elise jordan for a second. >> okay. >> i'm telling you, elise, that sun in washington or boston or wherever, moves very fast. but before you go back to the senator with a question, i want to get your impression on the debate last night and specifically about the fact that mike pence, a guy that we shared a party with for quite some time, last night would not say that he would support the peaceful transfer of power if the will of the people went against donald trump. >> i agree with claire mccaskill that this should be a bigger deal, that we have now a president on the debate stage and a vice presidential candidate who are refusing to say that they will accept the results of a free and fair election peacefully. it is mind blowing. yesterday was the 19th anniversary of the u.s. being in afghanistan and i think back to all of those years that america was working over there and assisting with the election process and how we would have just lost our minds if hamid karzai has said, i'm not going to accept the results of the process and that's literally where we are with donald trump and mike pence. and that's what i would like to ask senator warren about now that her angelic halo is probably faded from the back drop. yeah, now that back drop looks great, joe is a great producer. what do you foresee as the stakes when it comes to the election results and the aftermath of the election? >> so, that's a great question. and you can tell you're out on my porch in the morning here, but the way i see this, this is going to be one more test of the strength of our democracy. you know, i will say that before trump ever got here, i thought all of our democratic institutions were strong and robust and that sort of the overall bureaucracy, if you will, would mean that trump, yeah, he can do some bad stuff, but not a lot. and wow, he has come through and just broken one thing after another. and for example, we're just talking about health care. when the republicans couldn't get the health care repeal through the congress when they had control of the senate, control of the house and kept right on fighting, took it back to the courts, tells you, man, they're just working on their own schedule. they want to impose things on the american people that the american people don't want. so i think what happens after the election is a really important moment for america. where everybody takes a deep breath and says, the winner is the one who becomes president. and that to me what this means is the next 25 days are so critically important. i not only want to see us beat donald trump. we can't afford to beat him by a little bit. we need to beat him as trump would say bigly. because there can't be any dispute. >> yeah. >> because he is the man who will dispute it if he has the tiniest shred of anything that he can hold on to. and so i think i think that's the importance of the get out the vote, get out the vote, get out the vote and when we have gotten out your vote, you get out the votes of your friends and get out the vote of your friends. this has to be one of those elections where we all get and vote, not only for the candidate we care about, but get out and vote for our democracy. >> all right. senator elizabeth warren, thank you so much. senator warren, we greatly appreciate you being with us this morning. and adjusting the camera. >> oh, your dog is there. i want to see him. >> yes. here he is. look at bailey. >> so beautiful. >> such a cute doggie. >> okay, you just made my day. >> take care. >> great to see you, senator, thank you. so bob woodward let's -- i want to ask you a more general question about the people that you have covered through your years in washington, d.c. and let's just go from just go huge story, history changing story to the history changing story you broke earlier this year from the nixon administration to the trump administration. we saw mike pence last night, and we've talked about about it refusing to say that he would accept a peaceful transfer of power, but you've also obviously interviewed a lot of people for this book, some generals and other officials who would not bend to donald trump's will and who, anybody reading "fear" will see there are quite a few really good men and women who went in to serve for the right reasons but then refused to go as far as mike pence has refused to go. i'm just curious, is this something unique to donald trump and the trump administration, or did you run into this a good bit during the nixon administration as well? and what separates somebody like, well, my gosh, why don't we just talk about two friends, what separates somebody like mike pence from senator coats who could not sacrifice this country at the altar of donald trump? >> it's significant, and to discuss this issue of peaceful transfer of power, the idea that we're even -- that it's an issue, that there is not automatic, okay, yes, we have a democracy, the winner takes the office is absolutely stunning. senator, former senator mccaskill is right about this. there is outrage after outrage, and you kind of wonder when we're going to hit the wall here. i thought senator harris made vea very good point last night on the health care issue where she said they're coming for you. they are coming for you on this issue in the courts, in the way they run the government and everywhere, and i think we can look at the overall picture here and say not that they are coming for you but they have done it. they actually have put themselves on the edge of saying let's subvert the democracy and, you know, what's