His first full week since his historic victory. Naming a covid Advisory Board first thing this morning. Already receiving a briefing on the virus today and early this afternoon announcing a Covid Response plan that he says hell deploy as much as he can even before he takes office. Now emboldened by the gravitas of his newly besy toed title, president elect. Well follow the science, well follow the science. Let me say that again. And well adjust to new data when it comes in. And well listen and work in cooperation with governors and leaders of both parties who are fighting this virus in their communities. This is a crisis that effects everyone. As i said throughout this campaign, i will be a president for every american. This election is over. Its time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric thats designed to demonize one another. Its time to end the politicization of basic, responsible Public Health steps like mask wearing and social distancing. I wont be president until january 20th, but my message today is to everyone is this. It doesnt matter who you voted for, where you stood before election day. It doesnt matter your party, your point of view. We can save tens of thousands of lives if anyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Joe biden pressing forward on the crisis thats currently putting millions of americans in harms way despite the defiance from his soon to be predecessor, who is refusing to concede and who his allies say might never concede, as members of trumps own administration embark on an extraordinary effort to deny joe biden access to the resources to which hes entitled in the runup to inauguration day. Todays Washington Post reports this, quote, a Trump Administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing president elect joe bidens Transition Team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged bidens victory. And the Trump Administration, in keeping with the president s failure to concede the election, has no immediate plans to sign one. This could lead to the first transition delay in modern history, except in 2000 when the Supreme Court decided a recount dispute between al gore and george w. Bush in december. Donald trumps refusal to activate the levers of government to ensure a smooth transition of power comes as he begins to send his own administration into even more turmoil. Today, the abrupt firing announced on twitter of his defense secretary, mark esper, who publicly broke with trump after protesters were gassed in Lafayette Square to clear the way for trumps photoop in front of the church. And shortly thereafter, when esper told supporters, he did not support using the insurrection act, something that trump left on the table amid growing civil unrest in the aftermath of the killing of george floyd. The already fraught transfer of power from President Trump to soon to be President Biden is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. John heilemanns back, nbc news and msnbc National Affairs correspondent, cohost and executive producer of showtimes the circus is here. Also joining under the circumstances us, ben rhodes. Also here, nbc news correspondent carol lee, who has some new reporting for us. Carol lee, how has this twitter firing of mark esper landed inside the president s inner circle . Look, weve heard from people around the president who said that this is not something that they would have recommended, it caught some people, a number of people, offguard, both in the white house and certainly at the pentagon. And this is weve reported on the relationship over several months. This is something that while expected, in the last couple of of days, there were some questions about whether the president would actually follow through with this when the transition was not yet clear, when hes still contesting the results of the election and according to our reporting, mark esper had a Resignation Letter prepared, so, the president wanted to get in front of him and do the firing himself, as opposed to have one of his top aides in his cabinet resign amid all of this thats going on, where hes questioning the results of the election and people are trying to convince him that maybe these legal fights are not something that he should continue to so aggressively pursue. We have new reporting that there are people around the president that hope these peter out by the end of the week, they are concerned he could be destroying his own legacy, taking the Republican Party down with him. And this adding to all that just raises the stakes for all of these concerns that were hearing and again, this is all happening against the backdrop of a new outbreak of coronavirus within the white house that has the president s own chief of staff sidelined. So, theres a lot of uncertainty, a lot of tument and a lot of concern increasingly about where the president is heading on this and who is going to step in and tell him that it may be time to throw in the towel here, to admit the Election Results and that joe biden is the president elect. Carol, its so interesting, when you hear of the kinds of arguments people are making to donald trump, theyre about preserving his legacy, maintaining his dignity, theyre never about the country. Is there anyone with the countrys interests in mind . Look, i think there are a number of people around the president who are thinking about just the broader picture. The president , though, you know, if youre trying to convince the president to do something, you have to do it in a way that motivates him and one of the motivators for him is his own legacy and how people will see him. Look, one person that i spoke with told me that this is an exercise thats designed basically to get the president , to help him save face. That this is not the goal here is not to have legal battles that people think are going to wind up