unlike any time in my career, one state, one state can chart the course, not just for the next four years, but for the next generation. >> this could be the most important vote you will ever cast for the rest of your life. it really could be. >> well, if it's tuesday, yes, tuesday, it means it's election day. again. the polls are open in georgia amid an escalating war between the president and the state's top republican election officials. we'll learn a lot more from these races than just who will control the senate. plus, as the president rallies his allies on capitol hill to try to stop congress from certifying the electoral college vote tomorrow, vowing he's going to fight like hell to overthrow the election. a pro-trump protest is scheduled

to get under way in d.c. later this hour. and a new lockdown in britain as the united states finds more evidence that this mutant strain of the virus is spreading here. we'll talk to the governor of colorado where officials first discovered this highly infectious variant had reached our shores. and welcome to election day part two. it's "meet the press daly. "i'm chuck todd. voters are voting in georgia and this time control of the senate is at stake. the fate of the biden agenda possibly on the line as well. and if the future of the republican party is definitely on the line. republicans are going to find out how viable the president and his conspiracy theorys about the election are ahead of tomorrow's joint session of congress to officially certify the electoral college vote. as the president tries to convince more members of his

party to try to overthrow the election, his closing message last night to republicans in georgia was that their state's election system, run by republicans, across the board, folks, is apparently part of a vast nationwide conspiracy out to get him. yet much of his base believes it. and the state's republican senate candidates have tacitly endorsed it. >> hello, georgia. by the way, there's no way we lost georgia. there's no way. rigged. that was a rigged election. i've had two elections. i won both of them. it's amazing. when you win in a landslide and they steal it and it's rigged. it's not acceptable. >> i van announcement, georgia. on january 6th, i will object to the electoral college vote. that's right. thank you. we're going to get this done.

>> the georgia race has magnified how president trump's obsession with the election results has fractured his party. the national and local levels. republican leaders like those inside the georgia secretary of state office find themselves pummeled by the president for merely doing their jobs correctly and telling people the truth. >> we can't keep on taking shots from people and people keep putting out stuff that's not true. we're going to respond. we're going to respond forcefully sometimes with the facts. and if people can't handle the facts, i'm sorry, but those are the facts. >> there's a claim that 66,248 people below the age of 18 voted. the actual number is zero. they say there's 2,423 people who voted without being registered. let's just be clear about this. you can't do it. there is no shredding of ballots going on. that's not real. no one is changing parts or pieces out of dominion voting machines. this is all easily provably

false. yet the president persists. >> what's amazing is how many highly educated united states senators somehow think that that gentleman there, mr. sterling, is lying. republican leaders in congress, meanwhile, are bracing for the spectacle of tomorrow when a number of lawmakers are going to try and fail to stop the certification of the electoral college vote. unless a special commission is set up to investigate the president's already debunked conspiracy theories. meanwhile the president is falsely pushing claims the vice president can overthrow the results when he presides over the counting of those electoral college votes. he does not have that power. there are a lot of questions about what the next 15 days are going to look like before biden is sworn in and beyond, which is why we're watching the vote in georgia so closely. we'll learn a lot in the next 24 to 48 hours. so let's go to ground zero. blayne alexander is at a polling place in atlanta. steve kornacki at the big board.

also with us someone with close ties to republicans on the hill. a former spokesperson for the republican senate campaign, matt gorman and ellison barber is in downtown d.c. where a pro-trump demonstration is getting under way. blayne, let me start with you. i've got to start with the breaking news that sort of hit about an hour ago. some concerns about threats of the election, polling place threats, is this vote counting threats? do we have any more specific? >> we do, chuck. i have a little breaking news. i spoke with the gbi spokesman who tells me there are ten counts impacted by this threat. we just got some more details from a facebook post put up on the cherokee county sheriff's office. it appears the threats came in the form of an email. an email sent to several county employees threatening several polling locations there in the county. so we do know that's what they are investigating. few other details are coming out

