extort bribes in the form of campaign donations from big companies who want favors from his administration. the president today openly, in front of a crowd of people, suggesting that exxonmobil might want a couple controversial permits and he might green-light them as president in exchange for exxon spending $25 million to boost his campaign. exxon later in the day had to tweet publicly to let everybody know that they're not actually planning on doing this, this was just the president musing out loud hypothetically about him committing that crime. he didn't actually already commit it, nor did exxon. they just want everybody to know. okay, that said, the president today did call his election opponent a criminal and said if he had a better attorney general, his opponent would already be locked up in jail. the president also today said reporters are criminals if they don't report his claims that his election opponent is a criminal who ought to be in jail. all in all, this has been a pretty normal day now in what used to be, until very recently, the world's leading example of a mature rule-of-law-based democracy. now we know, all it takes is one presidency like this, and now we're all -- we're like all these other sad-sack, maybe democracies around the world wondering if maybe they'll be a hunta this year and no longer feels weird to prepare for election day violence. how did we become that country so quickly? it takes one presidency, one of our two major parties happy to go along with the whole "lock her up" thing, less than four years of us not quite adjusting to what the rest of the world easily recognizes as authoritarian drift, and all that means for corruption and nepotism and the rule of law. turns out, it doesn't take much. it does not take much, and it certainly doesn't take much time to reduce us to the kind of country we used to lecture on democratic norms and regular order and the impartial administration of justice, even on the incitement of political violence by national office-holders, right? we used to lecture little countries all over the world about that stuff. now it's us. and we are 15 days out from deciding if we want to change that course. while the country marches straight back up toward another even higher peak in covid cases, right? the president is now holding multiple, in-person rallies per day, including these two beauties today in arizona, where there were almost no masks to be seen and where people were absolutely packed in because that's the way the president likes it, pandemic or not. to that end, here's something new. this is exclusive to us. this is latest ad that is about to be launched by the dnc in this last two weeks of the campaign, while the president keeps doing these no-mask, crowded events. we obtained an early copy of this ad. nobody has seen this publicly before now. i think it's newsworthy. watch this. >> he swore an oath to protect us, but now he's on a reckless campaign tour, infecting us. holding potential superspreader events in state after state, dancing as the country suffers. too politically weak to deliver new stimulus relief, too selfish to save american lives. no plan to fight the virus. and now, a third wave is coming. had enough? >> i'm joe biden, and i approve this message. >> had enough? that is the new covid-themed ad from the dnc. we got an early copy of that. that's first time anybody has seen that anywhere. as much as the trump campaign does not want this election to be about the coronavirus and the disastrously failed u.s. response to it under president trump, the president today publicly moaning, complaining about how much the news media wants to talk about the coronavirus and the huge new surge in cases in this country. he's complaining about that, like it's some sort of plot against him and not just something happening in this country. but as much as the president and his campaign don't want the campaign to be about covid, when this is what's happening in the country 15 days out from the election, and the president and his campaign really are holding a string of high-covid-risk events like no other entity in the whole country, after the president himself was just hospitalized for it -- yes, covid is going to be the basis on which the election is held, inevitably. there's no getting away from it. today in florida, where early, in-person voting just started, former vice president joe biden today published this piece in the "tampa bay times," laying out his plan for tackling covid and making this argument to florida's many, many older citizens, that maybe president trump isn't totally committed to looking out for you. biden says in his op ed -- "one day, before we cross the threshold of 200,000 deaths, president trump held a rally-anrally and insisted that covid-19 only impacts elderly people with heart problems and other problems. he said it affects virtually nobody." biden then continues, "think about that. who was the president talking about when he said it affects virtually nobody? he was talking about seniors, seniors who worked hard their entire lives and deserve security, respect and peace of mind in their golden years." joe biden making his case in the tampa bay times today, as floridians started voting in huge numbers early in person today. and of course, not everybody who votes in florida is an older person, but i think the combination of the vulnerability of older americans to covid, the rank incompetence of this administration in trying to get covid under control at all, the president calling older americans who get covid virtually nobody, and, let it be noted, the president trying to push through a new supreme court justice right before the election who won't even