Welcome to Talking Feds, a round table that brings together prominent former federal officials

and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics

of the day.

I'm Harry Littman.

The virus has gripped the country and the world more tightly than ever.

With winter approaching, the Center for Disease Control has warned that these next few

months may be the most difficult time in U.S. public health history.

Hospitals are already straining capacity and the predictions are that by March, the death

toll of the nation will stand at twice the 250,000 figure that we passed just last week.

But there is also an emerging bright spot visible in the form of an effective vaccine, and

there is finally some movement in Congress for at least a stopgap stimulus to address the

worst effects of the virus, which is hit the working poor, especially hard.

The President, meanwhile, apparently has taken up full-time residents in a world in which

there is no virus, but there is an existential crisis of widespread fraud undermining the

entire presidential election, which he is confident he won in a landslide.

He gave what he turned, maybe the most important speech I've ever made, a 46-minute extended

hallucination, insisting that the election was rigged and itemizing a long list of false

assertions about voter fraud.

Those claims have been scornfully rejected by a long list of state and federal courts,

as well as Trump's erstwhile loyal servant Attorney General Bill Barr, who conceded that

there was no evidence of fraud that would change the election outcome, a statement that reportedly

left Trump livid and considering sacking Barr.

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