Summary
COVID-19 dominates final days of presidential race. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden hits President Donald Trump for "Super spreader" rallies. Biden and Trump focus on crucial state of Florida. Tampa Fire Department sprays water to help cool people at Trump rally. Biden hits Trump on efforts to limit voting. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has leads in Pennsylvania and Ohio in a new survey from Quinnipiac University Poll. US surpasses 9 million coronavirus cases and sets another daily record.
Transcript
BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC HOST: Well, good evening once again, day 1,379 of the Trump administration now five days to go until Election Day, it'll be down to four by the time just this broadcast is over here in the east.
We continue to cover two major stories, a presidential campaign in the midst of the height of the coronavirus pandemic here in the United States. Indeed, today, we saw another record setter over 88,000 cases today. That's a new single day record. Most public health specialists believe we're headed for 100,000 a day just to sure as I'm sitting here talking to you nice folks. We lead the world with 9 million plus cases and the death toll approaching 230,000.
The candidates' events today perfectly mirrored their approach to the uncontrolled pandemic. Trump's rally in Tampa was packed very few masks. Biden followed the rules at a drive-up rally in Coconut Creek and then one later in Tampa. Here's what we heard from them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We know the disease, we social distance, we do all of the things that you have to do. If you get close, wear a mask.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you for wearing your mask. And thank you for social distancing. President Trump's super spreader events that he's spreading more virus around the country and here in Florida today. He's spreading division and addition.
TRUMP: Joe Biden's plan is to deliver punishing lockdowns. He's going to lock you down. There will be no school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgivings, no Christmases, no Fourth of July's, there will be nothing. They will allow you nothing.
BIDEN: I'm not going to shut down the economy. I'm not going to shut down the country but I'm going to shut down the virus. I'll put in place a plan to deal with this pandemic responsibly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Here's the problem cases have been somewhat quietly raising in Florida. The New York Times puts it this way, Florida is listed in the red zone for coronavirus cases in the latest weekly report from the White House Coronavirus Task Force, you remember them, which noted an increase in new cases over the past week. Both candidates want Florida badly of course. POLITICO reports, Democrats are sounding the alarm about weak voter turnout rates down in Miami Dade, Florida's largest county. You heard James Carville sound that alarm just a few nights back on this broadcast.
I'll look at the latest poll show just how tight the race is there. Biden's lead is there but it's in the low single digits today at their rallies. They laid out what's at stake.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Right here in Florida, it's up to you. You hold the key. If Florida goes blue, it's over, it's over.
TRUMP: Five days from now we are going to win Florida. We are going to win four more years in the White House. Tuesday your vote is going to save our country. We are going to defeat the Marxist and the socialist and the riders and the flag burdens and the left wing extremists.
BIDEN: Everybody knows who Donald Trump is. He knows when America votes, they reject people like him. We choose hope over fear. We choose unity over division. And we choose science over fiction. And yes we choose truth over lies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Could horn honking be the applause of 2020? New data from NBC News and TargetSmart showing nearly 80 million of us have already voted. That's more than half of the total turnout last time around in 2016. As the campaign goes down to the wire the final report card on the economy came out today, third quarter gross domestic product measure of the total goods and services produced in our country from July to September grew at a 33.1 percent annualized pace.
Of course remember the starting point, that game -- that gain comes after a devastating 31.4 percent plunge in the second quarter. While that was the fastest growth on record, there's mounting concern, the economy is still under threat from the virus surge we're looking at right now. And of course a ton of people are out of work. This afternoon, Trump and Biden offered very different interpretations of the state of our economy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This is the greatest number 33.1 percent. This explosive economic growth is four times greater than what the experts expected. We're going to have next year, the best year we've ever had economically.
BIDEN: Now he's squandering that economy like he squandered everything else. But we can build back and we can build back better with an economy that begins to reward work not wealth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Tomorrow the dueling rallies head to the Midwest, both Trump and Biden will visit Wisconsin and Minnesota. Trump will also make a stop in Michigan while Biden will stop in Iowa. It's a lot.
Let's bring in our lead in three on a Thursday night Errin Haines editor-at-large for The 19th, a nonprofit nonpartisan newsroom focused on gender politics and policy, Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, and John Heilemann, author, journalist, our national affairs analyst, cohost of the Circus on Showtime executive editor over at the Recount. Good evening and welcome to you all.
