Past election day. That of course might spark a backlash from the president who claimed one could be ready by the election. But might indicate that science will rule. Next hour, the nations Top Health Officials are testifying on the hill about the nations response to this pandemic. Well bring that to you live. First though we begin with cnns medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen who has the latest on the vaccine to big phase three trials in the u. S. This is a big point because this is where you tested among thousands of people. What are we learning . Right. As we test it actually among tens of thousands of people. This is now number four to go into phase three clinical trials. Lets look at the list. So we know that know that moderna and pfizer started in tens of thousands of people on july 27th. Astrazeneca sort of an interesting one, started august 21st and then went on hold while an illness of one of the participants is being investigated to see if its related to the vaccine. Johnson johnson started today, september 23rd. When you look at these four, the first two use the same type of vaccine platform or technology. The second two use another type. So the first two use one type and neither of the times has ever resulted in the vaccine on the market. So these are relatively new vaccine technologies. We will be interested of course to see if they actually work and if theyre safe. Jim and poppy. I mean, thats so interesting, that neither of them the mrna and others have been approved to take it to market. Can you tell us and explain what changed overnight in terms of how the fda is issuing what appear to be pretty more strict guidelines at least on the time line for authorization. Right. I think, poppy, hit you hit an interesting point there. These are new technologies and the sources im talking to says theres a bit of anxiety about this because theyve never resulted in a vaccine being put on the market and being given to hundreds of millions of people. We are being told that the fda is expected to put a rule on that will say, hey, when you get to the certain point in your trial, a point that neither moderna or pfizer has reached yet, you have to wait two more months until youre allowed to apply for the emergency use authorization to put your vaccine on the market. So its waiting two months past a certain point in the trial that neither one has got to. You dont have to get your calendar out to know that neither one of the vaccines will be on the market by election day which is what President Trump keeps talking about. And the reason for this is safety, safety, safety. The fda wants more shots and more arms, so that they can see, hmm, is there a safety problem here . We want more people in these trials so that we can see if this vaccine might possibly cause problems. Jim, poppy . Elizabeth, thank you for that reporting. With me is the president for the center for science and the Public Interest and hes critically a former associate commissioner of the fda. Dr. Laurie, i have read your quotes for months now about this. Im glad youre here in person. Thanks so much. Thank you. So lets begin with that. The fda our sources there are saying two things. One, the fda could make these Pharma Companies wait 60 days after all participants in the trial have gotten the second dose. And then go for emergency authorization or wait for 60 days until half of the people have gotten the second shot. Is it safe to wait for half of the people to have been two months out from this and not all of them . Well, its a balancing act. On the one hand, you want additional Safety Information and on the other hand, you dont want it to be withheld without improving what you know. So i think this is probably a reasonable balance that theyre striking. Its important to get that additional Safety Information because sometimes those signals dont appear for a while after the injection. So theyre basically putting the limits on before they give a ua. You were quoted on monday about sector of health and human agencies, alex azar, assuming control for what all of the agencies underneath him do and say, right . Barring the Health Agencies which would include the fda from signing any new rules that would include on a vaccine without him first approving it. So can the fda do this without him signing off . So i think there are maybe a couple of Different Things going on here. I do think that the fda can enforce this and they do so by telling the companies what they expect and any company would be foolhardy to submit something with what the fda said they required. I think theyll go along with this. The second relates to the memo from secretary azar, which i do think is, you know, something of a power grab by him. But what it does is it relates to new regulations and these orders that relate to vaccine approval and emergency use authorization they arent orders. The move by the secretary to insist he signs all regulations i dont think it affects all regulatory approval. So your comment about it being a power grab, the chief of staff to him, harrison, said this is a housekeeping matter. It has no bearing on how the agency deals with covid vaccines. Explain why you think the hhs secretary shouldnt have this power. Well, you know, what this really relates to is whether or not given kind of person ironically called an interior officer can sign a regulation and i speak as somebody who was an inferior officer and i signed these when i was at the fda. It adds really meaningless bureaucracy to the process to require that someone several levels above the level i held is going to be somebody signing a regulation. I mean, thats just a total waste of time and it creates a gumming up of the machinery when it comes to regulations. I think whats really going on is that the secretary is sending a signal to the white house that he has his and that the whole thing is