the virus after another infection from the election night super-spreader and new alarms over increased fatalities amid staffing shortages at hospitals around the country when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. we've never really been where we are before in this country. if you're feeling strange, i am, lots of people i know are, there's good reason for that. in "the new york times" legendary report thomas ed sell interviewed a host of scholars and historians, people who study democracy and authoritarianism here and across the world, who characterize trump's refusal to concede as both unprecedented and extraordinarily dangerous. while we've had close and contested elections, one said, we have never had a completely manufactured controversy based on no evidence whatsoever, purely to remain in power and to overturn a legitimate election. so the question of what world we now live in is not an easily answerable one and it's deeply slight-producing. if trump continues to deny joe biden's victory and his legitimacy, another expert said, it will be a brutal renunciation of american democracy. it would create not simply a fissure but a chasm in the nation's politics and government. the way that american elections usually work in a kind of functional, institutional, traditional sense, not a legal sense, is that votes are counted and the media organizations make calls based on those counts, and then the people that lose concede. and that is what's happening now. it's been happening all over the country in thousands of different races, republican and democrat. for example, today first-term democratic congressman max rose, who you may have seen on our show a number of times, conceded in a very, very tough, hard-fought race that he called to congratulate his republican opponent. now, they haven't certified the race yet. legally it's not done. he could keep fighting. he could say there's tons of voter fraud or some mysterious conspiracy against me to take away the legitimacy, but he's not. because when you realize you can't win, you concede. now, donald trump can't win either, but of course he's incapable of accepting that fact. trump already lost this election by a pretty big margin. he's likely going to lose it by even more when all votes are counted. president-elect joe biden has 3.5% point lead over trump in the popular voight. that's a healthy win. that's more than obama in 2012. it may well hit four points or even five because of where the outstanding votes are in heavily democratic places like chicago, new york, and illinois. in the state of georgia, biden's got a 14,000 vote lead and while the state has not been called and the republican secretary of state plans a hand recount, that same secretary of state also said he didn't believe the recount would change the vote tally in georgia. and good for him for saying that because he's right. biden's also up by 11,000 votes in arizona. a call there could come anytime. he is likely to have 306 electoral votes when all is said and done, a pretty big cushion when you need 270. but the republican party is just kind of allowing perhaps the most notorious liar in american history to just keep denying reality and attacking the fundamentals of american democracy, unchallenged, day after day, without any real kind of concerted intervention. that's something that former president barack obama says he finds more disturbing than the current president's refusal to accept reality. >> what are these false claims of widespread election fraud doing to our country right now? >> they appear to be motivated in part because the president doesn't like to lose and never admits loss. i'm more troubled by the fact that other republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion. it is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming biden administration but democracy generally, and that's a dangerous path. >> to give you a sense of how wildly insane what president trump and his allies are doing, i want to take you back to 2004. i was there at the time. it's when john kerry lost to george w. bush. he lost by one state, ohio, okay? and there was a huge difference between what the exit polls had said and what had been said -- what happened in the election. so on the left, there was speculation that bush had stolen the election, specifically in ohio where some claimed the company diebold which makes voting machines had manipulated vote counts. there was reason at the time people were shocked by the victory, and i understand why people started looking for this as an idea, right? a lot of the claims that were made were on the website daily cost. there just wasn't any evidence to back it up. it increasingly became clear this was a conspiracy theory and kind of a dangerous one. the founder of that site, he eventually just stepped in and banned all of the blog posts, the so-called diaries on his site that were pushing the conspiracy, later saying the same discredited, so-called facts regurgitated over and over again, i finally got tired of that. i thought it was destructive. that's the guy running an extremely progressive blog in 2004 being a far better gatekeeper of truth and discourse and responsible treatment of american democracy than the current president and the entire institutional republican party with some notable exceptions. and now the top u.s. cybersecurity official who works on election security and sought to combat election misinformation is reportedly telling people he expects to be fired. that guy, chris krebs, who is still employed as of tonight, and shows you can retain your integrity even while serving the government under trump, today re-tweeted this. please don't re-tweet wild and baseless claims about voting machines even if they're made by the president. that's fantasies have been debunked many times, and they are being made by the president. earlier today in a claim that was flagged by twitter, trump