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Transcript: All In with Chris Hayes, November 24, 2020

Guests: Janai Nelson, Ed Markey, Rick Bright, Lachlan Markey, Jennifer Horn

Summary

Today, President-Elect Joe Biden formally unveiled some of his key picks for his cabinet, many of them served in the Obama administration. Joe Biden selects former Secretary of State John Kerry to be Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is interviewed about President-Elect Joe Biden's pick for his cabinet. President Donald Trump takes a stock market victory lap as millions of Americans remain unemployed and the coronavirus surges. Polling shows that Republicans want their leaders to fight like President Trump.

Transcript

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Indeed. Amen. Thank you, Reverend Al. It's always great to talk with you. Reverend Al Sharpton, thank you very much.

I also do want to say to the family of Bruce Boynton, who also passed away, rest in peace to him as well and the best for his family. That's the REIDOUT for tonight. "ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice over): Tonight on ALL IN.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.

HAYES: 57 days until inauguration, the Biden team takes the stage. Tonight, as Pennsylvania certifies the Biden victory, how America nearly failed the Trump stress test for democracy.

Then, Senator Ed Markey on what looks like bold Biden climate plans, Dr. Rick Bright of the Biden Coronavirus Task Force on their plans to turn vaccines into vaccinations, and the cruel reality of a president patting himself on the back for the stock market as millions of Americans wait in line for food, when ALL IN starts right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. It took 17 days from when Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election by all the major press outlets and networks, 17 days of lies and absurd court challenges and tantrums, pressure on public officials. But today, finally we got the first full day of the actual Biden transition.

The incoming Biden administration now has access to the FBI to vet potential nominees and funding for salaries and travel and office space and the ability to communicate without going appointees and crucially civil servants with information, also a .gov Web site.

Biden is also starting to get the President's daily briefing. This all should have happened 17 days ago, but at least it happened now. Here's what Biden told NBC News' -- Nightly News' Anchor Lester Holt in an exclusive interview earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: It's a slow start, but it's starting. And there's two months left to go, so I'm feeling good about the ability to be able to get up to speed. And I fully expect based on what I've heard so far, we'll get full cooperation from each of the agencies in question.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Today, Biden formally unveiled some of his key picks for top positions, many of them served in the Obama administration. There's a kind of sigh of relief. I think a lot of people are breathing now. I mean, this does seem to be over after weeks of the outgoing president waging war on the election's legitimacy and trying to do whatever you could to hang on to power including embarking on a litigation strategy that conservative legal writer Walter Olson described as going down a hotel corridor, trying each door to see if any had been left unlocked.

It seems like we are finally moving on. That said, Trump is of course still falsely claiming the election was stolen as he will for the rest of his life. And Republicans today filed some last-minute lawsuits, again, to try to block the election certification in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

But it does seem to finally be over. Today, the much watch state of Pennsylvania officially certified Biden's win, as did Nevada, another state Trump had tried to contest, and so did Minnesota. Apparently, that last-minute lawsuit I just mentioned didn't quite do the job.

And with all that has been happening, you're seeing some people start to say, look, the system works. The guardrail is held, our democracy is fine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN DOMENECH, CO-FOUNDER AND PUBLISHER, THE FEDERALIST: This is a significant development. And I think it also kind of disproves a lot of things that people who've engaged in fever dreams about the president, you know, holding on to power well after this election. Our republic is very strong, that its guardrails are very solid.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think one thing to take away from this, Judy, is the fact that the guardrails of our system actually worked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The good news here is that the institutions in American democracy have held up the courts and all of the rest. And Joe Biden will be president and this Trumpian effort to overturn democracy is not going to succeed. That's a really big deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: So, some of that is absolutely true. I mean, one takeaway here is that by and large judges particularly, no matter which President appointed them, really did have zero tolerance for these completely fanciful, ridiculous, baseless accusations from the Trump team, which properly got laughed out of court. And in that way, the system did hold.

But take a step back to remember why we are where we are, right. For months leading up to the election, the entire Trump reelection strategy was predicated on the premise he would lose the popular vote. They knew that. And that any victory would be a narrow one in a few kings few key swing states like 2016. And they began putting in place a plan to basically declare victory even if they narrowly lost in a key state or two.

This was the groundwork laid with the constant casting aspersions on the integrity of mail-in ballots and the tweeting about fraud with the pre-election lawsuits to throw a kind of legal poll over certain categories of ballots, particularly ones that arrived after election day in hopes that campaign could then go back into court after election day and try to get those votes thrown out if it was close. That might be decisive and the Supreme Court kind of saying maybe come back, right.

