tonight on ""the mehdi hasan show,"" the senate awaits the final text of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but even if it passes in the senate, is it good enough to win the support of house progressives? i'll ask congresswoman ilhan omar and janet schakowsky. plus, is this guy really going to be the next house speaker? >> i want you to watch nancy pelosi hand me that gavel. [ applause ] it will be hard not for me not to hit her with it. >> kevin mccarthy's spokesperson claims he was joking, but if

democrats can't pass voting rights legislation, this could be their future. and florida is seeing a record number of new covid cases, so why is governor ron desantis blocking mask mandates? >> good evening. i'm mehdi hasan. any moment now the senate expects the final text of the bipartisan infrastructure bill to arrive. once it arrives, the senate will finally have something specificing to consider, and we could see a vote on the final bill later this week, but there is still a long way to go. there's no guarantee this bill will pass muster with house progressives. coming up i'll be speaking to two progressive congresswoman who could hold the key to its future, but democrats won't be able to pass legislation like this beyond 2022 without free and fair elections. you can't say you weren't warned. a few weeks ago we led this show by pointing out how election subversion, even more so than the attack on our voting rights, is the big gop authoritarian tactic. the biggest threat to american

democracy. and it's happening now in front of our eyes in georgia. it wasn't enough for georgia republicans to make it extremely difficult for minorities and others to vote in predominantly democratic areas of their state, now a swing state. so they are now turning to election subversion. if they can't win elections even by shading means, then they are damn well going to overturn the results. a letter sent friday to the georgia state board of elections from statehouse republicans request that the state undertake a performance review of local election officials in atlanta's fulton county, the speaker pro tim of the georgia house jan jones accuses fulton county of conducting sloppy elections in 2020. hmm. i wonder if she'd feel that way had donald trump won. state senate republicans sent a letter earlier in the week. it's a move that could result in a republican takeover of election operations in the state's most democratic county.

that republicans are even allowed to make this request is a part of georgia's controversial new voting law. last month president biden called election subversion the most dangerous threat to free and fair elections in our history. >> never before has there been an attempt by state legislatures to take over the ability to determine who won. not count the votes, determine who won. we have election officials across the board that they're deciding to push out of the way. >> on friday after a meeting at the white house, biden, kamala harris, nancy pelosi, chuck schumer all, quote, agreed on the moral imperative of passing legislation to protect against voter suppression, electoral subversion, dark money, and partisan gerrymandering. it sounds great. i'm all for it. there's nothing wrong with what

the president is saying, and i'm glad he's saying it, but once again what is he planning to do about it? what will joe biden do this week when house democrats unveil their revamped voting bill named for the late civil rights icon congressman john lewis? what will biden do when a group of about three dozen house democrats push leadership to hold a vote on a slimmed down version of the for the people act that focuses on preempting harmful laws already passing in statehouses across the country because indications so far are that biden doesn't plan to do much. behind the scenes the white house is reportedly telling voting rights advocates that they are less concerned with learning slating against restrictive voting laws and are instead confident they can outorganize the threat. no, i'm not kidding. that's what they are saying. fyi. you can't. and so it's an extremely risky, selfish, and short-sighted approach. and talking of selfish and short-sighted, supposedly democratic joe manchin was on the sunday shows this morning saying he can't even imagine

changing the filibuster on a one-time basis, something called a carveout for voting rights. >> i can't imagine a carveout, and i was here in 2013 and it was called a carveout that we're going to do the cabinet for the president, and then it went into the we're doing judges for lifetime appointment for district and circuit and they were even going to do supreme court. the democrats were in control. 2021, mitch mcconnell is in control, comes right back in and guess what, that carveout really worked to carve us up pretty bad and then you've got the supreme court, okay. so there's no stopping it and if we don't put this place back in order. you get rid of the filibuster which makes us work together -- >> so that's what activists looking to push investigate rights reform legislation through congress are up against on one side. pro-filibuster democrats like senate joe manchin and president joe biden. while on the other side they are up against former president donald j. trump who isn't just a twice-impeached florida retiree to quote nancy pelosi, he's also as of right now the presumed 2024 republican presidential nominee. according to notes taken by justice department official

