Transcripts For MSNBC The 11th Hour With Brian Williams : v

Transcripts For MSNBC The 11th Hour With Brian Williams



day 50 of the biden administration and exactly halfway through his first 100 days in office the president is marking two big accomplishments. today he secured a landmark bill for federal aid, and he announced that over 100 million more covid vaccines will soon be in the pipeline and then in arms across our country. this afternoon congress cleared biden's signature domestic packages, $1.9 trillion national relief package. >> this bill represents a historic, historic victory for the american people. >> the bill won final passage in the house of representatives on a straight party line vote, 220-211 with biden looking on from the executive mansion. >> there we go. [ applause ] >> the white house says the president plans to sign the legislation on friday. americans should know this aid they're about to get is from the democrats. that is not a political statement at all. only democrats voted for it. not a single republican in the house or the senate. >> this is the most consequential legislation that many of us will ever be a party to. >> we said if we won those two seats in georgia we would get things done. mr. ossoff and mr. warnock told the citizens of georgia if they were elected, they would make sure that the actual promises made would be promises kept. >> this bill offers one of the largest infusions of federal aid since the great depression. in many ways it redraws our social safety net and thus has been described in terms of the new deal and the great society. it includes those $1,400 stimulus checks, extended unemployment benefits, funds for states and small businesses and school up grades across the country as well as vaccines, testing, tracing. the first direct payments are expected to go out around the end of this month. just hours after the house vote the dow posted a new record closing above 32,000 for the first time. and now the biden white house focuses on selling the benefits of this bill to the american public. tomorrow night the president gives his first prime time address to the nation. >> i'm going to talk about what comes next. i'm going to launch the next phase of the covid response and explain what we will do as a government and what we will ask of the american people. >> on tuesday the president heads to the familiar confines of delaware county, pa, to talk about the benefits of the stimulus package. vice president harris for her part will also be on the road traveling to las vegas on monday, denver on tuesday. meanwhile the senate has just confirmed three more biden nominees. merrick garland as attorney general. marsha fudge as hud secretary, and michael regan as epa administrator. as we mentioned more johnson & johnson covid vaccines are on the way. today the president announced this purchase of another 100 million doses, which another drug company, merck, is helping to produce. and remember because it's one and done with the j&j vaccine that means enough for 100 million americans to get fully vaccinated. this was also the day the state of texas officially ended its mask mandate, a move now pitting the state against some local officials in the same state who want to continue requiring face coverings in public. there's more on that. a report from texas later in this hour. but health experts warn these moves to lift restrictions as covid cases and fatalities slowly decline could have devastating consequences. >> these numbers that have come down have given us a false sense of security. we are going to see a big increase, and everything we're doing right now is literally just kind of walking into the mouth of the virus monster as though somehow we're not at risk. >> there is one other developing story we're following tonight. "the wall street journal" has obtained an audio recording of a late december phone call between donald trump and the chief investigator for the georgia secretary of state, the now former president can be heard urging the state official to hunt for voter fraud that did not exist. >> i won georgia. i know that by a lot. and the people know it and something happened there. something bad happened. if you get to fulton, you're going to find things that are unbelievable, the dishonesty. when the right answer comes out, you'll be praised. >> this is now the second phone call where trump can be heard begging georgia election officials to find votes. the fulton county district attorney is now conducting as you may know this criminal investigation into trump's efforts to overturn the election results and nothing less. with that let's bring in our lead off guests on this wednesday night. peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." lisa, a national political reporter also with "the new york times." and eugene robinson, pulitzer prizewinning columnist just to keep things fair over at "the washington post." good evening and welcome to you all. peter, because you have the most ears on the job covering the white house, you get to go first. and a question about where you rank this accomplishment today, this massive bill that's been passed with just democratic votes? and do we have it about right saying this is in a way a redrawing of the modern social safety net? >> well, obviously it's a big deal for president biden to come out of the gate and get what he needs to get through, what he promised to get through in the early weeks. remember there's a deadline of march 14th when expanded unemployment benefits was set to expire. he needed to get it done by then. he has the narrowest of margins in congress and yet still pushed it through. he didn't do it with any bipartisan votes which is something he hoped to do. and you're right this really three bills in one. one is to provide help in the pandemic and the other is to pump more energy into the economy. pouring $1.9 trillion into the economy is a big deal no matter where you put it. certainly going to give a big jolt to economic growth for the rest of the year. and then the third part is what you talked about, the social safety net. you hear a lot from the white house these days this may in fact cut child poverty by half. this is sort of a democratic wish list of programs and spending they would have like to have gotten done in years. now, some of this will expire in a year. so it's only temporary things. they'll have to come back if they want to make it permit they'll have to make a sustained change. it's a big deal to get this done and you can see why they're cheering at this