from the gbi. here in fulton county, i spoke with a spokesperson who tells me that every polling location around fulton county has an assigned security officer. some person who was assigned there to keep security. that's the same thing we saw back in november. to be clear, it's something they started back in november and something they're continuing today. but before this election cycle, it was not something that was typical for fulton county. it sets the scene for the type of political climate that we're in right now. those threats aside, though, and those concerns aside, i will tell you just the feeling that i've gotten from the voters here. the good news is that doesn't appear to be impacting people that i've spoken to here at this location. i will say that it's the tale of two locations. i'm here in southwest atlanta, fulton county. it's our only democratic area. the wait times have been almost nonexistent. most people have been in and out in less than five minutes. has to do with early voting. but if you go to a more republican area like where

shaquille brewster is, there's a solid line of about 30 minutes or so. certainly tells the difference in turnout patterns between the two parties, chuck. >> before i let you go, you had that interview with the secretary of state. want to play another excerpt where you were asking him sort of what his motivation was to do that press conference yesterday which we -- which we've been excerpting from quite a bit. let me play a bite of it. >> at the end of the day, what he said was not factually correct. and i want to make sure that people understand the facts. that's what gabe sterling did out there, one by one, knocking down the rumors. the numbers he had were not correct. we had two people dead people voting. that's a great example of how their numbers are so wrong. it's really sad because it's spinning people up. >> blayne, does the secretary of state at this point think, like he did before, that all of this

is likely hurting the republicans? >> that's certainly concerning and he made that point when i spoke with him yesterday. all of this is happening -- i kind of got a sense two of things from him, chuck. one, this is somebody who is frustrated, not only with this call that we've been talking about and the fallout from that but somebody who is just frustrated with what we've seen has been weeks of a constant barrage of tweets and insults from the president. so when speaking to him yesterday, i got the feeling he was responding to all of that in totality. secondly, though, yes, he does have concerns or he did when i spoke with him about what this would mean for republicans turning out which is why he said at the end why you heard gabrielgab gabrielgabe gabriel sterling say. the election is secure and you have to come out and vote. that's the strongest thing they were trying to get out there. of course, their office, but other republicans as well, that's the big question. what will this look like especially in the context of

what the president has been saying over the past few weeks. >> blaine alexander on the ground for us in georgia. blayne, thanks very much. let's go to kornacki at the big board and giving everybody an opportunity to essentially watch the results like an expert. steve, we have, because this is a runoff, because we have that ossoff/perdue race, we have a lot of almost easy markers for us to identify to quickly be able to find out as these results come in whether one side is overperforming or underperforming. take us through it. >> look, one way of looking at this is just biden in november gave democrats a blueprint to win georgia, barely, but he did get about 12,000 more votes than trump. but the first thing we saw in november is those votes for biden largely, but not entirely tracked with the votes for democrats in the senate. that was a key difference. look at the ossoff/perdue preliminary race.

perdue finished ahead of ossoff by nearly two points. an 88,000-vote margin. biden got 12,000 more votes than trump but perdue got 88,000 more votes than ossoff. if you look at that other senate seat there, the jungle primary, combine all the democratic candidates, combine all the republican candidates, it was the republicans who got nearly 50,000 more votes than the democrats. so you have that as a statewide phenomenon. the democratic senate candidates ran behind biden. there's a lot of counties. the first one is just a question of how long it takes to get the results but fulton county. the biggest one in the state where atlanta is. the atlanta suburbs. that's where you saw the biggest split. biden, 72.6%. ossoff, under 70% in fulton county. big difference between being under 70 and being a few points over it. where does ossoff finish there tonight? >> so the other thing we keep hearing is election day vote versus not election day vote.

you and i were obsessed with this during election night trying to keep people to understand the different order of the vote. if you can quickly sum up the order with which we'll see the vote count come in and by what time should we expect to hit, say, 95% of expected vote? >> well, so this is -- i'm not sure if we should expect anything. i'll tell you in november at about 4:00 in the morning, 94% of the vote statewide came in. the other 6%, and that's the 6% that put joe biden past trump and gave him the state, that came in over the next five days. now when you call around and talk to these county election officials, they think they've learned some lessons from november. they think it could be a quicker process. but one of the wild cards in georgia, this isn't florida. this isn't some of the states where it's straightforward. there are some counties when the polls close or within the first hour, you'll get most or all of the mail vote/early vote. there are -- fulton county, i