say if she thinks medicare and social security are constitutional. according to amy coney barrett, medicare and social security may not be constitutional. she doesn't want to say. the president, in the midst of this pandemic, trying to push through a supreme court nominee at the very last second who is not only publicly and volunta vociferously hostile to that, she's publicly agnostic as to whether we're even allowed to have medicare and social security as a country at all. i think the polling right now is close in florida, but particularly with older voters in florida, the biden campaign thinks they've got the better case to make to those voters in these closing two weeks. we shall see. in terms of looking at the polling right now, i mean, choose your own advantage in terms of how you want to look at polling averages. i do recommend you look at polling averages, instead of individual polls. in "the new york times" polling average right now, they say the polling average for high-quality polls is currently biden plus four over trump in florida, but they also -- if you have anxiety about what the polls mean this time, given how wrong they were in 2016, the "times" does this handy thing, where they say, if it turns -- they calculate -- if the polls in florida this year are as wrong this year as they were in florida in 2016, they also give you a polling average that adjusts for that. and if we adjust for how badly wrong the polls were in florida in 2014, they say, if you factor that in, that would mean that biden is closer to plus one over trump in florida right now, not plus four. that said, the polesters say they actually learned from their mistakes in 2016 and they won't be nearly as bad this year. who knows. take it all with many, many grains of salt at this point, if you do care strongly about what's going to happen in this election, with 15 left, my only advice to you is to prognosticate less, like, worry less about, you know, what you can speculate about responsibly or not, prognosticate less, speculate less, vote and volunteer and donate more. do the things you can do. don't worry about the stuff that is predictive in terms of what's going to happen. now's your last chance to try to change what's going to happen, rather than worrying about how other people are predicting it will or not. and here, toward that end, is some encouraging news in terms of americans getting off the couch and pitching in to bolster democracy for this election. we're starting to see headlines like this from different pockets all over the country as people start to volunteer in record numbers to be poll workers. this is something that some of the federal agencies responsible for ensuring the integrity of the election have suggested people do, if they're able. this is something president obama has suggested people do, if they're able. this is people volunteering to help out at voting locations on election day. and we're seeing headlines like this all around the country. this is from a local radio station in ohio about poll workers in montgomery county, ohio, and miami county, ohio. "montgomery county board of elections director jan kelly says they've had so many people reach out to them to be a poll worker that they haven't been able to return all the calls. "we have heard you. we're just so busy that we're still calling people." now, they don't have enough poll workers all over ohio, but in those two counties, they've got lots. that's good. that's a good sign. this is from erie county, new york. local elections supervisor there saying "it looks like we're going to have plenty of people this election day. we've been overwhelmed with requests. we've had lots more requests than usual from first-time people." from "the philadelphia inquirer." people are volunteering to be poll workers in record numbers in both philadelphia and in the suburbs. "across the state, huge numbers of pennsylvanians -- many of them younger and first-time poll workers -- have enlisted to check in voters on election day, to set up voting machines and to troubleshoot problems. so many thousands of applicants have signed up in philadelphia and its suburban counties that elections officials are in the unusual position of having a surplus." again, fantastic news out of pennsylvania. here's virginia -- "election officials in lunenburg, buckingham, cumberland and prince edward counties said their localities are among those benefiting from an increased number of poll workers, with it looking more likely that they will have a surplus of poll workers come election day." that's good news out of virginia. here's madison, wisconsin. "madison poll workers sign up in droves ahead of november election. the city of madison hired an unprecedented 6,000 poll workers this fall in anticipation for the upcoming november 3rd election. that's a total that dwarfs recent election cycles." the madison city clerk's office announced that applications regarding poll work will no longer be considered because all 6,000 positions in madison have been filled, more than doubling that of past presidential election cycles. that's madison. elsewhere, they still need folks to volunteer with about 50 other communities in wisconsin that still need volunteers. if you are listening to me from wisconsin right now, if you are watching this show from wisconsin, you should figure out whether your locality and where you live might be one of the places that needs more poll workers. if you are able to volunteer, your country needs you. also, as i alluded to before, there are some specific parts of ohio that need more poll workers to volunteer as well. some counties are fine. lots of people are volunteering to serve. most counties, in fact, in