Summary
New York State now has the nation's fourth lowest positivity rate at 1.2 percent. New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo has published a new book entitled "American Crisis: Leadership Lesson for the COVID-19 Pandemic". Most of the people who are switching the party they voted for, for president in 2016 are switching from Republican to Democrat; from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. That's according to a New York Times survey of voters in six battleground states including Iowa.
Transcript
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Rachel.
And I will see you here at 10:00 p.m. tomorrow night. My first guest tomorrow will be the communications director of the Biden campaign, Kate Bedingfield. So, we might have a little spin room here to start things off.
And tonight, Rachel, I have two people who have been in real wrestling matches with the bear, with Donald Trump. Speaker Pelosi will join us. Governor Andrew Cuomo will join us. I think they both have similar stories to tell of what it has been like during this pandemic, to try to force this White House to do the right thing. They both have just experience that's no one else in their position has ever had in dealing with the White House and in the middle of a pandemic.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST, TRMS: Fascinating.
Get to it, Lawrence. I want to hear it.
O'DONNELL: Thank you, Rachel.
People are voting. The lines are long. The people continue to show up to vote in record numbers in early voting all over the country.
People are social distancing in those lines as they wait to vote. Because they know that the country is in the grip of a pandemic. And there is some risk to their health and their lives by going to a polling place.
And they know that the president of the United States is doing absolutely nothing about that. They know that the president of the United States has allowed all of the economic support systems for people suffering in this pandemic to expire, and they know that the president has never even attempted to design a national plan for dealing with this public health crisis that affects everyone in this country.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has plan. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has plan. They will both be joining our discussion here tonight. They have been working every day to try to deal with the public health and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
But the biggest problem they've had is trying on deal with the president who just doesn't get it. Donald Trump doesn't get it to the point that he actually got it. He got the coronavirus. And his wife got coronavirus. And we learned today that his high school age son who lives in the White House got the coronavirus.
The people in those lines to vote know Donald Trump is incapable of protecting them from the coronavirus just as he is not capable of protecting his own family from the coronavirus.
There are 20 days until election day and more than 50 million Americans have already voted, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project. Yesterday, on the first day of early voting in Texas, 1 million Texans cast their ballots.
"The Houston Chronicle" reports Harris County by far had the biggest turnout on the first day with almost 170,000 ballots cast in person, or through mail-in voting as of Wednesday morning. In 2016, Harris County had just under 130,000 ballots submitted on the first day.
In Florida, the Republicans used to hold a slight advantage in absentee ballot returns, in Florida elections. But his year, that has changed. "Politico" reports for the first time ever at this stage of a general election, Democrats here are outvoting Republicans and by a mammoth 384,000 vote margin through Tuesday.
In Ohio, early voters, early voting is three times higher than it was in 2016.
The California secretary of state reports that more than 1.5 million vote by mail ballots have already been returned by California voters. That is ten times higher than it was four years ago in California. Another day means another national poll with Joe Biden 10 points ahead.
"The Economist" poll of likely voters shows Joe Biden at 52 to Donald Trump's 42 nationwide.
In North Carolina, a state Donald Trump won four years ago, a "New York Times" poll of likely voters has Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 4 points, 46-42. And New Hampshire, a state that Hillary Clinton won by less than 1 percent of the vote, a Suffolk University poll of likely voters has Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 10 points now, 51-41.
And in Ohio, a must-win state for Republicans. A Quinnipiac poll of likely voters has Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 1 point, 48-47.
And in Georgia, the Quinnipiac poll of likely voters has Donald Trump ahead but 7 points tonight, 51-44. That is the strongest poll for Biden yet in the state of Georgia.
Donald Trump went to Iowa to campaign because he is in desperate trouble in Iowa, a state that he won by 10 points four years ago. The latest Iowa poll of likely voters shows Joe Biden tied with Donald Trump at 49 percent. "The New York Times" reports that polling data shows Joe Biden is building a formidable coalition of voters.
