Summary
Joe Biden made a poignant appearance today in Warm Springs, Georgia, a place that took on new resonance in a presidential campaign during the coronavirus pandemic. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is interviewed. Congresswoman Dingell says she was "the crazy one," as she put it, as she was warning the Clinton campaign before that they were in trouble in Michigan. Olivia Troye and other Republicans are making history by, as a matter of conscience, turning against the re-election of the president they worked for.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.
You know, four years ago this week, Debbie Dingell was the crazy one. That's actually how she describes herself. She -- she -- Congresswoman Dingell was the crazy one, as she put it, who was warning the Clinton campaign that they were in trouble in Michigan.
And we're going to have Debbie Dingell join us tonight to tell us what she thinks the difference is from four years ago in Michigan to this week in Michigan and how it looks for Joe Biden in Michigan. And the other states that Donald Trump won by less than 1 percent of the vote, like Michigan.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Wow. Well done. Good booking. Well done, Lawrence.
O'DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: Thanks, Lawrence.
O'DONNELL: Thanks.
Well, Jim Messina's also going to be joining us tonight to lead off our discussion of the presidential campaign because this -- this is when we desperately need to hear from the professionals, the people who have run successful presidential campaigns. Jim Messina was the campaign manager of the last successful Democratic presidential campaign, the Obama/Biden re-election campaign of 2012. And we need him to tell us what he sees in the candidate's travel schedules today, which included the president fueling up Air Force One to fly into Nebraska, a state that Republicans always win.
Donald Trump went there in search of exactly one electoral vote because Nebraska's electoral votes are allotted by congressional district and there is one congressional district in and around Omaha that can go Democratic. And Donald Trump went chasing that one electoral vote tonight.
Joe Biden campaigned in Georgia today, which a Democratic presidential candidate has not won since 1992. Joe Biden could spend the day trying to flip Georgia because President Barack Obama was covering Florida today for the Biden/Harris campaign. Every analysis of Donald Trump's Electoral College win in 2016 said that it was the result of low voter turnout. It depended on low voter turnout.
And we are now headed for an election that is going to have much higher voter turnout and possibly record-high voter turnout.
Jim Messina will make sense for us of all of the numbers that are coming in on voter turnout and the trends that we're seeing in polls.
But first, in this final week of the campaign, let's listen to what the voters are hearing in the battleground states when the campaign comes to them.
Joe Biden made a poignant appearance today in Warm Springs, Georgia, a place that took on new resonance in a presidential campaign during the coronavirus pandemic. Warm Springs is where President Franklin Roosevelt went to try to rebuild his increasingly frail body, and it is the place where President Roosevelt died when he was on the verge of winning World War II.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Warm Springs is a good place to talk about hope and healing. It's where Franklin Roosevelt came to, quote, to use the therapeutic waters to rebuild himself. Stricken by polio and the polio virus in 1921, he suffered from paralysis. Like many other Americans in those pre-vaccine decades, FDR longed to live an independent life, a life that wasn't defined by his illness.
To him and to so many others facing physical challenges, warm springs offered therapy for the body, and I might add and the soul. But it offered something else as well. FDR came looking for a cure. But it was the lessons he learned here that he used to lift a nation -- humility, empathy, courage, optimism.
This place represented a way forward, a way of restoration, of resilience, of healing. In the years that followed, FDR would come back to Warm Springs often to think about how to heal the nation and the world. And that's exactly what he did, lifting us out of a great depression, defeating tyranny, saving democracy.
Then it was here on April 12th, 1945, that President Roosevelt died. A casualty of war as surely as any who fell in combat. And the free world mourned. America's leaders wept.
Maybe even more important was the reaction of the American people. Naval Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson, a black man, cried as he played his accordion in tribute to FDR not far from here. And the stories told that when Franklin Delano Roosevelt's funeral procession went by, a man collapsed in grief.
