and this desert doesn't give up its secrets easily. this sunday, party purge. >> i have lost confidence. >> republicans move to oust liz cheney from party leadership. >> i have heard from members on her ability to carry out the message. >> the message cheney has been sending. >> president trump claimed for months that the election was stolen and set about to do everything to steal it himself. >> you consistently speak out against the leader of our party chiefs. >> she's made a determination that the republican party can't grow with president trump. i've determined we can't grow without him.

>> my guests this morning, maryland republican governor, larry hogan who is eyeing a run for president and republican senator from louisiana, bill cassidy. >> models once projecting grim news offer reasons to be quite hopeful for what the summer may bring. >> bistros, broadway and ball games preparing to come back. >> in every part of new york city, life is coming back. >> the cdc projecting a sharp decline in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. >> let's get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. >> even as herd immunity is unlikely because of vaccine hesitancy. >> i don't know if i'm going to get it. the disappointing jobs report. evidence that we're spending too much on unemployment benefits or proof we need to keep the support going. joining me are nbc news senior washington correspondent hallie jackson, cornell bellcher.

daniella tletka and jake sherman. founder of the news site punch bowl news. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." >> announcer: this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. a good sunday morning and a happy mother's day to all the moms out there. the coming leadership ouster of liz cheney is more about the sacking of the number three house republican, it's an unconditional surrender that the 2020 election was somehow stolen. cheney's crime isn't that she isn't conservative, it's that she's not conservative as defined by today's republican party which partly means unquestioned loyalty to the defeated former president trump. she says the election was not stolen and charges trump with inciting the insurrection. it is the latest chapter in the

party's purging of the legacy. the bushes, mccains, the romneys and now the cheneys. names that appeared on eight of nine presidential tickets from 1980 to 12, ex communicated by the party's base and the leadership. for one reason only, the message, go along with drld and his lies or go away. will this help in the short term? perhaps. what does it mean for our democracy, when a great institution refuses to accept free and fair election results and rejects their own who chooses principle over party. >> i have concerns about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair. >> congresswoman liz cheney facing a vote as soon as wednesday to oust her from leadership after her criticism of donald trump's big lie that the election was stolen and his role in the capitol attack. >> we will not forget what happened on january 6th and the

sing the greatest threat to our public is a president who would put himself above the constitution. >> cheney writing in "the washington post" this week, the question before us now is whether we will join trump's crew said to undo the legal outcome of the election. house republicans have answered. >> i've had it with her. i've lost confidence. >> boosting elise stefanik who trump has endorsed. >> what they're saying is, if you don't go along with the big lie, you need go. >> stefanik voted with trump 78% of the time, opposing his border wall and nafta and trade, even voting against his signature 2017 tax cut. cheney voted with trump 93% of the time. once a critic --

>> he's insulting -- >> this week he called her a war mongering fool who has no business in republican party leadership. >> the good news is, in her state she's been censured. >> all republicans who voted to impeach or convict, have faced formal rebukes at home. mitt romney, one the party's nomination. >> i don't have a fact that i wasn't a fan of our last president's character issues. >> his big lie is restricted voter access in republican controlled state legislatures across the country. including florida and texas this week. and a hand recount of ballots in maricopa county arizona. >> there's accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown in from arizona and it was stuffed into the box. it came from the southeast part of the world, asia. what they're doing is to find out if there's bamboo in the

paper. >> while cheney has republican supporters. >> we need to make sure as we're moving into 2022 that we don't start narrowing the tent which is what this will do. >> senate republican leaders have stopped defending her. >> do you support liz remaining in a position of power? yes or no. >> i'm focusing on the new administration. >> a total party surrender to donald trump. >> i've always loved liz cheney. but she believes that the republican party can't grow with president trump. i say we can't grow without him. joining me is senator bill cassidy of louisiana. one of the seven republicans who voted to convict president trump during the second impeachment trial this year. senator, welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> thank you, chuck. good to be with you. >> congressman anthony gonzalez,

