new cases. testing is expected to be a major focus. in parts of the country we've seen lines for covid tests stretch across multiple city blocks and folks getting charged hundreds of dollars for rapid hults. the white house is getting slammed with headlines like these from the "new york post." biden has been breaking his promises on covid tests all year only to keep doing it again and again. out of bangor joe biden says access to covid-19 testing is a lot better than it was but that's not good enough. dr. fauci is insisting that help is on the way. take a listen. >> it's always been an issue with the 500 million tests the president is putting out there as well as the putting online the capability of ordering tests and having them delivered to your home and setting up 10,000 to 20,000 testing centers throughout the country, particularly in the cities that are having high surges. things are going to change substantially in the first couple of weeks and as we get into the middle of january. >> i'll talk to dr. marty makary about this but first rich edson at the white house this morning. >> testing really is the white house focus here. they're trying to get the website up so americans can order the at-home tests trying to secure 5 million of those tests. many won't be shipped the earliest until next month well after the holiday season after you have had the surge in covid cases. people having trouble getting tests, waiting in long lines for covid tests, shortages of at-home kits. president biden acknowledged last week his administration should have boosted testing availability two months ago. some health officials criticized the administration for what they say is a late push for free at-home tests. >> for omicron and delta the administration hasn't done enough on testing and through communication. the fwo places i would say the administration needs to do a better job, communicating with the american people an making testing more widely available. >> two months ago the biden administration rejected a proposal from several public health experts for free rapid tests for the holidays. based on what many other countries are already doing. the concept the white house press secretary derided earlier this month according to "vanity fair." the white house argues there wasn't enough production capacity on the market in october. in march the president signed the american rescue plan about 2 trillion, much of it to address the economy. some of the covid provisions, $6 billion to vaccine treatment and development. vaccine distribution went for $9 billion. tracing and 48 billion. genome sequencing and covid supplies and defense production act at $10 billion. testing is what they are stressing at the white house today. that will be the case with governors and the meeting is scheduled to begin in about 30 minutes. >> testing, testing and more testing. let's bring in dr. marty makary, he is from the johns hopkins school of public health. i want to flag this for you. something brand-new from dr. fauci just a couple of hours ago this morning. take a listen. >> if you are talking about requiring vaccination to get on a plane domestically that's just another one of the requirements that i think is reasonable to consider if you want to do that with domestic flights, i think it is something that seriously should be considered. >> testing for domestic flights. thumbs up or down? >> thumbs down. this is in line with the idea we need to make the life of the unvaccinated miserable and that's basically an edict that has come from the white house and many advisors to the white house. i don't think the white house is getting good medical advice. it is a false construct. it should be more medically precise as the immune and non-immune. >> i want to ask you a bigger question. the surgeon general was trying to sound optimistic about the future. take a listen to what he said. >> certainly i can understand that fatigue and frustration that many people have where we are in the pandemic right now. it has been almost two years. we've lost so many people and our lives have been changed fundamentally. those struggles shouldn't obscure one critical thing which is that we have made tremendous progress in the last two years as well. >> he goes on to say the pandemic is going to end. i'm curious, though, dr. makary at this point two years in, is it reasonable for americans to start asking when the pandemic is going to end? >> sure. look, people are getting tired and fed up. i would commend him for declaring a mental health emergency among children. it has come a little too late. we should recognize the toll of these severe restrictions and people are recognizing a lot of things that were missed by public health officials. the cloth masks are barely or ineffective. that kids should have been in school the entire time. natural immunity is real. they are seeing through the political facade put on by the public health officials and ignoring the science and silencing some in the medical community for having an open discussion about these issues. people are ready to move on and with omicron we have a more mild virus. the public health officials are still hesitant to call mild. we have laboratory population and bedside evidence now that it is mild. >> a quick follow up year. have you heard anyone who is an official with the federal government predict an end date to this pandemic? have you heard anyone say anything like weeks, months, years, i have not. i'm curious if in your circles anybody the guesstimating. is it a crazy thing to start asking officials for a word about? >> i think public health officials are afraid to be caught incorrect so they are so cautious about giving people hope and that's not -- that may be politically wise to avoid giving them an end date but people are hungry for honesty now. the date why from south africa was a rapid brief epidemic growth curve. >> the cases out of south africa this morning. i want to share by way of a personal anecdote with you an experience i had the weekend before last. i wanted to get a covid test so i reached out to a clinic, privately operated clinic in my neighborhood and to get -- they could see me that day to get