welcome to thursday. it is "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. this country is being ravaged by the virus. and the president is raging against an election he lost. the u.s. just experienced its single deadliest day in the pandemic. nearly 2800 deaths reported yesterday alone.

those are 9/11-sized figures. experts worry this is going to get worse. 9/11 every day. yesterday also broke the single day record in confirmed cases eclipsing 200,000 in our nbc news count. the first time in this pandemic. the strain on our hospital system is immense. for the first time in this pandemic we surpassed 100,000 hospitalizations. more than 14 million cases have been confirmed in this country. we can see around 400,000 deaths by the presidential inauguration on january 20th, according to recent models. yes, the death toll is going up and the models are going up. the disturbing numbers contrast with this number. 46. that was the number of minutes in this presidential video released yesterday amid all those infections and deaths. as mr. trump unloaded a torrent of lies and conspiracy theorys about an election he lost. as we said in nbc's first read this morning, that split screen, a president protesting an

election he clearly lost a month ago versus a virus that is getting deadlier by the day. might represent the most jarring disconnect in white house leadership we can remember, certainly in this century, if not last. sources also tell nbc news president trump has not ruled out firing one of his most loyal allies, the attorney general, bill barr after he contradicted the president's lies that there's widespread election fraud. kristen welker asked about barr's comments at the white house. >> mr. president, can i ask you to respond to the comments by your attorney general who indicated he has not seen, at this point, any evidence of fraud, enough to overturn the election results. given that, why is now not the time to concede? >> well, he hasn't done anything. so he hasn't looked. they haven't looked very hard, which is a disappointment to be honest with you. it's massive fraud. >> do you still have confidence in bill barr?

>> asking that in a number of weeks from now. they should be looking at all of this fraud. this is not civil. he thought it was civil. this is not civil. this is criminal stuff. >> joining me outside the white house, nbc's carol lee. also maura barrett following the vice president ahead of some coronavirus related events in tennessee. we also have politico's michael cruz who, of course, has covered president trump both as candidate and now through the trump white house. carol lee, let me start with you. and sort of the president's obsession, he clearly is not focused on any parts of the job that are in front of him day-to-day. the virus, what's going on on capitol hill. he seems to be singularly focused on wreaking havoc on this election. is there -- is it really likely he could fire bill barr? is that really plausible here? >> it is, chuck. in the sense that with president trump, even those who are

closest to him don't know whether he's going to, in a fit of rage, suddenly fire his attorney general. he's clearly very frustrated with him. he has been for some time. and he's expressed some of that frustration here and there. we heard it in an interview with fox where he said his attorney general and the justice department were missing in action and now he's being very plain about it. and i think what it underscores is a couple of things. as you said, the president is very myopically focused on the election. anyone who tells you, who you talk to in the white house, will tell you that. the other thing is what you're seeing in president trump, whether it's bill barr or republican governor in georgia, is, if you are not a purist in his eyes and you will 100% back him undo everything he wants you to, do he's eventually going to turn on you. as you said in your intro, bill barr has been one of the president's closest allies in terms of doing and conducting the justice department in a way that the president wanted his

previous attorney general to do. he's launched a number of investigations the president has been hoping the justice department would launch, whether it's michael flynn or the durham investigation into the origins of the russia probe. so the idea that he's now having -- that bar is now on the chopping block just shows you how, if you aren't fully in the president's mind, then you're out. >> and has he spent -- is there any evidence he's spent maybe a couple of minutes focused on the pandemic? the single worst 24 hours of this pandemic in the country so far and it seems as if the president literally is pretending it's not there. >> the white house has tried to make the case that he is behind the scenes but there's just not real evidence of that. i think the one place that he is focused is on this vaccine. and the reason why he's focused on that is because he wants to make sure he gets credit for it. he said that himself. he doesn't want president-elect biden to get credit for the vaccine. he feels that's part of his leg

