every day in business is a big day. we'll keep you ready for what's next. comcast business powering possibilities. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com ♪ unraveling, a deepening democratic divide puts their agenda on the brink. the president is still optimistic. >> it's time for us to convince in ourselves. plus, congress ready to hold steve bannon in contempt for ignoring its subpoenas. could he and others really face jail time? >> we're not messing around. if people don't show up, we expect that it will be prosecuted. >> the biggest race of the year. it's down to the wire in

virginia. >> terry mcauliffe believes in big government. he believes that government should be between you and your children. >> he's a trump wannabe. he's trying to play it both ways. >> "inside politics," the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters now. ♪ welcome to "inside politics" sunday. i'm phil mattingly in for abby phillip. it's a crossroads moment for president joe biden. these next few weeks could make or break his presidency. and that's not actually hyperbole. so let's out these three major questions the white house is currently facing. wlrp the economy be just a few months from now? at this moment major shortages in the supply chain. prices, they are up. if the fed wants to target, say, a 2% inflation rate, that's what they're generally looking for, it's been above that level for the last seven months. have we seen the last major

surge in covid cases in the u.s.? experts at this moments seem to be optimistic, but no one's quite sure as to what will happen as the weather gets colder. and will we rebuild america's infrastructure and transform it. >> too many folks in washington still don't realize it isn't enough just to invest in our physical infrastructure. we also have to invest in our people. i'm convinced we're going to get this done. we're not going to get $3.5 trillion. we'll get less than that, but we're going to get it, and we're going to go back and get the rest. >> now, americans are split down the middle on the president's performance according to a new cnn poll, 50% approve, 49% disapprove. shocking the country polarized to some degree. joining us now with their reporting and their insight.

jeff, look, i thought this was a week, and i've been bothering our production team about this for the last several days. it really laid bare the challenges the administration faces. and you looked at the supply chain issues which we'll get into inflation is very real. jen psaki was asked kind of what the vibe is at the white house right now. and this was how she put it. >> i promise you we don't get too glum around here even if things look challenging our view and his view is that he was elected to continue to press forward and address the challenges the american people are facing. >> so maybe they don't get too glum. >> not too glum. >> but they're very cognisant of what's going on right now. what's your reed of how they view this moment? >> i spoke to a senior administration official in the west wing who said we will be

judged on how we address covid and we'll be addressed on the economy. and here we are in october many months on and the economy is facing headwinds and covid is a little bit better, but definitely not where they thought it would be by the fall. i think that they -- i mean, i think jen's right, they don't let themselves get down, but they're not where they thought they'd be this far in the administration. and certainly the frustrations with the legislation, he needs a win and he's about to go on a couple or one foreign trip, two stops, where he wants to highlight some wins about how well the economy is doing or how well they're dealing with covid. he just doesn't have enough yet to be able to really make that argument. >> i think one of the challenges right now is if the president wants to win, there are opportunities on the legislative front. it's intractable seemingly from the outside, but there's a very real possibility that they end up getting both pieces of

legislation. in terms of what the president can actually do when it comes to inflation or when it comes to supply chains and they're very interconnected at this moment in time in a post-pandemic world, there's not a lot the president can do. is that the right assessment? >> right, because there are so many parts that factor into inflation and the rising prices that american consumers are seeing every day. you're looking at gas prices, which are right in your face as you drive down the street. you're looking at the price of food going up in the grocery store. all of those things are part of inflation. the president wanted to open the port of l.a. 24/7 to help get goods into the united states. that's all well and good but may not help you out that much if you don't have enough truck drivers to carry those goods to different parts of the country. at the same time we are seeing some wage growth, which is good. congratulations, american workers, but that also can factor into higher prices when companies choose to raise prices so they can pay their workers more. so you have all of these

different factors feeding into why prices are going up, and that's what's in the face of american consumers, and it's hard to pick and choose what part of that to attack and whether or not it will make a difference. >> the port issue that the president laid out said it could potentially be a game changer. the reality is, no, it can't, in isolation, because there are so many different things up and down the supply chain. so i think the question becomes from a federal government perspective, what can they do to actually change these dynamics? is there anything they can do? >> i mean, opening that port a little bit longer was one thing they could do, but like i said, with so many inputs, sure, maybe you can try to make it easier for truck drivers and encourage more people to sign up and provide additional support to large companies asking them to say, hey, can you put some other things on these giant ships that you're chartering to help move

