this is gps, the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on the show, another judgment day in the senate and another acquittal for donald trump. the former president's critics say it is yet another sign that american democracy is broken. if so, what can be done to put it back together and make it stronger? >> this cannot be our future. this cannot be the future of america. >> i'll ask david from and ann

apple balm. then the state of the pandemic. vaccinations are going slow but steadily. what to make it it all? i have talk to the former head of the cdc. then, america under attack. in case you forgot, the united states is still recovering from a massive cyber attack. "the new york times" tell us why america is so shockingly vulnerable. but first here's my take. joe biden has begun his presidency with great success. he's moved to address the central issue facing the country, the pandemic and proposed big, bold policies to help the country recover. he seems to have learned a key lesson from the obama years. the democrats do well when they act with imagination and courage rather than waiting around and

watering down proposals in the vain hope of republican support. but while the biden administration has adopted a confident assertive stance on domestic policy, on foreign policy it's taken a different approach, hesitated and fixed on mullfying its republican critics. now, let me be clear. biden's foreign policy team is highly intelligent and capable. and these are early days. but i do want to highlight some worrying signs. ever since donald trump pulled out of the iran deal, joe biden and his top advisers made it clear the withdrawal was a serious mistake, one that undermines america's credibility with the world and created a more dangerous middle east. the deal placed iran in in a box placing strict limits on its nuclear program. without them, they were moving closer to nuclear weapons.

both the secretary of state and the director of national intelligence say that re-joining the deal is a long ways away. they insist that iran first come back into compliance, but that's largely a tactic to avoid confronting. diplomats could find a method for the two countries to rejoin. many have negotiated the iran accord and argued strenuously it was the best deal that the united states could get. have they changed their minds. on china, the administration has been falling over itself to prove how tough it is. the american read-outs from biden's call with president xi and blinken's call with his counter part sound less like diplomatic documents than pieces of performance art designed with a domestic audience with words like coerciven and unfair.

the biden campaign december piebed an unmitigated disaster that cost americans money and jobs. when biden was asked in an august interview whether he would keep trump's tariffs, he answered no and offered a wholesale critique of trump's china policies. but they are not being reversed. it is all under review. on cuba, biden attacked trump's policies and pledged to return to the obama era effort to relax the embargo and engage with cuba, arguing these policies would be more effective in changing the island nation than the decades long policy of isolation and sanctions. but nothing has been reversed. again, it is all under review. now one would have thought biden and his advisers already spent the past four years carefully reviewing trump's policies since they publically concluded that

they were disastrous. i suspect biden's foreign policy team is trying to play domestic politics, hoping to deflect republican criticism of being soft on u.s. foes. it won't work. already republicans have sensed weakness, and they are pursuing a campaign to keep the iran deal from ever being resurrected, which would be tauted as a credit republican victory. on china, a former top trump official responded to that tough read-out of the biden she called by suggesting that it was a lie and that the real story was the biden selling out the country with chinese communist party business deals. meanwhile, the same day mike pompeo questioned the patriotism of democrats and accused them of funneling money to the chinese communist party. no matter how aggressive the policies, they will accuse him of appeasement.

democrats should keep in mind that when they run scared on foreign policy, they never win. lyndon johnson sent half a million troops into vietnam for fear they would say he was soft on communism. after 9/11 democrats eagerly voted for the patriot act and the iraq war. john kerry was a war hero with three purple hearts and like joe biden voted to authorize the invasion of iraq. in return, republicans smeared him as a coward who had lied about his war record. if you think about barack obama's foreign policy successes, the paris climate accords, the biden raid, the iran nuclear raid, he achieved them because he was an unusual figure willing to question bipartisan group think in washington, take risks and above all stop conducting foreign policy on republican terms. the biden team is, as i said,

highly capable. many of them helped craft these policies. they should take pride in their achievements and to quote president biden build back better. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week. and let's get started. ♪ the verdict in the second senate impeachment trial of donald trump was as expected. seven republican senators joined their democratic colleagues making the final vote 57 guilty to 43 not guilty, but that was not enough to achieve the two-thirds majority to convict, so trump was acquitted. where does america, its democracy and the republican party really go from here? a peach writer for george w. bush and is a staff writer.

