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(people chattering)
(tense music playing)
(helicopter whirring)
JAKE TAPPER: It is a stunning moment, Dana.
The disgraced 45th President of the United States
and First Lady Melania Trump
walking to Marine One for their last ride.
(whirring)
(music continues)
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen,
the President-Elect of the United States,
Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
and Dr. Jill Biden.
(cheering and applause)
(whistling)
Jen Psaki: There was huge security issues that day.
Fears after January 6th
and a lot of steps and precautions
that were being taken.
We couldn't even get close enough
to drive here on our first day.
So actually, all of the senior staff
all met at the zoo
and we got on buses,
and we all were watching the inauguration on our phones.
Chief Justice Roberts: Please raise your right hand
and repeat after me.
I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear.
Chief Justice Roberts: That I will faithfully execute...
Jake Sullivan: I was not out on the mall
watching the speeches,
but rather sitting in the situation room
watching the secure monitors where we had up on the screen
the command centers for DHS and FBI,
because we were worried about the potential
for unrest or violence.
(siren wailing)
President Joe Biden: This is America's Day.
This is democracy's day,
a day of history and hope,
of renewal and resolve.
Antony Blinken: Even in that moment of joy, of renewal,
people were extremely conscious of the inheritance we had.
Thinking about the challenges we were facing at home,
I knew that as Secretary of State,
I would have to be in some way explaining that
around the world.
President Biden: We'll press forward
with speed and urgency, for we have much to do
in this winter of peril,
and significant possibilities.
Much to repair, much to restore,
much to heal, much to build,
and much to gain.
♪ ♪
Hello, Cathy.
Catherine Russell: (on screen) Hello, sir.
Good evening, everyone.
On behalf of the White House Office
of Presidential Personnel,
I am delighted to welcome you
to the swearing in of the day one appointees
of the Biden-Harris administration.
We are joined by hundreds of White House staff
and hundreds more agency appointees, all of us here...
Psaki: There was a nervousness about COVID,
even among us, and we were pretty informed people.
So many of our meetings were done over Zoom.
I'm looking at all your photographs
and I'm supposed to be looking straight ahead,
but I want to take a look at you while I'm talking to you.
Psaki: You know, this was not business as usual.
This was not normal.
It was an incredibly challenging week around here.
Good evening, everyone.
Thank you for joining us on this historic day.
I was doing a briefing for the first time that day,
which also was not typically done.
We just felt it was important
to do a briefing on that first day
to send a message to the world we were going to return
to respect for the freedom of press and that engagement.
President Biden also officially appointed
a COVID-19 Response Coordinator,
a position and team we had already previously announced,
but made it official today
to create a unified national response
to the pandemic.
Jeff Zients: On day one,
the first full day of the presidency,
we only had the small core of a team
here at the White House.
Andy Slavitt: The few of us that showed up in the building,
and I was one of, like, four people
on the COVID team that showed up in the building.
We couldn't even be, uh, near one another.
We all knew that this was going to be a race against time.
Hospitals were full.
Only two percent of the public had been vaccinated.
Zients: In December,
as we started to make the transition,
we kept asking for the plan,
and there wasn't a plan.
So the team came together
and put together a plan.
On that first day,
we knew we were meeting with the President.
Within a couple of hours,
the President was announcing the strategy.
And we didn't have the ability to sign on to our computers.
We had to figure out where to print.
And then the hardest thing was the binding.
(laughs) So, we had a loose-leaf folder,
notebook, alternative or backup plan,
and at the last minute, one member of the team
figured out how to get it bound.
So, just in time, we walked into a press conference where the President,
you know, rolled out the plan.
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Mr. President, how are you?
You're going to be doing a lot of talking
for the next while.
-Nice to see you. -Nice to see you.
Good afternoon.
Today, today, I am unveiling
the National Strategy on COVID-19
and executive actions to beat this pandemic.
Our plan starts with mounting an aggressive,
safe, and effective vaccination campaign
to meet our goal of administering 100 million shots
in our first 100 days in office.
We're on day one.
David Sanger: I'm going down to the White House
for the first time since Biden was elected.
I covered the White House for years
under the end of the Clinton administration
and then through the first six years of George W. Bush.
Then I've been off for a number of years
working on big national security projects.
-Man: Good morning. -Sanger: How are you?
But I'm coming back to the White House this year
and doing it mostly to see
how this team come together
to try to pull the United States
out of the hole that it finds itself in
around the world.
Psaki: Today, uh, the administration announced
a historic new donation
in the global fight to defeat COVID-19.
Sanger: This is a period of such remarkable division
in the country.
From the racial reckoning
that was playing out in the streets
in the summer of 2020
to President Trump's big lie
that he had been cheated out of the election
to the rioting and horror of January 6.
It all played into a Russian and Chinese narrative
that America was in terminal decline.
(newscaster speaking Russian)
(newscaster speaking Chinese)
Sanger: For Biden, the biggest challenge
is to make clear that democracy could be
a winning formula for everybody.
And to do that, he brought back the people he knew best.
Alright.
Sanger: His chief of staff, Ron Klain,
has been with him for years and years,
including as Chief of Staff when he was vice President.
Sullivan: Here or here. Here?
Sanger: He ended up picking as his National Security Adviser
Jake Sullivan, who at 44
was one of the youngest people ever to be in the job,
but had already been his National Security Adviser
as Vice President.
Blinken: Where do you guys want me?
-You're gonna be right here. -Blinken: Alright.
Sanger: His Secretary of State is Sullivan's predecessor,
Tony Blinken, who had served for years
as the National Security Adviser to Biden
while he was in the Senate.
Blinken was also the Deputy Secretary of State
under John Kerry, Obama's Secretary of State.
And Biden brought Kerry back as his climate czar.
Interviewer: Do you mind taking off your mask?
John Kerry: You know, we've grown nervous of it today
because we're hearing about cases.
They put Kerry in the White House
because putting him in the State Department
would have been a little bit uncomfortable.
He would have been reporting to his former deputy.
Man: Okay. You guys gonna sit?
-Man 2: Yep. -Man 3: Yep.
Sanger: For his Secretary of Defense,
Biden chose Lloyd Austin,
a retired general he had known for a decade
and who had been a friend of Biden's late son Beau.
Vice President Kamala Harris: I, William Burns.
William Burns: I, William Burns...
Sanger: And finally, as his director of the CIA,
Biden chose Bill Burns.
Burns had been ambassador to Moscow under President Bush,
and there's no one in the administration
who knew Vladimir Putin better.
Burns: I spent the first decade of my career
as a diplomat at the end of the Cold War.
