it is 4:00 in new york city. i'm john heilemann in for nicolle wallace. i apologize. before we get into the what of the biden administration's new covid response announced by the president at the white house, course of action that's urgent and immensely dift to pull off. let's first address the question why. odds are, it being december 21st, you have probably, hopefully, i hope, i hope you thought or thought about or

gotten tested before traveling or seeing family for the holidays. if that's the case, images like you're seeing now probably look familiar. lines down the street, in the cold, three, four, five hours of waiting. these particular photos are in gotham city, this is from washington, d.c. take a look at this ariel shot. this is what the situation looks like in miami, florida. embarrassing, frankly. two years into a global pandemic that has dominated all of our lives. again, it is very possible you already have personal experience in this arena. behind the surge in testing, omicron, which the cdc now says is the dominant variant of covid in the united states. 73% of new cases in this country and upwards of 90% in certain areas. feels like that in new york city. sadly yesterday officials in texas announced what is thought to be the first omicron related death in the u.s. an unvaccinated man over the age of 50 with underlying health conditions who had contracted

covid twice. so all of that is the why of what happened today. but here's the what of this essential new course of action emanating from the white house. 500 million, that's half a billion, at-home covid tests free to any american household that requests one. new test sites nationwide with the first set to open in new york before christmas and help for hospitals from the military. 1,000 servicemen and women expected to shore up staffing while fema sets up overflow operations for hospitals at capacity. president biden finished his speech today laying out that plan by sending a message directly to the american people. >> i know you're tired. i really mean this and i know you're frustrated. we all want this to be over. but we're still in it. and this is a critical moment. we've endured because remember, there's no challenge for america. i mean this from the bottom of my -- no challenge.

you've come through better and stronger because we stay together as the united states of america. that's what we have to keep doing today. we can do this together. i guarantee it. >> joining us now, director of the center for infectious disease research and policy at the university of minnesota. also with us, msnbc political analyst, donna edwards and just climbing into her chair there. white house correspondent from pbs news hour, moderator of washington week, as well as msnbc contributor. looks like you're ready to go so i'll start with you. maybe she's not ready. she's plugging in. ready? got me? okay. >> i'm here. >> just want to ask you the first question because you're at the white house. you know, wasn't that long ago that our friend jen psaki mocked the notion of test every american at home. only a couple of weeks ago, and

now we are where we are. what happened in the course of that two weeks? i know the answer is omicron, but what happened inside the white house in terms of their thinking? >> that's a key question and it's a question i posed to the president. which is essentially, americans are in line and a lot of them are taking why did this take so long? why is it only know we're talking about sending tests to people? ramping up testing sites? the white house is essentially saying that it's because no one foresaw omicron becoming the dominant variant. the president, if he had told me a couple of weeks ago this virus would be eight times more likely to spread than delta, i might not have really seen that coming. of course, there are experts who say we've been worried about variants for a long time and the white house was slow to do this, so in some ways, we have a white house that's changing with the science. jen psaki defended her sort of answer to sending tests to people and she said essentially she didn't want to waste tests and she's saying now people are able to sign up for tests.

they're able to request a test, but they're not going to be this sort of mass mailing out of tests which is what she was scoffing out when she mocked the idea. >> teed me up there. we wanted to play that exchange so we're going to right now then i'm going to ask the doctor on the other side what he thinks of this answer. let's here the question to joe biden and what he said in reply. >> mr. president, what's your message to americans who are trying to get tested now and who are not able to get tested and who are wondering what took so long to ramp up testing? >> come on, what took so long. >> i'm hearing that from people trying to get tested now before the holidays. >> well, what took so long is it didn't take long at all. what happened was the omicron virus spread in more rapidly than anybody thought. if i had told you four weeks ago that this would spread by a day-to-day basis, spread by 50, 100%, 200%, 500%, i think you

would have looked at me and said, biden, what are you drinking, but that's what it did. now, we don't know what's going to happen from here. there's some evidence that in south africa where a lot of this started that it's dropping off quickly, too, we don't know. but i do know that we're not going to be in a position like i said, remember when we were having trouble with masks and gowns and the like. i said, i promise you. i got questions, why are you still paying for all these masks and gowns? why are you stockpiling this? turns out we're going to need it. >> doctor, you know, you and i had a conversation toward the end of the summer i believe on a podcast that i hosted. we talked about what the future looked like and you were pretty clear eyed about the likelihood that would be more variants coming and the likelihood there could be variants even worse than delta coming. we'll talk about omicron in a second, but when you hear joe biden say it didn't take long at all, what do you think about that?

>> well, in fact, we really need to address two different kinds of needs in this country. one is the period of three weeks, eight weeks from now. we are going to be in the middle of a viral blizzard across the whole country. as you know, with delta, it has really been located primarily upper midwest, northeast, some places in the country are saying what's the big deal and covid right now. this is going to be a blizzard that's going to hit all 50 states. testing is going to be terribly inadequate but i think the most important aspect of what's going to be critical is the number of healthcare workers. we heard today there will be 1,000 military medical personnel dispatched. there will be additional fema people dispatched. there are 22 million healthcare workers in this country. 9.3 million doctors, nurses, and technologists of which i anticipate 10 to 30% are going to get infected in the next three weeks. if we already think we have a terrible problem in our

healthcare systems now where delta's been hitting, this is really going to become a problem. that really wasn't addressed today at all and that's to me the biggest challenge. it's not the respirators, the ventilators. it's going to be the personnel and we just haven't addressed that. >> we've got the 14-day change in the united states. cases up 20%. hospitalizations up 14%. deaths up 3%. and that's, you know, we've not even begun to feel the blizzard of omicron. now let's look at the delta versus omicron in the united states. percentage of all cases. look at this change. the week of november 28th. delta, 99%. omicron, 1%. and now, the week of december 12th to 18th, delta, 27%, omicron, 73%. so you know, mike, that's a, that's just a blizzard. it's like the blizzard from hell. it looks like a monster, right? i know there is data now from

south africa, the uk, denmark, it's going to be gar began. how bad do you think it's going to be come january, february, in the ways you described, what should we get ready for and the worst places where it's going to hit the worst in america? >> well, i don't think any place in america is going to be spared, but let's break this apart into two buckets. one is transmission. this virus is simply remarkable. it's highly infectious. if you are not vaccinate d or even if you are, but you don't have the three doses on board, this virus will find you and you have a potential for serious illness. the second bucket however is the seriousness of the illness and we've seen in south africa and england it is less severe. for example, in south africa, only about 50% of the hospitalization level among those 65 and older compared to what we saw with delta, but the

difference is with the transmissibility, the number of people who are going to get infected is going to be astronomical. there we could have the same number of people or more who are in our hospitals with delta now in the hospital with omicron. so i think that that's the challenge we have and we've got to get healthcare systems in this country to understand that. we are going to go into a crisis standards of care. let's just accept that now. what we don't understand is how bad that's going to be. >> i'm going to ask you one last question before i ask donna something about misinformation. given everything you've just said, given what the administration announced today, at the biggest level, is this gone far enough or woefully inadequate or somewhere in between? >> well, again, we'd have to break into the two buckets. for the three to eight-week period, we don't have a lot of

