house of cards, when the killer tells his wife. >> the best way to succeed is to write which you know. this sunday. after the verdict. >> guilty. guilty. guilty. >> the country exhales. >> it feels like we just got a breath of fresh air. >> i feel good, we got justice. >> does the guilty verdict indicate real change or is it just another high profile event? >> the jury did its job. hopefully we in the congress will do our job. >> this morning we'll hear what the verdict means to many african-americans. >> i was happy the nation could see that there may be a change coming about. >> and i'll talk to senator amy klobuchar of minnesota, baltimore police commissioner

michael harrison, and historian keith mayes of the university of minnesota. plus. >> we are no longer recommending a pause for the johnson & johnson vaccine. >> the cdc recommends a warning label for j&j vaccines with a rare blood clotting disorder. >> with vaccination rates already falling, will the j&j episode contribute to vaccine hesitancy? >> it is alarming that this is so widespread at a time when we're right on the edge of being able to get past this disease or not. >> my guest this morning, the director of the national institutes of health, dr. francis collins. and our new nbc poll. where president biden stands 100 days into his administration. the early successes and the early warning signs. joining me are "washington post" eugene robinson. joining me are "wall street journal" columnist peggy noonan. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in

washington. the longest running show in television history. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. and a good sunday morning. millions of americans felt a combination of grief and relief, experiencing both the trial and the verdict of derek chauvin last week. but even as much of america exhales, it does help to remember the initial statement from the minneapolis police department. here is how it read. officers were able to get the suspect, george floyd, into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. officers called for an ambulance. he was transported to hennepin county medical center by ambulance where he died a short time later. he appeared to be suffering medical distress. that's all it said. did derek chauvin's trial and conviction change anything? it's hard to know. right now there are calls for video to be released in the fatal shooting last week of andrew brown in north carolina. but most cases of alleged brutality against african-americans do not have

video that puts the lie to statements like the one the minneapolis police department put out. most cases don't have the whole world watching. yes, there are some hopeful signs that democrats and republicans can work out a compromise on police reform but until the country feels the criminal justice system is fair, when there is no benefit of video, and no spectacle, we won't really know whether things have changed or if justice was served only in this one particular case. in the past few days we've been asking a number of african-americans what the trial and verdict means to them. >> when the verdict actually came in, i sat there steadfast, looking at the tv. just so many things was running through my mind. will we get justice this time? or won't we? because so many times, we thought that we would get justice and there was no justice. just like in my son's case. >> i can't breathe! i can't breathe!

>> this is for everybody that's been in this situation. everybody. everybody. >> when the verdict was announced, i got quiet because i just wanted to sit with this moment. >> guilty! [ cheering ] >> someone just took a thousand pounds off my shoulder. with each successive verdict there was a little bit more weight lifted. >> this to me was an effort on behalf of 12 men and women to repair the fault in our system. >> no justice, no peace! >> i was happy that the nation could see that there may be a change coming about. >> it's a way to describe it, could be that of relief, maybe hope for the future. but in reality, not real joy. >> i can't believe it. it feels -- there's poetry in the fact that he couldn't breathe and it just feels like we got a breath of fresh air. >> george floyd was dehumanized

by derek chauvin. the courts are now holding derek chauvin responsible. but our society has been dehumanizing black bodies. and so as a country, we must hold ourselves and each other accountable. >> we the jury find george zimmerman not guilty. >> seven years ago, i thought there's no possible way that this man could walk free for killing a child for no reason. it wasn't just trayvon. >> i am a son of a police officer who died. and i am the stepson of a prison officer. i think the majority of police officers get into the system because they want to protect themselves. and so we have to give them the tools to protect themselves and tools that don't include firearms and tasers and things that bring force but tools that bring the community together. >> i think we saw in the trial

