♪♪ this sunday, risk management. after the collapse of two u.s. banks, washington moves in to stop a widening panic. >> americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe. >> did the government's actions actually make the system healthier? i'll ask democratic senator elizabeth warren of massachusetts. plus close encounters. a russian fighter jet collides with a u.s. drone over the black sea. >> we know the intercept was intentional. we know the aggressive behavior was intentional. vladimir putin gets ready to welcome chinese president xi jinping at what could be a

pivotal moment for the war while the top 2024 candidates no longer see supporting ukraine as a vital security interest. >> the greatest threat to western civilization today is not russia. it's probably more than anything else ourselves. >> is the party ronald reagan embracing isolationism. i'll ask republican mike rounds of south dakota and a call for protest. former president donald trump claims he will be arrested and calls on his supporters to protest as he faces the possibility of an indictment in new york city. trump tries to use this case about hush money and an affair to distract from the more serious charges he faces in georgia. >> the prosecutor of new york has done more to help donald trump get elected president than any single person. joining me for insight and,a nal sis are, nbc white house correspondent carol lee, jen

psaki, former congressman carlos cabello and peter baker. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." ♪♪ ♪ from nbc news in washington, the longest-running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. a good sunday morning. brace yourself, folks, it is going to be a whirlwind of a week. it starts with the russian president. he's hosting xi jinping in moscow. china is considering whether to arm russia because russia is in desperate need of munitions for the war. tiktok ceo under the biden administration will be testifying on the hill this week and already former president donald trump is creating a circus-like atmosphere, hijack the media narrative and calling for protests ahead and what is an expected indictment next week and it would be the first

indictment from the former u.s. president in american history and we'll begin with the economy. three years ago this week we probably need perspective here, folks. the world began a complete shutdown. countries began sealing their borders and distancing became a catch phrase. three years later after 760 million reported covid cases worldwide and 7 million deaths from the virus, the fallout has been impossible to ignore. 47% of americans admitted they say their lives will never return to pre-pandemic normal. inflation, of course, has been a big fallout from this shutdown and it remains shutdown. the prices continues to rise in february. the fed trying to slow the economy gradually to curb inflation has been raising rates at one of the fastest rates in decades pulling back on so-called easy money policies. supply chain has been slow to recover and the unemployment rate is super low, 3.6%.

it is well off of pre-pandemic highs and strict immigration policies in this country and now the u.s. economy which has remained resilient despite the challenges is facing a new test after the failures of silicon valley bank and signature bank. moody's cut the overall banking system from stable to negative. markets had a volatile week. down on friday as regional bank stocks continue to slide. the fed will be meeting this week and they'll be considering another rate hike. washington is divided, though about what right now can be done to stem this crisis. >> i'm going to ask congress and the banking regulators to strengthen the rules for banks to make it less likely this kind of bank failure would happen again. >> it seems as though the regulators didn't do their job. >> joining me now is democratic senator elizabeth warren of

massachusetts and has been warning of something like this happening after the 2008 decision on mid-sized banks. senator warren. welcome back to "meet the press". >> thank you. good to be here. >> let me just start with a big-picture question. last week you seemed to believe we were out of the woods. do you still feel this way this weekend? i saw disturbing news about credit suisse that will essentially be ended. we have mid-sized banks that can't find buyers. is the contagion contained or not? >> well, can we just start, though -- let's roll this back just a little bit about what went wrong. remember, gary becker and the other ceos of these multibillion-dollar banks came to washington back in 2016 and said lighten the regulations on us. donald trump ran for president saying i will lighten the regulations on these big banks. he gets put in and he puts in bank regulators who lighten the regulations.

