Yamiche Alcindor discusses President Biden's first year in office

Joe Biden: I, Joseph Robinette Biden Junior, do solemnly swear--

Archival Recording: That I will faithfully execute--

Biden: --that I will faithfully execute--

Archival Recording: --the office of president of the United States.

Biden: --office of president of the United States.

Lee: Today marks one year since Joseph R. Biden Junior was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.

Archival Recording: And will to the best of my ability--

Biden: And will to the best of my ability--

Archival Recording: --preserve, protect, and defend--

Biden: --preserve, protect and defend--

Archival Recording: --the constitution of the United States.

Biden: --the constitution of the United States.

Lee: Biden assumed office in the midst of the deadliest pandemic the world has faced in 100 years. And in the middle of the most significant push for racial justice the country has seen since the Civil Rights era.

Archival Recording: So help you God?

Biden: So help me God.

Archival Recording: Congratulations, Mr. President. (CHEERING) (MUSIC)

Lee: Biden took over from Donald Trump who built his political brand on a steady stream of outright lies, racist fear mongering, and insidious conspiracy theories?

Donald Trump: He controlled--

Archival Recording: Who do you think is pulling Biden's strings? Is it former Obama--

Trump: People that you've--

Archival Recording: --that pulls--

Trump: --never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows, people that are controlling Mr.--

Lee: And amidst the extreme social and racial polarization that Trump promoted, Biden inherited a House of Representatives where his party holds a razor-thin majority, and an evenly divided Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris providing Democrats with the tie-breaking vote. On the campaign trail, President Biden was optimistic that he could work with Republicans to get his legislation passed.

Biden: I come across the aisle to reach consensus, targeting government work in the past. I can do that again with your help. And I'm gonna bring Democrats and Republicans together to deliver the economic relief for families, schools, and businesses. When I say that, and I've been saying it for two years now, I'm accused of being naïve. Well, I'm here to tell you they can and they must if we're gonna get anything done.

Lee: Biden has had a couple major legislative victories like the COVID relief package last spring, and the bipartisan jobs and infrastructure plan this fall.

Biden: America is moving again. And your life is gonna change for the better.

Lee: But, ultimately, very few Republicans have shown support for the more progressive parts of his agenda. Biden's sweeping economic and social policy plan, the Build Back Better act remains stuck in Congress. And so far, the racial justice legislation that he promised like voting rights and police reform has gone nowhere in the Senate. Yet, this week, a bit of progress. Congress has finally started debate on federal voting protections after Biden said for the very first time just last week that he supports going around the filibuster on this issue.

Biden: As an institutionalist, I believe the threat to our democracy's so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bill. Debate them, vote, let the majority prevail. And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this. (CHEERING)

Lee: I'm Trymaine Lee. And this is Into America. One year into this administration, we're returning to the promise Joe Biden made in November, 2020, the night he declared victory. A victory that wouldn't have been possible without Black voters.

Biden: And especially for those moments where this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African-American community stood up again (UNINTEL). (CHEERING) You've always had my back, and I'll have yours.

Lee: So has President Biden fulfilled his promise to Black Americans? NBC's Kristen Welker asked the president a similar question at a press conference on Wednesday.

Kristen Welker: I spoke to a number of Black voters who fought to get you elected. And now they feel as though you are not fighting hard enough for them and their priorities. So what do you say to these Black voters who say that you do not have their backs as you promised on the campaign trail?

Biden: I've had their back, I've had their back my entire career. I've never not had their back. I started on the voting rights--

Lee: To answer the question of how well Biden has kept his word, there was only one person I knew I needed to talk with. Yamiche Alcindor. Welcome back to the show.

Yamiche Alcindor: Thanks so much for having me.

Lee: Yamiche is without question one of the best D.C. reporters in the game. She's been with The New York Times, PBS News Hour, and now she just joined NBC News as a Washington correspondent. Welcome to the family, it's good to have you.

