Transcripts For CSPAN2 President Trumps First 100 Days 20170626

Cspan programs are available at cspan. Org on our homepage or by searching the video library. Next a look at the first days of the Trump Presidency with Political Consultants and professors from university of southern california. They discussed Public Opinions based on polling from before and after the election. This is one hour and a half. Good morning. Im bob shrum, director of the Unruh Institute politics, on behalf of the institute the Political Science department, the door inside college of letters arts and sciences. Welcome to the next and this is a conferences that we are holding designed to bring together a lyrical actors, journalists and academics to discuss major issues and inflection points. We have two changes today. First anthony who was close to President Trump phoned yesterday to say he had been summoned to a meeting in washington. Ambassador who was in china when she accepted this conference put the date and time into her phone there. And so she showed up yesterday primed and ready for the conference. But we are ready to do it with an outstanding array of panelist. Our aim is to proceed as in all discomforts of in the spirit of president kennedy who called on americans to disentangle themselves from tourism and stereotype and never to enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Or is present reagan said, the ultimate determinant in the struggle will be a test of ideas. Thats why we are here and let me introduce our friend, my friend and colleague in this venture to moderate the first panel, professor dennis chong. [applause] good morning. Id like to add my welcome to all of you two usc 100 days days conference on the Trump Administration and Trump Presidency. Bob and i hosted a conference in late november after the election, and everyone who participate in that event i think was a bit stunned because of the unexpected out, here and now w were almost 100 days into the administration, and i think we are probably still a bit disoriented by the whirlwind of events that have been taking place from russia to syria, wiretapping, the travel ban, north korea, repeal the replacement of obamacare, the Supreme Court nomination, tax reform, the list goes on. We are going to today try to make sense of any of these things with help of an Amazing Group of experts from the Usc Dornsife College and beyond. In planning these conferences, our principal goal that bob and i have used is to bring together in dialogue the perspectives, insights of scholars and also those active in the work of public affairs. I think that is appropriate that this marriage of perspective is taken place in this particular venue which is known as town and gown. So let me provide you with the brief preview of todays events. We are going to have four Panel Discussions over the course of the day, to this morning and also to this afternoon separated by a lunch break. Our two morning panels are going to focus on the state of Public Opinion and nondomestic politics, and in the afternoon we will talk about the administrations actions in foreign affairs, and also discuss the future of the democratic and republican parties. At the end that each of our panel we will reserve time for the audience to be able to ask questions here so i wanted to invite all of you, i want to thank you again for being here, getting here on an Early Morning, for an Early Morning panels in los angeles this always a challenge i know. So thank you for being here and i fight you to sit back and enjoy the days discussions. Im going to start by monitoring the first panel. Thank you very much. [applause] will moderating. Good morning. This is panel one, is cant hear you. How is that . Okay. So the first panel is on politics and polling, and want to begin by introducing the panelists here. Going from left to right, to my far left is joel pollak, the Senior Editor at large and inhouse counsel at breitbart news. Hes also the author of how trump one, the inside story of a revolution. Angemarie alfaro is a professor of Political Science and gender studies at usc dornsife, and shes a renowned scholar on the topics of the intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality politics. Bill carrick is a democratic consultant and chief strategist for Dianne Feinstein and erika garcetti. To my right is arie kapteyn who is the executive director of the usc Dornsife Center for economic and social research. To his right is jill darling, the survey director for usc Dornsife Center for economic and social research. Arie and jill attract the usc dornsife daybreak paul, which is gained some notoriety for the november 2016 election for showing trump to be doing much better than a lot of other competitor polls. And lastly david lauter is the Washington Bureau chief at the Los Angeles Times and he works with and reports on the daybreak paul. So were going to begin with a presentation of the daybreak paul results at the 100 day mark, and joel and arie will be doing that for us. So, chill. My turn now. All right, good morning. So im going to start to sort of walk is through some of the findings from the polls that which is conducted and if all that we conducted in april, and then i will hand it off to arie to tell us all a bit more about some of the indepth findings. So im going to stay seated here because its a little hard to see this from the dais that its hard for me to see it here, too. Anyway, just as an introduction, the surveys that we conducted were among respondents who were in a National Internet panel that we maintain at the center for economic and social research. Its a probabilitybased panel. We ask questions of them before the election, in a preelection polling, and then we did followup surveys in january, february, march and april. And some of, a cup of the questions we talk about today and were asked over time. Mostly what we will be looking at is the post Election Results over the last two months when we polled in march and april. We were interested mainly really in looking into rather than sort of investigating highlevel source rates numbers that have the numbers are probably going to really sort of did you right now, we are really very interested in diving a little deeper and look at some of the underlying reasons for what we are saying and trying to get a little more indepth. Thats an ongoing project and this is an opening salvo in that. So to start with basically there is still the partisan divide that we saw before the election continues to persist after the election in the sense that people who voted for donald trump, and at all of these slides thats going to be designated in red as is now traditional, and people who voted for Hillary Clinton are the blue bars in these charts. You can see when you ask about just this very general question that pollsters like to ask because its pretty useful, and it doesnt always at this time very much tracks this partisan divide. We see theres a lot of optimism being expressed here by trump voters and opposite feeling among people who voted for Hillary Clinton. Ill talk about thirdparty voters a little bit later on, so right now i we going through this divide and talk about how we really are seeing eye country where two groups of people are seeing things very differently from one another. This is talking about, we asked them to tell us about how they saw things improving or whether they were getting worse or staying the same over the next 12 months in a variety of issues that we asked about. You can see that for this, this is expecting improvement. Theres sort of guarded optimism among trump voters for i cant see the list from her so let me just get it off my page here so i can tell you exactly what those are. The list that we asked about where the rights of minorities and women, individual freedoms, threat of terrorism, jobs and unemployment, health care and healthcare reform, Race Relations in the environment. Theres quite a bit of optimism among trump voters about jobs and employment, a small amount among clinton voters as well. You can see this is very different from the response that we got from the clinton voters, and this is now the percent is that things are going to get worse. And so rather than even thinking things are going to stay the same, you can see clinton voters really feeling like a month ahead, and were talking about the shortterm, twelvemonth outlook, looks pretty bad. There is a sort of guarded sense of, i dont know if its optimism, but i would say the plurality of who thought things would at least in the same or get better, the majority think that its going to get same or better about employment, perhaps looking towards Infrastructure Spending in that category. We also asked them to say whether or not they would attribute a series of positive characteristics to trump, and those were keeping promises, speaking for people like me, inspiring confidence, bringing needed change to washington, d. C. , representing american values, if his ethical and trustworthy, and basis policy of facts and good data. As you can see he had