this is "gps", the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. today on the show, hillary rodham clinton. we'll talk about president biden's first 100 days. >> i'm a hard grader. >> and america's booming economy. >> we're working again. dreaming again. discovering again. and meeting the world again. >> i'll ask her about america's worsening relations with russia. >> this is not a regime that you can take at face value. >> and what she really thinks

about biden's decision to withdraw u.s. troops from afghanistan. >> he can't afford to walk away from the consequences of that decision. >> also, the tragedy of india's covid tragedy grows deeper and darker every day. what is happening there is called a crime against humanity. and many are wondering how much does politics and populism in particular have to do with it. but first, here is my take. this weekend marks the 10th anniversary of the operation code named neptune spear that killed osama bin laden. >> tonight, i can report to the american people and to the world that the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda. >> it is an opportunity to reflect on the state of islamic

terrorism and radical islam more generally and the initial diagnosis is clear. the movement is in bad shape. total deaths caused by terrorism around the world have plummeted by 59% since they're peak in 2014. in the west, the current threat is less from islamic violence than far right terrorism which has surged by 250% in the same period. it now makes up 46% of attacks and 82% of deaths in these countries. most islamist terror tends to be local, the taliban in afghanistan, boko haram in nigeria and al shabab in the horn of africa. that is from the glory days of al qaeda when the leaders insisting the focus must not be on the near enemy, but the far enemy, the united states and the west for broadly. this is have disintegrated to no

central command or ideology. isis has more funds but it too searches for unstable or ungoverned places like mozambique, where it could operate from. the focus on the local conflicts eroded any global appeal. muslims around the world did not identify with local causes in mozambique. in the 1970, they rooted their appeal in failure, the failure of the dictatorships and monarchies of the arab world to develop their societies. islamist urged muslims to give up on western style modernization which led only to poverty and tyranny for them. instead, they urged the embrace of the idea of political islam, the road to an islamic state. people like bin laden and his associates turned political islam into militant islam

because they urged that is the only way to topple the dictatorship. they urged terrorism against those regimes but more importantly against the superpower that supported them, america. in an essay in the journal religions, they point out that the allure of political islam was always that of an untested opposition movement, a mystical alternative to the shoddy reality that existed on the ground in the muslim world. but over the last few decades, islamic parties have entered the political process in iraq, sudan, tunisia, and gaza and jordan and other places. they write one general theme stands, the popular prestige of political islam has been tarnished by its experience with state power. you see millions of muslims have now seen political islam in action and they don't like it. they fled the isis caliphate in

droves. they protested against the muslim brotherhood in egypt and watched shia parties turn into corrupt pat rothage operations and in iran they are deeply disenchanted by the country's theo crattic government. the disgust with the current regime and the blind faith in the promise of religious leaders has been severely depleted. what remains are local problems and local discontent not part of a great global movement. it is true in the west, there has been a spate of islamic attacks in france but all carried out by individuals, not freefusually known to the police and not part of any known jihadi groups. they were self-radicalized with their own personal discomforts leading them to a radical ideology. in this sense, attacks in europe have something in common with

far right attacks in america. radicalize online find ideology that weaponize their fears and furies. america has more ail yessen ated white men than muslims hence the changing composition of the terrorism on its soil. the lessons to draw about islam and islamic terrorism and islamic countries are complicated and varied. 2021 is also the tenth anniversary of the arab spring for democracy and human rights, a movement that sprouted up again over the last few years in algeria, sudan, lebanon and iraq. while the efforts have had limited success, they do show powerfulfully that arabs and muslims want freedom and democracy more than they do a caliphate. for america, there is one big lesson. stay calm. in the months after 9/11, we

panicked. sacrificing liberties at home and waging war abroad. terrified that we were going to be defeat by this new enemy. this is part of a worrying american tradition of exaggerating the threats we face from the soviet union to saddam hussein. as we scour the world for new foes, let's learn to right size our adversaries and find a way to run fast but not run scared. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week. and let's get started. without further ado. today's main event. my interview with hillary clinton. welcome back to the show, madam secretary. >> it is good to be back. fareed. even though virtually. >> all right. let me ask you, before we get into foreign policy, i want to

ask you about biden's 100 days. and i want to you ask something very specific about it which he has outlined a much more ambitious role for the government than people thought democrats could or had the courage to, your husband famously said when he was president, the era of big government is over and james car vel said when i come back as the bond market because everybody here is worried about any spending that would upset the bond market. was that all wrong then or is it that biden is in a new age? >> i really think it is a new age. and in part because what had to happen in the '90s, did happen. there was a lot of, you know, positive economic growth that was aided and abetted by government policy. and huge amounts of advancement