ohio have enough poll workers, but according to the state, out of the 88 counties in ohio, there are 16 counties that still need more people to come forward and volunteer. so, more still to be done, but it did it. it is heartening. it is heartening to see so many of our fellow americans stepping up, not in a partisan way, necessarily, but in a small "d" democratic way to do their part to make sure the election goes okay, right? if you are fit and healthy and not at high risk for covid, if you can be the election volunteer so the sweet old lady who usually does it can stay home and be safe, then your country thanks you for doing it. the total number of americans who have already cast their ballots is getting pretty close to 30 million nationwide now. that number is growing by the millions each day. in texas alone, where the polling average now has it so close that it may be somewhere around a two-point race in texas between biden and trump, as of today, almost 25% of all registered voters in the state of texas have cast their ballots already. that's crazy! i mean, what that means in practical terms for the campaigns is that there are fewer and fewer people every day now who are going to vote and who can still potentially be persuaded by something new. if you've already cast your ballot, you're off the table in terms of being persuadable, either by one of the campaigns giving you an argument that you like or that you don't like or from something in the news that might nudge your vote either way. for so many people, between 25 and 30 million americans, their vote is already off the table in terms of persuasion. it's also already banked in terms of your vote counting, which is great. but with that many people early voting, the campaigns have to figure out, what's the best way to marshal and spend all of their remaining resources between now and november 3rd? i mean, right now, biden is ahead in the polls, both nationally and in most swing states. take the polls with a grain of salt, you know, but it's true. if biden is this far ahead, as the polls say, biden doesn't need another debate right now to try to change the course of the campaign, right? he doesn't need to change his message dramatically to change the course of the campaign. from the biden campaign's perspective right now, things are going well enough for them that they are happier the more people vote right now because they don't want anything to change over the next 15 days. in terms of whether or not there's going to be a third debate, well, president trump backed out of the second debate. there's only been one debate so far, and it was that first one. president trump's performance in that first debate was so disastrous and his polling cratered immediately thereafter, i'm sure the biden campaign wouldn't mind a second sip of that tea, but it's a reasonable question as to whether or not there will be a third debate this week. i'm sure the biden campaign is confident about their performance, given president trump's performance in debate one, but they don't need things to change much over the next 15 days for thing to go their way. the president did have that terrible first debate. he bailed on the second debate last week. i think it also shouldn't be overlooked that last week, the president also admitted that he may have broken the rules that he agreed to, which stipulated that he needed to have a covid test on the day of the first debate. the president was in the hospital, hospitalized for what appeared to be pretty significant covid symptoms within days of the first debate. the president now won't say whether or not he actually followed the rules and got tested the day of that debate. he says maybe he did have that test, maybe he didn't. he doesn't know. him breaking the rules in that first debate in that way should presumably have some sort of consequence, right? if biden wanted to opt out of debate three, that seems like reason enough. today, president trump's campaign wrote an open letter complaining to the commission on presidential debates about the rules his campaign already agreed to. they also, weirdly, in this letter to the commission, they complained that this final debate -- they were promised -- they said, they were promised that this final debate that's supposed to be coming up this week, would be all about foreign policy and nothing else. and so, now they want all of the other announced topics dropped. that's not true. the third debate was never promised to them or to anyone to be all about foreign policy. that is something the trump campaign made up. the commission said from the outset that the moderator of the third and final debate would choose the topics herself and announce them in advance. that's what has happened. but the trump campaign is lying about that, saying they were promised it would be all foreign policy. they're complaining about that now, hoping nobody remembers the real story. it seems a little desperate. the president today, of course, also started talking smack, started making personal attacks against kristen welker, the widely respected nbc news white house correspondent who is set to be the moderator of thursday's debate. of course he did. that kind of whining and complaining in advance and lying in advance about both the debate commission and the moderator, that's like, you know, standard-issue trump campaign tactics, working the refs ahead of the contest. but now, with the late-breaking news tonight about what's supposed to happen with the third and final debate this week, let's see what happens. "the new york times" is first to report tonight that the commission on presidential debates actually is going to change the debate format a