morning. we really appreciate it. and speaking of pandemic life and that kristen dahlgren package that we just saw, it's a reminder, i think, for all of us, but particularly for women who have suffered so much in the workplace in this pandemic, how we go back to work is going to be a chance for companies to lead in helping women get ahead in this workforce in a way that works for them. i'm already starting to hear that from people across the board. and it's something i'm interested in reporting on in the future as we go forward. thank you all for getting up way too early with us on this monday morning. don't go anywhere. "morning joe" starts right now. very soon, imminently, in the next few days, very likely, the cdc will be coming out with updating their guidelines of what people who are vaccinated can do. and even some who are not vaccinated. and certainly, what one can do outdoors vis-a-vis masks is going to be one of those recommendations. you'll see people wanting to do things outdoors without masks and it's common sense to know

that the risk when you are outdoors, which 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 yesterday with that news on expected updated cdc guidelines on wearing a mask outdoors. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, april 26th. with us, we have white house reporter with the associated press, jonathan lemire. eddie glaude jr. staff writer at the atlantic music and author of the book "twilight of democracy," anne applebaum, and u.s. national editor at the "financial times," ed luce joins us. and joe, dr. scarborough was possibly right. >> i'm not a doctor, but i play one on tv. and usually that's bad news for anybody listening. >> all of these guidelines will

catch up with each other. everyone is trying to do the best thing and keep people safe. >> you've been hearing from a lot of doctors we've had on regularly that have been advising caution since last march that it really had no sense to have mask mandates for people outside, who have been vaccinated. and with us seeing in the united states, seeing the rates of vaccinations slow down a good bit, we're also still finding, people are still getting covid. and i've seen it, jack's baseball league has been stopped because of a covid outbreak. >> or one case. >> there are other people who have gotten -- yeah, for a case. but there are other people who are still suffering with covid, so, yes, we need to be cautious, but if you're vaccinated, if you're outside, if you're with others who have been vaccinated, oh, my gosh, those standards should be relaxed. kids should have been back in

school weeks ago. but we'll see, they're moving along now. hopefully these are going to be some positive guidelines. >> and if americans followed one guideline, it would be to get vaccinated. if they could agree on one thing, it would be that, please. >> get vaccinated and give people a reason, encouragement, if somebody's vaccine hesitant, give them a reason to want a vaccine. a return to normalcy. >> let's move to politics now, which is actually connected to this. the latest polling shows president biden's approval rating holding strong as he approaches the 100-day mark. he is at 53% approval on the latest nbc news poll. 52% approval on the new "washington post"/abc news poll. and 58% in the cbs u.gov survey. according to nbc news numbers, that puts him ahead of president trump's first 100 days, but behind president obama'ses and george w. bush.

president biden also received high marks for his handling of the country's most pressing issues. on the pandemic, his approval is at 69% in the nbc news poll. "the washington post" survey puts him at 64%, and the cbs poll at 65%. the cbs news poll also shows 72% of americans approve of how he's handled the vaccine distribution. when it comes to the economy, both nbc news poll and "washington post"/abc poll have him at 52% approval. the cbs/u.gov poll is at 57%. the president's infrastructure and jobs plan is also popular with most americans. 59% support the proposal in the nbc news poll, 52% in "the washington post" poll, and 58% from cbs news. the situation at the southern border continues to take a poll

on the president's immigration ratings. 59% disapprove of how he's handling immigration, according to the nbc news poll. "the washington post" shows 53% disapproval and the cbs poll, 57% disapproval. >> jonathan lemire, we saw 100 days in with past presidents, still, these numbers are very high compared to what we've seen over the past five years. the biden administration doing very well it comes to the economy, on infrastructure, but 100 days, in, i suspect they're happy with where they are. tell us about it and what you plan to hear from the president when he speaks about his first 100 days this week. >> 100 day mark has become an

artificial arbitrary, a moment to take stock of a young administration. and these poll numbers are ones that hearten the white house. i've been talking to people inside the west wing in recent days looking forward to this week. we know that the president is going to address congress to mark the hundred days. he's going to unveil the second part of his infrastructure and jobs plan that night. this is more about the people piece of this, of infrastructure and jobs, rather than the traditional highways, subways, broadband, which we saw him unveil a few weeks ago. and basically, the president and his advisers believe that he was elected and his first three plus months in office were about two central things. first, to simply not be president trump anymore, who was so divisive, whose leadership during the pandemic was scattershot, to put it kindly. to someone who had really turned up the temperature in washington. and my colleagues and i at the ap have begun looking at what this president has done in the last three months, and it's

about taking the temperature down. it's about being quieter, about being a little bit less of a presence in americans' everyday lives. therefore we do hear from him in big moments, like when he marked the half million dead from covid, or the one-year anniversary of the lockdown and again wednesday night, his words carry more meaning. he's able to talk about the grief and the struggles that americans have had over the last year, because his own life has been efused with much strategy and the road ahead. and the second piece is the vaccines and the handling of the pandemic. and how the distribution has really ramped up. and how now my american adult who wants one can get one. they still, they know that there are populations that need to be convinced to take it, but the president has received strong marks for his leadership of the pandemic so far, and they believe they can build off this for the next hundred days. >> anne applebaum. he has been trying to be more

moderate temperamentally, to lower the temperature, but you dig into these numbers and you see the kind of tribalism that you've talked about, that has led to liberal forces globally over the past five to ten years and you see joe biden have lower approval ratings among republicans and higher disapproval ratings among republicans in some of these polls than even barack obama. the tribalism here, just as fierce or perhaps even more fierce, despite his higher numbers. >> i'm afraid that's something that will be with us for some time. the polarization that existed before president trump deepened during his protest. and there's a large part of the republican part that sees this as an advantage. they think that they can win office or win viewers or win attention by deepening it, by focusing on culture war issues,

by keeping people in a state of anger and frustration and keeping emotions raised. and as long as that's the way they're doing politics, i'm afraid those divisions will continue. one of the best anecdotes to that kind of divisive culture war politics is the focus on real things, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's building roads and bridges, whether it's getting people vaccines, whether it's, you know, anything that people feel in their real lives. the more biden can get people to look at those things and think about them and talk about them, the better off we'll all be. i think he's done a pretty good job so far, but, again, keeping the focus, keeping the conversation about reality and not about emotion, not about, you know symbols, this is a way in which he can begin to pull the nation together. >> if somebody had actually just

come out of the woods after sleeping like rip van winkel for ten years, they might hear you say, talk about real things, what else would they be talking about? of course, there we go again to the politics of gesture that we've seen, as you've written about so eloquently in poland and hungary and what we saw here with donald trump, whether it was building a wall, which he never even when republicans were in charge, they really didn't even want to fund that wall. whether it was that health care plan that was always two weeks away from being launched. whether it was attacks against these nefarious forces that didn't really exist. this is, again, there is such a difference between the politics and the governing by gesture versus getting to 200 million shots into people's arms and building -- you know, getting plans to build infrastructure, so build a new electric grid. so many things differently

domestically happening. ed luce, i'm just wondering, though, let's go from his first hundred days domestically to his first one hundred days on the foreign policy side. yes, you see confrontations with china, you see confrontations with russia, you see him drawing the lines in some areas. at the same time, you also hear of overtures quietly to russia, possibilities, overtures to china. and over the past week or so, we've seen both of these countries, both of these rivals, russia more of an adversary, we see both of them responding in a way that may present an opening. >> yeah, that's right. the russia one is particularly problematic, as you know, putin had 100,000 troops on ukraine's border up until the end of last week and thankfully has called them back. alexei navalny, the dissident who was on hunger strike has

also called off his hunger strike, so the temperature has down a little bit there and putin may be in more of a position to accept biden's invitation for a summit with him. i don't think there's going to be any sort of talk of a reset of relations with russia under biden. he has called putin a killer. he's made that very plain. he's said earlier that he's looked into putin's soul and discovered he doesn't have a soul, in contrast to what george w. bush said many years ago. this is going to be a very difficult, probably insoluble problem, one that biden just has to manage. the bigger one, though, is china. and again, the tensions there have been extremely high. they've been ratcheting up. the vulnerability of taiwan is, i think, the most potentially explosive problem of the biden years, but they can talk on other stuff, like climate change, which they did again at the end of last week, biden held

a virtual climate change meeting that xi jinping, china's leader attended. john kerry, biden's global warming czar, envoy, has visited china. it's going to be a much more frustrating and back and forth yo-yoing kind of foreign policy than we're seeing in terms of biden's much more radical, much more ambitious domestic policy. so we're not going to get to the big hundred-day moment here. but it marks a pretty dramatic contrast to the foreign policy by tweet and by caprice that we saw under donald trump. >> it is so interesting how joe biden told vladimir putin that he looked into his soul and he saw nothing, he saw darkness. vladimir putin's response, so we

understand each other. >> incredible. >> so eddie glaude, the first one hundred days, there's no doubt that george floyd and the tragedy of last year young over this country. that has been resolved, but wlabt the bigger issue, black lives matter last year dominated news, dominated the campaign and issues surrounding it and issues regarding policing now obviously are at the forefront, certainly for many americans. how has joe biden done his first one hundred days on issues involving civil rights? >> one of the interesting things, joe, he's been very direct, losing language that i haven't heard from the presidency in all of my years of paying attention to this. the idea of saying that there is systemic racism, that white supremacy obtains, the way that

he has directed his attorney general, the department of justice, to address the rising presence of white supremacist organizations and militias and the like, we know that this is important, that the country is still in the midst of a racial reckoning, and part of what president biden has tried to do is go beyond a politics of gesture. it's one thing to acknowledge it, another thing to try to address it specifically. there is support around policing, the george floyd policing and justice act. there are other efforts that i know that are coming down the pike, at least i hope are coming down the pike that will take us beyond symbolic acknowledgement of the problem. but i would like to emphasize to see these sorts of numbers in a hyperpartisan, polarized society, to see any politician above 50%, is a pretty good thing for the first 500 days, it seems to me, particularly around these sorts of issues. >> ed luce mentioned russia and russian opposition leader alexei navalny who ended his hunger

strike just recently. anne, your latest piece in "the atlantic" says, navalny has a lesson for the world. you write in part this, when alexny navalny boarded a plane to moscow on january 17th, he turned his life into a metaphor. he knew it, his wife knew it, and everyone else on the plane knew it. so did millions of people who had watched his documentary videos, who had seen the witty interviews he did on the plane who have since joined the demonstrations in his name, so did the leaders of russia, including the country's dictator and president, vladimir putin. this navalny was telling all of them is what courage looks like. he has already showed his compatriots that it is possible to live an honest life, in a dishonest political system. it's an invitation for others to follow. dictatorships survive because

most people are not willing to pay that high a price. and anne, i'll just read, also, he wrote a note to yevgeni albats, a russian journalist, close friend, and said, everything will be all right, and even if it isn't, we'll have the consolation of having lived honest lives. he has life is a metaphor. can you explain the impact navalny has had on vladimir putin's leadership, directly? >> it's important to understand that the reason why vladimir putin rules russia, one of the most important reasons is that he has successfully created a sense of apathy among people, among the russians. he gives people the feeling that there is no alternative to himself. he allows no one to emerge that has any different ideas, who has any different idea of running the country. he presents himself as the

center of politics. he shows himself in conflict with foreign countries. i don't think americans realize the degree to which anti-american propaganda runs constantly, as well as anti-european propaganda. he creates the feeling that everything around us is dangerous and only i can save russia from all of these terrible challenges from the outside world. and by showing that that's not true, by showing that there can be an alternative, by putting together these extraordinary projects, videos, exposes of putin's corruption, of the corruption of the people around him, navalny shows that there could be an alternative. we could live differently. this is something that putin increasingly can't tolerate. by the first few years he was in

power, he won by more or less doing a deal with russians saying, okay, i'm corrupt, i'm stealing, but at least you're -- that's not true anymore. so instead what he said is, i offer you conflict and triumph and glory. and navalny is showing that there is a different way of living, there's a different way of being. we could have a different kind of government. and that's something that putin can simply no longer tolerate. any kind of opposition at all. >> ed, could you explain to our viewers why it is of all the things that navalny has done, anne was talking about the corruption, the pictures of his massive estates and his vast wealth seemed to have stunned putin the most. and maybe inspiring some of navalny's leaders to get out in the streets at the risk of their own lives.

