Clip: Biden visits the Middle East as his domestic agenda is dealt a major blow

Desjardins : A high stakes dance on the world stage is underway as President Biden meets with Saudi Arabia’s controversial crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a powerbroker in the Middle East, and also the man U.S. intelligence agencies determined approved the brutal murder of "Washington Post" journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Biden : With respect to the murder of Khashoggi, I raised it at the top of the meeting.
He basically said he was not personally responsible for it. I indicated I thought he was.
Desjardins : But here at home, the president’s domestic agenda and hopes of climate change activists have again crashed into a Joe Manchin wall.
This comes as inflation numbers out this week showed a historic spike, the highest since 1981.
Joining me tonight to discuss this and more is my colleague, Nick Schifrin, PBS "NewsHour’s" foreign affairs and defense correspondent. He’s in Saudi Arabia.
And joining me here at the table in studio, Hans Nichols, political reporter for "Axios", and Tarini Parti, White House reporter for "The Wall Street Journal".
Thanks to both of you.
Nick, let me start with you with a set 3:00 a.m. local time, let’s get going with you, staying awake for us. We appreciate it.
Bring us the latest there from Saudi Arabia and what is President Biden getting out of this trip?
Nick Schifrin, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, PBS NewsHour : Well, he’s getting a few things. He certainly wants to get out more Saudi and OPEC plus oil production to bring down gas prices. We can talk about it, whether it is even possible. I think he’s getting, as U.S. officials would put it, avoiding a vacuum in the Middle East when it comes to the United States. Te U.S. has receded, its influence has receded in this region over the last few years. Biden trying to stem that tide, questioning -- I think a lot of people questioning whether that’s possible, too.
And in Israel, it is important for Joe Biden to be seen politically supporting Israeli officials. Frankly, he believes in it. He has been for a half-century a big supporter for Israel. And, of course, Israel getting what it wants also that presidential visit.
So I think it is on those three levels. An overarching this is more regional cooperation, product of the Abraham Accords during the Trump administration. But also, military and intelligence services across the region taking it upon themselves to cooperate because they see a common enemy in Iran.
Desjardins : Tarini, we just heard Nick talked about the goals from the Biden administration. But, you know, a picture sometimes can dominate things. Let’s talk about the fist bump.
We knew we were going to wonder the interaction between President Biden and MBS, Mohammed bin Salman. They did have a fist bump. And that is getting attention from some Democrats. He is someone who is known for human rights abuses, the U.S. has said that, involvement, according to CIA and others in a murder.
Did the Saudis get what they wanted just from that photo? Did the U.S. concede something?
Tarini Parti , W hite House Reporter, The Wall Street Journal : There is clearly a lot of discussion beforehand, whether it was going to be a handshake, whether it was going to be a fist bump. And, of course, we got that answer today and the photo, of course, the Saudis released it pretty quickly thereafter. And, you know, it does raises questions depending on what the president is able to accomplish from this meeting, whether it was worth it or not.
And we are already hearing some Democrats, including Congressman Adam Schiff raised that point. He tweeted today basically saying that the photo shows the grip that autocrats in the Middle East still hold on the U.S. and foreign policy because of they’re oil-rich and can sort of have that grip on the U.S.
Desjardins : Hans Nichols, let’s get into the why of this.
Hans Nichols, P olitical Reporter , Axios : Yeah.
Desjardins : I know your reporting is that the president was not skipping and leaping into this visit. But his administration said he had to go. Why?
Nichols : Oil, right? I mean, they had been talking about this since February. They’ve been debating this. They’ve been mulling it. They’ve been trying to attach and find some moment for President Biden to go smooth things over for the Saudis and convince them to pump more oil, because it’s just a basic fact of hydrocarbons. They have more underneath their ground and they can pull them out really quickly, with they just flick a switch.
And so, officials always knew the world needs oil. They know they are facing energy shortages, natural gas, how cold the Europe winter is going to be. It’s a big issue of concern inside the White House, and they were willing to risk the -- at least had the prospect for more oil, and the risk being this photo.
And, you know, we -- it is hard to say the long-term damage of this photo is, if it’s just going to be glossed over, if it’s going to stick with people. I generally have a theory that when you’re covering some foreign trip, the side that releases something first is the side that’s happier with it, all right?
So, sometimes you get statements that come out and say the leaders had a productive conversation, which is code for that they were yelling at each other, right? So, whoever releases the photo first or something first tends to want to get out front and wants that image. And I think that tells us here.
Desjardins : And here was the Saudis releasing it first.
Nichols : Yeah. Now, to be -- I should have the caveats here. And here are my caveats, it was a Saudi photographer, right? And it was an official photo. But like the White House wasn’t dying to release it. You can check out the feeds to what extent the photos to what extent this photo plays in to the overall Biden mythology that they want to put out there. So, yeah, point taken.
Desjardins : I’m going to follow up from what Hans is saying, Nick, and go to you. You raised this earlier, saying, we could talk about oil and we can talk about gas prices. So, Nick, talk about it. Does this trip -- will this trip have any effect on oil and gas prices in reality?
Schifrin : So, a couple of points. One is that I asked Adel al-Jubeir, the deputy foreign minister basically in Saudi Arabia, just a few minutes ago about whether they would push OPEC Plus to release more oil as the national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, suggested, or they would release more of themselves, as the president suggested tonight.
