in the last hour. thank you for doing that so artfully. it was very scary stuff. >> really wild set of facts when you put yourself in the shoes of the person who is on that receiving end of those texts. >> yeah, and i mean, you and i know, you know, we cover lots of people who get lots of totally illegal threats in the course of political life as journalist. we've experienced some of that ourselves. this being paired with the mass violence as the capitol was being overrun, it is another level of terror. the fact that this is 20 days ago and we're like, oh, that's the past. we're moving on. there doesn't need to be any accountability for that. i feel like my hair is on fire about this story. >> great. i'm going to go watch you. >> thank you. appreciated. and thanks to you at home. we have a lot to get to including my interview with the brand new chairman of the democratic party. one of the perks of being elected president is that your party lets you basically pick who you want to lead your party.

your national party while you are in office. joe biden has made his choice to lead the democratic party. he has chosen jamie harrison as the new chair of the party. jamie harrison will join us for an interview. jamie harrison has been a friend of the show, incredibly kind to me in my coverage of south carolina politics. helping me cover it in the past. he's -- i'll tell you my personal opinion. i think he is a mensch. i think he is so intelligent. i'm really looking forward to hearing from him in terms of how he views that job. that interview is coming up. in the last hour on msnbc, on all in with chris hayes, we did have some remarkable news from one of the members of congress in the leadership among the house democrats. congressman hakeem jeffries of new york telling chris on msnbc

that he is the person described as congressman-1 in a really quite scary court document just unsealed today in the southern district of new york. this is a federal criminal complaint. charges a 35-year-old man from california with threatening, not just threatening congressman hakeem jeffries by threatening him by threatening to physically harm his family. trying to intimidate and cow congressman jeffries by threatening to kill his family members in new york. the fbi prosecutors say the same man also in similar ways targeted the family of a prominent journalist as well. "the new york times" is reporting the journalist in question is george stephanopoulos from abc news. according to this criminal complaint, the man arrested and charmed send these threatening messages to the family of jeffries and stephanopoulos because he was dissatisfied with the results of the 2020 election and subsequent statements about the election made by the congressman and the journalist.

quote, rather than peaceably disagree, the defendant robert lemke threatened to harm those individuals families demanding they retract their statements. congressman jeffries moments ago on "all in" described those threats. >> what was chilling is that this individual said, stop telling lies. biden did not win. he will not be president. so he was radicalized by the big lie that donald trump told, and that has been supported by so many republicans in the house and the senate. >> congressman jeffries, as i said, identified himself as congressman-1, cited in this criminal complaint. and he is describing there what this criminal complaint alleges, what it indicates about how this man who threatened his family

was radicalized. radicalized by president trump and the republicans' big lie the election was not really won by president biden and somehow president trump is still going to be president. but the actual nature of the actions this man took, the ways he decided the act, to attack the government, and to attack the press in response to that lie is very chilling. in the explain, this is an affidavit from an fbi special agent who recounts the threat that this man made to congressman jeffries' brother, to his family. listen to this. quote, on or about january 11th, the office of congressman 1 informed the fbi that on or about january 6th, the day of the capitol attack, jeffries'

brother had received the following text messages from the defendant's phone which also included a picture of a home in the same neighborhood where congressman jeffries' brother lived. according to the text messages sent to the congressman's brother, the text message said, quote, your brother is putting your entire family at risk with his lies. and other words we are armed and nearby your house. you had better have a word from him. we are not far from his house either. already spoke to jeffries' son and we know where his kids are. your words have consequences. stop telling lies. biden did not win. he will not be president. we are not white supremacists. most of us are active or retired law enforcement or military. you are putting your family at risk. we have armed members near your home. dolt risk their safety with your words and lies. again, accompanying that text message is a picture of a home, in the same neighborhood, nearby to where congressman jeffries' brother lives.

so he's receiving these messages and getting a picture of one of his neighbors' houses. this is the fbi special agent in this affidavit. the basis of a criminal complaint charging robert lemke of california with federal communications. on january 6th, hakeem jeffries' sister-in-law exchanged the following messages with the lemke phone. quote, calm your husband down. victim two. congressman's sister-in-law. who is this? your number is only coming up. not your name. lemke phone. quote, does that matter, we saw on the hidden camera. he was quite stirred up. you need to have him talk to congressman jeffries. thanks. on the hidden camera? the complaint then goes on to discuss the same defendants' threats to a journalist who is not named in the complaint. but according to the new york times, it is george stephanopoulos. we have not confirmed that independently but that is what the "times" is reporting.

