"politico", cnn, abc news and the "washington post" discussed what it's like covering the biden administration in its first 100 100 days. this is just under one hour. >> hello, everyone. thank you so much for joining us today. i am the president and coo of meridian international center. and as many of you know, meridian is a nonprofit, nonpartisan diplomacy center that was founded over 60 years ago with the vision that greater collaboration across countries and cultures leads to a more secure world and prosperous shared future for all nations. today we're going to hear from an esteemed group of journalists who will offer an inside look at how top white house supporters have been covering the biden administration amid the changing information and new media landscape. we look ahead to biden's 100 100 days as president and beyond. this program is part of the meridian global journalism initiative which build on our 20 years of working to develop international journalists reporting capacity while b strengthening shared values of democracy, press freedom and combating disinformation in u.s. and across the world. we're honored to be joined by a great audience today and hope you are contributed your great questions and thoughts in the q&a module. the event is open press and i know we're joined at least by c-span and others. leading us in the conversation today is ryan lizza who is politico's chief washington correspondent and playbook co-author. hede covers campaigns, congress and the white house. since arriving in washington in 1998, ryan has written about national politics policy and elections for esquire, new york magazine, gq, the "washington post," the new yorker the new republic, the near times and the atlantic. ryan, we arega so pleased having you here today toke facilitate e discussion here out of it over to you now. >> thank you, lee, and thank w u to meridian for hosting this event. we have three white house reporters, three of the best in the business to break down what we've learned so far in the biden era, and to look ahead to the 100 day mark about the state of the biden administration because we know there's a lot of international viewers here. we will try to break down the foreign policy question that perhaps have been getting as much attention the last few weeks as we've all been focused on the pandemic and the covid relief bill. let me introduce our three excellent panelists. john harwood, a white house correspondent for cnn. geoff bennett, white house correspondent for nbc news, and seung min, white house reporter for the "washington post." three people if you don't follow the work you should be following them everyday on twitter and on tv and in the "washington post." i just want to kick it off with a final word, make sure you have a question prepared. we will go for about a half hour an answer audience questions. hello, everyone. how is everyone doing? >> doing well. how were you? >> very, veryy well. let's just start with a big broad question. all of you covered trump, and this is like at least for me has been like whiplash going from the trump era to the biden era, and in a lot of different ways. each of you just give us your big broad thoughts about personally what it has been like covering trump world and covering biden world these last few months. why don't we start with seung. >> so obviously you're right, it has been quite the whiplash going from covering trump where he could send out a tweet at 6:15 a.m. and then completely change the course of the day. i think that rather than waking up to trump's tweets i i now e up to white house chief of staff who is a prolific user of social meet as well speak we can talk about that after. >> but it is, it's just going from such an unorthodox, unpredictable presidency where things were never done, almostre never done through the proper channels, rolled out kind of like what we expect in a normal weight in a normal washington way. biden has really at least for the most part return to that. i'm kind of warming up the muscles that are used mostly covering congress but what the obama white house was up to when president obama still in office. a lot of it is a return to that in what biden is doing in terms of properly notifying congressional allies the plans or whatnot, and so it's kind of a return to that. obviously, there are still several reporting challenges that we are facing. for example, we're all resting on the white house for president biden to hold a news conference as soon as possible. he is far beyond come far behind -- [inaudible] of not holding a conference yet but certainly there's a big difference between covering trump and covering biden at this point back. >> geoff? >> i would suggest in the last four months i've covered more pure policy in the last four months that ended in the entire four years of the trump administration. part of that is the function of the platform that i work for, mostly cable news, and so if you set aside the rush investigation and both impeachments what you're left with during the trump administration for the most part was the scandal or controversy du jour and then figure out who the president was met at on a given day and doing reporting about that, and, of course, his twitter feed was a 24/7 entry point into his brain. and now what you have been joe biden, setting aside his politics yet someone who is a traditionalist figure someone who spent about what, have center almost in the senate. he understands the rhythms of official washington picky understands what incentivizes