>> those video images of this palace that's been built on the black sea, allegedly putin's palace with extraordinary sort of luxuries, also the list that navalny and his people have been keeping of oligarchs around putin, close to putin, and the kinds of storied wealth that they're sorting away, outside of russia, not possible without the caribbean shelters and all the shell company games that we facilitate. that's clearly the route to russian anger, the idea that they're being looted and that the people looting them around putin and including putin are living extraordinary lives based on stolen russian assets. and i think that's, you know, what probably strikes the rawest nerve with putin. it does also, i think, give the

biden administration a real opportunity. you don't need to move troops up to the russian border. you don't need to get a doubling of nato spending. you don't need a military response. if you can just expose through transparency, the ill-gotten gains, to the russian people and to the world, of the russian athletes, by having transparency in terms of our financial systems, requiring the beneficial owners of those apartments in the trump tower or wherever it might be, the names to be published. and other panama papers, if you remember the panama papers, these kinds of antikleptocratic weapons would be very, very powerful against putin. >> and jonathan lemire, russia obviously, has been on the front pages of our papers over the past four years. vladimir putin's interference in american elections has been

almost a singular focus of the media and of many of donald trump's opponents over the past four years. where is the biden administration right now in relation to their relationship with vladimir putin, with russia, and where they wanted to go over the next several years? i'm sure they were pleased to see a de-escalation along the ukrainian border. >> they were very heartened by that, joe. the relationship with russia has been an early, significant focus of the biden administration. the president has talked to president putin twice now already on the phone. the s.t.a.r.t. deal, the nuclear arms deal was extended. that treaty was extended. that was seen as a really important diplomatic victory benefiting both nations early on. and they've been able to supply pressure, some of it subtle, some of it far less, on putin, threatening the sanctions and

leaning into, frankly, a warning about navalny. we heard national security adviser jeff sullivan yesterday suggest bluntly, there would be consequences if navalny were to die. that navalny's condition was improving, that was greeted as good news. and putin remains a focus of what may be -- what will be the president's first foreign trip. he announced on friday that he is, even in this pandemic world, making his first trip overseas. but it's important to announce how this will work. he's going to go in june to the uk, a meeting of the g-7, and to brussels, to nato, for the annual meeting there, where he's expected to really emphasize the u.s.' support, unequivocal support for that long-standing western alliance. one that president trump, when he was in office, tried to undermine. had to be talked about out of pulling the united states out of that organization. we're going to hear the exact opposite from president biden when he goes there in june, pledging complete support. and only after he does that,

there's talk of a third stop, which may be the putin summit. now, that's not locked in yet. that summit may not happen, it may fall to later in the year, but there is a chance it will be then, as part of the president's first trip, which carries symbolic weight, of the importance of this relationship. but again, only coming on the heels after nato, after president biden reassures allies, the united states is back, we're not going anywhere. this organization built as a bulwark to russia, it still will remain that way. that we're going to stand tough to putin and encourage the protests from this movement we're seeing led by navalny. >> all right, jonathan. our thanks to ed luce. thank you for being on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll stay on the big developments overseas, including how some parts of the world are falling behind on vaccines, particularly india, and what that means right here in the u.s. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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the president bears responsibility for wednesday's attack on congress by mob rioters. he should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. these facts acquire immediate action for president trump. >> what i talked to president trump about, i was the first person to contact when the riots were going on and he didn't see it. what he ended the call was saying, telling me, he'll put something out to stop this. and that's what he did. he put a video out. >> quite a lot later. i guess did he say to people, i guess some people are more concerned about the election than you are. >> my conversations with the president are my conversations with the president. >> oh, my god -- that is so weak. >> house minority leader kevin mccarthy yesterday in contrast -- in contrast to what

he said a week -- >> that's so sad. >> it's so sad. >> so sad to be that weak. >> but joe, it works with this group of people that refuse to turn away from trumpism. >> i guess they like following weak, weak people. weak, weak leaders. >> it is pathetic. >> i'm saying, maybe they like their leaders weak. i guess to each their own. i shouldn't judge people. if you want a sad, pathetic weak leader, there are a lot of them out there for republicans to follow. >> in a filing made late last week, the justice department notified federal judges in washington that it expects to charge more than 500 people with taking part in the january 6th riot at the u.s. capitol. roughly 440 have been charged thus far. according to nbc news, court documents show those charged come from nearly every state,

with florida, pennsylvania, and texas topping the list in number of residents arrested. the majority of those charged are accused of lower-level offenses, like entering a federal building without permission and trying to disrupt the counting of the electoral college vote. a few dozen face more serious charges of assaulting police officers or damaging government property. prosecutors have also filed conspiracy charges against members of right-wing militant groups, the proud boys and oathkeepers. they're accused of playing a more central role in planning and leading the capitol siege or encouraging others to doing it. look at this. these pictures are still just shocking. despite the events on january 6th, former senior adviser to president george w. bush, karl rove, argued in an op-ed last week that it's the democrats who have left themselves up to claims the party is anti-police,

brightening gop midterm chances with renew calls for defunding and reforming police departments. i hadn't heard that. overseas, support for police does appear to be fueling a rise for the far-right party in france, after the stabbing death of a police woman by a tunisia immigrant and an increase in terrorism-related attacks in the country. a "new york times" piece this weekend entitled "terrorism fears feed the rise of france's extreme right" takes a look at french president emmanuel macron's challenge from the right. joining us now is the author of that article, foreign correspondent for "the new york times," roger cohen. also with us, president and founder of eurasia group and foreign affairs columnist and editor at large for "time," ian bremmer, who's been following the rise of far-right french candidate marine la penn for years. >> so roger, why don't we get into this and start explaining

americans why a far-right candidate may actually beat macron. you have, of course, most recently, the killing of a mother of two, a police officer stabbed in the neck. of course, my french friends that live in the united states, horrified, just absolutely shocked by the schoolteacher who was killed and decapitated. of course, the slaughter of a satirical newspaper. many people who work there. talk about how this is -- this along with a supposed indifference to petty crimes in france is reshaping how the next election is going to look. [ no audio ] >> we have a little bit of an

audio issue with roger. we'll get him back. ian, i throw the same question to you. >> well, let me say, i'm less concerned that marine la penn actually has a shot in the second round. she's right now polling a couple of polls, very tightly with macron in the first round. macron is doing very badly, because he's had so many massive crisis to deal with. you'll remember the yellow vest demonstrations. you know how badly the french economy has been hit through that. you also know, of course, coronavirus, that everyone is dealing with. and of course, the eu and france in particular having much harder problems with vaccine rollouts and lockdowns today than we are in the united states. but france is a two-round system. and in order to win, when there's only two candidates left in the runoff, you then have to reach 50%. and that's where la penn has very serious problems. in order to get 50%, you have to have things like a credible economic program. that's where she got crushed

against macron last time. since then, she used to be in favor of frexit, like brexit, france leaving the eu, she's given it up, but she doesn't have a new eu program. they have massive funding issues inside their own party. they have about 20,000 members now as opposed to 80,000 at the high water mark. when you just look at the polls in the first round and you look at how they compare with each other, la penn is doing much better than you would like. a far-right, islamophobic creature in politics to do. but her ability to win the presidency in france is probably closer to 5 to 10%. it's nothing like a coin flip. >> you know, anne applebaum, i've been observing and actually been talking about it for quite a few years on this show. how it seems, well, it appears that we've lost anne now. the satellites are scrambling. ian, back to you, because, of

course, you're our favorite commentator. and also, the only one who is up right now. but, you know, i've been concerned for years, ian, about the fact that there is no middle ground when it comes to immigration in europe. for years, it has been, you either open the doors, let everybody in, have all of these countries that have common borders, that people can flow through with very little regulation, or you're a right-wing nazi. never a middle ground, never a middle ground in europe. and by middle ground, i'm talking about president obama's pretty tough approach on illegal immigration. i'm not talking about donald trump's. is this the price now that mainstream eureuro european pol figures are paying? >> it's the price of where they

live. if you think about the fact that europe itself, with all of the stresses of north africa and the middle east, with the wars we've seen, particularly around syria, libya, iraq, you name it. i mean, this is an enormous amount of migration, that also has a really hard time integrating into european societies. so when you talk about immigration in europe, it is less about, oh, we need these people for jobs, it's less about high-skilled, able to do work that nobody wants to do. it's more about, we've got this massive number of people that aren't actually in any way able to become french or british or swedish and we don't want them there. and it creates a much bigger cultural gap on this conversation. when you ask europeans how many muslims, they think, are in their populations compared to how many actually are. in france, the number, which is quite high in any country in

europe, it's about 6%. the average french response, oh, it's a third. a third of the french population is muslim. you see those kinds of responses, fake news responses across all of europe. and it creates space for the european political leaders to grab on to it. and your point of obama versus the europeans, i mean, when merkel said we can do this, i'm going to take a million german refugees -- syrian refugees, by far the most unpopular thing she did, really a tipping point in her leadership, obama said, i'm not going to do a damn thing. i'm keeping our numbers where they were, because this would be so destructive for me domestically, the germans had to move away from that policy as a consequence. so i think there's a different in europe and the u.s. right now. >> so, roger, i understand we have you back. talk about your piece and talk about the challenges that

mainstream politicians are facing, because the french actually are terrorized by the events of the last six months. >> hi, again, joe. hope you can hear me now. sorry about that. yeah, there's a very tense situation in france. it's not just the last six months with the beheading of samuel petty that you mentioned and this most recent stabbing in the neck and the abdomen of a police official, mother of two. it goes all the way back to 2015 and 2016, when more than 200 people were killed in islamist terrorist attacks. and you know, in the united states, we've moved on, somewhat, with the defeat of isis. and 20 years now, since 9/11. but in france, this problem of islamist radicalization in the country is very present. up and until now, president

emmanuel macron has had difficulty persuading, although he's moved to the right, he's had difficulty persuading french people that he has the situation under control. and here's marine la penn, the parental right candidate. she's moderated her tone, she talks more softly. she's moved away from policies like taking france out of the european union, that worried a lot of french people. she's undergone what the french call a banalization. and every time, in this instance, the last stabbing, we're dealing with a tunisiatun man, and this creates a huge avenue for marine la penn to go down and say, you see, the problem is immigration. the problem is these people who are undocumented, who are in the country. and i can control this situation, president macron

can't. and right now she's running more or less neck and neck with president macron for the presidential election, exactly one year from now. >> anne applebaum is with us and has a question for you. anne? >> i'm wondering whether macron might be able to shift the situation in the manner that joe biden has done, in a kind of parallel manner, by changing the subject. i mean, are there domestic issues, are there domestic political issues he could focus on, that would move the conversation away from immigration and the cultural arguments around it. do you think he's up to doing that now? >> well, anne, there is a huge other subject, which is the pandemic. and france is still under lockdown. and i've been in paris for four months and haven't had a meal out yet. i know in the great scale of global issues, that's a very, very small one. but, yeah, there is the pandemic and there is -- there are issues

