ukraine. welcome to "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. you can sum up the current state of the pandemic in three phrases -- record cases, holiday travel, not enough testing. it all adds up to a bit of confusion and lots of it. the u.s. has seen more than 200,000 confirmed cases every day so far this week. cases are skyrocketing in new york and washington, d.c. we're also seeing spikes in texas and florida. another member of congress has tested positive, the tenth member of congress announcing testing positive in the past week. seven people on a trip have tested positive. the vice president and vice president have had recently had close contacts with someone who tested positive. thankfully neither of they have tested positive. as the lines show you, this virus has totally overwhelmed this country's testing capacity. the white house is once again scrambling with its strategy and messaging. >> we're nearly two years into this pandemic, you're a year into the presidency. empty shelves and no test kits in some places three days before christmas when it's so important. is that good enough? >> no, nothing has been good enough. >> i know you'll get together with the children and the grandchildren for the holiday. how will that work? will you all rapid test before you're together? >> yes. i'm doing it almost every day. >> is your hope that for the millions of americans trying to get tested before the holiday that they'll be able to -- >> they won't be able to do it -- the number of tests available, i've ordered half a billion of them. >> getting those tests manufactured and districted is simply going to take time. president biden wouldn't call the administration's testing strategy a failure, though our friends at politico's playbook noted he's been promising to fix the lack of testing capacity in the u.s. since he took office. >> our national strategy puts on -- us on a war footing to aggressively speed up our covid-19 response, especially on vaccines and testing and reopening our schools. we continue to work on making at-home testing available. we're going to deploy things like testing to expand detection of the virus. i'm taking steps tonight to make testing more available, more affordable, and more convenient. the third piece of this is making free at-home tests more available than ever before and having them covered by your private insurance plans. among the other things we know that has to be done is more testing because omicron spreads easily, especially among the unvaccinated. it's critically important we know who's infected. that means we need more testing. >> the silver lining, new research is suggesting that omicron is less severe than delta and the fda approval of two new treatments in the past two days is also helpful. let's kick things off with the latest of our team of reporters. pete williams is also here as the supreme court is going to take up challenges to the white house's mask and vaccine mandates in january. let me start with you, josh letterman. it was interesting what a difference 24 hours makes, josh, after the president did his covid remarks before he would not accept the idea that they had done anything wrong with testing, and then in the sitdown with abc, there was a little acknowledgment, yeah, we wish we ordered these two months sooner. >> reporter: yeah. they've been trying to walk a dell kalt line on this because part of the argue. we hear from the white house why they don't have enough tests for all americans is that they say that, look, when these home antigen tests came on the market and were first approved, that there wasn't enough demand from americans to really merit ramping up production. it is true there is a lot of testing taking place in the united states. there's a distinction that the white house would like to make between the tests, these pcr tests where you go to the lab, the doctor, or a drive-through and get tested, and these at-home tests that are in such demand as people are heading into the holidays. we heard president biden last night in that interview trying to acknowledge what i think everyone who's trying to get a covid test right now realizes, which is there's not enough and that that is an oversight without continue seeding that there's something they could have and should have done earlier that they did not. but the fact of the matter is here we are on christmas eve eve with everyone trying to decide right now whether or not it's safe for them to gath we are their families and travel. and there are more questions than there are answers about this testing strategy. >> who's making the 500 million tests? they don't have contracts yet, but jen psaki said a few minutes ago they're not worried about that. they think they can get those tests. who is building this website where we're all going to go and order these tests? we recall what happened with the obamacare rollout the obama administration. that's not an easy thing to build. what happens after you get a test? 300 million americans. is that amount of tests enough? they're trying to answer those questions even as americans need those tests right now. >> josh, they've invoked the defense production act. what does that help with by doing that? will it fast track it or, you know, we'll get to this with jacob ward, but there is only so much that can be done at this