Summary
Most Republicans refuse to condemn President Trump's coup attempt. The Washington Post reports that about one minute after Mike Pence was hustled out of the Senate chamber, a group charged up the stairs to a second-floor landing in the Senate. A D.C. police officer details his experience as he was assaulted by the Trump mob. Despite White House promises, coronavirus vaccine is in short supply.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight, on ALL IN. Five days from inauguration with a Capitol on lockdown and a president still scheming how one party's moral failure, fear, and disloyalty to the country led America to this point and how it's not too late to do the right thing.
Then, as federal prosecutors allege insurrectionist plotted to capture and assassinate elected officials, the police officer dragged, beaten, and tased by Trump's mob speaks out.
MICHAEL FANONE, D.C. METRO POLICE: And they were chanting like, kill him with his own gun.
HAYES: And as furious governors rail in the White House for lying about a non-existent vaccine stockpile, the incoming president announces his fix.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT, UNITED STATES: You have my word. We will manage the hell out of this operation.
HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now.
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HAYES: Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. America is in the middle of three crises right now. We have a crisis of democracy, a pandemic crisis, and an economic crisis stemming from the pandemic. Today, the global Coronavirus death total past two million. Nearly 400,000 of which have come in the United States. The economy is still bad and getting worse. And the situation on Capitol Hill has gotten so untenable that some Democrats in Congress are worried their colleagues might kill them.
And here's the thing. The Republican Party and the broader conservative movement are in denial about what they have wrong. Obviously, the hardcore Trump fans are not in denial. This is what they're pursuing. They like Donald Trump. They like what he's doing. And then of course, there are the never Trumpers. Those who got out earlier or even recently, and who have dedicated themselves to opposing Trump.
But the majority of the institutional Republicans, the professional conservatives, elected politicians, the people that work on the Hill, or for K Street firms, work for the Koch brothers, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, most of those folks are basically in a kind of middle space. They don't like Trump. They have eyes and ears and a conscience, some kind of moral sense. They know Trump is a demagogue. But Trump is the face of the Republican Party, and the base really loves him.
And you know, that's the conservative coalition American life and they're conservatives. And they think the assault on Capitol Hill was bad, terrible, even. But Democrats and liberals are bad in their own way, and AOC is a socialist, so what can you do?
I know these folks. I know there are people that watch this show. I interact with them and correspond with some of them. Some of them might be watching right now. And if that's you, if that's the category you're in, if you're a Hill staffer or a Republican member of Congress right now, I want to talk to you for a second. I think I have a sense of the bargain you have made with yourself, how you have justified what you've done in the last few years. And I genuinely get it.
Life is complicated. There's no such thing as purity. We all make compromises in this world. You have told yourself that if Trump is going to be president, isn't it better that I work in my small sphere to make this thing as good as it can be? So, if you're someone who's nominated for a judgeship, or Supreme Court position, you might think well, better me than some hack. I can go in there and do things, like pay attention to the Constitution, issue rulings, swatting down electoral challenges, which some Trump-appointed judges did.
And if you're a DOJ staffer, you might think, well, if it's not me, it's going to be some kind of Stephen Miller type person. That would be terrible. I mean, there are elected Republicans thinking, if I don't go along with him, if I speak out against him, if I don't vote to say overturn a democratic election for the first time in American history, I will be primaried, and the person who primaries me will be more dangerous than me. So, I just have to make these compromises to hold the line.
And these are not crazy calculations. In fact, each individual case, they can be downright persuasive. I mean, let's be clear. There are Trump appointees, people that worked in administration are pointed, like, by Trump, like Fed Chair Jerome Powell, or Cybersecurity Director Chris Krebs who did their jobs with integrity and really did made things better. And we'd probably be in worse shape if they had quit or not taking the job.
But what I want you to do is take a step back and understand the moral collective action problem. Each of these small incremental decisions, these justifiable transactional decisions, yes, I'll take this judicial nomination or yes, I will go work in this agency. And no, I won't speak out about what the President is doing. Think about what that all adds up to, what it all has added up to.
We are standing over a moral abyss with a country imperiled. Of the 211 Republicans in the House, only 10 of them voted to impeach Donald Trump after he incited a riotous mob to charge the Capitol while his vice president was inside. As far as I can tell, there have been two congressional staffer resignations since the riot and since the majority of Republicans voted to overturn the election, two, only two.
