yamiche: disinformation threatening our democracy and our health. >> how the blank could something like this happen? is this america? yamiche: raw and emotional testimony at the first select committee hearing on the capitol attack. >> the indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful. yamiche: four police officers describe putting their lives on the line and demand justice. >> will we preserve the peaceful transition of power? or will we be so blinded by partisanship that we will t. rowe away the miracle -- we will throw away the miracle of america? yamiche: republican liz cheney pledged to get to the bottom of what happened and plus who was responsible. president biden: this is an american tragedy. people will die who don't have to die. yamiche: as the delta viant

spreads, president biden announces new vaccine requirements. and the c.d.c. reverses its mask guidance. next. announcer: this is "washington week." corporate funding is provided b. additional funding is provided the estate of arnold adams and ko and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities and sardinha and carl delay magnuson. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again from washington, moderator yamiche alcindor. yamiche: good evening and welcome to "washington week." the capitol insurrection took

place 205 days ago. an the nation is still grappling with how such an attack could have happened in the heart of our democracy? to get to some answers on tuesday, the house select committee investigating january 6 held its first hearing. lawmakers heard powerful testimony from four police officers who defended the capitol and the people inside. >> for the first time, i was more afraid to work at the capitol than my entire employment to iraq. >> lives electrocuted again and again and again with a taser. i remember thinking there was a very good chance i would be torn apart or shot to death with my own weapon. >> the mob of terroristsere coordinating their efforts now shouting heave, ho as they sink row kneesed pushing their way forward crushing me further against the metal door frame. one latched on my face and got his thumb in right eye attempting to gouge it out. >> one woman in a pink maga

shirt yelled you hear that, guys? [beep] voted for joe biden. and then the crowd perhaps around 20 people joined in screaming, boo, [beep]. yamiche: their experiences were heart breaking and underscored the crisis our democracy faces at the same time our nation is also dealing with a deepening health crisis. the pandemic is intensifying as a delta variant surges. joining us tonight to discuss all of this are kelly o'donnell, white house correspondent for nbc news, ryan reilly, senior justice reporter for huffpost. and rachel scott, congressional correspondent for abc news. thank you all of you for being here. rachel, i want to start with you. this hearing was remarkable. it was such a heavy day. my question is talk about the power of what you saw, what we all saw and what might come of this? kelly: yeah. you know, i think when the chairman started that hearing, he said that this is not going to be easy. and it really wasn't. i think some of the most

striking testimony you heard it from officer don tu how could this not be political? this was a political rally. it started with a political rally that turned inta riot. you heard the pain in their voices. you saw how visibly upset. they still are. being forced to relive those experiens. and only want is answers. i had an opportunity to talk to officer fanon hours before that hearing. he told me that even though he knew it would be hard, reliving the pain from that day, that he wanted the truth to get out, and in the middle of that, the brother of craig -- brian sit nick called me, his name is craig and told me he could not bring himself to watch the hearing. that it's so painful for him to see the violence. and he just -- left with this answer of why. why did this happen and how can we prevent it? yamiche: why. it's such a good queion, kelly. you're nodding your head. when i think about officer dunn, i think about the fact that he compared with what happened to a hitman and said if a hit man

sent someone to kill someone, that person of course the hitman would go to jail but so would the person who hired them. let's talk about the accountability and the idea -- the idea that there might not be accountability or there will be accountability. and what impact might this have on former president trump? rachel: well, i was at the rally that day where -- thenresident trump was tking with a crowd and one of the things that struck me as i was beginning to walk with the crowd, ey were saying he's coming with us to the capitol. when as a white house reporter, i already knew the president was going to be heading back to the white house. he would not be going there. ere was a link between the people who attended that rally and ultimately went to the capitol and what their expectations of then president trump were. i think one of the things we'll have to look for is the power of the subpoena. what will this committee be able to do beyond the emotion we saw from these officers, which was vivid and visceral, and gave us -- we've seen so much of this from a wide angle view of all that violence and all that noise at the capitol.

