that will do it for me. thanks for watching on this holiday weekend. tune in tomorrow to the sunday show and i will be joined by democratic congressman elect derek tran, fresh off his win in california where he flipped a red seat to blue. that is tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. follow us on x, instagram, threads, and now lou's guy, and catch clips of the show on youtube. you can also listen to every episode as a podcast for free, just scan the qr code on the screen to follow. keep it here. sam stein is in for ayman . now.

good evening. tonight trump's team sign in transition agreements with the biden administration. but in true trump fashion, there is a twist. plus, donald trump may be the president-elect, but right now it is elon musk acting like he is in charge. we will unpack trump's newly imposed tariffs. what they could mean for our allies and for you. i'm sam stein in for trying to anyone. let's do it. all right, good evening. the trump transition team has finally agreed to work with the biden administration on the official handoff from one administration to the next. but there is a catch. well, there's three catches. trump's team is still refusing to sign an ethics pledge that would swear off conflicts of interest. they are refusing fbi security checks for their staff, and continuing to fund the transition with secret, unlimited donations. so, basically the trump

transition appears to be as indifferent to charges of corruption and preventable security lapses as they were before this announcement. now, the standard practice during presidential transitions is to sign an agreement that puts strict limits on private funding, discloses the names of private donors, and caps donations at about $5000 in exchange of transition team to get $7 million in federal matching funds. instead, team trump is continuing to rake in untold sums of monies from secret donors, but the mystic and or in, in exchange for who knows what. as a reminder, trump's first administration was found by an ethics watchdog group to have more than 3400 conflicts of interest. but corruption and quid pro quo are not the only concern. the guardian reported this week that trump's team is planning on conducting background checks on staff only after, after trump has taken office and taken over control of the fbi with his personnel.

so, it seems that trump does not trust current bureau personnel with those background checks, and only wants them conducted when their hand selected people are in place. this comes as the new york times released a stunning, and i mean truly stunning new report on trump's pick to lead the department of defense. fox news host pete hegseth . the times has obtained an email that hegseth's mother sent to him in 2018, while he was in the midst of a divorce. she wrote to her son the following. quote, you are an abuser of women. that is the ugly truth, and i have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. you are that man, you have been for years. as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth. she added this. we still love you, but we are

broken by your behavior and lack of character. on behalf of all the women, and i know it's many, you have abused in some way, i say get some help and take an honest look at yourself. now, ms. hegseth is now disavowing what she wrote in that email. nbc news has not obtained this email or an alleged apology email she says she sent afterwards. but this is an administration that clearly does not put a premium on background checks and character references. hegseth's lawyer recently confirmed to nbc news that his client paid a woman an undisclosed amount after she accused him of sexual assault. kicking us off tonight, tom nichols, staff writer at the atlantic. barbara walter, professor of international affairs at uc san diego and author of quote how civil wars start and how to

stop them. and my friend, tim miller, msnbc political analyst and writer at large and one of the great sites online, the board. he is also the author of why we did it, the travelogue from the republican road. all three of you, thank you so much. i know there is nowhere else you would rather be on a saturday on thanks giving we can, so i appreciate it. tom, let's start with you. first of all, i hope your mom is never written you an email like that. secondly, what do you make of the latest hegseth revelation? >> well, yeah, when your mom send you something like that, that is the time to re-examine your life choices. normally discussion between pete hegseth and his mom is nobody's business. but if you want to run a 3 million person department, the biggest in the government, have clearance that includes the nuclear chain of command, and be in the presidential line of succession, yeah, your personal behavior does matter and it does become an issue of national

interest and national security. this is the kind of thing that if you were applying for a really senior security clearance and you had engaged in this kind of behavior, it would come up. people would ask you about it. you might not get that clearance. so on the one hand, it is just painful. it is such a painful thing to read from a mother to a son. what it suggests that this guy has had issues with women for a long time. and especially for a department that has had its share of issues with sexual harassment problems, this really is a problem. i mean, you know, i think hegseth is disqualify a bowl for so many reasons, including that he is not in any way qualified for the job . but i think this is just one more straw on an already broken camel's back. >> yeah, it is a deeply common deeply personal, painful. but i think ultimately relevant of information. arbor, i want to talk about the