back to the complaint. also on or about january 6th, while the capitol attack is happening, while in the bronx, new york, a relative of journalist 1 received the following message from the lemke phone. journalist one, george stephanopoulos' words are putting you and your family at risk. thousands of us are active law enforcement and military. that's how we do it. the complaint goes on to quote what is believed to be the facebook page. the lemke facebook account says, folks, be ready for war. trump has refused to cede. evidence shows fraud occurred and the supreme court cases will be successful. trump will prevail. faith, my fellow republicans. do not give up. keep an eye out for a variety of protests. add that "the new york times" is reporting that a spokesperson for the sheriff's department in northern california and the

united states air force which this gentleman claims to have been, worked at both, he claims to be a u.s. air force veteran, claims to be an employee of the alameda county sheriff's department. both alameda and the air force say they have no record of him having worked or served in either of those places but that is how he represents himself. that is his threat. we are active or retired law enforcement and military. that's how we do it. i think the implication there is not only do we have access to firearms and we have access to sort of tactical knowledge that we would need in order to kill you or your family members, but we would get away with it. i think that's the implication there. nevertheless, these threatening text messages to congressman jeffries' family and allegedly george stephanopoulos' family, i know where your kids are, we're exmilitary and law enforcement. we have hidden cameras in your

home. we're watching you now. we're outside with guns and we're going to kill you unless your congressman relative, your journalist relative, starts saying what we want them to. this is also what was happening in our country on january 6th from the president's supporters. this is the other thing trump supporters were doing that day. i mean, a bunch of ways to try to use force to overthrow the government. one is what we saw on the capitol steps, the rotunda and all the places the trump mob got into. but another one is threatening to kill the family members of congress as a means of trying to force that member of congress to do what you want. and the further we get from the attack on the capitol, the more details we learn, the more criminal cases are brought against people who are involved, honestly, the sort of heavier that day becomes.

it may be that members of congress and the republican party and senators and the republican party think january 6th is now ancient history and we should move past and it there doesn't need to be any consequences. but as more people get arrested, as we get to read more criminal complaints and indictments, the weight of what happened there, what was organized there, is getting heavier and heavier. you will recall, for example, the case of the 22-year-old woman from pennsylvania charged with having some role in stealing a laptop or some other computer equipment from house speaker nancy pelosi's office during the capitol riot. the fbi affidavit filed in her case, it included this almost unbelievable allegation that she had a plan to provide the laptop to someone she thought would be able to give to it russian intelligence. nancy pelosi's laptop. nancy pelosi's hard drives. well, last week after her court appointed defense counsel admitted that she was part of the crowd that violently attacked the capitol on january 6th, we here this show covered

the almost equally unbelievable fact same defendant was then released into her mother's custody. not kept in jail. this week, prosecutors are back in court seeking new restrictions potentially on her release because they say they've just recently discovered that since she has been out, she has tried to destroy evidence and encouraged other people to do the same. from the hearing today, quote, the prosecutor says we have some additional concerns about her use of the computer and the internet to destroy evidence. and in charge of people to do the same. we were aware that she was deleting her own online accounts and possibly switching devices. that was in both the original explain and the amendment of complaint statement of facts. what we learned recently is that we think she may be telling, we have indications she was instructing other people to delete messages as well. today prosecutors told the judge about a specific instance of

that defendant instructing an associate to delete messages. the judge thereafter decided that this defendant will no longer have internet access. that's a changed condition of her release. the defendant claims her social media account has been hacked by a disgruntled ex-boyfriend and that explains all of it. it is not going well. and what may be worse and more unnerving, the laptop in this case, the computer equipment apparently stolen from nancy pelosi's office, pelosi's office does say they had a laptop or some computer equipment stolen during the capitol attack. that computer equipment as far as we can tell has not been recovered. whether it was a laptop or hard drives or some other computer components, whatever was stolen from pelosi's office while a witness told investigators that this defendant planned to give to it russian intelligence, law enforcement, whether or not that has ever happened, law enforcement apparently has never