tested it would be free was the great news. the shocking news is that to get test results within an hour they would charge me $250 in cash non-reimbersible by insurance. are other people outside of the united states forced to bear that kind of financial burden. >> they're not. we're one of the few countries where we have a very limited testing supply and yet we have public health officials out there telling everyone to run and get tested sometimes multiple times. you can't have it both ways. there is this lack of acknowledgement that we are rationing a scarce resource. when you have in the united states right now is price gouging. it is very difficult. we have to more away from universal testing. to selective testing in situations where you change your behavior around somebody vulnerable. >> 250 dollars, it beggars belief and in most other developed nations in the world people are getting rapid tests on demand for free multiple times a week and we're still weeks behind that here. the science behind lockdowns is fickle. here is a quote from that piece. the mainstream scientific community opposed lockdowns and similar measures against infeshous disease from historical analysis of the pandemic and awareness that society wide restrictions have severe socio-and economic costs entirely speculative benefit. i am having problems reading. you get the gist there. what do you think about this, the major lockdowns is really a modern, contemporary conception that undermines centuries of previous thought? >> that's right. look, the greatest failure of the pandemic response by public health officials has been the failure to recognize that the risk of this virus is not equally distributed in the population and while it may have made sense when we didn't know what we were dealing with to have one simple message for everybody now it has to be custom tale ored. if somebody has no immunity and old and vulnerable and no vaccinated and no natural immunity they need to be very careful and protect those people now. the risk in a young healthy person is very different from somebody in that situation. we've never acknowledged that we need to custom taylor the policies according to the individuals. those who have chosen not to get vaccinated and not have covid do so at their own individual risk. we have never seen this level of martial law to prevent mild infection in 300 million americans. >> different categories of rules with different categories of folks have been the name of the game. as much as we might not like it, it seems to be the medical reality here. great to talk to you. reports of dysfunction in her office and senior staff quitting vice president kamala harris is speeng out and insists the biden administration is not setting her up to fail at the nation's number two job. her critics remain undeterred, though. they are doubling down on everything from her approval rating to where she travels. plus now there is this. >> i don't know why they would want to continue it. maybe they will find a way to vote on it yet and further lead to their political demise while destroying the country. >> republicans are thumbing their noses at democrats desperate to revive the build back better bill after joe manchin torpedoed it. progressives are asking biden to step in and save the plan with executive action. we have a congresswoman talking about that next. and i'm still . in the kind of work that i do, you are surrounded by people who are all younger than you. i had to get help somewhere along the line to stay competitive. i discovered prevagen. i started taking it and after a period of time, my memory improved. it was a game-changer for me. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. veteran homeowners- you 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broken promises can't deter the path to build back better congresswoman jayapal says we're calling on the president to use executive action to improve people's lives. taking executive action will say that the white house and democrats will deliver for americans. now maryland democrat senator is saying this. >> are democrats open to scaling it back or various pieces as stand alones or maybe attracting senator manchin? >> that's a strategy decision that is being considered. we are prepared to move. we just need to make sure you have -- we'll start on that next week when we return. >> joining me now is iowa congresswoman. thanks for being with us. let's rewind 30 seconds into the beginning of this. i want to ask you about congresswoman jayapal who says president biden should take executive action to push through build back better. what does that even mean? if it was possible for the president to do this all along, why was congress dragging the american people on this drama for the last year? >> well, i think it is the wrong approach. we've seen president biden when he came into office have over 40 executive actions, one of which was to stop construction of the keystone pipeline, another was to stop construction of the border wall and open our borders. they are dealing with multiple crises at the same time but still trying to push through this progressive agenda which their bipartisan support both in the senate and the house against this bill. senator joe manchin has been very clear he would not vote for the bill. >> so essentially here you seem to be saying that president biden would be doing a big workaround congress if he went ahead and tried to push through his agenda via executive action but it wouldn't really have the sort of thrust of statutory authority here, right? what are his options? some kind of executive order? that doesn't carry the weight of law. >> precisely. there is appropriations. where would he get the appropriations in order to support the build back better? meanwhile we have people have rising inflation, people are paying higher prices at the gas pump. they're paying higher prices at the grocery store. bacon is up tremendously for those of you who like bacon, we need to deal with the crisis we have now. whether inflation with all the spending bills. the crisis at the border, the crisis in the middle east with the afghanistan withdrawal and the rising predominance of