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The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC. Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Tonight, we are going to be joined live this hour by the person who is fast becoming one of the most familiar faces and voices of the new administration. Jen Psaki, White House spokesperson, is going to be our guest tonight. Even though we're only one week into the new administration, I can show you this many different pictures of her conducting different White House press briefings because we have daily White House press briefings.

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Again, she does these every day under the Trump administration. The White House briefings started off bad and got quickly worse before they ultimately disappeared entirely. They really just seemed in the last administration to not be able to handle the responsibility of talking to the press every day and taking questions. But immediately from day one, the administration brought back the briefing led by Jen Psaki, and she is here tonight live for the interview. Very much looking forward to speaking with her.

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It seems awkward to know it, let alone talk about it, but as the Biden administration gets under way and in this first week, they start reversing things that were undone or broken by the previous president as they as they set out to restore some of the government basics that went by the wayside in the past four years, including things like daily briefings as they set out to pass a whole bunch of ambitious policies and programs that Biden campaigned on, that Democrats in Congress campaigned on things that are designed to deal with the myriad crises the last presidency left us with.

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It is sort of awkward, but I think unavoidable to realize that one crucial thing that is going to make the life or death difference as to whether or not the new administration and the new Congress are actually able to get stuff done is a thing that we only have because of Richard Nixon being such a terrible president and specifically because of something that Richard Nixon did right before he resigned. And it seemed like nothing much at the time. It got not that much attention at the time, but it very well may now determine if the Biden presidency and the Democratic Congress under the Biden presidency is able to get anything done or not.

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It was July 1970 for July 12th, 1970, for President Richard Nixon's top White House aide was convicted on multiple felonies. John Erlichman, he was domestic policy adviser to Nixon, top adviser to Nixon in the White House. Erlichman was convicted of multiple felonies, convicted of conspiracy and lying to the FBI and lying to the grand jury. Actually, that day in July, nineteen seventy four multiple Nixon guys were convicted. But Erlichman was a big deal. He was way up there in the hierarchy.

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It was the highest ranking person at that point convicted in the Nixon scandals. And President Nixon had to be rattled by it. Nixon's White House press secretary at the time, Ron Ziegler, told reporters there would be no comment from the president on air on Erlichman conviction. But but that conviction was, of course, the lead story in the news all over the country.

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Good evening, John. Erlichman has been found guilty of three counts of perjury and one count of conspiracy in the Ellsberg break in case the verdict against Erlichman, formally President Nixon's chief domestic adviser, was returned by a federal district court jury in Washington this evening after only a few hours of deliberation, Erlichman, who stood impassively as the verdict was read, could receive up to twenty five years in prison.

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Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News the night of that verdict. That was the opening story on Nightly News that night that we now know, looking back at the timeline, that it was less than a month later that Nixon himself would resign from the presidency in disgrace as the net of all the Nixon administration scandals and accountability for Watergate just closed around him as well. But that Friday in mid-July, remember, Nixon resigned in August. This was mid-July, the day that Nixon's top aide was convicted while the president was that much on the ropes.

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If you stayed past the lead story that night, if you watched the whole evening news that night beyond just the lead about Erlichman facing decades in prison and the president having no comment on that, if you got through the rest of the nightly news that night, you would eventually like 17 minutes into that 30 minute newscast, get to the thing that now is everything to us and get to the thing that now 40 years, 40 plus years later, is really the the make or break determinant as to whether or not President Joe Biden is going to be able to do anything substantive in Washington in his first term in office.

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And if the White House today, President Nixon signed a new budget bill into law, the most significant reform of budget procedure since Congress began the bill gives Congress much more authority over the national budget than it ever has had before. The president, for example, no longer will be able to impound appropriated money without the approval of Congress.

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It was that same day. That's the same day the president's top adviser gets convicted of multiple felonies. So this story about the other thing that mattered about the president that day that had to wait until 17 minutes into the newscast that night in the newspaper the following morning, it only made it onto page six of The New York Times. But what that was what Nixon signed into law that auspicious day or an auspicious day back in July. Nineteen seventy four is something he probably never would have signed had he not been in extremis, had he not been fighting to save his own political life, had that not been less than a month before he was going to have to resign the presidency in disgrace.