That was the plan. I mean, Republican legislators even refuse to let key states just constant Michigan, Pennsylvania, count their mail-in votes early so that Trump could declare victory on election night as he did. And the only problem with the plan and the biggest thing that stopped it, it wasn't really so much the institutions, it's just that Trump lost the election by too much to really pull it all off.

And right now, with 98 percent of the vote counted, Biden is ahead in the popular vote by more than six million votes. That is likely to continue to go up with still a lot of votes in New York. Donald Trump has the biggest popular vote loss since 2008, even bigger than Mitt Romney's, the man that Trump is so fond of calling a loser.

And remember, Biden won 306 electoral votes giving him a good amount of breathing room beyond the necessary to 70. In other words, it never came down to just a single state. And yet, even with those margins, we've seen the president commits a huge percentage of Americans that vote fraud was endemic. We've watched as he pressured sometimes successfully these random Republican functionaries to abdicate their responsibility to follow the law.

Now, he wasn't that successful in the grand scheme of things, and there were Republican officials, many, the majority actually, who didn't do the right thing, thank goodness. But, I don't know, imagine the Republican Secretary of State in Georgia had been a complete hack or successfully bullied instead of a responsible civil servant. Or if the single Republican who voted to certify the results in Michigan, the state Biden won overwhelmingly, the guy on the state canvassing board who departed with his Republican colleagues voting to certify, if he'd been a hack, or if a Trump-appointed judge in say, Pennsylvania, got along with a scheme too. We could be in a very different place right now.

That's just a handful of people who could have altered the trajectory. It didn't happen. But that's a flashing red warning sign. So, here are two of my big takeaways. One, the Electoral College is a real problem. I mean, the margins are almost always going to be small in these contested states, certainly smaller than the national margin, and that makes them vulnerable to attack.

Even if you take away all the high jinx, it's still a ticking time bomb. I mean, imagine the democratic legitimacy crisis we'd be in if Trump had flipped 60,000 votes in the right states, and was about to be inaugurated president having lost by four points and over six million votes, back to back elections, for the first time in American history. Not good.

The other takeaway from this election is that the tolerance that the institutional Republican Party has for authoritarian and flatly anti-democratic politics to just overturn the election, the tolerance is luckily lower than the worst-case fears, but it's way higher than anyone should be comfortable with.

To discuss the state of our democracy as we entered the Biden transition, I'm joined now by NBC News Election Law Analysts, Edward Foley, law professor at The Ohio State University, who just authored a piece for The Washington Post titled "This unnerving election does not bode well for the next one." And with me to discuss the election and our democracy, Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Ned, let me start with you because we've had you on a bunch to talk about this throughout. And you have been -- I would call you bullish, bullish on American institutions, bullish on the rule of law, that you couldn't just waltz into courtrooms with nonsense and get an election thrown out. And that part of I think your faith has been essentially repaid here. What what's your assessment?

EDWARD FOLEY, MSNBC ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Well, I think there's a good news and a bad news part of the story, just like you said at the outset. I mean, the good news is, this attempt to steal the election did not work, so the system held essentially and it's intact. On the other hand, it came way too close for comfort. This election was not close, as you pointed out, and therefore it should not have been within the proverbial margin of litigation.

You know, Bush versus Gore was something you could reasonably fight over because it was one state, and it was unclear the result. This was very clear from the outset, once it was called by the networks as you said, and yet they still litigated and still fought, and then that fight went on for too long. So, it does give me pause any rate about the norms of fair play and how we go forward and repair electoral competition because we've got to have a robust electoral competition going forward.

HAYES: Yes. Davin Phoenix is a political science professor, Janai, at UC Irvine said, "I see 'our guardrails were effective, the system worked' takes are out. If I'm driving, by the time I get to my destination, my car lost two wheels, the engine smoking, and emergency light is on. I don't think wow, the car worked. I think I got to fix this ASAP. Is that where you're at?

JANAI NELSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR-COUNSEL, NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE FUND: Yes, Chris. I have to say that the past four years and especially these past few months have been some of the most difficult teachable moments that this country has seen concerning our democracy. And the question is, are we ready and willing and humble enough to learn or do we want to breathe right past this, as we do with so many of the ails that plague our democracy.

It's not just that the car is without wheels and smoking, we've actually crashed. You know, the highway crash barriers need to be replaced. We've run into some significant obstacles in our democracy that have revealed fissures, if not craters in the foundation of our democracy.