point. >> lisa, great to see you. great to have you back on the broadcast. it's been too long. as i said this is going to make lives better among the recipients of what's in this bill. it's also true that it's biden's story to tell especially since it was just democratic voters. how does biden, however, prevent the republicans from going into the field with their own prequel before his message is fully out there? >> well, right now he's going to go on a sales pitch. that's going to kick off tomorrow evening with a white house address. and then we're going to see the president and members of the administration travel around the country. and i think what looms particularly large in their minds is the lessons learned from president obama's 2009 stimulus bill. and the thinking there is that the president failed to sufficiently sell that piece of legislation and republicans were able to tag it as a bit of a boom that provided some of the fiercest opposition to obama's proposals throughout his time in office. some folks who worked for the obama administration will say that's not quite fair, that president biden has some economic wins at his back. all the economic forecasts look like the economy will keep improving particularly as more people get vaccinated, which will make this easier to sell. it's also more popular than the stimulus was even among republicans. i think that's why although we saw every republican vote against this bill, we really didn't see the party come out with any comprehensive messaging so far at least against the legislation. and in part that's because a third of their voters depending on the poll supported the bill. i had called a bunch of republican voters in the past couple of weeks and i frequently heard people who said that they are eager, republicans who said they're eager to see those checks just as much as democrats. >> eugene robinson, we have a new definition tonight of the word richard nixon is famously rumored to have pronounced, most of us call it hutspa, and here's what he tweeted tonight. independent restaurant operators have won $28.6 billion of targeted relief. this funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic. one problem. he's a republican senator from mississippi. as people instantly pointed out he didn't vote for this but he's selling it back home. does he think his voters are stupid? maybe. he was contacted and a reporter caught up to him. we have his briefest answer to this question. >> i'm not going to vote for $1.9 trillion just because it has a couple of good provisions. >> so couple of good provisions, and eugene, this is where it brings us is do you think there's going to be any regret that the republicans have goose eggs, senate and house on this, that this bill indeed has a couple of good provisions and it's going to end up helping their constituents? >> well, i think that was an expression of regret really from senator wicker. and i think that's -- that makes it potentially easier for president biden to get his message across simply because the republicans don't have a unified message that on the legislation that they think their voters, even their base voters are going to buy. if they go on and on about how horrible and awful it is, that is not going to resonate with republican voters at least according to polls. most of whom support the legislation, there are polls that show most republicans wanted this to pass. to say nothing of, you know, almost all democrats and the vast majority of independents. this was an extremely partisan piece of legislation. and so to the extent that president biden has a challenge in selling it and getting it across, he has the wind at his back. >> peter baker, should we just for now stop any pie in the sky talk of bipartisanship, or will the next test be in infrastructure or as it should be appropriately billed, jobs programs across the country? republicans have traditionally liked a good public works bill. they haven't always liked paying for it. >> yeah, look, infrastructure of course has been the golden shimmer out there for bipartisanship now for years. donald trump talked about infrastructure. barack obama talked about infrastructure. democrats say they want infrastructure. republicans say they want infrastructure, and yet they've never been able to get it. president biden has promised of course he'll be able to figure how to get things done other presidents have. he can work across the lines in ways his predecessors haven't been able to. there's appeal on the part of everybody. now, can they come together to figure out how to divide up that money? can they come together to figure out how to fund that kind of project? that's a big, big question. and i don't think there's any reason right now to suspect they're going to necessarily be able to overcome the polarization that's been holding this up for years in the next few weeks and months. maybe they can. this is one of those areas where there is common ground if they choose to seize it. so far we've seen the parties in washington haven't chosen to seize it in modern times, and i don't know that that's changed. >> lisa, back to your unofficial poll of republicans. they've been four square against this massive bill. and this week at least four square behind dr. seuss and piers morgan. a serious question, how long can they live on a diet of just distraction? >> well, i think part of the issue for the republican party is those are the issues that fire up their base. it is talking about dr. seuss, meghan markle, these sort of new culture war issues different than the gun and marriage issues that we saw decades ago, that really get their bases energized. it's how you can raise money as an upcoming and lawmaker. it's the reason we see so many retirements in the senate, part of the reason. and it also speaks to little intraconservative media competition where you see these more upstart, more right wing networks coming into fox news's eyeballs and market share about conservative viewers. so it is really hard when the whole conservative ecosystem is really stretched around these culture war issues to get a lot of rewards among the conservative base for doing things like working across the aisle on an infrastructure bill. we'll see if that changes. as i said republican voters do like this stimulus bill, so maybe the fever will break and republican lawmakers will see that there is some political gains to be gotten from passing legislation. but given the way that the conservative world is functioning right now, it does seem hard to picture. >> eugene, let