In the history of television, only two of the 100 most watched shows have not been live sporting events, the oscars and the State Of The Union. So as a campaign kickoff, you dont get a bigger platform than joe biden has tonight. But with enormous opportunity come enormous challenges. Can he meet the moment and how . Our team has reporting on what is happening inside the white house right now and the unique unvarnished insights of a former biden Speech Writer. Plus, as the president prepares to address the israelhamas war tonight, conditions in gaza are deteriorating to new lows. Children starving to death. Bright orange bursts of flames as a plane makes an emergency landing, what exactly caused it. An awful lot to get to. We begin with this, among all of the goals President Biden has for tonights State Of The Union address, there is one that rises above all others. Show americans he is still up to the job. Do not expect to hear the words age or energy or focus, but as much or maybe eve
Those are 9 11sized figures. Experts worry this is going to get worse. 9 11 every day. Yesterday also broke the single day record in confirmed cases eclipsing 200,000 in our nbc news count. The first time in this pandemic. The strain on our Hospital System is immense. For the first time in this pandemic we surpassed 100,000 hospitalizations. More than 14 million cases have been confirmed in this country. We can see around 400,000 deaths by the president ial inauguration on january 20th, according to recent models. Yes, the death toll is going up and the models are going up. The disturbing numbers contrast with this number. 46. That was the number of minutes in this president ial video released yesterday amid all those infections and deaths. As mr. Trump unloaded a torrent of lies and conspiracy theorys about an election he lost. As we said in nbcs first read this morning, that split screen, a president protesting an election he clearly lost a month ago versus a virus that is getting de
with the federal health care website. if anything, it s revealed that the federal government isn t so tech savvy, right. they re not really good at managing projects like this. so when president obama and administration officials are getting advice from top execs like google, facebook, twitter, linkedin, even etsy was here. that s invaluable insight for the administration. okay. we ll wait to see maybe if we get some read out from the meeting. reporter: we will. it s just not out yet. okay. we ll wait for it. meantime, big announcement from the white house today. talk to me about this new enlistment to take over healthcare.gov. reporter: this is a really big deal. the former top exec at microsoft will come in to try to shepherd healthcare.gov to success. jeff zeinst is going to be one
that that information is complete, it s accurate, that it s something that the health plan can then process and consumers can be confident they re enrolled and their coverage can begin on january 1st. what we ve seen so far is that health plans have you know, a lot of those files have included data that s been inaccurate, that s been missing. in some cases those files haven t gotten to the health plans at all. so it s important to make sure we get those issues addressed so that we all avoid a situation in which consumers think they re enrolled and find out after the fact they re not. is jeff zeinst and his team, are they addressing that as well as addressing the front-end problems? absolutely. our industry and people in our industry have been working closely around the clock with the technical folks at the administration to try to get these issues addressed. progress has been made. we re seeing improvements every single day. but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done
another deadline you can t possibly guarantee. why would the president back himself into a corner like that? why would jeff zeinst say i ll get it done by the end of the month. jeff ze i nst said this is so much worse than i ever thought. you ve got to be signed up by the end of december. that gives people one month. that sends people to the call centers. the call centers are screwed up too. meanwhile president bill clinton was on. who knew ozzie on-line magazine had such interesting bump music but they paid it during this sound bite with president clinton where the president said so many times if you like it, you can keep it. now bill clinton says that president should keep his promise. here s bill clinton. i personally believe even if it takes changing the law the president should honor the commitment the tp-rg made to those