think, shortly after the polls close, i think we're expecting to get a big batch of just the mail votes in fulton county when the polls close there. but there are other counties, i've called around columbia county says very end of the night they'll release all their mail votes and all their early votes. before that just their same-day. when you get these county results, the first dwquestion t ask is, are we looking at the same-day vote? the mail vote? are we looking at a combination? because to interpret these results you have to know the answer to that and georgia, honestly, doesn't make it too easy in a lot of cases. >> no, they don't. that's why they ought to just watch us all night and stick with us. stick with you. stick with us. we'll be here. you're staying up. you've got the extra coffee. >> i'm ready to go. >> we're ready to go, right, brother? let me bring in matt gorman, a former spokesman for the nrsc

in the 2018 cycle. let me start simply with compare the feelings the republican campaigns had a week ago about where they thought this race was going to be and where they are today. >> i think you could even go further back. you can go two months. or i should say two weeks. feeling much more confident two weeks ago than they do right now. and i'll give you an example. with the georgia six special election in 2017, ossoff, that last week we felt a quiet but secure confidence going into the election day. i talked to republicans down there. they're going to win, but they concede there's a lot more unknown even just in the last two weeks, let alone since election day. >> it's obviously turning out these sort of -- the trump voters that don't always show up in the midterms, don't always show up when trump's not on the

ballot and this is the test here. what happens when trump is not on the ballot. what are you hearing on that? and what kind of turnout do they need today? i've heard the number minimum election day turnout has to be 800,000 for the republicans to feel they have a shot of this. >> the number i've heard is 900,000. they are looking at the 14th district where trump was last night and the 9th district. ruby red areas. they need to blow it out there. and they say, look, if they win, they are attributing it to blunt force. overwhelming ground game. tons of ad spending. that's what they are looking at and what they'll credit. >> what happens tonight if we do know some results and the impact on tomorrow? so i'm going to play off two scenarios for you. does tomorrow become more -- well, more chaotic or less chaotic if democrats sweep the

races? >> i think if democrats sweep the race it becomes far more chaotic. and again, you'll see -- >> why? >> does that affect -- i think you're going to see a panic because many republicans, again, two weeks ago, going into election day, much more uncertain. but if you go to november, until two weeks ago, they had a pretty good confidence they were going to win these races. their calculus will have changed in a very short time and leading into this electoral college vote, those people have not made their positions clear. especially those up next cycle. marco rubio and others will have to do some very quick thinking. >> to me, the two most interesting votes tomorrow are marco rubio and rick scott. rubio is up. rick scott is head of the nrsc. they both happen to be in florida and both represent a very lean republican. it's a lean republican state. do you think tonight's outcome will decide which way they go

tomorrow? >> they also both probably want to run for president in 2024, too. >> right. >> so i do think that will play a factor in this role. you're seeing this dividing line very clear, and the advantage here, above everybody, are the governors who can sit back and see how this plays out over the next year or two. >> the unintended consequence. i had plenty of republicans tell me today they think president trump actually hopes the republicans lose here. that he almost wants that split and vindication for his own selfish reasons, you know, it's impossible to crawl inside his head and try to read his mind. but what is the feeling inside the republican conference now about trump or are they starting to aim at each other? >> i think what they view is this is a test case. again, it's not perfect. but to your point at the top of the show, does he have the same

command of the electorate, whether he's on the ballot or not, that he did over the last four years. for better or worse. he's going to be all over the place. he's not going anywhere. cable news, rallies and the like. but with him leaving the presidency, can he hold sway, again, pro/con over those voters? it's not a perfect test case because he's not out of office yet, but it's going to give a little bit of guidance. >> i have to say, i am very curious how kelly loeffler is going to -- if she loses, does she really still go through with an objection? that's a question that i have. a lot to find out tonight before we even head to tomorrow. matt gorman, thank you, sir, for your expertise and your perspective. let me check in with ellison barber. she's right in washington, d.c., the pro-trump rally. we know a bunch of them set for tomorrow as well, starting one today. ellison, what are you seeing, and how big do we expect this to get?