senators. during the campaign this was especially true during the transition. if there was an issue that didn't work for him politically, if it didn't benefit him politically he wouldn't talk about it and the staff wouldn't talk about it publicly. during the transition with the i trump administration obstruction met roughly 15% of the transition time was lost to the biden administration, then president-elect biden really didn't speak about it unless he thought that obstruction either imperiled national security or made it suffer for him to do with the pandemic once he got into the white house. we really have seen that sort of discipline fromel him continue n the white house and from his top staffers and, of course, at times it's frustrating to cover this white house given the fact that they employ sort of the discipline we didn't see under trump. but but i would say the muscle memory of covering the trump administration for four years is still with those of us who were there and are present at the white house coming day in and day out. >> john? >> before i pick up on that excellent discipline, i just have to confess there's personal bias under trump and i worried about getting coronavirus. under biden i first moderna shot four weeks ago. i have my second one on thursday so -- look, i think the differencei is donald trump was the outlier. donald trump was a president like we haven't seen before. he was not somebody who knew government. he employed a lot of people who didn't know much about government. they didn't have much regard for government. they were not particularly professional in their dealings with the issues that came in front of them, part because they had a boss who would just pop off in outrageous ways all the time. now youop have a president who s steeped in government with a staff with experience going back to to make previous democratic administrations all the way up to present day. they are very serious about getting things done on policy as just indicated, and you have a situation where -- geoff indicated -- in the trump white house you couldn't really get informed answers from staffers in a lot of occasions because the only relevant information that was coming out of the phone of the president and he didn't know what i was going to be. it may have been something reflecting a late-night phone call he got from a friend or some private late-night meeting or conversation he had. and so it wasn't an orderly situation. that's been replaced by a high level of order in organization and very strong message discipline. seung min mentioned the idea of having news conference. they have avoided occasions where joe biden would get sucked into controversies that might detract from the core focus he wants to advance right now, which is the american rescue plan attacking the coronavirus. that can be frustrating if you're looking for him to react to the problems of governor cuomo in new york or various other political things that bubble up on a given day. however, from the standpoint of the biden white house it's been pretty effective so far. and so it's fair to say that we went from chaotic white house that on most things had a propensity for not getting things done him to one that had a propensity for getting things done and being fairly tightlipped about it along the way. >> just following up on that, it leads into this next question i have for each of you, which is, you know, biden has just had an enormous legislative success. anyone who covered the last few administrations knows that president usually get the first you to get mixed up done and things kind of get difficult prepa's after that. but -- the high drama of the legislative agenda, and compared with the stimulus bill, this thing basically just went up there, was written, had a few minor as rahm emanuel recently said nips and tucks based on a couple of democratic senators probably just for home state reasons needing to show they changed it. past basically as is $2 trillion, yound know, massive new cash payment programs. what do each of you attribute to the incredible o glide path that this giant stimulus package had compared with previous big-ticket items in presidents first years works we can go around the same rotation. seung min. >> one park, one key ingredient obvious he was with the georgia runoff races. i think it's not unfair to say, there were plenty of issues involved in that race, including the former president unwillingness to concede he had loss of h georgia and really undermining the integrity of the election system with his baseless claims and lies about the voting system in georgia. another big issue is they really ran on a for voters amid the pandemic and particularly the stimulus check. that's kind of the most direct result we have seen from an electionin victory to a policy outcome. so i a lot of it is that. if you kind of look back at come in terms of the bipartisan negotiations, that were the coronavirus pandemic, it's not hard to kind of include that democrats being able to to win both seats in georgia was a net benefit for coronavirus weight to the tune of about $1.2 trillion. senate republicans were only willing to offer up about $600 billion of covid relief. the bill was about 1.9 trillion, about $1.3 trillion of relief was just based on them being able to win those racist because if they lost even one, the scale and scope of the relief package would be far smaller. it's really interesting to see what i have been kind of, what's been interesting for my part, -- directly