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Meet the Press - May 16, 2021

Richard Engel, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Peter Baker, Brendan Buck, Donna Edwards and Kristen Welker

CHUCK TODD:

This Sunday: About face.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

We have all longed for this moment.

CHUCK TODD:

The announcement so many wanted to hear.

PRES. JOE BIDEN:

If you are fully vaccinated you no longer need to wear a mask.

CHUCK TODD:

Millions of Americans now ready to resume close-to-normal lives.

CALIFORNIA RESIDENT:

Wooo, I'm super excited about that.

GEORGIA RESIDENT:

That's great. I haven't heard this and I'm excited.

CHUCK TODD:

The news may even encourage others to get the shot.

NEW YORK RESIDENT:

I'd get vaccinated in a second if it means I don't have to wear a mask.

CHUCK TODD:

But did the CDC rush its decision? My guest this morning, the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky. Plus, after the purge.

REP. LIZ CHENEY:

We can not both embrace the big lie and embrace the Constitution.

CHUCK TODD:

Congresswoman Liz Cheney defiant after her ouster from Republican Party leadership and with a promise.

REP. LIZ CHENEY:

I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.

CHUCK TODD:

This as some who sought her removal try to justify it by rewriting history.

REP. ANDREW CLYDE:

If you didn't know that tv footage was a video from January the sixth, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

CHUCK TODD:

I'll talk to two Republican members of the House abou this divide, Dan Crenshaw of Texas.and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Also, gas pains.

GAS STATION WORKER:

We're out of gas. All out.

CHUCK TODD:

Gas lines for the first time since the 70's. Oil starts flowing from that hacked pipeline after a big ransom payment. But how safe are we from the next cyber attack? Joining me for insight and analysis are: NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Kristen Welker, former Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker and Republican strategist Brendan Buck. 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 Chuck Todd.

CHUCK TODD:

Good Sunday morning. We're going to get to all the news about the CDC mask recommendations, including the confusion that's resulted from the surprise announcement. But we're going to begin with the fighting between Israel and Hamas, one day after the Israelis demolished a building in Gaza housing international news organizations. NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel is in Tel Aviv for us.. And Richard, on Friday, you and I talked about this and you had said Hamas and the Israeli government were looking for an exit ramp. Why can't they find it?

RICHARD ENGEL:

Well, I think still that both sides do seem to want to find a way that they can declare victory. They both have a lot of interest in doing that. Israel, so far, hasn't invaded the Gaza Strip and it could have done that, so it is holding off. Instead, it is just launching air strikes, causing a lot of damage inside of Gaza, as it is degrading the Hamas military infrastructure and destroying a lot of other buildings. If Israel were to roll in with its tanks, it would face intense ground assaults. Its soldiers could get kidnapped. There are booby traps. So, there are a lot of reasons that Israel doesn't necessarily want to do that. Hamas doesn't want to see the region totally destroyed, doesn't want to see Gaza totally obliterated. And right now, it is however gaining a bit of support, and that's the problem here. These conflicts, once they start, tend to gain momentum. Palestinians in Gaza, for the last several years, have felt hopeless. They are imprisoned in the territory. The infrastructure is terrible. There's really no employment. We spoke to a woman in Gaza and she said, "Why bother? Why bother dreaming about the future? Why bother opening a business when, just every couple of years, everything is going to be destroyed and the clocks will start up again?" And that hopelessness is dangerous, but I do think, yes, both sides are looking for a way where they could say they achieved something and now let's dial it back without having to destroy the region and put a lot of Israeli troops at risk.

CHUCK TODD:

All right, but I am curious, how much influence does President Biden have over Bibi Netanyahu, who has certainly played his share of politics in this country? And how much influence do the Egyptians have over Hamas?

RICHARD ENGEL:

They’re not -- neither side is particularly close to the other, but they do have influence. That is the way that these conflicts have ended in the past, with the United States and Egypt and other countries getting involved. So, they don't have the kind of personal relationships. The U.S. is not even talking to Hamas. The U.S. reached out and spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, who has almost no influence over, over Hamas and what's happening in Gaza. But the United States still absolutely is a major power in this, has great relations with Israel, and its voice is important.

CHUCK TODD:

Richard Engel, in Tel Aviv for us. Richard, please stay safe.

CHUCK TODD:

Turning now to the news on Covid. The CDC had a lot of good reasons to decide that fully vaccinated people can go maskless in most situations. More than 121 million people have been vaccinated amid a growing number of studies showing the vaccines keep people from contracting or spreading the disease. In so many ways it was the announcement we've been waiting for, a release from this ever-present reminder that Covid has changed and uprooted our lives. Yet at the same time, is it way too early to declare victory? A majority of Americans 18 or older are not fully vaccinated and 25 percent say they won't get vaccinated at all. Plus, there is still an average of 34,000 new cases diagnosed each day. Beyond that, there are many questions. Why now? How does the new advice affect schools? What will businesses and local and state governments do about their own Covid regulations? Did the CDC feel pressured by politicians and growing public frustration to simply just drop the mask recommendations? And finally, how will we know who's really been vaccinated?

[BEGIN TAPE]

DR. KAVITA PATEL:

I do think that without more guidance, these guidelines will cause more confusion.

