dan diamond, i know you are planning. dan diamond, i know you are a planning.nk you very much for your time. dan diamond a health policy reported that. thank you, mike. the us has recorded its first case of the new variant of coronavirus first identified in the uk. the governor of the state of colorado —jared polis — tweeted, the person who tested positive is a man in his 20s who has no recent travel history that would link him to the uk. the number of infections in the united kingdom reported in 2a hours has risen steeply to another record. 0ne senior medical officer has expressed extreme concern at the situation. official data puts the figure at 53,135 new coronavirus cases in the latest 24—hour period. and a14 deaths were reported. this report from our health correspondent catherine burns includes flash photography. we all wanted to have a few days off over christmas but instead have been asked to come back to work. this time, it's a wave. this time, we've seen a massive increase. if we continue with the current rate of admissions, we are very, very close to

administration will make more documents available, especially given the public pressure here. >> dan diamondrter at politico.com, who deserves a lot of credit for opening up this line of inquiry and showing us what was going on. dan, thank you. congratulations on your reporting. it will be interesting to see where this goes. >> thank you, and credit to my colleagues, too, at politico. >> fair enough. all right. thank you. i'll tell you, the congressman, james clyburn, will be joining ali velshi in "the last word" next hour. stay with us. n "the last word" next hour. stay with us want to sell the best burger in every zip code? add an employee. or ten... then easily and automatically pay your team and file payroll taxes. that means... world domination! or just the west side. run payroll in less than five minutes with intuit quickbooks. every minute. understanding how to talk to your doctor about treatment options is key. today, we are redefining how we do things. we find new ways of speaking, so you're never out of touch. it's seeing someone's face that comforts us, no matter where. when those

interfering with the operations of the cdc during the pandemic, joining us now is the politico reporter dan diamond broke open this line of inquiry months ago with his explosive reporting what trump appointees were getting up to at cdc. mr. diamond has been following this story for months. thanks for making time tonight. it's nice to see you. >> thank you, rachel. >> so i'm struck by what congressman clyburn is asking for and in part why he says he's asking for these documents. he says he wants to know more information about the story you first reported, that there were trump appointees essentially muzzling cdc scientists and interfering with their work. but he also wants to know if their doing so was part of an effort to sort of deliberately screw up covid response because of a misunderstanding of this idea of herd immunity? does that strike you as the right next question to be asking? >> i think we can take that in two parts. when congressman clyburn and the covid subcommittee are looking for are more documents from senior officials who aren't named paul alexander. that is the controversial scien

dan diamond of politico. dan, i want you first to just set up for me who was paul alexander and who is michael caputo, and what role did they play at hhs? >> chris, thanks for having me back. paul alexander a part-time health professor from a p university in canada became a scientific adviser in the trumpt administration for most of the pandemic. he advised michael caputo the department's top public affairs official who was also a confidante of president trump president trump personally installed caputo in the department. to put it in simple terms, paul alexander was the hand picked adviser to the hand picked head of federal health communications during the pandemic. for months paul alexander sent e-mails to cdc director robert redfield, fda commissioner steve hahn, other officials urging them to let americans get infected. young americans, middle aged americans without preexisting conditions, infants, to accelerate what he and others in the administration believed this idea of herd immunity that by having so

diamond has been following the story for months. danch for making time tonight, it's nice to see you. >> thank you, rachel. >> so i'm struck by what congressman clyburn is asking for and in part why he is asking for the documents. he said that he wants to know more information about the story you first reported that there were trump appointees, interfering with cdc scientists work. and if it was to deliberately mess up covid response because of the idea of herd immunity. does that sound like the right next question to be asking? >> i think we can take it in two parts. what congressman clyburn and the covid subcommittee were looking for, more documents from senior officials that are not named paul alexander, he is no longer part of the administration. but there's e-mails that the committee believes they were promised by hhs from people like auto health secretary azar and director redfield, and they want to see the documents and the idea that there was a deliberate effort to under mine what the trump organization was doing and the cdc was

earlier i spoke to politico health policy reporter dan diamond about how mr biden‘s propsoals differwhite house. i spoke today to biden‘s incoming coronavirus coordinatorjeff zients, and we talked about the efforts that the trump administration had done, that the team biden was putting together thinks they can build on. so rolling out vaccines, they don't think trump has done a good job on that but developing the vaccines and getting some things in place, they think that that will be an area where they can pick up the baton and keep running. and yet, even building and expanding on what is in place, mr biden‘s plan is pretty ambitious isn't it? can he do it? i think there are things that are not as hard as they might sound. the 100 million jabs in 100 days is not so different than what the trump administration was aiming for. i think what has been tough is the numbers so far, numbers of vaccinations in the states are much lower than what the trump administration had promised. they had said 20 million shots by the end of the year. as of tuesday morning, the us centres for disease contr

. >> "politico" this afternoon, i'm not sure if you saw the scoop from dan diamond, but they're reportingappointee at the department of health and human services, mr. alexander, was pushing this herd immunity theory to officials, not the herd immunity, but infections. he said, we want them infected, let the young folk get infected. this theory of letting young people get the disease and acquiring herd immunity that way as opposed to vaccinations, it's obviously been widely discredited by health experts saying it would cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives to be lost. when you see this, when you hear this, what's your reaction? >> it makes my blood boil. many of us have suspected for a long time that the administration was prioritizing the economy, and by extension, the re-election of the president over the health of americans. despite protestations to the opposite, high-level administrations were pushing for herd immunity. scott atlas was one, a very prominent adviser pushing for herd immunity, pushing the president to let this virus burn through the country. another repor