aerks th acy that he doesn't want taken from him. crediting himself and his administration and his efforts with getting us there. not about the number of deaths we're seeing, the number of cases we're seeing on the rise. and even dr. fauci to you on sunday who said he didn't know if trump might -- would come out and advise people not to travel on the holidays and put on masks. that that's not necessarily something he xould guarantee. there's a reason for that. he's not seen as somebody the white house can get to go out and do the kinds of things that one would expect the leadership to do. we've seen vice president pence do some of that and others in the administration. >> before i let you go, you have a great piece today on mike flynn. and essentially you go back and you have some new reporting on sort of the intense period basically between when he made his phone calls to ambassador kislyak through, you know, through comey, through the pardon and all of that stuff.

big picture here. when you see sort of mike flynn's and donald trump's relationship evolve over the last five years, how should we apply that to what we can expect, how he'll treat bill barr in the next ten days? >> i think what it tells you, chuck is that the president likes someone when he feels that they can do something for him. that is the story of the relationship he had with michael flynn. what i was told is -- by a number of officials is the president soured on flynn even before they got into the white house. one wanted to fire him before we were even in the west wing. and then once flynn kind of started to cooperate with the mueller investigation, the president didn't know how to handle him. when he flipped back and was seen in the president's eyes as on his side, he used his case as a tool, as a means to his own end which was to undermine the mueller investigation and brought him on side. that's where you see the relationship today. if he's an ally, then you're in.

and if seen as not, in the eyes of the president, then you're not in. >> yeah. it applies to michael flynn. it applies to bill barr. it applies to secretary of state raffensberger or governor brian kemp in georgia. carol lee, thank you. let me go to maura barrett in tennessee. the head of the white house coronavirus task force, vice president mike pence, is going to be there doing -- ostensibly, talking about the distribution of the vaccine and the coronavirus. i guess this is the part of the white house that's at least publicly focused on the vaccine and on the virus. but is it just vaccine or are they actually sending a message about mitigation? >> it doesn't seem there will be a message on mitigation. the white house putting out guidance that the vice president will be attending a coronavirus-focused round table in memphis took talking about vaccine distribution. focusing on the public/private

partnership going on here in tennessee. tennessee is one of those four states that's part of pfizer's pilot program twhen comes to that vaccine distribution. and memphis is interesting because that is where fedex is headquartered and probably one of the reasons pence is having this roundtable there. he'll be meet with fedex executives to discuss the distribution plan as fedex has expanded its abilities with their cargo planes to have more dry ice, more cold storage because these vaccines need to be stored at such cold temperatures. but the reality of the situation here in tennessee, doctors tell me is that mitigation needed to be the focus. governor lee will be here with vice president pence today and he still has not issued a statewide mask mandate. but doctors telling me that's not an effective approach. we saw the white house task force report saying that public health officials should override their local and state officials if they feel the severity of the coronavirus spread in their state isn't doing enough. that's what doctors are telling

me. here at vanderbilt, where i am, they had to shut down their elective surgeries to accommodate for the rise of coronavirus cases here locally. and also, we're seeing a record number of low availability when it comes to icu beds. doctors concerned, about we can see the vaccine through the light at the end of the tunnel but mitigation is still very, very important. >> so, over the last 24 hours, maura, former presidents bush, obama and clinton all said they'd get the vaccine on camera. i'm curious, has vice president mike pence, do we expect him to -- i guess we're waiting to see what president trump will say on that. do we expect to hear vice president mike pence perhaps make a pledge like that? >> well, we're still not sure. it depends on what the president does. we saw his daughter ivanka saying she'd do the same and i think that doctors are saying to me that that kind of public show of confidence in the vaccine would be huge because,

