day total in the fall, willie, when the president swore to the american people it wasn't coming back and again, we're reaching 9/11 numbers now every day. >> good god. >> record number yesterday of cases, record number of deaths, record number of hospitalizations in in pandemic that is exploding right now. that the cdc came out and said this is the worst public health moment in the history of this country. the next three months could be if we don't immediately wear masks and distance and do all of the things we need to know, the white house task force elevating the alarm as well. everybody but the president knows what's going on here.

and yet, he spent 46 minutes yesterday in the diplomatic room of the white house behind the presidential seal making effectively a facebook video full of lies and conspiracy theories about an election he lost. it's a stunning contrast and there is an interesting subplot there as you said with mike pence. he hasn't really been seen in the last several weeks. he hasn't been participating in this lame attempted coup by the president and his cronies, these lawyers that he's sending out to georgia. not only to suggest locking up the republican governor of that state, but also telling voters not to go vote on january 5th where mitch mcconnell desperately needs those two senators, david perdue and kelly loeffler, to be re-elected to their seats so he can control the senate. it's an astounding tableau but the important number is the one you pointed to on the screen and that's the pandemic and it's exploding right now. >> that part is the side show. we'll get to that in a moment, but we start with the pandemic which shows no signs of slowing

down with records yesterday in a number of daily cases, daily deaths and number of hospitalizations. the u.s. recorded nearly 205,000 new cases reported in a single day yesterday according to an nbc news tally. that figure comes just a month after the single-day record topped 100,000 cases for the first time. and according to the data, yesterday alone, more than 2,700 people died from the virus making it the deadliest day for americans since the start of the outbreak. we're not getting better it's getting worse and hospitalizations also reached an all-time high. the u.s. is reporting more than 100,000 people are currently in hospitals, sick with the coronavirus nationwide. according to the covid tracking project, this more than doubles the number of hospitalizations compared to the beginning of

november. many hospitals are running out of beds or turning away new patients, limiting the care available to both covid patients and those with other health care emergencies. willie? >> so there are the numbers and here are the warnings. the latest white house coronavirus task force report warns state officials of a historic high risk of the virus. nbc news obtained a copy of the report issued to state governments which reads in part, the covid risk to all americans is at a historic right. we're in a very dangerous place due to the current extremely high covid baseline and limited hospital capacity. a further post thanksgiving surge will compromise covid care as well as medical care overall. the memo continues, if state and local policies do not reflect the seriousness of the current situation, all public health officials must alert the state population directly.

if your governors and your officials are not taking this seriously, public health officials go around them and tell the people what they need to do. >> willie, we have to break this out into two parts. we can talk about some republican governors who were still being extraordinarily reckless. who are still ignoring science. still ignoring basic medical guidance and advice. and then we can talk about the other governors, many of them democratic. some of them democratic and the mayors who are saying one thing publicly, but acting recklessly privately. and undermining everything that they seem to be, you know -- seem to be suggesting. we showed a shot of gavin newsom a couple of weeks ago having that dinner at -- beyond a 1

percenters restaurant jammed in there. but you have the mayor of austin telling everybody to stay at home. you have the mayor of denver telling everybody to stay home and then he leaves, you go down the list. these people who even some of the leaders who are -- who sound like they're saying the right thing are being raging hypocrites and people can't hear what they're saying because they see what they're doing. >> yeah. i mean, we have had a couple of those. the mayor of san francisco now we know, the mayor of san jose again going to restaurants, holding gatherings over the thanksgiving holiday. all the while standing in front of the people and telling them to do the opposite. the hypocrisy is pretty stunning. dr. robert redfield yesterday had a stark warning about the pandemic for the coming winter months. >> the reality is december and

january and february are going to rough times. i actually believe they're going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation. we're in that range potentially now of starting to see 1,500 to 2,000 to 2,500 deaths a day from this virus. so, yeah, the mortality concerns are real and i do think unfortunately before we see february we could be close to 450,000 americans have died from this virus. >> yeah. yeah, so -- >> go ahead, joe. >> go ahead, willie. i'm sorry. >> i was going to say the director of the cdc there now he sees it necessary to go out publicly and raise the stakes because he's not seeing mitigation efforts being taken seriously. he is watching what's happening in the hospitals. one of the phenomena that he talked about that's going on here, joe, is that these rural hospitals and hospitals across

the country who previously could offer nurses and doctors to go to big cities to help with these outbreaks, they can't afford to give up doctors. they can't afford to give us nurses because it's happening in their states now too. it's critical almost everywhere. >> almost everywhere and, you know, i remember back, mika, in may. actually, march when this was first breaking. asking ari emanuel to get zeke on the phone and ask zeke what was going to happen and i have recounted this before on the show but for those who didn't hear it, zeke emanuel who worked in the obama administration said it's going to be very bad. the president -- the president needs to wake up and he needs to understand how badly things are going to go. he said, but joe, as bad as they're going to be this spring, if you look back at the pandemic of 1918, it's going to be terrible in the fall. and we have to start preparing

actually for the fall right now. that's something that scott gottlieb and other health care officials have been saying for quite some time, mika. and it's something that the president just keeps ignoring. >> well, then, it was all laid out for this president for his task force for republicans in the senate, for people who worked in the administration, it was all laid out for you. literally you had to work hard to do this badly. and to look at these numbers and to know there was so much suffering out there and it was simple science and president trump and his weak, feckless, obsequious self-serving staff who refused to step up, all of this is happening because of the worst leadership i have seen in my lifetime. this is not oh, he's, you know,

trying not to leave. we know he's going to have his own little party during the nation because he's a big baby, but he's killing people. the shock is by that day by day by day, his leadership is leading to death and the people who follow him, who know better are too afraid or self-serving to do about him. the science here is simple. you -- you could follow it yourself and keep yourself, but you know what? this white house you know what they're doing? they're having christmas parties. they're having more superspreader events. you have mike pompeo having parties t white house having parties, really? and when the white house is asked about this, this kaylee individual who calls herself a press conference, she says you can loot and protest, we can have christmas parties is this

eighth grade? you're making a mockery of the health of the american citizens of the people who voted for you and the people who didn't vote for you. and it's not that i'm shocked and appalled -- i wouldn't give him the joy of being shocked by him. we know what he's like. the question is why others won't lead to save the lives of the american people. here we are at 274,000 deaths and that is shocking. because it is stupid that we're here. it's downright stupid. >> you know, the thing is that the president knew. >> of course he did. >> he had -- he admitted it to bob woodward. it's all on the tapes. i have had friends over the course of the year say the stupidest things to me, the most ignorant things to me. >> painful. >> no worse than the flu.

that masks don't do anything. oh, this is going to magically disappear the day after the election day. you know this is all just a conspiracy, to try to defeat donald trump. it's going to go away afterwards. anthony fauci has cooked this all up so he could make billions of dollars off of vaccines. it's all a scam. and it's not -- it's not -- >> a scam is the lies. >> the people inside the cult and inside the trump cult that actually believe this is a conspiracy because if you do, you are inside of a cult and it's dangerous and you need to get help from mental health providers. i would say you would need to go to church but unfortunately there's so many liars behind the pulpit right now who are spreading donald trump's lies. they are worse than the religious leaders that jesus called out when he was -- he was doing -- in his ministry.

so it's hard to find people i guess in some communities that won't lie to you, but just know this. donald trump himself is on tape and you can check it out on the google machine and -- or go next door. maybe your friend has a google machine. but before you do, please don't stick your hand in that blender, it's not good for you. but if you do -- if you just do a basic search, you will say donald trump knew all of this was true. all the way back in february. and jonathan lemire, here we are in the fall. >> exactly where they said we'd be. >> -- since the spring to get ready for the fall. scott gottlieb has been warning americans since the early spring to get ready for the fall. dr. fauci has been warning since spring to get ready for the

fall. everybody has said it's going to be the worst time ever. and what does the president of the united states do in april? he lies again through his teeth to the american people. he lies to members of his cult. he lies to people who believe his continued steady stream of lies, his fire hose of falsehoods instead of just listening to basic science and medicine. look at this clip. >> dr. robert redfield was totally misquoted in the media on a statement about the fall season and the virus. totally misquoted. >> you're accurately quoted? >> i was accurately quoted in "the new york post." >> he is saying please add to the guidelines getting your flu shot and --

>> you said there's a good chance that covid will not come back. >> we don't know. >> covid comes back, it's in a very small, confined area that we put out. >> well, the great thing is we'll be able to find it earlier this time. >> it might not come back at all, jeff. may not come back at all. he's talking about a worst case scenario where you have a big flu and you have some corona, but it's also possible it doesn't come back at all. >> we will have coronavirus in the fall. i am convinced of that. there will be coronavirus in the fall. >> and of course, donald trump then went behind him and said he disagreed. so here you have redfield running the cdc telling "the washington post" that get ready, because it's coming in the fall. the president of the united states attacks him for telling the truth. this is the trump administration in a nice little neat capsule. the president lying through his teeth to members of his cult, that are stupid enough to believe that he actually cares

about them and cares about more than the stock market and actually is telling the truth about it not coming back in the fall, because if you believe donald trump and politicians who has been lying through the entire presidency more than you believe doctors and medical officials, then, yes, you're a member of a cult and you need get help. but in these clips you have the head of the cdc and you have dr. fauci warning americans. it's coming back in the fall. it's going to be worse. get ready, and you have donald trump lying once again about this pandemic saying it's not going to come back. here we are breaking new records every day and looks like we're getting into the position that we could have a 9/11 every single day.