that law enforcement can join this movement because we all want to be better. >> we've got to do better recruiting. the training is good. we just have to be better people to be trained. >> young black man, we want them to have their potential fulfilled. i want my 16-year-old to live in a country where he can feel that. >> even with my grown son in his 30s, i still remind him, don't forget, be mindful, when you get pulled over, turn the lights on, put your hands on the steering wheel, don't make any sudden moves because i need you to come home and tell me what happened. i don't need to go to a morgue to find out what happened. >> somebody referred to it as a selma moment, it could very well be that. i certainly hope it is. >> now is not the time to sit and watch. now is not the time to keep quiet. now is not the time to enable. we're stepping into a point in history in which you want to look back and know that you did what you could. >> and joining me now to discuss the chauvin verdict and its implications for policing,

democratic senator amy klobuchar. she is the former hennepin county attorney and the author of "antitrust." commissioner michael harrison of the baltimore police department. and historian keith mays. i want to bring up, senator klobuchar, what george floyd's brother said right after the verdict. here is what he said. >> the video. you don't need nothing but the video. you couldn't stop the video. you couldn't fast forward the video. somebody was tortured to death. >> senator, without the video, where would we be today? >> i don't know, chuck. but what i do know is this. keith ellison and his team did an incredible job. you had the witnesses, the people that just -- regular people walking by who didn't walk away, who testified. what i came through that trial thinking, the guilt they were shouldering, when they could do

nothing about it, the young teenager saying every night she laid awake, apologizing to george floyd, thinking, what could i have done. well, i think you've got to flip that. it's what can we do. to me, you cannot have true justice when chokeholds and knees on the neck are still being considered legitimate in some places. you cannot have true justice when a young kid can get stopped for an expired tag and then end up getting shot. and you can't have true justice in the words of daunte wright's mom in the funeral that we just had here this week, she can't have her son home for dinner. so to me, yes, everything worked in this trial because of the tremendous effort. but that, you cannot confuse accountability for true justice. and that's why we must pass the george floyd justice in police act, to change this going forward. and that's on us. >> commissioner harrison, you said wednesday that you watched the chauvin verdict through multiple lenses, as a father, as

a black man, and as a police officer. so explain how those range of emotions that you felt through all those lenses. >> first of all, thank you, chuck, for having me on, and good morning, senator. i had to watch this through multiple lenses. i am a police chief in and out of two major american cities. but before becoming a police chief or police officer, i'm an african-american man who grew up in an urban city. i am the father of two african-american children, my son and my daughter. and so i had to look at this through multiple lenses. i agree with the verdict. it was the right verdict on all three counts. and as a chief, i had to anticipate what would happen and prepare my department for what could happen if that verdict did not come that way. but not only was it the right verdict. i'm very pleased as a police chief to see that verdict. and i'm very pleased as an african-american citizen in this country to see those three

verdicts. >> professor mayes, you and i have talked about this before, but this is not an isolated incident in the state of minnesota, in the county of hennepin, in the city of minneapolis. there are names that are -- that everybody just knows now, and daunte wright's been added to it. what does this verdict mean to you and what do you think the impact will be in your home state? >> i think the verdict was just. i think it was correct. it was right. but here is the thing, chuck. six black people lost their lives at the hands of police after the verdict. what does that suggest? we now hear that merrick garland and the doj will come in and do an investigation. but they did one in 2015, in january, and tragically we lost a young man named ja mar clark. then the doj came in and did another study of police accountability, police misconduct.

and then we had the murder of george floyd in 2020. now the doj is coming back again. so the beat goes on, chuck. i think we can celebrate the verdict in the chauvin trial but the question must be asked, will police behavior really change? and since that vert which was rendered on tuesday, all the evidence says that nothing has changed. so we definitely have to pass the george floyd justice in policing act to begin to deal with this issue on a systemic level. i want to talk about the systemic issue. commissioner harrison, here is what trevor noah said, and it was a different play on the "bad apple" metaphor. take a listen. >> the system in policing is doing exactly what it's meant to do in america. i feel like you get to a place where you go, oh, we're not dealing with bad apples, we're dealing with a rotten tree that happens to grow good apples.

