Summary
Coronavirus is running rampant across the United States and hospitalization is on the spike. President Trump and the Republican Party are trying to hinder a peaceful transition of power. President Trump is moving loyalists into top Department of Defense positions. President Donald Trump, the GOP, and Trump TV are denying election reality, pushing for voter fraud.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: You can get your mail-in ballot. Request your mailing ballot right now for the two runoff elections as the -- at the web address on your screen. If you still need to register, the deadline is December 7th. Early voting starts December 14th. Georgia, it's up to you. Don't wait. Vote early. That's tonight's REIDOUT. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Tonight on ALL IN. 70 days until the inauguration, America's lame-duck national emergency.
DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, EPIDEMIOLOGIST: We are about to enter COVID hell. It is happening.
HAYES: Tonight, Biden COVID task force member Dr. Michael Osterholm on how to save lives before Trump leaves.
Then, the president installs more loyalists inside the Pentagon. And how much damage can he do before January 20th? And how much damage is coup cosplay doing to the country?
And because your federal government can't bother, a viewer's guide for how to avoid Coronavirus on Thanksgiving when ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. The states that comprise this glorious union of ours are beginning to certify their election results. Delaware was the first certifying last week that Joe Biden won their three electoral votes. Yesterday, Vermont certified Biden's win for another three votes. South Dakota and Oklahoma certified wins for President Trump totaling 10 electoral votes. Today, Trump's wins in Wyoming, South Carolina, were also certified adding another 12 electoral votes officially in the President's column.
Now, you will notice Republicans aren't crying voter fraud in any of these states. They're only focused on spreading that toxic lie in states they think will help them unseat the Democratically elected government. But as we watch the election results being certified, this process will go on through December.
And as we think about what happened in this election, it's an opportunity for all of us to take a step back and marvel at the fact that this is an enormous, complicated country that quite literally contains multitudes. 72 million people voted for Donald Trump and 77 million and counting, that'll go up, voted for Joe Biden in the tallying completed so far.
And all of us, Trump voters and Biden voters, we share this country together with each other. What it means to be American is to share this place, this land that spans from California to Wyoming to Delaware with all kinds of political persuasions, and what it means to love your country. The best form of patriotism is that you love your country not because it's better than other countries. You love it the same way you love your family, because it's yours. And you fight for it because it's yours.
And this country, our country we all share together, is in unbelievable distress right now. What all of those states that have already certified their election results, with the exception of Vermont have in common? They are all part of this great nation where Coronavirus is running rampant.
In Delaware, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming and South Carolina, new cases are higher and they are staying high. In Delaware, new cases are up more than 80 percent over the last two weeks. And in Wyoming, Coronavirus cases are up over 100 percent. Look at that curve there.
Black Americans, and White Americans, and Latino Americans, indigenous Americans, liberal Americans, conservative Americans, rural Americans, urban Americans are all being thrashed by this virus. What would a patriotic government that cared about its own people be doing right now?
Well, you think for a second about what you would be doing for a loved one in your family. If someone you loved cared for were in a hospital receiving very obviously substandard care, neglected, left to essentially care for themselves as they were eaten away by a plague, you would not tolerate it.
And you sure as hell wouldn't say, well, if you take a step back, yes, this hospital performs in the lowest 10th percentile in the state. But I mean, there are people who have it worse. And you know, running a hospital is hard. And you know, what can you really do? Who can blame them? If my loved one dies, my loved one dies. It's a tough problem for anyone to figure out.
No, that's not how it works. You fight for the people you love, and you fight for the country you love and we fight for American lives. This is where we are right now. These are the 10 countries in the world with the highest deaths per million people. Now, you'll notice some very tiny little countries with very small denominators like San Marino and Andorra are in there. But even with them, we are the 10th worst country in the world right after Bolivia.
There are more than 150 countries doing better than us. This is what making America great again looks like in reality, 10th worst in the world. And there are conservatives and Republicans running around being like well, you know, Spain is worse. Well, you know what, we don't live in Spain, do we? We live in the United States of America. We live in our country, our home. We should be demanding the best of our country and our leadership. But instead, this corrupt, defeated government has surrendered.
This is what the map from COVID exit strategy looks like right now. Every state in the country except for Maine seeing uncontrolled spread of the virus. This graph shows new reported cases by day nationwide. New cases are so high that they dwarf the previous two spikes we saw this summer.
The country is on fire, and it's not an accident. This is the Trump administration's current policy what you are seeing. And if you don't believe me, take a look at this Republican rally today in Georgia headlined not by Donald Trump. Forget about Donald Trump, just the normal Republicans, headlined by Senators Marco Rubio and Kelly Loeffler to drum up support for the runoff Senate elections. Crowds of people indoors, many not wearing masks, packed into that room at the Cobb County Republican headquarters. Now, Republicans have their eyes on the prize, and that's not defeating the virus and that's not saving your loved ones from dying in the plague, but trying to secure a Senate Majority.