>> from the first moments of this pandemic, joe, the president has misrepresented and outright lied to the american public about the dangers of this virus saying that it would be gone by easter. ignoring the advice of his health experts, deliberately contradicting them. time after time. redfield warning about the dangers of the fall not only in an interview to "the washington post" but in testimony, appearing before congress. on a day that i was there at the white house the president a appeared in the briefing room hours later and utterly undermined that president. wed the president night after night at campaign rallies across the country saying the nation was rounding the corner on the virus, that it was all but over. that the pandemic was in the nation's rearview mirror. mind you, he says this into crowds, thousands of people, most not wearing masks, none of them socially distant. we know there had been outbreaks of the virus directly linked to

some of the president's campaign events and now as this pandemic has hit its highest point, as states across the nation are grappling with this and hospitals are running out of beds and as we have as you said almost a 9/11 type death toll every single day, the president is nowhere to be found. he has abandoned his post. as leader of the nation in the worst health crisis we have seen in a century. there are messages that his own government is putting out, warnings about how bad this could be. the president is not amplifying them. the president is not using the bully pulpit. the president is not using the oval office to suggest to warn the american people that this is coming. what he did instead is he appeared in front of the presidential seal and he spoke for 46 minutes of dangerous conspiracy theories and baseless accusations about an election that he's lost.

talk that is undermining in the minds of some americans the legitimacy of joe biden's election. a speech that he had to put out on, mind you, taxpayer funded video and release on social media because no network would carry it because of the number of falsehoods it contained. that's the president's message. he has two more events today. one he's giving a medal to lou holtz, and another one signing the executive order. will he appear the camera for either? no. he doesn't want to take questions about the baseless claims of the election or the surge in the pandemic. the president is not leading. he's just consumed with conspiracy theories and there's no one around him who's able to get him to change course. >> you're right. he has abandoned his post at this critical time for the country. let's bring in a couple of doctors from infectious diseases at brigham and young hospital, dr. paul sacks and dr. dave campbells. good to see you.

dr. sacks, let me start with you. we have laid it out pretty starkly. record number of deaths, record number of cases. record number of hospitalizations. only climbing warns the cdc director. what is your snapshot assessment of where we are this morning? >> well, it's obviously very concerning to have the cases go up as we have known for some time. these coronaviruses all of them including the one that causes covid-19 do have a seasonality to them, meaning they get worse in the fall and the winter. on the plus side, we know better how to prevent the spread of these viruses and also know that there is a vaccine coming and we're all extremely optimistic about the vaccine results that can't come soon enough. >> so dr. redfield was talking about january, february about being the worst public health moment in history, but if we mitigate it and have everyone wearing masks, social distantly,

if we don't gather in large groups around these holidays that are coming up we could stem the numbers a bit. but what makes him or anyone believe that suddenly a group of americans who have listened to president trump for example and ignored all of these warnings from the cdc and from his own white house task force, what makes you think anything would change now? >> one thing that has changed is we have as i mentioned a better understanding of how the virus is spread. i also am very hopeful that testing will become much more broadly available. there's a lot going on in the background with testing. we have always suffered from it from the very beginning with the shortage of testing and a difficulty of accessing tests but if we look at the technology that's in development, very soon we should have access to tests quite readily and quite inexpensively and that will enable people to get tested and to isolate. and it will enable us to have more comfort about going to work, et cetera. so i agree. this is a very concerning number and this is not a trend we want to see.

but there are some things on the horizon that i think can make this not as -- not as devastating as it was in the spring. >> yeah. i want to talk to dr. dave about that as well, but first, dr. dave, the cdc revised the two-week coronavirus quarantine period. what is the new recommendation if you have been exposed or you get it? >> mika, this all falls in the bucket of hope that dr. sax was intimating and we have now the ability to look forward and see that vaccines are going to come sooner than we thought and in greater numbers. the cdc has said that instead of a 14-day quarantine after exposure, there are some times that you could shorten the duration of quarantine to ten days or even down to seven days if you're willing to get a test right near the end of the seven-day quarantine, as long as you're not having symptoms. that is intended to increase

compliance and i think it's also intended to fall in this bucket of hope where if we could just all be more diligent and persevere through the next three months that dr. redfield has laid out these dire consequences if we don't, then perhaps by february, march as we see the number of vaccines available increasing every single week, we'll see the production increasing of the vaccines that have been approved with emergency use authorization. that's what we could all hope for. so if we could be a little tougher for the next few months, even those who are anti-vaxxers or even those who believe everything trump has said, we will get through the winter surge and get vaccinated, mika.

>> so kasie, i know you have a question for the doctors but i have a quick question for you. we have certainly heard the president making his threats about vetoing the defense authorization bill, actually undermining our armed forces because he's not getting something that he wants regarding section 230. where do we stand though on the covid relief bill? any chance that that could move forward in this lame duck session? >> yeah. that defense bill often passing, joy, with veto proof majorities as i'm sure you remember from your time in congress. the coronavirus relief package, the pressure i think has built to the point where we are actually seeing something happen because it has become so utterly clear that the failure to do anything for these past six-plus months since may when the house

passed the h.e.r.o.e.s. act is devastating for americans. the failure of congress to overcome partisan divisions that you know we cover every day, that have become relatively normal in washington, are simply not acceptable in this time. i think the middle of congress, rank and file members, the centrists that are still there, they recognize how deeply problematic this is. how hard americans -- of a time they're having right now. and the fact that people from all sides of the political spectrum, the federal reserve, the economists who come from different corners say this is a very, very difficult time and they have not been able to overcome their political divisions. that's changing a little bit. and i think it's possible we could see some temporary and significant relief added to a government funding bill that's coming in december. i think the jury is still out on whether pelosi and mcconnell can get together enough after a very

toxic fall heading into the election to actually do something. they -- the pressure is on from inside the congress, from moderates and people in the center, but i think there's still open questions there. that brings me to the question for dr. sax because part of what they have to do and they know they have to do is give money to help distribute the vaccine. you mentioned behind the scenes testing, things that are going on and we are hearing from people who say, hey, we need help from congress, we need money from congress to get this out there and then there's also the question of convincing americans to get vaccinated that could involve, you know, public information campaigns or resources for that. i'm just wondering what do you want to see congress put in that bill as we look ahead to the next steps of fighting this pandemic? >> you bring up a very good point that the department public health and state public health

officials are all running on fumes. it's a lot of months we have been working on this so some help would be welcome to roll out the vaccines. this is is an extraordinary effort that needs to be taken. then as far as communicating to the public, i think if we convince people by expressing in a clear way how effective the vaccines are, they're extraordinarily effective and that they're safe, but they should prepare themselves perhaps for some side effects and it's worth it because that's the way we get our lives back and go back to normal. you know, if we do it in the clear, in the really uncoercive way, in a way that's culturally and inappropriately -- to people, we can do it. i hate to use the tired analogy of war, but somesome ways it's accurate because we have the same enemy and that's the virus and if we work together like we would in a war we can overcome it. that's the message i would try to convey. >> so dr. dave, you have talked

about the vaccine. we have talked about the vaccine priority. what for you in your mind, what does the time line look like, because the vaccines came online earlier than we expected? what's the time line before we get a return to normalcy? obviously the priorities are older americans, those with underlying conditions. but when do we get it to enough americans without those underlying conditions that we start going out to the ballparks again? we start going out to restaurants again. we start being able to invite our family and friends over for our children's birthday parties again? >> joe, my understanding from all of the experts trying to answer that very important question are that it's in the spring. it does depend on how you define normalcy.

you have tried -- i appreciate that. if it includes wearing face masks and a little bit of social distancing, perhaps that time line can be shortened. baseball games are outside. birthday parties can be outside. there are lots of things that can be outside that can be rolled in sooner than indoor bars and dining things that we know that are high risk or even family gatherings in tight quarters inside. so the answer is dependent upon the definition, but it is very, very optimistic. we just have to get through these next few months, joe. i can't reiterate that as much as -- enough and everyone else agrees with that. >> yeah. >> drs. dave campbell and paul sax. thank you both. a lot of work ahead and a lot of hope. >> a couple of things. what was our -- how many americans died yesterday? was it --

>> 2,800. >> yeah. >> almost 2,800. >> 2,800 and of course we're thinking -- i'm thinking about, you know, everybody across especially the northern half of the united states, because it's colder and that's leading to a lot of problems. while in canada, further north, 114 deaths yesterday. and you multiply out again populations and do it per capita, we're still doing such a horrific job with this pandemic compared to canada. it's really -- it's really quite remarkable. as mika said, donald trump and the administration had to work hard -- >> to be this stupid. >> to ignore the warning signs and let this many people die. >> it's -- it is a true tragedy and a terrible mismatch of a moment and a leader.

it's interesting to hear dr. sax describe this in terms of it being a war. president trump likes to think of himself as a war time president. he could have been, he could have started back in february and january and tried to stem this a little bit so it doesn't come back the way it's come back now. made it better, not mocked masks, not put people he saw on fox news instead of dr. birx and dr. fauci. he did all this. he made all these decisions and he decided not to lead despite the fact he knew exactly as you said from bob woodward's book how serious it is. >> it's been a year of magical thinking, mika. and his magical thinking has -- >> killed people. >> has killed people. talking about hydroxychloroquine repeatedly, something that scientists and even the fda tried to warn americans that it wasn't the cure all that donald

trump and quack doctors said it was. when the president thought his life was on the line, he didn't use hydroxychloroquine, but he pushed it nonstop. then of course he was talking about bleaches, talking about sticking lights inside of bodies. talking about getting people back by easter. then memorial day. then saying it wasn't going to come back in the fall. he's been lying to americans day in and day out. so yeah, if this were a war, as the president claimed it was doing to be back in march, he hoisted the white flag very quickly and surrendered to it. and basically, let americans know they're on their own. >> and still ahead, speaking of that magical thinking, michigan has already certified joe biden's election win. but rudy giuliani is still trying to change the results into president trump -- >> has he been disbarred yet? and if not, why not?

>> just a bad, bad reality show. plus, two pro trump attorneys stage a rally in georgia and urge republicans not to vote -- >> see, this is what concerns me. one of those lawyers that are telling republican not to vote is an obama support. an obama contributor. contributed twice to barack obama. that's getting kind of messy down there. >> you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. watching "m joe. we'll be right back. i had enough! it's not getting in my way. joint pain, swelling, tenderness...much better. my psoriasis, clearer... cosentyx works on all of this. four years and counting. so watch out. i got this! watch me. real people with active psoriatic arthritis look and feel better with cosentyx. cosentyx works fast for results that can last. it treats the multiple symptoms of psoriatic arthritis,

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the targeted killing of a high-profile iranian nuclear scientist. >> did he say he was going there to advance peace talks? is that why he went there, peace talks, or was he going there for personal reasons or -- >> is he qualified to -- >> well, i don't know. i'm curious why we sort of stated that as a matter of fact that he was going there to extend peace efforts. i guess we'll see. >> it seems like a reason he made up. like me -- like my cat meatball going to qatar to advance peace talks. >> trying to get qatar to give to their organizations in the past. anyway, carol lee, i have a feeling she'll have the answers that we need. also from "the washington post," david ignatius. carol lee, why did jared kushner go to qatar and saudi arabia? >> joe, what the white house is

saying that he went there to try to broker basically a truce between qatar and saudi arabia and other gulf states who have had this blockade against qatar against 2000 2007 and iran. you can't forget about iran, trying to normalize the relations with israel and saudi arabia is the big one that hasn't fully leaned in on that. so he's continuing to try to button up some things before they leave office. that's really what this is all about. and there's some reporting that they may have gotten somewhere on the qatar piece of this. we don't have that reporting ourselves, but that's the stated goal for them to try to do whatever they can to try to advance this effort that they have been putting forward for the past couple of years in terms of reshaping the middle east. >> yeah. they could broker peace between qatar and other members of the

arab league that in itself would be a breakthrough. david ignatius, so i have not been a critic of the trump administration's approach to the middle east instead of having one big american president put his arms around everybody and drag them into the room and force them to sign a peace deal. they have decided and decided from the beginning that jared was going to try to pick off one country after another. he's picked off a couple of countries. there have been some successes. my fear is as things move forward, if you don't have a universal agreement it's a lot easier to see it unravel six months from now. one country at a time. what are your thoughts and what are you hearing from the region? >> well, joe, i think you're right to credit kushner and trump with having achieved some interim successes in the middle

east. i think the agreement between the united arab emirates and israel to open diplomatic relations, to have flights between the two countries is a good thing. it's good for the region, the two countries. the agreement with bahrain and sudan, it's more uncertain. >> oops. >> we had -- we had david obviously in california experiencing an earthquake. >> or he dropped his camera. >> or a cat jumped on his -- his little cat mittens jumped on his camera and messed it up. do we have mittens and dave -- >> there he is. >> back from the san andreas fault -- >> i apologize for being in the midst of that earthquake. >> we interrupted you.