point? >> well, that is a big part of it. actually, what the white house has been saying about that is that earlier on, they could have invoked the defense production act. it's really only in this last year and more recently than that that we've had these tests. the dpa is effective when they need to force companies to do something they wouldn't otherwise do. but the white house sees this as a demand issue, that until recently there wasn't the demand of companies to want to ramp up production, and now there clearly is so they're hoping some of that will take care of itself as production of these at-home tests starts to pick up in the next few months. >> let me move to kathy park, who is seeing the testing for on demand on the ground in new york city. there are people standing in line, depending on their result, that will determine if they get on a plane or in a car or stay home. >> reporter: absolutely right. here we are in new york. infections are soaring once again. more than 28,000 wednesday alone, which is another record. as these numbers continue to kline, the covid testing lines, well, they're not getting any shorter. we are out here hours ago. in fact, there were some people out here earlier than us, around 6:00, and they started seeing these first patients at 9:00 this morning. keep in mind, it is cold out here so they are braving the cold and also these long wait times to see if they're covid free. here's what one woman told us today. take a listen. were you prepared to wait in line? >> double hat, double glove bs tea. >> you did this before? >> sunday. >> reporter: what was that like? >> 2 1/2 hours. >> reporter: same location? >> same location. i was hoping if i got here earlier today i would get in in an hour or so. maybe it will still happen. i don't know. they're moving quicker. we had to preregister last time. this time we didn't have to so maybe they've figured out a better process. >> reporter: chuck, listen to this. we heard from a new york city health official yesterday and they told us that they are processing 170,000 covid tests each day now, which is another record in itself. the previous record was for 120,000 tests. but there is some good news. help is already here in the city. across all of the boroughs, they are distributing thousands of free covid tests. they had 2,000 available at five different locations. the mayor has also pledged that there will be 112 covid testing sites by the end of the week. and then starting next week, governor kathy hochul said there will be pop-up locations for testing as well as vaccinations at subway stations, something we haven't seen. so the options for folks getting tested, they're expanding, but in the meantime, this is what we're looking at, chuck. long lines. >> yeah. it all feels like it will come online about two weeks after we need it to. kathy park, thanks. let me get to jacob ward. jacob, you're trying to report on sort of the logistics of this, of these at-home tests. i mean, look, the alternative, if you can't get an at-home test, you have to wait in line. we know that testing, that capacity to get the results certainly has been ramped up. you've been looking at the issue of these at-home tests, the way many families are using that to figure out travel plans. what are some of the barriers to ramping up production? >> well, chuck, when i first began looking into just the absolute need here, i looked back at a study from 2020 to ho regard, the roadmap to pandemic resilience, which at the time and still is the most cited number when it comes to the actual testing capacity we are going to require in this country. let me show you those numbers. it turns out if we are going to remobilize the economy and make it so people don't have to stand in line, we'll need 20 million daily tests. that is about one-sixth of the national population. but at the very peak of testing, when we were all-out, flatout testing as many people as possible, about a year ago, we were only doing about 2.2 million daily tests. right now the average is about 1.5 million. i think what we're looking at here, chuck, is a structural failure. we're talking about a world in which we thought somehow market demand was going to regulate out the need for tests such that they would be produced with the numbers we needed. it turns out that everybody got focused on the vaccine and as a result state and local officials began to convert testing facilities into vaccine facilities, then not enough people were vaccinated. now we see varians popping up. now we're in a position where the market is not able to meet the demand. we spoke to a western operations manager for one of the lab-based companies that does pcr testing to talk about the demand they're seeing, and they are going flat out. have a listen. >> two, three weeks ago across the board we were collecting about 25,000, 30,000 covid tests per day. we finished our day today with 120,000 samples collected across the nation. sample increases of about 300% in florida. texas seeing about 400%. southern california about 350% increases from last week alone. definitely seeing a big increase in sample volume. >> the market won't stand in and be ready for this omicron variant or the next variant. in order to do that, we'll have to put an incredible amount of resources on hold and that may not be something that private