not bowing to his undemocratic wishes, especially in georgia. the "atlanta journal constitution" reports that just today president trump called georgia governor brian kemp and pressed kemp to call a special session of the georgia legislature to somehow overturn the november election results. kemp has once again declined trump's request. well, that rejection likely will not sit well with trump who's been heavily targeting kemp and their republican parties secretary of state. >> it means nothing because they don't want to check signatures. if you're not going to check signatures in georgia, it doesn't work. but we have a secretary of state and a governor who made it very difficult to check signatures. why? you'll have to ask them. >> but, hey, even though president trump is squabbling with georgia's republican leadership, rnc chairwoman ronda mcdaniel for one feels the mixed messaging won't affect perdue and loeffler. >> i think the voters very much support the president. however, they want to make sure we keep david perdue and kelly loeffler in as well. we can walk and chew gum at the same time and we need to support the president's efforts to make sure that we follow through on this election in georgia. >> well, with projected confidence like that, she may want to check on what pro-trump attorney sidney powell and lynnwood told a crowd of supporters at a georgia rally this week. >> i would encourage all georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all until your vote is secure. >> they have not earned your vote. don't you give it to them. [ cheers ] why would you go back and vote in another rigged election? for god's sake, fix it. you got to fix it before we do it again. >> quite the predicament indeed. we're going to dive in with msnbc reporter deepa shivaram at trump's rally. zerlina maxwell, msnbc political analyst and author of "the end of white politics" and tia mitchell is the "atlanta journal-constitution's" washington correspondent. they report brian kemp was pressured into overturning biden's victory. what more are you hearing? >> reporter: alicia, it's a pretty complicated situation. donald trump is delving once again into this trying to just bring this whole recount, re-election thing back up. he's not letting it go. he does not want to accept and acknowledge that joe biden will be the next president of the united states. what he's doing is pointing fingers at the republican george governor, at the republican secretary of state, basically trying to say you're not doing enough for me and not standing up for me and you're getting in my way. so he's called brian kemp, like you just said, asking him to call a special legislature in to do a recounted. he's been tweeting all day about signature matching, doing a lot of these things basically to try to invalidate the results of the election in georgia and in the country. the problem is that it's putting republicans in the state and particularly these two senate candidates in a really tricky position. they can't counter president trump. they need his support. they need support from his voters and from his base. at the same time, the president's trying to say that the election is rigged, the system is rigged, so he's asking people to vote and at the same time telling them that their vote might not count. so it's a complicated situation. what the president will say here today is what we're looking out for. we did hear from senators perdue and loeffler earlier tonight. there's no signage for their names behind me. it doesn't seem like an event targeted towards them. it does seem trump centric already. both of them came on stage and talked about trump and how they were out there trying to make sure every legal vote was counted. you can see some of trump's rhetoric following into the senate candidates as we move forward into the next month. >> zerlina, can you add context to the fact that the balance of the u.s. senate is going to be determined in georgia. there's a rally. you see the number of people who are there. it is still trump centric. you have republican candidates getting up on stage and mostly talking about donald trump. what does that tell you, zerlina, about the state of the republican party and how this is going to play out in this critical race? >> i also noticed that the sign behind deepa, it says donald trump on it. it doesn't say trump/pence, which is interesting to me. i think now that we're post-election, everyone is coming around to the fact that joe biden won the election. donald trump seems to be the only one left still wanting to fight. and because republicans are too afraid to stand up to donald trump because of the support that he has in the republican base, they're now in this uncomfortable position where they really can't talk about the fact that they need as many republicans as possible to turn out in a runoff election that traditionally republicans do well in. they don't lose runoff elections in georgia, alicia. and so i think they're in a tough spot and it makes no sense. but they could also tomorrow decide to stand up to donald trump, call joe biden the president-elect, as david perdue did in private, and they can try to charge up turnout in the republican base themselves with their own independent message. >> zerlina, in addition to that sign, you also missed earlier they were playing "memory" from "cats" the musical. it set the mood. the governor declined president trump's request, but still