anne is a historian whose latest book is "twilight of democracy." she also writes for the atlantic. david, let me start with you. you posted an article last evening in which you said, while trump is legally acquitted, he is politically condemned and quite badly. explain what you mean. >> i have a different view from many in the pro-impeachment camp. i think yesterday was as good a day that could have happened. not only did seven republicans vote to conduct, but so did joe manchin that voted 70% for trump in 2020. the total number was much higher than most people expected. i think new expected richard burr of north carolina and cassidy of louisiana and sasse and murkowski and collins. by the way, those eight make up as many senators as filled as

filled all of john f. kennedy's courage. only fewer than 25% of americans say that donald trump did nothing wrong. 55% to 60% want to see him convicted and removed and agree with the impeachment process. and republicans face a tough matt in 2022. it will not be their year. this was a tough vote for many of the pro-trump members of the house. finally, this result lifts the deterrence away from state and federal prosecutors who he has kated to pursue donald trump criminally. they now have a plolitical ligh to go after him. and he also has massive civil responsibly. there may be some difficulties entering into any court. donald trump was practically and morally responsible for what happened at the capitol. but if you are an attorney representing a family that suffered harm on that day, you have powerful evidence that the

person you want to see is the former president of the united states who advertised himself as having very deep pockets. >> so, anne, could this be a situation like watergate? i remember, you know, i was in india growing up. and at the time there was the sense american democracy is broken. but after a while, people began to say, well, the system did hold this guy accountable. it shows that the country can grapple with these issues or is this too pollyannish? >> remember what happened on january the 6th was not republicans attacking democrats. this was a group of people who were attacking the system itself. they were there to prevent congress from recognizing the result of the election. they were there to kidnap and maybe worse maybe attack or kill members of congress. they were looking for the vice president, who is himself a republican. they now represent an anti-systemic group inside the republican party.

not all republicans are like that. certainly not all conservatives. but they are a distinct group, and they have enough support, as we saw yesterday, inside the mainstream republican party to feel themselves, you know, recognized and to give them the sense that they can continue. i don't think this was the kind of challenge that we faced during watergate. we didn't have a part of the republican party attacking the very system, the electoral system, electoral officials the way that votes are counted. we didn't have anything like that then. so i do think that this represents something new. i mean, it is not entirely new in american history. you know, we know it from the civil war and post civil war eras, nor is it remotely new in democracies. most democracies over the last 20 or 30 years that have run into trouble have done so not from coup d'état, from pictures like the ones we saw some days ago in ber ma with tanks on the

streets. most of them have ended or run into trouble because one or more political parties inside the system has turned itself against the system and has begun to see that or judge it can't win using the normal rules and therefore the rules have to be changed. >> david, isn't that a valid point, that the republican party seems to have become -- the simplest way to put it is anti-democratic because it seems to recognize that if it played by the rules it does not have a majority so it does extreme gerrymandering. it does voter suppression. it tries to rely on the senate, the electoral college, judges. what do you think is going on there? you have been a lifelong republican. >> look, i think you are right. i think anne is right about that point. donald trump's plot to overturn

the election depended on getting state legislatures to change the vote in their state. and the legislatures he was looking to, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, north carolina, georgia, the majority of all the votes cast in state elections were for democrats but the system converts 45% of the vote, which is what republicans get into a majority of the vote. in wisconsin, republicans get two-thirds of the seats with 45% of the vote. that didn't happen by accident. there was a great jury min 2011. we need to make sure that is rolled back. here there is, as you said earlier, signs of america correcting itself. the movement for nonpartisan seat allocation is spreading. virginia is going to do it. maryland is going to do it. state electorals must move through the referendum process saying we want to choose you,

not have you choose your own voters. so that's the task ahead. there is other democratic reforms that have to be done. i think maybe the way i look at the trump -- without in any way minimizing and i have written a lot about the seriousness of what happened, this is also a tremendous opportunity for the united states. this is like one of those accidents you have in the road that someone snaps your adrenaline back and your focus back to say, you nearly hit a truck. you need to pay attention. but you're alive and well. you can keep driving and do better. >> stay with us. next i will ask david and ann, what is the fix? you have got our attention. how do we strengthen american democracy after seeing so many weaknesses? fareed's take, brought to you by fisher investments. clearly different money management. find why investors like you switch to us. ur clients.

