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tv   MTP Daily  MSNBC  February 19, 2021 10:00am-11:00am PST

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serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. tremfya®. emerge tremfyant™ janssen can help you explore cost support options. if it's friday, the current president ramps up his efforts to turn the page on his predecessor as the biden administration looks to restart talks with iran, reestablish american credibility on the world stage, reassure our allies and undo what he perceives as the damage of the last four years. can democrats make a deal? we'll speak with the chairman of the house democratic caucus. the house pushes ahead with some truly massive plans on covid relief, immigration and infrastructure. while power has been
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restored for millions, the nightmare is not over in texas because people still do not have access to clean water and in some cases any water. president biden is hoping to visit the state soon as texas officials, including ted cruz are facing intense criticism. welcome to friday. it's "meet the press daily." i'm chuck todd. president biden is ramping up his efforts to roll back pillars of president trump's america first foreign policy. his administration has offered to restart talks with iran that former president trump pulled us out of. they are pledging billions to help vaccinate folks in poorer countries. today the biden administration is formally rejoining the paris
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climate agreement. president biden spoke to world leaders at a virtual g-7 at pair of global summits. his public remarks did not mention former president trump by name but in many ways he didn't need to do that. >> america is back. we're looking forward. the united states is fully committed to our nato alliance. i know the past few years have strained and tested our transatlantic relationship but the united states is determined, determined to reengage with europe. democracy doesn't happy accident. we have to defend it, fight for it. strengthen it. renew it. the last four years have been hard. europe and the united states have to lead with confidence once more. >> all of this caps off a week where the white house was clearly looking to aggressively turn the page on the trump era following his senate acquittal six days ago.
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the white house is pushing ahead with nearly $2 trillion in covid relief. they unveiled legislation over overhauling our immigration system. there's talks on a multitrillion dollar infrastructure package. they want to move on from trump, as do many americans. there's one slice that doesn't. republicans are by in large signaling they are not ready to leave trump. the number two republican in the senate, john thune is frustrated about that. in his first interview he spoke about republican efforts to punish and censure members of trump flp was a strong case made by the house impeachment managers. people could come to different conclusions. if we're going to criticize the media on the left for cancel culture, then we can't be doing that ourselves. bottom line, it's ban brutal couple of weeks for the republican party as a whole. think about the following. their biggest donor and most influnts shl communicator have passed away.
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mcconnell and trump are feuding over the party's future. texas, the unofficial capital is in crisis. in fact, the entire deregulation mind set is now under a microscope which is also embroiled ted cruz in his own self-made mess. joining me now from the white house is nbc chief white house correspondent. peter, let me start with you. all week long we have seen different ways and really since the 20th, different ways where the biden administration is subtle and not so subtle, they are turning the page from the trump era. today was foreign policy way in a big way between the clmate accord and iran. >> reporter: donald trump's name was not mentioned but he was the person being put in the rear rue
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view mirror. no more america first. it's america is back. from a voice that is familiar as joe biden took the virtual tour around the globe for speaking to the g7 virtually and doing the munich security conference as well where the phrase so different from the past administration focused on multi-lateralism, on alliances and the like. seeing the need for partnership on so many issues on the fight against covid-19 as you noted with billions of dollars being committed by the u.s. to the global vaccine effort. on cyber hacking, on arms control and a variety of other issues beyond that. it was so familiar is donald trump would travel overseas that he never really would commit himself to article five of nato that allies would back one another up and joe biden said we are back and we are committed to these things. in many ways he acknowledged there's been damage done and they will try to sort of bridge this gap that's been created over the course of the last several years but casting it as
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an anomaly saying the u.s. is committed to these alliances overseas. >> i want to pick up on the anomaly issue. i think quite a few european leaders and diplomats are not running -- while happy about the development of trading trump for biden and getting biden now, they're not racing back into the arms of america for fear that maybe it's only temporary and a trump party two shows up again. >> reporter: i think you're right. that's the issue of trust which joe biden himself alluded to today that you need to rebuild that trust with so many of these foreign allies overseas right now. it's a challenge as it relates to places like iran, given the iran nuclear deal and the headline it's making with the u.s. recommitting itself to reengaging in that process even as it's likely not to pick up where they left off. there's other challenges with iran via proxies.
