CHUCK TODD:
This Sunday: The growing Covid crisis.
TRAVELER:
Covid is out there, you just have to be cautious with how you deal with it.
CHUCK TODD:
With a million people a day taking holiday flights --
TRAVELER:
I really want to see my family. My dad was really sick, so it just needed to happen.
CHUCK TODD:
-- and tens of millions on the road, new fears of a deepening Covid pandemic.
DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER:
This is clearly a superspreading event and we can see a surge of cases on top of the current surge in a couple of weeks.
CHUCK TODD:
Health care workers overworked, understaffed and frustrated.
NIKKI TOMLINSON:
I couldn't get through the next day of work without breaking down for an hour, or every hour.
DR. NATHAN HATTON:
We have 20 to 30 people probably caring for each one of these patients every day. That is what's going to run out.
CHUCK TODD:
Vaccines are on the way, but how soon? This morning my interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Plus transition politics. President-elect Biden starts forming his cabinet.
JOE BIDEN:
It's a team that reflects the fact that America is back.
CHUCK TODD:
Even as President Trump continues to cite non-existent fraud.
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
It's going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud.
CHUCK TODD:
How much is President Trump trying to tie President-elect Biden's hands in hot spots like Iran and Afghanistan? I'll talk to the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, about why a smooth transition is critical to national security. Joining me for insight and analysis are: NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Kasie Hunt, Hugh Hewitt, host on the Salem Radio Network, O. Kay Henderson, news director of the Radio Iowa Network and Michael Eric Dyson of Vanderbilt University. Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press.
ANNOUNCER:
From NBC News in Washington, the longest-running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.
CHUCK TODD:
Good Sunday morning and I hope you're having a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving Day weekend. Throughout America's Covid crisis there has been a parade of grim statistics. Among them: As of this morning, there have been more than 13.3 million cases and more than 266,000 deaths in the United States alone, with little reason to believe things will improve in the short run. But if there is one statistic that stands out above all the others it's this one: The United States has four percent of the world's population and somehow has 19 percent of the world’s Covid deaths. This is hardly what people mean by American exceptionalism and no amount of gainsaying or presidential tweeting that increased testing is somehow to blame can wish away this dubious honor. This weekend tens of millions ignored pleas from health experts and some government officials to avoid travel and instead spend time at home with their immediate families. The result may well be a Covid surge beyond the record numbers we've seen. How did we get here? Did we lose faith in our government because our government gave us reason to lose faith in it? Was it a decades-long assault on science and objective facts particularly by some on the right? Was it a fractured media environment that invites people to seek alternative facts that fit their personal worldview? Or are we just fed up, done with months of Zoom meetings and closed stores and kids home from school that we've simply had enough, enough that millions feel it's worth taking a big risk to have a brief sense of normalcy? Whatever the cause, the results are clear: Millions are being infected, hospitals are near their breaking point and health care workers are the ones paying the price.
NIKKI TOMLINSON:
I've been a nurse for 20 years, and I've never experienced burnout like this.
CHUCK TODD:
On the front lines, health care workers are exhausted, overwhelmed - and at times angry at an American public that is only half listening.
DR. KENNETH REMY:
I hope that the last moments of your life don't look like this. Because this is what you'll see at the end of your life if we don't start wearing masks
LACIE GOOCH:
We're understaffed. We have so much on our plates as nurses.
CHUCK TODD:
With coronavirus cases now over 13 million and continuing to climb -- up in 44 states in the past two weeks -- roughly 90,000 Americans are hospitalized. ICUs are overwhelmed.
DR. MARK MOROCCO:
It's not entirely clear to us that we're going to be able to move personnel from cool spots to hot spots because the hot spots are everywhere.
CHUCK TODD:
According to federal data, by the end of the week, 22% of hospitals - nearly 1400 - expect to face a staffing shortage.
DR. NATHAN HATTON:
One of the plans in Utah is to open up one of our big event centers as a hospital. Well, where are the doctors coming from?
DR. KENNETH REMY:
You can't just pick up medical professionals at the grocery store when you're in need of staff.
CHUCK TODD:
In a September survey, nearly 1 in 4 physicians said they know a physician who committed suicide. 58% express feelings of burnout. Health care workers are surrounded by dying patients.
CLIFF ANDERSON:
We had to decide to take the oxygen away. That was really hard. That was hard.
CHUCK TODD:
And health care workers are sacrificing their own lives.
SELENE MEDA-SCHLAMEL:
So willing to put her life on the line to help others so that they could then help others. It was such a tragedy.
CHUCK TODD:
But, while travel on Thanksgiving was down from previous years - more than 6 million people flew over the last week.