being legit and actually overturning the Election Results, its that its for the president , its for him, its to get him to acceptancacc ultimately, and that they want this person described it, the idea is branding him as anything but a loser. Thats a quote. And so thats the exercise were seeing playing out and were starting to see this divide within the president s team about who thinks that he should continue going in full speed in this direction and those that really kind of want him to pull back and to go back to your question about defense secretary esper, that really kicked some of those people who may have been on the fence about this into the column of thinking the president has to stop. You know, John Heilemann, i dont know who else other than a loser ends up at the four seasons total landscaping parking lot next to a sex shop. So, i think i think carol is right in what shes reporting, but if theyre trying to spare him from being a loser, the die was cast when his team, the moment that every network, including fox news was calling the race for joe biden, his top personal attorney was standing in the parking lot of a landscaping business next to a sex shop. Yeah. Any, nicolle, how are you . Im great. How are you . Hi. Pretty pretty damn good, right . Feels pretty good to be here on this monday. It does. Just want to wallow around in that. The president elect is putting together a Covid Task Force and talking about how we shouldnt see masks as a political thing and we should really all pull together as a country to fight the virus and not telling us were just around the corner, not living in some fantasy land about this pandemic. I want to pause and just say, doesnt it feel great to have an incoming president of the United States who is going to take this virus seriously and try to bring the country together as opposed to divide it every single day . Having said that, i think the nuance in carols reporting, which i think may just kind of you got to parse this thing real carefully here. Its not that they can make him not a loser, hes a loser, hes lost the presidency and its been called and hes hes lost. And some of the things like the four seasons landscaping thing add just that perfectly trumpian sort of absurdity to the whole thing. The thing is to try to get trump to think hes not a loser. His advisers have different motivations. Some of them are really probably thinking that their elections been stolen and that he should fight to the last to the last day. Who thinks that . Like, who thinks that . Who thinks 40,000 votes were stolen in these states . Who thinks that . Nicolle, i think only someone who is totally unhinged and divorced from reality, but theres like a guy named mark meadows who works as the chief of staff for donald trump and who everything thats come out of his mouth in the time that hes been in that job has been that hes been a perfect kind of d donald trump mine kneeime. I dont want to rule that out, but most of the people recognize that President Trump has lost and the game now is a psychological game. They know what would be best for trump, what would be best for the Republican Party and what would be best for the country would be for trump to move on. The question is, how do you get trump to do that . And you cant, to your question, to carol, you cant appeal to him on that basis. You cant appeal to him on the basis of party, because he doesnt care about the party. You cant appeal to him on the basis of the country, because he doesnt care. If you can get him somehow to see it as being in his best interest to stand down on these challenges and on these acts of trying to slow down bidens ascension as president elect and ultimately president , if you can get him to see that as being in his best interest, you might be able to get him to do the right thing for the party and for the country, but you cant make the straightforward appeal, because trump, if you said to him, this would be the best interest in the country, hed be like, what, the country . So, you got to put it in a language he understands and the only language donald trump understands is the language of selfinterest and the language of trump. Well, and sadly, that is the language, ben rhodes, being spoken thats supposed to release money to the biden campaign. If youve worked in a change of president , you dont know how important that is, but what a transition is, is the incoming president gets Government Funds and Government Office space at hhs and dhs and they get to put a Transition Team in there and start understanding some of the policy issues and really the most important thing they start working on is personnel. To deprive joe biden of transition funds and the Transition Authority does not hobble him on day one, he still becomes president on day one, but it is another example of what carols reporting and what heilman is crystallizing, this is a president that does not and never did care about the country he leads. Thats right, nicolle. And transitions are set up to be the most efficient way possible to hand over this massive apparatus of u. S. Government from one president to another. That means you have to do several things at once. Part of it is mapping out personnel changes, from cabinet secretaries to the several thousands political appointees that need to be filled to the white house staff itself. You also have to get ready for your policy agenda. So, they have these landing teams that go into the different departments, teams of people that would be normally working out of the state department of hhs, trying to get a handle on, whats the state of play here . Whats the latest on the virus thats in the u. S. Government that we need to know about as were making our plans so we can have as seamless a transition as possible to january 20th. And this is an effort to kind of slow down those gears. But heres the thing. This