extreme precautions in the white house, including some of the people who did get the coronavirus are among some of the people who were the most careful about the virus. >> yeah. well, getting the virus is not some badge of being insufficiently vigilant. the thing is implacable. jennifer r who is jennifer, thank you, i really appreciate it. rachel maddow begins now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, chris. thank you. much appreciated. a busy tuesday. it was even a bigger vaccine rollout than yesterday was. yesterday it was about 140, 150 places around the country that received their first doses of the coronavirus vaccine. started administering those vaccines mostly to front line health workers. as i said yesterday, just around

150 sites around the country. but today it was more than 400 sites around the country that got their first vaccine deliveries. and it was in bedford, massachusetts that the first va patient, the first patient at a va facility got a vaccine. a world war ii veteran, a woman named margaret clussens. margaret clussens is 84 years old. she wears her hair in a ponytail on top of her head like a boss. she said she wished she would have gotten attention for something like this when she was 16 instead of 96, but at 96 she'll take it. >> the nurse come up and told me that the vaccine was in, and she said i was going to get a dose of it. so i get up, i was happy. >> reporter: clussens, who is originally from charlestown

served in the women's army corps. she worked in georgia through the war and said on monday she was surprised how fast the vaccine came in. >> that's what i thought when the nurse come up to me. i thought, oh, they really did get it in early. and i thought everybody was going to get it. then i find out that i'm the only woman down there to get it. >> i'm proud of her, i really am. >> sally clussens is one of margaret's four children. she didn't know her mom got it until her mother called. >> i'm glad she got it. she makes her own decisions. she's highly competent, which is wonderful. >> on monday margaret clussens told us she is still feeling good. >> they asked me after they inoculated me, and no pain, nothing. >> we want to get her out and about going out to dinner and swimming again. she used to swim all the time. >> reporter: margaret clussens said she now hopes everyone can get the vaccine. she said she's thankful for the

opportunity and laughs at her newfound fame. >> why didn't all these things happen when i was 16? >> 96 years old, world war ii veteran margaret clussens. we're going to talk this hour about not just how it's going in these first two days of the vaccine rollout but how the vaccine effort affects two other things. first of all, the record hospitalizations that we are seeing right now with all the joy over the vaccine starting to get out there. tonight there are more americans in the hospital with covid than there have been at any other night in the entire pandemic. over 112,000 americans hospitalized with covid right now, and it does not look like that number is going down any time soon. so how does the rollout of the vaccine affect everything we need to be doing to try to bring new case numbers down, to try to keep people alive who are already sick right now, and to help and support the health providers who are trying to keep

our brothers and sisters alive, and all the hospitals and health care units around the country that are full up and getting worse right now? hope helps and the vaccine provides hope. but what else can we be doing and how does the vaccine effort affect what we need to be doing given how absolutely overrun we are right now by sickness and death and new cases. we're going to be talking about that tonight. we're also going to be talking tonight about what it means that we may be soon getting a second vaccine approved, like really soon, perhaps by the end of the week. a vaccine rollout for a single vaccine has been fascinating, and as i said, it has inspired hope over these last couple of days. if we get a second vaccine approved and started to roll out by the end of the week, how do those two vaccines dovetail, essentially, in the rollouts. we'll get expert help on both those questions coming up tonight. in washington tonight, the

special guest star making a surprise appearance in the news is shame, the return of shame. or at least embarrassment in the last days of the trump administration. this is a surprise to me. i never thought shame would come back, but here it is. trump national security adviser robert o'brien had been planning to spend all week long this week on a european and mediterranean junk junket paid for by the taxpayers and accompanied by his wife. in london, rome and paris, in which it included a private tour of the louvre museum, a private tour for robert o'brien and his wife. even though the louvre was closed because of covid concerns, he apparently played the "i am national security" card to get that. it sounds like tons of fun, huh? nobody is traveling everywhere. museums are closed around the world, but taxpayers sending you

