♪♪ >> Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, a new president faces big problems in his first 100 days.

President Biden has laid out an aggressive agenda, but will a deeply divided Congress be able to get anything done?

I'm talking to lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and is part of the slimmest of Democratic majorities.

And freshman Congresswoman Nancy Mace is a newly elected Republican from South Carolina, and she has vocally condemned President Trump's actions leading up to the attack on the Capitol but stopped short of voting for impeachment.

Don't worry.

I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Well, I barely even moved in here, and my video voicemail's already full.

>> But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... And by... ♪♪ >> 100 days, almost a third of a year, and less than 7% of an American president's four-year term.

But there's big pressure riding on that small amount of time.

>> President-elect Joe Biden promising a packed day-one agenda.

>> Joe Biden has set a goal of a hundred million coronavirus vaccinations during his first 100 days in office.

>> There's no shortage of crises or challenges.

>> As it turns out, the 100 days idea is only 88 years old.

>> Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

>> It began in 1933.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just become the nation's 32nd president at the height of the Great Depression.

The unemployment rate was a staggering 25%, and 9,000 banks had failed across the country.

>> It means the interminable line outside factory gates, desperately hoping for a job that rarely comes.

>> FDR came into office on a mission -- pull America out of the greatest economic crisis the modern world had ever known.

His productivity is unrivaled still today.

76 bills signed, an Emergency Banking Act, the kickoff of the New Deal.

A few months into his term, in one of his famous fireside chats, FDR called on Americans to, quote, "assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of his first 100 days."

Every president since has had to live up to that image.

There were early wins, like Ronald Reagan's day-one announcement of the release of U.S. hostages in Iran, and early setbacks, like Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, a wildly unpopular move that helped ensure Ford was only a one-term president.

Bush, Clinton, Bush again, Obama -- they all got the 100-day treatment from the media.

But none began their presidencies in a crisis like the one we're facing today.

Like FDR, Joe Biden's America faces tremendous economic loss and unemployment, not to mention more than 400,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic.

President Biden has laid out aggressive goals for what his administration says are the four converging crises of our time -- the pandemic, its economic fallout, climate change, and racial inequality.

The first steps have been significant -- executive orders bringing America back into the Paris Accord and the World Health Organization, a promise to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days, and most dramatic, a proposed stimulus package worth nearly $2 trillion.

But there's another crisis that wasn't on that list -- a divided and polarized nation.

Democrats have only the slimmest of a majority in Congress with the specter of yet another impeachment trial for Donald Trump waiting in the wings.

How much can Biden accomplish by April 30th, his 100th day?

That's what we're talking about today.

>> Senator Chris Murphy, so glad you're joining me.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> So let me let me start off, back on December 11, 2020, which seems like eons ago, you actually said -- I want to quote -- on the Senate floor... >> Right now, the most serious attempt to overthrow our democracy in the history of this country is underway.

>> What made you so sure so early that this was more than just typical Trump theatrics?

>> You know, that speech felt out of place to a lot of people when I gave it.

Nobody was really raising the potential for insurrection in early December.

What caused me to give that speech was the fact that so many House Republicans had signed on to this ludicrous brief alleging that there was substantial fraud in the elections such that Donald Trump should be named president for the next four years.

To me, it was the sort of first act of sort of mass rebellion from institutional Republicans in Washington.

And it signaled that there was going to be a mainstreaming of this idea that Joe Biden was an illegitimate president inside the Republican Party.

That's exactly what continued to happen over the course of the next month, leading to the events of January 6th.

>> So, on the day of the 6th, you were actually in a safe room for some six hours with a number of your colleagues.

Did we at least have unity for those six hours?

What surprised you about your conversations during that time?

>> Well, I guess what surprised me most was our inability to become unified.

I mean, at that point, you know, Senator Hawley had a decision to make.

He could stand down and not offer additional objections to the certification of the electoral vote.

He could have taken steps to recognize how dangerous his actions were and how they had led, in part, to the siege of the Capitol.

But that's not what occurred.

Well, about six or seven Republicans did change their minds and vote against Senator Hawley and Senator Cruz's motions.

Senator Hawley still went ahead with it.

And a hundred-plus House members voted for his resolution, I would argue, further enflaming the crisis at a moment when we should have been all coming together.

>> I mean, I almost hate to ask you this question or at least put it this way, but given that and given now the growing chorus from Republicans that, "Look, I mean, come on, impeachment?

You're just slowing everything down.

Let bygones be bygones."

Was this crisis not big enough?

>> Well, I mean, I think it's really wild to think what could have happened that day.

I mean, let's take these rioters at their word.

They were chanting, "Hang Mike Pence."

>> Hang Mike Pence!

Hang Mike Pence!

Hang Mike Pence!

>> They were walking around with stun guns and zip ties.