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and we are back. we are trying to fix american democracy. ann, i think i agree with what you are saying, that the core of the prop is that part of the republican party has become deeply anti-system, anti-democratic even. so my question to you would be, how would you fix it? and is the problem -- how would you reform the republican party? is the problem republican leaders or is the problem really republican voters, to be blunt? >> so those are actually two separate questions, and they require slightly different answers. i would start by looking around the world at other countries that have had far right

movements, sometimes far right parties develop into powerful forces and the leaders who have been successful at beating them back. there is one example in austria. another example is germany where far right parties were gaining in momentum and center right leaders beat back against them by, you know, sometimes by stealing their issues, by finding alternate ways to talk about immigration or about, you know, or about -- or about, you know, traditionalism in ways that were more sen tryst and moderate, stealing their voters and also by -- and by aggressively going after them. in other words, the center right is going to be the main tool for isolating and, you know, isolating the far right. and they're going to be better at ate and more important at it than anyone else. so democrats can say whatever

they want. they are not the best messengers to reach republican voters who might be in between. it really does depend on leadership. it does depend on, you know, responsible republicans like the ones who voted to impeach trump yesterday. them trying to reach out to the party. we have seen in other places that this can work. i mean, there is a second way of thinking about it, which is how do the sen trysts, how does the democrats, how does biden, how do they reach republican voters who might again be on the line? the answer there is a little bit counter intuitive. the answer there is probably to change the subject. so talk to them about the coronavirus. talk to them about fixing the economy. talk to them about, you know, locally talk to them about roads and bridges and infrastructure. don't talk to them about who won the election. don't talk to them about hot button culture war issues, get them back into focussing on

issues that we all share and we can have different opinions about, but at least we're within one single conversation. that's the less son from places like northern ireland or columbia, places that have had really violent insurgencies and had to cope with them. the way back is not to increase the argument but focus on issues we can all argue about without killing one another. >> david, i wonder about whether it dates back to something you described in your first book, dead right. you pointed out that finally reagan comes into office and this is the opportunity they have been waiting for to cut government spending. but it turns out they realize the voters don't actually want them to cut government spending. and that -- you know, at that point the republican party leadership realizes that they basically have to fool their voters. it seems to me that everything that's been going ong since then

has been this problem, that the republican leadership knows that deep down the voters want something very different. >> and their voters have been shrinking. republicans have lost a lot of suburbs. the congressional district that was represented by george h.w. bush, the district represented by newt gingrich, by eric kanter, all of these districts went democratic in 2018. these are high earning, well educated districts. the question you posed to ann about the future is to think of it this way. think of yourself as an ambitious office holder. there are two paths back to power. the easy way and the hard way. the easy way is to simply rig the system in such a way that the people who don't want to vote for you, young people, people of color, poor people, that they're not allowed to vote, that they're prevented from voting. the courts will let you. so if you can do that, that's easy. you don't have to change anything. if we take away that option, if the courts change, if the system

changes, then republicans have to win power the hard way, which is by winning multiethnic coalitions around the new issues of the 21st century. obviously people don't like to work if they don't have to. make them do it. they will discover that, you know what, there are a lot of multiethnic voters for your message. one of the most hopeful things for republicans in this cycle was the discovery in the state of california that there is a majority in california, one of the most liberal states in the union against racial preferences. that is what the republican party of tomorrow could look like, multiracial, multiethnic, facing new kinds of issues. but first they have to be told the easy way, the way of preventing people from voting. that way is debarred. >> and i have just a minute left. i just want to ask you your thoughts about a conservative party that has managed to make

this transition. boris johnson's party. conservatives in england are probably the oldest and most successful in the world at incorporating new trends. you were once boris johnson's editor at "the spectator." do you think he's managed to pull something off here. >> i was his colleague, not his editor. the issues in britain are different. i don't think there was a significant part of the torre party that was ever anti-democratic. we didn't have the problem in quite the same way. but, yes, you're right. they stole the brexit issue from the far right. they put it at the center of the party, and they have -- and they managed to win elections that way partly because their opposition was so weak. i do think the verdict is still out. you know, it will be a year or two before we know how people feel about brexit and how they feel about what the party has done. but you're right, that was the tactic that they chose. >> all right. we have to leave it at that.