for people up and down the income scale. minorities and others. in the obama administration, the biggest expansion of health care that could happen. but it wasn't until the pandemic that i think a truly working majority of americans crossing party lines as we've seen, because of the approval that republicans and independent voters are giving biden. suddenly understood in a clear way that, you know what, there are a lot of times when we need the government and we've been exposed as lacking in the kind of investments and support that we, as americans, should be providing each other with the government as our partner. and i'm thrilled that president biden is taking advantage of this moment to try to push the agenda as far as possible. i think both president obama and clinton did too.

but they were more constrained given what the climate what politically during their administrations. so, yes, i think it builds on a lot of what did happen in prior democratic administrations. but it also goes further. and it can go further because people understand, guess what, you know, we kind of were failed by our government for four years when we confronted one of the worst health care crises, economic crises that our country has seen. >> president clinton's treasury secretary, larry somers, said he's all in favor of more spending but this is just too much. it will end up being, if the infrastructure bill goes through, $4 trillion to $5 trillion and theresy danger of triggering inflation. are you worried if all of this goes through that it may just be too much? >> i'm not worried yet. and really for a couple of

reasons. we have seen signs of very robust economic growth. california for example, given the existing tax structure, has seen a huge infusion of tax revenue because of stock market gains and then the capital gains that came with those. i think the same is beginning to happen elsewhere in the country. the first quarter shows that we could be possibly seeing over 6% growth. i do think that what the president has proposed, first with his american rescue plan, then as american jobs plan which is focused on infrastructure of all kinds, and his american family plan, is making up for a lot of the problems that american families have faced, particularly since the great recession. the great recession just was a terrible blow to so many

families who lost their wealth because they lost their homes, who never fully recover, small businesses that were just barely scraping by or had to go out of business. so i think it is always important to look over the horizon, to try to anticipate problems that might occur but i think right now it is absolutely the time for the biden/harris administration to stake a big claim to try to lift up the majority, the vast majority of americans and one thing, fareed, that i'm particularly excited by given the work that i've done over many decades is the child allowance plan that will lift so much children out of poverty. and we know absolutely that more money into parents' hands so they could provide better for their children has long-term consequences for the better. so, yeah, i'm willing to look

over the horizon and keep an eye out for any problems. but right now, i think we're trying to right size the government to meet the challenges of today. >> biden faces a specific challenge which is the republicans have made clear that they would go for an infrastructure bill one substantially smaller than the one that he's proposing. do you think it is worth trying to find some kind of compromise there, even if it means taking potentially a trillion dollars off his numbers or should the democrats stick firm to their basic goal and pass what they can with the very narrow majority they have in the senate? >> well, i think there needs to be a good-faith negotiation. and i'm not sure yet that the republicans are engaging in a good-faith negotiation. and that has to be tested. so i'm very confident that given

his years if the legislative body in the senate and certainly as vice president, president biden will test that. i know he continues to meet with republicans in a bipartisan effort to try to figure out what they could agree on and how far they could go together. but at some point, there will have to be a very clear political calculation by the administration that, you know, we've done everything that we know to do, we have on x and y but we can't get agreement on the rest, which we think will help promote growth, increase income equality and the like, so we're going to do one of two things. we're going to split off what we could agree on and put the republicans to the test, so you have two votes, you have a vote on what is agreed upon in a bipartisan way, and then you have a separate vote on the additional funding that democrats and the administration seek. or you could conclude that there

is not a good-faith negotiation and you put forward as big a robust infrastructure bill as you possibly can and try to round up the democratic votes, including the vice president's tie-breaking vote if necessary. >> stay with us. next on gps, hillary clinton on her attempted re-set with splad mere putin and what the state department might learn from her experience. >> this is not a regime that you could take at face value and so you need very focused efforts to restrain and even punish where necessary. ins you've got the looks♪ ♪let's make lots of money♪ ♪you've got the brawn♪ ♪i've got the brains♪ ♪let's make lots of♪ ♪uh uh uh♪ ♪oohhh there's a lot of opportunities♪