We also got more news today of more people obviously testing positive for Coronavirus in the latest White House outbreak. I've lost track of how many there have been. People who were in that big election night party, again, inside around each other without masks. This is not rocket scientists. We know how this goes. Brian Jack, White House political director, Healy Baumgardner, former Trump campaign aide, they were both there that election night party. I wish both of them the best the way that I do every American who's being sickened by this thing.
If we had a government that care for its people, it would be fighting for us right now. It would be at the very least -- at the very least this doesn't take a bill of Congress or an executive action, the least, the literal least they could do would be sending out messages every day to the 72 million people who voted for Donald Trump, the tens of million people who love the man and trust him, telling those people how they can keep themselves and their family safe and the rest of us safe, telling them what to do this Thanksgiving.
But they're not doing that. They cannot be bothered. The President is sulking and watching golf and cable news. And the rest of the Republican Party, the whole party, complicit in all this, focused on the Georgia runoff, and maybe overturning the results of a Democratic election to stay in power against the people's will. But if they love their country, they should start acting like it.
Dr. Michael Osterholm is one of the people we should all be listening to right now. He's the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at University of Minnesota and a member of President-Elect Joe Biden's transition COVID-19 advisory board.
I guess we'll start with a check-in on where we are although we just run out of adjectives to say horrible. One of the things that jumped out today to me in the COVID tracking numbers is the hospitalizations. I mean, you know, cases are somewhat dependent on testing, hospitalizations are up 30 percent in a week, we're just smashing through the all-time record, which happened to be about 60,000. We're at 65. What does that mean, in real terms for the system?
OSTERHOLM: Well, I think the challenge we have before us right now is one, dealing just with the overflow of cases we're seeing in many hospitals around the country, but more importantly, planning for what's coming. Chris, we could easily go far as north of 200,000 cases a day, which means that we could be talking about another 40 to 80 percent of cases above what we have. That's the challenge before us right now.
HAYES: Well, I mean, let's talk about in more granular terms about hospital capacity. The first time this thing blew through the world in this country, hospital capacity was the main fixed variable everyone had their eyes on. And we have seen when hospitals become overwhelmed that fatality rate goes up.
Now, one of the things that has happened over the course of the virus is the fatality rate of people hospitalized has gone down as we've gotten better at treating them. What do we -- what is going to happen to these hospitals and what are we up against in terms of capacity where you have intense, localized outbreaks?
OSTERHOLM: You know, capacity is often measured in number of beds. And that's actually a misnomer in terms of how prepared you are to respond. It's the ability to actually recruit the kind of expert medical people that you want, the people who have intensive care experience.
And when we had the original big peak in New York last March and April, and then we have the peak the summer in Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, and California, we actually moved people around the country to help go into those areas and support that kind of expertise.
We can't do that right now because everybody's a house on fire. And so, one of the real challenges we're going to have is we're going to be seen more and more care provided by hospitalist, family practitioners, etcetera, all physicians, nurses, etcetera, who are doing their very best, but they're not intensivists. They're not the doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists teams that work in intensive care. That means, for certain, the actual percentage of patients dying who are in these hospitals will increase
HAYES: The Hoover Institution affiliated radiologist who has been running essentially point for the nation's response, a guy by the name of Scott Atlas, he's been pretty clear and the President is pretty clear, at a certain point, they pivoted to let the virus go wild and focus on therapeutics and hospital settings to reduce fatalities there and protecting vulnerable populations.
I guess my question is, those therapeutics the president promised everyone when he got to the hospital that everyone would have and have cheaper and the like, is that the case?
OSTERHOLM: Well, the problem we have right now with the therapeutics that actually hold the most promise for having some impact in terms of new ones treating COVID are the monoclonal antibodies. And we know that those antibodies have to be given in the very earliest hours of one's clinical illness.
And when you're a company that you have 50,000 doses on hand, and you can only make X amount, and you're seeing 100,000 cases a day or more. And then you have to figure out who's going to get it, where are they going to be infused because they have to be infused with this monoclonal antibody, I mean, that just doesn't work.
And so one of the challenges we have is not just enough to say you have a drug that might keep you from becoming severely ill, but how would you ever use it? And that's the challenge we're seeing right now.
