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Listen daily on SiriusXM. This Sunday, taking on Trump. The Republican primary field will be expanding this week's Florida Governor, Ronda Santis, and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Both jump into the 2024 race.
I think the party has developed a culture of losing. It's time for us to be proud, to be Americans and proud of our president. Can't either candidate make the case keys. The better alternative to Donald Trump and unite the party in the process in the primary battle ahead.
I'll talk to Republican Congressman Byron Donald to Florida, who's currently backing Donald Trump. Plus, flirting with disaster, debt-sailing negotiations break down, restart, and then stop again. This vote is not an option. This White House will not acknowledge that they're spending too much.
What's really going on inside the talks is either side negotiating in good faith, and how serious is the June 1st deadline for a catastrophic default? I'll talk to Treasury Secretary Janet Yell and abortion politics. Second, Second, Second. The lawmakers in Nebraska and North Carolina pass new abortion restrictions as Democrats prepare to fight back.
Politicians shouldn't push their way into the exam room with women and their doctor. President Biden's 2024 campaign is already planning to focus on the new ban in the swing state of North Carolina. How will the battle over abortion rights impact the 2024 race? I'll talk to North Carolina's Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.
Joining me for insight and analysis are NBC News managing Washington editor, Carol Lee, Dan Ball's chief correspondent for the Washington Post, former Republican Congressman Carlos Cravello, and Simone Sanders Townsend, former Chief's spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris. Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press. From NBC News in Washington, the longest-running show in television history, this is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.
Good Sunday morning. This is going to be one of the busiest weeks yet in the presidential campaign as the 2024 Republican field grows, some of the concerns among some Republicans that none of Donald Trump's current rivals are going to be able to beat him in a primary. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has announced that his campaign tomorrow in his hometown of North Charleston before heading to the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and for the Governor Ron DeSantis' expected to formally file paperwork for President this week. I've been a soft launch of his campaign with a video and a donor retreat at the four seasons in Miami before formally having the big campaign rally announcement later in the month.
But when the year began, DeSantis had the look and feel of not just a front-runner, but of a potential juggernaut. The last five months have not been kind. Trump has relentlessly attacked him, and under those attacks DeSantis has floundered a bit. He has struggled with big donors who have complained quite publicly that he, quote, doesn't even return phone calls.
Others don't like his position on abortion. The six-week ban, I believe, it would be a problem in a general election, and still others worry about his charisma. He launched a book tour. It was immediately overshadowed when he called the Ukraine war, a territorial dispute.
He walked it back after some donors complained. Then there's the fight with Disney, where he took a political advantage in a victory and it has now turned into a political problem. The DeSantis slum has made more Republicans who believe Donald Trump cannot win a general election, flirt with jumping into this race themselves from New Hampshire governor Chris Sunn Ironically, that electability fight may not be about January 6 and Trump's growing legal baggage. This week, Trump said that, quote, many people within the pro-life movement feel, DeSantis is six-week abortion ban.
It's too harsh. Well, DeSantis responded to Trump earlier this week. As a Florida resident, he didn't give an answer about, would you have signed the heartbeat bill that Florida did? They had all the exceptions that people talked about, the legislature put it in.
I signed the bill, I was proud to do it. He won't answer whether he would sign it or not. And joining me now is Republican Congressman Byron Donald of Florida. Donald, by the way, introduced DeSantis at his election night, which he party in November, the last month he became one of 11 Florida congressional Republicans to endorse Donald Trump.
Welcome to me to press. That's going to be with you, John. Before we start with the politics, sort of the political junkie conversation, we're talking about the debt ceiling, you remember the Freedom Caucus on here. Are you going to be comfortable with a deal that you probably personally won't like, but it's a deal that sort of maybe progressives don't like it, the Freedom Caucus doesn't like, but it can pass.
Are you going to be able to accept a deal like that? Chuck, to be blunt with you, we're not really sure what deal is even on the table. The White House is not serious. They came up with a proposal to spend another $30 billion more than they already wanted to spend and they're not taking a look at the reality of where our country is fiscally.
Look, Joe Biden is saying that he's cut 1.7 trillion from the deficit, but everybody's saying that's not true. That's what he actually has done is he's a trillion dollars over what CBO was projecting spending was going to be because after all of the COVID spending in the last year of President Trump, that Congress wasn't going to extend that and Joe Biden did. So we're in a situation right now where the only plan in Washington has been passed by the House of Representatives. It's the only plan.
