And the first vaccine is approved in the uk as the cdc decides who in the u. S. Should be first in line foor a vaccine here. Welcome to wednesday. It is meet the press daily and im chuck todd. President trump appears to be leaving washington the same way he has governed it, chaotically. The uncertainty has only complicated talk necessary capitol hill where a group of bipartisan lawmakers yesterday unveiled a compromise package regarding nearly 1 trillion. But Mitch Mcconnell is signaling its a nonstarter because he thinks the president wouldnt sign it. So now were facing the collision of a must pass government funding bill with the chaos and drama of emergency relief, a bunch of which expires this calendar year all with the backdrop of a worsening pandemic. On top of all that, the president is now threatening to veto funding for the u. S. Military. This is the second veto threat for the same bill that hes issued, by the way, but this time he says hes vetoing it unless lawmakers soften protections for social Media Companies which has some bipartisan support. But before he had threatened to veto that same bill over the decision to rename military bases that were named for Confederate Military generals. But wait, theres more. President trump has been discussing the possibility of pardons for his family members and some Close Associates in recent days. One source says this is the musings of a president who feels embattled and his conversations are reportedly within that context and not because he believes he or his family members have actually committed any crimes. The white house so far has not commented on that story. On the fopic of president ial parts, if Justice Department released that theyve been investigating a bribery scheme. And as the president rages against republicans who wont indulge his attempts to overturn the election results, attorney general bill barr has come out to say he has not seen any evidence of widespread Election Fraud that would somehow alter the results of the election. A run official meanwhile is now publicly warning that someone is going to get killed because of all the inflammatory rhetoric after a Trump Campaign lawyer said an official was shot. I havent mentioned the president s leaked comments about running in 2024 to investigates the russia probe during the biden presidency. All of these developments are in the last 24 hours. In some ways, were numb to this sort of world that trump has created. But right now, it is a striking contrast to joe biden where arguably his biggest controversy involves tweets by his nominee for budget director. So joining me now is monica alba and jill ya angly. These are the three areas where everything resolves today. Monica, let me start with you. And i want to get to the nittygritty stuff before we get to the pardons. The veto threats, and covid relief, the white house, are they saying anything you publicly about what they feel about covid relief . Now Mitch Mcconnell is claiming he wants to go really, really, really small. What is the truth there and what is the truth on this defense appropriation bill . Which sri foe threat matters, the one on confederate generals or the one on social Media Companies . Youre right. And the president has been on the sidelines for both of these things sort of barking out his preferences without being a part of the direction negotiation, something weve seen as a part over the last few months. But the whiteout hasnt been able to say where they are on these latest negotiations. But there will be a press briefing this afternoon. But you raise the issue of that defense bill. We were told the president wanted to revisit it because of the potential of renaming these bases that were named after confederate war generals. It seems now that is out the window and hes found another issue and Something Else he wants to get to battle on. But it doesnt address the heart of the matter for both of these things. There are extremely important things in these measures that are critical to american lives and livelihoods and thats at the center of this. The president is quibbling over these things instead of focussing on the all important issue of defense and coronavirus relief, vfk. So separate some fact from fiction stuff for us on this pardon stuff. We know hes musing about it. Frankly, i know all of us are prepared for the fact that he could do anything, pardon himself, pardon anybody, who knows. What is the white house indicating to you, monica . It seems the president is sort of taking pitches. Thats how its been described to us, chuck, in these conversations with Close Associates. The president is weighing whom in his inner circle or even outside of it he should use his president ial power for in these last 48 or so days. And were told among the discussion high on the list is the potential for him to pardon his three eldest children. That raises all sorts of questions about what crimes they would have potentially committed that he would have to issue a pardon for. Of course, he hasnt been willing to answer that yet. To me, its a signal for a president who has not publicly said he lost this election and hes leaving that of course thats what he is planning for and thats what is at the top of his mind and agenda because he has to do this in the next little bit of time. The other person weve been told has been discussed is Rudy Giuliani who has reportedly been a part of this in terms of the pardon. He rejects that. He says thats completely false and hasnt