we begin this hour with day two of the president s first foreign trip. joining us now, chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell. she is in england near the site of the g7 summit. matt bradley is in england. and also with us is ravi agerwall. andrea, what message is president biden sending with today s announcement on selling vaccine doses with the rest of the world? reporter: he is trying to show there s american leadership, that america is contributing to covax, the global consortium for vaccine doses. he is striking a different pose, certainly, from donald trump, coming into a g7. trying to prove that america has humanitarian issues at heart,
it s signaling domestically. vladimir putin has been signig a law that would restrict extremist organizations from running for elections, specifically the elections that are coming up in the fall. that s why a lot of politicians throughout russia are getting rounded up by the police. navalny is not alone in facing that kind of pressure. it seems as though in russia, there s a new attitude where a lot of people are afraid for putin, within putin s inner circle, many are worried that the upcoming elections, they probably won t sweep him out of power, they could damage his authority and expose some impatience with vladimir putin s very long position leading that country. i wouldn t necessarily say this is aimed directly at the president and timed for that meeting in geneva. matt bradley, andrea, thanks for starting us off.
let s break this down with you, ravi. start with russia. what would success look like for a biden/putin summit, given what we see play out? maybe not necessarily a direct message to the americans but something that american lawmakers and politicians are very mindful of, what happens to navalny. they have been calling for support for him and his organization. two answers to that question. on the one hand, there s rhetoric. on the other hand, there s progress or tangible achievements from the meeting. i think on the rhetoric front, i think that side is going to be easy. what biden will focus on the most is to present a very different face than the one that trump did. that s not going to be difficult to do. instead of appearing to be ply pliant, he will be tough. that will set the tone for the
relationship. that will set the tone for how the two countries extend their relationship over the next few years. that s the broader rhetoric. we will all be looking out to parse how biden appears to be around putin. more substantially, as was said, i think the navalny issue will be front and center. syria is going to be a major part of the discussions in that we know that the u.s. wants to try and pressure russia to try and ensure that aid gets into syria, which russia has been stopping on several opening points into syria. that s going to be another issue. of course, europe, biden would have just come from the nato summit. the issue of conflicts across europe s borders, in fact, the very issue of borders not being secure is an issue that i think europeans will worry greatly about. in no uncertain terms, i imagine they will tell biden to press
the stagnation is regional challenges. here is what he told my colleague chuck todd. we have a big country. there s real disparities and differences in the percent of people who are vaccinated. there are some regions that are well below 50%, which is really unfortunate, because those are the states and areas that are going to be most vulnerable. joining me now to break down the decline is steve kornacki. what are the numbers? first of all, what you see, this 52%, this is the total population of the country, everybody, adults, kids. 52% have at least one dose of the vaccine. that july 4th target you are talking about that biden laid out, he said this second number i m about to show you, he wants that to be 70%.