been able to recover the computer or the computer equipment stolen from pelosi. so where is it? and why is this person being released to the custody of her mother, especially if she's already broken the conditions of her release? meanwhile, the acting u.s. attorney in d.c. who is apparently in charge of the investigation into the capitol attack is saying that there could be seditious conspiracy charges brought against some of the rioters as soon as next week. he said today that they're closely looking at evidence of seditious charges and he expects they will bear fruit very soon. also, charges have now been brought and it appears this is the first time this has happened. charges have been brought against someone who spoke at one of the rallies. this guy was one of the speakers at a stop the steal rally the day before january 5th. he was at the capitol on january 6th. he is charged with what he did there. the fbi accompanying the charges described his speech the day

before urging people in the crowd to fight. telling them it was a revolution. clearly prosecutors think that is at the very least a context for the federal charges he is now facing. so that's where we're at. they are starting to arrest the people who spoke at rallies before the capitol attack. the question is whether anybody will be charged for incitement or some other part of rallies. the issue of incitement is that the center of president trump's impeachment trial are the people who incited this thing from the dais with a microphone in their hand culpable for what the mob did after they were so inspired by those speakers. if they are, that gets to us criminal charges against multiple public officials who spoke at those rallies. when that u.s. attorney in d.c. announced earlier this month that he had set up a strike force to consider potential sedition charges. that's a 20-year felony.

when he said there would be a task force set up in the u.s. attorney general's office to look at sedition as a charge category for people who are implicated. when he announced that, he said among the prosecutors he was tapping to do that work are prosecutors with national security backgrounds but also prosecutors with public corruption backgrounds. public corruption prosecutors. people used to prosecuting public officials for doing bad things while in office. that who is looking at the sedition charges in d.c. and while we wait to see what kind of further charges are in store, meanwhile the national guard will stay at the capitol for a while yet. i'll tell you personally, when i went up to the capitol yesterday to interview the new majority leader chuck schumer in the senate, i mean, i've been covering this. i knew about the military

presence at the capitol grounds. but it was remarkable to see. it was quite unusual. we literally had to snake through armored personnel carriers set up as barriers to do this interview. with the majority leader, it is a very different feeling than anything that i've been used to in all the years i've done this job. the national guardsmen and women who are part of that deployment, it is not an easy deployment. they are out there under austere conditions. they haven't sorted everything out, in terms of getting they will well fed and bathroom breaks and a place to wash and change their clothes. the national guard at the capitol, that deployment will be extended at least 5,000 troops will stay through march. and that is not because it is convenient and cheap to have that many national guardsmen in d.c.

it is because the threats remain from the president's supporters. from president trump's supporters. around this new aspect of their conspiracy theory where they're saying, oh, maybe the biden inauguration wasn't real. it was some sort of deep state mirage. and the real inauguration is the old date from the constitution before they changed it. so donald trump, the real inauguration will be on march 4th. and donald trump is secretly still president. and that's when the qanon storm -- okay. a new conspiracy theory that maybe the next thing they're going to do should be in the first week of march. but even before then, the impeachment trial will be starting in a couple of weeks. and there is reportedly enough threat and noise from violent trump supporters online that the impeachment trial itself might yet be the occasion for them to mount further attacks on the government and on members of congress. either as a group or individually one by one.

so the guard is staying. the armed national guard, the deployment of thousands of armed u.s. troops will extend well into march. because the supporters of the former president may be mounting more armed attacks on the government and we need to be prepared for it. that news comes today as the u.s. capitol police issued a remarkable apology today for their failings as a police department on january 6th. the new acting chief of capitol police, the last one resigned, said the department knew there was strong potential for violence. they recognized that the target of the violence was congress. nevertheless, they failed to take adequate measures to prepare. the chief of the capitol police today apologizing for not having been able to protect the capitol. a stark thing. this full-on apology. she said they did prepare but

not nearly enough for the scale and the violence of the threat posed by president trump's supporters after they had been egged on by the president to come to the capitol. as we continue to learn more and more about the january 6th attack, how serious it was, how dangerous it was, as more people are charged, as people potentially face sedition, or seditious charges, the president continues to be enough of national guard troops with m-4 rifles will stay in washington posted at the u.s. capitol for weeks to come. all of that, what is now becoming quite perfectly clear is that the republican party really doesn't care. i mean, for all the little people that's we got from senate republican leader mitch mcconnell that he was open to the idea of convicting president trump for what he described as president trump's culpability, opining from the senate floor

that the rioters were fed lies by the former president, quietly telling lots of reporters that he was quite appalled and ready to make a clean break. and he was open to convicting the president, barring him from office for life, mitch mcconnell voted with 44 other republican senators that there should not even be an impeachment trial in this case. only five republicans said the trial should go ahead. you will recall that it was mitch mcconnell who would not allow an impeachment trial to start until donald trump left office. it was his decision, and his decision alone. right? chuck schumer that, hey, mr. mcconnell, if you and i agreed that the senate can be brought back to start the trial, that's all it requires. we can just agree, bring back the senate, start the trial now. mitch mcconnell said no. i will not allow the trial to start until donald trump is no longer president. today he voted that because donald trump is no longer president, there cannot be a trial.