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And it's something he never would have been asked to sign had Nixon not been such a terrible president. I mean, we remember Nixon in history now because of all the people who got convicted, right. Because of the Watergate disaster, because of all of that. That scandal revealed about his scummy administration and his failings as a person and the dramatic way his presidency had to be brought to an end. Remember all that about about Nixon before Donald Trump? There's a reason that Nixon is the standard bearer for a scandal ridden, disgraced president.

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But because of that, because of the way it ended, we sometimes forget that beyond Watergate, beyond all of those marquee Nixon scandals, he was a pretty terrible president in other ways. And one of the ways in which Nixon showed his sort of radical power mad side is not just organizing break ins and having that CIA try to cover them up for him and all that's all that cloak and dagger stuff. It's stuff that he did as president in the light of day, including him claiming new power for himself as president.

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That basically turned Congress off like a switch. We all know how it works. Congress passes the laws, Congress passes a budget. Congress appropriates money for the government to do stuff. But Nixon, when he was president, he decided, forget that, forget those constitutional strictures. He instead would take control of that process himself. And so he started. You heard Tom Brokaw say this in that report from July nineteen seventy four about impounding money. That's what Nixon was doing.

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He started doing something they called impounding money that had been appropriated by Congress. This is something he did not just with small stuff, but with billions of dollars. Congress would appropriate money for a purpose within the government. They would fund a program or an agency. But if Nixon didn't like that program or the agency, he decided that he had the power to just take all that money and refuse to allow it to be spent.

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He would impound the funding that had been appropriated by Congress. That's arrogating to himself what they call the power of the purse, which is what Congress's main power is. I mean, like our country or don't. That's fundamental to who we are as a republic. It's Congress that gets to decide how money is spent in the government. And Nixon in his presidency took that power for himself and Congress was very unhappy about it. And so when President Nixon was on the ropes, when he was embroiled in scandal and on the precipice, we now know of having to resign the presidency in disgrace.

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Richard Nixon signed a new law that cut himself short, signed a new law that was designed to stop him from being able to do this thing that he had been doing. He signed a new law that would prevent any future president from bogarting the budget, from bogarting money appropriated by Congress the way he had been. It gave Congress a whole bunch of new powers when it came to the budget to try to constrain a president who was sticking his nose where it didn't belong.

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And that law, which Nixon in extremis at the very end signed that law included one tweak, one little power that Congress gave itself with this new law. It's a quirky little thing that they could do only once per budget, since Congress is supposed to do a budget once per year, that Congress could do this thing only once per year. It was originally designed in that bill that that brushed back the president. It was originally designed in that bill to give Congress a small window, basically a last chance to make it after the fact changes once they had set their budget for the year.

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And they could make those changes with just a majority vote in the House and in the Senate. This was not intended from the outset to be a very big deal. This is not intended from the outset to be a fundamental change in the way the country does its business and the way the various branches of government work together. But it ended up becoming very important over the years. I mean, this overall reform that Nixon signed in nineteen seventy four was to give Congress the tools that they needed to set the budget to oversee the allocation of money as they saw fit without being locked out of the process or worked around by a president like Nixon who was trying to take those powers for himself.

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Nixon signs in nineteen seventy four, less than a month before he resigned, signs it on the day his top aide was convicted on multiple felonies. It's the sort of it looks like a footnote to that much bigger news of that scandal at that time. But what Nixon signed went into effect for the first time in nineteen eighty over the ensuing forty one years. What that little tweak has turned into is something that's a very big deal. What it has turned into is a means by which the Senate can pass stuff without needing 60 votes that needed a supermajority to do it.