and your wife on a european tour of all the capitals with private museum tours for just you two, travel a government aircraft, no cost to you. boy, that sounds fantastic. until shame returns. and it gets reported that that's how the national security adviser is using up his last days in the lame duck, and then suddenly robert o'brien decides tonight, apparently, that maybe it might be a good idea to heed the call of shame and head home. jennifer jacobs at bloomberg the first to report tonight that national security adviser robert o'brien cut short his jackpot vacation. he says he's now heading home to deal with the massive consequences of the russian intelligence cyberattack on u.s. government agencies. this is this big attack by russian government actors. it was first reported over the weekend. it now turns out that it was incredibly widespread and potentially incredibly damaging. the russian government hackers

infiltrated and compromised computer systems at the u.s. state department, at the homeland security department, at the department of defense, at the treasury and commerce departments. most worryingly, the trump administration appears to have had no idea that the attack had even happened until a private cop told them about it last week -- that's bad. perhaps even more worryingly than that, the white house and senior trump administration officials have been basically silent on the attack. silent about who did this to the u.s. and whether there will be any consequence for the attackers. it should be noted that seems to be sort of par for the course in this administration when we get hit by attacks from that one particular country. this is the "new york times" today, quote, analysts said it was hard to know which was worse, that the federal government was blindsided again by russian intelligence agencies, or that when it was evident what was happening, white house officials said nothing. but this much is clear. while president trump was complaining about the hack that

wasn't, the supposed manipulation of votes in an election he had clearly and fairly lost, president trump was silent on the fact that russians were hacking into the building next door to him, the united states treasury. don't worry. as much of a bummer as it was for his cool world tour, robert o'brien is coming back to washington, coming back from his trip early to work on this mart. we'll see how this goes. at buzzfeed news today, t y pried loose the information act to get this thing. we have never seen this document before. it was the criminal referral that was made to the fbi and the justice department concerning president trump's behavior, specifically about his call last year to the president of ukraine

where president trump told the president of ukraine that ukraine would only get its military aid from the u.s. government if that country's president helped trump get re-elected by announcing some ukrainian investigation of joe biden and his family. bring it all back, right? why does this sound so familiar? oh, yes, we forget, donald trump was impeached a year ago. donald trump was impeached. we are a country. it will always go down in our permanent record that we are a country that elected donald trump to be president of the united states. but it will also go down in our permanent record that mr. trump twice lost the popular vote and he was impeached by the house before he was voted out of office by the american people, by a pretty impressive margin after just one term. it's all sort of a mixed bag. it's funny, as weirdly hard as it is to even remember that trump was impeached, it's even harder to remember that within the impeachment saga, there was a moment when the sitting president of the united states

was referred for potential criminal prosecution. referred by the inspector general of the intelligence community who looked into the allegations, said these are worth passing on to the justice department for potential prosecution. and now for the first time, we can see that criminal referral. it is addressed on the counterintelligence version of the fbi. it's copied also to the head of the criminal justice department. it says, on behalf of the office of the inspector general, the aig is formally reviewing allegations, among other things, violations of law relating to a telephone call on july 25th between president donald trump and the president of ukraine. according to the allegations, the president of the united states is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 u.s. election which includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the petition main political rivals. the complaint alleges that president trump, during a phone call with the ukranian

president, sought to pressure the ukranian leader to help with trump's 2020 election bid. if true, that might violate criminally enforcible laws. the isig conducted a criminal review of the complainant's allegations. based on the criminal review, i determine that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the allegations appear credible. if so, such allegations may violate law which prohibit giving something of value. they also prohibit such a donation from a foreign national directly or indirectly. and a spiritual debate of such conduct might lead to credibly enforced laws. that was from the president. that was sent to the fbi and the justice department. hey, look, it looks like these

might be crimes by the president. are you guys going to handle this? it really is so high. you forget the elevation of each individual peak. we forget that president trump was impeached. we forget that when this impeachment started, he was referred for potential criminal prosecution. remember what happened to that criminal behavior? attorney general william barr and the the one under him will not take congress. in fact, we will leave these here and decide whether these are potential crimes by the president, just leave it to us. >> from the moment, temporarily blocked the complaint about trump a behavior from being considered or concerned by the gs. william barr and the justice department very promptly decided