he then goes to congress and says to congress, give them the authority to lighten regulations even more and congress with help from both parties obliged him and then jerome powell just took a flame thrower to the regulations, weakened them, weakened them, weakened dozens of the regulations and then the ceos of the bank did exact he what we expected. they loaded up on risk that boosted short-term profits and they gave themselves huge bonuses and salaries and exploited their banks so the problem we now face is twofold as you describe this. what will we do to make sure that the banks across the system are stable and that is the big banks. the little community banks are doing great, but these banks that are multibillion-dollar banks. how are we going to make sure that they are stable and that we've got a set of rules in place going forward that will

keep them safe. so i want to see an independent investigation. the fed just doesn't get to investigate itself. i want to see us make a change in the laws and roll back the rollbacks to put tougher regulations in place and we finally need to step in and say these bank ceos, we've got to align them so that their clawbacks, they're giving up on these big salaries and they don't get to go into banking again if they explode a bank. that's how i see the overall system right now. >> okay, but what about in the moment? how concerned are you about this? >> in the moment. >> about this unraveling on us in the next couple of weeks? >> well, in the moment we've got the federal government obviously taking extraordinary action and they've taken on depositors and

depositors should be able to take a pretty deep breath. the federal government has indicated there will be a lot of protection for you, but we have to worry about how much risk is in these multibillion-dollar banks. >> yeah. >> it's perfectly clear that these regulators were asleep at the switch. >> i want to get to that because, you know, there are some republican lawmakers that are arguing, look, that 2018 law itself didn't tell the fed not to regulate these banks. that essentially if they wanted to be on top of them they still could. where do you fall on that? is this more on the fed or more on the law that was repealed? it's both and because what the law said, the door is wide open to roll back those regulations and you know how i know that is exactly what the effect of the law was? because jerome powell said so.

he stood up after the law was passed, and he said, whoa! he was going to weaken a whole slate regulations and why? because congress just told me to. >> right. >> there's plenty of working together to weaken regulations and look, that's why now when we need to do is we need to go back and take that provision that we passed in 2018. >> right. >> and just roll it back out and say no. the fed doesn't get that ability to just go to sleep when the -- when they have ultimate supervisory responsibilities over these multibillion-dollar banks. >> last fall you had written a letter to the fed chair jay powell and other lawmakers are concerned about the rapid rise of interest rates. at the time you didn't mention the impact on potentially banking investments and perhaps there's no reason you should have and you were more concerned about his intended goal of

raising the rates. considering another rate hike is on the table, do you think it would send a bad message to the economy that maybe our banks are unstable if he doesn't keep on this path or do you think he should keep going if that is his intent and raise a quarter-point cut. >> no, i do not think he should raise rates, but look, i want full disclosure here. i've been in the camp for a long time that these extraordinary rate increases that he has taken on. these extreme rate increases are something that he should not be doing. why? and the reason for that is twofold. the first is to remind chair powell he has a dual mandate. yes, he is responsible for dealing with inflation and he is also responsible for employment and what chair powell is trying to do and he has said firly explicitly is that they are trying to in effect slow down the economy so that this is by the fed's own estimate, 2

million people will lose their jobs, and i believe that is not what the chair of the federal reserve should be doing. i want to make a second point on inflation as well, though. there are other drivers of the cost increase. for example, price gouging and supply chain kinks and the war in ukraine. raising interest rates doesn't do anything to solve those problems. all it does, at least, by the way the chair wants to do this is put millions of people out of work. i opposed chair powell for his initial nomination, but his re-nomination. i opposed him because of his views on regulation and what he was doing to weaken regulation, but i think he's failing in both jobs, both as oversight manager of these big banks which is his job and also what he's doing with inflation.

>> if at this point, i am curious -- do you think -- it seems like we will never let a bank fail. is it a mistake? is it okay for banks to fail? >> you know, i always want to start with this area with the resentment that our community banks feel? the regulators for years have let them fail. >> right. >> and they really have it bear the consequence fess their balance sheets are not solid. fortunately, right now their balance sheets are very solid and they're in a secure place, but these multibillion banks, i think the thing that downright offends me is that gary becker and these other ceos were coming to washington telling donald trump, telling the republicans and telling congress they pose no risk. they should be treated just like the small community banks that know their communities and don't take on much risk, and look,