little bit to try to keep it from turning into another 10,000-car pileup like the president careened us all into at the first debate. this is how the "times" reported it earlier tonight -- "as in the first debate, each candidate will be allotted two minutes of speaking time to initially answer the moderator's questions, but while each candidate is using that allotted two minutes, quote, his opponent's microphone would be turned off during that period, in an ateam to ensure an uninterrupted response." after the disastrous first debate, the commission had said they would consider additional measures to keep the debate functioning within the rules agreed to by the campaigns, including the rule that each candidate gets two minutes to answer before being interrupted. that means they warned this is coming. but now they actually made the change. the biden campaign has no need for this debate. the trump campaign needs the debate, but they're so invested in the public narrative that the president is the victim and he needs everything to go his own way, that, of course, this is a perfect excuse for them to quit the debate, too. so, you know, the night is young! anything could happen. stay with us. we've got lots to come tonight, including, who knows what is going to develop on this debate issue, now that the commission on presidential debates has announced that the microphone for the opposing candidate will be cut off while the other candidate gets his two minutes uninterrupted. who knows what will evolve from each of the campaigns in response to that. we've also got a live report from the great state of wisconsin coming up. we've got jeremy bash here tonight live on that surprise news today of a bunch of russian military intelligence officers getting hit with federal charges in the u.s. for election interference. but what they're being charged with is interfering in other countries' elections, not ours. we've got lots to come tonight. as i said to chris at the top of the hour, the news is weird tonight. we've got lots to come. stay with us. tonight. we've got lots to come stay with us so you're a small business, or a big one. you were thriving, but then... oh. ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you don't, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. powered by the largest gig speed network in america. but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together. bounce forward, with comcast business. hi. my name is melissa resch. i am a nurse who works on the covid medical unit at wausau hospital. it has been quite an experience. we started off small scale, seeing patients who are being ruled out for covid, and now we're seeing they were walking, talking, independent. now we're seeing people on high amounts of oxygen, needing to be repositioned, needing to be intubated, needing to be on large amounts of oxygen. n-95 masks do not absorb tears when you are at a bedside removing somebody from a bipap, letting a family facetime them to say good-bye and you sit with them as they take their last breath. it is not something that i ever thought i would be doing as a nurse during a pandemic, and we're seeing it more and more frequently. >> my name is david eggman. i'm a nurse. i've been a registered nurse for 20 years. i've worked in icus for 20 years. since april, i've been volunteering in the covid icu. we had it pretty darn easy in april, may, june and july here in wisconsin/north-central wisconsin. since august, it's gotten bad, and it's getting much worse. we have many patients who have come in here and their last words, before we put a breathing tube in, are, they didn't realize it was as bad as it was, they thought they were doing what they could do to protect themselves. we've had several people come in here and be very sick that all they did was want to see their grandparents. i'm a grandparent. i would like to see my grandchildren. this is larger than that. by wearing a mask, you're protecting them as well as yourself. please, if you do nothing else, please start wearing masks. thank you. >> this has been a really crazy time to be a nurse, especially an icu nurse. you know, in the beginning, in the spring, we had tons of support from the communities. we had the blue army, #bluearmy. we had people, you know, putting blue hearts in their windows and blue porch lights on. i still have mine on. and then, you know, over the summer, it kind of slowed. and now we're at the part where we've never been busier. we've literally never been busier. and i think, for the most part, the community has still been supportive, but i feel like we're kind of fallen off a little bit with our support, and i think we really need the support. it's hard walking into these shifts every day or into the hospital every day, seeing some of these people just not progress, seeing multiple deaths, multiple days in a row. it's really hard to try to stay positive when a community itself isn't really got your back. there is some people who have been really resistant to the whole covid world. they don't believe it exists. they don't see what we see. there's nothing political about these people dying. >> there is nothing political about these people dying. those health care workers from wisconsin -- wisconsin, of course, one of the states that's having a really hard time right now, state's seeing record number of cases and hospitalizations, some hospitals stretched dangerously thin in wisconsin right now, but it's all over the place. more than 30 states have seen more than a 25% increase in case numbers in the last 14 days. in utah this weekend, the largest hospital in the state overtopped its icu capacity. that hospital drafting in overnight overtime doctors