>> commissioner harrison, do you understand where trevor noah is coming from? >> i didn't hear that, but hearing it now, i do understand what that means. and that's why baltimore police department, like my former department in new orleans, is under a federal consent decree and we are essentially in a complete makeover of a department. and that's why i believe the justice department will in its investigation probably find patterns and practices of unconstitutional policing and it's very likely minneapolis will be in a consent decree as well. now, in our makeover, it is because the system was bad, everything from recruitment to hiring to training to policies, to practice and protocols, supervision technology, here are the good apples. this is what trevor was talking about with good apples. we need a peer intervention program where we teach officers

how to step in front of colleagues when a bad act is about to happen. and what we need is for more good officers to step up without being retaliated against, and without having, without being punished for stepping up to do the right thing, to prevent bad things from happening. there's a wonderful program called able activate bystandership. many are moving in that direction. >> i guess the question is, can everybody get to yes on the george floyd police reform act. here is senator tim scott offering a compromise on the issue of qualified immunity. i want to get your reaction to it on the other side. >> there is a way to put more of the onus of the burden on the department or on the employer than on the employee. i think that is a logical step forward.

it's something that the democrats are quite receptive to. >> i'm quite curious, answer the question, actually, both in terms of, first of all, does that help, a compromise, but you're a former prosecutor. is that an effective change? >> first off, we don't know what senator scott exactly is proposing. i want to see the language. senator booker is leading this bill and i have to much faith in him to get to something meaningful. every one of us on this panel in our different ways knows that we can't just say, hey, let's just have another study of this. we've had a lot of study of this, people are dying. we need changes and that includes changes to standards and practices, changing the standard from reasonable to necessary force. that would make a huge difference. it's things like transparency. when you have good officers but then you also have officers that have messed up a number of times and they're able to go to

another department and you don't even know it, there should be data collected on that. you have to have more accountability. so i'm not going to get ahead of the negotiations here. but the fact that we have senators on both sides that are seriously talking right now and moving forward on this is something we haven't seen forever, because i don't want just one verdict, i want to see systemic change. it would be good for everyone, including the officers that testified against chauvin, including the officers that protected us valiantly during the insurrection. we need to have a major change in policing in this country. chief mayes, you heard jim clyburn say maybe this will be a selma moment. in fact people have asked what would selma have meant if it hasn't led to the passage of the civil rights act. what happens if we don't act on police reform this year? >> we'll be right back here again, chuck. i don't think this is a selma moment because i don't see lawmakers in washington, d.c.

really trying to move on this. the democrats have put together a comprehensive bill. who can be against the removal of chokeholds, who can be against the limitation of qualified immunity, who can be against reducing the criminal standard from intent to reckless. all of these are great, great bills. i think the democrats need to push back on tim scott, to put this on police departments, to say that we don't want individual police officers to be responsible. we want the money taken out of their pensions. why overburden municipal budgets who get a lot of their money from sales taxes? we have to pay this exorbitant amount of civil judgments from the taxpayers, from the people of the cities. so we don't want to shift the burden from individual officers to police departments who we have to rely on the people to pay that out. so no, i disagree with clyburn. this is not another selma moment, because we don't see a bipartisan effort in congress to move this issue forward.

the democrats are holding this alone. and i think they really need to push back on tim scott's counterproposal. >> i want to -- the last question on policing i want to ask is to you, commissioner harrison. the traffic stop seems to lead to a lot of problems. is there -- is it time to revisit the traffic stop? >> absolutely. i think, you know, minor traffic violations and those small things officers observe, it's time to rethink that. when we have information about violent crime or serious crimes that have taken place, our information about the person driving the vehicle, whatever violation they may have committed, you know, those traffic stops, we certainly want our officers focusing on the more important things which are violent crime. it's certainly time to revisit when and how we do those traffic stops. >> senator klobuchar, we mentioned at the top that you have a new book out on

antitrust, monopoly power. in many ways it's setting up what could be the breakup of big tech. there's going to be a big announcement by facebook's oversight board having to do with the future of the former president, donald trump, and whether he can communicate on that platform. how much does that impact where you think congress should go when it comes to dealing with big tech? >> when you step back, you see that all this consolidation has been hurting us, hurting families, hurting workers, and yes, hurting our democracy, chuck. and when you go back in time, and that's what i do with this book, i show the stories of people like edith tarbell, ida tarbell, who took on standard oil or the woman who invented the monopoly board, to show that america has always stood up at some point. right now with the tech companies, they are gatekeepers. they control so much information. it shouldn't be a surprise that we don't have an instagram that