HAYES: Right. So, I mean, the President, Ben Carson, apparently, as others have sort of access to these sort of cutting edge treatments, that's not widely available, there's a capacity issue. There's also this idea that we've seen it, and we knew it wouldn't work, so you'll forgive me if I get a little angry talking about this, that there's a universe in which you can let the virus go wild, and it stays out of long term care facilities, that you protect vulnerable populations.
Well, again, COVID tracking showing that we are -- it's all over long term care facilities now. Like, what do we do now?
OSTERHOLM: Well, the challenge is that -- and the fallacy of that whole theory about developing herd immunity by letting it just run willy-nilly was that how do you bubble up 40 percent of our adult population that have increased body mass indexes, that puts them at risk for serious disease, wholy underlying conditions that exist.
And then for that matter, transmission. You're a single mom. You have two young kids; you live in an apartment with your mother, and your essential worker. You have to go to work every day just to make sure that you have a roof over their heads. How do you bubble that person when they come home to be with their mother and their two children? That just doesn't work.
So, we've always realized that that is not the answer is to just try to bubble up those who are at high risk. And as you pointed out, you know, the people who work in long term care facilities, they go home to those same situations. And so, it is a real challenge. You can't bubble it up. We've got to do what we can to stop transmission throughout the entire community.
HAYES: So, we have seen in the E.U. countries announced another round of shelter in place orders. Some of them less stringent than the first one. What I'm watching policymakers in the U.S. do, and this is Republican and Democrat, is essentially trying to balance two impossible competing imperatives.
I mean, Governor Cuomo today saying, we're going to start closing restaurants at 10:00, and gyms at 10:00. And people said, well, does COVID clock out at 9:59? Like, what exactly is going on here? But the rationale, and I see it is, whether it's Lori Lightfoot in Chicago, or Governor Cuomo, or governor of Maryland, these businesses are all hanging on by a thread. There's no more federal support coming right now. And so, they don't want to be the ones to snip out the last part of their lifeline.
And so, what we're getting are these half measures that attempt to like kind of combat transmission and kind of keep the businesses alive. And my question to you is, is that enough and is that going to work?
OSTERHOLM: You know, it doesn't work for either one. That's the problem. You know, I published an op-ed back in early August at the New York Times with Neel Kashkari, the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, and he brought his economic expertise, I brought my epidemiologic expertise.
We've said in that op-ed piece that what we're seeing right now would happen. And we said the only way to actually stop that is to learn from what the Asian countries did where they really locked down in that -- and I hate that term. If you interview 50 people today and ask what a lockdown is, you get 75 different answers.
The point being is that what we were talking about is today in this country, the savings rate has grown dramatically during the pandemic. Rather than eight percent of personal income being saved, it's up to 20 some percent. We could actually borrow all of that money that's sitting in our banks at historic low-interest rates, and use that as a stimulus to actually pay people to who are being hurt by losing their work, pay small businesses so that they wouldn't suffer.
We can actually take care of cities, states and counties, keep them whole. And you know what, then we could do what they did in Asia. Look at what they did. And don't tell me it's just the authoritarian countries. I realized New Zealand and Australia are both islands, but they had real problems going on. And they basically quashed both of them just using good public health methods that we could do if we can get the number of cases down.
HAYES: All right Dr. Michael Osterholm, thank you so much for sharing your time. Come back anytime.
OSTERHOLM: Thank you.
HAYES: Tonight, in just a few days since President lost his reelection, why are Trump loyalists being installed in an important Pentagon positions? We'll try and get some answers next.
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HAYES: 2021 and the peaceful transition of power is supposed to be well underway by now. Tonight, President-elect Biden has named, no surprise, Ron Klain his White House Chief of Staff. Ron, a very frequent guest of the program. President Trump and the vast majority the Republican Party continue to block the process both by refusing to release the federal funds to officially begin the transition and get folks e-mail addresses and office space and all that, and by outright denying that Joe Biden has won election he clearly has won.
The Trump ministration isn't just refusing to move forward. They are also actively moving Trump loyalists into positions of power within the Department of Defense. On Sunday night, Mark Esper, a man appointed by the President was still the Secretary of Defense. His chief of staff was Jen Stewart, former top Republican staffer on the House Armed Services Committee. His Undersecretary of defensive policy was James Anderson, an academic and former Marine, and his Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence was Joseph Kernan, a former SEAL Team commander. That was the leadership team.
Just days later, all those people are gone. They are replaced instead by who's who of Trump loyalists and hatchet men. The Acting Secretary Defense Chris Miller was moved from the National Counterterrorism Center, jumping the Deputy Secretary of Defense in a move that may not be legal. His chief of staff is now Kash Patel, which may ring some bells, a former White House staffer and aide to none other than Congressman Devin Nunez, who crafted a dubious memo denounced by the FBI to discredit the origins of the investigation into Trump team's contacts with Russia.
