Transcripts For MSNBCW All In With Chris Hayes 20200430

Were not going back to the precoronavirus normal anytime soon. Crowded rock concerts in giant arenas, sold out broadway shows, football stadiums, filled with 100,000 people just packed next to each other. I think its pretty unlikely any of those things are going to look how they looked before. Were going to stand further away from one another. Were not going to crowd into spaces. Were going to wear masks. Workplaces that can do it are going to try to stay empty as possible, not breathing each others air, and that principle two that were not going back to normal, even in places like texas where restaurants will open on friday. Those restaurants are only allowed to have 25 capacity. In georgia, famously the most sort of out front on this, some barbers are only allowing one customer in the store at a time. Others wait outside 6 feet apart. Most people or i would say almost everyone understands that things need to change. Those are the principles we all seem to agree on. The question is what is in between those two principles. Right . What is a safe responsible way of reopening. We like to call on this show, door number 3. The option that is either an uncontrolled pandemic or economic depression. And i got to say, this should not be some weird culture war question, despite the effort of some to make it some in order to detract from the manifest failures of the president to march people out to sacrifice themselves to the dow, it is a difficult complicated question that the world, every world leader, every state in the union is dealing with and theres actually a specific goal every society is trying to accomplish, and that is this, to keep the rate of transmission of the coronavirus down so that each infected person infected on average less than one other person. Okay. This is the key benchmark. If the transmission rate is less than one, the disease is declining. If the transmission rate is more than 1, the disease is spreading. Angela merkel who plans to be doctor of chemistry explained as they were gearing up to reopen their economy. [ speaking in foreign language. ] ge first of all, just imagine for a second having a leader that thought of the question of how to reopen society with that level of nuance. But thats whats necessary. When germany started to open up, they had the infection transmission rate down to. 8 below that 1 threshold, but the coronavirus started creeping back up to an infection rate of one because this virus is so contagious, so few people have immunity. In singapore, many have covered as a Success Story because it has been, they are dealing with a second outbreak which is essentially forcing them to enter back into shelter in place, and the reason is because they ignored a marginal community. Migrant workers who live packed in dormitories on the outskirts of the city. The margins dont stay the margins for long with this virus. Other places like taiwan and south korea have been able to keep the virus, through testing and Contact Tracing. Seattle, with its huge shelter in place order, they have gotten their infection rate down to where they started to lift some restrictions on things like farme farme farmers markets, outdoors, people can buy food. Thats whats so important that Angela Merkel was saying, the margin of error is small because of the way exponential growth works. You can find yourself back where we were two months ago, two months ago, two months ago, february 29th when there was literally one confirmed death. Before it spins out of control and we lose 60,000 lives in 60 days. And there are so many deaths that one funeral home is moving bodies if uhaul trucks because they dont have enough room. The question of how and when to reopen society is a hard problem to solve but a worst Case Scenario would be after we have lost many tens of thousands of lives, and knowingly pushed our economy to the brink of a depression and seen the sacrifice that the unbelievable national sacrifice americans have made in so many ways, after we have done all of that, to squander on some blind hope and culture war propaganda and end up in the same place a few months from now. Joining me now is Jeffrey Sachs, author of the the ages of globalization, also has been writing about this topic as well. Dr. Sachs, this sort of technical question, it seems one of those moments where looking out in the comparative world and in some ways trying to take it outside of the hot stove of American Culture war politics seems crucial. Chris, thank you so much for the clearest explanation that i have heard on television or the media since this epidemic began. We have heard nothing but nonsense for weeks and weeks from the white house, and we have 60,000 deaths. And the fact of the matter is many countries have suppressed the epidemic. China did after its initial outbreak. Taiwan. Vietnam, hong kong, japan. You have new zealand, australia, so its not purely a hypothetical, and it has nothing to do with the culture wars as you pointed out. It has to do with one simple idea, exactly what you said, which is that each infected person must be stopped from infecting more than one other person. That means several things. It means Early Detection of every case. It means early quarantining or early isolation. You ask, can you be safely at home or will you spread it to family members. If its too crowded at home, you have to go to a public quarantine, which could be a hotel room, for example. It means that in public, people