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A Week Of Contrasts Between Incoming And Outgoing Presidents; Health Officials Fear Thanksgiving Will Trigger Surge In Cases; Biden's First Cabinet Picks Include Longtime Aides, Obama Vets; Economy Recovering Much Faster For Those At The Top; Frontline Doctors On The Pandemic Surge. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired November 29, 2020 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:14]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MANU RAJU, CNN HOST (voice-over): America prepares for a post- Thanksgiving COVID surge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We already have this massive surge across the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the potentially the mother of all super spreader events.

RAJU: Plus, the Biden administration takes shape with a message of unity.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: We're at war with a virus, not with one another. Let's remember, we're all in this together.

RAJU: While the outgoing president clings to his voter fraud fantasy.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The numbers are corrupt. It was a rigged election, 100 percent.

RAJU: And the split screen economy, stocks at record highs while millions of Americans go hungry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just survive it. That's all I can say. You just have to survive it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU (on camera): Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm Manu Raju, in for John King.

To our viewers in the United States and around the world, thank you for joining us.

In 52 days, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the nation's 46th president. We know that, especially after Friday night ruling from a Trump appointed appeals court judge rejecting his claims of fraud in Pennsylvania, saying they, quote, have no merit. Yet, President Trump still spent his post-Thanksgiving Day weekend

tweeting, retweeting false conspiracy theories, claiming without any basis in fact that he's the real winner and the fight is not over.

So these words on Thanksgiving Day may be the closest we'll get to a concession. He said, yes, he'll leave the White House if the Electoral College crowns Biden the winner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Certainly I will. Certainly I will, and you know that. But I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20th of January, a lot of things. Massive fraud has been found.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, President-elect Biden is moving forward. He unveiled the first cabinet picks last week, a national security team made of long- time Biden advisers and Obama administration veterans. And tomorrow, he will receive his first full presidential intelligence briefing.

He's set to announce his economic in just the next few days, which sources say will include former Fed Chair Janet Yellen as treasury secretary.

But the real story last week was the tale of two presidencies, current and future. A contrast best illustrated by their Thanksgiving week messages.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: I know we can and will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war. We'll get our lives back. Life is going to return to normal, I promise you.

TRUMP: Don't let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine, because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they've been pushed before.

BIDEN: Our democracy is tested this year. And what learned is this, the people of this nation are up to the task.

TRUMP: This was a massive fraud. This should never take place in this country. We're like a third world country. We have machines that nobody knows what the hell is they're looking at.

BIDEN: America is a nation not of adversaries but of neighbors. To love our neighbor as ourselves is a radical act. It's what we're called to do.

TRUMP: Don't talk to me that way. You're just -- you're just a lightweight. Don't talk to me that way. Don't talk -- I'm the president of the United States. Don't ever talk to the president that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP) RAJU: Now, joining us now with their reporting and their insights, Julia Hirschfeld Davis of "The New York Times", and "The Washington Post's" Seung Min Kim.

So, Julie, let me start with you.

Listen here first to President-elect Joe Biden who is clearly trying to showcase a different style and tone than President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: You want solutions, not shouting. Reason, not hyper- partisanship. Light, not heat.

You want us to hear one another again, see one another again, respect one another again. You want Democrats and Republicans and independents to come together and work together. And that, my friends, is what I'm determined to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Julie, the question is, can he maintain that? He's facing a divided Congress. A lot of Democrats, frankly, want him to be tough with Republicans. Many Republicans are likely to resist him at all costs. Some Republicans haven't acknowledged he's even president-elect at this moment. So, will his case to bridge divide, and efforts to showcase really amount to much here in this very polarized town?

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I mean, it's hard to say, and that's the big question of whether or not his, the beginning of his administration can be successful. I mean, what you played there was definitely a contrast between two different types of people. President Trump is talking about his own grievances and personal complaints and you have Joe Biden who has campaigned for many months and won the presidency by talking about unity and coming together and getting past all this division.

But what you also saw was two people who have two very different interests in what happens next, right?