The man listed as performing the duties of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is Anthony Tata, who Mitch McConnell's own Senate would not confirm for the role over this summer because he's so out there. I think he told the former CIA Director to "eat a gun at once." He famously called President Obama a terrorist leader and a Muslim.
And the man responsible for intelligence in the Defense Department is now Ezra Cohen-Watnick who reportedly helped Devin Nunez invent a scandal over the unmasking of Trump officials. What are all these people doing at the Pentagon and why have they all been moved to those positions now?
Someone we hope can help answer those questions, Spencer Ackerman, national security correspondent at The Daily Beast. His latest piece is titled, "Infamous MAGA Figures Rush Into Purged Pentagon."
Spencer, you've been doing great reporting on this. First, I just want to start with giving people a little perspective. How common is it for those four positions at DOD to just be wiped out and replaced in a day or two?
SPENCER ACKERMAN, SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, THE DAILY BEAST: Never. I haven't heard of it. This is not a situation that has happened probably in the history of the Department of Defense except for, I don't know, maybe like final days of transitions is people kind of cycle in and out. But that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is a purge.
HAYES: And the purge, again, I want to get to who they'd be replaced. But we should just also note that like, the U.S. military is one of the three most complicated organizations on planet Earth, probably. I mean, I don't know, the Chinese Red Army, like it's just an enormously complicated thing with this $800 billion annual budget and million people. And like, it's not something that you can just like, throw the keys to any four Yahoo's you find.
ACKERMAN: No, it's definitely not. And you really don't want to throw really any military keys to any Yahoo's. This is a very, very serious thing that's underway now. In particular, what we're waiting to see is what Chris Miller, the Acting Secretary of Defense will do.
The main question that I can't get a solid answer to is everybody who's talked with Chris Miller, he's a former Green Beret, has a lot of respect for him, and describes him as having a lot of gravitas and a lot of integrity. So, why then Is he there? What did Mark Esper say no to that Trump thinks Chris Miller is going to say yes to?
HAYES: And you don't have the answer to that?
ACKERMAN: I wish I did. One speculation that -- I really do, honestly. One speculation that I keep hearing is that a basically Miller is in place to wander his integrity through whatever Tata and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, and Cash Patel are going to ultimately do.
Some speculation runs that they're there to basically ransack intelligence, particularly on Ezra Cohen-Watnick's new directorate to make sure that ultimately, when President-elect Biden takes office, they'll have a whole lot of dirt that they can try and feed Republican officeholders, and probably the conservative media as well.
Other speculation, which gets like pretty scary is that who knows if there's going to be another confrontation with Iran before Trump leaves. In a couple of days, Mike Pompeo is going to go fly to the Middle East, and he'll be meeting with pretty much the anti-Iran coalition, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
No one that I've talked to really knows. And I think that's both an important thing to tell your viewers and also a scary thing that the country ought to know --
HAYES: Yes. We --
ACKERMAN: -- that right now -- yes.
HAYES: Well, no, finish your sentence.
ACKERMAN: No, that right now, you have a circumstance for the entire Pentagon leadership is sort of mysteriously turned over and people both in the building and recently out are not sure what the purpose of this will ultimately be. Few people think that Miller is there to keep Trump in office illegally beyond January 20th.
Honestly, I really hope that's the case. And I hope that the people who know Chris Miller and are vouching for him, not just me but a lot of other reporters, have it right.
HAYES: It does seem like a thread here about intelligence. You know, these are people that David Ignatius had a column in the Washington Post that was about a kind of backdoor fight with Gina Haspel at CIA. Basically that it's their last chance to pull intelligence out from behind, you know, classification to make whatever cases they want to make about like the corrupt Russia hoax, yadda, yadda, yadda, and that there's maybe a backdoor fight happening with Gina Haspel over CIA.
When you look at these, particularly Patel and Cohen-Watnick, I mean, these are very sort of infamous committee to reelect the president kind of plumber style guys who've been sort of doing this sort of stuff for Devin Nunez and others around intelligence for a while, which suggests maybe that's part of it.
ACKERMAN: Yes. And Ezra Cohen-Watnick worked for Mike Flynn at DIA as well. These are guys who go to manufacture scandals, particularly to misrepresent intelligence and try and, you know, gin up controversies in order to distract from the agenda that you're actually pulling off.
And given their histories, I would expect, that's exactly why they're put into these exceptionally powerful positions they're put in. I'm told that Ezra Cohen-Watnick is not just the Acting Undersecretary for Intelligence right now, but he retains his former role as the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations at Low Intensity Conflict.