companies can handle, chuck. >> yeah, well, this was something we discovered at the start of this pandemic. all of that is understandable then. it is harder for a lot of people to understand nearly two years into this. jacob ward, appreciate that. let me bring in pete williams. pete, the supreme court announced it will take up a hearing on the president's mandates, both of vaccine, mask mandates and do it soirnl in the first part of january. is there anything to read into that on the speed with which the supreme court said it would hear arguments on this, and does that tell you anything? >> in terms of the outcome, no, i don't think it does. i think it may be a reflection of the fact that the court has gotten so much criticism for deciding these issues on what's called the shadow or emergency docket, without oral argument. the court is basically saying, okay, these are coming to us on emergency applications. let's have a hearing. it's very accelerated. it will ruin a lot of lawyers' christmas vacations getting ready for this january 7th argument. the court wasn't even scheduled to hear anything that day. not scheduled until the following week. in terms of what we learn from what the court has done in the past, the past cases have largely been claims of constitutional violations. remember the early ones about limiteding public gatherings, a lot of churches objected, the supreme court shut down a lot of those objections or a lot of those claims from the states and forced them to open up, for example, allowing more people into churches. then you had the second wave of state regulations, people challenging vaccine mandates in universities or for health care workers or teachers or so forth in the states. again, the supreme court has allowed those restrictions in place. so the new batch of cases is really a question not of the constitution but in terms of interpreting federal laws. does the osha law give them the legal authority to impose this on employers with more than 100 employees. does the federal health care law give the government the authority to say anybody who treats medicare and medicaid patients has to be vaccinated so they don't spread the disease to people they're treating? you can't tell from past cases how they'll answer those. >> pete, we won't get an answer to the question about whether the federal government can mandate a vaccine. we'll get an answer about whether it's osha that can do this? >> yes. but it's specific to each one. remember, the osha one was challenged. a federal appeals court shut it down. another one said you can do it. osha has started to take enforcement action there. it's a very simple question. does osha have the authority to do it? the appeals courts have divided on that. one said no, the other said yes, so the supreme court will have to decide that. in the medicare and medicaid question, that's also in the lower courts. it's in effect in half the state bus not the other half because the appeals courts are divided on whether the federal health authorities have the legal power to do this. >> how quickly should we expect resolution? the arguments are january 7th. >> yes. >> obviously, it will be quicker than usual. what is that? >> so this is the supreme court at warp speed agreeing to take these cases so fast. i think we'll get a quick decision as well, perhaps a couple of weeks, a month or so. >> pete williams. only in the supreme court is a couple of weeks or a month or so is the quick decision. thanks for getting us started. breaking news in the kim potter trial out of minneapolis. we head there where shaquille brewster has been covering that story. word of an outcome. i didn't hear the v-word, verdict. >> reporter: exactly right, chuck. it was a note that came from the court a couple minutes ago telling us that an outcome has been reached in this trial and we'll learn what that outcome is by 3:00 p.m. eastern time today. now, you mentioned they did not use the verdict word. we're trying to see if that's standard procedure or if we can read anything into that, but there is an outcome in this case after about 27 hours of deliberations. this is a jury that has been remarkably silent for the past day at least. yesterday not getting any notes from them, only confirmation that they deliberated for more than nine hours yesterday. but over the course of their deliberations, they have asked the court at least three questions, one of them signaling they were struggling to reach a consensus, another was asking for more information or more access to the firearm that kim potter used when she killed 20-year-old daunte wright. just to back up a little bit, potter is facing two counts of manslaughter, first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter. they carry a maximum penalty of about 15 years in prison. lyle experts worn even if she is convicted it is unlikely she will see anything close to that 15-year period, likely something about half that. but as we know, the court is saying that there is an outcome that has been reached. we'll learn about it within the next two hours. until then, we continue to wait, chuck. >> shaquille brewster with that significant development. we've been following three trials this week, wondering if we would get verdicts this week. at least an outcome in one of them. we'll find out at 3:00. up next, what we still