Peter, because of your beat, I'd like to begin with you tonight. And I'd like to begin with this moment, this was the VFW convention, Kansas City 2018, a lot of people saw this as the predicate for what would follow.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Just remember what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Peter, I know you remember that moment everyone covering this President remembers that moment. So with what the President is saying about this virus blatantly wrong, is that just the effort we're seeing now to try to convince his bases already with him, trying to convince the public that what they're seeing and hearing just isn't the case?
PETER BAKER, THE NEW YORK TIMES CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I think he is still speaking to the base. He's trying to reassure them, to get them, to come out and as large numbers as he can, because right now, there are not a lot of undecided voters. Let's face it. We're five days out from the election. But in a way, we're actually already in Election Day.
As you point out, 80 million people have already voted. That's like being at 2:00 p.m. on Election Day in effect. At 2:00 p.m. on Election Day, you're not changing a lot of minds. You're just trying to make sure you get your people to the polls as best you can, that's what the candidates are doing right now. Now, the real suspense, of course comes after these votes are cast, we decide which ones are going to be countered or not. And that's where, you know, you're seeing a lot of legal action already.
But you're right. I think he's trying to convince his own people, people who are willing to vote for him that the coronavirus is not the debacle that a lot of people think it is. The polls show that most Americans think the President has mishandled it. And that's what he's arguing against in effect. He's trying to say don't believe that. Don't believe what you're being told by the media. The elites don't believe of what you're being told by Joe Biden. Don't believe what you're being told by the scientists and the medical experts.
Look at me, I had coronavirus, I got through it. You know, this is OK. Don't make a big deal out of it. And of course, it's hard to argue with the disease, 228,000 people dead. Another thousand people died just yesterday from this. That's not something you can just talk away.
WILLIAMS: Errin, let's talk about Florida. It's been called seven of the most valuable states and all of politics. I know there are some Democrats who wouldn't be happy unless Joe Biden moved there for these next couple of days and had his mail forwarded to Miami. Is there any degree in the Democratic Party folks thinking it's under control, he's going there enough?
ERRIN HAINES, THE 19TH EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Oh, no, they absolutely don't think that this is under control. I mean, much like the Falcons which, you know, who currently have a fourth quarter lead, you know, anything is possible with this many minutes left on the board. So, you know, I think that you're seeing Democrats flood the zone, Barack Obama was in Orlando, you know, just this past -- over the past few days, you know, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, but also Donald Trump, the First Lady Melania Trump is going to be in Florida.
Everybody understands the stakes in Florida and that the pandemic is absolutely political. With this record turnout for early voting, what we know is that the majority of these early voters across the country have been women. And what they know is that their lived experience is what they believe, regardless of what either of these candidates are talking about. They are living the reality of this pandemic from both a public health and an economic standpoint, and that is what they are taking with them into the ballot box, even as we speak.
WILLIAMS: John Heilemann, I want to read this from the great and well sourced Ashley Parker, who is like the three of you a friend of this broadcast. She wrote this tonight, underscoring the true uncertainty in Trumpworld, I asked a Trump adviser for their gut sense on what will happen on Election Day quote, if you put a gun to my head, I'd say shoot, this person said helplessly.
John, you too, are great and well sourced. What are you hearing from inside the Trump campaign? How does it feel inside the Trump campaign?
JOHN HEILEMANN, MSNBC NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: That sounds about right to me, Brian, what Ashley reports there. I think you know, there's a sense of despair mixed with tinge with hope, you know, for those who are around in 2016, you know, you will recall as many do that, you know, on the on Election Day of 2016, the senior people in Donald Trump's campaign were briefing network reporters and network broadcasters, that they were expecting to lose the election that night.
So they went into 2016 expecting to lose, they had some small idea in their mind that they might be able to win. I think it feels eerily reminiscent to that, for them again, this time around. I do think as I said, there's fatalism. I think the main difference is that in 2016, the extent to which there was hope, it was rested on the notion that a couple things that broken their way, Jim Comey had broken their way, and that their candidate was behaving by his standards. And again, we're grading on a curve, by his standards in a relatively disciplined way.