That puts him in charge not just of the Pentagon's vast intelligence apparatus, but its secretive and deadly Special Operations apparatus. He doesn't have operational control. He doesn't, you know, have a role in the chain of command, but he has oversight over all of these things. And it's a tremendous responsibility in the hands of someone who, you know, people at the Pentagon described to me and people who used to work with him at the NSC described to me as not just manual -- is not just manifestly unfit, but absolutely the last person you should have in these roles.
HAYES: Oh, well, that's an unnerving report from Spencer Ackerman, who's one of the great reporters on this beat. Thank you, Spencer. I appreciate it. Ahead, there is no evidence whatsoever of any widespread voter fraud and yet the president and his enablers continue to peddle conspiracy theories. We'll talk about what it will lead to just ahead.
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HAYES: The front page of The New York Times today made explicit what had already become pretty clear, election officials nationwide find no fraud. The Times calling officials in every state to verify no fraud and disorder. They talk to Republicans and Democrats. There's tons of quotes from tons of officials up and down the chain. And the thing that Donald Trump and his allies keep insisting is happening in an effort to cling to power, it just is not happening.
And pretty much every supposed example that he's given has preposterously blown up in their faces, not that it's going to stop them from doing the next one. Senator Lindsey Graham called for Department of Justice investigation after a Pennsylvania postal worker alleges he witnessed ballot tampering. The Postal worker then promptly signed an affidavit recounting his allegations according to officials and admitted he made it all up.
In Nevada, Republicans sent a criminal referral to the DOJ alleging thousands of cases of voter fraud. But their list of alleged fraudsters included many members of the military who had say, been transferred to another base. And they and their families were not exactly thrilled to be cited as part of an evil Democratic plot.
They're playing more examples like this because there is no evidence of voter fraud in this election, no matter what Donald Trump and the Republicans claim. Here's the thing, though, this really drives me a little nuts. There is actually one real example of the type of thing Republicans are talking about that actually did happen in the last four years, in an actual election with absentee ballots, and it didn't involve Democrats.
In the 2018 midterms, North Carolina Republican Mark Harris, a conservative pastor, had a slim lead over his Democratic opponent in that race when the initial results came in. But the North Carolina elections board refused to certify the race amid rumors of questionable activities. And after regulators notice that in North Carolina's Bladen County, Harris won 61 percent of absentee ballots, even though Republicans there accounted for just 19 percent of them. It doesn't quite work.
Now, Harris tried to ignore the scandal and he went to court to try to get his victory certified with the full support, let's be clear, the full support of the state Republican Party. But a judge rejected their claim and with good reason because it turns out that, drumroll, Harris had hired this guy, convicted felon MccRae Dowless to help with his get out the vote efforts.
And MccRae Dowless had allegedly orchestrated an absentee ballot scheme, which according to testimony, included operatives forging signatures and just flat out filling in votes as part of an illegal effort to help Republican Mark Harris win. Now, that is exactly the kind of thing Republicans claim they're so worried about that the evil Democrats in the big cities do with all that means.
But do you remember them making a big deal out of one of their Republican candidates doing this in 2018? Did anyone say anything? No. Me either. Because they didn't. Of course, they didn't. They either tried to just sweep it under the rug or in the case of Mitch McConnell, he actually blamed Democrats for voter fraud perpetuated entirely by Republicans.
Now, one lesson here is that Republican voter fraud claims are entirely insincere. Obviously, we know that. The other is that you can't really do voter fraud at scale, which is what you would need to affect the outcome, without it being obvious. You get caught, which is why Republican claims of rapid massive fraud now are so ludicrous and why what they're doing is so poisonous. I want to talk more about that next.
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HAYES: Trump TV dead-enders are still out there selling conspiracy theories of voter fraud to explain his lost to Joe Biden. Last night, Laura Ingraham who is promised her audience she would "continue to spread Trump's message," brought us this truly award-worthy special investigation.
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LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: He saw something suspicious -- we're going to get right into it tonight -- happening on the side of a Biden-Harris van in the parking lot of the polling station. Now, walk the audience through what happened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I went out to go for a walk on my break and I could see these people hand over what appeared to be white envelopes, just hand over to this table. And as I got closer, the envelopes are being torn open. There were two men or two people dropping the envelopes, and two people ripping them open and turning and facing the van and drawing on them or marking them.
And as I got closer, you know, as I was walking, they would put things down and put more paper up on the van and then put it down and pick some more up. And as I got closer, I thought those are ballots.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Did you? Just to be clear about what this exclusive Ingraham Angle investigation has blown the lid off here, an anonymous poll worker says she saw two men in a van with Biden-Harris paint in the side in the parking lot out back behind the polling place just marking out a bunch of paper that prompted the thought those are ballots.