The communications director for Senator Ted Cruz who resigned in protest but didn't issue a statement, and the Armed Services Committee staffer who wrote a vicious condemnation. Maybe I missed some, but do you know how many Republican staffers are on the Hill? And again, I get it. It is really hard to quit your job. It's a courageous thing to do. Most people are not going to do that even in the face of something terrible. But two, only two? There are only two of you in the offices of the 147 members that voted to overturn a democratic election for whom this is a bridge too far?
Because republicans and Republican officials have twisted themselves into knots defending Donald Trump over and over. They hate it when liberals and I sanctimoniously harangue them about it. Which again, I kind of get it's annoying. I'm sure. So, now, we have a situation where 51 percent of Republicans say GOP leaders didn't go far enough in nullifying the election. And 56 percent say Trump bear zero blame for the insurrection, and two-thirds say Trump has actually acted responsibly since the election.
Come on. You know, that's not true. Republican officials made all these bargains with themselves to keep the thing together, and I think told themselves to avoid the worst outcome. But guess what, guys. We got something that looks pretty damn close to the worst outcome. And unless there is some wholesale soul searching and apology and repudiation, I don't know how we go forward in American politics.
We've now got a huge part of the Republican Party that is now essentially anti-democracy, seditious faction, thanks to self-interested and short-sightedness and internal justifications they have been making for so long now. I think the majority of the folks that work the Republican Party and the conservative movement cannot see what they have done or cannot admit it. You have brought the country to the precipice of ruin.
You have threatened American democracy in the most frontal way since the Civil War. There are nearly 400,000 people dead. It's the First Presidency to lose jobs since the Great Depression. You guys all did this together. Whatever you told yourself about what you were doing to make things better, I don't think it worked.
Of course, there are some who think of Donald Trump just wasn't Donald Trump, then it would be perfect. Just days after the assault at the Capitol, Mitch McConnell's former chief of staff, a guy named Josh Holmes, told The Washington Post, "If you can replicate his draw amongst rural working-class voters without the insanity, you have a permanent governing majority."
It is that kind of attitude that got us to this point. It's not just Donald Trump, but the people who knew better and tolerated his wannabe dictator behavior that brought us to this point. There has been a total inability to reckon with it at scale. Not just Trump is bad, not just for how we shouldn't have gone along with the election stuff, the whole thing you built, has brought the country to the edge of ruin. You need to reckon with that.
And you have a chance now to do that. If you want one silver lining from this entire awful affair, it is that impeaching the President has now given the Republican Party an opportunity to do the thing it has not done. He will be gone in less than a week. You can no longer justify supporting him since he's the president. The question is, will the professional class of the Republican Party and the conservative movement rally to issue the collective repudiation that the man obviously deserves to convict him and then use the constitutional legal process as a movement as a party to say, we do not accept this man or his actions. That is the opportunity you have been given.
After all this denial and all this havoc and heartache and death and all this disaster, you have brought -- you have been given one last chance to do the right thing. Please do it. One of the Democratic jurors in that trial is Senator Amy Klobuchar, and she joins me now.
Senator, do you think the folks that you are in the Senate with have second thoughts about what's happened and about particularly that vote that happened in which some of them voted to overturn the election?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): You know, in the end in the Senate, it was about only six or seven percent of them, six or seven of them, two different votes, that voted that way. And that actually is where we start, because the Senate, unlike the House, actually was very strong in terms of voting against this assault on the election.
And I would -- I loved your analysis, by the way, and the kinds of things people say in their heads and what I hear in the hallways and what I hear behind closed doors. And I guess I go back to the first words on your show tonight, and that is that it's not too late to do the right thing, which is what I'd say to my colleagues.
We need 17 of them. We need a schedule and Mitch McConnell to work with us on a schedule so we can have this hearing in a way that allows us to proceed with these important nominations for Defense Secretary and Attorney General and, of course, Homeland Security. All of them made even more important in light of what just happened on January 6th, and of course, the pandemic bill.
Joe Biden has put out there an aggressive plan, and we have to get that done as well. And I say this to them. People at home are juggling their toddlers on their knees and their laptops on their desk. They're juggling jobs. They're juggling, trying to figure out how to pay for stuff. We should be able to juggle this in the U.S. Senate and do three things at once, nominations, impeachment hearing, and this important pandemic legislation.