and nurses for their overrun icu as they scramble to convert other bed space into intensive care capability. north dakota continues to have an incredibly difficult time. north dakota ranks first in the country for the number of new cases per capita, and it's just been an inexorable rise in north dakota the last few weeks. today, that state recorded its 12th straight day of active cases reaching a record high. 12 days in a row. north dakota's governor has resisted instituting any kind of statewide mask order because he keeps saying it wouldn't matter, that people wouldn't follow it even if he did it. fargo tonight became the first city in north dakota to implement a mask mandate. in south dakota, where the republican governor has refused to order any statewide covid restrictions, after record numbers of cases and hospitalizations, the mayor of sioux falls, south dakota, today is urging residents of that city to "wear a dang mask," saying he needs them to do more. they're not going to do anything at the state level. he's got to do something at the city level. states across the country are breaking record after record at this point, as the president continues to downplay the virus. today he called dr. anthony fauci another career scientist involved in the u.s. public health response -- he called them idiots. as much controversy and scandal as there is on this at the federal level, on the front lines, in the states and in our counties and cities, health care workers are fully engaged right now. as much nonsense and fighting over the disastrous federal response, on the front lines, health care workers, the doctors, the nurses, you know, the pulmonary specialists, the housekeeping staff, people who are dealing with the covid surge into our hospitals, those folks are more engaged on this than ever before. and they are doing it now still without any federal leadership, but also now, in a lot of cases, without the kind of community support they used to get earlier this year. joining us now is dr. paul casey, the emergency department medical director at belen hospital in green bay, wisconsin. dr. casey, thank you so much for taking time to be with us tonight. i appreciate you stepping away to talk with us. >> thank you, rachel. it's an honor. >> we've seen some testimonials, sort of video diaries from some health care workers at bellin. we've seen a lot of reporting about how resources at the hospital have been stretched to accommodate this influx of patients. what do you think the country should know right now about how things are going in wisconsin and how you all are coping with what has been a really steep rise in cases? >> so, we are currently experiencing an amazing rise in coronavirus cases over the past month. we didn't really have a second wave -- we're in our second wave right now. and on friday, we had 3,800 new covid cases in the state of wisconsin. we know that 6% of covid patients will ultimately need to be admitted. so that means in 7 to 10 to 14 days, we're going to have 228 patients from a single day who are going to need hospitalization, in a state where our bed capacity is already close to being maxed out. i've been a doctor for 34 years, and i have never seen the amount of suffering i have seen in a short period of time. i have never seen in my career a time where an entire ward -- 20, 30, 40 beds -- is filled up with patients with the same disease. people try to compare covid-19 with influenza. we admit more patients per day for covid-19 pneumonia than typically we admit in a whole influenza season. this is not at all like influenza. >> you talk about 20, 30, 40 patients all in the same ward, all suffering with the same serious illness. when we saw the kinds of peaks that we saw early in the pandemic in new york, in new jersey, and the northeast, when things got so bad so fast for those hospitals, the whole country got concerns, not only about the pandemic taking off, but about the toll it was taking on health care workers, them putting themselves at risk and working themselves to the point of exhaustion. doing that in march, february and march, when this thing was brand-new, almost feels like a different ask than asking health care workers to do that now, in october, when it has been a year of stress and a year of building and a year of dealing with at least some amount of this. i can't imagine -- i you and your colleagues must be just exhausted, must be -- it must be hard to keep up the pace. >> we are starting to get tired. however, health care workers are troopers. we're in this to help people. we do whatever we can to help anybody. so, the big difference between the first wave and the second wave, at least in our community, is during the first wave, we shut down our entire hospital. we canceled clinics. we stopped doing elective surgeries, so we had tremendous capacity and more health care workers to care for those covid patients. what we learned from that, however, is that people suffered from that. they didn't get their colonoscopies, their breast cancer screening, their hip replacemen replacements. and so, in may, we opened everything back up to full service. so, we no longer have extra staff to pull in to care for covid patients when we're short because all of the staff are doing their usual jobs. so, we are taking care of those 20, 30, 40 covid patients in addition to a full hospital capacity. that's the big difference, and that's why this time it's so different. >> do you think that you're in a situation in wisconsin where you're going to have to put out the kind of call for assistance that new york did, for example, early on, that you're going to need to call in additional staffers to bring in people from outside