EXCERPT AIRED TONIGHT ON THE “CBS EVENING NEWS WITH NORAH O’DONNELL” (6:30-7:00 PM, ET); WATCH IT HERE

MORE AIRS TOMORROW ON “CBS MORNINGS” (7:00-9:00 AM) AND SUNDAY, DEC. 26, ON “FACE THE NATION WITH MARGARET BRENNAN”

FACE THE NATION moderator and CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan sat down with Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House today, for an exclusive interview that is being featured across CBS News broadcasts and platforms.

In the first excerpt that aired tonight on the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH NORAH O’DONNELL (6:30-7:00 PM, ET), Vice President Harris told Margaret Brennan she doesn’t feel betrayed by Manchin’s “no” on Biden’s social spending plan. Harris also rejected the idea that Democratic Senator Joe Manchin had betrayed the White House when he said that he would not support President Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending plan, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the bill.

Transcript of the preview is below.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you feel Senator Manchin is playing fair with you? He went on television and said “no” pretty definitively.

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: I think the stakes are too high for this to be in any way to be about any specific individual.

BRENNAN: It’s a 50-50 Senate, though.

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: It is. I’m the tie (laughing) vote.

BRENNAN: Exactly.

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: The stakes are so high. I refuse to get caught up in what might be personal politics when the people who are waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning worried about how they’re going to get by could care less about the politics of D.C.

BRENNAN: You don’t feel betrayed?

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: No I don’t have feel any personal feelings about this. This is about, let’s get the job done and talk with families who say, ‘I can’t afford to do the basic things that I need to do as a responsible adult, like care for my children, care for my older parents or afford to get life-saving medication like insulin.’

BRENNAN: How do you do that without Senator Manchin?

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: You don’t give up. That’s how we do it.

BRENNAN: Medical experts are now projecting that we could see as many as a million infections a day with this new Omicron variant. Is our healthcare system prepared for what’s coming?

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: We are prepared for it.

BRENNAN: Particularly in the northeast, we’re already seeing hospitals overwhelmed with Delta. Inflation is real, and it is going to be with us as long as the pandemic dominates. When can you tell the American people this will end?

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: We have the power today – if you’ve not been boosted, go get boosted. The power today to go get vaccinated. And that will have an impact on where we end up tomorrow.

BRENNAN: Is it the fault of the unvaccinated?

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: I don’t think this is a moment to talk about fault. It is no one’s fault that this virus hit our shores or hit the world. But it is more about individual power and responsibility, and it’s about the decisions that everyone has the choice to make, no doubt.

BRENNAN: There are 100,000 Russian troops on the border with Ukraine. Are we going to see a hot war in Europe in the next few weeks?

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: We are having direct conversations with Russia. We are very clear that Russia should not invade the sovereignty of Ukraine. We are prepared to issue sanctions like you’ve not seen before.

BRENNAN: Does that mean sanctioning Vladimir Putin directly?

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: I’m not going to talk about specific sanctions, but we are making that clear to him.

Watch CBS MORNINGS (7:00-9:00 AM, ET) tomorrow, Dec. 21, for more of Brennan’s interview with Vice President Harris. Additional excerpts from the interview will run on CBSN, CBS News’ 24/7 streaming service, and on CBS News Radio.

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