Just filed a lawsuit against william barr, the attorney general and the justice president and the bureau of prison ns alleged he was locked back up last week specifically to stop him from releasing a book critical of the president like i said, busy times. Thats going to do it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow now its time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Good evening, rachel. And the president restarting coronavirus briefings tomorrow, what could possibly go wrong you know, if you work in the Pr Department at lysol, like do you sleep tonight . Do you just unplug everything at your corporation at this point like please dont again talk about ingesting disinfectants. Just duck and cover, man. Does he know that im simply going to have to rerun the lysol thing tomorrow night just to explain why its been so long since weve seen him do this he knows hes reviving that, right . He knows that. He knows it and hes doing it, you know, with the New York Times reporting that republican governors are getting together every night and having these phone calls without him where they all talk about how terrible he is and try to scheme ways around him, adviser to Governor Greg Abbott of texas said the president has stopped working on coronavirus because now hes bored of it. But then hes going to talk about coronavirus. We know every time hes asked about it that he knows nothing about it and it is just going to be hes just going to dig the hole deeper. Maybe he will surprise us all. We will see thank you, rachel. Thanks, lawrence. Should the Edmond Pettis bridge be renamed for john lewis after he was beaten for daring to cross that bridge in a march with Martin Luther king jr. In 1965 . After the passing of john lewis this weekend, many are suggesting that bridge should be renamed for him. We will be joined at the end of this hour with an answer to that question from the family perfective Caroline Randal Williams is a desd descendant of pettis she is his great great granddaughter, and she is the author of the stunning New York Times op ed piece, you want a Confederate Monument my body is a Confederate MonumentCaroline Randal Williams, the great, great granddaughter of Edmond Pettis will get tonights last word. And ive said it before and i have to say it again only because i feel that once again it needs to be said. Its not up to donald trump. Donald trump is going to leave office if joe biden leaves the Electoral College because it is not up to donald trump if joe biden wins the Electoral College, chief Justice Roberts is going to swear in joe biden as the next president of the United States at 12 00 noon on january 20th, 2021 there is nothing donald trump can do to stop that, but that wont stop the precious few interviewers who are allowed to donald trump from asking him, will he accept the results of the election as if its up to him to accept the results of any election Chris Wallace asked donald trump that question in an interview on fox yesterday, and donald trump got what he wanted with that question and his answer. 24 hours of distraction, 24 hours of people worrying that maybe donald Trump Wont Leave Office 24 hours of no one noticing that the interview went very, very well for donald trump, as well as it could possibly have gone under the circumstances because Chris Wallace never asked donald trump about intelligence reporting that russia is paying to kill american soldiers in afghanistan and donald trump has done nothing about it. Watch donald trump when he plays his game with the question of will you accept the results of the election, and dont miss how this exchange begins, with donald trump lying and saying that four years ago Hillary Clinton never accepted the results of the election. Hillary clinton called donald trump on Election Night and conceded victory to donald trump on the phone that night, but apparently no one at fox knows that because when Donald Trump Tells that lie, Chris Wallace, inexplicably says, i agree and you know what, shes the one that never accepted it. I agree. She never accepted her loss and she looks like a fool. Can you give a direct answer, you will accept the election i have to see. Speaker nancy pelosi crushed that nonsense this morning on morning joe. Just because he might not want to move out of the white house doesnt mean we wont have an inauguration ceremony to inaugurate a dulyelected president of the United States there is a process it has nothing to do with the certain occupant of the white house doesnt feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there. The fume gators are the secret service, not the American Military which has no role in the transition of power from one president to another no one has to wonder how the military will react during a transition Donald Trumps secret Service Detail will switch on january 20th from protecting a president to protecting an expresident. And it is the secret service that will usher donald trump out of the white house into the land of expresident s if necessary. But my personal bet is that donald trump will be in florida playing golf an Inauguration Day and refuse to publically participate in the transfer of power because nothing requires him to and no one will miss him. Chris wallace did do some spectacular Fact Checking with