biden touted at a very long news conference on wednesday. but how do americans actually feel about what his white house has done so far? steve kornacki is at his big board with some brand new nbc new polling. what head winds is this white house facing as it dives into year two? right now house speaker nancy pelosi is selling with her caucus has done in the first year of the biden presidency. we are listening very closely as democrats plot their legislative road ahead. her fellow democrats in the upper chamber lost their fight to pass voting rights. they knocked down a one-time rule change that could have made that happen. so where do democrats go from here as they stare down the harsh reality of some fast-approaching midterm elections? we start by turning the page on year one of the biden presidency and digging into where the administration goes from here. nbc's chief white house correspondent peter alexander there at the white house. steve kornacki at the big board with the new polling we mentioned. i also want to bring in robert gibbs, an analyst who served as press secretary during the obama administration. mr. kornacki, you have your finger on the pulse of the people with the numbers. how are folks grading the president so far on his first year in office? >> new nbc poll numbers, craig. and the answer to your question is a lot more don't like the way joe biden's handling his job as president than do. a 42% approval rating for the president at the one-year mark heading into this midterm election year. you can put this in perspective a couple ways. first, let's compare the number for biden at the one-year mark to his recent predecessors at this point one year into their presidency. donald trump one year into his presidency, he was actually doing several points worse than biden is right now. in fact, he was under 40%, trump was, at that point. then you go back to barack obama before donald trump one year into his presidency. he was actually at a 50% approval rating. the number was trending down at that point. but you can see biden clocking in between where trump and obama were. the bad news for biden and for democrats when you look at this comparison is that both trump and obama saw their parties suffer pretty rough midterm elections. and there's joe biden. his number at least right now a year in is right in that range. digging a little bit deeper into that approval number for joe biden here, we can break it down by race. i think one thing that's interesting, this is a number we're going to be looking at pretty much every poll we see this year. the hispanic vote this year, a lot of attention about the hispanic vote coming out of 2020. donald trump made some pretty significant gains with hispanic voters. we saw it in florida and texas. i want to keep an eye on this number throughout the year to see if the gains have carried over, have they increased? is that going to shake up the midterm campaign in 2022? so you can see the hispanic break down in our poll in terms of joe biden's approval rating. the other way of looking at this, i think there are two key issues. look at the trajectory for the public's opinion of biden. one is the economy. you're seeing this is nbc polling throughout 2021. you can see he started with a 52% approval rating on the economy. it declined throughout 2021. here it is now. joe biden under 40% when it comes to his handling of the economy. the one that jumps out even more at me, and i think maybe is the most significant, it's the issue of covid. and, again, look at trajectory. when biden came to office, he had nearly a 7 0 % approval rating when it came to his handling of the pandemic. this was his strongest suit in polling in the opening months of his presidency. you can see the number declined through 2021. and now here it is for the first time in our polling, joe biden is under water. he's less than 50%. he's at a 44% approval rating on his handling of covid. almost ten points lower than his disapproval number. so from that at the beginning to this now, that decline in covid, i think, says a lot in terms of the public's assessment of biden here. >> all right. steve, bring back the economy numbers in a second. i want to ask robert dwibs about that in a moment. i do find that especially interesting. but before we do that, mr. alexander, in the next 15 minutes the president and vice president harris are going to be meeting with members of this infrastructure task force. what are you hearing in the west wing about how they plan to build on and even trump at their accomplishments going into the second year? >> yeah. craig, you're not just hearing it inside the west wing. you're hearing it from the president in the east room himself saying he wants to get on the road more often. he wants to speak directly to the american people when he has the opportunities so they can see in his words, his sincerity on these issues. and when he was assessing his handling of covid and of his first year in office, he said he thinks his report card for year one would be pretty good in his eyes. he thinks there's been significant progress made. it's on those issues that they are trying to emphasize. that's why we've been hearing from mitch landry. why the president will emphasize infrastructure again today, because that was one of those issues the president did successfully accomplish on a bipartisan basis. they've also been pointing to the covid relief bill that put a lot of money into the hands of americans. it was notable yesterday, craig, when we heard from the president, that as he looks ahead to the midterms with steve rolling out the challenges that the president faces and democrats face right now, he is in many ways trying to make what