extremely high levels of endorsement among his own voters, and very low endorsement among clinton voters. So once again of view of the president that is just strikingly different from one another. This extensive than to the deep divisions that we see when you write, rating his job as president , where once again we pretty much equal levels of approval and disapproval, depending on whether in who they voted in the election. This is neither category which is neither approve or disapprove was much higher a month ago. We saw some consolidation across year, and particularly among trump voters, that trump voters were maybe waiting to see what the present with you over time moved into the category of approval just ruled over the last month. So we also asked about keeping promises. Thats one of the themes that is come up around 100 days mark is, has he accomplished what he said he would do. And people who voted for donald trump, the majority, 81 , thought that he accomplished as much or more than he said he would do. You can see that the majority of clinton voters disagreed with that, but 20 , one in five said that he had at least accomplished as much as he said he would do. So theres a certain amount of giving trump some credit for at least working towards what he said he would do, and perhaps not holding him responsible among his supporters for not accomplishing some of these sort of largescale things that he said, they can see him working towards. In sort of trying to get at the idea about whether there was a difference between whether people like him personally and approve of his policies, we asked that question spread out this way. Did they like him personally and or like or dislike him personally and or approve of his policies. And we also gave them an out and not being sure about his policy. As you can see we had a High Percentage of, but not i cant even see that number at the dont remember it off the top of my head. Was that fiftythree. Thank you. 53 who said of republicans who said that they like him and approve of his policies. So not overwhelmingly. And another 19 , one in five come who said they like him, they are not sure about his policies. Again there is a subset of wait and see. Another chunk 17 who said they dislike him personally but approve of his policies. And, of course, we did see some of that in the preelection polling as well that people were saying there were voting for him based on issues rather than personality. The feeling among clinton supporters of course seven out of ten this like him, disapprove, and 20 said that they dislike them and they werent sure yet about his policies. We had to wait and see. And so we dont have a lot of optimism among the thirdparty voters either. 59 disc approved disapproved of the job yesterday. He had a high proportion saying he is on the wrong track. Disliking trump and being not sure about his policies, and predicting things, theres a certain amount of optimism but not a lot, and predicting things would get better in jobs and employment. 56 think it is staying the same. We didnt see much optimism about things Getting Better in the future among this group. And when you see is almost exact division between people who voted for clinton and voted for trump, the reason for overall low ratings that youre seeing in other surveys that we saw in hours for approval and right track and optimism about the future really its tipping the balance by the folks who voted for third parties, the independence, people who didnt actually vote in the election. Though we are not showing here. We did see some small changes since march as i mentioned earlier among Trump Supporters. We had a ten point increase among trump voters that brought them further into the job approval category, and we saw some improvement among, or not Much Movement among clinton and thirdparty voters. We saw sort of an interesting effect, too, that it was sort of more detectable in terms of downward ripples in positive attributes for trump among his supporters, people feeling like they were not as enthusiastically endorsing that he had kept his promises, that is bringing needed change, perhaps because of the blockages that were going on. But on the other hand, quite a bit of the Movement Towards approval from neutrality was among people the other group of people who really did see him as keeping his promises and bringing needed change pics of that sort of a division among that group of trump voters as well. We have seen, you know, that in many ways really opinions have changed little. We still have the postelection era that generally you have a honeymoon. For president s who, you know, where you have support from both sides or at least sort of a positive level of waiting and seen. And in this case because of the rhetoric that weve had since the election at all of the event set up got on were seen this persistence. And arie will take it from your aunt tells a little bit more about some of what has gone on. Thank you. So im going to show you some more red and white, red and blue bars, i think thats in an age of what to do today. I will start with, i would say what, brown and yellow. We have done this poll for quite a while, and the underlying data of the panel has been around for about three or four years. Sometimes i will talk about things we know from a few years ago and then finally i will talk about what we found just a few weeks ago. One of the things we as the number of time start in august was how happy would you be when Hillary Clinton with the president and how happy would you be if donald trump would be president. It seems as you know trump got elected a modicum to talk about trump. If you look at august, and you see that, quite a bit chunk of the respondents said they would really be very unhappy if trump were president. President. So these are the people who gave as it will and then a smaller number said they would actually be quite happy if trump are were present. You dont see much change between august and october. But right after the election use quite a bit of change. Use the people who thought it would be really that if trump with the president , a drop from 40 to 30. The number of people say they would be very happy is going to. We dont know why this is but you can certainly imagine how this happens. On wednesday at the election you always sort of established trump would be present and you wake up and hes actually president. You may decide the sky has a fallen and bigger life is at that as you thought. Thats an interpretation. We dont know quite what happened. If you look after that, you look at the brown bars are again people to be very unhappy. After the election really not much of change pics of the people didnt like the notion that he would be president , that number hasnt really changed. What udc theyll is a yellow bar seems to be going down a little bit. You see a bit of slipping in support for trump. You can also look at this in a different way. So what you do here is we look at just the average score on the zero to ten scale. People can give a number between zero and ten, zero is that and ten is very good, and would break it down for who they voted for and you see that among the trump voters, there is a bit of a slippage. On the zero to ten scale about threequarters of the point on average that the board has gone down. Then for the others, the clinton voters, theres really no change. Among johnson voters may be a little more and then stein of the list. My invitation will be theres not that much to change. As noted would look at that because we also asked people if the election were today it would you vote for tax what you find is that the vast majority of the trump voters say they would vote for him again. As a matter of fact, so by the way, you may have noticed, we are looking at [inaudible] have to remember its in there. What you see is actually the a number of people who would say that they would vote for clinton is a little less than the people who say they would vote for trump again. In many ways opinions havent really changed that much. People are pretty much in the preferences, and theres a movement from people who voted for johnson or stein two other candidates. One of the things that jill talked about all of it optimism and pessimism is we can look at this and a slight edge of the way also. As i mentioned the respondents we have come weve had them for a number of years. What are the things we as quite a while ago we would ask them, what is your Current Situation and to think its going to be better next year . This was not one or two years ago we asked everyone but way before the election, what you see there is that the clinton voters, they were deathly optimistic that the financial future and the trump voters. Now ask this question in april and you see a real stark reversal. Now you see that suddenly that trump voters are much more optimistic and, for example, the clinton voters are more likely to say that their future financial situation will be worse than today. But as that number shrunk to only 5 for the trump voters, and about the same, theres not too