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we are in an odd stage of the coronavirus pandemic where there is good news and bad news at the same time. on the plus side many people in many corners of the world are getting vaccinated and the covid case rate continues to fall in the u.s. and worldwide. on the negative side, vaccine administration is still slow. in many parts of the world,

nonexistent. further, the new variants are causing great concern about the coming months. tom friedman, the former head of the centers for disease control, joins me. tom, welcome again. pleasure to have you on. let me start by asking you about those falling numbers. so you see the number of deaths in the u.s. falling. you see the number of cases falling. r-not, which is the symbol of the rate of spread is covid is also now below one. is this all happening because more and more people, at least in the united states, are getting vaccinated? or is there some other explanation? >> no, i don't think, fareed, the vaccine is having much of an impact at all on case rates. it is what we're doing right, staying apart, wearing masks, not traveling, not mixing with others indoors. basically, we're getting over a huge surge around the late year

holidays, starting with thanksgiving and on to the december holidays. this essentially was an accelerator for the virus. and now cases are plumeting. they're coming down followed by decreasing hospitalizations, followed by decreasing deaths. but they're still high. our case numbers are still higher than they were at prior peaks. we're nowhere near out of the woods. really, we have had three surges. whether or not we have a fourth surge is up to us. and the stakes couldn't be higher. not only in the number of people who could die in a fourth surge, but also in the risk that even more dangerous variants will emerge if there is more uncontrolled spread. >> and what do you make of the vaccination rates? first of all, can they be ramped up much more now? we have news that we're going to essentially have 600 million vaccines by the end of the summer. can we get to 600 million

vaccinations? and at what point will we see the fact that large parts of the population are vaccinated? at what point will that start to drive things down? you know, moving closer to herd immunity. >> i think basically many states and communities are getting the kinks out of what is a complicated vaccination program that didn't start well. it started with the federal government and the prior administration basically throwing the vaccine to states and saying, you figure it out. now there is a collaboration to try to do this well, especially to address equity issues. what we're seeing is that black americans are dying at two or three times the rate as white americans from covid. we need to do much better addressing equity issues in vaccinations. the biggest challenge is the lack of supply. currently the u.s. is giving an average of a million and a half vaccinations per day, but they're only sending out about

10 to 12 million per week. that means they're now being used in often chaotic and disorganized way, but they're being used. what we think will happen if the companies do what they say they're going to do is a big increase in supply over the coming weeks and months. in terms of the impact of the vaccination program, what i think will happen is that within the next few weeks, we will see substantial decreases in deaths in nursing homes and people over 65. and that is an impact of the vaccines kicking in because they're quite protective. but in terms of case rates it will be many months until we have a big impact on the number of cases. that's why it is still important to limit a mask and limit the number of people you share indoor air with that aren't in your household. >> you said in an interview that we have to recognize that we are kind of in the five stages of

grief, and we need to come to acceptance, and acceptance meaning, you said, life will never be the same again. we will never go back to the prepandemic normal. explain what you mean because that is a slightly ominous statement. >> well, i have a new piece out in the wall street journal talking about what we need to do as a world to be safer. covid has to remind us that we really are connected. uncontrolled spread of covid or other dangerous viruses any where is a dangerous to all of us. it is in our interest to work together to decrease this risk. i think things will be different after this pandemic. people realize that maybe they can work from home. not all meetings have to be in person. there are things you can do without traveling. and in east asia people wear masks when they feel sick. that's a good idea. we have seen the curve of flu cases crushed by efforts to control covid and flu sends tens

of thousands of americans to the hospital every year. so there is a lot we can do to be safer and healthier. but the biggest change i hope will be that we take much more seriously our global commitment to reduce the risk of epidemics and pandemics. >> tom friedman, pleasure to have you on. >> nice speaking with you again, fareed. all the best. next on gps, america the vulnerable. why do we keep hearing disturbing news of cyber hack attacks? that story when we come back.