would often be is a referendum on the party that controls not just both houses of congress, but also the white house, to make it more of a referendum on republicans. how many times do we hear that in refrain? what do they stand for? and the president and his aides want to make that a message that sticks. the bottom line is given the numbers for most americans, they still hang this on him and are looking to hear more from him himself. >> robert gibbs, let's go back to the numbers on the economy specifically and let's take a shot at the big board. i mean, you could make the argument that perhaps the frustration with how the administration has handled the response to the pandemic so far, perhaps that is justified. when you look at the economy, wages are up. unemployment at historic lows. but still, you have a significant swath of the american public who don't think that president biden has done a good job with the economy. how can that be? >> well, i think that the economy and covid are very, very connected. i think we've seen that in polling really we've gone back into the trump administration. and i think what these numbers suggest is there's a considerable amount of anxiety in the country, particularly related to covid and prices in this economy. we see inflation isn't transitory. it's something that we're going to be dealing with probably for a number of months going forward. i think we've got supply chain challenges. i think that's why the president talked a bit about that yesterday. i think, again, there's anxiety in the country. right? are we testing enough? you heard the president talk about that yesterday. i think whether they're giving clear guidance, parents are concerned whether schools are going to be open or not. so i think this all given where we are in the omicron variant and things like that, i think some of these numbers are not terribly surprising, sort of given where we are. what has to be done now is focusing on where the administration goes from here. right? getting back on track with what they can get on build back better. they're not going to get what they were going to get before or hope to get before. i think the president has to be present, talking about infrastructure, inflation, and, again, all those anxieties that americans are continuing to feel. >> i want to play something that president biden said about his term so far in the news conference. which, again, surpassed the lengths of any by his two spread sors, president obama and president trump on wednesday. here's what he said. >> look, i didn't overpromise, and what i have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen. the fact of the matter is that we're in a situation where we have made enormous progress. >> and to your point, robert gibbs, he did acknowledge the challenges from covid and inflation, and he's going to have to break up the build back better act into pieces to pass what they can. where do you think they should start, robert gibbs? >> on build back better or the economy or what? >> just in general. what should be the next order of business from a legislative standpoint for this administration? >> i would get build back better done in what they can get done. again, i think we have politics to me and to many is the art of the possible. right? and we have a 50/50 senate. the idea that we were going to get 3.5 billion or 6 billion or 10 trillion for build back better, i think was probably always going to be hard to imagine. and we understand a 50/50 senate. you've got to get everybody to agree. i would say get what you can get on clean energy. get what you can get on early childhood education, on prescription drug prices, on raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. and celebrate a win. because i think what we've compared all of these proposals to is the perfect. and we've made the perfect the enemy of the really good, and i think it's time for them to get the really good, celebrate that win, and the things they don't get, and you heard the president talk about this. you heard peter talk about this. fight those things out in the election. >> peter, what reporting do we have on that? i mean, where the white house is going to start on isolating pieces of the president's build back better act? >> well, as robert just said, obviously you need all 50 democrats on board for that. so we've heard from the president's chief of staff, that they are going to be beginning negotiations again with kyrsten sinema and joe manchin. they have been the two key holdouts on the issue. the president himself said that he thinks he can find the support he wants on capitol hill as it relates to climate and the provisions about $550 billion worth. that's a lot of money and the goal that this white house set was to slash carbon emissions by 50% by the year 2030. they need congressional action to keep those goals possible at this point. and the president himself said, though, if you are going to break this up, he said i think we're going to need to do that, he thinks he can get big chunks done. two things that might be out are going to concern a lot of progressives notably. the child tax credit. the president said the votes aren't there for that right now. joe manchin has opposed the spending associated with it. and community college as well. early education is a priority. the president's focussed on that here. the bottom line for democrats is this challenge within their own caucus right now. because a lot of those progressives, one said in the past this is up to joe biden to get it done. and the progressives on capitol hill will say we want all these things. >> it was interesting to see the president go out of his way to distance himself a bit from the