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destabilizing that region. president biden never mentioning president putin. he just called him putin by his last name. >> it's an interesting challenge. i think they want to move on from trump. they don't want to linger on trump. at the same time, it's hard to work with the republican party that mostly also is not ready to move on from trump. clearly, mcconnell and thune are but they are more alone than i think the biden folks had hoped. >> that's right. what we saw from president biden was also a president who is doing damage control, to be frank. this is a president talking about covid or climate change or the global economy or china or russia is taking completely different stances than president
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trump and he is looking at european allies and other countries globally and they are still wondering what just happened for the last four years. is what happened in the last four years an anomaly. is this what america is? is this america's values? when i push biden administration officials on that point, they told me what biden wanted to do today was say the last four years were not a reflection of american values and he wants to do some long term things that will last past his presidency. when you move to the republicans this is party that is much more a party of trump. talking to state and local officials for a story i'm doing tonight for pbs news hour. you can hear president trump and his agenda is the north star for the majority of republicans around this country. there's the mitch mcconnell and others who have been critical of president trump but for the vast majority of the party, 74 million people even in the aftermath of january 6th they are still sticking with trump.
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it's clear they are not only angry at washington republicans but they are happy to krshlgs -- censure. >> sometimes those leaks are intentional and sometimes they aren't. was that an intentional leak to send the message to the hill or not? >> it's off the thing to ask. what leaked is what president biden said himself. they didn't minimum wage would make it into the bill. he said we have lawyers looking
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at this. it's not easy and not time to count this out. minimum wage is a big sticking point here. it's something that progressive democrats are going to be angry about if it doesn't make it into the bill. >> i'm guessing a lot of -- some of those that are undecided on this are hoping the senate parliamentarian makes the decision for them. getting a start. thank you both. as peter just reported the biden administration says it's ready to hold talks with iran. the question is what does this mean? joining me is richard haas. the biden administration to walk back in. how should we read this decision? looks to me like they want to
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buy more time to see what happens to the politics of this inside iran, but what say you? >> i think there's that. the iranians have an election this june. also the administration they believe they don't have a lot to lose. it is possible though it's something of a long shot to get back into the 2015 agreement. it will take an awful lot of diplomacy and sequencing and compromise with iran to get back there. it's better for the united states to have tried to. who has more leverage here. on one hand, might be the only american president iran can negotiate with.
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to me it's as if biden has a lot more leverage. >> he doesn't need congress. going back into the sanctions hurting iran drastically. i think the united states has considerable leverage. we do not want to see iran continuing to go down the path its on. they are enriching uranium. they are shrinking the time they need to get a nuclear weapon if they decide to sprint to that point. that's where iran can push back. >> is it pretty clear now that any new iran deal will be tougher than the original one? >> no. you could have the old agreement which has all sorts of so called sunset provisions where parts of
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it begin to expire over the next five or ten years. that's one of the biggest flaws with the agreement. i think from the biden administration point of view, they would just like to ice this problem for four or eight years. >> at the timing of phone calls, what should be made of the timing of president biden waiting as long as he did to call prime minister netanyahu? is more being made of it than it should or is the biden administration sending a message? >> you don't not call the leader and it's not sending a message. i think the united states, this
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administration does not see eye to eye with netanyahu on the palestinian issue, with saudi arabia and the crown prince. i think for any number of reasons this administration is pushing back and a statement that the middle east is not going to dominate u.s. foreign policy going forward to the degree it has over the last three decades. >> do you think, what do you make of the possibility that the president mbs but only the king in saudi arabia. real power and authority so whether the president engages mbs, the crown prince, the united states one way or the other is going to have to. even if he is radioactive because of his role in the killing of mr. khashoggi and
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we're going to know more. i think it's next week that the intelligence community is going to release its report on just that. >> financial sanctions don't mablg sense. it might be a long time before mbs sets foot in the oval office again. >> richard, great to get your expertise. thank you. >> thank you, chuck. up ahead, covid relief. immigration reform. infrastructure.
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the biden agenda increasingly ambitious. how much of it is doable? i'll ask the chair of the house democrat caucus, next. later, the ongoing crisis in texas. while the power is slowly returning, water is not. millions are still under boil water advisories and that's if you got the water flowing through your pipes. we'll talk to the mayor of austin where more than half of that city has no water right now. and it's a long flight too. once we get there, we will need... buttercup! ♪ voiceover: riders. wanderers on the road of life. the journey is why they ride. when the road is all you need, there is no destination. uh, i-i'm actually just going to get an iced coffee. well, she may have a destination this one time, but usually -- no, i-i usually have a destination. yeah, but most of the time, her destination is freedom. nope, just the coffee shop.