under control. Okay. Well, its great to have your insight, dr. Laurie. I hope you come back soon. Thank you very much. Well, still to come, moments from now, Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg will return for the final time to the Supreme Court. You will see it live right here. A moment for the court, a moment for the country. And new reporting this morning from the New York Times says that russian trolls are simply amplifying President Trumps own misleading statements this election cycle rather than create their own disinformation. Former National Security adviser to President Trump, h. R. Mcmaster will join me next to discuss this and other threats. And longlasting gain scent beads. Part of the irresistible scent collection from gain and all the moments you havent hi love, cant wait got the ring yes and with jared it doesnt have to to stir that fire, university of phoenix is awarding up to one Million Dollars in scholarships through this month. See what scholarship you qualify for at phoenix. Edu. That includes temperature scan, and sanitizing everythingfe. And all of our staff wearing gloves and masks. Not that mask. This mask. Thats the visionworks difference. Visionworks. See the difference. Neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair®. Weve got the retinol that gives you results in one week. Not just any retinol. Accelerated retinol sa. One week is all it takes. Neutrogena®. Welcome back. Today the Senate Intelligence committee is set to receive a briefing behind closed doors on the issue of election security. This on the same week were learning that the cia says russian president Vladimir Putin is probably directing russias interference once again and the fbis warning that foreign actors might try to spread disinformation about the 2020 election results. Im joined now by the president s former National Security adviser, lieutenant retired Lieutenant General mcmaster. Hes out with a new book called battle grounds, the fight to defend the free world. I would recommend it. Thanks for being on this morning. Thank you. House intelligence indicates that russia is interfering in the u. S. President ial election as well as the broader political conversation here. Under putins direction, to help donald trump and hurt his democratic opponent. As we saw in 2016. Given your experience particularly with russia, why does the kremlin prefer it seems President Trump . Well, jim, you know despite this report, i dont know if they really prefer anybody. What they want to do is they want to sow doubt about whoever wins, right . And make sure that americans lose confidence in our democratic process. And in our institutions and elections broadly, but who we are as a people. So anything they can do to divide us and, you know, i mean, putin at the kremlin, theyre always like a step ahead, right . Theyre always thinking about what can we do next to make it even worse for americans in terms of how we view ourselves and one another. I think thats i think thats what theyre up to. I think they dont really care who wins, as long as we doubt the result and they can pit us against each other. I get that. And i get that putin, the kremlin, win regardless, right . Because any disarray in this country serves their interest, but the fact is they focus their negative disinformation, right, on Hillary Clinton in 2016 and now on joe biden. Why then that focus if it doesnt matter to them . You know well, its winwin for them, because what happens is if theyre seen as actively undercutting the one candidate, the other candidate wins and the other is discredited. You know, how can they lose in that scenario, right . So putins really sophisticated about this. Jim, again, 2016 election, what i found as we were looking into this is that the Internet Research agency, like the Front Organization for the you know, the kremlin spies running the sustained campaign against us, their activity went way up right after the election. And they had a Campaign Like ready to go of, you know, hey, trump should have won, but the election was rig. But when trump did win, they had to shift it oh, wow, he would have won the popular vote. So theyre always trying to sow these doubts about our processes. Hey, what we ought to be proud about though i think and positive about, there have been a lot of adaptations since 2016. Their organizations stood up to protect the, you know, the election infrastructure. But that also to counter the disinformation and the propaganda. The report that leaked out of the Intelligence Agency its an indicator. Hey, the government is working on this hard. I think jim what we need to do is work on it harder ourselves. Because what russia does is like they they take advantage of any division we have. Right . As we were at each others throats you know, from a partisan perspective, you know, russias i mean, theyre celebrating. You know, this is a great situation for them. I get that. I do. And you see it. Listen, russia as you know better than me dives into every divisive issue whether it be take a knee in the nfl or election disputes. But what has been missing as you know is a unified american bipartisan response. Right. You look at a whole issue of provocations recently, you know, bounties on u. S. Soldiers in afghanistan, arm sales to the taliban, the poisoning of navalny, which in any other time everybody including the president would be standing up and saying, putin, stop it. But the president doesnt do that. I want to play what he said yesterday to the rally and ask you a quick question about it. Have a listen. I like putin, he likes me. We get along. But the fact is, russia doesnt have our interests at mind at heart. Do you have any explanation for why the president wont utter the simple words dont mess with us, russia. Im on to you. Right. You know, jim, i dont understand it. You know, i wish President Trump would just realize