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD:

And joining me now is the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. Dr. Walensky, welcome back to Meet The Press.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

Good morning, Chuck. Thanks for having me.

CHUCK TODD:

I want to start with something you said as recently as Tuesday this week about masks. Take a listen.

[BEGIN TAPE]

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

We still have about a third of counties in this country that have over 100 cases per 100,000, very high transmission rates, and many counties and areas in this country that have less than 20 percent vaccination rates. So, in that context, we are keeping our public health guidance to recommend vac -- recommend masking for people who are vaccinated.

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD:

Now, The Washington Post is reporting that, actually, you had signed off on a decision to drop the mask mandate for vaccinated people before you testified to Congress with those remarks. What changed in this 72-hour period?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

First, I want to just sort of celebrate the moment where we're at in this pandemic, where we see cases coming down, just even over the last two weeks, and really even since Tuesday by a third of cases over the last two weeks, deaths at rates that we haven't seen this low since April of 2020, and now we have science that has really evolved. Just even in the last weekend, a paper that was published as recently as Friday that demonstrates that people who are vaccinated are protected, that they are, that this vaccine is working in the real world just as it did in the clinical trials, that it’s working against the variants, and that if you get an asymptomatic infection after you've had the vaccine, that you really can't give it to somebody else. So really, just in the last two weeks, we've had a lot of evolving science.

CHUCK TODD:

I understand that, but not a single state in the union has got a vaccination rate above 50 percent, a fully vaccinated rate above 50 percent. So why -- and in fact, that was your rationale for why -- keeping it. Why not create a metric? Why not say, "Look, these vaccines work. This is great. As soon as you hit this mark in your state, we say drop it"? It would have given local and state officials time themselves to message and perhaps increase vaccination rates, no?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

I think it's really important to understand that as communities are working one at a time locally to figure out what their policies are going to be as they open up, that they understand what is important and what is true for individuals who are vaccinated. So, this was really the first step, and it truly was science driven that demonstrates if you are vaccinated that you are not at risk of getting disease, if you take your mask off. If you are not vaccinated, importantly, get vaccinated. But those are the people who are at risk of disease. And so, we really need to understand the individual risk as we're making community-level decisions.

CHUCK TODD:

I understand that, but I want to show you, as you've seen, I mean, all of the papers and, look, people are both happy and confused. You've got here the mayor of Kansas City, "I don't know if that's the type of rule that was written in coordination with anyone who has been a governor or a mayor over the last 14 months." Dr. Wen, "The CDC has gone from over-caution to throwing caution to the wind." Folks in San Antonio, “The government messages are confusing " And that's the thing. Again, I go back to, the local officials are the ones that have had to enforce these mask mandates. And now, you're saying, "Hey, still enforce a mask mandate," but now they're going to sit there and have people say, "Well, the CDC says I don't have to wear the mask anymore." So, you basically -- how did you not just pull the rug out from underneath the mayor of Kansas City and everybody else in the country that's trying to manage this?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

Everybody, as we are working towards opening up again, towards the -- after 16 months getting out of this pandemic, will need to understand what they need to do locally. And this was not permission to shed masks for everybody everywhere. This was really science driven, individual assessment of your risk. Now, what -- that's the first step that we need to take in our guidance to understand what's the individual risk. And now we all need to work together -- and CDC is hard at work now -- saying what does this mean for schools, for travel, for camps, for businesses. But we needed this foundation, this building block, in order to revise all of that guidance, thousands of pages of guidance, so that we could take this information, this science-based information, as we open and as we take these next steps.

CHUCK TODD:

I guess, why do you make the announcement about -- I understand the science about masks with vaccinated people, but you just said, “Okay, we're going to get new guidance for schools, new guidance for businesses, new guidance for travel.” Why not have those things ready to go before you make the initial announcement?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

You know, it was very clear that places were starting to make their own assessments, and we wanted to make sure that they understood that it was safe at the individual level. It was going to be nearly impossible for us to revise all the thousands of pages of our guidance simultaneously and release it all one at a time. We needed this building block, this first step, so that we could say, "This is the science upon which all future guidance will be based upon."

CHUCK TODD:

Right. Again, I'm going to go back to something that you didn't address it earlier, which is, why not create a -- you announced that all this scientific studies have shown the vaccines are working. So, use the mask, the dropping of the mask ordinance, to incentivize higher vaccination rates. You did it backwards. You announced, “Okay, it's done.” And now, we have no way of knowing. What is a business supposed to do when somebody walks in without a mask, assume that they're abiding by the rules?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

You know, we are asking people to be honest with themselves. If they are vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask, they are safe. If they are not vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask, they are not safe. And what we're asking businesses to do, probably the most important thing that businesses could do right now, is to work to ensure that it's easy for their own employees to get vaccinated, and to give them the time that they need so that they can make those appointments and get themselves vaccinated so those, people in those businesses are safe.

CHUCK TODD:

So, you're counting on businesses to do vaccine mandates?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

We're not counting on vaccine mandates at all. It may very well be that local, local businesses, local jurisdictions will work towards vaccine mandates. That is going to be locally driven and not federally driven.