Neither one of those things has happened in this race. So, they have not gotten the break, nor is their candidate behaving in a, campaigning in a relative -- even a relatively disciplined way. And I think that means that in the relative mix of despair versus hope, there's more despair in the air in Trump -- in the Trump campaign in 2020 than there was in 2016, even though there was a mix of both in both cycles.
WILLIAMS: To your point, I always remind people there was no acceptance speech written in 2016 only a concession, the acceptance, which had to be written on a laptop --
HEILEMANN: Correct.
WILLIAMS: -- backstage. Hey, Peter, let's talk about Trump at these rallies. He is justifiably proud of the GDP number, but he is learning that to rally audiences, GDP doesn't exactly what bum up on the road. Hunter Biden seems to, but to the point you were making, that's just to the base.
BAKER: Yes. Look, you have a lot of Republicans out there who wish the President had talked more about economics in these last couple of weeks, that that was his strength. That's what polls showed people had the most faith in him. Maybe it could have made the argument more strongly, more essentially that this is something he knows how to do, and that he can rebuild the economy, that number today, then would fit into that argument more smoothly, if he had been making it more consistently and strongly and not letting himself be distracted by other arguments over these last couple of weeks, because Republicans think that, you know, talking about the virus is not going to be a winner for him. And then he should have relied on his strong point.
This number is obviously a good one. But if people don't feel it in their lives, you know, it's only going to be a number. And right now, we're still down even having bounced back that much in the third quarter, we're still down from where we were at the end of 2019. We're not even back to where we were then. So a lot of people are still hurting, a lot of people still out of work. And if you're not out of work or out of, you know, hurting yourself, you know, somebody who might be. And I think that's a reality that that is hard for him to overcome at this point.
WILLIAMS: Errin, two things. Number one, if we get a final don't tell me because I'm recording the game. But number two, and back to journalism and your life. You wrote a piece this week about your voting experience? Is your fear writ large, the number of people being quietly dissuaded or more overtly dissuaded from both voting?
HAINES: Well, you know, thanks for bringing that up, Brian. And I encourage everybody to read my essay at 19thnews.org, about the fact that it took me four hours to vote here in Philadelphia, largely regarded by many people as the cradle of democracy where the constitution was signed. I mean, it's a centennial year of suffrage, you know, the 19th amendment, my newsroom is named for that.
And so, you know, this is something that that means a lot to me. And the idea that not that I was standing in line for four hours, I'm a journalist, Brian, I have time to do that. But there were too many people in that line who did not have that kind of time. And not only that, I mean, it's also a question of voter depression, right? The people who were walking by or driving by, and maybe saw those long lines and said, you know what, I'm not doing that. I don't have time for that or maybe I'll go to another location, or maybe I just won't, you know, be able to cast my ballot.
And so, you know, this is this is, what 21st century voter suppression and depression looks like. You also have the President raising the specter of a rigged election in Philadelphia, saying that we're watching Philadelphia. Well, I hope people are watching because, you know, all of us should be rejecting the politics of voter suppression, regardless of party because, you know, this is a democracy and one person one vote, you know, that's what really, elections are supposed to be all about.
WILLIAMS: John Heilemann, due to your relative views, you do not have senior status when it comes to conventional wisdom prognosticators. So you cannot yet be listed with Johnny Apple, Jack Germond, and David Broder, but you're right at the cusp. Given that, tell me where do you think this race is right now tonight at 1:15 eastern time at 11:15 eastern time?
HEILEMANN: I think that it's you know, Brian, I think that the extent that we can rely on data and the ways in which the data has been consistent over the course of this last six or eight months, the dynamic, the central dynamic in the race, which is to say, a race that that has turned out to be ineluctably despite the best efforts, or maybe not so best efforts, the flailing efforts of the President who make it into a choice election, and to try to disqualify Joe Biden it has ended up being a referendum and a referendum principally on Donald Trump's management of the most important dominant issue in the campaign.