Democrats agonized over whether their best path to the presidency was to lure back the white working class voters who defected to the president, or to increase turnout among Democratic voters who may have stayed home or supported minor party candidates like Jill Stein.
"The Times"/Siena survey suggests that Mr. Biden is succeeding on both fronts by at once peeling off a modest but crucial sliver of the president's former supporters, and benefitting from a significant advantage among voters who either backed a minor party candidate four years ago or didn't vote at all.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris used her final moments in today's Supreme Court confirmation hearing to make this point.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: These proceedings, I believe, lack legitimacy in the eyes of the people of our country. Americans are right now suffering from a deadly pandemic and we are also suffering an historic economic crisis. The Senate should be working day and night to provide economic relief to families and not rushing in a Supreme Court confirmation.
We are also in the middle of an election. More than 12 million Americans have already voted. The American people want whomever wins this election to fill this seat.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: The Senate should be working day and night to provide economic relief to families, says Senator Harris. Sounds obvious.
But the United States Senate is literally doing nothing. Mitch McConnell has put the Senate in recess. House Speaker Pelosi passed a $3 trillion relief package through the House of Representatives on May 15th. Like all legislation that passes the House, it was delivered to the United States Senate where Mitch McConnell would not even look at it, wouldn't even discuss it.
Speaker Pelosi then engaged in negotiations with Donald Trump's treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, because Donald Trump is afraid of dealing directly with Nancy Pelosi since this moment in the White House cabinet room humiliated Donald Trump. Donald Trump lives in fear of another moment like that, caught by a photographer.
But past presidents have frequently left legislative negotiations to cabinet members. And so, things were moving slowly but least they were moving when last week, Donald Trump on Twitter declared an absolute end to any negotiations on providing any relief to any Americans suffering in this unprecedented crisis. Donald Trump shut it all down completely and the stock market immediately crashed.
And so, Donald Trump like the drunk driver of Washington negotiations, started swerving back into the traffic. And by Friday, Donald Trump told Rush Limbaugh, quote, I would like the see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either the Democrats or the Republicans are offering.
And that, of course, was a complete lie and the White House immediately put out a statement correcting the president and saying, no, no, no, we want a much smaller package than Nancy Pelosi wants. The only person who has created any serious movement in these negotiations is Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has moved down from her comprehensive package of $3 trillion of aid that she passed in the May to a current proposal of $2.2 trillion of desperately needed aid.
The treasury secretary has a proposal of $1.8 trillion which uses the money very differently from the way Speaker Pelosi's proposal uses the money.
And that might seem like bridgeable gap, especially if you look at nothing but the numbers and completely ignore the underlying policy differences as the Washington media always does, $2.2 trillion, $1.8 trillion. Maybe they could meet in the middle. That's the conventional wisdom, because that's what Washington usually does.
But it is not up to Speaker Pelosi and the treasury secretary. In the end, it has to be a three-way negotiation that includes the United States Senate and Mitch McConnell's offer began at nothing. Zero. That's what Mitch McConnell said he was willing to do while Nancy Pelosi was negotiating.
And now, Mitch McConnell has come all the way up to $500 billion. Mitch McConnell wants less than one-third what the White House wants. And in the face of that negotiating dynamic, there are members of the news media who have never, ever been in the room during legislative negotiations, who have never, ever worked on legislation involving hundreds of billions in tax provisions and spending provisions designed to help tens of millions of people, and they have negotiating advice for Nancy Pelosi.
I've been in those rooms. I was in those rooms many times when I was the chief of staff for the Senate Finance Committee. But Washington is now filled with people who have no idea what it is like the work on even one provision of legislation like that. Never mind the whole package.
And suddenly, they have negotiating advice for the speaker of the House. And they don't have a word to say to Mitch McConnell who is literally laughing off the whole idea of doing anything for anyone who is suffering in this pandemic.
Here is Democratic Senate Democrat candidate Amy McGrath debating Mitch McConnell in Kentucky on Monday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMY MCGRATH (D-KY), SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: The House passed a bill in May. And the Senate went on vacation. I mean, you just don't do that. You negotiate.