is going to happen anyway, nicolle. The trump people seem to be talking like they have some agency here. Were going to have the pageantry of the president elect announcing his Advisory Board. Hes going to start announcing cabinet secretaries. The center of political gravity is shifting to joe biden. Foreign leaders are already having phone calls with joe biden, talking about the agenda theyre going to pursue january 20th. If that reality hasnt sunk in yet for people in the white house, it will sink in when they have to leave on january 20th. And theyre going to be in for a rude awakening here. I was on the incoming side, where i felt the spotlight shifting to us in 2008 and i was on the outgoing side in 2016 when it was shifting away from us to donald trump. Thats just going to happen regardless of what they do. How much damage do they do . How much do they sow seeds of doubt . But they cannot affect the basic story here and joe biden won, donald trump lost and joe biden is going to be hiring a team and getting ready to take over the government on january 20th. They can make that more difficult for him, but they cant stop it. They cant stop that, but the truth remains, a lot of folks in your circles, in National Security circles are very concerned that the most damage donald trump can do other than continuing to ignore the raging pandemic is in the National Security arena. Today, firing mark esper by tweet, but we know axios and others have reported that he has designed on firing the fbi and cia directors. Other than the individuals, what is the impact of going on a firing spree like that as a lame duck president . Well, i mean, theres a shortterm challenge, which is, events could happen. In 2008, during our transition, there was a war in gaza between israel and hamas. A huge terrorist attack in mumbai. The government still has to be the government and still might have to deal with National Security contingencies. And it is incredibly dangerous to be hollowing out the leadership of the most important National Security agencies. And this concerns me as a former National Security official, theyve already hollowed out a lot of these departments. The biden people want to get in there, because they want to determine, how much damage has been done here . What has happened at the office of the director of National Intelligence where theyve already gone on purges . Whats happened at the state department, where they have gone on purges of officials . Its important that the biden people have an understanding of how broken these agencies are, because theyre going to have to rebuild them. Its not just the people at the top, its the entire front offices. Its how the pieces of massive bureaucracies like the pentagon, how do those connect up to the office of the secretary of defense . Yes, theres a shortterm risk that hes creating vulnerabilities by clearing out these positions, but then theres just the question of, how deep is the rot at the heads of these agencies and the less than he lets the biden people get in there and see that, the harder it is going to be for them to hit the ground running in january and it just creates more uncertainty and instability for our country and government at a time when we should be preparing to move into a new chapter. Carol lee, i cant imagine that Anyone Around the president thinking that he minds that joe biden is just going to move ahead and try to contain and control the coronavirus pandemic. The president has publicly and privately made clear hes not interested in that role. But was there any reaction to the caliber of individuals named today on the Advisory Team . Well, in terms of the trump sides reaction to the whole thing, i mean, we did see a tweet from one of the president s sons when pfizer came out and made its announcement about a vaccine, sort of suggesting there was something nefarious happening, all of a sudden we have an announcement about a vaccine. You know, coronavirus, in terms of a task force, is not something that we have seen this white house focus on, really for several months. They initially would meet regularly and then it just faded. And so i think if youre observing the president elect and him pulling together his team, its a very different image than what weve seen coming out of the white house, which is, we dont hear from the experts and the doctors in the Briefing Room in the way that we had initially, when all of this started, back in the spring, or late winter. And so, its its a contrast. And its part of this broader split screen that were seeing. Were seeing the president elect move forward with pulling together a team, were told hes going to make announcements this week on his day one staff, those who wihe will have with him immediately to make policies and decisions. And then have to the cabinet. Hes obviously, he had this meeting with his Coronavirus Task force and then you have the white house and we havent seen the president since thursday night, we saw images of him on the golf course, but he hasnt addressed the public. We see a lot from him on his twitter feed, a lot of it is defiant. Weve seen a number of his allies come out and hold these press conferences but theres not a even the way he fired the defense secretary, it was via tweet, it was not coming out, making a statement or saying anything publicly. So, you have this split screen moment in the country and its worth noting that one of the things that a person close to the president told us, told my colleague peter alexander, when it really started to sink in for some people around the president is when internationally, World Leaders started to congratulate president elect biden. And weve seen some holdouts, but by and large, thats whats happening. And the feeling around the president from the members of his team is that hes increasingly shouting into the international, global wi