REPORTER:
Are you concerned about the coronavirus?
TRAVELER:
I’m not. I don't know anybody who has got it.
TRAVELER:
It doesn't seem like it's getting any better. So, I mean, might as well just try it and have a little bit of fun
DR. MARK MOROCCO:
Doctors, nurses, all healthcare front liners are pretty frustrated and angry.
LAUREN WILLDEBOER:
A lot of people say that Covid is a hoax, that masks don't work, that masks are politicized.
CHUCK TODD:
While some elected leaders are showing urgency, others continue to downplay the virus.
GOV. KEVIN STITT:
I think Oklahomans should be with their loved ones over Thanksgiving. Let's be safe about it.
CHUCK TODD:
In Denver, Mayor Michael Hancock urged residents to stay home --
MAYOR MICHAEL HANCOCK:
I'm asking, I'm urging, I'm pleading with everyone, please stay home
CHUCK TODD:
-- then flew to Mississippi for Thanksgiving.
COLORADO RESIDENT:
He told us we should not be seeing our family and should not be traveling for Thanksgiving and then he goes behind our backs.
ERIN BONI:
One of the things we've been struggling with is what we do with our kids if. We can't keep them safe, that includes potentially sending them to live with a relative away from us. So stay home, please.
CHUCK TODD:
In the two days since Thanksgiving, there have been 346,000 new confirmed Covid cases in the United States and 2,700 deaths. Of course, we won't know for a while how bad the surge of cases and deaths due to Thanksgiving weekend travel will be. Joining me now is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who of course is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci, welcome back to Meet The Press. I think this other statistic tells the story of November pretty well. The total number of coronavirus cases in the United States for November surpassed four million on Saturday. That's double -- more than double what we saw in October. What are we staring at in December considering, I guess, Halloween was part of this early surge in November. What should we expect in December, sir?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Well, if you look at the slope of that curve that led to the numbers that you just mentioned, Chuck, we're going to be seeing, as we go towards the end now and getting into December, we're seeing the surge with an inflection curve like this. The concern we had as we entered into the Thanksgiving holiday and as we're now coming out of the Thanksgiving holiday is that the travel and the people congregating at dinners that you'd expect -- we tried to get the word out for people, as difficult as it is, to really not have large gatherings of people, family and friends but try to keep it confined to the immediate household. But, you know, people are not always going to do that. So, what we expect, unfortunately, as we go for the next couple of weeks into December, is that we might see a surge superimposed upon that surge that we're already in. And you know, when I give that message, I don't want to frighten people, except to say it is not too late at all for us to do something about this because as we travel back, to be careful. When we go back to where we are, to just continue to do the things that we've been talking about. An important issue, Chuck, is that we know when you mitigate with masks, with distance, with not having crowds or congregate settings, that those states that have done that, you can actually see that the inflection of their curve starts to do this. So, we know we can do something about it, particularly now as we get into the colder season and as we approach the Christmas holidays.
CHUCK TODD:
Look, it took, what was it -- I think it was only about a week before Thanksgiving that the CDC came out and advised against travel. Are we going to see more dire warnings given about travel now -- essentially now, in the next week or two, as we prepare for the end of the year holidays and New Year's?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
You know, Chuck, I'd have to say honestly unless something changes dramatically, which I don't see that happening, because the curves, when you look at the dynamics of an outbreak, that you see usually a three, four, five-week period of time before curves start really coming down. So, I think we're going to be faced with another situation. We're going to have to make decisions as a nation, state, city, and family, that we're in a very difficult time and we're going to have to do the kinds of restrictions of things we would like to have done, particularly in this holiday season, because we're entering into what's really a precarious situation because we're in the middle of a steep slope. You know, and when I tell -- what people need to do, we say it over and over again, we know it works. But also that there is, as I mentioned to you before, Chuck, there is light at the end of the tunnel because we will really be seeing vaccines soon. We likely, almost certainly, are going to be vaccinating a portion of the individuals in the first priority before the end of December. And then, as we get into January and February and March, more and more. So, if we can hang together as a country and do these kinds of things to blunt these surges until we get a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated, we can get through this. There really is light at the end of the tunnel.
CHUCK TODD:
What --
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Yeah, go ahead.
CHUCK TODD:
What is your confidence level that various hospital systems are going to hold up right now? I mean, look, the warnings are coming from all over the country. I know you guys see these reports on the task force. I saw one earlier this week. It was something like one in five healthcare systems around the country were on the brink of basically being over capacity -- they were already over capacity.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Right.
CHUCK TODD:
The next two weeks could make it worse. Healthcare workers themselves --
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Right.