claim claimed a lie. one way to see what a con it is, is to look at what the trump lawyers are saying in court versus what they're saying on twitter and trump tv. when they walk into court where they're under oath and where they're lawyers whose bar certifications are on the line, the language is a lot different. a trump lawyer saying in a case in arizona today, this is not a fraud case. we are not alleging fraud. we are not saying anyone is trying to steal the election. donald trump lost this election. there is no doubt. he is still the president, and while president, he and along with his enablers is waging an unprecedented attack on the foundations of our system of democratic legitimacy. so it's understandable if you're a little freaked out by that. so what i want to do next is talk about what the law says. what are some of the benchmarks coming up for certifying the election and what if anything trump can try to do to stop them. here to help me do that, msnbc election law analyst edward fol foley. ned, we really are seeing like the distance between how we as normal people experience an election normally and what the law says about when an election a done. because of the president's refusal to concede, we're getting a window into this. what happens with the states and their elections and them saying basically it's over and going to the electoral college. >> good to be with you, chris. so certification of the returns is the first step. the date for that varies state to state because states get to control the process. sometimes it's two weeks. sometimes it's three weeks. a couple of states have already done that. it starts at the county level and has to build to the state level for each state. eventually all of that ends up with the appointment of lectors based on the statewide certi certification of the popular vote in each state. and federal law looks for that to be done by december 8 to give states five weeks before november 3rd, election day, and that date, december 8, which is sometimes called the safe harbor deadline because if states meet that date, they get the benefit of congress saying, we're not going to second-guess your decision. so states can do that before december 8. some do. we could talk about recounts and other processes, but the basic thing is just the certification. >> so let me ask you this. when you say states, who is the one doing the certifying? >> it's usually the secretary of state. sometimes it's something called a state canvassing board. again it starts -- there's certification at the local level with the county boards of elections. but in a presidential election, you need that statewide certification, and usually secretaries of state, sometimes a board. >> so we've seen a few lawsuits. i'm going to talk with the next guest about the particulars. but we've seen a few lawsuits in the trump campaign trying to sort of jam a crowbar into the machinery of certification, particularly in counties, particularly i would note in predominantly african-american counties, and say, they can't certify, i think as a means of trying to throw those votes out and certify the votes without it. that strikes me as a wild hail mary that's not going to have a chance. what do you think? >> correct. it's not going to work for a couple of reasons. the basic -- i mentioned december 8. but six days later is december 14. that's the date the electors meet to officially vote for president in each state. as long as the lectors that are pledged to biden meet that day, they can send their votes to congress, and the congress can accept them on january 6. so if for some strange reason -- i don't think it's going to happen -- in a statement there's a derailment of the certification, the electors can still meet. congress will have to recognize their validity despite the attempt at derailment. so this idea of trying to delay and somehow deprive biden of his victory by not having certification is just not going to work. >> that is a very concrete and welcome answer. here's the second question. it's about this notion that the state legislators are going to just step in, and they would have to do it in two or three states, depending on which states, and say, no, people of georgia, no, people of arizona, no, people of wisconsin, we reject your vote. this election was so tainted by fraud that we will step m ain a award our electors to donald trump and send them to the electoral college. what about that? >> that won't work either because it can't deprive the biden electors from meeting. the only thing that could do is create a rival slate of electors that could send their submission to congress. but then it's up to congress to pick which of the submissions to accept. by my analysis, i think there's no doubt that on january 6 when congress meets, congress is going to accept the biden submission, and i could explain it in more detail why that's true. >> can you give me the fast version? >> sure. so basically if both houses of congress accept the same submission, that controls. so we know the house of representatives is going to accept the biden submission if there's a conflict. and i think we can now be confident that the senate will as well. that's because four republican senators have already come out and congratulated president-elect biden's victory. and i think you can count on them to do the right thing. >> i see. right. so there's enough that have come out to say, yes, biden's the next president such that the math in the senate won't work either. this delayed certification and choose the electors are essentially both dead ends. that is my takeaway from our discussion. >> that's exactly right. >> all right. >> that's because the senate -- >> i'm going to start talking to you about covid because i try to have these covid conversations where people make me feel better, and it never works out that way. so thank you, ned foley. i appreciate it. >> for more on the president's