And Ned rightly points out that the norms of our democracy have been ignored, they've been stress tested, and some of them have really fallen away. And I think what we've realized, if we want to be a country that is based on the rule of law, we need stronger laws. We can't rely on norms that can be disregarded when it is in someone's political interest to do so.

So, this has really called us to look very keenly and critically at the structures and our democracy, and to think about how best to reform them so that we never, ever lived through this again.

HAYES: You know, Ned, one of the -- one of the sort of weaknesses, right, as it's being stressed-tested, you're seeing the places in the system. One of the things that really struck me and that has left me a little shaken isn't the courts, which I think did a pretty good job of playing their role of saying, look, you have to present evidence, you have to make arguments, you can't just come in here with nonsense. It's the claim of hinting at what you might best call massive resistance that we got to in a few of these obscure bipartisan boards where you have essentially these administrative bodies that are constituted as bipartisan that just rubber-stamp the results like Luzerne County in Pennsylvania, and seeing those functionaries say, no, we're not doing it. Not really predicated on any evidence, we're just not going to do it. I mean, that was -- those were the sort of alarm bells to me that were really worrying. What do you think?

FOLEY: Yes. I mean, those of us who've studied election law have always been worried that the institutions of our election administration can be affected by partisanship. You know, other countries try to have robust nonpartisan election administration. We don't do that as much as we should.

Now, I do think some officials, like the one you mentioned in Michigan, really stood up to partisan pressure and should be applauded for that. But we need to look at our rules and our institutions as well as our norms to get all three components working as best as possible.

HAYES: And Janai, there's this obviously inescapable racial subtext to the entire thing -- not to subtext, I mean, text -- that, you know, it's the bad -- it's the big, bad black cities, and their corrupt nefarious votes and machines. And we should -- if we got rid of Wayne County, then we win the election, and nothing good happens in Philly, and time and time again.

And this creation of this mythology, which you've seen, you know, independent of the courts, this mythology was there before Trump among the Republican voters that like there's a bunch of suspicious non-white people in these cities who get together to rig elections, which has now been supercharged by the President.

NELSON: That's right. I mean, it began with the myth of voter fraud, which has fueled so many of our draconian voting laws in the country that really suppress voters and make it so much more difficult for people to cast a ballot, and black people and other people of color in particular.

But what this election didn't -- in particular, it really ripped off the band-aid on the wound of racism that has just been festering for so long. And it allowed it to be exploited by an administration that was intent on maligning black voters at every turn, including leading up to the election suggesting that mail-in voting would somehow be tainted, even though he and so many others in his administration took advantage of that way of casting a ballot, and continue to suggest that these predominantly black cities somehow we're ineffective in counting their boats or somehow they're those were cast fraudulently.

And to cast doubt on the election and use black people as a vehicle for that doubt is one of the most destructive ways to handle defeat in an election. And it is something that we need to name and call out quite critically, which is what we at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund have done. We even brought a lawsuit and are continuing to press our claims of discrimination against Michigan voters.

HAYES: Edward Foley and Janai Nelson, thank you both for joining me tonight. I really, really appreciate it.

NELSON: Thank you, Chris.

HAYES: Tonight, President-Elect Biden's cabinet starts taking shape as we get the first real look of the incoming administration, and signs that climate will be a central priority. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: In calls from world leaders that I've had about 18 of over 20 so far, I'm not sure the exact number, in the week since we won the election, I've been struck by how much they're looking forward to the United States reasserting its historic role as a global leader, both in the Pacific as well as the Atlantic, all across the world.

The team meets this moment, this team behind me. They embody my core beliefs that America is strongest when it works with its allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): A pretty striking scene today in Wilmington, Delaware. President-Elect Joe Biden introduced some of his choices for top national security and foreign policy cabinet positions, notable for Biden's selection of experienced, well-tested professionals, and for the message they chose to send like his pick for the Ambassador the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD, NOMINEE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: And on this day, I'm thinking about the American people, my fellow career diplomats and public servants around the world. I want to say to you, America is back. Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): There is a sort of theme to the event, the idea that all of us bring different cultures to the table, we're all in this together no matter where we come from. Tony Blinken is Joe Biden's pick for Secretary of State. Today, he relayed his family's story of escape from Nazi persecution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, NOMINEE, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE SECRETARY: My late stepfather, Samuel Pisar, he was one of 900 children in his school and Bialystok Poland, but the only one to survive the Holocaust after four years in concentration camps. At the end of the war, he made a break from a death march into the woods in Bavaria. From his hiding place, he heard a deep rumbling sound. It was a tank. But instead of the iron cross, he saw painted on its side, a five-pointed white star.