CHUCK TODD:
-- there are not enough of them. Are you concerned about failing systems around the country?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
You know, Chuck, I have to say that I am. And I am because reality stares you right in the face. Just last night, I got a couple of calls from colleagues and associates who are very much involved in different states throughout the country, saying, "We're at that point where we soon, if things don't turn around quickly, we're going to have a situation with capacity. Not only of hospital capacity, but staff. You know, what do you think we should do?" I mean, almost pleading for advice about, you know, "What can we do? We don't want to lock down completely, but we might have to if this --" and I'm talking locally. I'm not talking about nationally. I'm talking about individual locations of people starting to see significant stresses on the hospital and healthcare delivery systems. So, again, that's such an even more important reason why we've got to realize that we do have within our capability to be able to blunt that by doing the simple things that we talk about short of locking down, so we don't precipitate the necessity of locking down.
CHUCK TODD:
Is this -- look, I don’t mean to -- I don't want to belabor a point about the federal response here that you and I have talked about in the past, but how about getting the president to talk about not traveling over the holidays? Or getting the president to talk about wearing a mask again? Is that possible?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
You know, I don't know. I mean, it certainly is possible, Chuck, I mean, but I don't think I have any power in that regard. I mean, so what I'm doing is the best that I can do, you know, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to the nation on a national program to talk about the importance of those kinds of things that can have an impact.
CHUCK TODD:
Let's talk about the vaccine. The CDC is going to put out some protocols on who should get it first. It's pretty clear in the conversation you and I are having, it's healthcare workers probably should be priority one and priority two here. What does that look like? How realistic is it to get the nation's leading frontline healthcare workers vaccinated by the end of January, say?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Well, Chuck, I think certainly the healthcare workers are going to be among those. I don't know exactly what the precise final decision is going to be. Certainly healthcare workers will be up there. There may be others, I don't know. As you know, on Tuesday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, either Tuesday or Wednesday, sometime early next week, are going to be coming in meeting with the CDC and making those kinds of decisions. But if you look at the number of healthcare workers, obviously you're going to have to do it in a graded way. I mean, we don't have enough vaccine right now, in the first -- you know, in the last week or two or three of December -- to be able to get everybody who needs to. And that's the reason why what happens is that a certain amount of vaccine gets shipped locally to the states. And then the final decision of how to do that properly will be left up to the states, with strong recommendations from the CDC.
CHUCK TODD:
So, let me get into some specific asks. Because there's people watching here, "Hey, I've got a parent or a grandparent in a senior facility." Maybe it's a nursing home, maybe it's a senior living, you know, care. When will they get it? How early in this process do you expect them to get a vaccine?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Yeah. Again, I don't want to get ahead of the advisory committee, but I can tell you what likely will happen, certainly not definitive, that people in nursing homes will likely be very high up there in that facility. You know, if you look at the number of people who are in what's called “official nursing homes,” there's about 1.5 million people. If you look at the people who are the staff that staff those official nursing homes, that's about another 1.5 million. So, you probably have around three million people. I think you can get them protected reasonably soon because obviously they're very vulnerable. And then you go down the list of people who are elderly, with or without underlying conditions, and you get the different priorities after that.
CHUCK TODD:
Let's talk about kids here. Moderna had not -- did not do any clinical trials with anybody under the age of 18, and I think Pfizer did some of its clinical trials down to age 12. But there hasn't been a lot. What is, what is your sense of when should we expect school-age kids to be able to get vaccinated? Are we looking at the summer? Is that going to be a longer period of time here?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Well, traditionally, Chuck -- well, the answer to -- the direct answer to your question, it's going to be months. And the reason is traditionally, when you have a situation like a new vaccine, you want to make sure, because children as well as pregnant women, are vulnerable. So, before you put it into the children, you're going to want to make sure you have a degree of efficacy and safety that is established in an adult population, particularly an adult, normal population. Then there are ways to get children vaccine by, let's say, maybe in January. And again, this is my estimate.
CHUCK TODD:
I understand.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
It may not be exactly that. That you go ahead and you do what's called a Phase I and a Phase IIa trial in children. In other words, you find out is it safe in children and does it induce the kind of immune response that's comparable to that in adults, an immune response that you know protects adults. And then what you can do is you can do a study, what's called a bridging study. You can say, “Okay, now we have safety in the children. We have comparable immunogenicity,” namely the same type of immune response. “We can get this expeditiously approved for the children before going through a, you know, 30,000 person trial that may take a longer period of time.”
CHUCK TODD:
Got you.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
So we're going to start the process very likely in January to get it to the children sooner rather than later.