that everything trump did, nothing was a kril, everything donald trump did was super cool. that can be the end of it, nobody ever needs to hear about it. it was escaping the justice department's efforts to cover up what the president did and to secretly exonerate the president without even investigating what he did. that is how we got the impeachment of this president last year. and we know from the record that the person who actually led that effort at the justice department to keep this thing under wraps is named jeffrey rosen. when bill barr became attorney general, he insisted he needed to bring on his own hand-picked deputy, the person he hand-picked to be his attorney

general was jeff rosen. but we know the review against the criminal elements was jeff rosen. it turned out there was no investigation on trump's behavior. that's how president trump appreciated. having jeff rosen to review so he could say there's nothing to do here. and then them trying to keep it from captain, louisiana today we can see criminal activity from the inspector general who said, i have looked into this in a criminal way. you need to figure out if this is potential crimes. we know how the story ends, right? that inspector general who made the criminal referral about trump, trump fired him several months later.

fired him in april 2020. but the guy who was given the criminal complaint to deal with, the one who buried it and tried to make it go away said, there doesn't even need to be an ags allegation of this. we learned that william barr was pushed out or resigned last night, but we learned his hand-picked justice department will be taking over. the alleged key role by the president that led to trump's impeachment, it's interesting to me, it hasn't had much scrutiny at all since the announcement that he's going to be the new attorney general. but if he's taking over the justice department for just the last month of the trump administration, it's worth thinking about the kind of things that trump wanted to do in that last month. it's trying to make that criminal behavior of president

trump disappear, but not only disappear to prevent other people looking at them. what else has happened over jeffrey rosen's tenure since he and william barr have been in office. charlie savage put, quote, mr. rosen has kept a low profile, but with attorney general william barr's pending resignation, he is set to be the nation's top law enforcement official for the delicate final month of mr. trump's presidency. it will be an extraordinary responsibility for a man who has no prosecutorial experience and who has participated in sdefrl several decisions in which the department took steps that favored the president's friends. he took over the fbi after trump

fired comey, mccabe had been over the trump administration. donald trump insisted that mccabe must be locked up. it was also jeffrey rosen who was put in charge of reviewing the work of career prosecutors who took on the case of robert stone. the result of rosen's review was that d.o.j. came in to try to overrule those prosecutors, and they quit in protest after what jeffrey rosen did to their case on stone. it was jeffrey rosen and quarterbacked john bolton, when bolton set out to ride a book. they suggested that he go after bolton. it was jeffrey rosen that actually led the justice department in that effort to, in fact, put the power of the u.s. justice department into an

effort to go after bolton. it was also jeffrey rosen who decided that trump cabinet secretary ryan zinke. it was jeffrey rosen who kiboshed and zinke was never charged. it was zinke who interfered with trump officials to make sure paul manafort would not have to set a delicate foot in jail on rikers island like any other prisoner would have to do if that person were facing charges in federal court. it was jeffrey rosen who intervened to make sure he didn't have to go to rikers. he suggested they start charging

anti-protest anti-protesters. that was jeffrey rosen who wrote to prosecutors to tell them that's how they should treat anti-racism protesters, throw the u.s. government on them and throw the book at them. now he's going to be taking over the justice department for the last and trump did nothing weird at all wlt powers of the justice department. what could possibly go wrong? so from the trump side, the lame duck period is as weird as it's ever pen, and unnerving as well. that said, one of these things is not like the other. from the biden side, the biden administration, they're rolling things out as normal, at least, as normal as it can be done because of the pandemic. today biden appointments were

announced for a bunch of different positions, including pete buttegieg as transportation secretary. there is also word he is choosing gina mccarthy to work on climate on the domestic side. of course, michelle obama knows what she speaks of on this issue. from the side of the incoming administration, the president-elect and his team in an orderly and fairly noncontroversial way. the transition appears to be on page and again, kind of normal looking from the inside of the trgs. in terms of the outdoor

administration, it's twinl still crazy town. forgive me, it's a the republican of georgia should be prepared to go to jail. it shows them both wearing face masks that shows that their secret communist china agents. it's one thing -- actually a pretty considerable thing -- that one of the leaders would say something like this and put it on line. but for the president to boost it and endorse it is amazing. that's what things are like on that outgoing side of the transition. even with republican senate leader saying joe biden is the