rich and donahue and released to congress this woke before being made public on friday, trump press senior justice department officials in late 2020 to, quote, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and republican lawmakers. a sign of just how far trump was willing to go to prevent joe biden from taking office. only a few weeks later a mob of his supporters, many of them armed, attacked the u.s. capitol in a brutal and deadly bid to overturn the election. the worst of what trump did ahead of that we now know was behind the scenes, but in georgia republican officials are putting the machinery in place to subvert and overturn elections openly. as a matter of law, and if the democratic party doesn't stop them in, joe biden and nancy pelosi and chuck schumer don't find a way to stop them, say good-bye to american democracy. it's that simple. let's turn now to harvard government professor steven lavinski and daniel zibler and

an argument that the most threat to american democracy is not another january 6th elect but the possibility of a stolen election, and they are also the authors of the 2018 book, "how democracy dies," and they are working on a follow-up, sad that we need a follow-up. daniel, let me star with you. with steven you wrote the book "how democracies die" as the doj memos show us on friday they usually don't die in civil wars do, they? they die in this kind of behind-at-scenes coordination between would-be autocrats in the executive branch and more pliant members of the judiciary and they die drip by drip by drip. >> yes, that's exactly right, and, you know, mehdi, one of things we pointed out in our book that what electoral authoritarians try to do is capture the referees, and that's exactly what we saw with donald trump to pressure the officials to subvert the election, and the other is to attack democracy

legally, and that's exactly what you've been describing. >> and, steven, quoting from your excellent recent article with daniel in "the atlantic," which i urge people to read, throwing out thousands of ballots in rival strongholds may be profoundly anti-democratic, but it's technically legal, and republicans in several states now have a powerful stick with which to enforce such practices. steven, let's say they do that, legally quote, unquote. doesn't that mean that tens of millions of americans who see an election rigged in front of their eyes, doesn't that mean they are going to do something about it? they are not going to sit at home. would there be a point in 2024 that this is civil conflict or is that hyperbole? >> i think it depends. look, if you look back at -- i know that this is somewhat different but the stolen supreme court seat in 2016, i think very few people could have imagined that before it happened. it happened and there was nothing that democrats could do it because it was totally legal and constitutional. something similar could happen

in the 2024 election. again, because our elections are so close, because elections in states like georgia are so -- the difference is so razor thin, the throwing out or forcing out or the tossing out of 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 ballots in fulton county may not get much attention. it may not be considered that big a deal. i can -- i can imagine a scenario in which they get away with it and there aren't massive protests. >> yeah. it's just -- i can't believe we're having this conversation but we have to. daniel quoting again in your "atlantic" piece, unless and until the gop recommits itself by playing by democratic rules of the game, american democracy will remain at risk. each national election will feel like a national emergency. therefore, the deradicalization of the republican party is a central task for the next decade. is president biden biden playing from a rule book in which the

republican party he knows still plays by the same rules? these are his good friends from his senate days. he said recently he wants to convince republicans in the senate who know better. who are they? even mitt romney won't back the for the people act. >> yeah, what's remarkable is the jop lewis voting rights act and the voting rights act itself was supported by republicans up through and until the mid-2000s. only a new phenomenon that the republicans have so thoroughly turned against democracy so as much as we sense acute crisis both on january 6th as well as today facing this crisis and this exact kind of fear that you're describing that you have, you also have to realize there's a deeper underlying problem, a chronic problem of our dem democracies that the republican party is no longer behaving like a democratic party. and as long as it continues to behave like a nondemocratic political party, we'll careen from crisis to crisis and continue to feel like