I would never underestimate in dealing with President Putin
over the last couple of decades, his risk appetite.
(crowd cheering)
(announcer speaking Russian) ...Vladimir Putin!
Blinken: President Biden has a history with President Putin.
They had met when President Biden was Vice President,
a very memorable meeting
that I was part of in the dacha
that, uh, that President Putin had
just outside of Moscow.
Then-Vice President Biden was in the study with Putin.
They were very close to each other.
And Vice President Biden looked at him and said,
"I'm looking in your eyes, and I can't say
that I can see your soul."
And Putin laughed and said,
"Good, we understand each other."
Anne Neuberger: Good afternoon. It's great to be here with you today.
So first, what happened?
Hackers launched a broad and indiscriminate effort
to compromise the network management software
used by both government and the private sector.
An advanced persistent threat actor,
likely of Russian origin, was responsible.
Biden has an immediate problem with Russia,
one he's going to have to deal with
in the next few weeks.
And it's called SolarWinds.
The hack of the federal government
and more than a hundred American corporations
was the deepest, most sophisticated hack
of the United States
that's ever been accomplished.
Russians managed to slip in through this software
that was put out by this company called SolarWinds.
Alejandro Mayorkas: What was remarkable about this
was its sophistication
and the residency, the duration of the residency,
of that intrusion in government systems.
These Russian hackers have been in these US governments
since March and remain there.
This is an ongoing, widespread espionage operation.
The alarm, I think, was quite, um, significant.
It was an alert that we're entering
into a new chapter
in our relationship with Russia.
Neuberger: What are we going to do about it?
Three things.
First, finding and expelling the adversary.
Second, building back better to modernize federal defenses
and reduce the risk of this happening again.
And finally, potential response options
to the perpetrators.
Sanger: They're in a tough spot here.
We know that in the next few weeks,
the United States is going to begin
a series of sanctions against Russia.
But Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser,
has made clear sanctions alone are not enough.
And then the question is, can they establish
some kind of deterrent,
which so far has failed completely?
When you think about the challenge that Biden faces,
he's in the position of being in adversarial relationships
from the start with the two other major nuclear superpowers
in the world, Russia and China.
And the only way he's going to be able to make that work
is if he can organize the allies with him.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield: Because of the past four years,
what I heard from my colleagues was, "Welcome back."
Thank God you're back. We're so happy to see you.
(indistinct conversation)
Thomas-Greenfield: It was a love fest
my first few weeks here in New York.
Samantha Power: With our fellow democracies having experienced
the US retreat for four years,
there's a sort of a sense of, "Okay, phew,
uh, now we can actually build these alliances again."
But there's also a sense that democracies need
to, to pull together, that we need all hands on deck.
Rep. Adam Schiff: We are really in a global struggle
between democracy and autocracy.
And in the last decade, autocracy has been on the rise.
(shouting)
Psaki: The way we view it, and the President views it,
is that it is an ongoing fight,
and it will continue to be,
because there will always be powers
pushing for autocracy.
Ian Bremmer: The problem is the United States
is in a particularly weak position
to have that argument.
I mean, in terms of how you want a political system to run,
there are, there are countries around the world that would say,
"I might want my country to run like Germany
or Japan or Canada."
There's no one around the world
that looks at the United States and says,
"I wish my political system would run like that."
Crowd: (chanting) USA! USA! USA! USA!
USA! USA!
Well, thank you very much.
And hello, CPAC, do you miss me yet? Do you miss me?
(crowd cheering)
Ron Klain: President Trump's behavior this year
as an outgoing President is certainly unprecedented
and very different than what the other 44 people
who held this office had done.
Michèle Flournoy: Remember how quiet
Obama was when Trump first came in?
He said, "Look, you know, he won. This is his time.
I'm not going to be here criticizing him at every turn."
Trump did no such thing.
Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month
of any President in modern history.
-That's true. -(crowd cheers)
When you look at the polls of Republicans,
you still get a very substantial number,
nearly a majority, who believe Biden is not
legitimately elected President of United States.
I don't know how you get past that.
Donald Trump: This election was rigged.
And the Supreme Court and other courts
didn't want to do anything about it.
(cheering and applause)
Klain: I will say it's probably what we expected.
His behavior as President was unprecedented,
and so there was no reason to think his post-Presidential behavior
would be unprecedented, I suppose.
Woman: Keep going up.
-Okay. -Woman: Okay.
Psaki: We made a conscious decision
when the President came into office
that we didn't want to make his presidency
a continued campaign and battle with Donald Trump.
Alright, guys.
The lesson we took from the American people
was that they wanted to take the venom out of our politics.
Okay, what are follow-ups?
Follow-up on Abbott, and Mexico, on the other side of the border.
The migrants arriving from Texas...
Psaki: President Biden wanted me
to take the temperature down in the country.
There's concern about their treatment.
I don't think we need to, like, change our posture
because it's not everything.
Psaki: After years of questioning
the legitimacy of the press,
not having normal briefings, lying,
I mean, returning to a version of normal.
I don't think we have any update on that,
although maybe we can check and see what the status is.
I think what people have seen is
after the four years that predated President Biden
is, um, you know, US--
what US leadership should look like
and what it looks like to stand up for democracy.
Woman: (on phone) I'll find an answer for that.
(seagulls squawking)
(ship horn blares)
Newscaster: Relations between the United States and China
will face a new test
as officials from both sides meet in Alaska.
The discussions are expected to be frosty,
with Beijing warning that compromise
is not on the cards.
Sullivan: We went to Anchorage,
myself and Secretary of State Blinken,
to meet with our counterparts
from the People's Republic of China
for a multi-hour session
to go through the full range of issues
in the US-China relationship.
Bitterly cold, not exactly a shock.
It was Alaska in the late winter.
Blinken: On behalf of
National Security Adviser Sullivan and myself,
I want to welcome Director Yang,
State Councilor Wang, to Alaska.
And thank you very much
for making the journey to meet with us.
We wanted to be able to tell them directly
our concerns about some of the actions
that China has taken recently,
challenging not just our interests but our values.
Our administration is committed to leading with diplomacy
to advance the interests of the United States
and to strengthen the rules-based international order.
The transition identified a few basic propositions
about what we expected from China.
We believe that the Chinese government
had made a decision that they were going to attempt
to surpass or displace the United States
in terms of being the world's leading economic
and military power.
That this next decade was a decisive decade,
and that we were going to have to deal with a more assertive,
more aggressive China
and that we had to tool-up
and be prepared for this competition.
We've said to them, you want to play,
you want to be a superpower.
With being a superpower comes responsibility.
Uh, with that, there are certain rules of the road
that you have to abide by.
