The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Donald Trump's former National Security Adviser doubts the President will leave office graciously.
The current President is quickly running out of options to avoid a defeat in America's presidential election.
CNN is projecting Joe Biden has 253 of the 270 electoral seats needed to win - with Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania all remaining too close to call.
Judges have already dismissed lawsuits from the Trump campaign in Georgia and Michigan.
However, Trump is refusing to back down. 
"All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud," Trump tweeted. The tweet was flagged by Twitter as disputed and "might be misleading".
John Bolton, who served as Trump's National Security Adviser for around 18 months, told Mike Hosking Trump's finally facing the writing on the wall.
"I think you're going to see more of the kind of rhetoric when he accused the Democrats of stealing the election from him [and] committing massive fraud, as to which there is no evidence whatsoever."
However, he says Trump is legally entitled to request a recount in close states.
"The fact is, though, once you go into court, you have an obligation for what you say, as opposed to being a politician, where you can say pretty much anything you want."
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THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Friday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) What a Way To Go/Slow Government/Mark the Week/Call Off the Awards/Bank Bars

Rhys Darby has easily made the best of his opportunities. 
He’s become a global sensation after his stand up and Flight of the Conchord breaks back in 2007. 
That includes recent appearances in the Jumanji franchise and Guns Akimbo alongside Daniel Radcliffe. 
What you might not know about him is that he a kid's book author too.
His third book - The Top Secret Intergalactic Notes of Buttons McGinty - is out now. 
Darby joined Mike Hosking live in studio to discuss his latest work and life in America in the age of Trump. 
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Four Italian regions are being put under “red-zone” lockdown, with severe limits imposed on the circumstances under which people can leave home, Premier Giuseppe Conte announced on Wednesday night.
What he called "very stringent” restrictions begin on Friday for Lombardy, Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta in the north, and for Calabria, which forms the southern toe of the Italian peninsula.
The lockdown is aimed at tamping down a surge in COVID-19 infections and preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed with cases. Lasting at least two weeks, it will involve some 16.5 million of Italy’s 60 million residents and include the country's financial capital, Milan.
Barring very few exceptions, no one will be able to leave or enter the “red zone” regions. People there must stay home, except to go to work or shop for essentials. They can also exercise near their homes and while wearing masks.
 

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza, left, and key government adviser on the pandemic Dr Franco Locatelli. Photo / AP
 
After days of consultations with regional governors, Health Minister Roberto Speranza decided which regions received the “red-zone” designation.
“I know that these choices will mean sacrifices and difficulties, but they are the only way to bend the (contagion) curve," he said in a statement. “United, we can do it.”
Barber shops and hair salons can stay open, although other non-essential shops in the “red zone” must close.
Less severe restrictions on movement were decided for southern Sicily and Puglia, where people will be able to leave their homes, but can't travel between towns or regions, and cafes and restaurants can only do takeout and delivery.
While classrooms are open in the rest of Italy except for high schools, which must do remote instructions, in the “red zone,” only nursery, elementary and the first year of middle-school will still have in-class instruction.
The latest crackdown was supposed to start on Thursday, but Conte said it will begin instead on Friday to allow time to organize. Designations will be reviewed every two weeks.
He added that previously announced nationwide measures, like museum closures and an overnight curfew, would also start a day later, on Friday, and last until Dec. 3.
Conte promised that later this week his center-left government would approve more funds to aid businesses crippled by the latest closures.

