Monday Morning Politics: Afghanistan Withdrawal; Vaccine Goals; Crime & Police

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom filling in for Brian Lehrer, who is on vacation this week. Coming up on the show today, we'll talk to Brooklyn State Senator Zellnor Myrie about two of the biggest local stories of late, the primary election, and specifically how the board of elections is run and gun violence. Plus how we're doing locally on COVID vaccinations. Later in the show, we've got a list of outdoor arts events for you to add to your personal cultural calendar.

To start, the United States is moving out of Afghanistan after President Biden ordered a complete withdrawal after two decades of American military involvement. Today, the top US general there will step down while security concerns are on the rise. Here at home, President Biden's Chief Medical Advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci made the rounds on Sunday morning shows yesterday as the nation hits a vaccination roadblock with only 48% of Americans fully vaccinated according to the Associated Press and a growing risk from the more transmissible Delta variant. With gun crimes on the rise, President Biden is set to meet with leaders from across the country in Washington DC today to discuss strategies for combating this violence. Brooklyn Borough President, Eric Adams, who just locked in the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor last week is expected to attend that meeting at the White House. Then tomorrow the president will deliver a major speech outlining the Democrats' plans to defend voting rights, an issue Republicans have been seizing on since the election. To talk about all of this in our Monday Morning Politics segment, we are joined by White House reporter for the AP, Jonathan Lemire. Jonathan, welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan Lemire: Hey, good morning. Great to talk to you. Always glad to be here.

Brigid Bergin: Let's start with Afghanistan. President Biden made the call to withdraw US troops back in April, but he's been forced to defend this policy decision including remarks he made just last week. Here's a little bit of what he said.

Joe Biden: The United States did what we went to do in Afghanistan, to get the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and deliver justice to Osama Bin Laden and degrade the terrorist threat to keep Afghanistan from becoming a base in which the attacks could be continued against the United States. We achieved those objectives. That's why we went. We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build and it's the right and the responsibility of Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.

Brigid Bergin: Jonathan, this is a decision long time in the making. Is this really the extent of the argument President Biden is making?

Jonathan Lemire: Well Brigid, he's been saying this long before he was President Biden. He has, for some years now, questioned the wisdom of keeping a permanent force or near-permanent force in Afghanistan. When he first announced this withdrawal a few weeks ago, he made a point of saying that there had been four presidents now, he was the fourth to command troops that were in Afghanistan, that he wasn't going to hand it on to a fifth. The top US commander in Afghanistan General Scott Miller, he relinquished control just this morning. The drawdown is very much underway though President Biden said it would be August 31st before all troops are out. To be clear, a small force would be left to secure the embassy there but this is a controversial decision. The foreign policy establishment here in Washington, a number of Republicans certainly as well have questioned whether or not this is the right idea, but Biden keeps returning to the theme, he cannot ask American families to lose another son or daughter in this so-called endless war

Brigid Bergin: Let's touch on that debate a little bit. The president's language is pretty cautious. As we just heard, he said the United States did not go there to nation-build. He's also said that the mission there has not failed yet. We know that there are a lot of open questions about the future of this extremely fractured country but it doesn't seem to be an issue that is getting a lot of national attention in terms of the debate that might be going on in foreign policy circles. What are you hearing coming out of the White House and surrounding this decision?

Jonathan Lemire: That's certainly true. Polling suggests this position is broadly popular. Majority of Americans want to bring those soldiers home. It was, of course, Biden's predecessor, then President Trump who initially authorized this withdrawal and Biden delayed the timetable somewhat but is sticking to the plan. He has admitted it could be hard going. He said the other day that he did not expect that one government will control the whole country, giving a nod to the idea there could be separate fiefdoms there within Afghanistan, and it does seem, and this is very worrisome that nearly every day, the Taliban seems to make more and more advances in terms of gaining more territory. Certainly, there are a lot of people there who feel very worried and an immediate decision that is the president and his team are working on is the fate of the translators there, those Afghani citizens who helped US officials, namely the US military for so long who now may be in real jeopardy with the Taliban resuming power and there's efforts underway to speedily get them out of the country.