Joe Biden's not serious at the negotiating table. I've talked with my colleagues who are in that room. So at this point, really, the question is what's the Senate going to do? Where's Chuck Schumer in all this?
Because the Senate has not done any work at all and Joe Biden has not done any work at all. What do you get you to respond to something former President Trump said about the debt ceiling in 2019? Take a listen. I can't imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating budget.
Why don't you agree with him on this? Well, first of all, he also said the other day on a rival network that he said that when he was president and when asked why he wasn't saying it now is because he's not president. Listen, Donald Trump isn't that good. You don't have to have that sound.
That is not absurd. He's always negotiating. Chuck, he's always negotiating. That's what he does.
That's actually one of the reasons why so many deals for our country worked out to our benefit as compared to his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat because he's always negotiating. Do you realize how partisan that sounds? That's not part of the thing. What is good for me is not for the...
He's basically saying, when I'm president, there's no negotiating on this. But hey, when somebody else is president, screw him. Well, no, here's the thing. Let's be realistic now.
When Donald Trump was negotiating debt ceiling, with Nancy Pelosi, mind you, they negotiated that. No, they weren't there. When they were doing that, when they were doing that, our economy was thriving. Our debt levels were not where they are right now.
We were about $24 trillion, not $32 trillion. We weren't having massive deficits the way we are right now. It was a very different environment. Now, you have $32 trillion on the credit card, and all House Republicans are saying is, let's go back to pre-pandemic spending.
That's common sense stuff. But there's one more thing House Republicans are asking for, which is they want fewer IRS agents. They want fewer attempts to try to properly get tax receipts into the federal government's coffers. I have never understood the resistance of extra IRS agents unless you knowingly cheat on your taxes.
That's salacious, and you know that. Most Americans by far pay their taxes and they do it honorably. What House Republicans and Republican Party is concerned about is having IRS agents go after middle-class families and small business owners. And you have that many more agents.
It's not to go after the rich. It's to go after the middle-class. Again, so if you're paying what you're supposed to pay, then you should have nothing to fear. You would make the assumption that IRS audits are up, that they're putting out more liens on the American people.
That's not true. That data's not there. All Joe Biden's trying to do is find every possible nickel out of every couch from every American to pay for his radical spending. Why would we do that?
Listen, let me contrast for you. When we passed a tax cut in Jobs Act, CBO said it was going to cost $2 trillion. It's actually not true. What ended up happening was the federal government took in a trillion dollars more than CBO actually projected.
The economy grew another one. And we can't litigate the tax cuts with what happened with COVID. We don't know how much this rate into everything, but it certainly looks like there were going to be fewer revenues coming into the government. But we don't know.
In fairness for you. There's no ability to litigate this because of what happened with COVID and the extra. That is not true. In 2019, we took in more revenue than we ever have in the history of our nation.
As a bunch of a percentage of our economy than we ever have as a nation. That was 2019. Also, as a president Trump has added more to the deficit than Joe Biden. You're going to use it.
I'm going to use it. I'm going to use it as COVID. I'm going to use it as COVID. It's not true because we raise more revenue than CBO projected.
If you bring in more money than your projections are, how are you adding to your deficit? And if you pay, if somehow you keep cutting taxes, but more revenue comes in the government, that math doesn't work over time. You can have it in the first year due to some various accounting tricks, but it doesn't work over time. No, that is not true.
The purpose of tax policy is to raise revenue for the federal government. Not to equalize society. After the Trump tax cuts were passed, more tax revenue has come to the federal government than at any other time in the history of our nation. Those are the facts.
Raw dollars can happen because we do it. And a percentage of the economy. Let me ask you this on caps. Are you, do you want to see caps on defense spending as well as domestic spending?
Because right now there seems to be, whether there's going to be budget caps, only under domestic or Republicans are also wanting caps on defense spending. So internally, we're having this discussion about defense. We're looking at trying to see a way to keep defense spending in mind because there are threats all over the globe. We see it in Ukraine.
We see what's happening with China's stable rattling with Taiwan, etc. So we want to make sure that our military preparedness is where it needs to be. But at the same time, House Republicans are not looking at just letting the Department of Defense have massive radical increases as well. We have the control spending everywhere in our government.
Let me go back to the reality of politics. Tom Chol said any deal is going to lose people like you in the Freedom Caucus and people on the progressive side. Any added this to the dispatch. We're not going to have a deal with the President of the United States doesn't sign it and we're not going to have a deal with the majority of the House doesn't support it.
So each side is not going to just simply give the other side what it wants. It's politics 101. I go back to my first question. You accept that premise.