says that he supports trump. i mean, how are other republican leaders striking that balance, especially loeffler and perdue? >> and that's kind of the conundrum they're in because they are trump supporters. they are conservatives. and now they're being asked to kind of participate in this double-speak where they're supporting loeffler and perdue and they want republican voters to participate in the runoff, but they also are, you know, if not outright contradicting president trump, they also aren't calling him out. so you have different degrees. you have governor kemp who has not gone as far as secretary of state brad rathlessberger saying the vote count shows biden winning is accurate. governor kemp has -- has repeated some of the concerns that president trump has raised about, you know, the integrity of the election. so has senator loeffler and perdue. and again, that double-speak is why there is concern that as they question the integrity of the elections, they could also be depressing turnout in this runoff. >> i want to ask you, as you talk to voters in georgia, specifically republican voters, how are they interpreting what we are understanding as mixed messaging coming from the republican party? >> so me and my colleagues have been working hard to make sure we're talking to voters. we're hearing both. one of my colleagues wrote an article just today. there were republican voters he spoke to he said i'm not happy with the way the election is done. i do think president trump was robbed, but i'm still going to vote and participate in the runoff. but he also spoke to some voters who said i don't know if my vote will count, so i don't know if i'm going to participate. or they don't think senator perdue and senator loeffler have done enough to defend donald trump. and so they're thinking about protesting by not participating in the runoff. we're starting to see polling that's coming out that indicates that it could be having a negative effect on perdue and loeffler's chances of winning on january 5th. >> i mean, zerlina, i want you to both underscore for me just how wild that is and also talk a little bit about the fact that perdue, loeffler, and ossoff and warnock are performing well with their respective bases when you take the variable out of the equation. how much is this campaign on both sides about ensuring the people show up rather than trying to actually persuade voters from the other side? >> oh, a runoff election is absolutely fundamentally about boosting the turnout in your base, because you don't have a lot of time to persuade voters on the policies. and so you're essentially sending a message to your base that the majority of the senate is at stake. anything joe biden and kamala harris would be able to do legislatively hinges on this runoff election. remember, joe biden only won georgia by 14,000 votes. so every single voter contact you can make in every demographic group and really in every locality, one of the things i noticed about reverend warnock's race in the 2020 election that just happened is that he was able to get absentee ballots returned by black voters in rural areas. so it would be smart for the democrats in this runoff to go where the democrats are no matter what type of neighborhood that is. and of course the demographics in georgia are shifting. latinos are now 5% of that state, and so you boost the turnout in your base and you do well in a runoff. i think it's going to hurt republicans that they have two messages. you need everyone that showed up just a couple of weeks ago to come back and vote for loeffler and perdue. if half the people are saying they're not sure if they're going to participate, that makes up a lot of that margin. >> tia, do you get the sense when you and your colleagues talk to voters in the state that they understand that they are motivated by the consequence of what this means for the u.s. senate? >> i think that they understand the consequence, but i think particularly among conservatives they're motivated much more by their allegiance to president trump, those far-right conservatives, those maga conservatives. president trump is the number one motivator, and so that's why tonight's rally is so important because if his message is very strong in saying if you support me, you got to participate in this runoff, you got to support loeffler and perdue, i think folks will walk away thinking he has helped their campaign. but if his message today continues to double down on falsely saying he could have won in georgia and he continues to question the integrity of the election system without mentioning perdue and loeffler in the strongest terms possible, that's going to depress turnout because he controls so much of how a big fraction of conservative voters participate in this political process. >> we're going to continue talking about all of this a little later in the show with actress and activist rosario dawson. thank you to the three of you for kicking us off. i appreciate it. up next, heading for a holiday in lackdown. we go to california to tell you when millions in the state could see new restrictions in place. plus, the race for a vaccine. we're getting a clearer picture about when we might see that light at the end of the tunnel. later in the hour, the history of suppression in georgia. now actress and activist rosario dawson is live here on "american voices." do not go anywhere. heree so you only pay for what you need? 