Brigid Bergin: Jonathan, before we shift to domestic issues, one question on Haiti. As the country faces ongoing instability after the assassination of their president, Jovenel Moïse last week, the country has requested US troops to help stabilize the country. Where does the Biden administration stand on this issue right now? Particularly, it seems to come in such direct contrast to what we're just talking about in terms of what's happening in Afghanistan.

Jonathan Lemire: They haven't made a final decision one way or the other but right now, according to our reporting as well as from other outlets, they're leaning against sending a military presence there, sending troops on the ground to Haiti. Right now, there is a team of senior FBI agents, Department of Homeland security agents. We received an update from the White House just this morning saying that they're there, they're doing an assessment, they're analyzing what happened there. Certainly, the scene has grown increasingly chaotic at the assassination. There is concern.

This is something that's happening in our backyard. Haiti, right there in the Americas and it's such a challenged nation particularly after the 2010 devastating earthquake, and of course, that only exacerbated the extreme poverty in some portions of that country. This is something that is certainly on the White House's radar screen and but we've heard pretty consistently including from a top Pentagon spokesman yesterday being reluctant to the idea to committing forces there. At least at the moment that doesn't seem to be on the table.

Jonathan Lemire: So interesting. Listeners, do you have a question about the president's handling of some of these foreign policy decisions in Afghanistan or Haiti or about the president's efforts to increase COVID vaccine [inaudible 00:07:17] defend voting rights or tackle rising crime rates? Your comments and questions for AP White House reporter Jonathan Lemire, call us at 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Again, that number is 646-435-7280. Here at home, Jonathan, Americans aren't still confronting the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and really the need to increase vaccination rates. Dr. Fauci was on television pretty much everywhere yesterday talking about it. Here's a little bit of what he said on ABC's This Week.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: This is no time for politics. This is a public health issue and viruses and public health don't know the difference between a Democrat or Republican or an Independent. One of the ways to do that is to get trusted messengers without any political ideology, differences out there that could be clergy, that could be trusted messengers in the community, that could be your family physician to get people to put aside this political issue and say, "What am I going to be able to do for my own safety and for that of my family?" We've got to get away from the divisiveness that has really been a problem right from the very beginning with this outbreak.

Brigid Bergin: Now, Politico and others have reported of the interesting Catch-22 faced by the Biden administration related to the slowdown in vaccinations. They reported administration officials argue that it's actually a side effect of the government's largely than anticipated vaccine rollout. Good thing that it was fast but bad that so many people are still uncertain about it, and that the politics are still very much at play here. We heard that in this next clip I want to play for you, again, from ABC's This Week, this time with Republican, Governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson and his response to hearing some of the Biden messaging on this. Let's play this. It's a little bit of a longer clip.

Joe Biden: We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door, literally knocking on doors to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus.

George Stephanopoulos: Now, he made it clear that he didn't mean having federal officials necessarily be going door to door, but there is a federal outreach effort. Are you going to be cooperating with that? How do you respond to some of your fellow governors in the south who say they don't want the federal government to have any part of this?

Asa Hutchinson: We have a low vaccination rate, we want all the help we can in order to accomplish a mutual goal in increasing vaccinations long before president Biden said that. We have community organizations that's helping us. We have churches that are going into homes. We have people that go into those that are bedridden so that they can have access to the vaccine. There's nothing dramatic about what the president said in itself. No one wants an agent knocking on a door, but we do want those that do not have access otherwise to make sure they know about and have the information. Not everybody goes on the internet and not everybody has that access and so how do you get information to them? We want to have our churches involved, we want to have our communities, organizations and if it means going into a community door by door and letting them know of this, then that's okay.

Brigid Bergin: Jonathan, a lot of politics at play there when we address these COVID vaccination gaps. From your coverage of the White House and from your coverage of this issue, to what extent are there political obstacles that are individuals that are leading to the limits in vaccination rates in other parts of the country?