Senator, it is a national crisis. You knew that the coronavirus wasn't going to end at the end of July. We knew this. I mean, I just think, you've got to -- here's the thing. If you want to call yourself a leader, if you want to call yourself a leader, you got to get things done.
Those of us who served in the Marines, we don't just point fingers at the other side. We get the job done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Joining us now, the representative of California's 12th congressional district, who was the 52nd speaker of the House of Representatives and in that constitutionally established office, Nancy Pelosi is second in line of succession for the presidency.
Speaker Pelosi, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
And I think you could just hear that as Amy McGrath was explaining to Kentucky that Mitch McConnell has done absolutely nothing. The only entry he made in the debate transcript there was his laughter. That's all he had to say about it was to laugh about the situation.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: It's remarkable. Hearing him laugh there, it was so heartbreaking because it reminded me when we passed the bill when he said, let's take a pause. Let's take a pause. Let the states go bankrupt.
He's never taken this seriously. Probably the most honest thing he's done is laugh in public about it to show his true colors. It's really so tragic.
And then that was echoed today, in something that Secretary Mnuchin said. I'm not paying for pensions for the states.
So this isn't about that. This is about a pandemic in case you haven't noticed. This is about a pandemic where we are trying to compensate the states for the money that they spent on the pandemic and the revenue that they lost.
That's one thing that the president -- they've all just ignored. The president said, I'm not paying for blue states, all that stuff. They haven't taken this seriously.
And what's sad about it is, we could come to an agreement. We need to come to an agreement.
But the -- you know this because you've been there. They had in the CARES Act something that made everybody swallow, a big $150 billion tax giveaway to the wealthiest people in America.
And yet when we want to make good on an expanded benefit for those who are unemployed, they say we can't afford that. So, coming into this negotiation from CARES to HEROES, we said, let's get rid -- let's get rid of that, that operating cost, that $150 billion at least, it could be more, tax break for the rich, and let's put an earned income tax cut for the poorest families in America, for our poor children. They're losing their jobs through no fault of their own, their parents, and we had an earned income tax credit, which just until a few days ago we though that they would respect.
But no, they insist on having their net operating loss tax break for the wealthiest while they give zero to an earned income tax break.
Very much different from President Bush, as a matter of fact, because when we were doing stimulus packages with President Bush, he liked using the tax code to help people who needed help in our country, and we had one of the best -- Barney Frank said one of the most progressive tax bills ever because it addressed the needs of working families, the earned income tax credit.
O'DONNELL: Speaker, you know you lose a lot of people, especially in the Washington news media, when you start getting into the actual provisions.
PELOSI: Yeah.
O'DONNELL: When all they want to talk about is 2.2 versus 1.8. And never think about what is actually in the legislation.
But one of the things that I want to highlight, because these both occur within the Senate Finance Committee, these tax provisions, you have the earned income tax credit which benefits the lowest earners in America and it's an automatic system that helps fund them, that we know how to do. We've been doing it for decades.
And you have this new huge deduction, a huge deduction for rich people running rich companies, that the Republicans want in legislation that is about financial aid in the coronavirus pandemic.
PELOSI: Yeah.
O'DONNELL: And it seems impossible to get attention to what the Republicans are actually asking for while at the same time, Mitch McConnell is saying, I would prefer to do absolutely nothing.
PELOSI: Well, I appreciate that you're calling attention to what -- it's not about the dollar amount. It's about the funding that it will go to, and if it's underwriting tax cuts for the wealthiest, while depriving of it to the working, working low income people. You see the unfairness of it all.
But let's just enlarge the issue for a moment. We all want to have an agreement. My message is out there.
Help is on the way. We want it safer. We want it bigger, we want it better and it will be retroactive. We have to come to agreement.
In order to solve the problem, we have to crush the virus. And they still cannot face that reality. They laugh it off.
And one other part of this, because everything we've done in there has had to meet the test. Is it coronavirus-centric? Is it about this?