developed bells and whistles that would have had more privacy rules or done something about misinformation as you alluded to. why? because facebook bought them up. mark zuckerberg, in an email now revealed, said, oh, they might be disruptive to us. do, that's what competition is supposed do, disrupt things. the book is about the past and how we got here today. it has over 100 cartoons so it's fun to read. i have 25 solutions for the future. >> it's a well-researched book. you would think it's a tough subject, it's not, it's very readable. thank you all for being here, commissioner harrison, professor mayes, and senator klobuchar. when we come back, federal health officials and the pause in the johnson & johnson vaccine. will the entire episode only add to growing vaccine hesitancy? the director of the nih, dr. francis collins, joins me next. t [ life is bu eak up on you. for a convenient life hack.

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welcome back.

federal health officials on friday ended their pause on the johnson & johnson vaccine while adding a warning label about a very rare but troubling blood clotting disorder. this is good news in the effort to vaccinate as many americans as possible, there are still concerns that vaccine hesitancy could grow as a result of the j&j hurdle. joining me now, director of the national institutes of health, dr. francis collins. welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> nice to be with you, chuck. >> let me start with the news about the j&j vaccine. you and i talked before this decision. it is out. the warning label seems to be more general than specific. and some doctors have wondered why it wasn't more specific. here is dr. leana wen in "the post." she says the default position should be targeted to women under 50, period.

what do you say to her? >> well, i think she is in the minority compared to the decision that was put forward by the advisory committee on immunization practices of cdc which met for an entire day on friday and went over all of the data, documenting a total of some 13 cases of this rare form of blood clotting out of some 8 million doses of the j&j vaccine that had been administered. and the strong conclusion of that group was that the vaccine should go forward, it should be made available to everybody, but there should be a fact sheet that provides the information to everybody to understand what the nature is of this potential very rare side effect so that everyone is aware of the facts. i think that was the right decision. i think people will want to read the fact sheet. but when you consider the nature of this risk, this is truly a rare event. when you measure that against the benefits of preventing somebody from dying of covid, there is no comparison. we clearly have a situation where the benefits greatly outweigh the risks, even for

younger women. >> all these statistics i've read seems to reinforce that point you just said about how rare it is for this to happen. can you give viewers a layman's comparison here? what is a common drug that is out there that people take where it would be -- you would almost be at higher risk of this than you would with this j&j vaccine? >> well, think about aspirin. all of us have been taking aspirin for headaches and muscle aches for the last many decades. the risk of aspirin inducing a significant intestinal bleed is much higher than what we're talking about here, something in the neighborhood of one in 500, one in a thousand, for people who regularly take aspirin. we're talking about something about a thousand times less likely to happen. but we americans are not that good at this kind of risk calculation. something sounds scary, somebody has pointed out, you are less

likely as a woman taking j&j to have this blood clotting problem than to get struck by lightning next year. so it's a real low risk. and we do figure out how to do that. we wear our seatbelts, right? what you're doing there, you're trying to prevent a bad outcome in a car crash. back when seatbelts were first being introduced people were like, suppose my car gets into a lake and i can't get my buckle undone quickly enough. okay, i guess that's in there too, but balancing the benefits and the risks, which is what we're trying to do here, you come out pretty clearly on the side of, roll up your sleeve. >> let's talk about the issue of vaccine hesitancy. you and i, again, were talking about this earlier. you're doing your best to reach out to communities of faith in particular. but as you noted to me and at our poll will show you, i'm going to put the numbers up here, we have a political divide. among democrats, 75% of all democrats call themselves already vaccinated and only 4% of democrats say they will not get vaccinated. numbers among republicans, 40% already vaccinated, one quarter of republicans saying they will