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you know, unfortunately some patients do get very sick. some die, some go to the icu. so there's definitely an element of fatigue. >> reporter: and the hope is that these restrictions will help to ease some of that stress. in much of the state, it will be in effect for three weeks. but the bay area it will continue through christmas into january as they try to get things under control as we wait as the rest of the country does for the vaccine. alicia? >> scott, at the same time you have business owners pushing back on these decisions being made by the governor. some of them taking their issues to the court. what does that look like? >> reporter: there is a lot of concern, as you can imagine, with business owners who have done so much over the past ten months to try and adapt to this. so we talked to a restaurant owner in palo alto who built a whole setup for outdoor dining only to find out that now he has to pull that in because they're going to reopen the street when the restrictions come in. you have a nail salon owner in southern california who was talking about all of the measures that they've taken to try and mitigate the disease, yet they have to close down. so it is certainly frustrating and certainly very difficult for these business owners without any relief in terms of disaster relief from the feds or whatever. and so there is going to be this tension that continues, again, until we can get some people vaccinated. >> all right. scott, thank you for spending some time with us. with great strides being made in the development of the much-anticipated covid-19 vaccine, the question turns to its efficacy and distribution. dr. bedealia, good to see you. it takes years for medical experts to develop effective vaccines. considering the covid-19 vaccine has been fast-tracked in a way we just haven't seen before, what do we know about any potential side effects and just overall the effectiveness of this vaccine? >> good evening, alicia. i want to start by saying that some of this speed with this vaccine is not because there were shortcuts taken. in the actual evaluation, the shortcuts are putting the money in to frus vaccines as we're studying them. so we know that there are two vaccines closest to getting emergency use authorization, one is a moderna vaccine, and one is the pfizer vaccine. in both of these vaccines, moderna had 30,000 participants, of which they saw 196 cases, and only 11 of those were in people who had the vaccine. no one had severe disease. that's almost a 94.5% effectiveness. the pfizer vaccine, again, 43,000 people studied, 170 cases. and they saw about 95% effectiveness. the main side effects were those that occurred right after you got the vaccine at the injection site, relentlesdness, swelling . they felt run down, headaches, body aches. those are the common effects we sometimes see. now we're looking over 50,000 people that got the messenger rna vaccines. people are concerned this is new technology, although we've been studying them for the last ten years. the thing that puts my mind at ease is in a majority of vaccines, the most common side he knew that appear within six weeks of you getting the vaccine. the fact that we didn't see that in 53,000 people who got this technology sets my mind at ease. but the thing that's remaining is that we need to continue to follow the people who are vaccinated because once you open up the vaccines to a much bigger population, then you're concerned about the rare effects like 1 in 500,000 or 1 in a million people may have a rare side effect. that's why the fda and cdc have something called vaccine adversary effects reporting system that already exists and they're going to be using that to track the rare side effects if they exist. >> doctor, i asked you about the side effects and the efficacy of these vaccines because a recent survey done by pew research center found that about 60% of americans say they would get a vaccine for coronavirus if it were available today. that's an increase from what we've been seeing over the past few months, just a couple of days ago you had former presidents obama, bush, clinton saying they would be open to publicly taking the vaccine. i wonder what you think is both behind that hesitation that we're seeing on the part of a lot of americans and what can be done to mitigate it. >> i think it's multifold. even before we had the covid pandemic, you know, the vaccine hesitancy was one of the top ten global health problems. so we were seeing trends of this. some of it is disinformation that's online. some is the politicalization we've seen around medical products developed around operation warp speed, which is pretty sad to hear because operation warp speed has been one of the rare successes of our pandemic response. i think the way that we move forward is that once fda looks at this data, we sort of share that data with the public as much as we can. i think having examples like the community leadership. not everybody looks up to the same people at dr. fauci said on the "today" show a couple days ago. communities we know may be more hesitant. we find people that are respected in those communities who may serve as the vaccine advocates. that's one of the steps we take. the other is, again, more information as much as we can sharing with the public. >> trusted messengers always critical in a campaign like this. doctor, thank you so much. up next, follow the