during the obama campaign but it did come on a couple years after an cannon house the center of gravity in the democratic party had shifted so much to the left on healthcare, on fiscal issues. i'm trying to imagine joe lieberman supporting an early $2 trillion package that joe manchin was able to do relatively easily in 2021 and you see thatha shift in healthce when a public option became the conservative position in the democratic party when that was going too far for a 50-foot majority that they had back in 2009-2010. so just how biden was able to get this so easily and so quickly and just so kind of mostly -- you see them going and thinking voters with the travel to savannah on friday. >> i want to just add one thing to do. there's so many things to add but just to look forward, can it be replicated or was there something very specific about covid relief that -- >> i think the thing that made covid relief different was that everyone had skin and again. during the aca debate that it will need to be on exchanges. those people get their interest to the employer, but independent everyone is spent the past year at home eating with the kids during remote schooling at the kitchen table. lots of people lost loved ones. so it was clear just from a visceral perspective why this $2 trillion package was needed, given just the scale and the severity of the need across the country. politically, i think it's also clear and the president made clear that so much of his presidency hinged upon giving his package across the finish line. $1.9 trillion wasn't a number that existed in a vacuum. they didn't pull it out of thin air. they looked at the needs existed, came up with the a soln and priced it all up. i think the administration deserves credit for messaging that out publicly but it also bringing in the various wings of the party. it also helped bernie sanders, progressive bernie sanders was a budget chairman so it allowed president biden say that bernie sanders said this is a most progressive bill in u.s. history, or however he framed it. .. and then to put a more tailored infrastructure bill and then to go big again with vigor the build back better bill that some democrats on the hill >> on covid relief and do another multi-billion, multi-potentially trillion dollar bill on infrastructure and jobs, but that right now i think is the lingering question. >> john, anything to add to that and can they replicate this or is this something specific about a crisis and having these 50 votes and just not really translatable to the other part of the agenda. >> i think it's hard, but not impossible. a couple of things to add. everything is different about 2009 and 2020. first of all, the covid relief bill, universal application, that is sending $1400 per person checks to the vast majority of american families. it's fundamentally different from performing a very complicated health care system that a lot of people didn't know if they were going to come out ahead or behind on that. so that's-- secondly, that health care debate followed on the stimulus debate in 2009 which itself was controversial in part because it came on the heels of the wall street bailout and people again were, who is getting this money and why are they getting this money and am i going to pay for it? much more difficult to sell. third, you can't underestimate of effect of having the first african-american president versus comfortable old joe biden, that's a psychic difference that matters a lot politically, and finally, you have a fundamental shift in the level of confidence within the democratic party now than they had then. democrats have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out if they could possibly become the dominant party nationally and there was a fundamental assumption that republicans were sort of the home team in terms of presidential politics. biden kind of broke through-- excuse me, obama broke through, but you still had at that time a figure -- significant number, moderate and conservative democrats from states like arkansas and then let's see, we had ben nelson and people like that who were not going to go as far as obama wanted to go and lots of democrats wondered whether they were the sort of center of gravity of the country politically, that's changed now, the democrats have gotten the most out of the last elections and they know they're the majority. even though those numbers are smaller, they have fewer of the mark pryers and ben nelsons. they're a cohesive caucus and manchin is an outlier, and there is something about the senators in the reconciliation process and only doing it with democratic senators that provided a unity that biden was able to take advantage of. the question as you guys were discussing previously, can he recreate that again? there's an acute sense among democrats that they have a very, very good chance of not having full control of the government after the 2022 elections. and so, there's a now or never quality to some of the things that they want to do. and that is relevant, even to the conservative senators, as well as the liberal ones. if you're joe manchin and see the prospect of deliver a ton of money to west virginia for structure and broadband internet, that's a very tempting proposition. so the question, how big do they go? what do they bundle together? because they're -- you've got to keep all 50 members together, there are many constituencies, so do you agree in in package structure and climate? that's a given. but do you include making permanent some of the