one of the house members who voted to impeach. he was censured by the republican party and called a traitor by a candidate from the u.s. senate who hopes to be your colleague in 2023, josh mandel. can you explain the fervor to punish somebody like yourself and anybody who crosses the president? >> what i found is there's a lot of misinformation out there, when you listen to people, they know you're listening and you present the other side. you get people who are least neutral but oftentimes, hmm, i didn't know that. they'll agree with you. for example, if i'm asked about voter fraud, i point out that giuliani under oath said there was no fraud. now, outside the courtroom he says stop the steal. inside he says there is no fraud. sydney powell in march said that no reasonable person would have believed what she had said. no reasonable person. she's playing people for a sap. once they hear that, that gives them a gut check. when you go through those facts,

there's a reconsideration. i'm confident that process will continue. >> how should that process continue? as you saw in our opening piece, more elected republicans, and i'm leaving you out of this, because when you're asked, you address the issue. but a lot of republicans have chosen not to. chafe' chosen to say, in the face of these trump conspiracy theories i'm not looking backwards, i'm looking forwards. is that a mistake? >> i can't speak for other people, but i do find being honest with the american people always works. if you give them the fact, they will flip their mind. if they ask about the constitutionality of the impeachment proceedings, i say watch the youtube of the first day and you will come away convinced it was constitutional. the more you hit that, these are good americans, the more they do their investigation, the more they'll come to understand at least it's reasonable to hold the position as i, as

representative cheney, and that's our process of getting to a better place. >> do you still feel welcome inside the republican party? >> absolutely. i feel incredibly welcome. believe me, there are some people still upset with me, and there's some people who are very pleased. i was at an air show at the air base in shreveport, louisiana. those young airmen and women, they take an oath to support the constitution. almost every american wants to support and defend the constitution. once we begin to see it in that light, folks are okay with where i am. i'm okay as well with this process that we're working through. >> lindsey graham said he doesn't believe the republican party can grow without donald trump. this debate is there, right? you can't win with him, you can't win without him.

where are you on this? >> the policies really worked. before covid hit, we had the best economy we've had in my lifetime. i would argue there are some who still see him as the messenger of that set of policies they felt was incredibly positive for our country. if you look at polls, there's a whole group of folks that agree with liz cheney. for us to win in 2022, and 2024, we need everybody. we need those who feel as liz, those who feel as lindsey. ultimately it's about the policies. you see cheney, cassidy, support those policies. those policies are a ticket to victory and bring us back in 2022. >> i want to play something that senate republican leader mitch mcconnell said earlier this week about working with the biden administration. he said 100% of his focus was on stopping the new administration. the next day he walked it back

and said he wants to do business for the president but he needs to be moderate here. do you feel as if he's given you openness to work across the aisle. do you feel you can cut a deal if you come to agreement on an infrastructure plan, that leadership will support you on this? >> absolutely. i'll give an example. on the asian hate crime bill. we said we don't like the way the bill starts off, but we can work with democrats and get to a better place. on infrastructure, he's made it clear. if we can find something that spends money on infrastructure, roads and bridges, as opposed to what the biden plan does, which is to spend a billion on things that has no relationship to infrastructure, we can cut a deal. i don't think mitch or any republican is for the $7 trillion in spending the administration proposed for this year alone. i think that's the thrust of his comments. >> when you heard president biden say he's not going to deficit spend, does that tell you this bill is going to get smaller because there have been democratic senators that have

been a little nervous about some of these tax increases. does that indicate a smaller deal is in the works? >> any time you're talking about $7 trillion in one year and you're not going to deficit spending, grab your wallet. i don't care who you are. of course they're nervous. you're talking about spending that inevitably ends up hurting the economy. republicans showed that when you let the american people keep their own money and invest in that which they wish to invest in, the economy takes off. with record low unemployment for blacks, hispanics, veterans, high school dropouts, you name it. the biden administration is trying to trickle down through democratic-leaning organizations. i think everybody has a pause about $7 trillion spent in such a way. >> i want to ask you about the pipeline. you're on the energy committee. this cyber attack on the colonial pipeline. it goes through the state of louisiana. it moves oil up and down the east coast.

