Previous record. More than 157,000 people tested positive for covid in the United States today. Well be talking in just a few minutes with a member of president elect joe bidens covid19 advisory board. Looking forward to that conversation. Were also expecting brand new numbers from maricopa county, arizona, tonight which could well lead to the state being called for joe biden. But before we get to the next president , in fact, before we even talk about the current president today we heard from our last president. Not in a speech or interview but in an audio book. The atlantic magazine today published an excerpt from president obamas new memoir including an audio excerpt of the former president reading the books preface. In that preface he said one reason it took so long to write this book is because he didnt fully anticipate the way things would fully unfold in the years after he left the office. Which i think is Barack Obamas measured way of saying stuff got crazy around here. Our democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis. A crisis moving between two opposing visions of what america is and what it should be, a crisis that left the body politic angry, divided and mistrustful and allowed for a breach of institutional norms, procedural safe guards and an adherence to basic facts that both republican and democrats once took for granted. What i can say for certain is im not yet ready to abandon the possibility of america not just for the sake of future generations of americans but for all of human kind. And so the world watches america. The only great power in history made up of people comperizing every race and faith and Cultural Practice to see if our experiment in american democracy can work, to see if we can do what no other nation has ever done. To see if we can actually live up to the meaning of our creed. The jurys still out. The jurys still out. Preface to president obamas new book continues from there. But when he record that audio version this years president ial election had not yet happened. For the written version of the excerpt published today the former president updated the text in lith of recent events, and it continues from where he left out. Im encouraged by the record setting number of americans who turned out to vote in last weeks election have an abiding trust in joe biden and Kamala Harris, in their character and capacity to do what is right. But i also know that no single election will settle the matter. Our divisions run deep, our challenges are daunting, end quote. Boy, are they. As of tonight only four count them four republican senators have acknowledged joe bidens win. These four. That means joe biden has received far more congratulatory calls from foreign leaders than he has from elected officials in his own country. And biden would have received yet more calls from foreign leaders if not for the fact Donald Trumps state department is refusing to put them in touch with biden when they call. The state department has always handled communications with foreign leaders for lots of reasons including translation and recording what they say and briefing the person getting the call for the president elect. But not this time. Another thing that president elects have always gotten but joe biden isnt is the president ial daily brief, the daily Intelligence Report prepared for the president. Several republican senators have begun saying joe biden should at least be getting that. But to be clear theyre saying he should be getting it not because hes the president elect but just in case he becomes president. Okay senator James Lang Ford was saying yesterday if joe biden did not begin receiving the pdb by the end of the week he senator langford would step in which many tormented to believe senator langford of oklahoma was saying the president ial transition should begin. To clear things up he rushed to the microphone to say theres no such thing. Sure, give joe biden some briefings. No sense being unprepared. How could republican senators be expected to have answers to such bottomless mysteries like he won more votes in the election . Okay, all kidding aside theres a reason that one place republican senators are starting to budge is actually the issue of Intelligence Briefings because if they know in their heart of hearts as most of them surely do that joe biden really is going to be the next president regardless of what theyre willing to say within earshot of donald trump, well then making sure the next president is up to speed on the latest intelligence and National Security information is really important. Today over 150 former National Security officials including several who served in the Trump Administration wrote to the Trump Administration to urge them to officially name joe biden and Kamala Harris as the apparent president and Vice President elect. The technical step that is required to get government Transition Resources flowing, they warn that, quote, delaying the transition firth poses a serious risk to our National Security. And even as the lack of a president ial transition process may be doing unknown harm to National Security, President Trump continues to clean house across the intelligence and National Security establishment in the u. S. Government. Weve written reporting from the last few days about the firings from the Defense Department and the installation of trump loyalists at the top levels of the pentagon. Well, today President Trump appears to have started clearing out the governments top Cyber Security officials. The department of homeland securitys Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency or cisa, throughout 2020 it was responsible for preventing Cyber Attacks and also push back on internet disinformation about t the election. And the widely rrptespected heaf the agency, chris krebs, is telling associates that he expects to be fired. Heres whats particularly crazy about this. Just today cisa joined several other Government Agencies in a celebratory statement announcing that, quote, the november 3rd election was the most secure in american history. There is no evidence that any Voting System deleted or lost votes, changed votes or buzz in any way compromised. Thats amazing news. Imagine being the president of the United States and seeing that statement and being upset by it. But apparently it is cisas insistence that it did the job it was supposed to do, that it successfully helped protect american elections that has made donald trump so angry. Chris krebs, quote, drew the ire of the Trump White House over a website run by cisa dubbed rumor control which debunks disinformation about the election. White house officials have asked for content to be edited or removed which pushes back against numerous fall false claims of the election including democrats are behind a mass Election Fraud scheme. Just makes your head spin. The top Cyber Security official his whole job is to protect the integrity of the election and he did, but the president says the election was fraudulent, so the guy has got to be fired. In just a moment were going to speak with a key democratic senator whos worked on Election Security and knows chris krebs about how concerned we should all be on what the president is doing here. This story gets at the attention weve been talking about all week. On the one hand it seems very, very bad the president is clearinghouse in all these National Security posts as he refuses to concede defeat in the election. It can look sinter and scary, but if trump is just firing his top security official because hes mad twitter debunked his conspiracy theories today in arizona a Trump Campaign lawyer attempted to submit as evidence a stack of online forms filled out by random people who claim they had witnessed or heard about voting irregularities. Even the trump lawyer admitted the forms were full of lies and, quote, spam. The judge would not allow the socalled evidence. The trump lawyer was later forced to admit in court, quote, this is not a fraud case, this is not a stealing the election case. Which maybe he should tell the president. Meanwhile another trump loyer attempted to file a lawsuit that has no jurisdiction over elections. Quote, trump insists hell win but aides say he has no real plan to overturn results and talks of a 2024 run. National reporter Philip Rucker and josh dossy and Ashley Parker wrote one Administration Official chuckled and said youre giving him way too much credit right now. Trump has been on the phone calling his advisers and friends. Theres no doubt this is scary time. Theres no doubt donald trump can do a lot of damage on his way out the door. The moment calls for vigilance, but there is mounting evidence there may not be an actual plan or even a genuine effort to keep donald trump in power. Joining us now Philip Rucker. What are you hearing about those around the president , what they believe to be true and what theyre telling him and what hes thinking . Well, what they believe to be true is not the same necessarily as what theyre telling him, that the people around the president understands the reality as it exists which is joe biden won this election, hes the president elect, that these legal challenges do not have much hope of turning those Election Results around even if some minuscule amount of voter fraud were to be discovered, and lets be clear none has been discovered yet. Its not enough to turn this election around. Biden won. Thats the reality, its what the white house officials largely believe. But a number of people are trying to encourage the president. Dont necessarily want to give him bad news. Theyre trying to encourage him to fight onto pursue these legal challenges. The president instead of being president , instead of addressing the coronavirus and making public appearances and holding Task Force Meetings these last few days, hes been lighting up the phone. Hes been calling friends, allies, advisers, anybody who can give him some good news, who can point to discrepancies potentially where the vote may be crooked in the president s view and give him something to cling onto as he tries to claim falsely that the election was stolen from him. Theres reporting that the National Security advisor has told staff dont even mention bidens name. If you ever mention bidens name thats a nogo. Youd be fired the National Security official said. Everyone is scared of even talking about the chance of working with the biden transition. Thats reporting from the daily beast. Where does this go . At some point are they all hoping hell come around to the conclusion himself or the courts will dismiss all the cases and all the counting will be finished and therell be nothing left and at some point donald trump will accept reality . Well, ali, the hope of some in the president s orbit, and this would be the least dangerous scenario for the country is that this is just getting the president to a better emotional state. And, you know, maybe next week before we hit thanksgiving hell start to realize whats really going on, and hell find a graceful way to accept the reality of the results and move on, and biden will be able to begin his transition in the formal official wayt t that he waiting