these things along? there are things in ek do at the edges, but we have such a globalized distribution system for the goods that we're buying that wasn't equipped for a pandemic. and consumers in the united states used to be very services oriented, and then lockdown we started buying a lot of stuff. so at the same time that you had people shutting down manufacturing operations all over the world, you also had us buying more physical things. and the global economy just wasn't equipped for it and it's going to take us years to catch up. >> which the president can't just wave a magic wand and make change. he can try to sell his legislative agenda and get it across the line. it's been one of the things over the course of the last month we expected him to be selling the agenda on a regular basis. reality got in the way of that, whether it was afghanistan, whether it was storms. you take a look at the president's travel to promote his agenda over the last few

months. often not a primary focus. we're going to dig in on the agenda in a little bit, but what can they do to help get this plan, i guess, more understood, better understood? >> well, they can definitely hone their messaging and they can tailor some of their messaging to what people are feeling in the grocery store with some of this inflation. when you listen to senator manchin, he is one of the people that says, you know, we need to pump the brakes on all of the spending and maybe rear back some of these very ambitious pieces of the agenda, in part, because they could add to the inflation. he is worried about the amount of government money that's being pumped into the economy. and he believes that having a $3.5 trillion bill will make things worse on that front. having the white house directly tailor their message to him and to other people that are worried about inflation and the economy and say this is how we could actually solve these problems could help move this problem along. because not putting trillions of

dollars into the economy is going to make it hard for fthem to get that administrative agenda through. >> they're talking about the 3.5 -- they don't want to be talking about numbers, but they don't know what number to land on and they don't know if they're going to be talking about a program that they can't keep promises on. they want to put out there what they want, what the build back better agenda, what they want it, but right now it's wish-casting until you have a bill. >> you take up the cnn poll i was referencing earlier, the key biden constituencies who don't actually think the bill would help them, 25%, independents, 20%, women, 23%. the core of the second proposal is women and women who have been detached from the workforce or have been unable to get into the workforce. look, go ahead -- >> yeah. something as simple as the child tax credit, which whether or not

it's going to be extended is dependent on whether or not this legislation passes. you have more than, like, 60 million kids who are affected by this. this is money the parents are getting every single month that they weren't getting before the pandemic. and so here you have we're waiting on the details of this legislation, and it actually does matter to many american families whether or not one piece of it, the child tax credit, gets extended. >> the fact that people don't necessarily realize what the components of this bill are comes back to a little bit of what he was saying. there is a messaging miss there because there's a lot of great stuff in it for people who should be the core constituents of the democratic party and of president biden. >> yeah. and, look, once we have a better idea of things it's going to be a blitz. and if we do end up passing this, the better part of the next year is going to be explaining to people what it actually is. but explaining it after the fact hasn't always worked out.

bill clinton is expected to be discharged today from a california hospital. he spent the last several days there receiving treatment for a urinary tract infection that spread to his bloodstream. up next, steve bannon defies a congressional subpoena. could it cost him his freedom? >> "inside politics sunday" brought to you by adt, real protection.

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committee chairman bennie thompson says anyone trying to obstruct the probe will face consequences, including the former president. >> if former president trump thinks he can get away with what happened on january 6th about being cute with his press releases, then he has another thing coming. our committee, the bipartisan committee takes our work very seriously, and we will pursue it. >> cnn's melanie zanona joins the panel now. melanie, did you get a break during the congressional resource? and i think the answer is no. they start this very real contempt process, what actually happens? is steve bannon going to jail tomorrow? the answer's no, but why? >> that is a great question. you remember covering capitol hill for so many years. it really exposed the weaknesses that congress has when it comes to oversight. they could do something called

inherent contempt, which would require the sergeant in arms hauling people in and holding them in custody or they could do criminal contempt, which is what they are pursuing with bannon, but it ultimately kicks it to the doj. so congress doesn't actually have a ton of power, and we don't know what merrick garland is going to do. he wants to aid the investigation. but at the same time the administration wants to show that the doj is independent. so we don't know, and even if they do decide to pursue criminal charges, it's going to wind up in a lengthy court battle. so it could take years to resolve. the truth is the committee doesn't have that type of time. the house could flip to republicans next year, and then this whole select committee would go away. >> having lived through the two impeachment investigations, specifically the first investigation where i feel like the former president's lawyers figured out that you could basically destroy the investigation by just saying no to absolutely everything. is this going to be the same situation where everybody's waiting for three years to see