>> so the -- the specifics of what jared has accomplished are limited but commendable. he never got the big palestinian peace deal that is the key to unlocking some kind of final settlement. this last trip, i think as carol said, is about trying to ease the feud between qatar and saudi arabia. it's something that has made the middle east poisonous in different ways to have these two energy-rich countries hating each other, blockading each other's air spaces, it has been complicated. the u.s. has the largest military base in the region in qatar. i have been trying this morning and last night to get some kind of sense of what jared accomplished on the trip and his team just isn't saying it. waiting for the announcements in the region. my guess is that they have got some move toward a qatar or -- an agreement which would be a

significant regional achievement at the end of their term. certain it would make -- this is the point i note, it would make the qatarese grateful to jared for having helped and well documented qatar has been major investors in the kushner properties in the united states. i want to want to draw a conspiracy theory here. so that's -- >> yeah, you don't have to draw any conspiracy theories. obviously, willie, it's the sort of thing that past administrations wouldn't have done. we heard early into the trump administration that the kushners were in financial trouble with their building on fifth avenue, and that they were reaching out to qatar for financial help. >> yeah, that's matter of fact, we know he has a cozy

relationship with the crown prince of saudi arabia as well, we know that president trump has business dealings in saudi arabia. that's all true. but most importantly i want to credit david ignatius with wearing a full suit as we got the full length view of david. >> you wouldn't believe what joe is wearing. >> so good for you. >> exactly. >> let's turn -- >> don't talk about your personal life. >> carol lee has a big new piece up about michael flynn. it has been more than a thousand days since he resigned as national security adviser, eight days since president trump tweeted that he would pardon flynn. carol, you spent three years covering every development in the story. 20 interviews, more than 20 with current and former trump administration officials. you've pulled together a presence time line of flynn's brief but consequential tenure in the white house. one of the things that grabbed me as i started to read it is that donald trump had already begun to sour on michael flynn before they even got into the white house during that time in

the transition. >> yeah. that's right. willie, i mean, i looked at the whole of michael flynn's time at the white house which was very brief but he has been a fixture for four years. even though he served for such such amount of time. you're right, the president had begun to disdain michael flynn. he wasn't really liking when he was around. he didn't like how he briefed him. he was frustrated with him because of the media attention that he had brought during the transition. i started with david ignatius' column on january 12, 2017, saying that michael flynn had a conversation with the russian ambassador on the day that the obama administration levied the sanctions against russia and that brought a swirl of attention and questions and that's what started this snowball of just misleading his colleagues and then misleading and giving false statements to the fbi and then the journey of this case.

you know, millions of people go through the justice system in our country and very few if any like this with michael -- if you look at the journey of michael flynn's case. so you had a president who's frustrated with him. one administration official told me that the president wanted to fire flynn before they got to the white house, so he was frustrated with him once they got in and then all of this started happening and the administration -- the white house was trying to figure out what to do with michael flynn in terms of his conversation with the fbi and also that they were getting the warnings from the justice department and then there was enough public pressure where he resigned. but none of that changes and then you get to the pardon. but none of that changes the fact that even now people who worked with michael flynn in the white house at that time just still don't understand why he lied to them and none of the pardon or any of what's happened to his case changes the fact that that's why he was fired. and that the president didn't want him in the white house

because he was lying to the vice president and others and yet the president eventually when it served his own interests really embraced michael flynn's case because he felt it made the case, the mueller report, was fake and it needed to be undermined. it's a presence look at flynn in the white house and outside now. >> it is something. david ignatius, so much has happened over the past four years that we forget all of the extraordinarily inappropriate things that this president has done over the course of the past four years. much of it -- historians will look back and not be quite as

careful as comey was and just call obstruction of justice, and say it's obstruction of justice. i saw the comey rule, the showtime special on comey. if anything still hasn't seen it, i strongly recommend they do because it's staggering -- staggering. you forget all of the things that happened throughout the 2016 campaign, how compact it was and then how the president handled this michael flynn affair and calling comey into the white house, demanding loyalty from him. telling him to overlook it. just let it go. don't charge him. one call after another, extraordinarily inappropriate. and really unprecedented for any american president to act that way and had anybody else done it, had a mob boss done it, they

would be in jail for obstruction of justice. it really is staggering and trump when it comes to flynn, it was trump who tweeted out that he had to be fired because he lied to the fbi and he lied to mike pence. >> it's a long strange story. this unraveling of the trump administration began with the michael flynn case. it's an unlikely place for it to have begun as we look a back at the facts, carol lee has done a good job of summarizing that early story. but as you say, each thing rolled to the next. flynn was not truthful with his colleagues. he wasn't truthful with the public about his phone calls with the russian ambassador. then there was the issue of him being fired. then the president was going to the fbi director saying go easy on him and then the fbi director

was extremely worried about the president. and then we just roll into the series of events that end up making up the mueller investigation. joe, i think -- my feeling is that it will take years for us to really unravel all the details of this story. not least all of the things that we don't know about the conduct of the individuals, both in the white house and their dealings abroad. it's a work now for historians i suspect more than the prosecutors. >> all right. nbc's carol lee, thank you. we'll be reading your expansive reporting on michael flynn at nbcnews.com and david ignatius. thank you as well. we really appreciate it. >> david, we're glad that you're safe and we're glad that you were not wearing pajamas. >> yeah. >> everything -- >> you didn't have the santa claus pajamas on. still ahead, top democratic leaders have come out in support of a bipartisan $908 billion

coronavirus aid package. senator dick durbin joins us to weigh in on where the negotiations stand right now. "morning joe" is back in a moment. how about no

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the reality is december and january and february are going to be rough times. i actually believe they're going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation. we're in the range now of starting to see 1,500 to 2,500 deaths a day from this virus. so the mortality concerns are real and i do think unfortunately before we see february we could be close to 450,000 americans have died from this virus. >> this may be the most important speech i have ever

made. i want to provide an update on our ongoing efforts to expose the tremendous voter fraud and irregularities which took place. >> as the a.p.'s jonathan lemire put it, the president has abandoned his post. delivering a long and rambling speech filled with lies and falsehoods about the 2020 election instead of focusing on what's right in front of us on what the cdc director says will be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation. look at the number on the screen. the amount of people who died and so many of them did not have to. jonathan lemire is still with us and joining the information, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle and professor at princeton university eddie vaud jr. it's impossible to understand the president at this point, but

the people who won't stand up and let this pandemic rage on across this country, with record numbers yesterday in the number of daily cases. numbers of daily deaths and numbers of hospitalizations. the u.s. recorded nearly 205 new cases reported in a single day yesterday. according to an nbc news tally that figure comes just a month after the u.s. single day record topped 100,000 cases for the first time and according to the data, yesterday alone more than 2,700 people died from the virus. making it the deadliest day for americans since the start of the outbreak and hospitalizations also reached an all-time high. the u.s. is reporting more than 100,000 people are currently in the hospital sick with the coronavirus nationwide according to the covid tracking project. this more than doubles the number of hospitalizations

compared to the beginning of november. many hospitals are running out of beds or turning away new patients, limiting the care available to both covid patients and those with other health care emergencies. >> yeah. yeah. so eddie glaude, let's -- i just -- i want to ask you a question that, i mean, i think we look at this public health pandemic, unparalleled in our time and you listen to dr. redfield and dr. fauci, it's only going to get worse. here we are in the middle of it and you have a president spewing conspiracy theories and we know who he is. so again, none of us are shocked by that. but it is shocking that republicans in the senate, republicans in the house, that officials inside the white house

are still enabling him as they have enabled him, as they have known he has been lying about this pandemic now for nine months. you have had people supporting him putting out conspiracy theories every day on facebook. putting out the -- claiming this cabal of billionaires, gates and i'm sure they would put george soros in for a nice sprinkling of anti-semitism, dr. fauci are all behind this and they're behind so it they can make money off of it. we can go to what the president was talking about yesterday, local officials getting death threats for doing their job, counting the votes and certifying it. and i was reading yesterday a new yorker article by alex ross, it was revisiting hitler's final

days in the bunker and he says it's -- you know, we have this simple story about this evil, malevolent force trapped. he said it's not that simple. and he quoted volker ulrich who wrote when civilizing forces -- these are the words i want us to focus on here. when political institutions fail and civilizing forces in society are too weak to combat the lure of authoritarianism, that's when things like this happen. and i found those two words haunting. civilizing forces. we had tim carnie on to talk about his wonderful book, talking about the disappearance of churches in smaller towns across america, of these societal institutions that pull

people together. so they're not stuck believing lies on facebook. so they can go to church or to synagogue and somebody is like, oh, no, that's not true. but people isolated in their own homes and, again, that word and our civilizing forces in society are too weak to combat the lure of authoritarianism. just seems to me, eddie, that we can pass all of the laws we want to pass in washington, d.c., but until we figure out how to bring this country back together and buttress those civilizing forces, we're going to be in trouble not just this year, but for the next four years. the next 40 years. >> joe, i mean, i think you have gotten to the heart of the matter. when we think about -- one way to think about the forces is a sense of mutuality, robust public good.

so we can talk about the obvious incompetence and negligence of donald trump, his lack of empathy and the like. but what we need to talk about i think is the epidemic of selfishness that threatens the republic. you have millions of americans because death has seemingly passed by their door, they think they're okay, they're fine. they're not really concerned it seems to me about those families who are grieving, those families who are grieving the loss of loved ones. the fact that we lost over 2,700 people yesterday and the fact that the president of the united states did not mention it, and the fact that you have folks in staten island having large parties, having to be disrupted by the police, the fact that we have americans acting as if folk aren't dying at this rate, 350,000 of our fellows may be

dead by february, right. it reminds me of ayn rand's selfishness. so when you talk about the forces you have to talk about the selfish we have become so that we can't express empathy for our fellows that's where it we are it seems to me. >> willie, it's the challenge that also has to do with the fact that so many people have become isolated, they sit in their homes all day and they'll either watch cable news, whatever channel or they'll listen to a podcast. they'll go online and see things that reinforce their pre-existing world view. they're solo operators and then they'll spew hate back out online. and again, this lack of civilizing forces in society too weak to combat the lure of

authoritarianism, it leads -- just think about what we saw yesterday. the madness, the absolute madness of a president of these united states inside the oval office or inside the white house spewing conspiracy theories in any prior time, his cabinet would have gone in and they would have voted to remove him through the 25th amendment. they would have walked him away. in any prior time, any prior administration, this wouldn't have happened. but you have now too many americans believing him, believing the bizarre conspiracy theories. we saw it burst on the scene with pizzagate where a guy shows up with a gun. we have people believing that democrats are running what

pedophile cannibal rings or something like that. and the president won't even discount that. but again, we know donald trump's problem. >> that's right. >> it's a -- the bigger problem the people inside the white house including his own family have allowed this to happen. the members of senate who have not called him out because they're afraid things may go bad in georgia? things may go bad in georgia? you let civilization go up in flames because things may go bad in georgia. mitch mcconnell, i have bad news for you. things are going bad in georgia right now. you have a guy that gave money to barack obama, claiming he's jesus and he's a trumper and voting not to vote for your candidates in the georgia race. you're being too clever by half.

