she has the moderates on one side pushing in one direction, progressives on the other side pushing in another direction. she knows she can t count on any republican votes so she has a margin of three. and she s going to do what she has to do to push both of the packages through. she s let clear she s not letting one go through without the other. what she has to do to make it happen, we re not sure yet. that s the test really for the whole biden administration at this point. one thing that president biden wants more than anything i think is re-establish some sense of momentum and competence after the last week s debacle in afghanistan. so, john heileman, the dynamics on capitol hill are complicated and i think it would be in the republican s best interest to cooperate in some way given covid raging through states where republican leaders have gone against science, extremists trying to bomb washington landmarks. wouldn t they want to at least
has been in recent weeks. so i m looking forward to recent uptakes in the vaccine. john heileman has the next question. doctor, i m curious about what you think about the importance of and how to handle the competing imperatives here of obviously trying to keep american people healthy, vaccinate as many as possible, give boosters to people with two shots and so forth and the problems we face worldwide, the problems of the unvaccinated world serving as a breeding ground for new variants. joe biden said the other day we can do both. we can have plenty of vaccine doses for americans while also sending tens of millions of shots out into the world. but the vaccine supply is finite. it seems to me in the long run if we re concerned about new variants, the global challenge here is in some ways maybe the
we ll discuss that moving forward. with regard to the human rights abuses, the president has said, obviously, what we see images of women and children in afghanistan, of course, it s appalling, it s horrifying. what he would say is the best way for us to combat that around the world is not for the united states to put boots on the ground in every country where there are human rights abuses taking place we can do this through economic levers, humanitarian aid and rallying the world to put pressure on these people. but his belief is we can t defend it will rights of every person around the globe by putting american men and women in harm s way. john heileman? i think everyone can foresee, as you talk about getting first americans out and then america s afghan allies out of the country in the days and weeks ahead. everyone can foresee a debate over what s going to happen to
beautiful shot of new york city. live this morning happy friday. it is friday. welcome back to morning joe. top of the hour on friday, august 20th. eddie glaude jr. still with us. joining the conversation we have peter baker. and msnbc national affairs analyst john heileman. good to have you. i m curious, peter baker, where do we stand at the end of a week that started extraordinarily chaotic in afghanistan and now seems to be stabilizing a bit. we re getting some americans out and getting those that supported america s efforts in afghanistan over the past 20 years out. how does the white house feel about where we are today? well, i think they re feeling a little calmer today than they were earlier in the week, they
happen at the same time. so i think i think they do know how to do this and they ve shown they re quite good at it. so i m not writing off this deal because of the this new threat from the moderates. i anticipate there ll probably be threats from the progressives as well. but let s see how it works out. because, again, pelosi usually finds a way to get the votes. regardless of where the threats come from, let s look at the situation right now, john heileman. after six months, seven months, eight months of so many people telling joe biden to ignore the republicans, you re never going to get a deal with republicans, stop talking about bipartisan, it will never happen, basically saying you re a fool, you re being suck erred into this, it s lucy with the football. we find ourselves now in a position where joe biden has