child care tax credits and some of the covid relief bill? that's more controversial and difficult to do? do you include some have even talk about including some part of immigration legislation. i doubt that will happen, but everyone is looking at how many more shots do we have and what do those shots consist of and looming behind all of it is the voting rights debate which is taking against the back drop of the lies trump told about the election, the first ever violent transfer of power from one president to the next. republicans responding in the states by saying, we need to curb access to the ballots and then democrats having legislation on the table to say, no, we can stop that, we can put a floor under voting registration and voting procedure. are they willing to unite to do that. that's a question that i think is going to be answered in slow motion the next couple of months. >> well, just to add my two cents to this and i agree with almost everything that's been said about this, and at the end of the day, the one other issue i was raised, something that harwood got at, somehow biden has depolarized things a bit and i really-- i mean, at the end of the day he had 50 votes and that's all that matters, right? people talk about lyndon johnson being the great, you know, vote wrangler, when johnson after kennedy died had the votes he could pass anything he wanted. when he lost all of his democrats in the mid terms couldn't pass anything and that's with johnson he had the vote and biden has the votes, right? but aside from that, i think there's something about how the right reacted to this legislation and did not have the coherent message, conservative talk radio and television, never really was interested weirdly in the details of this package. all sorts of that they could have had and didn't, if you watch fox news on a nightly basis. biden just had things sailing through the house and senate and wasn't mentioned much and the details of the legislation were not mentioned. there's been no party-like backlash like in 2009. probably a number of reasons for that. the sort of libertarian roots of the republican party which always sort of catches fire when a democrat is president, that hasn't happened. that whole anti-government wave, i just don't see it forming yet. and then the flip side of that is, biden himself has been kind of, you know, absent. picks his moments when he wants to speak and he's been a very, very difficult target for the opposition to make a figure of hatred. so i think that's all playing to their benefit and this is my segue to foreign policy, the domestic politics being under the radar. internationally, that may not be the way he wants to exercise leadership and what do you all see as the biggest breaks coming between the biden era and the trump era internationally? and you can follow up more to the point about biden and leadership and being a prominent figure on the world stage in front of us all the time and whether that matters internationally. and just to mix it why don't we go back around and start with harwood. >> a couple of things on the depot -- de polarization, it's incredibly important with joe biden, 78-year-old man, in the catholic church, white guy grew up in the 1950's, that is received more comfortably by some of the voters that the democrats need. it's not a rapid change. donald trump got elected in 2016 because he shifted about 10% of white working class voters from obama to his column. biden won one out of 10 in those voters in 2020 despite the pandemic, despite the crazy behavior by trump he got one out of 10. can he build on that? that's a question. in terms of the break on foreign policy, i think we've already seen the significant one which is the emphasis on management of alliances, drawing closer to say our allies in europe. trump was the first president ever to call into question our commitment to nato our mutual defense obligations under nato and we're going to see a commitment to multilateral action which is tied to the climate change priority. but i think the question mark is going to be how visible does he want to be and how does he want to express the difference on china? he's not going to-- they've already indicated they're not going to immediately lift all of the tariffs that may plied to china. they want to stand up to china both as an economic matter and military matter, but try to do it in a more coherent and organized fashion with allies behind them than trump did, and the question is is that effective and seen as effective? >> no, min, i'm going to kick it to you. what of the foreign policy issues that we should be looking at in the short-term as we switch from some of this domestic policy to surely a lot more international issues that are on the radar now? >> a couple of things. i think we'll go back briefly on your point about the republicans not having a message on the covid bill because i think that was a really important point and maybe they will improve on that when president biden goes on his promotion tour over the next several weeks, but i had talked to some republicans about this and they wouldn't say this publicly, but privately they say, if you look at how-- a really passed in congress. a lot of the same messengers, the substantive republicans against this package, the senate was distracted with the impeachment while this was still in the senate. i remember addressing this as a reporter. and the republicans staying together and strategizing and there's concern whether house republicans how extreme