declared in a speech. did she and manchin halt the president s effort on voting rights? abc s rachel scott. reporter: tonight, a tough blow for president biden from a member of his own party. less than an hour before the president was due to arrive on capitol hill to make a direct plea to democrats to change the senate rules to pass voting rights legislation, senator kyrsten sinema declared she s not on board. while i continue to support these bills, i will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country. reporter: her announcement undercutting the president s visit. and when he emerged from his meeting with senate democrats, the president sounding somewhat defeated. i hope we can get this done. the honest to god answer is i don t know whether we can get this done. but one thing for certain, one thing for certain like every other major civil rights bill that came along, if we miss the first time, we can come back and try it a
this is becoming a great excuse for them to do damage to our democracy. the great lie has now become the great excuse and biden is becoming a great champion. abby, president biden is naming vice president kamala harris to lead the effort on voting rights across the country and he s calling for june to be what he calls a month of action on capitol hill. how much, if any, impact do you think this is going to have? i think it s really an open question how much even the vice president kamala harris can do. yes, she is a former united states senator who served in that chamber for two years, but at the same time the problems with the lack of bipartisan ship, the back of willingness among republicans to address voting go way deeper than that. i m not even sure that president biden, who himself has 30 years of relationships in that chamber could overcome it. so it s a tough task, but it is