HAYES: Yes, I mean, I think that the instinct here, and we saw this, I think, the last time a Democratic president and Joe Biden was in administration, sort of inherited a mess, right, a country that was in crisis, I mean, deep and acute crisis, was the imperative to look forward and not backward because, and not crazily, that there's so much to do.
It seems to me, the impeachment of the president of the United States for the second time, for the first time in history, means that that's not an option. Like, this chapter has to be closed. It has to be multitasked. You guys are called to account on this, all of you, to not just look forward and not backwards.
KLOBUCHAR: Right. Let's quote Liz Cheney, right, who you often quote on your show. But she said this. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. That's why this is so important. We can't just sweep it under the rug and pretend that it didn't happen. We cannot do that.
And as you know, there's an important consequence here, which is that there's a second vote after an impeachment vote on whether or not someone can hold off as again. And that is just a majority vote. And that would be the remedy. And that's why in the past, including with the Secretary of War, as Congress and Senate has said that you can do this after someone leaves office. It's a precedent and it's important to know. And to me, you just can't let this go.
You know, in America, the president isn't King. And that's what he thought he was when he sent that angry mob down to invade a coequal branch of government, the Congress. That's what he thought he was. The President is not a king, the law is king. And that's why this democracy, and by the way, this upcoming inauguration is something to no longer take for granted. It's something we must cherish and safeguard.
HAYES: On that point, I know you're intimately involved in the planning of the inauguration. There was this news today which I think people are very worried. I got to tell you. I'm sure you hear this about the inauguration. They're freaked out. Everyone I think is -- I think people that I know that work on the hill are dealing with like genuine, post-traumatic stress issues, right?
KLOBUCHAR: That's true. Yes. Two staff were in a closet with a fork. That's all they had on the first floor because I was on our side in charge of the Electoral College, and so we had rules staff there. That's what they were for two hours while the mob ran back and forth, and back and forth. So, a lot of people, it's been It was a very difficult thing for them.
HAYES: So, there was this -- the Biden inauguration rehearsal is postponed due to security threats. I know you're intimately involved in planning the inauguration. What do you say to people say, I'm scared about this and maybe they should just do the whole thing indoors and virtually?
KLOBUCHAR: We're listening to security people, and this will be an unprecedented amount of security. I will also note, Chris, unlike other inaugurations where you have a million people, and that creates all kinds of things, because of the pandemic, Joe Biden, those of us that are in charge of this integration, made this mark decision, I believe, to limit it to around the size of a state of the union crowd, a couple of thousand people. So, that will make it easier to guard the future president and vice president as well as the platform.
Right now, they are feeling very strong about the plan for security. And I think that's good. This inauguration, I do not think we should allow the thugs to have the last word. We shouldn't allow these people that thought they could undermine our democracy, literally take the torch of our democracy and commit political arson and torch the Capitol.
We have to have this moment with all of the Congress, including the leaders from the Republican party who do plan to come, sitting behind the next president and vice president of the the United States to be there as part of this ceremony. And we pass the torch of democracy that way, not how these guys used it as a weapon.
HAYES: Senator Amy Klobuchar of the state of Minnesota, thank you so much for your time tonight.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. It's great to be on, Chris.
HAYES: Congressman Brendan Boyle represents Pennsylvania's second district, which encompasses the northeastern portion of Philadelphia, was evacuated along with his colleagues during the Capitol riot. Well, he's been outspoken against critics the election, particularly Ted Cruz, to whom he tweeted, "Dear Ted Cruz. Just stop. You know, better. I know, you know, better. It's not an effing game. Five people were killed. What the F is it going to take for you to end this? How many more 20-year-old staffers do you want to be terrorized and hiding in your offices?"
And Congressman Boyle joins me now. Congressman, you introduced a resolution to open a criminal investigation into the president for his involvement, incitement of the violence attacks at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Why?
REP. BRENDAN BOYLE (D-PA): Thanks, Chris. You know, obviously, the impeachment vote which I voted in favor of, and what's happening right now in the Senate are about to happen or about to happen at the Senate, the trial, both of those things are important. But I wanted to make sure, and I mentioned this earlier this week in a meeting of my fellow House Democrats, we have to make sure the criminal investigation and prosecution is not lost in this.