wear face masks and respect the physical distancing. It means that any place that does open up is monitoring temperature, screening for symptoms. It means that we have a Public Health system that contacts each case every day, hows your temperature mrs. Smith and are there other people you know close by, your family members, your children, your parents who you think have symptoms. We need to contact them. Right. Are there people at work that we should be contacting. Whats Contact Tracing. This is straightforward. What is unbelievable in america is we have reached 60,000 deaths and not done the basics, and those countries that i mentioned, chris, have death rates that are 50th of ours or a hundredth of ours, so this is not hypothetical, our country, we have a leader who is the worst president in our history. Such an idiot, im sorry to say, but americans are dying by the tens of thousands because were not doing the basics and today, incidentally, the wall street journal ran an editorial about our zero, exactly this, but they dont even look at their own news stories, which have the asi asian successes. Lets look at how other countries are doing it. Were not so stupid in america that we cant learn from the others. You know, i thought that the Vice President s visit to the mayo clinic, hes the only person not wearing a mask in violation of rules and protocols. His response was, which was not a crazy response, basically he says, im tested for the coronavirus on a regular basis, everyone around me is tested for it. You test for it, and matt igl i iglacious, what if we do that for everyone. The Vice President , so he can live a semino normal life. What if we expanded that idea for all of us so we were in a similar boat . Chris, you know, theres been a problem with testing because our system, our centers for Disease Control failed. America is breaking down in so many ways because we dont take care of basic government functions anymore, so the testing got way behind because our Main Institution for this failed, but if you look at those other Success Story countries, korea has several private companies that immediately got successful testing going. The many other countries, even without much testing went on the symptom basis, people isolated. They went for quarantine, and they had Public Health officials that were tracing the contacts. This is so basic i cant even tell you. The first page of epidemic control is trace the contacts. When did President Trump say one word about tracing the contacts, not until now. 60,000 deaths later. This is what were facing. Its a mad house that were having this in this country when there is so much knowledge and experience of what to do, but its true also, by the way, cities across this country and governors, theyre debating the date to open, not preparing the Contact Tracing, not hauling confirmed cases, not preparing the quarantine. This is the tragedy. Were wasting our time because as you said completely correct, you can get the case load down very far. But if you just open up again because of exponential growth, everything shoots up again, so its not a matter of the date of opening, its a matter of preparing the alternative to the lock down. The alternative is whats called Public Health. You isolate cases. You quarantine, you test. You trace contacts. Can we do this in america still . Do we have any sense of learning the most basic things when our lives depend on it . Thats the real issue. Jeffrey sachs, thank you so much for sharing your expertise tonight. Well, thank you, thank you for what youre doing. Its so vital. We need to get the basics out for the public. I want to bring in now the president and ceo of the center for American Progress ni nira tanden, appointed to new jerseys Recovery Mission by governor phil murphy. The center for American Progress, the think tank you work at worked at a reopening plan, and aei, which is a right wing think tank, they did their plan. The plans are not that different. Its not like we have got some big, you know, abortion rights level culture war happening among the people that know what theyre talking about about this question. Theres actually consensus and yet that seems so far from what the political debate has been. Yeah, no, i mean absolutely, and Jeffrey Sachs talked about the consensus and its not just center for American Progress and aei, its every major university, every institution, economists have all said we need to do Contact Tracing and testing, and separation. And i think the real problem is in the country that we have a leadership people dont trust, and we have a National Leadership that hasnt been clear and obvious about what to do, and i think the original sin here was that for whatever reason we didnt do testing right, but the president cant admit to that failure. Cant admit for numerous reasons so he has moved to reopen at a time when people are just not prepared. You so eloquently said and is so clear, you risk so much by reopening when you dont have case loads down and enough, and when you dont have the infrastructure to actually even be able to contain the virus, and that is the real danger of texas, georgia and florida, their actions, which is, you know, its a gamble. That is the problem. It is a big gamble. And thats why i think everyone should be working on tracing and testing and its unfortunate that theyre not. Yeah, the testing we should just note that one of the things that countries do have in common dealing with that is they test a lot so they have low