more progressive wing of his party. at one point declaring i'm not bernie sanders. thank you all. i want to bring robert back and talk about something else later in the hour. meanwhile, in the last two hours, the president of ukraine seemed to respond to something that president biden said in that news conference. he wrote on twitter, quote, this is, again, president zelensky. we want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations. just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones. i say this as the president of a great power. that tweet comes after president biden said this. >> russia will be held accountable if it invades, and it depends on what it does. it's one thing if it's a minority incursion, and we end up having a fight about what to do or not too, but if they do what they're capable to do with the force amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for russia. >> so since the news conference, white house officials from the vice president this morning on the morning news shows to the chief of staff have said if russia takes aggressive action, it should expect severe and serious consequences. nbc's matt bodner is here for us. how is this all landing overseas? >> reporter: craig, good morning. well, there was obviously a sense, kind of a sigh of disappointment. you could feel it this morning among a lot of european powers and allies. especially some of the more vocal supporters of ukraine and obviously ukrainian president's tweet was evidence that ukraine wasn't exactly thrilled to hear that either. and the reason i think this particular comment is getting so much attention is because it's exactly the kind of thing that russia probably wants to hear on the eve of secretary of state blinken meeting with his counterpart in geneva. russia is signaling it's prepared to go quite far to obtain the political objectives. really, what we're expecting if president biden is correct that russia is intending to go into ukraine, what we're expecting first, most likely, is, in fact, a so-called limited incursion. air strikes, artillery strikes, before a serious commitment of ground forces. russia is sitting on the sideline right now essentially circling, watching the west, looking for the reaction. looking for cracks to exploit. so that kind of statement definitely is being read in russia. though, they're not openly talking about it. i mentioned that holding pattern. of course, the kremlin press secretary today was asked about this. and he kind of couched this in the standard russian response we're seeing in the leadup to tomorrow's meeting. that is they're saying all of this is a manufactured crisis by the west to try to create a justification for hostility either by the west or by ukraine against russia or russian speakers in eastern ukraine. that's what they're telling the russian people. and so we saw one say that this is all just part of the game. part of the game to -- that the u.s. is playing, and it's a dangerous, reckless game. all of biden's comments, because russia is worried it might ebb courage ukraine to attack russia. that's what we're hearing on this end. in general, i think, it all comes down to this meeting, this high stakes meeting tomorrow that in some ways could be a hail mary. perhaps one of the last possibilities for that as russia continues to amass the troops. >> let's hope it's a hail mary that's caught. matt for us in moscow. we will be checking in with you tomorrow especially. thank you. things will get better. things will get better. that's what president biden said about the pandemic at that news conference on tuesday. we've got a closer look at what he said has worked and where his administration has fallen short in the covid fight. also, what's next in the push for voting rights after senate republicans blocked the vote on a major bill. and we've also got an inside look at how a group of citizen investigators made a massive break in the case of a texas woman who has been missing since 2017. how they tracked down her car years later, and how her family is doing now. >> i mean, it's something i've been waiting for for the longest. someone to come out and help, and we got it. i didn't think it was going to be this fast. >> we'll get to that in a moment. speaker pelosi is now talking about build back better. let's listen in. >> has such a commitment to the values contained in this legislation. the legislation. the reconciliation bill. when we passed -- when considering and later we passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the president said, i want to find as much common ground as i can in a bipartisan way when it comes to infrastructure. but i cannot limit my limit for america to what the republicans will agree to in terms of roads and bridges, et cetera. that's important. but it's not all. so in this legislation, if we care about preserving the planet for future generations and clean air for them to breathe today and water to drink, we need to pass the reconciliation bill. so i would hope that that would be a major part of it. so what the president calls chunks, i would hope would be a major bill going forward. it may be more limited. but it is still significant. so we talked about climate. now let's talk about health care. so important in the legislation is that millions more people will have access to health care at a very low cost, because of what is in the bill in terms of expanding the affordable care act. let's now talk about child care. child care in the bill whether you're talking about the child tax credit or you're talking about child care, or you're talking about home health care that might include a child or an older sibling or a parent, or you're talking