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It's a means by which the Senate can pass some stuff as long as it pertains to the budget with just fifty one votes. And they can do that once per budget. And it's because of that Nixon reform that he signed in nineteen seventy four and now this year in twenty twenty one, with all the once in a lifetime craziness that we are contending with as a country, with the outgoing president having been impeached twice and with him due to go on trial again in the United States Senate next week, even though he's already gone from office with an ongoing and indeed accelerating global pandemic, having killed more Americans in the past year than were killed in the whole length of World War Two, with an economy just squashed by the pandemic, putting more Americans on the unemployment rolls every week than we have seen at any time since the Great Depression, with the country having just voted out the latest Republican president who made Nixon's scandals look quaint and having voted Republicans out of control of the House and the Senate, too, but narrowly in each case.

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Now, today, that page six of The New York Times, 17 minutes into the newscast, footnote that that tweak in the way the budget gets done in Washington is going to make all the difference in the world. As to whether or not now the Democratic Party having control of the presidency and the House and the Senate is going to be enough for this new president to get big lasting things passed to try to help the country and all of the crises that we are in now.

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These are the policies roughly as short handed by me and I take full responsibility for any of these things that aren't that don't end up being proposed in exactly this way. But roughly, these are the priorities that the Biden administration and the Democratic led Congress have said they want to get done first. It's what they're calling the American rescue plan, the covid relief. This is funding for the national vaccination program and a stimulus check for American families and another round of help to our suffering small businesses and help for cities and states.

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So the economic crunch from the pandemic doesn't force them to start laying off cops and firefighters and paramedics and teachers and all the rest. It extends the ban on evicting people from their apartments or foreclosing on their homes during the pandemic. It extends the pause on people having to repay their federal student loans. It puts extra money in people's unemployment checks. It includes a really overdue hike in the federal minimum wage. So that's one that's the American rescue plan. That's covid relief bill.

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There's also their jobs and infrastructure bill, this is basically an economic rescue and infrastructure plan. It includes a big focus on domestic manufacturing. There's a lot in there about transportation, lots of investments and things that will both help the economy and help with climate issues like emission standards and stuff. This is a lot of what Biden campaigned on. Build back better. They also want immigration reform, including an eight year long path to citizenship for immigrants and reforms and rationalization on border security and on applying for asylum and on the treatment of refugees, very, very, very long overdue immigration reform.

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They want to do that.

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And there's democracy, voting rights and shoring up democracy. They're calling this one H.R. one in the House and one in the Senate, meaning numerically, it's the first bill in both houses of Congress. This includes the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. It puts a stop to partisan gerrymandering. It makes it so every state has a floor. They can't go below in terms of providing for early voting and and same day voter registration and other things that open up the voting process to make it easier for people to vote.

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It blocks states from messing with voting by mail. It standardizes and makes voter registration the norm nationwide instead of something that states tinker with and try to make Hardeman, certain parties see it to their advantage. And it's got a whole lot more into it. That's it. But that's some of it in in very rough terms. Again, I'm I take responsibility for leaving out some stuff and and maybe overstating or understating some other things. But this is basically how I understand it.

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These are the four things they are aiming at from the outset. These are not executive orders or resolutions or statements of intent or anything else that can be reversed with a with a with the sweep of a pen by the next president. This is law. These would be big leaps forward in terms of law, congressionally passed, real durable legislation that will change and reform things in big ways in the country, big moves to try to handle these multiple crises that we have been struggling through and how they can do it.

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This is all stuff that has to be done through Congress.

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Now, in the House, Democrats have a narrow majority, but they have a majority and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows how to get things passed with a Democratic majority.

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The issue is the Senate in the Senate. Senate rules say that the minority party can filibuster almost anything, which in effect means that they can require 60 votes to pass legislation. There are only 50 Democratic senators in the Senate and. You know, on some issues, maybe a Republican senator or two or three, hey, let's be optimistic, let's say four or five or six Republican senators might cross over and side with the Democrats on some piece of legislation.

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Maybe, but come on, it's just not going to happen on anything big. And even if they could get one, two, three, four, five, six Republican senators to cross over on something, it's certainly never going to be 10 Republican senators who cross over to vote with Democrats on anything at all, let alone something big and substantive. Republicans just don't operate that way anymore. I mean, under their leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, you could not get 10 Republican senators to vote for a resolution that said moms are good and ice cream is cold and tasty.