Jonathan Lemire: Sure. Politics play a huge role in this, if you look at the states with the highest activation rates, they are all with nearly no exception, Blue States, those that voted for President Biden and the states with the very low vaccination rates are Red who voted for Donald Trump in the fall. Certainly, we touched upon them in the go. For some people, the idea of how quickly this vaccine was developed, far quicker than the vaccines are normally created, gives them some pause. Hesitancy has this been thoroughly vetted and tested, even though there are so many assurances from public health officials now for months and months, but it's become more of a political issue. I'd point to CPAC, the conservative local action group. They had a gathering over the weekend in Dallas and yesterday someone noted the low vaccination rate in these Republican states and the crowd cheered.

It's part of their political identity in some ways and they took your cues largely from former president Donald Trump, who instead of touting the role, his administration barely played in creating this vaccine, [unintelligible 00:12:13] development, they put a lot of money into it. Instead, he received his shot in private, doing so during the moment where he was contesting the election, he has never given a full-throated endorsement to people to take the vaccine. He has started to interview, started mentioning, "Oh, it's a good vaccine, people should get it," but it's never been like the centerpiece of what he says. His focus is far more on complaining, frankly, that he hasn't gotten enough credit for the vaccine.

At this point, as this moment shows, the reluctance to take the vaccine has become almost an ingrained part of a certain element of the right of the Republican party, as well as a different matter, a lot of young people who just think that they don't need it because there's a you're invincible to the disease. These are worrisome buckets of folks and the White House is concerned because as long as there are big pockets of people who are not vaccinated, there's a chance for the virus to spread. We know that the Delta variant is far more contagious and it seems to be affecting almost exclusively those people who are not vaccinated and the longer a strain of the virus stays around, whether it's in the US or domestically, the greater the chance a new variant will be developed. One that might even be able to get around the vaccine. This is something that they are really pushing and they recognize the top-down messaging from the White House really hasn't worked and they're trying to enable local leaders, community leaders, churches, local doctors to be the ones to really convince people to take the shots.

Brigid Bergin: Do you have a sense from administration officials of when, or if they think they will be able to reach their vaccination target rates? The president had a very clear goal that we did not hit earlier this summer. As you've just laid out, there are a lot of implications of being so far away from this goal. Not only the increase in potential variants but if we think about an economic recovery for the entire country, we're facing real limits in the ability to do that if parts of the country potentially need to face shot-downs again because of widespread hospitalizations or increased COVID cases. What are you hearing out of the White House about this issue?

Jonathan Lemire: Right. It's the impact on others, which is so frustrating to a lot of people that people refuse to get the shots. It's not just they're endangering their health but others. Also if there is a major outbreak again, we could see things start to close up. We've even seen some mass requirements be re-installed, in certain communities, at least, we're indoors. The White House, yes, you're right. The president's vaccination goal by July 4th was not quite met. They believe they'll hit that sooner than later but even that's not enough. That was meant to just be a benchmark.

At this point, there is real concern that we will never quite achieve the quote herd immunity which will be so needed to really squash out this virus this year or so. When you combine that with the incredibly low vaccination rates across the rest of the world, the US despite the frustrations here at home is still doing leaps and bounds better, more than nearly any other nation on earth but there's a sense that this virus is going to be with us for a while. It will run its course but it may be years still which of course is a depressing thought for anyone.

Brigid Bergin: You're listening to the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC, I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian today. My guest right now is associated press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire. We're going to take a short break now, when we get back, we'll take your calls. Plus, we'll preview a speech president Biden will make tomorrow on the Democrats' plans to defend voting rights. Stay with us.

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It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian. My guest is AP White House correspondent, Jonathan Lemire. Listeners, the lines are open to you. If you have any questions, whether it's about the president's efforts to increase COVID vaccination rates, on foreign policy issues related to Afghanistan or Haiti, on his upcoming speech to defend voting rights and what will be happening at the White House today, a meeting to talk about tackling rising crime rates. Your comments and questions for AP White House reporter, Jonathan Lemire. You can call us at 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Jonathan, I just mentioned it but today at the White House, the president is scheduled to meet with leaders from around the country to talk about rising crime and specifically gun violence. Eric Adams, the city's Democratic mayoral nominee will be there. Who else is going to be at this meeting? What are you going to be watching for?

