Summary
Presidential polls continue to move towards Biden and away from Trump. President Trump campaigns in Florida. Dr. Anthony Fauci fact-checks President Trump. Democrats focus on health care as the Supreme Court hearings begin.
Transcript
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: "THE BEAT" with my friend and colleague Ari Melber starts right now.
Hi, Ari.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Hi, Nicolle. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
I want to welcome everyone to THE BEAT. I am Ari Melber.
And we're tracking several big stories tonight, more bad news for Donald Trump in the presidential polls, this clash in the Senate over his Supreme Court pick.
Plus Joe Biden speaking tonight in Ohio. You're looking at live pictures. The vice -- the former vice president is now statistically tied with Trump. We're keeping an eye on any news that may come out of this high-stakes appearance in Cincinnati. He also just hit the president for contagious campaigning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSEPH BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis has been unconscionable. The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to get.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: More reckless?
Well, Biden is speaking about scenes like this, Trump restarting his campaign in a packed Florida crowd. This is one week after leaving the hospital infected with COVID, while his White House staff continues to be hampered by the outbreak there.
The rally you're looking at blatantly breaks CDC guidelines, even as the White House continues to basically play defense over when and how it's released information about Donald Trump's COVID tests.
Now it has asserted that Trump is no longer considered a transmission risk to others by his own doctor.
Meanwhile, new reports of Republican fears about Trump's behavior and his potential drag on the ticket for down-ballot party candidates.
Take a look at some of these new headlines from objective outlets. The lead story in the AP says, "Trump faces concern in his own party about a campaign slipping towards a loss."
Or this news that Trump now trails in Wisconsin and Michigan, states he won listen time, for a very specific reason, the -- quote -- "modest, but significant defections among white and independent voters away from Trump, reinforced by opposition from those who voted there for minor party candidates or didn't vote at all" in those key states last cycle, 2016.
None of those shifts imply that Biden's lead is somehow insurmountable. In fact, we have more details on some of these exciting and interesting numbers at a key part of the homestretch later in tonight's program with a special guest.
But what these new numbers show, on top of the dueling campaign appearances that you just saw on your screen, is the trends right now are away from Trump and towards Biden.
I want to bring in our guests right away on a big 2020 night, Jason Johnson, professor at Morgan State University, Margaret Carlson from The Daily Beast and Dr. William Haseltine, chair and president of the global health think tank ACCESS Health.
Good to see all of you.
We're also keeping an eye on Biden speaking. I think everyone who watches these events knows a lot of them repeat. But, sometimes, news is made, especially with so much unfolding from the Supreme Court hearing today to some of the trends I mentioned.
So, we may dip in or get any news out of Joe Biden, if he makes news.
Margaret, when you take it all together, the president's bumbling of his own COVID, and it hitting the White House, has overlapped with a particularly brutal period in his political standing.
MARGARET CARLSON, COLUMNIST, THE DAILY BEAST: Well, every rally he has is going to be covered in terms of COVID and how safe it is and, in his case, how unsafe it is.
That picture you just showed, I was checking on the weather in Sanford, Florida, cloudy with a chance of Tulsa, no social distancing, people getting sick, maybe someone dying.
And that's what you think now when you see an event that the president is hosting. Last week, we had the president on steroids. So, there was some explanation for some of that conduct, COVID is a blessing from God, don't let it dominate your life, reportedly planning on ripping opening his shirt and showing that he was Superman as he left the hospital, when, actually, he's a super-spreader and everybody seems to know it but him.
And the idea that his first day back this week, he's going to go and kind of duplicate that tiny rally that was like a carnival on this -- on the South Lawn on Saturday, where he only spoke for 16 minutes, so uncharacteristic. Maybe he's not as healthy as his doctors want to say, and with still not putting out a test.
So are we going to take his word for it? Are we going to take his doctor's word for it, when he said he was giving a rosy picture? I don't think so.
MELBER: Yes, and you just hit at the contrast between super-spreader, what Dr. Fauci and others diagnosed at that event at the White House, I mean, a risk to the Supreme Court nominee, among other important government functions, to say nothing of the humanity and the ethical obligations, super-spreader vs. Superman.
But let's get into it, because here we are. You brought it up, Margaret. It was just a week ago that, of course, there's the iconic video where you see Trump leaving the hospital. He returned to the White House. That was a produced event we all witnessed.
We are learning, though -- this was some of that moment. But we're now learning, as Margaret just mentioned, when Trump did want to leave the hospital, "The Times" reports he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, but underneath his buttoned-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer.