We'll also discuss our deep concerns with actions by China,
including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan,
cyber attacks on the United States,
economic coercion toward our allies.
We wanted an opportunity to explain
how we see the world,
what America's interests are.
And I would say that we actually accomplished
all of those objectives.
Now, there were some of the public fireworks.
Translator: This is not supposed to be the way
one should welcome his guests.
We wonder if this is a decision made by the United States
to try to gain some advantage in dealing with China.
But certainly this is miscalculated
and only reflects the vulnerability and weakness
inside the United States.
I see a confidence level among my Chinese colleagues
that over the years I had not seen before.
They have come in with a, with a sense of power
and a sense of strength.
They came up with this term "Wolf Warrior"
to describe their diplomats.
When you're talking about your diplomats as Wolf Warriors,
that says something.
And that's what was on display in Anchorage.
Translator: We hope that the United States
will do better on human rights.
The challenges facing the United States
in human rights are deep seated.
They did not just emerge over the past four years,
such as Black Lives Matter.
Sullivan: It was a kind of classic whataboutism that we saw
from the Soviet Union back in the day.
It didn't work then. We don't think it's going to work for the PRC either.
It was, "You want to talk to us about human rights.
We're going to tell you about human rights" kind of thing.
So part of my reaction was, we've seen this movie before.
Part of my reaction was,
uh, "Man, they're really going for it."
Sanger: The United States has never seen
an adversary like this before.
Biden knew that for ten years,
Washington was trying to make a pivot to Asia,
but something always got in the way.
And he was determined that he was going to execute on it.
President Biden: Good afternoon.
I'm speaking to you today from the Roosevelt,
the Treaty Room in the White House.
I'm now the fourth United States President
to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan.
Two Republicans. Two Democrats.
I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.
We have to focus on the challenges that are in front of us.
We have to shore up American competitiveness
to meet the stiff competition we're facing
from an increasingly assertive China.
It's time for American troops to come home.
Lloyd Austin: You go back to when we came in ,
a deal had already been struck
that our forces were going to be
out of Afghanistan by May.
The Taliban had said,
"Hey, if you're not out of the country by the,
"by, by, by May 1st,
then we're going to start attacking you again."
So this really doesn't give President Biden
a long time to work through this process.
His choice is to either increase
our footprint significantly
or he can make a choice to, uh, decide to leave.
It's time to end the forever war.
Thank you all for listening.
May God protect our troops.
May God bless all those families
who lost someone in this endeavor.
Sanger: If you listen to the speech, it sounded pretty simple.
We were just going to pick those forces up and bring them home.
Very popular among Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike.
But what was important about that announcement
is what's missing.
There's no plan for bringing out the people
who had helped the American troops,
had helped journalists, had helped contractors,
and who will be targets of the Taliban.
Newscaster: The pace of the vaccine rollout
slowly picking up.
The federal government sending out
an additional one million doses this week
to 6,500 select pharmacies across the US.
Slavitt: The main event was vaccinate more people more quickly,
period, no matter what.
We felt that we were racing against an enemy.
Zients: We quickly deployed the Defense Production Act,
worked with the vaccine manufacturers,
helped them get additional equipment,
raw material.
So we were able to lock in in the first few weeks of the presidency
enough supply for all Americans by July.
And then we were able to accelerate that.
And actually by April 19th,
all Americans were eligible for the vaccine.
In my first full day in office,
I outlined for you a comprehensive strategy
to beat this pandemic.
We've spent every day since attempting to carry it out.
But that wasn't the only problem. Not just supply.
There weren't enough vaccinators.
President Biden: We're mobilizing thousands of vaccinators
to put the vaccine in one's arm.
There weren't enough places for people to get vaccinated.
President Biden: Calling active duty military,
retired doctors and nurses, administrators.
Slavitt: We stood up these big federal FEMA sites.
We created a Web text line for people
to be able to find a place to get vaccinated.
Newscaster: Things are slowly changing.
Newscaster 2: 32.8 million Americans
have received at least one dose.
That's about 10 percent of the population now.
Newscaster 3: Nearly 90 million Americans
have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Zients: The President had set a goal for us
of 100 million shots in 100 days.
We did 100 million shots in 58 days.
Power: President Biden's ability to get the country vaccinated
and back to work, that's democracy delivering.
And that is the debate that we have struggled
to have in recent years,
because we weren't able to do
in the last four or five years those, those big things.
If we do this together, by July the 4th,
there's a good chance you, your families, and friends
will be able to get together in your backyard
or in your neighborhood and have a cookout
and a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day.
♪ ♪
When we came in, of course,
the most dominant thing has been COVID,
and that certainly changed the way
that, uh, that we were doing business.
Well, good morning.
Well, good afternoon. Good evening.
Let me start by thanking China and Foreign Minister Wong
for initiating this critical discussion.
COVID has been an enormous crimp on diplomacy.
Hey, folks.
Diplomacy is always better
person-to-person, country-to-country like that.
Thank you very much, President Fernandez,
for your leadership
and thank you for convening this timely conversation.
Thankfully, we got to the place where we could start to,
to get out there, actually see people.
Good morning.
Great, great to see you.
We've had the opportunity to see each other
and work together in Brussels at NATO,
but it was mask-to-mask and now it's finally face-to-face.
So that's really, really good news. So a lot...
When you think about any of the challenges that we face,
whether it's COVID, whether it's climate change...
Lots to talk about. I'm just grateful for the opportunity
to be able to spend some time today.
...not a single one of them can be effectively addressed
by any one country acting alone.
Even the United States.
With Russia, the way President Biden sees it is this,
it makes the most sense for us
to see if we can have
a stable, predictable relationship.
Please, have a seat.
On the other hand, we've also been equally clear
that if the Russian government chooses to act aggressively
or recklessly challenging our interests,
challenging our values,
threatening friends or partners, we'll respond.
(camera shutter clicking)
Sullivan: In late March, heading into April,
we began to see indications
of a massive Russian military buildup
around Ukraine.
The President received multiple briefings
from his intelligence community, his military experts.
Austin: Our concern is that nations respect
some measure of a rules-based international order
where countries don't arbitrarily attack
other countries and change the borders.
I mean, we've heard Putin say before
he thought the fact that the Soviet empire broke apart
was one of the worst things
that he had ever witnessed in his lifetime.
So does he have a desire to, to reconstitute something
that looks like that?
I mean, that could be the case.
(Sergei Lavrov speaking Russian)
(reporters clamoring)
Blinken: We made clear that these actions are simply unacceptable
and are not going to go unanswered.
They're not going to be allowed to happen with impunity.