these are guys who figured out they could make a lot of money by loading up on risk. look at just the piece on inflation. >> yeah. >> they made the bet that inflation would stay at historic lows forever. why? not because they're not smart. they made that bet because it cost money to hedge that bet and that would have bitten into profits and that would have bitten into the bonuses they got. so that means this is why you have to underscore this, for those big banks that could take down the banking system. that could take down a lot of small businesses and medium-sized businesses. we've got to have tough regulators. that means and i'm going to say it again, we've got to have an independent investigation. powell needs to turn around the regulations that are in place right now. congress needs to step up and roll back the changes that were

made in 2018 and we need to hold these ceos accountable and that's how we have a safe and secure banking system. >> it's clear you don't have confidence jay powell. do you think the president should fire him? >> my views on jay powell are well known at this point. he has had two jobs and one is to deal with monetary policy. one is to deal with regulation. he has fail at both. >> would you advise president biden to replace him? >> look, i don't think he should be chairman of the federal reserve. i have said it as publicly as i know how to say it. i've said it to everyone. >> all right. a couple of quick other topics. a tick-tock ban. there is some thought of trying to pass this in a way, this restrict act that would essentially target companies like tiktok that have relationships with perceived enemy like the chinese communist party.

where are you on that? >> so, look, there are two parts for me. one is the ties with the chain ease companies. we have companies with a lot of ties to the chinese government, we should take a close look at that. that's what cfius is about. the other is the question of privacy overall about the information gathered about individuals and how that information is being used. for example, here we are in the wake of roe versus wade being repealed. texas putting a $10,000 bounty on people who help someone perform or get access to an abortion. what kind of information is being collected off people's telephone and how is that information being sold to others. this is a much bigger problem that congress needs to look into. calling this a tiktok problem by itself i think really misses the elephant in the room here. >> and very quickly, a lot of

progressives not happy with reese not moves by the biden administration and immigration is one of them and the d.c. crime bill is another one. but the one that perhaps a lot people see cynicism behind us, the decision to approve a massive new drilling project in the arctic. what do you make of these moves by president biden? are you supportive of them or how critical are you of them? >> no, you just named three in a row that i oppose. i thought they were wrong. i said so publicly. i've written letters. >> what do you think the motive is behind them? >> look, i want to be clear, though. joe biden and i don't agree on anything, but i am glad he's president of the united states and in the middle of the banking crisis, he's kept a steady hand and he's done the things that keep us safe and i appreciate that. he is someone who has pushed hard and look at this latest budget he's put out. he said to the republicans, you

guys want to say that you want to bring down the national debt, i know how to do that and ma is make the wealthy and the well connected, pay their fair share and he wants to put money into universal health care and lift children out of poverty and he's delivered the big of the climate package in the history of the world and now paid for by my 15% minimum corporate tax on billionaire corporations. so he's got a lot that he's gotten done and he's got a lot that he's doing. we don't agree on everything, but boy, i'm glad he's president. >> you don't think these moves demoralize his more progressive supporters. whenever someone's not doing whenever any one of us want to see him do. of course, you stay in the fight and you try to persuade him about the rightness of your position. you try to urge them to find other ways to accomplish their

goals, but to protect our lands, to protect our nation and to protect our economy. we need a president to do that, and i'm grateful to president biden for as much as he's done. >> elizabeth warren, democratic senator from massachusetts, i appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us. good to see you. >> you bet. thank you for having me. with ron desantis, and the importance of the national interest. it's worth what's the next adventure? that's the real question. with fidelity income planning, we'll help you create a clear, personalized plan for cash flow, even when you're not working. one that includes your 401(k) and all your other accounts. so you can make informed decisions that best fit your life ahead. a plan designed to help you make your money last so you can go from saving... to living. that's the planning effect. from fidelity. hey guysys, detetect this:

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stop dovovato and geget memedical helplp right awaw. tell y your doctoror if you he kikidney or liliver problele, oror if you arare, may be,, or p plan to be e pregnant.. dovato mayay harm your unbnborn baby.. ususe effectivive birth coconl while onon dovato. do n not breastftfeed while takiking dovato.o. most comommon side e effects are headacache, nauseaea, didiarrhea, trtrouble sleeee, tirednesess, and anxnxiety. detectct this: i ststay undetecectable with fewerer medicineses. ask k your doctotor abot switching g to dovato.o. welcome back. the republican party's rapid shift toward isolationism accelerated this week after florida governor ron desantis decided to align himself directly with donald trump and he did so to fox's tucker carlson who has been a huge critic of this war. while the u.s. has many vital national interests he writes to

tucker carlson, becoming entangled in a territorial dispute with russia is not one upon them as vladimir putin decides to host xi jinping in moscow and a week after a fighter jet intentionally intercepted a u.s. drone and forced it down into the black sea. republican hawks have hit back at the desantis comment. lindsay graham even told "the new york times", the neville chamberlain approach never ends well comparing desantis to the infamous prime minister who famously appeased hitler. mike pence also weighed in. >> the war in ukraine is not a territorial dispute. it is a russian invasion. anybody that thinks vladimir putin is going to stop if he takes ukraine has what we say in this part of the country another thing coming. >> joining me now is republican senator mike rounds of south

dakota. he happens to sit on two committees that are pretty front and center. the topics we are discussing is armed services and senator rounds, welcome back to "meet the press". >> thank you very much. thank you for the opportunity. >> let me start with a banking-related question and it's a similar question i asked senator warren. are we out of the woods for the next few weeks? before we debate the longer term issue, investigating and new regulation? are we currently out of the woods or not? the weekend headlines indicate we may not be. >> my personal take on it is it may take a couple of months to work its way through the system. i think we're going to be moving in the right direction. i did agree with what the fed did and the treasury did over the weekend to stop the bleeding, so to speak on the immediate aftermath, but longer term, i think a lot of our regional banks and the smaller banks in particular are going to want some reassurances that

they'll be able to compete with the big ones, the big five. so i think it will take a couple of months for consumers outside to recognize that all of these banks are stable. >> should we -- is it okay to let a bank fail? >> you know, let's think about this for just a second. when we talk about allowing a bank to fail, it's one thing to say it's okay to allow the owners of the bank to lose their resources. it's another thing to say that the depositors should necessarily be allowed to lose their deposits and that's why we begin with a quarter of a million dollars of protection and we started with 200,000 a few years ago, and we bumped it to 250,000 for deposit and then the question is whether or not things are appropriate as things rise, should we bump that up? the other piece is whether or not within the commercial marketplace and among the banks themselves can they arrange for

things such as interest rates and so forth. can they use those to actually protect themselves a little bit better, kind of like buying re insurance on those accounts? among them there are some tools out there. the real question is whether or not all of the banks are taking advantage of the tool available to them right now? >> are you at all concerned by protecting the deposits? we're sending the message to the real high stakes equity folks by saying, you know what? we'll always back you up even if you make a stupid bet. >> that's a really good question, but you have to remember that because of dodd frank to begin with, we've identified that there are a group of banks, the very largest that we've identified as being too big to fail, and they are significant to the entire financial services of the united states and therefore it is suggested very strongly that we won't let them fail. now the question is does that mean that they should have a competitive advantage over small and medium-sized banks when it

comes to trying to lure depositors in. we want to make sure that the tools are available for those smaller banks to be able to spread the risk and so if a depositor comes in and a lot of businesses will have more than a quarter of a million dollars in their accounts. should they be able to be assured that there are commercial products available so that they can actually spread that risk out and those depositors know that they're safe in the smaller regional banks and that they don't have to move the deposits to a bank that may very well have challenges because they're so large, but that they have the backing of the federal government behind them and they're a cfius, and the medium and small banks that do the vast majority of the commercial lending and the small communities across the entire united states. >> it seems pretty clear to me that you do not believe that the

