Interview since Justice Ginsburgs death. We are also following a slew of latebreaking news tonight. Some of it quite dramatic, including the news that cindy mccain, the widow of republican senator and republican an president ial candidate john mccain, cindy mccain is , endorsing joe biden for president. Mrs. Mccain writing tonight, quote, my husband john lived by a code. M country first. We are republicans, yes, but americans foremost. S theres only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation and that is joe biden. N. She says, quote, joe and i dont always agree on the issues and i know he and john certainly had some passionate arguments, but joe is a good and honest man. He will lead us with dignity. Quote, he will be a commander ip chief that the finest fighting force in the history of the world can depend on. Because he knows what it is like to send a child off to fight. Cindy mccains decision tonighta was reportedly informed in part by recent reporting in the atlantic magazine from reporter Jeffrey Goldberg that President Trump had repeatedly called u. S. Service members who were hurt or killed in battle, quote, losers and suckers. Again, that dramatic endorsement tonight from the widow of in senator john mccain. Ndni also tonight, with just 42 days until the election, we are six weeks out exactly from the election. T tonight the fbi has put out this unusual warning to voters. And you see at the very top there, the headline is literalln Public Service announcement, but this is not like a, you know, look both ways before you cross the street. Make sure you turned off the oko stove kind of thing. You see the headline there, foreign actors and cyber criminals likely to spread e al disinformation regarding 2020 election results. Ti quote, the fbi and the Cyber Security and infrastructure security agency, thats a thing, are issuing this announcement to raise awareness of the potential threat posed by attempts to spread disinformation regarding the results of the 2020 elections. They warn that, quote, state and local officials typically require several days to weeks to certify elections final results in order to ensure every legally cast vote is accurately counted. The increased use of mailin ballots due to covid19 protocols could leave officials with incomplete results on election night. Quote, foreign actors and cyber criminals could exploit the time required to certify and announce elections results by disseminating disinformation. That includes reports of voter u suppression, Cyber Attacks io targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud, and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections illegitimacy. Again, that remarkable Public Service announcement, this stark warning from the fbi being released tonight. Six weeks from the election. Saying that foreign entities are likely to try to convince us that the election has either been botched or that it is over when it is not. Given the time that it will take between the ballots between h polling places closing on pl election day and when ballots are finally counted. Okay. Theres a lot going on tonight, as i said, six weeks until the election. One week until the first president ial debate. Things are moving fast now on many fronts. And the man at the center of a lot of these fights and a lot of this discussion is the top democrat in the United States senate. Cuna joining us now, im pleased to say, is senator chuck schumer. This will be his first tv interview since Justice Ginsburgs passing on friday night. Senator schumer, i really appreciate you taking the time to be here tonight. Thank you. Thank you, rachel. Scte yes, and just a word about how we miss Justice Ginsburg, what a wonderful person she was. J in a maledominated world, she changed the world for women and then she got on the court and changed it for everyone. Th she went to James Madison high school, my alma mater. Our whole neighborhood felt private for what she had done and accomplished. So, we miss her. Senator, what do you want american tours expect in terms of whatec is going to happen wi her seat on the court. We know its been reported this week that you told your fellow democrats that nothing is off the table if the republicans choose to ram a trump nomination through. What do you think americans should expect about this tau process . Xp well, what they should expect and what they should see is how the nominees the nominee that the president will pose poses a real threat to americans in their lives. Ve this is not just a game of politics, democrats, republicans. No this nominee and a conservative rightwing court will take away americas rights, will take away americas progress. Lets look at the issue of health care. 130 million americans have the protection for preexisting conditions and the Insurance Company cant pull the rug out from under them. Ns as we speak, donald trump and his republican cohorts are in court the case will come before the Supreme Court on the 14th of november as to whether this should be taken away, whether obamacare should be eliminated, whether 10 million d people will lose their health care. Il but its not just health care, as important as that is. Its also voting rights. This court even without this new rightwing nominee, whoever it will be, was horrible in the shelby decision. W justice roberts, the socalled moderate justice roberts, said theres no more theres going to be no more discrimination so we can get rid of the tools of t the voting rights. Labor rights. R this court will want to make america a right to work nation. They began to do that in the janis case. It will be much worse with a new nominee. Se lgbtq rights. Rachel, i was at my Rosh Hashanah dinner with my family. It was announced that Justice Ginsburg passed away and my daughter and her wife were at the table and immediately they started wondering what about gay rights . What about gay marriage . What will happen to