not get vaccinated. look, this is not easy for a democratic-led administration to try to convince these republicans to do this. what are some of the efforts you guys are thinking about to sort of depoliticize this? >> well, it is a really important issue, because we're all in this together, and clearly if we're going to be able to put covid-19 behind us, we need to have all americans take part in getting us to that point. i think maybe one of the things we can do is change the conversation a little bit. maybe there's been too much finger wagging. i've been doing some of that, i'll stop, and try to listen and see what the problems are. and try to emphasize the positives that people go through as we go through vaccinations. my wife and i were able to invite another couple to come to our house to dinner and take off our masks because they were

immunized as well and have a normal conversation and hug each other at the end of the evening. that was so liberating. if you're not vaccinated, you're missing out on that chance to lift that blanket of fear that's been there. even if you don't think covid-19 isn't that big a deal, tell me whether you haven't worried at some point about whether it will hit you or your family. that's a way to put that fear behind us and get back to normal life. that's an incredible gift. you have to unwrap the gift. >> i know all of you public health officials are resisting all of our questions when we say, when do we get to herd immunity, right? i understand it's a moving target, it's a bit subjective due to variants and things like this. how much risk do we have the not hitting herd immunity if we continue to have these vaccine hesitancy rates? >> well, we have a serious risk. and a reason nobody will give you an answer, chuck, is because we don't really quite know with this particular virus, with the variants that are happening, exactly what that number is. but it's up there around 70,

85%. and we're not there yet. you can see some places in the country that are getting close to that, with a combination of having had a lot of cases of covid, which also provides you with some immunity, plus the vaccines. but there are other places that are way behind. and those are the places we all worry about, as the next hotspot. you can see michigan has gone through a terrible time in the last month. they're now getting past that, which is really encouraging. what's the next one? you can look at the map and say where are vaccines lagging, those are the places to worry about. and we could change that if we can really inspire everybody to get engaged. we're doing everything we can to make it easy to get vaccination. 90% of the country now lives within five miles of a site where you can get vaccination done. it's out there in the pharmacies. doctors are getting more engaged. it's not that difficult, as it was at the beginning, to get yourself an appointment and to get into this immunized group which is where i think most

people will want to be. >> we saw some announcements this week of a couple of university systems that are going to mandate the vaccine in order to come on campus, in order to teach, things like this. we know there are other entities that would like the vaccine mandates. but you can't have a mandate under emergency use authorization for these vaccines. what is the timetable, at least particularly with moderna and pfizer, here generally, when we should expect this to go from emergency use to formal approval? >> that is not a timetable that's been precisely defined just yet. again, to get the permanent approval, you need a certain number of months of followup to look at any possible late safety signals. there have not been any for pfizer and moderna. but fda is not there adequate. that's a question for fda, when will they say it's enough. there's nitty-gritty technical stuff about manufacturing, that information has to be provided. we're not there. we'll get there in the next few

months. meantime, i think if private organizations decide they want to put forward a mandate, i'm not going to disagree with their approach. after all, vaccines are good for you. i'm certainly encouraging everybody who works for me at the national institutes of health to get vaccinated. but i'm not mandating it. think about it, though, in the future, though, particularly for people who are in health care and have interactions with vulnerable patients. we have been able to go in the direction of saying, you should get your flu shot. i suspect the same will need to be the case for covid once we're at the point where we no longer have this block about it being emergency use. so people who are involved in health care, i expect that's where we're going. >> dr. francis collins, always appreciate having you on and your expertise. the director of the nih. for those wondering technically, dr. fauci's boss. dr. collins, thanks for coming on and sharing your views with us. >> thanks, chuck, it's always a pleasure. good morning to everybody. >> you got it. later in the broadcast we have our new nbc news poll on president biden's first 100 days in office.

but next, what the derek chauvin verdict means and doesn't mean for the future of policing and then some. the panel is next. the panel is . e a that works to turn down acid production, blocking heartburn at the source. with just one pill a day, you get 24-hour heartburn protection. take the prilosec otc two-week challenge. and see the difference for yourself. prilosec otc, 1 pill a day, 24 hours, zero heartburn.