positive rates. If youre testing a lot, you want to be in a situation where youre not getting half positives or 30 positives. Right now, the u. S. Were getting 18 positive, thats way too high, countries like south korea, a numerical capacity issue that we can do. Its america. We should be able to figure it out. I mean, the most important thing actually is to be able to test everyone whos sick and really Test Community test, meaning youre testing places that you havent seen a virus, you know theres a virus, and you know the virus isnt there. The problem in the United States is that our Testing Capacity has been so low that people who are sick cant get tested, but were not testing anyone on the front lines who arent sick. And the thing that is incredible is that these states are considering mandating people come back to work and not giving them testing. I mean, that is the moral and Public Health failure because that is where you get the outbreaks. People come back to work, and then they spread it, and then youre just dealing with it at the end when we dont even have an ability to contain it. It is like completely shooting in the dark and hoping no one dies. Its scary, and no country is handling it like this. Ive gotten emails from viewers from both iowa and georgia who have said similar things which is basically, and the Iowa Governor kim reynolds made this clear yesterday, if youre scared of your health and you dont go to work because of it, youve left your job. You dont get unemployment, the way unemployment works in america, if you get laid off or fired, you can get unemployment. If you quit, you cant. You have a situation quite perverse in georgia and iowa, if you feel like my workplace isnt safe, youre out of luck, and thats not good for epidemics, thats not good for epidemiological purposes whenever you think about the moral aspect of it. I mean, the big problem with this virus is that essentially everybody, every Single Person is at risk, right, so when individuals are forced to make decisions, if a person who is not feeling well is forced to make the decision to go to work for their livelihood, any Single Person can be a super spreader. So when youre telling people that they should go to work when they feel sick or that theyre going to be at work with other people who could be sick, then you are inviting a real possibility of contagion, and you know, its really almost the opposite of what we should be doing from a Public Health perspective. Neera tanden, thank you so much. Just to make this point. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you, neera. Appreciate it. Sorry. Its the miracle of skype that i thought i was done a minute ago. Well talk to you soon. Thank you very much. New data from the cdc says we are significantly undercounting the death of coronavirus, the debunking of coronavirus truthers, next. Deb coronavirus truthers, next i got this Mountain Bike for only 11. Dealdash. Com, the fair and honest bidding site. An ipad worth 505, was sold for less than 24; a playstation 4 for less than 16; and a schultz 4k television for less than 2. I won these bluetooth headphones for 20. I got these three suitcases for less than 40. And shipping is always free. Go to dealdash. Com right now and see how much you can save. There are times when our need to connect really matters. To keep customers and employees in the know. To keep business moving. Comcast business is prepared for times like these. Powered by the nations largest gigspeed network. To help give you the speed, reliability, and security you need. Tools to manage your business from any device, anywhere. And a team of experts here for you 24 7. Weve always believed in the power of working together. Thats why, when every connection counts. You can count on us. The coronavirus truthers as we call them have taken up this line about the virus, and oh, actually, you know, i know that the obituary pages are full, and no one can buy a sympathy card but its not that deadly and dangerous as the death toll continues to climb past 60,000, 2,000 new deaths day after day. And every day brings new evidence of how absurd those very claims are. So the New York Times citing cdc data now reports that the u. S. Death toll is actually far higher than whats been reported. Now, people of course in america and everywhere, they die of all sort of things every day in this country, flu to cancer to heart attacks, homicides, driving accidents, suicide, and states and cities collect all that data, called all cause mortality. One way we can get a sense of how hard states can be hit hard by the coronavirus is just by looking at those current overall mortality totals and comparing it to the same period of time say last year. Thats exactly what the times did. And lo and be hold, they found excess deaths everywhere they looked. Some of them were positively reported coronavirus deaths and many others were not, though they were likely due to the virus. Each state they looked at has a huge spike, and crucially it is even bigger than what you would see if you took into account the reported coronavirus deaths. Look in new york city, the gray lines at the bottom are total deaths in the previous five years. The red line is this year. The overall death rate just shot up so dramatically. If you were looking at the chart and it wasnt labeled, you would say what happened in march. Heres new jersey, and michigan, and massachusetts, and illinois. They all have this huge spike, that red line in deaths, again, represented