These are all truisms now. The coronavirus is what the election is about. Trump's mismanagement of it is what's at the center of it. That is a race that may -- was very -- going to be very difficult for him to win. The data speaks loudly and the data is different than the data in 2016. We've heard many people who are deeper in data that I am. Point to that that does not mean Donald Trump cannot win. It does not mean that there is not a surprise, that would be always a 20 percent chance, a 30 percent chance that Donald Trump could again pull the inside straight more like maybe an inside straight flush this time than an inside straight.
But boy, Brian, the difference, the key difference is that the President keeps campaigning in these closing days in a way that calls attention to an issue that just crushes him with key demographics that he did -- that he did not get crushed by in 2016 with senior citizens, with college educated, and with blue collar white women, with suburbanites. These are giant swathes of the electorate that have turned against him that turned against the party in 2018, and drove the blue wave that took back the house representatives for Democrats. And I think it would be consistent with that result to see Joe Biden win again in 2020. And the things that have happened between 2018 and 2020 make that more likely.
But honestly, I don't think any of us not just because we're snake bit by 2016 but just because there's so much noise out there in the world. I don't think anybody should consider this race a done deal. And I think we're going to consider a done deal even maybe on election night.
WILLIAMS: Good answer somewhere. Johnny, Jack, and David are proud. Our thanks to our big three tonight Errin Haines, Peter Baker, John Heilemann, greatly appreciate you starting us off back to the game, Errin.
Coming up for us, early voting continues to break records across our country but Obama alum David Plouffe warns about the threat of a bad Election Day turnout for Biden. We'll talk about that. And later, as pockets of our country take steps to at least temporarily shut things down again. We'll ask a critical care doc if he thinks even more cities are going to have to follow suit. It's a lot. The 11th Hour is just getting underway on this Thursday night.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Look at that, oh, they're doing that on purpose? Are they friend or foe? I don't actually felt good. I felt water in my face. I said where the hell is that coming? They may be doing that on purpose. Let's find out if their friend or foe. And if they're foe, let's take care of that son of a bitches. Look at that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: So it was 87 degrees there outside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. Today the fire department was spraying water on the crowd to cool them down. Fire officials told NBC News, 17 people at that rally needed medical attention quote, one of the attendees fainted and another had a seizure. The other 10 two were taken to the hospital were just listed as sick with no other details.
Remember, just a few nights ago, several people at a Trump rally were hospitalized for exposure to the cold. So when you add in the threat of COVID it's fair to say anything can happen to you at a Trump rally perhaps even resulting in hospitalization. Back with us again tonight, David Plouffe, former Obama campaign manager, senior advisor to President Obama, he is on the board of directors of the Obama Foundation just to keep things even, his latest work is "A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump".
So David, let's start with your most provocative point. I thought Democrats were largely ecstatic about the early vote. Why your concern over in person Election Day vote for Democrats and a pandemic?
DAVID PLOUFFE, FMR. OBAMA CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Well, Brian, you have to play all four quarters. So I think early vote looks very good for Democrats across the country states like Texas, states like Georgia, most of Florida. But you have to execute the rest of the early vote period. And then you have to make sure you hit your mark on Election Day.
So there's no -- I don't have outsides concerned about that. But we saw on 16, everybody I trust, who knows Florida, well, including myself, looked at the early vote numbers and thought we were headed to a Clinton victory. But Trump had very strong Election Day turnout and Clinton less so. So it's not good enough just to do really well in early vote, you have to do equally well on Election Day.
Now, what's interesting about this, organizationally, is so many people voted early. If you're the Biden campaign or Democratic Senate candidates, you have a smaller pool of people you're concerned about Election Day. So you should be able to reach all of them by phone, by texting, door knocking where that's done carefully. So organizationally, it's a more doable task. But that concerns me because we are, this is a pandemic. Trump's voters express less concern about the pandemic across the board. So I think they're going to show up.
So I just think we cannot rest easy no matter what the polls show, even with your only vote shows, until we begin to unpack actual precinct results on Tuesday night in states like Florida and states like North Carolina and see if we're happy with the turnout.
WILLIAMS: I want to read this to you from Matt Dowd. He tweeted this today. Texas has never had 9 million people vote in an election. By tomorrow, that line will be blown right past. And that is before next Tuesday's votes. And by Tuesday evening, Texas will blow right past 10 million. It is likely to pass a 11 million total. And David, let me ask you about Texas. It is a big question for Democrats. What's the chance you'll have a big night there? What's the chance it's going to be a blue mirage?
