Trebek give you credit do the judges give you credit for yosemite, when we know what you meant, but the pronunciation was just a little off . Yo, willie hey. Im amazed it isnt on a tshirt yet. How is the biden camp already not manufactured these, started to distribute these shirts . Yosemite is look, he tried, but it does highlight that we know that the president and his campaign have tried to point out that they suggest that joe biden maybe has lost a few miles on his fastball, that he did point out a gaffe here, a blunder there, a misstatement there. Moments like yesterday go to show you, thats sort of a risky strategy for this particular president , whose at times, relationship with pronunciation is, shall we say, shaky. Youre being very generous there. That was at the billsigning for the Great American outdoors act, a great bipartisan piece of legislation. Amazing, though, you can make it to 74 years old and not see the word yosemite written somewhere. But we digress and move on to more important matters. Yesterday saw a potential step forward in the congressional negotiations for another Coronavirus Relief package. After weeks of resistance, Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell said he will support an extension of the nowlapsed 600 federal Unemployment Insurance relief every week, that is, if President Trump backs it. The American People in the end need help, and wherever this thing settles, between the president of the United States and his team that have to sign it into law, and the democrat, not insignificant minority in the senate and majority in the house, is something im willing to support, even if i have some problems with certain parts of it. So, jake sherman, you cover Mitch Mcconnell. You know him very well. Thats as close as youll get to seeing Mitch Mcconnell concede there, where he effectively said, okay, i know this bills been sitting on my desk for three months. Ive got some problems with it. The Democrat Bill from the house. But i may be willing to budge on that 600 weekly payment. The original counteroffer from republicans, as you know, had been 200 a week. So, if he concedes on that point, gets 600 a week of Unemployment Benefits to people who need it so desperately right now, does that mean were going to get a deal here . Well, i think, willie, were going to get a deal at some point in the next week. It looks not promising, but it looks possible. Heres the catch. Mitch mcconnells not a part of these negotiations right now. So, for the first time in a long time, we can kind of say that Mitch Mcconnells view here is a little bit tangential to the overall negotiations. Now, mark meadows and steven mnuchin, who have been in the negotiations, have offered 400 a week until december 15th, which also, by the way, is a very big concession for the gop. But we actually, in playbook this morning, give a blowbyblow, chockfull of quotes from inside of that negotiating room during a 2 1 2hour meeting yesterday in the capitol, illustrating that there are a lot of issues that remain open to get Coronavirus Relief to the American People, just to give a sense, willie, about how far we kind of are from a coronavirus package. They are bringing in the postmaster general today to talk to the negotiating team about the needs of the u. S. Postal service because there is such a divide on how much the post office might need to complete its operations. So, again, these negotiations are very fraught, very complicated, and theyre dragging on. Were now almost two weeks in. I think well have another week, at least, before this bill is passed. And both sides want to get a deal before friday. So, jonathan, Mitch Mcconnells not involved here specifically. Neither is the president of the United States. Hes taken a handsoff approach to this entire negotiation, sending his chief of staff, mark meadows, and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin in to do the negotiating here. How badly does the white house need a deal . Does the president recognize that more than 30 Million People just lost that 600aweek check thats allowing them to survive for the last several months . Is there urgency from the white house on this . Reporter there is, willie. The president in the last 24 hours or so has insisted that he is playing a role in these negotiations, but we know that is largely not the case, that he has, indeed, deferred it to his chief of staff and treasury secretary. And jakes certainly done an excellent job outlining how these negotiations have gone. But yes, there is a keen awareness that this is a president whos facing voters in under three months and that americans are hurting right now. And beyond just wanting to have a helping hand to those who have suffered so much during this pandemic, of course, theres an eye towards his reelection chances here. And if unemployment numbers continue to go up, if the economic slowdown if the economic recovery slows down, that only hurts his chances. They are trying to push here. They understand that theyre in a bad spot. These negotiations have not gone well. Each day that it drags on is a bad day for this president , who, again, is trying so desperately to point to the idea of a recovery, an economic recovery, as opposed to how he has handled, or perhaps better said, mishandled the coronavirus pandemic to this point. And of course, President Trump has said, i will sign executive orders, if congress cant get this done. Remains to be seen if he has the power to do it on some of the questions were talking about. Meanwhile, on the health side of this, the United States averaged more than 1,000 deaths from coronavirus for the ninth straight day yesterday. The number from the virus here in the u. S. Now approaching 160,000 deaths. Meanwhile, the president continues to cherrypick data to downplay the death toll here in the