donald trump during the interview that donald trump was utterly unprepared for and for which Chris Wallace fully deserves all of the praise that he has been receiving. But it is impossible for anyone to fact check everything that pours out of a pathological liar at high speeds for example, just one example, donald trump was able to say without challenge, quote, all i can say is, thank god i built most of the wall because if i didnt have the wall up we would have a much bigger problem with mexico he actually said that. The southern border is 1,954 miles long, and donald trump has managed to build 3 miles of new trump wall but Chris Wallace was in the middle of cornering donald trump on mortality race from coronavirus, so he couldnt swerve off to the wall, and he did this, Chris Wallace did this, masterfully. We have the seventh highest mortality rate in the world. Our mortality rate is higher than brazil. Its higher than russia. And the European Union has us on a travel ban. Yeah. I think what well do we have them on a travel ban, too, chris. I closed them off. If you remember, i was the one that did the European Union very early. But when you talk about mortality rates, i think its opposite i think we have one of the lowest mortality rates. Thats not true, sir. We have 900 deaths on a single day this week ready can you please get me the mortality rate i heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate in the world. Do you have the numbers, please . Because i heard we had the best mortality rate number one low mortality rate. Because the interview was prerecorded before his show, Chris Wallace was able to cut to Fact Checking, which shows that there is not a chart in the universe with the United States having the lowest mortality rate in the world Chris Wallace was completely right about that donald trump was completely wrong. And after that exchange, donald trump actually said these words. Look, i take responsibility always for everything because its ultimately my job to. I take responsibility always for everything donald trump spent the rest of the interview not taking responsibility for anything, but he was never asked if he takes responsibility for the safety of american soldiers in afghanistan whose lives have been threatened by Vladimir Putins soldiers he was never asked if he takes responsibility for what he did or didnt do after those intelligence reports were presented to him joe biden has called that a dereliction of duty. Donald trumps refusal to take those intelligence reports seriously or to do anything about is, dereliction of duty, joe bidens words. Donald trump actually tried to get Vladimir Putino a g8 meeting after donald trump was presented with intelligence reports that showed Vladimir Putin was paying to kill american soldiers in afghanistan. There is no greater dereliction of duty imaginable by a commander in chief there is no greater dereliction of duty by an american commander in chief that we know about. But there was no time for that in the fox interview yesterday, no time. Chris wallace did spend several minutes, several minutes of the interview irrelevantly trying to convince donald trump that Chris Wallace is fair, and he did that by showing video of Chris Wallace putting challenging questions to nancy pelosi and james comey, maybe Chris Wallace was actually trying to convince his boss Rupert Murdoch that he was fair but he had to know there was no way of changing Donald Trumps mind about who is fair so for several minutes of the interview, wasted, utterly wasted on an exercise in which the interviewer is trying to prove how fair he is by showing donald trump that hes asked challenging questions of people who donald trump hates, and not minute, not one minute was used to ask the president of the United States about intelligent reports that the man he seems to admire most in the world, Vladimir Putin, is paying to kill american soldiers in afghanistan, not one minute on that not one word and that is what donald trump calls a win because the trump game is to create as many news media distractions as possible so that the news media will forget his most e greggous outrages and it works most of the time, but its not working with voters. The latest abc Washington Post poll shows donald trump running 15 points behind joe biden, 5540. In an interview tonight with joy reid in her new 7 00 p. M. Show here on msnbc, joe biden made it clear why donald trump is running so far behind in the rolls now he doesnt care. That was joe bidens message about donald trump everyone knows that there is a lot about government that donald trump doesnt care about, even the most ardent Trump Supporters admit that but for a president not to care about americans dying for a president not to care about Vladimir Putin offering bounties for killing american soldiers, for a president not to care, how many of us have died or might die from coronavirus, joe biden seems to think thats what were dealing with, a president who doesnt care, a majority of the American People know that that is true. And its now not even slightly controversial to say that the president of the United States does not care if you die he talked about, remember early on thrks is going to go away in a few days this is going to be gone tomorrow you will wake it up and it will