The senates top Democrat Chuck schumer says he will try to quickly pass the bill on the senate floor tomorrow. And now vermont senator Bernie Sanders says he will filibuster and override the defense bill veto approved tonight in the house until mcconnell allows a vote on the 2,000 direct payments to americans. That bipartisan house vote to reject donald it ups veto of the 741 billion defense bill sets up the first override of Donald Trumps presidency, weeks before he leaves office. 109 republicans broke with the president to vote for the override, and it has now been more than two weeks since weve actually heard directly from the president in public. He has yet to comment personally on the Christmas Day bombing in nashville, and he has said nothing in recent days about the latest covid surge or the staggering loss of american lives. President elect joe biden, meanwhile, did speak to the nation today after a meeting with National Security experts. He began by thanking members of Law Enforcement for their work on the nashville case. Then he said this about the trump administrations efforts during the transition. For some agencies our teams received exemplary cooperation from the career staff in those agencies. From others, most notably the department of defense, weve encountered obstruction from the Political Leadership of that department. We need to make sure that nothing is lost in the handoff between administrations. We have encountered road blocks from the Political Leadership at the department of defense and the office of management and budget. Right now we just arent getting all the information that we need on the ongoing from the Outgoing Administration from n. Key National Security areas. Its nothing short in my view of irresponsibility. The acting defense secretary, chris miller, responded with this quote. The department of defense has conducted 164 interviews with over 400 officials and provided over 5,000 ages of documents. Far more than initially requested by joe bidens transition team. D. O. D. s efforts already surpass those of recent administrations. President trumps nearly twolong campaign to try to reverse the president ial election is now focusing on his allies in congress. Hes pushing them to challenge the certification of Joe Bidens Electoral College win on january 6th, telling twitter followers today that he will see them in washington on that date, which is next wednesday. Republican congressman Louis Gohmert of texas is now trying to help the president on that front. Today he filed a bizarre lawsuit that asks a federal judge to declare that Vice President mike pence has the, quote, exclusive authority and sole discretion to decide which electoral votes from a given state should be counted. Legal experts across the country called the congressmans effort farfetched. With that, lets bring in our leadoff guests on this monday night. Alexi mcham 7bd, political reporter for action yos. Joe colvin, White House Reporter for the associated press. And clint watts, former fbi special agent, a distinguished Research Fellow at the Foreign PolicyResearch Institute and our National Security analyst. So jill, this is a question that i could have been asking since the election, since Election Night almost, which is where is the president . Where is he on the crisis of covid . Now where is he on what happened in nashville. And why was he so delayed in signing this bill . What goal did he hope to achieve . Well, the president has been in florida and he has been spending much of his time at his golf course here in west palm beach, not far from where im sitting right now. Hes traveled there almost every day, golfing, having lunch with friends there, speaking with, you know, colleagues who come to the club or paying members. But not a lot of staff around him. And we have not seen him the whole time that he has been here on his holiday vacation. Weve obviously heard from him in the form of his tweets. But as you mentioned, he has not addressed us publicly and has not weighed in on several key issues including the nashville bombing. And the president s game play here was something that really left both republicans and democrats, allies, members of his administration, completely dumfounded as they tried to figure out what exactly he was trying to accomplish here. Of course we know both the senate and house had overwhelmingly passed this deal, thinking that they had the president s blessing. Steve mnuchin was the one who was negotiating on behalf of this administration. And you had the president here trying to claim some wins, but the fact is that the bill was signed without any major changes. The vote that we had today on the 2,000 checks had already been scheduled to take place. But you did see a situation today where a lot of republicans did wind up siding with the president. Republicans who the partys position had been against these 2,000 checks and yet you saw a situation where you had nancy pelosi, Chuck Schumer, joe biden and donald trump all pushing for more money, putting republicans, especially Senate Republicans that this will now depend on, in a really awkward spot as they decide are we going to stick with our original position or are we maybe going to consider this request to put more money in peoples pockets. Its not just that, alexi. This request to up the amount of money for direct stimulus, which republicans had opposed. It was part of the reason why this took so long to negotiate. But also overriding, the very first override of a president ial veto of his administration on the ndaa, which is core to republican values. Yeah, thats something that has historically not been a controversial issue to pass, and now comes President Trump and makes it a controversial issue. And