they've gotten. a vast majority voted know the to certify biden's results and in their conference. how effective can they be as message rs they're trying to i am move on that. one thing to watch, too, is as trump-- sorry, president biden goes and tries to rebuild the global alliances around the world, how countries react in turn. because you know, officials abroad where theyible obviously want reengagement by the united states and aware that trump himself is not around, the idea of trumpism and a lot of his words and ideals domestically are so kind of in the republican party and by a lot of republican officials who could be angling to run for president in 2024 should the former president not run again. kind of, you know, have got-- obviously, we' reengaging again and europeans are building their own alliances to act without the united states, more diplomatic and economic issues. so i think how-- in addition to what president biden does, how much, how one policy-- how people abroad see -- how people abroad react to that and how they're preparing for, you know, a potential republican return to power in just as short as three and a half years i think is going to be an interesting line for us to watch and also, the role of kamala harris, she on the surface, even with the president-- on the foreign relations, vice-president harris has to be more involved to carve out her policy, and she has had with foreign leaders and meeting with president biden every morning and on national security issues when she was a member of the senate intelligence committee and how she approaches foreign policy is a story line we'll be watching for the next four years. >> that's interesting and jeff, just to follow up on one of the points there, do you see the continue hold of trumpism on a large chunk of the american people as potential break on biden, long been a champion of sort of post world war ii international concensus, always described himself as a internationalist. will trumpism continue to be a break on some of his plans or have the democrats even changed a bit and that might be okay with them. at the end. obama era we were seeing democrats talk more, well, maybe some of our european allies should be carrying some of the costs and a lot of discussion about burden sharing. what are your views on that? >> it's an interesting question. the question that i have and once we get beyond president biden and focused more on the domestic issues and is the trumpism dynamic stronger than joe biden's personal relationship with so many of these world leaders. you could argue there has never been a president since george h.w. bush who had as many preexisting relationships with leaders walking in the door as president. there's been the dynamic, joe biden as candidate says one thing and then as president will say and do another. so during the campaign, for instance, he talked about saudi arabia as a pariah, he promised to get tough on putin, called putin an autocrat. he promised to take a different approach on china has trump did and talked about optimistic-- i'm taking an optimistic view of america's place in the world and using that sort of reshape global alliances and the whole thing. he has certainly used more of a scalpel than a sledgehammer as president compared to the rhetoric that we heard from the campaign. so i'm interested to see how that plays out, weeks or months from now. >> can i add something-- >> before you start, john. everyone watching please jump in with questions and do it with the q & a button and the chat as well. type your questions. go ahead, john. >> i want to add two things, on geoff's scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, biden is focusing on the virus pandemic so he doesn't have the use of the sledgehammer at this moment. and the point about vice-president harris. remember we have a 78-year-old president. don't know that he's not going to run for reelection, but that's certainly a question hanging over his administration. will he decide in 2024 to go again? if he doesn't, you've got to assume that vice-president harris will start out as the strong favorite to win the nomination and for her establishing foreign policy credit essentials, therefore, is more important because she is proximate to a presidential candidate where she might be the nominee, she has a strong incentive to be strong in foreign policy so she looks presidential as 2024 approaches. >> one of the things i heard from people close to her and certainly the case during the campaign after biden named her vice-president is importance of normalizing the face of a woman of color as a world leader, you know, going around the globe and shaking hands with these folks and advancing u.s. interests. and then to your previous question about sort of foreign policy issues, that the thing i'm paying close attention to is immigration as a foreign policy issue, how is this administration going to handle the influx of migrants from the northern triangle, there is the comprehensive immigration bill that likely go nowhere in the senate, that has in it money and legislation that would help deal with the push factors, the reason why migrants are leaving guatemala, and honduras, poverty, devastation after natural disaster. i've been asked around, is that a way for stand alone bill to rush to the region and so far stay in their country. the white house hasn't engaged on it because it's a luxury they don't have. they're not able to think that far yet because they're trying to deal with unaccompanied children. 