of poverty and exclusion, but you know, every time this happens and it's been happening regularly now in the last six months. every time there is another terrorist attack, every time some muslim from north africa gets radicalized, often alone and apparently through the internet more recently, this just brings the issue right back to security. and in a survey by the sunday paper yesterday, security had risen very high in the chief preoccupations of the french, above, for example, unemployment, which traditionally is a number one concern for the french. i think it's difficult for president macron to do a biden. i think what he could do, if he was to take a leaf from biden's book, you know, one of the impressive things at least to me about president biden in the

first hundred days has just been this very regular drumbeat of strong policy announcements that seem to go in a single line. you don't really have that from president macron. he's agitated. he moves back and forth. he's known as the "at the same time president," because he makes one argument, but then he says, but at the same time, there's another issue. so i think in style, he could borrow from the biden playbook. >> jonathan lemire with the associated press has a question for you, roger. jonathan? >> roger, i was hoping you could drill down a little further where you started to go just a moment ago about the response to the pandemic. we're seeing vaccination rates, of course, really low in europe, compared to the united states. in france, there seems to be a rather high number of people there who are vaccine hesitant or outright refusing to take the shots. could you expand a little more about the tension that's perhaps

creating there? is there a frustration with the leadership of the pandemic, that is also fueling whether it's bias attacks or anger at immigrant groups or people who don't look like, quote, you know, the normal french, you know, in the words of the right wing there. walk us through exactly how things are happening there and that tension and how that could be tricky for macron as he tries to stay in office. >> you know, that's a big issue. france has underperformed on vaccination. it's way behind, for example, the uk. compared with other than continental european countries, germany, italy, not so much. the european union made a radical decision, which was that it was going to try to centralize the whole vaccination operation, 450 million people. the eu didn't have any health capacity of that kind. that was always an issue that

was handled nationally. so for the bureaucracy in brussels to take this on, was a huge step. president macron, who is trying to build a more federal europe, holds it up as an illustration of how europe is coming together. and i think in the long-term, that's probably true. in the short-term, it meant a lot of chaos, inefficiency, and that slowed things up. there was also in france, certainly in december, very strong resistance to vaccines, to this vaccine. where exactly that came from is not clear, but a lot of people were hesitant. that number has gone down quite radically. people do seem to be ready to have the vaccine, if they can get at it. it's only recently that france has introduced what they are calling vaccine-o-dromes. just huge stadiums converted

into vaccination centers. and i think president macron is very conscious of the need to get this done, in order to open the country, get the economy going, move the french out of their current sullen state before the election a year from now. and let's not underestimate how the enormity of a la penn presidency, if that were to happen, it would change the equation completely in europe. >> yeah. eddie glaude is with us and has a question for ian bremmer. >> ian, good morning. it's one thing to talk about la penn, was how do we account for the mainstreaming of these far-right elements within french politics. can you give us a sense of what's driving the expansion of these organizations and the politicians that represent them in french politics, if you can?

>> it is definitely the role that islamic attacks, radical islamic terrorist attacks is playing in france compared to the united states. in the last year, when we talk about terrorism, what are we talking about? overwhelmingly, white nationalism. so you can't really move the needle. i'll tell you, one of the most popular things in the united states that since he's become president is to end the forever war. that did not go ever well at all with our allies in europe, in nato. they wanted to stay in. they contribute more forces together in afghanistan than the americans do. more have died from nato allies than the americans. but they are much more focused on containing radical islam at home, and they see afghanistan and the potential of that regime

falling to the taliban as a problem. if biden had said, no, we need to expand our forces, because we have to ensure that the taliban doesn't take over, he would have found very strong support among allies in europe. and they were really agitated. and i've had this conversation with many of their leaders, that there was a strong interagency process inside the united states, but then they told the allies, we're leaving. there wasn't a discussion, despite the fact they provided all of that sacrifice. you hear from a lot of europeans, whether it's on vaccine nationalism or whether it's on nato and afghanistan that joe biden doesn't sound like america-first trump, but in the actions, there's a lot more that unilateralism and it's quite consistent. they're quite upset about that. >> well, our european allies have reason to be very concerned about the taliban taking control of afghanistan sooner rather than later, once we leave. ian bremmer, roger cohen and anne applebaum, thank you all so much for being with us.

we greatly appreciate it. hope to see you very soon. and t.j. and alex, this is down and dirty tv. i want to make sure, because we had quite a few glitches there. do you guys have the hamsters on the hamster wheel? are you feeding them to keep them running? to keep the electricity on? we have to keep this -- keep the generators moving. >> i know, i should have paid that bill that said "remit now." i don't know why things happened this way, but i'll get the bills paid. >> wouldn't it help you if you and t.j. are there -- wouldn't it help you to have the glass in between you all instead of like -- what's going on here? >> we consulted fauci. we're good. >> oh? >> we've got dan back here, at least two people producing this show today. >> i got a remote control. this is great. >> look at this. fauci, you know, it is so lonely in there.

>> it's like nasa. >> it's like nasa if nobody is there. >> let's not. when is everybody getting back in there, alex? >> we're working on it. the difference between nasa and us, nasa can actually land something on mars. we have our problems. >> t.j. has his remote cam. that's all he cares about. >> he's telling me to go to break. >> coming up, we're going to be in washington, d.c., inside a studio this week. >> this is going to be weird. >> do we have to have be 6 feet -- >> yes, but that was mika's request. >> we're not going to be 6 feet apart. us two, no, we're not going to be 6 feet apart in the studio. >> no, just us. we can just snuggle up. >> so how does this work? >> no, we can't. >> how does this work? on vaccines, like, if willie is vaccinated, can he be close to us? or do we have to -- >> 6 feet. >> do we have to put him a

basketball court away as well? >> now we're getting into policy. we can talk about this in the break. we'll talk about it later. >> we want everybody vaccinated -- >> joe, we can snuggle up. it's going to be so fun. okay? >> okay. >> it gets so awkward with them. coming up, the latest in the debate over expanding the supreme court and why our next guest says the fight can wait. "morning joe" is coming right back. "morning j" oeis coming right back lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive to dairy. so anyone who says lactaid isn't real milk is also saying mabel here isn't a real cow. and she really hates that. among my patients i often see them have teeth sensitivity as well as gum issues. mabel here isn't a real cow. does it worry me? absolutely. sensodyne sensitivity and gum gives us a dual action effect that really takes care of both our teeth sensitivity as well as our gum issues. there's no question it's something that i would recommend. are you managing your diabetes... ...using fingersticks? with the new freestyle libre 2 system,

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senator, is there systemic racism in this country in policing and in other institutions? >> no, not in my opinion. we just elected a two-term african-american president. the vice president is of african-american/indian descent, so our systems are not racist. america is not a racist country. within every society, you have bad actors. >> so as far as policing goes, i

guess he's saying, if barack obama or kamala harris get pulled over, they should be fine! other black americans, maybe it won't be quite as simple. >> senator lindsey graham's response to president biden's call for the u.s. to confront systemic racism. joining us now, president and ceo of the national urban league, mac morial, and longtime media executive, editor in large at "newsweek," and cnbc founder and contributor, tom rogers. good to have you both. >> i'm wondering what lindsay's fellow republican in south carolina thinks about systemic racism, whether that may be systemic racism in the united states, even if this country has moved forward in the last 50 years. >> you know, joe, good morning. the country has moved forward, but let me try to help people understand systemic racism. there's not a single element of american life, not jobs, not

housing, not health care, not education where african-americans are statistically equal to white americans. so systemically, across the board, this is not about individual behavior, this is not about individual achievement alone. and i think that those that deny systemic racism are like climate deniers, like science deniers. they're denying a reality. if we accept the reality, we are much better as a nation to confront the reality. you asked about tim scott. well, tim scott is, i know, working diligently along with cory booker and karen bass and a number of others to find a way forward on the george floyd justice in policing act, which i hope that lindsey graham at the end will support a bill. it is so important, as president biden has lifted up racial justice and has sought, i think, to use the bully pulpit of

presidency to educate americans and put his administration squarely behind an effort that the tragic death of george floyd, the murder of george floyd revealed that systemic racism in policing, in the criminal justice system. we see the disparities in the health care system, with covid, in the economy. they are are systemic. and because we have come past the last 50 years and made progress does not mean we've ended, if i can call it the little brother of slavery and segregation. and that's systemic racism. >> so, lindsey graham, maybe he's -- you know, he's sort of on a delay. you know, like we have a seven-second delay on this show for joe, if you know what i mean. but he just said that he believes the science behind climate change. so maybe in a few years, he'll actually admit that there is systemic racism in this country. tom rogers, your latest piece for "newsweek" is entitled

supreme court commission voting, rights, and the fight over two minorities. and you write in part, this. right now, the biggest social justice issue getting attention in the political arena is voting rights. and the effort to protect another minority. minority voters, particularly in black, urban areas from being subject to voter suppression efforts led by republican legislatures in a number of states. to fight to expand the supreme court can wait. you do on to say, voting rights must be the near-term provider. i tend to agree with you, but if you could expound on your thesis here. i mean, the voting rights issue is the issue of the moment. there are laws that have been passed based on lies. and if this isn't solved, there are going to be far bigger issues down the line as it pertains to the courts. >> well, you're absolutely right, mika, and i am a big

proponent of expanding the supreme court. i think i was the first person to come on your show and talk about how that could be done by a simple majority and didn't need a constitutional amendment. the issue is it really frames up two minority groups central to each of the political parties. white, increasingly rural trumpian culture conservatives where the supreme court and a 6-3 majority is the big protector of their issues. and black urban voters, which are obviously central to the democratic party, where voter suppression is the issue and rectifying those issues is not just a question of protecting a minority, but it's also about making sure that the majority will can be heard, as opposed to stifling the majority will by undermining those minority voters. and while i think both the issue of voting rights and expanding

the supreme court, which the democrats undoubtedly deserve to do, the nature of that is such that i think that the legislation ought to be called the redress of merrick garland and amy amy coney barrett's stolen seats act, given how the republicans got their nominees through. that right now the eye on the prize has to be the voting rights issue, because it's the civil rights issue of our time. and i think it's the one that is in most immediate need of being addressed. >> so in texas, the republican-led state legislature is expected to vote on two bills this week that could make it harder for residents to vote. republicans are looking to ban drive-through and 24-hour voting across the state. these methods, according to the texas civil rights project, were predominantly used by people of color in the 2020 election.