your usual area in terms of bringing on new staff? >> we hopefully won't get there. we have planned out three different scenarios for expected covid patients based on the r0, the number that predicts how many patients will get infected. and we've already had to start using some traveling nurses and respiratory therapists. and the other problem is that we have patients out on -- not patients, but health care workers out on quarantine, because they, themselves, have been exposed to covid. so, we hope we don't have to go there. and we're preparing to not do that, but we may have to go there. >> dr. paul casey, emergency department medical director at bellin hospital in green bay, wisconsin. sir, you and your colleagues i know are working harder than is possible. thank you so much for your time tonight. >> you're welcome. thank you. >> all right. we've got much more to come tonight. stay with us. come tonight. stay with us the ups and downs of frequent mood swings can take you to deep, depressive lows. or, give you unusually high energy, even when depressed. overwhelmed by bipolar i? ask about vraylar. some medicines only treat the lows or highs. vraylar effectively treats depression, acute manic and mixed episodes of bipolar i in adults. full-spectrum relief for all bipolar i symptoms, with just one pill, once a day. elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis have an increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor about unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. report fever, stiff muscles, or confusion, which may mean a life-threatening reaction, or uncontrollable muscle movements, which may be permanent. side effects may not appear for several weeks. high cholesterol and weight gain, high blood sugar, which can lead to coma or death, may occur. movement dysfunction, sleepiness, and stomach issues are common side effects. when bipolar i overwhelms, vraylar helps smooth the ups and downs. here's a story for you. may 2017, voters in france went to the polls to elect a new french president. just like in our election, the year before then, russian intelligence agencies and the russian government played hard in the election thatay. russian-owned websites were pushing outlandish rumors about the centrist candidate, emmanuel macr macron. those were processed into hit pieces in russian state media outlets. macr macron's rival was a far right candidate named marine le pen. she had inherited from her holocaust-denying father control of france's post world war ii fascist party, so it was the neo fascist party running against macron. le pen's far-right neo fascist campaign was exquisitely bank-rolled by a russian state-controlled bank. marine le pen went to moscow and met with vladimir putin at the kremlin during the campaign. i mean, this was not subtle. but it was too much for russia to pass up, a divisive, racist, far-right fascist candidate injecting chaos into the elections in a major european democracy in 2017? that's like catnip to russia, right? they want to undermine democracy everywhere. they want to undermine western countries in general however they can. but russia saved its boldest move for the eve of that french election. just two days before the vote, russian hackers, part of the same russian military unit that had disseminated hacked democratic emails during the 2016 american election the year before, they dumped tens of thousands of files online, 9 gigabytes of stolen emails and other information, all hacked from emmanuel macron's campaign. and that might have become the dominant news story of the final weekend of that campaign before french voters went to the polls. it might have actually ended up upending that election, if not for a quirk of french law, which imposes a media blackout on anything relating to the campaign for a full day before voting starts, all the way through until polls close on election day. that blackout period in french law precedes this whole scandal with russia messing with the french election, but it ended up kind of saving the day. the material that was hacked by russian intelligence got posted online in france just hours before that media blackout period began, just minutes before the blackout began, at midnight that night, the macron campaign issued a statement, warning that the hackers had inserted forged, fake documents into the hacked, stolen material. they pleaded with the media to not report on that junk. and the media didn't. they stuck to the blackout rules. and in the end, emmanuel macron beat the far-right neo fascist marine le pen by more than 30 points. and there's a couple of reasons for us to be thinking about sort of relearning the story of that 2017 french elections right now. one is that the intelligence community is raising the alarm that russian intelligence is executing an operation just like the one they did in france on us right now. the supposed biden scandal that rudy giuliani has been shopping, the scandal he managed to get printed in the "new york post," which president trump has been gleefully promoting ever since, including posing with a copy of that paper in the oval office -- that junk that giuliani has been promoting is being actively investigated by federal investigators as potentially part of a hostile foreign influence operation illegally targeting our election. and the intelligence community is investigating this, johnny on the spot, in part because they saw this coming in advance. this was in "the new york times" last week -- "the "times" reported last january that the ukrainian company where hunter biden was once on the board, burisma, had been hacked by the same russian intelligence unit that hacked the democratic national