me get you on record with the question i asked peter. is it an overstatement to say that one of the things this bill does is kind of a modern day redrawing of what we've come to know as the social safety net? >> i think it does. it represents a significant shift in philosophy, and it's a shift back more toward linden johnson's great society way of thinking rather than the ronald reagan's way of thinking, which has dominated our public life really since the reagan era. this is potentially a shift of that magnitude if it can be sustained. i think this legislation is a really big deal, and i think that, you know, in terms of bipartisanship, look, you can't do anything. and if republicans decide to deny biden the gift of bipartisanship by simply voting against everything there's nothing you can do about that. biden makes a gesture, he makes the offer and then you move forward. i think that sets an important precedent for going forward. but just to answer your basic question, i think this is potentially a really, really big deal for the way this country thinks about attacking poverty, thinks about lifting up the least of us and giving everybody a chance. >> to our viewers because this is an important night we've asked our lead off three guests to stay with us through this break for one more segment. and indeed, coming up a big win for the biden white house for now. but for them it's just the first item on the list. we'll talk about this. will republicans agree to vote for anything this white house puts forward? and later three doctors, three different cities, three different front line battles against one virus in the space of this past year. where are we now? when are we getting out of the state we're in? 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(man) i'm a verizon engineer, part of the team that built 5g right, the only one from america's most reliable network. we designed our 5g to make the things you do every day better. with 5g nationwide, millions of people can now work, listen, and stream in verizon 5g quality. and in parts of many cities where people can use massive capacity, we have ultra wideband, the fastest 5g in the world. this is the 5g that's built for you. this is 5g built right. only from verizon. did you know that some aluminum-free deodorants only mask odor? secret aluminum free helps eliminate odor instead of just masking it. and is made with 3x more odor fighters. with secret, keep it fresh every day. secret. the american people elected joe biden so that we can work together and that's what he's committed to doing. so there are things like infrastructure investment and immigration i mentioned. he's had some meetings in the oval office about some of those issues, and we're going to see what we can work together on. >> so that was jen psaki from just tonight remaining here with us in part of our conversation peter baker, lisa lair and eugene robinson. peter, first again to you in this segment. we talked about what else biden wants. let's preview tomorrow night. what can he say? what should he say? what does he want to say to this country that is very eager for better days to come? >> well, i think that's one of the things he wants to say is that there are better things to come, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that the passage of this bill will provide money to those who need it and speeding up the vaccine distribution will provide shots to those who desperately need that as well, and that there's a point at which we can see a normal light returning or at least some semblance of it. i think at the same time you'll hear him warn there's a lot of danger between now and then. that just because we're making progress doesn't mean it's time to give up public health precautions like masks and social distancing and so forth particularly for those who have not been vaccinated which is vast majority of the country. he wants to take credit as lisa said. i think you'll begin to see him talk about that more than he'll talk about other steps like infrastructure at this point because he does want to solidify public awareness of what this bill does and reap the political benefit that usually comes from this kind of thing. >> all i know is they need a better word for infrastructure. hey, lisa, how big a potential trip up and there's a real human cost to this issue is the border and immigration? knowing that the forces against biden will get a big assist from the fox media industrial complex. >> for sure, and that is a real problem for the administration. you have this very high number of unaccompanied children coming to the border and the administration is really trying to send two messages at once. don't worry, we're working on a path to establish more legal ways into the country but also please don't come now. and those are pretty hard messages to sell simultaneously in south america and central america. and as a result they've been left open really to attacks on all sides. liberals are unhappy with how the children are being held. they're out of facilities. there's all kinds of restrictions because of the pandemic and it's a difficult situation. it brings up echoes of things that happened during the trump administration that were very traumatic for the children but also for the democratic party and for many people in the country. and conservatives, of course, are eager to blame as they often do the influx of migrants into the country on biden. so he's really getting hit from all sides on this, and you're right it is the kind of issue that republicans are very eager to leverage against him and could do with some success potentially. >> hey, eugene, i want to play for you senator mike lee. he was commenting on fox news about hr1. our discussion on the other side. >> i think i disagree with every single word in hr1 including the words, "but" "and" and "the." >> eugene, i know you've written forcefully about the need to pass hr1. there are a slew of republicans and even some democrats cautioning about making great the enemy of the good. cautioning that it's what else is in this bill that is weighing it down, that is putting a mark on its side, and if they could strip out and consider and vote for voting recognizes alone it might be a different story, but i want to hear you out on it. >> well, look, i think the important parts of this bill are protecting voting rights, and that includes things like ensuring that people have easy access to voter registration, ensuring that people have easy and ade

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