CHUCK TODD:

Are you concerned that all this confusion over masks now -- I mean, was there any concern about the minute you lift this you're never going to be able to put it back? If there is any spike at all, a local or regional spike, considering how this was announced and sort of the political climate we live in, did you consider the fact that, once you lift it, you can never put it back?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

We were pretty clear when we lifted it that the science right now tells us that it is safe for vaccinated people to take off their masks. We also said that this virus has given us many curve balls over the last 16 months. We've also said that the more circulating virus that we have, the more likely it is that variants will emerge, and variants are really, you know, something that we have to keep very close eye on and we're doing a lot of sequencing at this time. Right now, the data, the science shows us that it is safe for vaccinated people to take off their masks. I, as the CDC director, promised the American people I would convey that science to you when we knew it, and that's what I did on Thursday.

CHUCK TODD:

I want to go back, though, to Tuesday. Tuesday, you were defiant in defending the decision to keep this, to keep this. And by Thursday, you changed. I think that's the part of this that, that a lot of people can't understand. And I go back to, a lot of governors are wondering why they weren't consulted, at least in advance given a little bit of a heads up. We've seen reporting that supposedly even the White House coronavirus team was sort of blindsided, if you will, found out very late in the day on Wednesday. Why the rush?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

You know, our guidance is not that -- when that guidance changes, it's not a spectrum. It’s a switch. We have to pick the time and the day that this guidance is going to change, that the new guidance is going to appear on the website. We were still finalizing science early last week for data that was going to appear in the MMWR on Friday. There were two studies the prior Thursday that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, and we were taking all of that science together, really actively during that time on Tuesday that I was in Congress, to convey what we needed to say, how we needed to say it with all of our subject matter experts. We were actively doing that last week.

CHUCK TODD:

If you live in a mixed vaccinated household and you're fully vaccinated, do you go out -- what do you do?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

You know, I think that that's going to be family by family. People are going to have to decide whether their children will understand that if they're younger than the age of 12 that they're going to have to wear a mask if the rest of the family is not. We have this for many other policies that influence families of different age ranges. And, and I think that that's going to have to be a family by family decision. I also want to convey that because our guidance changed on Thursday, there's no need for everybody to start ripping off their masks. We have been told for 16 months to keep ourselves and our family safe by putting a mask on. Those behaviors are going to be really hard to change, and there is no mandate to take it off. What we're saying is, now this is safe. Work at your own speed, work with your own family and your own businesses to remove them when necessary.

CHUCK TODD:

And if you're immunocompromised and fully vaccinated, what would you recommend?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

Thank you very much for that question. Certainly, we know that -- and there are emerging data to suggest -- that if you don't have a fully competent immune system from chemotherapy, from transplants, from other immune-modulating agents, that the vaccine may not have worked as well for you. So, please, before you take off your mask, consult your physician.

CHUCK TODD:

All right. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. I know it's been a long week, and here's hoping everything keeps safe. Thank you.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY:

Thank you so much, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD:

When we come back, after the Liz Cheney ouster, can anyone survive in today's Republican Party without appeasing Donald Trump's lie about the 2020 Election? I'll talk to two Republican members of Congress, Dan Crenshaw and Adam Kinzinger, about that debate next.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. The sacking of Congresswoman Liz Cheney last week was certainly what happens to someone in Republican leadership who refuses to embrace former President Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But it may be just as much an attack on our national memory. Here's House Leader Kevin McCarthy last week.

[BEGIN TAPE]

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY:

I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with.

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD:

Well, that would be news to the former president himself, who has made it clear it's not all over with, at least for him. And then there are these statements from Republican House members looking to wipe clean our collective memory of January 6th.

[BEGIN TAPE]

REP. PAUL GOSAR:

The truth is being censored and covered up. As a result, the DOJ is harassing, harassing peaceful patriots

REP. JODY HICE:

In fact, it was Trump supporters who lost their lives that day, not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others.

REP. ANDREW CLYDE:

Well, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD:

So, joining me now, are two Republican members of the House, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the remaining Republican members of Congress who has remained critical of Mr. Trump and publicly supportive of Liz Cheney, and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, who says he's neither a Trump loyalist or an anti-Trumper. And I'm going to begin with Congressman Crenshaw. Congressman, welcome to Meet the Press. And let me just start with whether you agree with the following analysis, which is: Liz Cheney was kicked out of leadership simply because she wouldn't carry the water of former President Trump's election lies. Do you agree with that statement?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

No, fundamentally I don't. Look, thanks for having me on. I was a little surprised because I've been so detached from this drama -- and it is drama -- over the past month. But I have followed it. And look, you can't forget that we already had this vote for Liz Cheney. We had this vote and that vote was directly because of her vote for impeachment. And she won overwhelmingly. The Republican conference said, "Look, we disagree," and Liz did not apologize. And she said she would not apologize. And she still won that vote overwhelmingly to be a leader in our conference. You can't forget that. You can't gloss over that fact. But what happened after that, and I think the reason that a lot of our colleagues got more frustrated with her, is because effectively she kept demanding that everybody else start apologizing. So, she refuses to apologize, which is fine. I don't think she should. But then she demands that everybody else does. And I think what Kevin McCarthy was trying to say there was, “Look, there is disagreement and it's time to move on.” We can keep having that fight if we'd like, but what is the point and what is the outcome, when in reality we need to be talking about the things that American people actually care about. I've got to tell you, this is not the subject that I'm asked about. I get asked a lot of questions. I'm always doing events. I'm always meeting with people. I never get asked about this. I get asked about -- why is there rising inflation? Why is there a border crisis? What is going on in the Middle East? Why can't we get gas? What is happening to our energy infrastructure? Why can't I hire people? Why are they getting paid by the government to stay at home instead of come to work? These are things that really affect people, not this internal drama. And one of the reasons I agreed to come on your show is basically to say that this isn't that important to people.

