romeo. dianne babcock a vision so haunting who rose from the lake as if merely asleep. dianne babcock so long in her grave this sunday, our struggling recovery. >> everything we're seeing today was induced by the pandemic. >> higher prices, slower job creation and a supply chain backlog with no end in sight. >> have you ever seen a backlog like this? >> never. we've never seen anything like this. >> with workers feeling empowered, more than 180 union strikes already this year. >> it's a resurgence of the lake or movement. the cheap labor bubble has finally busted. >> my guest this morning, transportation secretary pete buttigieg. plus, the battle over

vaccine mandates. >> i guarantee you at least half of the department is staying home come saturday morning. >> companies and municipalities requiring vaccines and the battle lines are drawn. >> while some republican governors see advantage in opposing mandates. >> unfortunately, this has become about politicians wanting to control peach. >> i'll talk to arkansas governor asa hutchinson. and god and politics. while most evangelicals are aligning with former president biden -- >> do you think he's using him? >> absolutely. i think president trump is a miracle. >> the bible belt is unbuckling. >> looking at the divide in the evangelical movement. joining me for insight and analysis are amy walter, editor-in-chief and publisher of "the cook political report," nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake. kimberly atkins stohr from "the "boston globe,"" and john podhoretz, editor of the "commentary." welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running

show in television history, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. a good sunday morning. the economy's inability to fully recover from the shock of covid-19 is both an economic story and a political one. what is holding the economy back? in the spring we thought we were turning the corner on covid. when we turned that corner, the delta variant was waiting to hit us hard in the face. delta and vaccine refusals sent cases to their second highest peak of this pandemic this summer before they finally began to trend downward. let's hope there's not another variant out there. a post-covid supply chain backup has spread across the globe, causing cargo ship backups, slowing delivery of goods, and driving up costs. in fact, those higher costs have helped feed a rise in prices all over the map, leading to the sharpest rise in inflation in 13 years. on top of that, millions of americans have decided they don't want to return to their

old high-stress, low-wage jobs, so that's keeping job creation stubbornly low for the last two months and takes some important workers out of the supply chain. all those economic problems add up to a big political problem for the president. is all of this his fault? of course not, but it is now his responsibility. and he and fellow democrats are in real danger of suffering some serious political consequences. mr. biden ran on a promise of a basic return to normal, or at least a path to normalcy. with the midterm elections just over a year away, unless voters see evidence of this new normal, they may decide to return power back to the republicans. >> everything we're seeing today was induced by the pandemic. >> the slow economic recovery is hurting president biden's standing, eroding voter confidence in his competency and threatening to overshadow his agenda. >> have you ever seen a backlog like this? >> never.

>> there's the crush of cargo in the ports. >> like a python trying to swallow an alligator. that's the kind of volume we're trying to send through our ports now. >> on wednesday president biden announced the ports of long beach and los angeles will now be open 24/7. >> our goal is not only to get through this immediate bottleneck, but to address the longstanding weaknesses in our transportation supply chain that this pandemic has exposed. >> retailers are warning of price hikes and shortages over the holiday season. products are not just harder to get, but more expensive. prices for kids' shoes up 12% in the past year. beef up 17%. new and used cars up 24%, and gas up 42%. >> fuel costs are a bid of a headwind. i think when you're looking at inflation across many industries. >> then the turmoil in the american labor market itself. americans quitting their jobs in record numbers, 4.3 million in august alone. those who remain are demanding better pay and working conditions with strikes rippling

across the country. >> cheap labor bubble has finally busted. part of that is due to the pandemic. >> i think the pandemic has awakened the union movement again. >> those economic aftershocks are taking a toll on president biden's approval ratings. >> when these guys get into office, it's a job that has to continue, not just when you win an election. >> people don't know what to do and who to vote for. they made a change. it doesn't seem to be really working because he's a good vice president, but i don't think he's a president. >> the president is pitching his social spending plans as a solution. >> despite the attacks and misinformation, my plan still has the overwhelming support of the american people when they're told what's in it. >> republicans sensing an opening are stepping up criticism. >> joe biden is killing this economy. >> this is an economic crisis of their own making. >> it's driving an inflation bomb throughout the economy. >> with the first test of this political environment in the virginia governor election just over two weeks away, the democratic nominee is nervous. >> if i were running the show