larger scope here on the issue of security. there was an op-ed written this week by former republican and democratic senate counsel who used to deal with fbi background checks. that is noah bookbinder. they write this. at a time when there are fewer and fewer meaningful checks on presidential power, the need for rigorous senate consideration of nominees is all the more important. without it, the president and his appointees can run roughshod over the government at over americans lies with no in challenging them. to prevent this, the senate, across party lines, must make clear that, as is been the case for years, it will not consider nominations without an fbi background check. listen, with these latest hegseth revelations, after the matt gaetz situation where he bowed out due to his indiscretions, will the senate, you think, feel that they need to have that fbi background check? are they going to say we trust the trump administration to do their own homework?

>> the big picture right here is that the main check on presidential power here in the united states is congress. it is the senate and is the house of representatives. if they don't check attempts by presidents to try to grab as much power as they can and appointing incompetent loyalists into big positions of power, and purging of the judicial branch and appointing loyalists there, that is a presidential grab for power. and if the senate does not check this grab, then basically, one, they are not doing their job. and they are allowing the president to essentially do what our founding fathers never wanted to happen, and that was to make himself king. >> tim, look, we are in the situation where if you get angry or mad, and you bring up these revelations, what happens is people in trump my in orbit a sickly rally around the person being targeted. showing distain for a system that people dislike and

distrust is kind of a big reason why trump got elected. so this is almost energizer for them. do you think that they will actually be emboldened around pete hegseth because of this? that they will just go to the mat for him all the more? >> certainly in the maga media sphere, that is true. us sitting around at msnbc complaining about this is just some fodder for megyn kelly's youtube show on monday, probably, or something. but that really is and the people that matter anymore. those are the people that were key during the election. right now, the question is are there four republican senators that might look askance at this? and you can think of four republican senators that are not the types to rally around somebody who is completely unqualified. we have already seen it, and there is another

kind of category, particularly in national security issues, of people who have not been courageous over the past eight years. don't get me wrong. but who might look at pete hegseth and say this is too preposterous of a choice to leave the defense department. i think it is also worth remembering, we are so early in this process. trump made these nominations, historically these don't usually come until closer to the inauguration. it feels like we are in the trump presidency already, the way he has been acting. so we are at november 30th. january 20th is a long time. if your mother write to that email, you've done some bad stuff. let me tell you, there are other stories that are coming out about pete hegseth between now and january 20th, and i think while the maga media folks might rally to his defense, it might be enough to disqualify him for a few key senators. >> now, look, because this is the trump years, and information comes like a gusher, while we were sitting here, news has broken that

donald trump is going to be naming cache patel to leave the fbi, to be his new fbi director. a couple things to consider here. one is he is a long-standing critic of the fbi, believes that it was used to unfairly target trump and his supporters. also, the current fbi director, christopher wray, serves a 10 year term. it is not up, i believe, into 2027. which means that donald trump would have to fire chris ray in order to nominate kash patel, who would have to be confirmed by the senate. i had to put you on the spot, but what is your reaction to this one? among all the choices for confirmable positions, there has obviously been a few that have had severe pushback. this one seems like one that could engender a lot of pushback, precisely because kash patel has been such a vociferous

cricof the fbi, and trump himself has said he wants to weapon eyes the fbi for political purposes. >> yeah, tim just used the word preposterous. this is the world we are living in now. of these preposterous and yet extraordinarily dangerous picks . what you see trump doing, and it's kind of strange, he is methodically appointing people who will completely destroy any limits on his power, and this is just putting foxes in charge of the henhouse at every possible turn. he would have kash patel at the fbi, pam bondi at the justice department. that means that his opponents get investigated, and his friends, he and his friends do whatever they want. there is a saying attributed long ago to a latin american dictator, for my friends, everything. for my enemies, the law.