PLOUFFE: Well, I think it's going to be close, which you wouldn't have said at the beginning of this cycle. You might not even said that six months ago, something special is happening in Texas. Harris County, one of the biggest counties in America now has had more people voted early than voted in all of 2016. I had Beto O'Rourke on my podcast and he's done so much great grassroots organizing down there since he dropped his presidential bid.
And it gives you confidence. You know, it's going to be close. I mean, Joe Biden is not going to win Texas if he wins it by even four points. But you can see with these early vote numbers. And also, Brian, some of these suburban areas of Texas when you talk to people working in the state house races down there, some of these state house races in suburban areas, like in Tarrant County outside of Dallas, have moved 30 points from 16 to 20. So turnout looks good, the suburban vote has fundamentally changed. So I think Texas is going to be fat. And of course, they count a lot of their early vote early. So that's a state we should know a lot about on election night.
WILLIAMS: I know you and I will be talking between now and Tuesday. And let's go ahead and include Tuesday. David Plouffe, thank you, as always, for coming on and taking our questions tonight. We greatly appreciate it.
Coming up for us, as we approach our next break, Donald Trump has launched the greatest voter suppression effort in the modern history of the presidency. That's a fact. We'll have a closer look tonight at what is happening in one hugely critical battleground state.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Article today in a press, I want to read a quote from it. It says, never before in modern presidential politics has a candidate been so reliant on a wide scale efforts to depress the vote than Trump. He knows if he vote he can't win.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Joe Biden there, referencing a piece in POLITICO today that details the Trump campaigns effort to limit voting around our country. It reads in part quote, in Philadelphia, his campaign is videotaping voters as they return ballots. In Nevada, it's suing to force election officials in Democratic-heavy Clark County to more rigorously examine ballot signatures for discrepancies that could disqualify them.
The Trump campaign has sued to prevent the expanded use of ballot drop boxes in Ohio. They've sought to shoot down an attempt to expand absentee ballot access in New Hampshire. They've tried to intervene against a lawsuit brought by members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona which sought to allow ballots received from reservations after Election Day because of mail delays. And that's just a few of its efforts.
And what about the all important state of Pennsylvania while the New York Times tells it this way, quote, Trump's campaign is pursuing a three-pronged strategy that would effectively suppress mail-in votes in the state moving to stop the processing of absentee votes before election day, pushing the limit how late mail-in ballots can be accepted and intimidating Pennsylvanians trying to vote early.
It's a lot but for more we welcome to our broadcast Tom Rogers. He happens to be the founder of CNBC where he remains a contributor. He also happens to have been instrumental in the establishment of this network, former CEO of TiVo he worked in the past with the House Telecom Subcommittee. He's now an editor-at-large over at Newsweek. Also with us tonight, Lamont McClure, he's county executive of Northampton County in Northeast PA just outside of Allentown.
Gentlemen, welcome to you both. Tom, it's good to see you again. What is the worst case scenario you are worried about in Pennsylvania? And what's your big picture objective here?
TOM ROGERS, CNBC FOUNDER AND CONTRIBUTOR: Well, thanks for having me, Brian, great to see you. The big picture here is there's a real strategy afoot in terms of trying to delegitimize the mail in ballots, and trying to suggest that these could all be fraudulent.
And this isn't about Donald Trump's saving face. This is about him trying to deface a legitimate Biden Electoral College victory. And that's the worst case scenario here. And what happens is, he tries to throw this election to the legislative branch. First, the state legislators, including the state legislature of Pennsylvania, and then Congress.
And the way he does that is to create this narrative, that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, they're infected, there's been foreign interference, they'll come up with all kinds of explanations as to why they're illegitimate.
The point being, they give state legislators cover to be able to submit a challenging Electoral College slave to the legitimate slate of Joe Biden. And when that happens, that lands in Congress's lap, and then you get into some very tricky arithmetic.
Because once that lands in Congress's lap, the House and Senate need to be in the same hands in order to have a consistent view of which Electoral College slate is the legitimate Electoral College slate. Well, for the Democrats to take control of the Senate, a lot of talk, we need a net three pickup assuming Alabama goes Republican, you need four Democratic seats.