about universal pre-k. all of this lowers cost, lowers cost for care and this transformative in the lives, especially of women in the work force. so we have to have -- if our economy is going to succeed, and when he say when women succeed, america succeeds. people not in traditional jobs to expand what it means, we have to have care at home. whether it's for children, or, again, older siblings or parents. so this -- there are big chunks of the bill that have to be contained in the bill. but remember this. this is a reconciliation bill. so when people say let's divide it up, then -- they don't understand the process. what can we agree upon, and i'm sure that we can agree upon something significant. call it a chunk, if you want. but whatever you call it, we want it to be able to make a difference in transforming the workplace by honoring work, by respecting the fact that there are families that have to make decisions between home and work, and, again, protecting the planet. so i'm optimistic. i'm optimistic. yeah. >> reporter: so -- >> very disappointed. >> reporter: but that said, you've -- [ inaudible ] >> no. >> reporter: [ inaudible". >> people say what they're going to say. i discourage it. you never know who is going to be in the design of the next bill. and so we have to be respectful, but i've discouraged people from making comments about them. and you maybe hear it more than i do. i just don't hear that much of it anymore. >> reporter: [ inaudible ] >> no, i don't think so. i don't think so. i think that they'll do what they believe, and if they -- i'm hopeful -- they have come to agreement on aspects of build back better legislation. we may want to have to rename it to something that's even build back better than that kind. whatever we decide to call it. but the fact is that -- it's a -- we're a diverse place from right to left. democrats to republicans. within our own parties. and the rest. and we have to be respectful. and i don't think there's any other up side in democrats' criticizing democrats. >> reporter: can you talk about. [ build back better and what you guys are -- [ inaudible ] >> well, as i said earlier, right away, we have been working on legislation right now to keep government open in a way that meets the needs of the american people, that protects the security and stability of our country. and that is legislation that we hope will be on the floor in a short period of time, and i thank rosa for that. a high priority for us is to honor the pact to make sure that our men and women in uniform who were exposed to burn pits understand that this is of the highest priority for us. it's going to be very costly. but it's worth it, because we owe them. they were exposed in the line of duty to dangerous situations where they now have serious health issues, and they need care and benefits. i mentioned also that -- it was a issue that relates to competitiveness. this is really important for us in terms of chips and what that means to our manufacturing base in terms of supply chain which that means -- what that means the our economy, and research, what it means to our present and our future. all of these are big bills. the trillion and a half for the omnibus bill, probably over half a trillion dollars for burn pits. we don't know. we're awaiting for further cbo scores on that. and then in terms of the competes act, that's a $50 billion for chips and other $40 billion for supply chain and the rest. these are significant bills that contain, especially the omnibus and the competitiveness bills, they're bills that contain large numbers of other bills. large numbers of other bills, but they are the vehicle that will take us forward under the title of competitiveness. what was it called in the senate? useca in the senate, and we call it competitives bill here, whatever the title, we hope to go to conference on that soon, and then there are other bills that relate to the postal service and the rest. again, about governance. but we have always been about america's working families. so we still want to pass a legislation that expands our work force by recognizing responsibilities that people have at home which i address. so i went over some that are in the near future. we have three task forces at work. select committee task forces that are not legislative committees but will make recommendations. one of them is the select committee on the climate crisis. and much of what they have recommended is in the current version of the bbb. we hope that most of that is revived. but that isn't the end of it. there will be other opportunities that we'll have to have other countries to save the planet as well. so nothing is the end game, but it is -- takes us well down the path. in terms of the select -- and that's chaired by kathy caster of florida. she's doing a sue perlative job. next the select committee on covid. the leadership of mr. clyburn, our distinguished whip. and they are doing very important work that helps us make judgments about what has worked better or what in terms of how we move forward in terms of this pandemic, but any future ones as well. and then we have a select committee on disparity and the common opportunity in our country chaired by mr. hiems. and you'll see much more of that now that we've gotten through some of the hopefully soon, some of the big legislation. >> okay. we've within watching and listening to house speaker nancy pelosi. really talking about the past president, future with regards to the legislative agenda for her party. talking about precisely what we were talking about we went to the speaker, the idea of breaking up the president's build back better agenda into chunks and trying to get everything from health