tv Katy Tur Reports MSNBC January 12, 2022 11:00am-12:00pm PST
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good to be with you. i'm katy tur. new numbers today confirming, no, it's not just you, everything is more expensive than it was a year ago. across the board prices rose by 7% in 2021, the fastest increase we've seen since reagan was in office. it costs more to eat. bread, meat, fish and eggs are all up a whopping 12.5%. a pound of bacon just over $5 last year. $6.50 today. it costs more to sleep. rent and mortgage is up 4%. that means if you were paying $2,000 in rent every month, you might be looking at an $80 increase going forward. almost $1,000 more for the entire year. it costs more to get around as well. used cars are up 37%, a $20,000 car is now more than $27,000. and it costs a lot more to drive it as well. gas prices are up 50%, despite a
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dip in those costs at the end of last year. all of this, as you well know, adds up, especially when salaries are not keeping up. take all of this inflation into account, and the average earnings by the hour, hourly earnings, actually fell. you've been told not to worry about it, that these prices were just temporary, pandemic-driven disruptions, supply chain issues, stuff that will get worked out sooner, not later. but some economists now worry these prices are here to stay. and senator elizabeth warren wondered if it was actually at least partially the fault of big business. she asked fed chair jerome powell if they were using the pandemic as cover to pump up profits. >> does that increase in profit margins, combined with greater market concentration in industry after industry, suggest to you that some corporations may be passing along increased costs
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and at the same time charging more on top of that to fatten their profit margins? >> that could be right. it could also just be, though, that demand is incredibly strong and that, you know, they're raising prices because they can. >> raising them because they can. joining me now is nbc news senior business correspondent and msnbc anchor stephanie ruhle. "washington post" white house bureau chief and msnbc political analyst ashley parker. and the host of nrp's -- npr, excuse me -- "full disclosure" podcast. stephanie, they say don't worry, these prices are temporary. but jason fuhrman notes, a noted economist, notes they've been saying this now for many months. are these prices actually here to stay, stephanie? >> well, no one knows. no one has a crystal ball. but people keep thinking the way
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inflation works or the way it's monitored, the price is going to go back down. likely you're not going to see businesses cut prices. again, this goes back to what jay powell said, why would they cut prices, they don't need to, demand is up. however we could start to see the rate of prices increasing start to slow. we saw that in this last pci report. the administration isn't wrong. all of this is tied to covid. and the further we get away from covid, the more the supply chain and the labor issues start to get worked out. things will flatten. but this idea that, oh, we're going to get back to normal, that's not the case. look at some things that are having the biggest price increases. again, it's cars. we know that when you've got a chip shortage, that impacts new cars. if they're not putting new cars on the lot, then people aren't trading in old cars. so it trickles down. and homes. we're seeing an increase in the price of homes. it's tough for the administration to say, oh, that's going to work itself out. i mean, yes, they're going to
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build more affordable housing. but it will be years before that happens. >> what about big business, stephanie? elizabeth warren was wondering whether some of these big businesses have used the pandemic as cover to raise prices. if that is the case, is it likely those prices are going to come down? >> okay, here's the more important thing. if that is the case, it's legal. this is how supply and demand works. what elizabeth warren is really getting at, should we be looking at some of these industries and monopolistic behavior. that's why the administration is taking a look at meat processing, right? look at small farmers in this country and what's been happening to them over years. now you only have a few meat processing conglomerates. they squeeze out the little guy, they overcharge at the grocery store and they're the ones running away, ha ha ha, with the farm. this is about do they have the ability to price gouge. right now they do. we don't like it but it's legal.