their ability to live a normal life . Climate. L this court has undone so many strong climate regulations. Theyll get rid of the clean air act, get rid clean water act. I could go on and on with issues that matter here. This affects every american. And what we democrats are doing tonight as im speaking to you, we are occupying the floor of the house of the senate and we are letting the American People know how much this affects them. And asking, pleading with americans, call your senators, tell them how bad this is, tell them to abide by Justice Ginsburgs last honorable wish. And that is let the next president decide. And then the election can help be a referendum on these issues, rather than jam it through, as Mitch Mcconnell is doing. He has defiled the senate. He has just about destroyed the senate. And we have to fight him every step of the way. Senator mcconnell, who you just mentioned, sir, has been m trying to portray this as a fait accompli. That this is done, that they have the votes, that this will happen maybe before the election, and that there is nothing you can do to slow them down. Do you disagree with that . I do. A, we have tactical options to slow them down. We will use every tool in the toolkit. E admittedly mcconnell has changed the rules, so we have fewer tools and theyre less harp. But every tool we have we will use. Today we delayed committees going into effect. We had the right to do that and we did it. In tonight were on the floor taking up all the time on the floor to talk about how bad this potential nominee and there will be many other things that o we can use. B youll see them in the days ahead. But our number one goal as we slow it down is to give us more time to convince the american wn people and i dont believe its a fait accompli. You have a whole bunch of republican senators who have not taken a position. When you find the nominee, you never know whats going to be if their background. You might find something that wins people over who were the other way. T you know, a great metaphor for this, rachel, is ruth bader ginsburg. Against the longest of odds she never gave up and she kept fighting. We are going to keep fighting and she is an inspiration to us. Senator schumer, when we think about fights like this in washington, you say this isnt just a political fight. It isnt just democrats versus republicans. Olpu its about all of these life central life issues, including health care and whether the aca is going to potentially go away next month. E yes. When when i was talking last night with a number a number of your senate colleagues, but also an activist leader from the Group Indivisible about what tactical options are available here. He said one of the things that indivisible is asking is that on friday after Justice Ginsburg has laid in state in the State Capitol and after as her an memorials are going forward, they want people who care about her legacy to bring flowers, to bring mementos, to bring things memorializing the justice to their Senators Office at home. Good. I like that. Whatever your home state is, whoever your senators are, let them know. R thats good. S are efforts like that to nationalize this fight, to not make it just a washingtonfocused thing, do you think that will be effective . Wa yes, that is so important. And i was on the phone a day or two ago with all of the leading groups, the civil rights groups, the labor groups, the thi g environmental groups, the Lgbtq Community groups, and that was our plan. To go to the people in the states, show them how theyre affected by this and then them to call, write, picket, bring roses, whatever they will do, to their senators. This is a consequential and a monumental fight and we have to use every tactic. But the number one thing is letting america know how bad this court will be for them, for their health care, for their ability to vote freely, to breathe the clean air and drink clean water. E to organize and get more money from the bosses as labor unions do. This is all so, so important. And we got to keep at it and keep at it and keep at it. Senator, let me ask you it bluntly, obviously youve been o very clear and your colleagues r have been very clear that the Affordable Care act is at risk. That very shortly yes. After the election there will be a case before the court where the aca would likely be wiped out by a conservative majority on the court. That would cost tens of milliond of americans their Health Insurance coverage. Let me ask you if you can also be as blunt about the prospect k for reproductive rights. Un yes. The president says he will only appoint justices who are prolife who will overturn roe versus wade. Do you think that will happen if he is allowed to put another justice on the court . Yes, i am so worried about that. I grew up in a time before roe v. Wade and what women did, had to do to have the freedom to for their bodies to use their bodies in their own way, the way they wanted. The federalist society, and donald trump has only chosen justices from the federalist society, their goal i think leonard leo has said it. If hes not, hes stood for it. Their goal is to repeal roe v. Wade. Anyone who thinks roe v. Wade is safe under this court is not looking at who the justices are, what they have said and what they have done. So this is absolutely roe v. Wade is on the line. And i was heartened i was with a group of young women whoe were born after i was, of course, and after roe v. Wade had been law. An and they realize the risk. R they realize the risk. All of america realizes the risk. Senator chuck schumer, the top democrat in the United States senate, sir, youre at the center of the hurricane, as usual. Thanks for taking time to be with us tonight. Were going to keep fighting, rachel. All right. G keep fighting. Ch were going to win. Thank you, senator. All right. It is, like i said, this is a fastmoving news environment. It is likely to stay that way for