And the neighbor asked him, did you know the president? The response was, no, the man said, but he knew me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: In Orlando, Florida, President Obama closed in on Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID. He said this at one of his rallies. COVID, COVID, COVID he's complaining. He's jealous of COVID's media coverage.
If he had been focused on COVID from the beginning, cases wouldn't be reaching new record highs across the country this week. If we were focused on COVID now, the White House wouldn't be having its second outbreak in a month, the White House.
Let me say this. I lived in the White House for a while. You know, it's a controlled environment. You can take some preventive measures in the White House to avoid getting sick, except this guy can't seem to do it. He's turned the White House into a hot zone.
Some of the places he holds rallies have seen new spikes right after he leaves town. And over the weekend, his chief of staff said, and I'm quoting here, I'm not making this up. His chief of staff on a news program says we're not going to control the pandemic. He just said this.
Yes, he did. And, yes, we noticed you're not going to control the pandemic. Listen, winter is coming. They're waving the white flag of surrender.
Florida, we can't afford four more years of this. That's why we got to send Joe Biden to the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: It was New York's former Governor Mario Cuomo who once said: You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.
Here is some of the campaign poetry of Donald Trump in Michigan today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: And that was the only part of Donald Trump's speech that was true. As usual today, Donald Trump gave his audiences this public intelligence test, which he is counting on them to fail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We test everybody. And because of that -- now if I tested half -- if I said we are going to cut our testing down in half, they'd go crazy. Because the cases would go down in approximately half, right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: President Obama had much more to say today about the man he calls our current president. Here is another sample.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: Our current president, he whines that "60 Minutes" is too tough. You think he's going to stand up to dictators? He thinks Lesley Stahl's a bully.
Just yesterday, just yesterday he said that Putin of Russia, Xi of China and Kim Jong-un of North Korea want him to win. We know. We know because you've been giving them whatever they want for the last four years.
Of course, they want you to win. That's not a good thing. You shouldn't brag about the fact that some of our greatest adversaries think they'd be better off with you in office. Of course they do. What does that say about you?
Think about that. Why are you bragging about that? Come on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Leading off our discussion tonight, Jim Messina, CEO of the Messina Group. He served as the deputy chief of staff for President Obama in the White House from 2009 until 2011. He was also the campaign manager for President Obama's successful re-election in 2012.
And Eugene Robinson is with us. He's associate editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for "The Washington Post". He's an MSNBC political analyst.
Jim, it's difficult and it's difficult for Gene Robinson to keep a straight face, it's difficult for President Obama to keep a straight face when these delivering those lines about Donald Trump accepting the praise of dictators and the desire of dictators to see him re-elected.
But what do you -- what do you think is the most effective thing we're hearing in what we can loosely call the poetry of the campaign in the final week?
JIM MESSINA, FORMER WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Well, look, I think this election right now is a referendum on COVID and Trump's handling of it. You know, we used to say to President Obama, if the campaign's a referendum on the incumbent, they usually lose. If it's a choice, they win.
And right now, this is a complete referendum on Trump and his terrible handling of all these things. And Trump is, as you've been saying, Lawrence, night after night, Trump's been steering into it and, like, literally can't shut up about it. We haven't heard him talk about the economy, which is kind of the only thing propping him up with swing voters right now.
He just continues to whine about media coverage and about COVID and all of these things in a way that just drives perfectly -- the contrast perfectly for Joe Biden. He -- Donald Trump continues his all-out assault to do everything he can to blow up his own candidacy.
O'DONNELL: Gene, what did you hear today in what these candidates are saying from President Trump to President Obama, Joe Biden?
EUGENE ROBINSON, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, for President Trump, I heard, as Jim did, just this sort of obsessive rambling that's increasingly disconnected with what ought to be a rational campaign plan, because he ought to be talking about the economy. He ought to be at least pretending to deal with COVID in a -- in a reasonable and responsible way. He ought to be -- he ought to do what he did toward the end of the -- of the 2016 campaign when he, you know, for him basically toned it down a little and did what his campaign advisers told him to do, you know, and laid off the tweeting for a bit in the last week or so.