At 12 noon on Wednesday, January 20th, Donald Trump will no longer be under the protection of that Justice Department directed against indicted a sitting president. I outlined in my resolution at least two different federal crimes I believe already based on public evidence that is known the President has committed. That includes solicitation of a violent crime, as well as seditious conspiracy.
We have to make sure this is thoroughly investigated. And I believe once it is, you will see an indictment of Donald Trump.
HAYES: I should note, we have some news tonight that down in Fulton County in Georgia, there's a district attorney there starting to look into the possibility of opening a criminal investigation just based on the phone call, which again, has been so lost. That was a week -- you know, two weeks ago. A phone call that would have, just to be clear, would have gotten any mayor or governor in the country resigning and probably investigated and indicted very quickly. The president is calling an election official urging him to overturn the election. So, that is happening, at least at a local level.
BOYLE: Yes, I think there are actually two phone calls. The one that came out and was recorded, but then there was a report on another phone call that Donald Trump made as well. Look, I mean, there are probably hundreds of things over the last four years than any previous president had done, we would be shocked and it would be a tremendous scandal. I think though, one thing we can't lose sight of is obviously as you know, these investigations aren't mutually exclusive.
You also have the New York Attorney General, as well as the U.S. Southern District of New York looking into financial crimes or potential financial crimes that Trump has done. The nice thing about -- for lack of a better word, the nice thing about the investigations happening at the state and local level is Donald Trump, regardless of what he tends to do with a self-pardon, we know that even if that were to be upheld in court, which I'm doubtful of, but even if that were to be upheld, it would only apply to federal crimes.
HAYES: Right.
BOYLE: So, his real exposure is probably at the state and local level.
HAYES: Let me ask you this. You are very critical, I think, righteously so against Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and the individuals that pushed this line to overturn the election. One of the senators who voted for that, Senator Lankford of Oklahoma, issued an interesting apology where he said, I did not realize. It was all the national conversation about states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, was seen as casting doubt on the validity of votes coming out of predominantly Black communities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit.
He goes on to sort of talk about the hurt that might have caused. And I'm curious what your reaction is to that as someone who represents Philadelphia which has been from before the election, a target of a president as essentially corrupt and illegitimate.
BOYLE: Yes. I mean, Donald Trump in the first debate, if you remember, said famously bad things happen in Philadelphia. So, we took a lot of pride in the fact that we put Joe Biden over the top to determine the election. You probably could tell from my Ted Cruz tweet that I am from Philly with some of the language that I used. I typically don't use that language, but it is the real sort of justify anger that a lot of us who work on Capitol Hill are feeling.
As far as Senator Lankford, I will say, I read his letter. I believe it was to a group of African American constituents, and you know, I was really struck by it. I hope it's genuine. I hope it's a moment of self-reflection when he recognizes that when you go after Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, it's pretty obvious what you're saying is the same little old garbage that I've been hearing my whole life about dead people voting in Philadelphia, and of course, targeting largely African American communities. It is if not overtly racist, very thin beneath the surface racist.
HAYES: Congressman Brendan Boyle of the city of Philadelphia, thank you very much, sir.
BOYLE: Thank you.
HAYES: Tonight, new reporting about just how close the violent Trump mob got to finding the vice president during the attack on the Capitol. The astonishing details, those are next.
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HAYES: Every day, the more we learn about the violent attack in the Capitol last week, the worse it looks. Remember that much of the mobs' fury, it was directed not at Democrats but at Vice President Mike Pence. And it was the president who fired up the mob to aim their fury at his vice president. Remember, here's what he told them on January 6th just before they marched over to the Capitol.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we're going to have to fight much harder. And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. And if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And as the rioters gathered at the Capitol, Trump then tweeted, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done." It was not an accident the rioters stormed the capital with Mike Pence inside because we know that because once they made it inside the Capitol Building, we heard them chanting, hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence.
And today we learned, they will within a minute of coming face to face with him. Washington Post reporting about one minute after Pence was hustled out of the Senate chamber, a group charged up the stairs to a second-floor landing in the Senate. Pence and his family had just ducked into a hideaway less than 100 feet from that landing.