here, i'd get everybody in a room, lock the door. what do you need? what do you need? and let's get this thing done. >> joining me is the secretary of transportation, pete buttigieg. secretary buttigieg, welcome back to "meet the press." >> thanks for having me back. >> i want to start, obviously, with the issue of the supply chain. you're secretary of transportation. the ports, all of this is under your purview here. the big news you made was trying to establish a 24/7 operation now at as many of our nation's ports as possible. let me ask you, this supply chain issue has been a problem for months. why wait until this week to try that? why weren't we at a 24/7 operation nine months ago, ten months ago, a year ago? >> i can't speak to a year ago before this administration was in office. i can tell you as soon as the president came in, he issued an executive order i think in february to look at the supply chain from all angles. one of the things we started looking into earlier this year was these expanded operations.

if you think about the scale and the complexity of these ports, obviously it's not something that you can do overnight. but after bringing together the players, agreeing this was a good approach, seeing the pilot launched in long beach and being able to announce, as the president did last week, that l.a. is also going 24/7, we've got major progress on that front. now, that's just one piece of a very complex puzzle where you've got the terminals, the rail piece, the warehouses, the drivers. we're working on all of those angles. let's remember, these are are private sector systems. this is a capitalist country. nobody wants the federal government to own or operate the stores, the warehouses, the trucks or the ships or the ports. our role is to try to make sure we're supporting those businesses and those workers who do. >> let me ask you about various ideas that industry leaders are going to be asking the federal government for. i'm going to put up four ideas that we have found in our research. there's some that would like to

see deploying of the national guard, maybe use of the u.s. navy at the ports themselves, a suspension of some of the tariffs that right now have added to the cost of shipping. fill some of these vacant jobs using some temporary visas with labor from overseas and possibly even tap some national defense funding. let's unpack this. the national guard, the state of massachusetts is using the national guard to fill a gap of school bus drivers. is there any reason why you wouldn't use the national guard to try to get more truck drivers on the road? >> right now we're focused on some other steps that we think are making a difference, including my department working with the state dmvs to cut some of the red tape for issuing commercial driver's licenses. we're constantly going to re-evaluate all of our options. the steps we're taking right now will make all the difference. we have more profound issues in our economy. the annual rate of turnover for truck drivers is 90%. that tells us there's something deeper going on than any short-term fix is going to

address. truck drivers want to be paid, they want to be respected. the secretary of labor marty walsh and i have been speaking out on this from earlier this year. we've got to deal with deep issues in our infrastructure, these shorter-term measures are really not going to be enough. that's why we have things like the infrastructure bill, like the build back better plan that are really going to set up america for success in the long term. >> i understand that. we've got a short-term problem here. look, most of our ports are out of date technologically. it would be great to sort of build some new ports, but some of these things take time. what you're describing takes time. it doesn't mean there's going to be gifts on the shelves to buy for christmas this december. it sounds like what you're setting up the country for is do you agree -- do you concur this is going to get worse before it gets better? >> what i can tell you is we're

doing everything we can for the shorted term and the long term. there's some x factors out there on everything from, you know, pandemic-related closures of factories and ports in asia to things going on through the chain on the u.s. side. of course, the other thing we've got to talk about is this isn't just a matter of supply. this is a matter of supply and demand. every supply you see, every container at ship waiting on anchor is there because an american company or consumer purchased it. that's because demand has surged. retail sales are off the charts. remember, these ports are already bringing through record amounts of goods this year. that's a sign, of course, of the successful work that's been done to bring the economy out of the teeth of the recession we were

facing earlier. we've got that issue of demand that's mismatched with supply. now we've got to make sure that the supply chain in the short term and the long run are positioned to catch up. a lot of this should be resolved by markets, but we're not waiting for markets to take care of it. >> one of the other things the government can do is tariff relief. is it on the table? >> again, i think any opportunity to make a difference will be looked at, but let's also remember that the president's overall policy of buy america is constantly pushing for us to make and source more goods in america would be a big part of the solution on a lot of these issues. if we didn't need to go overseas for so many of our products, we would have a lot more resilience in our supply chain when there is anything from a typhoon to a covid outbreak shutting down a factory overseas. so it's one more reason why the president is rightly calling on america and working for america to build up more of that domestic manufacturing and other supply capacity. >> one of your tasks these days is also trying to sell the president's agenda, particularly what you referred to a few times, build back better. there seems to be some news over