Alcindor: Thank you so much. I mean, clearly, you've been a mentor and a friend to me. And it's only right that I would follow you to your latest job.

Lee: (LAUGH) Well, first of all, what is it like covering Washington these days? Obviously, you covered the Trump administration which was absolutely bonkers. But what is it like, like, in this era, the Biden/Harris era? What's it like?

Alcindor: It's strange because we're still living through this pandemic. And it feels like we're in this sort of dystopia and everyone's so fatigued by the pandemic that even while the president is talking about infrastructure or talking about supply chains or talking about voting rights, it's sort of always this idea that we're sort of in this alternate reality and that his number one priority is to get the nation healthy and to get people what they need to get through this pandemic.

The other thing I notice, of course, that there is this sort of feeling that things are, on one side, boring in that you don't have President Trump, this person who was creating chaos. He was sort of the bull in the china shop. All of the sort of chaos that we saw, most of it, I would say, was self-created.

Where with President Biden, what you have is someone who is sort of navigating chaos. Other than sort of his withdrawal from Afghanistan which, of course, was a big, chaotic time in this administration. He has all this other stuff that's sort of happening to his administration.

When you think of COVID, when you think of the voting rights issues going on, when you think of white supremacy and a spike in all of that going on, think of the supply chain issues and inflation. While, of course, presidents can impact some of that stuff, when it comes to the economy, when it comes to sort of the way that we're all functioning in this pandemic, it seems like this is really a White House that is trying to juggle a number of chaotic situations that they don't quite have as much impact on.

This is the party that isn't lock-step. You know, Republicans, for as much as they would sort of whisper about former President Trump, they sort of always had his back. In this case, you have a president who really is facing a Democratic base that is open to criticizing home, that will say when they think he's wrong. And that sort of is a different dynamic.

Lee: As a White House corespondent for the PBS News Hour, Yamiche had a ring-side seat to the circus that was the Trump presidency. But she was often the target of the president's vitriol toward the press and Black women reporters in particular. Like here in 2018.

Alcindor: On the campaign trail, you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists. Now people are also saying--

Trump: I don't know why you'd say that.

Alcindor: --that the press--

Trump: That's such a racist question.

Alcindor: There are some people that say that--

Trump: That's such a racist question.

Lee: Trump's open hostility became a pattern. This is from July, 2019, when Yamiche asked him about former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Trump: You're untruthful when you ask. You are untruthful when you ask that question. When you asked that question, you're untruthful.

Lee: And in March of 2020, here's what Trump said when Yamiche questioned him about the administration's response to the pandemic.

Trump: Why don't you act in a little more positive? It's always trying to get--

Alcindor: My question to you is--

Trump: --you, get you, get you. And you know what, that's why nobody trusts the media anymore. That's--

Alcindor: My question to you is how is--

Trump: --why people--

Alcindor: --that gonna impact--

Trump: Excuse me, you didn't hear me. That's why you used to work for the Times and now you work for somebody else. Look, let me tell you something, be nice.

Lee: But then you have this administration where not only did Joe Biden say, "Black folks, you've had my back, I'll have yours." But weeks later, he said, "You know, we're gonna center social and racial justice in every department." Right? "Across this White House, we will put this front and center. We're gonna have the most diverse cabinet ever." Have we seen any of that play out in a real substantive way that changes the prospects of Black people in this country?

Alcindor: Well, in some ways, we've seen the COVID relief bills, we've seen the bipartisan infrastructure bill be passed. We have seen a cabinet that is absolutely diverse. We have a gay man who is now the treasury secretary, we have, for the first time, a Native American who's doing the Department of Interior.

So we have people that have just never been in the positions that they've been in. And of course, I can't leave out the vice president who is the first Black woman, first woman of color, first HBCU graduate to hold that position. So in theory, you have seen President Biden absolutely fill his administration with people who are the face of diversity and who really represent sort of the changing face of America.