CHUCK TODD:

Well, but why should anybody believe a word you say if the Republican Party itself doesn't have credibility? I want to use -- I want you to take a look at what Liz Cheney said to CNN on Friday, because this is her rationale for fighting it. Take a listen.

[BEGIN TAPE]

REP. LIZ CHENEY:

For Republicans to be in a position where we can stop those policies, we've got to be able to tell people, "You can trust us. You can trust us to be based around conservative principles and to reject the lie and to protect the Constitution."

[END TAPE]

CHUCK TODD:

Look, for her and for many Americans, you know, sitting here and saying, "Oh, there's disagreement about the election” -- look, there's not disagreement about the facts. This is, you know, so -- do any of your critiques come across as credible if you can't accept the fundamental fact that our democracy held a free and fair election?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

Yeah, but I can speak for myself, of course, and you know where I've been on this issue, I assume, right?

CHUCK TODD:

Well, I do. In fact, in December -- I know how you voted --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

You know, I, I, I can stand by everything I've ever said.

CHUCK TODD:

I understand that. But in December, you signed on to that lawsuit that the Texas attorney general filed to question the elections of other states, which seemed to be a pretty anti-federalist thing to do.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

Yeah, yeah, and you guys in the press, you guys in the press --

CHUCK TODD:

Why did you sign on to that?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

And you guys in the press -- and look, you guys in the press painted that as some extreme action, and of course it wasn't. That amicus brief was a simple question of the Supreme Court in saying, “Can you please speak to this question of whether, of whether process changes in the election last minute, not approved by the legislature, can be deemed constitutional?” It was a question. Now, they didn't want to answer that question. And I said -- and then I said it's unconstitutional for us to overturn the election in Congress. So, I did not vote --

CHUCK TODD:

You don't feel like you fed --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

I did not vote, I did not vote to object. I voted to certify.

CHUCK TODD:

But this is the, this is an issue that many people have, is that you're sitting here trying to, trying to say, "No, no, no, no, I just had a specific question," yet what you did gets weaponized by the former president. Did you see the rantings of him yesterday? And to the point where a Republican official in Maricopa County called the former president unhinged. You know, I understand you guys want to put this behind you --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

Chuck -- Chuck -- look --

CHUCK TODD:

-- but he is the leader of your party and he doesn't stop talking about this nonsense.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

Chuck, the only -- look, he's, he’s one of many leaders in the party. He’s a former president. We're five months into President Biden's presidency, and there is a time to move on. And look, the -- you guys in the press love doing this, and I, and I get it, right? The press is largely liberal. They’re largely --

CHUCK TODD:

No, no, no, no.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

-- pro-Democrat.

CHUCK TODD:

Don’t start that. That is --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of --

CHUCK TODD:

That is the laz-- look, there’s nothing lazier. There’s nothing lazier than that.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

It is. I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of --

CHUCK TODD:

Excuse me --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

There’s a lot of reasons to keep this alive.

CHUCK TODD:

I understand -- what you’re trying to appease --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

And there’s a lot of people in my party that take the bait. I’m not going to take the bait here --

CHUCK TODD:

I’m not trying to bait you. I’m trying to -- I’m trying to figure out --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

I’m not going to take the bait here. What is the outcome you’re looking for?

CHUCK TODD:

Why do you, why do you appease -- why do we sit here and have a political party that is basically rallying around this bizarre lie and mythology that the former president is doing, and you guys just want to say, “Hey, pay no attention to this,” that, that somehow we in the press are bringing that up. It’s the former president.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

Well, I already, I already debunked, I already debunked the notion, I already debunked the notion that there's, that there's no space in the party for that. Remember, Liz won that first election --

CHUCK TODD:

She’s not there now.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

She won that first leadership vote. Okay? Well yeah, but I told you why. I helped you understand why, and what I'm trying to help you understand is that these are not the phone calls I get, about this, about who's the leader of the party, what's happening with Trump. My Republican supporters do not ask me about Trump. They don't ask me about what he said. They're not riled up about it. You know what they're asking about? What are we doing about over a quarter million illegal crossings on our border in the last two months? That's what that's what they're asking about, how is that sustainable? What about my inflation, what about my savings that are now less valuable because of rising inflation, because we're spending money that we don't have? My small business can't hire people, because they're getting paid more to stay at home, and we said this would happen. We said this would happen, and now our economy isn’t recovering, and what do you think about the jobs report recently?