so willie, it's such a -- it's so much bigger this problem, this problem is so much bigger than donald trump. it's all the people and him, it's the family members around him, it's staff around him in the white house, it's people on capitol hill, it's mitch mcconnell, the republican senators who will not speak out because civilizing forces in society are too weak to combat the lure of authoritarianism. >> never before have those conspiracy theories that you're talking about throughout this presidency and right now about this election reached the oval office and been amplified by the most powerful person on the planet and that's what's happened. the conspiracy theories that used to live in the dark corners of the internet have been elevated over the last several hours to a national stage and to the point where the president of the united states used the diplomatic room of the white house for 46 minutes in the

middle of an exploding pandemic to spout conspiracy theories on to facebook and twitter. fully prepared, his staff did the opposite of marching in and telling him it was over. they prepared this presentation for him with charts and everything else. we have got -- this is how -- reported on president trump's -- increasingly detached from reality, this is from the a.p., president trump delivered a 46-minute diatribe against the election, backing the baseless claim that he won. the a.p. went on, trump called the address released only on social media, delivered in front of no audience, perhaps the most important of his presidency, but it was a litany of information and unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud he has been

making for the past month. pbs correspondent yamiche alcindor joins us now. we have been talking about the record number of deaths, report number of cases and hospitalizations from coronavirus. but instead, 46 minutes of conspiracy theories. >> that's right. and president trump called yesterday's 46-minute diatribe one of the most important speeches of his lifetime when it was the most dishonest speech of his presidency. i watched all 46 minutes and what i can tell you is the president was saying things that have now been negated by his own attorney general, but the department of homeland security, by republicans and by judges. some that were appointed by donald trump. what we saw was the president upping the ante and getting even more deep into this conspiracy theory that he somehow is the

rightful winner. pulling out the charts it shows you that he has these people around him and they're helping him to spread the disinformation to americans. what i was also struck by, the president might be able to say it in front of a crowd of reporters who will question him afterwards but what we have entered into the time period, he doesn't want to face questions over his own speeches which is why reporters like me and others, like jonathan, weren't allowed in a room to try to follow-up and ask him why are you talking about this and not the coronavirus pandemic that's killing so many americans and that has so many americans hospitalized? we have seen the president do interesting things. yes, there's an official transition under way and people are saying, okay, this is coming to an end. but then you have the split screen of the president continuing to tell millions of americans that he is the person who won this election and that

can be dangerous. that according to a georgia republican official could get someone killed. so the president is not doing again what members of his own party are doing, which is trying to get him to really talk to people and say, look, we need to be less violent, not to be talking about shooting people. so we haven't seen the president step up and doing what his own party is calling and that's making this more and more a scary situation. >> it is scary. and it has been for quite some time and president trump, mike barnicle, has normalized a lot of frightening things. at some point, they could come to pass. you know, joe was talking about the members of his cabinet, his staff, and republicans who are supporting -- let's just look at this week alone. republicans who were screeching, who were just horrified at neera tanden, her tweets, really?

can we look at just this week, this president, this diatribe full of lies. a man who wants pre-pardons for his family, a man who tweets by the day, dangerous messages, promoting violence, racism and undermines his own cdc by promoting the wrong type of -- or even no health measures to try to fight this pandemic? like the question i have for them and the question i have for you is what are they willing to do? what are they willing to do for this man and where is the line for them and when they leave the national stage and they will at some point, will they have any credibility left? >> well, mika, you know, you stated that it's scary and it certainly is. you're correct. but it's also historic and

history is a constant stenographer, it records everything that happens by the moment each and every day and what is happening now is deeply historic because we have a president of the united states, the commander in chief, that is his title, the commander in chief who has walked away for more than a quarter million americans dead. more than 2,000 yesterday alone, dead. he has walked away from these duties. he has left the field. he's surrounded by people who have not heard or answered the call of the country. the country wants leadership. there was leadership in this country at several different points in the history of this country. the most recent probably that people remember is immediately after september 11th when president george w. bush address at the nation a few days after it. i believe from the national

cathedral and his speech echoes still today. a lot went wrong certainly in the bush administration, but at that moment when the country needed a leader it provided a leader and they found leadership. the question now the one you raised is where are the republicans? where are the republican united states senators who perhaps heard of or listened to that 46-minute mentally ill rant last night from the president of the united states. where are the barry goldwaters and the hugh scotts from a long-gone era who went to the white house to tell richard nixon that he had to go. anyone who listened or heard what donald trump said last night and were commissioned by the people of their states to represent the state and the country who did not think maybe we should go down and take this away from him. invoke the 25th amendment before more damage is done, where are

these people? that's the question of the day. that's the question of our time. >> mike, most of those alleged leaders can't even bring themselves to say out loud in public that joe biden won the election so they weren't going to criticize donald trump yesterday, i guess. jonathan lemire, you have some more reporting on that, that the white house is putting pressure on the fda to speed up the vaccine process, as if it wasn't going at a historic speed and the head of the fda, stephen hahn is standing his ground after he was called to the white house and said we'll let the scientists determine how fast this goes. >> hahn has been called to the white house on two consecutive days to meet with the chief of star as part of an ongoing effort by the white house to push the approval and the beginning of the distribution of these vaccines. as you correctly note it's already been at remarkable speed. and to the credit of all involved. that we're on the brink of getting those vaccines now.

we know we had the approval in the uk for that distribution. but the president -- this is not a new thing. the president has been railing privately and now burst into public about the vaccines and how he feels they were deliberately delayed to hurt his election chances. that he had been promising we all will recall that they were coming out at any time, promising they'd be out before november 3rd and he believes that the drug companies deliberately slowed it down to hurt his chances of winning another term in office and he's angry that the fda didn't push the drug companies to go even faster, to get them out prior to the election day or at the very least to have an announcement saying they're coming this day. he has suggested that if the vaccine approval had come and they were the first doses went out, even in the first couple weeks after the election, this is what he's told allies, that

he believes even then that may have led to the ground swell of support for the electoral challenges, that people may have said, look, this is someone who deserves another four years even though the votes went against him. this continues his nonsensical conspiracy theories but it shows the anger of the president right now. at least to this point, the fda has stood their ground, they won't approve the vaccines until that's completed. but right now, we can report, career officials at the fda and those in the white house fear that at any moment, even at this perilous time as the nation looks at the vaccine the president may even fire hahn and replace him with someone who will speed this along. >> yeah. you know, of course republicans will remain silent. >> it's -- >> on the hill, as i was talking about with eddie at the beginning of this block, we talk about the corrosion of these civilizing forces.

it's funny, republicans used to talk about. i remember reading peggy noonan's book when character still counted, when bill clinton was president. of course, bill bennett, my god, don't even get me started on -- >> it's painful. >> what he's done now. and we now, mika, have so many remaining silent. certainly inside the white house. i haven't heard mark meadows say anything about the president's crazed tweets or his deranged approach to all of this. and the impact that it's having. the fact that you have a lawyer who's been connected with trump going around saying a former homeland security official should be shot, because he said that this election was fair and

yesterday, i didn't hear mitch mcconnell calling him out. i didn't hear republicans calling him out. maybe they did. who knows? but local republican officials in georgia and across the country getting death threats because -- not only are they doing their job, they're following the law. and then you have the wife of the secretary of state of georgia, a republican a life long republican unlike donald trump, who's actually getting sexually violent threats -- >> yeah. >> -- directed at her. because her husband is simply doing the job that he raised his right hand and gave an oath to the people of georgia that he was going to do. and yet, this is allowed to fester. people in the white house saying nothing about this, despite the fact that it's going to hang around their heads for the rest

of their lives. wherever they go, they're a part of this. they own this. but they're saying nothing about it now. too many republicans are remaining silent. they need to shut him down. they need to speak out against this madness. before somebody in georgia gets hurt. before a family member of an election official gets hurt. before more damage is done. these -- again, let me say it again, civilizing forces that used to hold us together, that used to hold washington together. republicans have the power this morning to actually show us that some of those civilizing forces still exist, that are still inside of them and they're willing to speak out in the

final hours of a presidency as -- as the man that they have silently allowed to take this country on the terrible journey over the past four years. continues to go deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories and dragging down local republican officials with them. >> i mean, if they don't care what they're doing is by not speaking damaging our democracy, they are also losing all credibility. they will have none left. zero. still ahead on "morning joe," with the coronavirus cases spiking across the country, it's not just doctors and nurses who are feeling overwhelmed. ambulance companies are also reaching a breaking point as hospitalizations climb. that part of the story is next on "morning joe." that part of tt on "morning joe. oh humans.