CHUCK TODD:
If someone has had Covid-19, do they get vaccinated?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
You know, the answer is very likely yes. When the trials were done, the Moderna trials and other trials, and we looked at the data, there were people who, when you looked at their antibody response, they actually gave indication that they had already been infected and actually recovered quite well. And at the time of the vaccine study, they were actually well and normal, as it were, and yet they still got vaccinated. Since we don't know the durability of protection from someone who has already been infected, how long that protection lasts, it would not be surprising that we would be vaccinating people who have recovered from Covid-19.
CHUCK TODD:
Given the, and you've admittedly said this, our sort of rough roll-out of a testing strategy in this country. Arguably, we still don’t have, you know, we're still dealing with a testing strategy that arguably prioritizes sports leagues over healthcare workers at times. But let me ask you this. Why should we feel confident that vaccine distribution will go smoothly considering, frankly, how unsmoothly testing went?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Well, the reason that we should feel more confident about that, Chuck, is that we have a long, long history of the distribution of vaccines. I mean, it's not to the extent that you're giving it to 300 million people, but every year the system is set up in a relationship between the CDC and the state and local health authorities that they distribute 80 million or more vaccines every year. So, this isn't something that they've done just for the first time. Obviously, you're going to want to scale it up because the numbers are going to be greater, but there are a couple of aspects to getting vaccine into the arm of someone who needs it. One, is to get it transported from the place where it's made and stored to the local state and city areas. That's being handled by General Gus Perna and the military in the transport of that. Once it gets there, it's the state and local authorities who are responsible for the distribution. So, there are a couple of phases. The part about 300 million doses getting shipped is going to be taken care of by people who know how to do that. The part at the distal end, namely getting into people's arms, is going to be more challenging than just a regular flu season. I think it would be foolish to deny that. But I think it's going to be able to be done because the local people have done that in the past. Hopefully they'll get the resources to help them to do that.
CHUCK TODD:
On January 20th, a President Biden calls you up, Dr. Fauci, what's the first thing you say to him? He says, "I need to handle -- what's the first thing you want me to do, Dr. Fauci?" What do you say to him?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
You know, I think there are going to be a couple of things. I think it's going to be continuing to make sure that the vaccines get distributed in an efficient and equitable way. I think that's really very important. I also have been, you know, together with Dr. Birx, have been saying that, you know, there are two types of testings, or a couple of types of testings, more than two. But one is the testing for a situation where you want to find out is this person infected and can we be able to do good identification, isolation, and contact tracing? And then there's the broader testing, namely one that's less sensitive but that's testing people who are not symptomatic, namely a much broader blanket over the country in a way that's easy, that's cheap, that is even a home test. I'm going to be pushing for that because I think when you really allow us to know in a very quick way what the penetrance of infection is in any given way, I think that's going to be very important because the virus is being spread throughout the country by people without symptoms. So, we've got to go beyond the symptomatic people and get a better understanding of the asymptomatic transmission.
CHUCK TODD:
Every day, when I make a right turn to come into the office, when I do come into the office, there's a big sign that says, "Thank you, Dr. Fauci." Let me just say the same thing right now. Thank you, Dr. Fauci. I appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Thank you very much, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
You bet.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI:
Thank you for having me.
CHUCK TODD:
You got it. When we come back, the assassination of the head of Iran's nuclear program could complicate President-elect Biden's foreign policy. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, joins me next on why presidential transitions have implications for national security.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. Not every presidential transition has to be as difficult as this one has been. Under President George W. Bush, Admiral Mike Mullen -- on the right -- was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Bob Gates -- on the left -- was Defense Secretary, and President Obama kept both men in their jobs, ensuring an even smoother transition of power than normal. Admiral Mullen knows what a proper transition looks like and why a rocky one can have serious national security implications. And he joins me now. Admiral Mullen, welcome back to Meet the Press. I'll be honest, I was very focused on getting you on here, about a week -- over a week ago, on the news about Afghanistan and the decisions that the president was making right before he was handing over power, and I had my own flashback to decisions you were involved with in Afghanistan. And then the Iranian -- then the assassination happened last night, over the weekend. So I want to start with Iran, Admiral Mullen, and what you think the implications are going forward for a President Biden and the Iran nuclear deal.
ADM. MIKE MULLEN:
Well, I think the assassination makes it much more challenging if you will, Chuck, in terms of where President-elect Biden wants to go in terms of renegotiating or making, you know, re-entering into the nuclear deal, specifically. I'm hopeful that, actually, President-elect Biden can do that. Fakhrizadeh was at the heart of the Iranian nuclear program and has been for years, not only the brains but also the passion behind it. So his assassination is really a significant event, not unlike a year ago when we took out Soleimani. It's a real, real center of gravity, if you will, for that program. That doesn't mean there aren't other nuclear scientists, or that Iran can’t continue on. So I really, I expect this -- certainly, the media is reporting that tensions are on the rise. There's an Israeli component to this, meaning Israel is, you know, a nuclear weapon in Iran is an existential threat to Israel and Israel will do all it can to make sure that never happens. So I'm hopeful that President-elect Biden can actually reach in and calm the waters, but I think this heightens tension significantly.