>> so the majority of the events, they are expected to take place tomorrow. but you can see this event, things have already started today. the national park service has approved three different permits for first amendment rallies. some today. this one today. the majority of them tomorrow. and all those permits are approved for about 10,000 participants. but d.c. police expect the crowds to be much larger than that. they are expecting these rallies to be bigger than the similar rallies we saw in november and also in december. and because of that, d.c. police say they have asked the d.c. national guard to come and help them out, mostly with crowd control and traffic because they are expecting so many people to attend these events. everyone here, they say they've come for the same reason. they want to show their support for president trump and to protest the election results. and also make sure that the small group of republicans on capitol hill who plan to object to the electoral college vote, that they have their support as well. you talk to people here about

whether or not they'll accept joe biden and kamala harris as the president and vice president if tomorrow's electoral vote is certified as we expect it to be. most of them say, no. they say they'll continue protesting, speaking out in some form or fashion but regardless of what happens tomorrow, these people say they'll continue to be out here and we're expecting very large crowds tomorrow. some of that taking place today but tomorrow is where the majority of the rallies, the events, the most activity we're expecting. chuck? >> ellison, do we have any idea of ramped up security around the capitol? i mean, i know these events and the mayors talked about downtown, d.c., but what people may not realize is the capitol is not in downtown d.c. that may be where the white house is and where the president may be. so are -- besides the national guard, is there going to be any extra security for where the action actually is taking place? >> yesterday when they were giving a situational update on this with the mayor of d.c. and

the chief of police and park police, they were holding back on some information in terms of all of their plans logistically as it relates to security. they did talk about having a lot of focus on areas where the protests have happened before in the past, places like freedom plaza where we are now, as well as over on black lives matter plaza. we do also know there's going to be events, rallies taking place and there will be some activity. there are permits. we expect there will be activity on capitol hill. in terms of all the details of how they'll handle that, not getting a ton of it, but certainly something d.c. police, fbi, everybody has been looped in and are paying attention to, chuck. >> ellison barber, you stay safe out there as well. thanks very much. be sure to keep it here on msnbc. we've got special coverage of the georgia runoffs later today. nicolle at 4:00. ari at 6:00. at 6:30, just before polls close, brian williams and rachel maddow will pick up the

coverage. and kornacki will break down the vote county by county. plus joy rooed and nicolle wallace. it all starts at 4:00 here on msnbc. after the president and his supporters in congress make a futile play to overthrow a free and fair election, how do we get our democracy back on track? all of the former living defense secretaries are sounding the alarm over the president's behavior. i'll talk with one of them coming up. than rheumatoid arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz... a pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis when methotrexate has not helped enough. xeljanz can help relieve joint pain and swelling, stiffness, and helps stop further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections. before and during treatment, your doctor should check for infections, like tb and do blood tests. tell your doctor if you've had hepatitis b or c, have flu-like symptoms, or are prone to infections. serious, sometimes fatal infections,

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and you've got to swamp them because everything is so crooked around. not here. they're saying, oh, he's complaining about georgia. no, i'm complaining about eight different states. and i think we're going to win them all because we have to go and we have to go all the way and that's what's happening. and you watch what happens over the next couple of weeks. >> i have to remind folks sometimes that was the president of the united states of america

talking that way, not a banana republic leader. he made it clear he's fixated on what he says -- he incorrectly says will happen in the next few weeks. meme, so meme. meanwhile, some democrats are trying to look into the next few years. joined now by senator jeff merkley, a democrat from oregon, who is beginning his second term in the senate. senator merkley, it is -- thank you for coming on. let me start with what we should be looking for tomorrow. what do you expect, and do you think anything that happens in georgia tonight could turn the temperature down tomorrow? >> well, let's start with what we're expecting tomorrow is that since the states will go in alphabetical order in terms of examining the electors who have been certified by their

secretary of state, we'll probably see arizona be the first test. and we don't know if the senators have decided -- the republican senators have decided if they're going to contest all six states or pick out a couple of them. perhaps georgia, arizona, so forth. but let's say arizona is the first. well, when they object, just one senator objects, and now we anticipate several will as indicated by the letter that cruz read. then we'll find ourselves in that debate in the senate and there are only two standards under the law for rejecting a slate of electors. one standard is that the electors were not properly certified under state authority, and the second is if their votes are not properly represented in the letter being delivered to congress. that's it. it isn't about whether or not you properly accounted for absentee ballots or someone saw shredding or you have doubts about whether there should be an additional investigation.

