Speaker 1: It's Monday, December fourteen. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: The Fiser vaccine is being shipped out now to all
Speaker 1: the states and will start being administered immediately, as we
Speaker 1: mark another turn in the pandemic. Despite President Trump's record
Speaker 1: on handling the coronavirus, Operation Warp Speed has been a
Speaker 1: success in getting a vaccine approved in less than a year.
Speaker 1: In other news, after suffering another loss in court, it
Speaker 1: seems that the president is all out of options to
Speaker 1: overturn the election. The Electoral College is meeting today to
Speaker 1: formally cast votes for Joe Biden, sealing his victory over Trump.
Speaker 1: Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, joins
Speaker 1: us for all this, plus how the Hunter Biden investigation
Speaker 1: could influence the president elects decision on an attorney general.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for having me. We've
Speaker 1: got some great news in the whole progression of this pandemic.
Speaker 1: The approval, all the approvals have gone through. Now for
Speaker 1: the Fiser vaccine, it's being shipped out. It's hitting state today.
Speaker 1: I think the expectation is that they're going to deliver
Speaker 1: two point nine million doses this week. This is all
Speaker 1: going to be via ups and fed X. And you know,
Speaker 1: just speaking of the President's accomplishments and his handling of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, it's been uneasy at best, let's say, But
Speaker 1: with regards to Operation Warp speed, this is as success
Speaker 1: a vaccine that's highly effective in under a year, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's already being rolled out. That's right. We're
Speaker 1: really at sort of a historic moment in this historic pandemic,
Speaker 1: which is that within the next few days, needles will
Speaker 1: be in arms, people will be receiving the vaccine d
Speaker 1: f d A. The CDC gave all the sign offs,
Speaker 1: and President Trump likeas to tout how quickly this happened.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look in the history of the
Speaker 1: world or the history of the United States, how long
Speaker 1: a vaccine would take to get to prove it would
Speaker 1: be much longer. And obviously US and the rest of
Speaker 1: the world has moved much more quickly than we would
Speaker 1: in a non emergency time. And while I know for
Speaker 1: me and so many people it feels like it's been
Speaker 1: eons we've been stuck in this pandemic. Really record speed
Speaker 1: to get a vaccine out and start administering it to people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now the next big step is for the states
Speaker 1: and the governors to roll this out the right way.
Speaker 1: You know, Operation warp speed only takes it so far.
Speaker 1: It only takes it to the states, and from there,
Speaker 1: the states have to do it right. And then beyond that,
Speaker 1: you know, we we'd have a messaging problem right now
Speaker 1: with the vaccine, and we need people to gain trust
Speaker 1: in it and to want to take it. I have
Speaker 1: no doubt that all the doses will be sent out
Speaker 1: in every and administered, but there is some hesitation on
Speaker 1: a lot of Americans part on this. I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna see an organized effort, particularly by
Speaker 1: the governors, sort of calm that worry among people and
Speaker 1: to build confidence that it is safe. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna be seeing governors themselves rolling up their sleeves to
Speaker 1: show their states that it's safe. Several of the living
Speaker 1: presidents former presidents have volunteered to take it on camera.
Speaker 1: President Bush, President Clinton, President Obama. All three of said
Speaker 1: they will do so in a public way so people
Speaker 1: can see them receiving the vaccine. And I think we're
Speaker 1: going to have a real shaky kind of moment here
Speaker 1: on distribution where we're all going to be watching how
Speaker 1: this goes, not because of the safety of the vaccine,
Speaker 1: but because, as you said, Operation word Speed, this is
Speaker 1: the end of the line for it, and now it's
Speaker 1: in the hands of the states, and the federal government
Speaker 1: under Trump has not really sort of run the distribution
Speaker 1: process beyond this. They've left it to the states. It's
Speaker 1: a criticism we've already started to hear that the states
Speaker 1: don't have enough money or resources to distribute this, and
Speaker 1: so we're gonna see, you know, more than fifty different
Speaker 1: organizations basically, each trying to do this on their own.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't be surprised if it's not the same
Speaker 1: across off fifty states, and if that leads to confusion.
Speaker 1: But we have to hope the American people understand people
Speaker 1: are trying to do the best they can. They're trying
Speaker 1: to get it out there, and the fact that one
Speaker 1: state does it differently than another doesn't speak to the
Speaker 1: safety or the efficacy of the vaccine right exactly. So
Speaker 1: we're just hoping for a speedy rollout and very effective
Speaker 1: on all parts I wanted to move on a little
Speaker 1: bit onto the transfer of power. Joe Biden is coming in.