again, as you said, facing potentially the first veto, the first sort of override veto of his presidency as hes going out taking issue with any number of things including, lets not forget, the outcome of the election. But thats because President Trump is entering himself in these negotiations, in these situations at the 11th hour. You asked julie earlier about why hes doing this. Hes doing it with a focus on what he wants to get out of these things. Hes taking issue with the defense bill because of things that he cares about narrowly like confederate naming statues and section 230 which is an ib with tech companies. When you look at the covid relief package, the sweetener in his statement, the thing he really wanted to get out of this that clearly Kevin Mccarthy or mnuchin kind of made this clear to him, he wrote in that statement from the white house that the house and the senate are going to be pursuing voter fraud investigations. He made a mention of that twice in that statement, which is something that he cares deeply about which hes trying to bring back into thish of the covid relief package which of course has nothing to do with getting the economy back on track or getting the money to people but has everything to do with what the president really cares about and is really focused on. On that front, jill, what is he expecting exactly when he says congress is going to focus strongly . What does that mean . At this point its unclear exactly what was said in those conversations. You know, Republican Leaders spent a lot of effort over the last 48 hours trying to convince the president to please come on board to sign this deal, looking forward to the two Georgia Senate runoff races coming up next week. And you know, heard from senator perdue, included in that group of people, who are really begging the president to please assign this. You already had a situation where millions of people were losing lost unemployment benefits. You had a situation where the government was careening toward a shutdown in the middle of a pandemic. And then just seeing that there was no political upside possible to the president dragging his feet any longer. And so in the course of those negotiations, those conversations, trying to get the president to put aside his frustrations, it sounds like a lot of promises were made. You know, the president in his statement talked about how he was going to make all of these rescissions, things that dont really have any consequences. The bill still goes forward as passes. But at least hes able to say, to tell people as he has been over the last, you know, 14 or so hours, telling, you know, friends at maralago, look, i was able to get these concessions. They want him to be able to walk out feeling like he accomplished something so he was willing to sign it. Its unclear what that looks like when it comes to both section 321 as well as, you know, trying to support his efforts to try to overturn a democratic election. We just dont know what that looks like at this point. It seems like hes trying to show how powerful he still is among the Republican Party, but its backfiring for him when it comes to covid relief and also to the ndaa. On the subject of the transition, i know Donald Trumps refusing to concede the election but the transition is still moving forward. It was delayed to begin with. But now joe biden is saying that its not going as smoothly as it should. Today he says hes meeting some political resistance within the pentagon, clint watts, and also within the office of management and budget. He also said this about his concerned concern about where the agencies currently stand and how they have been dismantled over the past four years. Take a listen. Truth is many of the agencies that are critical to our security have incurred enormous damage. Many of them have been hollowed out, in personnel, capacity, and in morale. And the policy processes that have atrophied or have been sidelined. In the despair of our alliances and the disrepair of those alliances. Twopart question. Clint, first part. If joe bidens not getting the full picture of where we stand with our National Security from the pentagon, what is at risk, number one. And number two, in order to overcome that and also to rebuild agencies, what is joe biden going to need to do . I think on the first thing, katy, that we should note is there may not be a picture. Meaning we dont actually know whats going on in a lot of these agencies. If you just look at the turnover, the number of firings, the number of resignations, the number of people currently on vacation, i think part of the problem with the whole baton handoff is theres no one handing the baton off because theres no baton in some ways. And this has been pretty consistent i think with lots of folks ive talked to. Whether its the department of defense, justice department, other parts of the government. Theres so much turnover, so much turmoil, theres not really a picture to even be grabbed on to. I think that really speaks to what will be the next thing. I see a major lull over the next six to nine months where if youre a new biden appointee, youre coming into any of these agencies, theres not much of a handoff. Youve got to take several months to really get your hands around what is going on in these departments, what is going on at these agencies, and then try and pick up and actually move forward. I think in the same point youve got a lot of, you know, midtiered Civil Servants that have been there for four years that are exhausted and have just tried to get through on these jobs. Theyre going to need support. I think theyre going to be looking to these appointees for direction, and we wont have that long. Weve got a pandemic. Weve got russia and china as big