there when you compare this year to previous years, and guess what, the evidence from across the world tells the exact same story. The Financial Times using the same approach. All cause mortality, found global coronavirus deaths could be 60 higher than reported. The death rate in belgium, for instance, is 60 higher than the historical average this time offof year. In spain, 50 average higher. We are seeing this everywhere. And its an illustration of why coronavirus trutherism is not just so dangerous but also so deranged. Im joined by dr. George q. Daly, who cowrote an opinion piece in the washington post. Maybe we can start the broadest possible way, which is in terms of two months ago, how scientists were dealing with this new virus, and how deadly they thought this was, and two months later after the ravages, how did those sort of expectations and the data line up . Well, i think based on what we knew two months ago, we knew this was a highly contagious virus, and the early results out of china suggested that a shockingly large percentage of infected patients were dying. Maybe as much as 3 , maybe 6 . And now two months later, we realize that some of the hot spots, italy, new york city, and beyond, have suffered a just astounding burden of death. Now, we dont know the underlying complete percentage of individuals who have seen the virus and thats why these recent surveys, these antibody surveys are allowing us to reassess the actual case mortality rate. But even as we have reassessed it down, because we appreciate that many more people are actually have seen the virus than are being counted, the rates are still quite staggering. The burden is very great. This point is a really crucial one, so this sort of sets up this debate right now, and it sort of mixes together a good faith debate among experts and the data and a sort of bad faith attempt to do some sort of bait and switch. So the good faith version of this is we know how many cases there are that are confirmed. We dont know how many people have been infected which is a much larger number, and if the multiple is big enough. If its actually 100 times what we know of the actual cases, then actually the disease is not as deadly as we thought. Youre arguing that the idea, the bullish case that like everybody has had, and its a hundred times is not being born out by what we know. Is that sort of the argument here . Yeah, this is what i am deeply, deeply and profoundly concerned about is the over interpretation that some of these early studies that suggest that maybe tenfold or even in some reports, 80 fold as many people have actually seen the virus, that this is being used to suggest, oh, this is not a devastatingly fatal or virulent disease, but lets anchor it on what we see. In the major cities that have been hit, whether its in the north of italy or wuhan, china, or new york city, our intensive care units have been overwhelmed with virus. Even in the worst flu years, we dont see this rapidity of death. We dont see the bodies piling up in morgues that cant handle them. This is far worse than flu. And we have to be careful as we interpret these early assessments of the percent of people in our communities that have seen the virus. We have to be careful that we dont reopen the economy too early because we will provoke a second wave of epidemic. We will provoke an increased number of infections and behind it, we will see the deaths start to mount. Yeah, that is the big fear, the one that were all trying to avoid. Dr. George q. Daly, thank you so much for making the time tonight. I appreciate it. How is it that the Health Care Industry is crashing, well talk about whats breaking our Health Care Systems economics and why right after this. Health care systems economics and why right after this nothing quite captures the perverse business incentives that the American Health care system in the midst of this pandemic as we all celebrate Front Line Health Care workers in hospitals that some of the same hospitals are hemorrhaging money and teetering on bankruptcy, and more broadly that the Health Care Sector of the economy, amidst the worst peck is the leading source of Economic Contraction in the First Quarter of the year. 2. 3 Percentage Points off gross domestic product. How is this possible . To help answer that question, im joined by don burrwick, president , and and senior fellow of the health care improvement, who knows the field as well as anyone. I talked to someone i know at a new york City Hospital thats been doing a ton of Covid Patients who talked about losing half a billion a month, and this is hospitals all over the country hemorrhaging money. Why are they losing so much money. Theyre getting squeezed too way. Their costs have gone up. They have to invest capital hire more staff. Theyre converting bed spaces, all of that takes a lot of money, and meanwhile, their revenues are down because the normal businesses they depend on for revenue, the elective surgeries, the work of their own Emergency Rooms for noncovid conditions, thats how hospitals get by financially, and that revenue is gone. The other part of the problem is on their insurance, we have a frail and chaotic insurance in this country. Were trying to put patch on it in the covid epidemic but its coming home to roost that a lot of people dont have coverage. All of that means theyre losing tons of money, and i have talked to Hospital Leaders that give me the same numbers you just quoted, chris. I want to talk about what we call elective