and that is what you're seeing here. and on top of everything else, as if we have to actually say this, kash patel has absolutely no qualifications whatsoever to be the nation's top law enforcement official at the fbi. none. but his main qualification is absolute servitude to donald trump. and this is just incredibly dangerous. you are starting to put together, we don't know what will happen with the hegseth nomination. that you put together tulsa gabbard, john radcliffe, another loyalist at cia. kash patel at the fbi. pam bondi at justice. you have the makings of a not so slow motion authoritarian takeover of the united states government. and people ought to be really concerned about this. >> tim, we talked a bit about this, you and i, about the over lighting of the system, basically. in which case senate republicans are just sort of overwhelmed by it.

they maybe want to defeat one or two of them, but they are not going to defeat all of them. how do you see this playing out on the hill? are they going to say okay, we will give you rfk junior, we will give you tulsa gabbard, but please know kash patel? is there enough backbone there, do you think, to defeat multiple nominees? >> i don't know, i think it's possible. we saw with matt gaetz already, and i was surprised how quickly that happened. to me, kash patel, and i don't say this lightly, is the most dangerous nominee that we have seen yet to our democracy. and you might think that having pete hegseth is more dangerous because of his lack of experience, or tulsa gabbard inexperience, but the threats to democracy we were warning about before the election, kash patel was a key player inside the trump white house , pushing for and orchestrating the coup attempt in 2020. he was trying to completely take control of the justice department at the time, he was

trump's top lieutenant, he was willing to do anything and advance any lie in service of his attempt to overturn that last election. to such a degree that there were many people that were trump appointees in 2020 who were staying around and saying no, standing in the breach and saying no, not kash patel. you cannot put kash patel as a temporary leader of the justice department. these are trump appointees. so we will see what happens in the senate, but if trump didn't have people around him that were like that guy is too far, who knows what that will mean for the senate? >> all right, listen, this is a lot. definitely a lot. unexpected, but i guess that is the trump years. barbara walter, thank you so much. sorry we could not get you in more. tom and tim, you guys are sticking around, really appreciate that, as well. on the breaking news after this quick break. quick break.

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welcome back. president-elect donald trump announced via truth social moments ago that he is nominating former chief of staff to the secretary of defense under the first trump administration, kash patel, to be the next director of the federal bureau of investigation. now, patel had several other notable roles during the first trump term. what's notable here is that christopher wray, who donald trump chose as fbi head in 2017 after firing james comey, christopher wray has not yet finished his 10 year term. so, trump would have to fire him in order to get cash patel into that post. tom and tim are back with me to unpack all of this. look, tom, we were talking about this, among his other faults, kash patel is a conspiracy theorist and would be another one and a lot of them who would be going to the trumpet administration, should he be confirmed. he was also a key component of the january 6th insurrection.

i mean, what does that say about having that type of personality in your next term? it just completely obliterates any recognition or culpability for anyone who is involved in that riot, as far as i'm concerned >> yeah, i mean, donald trump is been trying to erase history and read con that whole business into just another day in washington. and unfortunately, he has been somewhat successful trying to memory hole at least some of it. but patel is, and i think tim is absolutely right. when it comes to the danger to our democracy, patel is about as dangerous as it gets. not because he is that much of a true believer in anything, but because, and i would recommend that people take a look at a piece that we had about him in the atlantic, he believes in nothing except serving donald trump. his own interest. and what you are going to see is donald trump creating an administration of people who

really don't care about the interests of the united states. they are there to build on authoritarian codger, and to put themselves beyond the reach of the rule of law. if you want to be beyond the reach of the rule of law, one of the first things you want to capture is the fbi. the other thing this says, it says the fbi is no longer in the law enforcement business. it is certainly not in the counterintelligence business, which our enemies will be very happy to hear. it is in the business of protecting donald trump, furthering donald trump's interests, and making sure that donald trump's enemies are investigated and that donald trump's friends are given a free pass. i mean, this is really, you know, i suppose if we still had the ability to be shocked, it is shocking. but i think this is something probably many of us are coming. and it should not be this surprising. but it is an incredibly dangerous development. >> tom, i am impressed that you