that's not what the law says. so we're going to have, i think, what is going to be a very political discussion with the senators who are saying we should reject these electors. not founding their argument on the law, but on their desire to essentially say congress should have a role in throwing out the votes we don't like which is obviously a very different vision of how to elect a president and totally out of sync with the constitution. totally out of sync with the law established. >> have you had any -- have you made an attempt to talk with some of these republicans and try to talk them out of it? >> so the conversations -- they've been holding their conversations very close to their vest. i think they feel, and it's reflected in a whole series of discussions, absolutely constrained by the trump base. that they have a base that is so

significant in their future elections that they cannot offend it. and that base is constantly seeing what trump describes as the trump media. the social media, the cable news networks, the emails, the talk radio stations. and that they cannot get out of sync with that base. and they're struggling with how to square that with what they know is their proper role under the law and under the constitution. >> glad you quoted the president there from last night. every once in a while he says something very accurate. and he did, no, no, not social media, trump media or that was from the phone call, the trump media. that's a better descriptor of whether it's the bongino garbage or newsmax business we deal with. you are one of the leading advocates of abolishing the electoral college. do you think right now -- you have an entire republican party from leadership structure on the

top down who now looks at the 7 million vote gap and thinks, oh, my god, we can't ever give up the electoral college. it's our only path to the presidency. how does this happen right now in this divided era? >> yeah, we certainly are not going to see republicans championing getting rid of the electoral college. their assessment is this isn't in their political favor. the same reason they support gerrymandering and voter suppression and dark money. it's all about political power. so the only real path to abolishing the electoral college is use the constitution as written which is states can decide how to allocate their votes. if enough states join a compact, that's the only way to get there. so my constitutional amendment has no chance, but i thought it was proper to lay it out as a point of discussion, even though we're not going to get two-thirds in each chamber to

say that should happen. >> after we get through tomorrow, what more -- what other -- i'll ask you a question that i get asked all the time. sometimes from family members and friends. after tomorrow, are there any other speed bumps, hurdles left? is there any way that president trump can do more things to sort of, you know, cause uncertainty? >> i think that the path in terms of his potential to be able to take a second term is done after tomorrow. can he still create many problems? yes. there are regulations that are still being crafted that he will try to implement the last minute. we're certainly worried about military hostilities that might occur between now and the 20th. who knows what an angry, illogical president might do

with the remaining days in power. so we hope that he'll instead retire to florida and spend his last few days down there nurturing his wounded ego rather than creating more problems for citizens of the united states. >> plenty former new yorkers, retire to florida and they can run for president of condo association boards. senator jeff merkley, democrat from oregon, thank you for sharing your perspective with us. thank you, sir. up next -- the covid surge in the country's second largest city is forcing doctors and nurses to make new life and death decisions. we'll have the latest on the pandemic. and as we go to break, a live look at dallas, georgia. voters cast their ballots in the races that could shift the balance of power in the senate. we'll be right back.

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america's second largest city. and with vaccine rollouts still proceeding at an alarmingly slow pace, with only 4.5 million americans injected so far, the fda is opposing dr. moncef slaoui's suggestion of having the moderna vaccine doses in order to vaccinate more people. the fda says that would not be rooted in the science and would run a risk to public health. they're not ruling out the idea but they'd like to have scientific research back up the theory. in the uk, boris johnson ordered a new national lockdown. it's the strictest restrictions on the -- in the country since march. rapid spread of the virus in the uk is largely being attributed to this mutated strain that may be up to 70% more transmissible. though it is not believed to be more deadly. governor andrew cuomo announced the uk variant has been found in upstate new york. so far four states have confirmed this more contagious