Certainly, net operating loss, retroactive is not about the coronavirus. But the other part of it is, when I say safely, it's important to note -- again, we want to honor our heroes, state and local. We want to crush the virus, but we also want to protect our workers as they go to work.
And they have in there something that really is so -- again, heartbreaking for what it means to America's families. If you're an essential worker, you have to go to work. If you don't, you don't get unemployment insurance.
But if you go to work and your employer has not taken precautions and you get the virus, you have no recourse. That's the McConnell language that he has in his bill. And that is a stumbling block. We cannot accept that.
We're proposing and they're -- we're trading language on a strong OSHA standard that that doesn't work unless you get rid of the McConnell provision which says that, I won't even go into it. It is so beyond COVID. But nonetheless, it negates any regulation that you might put in there under OSHA.
So worker safety is not for us, a provision in a bill. It is a value in our country. It's a value in our country. And they just do not respect that.
So the disdain that they have for the state and local, the contempt that they have for science by not wanting to have a national strategic plan, and the -- again, the unfairness when it comes to America's workers, it is a tough nut to crack.
Still and all, we want to try to find our common ground. And they -- we say to each other, the secretary and I say to each other, if we didn't really want to find an agreement, we wouldn't even be talking to each other, because, frankly, from my standpoint, we do not have shared values. But there is a practical need.
Now you know from your experience that if we give, send a check to people, people say that's what they needed. That's what they should have. And the price that we have to pay as a society, as an economy is net operating loss.
No clear plan to crush the virus, disrespect for our heroes, our health care workers, our first responders, police and fire, transportation, sanitation, food workers, our teachers, our teachers, our teachers, and then about our children, about the fact that we still haven't seen how they would spend the education money which is too little. And that's one difference in the money, too little for our children.
And again, associated with that is that they would not come close to our number on the child care. Childcare is a key, especially in this time of coronavirus, because parents, moms or dads, cannot go to work if children don't to go school unless there's childcare. You would think they would use this opportunity for childcare they say we're asking for too much money. They don't think that is needed.
So, again, it's not shared values. But nonetheless, a common purpose which is to crush the virus. Now, let me say one more thing, because I've been hearing this all day. I met with the secretary this morning virtually, then I had five Zooms and now here I am.
And on those calls, people said, I think they do have a plan for the coronavirus. It's herd immunity. That's why they don't want to put the resources where they need to be, where science tells us it has to go.
So, again, tomorrow, I'm hoping to get better language book how we crush the virus. The virus is the cause of it all and yet they don't want to treat the cause. They just want to deal with some of the consequences of it. It's really quite tragic.
But nonetheless, we've had four bills, bipartisan, all along the way. We've been able to work with Secretary Mnuchin on the Mexico, U.S. -- U.S., Mexico, Canada trade agreement. We've been able to work on appropriations bills on a number of occasions, and I hope that we can soon find common ground so that as soon as possible, we can protect our heroes -- honor our heroes, crush the virus, and again put money in the pockets of the American people.
They're not with us on the livelihood of our democracy, though, in terms of election funding and the census and that's most unfortunate as well. But that's still part of conversation.
O'DONNELL: Speaker Pelosi, I could talk to you all night about what's actually in this legislation. We've just touched the tip of the iceberg. I urge people to read what's actually in Speaker Pelosi's bill that she passed. The proposals she's made, the proposal coming from the White House, and the zero proposal from Mitch McConnell.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
(CROSSTALK)
O'DONNELL: I'm -- look, I'm confident based on the way you've represented it that you and the treasury secretary could work something out.
PELOSI: That's right.
O'DONNELL: The trouble is you have the president behind the treasury secretary who changes his mind every day, every hour. And then you have Mitch McConnell --
PELOSI: Yeah.
O'DONNELL: -- who just has nothing to say about it. No one has ever been in the position you're in on this and we -- we wish you luck trying to get this job done.
PELOSI: Thank you.