committee in 2016. last month, u.s. intelligence analysts contacted several people with knowledge of that hack, asking them for further information because they had picked up chatter that stolen burisma emails would be leaked in the form of an october surprise." among their chief concerns would that the burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt biden's candidacy, as russian hackers did when they dumped real emails alongside forgeries ahead of the french elections in 2017. so, that's what they did to macron in 2017. they hacked and stole all of the stuff from his campaign, then they mixed it up with forged stuff and dumped it right before the election. that's what the u.s. intelligence community said they believed was going to happen with burisma and some sort of october surprise from rudy giuliani. right on time, rudy giuliani shows up with some emails from a mysterious source that are totally unverified and unverifiable and only one rupert murdoch-owned right-wing tabloid will air that junk. put it in their paper. so, that's one reason the russian operation in the 2017 french election is newly relevant to our lives right now. the russians may be trying that same trick all over again, except we don't have media blackout rules. the other reason that that 2017 russian operation in france is newly relevant is that the guys who did it just got indicted by the u.s. justice department today. here they are. the russian military intelligence hackers who carried out that operation to interfere in the french election in 2017. the justice department says in the indictment today that these guys also launched major malware and hacking operations that shut down the power grid in ukraine, that hit the parliament in the nation of georgia, that hit chemical weapons investigators in the uk and europe who were looking into the russian poisoning of former russian spy sergei skripal, who was poisoned with a russian nerve agent on british territory. they say they also orchestrated hacks that hit hospitals and companies in the united states. they also organized hacks that hit the 2018 winter olympics. it's quite a list. and although one of the russian hackers that was indicted today was previously indicted by robert mueller in 2018 for his role in the hacking operation against the 2016 election here in the u.s., today's indictment of these russian hackers doesn't include any charges related to american election interference this year. that said, the american election is two weeks from tomorrow. it's hard to look at today's indictment without trying to understand how it relates to our own election and what the justice department is trying to signal here. is that the right way to look at this? joining us now is jeremy bash. he served as chief of staff at the cia and at the defense department under president obama. jeremy, it's nice to see you. thanks for making time. >> hey, rachel. >> so, this is a lot going on, this surprise announcement from the justice department about the indictment of these russian hackers. when you look at this with your background in intelligence and your understanding of what russia has done to target our democracy and others, what do you think is most important here for people to understand? >> well, i think what's most important is that the gru, this russian military organization that was responsible for the 2016 hack-and-dump operation against the democrats that was responsible for the 2017 election interference in france, as you noted, and is responsible for these malicious cyber attacks globally, including against u.s. hospitals and businesses, they are very active, they're very capable, and they are, in fact, probably behind this russian intelligence operation. at least, it looks and appears to be a russian intelligence operation targeting the biden campaign. >> last week, andrew weissmann, who was part of the mueller investigation, wrote in "law fair" about the decision that was made by bill barr earlier this year, this spring, to drop criminal charges against russian companies that had participated in the attack on our election in 2016. and while that didn't actually get a lot of attention when it happened in march, i think in part because the country was overwhelmed by what was starting to happen to us in terms of covid, weismann makes the case that barr might have acted improperly in dismissing those charges, essentially signaling to russia that the u.s. criminal law wouldn't be used against them as a tool if they wanted to interfere in the election this year. i'm wondering if this might be a signal in the other direction, if this might be some sort of signal to brush back russian intelligence ahead of what appears to be their ongoing efforts to boost trump and his re-election effort? >> hard to know, rachel, but what we do know is that there are mixed signals being sent by the u.s. government. here today we had the justice department indicting russian hackers, but you've got the president of the united states welcoming, condoning what looks, apparently, like the russian intelligence operation targeting the biden campaign. now, remember, rachel, that rudy giuliani met in kiev with the ukrainian lawmaker who's been assessed by u.s. intelligence and announced by our treasury department to be a russian asset for the last decade. he goes to kiev, meets with dirksh and comes up later with these mysterious emails. so, every intelligence official i've talked to over the last 24 hours says that this walks like a russian intelligence disinformation campaign, this talks like a russian intelligence disinformation campaign, this is most likely a russian intelligence disinformation campaign against the biden team. >> if there