[08:05:03]

Joe Biden is trying to set the table for the kind of bipartisan progress that he wants to see that is really the only way that he can get anything done given how closely divided both the House and the Senate are going to be, whether Democrats have control or not. And what President Trump is doing, and, frankly, what a lot of elected Republicans who are aligned with him are doing are trying to set the table for a very different which is basically stoking people's anger and hostility about the outcome of the election to try to make it as difficult as possible for Joe Biden to get anything done starting with him, you know, even being able to confirm the cabinet nominees if he wants to fill out the top echelons of his administration.

RAJU: And that's going to be the big question going forward. So, we'll talk more here on the show. And, Seung Min, President Trump said for the first time last week, he'll leave if the Electoral College votes for Biden. But he also falsely keeps saying he's the real winner even though he's not and courts keep rejecting his lawsuits. Yet his lawyers insist their taking them to the Supreme Court.

So, where -- what's next in this legal fight for the president, and at what point does he actually acknowledge reality here?

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think we've seen him come the closest to acknowledging reality just in the posts you've seen from the Thanksgiving Day appearance where he said, you know, he doesn't have any intention of not leaving the White House should Biden be crowned the winner of the Electoral College which we expect him to be.

But we've known this all along, even before the election results, that this president does not going to be the type of president who was going to go out with a gracious concession speech like we've seen from past losing candidates of national presidential elections. He perhaps was never going to have the traditional meeting of the incoming president and the outgoing president, and there's a question of what he's going to do at the inauguration for Joe Biden.

He did hint at that in his Thanksgiving Day appearance, that he knew what he was going to do an inauguration, but he wouldn't tell the press who was there what his plans were. I mean, I think the closest you may see to any sort of concession speech is perhaps his upcoming rally this weekend in Georgia.

Again, he's not going to admit defeat. He's made it clear he does not believe he lost, even though he did, and I think what we can expect to see is just kind of a long laundry list of his accomplishments while in office to try to, you know, show his supporters that he was the actual winner when he wasn't.

RAJU: He clearly was not. And, Julie, one of the contrasts we've seen through this week is the Biden cabinet picks versus the Trump cabinet picks. Biden is leaning towards conventional nominees, people with a long track record in government. People can see how they stack up.

They look at -- how they look against the Trump picks over the years. These nominees clearly aligning with Biden's world view of reengaging in U.S. alliances, the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal.

The question is, how feasible will it be to simply rebuild those alliances, rejoin these agreements after four years of Trump who took the opposite approach?

DAVIS: Well, I think it's a really tall order. It's a big task. Part of the reason why he has I think chosen some of the people who have real experience in the trenches of policy making on these issues is because he knows that there is so much ground to make up, given the four years that we've just seen. There's no question that this cabinet that he's filling out here looks a lot like what we've seen in the past, a lot like the people he's worked with in the past, the people in the Obama administration.

If you just look at the national security team, sort of the deputies, committees that would need to hash out these policies that we saw rule out under former President Obama, it's a lot of those same people. And so, their experience with these issues will serve them well, but it's still going to be a tall order to try to put back together some of these relationships that have really been frayed over the years.

You saw that he selected John Kerry to be a climate czar of sorts. That is an area we've seen a lot of backsliding over the last four years. President Obama put a lot of energy and effort into making that an issue in his second term. We've seen President Trump really be able to unwind quite a bit of that.

You know, rejoining the Paris accord is one thing, but there's a lot of work that has to go into repairing that record as well and doing some of the work to get our country and the rest of the world where it needs to be as far as Biden, the progress Biden wants to make on that. So, they have a pretty tall order.

RAJU: No question about it. And, you know, as this week of contrast played out, we've seen the president making one false claim after another in voter fraud, including in Georgia where the Republicans are confronting what could be a problem here. Voters who believe that the system is rigged, and yet, there are two crucial Senate runoffs that will determine the next majority.

