it would be another data point in that favor in just a few months. before donald trump backed roy moore he backed luther strange remember in the primary in alabama. he failed to get luther strange across the line. mitch mcconnell and gop super pac spent millions of dollars trying to back luther strange, stop roy moore, they didn t succeed then, that was just in december and one counterpoint to that. we talk about a democratic civil war, there are no real primaries happening in the senate on the democratic side. this is largely a republican phenomenon and i assure you don blankenship mitch mcconnell would be happy to get an extra seat from west virginia but not happy to have don blankenship in the senate next year. steve kornacki, thank you very much. you ll be back with us tomorrow morning for analysis of tonight s results. alex seitz-wald, we ll read your analysis on nbcnews.com and nicholas johnson of axios, thank you as well. still ahead, new york
the u.s. congress the way macron did, since bibi netanyahu. admiral james tavridis. thank you very much for being back on the show. coming up, senators dick blumenthal and jeff flake will be here, they both will cast critical votes today for mike pompeo as secretary of state. also a new headline from axios just moments ago. white house sources tell axios that they expect white house physician ronny jackson to withdraw as president trump s nominee to run the veterans affairs department after democrats on capitol hill circulated harsh new allegations. we ll be following the developments in that story, all ahead on morning joe.
there s been controversy about his nomination to be the secretary of a bureaucracy that overseas nine million veterans. a massive bureaucracy, he s the personal doctor for the president. he was for president obama and for a short time for president bush as well. it looks like according to axios there s reporting he may withdraw his name given everything that is in the background of his nomination. as you look at the way the process started with dr. jackson standing at a podium several months ago and delivering a clean bill of health in sometimes grandiose terms for the president of the united states saying he thinks he could live to 200 if he ate better, said god just made him this way, he s got great genes, all that stuff president trump likes to hear and earned him the nomination to be v.a. secretary. is this just a process that had no process? in other words, no vetting, no interviews that they might have dug up everything in the ig report before they nominated anymore a more conven
these creatures from the black lagoon told us this is exactly how it worked. he said he gave money to politicians because that bought him access and the system is rigged and it s crooked but the problem is he went on to say i m going to clean it up and, of course, he s just made it worse and worse and worse. and another problem, dr. dean right now, the head of the v.a., ronny jackson, the white house physician, we re hearing from axios he may rwithdraw his name from consideration. what s going on there? this is fascinating. you can always suspect revenge and ulterior motives. this is i think there must be something some real fire h e here. why would you go after the personal white house physician vouched for by obama if this isn t true? i don t think this is a hit job. i really don t. i think there s something really wrong going on here. i don t know what it is.
the problem is internally at least, they cannot, at the moment, conceive of a clean, is the words used to describe it to me. a clean way to get rid of him. so it s unclear when, how, if, who replaces him, but the president still very much wants to get rid of rod rosenstein. it will be interesting. jonathan swan live in washington, d.c. we ll be reading axios a.m. in just a little while. to all our viewers out there you can sign up for the newsletter at axios.com. that does it for us on this friday morning. good friday. good friday. excellent. morning joe starts right now. the president said the hookers thing is nonsense, but that putin had told him we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world. he did not say when putin had told them this and i don t recall redacted. some of this is redacted. the president was conveying this