That being said, when it comes to substantive changes, the White House would argue that the COVID relief bill, that helped people because we know that Black and brown people are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. They also had a child tax credit that was extended.

They had eviction moratoriums. All of that impacts people who are vulnerable to the pandemic and all of the economic struggles. But of course, that is also something that Black folks like to call, and others like to call, trickle down politics. That is the thing that, of course, if you help everybody, Black people will get helped more.

With the Affordable Care Act, when you talk to former Obama officials, they say, "We did huge things for Black people because health care is a huge thing for Black people." But when it comes to actually targeted things for African-Americans, that's really tied up in that other bigger bill that is stuck in the Senate, that Build Back Better act.

And I think a lot of people, especially when it comes to student loans, something that is disproportionately impacting Black people in this country, they're very, very disappointed about the Biden administration not canceling student loans in a way that the president, frankly, promised.

Also voting rights. I mean, the people who are being targeted in Georgia, the people who are having their votes restricted, African-American women in particular, because if you go out to the Democratic base the most loyal voters are Black women.

That's a place where you also see Black people say, "Okay, we love all the speeches. Go to Georgia, go to Philadelphia, say all these great words. But where is the action plan? How are you going to make sure that my 75-year-old African-American mother who has been working and going to school and doing all of these things, and now she's possibly going to have her vote restricted because she can't drop it off on a mailbox. And instead, is being asked to stand in line for 12 hours."

Lee: You know, when it comes to Black people in this country, I think there are a few things that really would satisfy us short of, like, liberation, full inclusion to the franchise, stop caging and killing our children, you know, health care, voting rights, all the big things to the White House's, not say, credit, but to give them the benefit of the doubt.

It does take more than the president willing or wishing these things into existence, right? It takes the Congress. It takes a lot of different forces to come together. How reasonable is the criticism from Black folks, in particular? Or should we give the president a little more, a wider berth when it comes to this progress or lack thereof?

Alcindor: You said it I think really, really clearly which is that it takes a whole lot for things to happen. But it also takes really two people for things to happen, Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema.

Lee: There you go.

Alcindor: When you look at all of the different problems really that President Biden is dealing with trying to get his agenda passed, when you think of the Build Back Better act with this infrastructure, but infrastructure really meaning also money for HBCUs, money for African-American communities that historically had highways built through their communities that were torn up because people wanted to build infrastructure through some of the most important parts of African-American communities in this country.

That is all wrapped up in that bill. Also home health aids, a job that African-American women, women of color do disproportionately, there's going to be money in the bill for that. That's all being held up because Senator Manchin of West Virginia is saying he doesn't wanna do it.

You look at the filibuster rules, for those who maybe haven't heard us talk about this ad nauseum, the filibuster rule essentially is something that has to be changed in order for voting rights to be passed, when, of course, we know Republicans have passed laws to restrict voting in something like 19 states.

Democrats want some sort of federal law to protect that. But none of that can be passed if you don't have these two senators change their minds because they've been adamant that they don't wanna change the filibuster. So in talking to White House officials, they say the president deserves a little bit more credit and a little bit more patience because he's doing all that he can to first do quiet diplomacy.

Now he's come out and been very vocal about the fact that he wants to see the filibuster change. Also, President Biden, in some ways, has been very clear about what is holding up his agenda. At a CNN town hall I heard something that I feel like sort of gets to the very core of what's wrong with the Biden presidency. (LAUGH)

Biden: When you're in the United States Senate and you're a president of the United States and you have 50 Democrats, everyone is a president. (LAUGHTER) Every single one. So you've got to work things out.

Alcindor: That was President Biden's own words. And that is a problem that he's gonna have to continue to deal with because, in some ways, everyone has an outsized power over this president's agenda. And that is something that he just has to reckon with.

Lee: Let's talk about VP Kamala Harris and the job she's done and some of the criticism that she's received. Obviously, her tone when they were running for the White House about the border and other issues, right, like, it's an abomination. And then we see Black Haitians being beaten and abused at the border and turned around.

