yamiche: domestic politics and foreign objects. >> i will not allow this nation to fall. yamiche: president biden focuses on the economy and pushes back on republican demands overt negotiations about the debt limit. >> america is not past its prime, it's just that our politicians are passed to theirs. yamiche: and nikki haley challenges former president trump the race to be the gop residential nominee. plus -- >> they don't know what they are, they >> haven't told anybody. >>i make no apologies for taking down that balloon. yamiche: president biden defense's handling of the chinese spy balloon and downing of three other unidentified aerial objects, next.

>> 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 customer service team can find one the fits you. to learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. >> additional funding is provided by -- koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation -- committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. sandra and carl delay-magnuson. rose hirschel and andy shreeves. robert and susan rosenbaum. 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. it has been ather busy week in

news and while we are a long way from 2024, we have a preview this week of the messaging and challees of the likely contenders. for his part, president biden kept up can present -- kept up criticism of republicans. >> some republican friends in the house are talking about taking the economy hostage over the full faith and credit of the united states. i will not negotiate whether or not we pay our debt. yamiche: biden has yet to formally announce he is running for reelection, and has posted the results of his latest physical. the doctor said biden remains healthy and is fit to successfully executehe duties of the presidency. meanwhile, former president donald trump's list of challenges got longer as he again runs for president. on tuesday, he got his first official challenger for the gop presidential nomination when

nikki haley formally announced she is entering the race. >> it is time for a new generation of leadership. you should know this about me -- i don't put up with bullies. and when you kick back, it hurts them more if you are wearing heels. yamiche: quite the announcement. trump did criticize the announcement in a way. on wednesday, he told foxnews digital, "i want her to follow her heart, even though sheade a commitment who she would never run against who she called the greatest president of her lifetime." meanwhile on thursday, a georgia grand jury avesta getting trump and allies attempts to overturn the 2020 election said more than one witness may have lied under oath. joining me for this and more is zolan kanno-youngs, scott macfarlane, eva mckend, and

ashley parker. what is the thinking win president -- with president biden leaning into the president going after entitlements while they are juggling a lot? zolan: it almost seems an unofficial start to campaign messaging for a likely reelection announcement, right? talking to people around the white house and allies of the biden administration, this is really going to be the messaging going forward. for a while, particularly in the absence of former president trump, who was an easy photo for them to contrast to their agenda with, they've been looking for a foe. anyway they got it just before the midterms by pointing to some of these certain propols coming from a limited number of members of the republican party. and by that i mean sunsetting medicare as well as social security. for those in the white house,

just putting a spotlight on those plans basically allows you to contrast what some say is big spending also programs they say will invest in making your quality of life better with those proposals that have been put forward. so a while republicans accused the biden white house of being irresponsible fiscally, the white house is saying look, our policies, investing in denver structure, capping insolent prices, will improve your day-to-day lives, and look at these limited proposals. numbers of the republican party would say the leaders of our party have already said that is off the table, that that doesn't mean the messaging politically will be going away, especially for the white house. yamiche: it's interesting, it has put republicans on the defense in the middle of where they are supposed to be leaning into the fact that they have control of the house. now you have senator rick scott on the senate side saying i have to redo my policy, i'm not going

to talk about cutting social security and medicare. talk to me a little bit about what you make of the reporting on this. scott: we are about two or three weeks past the deadline to raise the debt ceiling, we have reached the max and they are buying some time but we've hit the deadline, and in the time since we've spent weeks talking about social security and medicare. who is winning the messaging battle so far if that is the case? that's the playing field on which democrats want to have this argument. that has already knocked the republicans off message at a sensitive time because they are now controlling the u.s. house, they have this capacity and platform with which to control the message and resonate their priorities and instead they are talking internally about social security and medicare. in the early stages of what will be a very dangerous war over the debt ceiling, it appears democrats have the upper hand. >> this is a real dumpster fire for senator scott, he came up

with this plan a year ago and now he's having to edit it in public, it is embarrassing. it's not only a problem for him but for a lot of republicans. they have, in different iterations, i think maybe not explicitly but voiced some support of reforming entitlements. that in essence would be cutting social security and medicare. now they have to explain this. i think this conversion only becomes more pronounced and problematic for them as we get more focused on the debt ceiling. >> you have to keep in mind, pre-trump, reforming entitlements was on of the keep being a republican. you have statements nikki haley and ron desantis made, when speaker paul ryan was advocating for some of these cuts, being in favor of them, that former president trump is now leveraging as opposition against some of his republican or would be rivals.