we're in a state of emergency. that at the end of the day is the underlying problem that the world is facing. >> yeah, and i do hope that joe biden is listening to what you're saying, daniel, because that's a key point about the republican party. steven, one last question to you. what would you like to see happen this week? how does the streamlined for the people act or the john lewis voting rights bill get passed? is there any way, do you think, short of eliminating the filibuster. joe biden told don lemon that there is. i don't see it. >> absolutely not. have you to get rid of the filibuster. at the very least create this carve out that joe manchin was talking about a couple of minutes ago. there's no way that this gets -- there's no way that this gets ten republican votes, so either the democrats find a way to rally 50 votes behind some kind of reform of the filibuster, or they -- they don't get it this time, and they risk republican control of the congress starting in 2022, which will ruin biden's presidency and -- as we said, threaten our democracy. >> this stuff is so obvious it shouldn't require two harvard professors to have to point it out, but i'm glad you are, and i hope the people in washington,

d.c., and capitol hill and the white house are listening because this is serious stuff. thank you both so much for your time tonight. appreciate it. still to come, there's a rise in muslim hatred, anti-muslim hatred all over the world. congresswoman jan schakowsky and ilhan omar are calling on president biden to create a special envoy to combat global islamophobia. they join me next. plus, the bipartisan infrastructure bill is getting close to being passed in the senate. getting close in the house as well. what will it take for progressive voters to support it?

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at long last we have a bill. based on the size of that stack, it will take some time to go through all of those pages to know what's in it, but whatever comes out of the senate will still have to get the support of house progressives. senator chuck schumer says they'll move to it. house progressives won't support the bipartisan bill if it isn't also advanced. who better to turn to than the most influential voices. democratic congresswoman ilhan omar of minnesota and jan schakowsky of illinois. thanks so much for coming back on the show, together. let mow start with you, congresswoman omar. alexandria ocasio-cortez, your colleague in the house, made it clear that progressives may reject the bipartisan bill if this reconciliation bill is not advanced as well. she appeared on cnn this morning where she was asked how many progressives in the house support her stance. she said this. have a listen. >> i believe a very large amount of the progressive caucus, the

total amount is about 90. you know, i'm not the whip of the progressive caucus, but what i can tell you is it's certainly more than three, and it is in the double digits absolutely. >> enough to prevent it from passing. >> more than enough. >> congresswoman omar, you are the whip of the congressional progressive caucus. how many progressives share aoc's stance? >> so we actually did the whip on this a little while ago, and a super majority of the progressive caucus supports simultaneously moving the bipartisan bill and reconciliation bill. we do not believe that there is a path forward for the bipartisan bill without a reconciliation bill that has core progressive priorities in it moving alongside it, getting a chance to pass.

>> and you would defeat -- just yes or no, you would defeat joe biden's beloved bipartisan bill if that doesn't happen simultaneously. >> i don't consider that as a defeat. i consider that as being part of the negotiation. we have made our stances very clear for months now, and it's really important for us to be able to deliver this bold transformative investment in regards to expanding medicare, making sure that there is a care economy investment, and that we are taking care of investing in affordable housing. >> congresswoman schakowsky, what's your biggest concern with this whole infrastructure process and the white house and senator joe manchin's seeming obsession with bipartisanship over everything else? >> first of all, let me say that i think that there's a big sentiment that we're not just going to sign on to the bipartisan bill without some negotiations with the house. there's a lot of things on climate that are not in the

infrastructure bill, and i know that chairman peter defazio wants to be able to still have another word to be able to make sure that we can expand that legislation, but i am optimistic because i think we have full support of our leadership, that we're not going to move ahead unless we have a commitment that we're going to get this reconciliation bill that has all of these wonderful things that the american people are longing for, that we want seniors to be able to have their eyes, ears, and teeth fixed under medicare. we want to make sure that families have child care, so i'm optimistic that we're actually going to get there. >> i hope you're right. just shifting back a little bit. congresswoman omar, gop leader kevin mccarthy made some comments at a tennessee republican party fund-raiser last night.