much of a difference. You can still also show this in a different way. What i do is simply look at the difference between the clinton and trump voters. You see the dark red, thats before the election and then the sort of vague, pink or thereabouts, at the electric use before the election that was quite a difference in optimism between clinton and trump votes had been at the election use it goes the other way. You see that now that trump voters are 30 Percentage Points more likely to be optimistic. If you look at worst, then you see that among, before the election the clinton voters was 6 less likely to think it would get worse and other think, that there is 11 more likely think its getting worse. We see a remarkable change in optimism, and realistically nothing really has changed at this point, right . Its not as if suddenly the world has changed. She is a different expectation. As a result one has to assume who got elected. In general, the country is fragmented not just in what i feel and the police as john said, but also in for example, who they know and about half of the clinton voters can they dont really know anyone who voted for trump. Maybe if you. But in among the trump votes theres hardly anyone knows anyone who voted for clinton. So you have these different groups. They have their own circle of friends and acquaintances. They had similar opinions, and as a result their opinion doesnt message of change very much because their opinions get reinforced by the people to talk. I think thats pretty symmetric among the two groups. Im now going to talk a bit about, of course we asked many questions on just take if you added think are worth sort of highlighting. So one of the questions we asked is, because people have talked about alienation, do people feel a part of the political process, do they feel like theyve been influenced of whats going on . We show people a number of statements they could agree or disagree with and this is a statement where the statement is essentially people like me have very little say whats going on in washington. But you see here that the clinton Trump Supporters are pretty much the same. Its not as if one group is animated, the other one isnt. They are pretty much on the same page. On the other hand, if you can ask them what kind of opinion do you value, then you see a stark difference. You see that the statement what people are asked to agree or disagree with the statement i rather just ordinary people than experts, you see that the clinton voters are much more likely disagree with that. They are much more likely to put the trusted experts and trump voters. You see it more starkly if you look at the statement where that says scientific actually dont help much. You see a full 50 of the clinton voters strongly disagree with that statement. You will see that among trump voters people are much more likely to endorse that statement. If you sort of think of public discussions about some of, some of the more debatable or scientific findings that they are more part of public debate, then of course you can understand how this plays out in this case. On the other hand, if you ask the question do you consider yourself to be like most americans, then they are pretty similar. Whether youre a trump vote or a clinton voter you feel your like other americans and against sf the present if you only know people who are clinton voters or trump voters. But in america, the america they proceed, the america they think the living end, whats happening in society is different across these groups. You can see this here. We asked people a number of questions about fax. We just asked him if its true or false. By the way each of the statements you see i. T. Or an f in front and its our belief whether these are true or false. You can disagree with us what we believe are true. Im not going to go through all of them. But for example, there is a question about i can see it, okay. Theres a question about whether the work a few million illegal votes cast in election. You see the statement that gets indulged much more by trump voters than clinton voters. During the obama administration, there were about 9 million jobs created. You see around 80 of the clinton votes actually agree with that and less than half of the trump voters believe that is true. To have one final example we have the longrunning discussion about the russian influence in the 2016 election, and you see again about 80 of the clinton vote really think of literal and then among the trump vote is more like 15 . They are really very stark differences. The question is where of these differences coming from . Obvious place to look a is the sources of news that the consult. We asked people, what are your new sources, and they can click on many as they like you. What you see is robbing a surprising is that the clinton voters, they have a pretty broad range of new sources. They console like npr and cnn at the National Newspapers. If you look at the trump voters of course it is also a variation across sources but for them foxnews is by far the most important whereas at the same time for the clinton voters box is at the bottom. It even gets more stark or more striking if you look at who did the trust. So this is about who they trust. Now you see that the clinton voters trust pretty much every new source except fox. And the trump voters, and im exaggerating a little bit, for the more they mostly trust the white house, the Trump White House is not a category is now a category could use all the other ones being quite a bit lower. Its worth to explore this more. One of the things we do is, so this graph, what we do here is we only look at the people who say they trust box. We look at all who responded to say they trust box and they would look at how much do they trust these other sources. What you see is all these other sources, npr, cnn or the National Newspapers get a scored way below 50 . If if you trust box then you are unlikely to trust these other sources very much. We can repeat this for everyone who trust semen. Here we are and who want to as them who else do you trust. What use is they trust all these other sources well above 50 except for one. They dont really trust fox that much. You do the same thing for National Newspapers, the wall street journal, New York Times and usa today. The people trustbased National Newspapers, the trustees of the source except fox that so much. Finally msnbc the same picture. What you see is people either trust box and not the others very much, or the other way round. And by the way you may note that Internet Sources are not in your and this because we asked for number of Internet Sources that they get less than 10 . People may read the internet but when it comes to trust at this point its not a big factor. Its really in many ways you might say fox visavis the rest. If we sort of summarize or define here, third of all as a set the traditional media still seem to be the dominating, the dominant source of information. There is agreement probably among the electorate in many ways that they dont feel germans have a lot at stake in whats going on in government. But then the countries fragment and a number of different ways. As weve seen their friends and acquaintances have the same opinion so theres not that much call for interchange of different ideas. And then they have different news sources they consult, different news sources they trust come have different opinions about the role of expertise, different opinions about the extent to which the trust the government. They have quite different views on whether certain facts are true or not true. They are very different in expectations about the future, with optimistic or pessimistic. All of that feeds directly into appreciation of the president. Finally whats important we havent really seen all that much of a change. What we have is, and i think by now you should be clear given all the blue and red bars ive shown that the country is very divided in many, many different ways, and also it doesnt change that much. It seems to be unreasonable to expect that this division will be with us for quite a while. Thank you. Thank you, jill. [applause] what id like to do is get some of the other panelists involved in the discussion of the paul, and let me start with david, because david wrote in todays Los Angeles Times an overview and also some analysis of the 100 days and with reference to the poll that jill and arie just went over. David, i was wondering if you could put some of these findings and get some Historical Perspective for us. Party polarization has been a fact of life in u. S. Politics for a while now, but these results show even greater disagreement between democrats and republicans that has been the case with recent administrations. What we are seeing is not only does approval, but were also seeing a lot of intensity of opinion, people who strongly approve or strongly disapprove. And so the poll results i think are in keeping with the growing trend towards disapproval, disapproval of the present among members of the Opposition Party but weve seen dramatic