maintain the ability to be shocked. tim, i want to read this part of the washington post write up of the kash patel nomination. it reads as this. patel has publicly mused about targeting journalists and government officials, and he published a list of quote deep state names in a book last year, titled, quote, government gangsters. promotional materials for the book included a quote from trump, who called it a road map highlighting every corrupt actor and a blueprint to help us take back the white house and remove these gangsters from all of government. so i don't want to bend your mind in uncomfortable ways, tim, but paint when an fbi under kash patel might look like, knowing what he has written and what trump is endorsed. >> yeah, it is probably more direct and worse than how the washington post put it there. he has not mused, really, about targeting journalists and political foes. he has said it, absolutely

explicitly and with relish, often, on steve bannon's podcast and other maga media sources. in addition to the book that you mentioned. this is somebody that is planning to target donald trump's political foes. prosecute the prosecutors, this is also something that pam bondi said that she planned to do. so i think that the people who were investigating donald trump, using completely open reasons, going to grand juries, playing this by the book, nonetheless i think they can expect to be targeted by this incoming administration. i think the other thing, in addition to targeting people that they think are not loyal within the government, career officials, i think that this is also, they want people to quit. there is a notion of if you are a senior fbi official, the idea that you're going to have to report to somebody like kash patel , who has absolutely no business being the director of the fbi, who does not have the

career record, does not have the experience, has not gained the trust of the people who work there, i think there will be an exodus, or at least i thought. and i think the trump administration is hoping that people leave. and i think, unfortunately, we are going to have to hope that the sum of these people stay in what is going to be a pretty uncomfortable bureau. >> tom, let's talk a little bit about going back to the james comey firing. because when that happened, it was an uproar. it was deeply, and deeply problematic for a lot of people in d.c. and trump responded by ultimately selecting chris ray, a guy who had the backing of chris christie, and institutionalist, someone who is totally fine for the vast majority, all of the republican party. this go-round he is not going on that road map. he is obviously going with the most loyal person he could possibly have. what do you think that says about the trump presidency 2.0?

>> one thing that i think is really clear, first of all, he believes he has a mandate. he won by a small margin, but for him, he thinks this is an absolute license to roulette will. the other thing i think is that he feels very strongly that he can just push this republican senate around. that there is nobody left in the republican, and he may be right, he feels that there is nobody left among senior elected republican officials who is going to dare to stop him. now, i hope he's wrong about that. and i'm hoping that he is finally, i think with matt gaetz he went too far, and it was clear he was not going to happen. and now, again, people in the republican party and in the senate, especially, are going to remember that they are, the

article one branch of government that tells the president he can't do stuff like this. that he feels strongly that he's got a mandate and that the republican party and its elected officials are his to push around at will. and again, that's really dangerous. you can see that he's been kind of numbing us towards this. he has been paralyzing the system. he starts off with marco rubio, and a few other incredible nominations, and then it gets worse and worse and worse. this nomination has been out for a long time, but in true trump fashion, he wanted to exhaust everybody, wear them out, and i think your question about whether the senate has the spine to take down multiple nominees is a really good question. because he is trying to flood them with completely unqualified and dangerous nominees, to see how many of them managed to get through. >> yeah, that's about right.

tom, stick around. you've been a great guest. tim, i wish i could say the same, but we got to let you go. you very much. hours ago, donald trump lost a new threat to raise tariffs on outside nations, saying he will impose, well, i'm going to break. sorry, we will go to break. we will come back on her with kash patel .

for more than a decade

farxiga has been trusted again and again, and again. ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ♪ far-xi-ga ♪ ask your doctor about farxiga. hours ago, and eternity in trump world, donald trump launched a new threat to raise tariffs on outside nations, saying he will impose a 100% tariff on coalition non-western countries, including russia, india, and china among others. he would do that if they move away from the u.s. dollar. this comes after trump proposed a 25% tariff on products imported from her allies of mexico and canada, while threatening china with an additional 10% tax. all of this is part of an apparent effort to curb migration, and drugs, namely

fentanyl, into the united states. after trump hosted canadian prime minister justin trudeau for a dinner at mar-a-lago, he posted on true social quote trudeau has ended this devastation with families. this comes after a phone call with the mexican president and trump were the two world leaders had, shall we say, vastly different takeaways from the conversation. the president-elect claimed that she promised to close the u.s. border with mexico. shine bomb posted on x that mexico's position is not to close borders, but instead build bridges between government and people. tom nichols is back with me, and joining us is in msnbc contributor maria kumar. he is also the president and ceo of voter latino. during his campaign, trump claimed various times that a tariff is not a cost on the

