yamiche: a health crisis for the unvaccinated. >> these vaccines are saving lives. >> please take covid seriously. enough people have died. yamiche: as covid spikes across the country, more republicans find new enthusiasm for vaccines. >> we know that the majority of these deaths could be prevented with a simple, safe, available vaccine. yamiche: and the white house ramps up its own efforts to fight the the -- delta variant. >> we will not let their antics stand in the way. yamiche: house speaker nancy pelosi rejects minority leader kevin mccarthy's joyce -- choices for the january 6 select committee.

new reporting reveals what former president trump really thinks about the cap top attack. next. capitol attack. announcer: this is "washington week." corporate funding is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no-contract plans and our u.s. based team can help find one that fits you. announcer: additional funding provided by, the estate of arnold adams, koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. and sandra and carl delay magnuson. corporation for public broadcasting and from contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

thank you. from washington, mod moderator yamiche alcindor. yamiche: good evening. the delta variant is top of mind as covid cases continue to surge. on wednesday, president biden urged americans to get vaccinated. pres. biden: if you're vaccinated, you're not going to be hospitalized and you're not going to be in the i.c.u. and you're not going to die so it's gigantically important that we act like we care about fellow americans. yamiche: high rates of vaccine skepticism persists. a growing number of g.o.p. voices pushed to get people vaccinated. here's house republican whip steve scalise. >> i have been vaccinated and the vaccine is saf effective and widely available across the united states of america for anybody who wants to get it. yamiche: but the g.o.p. is split

on messaging. many in the party embrace conspiracy theories about the vaccine and the virus. in the meantime, this is fast becoming a crisis of the unvaccinated. here's what the republican governor of alabama had to say. >> folks supposed to have common sense but it's time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. yamiche: what can leaders in washington do to get more americans vaccinated and will the delta variant reverse the progress made against the pandemic? joining us, top reporters, yasmeen abutaleb, healt reporter for "the washington post." and joining us in studio, eva mckend, with the spectrum news. and carol leonnig of "the waington post" and philip rucker of "the washington post." carol and phil are authors of

the best selling book "i alone can fix it, donald trump's catastrophic final year." i'm so excited to dig into all of the things that happened this this week. yasmeen, some data suggests the u.s. is seeing as many as 1,000 new covid cases every hour. but today i talked to a white house source who underscored to me tha people who are unvaccinated should be the most concerned about the numbers. why are unvaccinated americans so much mor at risk and what are experts most concerned about as the delta variant spreads? yasmeen: i think the evidence of why unvaccinated people are most at risk is in the numbers. the c.d.c. director said more than 97% of hospitalizations are in people who are unvaccinated. more than 99% of deaths are in people who are unvaccinated so although we're hearing reports of people who are fully vaccinated getting so-called breakthrough infections, they tend to be milder, they're at low risk of being hospitalized or from dying.

the vaccines are highly effective in preventing hospitalization and death so i think when president biden and top advisers say this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated it's that people who are unvaccinated are still at risk of the worst effects of covid and you can see it in parts of the country with low vaccination rates, they're filling up ic.u.'s and delta variant is 1.8 times more virulent than the strain spreading last fall when we had fewer counter measures at our fingertips but it is highly transmissible and we can see that in how cases have climbed the last two or three weeks. yamiche: i want to stick with you, yasmeen. talk about the what the president is weighing moving forward and might we see new mask mandates or new mandates when it comes to the vaccine?

i'm asking that question in the middle of the olympics kicking off and some athletes unable to go there because they got the coronavirus. yasmeen: this is a difficult moment for the white house and the administration becse they've been pushing vaccinations very hard since they got in office but it's stalled out the last couple of months because by late spring, early summer, everyone eager to get a vaccine had gotten it so now they're tryg to convince people, you can see t rates of vaccinations slowing down tremendously from their peak a couple of months ago and also this is a point where the outbreaks that we see are going to be regional depending on vaccination rates and social dancing measures. you saw l.a. county and washington state and new york, cities reimposing mask mandates indoors for both vaccinated and unvaccinated but the tricky thing for the white house, they

want to show if you're vaccinated, there is freedom from the virus, there are perks to being vaccinated and if you reinstate mask mandates, you might dissuade people on the fence but public health experts, many think mask mandates make sense because delta is so transmissible. miche: yasmeen is talking about how transmissible this virus is but we played the sound of the g.o.p. finding new enthusiasm for vaccines. some say it's too late. what's your reporting tell you about the reaction to this and what's driving the g.o.p., people like sean hannity and others -- although sean hannity might have taken a few steps back -- what's driving this? eva: it was certainly a noticeable shift, still trying to get a sense if it's a coordinated effort. i spoke to the staff of the senate republican conference asking them, wases there some sort of memo that went out to republicans, because it felt like it because they're all singing from the same hymnal.