If the pro-Trump mob had arrived seconds earlier, the attackers would have been in eyesight of the Vice President when he was rushed across a reception hall into the office. Ashley Parker reported that piece for The Washington Post where she's a White House reporter. She joins me now with Evy Poumpouras, a security expert and former Special Agent with the Secret Service, also the author of Becoming Bulletproof: Life Lessons from a Secret Service Agent.
Ashley, amazing details in this piece. Just break down how close this came.
ASHLEY PARKER, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Incredibly close. The two key numbers and figures are 60 seconds and 100 feet. And again, as we reported, basically, Pence was spirited off the floor of the Senate and into his secure room, his office just off the Senate floor out of the chamber. And exactly less than one minute after he was secured there, that mob of -- angry mob of Trump supporters, basically, came up in that viral video we've seen that Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman leading them away.
When you see the officer look over his shoulder to his left, he is literally looking at the area where the vice president less than 60 seconds prior was there. And again, it's 100 feet and it's 60 seconds and things could have been totally different.
HAYES: Evy, I want to ask as someone who was in the Secret Service. Like, what do you think was going through Secret Service's mind at that time? And what would have happened if a mob had set upon the vice president with a Secret Service detail inside the Capitol?
EVY POUMPOURAS, FORMER SPECIAL AGENT, U.S. SECRET SERVICE: You know, and that's the thing. You're prepared for a threat, for an actual threat, some type of attack, someone looking to cause harm, and you're ready to take action using deadly force, any type of force you need to protect that the vice presidents, any protectee.
And now, here in this situation, what do you do? You've got a mob of people, they're civilians, and they're rioters. Do you start -- you know, literally, you're probably checking off the list. Can I shoot these people? How do I keep all these people off? It's like, what am I allowed to do? And you're also talking about not one person or two people or three people, you're talking about a mob of people. This could have been very bad, extremely bad.
HAYES: Yes, we -- that calculation you're talking about, we saw -- you can see it in the eyes of the police, right? I mean, we even have reporting of this, Ashley. I mean, in in the case of officer Goodman, right. Like, you could see him making a bunch of calculations in real time. There's one of him, there's a bunch of them. If he opens fire, they might overrun them, and also, then he's open. Like, it's an impossible situation. Is the Secret Service -- how long did it take for them to get communicated that the capital had breached to get Pence into that room?
PARKER: Well, that's another key number. We know that basically, the first attempted breach occurred at 1:59 p.m. and the vice president was not taken off the Senate floor until 2:13 p.m. So, that's a 14 minute period, a window where there was some sort of warning, at the very least, that the situation is spiraling out of control.
Before that, even before that breach, an officer on the scene had declared it a riot situation. And in those 14 minutes, he was still presiding over the electoral certification. So, while those first two numbers I mentioned are sort of the most harrowing and the closest, the other number that's quite troubling and which raises questions is why after there was a known breach at the U.S. Capitol attempted was the vice president not secured for 14 more minutes.
The final thing is we know, they actually broke through one of the windows with a two by four at 2:11. So, two minutes after that is when the vice president was finally moved to his first secure location, two of that day.
HAYES: Yes. Evy, what's your reaction to hearing that timeline?
POUMPOURAS: She has -- she brings up a valid point. You know, that's a very delayed response. And if I'm not mistaken, according to the reporting, it's saying that the Vice President didn't want to move or he was reluctant to move. And this is where you kind of get into a back and forth with the protectee. At the end of the day, you have a protectee who say, no, I want to do this. No, I want to do that. And these are the moments where Secret Service, your detail has to stand up and say no, we're moving you.
And I think there are going to be a lot of learning lessons based off of this because, at the end of the day, that is the protectee. They are not -- they are not there to call the shots. Of course, you want to respect, you know, their wishes, but at the same time, you need to be able to do your job. And I think that they should look into that and reassess why that happened. And this is way too much of a close call. It was something that (INAUDIBLE).
HAYES: Finally, Ashley, just to me your reporting underscores that top to bottom, how unawares everyone seems to be have been caught by this.
PARKER: That's exactly right. It feels like each new day we learn more about the various failures of either intelligence on one hand, or perhaps even more troubling, if not as troubling is not failures of intelligence, the intelligence was there. There was a report, warning against this. There was an FBI office in Virginia raising concerns to the intelligence there, but a failure of action.
