0 faces. this is in some ways, i think the white house believes this can be not a, you know, not a mission accomplished moment, but a reset for the country when and it comes to covid and moving to the next phase. >>ia can see it visually. you have been talking about the fact there are lot of people wearing blue, wearing gold, the colors of the ukrainian flag. and you're seeing republicans on the gop side of the aisle holding ukrainian flags. so there already is, even before we hear the president in what the white house hopes will be a unifying moment, not just for america but for vladimir putin to see, and people around the world to see, you're already seeing the symbolism of it. >> there's linda thomas greenfield, she is the u.s. ambassador to the united nations, somebody whose face you may have seen a lot more in the last two or three weeks, dana, you just interviewed her sunday on "state of the union." evan, it's interesting because joe biden as a senator, as a vice president, as a candidate, and as a president, he has talked a lot about democracies versus autocracies. he's talked a lot about that recently because of his fears of the united states being pulled in the direction of an autocracy. but here we have a full throated, full fledged autocracy, russia, and a dictator, vladimir putin, that he is confronting. >> it is. it's an extraordinarily vivid demonstration of something i think until now has been a bit abstract for people. they understand this is sort of hovering over geopolitics, but here we have in the most dramatic and brutal fashion a demonstration of this contest of systems which really goes back not just the last two years but really all the way back to 2014 when vladimir putin invaded ukraine at the time, and interestingly enough, if you go back, what biden was saying then was what happens to ukraine is going to set the tone for what happens in europe in the future. and there was something about that that was, i think, probably sounds truer to us today than we appreciated at the time. >> jake, he was concerned about the march potentially of authoritarianism in the u.s., but he was also saying in his inaugural speech and also in his first address to congress last year that he was worried that a divided america would lose the war in a battle between democracy and autocracy, and he's giving a speech tonight to try to unite the country around its values, around him in a moment of war, and it's a real challenge because we are as divided now as we were a year ago or as we were two years ago. and it's more difficult now. i think there was a time, dana, you were saying earlier about the post-9/11 world in which george w. bush was giving his state of the union speech. this is not that kind of time. it's a different era for president biden. >> there's a retiring justice stephen breyer, who president biden has just officially nominated a judge to replace him. and that is, he is hoping, one of the big achievements he will have this year. one of the things that people in the intelligence community will say is that vladimir putin has had two goals, two major goals when it comes to things that take place outside russia and territory he wants to claim. one is to divide nato. and the other is to divide the united states. he has failed to divide nato in recent weeks. in fact, he's brought it closer together than it's been in years and years. but the russians did a lot to divide the american people in 2016. that was in fact, evan, one of the -- one of russia's goals more so than electing one candidate over another, was to sow discord. >> absolutely. the power of unity and disunity is a fact of geopolitics, is something we don't talk enough about. as we know, biden hung a portrait of fdr on his office wall at the oval office. one of fdr's comments in his state of the union in 1941 is our unity is our strength. and that really is sort of in the back of how biden thinks about how we project our vulnerability and our strength to the rest of the world. it's funny because he said almost that exact same thing earlier today, president biden, when he had his lunch for anchors, the one thing we were alouded to repeat he said on the record was that the strength of the alliance against putin was the unity. that's what gave it the strength. >> go ahead. >> that really runs through everything of how he thinks about foreign policy and domestic policy. >> abby you were saying this is so different from post-9/11. no question about that for a million reasons. one thing i will say is just kind of bringing the threads of what you were both talking about together, especially jake saying that what russia, what vladimir putin in particular has been trying so hard to do is to sow discord in america, and he's been successful in a lot of ways, is that what he did with nato, you might see a moment of tonight, which is unity around opposition to vladimir putin. >> this is general william walker, the house sergeant in arms. let's listen. >> the president of the united states. >> followed by the senate sergeant in arms, karen gibson, and there's the president. let's listen in to see if we can hear any of the comments .