he said nothing from us. so still working to find out what is behind the strategy but definitely a noticeable shift. last week, senate republicans beginning their news conference with this, the importance of vaccinations and then again this week, talking about vaccinations again. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell talking about being a polio survivor and knowing how critical and vital it is to get vaccinated. but they aren't going as far -- republican leadership is not criticizing those republicans who are casting doubt on the vaccines. i pushed leader mcconnell on this last week. he said it's perplexing why more people aren't getting vaccinated and i said respectfully, it isn't all that perflex plex -- perplexing with people in your party casting doubt on this

process. are you cllenging them directly? he said he can only speak for himself. yamiche: and eva talking about unnamed republicans casting doubt. carol and phil, you wrote a a book about former president trump who downplayed the virus. carol, talk a bit about why former president trump played along with anti-vaxxers, knowing full well he was vaccinated early and he was really sick from this. what's behind his relationship and the way he talks about the vaccine and the virus? carol: everything that happened with donaldrump when he was president was about getting re-elected and feeding his base, not leading his base, but making them appeased. and he believed he looked week if he suggested the virus was serious and you would need a vaccine but he has waffled back and forth on this. he's like, on one hand, he wants to take credit for having given us the vaccine, that he pushed

for it so ardently and he did. and on the other, the other day, he see-sawed again and said i understand why people distrust the vaccine. he's playing to that base he knows is his source of political power but it's a hangover and it's from his presidency that imperils american lives, just as many of his decisions during the presidency did. yamiche: and imperilli american lives is a great way to put it. there's an analysis in the "new york times" in april that found the least vaccinated counties in the country voted for former president trump. talk about what that tells you about the lasting iact of president trump's - former president trump's -- stance on the virus and as you talk to him in your interview, he had no regrets. so talk a little bit about what's going on nown the former president's mind.

philip: what we saw last year in 2020 was that donald trump from almost the beginning of the coronavirus tried to discredit the credibility of the government scientists and the medical experts here in washington who are trying to lead the pandemic response, first and foremost, dr. fauci, but also dr. deborah birx, the c.d.c. director, and others in the government leading this response. trump tried to sow doubt among his political reporters in the facts that were presented and that has reverberations todayed with vaccines so as dr. fauci is telling everyone they can trust the vaccine, trump for months leading upo this moment has been creating sort of a piñata out of fauci with his supporters. he's made them not believe in what fauci is saying and that has this lingering effect but when carol and i went to mar a lago to interview trump for our book, we asked him if he had regrets about his handling

the pandemic, hundreds o thousands of americans died on his watch when he was president and he spread lies a misinformation about the pandemic for months. he said he had no regrets, he thought he handled the pandemic very well and he claimed he didn't get credit from the media for the good things he had done and the only regret he hadas not sending american troops into portland, into seattle, into washington, during the black lives matter protests. he wanted a military response and he wishes he sent one. yamiche: that's incredible. we're going to talk more about "i alone can fix it." i have to catch my breath thinkingbout that, when you think about 600,000 americans haveied from covid. today when i was talking to white house officials about the week they said there are good signs, this week compared to last week, one official said vaccination rates are up 14%. jen psaki was saying that states with the lowest vaccination

rates, they were seeing good signs in those states. what are you hearing from wte house sources? and are there good signs when we see different voices including republicans coming out more forcefully telling people to get vaccinated? carol: it's of course good if more republican voices are telling people to be vaccinated. white house officials recognize only so many people will listen to people like the president and dr. fauci and administration officials. republicans need to hear from their leaders in order to be convinced the vaccine is safe and effective but i think there is concern because they think they will get to 70%, which was the july 4 goal, in a couple of weeks so maybe about a month behind their initial goal come is not so bad but i think the big concern is that delta is well underway. they are continuing to make progress in the vaccination campaign but there's only so much they can do. there is, of course, the debate about whether the c.d.c. guidance should be updated to recommend that everyone vaccinated and unvaccinated wear