2018 rollback of medium-sized bank regulation was a mistake. so do you plame regulators for not overseeing this bank better? >> let's go back and make it clear that this was a liquidity problem with regard to the failure with svb right now. it was not a capital problem and when we talk about the liquidity problems on it, even if you would have had the liquidity requirements that would have been there before 2055, what we did in 2018 this bank would have qualified already. there would not have been a change in terms of what happened and even if they would have failed the test which they would not have, and even if they would have failed the test under dodd frank. >> right. >> they simply would have purchased more of the long-term treasurys and been solid again so, no, it's very, very clear that the portions of 2155 and it

was done in 2018 did not impact this particular issue. the real question is why didn't the managers at svb take advantage of a lot of the tools that were available to spread the risk out. why did they use interest rate swaps for a period of time and basically for a year previous to their failure, they quit using them and why did they not have a chief risk officer in place from april until december? why did they have a cfo that was operational over the previous year? those are the types of things that the investigations should focus on. >> yep. >> and then whether or not the actual auditing organizations, and the folks responsible and the california banking commission and the san francisco fed, did they do the audits appropriately? were they providing adequate oversight? >> okay. let me move to in what i started

our conversation in introducing you and governor desantis' designation of the war between russia and ukraine as a territorial dispute. do you agree with him? >> look, i don't think it's a territorial dispute. while he may be taking territory and it's accurate that there's territory being taken this is bigger than that for us. number one, china is our nearer peer competitor and they're our focus right now and russia is right behind them and in in this particular case you have a number of items that make the up the big picture. when we pulled out of that sent a message that that we were withdrawing from the international scene and they could test the waters about whether or not we would exercise our capabilities internationally in the future. so taking out the issue of afghanistan, and then moving into the fact that putin now

tests the waters by walking in or attempting to take over a sovereign state that we had in 1995 agreed that they would have sovereignty over that specific part of the land, well, xi jinping looks at that and says i'm going to watch this very carefully because xi jinping would like taiwan and one way or another he wants to get that back and he wants to see whether or not we keep it together or whether or not it strengthens nato. >> do you think he's misinformed? >> i'm not sure -- >> or is he playing politics here? >> i think primary politics has something to do with it, but i think it is also a matter of looking at the big picture and i'm not exactly sure yet because i haven't seen the entire interview if perhaps part of it was taken out of context in terms of how does that measure compare to other issues and do

you look at the border as a big issue? do you look at the economy as a big issue and do you try to separate those out? i just think that what's going on in ukraine can't be separated out from the united states and china. >> unlike you, governor desantis rarely allows reporters to ask follow-up questions and it was in a statements to infotainor. let me ask you about former president trump and his call for protesters to the manhattan courthouse next week. do you think that's appropriate behavior? >> to begin with, let me make it clear, there's a difference between the former president and what he did on january 6th as the president of the united states and his call for support at the capitol versus an individual person today asking people to show up to protest if

he is indicted and i'm assuming you're talking about the possibility indictment which has not yet happened and we don't know what the indictment would be and we're making assumptions -- >> he made the assumptions. >> it might be better to ask those same questions later on. >> are you concerned that this only adds to distrust? it's almost like he's fomenting the distrust. >> yeah, look, i don't know if he's fomenting distrust or not, but clearly, we don't know whether or not this is actually going to happen. we don't know whether or not there will be an indictment. clearly, he following some leaks that are coming out of the d.a.'s office that should not happen, but most certainly you don't want to have any threats towards the implementation or the attempt to implement justice, and that's something that you always have to take seriously whether it's from an individual person or a former president of the united states. >> i'm just curious.

have you ever had second thoughts about your decision about not to vote to convict after january 6th with former president trump? >> it's very clear in the constitution in the way that the founding fathers have laid that out that you are looking at whether or not an individual was the president of the united states or was just an individual. at the time of that trial mr. trump at that time was an individual. he was not the president of the united states. the founding fathers clearly did not want indictments to start on former presidents. they didn't want that to happen and they saw it going on in england today and they didn't feel that it was appropriate to go back in and find former -- >> you could have barred him from ever running for office again. that was the point of that exercise. ? actually, the idea behind an impeachment is to take away the shield of office. that's all it does. after that, other things can

