american people. so i have to appreciate him just methodically, honestly, elizabeth, answering the question. i don t disagree with anne s question. i think there are a lot of questions on the world stage that address the issue as to whether or not, is this a four-year blip and america continues to slide or is joe biden going to put a stake in the ground and keep us moving forward in the democracy that we are. but yet, the stories that david is sharing, about world leaders clamoring to get in america s face and the america is back statement, while it s garnering some questions from the press, i m not sure what more joe biden can do, beyond what he s doing, which is messaging and showing. that s true. you saw how long it took him to answer he took his time. there was a long pause before he started answering the question. and obviously, the white house is concerned about that. and, you know, underneath all of this warmth and celebration of joe biden, it s a real concern among th
reset. hitting the but the tonight with the reset. after all of those miscalculations, it is hard to believe that we would have yet another president who would repeat the same mistakes. and it s just not in his nature. you know, the president biden is a student of institutions. you know, he comes out of the senate, he s come out of the white house. he s got this broad base, as he will tell you, you know, he has relationships with a lot of these leaders. by the way, he s made a lot of mistakes himself. robert gates famously has said, he s made a lot of mistakes that he s learned from. and he knows who s sitting across from him tomorrow. he s less interested in what s in his soul and his eyes and cutting some secret deal after an election or capitulating to him, as we saw trump did. what he s doing, and i think david put his finger on it, he s going to draw some red lines
these enemies we obsess about every day, and yes, we should be concerned, but still, david, i wonder if we re continuing to focus too much on the wrong thing, instead of just focusing on how important having good relations with our best allies how important that really is. and how we are unassailable if we take care of first things first. you know, joe, this trip has been an object lesson that it s always sensible to remember the number. just how strong the u.s. is. but we had a demonstration of that this week. that the biden team talked in their preliminary conversations about the trip, that they re going to say, america s back. they re going to remind the world of american leadership. but we saw this week, exactly what that means in practice. i m told that every one of these meetings involved leaders who were almost clamoring to sit
frightening out here in the real world. it s not. i remember telling phil griffin 15 years ago, phil, it doesn t matter where you are, you can be in a closet and if you deliver the content, everything works out all right. that s true. in the closet. but, you know, i don t know. i m kind of missing the closet right now. but it s great to be with our friends here, willie. we can t wait to see you here, as well. i m hitchhiking my way down. south of philly right now. popped into a truck shop to do the show this morning. but, man, the space we just saw, that was the longest tracking shot since goodfellas through the kitchen just to get to you. i ll see you tomorrow. i ll do my six-mile loop before we leave. it really is something. david ignatius, we showed some clips of last year and this year, obviously a big difference. something occurs to me this week. we had the meeting with boris johnson and then we have the g-7. and now we re having nato.
totally agree. 40% of republican members of congress would not tell cnn whether they had been vaccinated. which tells you that is exactly my point. either they haven t been or probably have been and just don t want to say. they don t want to you know they have been. they don t want to lead. of course they ve been vaccinated! and that s where my anger is focused and directed, at people that were first in line to get the vaccines and then they re lying about it. and david, one other thing. let s be clear on a couple of points. number one, this did not start with donald trump. secondly, donald trump has carefully at times chosen to say, get the vaccine. i did this, it s a great vaccine. i m proud of it. he s not he s not outfront of it, but again, but he i just want to make this pitch one more time, to republicans and to