be gone. He talked about how we are going to be in a position where we are going to be able to lead the world, et cetera, and he was going to be a wartime president fighting this virus. We raised the white flag he has no idea what to do. Zero it is only one thing he has in mind how does he win reelection . And does it doesnt matter how many people debt covid and or die from covid because he fears that if the economy is strapped as badly as it is today that, in fact, hes going to be in trouble. Thats what this is all about. I have never seen a president who has been so selfserving in the conduct of the office. Leading off our discussion tonight, staff writer for the new yorker and a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former senior aid to joe biden and barack obama professor, let me begin with you and Donald Trumps interview yesterday in which he actually said the words, i take responsibility for everything, spent the rest of the hour running away from every responsibility you would expect a president to have to assume in the fighting of the coronavirus especially right i mean, if you notice, he said, i take responsibility. And the next thing that came out of his mouth was, well, the governors have not handled this the way that they should have. So he says one thing and literally contradicts it in the next sentence. The point that you made earlier about Chris Wallaces handling of the nterview, one of the things that struck me when i actually saw it because i heard about it before i watched it and, you know, was thinking about this in terms of my students and what we teach them in interviewing and so on was that this was a pretty straight down the middle interview. It was billed as antagonister ic and tough. It was challenging but nowhere as challenging as it could have been. He was probably at 50 of challenge. Yeah. The bar is so low that when you see someone try to do a good job of it as i know Chris Wallace was doing is thats what it looks like and you get huge credit for challenging him on anything and i think anyone, anyone would have to let some of those things go by like thank god i built the wall because you have got other things you are trying to pursue. So i can understand some of those choices. But the thing i cannot understand, i cannot understand how anyone who seriously engages in delivering the news would overlook, overlook reports that intelligence was presented to the president saying Vladimir Putin has been trying to kill american soldiers in afghanistan and that does not become point number one in your interview of that president yes its hard to understand why that was skipped. But at core it is hard to understand why you let the statement i take responsibility for everything not become the centerpiece of that interview. At the start of this crisis, President Trump stood in the rose garden and said, no, i dont take responsibility at all. I mean, that was the moment when he should have taken responsibility, responsibility for getting testing going, responsibility for getting protective gear, responsibility for contact tracing. When it mattered, he took no responsibility now a throwaway line and a throwaway interview where hes trying to look like hes doing his job. The bottom line, lawrence, is hes got a failed presidency he hasnt taken responsibility for whats the central problem in our country right now, which is this horrible pandemic. He will start to talk about it more tomorrow, but where is the action where are the steps to get this disease under control . Thats not happening he wont take responsibility for that central failing and Chris Wallace did press the president , i think smartly, on obamacare and the president s attempts to get rid of it and get rid of it in a pandemic. Lets listen so what joe biden said about that. It is absolutely i dont i quite frankly dont get it, and i dont understand how he thinks it appeals to the American People. Overwhelming the American People want us to keep obamacare and improve on it. Not get rid of it in the middle of a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of people ill and dying, and he wants to take away Health Insurance my lord. Yesterday donald trump says he has a Health Care Plan thats going to come out in two weeks the fabled trump two weeks everything is going to happen in two weeks. The Health Care Plan has been three and a half years in the making right i mean, that doesnt fall solely on Donald Trumps shoulders admittedly there are a whole bunch of republicans you can point to that over the course of the actual creation of obamacare, the time when obama was in office there has been a long time of alternatives presented but the real point is similarly undoing something they found was politically profitable, irrespective of whether or not it was beneficial to large spots of the public, 20 million plus people who were able to gain Health Insurance on the basis of it then the other part of it that i think is operative here is that i think trump has benefitted a lot from the absence of an Attention Span among his most f fervent admirers so there is this thing about the Affordable Care act and then the next thing you know hes back off talking about the wall and disinfectants or any of the other kinds of things going on in his head at any point in tim