this critical infrastructure held by private companies where we're not 100% sure they're doing everything they need to be doing, how do we fix this? >> economists have attempted to fix that. there's been problems in the past with sharing classified information with private entities, and congress passed a law to fix that. it's going to take an ongoing relationship, by the way, a bipartisan relationship, in which we better equip small businesses and large businesses to withstand cyberattacks. chuck, the implication for this for our national security cannot be overstated. i promise you, this is something that republicans and democrats can work together on. >> senator bill cassidy, republican from louisiana, appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective. thank you. >> thank you. joining me is governor larry hogan of maryland, a republican in a very democratic state who

has taken on a leadership role in the republican party and may end up running for president in 2024. good to have you. welcome back to "meet the press." >> good morning. >> so i want to start with this which is the lindsey graham analysis. who believes that the party cannot grow with donald trump. and lindsey graham believing that the party can't grow without president trump. what say you? >> i think we've got to get back to winning elections. we have to have a republican party that appeals to a broader group of people, having a bigger tent as reagan talked about -- we've had the worst four years ever in the republican party, losing the white house, the house of representatives and the senate, and successful politics is about addition and mult

multiplication not subtraction and division. >> most of the elected leadership, you're an exception, the nga rga apparatus. most of the leadership doesn't seem to pin this on him. again, you sort of -- the record is the record. why do you think they don't want to pin it on him? >> i think they're concerned about retaliation from the president. they're concerned about being attacked within the party. it just bothers me that you have to swear fealty to the dear leader or you get kicked out of the party. it just doesn't make any sense. >> to me, the most damning thing is liz cheney voted for president trump's singular achievement and many people tell me that they're protecting the person who voted against it. is the party now, what you just said, if you're not with trump, you're not a republican?

>> well, it's sort of a circular firing squad where we're just attacking members of our own party instead of focusing on solving problems or standing up and having an argument that we can debate the democrats on some of the things the biden administration is pushing through. >> how do you talk to trump voters? there's certainly some places that president trump did well in western maryland, some places along the eastern shore. you're in a blue state. so you have a little easier time straddling the wings of the party. how do you have a conversation with a trump supporter that says, hey, how come you haven't investigated voter fraud, governor hogan? >> i try to be honest with them. in my state i ran 45 points ahead of the president. i'm ahead of him among republicans, among conservatives and democrats and independents. i think what most people want, really, is for people to tell them the truth. we can disagree on what happened in the election.

voters still support me in spite of the fact that i don't happen to support conspiracy theories. >> one of the issues is the information ecosystem. as you know, there's a reward -- there is a sort of reward system for own the libs political theatrics and if you somehow help pass a bipartisan bill, you're punished. you want to run for president, how do you run in an environment where most of the voters you'll be appealing to are hearing this bizarre set of fictional ideas? >> i think most voters in both parties are kind of fed up with crazy things coming out of both parties. they really want elected officials that are willing to work together, get things done and come up with bipartisan, common sense solutions. i've proven that in two elections in a row by winning

overwhelmingly with republicans, democrats and independents. people are fed up with the politics we have in washington today. >> this decision by the house republicans to oust liz cheney. it's not a done deal yet. does this make donald trump and the republicans in 2022, it's a referendum on his leadership. if the republicans can't win the senate with donald trump the leader of the party, is this when they realize, oh, trump hasn't been good for the party? >> perhaps. it's a long war. it's only been a couple of months. we've got to see what happens in '22 and lead up to 2024. this is going to be a battle for the soul of the republican party and i think things will be a lot different from now two years from now, four years from now than they are right now. 1976 after watergate, they said

it was the death of the republican party, and we came back four years later, in 1980, with the biggest landslide victory in history, ronald reagan. >> i want to ask you about this pipeline situation. this pipeline goes through the state of maryland. how does something like this work? are you alerted? are you aware of this? these ransom attacks are getting hit with these almost every single day and we don't seem to know how to deal with it. what's your prescription? >> cyber threats are one of the biggest threats we face. maryland is the cyber capital, home to nsa and u.s. cyber command. we have to invest more money. senator cassidy, who you had on earlier, he and i are working on a bipartisan compromise which focuses on infrastructure, and securing the grid and securing our energy infrastructure.

>> governor larry hogan, republican from maryland, thanks for coming on and sharing your view. >> thank you. when we come back, republican leaders are betting that unflinching support for donald trump is smart politics. is it? the panel is next. you. for a convenient life hack. try febreze unstopables fabric refresher. with 2 times the scent power of regular febreze, unstopables fabric finds, neutralizes and eliminates tough odors trapped in hard-to-wash fabrics, like couches or smelly sports equipment; leaving an irresistibly fresh scent. and for a tropical burst of freshness, try new paradise scent. stop sneaky odors from lingering in your home, with febreze unstopables.