Jonathan Lemire: Certainly, Brigid, this has become an issue of real concern for the White House and Democrats at large. As polling suggested, crime is becoming more of a focus for voters. We certainly do see that violence has increased and gun violence, in particular, in some parts of the country. Certainly, Republicans are using it as a potential cudgel to bash Democrats. Now to be clear, President Biden, he did during the campaign, and he's doing so now, has never been part of the so-called quote defund the policeman movement. He has that in common with Eric Adams, who you correctly note will be at the White House later today. White House aides feel that he is fairly inoculated from some of these attacks, but he also has to do something. He is in charge, and there is an effort for more of a federal mobilization.

Also at the White House today, as part of this meeting, he'll have the mayors here with Washington DC, Mayor Bowser, the Mayor of San Jose, California, various police chiefs across the country, including those from Chicago and Newark and some community-based violence intervention experts, as well as a Borough President Adams. It's not clear that there will be new initiatives technically rolled out today. It's more of an emphasis on stuff they've already done and expect to hear from the president, again, a call to Congress to pass some sort of meaningful gun legislation. I know there's been some movement on perhaps an expanded background check law but right now, that seems fairly stalled and the president, his team feel like they've done about all that they can by executive order.

Brigid Bergin: Jonathan, last summer after George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, there were demonstrations across the country, including of course, here in New York, demanding police reform. Where does that reform conversation fit into what's happening in DC today?

Jonathan Lemire: The president has made clear that he wants to proceed on both tracks. We've heard from him on this issue just about two weeks or so ago. The fact that he's having another event on the same matter shows it's important to the White House, but he said that he certainly wants to be supportive of police in efforts to bring down crime, this surge we're seeing, but he also wants to move forward with police reform. He has spoken powerfully about the George Floyd verdict, so has the vice president, Kamala Harris. He has met with civil rights leaders on a number of occasions about this. There has been some progress on a police reform bill in the Senate that has some Republican support. Tim Scott of South Carolina has been leading the GOP push, but there haven't gotten there yet. There had been real hope to get that done by the anniversary of Floyd's death which was late May, we're now six weeks beyond that. There was thought it might be in June, that hasn't happened. Still, aides on both sides say they think they'll get there, but they're not sure when.

Brigid Bergin: You covered New York City politics for a long time before covering the White House. What role do you expect Eric Adams to play in the conversation today and moving forward?

Jonathan Lemire: Yes, it's a big stage for Eric Adams, and I will say that White House aides though, certainly the president didn't have any role in the mayor's race, he didn't endorse and I don't believe he and Adams have much of a personal relationship, but there's a similarity in terms of some of their politics. The White House aides think that the working-class voter, those outer-borough voters that Adams won in the primary look similar to the coalition that Biden was able to stitch together for him to win. He was much more of a moderate candidate than say, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, just like Adams certainly was not nearly as far left as say Maya Wiley or some of the other candidates in the New York City race. I think there is a little bit of a kinship there and they have similar theories on policing as well as just noted. Opponents of the defund the police movement certainly, though both have also called for reforms to policing. It'll be interesting to see what their dynamic looks like today. I'm eager to watch.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to the phones. Amy in Manhattan, welcome to WNYC. What's your question for Jonathan Lemire?

Amy: I want to ask about the situation and I'm just wondering like any cases where a power that is interesting in the country has actually successfully withdrawn [unintelligible 00:21:13]

Brigid Bergin: Amy, I'm sorry, we're having a little bit of trouble hearing your call. Thanks for calling in and please call us again. I think the piece of it that I heard Jonathan was related to examples of success of withdrawal, which may be a little bit outside of your purview but did you hear more of it than I did?

Jonathan Lemire: Oh, you know me, I'm willing to talk on anything.