mask indoors but outside of that and outside of working to get more people vaccinated, there are limited options at their disposal to deal with the delta variant. they're out there stressing how dangerous it is and how important it is for people to protect themselves there's still confusion about what is safe and what's not safe depending on vaccination status and i think we're seeing i.c.u.'s and emergency rooms fill back up as we did in darkest days of the pandemic and i think there is reason for hope but some of it might be a little bit too late. yamiche: a dire situation but some reason for hope. that's the thesis of your reporting and i appreciate you coming on to share it. thank you so much, yasmeen, for joining us, with our reporting. now let's turn to capitol hill and the bipartisan january 6 committee. on wednesday, house speaker nancy pelosi blocked the appointment of two republican congressmen, representatives jim jordan of ohio and jim banks of indiana, both lawmakers pushed

to overturn the results of the 2020 election, an election that was free and fair and that did not have widespread fraud. house minority leader kevin mccarthy fired back, pulling all five of his nominees from the committee. here's what mccarthy and pelosi had to say. >> this panel has lost all legitimacy and credibility and it shows exactly what i warned back at the beginning of january, that pelosi would play politics with this. >> this is deadly serious. this is about our constitution. it's about our country. it's about an assault on the capitol. yamiche: eva, i want to the come to you. this select committee is in complete chaos. you have house speaker nancy pelosi taking unprecedented step. you have the g.o.p. calling it a sham. my question is, who won, when you look at this tussle we saw today? there's some who say pelosi got what she wanted but some say now

kevin mccarthy can say it's too political? eva: i don't think either side won politically emerging from this week. leader mccarthy said republicans will pursue their own investigation but we are where we are because republicans rejected a bipartisan investigation and so that is wh- necessitated this select committee. it's a confusing apartment for mccarthy to make because if he wanted outside voices represented, they could have agreed to something that would have had more bipartisan input. nonetheless, we are where we are. something that stuck out to me about this back-and-forth was how deeply personal it felt. he described her as a lame duck speaker of the house. i know that he can almost taste the gavel, it's so close, as

he's itching to be speaker of the house in 2022. but she just came back into the position in january. there is still a significant amount of time for the next election so that felt like really insulting but you could tell he also felt disrespected by this action by her so the entire back-and-forth, deeply personal. the hearings will start next tuesday and we'll have to see. it seems at this point it could become more political theater but speaker pelosi is doing all that she can, it seems, for it not to be perceived that way. yamiche: where does this leave liz cheney? she was on my mind as i was watching this happen. what does it mean for her future and the future of the party that she's now the republican on this

committee? eva: she defended speaker pelosi and subsequently described the panel as "we." she kept saying "we" and i was like, she is in the we with democrats, no longer in the we with republicans. so we'll have to see. leader mccarthy did threaten any republicans that joined, that speaker pelosi selected for this committee, that he would remove them from their committee. it seems like he is not actually moving towards that. maybe he just sort of thinks that will make a bad situation worse for his party. and so we will have to see but i think she's going to be an important voice on this manual. the -- this panel. the few republicans that believe this is legitimate and necessary will look to her for guidance. yamiche: deeply personal and you said it, it is incredible to watch liz cheney say "we" and talk about democrats. i'd like to play part of your

interview with former president trump for your book. you questioned him about january 6 and he denied the crowd was violent. >> it was a loving crowd. the capitol police were very friendly. they were hugging and kissing. you don't see that. yamiche: that, of course, is just not true. there was a lot of violence on january 6. five people, including a police officer, died in the attack. hundreds were injured. since then, more than 500 people have been arrested. phil, i have to come to you. talk to me a bit about your interview with president trump, former president trump, more about that. you told our pducers, every sentence was a lie. we covered him together. how does he continue to be in this alternate reality? philip: just to be clear. not every sentence was a lie. nearly every sentence. it felt that way. but yamiche, carol and i were there for 2:45 talking to him about the election, about