anything about anything? and by that point everybody's moved on. >> i think it very well could be, which is not only, it's a shame mostly because the american people deserve to sfaknow what happened on january 6th, the full answer. and we're finding out new information every day. look what happened with the doj this week and the capitol police officer who's been accused of helping the rioters after the fact and trying to get them to take down their social media post. but melanie's absolutely right. congress' power here is very limited. so, we're kind of hurry up and waiting right now. but this committee has to be aggressive in terms of the posture they take. because a lot of people are watching what happens with steve bannon. >> you talk about pressure from the white house. the president on friday had an interesting response given the

fact that the white house and the president has made very clear the justice department is a separate entity, merrick garland is his own man who's going to make his own decisions. >> i hope that the commite goes after them and holds them accountable. >> they should be prosecuted? >> yes. >> i was very encouraged to hear what president biden said today, that he thinks our committee should go after those who don't comply, and he believes that they should be prosecuted. now, to note, the justice department put oit a statement saying they will make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law full stop. are democrats trying to put their thumb on the scale here? >> i think president biden would like to see this pushed for sure. i don't think that he's changing his view about the independence of the department of justice. but sometimes when he has a moment like that where he's chatting with reporters, you'll see what he really thinks. and he thinks this was an attack

on our democracy, and he thinks that the committee needs to get down and get at the dirt, and that's why that came out. >> and the delay tactics that we saw during the trump administration were effective. they were able to delay a lot of the impeachment investigation. we didn't hear from don mcgahn until trump had essentially left office. and they want to say we'll take this to court, we'll see you in court. two years, three years later we find out what happens. >> especially if it is a a threat to democracy. speaking of the former president, you wrote a great story this week about how the president's push on fraud, if we don't solve the presidential election fraud of 2020, which we have documented, republicans will not be voting in '22 and

'24. just to be abundantly clear they have not thoroughly conclusively documented anything. however, that's a very real problem for republicans who want to run and don't want to run on this issue but feel like they have to. >> i talked to a ton of republican lawmakers and aides and they were frustrated that trump continues to rehash 2020. they want to focus on biden, the border, the economy. they want to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror. and there's also some concern that trump talking about false claims of election fraud and a rigged election are going to depress republican voter turnout like we saw in the georgia senate races earlier this year. at the same time, republican leaders are not rejecting these lies, they're not calling trump out. and as long as they continue to make him a part of their party and a centerpiece of their party, they're going to have to deal with those consequences.

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poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation, two democratic senators remain in opposition, including senator joe manchin. joe manchin's from west virginia. then this response from manchin. i will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs, no op-ed from a self-declared independent socialist is going to change that. and news that is infuriating progressives, the key plank in biden's climate change agenda is likely to be stripped from the bill. so now that we've had two senators, other than that everything's going absolutely swimmingly. two senators from the top rope at one another. look, i think the question right now is, you're in the white house every single day, what's your read about kind of how they viewed this moment in time with the legislation? >> i think they're ready to get it across the finish line, and it's just not moving very quickly. and we talked earlier about these upcoming summits that the president is going to, the climate piece is really important to his argument at glasgow, which is this

international climate change conference where he wants to say the united states is back and we're going to cut our emissions 50% by 2030. it's going to be a much harder sell for him to say that if he doesn't have the goods to deliver it. and the goods right now are in that legislation. >> in some ways it feels like we are farther away from a deal than we were a few weeks ago. you have bernie sanders and joe manchin sparring with each other in public, and you still have a litany of policy issues that haven't been resolved from climate change, medicare expansion, drug pricing. these are major, major components of the agenda. i think my question is at what point does the white house put its foot down and say this is where we're at, it's time to move forward? up until this point they have treated joe manchin and kyrsten sinema with kid gloves. they don't want to paint themselves in a corner, but they don't have a lot of leverage points. >> they haven't done that, they haven't put their foot down. that, i think, has been some kind of a frustration for some dems that the white house hasn't

ever -- it's not that they're not showing in ileadership, but they're not coming out and saying this is our bottom line, this is what can or can't be cut because that just hasn't been their strategy. >> so why hasn't the president, which we've heard from a lot of congressional democrats and i think all of us probably have, like, why isn't biden coming in and telling joe manchin this is what we're doing and we're going now. >> if you look at how he campaigned he said he was a moderate, he said he was going to bring the party together and work with republicans. but he also said he was going to be the most progressive president in history. he's been sort of straddling these two parts of the party and it's been very difficult to bring them another, in part, because if you look at the oped and the statement from manchin and sanders, they both think there is a problem that is making it harder for working-class americans to make it in america. sanders thinks it's because the rich are too rich.