answers and we're going to see a lot of places hit by this viral blizzard. it might be thought of as a category 5 hurricane in many, many part of the country. we're not ready for that. what we're talking about is how do we deal with it next month, five months from now, ten months from now, but we've got to get through the next three to eight weeks. >> donna, i want to talk to you about misinformation. i'll play a little sound from joe biden today where he got pretty hot about this question of misinformation, something we talk a lot about. let's play that joe biden talking about his misinformation. >> look, the unvaccinated are responsible for their own choices. but those choices have been fueled by dangerous misinformation on cable tv and social media. >> these companies are making money by peddling lies and

allowing misinformation that can kill their own supporters. it's wrong. it's immoral. i call on them to stop it. stop it now. >> so, donna, i think all of us agree with that sentiment. does that do anything to help or combat the problem? >> i don't know, but i think it was important for the president to express that frustration because many of us who are vaccinated are equally frustrated that we haven't been able to get a handle of this virus because there's still so many people who are unvaccinated and the reason they're unvaccinated is sort of entrenched group of people is because they've been sold a bill of goods. that they've been sold by people who are vaccinated. so that is the irony of it and i think what the president did today is speaking to some of the american people just saying

don't listen to this stuff. the president has been, he announced a plan today. we at least have a plan to try to deal with this. but he's been fighting not just the, combatting not just the virus, but combatting what he described as these purveyors of misinformation who have gotten in the way of us being able to successfully deal with this very, you know, virulent virus and i think it's just a challenge for the rest of us to understand how people can listen to and hear the misinformation then act on it by not getting vaccinated, by not wearing masks and by not protecting themselves and their families. >> so there's another problem, right, the country's just tired, you know. and tired of covid and the weary. the notion this pandemic is unending is in the heads of a lot of people and here in new

york, people are obsessed with omicron. not so across the country. according to axios. it says america tunes out omicron despite the ominous threat. that's the headline. new data shows the omicron variant is not jump-starting america's engagement in covid news despite indications it may be one of the fastest spreading variants todate. omicron is not having the same effect yet. social media interactions, likes, comments, shares on news articles on covid have declined dropping to a new low. there's a whole bunch of numbers, i won't read them all, but it's sort of stunning to me. we know here in new york city and in some other big coastal cities that we live in a bubble, but the fact that this thing, there's such a disparity in terms of the focus on it in places like new york and washington, d.c. and so little elsewhere in the country. what do you do about that if you're the president of the united states? >> well, i thought it was important for the president,

actually, today, to express the frustration and the exhaustion that all of us feel. i mean, how tired are we going out, we have to put on our masks. we have gotten vaccinated. many of us have gotten boosters. and we're still fighting this thing. i discussed with my son today, we are two years into living like this and not seeing our friends and families. not traveling the way that we want to and so i think that that's an understandable frustration. but as the doctor has pointed out, this is exactly the moment that we have to double down on the things, the tools that we have to combat this virus because it's not going to end just because we're frustrated. it's going to end because we're doing the kinds of things that are going to make a difference in fighting this virus. >> we talked about the weariness of the american people. i want you to give a sense of the weariness within the white

house with this. that you know, that they had the summer when the president, with some qualifications, declared independence from the virus, then got hit with delta. headed towards this holiday season, people thought it was going to be relatively normal. now he gets hit with omicron. how much weariness and frustration and irritation and just the throwing up of hands going on, if any, in the white house over this kind of, this rolling crisis that never seems to have an end and definitely has had fairly or unfairly, negative political consequences for this president. >> i definitely sense a feeling of frustration inside the white house. this is not only a president, but white house aides who are feeling like this is a pandemic that is stretching much longer and intensifying in ways they did not anticipate. we all remember on july 4th when the president was trying to really celebrate a return to some sort of normalcy. i also remember being here at

the white house when there was that sort of change where we could all take off our masks. i remember for the first time seeing white house aides, their full faces for the first time because they had been in office for a few months and no one had seen the full faces of some of the press aides. they were excited. then when we had to put our masks back on, you felt the sadness of that. and now the president is having to deal with this is spiking at a moment where his party is fighting. him and joe manchin cannot get on the same page to give relief to the american people to provide some of the badly needed things that people need. one other thing, the president talked about misinformation. of course he can ramp up testing, encourage people to get vaccinated, but the number one thing that it's continuing to keep us in this cycle of waves and variants are that there americans who simply don't trust science. you are now ready to boo the former president because he's

admitted to getting a booster shot. that's a political problem that the president can't wrap his hands around. the most vaccine hesitant group of people according to my interviews with experts, which are republicans, especially white republican men, they do not want to hear joe biden tell them to get vaccinated and that is i think something that is very tough for this white house to figure out. it's going to be very tough for the country to figure out as we continue in this pandemic. >> we understand president biden was exposed to someone who tested positive for covid. i think he's had a couple of tests. there was some discussion about it in the press room yesterday. what's the update on where his current covid status is and his testing status? >> he is continuing to test negative. the white house press secretary said he's asymptomatic. he sounded fine. looked fine. he was walking fine. of course there's going to be another test i'm told tomorrow to continue to test him because there was that staffer that he was with for about 30 minutes in close contact with and that was a staffer who tested positive.

so really the president is navigating the same thing that a lot of americans are. that is at this virus spreads, you get more and more people around you testing positive so he is going to continually be tested. but as of now, he's in good health. has no symptoms as of now. >> mike, one last question. you've been as clear eyed about this pandemic as anybody in the medical community. what's your right now as we head a few days into christmas, what's your big headline message to america about what it should be doing, shouldn't be doing, what it should be fearing and what it shouldn't be fearing? >> well, i think if i could kind of paraphrase something you said, donna, basically the country's over with this pandemic. the problem is the virus isn't over with us. it will find you. even those who are partially vaccinated, what one time would have been at least some protection against the virus will likely yield little protection against this one unless you have your full three

doses. and so i think we just have to continue to keep hitting that home and again, if you don't get vaccinated, this virus will find you. that is something that i wish more people would take to heart. especially all you people out there who have not yet gotten vaccinated. listen to this doctor. he is very smart. when we come back, we've heard from the president. we know what needs to be done, but the challenge will be taking this action and taking it quickly. what the testing and booster rollout will look like next. plus, fanning the flames of vigilantism. the far right hero worships the teenage boy who grabbed an ar-15 and left a trail of bodies on the grand and -- now that is some political and legal jiu-jitsu for you. and later in the show, january 6 select committee was hoping it wouldn't have to go this far,

but are its members now one step closer to issuing a subpoena of one of their fellow lawmakers? those stories and more when deadline white house continues after this. please, please, don't go anywhere. r this please, plseea, don't go anywhere this is your home. this is your family room slash gym. the guest bedroom slash music studio. the daybed slash dog bed. the living room slash yoga shanti slash regional office slash classroom.