4,000 kids now, unaccompanied minors in border patrol protection, most of them, more than half have been there longer than the three-day legal limits and these are facilities which you know are not designed to house kids. >> yeah, well, i want to follow up on this question of biden and immigration and how it relates to the pandemic and there's a question from someone in the audience crates reporting from politico today about 5,000 foreign nurses who are eligible to work in the u.s., but have been unable to secure visas. and the question here is how is the administration responding to the immigration of immigration and health issues like this one case illuminates. and it just triggered a couple of thoughts. one is, the biden administration is not being very atruistic with american vaccine. fauci said we'll probably give some to other countries way behind, but it's frankly america first and americans vaccinated first and then we will turn our attention to other people, to other people around the world. and i wonder what the reaction would have been if under trump making a statement like that. and then two, geoff you brought up the fraught situation that the biden administration had inherited on the border. and i'm just curious what folks think about the way that the biden administration has been handling this. obviously republicans are certainly, this is what they want to talk about, they don't want to talk about covid relief they want to talk about immigration, and mccarthy was down on the border. are those two big issues, one, i'm wondering if biden is getting more of the benefit of the doubt than did. and two more on the policy, how do you all see the administration grappling with the two foreign policy issues going forward? who wants to start? and like all questions. >> i would say on not sharing the vaccine for the america first approach to the vaccine, i think if there's one area where joe biden benefits from a donald trump, it's that one. because i think, you know, because he said, i think it was, i can't remember the venue if he was in the white house, he said i want to make sure that americans are taken first and he can say that after four years of donald trump and people will get it and they understand what he's talking about and again, the stakes are such that right now the demand in this country is outpacing the supply, i don't think he'll find many detractors at least politically. to the other question about immigration-- >> and the down side saying you have to take care of the health of americans before foreigners. >> the potential downside to saying that? the political downside? >> i don't think so. you could say from a republican health perspective there certainly is because then you invite variants to populate in europe and brazil and next thing you know, this country isn't fully vaccinated and introduce potentially new variants. on immigration, i think there was a failure of imagination on the part of the biden administration to understand what would happen if they allowed unaccompanied migrant children to come into the country and stay. even though the biden administration says the border is closed, for unaccompanied kids now, that's not true. and certainly migrants who have been waiting in mexico for the last year, or folks in the northern triangle, certainly human traffickers and smugglers and coyotes know that that's not the case and that's the message they're selling in central america and so the infrastructure that allowed president trump to rip family's part, separate kids from their parents, house kids for god knows how long at the border, all of that basically is still in place. the laws really have not changed. the process for border patrol picking up the kids and then the kids having to be moved from border patrol to hhs, that process is the same. when you have a surge in migrants and a scarcity of feds, what you have is a situation that we have now where the administration is now trying to set up a facility at the dallas convention center to house 3,000 migrant teenage boys. so i have a hard time getting my head around how you have so many obama administration veterans who could walk into the situation, know for the damage that steven miller and donald trump had done to the asylum system and immigration system rit large and not understand that it would have happened the way it happened. >> weigh in on that. i want to talk about one case study and what we've learned from it and that is the way that the biden administration dealt with saudi arabia. what did we learn from that? biden during the campaign followed a long line of challengers who say very aggressive things about unpopular foreign governments, that the incumbent was arguably cozying up to. i remember bill clinton talking, you know, talking about the butchers of beijing when he was running against george h.w. bush and then of course in office was much more accommodating to china than his campaign rhetoric allowed. saudi arabia is often a, you know, sort of bogeyman on the campaign trail with president after president said, fine, they can't use the same rhetoric. we saw a version of this with how the biden administration grappled with the khashoggi case. what have we learned? am i cannot forgiing enough of the biden administration in the way i describe that? >> who wants to start? >> okay, i'll start and make one point on immigration before i address that. immigration, economically is a unifying issue for democrats. immigration is divisive issue for democrats, that's why it's tough for