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