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I mean, there's just no way they would do it. And so Richard Nixon and that tweak that he signed in high summer, nineteen seventy four, less than a month before he resigned.

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To basically clip his own wings after the way that he had been trying to arrogate the powers of Congress to himself, that tweak that he signed, which is sort of a miracle that he signed it, he probably never would have it been in such trouble. But he signed that tweet that gives Congress new ways to wrangle the budget, including one neat trick where the Senate can pass stuff once per budget in a way that gets around a filibuster and lets you just pass something with a majority.

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That's heaven and earth right now, that is that is black and white, that is night and day, that is up and down. That is going to be the difference. Put back up that list of stuff that Biden and the Democratic Congress wants to do again, as we roughly understand it. And again, this is rough. Remember, this is just my shorthand. And in most cases, we haven't seen the bills yet. So this is just sort of my expectations, roughly based on conversations with people who know these things, what we've seen in the press and what the White House and the Democrats have explained four main things.

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Well, that gift that we got from Richard Nixon, that that that gift, that tweek that says once per budget, you can pass something just with a majority, just with fifty fifty one votes once per budget, you can use the budget reconciliation process to pass something with just a majority with which which Democrats have just on their own. Well, you can only do that once per budget resolution.

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Here is the unusual wrinkle in the Democrats favor. Turns out there was no budget resolution passed last year. They still didn't do last year's budget resolution. And of course, they haven't done this year's yet either. So even though that 40 year old gift from Richard Nixon usually means you can use this reconciliation process to pass stuff with 50 votes once per year in the Senate this year, they get to budget resolutions. They actually get to do it twice, which is a windfall.

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But put back up that list of things they want to do that is still not enough to pass this stuff that they want to do, right, with just a majority vote, with just Democratic votes, if they need to do it that way, think about it. Are they going to get 10 Republican votes for any of these things? Likely not, right? They can only use that one neat trick to pass things with just a majority of votes twice.

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It's amazing that they can do it twice. That inheritance from Richard Nixon is enough, we think, to pass two of these two big, ambitious legislative lifts, the two that are highlighted here are the ones that we think they're going to go for. What does that do for immigration reform? What does that do for voting rights and shoring up democracy? What does that do with everything else they want to pass through the legislation, through legislation in Congress?

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Mean, the other hurdle here is that anything they want to pass by this process, they have to make the case to the Senate parliamentarian that everything in that bill is materially related to the budget. If it's not budget related, they can't do it with just a majority vote. But bottom line, using the reconciliation process, they can pass two big packages of legislation this year. If the Democrats hang together, even if they get zero Republican votes, if they want to pass anything else besides that, they only have two options.

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They're either going to have to persuade 10 Republican senators to cross over. And again, 10 Republican senators likely would not cross over to vote with the Democrats to proclaim kittens to be soft, let alone to vote with Democrats on on something like immigration reform or covid relief or infrastructure or voting rights. Are you kidding me? Ten Republican senators, seriously, they can either persuade 10 Republicans to leave their bodies and do something that they are constituents incapable of doing in this era of the Republican Party or their other option if they want anything passed at all while Joe Biden is president, if they want anything other than the two things they can do through reconciliation to pass, the only other thing they can do is to vote themselves, all the Democrats, to get rid of the filibuster, to get rid of that in the Senate, to make it so a majority vote carries the day on all legislation from here on out.

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And there's no more 60 vote threshold.

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They can do some things specifically, we think they can do two packages of legislation, all of which has to relate to the budget without the help of 10 Republicans. But that's all they're going to be able to do unless they can kill the filibuster or unless Republicans suddenly have a massive change of heart. Don't bet on it. And I know this seems like US government trivia. It seems like marginalia. It seems like something vestigial. We never noticed during the cratering of the disastrous Nixon presidency.

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But it has become the one thing that determines if we can do anything substantive to get our country out of the mess that we are in. If we can apply the power of government to making lasting change to address the fundamental problems where we are to give a vaccination program funding nationwide, to give the American people relief from the economic and health disaster that we are in right now to shore up our democracy, to support and buttress voting rights, to finally reform and rationalize our absolutely broken immigration system.