changes over time. If you go back a halfcentury, at the 100 day mark with John F Kennedys administration, over 60 or more of republicans approved of kennedy. Even if we look at barack obama. His Approval Rating in his First Administration was in the mid30s. So today only around 10 of democrats approve of trump. Tell us about president ial honeymoons. Are they a thing of the past . Thats a good question. Let me start out by thinking arie and jill. We had a very productive holding partnership with them and with the Unruh Institute during the election, and im glad that his continued. Its always a pleasure to be on the usc campus. So i want to thank them and bob in th the under institute and te center for doing this work. So if there are two things that i would hope you all would take away from the paul and from what weve seen with President Trump and his standing with the country, would be polarization and stability. As dennis was alluding to, it was not that long ago that president would come into office with significant support from the Opposition Party. It didnt always last, but it would at least start out that way. As i think bob and bill carrick would probably agree, public figures Approval Ratings tended to be event driven. If you had success, you Approval Rating would go up. It get something happen that was bad, your Approval Rating would go down. What we found with president obama after the first few months, his Approval Rating settled into an extremely polarized pattern that basically never changed. It would let up a little bit. The bin laden raid, for example, kicked his Approval Rating of a few points. This data over the debt ceiling in 2011 take it down a few points, but those blips are both small and temporary pick overall, obamas Approval Rating was remarkably stable and remarkably polarized. Even more so than georg george. Bushes had been. And it appears that President Trump has continued exactly that same pattern about hyperpolarized and, therefore, extremely stable Approval Rating what those who dont like him dont like him, those who do like you are going to stick with them. Thats largely because the Approval Ratings and the Political Polarization have become consistent with a number of what you could think of as tribal divisions in american politics, divisions of race, divisions of education, divisions of urban versus rural, the kinds of things that get to the question that goes through a persons mind of i am the kind of person who here im the kind of person who looks at the world any particular way, and that particular way has become consistent with a particular Political Party which didnt used to be the case. If you think back to the 1960s and 70s, there were conservative democrats, liberal republicans. The species have largely disappeared at this point, and the two parties have become so much more consistent along these fundamental fault lines of im the kind of person who, that it is much harder for them to change. So you see this very stable level of approval with the trump. With the trump the Approval Rating is lower, stable but lower, than it was with obama. That largely reflects the reality that the Republican Base is smaller than the democratic base. So you are starting out with a smaller group. So then of course the question becomes what happens over the next several years . We dont know. I there are a couple of things that i would suggest we can look toward and things that will be critical. One is that not only is the Republican Base smaller than the democratic base, its more divided. Obama largely converted the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party gained the obama party. Trump captured the Republican Party. He hasnt converted it yet. He may, but he has not yet done that. As the polls showed, jill mentioned about what in six trump voters say they dont really like him. They may approve of his policies but they voted for him because they dislike the of the candidate more. Its that because he liked him. There was a lot of negative polarization in the election, and it benefited trump ultimately. That group of republicans who dont particularly like trump tends to be more upscale, better educated, the kinds of voters that we saw in suburban regions like Orange County here in southern california, or like the suburbs of atlanta for the special election was held earlier this month where the republicans have been underperforming. So thats one thing to look at, that kind of fraction in the Republican Party. The other is the kind of thing that weve seen in the healthcare debate. The administration has been unable to get an Obamacare Repeal bill to the house, despite the fact that it was a Central Campaign theme not only for the president might even more so republican members of Congress Going back to 2010. And part of that reflects the fact that republicans have been able to agree on repeal but not on replacement. But part of it also reflects some very deep divisions within the Republican Party about policy, and those are divisions that trump to some extent has exacerbated because his policy prescriptions, the sort of nationalist, populist appeals that he has made our culture significant extent, at odds with other parts of the Republican Party, and you see that push and pull in healthcare debate. You see it whenever the debate turns to entitlements where the presence of use are significantly different from those the president views from the senate leadership. You see it on trade and you will see it in the tax debate as that unfold over the next year. So as those of debates continue, the question i think, and the one that my colleagues and i in washington are going to be trying to watch is, does the president succeed in converting the Republican Party and really making it his party, or do these divisions between his position and the more orthodox republican position persist and worsen, in which case you may begin to see his Approval Ratings move downward despite the kind of tribal polarization that i mentioned to begin with. So those are my thoughts at this point. Great. Thanks, dave. You know, in the poll, there is good news and bad news for the democrats. Trump is seen as out of touch, but at the same time weve seen in polling that the Democratic Party is seen as being even more out of touch with the people than trump is. We are seeing no regrets from trump voters, but we are saying maybe some regrets in the fall, and the results of that jill in arie just presented we are seeing some regrets among clinton voters, not that he wouldve voted for trump that he might have abstained, stayed home or vote for thirdparty candidate. So when you look at the 100 people is the only a report card on republicans, but it also tells us how well i think or maybe gives us some clues about how well the democrats are doing in countering trump. So what does the poll tells about the success or lack of success of the Democratic Party as the Opposition Party . So i want to turn to bill carrick as the democratic strategists. How do you interpret Public Opinion at this stage, as far as how well the party is doing, the Democratic Party . Well, thanks for that, dennis dennis. The reality is the whole entire Political Landscape right now is totally dominated by trump, and the Democratic Party has got obviously a little divided on how to approach that. How do you deal with trump . We have people who make a strong case that we should be in continual and aggressive, active resistance to republicans. And there are people who are looking, try to figure out okay, is there any way in hell we can do business with this guy on something . As jill suggested that the largest opportunity there seems to be infrastructure, although as david suggested, when we get into these issues they become rather complex and tha the republican to think infrastructure is to give tax cuts to Corporate America to build things, and the democrats want no part of it. They want to see Public Investment in infrastructure with at a minimum publicprivate partnerships. Theres a deep division at the Democratic Party on how to deal with trump. Now, on the other hand, trump may deal with himself in ways that inns of being beneficial to the democrats. Obviously, the big take away from this poll is the unbelievable polarization. The american seem to be trapped in their own silos, whether their partisan, racial, geographic or ethnic, and to some extent genderbased, and even to the point that the old cliche about everybody goes and finds the news they like is starting to be true based on the numbers that have come back. Its not universal but obviously there are republicans, Trump Supporters, who go to fox news to hear what they want to hear, and there are democrats and progressives ago two msnbc seeking the news they want. We are almost having a debate with people with two different sets of information about the world and the country. I thought it was the most intriguing weaknesses i saw with respect to trump in this is the individual attributes here are quite negative. The big picture, we still see the polarization. We see an