And, you know, that was -- I think that was -- was helpful to him, but he's not doing it this time. He's just pedal to the metal. And I just don't -- so I don't know what his handlers are doing.
President Obama, by contrast, seemed just to be having so much fun with that speech. He just seemed to have a great time being on the stump and delivering a real, you know, stem-winding attack. And -- and from Joe Biden, I think we heard, you know, a chapter in his closing argument about bringing the country together, harkening back to history.
History, actually, you know, somebody actually talks about history and knows a bit about it. The kind of thing we're used to hearing from serious presidential candidates. And being a serious candidate right now is -- is a plus for Joe Biden as we go into the final days.
O'DONNELL: Jim Messina, help us see this through a campaign manager's eyes in the final week of this campaign. All the data's coming in on the early vote. You're looking at polls.
What are you -- what would you as a campaign manager tonight be staring at most intently in all the data that's available to you?
MESSINA: It's a great question. A couple of things come to mind here, right? The most important thing you have isn't your candidate, it isn't all the money or the TV ads. The most important thing you have is time. You have 169 hours until the polls close.
And so you're going to think about everything you can do in those 169 hours, especially where you send your candidates and your surrogates. And you're looking very deeply at that.
And that's why I think it's incredibly interesting where both campaigns are going right now. You have the Biden campaign on the offense going to states like Arizona, which, you know, Barack Obama didn't win either time. Like Georgia, where Joe Biden was today, which no Democrat has carried since 1972. And meanwhile, Donald Trump is just completely on the defense.
You said this exactly right. He went to Nebraska, Lawrence. Like, Nebraska. When you're trying to shore up Nebraska and Ohio and Iowa and Texas, you're screwed. You're in deep trouble.
And so, you know, the only offense the entire campaign is doing in the next week is they're sending Pence to Nevada. That's the only Hillary state that they're doing anything in. And I do think it's a little weird to be sending Vice President Pence, who has his own issues with -- with women and all these things, to Sin City to campaign. I think that's a skeptical decision, too. So I am -- I think it all kind of, you know, doesn't make a lot of sense.
The other number that I'm going to really care about because, Lawrence, you know how I feel about polls. I think they're mostly garbage. But 64 million Americans have already voted. And both campaigns get those numbers every single morning.
They run it through their models. They know who has voted. They know what their targets are. They know of their supporters who's voted and they know these independents.
And a couple of things have really struck to me. First of all, the youth vote is coming out in a very big way. A quarter of the voters in Texas who have voted who didn't vote in 2016 are young voters. And that starts to really change. Why is Joe Biden going to Georgia? Not because of polls. It's because Stacey Abrams only lost by 60,000 votes, and as of this morning, 73 percent of the entire 2016 voting number has already voted in Georgia. And we're going to go way over 100 percent.
So suddenly the numbers start to make sense where you have a shot in a Georgia. Where, you know, no one thought you would have a shot six months ago. So you're going to do that, but the thing that the Biden campaign is doing really, really smart is never taking it for granted in the Midwest.
You're having Congresswoman Dingell on and, you know, she called me almost every day in both Obama campaigns to remind me that this election is won in the Midwest. So you see the Biden campaign just parked in the Midwest over and over and over with quick forays to try to expand the map.
O'DONNELL: Gene Robinson, remember the -- we remember the Clinton campaign four years ago after the fact and only after the fact being criticized for spending some travel time in some reach states that were hard to get and neglecting places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and it seems the Biden campaign has found a way to do both.
ROBINSON: Yeah, it seems like -- and because I think you have to do -- you have to do the one. You have to take care of those Midwest states. And I -- and anybody who didn't learn that lesson in 2016 deserves to lose the election. So they did learn that lesson.