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welcome back. the biden administration tom legislative priority right now is that 1.9 trillion dollar covid relief bill. they don't want to talk about what comes next until they get to the finish line. after that comes infrastructure and clean energy and domestic manufacturing and child and elder care and immigration reform and perhaps the minimum wage, if that does make it into the covid relief bill.
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the biden agenda is long. democrats will need to make some decisions on where they want to give if they want to get many of these things done with narrow majority. joining me is the chair of the democratic house caucus. first of all, let's talk minimum wage. he's made realistic punditry. he said it's unlikely to make it into this package. is that your understanding of where things are headed is this unlikely to be in the package? >> the house will move next week on the american rescue plan. it's my understanding and i support the notion we'll include an increase in the minimum wage
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to $15 per hour. the reality is that the american people are struggling in so many ways through this pandemic and the fact we have a $7.25 minimum wage is shameful in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. what happens in the senate is the senate to decide in the context of reconciliation and the byrd rule. i think what president biden may have been expressing given his familiarity with the senate, is that it's uncertainty in that chamber but i'm confident that we're going to move forward and include it in our version of the package. >> i'm kier yous, i've heard a lot of democrats make the case to me, there's going to be republicans that vote for this. there are plenty of republicans when this gets put on the floor. why not make it stand alone? >> with respect to the $15
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minimum wage? >> yeah. why not make it stand alone? you might smoke out more republican support. is there a way to smoke out support by making it a stand alone? >> i think we have one objective as set by president biden, speaker pelosi and leader schumer which is to provide comprehensive, continuing and compassionate relief to american people in the context of a once in a century pandemic. that require a once in a century congressional response. that's what the american rescue plan is all about. increasing the totality of the direct payment survival checks
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to $2,000 per person and dealing with homelessness and food insecurity and unemployment and all of these various things. in the context of that comprehensive response, i think it makes sense to include the 15 dollar minimum wage increase but that's going to be subject to parliamentarian over in the senate. >> if they say no, how quickly do you introduce the minimum wage as a separate bill? >> that will be a decision that the caucus will have to make collectively. there's such a broad agenda. there's so many problems. the gop test where $2 trillion wasted. 83% of the benefits went to be wealthiest 1%. we'll benefit the working families, middle class families.
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certainly in the context of the $15 minimum wage, that falls into that category. major transportation and infrastructure falls. >> i got you. let me bring up immigration. on the day the coprehensive bill was introduced, dreamers would receive their green cards immediately. on the day this was introduced, there was also signal sent by the leadership and in your chamber and by the white house that said, look, there was realism there that this bill is a menu for now. meaning this is everything we want but we're willing to do it piece by piece.
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is that a fair aassessment? >> i think all options are on the table. we have great confidence in linda sanchez who will be leading the charge in the house and senator menendez leading in the senate. immigration has been elusive for decades. democratic presidents and republican presidents have tried. we have seen bipartisan support for it in the senate as recently as 2013. we have never been able to get it over the finish line. it's so critically important for economy, for our values as a nation of immigrants to continue to deal with things in a smart way such as increasing border security, using technology as well as countries.
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>> very quickly, capitol police suspended issues officers with pay following january 6th. at the same time as we learned during the impeachment trial so many heroic moments by the capitol police. i'm curcurious, do you feel safn the capitol when you're there? >> i do feel safe in the capitol. i'm thankful for those hard working men and women of the capitol police who have been working incredibly hard. working extended shifts since the january 6th insurrection and fought valiantly to protect us and avoid an even greater tragedy. there are issues that need to be worked through. we need a comprehensive evaluation and analysis of what happened, why it happened and how do we stop it from ever happening again. i'm thankful the speaker will move aggressively forward on
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a 9/11 style commission and as she has indicated, we have to do it in a bipartisan way so it has the full support of the congress and the american people so we can provide answers and deal with this tragedy, an american tragedy that should never happen again. >> there's no doubt. that trust needs to be built on that one. always appreciate you coming on and sharing your views with us. thank you, sir. >> thank you. up ahead, in it can, one crisis has led to another. half of state is dealing with serious water issues. it's not clear how soon that can be fixed. but we are hoping things will pick up by q3. yeah...uh... doug? sorry about that. umm... what...its...um... you alright? [sigh] [ding] never settle with power e*trade. it has powerful, easy-to-use tools
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by over 200 indoor and outdoor allergens. try claritin cool mint chewabls for powerful allergy relief plus a cooling sensation. live claritin clear. welcome back. power is being restored to much of texas. that's the good news but the crisis cause by this week's winter weather is far from over. ercot, which is the private
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company that manages texas' power grid says it's generating enough power to resume normal operationing conditions but more than 14 million texans are being told to boil tap water bauds of burst pipes and water mains. that's if your tap is working. firefighters in san antonio working to contain this apartment fire because of frozen hydrants. president biden says he hopes to travel to texas next week to assess the devastation firsthand as long as the trip doesn't create too much of a burden for authorities and residents. in a moment i'll speak with the mayor of austin, texas where about 70% of the city has no water now. you're at a water distribution center. what are you hearing from residents as you talk to them as they come by? >> reporter: yeah, chuck, now i'm in houston at this massive