HAYES: Ashley Parker and Evy Poumpouras, thank you both. I appreciate that. Still ahead, the police officer dragged, beaten, and tased by the mob that Donald Trump incited and sent to the Capitol speaking out about his nightmare experience and he is not holding back. His story next.
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HAYES: We still do not have a briefing from the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6th, but day by day, more of the officers who were there when insurrectionist stormed the Capitol are telling their stories. The person you see here is a D.C. Metro Police Officer Michael Fanone. Fanone was dragged into the crowd of rioters while defending the west front catacomb entrance of the Capitol with fellow MPD officers.
He told the Washington Post he saw tens of thousands of people pushing into the tunnel, and that it looked like a medieval battle scene. The officers are struggling to breathe due to gas and bear spray that had been sprayed at them by the rioters. They pushed the rioters back but Fanone and other officers were dragged down into the crowd where they were beaten by the riders with metal pipes and American flag, and in Fanone's case, a thin blue line flag. That's the modified American flag to pay tribute to police officers.
That's Fanone being dragged into the crowd right there. The rioters who had been chanting USA, USA, stripped him of his radio and badge and he says, tased him again and again and again.
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FANONE: The guys were trying to grab my gun, and they were chanting, like, kill him with his own gun. So, at that point, like I was thinking, all right, you know, how do I survive this situation? I thought, you know, I could shoot them. They're trying to kill me and I'm justified. But if I did, that, I would provide them with the justification that they needed to kill me because I can't get to, you know, hold.
So, then I start thinking like, you know, maybe I can appeal to somebody's humanity. And I started, like, just yelling that I have kids. And I think, you know, fortunately, there were some people in the crowd that recognize that I was a police officer, and that, you know, I don't know, killing me was not the right thing to do.
And so at that point, people started to kind of encircle me. And, you know, offer me some degree of protection. How do I feel about the people that were there? Well, the people that helped me, you know, thank you. But (BLEEP) you for being there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick did not survive the attack. He is one of at least five people to die in the Trump mob riot. The FBI is now investigating his death. I'm joined now by someone who's been doing amazing reporting on the siege at the Capitol, Peter Hermann of the Washington Post who's latest says, We Got to Hold the Door: How Battered D.C. Police Made a Stand Against the Capitol Mob.
And, Peter, the account is harrowing. Tell us about how those officers ended up where they ended up.
PETER HERMANN, REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, Officer Fanone wasn't even on the -- Officer Fanone wasn't even assigned to the demonstration. So, he heard an emergency call go out and, you know, with his partner, rushed to the scene and then ended up engulfed in something I think they never in their wildest dreams expected.
HAYES: About -- do we have a sense -- I mean, Capitol Police haven't been given briefings or anything. So, I want to just focus on MPD for a second then we'll go to the Capitol Police. But how many of their officers were injured in it? How many of them were actually there during the riot and the attack?
HERMANN: I don't quite know numbers of how many were there, but several, several hundreds to be sure. Nearly 60 or about 60 police officers, D.C. police officers were injured and an unknown number of Capitol Police officers were injured. The injuries range from bruises to twisted ankles and twisted knees.
Officer Fanone suffered a mild heart attack. You have concussions and a lot of breathing problems due to the bear spray and other chemical irritants that were sprayed.
HAYES: I want to talk about the Capitol Police This is a force -- it's actually one of the biggest police departments in the country. It's almost half a billion-dollar budget. It's bigger than the Atlanta -- entire Atlanta police force, right? They have -- the head has resigned after being called to resign. And we -- I just -- what is the -- how are they doing? Like, what is the sort of organizational morale over there as they plan for the inauguration because we have heard nothing, no public briefings from this entity since this happened.
HERMANN: Correct. So, we haven't heard anything from the chief -- the old -- the outgoing chief at least publicly. He has spoken to Carol Leonnig at the Washington Post, of our newspaper, but he hasn't made any public statements. There hasn't been any public statements from the sergeant of arms or the leadership there. They are not as accountable as the local municipal police departments are around the country, and so we know very little.
I know we've talked to a few -- a handful of police officers shortly after Officer Sicknick died and, you know, they are demoralized. They feel that their command, their bosses, let them -- let them down and let the country down.
HAYES: We've got reporting tonight from your colleague who you just referenced, Carol Leonnig, that there was an intelligence report before this -- before the attack that warn three days before the attack that the Congress itself could be targeted, and laying out a scenario that basically ended up coming to pass.