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at t-mobile, we have a plan built just for customers 55 and up. saving 50% vs. other carriers with 2 unlimited lines for less than $30 each. call 1-800-t-mobile or go to t-mobile.com/55. two months ago we began to understand the devastating depth of a massive hack of u.s. government and corporate computer systems. american officials say the perpetrator of the so-called solarwinds hack was russia. news has broken of a cyber

intrusion much smaller in scale but in some ways more frightening. somebody got into the water treatment system of a small town and attempted to boost the content of lie in the water to a poisonous 100 times its regular level. the u.s. finds itself incredibly vulnerable to such attacks, especially at a time when many of the country's enemies have highly skilled hacking teams. nicole reports on cyber security for "the new york times" and is the author of a new book, this is how they tell me the world ends. nicole, welcome. first tell us, do we still not know much more about that florida attack? >> we don't know much more. we don't know if it was a nation state or a disgruntled employee or a teenager, even. we just know that someone got into the controls at this water treatment facility on a friday before super bowl weekend just outside tampa and increased the amount of lye in the water.

thank god some engineer was sitting at his computer and saw his cursor move around and saw his cursor get into the controls. if he had not been there, there might have been additional sensors that picked it up. but that is the target we have worried about for a long time, the smaller municipalities that don't have the security and resources of a pg&e and have to allow engineers to remote into their systems to be able to monitor the balance of chemicals, make sure everything is running smoothly. we have known for a long time that that same kind of remote access can be exploited by hackers. >> who worries you the most about the solar winds one, which is breathtaking in its scope. what could the russians do? it seems as though they are still in lots of american computer systems, right? >> that's right. so what worries me most about the solar winds attack is just

how pervasive it is. the fact that they were in these systems for more than nine months before we learned about them, the fact that we didn't learn about them from the nsa or government. we learned about them from a private company, a security company that itself was hacked. and we discovered that the russian targets had gotten into the state department, justice department, treasury, the department of energy, some of the nuclear labs and the department of homeland security, the very agency charged with keeping us safe. now, they were in there for so long that they basically had nine months to plan additional back doors. and we are just at the very beginning of unwinding this attack. if it is indeed who we believe it is, which is a group of the svr, russia's intelligence agency, this group is very good. about five, six years ago, they actually hacked into the white house and the state department. and those who were responding to

that attack told me that trying to get the russians out of those systems when they knew they were in and when they caught them pretty quickly was the equivalent of hand to hand digital combat. i think it will be years before we can confidently say we kicked them out of our systems. >> some f it happens in response to our cyber attacks, to american cyber attacks. the iranian stuff seems to have begun after the efforts to derail iran's nuclear program. >> yes. >> so, you know, 10, 11 years ago, we discovered the most stunning cyber attack in modern times. and that remains the most sophisticated attack we have ever seen. as you mentioned, u.s. and israel broke into nuclear facility, used code to decimate a thousand of their center fugues. we sent iran's nuclear ambitions behind years. it brought iran to the

negotiating table when it came time for the iran nuclear talks. long-term, it has been a disaster. once that code escaped. once iran had a chance to dissect it, once it showed the world the possibility for mayhem and destruction that could be caused with a cyber attack, every other government has tried to get into this scheme. and iran has really emerged from this sort of digital backloger into one of the most prolific cyber armies in the world. here i should stop and say the united states bar none remains the world's most advanced digital cyber super power. but we are also its most targeted and its most vulnerable because we are so much more digitally connected and wired up than many of our adversaries like iran, like north korea. they have seen they have a real asemimetry cal advantage when it

