i m going to stop, but with your permission i m going to walk into the room because i want to say hello to you. thank you. [ applause ] and you ve been watching president biden at a white house event in the east room, a couple of days after labor day as he digs into a critical month that can well-define his presidency and we begin with senior washington correspondent phil rucker, co-author of i alone can fix it and gerald cena, and eugene robinson. phil, you ve watched this president for a long time. this is his happy place. he s with organized labor and this is his space. it certainly is, andrea. it s hard to think of a president who has had this deep of a connection to workers and
and we still don t know what s going to happen on that, so i think we are looking at very uncertain political times. thanks to all of you for starting us off. a very important month indeed for president biden and all of his agenda. thanks to phil rucker, of course, to jim messina and sorry about that, eugene. eugene. with the president still in the east room that s what we ve been all focused on. he has just been shaking hands with his pals in the labor movement. thanks to all. and the secretary of state is pushing back on bipartisan criticism. the state department is responsible for the delay of getting the charter planes out of an airplane in northern afghanistan prepared to evacuate americans and at-risk afghans released from the tarmac, though, still delayed, and not released and both sides blaming each other. secretary blinken addressed the situation moments ago speaking
however, it is at the bottom line arithmetic and democrats have to agree on the arithmetic. they already have republican agreement on hard infrastructure part and the rest they can do with democratic votes, so i think they will get this done, but those other issues of voting rights, abortion and other issues beyond, it s very difficult for me to see how ven nancy pelosi, the great financial wizard to get anything enacted on that. phil rucker, the midterms are just over the horizon and as much of a hit as the president may have taken over afghanistan and the way the afghanistan withdrawal took place, overall, withdrawing from afghanistan is popular. he s got the 9/11 commemorations coming up on saturday which will
testing of america, phil, only the most charming and friendly part of this trip is coming to an end right now. the hard work still remains ahead for president biden. it sure does, ali, that meeting that you mentioned with president putin is going to be the high stakes, you know, diplomatic moment of this trip. of course he spent the last biden has spent the last couple of days with america s western allies forging cooperation and trying to build back the alliance that former president trump had so, you know, torn at, but that meeting with putin, high stakes there, we have already heard from vladimir putin ahead of the meeting, challenging biden to some degree, and we ll see what biden does when he gets to switzerland to confront the russian president. how is this playing back at home with the political classes in washington. obviously there are a lot of people who want america back in a better place with the world. on the other hand, there s not agreement in washington as to
paying for a large portion of their defense. they were taking advantage of the united states and therefore, of course, they like biden because now they will be allowed to return to their old ways of ripping off our country end quote, and of course, looming on the president s schedule is his wednesday meeting with president vladimir putin. that s the firstmeeting between the two men. we will not see the trump publicly backing the kremlin over american intelligence. the biden team has announced that the president will hold a solo press conference after his meeting with putin, so we will not be seeing him side by side with putin taking questions along with the russian president. joining me now is washington post senior washington correspondent phil rucker, he s also an nbc political analyst, and the coauthor of the best selling book a very stable genius, donald j. trump s