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ambulance companies across the country have been heavily impacted by the pandemic. truly at the breaking point.

in a letter obtained exclusively by nbc news, the american ambulance association told the department of health and human services that quote, the 911 emergency medical system throughout the united states is at a breaking point. without additional relief, it seems likely to break even as we enter the third surge of the virus in the midwest and the west. joining us now chief medical officer, dr. ed rakt. thank you for being on this morning. can you describe the situation that the ambulance companies are facing? >> absolutely. good morning, mika. ems, the ambulance services industry through this entire pandemic as the country knows has been at the front of that front line. so the 911 calls, moving

critically ill patients from one hospital to another and that workforce has done a tremendous job. and it's been done in a very challenging environment and we are worried, we are more than worried that the sustainability of that approach is in jeopardy. >> and can you describe the scenarios that they are facing in terms of man power, in terms of that they're seeing on the front lines and why we are in this situation now today? >> yeah. it's an interesting collision. it's the perfect storm. if you look at medicine and emergency health care. so you have an evolving pandemic, a transmissible disease that spreads nationwide. it affects the providers themselves so there's a tremendously enhanced protection mode, training, appropriately managing those folks. the call volumes in 911 and community has skyrocketed given

the number of patients and given that environment and given the changing of the economics, particularly in health care. the storm that's created is a much tougher clinical environment. much more challenging operational environment. health care providers, paramedics and emts that are getting ill. getting covid, put themselves at risk with the challenges of obtaining increasingly costly ppe and you put all that together and especially at this point with increasing illness burden in communities and hospital saturation, the challenges are substantial. i think what's important is ems can do this. and ems has done this. but in order to sustain that effort, the -- being able to finance that component, being able to support the providers, being able to look at regulatory

relief, to be able to manage communities in an unprecedented pandemic state is critical at this point. we now know we're worried that ems as a profession is worried about sustaining that as we move into the tougher time in this pandemic. >> mike barnicle? >> you know, let's talk about that a little more, pull the string on that. with the crisis as we are in clearly, the calls double, triple, every single day it seems. could you speak to the level of caution among the emts and the exhaustion factor leading to morale factors and just the general tenor of being an emt and never getting a break during your workday and what happens to you personally? >> first, mike, thank you for

the question. i think on behalf of my colleagues out there, they are exhausted and in a profession that prides itself with being ready to take care of anything. 24/7, 365. and it is a tough change in their professional environment. i think the exhaustion, the emotional fatigue and the covid fatigue as we call it, coming to work every single day in new personal protective equipment, going home to our families who say, you know what? honey, i don't want you to infect the children or, you know, my parents are coming over, so the environment that's been created is one that the individual ems provider, the paramedic, the emt is in the center of caring for critically ill patients who are highly infectious, with challenging ppe, with their support system that's increasingly concerned

that they will become ill and that they'll infect the family. so it creates a tremendous amount of emotional and mental stress. we don't want health care providers to have stress relating to their profession, to their job as they take care of these critically ill and infectious patients. so it is a new level of fatigue and challenge for our colleagues. >> thank you for being here and thank you for the work that you do and the sounds of the ambulances back in march and april back in this city in new york were haunting but it also meant that there were people like you out doing the job and we're thankful for that. what do you need to see at the federal level right now? we are having the discussions about another round of covid relief, $908 billion is the number on the table right now. whatever you looking for and what difference would it make in the short term to get us through

the next few months? >> so i think the important factor and, willie, thank you for the question, it's spot on. the important factor for sustainability is to be able to bridge the gap in funding, in finance, for the ems system until we get closer to whatever new normal is. so the -- on the private plans side, the initial 300 plus million was a start in april and that evaporated very quickly in the ems world given the demands out there. as we push forward to be recognized as the front of that front line of health care, being able to manage those patients at the very beginning is what's crucial to sustain us as we move forward. >> all right, chief medical officer at american medical response, thank you so much for

being on. coming up, we have a provocative discussion ahead. our next guest is combating cancel culture with a popular class at smith college for which she tells students who enroll, quote, if you need a trigger warning or a safe space, i urge you to drop this class. professor lohr eta ross joins us next. professor lohr eta ross joins us next - [narrator] with the ninja foodi power pitcher, you can crush ice, make smoothies, and do even more.

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38 past the hour. we have all heard the term cancel culture. what "the new york times" calls the act of shaming another person for behavior deemed unacceptable. in fact, "the times" just profiled the popular course at smith college taught by our next guest visiting associate professor of the study of women and gender, loretta ross. ross is challenging her students to identify the components and

limits of callout culture. as she describes it, quote, what i'm really impatient with is calling people out for something they said when they were a teenager, when they're now 55. i mean, we all at some point did some unbelievably stupid stuff as teenagers, right? and yes, right? and professor ross joins us now. great to have you on the show. fascinating topic. important. >> and many of us around the set have continued to do incredibly stupid things throughout our adult lives. thank you for being with us. there's a line in there where you said -- instead of pushing people out of the conversation, canceling them out of the conversation, you wanted to pull them in. explain. >> well, i think that most of us need to accept that other people are as complicated as we are. and so people aren't the worst thing that you ever heard them say or what they did a long time

ago. people have good days, they have bad days, there's good people who do bad things. there are bad people who do good things. so i think we have become too intolerant and too unforgiving of mistakes unless we make them and then we actually want to forgive the mistakes so the people we know, we'll give them a pass, i know you didn't mean it. but i'm calling on us to realize that we need to have a more forgiving society. we need to have a society that really cares about people and when you're on the social media, act like you're holding somebody's heart in your hand and you don't want to crush it. before you decide that you're going to blow up somebody's life so that you can get a little sadistic pleasure. then the crowd goes off, and then you're the person that's left there stunned, shattered,

hurt and i find that people are actually talking about how they regret who they are on social media now. they don't like who they have become behind the anonymity of the callout culture. so we can do better. my former boss was reverend vivian, of course he died the same day that john lewis died. reverend vivian used to tell us, when you ask people to give up hate you need to be there for when they do. i did not like that message. and then -- >> it's a great message. a great message. >> yeah, i learned through deprogramming class with leonard eskin and working with people who had actually been in the hate movement that once you see them as human beings, you can't hate them anymore. when a black woman can't hate the klan, who's left? >> that's a very good point. >> the article also says that you've told your students the following. i think this is also related to

something i just discovered called doom scrolling. i think we actually sabotage our own happiness with this unrestrained anger and i have to honestly ask, why are you making choices to make the world crueller than it needs to be and calling that being woke? and professor, i have so many friends that will go on twitter or go on instagram or go on facebook or turn on cable news shows that anger them and i actually call it shock porn. i say, stop with the shock porn, stop with the shock opera. you know you're just going to get angrier in response, so slowly step away from the tv. slowly step away from your twitter account. >> well, i think that we're supposed to be outraged about injustice.

so i'm not going to say we should be calm and indifferent to injustices but they're getting angry in the cause of human rights. i'm not mad about that. i'm concerned that they take it out for getting people's humanity that's on the other side. that you can disagree with people in a pluralistic society without calling them names, without assuming that they don't have the human kindness within them and that you shouldn't care about them simply because you're on the other side of the political divide. i know that's really, really hard nowadays because too many people are asking those of us who are democrats to reach out and love republicans, but i don't see them asking the same thing of the republicans, so we've got a problem with that. but at the same time, i'm going to offer this hand of friendship to anybody who's on the other side anyway, because my integrity demands it. my integrity at how i have to walk through the world demands

it that's what reverend vivian spoke to me when i finally agreed that he was right. he was right. >> yeah, obviously, there's a difference between having righteous anger -- jesus had righteous anger and what you call doom scrolling and getting in the vortex of social media that moves them away in seeing the humanity of others who they not agree with them. eddie glaude has a question for you. >> good morning, professor ross. thank you so much. i mean, i find this interesting. there is -- you know, there's a scale, a spectrum of cancel culture that can travel from the internet to what we're seeing in georgia with regard -- with the battles with the republicans and the like. can you talk about the difficulty, because you mentioned this, of not inferring from one's political positions

that they are bad people? it's hard to say if you hold this view, you must not be a decent human being. it's that move that's difficult to hold at arm's length. to draw the conclusion that if you hold this position it must mean deep down inside you're a bad person. how do you keep us from drawing that conclusion? >> i find i can talk to anybody if i do beneath their words and ask about their values. we're all socialized in this country so i have conservative parents who talked me about honor and trust and investing in community and i find that even people with the most odious views actually have some values you can talk about and perhaps agree with. if you do underneath the rhetoric and look at people's values, they become more human to you become more human to them as you find those points of

agreement. actually, someone told me that henry kissinger used to get into these negotiations meetings and before they could talk about the disagreements between countries he used to draw up lists on what they agreed with. that's where he would start any negotiation for them. that's a basic community organizing tactic, thank you, dr. kissinger. but that's what we need to do in this moment. even if someone is feeling ideas i don't agree with as long as they're trying to be civilized how they spew them, i'll let them talk about them. i won't let somebody spit in my face because they're not in a listening mode to begin with. >> professor, great to have you on the show. we have heard this concept and a lot on college campuses i'm sure you have seen it of words as violence. the things you say that i may disagree with or that i may mind personally distasteful are hurting me.

they're violent, therefore we shouldn't read this book, because of content that i don't like. what do you make of that argument and where does that leave us if people say the thing i disagree with shouldn't be allowed to be said out loud? >> well, two points i want to make with that. first of all, campuses -- the role of campuses is to provide the most secured learning environments we can provide to students. their parents entrusted us with their children, their most precious product. so we can't take their responsibility for their safety and security lightly. as we have on a much more diverse campus we're going to have conflict and interaction because people are coming ought of homogeneous bubbles because they never interacted in any

significant way. people say, you are violating me or i'm being targeted or upset because someone says something they disagree with or that -- or is disagreeable. we have the overstatement of harm. we don't have to offer our universities' imprint to someone claiming the earth is flat that the holocaust didn't happen, that slavery was a benign institution. because our job is also to protect facts, evidence and truth. and so we have to use our judgment and not just have untrammelled free speech on the campuses because we're violating the students' safety and violating our job to present evidence, facts and truth to the best of our ability and we have to make sure that the students learn how to have measured response to those things that make them uncomfortable and not overstatement the harm.

>> professor, yamiche alcindor has a question for you. >> good morning, professor. this is such interesting work. i have two questions for you. the first is talk to me a little bit about the generational differences because we do see obviously you're talking about students but there are baby boomers that are also at times spewing hate, talking about canceling people online. so talk about the generational difference and also, is there a difference between the way we should treat individuals and public officials looking at their histories and their actions? >> well, we're human beings and human beings have called each other for as long as we have been able to talk, after all, alexander hamilton was killed in a duel and that was the original callout. we have different technology and there's a speed at which something can go viral because of social media. so that's basically the difference, but i remember, you know, when my mother thought a

telephone party line was a miracle and they called each other out on the party line. we have human behaviors that haven't changed as much as we'd hope them to. i remember back in the '60s and the civil rights the feminist movement was called out by the antifeminist movement and by black feminists. i mean, these are the debates you're supposed to have in a pleur pleur pluralistic society. what was the second part of your question? i got caught up in the first. >> the second part is there a way we should treat individuals different than public figures? >> certainly i believe in punching up. i have to honestly say when someone is unreachable, unapproachable and unapologetic that i'm going to call them out, and i'm going to write the most terse letter i can to call them out because if they're betraying the oath of their office, if

they're betraying the people's trust, when their bad behavior affects the lives of many, many others and they don't seem to care, i'm going to call them out. but i don't believe in punching down. i don't believe in picking on people more vulnerable than me who have less power than me, but the purpose of my book is about punching sideways. why we spend so much horizontal hostility on each other with people who have the same power we have. sometimes share our identity, sometimes they don't, but we're basically criticizing everybody else's view on the world and their social justice practices as if it doesn't take every strategy in our tool kit to change the world and reset it back right. >> professor, one final question. i've been concerned at times when my kids have gone to high school, gone to college that in

certain schools or certain classes they may not get both sides of an argument. you talk about people coming from homogeneous backgrounds. there's certain schools, certain colleges that are -- certain professors who keep that homogeneous bubble intact. how important is it for not only progressives to hear conservatives talk about their world view and where they come from, but conservatives to hear progressives and to hear it in a way where there is this free exchange of ideas and even if somebody is offended, as long as, again, it's within the guardrails of accepted speech, how important is it that people in your class, people in universities get exposure to all views in this country? >> if they're in my class,

they're going to read radical, liberal and conservative writers. i tell them, first of all, you need to read a wide range of sources, and frankly don't even believe me because i want you to have critical skepticism all your life so you can make up your own mind based on reading a wide range of sources and that you can use your own natural intelligence to determine what's true, what's false, what can your soul live with? what would you want to oppose, those kinds of things. so if people who are teaching aren't taking that responsibility seriously enough to really encourage critical thinking among their students, i think higher educations should just be another form of brainwashing. >> professor loretta ross, we want to thank you for coming on today. we need more of you. come back soon. we really appreciate it. and we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." - [narrator] with the ninja foodi power pitcher,