But if you're in the Biden campaign situation where, you know, the numbers look pretty solid in those states, and the numbers look really more than inviting in a state like Georgia and even in a state like Texas where Kamala Harris is going to go, and you've got all this money, then it makes sense to bet a little bit on it and see what you can do. See what happens.
The one thing that it's hard to see from this altitude is what's happening on a granular level on social media, sort of micro targeting of voters and whether the -- the Trump campaign is making any headway there. And that's hard to see from -- from where we sit.
But everything else looks really, frankly, very bad for the Trump camp.
O'DONNELL: Jim, quickly before we go. And I ask this on behalf of a few million people who desperately want to hear this answer from you right now. Do you have a secret for managing the emotions and the anxieties of the final week?
MESSINA: Gin and tonic? No, Lawrence, data. You know, you look very closely -- and this year we actually have real data. We don't need to worry about polls.
We can look at these 60-some million Americans who have already voted and we know how they're voting, we know what the models are and so, you know, everyone can kind of take a deep breath and look at actual real live data and not worry about the latest garbage polls.
O'DONNELL: All right. Data, that's the answer.
Jim Messina, Eugene Robinson, thank you both for starting us off tonight. Really appreciate it.
ROBINSON: Thanks, Lawrence.
MESSINA: Thank you.
O'DONNELL: Thank you.
Senator Amy Klobuchar is going to join us next, and she has helped produce a guide for voters about what to expect on election day and in the aftermath of election day and when we might actually be able to declare a winner in this race. It is very important information.
Senator Klobuchar joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: The United States Supreme Court has ruled that Wisconsin will not be able to count mail-in ballots that arrive up to six days after Election Day, as Wisconsin did earlier this year during the primary election. In an opinion accompanying the Supreme Court's decision to not allow Wisconsin to count votes that arrive after election day, even if they are postmarked before election day, Justice Brett Kavanaugh included a Trumpian level of ignorance in his opinion, suggesting that counting ballots that arrive after election day produced, quote, chaos and suspicions of impropriety if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.
It is, of course, impossible to flip the results of an election by counting all the votes. Like Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh imagines there is some sort of magical result that occurs on TV on election night and that anything that changes that temporary number that you see on TV, Brett Kavanaugh thinks must be the result of something illegitimate. This is the kind of legal scholarship produced by the Trump Supreme Court that would get you a failing grade in law school or high school.
The biggest vote counter in the country, the state of California, will be counting votes for 17 days after Election Day. Recounts in close elections can sometimes extend the time it takes to get a result by months, as happened in the first Senate election of Al Franken, who won by 312 votes, eight months after Election Day when all the votes were counted.
Brett Kavanaugh knows none of that and his ignorance poses a threat that Democrats might have to contend with legally in lawsuits that Donald Trump is very likely to file to try to stop counting mail-in ballots after election day. The most authoritative guide yet published on what to expect on Election Day has been produced by Senate Democrats and their staff that specifies exactly what the vote counting rules are in every state with extra details supplied for the presidential battleground states and the states with competitive Senate races.
If you want to know which states -- which states get a head start on counting the mail-in ballots before Election Day, and so might have a clear result to report on election night, that's in the Senate Democrats' guide which drills home this message.
In some states, we may not know the winner on election night. That's okay.
Joining us now is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She helped put that Democratic Senate guide together.
Senator Klobuchar, I've been reading it all day. It's going to be one of my important resources on election night.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Great.
O'DONNELL: Checking exactly -- exactly which states have already been counting their ballots so we know that they might have a chance to report that night.
I mean, Florida, for example, is one of those. They're allowed to start counting mail-in ballots before Election Day so that combined with the Election Day results, you know, by 11:00 p.m., if it's not too close, they might be able to tell us what's happening in Florida.
What else do we need to know as voters as Election Day approaches and as getting the final results might be much more complicated than they have been in the past?
KLOBUCHAR: Sure. I also want to give credit where credit's due. I did that report along with my friend Senator Bernie Sanders and Tammy Duckworth, Martin Heinrich and Chris Murphy. We did it as a group.
