joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news senior white house correspondent garrett haake, leigh ann caldwell, chief washington correspondent for puck, former republican congressman carlos curbelo and ashley etienne former communications director to vice president harris. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is "meet the press" with kristen welker. >>> good sunday morning. in his frenzied first week in office president trump is testing the limits of his presidential power, racing to fulfill campaign promises to reshape the federal government and to settle scores. >> many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback, but as you see today here i am, the american people have spoken. >> on his first night as president mr. trump granting a blanket pardon to virtually all of the roughly 1,500 defendants in the january 6th capitol attack and commuting the sentences of the remaining 14. >> you would agree that it's never acceptable to assault a police of

. >> with us now, leigh ann caldwell, an anchor for washington post live. and matt mowers, former trump administration official. i want to play. our lauren fox chasing down the current house speaker, mike johnson ago. i want to replay that moment so we can hear again what he said. let's listen. >> how are you feeling this morning? >> yep. confident. >> how many holdouts do you think there still are? >> would you be? i think i expect we can get it done on the first round. working towards it. >> would you be open to making chip roy choi, the rules committee chairman? >> all right. first thing i want to point out is the excellent camera work. there. our camera team and lauren fox, they're gliding down the stairs keeping out with the house speaker. not a glitch at all there. the second thing i want to point out, leanne, is the fact that he says he thinks he's going to get it done on the first ballot today. do you think he's right? >> well, we're going to see. >> that's a question. mike johnson is obviously projecting confidence, but what people are saying behin

cnn's jeff zeleny, laura barron-lopez of the pbs newshour, and leigh ann caldwell, now of puck, you have done also extensive reporting on this issue throughout the campaign. the politics of it, the policy of it. can you just give us your top line view of what we saw over the weekend? >> well. >> what we're seeing is. >> priscilla is saying, is this all of government approach? essentially. a lot of other agencies being involved, including the justice department, in carrying out these deportations and, yes, tom homan is saying it is just being focused on public security threats, national security threats. but there are other migrants getting looped in here. and he said that they're they're definitely not going to stop arrests if migrants are if migrants who have no criminal record are caught up in these. so there's that. but there's also this other big story when it comes to immigration in terms of shutting down all legal pathways, essentially, effectively, all legal pathways have been shut down. and when tom homan gave an interview with abc over the weekend, he said, people just need to c