I mean, had they run in to members of Congress, had they found Mike Pence, you know, some really terrible things beyond what already happened could have happened.

Maybe that crisis would have been big enough.

But just because the absolute worst didn't happen, just because only five people died, not 500, that doesn't mean that what happened deserves consequence.

Because if you don't hold people responsible, then the rule of law falls apart in this country.

So, yeah, maybe Republicans are looking at this and thinking that, you know, in retrospect, it wasn't that bad, it was bad, and it could have been much worse.

>> The impeachment trial in the Senate is about to start in the coming week.

Does it feel a little like status quo ante is slipping back to you?

>> I do think there were a lot of Republicans who, you know, had used their vote on impeachment as a mechanism to try to keep Donald Trump in line.

And to the extent he has been relatively quiet since the 6th, it may mean that some Republicans are going to end up voting to acquit the President.

Listen, I think that's a mistake.

But I do think that, in the end, there may not be a whole lot of Republican votes.

It doesn't mean that we shouldn't go through with the exercise.

I just think that, ultimately, we have a constitutional responsibility in the Senate to process these articles.

And I think in order to sort of right the moral ship of this nation, you can't skip the accountability phase for the President, who tried, over the final days of his presidency, try to lead a violent insurrection against democracy.

>> Let's move to policy -- $1.9 trillion in stimulus, by far the most important of Biden policy objectives in the immediate term.

How do you feel about where it's going?

>> It's going to pass because it is a bill that unifies the country, right?

What Biden has put on the table are broadly popular policy measures -- more money for increased vaccine production and distribution, $2,000 in the pockets of ordinary low-income and middle-income Americans, money to make sure that all of our schools K through 8 open in the next 100 days.

All of that is wildly popular.

And so when the President talks about a unifying agenda, he has presented it to the American public.

It's not my fault or the President's fault that Republicans are thinking about voting against a very popular agenda to try to rescue the country from this pandemic.

And so, in that way, I think even if a bunch of Republicans vote no, it's still a unifying agenda.

The President can't literally force Republicans to vote for something.

But what he can do is put on the table ideas that are supported by 60%, 70%, 80% of the American public.

>> But does that likely end up being more like a party-line vote?

Do you think that's what legislation is just generally going to look like in 2021?

>> Listen, I was here in 2009, and Mitch McConnell made very clear at that moment that his number-one priority was beating Barack Obama, not helping to solve the economic crisis.

I worry that Republicans are going to take the same position here.

And, well, we're going to spend a lot of time in the next couple weeks trying to find common ground with Republicans.

Ultimately, we're going to have to be willing to take no for an answer.

If their priority is obstructionism, if their priority is opposition, no matter the popularity of the legislation, we're ultimately going to have to move the bill because people are hurting out there.

The vaccine is not getting into people's arms quickly enough.

Schools are having trouble keeping the doors open.

We just -- You know, we have to solve problems, and we can't ultimately let Republican obstructionism stop us from doing that.

>> So let's close with a speed round on my favorite topic, foreign policy, especially since you're on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Maybe start, all of the things that Trump has done, for good or bad, what are the couple that you'd like to make sure the Biden administration does not throw out the window, where you think there's been success?

>> Well, it's a very narrow list, but for me, at the top of it probably is the path that we're on in Afghanistan right now.

Listen, I think Trump's negotiation was ham-handed and done poorly, but his idea is not wrong, that we do need to sort of put a definitive timestamp on our engagement there, and we need to be in discussions with both the Taliban and the Afghan government to figure out a way for us to leave.

Second, to the extent that some of his bullying techniques succeeded in making European countries more willing to spend additional dollars on their own defense, you know, we should do it differently, but we should make it clear to the Europeans that we need them to be sort of more fulsome participants in the defense of Europe.

So those would be two areas in which I think that we can maintain some continuity.

>> Now, Iran is going to be a big area where you're not going to see continuity.

And the foreign minister of Iran is saying, "Let's get back to the JCPOA, the Obama Iranian nuclear deal, as soon as possible."

The Biden administration seems to be a little tentative on that front.

Where do you think they should go?

>> They should get back into the deal.

They should offer compliance for compliance.

And I think we should all be very strong in the way that we push back on the Iran hawks' claims.

Right?

They said we shouldn't have gone to JCPOA, because instead we should have continued to ratchet up sanctions on Iran, even if that had to be in a unilateral basis, until Iran was willing to put all of our outstanding issues on the table, not just the nuclear issue, but also their support for terrorist groups, their ballistic missile program.

Well, the Trump administration tried that approach for the last four years.

They ratcheted up sanctions through their maximum pressure campaign.

As predicted, the Europeans didn't go along.

They told the Iranians, "We're not willing to talk until you put everything on the table."

And they failed.

It failed miserably.

The Iranians weren't willing to talk about anything.

In fact, they restarted their nuclear research program.