CHUCK TODD:

So are you very -- so you must be --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

This is what people care about, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD:

-- upset with the former president that he can't let the party, let the party go. I mean, I don't understand. You keep putting this on the press. Is it not the former president?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

I’ll tell you what. If, if former President Trump, if former President Trump asked me, I would say, "Form-- Mr. President, please keep talking about the border. Please keep talking about these issues." That's what I would say to him, for sure.

CHUCK TODD:

So you believe he's the legitimate leader of the Republican Party?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

I mean, I don't mind saying that.

CHUCK TODD:

And you believe he's a legitimate leader of the Republican Party?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

Do I believe -- well, hold on. I believe that you're not going to excommunicate a former president, right? And I refuse to, I refuse to go into this sort of black-and-white thinking about, it's either totally one thing or totally the other. These are complex human relationships that involve millions of people. And I have always said, look, I do not think Trump is the devil, and I won't say that. I don't think he's Jesus either. You know, I'm a rational human being about this, okay?

CHUCK TODD:

I get that.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

And I'm going to agree where I agree, and I'm going to disagree where I disagree. And I refuse to allow this drama to engulf us. That's what Kevin McCarthy was saying. I fully agree with that. And there's no point in relitigating some of these things. Look, look, and I said this to Liz, and I said this to Adam: you're not going to get the colleagues who believe in that stuff to apologize to you --

CHUCK TODD:

Okay.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

-- to agree with you. Look, I, I, I,I stand by everything I've ever said --

CHUCK TODD:

Okay.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

-- and done, and that's kind of, that’s all I can speak for. And I speak for constituents who care about those issues --

CHUCK TODD:

All right.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

-- that I've told you about. And I think those are the issues we should be debating on this program.

CHUCK TODD:

Okay.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

You've got a great show. You've got a lot of listeners. Let's debate environmental policy. Let's debate healthcare policy --

CHUCK TODD:

Okay, Congressman, I --

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

-- border policy. I'll go toe to toe with you on all of those.

CHUCK TODD:

I, I, I -- we would, we would love to see that. Contact the former president about that situation. Anyway, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, I do appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us. I think that's very important, so thank you.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW:

Well, thanks for having me.

CHUCK TODD:

Let me turn to now a different perspective on this with Congressman Adam Kinzinger. So, Congressman, why do you -- I know where you stand on this. Why do you believe you can't both appease former President Trump and his narrative there and somehow build the Republican Party?

REP. ADAM KINZINGER:

Well, it's two things. Number one, Trump set the table. He's the one that continually brings up a stolen election narrative. He's the one that has convinced members of Congress, including what we saw a few days ago, to have a hearing on January 6th and claim that this was nothing but a tourist group or that it was hugs and kisses. I mean, if you saw the press releases he put out yesterday about this is the lie of the century, the greatest crime of the century. You cannot, on the one hand, say that Donald Trump is a leader or the leader of the Republican Party, which I believe he is the leader of the Republican Party right now because Kevin McCarthy gave him his leadership card. You can't say he's the leader and then say we have to move on. I would love to move on, Chuck, but listen, when Liz Cheney, probably on a total of maybe four or five times, just simply answered questions that the election wasn't stolen, and then Donald Trump, dozens and dozens of times, says it is, it's not Liz's fault.

CHUCK TODD:

Hey, what is the Republican Party now? I want to put up a Club for Growth stat here, who is Chip Roy and Elise Stefanik, who replaced, who ended up replacing Liz Cheney. She has a lifetime Club for Growth record of 35%. This is a conservative economic group. And Chip Roy is a 100%. For what it's worth, Ilhan Omar, a Democratic member of Congress from Minnesota, has a higher lifetime Club for Growth rating than Elise Stefanik. What does that say to the American people about what the Republican Party is today?

REP. ADAM KINZINGER:

Well, I think what it needs to say to any Republican that's maybe kind of confused by the moment we're in is policy doesn't matter anymore. It literally is all your loyalty to Donald Trump. As I've said before, this is something that, like, echoes a little bit out of North Korea, where no matter what policy comes out, you're loyal to the guy. Think about this. Donald Trump, I had so many people that said, "I don't like what Donald Trump tweets, but I like his policies, so I'm going to support him." Liz Cheney, everybody's saying, "Look, I like her policies. I don't like what she tweets, so she needs to leave." What that shows to me is an inconsistency that is built solely around allegiance to one man, Donald Trump. And we have to recognize that as a party and we have to recognize that four months ago, we allowed basically the narrative to lead to an insurgency on January 6th. And until we take ownership of that, we can't heal. That's why I think it's so important.

CHUCK TODD:

How long do you fight to stay a member of a club or reform a club that doesn't want you? And I'm referring to the Republican Party.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER:

You know, look, I've been a Republican far longer than Donald Trump has, and I'm not going to let him come in and hijack my party and turn it into something that, you know, great people like Ronald Reagan and George W. and George H.W. Bush and all the great leaders back did not want it to be. It’s -- I'm not going to let him win. I'm not going to let Donald Trump win at that, so that's what the fight's about. And look, I believe in what we used to believe in with 21st century solutions though.