(reporter speaking)
You saw the international community
in many countries stand up and raise concern and alarm
about the buildup of Russian forces on Ukraine's border.
And in the weeks after that, we saw Russia pull back
many of its forces and much of the equipment.
Not all. It still represents a real concern.
Victoria Nuland: I think at that point the Russians were surprised
at how quickly,
now that we were actually talking to our allies again,
we were able to pull together a more united response.
But they sometimes tactically de-escalate.
It doesn't mean that they strategically de-escalate.
I think it remains to be seen.
♪ ♪
Sanger: This is the second stop
on a very carefully choreographed
first foreign trip for President Biden.
(speaking in native language)
The Group of Seven meeting that just took place
in Western England
was really about demonstrating that the alliance is back.
The meeting here in NATO is to play the anti-Trump.
To say that our obligations to our NATO allies
to come to their aid, is what Biden has called
a sacred obligation of the United States.
The change is obvious.
After four years of an administration
which had shaped the foreign policy of the US
in a way which made the functioning of alliances
quite challenging,
it has created positive expectations.
Dame Karen Pierce: I want America to be
the leading nation in the world.
But the Biden administration faced
a potentially very large challenge.
Allies were looking at them very warily.
Sanger: Even among the European leaders.
you're hearing this set of doubts
about whether or not Joe Biden,
who they're delighted to meet here in Europe,
is actually the blip, not the change.
But each of these officials have their own dynamics
that are keeping them
from fully signing on to the Biden agenda.
They're willing to stand up to China,
but not so willing that they're going to cut off
all their trade in luxury German cars.
Yeah, they're willing to go stand up to Vladimir Putin,
but not so willing that they will cut off the pipeline
that's bringing them natural gas
direct from Russia and routing around Ukraine.
So everybody's engaging in their own hedging strategies.
And meanwhile, President Biden wants
to show up at Putin's doorstep
and basically say, "You're outnumbered."
Newscaster: Tonight, President Biden in Geneva,
just hours before that critical
face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin.
A major test for President Biden
who requested this summit.
Sullivan: It's important to recognize
how this summit came into being.
President Biden called President Putin
and said, "I'm going to impose a series of sanctions on you
"for what you've done with SolarWinds
"and what you've done with election interference.
But I want to sit down and talk."
Sanger: So they arrive at this beautiful estate
where the conference was to be held.
They have this stiff greeting at the entrance way.
And then there was this scrum of Russian reporters
pushing American reporters
as they tried to get into the room.
Reporter: Everyone, take a step back! We're not going in!
One of my colleagues telling me that one of the Russians
put his hand right up to his throat
to get him up out of the way.
(reporters clamoring)
Sanger: So, I would say that the press corps behavior
wasn't all that different from the national behavior.
Sullivan: It was a calm, determined atmosphere
on both sides of the table in Geneva.
There was a sense in the room of we're going to have harsh,
in some cases, unrelenting differences
on various issues.
But this is a channel where we can talk plainly
to one another and come to some understandings.
I would say that the two men
had a depth of familiarity with one another.
Kind of understood where the other was coming from
in terms of their perspective,
even though they disagreed vigorously on things.
Now, those understandings could be,
"You're going to do X, and I'm going to respond,"
or they could be, "We can work through this."
But that's really what you felt in the room.
(reporter speaking Russian)
(speaking Russian)
Donald Trump could not get his head around the idea
that Ukraine was an independent state.
Biden and all of his team come in and reaffirm
the traditional threat
of the US-Ukrainian relationship.
We have visits by the Secretary of Defense General Austin.
We have more exercises going on
between Ukraine and NATO forces.
For Putin, this is not just an affront,
but it's a bit of a shock.
Did you commit in these meetings
to stop threatening Ukraine?
(chuckles)
(Putin speaking Russian)
From the Russians' perspective, Ukraine may not end up in NATO,
but NATO is ending up in Ukraine.
And that becomes impermissible for Putin.
I communicated the United States' unwavering commitment
to the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
I did what I came to do,
communicate directly, directly,
that the United States will respond to actions
that impair our vital interests or those of our allies.
Now, here's the interesting question:
Did Putin believe him?
Putin might think that the United States,
at the end of the day, is going to come
to the conclusion that it can't risk
getting on an escalation ladder that it can't control.
(military band playing)
Announcer: (on mic) Ladies and gentlemen,
the President of the United States.
("Hail to the Chief" playing)
Slavitt: As we moved to summer, we had gone
from hundreds of thousands of cases a day
to 10,000 cases a day.
We'd gone from thousands and thousands of deaths
down to 200 deaths a day.
We were doing four million vaccinations in a day.
Variants were emerging in other countries,
but there seemed to be a reasonable case
that we would have a limited amount
of case growth come back,
and it would be isolated and targeted in regions of the country.
Just think back to where this nation was a year ago.
Think back to where you were a year ago
and think about how far we've come.
Psaki: We'd seen cases go down.
We had vaccines available for everybody in the country.
We had a lot of resources, um, to fight the pandemic.
Today, all across this nation,
we can say with confidence,
America is coming back together.
(crowd cheers)
But we didn't have a sense clearly
of, uh, the impact of new variants.
(somber music playing)
Newscaster: Residents and officials here
are confused about an outbreak
that is stemming from large July 4th celebrations
that happened here just a couple weeks ago.
Newscaster 2: Out on the Cape, an uptick in COVID cases
serving as a reminder that while the vaccines
are highly effective,
they're still not 100 percent protective.
It became clear that we were going to be dealing
with much higher case counts than we thought.
Newscaster: The Delta variant is now taking hold in the US
Ten percent of new cases now and doubling every two weeks.
(reporter speaking)
It took this sort of very clean story
of vaccinated and unvaccinated,
um, and it said, you know what, it's vaccinated, yes,
but with an asterisk.
There was a wall we were hitting
of people willing to get vaccinated,
and that's when we started to get concerned.
Newscaster: Some states are pushing back,
blocking health officials from promoting the vaccine.
COVID had been a politically divisive issue
around the issue of masks before we got here.
But I believed that when you had a vaccine
that President Trump had boasted that he had developed,
that the FDA under his leadership
had approved the vaccine,
the idea that his supporters would refuse to take a vaccine
that was developed on his watch,
that was approved on his watch,
was something that I did not expect
in the numbers that we have seen.
President Biden: Good afternoon.
Earlier today, I was briefed by our senior military
and national security leaders
on the status of the drawdown of US forces
and Allied forces in Afghanistan.
When I announced our drawdown in April,
I said we would be out by September,
and we're on track to meet that target.
(clears throat) Excuse me. Our military mission...