it has shifted so quickly from entitlement reform to we will not touch any of this, which makes sense politically. if there's one thing we have learned it's that voters hate things being taken away from them, even voters who hated obamacare, when you tried to take away some of the health benefits, they did not like that. yamiche: it is a critical point when you think about what voters are think about and what will impact their lives. as we talk about health, there was the physical exam president biden put out my he was healthy and vigorous -- i hope my doctor would say that about me. are democrats worried that this is the possible achilles' heel for president biden. his numbers have been struggling but he is popular in his own party. talk about t decision to put this out and what the report might mean. zolan: when you ask about any topic, i would say this is the one they are the most defensive

about. yeah, it is a sensitive issue. they would say something that helped was the state of the union. i think many folks who plan on working on any potential campaign or allied with this white house saw him going back-and-forth with republicans in -- and a word i continued to hear was agile and it showed the energy was there. they are planning a traveling blitz in the weeks ahead as well. but look, you cannot deny that when you look at polling data, this is a concern among voters as well and americans. it does help that the physical did come out. i did some reporting this week gog through previous president's physicals, and it is important to say that it doesn't tell you about anything six years down the line. maybe one year down the line, and like any other patient, the person that has discretion about what information is made public

is the president. i don't know if just one single physical will eliminate all concerns around that issue. >> something that strikes me is the press secretary says sometimes they have a hard time keeping up with him but he's going to have to be out here, especially if he announces he is running in 2024, he will have to do a lot of what we saw him doing this week, speaking to union workers in places where he is very visible and touting the successes of the administration. yamiche: as we think about this, in some ways wanting to transition to the challenges we started talking about for former president trump, and scott, i was looking at the georgia grand jury report, trying to figure out, what is the news here. what do you think is the biggest take away of this report, given that we didn't learn that much other than we learned that at least one person was accused of lying before the grand jury and

essentially committing perjury. scott: they released part of the report, a college student stream, just three pages, don't give us anything more, you can double space at. that's what came out after the redaction ordered by the court. two key kernels, the grand jury believes at least one if not multiple witnesses lied and should be prosecuted for it, quite a statement to the district attorney of fulton county. also that it was clear to all grand juror's there was no widespread fraud that would have impacted the election. we knew that but at least the grand jury gives that more credibility. this investigation seems to be moving quickly. this has been measured in months , not in the years it may take this grand jury in washington. investigating january 6, or the many years that have gone into the new york investigation. in fulton county, there should be and there is intense focus on what comes next. yamiche: in some ways, what

comes next, we think about the primaries, you made a smart point to our producers that this isn't normal times. inking about nikki haley but also there are people still protesting nightly in support of the january 6 the fenton's. you have the georgia grand jury looking at efforts to overturn the 2020 election and then you have a republican base still leaning into those same lies. scott: there is vitriolic election to nihilism through america. we see it manifesting in washington, d.c. about a mile from the capital where there are number of january 6 defendants held awaiting trial. our rallies there every night, there are supporters, and some fenton's speaking with members of congress trying to get hearings and investigations to hear what they characterize is department of justice overreach or mistreatment of the defendants in jail, but they now have her platform, i'm at -- a republican majority with members who want to have hearings.