[08:05:00]

So listen to the head of the Republican national committee just yesterday trying to reassure GOP voters there that they should vote in the system -- they should have faith in the system and vote come January.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONNA MCDANIEL, RNC CHAIRWOMAN: It's not decided. This is the key. It's not decided.

If you lose your faith and don't vote and people walk away, that will decide it. So, we have to work hard. Trust us, we're fighting. We're looking at every legal avenue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So, Seung Min, I mean, will the president's rhetoric become a problem for Republicans come the January 5th runoff elections there?

KIM: Well, I think you've seen the difficult dance she had to do in the clip because of -- you know, because of the problem by the Republican parties, that the president had continuously pushed these baseless voter fraud accusations, particularly in Georgia, which is a state that is critical in these January 5th runoffs. And you do see how -- I mean, you know, we've seen over the last four years how powerful the president's words are. Even with his multitude of falsehoods, that his supporters really do

believe that he's saying. It's not a surprise that when he is pushing through his Twitter accounts, through his allies and conservative media, when he's pushing the baseless claims that there's voter fraud, basically every single day since the election, that particularly in Georgia, of course the supporters are going to believe that and latch on to that.

And that definitely could have an impact where Republicans are going to need every vote in Georgia. It is a close race and those two runoff seats there, and they need -- every voter needs to have faith in the system in Georgia.

And I think that's what you saw the Georgia secretary of state is trying to do over the last several weeks when he was in quite a standoff with national Republicans and really trying to protect the voting integrity -- the integrity of votes in his state, but does that -- I think that's a problem for the GOP.

RAJU: The Republican secretary of state, and this fight also reminds me of mail-in voting, the president saying baselessly that it's rife with fraud. Republican leaders pleading with him not to do that because they wanted their voters to vote by mail and warning that it could lead to November and the president ended up losing, of course.

Seung Min, Julie, thank you so much for your time.

Up next for us, is this Thanksgiving going to be -- end up being a coronavirus super spreader event like many experts fear?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:49]

RAJU: It's been the worst month yet for the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, a record number of new cases and worries that Thanksgiving travel will turn out to have been a super spreader event. So, let's take a look at where things stand.

Total number of cases in the United States, nearly 14 million, 13.2 million cases. More than 4 million cases in November alone. That smashes an old record set a month ago in October. There's no single hot spot. It's spreading in big states and open states, open states and rural areas.

And at least 100,000 new cases since November 3rd every day. This is not because of increased testing. It's because of an increase of hospitalizations. People are worried that states across the country about what this means.

This is the number of cases per week -- 1.1 million in the week that just ended. At least 1 million new cases every week. That's also double from about a month ago.

Now, look at the increased hospitalization. This is a real concern that's happening all across the country. More than half of the states, 26 states said hospitalization records last week. About 91,000 Americans currently hospitalized and hospitals are warning they're running out of ICU beds and trained staff. We're not rounding the turn no matter what the president is saying.

The real concern, the tragic concern about the virus all along is about deaths, of course. That is the lagging indicator here. Deaths on Wednesday alone, 22,097 deaths in the United States. Hospitals are better at treating COVID patients than last spring, but experts warn when hospitals are so overwhelmed, patient care may suffer.

And the real concern is that after the Thanksgiving surge, that this could lead to an increase in the death count.

Now, Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston has a dire forecast for what's ahead this holiday season.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR & DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: We're going to be regularly hitting 2,000 deaths per day, but then going up to 3,000 deaths and 4,000 deaths. The numbers that are approaching what we experienced in the 1918 flu pandemic, except it's happening over a much shorter period of time.

So, this is -- this is going to be destabilizing for the country not only in terms of health, but also our economy, as well as our homeland security is under threat because of this at this point.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, joining us now, Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency room physician and researcher of Brown University and dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, Dr. Ashish Jha.

Thank you both so much for joining us.

And, Dr. Jha, I'll start with you.

I'm wondering, do you agree with that very dire assessment, the potential of 4,000 deaths a day and the possibility of civil unrest?

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yeah, good morning. Thanks for having me on.