occur and right now the shield of office is gone and now it's up to the courts. >> all right. >> mike rounds, republican senator from south dakota, former governor of south dakota, as well. always good to get your perspective. thanks for coming on and sharing it. thank you. >> thank you. when we come back, president trump says he expects to be trump says he expects to be arrested and shshe found d it. the feelining of findiding the e psoriasis s treatmentt she's bebeen lookingng for. the feelining of findiding the e psoriasis s treatmentt sotyktu is t the first-o-of-its-kind, oncece-daily pilill for moderarate-to-sevevere plaque psosoriasis oncece-daily pilill for moderarate-to-sevevere for the e chance at t clear oncece-daily pilill for moderarate-to-sevevere or almlmost clear r skin. oncece-daily pilill for moderarate-to-sevevere it's's like the e feeling of fifinding thatat outfit pspsors oncece-daily pilill for moderarate-to-sevevere trtried to hidide from youo. oror finding y your swimsust is r ready for p primetime.. [dad]] once-daiaily sotyktutu is pn to get morore people once-daiaily sotyktutu is pn clearer skskin thanan the leadiding pill. clearer skskin don'n't take if f you're allllc clearer skskin to sotykyktu; seriouous reactionons can occ. sotyktu u can lower r your abily to f fight infecections sotyktu u can lower r your abily inclcluding tb.. seriouous infectioions, cances inclcluding lympmphoma, seriouous infectioions, cances muscscle problemems,

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>> welcome back. panel is here. nbc news white house correspondent carol lee. >> former congressman carlos carvalho and jen psaki, here before the debut of her new show here and on pea cocke. congratulations. >> thank you very much. >> thanks for doing pregame with us. carol, i want to start with what the former president was up to. this is a strategic decision. this is a campaign strategy, you know, they don't keep it a secret. they know they believe focusing on this manhattan case will

essentially trickle down sort of what the steel dossier did to the mullen investigation they hope the d.a. does to the special counsel in georgia. is this the strategy? >> that's exactly rate. we've seen this playbook before. it's trying to pre-butt, set the tone and create the tone and the former president stepping outside saying he's going to be arrested on tuesday which his spokespeople told him to say no one has told him that and he's gleaning it from news reports and this is from talking to republicans over the weekend, this helps trump, gets him attention and gets him fund raising and puts him out in a way where he's the victim and he gets his supporters riled up about this, but it hurts the party that wants to talk about inflation and joe biden and crime and issues like that and so once again you're seeing republicans having to answer this question of whether they feel like the president is being wrongfully targeted. >> we're seeing him try to also hijack the press here a little

bit. hijack the media narrative. he did it so well in '15. this is an interesting first test, peter. >> it is. let's step back for a second. traditionally they want to capture it by a successful thing and not that they might be arrested. >> yes, there's a tactical, am i getting ahead of the curve and will i appeal to my political base. let's not forget that this might be the first time in american history that the former president might be indicted and january 6th and an effort to overturn an election and it seems small and it may be the first of many and the next two months will be momentous, potentially for our rule of the game when it comes to presidents and former presidents. what is accountability. how do we look like the justice system and how do we play it out? it will be an important test of the system. >> carlos, it was an interesting

bat signal because at work, kevin mccarthy said an outrageous abuse of power as he pursues political vengeance against president trump and he promises to have an investigation of the investigators to see if there are politically motivated politicians. he's getting the party to support it. you do see the republicans do it. that's right. this is the trump trap. republicans need to check the box a to appease donald trump and this is good for the trump base and the house republicans for the primaries depend on the trump base, but this is bad for those majority maker, right? and there are only five. there's a five-seat majority. so these members and i'm thinking people have south florida, suburbs, long island, all over the country. they don't like this. this is a distraction, as he said, for the party.

it's very harmful long term and for kevin mccarthy, someone who has had an unstable situation in the house a few weeks ago. >> that's a nice way of saying it. >> this is one of the ways that he guarantees that stability by appeasing trump. >> jen, you know, it's interesting. albert bragg, there are people who will say he was bullied into this and he would be plamed if he didn't do it and others who would blame him for ruining the ross kugzs and he seems to be in a no-win situation. >> that's right. trump knows that as everyone on the panel has been saying and his statement yesterday and the surprising thing to me was not i may be arrested on tuesday even though we now know he doesn't know any more than we know. he was sending a bat signal, let's create manufactured outrage because we want to delegitimize him before he does anything at all, and green, and