People familiar telling "The Times" that he literally wanted to wear a Superman shirt. And how does that even get discussed as a potential reality show plan, with doctors involved?
Social media, of course, has already been lighting up. The Drudge Report shows Trump dramatically ripping his shirt open. Another one, not as flattering, of Trump as Superman filling out the costume a little differently. And then you have COVID Superman Trump. That's courtesy of a cartoonist at "The Washington Post."
And Jason Johnson, obviously, for people of a certain generation, this felt like maybe Donald Trump's inevitable Soulja Boy moment, wanted to go Superman.
(LAUGHTER)
MELBER: And yet within these jokes is the deadly serious fact that this is ridiculous.
JASON JOHNSON, MSNBC POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, Ari, it's ridiculous.
And his claims, him trying to co-opt other people into his COVID lie, remember, he just ran this commercial where he quotes Dr. Fauci, and, 24 hours later, Dr. Fauci is like, keep my name out your mouth, right?
This is, you don't know what you're talking about. You are not healthy. You are not safe. And yet the president is trying to get as many people as he can involved in this nonsense.
This is another key thing. And Trump is going to lie and his party is going to lie, but the numbers aren't lying. The reason he's heading to Florida right now is because you have got over a million people who've already voted, 13 percent of whom did not vote in 2016, and 49 percent of those people are registered Democrats or have voted for Democrats in the past.
So Trump is running to different places, while he is still potentially sick, because he hasn't said -- we haven't seen that he's necessarily passed the COVID test, because he is losing states that just two months ago seemed like they were pretty safely in his pocket.
So he's screwing up from both an advertising standpoint, a marketing standpoint, and now a campaign standpoint.
MELBER: Yes, I mean, you walk through again what some of those metrics are that are cause for alarm inside the Trump campaign.
Dr. Haseltine, I'm sure you noticed here Professor Johnson responding to the Soulja Boy reference with Three 6 Mafia, keep your name out of my mouth, and early Jay-Z, men lie, women lie, numbers don't lie.
And we don't expect or demand any lyrics from you, Doctor. But I imagine you would associate yourself with the concept that numbers don't lie, and that there are numbers here that matter.
People who are in that small number of folks who are around the contagious president intimately indoors include the chief of staff.
And so, Doctor, on a slightly more serious note with the consequences at stake, here's a little bit of how that person in that circle was acting today, refusing to wear a mask, even when close to people. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Let me pull this away.
QUESTION: Yes. Pull away.
MEADOWS: And then, that way, I can take this off to talk.
QUESTION: No.
MEADOWS: Well, I'm more than 10 feet away. I'm not -- well, I'm not going to talk through a mask.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: The chief of staff having a back-and-forth.
And, Doctor, in all fairness, we are told by CDC, of course, that distancing is great. And if you are very far away or outside from people, then the mask is less relevant.
But your view, more largely, at what it tells us that, even after this many infections at the White House, there seems to be a basic problem following their own administration CDC rules?
DR. WILLIAM HASELTINE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I'd say a few things.
First of all, I would worry about the president's health. It's not wise to take a strenuous trip, when you -- or several trips, when you have been so ill. That's the first thing.
Second thing is, he will be in a lot of closed spaces. He will be in helicopters. He will be in planes for a long period of times, and he will be in cars. All of those are dangerous. And masks can protect you for a short while.
But when you're in a closed space, we know the virus can go through. We know that our aerosols and other can people can breathe them in through their mask. Unless they are really hazmat-outfitted, they're all at risk, and he's putting his whole entourage at risk.
That's aside from the fact that everybody who congregates, we know that the worst thing you can do in this pandemic is to congregate. The fewer people you have, the better, the more people, the more dangerous.
These rallies are dangerous. They're dangerous to him, the people around him. And, most importantly, they're dangerous to those people, their families, and especially the elders that they will associate with.
This is a way to keep fueling this epidemic. And you said numbers matter. The number that matters to me is 215,000 Americans dead. I'd like somebody to take a look at what that looks like in a graveyard.
Those are deaths that need not have happened.
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: Margaret and then Jason.
CARLSON: Oh, I was going to say to Bill, here in Washington, on the Ellipse, there are now 20,000 chairs set up to try to memorialize the way -- 3,000 desks were memorialized after 9/11, but there's no way to moralize 216,000 deaths.
It's -- we can't comprehend it. And so, in a way, we put it aside. It's like, you wake up in the morning and there's another digit. Only, it's in the thousand. It's unfathomable.
And so I say to people, go and look at the picture of the chairs, and it will bring to life what -- or to death -- what Dr. Haseltine has just said.