the bill also calls for the same number of voting machines to be distributed in each precinct, regardless of population. texas has seen a shift in its voting landscape recently, with registration up in the state's more democratic cities. and almost six months after joe biden won the 2020 election, another vote recount is underway in arizona's biggest county, backing claims of election fraud pushed by former president trump. state republicans have ordered an audit of maricopa county's 2.1 million votes. this even after three previous reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud in the state won by joe biden. overseeing this latest audit a company called cyber ninjas, whose chief executive has pushed many of the same conspiracy theories as trump. the pro-trump one-america news

network, which helped finance the recount, was also hired to monitor the audit, as a, quote, non-partisan observer. >> what a clown show. what a clown show. >> i can't even -- eddie, you have the next question or you can comment, if you'd like. >> i think joe's description and your response, they're both appropriate. what a clown show, giggle, giggle, right? but i would want to ask the mayor a question. given what tom has laid out in his piece and what mika just described and the question around these efforts, these very, very clunky, you know, very obvious efforts to disenfranchise american voters, how do you view what's going on in the senate with senator manchin and sinema and all the others on the democratic side? what needs to happen to get federal legislation through to address these issues around voter laws that are attempting to disenfranchise americans

across the country? >> well, you know, thank you very much. the heart of the problem is the antiquated jim crow filibuster. imagine that the jim crow filibuster, quote, a device to protect minority whites in the senate, is the device being used to suppress and oppress minority whites at the ballot box and across the board. the jim crow filibuster, because it is fundamentally, its main use has come into vogue as a permanent tool, which it was never envisioned to do. so ultimately, there either has to be some sensibility that members of the united states senate have to step away from partisanship and republican members step away from partisanship, and embrace those things, like the voting rights act that they've embraced. it was renewed under reagan, it was renewed under nixon. it was renewed under bush.

now modern day republicans have turned it into a partisan debate. the supreme court put itself in the bull's-eye with the shelby decision, which was a poorly reasoned, really extra judicial, politically motivated decision, which struck down provisions of the voting rights act. they put themselves squarely in the bull's-eye with that decision. and that decision opened the floodgates for this round, this new pandemic of voter suppression. so in the senate, you know, either there's going to be some comeuppance that these measures, george floyd justice and policing act, the protection of democracy, are central, central to america in this period in our history, or we have got to dump this antiquated jim crow filibuster. it's just that simple. >> mark morial, thank you very

much. and tom rogers, thank you for another great column for "newsweek." we appreciate it. thank you for coming on this morning. we're going to turn back now at five minutes past the top of the hour to the latest polling that shows president biden's approval rating holding strong as he approaches the 100-day mark of his presidency. he's at 53% approval in the latest nbc news poll. 52% approval in "the washington post"/abc news poll, and 58% in the cbs/u.gov survey. according to the nbc news numbers, that puts him ahead of president trump's first one hundred days, but behind presidents obama and george w. bush. president biden also received high marks for his handling of the country's most pressing issues. on the pandemic, his approval is at 69% in the nbc news poll. "the washington post" survey puts him at 64% and the cbs poll at 65%. the cbs news poll also shows 72%

of americans approve of how he's handled the vaccine distribution. when it comes to the economy, both the nbc news poll and "washington post"/abc poll have him at 52% approval. the cbs/u.gov poll is at 57%. the president's infrastructure and jobs plan is also popular with most americans. 59% support the proposal in the nbc news poll. 52% in "the washington post" poll, and 58% from cbs news. the situation in the southern border continues to take a toll on the president's immigration ratings. 59% disapprove of how he's handling immigration, according to the nbc news poll. "the washington post" poll shows 53% disapproval. the cbs poll, 57% disapproval. joining the conversation, we have chief white house correspondent for "the new york times," peter baker. and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt, along

with jonathan lemire and eddie glaude still with us. >> so peter baker, following a rough transition, following january the 6th, following the chaos that followed the election last november, joe biden has seemed to steady the ship. are they pleased with their numbers? >> i think they are pleased with their numbers. they're particularly pleased that they can point to bipartisan support for a number of their proposals in a time when they're not getting bipartisan support on capitol hill. and of course, they've tried to redefine the idea of bipartisanship from a president who promised unity, saying it's about public support, not necessarily lawmaker support opinion using that to pressure republicans and possibly even set up an argument for next midterm election. but these are good numbers for president biden, particularly compared to president trump, who never had numbers as good as this for a single day of his presidency, certainly not the 100 day mark. they're not good historically. they're pretty -- in fact, if you use a net approval rating,

that is approval minus net approval, the net difference is lower than any president going back to eisenhower when they started asking these kinds of questions. it's not historically high. and that says more about our poll rise country right now than particularly about joe biden, although there's certainly concern among a lot of republican voters in particular, with some of these spending plans and where they're going. but i think it shows the challenge ahead for him. is there a way that he can get beyond these low 50s into anything higher, and can he hang on to these low 50s? that's at least a stronger position than the last four years we saw with president trump. >> jonathan lemire, he's at a place where donald trump wanted to get to over his four years in the white house, but never did. the question is, as you dig inside the polls, you've seen some of the polls, things are even more polarized now than they were when barack obama was president. more republicans opposing joe biden's presidency than opposed

barack obama's presidency, which actually, if you look at how harshly the republicans responded to barack obama, that even seems surprising by today's standards. with that being the case, does he have any chance of forging compromise -- do they believe -- does the biden administration believe they have any chance of forging compromise with republicans whose base just don't like joe biden? >> yeah, it is a deeply divided nation, joe. and that's only accelerated in the last four years under donald trump. and in part because of republican efforts during the obama administration. there's no sign of that going back. that's tooth paste that's hard to put back into the tube, unfortunately. and i think that the white house is aware of that. and as much as they are heartened by the success of the first hundred days, we talked last hour about bringing down the temperature in washington,

certainly the response to the pandemic and the vaccine distribution. they know it only gets harder from here. that republicans are digging in their heels on this infrastructure jobs bill and how to pay for it. i think that though the white house aides have told me, they feel this is one they'll win, the public is behind them. the public likes things like roads and broadbands. they'll like things like health care. they believe that this is something that can be politically popular. they're going to try. they're giving themselves through memorial day into early summer to work with republican lawmakers, to see if they can get them onboard. if they can't, they'll go it alone. they'll do reconciliation again, on a party line vote. there's some momentum, perhaps, for small bipartisan measures on some of the hot button issues that loom on the horizon. we've talked about policing, that senator scott, republican, is working on there, his party's promise there. that there may be small compromises possible on some things and the white house will certainly look for those. but they recognize that with some of the thorny issues that will dominate the next hundred

days and the hundred days after that, things like immigration and guns, there's not much optimism for any republican buy-in. and they're going to be counting on public support to try to keep biden's numbers where they are, with the economy, they hope, continuing to improve. and that is the final point. the undercurrent to this, we don't want to get ahead to the midterms yet, but if the economy keeps picking up, they feel like that's the democrats' best chance to hang on to their slim majorities in both houses of congress and keep the president's approval rating north of 50. >> kasie, it appears over these first 100 days, my early predictions of everybody reaching out -- ♪ reach out and touch somebody ♪ -- that didn't happen in congress. i looked at the eight, nine, ten moderates in the republican and democratic party and i thought, wow, we might actually see some

bipartisanship here, but man, not even close. you've got republicans that are voting against bills that have 75% approval rating. you have both sides really far apart on the infrastructure plan, really far apart, they're really far apart on the covid plan. is there really any hope for meaningful compromise, for meaningful bipartisan support on bills? or are we just doing what we always do? elect somebody in 2020 and then everybody focuses on the races two years from now. >> well, i think that's already happening, joe. i mean, the midterms are already dictating how people are making decisions in washington. the campaign cycle starts right away. now, that said, i don't think that the nails are entirely in the coffin on bipartisanship yet. i mean, they're still breaking bread together. moderates in the senate in particular are still trying to

forge personal relationships and alliances that will let them do some things. i think police reform is something that we may see some progress on. but you know, that's also about the midterm elections, frankly. the places where you're going to see republicans perhaps work with democrats are on issues where they recognize that they may have some weaknesses that they need to shore up, if they want to try and take back control of both chambers of congress. and, you know, you think the reality, joe, for the president, and for democrats in general, they need to try to keep the conversation on these issues where the president's above 50. if they're fighting these elections and they're focusing on issues like immigration where the president loses, they're likely to lose, as well. and so that's going to be the challenge for the biden administration in the next 100 days, to make sure that they're talking about these issues where they know they have common ground. and i think that you're seeing the biden administration be careful about immigration and

about guns for that very reason. >> yeah, and richard haas, let me bring you in here a little bit -- we were going to have you on another topic. but i want to bring you in here, because there have been -- there have been differences between republicans and democrats. and in the case of the covid bill, which 75% of americans support, we had democrats coming on here. we had steve rattner coming on, talking about how the biden relief plan actually pumped more money into the economy, if you look at all the other relief plans, than was actually taken out of the economy. he had inflationary concerns. the cfr had larry summers on. you guys had larry summers on. larry summers, not a guy that's been squawking about inflation and deficits and debt as much as i have over the past quarter

century, but larry summers expressed concerns. there are a lot of people that -- i'm not putting words in their mouth, but if you look at their concerns, these democrats, these economists, they actually echoed what republicans were saying. so when you look back and you look at the massive spending bills that have passed, i would not expect many republicans from any era to support those bills. against, joe biden's a president, he got elected president. he can pass whatever bill he wants to pass. i'm just saying, for people that are looking at these bills, as we've been saying for the past several weeks, richard, it's not a surprise that a lot of republicans just said, hey, you know what? i can't put more money into the economy from the federal government than was taken out by this pandemic. >> yeah, exactly right. look, i understand why republicans don't have a whole

lot of standing here, given what they did over the last four years, i get that. but that said, there's a lot of spending here that's not targeted, so the concerns are really two-fold. one is the inflationer expectations or pressures you're building in. it obviously contributes to the deficit and debt. but also what people like larry summers were saying, you didn't get a whole lot for this in terms of infrastructure, in terms of moving things in the direction of green technology, so now you need a whole separate piece of legislation to do that. which simply adds to the pressure. so it's not surprising to me that you have republican concern. because, also, joe, the question is how you're going to pay for it and the debate about taxes. we're in some ways coming back to a classic conversation about the role of government and the size of government. >> yeah, classic conversation, mika, which republicans have been absent from for the past 15 years, for the most part. except, well, of course, when democrats are president, then republicans suddenly care about

the deficit and the debt. when republicans are in the white house, they just don't care. >> i know. >> they haven't cared over the past four years. deficits and debt exploded at record levels. and they said nothing. now you see some senators saying, oh, i'm concerned about raising the debt limit here. i'm concerned about inflation. it's preposterous. and that's the real problem for republicans. nobody -- other than a handful, a small handful of republicans in the house and the senate, you really can't take many of them at their word that they're truly concerned about the deficit and debt, when they ignored it during george w. bush's presidency and donald trump's presidency. >> and i think it's fair during this time to say that that is a big issue right now. and how much we are spending is actually a really big conversation one should have, except most of the people you're having it with are republicans who didn't think it was an issue during the trump presidency. >> only when -- >> it's kind of tough.