And we've seen a lot in the public space, right, and white reporter, white male reporters especially, taking aim at Kamala Harris. And at the same time, you have a lotta Black folks who never trusted Kamala Harris from the beginning and have continued to, like, lob their bombs at her. How much of the criticism that she's received do you think is about her being a Black woman, especially from the media establishment? And how much of it is legitimate? How much do you think is, again, because she's a Black woman?

Alcindor: I think it's two-fold. I think the first part of it is that she is dealing with what vice presidents long before her have dealt with which is that you are not the top person, you get all the hard jobs, including immigration, in her case, including voting rights.

These are things that are very, very hard to solve to even have big leeway on because of all the things that we just talked about, the Senate, and all the things that are going on. The other thing though is that, of course, she's doing this job in the body of a Black woman.

So you have what feel like racialized tensions and racialized criticisms towards her. Let's remember that Republicans are trying to start Birtherism 2.0 on her. Some are openly questioning whether or not she's even eligible to be the vice president or the president.

We've seen that playbook. And that all has to do, I think, with the fact that she's a Black woman. There have been, of course, some real setbacks in her office. She built an office that was largely run by African-American women, two high-ranking women, Ashley Etienne and Symone Sanders have now departed her office.

That was seen as a real problem there that was real dysfunction. People in her office, frankly, were not getting along. People felt like, and this, of course were sources talking to CNN, talking to Politico, talking to _Business Insider, there were people saying that she wasn't reading her briefing books.

This, of course, being the vice president accusing her of not really empowering her staff. When you think about immigration, she is the child of immigrants. Right? She is Indian and she is Jamaican. And there was this really poignant piece in The New York Times that said of all the people the administration could have sent down to Guatemala to tell people not to come, they send this child of immigrants to say that.

And there were a lot of people who heard her say, "Don't come," and thought, "How are you the messenger of this?" Some of the best people who are doing the reporting on Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, they're also African-American. You think of Eugene Daniels at Politico. You think of Jasmine Wright at CNN.

There are some young African-American reporters, in particular, who are doing tough stories about her. Part of this is, yes, white male reporters at Times taking shots at her, especially conservatives. But also, there's some truth to the sort of confusion and chaos in her office.

Lee: Yeah, that's something I wanted to add, you know, some of this is par for the course in terms of politics. Running an office, running any kind of office, let alone a political office with egos and power and money, I would imagine that this kind of dysfunction is probably spread across the Hill. Right? It's not just Kamala.

Alcindor: It is spread across the Hill. But when you're the vice president of the United States, your drama is gonna be the drama that people wanna write about. You know, you brought up the Haitian migrant crisis. As you know, I'm Haitian-American.

I have family members that still live there. That moment was a critical moment in the Biden administration because they were essentially seen as letting Haitians be whipped at the border by border patrol agents. And there wasn't the outcry initially by this administration that people thought was warranted.

And as someone who is Haitian, I heard a lot about the outcry among Haitian-Americans and Haitians in this country. But I realized later on, that Black people, in particular, the base of the Democratic Party saw Haitians and said, "Those are the people that look like us. And they could not be treated like this."

And you heard the vice president come out a few days into the sort of controversy and really make a strong statement. But there are a lotta people who thought, "Why weren't you talking about it on day one? As soon as we saw those pictures of horses being used against people, why were you not immediately giving a speech, going out in front of the camera and saying, 'This is not the way that we're gonna run our immigration system'"?

Lee: We'll be right back.

Lee: You know, one thing that a lotta people love about President Biden, Working Class Joe, is that he has been able to work across the aisle in the past. Right? Some people might find that a little offensive. But he really has been a guy who's tried to, you know, appeal to the other side and find a good, healthy middle.

But I wonder a year out, if there have been anything good to come from that kinda kumbaya feeling. Obviously, we know Manchin and Sinema are holding up progress on the Democratic side. But have there been any gains in terms of, like, bipartisanship, real bipartisanship?