for. But we dont know thats going to happen. And donald trump is mercurial, impulsive. He makes decisions based on instinct and based on what information people are feeding him, and theres a very real possibility that he refuses to concede, and that he refuses to accept these results, and this continues all the way through the inauguration on january 20th. But its worth keeping in mind that the staff in the west wing, you know, are under orders not to accept that biden is the president elect, not to be casting about for jobs, sending their resumes out. Privately they know their jobs are going to be over january 20th because they know how this election turned out. Philip, you are White House Bureau chief for a reason. At some point in between there therell be Electoral College vote, but what do people tell you is the worstcase scenario . Well, that would be the worstcase scenario that the president continues to challenge the election result, that he continues to encourage his millions of followers around the country not to believe the integrity of the vote, that he casts doubt about the validity of our very democracy in this country and refuses to accept biden is his successor. Now, what that physically means on january 20th when hes supposed to vacate the white house, who knows, and im certainly not going to speculate about that, but its a dangerous scenario because as you just quoted barack obama saying in his book, the world is watching. This is the most powerful and important dem oxeracy in the world, and what we have right now is a sitting president challenging the very integrity of our election system. Philip rucker is the White House Bureau chief for the washington post. Phil, thank you for making time for us tonight. We appreciate it. Thank you. I want to turn now to senator Amy Klobuchar of minnesota, the ranking democrat on the rules committee and a member of the judiciary committee. She was a key voice on Election Security throughout the 2020 campaign. Obviously she say also a president ial candidate herself. Senator klobuchar, good to see you again. Thanks for being with us tonight. Thanks, ali. Thank you. Lets talk about what you believe is going on with mr. Krebs cisa. He did tweet again today the president that is about votes actually changed, votes for trump that had become biden votes. Theres no ground on that at all. What the do you think is happening . You know, chris krebs has headed up this agency toiling away now since he was appointed to this position and then confirmed by the senate on a bipartisan basis all since 2018. And hes won the respect of conservative secretary of states like west virginia, secretary of state who said he turned everything around, worked on Election Security to people like my friend mark warner who issued a statement supporting chris krebs and his position as a ranking democrat on the intelligence committee. Why is all this . Because this guy literally has been telling the truth. And this is and the people that work for him. All along they started this website and i suggest people look at it, ci cisa. Guv rumorcontrol. At the same time he worked really hard to stop foreign interference in our election. Yes, there were attempts which they came out publicly with before the election, but overall as they stated in their statement today, this has been an election where we were able to have a fair election. And thats because of local Election Officials all over this country, republicans and democrats who are doing their jobs, and thats because of people like chris krebs. And no frivolous lawsuits by donald trump are going to change that. And im proud of chris krebs. Yeah, but there are a lot of them. And i think he should get a medal instead of being condemned for protecting our countrys elections. For four years we talked about foreign interference in our elections. In fact, there was a joint statement from cisa and the elections infrastructure, guv wering coordinating counsel, a whole bunch of people who governed overseas elections and they said theres no evidence no Voting Systems, deleted or lost votes, changed votes were any way compromised. These are governmental organizations saying so, and today the same day you have the president not just tweeting about suppression and polls and all that kind of stuff but actually saying votes were changed. And the net result senator is depending on what polls you look at up to 20 of americans do not think this election was fairly decide. Do not think donald trump lost it, do not think it was run fairly. This is the deep scar imposed on the democracy of america. It is. And im pleased people are coming out slowly but surely on the republican side. The governors, there have been a number of them that have come out and congratulated joe biden on his election, and we just start seeing now today, yes, james langford, said he thought biden should get the briefings but also Chuck Grassly said the same thing, and he is the most Senior Member of the u. S. Senate on the republican side. So, you know, i think that things are slowly but surely changing. Am i dismayed that donald trump is firing people left and right while we have the worst moment in the pandemic so far occurring in this country . 56 people died in my state alone yesterday, and he is just sitting, stewing in his office as john bolton said today. We dont have time to get through seven stages of grief with donald trump. The point is that joe biden and Kamala Harris are moving forward. Joe announced his chief of staff today. The president elect has put together this preeminent task force of 13 experts