he was imagining the moment when the republicans take back the house and speaker nancy pelosi relinquishes her gavel to him. have a listen. >> i want you to watch nancy pelosi hand me that gavel. [ applause ] it will be hard not to hit her with it. >> a spokesman for mccarthy said that mccarthy was, quote, obviously joking about hitting nancy pelosi. congresswoman omar, i'm trying to imagine the reaction from the right if you had joked about assaulting kevin mccarthy. >> yeah. and i -- i think certainly it is really important to also point out that joking about violently attacking a woman is not funny. it's beneath anyone, especially a leader in congress, and it's something that he should be

ashamed of, apologize, and his resignation should be called for by every single member of congress. >> yeah. i don't think every single member of the republican party is going to get behind that or even your party. let me talk to you both about an initiative you're working on. congresswoman schakowsky. you and congresswoman omar have joined together in calling on the biden administration to create a special envoy to monitor islamophobia around the world. the position would be modeled on the global anti-semitism model which was created back in 2004. you are jewish yourself. why is this new position so important to you? >> well, i will tell you that i am not new to this issue because on 9/11, that's 20 years ago, my community was threatened, and there was violence against

muslims that live in my district, and i organized a unity march down the streets to make sure that we were carrying american flags, all of us, and we had a wide variety, a very diverse group of marchers to say that we stand together with our muslim brothers and sisters, and so this is something that is deep in my heart, and it's not all that separate from the idea of -- of defeating anti-semitism that -- that there's an epidemic right now of islamophobia, and i'm just so proud and happy to join my colleague congresswoman ilhan omar to stand together to say, yes, we need to have a special envoy focused on monitoring and combatting islamophobia, just as

we have for anti-semitism. >> yes, and congresswoman omar being yourself perhaps, the number one target of islamophobes in america right now. have liberal politicians and liberal journalists turned a blind eye to this growing islamophobia in your view, not giving it the importance that it deserves? >> i mean, anti-muslim hate as you have pointed out many a times is one form of hate that isn't really addressed in the seriousness that it deserves, and we have seen really terrifying uptick in our country, but discrimination against muslims isn't just happening in the united states. we've certainly witnessed what happened to a family that was mowed down by someone because they were muslim in ontario, canada. the u.n. human rights council just put out a study where they said anti-muslim hate is an epidemic -- has hit an epidemic proportion, and they called on countries around the world to take steps to address discrimination and violence against muslims throughout the

world. and so i am just delighted to have found a partner with congresswoman jan schakowsky and others who are willing to take this issue seriously and call on secretary of state blinken and president biden to address this issue by appointing an envoy that would monitor anti-muslim hate, and we also hope to follow up with an actual legislation to give this some teeth. >> exactly. >> i hope you get that legislation. and i'm glad you're doing this initiative, i have to say. we're out of time. thank you both. congresswoman schakowsky, thanks for joining me on the show. congresswoman omar, please do stay with us because you have a lot of firsts to your name, and

you talk about them in your new book, "this is what america looks like." we'll get into your journey next. first, richard lui is here with the headlines. hello, richard. >> thank you. the world has a new fastest human. italian sprinter lamont marcel jacobs got the gold in the men's 100-meter finals sunday. he came into the games as a relative unknown. jacobs dethrones usain bolt. usain bolt held that top spot for 13 years. the uk and u.s. joined israel alleging iran carried out a deadly attack on an israeli oil tanker. two people were killed in that attack off the coast of oman thursday. secretary blinken said the state department is, quote, confident that iran conduct that had attack with a drop struck but they deny responsibility. 25 people between two boston transport trains crashed at a train station. the train operator was placed on leave. more of "the mehdi hasan show" after this break.