I accept the premise that Joe Biden's got to come up with the deal. He doesn't have one. I would ask you, you should ask him. If he actually will take your question, you should ask him if he has a plan.
If he has a strategy. The only thing he's ever said is it should just be clean. But nobody with an economic mind is saying, yeah, sure, just give the federal government a blank check. Are you comfortable with reaching the debt soon?
No, I'm not comfortable with that. This should have been done a hundred days ago. How's Republicans been working on this for three months? I've been in the room.
I've been in those meetings. And while we were working on a strategy to raise our nation's debt ceiling, which is something the House of Representatives has passed, Joe Biden was ignoring it and Chuck Schumer was ignoring it. And I think that he has been derelict in his duty. Let me ask you about the President's race.
We got more on the debt ceiling than I think either one of us expected. I want to play your celebration of Governor just saying to us and asking about it on the other side. The newly reelected Democrat beating, freedom standing for America's governor Ron DeSantis. Obviously, you chose to support right now, Donald Trump.
Instead of who you described as America's governor there. What Governor DeSantis had done to convince you to stick with him and not the former president? Well, first of all, that speech was pretty good. You got to acknowledge that.
That was good stuff. Anyway, look, to me, it's not really about Donald Trump versus Ron DeSantis. It's about what America needs. And that's where I've been really since day one.
We talked a little bit about foreign policy in the last block. We have a situation right now where Russia is on the move and China is on the move. We need somebody who can step in day one, look at Vladimir Putin, look at Xi Jinping and say, okay, enough, I'm back. We're going to get everything in on the way.
It has that ability. I think it's going to take them time. There's only one person who has that ability right now in his Donald Trump. And for all the naysayers who would say, oh, he's unpredictable, oh, we don't know what he's going to do.
Let's be very clear, when he was president of the United States, the world was in a much safer place. Nobody can say that the world is safer now than when it was when he was president. He called January 6th a beautiful day. That is not something many people associate January 6th.
You really think that's an electable position? Look, I think what happened on January 6th was a terrible day for the country. I was on the House floor. It was a terrible day for the country.
But that also being said, we have a situation where we got to get the country back on track. I made a comment the other day that as bad as January 6th was, the American people aren't consuming January 6th away, the media in Washington is consuming January 6th. Our country has to get back on track. I was trying to watch it.
It was a pretty scarring day for the West. It was, but what's happened in our southern border right now? That's scarring for the people who live at the southern border. What's happening for middle income families when their wages are being eroded by a massive inflation brought to us by Joe Biden?
That is the stuff that the American people are concerned about right now. There's been some talk that you might be interested in running for governor in 2026. Let me ask you this. Would you have signed a six-week ban or do you think that's too much?
You know, honestly, that's something where you have to deal with your legislation on that. You have to look at your legislature, you have to deal with the people in your state and you figure out what that process is going to be. Sounds like that. Sounds like that you think six weeks is too much.
Well, they also put a lot of exceptions to it. I wasn't in the legislation when he did this. I want to be blunt with you. I'm not sure where the governor wasn't in the legislature was on this.
What I will tell you is this is a far better place to be than when Roe v. Wade was the lawyer. I don't think it's too much. It's too extreme to agree with him on that.
I think he's going to figure out what he thinks is going to be the best thing for the country. He said that already. He's on the record with that. Look, abortion politics is very personal.
It's very, very personal. And obviously, we all know it's hyperbolic in our country. It's really, really important. And the reason is, obviously, the United States, because the country's never really had to deal with the politics of abortion.
Compare us to the European countries. America's abortion policy is radical compared to the European countries. Most European countries are intended 12 weeks. That's where they are.
They also have exceptions that allow abortion. So, before law has exceptions to law all the way there, I'm going to do more abortion here in a few minutes. Senator Donald's Republican, Congresswoman, from South Florida. Thanks for coming in.
Thanks for your time. Thank you. Speaking of abortions, Republicans in North Carolina took advantage of their new supermajority push through an abortion ban of 12 weeks over Governor Roy Cooper's veto. The new law bans abortion after 12 weeks requires patients to be in person with a physician at least 72 hours before the procedure.
includes 20-week exceptions for rape and incest, any 24-week exception for what they call life-limiting fetal abnormalities. So joining me now is the Democratic governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper. Governor Cooper, welcome back to me to the press. You better be with me Chuck.
As always. So let me throw this. We've described how this bill came to be. It is less restrictive bill than some of North Carolina's surrounding states.