surgeries. It sounds like cosmetic surgery. This is a huge category of things, and my understanding is when we say theyre a big problem of the bottom line of hospitals, elective surgery, they are the margin, basically. I mean, theyre a huge part of how the finances of the hospital work. Yeah, elective doesnt mean cosmetic. It means nonemergent. A lot of surgery, even cancer surgery, you dont have to do the day it occurs as you do for a trauma victim. Hospitals call that elective procedures. They can be scheduled. We are in a fee for Service Based Health Care System where the way hospitals or doctors make money do more things. The more they do, the more they make, that pays the bills. The normal Business Models of the hospitals are simply in shambles. Theyre not working, and well see whether theyre able to dig out after the covid epidemic. God willing, and get back to Something Like square one. So i feel like i have two twin contradictory impulses here. Ill talk about the first and the second. The first is this makes no sense, and we have to deal with the situation as it exists, the system that we have, the hospitals we have. These hospitals really have done remarkable work on the front lines of this, and how do we basically, what should we did doing at a first order tri age policy, that were the no seeing huge abrubankruptcies for nursed others, and hospitals. Youre exactly right. There is a shortterm issue here which is they dont just dont the money. Theyre running out of money, and we need Something Like a bailout like were doing for airlines and other industries. The hospitals need the cash, and thats the shortterm solution. I dont know of another possible one. In the longterm, this does reflect a basic set of defects in the way were Funding Health care in america. One is that its all fee for service or motorist of it is no. Were trying to move toward paying hospitals to be there to take care of hospitals. That would have helped if we were there sooner. The second is the problem of a broken American Health Care Insurance system, which essentially everybody has to run ragged in order to stay in place, and the payment is all chaotic, and it drives costs up, and really leads to a lot of vulnerability for hospitals. Theres a shortterm fix, bail them out, and a longterm fix, lets think differently about how we should be Funding Health care in the first place. The first one, you know, there has been money for hospitals in the last two bills. The democrats had to push for it. Originally moitch mcconnell did not want it. The conflict is this. Hospitals have been as a kind of lobbying force often a quite reactionary force in the politics of American Health care because they want to keep the fees flowing in, and the fees are their bottom line sources of revenue, and when you try to talk about creating a country that isnt going to have 17 of its gdp spent on health care, the hospitals are one of the big obstacles, theres something perverse about the moment of heres money to bail you out, make you whole, and next year youre going back to stopping us from keeping Health Care Costs down. Yeah, until the next pandemic. Of course theyre scared of change. We hooked ourselves on this gerbil cage of do more, get paid more, do more get paid more. People arent plotting to do unnecessary things. The dynamics and economics are not favorable. Thats how we set it up. If we want to switch to something which would be far smarter, Global Payments for hospitals to take care of populations, or systems to take care of populations, everyone has to face the changes. I think were going to go bankrupt as a country if kwoowe not careful in the longer run. We can have all the care we want and need, we just cant have it the way were paying for now. Thats going to involve changes which means political dialogue. Were going to have to fight through a Better Health care payment system. Don burke who is humble enough not to mention hes one of the foremost leaders, precisely how to implement that in ihi, and the center for medicaid and medicare services. Thank you, don really appreciate it. My pleasure. Up next, why the government rescue of americas businesses should never be a jump ball between your local dry cleaner and the l. A. Lakers, the way to fix the ppe program, next. Ay to fix the ppe program, next. Do you remember the food stamp surfer dude who ate lobster. In 2013, fox news tried to make him a government grifting star. We have ahi, salmon, eel, yellowtail with rice and avocado, and then they had lobster on special, 200 a month, and you just go boom. Just like that. All paid for by our wonderful tax dollars. That was part of a whole gross war that fox waged against food stamps and food stamp recipients and motivated by the idea that someone somewhere was getting over and buying food they shouldnt be. Thats one of the most animating reactionary forces in all of American Life regarding the welfare state, that when we try to have the government do something, in this case, feed people, someone must be taking advantage. Someones getting over. The wrong people are getting the money, and we are seeing that right now with the Payroll Protection Program designed for Small Businesses and their workers. There have been a lot of surfer on food stamps eating lobster headlines from that program, and i will admit, they have made me mad too. The l. A. Lakers, an nba franchise worth over 4 billion was given a ppe loan before they gave it back. Shake shack got 10 million before giving it back. The