president-elect. it took him six weeks to say it. even with mcconnell finally getting there today, and mcconnell reportedly telling other senators that those votes shouldn't count with they come up to vote on january 26. if their guy lost, it is getting better on the republican side. it did end up being six states yesterday won by joe biden where, nevertheless, republicans in those spaces, sort of they'll go through this kind of pageant and claim that they're electors went to states. six different states did that

yesterday. wisconsin u.s. senator ron johns johnson, he is nevertheless going to chair a utes utes. allegedly trump lawyers have argued these cases that have lost avrt level of the legal system in order to chase those wet indicated we'll get a platform tomorrow. krebs is the cybersecurity chief at homeland schurt trump fired saying his homeowners need to stick around. the democrats are calling that person an order to reality check

which the companies are continuing to allege that they still don't believe really happened. but rem 2 is coming, right? the day or two beforehand if the monkeys won't splaun nug. it will drn which party controls the senate and will depend, in ah large part, whether biden was transformed in a straightforward way in those elections. biden doing a big rally and event for them today in georgia. meanwhile on the republican side the president was calling for the imprisonment of the state's republican governor and secretary of state. michael flynn, president trump's former national security adviser, just did a fox

interview in which he insisted they shouldn't pay any attention to senate runoff in georgia, because the real election that everybody needs to worry about was the one stolen from donald trump in september. we're a two-party political system. but one of these things is not like the other. one side over a two-party political system is having a much harder time of it than the other right now in ways that i think in sort of an underappreciated way do set up a scary present, a scary current moment for the lame duck on the entities, the u.s. department of justice, which when they go haywire, it can cause mass

feelings. this also has political consequences. the difference between the parties right now also sets what is a truly unknowable future like that big election in georgia. we'll get to more that straight ahead. we've got more on vaccine day, day 2. lots more. stay with us. stay with us tonight...i'll be eating a falafel wrap

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today president-elect biden flu to georgia for his first campaign stop since the presidential election. it was a drive-in rally for democratic senate candidates jon ossoff and raphael warnock. the senate hangs in the balance of their elections. there appears to be a strong amount of interest in these races. georgia, in many ways, the center of the political world

right now. as soon as joe biden took the stage, he shouted out keisha bottoms, stacey abrams and also lakima williams. she will be joining biden next month as a newly elected member of congress. when john lewis died at the age of 80, it meant that the democratic party just had three days to decide who i want to nominate for his seat. the state of georgia, the whole country, was only just starting to mourn the passion age p. even in the initial flush of grief at his passing, georgia democrat who wanted to replace him on the ballot.

they chose state senator nakema lewis had become the first woman to be elected in the democratic party. so last night during elections, not only didly senator williams take some of these, but she'll take this to the presidential frirs the first time in 30 years. >> yes arksz one of our booinld. you know with him yams. you take. >> thank you for being here tonight. >> thank you, rachel.

>> i imagine you and other democrat are somewhere between euphoric, what you were able to do in the state of georgia in the presidential race, and on a tightrope in terms of the import of the two different tasks you've got with the senate runoffs on january 5th. let me just how you and your colleagues are doing right now. we definitely want to celebrate small kids. what we did on november 21, we have to finish the job. we're out there talking to voters, making sure we're reorganizing and we're talking ta person joe bind was rallying the troops, i am excited from us switching georgia plough and

work to be done in order for us to bring it home to the entire country on january 5th. >> i have to ask if you to adjust or account for or make sense of some of the crazy things happened on the outside. i saw something about trump. barbet 4980 senate runoff lixz. he wrote in one recent text message, we must are view from the demes. i search and they're pocketing manafort senate money. their races aren't getting a cent. the president has made it the president of the universe because he wants to talk about his own health there.

tlar wondering what they're going to do about their own candidate in georgia. >> he was listening to you earlier, crazy town is exactly what tit is, and i can't make i make sense. yesterday as i was casting an official california vote, one of the 16 from georgia. we had georgia republicans downstairs doing their own little circus show. none it have, and we are just staying the course dhirg that and we're organizing, we're talking about the issues that matter, do you do we make sure we get this in too titanium for everyone in this country. we have no time for it and i kind of pay them no attention.