and they made it so personal and so individual. but what comes next, i think, is will he be able through subpoena power to get documents that tell us about what happened inside the white house that day, who spoke to presidentrump, what was happening there, will there be witnesses from that administration? people the president spoke to who will provide testimony when the committee convenes again. will that give us a window into what was happening? could the president at that time have done more? was he given the sufficient warnings and plenty of people saying that is certainly the case. and that he did not send help in an urgent way. and in fact watched it as sort of a spectacle. so the subpoena is the thing to watch going down the line. yamiche: and i want to ask you a quick follow-up which is after 9-11, the terrorist attacks, we saw these real pushes to prevent another attack like this from happening. do you think this committee, someone who has covered -- covered capitol hill for a long time do you think this committee might get to that point where we could prevent future january 6's?

rachel: it's hey soared because there is a fragile and poll till political mix right now. i think part of what those reuters had was the element of surprise. much like 9-11. now we know from being in washington and anyone who visits here as part of their summer vacation, much harder to get close to the capit. so there are hardened defense that is exist now. but are there ongoing threats to democracy? very definitely. and if this committee can shine a light, can try to expose what really happened, and maybe some of those who were swept up in it, who are not those charged with what was happening there, but just swept up in it, even as observs from afar, maybe they will have a better understanding or insight about how fragile our democracy can be. yamiche: ryan, we had to have a justice reporter on this week. talk a bit about the fact that these people, some of them are being tracked down by online sleuths and some of them are being charged but we also heard officers call them terrorists. but they're not being charged with terrorism. ryan: yeah. smeep, what's interesting -- i

mean, what's interesting is people don't always have the best understanding of what domestic terrorism mns exactly. bacally what that means is something that's motivated by something here. when people designate between foreign terrorism and domestic terrorism, what they're really talking about is the underlying ideology. so with foreign terrorism, that essentially operationally boils down to being islamic extremeist groups. domestic terrorism is much more broad and not actually a specific law on the books that bans domestic terrorism outright. after someone is sentenced under another federal charge, they can be -- give a little bit of a boost in their sentencing. because you know, it's a dostic terrorism case. but that's not actually what they're charged with. so the justice department will be very judious when they use the term domestic terrorism because if you look back at our history obviously in the past -- and through the f.b.i. and throughout the history of the united state the term terrorism has been used in very awful ways against political enemies. so that's something that i think the justice department will be very careful about and makeure that they have the facts lined up before they come out and say this person is a terrorist.

yamiche: and before the hearing on tuesday, a group of republican lawmakers blamed speaker pelosi for the capitol attack. >> on january 6 these brave officers were put into a vulnerable and impossible position. because of the leadership at the top has failed. >> the american people deserve to know the truth that nancy pelosi bears responsibility as speaker. house for the tragedy that occurred on january 6. yamiche: now, to be clear, those claims are false. object january -- on january 6 the capitol police were responsible for the security of congress but ryan, i'm going to turn to you. what's the actual truth here? ryan: that's just not the case. there's a little bit of a distance between the oversight of the capitol police. there's an oversight board. and what they're not mentioning here is there are two components to congress. we all learned this in grade school. the house and there's the senate. together, those two organizations are in charge. the heads of those two organizations and who is in charge. senate and who is in charge of the senate at that point? that's mitch mcconnell. that's what the republicans are

leaving out that nancy pelosicy in charge of the entire capitol police system is just false. yamiche: uh-huh. and this afternoon, news broke that late last year, former president trump pressured top justice dartment officials to say that the election was corrupt even though there was no widespread fraud. according to the notes from the acting attorney general's deputy former president trump said, quote, just say that the election was corrupt. plus leave the rest to me and our congressmen. i'll come to ryan in a bit but rachel, what's the significance of this? you covered president trump right along with me former president trump right along with me and what does it mean that he's using almost every lever of power to try to overturn that election in 2020? rachel: yeah. what is interesting here is that what he was saying privately he was also saying out loud publicly. he was saying it right after the election. he was saying it in an effort to overturn his election loss. and what it is isust flat out lies. but it shows you the lengths that the former president was willing to go to try and convince everyone around him,