mike pence and that's what they want him to do. >> ironically, the republican presidential race had nothing to do with donald trump and it had to do with governor desantis aligning himself with the isolationist wing, and they called it his first big mistake. the press will play those up as contradictions. wall street journal praised that it is press. this could become less a policy issue than a matter of character. what does ron desantis believe anyway? it's a big moment. >> it is a big moment, chuck, if you look at it it's the first time that ron desantis has had to weigh in publicly on a national issue not related to his home state and it was a bit of a test and republicans privately say that he walled. "the wall street journal" said that publicly he failed the test. trump light essentially doesn't work and he could have taken a

position that would have set him apart and he chose not to. i'll put up these numbers here. the wall street journal editorial page and it's not where the republicans, and they're not divided on this. it's 2-1 that want to limit the amount of new funding and weapons to ukraine here. what's going on in your party, carlos? >> well, chuck, i think their point about credibility is valid. ron desantis has been a huk his entire career. he would come on the house floor and he would come to move letters advocating for a muscular foreign policy and having the u.s. lead in places like the middle east and latin america. now the sharp turn to the left, to the right, u-turn, whatever you want to call it is strange and isn't believable. by the way, if you want to beat donald trump in a republican primary, you're not going to do it by being a cheap imitation of donald trump, the state of florida is doing well by many

metrics, and yet he's choosing to follow donald trump and that just doesn't seem like it's going to work long term. >> do you expect biden's re-election will frame and the uk issue was all his. is he comfortable with >> i think it's up to are you up to the task for the job in biden has decades of experience. china is watching what trump and desantis say. putin is watching because guess what? it doesn't stop in ukraine and that's something even republicans have said about desantis and trump's comments. it's about larger values. >> the russians must be very happy. the top two republican candidates are now taking the position that what they're doing is okay. >> it's fascinating. right now everybody else is on the other side and i'll be curious how long everybody else stays there. up next, since the midterms, election deniers have actually won campaigns for state positions in colorado, kansas and michigan. we'll show you how the gop

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welcome back. "data download" time, as the republican party can't seem to leave behind the 2020 presidential election with many republicans still refusing to accept or acknowledge that president biden won over trump. the colorado republican party decided to elect an election denier to be its chair following the party in michigan and kansas that both did the same last month. this is after the 2022 election results. and new data from some research at stanford university shows the pickle the republican party has put itself in when it nominates its election deniers, it hurts them at the ballot box. those election deniers, they do get a two percentage point bump in primaries, but it costs them on average 2.3%. they did this study across the board, obviously, it will go up and down. let's look at these gubernatorial can ats from

carrie lee to mastriano, they benefitted from being election deniers and won their primary because of it and thanks to that and a trump endorsement and look at what 2.3% might have been the difference and kari lake might have been a coin flip. this is on average and i don't know if it would have closed the mark in michigan or pennsylvania, but it certainly would have changed the landscape there. and what does 2.3 percentage point means if this is what the overall data says, look at this, in the 2020 presidential election these were the states that were decided by less than three percentage points. the republican party has to ask itself. election denialism, is this the road? according to this map, it is not. before we go to break, our "meet the press" minute, there are questions whether the republican party is still the party of reagan, with his boss facing a primary challenge from an american firster on the right.

defense secretary dick cheney warned against isolationism in the gop and it happened to be ten days before mikhail gorbachev's resignation which of course, formally brought an end to the soviet union. >> you're a politician. as a politician can you admit that with pat buchanon running a serious challenge against president bush on the new hampshire platform of america first you are seriously constrained about how much taxpayer money you can pour into the soviet union? >> i don't think that's it at all, bob, this dichotomy and the domestic policy and the future of what happens in the soviet union is unrelated to what happens here at home is hogwash, and it's not true and the american people are sophisticated enough to understand it. we have spent trillions of dollars and winning the cold war and what goes on has an impact

at home. you have to be naive to assume the american people don't understand that. >> one of the first sovereign countries after the breakup of the soviet ththink he's p posting aboboul that a ancient romoman coinag? no. he's m making realal-e money y moves withth merrill. so n no matter w what the markrket's doingng, he's reae. anand that's... so n no matter w what the markrket's doingng, he's reae. how w you collecect coins. so n no matter w what the markrket's doingng, he's reae. yoyour money n never stopsps wg for r you with m merrill, so n no matter w what the markrket's doingng, he's reae. a bank of f america cocompa. so n no matter w what the markrket's doingng, he's reae. (vo) red lobsteter's finener pointsf fun n dining:

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welcome back. as we indicated, i want to do a little update on tiktok. i know you have important news here and they will try to save this company from an american ban. china's actions and moscow has only med his job, i think impossible, what should we expect? >> it's not going to be a friendly crowd. currently tiktok says it has 100 million people in the u.s. who are active, regular users. what i am told is when the ceo testifies on thursday before the house committee that he's going to say that number has now jumped up to 150 million users. >> why is that relevant? >> that's relevant because as washington figures out what to do with tiktok and they've had the national security review going on for three years and congress is trying to figure out what to do with it, it's becoming more and more entrenched in americans' daily lives. so one of the things you will see tiktok do is pull out a lot of stops this week, they're

bringing these creators to washington and these are people who are small business owners, entertainers and things like that and they'll make an economic argument and here, look, if you ban tiktok it will hurt us financially because we rely on tiktok to basically build our businesses and things like that. >> even though there are alternatives. it will be a tough argument. >> tiktok has a big reach. they're trying that and if you look at these numbers, chuck, they're young. 31 is the average age and so that politically speaking can hurt democrat depps because the other voters are more likely to support. >> is there a political impact here? >> yeah. potentially. it is so hard to reach young voters. this is always a challenge for any democratic candidate no matter how hip they are. so tiktok is a platform where it doesn't require joe biden or kamala hair toys do tiktok dances. they can go on there and do

policy and have the conversation they're trying to reach and they've been playing around with this at the white house. >> can you both use tiktok and criticize it at the same time? >> democrats including joe biden do that with facebook. you do that with twitter. you can't take yourself off of the field of these things and they're doing that while criticizing it, yes. >> peter backer, you had an incredible scoop and it would have been huge news in 1980, and i'm sure jimmy carter who may be watching now and absorbing this right now, obviously, he's been in hospice care and a suspicion that the hostages were held up from being released for politics, a confirmation from a former democrat. >> for years the carter administration suspected something happened there to keep the hostages in iran. >> they were released on january 20th on inauguration day. >> what's your evidence?

>> that. >> and the investigations and books written and no one proved it, but we now have testimony from an on the record source, ben barns, a former texas lieutenant governor, very widely respected democrat in his state, powerful figure in his time tells us that he took a trip in the summer of 1980 with john connelly, he had been the republican presidential candidate during this trip around the middle east, he told the leaders, get a message to iran and tell him to hold the hostages until after the election and reagan would be better than carter and we've never had an on the record source like ben barnes telling us the story and most intriguingly, he says that when they get back from the trip they meet with bill casey. we don't know that reagan knew anything about it. we don't know anything from casey, his past, connelly's past and we cannot verify the story 100% and ben barnes has a lot of

credibility and it's a wonder where he would make this up at this point. >> it's astonishing and we wonder why americans believe conspiracy theories. >> well, there are some conspiracies out there. >> turns out to be true. >> before we go, i have a quick opportunity for you tonight to see one of the terrific films that we screened "the recall reframed" it explored the incident of the stanford imswimmer, brock turner and seeking justice for sexual assault victims and you get to watch it today on nbc universal and msnbc and it will stream on peacock as well. enjoy it. that's all for today. thanks for watching. we'll be back next week because if it's understand, it's "meet the press." ♪♪ ♪♪

critical witness today a new witness is expected to go before the new york grand jury investigating former president donald trump today over alleged hush money payments we have the latest developments. high stakes visit. russian president putin welcoming his chinese counterpart this morning in what will be a closely watched meeting. emergency rescue major moves in the race to contain the global banking crisis a banking giant buying its rifle in a multibillion deal deadly earthquake. authorities in ecuador and peru assessing the damage after