so 45 republican senators said today that there shouldn't even be a trial for this. forget it. yeah. they stormed the capitol and tried to kill the vice president and the speaker of the house and probably lots of us. and they stormed the senate chamber and went through all of our desks and had guns and tasers and bats and ransacked the place and thought that would be the way that they would take control of the government while threatening to kill all of us. but you know what? it was nearly three weeks ago. 45 republican senators voted that today. and that is technically meaningless. it has no implication directly in terms of what will happen at the senate impeachment trial of former president donald trump. the trial will go ahead. there have been four senate impeachment trials of u.s. presidents in u.s. history. two of them are for donald

trump. today all senators took their role for what amounts to jurors in next month's trial. it was administered by patrick leahy. he is the president pro tem of the senate. the senior senator and the senate majority. he is 80 years old, the longest serving in his role as president pro tem, he will be the one who presides procedurally over the trial i should note we did have a bit of a scare this evening when we received word that senator leahy had been taken to the hospital at the recommendation of the capitol physician after reported not feeling well at his office. we're now told that he is already out of the hospital and at home. he's had a thorough examination. he got some test results back. they said he is looking forward to getting back to work, potentially as soon as tomorrow. so again, a scare in terms of senator leahy tonight but we send the senator best wishes for a speedy recovery and hope it is nothing serious.

as far as the trial that senator leahy will preside over next month, republicans don't think there should be a trial. they believe the president should not have been tried while he was still in office. now that he's not in office, he can't be tried. so if you mount a violent attack on the u.s. government, including your supporters seemingly being bent on trying to kill the vice president and members of house and senate, depending on the timing, it might be okay. they are really cool with this being what their party does right now. it is almost impossible to believe that that is where they are. and that really is where they are. tonight cnn reporting that one of the new members of the house, marjorie taylor greene, as recently as 2019, was publicly advocating for the execution of prominent democrats in this country, including nancy pelosi who she suggested should get a bullet in the head. no sign whatsoever that will have any impact on miss greene's

standing in the republican party or in congress, because that's not weird for the republican party anymore. and often when a party gets voted out of power, like the republicans just were, they no longer hold the white house or the house or the senate. often, when that happens, in normal politics, you see all this reporting, all the headlines about oh, the party in disarray. this is a very particular and peculiar kind of disarray. this is what appears to be a political party but they're not dealing with like, how do we regroup and address our internal differences and come back to the american people with a newly credible case that we should be governing. no, they are dealing with what we would usually think of as a fringe violent extremist criminal movement. but it is right at the heart of what they are offering the country and they are really taking great pains to make sure that the leader who drove them fastest and hardest in direction can run as their standard bearer

in 2024. they like the way he did it this time? that's more than a party in disarray. that's something where it is very hard to have a stable democracy based on a two-party system if that's one of the two parties. if that's their contention. what do we do about our members who bring guns on to the floor and saying our speaker should have a bullet in the head and what do we do about a president who just mounted an attack on the capitol? should we just make sure his followers are charged and make sure he come back and run for president in 2024? i mean, this is not politics per se. this is a question about the viability of democracy if that's one. two parties in this country. meanwhile, there is another major party in this country. and on the other side, we've now got democrats in control of the house and the senate and the white house. and what they are contending with right now is they have all this policy they would like to get done.

