washington more with help from those running in tight races this year. mike memoli calls it air force diplomacy and reports that 70 lawmakers have held joe biden since november and inviting them on air force one to write and localize the remarks. joining us now is mike memoli live in pittsburgh with the president and los angeles times eli stokel is here. mike, tell me about the president s day. reporter: we have been talking for a while now about the white house s efforts to reset or reboot in the new year given the political troubles they have been facing and planned the speech to do that. when you see pittsburgh on the president s schedule it is a moment to pay attention. he had a first rally in the 2020 campaign here. kicked off the 2018 midterm campaigning here and delivered a
covid and the demands of the office and been a way in which the white house is finding is a great way for him to have a connection more to sort of the he s a tactical politician and on the ground stuck in washington for so long. there is a thing, too, eli, about a president feeling i m thinking of palin s word is unshackled. to pop out of the bubble and bring everyone in the bubble but the psychology for any president to get out of washington and see streets lined with people that like them and it seems like this is a right moment for this president and this white house to sort of change up the routines. i think that s right. the president for one reason or another was not able to travel as much as he liked and this
criminal. those comments were almost immediately met with push back from moscow. in a statement to russian state media, the kremlin spokesman said, quote, we consider it unforgivable, such rhetoric from the head of state whose bombs killed hundreds of people around the world. joining us, eli stokel, an msnbc political analyst. thank you for being here this morning. that moment yesterday at the white house, what s significance does it carry that biden used the phrase war criminal to describe vladimir putin? well, it was seen in the kremlin so i suppose it could be significant in terms of how they feel about where the u.s. is going, they could use it to try to rally support in russia. i don t think there s that much significance beyond rhetorical at the moment. as jen psaki noted yesterday, there s a process for prosecuting someone for putting out a case against somebody, making a case somebody is a war
from. mimi is right for democrats and prosecutors, there are enough evidence already. what the president is banking on is that the president public enable them to be unbiassed jury pool that the people will look at this through partisan lenses that republicans will be locked down by the president and they re not abandoning the president. at town halls, it seems like people are still split on this. public opinion still reflects yes, there is been a little movement up support for impeachment inquiry, still not support for removing the president from office in spite of all the evidence. the president is double dog daring nancy pelosi saying you are not going to get any information unless you take this thing to a vote. let s see if she does and let s say she gets the vote she needs. do you think the white house is going to turn over the documents in question, eli? no, they ll just dismiss the
offense. that s a broader lens. he s caught in realtime. why did they put the conversation from a phone call locked away in a safe. they did it because they knew he does something wrong on the call. there is so much conscious of guilt going on there. they re caught in the act of text messages and they re caught in the act. the american public is seeing it. forget about the law of what he s trying to normalize it. they re caught in the act doing what they should not be doing and they know it and they are looking guilty as heck. the american people are seeing it and if they are watching you and i they re not seeing it if they follow conservative media. eli, take us to all members in congress were in their home district. the democrats did not pull for a vote for an inquiry. the president is basically and