This extremely irresponsible viral anecdotal nonsenses has absolutely flooded Facebook and Trump TV to create an impression among tens of millions of Americans that Donald Trump actually won the election. This sort of thing is being pushed to Trump -- to the American people by Trump TV.
Let's talk about what this is really all about Judith Browne Dianis, Executive Director of the Advancement Project's National Office, a civil rights organization that focuses on voting rights and participation, particularly in communities of color.
There's one line of that I've seen people saying, and this is a lot of anonymous Republican officials speaking to reporters, and all of their cowardly glory, saying, well, just let -- the president needs to come down from this. He wants to gin this up. Just let him have his fun. What's the effect of this, of this message, this drumbeat day in day out about those people stealing your election?
JUDITH BROWNE DIANIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE ADVANCEMENT PROJECT: Well, Chris, we've seen this bad movie before. We saw the republicans take out that playbook around voter fraud in the 2011, right, after Obama was elected, right. After that, they start talking about voter fraud to gin up concerns about voter integrity for the 2012 election. And as a result of that, what we saw were states rushing to pass laws that were more restrictive, voter ID laws. In particular, knowing in one North Carolina court said in one of our cases that those laws were surgically crafted to suppress the vote of Black voters.
And so this is -- this is the downside of this, right. Like, first of all, calling into question the integrity of our democracy is one problem. Two, is that the way that he is talking about it, targeting Atlanta, and Detroit, and Philly, the same cities that he talks about when he talks about the protests, and he talks about the so-called thugs who are out in the streets, where he has to use law and order, these are the same places where he's now saying voter fraud happened.
And so, we know that the target will be on Black and Brown voters. And what will happen is, in the next legislative session in many of these states, we're going to see more restrictive laws, we're going to see it making it harder to vote for particular groups of people. I'm sure mail-in ballots will be -- the whole process around mail-in voting is going to be harder.
And here's the thing is, the reason they're also going to do that is because we had almost 100 and 60 million people who voted. And they know, when we vote, we win. And so, they're going to try and make it harder, and it's going to -- you know, we'll be in a fight in legislative sessions around the country.
HAYES: It's also striking to me. You know, there's this caricature, sometimes accurate, of a certain kind of liberal who's out of touch with the country. And there's this famous quote by the film critic of The New Yorker in the 1960s, Pauline Kael, who said, I think it was after 1972, like, I can't believe Nixon won, no one I know voted for him, right? And it's like, well, right, you heard a very small circle of people that voted for McGovern. It's a big country out there.
But it strikes me how much like what's happening on Trump TV is the inverse of this. Like they're out of -- they're out of touch. It's inconceivable that a majority of Americans don't like Donald Trump. They voted against Donald Trump by six, seven million votes, by four percentage points. There's a majority people that don't like Donald Trump, and they're so out of touch that it has to have been some other explanation.
DIANIS: Right. I mean, this is the parallel universe that he's created for us. And unfortunately, there are people who are buying into it. And that means that we're going to have -- we're kind of having this democracy civil war, right, around like, what does voting look like in our country and what should it look like.
And I am -- I am very worried as a voting rights lawyer, as a civil rights lawyer about what is to come because we know like states like Michigan where they passed a ballot initiative in order to make it easier to vote, we're going to see those restrictions. We still have not had the Voting Rights Act reauthorized, right, The Voting Rights Advancement Act named after John Lewis now hasn't gotten through the Senate. So, we don't have the protections that we need.
In addition to which, we have a Department of Justice that instead of enforcing our civil rights, is looking for voter fraud. And so we're, we're in a little bit of trouble on what's to come in terms of participation. And I think what this calls for is this calls for a pro-democracy movement. All the people that we saw in the streets dancing with joy are the same people who need to be saying, I vote, I count.
HAYES: Yes. And the idea of a pro-democracy movement, I mean, that's what is so -- you know, that's the, that's the existential canyon that we were sort of perching our toes over. And that still feels like we're standing there, and that any second someone might come and shove us. I mean, that's why I think people feel pretty stressed out still because, you know, that's -- this is what it is.
Like, if the -- if the votes come in and a person wins, then they take office. That's how it goes. And there are people that don't want that to be the case.
DIANIS: And I mean, it's just crazy. 160 million people almost, and we're still saying that this doesn't matter. And so, you know, I just think that -- I mean, I wish he would go away just like he said, the pandemic and Coronavirus would go away. But that's not happening. And what it's doing is that he is just ginning it up.
And unfortunately, Chris, we don't have enough people in his party, Republicans, standing up and saying no. Now, we do have Secretaries of State who are saying, wait a second, I ran a very good election. It is a very clean election, and I had integrity in my election. And so we are seeing that, but like -- and we're seeing the court saying there's no voter fraud. They're throwing those cases out. There's no evidence.