american consumer, and it is going to be borne by the other country upon which it is placed. of course, love, economists have debunked it. people in his orbit still argue it. how badly could these new tariffs actually impact the american people, and how would this damage are diplomatic relationships if, and is the most important, if he actually follows through on them? >> yeah, i mean, the tariffs would fall most heavily, ironically enough, on many of the people who voted for him, just as they did the last time. people, we were talking earlier about january 6th falling into the memory hole, here we go again. people talking about this as if trump did not try this and then had to bail out farmers and small businesses because he either doesn't understand tariffs or thinks that tariffs are a magic word, because he keeps bringing them up and people who also don't understand what tariffs are respond. because they think it is somehow a tax on foreigners.

so, if he does it, what will he do? canada, for example, the people in the midwest and the planes would start paying a lot more for a lot of things, because they are kind of on the front line of where a lot of stuff comes in from canada. people that did not vote for donald trump in coastal areas and some of the upper income blue cities, not really going to hurt that much. so i have always been amazed that trump kind of gets away with this threat to hurt his own voters, but he did it before, i have no reason to think he won't try to do it again. but the kind of tariffs he is talking about, you are not just talking about an inconvenience. you are talking about a trade war that will then remind people of things like the pandemic, where you have supply- chain bottlenecks and shortages, and other things. i guess people just keep wanting to touch the hot stove of a trade war over and over

again. but i am just surprised that the people who would be most hurt by this don't realize that, again. >> and the other part of this is that the problem that these tariffs are supposedly being used to solve may be, in fact is overstated, if you look at the numbers. migration, apprehensions of the southern border are down significantly in the past half year. in a statement firing back at trump, the mexican president made it clear that mexican officials have actually been working to curb migration. tell us what's going on here. first of all, how big a role as mexico playing in curbing migration? and exactly how far down are we from the highs of the biting years >> right, sam, let's be very clear to everybody tuning in. a tariff is a tax. a tariff is a tax on the american people. right now what trump is trying to do is create a whole bunch of blustering, like i am going to go ahead and create a trade

war with mexico and canada, because i want to prevent and curb migration. i want to curb fentanyl. but he is actually not laying it straight. the fact that the president of mexico came back and said not only are we right now working to build bridges between people and government, that we have been working behind the scenes, very effectively, with president biden. in fact, migration is down 75% at our southern border because of the policies that have worked in coalition with the u.s. government and mexico to curb migration at the moment people enter mexico. they are actually integrated back into their country. so it has been one of the most successful programs, that frankly, has not been covered. but if we take a step back, it doesn't matter in trump's world if migration is down. the moment he steps in the office he's going to say you know what? my threat actually worked. but this is the rub. the fact that he threatens trade wars, whether it is mexico, china, canada, he is putting, very

clearly to the rest of the world, to our allies and to our trade partners, the perhaps america cannot be trusted. that we are going to use words without action, and that actually is going to erode our ability to do real trade agreements in an increasingly inter-global world. so, i would encourage folks to recognize that a tariff is a tax not on the country, but on the american people. every single person that right now says inflation is a big deal, you have seen nothing yet. if anything actually happens. but secondly, let's remember those trump years where he did a lot of luster, he did a lot of his policies via x. he did all of them in bluster. none of it came through, but it did destabilize our ability to have relationships, because it eroded trust. >> tom, i want to talk about the kind of divergent reactions we have seen from well beavers who have been on the receiving end of these threats. you have the mexican president, who basically opposed him.