So let me ask you about how the Washington Post described it. They called it this. It is the first new abortion ban to pass since the fall of Roe v. Wade that does not outlaw all or most abortions, effectively allowing roughly 90% of abortions to continue.
Are they correct in that assessment? You agree with the Washington Post assessment of that? I don't think so, but I hope so. We're going to make sure that this bill gets implemented in a way that we provide the most access possible to women.
This bill was contradictory, conflicting, confusing. They wrote it in the middle of the night. It's going to be open to interpretation. This is in no way a reasonable compromise, as Republicans have presented it.
It's a compromise between the right wing and the radical right wing. It is better than some of these surrounding states. But we know that Republicans are unified in their assault on women's reproductive freedom, not a single one of them, not a single one of them stood up even when they had made promises to the people that they weren't going to change North Carolina's abortion law. That tells us where we are right now.
Well, look, the bill also includes millions of dollars of funding to expand access to contraception for low-income and uninsured patients. It increases payments for foster families and expands access to child care and it includes increases pay per rental leave for state employees. Did you find those provisions that were included in something you could support? Well, first, I've already issued an executive order for pay per rental leave for state employees.
They should be doing these kinds of things anyway. What they spent a lot of time doing is dressing up this bill so that they could attract their swing Republicans because they knew they needed every single vote in order to be able to get this bill passed. Democrats were unified on a Roe v. way standard.
So what they did is try to make this bill ugly. It's the oleptic on a pig kind of thing. Yes, those investments are important and should be made anyway. But when you look at what this bill does, I don't think we can even comprehend yet the pressure that these clinics are going to be under by these additional restrictions.
Women who are working hourly wages and already have children and have to make multiple trips in order to get reproductive care. North Carolina has been an access point in the southeast. We already have long waiting lines and you can press the time that women have to make these decisions. I don't think it's reasonable to call this thing a 12 week ban because inside of that 12 weeks, there's a lot going on that would be obstacles to women in being able to get care.
Yeah, the 72 hour provision certainly is a hurdle at a minimum and perhaps a full on obstacle. I'm going to ask about the party switcher Trisha Gotham who was a democratic state representative switch parties allowing the super majority to be there. A fellow state rep, a democratic state rep Cecil Brockman said the following and I'm curious if you respond. I didn't see a coming referring to the party switch.
But I do get how she feels resentful from the content character attacks that she has received and a couple of us have received. It is a lot of eating your own. The biggest issue with Democrats in the state of North Carolina is that we'd rather be right than win elections. The implication that the progressive left so attacked Trisha Gotham that she felt unwelcome in the party.
Was that a fair critique? You can't make major policy changes because you get your feelings hurt. Here in North Carolina, we are on a razor's edge. Major policy changes can happen because of one legislator making a decision because of our gerrymandered districts.
We are so close to a super majority. The last four years, we've had enough Democrats to be able to stop all of the bad legislation. All of my vetoes have been upheld. But when you're talking about investments in education for our children, when you're talking about expanding Medicaid, which we were able to get done by the way, when you're talking about bills that discriminate, bills that attack, voting rights, bills that affect our democracy, those one votes matter.
And yes, it's a lot of pressure to make sure that we don't have these radical policy changes in a state that has kept our purple nature. One of the reasons we're the number one state in the country for businesses because businesses say we are stable. We have a good business environment, but we also have stayed out of the culture wars. And if you run for elective office, you got to be tough.
You got to be ready to jump into these issues and understand that there are going to be differences of agreement, differences of opinion, and that people can be pretty rough in that kind of situation. Politics or being vague. We do know this. I think abortion and the issue of abortion will be the number one issue in North Carolina come 2024.
We will see what it does to the state politics. Governor Cooper, Democrat from North Carolina. Thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective. Thank you, Jack.
When we come back, when will the federal government run out of money? Can a deal still be reached to avoid a catastrophic default? You're going to hear from the Secretary of Treasurer Janet Yell next. Stay informed with the NBC News app.
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Hey, guys. Willie guys to you are reminding you to check out the sunday sit down podcast. On this week's episode I get together with Red Hot stand up comedian Nikki Glaser to talk about the long career grind that has brought her to this starring moment hosting the Golden Globes, killing at the time Brady rose and now with another hit special on Hulu. You can get our conversation now for every time for every download your podcasts.
Welcome back as the Treasury Department warns that the US could breach the debt ceiling as soon as June 1st this week in negotiations. And then they were off. Then they were on again. As the basis of both political parties balked at some of the compromises that were being made public that were supposedly on the table.