money. donations are pouring into the president's legal fund. but where is it really going? plus, with so much going on, it is easy to miss the big picture, i mean, the really big picture. a new warning about the dire situation facing planet earth next on "american voices." ♪ ♪ ♪ this on us, on every plan! get an iphone 12 with 5g, ♪ and if you're 55 and up, switch to our essentials 55 plan and save 50% on your bill vs. the other guys. that's right, iphone 12 on us! holiday on with t-mobile. ♪ ♪ smooth driving pays off. ♪ with allstate, the safer you drive the more you save. ♪ you never been in better hands. allstate. click or call for a quote today. that selling carsarvana, 100% online wouldn't work. you never been in better hands. but we went to work. building an experience that lets you shop over 17,000 cars from home. creating a coast to coast network to deliver your car as soon as tomorrow. recruiting an army of customer advocates to make your experience incredible. and putting you in control of the whole thing with powerful technology. that's why we've become the nation's fastest growing retailer. because our customers love it. see for yourself, at carvana.com. . this week the trump campaign announced that it has raised more than $200 million since election day. it is a staggering amount of money that was supposed to go to legal fights and recounts, at least that's what donors were told. a great lesson in reading the fine print. andy zavalos with where the money is coming from. >> reporter: president trump has been raising a lot of money on his unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud. we know that trump hasn't had much success actually challenging the results of the election in court. still, the campaign announced it and the rnc raised more than $200 million between election day and november 23rd. part of the fundraising push comes from nearly 500 emails in november, many of them pointing to this website asking for donations purportedly meant to fund their efforts for recounts and the legal battles associated with them. but a look at the fine print tells a different story. in the days after the election, as much as 60% of the fund's proceeds were for remaining campaign debt. thousand the fine print changed, designating up to 75% of donations will now go to trump's new political action committee, save america. if you take a look at the campaign website, there are a lot of things that deserve a closer look. for example, two boxes are automatically checked. the first set up donors for automatic donations and $5 to be withdrawn an december 5th. your contribution will benefit trump make america great again committee. and the fine print is below with money going to a slew of trump and gop entities. large donations will go to the rnc's legal proceedings or headquarters account. is all of this kosher. when does it go beyond not reading the fine print and into deceptive practices that can be legally challenged? it's usually on the consumer to read the fine print. most people sign and click through documents that are legally binding without even looking at the fine print. in this case while the solicitation may be misleading, the fine print is there, so it's lawful. of course if the solicitation contains a false statement, it doesn't matter what size font it's in. it's crosses the line into fraud. then there's the gray area a statement that is technically true, but misleading, or it omits an important fact. the fine print is not just a thing. courts care if the important stuff is in a tiny font compared to the rest of the language. take a look at this email from november 12th. that pushes people to the fundraising site. the subject is proof of election fraud. but the email doesn't provide that proof and the campaign hasn't backed up such claims with anything that's held up in court. now, the subject line is really just a subject. it could mean they're looking for proof of fraud, but it's vague to be sure. this is starting to enter the gray area. the real question is do trump's donors even care? >> that was msnbc's legal analyst danny cevallos. for more on the cash grab and where the money is going, we go to "washington post" reporter and msnbc analyst dave ward faron hold. good to see you. let's pick up where danny left off. i mean, if the people donating to the trump campaign cared about him making baseless claims, they probably wouldn't be donating. do you think they care what trump does with their money? >> well, it's hard to know. i mean, obviously there's fine print saying this money is going to other purposes, the pacs, but if you believe donald trump is being cheated out of this election, i can see why you might give money and i can see why you might be disappointed to find out you're not doing anything to help him contest the election but provided for a political future after 2021. i don't know if people are disappointed but they probably don't understand, really, where the money is going. >> will the use of this money present legal problems for him in the future? >> well, what's really interesting about this is that the save america pac, the pac that trump is fudge this money into, it's what's called a leadership pac in campaign finance. and i was surprised by this. there's basically no rules about what you can do with that money. trump can use it to may repay his internal expenses, to hold events at his hotels. i mean, just about anything with that money. if