extension of the november election in peoples attitudes on election day. But you look at the individual attributes about whether, what hes doing and how people react to that and how to feel about him and his ability to accomplish things or be consistent, all these things, they are really quite bad. Now, they may actually be predictors of where Public Opinion takes donald trump in probably the relatively near future. I would also say, to me, the numbers didnt deal directly with this, but you know, the real question is he is now locked in to post november positions, same place he was then. The question is if he had success, david, instead of failure on healthcare, what if he had succeeded in repealing and coming up with an alternative . With data taken voters who were in the trump sought category which you see plenty of evidence there are some very soft supporters of trump, if they start to not like the things that he is accomplishing, right now hes being judged by his failures. You know, i think maybe for the republicans worse than his failures may be his successes. I mean, just one of the subjects of the day, i mean, okay, raise your hand if you thought we would be in a trade war with canada now. [laughing] you know, so we, his successes may be more damaging to the republicans that his failures. Gridlock is also been with us for a while, but as dennis said, but if you look at, in our lifetime, almost everybody in the rooms lifetime, weve had to extremely polarizing elections. 92 which people forget was a threeway election, and a whole hell of a lot of voters said plague on both your houses. And bill clinton got elected and his Approval Rating was in the 50s, in the first 100 days. In 2000 we had the longest Selection Process in the history of the country. We were still counting almost up to the inauguration. In fact, if Vice President gore had not taken himself out, we may still be counting. But the reality, he, president george w. Bush ended up with Approval Rating in the low 50s. So the depths of trumps lack of Approval Rating are obviously unique historically. His capacity, you know, everybody moves off the bottom, and hes going to, he may move ten points and he may actually be, you know, within striking distance of george w. Bush and bill clinton were in two very polarizing postelection environment, but thats not going to help him. Thats not going to help him govern. Finally, i think david makes an excellent point, and we are seeing this, this, i dont take, this wasnt in our poll today that weve seen of the polls that have paul ryan may end up being exactly where nancy pelosi is in Public Opinion pretty quickly. Congress gets a lot of credit for gridlock. Its just inevitable, if the government, god for bid, shuts down, that is usually right on congress. It will be on the president , too, but at what point does interests and ambitions of the Congressional Republicans diverge from trumps own personal agenda . And weve seen as we discussed trade, entitlements, tax cuts, and some of the foreignpolicy issues, weve seen stark differences between republicans and the president. We dont often have that in our political system. We are not a parliamentary system. Its not the same as uk, but we are usually the partisans of one Political Party are very supportive of the president. Occasionally we had come sorely during the 1950s, we had eisenhower doing a lot of business with democrats, and we saw bill clinton in the 90s do a lot of business with republicans. Weve had that dynamic, but weve usually, very few exceptions, weve usually had, you know, the roosevelt have split is a case in point, but weve usually had partisans of roosevelt taps president and congress be very supportive. So far weve seen with the Freedom Caucus and the moderates, weve seen a lot of fracturing of the Republican Coalition in congress. When we had that in the past, or we that rumors of that, the president has got a call set out and dealt with the democrats. With the exception of infrastructure i dont see a lot of opportunity for trump to figure out how to do business with the democrats. And it is going to transcend this polarization and gridlock we saw in the poll, hes going to have to figure out some way to do that. Now, i dont think he can continue and successfully govern if these numbers stay the way they are. They have to change. Hes going to have to find some ability to appeal to americans outside his own limited political base. So far we havent seen any capacity to do that. I was not harden up this morning when he was repeating the president obamas protections of lands in the west from oil drilling through the monuments cause, the antiquities clause. It seemed to be another irrelevant nietzsche issue emoluments clause. That he picked up on the campaign trail as he sort of struggle to become a republican president who could carry utah. You know, the bottom line is we are at a point as arie made pretty clear, we havent got to the next step. We are still in the preliminary stages of this presidency where everything is just totally locked in the same place it was back in november. Angemarie, do you want to join in . When you look at polls, regarding what democrats want, the representatives to do, they dont want compromise with the administration and they prefer permanent resistance to trump. Is that of viable strategy for them over the next four years . Well, i think a couple of things that i wanted to make sure we brought to the table, and i think the fact that were doing this in california i think skus sometimes our idea of just how strong they taste is for fullscale tour resistance all the time. And i think one of the important kinds of conditions that may be California Democrats and others in the new york democrats and others did to think about is what happened in kansas and in georgia. So how close they came in kansas, how close they are in georgia in the district where jon ossoff is running against karen handel. That i wanted to raise with regard to the second wave of the Internet Survey happening the first week of april. We know historically that the idea of getting involved in defense kinds of things, Foreign Policy kinds of things does tend to consolidate whatever support is out there for a president. We saw this after 9 11 which is far more severe in terms of what americans thought of Severe Threat than syrian refugees, i think its fair to say. I think thats one of the things that might be worth kind of thinking about on how the slight uptick kind of happened for trump overall in april. The second thing i wanted to kind of talk about was the one of the data that wasnt necessarily presented thinking about gender and raise. When you look at that part of the data, you see that white women both with no degree and with a degree, so white women in general regardless of education status voted, still supported and thought that the country was headed in the right direction four months after the inauguration. Really think about the way in which white women are this kind of lever for how we think about Public Opinion regarding this president. I think instead what we really want to think about is how do we think through the different pairs of, you know, kind of black women, latino women, asian women as well as white women in terms of public support. Here is what, i think, is going on here. Jane is sort of speculating about this in the paper that was published. White women have been voted republican since two elections. You listen to the Mainstream Media youll hear that the gender gap is kind of, you know, across different racial groups and operates the same across racial groups. What jane has found is that thats not the case. And so what we are trying to work on and tease out is why and whats going on there and one of the things thats going on there is the notion of security, right, and so part of what made trump appeal to white women so successful is something that was also true in the early 2000 following 9 11 and something that was part of southern strategy, again, we normally thought of the southern strategy as appealing mostly to white male voters but in fact, this was appealing to white female voters and that was the notion of security, right, security and safety, right, so one of the things thats phoning on there is this idea, not so much safety and security from terrorist threats but safety and security in terms of safe neighborhoods, in terms of making sure that kids are safe. Those kinds of things, when those narrative are brought up, suddenly speaking but brought up, then you have white women making sure they are consolidating around a candidate that is going to quote, unquote, safe and thats something that the democrats do not have an answer for. This is something that the democrats have not have an answer for. They dont know thousand appeal to that segment of the population in the way that makes them feel safe. Hillary clinton tried in 2008 but i didnt work obviously, right. So this is something that the democrats have still yet to kind of identify and figure out a solution to. The other thing that, i think, is