A Republican aide told NBC News that house conservatives are, quote, privately seething at how the talks have been going saying Republicans are giving away their leverage. Well, then you had 11 progressive Democrats in the Senate and 66 in the house are arguing the president Biden should invoke the 14th Amendment and pull out of talks completely saying the constitution requires the government to pay its debts. So with the basis of both parties unhappy, in theory, we're in the sweet spot for a deal to get done. Or will the basis derail the steel?
Join me now is the Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen, Secretary Yellen, welcome back to the press. Thanks so much, Chuck. It's a pleasure to be with you. All right.
I want to start with today's May 20th. 12 days is June 1st. How hard is 12 days? President Biden seemed to hint earlier this morning that he thought we're two to three weeks away and, you know, 12 days, two weeks, we can argue there.
But how hard is this June 1st deadline? Well, I indicated in my last letter to Congress that we expect to be unable to pay all of our bills in early June and possibly as soon as June 1st. And I will continue to update Congress, but I certainly haven't changed my assessment. So I think that that's a hard deadline.
I want to point out something that a lot of House conservatives just simply don't believe what Treasury is doing. I'm going to read you one quote here. Some conservative Republicans have said for months that they felt Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had exaggerated the risk of the default in June. In a bid you put pressure on the House Republican majority.
She's going to play it out now saying it's a crisis. The day is here, said Rep Ralph Norman, a member of the Freedom Caucus. What do you think you could do to convince Congressman Norman that this early June deadline is real? Well, Treasury has a long history of informing Congress about how much cash and headroom we have under the debt ceiling.
And we take pride in the credibility of the forecasts that we make. I would point out that the Congressional Budget Office has recently indicated that they expected early June is a problem, will be a problem. And forecasters on Wall Street who look at information daily on our cash balances and resources agree. So there will be hard choices to make if the debt ceiling isn't raised.
And I would simply say, since 1789, the United States has a history of paying its bills on time. That's what the world wants to see a continued commitment to do that. It's what underlies U.S. Treasury securities as the safest investment on the planet.
And it's not an acceptable situation for us to be unable to pay our bills. I just want to sort of understand the go or no go to June 15th in this way. It's clear that June 1st is not hard, but it's the beginning of that period. What is the likelihood we can get to the June 15th tax receipts to avoid breaching the debt ceiling?
Can you put a percentage on it? Is it 20%, 40%, something like that? Well, there's always uncertainty about tax receipts and spending. And so it's hard to be absolutely certain about this.
But my assessment is that the odds of reaching June 15th while being able to pay all of our bills is quite low. Fair enough. Let me ask you about what are the sticking points here. It does appear as if we heard President Biden bring up a revenue, meaning taxes, maybe it's closing loopholes or maybe it's actually raising a percentage here or there.
Is it a hard and fast line? Is the White House going to accept a deal on this to raise the debt ceiling that includes sending caps but does not include any increased revenues or taxes? Well, look, the White House is negotiating in good faith with the Republicans to try to find a bipartisan solution. I don't want to negotiate in public and put down any red lines, but certainly the President has pointed out and it's important for the American people to understand we're all concerned about deficits and fiscal responsibility, but deficits can be addressed both through changes in spending and also through changes in revenue.
And the Republicans have taken that off the table. Something that greatly concerns me is that they have even been in favor of removing funding that's been provided to the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax fraud. We have an enormous gap between the taxes we're collecting and what we should be collecting if everyone paid the taxes that they really owe. And that's really a reflection of tax fraud.
It amounts to an estimated $7 trillion over the next decade. So equipping the IRS with the funding they need to audit high income individuals and corporations, that's something that doesn't cost money. It nets money substantially for the federal government. So, and of course, there are revenue proposals that we think make the tax code fairer.
Let's end with a phrase that I talked to you about at the beginning, and that's this idea of extraordinary measures. Is the Fourteenth Amendment following the category of extraordinary measures? Well, extraordinary measures is used in a different way, but there has been much discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment. And as President Biden said, I believe this morning it doesn't seem like something that could be appropriately used in these circumstances, given the legal uncertainty around it, and given the type of time frame we're on.
So, my devout hope is that Congress will raise the debt ceiling and do all of our bills. But are you just going to, if it doesn't happen, okay, and we're at this point, are you just going to sit there and pick and choose? Or why not go and pay? And then, you know, it's one of those, are you going to pay all of our debts and essentially let the courts tell us you shouldn't have?