[chuckles]

I think there's the immediate comparison though and that is what I heard as well is Iraq. That's the most recent example and obviously, when the US troops pulled out of Iraq, things did not go well. It required them to have to send some back. That is something that this White House is keenly aware of and they say they don't want to but there certainly have been as per our earlier discussion those in the foreign policy community who believed that someday the US will have to send some forces back to Afghanistan in order to stabilize the situation. Only time will tell if that's happened. The president and his team have certainly not sent signals that's something they want to do. They want to limit their presence there to this relatively small force to secure the embassy, maybe help with some of the airfields while relying on other partners, namely Turkey to do the same.

Brigid Bergin: Let's take another caller. Greg in Stanford. Greg, welcome to WNYC.

Greg: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call. Listen, there's a massive labor shortage in the country, industries. I'm in the hospitality industry. We can't find workers and part of it is obviously the federal $300 check. Can't the president, just get up and say, listen, we'll keep sending you the check, just go back to work. I'll look to you for your answer.

Brigid Bergin: Thanks so much, Greg. Jonathan's thoughts on federal support for workers?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, that call I heard clearly. I think that the president has certainly-- this is something that they're watching. They understand that right now that they were heartened by the jobs report of last week. It showed a huge number of jobs come back, the employment rate actually did tick up a smidge. They know that there are jobs out there that employers are trying to fill and they just can't. The benefits of course will run out at some point and there's certainly a lot of debate right now in terms of how much more federal money should be pumped into the economy if there's an inflation and such.

Certainly, the president and his team are moving fully ahead with their big infrastructure bill, both the bipartisan part and then the even sleepier section they're going to do by reconciliation. They're not backing off of that. In fact, the president himself has said that he feels like this is a moment that's good for the American worker because they should be able to be paid more if there's such a demand for their services. That at least for now is the tack he's taking. The economy though largely good, it is there are warning signs that recovery maybe won't be as long-lasting as people thought, there is worries about inflation. It's something the White House is tracking carefully.

Brigid Bergin: Let's pivot to another issue that the White House is focused on. You're going to be with the president tomorrow in Philadelphia, where he's going to deliver an address expected to bolster the Democrats' position defending voting rights. This is an issue that's been a real stumbling block both in terms of the policies they're pushing and their ability to change filibuster rules just to get it done. Can you give us any preview of what to expect from the speech tomorrow?

Jonathan Lemire: The president has called this the cause of his presidency, but at least to this point, he hasn't had a full-core press on the issue. White House aides say that'll start tomorrow. He's traveling to Philadelphia, I'll be with him and giving a speech at the National Constitution Center talking about just the sanctity of the ability to vote. That it is a constitutional right hence the backdrop but where things go are stalled. We know there are a number of state legislatures, Republican statements lectures that have restricted access to the ballot. There are Democrats who say, this is an existential crisis, not just for their ability to say retain power next year's midterms, but going forward, that voters are being disenfranchised, particularly, minority voters. The same minority voters who helped elect Biden last year.

He has met with the voting rights advocates. He has met with civil rights leaders. A number of them will be invited to the speech tomorrow and they are championing-- The department of justice is doing--- they're encouraging litigation, but pretty much everyone on the side, Democrats, believe the only meaningful change will come by a federal legislation. That seems really stalled, there are two different, big voting rights packages HR-1 and HR-4, John Lewisville that have both stalled in the Senate. Republicans won't even bring them up for a debate and it seems like the only way around that would be to change the filibuster rule.

Something that Biden has not committed to doing, although he has inched towards it a little bit but even if he does, it's unclear whether those moderate democratic senators, namely, Manchin in West Virginia, Sinema in Arizona, but there may be others who just are more quiet about it would be willing to go with it. If they don't, it remains unclear how they get to that federal forum. I should note the White House aides tomorrow are not previewing a major policy shift from President Biden but rather simply a reiteration of what they've already done and just him using the bully pulpit to just rally people behind this cause.

Brigid Bergin: As you said, Biden has committed to addressing voting rights, in the ways that many of the Republican-controlled state legislatures are trying to restrict access to the ballot box. Even some of his allies, I'm thinking Senator James Cliburn say, he needs to go further to do more in this issue related to the filibuster specifically. You're saying that the White House is not offering any policy previews. Do you get a sense that he's willing to go further? Is this just going to be more of a symbolic moment tomorrow?

