imaginable tile, wood, laminate or stone without compromising my design, one aisle doesn't cut it. i need an entire store. now, i've got one. explore floor & decor in person or online at flooranddecor.com this sunday, the cyber threat. >> we're one step away from cities being plunged into darkness. >> ran some wae attacks targeting american institutions from coast to coast. >> they went after our gas and our hot dogs. no one is out of bonds. everyone is at play. >> many cyber criminals in russia and protected by vladimir putin. >> we can't give any corner and no country should be harboring criminal actors of any type. >> how will the u.s. respond? >> do you think putin is testing

you? >> no. my guests this morning, democratic senator mark warner of virginia and republican senator roy blunt of missouri. plus, rebuilding america. both parties still far apart on fixing the country's roads, bridges and more. >> we need to make those investments today to be able to continue to succeed tomorrow. >> with no certainty that a deal will be struck. >> i don't know whether they're going to reach an agreement or not. >> what's the price tag? who should pay and could democrats try going it alone? i'll talk to energy secretary jennifer granholm about the risk she sees if there's no agreement. also, former president trump rallies north carolina republicans by pushing the big lie. how republican candidates may not be able to win without mr. trump, and the party may not be able to thrive with him. joining me for insight and analysis, anne gearan, white house correspondent for "the washington post," former hardball an who chris matthews.

kimberly at tins stohr from "the boston globe" and lanhee chen from washington university hoover institution. welcome the sunday. it's plets. from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, that is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. we are a nation under attack right now, cyber attack. last week cyber criminals slowed food production here and abroad. last month hackers caused gad lines up and down the east coast. there have been ransomware attacks. so many areas are at risk and so many companies with enough money to pay the ransom. many of those payments are being done in cryptocurrency which is much harder to trace, another issue. the main culprits are cyber criminals based in russia which, as a nation state is offering them safe harbor as long as

their targets are in the west. the problem has become so acute, officials say the u.s. is considering offensive cyber operations against the criminals inside of russia. it all raises this bigger question rngts and an uncomfortable one. is this all a plan of vladimir putin's to test our new president, joe biden. we're going to find out how the president decides to respond when he meets with putin one-on-one ten days from now in geneva. does our high-tech society leave us vulnerable, urn able to discourage an enter fries at the cost of trillions to american businesses and consumers. >> it's almost like your house gets broken into. there's a sense of security that you lose. >> last week it was the world's largest beef supplier, a month before colonial pipeline paid $4.4 million to russian hackers in bitcoin after they accessed

its system with a compromised password. >>. >> ransomware attacks have become routine, hitting everything from groceries to gas, hospitals to transportation, to local government. >> the largest public transit authority? the united states has fallen victim to a cyber attack. >> headaches for the steam ship authority continue today following a ransomware attack. >> u.s. health is the target of a ransom wear attack. >> the fbi confirms it's investigating 100 different types of ransomware, each responsible for multiple attacks in the u.s., many originating from russia. it's a challenge christopher wray compares to 9/11. >> we're one step away from cities being plunged into darkness. that's based on facts. >> you can take down our electric grid, transportation, financial system. you could virtually paralyze the

country. >> the justice department signaled in a memo on thursday it plans to treat ransomware cases with the same priority as terrorism cases, centralizing internal tracking of investigations and prosecutions. >> the criminal groups that fuel many of these attacks, including some of the recent ransomware attacks we've seen, come from groups that have links to russia. we cannot give any quarter and no country should be harboring criminal actors of any type. >> how will the u.s. respond? back in 2016 after russian interference in the election. >> why haven't we sent a message yet to putd tin? >> we're sending a message. we have the capacity to do it, and the message -- >> he'll know it. >> he'll know it. it will be at the time of our choosing and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact. >> now ahead of a june 16th summit with putin, the biden administration is considering offensive cyber operations against hackers inside of russia. >> mr. president, will you