don't know about omicron as more data provides further evidence that the delta variant continues to pose a much larger health threat to us. and later, as the door shuts on 2021, the retirement floodgate. nearly two dozen house democrats. are you tired of clean clothes that just don't smell clean? what if your clothes could stay fresh for weeks? now they can. downy unstopables in-wash scent boosters keep your laundry smelling fresh waaaay longer than detergent alone. pour a cap of downy unstopables into your washing machine before each load. and enjoy fresher smelling laundry. if you want laundry to smell fresh for weeks make sure you have downy unstopables in-wash scent boosters. shop online for downy unstopables, including our new, lighter scent. omicron is the dominant strain in the united states. it is spreading fast, but more data from research teams in three countries -- south africa, where it was first detected, england and scotland -- back up the idea it may be a milder form of the virus. the results of each study, while preliminary and not peer reviewed, showed the variant was less likely to send people to the hospital. dr. offit from the children's hospital of philadelphia joins us. help us out with the science here. i saw one write-up, you know, we're all amateur epidemiologists these days in the media world, but that one potential explanation for why omicron is less severe it doesn't affect the lungs first. is that the scientific explanation for this potential outcome? >> well, certainly there are data that have been generated that show the virus is better able to reproduce itself in the upper respiratory fact than in the lungs. the more likely scenario is you're dealing with a population that is pretty highly immune either from nach value immunization or vaccination. omicron, you would have a milder infection, i think it will protect against severe infection. that's another possibility. we're seeing a disproportional relationship between cases which are high and severe cases, meaning hospitalizations and death, which aren't as concomitantly as high. >> the idea that omicron at least will burn itself out, the south african version of the cdc, eventually said, hey, this thing went up like the north face of everest and it's coming down as if you're going down the south face here. is that the outcome we should expect around the world that omicron comes and goes, it's going to spread fast, but it goes quickly? >> could be. that was true in south africa during the delta variant as well. we saw a dramatic increase in cases, hospitalizations, deaths, then decrease. same for delta. dramatic increased cases, hospitalizations, deaths, then decreases. here with omicron, it's somewhat reassuring, a dramatic increase in cases, not concomitantly as high in hospitalizations and deaths for the reasons we talked about. i think you'll see a lot of upper respiratory infections that are mild. i think you'll see increase in cases in winter anyway. it's a winter virus and people are susceptible and we're doing more testing. this particular vaccine doesn't protect against mild disease as well as against this virus. if you get a beaster dose, that's much better protection. i think people should be reassured even if they've had only two doses and haven't had a chance to get a booster dose, they're likely to be protected against severe infection. >> endemic, are we already there? >> i think we're getting there. this is the ninth coronavirus that has sort of left the animal population and spilled into our population. we have four strains of human coronavirus circulating in this country every year, probably casualty for cases in our hospital every year. i think we will move to an endemic infiction. i think eventually we'll get used to the fact that people are going to have asymptomatic infection or mildly symptomatic infection and not try to test them all the time and isolate them all the time and we'll feel more comfortable with grandfathering that in. look what we do with flu every year. two year before this hurt, about 60,000 deaths from influenza, which in a sense is grandfathered in. we mask and social distance every winter to reduce the risk of influenza. >> as we proved in 2020. we were a living experiment on that with the flu then we're sort of back to normal there. dr. peter hotez on my program a couple days ago indicated we're seeing the booster waning faster. it may not last six months, maybe three months. he's concerned about health care workers. i'm curious if you concur with that opinion and if that means we're looking at boosters every three to six months for a while. >> the question is what do we want from this vaccine? if it's protection against serious illness, we're not going to need frequent boosters. if what we want from the vaccine is to protect against all symptomatic illness, yes, but that shouldn't be the goal. i think we were fooled in many ways by the so-called phase three studies presented to our committee a year ago. so when pfizer did its 40,000-person study and moderna its 30,000-person studies, resip i did notes received their second dose. looking at protection against mild illness, it was 95% effective for those vaccines. that would never hold up because neutralizing antibodies fade, protection against mild illness fade, and the goal is protecting mild illness, we'll