I mean, if we breach this debt ceiling, I understand not wanting to use it now. But are you, are we really going to sit there and just let some bills go unpaid, not even trying this? Well, we take the debt ceiling seriously is a constraint on our ability to pay bills that are coming do. And my assumption is that if the debt ceiling isn't raised, there will be hard choices to make about what bills go unpaid.
And so there will be bills. What you're saying is, you're saying is if the debt ceiling is not raised, that there's going to be a default on President Biden's watch, even though he doesn't want it, that he's not, you're not going to try any other measures, you'll allow a default on some debt if Congress doesn't raise this debt ceiling. Well, there will be some bill we have to pay interest in principle on outstanding debt. We also have obligations to seniors who count on social security are military that expects pay contractors who have provided services to the federal government.
And some bills have to go unpaid. So there will be some bills unpaid if the debt ceiling is not raised? Yes. And many people.
Have you decided which bills are going to be yet? Look, I would say we're focused on raising the debt ceiling and there will be hard choices. If that doesn't occur, there can be no acceptable outcomes if the debt ceiling isn't raised, regardless of what decisions we make. Secretary Yellen, Treasury Secretary, for President Biden, appreciate you coming on and sharing the administration's perspective.
Thank you. Thanks. When we come back, Rhonda Santis is about to make it official, but there's a whole wave of other contenders who are suddenly betting. He's already missed his moment.
Is there room for more alternatives to Donald Trump and listens? Welcome back panelists here and BC News Washington managing editor Carol Lee. Dan Ball is the chief correspondent of the Washington Post former Republican Congressman Carl Scobello and Simone Sanders Townsend, he's the host of Simone and the former chief spokesperson Vice President Kamala Harris. Look, I want to mostly stick to the Republican primary, but Carol, let's you and I quickly on this debt ceiling.
I feel like it's a lot of theater and that there almost the lack of urgency on the specifics of the end game from Secretary Yellen tell me they still, the White House wants to land this plane almost at any way possible. They do and they also want to be able to land it in a way where all sides declare victory. That's been the goal. They lost nothing here.
Yes, and but the president wants to be able to say that he went in the fall for priorities that mattered to Democratic Party, that he didn't give away too much and look they raised the debt limit. And this sort of the noise that we're hearing is as those of us who covered this, these fights in the past, no, is part of the process. And so the president speaking with the speaker, he's likely to meet with the speaker and others this week and they expect to have some sort of deal by the end of the week. Our advice pay no attention to the posturing for social media and cable news consumption.
Let me set up the presidential race. We had a little bit of back and forth already between DeSantis and Trump supporter, sort of. Let me give you this back and forth this week from DeSantis and the new nominee for Governor of Kentucky. We are supposed to have this big red wave and other than like Florida and Iowa, I didn't see a red wave across this country.
And so I think the party has developed a culture of losing a big thank you to President Donald J. Trump for his support. And here's endorsement of this campaign. Let me just say, let me just say the Trump culture of winning is alive and well in Kentucky.
So Dan balls, Rhonda, Santa's finally going to come in this week. I can't help but wonder imagine how he flipped his switch on the exploratory committee in January of this year, where he would be with Tim Scott, be even announcing this week. Well, Chuck, I mean, I think the question is, was he ready in January and is he ready today to be a national candidate? I mean, I think what we've seen is somebody who's been, you know, far from sure footed in his first steps in trying to run a presidential campaign.
But he also caught himself in a situation which he wasn't quite in, but he was trying to get in. And so I think what we've seen is in some ways what may be the worst of Rhonda Santas during this period. And I think the question going forward is, will we see a different and more effective Rhonda Santas? I mean, you know, Chuck from campaigns past candidates, even ones who started out with a lot of hype have trouble.
Barack Obama in 2007 had trouble in the early spring. And a lot of people were saying, what's the matter with this guy? He was really good candidate. We've seen it in a variety of other campaigns.
So I think that the real challenge for Rhonda Santas is to now step up and show that he's a national candidate with a national message and with a kind of confidence about how to deal with and go after Donald Trump. You know, Carlos, I had somebody who's wanting to Santas to get their sort of wonder here. Geez, a lot's been lost over the last four months and does see that, you know, maybe Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, don't have big donors coming to them. Maybe Chris Christie doesn't have Scaramucci and see Cohen saying, yeah, we'll fund your campaign that you don't have, you know, all of this is because not of Donald Trump, but it's actually because Rhonda Santas is looked weak here.