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>> great. great, stephanie. ashley, let's talk about what the administration is doing about this. they've said they've taken concrete steps to ease inflation. what are those steps, and are they working? >> well, it's something they're still grappling with, to be perfectly honest. one of the first things they did in this new year was come back and do an event, take tangible steps on what stephanie just mentioned, sort of meat and poultry conglomerates. that's one thing that's not going to overhaul the entire system. there is a debate within the administration of how forcefully they should be going after some of these big corporations and painting them as villains. there's some discussion of using tariffs but there is a line of thinking in the administration that that won't actually help much with inflation but it would hurt politically because people would say you're soft on china. there's the messaging side of things which they know they have a problem on and trying to get
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under control. in some ways, based on indicators, they have a good story to tell. but you just laid it out, when how you drive, where you sleep, what you eat, is costing more, and people feel it, that's something they need to change. polling shows americans are incredibly optimistic and resilient and can handle just about anything if the future looks more positive. what they can't handle are these ups and downs and the uncertainty. and part of that would also be someone like president biden, there's discussion of messaging more, talking about understanding the struggles of everyday americans, of how things are getting better, rather than push back at poultry and meat packers, which won't really change the situation. >> how would focusing on
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interest rates help? >> there's only so much you can do with exhortation, what are you going to do with meat packers, shame them? detroit wants to sell cars, they don't want to see used car prices surge in the high double digits every year. to that extent, you saw the exchange between senator warren and jerome powell, i'm worried in how the fed doesn't have surgical tools and snuff out inflation at the point where it's most worrisome. do you have an economy right now? yes, the stock market is at a record, yes, real estate is at a record, it's affordable for anybody. but if the fed has to hike two, three, four times this year, that will hurt elements of the economy that are people just hanging on.
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>> i don't know if you want to buy a van on the river. >> if you're buying that van, you're buying it so you can live in it. >> i was making a bad joke, i was saying a van down the river, my bad, i went too far off the reservation. >> chris farley appreciates it. >> robin, let me ask you this. you are an employee, your wages aren't increasing at the same rate as inflation. do you go in and ask for at least a 7% raise considering that anything less than that is essentially a pay cut? >> i want more like a 50% raise because chipotle is gouging me, the cost of guacamole adjustment, every time i go in there it's more and more. and that's wages because if there's a wage/price spiral effect, that resembles what we saw in the early '80s. yes, i was a very young person
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then, but i always remember my dad complaining about inflation, i remember cd rates at 14, 15% and the banks were giving you toasters, begging you to get your money. so i worry in that we don't have an institutional memory of what that looks like. >> a lot of us were pretty young back then. robin, thank you very much. ashley and stephanie, thank you as well. along with rising prices we're still seeing empty store shelves and out of stock notices online. backlogs are continuing to interrupt the deliver of goods. transport secretary pete buttigieg toured two ports in california. joining me now from california nbc business and tech correspondent jo ling kent. jo, good to see you. the supply chain, people are seeing a lot of empty shelves in some parts of the country for some goods. what did the transportation secretary tell you about how that's going to ease up? >> reporter: certainly, katy, these inflation numbers don't help. the pressure is really on
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secretary buttigieg and the biden administration to get the supply chain moving a lot faster especially with those empty grocery store shelves and out of stock warnings as all of us are shopping online, even though we're post holiday season now amid the backlog. secretary buttigieg visited the ports of l.a. and long beach where we asked if the $241 million they're spending on fixing the ports is too little, too late. >> we've already seen major progress. >> reporter: we asked transportation secretary pete buttigieg the question on so many consumer's minds. >> when do you think the delays are going to end? >> as long as there is a pandemic, it will be creating disruptions. the good news is we've found a lot of steps we can take, including in the short term, that have made a huge difference. making sure that empty containers don't pile up, getting in the way, including holding the owners or shippers of those containers accountable if they let them accumulate. >> reporter: he's talking about the $100 a day fine imposed on containers that overstay their
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welcome. the transportation department has also announced $241 million in new grant money to modernize port facilities in 19 states. >> so if you were to explain to a shopper where the biggest pain point is right now, is it here at the ports? is it on the railways? is it in the warehouses? where is it? >> the truth is if you see a ship offshore here waiting for a chance to unload its goods, there's a good chance the reasons have to do with something a thousand miles inland like an issue with labor capacity in trucking. right now we have something like 300,000 truck drivers leaving that job every single year. >> how much should truckers be paid? >> enough to show respect and regard for the fact that they are the very definition of essential workers. it's not just how much, but how. truckers right now are often not paid for their time. and right now, in too many environments, from warehouse environments to port environments, there is no cost