You know, back in July, I was asked by somebody whether we would ever see the 2400 deaths in a day that we did in April. And I said I can't imagine. I can't imagine we'd get that bad.

I obviously have enormous respect for Dr. Hotez, I hope he's wrong. We all hope he's wrong. Two thousand deaths a day I think are kind of baked in already. We're going to have that.

If we do our part, we can avoid the dire warnings of 3,000 or 4,000 deaths a day.

[08:20:03] RAJU: And, Dr. Ranney, 90,000 Americans are hospitalized with coronavirus, and that's double from just one month ago. And governors across the country warned Americans this week that Republican, excuse me, hospitals are reaching their capacity.

And, Dr. Ranney, you worked in an E.R. in Rhode Island. Are the hospitals prepared?

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, LIFESPAN/BROWN UNIVERSITY: So there's no way that the hospitals can be fully prepared for what we're currently facing. This is like a natural disaster occurring in all 50 states at the same time. There are not adequate beds. There are not adequate staff.

And because of the lack of national preparation, there are not adequate supplies. Now, here in Rhode Island we're currently planning to open a field hospital on Tuesday because our hospitals are so full of sick COVID-19 patients. But not every state has that option.

And even if you open a field hospital, if you have hundreds of staff who are sick which is what many states across the country are currently facing, if you don't have nurses and doctors and respiratory techs, even a field hospital isn't going to save you.

Our health care system is literally at the breaking point right now, thanks to COVID-19.

RAJU: And it could potentially get worse. And, of course, that's the real fear here.

Dr. Jha, while air travel was down 60 percent compared to a year ago, more Americans, about 3.5 million flew between Monday and Thursday. It's the most air travel since the pandemic began. So, should that be a cause here for concern?

JHA: Yeah. So, obviously, a lot of Americans did listen to public health advice and did not travel. I'm thankful for that. We will find out probably in about a week what impact the holiday weekend, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend had. It just takes a little while.

And so obviously given where we are, I think we're all worried about the impact. What I would say is for people who did travel when you get home, try to keep your interactions limited. Wear a mask. Do things you can to stop the spread. It's going to be a tough few weeks ahead.

RAJU: Yeah. And, Dr. Ranney, L.A. County and others, a lot of cities taking new things into effect, taking tougher measures between L.A. County's stay at home order takes effect tomorrow. It bans all gatherings with people outside your own household. It bans all in- person dining whether it's inside or outside, but allows retail businesses and schools to say open.

And police say they won't actively enforce it. So, can this be effective at all?

RANNEY: You, what I wish is people would follow the stay at home orders. I can't tell you how many patients I take care of who tell me, well, I just went to an indoor restaurant or I just went to a party with a few friends. I didn't think I was going to catch COVID, right?

So, the stay at home orders are critical. I think it's important to you keep safe workplaces and schools open. In the structured settings where people are masked, keeping a distance, I'm hopeful that order will be effective.

And we've seen in France that it works. In France, they shut down restaurants, cafes, large get-togethers but they keep school and some workplaces open. And it was effective.

I sure hope it will be in L.A. and I hope the rest of the country will follow suit, because we need to do something or again, this virus is going to just continue to grow out of control.

RAJU: And, Dr. Jha, an FDA advisory committee will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to recommend who should get the vaccine first. We expect people also have to get inoculated twice.

So, how complicated will this process be of distributing the vaccine and ensuring people are actually getting it?

JHA: Yeah. So, this is a great example of where the biology and the medical community has done a great job building a vaccine, but now there's a huge complexity to getting this out to 300 million people, creating a priority list, making sure people get vaccinated twice. All the logistical stuff and then all the communication stuff to help people understand that these vaccines are safe.

There's a lot of work ahead, and we really need a functioning government to help pull this off.

RAJU: Dr. Janney, Dr. Jha, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us this morning.