biden it handle this. the nature of opposition he faces from the republican party is at its core white americans in particular white christians who think the country is changing in ways that leaves them behind and the more you accentuate your accommodation to people coming into the country in various ways, whether they're refugees, crossing the border, making asylum claims, that is a tough subject for democrats. they're going to have to deal with it, but that's a difficult subject. in terms of saudi arabia, no, i don't think you're being uncharitable. that is also a very hard issue. one of the questions is, was the problem what they did in government or what he said in the campaign? it's very inviting in the campaign when you're a democratic administration and you see somebody like donald trump who is so transactional and focused on economic stuff and got his young son-in-law as the broker and he's friends with mbs. tempting to say he's tolerating butchery. but it's different when you're president, vis-a-vis aran, one of your adversaries in the region, okay, what exactly are you going to do? when you talk to some of the foreign policies veterans who are not right wing or left wing, richard haass, for example for foreign relations looked at what the biden administration did and said that was a reasonable outcome, that mbs is somebody who we're likely to be dealing with for 50 years, a significant country. how exactly do we have relations and get things that you want if you have vented by acting in ways that you suggested you would in the campaign? so i think that's one where the biden foreign policy team swallowed hard and said, yeah, maybe we were more aggressive than we could follow through on in the campaign, but we're going to do what makes sense to us now and we'll absorb a little bit of heat from that and they have, but i would say that it's not been a massive amount of heat. >> so a couple of good questions here that are more about reporting on this white house that i want to get to that i think are interesting because i know we have a lot of foreign journalists on here and i'll ask both of them and you all can weigh in as you see fit. one is, access issues for conservative outlets, has there been any change? i mean, as long as i've been covering the white house, most white house press shops have had a completely open policy when it comes to the reporters. in the trump era there were some fringe whacko right journalists that they let into the briefings and frankly, you know, i didn't think should be-- they shouldn't-- they should not have any restriction it's always been like that and someone asked if it's changed at all and some people watching may not be familiar with some of the covid restrictions, so talk about that, but the second question i think is really interesting as well is, have these covid restrictions that really affected covering the biden campaign, during the campaign if any of you were out with biden, are they going to change things? is the biden administration going to use the restrictions put in place once things go back to normal that might make our lives more difficult? so why don't you start and i know we all cover the white house and we have a lot of personal experiences with all of this, so, go ahead. >> i have a question about the conservative outlets, a lot of the difference between -- and the primary difference between the trump white house and the biden white house is that biden white house is not proactively inciting people to violate social distancing protocols like the trump white house did. i'll only speak for myself, but you know, i don't have a problem with more ideological outlets in the news room or the briefing room. the problem was that they were putting more people in there what should have happened in a time when we're all supposed to be six feet from each other. covering a white house that was careless with their social distancing protocols, which has been a huge problem with having people from oan in the back of the briefing room when they were clearly not supposed to be there. so, obviously the biden white house doesn't have that problem now because they are restricting reporters and journalists to 80 people, 40 people outside, 40 people inside, including correspondents, reporters, cameramen producers. and that is a limited number. i can only get into the white house once every like seven or eight weeks because i have an internal rotation within my team and then we're part of and we get to be part of the briefing room. so that's kind of more related to covid than anything else. and i do think that it is a concern. obviously we're always going to be wanting more access and hopefully soon we'll get to a point where the briefing room people will be safely occupied again, but hopefully-- i think we obviously hope that the white house doesn't use health reasons, and there's no sign, major sign that they will once the pandemic starts to lift, but clearly once they start to turn around and once the cases subside, once we are all back, there will be no major reason to restrict access to the white house again because it does matter how many people who are there. we try to be generous and you know, when we're pool try to ask people on behalf of people who can't be there. and i'm on a lot and tried to set up a similar where we share notes and ask questions on behalf of people who can't be there working from home. but it is different. when you're physically there, when you have your own story idea and questions you want to pose