Jonathan Lemire: I think tomorrow is largely going to be about the symbolism. I think the timing, whether he goes further, that's later in the summer because I do think right now and there are critics of this on the left. The White House's main focus right now is this infrastructure package, getting this bipartisan deal done. Then turning to this reconciliation package, which could be multiple trillion dollars in the family economy, CARES economy as they put it. I think that's first and then I think they turned to this. That has drawn some criticism from Democrats who say, look, nothing's more important than the right to vote. That's where your energy should be.

Biden, of course, a veteran of the Senate. He knows about sequencing, he knows about legislation and aides have said, they believe this is the appropriate order to do things. I think the time will come later this summer, whether we see Biden really lean on these Democratic senators to make some sort of, even to not necessarily blow up the filibuster but to change it, to make it harder, or to have some carve-outs where voting rights could be accepted. We've seen Republicans do this in the past for federal judges. Maybe there's a way that the filibuster can be altered and to make this possible. That's a debate that is still going to come just a little later this year.

Brigid Bergin: Interesting. Let's go to Mark in East Elmhurst, Queens. Mark, welcome to WNYC.

Mark: Hey, good morning. Thank you, guys. I just tuned in and I just have to point out, it seems like there's not any talk in this Infrastructure Bill at any point of guaranteeing any sick leave in this country or paid family leave. We don't have any of that in this country. I'd like to refute that one employer in the hospitality industry who said he can't find any workers and he thinks it's because of this unemployment. An article I saw a couple of weeks ago said that a couple of these red states that ended the extra unemployment, it didn't change anything. It's the fact that people have other lives they want to live. Then this pay is really not enough for these industries, for the demands that people make in the service industry. I find it very funny this person didn't mention how much he's offering but it's that he can't get any people to work.

Brigid Bergin: Mark, do you work in the hospitality industry?

Mark: Well, I actually am just technically a self-employed contractor with various gigs. Which is another point it's been thinking about, I've discussed with people about how it's really like they're a staffing agency really than an independent contractor. For parts of the pandemic when restaurants shut down, I was able to receive the special unemployment benefits because otherwise I'm not technically employed, I have no benefits, no insurance. The other thing is though even doing that before restaurants were shut down, I left being a manager at a McDonald's because I was there for years, I was their closing manager. They have all the nice words to say thank you, thank you but it's never an increase in pay. I make more money doing Uber eats for McDonald's than actually being a closing manager for them. This is for years now, they're not offering enough money, no benefits, nothing, and then they complain, "Oh, people don't want the job."

Brigid Bergin: Mark, thank you so much for calling with that perspective. I'm sure you are not the only listener who is having that experience. Jonathan, he raises a lot of points about the struggle of workers and the conflicts they face when what's being offered by employers doesn't really meet their basic needs. Do you see the administration or Congress picking up on any of those issues whether it's through the infrastructure bill or in other legislation?

Jonathan Lemire: Well I'll say the White House is going to do this week tap the child income tax credit, something that they really expanded and has done a lot of good for American families. We'll hear from that this week. I will note that on the federal leave there is an element of that in by this proposal, as part of that record reconciliation bill that'll be intended to in tandem with the hard infrastructure bill that's being done in a bipartisan fashion. Now whether that stays in or not remains to be seen. The bill hasn't been written yet, the size of the bill is unclear. We've heard that Biden, initially, his team proposed our $4 trillion. We've had some more moderate suggest they want more like $2 trillion. Bernie Sanders thinks it should be $6 trillion. These are all very big numbers, but it's unclear where they'll end up and what will stay in and what will fall out as it comes together, but that at least was in Biden's initial proposal which he unveiled in April.

Brigid Bergin: Sounds like there'll be a lot more to watch and a lot more to be talking with you about in the future. We're going to have to leave it there. I've been speaking with Jonathan Lemire, White House reporter for the Associated Press. Thanks so much for joining us.

Jonathan Lemire: Happy to come on anytime.

 

 

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