Blinken: The assessment across the government
was that even in worst-case scenarios,
as our forces withdrew from Afghanistan,
that the Afghanistan government, the Afghanistan security forces,
would hold well into the following year.
Reporter: Is the Taliban takeover
of Afghanistan now inevitable?
No.
I believed strongly that we were going to have
a robust embassy,
an embassy presence in, in Kabul,
certainly through the year, well into the next year.
There's going to be no circumstance for you
to see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy
in the, of the United States, from Afghanistan.
Everything that we planned and did
was based on that assumption.
Newscaster: To Afghanistan, the Taliban seizing control
of more and more territory.
Newscaster 2: Taliban militants blast their way into Kunduz.
Newscaster 3: The Taliban has captured the capital
of Baghlan province.
Newscaster 3: It's the eighth province now
to fall in a short number of days.
Sullivan: On Wednesday, August 11th,
the President convened us in The Situation Room
for an update.
Some of the outlying provincial capitals
had begun to fall,
and he was increasingly concerned
about what might happen in Kabul.
The President posed a series of direct questions
to his national security team
about whether we had to activate
the contingency planning that we had put in place
over the course of several months.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
and the Secretary of Defense recommended to him
that we put the forces
that we had already set in place,
that we put them on what's called
a "prepare to deploy" order.
Afghanistan was the first big international issue
that dominated the airwaves and was on everybody's minds.
Okay. A lot going on today.
We are closely watching the deteriorating security conditions
in parts of the country, uh,
but no particular outcome, in our view, is inevitable.
-Reporter 1: Jen. -Reporter 2: Jen.
Psaki: We were playing catch-up
from the moment the President took office.
Sullivan: Middle of the night on Wednesday night,
or in the early hours of Thursday morning,
I was woken up by a phone call from Chairman Milley,
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
He informed me that the Taliban had taken a city called Ghazni,
which is on the highway approach to Kabul.
And he said, "It's now my judgment
"that it's gone past 'prepare to deploy.' We need to deploy.
And that would be my recommendation to the President."
To the other breaking news, President Biden announcing
he is sending additional troops into Afghanistan
to help evacuate US embassy personnel
and Afghan visa applicants.
Newscaster: Biden defending the drawdown in a statement writing,
"One more year or five more years
"of US military presence
"would not have made a difference
"if the Afghan military cannot
or will not hold its own country."
You keep changing the subject
to whether or not we should be there forever.
And I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about whether or not
this exit was done properly.
Taking out all the service members,
and then you have to send people back in.
That's the definition of,
oh, we shouldn't have taken those troops out
because now we have to send twice as many back in.
The thing that we were up against in that time period
was a very basic tension.
And it was a tension between moving fast
to fly people out
before instability had really set in,
thus potentially triggering that instability,
triggering panic,
um, or standing by the government
who was asking us not to do that.
Blinken: We were in intense conversations
with the Afghan government throughout this period
of August and, and into the middle of the month
to help organize a peaceful transfer of power.
And President Ghani said to me on the phone that Saturday,
"If the Taliban doesn't agree and engage in good faith,
then I will stay and fight to the death."
That was Saturday.
He fled the country the next day on Sunday.
-Sanger: No notice? -No notice.
Newscaster: We begin with Afghanistan
and the dramatic fall of the capital.
Helicopters and black smoke, visible American diplomats,
including the ambassador, evacuated to the airport.
At least 500 staff leaving the country so far.
The embassy shuttered. The flag coming down.
My God. Not only were people pulled out of the embassy,
we were pulling people off of the tarmac.
Newscaster: Chaos at the airport
as thousands of Afghans desperate to get out.
Newscaster 2: Afghan civilians desperately fleeing the airport.
Packed commercial flights fully booked.
Many who work for the US forces searching for visas to get out.
One former translator pleading for Americans to help.
Newscaster 3: Tonight, the worst predictions
for Afghanistan's future coming true.
This country now under Taliban rule.
(people clamoring)
It's an embarrassment.
It's a stain on our national reputation.
Imagine if there were hundreds or even thousands
of effective American hostages
that are trapped in Afghanistan
because of Joe Biden's chaotic,
disorganized, ill-planned evacuation from that country.
President Biden: Let me lay out the current mission
in Afghanistan.
I was asked to authorize, and I did, 6,000 US troops
to deploy to Afghanistan
for the purpose of assisting in the departure of US
and Allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan.
(airplane whooshing)
Operation Allies Refugee has already moved 2,000 Afghans
who are eligible for special immigration visas
and their families to the United States.
In the coming days,
the US military will provide assistance
to move more SIV eligible Afghans
and their families out of Afghanistan.
-(people clamoring) -(gunfire)
Klain: We were executing this incredibly complex,
incredibly difficult,
historic evacuation
of civilians from Afghanistan.
Man: He's a friend.
Klain: It had gone beyond,
I think, anyone's expectations
in terms of the size and scope.
US. US.
Klain: The thing we thought about every day
was would Americans wind up giving their lives
in the service of that mission?
We knew it was a risk. The President knew it was a risk every single day.
We knew there were terrorists in Kabul.
We knew there were terrorists trying to kill Americans.
Burns: To try and ensure that the Taliban
weren't going to in any way
obstruct the evacuation that was underway,
the President asked me to go to Kabul
to meet with Mullah Baradar
and some of the other Taliban leadership.
We met at the old civilian terminal
at Kabul International Airport.
The setting was quite tense around the room
in which we were meeting over a couple of hours.
You know, we had both of our security detachments outside
kind of eyeing each other very warily.
Mullah Baradar reaffirmed that the Taliban were not going
to obstruct the evacuation effort.
Certainly shared the concern
about ISIS threats in that period.
They were seeing much the same threat stream
that we were seeing.
We had incredible intelligence
about attacks by ISIS-K that were in the offing.
Of course, we didn't have the specificity,
but honestly, this was like a, a slow-motion nightmare.
You know it's happening, but you can't do anything about it.
Burns: A couple of days after, I was in The Situation Room
with the other principals getting ready
for a National Security Council meeting
with the President.
General McKenzie, the commander of CENTCOM,
was on the video screen from his headquarters
and mentioned just before the meeting began
that he had just gotten handed a report about an attack
at Abbey Gate at Kabul International Airport.
(people clamoring)
President came into the room shortly thereafter,
and at that point, General McKenzie informed him.
You know, we didn't have, uh,
all the facts all at once.
They kept coming in, and we heard...
the casualty count
go up through the course of the meeting.
Newscaster: We have just learned from the Pentagon.
This is their statement.
"We can confirm that a number
"of US service members were killed
"at the Kabul Airport.