legal challenges, i'm join by a law professor at fordham school of law. i've lost count of these lawsuits but it's always hard with trump hijinks of like they're equal parts clownish and kind of terrifying. how would you characterize this body of lawsuits they've pursued? >> well, the body, i would describe in the technical term of meritless. you know, so they can't even come up with a solid anecdote of either fraud or votes not being counted. and they really, based upon the numbers you showed at the top of the show, they would have to be showing a massive criminal conspiracy of tens -- frankly of hundreds of thousands of votes to raise the questions on these flee different pa three different paths to 270. one example is in pennsylvania and in michigan the last couple of days, lawyers have presented witnesses that simply ask questions about whether their votes were counted. judges then turn to those lawyers and said, are you alleging fraud? and here's the great things about having these court cases. those lawyers know they'll be sanctioned for misrepresentations or lies. both of those lawyers retreated and said, no. one lawyer said, to my knowledge at present, no. >> right. >> when asked directly, they are denying that they're alleging fraud. >> right. and i mean you even got people who are coming to testify saying that they think their vote wasn't counted, and then being asked like, well are you sure your vote wasn't count and them being like, no, i don't know. that doesn't work. >> that totally doesn't work. you aren't going to be able to raise any questions about the states at this margin. keep in mind the margins in arizona and in georgia, as you said, they're over 10,000 votes. having a couple of cases where people don't know if their votes were counted has frankly been laughed. literally judges are laughing, and one judge said, come on now in response to some of the trump's lawyers' claims. go ahead. >> we should just note that there's sort of a funny moment today when the trump campaign filed a lawsuit challenging the votes in wayne county, detroit. not just in a federal court in michigan but in a court which has no jurisdiction in such cases. they just filed in the wrong court. >> yes. we call this the four seasons total lawyering, right? i mean this ploy is effective. if you don't have any substance to your vote fraud claim, then at least you can have just like in the -- just in the four seasons total landscaping, people will be asking you, why are you here? they filed in a court that has absolutely no jurisdiction over these claims. you know, at a certain point, my argument is actually that we should be welcoming these claims precisely because it exposes how little is behind these vote fraud claims. it may be a fiction about whether there was fraud, but the skepticism, that's the larger problem. those are social facts. so the advantage of the trump campaign actually litigating it is it exposes how little they have. it debunks the longer-term republican propaganda about there being rampant voter fraud, which is why they make claims and why the roberts court has ruled in the favor of things like voter i.d. or what they call, you know, vote caging, where they take people off of the rolls. i think this actually plays into a longer-term advantage by being able to raise questions about how illegitimate these claims are. but the last point i'd make is i think democrats want to be careful about sort of denouncing litigation over voter fraud because not just in two years or in four years, but in two months, we're looking at a georgia runoff where i think there are legitimate concerns about voter suppression. kelly loeffler and david perdue wrote a remarkable letter asking for the georgia secretary of state to resign, and i think that was inviting voter suppression. i think democrats want to make sure that when they have this -- when the shoe's on the other foot and the tables are turned -- >> i read your piece making this argument, and i really appreciate the kind of like bring it on and trust that the courts -- i tend to be somewhat cynical and somewhat of a legal realist. i think in this case we're seeing that, like, the law does count for something and you can't just waltz in with total nonsense and expect to get anywhere and i think that's been a reassuring aspect over the last week. jed, thanks for your time tonight. >> thanks for having me. as covid cases soar across the country, the trump administration is actively harming efforts to fight the virus. we'll look at what needs to be done with one of the incoming covid task force members, next. [ whispering ] what's this? oh, are we kicking karly out? we live with at&t. it was a lapse in judgment. at&t, we called this house meeting because you advertise gig-speed internet, but we can't sign up for that here. yeah, but i'm just like warming up to those speeds. you've lived here two years. the personal attacks aren't helping, karly. don't you have like a hot pilates class to get to or something? [ muffled scream ] stop living with at&t. xfinity can deliver gig to the most homes. they prolong the pandemic. that's all i hear about now. that's all i hear. turn on television. covid, covid. covid, covid, covid, covid. a plane goes down. 500 people dead. they don't talk about it. covid, covid, covid, covid. by the way, on november 4th, you won't hear about it anymore. >> that was donald trump's closing pitch to voters in the run-up to the election. the media only talks about covid to hurt me. you will never hear about it after the election. obviously not true then, and as the pandemic continues to spread out of control across the country, it seems as defying public health device and contracting the coronavirus is now a badge of honor for republicans, who want to prove themselves to trump. today trump campaign adviser corey lewandowski became at least the fourth person who attended a crowded, indoor election