obviously, we've seen some misinformation about the vaccines. people concerned about the long-term effects and dr. aranof, head of the national coronavirus task force says he understands people's concerns because it's a new vaccine and he gets that, but the thing is, it has the same efficacy rate as the measles, the mumps vaccine and how often do we hear people talking about getting sick with the measles or mumps? he's trying to instill this confidence. if we want to get back to any sense of normalcy, mitigation, social distancing, mask wearing hasn't worked so far. the vaccine is the best bet to get back to normal. people should feel confident about doing so. >> maura barrett at vanderbilt in nashville, tennessee. thank you. let me bring in michael cruz. i think the best way to describe you some days is a trumpologist if you will. you've been focused and covering him in so many ways. the 46-minute most important speech of his life, michael. i'm trying to think about what you are -- assuming your

children decide to follow in your footsteps, 30 years from now they'll write about the pandemic and be able to say on the day that it reached its worst peak, this is what the sitting president was doing. i know we're not surprised but what did you learn from that trump 46 minutes? >> i think what we've seen, chuck, over the last 24 hours, and really over the last month since election day is an extreme version of a great trump truth. he is a loser. he's been a loser of money, of opportunities, of relationships, of celebrity and stature, but he's been remarkably effective at not being seen as such. not being seen as a loser. at convincing many people, millions of people that he is not a loser. and it is imperative for him right now to have that continue.

politically, financially. psychologically, frankly, it is better for him, from a perception standpoint to be seen as a victim than to be seen as having been outright vanquished in some clear and permanent way. >> i mean, it is sort of remarkable. we may look back in history and say, he's the only person to have a failed presidency launch a political movement. >> this is what he's doing here. let there be no misconception. donald trump does what's best for donald trump. and what's best for donald trump right now is to lay the groundwork for at least the potential of a 2024 comeback run. he cannot be seen as defeated. he just simply cannot. and he has been effective over the course of his adult

existence at creating a sort of topspin. facts and reality, set them aside, but he's a guy who wrote in the early '90s a book -- had someone write for him a book called "surviving at the top" when he was barely surviving and nowhere close to the top. penned late '90s, "the art of the comeback." he hadn't come back. he survived. still viable as a b-list celebrity at the time but wrote "the art of the comeback" to create topspin for the possibility of future opportunities. and frankly if he can retain that support that he has from tens of millions of republican voters around the country, convincing them that they has not lost, that he has been robbed. he has not been defeated. it lays the groundwork for a 2024 run. keeps him in the conversation. and frankly, without attention, he is something like dead.

>> he is -- i think that's a case where he's like a shark. i guess, michael, there's one other pattern here with the president in his life is that everything he has failed at, he was never able to succeed at that first failure. so he never got the casino business, he never had a second run and did well in casinos. never had a second run on "the apprentice" that did well. "celebrity apprentice" was a -- an empty version of the first one. as a real estate developer, right, he's not developing anymore. he's just franchising. it's hard to imagine he's never been able to actually come back ever. that he has to go use his failure and try something else. so do we assume that's what is the most likely result? >> yeah, to retain the perception. season one for donald trump, both literally in "the apprentice" but more figuratively across his entire existence has always been the

most successful season. season two is a little less successful. season three, even less successful. and so on and so forth. so he has talked a lot about comeback. he loves the word. it allows to talk about a win to come, even if he's not sitting on a current win. but you make a good point. the comeback usually fizzles. we'll see if that happens. he's still, by most accounts, the prohibitive favorite for the 2024 republican primary. >> yeah, well, look, let's see in six months, let alone four years. i'll believe that when i see it. right now, republicans still have to take his call. they don't have to take his call in six months. michael kruse from politico, thank you. and carol lee and maura barrett. how does america get the coronavirus vaccine to everybody? a closer look at the logistical challenges of getting the shots to millions of people and how long that could take. later, the hard lessons of