next? i worry, frankly, from continuing reporting that trump is so determined to win and get the focus on other issues so we don't talk about the virus so much that things will happen. i'm not going to say he generates something, but i think there can be accidents in foreign affairs that presidents can seize on and say this is a moment for us to get tough, so i don't think it's going to be a -- not only a peaceful transition, but perhaps not a very peaceful whatever it is 27 days or whatever to the election. >> so claire, if you could extend upon that because i know the outrage factor is exhausting, and some people are tired of it, but something that we can't ignore is the danger that this country is in at this point on so many levels from covid to the president's leadership in general. >> well, i think this is really why his numbers are collapsing. there is a collective weight of all of this. you know, if you just look at the last week, you know, it's train wreck after train wreck after train wreck highlighted, of course, by the brazen irresponsibility of this president once he's diagnosed with something that's highly contagious. so that's all there, and i thought i would certainly underline a point that joe has made over and over and over again about the trump campaign. they still steadfastly refuse to reach out to new voters, and pence didn't reach out to new voters last night. he was all about a clarion call to the base, the trump base, not thinking about how women were going to handle him constantly interrupting and constantly talking over the time rules. that was -- the women of america are like already fed up with these folks, and for him to do that, women know what it's like to be interrupted constantly by a man who thinks he knows better. so i think that is -- there's nothing that happened last night that changed the trajectory of this race, and that is very bad news for donald trump. >> yamiche, what is the state of affairs inside the white house this morning? we know that the head of the security office creed bailey has tested positive for covid. his condition is unclear at this point, but some reports say that it's a pretty serious case of it. the president of the united states of course has it. there's an outbreak inside the white house, we know talking to people behind the scenes off the record that there's confusion about who should be coming in and who shouldn't, no leadership. what is it like to be inside the white house right now? >> well, the state of affairs inside the white house is mayhem. people are freaking out. they are scared. they're lining up to get tested. they're waiting to see who gets tested next, and whether that person will be positive. every new prominent case also reminds aides that they were forced in some ways through a culture of anti-masks to acquiesce to this idea that masks with ar political statement and they weren't encouraged to wear masks. i've talked to lower level aide who is say my boss didn't wear a mask, so i didn't wear my mask. when you look at the way the white house handled things they don't want to say they're a super spreader, but the evidence bears that out. something like more than 34 people now have tested positive, so it seems as though people, while they're trying to push forward, while the president's trying to say he was cured and this is a blessing from god, there are a will the lot of peoe white house who are anxious. you see someone like chris christie, as far as i understand is still in the hospital with the coronavirus. he said he was not contacted by the white house, even though he was in debate prep with the president and at that saturday supreme court nomination. so when i go to the white house, i'm very, very careful because there are a lot of people who have simply cleared out of the building because they don't feel safe working in what is supposed to be the most protected building in the world. and i want to say one quick thing, mike pence yesterday, there was obviously this kind of smooth delivery. he is not as brash as president trump, but last night's debate was a lot about truth and a lot about fact, and there are number of things he said -- including the fact that a white house pandemic office was not dissolved under president trump. we know that that was resolved, and as a result the white house is in some ways trying to rely on other people, some of them also political appointees who are about messaging that the white house is on and business as usual when everything at the white house shows that business is not as usual. >> yamiche alcindor, thank you so much for your reporting, claire mccaskill and elise both for your analysis, and bob woodward thank you as well. the book once again is "rage." we've got much more ahead including the latest on a still infected president trump making his way down to the oval office even as white house covid outbreaks continue to expand. and as we go to break, a look at the new issue of "time" magazine. the cover story is patient zero. donald trump faces his personal and political mortality. >>> also making headlines, in a first for the new england journal of medicine, the publications editors are placing a finger on the political scale calling for americans to vote out leaders who have not done enough to address the pandemic. while the editorial does not call out president trump by name, the piece is filled with illusions to his actions and proclaims, quote, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. 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