O'DONNELL: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.
PELOSI: Well, just to remind you, last night, the president said go big or go home.
O'DONNELL: Huh? Yeah. Which he didn't mean.
(CROSSTALK)
PELOSI: Talk about changing his mind.
O'DONNELL: Right.
PELOSI: Stay safe. Stay safe, Lawrence. Thank you.
O'DONNELL: You, too. Thank you very much.
And up next, Governor Andrew Cuomo who has had his own experiences dealing with the Trump White House, including one that he calls extortion at the hands of the Trump White House at the height of the coronavirus in -- crisis in New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: Tonight, Donald Trump held a rally with no social distancing as usual and very, very few masks in Iowa which today reported a state record for coronavirus hospitalizations for the second consecutive day. Iowa has the nation's fourth highest positivity rate at 18.82 percent. New York state now has the nation's fourth lowest positivity rate at 1.2 percent.
New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, has published a new book entitled "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons for the COVID-19 Pandemic".
One of the lessons of the book is how difficult it has been for governors dealing with the Trump White House while trying to control this pandemic. Quote: Hospitals in New York began participating in a standard testing regimen with the FDA protocols to see if the hydroxychloroquine actually worked. The president was eager to get the results.
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, called me. Meadows said that they wanted the results from the test on hydroxychloroquine. I told them as I told the president that the tests were being double by the hospitals and when they were complete, they would be sent to the FDA.
Meadows then communicated to me that the federal government was about to send out funding for hospitals and strongly implied that if the tests weren't completed, New York wouldn't receive any funding. I don't mind exaggeration or expletives but I draw the line at extortion.
Joining us now on is the governor of the great state of New York, Andrew Cuomo.
Governor, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
And we just listened to Nancy Pelosi discussing the unprecedented difficulties of dealing with the Trump White House. What I just read from your book and much else that I've read on your book about what is basically extortion. We want, you know, the stuff on hydroxychloroquine as soon as we can get it so Donald Trump can throw it around in his next press conference.
What was that like dealing with that at the height of this pandemic in New York state?
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: Yeh, no, thank you, Lawrence.
OK, it was emblematic of the way they do business, right? First, it's amazing when you think back how wrong they were about hydroxychloroquine, right? The president was running around and all his supporters in the White House.
If you listen to them, hydroxychloroquine would cure COVID. It would grow hair. You know, it would promote sleep. It was the cure-all, right? It was -- it was just the perfect metaphor of the snake oil salesman.
And they were sure that it was going to work and they wanted the results from the New York hospitals that were participating in an FDA test. And the chief of staff to the president said, and I was kind in the book, but made it clear they wanted to test, they wanted it right away, or he wouldn't forward the funding that was in the CARES Act.
Now, as you know well, the budget laws are laws. They're not subject to the discretion and the political whim of the president. But everything with them was personal. No respect for government. No respect for the rule of law. No respect for the institution. And it was all personal. It was all about their public relations, always.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: It was fascinating for us to watch from this distance in the way you were trying to manage Donald Trump because you would go down to the White House and have private meetings with him. Sometimes criticizing him in your news conferences, sometimes not.
I want to read a passage from page 192 of your book because this takes us inside the world that we were watching on television. It says "If you listen to President Trump he will tell you what he needs. He doesn't hide his neurosis. When Trump said he needed gratitude, he was exposing his insatiable need for affirmation. If he needed affirmation, it meant he couldn't take criticism.
My weapon was to criticize his failure and neglect. I did it often and loudly. He hated criticism and couldn't handle it and this discomfort caused him to deliver more for New York than we would have otherwise received."
So part of your strategy was, if I criticize him here, then I've got a negotiating position to in effect tone it down if he delivers something.
CUOMO: Yes. And look, Lawrence, you know the federal government better than I. But I was a cabinet secretary during Clinton's time. When have you ever heard of a national emergency, a national pandemic where the federal government has no role? Where the president gets up and says I'm going to delegate total responsibility to the 50 states?