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i want you to know we have great science that says wearing a mask and watching your distance and avoiding contact outside your household will work to blunt this surge. and there's hope. we're almost to a vaccine. >> we are p. so just hang on a little bit longer. >> welcome back. that was surgeon general jerome adams repeating a plea we've heard many times, just hold on until the vaccine arrives. according to health officials it should only be a matter of days until the pfizer vaccine's fda approval comes through and the first doses go out to the public. health and human services secretary alex azar told reporters yesterday in an "operation warp speed" briefing that he expects 20 million americans will be vaccinated by the end of the year and up to

100 million by march. even as the first vaccine doses go out, americans will continue to contract covid at alarming rates. the cdc director robert redfield warned the winter months are shaping up to be some of the most difficult and dangerous and as america passes one grim virus milestone after another, it's clear there's no room for a misstep in vaccine distribution or safety. the smallest of delays or setbacks could have far-reaching consequences and sadly, just simply increase our death toll. joining me is dr. paul offet, a member of the fda advisory committee on vaccines. also a practicing physician and the director of the vaccine education center at the children's hospital of philadelphia. doctor, thank you for coming on. let me be frank here about this. our national testing strategy has been a disaster, was a disaster, is a disaster because, you know, it's been a problem. and i realize that we were trying to start something we'd never really done before. why should americans have confidence that our vaccine

distribution will go smoothly? >> i think it's going to be a challenge. but certainly a lot of people are -- including the cdc and the department of defense are working together to make this happen. i think, as they say, all politics is local. i think all vaccine distribution is going to be local. how we do it is going to depend on how various states and distributions and localities choose to do it based on their resources. the most important thing is we give them those resources to be able to distribute the vaccine. >> what is -- so as we -- there's sort of so many potential logistical challenges, right? we've got the issue of the deep freezers. i saw one stat, it was only ten hospitals in the entire state of kansas that had the freezer in order to house these vaccines. what are the different things that you think the government is going to have to jump-start in order to accelerate vaccine distributions? >> i actually work with our secretary of health at the

commonwealth of pennsylvania. so i've listened to those meetings every two weeks. she feels she can figure out how to distribute pfizer and moderna's mrna vaccines. she wants help from the federal government to help establish some centers, some sites in which those vaccines can be distributed in much the same way you'd have a testing site. she doesn't need directives. she just needs the money to be able to do it. that's where i think the federal government has to chip in. >> when it comes to an education campaign, i'm -- i heard this in my own household where my 16-year-old has taken biology and they're doing a good job of using the virus as a way to sort of teach biology. and she brought up a point that is very true. she says, hey, we've never taken these types of vaccines before. how do we know they're going to work? the messenger rna type of

vaccine. we're putting an awful lot of -- we're super confident this is going to work and yet we've never done it this way before. >> it's true. and i can understand how people would be hesitant about getting a vaccine where the strategy has never been used to make a vaccine before. but the size of these trials are typical of any vaccine trial for adults or children. 30,000-person trial. pfizer, 44,000 person and you're following those people for two months after the last dose. so in terms of the safety issue, you'll be able to say with confidence, these vaccines don't have at least uncommon serious side effects. when you look at the serious side effects of vaccines, and there are some, they invariably occur within six weeks of getting a dose. the thing that's concerning and the reason these are not licensed but approved for uae is to see whether they're effective. we'll know if they're highly effective for a couple of months but that doesn't mean they're effective for six months. if it is highly effective after

a couple of mufthsonths it's reasonably likely to be effective. you'll not do a one or two-year trial given that 260,000-plus have died this year in the united states. in terms of mitigating risk, we've mitigated a lot of the risk. also remember, as this vaccine rolls out, it's initially going to roll out for people who work and live in long-term care facilities and health workers. essential health care workers. that's going to be 24 million people before we ever get to the next group. you'll have tens of millions of doses out there which should make people feel more comfortable that there isn't a rare serious side effect. >> here's sort of when we were talking about this in our morning meeting. here's a problem where here's something, hey, it's 90% effective. and guess what the internet is going to be filled with? all the anecdotes of the times that it either wasn't effective or maybe there was a coincidence and somebody gets the vaccine and the next day they drop dead because of something else happened to them and it had