retale ate against russia for this latest attack. >> we're looking closely at the issue. >> the president's message will be responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals. >> on friday, putin called the allegations nonsense and decided to escalate the back and forth by expressing sympathy for the january 6th insurrectionists. >> translator: they weren't just robbers. they came with political demands. >> joining me now is democratic senator mark warner of virginia. he's, of course, the chair of the senate intelligence committee. senator warner, welcome back to "meet the press." the fbi director, christopher wray, in a "wall street journal" interview essentially invoked 9/11 in how to deal with these ace symmetrical groups, these cells. we called them terrorist cells in 2001 and 2002.

are these cyber criminals terrorists? >> chuck, let's step back and look at this problem. we've been talking about cyber for a long time. finally the american public is starting to wake up to the ramifications of these attacks. there's generally been two types of cyber incidents, one where a nation state steals information, two, where cyber criminals come in and threaten to shut down a system and demand ransomware. we've seen these individual attacks of these pipeline companies, ferry companies, meat packing companies. what i'm really worried about is if we saw the kind of massive, across-the-system attack that took place last year, the solar winds attack, they got into 18,000 different companies. if that attack had been to shut down the system, our economy would have come to a halt the way russia attacked ukraine. we ought to do three things. one, we ought to put in place --

we have bipartisan legislation to do this -- to require that, when companies get attacked, they notify the government. there is no requirement right now. second, we do need international norms so that when cyber groups out of russia, because they're not just attacking us, they shut down the irish health care system. we need international norms. third, we need to have more transparency. there's going to be a debate about whether these companies should pay ransomware. there ought to be more transparency if a company does pay so we can go after the bad guys. >> you pre answered a couple questions i have. i want to pick up on the last point. should we make it illegal to pay ransoms? many people think this is a simple solution, right? you don't pay the ransoms, the attacks will stop coming. >> well, i think that's a debate worth halving. i'm not sure what the answer is at this nt. the alternative, if you shut down a sy paid the ransom,

it took five days. but what we should make sure, as we have that debate, let's make sure if companies do pay, there's transparency to those payments. last year i worked on legislation that became law to tighten up our illegal cash payments, the use of dummy corporations. america was, frankly, not even at international standards. we need more transparency. right what's happening around ransomware, not only are the companies not reporting they're attacked, but they're not reporting the ransom wear payments. >> i want to get to the ransomware payment in a second. you want to make it basically illegal to not report a ransom wear attack if you're a company based in the united states. what about a step further where you mandate a minimal amount of security. if you want to be a defense contractor, you have to prove

your ability to handle classified information? you know this very well. that's how colonial has to be treated, gbs, anybody who essentially sells goods and services in the united states. >> chuck, here is the challenge. we need higher cybersecurity nd. there ought to be penalties. many of us remember a few years back when equifax lost all of our information to the chinese. they were totally negligent. there needs to be some level of liability for companies that don't hit these standards. the truth is, when you have a tier one adversary like russia or china, not necessarily cyber criminals, but a tier one advocacy, it's tough to 100% perfect all the time. that's why, if we have an incident reporting requirement mid attack, give the company some limited liability protection. that needs to come into the government, but also share with the private sector.

microsoft, amazon, the cloud providers, the other cybersecurity companies. we need to have a public-private response team to this, and that's going to require that mandatory reporting. >> look, there's another idea that's out there. simply this, in the "wall street journal," ban cryptocurrency to fight ransomware. the fact of the matter is, without the ability of the anonymity of crypto, we would not have this intense situation now. i know how popular it is. there's a rave going down in miami this weekend for people wanting crypto. but crypto's popularity is its anonymity. it seems as if why people like is they get to hide where their money came from. it sounds like an illegal enterprise to me. >> chuck, i've got a lot of questions about crypto. there's good things coming out of the technology, but we're seeing some of the dark underbelly. that's why i'm focusing more on trance piern see. the truth is, there are ways we