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committee hearing this past tuesday was revealing for a number of reasons. one of the main ones being that we got firsthand evidence of how much of a race riot 1/6 actually was, how much racism was actually involved. officer harry dunn described in great detail the abuse he was subjected to. the rioters even questioned whether officer aquilino gonell who served this country in uniform, served in iraq before becoming a police officer, he was questioned whether he was even an american. watch. >> each through my mask they saw my skin color and said you're not even an american. regardless whether i was in the military. for me i wasn't even thinking of that. i'm there to stop them regardless, and i'm thinking

what they were yelling in terms of my skin color or my race, and i know i'm an american soldier and former soldier and a police officer. >> back with me now congressman ilhan omar, who is also an immigrant, if i might. her new book called "this is what america looks like, my journey from refugee to congresswoman." thanks for staying with us. on the book and the journey you take i look at officer gonell's story, similar to yours in some ways, the embodiment of what many call the american dream, and yet he almost lost his life simply by choosing public service. you've had a target on your back since joining congress, and you've become something of a boogieman for the right. i want to read from your new book. you said, quote, as much as americans on one side of the aisle thought i was some kind of hero there were others on the others who believed i was just the devil. just as my office was inundated we appearances and interview

requests from our first day, we also received countless hate calls, mail, and emails. i'm curious, congresswoman, what that's like for you on a personal level, having to live your life as a congresswoman with security details at public events, people wanting to attack you because of who you are, what you look like, where you're from. >> i mean, just as the officer, you know, was saying, our story, my story, his story is very uniquely american. we all came to the united states looking for an opportunity and we see ourselves as american. we chose to serve of this country to make it better. we both took an oath that, you know, many aren't willing to take to serve and to protect, and so when you have people who are forgetful of truly what it means to be american, what the embodiment of the spirit is, and how we should be looking at one

another as americans, celebrating our diversity and recognizing that this, our country, its foundations are built on people coming here to find an opportunity to escape religious persecution, to fight against intolerance, and to build community for one another. >> but we heard from those police officers, basically ptsd, how much stress and mental health issues they have had, emotional health issues and given what they had to go through on january the 6. you came out of a war zone as a refugee. you come to america. you become american, and you get elected to congress, and now you've got people going to prison. people are actually being jailed, imprisoned for trying to kill you. i've done events with you in public places where you've had to turn up with security guards. do you wake up in the morning sometimes thinking this is not

worth it? you know, i've got kids. you're putting yourself through this. >> i think it's worth it, and i believe that officer would say it's worth it because, you know, for me, i know that if i chose today to not show up for work, to not show up as myself in public, to not be as, you know, bold, honest, and brave as i've been on behalf of not just the people that have elected me but for my kids, that i would let the, you know, fringe communities in this country who don't understand wait means to actually be an american to embody the spirit of america win, and i think a lot of the hate and vitriol that i deal with, the violence that is directed towards mee isn't

really directed towards me. it's to try to stop the progress that many muslims are making. it's to try to stop the progress that many immigrants are making. there are so many of us who have overcome so many challenges who have, you know, taken up the opportunity that is provided to us in this country to say we are here. we are part of this country, and we are going to tribute to make it better for everyone. >> just you and i having this conversation live on msnbc right now, i'm sure, is killing a lot of people. let me ask you this. you obviously had to reflect a lot on your life to write this memoir. what, i wonder, is your biggest regret since becoming a public figure, something you wish you hadn't said or done, something you wish you would have done differently if you could do it again. >> i think there's been a lot of things that i've said and done that has made it hard or has been a distraction in, you know,

serving my constituents the best way that i could, and obviously as someone who has grown quite a lot and is always seeking to grow, it is really important for me to reflect on that in the book but continue to reflect on that because i ultimately ran for office because i understand and had fluency in the day-to-day struggles of my constituents, and i want to have the opportunity to find the solutions and work on policy that would provide a positive direction for them, you know. a couple of nights ago i spent the night on capitol hill trying to bring attention to the fact that the eviction moratorium was coming down. >> yes. >> it happened last night, and there's so many people in my