manchin thinks we're giving too much money from the government and expanding government too much and that's leading to inflation making it harder to get people to be able to afford their everyday needs. so those very fundamental very major differences in policy thoughts makes it harder for biden to come with, get everyone in the back room and figure it out. >> i just want to talk about that because the new cnn poll, you take a look at kind of where democrats and independents land on things, and you kind of get into maybe what senator manchin is looking at versus what bernie sanders is looking at. would you have all safety net policies, climate change policies. independents only 30%. includes fewer policies, democrats only 20%. not pass any bill at all, democrats 4%, independents at 32%. it's not democrat versus democrat there. democrats are very behind these proposals.

the vast majority of both caucuses are behind these proposals. bernie sanders has been a good soldier for the better part of the last nine months with the white house, i think much to the surprise of some people in the white house. this moment feels different though to some degree because of how close they are and how divided they are on certain issues. >> right. and i think what policies do you remove? how do those numbers change if some of the policies that are popular start falling away? and that, and because of how congress is divided both in the house and the senate, all of these, while we tend to focus on sinema and manchin, there are kind of some moderate democrats w who might have tough re-elections coming up in the future. and the progressive caucus effectively made it so the infrastructure bill couldn't go to the floor. so they are trying to please a lot of people, and every single one of those members of

congress, usually you can count on good soldiers to sign right up and march right on. and some of them will. but if you decide you want to take a stand and you're a democratic member of congress, the white house has to listen to you right now. >> i think this is really interesting is they try and figure out how to thread this needle. take a listen. >> i'm of the view that it's important to establish the principle on a whole range of issues without guaranteeing you get the whole ten years. it matters to establish it. you pass the principle and you build on it. >> so there's been this debate about do you do fewer programs well, as the speaker laid out last week and then seemed to walk away from. or do you do all the programs with significantly less funding it's not mutually exclusive. you can do kind of all of the above of having pieces of each thing or trying to have, maybe it's some things for longer,

some things for shorter. just because you can't do the climate energy performance program, perhaps you get at that through different tax incentives. but we've all watched this happen legislatively before. do you feel like staff, very smart staff, can figure out in this case how to thread that needle? >> it's a rubik's cube. there are two different schools of thought. fund fewer programs and do them more robustly. you are setting these programs up for success, but then you have entire programs that are on the chopping block and that could be really, really difficult. and the other school of thought is that you could do more programs and just fund them for shorter periods of time. that makes it harder theoretically once people start receiving benefits for future congress to take them away, but then you do set up these risky sort of cliffs and moderates really don't like that idea. the question is can you do a limit of both? maybe some here, maybe some there. but that is how they are trying to decide how to pair back over a trillion dollars likely from

the top number. >> anyway, there's one last thing i want to talk about because i thought this was really interesting. we're constantly looking at polling and numbers. if you wanted the animating theory of why the president was willing to get behind a progressive economic proposal, coming out of the pandemic the idea was that people finally recognize that they needed government, you desperately needed government, the pandemic just laid bare these fragilities in the economy that have been there for a long time but were really exacerbated. if you look at the core of the pandemic, people who thought government was doing too much or should do more, the numbers have started to shift dramatically where they spiked up kind of in the middle of the pandemic, and now are starting to reverse almost to some degree where people are starting to get more weary of government again. look, you've paid closer attention to how this white house operates than anything else. if those numbers are shifting against them all of a sudden, people are concerned more about the role of government, what does that do to kind of the animating theory of the

proposal? >> well, it's a problem. it rips the rug out a little bit from what he's trying to do. to your broader point, it shows what the progressives are arguing, which is that biden has been on their side. he wants all of those things, that quote that you just played shows, i still want all of it even if it's a little bit shorter time horizon. but if he doesn't have that support publicly or obviously legislatively in terms of the votes, it's a challenge. >> yeah. it's going to be interesting to watch. i think we're all going to be busy the next couple of weeks. coming up next, 16 days to go until virginia's gubernatorial election. will it be a referendum on the current president or the last president? and lasts a long tim. dove men, 48h freshness with triple action moisturizers. ♪ (calls dog) buttercup...