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in our mission to defend. cybereason. end cyber attacks. from endpoints to everywhere. welcome back. the vaccine rollout has been plagued by confusion, shortages and a lack of leadership from the federal government. leaving states with the burden of figuring out how to get the vaccine into the hands of americans. feels like deja vu if you recall the testing debacle last spring. in colorado, 1 of 4 states that's confirmed cases of this more transmissible virus strain, only 112,000 vaccines have been administered. that's less than half of what the state has received. joining me is the governor of colorado, democrat jared polis. good to see you. let me start with the basic question. walk me through your vaccine

rollout plan and explain what's working and what you think needs to work better. >> we're now in our second week of administering to any colorado aged 70 and up but it , but tha take several weeks. but it's really exciting to me, chuck, every day, when i get the numbers on thousands we were -- tens of thousands of coloradans over 70 who are vaccinated. that's after the phase where we vaccinate the people that work in covid wards and medical wards. that's largely done in colorado but we don't want to just focus on that. and that's why last week we expanded to 70 and up. what's going well? the reception so far among people age 70 and up is terrific. in fact, a lot of people saying why is my appointment three weeks out? i want it tomorrow. the erratic nature of the supply. we'll get half the numbers one

week. more the next. and very little notice, chuck. very little notice. we might have the order placed in a different number shows up and it's really hard to plan to make sure every vaccine is put in somebody's arm right away when we don't really know the numbers until we get them. >> i was just going to say. how are you handling the second dose issue? are you rolling the dice and hoping that you get the second doses in time from the federal government? or are you hold something doses back yourself? >> so we're -- so far, that piece seems to be going well. the federal government has a very cautious approach to that. some might say too cautious in that there's a mirror dose for every dose administered that's sent at the appropriate time. so we're just starting. i think all the states are, second doses, but some of the very first people. this is really the first second dose week. we don't really count those in our new totals. those are automatically sent. they're given to the same people

who got it. the federal government has a cautious, thoughtful approach on that. i'm confident nearly every second dose is happening unless the patient just simply isn't to be found. >> how -- i want to go to the finding of this new strain of the virus. you guys had a confirmed instance in colorado. have your scientific advisers explained to you how well are you surveilling -- how well is there virus surveillance? i imagine not every person who has tested or hospitalized do we look at the strain of virus they had or do we. i mean, we found one. how do we know it's one? you get my point? what are your scientific advisers telling you? >> so we have several providers that we use for testing. we do our state lab. maybe one-third of the tests in the state through there. and we use several other private labs that fill out the rest of the roster for the majority of tests. most of those private partners

don't yet and are not -- don't have the capability and are not doing the screening but we are in the state lab doing the initial screen. somewhere around 2one-third of the tests we're doing the initial screen on. it's not definitive. it then says likely positives on the variant to do the more details analysis which they do at the state lab. this is not the most widespread variant in our state. it would be popping up a lot more. we have some other possible cases of the variant that are going into the more rigorous analysis, but our screening is sufficient to find out if this is a widespread variant. we're doing the initial screening on more than a quarter of the tests done in our state. >> you have had cases go down a bit. are you nervous about a holiday surge? do you feel -- are you worried that curve was a false positive, if you will, to borrow language we've all gotten used to? >> well, look, i mean, what we're watching with great worry what's happening in many other

states in the country. the nation has more cases than ever, more deaths than ever. last week was the most deadly week of the virus. the hopeful side of me thinks our region got hit more recently. the upper midwest coming down through colorado, the dakotas, wyoming. we peaked about a month ago. is the second peak possible? it absolutely is. and, of course, we're watching what's going on in california, arizona and many of our neighboring states that seem to have an additional peak going on right now. >> governor jared polis, democrat of colorado, it's nice to hear some positive news, right? your vaccine distribution is working. starting to ramp up. let's hope we can have a couple of weeks in a row of good news. governor polis, thanks for coming on. >> happy new year, chuck. >> you got it. happy new year to you. up ahead -- ten former defense secretaries united ed behind a single message. the presidential election is over. how about the fact they all felt

the need to write that? chuck hagel joins me next. earlier i said senator merkley was entering a second term in the senate. it's the beginning of his third term. our mistake there. we'll be right back. feeling sluggish or weighed down?

