parade. president biden signing executive orders, but is it enough from the members of his own party? good evening. i m erin burnett. the january 6th committee says it learned from trump former white house counsel today. pat cipollone spending eight hours behind closed doors with the committee. as you can see weeding that marathon session tonight. we know his testimony was taped and we know the committee says it was important. mr. cipollone did appear voluntarily and answered a whole variety of questions. he did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses and i think we did learn a few things, which we will be rolling out in years to come. have you learned any significant new information from him? i think a few things, yes. the answer is yes and obviously nearly eight hours, that is a lot of time with a crucial witness. that is the january 6th committee. as for the justice department s investigation for that insurrection day, a stark warning from the director,
critical issues like taiwan and uk. a surprise among democrats to lower drug prices and address climate change. we re going to discuss with democratic senator brian schatz from hawaii. also new this hour, a u.s. prisoner swap proposal to bring wnba brittney griner and businessman paul whelan home from russia. what moscow is saying, ahead. we begin this hour with the state of the american economy. a short time ago the government reported economic activity fell by 0.9% between april and june. that s the second straight quarter it has fallen. moments ago president biden issued a statement on the report saying, in part, it s no surprise the economy is slowing down as the federal reserve acts to bring down inflation. but even as we face historic global challenges, we are on the right path and we will come through this transition stronger and more secure. also this morning, we learned that 256,000 people filed first-time unemployment claims last week. that s a slight decrease
president and his fellow democrats first laid out nearly 16 months ago. look, this bill is far from perfect. it s a compromise. but it s often how progress is made, by compromises. and the fact is that my message to congress is this this is the strongest bill you can pass to lower inflation, cut the deficit, reduce health care cost, tackle the climate crisis and promote energy security, all the time reducing the burdens facing working class and middle-class families. so pass it. pass it for the american people. pass it for america. i want to bring in nbc capitol hill correspondent ali viatali, jason furman served as chair of the economic advisers and is professor of economic policy at harvard. i don t know how much of this you were able to listen to, jason, but if you had to sort of break it down for folks to the basics of what is, as we said, a very complex economic argument that the white house is trying to make, what is it? it s a very complex economic situation. t