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is possible and the experience to realize that vision. terry mcauliffe is that leader. so early voting has already started, and this is the first year that you can vote on sunday. so, please vote after today's service. >> the vice president is one of many top democrats trying to make the case for mcauliffe in the final days of the virginia governor's race. see if you can spot it right here. >> president trump said glenn youngkin will do whatever we want him to do. people don't want president trump, they don't want a trump wanne like glenn youngkin. donald trump wants to use this race to kick himself off for 2024. and we're just not going to have that here in virginia. so we've got to stop old donald trump. we don't want him back again. >> it was subtle. [ laughter ] you had to really pay close attention there. did you pick up what he was going for? >> well, it's pretty clear if you look at 2018 and 2020, the

times the democrats were able to get a lot of turnout and build that coalition that obama had in 2008 and 2012. it was when they were hammering home the message of you don't want trump in office, you want to take away some of his power. they are testing to see whether that message will continue to work. the biden agenda has not produced as much as the democrats wished it would've produced by this point. we don't have voting rights legislation. we don't have legislation on some women's rights, women's health issues. climate change that democrats said put us in the white house, put us in the house and senate and we'll get you all of these things. they did pass the american rescue plan, but there are a lot of things they have not been able to pass. now they're saying don't allow trump acolytes to get into office. >> it seemed like the campaign was simply casting about for a message, kind of hoping to bait trump coming in. and then you had this steve bannon rally that youngkin did

not attend, but they pledge ad ledgeance to a flag that was waved on january 6th which was absurd. and youngkin made very clear that it was weird and wrong i think was his to rememberology. and when asked about trump, this is how youngkin responded. >> would you like to see him campaign here? >> the person that's going to be campaigning here for the next two weeks is youngkin. i'm on the ballot. i'm running against terry mcauliffe. by the way, terry mcauliffe wants anybody but terry mcauliffe campaigning. he's invite the world to come in. [ laughter ] >> it was actually a good response to the question. the youngkin campaign clearly feels like they got a message. they feel like they've had mcauliffe kind of on the ropes compared to where you would think president biden would be. how do they close this next 16 days out? >> they're talking a lot about, it's kind of like this all politics are local message. they're talking a lot about

education. they're talking about the economy. and he is trying to keep it focused on him. but he's also not coming out against anything former president trump has said. he's walking this line. and it seems to be doing a pretty good job doing it right now of trying to attract those republicans who may have voted for biden in 2020 and also hold the trump coalition that are going to be kind of the loudest and proudest out there on election day and the independents who've kind of gone back and forth. the mcauliffe people say that they're focusing on vaccine -- they're both focusing on vaccines but they're taking different tacts to it. and mcauliffe has been very supportive of the biden position on vaccines and how that helps the economy come back. so, it's going to come down to the wire. it really is a fascinating race to watch because it does have this local nationalizing split. and we'll see how that gets

analyzed after the fact. >> i'm sure it'll be analyzed to death regardless of what happens. it's an off-year election. virginia voters have got to be exhausted. they have elections every single year. we live in an area where you get the virginia campaign ads. >> and they get the d.c. politics too. >> you literally want to throw your remote through the television. we've always talked about the balance between how you deal with the former president. youngkin seems to have done a fairly decent job to this point. how do they read it? >> they're viewing the way he's running his race as a potential model for 2022, especially for these republicans in more moderate areas or in battlegrounds because he's found a way to tap into the gop trump base without fully embracing donald trump. he said the election was not stolen, and yet he's made election integrity a key part of his campaign. he's talking about the vaccine mandate in school, packaging them as parental rights. so i think republicans see this as a potential playbook for

them. democrats, meanwhile, are watching this very, very closely, they're starting to get very spoofed. i think if mcauliffe loses you could see democrats pull away from potentially what they're doing on reconciliation. they might think it's a sign of unpopularity for biden and democrats writ large. so i think there's a lot at stake for republicans and democrats on capitol hill. >> and you want to know how much democrats know what's at stake? we talked about the vice president. we had joe biden there two days ago. former president obama is coming. vice president harris. stacey abrams. mayor keisha lance bottoms. you're bringing the power houses but they're also targeting very specific demographic areas. black voters in particular it seems like. talk to the democrats, talk to the white house, how do they feel about what's going on? >> the white house is using language like virginia's race is not about weather. i spoke to a source in the youngkin campaign yesterday who said that all of these big names

that mcauliffe is bringing in, they see that as a sign of desperation. they have a reason to say that. but it is, as acrjackie said, i really tight and democrats are not hoping for that at this point. >> 16 days to go. all right, thguys, thanks so mu. kyrie irving and the white house's push to get everyone vaccinated. now $1 delivery.