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welcome back. the panel is with us. "washington post" columnist eugene robinson. nbc correspondent morgan radford. "wall street journal" columnist peggy noonan. and malcolm gladwell, the author of "the bomber mafia." the s-are story behind the advent of precision bombing in world wa two.

eugene robinson, you heard keith mayes say he doesn't see this as a selma moment. what say you? >> it's too soon to tell. too soon to tell. and frankly, if this isn't a selma moment, what's going to be one? this is a murder that was videotaped for 9 1/2 excruciating, painful-to-watch moments. there was testimony not only from experts but from the police, from the chief of the department involved, the minneapolis police chief, saying that what derek chauvin did was completely beyond the pale. you had everything. yet, you know, there was this enormous feeling, at least on my part, of relief. i could breathe, when we finally got the verdict, because so many of these verdicts have gone the other way. and so we'll see if we can

actually get some systemic change this time. i think we've got a better shot than we've had in the past. but we'll see. >> you know, morgan, on one hand you look at it and it seems obvious that change is going to happen. too much has happened, too much is available for all of us to see. but you know what, we thought that about guns too. >> that's right, we've seen this, chuck, time and time again. for a lot of voters we spoke to, this was sort of a full circle moment, many hoping this time is different. we heard a lot of the analysis this week describe joy and relief. it's also about something bigger, chuck, and that's acknowledgement, because the people we spoke to last summer after floyd was killed said they were protesting, for example, to defund the police, something they said that was not about abolishing police but rather about making sure that safety was not segregated. they said, we want police, we just want to make sure we have the same type of policing available in the suburbs. fast forward to this spring. when you heard governor walz say

this is the minimum floor we can expect for justice, a lot of voters are expecting democrats to turn this passion into policy. >> peggy, you know, that's the thing here that i wonder about. i think tim scott, karen bass, cory booker, i think they want to get to yes. but politics can get in the wednesday. in "the wall street journal" on wednesday, karl rove wrote this, a perception that's long haunted democrats, that they're antipolice and weak on law and order, hurt them in 2020. it's likely to inflict more damage on their prospects in 2022. when i read this, the alarm bells went off in my head, you can see the political strategists could get in the way here and say, hey, we want the issue, we don't want a solution. >> yeah, he was looking at the whole problem, the policing problem, through a political lens. but i think there has come to be a gelling of the idea that we have a societal problem going on here. we have a policing problem. and you think from there, a, the

police are so important, they're crucial to domestic tranquility in the most stressed places in america, in the most -- communities where life is hardest, we say communities, we mean neighborhoods. cops go there and they protect people, and they represent the law, which is an important thing, and a certain amount of order. it seems to me the great possibility here is to acknowledge there's a problem with our policing, but not be punishing or punitive in that towards them, if you will, in general, but to say they need our help. they need, as jim clyburn said, they need help in recruiting. they need help in my view, in deepening and lengthening their training. they are important. and i don't think they need less, defunding, or diverting of funds.

they need more. and i feel like we could do it now, and i hope the political consultants don't get in the way, and tim scott, cory booker and others can go forward. >> malcolm gladwell, you're a modern day alexis de tocqueville, you seem to see things clearer than most of us here. and as we've been debating the gun -- excuse me, the police issue, police reform, and the use of force, and why are guns drawn so quickly, the counterargument is, yeah, in this country, half the country is armed and you don't know who that is. how much more difficult is police reform because -- in this country because of how prevalent guns are? >> i mean, i think it's substantially more difficult. there is no country in the world that has a problem with these kinds of acts of policing on the scale of the united states. we're a massive outlier.

we need to ask the question, why is the experience of canada and germany and japan and all these other countries so different? and that means we have to extend the conversation, as peggy said, beyond the police, to all of us. you know, a paper recently looked at the levels of funding for different police departments around the united states. there are massive variations. there are places that are flush with cash and places where police officers are making as much as people who work at walmart. that's nuts, right? and that's not a problem that the police want or asked for. that's a problem we presented to police departments. we have this crazy funding system. so i would like -- you know, i would like those of us who want to reform the system to start the conversation with, well, what those of us outside the police community can do. >> gene robinson.