from his supporters to aides to people inside of the white house, to get on his side, to join his team, to have this idea of loyalty, to back him. and there's going to be outrage over it. we're seeing that outrage spill out on capitol hill and it's adding to this sort of desire to really investigate andet to the bottom of it. but again, all of this is becoming very political now. and where you have republicans that are eager to sort of turn the page and move on, eyeing the mid-term elections when they're trying to win back the house and the senate. yamiche: all of that and ryan, when i think about what rachel is pointing out here, there's this idea of who are we actually going to see? kelly talked a bit about subpoena power. we saw the d.o.j. weigh in a bit about what officials can and can't do. who do you think may or may not be subpoenaed, not only d.o.j. officials but if congressmen can be forced to testify? ryan: yeah. we're all going to relearn the name jeffrey rosen because everyone forgets who that was. [laughter] he was the acting attorney general, right? that's the one who will come back into this. that will be very important.

we all remember jeff sessions and william barr but this was in that key period right after william barr denied and came out and said the truth. that there was novidence of widespread fraud in the election. and this is who sort of took his place. so that was a very vulnerable time for the justice department. and i mean, that was just a really intense period. and sort of the wall held up a little bit there. but that was really an ongoing theme of the trump administration. if you look at it from the campaign, you look to the muller report and you look to the ukraine scandal, he dn't really respect that blind between the justice department and the white house. and i think that's something during the biden administration that there's been a lot of effort to sor of build back up again. that's very important to merrick garland to make sure that wall is in place to make sure there's not this direct political influence onion going criminal cases. yamiche: and kelly, ryan is talking about this through line. and i think -- not respecting the line between the d.o.j. and the white house is probably a nice way to put it. we saw this president over and over again want to see the d.o.j. act almost as his personal attorney according to a

lot of critics and to his own d.o.j. officials. i'm also struck by the idea in 2016 president trump, former president trump said i alone can fix it talking about the political system. what do you make of the idea that here he is saying i can fix this election in 2020 if you just give it to me and my friends in congress, i can figure this out. kelly: so much of donald trump's political identy was that notion that the force of his personality could do things. and he would run over traditional lines. legal lines. tradition in a sense about how you define things. like his trouble with impeachment with the ukrainian president. running over another line. he did that frequently. so much of what he did he did say out loud. these new notes related to those conversations are very similar to what we heard in the taped record whtion he was speaking -- recordings when he was speaking to state level election officials. he went to every door he could to try to get someone to join him in an official way to say, this election was corrupt. it was not corrupt.

and people began resigning as in william barr. and so the president was trying to use that power to convince people. and then this i think brings us to another point where when americans look at this, and say, is that what president should do, should be trying to pressure a career official at the department of justice? that's a question that even people who liked president trump or voted for president trump could ask themselves, is that what you would want after an election? and so the president to his final moment in office was trying to exert that kind of power. yamiche: and that -- that power trying to exert that power, there was -- there's this idea in my mind that this threat continues, ryan, that there's this ongoing wave of people who believe in president trump, and i'm also struck by the idea that officer daniel hodge said this was a white nationalist insurrection and thread hose two together and where -- and the threat that still continues here. ryan: yeah. race was a major component of this and overwhelmingly white crowd.

i think in terms of the threat that is facing -- i remember talking -- immediately after the elecon i spoke with an f.b.i. informant. this is less than a week afterwd and this is when trump was spreading all these lies about the stolen election. and what he told me he predicted exactly what was going to happ. he said that donald trump is walking these people to the line. and then when they do something about it, he's goi to say i didn't tell them to do that. and that's exactly what happened. because this is a situation where if you actually beeve that the election was stolen, if you actually believe that this was 17762.0, 1776 wasn't a peaceful event. that was a violent event and you believe the election is being stolen some people who believe that will do something about it and put themselves on the line. i think the predictability of this is something that is going to be a question that's going -- the f.b.i. will have to answer. the justice department will have to answer. and i think the commission is going to be very interested in that going forward. yamiche: the new capitol police chief islso preparing for this, too. he's maybe a couple of days in on the job. i talked to him this week and i asked him if he's concerned about ongoing threats and said he would be foolish if i wasn't. and he actually said he believed that january 6 could happen