But for this purpose, Vice President Pence is still in the chair, as President of the Senate has the deciding vote when the Electoral College envelopes are open January 6 in Congress. So for the Senate to be in Democratic control for this purpose, you need to have five Democratic seats, one assuming Alabama is lost. And if the Democrats don't do that, and then you end up in a situation where the House and Senate don't agree on the Electoral College delegates, and nobody can get a majority in the Electoral College. It goes into the house.
And that's what this strategy of Trump is all about. Because if it gets in the House, you have yet new Mac, because the vote in the House for presidency is by delegation where each state gets one vote. And the determination of that vote is how many Republicans or Democrats you have in the House of Representatives in that delegation. Today, Trump wins that vote 26-22 and that is the worst case scenario. So the Democrats have to win four Democratic delegations.
WILLIAMS: Well, Mr. McClure, I did ask for the worst case scenario for the anxiety ridden Democrats who are watching who have not yet passed out at the thought of this. Tell us what the situation is, where you are how active the Trump campaign is where you are and what you're worried about where you are.
LAMONT MCCLURE (D), COUNTY EXECUTIVE NORTHAMPTON COUNTY, PA: Well, Brian, I have to say, good evening, and thank you for having us here tonight. We're not intimidated in North Hampton County. We've been around since 1752. Our mail-in ballot process is going very well. We have about 202,000 registered voters here in Nortampton County and Bellwether County.
We have about 85,000, mail-in vote applications. We've received about 67,000 of them back already. And that's about a 78 percent rate. Things are going very, very well with our mail-in ballots, and they are safe, insecure. And we have a lot of experience in Northampton County of running legal, fair and accurate elections.
WILLIAMS: As a Pennsylvanian, for all those who don't have the good fortune of living in Northampton County, what's your level of concern five days just about to be four days out?
MCCLURE: Well, I have to tell you, the one thing that I would tell folks is to be patient with the count in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we're Commonwealth. And so essentially, you're going to have 67 individual elections, administered by each of the counties going on, and some of the counties are going to take a few days to count their votes.
In Northampton County, we believe by about six or 7:00 a.m., Wednesday morning, we're going to know what happened in Northampton County. But it may take some of the other counties a little bit longer. And so while I am very confident in the safety and security of the election that's going to be conducted in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I would counsel patients. I would counsel patients for the folks who vote in Pennsylvania, and I would count patients that would -- I would counsel patients for the folks all across this great nation to wait until all the votes in Pennsylvania are counted.
WILLIAMS: Tom as a cable and veter, you know, 60 seconds when you see it. That's how much I've got left for this answer. So you're telling your fellow Democrats, you need a cushion to run up the score when and where they can. And you need national media attention and scrutiny on what's about to happen in Pennsylvania. Do I have that right?
ROGERS: You do. First of all, the results need to be to big rig. Second of all we have some key house races that checkmate this strategy, and if four states can be flipped in the House of Representatives Pennsylvania key, Eugene DePasquale running in Pennsylvania 10th. Christina Finello running in Pennsylvania 1st. These are national important races because they could determine the presidency. They need a lot of support. If these delegations can be flipped, and the Trump strategy can be checkmated we will all breathe a sigh of relief when they try this.
WILLIAMS: To our viewers, these are two men committed to the cause on the Democratic side of the ledger and a state that could not be more important come next Tuesday. Our thanks to Tom Rogers and Lamont McClure, I greatly appreciate both of you gentlemen, making time and staying up with us.
Coming up tonight. Today was the worst day yet in our country's brief, but dark history with this coronavirus. A report from a doctor on the front lines right after this.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP JR., EXEC. VICE PRESIDENT, THE TRUMP ORG.: But I was like well, why aren't they talking about this? Oh, because the number is almost nothing because we've gotten control of this that we understand how it works. They have the therapeutics to be able to deal with this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: That was the son of the President of the United States on Fox News Tonight, Don Jr. DJ/TJ saying the number of deaths is almost nothing. Here's your second reminder during this hour, we lost over 1,000 souls just yesterday.