And up next, as Biden's cabinet begins to take shape, he declares America is back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:29:06]

RAJU: President-elect Biden is assembling a diverse cabinet with several firsts. Alejandro Mayorkas will be the first Latino and immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Janet Yellen, poised to be the first woman to lead the Treasury Department if Biden announces her nomination, which is expected. Avril Haines will be the first woman serving as director of national intelligence. And Linda Thomas-Greenfield, picked for U.N. ambassador is the first black official in Biden's cabinet.

Now, this is all in keeping with a promise Biden made in an op-ed back in June where he pledged he'll ensure the leadership in the institutions actually look like America.

[08:29:43]

Joining us now Laura Barron-Lopez of Politico and "The Washington Post's" Seung Min Kim back with us here.

And Seung Min, let's start with you. He named his initial cabinet picks this week. Any surprises to you? And also what does it tell you both about his policy goals and his strategy in dealing with Republicans in the Senate?

SEUNG MIN KIM, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, no major surprises here so far from the Biden team about his picks. There are a lot of -- they're pretty conventional picks as far as cabinet nominees are concerned. These are people who, first of all, particularly on foreign policy, share Biden's world view of reengagement on the national stage.

I think these are people where Republicans even aren't questioning their at least credentials and their experience to serve in these posts. So I think no surprises there.

I think there are fights looming ahead, particularly within the Democratic Party and with progressives on some of his future picks such as the picks at the Pentagon and more members of his national economics team.

But you do see, perhaps, where he may have been calibrating and thinking about the potential that he could be facing a Republican Senate who will confirm his nominees.

I think the obvious example there is Susan Rice who was talked about as the top candidate for secretary of state. Clearly qualified to sit in that position, but they already face a lot of public resistance from Republican senators. And Republicans are signaling that they were going to have a major fight against her already, even before her nomination.

And I think that may have played a role in, you know, Joe Biden ultimately going with Tony Blinken for secretary of state.

RAJU: Yes, it will be fascinating to see which fights he chooses to pick in the weeks ahead.

And Laura, Seung Min alluded to the progressives. They have been pushing Biden to name a major figure like a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren to the cabinet. But here's what Biden had to say about that to NBC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I said we already have significant representation among progressives in our administration, but there's nothing really off the table.

But one thing is really critical. Taking someone out of the Senate, taking someone out of the House -- particularly a person of consequence is really a difficult decision that would have to be made.

I have a very ambitious, very progressive agenda, and it's going to take really strong leaders in the House and Senate to get it done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So Laura, will the left wing of the party accept no Warren, no Sanders in a Biden cabinet?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Well, we'll have to see. But a number of progressive activists actually texted me after Biden made those comments saying that he thinks he has enough progressive representation, is going to have enough progressive representation in his administration. They said what progressives is he talking about?

And so one of the things that a number of outside groups, whether we're talking about Democrats or we're talking about MoveOn. They're waiting to see some bigger names that they feel would more represent this emerging left plank of the party.

That being said, a lot of the nominees that Biden has named so far are people that progressives say that they can live with. They aren't entirely in love with them, but they're people that they think they can work with.

Some of those are Ron Klain, who Biden named as chief of staff. Progressives saw that as a win for them because compared to the other candidates that Biden was potentially going to choose from, they felt that Ron Klain was the one that would be most sympathetic to their policy priorities.

They were also particularly happy about Janet Yellen who Biden is expected to formally name to be in the Treasury Department. And they feel as though she's someone that they can work with.

But they're mounting more aggressive campaigns against some lower level potential picks. They are particularly against Bruce Reed, who's a veteran Biden staffer. He was Biden's former chief of staff when Biden was vice president. He's been with Biden for a long time throughout the years. Also served on Biden's campaign. And a lot of progressives see him as a deficit hawk.

He is likely going to be in the administration, it'd be a big surprise if he isn't so that might be a loss for progressives because Biden's team has forcefully defended him saying that he is not a deficit hawk, that he wouldn't try to limit spending, especially during a time of crisis.

RAJU: And Laura --

BARRON-LOPEZ: There's a lot --

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: -- staying with you because there has been also some pushback from top member of the House Democratic leadership, Jim Clyburn. Congressman Jim Clyburn who had been concerned about the lack of diversity so far in pushing for more black officials to be in the cabinet.