again. something like that. but he thinks the department would be better prepared now than they were on january 6 that day. but they're on high alert still. yamiche: such a good point that they're on high alert. and that it's good that in some ways that they feel like they're more prepared. because obviously this threat still ntinues. now, i want to turn to the pandemic. on thursday, president biden announced incentives and requirements to get more americans vaccinated. president biden: we've made it our first and top priority to have available vaccines for every eligible american and that's never going to change as long as i'm here. it's a shame. it's such a shame to squander that blessing. yamiche: his remarks came after the c.d.c. recommended that vaccinated americans mask up again in areas with substantial or high infection rates. according to the c.d.c., nearly two thirds of the counties in america fall under that category. and many of thoselaces are in the south. yet partisan political battles remain at the center of this

pandemic. house minority leader kevin mccarthy said in a tweet that the mask changes at the capitol were not based on science and he said, quote, liberal government officials want to continue to live in a perpetual pandemic state. in response, speaker nancy pelosi had sharp words for mccarthy. >> to say that wearing a mask is not based on science i think is not wise. the republican party has been delinquent in embracing the science that people need to be vaccinated. yamiche: joining us now is dan diamond, national health reporteror "the washington post." thank you so much for being here, dan. now, an internal c.d.c. document revealed this week said that the delta variant appears to cause more severe illness, to be as contagious as the chicken pox and more likely to cause breakthrough infections all of those things scare me. what more do we know about the science behind the changes we saw this week and t possible

danger ahead? [no audio] yamiche: we're having a bit of a challenge with audio. so i'm going to go to kelly and we'll come back to you, dan. i'll come to you, kelly. the white house is obviously they're struggling with this. and they didn't want to be here. just -- in this month, we had president biden celebrating normalcy. what are you hearing from the white house and the way that they're -- kelly: the big difference is they came in with a mission to try to get vaccines out the door and into arms. and now this is really the first time they're grappling with a dynamic change in the virus itself. a new level of danger a. new level of threat. as the president left the white house on friday, going to cap david, should americans expect more restrictions and guidelines? he said in all probability. yamiche: uh-huh. uh-huh. and dan, i hear that you're back. 2021 so that would happen. so dan, i'll lead into you again. tell us about the science, the

danger ahead. dan: well, i don't know if i can critique the c.d.c. on messaging challenges if i'm having my own. [laughter] but the c.d.c. found yamiche out of massachusetts my post colleagues first reported was that the delta variant is really challenging. what we knew about the protection from vaccines. the vaccines still remain overall very protective. but in a study of several hundred infections and -- in provincetown it appeared first that vaccinated people were getting infected and spreading the virus to others and second, that the delta variant itself is moving more quickly than previous versions of the virus. if you're even looking across the country, the number of cases has gone surging up at the beginning of the month, around 12,000, 13,000 per day and the post average is 75,000 per day. so the c.d.c. looked at that guidance and made a very difficult call. about two months ago the agency had said if you are vaccinated, you don't need to wear a mask in

most places. now they're saying in most of those counties across the united states, where transmission is relatively high, masking remains a significant tactic before everyone gets vaccinated to make sure that people who are vaccinated or not vaccinated, they're both not spreading the virus. yamiche: and dan, i want to -- you talked to health officials in states who are literally begging people to be vaccinated. i wonder how much do you think people can be persuaded? what happens if we can't persuade more people and then long term, i'm also wondering can you talk a bit about vaccine mandates if that -- if the people can't be persuaded might vaccine mandates be the way to do this if you hear from experts? dan: so yamiche, i did speak with a california health secretary earlier this week who said we were in a phase of getting down on our knees asking people to take the shot. that has really slowed down. overall, about 60% of american adults are fully vaccinated. the rate has very slowly crept