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now, to one of the biggest puzzles facing president biden. what to do about russia. former secretary of state hillary clinton joins me again. >> madam secretary, let me ask you, you started out your ten years as secretary of state trying a re-set with the russians and trying to figure out whether there were ways to compromise with them. what transpired by the end of it was put inde-- putin deciding t you have tried to support pro-democracy movements in russia and therefore he was going to take revenge on you by american intelligence accounts that is one of the reasons that he interfered in the 2016 election. so i guess what i'm wondering is can you be objective about this, is it worth another re-set with vladimir putin? >> well i certainly could be objective because the goal is to

try to figure out how to rein in and stop the malicious behavior of russia in destabilizing countries on its border, in europe, the united states, through the election interference and so much more. we always have to be ready to find common ground, if there is any. so i think, fareed, my approach would be similar to what i see happening, which is to sanction russia over its cyber attacks and over their interference and to make it clear they are a bad act or when it comes to undermining democracies in the west particularly, but also to see whether there is any potential for cooperation on climate change, for example, on

the iran nuclear agreement, where they are part of the p-5 plus one. looking for those areas. narrow as they may be that we could get some, you know, positive action out of the putin regime, i have to say, however, that is the crackdown on alexei navalny and his supporters, his lawyer, the organization that are trying to speak out against the corruption, the thievery, the oppression that marks the current russian government is deeply troubling. the massing of military forces on ukraine's border, a continuing effort to intimidate that country and its government, the undermining of governments through spying and very, very deep espionage networks like the one that that's been disclosed

in the czech republic. the list goes on. this is not a regime that you can take at face value and so you need very focused efforts to restrain and even punish where necessary, look for areas of cooperation, if any are possible. >> president biden was asked if he thought vladimir putin was a killer and he said yes. was that too undiplomatic of him. there were people who criticized him who said you have to deal with this guy and this is going to make any kind of cooperation more difficult? >> i think he told the truth. and i think that if he had keck whiff cated or dodged the question that would have also have prepercussions. there are tens of thousands, probably millions of russians who know they're being badly

governed, who want more and want to be part of the broader modern world, who leave russia if they can in order to live in the united states or canada or europe seeking not only freedom but opportunity. and so for a united states president to have brush a-- brushed aside what everyone knows is true would be demoralizing. he still has to deal with him. we know that. he talks to him on the phone. they may end up meeting. we did that through the cold war. we did that with the soviet union. we did that with communists who had been part of stalin's purging and murderous communist regimes. of course we will have to keep talking. but that doesn't mean we should sugar coat the damage that putin has done both to russia and to countries and people outside. his killing machine run by the

intelligence and military services of his country have killed across europe, have killed as we know very clearly inside russia, and i just think that we've got to call it for what it is and give some -- give some hope and support, even by long distance, to the many, many russians who know they deserve better. >> next on "gps", hillary clinton weighs in on the biden administration's decision to pull out of afghanistan. and she gives joe biden a grade for his first 100 days. somethin. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this... your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee... yeah i should've just led with that... with at&t business... you can pick the best plan for each employee

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madam secretary, let me ask you about a big decision that the president has made which is to withdraw american troops from afghanistan. there are only a few thousand there now. but they will all be gone by the anniversary of september 11th. what do you think of that decision? >> well, it is been made. and i know it is a very difficult decision. this is what we call a wicked problem. you know there are consequences both foreseen and unintended of staying and of leaving. the president has made the decision to leave. and i think that our government has to focus on two huge consequences. one, the potential collapse of the afghan government and a takeover of afghanistan by the

taliban probably with a resumption of civil war and certain parts of the country, but a largely taliban run government at some point in the not too distant future, how do we help and protect the many, many thousands of afghans who worked with the united states and nato, who worked with american and other nato connected contractors who stood up and spoke out for women's rights and human rights. i hope that the administration in concert with the congress will have a very large he's up program and will begin immediately to try to provide that channel for so many afghans to utilize so that they are not left in danger. there will also be, i fear, a

huge refugee outflow. and of course the second big set of problems revolves around a resumption of activities by global terrorist groups, most particularly al qaeda and the islamic state. and i agree with a recent article that you have written, fareed, that we've seen a really sharp drop in both capacity and action on behalf of islamic terrorist groups. i don't think, though, we could counts on that staying in a downward spiral if the taliban continued to provide refuge to international terrorists, up to the efforts at negotiation in the last months of the trump administration, the taliban has

never been willing to separate itself from al qaeda. and we know that the current head of al qaeda who had been bin laden's deputy is still somewhere in afghanistan and pakistan, bidding his time. and so i think these two huge sets of issues have got to be addressed. i mean, it is one thing to pull out troops that have been supporting security in afghanistan, supporting the afghan military, leaving it pretty much to fend for itself, but we can't afford to walk away from the consequences of that decision. >> finally, madam secretary, give president biden a grade, overall first 100 days, how is he faring? >> i give him an "a" and i'm a hard grader. ive give him an a. on effort.