can break through skom of these systems. if we don't have -- if a company is paying, if there's not some transparency so that payment, the bad guys will simply find another way to hide it. this is an area where frankly, again, our company has been behind the international norms. we got better on bipartisan legislation last year, but this debate about crypto and ransomware is just starting. that's why in the meantime let's put in place these transparency requirements. >> one other idea out there is about going more on the offensive against russia for being a safe harbor and doing what they did. i want to show you something here. i hope you can see this graphic. these are all the different ways the united states has tried to confront russian aggression going to 2014. ejected them from the g7, it's not the g8 anymore. plenty of sanctions. there have been import restrictions. we've expelled diplomats. we've seized their assets. we've had indictments. none of it has stopped his behavior. what would it take, do you think, to durr tail putin's

behavior? >> two things, chuck. one, i do think we need to have the ability to use some of our offensive capabilities. we have done a better job on that. if we look at our ability to cut back on some of the russian election interference, that was because we were willing to punch back. but what we also need, and this is why i say we need the level of international norms so that a country like russia would know, if they are harboring cyber criminals and you're shutting down a health care system, for example, the way the cyber criminals did in ireland recently, there needs to be international repercussions, not simply one-off, the united states acting alone. that's why president biden going and rallying the democracies at the g7 meeting is so important. >> senator mark warner, i'll have to leave it there. chair of the senate intel committee. we'll find out in about ten days how well biden's confrontation goes with putin.

i want to continue this conversation. joining me is the chair of the senate republican committee, roy blunt, mrs. a member of the intelligence committee. let me pick up on holding putin accountable, senator blunt. you saw here, there has been plenty of attempts. it hasn't worked. is there a better way to hold putin accountable that we haven't tried? >> well, as chairman warner pointed out, we did see in the 2018 elections, we really did push back. remember in 2016, as late as early 2017 we had cyber defense capabilities, but we didn't have the authority, the president had never given the authority for cyber offense. so when we did push back, we pushed back pretty hard in 2018 it stopped. to some extent, chuck, you have to treat russia like virtually a

criminal enterprise. they harbor criminals. they don't appreciate the rule of law or any kind of level of personal freedom, and i do think we have to push back. when there's no penalty, there's no sanctions, hard to find who is doing it, even when you can find where they are, we haven't really effectively sanctioned the countries that are protecting this kind of activity. it has to stop. on one question you asked chairman warner, could we say that companies have to guarantee their system to be a u.s. vendor or whatever the other guarantee might be. the truth is, we haven't been able to guarantee our own system. on the solarwinds, they got in the government system as well. we didn't know they were there. we don't know how long they were there. we're not absolutely sure they're not there still. so saying that companies would have to meet a standard we can't meet would be one thing. let me make one other point. on the colonial pipeline, it was

a very simple way in. they used an old account that was no longer even a person -- that account was not even part of the system anymore, but it wasn't taken out of the system. there was a place where a two-part authentication would have made a big difference. we worked hard on this, both on the intel and republican policy committee, trying to alert companies but also our own colleagues of how broad the danger could be here. i'm glad this is getting the attention it's now finally getting. it took gasoline and beef. >> that's right. >> this is really a serious problem. >> that's right. when it hits people at home. this is one of those things. this feels like a crime wave. you guys are supposed to keep us safe, right? you're our elected officials. you guys have to ep coup us safe. i want to puch back that you can't hold businesses to a standard the government can't meet. why can't everybody be mandated

to meet the standard. the 2020 cybersecurity bill, one of the reasons it didn't pass, there was a debate we were asking too much of the private e be asking american business to do more? >> well, i don't remember the 2012 cybersecurity bill. i do remember around that same time senator carper and i were leading the effort to have reporting as part of the requirement. a lot of pushback. nobody wanted to report they had been hacked. that was a fight we've been having now for almost a decade, and the only way you can begin to get on top of this is to know how pervasive the problem is, try to develop a pattern. cryptocurrency, not allow that to be just behind the scenes in the entire system. we have a lot of cash requirements in our country, but we haven't figured out in the country or in the world how to