up. so these incentives, be them vaccine lotteries, asking nicely, it just doesn't seem to work given that so many holdouts have been just set in their ways, set in their beliefs for a variety of reasons. whether they're not sure about the science of the vaccine, which i should say has been proven to be effective overall. and even in this new study c.d.c. found if you have a vaccine, significantly protective against the new delta variant. but the number of americans in states who are holding out, that has led california to require all health workers, all state workers to get vaccinated or prove that they're not testing positive for covid. we've seen president biden echo that. on a national level. they don't want to call it a mandate at the white house. mandate is a dirty word in politics for anyone who remembers the affordable care act. calling did a directive. -- calling it a directive. but same idea. you're going to have some pressures put on you to get vaccinated and if you're not vaccinated there will be

restrictions based on what you can do at work. yamiche: i want to come to you, rachel. because dan said something one, asking nicely doe't seem to be working. rachel: yeah. yamiche: but to mandate is seen as a bad word. when you think about the white house's strategy here. what are you hearing about how much politics and political backlash really is factoring into how the white house this about this? i should tell you sources tell me we're not thinking about politics. but obviously it's a thing. rachel: yeah. the white house they insieve that this is not -- insist that this is not political. the virus does not discriminate. but what we do know from looking at polling data also is vaccinations are along party lines and you have republicans in this country that are less likely to get vaccinated. and the white house continues to say that people listen most to the leaders in their own communities, right? and so when you have some republican leaders, not all, but some republican leaders that are pushing messages saying that these masks don't really matter. do not wear them. they're mocking some of the

c.d.c. guidances in states like florida. you heard it straight from the governor this week. that is going to be a challenge for this administration. and a significant one for president biden. i think he knows that overall the success of his administration is going to depend in large part the way that the american public views how he is handling this. the response of this virus. and that's a big reason why he called out senate minority leader mitch mcconnell this week praising him for encouraging americans to get vaccinated. yamiche: we have only 45 seconds left but i want to come to kelly and you know how to wrap something. infrastructure happened. but will this deal actually hold up? will it happen? kelly: the fact that we are as far as we are with a bipartisan agreement is worthy of praise for those involved. that is a big statement. now, getting it across the finish line, i think we're going to be talking about infrastructure many more times in the weeks ahead because it will be complicated and difficult.

but there is such a desire on the part of both republicans and democrats to get something done that i think that will -- is at the moment has the momentum. yamiche: and i have only about maybe 10 or 15 seconds but ryan, i want to pull you in really quickly. which is these -- what connects these two things that we were talking about tonight is the fact that there's a conspiracy and a threat still exists. what do you make of tt? ryan: yeah, i mean, you can see those ties. between the capitol attack and the pandemic like there's a lot of political leanings that are not believing what the government is saying here and don't trust in the government and that's a real problem i think for democracy going forward and for the nation's health. yamiche: well, thank you to dan to ryan and kelly and rachel for joining us and sharing your reporting and don't forget to tune into "the pbs newshour" on monday as we report onater wars, and how drought in the west is exacerbating the fight between farmers and -- in need of people and before we go tonight, waibt to send a speciaa special message to simone biles and the women's olympic gymnastics team. biles withdrew from competition for mental health reasons.

susana lee went on to win gold in the individual all-around. the team won silver. now, biles told nbc we hope america still loves us. it struck me so much, i want to say well, simone, we absolutely love you. we cherish you. we thank you for being an example of taking care of yourself during tough times. and we will continue the conversation on the washington week extra coming up next at 8:30 eastern time streaming live on our website, youtube and facebook. thank you so much for joining us forhis important conversation. i'm yamiche alcindor. good night from washington. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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batteries and first aid kit are a good start to learn more, visit safetyactioncenter.pge.com batteries and first aid kit are a good start ♪♪ announcer: this program was made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. it's so clear to me that we are all more than the worst thing we've ever done. i think if someone tells a lie - they're not just a liar... - mm-hmm. and they should not have to go through life branded only as a liar. even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. self-awareness is a funny thing. most of us think we are, but research says we really aren't. it's no wonder. looking hard at yourself or your community or your country takes guts. once in a generation, someone comes along and holds up a giant mirror