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water distribution effort. people were waiting outside of this site for hours in lines in order to come in here and make sure they got case of water. we're seeing volunteers bring about two or three cases in the trunk. people don't have safe drijing water. some cases they don't have any water coming out of their faucets at all. this is harming people in communities of color and lower income neighborhoods. these are the folks who don't have enough resources to keep coming up with plan b or c or d. i want to share the story of a woman who i met just the other day. her name is cheryl walker. she lives in one of these
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affordable housing come pleks -- complexes if houston. listen to this. >> you know, somebody responsible for this. somebody need to pay for it. you got people dying out here. you got hypothermia dying. people's houses all busted up because the pipes busted. i'm surprised mine didn't bust. the lady behind me hers bust. over here in the apartments. >> reporter: chuck, you can hear just how upset she is at this point. this isn't just a one week crisis. these are the same neighborhoods that have been hit hard by covid for the past year and now they have shivered through the week and in the case of cheryl, she has no water at her home, chuck. >> it's only been less than two years since the massive
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hurricane and flooding. it's been impact after impact to many communities in houston. >> reporter: they can't catch a break. >> no, they can't. with me now is the mayor of austin. thanks for coming on. i want to start with this water situation. i've talked to some folks down in austin who their frustration about it is, they're not getting any information about, okay, when is restoration coming. what is the situation. it seems as if residents have a grasp of power situation but people feel they don't have a grasp on the water situation. what can you do to help explain the time line here? >> we don't have any good answers because we can't give people an exact time when the water will come back. we don't know until things thaw exactly what is the status of
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the pipes in the city. we fear that there's going to be real significant breakage of pipes following from the frozen situation that we have for the last week. we have every crew out working on this. we're going to bring it up just as rapidly as we can. we're lobbying the state right now to wave some of the regulation so we can speed up the process of recovery on the the back end and we're continuing to give updates to our community as we get additional information. i wish we could tell people when but we know it's not going to be tomorrow or the next day. we just don't know how long. >> you say you're having a hard time getting the extent of the damage. is that just due to the power situation? is it due to how many pipes burst? you're not sure whether they are individual house pipes causing
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this problem or bigger. what is made assessing the situation difficult? >> it's the pipes at this point because we have so much of our city that's frozen given the power outages that we had for the prior week. one of the things that precipitated the water issue in austin is when the power went down, we lost functioning one of our water treatment plants, the largest one. that's now back online. we're producing water at the greatest rates we possibly can. we're filling back up the reservoirs which were depleted. we have gone to the community to ask for conservation and now producing water at a greater rate than we're utilizing it. at this point, we don't know how long it's going to take to have the integrity in the system. it's apparent that there's a significant number of breaks. >> obviously, there's going be
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many homeowners that need help with fixing pipes. there's going be many buildings, cities, municipalities. is that been your ask of the federal government which is basically more hands on deck in order to deal with this? >> we're asking for supplies. we have many gallons -- many gallons of water that are arriving to the city today. we had to ship that in from six states in the southeast part of the country. we have gone to fema asking for direct assistance and business ordinary reason and prudence and property owners to make the repair. to the piping on their properties. that would be assistance that would be real helpful now too. >> i want to get your reaction
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to something rick perry said as the debate occurs about whether this was a preventible crisis or not. here is what he said. >> this was a black swan event, if you will. it was a one of a kind. maybe the only type of event in a hundred years. we should have been recognizing that we had not weatherized properly our energy supply generation companies out there. some of the things that people have talked about is that the federal government should come in and regulate the texas grid. i think that's an overreach. let's find out what happened. >> i'm curious. he's not ready to concede that this was a regulatory failure. what say you? >> it was absolutely a regulatory failure. this is a condition that's
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pretty unusual, but i seen it happen three times. we in texas were protected against hot weather but this cold weather, we were not prepared for it. our regulatory system right now is almost nonexistent. it's built around producing power at the lowest possible cost. that's whereincentives are directed. there is no incentives for these energy producers around the state to buy the insurance policy associated with hardening our systems for the low temperatures. that's a regulatory issue. we have to build in the incentives or the rules or requirements to harden our system better. it has to happen going forward so this doesn't happen again. >> are you an advocate of joining the national grid at this point? anything less is a mistake? >> i don't know the answer to
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that. i know there's a lot of questions that we have. we need answers. the truth is, right now i'm focused on trying to get water and food to everybody in my city. that's where the attention is. >> totally get that. we got plenty of time for the after action. right now we're still in the action. good luck to you. we hope that water can get restored asap. up next, the latest on the covid fight, including vaccine testing beginning for one of the most vulnerable groups. keep it here. e groups keep it here psst! psst! allergies don't have to be scary. spraying flonase daily stops your body from overreacting to allergens all season long. psst! psst! you're good. ♪ limu emu & doug ♪ hey limu! [ squawks ] how great is it that we get to tell everybody how liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need? i mean it... oh, sorry...