>> they only care about deficits and debt and inflation wanted democrats in the white house. >> and richard, i know you wanted to way in on the vaccine. so we'll get to that now. there was an 11-day pause and the cdc and the fda are now allowing the united states to resume use of the j&j vaccine, johnson & johnson. the two federal agencies made the joint announcement on friday, following a 10-4 vote by a cdc advisory committee to recommend lifting the pause. health officials also recommended adding a warning about an increased risk of a rare but serious blood clots. that will come in the form of a fact sheet for those receiving the shot. meanwhile, the united states is partially lifting a ban on exports of the materials needed to make coronavirus vaccines in india. the move is an abrupt policy change for the biden

administration, which had previously denied the request to allow the exports, claiming their focus was on vaccinating americans. india is seeing a devastating and record-breaking surge of the coronavirus. "the new york times" reports the country is witnessing perhaps the worst crisis any nation has suffered since the pandemic began, with hospitals overflowing and desperate people dying in line, waiting to see doctors. also, mounting evidence that the actual death toll is far higher than officially reported. india is the largest producer of vaccines in the world, but is falling behind on distributing doses to their own population, according to "the new york times." only 10% of indians have gotten their first dose and only 1.6% are fully vaccinated. so, richard, you see both the decision to suspend the j&j

vaccine and the decision not to export vaccines as bad decisions. tell us why? >> yeah, just to set the stage. i think the biden administration deserves, mika, a lot of credit for upping the production and the distribution of vaccines domestically. let's just say that for a start. i think the pause through j&j was excess caution. and it really has fanned the flames of vaccine hesitancy and the risk/reward ratio was seriously skewed. and we basically have adopted a policy of america first, in terms of making vaccines available. and it doesn't make sense to me, in terms of health, all of these variants breaking out around the world are going to come back to bite us. also, strategically. how do you say to a country like india, we want to work with you, we want you to work with us. be it about china or climate change, when in its biggest hours of need, we have been reluctant to provide them with the tens of millions of doses of vaccine we're not using. we've not given them until yesterday or opened up the

possibility of them getting some of the components of vaccines. we still haven't licensed the technology to go there. so again, there's a sequential approach, when it really needs to be simultaneous. we want economic recovery to be global. there's a humanitarian case here. there's a self-interested case, so the variants don't break out, and there's also a strategic case here. so i think the administration, again, has been too careful. and i think they've probably been too worried about the attacks by the very people who won't avail themselves to the vaccine here at home. >> well, you certainly can't be america first in a global pandemic. let's bring in the dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine and co-director of the texas children's hospital center for vaccine development, dr. peter hotez. he's the author of the book, preventing the next pandemic. vaccine diplomacy in a time of anti-science. and i would love for you to weigh in on the situation with

india, doctor. >> yeah, i think actually, richard gave quite a good summary. but i'll add one other piece. because the whole infrastructure for vaccinating the world against covid depends on india. india is one of the world's -- probably the world's largest producer of vaccines, between the serum institute of india, biological-e, bharat, and a couple of others, the whole plan was that india was going to provide lots of the vaccine for africa and latin america and elsewhere. so by shutting down exports and not only blocks india from producing vaccines for itself, but globally. i'm really glad what the biden administration has done this weekend, opening up the exports so the serum institute can start producing the biological vaccine. and also using our vaccine, which is a low-cost recom

recomecombinant people's vaccine. this is the problem, we don't have the supply of vaccines for the covax sharing facility. >> here in the u.s., a growing number of americans are skipping their second shot of the two-dose pfizer and moderna vaccine. according to the cdc, more than 5 million people or nearly 8% of those who received one shot have missed their second required dose. this figure is more than double the rate among people receiving vaccines in the first few weeks of the inoculation campaign. the white house says it is monitoring the situation, but senior health officials pointed out that 8% is a relatively small figure, compared to those who returned, 92%, especially compared to other vaccines, such as the one that protects against shingles, in which roughly 75% come back for their second dose. dr. hotez, what's the risk of not coming back for your second

covid shot? and if it starts to happen in larger numbers? >> there are two issues. we know that two doses give very high levels of virus neutralizing antibodies. two doses is a very good vaccine, either one. a single dose gives a lot of variability in virus neutralizing antibodies and probably not as durable. so it's not nearly as good. for instance, in israel, they showed this a single dose gave about 40 to 60% protection after a couple of weeks. it may go up a little bit after that. we really need everybody to get two doses. some of is that people are getting their first and second dose in a different state, so some of it may be accounting. here's the big issue, the way i see it. we need about 80% of the u.s. population vaccinated to stop transmission. that's based on modeling studies that we did with city universe

and others. you have to take 20% right off the top, because those are individuals under the age of 12. those are kids. we don't have approve or authorization to immunize kids. that means we need about every adult and adolescent vaccinated. and we already know about 10% of the u.s. population who identify themselves as vaccine-refusing republicans, those are four different polls, are already say they're not going to get vaccinated. so we need to try to fill every gap that we can, if we're really going to stop virus transmission by the summer. >> let's keep the vaccines coming. get your vaccine. dr. peter hotez, thank you so much. we appreciate your coming on this morning. so president biden has taken a concrete stance on the killing of more than a million armenians by ottoman turks more than a century ago, becoming the first u.s. president to call the event a genocide. former presidents have acknowledged the mass killing,

but stopped short of labeling it genocide, due to turkish objections. the distinction came on april 24th for armenian genocide remembrance day. in a white house statement that reads in part, quote, each year on this day, we remember the lives of all of those who died in the ottoman-era armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. according to a senior administration official, biden informed president erdogan of his decision before making the announcement during a phone conversation on friday. turkey has firmly rejected the declaration. so peter baker, i guess my question to you is why former presidents have bent to turkey's needs on this being not labeled correctly. >> well, i think, you know, one thing it shows us is the state of our relationship with turkey,

which is not nearly as good today as it has been under previous presidents who didn't want to rock the boat. other presidents made this promise and didn't want to follow through. turkey is a close nato ally and a strategic important position in the middle east. we've needed our base there and our access to their territory over the years. so i think there's been a reluctance to, you know, to upset things, for what may have seemed to some to be a symbolic gesture. certainly for armenians, it's not symbolic, it's an important thing to look straight in the face of history and say, this is what happened here, and be honest and truthful about it. and this president decided to do it. it may not be much cost there, because our relationship with erdogan and turkey right now is at a low ebb period. turkey has been a real you know, problem for american foreign policy makers for a number of

years now, and i don't see that they see much cost in that sense, because they're already at odds over a number of different issues. >> richard haas, what's the requirement for synergy on core values to be a member of nato? and what is the significance of this move by president biden? >> on the latter, peter's got it exactly right. this relationship under erdogan has deteriorated to such an extent, there's not a lot of downside for making this decision. when i was in the state department, mika, we looked at this every year, and it was essentially the politic that dominated historical and human rights considerations. i think it also reflected where this administration is on human rights. this is not an exception, but putting these issues towards the top of the agenda as opposed to the bottom of the agenda like the previous administration, this is consistent with that trend. now, to be in nato, a country is maintain to be a democracy, which is a different issue. but there's no way to kick somebody out of nato.

so what you have is turkey in nato that remains an ally, but the fact is, it's not a partner. and increasingly, strategically, we have workarounds, which we know in a crunch we're probably not going to see eye-to-eye with turkey, and we can't depend on them. again, this is both what will reflect that and also contribute to that trend in the relationship. >> richard haas and peter baker, thank you both for your analysis there. still ahead on "morning joe," a lot's been going on in the home state of our next guest. the senior senator from minnesota, amy klobuchar joins us. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. i'm ordering some burritos! oh, nice. burritos?! get a freshly made footlong from subway® instead. with crisp veggies on freshly baked bread. just order in the app! ditch the burgers! choose better, be better. subway®. eat fresh.

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because it's not a fully approved vaccine, i think we probably should have limited the

distribution to the vulnerable. what is the point? if the science tells us that the vaccines are 95% effective. so if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not? why is this big push to make sure everybody gets a vaccine? to the point where you better impose it, you're going to shame people, you're going to force them to carry a card to prove that they've been vaccinated so they can participate in society. i'm getting highly suspicious of what's happening here. >> we have 567,000 people who have died so far in this country from this disease. that is a really, really good reason to get people vaccinated with a vaccine that you've shown is highly efficacious and quite safe. and that's the reason for the emergency use authorization. we are dealing with an emergency. how can anybody say that 567,000

dead americans is not an emergency? >> well, there grow. dr. anthony fauci laying waste to those comments you heard from republican senator ron johnson. that's probably all the time we should give to what ron johnson had to say, which was just moronic. joining us now, democratic senator amy klobuchar of minnesota. she's a member of the judiciary committee and author of the new book, anti-trust, taking on monopoly power from the gilded age to the digital age. and this book is just how. congratulations. usually we sort of talk about other issues of the day before we get to the book, but i want to jump right in. because this has everything to do with what's going on in our country today. tell us what you've found out about the state of the anti-trust laws in our country and why it matters to most republicans. >> well, mika, it matters to everyone, because it affects workers, it affects families, it

affects our very democracy if you have a bunch of huge gaitkeeper tech companies that don't have the bells and whistles that can protect people's privacy or stop misinformation, that ron johnson thing was just the type of the iceberg that we see spreading across the internet. so what i believe we need to do is look back in history, and i do that, i have over 100 cartoons so it's not boring, and look at some of the people that took this on, from ida tar belle, who took on standard oil, to the woman who invented the monopoly game, because she was actually against monopolies to teddy roosevelt to now. and i make the case that there are over 25 things that we can do right now. i list them, to take back our country's economy. you have literally the biggest companies the world has ever seen. i don't -- i'm not mad about their success. i think they're great companies, in terms of employing people and

new innovations, but when you look back through history, we've always rejuvenated our capitalism by using the anti-trust laws, as a check and balance of too much power in one's hands. because we want small businesses to start up. we want consumer prices to go down. we want to have women owned and minority-owneds byes to have a chance to not just start, but to keep going. and that's really hard in a monopoly environment. >> well, i want to follow up. you mentioned the tech companies where you have certain massive areas where people get information that really work off of misinformation, propaganda, and even things that coarsen our society. and yet there's no way to have any type of controls over what is true, what is untrue. no editorial. i mean, what is the solution to all of these lies that are cropping up on facebook, in

social media and feeds? i mean, it seems to be out of control. >> right. for so long, the companies have said, trust us, there's a few solutions. one is, of course, both privacy rules that we have not done on the federal level, as well as looking at this thing called section 230, which is about immunity for the companies. >> exactly. >> and making some changes when it comes to civil rights, when it comes to things involving misinformation. but the third one, and this is completely related, is monopolies and using anti-trust. just think about it. i'll use mark zuckerberg's own words in an email that came out during the house hearings. he said, when explaining why they would look at purchasing companies, like whatsapp or instagram, he said, basically, welg, their brands may be small right now, he called them nascent companies, but one day, they could be very disruptive to us. and he later said, i would rather buy than compete. well, what does that tell you?

that is exhibit "a" for a monopoly. they're buying those companies so they will never be able to compete with them. maybe instagram could have developed the bells and whistles when it comes to misinformation. or how about google in australia, with a 90% market share when it comes to search engine. what do they do when the government says, you know, we're going to start making you pay for content from newspapers and things like that. they said, okay, no, we'll leave your country with no search engine. you'll just a little tiny bit of one. we're gone. monopolies do things. or the last thing i'll note is app store hearing about apple and google, where the night before google literally called one of the witnesses for match.com and started threatening them about their testimony being different than what they said in their earnings report. that's what monopolies do. monopolies are bullies when it comes to the economy. >> eddie glaude, jump in.

