all right. good morning, everybody. welcome to the cross connection. i m tiffany cross. you heard some of the black voters who put joe biden in office weighing in on his myers i first year with mixed reviews. biden gave himself high remarks in what turned out to be the longest press conference in presidential history. it was a quite informative one. now, there have been many successes that you don t often hear about in the biden administration. over three-quarters of americans have finally received one jab. that s something and free home tests are now on their way to your mail books, not to mention the pass annual of the american rescue plan. we put more change in your pockets. we appreciate that and a massive infrastructure bill. but we do have to be honest. there have been many challenges, excuse me, ballooning inflation. the social spending bill nope as build back better, it s pretty much stalled indefinitely now and, of course, the big unanswered question, that is, of
own charm offense. and so, again, democrats must recalibrate and ask themselves what voting bills can they get passed, while republican lawmakers at all levels continue to resist and ask themselves what voter restrictions they can get away with. watching all of this are black voters and civil rights leaders like myself, exhausted with the process and ready to demand executive orders. we ll unpack the domestic week that was, and shortly i ll ask the chair of the foreign relations committee about the escalating tension between the united states and russia over the country s brinkmanship on ukraine. is confrontation inevitable? all that tonight on politicsnation. let s get started. joining me now, senator bob menendez, democrat of new jersey and chair of the foreign relation committee. senator, thank you for joining us tonight. i know it was a bruising week for democrats and certainly president biden who opened up the second year of his presidency with thundering accommodation
biden s legitimate electoral votes. we begin with the select committee s letter today asking donald trump s daughter and former white house aide ivanka trump to testify voluntarily before their committee. that letter is not just a scathing indictment of the former first daughter who never had any business, frankly, being in government, no matter who her daddy was. it also painted a devastating picture of how trump stood in the way of real action as the country he was sworn to protect fell under attack. the committee made clear they re interested in a phone call between president and vice president pence which ivanka and kellogg both witnessed in the oval office. they revealed in earlier testimony general kellogg confirmed that trump pushed pence to reject biden s electors. if you don t do it, i picked the wrong man four years ago. you re going to wimp out, he reportedly said. then at the close of that call, kellogg says ivanka trump turned to me and said, mike pence is a g
they want information as a witness. the daughter of the former president also famously a senior adviser and apparently heard trump and pence talk on that morning of january 6. it s a request for voluntarily cooperation to learn key details of how pence responded to help trump and try to stay in power. investigators noted that his white house lawyers may have concluded the plot to abuse executive power is criminal or illegal. congress knows the attempted coup would fail even had pence joined in. the administration cannot override the election and they do not support that illegal ploy. in fact if you want to do the thought experiment if it came to it the evidence suggests that the u.s. government and the military would back a court s rulings that the transfer of power to then president-elect biden was the lawful outcome. no chicanery from the vice president to change that. there were people in the white house serious about this very plot. trump aide navarro said with plan was t
lester holt. good evening. with potential war looming between russia and ukraine and covid still ravaging the country, president biden making news tonight on several fronts as he offered a self-assessment of his first year in office in a nearly two-hour long news conference, the president appeared to hit the reset button as he begins his second year in office tomorrow, vowing to get out of the white house more and seek more outside advice and input the president enumerating accomplishments, lower unemployment and millions vaccinated, while acknowledging rising inflation and not being on top of covid testing in the early days but the president also exploring the mind set of vladimir putin amid growing signs of a russian invasion of ukraine. kelly o donnell has our report reporter: tonight president biden struggling with soaring inflation, a stalled agenda and sinking approval ratings is searching for a reset. in his first solo white house news conference in nearly a year,