care expansion to child care, and tax credits passed through the house and the senate. and you also heard the speaker talk about burn pits as well, indicating that would be a legislative priority moving forward, helping veterans, many of them veterans who served in iraq and afghanistan who were exposed to a slew of chemical compounds as a result of the department of defense burning a host of things when we left those countries. allie covers capitol hill for us. you were listening closely to the speaker as well. the question at the heart of what we are going to see in the next year from house democrats, all about the build back better act. how they are going to proceed with prioritizing pieces of the bill and trying to pass them into law. what did we learn from the speaker with regard to that? >> craig, it caught my attention the way that she tackled the idea of chunking this bill up into different sections, prioritizing various pieces of policy that are in the current version of this bill. we know that the big roadblock to it was senator joe manchin in terms of the policies that were still included. on the other side of this, we know senator sinema was one of the key opponents of the different revenue streams they were trying to use to pay for it. the interesting thing as they try to figure out what the path forward looks like, there seemed to be competing ideas on whether or not build back better would still be a reconciliation or a budgetary process that democrats would go out alone, or if it was something that as manchin has said repeatedly, he would try to do in some kind of singular policy by policy bipartisan fashion. pelosi here making clear that she still wants to take this through the reconciliation route which allows democrats to do it alone. she said it's interesting when you use the word chunk it up. she made clear that she still wants it to be a package. whether or not it's something that includes, of course, scaled down lists of priorities, that's what it's likely to look like. we know, for example, that something in the bill right now that manchin has said he's not for or things like paid leave, but you heard pelosi laying out the things she wants to see in the bill. she mentioned the need to bolster women, things like child care, universal pre-k. she also mentioned the need to include a lot of the climate change provisions that were important to democrats when they were first crafting this. i think the key thing as we watch this come together is they will go at it through reconciliation. likely they will get some of the policy priorities in. manchin's key thing is he didn't want to see things phased in for two or three years or five years to try to take the cost down. instead, we're probably going to see the programs extend for ten years which will bring the cost up. that means they can do less things in the one package. >> allie, giving us the overview and taking us into the weeds a bit. we appreciate both of those things very much. thank you. we're going to take a quick break. we'll be right back. k break. break. we'll be right back. i don't know. i think they look good, man. mm, smooth. uh, they are a little tight. like, too tight? might just need to break 'em in a little bit. you don't want 'em too loose. for those who were born to ride there's progressive. with 24/7 roadside assistance. -okay. think i'm gonna wear these home. -excellent choice. ♪ ♪ with 24/7 roadside assistance. -♪ ♪y. aleve-x. it's fast, powerful long-lasting relief with a revolutionary, rollerball design. because with the right pain reliever... life opens up. aleve it... and see what's possible. quote, it will get better. that was part of president biden's message to americans on the covid fight during his news conference tuesday. but his latest omicron surge this latest surge we're all experiencing, cases, hospitalizations, deaths hitting new heights nationwide. we've recorded over 14 million new cases since the start of january. that's the equivalent to about 40% of all the cases recorded in 2021. we've lost more than 33,000 americans in just the last 20 days. with me now, nbc's heidi przybyla and dr. anderson. heidi, let me start with you. take us through the larger points the president made about this pandemic on wednesday in his news conference, and specifically about his administration's response to it. >> reporter: yeah, craig. just acknowledging how people are feeling with those numbers you just mentioned. exhausted. demoralized. i a bit of a national therapy session, and acknowledging some specific things that maybe he could have done differently or better. like testing. started with a testing supply earlier. a lot of it was just reframing the conversation around covid with this new variant that's evading vaccines. as covid being something that we are going to conquer which is what we heard a lot of during the campaign to something that we're going to manage and that things will get better. here's what he said with that things will get better message. >> billions of dollars made available. that's there. not every school district has used it as well as it should be used. but it's there. so i, i think as time goes on, it's much more likely you're going to see that number go back up from 95% back up to 99%. >> reporter: and not only on schools, craig, but the big shift here is the approach by this administration within the past week that i want to point out which is with the free masks and the free testing, this is a big shift in the federal government using the bulk purchasing powers on behalf of the american people. >> all right. heidi, thank you. doctor, stand by. president biden just spent a few minutes talking about clarifying, if you will, the