And I will tell you, Chris, you and I, as lawyers, we know like these lawyers need to stop filing these frivolous baseless cases before they get sanctions against them, right, because there is no there-there. And so, Americans need to start shouting from the rooftops, I voted, I count, this election matters. 160 million people had their say, and we are not going backwards.
HAYES: All right, Judith Browne Dianis, thank you so much. It's always great to talk to you. If you've been wondering what to do for the upcoming holidays, whether you should gather together, how to do it safely, you're in luck. Don't go anywhere -- well, you're not in luck. None of us are in luck. But don't go anywhere. We have two doctors standing by to answer all those questions right after this.
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ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I think each family is going to have to make a risk assessment about what the risk and benefit of what we all feel as such an important tradition that we've had since, you know, the beginning of our nation is Thanksgiving. It's an important family holiday.
My wife and I are going to have dinner together, a quiet dinner. We're going to get on Zoom and we're going to talk and smile and laugh and drink and eat with our children who are doing it distally and virtually.
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HAYES: Did Dr. Fauci's discussion of Zoom Thanksgiving bum you out tremendously when you saw just now or before? Because it definitely did to me because I love Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday. For years, we've done it at my parent's house. My mom makes a stuffing with a stale Italian bread and Italian sausage, mozzarella, and parsley, and it's amazing. And there's always a bunch of people, but it's a bunch of people indoors in the midst of a pandemic and that just doesn't work. It doesn't work. We can't do that this year. We're not going to do it this year.
If your heart is set on traveling or having people over this year for Thanksgiving, you need to listen to my next guest. Dr. Dara Kass, an emergency room physician here in New York, contract COVID earlier this year and has since recovered, and Dr. Syra Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist, member the Federation of American Scientists COVID Taskforce.
All right, let's just start open-ended question. I'll start with you Dr. Kass first and then you Dr. Madad. Thanksgiving plans, how should people be thinking about?
DARA KASS, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: The same way we thought about the holidays since this pandemic started, which means you need to be with your nuclear family in your house. If you want to do a Zoom and you all eat the same meal at the same time, that's great.
There should be no interstate travel. You should not be eating dinner with anyone you don't live with. Unfortunately, the pandemic is raging all over the country. There's nowhere safe and no testing guarantee that you're not bringing the virus into your house.
HAYES: Dr. Madad, you're nodding your head.
SYRA MADAD, MEMBER, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS COVID TASKFORCE: Yes, I completely agree. The safest way is to celebrate Thanksgiving within your own household. If you are going to merge your social bubbles, it's really important to understand now is the time to quarantine for 14 days. If you're going to merge non-household members and you want to do it in a very small, you know, gathering, you want to go ahead and quarantine now.
And then you want to add on some, you know, the preventative layers. It's not a, you know, one size fits all type of approach. You want to add on more layers, have it outdoors, keep family units together, don't share utensils. These are things that we want to continue to do to essentially reduce the risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19.
The other thing that I'll just quickly mention is that there's no face at COVID-19. You don't -- you don't see somebody and say, oh, they may have COVID-19. I mean, you want to make sure -- you want to assume everybody has it. And so, with that, you want to take on these preventative measures that we've all been discussing for months on that.
HAYES: Well, Dr. Kass, what -- talk more about the testing, right? Because it seems I know -- like, I've been working through this trying to like come out -- like how can I escape my own public health commitments so that I can see the people I love at Thanksgiving, literally an intellectual game I've been playing with myself. Like -- so, you want to say like, what if, you know, it's just a few people and everyone gets tested, and then they lay low for a bunch -- like a week?
KASS: So, there's no way around this. I mean, I think that everyone I know has asked me about special rules, getting tested, waiting for a period of time, testing people at the door. And we saw this at the Rose Garden. I mean, like, let's be honest, we've seen super spreader events that have had "testing," and there are no guarantees.
Look, people are going to do things and they're going to take breaks. And so, we're trying to give people advice to mitigate those risks. But if you're trying to do the right thing, unfortunately, Chris, you can't get around the rule.
HAYES: Well, OK, but it isn't binary, right. So, I think like the safest thing to do is to have it with your nuclear family and Zoom in to other people. That's clear. Not everyone is going to do that. So, on a risk spectrum -- I mean, one thing -- one thought I had was like, it's going to be cold in much of the country, Dr. Madad, but like if you -- if you need to see people, and maybe you have like a drink or a celebratory something outdoors -- like outdoors is so much better than indoors. Like, the idea of people in a house in winter together, that's like the nightmare scenario for spreading. Am I right?