district. as you walk around, you can see the encampment and we know there is an eviction tsunami coming, as my sister ayanna pressley says, and we have do everything that we can. it's up of those moments where you realize you ran to make a difference and you have to do everything that you could to make sure that those differences are happening. >> on that eviction moratorium ending, shockingly. you did spent an amount of time with cory bush and others. are democrats going to listen and pull off a extension, yes or no? >> it's really been quite him aful to have had the house adjourn without us extending the eviction moratorium. i am shacked that the administration remained silent as so many people in our country are about to face an eviction and, you know, we'll continue to pressure them

because, you know, we have the opportunity to do something. we have the responsibility to do something and there's a moral imperative that those of us who are in positions in leadership have, and so i do call on the speaker to -- to reconvene us so that we can take action. i call on majority leader schumer to do it in senate and i call on biden to use his executive power to extend this eviction moratorium. >> let's hope they are listening. millions of people's homes depend on it. thank you so much for joining us. coming up, right-wingers should stop pretending that they actually care about blue lives the way in which capitol police officers have been tweeted. that tells you everything. i'll explain in the 60-second

review. do not go away. review do not go away

welcome back. it's time now for whey i'm calling the 60-second rant. start the clock. not just congressional congressmen that threw the police officers under the bus, it was also frat personal of police, the country's largest police officer. the fop never reached out to him or any of his colleagues, which is weird since they spent the

summer racial justice, perhaps demanding anti-politicians on the left to either stand down or be voted out. but in relation to january 6 the condemnations have been mauch rarer, lacking in name calling. why wouldn't the nation's biggest union be more outspoken when it comes to the trump mob on january the 6th. that makes sense. the reality is that when the police unions talk about blue lives matter, they are talk about facing off against not white racial rioters but on black lives matter activists. the cdc keeps warning us about how deadly this delta variant of covid is while some republican lawmakers keep showing us how much they don't care. i'll explain next.

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on friday florida gop governor ron desantis signed an executive order banning school mask mandates, and on saturday the sunshine state reported its highest number of new covid-19 cases ever. under desantis, it's fast becoming the new national epicenter for the virus. last week florida recorded more infections than california, illinois, new york and texas combined. joining me now is dr. angela rasmussen, a virologist with the infectious disease organize with the university of saskatchewan. thanks so much for coming back on the show. i want to get your reaction first to the cdc internal slides that the "washington post" got their hands on suggesting that the delta variant driving the cases in florida, texas, and beyond not only causes severe illnesses than earlier variants

and spreads as easily as chicken pox and is more transmissible like other diseases like the common cold and seasonal flu and found that vaccinated people may be just as contagious as the unvaccinated. how should ordinary americans interpret these findings? do you think the reaction has been alarmist? >> i do think the reaction has been somewhat alarmist because i think that we haven't really put these data into context for people. so, yes, the delta variant is more transmissible. yes, it does have a basic viral reproduction number that's not equivalent to chicken pox and other diseases that are more transmissible than the original recipe sars coronavirus 2. however, we do know that vaccination does provide excellent protection against severe disease. so the delta cases that we see now in states where cases are rising, florida and texas as you mentioned, along with many other states in the u.s. and around the world, that is largely

rising in unvaccinated people. so it still stands that the best protection for you against delta variant is to go out and get vaccinated. people have been concerned because of the news vaccinated people can transmit the virus to unvaccinated people. that is true. however, we don't have any data that suggests that vaccinated people with those equivalent viral loads are transmitting the virus onto other vaccinated people. the majority of the risk is to unvaccinated people. >> so on that note, a major part of that cdc report was based on what happened in provincetown, massachusetts, where there was a high degree of transmission among fully vaccinated people. that study showed no significant difference in the viral load in breakthrough cases, people who double vaccinate and get covid, versus unvaccinated cases.