they have a very different challenge to their hands. and we're now seeing within the past 48 hours, their idea for how they're going to try to get stuff done for the country. the contrast between what the two parties are dealing with internally, it is not like night and day. it like earth and mars. but the democrats have their own challenges and they are how to pass the legislative agenda. last night in our interview with chuck schumer, he made news when he said democrats may have a way to pass the covid relief bill and also president biden's infrastructure bill, just with 50 votes. so even if the republicans decide they want to filibuster everything, those two biggest pieces of legislation that they want to do, they may have figured out a way to do them just with democratic votes. the number two democrat in the senate dick durbin saying today they may have found a way to pass a new minimum wage. a $15 minimum wage just with 50 democratic votes, plus the vice president. even if all republicans vote against it and republicans filibuster and do everything

else to stop it. bill and an infrastructure bill and a $15 minimum wage with republicans not being able to stop with it the filibuster, that would be quite a series of legislative accomplishments for the entire term, let alone the first month of the term. biblical drama right now really playing with existential stuff in terms of this country and who they are and what they're offering. and their confidence level and comfort level with violence against democracy being what they are offering this country as their option. all right? and while the republicans are doing that, democrats are coming up with all the ways they can to try to move all of the substantive policy thing they want to do without the republicans. that's what is happening in congress. and president biden is moving forward with a ton of executive actions because he can do that

without engaging congress at all. eliminating the zero tolerance policy that led to kids being separated from their parents at the southern border. we're still waiting to hear what the administration's plan will be to reunite all those remaining kids with their families. they said they would set up a task force to get it double. the policy today eliminated at the stroke of a pen by president biden. president biden today issuing multiple executive orders on racial equity. building racial equity into everything the federal government does. he made announcements today about vaccines including his administration believes it has found a way to get 300 million americans vaccinated by the end of the summer. we'll be talking more about that in detail later in the show. that's a very big deal if they can pull it off. big picture though, we are at this place right now where we are supposedly a two-party, two major party democracy. that's been the source of stability and continuity and democracy.

now we are clearly at this place where the two parties have totally different tasks at hand. and on the republican side, it is some scary and kind of unnerving stuff about whether or not they are a party that endorses violence and whether they are a party that still believes that democracy and elections are the way that we decide things as a country. on the democratic side, they're just trying to govern. they're trying to figure out how to get something done without having to deal with that dumpster fire on the other side. how can that be your governing partner? however much we tend to treat politics as a horse race, a numbers game in terms of how many seats on each side, how much elections have consequences based on how many people are on each committee.

once the consequences are that you are in control of both houses of congress and the white house, the thing that is most key to your political success is to show whether you can do good things for the country with your power. whether you can get stuff double. the republican party is having a very different crisis. the democratic party is trying to figure out how to deliver. and that makes the task of the democratic party totally different than what is happening on the other side. it makes it sort of earnest and civic right now. but also incredibly important as to whether or not we'll have a republican in the future. because on the republican party, that's not the way they are approaching the nation's problems right now. the democrats have to prove they can do this or contend with the dumpster fire over there with what the united states has to choose from with the two options. an incredible situation we're in. as i said, the man who joe biden has just chosen to run the democratic party, he has a deep and complex and urgent task ahead of him. he joins us live for the interview, next. these folks, they don't have time to go to the post office

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when a new president is elected, it is not written down as black letter law, but by the newly elected president gets to choose who he or she would like to lead the president's party. well, president joe biden has made his choice. joining us now for the interview is the brand new chairman of the democratic party. jamie harrison.

mr. harrison, great to see you. congratulations on this new gig. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate it. >> so tell me in your open words what you believe your mission is, your sort of vision statement for what you warm to do at the helm of the democratic party for these first couple years that president biden is in office. >> well, rachel, you know, president biden's mission is to enact policy, to really help address the issues people work on on a day-to-day basis. my job as the chair of the democratic party is to make sure we take his successes, the promises he has made, that we make sure the folks down in small towns, in the cities, on dirt roads, understand those are promises that are kept. it is also my mission to make sure that democrats build back better, and we have a strengthened party, in all 50 states, in our territories, that

we can give him more help in terms of the house, the senate, in governor's mansions and state legislatures across the country. so i'm looking forward to doing that. and we're already getting to work. i had calls into ohio today, into arkansas because of sarah huckabee sanders said she is running for governor. talk about republicans in disarray, that's just one hot mess. and we are not going to allow that to happen. we are going to fight everywhere, rachel. and i'm excited about that prospect. >> one of the reasons i wanted to talk to you right now is because i feel like there is an imbalance in the national conversation. because of the way president trump's term ended, because of the attack on the u.s. government mounted by his supporters, i feel like the whole government is thinking about trumpism as a movement, thinking about trump supporters and whether they fit into the republican party and the republican party is having some

very weird discussions and decisions about how they want to court even the most extreme supporters of the president. so we think about the relationship between the politicians and the republican party, and the movement of people that supports them. almost i think compulsively now because we've seen the danger that they may present when led in ways that the president, the former president has led them. on the other side of things, we very, very rarely talk about people who voted for joe biden and kamala harris, people who voted for a democratic controlled senate, people who voted for a democratic controlled house again as a movement. as a group of people who need to be courted, who are potentially a major force in politics, depending on how they are led and how they want to channel their energies, and that may ultimately determine the success of whether president biden can get done what he wants and leader schumer can get done what he wants and speaker pelosi can get done what they want. i feel like the democratic party is millions of people in the country.