"A number of Afghans fell victim
to this heinous attack."
It causes you to stop and reflect for a minute
and, and think about, you know, what you just heard.
I felt it intensely because
the men and women of my department
had been at those very same gates
for almost two weeks,
helping to pull people to safety.
Burns: I remember the President just paused for,
you know, at least 30 seconds or so
and put his head down because he was absorbing,
you know, the, um,
you know, the sadness of the moment
and the, and the sense of loss as well.
Newscaster: This is not surprising
to this White House and to the Biden administration
because they've been warning publicly for days
that it could happen.
But regardless, a nightmare scenario.
Something they've been very sensitive
to the possibility of.
And it has now happened.
Unquestionably, that day was the hardest day
of the first year, no question about it.
And, uh, you know...
he is the President of the United States.
He is the Commander-in-Chief.
He is also a father and someone who sent one of his sons
to go serve in the Middle East.
President Biden: I believe...
this is the right decision,
a wise decision
and the best decision for America.
We're engaged in a serious competition with China.
We're dealing with the challenges
on multiple fronts with Russia.
The world is changing.
Bremmer: I've known Biden's cabinet,
most of them for many years.
These are not stupid people. They're experienced people.
They're smart people. And they got this really wrong.
Suddenly, they're seen to be incompetent.
Sanger: Had Biden, after he made the decision in April
to pull out of Afghanistan,
immediately begun speeding up the withdrawal
of the Afghans who had helped Americans,
then I think August could have played out very differently.
Instead, by the end of the summer,
there was a sense that things were really falling apart.
Delta was raging.
Newscaster: In April, almost 70 percent of voters
said they approved of the President's performance on COVID.
That number has fallen to 53 percent.
The disapproval has risen to 44 percent.
A dramatic change.
Newscaster 2: The number of new COVID cases
is higher now than during last summer's peak.
Weekly hospital admissions are up more than 40 percent.
Slavitt: We had an opportunity,
and I really do think it was an opportunity,
to show that we, too, could sacrifice for one another.
And I think the question that I most underestimated was,
would we be willing to say that none of us
are more important than all of us?
Or would we fall into the pattern
that most people would have thought
we would have fallen into,
which is to say
that, no, we each individually are more important.
And I think it's one of the reasons we've suffered so greatly.
Newscaster: 700,000 Americans now have lost their lives to COVID.
Newscaster 2: One person is dying in America
every 43 seconds.
Newscaster 3: One in 500 Americans
are dead now.
Bremmer: Biden's first year could be defined more
by COVID than anything else.
Remember, Biden is the guy that said by 4th of July,
if you just stick with me and wear the masks,
we're going to, we won't have to do that anymore.
And that's just not the case.
♪ ♪
Newscaster: World leaders gathering in Scotland
this morning following G20 sit-downs
in Italy over the weekend.
The summit is being billed as the world's last best chance
to curb the climate crisis.
Newscaster 2: More than 100 heads of state
have been arriving in Glasgow this morning.
But in addition to world leaders,
dozens of corporate CEOs,
fund managers, and venture capital firms
will be here over the two weeks.
Noticeably absent will be China's President Xi
and Russia's President Putin.
Kerry: There's a lot at stake here.
In 2018, the IPCC scientists told us
that we really have 12 years
within which we must make and implement
the key decisions to avoid the worst consequences
of the climate crisis.
And, unfortunately, we lost three years
during the Trump administration
where we pulled out of the Paris Agreement.
I do believe that this is our last, best chance
not to solve it all in one blow here,
but to get on the track
where we keep 1.5 degrees alive
as the limit of the raising of temperature
on the planet.
Man: Hello, Senator.
Good to see you've made it out, sir.
Kerry: How are you doing?
Do you think we'll be successful?
I do indeed. Yes, I do.
Keep your fingers crossed then, eh?
Yes, sir. Thank you.
Sanger: By and large, the Biden administration
has been highly disciplined, highly coordinated.
Kerry: I love it, I love the accent.
-Man: I loved that. I love that. -"Keep your fingers crossed."
(laughter)
Sanger: But John Kerry is a former Secretary of State,
a former presidential nominee himself.
This is the last big job of his career.
And he felt like he could say what he wanted to go say.
And so on China,
they were not at times on the same page.
I think it's been a big mistake,
quite frankly, for China,
with respect to China not showing up.
The rest of the world are going to look to China and say,
"What value added are they providing?"
Justin Worland: It came as a surprise that Biden offered
really strong criticism to Xi
for not coming himself to Glasgow
because the Kerry strategy on China
was largely to work behind closed doors,
avoid sort of any open conflicts.
I have to imagine it was strategic.
What we know now is that they were brokering
this sort of last-minute US-China pacts
the last days of Glasgow.
And so one has to assume
there was some pause,
rift, something in the discussions
that would have led
this administration to think this will help.
Newscaster: The US and China have struck
a deal on climate change.
The announcement came during the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
The United States and China have
no shortage of differences,
but on climate--
and climate cooperation is
the only way to get this job done.
This US-China announcement is both huge
and kind of small.
You know, it's small in the sense
that none of this stuff is truly groundbreaking.
But I think in that moment,
just the two of them coming out publicly
and saying, we're going to work together, we're committed,
it was a big deal.
Fiona Hill: The Biden administration came in
as the Trump administration went out,
with a clear focus on China.
China is definitely in that old Cold War terms
of a system challenge,
saying that its system is better than ours.
But Russia's saying, "Hey, it's not just about China.
"We're here and we matter,
and you'd better pay attention to us."
(camera shutter clicking)
Sullivan: In the fall, we began to pick up
a variety of indications
that the Russians were conducting a significant--
significant would be an understatement--
massive military buildup around Ukraine.
They have so much forward firepower
that they are assembling.
Um, it's on a level that is not comparable
to what they did in April.
Sullivan: The President decided that we would begin
down a dual track
of deterrence on the one hand and diplomacy on the other.
So we asked Bill Burns
to go to Moscow quietly.
Burns: The President asked me to go to Moscow
to convey to President Putin
and some of his most senior advisers
our serious concern about what we were seeing.
This was in the midst of the fourth big wave
of the COVID pandemic in Russia.
So Moscow was locked down.
President Putin was in isolation
in Sochi at that point.
I found President Putin to be quite measured
but unapologetic
about Russian concerns about Ukraine.
I think over time his confidence has grown.
In some ways, his appetite for risk has grown.
I think his sense of personal legacy
has probably deepened over time.
I conveyed on the President's behalf
a message of serious consequences
that would flow from a Russian decision
to renew military aggression against Ukraine.
We wanted to communicate that if Putin moved on Ukraine,
there would be severe consequences
from the United States and our allies.