How much-sustained investigation do you think we need, sustained open, transparent investigation to sort of figure out what happened here?
HERMANN: I think we need a lot. I think there's million questions, right. I mean, one of the major ones is why -- you know, what happened at what level to have them miss this type of -- this type of thing, especially when they had such intelligence going in. I know the former police chief has said that it was Monday or Tuesday when he got concerned that the efforts by him to get permission to enlist help from the -- from the National Guard were rebuffed, I believe, six times. But still, D.C. Police were preparing long before that, for patrol at least in the city. They're never expecting to have to go to the federal building, to the U.S. Capitol to defend or to save it.
HAYES: Peter Hermann, reporter for The Washington Post who has been on this beat and there's a lot more to report on it, thanks for being with me tonight.
HERMANN: Thank you for having me.
HAYES: Ahead, as the new more contagious strain of COVID spreads across the U.S., another crippling setback in the vaccine rollout. What we know after this.
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HAYES: If you or a loved one are eligible for Coronavirus vaccine in your state and you've been struggling to get one, you're not alone. The vaccine rollout is in shambles right now. States are trying to expand access per the federal government's guidelines and actually have had a lot of success to everyone 65 and over.
Earlier this week, the Trump ministration promised to help accelerate that effort by releasing more vaccine doses.
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ALEX AZAR, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN RESOURCES: We are releasing the entire supply we have for order by states rather than holding second doses in physical reserve.
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HAYES: Great. That's a great call. It took too long but great. So, those extra vaccines were supposed to come from a reserve from doses originally held back from distribution for future second shots of the two-shot vaccine regime. But the Washington Post reports there was no vaccine reserved to release to the States.
The Trump administration had already sent out all their doses. There was nothing more to ship out. And many of the states trying to expand access to vaccines have now run into a major supply shortage. The Associated Press reports, Mississippi's health department stopped taking new appointments the same day began accepting them because of a monumental surge and requests.
In California, counties begged for more Coronavirus vaccine to reach millions of their senior citizens. Hospitals in South Carolina ran out of appointment slots within hours. Phone lines were jammed in Georgia. Here in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that absent a major resupply, the city will run out of vaccines entirely by next week.
Now, all this is happening as a new more contagious version of the virus keeps popping up across the country. The CDC is now warning that this new extra contagious variant first identified in the U.K. could become the dominant strain by March here, leading to another huge surge in COVID cases.
In five days, the United States will have a new president with a new plan to take on this public health catastrophe he's walking into. But he can't start for five more days, so can it get better right away? That's the question next.
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HAYES: When Joe Biden takes the oath of office in five days, he will inherit the biggest health crisis in at least a century in America maybe ever. In a little less than a year, the coronavirus pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Now, there's the threat of the new more contagious strain of the virus reported to be at least 50 percent more transmissible becoming the dominant strain by March here.
It's an understatement at this point to say the speed of the vaccine rollout is of the utmost importance. And today, Biden announced his plan to fix it.
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BIDEN: Our plan is as clear as it is bold. Get more people vaccinated for free. Create more places for them to get vaccinated. Mobilize more medical teams to get the shots in people's arms. Increase supply and get it out the door as soon as possible. This is one of the most challenging operational efforts ever undertaken by our country. But you have my word that we will manage the hell out of this operation.
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HAYES: To get a better handle on Biden's vaccine proposal, I'm joined by a member of his COVID-19 Task Force, Dr. Celine Gounder, infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist. Doctor, it's good to have you on.
First, let's talk about where we are right now with the announcement today or the reporting today that there is no extra supply lying around, that there weren't doses held back or if there were they're not there. Like, what does that operationally mean if we now I think, for the first time, have run up against a supply constraint?
CELINE GOUNDER, MEMBER, BIDEN'S COVID-19 TASK FORCE: I think this is evidence yet again, Chris, that the Emperor had no clothes. The Trump administration had no plan beyond helping pharmaceutical companies speed up -- speed up their research and development process to get authorization for their vaccines.
That's not a plan to get people vaccinated. The President-Elect remains very committed to making sure that we get 100 million vaccinations into people's arms by 100 days. This is going to require an all of government effort, and he really will spare no effort in making sure that happens.