CHUCK TODD:
Look, we still have another 50 days before the transfer of power. We -- it certainly looks to the layperson that -- and Israel looks at its national security priorities and thought, “Boy, the timing -- we better do this now, before, before there's a new American president.” What other situations are there around the world right now that you're concerned that there may be more attempts at tying the hands of the new president?
ADM. MIKE MULLEN:
Well, I think -- I'm actually very concerned about the Trump loyalists who have now gone to work in the Pentagon. I mean, recently, Secretary Esper was fired, and a host of other people left the building. And there are some real Trump loyalists there now, in charge and it's pretty difficult to think that over the course of 50 or 60 days you can do something constructive, but you can do something that's really destructive. And a week ago there were certain -- many media reports that there was a debate about action against Iran specifically. The president reportedly turned down. But I would be concerned that those issues continue to be raised. You mentioned the troops in Afghanistan coming out there. There are reports now of bringing troops home from Somalia and just, I guess generally trying to get as many troops home before the inauguration as possible. I just think we need to be very careful with that. I'd like everybody to come home as well. The reality is, on the ground in places like Somalia and Afghanistan, there are still terrorists who would do us ill, and I want to play, actually, the game on their turf, and not play it here. If we just come home, my fear is that they arrive here in the United States, and we've been through that before and I never want to see that happen again.
CHUCK TODD:
Look, I want to make -- I made a point at the start of our interview about sort of the transition from Bush to Obama, but I want to put it in starker terms here. Here was the New York Times headline, just a week ago, “Trump Using Last Days to Lock in Policy and Make Biden's Task More Difficult.” And here's an excerpt from Robert Gates’ book “Duty,” where he says, “In December, Bush was prepared to approve the additional 20,000 troops,” this was December of ‘08, “and Steve Hadley asked Obama's national security adviser-designate Jim Jones,” Steve Hadley was Bush's national security adviser, “whether the new Obama administration preferred that Bush make the troop decision, and take the heat, or hold off. The new team opted for the second course.” The point was, this was a transition and, granted made easier because Gates was staying over, where there was consultation and there was a concern, what would the world think if one president boxed in another president? Now we have one American president boxing in another American president. What message does that send to the world, Admiral Mullen?
ADM. MIKE MULLEN:
One of the things that I learned in the job that I had is you don't want to -- you'd like to do all you can to not box in the president, to give any president as many options and as much space as possible. So, this is obviously the opposite case right now. In fact, I thought President Bush set the tone for the issue you mentioned, but also a handful of other issues that I saw that, that these were decisions that were going to be impactful on the next president, and it was his desire, that is President Bush, to make sure that President Obama had a vote, specifically. And the example that you lay out is one significant example, specifically. So, it appears that the current administration is trying to lock in as many options as -- as many issues as possible to make it much more difficult for President-elect Biden to govern. And actually, historically, that has just never been the case. I worry that, you know, in a time where -- you just went through, you know, where we are on the, on the, the pandemic. Specifically, the challenge we have in the economy, and national security issues do not wait. That's going to be a particularly difficult transition in that arena, actually having started three weeks late. So it is, I think, our allies, our friends, and our enemies look at us at a time of real fragility in that regard, and our enemies always try to look and take advantage of a transition period.
CHUCK TODD:
Very quickly, what do you tell those that are still wearing the uniform, active duty, whether it's General Milley on down, and they see what these staffers are doing right now at the Pentagon and they're very nervous about it? How publicly should they be sounding alarms?
ADM. MIKE MULLEN:
Well, I have a lot of faith in General Milley that he understands where he's working and who's in the building. And confident that he's actually sending the right message. And he said it recently, at an event locally in Washington, where -- the United States military men and women support and defend the Constitution. We do not support and defend an individual or an individual office. And I think that's the message. Milley's been very strong on that, and that's the right message to them.
CHUCK TODD:
Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs. Retired Admiral, of course. Thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective, sir. I always appreciate it.