50 states have to go scramble and buy PPE. 50 states have to do testing. 50 states have to put together an international supply chain.
A state can't do that. You needed the resources of the federal government. The federal government had the Defense Production Act. New York needed the federal government. And I needed to deal with this White House and this president.
Now, his personality, frankly, is so extreme and needy, that it is transparent. He wanted affirmation. Graciousness is the word they would use. And on the other hand he couldn't stand criticism.
And as governor of New York, I have a podium also. I have a microphone also. And my job was to deliver for the people of the state. And I tried every way I could up and down.
At the end of the day, they were just in denial about the virus. That was their political tact from day one. It still is their political tact. You see it with the president, the way he handled the disease now, you see the way they're handling with Speaker Pelosi the next piece of legislation.
The virus doesn't exist. They don't recognize it. They don't recognize that it needs to be treated. And by the way, God bless Speaker Pelosi to have the patience to keep going back and fighting this fight.
But I would like to know what they think is going to happen. COVID isn't gone. The numbers are going up. The fall is here. And even once we get to a vaccine, Lawrence how long is it going to take and who is going to administer 300 million doses of a vaccine?
I mean, we have months more to do. And how do they think it's going to happen without now at least funding the state and local governments that they delegated this entire responsibility to?
O'DONNELL: Governor, can I hold you over a commercial break because there's so much more I want to talk to you about in your book --
CUOMO: Please.
O'DONNELL: -- and in the political environment. We're going to squeeze in a quick commercial break right here. We're going to be back with Governor Andrew Cuomo.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: Back with us, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York. His new book is "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic".
And Governor, there's so much in this book that I'd love to talk to you about including the personal side of it. You visit early on the story, you're worried about your daughter Cara might have been exposed because her mother might have been exposed because a friend of hers was infected. You're worrying about your mother Matilda and I'm worried about all of them as I'm reading this and trying to figure out how you juggle that with your daily duties and your public duties.
But let me ask you something for voters tonight in America. If could you talk to voters in Iowa tonight, which you can through this program, what would you tell them to think about in terms of their future in this pandemic as they cast their votes for president?
CUOMO: Yes. I think Lawrence the sad fact is that they understand it. You look at Ohio, you look at the high infection rate there. COVID is not done with us. We may have COVID fatigue but COVID is getting stronger.
And this road is not over. We have many more months. We then have a vaccine. You're going to see continued outbursts and outbreaks of this virus as we go forward.
This is a federal administration that has never acknowledged the problem let alone come up with a plan. This is a federal government that is willing to let 70,000 -- 80,000 people more die just because they won't say wear a mask. I mean what does that say about their sense of humanity and decency? They were never prepared to govern and they're not prepared to govern now.
And this is a time, Lawrence, when this nation needs government to work. It is a moment of transition. Never has government been as relevant.
Leadership matters. Competence matters. Government can actually be the matter between your life and your death right now. It is that serious.
And the president has shown himself for who he is. The president's problem in this election is the American people know him, Lawrence. They know him. They've seen his soul. And that is why he's going to lose on election day.
O'DONNELL: Governor, knowing what you know now, what you've learned from what you got right, things that you got wrong in the first wave of this. What are your expectations for how New York and how you will handle a possible second wave as winter closes in on New York state?
CUOMO: Well, what happened in New York was we were ambushed, right. The president loves to talk about the China virus, China virus, China virus. It wasn't the China virus. It was the European virus. The virus was in China last December.
Somehow this federal government thought that the virus would just stay in China. It got on a plane, it went to Europe. And the scientists have trace that the virus that came to New York and much of the Eastern Seaboard actually came from Italy, France and Spain. So it was here for three months before they ever told us.
But we were left on our own. We scrambled. We put together our hospital system. We procured PPE. We're now doing more testing than any state in the United States. So we will never be caught unprepared again the way we were.
But this is a constant battle. Don't kid yourself. We're now fighting it literally block by block, Lawrence. We have that level of testing. But you're going to see people continue to get sick and hospitalized and you're going to continue to see people die, unfortunately. That is the truth.