comments he made with regards to russia and ukraine. >> any assembled russian unites move across the ukrainian border, that's invasion. and met with coordinated and economic response. we've laid it out clearly for president putin. but there is no doubt, let there be no doubt at all that if putin makes this choice, russia be pay a heavy price. it's also not the only scenario we need to be prepared for. russia has a long history of using measures other than overt military action to carry out aggression. and paramilitary tactics, so-called gray zone attacks as inactions by russian soldiers not wearing russian uniforms. remember the bus with little green men? they were daily with those who were russian sympathizers, and said that russia had nobody in there. well, that includes little green men in uniforms, as well as cyber attack. we have to be ready to respond to these as well, and decisively and united way with a range of tools at our disposal. the ukrainian foreign minister said this morning, he's confident of our support and resolve, and he has a right to be. let me turn to the topic of the day. by enacting the bipartisan infrastructure law, we demonstrated democrats and republicans can actually work together to get something done. and by implementing it officially and effectively, we're going to demonstrate the government also can work for people efficiently and effectively. in two months the investments are underway to modernize our roads, our bridges, our ports, our airports, our rail, delivering high speed internet and clean water. in expanded, modernized, as i said, rail as well as strengthening the energy grid and the list goes on. up until now, our nation has never fully made this kind of investment. and the reason why we've had the whole problem with regard to supply chains. but when we start moving stuff faster through our ports, when bridges don't have weight restrictions, when there's less traffic on our roads because there are more roads to travel on and people aren't backed up bumper to bumper, and more capacity in our rails, that's how it resolves the supply chain problems and get goods to people and get them to them quicker and quicker and cheaper. i know you've been all over the country, mr. mayor. former mayor, and my buddy, meeting with mayors and governors, county commissioners, travel leaders, and like i did with the recovery act which was a similar kind of operation. because we need to stay on top of it. i know you remember for aty as a mayor what it was like and how detail really matters. and so the detail matters. execution matters. i'm looking forward to an update on where we are now and where we're going from here. so thank you very much, and i'm going to turn it over to the guy who i asked to come out of retirement -- not retirement, but come and take over this huge job for me. >> mr. president, thank you so much. i'm honored. >> that is president biden and former mayor of new orleans as well. they're talking about infrastructure and implementing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. before that we heard the president talking about ukraine. of course, there are remarks made in the news conference yesterday. it raised a lot of eyebrows, and then we heard a clarification from the white house press secretary after those remarks. and then we heard clarification again this morning from the vice president, and then president biden there attempting, i think, to make it very plain to vladimir putin that chief white house correspondent, peter alexander was also listening in on what we heard from president biden. peter, what do you make of what we heard? >> as you saw, president biden was reading off of prepared notes in front of him. so there would be no error in the way he communicated a message that yesterday did alarm certainly many of america's allies and obviously the ukrainians as well. given the circumstances with 100,000 russian troops now amassing at the border to ukraine. the key quote for the president was if any assembled russian units move across the ukrainian border, that is an invasion. yesterday the president seemed to suggest that there was some sort of a sliding scale in terms of the level of punishment depending on the size of the invasion. saying if it was just a minor incursion, perhaps, the repercussions, the consequences would be different. that caused a swift cleanup job here at the white house with the national security spokesperson quickly putting out a statement that was retweeted by the press secretary. the press secretary putting out a statement saying the u.s. and allies would respond in a swift and severe and united way if russia was to invade in any form. the bottom line is it does stir up the tensions in the region. right now it's obvious we do know there have privately been divisions within the nato community in terms of what they want to do vis-a-vis russia right now. but the president who in the past as the head of the senate of foreign relations committee can say these things from a different view. when you say it as path of the united states, it's viewed differently around the world, recognized that ukraine was watching. certainly vladimir putin was watching in russia. so the president trying to clean up that language, making it very clear where his position is in his remarks moments ago. >> you have to wonder if the white house had gotten word of the tweet last hour. mr. gibbs, i know you were listening as well to president biden as peter rightly pointed out, reading from a pe paired statement, clarifying the administration's position on russian aggression in ukraine. what did you make of what we heard from the president as well, robert? >> well, craig, i think very