night party at the white house to test positive for covid. joining housing secretary ben carson and david bossie, who is leaving trump's re-election challenges that are going so well that you heard about in the previous segment as well as former trump campaign adviser healy baumgardner. we wish them all a speedy recovery and good health. but it's not juyesterday joe bo tweeted this out. i'll be having more than ten people at my house at thanksgiving. my address is public record. some family will come from, gasp, new jersey. kids will see their grandparents. cousins will play in the yard. sis in law will bring strawberry rhubarb pie and a turkey will be ov overcooked. we're all human beings with people we love and miss, but also we all have a moral responsibility to keep people safe during a once in a century pandemic, a responsibility that mr. bore ellie and a huge part of the republican party doesn't seem to recognize. on i much larger scale, the republican party's refusal to allow president-elect joe biden to begin his transition is hurting america ability to respond to the pandemic and making things worse for longer. someone who knows firsthand about the damage done by this delay, a professor at the harvard school of public health, now a member of the biden/harris transition covid-19 advisory board. dr. gawande, how do you see what your -- what the incoming administration, which folks like yourself -- what they have to do in the next 65 days to get ready to take the baton, even if it's not passed, on january 20th to fight the virus? >> here's the situation. we got some tremendous good news this week with pfizer results on a vaccine that shows us that there is light at the end of the tunnel. so now that gives us a target. we have to get the country through that tunnel with all the people we can alive and as many jobs as we can saved. we now have a target. and for a scientist and doctor like me, it is enormous relief to see that the vice president-elect harris and president-elect biden have said this is their top priority coming in on day one. and so, you know, what i see is they're moving. >> we got to get through the tunnel. obviously there's no formal power that the president-elect and the vice president-elect have. i'm running out of -- we're all running out of words to describe how bad it is. this is the worst thing we've ever seen in terms of the outbreak. today 151,000 cases. 67,000 people are currently hospitaliz hospitalized. the death toll, 1,100. when you look at that red line there, it's almost vertical case growth. when you look at hospitalizations, it's getting close to vertical. if you look at the positivity rates in these states, it's pretty clear the cases are actually lagging what's really happening. can we ride this -- like it seems the plan is to ride this out. and i guess the question is let's say we do nothing. how bad does it get? >> it's math, and the math is simple, and it's alarming, right? we have a doubling rate of about four weeks on hospitalizations and deaths. that 67,000 you described in a month will be double. and moreover the deaths will go from 1,000 to 2,000 deaths a day. and it's not just about the lives and the harm involved. it's also about the jobs that go along with that. there's data out of michigan today from their hospitals showing that when they followed up 60 days after people got out of the hospital, survivors who had had a job before, 40% of them had lost their job. half of them because the job was no longer there for them, and half of them because they simply couldn't go back to work. it's -- it's damage to our health, and it's long-term health, and it's also the economic damage that's going on. >> so there's a few things that seem to me important. one is a lame duck congress passing some kind of rescue package that would allow local policymakers to make public health informed decisions rather than threading these needles. we're watching them not wanting to kill off the surviving restaurants and bars and gyms. so they're making these half measures. that's one thing. the second thing is what else? i mean it doesn't seem like there's any appetite for lobl lockdowns. if all of maga world went around telling everyone to take certain pr precauti precautions, could that help? >> no. the mix here is we've known it, and it's straightforward. it's masks, and we have to -- we have to start requiring that the businesses enforce masks, that we all come together. you can't just mandate your way into getting everybody to wear a mask, but we got to get it over 90%. if we do, we turn this around. >> wait. let me stop you there. you think if we could hit -- because i'm looking and trying to pull myself away from despair. you think that if we could get mask compliance up to 90%, we could actually break the back of this current curve? >> absolutely. it is very clear. it is very clear. and we have parts of the country where we're up above 90%, 95%, and we have large parts of the country where we're nowhere near there. the critical elements are it's not just outdoors in public. it's also indoors in public, and it has to be combined with, you know -- it's going to be so hard over the holidays when everybody just wants to come together and eat, which means taking off the mask. but, you know, those occasions, the small gatherings, going to restaurants and bars, are the biggest spreaders. and then, you know, add in weddings and other events like that. those are -- that's where testing comes in. hey, if you are going to come together, get tested. testing is much more accessible now. >> yeah. >> and if we get tested, we have a better chance of protecting one another. you have to also follow through that if you test positive, you isolate. >> well, yeah, for the love of god, yes. >> well, but i can tell you i just got off the phone with a state where the infectious disease doctor told me that they're seeing 30% up who are not adhering