>> good morning, senator klobuchar. this is a wonderful book. i'm thinking about whitman's 1971 text, democraticvistas. he's talking about how greed has hollowed out our democracy. i want you to talk a little bit about the relationship between monopolies and greed and what they both mean for a robust or eviscerating a robust conception of the public good in our country. could you talk a little bit about that for us? >> yeah, it's a great question. because, you know, when companies start out, they're doing what they do. it's a -- we have a capitalistic economy. i am a fan of capitalism, but when you go back to the beginnings, adam smith himself, the father of capitalism warned about the risk of unbridled standing armies of monopolies. and what he wander about is basically what's happening right

now. they get so much power with government officials, right now, that means lobbying, that means campaign contributions and the like, that they basically run the place. and that's true of our democracy, as well. then our democracy gets afraid of doing anything. that's what you've seen. you've looked at the insurrection, and what happened, was that all about the social media companies? no, we had a president that was inciting an insurrection. we had all kinds of things. but how did a lot of this misinformation spread online, unchecked? people were doing it online. why do we have a vaccine, because she said he read a post on facebook that they plant a microchip in your shoulder. that kind of misinformation hurts our democracy because people aren't getting facts. they're getting lies and passing it on to other people and it's

incredibly divisive. and the final thing is, it contributes to income inequality. if you have one monopoly and you've got some kind of skills and you're trying to sell yourself, it doesn't help you to have good wages if you can't compete with competing companies. because there's only one monopoly. and this isn't just tech companies, it's happening from cat food to caskets. as john oliver said in one of his great segments at the very end, he showed one of the few casket makers left, he said, this was three at time, and he said, if this is enough to make you want to die, good luck, because there are only three casket makers. now one has bought the other, so there's only two. that's why we need to change our antitrust laws, as we have many times in our country's history, to make it year's to bring the cases. i have a bill that does that. senator grassley and i believe that we need to invest in the agencies that are taking on these big cases, ftc, anti-trust, department of justice. they cannot take on the world's biggest companies with duct tape

and with band-aids. we need to charge higher fees on the biggest mergers, use that money to pay for the lawyers to take on the cases. >> jonathan lemire? >> senator klobuchar, good morning. great to see you. shifting gears, we're at the hundred days mark of the biden administration. a moment to take stock. the president will be speaking to congress in a couple of nights. i wanted to get you -- his white house, of course, he ran as someone who could bridge the gap with republicans, work across the aisle. his white house points to republican voters' support for their plans. they haven't had any success with republican lawmakers yet. i wanted to give you a chance to give an assessment of your colleagues across the isle, republican senators. they have been some efforts from the republicans on covid and infrastructure with their own plans, but the margins were not close. these were non-starters with the white house. do you see any hope in actually getting republican senators onboard for big issues with this administration?

or are you, the democrats, going to have to go it alone? >> i do see hope. i see hope because i see what we did last year in the middle of a crisis, with an administration that was a mess. and we were able to reach bipartisan agreement, in part, maybe because we had to, because the trump administration was having a lot of difficulty, although we did work extensively with the treasury department back then on those packages. so then, you get to the current. they were negotiating with the white house. they came forward with the proposal, but i greed with the president. we just couldn't wait. and we were so different in terms of the amount of help we believed people needed to get through the pandemic with the relief package. but now, infrastructure, again, they're putting proposals up. are we far apart? yes. but i think those negotiations should continue. you look at the reach out that senator scott did when it came to police reform. he's working with senator cory

booker right now. i've been working with a number of republicans on all kinds of proposals, whether it is on burn pits for our veterans or whether it's on the important work that we need to be doing when it comes to biofuels, adoption, you name it. i do it every single day. so i see on mid-level bills, continual bipartisan work. i see the white house genuinely interested, if you look at joe biden's story from beginning to end, in bipartisan work. let's see what happens with his infrastructure negotiations and move forward. but i think what joe biden has basically said is, i really want to make bipartisan negotiations, but if at some point we're not even close, i'm going to move on for the american people. we immediate to get things done, whether that's through reconciliation or other ways, we must get things done. people are too impatient after years of inaction. >> senator klobuchar, it's kasie hunt, good morning. i want to actually ask you about

what's going on in your home state of minnesota. the department of justice has announced a civil rights investigation into what happened with derek chauvin, but some community leaders are saying that investigation should be expanded, considering some of the other things that we have seen. do you think it should be expanded? and help us understand what we're seeing in your home state of minnesota. >> well, i'll answer that first. i am glad this investigation is taking place. i called for it along with senator smith and a number of the members of congress nearly a year ago after george floyd's very, very tragic murder. and right now, they've finally asked for it under merrick garland's leadership, that's good. and sure, you could look at other expansions. and i would let the justice department make those decisions. i think that should lay with them and not with the politicians. but what happened in my state, i think it was an amazing cathartic moment when it came to the witnesses.

regular people who didn't run away, who stood there and tried to save george floyd's life. and now as we learned, nearly a year later, have been literally carrying this burden all this time, teenage girls saying to herself, every night, she apologized to george floyd for not saving his life. a guy that literally was saying to derek chauvin, stop, stop, he can't breathe, stop. all of them, all of them holding on to that. police officers testifying against him. and when i hear all of that, i think, it's on us now. it's on lawmakers. it's on leader in the communities to say, we need police reform. we need to pass a george floyd act. that's where the action is right now in washington, to get that bill done. >> senator amy klobuchar, thank you so much. the new book is "anti-trust: taking on monopoly power from the gilded age to the digital age." congratulations on the book. thank you very much.

and coming up, can republican house leader liz cheney win her battle against the trump wing of the party? "the new york times" magazine's robert draper joins us with his latest reporting. but first, how plans for a european super league fell apart so quickly. roger bennett joins us next. we'll be right back. quickly roger bennett joins us next. we'll be right back.

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i want to apologize to all the fan supporters of liverpool football club for the disruption i caused over the past 48 hours. it goes without saying but it should be said that the project put forward was never going to stand without the support of the fans. no one ever thought differently in england. over these 48 hours, you were very clear that it would not stand. we heard you. i heard you. >> that was liverpool owner john henry apologizing to supporters

last week following outrage over the announcement that 12 of europe's top clubs would be breaking away to form their own super league. following fan protests, all six english teams announced within 24 hours they had revoked their decision to join the league and were followed by madrid and milan last wednesday. now aefa's president says all will face consequences. punishment won't be as harsh for those who quickly opted out. as things stand, some have not formally withdrawn from the competition. joining us now, nbc sports soccer analyst and co-host of "men in blazers" roger bennett. >> i think brick killed a man

with a trident. what happened? >> what a week for european club football. billionaire owners announced a breakaway dr. evil style super league. a power move that would transform the game to a generator of wealth, revenue, content like wwe. the team owners, a handful of entrepreneurs, john henry and others made one error. they ignored just how deeply english clubs are rooted and their traditions are embedded in britishcommunities. they are an expression of local identity. the players had spoken out. the government had spoken out. the royal family had spoken out. thousands of chelsea fans took to the streets to stop their own

team entering the stadium. >> new coke lasted longer. do you think the real surprise for the owners, whether you talk about the english league or whether you are talking about real madrid or ac milan, they expected their fans to be thrilled to be in the new super league. i'm sure -- i'm sure many of them thought that their fans would actually cheer them going into this elite class.

a complete shock to so many owners and the owner groups. i spoke to a few who said, we expected other people to be angry but never expected our own fans to not like this idea. >> that's the incredible miscalculation. look at liverpool's owners, they have worked so hard, to win the trust of the faithful who are deeply suspicious. they delivers champions league glory. they hadn't won for decades and they won the premiere league title. they were celebrated. to fritter it away so devastatingly was remarkable to witness. it's as you say, the one thing -- they hired government lobbyists, global pr teams, bot farms to get this out. the one thing they never thought about was their fans would rise up to protest against them. that's a devastating

miscalculation. >> whether it was -- i haven't spoken to my friends at fenway sports group about this. i spoke to other owner groups who thought their fans would love it and were absolutely shocked. quickly, roger, let's go to some of the highlights of this past weekend. a couple of matches to cover. >> you want to see some football on the field? this weekend was a cup final. think of it as the rob kardashian of football silverware and man city faced tottenham. city dominated. channel vogue, don't just stand there, let's get to it. city win. that goalkeeper, 26-year-old pennsylvanian zach steffen. in the premiere league, super

league teams return to action. the only goal of the game to rebel alliance. liverpool, look at that. i love this. elite shot like anthony hopkins. the karma does exist. >> please stop it, roger. just stop it. this is -- second week in a row liverpool gave up three points at the end against a team they should have easily picked up three points against. >> makes me believe in reward and punishment. fleeting. >> just stop it. you and your grubby little lot should thank us all, we americans, for getting involved in football. your stadiums will be better. your concessions will be better. everything will be better.

the americanization. >> this is normally where mika kicks us off. >> i'm going to step in. >> let's inject sanity in here. >> i will. we will be tuning in to "the men in blazers" on nbc sports network. roger bennett, thank you very much. up next, what americans are saying about president biden's performance as he approaches his 100th day in office. plus, dr. fauci says the cdc is poised to change its guidance on whether those who have been vaccinated still need to wear a mask outdoors. >> time to do it. >> that's where we begin with the next hour of "morning joe." very soon, in the next few days, the cdc will be coming out with updating their guidelines of what people who are vaccinated can do, and even some

who are not vaccinated, and certainly what one can do outdoors vis-a-vis mask is one of those recommendations. you are going to see people want to do things outdoors without masks. it's common sense to know that the risk when you are outdoors, which we have been saying all along, is extremely low. if you are vaccinated, it's even lower. you are going to be hearing about those kinds of recommendations soon. >> dr. fauci yesterday with that news on expected updated cdc guidelines on wearing a mask outdoors. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's monday, april 26th. with us we have white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire, professor at princeton university, eddie glaude, junior, anne applebaum

and ed luce. >> i'm not a doctor. but i play one on tv. usually that's bad news for anybody. >> these guidelines will catch up with each other. everyone is trying to do the best thing and keep people safe. >> you have been hearing from a lot of doctors we have had on that have been advising caution since last march. it made no sense to have mask mandates for people outside who have been vaccinated. with us seeing it in the united states, seeing the rates of vaccinations slow down, a good bit, we are also still finding people are still getting covid. i have seen it in jack's baseball league has been stopped because of a covid outbreak. there are other people who have gotten -- for a case.

is there are other people suffering with covid. we need to be cautious. if you are vaccinated, if you are outside, if you are with others vaccinated, my gosh, those standards, as we have been saying, should be relaxed. kids should have been back in school weeks ago. we will see. they are moving along now. hopefully, these will be positive guidelines. >> if americans followed one guideline, it would be to get vaccinated. if they could agree on one thing it would be that, please. >> get vaccinated and give people a reason. if somebody is vaccine hesitant, give them a reason to want a vaccine, a return to normalcy. let's move to politics, which is connected to this. the latest polling shows president biden's approval rating holding strong as he approaches the 100 day mark. he is at 53% approval in the latest nbc news poll. 52% approval in the new "washington post"/abc news poll.

58% in the cbs/ugov survey. that puts him ahead of president trump's first 100 days but behind presidents obama and george w. bush. president biden also received high marks for his handling of the country's most pressing issues. on the pandemic, his approval is at 69% in the nbc news poll, "the washington post" survey puts him at 64% and the cbs poll at 65%. the cbs news poll also shows 72% of americans approve of how he handled the vaccine distribution. when it comes to the economy, they have him at 52% approval. the cbs poll was at 57%. the president's infrastructure and jobs plan is popular with most americans.