zchz akukda. my porj will to want come back. if we were in the center of the universe right now, i would lover to have you back. >> i think i'll have to come back and celebrate, rachel, afr we win on january 5th. up nekts earlier this week, we found something really, really, really interesting and sort of heartwarming. in our archives it is very newly rell gantt given whaet happened in the vaccine right now that that is it s it

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. they are planning to roa roach -- reach a million and a half people with the polio vaccine. it was recommended that those who received the three-shot vaccine receive oral doses, a dose taken painlessly with a spot of sugar. it garnered huge cooperation. there were special arrangements for those too young to swallow the sugar. a drop of health. authorities were elated that the youngsters took to the immunization plan. an ounce of prevention multiplied by a million and a half. >> that was 1961 when the scientist named albert sabin made a vaccine for polio. it did not require a shot in the arm. the vaccine could just drop onto a cube of sugar, so kid were

happier to take that. they could just pop a cube the sugar in their mouth instead of getting a shot. the sabin vaccine sealed this hum human achievement for a lifelong vaccine against polio. they would hold massive polio vaccine drives, with lines around the church. they called them sabin sundays. on some of those drives you could get the souvenir spoon to mark the occasion. if you put aside for a second the medical marvel of administering a vaccine on a sugar cube, it was these really long lines that built up excitement around the sabin vaccine. it was going to work because the uptake was so strong. the american people were so interested in getting it.

you can hear the narrator in that newsroom marveling over it. the vaccine is only as good as the number of people who are willing to take it. the surgeon general was worried they will be too scared to take the vaccine. he was a bumblebee called well bee. well bee, get it? take the polio vaccine. works well, works fast, prevents polio. it might seem a little silly looking at it now, but those kinds of efforts to educate and meet with the public to encourage them to do it. if you don't build confidence that the taking of a vaccine is safe and that it will work, it doesn't matter how many doses you produce, it's effectively

useless unless the program works to get vaccines into humans. you might as well dump it down the drain if people aren't voluntarily going to line up to get this thing done. it's something we're bumping up against now as the rollout of the covid vaccine gets underway. a recent polling said they would definitely or probably not take the coronavirus vaccine. that's not good. the good news is that the number of people open to taking the vaccine appears to be back in september. it was 73% of the country that wouldn't take it, now it's 71. so it is moving. building trust in a big vaccination effort, it's not something you can manufacture overnight, which is why it was a little alarming this week to learn that the trump administration has just this

week begun the work of thinking about how they might try to convince the american public to take the coronavirus vaccine. they didn't start working on this in the spring or a few months ago and the vaccines were starting to look promising, they're just starting that work this week, just convening the first focus groups to talk about it while the first shots are being administered. they literally started holding focus group meetings today for the first time, by coming up with some language about how they might talk to the public about this. no time like the present. especially with a second approval of the vaccine. the first one was given to my apartment. it raises all sorts of the interesting and important questions about what this means to vaccinate the entire country. again, uts instructive to look

at on the the cougar krub. the kind of double-barrelled approach is kind of widescale like this one. it can be used to fight back in an outbreak like the one we have now. it can give you a comparative value of vaccines. today we're only in day two of what we think will be the largest vaccination in the history of this country. how will having two or potentially more that are all slightly different from one another, how can that be answered? we have important experts with us next. stay with us. we have important experts with us next. stay with us now is the time to put hands and feet to our prayers.