This is what he told "The Hill" newspaper. He said, "From all I hear black people have been given fair consideration. But there's only one black woman so far. I want to see where the process leads to what it produces but so far it's not good."

[08:34:49]

RAJU: So you know, Laura, we know that Clyburn is pushing for Congresswoman Marcia Fudge to be our Ag secretary -- Agriculture secretary. But how are Biden and his team reacting to such criticism and will they actually listen to what Clyburn is saying here?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, I think they'll certainly listen to Congressman Clyburn. He's someone that they've listened to throughout the campaign. As we all know, Clyburn was pivotal in Biden's South Carolina win and he definitely has an ear with Biden's incoming administration.

He's not the only one that is trying to push the administration. There's also members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who want to see a number of Latino nominees. They've said as many as, you know, five to six because they're hoping that the administration will be reflective of the Latino population across the United States.

Biden's transition team so far seems receptive to that, but again, we still have a lot of positions that the incoming administration has yet to fill. And we don't know how those are going to look yet.

RAJU: And Seung Min, You were mentioning Republican senators. They're already voicing their opposition to Biden's picks -- some of them are. A lot of them had been silent.

But this is Missouri Senator Josh Hawley who said "What a group of corporatists and war enthusiasts and big tech sellouts", he tweeted.

Senator Marco rubio also tweeted "I support American greatness and I have no interest in returning to the normal that left us."

And this from Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton saying the liberal media swooning over the A-Team of hypercompetent and incredibly (INAUDIBLE) Obama-Biden alums getting back together.

You know, we should expect these senators likely going to be no on most, if not all, the Biden nominees. But in your view, Seung Min, I mean how difficult will it be to get nominees confirmed no matter how controversial or less controversial through a narrowly divided Senate regardless of who is in charge here?

KIM: Well, Manu, something in common with those three Republican senators you named clearly, eying the presidential nomination, the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. And they're going to remind me of what a similar group of Senate Democrats did, you know, back in 2017 when President Trump's cabinet was taking shape where you had Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and what-not, basically becoming the "hell no" caucus and voting against all of Trump's nominees and wearing that as a badge of honor on the campaign trail.

I would expect that from these three Republican senators as well. But clearly a narrow Republican -- narrow senate and particularly one controlled by Republicans is going to be a problem for these cabinet picks.

I actually went back and looked at Tony Blinken's confirmation site to become deputy secretary of state under the Obama years. And for not even the top job in the post, he only got two Republicans to support him back then. And those two Republicans are no longer in -- no longer in office.

And I think a lot of Republicans at the time were very opposed to Tony Blinken's view on foreign policy and his personal ideology and the fact that he supported the Obama administration's foreign policies. And so you're going to see a lot of these, you know, policy fights play out in cabinet picks.

Not so much their experience which was a question a lot with Trump's nominees during his administration, but you'll see pretty brutal fights about their views on, you know, world engagement, on economics and so forth.

RAJU: Yes. Jeff Flake, Bob Corker -- two Republican senators no more. They voted for Blinken for the deputy job. How will Blinken now far with Republicans -- those two senators no longer here. We'll see.

Seung Min Kim of "Washington Post", Laura Barron-Lopez of Politico -- thank you two so much.

And up next, a tale of two economies. Investors celebrate new records on Wall Street as millions say they cannot put food on the table.

[08:38:36]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: Economists talk about a K-shaped economic recovery where things get better for those at the top and worse for those in the middle and bottom.

We've seen clear evidence of that this week in the form of two numbers. First, the Dow Jones Industrial average set a new record breaking through 30000 for the first time, good news for investors and anyone with a 401-K.

But at the same time, new data from the Labor Department showed 20.4 million Americans on some form of unemployment benefits.