nothing to do with the vaccine, but, of course, fear factor comes in. the mitigation of the misand disinformation on the vaccine, it's a challenge that -- just look at our politics. it's a challenge that i don't think anybody fully appreciates. >> let's say the vaccine is 90% effective which everybody would be happy with. 1 out of 10 people who get the vaccine are not necessarily going to be protected against moderate to severe disease. you'll hear from those people. similarly, coincidental associations. my grandmother got the vaccine, two days later had a stroke, a heart attack. so i think our job is to do -- systems like the vaccine safety data link to show that you are no more likely to via stroke or heart attack if you got the vaccine or didn't and try to get information governor ainformatid data out there. we have difficulty separating coincidence from causality, and it's going to be a challenge. i agree. >> let me ask you this one final question which goes to, we've got to find out, is this going

to be like the flu shot and you have to get one every year. is there just a system of people that are permanently on a clinical trial here for like a three to five-year period so that we know what the long-term impacts are? whether you need more? how does that research continue even as we distribute this current vaccine? >> right. so the people who are currently in these large clinical trials who got vaccine will be followed for six months, a year, two years, three years. we'll have a much better idea of for how long and how effective we have a vaccine. i think we'll have that information. you know, the -- you are always open minded to the fact that there are things you dont know and you have to be open minded to the fact there may be side effects we aren't thinking about but there are systems in place to know that. so i'm optimistic that we are going to have a lot of information about this vaccine. and we can look at it more positively that this is an amazing result. if you asked 1,000 scientists in january when we had this vaccine

in hand and knew its sequence, do you think within a year we'll have two large clinical trials that showed 90% to 95% efficacy, that seems to work well in people over 65, works very well at preventing severe disease? i don't think anyone would have thought that was possible. we're always looking a gift horse in the mouth. we should embrace what it appears to be on the surfarks an amazing technological achievement. >> it is the one thing we do well as americans. it's when our backs are truly against the wall and a world pandemic is one of those moments, it does seem as if we do make miracles. doctor offit, thank you for your expertise and for coming pop. you'll see more of dr. offit. he'llon our special edition of "dateline" tonight. lester holt will be speaking about to the top directors at pfizer and moderna and johnson & johnson. "race for a vaccine" tonight at

10:00, 9:00 central on nbc. up ahead -- how one of america's biggest cities is preparing to take on the challenge of distributing the coronavirus vaccine. i'll talk with chicago mayor lori lightfoot about her plan of attack just ahead. i felt like... ...i was just fighting an uphill battle in my career. so when i heard about the applied digital skills courses, i'm thinking i can become more marketable. you don't need to be a computer expert to be great at this. these are skills lots of people can learn. i feel hopeful about the future now. ♪ hello is friendly... hello is open... it's welcoming... everything we want to be when helping people find a medicare plan. so if you're looking for yours, say hello to hellomedicare... ...a one stop shop for medicare plans,

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hellomedicare. let's get checked for those around us. let's get checked for a full range of conditions. introducing letsgetchecked a health testing you do at home. let's get round the clock support from a team of nurses. let's get fast, accurate results. know your health. know yourself. for a limited time only, get 40% off at letsgetchecked dot com welcome back. the biden transition is getting ready to announce the team that will be tasked with guiding this country through the pandemic. dr. anthony fauci, the

government's top infectious disease expert, will be meeting with the biden transition landing team on the coronavirus pandemic today for the first time. it's a virtual meeting. joining me from biden headquarters in wilmington, delaware, is my colleague peter alexander. do we know, first of all, has that meeting happened already or is it happening now? what do we expect to have come out of it? and my other virus related question, i have one more on the transition, do we expect to hear president biden join former presidents bush, obama and clinton in the "i will take the vaccine publicly" pledge? >> you know, that's a good question, one we haven't had answered yet but i wouldn't be surprised as you heard from president obama saying he would do just that. as it relates to dr. anthony fauci, the nation's top infectious disease doctor, he told our own andrea mitchell just an hour ago that he would be having a substantive discussion with that landing team that's part of president-elect biden's new