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this is the all-caps headline across the whole front page of "the new york times" today. you can see it there. "healing is coming: u.s. vaccinations begin." and then below that, "dread

persists as death toll tops 300,000." but still, hope at last for those in the medical trenches. there's the front page of the "washington post" today, underneath a headline about the electoral college formalizing biden's win, you see there "mass vaccination effort begins at u.s. hospitals." and then look right in the middle of the page there, "disparaged by trump, scientists deliver." that's one for the ages. today's "hartford courant" in connecticut, "beacon for today." "akron beacon journal," "a moment of hope." "tallahassee democrat" "20,000 doses of hope." you see a nurse wiping away a tear after he got her vaccine. front page of the "dallas morning news" today, "let the healing begin." in nebraska, here's the "omaha world herald" today, "hope in a

bottle: vaccine arrives." and on top of that, this historic -- these historic editions of all local newspapers across the country, now new headlines about a second lane opening up on this highway. the "associated press" this afternoon, "second covid-19 vaccine, this one from moderna and nih nears approval from f . fda." that second vaccine could be approved by the end of this week. how is that going to impact the effort that's already under way? i have lots of questions. i hope answers to those ones are cause for yet more hope. joining us, dr. sah. it's always a real pleasure seeing you. thanks for making time tonight. >> thank you, rachel. >> how different are the pfizer and moderna vaccines? >> they're really similar. they're both mrna vaccines. they work in very, very similar ways. little bit of difference in how they're stored and how stable they are in warmer temperatures. pfizer needs to be minus 96 degrees and the moderna vaccine

can be kept in regular freezing and refrigerating for more a longer period of time. that's it. that's the only difference. >> that means that there will be different logistics necessary for both delivering and storing and ultimate lly administering e vacci vaccine. obviously, it's better to have more available and have multiple sources of relief in the pipeline here, but will -- should we expect an impact on the vaccine rollout to have two different vaccines, again, broadly similar, but with some different handling requirements? >> yeah, they definitely have different handling requirements. you're going to want to see them in different places so the pfizer vaccine in large hospitals, in major institutions, that can handle the minus 96 degree freezing temperatures that are needed, whereas i think the moderna vaccine is going to be easier to get to rural areas, pharmacies and doctor's offices.

from a clinical effectiveness point a view, not much of a difference in safety. i would personally be happy to get either one. small differences in dosing as well. after 21 days you get the second shot. the other one, 28 days. other than that, i think the logistics is where the differences are going to play out. >> and dr. jha, as we see this major logistical effort, you see the hopes of the nation riding along with the u.p.s. and fedex drivers who are delivering these things, everybody in the country is watching videos of vaccine delivery, wheeeping while we se it. with all that effort, that support, what's the parallel impact? i don't know if that traphrase e sense. how should we expect this effort to interact or not with the effort to try to keep americans alive who are sick with this illness right now? we've got a record number of americans hospitalized right now. america's hospitals and icus stretched tonight like they never have been before.

do you see these efforts as helping one another or will there be some competition of resources between the two different tasks? >> yes, i hope there isn't any real competition of resources. there need not be. there were different sets of issues. but one contrast the other really in a very striking way, doesn't it, that we're so close to putting this pandemic behind us and, therefore, like anybody who gets infected today whether we lose in three, four weeks from that infection is somebody who could have gotten vaccinated six or eight weeks from now. it makes it come ppelling to slooifs, proteslooif sa save lives. >> people can't imagine keeping themselves as safe as possible indefinitely, knowing you have to do it with closed brackets somewhere on the horizon, we can get past this thing, you need to keep yourself and your family alive through the time when we can make this more safe, maybe

that gives people more impetus to do it. i hope so. dr. ashiish jha. sir, it's always really, really helpful to have you here. >> rachel, thank you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. t back stay with us ♪ ♪ ♪

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one last story for you tonight, do you remember the u.s. state department holiday party with 900 people on the guest list? indoor party, 900 guests inside all in one room at the state department. that party is tonight and the

good news is it was apparently a gigantic failure. good news in the covid sense is what i mean. "washington post" reporting in the last few minutes, "only a tiny fraction of the more than 900 invited guests actually showed up. secretary of state mike pompeo was due to give a speech at the event. he canceled and got somebody else to do it. that's perhaps because of out of the 900 invited guests only 70 rsvp'd yes. fewer than that actually turned up. in one nod to covid compliance, at least, santa reportedly had a mask on at the event. you can see him there. but they invited 900 people for an indoor event. everybody they invited was like, are you kidding? if you want to do something nice for the holidays, that's not it. best party fail ever. all right. that's going to do it for us tonight. thanks for being with us tonight. i will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. i know it looks like i