Alcindor: Well, there's the bipartisan infrastructure package. You know, $1 trillion going to help roads and bridges and clean water and broadband in this country. That's something that's gonna help not only Americans as a whole, but African-Americans in particular.

So there is some bipartisanship there that I think now the president can point to and say, "Here is what we got for this country, a humongous bill focused specifically on infrastructure." Though, I think, when it comes to sort of long-term bipartisanship, that's pretty much probably gonna be the end of where bipartisanship works for this administration.

Something that Jim Clyburn said really I think hammers home the point the minds of where sort of most Democratic lawmakers of the Democratic basis, he said, "The 15th amendment, which gave the right to vote to African-Americans, that amendment was not bipartisan."

You cannot sometimes have justice and bipartisanship. That is the message that President Biden is hearing consistently from people who are saying, "You need to push through some of the things that are your priorities and some of the things that you say are really at the core of making sure American democracy functions. And that we have equity in this country."

Lee: You know, you and I both are reporters who came up taking issues of racial justice and social justice and policing head on. Right? Old-school street reporters who were out there, telling these stories for a very long time. And we both remember when President Obama, after Trayvon Martin was killed, which would be a decade comin' up, which is hard to believe it's been ten years, right?

But he said if he had a son, Trayvon could've been his son or would've looked like him. Right? And here we are, ten years later. Obviously, George Zimmerman, Trayvon's killer, got off. Here we are with Ahmaud Arbery and that family got some justice with the three white killers, vigilantes, all found guilty, all sent to prison for life.

But we still don't have any real, meaty, substantive policing legislation, racial justice legislation which President Biden, you know, said we need to do. No Emmett Till anti-lynching act, no George Floyd justice policing act. Could Biden and the Biden administration be doing much more? What else is there to be done? Here we are, again, as Black folks, pleading, and begging, and trying to hold you to your promises, what you say matters. But here we are still.

Alcindor: It's another thing that is frustrating, deeply frustrating for Black people and Civil Rights activists. The Democrats were working with Republicans, including Senator Scott, Tim Scott, of South Carolina. But they just couldn't get on board, even with the sort of bare minimum things that they were trying to do.

They just could not get on board. Some would say that the Biden administration could work harder. But, again, it goes back to sort of they are relying on the Congress to be able to pass laws and to be able to come together so that the president can get to sign something.

I think the other thing that's really important is when you think about sort of just the function of the federal government, policing is so local, I was sort of taken aback by the idea that now, it's gonna be almost a decade since Michael Brown got killed.

In Ferguson, we were all on the ground asking, "Well, how many people are killed by the police every year?" We thought it was a sort of simple question. And instead, there was no answer. The Washington Post and our friend, Wesley Lowery, they won a Pulitzer for starting this database. A database that's looking at the number of people that are killed by police. But the FBI, last I checked and last reporting was, the FBI is considering abandoning the effort to count how many people are killed by the police because local police departments won't work--

Lee: Which is insane.

Alcindor: --with them. That's insane. Right? But, like, as a president, how can you force local police departments to give data to the FBI? Right? That's the thing that is very, very hard when you look at these issues.

Lee: At the very least, I think that is an important point that people do need to understand, there are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. And when the FBI does their uniform crime reporting act, when they gather all the data around who's killed and by whom, the police departments, it's voluntary, whether they wanna, like, submit how many people they killed.

But also there's no standard on how to submit this stuff. Right? There was some work on, like, a centralized database. But they don't even have that. And I wanna get back to some of this with the Build Back Better act which is a mouthful. The Build Back (LAUGH) Better act, right?

Alcindor: I have to say it slow every time I say it.

Lee: (LAUGH) Build Back Better. Act is expansive. And when the administration did try to put a carve out in there for Black farmers in particular who have been done extremely and extraordinarily dirty, blatantly dirty, for decades, white folks and white farmers said, "This is racism." And they actually had to remove that language.