be giving frequent boosterings but that doesn't make a lot of sense. >> look, at least in our anecdotal world here locally in washington, d.c., it's a lot of teenagers that are getting the omicron first, unboosted teenagers. are we going to say we should have said yes to the boosters about three weeks ago? >> i think it offers you an increase in neutralizing antibodies for a relatively short period of time to protect against mild illness. do we want this war on the young against mild illness? does that serve us? is that the goal of the vaccine? the more reasonable goal is protection against serious illness, keep you out of doctors' offices, the hospital, the icu, keep you from burdenening the health care system. it's the goal for every other vaccine we have. this is the first vaccine we've tried to protect against mild illness for a long period of time. >> as my oldest will tell you, dr. offit, strep throat was a lot more debilitating last month for my oldest than the covid positive was. so therefore it reinforces what you're saying. dr. offit, appreciate you coming on. a lot of people are wondering what to do. i think this helps. thank you. >> thank you. up next, vladimir putin meets the press. what the russian leader said in his closely watched end of the-year marathon press conference about invading ukraine. the great highway. all they need is a bike and a full tank of gas. their only friend? the open road. i have friends. 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ask your health care provider today about once-weekly ozempic®. oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! you may pay as little as $25 for a 3-month prescription. ♪ ♪ 'tis the season to break tradition in a cadillac. don't just put on a light show—be the light show. make your nights anything but silent. and ride in a sleigh that really slays. because in a cadillac, tradition is yours to define. so visit a cadillac showroom, and start celebrating today. ♪ ♪ welcome back. as the u.s. and our nato allies anticipate russia's next move toward ukraine, vladimir putin says it's up to the west do to de-escalate tensions in the region, although it is his country's troops at ukraine's border. at his annual press conference which lasted nearly four hours, he said the ball is in their court to respond to russia's security guarantees. he blamed the u.s. and nato for the escalating situation and insists it does not want an armed conflict with ukraine. it comes as russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops along the border with ukraine. keir simmons has sparred a time or two with mr. putin himself. so, you know, keir, it's akin to the russians have take an hostage, amassed troops on the border with ukraine, and said don't make us shoot. is that the message he's trying to send? >> reporter: such a good analogy, chuck. today we saw a kind of diplomatic carrot and stick, so on the one hand saying, you know, talks with washington, with the west are gaining traction, but on the other hand, sounding just as belligerent as he did in my interview with him earlier this year and as he, frankly, always does. the real question with president putin and everyone is asking whether those troops amassed on the border really are intended for an invasion or whether they are part of a negotiation. it is almost impossible to know. but when i think today we really saw president putin most starkly when he was asked by a european reporter whether no matter what happens in negotiations, he would guarantee that there would be no invasion of ukraine. that's when he gave that answer you mentioned where he says, well, the ball's in your court. that's when he said -- and he was talking kind of directly to washington, even to president biden, it's you who must give us guarantees and give them immediately now. i think what you see there is it really president putin's end game. just in the past few weeks we've seen russia, the kremlin, release this plan, this draft treaty that makes uncompromising demands like, for example, that nato shouldn't expand eastward, that it shouldn't cooperate with eastern european countries. president putin wants to right the wrongs as he sees it of the gorbachev era and reinstate russia's power over eastern europe and plainly that is not something that washington can agree to. >> you know, keir, is the threat of not getting that pipeline, not being able to essentially become one of europe's leading energy providers, is that threat the exit ramp for him, or does he need one more big leap to pull back? >> reporter: that's a great question because it goes to the point that, you know, the truth is we can't deny this, the kremlin, russia does have a lot of leverage. they dominate gas supplies to europe. whether or not that new pine line goes ahead, and it's almost finished. and that, by the way, points to the fact that particularly western europe will be incredibly reluctant to put in energy-related sanctions, for example, against russia because of the damage it would do to europe itself. so that's where president putin really understands something. he kind of understands that the u.s. and western europe have to negotiate in some way, and, again, back to the point, the question is where is president putin trying to get to in these negotiations? one of the points, i think is really