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backlog in all 50 states delaying the distribution of 6 million covid vaccines. they expect the backlog doses will be delivered by next week. as president biden is expected to landfully moment in michigan where he will visit a pfizer va facility, the company has started a clinical vaccination trial of pregnant women. a group that's so far been excluded for covid vaccine research. joining me now is dr. paul offit. he's a practicing physician and the director of the vaccine education center at the children's hospital in philadelphia. let me start with the news that, i think the pfizer, more we're learning about the pfizer vaccine, the idea of one dose and how effective it is. what does this mean and what could this mean for vaccine coverage? >> it was a period of time three weeks between when you got the
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first dose and the second dose that some people got sick. were now more likely to have gotten sick. you were more likely to have gotten sick if you got the placebo. you know after you got the second dose you hat a dramatic boost in neutralizing antibodies. you also know that you had the kind of immune cells that suggest that you would have immunological memory. this is a two dose vaccine. you'll get better, longer lasting immunity. i worry some people are sitting that analysis of the data and thinking one dose good enough. it's not good enough. >> is the better way to use this discovery spacing out when you get the second dose.
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where you sort of could stretch things out where this could help. would you feel comfortable in we went to a six-week gap between doses or would you fear that people, too many people would forget to get their second dose? >> i think the cdc understanding that we have limited amounts of vaccine have said that. they said you can get the second dose six weeks after the first dose which is three weeks long every than the pfizer. that's not a big deal. people will fall between the cracks and it will be much longer than six weeks. then you have a partially immune niezed population which is not what you want. >> our understanding, i know andy said that we're getting all of the vaccine companies are already working on dealing with the new variant, particularly the south african one. the likelihood that we're all
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going to get a booster vaccine here, is that something that's more likely to happen this year. is it something more of a down the road too soon to tell? >> too soon to tell. here is where the line gets crossed. if you see people who have disease induced immunity or people who are fully vaccinated that when infected with one of these variants is hospitalized or worse. then i think a line has been crossed. that line hasn't been crossed yet. it's clear the vaccines will not work as well against the south african variant. it does work well enough to keep you out of the hospital and out of the morgue which is what you want. we'll see whether or not we cross that line. if that's true, then we'll have to have second generation vaccines that include that resistant variant. >> what is the time line on having an effective vaccine for children under 16.