He ran to the tank. The hatch opened. An African American GI looked down at him. He got down on his knees and said the only three words that he knew in English that his mother taught him before the war, God bless America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): Another notable feature of the Biden rollout today was the focus on climate change with former Secretary of State John Kerry leading the way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, NOMINEE, SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE: Mr. President Elect, you've put forward a bold, transformative climate plan. But you've also underscored that no country alone can solve this challenge. You're right to rejoin Paris on day one. And you're right to recognize that Paris alone is not enough. At the global meeting in Glasgow one year from now, all nations must raise ambition together or we will all fail together. And failure is not an option.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who along with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal. He's here to talk about the incoming administration and the newly created climate post that John Kerry will fill.

Senator Markey, you are in the Senate seat in the great state of Massachusetts, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that John Kerry vacated to take on the role of Secretary of State. He's now back in this position. What does it signal to you that he's among the first people that the President-Elect is touting that the centrality of climate here in terms of the domestic and international agenda of this administration?

SEN. ED MARKEY (D-MA): Well, it says very clearly, very powerfully, that the climate crisis is now in the Situation Room. And by naming John Kerry, our former Secretary of State, he was at the table negotiating the Paris Climate Accord, that there is a recognition by the Biden administration that this is the national security, economic, environmental and moral issue of our time.

That's what the Green New Deal was all about. That's what young people rose up to say to the country that they wanted action. That's what this decision really says that Joe Biden wants justice, and that at the same time, he wants to ensure that we can create millions of jobs. We can save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation. And by putting John Kerry at the table, he is sending that signal to the rest of the world.

HAYES: You know, Kerry's appointment is interesting to me because if we were in a universe in which there were 60 Democratic senators and huge House majorities, you might be talking about legislation, like the Green New Deal or something modeled on it. That's not the universe we're in. Democratic senators might take those two runoffs in Georgia giving a 50-50 split. Even that is going to be a difficult Senate to get legislative priorities through.

How are you and how are Democrats thinking creatively about what can be done here on the climate front, short of some big -- you know, big majorities in both houses?

MARKEY: Well, Joe Biden has proposed a $2 trillion green infrastructure bill. Ultimately, we're only going to come out of this deep recession if we can create millions of new jobs. Well, that's what Joe Biden has proposed. And even as he's proposed $2 trillion, he said that 40 percent of it should go to frontline communities, minority communities, to rectify the injustice that has been reaped by the environment on those kinds of communities historically.

So, from my perspective, one, we can work on an infrastructure bill and make it a green bill. But simultaneously, Joe Biden is going to be in a position on fuel economy standards, clients efficiency standards, on those 100 environmental proposals which Donald Trump roll back to just signal to the rest of the world that the United States is back in the game and we want to be sitting at the head of the table as the leader on climate.

And I think this decision today to name John Kerry is the beginning of Joe Biden's effort in order to match our ambition to the magnitude of the threat which the climate crisis poses not just to us but to the entirety of the planet.

HAYES: You know, I was reading today about I think -- I forget where it was about sort of proposals now floating around different tax credit schemes for green energy. We've seen -- I mean, the most encouraging thing happening right now is that actually, you know, wind and solar are getting much cheaper, coal is going out of business. Natural gas -- I mean, private equity is fleeing fracking, right, because that's the writing's on the wall for that as well.

I mean, it seems to me that there's some places to make policy progress, even at the margins that might even get Republican buy in if you're talking about sort of incentivizing these kinds of businesses. What do you think about that?

MARKEY: Absolutely. We can unleash the wind and solar, all-electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid, battery storage technologies, energy efficiency, energy conservation industries in a way that create millions of new jobs, millions of new jobs. We can make the argument very strongly to Republicans that this is a sector that has the greatest job growth of any sector in the American economy. We just need some kind of parity on tax policy, regulatory policy.

For example, wind offshore, it can create tens of thousands of new megawatts of electricity at a price that's cheaper than natural gas, cheaper than coal. All of it is ready to go and to be creating tens of thousands of new jobs in that sector. So, I think we do have the makings of a little bit of recombinant political DNA based around the incredible economic growth that can be harnessed out of this clean energy sector.