England has re-entered a national lockdown, following other European nations which have taken drastic steps to counter a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths across the continent.
The restrictions, which took effect at midnight Thursday, will see restaurants, bars and non-essential businesses close until December 2.
England's lockdown came days after similar measures were enacted in France and Germany, and ahead of a number of Italian regions becoming "red zones" on Friday.
Speaking before the parliamentary vote Wednesday which paved the way for the new lockdown, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he had been "confronted" with data projecting that the UK's National Health Service (NHS) could "collapse" in the face of increased demand because of Covid-19.
Johnson said deaths in the second wave of the pandemic could potentially exceed those recorded in the spring, with the number of coronavirus patients in some hospitals "already higher than at the peak of the first wave."
"And when I look at what is happening now amongst some of our continental friends, and see doctors who have tested positive being ordered, alas, to work on Covid wards, and patients airlifted to hospitals in some other countries simply to make space, I can reach only one conclusion: I am not prepared to take the risk with the lives of the British people," Johnson said.
The UK reported its second-largest daily increase in cases on Wednesday with 25,177 new infections recorded in 24 hours. There were a further 492 deaths, according to government data, and the number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 rose to 12,320.
It came after Europe recorded a 22% increase in new coronavirus cases and a 43% increase in deaths in the seven days to Tuesday, compared with the previous week, according to the World Health Organization.
France, Italy and the UK reported the highest numbers of new cases in that time, although Andorra, the Czech Republic and Belgium reported the highest per population incidence.
"France accounted for the third-highest number of new cases globally, with over 275,000 cases reported in the past week ... that is a 27% increase from the previous week," WHO said.
While cases in France rose in line with much of Europe from August onwards, the country saw a significant surge in infections in October, and the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care units was "rising rapidly," the report said.
France reported 854 Covid-19-related deaths in 24 hours on Tuesday -- an average of one person dying every 1 minute 41 seconds -- and the nation's highest daily tally since April 15, according to data released by the French Health Authority.
 

People pass through Trafalgar Square, protesting against renewed lockdown restrictions. Photo / AP
 
Sending in the military
The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic is already putting hospitals in several European countries under severe strain.
Intensive care units in the Belgian capital, Brussels, reached maximum capacity on Monday, and military personnel have been deployed to a new emergency unit to help relieve congestion in hospitals in the Liège region of the country.
A record 877 Covid-19 patients have been admitted to Belgian hospitals in the past 24 hours, according to national health authority Sciensano. The largest number of admissions in the first wave of the pandemic was 629, on March 28.
Switzerland is also deploying its army to help manage a growing number of Covid-19 hospitalisations, the Swiss government said on Wednesday.
The government said 2,500 soldiers would be available to help hospitals treat or transport coronavirus patients in areas where local resources have been "exhausted."
Switzerland and Liechtenstein registered 10,073 new daily Covid-19 cases, 247 hospitalisations and 73 new deaths on Wednesday.
Restrictive new steps
Italy's government, which has warned it could run...

Former Vice President Joe Biden has moved to within 17 electoral votes of claiming the presidency by winning the state of Michigan, CNN projects, in the latest twist of a dramatic election clash with President Donald Trump that has left America's political fate uncertain hours after polls closed.
His breakthrough came as Trump's campaign launched a flurry of lawsuits in several states designed to stop the former vice president from getting over the line, including challenging Pennsylvania's vote count at the Supreme Court.
A constitutional law expert claims it'd be hard to dispute the vote all the way to the US Supreme Court.
Kyle Kopko from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania told Mike Hosking it has to pass the state's Supreme Court first.
Biden's victory in Michigan means he has now captured two-thirds of the vaunted "blue wall" in the Midwest and Pennsylvania that paved Trump's path to victory four years ago. If Biden holds his leads in Nevada and Arizona, where counts have yet to be completed, he will have sufficient Electoral College votes to be the 46th president. The Biden camp is also confident of overtaking Trump in another key battleground state, Pennsylvania, where hundreds of thousands of mail-in and early absentee votes, which are expected to favour the Democrats, are still being counted.
But the Trump campaign plans to ask the court to intervene in a case challenging a Supreme Court decision that allowed Pennsylvania ballots to be counted after Election Day. The justices had refused to expedite the appeal before the election, and are considering whether to take up the case.
Biden holds a 253-213 lead in the Electoral College. A candidate must reach the 270 mark to win the presidency. Races in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are too close to call. In many cases, the tight races could depend on the counting of absentee and mail-in ballots, which tend to disproportionately favour Democrats.
In a brief statement Wednesday afternoon, Biden said his campaign was on track to win 270 electoral votes but that he was not declaring victory until the count was completed in key states. He said he was encouraged by the extraordinary turnout in the election and dismissed Trump's attempts to undermine the results.
"Here, the people rule. Power can't be taken or asserted," Biden said, in a speech in which he tried to create the aura of a winner, pledging to bring the country together and to work for national healing as president.
Trump hasn't appeared in public since his brazen and false claim of victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning in which he demanded that legally cast ballots in contested states where he may fall behind not be counted.
America now seems set for hours or even days of uncertainty with vote counts possibly ceding to legal battles in several states at a time when the country is already being rocked by the worst public health crisis in 100 years. While the nation's eyes were on the election on Tuesday, another 1,048 citizens died from Covid-19 -- a disease the President says has all but disappeared -- and from which 232,000 Americans have now perished.
CNN projects Biden will win at least three of Maine's four electoral votes, Wisconsin, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Virginia, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Delaware, Washington, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts and one of Nebraska's five electoral votes. Nebraska and Maine award two electoral votes to its statewide winner and divides their other electoral votes by congressional district.
CNN projects Trump will also win in Montana, Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Ohio, Mississippi, Wyoming, Missouri, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee and four of Nebraska's five...