JOHNSON: Yes, I want to add to this, because I don't think this can be sort of overstated.
Yes, it's 215,000 people who have also died. But I think even more painful than that, if we can imagine something more painful, is, there's no plan, right? Like, it's sad enough that all these people have died and that many of those deaths could have been preventable with even just the slightest of organization, if PPE had been sent out, if the president had actually done anything.
But this current administration has no plan to prevent it. And if you look at some of the voter suppression tactics that are being used in Texas, by Kemp in Georgia, by DeSantis in Florida, forcing people, oftentimes black and brown people, who seem to have a higher comorbidity with COVID, forcing people to stand in line for three, four and five hours to early-vote, it's not only a lack of a plan for the future, but it's almost using this pandemic as a way to continue to abuse and oppress people who have already been suffering.
So that's the really damaging part. It still shocks me that Trump is that maybe 42, 45 percent in this country. But it seems like the vast majority of Americans and why he's lost a lot of independents and working-class whites is his failure to come up with a plan for a pandemic that has destroyed lives, ended lives and ended businesses.
MELBER: Margaret.
CARLSON: So, Ari, at the beginning, you said, how can the president reset?
And he thinks voter suppression is one way to reset this election. But another way would be to actually act presidential and, as Jason says, make a plan. And he -- remember, at the beginning, when we all asked, when is the president going to pivot from campaigning to being president?
We were waiting, waiting, waiting. And he didn't, partly because he's in sales. He's not in operations.
MELBER: Yes.
CARLSON: But now having had COVID, he could have a dramatic moment. He could -- he has something Joe Biden doesn't have. He's president. He is somebody.
And as much as, you know, the majesty of the office has been tainted, there's still some of it left. Go to the Oval Office and say how having COVID has changed him, hasn't diminished COVID, but now, with the surge, and he sees what's happening in the fall, he's taking charge, and here's what he's going to do.
Now, I don't know what he's going to do. But he's got to do something. Campaigning is the exact opposite of what he should be doing right now, because polls show what people are concerned about is COVID. They're not concerned about how many people he can turn out at a rally.
MELBER: Yes, Margaret makes the point that there used to be the parlor game of saying, oh, well, what if it gets more serious? And even the transmission of COVID to both him and his team in the White House never really leveled up the seriousness.
Jason, I'm old enough to remember when people used to say, if he gave a non-irresponsible speech, that was the night he became president. I'm old enough to remember when people said, yes, take him...
JOHNSON: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: Take him figuratively, not literally.
Go ahead.
JOHNSON: Yes.
I mean, look, I was never one of those people who thought he was going to pivot. I called him a white nationalist in 2017 when he praised terrorists who marched through my alma mater and killed someone. So I never thought he was going to pivot.
I never thought after having COVID that he was going to have a Scrooge or Grinch moment where he wakes up the next morning and says, oh, my gosh, I have been a terrible guy, now we should come up with a plan.
This is who he is. This is who he was when he tried to have the exonerated five executed. This is who he was when he was engaging in misogynistic, terrible behavior on "The Apprentice." This is who Donald Trump has always been.
His only goal now -- as I have been saying, the man can't campaign. He doesn't have a message. He doesn't have a theme. He doesn't have a plan. The only plan is voter suppression. That goes with what's happening today with Amy Barrett. The goal is to get the courts to basically subvert the will of the popular vote.
That is his only plan left, which is why we have to remember that even as we're fighting to find some sort of plan and some sort of messaging about COVID, we have to stay vigilant about the kind of voter suppression that Trump is engaging in, not just the white nationalists, not just the courts, but also local elected officials who are doing everything they can to try and keep him from being removed from office in the democratic process.
MELBER: Yes, all important points.
Jason Johnson, Margaret Carlson, Dr. Haseltine, I want to thank you.
Coming up after our shortest break, 30 seconds, we look at the Supreme Court clash, Democrats saying Obamacare is their focus, and we will explain why.
Also, an inside look at why Biden continues to surge in key polling over Trump.
And, later, Dr. Fauci speaking out, fact-checking the president.
All that when we're back in just 30.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Welcome back.
It's a new week, so let's start with a pop quiz. If you're going to take a lead in a campaign, what's the best time to do it? When voting begins, of course, right? And that's good news tonight for Joe Biden, who holds stronger leads over Trump now than months ago, and now is when voting is under way in most of the country, 43 states.
We're about to hit 10 million ballots cast this month in this election. And here's what it looks like 22 days out, big long lines in Georgia, where people can vote in-person starting today, one of several states where early voting may be key and where it continues, despite the Trump campaign's efforts to limit voting.