trace cryptocurrency. so, one, fairly easy to do. people almost always pay the ransom. there are very few consequences and you can't trace the ransom payment of choice now. we've got to do a better job. >> vladimir putin scoffed at the charges that somehow he was behind these attacks. then he went on to say something else over the weekend that was quite zis tushing, basically praised the january 6th insurrectionists, said it was nothing but a political dispute. considering that putin is picking up on this as a way to divide this nation, does that make you reconsider your opposition to a january 6th commission? i know your argument against it right now. you think there's some bipartisan action happening. i get that. but you know we need as credible a review as we can to get on the same page as a country with facts. don't you see a january 6th

commission as doing that? >> you know, my point from not just last month, but from the very moment this commission idea came up. i never said, you know, i'd be for it if it was more bipartisan. it was very non-bipartisan in the first proposal. i never said that. what i said was, i think we know what we need to do here, and a commission, in my view, an immediate commission would slow us up in saying, well, we need to wait until we know all the facts, we need to know from the commission. we will come up with a bipartisan, two-committee report next week. the rules committee that i was the chairman over, now senator klobuchar and i on that committee. senator portman and senator peters on the other committee. we'll have a pretty extensive report on what happened, over 100 pages, with a significant number of recommendations, in my view, all of which could be put in place immediately. my sense was, it's more important to act and do what we

know we need to do than to get in a position where we start waiting for a commission to come forth with a report that we, i think, are going to be happy -- i think will be really pleased with the report you see. we'll see then where we need to go next after the report is out. >> i don't know if your report will deal with the root cause. the root cause is, you have the leader of your party, whether everybody wants to acknowledge the former president as the leader of the republican party or not. he seems to be the biggest fish in this pond now. he's had -- chief of staff was pushing the idea that italy used military satellites to somehow rig the election, and he keeps doing this. he did it last night in north carolina. you're part of this group of republicans that has stated that you don't believe in that nonsense, but you don't really push back at the president for spreading these falsehoods so much. are you not -- do you fear you're not doing enough?

one in for people in your party believe these delusional things. are you concerned about this? >> well, i'm concerned we're losing faith in the election system. i do think it's important to have a bipartisan belief ha the election system does what it's supposed to do, that the results of election day are what absolutely happened. i served for eight years as the chief election official in my state. i was pleased to see senator manchin have the same view, that we need to move forward on election reforms in a bipartisan way. i look forward to being part of that. we'll see what happens with the john lewis voting rights act and other issues i think we can deal with and deal with in a way that's less partisan than trying to create political advantage for either side. >> do you think the president believes this stuff or is exploiting a chunk of your party into convincing them to believe

it? >> you know, i really can't analyze whether he believes it or not. i'm sure he believes in a fair election he couldn't have possibly lost. of course, he had the ability to go to court and prove whether that election was fair or not. the courts did not accept those ideas, so we move forward and we continue to move forward. i do think president trump is an incredibly popular figure in our party, certainly political figure in my state. i'd like to see him get focused on the 2022 elections. there are plenty of things for republicans to be talking about. >> you're not the only republican that has said, look, the guy is popular in the party and there's only so much -- the implication is there's only so much i can say or do to push back. it sounds almost like you're

surrendering -- >> i'm not running for office again. i'm not running for office again. so that's not my point. my point is he's popular and could be incredibly helpful in 2022 if he gets focused on 2022 and the differences in the two political parties t biden agenda is an agenda that republicans are going to be talking about, defining themselves based on our differences on things like what is infrastructure. there are a lot of things to talk about. i think 2022 has great potential to be an important and good year for republicans, and i hope president trump puts his energy in that effort. >> senator roy blunt, as you mentioned, you're not running for re-election in 2022, but you are a republican senator from missouri. i appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective. >> good to be with you. when we come back, john mccain warned years ago that cyber