smart for the white house to come out of the president's -- the president to come out and be 100% clear on this. i have no doubt, craig, that in the many times that president biden has talked to vladimir putin, he understands, putin understands exactly what an invasion means. but i think it's important for the world to understand that so that there's no bit of difference between us and our other allies in the world. >> robert, it was also interesting to hear him not just -- it seemed to me at least not just limit it to any of the 100,000 troops amassed at the border physically invading the country, but also a cyber attack. did you get the impression a cyber attack would also be considered perhaps a form of an invasion? >> you know, unclear exactly on that, craig. but i do think what you see joe biden i think doing is making sure and working as hard as he can, as he has in the calls, the national security staff have done, to really constrain the types of activities that vladimir putin can undertake, and to understand that undertaking a real range of activities is going to be met with something swift and harsh, and i think that's the message he needs and wants the kremlin to hear this morning. >> to your point, these are two men who know each other well. president biden and russia's president as well. peter, thank you. robert gibbs, a big thanks to both of you. let's turn back to the other big part of president biden's agenda we were discussing. the pandemic. dr. charles anderson is with me. dr. anderson is president and ceo of a center in boston. dr. anderson, president biden admitted on wednesday his administration should have done more, testing sooner, but they're doing it now. the tests are literally in the mail. do you think there's enough available testing to help stop slow the spread? >> the reality is we're still in a position where we could use more testing. part of the value of the testing, the importance of being able to do those things after one finds a positive test which is a type of quarantining. the other idea about the important thing about having testing is that allows us to understand more about what's going on so that we can plan and prepare. >> dr. anderson, we heard the president say on wednesday we are moving toward a time when covid won't disrupt our daily lives. do you share that optimism? are we close to that point now? >> you know, i -- i'm always on the optimistic in these situations. the reality is we are currently seeing this virus behaving in a way that smart vices do. they want to figure out a way to live among us and not kill us. that's what we're seeing right now. case rates are starting to come down a bit, at least in massachusetts. they peaked ten days ago. that's coming down some. most importantly is what we're seeing is unfortunately hospital beds are still being filled. icu beds are still being filled. it's because of the numbers of people who are being infected. but the reality is over time, we're hopefully going to see this virus, although it causes infection, will contain the cause of disease severity and is much, much less. that's what the virus wants to do. it doesn't want to kill us. >> i think i know the answer, or at least the range at least to the next question i'm going to pose. percentage, the people in the hospitals that are unvaccinated or the folks who are in icu, unvaccinated. where would you put that number? >> so, again, to be clear, the demic is a community health center. we have hospital partners that are in constant communication. we're a gateway, a hub interfacing with the community. and then they often end up in the hospital, and then we're part of their ongoing care. so part of what we're seeing in the hospitals right now is we're seeing hospitalization rates that are significantly more than they were a year ago. roughly 3,000 hospital beds filled compared to 2000 a year ago. so that's a significant number, but what's even more concerning, craig, is that the number of people to care for those people in those beds has also been impacted. >> yeah. folks who can't get to work or who are burned out because of the virus. last question here before i let you go. and i pose this question to the vice president last week. the part of the strategy here to fore has been trying to convince people to get the vaccine, trying to convince people to get the booster. i believe our vaccination rate right now in this country is somewhere between 65% and 70%, if i'm not mistaken, roughly. should that be the strategy going forward? should we still be trying to convince people to get the shot? or are we at a point now where people who are going to get the shot have gotten the shot? >> we absolutely need to continue to convince people. there's no doubt about it. when we see what's happening in the hospitals and the icus and the deaths, it's largely those who are not vaccinated. that is really critical that we continue to communicate that. the other thing that makes it really important is that if we're really going to get a handle on this virus and hope to position it in the way we hope that it's going, to cause less severe disease, we need to get more of us vaccinated. the fewer people it can jump around to and mutate among, that is what we want to achieve here. and vaccination and boosting is a big part of that strategy. >> dr. charles anderson, we'll leave it there. thank you as always, sir. thank you so much. coming up, how a group of amateur cold case investigators made a huge break in the search for a woman who had been missing since 2017. >> i've learned that in this closure is not the right word. and i get this from the mothers, especially. that they've gone through the loss. they say jarod, it's never