ADM. MIKE MULLEN:
Thank you, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
When we come back, President Trump finally said he'll leave the White House if he loses the Electoral College vote. But is he planning a return in 2024? The panel is next.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back, the panel is with us. NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt; Hugh Hewitt, host on the Salem Radio Network; O. Kay Henderson, news director of the Radio Iowa Network; and Michael Eric Dyson of Vanderbilt University, author of Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America. President Trump, folks, is still insisting that he won the election, however -- which, of course, he did not -- and that Joe Biden did not win 80 million votes -- he has -- and that the election was somehow marred by massive fraud -- it was not. But last week, he did seem to put to rest the idea that he would refuse to leave the White House on January 20. Take a listen.
[BEGIN TAPE]
REPORTER:
If the Electoral College does elect President-elect Joe Biden, are you not going to leave this building?
PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Just so you -- certainly I will. Certainly I will. And you know that. But I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20th of January.
[END TAPE]
CHUCK TODD:
Kay Henderson, you're the one not stuck with the rest of us coastal elites. And I guess Michael Eric Dyson gets to be -- no longer is a coastal elite when he heads over to Vanderbilt from Georgetown. So as our middle -- literally, in the geographical middle of this country, what do Americans hear when they've been hearing the president complain about this election?
O. KAY HENDERSON:
Well, not everyone is hearing that, number one. Number two, in terms of a concession, in the state of Iowa, Jim Ross Lightfoot has still not conceded the 1998 election to Tom Vilsack. Tom Vilsack still went on to serve two terms as governor and both terms as President Obama's U.S. Ag secretary. So therefore, I think that when historians look at this period, they're likely going to look at the policies that were discussed and debated during this period. And perhaps, what Trump may or may not be able to do with Congress in relation to pandemic relief.
CHUCK TODD:
You know, Kasie Hunt, this is not new with this president. He has complained about whatever has happened, whether it's a bankruptcy -- he's always claiming that somehow what we're reading or what we're hearing is not true. In 1990: “Whether it's a marriage or whether it's financial, I've never seen press reporting as I have with regard to me, I hope the general public understands how inherently dishonest the press in this country is.” “We had a Type C personality running the hotel. I've never made money in my life with a Type C personality.” “These lenders are babies. These are total killers. Every company virtually in Atlantic City went bankrupt. Every company." There's always an excuse and there's always a reason. There's never a point where he admits the facts on the ground. Again, this is not just his political career, his business career and his celebrity career.
KASIE HUNT:
Well, and he spent most of the time in all of those careers trying to avoid the label of loser. And in this particular case, it's very clear he lost the election to Joe Biden. He lost it in a significant way. And that's something that he cannot escape, despite trying every avenue to the point of absurdity over the course of the last couple of weeks since the election was actually declared. And you're right. And in Iowa, remember, I don't even think he's conceded that he lost the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz --
CHUCK TODD:
In '16, you mean.
KASIE HUNT:
-- back in 2016 when he was first running for the Republican primary nomination. And this is something that clearly, you know, for him, he has spent the entirety of his presidency attacking the media. And he's been pretty transparent about why he does that. He says, "The reason I do that is because that way when they say something I don't like, no one will believe them." And that's the question here that I think history is also going to reflect on: how much damage was done to trust in our systems, in our institutions, in our elections during this period when an outgoing president was trying to do everything he could do to convince his supporters that the results couldn't be trusted.
CHUCK TODD:
Hugh Hewitt, your listeners, maybe they don't want to believe the facts that are on the ground. Do you feel like you confront your listeners enough that don't want to believe the facts? Or do you think you could do more?
HUGH HEWITT:
Oh, every day I talk to people who believe that there's massive fraud in Georgia. And I tell them no, and they've got to get out and vote for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who I support. But I think what's going on is an undervaluation of the voters' intelligence again. They're very sophisticated. They know President Trump is as of today planning on running for election in 2024 against President-elect Biden. And he's doing things consistent with that. And I think he is going to spend the next four years underscoring the big successes of his tenure, including Operation Warp Speed. It was great news what Dr. Fauci said, that most of the frontline people will be vaccinated by the end of December. He's going to emphasize his military rebuild, the Supreme Court, he's going to emphasize conservative realism versus Chinese Communist Party and The Abraham Accords. So he's just setting up a campaign that's already begun. And I wouldn't be surprised, Chuck, if on or before the inauguration of President Biden, he announces Trump 2024 is formed and it's off to the races.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, look, he announced his re-election campaign on inauguration day in 2017. Michael Eric Dyson, the damage -- President Trump is using old dog whistles to talk about voter fraud. He's talking about “the cities.” And I guess maybe we should be glad he's only using a dog whistle when he says “the cities.” Long-term damage that's being redone here, in your mind?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON:
Well, it's pretty unparalleled. A sitting president of the United States of America attacking with such vitriol and viciousness the very process of democracy that landed him the job to begin with. So while he undercuts the prospects of American democracy, he's undercutting his own legitimacy, the very thing about which he has been obsessed over these years. But think about the dog whistle that in some instances has been far louder. Look at, he's attacking Detroit: 79% Black. He's attacking Atlanta: 52% Black. He's attacking Philadelphia: 42% Black. He's attacking Milwaukee: 39% Black. So we get what he's doing here. He's trying to have his cake and eat it too, so to speak. He wants to -- he has an uptick in voting among African-American people by 5% among Black men, 4% among Black women. And yet, at the same time, he wants to be able to whistle to white supremacists and white nationalists that he is still their guy and that he will continue to send out the notion that somehow this is a fraud, the fraud is related to race, race is, itself, illegitimate, and as a result of that, you, as a white person, have every reason in the world, regardless of your stratification, whether you're making, you know, $100 million a year or whether you're barely making $10,000, to “vote for me because I'm your guy.” This is destructive to the process of American democracy and one of the most powerful repudiations of enlightenment. Here's a guy who's anti-science, he's anti-race, he's anti-everything that makes this country, it seems, the very great thing he wants to make it.