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the biden administration embraced vaccine mandates as the

quickest way to end the pandemic. not everyone feels that way. exhibit a, the head of the chicago police union battling the chicago mayor over vaccine requirements. >> we're going to keep fighting this mandate and this dictatorship. you would think there's no crime in this city to worry about. you would think there's no murder, no robberies, no guns being fired. >> what we have seen from the fraternal order of police and particularly leadership is a lot of misinformation, a lot of half truths and flat out lies in order to induce an insurrection. we're not having that. >> this is quite a battle. i want to get to a chicago native in a second. the bigger picture, the white house has been very clear in this shift. it wasn't a shift that they necessarily wanted to move towards for several months. but they have embraced it. they are fully behind it. we are waiting for this osha rule to come into place. you have heard from businesses concerned about labor shortages. what's your read on the sense from the white house about how this process is going, even when

we see political flare-ups? >> they want more businesses to follow and more businesses do it. it's interesting you mention this wasn't where they wanted to go. biden said recently that this really wasn't my initial instinct, but it's working. vaccination rates are going up. it's important to note that some of the requirements didn't just come from the federal government. some states were ahead and the companies were ahead. you can't give the administration to credit for it. >> you have seen the cities follow. some cities were leading. now some are following. chicago is the latest. what's your sense right now in the battle in the city? is this something that's usual, police union versus perhaps the mayor they don't like, or something bigger. >> in chicago, it hits home. they put their lives on the line

every day. the coronavirus right now is the leading cause of death among police officers. yet, they are the most resistant to getting vaccines. i think more broadly what the challenge is is that your vaccination status has become so much a part of your identity. politically, culturally and that's a hard thing to overcome. as jeff was mentioning, the vaccine mandates work. you have to wonder what things would look like had the biden administration implemented them from the beginning. >> that's a question a lot of us have had. you mention police officer deaths from covid since the start of the pandemic, it's rurufr roughly 475. one player in the nba, kyrie irving, has gotten a lot of attention. he decided he witness not play -- the nets decided he will not play. he addressed why. >> i don't believe that i'm retiring. don't believe i'm going to give up this game for a vaccine

mandate. this is not a political thing here. this is not about the nba. it's not about any organization. it's about my life and what i'm choosing to do. >> cool, right? you make a decision. there are repercussions for said decision. unfortunately, everything is political in this day and age. what's your sense? 95% of players are vaccinated. kyrie irving is the front page of every story for two weeks. where does that leave us? >> there's a power in the sports world. also in the cultural world and political world to speaking out and saying, i'm going to resist a government mandate or company mandate, even if it seems like kyrie and other people are essentially putting their own personal interests above community interests. there's this idea that you can stand out and say, i'm going to fight back and be the outcast or the person leading the charge. that has power in the political world. you see a lot of republicans, people in trump's world essentially saying, i'm going to resist the government forcing me

to put something into my body. there's political power with that, even though the vast majority of people have gotten the vaccine or agreed to some mandates. people that are standing out are keying into something that does have political power and that biden and democrats will have to deal with. >> it's influential. the danger is he is saying it's about my choice. it isn't about your choice. that's about this virus, it has nothing do to do with you. it's about everyone around you that could get because of your personal decision. that's what it boils down to. the danger here is that people are listening to him, that are on the fence, who haven't gotten vaccinated or who are thinking about their children getting vaccinated. that's where we are in the pandemic. we are talking about kids soon under 12 getting vaccinated. that is why you see a strong pushback to those who are still at the holdouts and who have a public platform. >> there's a recognition that this becomes a political issue.

look how republicans have keyed in on kyrie irving, any republicans who aren't vaccinated, including senator ted cruz. i don't know his vaccination status. his tweet, to all athletes, stop insulting our flag, our nations, our here rose, how dare you take a personal stance. in 2021, i stand with kyrie irving, i stand with bradley beale with jonathan isaac. your body, your choice. >> seems cynical. >> really? in washington? i don't believe it. >> ted cruz has been vaccinated. >> it underscores how little power the biden administration has over this debate. biden said this last week, we shouldn't make this political. we shouldn't make this political. it doesn't matter how often he says it. it is political. there are people and there are political forces who are using it to their advantage. >> no question. 95% of the nba is vaccinated.

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backed up, with negotiations at a standstill in congress and supply chain shortages hurting the economic recovery, does the biden administration need to change course? transportation secretary pete buttigieg joins me next. plus, lock them up? the house january 6 investigation has a choice to make as key trump allies say they will not cooperate. >> i hope that the committee goes after them and holds them