important, chuck, washington and president biden is trying to pivot towards china, confronting china. there is not an alliance between russia and china, but as everybody knows from theory of war, if you're trying to fight on two fronts it's more difficult than one front. president putin understands that the west needs to close down the questions with him if they want to focus on beijing, and he wants to keep those questions until he gets what he wants. >> it's quite the conundrum. europe can't afford to cut that energy off. he can't afford to go to war either and not have that pipeline. keir simmons reporting for us on the ground. thank you. coming up, the democrats' words are expressing confidence they'll stay in power after the midterms, but their feet are telling a different story. more members are rev deciding to retire than run for election. al prosper during their most important time of year. when you switch to t-mobile and bring your own device, we'll pay off your phone up to $1000. you can keep your phone. keep your number. and get your employees connected on the largest and fastest 5g network. plus, we give you $200 in facebook ads on us! so you can reach more customers, create more opportunities, and finish this year strong. visit your local t-mobile store today. [music: sung by craig robinson] ♪ i'm a ganiac, ganiac, check my drawers ♪ish this year strong. [sfx: sniffs] ♪ and my clothes smell so much fresher than before ♪ try gain flings and you'll be a gainiac too! the only detergent with oxiboost and febreze. (vo) singing, or speaking. reason, or fun. daring, or thoughtful. sensitive, or strong. progress isn't either or progress is everything. nicorette knows, quitting smoking is freaking hard. you get advice like: just stop. go for a run. go for 10 runs! run a marathon. instead, start small. with nicorette. which can lead to something big. start stopping with nicorette. welcome back. ahead of the mid-terps, watching how many members of congress choose to retire can be a pretty good indicator of how confident the party in power is about staying in power. the number of democrats heading for the exits right now is not a sign of congress. 23 house democrats will not be seeking re-election next november. the list includes some members who are running for higher office, and it includes three committee chairs and a whole lot of seniority. it's not that all are worried about losing, for some it may be they don't want to serve in the minority. looking at historical data, house republicans had 23 members opting out of another term at this same point in 2017. and what happened a year later, republicans lost 40 house seats and the majority of the 2018 midterm. january 2018 saw nine more retirements among republicans and we are expecting more democrats will be walking away next year after spending time with their family the question is how many. larry, you and i spent years i guess decades now looking at signs that help us forecast. and when you look at what we're seeing develop for this midterm, boy, this december looks like december 2017. you know, but just in the mirror image. things didn't look good for democrats in december 2013, if you will, nor december 2009. nothing's baked, but how worried should democrats be? >> oh, i don't think we need to tell them they should be worried because they are worried with good reason. this is just another indicator that democrats probably will have a bad year in 2022. i say "probably" because in our business, chuck, we all have a vivid imagination. we can't imagine the things that will happen in the next ten months so you have to add an asterisk, but you would much rather be republicans than democrats right now. and let's remember, redistricting is part of this too. some of those members, you know, they're getting hundreds of thousands of new constituents and it's a lot of work. it takes a lot of money to introduce yourself to new people. some of them have served 10, 20 or more years. maybe they do want to spend time with their families, although i've often thought we ought to survey the families. i don't know whether they're happy that some of them are coming home. yeah. >> you know, it is interesting, and, yes, redistricting is a fair point there. when was the last time a midterm changed trajectory on us halfway through? you know, i get you on the failure imagination and you sit there and are like, okay, but when did we have one where you're like, oh, wow, new information took place in the last six to eight months. so i guess the question is when does this trajectory change have to happen to give democrats a fighting chance? >> well, the last time it happened, at least in my view, is for the 2002 midterm election. bush lost the popular vote. he was relatively popular but not really until 9/11. now, republicans had been expecting to lose the house. they only had a majority of three or four, so democrats had every reason to think they could take control in 2002. the senate slipped because of jim jefferds became an independent with the caucus. but the house was expected to flip. well, 9/11 happened, and while we would never hope for anything like that, dramatic events that are completely unexpected can rarely turn things around. i agree, it would be rare. >> we are living in a traumatic event, some might argue two of them if you look at donald