This isn't just pushing to the left, this is -- this is doing much right. And doing what's right here is actually going to be good economics. And I think that Joe Biden is in a position not just internationally with John Kerry, but also domestically with the -- with the energy and environment czar that he's promising to name domestically, to really put in place the kinds of programs that will get some buy in from Republicans if they really do care about helping us to telescope the timeframe, to create the jobs, which will get us out of the recession while saving the planet simultaneously.

HAYES: Senator Ed Markey, senator of Massachusetts, thank you so much for making time tonight.

MARKEY: Thanks for having me on.

HAYES: Next, the most pressing issue on day one of the incoming administration will be the Coronavirus vaccine. I'll talk to the former Trump whistleblower now serving on the Biden COVID-19 Task Force about that -- what that will look like after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESTER HOLT, MSNBC ANCHOR: The day you take office, there could be two, maybe three vaccines out there.

BIDEN: Yes.

HOLT: We understand that health care workers will be first in line. What about the rest of us? How will it roll out? Will we go to our doctor's office or we line up at a stadium to get them? Who will determine the order of recipients?

BIDEN: Well, look, first of all, allegedly, that -- and don't mean that accusatory way. Allegedly, the administration has set up a rollout how they think it should occur, what will be available, when, and how. And we'll look at that. And we may alter that, we may keep the exact same outline. But that's in train now. We haven't gotten that briefing yet.

Secondly, I think talking to a -- you may know, I've talked to -- I've had a zoom with leading governors in the country, five Republicans, five Democrats. We've talked extensively about the need to cooperate and get the vaccine into places where you can actually get vaccinated and their ideas of who they think should go first.

I think we should be focusing on obviously the doctors, the nurses, those people who are the first responders. I think we should also be focusing on being able to open schools as rapidly as we can. I think it can be done safely. So, there's a lot to work out in the next two months as to exactly how it will be distributed.

Now, maybe the hope is we can actually begin to distribute it, this administration can begin to distribute it before we are sworn in to take office.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): The transition to Joe Biden's administration has officially been underway for just over 24 hours. And the biggest emergency his team will need to tackle on day one is the Coronavirus and the deployment of a Coronavirus vaccine. There are, as of today, another 166,000 people who've been tested positive in the U.S. More than 88,000 people are hospitalized right now with the disease. That is the 15th consecutive day that we've hit a record in hospitalizations.

And most disturbingly, today, a benchmark, an awful one, 2,000 people, more than 2,000 people died of the virus just today. The need to roll out a vaccine quickly and efficiently is obviously urgent. It's a very complicated logistical undertaking that awaits the new administration on its very first day and its very few first hours in office.

That's why the President-Elect formed the Coronavirus Advisory Board. On that board is Dr. Rick Bright. He served as director of Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and filed a whistleblower complaint may alleging the Trump administration ignored warnings about the pandemic, and he joins me now.

Dr. Bright, it's great to have you on. You know, this is an area I think you have some expertise and technical assistance on. Can you just talk us through the logistics of this as an undertaking? How foreign is it to the U.S. government or how familiar is it given what we do with things like the flu vaccine?

RICK BRIGHT, MEMBER, BIDEN COVID-19 ADVISORY BOARD: Chris, thanks for having me on. That's a really good question. It is probably the most complex, most complicated vaccine administration or immunization program than we've ever even contemplated. in the United States or actually around the world.

Never before have we tried to vaccinate or plan to vaccinate so many people as quickly and efficiently and really importantly equitably as possible. We know we're not going to have many doses of vaccine at the start, so we're going to have to really carefully identify and prioritize who gets those first dose of the vaccine.

We know we're going to have multiple types of vaccines, with different schedules, and different containment requirements such as super low cold freezers, not so cold freezers, and refrigerators, so different logistics. Two doses, one of them three weeks apart, one four weeks apart, and maybe even a single dose vaccine coming out in January and February.

So, there's a lot of complicated factors, a lot of things can go wrong. And that's why we're working really hard in the Biden transition team to make sure that we have a plan in place for day one. And we're trying our best to align it with the current Trump administration's plan to make sure that we don't miss the ball whenever the baton is passed to us.

HAYES: Yes, this does seem the one plate -- I mean, obviously, there's a million things about the U.S. government, you know, nuclear safety and things like that, that that really have to be transitioned smoothly. But this is a special project that has to sort of move from, you know, January 19th through January 20th smoothly and seamlessly and probably not something -- I mean, somebody's going to inherit some sort of logistical structure that you're going to have to make a determination about whether it's worth improving on the margins that much if it means changing it a lot. Because continuity, I would imagine will be a really, really important goal here as well.