to the press secretary. hopefully knock on wood when this all kind of subsides that be better. >> quickly, one for jeff and one for harwood at the end. and geoff, are you concerned about covid restrictions reasonable during covid leading to more permanent changes in the way that the white house allows us to cover them? >> yeah, in addition to the sort of spacing and access issues, we also have this new issue where the white house is making outlets pay for the cost of the covid test. before i could ever cross the threshold of the security gate i have to get a covid test. the cost somewhere in the $180 range. nbc pays that for all the people who work for nbc. for some outlets which couldn't, smaller outlets and certainly free-lancers would have to assume the cost on their own, that's in its own way prohibitive. but i think one of the things that people didn't get a good enough sense of, this is certainly the case during the transition was that the covid restrictions allowed the biden team to really limit the reporters who were brought into those press conferences in that theater in wilmington and then beyond that, they were able to select the folks who got to ask questions of then president-elect biden. that's not to say, frankly by doing that, the white house com team, they were doing their job. they had a message they wanted to get forward and trying to protect their principal. they didn't know the questions that we were going to ask, but they certainly knew who they were, the reporters were known quantity, no chance they were going to call on some local reporter from some unnamed newspaper who was going to ask joe biden potentially a difficult or uncomfortable question. and so, i think you know, that's something we should, i think, be very aware of when these covid restrictions start to lift and more people get vaccinated to your point, does the white house still sort of have sort of the preexisting footing in the preexisting sort of approach. frankly, at some point soon, hopefully, you can still you'll be able to fill a rose garden and have potentially, you know, dozens upon dozens of reporters ask questions and follow-ups of the president. >> and quickly john, a question about which country leader will get the first state visit. i don't know if this has been announced or not. but which-- >> the japanese-- >> shinzo abe. >> will be there first, there you go, the answer to that and an announcement that it will be japan. thank you all for doing this. a few takeaways from the conversation, one, you can get a lot done when things are less polarized and as john points out your economic agenda is really popular and you have 50 votes, a good recipe for success. whether biden can replicate that going forward is a question mark, but if he does a big bill with reconciliation pan keeps the joe manchins of the world in line, it seems like he's got a chance to do a big part two, but after that, things get dicey because the issues get more complicated and he only gets two shots at reconciliation for all kinds of technical reasons we won't get into. and on foreign policy, still a lot of question marks, but exhibit xing some large changes, but maybe restrained by just the reality of the world and the domestic way that trump has domestic politics and how americans are looking about our roles. as usual because we cover the white house and any sorts of restrictions being pocketed post-crisis. thank you all for doing this and i think lee is going to come back and say some final words. >> here we go, i had to unmute. thank you all so much. it's easy to see why these four journalists are at the top of their fields. ryan, john, geoff and seung, i love personally watching and reading each of you each day from a personal news consumption and i think everybody on the call if not already will begin to do that. it's important to go to trusted news sources and you are among them and at the top of the game. the team, i just want to say to meghan, devlin, juliann and juarez, they worked hard to bring speakers to timely topics to our network of people that are a part of our community. so, thanks to the team for working so hard to put this together and to our panelists giving us an hour of your day is hard for you to do because you're so busy and we're grateful to you for doing it. so thanks, everybody, for tuning in and have a good afternoon. >> today on c-span2 starting at 10:30 eastern, the senate resumes consideration of the nomination of katherine todd to be u.s. trade representative and later for the health and human services. watch live coverage here on c-span2. >> this afternoon federal reserve chair jerome powell discusses monetary policies pat a news conference. watch live coverage at 2:30 eastern on c-span 3, on-line at c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. >> listen to c-span's podcast the weekly. this week, the fellow on the 1.9 trillion dollar coronavirus relief bill and how it impacts the united states already growing federal debt. >> my big problem is that this is a massive bill which amounts and content is totally disconnected with needs brought on by this pandemic. >> c-span's the weekly where you get your podcasts. >> dr. anthony fauci and national institutes of health director dr. francis collins join faith leaders to encourage people to take a covid-19 vaccine. after making brief remarks, dr. fauci met with people as they were getting vaccinated. this event took place at the washington national cathedral.
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