many people as we can until the end of the mission. it comes as we see more political fallout from the withdrawal after the taliban took control quicker than most were expecting. while a majority of americans agree with president biden s decision to pull troops, nearly two-thirds disapprove of how he has handled it. as the evacuation continues, republicans and members of his own party aren t pleased either. joining me now, politico white house reporter and playbook co-author eugene daniels and also with us correspondent peter baker. good to see you. eugene, first and foremost, we know lives are at stake in kabul. but as a political issue, how big a challenge, how important are these next five days for the president? it is huge, right? because is this a president who one of the reasons that he is pulling out of afghanistan is because he wants to focus on domestic issues, he wants to focus on china, on russia. and so what this does political capital is basically everything
we saw at the very beginning. whether that is actually true, we ll have to see, but that is how they are feeling at the white house about it. and so peter, obviously the president s numbers have been going down and i was looking at this new florida poll, a state biden lost by three points, now there is a 13 point gap. a majority of florida voters disapprove of his job performance. i understand what eugene says that the president believes history will prove him right, i m sure a lot of folks around him believe that as well, but politically how worried are the folks at the white house whose job it is to worry about these kinds of numbers given the fact that 2022 may come sooner than the judgment of history? yeah, that is exactly right. look, the most important thing as a matter of politics as long as we make it about politics rather than the human story is they get out every american that they can in the next five days and that there aren t any americans who are taken hostage or kill
welcome back now to capitol hill where speaker nancy pell owescy bracing for a showdown over the infrastructure bill after nine moderates said they won t even consider the massive human infrastructure plan without passing the bipartisan deal first. earlier this week, pelosi met with the white house to talk strategy before the house returns next week and president biden made it clear he is on her side. let s go straight to capitol hill. politico white house reporter and playbook co-author eugene daniels is with us. sahil, you and i talked about this before. speaker pelosi can t afford to lose any votes here. is there any sign at this point that she has enough to get something done? reporter: not right now she does not, aaron. the vote is not right now. it s next week. she and her team are working feverishly to rally democrats
it s also not just progressives. nancy pelosi and the white house agree that this two track was the best way to operate and move forward. so whether or not moderates moderates are grumbling right now. whether or not they get in line when this vote happens that sahil just laid out, when this vote happens next week, that s to be seen. that s how moderates operate. they re not people to hold up the process as much as progressives or folks in the house freedom caucus, for example, want to do in the house. those things are what we re watching. the white house feels confident in pelosi s ability to get everyone together. even though they know it takes a couple of months, they need to get this done by the end of the year. in 2022, we ll be focusing on 2022, and all eyes in thes who will be focused on re-election. i m sure we ll be talking to you about this next week as well. sahil kapur, eugene daniels, thank you both. thank you. i ll see you at noon eastern
between the progressive faction and the moderate faction and speaker pelosi, governing with a wafer-thin majority, has just three democratic votes to lose. the stakes are enormous because president biden s agenda hinges not only on the infrastructure bill but also on this multi-trillion dollar bill which includes health care, education, climate change, paid leave and taxes on the wealthy. eugene, sa hichlt l laid it out nicely there. that was arguably the easy part of this, the infrastructure bill. how hard will it be for pelosi to pull off this two-track approach? and how long could it take? it could take months, right? this is all the work they have to do first. we re at the very, very beginning of the process for the house. they re actually coming back early so that they can get some of this done. it s nancy pelosi, so a lot of people i ve talked to feel that eventually she ll get especially these moderates on board.