So it's amazing that we could point to all the failures. But even when the administration does try to do something, the pendulum of, let's call it straight up, racism and white supremacy, always swings back. So even when he's trying to, here we are again with America being America.

Alcindor: You hear the frustration from the White House but also members on Capitol Hill that they are trying to target things to African-Americans who have disproportionately been impacted by all sorts of discrimination and racism. But that to do so in 2022 now means that you have to do it in a way that you won't get sued.

And that, to me, is a real also another conundrum that you have to deal with which is why when you see people and lawmakers talking about things, they say, "Well, this will disproportionately help African-Americans." But they don't wanna put the title on it because it inevitably will end up in the courts.

Lee: What do you think Black folks in particular should be looking for in the next year or two of this administration. Like, what substantive kind of policy issues or legislation should they really be paying attention to?

Alcindor: Based on my conversations with African-American voters, with Democrat strategists and with Civil Rights activists, they should be really looking at voting rights to see whether or not there really could be or in some way, some sort of filibuster change to voting rights.

I think that they should also really be looking at sort of economic help that's coming. The Build Back Better act, they should be watching that very closely. I think if you're an African-American voter, you should also be looking at who has the power.

We're in a 2022 year. It's an election year. So in some ways, you might wanna say that they should be looking to the Biden administration. But if Democrats lose the House or the Senate, they should be looking at themselves for help. When you talk to Civil Rights activists, they say, "Well, once the federal government fails you, African-Americans need to look into themselves, and need to look into their communities, and need to look into what they can do locally to help themselves because the federal government is not coming to save you."

Lee: Every time I hear anything like that, like the federal government is not coming to save you, which is a fact, Superman ain't coming. Right? But what does self-sufficiency, whether it's from a political power or otherwise, what does it actually look like on the ground?

Is it mobilizing within a framework that has already failed us time and time again but it's the only framework we have and the only one that when we needed it at times have delivered in terms of our rights? Like, what does that look like?

Alcindor: I think it depends on who you ask. I would imagine that for local officials, for mayors, for city councils, what it means is that you're trying to use whatever money you can, whatever money you have in your budget to help people where they are.

So whether it's your mayor giving out housing vouchers, whether it's your school board saying, "We're gonna deliver free lunches to your students who are struggling," employers who, on their own, are gonna say, "Okay, we're gonna take into account sort of the people who are most at risk and find competitive ways to keep people in raising their wages but also finding ways to keep them safe."

That's sort of, I think, what people think of when they say, "Well, we need to do something on a local level to help." Because, again, if it comes to the House being lost by Democrats, you'll now have Democrats and Republicans just arguing essentially for two years.

Most people will not think that anything will get done. And let's remember that for former President Obama, he got the Affordable Care Act done, and then there was nothing else that was really of substance. The Obama administration would say maybe they got some small things passed through. But that was the huge accomplishment of that administration. And then for about six years after Democrats lost control of Congress, they were really sort of at a stalemate.

Lee: Yamiche, my sister, my friend, you have a standing invite for this show--

Alcindor: Well, thank you.

Lee: --anytime you wanna come. We'll be tappin' your brain and your experience. So thank you so much for joining us.

Alcindor: Thank you so much for having me. (MUSIC)

Lee: Tell us what you're hoping to see from President Biden and Vice President Harris in year two. Write to us at Into America at NBCUni.com and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Into America Pod. That's at Into America Pod. And listen, y'all, we have some absolutely wonderful news to share, Into America has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

We're finalists in the Outstanding News and Information Podcast category. Now here's where we need your help, in order to win, we need your vote. So please visit Vote.NAACPImageAwards.net to cast your ballot. That's Vote.NAACPImageAwards.net. We'll also drop a link to the voting page on our social sites.

Thanks in advance for your support. Into America is produced by Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Aaron Dalton, Max Jacobs, and Joshua Sirotiak. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. I'm Trymaine Lee, see you next Thursday.