china. there are real issues we need to be dealing with rather than catering to the progressives on the left of the democrat party. >> so back to joe manchin for the moment here. because we would be remiss if we didn't talk about joe manchin in a segment. given the amount of political power he carries in washington right now, so your party, congresswoman, is vigorously pursuing him trying to wooh him to cross party lines. throw in the towel, become a republican. mostly your senate colleagues are behind this. is this because they believe in joe manchin's policy proposal and they are 100% behind him or more about retaking the senate next year? more of a raw political calculation? >> i think it's both. one they feel he is currently more politically aligned with republicans than the progressive democrats running the administration. two, because they see that they can gain a majority. i strongly feel we are going to gain a majority in 2022 both in the house and in the senate and senator manchin is in a position of tremendous power in his party. i also don't think he speaks only for himself. i think that he is the front person for other democrat senators that are also against this build back better bill. let's not forget the pandemic you talked about in your last segment where we have a president who will push out 500 million rapid antigen tests to give out free, which i heard you talk about the cost. but there is a reuters article from belgium that shows the rapid antigen tests are not as accurate. so we're pushing out a test and telling people to get tested and i have half a doz than people i know who had congestion and tested with the rapid antigen test and was negative. they got a fever is next day and tested and was positive. we need to rethink that strategy on the pandemic that they haven't controlled well, either. >> trace: maybe charging people hundreds of dollars isn't really following the science, either, on that issue. want to ask you about the filibuster. take a look at this from the "wall street journal." there is a new op-ed piece -- new reporting out from the "wall street journal" where president biden intimates this might be a trick he has up his sleeve. can we pull it up on screen so our viewers can see it? we don't have it but what's going on here is president biden talked about what he is calling a tiny exception to the filibuster which he might be willing to employ coming up during this calendar year if it will help him to get voting rights across the finish line here? have you ever heard anything about a small exception to the filibuster and what in the heck that means? >> well let's just recall there are no small steps. there are only big steps that lead to even bigger changes in the rules in the senate. the senate is supposed to be the deliberative body. if i recall correctly both senators sinema and manchin have said they don't support the filibuster. this may be part of the negotiations that he is having with senator manchin but the voting rights act is not going to make voting better, more accessible or more accurate. so what it does is it violates and gets rid of allstate voter i.d. laws. 70 to 80% of the population support voter i.d. and it makes people feel their vote is trust worthy and confidential and accurate and being counted. there is not support for the voting rights bill. we know what it does, it will make our voting system more susceptible to fraud and federalize our election system. >> the quote i want to read four. the "wall street journal" says that president biden touting a tiny exception in the filibuster is like an engineer saying he just wants to remove a little piece of the hoover dam. we have to leave it there. thanks so much for joining us today. we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> first omicron caused major travel problems over the christmas weekend. now freezing temperatures and record snowfall are making travel even worse. thousands of flights have canceled, avalanche warnings in multiple states and subzero temperatures expected in a whole lot of others. we have a report from fox weatherman who will break it down for you coming up next. plus we have this. >> no president has lost the faith and confidence of the american people more quickly and more totally than joe biden. >> stephen miller are tearing into the biden administration as the first year comes to a close. white house chief of staff ron klain is taking to twitter yet again with a rigous defense of 2021. we'll hear from jason rantz coming up next. e board... and you have 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weekend for the city of chicago. crime has been up all weekend long. it was a particularly deadly year overall. the weekend alone 19 people were shot. three killed. the murder rate in chicago has reached a three-decade high. so far 782 people have been killed this year. 61 of them under the age of 18. we've got mike tobin live in the windy city. hi, mike. >> with the three people who were murdered over the weekend, one of them a short distance from here was shot in the head just before midnight on christmas day. frankly, that number 19 people shot according to chicago police is a fairly normal pace for the city of chicago. what is abnormal is that the violence is spilling over into the wealthy neighborhoods and tourist areas. visual manifest of what we're seeing with the uptick in crime in chicago the smash and grab robberies that have plagued the nice stores particularly in chicago's gold coast. the mayor encouraged stores to have more security. but she was upset when some hired private security. >> any extra set of eyes in the neighborhood helping out is important. the biggest concerns are the strong arm robberies and the carjackings. >> now the "chicago tribune" examined data for two years of the pandemic and determined city wide shootings and homicides are up 60%. while violence has spilled over into the nice neighborhoods, the incidents of violence by total numbers and per capita numbers are much worse in the historically troubled parts of the south and west side. pandemic certainly is playing a role when it comes to carjacking. you do see that some cars are stolen because the gunmen need an untraceable vehicle to use in drive-by shootings but the aftermath of a lot of carjackings shows they're stolen just out of boredom to go joy riding. >> chicago is not the only city reeling from a massive crime surge. 