CHUCK TODD:
Kay, this issue of -- we're hearing, basically, two different sets of facts, two different narratives. How does that come -- where do you see it the most in Iowa? And where do you see it on the ground in your job?
O. KAY HENDERSON:
Well, frankly, I'm not seeing it that much. The Iowa Republican Party’s State Central Committee passed a resolution a couple of weeks ago saying that they support President Trump's pursuing avenues through the courts, all the way to the Supreme Court. You have Republican voices like the chairman of the Republican Party here in Iowa still supporting the president. You don't hear a lot of talk among Republicans about the voter fraud issue. We do have an election here that is still ongoing. There's a Congressional race here which currently has a Republican in the lead by six votes, and it's likely that this will also be going through the court system. So you don't hear those talking points here as much because of the vote counting that's still ongoing in Iowa's Second Congressional District.
CHUCK TODD:
I'll tell you, Kay, I’d love to go -- we could go real deep on that Second Congressional District. To think they went from Dave Loebsack, to possibly where they're going to go today, it just sort of tells you everything about the changing dynamics not only around the country but in Iowa as well. Anyway, when we come back, while Joe Biden held socially distant campaign events, President Trump hosted huge campaign rallies. Did they help or hurt? Data download is next.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. Data Download time. As the 2020 campaign wound down, President Trump crisscrossed the country, hoping big rallies would drum up enthusiasm as it did for him in 2016. Did it work? An NBC News tally shows there were 30 Trump campaign stops in the last two weeks in states from Arizona, to Nebraska, to Pennsylvania. In five counties that Mr. Trump visited he saw better results than he did in 2016. But in the remaining 25, either his margin of victory shrank, his margin of defeat grew or the county flipped to Biden altogether. So let's look at a few of these counties in a few battleground states. We're going to start in Michigan. On October 27th, President Trump held a rally in Ingham County, home of Lansing. He wound up doing five points worse than he did there in 2016. In Oakland County, north of Detroit, he did six points worse than in 2016, and in Grand Traverse County, after an election-eve rally, he won for a second time, but his margin fell by nine points. There was a similar pattern in Pennsylvania. President Trump visited Erie, the state's ultimate swing county, on October 20th. In the end, it narrowly flipped to Joe Biden by a single point. Mr. Trump won Lancaster County by 16, but that's three points less than his 2016 margin. And Lackawanna County, home to Joe Biden's Scranton, the president lost by more than eight points, almost five points worse than last time. And finally, the swingiest of swing states, Florida, which President Trump carried much more easily this time around -- well, despite Mr. Trump's rally in the Panhandle’s Escambia county, his winning margin fell, believe it or not, by five points. He lost Tampa’s Hillsborough County basically by the same margin he did in '16. But the big exception to this pattern was, that's right, Miami-Dade. President was there November 1st and he, of course, made huge gains, shrinking his loss there by 22 points, guaranteeing a win in that state. Now, to be clear, none of this is provable. Mr. Trump's rallies actually may have helped him even in places where he lost ground. But in the time where public health experts were warning about Covid risks at large gatherings, they may have been more of a liability, particularly locally, than an asset. Anyway, some evidence to back that up. When we come back, Joe Biden hopes to break Washington's partisan gridlock. What are the chances that Republicans agree to work with him on that? That's next.
CHUCK TODD:
Welcome back. As we turn more towards President-elect Biden and the transition, I want to highlight a quote, Michael Eric Dyson, that I think feeds into something you write about in your book as well. First, let me play this quote from President-elect Biden from -- on the evening of when he was declared the victory -- the victor by many media organizations.