the next six weeks. Election night is six weeks from tonight. Xt the first president ial debate is one week from tonight. Early inperson voting is starting all over the country. Absentee voting is starting all over the country. V this thing is upon us. Coming up next, though, we are going to have an exclusive report here that you havent to heard anywhere else on the Trump Administration messing with the centers for Disease Control during the pandemic, including specifically in one of the worst outbreaks we have had in the entire country since the pandemic began. This is exclusive reporting. We have been working on this for months. We have nailed it. And its next. Na stay with us. Here . Nah. Here . Nope. Here. When the middle of nowhere. Is somewhere. The allnew chevy trailblazer. It would be like if your community was in the middle of fire season, you knew youd be contending with terrible wildfires like weve seen in so many communities on the west coast this summer. It would be like in your community youre in the middle of a terrible, terrible fire season that threatened the whole town but the mayor of your town and the town leadership decided that they would go down to the fire station and start stabbing knives into the sidewalls of all the tires on all the fire trucks. And then theyd start ripping out the wiring, right . Pulling the pulling the trucks apart, scrounging for parts and stuff they like the look of. Maybe something they could use in their own cars or trucks at home. It wasnt like this was shortsighted action by the mayor in your town, like he forgot it was coming up on fire season or thought we might not have a bad fire season this year. This would be like the mayor choosing to do this, choosing to sabotage all the Fire Fighting equipment in your town while your town was in the middle of the worst fire season ever, while the fires were raging. Thats how bad this is. Or maybe its a different kind of sabotage. Lets say your town has a bridge fall down. The bridge collapses into the river. This is a critical artery for traffic in and out of your town. With the bridge down, nobody can get to work or get to school. And in the middle of your town, starting oh rebuild that bridge, you catch the mayor one day down at the construction site for the new bridge and hes, like, gathering up all the rebar, all the steel thats going to be used in the construction of the new bridge and hes putting it in the back of the truck to go sell it for strap. And later that night you catch the mayor and some of his friends again down at the construction site, and theyve taken the keys to the cement mixer trucks that theyre using for the construction effort to rebuild that bridge and theyre, like, playing bumper cars with the cement trucks, theyre crashing them into each other and destroying them in a big cement mixer Demolition Derby and all the trucks are smashed up and destroys and then they shove them into the river, right . The site the town thought we were all going to be hard at work rebuilding the bridge. This type of government failure. This type of government selfinflicted sabotage is like that. Its that level of selfinflicted destruction its not just for fun or for profit, its them monkey wrenching the specific thing the community most needs at a time of serious crisis. Now, why are they doing it . Lots of potential explanations. But how bad is it for the community that this is what theyre doing . Its very, very, very bad. And we are only starting to learn the depths of it. I mean, it is its six weeks until the election right now. Its a week until the first president ial debate. Weve just passed 200,000 americans dead from the coronavirus. In the United States, we have 20 of the worlds total body count from coronavirus, even though were only 4 of the worlds population. Right now our national graph of new cases looks like this. We had that first peak in april that was so terrible. And then a second much higher peak in late july. Twice as bad. Now were starting to head back up again. Some of that new increase in recent days being driven by sharp increases in very, very conservative red states like north dakota and south dakota and utah. But its also being driven by bad turns in terms of the case numbers in battleground states like colorado and minnesota and wisconsin. Look at the wisconsin curve right now. We are at 200,000 americans dead and things are going in the wrong direction, even from here how bad they are now. The president is not only not talking about 200,000 americans dying on his watch, he also keeps saying were turning the corner, like its all better, like this things almost over. It is not at all almost over. It is not going away. It wont go away unless we take action to stop it, which he has no intention of doing. Now we know it, it affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, thats what it really affects. Thats it you know, in some states, thousands of people, nobody young, below the age of 18, like, nobody. They have a strong immune system. Who knows. You look take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. But it affects virtually nobody. Its an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools. It affects virtually nobody. That was the president last night at a weird rambly latenight rally in ohio saying covid really affecting virtually nobody. I mean, a few old people with heart problems or whatever, but, you know, nobody really. Open your schools. Were at 200,000 dead. We are in a catastrophic Public Health crisis. At the start of this crisis, at the start of this administration, we had Public Health agencies that were the envy of the world. The International Gold standard for authoritative scientific excellence in controlling and monitoring and stopping the spread of disease. Thats what we had. Its part of our inheritance as americans. Something that previous generations and that Civil Servants had built up over decade