New Zealand and America will remain friends - regardless of which candidate wins the presidency.
That's the message from our US Ambassador, Republican Scott Brown.
He says while it's exciting to watch the 24 seven coverage, it's important to realise the relationship will be as vibrant and strong as ever.
Brown told Mike Hosking that whoever the President will be it will have no effect to the future plans between the two countries. 
Scott Brown leaves New Zealand next month to become Dean of a law school in Boston.
 
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New unemployment stats don't show the full picture.
Stats NZ show unemployment has risen to 5.3 per cent, slightly better than expected.
The number of unemployed people rose by 37-thousand to hit 151-thousand in the September quarter - after warnings it could rise by almost double that.
Infometrics senior economist Brad Olsen told Mike Hosking it's reassuring, but there are other factors to consider.
He says there are people who are working fewer hours, and also those who don't have a job, but who aren't actively looking for work.
The under-utilisation rate - where people have some work but want more - rose to 13.2 percent, with women impacted almost six percent more than men.
Olsen says many jobseekers don't suit what's available.
He says many people want to work but there's a skills mis-match, which has been exacerbated lately.
 
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Officials in key battleground states -- including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona -- whittled down the mountains of uncounted absentee ballots Wednesday as President Donald Trump cast doubt on their work.
Two late-counting states, Michigan and Wisconsin, crossed critical thresholds in the afternoon and were called by CNN for former Vice President Joe Biden.
Some of the states not yet called were posting their results as they were tallied Wednesday, while another -- North Carolina -- said it would wait to tally outstanding provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots before announcing more results next week.
Mail-in ballots, which smashed records this year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, have been expected to favour Biden, whose campaign encouraged Democrats to vote early, while in-person votes on Election Day appear to have given Trump an advantage.
In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, election officials were not allowed to begin processing absentee ballots until on or just before Election Day, after Republican-led state legislatures successfully opposed changing laws to allow earlier preparations like other states.
CNN on Wednesday projected Biden would win Wisconsin and Michigan. Wisconsin finished counting nearly all of its ballots early in the day after keeping workers going overnight, and Michigan officials said they were hoping to complete the tally of all of its remaining absentee ballots as soon as later Wednesday.
After Biden called early Wednesday for patience while workers continued to count, Trump attacked the legitimate counting of votes and falsely claimed he had won in states where millions of ballots are yet to be counted.
The Trump campaign said Wednesday it would request a recount in Wisconsin, which candidates can do if they are within 1% of the winner's total. Biden has a roughly 20,000-vote lead after the county finished counting its absentee ballots Wednesday morning.
Ahead of Election Day, the Republican National Committee scaled up for a large-scale legal battle. "We have thousands of volunteer lawyers and several law firms already on retainer in these battleground states," said RNC spokesperson Mandi Merritt.
Democrats have also amassed their own legal army to fight any potential court battles.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said at a press briefing on Wednesday that he is prepared to defend the votes in Pennsylvania as the state continues to process and count mail-in ballots.
"Pennsylvania will have a fair election. And that election will be free of outside influences," Wolf, a Democrat, said. "I will vigorously and we all will vigorously defend against any attempt to attack that vote in Pennsylvania."
 