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the panel is with us. nbc news senior washington correspondent, hallie jackson, cornell belcher, danielle pletka and jake sherman, founder of punch bowl news. jake, you're our resident capitol hill vote counter, and it may only need a majority of the house republican conference to oust liz cheney. can we consider this a done deal, considering how it went the first time? >> i have no evidence that liz cheney is going to be ousted.

she won by a healthy margin last time. a lot of republicans i've talked to in the last two or three days suggested they have not seen any sort of behavior change. that's the way they put it, from the vote. they were like her -- even the people, chuck, who don't like donald trump, some of the people who voted for impeachment do not want to be constantly talking about donald trump. they might agree with cheney on the substance, but they don't want this to be the overwhelming narrative of their next 16 to 18 months. >> i understand that. danielle pletka, this is one of the weirder parts of this. that liz cheney keeps bringing it up. donald trump has brought up the election some 20-plus -- 24 times since he's been off social media. he's put out a statement claiming election fraud. and the person who seems to be obsessed with relitigating the past is donald trump, not liz cheney. >> i think the problem for the republican party is that they

really -- since 2016, they have not figured out trump's appeal and haven't figured out how to govern trumpism without trump. that's great for donald trump because he wants this to be all about him. he doesn't want trumpism to exist without him. the problem with the party is they can't figure out what it is that got him elected, that made him popular, so there's this struggle. for the conference, the question we have to ask ourselves is why doesn't liz cheney speak for the conference? isn't that a big problem for the republican party? the answer, of course, it is a big problem and one they need to sort out. >> hallie jackson, elise stefanik voted against the trump tax bill. forget on all the different ways she has not been, what dani said, what is trumpism. if it's defined by these issues,

she doesn't fit the bill unless, if you believe the election lie, then she does. >> it's striking to hear house republican leaders talk about how they want somebody who will carry on the message of the republican party which is the message of trumpism. if you're looking for someone who is going to do that on policy, it's actually liz cheney who scores better on that front than someone like elise stefanik in this instance. the things i've heard mirrors what jake has heard. i'll put it like this. it's about the tactics, the way congresswoman cheney of going up against donald trump, even though he's the one that started this with his statement. there are those inside the party who would refer she let that go. she's created in the eyes of some this headache. this is a distraction of members while home on recess were getting questions about this. it keeps getting brought up in

the media. i heard a lot about the narrative framing of the media, about how liz cheney is suddenly this media hero for standing up to donald trump. that's annoyed republicans who still might agree with her behind the scenes on what she's saying as relates to former president trump. >> cornell, be a pollster here. is lindsey graham right, that they need trump, that republicans need trump to be competitive? cornell? we've got it frozen there. jake, how much belief is there on capitol hill that they actually need donald trump to succeed in 2022? >> a huge amount. in the republican conference cheney is an outlier by a huge margin. i would say about 85% of the republican conference not only supports trump, but comes from districts where trump is, you know, in the 80% range. so massively popular figure still in the house republican

conference, which is why we're seeing this fight. >> dani pletka, pretty much every republican who has voted against trump has been punished by the elected party leaders. there's a disconnect. the elected leaders seem to be almost uniformly pro trump. ironically, the polling we've had and other people have had and i think you've seen some of it, shows that trump's hold on the party actually is fading. this feels as if it's a -- it's a desperate save themselves in the short-term strategy here. is it not? >> look, without donald trump, the republican party doesn't have a leader, at least one that has not emerged beyond him. everybody is hanging desperately on to the individual because they haven't got another guy or another woman. again, if the republicans are going to move into 2020 and take

back the house and take back the senate, it has to be about ideas. it can't be about who donald trump endorses. they've got to figure this out. i think the leadership is struggling with it, and they're blaming liz cheney for something that is, in fact, their own problems. they are the ones who perceive they need trump. it's not her who keeps bringing things back to him, it's him and them going along with it. >> cornell, we finally got rid of the tech gremlin there. the question to you was, as a pollster, is lindsey graham right, do they need trump in order to be competitive in 2022? >> to that point, i will give you the number 25 which is from april's nbc polling. that is 25% of americans id themselves as republican party. they're not growing the republican party. in the "washington post" poll, it was 24%. they're not growing the