So look, two different kinds of candidates getting into the race this week. Tim Scott, who's going to try to get around Donald Trump and Rhonda Santas who doesn't have a choice but to try to go through Donald Trump in order to get that nomination. I think, you know, if the brawl between DeSantis and Trump gets nasty enough, candidates like Scott could become interesting, could become attractive, and also think it's a little early to write off Rhonda Santas. I mean, if any of us were starting a presidential campaign today and we had all that money, all the resources, and it's second place, we would probably be happy on top of that.
DeSantis has a strong record to run on for a Republican primary in a general, you know, social issues might be a challenge, but he has a strong economic record to run on. So look, been a tough last few months, but it's a bit early to say this guy can't make it. Someone would be learning, you were involved in a massive what some people thought was going to become a demolition derby on the Democratic side in 2019. All of a sudden, I think we thought we were going to have a smaller field, this field is growing.
Otherwise, it's Tim Scott, the Buttigieg of this graph, meaning that he may pop here if people don't want to carry on. Is he the Buttigieg or is he the Cory Booker, the person that everyone liked, but just could not catch fire with the voters. And I say that and I like Cory Booker personally, but we saw what happened in the 2020 election. If there were more candidate, if there were less candidates in it, maybe there were other people not in the race, could someone like Cory Booker could have popped fire.
I think it's a question that Tim Scott himself has asked him a couple of times his team. Obviously, there's something they've had to weigh and they've weighed that it's better to get in than say out. Look, I think that I'm with you. I think it's early, but it's also late and we had this conversation earlier.
It's late early because it's early, first debate, Republican primary debate is not until the end of August, but it's late because Republican primary voters start voting on January 8th. That's the Iowa caucuses. So how do you build infrastructure? How do you become a national candidate that can connect with voters from state to state?
Well, the other issue, of course, is the abortion issue, but this graphic Carol that we put together since stops, it is a consistent issue here for Republicans across the board. So in 2022, you had the Kansas abortion referendum, you had a special congressional election in New York, and of course, you had the midterms themselves, where it was clear abortion was a huge issue. And then look what we just learned over the last couple of months, the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, that abortion rights clearly helped the left there. And you have new mayors on the Democratic side in Jacksonville and an independent Republican's knockdown in Colorado Springs, all of them over being perceived as too out of the mainstream on social issues.
Will this Republican primary even matter in the presidential because of those numbers? Well, I can tell you that the Biden team is certainly looking at this and thinking that this is an opportunity for them to expand the map in North Carolina as well as Florida. The Biden official has told me that they think this six-week ban that Governor DeSantis signed is very significant. That's why they want to go to Florida.
And that's why, and they are already, they're quote unquote, testing the waters there, they're on the air, they see an opportunity here, and it's all comes down to abortion. And Dan, you pointed out in your terrific piece today, two key groups in 2022 showed up to the show of the Democrats that they didn't expect women without a college degree and voters under the age of 35. Yeah, and I think that the women without college degrees are a prime target, but I think it was the abortion issue that drew them. And I don't know whether that'll be the case in 2024.
They could easily slip back to other Republicans. All right. We have more time, I promise. Up next, the COVID public health emergency has been declared over.
So after living with three years of this virus, what was the real impact data download? Welcome back to the download time. Earlier this month, the National Emergency that's around the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared over. So we want to take a look at just how much this three-year pandemic impacted the country as a whole.
And let's start with the greatest statistic of all, the loss of life. Over a million Americans died of COVID-19 since it first appeared here in early 2020. That is more people than the population of Austin, Texas, or Florida, and it's more than the entire state of Montana. But the good news is the current death numbers are among the lowest they've ever been.
Look at this, just 281 reported last week nationwide at its peak in early January of 2021, the only 26,000 Americans lost their life in just a week, just a week. Now, speaking of those vaccines, according to CDC, over 81% of Americans received at least one dose of COVID vaccine. That number dropped off a little bit on second doses, as you can see, or nearly 70%. Well, let me tell you this, the boosters, they're not getting used by many folks very often.
Mostly this is folks over the age of 65. It's an indication of just how comfortable we are now living beyond this virus. But of course, the economic impact was huge with this pandemic. And you know, we threw over $4 trillion in money from the government to try to offset what was just a huge disruption in the American economy.
And even though we threw all that money at the economy, it still impacted our overall national economic trends here, $14 trillion in lost economic activity from 2020 through the end of last year going to research from the University of Southern California. Before we go to break, this week's special counsel John Durham released his long-awaited report on the Russian investigation. Well, back in 2001, Bill Clinton investigated Robert Ray. He joined me the press days after striking a deal with the president to avoid an indictment.