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it is important to know the problems with mail-in balloting. pennsylvania, michigan, nevada, georgia, arizona. >> do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic? >> in arizona in-person voters who ballots produced error messages from tabulation machines. >> you take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. >> also in arizona, the attorney general announced that mail-in ballots had been stolen from mailboxes and hidden under a rock. >> well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which you are about to enter so help you god? >> i do. >> congratulationcongratulation >> so if the election was rigged in arizona -- >> but it wasn't. >> -- why did the vice president

just swear in that state's new senator? >> well, it seems -- >> i thought it was rigged. >> it seems that people are slowly backing away from the president. you had the attorney general -- >> tippy toe. >> -- earlier this week sort of backing up, and then you had mitch mcconnell talking about the new administration, his way of backing up. you have the vice president doing the same, so, willie, the situation has gotten so sad for the president, the sitting president, he's now having to record these shock opera tapes that nobody believes, or maybe some scattered people still believe it. we're reduced now to a lawyer in georgia who was a contributor to barack obama two times shouting

lock him up against the governor of georgia, and so, again, this is -- republicans have to know this is doing nothing but hurting them and, you know, you look at the number at the bottom of our screen, and yesterday just about as many people died of covid, as died on september 11th, and we have our commander in chief saying absolutely nothing about it. that is a one-day total in the fall, willie, when the president swore to the american people it wasn't coming back. and again, we're reaching 9/11 numbers now every day. >> record number yesterday of cases, record number of deaths, record number of hospitalizations in this pandemic that is exploding right now, that the cdc came out and said this is the worst public health moment in the history of this country.

the next three months could be if we don't immediately wear masks and distance and do all the things we need to know. the white house task force el violati -- elevating the alarm as well. everybody but the president knows what's going on, and yet he spent 46 minutes yesterday behind the presidential seal making a facebook video full of lies and conspiracy theories about an election he lost. it's a stunning contrast, and there is an interesting subplot there as you said with mike pence. he hasn't really been seen in the last several weeks. he hasn't been participating in this lame attempted coup by the president and his cronies, these lawyers that he's sending out to georgia not only to suggest locking up the republican governor of that state, but also telling voters not to go vote on january 5th where mitch mcconnell desperately needs those two senators, david perdue and kelly loeffler to be reelected to their seats so he can control the senate. it's an astounding tableau, but

the important number is the one you pointed to on our screen, and that's this pandemic, and it is exploding right now. >> yeah, that part is the side show. we'll get to that in a moment. but we start with the pandemic, which shows no signs of slowing down with records yesterday and nuc in number of daily cases, number of deaths and number of hospitalizationing hospitalizatio hospitalizations. the u.s. reported more than 200,000 cases report instead one day. that figure comes just a month after the u.s. single day record topped 100,000 cases for the first time, and according to the data, yesterday alone more than 2,700 people died from the virus making it the deadliest day for americans since the start of the outbreak. we're not getting better. it's getting worse, and hospitalizations also reached an all-time high. the u.s. is reporting more than

100,000 people are currently in hospitals sick with the coronavirus nationwide. according to the covid tracking project, this more than doubles the number of hospitalizations co compared to the beginning of november. many hospitals are running out of beds or turning away new patients, limiting the care available to both covid patients and those with other health care emergencies. willie. >> there are the numbers, and here are the warnings. the latest white house coronavirus task force report warns state officials of a historic high risk of the virus, nbc news obtained a copy of the report issued to statement governments which reads in part. the covid risks to all americans is at an historic high. we're in a very dangerous place due to the current extremely high covid baseline and limited hospital capacity. a further post-thanksgiving surge will compromise covid

patient care as well as medical care overall. the memo continues if state and local policies do not reflect the seriousness of the current situation, all public health officials must alert the state population directly, joe. so what the task force is saying there, it's pretty staggering, is if your governors, if your officials are not taking this seriously, public health officials, go around them. go right to the people and tell them what they knead to dneed t. >> we've got to break this out into two parts. we can talk about some republican governors who are still being extraordinarily reckless, who are still ignoring science, still ignoring basic medical guidance, and advice, and then we can talk about the other governors, many of them democratic or some of them democratic, and the mayors who are saying one thing publicly but acting recklessly privately and undermining everything that they seem to be, you know, seem to be suggesting.

we showed a shot of gavin newsom a couple of weeks ago having that dinner at beyond a 1%ers restaurant and jammed in there. but you have the mayor of austin while he's telling everybody to stay at home, and what was it the mayor of denver telling everybody to stay home, and he leaves. and you go down the list. these people who even some of the leaders who are -- who sound like they're saying the right thing are being raging hypocrites, and people can't hear what they're saying because they see what they're doing. >> yeah, i mean, we've had a couple of those. the mayor of san francisco now we know, the mayor of san jose, again, going to restaurants, holding gatherings over the thanksgiving holiday, all the while standing in front of the people and telling them to do just the opposite. the hypocrisy is pretty

stunning. meanwhile, the director of the cdc dr. robert redfield yesterday had a stark warning himself about the pandemic for the coming winter months. >> the reality is december and january and february are going to be rough times. i actually believe they're going to be the most difficult time in the public health's history of this nation. we're in that range potentially now of starting to see 1,500 to 2,000 to 2,500 deaths a day from this virus. so yeah, the mortality concerns are real, and i do think unfortunately before we see february we could be close to 450,000 americans have died from this virus. >> the director of the cdc there now, he sees it necessary to go out publicly and raise the stakes because he's not seeing mitigation efforts being taken seriously. he's watching what's happening in the hospitals.

one of the phenomena that he talked about about that's going on here, joe, is these rural hospitals and hospitals across the country who previously could offer nurses and doctors to go to big cities to help with these outbreaks, they can't afford to give up doctors. they can't afford to give up nurses because it's happening in their states now, too. it's critical almost everywhere. >> almost everywhere, and i remember back, mika in may or actually march when this was first breaking asking ari emmanuel to get zeke on the phone and ask zeke what was going to happen, and i've recounted this before on the show, but for those who didn't hear it, zeke emmanuel who worked in the obama administration said it's going to be very bad. the president needs to wake up. he needs to understand how badly things are going to go, but he said, joe, as bad as they're going to be this spring, if you

look back to the pandemic of 1918, it's going to be terrible in the fall, and we have to start preparing actually for the fall right now. that's something that scott gottlieb and other health care officials have been saying for quite some time and it's something the president keeps ignoring. >> it was all laid out for this president, for his task force, for republicans in the senate, for people who worked in the administration. it was all laid out for you. literally you had to work hard to do this badly, and to look at these numbers and to know that there's so much suffering out there, and you could have done something about it. it was all laid out for you. it was simple science, and president trump and his weak feckless, on sebsequious self-serving staff and cabinet members. >> and son-in-law. >> who refuse to step up and do what's right for this country.

all of this is happening because of the worst leadership i've ever seen in my lifetime. this is not, oh, he's trying not to leave. we know he's going to try not to leave. we know he's going to try and have his own little party during the inauguration because he's a big baby, but he's killing people. the part that's shocking is that day by day by day his leadership is leading to death, and the people who follow him, who know better are either too afraid or too self-serving to do anything about it. the science here is simple. you could follow it yourself and keep yourself, but you know what, this white house, you know what they're doing? they're having christmas parties. they're having more super spreader events. you've got mike pompeo out there having parties. you've got the white house having parties. really? and when the white house is asked about this, this kaylee individual who calls herself a press secretary or whatever it is, says in response, oh, you

can loot, you can protest, we can have christmas parties. what is this, eighth grade? are all of you in eighth grade? >> that's such a -- >> you're making a mockery of the health of the american citizens, of the people who voted for you and the people who didn't vote for you, and it's not that i'm shocked and appalled by the president. i wouldn't even give him the joy of being shocked by him. we know what he's like. the question is why others won't lead to save the lives of the american people? here we are at 274,000 deaths, and that is shocking because it is stupid that we're here. still ahead, the only thing more disturbing than what the president said about the election yesterday is what he said about coronavirus months ago. how his dereliction of duty back then is wreaking havoc today. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. - [announcer] meet the ninja foodi air fry oven.

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jonathan lemire, here we are in the fall. >> exactly where they said we'd be. >> we've been warning americans since the spring to get ready for the fall. scott gottlieb has been warning americans since the early spring to get ready for the fall. dr. fauci has been warning since spring to get ready for the fall. everybody has said it's going to be the worst time ever, and what does the president of the united states do in april? he lies again through his teeth to the american people. he lies to members of his cult. he lies to people who believe his continued steady stream of lies, his fire hose of falsehoods instead of just

listening to basic science and medicine. look at this clip. >> dr. robert redfield was totally misquoted in the media on a statement about the fall season and the virus, totally misquoted. >> you were accurately quoted, correct? >> i'm accurately quoted in "the washington post." >> what dr. redfield clearly was asking for just like we ask for every american to follow the guidelines. he's saying please add to that guidelines getting your flu shot. >> and making sure you're protected. >> he said there's a good chance covid will not come back -- it's in a very small confined area that we put out. >> the great thing is we'll be able to find it earlier this time. >> and it might not come back at all, it may not come back at all. he's talking about a worst-case scenario where you have a big flu and some corona, but it's also possible it doesn't come back at all. >> we will have coronavirus in the fall. i am convinced of that.

there will be coronavirus in the fall. >> and of course donald trump then went behind him and said he disagreed, so here you have redfield running the cdc, telling "the washington post" that get ready because it's coming in the fall. the president of the united states attacks him for telling the truth. this is a trump administration in a nice little neat capsule, the president lying through his teeth to members of his cult that are stupid enough to believe that he actually cares about them and cares about more than the stock market and actually is telling the truth about it not coming back in the fall. because if you believe donald trump, a politician who's been lying through the entire presidency more than you believe doctors and medical officials, yes, you're a member of a cult and you need to get help. but in these clips, jonathan

lemi lemire, you have the head of the cdc and you have dr. fauci warning americans it's coming back in the fall. it's going to be worse. get ready, and you have donald trump lying once again about this pandemic saying it's not going to come back, and here we are breaking new records every day, and it looks like we're getting into a position where we could have a 9/11 every single day. >> from the first moments of this pandemic, joe, the president has misrepresented and outright lied to the american public about the dangers of this virus saying that it would be gone by easter, ignoring the advice of his health experts, deliberately contradicting them time after time. redfield warning about the dangers of the fall not just in an interview to "the washington post" but also in testimony, appearing before congress, and

the president on a day that i was there in the white house appeared in the briefing room hours later and utterly undermined that message. we have the president night after night at campaign rallies across the country saying the nation was rounding the corner on the virus, that it was all but over, that the pandemic was in the nation's rearview mirror. mind you he said this to crowds packed with thousands of people, most not wearing masks, none of them socially distant. we know there have been outbreaks of the virus directly linked to some of the president's campaign events. and now as this pandemic has hit its highest point, as states across the nation are grappling with this and hospitals are running out of beds and we have, as you said, almost a 9/11 type death toll every single day, the president is nowhere to be found. he has abandoned his post as leader of the nation in the worst health crisis we have seen in a century.