59% support the proposal in the nbc news poll. 52% in "the washington post" poll. 58% from cbs news. the situation at the southern border continues to take a toll on the president's immigration ratings. 59% disapprove of how he is handling immigration. according to the nbc news poll. "the washington post" shows 53% disapproval. the cbs poll, 57% disapproval. >> jonathan lemire, we saw comparisons 100 days in with past presidents. these numbers are very high compared to what we have seen over the past five years. the biden administration doing very well when it comes to the economy, doing very well when it comes to covid, doing well when it comes to infrastructure. still struggling on the southern border. 100 days in, i suspect this biden administration is happy where they are.

tell us about it and tell us what we plan to hear from the president when he speaks about his first 100 days this week. >> the 100 day mark, that's an artificial -- a moment to take stock of a young administration. the poll numbers are ones that hearten the white house. i have been talking to people in the west wing for recent days, looking forward to this week. we know that the president is going to address congress wednesday night to mark the 100 days. he is going to unveil more details of the second part of his infrastructure and jobs program, more about the people piece of this, of infrastructure and jobs rather than the traditional highways, subways, broadband, which we saw him unveil a few weeks ago. basically, the president and his advisors believe he was elected and his first three plus months in office were about to just simply not be president trump anymore who was so divisive,

whose leadership during the pandemic was scattershot to put it kindly. to someone who had really turned up the temperature in washington. my colleagues and i at the ap had begun looking at what this president has done in the last three months. it's about taking the temperature down. it's about being quiet, less of a presence in americans' everyday lives. we hear from him in big moments like when he marked the half million dead from covid or the one-year anniversary of the lockdown. wednesday night, his words carry more meaning. he is able to talk about the grief and struggles that americans have had over the last year because his own life has been infused with such tragedy but pointing to a road ahead. the second piece is the vaccines. handling of the pandemic. how the distribution has really ramped up and how now any american adult who wants one can get one. they know that there are populations that need to be convinced to take it. the president has received strong marks for his leadership

so far. they believe they can build off this for the next 100 days. >> ann, these are numbers we haven't seen for a u.s. president in some time, at least five years. joe biden has been trying to be more moderate, to lower the temperature. you dig into these numbers and you see the sort of tribalism that you have talked about, the tribalism that is fed to liberal forces over the past 5, 10 years, and you see joe biden have lower approval ratings among republicans and higher disapproval ratings among republicans in some of the polls that even barack obama. the tribalism just as fierce or even more fierce despite his higher numbers. >> yeah. i'm afraid that's something that's going to be with us for some time. the polarization that existed before president trump was increased and deepened during his presidency. there's still a large part of

the republican party and of the pro republican media that sees this action an advantage. they think they can win office or win viewers or attention by deepening it, by focusing on culture war issues, by keeping people in a state of anger and frustration, by keeping emotions raised. as long as that's the way they're doing politics, i'm afraid those divisions will continue. one of the best antidotes to that is the focus on real things, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's building roads and bridges, whether it's getting people vaccines, whether it's -- anything that people feel in their real lives. the more biden can get people to look at those things and to think about them and talk about them, the better off we will all be. i think he has done a pretty good job so far.

again, keeping the focus, keeping the conversation about reality and not about emotion, not about symbols, this is a way in which he can begin to pull the nation together. >> if somebody had just come out of the woods after sleeping for ten years, they might hear you say, talk about real things? what else would he be talking about? of course, there we go again to the politics of gesture that we have seen, as you have written about so eloquently in poland and hungary and what we saw with donald trump, whether building a wall, which he never -- even when republicans were in charge, they didn't want to fund that wall, whether it was the health care plan that was two weeks away from being launched, whether it was attacks against the nefarious forces, which didn't really exist. this is, again, such a difference between the politics

and the governing by gesture versus getting 200 million shots into people's arms and building -- getting plans to build roads, to build infrastructure, to build a new electric grid. so many things differently domestically happening. ed, i'm wondering though, let's go from his first 100 days domestically to his first 100 days on the foreign policy side. yes, you see confrontations with china. you see confrontations with russia. you see him drawing lines in some areas. at the same time, you also hear of overtures quietly to russia, possibilities, overtures to china and over the past week or so we have seen both of these countries, both of these rivals, russia more of an adversary, we see both of them responding in a way that may present an opening. >> yeah, that's right. the russian one is particularly problematic. as you know, putin had 100,000

troops on ukraine's border up until the end of last week. thankfully, has pulled them back. alexi navalny has called off his hunger strike. the temperature has gone down a little there. putin may be in more of a position to accept biden's invitation for a summit with him. i don't think there's going to be any talk of a reset of relations with russia under biden. he has called putin a killer. he made that very plain. he said earlier that he looked into putin's soul and decision could have -- discovered he doesn't have a soul in contrast to what george w. bush said many years ago. this is going to be a very difficult, probably insoluable problem. one biden has to manage.

tensions have been extremely high in china. the vulnerability of taiwan is the most potentially explosive problem of the biden years. they can talk on other stuff like climate change, which they did at the end of last week. biden held a virtual climate change meeting that china's leader attended. john kerry, biden's global warming czar, envoy, visited china. it's going to be a much more frustrating and back and forth yo-yo foreign policy than we are seeing in terms of biden's much more radical, much more ambitious domestic policy. we're not going to get big 100 day moments here. it marks a pretty dramatic contrast to the foreign policy by tweet and by caprice that we

saw under donald trump. putin has lined his pockets with the russian people's money. but that might be catching up with him. we will talk about that next on "morning joe." from prom dresses to workouts and new adventures you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need

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now are at the forefront, certainly for many americans. how has joe biden done his first 100 days on issues involving civil rights? >> one of the interesting things is he has been very direct, using language i haven't heard from the presidency in all of my years of paying attention to this. the idea of saying that there's systemic racism, that white supremacy obtains, the way he directed his attorney general to address the rising presence of white supremacist organizations and militias, we know that this is important. the country is still in the midst of a racial reckoning. part of what president biden has tried to do is to go beyond a politics of gesture. it's one thing to acknowledge it. it's another thing to try to address it. there's support around the policing -- george floyd policing and justice act. there's other efforts coming down the pike, at least i hope

is coming down the pike that will take us beyond symbolic acknowledgement of the problem. i would like to emphasize that to see these numbers in a hyper partisan -- to see it above 50% is good. >> ed luce mentioned russia and russian opposition leader navalny who ended his hunger strike. the russian opposition leader is showing what courage means. you write in part, this, when he boarded a plane to moscow, he turned his life in a metaphor. he knew it. his wife knew it. so did the millions of people who had watched his documentary videos, who had seen the

interviews he did. on the plane, who have since joined the demonstrations in his name, so did the leaders of russia, including the dictator and president, putin. this navalny was telling them is what courage looks like. he showed it is possible to live an honest life in a dishonest political system. it's an invitation for others to follow. dictatorships survive because most people are not willing to pay that high a price. anne, i will read also, he wrote a note to a russian journalist, close friend, saying everything will be all right. even if it isn't, we have the consolation of having lived honest lives. his life is a metaphor. can you explain the impact that navalny has had on putin's leadership directly?

>> it's important to understand that the reason why putin rules russia, one of the most important reasons, is that he has created a sense of apathy among people, among the russians. he gives people the feeling there is no alternative to himself. he allows no one to emerge who has any different ideas, who has any different way of running the country. he presents himself at the center of politics. he shows himself in conflict with foreign countries. i don't think americans realize the degree to which anti-american propaganda runs constantly on russian television, as well as anti-european propaganda. everything is dangerous and only i can save russia from these terrible challenges from the outside world. by showing that that's not true, by showing that there can be an alternative -- [ inaudible ]

exposes of putin's construction, of the corruption of the people around him. navalny shows we could live differently. this is something that putin increasingly cannot tolerate. for the first few years, for the first decade that he was in power, he won support by doing a deal with russians. i'm corrupt. i'm stealing. at least you are live -- [ inaudible ] i offer you conflict and triumph and glory. navalny is showing we can have a different way. putin can no longer tolerate that. liz cheney versus maga. we will talk about how the

republican party is turning on the few republicans who are willing to speak up against trumpism. that conversation is just ahead on "morning joe."

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to a follow-up to a conversation we had on the show last week around the move taken by howard university to shut down its classical studies department as part of, quote, prioritization efforts. it's a move that sparked a "washington post" op-ed entitled, howard university's removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe. they wrote, academia's campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay and moral decline and deep intellectual narrowness running amok. they treat western civilization as irrelevant and not as worthy of prioritization or as harmful and worthy only as condemnation. last week, we had jeremy tate on

the show. this morning his op-ed partner is on. also with us, the president of howard university, wayne frederick, princeton university's eddie glaude is with us as well. good to have you with us this morning. reading more from cornell's piece, if i could, to end this spiritual catastrophe, we must restore true education, mobilizing all of the intellectual and moral resources we can to create human beings of courage and vision and civic virtue. this classical approach is united to the black experience. it recognizes that the end and aim of education is really the anthem of black people which is to lift every voice. that means to find your voice, not an echo or an imitation of others. but you can't find your voice

without being grounded in tradition, grounded in legacies, grounded in heritages, engaging with the classics and with our civilizational heritage is the means to finding our true voice. it's how we become our full selves, spiritually free and morally great. >> cornell, it's always great to have you here. i'm sorry we blindsided you with eddie glaude. we will make sure eddie is respectful. for those watching, they have been friends for so long. cornell, when i first read this, i had to stop and look. is this harold bloom or cornell west? harold was writing about the cancelling of shakespeare in 1994. talk about why you wrote what you wrote and why you feel it is so important to keep classics,

especially in traditionally black universities. >> you know, brother joe and my dear brother, my mother passed. my mother was a classic. she believed in the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and the holy. the condition of truth allows suffering to speak. beauty has to do with elegance. howard university, of course, is one of the great institutions that has been involved in that quest. after talking to the great larry morris, head of the board and talking to brother frederick, i can see how we are involved in this common quest but we are trying to ensure the students are able to be find their

voices. i'm so glad to have president frederick here on the show. >> president frederick, tell us about the decision which obviously drew criticism and how you are restructuring the study of the classics at your university. >> thanks for having me. i would like to say, professor west, i send my condolences for your loss. we started back in 2009 with a presidential commission and academic renewal. i wasn't a part of that. my predecessor was. it was to look at how we look at our academic offerings, the quality of them, looking at the numbers of students involved and looking in ways that we can con tstimony -- contemporize it.

we believe the classics are important. as a foundational study. just as important as we believe african-american studies is to the black students today. the last thing i would say is we are focused on contemorizing the experience and take the classics and apply it. we can teach them but they have to be able to transfer that skill set. what i think we have been doing at howard and doing successfully is not asking students so much about their major but asking them more about their mission and trying to give them a contemporary education that has foundational elements but also progressive elements to it as well. >> eddie, i will have you go. i just wanted to stay another

part of the op-ed where the significance of classic literature in the lives of black freedom fighters throughout history, cornell and mr. tate point out that frederick douglass learned to read while enslaved and studied and in martin luther king's letter from jail, he referenced socrates three times. cornell brings up how the classics often have been used in civil rights movements to connect to some eternal truths that need to be reconfirmed even in these days. >> absolutely. absolutely. i wanted to ask my dear brother cornell and, of course, you are in my prayers and i live for the example of your dear mother, irene west, who was such an

extraordinary woman. i want to ask you this question about the op-ed. how do you respond to those who read it as inadvertently supporting a particular kind of understanding of the role of classics, that is to say that this is really about an argument about the importance of western civ, to the detriment of other subject matters, this is an attack on western culture and the like, how do you respond to those who say this inadvertently supports those moves within the context of the academy itself? >> it's a wonderful question. it's really important that people recognize that conservative brothers and sisters have no monopoly on truth and goodness and the holy. we must create counterweights against the rule of money, against the rule of mediocrity, the rule of military might,

against the rule of conformity so that in the last 40 years, conservatives have acted as if when you talk about shakespeare or herbert melville, because you talk about the classics, that's their terrain. no. not at all. you are talking about ralph ellison, james baldwin. greatness is found in every culture, every culture. we can talk about -- there's greatness. we can talk about -- it cuts across the board. and it does cut across gender, ideology, skin color. that's what howard university has historically stood for at its best. >> president frederick, what do you say to critics who say that