And I hope for a vaccine more than anyone else, or as much as anyone else. But even once you get the vaccine, is it safe? Will people take it? How do you -- how long does it take you to administer 300 million vaccines?
And who's going to do it? This federal government? That couldn't buy a mask and a gown? They're now going to vaccinate the entire country? And how long does it take? And how many more outbreaks will there be in the meantime? And how long until there is the next virus?
Because Lawrence, if COVID was developed in China today, COVID 2, developing in a wet market in China today, this federal government would be no better prepared than it was last December. And that is the frightening truth. They've learned nothing from the experience.
O'DONNELL: Governor Andrew Cuomo. His new book is "Leadership Lessons" from the COVID-19 pandemic". It is a book unlike anything ever written by a governor before because no one has lived through and managed the crisis that he has.
Governor Cuomo, thank you very, very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
CUOMO: Thank you for what you do. God bless you, Lawrence.
O'DONNELL: Thank you.
When we come back, just 20 days until election day. David Plouffe is here. Yamiche Alcindor is here. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: Most of the people who are switching the party they voted for, for president in 2016 are switching from Republican to Democrat; from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. That's according to a New York Times survey of voters in six battleground states including Iowa. "The Times" reports quote, "Alone these switches would be enough to give Mr. Biden a fairly comfortable victory."
Here's Joe Biden during a virtual campaign event tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This crisis we have enormous opportunity to build back, to build back a better future. That's what America always does.
So please, get everyone you know to vote -- friends, families, colleagues, the whole community. We can't let anyone think their voices don't count because the American people will decide this election and define our future. The American people, you. There's not a single thing we can't do when we do it together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Joining us now Yamiche Alcindor, White House correspondent for the PBS News Hour. And David Plouffe, former campaign manager and White House senior adviser to President Barack Obama. He is the host of the Campaign HQ podcast and both are MSNBC political analysts.
And Yamiche, at this point, the question becomes, does Donald Trump have secret polls of secret voters that tell a different story than what is being told in every other poll that comes out every day?
YAMICHE ALCINDRO, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: It does not seem that way. I will tell you when I speak to Trump campaign officials, they essentially say that they believe that the polls are not capturing all their voters. Their idea is that we're now all living in 2016 all over again and that there will be some sort of miracle surprise event at the end of the month and in the beginning of November that will help President Trump win these voters.
But when you look at what the president is actually saying, you hear a president who is very concerned with two key groups -- seniors as well as women. I mean the fact that he came out and said, suburban women, won't you just like me? And he also released this video talking to seniors specifically.
It tells you that he's in trouble with those two groups. I'm in Florida right now reporting and I can tell you that I have talked to a lot of voters who were for President Trump in 2016. Thought he was a little interesting. Thought he was brash. Thought it was something new.
Then when they saw his handling of the coronavirus, all of that changed because so many people have died and now the president is having to contend with the fact that people who took a chance on him are very worried and don't think that they will do that same chance again.
O'DONNELL: David Plouffe, what are you seeing in the new polling information and the dynamics of the race as of tonight that we need to focus on?
DAVID PLOUFFE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all Lawrence, a lot of people are voting. Over 15 million people have voted. So every day when Joe Biden's got a lead -- and there is a lot more polling of battleground states than there was last time.
I think the media's really digging in on battleground states after '16 So we have a lot more data. And it's not just, yes they're Trump/Obama voters but given Biden's strength with seniors and with suburban women, you know, he's getting people that voted for Romney and McCain, so he's adding to that. It's not just the traditional Trump/Obama voters.
So what I'm seeing though is these rallies that Trump is doing. He was in Iowa tonight. He was in Pennsylvania yesterday. These are advertisements that the Biden campaign would pay for, Lawrence. The visuals, huge crowds, nobody wearing masks, Trump not really having a coherent, compelling message. You know, we say there's 20 days to election, the election is happening now. That's when the election ends.