They just lost key rulings in Texas and Pennsylvania over drop boxes, those cases ongoing. But Trump is not just losing in signs from the early vote or in court. Trump's also losing the money war, even though he had the advantages of incumbency, Biden outspending Donald Trump by $85 million on ads. That's a huge show of strength.
So, if you're up in all these measurable ways, Biden polling better than any challenger since 1936, that's to say nothing of those -- these kind of headlines that don't correspond to the Electoral College, as we have emphasized, but they argue that, yes, maybe Biden, in some ways, has a better lead of basically anyone who's ever ran against an incumbent since the '30s.
Take that all together, and you can understand why some are rushing to the next step, predicting a Biden victory or even landslide. Now,
being up is different than a race being over. An iron lesson in politics that we all know that predates polls, and I think will last any scientific improvements in polls, is about this very thing. Polling and any of these other measures, they track people. People are unpredictable.
So we can take that lesson, of course, from Truman's famous upset in '48. But you don't really have to go back that far, if you remember 2016.
Now, the point here, when you look it over and you remember all the predictions, including people who really were acting like Trump was definitely going to lose, the point here is not that I'm trying to tell you that Biden this year is like Clinton '16, or that Trump 2020 even is like Trump 2016. They're not.
For starters, voters have now seen Trump in action, and many do view him more negatively now, as a failure on COVID, as a bully at the recent debate. To paraphrase Aubrey Graham, please do not speak to me like I'm that Drake from four years ago.
Many voters are not speaking to the president like he's that Trump from four years ago either. They see him very differently, an inverse Drake, if you will, as Trump has proven far less popular over time.
So it's true Biden really does look ahead in some key ways, but not insurmountably ahead. In fact, he's only doing slightly better or even with Clinton in key states at this same point from last cycle.
Now, this is about evidence, not predictions or feelings or political loyalty. So, take the public evidence at this critical time for whatever you think it's worth.
Here's exhibit A. Key states the Democrats usually need to win, like Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, well, Biden's lead over Trump now is still smaller there than Clinton's lead at the same time. She went on to lose those states Democrats need. So Biden is sitting on leads there that historically can melt away in three weeks. It doesn't mean they will, but they can.
Then there's these giant prized states that both candidates are visiting today, Florida and Ohio. Take the same comparison, Biden now to Clinton at this point in 16. It's a statistical dead heat in Florida, Biden exactly matching Clinton from October 16. She went on to lose Florida.
Likewise, a tie in Ohio, where Biden campaigned and holding the same position as Clinton before she lost.
Now, we just showed you those long lines with voting beginning in the traditional red state of Georgia, one that Trump probably needs. Here, Biden doing better than Clinton was at the same point, putting Trump on defense, as he basically -- you see there -- polls even, within a point.
What does the evidence reveal about the weeks ahead? And can any public talk of Joe Biden having huge leads actually depress the very turnout he will need for a huge win?
We're going to get into the history and the insights for the road ahead with award-winning historian Jon Meacham when we come back next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VIOLA HARDY, GEORGIA VOTER: I think people are just really ready to vote. And it doesn't matter how long it takes. We will stand in line to vote.
So, I think that's the most important part. We're voting like our life depends on it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Voters explaining their methodology, their motivation, like their life depends on it.
And we are joined by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Jon Meacham.
Thanks for being here, sir.
JON MEACHAM, NBC NEWS HISTORIAN: Thank you.
MELBER: What can be learned from history here, as well as the problem that we all share, anyone who works in the press, which is affecting the very thing that we're covering?
MEACHAM: Yes, this isn't a sports match, right? This isn't the baseball game. This isn't a football game. This is the future of democracy in a very real sense. I don't think prognostication helps much of and, in fact, may hurt.
I was thinking about John Lewis when I was watching your report and thinking, he didn't walk across the Pettus Bridge for a margin of victory in a horse race poll. He walked across the bridge so that we would each have the right and the capacity to register our will in a multiethnic, modern democracy.
And so figuring out war-gaming this state and that state is what many of us do, and it's human nature. But what matters is voting. And if you think this is over, as Ronald Reagan used to say, on Election Day, I always ask President Dewey how his administration went.
I learned this lesson early on. My grandfather was a judge in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and ran for office one time, and everybody said he was ahead. And he said, yes, but the only way to run is scared.
And I think there's a lot of wisdom to that.
MELBER: Yes.