BRIGHT: Well, we really do need to sit down very quickly to see what plans are in place. I mean, there's a big leap between the loading dock and the upper arm of an individual. That last mile, even that last inch of administering a vaccine is very different than making the vaccine. And we've invested a lot of money upfront in making the vaccines, but yet, we haven't fully invested in the money needed the downstream infrastructure and the nursing staff and all the other supplies that are critical to make sure we can administer that vaccine on that last mile on that last inch.

HAYES: Yes, I want to play something that Dr. Redfield of the CDC said about the sort of first batch and the timing on this, which I thought was interesting, and particularly talking about nursing homes were about more than a third of COVID deaths have taken place in long term care facilities. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CDC: The vaccine is going to begin to be rolled out probably by the end of the second week of December, initially in a hierarchical way. Nursing home residents, and then some combination of healthcare providers and individuals at high risk for a poor outcome. And those decisions are in the process of being finalized as we speak.

I do think we'll have about 40 million doses of vaccine before the end of the first year of the year. That's enough to vaccinate 20 million people. But then it will continue through January in February. And hopefully, by March, we'll start to see vaccine available for the general public.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): As someone who worked first hand in this Trump ministration and resigned or was fired, sort of unclear, over the -- over the mistakes they made on COVID, do you trust -- do you trust them right now and in this crucial interstitial time to be able to deliver on what Dr. Redfield said?

BRIGHT: Chris, I really need to see the plan. You described it. There wasn't a testing plan, a testing strategy. There wasn't a response strategy. There hasn't been a strategy or a plan to scale up and manufacture PPE and N-95 mass to protect our health care workers. And so, we're really concerned that, you know, maybe there are some gaps in the downstream distribution plan of the vaccine as well.

I hope there's not but we're ready to be able to take over that plan and augment it and make sure that every American gets the vaccine when they need to get the vaccine and is distributed in an equitable and efficient way.

HAYES: The final question is just about the reality of now, right? The vaccine is a future thing and it makes all of us feel good to think about a day in which we will be vaccinated and not have to deal with this. But we have 2,000 deaths today and we still got -- you know, there's a 22-day lag between cases and deaths, so we're staring down the barrel of unspeakable amount of pain and suffering and trauma. I mean, how are people on your taskforce talking about what that day one plan on suppression and mitigation and testing is going to be?

BRIGHT: Well, I'd like to augment the previous -- the press conference they had today with the new appointees for the cabinet. I like to add to that to say science is back also. And so, the president-elect team is working very hard looking at all the science. We're looking at all the ways to control this virus.

We need everyone in America to help us. We can't do it alone. We need every person across our country to take this outbreak seriously. We need people to wear their mask, make sure they -- even if they've traveled for the holiday, they take their mask, they wear it, they stay outside as much as possible for their gatherings and small groups, and they really avoid crowds and heed every bit of guidance that they can heed.

We want to make sure that there are people around to get the vaccine when the vaccine is available. And we can only do that if we have the help of every American right now.

HAYES: All right, Dr. Rick Bright who serves on that COVID task force for the incoming administration, thank you so much for talking to us tonight.

BRIGHT: Thanks, Chris.

HAYES: Ahead, while millions of Americans are unemployed in line stretched in front of food banks, the President came out today to take a victory lap about the stock market. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Our stock market has reached an all-time high today, all-time high. Think of it. Nobody ever talks about it. They don't talk about it.

I just want to state that, as you probably have noticed, the stock market hit an all-time record high today.

I'm very proud of our stock market, what's happened since I became president?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): We're very proud of our stock market. Throughout his presidency, no matter what else is going on, Donald Trump always cared about the stock market going up and keeping rich people happy. He, of course, would never talked when the stock market took a dive.

But in fact, less than two weeks after his election victory, in 2016, you remember this, then-President-Elect Trump headed to the Swanky 21 Club restaurant in midtown Manhattan, back when indoor dining was still a thing, promising to take care of the people who need the least.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

TRUMP: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Mr. President-Elect.

TRUMP: Thank you. We'll get your taxes down. Down worry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): There he is glad-handing with the rich folks saying, we will get your taxes down, don't worry. For all his working-class anti-elite campaign rhetoric, the first thing he did after getting elected was shake the hands of rich people and promise to cut their taxes. And cutting taxes for the rich was one of the things he really did deliver on.