important and we dont often think about this is that we should consider age and so one of the things we were able to do in 2008 and 2012 was to embed survey experiments and one of the things we found, again, you think of millennials of being all across the board liberal and all across tolerant and all across the board have social values as the Democratic Party and what we found was that that was absolutely manipulable. One of the survey experiment that is we embedded, the notion of increasing border security, something that trump clearly has been talking about, one of the things he removed making sure the government doesnt shut down in two days. The border wall, one of the things thats appealing to millennials about that is when you Start Talking about security threats, right. When you talk about being security against immigrants, they dont buy it but with regard to terrorism, then millennials will buy it just as much as generation x, just as much as baby boomers. Whats the role of age here in support of trump . Again, speaking more to the Opposition Party in the sense of what they can do because the republicans are in power and they have a large amount of power to do what they want. Speaking to the democrats, the idea would be how do you actually think about this because one narrative about millennials is that as we go through demographic change everything that democrats want, will automatically kind of happen organically, whether its lgbt rights, immigration reform, as long as millennials start running and getting into office then everything will organically happen. I think thats really a flawed argument and a flawed logic to kind of think about precisely because what we see among those young voters who did support trump was that he was able to find a way into appealing to them, right, and so i think theres this real important attention that needs to be paid to the rule of age as a available in some of the polling that we are doing because, i think, again, assumption that millennials are over here on the left when, in fact, theres a significant number of them whether they have evangelical or not necessarily religious at all but have the im concerned about security, im concerned about the future of entitlements and other things. Those are the things that i isnt that true the data that was presented today that are worthying about and the last thing i wanted to just kind of make sure we raise is really thinking about the role of state and local politics. And so different states are positioning themselves differently and so one of the interesting questions Going Forward is to really think about the role of federalism. If you think of what has happened up north with the federal judge blocking the threat to prevent funding to sanction sanctuary cities, for me as a political scientist its interesting to watch because, of course, this was was what happened with obamacare in 2009 and 2010 when democrats were in power and now the republicans are in power and theres the interesting federalism argument. Up one of the things Going Forward to look at is the notion, how is federalism either going save our democracy, right, in terms of making sure that the worst abuses of either party cant really, you know, end up harming the people that live here or, you know, its federalism eventually going to be something that cannot save us. I think thats one of the interesting questions that we can think about Going Forward. And joel i want to get you involved here. I want you to maybe talk about what does the polls say about trumps power within his party, can his support held up in doubt with what people are calling more significant legislative accomplishments and im wondering if theres a cult of personality behind him and that will sustain his support for a long time. Well, thank you very much, denise, when you introduced me i said i was on the far left. [laughter] but at breitbart we have a slightly different perspective. Im glad to be the furthest on the right on the panel. Before i answer your question i want to give you a sense overall where our readers are at and to me what is the most important number in this ball. First of all, i want to congratulate the pollsters actually not just for this poll thats very informative but also performance in the election. This was as far as im aware the only major public poll that got the election right, and i know that the pollsters had to endure all kinds of articles from the New York Times and unskewing their polls and trying to get at their sample and figure out what went wrong because trump couldnt win the election. They reported the data and they got the data right and that made everything that they produced from now on valuable because it was a rare win, losers, to put it in trump terms. 53 overall, 5 say hes keeping promises. Thats very significant and that drives the optimism that most Trump Supporters still have about the canned at a time. Now, at breitbart, youll read a lot of stories about how he is letting his supporters down on this issue or that issue. Breitbart surprised a lot of people, we thought we were just sort of protrump, surprised a lot of people to take him, one of the campaign was im going to investigate or prosecute Hillary Clinton and he dropped that almost immediately after winning the election and that was a big blaring headline on breitbart. First promise broken and people in the media reported that breitbart is turning on trump, we are not turning on trump. We always spoke for that audience. Our readers basically came to us for news that reflected their outlook on the world and outlook hasnt changed. These are the things they want tone, jobs, Obamacare Repealed and so forth and any time theres lack of product or flipflop theres a strong reaction. In general, even the most inclined to be offended by anything that trump does that isnt conservative hes basically doing his job. Let me give you a sense and why i think hes bullish in the first 100 days. First of all, no major disaster. Lots of things people are angry about. No major disasters. Maybe obama did a great job, whatever it was no major disaster to people arent going to panic about the first hundred days. That gets him halfway there. You have to appointment of nile gorsuch to the Supreme Court which perhaps any republican would have appointed him or someone like him. He basically covered the basis. The country didnt fall apart and major controversy and he put a conservative on the Supreme Court. Hes got a c grade. He passes and doing okay and then you add other things hes done that are unique, the most important legislatively, we heard a lot of talk about health care and news broke that the Freedom Caucus is signing on the new version of the health care bill. He dropped the ball there in first hundred days so far anyway but dropped regulations but to certain Interest Groups they are very much of interest. So i think bill mentioned one about federal lands in the west and to describe that as trump is taking away protection from federal lands is putting it in negative sense but technically it does that, but if youre living in those areas and relying on job creation, some of the monuments were created nilly, wily against significant local opposition and theres a huge constituency in some of western states against further federalization of land and so they are very happy to see trump reversing some of these things. 13 of the laws in total. Theres also executive orders to review regulations. Hes basically taken a hatchet to the regulatory state and thats very good for conservative supporters and draining the swamp from their perspective. Probably the most Surprising Development and the boldest was the missile strike on syria which had supporters that maybe hes going to turn into quote, unquote a neocon but most americans approved of that and reaccomplished in world stage and it was a sharp contrast to obamas conduct in the world strainl and so essentially marked one of several moves trump has taken to reaccomplish the United States as a force, as a leader from the front in World Politics whereas obama approach has been leading from behind. You take all of these things together, thats a significant pile of achievement in the first hundred dais. He hasnt achieved to everything hes promised and you can point things hes done against campaign trail. Some Trump Supporters are used to and didnt take everything he said seriously particularly when things were going to be easy. I dont know how many people thought that it was going easy, probably entertaining. Rise of the oceans didnt slow and other things didnt happen but obama supporters are still on board. So really interesting things were said on this panel and i really Value Insights and im going to pick up on a couple because its important where we go from here. One of the comments earlier it was one fifth of trump voters who dont like him, theres personal attributes of him that they dont like but they voted for him because they didnt like the other candidate. Now, if im a democratic strategists, im thinking, wow, thats who am i targeting, im going to