taken place yet. We continue, though, to ask the president and the white house, has the Legal Counsel been a part of this . Have they determined whether its actually possible for the president of the United States to pardon himself . Thats not entirely clear yet, either, chuck, although it may be something hes also considering. Exactly. Monica, thank you. Garrett, i want to start with covid relief first and trying to read the Mitch Mcconnell tea leaves. There are two schools of thought of what mcconnell was up to yesterday. One is that hes trying to jam the House Democrats. Hes basically saying, look, this is the deal that youre going to get. Take it or leave it. Or did he produce a deal that a lot of people like in order to make the bipartisan deal suddenly look like something worth getting on board with . Which theory of the case should we be following, garrett . Im focused on that first theory here, the idea of jamming House Democrats with a bill that would come out of the Republican Senate and which mcconnell says the president would sign. I think this is noteworthy and nobody really speaks for the president on his legislative priorities except for the president when he has legislative priority thats need to be spoken of. If you look at what happened yesterday, mcconnell put out this framework which is all things that republicans have been pushing for all along which he said they consulted with at the white house. There is no reason that framework couldnt have been put out last week or the week before that or the week before that. Yesterday wren he receivede knon offer for leadership and perhaps the schools of thought would be mcconnell needs dollars to give his members somewhere to park their support or they were going to flee to this bipartisan measure. But getting inside mcconnells head on this issue is particularly tough. His brill is just as much essentially a republican messaging bill as the one he criticizes for the democrats on. So were at a tricky spot once again. Mcconnells bill didnt seem very serious at all compared to what he used to say on this front. Let me put up the list of senators behind this compromised bill. Its basically 5d4r. And i guess the question is this. If nancy pelosi came out in favor of this bipartisan bill, what would that do to mcconnell and Senate Republicans . I think it would put pressure on them. A lot of the framework, i should make that point, there is not legislative text with this yet. That different matters. There is not text yet. And the thing that is a Sticking Point for republicans still is money for state and local funding in here. But if that were the only game in town or the game in down that has one chamber essentially locked down, that could make a difference. Chuck, i think its one way to look at this bipartisan framework here is it is a bit of an im police it view. This suggests and shows us the frustrate from democratic members that the speakers approach of trying to do this all or nothing has not worked up to this point and now youve got this bundle up from within the conference to say weve got to Say Something on this. That strategy has not worked up to this point. Youve got about a dozen members of the house that are democrats who just lost. And a lot of them think they lost because they didnt have covid relief. Very quickly, i move to julia at justice. Section 230. This does have some bipartisan support, what the president wants to do. But is the senate ready . Is Congress Ready to deal with this now or is this something they want to punt until next year . It seems like the president is on a very lonely island in terms of trying to force this issue on this bill. The republican chair said dont do this here and thats what a lot of other runs are saying. We hear you, we agree with the issue, but this is not the time or place to have this fight. Garrett haake, a lot of maneuvering. Its december in washington which usually is the one month where deals get made. But i have to say, i loved your engineer assic park reference yesterday. Now were back in the car again. Good luck with that. Julia, lets talk pardons. What more have you learned about what was unveiled yesterday . Theres a lot we dont know because a lot of it was redacted. But we do know the Justice Department is investigating some sort of pay for pardons scheme. What more have you learned . Thats right, chuck. It was heavily redacted. But in just what we could learn, we learned as recently as august 25th and perhaps far before that, theres been an investigation that involves, at least tangentially, prescribes that people were trying to pay to senior white house officials in order to get some kind of pardon. Its not clear who these people were and what investigation this spun out of, but the chief justice here at the d. C. Court, the d. C. Federal court said they could no longer protection some of these communication under Attorney Client privilege. And as i look further into this, chuck, they have seized terabytes of information off of 50 different digital devices. This is a large seizure which makes me think it is quite a broad investigation. Whats critical here is that no one has been named which means theres probably been no one charged or indicted by a grand jury on this and no white house officials are being investigated as part of this. That is what the Justice Department has said. So it could very well be that they were approached, but it doesnt seem that they have actually come into the crosshairs of the