administration as it relates to their efforts to sort of get their hands around the pandemic and the response to it, specifically on distribution of the vaccine and the problems associated with the next several months as we head into this tough winter. fauci said he's had multiple conversations in the past with ron klain, the president-elect biden's chief of staff, but has yet to speak with the president-elect himself. notably as it relates to that response to covid, it's becoming increasingly clear that we expect to hear the jeff zeinst that he would become the covid czar which is the same sort of position that ron klain served in during the ebola outbreak in 2014. likely to receive help from, among others, murthy who there is now reporting may be announced as a surgeon general. once again, the surgeon general for the u.s. with an expanded role going forward, i'm told by sources within the transition. that those formal announcements aren't expect to come in any

form on those issues until this weekend or perhaps next week. this week, they continue to focus on economic policy. brian deese, a name you're familiar with and folks watching with, another veteran of the obama administration, named today by president-elect biden as his head of the national economic council which shows you all these ties between the biden administration and the obama administration which is one of the benefits of only having president trump having served for four years. you can sort of get the gang back together before everybody has gone their own ways. >> peter, very quickly, it looks like there's a little bit of cross pressure going on, the congressional hispanic caucus is meeting with the biden transition team today. they seem to be a little nervous. they want to see a prominent hispanic in one of the big four. now some people argue that dhs is part of a big five now and there's, obviously, an hispanic heading dhs. the pressure that the biden team

is feeling when it comes to the pentagon and justice, african-americans would like to see some representation. women would like to see representation. his pang panics would like to s representation. they're running out sloftof slo. >> we've seen to white americans filling secretary of state, in blinken and janet yellen. that only leaves the department of homeland security. you have the pentagon, that position, it's unclear. it could be an african-american like jeh johnson or others who would be the ag, the head of the department of justice, the chc, the congressional hispanic congress having a discussion with some of the heads of the transition. on this very topic. among the names they're expected to push, tom perez, the dnc chair, xavier becerra.

they really want to have five members of the hispanic community a part of the president-elect's cabinet. chuck? >> peter alexander reporting from biden transition headquarters essentially in wilmington, delaware. peter, thanks very much. up next -- cities across the country are preparing for a massive vaccine distribution operation. we're going to talk to chicago mayor lori lightfoot about her plan after this. >>it's shiori. what? >>shi - or - i adam, emily and then... s-uh um... >>it's shiori. sh-ori. thank you, that's great. shiori (in japanese) there you go. >>yeah. (in japanese) wow, it looks beautiful! >>(in japanese) really?! i really like it. ♪

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another life-changing technology from abbott, so you don't wait for life. you live it. welcome back. a bit of breaking election news and another setback in the president's campaign to challenge the election results. the wisconsin state supreme court, which has a small conservative majority, has just rejected an emergency lawsuit filed by the trump campaign which sought to invalidate mail ballots it claimed were improperly included during the canvass in milwaukee and dane counties. it was a 4-3 decision in wisconsin. a 4-3 majority.

one of the conservatives voted with the liberals on that one. there was a concurrent opinion in the majority that simply said that if the trump campaign would like to contest all this, they should start in the lower courts n and not try to start immediately at the wisconsin supreme court. once again, another loss in the attempts by the trump campaign to overturn this election. let's move on as the state of illinois recorded the highest number of covid deaths in a single day yesterday. chicago officials are now saying they expect to start rolling out covid vaccines to health care workers later this month and it could provide them to lower risk residents by spring. the announcement came days after the first mass air shipment of the pfizer vaccine landed in chicago on friday. the city, along with the nation is in a race against time as it awaits the fda to approve emergency use of the vaccine. and then everyone has to figure out how to distribute them to millions amiss a worsening pandemic. joining me is the mayor of chicago, lori lightfoot.

