diseases as well. ed demauro, thank you for coming on the programme. thank you for having me. what did happen in the white house the night of the 2020 election? donald trump s team were confident he had done enough in the final days of the campaign to ensure a second term. but as the hours ticked by on election night and fox called arizona for biden, it soon became clear things were unravelling. a new book, excerpts out today, from the washington postjournalists carol lennig and phil rucker suggest it was the former new york mayor and trump attorney rudy giuliani who convinced the president the reason he was losing was the result of electoral fraud. the book is called i alone can fix it: donald trump s catastrophic final year. i m joined now by republican political strategist ron christie. good to see you, how are you? good evening to you. this could be the genesis of the big lie. let me show you the excerpt from the book. giuliani s grand plan.
if not months leading up to the election of the red mirage, the idea that in places like michigan it would look more pro-trump and in places like texas and ohio where they counted the paper ballots early, we all knew that. do you think he really didn t know? or is this, like, a performance? everything about donald trump is performance. but i think that he knew that he could possibly lose by actually counting the votes but was willing to do anything, lie, steal, and cheat to actually win. regardless of what his advisers, the news, the actual ballots were saying, he was not going to surrender. and that s why he called people to washington d.c. that s why he continues to push the big lie. he thinks he can make his own rules and not have to follow what actual voters are saying. and listen to this because it s fascinating. this is also from the book detailing rudy giuliani s conversations with top trump advisers on election night.
military is concerned about what the president is doing, that s scary. and the u.s. military was concerned, and i think it just underscores, and this book, this excerpt takes us inside the white house on election night. there are a lot of these books coming on. it should make clear anybody who doubts how dangerous this election was to our republic. this is a new excerpt, later we have michael wolf, we have michael bender later in the show, frankly we did win the election. all three of them make the same basic case here, which is that there were people who knew how dangerous this was yet didn t stop it, and that is something that is serious and needs to be discussed in much greater detail. john avlon, thank you very much. coming up, new details about efforts across the country to block vaccine requirements in school. plus, the white house backing local vaccine mandates but rejecting federal action, the surgeon general will join us next.
in full on the county. he responded, people are starting to see the light. great for america. the thrust of your tweets is that they re revelations that fulton county is unable to produce all ballot drop box transfer documents and invested thoroughly as we have other counties that failed to follow rules on the drop boxes. this cannot continue. you have to say there s been a leadership fail in full on the county. some people will look at that and think back to fulton county on election night and were there errors and people on this list that can t vote anymore that did vote in that election? of the 118,000 people coming off of these roles, none of them voted. we had two dead people that voted. two dead people. but what we re talking about with full full is really
secretary ben carson, who is a doctor, testing positive, he was at the white house on election night. after the president s chief of staff tests positive, too. and now the top outside adviser leading president trump s legal challenges testing positive for coronavirus. president-elect joe biden making it clear today, fighting the virus is his top priority. preparing americans for what could be a, quote, dark winter ahead, even with the promise of a new vaccine. asking americans, even before he takes office, to please wear a mask to help protect our fellow neighbors. and tonight, former president george w. bush and his phone calls to president-elect biden and vice president-elect kamala harris. president trump showing no signs of conceding defeat, pushing ahead with legal challenges and 48 hours after the race was projected for joe biden, president trump in a tweet firing his defense secretary mark esper. the new moves after this scene. fans rushing the field at notre dame. the t