And that goes to where there's an intersection of all the information we have with its differing levels of credibility. Journalism is rougher than history, right? And old history sometimes is -- tends to be sturdier than more recent history, because, over time, we get better and better complete sourcing, or you have the access to diaries of people who are now deceased, and all the other ways that it goes.
The credibility of these things in the middle, while I show the October comparison is precisely to give people an accurate sense of what it means.
So I'm going to put up a little 2016 memory. Let's go, Jon. I know you like history. This is recent history.
MEACHAM: Yes.
MELBER: At this point in 2016, "The New York Times," a very reputable source, was telling everyone, Donald Trump only at that point had a 9 percent chance of victory.
You can read that as one of the 10 days, he'd win, and he hit that day. Or you can read it as the type of overnumerical reporting that pushed potentially some people to think, well, if he's definitely losing, that might affect their vote to a third party or other things.
MEACHAM: Yes, I'm not against anybody making a living.
And I can't be for the First Amendment and free speech for me, not for other people.
MELBER: Sure.
MEACHAM: But Moneyball is interesting in sports. It can be devastating in politics, because if people were reading, as they were, that number all the way on election night -- I remember watching with my then 15-year-old son as that number went from 91, and Trump's number kept going up and up on that site.
And it just -- it kind of doesn't matter, right? I mean, what matters is the vote, and then what matters is getting the damn things counted and certified. That's a -- there's a huge battle that we may be fighting in this country after Election Day, in order to make sure that the suffrage actually prevails.
And so if you want to spend a lot of time thinking about the votes and how they count, go read the 12th and 20th amendments to the Constitution. Go read the Electoral Count Act of 1877.
I don't think there will be a -- I don't think Google's going to get broken because I said that. But there's a lot of ways to spend our time. The most important one is to actually vote. And the prognostication -- again, we all do it, because, again, it's human nature.
But if you care about returning the country to a -- an understandable, reason-based conversation about our politics in the moment and our politics in the future, focus on getting to vote and focus less, I'd argue, on whether this state or that state is going to go this way or that way.
MELBER: Right.
Well, and bring a context to it, because when we saw some of the AP and other headlines saying biggest national lead since '36, that may be true, but has nothing to do with anything, because there's no national vote. So you could pull Canada too and say Biden's way ahead in Canada.
(LAUGHTER)
MEACHAM: I got to go look that story up, because do you know what happened in 1936?
Alf Landon carried two states. Alf Landon of Kansas challenged Franklin Roosevelt 1936, and he lost every state, except Maine and Vermont. So, that's like saying, besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play, to have the best lead since Alf Landon? That's a data point with no significance whatsoever, except, if you're for Biden, get out and vote.
MELBER: And you're so erudite, you can pull out the name off the top your head, because we didn't give you the heads-up we were talking '36.
And when I hear Alf, I just think of that lovable alien. But that dates me to the sitcom era.
(LAUGHTER)
MEACHAM: An underappreciated classic of situational television. You're right.
MELBER: When you have -- when you take a Muppet, and you take friendly alien stuff, because a lot of times, with aliens, you're worried, are they going to try to destroy Earth?
(LAUGHTER)
MELBER: This was a very friendly, live-in alien, for those who remember Alf.
MEACHAM: Right.
MELBER: Shout-out to Alf.
Since you mentioned the integrity of the voting, I also want to get to this other piece of news, brand-new, coming in through over the weekend.
California Republican Party installing what they were calling -- quote -- "unofficial ballot drop off boxes."
MEACHAM: Yes.
MELBER: The state actually says that's illegal.
And I'm curious what you think, Jon, because, as you know -- you mentioned the First Amendment earlier. The first Amendment allows all kinds of things, including a great deal of lying. And many people say, well, lying is bad, but you don't go to jail for life.
And so there's all sorts of dirty tricks that predate Donald Trump and this stuff. When you see the party here, the Republican Party in one state, going well beyond even what we would call potentially legal dirty tricks, words, and going out -- and, again, we will track this story, but state officials telling us this looks like illegal actions.
I mean, this is the trickery and the voter suppression that so many have warned about.
MEACHAM: Yes, it is.
And politics has always been akin to warfare. Ask Richard Nixon and how his transition went in 1960-'61 about how kind and generous the Kennedys were on counting votes. So, I'm not being sentimental about the past.
But this is a sign of the total warfare, the Shermanesque quality of our politics right now, that people aren't even really trying to hide it. In 1960, at least, they did it quietly. This is overt.
And it's -- one of the things that's so frustrating about it is, no matter whether you like the results or not, people died for the right to vote. The men who hit the beaches at Normandy were projecting the democratic values -- trying to project democratic values across the world.