Supporter listen as Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a drive-in campaign rally at Lexington Technology Park in Pittsburgh. Photo / AP
 
Pennsylvania counting and lawsuits
In Pennsylvania, where officials couldn't begin processing millions of early ballots until Tuesday, counties made their own decisions about how to prioritise the crush.
In the major Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, where more than 350,000 mail-in ballots had been received, city officials still had hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots left to count on Wednesday, Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt said on CNN. He noted that Pennsylvania allows mail-in votes to be received and counted up until Friday.
"We are going to continue day and night until we get every one of those votes counted," Schmidt said.
Democratic-leaning Montgomery County, northwest of Philadelphia, planned to count "24 hours a day until completion," according to county spokesperson Kelly Cofrancisco.
A handful of Pennsylvania absentee ballots were being challenged in court. A judge heard a GOP challenge to about 93 absentee ballots in Montgomery County over how voters were...

President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden are still locked in a tight race for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Several battleground states are still counting votes, and the presidency and control of the Senate remain within either party's reach.
As of Wednesday morning, CNN had not projected winners in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina or Pennsylvania. Alaska was also too early to call. According to CNN's projections, Biden has won 237 electoral votes to Trump's 213.
With many votes left to count, here are six takeaways from the 2020 election so far:
Biden takes leads in key states
As Wednesday afternoon, Biden had reason to be optimistic: He held narrow leads in enough states to finish with exactly 270 electoral votes if he were to remain ahead, with other possible additions still in play.
Biden on Wednesday won Wisconsin and Michigan, according to CNN projections. He was also narrowly ahead in Arizona and Nevada.
It's not clear whether those leads, which would put Biden at the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the presidency, will hold. The good news for Biden, though: Votes remaining to be counted in most places were mail-in ballots -- the form of voting in which Biden generally performed strongest across the map -- and in areas where Biden expects an advantage. Trump's strength was in-person voting on Election Day, most of which has now been counted.
Significant numbers of mail-in ballots also remained uncounted in Democratic strongholds in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where Trump currently leads the vote count.
Crucial role for Omaha
Nebraska and Maine divide their electoral votes up by congressional district. While Trump easily won Nebraska overall, he lost the Omaha-based 2nd District -- and if Biden reaches 270 electoral votes, that single electoral vote could prove decisive.
If candidates' current leads all hold, Biden would reach exactly 270 electoral votes -- a path to the presidency that wouldn't be possible without Nebraska's 2nd District.
Trump prematurely declared victoryIn the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Trump called for legitimate vote-counting to be halted, declaring victory with millions of votes outstanding in several swing states and falsely claiming that Democrats were trying to "steal the election."
The moment was a chilling threat to democracy. But Trump's declaration bears no impact on states' vote counts, with many resuming processing absentee ballots later Wednesday morning. The mail-in ballot counting went slowly in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in part because Republican-led legislatures in those states opposed changes made in other states to speed up the processing of those ballots.
Biden spoke to supporters earlier Wednesday morning in Delaware, telling them that "we believe we're on track to win this election."
"Keep the faith guys, we're going to win this," Biden said.
Down-ballot Democratic disappointment
Two Democratic Senate challengers, Jaime Harrison in South Carolina and Amy McGrath in Kentucky, raised about $200 million combined to challenge Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. Both were blown out. Democratic challengers in Iowa and Montana also lost.
Despite record-shattering fundraising numbers across the map, Democrats' hopes of a net gain of three seats if Biden wins, or four if Trump wins, to give them a Senate majority were slipping. Those hopes could now depend on Georgia, where at least one and potentially two Senate races are headed to runoffs. Results in North Carolina -- a top Democratic target -- remain outstanding.
Many races were left to be decided as of Wednesday morning, but Republicans had ousted a few Democratic House members while defending some seats in key districts, potentially shrinking a Democratic majority that was widely expected to grow.
Trumpism is here to stay
The fate of...