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welcome back. anne gearan, white house correspondent for "the washington post," former hardball anchor on msnbc chris matthews, author of a new book "this country, my life in politics and history." kimberly atkins store from "the boston globe" and lanhee chen. anne, i want to start with what i found interesting from both warner and blunt, which is they both seem to separate a bit more from putin versus what we're dealing with with cyber, just as the white house seemed to be telling -- indicating they're ready to hold putin more accountable. where is the biden white house on this? they want to treat this as a putin problem or a criminal problem? >> you know, we've really seen an evolution in the way the government writ large is approaching the ransom wear and

cyber hacking problems together. i think from the white house perspective right now, they aree same thing that both senators were doing there and talk about this as a problem that is larger than one country and one individual national security relationship between the united states and russia, while at the same time making very clear that president biden plans to raise ransomware specifically and other kinds of cyber criminal activity that is housed in russia with putin when they meet in geneva. what they have not said is exactly how threatening the president plans to be or whether he will walk into that meeting saying we are going to do x, y and z if you don't cut this out. >> lanhee chen, you were at the hoover institution, you've got a lot of people you walk the halls

with and spend a lot of time in the defense department and the state department and understand these issues here. is there an effective tool against putin right now in our tool box that, number one, wouldn't punish russian citizens but actually could curtail putin's behavior? >> i think it's very difficult to draw that distinction. i think there's a few factors here. first of all, we can go after some of the infrastructure that facilitates this criminal activity in russia, and that would be targeted. that's something our cyber command is capable of. obviously, that runs into some international issues, does it violate existing international rules? we'd have to get into that. fundamentally we have the capacity to disrupt some of this behavior. on putin, it is important for us to continue to send a strong signal. by the way, the sanctions put in place by this administration and the previous administration, those are working. they are starting to take a bite out of long-term economic growth in russia. that's the right course. we have to continue that regime,

that sanctions regime is very important. i do think it's important for the president as well to send a very strong signal to putin that, to the extent he understands stands this activity is going on, which i think he certainly does, the united states will not tolerate it and will continue to put pressure on the russian economy up to and including additional sanctions on the central bank as well as elements of putin's government. >> kimberly, here we have this national security challenge that's one of these challenges that actually impacts -- suddenly is starting to impact our day-to-day lives. if you live in a city and there's a crime wave, you go to the mayor and the police commissioner and say, you do something about this. that sort of was my feeling, okay, guys, do something about this. i get a sense that everybody is looking for the handcuffs and not the solution. >> i think that is right. i think we are here in part because of that tension that you talked about with those senators before, this idea that holding companies, not just companies

that provide essential services and goods to america, but private companies in charge of parts of critical infrastructure, this idea that we don't want to force them to do too much because that could hurt business. with great power comes great responsibility. there needs to be a requirement that companies shore up their cybersecurity and the government needs to give them both help, but also impose requirements on them in order to do that while shoring up the federal government. you can do both at the same time. we see how critical that need is. >> chris, i know you've been doing some reporting on this. what does an effective response look like from the united states against the russians? >> first of all, we have to play offense and defense. the government's role is offense. only our government under our system is allowed to counterattack, to take any forceful action against moscow and its ransomware allies in this case. here at home it's going to be a lot like our covid response. we have to use public and

private. clearly what we have to do is do what we did after 9/11, build a good defense system. we upgraded our air traffic control systems to keep track of airplanes that might be hijacked. we want to know anybody who is off course. in this case we have to have business work together to put the dots on the screen, like an air traffic controller's screen. where is the ransom wear where people are trying to get to our companies, trying to hold us up. you have to report it in realtime. in many ways that's like a police case where you have a kidnapping in progress and you have to know when and where it's happening and you have to go to police. it's a combination of warning the russians -- i keep looking at that guy putin, chuck. i'd look him in the eyes and he says nonsense. i say we can't read that guy like we read normal human beings. this guy is a kgb officer. he and biden grew up in the cold war. that's know what this game is about. it's using other forces like the russians used to use national