HAYES: So, what is that -- what does that mean? I mean, the approach of the Trump administration has basically been similar to testing and other things. We'll get it to the states and then the states deal with it. We're out. How does the Biden approach differ and how -- and how do you do it?
GOUNDER: So, yesterday, he announced a $1.3 trillion rescue -- American rescue plan to rescue the American economy, to rescue the American people from the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, the government has until this point been largely AWOL as you -- as you point out. And, yes $1.3 million is a lot of money, but it is nowhere near the amount that this is costing, this pandemic is costing the U.S.
It is costing the U.S. $16 trillion. That's more than we have spent on all of the wars since 9/11 combined. That's more than 10 times what he's proposing spending in his American rescue plan. And some of what that plan will entail are ways to get vaccines out distributed to the American people much more rapidly than has been the case so far.
HAYES: But does that mean -- like, for instance, just to get down to the details, and maybe these details are too much. Like, does that mean, federal vaccination centers? Like, does that -- you know what I mean? Like, can we imagine a world in which there's like a federal workforce or the CDC or someone like that, or FEMA, I don't know who, is actually running vaccination centers? Is that -- is that the idea or is that not sketched out?
GOUNDER: So, I want to be clear that the Biden administration has not given up on an equitable distribution of vaccine, but we're less focused on saying, who's first in line. We're more focused now on saying, where can we distribute vaccines, how can we distribute. So, some of that will include, like you mentioned, community vaccination sites.
And so, we'll make sure that those are located not just, you know, in your average suburban community, but also very much so, in communities of color, communities that have been the hardest hit, that are the hardest to reach. We'll have mobile vaccination units that will go to rural sites.
And, you know, some of the key partners in the -- in all of this as well, and I want to say partners, are your primary care providers in the community, federal qualified health centers, which are also very important in serving vulnerable populations. We'll be working closely with them to make sure that they have the staff and the resources and the vaccine supply to vaccinate their populations.
And then finally, the local retail pharmacy, you know, that many of us go to get our prescriptions refilled, to do our daily shopping at, we're going to make sure that they to have the resources they need. So, we're not focusing on any one delivery system. We're going to need all of them. We're going to need all hands on deck. And that includes, like you mentioned, as well, FEMA and the National Guard and the U.S. public health service. We're really going to need everyone to help us in this.
HAYES: There's a new vaccine that looks like it also is effective, and there's only one shot. How big a difference would that make? And also just to have in terms of supply, that you have now possibly by, you know, a few months, three vaccines, including one that only requires one shot.
GOUNDER: So, you're talking about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. We're hopeful that it will qualify for FDA Emergency Use Authorization perhaps even next month. What's great about that vaccine is it is only one dose and it does not require the deep freezing that the current vaccinations required.
So, it certainly would be a lot easier to get out to people say at that local drugstore or through the, you know, local primary care doctor's office. And so, we're very hopeful that that will be yet another tool to help us here.
HAYES: The new strain is really worrying. The kind of epidemiological curves we've seen, say, in the U.K., are wild. I mean, just straight up, it is clearly much more transmissible. I don't -- there's no new magical thing to deal with that, but it does seem like that's also something that the Biden administration may be inheriting that really taking over here.
GOUNDER: There are a couple of points I'd like to make about that. One is that this does mean we have to really try to accelerate vaccination that much more quickly because we don't want these variant strains to be spreading. I think, secondly, the good old fashioned mask-wearing, social distancing, sticking to your household bubble, good indoor air ventilation or being outside, all of that still works against these various strains. So, we need to keep doing all of -- all of those things.
And finally, the more we let the virus spread, the more it adapts to us. We're its hosts. And it's adapting and getting better. And so, if we let it spread, we're going to see more variants like this emerge.
HAYES: That's a great point. I mean, this evolutionary process is going to keep going if we don't stamp this thing out.
GOUNDER: That's right. That's right. So, we absolutely have to control it with the vaccines, with the masking and the social distancing. We have to do that otherwise we're going to see more of these things emerge.
HAYES: All right, Celine Gounder who is on the COVID-19 Task Force for the incoming Biden administration, thank you so much for making time.
All right, that is ALL IN on this Friday night after another crazy week. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. You made it. Thank you, my friend.
HAYES: We made it.
MADDOW: Exactly. And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. It is Friday, President Trump's last Friday night in office.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END
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