he's going to walk away with tens of millions of dollars, that could be a huge boon for his private business if he chooses too-to-u use it that wa >> your reporting details the $1.1 million the trump campaign sent at the end of his campaign. what did you find? >> we found the continuation of a practice that started in the first months of trump's presidency. he has used his campaign committees, his campaign donors' money to enrich himself personally. he's funneled campaign donations into his private business. that started in june 2017 with a first big if you ever of his campaign held at the trump hotel in d.c. it continued until the last days of the campaign when he was holding events and staying overnight at his properties. so that's kind of a hint about how trump might use his big pot of money he has going forward. what's he done with the money he's had so far? a lot of campaign donors money ended up in his pocket. >> we are not taking the president live, but i have our producers watching the rally in georgia. i'm told that when the president got up on stage, he said i won florida, i won georgia. 50% true there, david. and so as we watch sort of this ongoing charade, you talk to any legal analyst and they tell you that this is not actually about having a legal strategy, this is instead a pr stunt, how much of that is being able to continue to raise money into these funds? >> our reporting from inside the white house suggests that trump himself really might believe it or really can't get beyond it. we had the great story posted a few hours ago that basically he spends his time with unstructured time in the oval office brooding about voter fraud and conspiracy theories. i don't think it's a cynical ploy. he has bought into his own delusion. he's done that a lot of times in his life. i don't think it's necessarily that he's conning other people as much as he's conning himself and them at the same time. but certainly the outcome of this for him is going to be a huge amount of money that he can spend basically however he likes. remember, he's returning to a business that's had a lot of problems while he's been in office and is now facing a huge amount of unpaid loans. so he's taken out a lot of cash that may solve his problems with political fortune. >> you were saying earlier that these payments made by the trump campaign, they're being made to trump properties. is that lawful? >> it is lawful as long as the trump properties are charging sort of normal market rate. it's not something candidates do a lot, but if you do do it, all you have to do is show you're not overcharging. i don't think anybody's raised an objection saying trump has overcharged his campaign. he's just gone back to his properties again and again, lou allowing them to charge. >> thank you so much for spending time with us. up next, a new dire warning from the u.n., why climate change needs to take center stage in the biden administration. we're still combining the president. he's been going after the state's governor and claiming he won when he did not. he claims the election was rigged against republicans. we'll talk to rosario dawson and her mission to make sure georgia voters have access to the ballot. you're watching "american voices" on msnbc. . you work hard for your money. stretched days for it. juggled life for it. took charge for it. so care for it. look after it. invest with the expertise of j.p. morgan, either with an advisor or online, through chase. after all, it's yours. savalas savalas solvency soofrls soofrls sefrls sefrls savalas sos soofrls sefrls sefrl just like your fingertips, your lips have a unique print. ...and unique needs. your lips are like no others and need a lip routine that's just right for you. chapstick® has you covered. chapstick®. put your lips first®. life doesn't stop for a cold. 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>> well, and that report was issued by the aclu that i wrote and what happened was that they said almost 200,000 people had fled georgia or left atlanta. now, if you don't live in georgia you can't vote in georgia. but we found out that these 198,000 people on that list had never moved at all, had never left atlanta or georgia. as you say, many voters of color. including, by the way, martin luther king's 92-year-old cousin. i was actually at the polls when she was thrown out from the place she'd voted at for 50 years. she hadn't moved if her home in six decades. these are the people that are being thrown out. so now what is shaping up to be actually the biggest voting rights case of the decade, a group of the top voting rights lawyers in the country with black voters matter, with operation rainbow push, the reverend jackson, and we've just learned a few minutes ago we're being joined by the southwest voter registration education project near the big latinx group, which is by the way frantically calling 26,000 hispanics on the list to say you've got to reregister, you've lost your vote unless you reregister by monday night. and of course we've also put up a gigantic electronic billboard with the lovely masked face of rosario dawson reminding people to check their registration, make sure they are not purged. that's a term that they use for just wiping the voters off the voter rolls. thank you. >> it's not lost on me -- >> thank you, greg. >> and i'm sure it's not lost on you, rosario, that you have -- through the split screen where you have the president