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we are back and staying on covid and omicron and that announcement from joe biden this afternoon. new testing sites, hundreds of vaccinators and half a billion rapid tests to be sent directly to homes in january upon request. it's a major shift from the president and urgency on testing and from his recent announcement that the way this was going to work was that americans would

get reimbursed starting next month. but also poses a huge logistical challenge, trying to make this happen quickly with demand for at-home tests spiking, so much so they are impossible to come back in some cities. joining us now, senior fellow at the federation of american scientists. doctor, i want to get your quick reaction to what you heard from joe biden today and whether you think as i asked the doctor, whether he's doing enough or falling short or somewhere in between. >> thanks for having me. boosters and rapid tests are absolutely critical. my worry is that it's almost too little too late because the virus is doubling every one and a half days in some places. less than two days of doubling and by the time january rolls around for all these rapid tests, we'll already have you

know, over the magnitude of case rises. and boosters, they increase linearly and you know the uptick will eventually peter out. we're less than 20% of a couple hundred boosted. only one in eight are boosted. and that's just not even close to enough. israel is already like 50%. many other countries are well ahead of us. boosters cannot chase an exponential rise. in many ways, the testing of boosters are good, but you have to do some blanket societal things in order to slow down exponential rise and that's why waiting until january, waiting for booster rollouts, it's going to be a little bit too late, too slow. we have to do something more urgently. >> i'm one of the 650,000 people who followed you on twitter and your account is an essential source of information about what the progress of the pandemic, but particularly looking at data

coming in from other countries. i watch you monitoring south africa data. you said we have to do something bigger than what joe biden said and you said some blanket societal measures. if you were the president of the united states, what would that be? >> first of all, i think for vaccinations, we have to make it clear that booster language can't be booster anymore. it needs to not be this optional sounding thing and we have to reclassify fully vaccinated as three shots. for all vaccinated workers and federal workforce and everywhere, it needs to be three shots and johnson & johnson folks need two two additional shots. premium kn 95 masks will be really critical. many countries in europe already do it. why aren't we? n95, the full n95, should be recommended for all high risk things such as workers in healthcare settings as well as teachers. we really need n95 masks. it's gone on way too long. this is a very airborne virus.

and besides mass distribution of massive tests, only 1.4 tests per person. we need to be free at charge, available next day or immediately at the pharmacy around the corner. and just like in europe where it's only a dollar apiece or just completely free at your neighborhood pharmacy. and we need mandatory indoor ventilation requirements for all indoor workplaces. shopping centers and schools. to ensure co 2 levels are low. that air disinfection is high. only with these blanket measures and again, blanket measures short of any lockdowns only by doing these measures can we truly slow down the spread. and unfortunately, the boosters alone, which is great, is not going to be enough by itself. >> the doctor says you know, this isn't nearly enough on testing and i'll point out one really obvious thing which is even the administration says

these tests aren't going out until january, only nine days away. dr. fauci was on andrea mitchell today. let's listen to that and we'll talk about it on the other side. >> we're going to hopefully quickly catch up with that curve. there's maybe many sections where it's not very easy to get a test immediately. particularly a home test that you could do a point of care. but hopefully that will be rapidly corrected. what do you think the administration will say to criticisms of the fact they're not moving fast enough, number one, and not doing as much on the larger scale that he was just talking about trying to get a real handle on this thing, given the size and dimensions of it? >> well, the white house, i've put those same questions to the white house already and said sort of how can you not be doing

more? should you be doing more? do you get the sense of the frustration that people are seeing in these long lines around the country? the white house is saying we're doing the best we can. the variant has spread at rates that we're not seeing or foreseen rather by the president and by the white house here. you can tell that they're trying their best to really ramp up things. they're opening new federal sites. testing sites. they're obviously going to have a website where americans are going to be able to sign up for test kits and get them mails for free. so you have a white house that's saying look, we understand that we have not had as much testing as we need to, but we're trying to change that. we should in some ways, even though it's hard to compare this white house to the previous one, the previous one, they just didn't even want to talk about testing. the president and the trump administration they sort of were like, testing is not a problem here. we have enough tests all the time. this is a white house that i think is more conciliatory. that being said, there are

people, experts, who say these variants are going to keep on coming and this white house needs to be more prepared so when omicron or pi or all the other greek letters that could come our way, when they come, we won't get caught off guard again. >> i want to talk about boosters. the situation, you know, again reading all the data that's coming across is that you know, the boosters, you said we have to stop calling them boosters and think about this as a three-shot regime. let's look at these stats. the vaccine tracker. 61.5% of the american population fully vaccinated. 29.8% of the eligible population is boosted. we're going to stick with that word for now. and 54.5 of eligible 65 and older are boosted. those numbers are woefully inadequate if getting that third shot or booster is what's really necessary to ward off the worst effects of omicron. so i ask you, you know, is this, this is not just a -- they're

facing a huge logistical hurdle. how do you get these shots in arms? but that indicates something deeper, which is that the demand for these third shots, the boosters, is not as ravenous as we would like it to be. what would you suggest is the right way out of the that bind for the administration and the country? >> i think for the vaccine mandates, which thankfully was held up in court, is a really great opportunity. if there is a vaccine mandate, which there already is for federal workers, then getting it mandated with a third shot is really critical and making the vaccine passports require a third shot is really critical. because you know, when we see it in europe and israel whenever they rolled out this third shot as the mandatory part of vaccine passports, then people rushed out to get it because they realize you want to live normal a life, you need that third shot. i think that is the one critical thing. and johnson & johnson folks, we

need to be very clear. they need a third shot, too. right now, the booster language is you need a second shot. you can get johnson & johnson and two mrnas. i think it's high time those folks aren't neglected anymore around this. again, i recognize the booster rollout is going to be slow because of willingness in uptick, but the vaccine mandate right now emboldening the boosters seen as a requirement for vaccine ending is really, really urgent. again, masks on top of this. because we know that this is such an airborne virus. that we need the masks and we need premium masks. we need to drop cloth masks. we need kkn 95 masks, period. only that, with multilayer strategy, can we get out of this hell hole of a pandemic. >> doctor, everyone should

listen to you because you make a lot of sense and also if you want to know what's going on when it comes to covid, got to read that man's twitter feed. thank you for joining us today. democrats on the hill trying to move forward with their agenda after getting 24 hours of finger pointing, recriminations, back biting out of their system. mostly. they're not giving up. holding a special conference call tonight to discuss the path ahead. ahead. >> did senator manchin break his commitment to you? >> senator manchin and i are going to get something done. thank you. one. thanyok u. at progressive, we love your pets as much as you do, like this guy in a hat. that's why progressive car insurance covers your pets for up to $1,000 if they're ever in a car accident with you. this mini majorette's gonna march her way right into your heart. -i'm sorry. can we stop? i know that we're selling car insurance here, but, you know, all the cute little animals, it's too much. define "too much." what's wrong with cute animals? -so are we doing this or what? -nah, it's over. [ sighs ] well, someone's got to break the news to mittens.