the stats say this, you are wrong, and that you had justin trudeau, who literally flew to mar-a-lago to sit with trump and talk over and put out a statement saying we are all on the same page, working to this similar end. how do you feel like world leaders have to navigate this? what is the right approach? is there a singular approach that is right? and as maria said, a lot of this is just luster, but do you have to play along? >> yeah, i just want to emphasize something maria just said, which is he claims victory when he gets people to, you know, he thinks he's gotten people to do stuff they were already doing. and we are going to be living in this alternate reality for a long time now, where trump says i talked to somebody and they agreed to do what i want. and the other person, the person he is talking about says that is not remotely what just happened. and i think world leaders who have met him, they know this guy. they've dealt with him before. and you saw it in his first term. they are going to manage them.

they understand that he does not understand anything or care very much about international relations, about trade, any of this stuff. they understand that flattery, i suspect trudeau came down because having dinner with donald trump, if it makes him feel better, if it makes trump feel better, then that is probably time well spent, and everybody gets back to work. but they are going to have to manage them. they have to manage around him, just like they did before. and it causes, it's going to slow down a lot of things in the world that americans care about. about things like trade and immigration, and other things where having a good relationship with foreign leaders really matters. and trump is already starting america off behind the eight ball, because only leaders he seems to have a positive relationship with our authoritarian leaders and dictators, and even some of

those same kind of chapped and ticked off with him lately. i think every leader is going to have a different approach to managing donald trump, but make no mistake, they are going to manage them and they are going to work around him. >> all right, tom eccles, maria kumar, thank you both very much. i appreciate it. next, trump taps a critic of lockdowns and vaccine mandates to lead an agency. what could possibly go wrong? my panel reacts to trump's latest threats against the press and what it could mean for media account ability. unt . t before taking off your shirts. west virginia! [stadium noise] yeah...oh, yeah. stew virginia? yeah, checking first is smart. so check allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. -hey, what's up? i'm the “w”. -hey.

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the national health institute is america's top biological research agency, with an annual budget of around $40 billion and dozens of centers and institutes under its jurisdiction. so you would think that the person at the helm of it would be a component of evidence- based science. but earlier this week, donald trump chose a physician who gained prominence over his critiques of the federal government's coronavirus response. back in august of 2020, he was one of several doctors who met with donald trump in the oval office and told him the covid pandemic was not as severe as public health officials had worn.

a couple months later, bhattacharya co-authored the open letter calling the great barrington declaration. the declaration advocated for coronavirus shutdowns and returning to life as normal, while maintaining so-called focus protections for vulnerable people. in other words, he was a big backer of herd immunity, with some protections. the open letter was widely criticized public health experts, including the then director of the nih, dr. francis collins. collins wrote an email to nih colleagues that was later made public. in it, he said, quote, there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. this was not the only time that dr. bhattacharya quoted controversy. he also repeatedly underestimated the death toll from the covid pandemic, and he cowrote an early study that overestimated how many people had already been affected and

recovered from covid-19. bhattacharya has also called for rolling back the power of the institutes and centers that make up the nih and he has singled out career civil servants like anthony fauci who he says wrongly shaped national policies at the height of the pandemic. this, this is the person donald trump believes should be heading the nih. after the break we will talk more about dr. bhattacharya and rfk junior, who could work closely with him as trump's pick for hhs secretary. we will be right back. in any condition and get samsung galaxy s24+ with galaxy ai and watch and tab, all three on us. even if your phone is old or dated, you can turn it in at verizon for gifts for you and the family. all three on us. that's up to $1,900 in value.

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ask your doctor about farxiga. dr. bhattacharya, donald trump's patent lead the national institute of health, is known for his controversial views on the coronavirus pandemic. if confirmed, he would be

leading the nih under the watchful eye of robert f kennedy junior, that is trump in choice for hhs secretary. as it turns out, bhattacharya is already a big fan. not bad, he cowrote for a british opinion site earlier this month, he argued that kennedy will disrupt the u.s. medical establishment, writing, quote, the rot having accumulated for decades was plain for all to see. if the officials continue to deny their own culpability, avoiding a long look in the mirror, kennedy can be that mirror. joining me now to discuss this is dr. vidalia, infectious disease physician, founding director of boston university center on emerging infectious diseases. former senior adviser on the biden white house covered response team. dr., thank you so much we really appreciate it. where to begin? it is clear that rfk junior and dr. bhattacharya are on the same page about what they would say is shaking up the health agencies that oversee research. bhattacharya even echoed rfk's goal about making america