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If we want to do any of those things, that's where we are now. And the White House has so far been avoiding talking about things in these terms, I think, because it's it's a little too stark, right. It's not the way that President Biden in particular likes to talk about the differences between the two parties and the prospects of the two parties working together. He likes to project optimism on that front. I think they don't talk about things in terms of this stark because they think it's too negative in outlook in terms of what Republicans are like now and what they're likely to do even for a good cause and for the country.

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But this is where we are, I'm telling you. And it makes it very simple in terms of how we think about the road ahead and the prospects for getting stuff done, and it means that Democrats are running very, very, very quickly into very hard decisions about how much they are willing to do to get things done for the country. And the new White House press secretary joins us live in just a moment. Stay with us tonight. I think this is going to be good.

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What happened? Parents ripped, their kids were ripped from their arms and separated, and now they cannot find over five hundred of sets of those parents. And those kids are alone.

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Nowhere to go, nowhere to go. It's criminal. It's criminal.

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That was candidate Joe Biden at the final presidential debate this past fall, just excoriating President Trump for this, the Trump administration's policies of taking little kids away from their moms and dads at the border and then never reuniting hundreds of those families. Well, the week after that debate, just a few days before the election, the Biden campaign released a TV ad that featured that portion of the debate. And it said the ad said that if elected on his first day as president, Joe Biden would create a federal task force to start the process of finding and reuniting those hundreds of kids with their parents.

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Well, now Joe Biden is president. And whatever is going to happen in terms of immigration reform and the president's immigration legislation in Congress, there is still this very pressing issue of hundreds of kids taken away from their parents by the Trump administration who still haven't been reunited with them. President Biden did not create a task force on this issue on on day one, as his campaign said he would. But we have been told that they are working on announcing something soon.

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And we did get this interesting development this week when the first lady's office announced that her chief of staff will be working directly on the issue of reuniting separated families. CNN reported that First Lady Jill Biden herself will give input to the task force that they are setting up to reunite these kids with their parents that suggest this is both still a high priority for the Biden administration and that this is going to be a high profile thing. Anything a first lady is involved in tends to be a high profile thing.

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But the question remains, how are they going to do this? Why has there been a delay from something they said they do on day one? President Biden had been expected to issue the executive order creating this task force as of tomorrow, as of Friday, but now it appears to have been delayed again. Sources telling NBC News this Julia Ainslee, Jacob Soboroff and Jeff Bennett that President Biden's immigration executive orders, including this task force to reunite separated families, those orders are being delayed by at least a few days.

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So at least in our reporting thus far, we don't know what is causing these delays. When should we expect the president to take action and what should we expect from this task force that he's promised that hasn't yet materialized? Joining us now is Jacob Soboroff, MSNBC correspondent. He's the author of the book Separated Inside an American Tragedy. Jacob's really been at the forefront of covering this issue from the beginning, and he joins us tonight from the border in Otay Mesa, California.

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Jacob, it's great to see you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Rachel. So you have been covering this for a long time. Where do you mean bottom line? Where do you think we are in terms of getting some action toward reuniting these families? What do you understand about the pace at which the Biden administration is working and why this rollout is slower than they told us to expect? I think of President Biden, Rachel was was able to launch this task force and announce a plan on day one, he would have done it.

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But what I think the Biden administration is now learning is that this is extraordinarily complicated and it's complicated, not just because of the cruelty and the intentionality that went into this policy to separate five thousand kids, over 5000 kids from their parents, including myself, who were separated and then detained, the namesake of the lawsuit that won the reunification of all of the families right here in Otay Mesa, but also because after the separations, there are so many different distinct groups of separated families and how ultimately President Biden and his administration will deal with them.

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What is the relief that they will offer? Will they bring people back from that side of the border who were separated and their children remain on this side? Will they bring parents deported with their children back to the United States? Will they designate them victims of crimes? There's all kinds of questions they have to answer, and I'm not so sure that they've answered them all yet. Is part of the issue, part of the complexity and potentially the delay here, the issue of accountability, as you say.