MADAD: That's absolutely right. We talked about, you know, risk of transmission increases if you're in confined spaces, crowded, you know, areas, and you know, you have, you know, poor ventilation. So, that's, you know, kind of a super spreading setting right then and there. So, you want to avoid these three C's. So, as much as you can have this outdoors.
The other thing is voice etiquette, right. So, we know in the holidays, people like to sing and chant. You know, these are activities that expel more, you know, droplets and aerosols. So, you want to not do those things. You want to keep the family units together, and then space them out. So, these are just some tips, but you know, certainly, we want to make sure that people are doing it, you know, safely as much as possible.
HAYES: Dara, what are you seeing right now in New York? I mean, we're not in -- we're nowhere like what we're seeing in North Dakota, and it's nowhere like what it was in April, thank the Lord. But it's -- it is going up, right?
KASS: Yes. It's going up. I mean, the numbers on the dashboard from the governor don't lie. We're seeing positive test rates between three and five percent all over New York. It's real and it's happening on the ground. We're seeing an increased number of cases in all the hospitals in New York City and New York State. It's not the same as the Dakotas in the Midwest where there's 100 percent capacity in their hospitals. They can't get patients phase over to transfer them for hospital beds. So, New York is not the same as the rest, but we are seeing an increase in cases.
HAYES: Yes. We should say the CDC, which, you know, is a legendary organization who has been sort of dragged through the mud during the Trump ministration says, the safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving this year is to celebrate it with people in your household.
And one thing that I would like to talk about Dr. Madad, I think this is really important is, risk is relative to community transmission. And, like -- and that was true during periods where there was very low transmission after some big waves. The country is in the fallout outbreak that will be worse than anything we've seen. Like, that just changes the risk calculation around everything. It sucks, but it's true.
MADAD: Yes, you're absolutely correct. You know, we are seeing fires all around the nation, and there's no one area that really is being spared. If you're looking at the data, all the states, unfortunately, are trending in the wrong direction. So, as much as you can do it locally, you know, and staying within your household, that is, you know, the safest way to do so.
Because even the sheer fact of travel has risk associated with it because you may be exposed at various points. So, it's really important to take all of that into context. And the other thing I'll just quickly point out is the risk is not uniform. So, you may be healthy, you may be young, and you may think that you know what, I'm going to go ahead and go to grandma's house, and you know, go ahead and, you know, celebrate with family members.
We know that even the young can get infected and succumb to the disease. And then we also have what we call long COVID. So, we can't just look at the disease based on the deaths associated with it, you see a very significant morbidity associated with it as well.
HAYES: What do you say Dr. Kass to people that just feel a lot of fatigue about this? I mean, I think this is a universal feeling that people have. People feel fatigue about the -- I mean, I've come to like, absolutely like loath the GD mask I put on my face every day when I come in here. It is what it is. Like, put it on, like I'm not taking it off, I get it. But there's a certain level of fatigue and like, what do you say to people that feel that?
KASS: So, look, it's totally understandable. We've been doing this for almost a year. It's a remarkable thing that we've gotten this far. I also want to remind people, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
HAYES: Yes.
KASS: We're seeing such promising data with the vaccine. We may only have to do this for a few more a month. But unfortunately, the best protection against getting sick long COVID and dying is not get infected in the first place. So, my plea with all the Americans that are listening right now is we're seeing a new administration come in, we're going to see new leadership, better communication, and probably a vaccine very soon. So, just please hold on for a few more months. We can do this together.
HAYES: Yes, Dr. Madad, I think, if you tell me we can have Thanksgiving next year as -- no, I'm serious. If you told me it's done for the next few years, at a certain point, it's like, what are we doing here? But if you tell me that we can have Thanksgiving next year, if we can make it through this period, that gives me like something to shoot for.
MADAD: Oh, absolutely. This is going to be a very, you know, vast, you know, a few months ahead. But certainly, next year in the holidays, we're going to be in a much better position because we have a better exit strategy. We have more tools in our toolbox, we'll have you know, more vaccines made available. There's going to be multiple different types by that time. So, I think we're going to be in a much better position come next holiday.
But you want to live for the next holiday, so do it safely this holiday so you can celebrate it next year with your family.
HAYES: Yes. Just think about what would happen if someone got sick after you had one of these gatherings and how you would feel about it. That's sort of always shocks me and brings me back. Dr. Dara Kass, Dr. Syra Madad, thank you both for making time tonight. That was really helpful.
All right, that's ALL IN on this Wednesday night. Stay safe out there, please, please, please, please. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now with Ali Velshi in for Rachel.
Good evening, Ali.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END
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