he's done a couple of things so well, fareed. he has once again embodied and modelled what a president should act like in the oval office, in the white house, in the world at large with dignity, with purposefulness, with care for what he says and how he treats people. and his attention to detail and the team that he has surrounded himself with, who are experienced at how you make the federal government work, has produced a just tremendous amount of positive action to not just undo the past four years, but really begin again to get the government working in the right way. and then the passage of the american rescue plan, to get money into the pockets of americans who are still suffering economically, is

absolutely the right thing to do and it got done. he was single-minded about it. and finally, man, getting 220 million shot-- shots into arms, getting the supply chain fixed and using the federal government through fema and the national guard to be part of the team in states and localities shows what competent government looks like which is why he has such high approval ratings across the board. of course he has high approval ratings from democrats. but even among independents and republicans, people don't have to worry all of the time. they don't have to hold their breath when they see their president on television. they don't have to shake their head and wonder that a president is going to tell them to drink bleach. we now have a mature, experienced, president and thank goodness we do. >> madam secretary, always a pleasure to have you on.

thank you. >> always love talking to you, fareed. thanks so much. next on "gps", covid deva devastated the u.s. under trump and now india under modi. all three are populist leaders. is there a connection? we'll have a discussion. if you miss a show go to cnn.com/fareed to a link to my itunes podcast. a cfp® professional can help you build a complete financial plan. visit letsmakeaplan.org to find your cfp® professional. ♪ plant-based surfactants like the ones in seventh generation detergent trap stains at the molecular level visit letsmakeaplan.org to find your cfp® professional. and flush them away. it's just science! just... science. seventh generation tackles stains. do you have a life insurance

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held massive rallies and despite the current crisis allowed the behind are you festival to continue. the times of india reports 25,000 people gathered at the gangies on the the final day this week. the masklessness and the rallies might sound familiar to americans who could see echoed of their own former president trump. joining me now is yasha mounk from john hopkins school of international studies and brett meyer from the tony blair institute for global change. welcome, yasha, let me start with you and ask you, do you think there is a connection here or is it a coincidence that so much of the prominent populist leaders that we think of, trump, bolsonaro in brazil, in mexico, now modi in india, seem to have taken a somewhat relaxed attitude cord covid which has often proffered to be a bad

mistake. >> no, unfortunately, and tragically, i think there is a connection. part of what populist do is that they distrust science, that they don't like independent institutions. they don't like logic of events to impose on their political preferences and what they want to do in order to be at the center of a narrative and hopefully gain votes. and all of those things have pushed so many poll -- populists in the united states to modi in israel and doubting the science, downplaying the severity of the virus, appearing maskless in public, raising questions about the efficacy of the vaccine in many cases. and unfortunately, so many people around the world are paying the price for that right now. >> brett, you've studied this fairly specifically and in detail and there is some variation. explain that variation and who

the worst offenders and the one who handle it okay. >> i looked at a report that we published last august and i found in response to a lot of early commentary at the beginning of covid last year, which said that this was going to be the death now of populous, because many are anti-science because they're anti-elite and going to respond poorly to the covid crisis and i found it is true there were several populists in bolsonaro and trump that downplay covid. the majority of populists around the world. 12 of the 17 didn't downplay covid. i was really surprised to see how many populist leaders tries to take it seriously and in some cases, like narendra modi, he took it too seriously, then enacted lockdowns that were two

strict and imposed too much hardship on the people of india. >> who are the other populists who took is most seriously. >> a lot were lesser known. andre babbist took is seriously and led government in italy took it pretty seriously and a few other lesser known, victor orban in hungary, and also modi we thought took it seriously in the beginning. >> yasha, what do you make of these findings and do you think that the trajectory of modi is telling, even though he started out very tough, eventually the kind of logic of populism which said listen to the people not the experts and stuff, reasserts itself? >> yeah, i think unfortunately it is very danger in the pandemic to make snap judgment in the middle of it. there is a lot of happenstance

about how people reacted at the beginning and certainly a lot of chance involved in what bad government policies could turn into a lot of deaths. i have in front of me a list of the countries that have had -- and a lot of the countries that were mentioned on it. hungary is the most deaths per capita, from the czech republic has the third most deaths in the world and i don't think that is a coincidence. i think it is because as the pandemic wore on, many of these governments did, in fact, act poorly and fail. norendra modi, is sort of a strange mix of a politician. he is a poll you'llist and a hindu nationalist in the mining and democracy in concerning ways over past years but he was elected in many ways as a competent economic manager, as somebody who had big success modernizing his home state. and i think we've seen these