you have a candidate in the race who continues to deny the 2020 election results, has made that the forefront of his messaging and now you have other contenders who will have to answer the question, was the election legitimate and is president biden the duly elected u.s. president and i'm not sure what they are going to answer. zolan: i thought that was also an interesting finding of the limited report from the grand jury and georgia, just the fact that they did not think the election was fraudulent, they did not believe those claims, that was one of the findings. there were, when you look at the stats of fulton county, we obviously don't know but there is a chance that some of them would be trump supporters. that isn't good news for the president and his allies that you could have trump supporters on that grand jury that still don't believe these fraudulent claims. >> this is a fascinating moment

for the former president the republican primary. trump is as weak as he has ever been in certain ways. i just spent a couple of weeks, a couple of days -- a couple of weeks ago, i spent a couple of days in pennsylvania talking with trump voters, in 2016 and many of them again in 2020 although not all of them. when you ask them who they want to be the republican nominee in 2020 four, a lot of them say i personally like trump, i thought he did a great job that i would rather see someone else because i just think -- i don't blame trump, they say the mediaas been unfair, the democrats are so unfair, some other voters think he is too divisive, so i would prefer someone who has a better chance of winning. so there is the strong lane for a challenger, but the flipside, they all, with a few exceptions, if he runs again, i will 100% support him. he has this floor he will not fall behind, which makes him

potent, but there are also people looking for something new in the question is, do republicans re-create 2016 where there are 16 challgers, trump gets his early 5% and everyone else gets 7%, 50%, splits the vote and he wins again, or does the field clear and we see trump -desantis, trump-haley? >> 35% is as good as 100% because you get all of the delegates with a smaller plurality. yamiche: i want to ask you, talk to me about nikki haley and especially with this balancing act, she's talking about how she wants to be recognized as the daughter of indian immigrants, she wants to talk about the fact that she is a woman but she is against identity politics, she's going after the 6019 project and the consequences of slavery. she's also not going after trump directly, but saying at one point we should go past the

"stale names of the past." eva: she wants all of the things be at [laughter] -- all of the things. [laughter] she tried to make it a generational argument, saying she doesn't kick sideways, she kicks forward and she will focus her energy on attacks against president biden. she says she will not evoke identity politics but she did elevate a lot of things in her remarks, the proud daughter of immigrants as well as a woman. the most fascinating i think part of her rollout to me is this real emphasis on america, her argument that america is not a racist country. i have covered many conservative, republican rallies, most recently a lot of herschel walker rallies in georgia last year, and unprompted, conservatives will say to me, i won't even be asking them about race, and they will say republicans are not racist, conservatives are not racist, they just want me to know that. nikki haley i think was speaking

to those sensibilities and that anxiety. i think she's probably smart to make it a central focus of her campaign because it really does appeal i think to a significant amount of white conservatives. >> she also used it to attack president biden and the current white house, at one point implying president biden said the country is racist, just a fact check, he refused to say that. then he quickly went into the history of jim crow and what have you. she mentioned that as well. yamiche: what's interesting also, some of the bigger names we've been talking about, ron desantis, mike pence, maybe even mike pompeo, they haven't jumped into this race. what do you think that means for the way things are shaping up? scott: it just feels like the more lanes to get field, --

filled, the more advantageous the president trump. no matter how many names, you divi this, the more slices in the pie, the more impressing that 35% is. it's not even a matter of who, it is a matter of how many i can't imagine donald trump trying to scare people off at this point because it could be the best thing to happen to his calculus politically. yamiche: yeah. i want to turn to another subject we can't get away from, on thursday president biden gave a speech on the shooting down of a chinese spy balloon and three other unidentified objects while defending his decisions. the president said the three objects were probably not used for spying. >> i am directing my team to come back to me with sharper rules to distinguish between those likely to pose safety and security risks, but make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the safety and

security of the american people, i will take it down. yamiche: we can get away from this topic. president biden spoke out because have been criticism from democrats and republicans. why did he decide to speak up now? zolan: there was criticism building, not just the first week of this, the white house not being aggressive enough, you allowed this chinese spy balloon to go across the country, waited too long, and then criticism started to shift and more people came in and now today i heard questions in the briefing room of was there possible overreaction in shooting down these other two objects that we don't know what they are? there was a report i saw, a hobby club says maybe it was one of my handmade balloons in illinois, we don't know if that's confirmed. [laughter] john kirby said he read that report and cannot confirm. the u.s. still doesn't know exactly what these materials