CHUCK TODD:

What do you -- the biggest problem -- it was interesting to hear Congressman Crenshaw because he said, "Hey, my constituents are asking about X." Well, one of the issues in our gerrymandered society, both of Congressional districts but also in the way siloed media is, you have a, you have a sort of an information wing on the right that seems to struggle with reality themselves and feeds this, some of this nonsense to many of your constituents. This seems to be the broken piece here. What do you think could be done about it?

REP. ADAM KINZINGER:

You know, I think a lot of it is just an overload of information for people. And so, instead of kind of working through that information, a lot of people have just chosen, you know, what venue or what people, what personalities they trust and put all their faith in it, I think similar to Donald Trump. I think people have to take responsibility for their own ability to work through misinformation, to remember what the Constitution is about, to be okay with losing power for a little bit and let that actually reaffirm that you have to go out and win a next generation of conservatives. And right now, you know, again, it’s, we're sitting here with Donald Trump throwing up all the smokescreen of four months ago. We want to move on. It's hard to do when he keeps bringing it back to a stolen election, which, of course, wasn't true.

CHUCK TODD:

Is it uncomfortable to you that success for the Republican Party in 2022 will mean bringing Donald Trump back as the leader and nominee? I mean, do you worry that 2022 will be a referendum on that?

REP. ADAM KINZINGER:

Yeah, I do worry that it'll be perceived as that. I think, you know, look, we have tailwinds, certainly, to be in the majority. This happens whenever one party has complete control. I think President Biden has gone significantly far to the left, so I think the American people will react. But that is a reaction to Joe Biden and I don't think an affirmation that Donald Trump should be the party leader. But we may take it that way.

CHUCK TODD:

Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from central Illinois, thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective with us. Appreciate it.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER:

You bet.

CHUCK TODD:

Hey, when we come back, is what we're seeing a civil war in the Republican Party or a purge? The panel is next.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. Panel is with us. NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Kristen Welker, New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker, former Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland and Brendan Buck. He's a former advisor to House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan. And Brendan, I'll go ahead and start with you, with our question that we asked in the tease. Is this a civil war inside of your party? Or right now, is it simply a purge?

BRENDAN BUCK:

It feels a lot closer to a purge. I wish that there were two bigger sides you need to have a civil war. The reality is, Liz Cheney -- and I obviously support what she is doing -- is representing a really small, vanishingly small part of the Republican Party. And what I think is important about what Liz Cheney is doing, though, is she is obviously making a moral argument. But she's also making a political argument that you don't hear too much these days. She's arguing that we can't continue to lose those suburban voters, those swing voters who were so important to our coalition. Look, Dan Crenshaw got very uncomfortable when you started asking him about these questions. I don't doubt that he never gets asked about it. That's because so much of the Republican Party right now is so focused only on conservatives. But we have to realize that there's a cost to that. And we are losing some of the voters that were really important to us in those suburbs, those educated voters. And so, I think she's trying to make the point that we have to be able to be a big enough party to have those people here. But we’re, we’re not -- there's not a lot of us these days that are making that argument.

CHUCK TODD:

Peter Baker, is this about the future of the Republican Party or the future of the American democracy?

PETER BAKER:

Well, I think it's both, obviously. I think to your point, whether it's a civil war or not, if it was a civil war, it's over and Donald Trump has won. I mean there are no, you know, as Brendan said, there’s not two countervailing forces of roughly equal size. This is lock, stock and barrel, right now, Donald Trump's party. And if you ask Republicans, even those who don't like President Trump, who don't even agree with what he's saying, what they'll tell you in private is, "Look, in my district, in my state, he still polls at 85 percent, more or less, among Republicans." So, what are they going to do? They're going to go against their own voters, still not going to pick up voters from Democrats or Independents by breaking with Donald Trump. So the reality is, uncomfortable as it may be for many Republicans, is they have to stick with Donald Trump. That's what they believe. And that's certainly what he's doing his best to enforce. So, you're right, it does actually go beyond the Republican Party to the larger sense of democracy. The questions of truth and revisionist history and, you know, what do we believe in, our system, are front and center. And that's why Liz Cheney got purged, because I think she was making a lot of her colleagues feel very uncomfortable.

CHUCK TODD:

So, Kristen Welker, I guess the real question for me in the next 18 months is is this a -- are we in a governable situation here? You know, the Biden administration has still wants to pass things, still has to work with some version of the Republican Party. Yet, you have this House version over here that is just not living in reality and wants to, wants to go down this road. Is the Biden White House -- you know, how do they navigate this? And what is their thoughts on how to deal with sort of the non-reality based wing of the GOP?

KRISTEN WELKER:

Well, I think that you are going to see President Biden try to get something small done with Republicans, potentially this summer on infrastructure. He had a number of meetings about that with Republicans, including Republican leadership this week. But it's not clear that there's a whole lot of room for broader bills to get passed in the coming months, Chuck. And I think that what you're seeing is a big bet by the Republican Party, that holding onto former President Trump will help them win back the House. That's clearly going to be their focus. You saw Representative Crenshaw preview their strategy to talk about the economy, to talk about the border and to try to battle President Biden on that. But here's the thing, Chuck. Former President Trump is going to start holding rallies again. And what's he going to be talking about? He's going to be talking about election fraud. And it's not clear that that is going to help win back those all-important, suburban voters that Brendan was just talking about.