personas shift over course of the pandemic. at beginning, perhaps he had more of the persona of a competent manager who is going to deal with the problem and impose a strict lockdown and solve everything with it. it turned out to be simplistic. he didn't use the time to shore up the public health sponsor put in place a test trace and isolate regime and so as the pandemic has gone on, we're seeing modi, the hindu nationalist, holding his giant rallies, being in favor of these religious festivals going on for events in which you see a very rapid spread of the coronavirus. and i think what is not altogether surprising, because there is a logical link between the form of populism and the outcomes in india, in mexico, in brazil, in bolivia and so many other countries around the world. >> brett you found that even in

countries where populists were taking the pandemic seriously, the leaders used it as an excuse to increase authoritarianism, increase what you describe as the measures by which they were combatting the crisis. >> yeah, that is right. the governments of poland, huchkary, turkey and india and the philippines took measures in response to covid so they used it in some cases to crack down on some of the existing opposition. i think in poland they used the opportunity to try to push through some legislation that had been very controversial. of course during a time when the public couldn't go out and protest. india, like i mentioned before, had a very strict lockdown before there were a lot of covid cases and this really imposed a lot of hardship on the the people, the country, because there is a lot of internal migrants and working in another country and were frozen in place

and duterte in the philippines instructed the police to be very strict in enforcing some of the lockdown policies. >> thank you both. fascinating and troubling conversation. thank you. and we'll be back. finding new routes to reach your customers, and new ways for them to reach you... is what business is all about. it's what the united states postal service has always been about. so as your business changes, we're changing with it. with e-commerce that runs at the speed of now. next day and two-day shipping nationwide. same day shipping across town. returns right from the doorstep, and deliveries seven days a week. it's a whole new world out there. introducing fidelity income planning.

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and now for the last look. saudi arabia's crown prince gave an interview on saudi tv this week that surprised the world. what was so stunning was that mbs as he's known announced that he wants to have a good relationship with iran. it is a radical reversal. for years saudi arabia with a majority sunni population and iran whose majority is shia had been bitter rivals. mbs has made his anti-iranian

views since he became the defact or leader in 2017. he's refused to meet with iran's leaders, one that iran wants to control the muslim world and even compared ayatollah to hitler. so what changed? in my estimation, his foreign policy has largely failed. take yemen, the saudi led intervention was to be successful within weeks they said. but after six years, they've made little progress. targeted inside of saudi arabia are hit with regularity by rocket attacks from yemen. in fact the rebel houthis had one hit as recently as last week. yemen has become saudi arabia's mini vietnam. and mbs needs to get out of his quagmire. with iran backing the houthis, he will need tehran to help make a deal. or take qatar, three and a half years of a blockade only pushed the tiny nation to become more

economically independent from the gulf neighbors and embrace closer ties with saudi rivals like turkey and iran. the embargo was a complete failure. and thus was lifted earlier this year. in lebanon, the effort to cripple hezbollah failed. that is one of the most powerful forces in the country. and finally, the united states. the crown prince bet all of his cards on his relationship with donald trump who supported him no matter what. but now joe biden has signaled a tougher relationship, one that will pause weapon sales and raise human rights issues including holding him responsible for the murder of the journalist jamal khashoggi. it seems that the saudi crown prince has learned from his mistakes and is seeking a more constructive foreign policy. just last month, the financial times reported that iran and saudi arabia were holding secret negotiations in iraq, though

both nations later denied it. and after mbs's comments, iran this weekend indicated a new chapter of cooperation may be on the horizon. washington should encourage this. ultimately the united states helps broker better relations between the saudis an the iranians, between the shia and the sunnis, it is playing its proper historic role in the region as an honest broker. it is a big change from basing american foreign policy solely on the passions and whims of one country, even one man. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. ly see you next week. ♪ ♪

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hey, i'm brian stelter live in new york and this is "reliable sources." where we examine the story behind the story. and figure out what is reliable these days. this hour we're talking about unmasking. the changes in how covid-19 is being covered and how interviewers are challenging president biden and members of his administration. plus despite his legal trouble, rudy giuliani is celebrating a win against "the washington post" this weekend. we have all of the details on that coming up. and later, the new story of late night. on how comedians are adapting to post trump life.