to isolation after testing positive. this is the thing. we can get through this tunnel, but we've got to have leadership that pulls us together to say, we're in this fight together. >> yeah. >> and come across all of our lines to make that possible. it simply doesn't happen if we don't do that. >> all right. dr. atul gawande, a member of the incoming biden covid task force and a voice of real reason and sanity, thank you very much. >> thank you. the growing shortages of everything from beds to equipment to staff in hospitals across america, next. every minute. understanding how to talk to your doctor about treatment options is key. today, we are redefining how we do things. we find new ways of speaking, so you're never out of touch. it's seeing someone's face that comforts us, no matter where. when those around us know us, they can show us just how much they care. the first steps of checking in, the smallest moments can end up being everything. there's resources that can inform us, and that spark can make a difference. when we use it to improve things, then that change can last within us. when we understand what's possible, we won't settle for less. the best thing we can be is striving to be at our best. managing heart failure starts now with understanding. call today or go online to understandheartfailure.com for a free heart failure handbook. just about every state in the union is dealing with uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus. the covid exit strategy map is on fire, showing a pandemic that is out of control in 45 states. the hospitals in a lot of those states are filling up faster than they have ever before. tonight more than 67,000 americans are suffering in hospitals with this disease, and the biggest problem with that record-breaking number is not just physical capacity. it's not just beds. it is staffing. back in the spring when the u.s. outbreak was fairly localized in new york and then in detroit and around new orleans, hospital staff came from all over the country to help those places out. this time in north dakota -- in texas. hundreds of medical personnel are being sent to west texas and hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed. state officials across the country are sounding the alarm. >> last week we were at almost 2,000 covid patients in our hospitals. and today, one week later, we are now approaching 3,000. >> again, we're at the breaking point and ready to have some serious repercussions because of that challenge. >> the staff in the hospitals are exhausted. emergency rooms are overflowing, and staff shortages are becoming a real issue. >> covid-19 is everywhere in our state. it is bad everywhere, and it's getting worse everywhere. it is straining hospitals and people are dying. >> "the daily beast's" aaron banco has been reporting in kansas where hospitals are facing dire staffing shortages that endanger the ability to provide care. kathleen sebelius served as secretary of health and human services during the obama administration, and she joins me now. i've been hearing more and more whether it's in the green bury area of wisconsin or el paso texas or in kansas, staffing shortages are the real crunch, sort of supply issue right now. >> i think that's right, chris. staffing is critical because the limited number of icus in rural hospitals is already a shortage. then you don't have trained personnel. the reason that the death rate has gone down fortunately with the number of cases is that you have people who are experts at dealing with very sick patients, and they've learned some things along the way. they've learned some things in these last eight months. if you don't have icu available, if you don't have the right equipment and you don't have the right personnel, that's just not going to happen. in kansas, it took us six months to get to the first 500 deaths, and that's 500 too many. it took six weeks to get to the second 500 deaths, and that's a terrifying trajectory. we are part of the country where we're in the red zone, and cases are rising, and they're rising in these small rural communities. we had an outbreak in my husband's home county of norton, kansas, in a small nursing home where 61 of the 61 patients were positive. they've already had 10 deaths, they've got staff positive, and there's no place to send people in that surrounding area. i mean they're trying to move very ill patients in regional areas, but unlike a natural disaster where if it hits -- a tornado hits in our state, you borrow equipment. you get personnel. you get help. this is everywhere, and it's really terrifying in communities that just don't have the capacity or the staffing. >> that story is really awful, and it's something that i think we're going to see more of. to me, it also shows just how intellectually bankrupt the notion is, which i think has been pushed by scott atlas and adopted by the president, that you can let it spread and just deal with it on the treatment end, right? that if the hospitals get better treatment and we get better at figuring out how to help people, that we could backstop it there and just let it spread. and what you just said, the hospital capacity you had, all that treatment stuff goes out the window if they melt down. >> you're absolutely right. i mean if the last eight months, the good news is there are some better treatments. there are definitely some better trainings that have gone on where people have learned things. but if you don't have the capacity, if you don't have the personnel, and as i heard a wise health care provider say, you can build extra beds. you can borrow extra beds. but if you don't have the personnel to staff that space, it really doesn't matter. so what we're talking about is areas and large swaths of the country that have major areas without an icu, without the ability to attract a critical care nurse or doctor that don, t have the ability to do anything but send them