And he talked about the lessons he learned as an independent counsel. The most important thing I learned is that achieving a just result for prosecutors not so easy. One can think exclusively within the box of being a federal prosecutor, but the position of independent counsel brings, I think, a larger responsibility not only to the interests of justice, but also to the country's best interest. And achieving a result that satisfactory to all of those concerns is not an easy one.
It is important for the country's confidence to know that law enforcement with regard to the integrity of public officials can work. We look forward to hearing from John Durham. We've invited him to be on this show. When we come back, we're going to look at the impact of the Durham Report on the FBI and what role it may play for an institution that's increasingly under partisan attack.
Welcome back. If you only consume media on the right, you might be excused for thinking this week's 306 page, Durham Report on the Russian Inquiry was a bombshell in damning and that the investigation was an abomination and a soft coup. But special counsel John Durham's actual sharpest conclusion after your investigation were that the FBI suffered from confirmation bias and quote, discounted or willfully ignored material information that countered the narrative of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. The report recommended no wholesale changes to FBI rules for regulations or wiretaps and Durham did not send a single person to jail, even though former President Trump once predicted that Durham would uncover the crime of the century.
That said, Dan Balls, this is not an FBI that should feel good about what Durham discovered because at a minimum, this issue of confirmation bias goes to the heart of how James Comey seemed to worry so much about what the perception of the FBI was that he, whether it was over-date or under-date Hillary stuff and then overdid-hearted Trump stuff. Well, since Comey, the FBI has been under attack and the Durham Report in many ways confirms what the DOJ, the almost identical. And in some ways back off some of the rhetoric that they had going into it, but the FBI's been in a compromised position and part of that has to do with the nature of our politics today. The FBI's become a politicized institution and a political target and this is going to make it much more difficult for America.
Ireland as he goes forward with these investigations. And I don't see any way out of that in anywhere in the near future. No, let me throw in this headline from your newspaper, Dan. FBI, misuse surveillance, January success, B.O.M., Black Lives Matter, arrestees and other Simone.
Look, trust in the FBI is eroding left and right. It feels like we're in the moment that we need a real church committee, that this is a moment like Jayden, that Jayden, the Hoover FBI clearly was no longer helping the American people. There was a moment. It feels like we might be in one of those moments.
I would say yes and no. Okay. Yes, because obviously, I mean, as Dan was talking, I thought about the civil rights activists, Black Lives Matter activists, Black Panthers, who have been targets of the FBI for eons and years. Okay.
Going back to well before this current political climate that we sit in. But FBI agents, law enforcement across the country, people who work with the government, they are in a precarious position because of this belief in the quote unquote deep state that does not, I would argue it doesn't exist. But if you read, depending on what you read about this report, you believe you could be persuaded to believe that it does. FBI agents, offices have been targeted, right?
Their lives have been put in danger. And so, would a church committee do anything but play to right into the hands of those in far-wing spaces and places of America? I hear you, but we got it seems like we have to do something to restore trust. We have to and it has to be moderate trust.
And the reason, Chuck, is that the FBI, you know, the opponents of the FBI, the conspiracy theorists, the people who want to diminish our institutions, they just need, you know, 10% of the truth, 15% of the truth to make a living and to bring down the institution. So the FBI has to raise its standards because they can't even give these people an inch. With an inch, they can bring down these and I'm going to ask Christopher Ray Heights. He does, only goes before Congress and he doesn't defend the institution.
There's a lot of consternation within the FBI about that, about the way he postures publicly. There's a couple of places where this is really going to come to a head this year and that is the two special counsel investigations, the Hunter Biden investigation and the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Fizemore. And that is something that's going to be a huge fight. The White House has been worried about it already for months.
It's going to get worse and all of this is going to be on display at that time at the end of the year. All right. I've ended there. Before we go, it has been 54 years since we first landed astronaut on the moon and now the US has done another space race back to the moon and then to Mars.
Watch our latest episode of Beat the Press reports, The Race to Mars, it's on PECOP, YouTube or after this broadcast, and NBC News now. That's all we have for today. Thanks for watching. We'll be back next week.
That's a bit Sunday. It's Beat the Press. I'm grabbing a matcha latte with comedian Taylor Tonlinson. The drink is always about someone's journey to the top and Taylor's story is remarkable.
She tells us all about her unlikely path from performing in churches all the way to headlining her own Netflix specials like her latest prodigal daughter. And she opens up about her religious upbringing, what drew her to stand up and how she feels when she gets on that stage. Hope you'll listen and follow the drink wherever you get your podcasts.