january 6, about covid, about all the imptant things that happen in 2020, his final year as president. and he just spun a completely alternative reality. he told us everybody knows i won the state of arizona. well, he lost the state of arizona. joe biden won the state of arizona. he said they were loving people on january 6. they were not loving. he said it was pence's constitutional obligation to send the electoral results back to the states. it was his constitutional obligation to certify the result results of the election which is what he did. trump is obviously not over the loss of the election but when we sat down with h, it was chilling that he had this warped dystopian view of reality that he kept telling himself and that his flatterers, his aides and friends reinforce with him at mar a lago. yamiche: carol, you told our producers you'd be happy to supply a witness list to the

january 6 investigation. who was on your list and why would you call them? carol: first and foremost, mark meadows, white house chief of staff, who there was that day. ivanka trump, his daughter. one thing phil and i learned as part of the book was that the president was watching this almost giddy on television, enjoying this moment. and that's pretty shocking because even before anybody broke through the glass of the capitol, they were committing felonies by breaching the perimeter, by pushing past police, by spraying them with bear spray. and he was sort of cheering that quietly in his dining room where he spends time watching television. well, later, ivanka and mark meadows give themselves the assignment to try to get the president to call off the dogs and they don't do this very urgently, as phil and i learned. it takes two hours for them to get him to say something. a president should be saying

something about a violent act that's happening at the capitol. they knew that. they had to convince him. but two of them really have an important insight. there are other people that day. keith kellogg, vice president's national security adviser, who was in contact with pence at the time and knows what the president didn't do. another shocker for me and for phil, in our reporting, which was that the president was m.i.a. he didn't try to find out if pence was safe. as you know, because you reported this, too, pence was seconds away from being attacked and when he was evacuated, rioters were coming up the landing right to where he was and thank goodness officer goodman steed them away. pence was seconds from being harmed. yamiche: phil, we talk --ou talk about, in this book, general mark milley who was worried about former president

trump attempting a coup and was also talking about fighting zis on american soil, american nazis. what's your reporting tell you about his fears and military fears as president trump was continuing to lie about the election? philip: those fears were real and serious and general milley ishe chairman of the joint chiefs of staffs, the highest ranking military officer in this country and is also a student of history and not a political actor and as he heard trump challenging the results of the election increasingly, trump claiming that the election was rigged and stolen and telling tens of millions of supporters in the country that the election had been taken from them even though there was no evidence to support that, he saw parallels to what adolf hitler was doing in germany in the 1930's as h consolidated power around the nazi regime and milley thought that trump as commander-in-chief could try to use the mitary to execute a coup to remain in power despite having lost the election and he wasn't alone.

the other joint chiefs, heads of the army, air force, navy, branches of the military, had the same fears and together they formed a plan of what to do if trump tried to issue some sort of military order that was unconstitutional or illegal or unethical and they would have resigned, one by one, in a reverse saturday night massacre, if it were. it didn't come to that but this underscores how harrowing those weeks were at the pentagon and for the highest people running our military. they thought trump could execute a coup. yamiche: eva, the frs that mark milley has, general milley has,hey continue. this isn't over, right? there are people continuing to have -- to lie about the election and conspiracy theories floating through the g.o.p. what does your reporting tell you about where this is heading? eva: i think those concerns are legitimate because certainly the former president still has a grip on the republican party, still has a grip on republicans in congress.

and so the the test will be, as this panel meets next week and we hear this testimony and as we get further and further from the trump presidency, if republicans will ever sort of really challenge -- challenge him out of concern for their own legacies and the legacy of the country. yamiche: a stunning situation in our country, carol and phil. i'm so excited to talk to you for the extra. i want to thank all the reporters here tonight including yasmeen. eva from spectrum, thank you so much for being here. carol and phil for sharing your reporting with us and don't forget to tune in monday for the pbs "newshour" as we explore the read ahead, checking in on where negotiations stand over infrastructure. join us also for the "washington week extra" streaming live at 8:30 eastern on our website, youtube and facebook. we'll dig into phil and carol's

new book, "i alone can fix it." thank you for joining us, good night from washington. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org.] announcer: corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by consumer cellular. additional funding provided by, the estate of arnold adams. koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. and sandra and carl delay magnuson. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

-this program is made possible in part by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [ wind rushing softly ] ♪♪ -in late 1933, chancellor adolf hitler is one step away from total power. only germany's elderly president, paul von hindenburg, stands in his way, the one man with the power to sack a chancellor. so it's vital for hitler to keep him onside. ♪♪