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unprecedented move. they signed on to a joint op-ed in "the washington post" and issued a warning about the dangers of military involvement in the election and they wrote in part, the time for questioning the results is past. the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes as of the electoral college votes as prescribed in the constitution has arrived. at senior defense department leaders have noted, there is no role for the u.s. military in determining the outcome of the election. joining me now is one of the authors of the op-ed, chuck hagel, a former republican senator from nebraska. i have to say, the fact this op-ed had to be written, signed by somebody -- by people who president trump fired, like mark esper, dick cheney, yourself, you name it, whatever you want to pick on the spectrum of pin

it on politics, there you were, did you ever imagine you would have to write an op-ed like that? >> chuck, no. i never did and i don't think my colleagues did either. this is a dangerous time. when we continually hear this irresponsible, erratic conversation about imposing military law, enacting the insurrection act to reverse the election results, the latest tape coming out, what we have coming up tomorrow in the congress, to decertify what the electors certified, that the election was fair and square and it was won by joe biden, all of that -- the environment, the words added to the concern, i think we all did, and i think we all felt it was important to write that, not just the former secretaries of defense, but as citizens of this country.

i have great confidence in our military and leadship, but in the end i think it was the right thing to do. >> you know, it's interesting, this fear had been through the halls of the pentagon and general milley went to great lengths to answer a question from aid congressional democrat and he went on the record to make sure it was clear as the chief military officer in this country that he did not see a role did his declaration not -- was it strong enough or was it the threat that michael flynn was talking about that made you guys act? >> well, it wasn't a matter of milley's statement not strong enough, it was very strong, but we felt that to give him backing, to give him support. ten former living secretaries of defense, who all come from different political perspectives, serve different kinds of electives, different

parties, it was important to give him that support and to give the military professionals that support from all of us. again, i think the general flynn comments, the white house conversations, obviously, that have been noted in the press about using the insurrection act, imposing military law to reverse the elections to conduct new elections, i mean, that's just crazy. it's erratic. it undermines the democratic fundamentals, values of our country and unsettles this country, let alone with our allies and adversaries think about what's happening in this country. but when you destroy the confidence of this system and our country and this process, that's very dangerous. >> let me ask you to put your former republican hat on or former republican senator hat on. i'm not going to ask you which party -- last time we talked you said you're still a republican. you still feel like a republican. do you still feel that way? >> well, i'm a republican in name only, chuck. i don't know what that means

anymore. it's not the republican party that i joined. the republican party has lost its way. it's no longer a broad divers ive party with an interest, with a focus, north star, fiscal responsibility, free trade, so on and so on. i don't know who we are. that's going to be a tough thing that the republicans have to deal with the next two to four years. >> i mean, is is it too alarmist to say, are we staring at a wig moment, the wig party? are we seeing what happened to the wigs in the 1850s? are we seeing the same thing with this current version of the republican party? >> it could be. i think it's too early to predict anything. who are the new leaders of the party? what is their message? what's their record? what should the republican party stand for? i think all those are unanswered questions and you have at least half a dozen republican senators that want to get the republican nomination for president 2024.

you've got some of president trump's own cabinet members, former cabinet members that want the nomination. it's going to be a brutal fight inside the party and it's going to put mitch mcconnell and the republican leadership and the congress in a very difficult spot. >> former senator chuck hagel, former defense secretary chuck hagel, you said it, still a republican but you're waiting to see what's left of the party. i think you're not alone in that question as well. it's good to see you, sir. happy new year. >> thanks, chuck. happy new year. thank you all for being with us this hour. be sure to join us tomorrow as we bring you special coverage of the electoral coverage. stephanie ruhle starts things off, then join andrea, katy tur and myself at 2:00 p.m. on msnbc and we'll take you what could be

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good afternoon. i'm katy tur. it's 11:00 a.m. out west and 2:00 p.m. in the east. it's not hyperbole to say the next 48 hours will shape the political future of this country for years to come. today is finally election day, the georgia runoffs. both sides are calling the moment urgent. kelly loeffler and david perdue echoing the president's false claims of fraud to try to appeal to his voters while warnock and ossoff are telling voters the only way to avoid gridlock and get the help they need is if democrats control washington. >> we need to get economic relief to the people. we need to pass $2,000 stimulus checks for the people. we need to surge vaccine