The folks on the Pettus Bridge, the folks on the Freedom Rides, it's just -- we have a remarkable protest tradition here of trying -- from the very beginning of the country, of trying to create a democratic republic where our voices mattered.
And then we mediate our differences. But the suppression of, actually, those voices before they're even allowed to speak, metaphorically, is an extraordinary thing to behold and a worthy thing to fight.
MELBER: Yes, I appreciate the larger perspective, which is often why we come to you on that level.
Jon Meacham, I want to thank you.
When we come back. I'm going to give everyone the update, Dr. Fauci getting pulled into 2020, but it's boomeranging on Trump, as he fact-checks their efforts to use him misleadingly in a campaign ad.
Lindsey Graham's hypocrisy, meanwhile, blowing up in his face today, Kamala Harris and many other Democrats using the first day of the Supreme Court hearings to make the case that your health care is on the ballot too.
We have all those stories, political and legal, the rest of our show.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Consequential day in the Senate, with the hearings for the controversial potential confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
I have two very special guests who join me in just a moment to get into all of it.
Now, today, the anger began before anyone even started speaking inside Congress, protesters against the nomination arguing Republicans violating many different important principles here, Republicans also violating their own previous stance on election year nominees, trying to push Barrett through with just 22 days until the actual election.
Twenty people were actually arrested in some of the scenes you see there.
Nobody from the general public allowed inside this hearing room. That's one of the precautions over the virus. Today, senators and the judge made opening statements. Questions, which is the real heart of the vetting, begin tomorrow.
But Democrats had a very clear approach for how to use the entire day. That also included slamming the Republicans' approach to the hearing itself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This hearing is a sham.
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): This slapdash hearing targets the Affordable Care Act.
SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Rushing through a judge they believe will vote to strip away health care protections.
WHITEHOUSE: A judicial torpedo they are firing at the ACA.
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): They are asking the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: To jam through a Supreme Court nominee who will take health care away from millions of people during a deadly pandemic.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): This is not normal, and we cannot normalize it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: It is true and important that the Supreme Court is about to hear a case on Obamacare, with the Trump DOJ trying to eliminate it. That comes right after the election.
Democrats even showed images of the very real people who could be hurt if the Trump administration gets its way. You can see some of that messaging here on the screen. They warn the Barrett will join the Trump agenda on that very issue.
Now, that wasn't the only thing going on. On the Republican side, you had Senator Mike Lee showing up to the hearing without a mask. Of course, he recently tested positive for COVID.
What is striking is, it was a contrast to his Republican colleague, Senator Ted Cruz, who chose to use a remote location through quarantine.
This is how Republicans saw today's priorities.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): What they're trying to do is to convince the American people that they should be terrified of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY (R-IA): Try to misrepresent and outright disparage Judge Barrett's religious beliefs and affiliations.
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): They're failing to do their job and they want the court to do it for them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Now, the real action, as I mentioned will come tomorrow, when Judge Barrett is pressed under oath.
Today, it was a prepared statement. But it is, of course, America's first chance to see this person who would join the court. She spoke about basically what she says is her approach, ruling on the law, never letting her personal views bias her. And she also touched on the legacy of Justice Ginsburg.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMY CONEY BARRETT, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE NOMINEE: I will be forever grateful for the path she marked and the life she led.
If confirmed, it would be the honor of a lifetime to serve alongside the chief justice and seven associate justices.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: As promised, we turned to Emily Bazelon from "The New York Times," also a fellow at Yale law school, and Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for "The Nation."
Emily, what do you think is important out of today, which is, of course, the warm-up day?
EMILY BAZELON, "THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE": Well, I heard Judge Barrett say very clearly that Justice Scalia is her model for a justice.
And she talked about him interpreting the Constitution as he believed it was written and what it meant when it was written at the nation's founding.
And what that means for the law is lots of really big changes. So, for example, Justice Scalia thought that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional, based on his understanding of how the Commerce Clause was written in the 1780s. Justice Scalia thought that Roe vs. Wade was incorrectly decided and made it pretty clear that he would overturn it when he was on the court.
And so I think we actually have a clear picture of what a Justice Barrett will mean for the Supreme Court than we have had for the last few nominations. There isn't really mystery here about how she would see her role.
MELBER: Yes, you mention that. I mean, she has far less time on the bench than some other past nominees, but the type of writing that she's done, as well as some of her opinions, are pretty clear.
I mean, you mentioned health care, which was such a key issue today. She's on the record being very critical of even the way that Chief Justice Roberts used a potentially or somewhat conservative rationale to rescue or keep Obamacare on the books, Emily.