people were shocked by this. then there is a new study from singapore, viral load is faster among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. i wonder how should a layperson react to this ever-evolving sometimes contradictory science? how can they stay informed when there seems to be such a great area in scientific views? i don't know what to believe any more. >> well, actually, mehdi, this is a great example of why we need to put this in better context for people. those two data points are not in conflict with one another. so the test that showed equivalent viral loads between vaccinated and unvaccinated people is one that looks at copies of the viral genome. it doesn't look at copies of infectious virus. if we think back to how the immune system works, the immune system responds to vaccines by essentially putting your immune system on standby for another exposure. it's not a magical force field that will keep you from getting infected. but if you do become infected, you will clear that infection much more quickly. and that is consistent with what the data from singapore shows. again, i'd like to remind everybody the situation in provincetown was mostly a highly vaccinated community, so you are

going to see more cases in fully vaccinated people. it was also in the context of an event that had a situation that were very conducive to transmission. a lot of people indoors together from outside the community as well as from within the community in packed bars and so forth. those, regardless of vaccination status, are conditions conducive to transmission. >> yes. >> but the take-home message should be if you are vaccinated, you still are very, very protected against the disease. >> i'm glad you're putting it so clearly. it's one of the reasons i wanted you on the show tonight. there's been a lot of problems with messaging from the cdc. you say forget the contradictory science. was it a mistake to tell people to unmask when delta was nowhere near herd immunity? >> i completely agree with that. i do think it was a mistake. i think it was very premature,

and many of my colleagues agree with that. i think the problem with the guidance in may is that it's scientifically correct. it's true vaccinated people don't have as much to worry about. but it also was a really one-size-fits-all for the country, and the country is in very different places. there are many communities where vaccination rates are very, very low in which the majority of people who are eligible for vaccination are not vaccinated. and we are seeing in places where there are surges, they're occurring in exactly those communities. so in places where delta can rip through the unpopulated vaccinated like wildfire, people should be wearing masks no matter what. they should be givetown guidance. you can pick and choose, and it's on you if you know

you've been vaccinated or not to stop wearing a mask. we really do need to be encouraging people to err on the side of caution until we get prevalence down nationwide. >> yeah, err on the side of caution. easy to say, hard for a lot of people to do. dr. angela rasmussen, thank you for your time tonight. appreciate your insights. coming up at the top of the hour on the week with joshua johnson, maryland senator ben cardin will be there to discuss the bipartisan infrastructure plan, what happens to it now. we'll be back with my final thoughts of the week. as the gop tweets about no-mask saturday, i have some thoughts on covid on mass death, and on the gop. do not go away.

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will republicans, especially the anti-vaxxer variety, ever get behind mandatory vaccinations, which a lot of experts are now calling for? fox's brian kilmeade asked senator ron johnson. >> could you ever get behind a vaccine mandate for everybody? >> no, not unless there's some incredibly deadly disease. i mean, much higher infection fatality rates than we had with covid. >> what? sorry, what? some incredibly deadly disease with higher infection fatality rates. are these people out of their minds? covid has killed more than 616,000 people in the united states and brought life expectancy down in 2020 by more than a year and a half. there have been more deaths from covid in the u.s. in 18 months than american deaths in world war i, world war ii and vietnam combined. and the coronavirus pandemic is the third deadliest event in american history behind only the

civil war and the spanish flu. that's not enough death for ron johnson, it seems, and the rest of the covid deniers on the right. they are not a pro-life party. they are a pro-death party. and there's no point pretending otherwise. thank you for watching tonight. we're looking not, i believe, to lockdown, but we're looking to some pain and suffering in the future because we're seeing the cases go up, which is the reason why we keep saying over and over again, the solution to this is get vaccinated, and this would not be happening. with coronavirus cases on the rise, a warning from dr. anthony fauci that things are going to get worse, but perhaps that's the thing that's sparking an increase in vaccinations in hot spots. will it encourage more americans to get vaccinated? plus, the feud between