have been all of these warnings from the fbi to congress, from the intelligence agencies to the white house, there have been public warnings to the u.s. public about there being a russian intelligence operation of this kind targeting this election in this way, and by the way, here's the names of the cast of characters involved, and mr. giuliani is still willingly and wittingly serving as their conduit of this information in order to carry out this interference effort, should that be illegal? shouldn't he potentially be in trouble for that, regardless of whether or not the president is also promoting it and regardless of whatever effect it has on the election? >> at a minimum, rachel, it's conspiracy to engage in computer crimes and hacking in violation of criminal laws. it's also potentially conspiracy to engage in election interference. but i think the most important point is that rudy giuliani wasn't just merely fed this intelligence. he wasn't just passively receiving it. he ordered it off the menu. he demanded it. he banged his hand on the table and said, "give me that dirt on joe biden." that's the reason, rachel, why the president of the united states called the ukrainian president last july -- spoiler alert -- he got impeached for this -- and demanded dirt against joe biden. and he said, i'm sending rudy giuliani to kiev to collect it. lo and behold, here we've seen it. >> jeremy bash, former chief of staff of the cia and pentagon during the obama administration. jeremy, thanks for your time tonight. i appreciate you being here. >> thanks, rachel. all right, we've got much more to come tonight. stay with us. ght, we've got muc more to come tonight stay with us ction. so we took our worst vice, and turned it into the dna for a better system. we created bionic and put the word out with godaddy. what will you change? make the world you want. tomorrow will mark two weeks until election day, but tomorrow also promises to be a nutty news day, and i can prove it to you. here's a couple of things to watch for. tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. eastern, a man named elliott broidy, former trump inaugural committee vice chairman, elliott broidy, a major trump donor, former finance vice chairman of the republican party -- tomorrow, he is expected to plead guilty in federal court. he's been charged with allegedly illegally lobbying on behalf of a malaysian business. but as bloomberg news reports, broidy is not just expected to plead, he is reportedly cooperating with federal prosecutors, although we don't know to what extent. tomorrow at his hearing, we should get a better idea of whether elliott broidy might testify about other people's business in order to save himself. even just given the legal strutny thus far against the presidential inaugural committee, just that, that could get really interesting really fast. but wait, there's more. even just from the courts there's more tomorrow. noon tomorrow is the deadline for the justice department to report back to a federal judge, who's demanding an affirmation from president trump himself, or from someone in direct contact with president trump, as to whether or not the president actually means what he says onlin online. specifically, did the president mean it when he sent a tweet saying he was authorizing the declassification of everything, no redactions, when it came to the russia investigation. justice department lawyers have tried to pump the brakes on this in court, saying ignore what the president said there, he didn't really mean it, that's not actually a declassification order, but the judge says he's not sure he can trust the justice department on that. he'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth. he has told the justice department to file a declaration settling once and for all whether the president means what he says in his tweets. and specifically, if two weeks before the election, the president really has just green-lit the entire declassification of all documents and records from the mueller investigation. really? is that what you meant? we should find out by noon tomorrow. watch this space. like you, my hands are everything to me. but i was diagnosed with dupuytren's contracture. and it got to the point where things i took for granted got tougher to do. thought surgery was my only option. turns out i was wrong. so when a hand specialist told me about nonsurgical treatments, it was a total game changer. like you, my hands have a lot more to do. learn more at factsonhand.com today. it is 15 days between now and the election. it means tomorrow is 14 days, which means, i don't know what your pacing system is like or what your stamina is like, but whatever you do to keep yourself going 15 days in advance to be at your strongest 15 days from now, now's the time to start doing that stuff. as you can tell, i actually don't have a very organized way to approach this, but i know that this next 15 days is going to be full tilt. eat your wheaties. all right, that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow. "way too early with kasie hunt" is up next. you don't understand. i understand well. you don't understand, and you never have understood. >> did you authorize your doctors to tell you when you last tested negative? >> is that so important to you? you seem to be so intent. if it's so important to you, why is it so important to you? >> we want to know how long you may have been -- >> why? why is it so important to you? look at your dedication. >> your strategy seems to be to call biden a criminal. why is that? >> he is a criminal. he's a criminal. he got caught. read his laptop. and you know who's a criminal? you're a criminal for not reporting it.