there are messages his own government is putting out, warnings about how bad this could be. the president is not amplifying them. the president is not using the bully pulpit. the president is not using the oval office to suggest, to warn the american people that this is what's coming. what he did instead is appear behind the presidential seal yesterday and speak for 46 minutes of dangerous conspiracy theories and baseless accusations about an election that he lost, talk that has alarmed election officials across the country. they fear for their own safety, fear that he's inspiring violence, talking that is undermining in the minds of some americans the legitimacy of joe biden's election, a speech that he had to put out on, mind you, taxpayer funded video and released on social media because no network would carry it because of the number of falsehoods that it contained. that's the president's message. today he has two more events, one of which he's giving a medal to lou holtz.

will he appear before camera for either? no because he doesn't want to take questions from the media about his baseless claims about the election nor the surge in the pandemic. the president is not leading. he's just consumed with conspiracy theories, and there's no one around him who's able to get him to change course. coming up, what does $908 billion buy on capitol hill? we'll dig into the details behind a new push for covid relief when the senate's number two dem, dick durbin joins the conversation. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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welcome back. in a moment, we'll swing over to capitol hill and the second ranking senate democrat, dick durbin who's been part of the discussions on a new bipartisan stimulus plan, but first, remembering an iconic american, gold medalist rafer johnson, first black captain of a u.s. olympic team died yesterday at his california home at the age of 86. more than a half century ago, he was considered among the world's greatest all around athletes, and later became a goodwill

ambassador with a leadership role in the special olympics. nbc's tom brokaw has this commentary on a life well-lived. >> rafer johnson was one of the finest men i had ever known as a schoolboy athlete, of course, i was a great admirer when he was winning the gold in the decathlon in the united states olympics. and then, when i moved to california, we got to be great friends because we were both working at the nbc affiliate in los angeles. rafer was not a national broadcaster, but he was a great man and easy to be with. i had to kind of check my hero worship as we became very close friends, and then i remember when bobby kennedy really wanted him to join his campaign, and rafer said what do you think? and i said if you do that, you can't come back to broadcasting. then i saw the two of them sitting together on the bleachers, and i walked over and i said rafer, i was wrong.

this is something you have to do, and we all laughed, bobby included. and then of course there was that fateful night when bobby was assassinated, and rafer, who was not officially a bodyguard wrestled the gun from the young maniac's hands. he went to the hospital with his friend thinking he would live, but he didn't, of course. rafer went home, took a small nap, got up, put on his jacket and realized he still had the gun in his jacket. he went on to have a great life working with the special olympics, being a man who was a friend to all. he had been the former president of the ucla student body as well as a great athlete, the first african-american to have that job, and he wore all of his fame with such ease. farewell, rafer, you gave us all something to think about and to measure up to.

>> nbc's tom brokaw remembering rafer johnson. coming up, senator dick durbin joins the conversation. plus, jefferson jackson, bush 41 and truman, what president-elect joe biden can learn from past commanders in chief. we're joined by a panel of historians who wrote the books on american leadership. "morning joe" is back in a moment. - [narrator] with the ninja foodi power pitcher, you can crush ice, make smoothies, and do even more.

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where's kelly loeffler here, where's david perdue? he ought to be standing rite here. those two people want your vote, then they ought to tell you what we're telling brian kemp. get a special session of the legislature now. do not be fooled twice. this is georgia. we ain't dumb. we're not going to go vote on january 5th in another machine

made by china. you're not going to fool georgians again. i want you to go to the governor's mansion. i want you to circle. i want you to blow your horns until brian kemp comes out and orders a special session of the georgia legislature. get us our legislature and tell everybody we want our legisla r legislator, and we want to fix the mess that he created. and then he can resign. and then as far as i'm concerned, lock him up. >> the baook poll book is compl off. >> off by 30,000? >> i'd say that poll book is off by over 100,000. that poll book -- why don't you look at the registered voters on there. how many registered voters are on there? did you -- do you even know the answer to that? >> i guess i'm trying to get to

the bottom of this. >> zero, zero, there's zero. >> so my question then is if the -- >> that's how many -- wait. what about -- what about how -- what about the turnout rate, 120%? >> let's -- let's let representative johnson ask his question. >> um. >> wow. that is some -- let me just say they're special. that was a side show, of course, in america's election process that was performed in michigan. well, my native state of georgia. >> the woman you heard last there was the so-called witness that trump campaign attorney rudy giuliani brought before michigan lawmakers. >> good job, rudy. >> as giuliani urged them to take the actions necessary to deliver the state's electoral votes to donald trump. this is what republican state representative aaron miller said

of giuliani's closing comments, quote, i'm happy to thoughtfully listen to evidence and claims, and that was what today was supposed to be about, but mr. giuliani's final statement waded into the realm of insanity. he made wild and broad partisan insults for several minutes that had nothing to do with the election, and it was frankly, unacceptable, shameful, and pathetic and distracts from any evidence that we might hear. i am utterly embarrassed. i'm embarrassed too. >> and you heard in georgia -- that's pretty tough. you heard in georgia that lawyer who has been tied to trump's dwindling legal efforts at a rally outside of atlanta yesterday urging georgians not to vote in the runoff races unless state officials actually follow the unsubstantiated voter

fraud claims. he also ginned up, if you're a republican in georgia, got a special election coming up that's going to decide who's in control in the senate, you always like it when somebody who claims to be for republicans is leading a lock him up chant directed at the republican governor. now, this is what i love. you sit there and listen at what this lawyer is saying, and i mean, wait, is this -- how much is chuck schumer paying this guy? this guy has to be a republican plant because -- or a democratic plant because he could do nothing that would hurt the republicans' chances of winning those seats in georgia and maintaining control of the senate, so i said -- i said, well, what's going on here? and then i heard that the

breitbart wrote an article -- >> the breitbart. >> -- that said the lawyer who's trying to sabotage republican chances of retaining control of the senate actually contributed, hold up, wait for it, wait for it, contributed to barack husain obama twice. >> stop it. >> so here we got a guy who's telling republicans not to vote in the state of georgia for the two senate races that are going to determine who krocontrols th united states senate who actually contributed not once, not once, my friends down in georgia, they think you're stupid. you're not stupid. we're from georgia, we're not stupid. well, i'm from georgia, and i'm not stupid either.

if -- well, let me just finish that because i said not once, but he contributed to barack obama twice. now, i'm not stupid. i'm just a dumb country lawyer, yes, that is true. but i got good what we call in georgia, good common horse sense, and willie geist, when i see somebody that is sounding like a democratic operative, that is running around telling republicans not to vote in a special election that's going to decide whether chuck schumer or mitch control the senate and he's talking about locking the up the georgia governor, and the person next to him on stage is talking about how kelly loeffler, however you say her name, that kelly loeffler actually is in a conspiracy with

the governor of the state of georgia to illegally win to get into the runoff, well, i just start looking at open secrets, those documents that show linwood contributes to barack husain obama once, who contributes to barack husain obama twice, i just start thinking that we georgians aren't that stupid, and will, i don't know. it's amateur night in dixie. >> and david perdue, ka mala wo. >> how long -- is mitch going to wait until the entire building burns to the ground? or is he going to maybe step in at one point and call the fire department and put an end to this madness? >> it's a conspiracy so confusing that republicans are having trouble keeping up with the points. so you had this morning after that performance that we just

laid out newt gingrich, of course the former congressman the leader from georgia who supports president trump saying, wait, wait, wait. the lawyers that you saw on the stage wearing the make america great again hats out there purporting to be supporting donald trump, don't listen to what they're saying about the race. we need you to go out and vote for david perdue and kelly loeffler, so the republicans can't even keep this straight. and by the way, when these lawyers are filing in court, they're often misidentifying states. they're talking about counties that don't exist. the actual legal side of this is so deeply unserious, it's just what we showed there. it's theater. it's a performance by these people who, i don't know, are trying to make money or get famous or whatever they're trying to do, and you have to go a long way, joe, to convince me that that woman we just saw in michigan in that hearing, was not kate mckinnon doing a bit. i'm going to need documentary proof. i'm going to need to see a birth certificate or something, and you know things are going badly

when rudy giuliani is giving you the hook. >> yes. >> if you look at that clip, he's reaching over tapping her kind of saying, i think that's enough. rudy giuliani. >> yeah. your mascara's running. you've got to stop. >> oh, my gosh, stop. joining us now -- >> i've just got to say this is the madness that has overtaken the republican party. this is where it ends. they're getting what they deserve, but they're not just doing it with these elections where they let the president go on for 45 minutes with conspiracy theories that are as baseless as what you're hearing down in georgia. they're doing it and have been doing it with the coronavirus for the past nine months. we're going to probably have over 400,000 dead by the end of winter, maybe 500,000 dead by the end of winter, and they've been lying, and all of my friends and my family members have been calling up saying, oh, this is all hatched by anthony

fauci or, oh, masks actually spread the disease, or oh, this is no worse than the flu. seriously, how stupid can you be? when are you going to step back and actually get reconnected with basic facts, not just on this election but on the coronavirus. you come up to me and you say, oh, joe, this is going to end after november the 3rd. coronavirus is going to magically stop after the election. >> it has not stopped. >> it's not. and you know what? it's done absolutely everything that we've said it was going to do. it's done absolutely everything fauci said it was going to do. it's done absolutely everything the doctors have been saying it was going to do, that it was going to get worse as donald trump said, it was going to go away, and that it was going to come back in the fall and it was going to be even worse in the fall. and you thought fauci was a liar, and you thought all the

doctors were liars. it's time that you wake up and start thinking for yourself again because you are not as dumb as they think you are. but wake up. >> joining us now second ranking democrat in the senate minority leader dick durbin of illinois, kasie hunt and mike barnicle are back with us as well. senator durbin, thank you for joining us. given what we just heard, how is it going working with republicans, the very republicans that joe was just speaking to? >> listen, this is not fair to ask me to follow a performance by joe scarborough as the poor old country lawyer or these videos that you have of people showing that the inmates are in charge in the political asylum, but i'm going to do my best. so for the last several weeks we've put together a bipartisan group of senators and members of the house. we sat down and said what can we agree on in terms of covid relief now this week, what can we do. we came up with a $908 billion

bill. mark warner, joe manchin, collins, murkowski, cassidy and romney of course on the other side, and we've got a bill we want on the floor of the senate. we don't want to go home and face the reality of what's going to happen at the end of this month. 12 million americans are going to lose their unemployment insurance the day after christmas, merry christmas. we're going to see 30,000 airline workers losing their jobs in illinois. we're going to see other small businesses closing because there's no money available to help them to try to survive this. this is inexcusable. we have got to move forward, and we want our bill called. >> kasie hunt, you've got the next question. kasie. >> senator durbin, good morning. it's good to see you. my question for you is if you're willing to do this now, 908 billion, why weren't you willing to do this before the election? democrats held out to spend closer to $2.2 trillion.