the weekend that some of the biggest -- perhaps the most important climate change, climate provisions in the bill have been struck down because of some negotiations with senator manchin. are you concerned that the lack of an aggressive action on climate, that it looks like this bill no longer will have in order to get 50 votes, is going to end up costing you progressive support? is what it takes to get manchin on climate, is it going to lose progressives on climate? >> the president is committed to major climate action. he has been from day one. you saw that in everything from rejoining paris, to the preparations that will take place next month in glasgow. this is important not just morally, but also economically, something we need to recognize, that like any maintenance issue -- this is basically a maintenance issue for the planet -- the longer you take to deal with it, the more there will be costs in livelihoods,

dollars and, of course, lives. this remains a core commitment of this administration. of course, my slice of it as transportation secretary is one we're working very hard on to prepare america for a future with more electric vehicles and to decarbonize other sectors of transportation which amounts to the biggest part of our economy when it comes to emissions right now. >> are we going to hold up the bipartisan infrastructure bill any longer than october 31st if there's no deal on the larger agenda? >> i'm not going to predict legislative mechanics. what i will say is we've got to get this done and we've got to get this done for the american people and the american economy. the build back better vision and the infrastructure bill are supported by a majority of americans. they're going to make lives better concretely in this country. they're going to strengthen the

economy. one underappreciated aspect of the president's agenda is that it will also lower the inflationary pressures we're experiencing it in this economy by making it easier for people to thrive and do well in the workforce and by improving our infrastructure that's so important to the supply chains we've been talking about this morning. >> i know you've been under some bizarre attack for taking paid leave by some loud mouths in our political system. but i want to ask you about paid family leave in general. it apparently may not be in the final part of build back better. you took it. the federal government offers it to federal government employees. what does it say if the president can't get paid family leave into his agenda? >> well, it's on the president's agenda. it's in the build back better plan. i'm proud to work -- >> but it may not last. >> -- as part of an administration that walks the walk on family values. it's in the president's vision, we'll see what the legislative process is going to bring. the president has been very

clear on what he's calling for. the american people want this, too. frankly i view this as something -- i wish that this is something that republicans could join democrats in calling for. paid family leave is important. it's important as a matter of family values, important to our economy. one more thing that i think is maybe underappreciated. when somebody welcomes a new child into their family and goes on leave to take care of their child, that's not a vacation. it's work. it's joyful, wonderful, fulfilling work. it is work, and it's time that our nation join pretty much every other country in the world and recognize that. >> secretary buttigieg, appreciate you coming on this morning and sharing the administration's view. >> thank you. let's turn more directly to the pandemic. there's been a national tug of war of sorts going on between municipalities and states and private companies issuing vaccine mandates. and the many workers who are vehemently opposed to them. in some cases it's republican governors like florida's ron desantis and texas' greg abbott,

choosing to side with their more conservative and anti mandate voters and against the private sector companies. governor asa hutchinson of arkansas who agrees vaccines save lives, last week he effectively approved a state law to allow workers to opt out of mandates even while saying he thought the law was harmful in getting more arkansans vaccinated. governor, let me dive into this issue. you didn't think this was a good law passed by your republican-controlled legislature to dictate to the private sector how they do these things, but you decided not to veto it, not to have the veto fight with the legislature. why? >> well, the principle reason is that the whole debate on mandates takes away from the

efficacy of the vaccines themselves and our push to increase vaccination rates. ever since the president reversed his position and said -- first said that we weren't going to have federal mandates and then he switched and said we are going to have federal mandates and then some of the states came back and said, well, we ought to have state mandates push back against federal mandates, all of this slowed down the acceptance of the vaccine and increased resis resistance, and so i'd like to see us get ba to, without the mandate battle, let's just encourage the vaccine acceptance, build confidence in it, and that's the direction we need to go. my heart goes out to these workers that, many of them say we're not anti-vax, we're just anti mandate. they're making a principled stand. that sort of makes the point that the mandates are not being beneficial. i pushed back here in arkansas that we don't need a counter, a