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Should they be defined, these folks be defined as as victims of crimes? Is it possible that government personnel, whether they're people in Washington or people who effectuated this policy on the border, may have committed crimes in doing so and that this should be treated as something for which individual people working for the Trump administration and carrying out this policy on behalf of the Trump administration might find themselves legally in trouble for what they did. I think it's a critical question and what vice president now President Biden meant when he was a candidate, you know, saying it's criminal, it's criminal.

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He told our colleague, Jeff Bennett, that he intended for his Justice Department to conduct a, quote, thorough, thorough investigation. Well, that Justice Department has provided a road map into potential criminality with this inspector general report that by name pointed out many key officials in the Trump administration for purposely implementing this policy, including Gene Hamilton, a counsel to Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions himself. And they say in this inspector general's report now that now the administration has that when they did this, the plan wasn't necessarily just to separate and prosecute people here at the border, but administratively separate.

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So we talk about five thousand people being separated. We now know that that number could be far higher, tens of thousands, if not one hundred thousand in that time period had they separated everyone. And so now it won't be up to this task force, which will be led by America's we understand the secretary designate of homeland security in consultation with HHS and as well as state. But separately, will this Department of Justice investigate this and ultimately pursue criminal charges?

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Wow, remarkable. Jacob Soboroff, MSNBC correspondent, who has been has been on this story literally from day one. Jacob, thanks for your time tonight. I really appreciate you joining us, particularly from where you are there on the border tonight. Thank you, Rachel. All right. As I mentioned, President Biden's new White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, joins us live next for the interview. Very much looking forward to speaking with her. That's next.

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By the time she joined then Senator Barack Obama's campaign as a traveling press secretary in 2008, Jen Psaki already had a pretty impressive resume under her belt. She had already worked on a presidential campaign. She'd served as a member of John Kerry's staff during his run for president in 2004. Before that, she'd spent time as a communications director on Capitol Hill. She'd done a stint at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Given that experience, it's no wonder that when she joined the Obama campaign in 2008, she quickly sort of became a fixture when President Obama ultimately was elected.

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Jen Psaki would go on to serve as White House deputy press secretary and then as deputy communications director. After working on the president's re-election campaign in twenty twelve, she shifted to a role as State Department spokesperson where she did daily briefings and she attracted whatever the opposite of a fan club is from the Russian government in particular. Jen Psaki would later finish out the Obama administration as White House communications director. So tonight, as she joins us, Jen Psaki is just eight days into this new role as White House press secretary, the most visible communications role in all of US government.

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But this is not day eight of Jen Psaki responsibility in jobs like this. This is a woman who knows what she's doing. She's she's been through it already. Joining us now for the interview is White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Jen, it is really nice of you to come on the show tonight. I know you have every option in the world. Thanks for being here. Oh, great to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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It is hard for those of us in the press and in the public to get used to there being a White House press briefing every day again. We were accustomed to it for so long. And then when it went away, we lost those muscles immediately. And it feels actually even sometimes hard to keep up. How is it going from your perspective? Well, on the first day, I have to be honest, I got some text from friends who said things like the world is counting on you, we're watching you, and hopefully it all goes OK.

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And there's a little bit of pressure on your shoulders. But, you know, I am I am honored that I get to serve in this role and to serve for this president who, you know, every day is willing to answer my questions and wants to make sure that we're on the same page about the tone we're sending and what he's thinking about issues. And the job is hard, but that makes the job a bit easier. So so far, I'm starting to worry.

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That's good. And hopefully I'm starting to lay the groundwork for rebuilding trust with the public. And that, I think, is really one of my primary goals at this point in time for this job. The trust with the public and not having such an adversarial relationship with the press or the press feels like they are under assault and put it physical danger because of your words. That's also that's also changed from the previous experience from the briefing room. But I have to say, like, I'm already feeling like the presentation that we are hearing from you in the briefing room already feels it is.