liberation where they're giving them the guns to fight ed by th they're pretending a little bit to be innocent. i look at the eyes of putin. when i look into hips eyes i see the cold war coming back as a cyber war. >> anne gearan, it comes back to what posture do they want americans to view joe biden as having when he confronts putin? do they want to be seen as aggressively confronting putin and do they have an idea what that looks like? >> i think the answer to the first is yes. they do want -- the white house does want to position the president for a pretty forceful interaction with putin or they wouldn't be having the summit now. this was a choice. biden invited putin to do it. he is saying very affirmatively here that he wants to talk to putin about a range of things which are in almost all cases

problems in the u.s. view. so it's not going to be a pleasant meeting i think. but the question very specifically on cyber is a really difficult one, because these are not russian government agents. they're people who live in russia and are, to a degree, under russian protection. >> i remember safe harbors in afghanistan and yemen back right after 9/11. i wonder if we'll start hearing conversations like that in the next few weeks and months. i'll pause right there. as the two parties fight over rebuildingamerica, o

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welcome back. if you want an easy summary of where the washington talks on infrastructure stand, try president biden and republicans can't agree on how m spend, on where the money should come from or even what is or isn't infrastructure. other than that, things look great. perhaps more significant, the recent spade of cyberattacks calls into question the safety pipelines. joining me is someone who has a lot on her plate, energy

secretary jennifer granholm. welcome back to "meet the press." >> thanks so much, chuck. >> i want to talk about your response at the energy department has been since the colonial pipeline attack. i think about what happens if the plan takes pipeline goes down. you have n bridge which provides the middle of the country gas. if one of those pipelines went down in the next -- this summer, are we better prepared to handle the crisis than we were just a month ago, or do we have a ways to go? >> here is what i would say, is that the tsa actually just put out a series of regulations requiring pipelines to let us know if they have been the victim, in the realtime -- just what chris matthews was just saying. where are these attacks happening, so that we know and we can coordinate with our intelligence community to

determine, not just how to respond in the long-term, but how to respond immediately. so to that extent, yes. the president has issued focuses on what the federal government should be doing. but as you've noted, these are a lot of private sector entities that run the grid, that run the pipelines. so one of the reasons why the american jobs plan is so important and so curious, chuck, why the investment that the president proposed in transmission grids, which would not just increase capacity and increase resilience, but also address cyber, why that isn't a part of what the republicans' counterproposal was. hopefully it will b. it's a bit frustrating it hasn't been. >> what kind of authority do you have right now -- you oversee the safety of our nuclear power plants, in some cases run by private companies. there's a certain level of security they have to meet to meet federal regulation.

can you demand certain standards of colonial and these other pipeline kpeents? or do you not have that authority at the energy department? >> right now on pipelines, no. we have an agreement with the private sector on the transmission grid. there are basic standards, cyber standards they may adhere to, cyber standards developed by the department of commerce, and we need that same sort of regime with pipelines. that does not exist at the moment. this notion of requiring them to report is important. that's a first step. we need to take the next step. they need to -- we need to work together. it's not just cyber on grids and pipeline. it's cyber for -- across the country. it is a huge issue, and everyone needs to wake up and up their game in terms of protecting themselves, but also in terms of telling the federal government if they are a target of attacks. many of these private companies don't want to let people know.