not just the people in washington. we don't talk about them that way very much. >> and we have to start talking about them in that way, rachel. you know, ultimately, you have a lot of folks in this country who just want to be seen. who want to be heard. and they want to be valued. they want a government that will work for them. what i'm going to encourage folks to do. look past the d and the r and just ask the question. who is fighting for me? for my family? who is fighting for my community? and right now you don't see that from the other side of the aisle. they're too busy fighting amongst themselves. and that's the big question. joe biden understands we're facing four big disasters right now in this country. covid which you know, many of us have been impacted by. the economy is creating, so many folks are wondering how to make ends meet, whether or not they have a roof over their heads. the climate change that is bearing down on this country,

and the racial inequities and injustices that have plagued this nation from its inception. those are the things that joe biden has that, i will move on them on behalf of the american people. those are the promises that are made. and it is important for us to galvanize these people to understand, they have power to really move this country forward. and those folks in washington, d.c. who don't want to do that, the kevin mccarthys of the world who are blaming the sedition of that mob on the american people. they need to be replaced. and rachel, i see it as my job to help motivate and move that ball forward. there is no place for people like rand paul who criticized joe biden for going after white supremacy. that has no place in this country right now. so if people want to be a part of this effort to build back better, and to have a 50 state strategy, go to democrats.org. be a part of the army we're building to really take our country back. >> mr. chairman, i'm going to ask you now if you will come back and talk about some of

those individual races. you mentioned the arkansas race, the senate race that's just open. i'm really interested. especially given your interest running against lindsey graham in south carolina and how much i learned from you about south carolina politics. really interested in you talking us through those races as they come up. i hope you'll come back. >> i'll come back. may 2016, if we nominate donald trump, we will get destroyed and we will deserve it. and i think that is coming to roost. >> wow! democratic national committee chairman, the new leader of the democratic party nationwide, jamie harrison. it is great to see you. congratulations. >> good to see you. take care. >> all right. you, too. stay with us.

let's start with the good news. president biden today announced

his administration will be able to distribute more vaccine to states as soon as next week. the administration says they'll be able to shipment out about 10 million doses per week for the next three weeks. and that is about 1.5 million more doses per week than they were previously planning on shipping out. so they've gone from like 8.6 million to 10 million for the next three weeks. that's good. the president also today announced his administration has ordered 100 million more doses each of the two kinds of vaccines that are currently available. pfizer vaccine and the moderna vaccine. and those 100 million each should be delivered this summer. that means if that happens, that by the end of the summer, the federal government will have supplied enough total doses to vaccinate 300 million americans. our population is 328 million. if you vaccinated 300 million of us, that would pretty much be

the end game. that's the good news. knowing what we are aiming at and saying we are putting together the means to get there. states will get more doses soon in the next three weeks. there will be lots more available in the summer. we are aiming within a matter of months at getting the whole population vaccinated. that's all good news. but there is also bad news. getting vaccinated in this country is way too hard and way too confusing. there are still supply chain problems and organizational problems that have led to canceled appointments and frustration and people waiting for their vaccine who's should have already gotten them. states have complained for weeks about inaccurate information from the government on how much vaccine they can have. hopefully the biden administration is turning that around now but it remains to be seen. on top of that, there is question about whether the mutations of the virus may require booster shots, or maybe even in the long run, entirely different vaccines in the future as the vaccine continues to

evolve and mutate. and even while president biden said yesterday that he hopes to increase the number of daily vaccines given in this country by 50%, he wants to go from a million a day, the initial goal, million a day, the initial goal, to a 1.5 million more a day, even 1.5 million a day isn't going to be enough. particularly with the mutations of the virus, in some cases, leading to a virus that appears to be much more easily transmitted. that mean more people infected quickly. more strain on the health system. more hospitalizations, more deaths. it means more urgency in preventing people from getting this thing. talking about the imperatives of the new more transmissible variants, and how well the biden administration is doing thus far. we've got just the expert here next to talk about it. stay with us.