BAZELON: Yes, she is on the record about that.
I want to make clear one thing that I was nervous got a little obscured today. The current challenge before the court, which the court will hear on November 10, to the Affordable Care Act is a pretty -- it's a very thin challenge legally.
There is less meat on the bones here. I wasn't a big believer in the merits of the previous two challenges, but this one is very thin. And so I do think it's important to keep in mind that if, indeed, a Justice Barrett turns into a deciding vote to overturn the Affordable Care Act, it will be on very thin ice.
That is not a kind of necessary or inevitable outcome, even for a conservative jurist.
MELBER: Right. You're making the point -- I will bring Elie in here -- that it just depends how cynical people want to be about the courts.
It is true that the Supreme Court does still resolve many things near unanimous votes, all sorts of technical things that are not always tied to the voting bloc of the party of the appointment.
But, Elie, people are concerned about the Obamacare one not because it's a strong argument -- to Emily's point, Obamacare has been upheld many times -- but because it could be a political grab that, where you didn't have the votes last time with Roberts, you might have it now.
ELIE MYSTAL, "THE NATION": Look, the ACA was already in dangerous condition when RBG was still alive.
The Republicans who are telling you right now that the ACA is safe because the challenge is so thin are the same people who told us that that challenge was really thin when it came up to the lower court, where Republicans won, and then when it went up to the Fifth Circuit, where the Republicans won.
So, while I agree, legally, it's a dumb argument, being a dumb argument does not stop Republicans when they get it in their mind to do something, right?
So, for the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to act like they don't know Amy Coney Barrett is going vote on the ACA, how they don't know how she's going to vote on issues of a woman's right to choose is intellectually dishonest.
The only reason why she is being put forward as a nominee is because they are confident in her positions, as opposed to the positions of say, a John Roberts. If the Republicans were confident that Roberts was with them, as he is 80 percent of the time, they would not be trying so hard to push forward a 6-3 majority on the court. They would be happy with their 5-4 majority on the court.
MELBER: Right.
As you say, it's about the results, not padding the voting bloc. And it is a turning point, as we have emphasized in our coverage, because this is the first time Trump is switching someone, not replacing, for example, Scalia with someone who's Scalia-ish, or maybe a little extra Scalia on the top, but, rather, a complete shift.
Lindsey Graham said something that, surprising as it may be, Elie, I think we should take seriously and genuinely and not question his motives.
Just kidding. It's Lindsey Graham. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Justice Ginsburg, she was confirmed 96-3.
Now, those were days that have since passed. I regret that. I don't know what happened between then and now. I guess there's -- we can all take some blame.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Elie, your view of Lindsey Graham, the chairman, there mixing a bit of lamentation for partisanship with a -- sort of a generalized ignorance, as if he doesn't know what's happening in the committee he runs.
MYSTAL: I will tell you exactly what happened between then and now.
In 2016, Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, and that committee refused to give him the hearing. The hearing that we saw today, the respect that was given to Amy Coney Barrett today by listening to her talk is the respect that the Republicans never gave to Merrick Garland.
If they had given him a hearing, and voted him down, that would be one thing. But they didn't even give him a hearing. And the reason why they didn't, they said, is because you shouldn't have a nominee put forward to be even considered after the primaries have started.
Now, as you just said in your last couple of segments, Ari, we are in the middle of an election that people are actually voting on. So the hypocrisy is off the charts.
But this -- Graham's statement -- and this goes to like the general feeling if you were watching the hearings, like what was going on -- the Republicans spent all day as victims in search of an assailant, right?
They kept worrying about attacks that were never coming from the Democrats. The fact that the Democrats weren't making the attacks that the Republicans worried about apparently didn't matter.
MELBER: Right.
MYSTAL: These still have this, dare I say, persecution complex about what's going to happen to their nominees.
I heard one of them say -- I think was Joni Ernst -- talk about how Democrats always do this when Republicans nominate a woman to the Supreme Court.
Man, the Republicans haven't nominated a woman to the Supreme Court since 1981.
MELBER: Since O'Connor, yes.
MYSTAL: All right? So, the level...
MELBER: All right, stay with me, Elie.
MYSTAL: Sorry.
MELBER: I want to get Emily on one other item.
And, Emily, I will tell you, some people in this business have gotten tired over the course of 2020, not Elie Mystal. The espresso in that apartment is going at full blast.
Before I lose Emily, I did want to ask you, as we preview tomorrow, there is this kind of goofy talk about super precedents. Legally, there's precedents, and that's it, and they can be overturned.