to a regional center which is likely already full, and then the region next to it is likely already full. so we're looking at a terrible catastrophe in rural america. and so far at least, as far as i can tell, the president of the united states has said absolutely nothing as this virus is out of control across the country. we hear nothing from a man who will be the president for the next almost ten weeks, and these are going to be some very dangerous weeks ahead. >> there's also we're starting to see crunches on ppe again. and we're seeing some testing crunches, lines for tests. one of the lessons just from around the country you can see some of the headlines here, n95 masks and other issues. you know, no human supply chain is equipped to deal with exponential spread. we as humans, we can't do exponential increase in capacity the virus can do exponential increase in patients. so if you try to race the virus, you're going to lose. >> well, the other thing that is very true is we didn't, as far as i can tell, use the intervening months when the virus went down somewhat in states around the country to ramp way up production in this country. >> right. >> this is a global pandemic. we have major capitals in europe shutting down as we speak. so the notion that we can tap into an international supply chain, we can get equipment from other places is delusional because everybody in the world is going to be looking for the same equipment. >> yeah. >> and we failed to again invoke the defense production act, ramp up the production here, so we were ready for this period. and you're right. i think shortages of ppe is likely to be one of the issues people are dealing with again in the united states. we seem not to have learned anything. and nursing homes are seeing again a surge in cases, and that's really terrifying. >> kathleen sebelius, secretary of hhs, governor of kansas, thank you very much. >> good to talk to you. the presidential election was decisive but what if it hadn't been? how willing would republicans seem to be to have stolen a closer election, ahead. for all the phony and insidious voter fraud stories being pushed by the president and his supporters, there are some dirty tricks we've seen in this election and they seem to keep coming from the republican side. there's a story out of florida which is really something where some real sketchy activity seems to have taken place. it's in state senate district 37, miami-dade county, where an unaffiliated third candidate named alex rodriguez never campaigned, never fund raised, never even reached a photo of himself. he happened to have the same last name as the democratic candidate in the race, hoe says javier rodriguez. local reporters in miami thought it was a little weird and they dug around and found evidence that alex rodriguez is one of three candidates in three separate florida state senate races who were essentially plants funded by dark money, put on the ballot with the sole intention of siphoning votes away from democratic candidates. local 10 news in miami found a set of suspicious similarities between the rodriguez character and another no-party affiliated candidate in nearby district 39, 81-year-old retire yes celso alfonso who both initially lied about their identities when confronted by reporters. for his part, alfonso claims to have filed on his own. but rodriguez and alfonso had recently been registered republicans. they both qualified as candidates on the very same day, june 12th. they both listed gmail addresses with identical patterns, and their support appears to come from the same political action committee called "our florida." that pac had one single expenditure, $370,000 on campaign fliers, and it had just one contribution, exactly $370,000 two days earlier from an entity that traces back to a mailbox at a ups store in atlanta. in district 37, where alex rodriguez got 6,300 votes -- that's the guy with no picture -- the democratic incumbent officially lost that race today by just 34 votes following a manual recount. this is the sort of race that needs to be carefully looked at. and other places around the country where something similar might have taken place. the presidential election will not be determined by dirty tricks, about you if the race were closer, it does look like republicans would absolutely be willing to go there. we'll talk about that next. today, we are redefining how we do things. we find new ways of speaking, so you're never out of touch. it's seeing someone's face that comforts us, no matter where. when those around us know us, they can show us just how much they care. the first steps of checking in, the smallest moments can end up being everything. there's resources that can inform us, and that spark can make a difference. when we use it to improve things, then that change can last within us. when we understand what's possible, we won't settle for less. the best thing we can be is striving to be at our best. managing heart failure starts now with understanding. call today or go online to understandhf.com for a free hf handbook. senator, did vice president biden win the election? >> we don't know yet. >> have you congratulated president-elect biden yet? >> well, first off we need to finish all the votes. all the votes need to be counted. so i look forward to the finish, to that being finished. >> senator, have you congratulated vice president biden yet? >> no. >> why not? >> do you believe that vice president biden should be receiving security briefing? >> i do think they're going to have to work that out in very short order. look, one of these two men will be the president of the united states after the election results have come in. >> one of them. who knows? look, we're used to the genre of republican senator cowardly kind of trying to navigate like the latest trump outrage. in this case it's not he said a mean tweet about someone. he's saying he should stay in power