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i can announce that we will increase overall weekly vaccination distributions to

states, tribes and territories from 8.6 million doses to a minimum of 10 million doses. and we believe that we will soon be able to confirm the purchase of an additional 100 million doses for each of the two fda-authorized vaccine pfizer and moderna. that's 100 million more doses of pfizer and 100 million more doses of moderna. 200 million more doses than the federal government had previously secured. not in hand yet, but ordered. >> big announcements about vaccine distributions from the biden administration. dr. peter hotez who specializes in molecular virology at baylor college of medicine says that the newly increased goal of 1 1/2 million vaccine shots per day, the old goal was a million shots per day. now president biden says a million and a half shots per day is a goal. dr. hotez says that might be enough. he's arguing on the pages of the op-ed of the washington post, to

get closer to what we need, we need to hit 3 million doses a day. how possible is that and why is that the right number to aim at? dr. peter hotez is codirector for the center of vaccine development at texas children's hospital, dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor. doctor, it's a real honor to have you back tonight. thanks for making time. >> thanks, rachel. great to be here. >> so, these are big numbers and it's hard to sometimes conceptualize what they mean. i know we just got to the point as a country where we can do a million, 1.1, maybe 1.2 million shots a day. why do you say the number we need to be aiming at is triple that, we need to be up to 3 million a day? >> yeah, first of all, i think it's really important not to diminish the accomplishments of the biden administration. we've now got a national plan in place. we have a national vaccination strategy. we didn't have that before, so,

you know, in a matter of a week, we've already got a national vaccine plan in place, and that's so absolutely important. so i give a lot of credit to the biden administration. i'm a little concerned, however, that we're not picking up the pace fast enough. the reason i say that is our estimates indicate that in order to stop virus transmission, remember, there's two things these vaccines do. they keep you out of the hospital and the i.c.u. if enough americans get vaccinated, we can actually halt virus transmission, potentially, we think that number is three quarters of the u.s. population. so 240 million people, most of the vaccines are two doses, so that's about half a billion immunizations that we have to take care of. and i want to do that by the beginning of the summer, not the end of the summer to race ahead of those virus variants. so the simple back of the envelope numbers are 500 million over five months, that's 100 million a month, 3 million a day. so we're only striving for half of that. and it's not good enough because we have according to the centers for disease control, the u.k. variant may be the dominant variant in the united states by march or april.

the transmission is going to go way back, way back up even though we're down by 20, 30% now from where we were. that's only temporary. i think we're in the eye of the hurricane and those numbers are going to go back up. so i feel like even as ambitious as the biden plan is, it's still not ambitious enough, and we can and have to vaccinate half a billion people by the summer in order to prevent that terrible number of 600,000 deaths. that's the bottom line, i want to save lives. >> so to get to that -- the corresponding sort of imperative there is to the extent that the virus in the united states is going to be supplanted by this more transmissable variant, a more transmissible virus, essentially means we have to move faster to give people immunity so that the infection rates don't race even further out of control than they've already been? >> that's right. we have to let the vaccination race ahead of the virus emergence.

and it's not just the u.k. variant. we could have the south african variant in the u.s. there is one coming out of denmark/california, one out of brazil. and not only are -- is the transmission going up, but according to dr. fauci, he feels that the deaths are going up as well with the u.k. variant, the death rate. so this is all very, very bad news on top of previous bad news. so we have to really look at what are some of the levers we can pull and push to vaccinate the american people in a faster time frame. and don't forget, you know, as we've all been hearing, my inbox is flooded with people who just are so profoundly frustrated, calling duane reade and cvs and walmart and sam's club trying to get vaccines for their mother, father, brother, sister. you can't under estimate the destabilizing effect that's having on the country. this is not only a public health crisis, it's a full-on homeland security issue, in my estimation. >> dr. peter hotez of texas children's hospital and baylor college of medicine.

sir, always an honor to have you here. thanks for helping us understand. >> thanks so much. >> we'll be right back. stay with us.

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that is going to do it for us tonight. way for a early is up next. way for a early is up next the senate votes down a measure to dismiss the trump impeachment. but only five republicans voted to move forward with the trial. the question, is this a sign that trump is headed for the another acquittal? plus, the president announces a deal to help speed up the slow pace of vaccinations. the question is, when can states expect more doses. and the baseball hall of fame class of 2021, empty. with not a single player winning the votes needed for induction. the question, will they have better lusk next year? it is way too early for this.