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to wasting a trucker's time. we've got to fix that. >> reporter: some supply chain experts say to really fix the backlog, make more stuff here in the u.s. and shorten that long distance between factories and shoppers. what are you doing to bring more jobs back in order to prevent supply chain disruptions in the future? >> one thing you'll hear about a lot in this administration from the president on down is constantly looking at ways to buy america, build america, keep it made in america, make more things in america. we're always going to trade with other countries. but if we have to bring in so many goods from overseas that a shipping issue or a factory closure thousands of miles away stops us from getting what we need, that's a problem. >> reporter: the real challenge of bringing jobs back or reshoring is that it takes a long time. and you're seeing it start to happen. you've got general motors, electric vehicles in michigan, samsung planning to make
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semi-conductors in texas, but moving factories to the u.s. is not an overnight solution. >> jo kent, thank you so much. an fyi out there, if you're not seeing your shelves empty, that doesn't mean other shelves aren't empty. the country is a big place, a lot of different experiences for a lot of different people. still ahead, why the biden administration is being urged to adopt a national strategy that would encourage americans to learn to live with covid. after months of opposing filibuster reform, president biden now says he's on board with it. what is the white house doing to convince holdouts in the democratic party? and later, the january 6th committee issues three new subpoenas, they're all in trump's inner circle. we'll walk you through what they might know. we'll walk you through what they we'll walk you through what they might knowand hickory-smoked ba. it's good, hall of fame good. save big. order through the app. ♪ ♪
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help is on the way for schools struggling to stay open during this latest covid surge. the white house announced today it will send 10 million free covid tests to schools each month as well as expanded access to labs to conduct all that testing. joining me now is dr. michael anderson, a senior adviser at children's national hospital in washington, dc. doctor, thank you very much for being with us. this is pretty good news for schools as they try to incorporate the test to stay open policy. >> katy, thanks so much for having me. i think this is welcome. you think about so many tough
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jobs across this country. it's tough to be in health care. it's really tough to be an educator or running a school, because there's so many pressures on you. in this ability to somehow take away a little bit of the burden of testing i think is really, really important. there's a lot of elements to keeping kids in school. i think pediatricians and teachers and of course moms and dads know that we want to keep kids in school. we've got to get kids vaccinated. the third leg of the stool is critical, that we get more and more testing into schools. >> let me ask, i want to ask you about vaccines but let's talk about testing to begin with. i wonder how long you think this is going to need to be the case, where kids are going to need these rapid tests if not every day, then a few days a week. i ask that because we're already seeing signs in the united kingdom where the cases are starting to decline in some areas, they're going to stop testing everybody and only test high risk individuals. there is also a lot of commotion
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in florida after the surgeon general for that state or one of the health officials for that state said that he doesn't want to prioritize tests for kids, he wants to prioritize tests for the elderly and those with immunocompromised conditions. >> i think there's some good news in what you mentioned both in south africa and the uk, we're seeing glimmers that omicron has now peaked and is decreasing, hopefully to more of an endemic state. i think you heard dr. fauci and other administration officials talk about that. i would respectfully disagree, kids are 22% of the population. we know that the admission rate for kids with covid has gone dramatically up over the past several weeks. although it's rare, thank goodness, there are some really sick kids with covid. kids deserve testing to keep them safe as well as anybody else does. to answer your question specifically, i think we'll see a couple of months of this intense need for testing to keep kids safely in school and hopefully as we get to more
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endemic, we can reserve testing for higher risk patients. >> would it help if more kids were vaccinated? would we be able to keep them in school more without all of this testing? and the under 18 category, it's still the most unvaccinated category in the country. 54% of teens age 12 to 17 and just 17% of kids age 5 to 11. >> those numbers are really disconcerting i think to pediatricians and children's leaders across this country. it is horrific that we have a vaccine for kids over the age of 5, of course we're still working to get a vaccine for kids under the age of 5, i know a lot of folks are working on that. those numbers are disconcerting because the only way we'll get to some sense of normalcy and worry less about kids is to get kids vaccinated. all the data shows these vaccines for kids over 5 are safe and effective. this calls for a conversation between pediatricians, family medicine docs, this vaccine is
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safe, what are your concerns, and how can we ensure your child is safe going into '22. vaccines are so important, katy. >> i do encourage everybody to talk to their pediatrician, it's conversation i will be having with mine as soon as my kids are eligible to get the vaccine when they do it for kids under 5. dr. anderson, thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate your time and your expertise. >> my pleasure. it's not just schools feeling the impact of omicron, it's businesses as well. in texas 700,000 workers left the bar and restaurant industry at the peak of the pandemic. that's more than half of the workforce. when workers came back, they weren't all going back to their old jobs in those restaurants and bars. when omicron hit and the cooks, servers, bartenders, and everyone else started calling out sick, these already thin workplaces were finding themselves barely able to open if they could open at all.