Trump has done very little if anything to stop the Coronavirus or help workers over the last six months. And ordinary Americans are experiencing record levels of hunger. We're seeing headlines from across the country. Here's one just from Rhode Island. In 2019, the number of people reporting food insecurity was 9.1 percent. This year, 25 percent said they were unable to provide enough food for themselves and their families.

It's just one state and that's being replicated across the country. As Senate Republicans continue to refuse to pass a new relief package, about 12 million Americans are going to lose unemployment insurance, not just the bonus, the actual unemployment insurance the day after Christmas.

Trump hasn't even saved the places that he cares about. In September, guess what, the 21 Club where Trump promised those tax cuts, well, they extended layoffs for 142 workers. The support system has fallen away. Millions of Americans are suffering because Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump won't pass and sign another relief bill.

But guess what? The stock market hit a record high today, so despite Coronavirus hospitalizations hitting record highs, 2,000 people dying, despite getting rejected by the voters, Donald Trump made a short and supremely weird appearance lasting just over a minute to say this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The stock market's just broken, 30,000. Never been broken that number. That's a sacred number 30,000. Nobody thought they'd ever see it. Most importantly, I want to congratulate the people of our country because there are no people like you. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES (on camera): Congratulations. All those people in the hospital looking up at the screen, having trouble breathing, watching the Dow shoot up. Despite Trump's failure to protect Americans from the virus or help them keep food on the table, the Republican Party doesn't show a lot of signs of changing course. We're going to talk about that right after this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: All right, here's my 62nd more or less thesis on Trumpism in the modern conservative movement and what it all means. Basically, tens of millions people in the country, they survey the commanding heights of American culture, the people that write television shows and movies and shows like this, and even the people that you know, make the Black Lives Matter shirts for the NBA and they say those people don't share my values. Why do libs control so much in American culture, and the New York Times op-ed pages, and why did they look down to me. I want to take back power.

But you can't vote out the NBA, you can't vote out the New York Times editorial board. And so political power gets channeled as a weird kind of proxy battle over a culture they feel they can't control. And so, you got a political movement that's formed around this idea of owning the libs and taking back power that isn't actually that committed to much substantive policy agendas.

A new poll conducted by Echelon Insights last week asked Republican voters what concern the most about the Republican Party under a Biden presidency. Now, the most whopping plurality said -- 44 percent said they are worried their new leaders won't fight like Trump. That's where that kind of cultural war thing comes from. 19 percent said they were compared -- will abandon Trump's policies.

So that's one-fifth of the Republicans are concerned about the policies. 13 percent are concerned the party will continue to be run by Trump and his supporters. I want to bringing two people who really understand what's going on with the Republican voters these days. Jennifer Horn, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and Lachlan Markey, a reporter of The Daily Beast.

Lachlan, you've got a piece about what Roger Stone is getting up to in Georgia, which I think kind of fits with this theme, right? The whole idea is the defining identity of a certain kind of Trump is conservatism is about fighting and besting the libs. And you know, as Don Jr. said, you know, make liberals cry again. That was a sign I saw all over the place. Like that actually, is the whole point.

LACHLAN MARKEY, REPORTER, THE DAILY BEAST: Yes. And it's animated the Trump presidency right up until the very last minute. And I think the reason that we're seeing this whole process drawn out and the president sort of cling to any last vestige of hope of hanging on to power is not that he actually thinks he's going to overturn the results of the 2020 election, it's that it's very important for his brand, whether he decides to make another run for the White House in 2024, or does some sort of media venture, or just otherwise becomes an all-around sort of celebrated celebrity figure in politics and pop culture.

It's very important for his brand that he be seen as that fighter. So, for him to concede in any form, even when all hope is lost in this election, would have just shattered that image at a time when it's really very fragile. And he needs to make sure he preserves it since he's not going to be in the White House projecting that political power come January.

HAYES: You know, Jennifer, I used to -- I used to see a lot of conservatives and folks sort of, of your ilk and the kind of never-Trump space, right, lifelong Republicans, people who think of themselves conservatives sort of point to all these kind of ideological betrayals, right. Like, we were the party of free trade and what's happened to us. And if you look at polling among Republicans, like, they're quite hostile, right, to free trade agreements.

It just strikes me that like, there's no real coming back from that. In some ways, it's just laid bare that the beliefs are not the point. And I don't think there's any way to like, remake them into being the point. It's going to be this. This is what the faction wants. This is what the coalition wants.