federal mandate on our employers with a state mandate on our employers. that's just the wrong direction, and i made that point. >> i want to ask you, though, if we've got some evidence here that mandates work. let me show you statistics in your state. on august 1st, 36% of the state was fully vaccinated. after the vaccine mandate was announced and you had companies like tyson and walmart in your state essentially announce their own vaccine mandate, vaccine acceptance went up 30%, got 46% of the state now. is that not evidence that the mandate by tyson's and walmart have had an inpath? >> absolutely, it does indicate that. our health care workers, many of our hospitals put in a requirement for vaccines and the rate goes up. so, yes, there is an effectiveness there. let me make it clear when i say i don't believe we ought to be engaging in mandates, i'm speaking of the government mandates, whether it's a federal government mandate or a state government mandate.

the states are sometimes coming in and saying employers should not have the ability to impose a vaccine requirement on their workers. to me that's the wrong direction as well. it's not practical in terms of creating that debate, but it's not principled either. so i am a defender of the employer's right to provide a healthy workplace. you would have just as many workers say i don't want to work there because it's not a healthy workplace because not everybody is going to be vaccinated. the employers are in a tough position. they should have the prerogative to make those decisions and id support that. >> there's a lack of consistency now in your party -- not with you -- on this issue, but this sort of government intervention with the private sector. republican state legislatures all across the country have gotten really aggressive at trying to insert government into overreach on local government decisions or on private sector decisions. are you concerned about the

direction of your party, that there is this sense of -- it's not a small government party anymore. it's a my government, my way party, if you will, at least on these state legislatures. >> it's an important debate on liberty. my view has always been, which i believe is consistent with the principles of our party, let's stay out of interfering with those private business decisions. these are not all large employers. they could be a small employer that wants to protect their business and their employees and their customers. they ought to have those decisions. to me, if you're going to say the government ought to come in and tell the employers what to do, the next thing is they should say we shouldn't have drug-free workplaces where you can't require drug testing in the workplace by employers.

i think that's wrong. i'm former head of the dea and i believe employers ought to be able to make that decision and if somebody doesn't comply and it's a sensitive workplace, they lose their job. we require that in many sensitive businesses across the country. so, yes, i think when you're talking about a restraint on government, let's be consistent. i don't want the federal government doing the mandate. i don't want the state government doing the mandate. let's try to be a little more consistent in that. >> it is noticeable you chose not to fight. why didn't you fight your republican colleagues on this in the legislature? >> well, that's the uniqueness of arkansas. you can override my veto in arkansas with a simple majority, and i didn't want to bring them in for that same debate because every time we debate and spend a week debating vaccine mandates and efficacy, our resistance increases and our acceptance goes down. i didn't want to recreate that. we just move on and let's try to get back to the business of encouraging vaccines across the

board. >> very quickly, among the bizarre statements that the former president donald trump released this week was this one when he said, if we don't solve the presidential election fraud of 2020 -- his bizarre characterization he claims, which we have thoroughly and conclusively documents, republicans won't be voting in 2022 and 2024. there are many i've spoken to who believe president trump's actions in georgia encouraged people not to vote. are you concerned this is only going to hurt republican turnout in the midterms? >> relitigating 2020 is a recipe for disaster in 2022. let's talk about the future. the election has passed, it's been certified. the states made decisions on the integrity of each of their elections and made improvements where need be. it's about the future. it's not about the last

election, and that -- those kind of comments are not constructive. we can win in 2022, and we're going to, but let's focus on the important issue of our supply chain, of getting over this pandemic, about freedom and not the last election. >> governor asa hutchinson, republican from arkansas, appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us. >> thank you. great to be with you. >> sorry about those hogs yesterday. i know i was pulling for them. when we come back, how worried should democrats like virginia's terry mcauliffe be about this slow economic recovery and what that could mean for the 2022 midterms. the panel is here, and it's next. ow economic (cooking timer rings) ♪ this is how we do it ♪ ♪ this is how we do it ♪ (tools drop) (squeaking sound) ♪ this is how we do it ♪ turns out, montell jordan knows how to do almost everything. and it turns out the general is a quality insurance company that's been saving people money for nearly 60 years.