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i think nothing is done until it's done. and i think our job right now is to lay out to the people of west virginia what's at stake here. the people of america what's at stake here. we've got to pass this bill. it would be really, really, really sad if we were not successful. but it would be even sadder if the american people said, these people stand for nothing. not only can't they get anything done, they don't believe in anything and i would prefer us to be able to say look, we tried. and we had all of the republicans bought off by the big money interest and we have two democrats who couldn't stand with us. give us more democrats and in the first week of the new congress, we will pass this. >> senator bernie sanders last night laying out his preferred

path forward and the argument for it when it comes to build back better after west virginia senator and fellow democrat, joe manchin, said he would not vote for the legislation. despite his refusal, the white house now vowing to quote, work like hell, to get the bill through congress and the president reiterating last hour he and manchin will get something done. "washington post" however reporting that congressional progressives are frustrated. what they see is manchin's failure to negotiate in good faith and are in no mood to scale back anything. yamish, i ask you -- let's just play joe biden expressing genuine emotion, frustration, got a little hot today when talking about build back better. let's play that biden sound then get your take on it after we hear it. >> build back better, we're talking about, talking about

healthcare. what do you do if you're a mom and a dad working with minimum wage? busting your neck? you look at your kid and you know if you don't get that vaccine for them, excuse me, if you don't get that drug for them, if you don't get that, be able to take that. what happens? maybe die. not only do you put the kid's life at stake, you strip away all the dignity of a parent looking at their child. i'm not joking about this. imagine being a parent looking at a child and you can't afford, you have no house to borrow against. you have no savings. it's wrong. >> that is a familiar kind of frustration and humanity this joe biden often shows when he talks about the impacts of policy on the live of regular

americans. you know, he, for a year, said joe manchin and i are going to get this done and they did a lot of business and had a lot of conversations, then this thing fell apart. the white house lashed out at manchin. manchin lashed out at the white house. where do things stand now between the two sides in terms of whether they can they can work together going forward on maybe putting build back better back together? >> based on my conversations with white house officials, build back better, they believe can still be negotiated. they believe that the president and senator joe manchin, that they have a relationship that allows them to continue talking and possibly get this law, this act rather, signed into law. but we also have to remember that today, joe biden was, president biden was specifically questioned on whether or not he felt like joe manchin had reached a commitment to him and he wouldn't answer that question, but let's remember that the president signed off on the white house statement that said very clearly that they believe manchin was going back on his word, that he had reached a commitment to the president and to senate colleagues and to

the house. so this is really the president i think having to navigate the fact that his own credibility is on the line. he promised progressives he was going to be able to work with joe manchin to get this done so this is the president saying he's going to have to continue to do this. the president said he's not holding any grudges. even though he's irish. that to me tells me this is a president who understands he has to work with joe biden in order to get things done because there is no build back better act without joe biden signing off. without joe manchin signing off. >> so many joes. >> too many cooks. >> donna, i ask you this question, the white house was pissed at manchin. progressives in your former body also pissed at manchin and have said so over the last 24 hours. what do you think, i understand why they're frustrated. why they're angry. a lot of the democratic party is really mad at joe manchin and

thinks he isn't really a democrat, that he should be kicked out of the party. that he's a betrayer. is all this pressure going to change manchin's political kole congratulations one iota? >> according to joe manchin's own words, he's not responding to that pressure, but i have to say i think some of his remarks and behavior are a direct result of the pressure that's been put on him. i think that you can hear from president biden today. there is going to be another dance with joe manchin. and the question is on build back better, it's not as though we have a president who is sitting on the sidelines waiting for a bill to be delivered to him. joe biden is invested in build back better. he believes in the elements. all of the elements of build back better and so when he's fighting for this, he's fighting for what he believes is a priority for the nation and so i think they'll reengage these

conversations with joe manchin and with house and senate leaders. we have a problem on the house side because so many of these votes were delivered on the promise of a commitment to negotiate around that framework that everybody signed off on. and so i think there are a lot of hurt feelings going on and afterall, these may be members of congress and a president, but they have feelings, too, and you can hear those expressed. i think they're going to come back to the table you know, get the holidays out of the way. let the you know, cooler heads prevail and get back to the negotiating table. this is a no fail for democrats. they don't really have a choice about getting something passed because their future, their political future really depends on it. >> real quick, the political tech tonic plates are shifting and the united mine workers in west virginia are asking manchin to rethink his position. you know, still the case he's

way more popular in west virginia than joe biden. there's a lot of things in play here, but there's also political pressure on biden from those house progressives who say now is the time to get serious about filibuster reform. right now. is that pressure having any effect on the way the white house thinks about the filibuster? >> it sounds like it's having some effect because i remember earlier in the year, i questioned the president about whether or not he could get behind some sort of filibuster carve out. he said he's he'd be okay with the talking filibuster coming back, but was less on board with other carveouts. not only now do you hear pressure on the build back better act, but voting rights. democratic-based voters, especially african americans around this country, saying there needs to be some sort of national civil rights legislation passed to protect people's voting rights and it sounds like the president is really starting to evolve on that issue. jim clyburn, a close friend of the president's, someone who was integral to getting him elected,

he's been saying for months there needs to be a carveout for civil rights. >> as always, in the room where it happens and then racing out to join us. so thanks for doing that and for spending this time with us today. donna's sticking around to talk about the rock star like reception for a teen who shot and killed two people in wisconsin. now welcomed with open arms and streamers and pom poms by the right wing fringe. the danger of that coming up next. t wing fringe. the danger of that coming up next

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>> that is not the wwe or a lee greenwood concert, that was the introduction oft, kyle rittenhouse. at a conference sponsored by the conservative groupd turning pot usa in phoenix yesterday where rittenhouse was greeted to a standing ovation, given a hero's welcome where he defended shooting three people on the streets of kenosha, wisconsin, last year. david french wrote a pressing piece in "the atlantic" called kyle rittenhouse's acquittal does not make him a hero. he wrote, when you turn a

foolish young man into a hero, you'll see more foolish young men try to emulate his example. and it will spill more blood in america's b streets. let'sic bring in chris brown, president of brady, united against gun violence, and donna is back with us. when you b see the reaction tha kyle rittenhouse got, i just want you to lay out what you think the danger is in that kind of treatment. >> well, it's hard to limit myself to a minute. but, obviously, you know, we see theee impact every day of guns everywhere at any time for any reason kind of agenda for america. and if i think of kyle rittenhouse instead o of a perpetrator but actually as a victim of that kind of thinking,

he is one. and so i think what i would think as a uniting moment in america is, do we really want a 17-year-old who is upset or concerned about safety in america getting an illegal gun because that's how he got it, to walk the streets of america and attempt in all -- all in the best alcast, right, to him, to have safety, be something he renders. do most americans think that's the america that we want? i think most would agree. and i don't have to think, i know. that's not the america that all of us want. but that is the america that we have been conscripted to, that we are destined to. in the current version of guns

everywhere, all the time, in all places, version of america. and kyle rittenhouse is simply a symptom of the disease. and frankly it's upon all of us, not through votes, not through enforcement, but how we talk to each other about guns and the right place in america that can change this. again, kyle rittenhouse is simply aho symptom of the disea. if we want to change that, we have to change how we talk to each other, how we talk to our legislators, how we talk to enforcement agents about guns in america if we want to change the narrative around this, or else we'rehi conscripted. we're faded to many more kyle rittenhouses. not just inyl kenosha, but in communities across this country. basically affecting their version of justice.