12 u.s. cities have stopped murder records in 2021. many people are blaming soft on crime policies that allowed repeat criminals to carry out crimes and get back on the street for little consequence. a new op-ed out from the "new york post" leaders in cities like san francisco and chicago are recognizing the problem and trying to mobilize the public safety system against it. unfortunately to do so they will need to undo the damage they themselves did to police, courts and jails over the last year. there are consequences to refusing to use or dismantling all together large parts of the criminal justice system. until lawmakers recognize this, the madness will continue. let's bring in jason rantz a seattle radio talk show host and in "focus" now. essentially what the "new york post" article is arguing here is it was inevitable that the people who were behind these defund the police policies were going to become victims of crime themselves. that is awfully sinister even for political criticism. >> look, at the end of the day if you live in a district that you are governing you'll be impacted by the policies that you implement. naturally if you are implementing light on crime policies. >> i'm so sorry. we have to jump in and go to president biden. he is meeting with governors amid the surge in cases. let's listen. >> the national governor's association leading this group and insuring we're all working together every step of the way. over to you, governor hutchinson. >> thank you, and i want to thank all of the white house team for being such great support to the governors and i want to thank mr. president your address to the nation last week. thank you for your comments designed to depoliticize our covid response. i think it was helpful. as we face omicron, the governors and your administration must be working together more closely than ever. i particularly appreciate your comments about increasing the supply chain of rapid covid tests. this has become a real challenge for the governors. your task force has been responsive and has kept us informed every step of the way. a good example is this last week i asked for more monoclonal antibody treatments. we still have a limited supply but responsiveness is much appreciated. i would like to give you a glimpse of arkansas today. hospitalizations are down by half from where they were this time last year. omicron case count and the demand for testing has increased. in arkansas we have a test to stay school program a pilot in 50 schools and expand it and woef sufficient tests to be able to do that. we also as governors are getting pressure to do more and the need is great to do more in terms of the rapid tests and the availability of it, so one word of concern or encouragement for your team is that as the -- as you look towards federal solutions that will help alleviate the challenge, make sure that we do not let federal solutions stand in the way of state solutions and the production of 500 million rapid tests that will be distributed by the federal government is great but obviously that drives up the supply chain for solutions that we might offer as governor. just a brief comment before i turn it over to you, mr. president. i want to say personally i have enjoyed working with you when i was in congress and head of the dea and i appreciate your leadership and thank you so much for giving us the time today to hear from us. but also so we can hear from you personally about the challenge that we face. so mr. president, the microphone is yours, thank you, president biden. >> president biden: thank you very much. look, there is no federal solution. this gets solved state level. i am looking at governor sununu on the board here talks about it a lot. where the rubber meets the road and where the patient is in need of help or preventing the need for help. look, thank you for what you are doing. thank you for national governors association and vice chair murphy across the river. all is well in new jersey, i assume, gov. >> it is, mr. president. >> president biden: and here today democrats and republicans. we discussed the rise in covid cases especially coming out of the holidays. and as i said last week omicron is a source of concern but it should not be a source of panic. if you are fully vaccinated and get your booster shot you are highly protected. if you are unvaccinated you are at a high risk of getting severely ill from covid-19, being hospitalized and in rare cases even dying. this is not like march of 2020 the beginning of the pandemic. we are prepared and know what it takes to save lives, protect people and keep schools and businesses open. we just have to stay focused and continue to work together. my message to the governors is simple. if you need something, say something. and we will have your back in any way we can. last week we took steps to bolster support for you with number one, more capacity to get shots in arms. more places, more vaccinateors, more times for folks to get vaccinated or get a booster shot. we've added appointments for booster shot adding hours, getting more convenient to get a booster every day. the second thing we're doing is more testing. seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend shows we have more work to do and we're doing it first. let's talk about how we got here. when i took office, 10 months into the pandemic and even so we had no, zero, over the counter home tests in the united states, none. and if you wanted to get one, you had to go to a clinic or drugstore to have someone give you the test and there were very few places to go. we quad umd the number of pharmacies offering free tests and more than 20,000 places where you can get tested for free. and many locations you can book an appointment online in advance to minimize your wait. we have worked with google so you can now search covid test near me on google to find a location. now i know the lines have gotten very long in some states. that's