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joining me now from dallas is nbc news correspondent morgan chesky. morgan, the restaurant down the street from my house had to go dark for a few days because everybody was calling out sick. >> reporter: katy, we're seeing that all across the state. i had a reservation this past week had a had to be canceled because the establishment shut down temporarily because of shortage of staffing. we're here in dallas's deep ellum neighborhood, a hotspot for bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and particularly the smaller venues here are feeling this omicron wave especially hard, because it could come down to having one or two people call in sick, either from having covid-19 or from being exposed to covid-19 and having to quarantine at home. that could cause a significant issue. we'll hear what one bar owner had to tell us about the impact on his own establishment. take a listen. >> it's frustrating for me. it's frustrating for my staff. i'm sure it's frustrating for patrons. i wish we had more tests and it was just easier for people to get tested like it was, you know, maybe during the delta
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variant or before, we had a lot of -- proudly, texas had a lot of mass testing sites. and it was fairly easy to go get tested, we have all this land, it was easy. >> reporter: and now? >> it's two to three days in advance. we ordered a lot of home kits so we can do our staff so they don't have to run around the city trying to find them. but there's only so much you can do, they'll run out of those and then we'll be in the same boat. >> reporter: that testing situation only complicates this latest omicron wave. i spoke to one woman who went to a county testing site here in dallas because she thought she may have covid. she planned on about an hour or two on her day off, ended up waiting seven hours, 45 minutes before she could finally get that rapid test, which came back negative, but ended up taking up her nearly entire day, just to find that peace of mind. >> that is insane.
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that is insane. how are we at this point still? come on. morgan chesky, morgan, thanks so much for joining us, i hope you get your reservation back in the future. everybody, support your local restaurants and your local bars because there will come a day where you don't want to drink at home alone and you don't want to to make yourself food at home and you don't want to go to a chain, you want to go to your local restaurant or bar. certainly that day as come for me already, many times over. coming up, the state of democratic control. the growing frustration in the party over their stalled legislative agenda. but first, the president calls for action on voting rights. is his pressure campaign working? his pressure campaign his pressure campaign working? real cowboys get customized car insurance with liberty mut so we only pay for what we need. -hey tex, -wooo.