madam mayor, thank you for coming back on the show. in plain terms, lay out the timeline as best you can for the rest of this month. the minute this authorization comes through on this vaccine, when it comes to chicago. >> so we have obviously been planning for vaccine distribution for many months now. the news of the shipment was really pfizer pre-positioning vaccine here in the chicago area. we have a mandate from the cdc to make sure that frontline health care workers get the first of that vaccine. we have been working with local hospitals to make sure that they've got the infrastructure in place to get that distribution ready to go as soon as it's ready. we expect that the fda will approve the emergency use authorization by midmonth and within days of that, we expect to start pushing out the shipments of the vaccines to the

hospital community and the first health care workers will get vaccinated before the end of the month. >> do you think you will have all of chicago's frontline health care workers vaccinated by the new year, or not? >> no, we won't get enough shipments of the vaccine. we won't even be able to cover the initial frontline workers, but my hope is that once the fda approves the emergency use that the manufacturers will continue ramping up what their supplies are. we have the infrastructure ready to go to handle that first tranche of shipments. but we need the manufacturers to be able to get enough supplies of the vaccines. remember, this is a two-shot vaccine. it's not a one shot. but we'll be ready, and my hope is, particularly with the new administration coming online, that they are going to provide the resources to support the

manufacturing of this vaccine so it can accelerated and we can see more of the tier two, tier three folks getting vaccinated by the end of the first quarter at the latest. >> what responsibility do you believe you have in building trust on taking this vaccine? we've seen, you know, there's plenty of reason in the history of this country, particularly in communities of color, to be a little nervous about the government telling you to take something. so that's going to be the next challenge. and so is this burden on you, on the city, or is this burden on the federal government? >> i think it's really on all of ubut, obviously, being on the front lines, we have a primary responsibility, and i'm well aware of, unfortunately, the sad history of experimentation on african-americans and people of color, which is a legacy that we're still dealing with now, and it's manifesting itself, i think, in the reluctance on the

part of some to think about the vaccine. so we're immediately taking a number of steps. one, we've got a local panel of experts who are going to be validating the process by which the vaccines have come on to the marketplace. i think that's going to be critically important. we need to make sure that we've got health care violators and particularly the frontline workers, not just the doctors and the nurses, but the lpns, the people that are actually involved in direct patient care. when they are comfortable, and they speak their truth to people in the community, that's going to be incredibly important. we've got a huge grassroots movement going to make sure that we educate people about the vaccine. and they can see for themselves why it's safe. but it is a massive lift. both from an infrastructure and distribution standpoint but also building credibility around the vaccine itself. certainly the current precedent hasn't helped at all and that's added the public skepticism about the vaccine.

but it's important that leaders and, at all levels, at the grassroots level and elected official level are stepping up and saying, this is absolutely necessary to help us return to something of a normal life. so we've got to get as many people vaccinated as possible. >> would you support vaccine mandates? >> well, look, i always think it's better to educate people into compliance if we can, but we can't live in a world where only certain people are taking the vaccine and some are opting out. that won't help anybody. and that will perpetuate the spread of this incredibly deadly virus. so we're looking at a range of options but our first choice, obviously, is educating people into compliance. demonstrating to them the safety of the vaccine. i will take the vaccine, as will my leadership team, and we're encouraging people of good will and faith across the city to do the same. and i think once we see that trend and influencers, whether

it's local elected officials, whether it's local stakeholders, people in the faith community, we'll see the trend turn in the right direction. >> i saw that you had to refinance, you borrowed some money because, obviously, you're not alone here. every city and state is, you know, exhausted financially, literally and figuratively these days. you had to borrow basically on tax revenue that you will be receiving. how dire of a situation do you think you're in now, and if you don't get relief in the next six months, this borrowing decision that you made, how much more debt can you -- can chicago afford to go into? >> well, part of our -- part of it is refinancing our existing debt and opening up lines of credit but, look, the bottom line is chicago, like towns and municipalities all across the city, all across the country, are suffering. we need the federal government to step up. we need a real stimulus.