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panel is here. amy walter, publisher of "the cook political report." nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake, john podhoretz, senior writer for the "commentary" and kim atkins stohr from "the boston globe."

kim, i -- garrett, i want to start with you because we have this sluggish economy due to covid. the president's agenda feels a bit clogged up. what is the mindset of democrats on capitol hill? do they see the forest now through these trees of obstruction if you will? >> i think they will. democrats promised the world to their voters coming into the last election cycle. now they're trying to figure out what they can still deliver on. they've left some priorities by the wayside. the guns bill, the voting rights bill that will get a vote this week that they don't think will pass. all the marbles are on these two big spending bills right now. they're just pretty well stuck. i think everyone understands that the reconciliation bill is probably too big to fail. they will all survive or fail and if they don't pass that big bill in some capacity, probably

everybody is going home. >> garrett, has it already got this weird negative vibe to it even if they passed it? here is what politico wrote yesterday. i thought it was a bit harsh, may be right. it now appears all but impossible for democrats to enact a reconciliation package that's anywhere near as far-reaching as what polls suggest a large majority of democratic voters want. and that effectively means for a lot of dems it will hard to see whatever ends up coming out of this process as a success, with potentially dire implications for the party in 2022. specifically they were writing about the funding provisions, basically capitulating to manchin's demands here, which basically secretary buttigieg didn't want to touch. >> it goes back to what garrett was saying. i don't know that democratic voters are particularly excited about build back better on an infrastructure bill. >> don't you see all the individual polling? just because something polls well.

>> it's not salient. what is salient and i've been sitting in these focus groups, especially with younger african-american voters. you know what they're talking about, like garrett said, where is the police reform? we talked about that a lot in 2020. voting rights, this is an existential right to our country and you can't pass it? you're in charge, democrats. you have a chance to do this. i think they're sort of missing out on the things that do really energize democrats on the one hand, and the other is everything you just talked about, which is there's just a sluggishness in the economy, in the optimism, that he's also the president and democrats aren't delivering on the sort of bread and butter that they were hoping they would. >> kimberly, how demoralized do you think the democratic base can get if this gets fraught? >> oh, i think it is already. i think it's very existential at this moment for all the reasons amy was just talking about. i don't think it's the matter that the democrats promised the world to their voters. it's voters demanded these things from democrats. now they're saying, okay, you have the white house, you have congress and after two years we have absolutely nothing.

i think that will be absolutely devastating to the democratic base if they whack away not just with nothing, but without voting rights particularly, without anything, without making sure everyone has health care, the expansion of medicaid. if they walk away with nothing, they can expect, as you said, to pack up. >> john, i'm going to guess you'll agree with ching char lee cook wrote. i should have made amy respond, but i'm not. here's what charlie wrote. democrats pushed for way too much without having the political capital to make it stick. it's killing them on over reach,

killing them on confidence. if misreading a mandate is a sin in politics, pretending you have one when you don't is a moral sin. >> in march, jon meacham convened a bunch of historians at the white house who said to biden, you can be fdr, you can be lbj. lyndon baines johnson won election in 1964 with 155-seat majority in the house and 69 -- >> 155? is that more than five. >> -- and 69 democratic senators. in 1965 they passed 70 major pieces of legislation. if you go to the johnson library, there are 70 pens lined up. that's the great society. joe biden has a majority of -- nobody even knows? is it three, is it five, is it four in the house? and a 50/50 senate. only a 50/50 senate because of bizarre machinations by trump in november and december that depressed the republican vote, democrats went nuts in the

winter. they went crazy. they're proposing -- they were at the point of having $8 trillion of new spending with no consensus -- forget the democratic base. there was no mandate to do any of this from the american people writ large. >> they're locked in structurally, right? you can't do voting rights with a 50-vote threshold. you can't pass a guns bill with a 50-vote threshold. you can spend money with a 50-vote threshold. you have to say the price tag first. that's the way reconciliation works. they locked themselves into the message nightmare. that's not a way you build a coalition around anything. it's what they were forced into doing. >> and they had a coalition for a bill. they have a huge spending bill, a trillion dollar infrastructure bill. that's a big bill. there was a time when you were going to spend a trillion on a bill, you'd be like, are you crazy? obama didn't spent that much in 2009.