>> donna, i want to ask you this, just to go to, all of that makes a lot of sense a to me. but i want to go to what we saw there in that room and what the reverberations of that are. in that david french piece, he says -- he talked about the republicans, his republican party. he's been a member of it for a lifetime. he has a lot of qualms about it in the trump era. political movement that turns a deadly vigilante into a role model is a movement that is courting more violence and encouraging more men to brandish weapons in dangerous places. is this a fetishization of guns, gun culture and kyle rittenhouse is the poster boy for that. even if you believe in gun rights and the second amendment, it seems like a dangerous social and political phenomenon that we're now grappling with. >> that's right. and kyle rittenhouse, whether or not he was acquitted, he, in fact, did kill two people and

seriously injured a third. he's not a hero at all. and i think that what happens in this country and it has particularly happened around the republican party is embracing anything that is -- can become a rallying cry for some sort of public policy goal even to the point of embracing an 18-year-old who at 17 killed two people and injured a third. anded i think it makes it reall difficult to then think about how we can get to a public policy framework around guns where you don't have this avalanche of people who are -- you know, view the mere -- the possession of a gun is so much of a right that it can trample on other rights. i think we're in a really dangerous moment and it's not a surprise that a young man like that or another young man then ends up in a school shooting.

>> we have a minute left. i want to ask you about gavin newsom who said, the supreme court is letting -- in texas is letting a law turn citizens into vigilantes against women who seek abortions. if that's the way that you get around constitutional protections, why not -- why don't we in california do the same kind of thing and allow people to become vigilantes against vigilanteism. i'm curious what you and your organization think about that? i wish i had a lot more time for it. if you could give a sense of whether you think that's a wise idea and whether you think that's going anywhere. >> you're challenging me here. so i'll try to do it really quickly. we are applaud the general messaging that governor newsom has put behind this. but we have to say, we have a major impediment to all sense of justice in america and that is

the protection of lawful and commerce and arms act, a law that congress passed over a decade ago with the gun violence -- gun rights groups behind - them, the nra. what that says is, if you were a victim of gun violence, you can't sue. you can't seek justice. that is why when people who are victims of gun violence sue today, they sue the people who were -- the host of sites where they were, at the hotels. that's why mgm sued -- settled a major case. that's not justice in america. we can't stop moving forward with litigation and we have done that. we need to hold gun manufacturers accountable for their crimes and while i applaud

gavin newsom and what he's doing, the bigger impediment to justice in this country is that we have t failed at a federal level to allow manufacturers of guns o to be held liable for th injuries they caused and we should. remove and repeal it. >> we're up against the break. we're going to have you come back and talk about this and maybe we can get gavin newsom to come on and talk about it with you. thank you for spending timeut wh usfo today. the next hour of "deadline: white house" starts right after this quick break. ght after this quick break ♪ i'm a reporter for the new york times. if you just hold it like this. yeah. ♪ i love finding out things that other people don't want me to know. mm-hmm. [beep] i just wanted to say... ♪ find yourself in these situations and see who you are. and that's just part of the bargain.

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american people and i suspect there's going to be much, much more to come as far as members of congress they want to hear from. >> it's 5:00 here in new york city and i'm, again, john heilemann, in for nicolle wallace. don't change the channel just because it's me. a huge step taken by the january 6th select committee, requesting documents from a sitting member of congress. republican congressman scott perry of pennsylvania, an ally of donald trump's, who played a larger role than anyone knew in trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, including objecting to his own state's results. in his letter to perry, bennie thompson indicated the areas of

acquire. we have received evidence from multiple witnesses that you have evidence. we are also aware that you had multiple text messages with president trump's former chief of staff and in that time frame you sent communications to the former commander in chief using the encrypted signal app. we have information indicating that you communicated at times with the white house and others involved in other topics regarding allegations that the dominion voting machines had been corrupted. congressman perry responded this afternoon, attacking the committee's legitimacy and saying that he will decline the committee's request. so a couple questions loom here. what will the 1/6 committee do about this next and in the end whether it will take extraordinary step of subpoenaing perry. all of this comes as the "new york times" reports that the committee is considering whether its probe might go beyond what

we all expected it to do, give us a comprehensive accounting of what took place on january 6th and go all the way to uncovering criminal conduct as well. from that reporting, quote, according to people briefed on their efforts, investigators for the committee are looking into whether a range of crimes were committed including wire fraud by republicans who raised millions of dollars off assertion that is the election was stolen, knowing the claims were not true, and whether mr. trump and his allies objected congress by trying to stop the certification of votes. the committee could send a criminal referral to the justice department and urge an investigation. barbara mcquade is here, former u.s. attorney and now an msnbc, clint watts, research fellow at the foreign policy research institute and curt anderson

author of about a million books. the most recent one "evil geniuses." barbara, i want to start with you about this subpoena thing. we keep saying that it's a rubicon to cross for the -- this committee to decide they're going to subpoena a sitting member of congress. is that as big a deal as we think it is? not only is it unusual, but like what are the actual practical implications and consequences of that as we look at them? >> well, john, as a matter of professional courtesy, members of congress are always very careful about how they treat their fellow members. the idea of questioning a fellow member of congress was already kind of out there. subpoenaing a fellow member of congress may strike some as a bridge too far. but i think, you know, the time has come and gone for niceties. we saw what happened on january 6th.

and there are genuine reasons to believe that scott perry has information that is relevant to this committee, that he was the one who helped broker the relationship between donald trump and jeff clark who was the would be attorney general who was going to help foster this idea of fraud in the election. and so they need this information. i think one of the things the committee has done well is issuing these letters from chairman thompson to explain why it is they want these witnesses to come and testify. if they want his testimony, they're going to be able to get it with a subpoena. >> congressman perry told the committee, as many people have tried to do, to go pound sand. and the committee is out with a new statement in response to being told to go pound stand. representative perry has information relevant to our investigation. the select committee prefers to gather relevant evidence from members cooperatively. if members with relevant information decline to cooperate and cover up, the select

committee will consider seeking such information using other tools. other tools, that's a loaded phrase. when you hear that, do you think, this committee is now ready to do what it takes and this committee recognizes that they are on the clock and they've done what they can do. the clock is ticking and november of next year is sooner than we think? >> sure. and the markets are not going to be there. this is a guy who in addition to being one of these, you know, junior jim jordan characters in the house is really a true believer and has been. in addition to, you know, all -- he's one of those few republicans who voted not to give gold medalists to the congressional cops who were involved in the -- putting down the january 6th riots. he was one of the few

republicans who refused to condemn qanon last year. this guy isn't just a normal right-winger in the house caucus. he's a -- he's as nutty as they they get. of course, he has been -- he's an interesting character because he's just -- we don't -- he's not a jim jordan-type yet. he's not a devon nunes-type yet. but he's about to become very familiar. one thing we should know about him, back in private business, 15, 20 years ago, he was accused of felonously conspiring to falsify his corporate records. so this guy -- he's familiar with the legal subpoena process and it will be interesting to see how this plays. i was also struck, in his denial of, i'm not going to cooperate, i'm not going to do this, which he announced on twitter, he used the phrase about the january 6th

select subcommittee, this entity is illegitimate. i was reminded, where do i hear the entity? it's used among the anti-israeli people on earth who describe israel as the zionist entity. it made me think what sort of extremist character scott perry is. >> basically what i think -- what i think it curt say is that perry is a bargain basement jim jordan. i just want to say, if anybody called me a bargain basement jim jordan, i would think it was time to rethink my life and priorities. but he's important. and remind us of the jeffrey clark of all this and why we care beyond the ridicule that we heap on him, i would say, justifiably? >> it was a scheme to subvert the idea of the acting attorney general and that was to supplant