And so I think every day that passes with so many people voting, that puts Trump at a disadvantage. So as you and I have talked, I don't think Trump has magic supporters in terms of his vote share.
The question is, is his turn-out game going to be so much stronger than Biden? Does he surprise people if he scores a turnout and we really won't know that answer until votes start to get unpacked on election night.
O'DONNELL: Joe Biden has said that Barack Obama is going to be going out on the trail. Let's listen to what President Obama said on the podcast "Pod Save America" today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He was always the guy in every meeting who asked, how's this helping regular folks? You know, the whole aspect of him about Scranton, and you know, getting on Amtrak and talking to the conductors and knowing their names and, you know, wanting to spend as much time as possible with voters and just hear about their lives and identifying with the ordinary day-to-day struggles of the American people, that's not a schtick, you know. That's who he is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: Yamiche, Joe Biden has President Obama to go out on the campaign trail. Who does Donald Trump have?
ALCINDOR: Well, President Trump has said over and over again the person that he really relies on to get people excited about his nomination, about his presidency, about his another four years pitch is himself. He said that over and over again. He said that when he was running against Hillary Clinton saying she had all these different people, all these different stars, that I had Donald Trump.
This is someone who is going to continue to rely on his instincts, his political gut. He doesn't really trust a lot of people including a lot of the Republicans who we remember (INAUDIBLE) and so many others who are running for the hills when it was like President Trump was going to lose.
That being said, you have to also remember that the president here is pitching this idea that he can get four more years because he knows what's best for America. And the Biden campaign is essentially making the case that he's not a decent man.
When you hear President Obama say that it's not a schtick that vice president Biden cares about people. that's who he is. I heard that again from voters today. Voters are telling me, I really think Joe Biden cares about me.
He understands loss. He's lost his children. He's lost his wife. He understands what it means to have a family member die. And I think that that's somebody who will trust and move forward with us through this pandemic in a way that will keep families at the center of what he's thinking. That is part of Joe Biden's schtick and really sticking with the voters that I've talked to hear in Florida.
O'DONNELL: Yamiche and David, I have to squeeze in one more commercial break. We'll be back with more on the campaign and the election right after this commercial.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'DONNELL: Yamiche Alcindor and David Plouffe are back with us. And David, I want to ask a winning presidential campaign manager this. I referred at the beginning of the show to the numbers coming out of Harris County, Texas. That's where Houston is. It is a Democratic area. Massive early voting numbers like they have never seen before. What do you make of that?
PLOUFFE: Well, it's highly encouraging, Lawrence. I think both of you want to see Biden win, but also for our country. and listen, a lot of data experts including Dave Watson and somebody you and I both think highly of, you know, is looking at this early vote turn-out and suggest it could mean we're going north of 150, maybe even 160 million turn-out.
I would -- a cautionary note though, we need some more days to happen here. We know people are excited to vote early. If this continues, obviously we had a big turn-out on day one and day two. We have to see if it continues.
And then of course you really can't relax until election day because do you get what you need on election day even if the early vote is shattering records. So you have got to run through the tape here.
And the one thing I've been consistent about Trump is going to get his turn-out. So his high watermark is going to be quite high. And so Joe Biden, I think, has more than enough swing voters -- we talked about them the last segment to win, but he's got to make sure the turn-out is there.
Everything we're seeing in Texas, in Arizona, in North Carolina, would be highly encouraging, but we have to see the rest of the early vote. Is there going to be a trough and how significant is it?
And there's still going to be a bunch of vote left on election day, not just Trump votes. So I'm cautiously optimistic, but I think we need to see more data.
O'DONNELL: Yamiche, I wanted to ask you about senior citizen voters in Florida who Joe Biden spoke directly to the other day. But the clock is ticking away on us and we're out of time.
Yamiche Alcindor, David Plouffe -- thank you both for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it.
PLOUFFE: Thank you, Lawrence.
O'DONNELL: That is tonight's LAST WORD.
"THE 11TH HOUR WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS starts now.
END
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