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when he visits tomorrow to push voting rights legislation and with republicans unwilling to meet democrats on the issue, the president is calling for a change in the filibuster. changing the rules to allow for a simple majority to pass it. republicans, as you just heard, are already crying foul. mitch mcconnell calling the president's appeal to voters yesterday demagoguedemagoguery. mitt romney said president biden was making the same mistake as former president trump by casting doubt on the reliability of american elections. and at least two democrats aren't on board either. majority leader chuck schumer, though, says he is working on moving senators sinema and manchin. >> we're having a lot of serious, long, and intense meetings with senators manchin and sinema and trying to come to a place, we're not there yet, i don't want to delude anybody into thinking this is easy. >> but manchin did not sound so
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moved. >> reporter: what did you make of the president's speech last night? >> it was a good speech. he gave a good speech. >> reporter: did it change your opinion at all on the senate rules changes? >> everyone's talking. >> reporter: he said when it comes to majority rule in the country, a majority should rule in the senate. do you think that? >> thank you. >> we all understand how the senate works. >> he understands how the senate works. joining me is nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard and most of msnbc "politicsnation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton. he's also the author of a new book, "righteous troublemakers: untold stories of the social justice movement in america." rev, i want to congratulate you on that. but let's start with vaughn in west virginia. vaughn, are constituents telling joe manchin they should change the rules? and what about their feelings about the other senator from that state, shelley moore
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capito? >> reporter: right, i think part of the back and forth there with garrett and joe manchin was telling because it was a conversation about the majority and what does the majority in the senate truly mean. i was talking to two gentlemen earlier who say they appreciated their senator was, quote, protecting the minority party's power. so what does that mean? the minority power is the republican party. these two individuals, they are self-described trump voters who have voted for joe manchin in the past and say they're watching closely to see to what extent does joe manchin team up with the rest of the democratic party to potentially upend the filibuster even if it's just for this one exception. i want to let you though, at the same time, hear from christopher smith, a longtime resident of charleston, because i posed the question to him. he considers himself a centrist democrat. i asked him, even if joe manchin were to upend the filibuster in this scenario, it could potentially put him at risk in
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the 2024 election, this is his response. >> as a senator it's his job to think about what's good for the people, what's good for the nation. and he needs to seriously consider that. you know, if some people don't like it, that might be the price of doing what is or is not right. he's just got to evaluate that. but i think it should pass, for what it's worth. >> reporter: i think it should pass, for what it's worth. essentially 2022 is the year. for years to come we'll be talking about 2022, because there is the very real potential republicans will hold the senate majority in 2023, 2024. joe manchin, who won in 2018 by just three percentage points, will be up for his own reelection. he will have a republican opponent in 2024. the question is what is he willing to do now, and would that be carving out an exemption here for the effort to pass major federal voting rights reforms here in the year of 2022, katy.
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>> rev, the democrats have the slimmest majority you can have in the senate. vice president kamala harris is the tiebreaker. he's also been running into opposition from manchin and sinema in his party on changing the filibuster to get something like this done. my question is do organizations that support this change, to civil rights leaders, do they hold joe biden responsible for having a hard time getting it done right now, and will they hold him responsible if he is not able to because he's running into these walls? >> well, i think that many of us were calling on him to do what he finally did yesterday. and i think that he came through yesterday with a very stirring speech. i wish it had been sooner. but i think that when he laid it out the way he did, and i was there at the speech, and i talked to him after and told him this, i thought that he did as
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well a job as could be done, probably by any president, because he said this is really not even political, it's really what the country stands for, which side do you stand for, martin luther king or george wallace, abraham lincoln or stonewall jackson. he was not calling manchin and sinema stonewall jackson. he said that these voting laws are being changed in the states and you should not be on that side if in fact you are for the democratic experiment that the united states has stood for. i think they've got to decide, particularly as we approach martin luther king weekend, what side are they on? no one could say it better than the sitting democratic president of the united states. let's also remember, katy, that the only reason that manchin and
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sinema are critical in power is because an unprecedented number of people came out and voted and gave the senate democrats 50 votes. if the republicans come in a majority, they won't have any power and nobody on the republican side would care what manchin or sinema thinks one day after the election. and if anyone believes mitch mcconnell will not go around the filibuster when he wants to, when he's done it for judicial nominations and others, we are naive to stupid. are we really saying that if they go around the filibuster, carve out the filibuster, that when mitch mcconnell comes into power, whenever that may be, hopefully never, but if he comes back in power, he's going to say, oh, you guys operated with some kind of brotherhood and some kind of feeling for us, we're going to do the same?