ritzcarlton of atlanta, using the paycheck Protection Program to stay afloat. It is outrageous that it appears to be a choice between say the beloved Grocery Store or laundry mat on the block and those folks, the ritzcarlton and theyre the ones benefitting. But i think thats a false way of thinking about it, and it is created by the flawed design and appropriations for this program, ppe. The point of the program is not to choose which are the best and most worthy and deserving businesses. The point is to offer a blanket protection for all Small Businesses under a certain size who meet the criteria to retain their workers with pay and basically put the economy on ice so it doesnt die while were fighting the pandemic. The problem is theres way more demand than there is money appropriated. So the funds are claimed within minutes every time they open it up, the architects of ppe have unleashed an all against all for deservedness, leaving the mom and pop businesses squeezed out, which is unjust. Heres a solution, make the criteria clearer, and make the appropriation open ended like unemployment insurance. If you qualify, you get the amount of money you qualify for. Thats it. Theres tno rush over fight ove whos deserving. If youre asking me should we bail out the ritzcarlton of atlanta, during normal times, no, right now, theyre a business with employees. The most classic american bait and switch, while we are focused on who is getting the one or 2 million loans, the big boys program for the major large corporations worth 500 billion is being run through the fed with far less transparency, and zero Strings Attached in terms of whether they have to retain workers. How about Small Businesses and their employees get rescued and we put requirements on the nearly unlimited credit spigot thats been opened up for the largest corporations. Thats been opened up for the largest corporations these folks, they dont have time to go to the post office they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps. Com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the Amazing Services of the post office only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again across america, Business Owners are figuring things out. Finding new ways to serve customers. Connect employees. And work with partners. Comcast business is right there with you. With a network that helps give you speed, reliability and security. And enough bandwidth to handle all your connected devices. Voice Solutions Like remote Call Forwarding and readable voicemail. And safe, convenient installation. When every connection counts, you can count on us. Get the connectivity your business needs. Call today. Comcast business. Throughout the entire me too era, there have been moments, i think for many of us, all of us when we have heard about accusations against someone who we find ourselves desperately wanting not to believe. Whether that is because we have personal admiration for the individual or their work or political admiration, someone on our quote unquote side but part of the difficultlesss lesson of me too era is not that everything is true, and should be true on its face, you have to fight that pulse, to take seriously what is alleged and what is the evidence, and that is the case of an accusation of tara reade. Last year she told a california newspaper that in 1993 joe biden quote touched her several times making her feel uncomfortable. At that time, reade was one of several women who came forward around that moment of acquisitions of inappropriate over physicalness, touching, kissing or hugging that they say made them feel uncomfortable. Then last month she made a much more serious allegation telling first a podcast and later the New York Times that in 1993 joe biden pinned her to a wall in the senate building, reached under her clothing and penetrated her with her fingers. Reade told the times she filed a complaint about what happened with biden, quote, she said she did not have a copy of it, and such paperwork has not been located. Reade also said she complained to bidens executive assistant as well as to two top aides about harassment by mr. Biden, not mentioning the alleged assault. All three of those people who were interviewed by the times deny having a memory of a complaint. A spokesperson for joe biden says the allegation is false and they have strongly denied it. This week, there was also a new development in the story, and that is that tara reades former neighbor at the time went on the record with her name telling Business Insider in 1995 or 96, reade told her she had been assaulted by biden. Nbc news reached out to her neighbor who confirmed by text message the story, the on the record reporting by a neighbor, contemporaneous of the story, has rightfully had a new round of scrutiny, and tension in the Progressive Coalition about how the biden camp should or is responding and more on that, im joined by rebecca tracer writer at large for new York Magazine who published this titled the biden trap. Take me through how you have tracked this story over it development and your sort of evaluation of it. Well, i have been watching it and reading about it with, i mean, obviously intense interest. It had a sort of reverse course from some of the me too reporting that broke through in the fall of 2017, the reporting done by megan twohey on Harvey Weinstein that it didnt start out as a massive investigative report. Tara reade first made the full accusation of assault in a podcast interview with