>> i'm not sure a trillion dollar spending package would satisfy the people who spend the pandemic marching in the streets for real social reform. >> i get that. i almost wonder, was manchin and sinema too easy on covid relief? we've got them for this. we'll try to get them for more. >> i think he's enjoying being at the center of this. i do think the american people and senator manchin should realize west villanuevians make up 0.5% of the voting public. >> trump's margin was 40 points in 2020 in west virginia. he's representing his constituents. in 2001 when george w. bush had a senate almost exactly analogous to this, he got one major piece of legislation

through that was a bipartisan piece of legislation shepherded by teddy kennedy. that was no child left behind. that was an education bill for which there had to be bipartisan support. they have that bill, they have the infrastructure bill, and democrats are tanking the infrastructure bill. >> amy, how much is all of this malaise, if you will, in washington going to impact mr. mcauliffe in virginia? >> you can already feel it. i think it's much more of the broader environment. it's also important for glenn young kin that donald trump stayed out of virginia. >> but he didn't. >> he didn't. >> have you watched tv in the last weekend? terry mcauliffe is making sure -- >> that people know he called in to a rally. >> he said the name youngkin. it's a pretty important moment. >> it is, but i think -- all right. let's put it this way. he's more important, i think, to turning out the democratic base than whether a bill passes congress, yes.

>> that is potentially, i think, a long-term problem for the democrats. they can't keep going back to the trump well. >> unless donald trump keeps running. >> fair point. when we come back, god and politics. the debate among evangelicals about donald trump and whether he represents their values. >> one thing i learned about scripture and the lord is god can use anybody. in the bible he even used a donkey. if god can use a donkey, he can use donald trump. dog barks you're right bunker, the medicare enrollment deadline is almost here. if you're on medicare and you want to explore your options, the deadline to enroll is december 7th. so, you should act now. were do i find the right medicare plan? at healthmarkets, they search many of the nation's most recognized carriers so they can help you find the right plan, at the right price that's the right fit for you. how long does it take? just minutes. my current plan only covers 80% of my costs. healthmarkets may find plans with zero dollar copays, deductibles and monthly premiums. even plans with prescription drug coverage, vision, dental and hearing aids.

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to upgrade, just say nba league pass into your voice remote or go online today. welcome back. one of the more unexpected developments in american politics in the last five years welcome back. one of the more unexpected developments in american politics in the last five years has been the enormous popularity of donald trump among the so-called values voting evangelical community. mr. trump won 77% of their vote in 2016. then he won 84% of it last year. on "meet the press reports" yesterday, my colleague anne thompson traveled just outside knoxville, tennessee, to report on the friction over what it means to be an evangelical today. her report was so revealing, we wanted to share part of it this morning right here on "meet the press." >> reporter: under this flag-painted roof, religion and

politics mix. >> i want trump to come back sooner than later, but you know who would be a lot better than coming back? jesus coming back. >> reporter: with gusto. >> biden, you trouble israel. leftists, you trouble israel. >> reporter: this is the patriot church on the outskirts of knoxville, tennessee. >> you unvaccinated people, you are causing the trouble in the land. that's what they say. >> reporter: founded by pastor ken peters. >> this nation was founded on predominantly christian values by predominantly christian people. we just want to keep that in play. we just want to keep our roots alive and not let this reconstruction, this tearing up of our nation's roots and a new set of values is being pushed on us. it literally is. >> so whose values are being pushed on you? >> these are leftest worldly values. they can't stand christian culture. why?

because we believe marriage is between a man and a woman. we believe there are only two genders. we believe life in the womb is actually human life, and they're murdering human life for money. >> he's not afraid to take sides and thinks god does too. >> one thing i learned about scripture and the lord, god can use anybody. in the bible he used a donkey. if he used a donkey, he can use president trump. >> do you think god is using president trump? >> absolutely. i think president trump is a miracle. i think god picked donald trump, an imperfect vessel, to be the champion of his people. >> reporter: that intertwining of patriotism, politics, and religion is attracting a devoted following. >> when you're in a culture where everybody is trying to silence you, it's great to be able to share how you really feel with people who feel the same way. >> we're just checking it out. i actually saw it on cnn. if they say something bad about it, it might be good. >> reporter: peters leading one side of the battle for the soul of the evangelical church.