We have set single day records all this week in terms of coronavirus cases. We continue to lead the world in the number of cases and not to be outdone, yes. The death toll. Denver's mayor's threatening stay at home orders. Tonight in El Paso where hospitals are in crisis, a judge ordered all non-essential services to shut down for two weeks.
We are fortunate to have back with us again tonight. Dr. Vin Gupta. He's a critical care doctor specializing in these types of illnesses, also an affiliate assistant professor out of the University of Washington Institute for Health metrics and evaluation at the risk of total embarrassment. Dr. Gupta has degrees from Princeton, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia Med School. In his spare time he serves in the US Air Force Reserves.
Dr. Gupta, let's start with what we just all heard the danger of this kind of talk, the danger of the President of the United States saying the largely unmasked crowds were rounding the corner.
DR. VIN GUPTA, MSNBC MEDICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Brian is just a series of irresponsible statements layered on top of irresponsible statements. Let me correct something that Don Jr. said. I didn't realize he said that. But that he said this evening there, there is actually no therapeutic that is available right now for the American people writ large.
So if you're a viewer right now listening to this conversation, no, there is no therapeutic out there that has been approved by the FDA that exists for you, if you were to come down with COVID-19. So let's be clear on that. There is no miracle cure here that's broadly available.
Brian, to your point here. We are expecting my Institute here, the Institute for Health Metrics Evaluation has been actually right on point with its models sadly, so for the contrary, but we're anticipating up to 20 to 100 deaths every single day by the turn of this by the turn of the calendar year.
We're expecting and this is concerning to me as an ICU Doc, 18 states to exhibit extreme stress when it comes to their ICU capabilities, meaning either they will not have the staff or they will not have the beds in 18 states across this country in the right use. And I think you know what that means Brian, it means people will die. That's why that we have that 2,300 number right there.
So this is very serious. And I'll finally say with Election Day upon us, mask uses lowest where it's hardest to vote by mail. And that's an Indiana, that's in the Dakotas, that's in places like Tennessee, and in Wyoming and Georgia, where governors have made it hard to vote by mail. And yet they've also done everything they can in their power to remove mask mandates. It's shameful and it's going to put people at risk. And that's what we need to anticipate and be vigilant for in the coming days.
WILLIAMS: Doctor, where you will live Canada is not theoretical they are as we were raised to call them in school in this country, our neighbors to the north. And so with that in mind, I read this from someone I presume you and I both admire. And that's Laurie Garrett. Quote, there is one place in the world where a map of COVID-19 cases and deaths reveals a straight line with a huge amount of disease on one side, shown here in red, very little on the other, where the 3,000 plus mile border of US, Canada, it's stark.
Doctor, it's been theorized that Canadians these days must feel like the people living in the apartment over the meth lab. But in the real world, this is deeply serious stuff. Look at the contrast in colors. What have they done right?
GUPTA: Well, for starters, Brian, when this first started, they actually adopted WHO guidelines. I know WHO is the Bugaboo here in this country, it's been politicized. But South Korea and Canada actually follow their guidelines. They had the right testing in place, they were able to test and trace early, which is why they avoided the massive outbreaks that we did.
It's not like they didn't have a hard time, Quebec, Ontario, these -- their provinces definitely did have some hard times, but they were aligned. They had something called cross partisan consensus, that's a foreign phrase here in this country. But no, you didn't have a governor DeSantis. You didn't have a Governor Christie Noem here looking to make politics out of basic, common sense ideas like hey, let's mask. Let's get testing on board. Let's not open up restaurants before it's prudent to do so.
You know, Brian, a Open Table released data not too long ago suggesting that Florida actually only shut down indoor dining for two and a half weeks from the end of April to the beginning of May. So Canada did not have any Governor DeSantis's. Their provinces largely got along their public largely cooperated. They largely had leadership that worked. And that's the reason why they've done so much better than we have. That's just the facts.
WILLIAMS: And as we're having this conversation, no less than the city of Chicago, Illinois fixing to shut down in-house restaurant dining because of this conversation and this topic, the president's son, not withstanding. Dr. Gupta, as always, great thanks for staying up with us and taking our questions and offering instructions and common sense.
Coming up more of what Dr. Gupta is talking about. We have a report that we all need to see it's behind the scenes inside a COVID ICU that is stretched to the breaking point.