republican party. it's hard to understand how as a party, if you are focused on things that quite frankly the majority of americans don't believe, which is that the election was somehow stolen, you're not a party of big ideals. there's a bigger thing afoot here. i don't often disagree with president biden. president biden said there's a mini civil car going on in the republican party. chuck, the civil war is over and the conservatives have lost. we've got to break down what is the big lie. we talk about the big lie all the time. what is fundamentally the big lie? it's promoting something that undermines democracy, that actually says the will of the american people is sort of thrown out and is fomenting attacks on our government. right now, our greatest national security threats are actually from this fomenting of these

lies. there's something bigger at stake here than just partisanship. all this talk about civil war, i think back -- ulysses s. grant at the start of the civil war said that there are but two parties now. traitors and patriots. i think we're increasingly coming back to that time. >> i feel that myself, cornell. when we come back, we want to talk about good news. could the worst be behind us? dr. anthony fauci joins me next. h . is having healthy gums. keep yours healthy with new crest advanced gum restore. it's clinically proven to detoxify below the gum line, and it restores by helping heal gums in as little as seven days. because you can't have a healthy smile, without healthy gums. advanced gum restore from crest. the #1 toothpaste brand in america.

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welcome back. there were days last week when los angeles, once overwhelmed with cases reported no new deaths. new york and chicago are planning to fully reopen in the coming weeks. the seven-day average of new cases is 43,000, down from 260,000-plus in january. so many americans have been vaccinated that there's confidence any new spikes can be contained. joining me is dr. anthony fauci. director of the national institute of allergy and diseases. dr. fauci, welcome back to "meet the press." >> good to be with you, chuck. >> let me start with the headline yesterday from the cdc about the virus spreading through aerosol form. i'll be honest with you, i had to check the date of the article

to make sure it wasn't from a year earlier. this felt like a known thing. now that there is a formal acknowledgment now of aerosol transmission, what does this mean for workplaces? what does this mean for schools, homes, things like this if we're going to have to live with this virus for another year or so? >> as you mentioned, chuck, correctly, this is something we've known for some time. when you have an aerosol, the distance between people becomes more problematic. generally when you say you have a certain distance that the droplets will fall and not reach a person. this will have an emphasis on proper ventilation. if there is aerosolization, you'll want to have good ventilation. that can hold true for schools and workplaces. the other thing, it also brings out the possibility you're going to have to make sure that indoors when you have unvaccinated people, that people wear a mask. that is already a cdc recommendation anyway. when you have the ability of a

particular virus to go further than just a few feet, clearly one of the most important things is proper ventilation and, number two, mask wearing. >> let's get to mask wearing. this is where -- at what point can we stop wearing masks outside? if vaccinated people get together, do you take the masks off? is the mask going to be something we have with us in a seasonal aspect? >> you know, that's quite possible. i think people have gotten used to the fact that wearing masks, clearly if you look at the data, diminishes respiratory diseases. we've had practically a non-existent flu season this year, merely because people were doing the kind of public health things that were directed predominantly against covid-19. the australians during their winter, they add almost no flu largely due to the things including mask wearing.

it is conceivable as we go on a year or two or more from now, that during certain seasonal periods when you have respiratory-borne viruses like the flu, people will wear mask to diminish the likely "today" that you're spread these respiratory-borne diseases. >> a year ago there was chatter that, okay, maybe we went through the worst, summer was coming. you'd have some warn, look, even if things die down now, we'll have a rough fall and winter which is of course what we have now. now here we are a year later. what is the likelihood we could have a rough fall, or are we looking at mole hills? no matter how bad things get? >> the fact we have vaccines is a game-changer. if we get, which we will, to the goals that the president has established, namely, if we get 70% of the people vaccinated by

the fourth of july even with one single dose. and even more there after. you may see blips but if we handle them well, it's unlikely you'll see the surge we saw in the late fall and early winter. that's the reason, chuck, why we plead with people to get vaccinated. the larger portion of the population that is vacks named, the less likelihood that in the coming season like the fall or winter, you'll see a significant surge. there's no doubt about that. that's the reason why vaccinations are so important. that's the wildcard we have now that we didn't have last fall or last winter. >> the president set wanting 70% of the population vaccinated by july 4th. that seemed an easy bar to meet considering that we're about to open up vaccines for 12 to 15-year-olds. was that intentional? are we not going to be able to

get to 80%? is that why we can't set the ball higher or are we breaking in a 25 to 30% vaccine hesitancy in this country? >> what you do, you set a goal where the president has said. that doesn't mean you want to stop there. it was the same thing with a goal of getting 100,000 people vaccinated in the first 100 days and we ended up getting more vaccinated in the first 100 days. it's a reasonable goal. i believe we'll get there. as you get less and less people in the cohort of unvaccinated, it becomes more difficult to get there. when you have a large cohort of unvaccinated people, then you get your 3 to 4 million people per day. right now averaging about 2 million a day. if we do that, which i think we will, i believe strongly we'll reach the president's goal of 70% of adults getting at least one shot by fourth of july.