somebody in the justice department that would go along with this scheme. i think this is where it gets remarkable when you look at the pieces that this committee is putting together. everything from who showed up on that day, where the money was coming from. if you look at some of it in terms of the subpoenas and what they're trying to get was about wire fraud, signal message chats and then the other part of it was, behind the scenes, i remember very specifically asking who is clark. i was trying to figure out, who is this person? never heard of him before. we learned a lot about all of the acting attorneys general and everybody that worked at the doj trying to keep the government together. that's the most remarkable story for me personally after january 6th. we knew there were going to be militia members show up, we knew there was going to be mobilization and violence. but the idea that the department of justice almost fell, if it weren't for some of donald trump's own appointees really holding the line in the final days there to make sure that we got into inauguration day. i think it's going to be

fascinating watching who at the white house was involved, who at doj, clark, if any others, and then who at capitol hill was involved and put this whole triad together that almost turned our democracy upside down. >> this talk of criminal referrals, criminal conduct is suddenly -- something we haven't heard for pretty much the entirety of 2021. now it's on everybody's lips partly because of what liz cheney did last week. she wasn't talking about scott perry or jim jordan, she was talking about donald trump himself. and i want to play, again, for the record, this could end up being a consequential moment for history when liz cheney during a committee hearing on mark meadows in contempt raised the prospect of criminal charges against the former president of the united states. let's listen to that. >> these nonprivileged texts are

further evidence of president trump's supreme dereliction of duty during those 187 minutes and mr. meadows' testimony will bear on another key question before this committee, did donald trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede congress's official proceedings to count electoral votes. >> is that the sound of a woman who is dead serious or someone who is playing politics? does this -- does liz cheney have the bit between her teeth here? what has to happen now to get the answers to the questions he's proving and prove that there is criminal conduct on the part of the president? >> the words she used there, john, really picked up my ears. those words she used were kind

of the magic incantations, corruptly, obstruct, impede the conduct of an official proceeding. that is straight out of one of the obstruction statutes that makes it a crime to interfere with an official proceeding. that said to me that this isn't just -- like the 9/11 commission report, let's find out what happened and document it. it is, we are looking to see whether particularly criminal statutes were violated. congress can't charge people with crimes. if they were to amass evidence that donald trump did corruptly obstruct or impede an official proceeding, that could be sufficient evidence for the justice department, either with or without any sort of official referral, to take that case and run with it. for all we know, they may already be investigating this as a criminal case at the justice department. but it seems that if congress is able to unveil all of this information and evidence, it would be difficult for the justice department to ignore it. >> when i was reading that

"times" piece, we know money is part of the story here. and whenever i hear money, i think follow the money. i think of richard nixon and you did this podcast series about nixon. again, along with the discussion of criminal charges, the notion of the financial elements of what happened on 1/6 is getting greater prominence and i wonder if you see parallels between what happened to richard nixon and donald trump and the co-conspirators around him that brought 1/6 into being. >> it's a worthy comparison as people have said all along of the donald trump administration, it's stupid watergate. but it is -- it has its parallels with watergate nevertheless in terms of exactly as you say, the watergate crimes were significantly about cash payoffs to the burglars, for

instance, and as well as obstruction of justice. but absolutely. and unlike watergate, you have here, it seems, in terms of the investigation of january 6th, people -- the president and people around him actually effectively committing the central crime in a way that you didn't have at least in realtime in the watergate investigation and hearings evidence of richard nixon ordering the watergate crime. here you have all kinds of incitement and people around him, whether they're scott perry or mark meadows, involved in that central set of crimes. and now, of course, we'll see. i'm using crime loosely about january 6th. obviously there were crimes involved. but the nature of those crimes, whether there was conspiracy and all the rest, which your legal guests can speak to better than i. but i think it is absolutely

analogous. there too, you do have, you know, bob holdman and john mitchell saying immediately after the -- as the crime was happening, mr. president, stop this, mr. president, stop this. and there you did here. so it's even more in a certain way egregious than what we saw 50 years ago. >> i would say so. i want to get one last thing in. we mentioned donald trump, jim jordan and scott perry. the full rogues gallery has not been complete for this block. we might as well talk about alex jones who is suing the january 6th committee in a bid to evade deposition. there's some nbc reporting about this. he says i offered to submit documents and answer written questions but the select committee won't take those. they demand that i have a deposition and i'm not going to go. that's another version of what we've seen from steve bannon and from mark meadows and others.

and i guess, clint, i want to focus on what you think the most extreme nut cases here, the most dangerous of the insurrections, are all playing the same game. what do you discern about that game and its long-term strategy? >> that's the info wars.com strategy. i think in this case, it's nothing more than there's not a lot to talk about right now. we got to keep people tuned in. i think everything that would be turned over in a subpoena would be very bad in terms of organization, coordination, financing, alex jones -- some of the reports say he was expected to go to the capitol. if that turned out to be true, that would be damaging. at the same point, he is -- he's right there with steve bannon who has already played this playbook just a few weeks ago and this keeps that show going,

right, as the two of them playing off each other, talking about mobilizing against the country. i think where it gets serious, though, is the scale of the audience between an alex jones and steve bannon and these people that essentially say this isn't legitimate. well, guess what, they're also going after local election officials and local and state officials on a variety of crimes. that's where i get concerned. >> it is easy to laugh at these people and yet they are playing this game in deadly ernest. thank you for starting us off with this hour. after the break, the extremism crisis inside the u.s. military now forcing the pentagon to respond. plus, the newest front in the voting rights fight as republican-led states lay out their plans to change the voting landscape as we know it ahead of those crucial 2022 midterm elections. sports arenas empty across the country with echoes of march 2020. how can we expect the world to

change during this omicron surge? all those stories and more when "deadline: white house" continues after a quick break. don't leave me. your plain aspirin could be hurting your stomach. vazalore... is the first liquid-filled aspirin capsule clinically shown to cause fewer ulcers than plain aspirin. try new vazalore. aspirin made amazing!