We think it's really important to look at three things. One, people should continue to vote early. With COVID rising, anyway, vote, go in person, drop your ballot off at the ballot boxes. Do it now.
Secondly, as you just said, we're not going to know the result in every single state on that night. And the third thing -- and that's okay. That's just fine. Some states we're going to know.
But the third thing is to turn out the vote but tune out the misinformation. Understand that voter intimidation is illegal and some of this -- I was so glad you brought up that Kavanaugh dissent. I literally -- it is chilling what he wrote. It is right out of the Trump playbook, right?
Today, Donald Trump says, oh, we should count all the elections on Election Day. Lawrence, you brought up California. Let's go a little more red.
Twenty-one states allow mail-in ballots to be postmarked on Election Day. They are states like Kentucky and states like Texas and states like Kansas, and they have varying degrees where you can count the ballots after that. Our military voters, right?
So, literally, you have a Supreme Court justice -- and I'm sorry, I don't chock it up to ignorance when this is a justice who actually worked on Bush v. Gore and argued that you should count all the votes.
And so, my view of this is let's put that aside. Let's thank those election officials that are out there every day. I was just out in Virginia. I was in New Hampshire, working hard getting the votes in.
And we believe that the votes must be counted and let's run this election like it should be. And there's a lot of Democrats and I'll say Republicans who believe the same thing.
O'DONNELL: The U.S. Postal Service is issuing a warning, saying we cannot guarantee the delivery of your ballot if you were to -- by Election Day, if you were to mail it even now.
What does that do to mail-in balloting?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, of course, the rules vary in different states. As you noted, some states have a lot of time to count it. You might be in a better situation putting it in in the mail in those states.
The safest way to do it is to bring your mail-in ballot to a ballot box if you're in a state -- most states allow them. As you know, the controversy in Texas, only one per county. That is the safest way. They have said they're going to treat these ballots are first-class mail and especially if you have no other way to get your ballot in, of course you should mail it.
But if you have the possibility of dropping that ballot off, either at the ballot box or one of the early voting places, do it that way or go in and early vote.
O'DONNELL: Senator, are you going to have this team that's put this report together kind of ready to go public on, say, the day after -- morning after election day with this message that don't be surprised if it takes several more days to get a count here?
KLOBUCHAR: Yes, of course -- of course we will, Lawrence.
But as you were just talking with Eugene and with Jim Messina, you know, it is possible that we will know the results on election night. I don't want to rule that out because Joe Biden is doing so well in so many polls, as you point out, in states that I don't think anyone would have predicted where Democrats can win because of the mishandling of this crisis by the president.
And by Joe Biden, as he said in his closing argument today, his consistent focus on bringing our country together on the way that we can actually get -- lick this virus and make sure that we get on to the day after tomorrow and move our country forward.
He's got the plan. He's got a way to do it. And Donald Trump every single day keeps dividing people. So, you know, I feel good about what's happening in the Midwest. I'm going to be in Iowa in the next few days. In Minnesota we're doing so well here, Lawrence.
just so much positive news. But if they start messing around that they've been doing. I mean let's face it, to the very end, I don't want to be a Pollyanna about this. They are going to court, the Republicans.
They did it in Pennsylvania. They've been doing it in Minnesota. They're doing it in South Carolina. They just did it in Wisconsin. Despite the fact that we all have the image of those African-American voters standing in a rain storm in their homemade masks and their garbage bags.
They're going to fight to the end, but we're fighting back and our voters are voting.
O'DONNELL: Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
KLOBUCHAR: It was great, Lawrence. Thank you.
O'DONNELL: Thank you.
And when we come back, Donald Trump won Michigan four years ago by about one-fifth of 1 percent of the vote. And Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan was sadly not surprised. She had been sounding the alarm for Democrats this week four years ago that they could lose Michigan and she was right.