If Putin wanted to go down the diplomatic road,
the United States was prepared to travel that road with him.
Newscaster: President Biden holding a high-stakes virtual meeting
with Russian President Vladimir Putin right now.
The two leaders speaking via videoconference today
as a potential geopolitical crisis
is currently unfolding.
President Biden: Hello.
-(translator speaking Russian) -(President Biden chuckles)
Good to see you again.
I, unfortunately, we didn't get to see one another at the G20.
I hope next time we meet, we do it in person.
(translator speaking Russian)
Blinken: The buildup that Russia was engaged in
was continuing.
(camera shutter clicking)
We had to have, and we did have, deep, deep concern.
Like all the conversations between President Biden and President Putin,
there have now been several in person in Geneva,
by video conference on the phone,
they're very direct, they're not polemical.
There's not a lot of wasted time.
And President Biden made very clear to President Putin
that if Russia committed renewed acts
of aggression against Ukraine,
there would be significant costs.
Sanger: Biden is confronting the question
of how does the United States support Ukraine
without getting its troops
directly into an old-time border conflict
in defense of a country that isn't even a NATO ally?
And when Biden had his teleconference with Putin,
the two men knew one thing:
Whatever Putin did next,
whether he rolled his troops or not,
the US was not going to put its own military
into harm's way to defend Ukraine.
(reporter speaking)
They never were on the table.
And are you ready to send American troops into war
and go into Ukraine to fight Russians on the battlefield?
Look, here's the deal.
I've made it absolutely clear to President Putin,
it's the last thing I'll say,
that if he moves on Ukraine,
the economic consequences for his economy
are going to be devastating.
Devastating.
Blinken: We have proceeded very deliberately
but also, in some cases, quietly.
For example, in December,
the President approved $200 million
for additional defense equipment to Ukraine.
We didn't advertise it at the time.
We just went forward with doing it
because one of the plays in the Russian playbook
is to create, invent,
point to some kind of provocation,
and to use that as justification
for something they'd been planning all along.
And we did not want to play into that,
at least not in any overt way.
Sanger: The question haunting the White House
is whether this is enough.
Because if Ukraine falls,
Russia will, for the first time
since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
be redrawing the map of Europe.
And more importantly, it will be showing
that it believes it can push back on a world
that was dominated by the United States
from the Soviet collapse forward.
Newscaster: On this January 6th,
solemn ceremonies at the US Capitol
replaced the violent scenes of rioters
ransacking the building one year ago.
Newscaster 2: There is still
a political divide that's very apparent
and even with today's ceremonies as well.
Rep. Schiff: Among my many reactions on January 6th
was just mortification
at how we appear to the rest of the world.
This day is a reminder
that Trumpism is very much with us
and that our democracy remains very much at risk.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Let us acknowledge today
our fallen heroes of that day.
I ask all members to rise
for a moment of silence in their memory.
Rep. Jim Jordan: What else are Democrats going to talk about?
They gonna talk about 30-year-high inflation.
They gonna talk about the fact crime is up
in every major urban area.
They gonna talk about 1.7 million
illegal immigrants coming into this country.
They gonna talk about the attacks on the First Amendment.
Um, what are they going to talk about?
Oh, so, January 6th.
Sen. Chris Coons: That today there are members of Congress
trying to act like that wasn't a big deal,
we should just move on,
I find hard to be reconciled with.
Man: (on phone) And there's not much more we can say,
but we'll keep background names
off the record, any reporters...
We started discussing in the fall
what that day would look like
and what that should mean for the President
and what he should have to say on that day.
We all agreed that it was an important moment for him
to be more direct about what that day meant,
what former President Trump's role
in that day meant for history,
and why we need to prevent it from ever happening again.
Alright, guys, um, we will catch up with you soon.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your stuff.
Uh, big day.
President Biden: We saw with our own eyes
rioters menace these halls.
What did we not see?
We didn't see a former President
who had just rallied the mob to attack.
Sitting in the private dining room
off the Oval Office in the White House,
watching it all on television
and doing nothing for hours.
It didn't mean that it was the start of every day
President Biden was going to go out
and talk about Donald Trump.
But that day felt like it uniquely required
President Biden to go out and really be direct
and call out the former President for his role.
President Biden: Those who stormed this Capitol
and those who called on them to do so
held a dagger at the throat of America.
Make no mistake about it.
We're living at an inflection point in history.
We're engaged anew in a struggle
between democracy and autocracy,
from China, to Russia, and beyond.
They're betting that democracy's days are numbered.
♪ ♪
Blinken: Good afternoon, everyone.
Very good to see folks here.
And to those I haven't had a chance
to say this to, Happy New Year.
Um, this morning, NATO's North Atlantic Council
met to discuss our coordinated response
to Russia's military buildup along the Ukraine border
and its increasingly sharp threats
and inflammatory rhetoric.
No one should be surprised
if Russia instigates a provocation or incident,
then tries to use it to justify military intervention,
hoping that by the time the world realizes the ruse,
it'll be too late.
We were working overtime to organize
allies and partners throughout Europe.
They also wanted to make sure that we were proceeding
in a deliberate way and not being perceived
as fueling a fire in any way.
Sanger: Vladimir Putin didn't pick Ukraine for nothing.
He knew that it wasn't a member of NATO.
And I think deep down he thought
the NATO alliance would be splintered
on the question of
whether or not to gather together
to push him back.
When he went into Crimea in 2014,
it took about a year for the allies to get together
and decide on some sanctions.
And by that time, the sanctions were so weakened
they had basically no effect.
Eight years later, Putin was still in Crimea.
Biden wasn't going to make that mistake again.
Blinken sure as hell wasn't going to make that mistake again
because he remembered it vividly from the time
that he was in the Obama administration.
So when they first saw this massing of troops,
they made a very important decision,
which was to declassify their intelligence
as quickly as they could and publish it.
We have information that indicates Russia
has already pre-positioned a group of operatives
to conduct a false flag operation in Eastern Ukraine.
Sanger: Sometimes they went out and announced it.
Sometimes they leaked it to us.
Newscaster: The US National Security Adviser says
more details will be revealed
within the next 24 hours.
In a few cases, they called a few of us in
and did show some sources and methods
just so that we understood they weren't making it up.
They knew it would take a while
to convince the Europeans that this was no bluff.
Blinken: By mid to late January,
not only was Russia still building up forces
to the east and the south,
but it was engaged in a buildup to the north,
particularly sending 30,000 forces to Belarus
under the guise of exercises that gave it the option
to really hit Ukraine virtually from all sides.