The Europeans abandoned us and undermined our sanctions.

>> Final big foreign policy question for you is on China.

There's really no trust between the world's two largest economies right now.

If you were to tell Biden to do it any differently than Trump has, what would your suggestions be?

>> My primary suggestion would be to think about our relationship with China through the prism of capacities.

Right now, we cannot fight China toe-to-toe because China can do things in the world that we can't.

For instance, their international development bank is three times as large as ours is.

Their ability to midwife technologies domestically and then spring them on the world cannot be met by the United States because we lack an industrial policy that puts us in the position of being able to compete with them on something like 5G.

Their propaganda arm is much better funded and much more powerful than our anti-propaganda arm.

So I think before we sit down at the table with the Chinese to try to figure out what the new world order is and how we manage their rise, we've just got to build up our capacities, our industrial policy capacities, our anti-propaganda capacities, our international development financing capacities so that we can actually meet them on an even playing field.

That's what I think the most important first step for the administration is.

>> Senator Chris Murphy, thanks for being with me.

>> Thanks, Ian.

>> And now to my interview with freshman Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina's 1st Congressional District.

Representative Nancy Mace, welcome to "GZERO World."

>> Hey, thank you for having me on today.

>> So I want to say welcome to Washington, D.C., as a new congressperson, but it wasn't a very auspicious welcome.

Your first day was pretty extraordinary.

>> Yeah, it was pretty harrowing, and I don't know whether you should be offering congratulations or condolences, quite frankly.

We are so divided in this country right now that it's led to so much violence, not only on January 6th but for months now all across our country.

And it just -- it really was sobering to see what happened, the violence that happened on the Capitol steps on January 6th.

And I think it's a real awakening -- should be for everybody who was elected to try to do better.

>> So, talk a little bit, since this is going around the world, too, about your personal experience on the day of the 6th.

How'd it go for you?

>> Yeah.

Well, I was there in the chamber when we first had our joint session and the Vice President was presiding over it before the first objection.

And then when the first objection on the state of Arizona happened, I started to make my way back to my office but wasn't able to get to my building because of threats at the Capitol.

In fact, there was a pipe bomb that was found just steps away from the Cannon Office Building at C and First Street.

And looking back at it now, I walked by a pipe bomb, where that was, to get into my office that that day, which is just -- which is just so crazy to me that that is the world that we live in today.

And it's very heartbreaking to see that.

But at one point during all the mayhem, I was stuck in a tunnel underneath the Capitol, trying to get back to my office.

And I read police reports this week of rioters that knew that there were some members stuck in the tunnels underneath the Capitol, and they were trying to go down, find a way to get down there to find us and capture us.

And so it was a very scary day.

It's a day I will never forget.

Our lives were at risk and were put in grave danger.

>> Are your constituents starting to accept that it was, indeed, a free and fair election?

I mean, do you see -- Because, again, on the day of the 6th, the polls we had, vast majority of Republicans said, "No, no, no, this was stolen."

>> No, I think that Republicans are still, by and large, distrustful of the results of the election.

Our election system, our voting system, is only as good as people's confidence in it.

We lost so much ground when the Capitol -- when the riots hit the Capitol.

When the insurrection happened, nothing like that had happened since 1812.

We lost a lot of the ground that we had gained.

So if we don't hold ourselves accountable, our own party and our contributions to it, then we can't turn to the left and expect to hold them accountable for the violence we've seen in Portland and other places.

And so I've tried to be really consistent in the way that I talk about these things and the stands that I take.

It's really important that we're not hypocritical on any of these issues.

And then the other thing that was brought out by Congressman Chip Roy out of Texas is that if there was so much voter fraud, then how did all these Republicans get elected in the first place?

And so these are things that we need to be honest about when we're having these conversations and talking about it.

Voter fraud -- I mean, you've seen it from machines that are broken to people voting provisional when they should or should not.

I mean, there are things that happen in every election.

The question is, was it enough to overturn the results of the election?

Probably not, when you look at it.

But there are always irregularities.

And if we want to pursue it, then we've got to be consistent in how we look at it, how we move forward on it.

I mean, you can't -- >> I mean, the very fact -- Look, it's refreshing to hear, but the idea that, you know, party members in the United States on either side would say, "No, we need to look into irregularities in places that we actually won," seems so farcically far from where we are as a country right now.

>> I certainly picked the worst time in our nation's history to enter Congress right now.

But as a single working mom -- I have two kids that I'm raising -- there's a country that I want to raise my children in.

And the violence that I'm seeing, the partisanship, the division, this is not it.

And I'm going to work very hard to change the way we play the game.

>> You've said that you feel that Trump should -- former President Trump now -- should have accountability, responsibility for his actions.

What does that mean?

What's the process by which there should actually be accountability?

>> Well, the impeachment process was rushed and didn't allow for any due process.