hey, Vladimir Putin is not his friend. Right . I mean, he wasnt george w. Bushs friend when he looked into his soul, hes not Barack Obamas friend when he was trying to work with medvedev. Hes not Hillary Clintons friend when she brought a reset button to lavrov. Its selfdelusion. I write about this in battle grounds like the strategic narcissism. We look at the world the way we want it to be and we have to confront the reality. Putin is the best liar in the world and he shakes our confidence in who we are with the flat denials of even what is so obvious that they have done. Right, the poisoning of navalny, a nerve agent like they did with skripal. And they shot down an airliner full of innocent people in ukraine and they said, oh, that wasnt us. There was incontrovertible evidence. So jim, i dont understand it. I think the president should be stronger on this and should be direct about it. We should be direct about it. You in your book, you focused particularly on the threats from russia and china and china is a country that the president reversed that narcissism if you can say it in terms of our view of the world from previous administrations. One hes been direct against. Who is the bigger threat including to the russia is it russian or china or are they differing kind of threats . Theyre different kinds of threat and china is a huge threat because of scale. I mean, the side of their economy. They have increased their defense spending 800 . Its the largest i think that im aware of, the peacetime buildup of a military in history. We see them becoming more and more aggressive in so many ways. And so what china wants to do is they want to take center stage, right . This is the narrative of National Rejuvenation from xi jinping. But russia realizes theyre weak. They have the economy the size of texas and they have big problems. The chance of oil prices and covid hit them hard. A lot of internal dissension especially in the eastern part of the country. But putins standards are lower. He wants to drag us down. Right . And putin thinks, hey, ill be the last man standing as i watch the United States, as i watch European Countries consume themselves in their vitriolic partisan politics and as you mentioned, right, what they do they use whatever issue can divide us, right . So about 80 of this Internet Research agencys efforts are on race. Divide us on race. Yeah. Yep. Then that go to hotbutton political issues like immigration or gun control. So whenever we have the conversations like were yelling at each other instead of having civil discussions about these issues, were just playing into their hands. Yeah, i get it. I want to ask you about the coronavirus because your successor, robert obrien, told the president earlier this Year Coronavirus would be his Biggest National threat of his presidency. We just sur passed 200,000 dead americans. Has the u. S. Failed from the National Security perspective in its response . Well, we havent done as well as we should have and you see how difficult it is to implement. You have to get things done. You cant just write a plan, you have to actually implement that plan. And there are three aspects to this. Ill go through this quickly. First of all, you want to be able to stop it early. Stop it where it starts so it doesnt get to your shores. And of course, thank you, chinas communist party. They suppressed any of the news of the human to human transmission. They shut down, you know, internal transportation before international. All of that. The second thing is you want to mobilize biomedical response. Thats where we had the biggest problems, right . Because we have the very fragile supply chains that were overreliant on china, but they were biased on efficiency and just in time delivery. Okay, we cant do that again. The pharmaceuticals and the personal protective equipment so mobilizing the response is hard for us because we dont have a centralized system. Its public and private and federal and local so coordination of the effort. That was the biggest shortfall i think. And the third area is innovation. How do you get therapies, how do you get a vaccine. Jim, thats actually going very well. You know . I heard you reporting and im confident in the vaccine effort. I know a lot of the people involved in it, on operation warped speed. On the plus side is that. And the minus side, we have to stop it early and mobilize and we have to work on it and get better at it. We have seen kelly, mattis, and others, some have questioned his fitness for office. I know this is uncomfortable for all military leaders, including you, deliberately in your book. I just wonder as a soldier, as a commander what is the greater duty for military leaders . To remain apolitical or to share concerns about the wellbeing of the country . You know, i think its both. Right . To remain apolitical and share concerns but dont do it in a partisan way. Dont get drug down into the morass of partisan politics. Im critical about the trump policy in the book but i wont get into the ad hominum attacks and the petty partisanship. We have to resist any effort to drag the military into the partisan politics. Our founders were very cognizant of this. George washingtons grandparents fled the english civil war. So we can never have the military involved in politics. So i think every political leader has a responsibility for those two, because, you know, jim, i mean, there are many examples of where if you have a partisan agenda, hey, just get some admirals and generals to sign up for your program. I think we have to resist doing that. I get you. The book is called battle grounds, the fight to defend the free world. Its a smart book. We appreciate your time. Thanks so much, jim. Great to be with you. Bring back poppy now. Of course, poppy, we have quite a moment this morning. Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court. Thats right.