>> some of the evangelical church, i think, is soft. i think they're cowardly, and they're trying to ride the fence between the left and the right, and so that's kind of where the divide is. >> reporter: here in the heart of the bible belt. >> i would say as a person of faith has been around church all my life, that the bible belt is unbuckling. >> reporter: across town, pastor phil nordstrom leads the life church. >> what do you mean the bible belt is unbuckling? >> the branding of christianity has suffered. i think our association with political extremism has especially turned off a younger generation toward evange so one of the challenges we face right now is who are we? what does it mean to be an evangelical? >> reporter: nordstrom is decided old school, a pro life pastor purportedly staying away from partisan politics on sunday.

>> the funny thing is, i'm probably personally pretty conservative. i don't come across as though i'm a liberal evangelical. but people get the feeling pretty quick that we're a pretty inclusive church, that everyone is welcome, that we're trying to not fight the culture wars from the pulpit. >> in reporting this story, i also sat down with dr. russell moore, a high-profile evangelical opponent of donald trump. he's the public theologian at "christianity today." >> what's fascinating, if you look at some of the pew studies, more people are identifying as white evangelical and yet fewer people are going to church. it is not as if these people are finding religion in the sense of what that phrase would have meant just a decade ago. what is happening here?

>> well, that's what concerns me. i'm talking every day to church going evangelical christians who don't want to use the word evangelical because it's become merely a political word, and then those who don't go to church but are using evangelical in a political sense as a way to own the lips, that's not a good development in my view. once evangelical christianity is defined not by the gospel but by some sort of cultural or political movement, we're in a really dangerous place. evangelical christianity is meant to be the good news of jesus christ, and handing that over to a political agenda, no matter what the political agenda, is a bad idea. that's especially true when we're in this crisis moment, where the moral credibility of virtually every institution is being challenged, and the church is certainly no exception. >> when you hear that the former president told a christian

broadcast -- he went on television and said he did more for christianity or for evangelicals or for religion itself, that nobody else had done more. what do you think when you hear him say this? >> you know, i think that's the tragic part about the past several years. if i had heard that in 2015 or 2016 or 2017 even, i think i would have been outraged all day. i would have flinched immediately when hearing it. i wasn't really even surprised. i think i gave it a half second's thought and moved on because we have so many things like that being said, that we've become used to it. i think that's part of the problem right now, that coarsening and trivialization of rhetoric in american life, we're getting used to it and that's dangerous. >> outrage fatigue, a huge problem. you can see our full report on the split in the evangelical movement streaming any time on

peacock. they're 30-minute docs. when we come back, the events that led to this traffic jam off the coast of california. what it could mean to your pocketbooks. stick with us. with us.

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welcome back. "data download" time and a look at what's causing the supply chain products. we'll follow one product, an apple iphone.

we'll show you how break downs in every step of the process have led to shipping delays for you. this is the iphone, even running shoes. eson precision, they make components for the iphone. they had to shut down due to both health concerns and power issues. this is not the only factory in china that had the issues. but this is one that impacted the iphone. there's your delay in manufacturing the iphone. now, they get the iphone done and they're putting it on a container ship. guess what's happening as we've seen this pent-up demand? the amount of cargo being sent from china to the united states is up some 27%. that's led to quite the backlog of big container ships outside on the west side of l.a. let's say you get the container ship empty. you've got to actually take that from the ports to the store shelves, whether it's your apple store, t-mobile, sprint, at&t, et cetera. with very a huge truck driving issues.

in fact, since 2019 there are 22,000 fewer people in the truck driving industry, an industry already struggling to find drivers even pre-covid. now even harder than before. so you have a hard time getting the actual product to the shelf. then you throw in -- this has been a problem not just for iphones, really for anything manufactured in china. so what has it meant overall? pre-covid it basically took an average of 40 days to get a product from china to the shelves in the united states. two years later, it's almost doubled. it now takes 73 days. the real fear is this is only going to get worse. why? demand is only going to grow and we'll still have this problem. we'll see. some people think this could take years, not months to unravel. when we come back, what happens when workers feel empowered to demand better working conditions. striketober, tens of thousands are walking the picket lines. we'll have more next. more next