And he did not say yes. He didn’t say no. But he did not say yes, and he actually said they have been producing more oil in the last nine months, that they have taken steps to think about high gas prices, and that they were not committing to take further steps to try and release enough oil to make a difference. So, that’s point number one.
Point number two is that whether the UAE and Saudi Arabia can release more oil. We know Mohammed Bin Zayed, MBZ, the head of UAE, told President Macron just a few weeks ago when all the leaders were at the G7 that he did not think that there was enough oil that the UAE and Saudi could pump in the next six months to actually affect gas prices in the U.S. I mean, that is from the horse’s mouth in Abu Dhabi.
And so, we know that regional officials do not think that they are pumping more will lead to the kind of political benefit that you guys are talking about in the studio.
So, between those things, you know, possibly. It seems like the national security advisor and president would not be confident about more oil coming if they were to get private reassurances. But whether we’ll actually see a difference is another question.
Desjardins : And Nick began talking about an official neither saying yes or no.
Hans, I want to ask you, but an American official not exactly saying yes or no, verbally, that’s Joe Manchin.
Nichols : Right.
Desjardins : Behind the scenes, he is saying that right now, he is a no on the climate change portion of the Biden agenda. And I think a lot of Democrats think that means he’s a no forever.
Nichols : Yeah.
Desjardins : But can you take us into what is happening and how big of a deal is this?
Nichols : So, he’s a no this month, is what Manchin would tell you. So, this was this last 24 hours, the big discussion about this, because Manchin went to Schumer, and Manchin said I’m just not going to be there this month on a broader package for climate and energy.
And we can just do the numbers really quick. He had always talking about $300 billion. That was generally a ballpark.
This morning, Manchin clarifies his comments, calls into a West Virginia radio show that we all listened to for the first time, great show.
Desjardins : It was a good show.
Nichols : It was good show. It’s dynamic. It’s fun.
He calls in and says, actually, I’m for Medicare doing -- renegotiating drugs for Medicare. I’m for something for the health care exchanges, and I’m for taking a lot of money, $240 billion if you back it out towards deficit reduction, but nothing on climate and energy this month.
He wants to wait for the inflation numbers, which we all know are going to come, the July numbers will come later on in August when the CPI number hits. And that has always been the barometer for Joe Manchin is inflation, inflation, inflation. He has been talking about this for months.
He felt his theory of the case has been validated, every time the numbers go higher, and he’s not in the position to really move when inflation is this hot.
Desjardins : So, they’re not moving warmly toward anything.
Tarini, I want to ask you, Joe Manchin has effectively had a veto pen on this president. This might sound like -- kind of a joke, but I mean it quite sincerely. Like is Joe Manchin defining the Biden presidency? How much is he defining the Biden presidency?
Parti : He certainly is. I mean, he’s basically, you know, Prime Minister Joe Manchin at this point. And, you know, the president knows that and has tried to work with him -- tried to negotiate directly with Joe Manchin. And it hasn’t really worked out. He was asked -- the president was asked today if he thinks that Joe Manchin is negotiating in good faith.
And the president basically said I don’t know. I haven’t done the negotiating on this myself. So, he didn’t really answer yes or not on that front.
But, you know, Joe Manchin has -- every senator in the Senate, of course, has so much power and Joe Manchin is certainly wielding that power over and over again. And this is just the latest. And, you know, the fact the White House pitched this massive proposal, and, just mainly because of Joe Manchin, a little bit also because of Kyrsten Sinema, this package has slimmed down over the months.
And right now, it’s basically to the bare minimum. The president said today that the Senate should go ahead and move forward on it because it seems all that they’re going to get.
Desjardins : Without the climate provisions on it, right.
Parti : Exactly.
Desjardins : So, Nick, I want to bring all this back to you in Jeddah and our president. And I’m curious. You spent a lot of time in the region. You’ve been trotting around the region right now, how is President Biden seen there?
Schifrin : I think it’s not just President Biden. I think we have to call a spade a spade. And that a lot of governments in the Middle East see the United States as a receding power, you know? I think the Trump administration’s efforts were to try and stem that tied and were to try and accelerate what was already happening, which is cooperation between Israel and the Sunni governments, as a response to the Iranian threat and as a response to what they saw as the Obama administration’s apathy to the region.
And as some of the regional actors told me during the Trump administration, as a response to not -- not being sure what Trump was actually up to. So we saw the Abraham Accords, we saw all this momentum between Sunni-Arab governments and Israel that saw Iran as a mutual threat. The Biden administration is jumping on that momentum. They are simply trying to accelerate things.
And Saudi is the crown jewel of that effort of normalization. Israeli officials, Saudi officials, all Arab officials say that if Saudi took any kinds of steps toward normalization, it really would be a game changer militarily, intelligence and certainly politically. That’s just not going to happen, frankly, according to officials across the region until King Salman, and it’s not going to happen until Saudi Arabia and the U.S. really do have a better relationship.
But that’s clearly where the momentum is going. And the U.S. is part of that right now. But, frankly, that momentum was started irrespective of U.S. policy.
Desjardins : Fascinating, these tectonic plates around the world of power, sometimes defined by one man, sometimes not. Sometimes one man has to go along with them.
Nick Schifrin, I want to thank you for joining us, for sharing reporting, staying up past your normal waking hours for us. We appreciate it.
Schifrin : Thanks very much.