u. S. Heres the president yesterday, questioned by nbcs shannon pettypiece. Youve talked a lot about, when youve talked about the mortality rate, the deaths as the proportion of cases, which i understand that is significant when you look at how deadly the virus is or how good a country does at keeping people alive who get infected. But when youre talking about the scope of this virus, when you look at the percentage of the population thats died, theres only three countries that have more deaths than the u. S. So, how do you explain that, why the percentage of the population has died is so much higher in the u. S. . Well, i think, actually, the numbers are lower than others. Ill get back to you on that, but we proportionately are lower than almost all countries. Were at the bottom of the list. And were, relative to cases, also were at the bottom of the list, which is a good thing being at the bottom of the list. But i can get back to you. We have about four or five different lists on that, and were generally speaking at the very bottom of the list. You dont have to wait for the president to get back you. Well show you the actual numbers in just a moment. But first, heres the exchange the president had a couple of days ago with Jonathan Swan of axios on this issue. Because we are so much better at testing than any other country in the world, we show more cases. The figure i look at is death. And death is going up now. Okay. No, no thats 1,000 a day. If you look at death yeah, its going up again. Lets look. Daily death. Take a look at some of these charts. Id love to. Okay . Were going to look. Lets look. And if you look at death started to go up again. Heres one. Well, right here, the United States is lowest in numerous categories. Were lower than the world lower than the world . Were lower than europe. In what . In what . Take a look. Take a look. Right here. Heres case death. Oh, youre doing death as a proportion of cases. Im talking about death as a proportion of population. Thats where the u. S. Is really bad. Well, well much worse than south korea, germany, et cetera. You cant do that. Why cant i do that . You have to go by where look. Here is the United States. You have to go by the occasions. The cases are there why not as a proportion of population . What it says is when you have somebody where theres a case oh, okay the people that live from those cases. Its surely a relevant statistic to say, if the u. S. Has x population and x percentage of death of that population, versus south korea no, you have to go by the cases. Look at south korea, for example. 51 million population, 300 deaths. Its like, its crazy compared to you dont know that. I do. Its you dont know that. Do you think theyre faking their statistics, south korea, an advanced country . We have a very Good Relationship with the country, but you dont know that. And they have spikes. Germany, low, 9,000 heres one right here, United States. You take the number of cases now look, were last, meaning were first. We have the best. I dont know what youre referring to. To what . Again, its cases. Okay, um and we have cases because of i mean, 1,000 americans die a day, but i understand on cases its different. No, but youre not reporting it correctly, jonathan. I think i am, but if you take a look at this other chart, look. This is our testing, i believe, this is the testing. Yeah. Yeah, we do more tests. Now wait a minute. Dont we get credit for that . And because we do more tests, we have more cases. In other words, we test more. We have now, take a look. The top one, thats a good thing, not a bad thing. The top jonathan if hospital rates were going down and deaths were going down, id say terrific, you deserve to be praised for testing, but theyre all going up. Possibly 60,000 americans are in hospital, 1,000 dying a day if you look at the newspapers, they usually talk about new cases, new cases, new cases. Im talking about death. Death is going up. You look at death. Death is way down from where it was. Its 1,000 a day. It was 2,500, went down to 500, now its going up again. Excuse me. Where it was is much higher than where it is right now. It went down, then it went up again. It spiked, but now its going down again. Its going down in arizona, its going down in florida, its going down in texas. Nationally look at this. These are the tests. Its going down in florida . Yeah, it leveled out and thats going down. Thats my report as of yesterday. All right. Lets suss through this. When the president says were at the bottom of the list, hes talking about deaths in proportion to the number of cases in the United States. In that list, the u. S. Still has the 14th highest number of deaths out of the 20 countries currently most affected by covid19 around the world. But the cdc, as you know, defines the mortality rate as the number of deaths compared to the population. Here we find the u. S. Has the fourth highest death rate per 100,000 people out of those top 20 countries. Only the united kingdom, peru, and chile, have a worse number. To frame it another way, the u. S. Is just 4 of the worlds population but represents 22 of the worlds covid19 deaths. So, Shawna Thomas, that was a painful clip to watch, obviously. The president was reeling there. But the cdc, i want to underline again, to be clear because there is so much misinformation flying around the cdc defines the deaths as a percentage of the population when it talks about the death rate, not as the number of reported cases. Yeah. I think, number one, i do want to give some credit to axios and Jonathan Swan for being able to grasp the information that the president was handing him in paper form and actually create the argument that he did in that clip, and im sure hbos very happy you just played basically almost the whole episode. But i think the thing that i keep coming