trump and the threat of democracy. but the pandemic, you know, to me this is the wild card, right. we're living the wild card in this moment. but it's also the wild card on whether we don't know if voters, if we're in the middle of the pandemic we'll vote on the pandemic, but if we're in a moment where it suddenly things don't look so bad, they seem to ignore the pandemic. >> well, you never know how they'll react. i suppose voters are like the press and those who observe politics. we focus on the bad news. you know, you focus on the plane that crashes, not the 29,000 that land safely. the same is true in politics. you focus on the bad news. now, at some point, the pandemic is going to get better. famous last words, but it should. and it could be in the next six to eight months in time to affect the midterms, assuming the economy moves along with it. and, you know, there are already some good signs in the economy. so you can spin a scenario as the democrats do whereby they're not as endangered as it appears right now. but, again, they only have a majority of five. you know, it's really tough to imagine how they hold on. >> how quickly do you think the democratic -- the private democratic mantra is, hey, we're going to hold both the house and the senate and they say. i privately just give money to the senate candidates. >> politicians are good at putting on a public face and tend to tell the truth in private. i doubt that changes before the election. maybe there will be one or two who defect from the party line and are honest, you know, on "meet the press," chuck. i'm sure that will happen there. >> i do my best. it's as honest as we can get them to be. thanks, sabato. enjoy the holiday season and have a happy new year, sir. >> same to you, chuck. >> my crystal ball says you'll have a happy one. "meet the press" will be all over the midterms in 2022 watching the trajectories of both party, who's in, who's out, who's voting and staying home. it will be a great year for covering politics but it will be a roller coaster. you're watching "meet the press daily." at least my shoes look good! looking good start with bounce wrinkleguard, the megasheet designed to prevent wrinkles in the dryer. firefighter maggie gronewald knows how to handle dry weather... ...and dry, cracked skin. new gold bond advanced healing ointment. restore healthy skin, with no sticky feeling. gold bond. champion your skin. i've spent centuries evolving with the world. that's the nature of being with nthe economy.ling. observing investors choose assets to balance risk and reward. with one element securing portfolios, time after time. gold. agile and liquid. a proven protector. an ever-evolving enabler of bold decisions. an asset more relevant than ever before. gold. your strategic advantage. welcome back. you are looking live at the courtroom in minneapolis where an outcome has been reached in the kim potter trial. we are expecting that outcome to be officially read in court between 2:30 and 3:00 eastern. potter, the 26-year police veteran, is charged with manslaughter after killing daunte wright. she says she mistakenly shot wright with her gun when she thought she was reaching for her taser. msnbc will have live coverage with this breaking news from the court in the next hour. it is their words using "outcome," not the word "verdict." coming up, where would we all now be if certain moments in history never happened at all? we're giving you a sneak peek at the special series of the chuck todd cast, "meet the alternative history." that's next. you're watching snow show. atchi. f vicks sinex. instantly clear everyday congestion. and try vicks sinex children's saline. safe and gentle relief for children's noses. nurse mariyam sabo knows a moment this pure... ...demands a lotion this pure. new gold bond pure moisture lotion. 24-hour hydration. no parabens, dyes, or fragrances. gold bond. champion your skin. at progressive, we love your pets as much as you do, like this guy in a hat. that's why progressive car insurance covers your pets for up to $1,000 if they're ever in a car accident with you. this mini majorette's gonna march her way right into your heart. -i'm sorry. can we stop? i know that we're selling car insurance here, but, you know, all the cute little animals, it's too much. define "too much." what's wrong with cute animals? -so are we doing this or what? -nah, it's over. [ sighs ] well, someone's got to break the news to mittens. [ squeaks softly ] she's a diva. [ mittens squeaking ] super emma just about sleeps in her cape. but when we realized she was battling sensitive skin, we switched to tide hygienic clean free. it's gentle on her skin, and out cleans our old free detergent. tide hygienic clean free. hypoallergenic and safe for sensitive skin. small businesses like yours make gift-giving possible. now, comcast business has an exclusive gift for you. introducing the gift of savings sale. for a limited time, ask how to get a great deal for your business. and get up to a $500 prepaid card with select bundles when you switch to the network that can deliver gig speeds to the most businesses. or get started with internet and voice for $64.99 per month with a 2-year price guarantee. give your business the gift of savings today. comcast business. powering possibilities. if you could give me some dance lessons