Congresswoman Dingell will join us next to tell us the difference four years can make in Michigan.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: Debbie Dingell was "the crazy one" during this final week of the presidential campaign four years ago. That's what she called herself in a "Washington Post" op-ed piece two days after the election. She wrote, "I was the crazy one. I predicted that Hillary Clinton was in trouble in Michigan during the Democratic primary. I observed that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination for president."
Donald Trump won the state of Michigan in the general election by much less than 1 percent of the vote. Donald Trump won Michigan's 16 electoral votes by a margin of only 10,704 votes out of 4.8 million votes cast in Michigan.
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell saw that coming in her state and she joined us on this program after she wrote that painful op-ed piece in that first week when the country was coming to grips with the reality that Donald Trump was going to be the president of the United States in those first days after election day.
And so we want to check in with Debbie Dingell on this week four years after she was going crazy about what was happening in her state of Michigan as election day approached four years ago.
And so joining us now is Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.
Let's go right at it. What is the difference in Michigan tonight than Michigan four years ago with the Democratic presidential campaign?
REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): Well, first of all, they believe it's competitive. They're taking it seriously. They're on the ground. They're talking to workers. They're working hard throughout the state of Michigan.
It's up to us now to make sure we work hard and turn people out to vote. But, you know, when Jim Messina said -- I used to call him every day. I wonder if he misses my call.
But they are listening and it's going to be -- we have to turn out our votes now.
And we have this massive early vote turnout in Michigan. It's up 200 percent, a 200 percent increase in early votes cast from 2016.
There's a poll out, the most recent poll -- and I really don't know what this means, especially since there's been so much early vote. But this poll says Joe Biden 52 percent, Donald Trump 43 percent. That's a poll presumably of many people who have already voted.
DINGELL: You know, first of all, Lawrence, I don't believe those polls. The polls in Michigan showed Hillary Clinton being up 8 to 12 points and I didn't believe them then and I don't believe those.
I believe Michigan's competitive. I believe that Joe Biden, who has done a far better job with talking to the workers, talking to that hardworking man or woman who are worried about their job, or worried about COVID, worried about how their lives have been turned upside down.
But, look, I -- over the weekend had -- 50 Trump supporters came and surrounded me at a campus. I was not intimidated. I stood and talked to them and at the end the leader of it and I (INAUDIBLE) but we had some intense conversations about the auto industry. I had to remind them about steel jobs that 1,500 the week before Christmas and another 350 in my hometown that weren't there. The promises that were made four years ago that haven't been kept. The $50,000 -- the $50,000 job loss in the state of Michigan for the last four years.
But it was a talk turkey conversation that I think intimidated some around us, but I'm not afraid to have those conversations and neither is Joe Biden.
O'DONNELL: Well, you made the point four years ago that your district has every kind of Michigan voter -- Just every single demographic is in your district. You -- you speak to all of them all the time. You're very clearly in contact with Trump voters, Republican voters all the time in your district. And you want to know what they think.
What does that -- what does that tell you of where we are tonight in Michigan? Are you just -- would you just leave it at it's competitive, either one of them can win?
DINGELL: I -- it is competitive, and anybody who doesn't take that seriously doesn't think that their vote matters. Thought that four years ago and look what happened to this country. So you can't take it for granted.
Do I -- I don't even want to tell you I feel a tad better because I don't know who's going to vote. I don't -- I know a lot of Democrats have voted. I know a lot of Republicans are going to turn out. I'm listening to people.
You know what happened on Saturday right before I was surrounded by the Trump supporters? Three women, one was celebrating her 74th birthday, had never done anything political in their life and they came to hand out voter guides. And they don't like pollsters calling them suburban housewives either. But they turned out. Those are women that didn't vote last time.
So, you know, but it's competitive. And anybody who thinks that this election can't go any way, anybody who believes that -- those polls, anybody who gets a false sense of security, the only vote that matters is the vote that's actually cast at the polls.