>> malcolm makes great points about the funding. but what also matters is what are those funds being spent on. if they're being spent, you know, on surplus military equipment, for example, to turn, you know, ordinary squad cars into s.w.a.t. vehicles, i think that's not the best use of that money. and the whole -- you know, "defund" was never a good word for what maybe needs to happen. but should police officers, fully armed, you know, with revolvers and tasers and everything else be the ones to respond to a lot of ordinary situations like a routine traffic stop, like other situations that you might encounter, or should there be other kinds of first responders. >> morgan? >> yeah, i mean, that's exactly what a lot of the voters we've

spoken to have said, that defunding was really muddled messaging, right? this is really about reimagination and reinvestment. a lot of voters looked to camden, new jersey. this was a police force which was overhauled in 2013 and saw their violent crimes drop by 40%. to peggy's point, that police need more, a lot of voters are saying, yeah, but what are you going to do once we give you more? instead of calling 911 and getting an officer, let's have a system that says, let's have a metal health worker, a social worker. someone who is able to deescalate the situation in those very communities. >> malcolm? >> i totally agree with the last two speakers, and that is that, you know, we have systematically underfunded our mental health services in this country. we have systematically ignored the homelessness problem. and we have let the police -- we have forced the police to be the last line of kind of social support for those troubled populations.

and that is nuts. like, you know, you can't do that and expect to have an optimal law enforcement outcome. >> excellent conversation. obviously i would love to keep more of it going. but i want to move here a little bit, got to get in another break. when we come back, as part of our climate challenge week at nbc news, we're going to look at how americans' attitudes towards global warming has changed. as we go to break, we want to remember walter mondale. a senator, a vice president, a democratic presidential nominee, and also a powerful civil rights advocate who died last week. mondale may be best remembered for how he transformed the vice presidency from a job that was a political backwater to one that became of real significance, and it started under president jimmy carter. here is walter mondale talking about that on "meet the press" in 1977. >> i think the role that the president has permitted me to play is unprecedented in american history. i am privy to all of the classified and secret information.

i serve on the national security council and all of its subcommittees. i serve on all the crucial policy committees. and i have virtually unlimited access to the president. >> walter mondale was 93. you neve house without your luvs or your big dad energy. because...when you see a leaky situation you have luvs ready for that pro-level leak protection. luvs. parent like a pro.

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lexicon. we now have polling data that shows that over the last few years there has been an increasing understanding that it is humans, us, that do in fact play a large role in earth's changing environment. but this answer still depends on where you live. check this out. survey data from the yale program on climate communication shows that in 2014, nationally just under half of adults, 48%, felt that global warming was mostly caused by human activity and in fact it was only in a majority of 17 states who thought that way. last year the numbers have gone up. it's now 57% nationally who feel that way and there's now majorities in almost all of the states except four. and you may be surprised to learn we're over 50% regardless of one's politics. this is not one of those polarizing issues here. now, on average, in states president biden won, 59% of people believe humans cause global warming. the number is not that much lower in states that former president trump won. so as you can see, not as polarizing. however, even if a majority of americans are now in agreement about the cause, they're very

much not in agreement about how it impacts them personally. there are only two states, california and hawaii, where a majority of residents feel that they are going to be personally impacted by global warming. in most of the other 48 states people are concerned about the issue but they have yet to see it as something that's going to personally impact them. it's worth noting because we all know about our own backyard politics. the climate change debate is shifting to what's to be done. and the answer will require billions of dollars in federal, state, and local funding. it may be tough to get people to spend money like that if they don't think this problem impacts them personally. by the way, speaking of climate change, right now on our streaming show, "meet the press reports," we look at how climate change from droughts to deep freezes has endangered our water supply and yes, our water security. among my guests, erin brockovich. you can find "meet the press reports" thursday on nbc news now and any time you want on peacock. so binge away. when we come back, our brand-new nbc news poll on what