this relief was just as badly needed before the election. what's changed? >> kasie you know that you go back six months, six months ago nancy pelosi passed a major relief bill in the house. then she reduced the number and passed a second bill. she has been bargaining in good faith and was unable to reach an agreement between the white house and of course the democrats, but also remember senator mcconnell never once attended any negotiations, not one. he wouldn't sit down at the table. well, we decided we couldn't wait any longer. yes, i want a lot more money than $908 billion, and we're going to need it for basic things of the administering the vaccines, but take what we can get at this moment, $908 billion is a bare minimum. but let's do it together on a bipartisan basis and actually help the people of this country. >> senator durbin, ws willie geist the majority leader has already said that he's not

particularly interest instead this new bipartisan effort, so if he's not interested and you can't rally republicans around it, how do you change that dynamic? how do you get this through? >> we're hopeful that some of the republican members that have told us privately they're upset with the decision by mcconnell will step up. if they tell him it's not business as usual, we're not going to spend christmas day here in washington because senator mcconnell doesn't want a matter even debated on the floor of the united states. if enough democrats and republicans say that, i think we can force the issue. >> let me ask you about some of your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, many of them are your friends. you've worked with them for a long time. we've been asking for weeks now, we're actually a month away from election day and just under a month since nbc news and most other media outlets declared joe biden the president-elect. and yet, many of your colleagues in the senate will not call him president-elect. they say they're giving time and space to these investigations, which now have gone on for a month and full of baseless claims, as we heard again from

the president even as all these states are certifying their elections. still, most republicans in the senate won't call joe biden the president-elect. what do they say to you privately about this when you ask them. >> they're afraid of the trump voters, the backlash is in their states and districts, that they'll lose the next primary. that's it. that's the bottom line. i think they're embarrassed by the circumstances that they face. let's listen, general flynn is calling for marshal law. some of these other folks in the republican party are calling for the mobs in the streets. i mean, this is a situation which is -- it's comic in a way. i understand that, but it's serious in a way, too. we've got at stake the stability of the united states and the american republic. it's time for both political parties to get serious. let's move on this covid-19 relief. let's hope with a new president we can turn the page. >> so let's be hopeful, senator. i look at the senate over the past 20 years, and yes, the

republican caucus has gotten more conservative over the past 20 years. you look at the democratic caucus. it's moved more to the left and it has become more progressive over the past 20 years because a the lot of red state democrats they started losing their races. but i look at the makeup this year, you know, i've got reason to still be hopeful. mika thinks i'm crazy. i'm hopeful that the senate can work together this a bipartisan way next year where you look at mark kelly. he's a democrat from a traditionally republican state just like kyrsten sinema. you look at governor hickenlooper, he ran as a moderate governor. he's going to be a senator. joe manchin, of course, is the bane of a lot of progressives' existence, but he's a democrat. he's a conservative, moderate democrat who has done bipartisan

gun legislation with people like pat toomey who's trying to get things done. susan collins has already said she wants to get things done and is going to support joe biden's nominations if they're mainstream. same thing with romney and lisa murkowski. i just named seven, eight people there, don't we have a reason to be hopeful again that we can actually return to regular order and get bipartisan agreement on a lot of bills over the next couple years? >> joe, i think you're right. consider the majority is going to be either 51-50, 52, i mean, it's going to be so razor thin close that we have to work together. what i've seen in the past several weeks with this effort on the covid-19 relief bill, democrats and republicans sitting in the same room, or at least on the same zoom calls sharing pizza and sharing their views and sometimes getting mad, and sometimes laughing, and at the end of the day, we have a political compromise. we both sides have been asked to

give. it isn't what the most progressive position might be, it isn't what the most conservative position might be. but the american people would cheer us on and say for goodness sakes do something, don't go home empty handed. help people who are helpless and needhand. and we're at a critical moment in our history if we're going to get through this coronavirus, and i know we will, we need bipartisan cooperation to do it. >> senator dick durbin, thank you very, very much for being on the show this morning. we'll talk to you once again soon. good luck. as president-elect joe biden prepares for the oval office, all this week, we've been discussing the traits of past u.s. presidents and what biden might be able to take from their governing styles. to continue that conversation, we have historian and rogers chair and the american presidency at vanderbilt university, jon meacham who unofficially advises president-elect joe biden. jon has written a number of presidential biographies,

including one on presidents george hw bush, andrew jackson and thomas jefferson. also with us, acclaimed writer, journalist and author tom ricks. his latest book is "first principles: what america's founders learned from the greeks and romans and how that shaped our country." great to have you both back on the show. >> so you all are such prolific writers. i wasn't sure exactly where we were going to go this morning but it strikes me that thomas jefferson and the election of 1800 and what followed after that makes perfect sense because both of you have written eloquently about it. and tom ricks, let me start with you because we are just talking about it yesterday. some of the parallels between 1801 and 2021. >> as long as you're talking

about southern politics, i used to be a reporter in georgia, and i remember there was a senator who famously was asked about all the people moving from south georgia to north florida. they said i expected to improve the intelligence level of both states. but the election of 1800, there's a real parallel here. which is that john adams was hur first one-term president. he was a crank. he was quite bitter about being turned out of office. he saw it as a demotion by the american people. the first person ever to not get re-elected to the presidency and even more, he had to turn power over to the opposition. thomas jefferson, an old colleague he'd come to distrust. to make things even worse, the transition goes on forever because effectively jefferson and aaron burr, because the constitution had been badly

written, jefferson and burr are tied. and in february, the congress votes 35 times, this tie 35 times on who the next president will be. finally, on the 36th vote, thomas jefferson wins. he becomes president. he's inaugurated in march. and here's what's key. thomas jefferson comes in and he makes a couple of points very clear. first he says, look, in his inaugural address, not every difference of opinion is a difference of principle. in other words, look, everybody. calm down here. you can oppose somebody without considering them to be a traitor. and the second thing he says, equally important, he draws a line between the way john adams had behaved and the way he's going to behave. he's not going to throw newspaper editors that criticize him into jail. he says, look, we'll have a forum for public opinion. and i think the federalists, who the new opposition will denounce

me, but i can take it, and whoever is right will win. so i think he's really trying to set a different tone for a new presidency with a real emphasis on stability and the loyal opposition which i think biden will imitate and i think it will make it for a very different presidency. >> and jon meacham, your extraordinary work on thomas jefferson. i still have that image in my head that you painted with your wonderful words where you have the third president of the united states before he actually wins the election, the side of the bed, his feet on ice and wondering whether this republic that he had given his life to and had been fighting for, for so many years, would survive his own election. very, very perilous times in 1800 and going into 1801.

>> i think that arguably, clearly the declaration of independence and then i think the second most important state paper jefferson ever wrote was the first inaugural. there were other important things, but as tom was saying, that inaugural address told a story and jefferson in many ways, more than washington, more than adams, was the architect of what i would call the politics of hope. the politics of optimism. a politics that, you know, lincoln would pick up, that fdr continued, that president reagan continued. this notion that in fact, tomorrow could be better than today and that the american project was not simply about preservation of what we had, but the expansion and the growth and the pursuit of that happiness. and the first inaugural told

that story. it also told a story of recovering the principles of '76. one of my favorite things when people say oh, if only things could be like they used to be. okay. well, in 1801, thomas jefferson was arguing that we had already fallen away from the principles of 1776. so that was the first restoration campaign in american politics. and it was only the second really truly competitive one after 1796. he wanted it to be the revolution of 1800 so that we would move back away from the federalist centralization, the trappings of office. so the words, the story of hope mattered. the other thing was the style mattered. jefferson walked from his boarding house to the capitol for the inaugural. then he walked back and sat down with his fellow boarders and had

lunch. he was very self-consciously the republican, lower case "r" as opposed to the federalist aristocratic figure despite all of his aristocratic virginia issues. so i would say that the lessons for any president would be, tell a story and carry -- begin as you wish to carry on. >> mike barnicle? >> tom, it struck me listening to you just a few moments ago that joe biden is the first man of the senate, a product of the senate that we've had in the presidency since lyndon johnson. it also struck me that the senate is a very different place today than it was when senator biden arrived in the senate in january 1973. and just in the past few days, the statements from some of the republican senators, especially the senator from arkansas and

the senator from missouri, young senator from missouri, wreak of such cynicism. i don't think it existed as viscerally, as visibly in the united states senate when joe biden was there as it does now. but you indicated you thought it would be, and i agree with you, a very different kind of a presidency, but the difference in the senate from what it was when biden was there and what it is today, what kind of an impact do you think that will have? >> look, the senate is such an odd place. used to drive me kind of nuts covering it. people who are senators don't really learn to run anything. it's always a worry for me when a senator goes into a cabinet position or the presidency. they bring with them a bunch of people who think the capitol hill is the world. it is not the world. this always bothered me about biden. he has all these hill staffers around him and they think it's

all about sitting down around a table and cutting a deal and finding a compromise. that's not necessarily the way the world works. yeah, it could be a very dangerous background for biden. especially such a centrist, so dedicated to finding the center on any issue. it can sometimes be a recipe for stalemate like the way biden under obama handled the afghanistan portfolio. >> jon meacham, we're going to have to go, but i want you to encapsulate all the great wisdom you have, not only for us, but also for america and the world in the next 30 seconds. go. >> what could be easier. look, the american presidency is very -- is often a mirror of who we are. but can also be a maker of who we are. and fdr said that the greatest presidents have come along and helped define thought and custom

at critical moments in the life of a nation. and so when we look back and when we look forward, we want presidents who have virtues that we ourselves believe when we're being our best selves that we would like to manifest as well. >> tom ricks and jon meacham, thank you both. we really appreciate it. and that does it for us this morning. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. >> hello there. i'm chris jansing in for stephanie ruhle. it's thursday, december 3rd. here's what's happening. we begin with alarming new milestones in the fight against coronavirus. a record number of deaths, hospitalizations and new cases all in a single day. nearly 205,000 cases to be specific. the first time we've crossed the 200,000 mark. the total is now a staggering 14 million. more than 100,000 americans are waking up in the hospital with covid. that's the first time we've seen that number.