The pollsters are putting their fingers in the wind. They're not -- they don't know what you are really doing. That vote is the biggest voice we have.
O'DONNELL: We got to go, but I have to ask you, is there anything the Biden campaign should be doing that they're not doing in Michigan?
DINGELL: Right now it's our job. It's our job on the ground. Working with those that care about the future of this country to deliver. They've done it. They've listened. I have to tell you that loud and strong.
It's now up to us. And we're not going to stop working until way after the polls are closed.
O'DONNELL: Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan, thank you very much for joining us again tonight. We always appreciate it.
DINGELL: Thank you, Lawrence.
O'DONNELL: Up next, Olivia Troye and other Republicans are making history by, as a matter of conscience, turning against the re-election of the president they worked for. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: Olivia Troye is a lifelong Republican who used to work for vice president Mike Pence on the coronavirus task force. And yesterday for the first time in her life she voted for a Democrat for president and vice president of the United States.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OLIVIA TROYE, FORMER PENCE ADVISER: I had tears in my eyes when I walked out of that voting booth and they were tears of just relief, knowing that I'm doing everything that I can to change this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Olivia Troye is making history with her participation in something we have never seen before, a group of people who worked for the president of the United States, who have publicly joined together in opposing that president's reelection and actively supporting the candidate of the opposing party running against that president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For the first time in American history a sitting president's senior staff is warning the country not to reelect him.
MILES TAYLOR, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT CHIEF OF STAFF: I'm Miles Taylor.
TROYE: I'm Olivia Troye.
ELIZABETH NEUMANN, FORMER DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY ASSISTANT SECRETARY: I'm Elizabeth Neumann.
JOHN BOLTON, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job.
NEUMANN: The pandemic was on its way to our shores. We saw good public servants attempting to do their job and the president telling them to stop because he didn't want the economy to tank.
TROYE: If the president had taken this virus seriously, he would have saved lives.
TAYLOR: Cyber attack, terrorism threat. He wasn't interested in those things because they didn't benefit him personally.
NEUMANN: The president's divisive language is indirectly tied to some of the attacks that we've seen in the last two years.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Stand back and stand by.
NEUMANN: Those words gave permission to white supremacists.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They saw Trump up close. Listen to their warnings.
NEUMANN: We are less safe today because of his leadership.
TAYLOR: It is so much worse than it was.
TROYE: We will no longer be America after four more years of Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can't risk four more years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm voting for Joe Biden.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This year I'll be voting for Joe Biden.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joe Biden will protect the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Olivia Troye will join us next and get tonight's LAST WORD.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: William Webster is 96 years old. He is the only person who has ever served as the director of the FBI and after that as the director of the CIA. The only person in history to hold both of those jobs.
In the last year of his presidency Republican president Dwight Eisenhower appointed William Webster as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, and it is in that capacity that William Webster signed a statement of former U.S. attorneys all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents.
The list includes former U.S. attorneys who were appointed by every Republican president from Dwight Eisenhower right up to but not including Donald Trump. And that statement says, "We believe that President Trump's leadership is a threat to the rule of law in our country. He expects his Justice President appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests and has taken action against those who have stood up for the interest of justice.
Former vice president Joe Biden has devoted his career to supporting law enforcement, protecting the independence of the Justice Department and working to ensure that the federal government exercises its law enforcement powers fairly and impartially and in the interests of all Americans.
We hereby announce that we will each be voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to serve as the next president and vice president of the United States."
Our next guest is a lifelong Republican from Texas who served in the Homeland Security Department in the Trump administration and became a member of Mike Pence's staff serving on the coronavirus task force.
Yesterday she cast her vote for Joe Biden for president and Kamala Harris for vice president of the United States. Joining us now is Olivia Troye.
Olivia, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it. I saw you describe to Nicolle Wallace today that the voting experience yesterday left you in tears.
Tell us what went through your mind when you were casting that vote yesterday?