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I trust it. And I also feel like it's too nice. I feel like the challenges that the administration has on Capitol Hill are more stark than you have been telling us in terms of the likelihood that Republicans are going to go along with anything that President Biden wants to do. And so it's not it's not a trust issue because I believe you are telling the truth. But I believe I'm just going to put it right to you. I believe you are being too nice about what Republicans are likely to do.

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Do you know something that we don't do or are you or is that a fair assessment?

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Well, look, first, I think you take your you take your guidance from the person you work for and for me, that's President Biden and he starts every day thinking, I want to be able to work with Democrats and Republicans and there's a reason they should work with me because the pieces that are in, for example, this covid package, that is the top priority for him right now are things that Democrats and Republicans across the country support, 70 percent of the public supports them.

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Are Republicans now against reopening schools? Are they against getting unemployment insurance checks to the American people? Are they against getting vaccines in the arms of Americans? So we want to lay this out and speak directly to the people out in the public who are watching the briefing, too, sometimes, or watching clips of it, too, sometimes to really explain to them what we're doing. So I promise you, I've been in this town long enough. So as President Biden, nobody's naive in the White House about how hard it's going to be or none of us think that Republicans are just going to lay lay down and work with us overnight.

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But we feel like we have to try and we have to lay out for the public what we're trying to do and that we are trying to work in a bipartisan way. And then we have a range of tools at our disposal to get relief to the public. If that doesn't work out and if they don't take it up, take us up on it at every opportunity. One of those tools, of course, is reconciliation. I tried to lay out at the top of the show tonight some of the history of how we got the budget reconciliation process and how weird that is.

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But the fact that basically there's probably two shots this year at being able to pass something using that process, which would mean that you could pass something with just a majority vote in the Senate, you wouldn't need 10 Republicans to cross over and beat a filibuster in order to do it. If there are two shots at that. And that is going to be the way that some of this legislation moves, are we right to expect that that would be for the legislation, the American rescue plan, and also for the big jobs and infrastructure bill, the building back better initiative?

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Well, I know there's been some reporting on this, we haven't even proposed the president has even proposed the jobs package yet, which he's going to do soon in coming weeks. But I will say on the covid package, you know, the challenge facing right now, Rachel, as you know and you talked about this on your show, is there's urgency here. You know, if we don't have certainty, if the American people don't have certainty about being able to put food on the table when we hit this unemployment cliff in March, if we aren't able to plan for how we're going to reopen schools, this can't be a game that's played where we wait and wait and wait and negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.

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We absolutely want it to be bipartisan. But this is one of the tools that we can use. And it's, as you noted and you've explained on your show, it's a parliamentary procedure or step. Now, even if it goes to reconciliation, Republicans can still vote for it. There's no blood thing they can't. So we'll keep trying until the end. But but there's an urgency here, and that's really our priority right now. And is it true that the president has been calling Republican senators directly and trying to talk to them about their concerns and trying to assess whether or not they might possibly be yes votes for something like this?

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Yes, it's absolutely true, and having sat in the Oval Office with him when he decides to make one of those calls or when he says he wants to make one of those calls, he doesn't really require a call sheet because it's kind of a very Washington term, but a sheet that tells him exactly what to say to a member of Congress and how to outline the bill. He knows he's known a lot of these people for decades. He has relationships that go way back and it may feel foreign to people, but his view is that it's working how it should work.

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He laid out his bill. He laid out what his vision should be. He listen to really smart policy experts in the health area and obviously economists as well. And people are going to come back to him and say, I don't like this. I want this to be bigger, which some some are saying I want this to be smaller, with which some Republicans are saying and he's going to hear them out and see what's possible. And there are areas, for example, on the targeting of checks and making sure they're going most to the people in need, that he's he's happy to have that conversation on.

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But at the end of the day, he also has his principles and he is not going to break this bill up. He wants pieces that address the vaccine's pieces, that address ensure we're getting checks to people so they can put food on the table and money so that we can reopen schools in the package is not going to break it up. But he's happy to have a discussion about the components of it and the size and things along those lines. And that's what's ongoing.