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WILLIAMS: The state of Montana has been undergoing a surge, it has not been a big mask wearing state despite mandates to the contrary and hospitals there are stretched thin. We have a troubling but fascinating report tonight from inside a hospital coronavirus ICU ward. NBC News correspondent Gabe Gutierrez was granted access and introduces us to the critical care staff in Billings, Montana.
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GABE GUTIERREZ, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): St. Vincent health Care in Billings, Montana wasn't always among the front lines in the war against COVID. It is now.
JOEY TRAYWICK, ST. VINCENT HEALTHCARE COVID-19 UNIT NURSE: I'm a good nurse. And the nurses that I work with are good nurses. But we are broken.
GUTIERREZ: Joey Traywick says he's personally held the hands of 23 of his patients who have died after the first one passed without him.
TRAYWICK: And I came back to the room at one point and she had passed by herself. And I thought I'm never going to let that happen again. If I have to stay late after work, if it means coming in on my day off. And they're not going to pass alone on my unit.
Again, none of them.
GUTIERREZ: The hospital granted us access with the permission of patient's families to show the devastating impact of the virus. Billings is a city of more than 100,000 people but this facility takes in critical patients from across the state.
(on camera): This is one of the hospital's three COVID units and these 14 patients here on ventilators right now. It's a minute by minute struggle.
It's been shocking to me how fast it's accelerated in the last couple of weeks. Dr. Kris Panjen (ph) works in the ICU.
DR. KRIS PANJEN (ph), ST. VINCENT HEALTHCARE COVID-19 ICU DOCTOR:You know, a lot of times these 12-hour shifts will morph into 13 and 14-hour shifts. There's just too much to do. And we just can't get it all done.
GUTIERREZ" How close are you to be at capacity right now.
PANJEN (ph): We're very close. We can probably find beds, but it's going to be at the expense of non-COVID patients.
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): She came out of retirement earlier this year to rush to New York. Now she's back. The virus followed.
PANJEN (ph): This patient may or may not survive.
GUTIERREZ: She showed us one patient still intubated, another had just come off his ventilator.
PANJEN (ph): He's improved. But that doesn't mean he's out of the woods yet. He is still very critical.
GUTIERREZ: The toll here is mounting both for the patients and their caretakers. Joey Traywick can self isolated for months sleeping in his basement away from his wife and three kids.
(on camera): How hard is that for you?
TRAYWICK: It's a huge impact.
GUTIERREZ (voice-over): This is why he does it. Late today he visited one of his patients now in recovery out of isolation.
TRAYWICK: He gets to get off of the COVID unit onto a different floor where he can have a visitor perhaps, it's like we won.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAMS: Our thanks to Gabe Gutierrez for that report and all the medical professionals they're in one of the great cities in the West Billings, Montana. Coming up for us. An incumbent Republican senator invoking that old rule of politics. If the last debate didn't go well by all means cancel the next one.
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WILLIAMS: There they are. Last thing before we go tonight. We last saw Georgia Republican senator and ardent Trump supporter David Perdue at a Trump rally mispronouncing Kamala Harris's name. He knows her from the Senate where they serve together. He knows her name.
But here's why David Perdue was in the news today. His debate with Jon Ossoff featured one of the epic put downs of this cycle. So watch Perdue here on the left just for proof of life as his opponent gets going.
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JON OSSOFF (D), GEORGIA: Well, perhaps Senator Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic if you hadn't been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading.
It's not just that you're a crook, Senator. It's that you're attacking the health of the people that you represent. You did say COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu. You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases. All the while you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio. And you did vote four times to end protections for preexisting conditions, four times. And the legislation that you tout the PROTECT Act. It includes loopholes that specifically allow insurance companies to deny policies to Georgians with preexisting conditions.
Can you look down the camera and tell the people of this state why you voted four times to allow insurance companies to deny us health coverage because we may suffer from diabetes or heart disease or asthma or have cancer in remission. Why senator?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Well, we got Perdue's answer today as soon as he was able to make words he canceled their final debate which was scheduled for Sunday, and that is our broadcast on this Thursday night we're getting there. We sure appreciate you spending this time with us every night. On behalf of all my colleagues at the networks of NBC News, good night.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END
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