The president focused on one number. The president-elect on the other.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The stock market has just broken 30000 -- never been broken that number. That's a sacred number, 30000. Nobody thought they'd ever see it. BIDEN: Think of all the people, all the people who are laying at night, awake at night staring at the ceiling thinking God forbid, what happens?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: University of Chicago economics professor Austan Goolsbee joins me. He was the top economic adviser under President Barack Obama. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

You know, it's good news for anyone with a 401k that stock markets are at record highs, something we have not -- we've heard the president tout last week at the White House.

But explain to our viewers how that can be with millions of Americans out of work and as we see unprecedented lines at food banks across the country?

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, FORMER OBAMA ECONOMIC ADVISER: Yes. I mean, it's quite a -- it's quite a difference to be put right in your face like that. And we've had specific days.

The one day in the spring where we announced a job loss of 21 million, the worst day in the history of the American job market and the stock market went up on that day.

You know, I think it's that it's just proving the old moniker that the stock market is not the economy. What matters for the stock market is the profitability of big corporations. And they can be profitable at the same time tens of millions of people are out of work.

I don't think over the long run that you can really sustain the k- shaped recovery where you have widely differing outcomes like that. But in the short-run, for sure you can.

[08:45:00]

GOOLSBEE: And you've seen partly from government bailouts and rescues, partly because the small competitors are drying up because they're running out of money, and partly because of good news that came from the vaccine, you've seen the stock market for the really big companies, they perceive that their profits are high and going higher. So the stock market value goes way up.

RAJU: And that leads us straight to the discussion in Washington about what to do about it. And the surge in new COVID cases means new restrictions on businesses, some states have partially shut down again.

Meanwhile you have pandemic rescue plans in Washington expiring or already gone. The bigger unemployment benefits -- the aid to small businesses to help prevent layoffs, the moratorium on evictions, money for states to avoid layoffs, the teachers, the police officers -- and these are some very sad numbers.

Ten million jobs lost this year, 26 million say they don't always have enough to eat. 6 million are worried about being kicked out of their homes. So given all that, Austan, should Democrats in Congress -- should they take a smaller deal before the end of the year?

Nancy Pelosi said no deal is better than half a deal. Is she right?

GOOLSBEE: Look, I'm just a policy guy. I'm not an expert on the political negotiations. I know that the President-Elect Biden, has been calling for doing something because the list of statistics that you said just tell you what everybody feels and knows which is there are a lot of people really hurting in the country.

I hope that they can agree on something soon because this -- because we have the vaccine and the virus really is the boss of the economy at this point, there is a great risk that we could stall out or even have a double dip recession if we continue to let this virus rage out of control like this.

And in an environment like that, where you've got millions of people literally saying they can't put food on the table, there's got to be some relief.

Now, I know everyone calls it stimulus, and it's sort of a pedantic point but this isn't stimulus. This is literally just relief money until we can get the furnace back on. We have to do this.

It's not jump starting growth. It's just keeping people from being evicted, keeping businesses from shutting down permanently from what was supposed to be a temporary shock.

And I think it's important. So if they have to accept half a loaf, then they should accept half a loaf, and then let's try to get another half of a loaf. But right now is really touch and go, and I wish both sides could see that.

RAJU: Yes. And you were part of the Obama transition in 2008 and 2009, and sort of the top economist -- White House economist at the height of the great recession. You did get some criticism from progressives at the time who said the Obama White House didn't do enough to help owners -- homeowners, working families. And that's why they argue the recovery was so slow.

Do you agree with that criticism? Was the administration too timid then and what lessons should Joe Biden's economic team, should they learn from that experience?

GOOLSBEE: I partly do agree with that criticism. No, it was more complicated to actually get more stimulus at that time. It was a deeply divided, if you remember, the stimulus came down to one vote in both the House and the Senate. So we had to accept a reality of what was capable.

I think the mistake we made was passing a large stimulus, wanting it to be bigger, and assuming well, if the economy is suffering, then the Republicans and the Democrats would be able to come together and pass more. And they didn't, for whatever reason. Mitch McConnell was already there and was already opposed to everything they did. I think that lesson for today is you ought to do as much as you can up front, especially in an environment like this, where it's known to be temporary, the virus is.