CHUCK TODD:

You know, Donna Edwards, we saw this week that the House couldn't even do some basic functions because of the animosity that is growing there. You know, I -- there’s a lot of Democrats who just are not comfortable working with Republicans who won't denounce this stuff. Are we to a point where sort of the House is, is barely functional?

DONNA EDWARDS:

No. I mean, look, I think that we are going to come to a point where we recognize that, in order to get anything done, we really are only going to be able to depend, in the House, on about a dozen Republicans to join House Democrats. I think that's where we are. And in the Senate, obviously, the margins are very narrow. But I do think that there is room on infrastructure to get something -- maybe not as big as the proposal that President Biden put forward -- but certainly not on the lower end. But it's a really complicated environment when you have, you know, members yelling at other members and not willing to acknowledge the, you know, that January 6th even happened. It's a really difficult working environment.

CHUCK TODD:

You know, Brendan, this week we've seen, though, that state Republican parties, just as the party is basically saying, "Fine, we'll embrace Donald Trump," then you have these little maneuvers that try to get around him, right? And it was successful in Virginia. A bizarre convention, primary-inspired convention got Glenn Youngkin who, after the primary, said Biden won legitimately. And then you've got Missouri Republicans who are trying to create a runoff system there to stop Eric Greitens, the former governor, who has baggage that is very similar to Donald Trump's baggage. So, this contradiction in the party -- on one hand, the state parties know Trump figures can't win. On the other hand, they're embracing Trump. It's sort of a, it’s sort of a bizarre strategy here.

BRENDAN BUCK:

Yeah, and I don't think anybody should delude themselves into thinking that they can set up the process to overcome Donald Trump. He is going to come in in Missouri, I'm certain, in other places, and he's going to play king maker. If he endorses Eric Greitens, Eric Greitens is going to be the nominee. You know, we have sort of nibbled at the edges of how to get around Donald Trump for so long and I don't think this is really the solution. I firmly believe we need to have a different approach if we are going to get past him. We've been trying so long this approach of just hoping that he goes away, hoping that if we look the other way, that, you know, his craziness won't infect the party. But look at what happened. We lost the House. We lost the Senate. We lost the White House. He is a political disaster, and I think we need to wake up to that fact and realize that the process isn't going to help us. We need to go in a different direction.

CHUCK TODD:

All right. I'm going to pause the conversation here. When we come back, a powerful new force in American politics: Asian American Pacific Islanders. But as we go to break, NBC News lost one of its own last Friday, longtime space correspondent Jay Barbree. Barbree loved space exploration, and he covered every space flight for us since 1958.

[TAPE BEGINS]

ANNOUNCER:

Here's that part of the story from NBC's Jay Barbree at Cape Canaveral.

JAY BARBREE:

The men reached the end of the countdown about two hours before dawn and the tall, slender Thor-Delta rocket burst alive on its path to leave an orange pillow of flame as it thundered into a dark sky.

[TAPE ENDS]

CHUCK TODD:

A few years ago, Jay talked to me about how space exploration could end up saving the human race.

[TAPE BEGINS]

JAY BARBREE:

We live on a spacecraft 8,000 miles in diameter. It’s finite. We’re all going to have to get off one day and we better have somewhere to go, when the human species will simply not be any longer after we lose this only place we have -- what Neil called our cradle.

[TAPE ENDS]

CHUCK TODD:

Jay Barbree. He loved his beat, and he loved the space program. He was 87.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. Data Download time. We talk a lot about changing demographics. And to mark Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we want to look at the growing political power of this huge and diverse ethnic group. Overall, the population of people who consider themselves AAPI grew by a whopping 27% between 2011 and 2019. This growth was led overall by Indian Americans. But all AAPI groups grew, especially compared with the overall U.S. growth rate of just 5%. And that only scratches the surface. All the ethnicities and nationalities that fall into the AAPI grouping, there are more than 20 overall. Everything from Japanese, to Pakistani, to Indonesian. Now, the biggest growth came in counties in three states. Take you to the state of Virginia, Loudoun County just outside of Washington, D.C. There were three counties in Texas, as you can see outside of Dallas, Austin, and Houston, and then there's Georgia, which is in Forsyth County, which is about an hour north of Atlanta. And all that growth could have big political impacts in those communities. You could argue we've already seen it in Georgia. Polling data before the 2020 election showed that Asian Americans skew heavily now towards Democrats, particularly Joe Biden. A poll sponsored by a collection of AAPI groups showed President Joe Biden leading among most of the groups over then-President Trump. Now, there was one exception, Vietnamese Americans who, like Cuban Americans, escaped communism and are more conservative politically, and certainly sensitive to the socialist attacks. As the AAPI population grows and spreads, it is likely to change as well. Historically, that has often been the story of different racial and ethnic groups as they grow and assimilate. But whatever happens, these numbers show that the AAPI population is becoming an increasingly powerful political force in this country. When we come back, we told you President Biden's second 100 days would be tougher than his first. Well, we're going to tick off the reasons why that's already proving to be true. Stick with us.