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welcome welcome back. kimberly, workers have never had more leverage. when you look around -- this is like one of those things, every national news organization discovered strikes this week. but the fact is, it is happening, and it has been -- you've seen, we've seen it in our own organization, more openness to organizing, more openness to unions. this is one of the more interesting consequences of covid. >> i think it's an accelerator actually. we saw that sort of movement in places like newsrooms coming up. and then you add covid where people realized, okay, if i'm not making enough money, if i don't have enough benefits and you're calling me essential and forcing me to go to the job, i'm rethinking what this means, and that really put more leverage on the part of workers before companies could pay them or not pay them whatever they wand to. things are changed in a representative way and that's what striketober has shown us.

>> i think this is a generational moment. for the last 20 years people have been frightened to lose their jobs. it's not just because of the economic dislocations of the meltdown of 2008. because of health care and the worries about changing their job, because of the stuff that happened as a result of 9/11, all kinds of things, almost all of the power has been in the hands of employers in part because of the anxiety of the workforce, and that goes from the very poor to the very wealthy. that is an anxiety shared by everybody. suddenly we have nine or ten or 11 million jobs open in the united states, and that's new.

and i think the psychology of the employers or these corporations has yet to shift. they know they need to pay people a lot more money. there are all these -- amazon is advertising paying people a lot more than $15 an hour and all of that. but i think of john deere and some of these other places, my guess is that the corporate culture has not yet shifted to the idea that we've got to be a lot nicer to our workforce. >> people in washington surprised by this dynamic, fundamentally misunderstood what happened in the pandemic when people with white collar jobs complained about staying home and people with blue collar jobs and were essential went to work every day and braved the pandemic. if you were working on zoom and you don't understand why folks out in it every day are striking

and are very upset, i don't know what to tell you. >> and our service economy is a very labor intensive economy, and now we're having -- let me put up some of the companies here. instacart is one of the places. i do think that this new sector of the economy, manufacturing workers were important to our economy in the '50s and '60s. now it's the service. >> the delivery, the doordash, instacart. >> not paid very well. >> not paid very well. are we going to have a generational change, this is covid, we'll look back 20 years from now and say that was the instigator for this? or will we wake up three years from now, it was covid but we're going to go back to normal because of all the structural challenges we still have, which is getting back to health care. that's still a fundamental problem or so many of the other inequities we have in our system. look, i'm very interested to see where this all goes, because the disrupters we've expected in the past to make significant changes in our politics, whether it was 9/11 or the pandemic didn't make big structural changes to our politics, but our economy, that's a whole different story.

>> speaking of the economy, though, this is all happening at a time of rising and apparently non-transitory inflation. if wages have to go up significantly, that's inflation too. i mean, there are inflationary -- this is a potential inflationary spiral. if you want to talk about political consequences, i'm sorry, people can talk about how this might be great for democrats because it's new activism and all of that. this is not good for biden either way. it's not good for democrats either way. they have the house, the senate and the presidency, and we could be looking at inflation continuing to go up -- >> it's a weird economy. we have plenty of jobs, and it costs more to keep your house. >> yes. one part of that is you can have fears about inflation, but the structure was unsustainable. you had this gig economy where people were working second and third jobs to keep food on the table, to pay for the health care that the law required them to have. that was going to be

unsustainable. so this conflagration of issues really brought it to the fore. yes, you have these open jobs. but when you look at it study after study, it shows, if you pay people more, they will take the jobs it's really shifting from that corporate perspective that they can have large profits to saying, no, to be profitable, you need to treat your employees well. >> one thing i would say, labor unions are getting stronger. i would assume one party has the advantage on this one. we know, particularly blue collar labor unions, they've been pretty open to president trump. all right, nice panel. that's all we have for today. appreciate it. thank you for watching. we're going to be back next week. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." "meet the press reports" on peacock. we've got "meet the press" every day of the week. we'll see you next sunday.

kidnapped by a gang in haiti. this morning u.s. officials are working with haitian authorities to try to secure the release of 17 missionaries, most of them, american. the question is, what is the government doing to free them. plus, joe manchin voices opposition to a key climate measure in the democrats' multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation package. the question is what does that mean for biden's package agenda. and lucy rocketed into the sky to explore. the question is