[BEGIN TAPE]
PRES.-ELECT BIDEN:
And especially those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. You've always had my back, and I'll have yours.
[END TAPE]
CHUCK TODD:
You write this about third rail race. And you say this, "Despite President Obama's attempt to gently but directly address the mammoth hurts and simmering hostilities between Black folk and the cops, the reactive white discomfort kept him for a while from touching the third rail of race. That was more than a little disconcerting to Black folk because we realized that if America couldn't listen to the truth from Obama, then few other voices stood a chance." So I'm curious, does Joe Biden and his voice stand a chance?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON:
I think so. I think my assessment there has been borne out by empirical facts. Empiricism is just a big word that which can be falsified or verified through the senses. And we saw the eye test, the polls, that when Obama spoke about race there was extraordinary disconcert and discomfort. But with Joe Biden, I think the white privilege he has as a figure who's been deeply rooted in traditions that are respectful of and conversant with African American communities makes him an ideal figure. He can use that privilege that he has as a white man who is mature and wise along with his ability and his ideals which I think are fresh. He's got people around him like Cedric Richmond, a powerful and brilliant congressman who will help guide and lead him. But already he has his instincts about police brutality, about the economy that has hurt African American people and the disproportionate ways in which COVID-19 has attacked their bodies. I think those things put him in good stance. And when have you ever heard a president before say, "I owe you Black folk because you stood by me. Now I'm going to stand by you." That's pretty remarkable in the history of American presidencies.
CHUCK TODD:
Kasie, what are you seeing? Are you seeing any differences between how -- does the African American lawmakers in Capitol Hill, do they expect Joe Biden to deliver?
KASIE HUNT:
I think that they do, Chuck. But I also think that there's pretty deep trust there. I think that's part of what explains why Joe Biden did so well, why Jim Clyburn stood up at his side when he did at that critically important point in the presidential race, why Black people listened to him and went out there for him. I mean this is not a relationship that developed overnight or came out of nowhere. This is a relationship that developed over many years, many decades, quite frankly, of Joe Biden's time in public life. And that trust has always been, as I'm sure Professor Dyson knows very, very well, that trust has always been kind of the bedrock for Black people in politics and political life. And it's something with which they have a long history. And, you know, President Obama, to what the professor's book was saying, his time in public life was simply much shorter. He's a much different type of political figure than Joe Biden is. So I do think that there is a deep trust and faith that Biden is going to follow through on what he said there.
CHUCK TODD:
Hugh Hewitt, I feel like that there's going to be some sort of, I don't know if it's a reckoning or what do you want to call it on the right, where you're going to have some who say, "Hey, there's plenty of African Americans that would like to support conservatives or Republicans. But the branding, thanks to Donald Trump, makes it very hard to have that conversation.” Do you think that changes in a post-Trump world?
HUGH HEWITT:
Well, I think it's already changing. Professor Dyson noted in the first panel segment that Donald Trump increased his numbers with African Americans significantly. And when you look at the biggest winners on Tuesday night a month ago were Kevin McCarthy in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate. And they are going to look at 16 Republican women who got elected, they're going to look at two African American congressmen, they're going to look at Michelle Steel in Orange County, Young Kim in Orange County, California. They're going to want to diversify the party. And I haven't read the professor's new book. I've read “Tears We Cannot Stop,” his other book, and I would recommend McCarthy and McConnell and every Republican read that. And that Donald Trump, as he prepares for 2024, build on that 50 percent gain that he made by putting his arm around Tim Scott and other people who speak for African American Republicans and Latino Republicans and say, "What worked? What didn't? Let's build on the former."
CHUCK TODD:
Kasie Hunt, you're here. I've got to ask you, Covid relief. I feel like it's something I ask you every time you come on the show. And it's always, "Yeah, maybe next week but unlikely." Are we there again?
KASIE HUNT:
It's really tough, Chuck. And as you saw, even through the course of the president trying to challenge the results of the election, people from his own party, from states who are struggling with this, came and they said, "Please, we need this, please. I mean, we're watching our health care workers struggle with this day in and day out.” It is something that is deeply, deeply needed still. And the politics of it remain incredibly difficult. So I think that there is a window for them to do some of the things or at least try and help a little bit. There is a must pass bill to keep government open, and I think there's a significant push to try and put some things in there that will help people who are really struggling with this. It's certainly something that I think the president-elect has focused on. But right now, not necessarily any hope for a big bill at this point, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD:
All right, guys. That is all I have for today. I wish we had more time. Thank you all for watching. I hope you enjoy the rest of your Thanksgiving Day weekend. I hope you aren't traveling, be safe. We'll be back next week because if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.