the move that howard university is making is also bad in the long run for black students and black scholars because when you look at the study of the classics, it's so dominated by white professors, by white thinkers, that howard needs to remain a beacon in this area so you can have more black thinkers, more black scholars moving into this field? >> i would strongly disagree. we are going to offer these courses. we are going to offer a path for students to do that but in a more contemporary way. we will start the social innovation hub that will put humanities and social security at the core of that and wrap that with different aspects that students can then go out and do the types of things and solve

the big problems like income inequality, criminal justice reform. i think what we have to recognize today is that while howard does represent a pipeline, we must not take on that pipeline at the detriment of our own selves in the cause of the greater humanity. there's several aspects of which howard does that where we have the first and only department and we ended up with the last and only department, but we also have to make sure that we can thrive, not just survive. i think we are equally and well criticized if we aren't surviving and making strong administrative decisions to ensure we are thriving. there's a different means to that end. we must do that. we started a program, the students in the program are going to have undergrad in the humanities and go to law school in one year less. that's a contemporary. we are looking at the black student, taking their debt

burden down, but giving them an opportunity for a contemporary experience. we have to keep being nimble along those things. i don't think there's one path that we should be -- that should be placed upon us for how we achieve some of those goals. the last thing i will say, joe, which is interesting, howard has the only swim team in the hbcu. we have a requirement every student has to pass swimming at howard. sounds a little bit unique. black americans are five times more likely to drown as compared to their white counterparts. that shows what howard does to fit a student coming to us and an issue around us. it's a practical approach to an issue. that goes on in many different areas where howard sends more africans to medical school. over the past 55 years, harvard

has been the number one supplier. howard is number two. that burden that howard takes to diversify all these fields is significant. you have to remember that our endowment compared to some of the other institutions is minuscule. we have to run this institution in a very, very practical manner to ensure this and the classics will be a part that was. >> thank you so much, president frederick. greatly appreciate it. eddie told us, cornell, how important your mother was to him and his life. will you talk to our viewers, will you tell our family that watch every day, tell them about your mom, tell them about what was so special about your mom. >> well, she was sublime and majestic because she loved with everything she had inside of

her. she emptied herself. she donated herself. she served others. she said her christian faith said at the very center who she was. those who encountered her -- remind you of armstrong. felt the joy oozing out of her soul. that's who she was. i will never be one-third of the human being she was. that's true for my father, too and my brother and brother eddie is part of the family in that way. in that sense, i'm probably the most blessed of all persons, let alone black men in the late modern world to have been a recipient of that kind of love and care and concern. but also correction. she understood love. she tried to keep me on the straight and narrow. not always successful. there's nobody like her. it was grace. it's a gift. i showed up and there she was

with dad. i'm even more equipped. i have a stronger spiritual arm even after her passing because part of her afterlife is manifest in my life with love tied to a quest for truth and goodness and beauty and the holy tied to a palestinian jew named jesus rooted in the struggle of black people and others around the world. >> amen. >> cornell west, thank you so much. thank you for sharing. up next, much of the republican establishment rallies behind house leader liz cheney as she battled the maga crew. is the establishment in control? we will dig into the gop split next on "morning joe."

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him? >> i would not. >> okay. liz cheney, very good catching up with you. >> a simple answer from republican congresswoman liz cheney. cheney is the focus of a sweeping new piece from robert draper for "the new york times" magazine entitled liz cheney versus maga. robert joins us now. kasie hunt and jonathan lemire rejoin the discussion. eddie glaude is still with us as well. >> it's very interesting, that clip, of course, upset an awful lot of republicans. yet, we played a clip early in the show where kevin mccarthy was blaming donald trump for january the 6th. kevin mccarthy was saying that there must be consequences after january the 6th. the only difference between mccarthy and liz cheney in this case is that liz has been consistent with what she said

since january 6th. kevin hasn't. >> i think that's right, joe. mccarthy has been consistent in his ambition, which is to be the speaker of the house. his theory of the case is he can't become one, the republican house can't regain the majority if he does not appease donald trump, if he doesn't tamp down trump's anger. liz cheney has the opposite point of view, which is the party simply cannot move on, cannot be a viable party unless it renounces trump, a person who attempted to overturn a democratically held election, and make the party about what it was before trump came on the scene, which is a party for limited government and low taxes and low regulations. unless and until they return to that, then it's always going to be the hot blooded populist themes that led to things like the insurrection. >> you know, one of the funnier

parts of your piece is you have a quote from a republican after a four hour long meeting, republican caucus meeting. they are sitting there and everybody is venting at liz cheney who is staring at them for four hours. a member of congress said, i can't believe we sat through four hours of men whining to a woman about her not considering their feelings. >> it drove them nuts that liz cheney would not apologize and big forgiven. her point of view is the republicans should apologize who passed on their moment of opportunity to vote yes to impeach the president. she stood by her vote and at no time was she going to apologize for it. >> kasie hunt? >> robert, i have to say, i enjoyed the portion of your piece that joe just pulled out. one of the things that you took away from that was that,

frankly, liz cheney, you write, was willing to face trump's wrath and that called attention to the fact that most of the men simply haven't had the strength of constitution or otherwise to stand up to trump and to take the criticism that's up to trum and take the criticism leveled at them the way she's willing to take criticism by sticking to her principles. >> that's right, kasie. members have said to liz cheney what they've also said to me, yes, yes, of course we need to move on from donald trump. but damned if i'm going to say so publicly. that would be the end of my political career. i would get death threats. my family would be threatened. somehow they're expecting them to -- to use the phrase of president trump, it will all go away like a miracle. but liz cheney is of the view trumpism does not end in silence, it requires leadership and republicans standing up saying we have to move on.

it's not going to move on by itself. >> jonathan lemire is with us and has a question. >> robert, great piece. i am hoping you can talk to us a little bit about what liz cheney's next move might be, her future. we know the maga wing is threatening to primary her, and matt gaetz went out to support that, and he's in trouble for other things. what is she trying to do, convert other republicans? how is she trying to normalize the party, break it away from trump? >> jonathan, those are good questions and in the very immediate, she faces a two-prong challenge, one within her party and one in the state of wyoming. she benefits in wyoming from what is likely to be a crowded primary field, people thus far are unserious candidates. so this is why an attempt to pass a bill that would require a

candidate to receive 50% or so before they can move on to the primary to attract interest from donald trump and others. so she's likely to prevail in wyoming. the question then is what becomes of cheney within her own party, and if there's a future for her as a leader, other than a congress person? she does not have much constituency within the house conference right now. she provokes great discomfort. in part because the piece mention, she reminds many of them of their own unwillingness to stand up as she did and face the heat. >> wow, that's an interesting reaction to being given the truth. in his latest column, by the way, for "the new york times," entitled "the g.o.p. is getting even worse," david brooks writes in part, those of us who hoped

america would calm down when we no longer had donald trump spewing poison from the oval office had been sadly disabused. there are increasing signs that the trumpian base is radicalizing. my republican friends report vicious divisions in their friends and families who don't toe the trump line or speaking of death threats and menacing verbal attacks. it's as if the trump base felt some security when their man was at the top and that's now gone. maybe trump was the restraining force -- >> no. >> what's happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. since then a large swath of the trumpian right decided america is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with alamo level desperation to ensure the survival of the country if they conceded. with their deep pessimism, the

high populous wing of the gop seems to be crashing through the floor of the philosophical liberalism. many 6 these folks are no longer operating in the political realm and that is a great point of view, joe, and i'm still stuck on all of these male republicans incapable of handling liz cheney, who's stronger than all of them put together. >> she's tough. >> it's pathetic. >> she's tough. you look at her mom and dad and it's not hard to figure out where she got that toughness from. i think we have to divide that. robert, eddie glaude has the next question for you, robert. eddie, i will direct this to you. i'm talking about my personal experiences. i'm surrounded by trump supporters, family, friends, most supported donald trump. i see trump supporters everywhere i go, and i go out and coach little league.

i'm surrounded by trump supporters for the most part. it's very interesting there is a divide, and i will say most of the trump supporters i've seen in my life after january the 6th, sort of quietly, i don't know what they tell pollsters but quietly moved away from trump, they think democrats are radicals, they don't like what joe biden is passing, but most of them are rolling their eyes and like too much, too far, let's move on. but they don't tell pollsters that. but you have hard core maybe it's a third, maybe it's 50%, i'm not sure, of the qanon types, conspiracy theorists, and the know-nothings there. so i just -- i guess what i'm

saying is i fell back to 2013 after mitt romney lost and there were all of the sort of morning after, hand-ringing conferences. we need to be more exclusive, we need to be more open. we need to get marco rubio. he's hispanic, right? he will help us win. instead they ended up with donald trump. you never know how this is going it turn out three years from now, right? >> right, joe. i think you're making a wonderful point that we can't just simply think about the trump voter as undifferentiated mob. all of them think alike. we don't want to make that move. i do think there's a through line. and this is the question i would like to ask robert, about the kinds of real serious anxiety and panic about the cultural shifts that we're experiencing in the country, cultural shifts that are in part a result of massive demographic shifts that are not only happening but in our immediate future. you tell the story of these

actors, liz cheney and maga, what is the result of this, do you think? what will happen to the republican party as this drama plays itself out, given the complexity on the ground. >> it's a. >> question because the demographic and culture changes are inarguable on a certain level. beyond that level, however, they are being high peshalized by performative individuals who stand to benefit politically or financially by fanning the flames of culture populism. in a lot of ways, here's joe biden, the president who is a serious man but also muttered in temperament and it seems he would be well equipped to take the temperature down, and it has not really occurred. he's got a 52% approval rating, but as others pointed out, that's quite low compared to anybody but trump at the 100-day stage. in a lot of ways the normal

level impact are the ones trying to benefit by stoking divisions that should be the subject of our inquisition unless and until we can clamp down on people like that, both in the political sphere and in the media, then i don't see how these things get better. >> all right, robert draper, thank you so much. great having you on. great article. we really appreciate it. mika, we also -- i think since donald trump has left office at least from what i see day in and day out interactions, and i don't know if you have seen the same thing, i have just seen the temperature go down, again, talking to republicans, talking to former trump supporters. doesn't mean i'm not being pollyannaish here, but i'm saying the temperature dropped. >> yes. i think there's a line over

january 6th though that is still very clear between most republicans and the few that are standing out really bringing the temperature down. before we go new this morning, congressman tim ryan of ohio has launched a campaign for the u.s. senate. the first democratic candidate in the race to succeed republican senator rob whartman, who is not seeking re-election. he made a video and released it on his social sites this morning called my hometown. the republican field for portman's seat features four declared candidates so far. very interesting. >> kasie hunt, what do you think? >> i think if there's any democrat that's going to have a shot at this seat, it's likely tim ryan. he has potentially the kind of profile to do it. i think a lot of it will again on what happens on the republican side. it's possibly a little bit of a

mess with president trump's likely involvement but it's really hard to know and ohio has just been moving away from democrats in such a significant way i have trouble seeing how this will be a success but i'm looking forward to asking tim ryan about it. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi, there, i'm stephanie ruhle live at msnbc headquarters here in new york city. it is monday, april 26th. there's a lot going on this week. so let's get smarter. this morning the johnson & johnson vaccine is officially back in play after a ten-day pause. at least 29 states are offering the single shot again after the fda gave it the green light again. but there are growing signs the nation's vaccination program is losing some steam. nationwide the average rate