CHUCK TODD:

Welcome back. Panel is with us again. As if we didn't know President Biden's second 100 days would be tougher than the first, just really, the Middle East has exploded into violence, the job numbers were disappointing, food prices ticked up noticeably, the hacked pipeline led to gas lines and shortages in much of the southeast. And as we discussed earlier, even the good news on Covid has led to complaints about a lack of direction from the top. Kristen Welker, I guess it's official now. The honey-- the honeymoon phase of the Biden presidency is over. And these, the phase of the presidency where you get to pick your issues is over. The issues are now picking him. How would you say the West Wing is prioritizing all of these, you know, mini fires that they're dealing with right now?

KRISTEN WELKER:

Well, I think that's a good way to characterize it, Chuck. Look, they believe that, given that the Colonial Pipeline is back up and running, albeit slowly, that that crisis is going to be contained within the week. They think these economic numbers are not a sign of things to come in the long run. We'll have to wait and see. I think the biggest crisis is really what's happening in the Middle East right now, Chuck. And so you had the president huddling with top advisors in the Oval Office on Saturday. He had calls with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas. And really had some stern language for them in terms of tamping down the violence. But what is so notable is that it's exposed divisions within the Democratic Party. Progressives calling on him to get tougher against Israel. He's not going to do that in public, at least not yet. I am told the tough conversations are happening behind the scenes. But those are the pressure points, Chuck.

CHUCK TODD:

They are. I do want to focus a bit on the pipeline though, Donna Edwards, because to me, this is a highlight of a problem that government hasn't been able to figure out. Let me just show you some headlines for this week that had to do with ransomware attacks that were not about the Colonial Pipeline. San Diego is still dealing with a cyber attack at one of his health facilities, Scripps Health, nine days in. In, I believe in Washington, D.C., our police department here has a ransomware attack that they've been dealing with. And the city of Tulsa has a ransomware attack that they've been dealing with this week. Look, this is what the Colonial Pipeline attack I think exposed here. Do you sense the urgency in this issue in our government? Or are you concerned that we're sort of not seeing the big picture here?

DONNA EDWARDS:

Well, I do think that President Biden has tried to -- and the Biden administration have actually tried to use the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack as a way to highlight what needs to happen on infrastructure. I think it's a tough fit because these are happening in private and public institutions. But we need to get a handle on it because it exposes how vulnerable all of our infrastructure is that, you know, you could have a pipeline shut down, a police system shut down. And I think that the administration is going to have to incorporate this fully as it begins to try to get something done on infrastructure over the coming few weeks.

CHUCK TODD:

You know, Peter Baker, if, if you're wanting to do damage to the United States of America and you watched how we handled this, this pipeline hack, where the public officials and the media all said, "Hey, don't worry. We're not going to run out of gas," well, that didn't work. I mean, this has to rattle national security folks about how easily this disrupted our society in the southeast part of this country.

PETER BAKER:

Well, I think that's exactly right. It's a wake-up call. Obviously, we've known now intellectually for quite a while how vulnerable we are to outside attacks like this. We focus a lot on state actors like Russia and China. But in fact, it goes beyond just hostile governments. It could be any rogue group out there with a computer, it seems. And that’s -- this particular incident will fade. The lines will go away. People will move on. But if we don't use the moment to learn some lessons from it to begin to figure out how to harden, you know, our vulnerable points, that's going to be the real challenge for President Biden going forward.

CHUCK TODD:

Brendan, how does something that has bipartisan support like cyber security not get done in Congress? This has been sort of a head-scratcher.

BRENDAN BUCK:

Yeah. I just don't think enough people are paying attention to it. You know, I've been out of government for a couple years. But when I was there, you ask any national security person, "What's the biggest threat," they'll all tell you it's cyber. It's not North Korea. It's not Islamic terrorism. It's this. And so I don’t think enough people -- we need to move beyond the national security world. And most -- more people need to realize this is the big threat. We have millions, if not billions, of connected devices around this country that, if they are hacked, can do real damage. Entire cities can have their power grids knocked out. And, you know, this is a relatively small crisis compared to I think what the real threat is. And so it needs a lot more attention.

CHUCK TODD:

And Kristen Welker, we know that the President signed these executive orders. But is this gonna get -- I mean, is Donna right? Is this how he's going to try to sell infrastructure now?

KRISTEN WELKER:

I think that it's certainly one way he's going to try to sell infrastructure, Chuck. And just to underscore the point of how unprepared the country, the government is for these types of attacks, when I asked administration officials, "What are the next steps," well, the next steps are just implementing the executive orders to try to strengthen the government's preparedness. And that is going to take time, they say. And so I think that's going to be a real challenge and a real test moving forward. Based on my reporting, they were considering a range of options to deal with this, Chuck, even potentially mobilizing the military to help get --

CHUCK TODD:

Oh, wow.

KRISTEN WELKER:

-- gas to stations. They decided not to do that. But it's going to be a test in the coming days.

CHUCK TODD:

It sure is. I mean, let's hope our adversaries don't take note with how it worked. Anyway, that's all we have for today. Thank you for watching. If you're fully vaccinated, enjoy these new privileges, but do so with respect, please. And remember, if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.