why i ordered fema to set up pop-up sites in places with high demand to shorten the wait. six new sites in new york city in five days and more coming. for over the counter at-home tests as i said there were none when we took office, none. now we have eight on the market and just two days ago another test was cleared. we went from no overthe counter tests in january to 46 million in october, 100 million in november and almost 200 million in december. it is not enough. it's clearly not enough. if i had known we would have gotten harder quicker if we could have. steps we have take to increase the number of authorized tests we're now able to purchase 500 million at home rapid tests to be sent to the american people for free when requested. we'll continue to use defense production act, produces as many tests as possible. starting in two weeks, private insurance will reimburse you for the cost of at-home tests. we're providing access to free tests for folks who don't have insurance. but we have to do more. we have to do better. and we will. the third point i would like to make is more support for your hospitals. on hospitalization let me start with this. because we have so many vaccinated and boosted we aren't seeing hospitalizations rise as sharply as you did in march of 2020. or even this past fall. americans -- america has made progress. things are better, but we do know that with the rise in cases we still have tens of millions of unvaccinated people and we are seeing hospitalizations rise. it means our hospitals in some places will get overrun. in terms of equipment both in terms of equipment and staff. that's why we stockpiled and pre-positioned millions of gowns, gloves, masks and ventilators for mobilizing additional 1,000 military doctors and nurses and medics to help staff hospitals. fema is deploying hundreds of ambulances and ems crews to transport patients and emergency response teams in colorado, michigan, minnesota, vermont, new hampshire and new mexico and ready to provide more hospital beds as well. the bottom line is we want to make sure the american people that we're prepared. we know what it takes and as this group of bipartisan governors have shown we'll get through it by working together. i want to thank the governors for their partnership. i mean that sincerely. with that i will turn it back over to jeff and i understand you might have some questions. >> i think we are going to clear the press first. >> dr. marty makary fox news contributor and professor at johns hopkins school of public health and has been standing by. the president just started his comments in this governors association meeting by saying i'm going to quote this so we get it right here and nobody gets mad at me. he was asked about finding a solution to the omicron surge and he said there is no federal solution. he said solutions are going to be found at the state level. i'm no medical expert. that is surprising to me. >> it is disappointing we are just hearing this sort of political hot air. there is a lot of important things right now the white house could be talking about that they aren't talking about. for one they need to announce a selective testing strategy. they can't recommend universal testing with the limited supply we're currently rationing and how to prioritize limited tests. they need to be talking about therapeutics. specifically say the word, there is a lack of awareness about it and the two other drugs by merck and pfizer cut covid deaths to zero. powerful tools we're not hearing about. >> the president touted the new policies kicking into effect is that insurance companies will reimburse american patients for the cost of their covid tests. you and i spoke a few minutes ago how the tests are understanding up to $250 a pop right now. that's two weeks from now. couldn't the omicron surge be behind us at that point? sounds like that solution is a month or six weeks too late. >> yes, if you look at the pattern of omicron in other countries it is a boom and bust phenomenon. a rapid peak and rapid decline. many of the policies announced will be far too late to address the problem. saying that insurance companies need to reimburse you is going to create this massive paperwork for everyday americans who will have to fill out claims forms with the test with the uncertainty of not knowing whether the test is cover. dealing with a mild common cold illness from omicron and pain of filling out insurance claims paperwork some people might choose the omicron infection. >> that's pretty good. some people might. as we all know filling out any kind of paperwork for insurance is something you probably have to take two weeks off work to do. thank you for joining us. we appreciate it. >> thanks. >> president biden is about to wrap up his first year in the white house. critics are talking about all the different crises. >> this administration has done everything wrong. you pick the policy area, they've done it wrong. we went from 11 months safe streets to record crime. we went from a secure border to complete chaos. we went from stable prices to record inflation. went from strength and projecting strength around the world to the debacle of afghanistan. you name the policy, they've screwed it up. >> white house chief of staff ron klain is taking to twitter to defend the president now and tweeted this article titled let's be honest, 2021 wasn't all bad. now twitter is on fire going after the chief of staff, one person replies it's been an ungaited disaster. another says on what planet? somebody else omg the gas lighting. let's bring in jason rantz. i interrupted you to cut to the president. i'm sure a lot of viewers will be mad at me. that's the way the cookie crumbles. thank you for being so gracious about it. what do you make about this tweet from ron klain? it is kind of true that 2021 wasn't all bad just like, you know, the place where president lincoln was shot wasn't all bad. >> welcome to the united states of gas lighting. this administration has been doing that since the moment they took office. time after time we see a crisis very clearly and we're told it is not actually happening. there is no issue at the border. what are you talking