are. you saw members of congress start to join in in really questioning the ambiguity around the strategy. i think what hangs over this in a way is one, you do have republicans trying to show they are more hawkish on china and that the white house is not being aggressive enough when it comes to competition with china, but two, you have this new dynamic and it comes to this competition between these two superpowers of this thing called near space, which is above us aware there really are no borders, really are no lines depicting front sovereign countries, where it is almost a free-for-all of military devices at this point. i think that will be a question going forward of how members of congress go after this and trying to establish rules. eva: the politics of this especially when we think about the president and president

xi not wanting to get to adversarial. ashley we saw the vice president saying this balloon was not helpful, that was obvious. the flipside had president biden thing i don't think president xi wants to blow up this relationship. they have an incentive to be competitors, to be geopolitical foes but to try to work together. eva: what we also saw, is this president and i think the administration not wanting to be bullied and come forward before they were ready, before they knew what they were talking about. imagine if the last week of january he was out here making declarative statements and he turned out to be wrong. i think that's what we saw, this balancing act in real time. scott: i think we saw a separation between the spy balloon and the ufos.

my kids think daddies work is boring until i mentioned uncovering ufo. i got some credibility with the kids. congress has reverted to its more comfortable position, whereby the end of the week when they recognized these other three flying objects were not necessarily danger to society, they got to complain about process which congress loves to do. they did not get the information as quickly as they felt they were entitled to it and that also -- that always rankles congress. yamiche: obviously the topic we could talk about a while, but before the show ends, i want to recognize that senator john fetterman, he has disclosed he will be treated for clinical depression. he is in my heart because he's had to deal with so much. politics aside, has survived a stroke. what you make that he is disclosing this and the challenges? scott: i think he made the

announcement to reduce the stigma that prevents people from getting the care they need. two numbers jump out at me. the national institute of health says 2 million america had a depressive episode in 2020, and one in three patients recovering from a stroke have suffered depression. those numbers make clear that john fterman is joining publicly a very large club of americans. yamiche: it is in some ways striking when he is saying i'm having problems in a city where a lot of people don't say that. a lot of elected officials have problems and they don't talk out it. ashley: it is very gen z of him to actively seek the mental help he needs. you don't see a lot of politicians doing that but i think that's why in a bipartisan way, i was struck by what everyone responded to this, or almost everyone, with empathy, words like this is brave, they appreciate him coming forward

and getting the help he needs. to the statistics that were cited, this is something a lot of people grapple with daily and if -- daily in a private way. and i think they appreciate feeling less alone. he's helping himself and also a lot of other people. zolan: to underscore, he has access to care. how hard is it to get on the waitlist for a therapist? how hard is it to get access for your insurance to pay for mental health care coverage? it underscores that john fetterman is fortunately getting the access he needs. eva: having covered him a little bit in yeary and pittsburgh during the election, he was accessible. that's constantly what i heard from voters, they felt like they could connect with him regardless of party. they sell themselves and him. i think him disclosing that he has depression is just an extension of that accessibility,

voters feeling as though he is within reach. yamiche: him really leaning into the idea that he wants to tell people and be transparent about what he's dealing with, i say it again, i will think about his family and i hope he gets all of the help he needs. we have to leave it there for now. they could to my panel for joining us and sharing your reporting on a number of talk it -- of topics. forget to watch pbs news week and on saturday as ukraine prepares to mark the first anniversary of the russian invasion. i am yamiche alcindor. good night from washington. >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no contract wireless plans to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team can help find the plan that fits you. to learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. >> additional funding is provided by -- koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation -- committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

sandra and carl delay-magnuson. rose hirschel and andy shreeves. robert and susan rosenbaum. the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

(narrator) the royal family and the tabloid press... (camera shutters clicking) ...have had a long and complicated relationship. (dramatic music) ♪ sometimes they're friends. ♪ and sometimes they're not. (reporter) this is harassment and must stop. ♪ (narrator) this is the inside story of that fascinating relationship of h the editors and copywriters got their biggest royal scoops and most iconic front pages. and how creating them had the power to re-shape public opinion. (male) why should news reporters and photographers hound people? (camera shutter clicks) (narrator) this time, a group of royals who have grown up much more aware of the power of the press. (camera shutter clicking)