against the will of the people because the vote was rigged. and yet we still get the same kind of behavior. meddy hassan and jennifer rubin join me now. jennifer, let me start with you on this. i think the psychology is interesting because it's not unexpected. this is how they have behaved for four years more or less. but the stakes seem higher to me here. do you acknowledge it and all this reporting about, well, give him his time. he needs hi blankie. he needs his naps and everybody just be easy with him and we'll get around to it. will they get around to it? >> this is my question. they always have some excuse not to. oh, well, we have the georgia senate elections coming up. we don't want him running as a third-party candidate. oh, we don't want him messing up somebody's campaign for senate. there is always an excuse to enable this guy, suck up to him, and they live in dire fear of him and his red-headed horde, and i think that mentality is not going to disappear for a long time. you know, behind him is don junior or eric. they will always find a way to cower because they live in fear that the base, which they need to rev up and make nuts and make crazy, will turn around and come after them. so they are in perpetual fear and they will put up for anything and everything. you're right. this is huge stakes, but for them it's all the same. impeachment, eh, got to humor him. democracy, got to humor him. >> part of what i find infuriating, these statements from republican officials that, like, are ostensibly reasonable but actually completely insidious. they're the functional equivalent of someone saying, look, i want to get to the bottom of the facts and let the investigations go where they go and determine whether my opponent is a child molester or not. it's like, well, we see what you're doing. so all this stuff about, well, he has every right to file these lawsuits and which need to count the votes. we know what you're doing. >> yeah. i'm not saying that 9/11 was an inside job. i'm just asking questions. >> just ask he questions. >> it's the conspiracy theorists retort and they are conspiracy theorists, and they are following a conspiracy theorists in the white house. this is the story of this election. trump is the carnival barker who is going to go on weert atwitte say nonsense. the entire party almost is behind the president as he tries to steal -- tries and fails to steal an election. it's outrageous, and they have been his enablers from the very beginning. they stood by him with his -- they enabled his violent rhetoric, his racism, his open attacks on key democratic institutions in this come, the free press, the department of justice, the courts, the election itself. so the story is we shouldn't buy into this joe biden line they'll have an epiphany after he's gone. no, this is who they are. we call them the gop. there's nothing grand about them. a new study out of sweden says they're more authoritarian or as authoritarian as the turkish government. >> this study that was written up in "the washington post" about this authoritarian trendlines and republican opinion among republican voters, i think this is really worrying. one of the things that has really struck me about the modern gop in the trump era is it views itself fundamentally -- it's not like this sort of expansive -- from a political perspective, nixon and reagan had a political vision that like we can win a majority of americans and we will do that and we will govern. this idea, well, if we can't win, well, then the worst for democracy. >> this is the exact game plan of a group who doesn't have a message, doesn't have a majority. they're part of a diminishing demographic, and so they do what people who can't win in a democracy do and that is they become authoritarian. they begin to undermine democracy. that's their only hope. that's what voter suppression is about, what disinformation is about, what attack on institutions is about, that you slowly, slowly increase power by simply running over the lines of democracy and intimidate, bully people. and this is how a non-representative minority stays in power. and we've seen it over and over again in history. it's made worse because of situations like the electoral kwlej in the united states and the u.s. senate which is heavily tilted in their favor. so this is their m.o., and you're right. it is not a political party anymore. it's a push. it's a authoritarian band of thugs and this is how they're intending to operate. governance is not of any concern. this is raw power. >> the irony here is they're going to pick up 11 house seats. it is actually popular. lots of people like the republican party. there's lots of conservative in america. they're all over the country. they're in new york and they're in kansas. all of this running around saying the election is fraud when you just picked up ten seats. >> yeah. they represent a very large minority. they don't represent the majority, but they do represent a big enough minority to rule in a system which leads towards minority rule. just a reminder to your viewers. look at the people who got elected. governor greg jgianforte in maryland. marjorie taylor green. facebook had to take down a picture of her with a begun nex threatening them. it's openly authoritarian and violate. >> thank you both. that is "all in" this thursday morning. "the rachel maddow show" with ali velshi in for rachel starts now. good evening, ali. >> chris, good evening. thank you for that and thank you at home for joining us this hour. rachel remains quarantined after a close contact tested covid positive, but rachel is still doing just fine. hou however, we just got word that 157,000 americans were diagnosed with covid today. this is a brand-new record, which comes a day after we broke the previous record. more than 157,000 people tested positive for covid in the united states today. we'll be talking in just a few minutes with a member