foes. Weve got the iran situation in the persian gulf. We have major problems going on in cyberspace. Across the board. What youre going to see is a lot of challenges hitting all at once, and a lot of people trying to figure out what has happened in these agencies over the last three to four years. What do you think he was told by these National Security experts in this meeting tonight, clint . Yeah, i think he was just probably told like hey, we need to get our hands around what the vision of americas going to be in the future. And my biggest concern really Going Forward is that the new administration will try to come in and rewind that its 2015, meaning that we are suddenly going to be able to create the world back in our image, in the way we wanted it, to become 2016, that were going to look at maybe rebuilding alliances. But i think with our partners around the world they watch whats going on today. They see President Trump, his actions in the last month here, and what will probably continue postinauguration, and they probably look at the u. S. And say hey, its a 5050 chance that well have President Trump 2024, President Trump junior or a trump acolyte that will surface in four years, and do we really want to build these alliances again. Its going to be a tough road to go in terms of National Security. And we do not want to be alone. If you look across the board right now, our allies of old are wavering. Theyre looking to new options. Some of them are taking on chinese technology. Others are reaching to china and other countries for help with covid. The u. S. Has not had a strong place, and institutions like nato and the United Nations are far weaker. So i think in terms of playing our cards and rebuilding our strength we are definitely sailing into the wind come this next year. In this resistance that joe biden is meeting, jill, one of the political appointees thats being named is cash patel, whos the chief of staff at the pentagon. Who is he . And why might he be resisting a full transition, full transparency with the Joe Biden Transition Team . There have been a lot of kind of mixed messages that have been coming from the white house and from the pentagon particularly. Now, you can go back to when this all started and of course the administration dragged its feet and even being willing to participate in any transition activities. You had messages coming down from political appointees to agencies across the federal government saying do not engage with the biden people, if they call please report it to us, we dont want you helping them out at all, creating that initial delay that really alarmed, you know, bidens staff as they tried to prepare to be in there on day one. And people, you know, in this government remain very loyal to the president. Kash, patel, for instances someone who grew very close to the president over the course of the campaign. Hes someone that reporters often saw, for instance, aboard air force one, somebody who was seen as very much a loyalist to the president and, you know, going to this holiday period and as we get closer and closer to the transition period the fact that there are still complaints from the Biden Incoming team that theyre not getting the information they need and feeling alarmed about this is really stunning given that this administration had claimed that it was kind of moving forward and willing to work with these people. And just to kind of i always think of this example as we try to explain to people what the reallife ramifications of this are. But always think theyre about the 9 11 report and how the delay in the transition in 2000 between bush and gore, that dispute was cited in that report as one of the potential reasons why 9 11 happened, because people were not fully up to speed. I kind of think of this in the abstract of people not receiving briefings, people not knowing whats happening. But there are potential reallife consequences to this kind of foot dragging that were seeing in the final weeks of this administration as the president continues to refuse to acknowledge that he lost this election. And were amidst multiple crises right now. Alexi, lets look ahead to wednesday. The president s holding a sort of rally i guess on the 6th. That is the day of the congressional certification of the Electoral College results. Theres also this lawsuit now by Louie Gohmert saying that Vice President pence is the only one that should be allowed which electors should be allowed to actually cast their votes. How much pressure is mike pence facing right now, who is i believe currently on vacation in colorado . Sources close to the president who have discussed this with him tell axios that the president views pence doing his job, the role that he is supposed to do on january 6th, as the ultimate betrayal to him. Hes taken issue, sources say, with a Lincoln Project ad that has depicted pence as not being a good enough fighter and not being in President Trumps corner enough. And we all know over the course of trumps presidency weve seen how hes really kept folks close to him who want to go out and be fighters for him on tv and otherwise, in press conferences and different ways we see. And mike pence has sort of been behind the scenes sort of staying quiet throughout this process, and now hes got the job again thats described as the ultimate betrayal because he could be the one to certify the election in favor of joe biden and against donald trump, and that is not something that donald trump can wrap his head around. In fact, its something that sources close to the president say hes been thinking about for weeks. And we even know that ahead of the election he was thinking about different ways to muddy the waters and question the Election Results by, yo