find whatever it is they dont like about trump and amplify it, but here is the thing, they voted for trump anyway knowing all the stuff about his rhetoric and access Hollywood Video and all the nasty stuff that people keep recycling and they knew all of that and kept voting for him. What they dont like about trump has to be Something Different. One of the things people thought he wasnt going to be a real conservative. Every time he creates minor promises he creates opposition. Democrats arent going to go out there and build a wall even higher because he hasnt built it yesterday, but if im a democratic strategists, i will go to voters, you thought he was going to drain the swamp, hes just another politician and our candidate, you know, fill in the blank, is really going to do it. This is the person who is really going to change washington and the problem is with what democrats are doing, term resistance has been used a lot. As a student of politics, im more particular with the term opposition. Resistance is something that you had in nancy nazioccupied europe. I understand that people find it somewhat excited to think about part of resistance. I said the same thing of conservative. This is during obama, this is ridiculous, we are not part of an underground. But this resistance term is purpose bigger than the underground term, resistance has become the banner. I agree with jerry brown on this, democrat, obviously, said that he doesnt use the term resistance because i think its inappropriate. I agree with him. I thought that was a very mature statement by a seasoned politician. The reason resistance doesnt work is because the voters, those one sixth of trump voters are not going to be attracted by resistance. We were talking about georgia election, jon ossoff, he doesnt live in the district. He may not win, but the lesson of his performance there is coming back to the lessons democrats used in 2006 when Rahm Emmanuel chose candidates that reflected a con receiver conservative electorate on the margins and didnt find people that were anarchy, resistance, whatever they were. These werent the people watching in the street. They were people just like republican neighbor who is wanted a change, who wanted as nancy pelosi and harry reid said, drain the swamp. The other thing about democrats, okay. People defend the idea of resistance and theres lots of things you can use to defend it. Ted lou is running a page called i legitimacy clock. This is about resistance as resistance gets. A huge success for him in fundraising. Hes raked in the millions of donations and its also been a huge success in terms of own voter base turning out at town halls, this weekend in la, good for him. Hes not in a competitive district. What democrats have forgotten, they look at the Tea Party Movement of 2010, they stormed the town halls, dressed in funny costumes. It worked for them. The district map was very different. In 2010 despite everything you heart about the Tea Party Wave there were only five democratic seats that flipped to republican, the vast majority of seats that were worn had formerly been republican seats where more conservative had won briefly and deposed by their conservative insurgence. It was more reversion of where things had been in 2006. The map youre looking at is not different from 2016. Democrats have few places they can win. There are 25 Democratic Senate seats up for reelection and ten of those are in state that is trump won. Democrats have to be thinking about how we can reach to those voters who we lost in michigan, in pennsylvania, well, theres a senate race in pennsylvania, but thats not true in every race. Congressional races, whatever it is, how can we find that one sixth and reach out to them . But thats where you have to be thinking and thats how you start to bring politics back to the center. One of the different we have a very divided electorate is it worked for obama very efficiently and trump is basically following the obama model. There were comments raised earlier how does trump improve on these Approval Ratings, how did he expand, the assumption seems hes going to have to find new voters among democrats and compromise, hes thinking im going to do what obama did, what obama did, when i couldnt get cooperation from congress, i did what i wanted, i pleased my base. Thats what happened in 2012, the public agreed with mitt romney on every issue but didnt like him but obama turned out the base expanded his base, brought more base voter specially minority votes to the polls specially like ohio. If you look at trumps own voters, hes doing the same thing. Hes still connected to them. He hasnt done anything major yet to upset them. You hear all the things about people hes hiring in the white house, some were democrats or jeb bush staffers, conservatives are very worried that hes going to move to the left. Most people would describe it as adjusting to the process of governing. If you read Abraham Lincoln team of rivals, fantastic book, trumps cabinet looks a lot like lincoln. Theres rival factions and argument, supporters of each faction cant stand each other but this plays out ultimately in a positive way because you have a chief executive thats able to delegate and take best advice after all the arguing is done. So theres a lot of cons constornation among conservatives. But the real question for conservatives is he going to be the transformative president that we wanted in terms of draining the swamp, getting rid of lobbyists in washington and repealing obamacare and doing all the other things that were important to us . Democrats could win in 2020 without doing anything if trump fails on any one of those major promises. If trump gives ammunition to someone like rand paul, okay, who was sharply antitrump in the early stages on the primary and later came to endorse him but adamantly opposed stance towards trump and policies and has been a sharp of critic of trade policies, rand paul is a libertarian. If trump makes obamacare more governmentoriented than it is now, hes going to give am mission to conservative base and the one sixth is up for grabs. If theres major scandal, im not talking about minor conflict stuff, that sort of stuff should be brought up but its not going to shift voters. You to find something else. A major scandal that could do it without much effort. The big question about polarization is this, and i guess since im from the media this is a good point to close on and this is one of the things thats great about the poll that its so granular. You can really ask important questions. The television in this country is granular. Its happening on media forms that are not controlled from washington, new york, and los angeles anymore. Its not even happening on breitbart anymore. Its happening on facebook, its happening on twitter, its happening in ways that people produce their own content and on social media and within families , among colleagues and people are isolating each other and destroying relationships over politics and im sure almost everyone in this room can relate some experience or another whether its thanksgiving dinner or a facebook friend that dropped out or Something Like that. This is happening over and over again and the experience of polarization was one that we are not just seeing when people show up to vote. I think that perhaps for me the most surprising number that 45 of trump voters dont know anybody who voted for clinton. We tend to think in the conservative movement that democrats are more sheltered from the opposite side because we are bombarded by media source that is dont agree with our perspective. In terms of personal relationships, that tells me that the problem is bipartisan and that people are totally cut off from any kind of normal conversation because certainly there are people in the neighborhood. I live in santa monica which is about as left as you can get and i look at the voting, 118 people, thats very small, obviously clinton carried the district by a wide margin, but 118 of my neighbors voted for trump and i dont know any of them, by the way. Theres no part of American Society thats completely and part of it is the increasing American Social life, suburban living but part of it is what we are doing to each other on social media. We have all of the ways to communicating with each other and tend to speak to each other less and less about things that are important. This is a great challenge Going Forward, try to figure out how to facilitate and they are used to using social media to reach voters, he doesnt care about people who tweet against him, not interesting. Is there a solution as we do as americans to try to find a way to stitch this all back together before it becomes worse and remarkably ann coulter canceling her speech in berkeley, theres been little violence. Im not sure how long that continues. It is bipartisan and a problem thats almost cultural in terms of how we behave towards each other. I think panels like this is very important and survey and im grateful to be with you all and i guess i will expand later when im talking about