they should not be paying ransomware, but they should be letting us know so we can protect the rest of the country. >> do you think there should be a law on the books that bans the payment of ransoms. you can outlaw the payment of ransoms. are you ready to go there? >> well, i mean, i would. i will say that, but i don't know whether congress or the president would at that point. i do think we need to send this strong message that paying a ransom wear only exacerbates and accelerates this problem. you are encouraging the bad actors when that happens. i will say, the president -- to the conversation you were just having, the president is really focused on the international regime of this as well, working with our allies. no country wants to be the victim of major cyberattacks, any cyber attack. energy sector, private sector,

the federal government, the president is working on a 360-degree solution, solutions. there's not just one solution. >> you've been tapped to help build support for the president's infrastructure proposal. that took you to west virginia this week. when you hear the words west virginia and washington, it means joe manchin. when we hear joe manchin say he still think there's going to be bipartisan support. do you think his definition is ten republican senators or do you think it's susan collins and lisa murkowski? >> i think he really believes there are votes for infrastructure from at least ten republicans. he's got some data on this. just in my world, in the world of energy, in 2020, in december, there was overwhelming bipartisan support for pieces of energy infrastructure that the president put into the american

jobs plan, but has not been part of the republican counterproposal. for example, investment in the transmission grid or in nuclear energy which republicans long supported and are not in the counterproposal but was in the president's bill. tapping of oil and gas wells and coal mines which could put a lot of people to work. republicans have supported that. the president put it in his bill. they didn't come back with a counter that included that. chuck, the big thing -- just coming from west virginia. it's a fossil fuel state. the week before i was in texas, another fossil fuel state. republicans and democrats have asked for the technology and the pipelines to take carbon pollution out of fossil fuel production and put it in the ground. it's called carbon capture. the president put it in his plan. republicans have been clamoring for it. it wasn't in their counterproposal. it's just curious. the bottom line is, he's got reason -- meaning joe manchin has reason to believe there's

bipartisan support. we just need to see it in the counterproposal. >> you brought up climate. i'm curious, when it comes to getting the oil and gas industry to participate in helping to mitigate climate change, we've seen the netherlands essentially use a court order to force shell to do things. we've seen shareholders get board seats on exxon and chevron. what do you believe is the most effective way to engage industry? you were a state attorney general, would you have filed a lawsuit in the state of michigan against an oil company, or would you be pursuing the shareholder strategy? >> or i think that -- honestly, these companies are seeing where the globe is going. they're seeing that their biggest customers are demanding that they produce energy in a cleaner way. so they want to see things like this solution of adding technology to remove co2 from their production, as part of the solution. so to me the carrots that the

president has put into his plan are really carrots that the private sector is asking for, even the fossil fuel companies. i won't say all of them clearly, but a lot of them, the big oil companies have all -- not all. but many of them have the same goals of getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. they're not going to be able to do it without the technology that will allow them to remove co2 from their production. but, again, the president put it in his plan and i think that's a way to go. >> optimism that the capital markets will force the oil and gas industry to change. we shall see. energy secretary jennifer granholm, thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. i appreciate it. >> you bet. >> you bet. when we come >> you bet. when we come these days you have to keep everything moving and reinvent the wheel. with a hybrid, you can do both. that's why manufacturers are going hybrid with ibm. cloud factories can use ai to automate the little things

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let me show you something about our employment picture. look, prepandemic we're at 3.5%. right now at 5.5%. but the key has been the labor participation rate. so these numbers may look good, but this is only among people who are actively looking for work or in the job market. let me show you the labor participation rate here. so right now among men and women, as of april of '21, it is down basically year over year because of covid. you can see here, 1.6% among men. basically the same among women. over all the change. what does 1.6% translate to? 3.5 million actual people, 3.5 million fewer people in the workforce. how does this translate where the economy is today to where it was in the past? our labor force participation rate is essentially where it was in january of 1977. think about what the workforce looked like in january of '77. fewer than half of the workforce was made up of women. that is not the case now. if we're there, we've got bigger