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anybody knows mitch mcconnell is going to do that no matter what. >> let me ask you about the filibuster and let's do a little bit of a history lesson on it. the filibuster has been used since the 1890s. it was initially used to block civil rights legislation. grassroots organizations have been working for federal action for generations. when you were researching and writing your book, what connections did you see between those big fights back then and the big fights now? >> the connection i see, i write about people like fred gray who never got household name recognition, that there were a lot of people in the trenches. amelia boykin, who was important in the movement that became the voting rights movement that led to the voting rights act. it was those that challenged the president in atlanta yesterday, some didn't even come to the
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speech, that are going to make change. those are the kinds of people, if the democrats cannot get them out to vote because they feel the democrats don't represent their interests, the democrats will not have to turn out to try to offset what has always been the midterm elections, and that is the sitting party loses seats. so we must remember, the reason the democrats have a small majority in the house and a 50/50 vote in the senate with the vice president as a democrat who can break the tie, it's because the largest turnout of voters in the history of this country came out last year. if you let them down, how do you even come out of the midterm election with anything looking like a victory? so i think the president did the right thing. i wish he had done it six months ago, but he didn't. the question now is whether sinema and manchin were to go down in history on the wrong side of history and be in a party that has no power, they
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will have no say, no celebrity, even if they change parties, they would be freshman republicans. so they're between a rock and a hard place. but the sunshine is they can stand up for what is right and help this country preserve voting rights, which is what the tenets of the country always said in talk but never did in fact until '65. and republicans helped to renew it several times. why can't they do it this time? >> reverend al sharpton, thank you so much for joining us. vaughn hillyard, did you as well. ahead, how the doj is turning its focus to the growing threat of domestic terrorism. and the trio of donald allies facing subpoenas from the january 6th committee. facing se january 6th committee.
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arthur schwartz, are republican strategist with ties to don jr. the third is ross wilmington, one of trump's former speechwriters. joining us is nbc's ali vitali. these are well-known name if you're running around donald trump's circles, not so well-known outside that have. what could they offer this committee? >> reporter: katy, what these latest round of subpoenas show is the committee is trying to get more information around the rally held at the ellipse. these three specific men who were subpoenaed yesterday all had contact either with each other and with other speakers who were booked to talk at the ellipse. that's why sarabian and schwartz were subpoenaed. ross worthington was on the white house speech writing team. the committee says they want to talk to him because he may have had input into a draft of the former president's speech that he gave at the ellipse on that day. there's something notable as i was reading through the
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subpoenas for sarabian and schwartz. some of the contacts they had were with people previously subpoenaed. others of them, though, have not been served subpoenas, at least not yet. there were a few names that jumped out to me. donald trump jr. and kimberly guilfoyle. both those people, sarabian and schwartz, have worked with them, advised them over the years. they have not been subpoenaed by the committee but if i'm reading between the lines, that could happen in the future. >> ali vitali, thank you so much for that. let's move on. the justice department is creating a unit to fight domestic terror. the threat of home-grown extremism has grown over the last year with the number of fbi investigations into domestic terror more than doubling since the spring of 2020. >> we faced an elevated threat from domestic violent extremists. we've seen a growing threat by
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those motivated by racial animus as well as those who subscribe to antigovernment and anti-authority ideologies. >> joining me now is fbi special agent and msnbc contributor clint watts. a lot of folks have been calling for a unit just like this for many years now as the rise in violent extremism here in the united states, domestic extremism, has been on the rise now for quite some time. >> katy, that's right, it's long overdue. this has been a problem for the bureau because they really don't have the same mechanisms that they do in the international terrorism space. if this were al qaeda or isis, they would have foreign terrorist designation as a group or organization. they would have foreign terrorist designated and that would be where the national
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security guidelines guide everything the fbi does inside the bureau. we just don't have that for the domestic scene, which makes it very difficult to put the pieces together. so this is a sign that the doj above the fbi sees this as their mandate, which is they can see all the cases being pursued around the country, hopefully they can put the pieces together in more preemptive ways so we're not reacting to something like january 6th or the spreadsheet of white nationalist, white supremacist attacks we saw. >> correct me if i'm wrong, clint, the threat assessments put domestic terror, violent extremism here in the united states above threats from international terrorists. it's more worrisome what is happening here than what might come over here. >> that's absolutely correct. and i think the balance really changed, to be honest, when president trump took office. he was a galvanizing force that at least for a lot of extremist