JENNIFER HORN, CO-FOUNDER, THE LINCOLN PROJECT. Right. You're absolutely right. The any pretense of standing on principle or fighting for any particular -- any particular policy or, you know, any particular agenda has been abandoned by the Republican Party under Donald Trump. You know, this summer at their convention, when they voted not to vote on a -- on a platform, they pretty much revealed exactly, exactly that, right? The Republican Party exists for the purpose of endorsing Donald Trump.

And I think that's what -- you know, that's what's going to be the great challenge for the Republican Party going forward. Donald Trump isn't president anymore. And I think that the voters are going too tired of this Trump-lican Party probably more quickly than the likes of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy and Ronna Romney McDaniel probably realize.

HAYES: Well, I mean, I wonder too, about the sort of factional fights right now that are happening, right, Lachlan. Like, it's been interesting to watch, you know, obviously, Trump and his supporters of attacking Fox because it has been, you know, barely -- been tethered to reality vis-a-vis vote fraud and the election outcome in a way that they find offensive, that infiltrates their safe space, that triggers them. And so, they want -- they want a completely safe space, so they've been -- they've been flocking to Newsmax.

I thought this line from Ben Smith column in the New York Times was amazing, that until now it's top shows attracted a paltry of 58,000 viewers. On Thursday night, the network drew its biggest audience ever notching 1.1 million viewers at 7:00 p.m. Like, that's no joke. That is actually people voting with their feet for a less sane alternative to Fox News.

MARKEY: Yes. For a long time, Fox was seen by folks on the right as the sort of countercultural force in media. And you know, with the very few other exceptions, like conservative blogs or talk radio, Fox was really sort of home base for people who were fighting that sort of same type of political culture war that Trump really embodies.

So, you know, when Trump voters are Trump supporters saw them call Arizona, for Joe Biden on election night, and you know, with folks like Tucker Carlson criticizing the President's legal team, I think it's less about the substance of what's being said or what the network is reporting or its commentators are saying, and more that it's sort of signals that they've -- they're no longer playing for the home team. It's kind of a binary choice in that respect. You're either with us or you're against us, and Fox is no longer with us.

HAYES: That, Jennifer, strikes me is the bigger issue, right? Like, structurally, it's if everything is about this kind of sense of loyalty and this sense of dispossession and getting back, like, it's tough to penetrate that if that's the animating concern. And again, you know, everyone in politics feels that to a certain extent. This is not just like, you know, this distinct thing. It's just there's a kind of universe built up around that with Donald Trump leaving it that doesn't have any corollary anywhere else in American politics or even within the Republican coalition.

HORN: And what's so bizarre about it, Chris, is that they lost. They lost overwhelmingly. I think, three 302 Electoral College votes, I think, 306 Electoral College votes for Biden, 232 for Trump. Trump lost the popular vote by eight million or more votes. They lost and yet they are going even more deeply into this entrenched position of it's all about Trump.

It's the definition of being like a cult. I don't see what path the Republican Party is trying to take here. It doesn't make sense on a principle or a political -- from a principle or a political viewpoint.

HAYES: But I do think, Lachlan -- I think, actually, Jennifer's point here, never admitting he lost his key because losers will get thrown off the boat. I mean, you know, people wrote books about George W. Bush is one of the greatest presidents who ever lived. I mean, this was a real -- this is a belief of many Republicans and liberals, like myself, who criticized him were out to lunch and out of touch to the American people.

As soon as that guy got turfed out after two terms with a 24 percent approval rating, no one could remember his name in the Republican politics. It was like sayonara, dude. And I think that's what Trump is worried about, and part of why he's denying this loss.

MARKEY: And as, you know, an immediate practical matter from a political perspective, if he does indeed decide to run for the White House again in 2024, for any incumbent that lost a previous election, a pretty potent argument against them, let's say, in a primary would be well, you didn't win last time, why would you win this time.

HAYES: Exactly.

MARKEY: So, if Trump can maintain this sense, you know, what polls indicate is a very widely shared view among the Republican electorate, that this election was stolen from him, that sort of neutralizes at least rhetorically in the minds of a lot of Republican voters that potential line of attack.

HAYES: This will be like one of those sort of like epistemic test for party members to see if you're cadre in the new Republican Party would just be like, did Donald Trump lose in 2020? And if you say yes, it's like you are out of line of what the party has decreed. And that is not the reality. You need to get in line. Jennifer Horn and Lachlan Markay, thank you making time tonight.

HORN: Thank you.

HAYES: That is ALL IN this Tuesday night. "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" starts right now. Good evening, Rachel.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END

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