back to from an analytical perspective is that you dont really want to see the president arguing about which death rate is the better death rate, especially when we have the number of cases and the number of deaths were having. And you pointed out that the average for the ninth day in a row is over 1,000 americans dying from covidrelated problems. So, the thing is, the president doesnt actually i mean, a president in general, when doing an interview like this, doesnt actually need to engage in this tit for tat. It is really, really easy to change the perspective of that conversation and come at it from the idea of that and this president has said that before that there are too many deaths in this country and we need to fix the problem. And the ways we go about fixing the problem and opening up the government. Because the fact that hes even engaging in that actually makes him look lesser in some ways, and that isnt the way necessarily to run a white house. That isnt the way to run a campaign. Theres nothing from that interview that they can turn into a campaign ad. But overall, it doesnt necessarily show that the president has compassion for people. And the more people who get sick and the more people who die and the more people who know someone who dies, you look at Something Like that, and you start to think the president may not understand what im going through. And one of the biggest things he can do right now and i dont know if he has this ability but one of the biggest things he can do right now is actually show compassion for people and then turn to congress and tell them, hey, you need to get something done to at least make peoples lives a little bit better in this terrible situation. In fact, hes doing the opposite of that, compassion. Hes saying, this isnt actually as bad as the media is making it out to be. And Mark Mckinnon, we dont play those clips for entertainment. We play them because thats the man in charge of this countrys recovery. Thats the man thats sitting in the oval office, of how we get our way out of this. And as a man whos run a bunch of campaigns, you understand why the Biden Campaign is already out with an ad that the clip when the president says it is what it is. He says, we have this under control, talking about coronavirus. He says, it is what it is, making it pretty easy for the Biden Campaign in that interview. Well, that may be the line of the campaign for the bidens, for the Biden Campaign, of course. Its just, we just cut through a massive distortion field in watching the president unable to grasp the reality of the situation. And the reality of the situation is that his Electoral Prospects are not going to improve until he embraces the reality first. And secondly, addresses the reality. And through that interview, it is quite clear that all he wants to do is deny the facts. In fact, at one point in that interview, as you saw, he talked about five different lists that he had that related to one supposed fact. So, he had five versions of one fact. So, i mean, its really astonishing that, you know, the person whos running this country and trying to get a hold of this crisis, is unable to understand what the crisis is. And its so obvious. The bottom line here is you cant get a hold of a crisis, you cant deal with a crisis, until youre able to confront the crisis and admit what it is. And thats the biggest problem, is that the president is unable to confront exactly what hes facing. Admitting that would admit the failures of the last six months, so i wont hold my breath for him to do that. Jonathan lamire, your new piece just this morning out, the Associated Press. Youre writing about this chasm between President Trump and the doctors. His own doctors. The people on the White House Task force, the experts who have been trying to pull him in one direction, he and the other. When you say the chasm has grown, we know that he and dr. Fauci have never been terribly close, as dr. Fauci has gone out and done a number of interviews recently contradicting precisely what the president had said earlier in the day. What about, say, dr. Birx and the other members of that task force, though . Reporter yeah, this is becoming a far more widespread phenomenon, willie. Lets remember, in the early days, the Coronavirus Task force briefings, the president would be up there accompanied by these Public Health experts, the medical officials, and his administration, to deliver the message to the American Public as to how best to handle the virus, update the status of whats going on with the pandemic, and certainly, those briefings didnt always go very well and the president at times seemed to deliver one message very contrary to what the experts were doing. But there was at least an attempt to have some sort of unified front. That has not been the case for some time. First of all, as the president has revived the briefings, its just him, no experts alongside with him. No one else is speaking to the public. The west wing has clamped down on dr. Faucis media appearances. Theres been tension there for months. The president jealous of dr. Faucis approval ratings. Some in the west wing think that dr. Fauci was more willing to criticize the president on media appearances, rather than in the west wing where he would temper his disagreements. But its not just dr. Fauci. Dr. Birx is another one who, for weeks and months, had sort of really closely aligned herself with the president , to the point where in recent days, some democrats, other Health Experts were very critical of her, suggesting that she was whitewashing, that she was softpeddling some of this information. That changed in the last few days, when she said in interviews recently that things were the pandemic was spreading out of control, spreading like wildfire. The president was furious, according to our report