about? the crime surge isn't really happening? you don't know how to read the stats. we were told inflation wasn't happening until it was happening and only transitory. we were told this over and over again some more and going into the mid-term election we'll hear the same thing amplified even louder by a lot of the media outlets that are doing the bidding of the biden administration. i don't know how anyone can look at the last year and say it was a successful first year for the biden administration. it has nothing to do with politics or that i'm a republican. you have to look objectively and a reasonable person is going to say things are not headed in the right direction, which is why we're having a conversation about what seems to be an inevitable red wave. >> it also seems to be -- if we talk political optics there is this terrible reality which is that hundreds of thousands of americans have died. even if you really think it was a great year for the biden administration you probably shouldn't be saying it. >> 100%. let's judge this year by the biden rule. let's use his own standard that he applied to president trump and he was talking about how covid is out of control, we have so many people dying. anyone who is the president when you see this level of fatalities doesn't deserve to be in office. we were told at the time that the testing wasn't actually being properly handled and now we're in the exact same position. biden is failing by his own standards. >> thank you for your patience today. hope you had a great christmas and have a happy new year if i don't talk to you before then. snow and cold is causing major problems for post christmas travel across the wrn and northern united states. avalanche warnings in six states across the west and dangerously cold temperatures are expected m states from montana to michigan. windchills in some places will hit 55 below and the surge in omicron cases have forced thousands of flight cancellations. more than 5,000 were canceled just yesterday and today according to flight aware.com. let's bring in meteorologist adam closs live in the weather center. >> you have begun with the winter weather and cold temperatures. look at that negative 11 degrees in montana right now. windchill below the negative 30 and 40. very windy and feel colder. warm spots on the map piling up in the southeast 70 in memphis. not the case for a lot of folks. mostly clear across the country. winter systems we're paying attention to bring you to one beginning in the northeast in the mid atlantic. snow on the leading edge of this system. maybe a couple of inches but out west is where they've seen round after round in feet of snow and it is continuing. a lot of moisture working its way on shore. along the coast heavy rain and possibly mudslides. higher elevation turned into a ton of snow not just in california but stretching deeper into the mountains and it's been this way for the lacks week or so and will continue. snowfall forecast. additional 18 to 4 inches of know in some locations and where they've seen a couple of feet. california forecasted snow totals get you up to 8 to 12 inches and some cases two fee. i wouldn't be surprised if some of these areas got three feet of snow. more winter weather on the way. >> thanks for the round-up of great news and things to look forward to. appreciate it. >> do you think you are being set up to fail? >> no, i don't believe i'm being set up the fail but -- but more important, i'm vice president of the united states. anything that i handle is because it's a tough issue. and it couldn't be handled at some other level. >> that's vice president kamala harris responding to the scrutiny she has faced during hir first year in office. the center of multiple crises and struggled with national approval numbers. she was asked about national security. listen. >> national security challenge confronting the u.s. >> one of them is our democracy. we're embarking on a new era where the threats to our nation take many forms. so i go back to our point about the need to fight for the integrity of our democracy. >> the "wall street journal" editorial board writes the white house is rolling out kamala harris for interviews to improve her public standing. judgment is it isn't helping the vice president or the country. let's bring in the power panel. mercedes schlapp and also a former trump white house advisor for strategic communications and have also jim kessler, the former legislative and policy director for senator chuck schumer and co-founder of the third way. jim, the v.p. here doubling down on something that the biden team has been saying all along, which is that, you know, threats to voting rights and climate are the preeminent concerns of the day. no news there. >> well, look, let's just start with what she said about democracy and i agree with her. this has been a very bad year for democracies around the world. it began in this country an january 6th with a smash and grab that the u.s. capitol that was threatening our democracy and it continued with former president donald trump spreading the big lie and then having a lot of republican office holders who privately say this is ridiculous but publicly they are quaking. i think that they support president trump on this out loud when privately they say it's ridiculous. we should be nervous about our democracy. i don't think everything that kamala harris said is correct but i think that is correct. >> mercedes, what say you, are republicans quivering and quaking as jim points out? >> no, i think republicans are feeling bold as we go into 2022 because of the failed policies by the biden administration. and kamala harris trying to salvage her reputation. i've talked to friends who are democrats and they've told me that she is really failed as a vice president. she has been unable to complete her task of gaining control of this border which i think is very reflective of all of what we've seen. the poll numbers are horrible for them. the voting rights bill that they are trying to push through. >> thank you to everybody at home for watching "the faulkner focus" today. we appreciate it. 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