comes to cyber attacks. >> i want you to unpack that initial statement. are you saying that the united states bar none does the most cyber hacking of other countries and then of course it is the most vulnerable as well? >> i don't know about the most. but i just know it is the most sophisticated. if you read our stories in the times we're constantly covering chinese cyber attacks. but rarely do we cover nsa attacks or attacks from cyber command. it is not because we're avoiding that coverage. it is just because those attacked are so much more difficult to detect. so just in terms of capabilities, both in terms of espionage and also the kind of destruction they brought to iran's nuclear facility, the u.s. is the most sophisticated player of this game. and we have relied for a long time on offense. we thought we could out smart our enemies so long as we were

better than everyone else and were the best at being stealthy and difficult to detect. the problem is is that the private sector owns much of our critical infrastructure. and they have been hooking up our water treatment facilities, our profession, our air traffic control, the grid, our nuclear plants. they have been rolling software into these systems for a long time. and we are much more digitized than countries like iran and north korea, which makes us more vulnerable. >> all right. it sounds like we are in for a lot more of this high stakes cyber warfare. nicole, pleasure to have you on. thank you so much. >> thank you so much, fareed. and we'll be back in a moment. ent. i'm his accountant. i'm so sorry. hey! -hey man, you're here! you don't trust me here in vegas, do you? uh, well... i thought we had a breakthrough with the volkswagen. -we did, yeah! we broke through.

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my book of the week is losing the long game, the false promise of regime change in the middle east by phillip gordon. gordon is a scholar of international relations who works in the biden white house. he details how over the decades, the united states has tried to effect a change of government in the middle east from iran in 1953 to more recent efforts in iraq, afghanistan, libya and even syria. none of them really worked. he speculates on why. it is a first rate work intelligently analyzing a complex issue and learning the right lessons from history. now for the last week. i'm about to show you some graphic video. but as difficult as it is to see, i want you to look at this 91-year-old man being brutally shoved and this 84-year-old man who died after being body checked to the ground. these two brazen assaults have some things in common. they were both in the san francisco bay area and both

victims were not only elderly but of asian descent. the motivation is not clear for these crimes, but they are part of a wider trend. attacks against asian americans seem to be on the rise. the fbi first warned of anti-asian hate crimes in march, according to analysis obtained by abc news. by the end of the year, more than 2,800 racist incidents from shouting to spitting to striking were self-reported to an organization that had been created during the pandemic to track and react to this growing problem. no such nationwide statistics were previously kept. but according to a pew research study, 6 in 10 say racist against them increased during covid. national crime data has not yet been reported but take a look at extreme local examples.

new york city, the nypd confirmed only one hate crime against an asian in all of 2019. in 2020 there were 27 incidents. that is a 2,7600% increase. in seattle hate crimes doubled to 42 through september 2020. activists and law enforcement alike point to the same cause for the spike, the coronavirus. more specifically rhetoric that blames covid-19 on the chinese. most notably then president trump's repeated references to the kung flu and the chinese virus. here's what a new york staff writer said to me in may. >> the most egregious incident was one night when i was taking out the trash and being called a chinese bitch. and that was actually, i think, hours after president trump

referred to the new coronavirus as the chinese virus. >> it is not uncommon in times of fear and uncertainty to seek out a scapegoat. think back to the rise and attacks on muslims and people mistaken for muslims after 9/11. but to the president and first lady condemning the rising hate crime during the pandemic. >> our diversity has always been our strength. and i promise you, our administration will be guided by that truth. >> i'm glad that now we have a leader who learns the right lessons from history. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. want a daily dose of fareed and his team? now you can get it with fareed's global briefing. the newsletter that gives you the best incite and analysis on global affairs. go to cnn.com/fareed to sign up.

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hey, i'm brian stelter in new york. happy valentine's day to you and yours. this right here is "reliable sources" where we figure out what is reliable in this world. this hour the online videos that drove trump's impeachment and the tv networks that helped determined his acquittal. plus, behind the scenes of the latest drama at "the new york times." also, the newest clash between china and the bbc. a top bbc official will be here to respond to that. and the editor of "politico" is also standing by.

but first saturd