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But, yes, he picks up the phone sometimes. He says, great, I'll call that. I'll call Senator So-and-so later today or make sure I call. I call that senator. I call them back and have a conversation. And I think that's that gives you a sense of how he's going to govern.

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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Would you mind staying with me for just a second? Have another couple of things I'd love to ask you for, but I have to take a quick break.

[00:39:26]

I'd love to. All right. Back with right back with press secretary right after this. Stay with us. We're back with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Jen, thank you again for doing this. I really appreciate you being here tonight. One of the things you talked about today at the briefing was that we should expect executive orders from President Biden next week in regards to immigration. And that potentially includes what before a lot of people is a long awaited announcement about the reuniting of kids who were taken away from their moms and dads by the Trump administration.

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We heard during the campaign that he planned to issue an executive order on day one, forming a task force that would that would take on that and start working on it immediately. Of course, that did not happen on day one. Can you give us an update on what we should expect on that front? Well, this is something that the president is absolutely committed to, and I you can expect you'll hear more from him on it next week. And as you've done reporting on it, as Jacob was just reporting on earlier in the show, this is an issue people have been waiting on for some time, creating a reunification task force that can help finally bring some relief to families who have been cruelly and immorally separated from that as a result of the policies of the last administration.

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So there will be more from the president on that next week. He has had a flurry of executive actions and orders he has taken, including and also put out put forward some legislation, including a comprehensive immigration bill or an immigration bill that addresses and tries to provide a pathway to citizenship. But I know this is something people have been waiting on. Tune in next week and also next week. Rachel, if I may add, one of the areas where he's really focused is rebuilding institutions across government and rebuilding trust, not just, of course, in the podium.

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I promise not to be so nice tomorrow, but but also in the career public servants. And next week, he's going to go visit the State Department and thank them for all of the work they do and really showcase what what how government works and how incredible the men and women who serve and have been serving for decades are. And that's something that I know is as close to his heart and something we hope to highlight next week to. In terms of the task force on reuniting kids that it's been it's been said that possibly the new Homeland Security secretary, soon to be Secretary Mayorkas, would be heading up the task force.

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It's also been reported that the first lady, Jill Biden, in her office, her chief of staff, may be involved in some way with that task force. Can you just can you confirm that for us and tell us more about what we should expect there? Obviously, this is something where the American people I think I think it's fair to say, feel like this is a gaping moral wound that needs to be fixed. There are questions potentially of criminal liability for officials who effectuated this policy under Trump.

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Can you just give us a little more about how that will work? Sure, and some I can give you and I will say when when initially when reports of families being separated was what was happening, was covering all the news. My son was a baby. And I think watching as a mother, it just still makes my heart hurt. So I joined many, many Americans who are watching and others around the world. You know, I think this is an issue that Dr.

[00:42:49]

Biden has taken paid close attention to and as a mother herself, that that certainly will continue to be the case. She actually met her chief of staff, currently her current chief of staff, when they took a trip to the border together or they met prior to that. But they did take a trip to the border together. It will be an issue that really follows closely. But we'll see. She's not going to be leading the task force or anything.

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I'm sure she'll be following closely, as Dr. Biden will be as well. But I would expect the New Yorkers, who we hope will be confirmed soon, will be playing a prominent role leading this effort, overseeing and, of course, out of the Department of Homeland Security. And we'll have more to share soon about the members of the task force and how it will work as we look ahead to address this really horrific, horrific challenge. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, thank you so much for your time this evening.

[00:43:43]

It is fantastic to see you back at the podium every day. And I know that it is not an easy thing to do. But even when people disagree with you and even when you were describing things that may or may not be popular, the fact that you are they are doing it every day is a really important thing for our democracy. And it just it's it's it's a it's the Lord's work. So go with God.

[00:44:04]

Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. Appreciate it. Thanks for what you do as well. All right. I'll be right back. Stay with us. I was as shocked as you were today to realize waking up that it's not Friday, today wasn't Friday, but it has come to my attention that today is Friday eve and that means more than you can possibly know.

[00:44:29]

We'll see you again tomorrow night on The Rachel Maddow Show weeknights at 9:00 Eastern on MSNBC.