investigators who are leading this case. It came at the end of a very interesting day, the Justice Department. This is Justice Department investigators looking into a tie to this white house shortly after what william barr said which clashed with what the president said on the Election Fraud. It was the cap at the end of the day to show that this Justice Department does still have a backbone and will continue these investigations despite things weve seen recently like the pardoning of Michael Flynn or the dropping of a roger stone prosecution. Let me ask you about the durham news. Did you get a good explanation of why the attorney general chose yesterday as the day to announce his actions from october . We know why they werent done before october. Thats the type of action, if youre appointed special counsel and youre too close to the president , you take action. But he specifically chose yesterday to come out with this. Was that a coincidence . It seems he had this scheduled interview with the Associated Press and he chose this time primarily because he wanted to put out he wanted to dispel any myths that said he was letting durham go bigger. He didnt want the news of the special counsel designation to leak out in a way he couldnt control. And he wanted to be very specific that durham is only looking at the origins of the probe, that crossfire hurricane investigation that we know of, meaning fbi officials getting involved. Hes not getting into what we think of as the mueller probe. Hes really looking at the very early days. And i think that was bars reason for the interview, for coming out with the news, but then of course he was asked about the election and the interview got even bigger than that. But i think the reason he wanted to talk about durham was so he could say im naming him special prosecutor, but im not widening his scope. What theyre investigating has so nothing to do with what actually happened in 2016, it is just one of these things. It is mind boggling and an abdication of actually justice. Thank you all for getting us started up ahead. The uk has just approved the Pfizer Vaccine and they ordered 40 million doses. Some folks out there will get vaccinated as early as next week. Will this push the fda and the u. S. To move faster . And later, the coronavirus hot spots face ago patient surge and bracing for even more. I felt like. I was just fighting an uphill battle in my career. So when i heard about the applied Digital Skills courses, im thinking i can become more marketable. You dont need to be a computer expert to be great at this. These are skills lots of people can learn. I feel hopeful about the future now. 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And right now, it is so important that we recommit ourselves to this mitigation as we now begin to turn the corner with the vaccine. But the reality is december and january and february are going to be rough times. I actually believe theyre going to be the most difficult time in the Public Health history of this nation. Largely because of the stress that is going to put on our health care system. Robert redfield, cdc director issuing a warning hes been issuing for months about this dark, dark period that we are in just as the light at the end of tunnel of vaccines is coming up. So we are back. That was, are, of course, Robert Redfield this morning. And the White House Task force has issued a dire warning to state officials in its most recent report which isnt made public. It has to be leaked saying the risk to americans is at a historic high and that, quote, we are in a very dangerous place due to the extremely limited this document which had to be object stained not shared with the public voluntarily warns about an impending surge after the thanksgiving holiday. This comes as nearly 100,000 people are hospitalized. Its a grim milestone that we will likely mark and theres a grim milestone that the days ahead of us may likely be the end of the pandemic. The uk has become the first to approve pfizers vaccine. They have shortened the recommended quarentine period if youve been exposed to the virus but tested negative. Let me start with the london news. Joining us now is Richard Engle and richard, with the news in the uk, obviously, this is something, you know, theres a little bit of a which one approves first race or at least thats how the uk and i think President Trump viewed things. What do we know about what has been approved and how quickly it will get distributed there and how many more vaccines they will be approving in the uk . So there is obviously a political element to this. Prime minister Boris Johnson just gave a briefing to some of his top advisers. This is a happy day for his government, a happy day for this golf, a happy day for the World Opinion but in listening to the details of his press briefing as he was describing how this Distribution Process would take place in practical terms, it is complicated. The vaccine needs to be kept at ultra low temperatures for storage. That means the distribution is frankly very difficult. That means the vaccines comes in bundles of hundreds of doses and they have the Distribution Authority to give them out to people, but they dont exactly have the authorization yet to break up those bundles. So that means they can only stockpile and give out the vaccines in places where they need to give them at hundreds of doses per time. So theyre going to start in hospitals which have cold storage facilities. But if you h