crying about disenfranchisement that didn't actually happen and then you have real disenfranchisement happening in georgia. the aclu says those impacted are young voters, voters of lower income and voters of color. what do you make of the groups that have been targeted by this purge? >> i mean, i think it's about -- they're targeting groups that are very responsible for turning the state blue and what they want to do is make sure that they don't get to vote and therefore potentially change the senate. and that's what's at stake. i was just in georgia. that's why i was masked doing the interview because i was there with gwar and mi gente and power. they've knocked on 21,000 doors. they're trying to get the vote to turn out. these are people that have been registered and might actually be purged. they will show up and try to get their absentee ballot and not be able to get that. what you were just talking about earlier with climate change, biden's plan actually has a lot of teeth in it when it comes to the environment. you know, he sat down with groups like sunrise movement and jay hensley has said it's about 85% of what he would have wished for from a climate change legislation. and we have the possibility of pushing that forward if we take the senate majority leadership away from mitch mcconnell who's r&r been sitting on bipartisan legislation that was passed in 2018 during the midterms when there was also record turnout of people of color and young people and which transformed congress into getting us our first native people, lots of women in there, in congress, and so we have progressive measures that can actually move forward. otherwise, we're going to have the grim reaper as senate majority leader mitch mcconnell calls himself who's going to be doing straight obstructionism and preventing this upcoming presidency from having any big wins so it can be taken away from them the next midterms and beyond. so we have a lot at stake if we don't have the voter turnout that we're expecting. the president is in georgia right now specifically trying to make sure that just because he's not on the ticket that people will still show up for the republican candidates. and we have to keep championing people to warnock and ossoff and make sure they're registered. there's a few turned 18 by january 5th. you're allowed to register to vote in this election. and we only have until monday to get these folks -- that's 198,000 people who've been purged from the voter rolls to make sure that they're allowed to vote in this election. i have a voting organization. what we do is voter registration. we register over 1 million people. it would be devastating if the people we had registered had been turned away from the polls after the work that it takes to actually get people to get engaged and involved. >> rosario, not a lot of people can get away with that play on words, but i'm going to give it to you because you were able to pull it off. greg, you have president trump calling on the governor of the state to ask for a special session of the state legislature. you are talking about big dynamic power structures in place. the president is asking to be leveraged in his favor. what does that say to you about the stakes of this race? >> everything is at stake. trump wants the state legislature to overturn the will of the voters. and so the republican leaders have basically thrown him under the bus because they have to save their senate seats. that's everything to them. and unfortunately -- look, i'm not partisan on this. let's let the voters pick who should control the senate. the problem is they've removed 198,000 voters illegally. we have to get them back on. they've been talking about fantasy fraud. they haven't -- where are these fraudulent voters coming in from out of state? where are these illegal voters swimming the rio grande to vote just because your last name is garcia? that's one of the problems. they've been picking out common names. rodriguez, garcia, jones, black, johnson, kim. and identifying those voters and saying they've moved because they found -- oh, they found believe it or not a jose garcia in another state. well, golly, yeah, it's not a common name for a republican. but these are the games that they're playing. we have to get these voters back on. and by the way, if we win this case, we're going to be crushing -- this legal team is ready to crush these vote suppression techniques that were first tried in georgia that they're trying to take around the country and we're going to stop it here. this is a big case, and we're going to have a federal court hearing. by the way, the courts have accepted the case, which is amazing. they're ready to hear the injunction. and the republican officials have hired the biggest law firms in the nation. they are in full panic. we're going to get these people back on -- >> rosario and greg, thank you so much. that is all the time i have for today. i'm alicia menendez. i will see you back here tomorrow 6:00 p.m. eastern. and at 7:00 for an "american voices" special report. 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[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. hey there. i'm joshua johnson. it's good to be with you tonight. president trump is in georgia hoping to help two republicans hold on to their senate seats. they're in runoffs that will decide the balance of power in congress. meanwhile, the current congress is nearing the end of its ter