And if we had done that, that would have been an avenue.

But, unfortunately, the rushed -- the lack of due process, which doesn't follow the Constitution -- there was no investigation opened -- it clearly bypassed either a special committee or the Judiciary Committee process.

We debated impeachment for about two hours on the floor.

Republicans had one hour, Democrats had one hour, and then it was rushed and passed out of the House of Representatives.

>> Which is why you voted against.

>> Right.

No, right.

I voted to certify the Electoral College for the same reason that I voted against impeachment -- for constitutional reasons.

And I felt that was the most consistent position.

And so now, with impeachment, whenever the impeachment is started over in the U.S. Senate -- I believe it will be the second week of February, February 8th or so -- the Senate literally can't do any other business.

And so when we're talking about COVID relief or stimulus or helping small businesses get back on their feet, people getting back to work, kids getting back in school, we're literally going to be unable to do anything else, at least on the Senate side, and that's, I don't think, something that you would want to have happen, either.

>> So, in terms of where you think you will -- you personally and where Congress should be able to come to some level of cooperation on policies going forward across the aisle, what would you hold out some hope for?

>> I'm going to hold out hope for transportation infrastructure.

That is a package that we've been talking about for a very long time.

The hiccup will come -- will be "How do you fund it?"

Because oftentimes we get these grandiose packages and have no way to fund roads and bridges and infrastructure projects.

>> Now that the Democrats are in charge of the House and Senate, should the Republicans start paying more attention to fiscal responsibility?

>> I think both sides really should.

I mean, the fact that our deficit was reached $4 trillion last year and our debt is approaching $28 trillion, these are things that both sides have contributed to.

I mean, over the last few decades, both sides are really going to have to take a long and hard look at how we are going to pay for all this in the future, because I don't believe, especially during a pandemic where people are out of work, that we start increasing fees and taxes for small businesses or hardworking families.

That's not going to solve the problem, either.

The poor are going to get poorer and the rich will get richer.

>> $1.9 trillion is what President Biden is looking to get in terms of the relief and stimulus bill.

There's been a lot of Republican pushback, but as you say, a large part of the population is suffering greatly right now.

What's it going to take to get your support on that bill?

>> So, in the bill in December, we were sending money to other places, countries around the world, who didn't need it.

I think we've got to be very, very targeted and specific.

We can't send $2,000 stimulus checks to people making $75K a year who had no negative impact on their wages or their salaries from COVID-19.

What are the numbers -- $1,000 or $2,000 -- I don't think is as relevant as who's actually going to get those checks.

We can't allow people who are deceased.

We've done that before.

We can't allow illegal citizens -- we've done that before -- to get those kinds of checks.

It really needs to be targeted to those who have lost wages and who've lost salaries and even those who've taken on, for example, greater expenses for child care.

So we just have to make sure that it's targeted relief and that we're not doing more harm than good to our economic -- to our economy in getting it restarted.

>> Nancy Mace, thank you so much for joining "GZERO World."

>> Thank you.

>> The White House says President Biden's first trip overseas has yet to be scheduled.

But today on "Puppet Regime," world leaders are just a Zoom call away.

Roll that tape.

>> I barely even moved in here and my video voicemail's already full.

Who's leaving all these messages?

[ Phone beeps ] >> Hi, Joe.

Look, I know you're busy because I was just reading your calendar on internal White House server, but, look, I hope that we can get off to a great start.

A great start!

Anyway, just to say that even with you as president, not much changes.

I will still be number one troll of America, and you will still not have enough stomach to stop me.

Enjoy!

>> Oh, like hell I won't.

Hey, Ron, Jen, prepare some strongly worded statements.

Strongly worded!

We're gonna need them.

All right.

Who's next over here?

[ Phone beeps ] >> Hello, Joe!

Whew!

So much relationship to patch up in so little time.

But it's like, when I look at America these days, it's like, "Goodbye, schadenfreude, hello, Biden-freude!"

>> Oh, God love you.

She seems like a nice lady, doesn't she?

I wonder what her hair smells like.

Anyway, who's up next?

[ Phone beeps ] >> Message to America.

I will never give up my nuclear weapons for anyone, except one person.

Cardi B!

>> Oh, great!

O-kurrrr!

What's that little sound she makes?

O-kurrr!

Anyway, maybe we can send her over to Pyongyang and help get us a meeting with our friend Kim Jong-un.

All right.

Who've we got next here?

>> 'Sup, Joe?

Just calling to see what's up.

What's good?

You know, just -- just hanging out here, not, uh -- not really going anywhere anytime soon.

So, uh...yeah.

Okay, man.

>> This guy, geez.

>> ♪ "Puppet Regime" ♪ >> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, and I know you do, you don't need a hundred days to know how you feel about "GZERO World."

Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

>> Additional funding provided by... And by... ♪♪