>> anybody that, at this point, anybody that trusts you, trusts the government, trusts the media, have gotten the vaccine. those that haven't, maybe it's trust with the medical community, maybe it's trust with government, trust with us in the media. what kind of strategies do you think are necessary to get us up to that 80, 85%. we're seeing financial coercion? are mandates the way to go? what is the strategy going forward? >> i think it's twofold, chuck. one, you've got to get trusted messagers out there getting people to understand why it's important to get vaccinated for themselves, their family, and their the community. different stages of life have different messengers. it could be sports figures, family, clergy. that's the first thing, trusted messengers. the next thing is make it easy

as possible for people to get vaccinated which we're doing now with the 40,000 pharmacies where you don't have to go online, you don't have to call up. you can walk right in at a walk-in and get vaccinated. mobile units going out to not easily accessible areas. i think those two are the major ways we can get that last group of people who seem to be recalcitrant to get them to understand why it's so important to get vaccinated. >> we got a new analysis from the university of washington that indicates more than 900,000 americans have died from this virus. it's almost double what we were able to track. just your overall reaction. what does this tell you about our ability to sort of track this virus that we may have undercounted by almost 50%? >> we've been saying and the cdc has been saying all along that it's very likely that we're

undercounting. the model says it's a significant amount, as you mentioned, 900,000. that's a bit more than i would have thought the undercounting was. sometimes the models are right online. sometimes they're a bit off. i think there's no doubt, chuck that we are and have been undercounting. what that tells us is that something we've known. we're living through an historic pandemic, the likes of which we haven't seen for 100 years. >> that's true. it looks like these numbers are going to make even 1918 look a bit smaller than what we dealt with now. dr. anthony fauci, as always, i appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise and perspective. >> thank you. when we come back, on this mother's day, how the pandemic economy has hurt women far more than men. stay with us.

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welcome back. it's data download time. on this mother's day, we wanted to look at covid's impact on women and working moms. when things first closed down last year, unemployment for everyone was staggeringly high. the unemployment rate was over 13% for men and just over 16% for women. thankfully things have improved. still higher than prepandemic levels.

the unemployment rate for men is 6.3%, and women are doing slightly better with a rate of 5.8%. for parents, the pandemic presented additional child care challenges. in fact, you'll take a look at this. the percentage of fathers who stopped looking for work during the height of the pandemic went up two points. but compare this with mothers. percentage who stopped looking for work neared 30% in 2020 according to analysis from the pew research center. for mothers. keep in mind, each percentage points represents more than 1 million people. as day-care centers and schools shuttered and moving learned online, the burden fell a lot more on moms than it did dads. in fact, last fall teleworking moms were about twice as likely as teleworking dads to say they were responsible for a lot of child care duties while working. fathers were more likely to say they were responsible for some child care rather than a lot. friday's jobs report was a disappointment. treasury secretary janet

yellen conceded the recovery will be bumpy. it shined a light on the pandemic and how unpaid work affects so many women, especially mothers every day. that will be of particular significance. when we come back, what happened to the big jobs comeback we were all expecting? what does it mean for president biden's spending plans. stick with us. stick with us. you have luvs ready for that pro-level leak protection. luvs. parent like a pro.