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>> those studies are being done now. i think early summer we would have the kind of data that would answer the question. it's not the big efficacy trials you saw with the initial pfizer moderna vaccines. make sure you get the dose rite and the immine response that will be protective. i think they can be done much more quickly. >> in this study with pregnant women that pfizer is doing, what is it that you'll be looking for to know that it is safe? >> you want to make sure it's safe for both the woman as well as for her unborn child. the cdc is interesting here. what they normally do when you don't have stuies that include pregnant women is they say
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contraindicated for pregnant women. they said a pregnant woman could reasonaby choose to get this. they say if you're pregnant, you're much more likely to suffer severe infection with this virus than if you're a woman of the same age that's not pregnant. they said, you can get it if you want. we encourage pregnant women to get this vaccine. >> appreciate you helping us out with -- i couldn't call it vaccine 101. i think we have graduated to the sec year class at this point but we really appreciate your expertise on this. >> thank you. >> hopefully more will come. coming up, we're going to introduce you to a group of people trying to pioneer a community based approach in order to get more black americans comfortable with the vaccine and the o get vaccinated faster. check out our interactive state by state guide to figure out when and where you can receive
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your covid vaccine. find out where you are on the list. visit planyourvaccine.com to learn more. we'll be right back. urvaccine.co learn more we'll be right bac k. thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer, which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for postmenopausal women or for men with hr+/her2- metastatic breast cancer, as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole, and shrank tumors in over half of patients. patients taking ibrance can develop low white blood cell counts, which may cause serious infections that can lead to death. ibrance may cause severe inflammation of the lungs that can lead to death. tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening symptoms, including trouble breathing, shortness of breath, cough, or chest pain. before taking ibrance, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills,
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welcome back. the racial discrepancies in who is getting the coronavirus vaccines continues to be a big issue and one where we're continuing to shine a spotlight on. according to data from the cdc, black americans make up over 13% of the u.s. population but have only received 6% of the administered doses. meaning the vaccines are not reaching the communities hardest hit by the pandemic though there is fear that some of this may be folks a little nervous about taking the vaccine. chris jansing is at florida a&m university, part of a task force creating a model for what they hope will help underserved communities that can be used
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around the country. chris, what have you learned? >> reporter: there is a major push here to get vaccines into the arms of folks who are in these underserved communities. i don't have to tell you this here in florida, there has been a lot of frustration in the black community with the way the state government halves handled all of this. the lack of resources. there is also recognition that it will take a little while for the biden administration to get up to speed. so they formed this task force and it is very specific who is on it. it is the president of this hbcu, it is leaders in the medical community who work particularly in community clinics. and it is lot of black church lead here's. fewer than 10% of black have been vaccinated in this county and statewide fewer than 5%. so they realize they have to go to people where they are, speak their language, from people who they know and who they trust.
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i had a long conversation with one of those leaders, the reverend dr. holmes, who told me the message is we're going to do what we can do and we want and hope that you, the government, will get on board. take a listen. >> what i'm not going to do is fight against the government per se but fight against this pandemic. and to say to the government you cannot do it by yourself. we have a group of leading citizens across the state of florida, have identified the trusted venues and voices that are saying let's get this done. why not work with us, why not work together. the government is not the solution. the community is the solution to dealing with this pandemic. >> reporter: and they have already had some success with the trusted venues part of it and the trusted voices come along with that. there was supposed to be a big vaccine clinic here today. unfortunately because of the
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weather, the doses didn't come in, so they will do it next week. they are also doing it at hbcus all across the state, they have identified scores of churches around the state where they will have people in, they will do vaccine clinics. there is another key part of this, and it really shows you how committed they are, thelmes community are going to raise a quarter of a million dollars to buy a mobile clinic, and that is part of the plan from the biden administration, their message is we can't wait for the government to do this stuff. we have to do it now. and we believe that if we show how a community partner ship can work with the state and federal government, it can be a model if other places. as he put it, people are dying, we just don't have the time. so hopefully next week they will get this clinic up and running. elsewhere there is always that question of will we have enough doses. but they frankly are not surprised by the lack of cooperation that they are
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getting from the state government, but they are frustrated and so they decide decideed to move on their own. >> the fact that the government hasn't been focused on this issue because they also have to worry about skepticism, it has been way too late. so no wonder that community leaders have had to take matters into their own hands. chris jansing in tallahassee, thank you. and i'll quickly end with a story that i'm excited about and a little proof that perseverance pays off. >> touchdown confirmed. safely on the surface of mars. >> first of all, i love the word perseverance. i always say how are you doing today? i'm persevering. anyway, the rover named percent "perseverance" stuck the landing. it is a much bigger rover than we've sent before.
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the seven most consequential minutes were called seven minutes of terror. it marks the start of the most ambitious effort yet to find out whether there was or is life on mars. and i'm particularly excited about that little helicopter that this rover also has. thank all for being with us this hour. we'll be back monday with press. sunday on meet the press, it is covid and schools. covid and sch. what are you doing? art class. it's abstract expressionism. when you start with a better hot dog from oscar mayer, you can do no wrong. it's all for the love of hot dogs. to support a strong immune system, your body needs routine. centrum helps your immune defenses every day, with vitamin c, d and zinc. season, after season. ace your immune support, with centrum.
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good afternoon. i'm katy tur. a very busy friday. there is a lot happening live in in next hour. president biden is set to tour the pfizer plant in michigan where the covid vaccine is made and shipped across america. that happens a couple minutes from now and we'll bring it to you when it does. and as the power starts to flicker back on in texas, it is shining a

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