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or maybe not in their own emotions. so show up, however you can, for the foster kids who need it most— at helpfosterchildren.com ten months after lloyd austin ordered a stand-down in the u.s. military to examine extremism, the pentagon has announced changes in hoping to curb the rise in extremism that's warned everyone.

the new guidelines including banning advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government, to fund-raising or rallying on behalf of an extremist group or liking or reposting extremist views on social media. of course, these guidelines come nearly a year after the capitol insurrection in which 1 in 5 of the defendants charged for the alleged activity on january 6th appear to have a military background according to an analysis from npr. officials are hoping that the new rules will encourage service members or outside law enforcement agencies to report worrying online behavior going forward. it's unclear how broadly the new rules will be enforced from a disciplinary standpoint. joining us now is kimberly atkins store and co-host of the sisters-in-law podcast and clint watts is still here with us. we've been waiting for lloyd austin and the pentagon to say what it was going to do about this. what do you make of the new

guidelines? is it enough? is it too much? is it off base? is it right on target? >> well, it's a step in the right direction. i think that it is very late in coming and certainly given the history of the connection between this sort of extremism and the military, i think it is a drop in the bucket. certainly january 6th was an eye-opener to a lot of people about the extent to which members of the military do support, belong to these -- support the views of some of these extremist groups. if you look into history, the connection between extremism and members of the military, particularly white nationalist and white supremacist groups, goes all the way back to the civil war. you have timothy mcveigh who engaged in this sort of belief and carried out violent attacks

afterwards. this is something that the military has needed to deal with for a very long time. january 6th brought it into clear focus and secretary austin made it a priority. but the fact that membership in extremist groups is not a -- does not create a ban, there's not a ban on such membership, it just shows me that this is just an incremental step and it's not nearly enough that needs to be done to eradicate this problem. >> if we think there's a real problem here, and i think many people do, a lot of people are waiting and thinking, they're going to try to root out extremism in the military. what we get instead is we get post facto regulations that say, if you're on social media and we see something on social media, you're going to get in trouble, which isn't really the definition for a lot of people of rooting out extremism in the military. my question is whether this feels like a band-aid solution

and not anything like the kind of structural, really dig in there that's required. five service members charged in connection with the january 6th riot. 55 military veterans charged in connection with the riot. this is not a trivial problem here. is it enough or did they just really take a pass on really getting it, the real roots of this issue in the military? >> john, i think this is something we talked about almost a year ago. there's a structural problem with domestic extremism. no one knows what it is and it's not defined legally. if someone were to say i support al qaeda or isis, it would be very easy for the department of defense to point to the foreign terrorist organization designations of the state department, the fbi has cases open. the problem with the domestic groups, it's not clear what is extremism or what they're allowed to police. this also buts up against the

first amendment and second amendment rights. what are people allowed to say as both citizens and in terms of service members and where that line is? and the way it's arranged right now, it sounds like they're going to wait for people to tell them about it. that's going to be troublesome. that can be personal grudges or political sort of speech or back and forth. it's going to be really tough to police. the next layer is second amendment. people in the d.o.d. are pretty progun. when you're looking at second amendment rights, if you're looking at militia groups, some of the extremist groups, they really play up to that line of what their second amendment rights, first amendment are and there's no clear designation about the groups and even if they did try and police groups, the groups will change their name to get around that. so it's going to be a perplexing problem, i think, for the d.o.d. when there's no clear line about

what domestic extremism is defined in the united states. >> there's a structural problem with extremism and there is, and there's multiple structural problems in different institutions and structures. here's one that has a structural problem, over at the right wing, echo chamber. a fox news host named jesse waters who had some comments about anthony fauci which i will read now because a lot of people are upset about this and i think rightly so. here's what he said. talking about fauci. he's been able to dodge and weave on abc and nbc. no one has been able to hit him. not even rand paul has been able to get in his face. he's in trouble. now he said, this a bunch of young people in the audience, you go in for the kill shot. the kill shot with an ambush, deadly, because he doesn't see

it coming. this is when you say -- and then he blah, blah, blahs and talks about fauci some more. i want to hear -- fauci got asked about this on cnn. let's listen to what fauci said when he was asked about this on cnn this afternoon. >> well, john, that's horrible. that's a reflection of the craziness that goes on in society. the only thing i have done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices, to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask. and for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot, to ambush me. what kind of craziness is there in society these days? that's crazy. the guy should be fired on the spot. >> i would say that that's not unreasonable position, that the guy should be fired on the spot. donald trump back in 2016 talked about second amendment remedies

against hillary clinton and we read that as encouraging people towards violence. now we have jesse waters out here talking about kill shots and ambushes. i know nothing is going to happen to him at fox news. but what do you think about this and just how bad do you think it is, how dangerous do you think it is, and what do you think can be done about it? >> well, i think that january 6th is a very clear indication about how dangerous this is. there's always been partisanship. there has always been politicized arguments, but what we have seen is violence mixed with that rhetoric. it began even with the former president's original campaigns when he was talking about using violence against his political enemies then. that has only escalated and now it's become normalized to the point that it is a problem. and i think coupled with this idea of trying to get at the extremism in the military.

one reason that these violent extremist groups recruit people in the military is because they know they have the capabilities to carry out that kind of violence. i think this is a major problem. this is something that the military, that congress, that everyone in positions of power need to be looking at and investigating and taking very seriously. and it's long past due that we do have a domestic terrorism law in this country that's meant to deal with this. it's no longer -- it's the biggest threat, according to the fbi, yet there's no federal law dealing with it directly. that needs to change. >> clint, you had fauci saying he should be fired. that's not going to happen. but you have jesse waters yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, kill shot, ambush. is that something law enforcement should be looking at? is that a threat that could potentially be criminal?

>> for sure. and the other part about it, john, it puts enormous tax on the law enforcement system. anybody who makes a claim like this, if they have an outsized following in the public media or space, there's a very small chance that someone will take them up. if you have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of supporters and viewers, someone will. when someone does do this, it really comes down to what is fire in the information space. we've not defined that do this day. it's a problem on social media and now it's a problem against our chief public health official in the united states in a time that we really need him. >> clint watts who is about as responsible, insightful and wise, the opposite of jesse waters. bills are being teed up by republican-led states for 2022.

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2021 isn't over yet. but there's one thing we know, a record year for voter suppression and nullification of legislation at the state level all across the country and things may be getting even worse, according to new analysis which predicts that, quote, this year's tidal wave of voting

legislation will continue in 2022. they add this warning, so far, at least 13 bills restricting access to voting have been prefiled for the legislative sessions in four states. in addition, at least 88 restrictive voting bills in nine states will carry over from 2021. these early indicators coupled with the ongoing mobilization around the big lie suggest that the efforts to restrict and undermine and pervert the vote will continue to be a serious threat in 2022. we're back with our guests. we talk about on this show a lot of the -- this question, i talk about it all the time. here's a specific thing. not a general think. amid the texas gop's effort -- they tried to indict -- the

texas attorney general ken paxton pursued criminal charges against her over her. some of it was successful. she said in an interview, i did not expect it. paxton's office saw to indict this woman on a charge of unlawfullily obstructing a poll watcher would be a class a misdemeanor. i read it because we talk about the future threat to american democracy, that these laws -- these laws pose. but it looks like it's already happening. we're seeing it like in -- on the ground right now. even in nonelection years. so just give us a sense, if you would, of how tangible you think this is, not far off from the future, but right upon us right now. >> yes, not only is it already here, but it has been many years in the making. you have to look to the u.s.