you would be saving my life. how do i know that you're legit? ♪ ♪ yeah, that's more like it. welcome back. as you gather with family and friends in the coming days, consider having a little fun, and we're not talking about politics, but wonky fun with a conversation about alternative history. what if jfk had lived? what if bill and hillary clinton had not gotten married? what if antonin scalia had not died in 2016? we created a special series on my podcast to discuss that, we're calling it "alternative history." you can listen to the first episode, what if bill clinton had resigned amid the monica lewinsky scandal in 1998? jeff greenfield has written books on scenarios like this. he's a five-time emmy-winning network journalist and now a columnist for politico. he joins me now. jeff, military planners war-game scenarios all the time and in some ways alternative histories i guess are the way journalists and historians sort of war-game things. but you've written some alternative history. and as a historian and political analyst, why do you do it? and why isn't it just simply fiction in your mind? >> if you do it right, it teaches you two things. one, the incredibly contingent nature of history. over and over again, tiny changes would have resulted in enormous consequences. if it hadn't stopped raining in dallas, that bubble top would have stayed on john kennedy's limousine. if elian gonzalez' mother had survived there wouldn't have been a custody controversy that probably cost al gore 15 or 20,000 votes in state he lost by 500. the second thing it teaches you is how critical character and temperament is. you take the same conditions and put a different person in and you get a different results. if lyndon johnson was in charge of the cuban missile crisis because john kennedy was almost killed before he even got to be president, with his values, his understanding, his trust in the military, you might have had a totally different outcome. apart from being kind of fun, i think it teaches a lot of stuff about history. >> i brought up one scenario in 2000. we were joking here, i'm going to hopefully use the term correctly, there's a kaleidoscope of different butterfly effects. you've got the butterfly ballot, all sorts on that one. but let's work the bill clinton scenario, because my goodness, the first question i think people have asked me is, does 9/11 happen? >> again, in my view, despite a president al gore's enormous efforts to stop it, if he was very hawkish about al qaeda, he had been there as vice president. i talked to richard clarke about an e-book i wrote about the possible gore presidency. too many of the elements who were in place to completely stop it, which leads to a second conclusion, that because he had been there for eight years, there might have been a lot more political criticism of a president gore than there was of president george w. bush after 9/11. >> and then it sets up a whole bunch of other things. does george w. bush even run for president in 2000 against a sitting president gore? >> my feeling is at that point, the collective republican establishment, which still actually picked presidents back then, unlike now, probably still would have found a texas governor with appeal to hispanics a credible candidate. but the other part about that is, you know, without bill clinton's hovering over the 2000 campaign, how do you run a campaign where your principal theme is, as george w. bush's was, i will restore honesty and integrity to the white house? does that work with a president gore as opposed to an outgoing president clinton? >> i think both you and i agree al gore doesn't go to iraq. barack obama was one of the few that stood up to republicans early on and said, boy, iraq is a mistake. if he doesn't have that moment, do we have a president barack obama? >> given his age, we might have a barack obama in 2024. he was an outsize political talent. but the point you are making, and it's really critical, i think, if you do alternate history right, is you have to play out all the contingencies. you can't just say we'll put this person in place of this person. for instance, would john kennedy, had he lived, gotten out of vietnam? people say, look what happened in '65, there was an attack on the marines. kennedy would have had 14 months to try to figure out some way to de-escalate vietnam, which he was very much inclined to do, i believe. so your point is very well-taken. you can play everyone out. would hillary clinton have gotten into politics, is a good example. would john mccain -- by the way, al gore could not have run in 2004. >> there might have been a constitutional question about that. i'm up against a hard break. as a former network guy, you get this. it's a pleasure to partner with you on this, jeff greenfield. catch more of jeff and i's conversation about some of these what-it's on the chuck todd cast. that does it for me. msnbc's coverage continues with katy tur and current history being made right now. we'll forgive you for that, chuck. good to be with you, i'm katy tur. the jury has reached a decision in the trial of kim potter, the former minneapolis police officer on trial for manslaughter. you'll recall potter shot and killed daunte wright during a traffic stop when wright jumped back into his c

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