But Judge Barrett did sort of corner herself a little bit, according to some of her critics, by making a list of super precedents, so, for example, racial justice being not something you're going to reverse, Brown V. Board, and not putting Roe on there, which contrasts even some other conservatives who've said otherwise.
We expect a lot of that tomorrow. Walk us through it, based on your views and knowledge.
BAZELON: Look, I mean, I think Brown vs. Board of Education is safe. Everyone seems to agree that, whatever your judicial philosophy, that one, you're not going to overturn.
But what Judge Barrett has been clear about is that she thinks that a precedent, her disagreement with the precedent, the idea that it's simply wrong, is enough reason to overturn it.
Currently, on the court, there's only one justice who takes that view. And that's Justice Clarence Thomas. Everybody else says, we got to have extra reasons. If people have been relying on it for decades or more, we have to take that into account. That's the sort of super president notion.
She doesn't really share that belief.
MELBER: Yes.
Well, I think you put it very succinctly there. And we will have more time to get into that over this week. And, again, this stuff matters. This is a key vetting under oath. Anything can happen, even though the Republicans have made a very big point of saying they're not waiting to advise and consent. They have already lined up the votes.
Emily Bazelon and Elie Mystal, I want to thank both of you.
And, Elie, we do want the coffee recipe, if we can get it, at some point, because we want that energy.
MYSTAL: Yes, I mean, this is going to be that week, right?
(LAUGHTER)
MYSTAL: I'm not sleeping.
MELBER: That week, that year, that decade. We will see.
Appreciate both of you.
When we come...
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
MELBER: When we come back after the break: Dr. Anthony Fauci got pulled into a 2020 ad, but it may not have gone the way Donald Trump was thinking.
We will show you what it means next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Dr. Fauci has a lot more credibility on COVID than Donald Trump.
You can just ask the Trump campaign, which has been casting Fauci misleadingly in an ad, trying to get some of his credibility to rub off on Trump.
And Dr. Fauci now blasting them for this misleading ad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NARRATOR: President Trump tackled the virus head on, as leaders should.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I can't imagine that anybody could be doing more.
NARRATOR: We will get through this together. We will live carefully, but not afraid.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: If you didn't know more, that might look persuasive, but Dr. Fauci himself going public, putting the administration on blast.
He says, not only was this used as permission, but, more importantly, it was early and out of context.
Just moments ago, he was asked if the ad should be pulled.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: I think so, Jake.
I think it's really unfortunate and really disappointing that they did that. It's so clear that I'm not a political person. And I have never, either directly or indirectly, endorsed a political candidate.
And to take a completely out-of-context statement and put it in which is obviously a political campaign ad, I thought was really very disappointing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Nothing easy about Dr. Fauci doing this while serving under the oversight of the Trump administration. But, clearly, he thinks this is important as voters make up their minds.
And he's not coming out and saying he's against Trump. He's just saying he's not for him in the way that the ad suggested.
Fauci also addressing reports that the Trump campaign wants to use him again, potentially misleadingly, in another ad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: That would be terrible. I mean, that would be outrageous, if they do that. In fact, that might actually come back to backfire on them. I hope they don't do that, because that's -- that would be kind of playing a game that we don't want to play.
So, I hope they reconsider that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Dr. Fauci is a notoriously calm dude, but him saying on television this would backfire on Trump is a pretty notable little statement, trying to advise them, don't do this again.
As for the credibility I mentioned, well, if you look at the numbers, the public right now, trust Dr. Fauci by 28 points more than Donald Trump for information on the virus.
We will see how this goes and whether the Trump campaign plows ahead with another ad.
And when we come back, a missed call, a major award, and, to end the hour, a video that might just make you smile.
That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Finally, Stanford economist Paul Milgrom missed the ever-important call of a lifetime, because the Nobel Prize Committee was not able to reach him to share the news he just won.
So, guess what happened? His fellow winner and neighbor stepped in at 2:15:00 a.m. to make sure you got the message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT WILSON, NOBEL PRIZE WINNER: Paul, it's Bob Wilson.
PAUL MILGROM, NOBEL PRIZE WINNER: Yes?
WILSON: You have won the Nobel...
MILGROM: Hi, Bob.
WILSON: You have won the Nobel Prize.
And so they're trying to reach you, but they cannot.
MILGROM: Wow.
(CROSSTALK)
MILGROM: Yes, OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: "You won the Nobel Prize." Sometimes, you find out how you find out. We thought that was a nice little modern moment to share.
That does it for us.
"THE REIDOUT WITH JOY REID" starts now.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END
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