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump will be on his way out pretty soon.
Speaker 1: The Electoral College is meeting today to seal the victory
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden. Nobody really expects anything crazy to happen. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's always a possibility, I guess, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the Electoral College will will seal the win for Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: This comes after the Supreme Court rejected President Trump's last
Speaker 1: big effort. He called it the big one in his
Speaker 1: legal lawsuit, this one coming out of Texas, that was
Speaker 1: backed by several red states, the majority of the House Republicans,
Speaker 1: but the Supreme Court just was not hearing it. That's right. Normally,
Speaker 1: you know, we would not care very much about the
Speaker 1: Electoral College meeting today. It's always kind of a perfunctory move.
Speaker 1: But given all of this, you talked about that lawsuit
Speaker 1: that the president's allies filed from Texas against states that
Speaker 1: had not voted for him. The Supreme Court refusing to
Speaker 1: really even acknowledge it, saying that it was going nowhere,
Speaker 1: have rejected it on Friday. To the Electoral Ledge will
Speaker 1: meet today. They don't all come to Washington and have
Speaker 1: a big meeting. They meet individually and each of their states.
Speaker 1: We have a great explainer from one of our reporters
Speaker 1: at NBC news dot Com, sort of breaking it down
Speaker 1: since isn't something we normally pay much attention to, but
Speaker 1: a great look at how this works. And so in
Speaker 1: each state the electors will meet, and it is possible
Speaker 1: that we all have what we call faithless electors, electors
Speaker 1: that vote not for the person who their state chose.
Speaker 1: That it happened four years ago we had two electors
Speaker 1: defect from Hillary Clinton I think one maybe from Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and vote for other people. The courts have sort
Speaker 1: of said that you can't do that, so they could try,
Speaker 1: but I think at the end of the day, really
Speaker 1: what we're gonna see is just a rubber stampa seal
Speaker 1: of what we already know has happened, which is that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden has been elected to be America's next president.
Speaker 1: And we'll see if President Trump at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily concedes, but at least maybe changes his tone.
Speaker 1: He was railing against the Supreme Court, you know, he
Speaker 1: said the fight is going to be ongoing. So I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll see what he does. He has very little recourse,
Speaker 1: you know, once that happens, um so there's always a
Speaker 1: safe bet to bet that he doesn't change his step exactly.
Speaker 1: And then I also wanted to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about Hunter Biden. We're gonna see a lot of more
Speaker 1: of this coming out. Federal officials in Delaware investigating his taxes.
Speaker 1: We learned about this this past week. Some of this
Speaker 1: has to do with income he didn't disclose from the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian gas company Barisma business dealings in China. This is
Speaker 1: an investigation that started in eighteen and again the President
Speaker 1: railing against Attorney General Bill Barr for not bringing this
Speaker 1: more to light before the election happened. Reporters are reporters
Speaker 1: are hearing that Bill bar very much wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that the Department of Justice followed the rules, and
Speaker 1: the rules say you don't unroll or announce investigations into
Speaker 1: people who are part of an election in the weeks
Speaker 1: or even months before the election. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism that that role was broken in and then
Speaker 1: it might have influenced the race in some way. And
Speaker 1: so we saw Attorney General Barry making sure that he
Speaker 1: wasn't breaking those rules, and they were abiding by the
Speaker 1: guidelines that Justice has, and so he didn't go public
Speaker 1: with this investigation into Hunter Biden. But it does explain
Speaker 1: some of the tweets we saw from President Trump during
Speaker 1: that time that he thought that there was more to
Speaker 1: Hunter and that the public should know. He might have
Speaker 1: been aware of this investigation and had wanted bar to
Speaker 1: be public about it then and now unhappy that he wasn't.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure how many votes it would have
Speaker 1: won him or how many votes it would have lost.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden will never know, But those are the rules
Speaker 1: that justice has and and we're gonna see this continue
Speaker 1: to unfold, and I think that it's probably weighing on
Speaker 1: Biden as he makes one of his last cabinet appointments,
Speaker 1: big cabinet appointments that we haven't heard yet, which is
Speaker 1: an attorney general, the person who will oversee these investigations
Speaker 1: once they take over. Biden has insisted that the attorney
Speaker 1: general should be neutral, that they should not be influenced
Speaker 1: by the president, and that his will be neutral, and
Speaker 1: so who he picks will be an interesting choice there
Speaker 1: given all of these new details. Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington,
Speaker 1: Digital editor at NBC News. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: joining us, Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's
Speaker 1: big news stories, you can check me out on the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow us
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