We are very likely to have a vaccine available to everyone, so do some relief right now. It's not a forever thing. You don't have to get on the train forever.

RAJU: And just real quickly, are you at all talking about a job in the Biden administration?

GOOLSBEE: I haven't. I'm a big supporter of the vice president's from the Obama days and through the campaign now. But you know, I don't -- I don't plan to be going into the administration.

RAJU: Austan Goolsbee, thank you for taking the time this morning.

And as COVID-19 hospitalizations hit an all-time record this holiday weekend, the doctors on the frontline tell us what they're most thankful for and what they're most worried about.

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RAJU: The U.S. reported the most COVID-19 hospitalizations ever yesterday -- over 91,000 patients. Now, hospital staff are bracing for that number to grow since there have been more than four million new cases so far this month.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of President-Elect Joe. Biden's task force warned that the health care systems are on the edge of breaking.

So we asked some emergency room physicians to give us their thoughts on the early days of the pandemic, the strain on the hospital systems now and what they are most thankful for.

We start off with Dr. Cleavon Gilman of Yuma Arizona who traveled to New York in the early days of the pandemic to help overwhelmed physicians there beat back that first wave.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. CLEAVON GILMAN, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIANS: We have had tens of patients who have been hypoxic. We had a patient who had a cardiac arrest. It's insane.

When I talk about the pandemic and the amount of death health care providers here are seeing who are not even trained -- who are not even trained for that. You know? I've been in boot camp in the military and I trained for war and they are in a war. Make no mistake, this is a war.

There is no general helping us. There is no plan. And for people in this country to continue to get infected.

[08:54:45]

DR. GILMAN: I hate calling family members and they keep telling me that their child or their husband or their wife is dead. That is what we are doing all across this nation.

My 27-year-old cousin, (INAUDIBLE) healthy as hell died from COVID-19. I've lost three colleagues to this virus. Last Sunday, I was working the graveyard (ph) shift here in Yuma, Arizona. No mask mandates. No ICU beds to transfer a patient but everything is open. Makes no sense to me.

DR. LAKSHMAN SWAMY, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: I remember it was this eerie feeling of getting everything ready, the hospital was quiet. The ICU was so quiet. And we knew what was coming.

And it was like standing on the beach and watching like a 40-foot tidal wave come at you and only after it hit you did you realize that it wasn't 40 feet, it was 80 feet and it wasn't the only one.

I just saw myself, my family, my loved ones, my community in my ICU in a way I never had before and that was really -- that was really kind of profound for me. I think we know a lot more now than we did then. I think we are going to do -- we're going to do better than we did then. But at the same time, once the volume of patients just hits a certain amount, there is only so much we can do. So I'm worried. I'm worried for that.

DR. MARINA DEL RIOS, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: It's getting very busy. It's getting very stressful to work in the emergency department.

I've worked shifts where we have had patients waiting for eight, ten hours to be seen, where we have had, you know, dozens of patients staying in the emergency department waiting for a hospital bed because our hospital was full.

This year was the first time that I broke down crying. I'm most thankful for having a healthy husband and healthy two boys ages 13 and 10, who have not yet gotten sick. I am most thankful for not having anyone absent from my table.

And I know that not only a lot of my patients' families, but a lot of my friends can't say the same thing this year.

My greatest fear is going into this holiday season or that people are dead (ph) or tired. I understand how difficult it is to remain isolated from your friends and family.

You know, for myself, Christmas is always a big deal. I always -- almost every year I'll travel to Puerto Rico which is where I'm from and visit my mom who is 80-year-old now. We are not doing that this year. I worry that there is not enough people making that decision.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: Amazing stories. We wish them luck in the months ahead and thank them for their service and their sacrifice.

That is it for INSIDE POLITICS.

Up next "STATE OF THE UNION" with Dana Bash. Her guests include the government's testing czar Admiral Brett Giroir, Republican Senator Roy Blunt, Democratic senate candidate Jon Ossoff.

Thanks again for sharing you Sunday morning with us. Have a good day.

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