closure for us. closure for us hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this. your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep lisa has to send some files, like asap! so basically i can pick the right plan for each employee. yeah i should've just led with that. with at&t business. you can pick the best plan for each employee and get the best deals on every smart phone. this is the new world of work. each day looks different than the last. but whatever work becomes, the servicenow platform will make it just, flow. whether it's finding new ways to help you serve your customers, orchestrating a safe return to the office... wait. an office? what's an office? ...or solving a workplace challenge that's yet to come. wherever the new world of work takes your business, the world works with servicenow. nothing like a weekend in the woods. it's a good choice all around, like screening for colon cancer... when caught in early stages it's more treatable. i'm cologuard. i'm noninvasive... and i detect altered dna in your stool to find 92% of colon cancers... even in early stages. early stages. yep. it's for people 45 plus at average risk for colon cancer, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your provider if cologuard is right for you. we're in. right now a texas family may be one step closer to finding out what happening to their mom. stephanie torres has been missing since 2017, and a group of citizens with a popular youtube channel decided to take up her case. on wednesday nbc news was there as that group dove into a lake and found her car. nbc's antonia hylton is in waco, texas. she was there for the search. tell us about the search and what these divers found. >> reporter: good morning, craig. this is a team called adventures with purpose. they're a team of surfers and divers. they clear out waterways, diving down and removing trash. in the process they started to discover cars and missing people. so they shifted their mission. this year they took on the case of stephanie torres and came here yesterday while nbc news was on the ground to watch this entire unbelievable search unfold. to give background stephanie torres disappeared in 2017. the night she drove off in her car, her kids say she had made suicidal statements and was in stream pain due to fibromyalgia. the kids had long suspected she committed suicide. the police say they quickly hit a brick wall and they were unable to uncover any kind of evidence or anything that pointed them toward the water. adventures with purpose decided to take on the case and suspected she might be in the river here because of the proximity to her home. they started the search in the morning and within an hour were able to find a car that matched stephanie torres's car from that night. they called the police here to the scene and were able to lift the car out of the water and confirm it was stephanie's. they also found unidentified human remains. it was an incredibly emotional day here and really unbelievable that within an hour they were able to find answers that this family hadn't received in four years. take a listen to some of the conversation i had with stephanie's daughter bianca. >> this is the thing i've been waiting for for the longest. it helps not just me but my family find closure. i knew they were going to find something, but i didn't think it was going to be this quick. honestly i thought it was going to take a while. when i got the phone call, i broke down. i broke down. i was scared, and i'm still scared. i mean i have so many things going through my mind at this point. >> reporter: you know, craig, what is so striking to me about this story is that for four years stephanie's children have basically been in agony, feeling as though their mother had essentially vanished and then four years were able to get answers, not complete closure. 700,000 people go missing in the united states every year and many times families, particularly families of color -- and this is a mexican-american family -- they feel the police don't pay proper attention to their cases. the waco police say they didn't have evidence to send them toward the water, but we were able to watch this all unfold, and now her children have a sense of what happened to their mother that night and they're able to move forward. craig? >> it really is a remarkable story on so many levels, and god bless those good samaritan cold case divers. antonia, thank you so much for bringing us that story. you can catch more of that reporting tonight on "nbc nightly news." there's even more to that story. turn to "nightly news" for that. thank you for joining me this hour. i'll see you right back here tomorrow. but "andrea mitchell reports" starts next. but "andrea mitchell reports" but "andrea mitchell reports" starts next. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ subway's new roast beef footlong has so much new, like hearty multigrain bread and usda choice angus roast beef. for in-depth analysis let's go to marshawn lynch. what? man, you just ate the product shot! save big. order through the app. good day. this is "andrea mitchell reports" in geneva, switzerland. as secretary of state tony blinken heads here in just a few hours after announcing that the u.s. is sanctioning four people including two current member of ukraine's parliament, the u.s. says are working for russian intelligence to destabilize ukraine's government. this ahead of tony blinken's high-stakes meeting with russia's foreign minister here tomorrow. but the focus here is on a troubling performance by president biden on russia and other subjects at wednesday's white house press conference on the eve of the first anniversary of his taking offi