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let's keep making a differene together. welcome back. the panel is back with us. well, the former president is back on the trail. chris matthews, normal political science would say, if you're a political party focused on the past and you're running against a political party running on the future, the future defeats the past. yet, the republican party seems to be stuck in this no man's land of their leader relit gates the past and roy blunt and others are saying, please talk about the future. what should they be doing differently that they're not doing now? >> well, chuck, this show, "meet the press," is about facts, not opinion. the fact is donald trump lost

the election. he lost it by 7 million people, 7 million votes. the electoral college vote was the same when he got when he won last time, 302. the facts are there. every political phenomena i've ever followed when i was a kid, somebody wins, somebody loses. the looser -- this is the deal we never thought would happen, the loser would have to say i lost, just like in tag, you're out, you're out. it's a strike. i'm sorry. we live on the basic facts of life. the concession speech is maybe the best thing in politics because it's when the losers say, damn it, i lost. hillary clinton did it, mitt romney, john mccain, al gore. honest people honestly accept facts. this president -- this former president, i should say, is not honest. therefore, he's taking the cheap route so all his followers will say, yeah, he won.

they know he didn't win. >> lanhee, i was intrigued by ralph's piece today in "the times." he talked about different ways different factions are trying to check trump. what do you think is the best way to chuck trump? sadly, more people now believe this nonsense than they did actually three months ago? that's a problem inside the information ecosystem in the right wing. >> i think the focus has to be how you build a movement that's durable going forward. that's not by focusing on the remarks or thoughts of one person. there are a lot of different ways to do this. you can talk about the policy contrast going into 2022. you can talk about the ways in which you build upon various groups, for example, the hispanic vote that seemed to improve for republicans in 2020, or you can talk about whether there are various figures preparing to run in 2024 who are not donald trump. there's lots of ways to do this.

fundamentally it's got to be a practice of addition by addition, not addition by subtraction. the fact that you have to cut people out of the party because they don't agree with donald trump, to me that's the wrong way pour the party to succeed and garner support in the long run. >> kimberly, how do you kick trump out without his people? is that the devil's bargain here? >> well, i don't think that that's the issue here. i think what lanhee pointed out was a decision that republicans had to make after the election in november, and they chose not to. i don't think this is an idea of a party being held hostage by someone. i think it's a party that has adopted the views of that person. this is a party not just of trump but trumpism. they believe the big lie is advantageous to them critically, that trying to restrict voting is advantageous for them politically and everything else the former president is seeking to do. i think the party has already made that decision and it has

already become the party of trumpism. >> anne gearan, the biden white house continues to believe that, if they project normalcy that time will somehow make that wing of the gop fade away. are they still believing this? >> i think so, chuck. certainly we had an example this week where the press secretary, jen psaki was asked about trump being suspended from facebook for two years and did she think that was a good idea. that was a sweet pitch. she could have just knocked that out of the park and gone to town. she didn't. she basically said, he's not our problem. we're focused on other things. it goes to biden's basic view that he has to show the work and the only way to get democrats elected in 2022 and for him to be re-elected is for him to do stuff, not talk about the past. >> chris, you and i are going to

talk more extensively in a podcast later this month, but i'm curious. this past year, what have you learned, what have you reflected on? >> when you're not on the air every week or every night, you get a little distance. like when i was in peace corps, i would keep up with events by reading atlantic magazine. you do see the pattern. what happened the other day with general flynn saying we should have a military coup isn't such a big jump as the election was stolen from me, we don't have a legitimate government. two-thirds of the republican party saying the election wasn't fair. it's not a big jump to say, okay, that's not a legitimate government, we can overthrow it. remember, all these people, men and women served in our military swore an oath to the constitution. let's not forget. they swore an oath just like donald trump did. >> don't for get his book right there "this country: my life in politics and history." thank you all for watching

today. remember, if it's sunday it's plets.

nbc sports home of -- we're in the second week of roland garros at the french open in paris. the quarter final match is taking shape. more to be determined later today with the continuation of the fourth round matchespotentig for 23-time grand slam champion

williams. looking to get