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groups, they saw him as an empowering force. he talked a lot about issues that spoke to them. they didn't always work together but they awe unity under his banner. that's why you saw the first set of militia groups show up with qanon supporters on january 6th. separately, you see the online space is absolutely, in my opinion, out of control, between covid-19, mask mandates, and white supremacy, it's a lot of violence out there. >> sorry to step on you, but on that point, what does a new unit like this, what sort of powers does it have? because there is still no domestic terrorism statute in this country. are they going to be able to go after these threats as successfully as they need to? >> very tough, katy. i think the reason that you saw those numbers quoted yesterday about the number of open domestic terror investigations, they were pursuing so many cases
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after january 6th, you saw an uptick because you had an overt crime. it becomes, how do we put all the cases together. and i think the doj sees it as legally easier under the criminal code maybe to put it together at their level and try to put the pieces together of what the fbi is doing around the country. still not the best solution but hopefully better. >> we all saw the threat play out in real life, in real time, on january 6th, 2020. clint watts, clint, thank you so much. up next, new admissions from tennis star novak djokovic and whether they will impact his fight to play in the australian open. the saga has gotten -- the saga -
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[copy machine printing] ♪ ♪ who would've thought printing... could lead to growing trees. ♪ with 24 hours until the draw for the australian open, it remains unclear whether unvaccinated tests are novak djokovic will be allowed to play. djokovic acknowledged today there was false information on the travel document he gave to australian authorities and he publicly admitted on instagram to giving an interview last
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month after testing positive for covid-19. nbc sarah james has the latest on the saga from melbourne, australia. >> tennis world number one novak djokovic came to australia hoping to become the first player in the world ever to win 21 grand slams. but with questions swirling about his entry into the country and that positive covid test, some down under are asking if the star player double faulted before he ever played a match. novak djokovic is on court training in melbourne, but there's more off-court drama for the world number one. as questions swirl around his movements after testing positive for covid last month. the tennis star now admitting to breaking isolation rules and attending an interview after finding he tested positive for covid-19. in a long statement on instagram, the tennis star writing that following a positive pcr test i canceled all
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other events except for the interview but i did ensure i socially distanced and wore a mask except when my photograph was being taken. when i went home after the interview to isolate for the required period, on reflection this was an error of judgment. also, the tennis star facing another showdown surrounding his visa to stay and compete in the australian open. despite a judge overturning his cancellation. his original paperwork declared that he had not traveled internationally in the 14 days before coming to australia. djokovic now saying the paperwork was incorrect. submitted by his support team on his behalf. this was human error and certainly not deliberate. australian media say authorities are investigating the discrepancies. meanwhile, many tennis fans aren't too sympathetic. the #djokovicout now trending on
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twitter. andy murray saying -- >> i think there's still a few questions to be answered. >> reporter: though djokovic has attempted to clear up the confusion before the enits begins next week, the decision to allow him to stay and compete could still be overturned. the immigration minister is continuing to review the matter. meantime, the drawrrow. >> did an interview after he today. hallie jackson picks up our coverage next. jackson picks up coverage next.
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narrator: on a faraway beach, the generation called "our greatest" saved the world from tyranny. in an office we know as "oval," a new-generation president faced down an imminent threat of nuclear war. on a bridge in selma, alabama, the preacher of his time marched us straight to passing voting rights for every american. at a gate in west berlin, a late-generation american president demanded an enemy superpower tear down a wall and liberate a continent. american generations answering the call of their time with american ideals. freedom. liberty. justice. for today's generation of leaders, the call has come again to protect our freedom to vote, to fortify our democracy by passing the freedom to vote act and the john lewis voting rights act because america - john lewis: we are not going back, we are going forward.
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we are at some point in the next couple minutes about to get a briefing from the white house as we come on the air. may be running a little behind schedule as the president gets ready to take the next steps. new reporting on his plans to meet with senate democrats tomorrow and start working those phones. with republicans still unanimously opposed. leader mitch mcconnell today blasting the president's voting rights speech in atlanta. watch. >> incorrect and beneath his office. >> just ahead, we're talking with one of the senators leading the charge to change those senate rules. also coming up, yes, inflation nation. with inflation the highest it's been since the go-gos were on top of t
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