It was becoming so clear,
including to allies and partners,
that this was happening.
Psaki: Our view is this is an extremely dangerous situation.
We're now at a stage where Russia could at any point
launch an attack in Ukraine.
Blinken: We said that one of the purposes of our foreign policy
was to defend this rules-based order,
because it comes with certain principles,
certain norms, certain expectations
that grew out of two World Wars.
(speaking French)
If you let an aggression against those rules
go forward with impunity, then you open a Pandora's box.
And you're going to see potentially conflict
and war everywhere.
And that's one way or another going to draw us in.
You've seen country after country
coming together, standing up.
I think it has been a reassertion
of American engagement,
American leadership...
and a recommitment by many countries
to defend this rules-based order.
(reporters clamoring)
(camera shutters clicking)
The discussion today with Mr. Lavrov
was frank and substantive.
We've made it clear to the Russians
that not only would there be
severe economic and financial consequences,
but they would also see more support
to build up NATO's defensive capacities.
John Kirby: As we've continued to see
the accumulation of combat power
and as we have now seen
that, so far anyway,
Mr. Putin has not elected to de-escalate,
all that combined has led us to want to contribute
more capabilities to the Ukrainian armed forces
and be ready to contribute more capabilities to our NATO allies.
Austin: Who knows what's going on in Putin's mind.
Whether or not he believes that the international community
will carry through is one issue,
uh, but what I believe is that our President is very serious.
I believe that other leaders in the region are very serious.
I believe that the world will take this
as a, as a very, very serious issue
if he invades Ukraine.
We just hope that he makes the right decisions.
And, uh, and I'll leave it at that.
Sanger: As Putin was building up his forces,
he went off to the opening of the Beijing Olympics.
The very fact that he was going there was remarkable
because he'd been in complete isolation.
When Bill Burns went over,
he made Burns go over to a Russian government office
and call Putin on the phone.
But he was willing to go see Xi Jinping
and the day that they met,
the two countries turned out
this extraordinarily long document
describing their common interests,
their dedication to working together in the future,
their joint pushback on an America
that sets the rules,
on a West that expands its influence.
A lot of people speculated
that Putin would not begin the invasion
while the Olympics were on
because he wouldn't want to anger the Chinese
by interrupting their big event.
And he held true to that.
(fireworks exploding)
(explosion booms)
Man: Oh!
Newscaster: It was unprovoked,
but Russian President Vladimir Putin
unleashed on Ukraine.
Newscaster 2: We have heard air raid sirens,
loud sirens here in Lviv.
This is in the west of the country.
Psaki: Wednesday night was a really pivotal night for us
as we were looking at what was happening on the ground,
and we were talking a lot internally about
when would we call it an invasion?
When was it the right time to send the President out?
When was it the right time to do a written statement?
The President spoke with President Zelenskyy,
who basically asked him to condemn what was happening
and to keep rallying the world.
I mean, those were his primary asks,
and that's exactly what he went out
the next day and did.
(camera shutters clicking)
Sorry to keep you waiting.
Good afternoon.
The Russian military has begun a brutal assault
on the people of Ukraine.
Without provocation, without justification,
without necessity.
This is a premeditated attack.
Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months,
as we've been saying all along.
(explosions booming)
Sanger: The Biden administration learned a lot of lessons
from the mistakes they made in Afghanistan.
By the time that the Ukraine crisis came along,
they had a better-oiled machine,
and they responded
by getting out ahead of events instead of being behind them.
For weeks, for weeks,
we have been warning that this would happen,
and now it's unfolding largely as we predicted.
Sanger: It will be difficult for any intelligence agency
to predict the outcome of this war
or how the Russian army
or the Ukrainians will ultimately perform.
But on the timing of the invasion,
they got everything right.
As murky as they were about how quickly
the Taliban would take over Afghanistan,
they had the Ukraine thing dead on.
I want to be clear.
The United States is not doing this alone.
For months, we've been building a coalition of partners
representing well more than half the global economy.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, says
that he is suspending
the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with Russia.
(speaking French)
The European Union remain resolutely united
as it takes the next step
in close coordination with its partners.
Sanger: You know, for the first half of the year,
we heard Biden talking about reestablishing old alliances,
listening to people,
building up what Donald Trump had tried to shatter.
And, you know, I think to most of the country,
that sounded like diplomatic gobbledygook,
like, yeah, sure, it's nice to get along with allies.
But Biden knew something, which was the moment would come
when you would need that alliance.
It came with Ukraine.
(explosions booming)
Thomas-Greenfield: The United States and our allies and partners
will continue to respond
to Russia's actions with unity,
with clarity, and with conviction.
Woman: How many White House staffers does it take...
To open a package of gum?
Don't tell Dr. Fauci how many pieces of gum I've swallowed.
This last week, because of the confluence
of a number of events
that in many ways were unrelated...
-Hi! -Man: Hi there. How are you?
Psaki: ...it was a wild, crazy, exhausting week here.
(indistinct chatter)
One of the more challenging weeks,
uh, since we started.
Sergeant at Arms: Madam Speaker,
the President of the United States.
(cheering and applause)
President Biden: Six days ago,
Russia's Vladimir Putin sought to shake
the very foundations of the free world,
thinking it could make it bend to his menacing ways.
But he badly miscalculated.
He thought he could roll into Ukraine,
and the world would roll over.
Instead, he met with a wall of strength
he never anticipated or imagined.
He met the Ukrainian people.
(cheering and applause)
He thought he could divide us in Europe as well.
But Putin was wrong.
We are ready. We are united.
And that's what we did. We stayed united.
Hang on. I was just about to call you.
I'm just disentangling my headphones.
Hang on just a second.
What's the biggest thought
that we're taking away from this?
So when Biden first raised,
you know, autocracy and democracy
at his first press conference a year, a year ago,
uh, this wasn't, this wasn't the battle he had in mind.
-Yeah. -Dick Stevenson: Right.
(keys clacking)
Sanger: Ukraine is going to be a constant diplomatic
and military effort.
It will haunt the next three years of his presidency.
What do you do if this ambitious,
deadly gambit by Putin succeeds
and no one really knows
what the world will look like
5 or 10 or 15 years from now.
Will this stick?
President Biden: Now is the hour.
Our moment of responsibility,
our test of resolve and conscience,
of history itself.
We'll meet the test, protect freedom and liberty,
and we will save democracy.
(applause)
Blinken: Others are watching.
Others are listening.
Others want to see how we're responding
to this challenge,
including China.
And so the potential repercussions
go well beyond Ukraine, well beyond Europe.
That's why this is important. That's why it matters.
♪ ♪
(upbeat music playing)
♪ ♪