we need not only to be able to replace our revenue losses as a result of covid's impact on our economy. our small businesses are hurting. our restaurants, our hospitality industry. our entertainment industry. independent venues. i mean, the list is long, and so i hope that the senate hears the cries of people all across this country in red, blue, purple states. we've got to get federal stimulus. >> very quickly, your predecessor is a candidate for transportation secretary, the former mayor of chicago, rahm emmanuel. would that be something you think is good for chicago, if he got that position? >> well, i am not going to dictate to the biden administration who they should pick for positions. i think the most important thing is we need people in positions of government, particularly transportation and other places, that understand collaboration,

understand collegiality, understand that the federal government will never have all the answers. that they've got to work collaboratively with states and localities. that's what i'm seeing in some of these key positions. and we've got to get an infrastructure bill across the finish line. we have been on borrowed time with our infrastructure, deferred maintenances now, a significant problem. we're stepping up here locally with an infrastructure bill, but we need the federal government to do the same. >> mayor lori lightfoot, appreciate you coming on, sharing your perspective and your plans with us particularly on vaccine distribution. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. >> thank you. take care now. >> you've got it. up next -- we are getting a clearer picture of how remote learning is really impacting education. stay with us for that discussion. needles.

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students had to switch to online learning, a sweeping new review of data is finally offering insight into the impact on student learning. it came from a growth tesk nwea. it was taken by over four million students. the agency found that normally the students that would take the test, that is not all. they found that a majority of students did good in reading, it was mostly those that attend high poverty schools were falling apart. and it is always interesting here, in some ways the study confirmed what every parent can

tell you. specifically i want to go through two concepts with you. we thought that it would have been easier with remote learning and it is the opposite. >> what we think is probably happening is that students, in reading, have a parent help at home more so than -- parents feel more comfortable providing support reading, having age appropriate books, and the school is not providing as much as possible. they are bringing back into the home as much. we think that may be contributing to the larger masses. >> when you do this test a year from now wlb that be a b, will

sense. do you feel like you're capturing it all right now or do you feel like it will be another year to truly understand how much education time was lost. >> i think this is a very initial look. i think we're in mile one of the marathon. but you know many students are still it in remote learning now. so network year will give us a bester sense on continued impacts on learning. this is a cautiously optimistic look that the learning losses may not be as bad as we imagined from the spring, but it is still very early on. >> so, at some point it is clear that we have a lot of losses here whether or not you're in pre-k or college, there has been lost education time, lost everything. are we going to come to a

conclusion that maybe we should let -- are we going to be able to give parents and students a choice that if you need another year take another year. does the entire education system need a gap year to catch up? >> i think that will have to be a local school district decision. we don't want to hold back students, but i think for many students we have to think about how we provide support and that may be so that they're able to move on. we know ma math and reading are cumulative, they build on each other. if you lost out on learning this year, it will continue to affect your ability to pick up the next grade level standards. >> you cannot keep up if you keep advancing. sometimes you need to stop, step back, take a breath. megan, thank you, it's a great fest look first look at this. we would like to understand hybrid learning versus full

remote or full in-person. i wonder if the hybrid is the worst of all models. >> we'll be back tomorrow with more "meet the press daily." katy tur is back after this break. i felt like... ...i was just fighting an uphill battle in my career. so when i heard about the applied digital skills courses, i'm thinking i can become more marketable. you don't need to be a computer expert

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good afternoon, it is 11:00 a.m. out west, 2:00 p.m. on the east. on wednesday a record number of americans tested positive for covid-19. a record number died with covid-19. we have been setting these words for so long the words no longer do the horror justice. the virus is not getting better, it is not going away, and we don't have the luxury of being fatigued. there have now been more than 14 million confirmed cases of