TROYE: You know, I always take voting as a right and a privilege. I never take it for granted having traveled to many places overseas where people just don't have those freedoms. So election day for me is always very special.
But this one was even more special just because I felt just a lot of emotion as I walked out of that voting booth. It was a different ticket. I voted for a straight Democratic ticket, something that I've never done in my entire voting life. And it was just a relief.
Walking out of there I had tears in my eyes because I was thinking I'm doing everything I can to change what is happening to our country. And this moment matters so much.
And I did my part and that's all I can do and hope that we'll come together and that this will change.
O'DONNELL: Let's listen to something that the candidate you voted for, for president Joe Biden said today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And I promise you -- we're going to (INAUDIBLE) -- I'll work as hard for those who don't support me as those who do. That's the job of the president -- a duty to care for everyone.
So in these final days, stay empowered, stay optimistic, stay united because you too have a sacred duty. The duty to vote. It matters.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Joe Biden said I'll work as hard for those who don't support me as those who do. And I think he says that just about every day on the campaign trail. And in five years of Donald Trump as a candidate and as president I've never heard him say that.
TROYE: That's just not who Donald Trump is. He's not a president for the people. He is a president for Donald Trump himself. He solely cares about himself. He behaves that way repeatedly.
He puts our American lives in danger. He puts our national security in danger. He doesn't take the Oval Office seriously. He doesn't take it in the way that it should be taken and that is behaving presidential and doing everything he can for the sake of our country. And that is not who Donald Trump will ever be.
O'DONNELL: Your former boss, Mike Pence is maintaining a full campaign schedule even though he was exposed to coronavirus from his staff. His chief of staff Marc Short -- there's a report about him in "The New York Times" saying "Marc Short has been among the leaders in the administration arguing the risks of the virus have been overblown. Short has also played down the value of mask wearing, administration officials said."
Was that your experience with Marc Short?
TROYE: Yes. Unfortunately, Lawrence, he was our chief of staff on the vice president's team. He was also, you know, very involved on the White House coronavirus task force. This is someone who not one day did he take the virus seriously nor did he believe it was real. He thought that it was overblown, overplayed.
I'm not surprised Marc Short actually got the virus because he never took any precaution to protect himself, the staff or the vice president. And so this is just par for the course.
O'DONNELL: Were you ever conversations with the vice president in anticipation of possible infections in the White House and a possible infection of the vice president or president?
TROYE: We certainly had moments along the way where we had close calls, right? I mean we had previous staff members in the vice president's team infected where we were exposed at very close proximity. Katie Miller, who's the vice president's communications director, had COVID back in May.
And we had these conversations. It was our duty to protect the vice president and the Oval. I mean nobody wants to see our country's leaders sick or put them in danger. That's just reckless.
But at the end of the day when you perpetuate a narrative that the virus isn't real, that's how people are going to act including inside the White House.
O'DONNELL: Are you surprised that Mike Pence is defying all the medical guidelines here and flying around the country even though he's been exposed?
TROYE: You know, Lawrence, I actually am surprised because he knows better. He's been briefed repeatedly on what this virus is during my tenure on the task force. I saw the vice president try and do the right things at times and I know he was in an impossible. But watching what he's chosen to do in this past week has given me great pause.
And, you know, I call it leadership by example. We have a severe pandemic going on right now that's not going away. We have cities right now that are shutting down and emplacing curfews. And they're facing some really challenging times right now.
So it is appalling to watch the head of the coronavirus task force behaving in this matter.
O'DONNELL: Olivia Troye, I have to tell you as someone who worked in government myself on the Democratic side of the United States Senate, I can't tell you how much I admire your decision this year to take this stance, take a -- be guided by your conscience in this situation and I think you have the admiration of really everyone watching this program tonight. It's a great example of government service and service to the country.
Thank you very much for joining us tonight.
TROYE: Thank you so much.
O'DONNELL: Olivia Troye gets tonight's LAST WORD.
"THE 11TH HOUR WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS" starts now.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END
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