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like you, my hands are everything to me. but i was diagnosed with dupuytren's contracture. and it got to the point where things i took for granted got tougher to do. thought surgery was my only option. turns out i was wrong. so when a hand specialist told me about nonsurgical treatments, it was a total game changer. like you, my hands have a lot more to do. learn more at factsonhand.com today. welcome back. i'm going to start things off with our new nbc news poll that we're debuting this morning as we approach president biden's 100th day in office. the president's approval rating among everyone sits at 53% against 39% who disapprove. nared down to just registered

voters. either approval rating, by the way, is higher than donald trump had at any time during his presidency, he never touched 50 once. there are warning signs here. on guns and immigration in particular. so let's bring back the panel. peggy noonan, it's interesting, i hope you saw our word clouds, we asked people sort of why do they approve or why do they disapprove. you sort of saw it in stark differences, it was, "not trump" jumps out among the approvers. a little less obvious on the other side, cognitive issues and border jump out and that sort of strange prime time cable on the right. your take on 100 days. >> you know, i think there's a lot of cautious optimism out there. i think the poll looked to me like a cautious optimism poll. i think it has to do first of

all with the general return to normalcy. washington isn't on fire every day. crazy dramas aren't happening. vaccines are online and everybody's getting vaccines, america is opening up. so there's a certain optimism. i would say cautions for president biden and his administration include what you say, guns and immigration, but watch this sense of high taxes, taxes, taxes, high spending, spending. in places like the suburbs that have been going democratic, i don't think they're going to love a sense of fiscal -- >> exuberance? >> -- too much going on. "exuberance" is one word. "overdoing it" is another. so i think that might be a concern there. so i would throw that one -- >> actually we did -- taxes,

he's just barely underwater on taxes, not as much as we saw on immigration, but it is i would say a yellow flag there. malcolm gladwell -- >> the taxes haven't started yet. >> malcolm gladwell, the one thing americans agree on is that we're divided, 82%. i guess the good news is we're self-aware in that we all agree we're divided. other than that, we don't agree on much else. well, i suspect that's probably been true with the exception of a little period in the middle of the 20th century, i suspect that you could have made that same observation through large swaths of the 19th century and even back in the 18th century. at a certain point, we muddle along. >> when is it debilitating, our polarization? >> i don't -- you know, i'm also a little bit of a skeptic that the observation in a poll that

people will say we're divided actually means we're divided. in our response to coronavirus, we were pretty united, like, we managed to do a pretty good job of dealing with this pandemic, better than a lot of other countries in sopt respects, certainly in our vaccine response. so i don't know, i think we sometimes get carried away with these kind of anecdotal observations about how we are as a people. >> morgan, you're on the ground all the time. is malcolm right? >> malcolm is right. i think you will see division, if you look at it historically, but what is new now is what people are divided on. if you look, for example, at the reuters poll that came out earlier this month, it showed that six out of ten republicans still believe the false claim that the election was stolen. and so if you believe that, or if you, for example, are a qanon believer and believe there's a cabal of people harming children running our government, it's really hard, right, to find

something in the middle. i think the question now is what are the systems in place that are allowing these extreme views to control the levers of power. >> gene, president biden has his big speech this week. i think he's focused on the big issues earlier, which has gotten him this good approval rating. what does he need to focus on in the next couple of days? >> the biggest thing in the positive word cloud is "not trump." he will continue to be not trump. he will continue to be normal, empathetic joe biden, laying out his agenda, and coming across as honest, and leveling with the american people and leveling with congress. he's having more success with the american people than he is with republicans in congress right now. >> that is an understatement for sure. that's all we have for today. really appreciate you all watching this week. thank you for being here. we'll be back next week, because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

you're going to be seeing people wanting to do things outdoors without masks and it's common sense that the risk when you're outdoors we we have been saying all along is extremely low, and if you are vaccinated, it's even lower, so you're going to be hearing about those kinds of recommendations soon. >> dr. anthony fauci, previewing a key announcement from the cdc on outdoor mask wearing. now that more than half of u.s. adults are vaccinated. the question is, how soon before we see a change in those guidelines? plus, new polling on president biden's first 100 days in office. the question is, what do americans think of b