healthy again days ago on x. what strikes you about the combination of these two men, and is disrupting a health agency what we are really talking about? or is it hurting them and replacing them with different people? >> yeah, sam, thanks for having me. to me, the simple part of this equation that bothers me a lot is that if you have all of these aspirations, and by the way, making america healthy is an incredibly useful goal to have. it is a powerful way to unite the country. because we are. 70% of us are overweight or obese. there are issues that we need to face with our health system. but the recommendation that both of these men have about getting our help, our public health government employees, is taking away just decades of knowledge about, expertise that has led many presidential administrations to threats to health, nation's health, that does not bode well for what

threats might be on the horizon for us. and that kind of bothers me a little bit. that of those two and i think rfk junior, potentially, to me, is a bit more troublesome. partly because of his long history of being an anti-vector . his organization has been touted as one of the biggest purveyors of disinformation around vaccinations, and has been responsible for many parents losing faith in vaccines, that has led to the highest rates of rental exemption from vaccine, leading to some of the biggest outbreaks we have seen with preventable infectious diseases in children. >> yeah, i want to talk about that a little bit. because the two men both have very interesting views of the pandemic early in the pandemic. dr. bhattacharya obviously was advocating for a form of herd immunity. he also was speaking as if the likelihood of covid related deaths would potentially be as low as 40,000.

it ended up being about 1.2 million in the united states. but on the flipside, to your point, rfk junior was also out there suggesting that he believed the covid pandemic might've been planned by the government. that is the order of magnitude 2 degrees that we are talking about here. as someone who is working on the covid response for the government, in the very early months of the biden administration when it was incredibly bleak and vaccines were just coming online, i am just sort of curious what it's like. why do you think the country no longer understands or respects or even remembers how bleak it was, and the steps that we did actually have to take in order to pull us out of those very, very troubling times? >> i'm so glad you have framed that way, sam. because when the barrington declaration came out, i was actually an author of a rebuttal letter called the johnstone memorandum. and i feel like there is this revisionist history where somehow people think herd immunity was the way to go and we didn't do it. just taking everybody back to where we were. we did not know the long-term effects of this virus. we did not know its impact on

children. and the fact that we have now found out that you can get rhe infections and there is no such thing as a herd immunity against infections themselves, separating the vulnerable from the rest of their caretakers, from their families would never been a sustainable long-term strategy. it tells me that that whole take on herd immunity early on have been a deadly route to take but it is my hope, bhattacharya is a researcher. a physician. is my hope that he will listen to the evidence that comes out of the government scientists that are in place to make those decisions based on the evidence that is in front of him, rather than looking at the political climate. it is my hope that he would be able to do that, because he has been in academia, he tells himself as an independent thinker. so i'm hoping he's able to change his mind on some of

these issues. >> that's a really important distinction. he's an academic thinker, he is a researcher. as far as we know, he believes in the value of scientific research and biomedical research, and research into infectious diseases. whether or not he agrees with the final synopsis of the research is another question. where is rfk junior is on record saying he wants to put an eight year pause on research into infectious diseases and focus primarily on chronic diseases. i someone in the field, i'm curious what kind of affect you think this is having or may have in terms of a brain drain. by that i mean people who are looking to further studies and rely on government grants to look into infectious disease research. will they start looking to other pastors? canada, japan, korea, china, and say hey, this is a more open and hospitable environment for us, we are going to take a research there? >> yeah, that's really critical point. i will add to that, it is not a false dichotomy. we can chew gum and walk at the same time. we can invest in chronic diseases and infectious

diseases. improving chronic diseases, turns out that helps get better result if you end up getting an infection. my worry is, and this is actually something that has been bothering me since rfk junior said this about the eight-year block, look, academics don't care if we invest in them or not. they are going to come anyway. so we need to be ready to do that. >> well, we are dealing with viruses right now, we hope nothing bad happens and we are crossing our fingers. dr. vidal you, thank you so much, really appreciate it. in the next hour of ayman and more on the breaking news that donald trump has tapped loyalist kash patel as his new fbi director.

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