supreme court with -- which in a one-two punch, one in 2013, when it removed the requirement in the voting rights act, gutted the part of the voting rights act that allowed the department of justice to preclear voting restrictions in places where there was a history of this kind of voter suppression and then just last term with a second case, that made it even harder to -- after the fact, after these laws already go into effect, to -- for the justice department or individuals to sue saying, look, these have a discriminatory effect. that one-two punch really signaled to these states that you can -- you can implement these laws and it's very little that anybody can do to challenge or try to strike them down. and so we have seen the legislatures in these states move with rapid quickness in imposing the states. texas is the place where they deputitized individual citizens

with bounties for a portion. they certainly would not be shy at trying to restrict access to voters who they don't think would vote that the leaders would want them to. it's not a surprise to see. but it's certainly a threat to democracy. >> i love talking with you and have for years and years and years because you are smart and wise and not a catastrophist. not someone who is inclined to be chicken little. we used to mock people who would say, so-and-so gets elected president, it's the end of american democracy. not just dismisses them, but mock them. and yet now, my sense is, from talking to you a lot, we both have this sense that things have changed. and as you -- i want you to take the big swing on this question here. do you think it's the case that given all of this movement and all of these states, not just to make it harder to vote for people of color and to suppress the vote, but to nullify the

vote, to change how votes are counted, whose votes count, do you think it's fair to say that the stakes in 2022 and 2024 are nothing less than the future of american democracy? >> they may well be. and, sure, given that binary -- i won't deny that they are. now, i keep from being a total catastrophist thinking, well, the judiciary, the federal judiciary has so far proven to be a bulwark against that happening, certainly they were in 2020. we'll see. i look at the very, very interesting report about all of these restrictive laws. they also in their absolute fairness show all the states in which expansive laws have been passed. many which is to say expanding the ability of voters to vote. in some, including in states that have passed restrictive

laws as well. absolutely we may be on the brink of where are increasingly and fundamentally, thanks to the constitution and the nature of our u.s. senate, are increasingly undemocratic country will go -- will be tipped over a line by all of these laws. we'll see. and as we should all hands on deck in trying to fight and litigate and defeat these laws that have been enacted and perhaps about to be enacted. but will also -- i think we'll have to wait and see how effective they will be at serving republicans, right? we don't know. we don't know. we saw in the last couple elections that many of the restrictions on voting in various states actually hurt republicans as well as democrats.

so the net ability of these laws, these kind of relatively -- some of them are rifle shots, many of them are shotgun shots at making voting more difficult. we'll see if they have the net effect that would indeed mean, okay, now we can say with certainty that american democracy is no -- is a -- not a full democracy. that could be the -- i'm not denying that could be the outcome. >> yeah. >> in three years from now. but my fingers are still crossed, which is to say, i'm hopeful. i'm not lying. >> well, let's hope that we all don't need to meet for dinner in vancouver in 2025. thank you for joining us. after the break, what professional sports can signal to us about what this covid surge may mean for everyday life in the weeks and months ahead. de in the weeks and months ahead.

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turning now to covid's continued disruption of the most beloved institution in american life, professional sports, sports, sports, sports. and all the real-world evidence that it is giving us how fast omicron can up end even the places and institutions and organizations that are doing the most to be safe. "the washington post" reporting that the nhl, the national

hockey league will no longer send its players to the winter olympics in beijing. it comes after the nhl suspended all of its games until monday starting the holiday break two days early to control rising cases among players, all of whom are all fully vaccinated except one. it's not just the nhl, the nba, college sports, everybody grappling with this situation right now. here to talk about it all, my friend, the one and only, the great william leitch. author of a great new novel called "how lucky." great to see you. how bad is it out there for the sports world when it comes to covid right now? >> well, certainly this is something they thought they were through. their strategy from the beginning has been to vaccinate their way through the pandemic and they've had a ton of

success. the wnba had 100% of its players, hockey, there's one guy that's not vaccinated. and he's mocked for it on the ice, by the way. which has been kind of amusing. they've done a good job of doing vaccines. as we've seen from omicron, to be able to get through the vaccines and i think that has led to this kind of issue now, sports, unlike a lot of businesses in this country, is constantly testing. and i think that has led them to this kind of point where they're getting a lot of positive tests. these are young healthy athletes who are fully vaccinated, boosted or both and they're getting positive tests for guys who are asymptomatic and that's led them to change of their viewpoints to keep going forward. >> we got games getting canceled. we went through -- 2020, every league was disrupted. it was hell on earth if you were a sports fan. the bubble in the nba, people couldn't go to live sports events. 2020 was a busted play in

sports. 2021, things kind of normalized to a large degree. as you look at seeing nba games getting canceled, nhl games getting cancel, nfl games getting canceled, 50 nhl, 7 do you foresee any likelihood in 2022 that we'll be back at least in this one dimension of the pandemic, we'll be back to the dark days of 2020? >> i don't think so. and i think that's why you're seeing the leagues' adjustments. the nfl, any player that is fully vaccinated and asymptomatic will not going to be tested. at a certain level that makes sense, like, if they're asymptomatic. but that means theoretically, they could have covid.

but like from trump, if you don't test, you don't have cases. but we're in a better place vaccination-wise, leagues are doing officially what i think an argument could be made that a lot of businesses will have to deal with in the coming months. if we're really saying that, like, to prevent severe disease, but some variants will break through to have a positive case. but otherwise, we're a fully vaccinated place, like sports is, do we have to make that adjustment? this is what college sports has been doing, they've only been testing symptomatic people. i think we'll see that moving forward. it might seem a little calculated, but sports is trying to get through the games, and i think they're not leading in this regard, but they're trying to do what they have to do.

>> will, i was going to ask you about, you have a column, as always, whenever there's a sports topic, will has a column about it. professional sports are learning to live with covid, we're next. i was at the knicks/bulls game, 19,000 people, no masks, then at a laker game, 19,000, no masks. will you go to a game, 19,000 people, no masks? >> i think people will be, and i'm fully vaccinated and this is something that, listen, we all have our own viewpoints. but if sports is not going to shut down. the only way there will be fewer fans is if the city or state makes them do so. teams won't have fewer fans, and people will continue to go to games. >> there's nothing more important than sports, i think

we agree. >> obviously. >> we'll be back after a quick break. break. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ if your dry eye symptoms keep coming back, what?! no! over the counter eye drops typically work by lubricating the eyes and may provide temporary relief. xiidra works differently, targeting inflammation that can cause dry eye disease. it can provide lasting relief. xiidra is the only fda-approved non-steroid eye drop specifically for the signs and symptoms of dry eye disease. one drop in each eye, twice a day. don't use if you are allergic to xiidra. common side effects include eye irritation, discomfort or blurred vision when applied to the eye, and unusual taste sensation. don't touch container tip to your eye or any surface. after using xiidra wait 15 minutes before reinserting contacts. ♪♪♪ this holiday, ask your doctor about xiidra.

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before we go, we have some very important news from the white house. we missed it yesterday. there was too much going on. but the united states has a new first dog. it's a pleasure to introduce you to commander. a 3-month-old german shepherd that arrived yesterday at 1600

pennsylvania avenue. you may remember champ, who passed in june. as of yesterday, the third majo. now it will be commander's job to sit, paw, roll over, fetch, chase, and ruin the white house landscaping. hopefully not the carpets, at least until the bidens follow through with their promise to get a cat. i have no idea why. if they can work it out, maybe there's hope for washington after all. we'll be right back. r all. we'll be right back. qunol's superior absorption helps me get the full benefits of turmeric. the brand i trust is qunol. i've spent centuries evolving with the world. that's the nature of being the economy. observing investors choose assets to balance risk and reward. with one element securing portfolios, time after time. gold.

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that does it for us this hour. i have a beast of my own at home, that i have to get to. "the beat" with alicia menendez starts right now. >> welcome to "the beat." i'm alicia