katie halper. Initially, it didnt have the sort of full, we have talked to 100 people, we have gone through these documents and that sort of happened in reverse in this case. And so i have been reading with great interest as sort of different portions of the story have either been denied or seemingly confirmed, and i think its one of those cases where theres going to be more reporting and were going to learn more about what we think of these claims with every story thats done, and i bet there are a lot of reporters. I know there are a lot of reporters out there working on it right now. In terms of the sort of, i think one of the things that happened in the me too era was thinking about how to evaluate claims like this, and what evidence is sort of corroborative and whats dispositive and the fact that in almost all cases its extremely difficult to arrive at some definitive counting in the sort of evidentiary record. I will say that in following this, one of the things that happened in me too and a piece of evidence that has risen in how i evaluate these stories is a somewhat contemporaneous disclosure to a trusted person who then tells a reporter about it. That is what has happened here, and to me, that has been in terms of what the evidentiary record has raised it a bit in my own view of this. I feel the same way. I actually thought that the times reporting which was inconclusive on the assault claim corroborated for me something which was her claim that she had complained about her harassment and then suffered a professional consequence while working in bidens office. The New York Times reporting on this story actually backed that up for me a couple of weeks ago because it found a couple of interns who she had supervised who remembered her suddenly being taken off of, you know, suddenly and without explanation no longer supervising them. That was pretty persuasive for me on that count. The assault claim, you know, obviously im waiting for more reporting on it, but as reporters and as readers, this is what we look for, you know, for journalistic corroboration, as you say a contemporaneous, somebody whos willing to go on the record. The other thing about the neighborhood, linda, reades former neighbor, shes a biden supporter and still intends to vote for joe biden, so that sort of addresses the question of is there a political motivation here for her recalling this, and yes, i think its a very strong piece of corroborating evidence. And you know, it was persuasive for me too. This point about, you know, obviously what hangs over this is that joe biden appears to be the nominee for the democratic party, that he will be running against a president who has bragged about Sexual Assaults, who has been accused of Sexual Assault by a dozen and a half women. Right now theres a woman e. Jean carol accused him of raping her, and two people on the record contemporaneously saying she told them the story at the time, one urged her to go to the police. Shes currently suing him because he dismissed the story, and of course that is not exculpatory for the facts of joe biden, but in the political context of how progressive and feminist and liberals think about it, its inescapable and also sort of impossible, your though thoughts, rebecca. And in addition to the claims made against donald trump, the person is Donald Trumps record of and promises around governance. He is in a position if reelected to appoint people to the supreme court. He already has. Thats a generations worth of law making in this country, is going to, if donald trump makes those appointments, going to be terrible for women and especially women, particularly in vulnerable communities. You know, his record on the environment, enfranchisement, the democracy is imperilled and women, and in particular Vulnerable Women are imperilled so progressive feminist women have every reason to support his opponent. However, what this is creating is a kind of perfect storm where the women who are being asked to support his opponent are now also being asked to answer for these charges, in part because of the vacuum created by joe biden who is not yet really directly answering these questions and certainly not doing what i wish he would, which is to say please direct your questions about these allegations to ne ame and not t women that are out there offering their support to my candidacy. Yeah, the man in question, the nominee, the former Vice President is going to have to address them and not have Stacey Abrams or anyone else or Kristen Gillibrand to do that. Your piece was fantastic and thank you so much for making some time tonight. That is all in for this evening, the 11th hour request bri with Brian Williams starts right now. Liams starts right now. Lit up tonight in blue for the workers of the mta who keep the buses and rails moving through the mostly stayathome city of the new york, good evening administration. 188 days now until our president ial election. And on this day spoken out loud to reporters in the white house, the president said this, and we quote. This is going away. I think were going to come up with vaccines and all, but this is going away. Its going to go. Its going to leave. Its going to be gone. Its going to be eradicated. Indeed the president s soninlaw, as youll see here in just a moment, today called what we are living through a great Success Story. For that today his proud fatherinlaw called him a genius. The president said well soon see some astonishing testing numbers, and he quickly followed