Foreign Policy at the afternoon panel. Thanks, joel. We are running behind and i im getting a signal that we should turn to some questions and answers from questions from the audience, so theres a microphone being circulated and maybe raise your hand and someone will get to you. Hi. I like what you said about millennials because everybody thinks that we are all generic and we are all into one group and we are all left but im a millennial who tends to leap conservative but i think of myself as an independent thinker and i just want to say for the democrats, personally, i didnt vote but i was going toward trump because nothing has been done to address the issue of us millennials, we grew up in a recession, we grew up in an economic downturn but it only seemed like the republicans were really paying attention to it but they were talking about jobs more like jobs of like manufacturing and thats more for older people. So i want to see both democrats and republicans, what they think about the whole economic crisis for us millennials coming out of job coming out of college with a degree and just ending up in debt and nobody really gives you any guidance, where to go or what to do or how to handle your finances, heck, theres no Financial Education in the high schools for god sake, who is bringing that up . Well, my view is that youre right, that nobody has addressed that again generational problem. I get to speak at a lot of campuses and forums like this and in my experience is that theres an enormous amount of alienation and what the heck am i going to do when i get out of school kind of problem. I just think on a campaign basis i think campaigns are still adjusting to trying to figure out how to communicate with millennials. I find that, you know, in the democrats as we have talked about, democrats sometimes take for granted millennials, republicans say we cant get them so we are not going to go after them. You get into theres a void there. You know, do i a lot of ballot measures which are not partisanly influenced so i spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to talk to millennials and we were doing measure at the transportation measure and we made a major effort, millennials were strong supporters of them but they didnt know what it was and we had to tell them so we were talking to them online, we were talking texting, here is a gate experience, whats the difference between millennial generation and the rest of the world. We sent text to millennials asking him to vote for him and i thought, you know what, we are going to get a bunch of fyous back, how did you get my text, blah, blah, we had more millennials texts us thanks for reaching out and talking to them than we had given us the middle finger. Its a challenge to basically even communicate millennials for both Political Parties and the elected officials across the spectrum. I think the only thing i was going adjust briefly was i think there was an intergenerational that i observed 2012 and Going Forward, as we recovered economically speaking in the country, there hasnt been much to address the fact that we have this crossgeneration an identity anxiety, we have millennials coming out of high school not know if they should go to College Given the costs and everything else. You also have baby boomers, one of the things the way the media often friems this, baby boomers are retiring, i thought i was going get a gold watch. The narrative is for both millennials and baby boomers, ive done everything i was supposed to do. I worked hard in high school and worked hard in college and did internship and theres no jobs. Baby boomers are saying the exact same thing. I worked hard all of my life, i paid mortgage and did all of these things and now i cant retire. You the crossgenerational anxiety going on and when people are writing about this in the media are pinning these two against each other. All the policy issues, are we going to do free college or social security, are we going to do whatever Millennials Want to do for kid or are we going to do, you know, medicare reform in some kind of way. We need to address it in meaningful way, not because theres new map but to really think about how do these things fit together so that we can have everybody feeling like theyre not going at each other so that free college doesnt come at the cost of. So i think thats one thing that Neither Party has really each party has kind of doubled down on own sets of platforms and not really addressed that theres crossgenerational anxiety and people need to be able to talk about that. If i can Say Something quickly. I just ran the numbers to look at what the age differences look like and actually optimism among 18 to 34 is over 50 to 56 compared to under and decreasing as you get older in other age category. In some sense the Youngest Group are the most optimistic of things Getting Better in the time ahead. The oldest group is the least. Im going the try to squeeze in one more question. Of course, its eating into our coffee break but is there a last question out there . There was a study conducted by lewandowsky that most voters take cues from elites and people tend to do the same thing with a bit of a gap but they also said that given the Media Coverage and how people learn social cues and elite cues that despite having more access to different media they also increase their tailoring so that since their media appetite is more restricted. So if it stems from the top, then theres problems at the bottom with people tailoring their news sources, who begins the initiation and do the elites take the initiative or is it on people themselves to begin to open up news sources . Thats a really interesting question for the next several years. The partisan polarized cycle that we are in is selfreinforcing. Politicians learn as joel said, you dont have to convert people on who disagree with you, you to mobilize your base. That was the lesson of of the obama 2012 campaign. It was also the lesson of the george w. Bush 2004 campaign which the obama people studied very carefully and if your strategy is based on base mobilization, you have very little incentive to try to break out of the partisan sort and to the extent that as as people were talking about that both parties partisans now have become more fervent. You get the same impetus from the bottom. The two reinforce each other. Ultimately, unless voters demand Something Different from their elected officials its very hard to see how you break out of that cycle because elected officials have no no incentives to change whats working for them and what we unfortunately if you dont like polarization, unfortunately, what we see is that the voters who are most engaged in politics and follow issues most carefully are the ones who are most likely to have strongly negative views about the other side and most likely to be the tab the most polarized opinions. So the ones who are who are more likely to swing back and forth are also the ones who pay the least attention. I thought i would never say this but im nostalgic for swing voters. [laughter] thank you very much. I want to thank all the panelists and its time for our coffee break. [applause] later this morning the Hudson Institute holds on trade relations. Live at 11 45 a. M. Cspan2. This week in the senate we expect debate on the Republican Health care replacement bill, the draft legislation is currently being scored by the congressional budget office. Itll be considered by the full senate as soon as that assessment is complete. Watch live Senate Floor Debate here on cspan2 or online at cspan. Org or you can also listen any time by downloading the free cspan radio app. Tonight on the communicators. I dont think theres any dispute on either side of the debate. Everybody is in favor of open internet. We are in favor of basic internet rules that can be enforced. The only way to ensure that is through legislation. Robert quinn, Largest Telecom lobbying operation talks about key issues in the companys interest such as Corporate Tax reform, privacy and net neutrality. Hes interviewed by reuters tech. We are going through the process. I think we kicked it off in november. We are going through a process with the department of justice. You know, i think weve told the street that we expect the deal to close by the end of year. We still have foreign approvals and we are not completely dope. Some of the big polls is we have an operation in mexico so the deal has to go through that process there. Weve got operations in brazil but theyre not the only ones. So we are going through a process at the department of justice right now and, you know, our expectation is, you know, we should be through that process, we should be through the operational issues that we have to go through in order to be able to close without licensed transfers and approval process and hopeful, confident that we are going to get through that by the end of the year. Watch the communicators tonight at 8 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan2. Next, look at congressional authorization for the use of military for