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welcome back. the panel is back. i want to get at the jobs report. there was a -- definitely a sort

of team blue and team red response. let me put up some of the examples here. everybody had their own political agenda in responding to this jobs report. on the left you had pelosi, evidence is clear that the economy demands urgent action. businesses that pay their businesses fairly aren't having trouble finding workers. and today's jobs report is terrible. but it's no surprise, joe biden is paying people not to work. april jobs report should be a wakeup call for joe biden. his policies are out of touch. john thune, democrats throw money at the problem. policies don't work. danielle, i get that everybody wants to make a political report. the same report a month ago gave a million jobs. >> you're right.

one report does not make a year of economic data. on the other hand, i went to our director of economic studies make strain, to ask him about this. one of the things he said is worrying is labor force participation now is the same as it was in june of last year, at the height of the pandemic. what that tells us is there are jobs out there but people don't want them. that is an important data point. there are jobs for people. they're not taking them. we need to figure out why. >> cornell, is it a wage issue? is it a child care issue? i think we're all trying to figure this out? >> i think it's all of the above. i also want us to play the long view of this. and not play partisan politics about it. if you look at where america is, especially to some of our eu friends who some are still in shutdown, we're doing a pretty good job. if you go back to the first of the year, there's a 15 point difference in those thinking the

country is heading in the wrong direction. moving to ten points of difference on the economy doing well. i think americans are feeling that the economy is doing better, but you can't say that wages are -- you can't say we're not going to raise wages but we're paying people too much to stay at home. we have to move people off the couch. >> this could spark an interesting immigration discussion. because i think overall we have a lot of labor shortage issues. joe biden this week reiterated something that i think means his bill could get a lot smaller on capitol hill. let me play the bite. >> i'm willing to compromise, but i'm not willing to not pay for what we're talking about. i'm not willing to deficit spend. they already have us 2 trillion in the hole. >> jake sherman, that comment this week, saying this isn't our final offer.

there's more coming. letters sent to the democratic biden administration worried about some of the estate tax proposals. is there momentum for a smaller bill that is bipartisan that's actually gathering steam? >> depends on who you ask, chuck. i think this jobs report, leaving aside the economic reality, there's a political reality that frankly democrats feel like they need to go big and go now. it's going to speed up the consideration of this package. i have to imagine this week, several senators are coming to the white house to meet. i have to imagine joe biden is going to give his dance with republicans another couple weeks and decide where he wants to go. on capitol hill among democrats i speak to, there's an overwhelming sense that they need to go big and move quickly. i think they're not willing to give up on those things to have a bipartisan stamp. on their infrastructure.

>> hallie, jake is getting at something i've wondering about. are we going to see a divide between the biden white house who is meeting with the bipartisan lawmakers this week, and congressional democratic leadership that wants to go big now? >> that's something i've heard raised by republicans on the other side of the aisle that relates that these negotiations. there is a sense among some that are familiar with this process, that these negotiations are -- as one person described to me yesterday -- quasi serious. some feel it's almost a backup plan. to be talking to republicans about this in case democrats can't do what they want to do as you say go big. the president is making very clear he's open to compromise and willing to do that. i do think there's at least a bit of hesitancy on the part of republicans that they would go a lot smaller. everyone is watching other democrats who may not want to go big and get on board with the

other 48, 49 democrats in the senate that would like to do at this point. that's a piece of the puzzle as well. >> we had a bombshell coming out of the justice department. we found out some "washington post's" reporters had phones subpoenaed and trump's justice department somehow approved this. i imagine we'll see congressional investigation start on this immediately. >> the two committees would be the judiciary committee and the oversight committee, both filled with trump-aligned republicans that will make it really interesting, jim jordan, the top republican on the judiciary committee. i imagine this week we'll see democrats announce something. in the next couple of days. >> dani pletka, does mitch mcconnell have to worry about his back if liz cheney can't survive? >> i don't see mitch mcconnell worrying about his back. he's one of the finest tightrope walking artists i've seen in

politics. i have a lot of confidence he's going to figure this out. the real issue is trying to keep the focus on what senator cassidy called, $7 trillion. remind people, that money comes from somewhere, it doesn't grow on trees. i have a lot of confidence in him. >> dani pletka, hallie jackson, happy mother's day. >> thank you. just a reminder the latest episode of "meet the press reports." is on immigration and the republican party's evolution on the issue. >> from ronald reagan to donald trump. you can "meet the press" reports any time you want. thank you for watching. enjoy hugging mom today in this vaccinated world. we'll be back next week. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." be back next week.

if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." everybody, every conversation you haven't seen with everybody since quarantine started. >> hi. >> i haven't seen you since before quarantine. >> totally. how was it? >> yeah, it was okay. considering. it was okay. >> yeah. >> which vaccine did you get? >> i got pfizer. >> i got moderna. >> nice. >> a question that leads to nowhere, asking, are you taking tylenol or ibuprofen.