senate intel committee s investigation and the seriousness with which he has allowed them to approach it. he has stayed out. he s kept his language muted. i think the leadership by no question, they know we ought to stop calling it leadership. this is not leadership by any stretch of the imagination. it just isn t. let me just remind us of something. remember at the end of the election, 2016 election, we were worried donald trump was setting it up, setting up the public to delegitimize the election of hillary clinton. in fact, setting it up so not just simply for trump tv but in order to stoke resentment you re right, we were ready for him to not being accept the outcome. not only muddying the legal waters by getting us to pay attention to seven, eight different things, right, he s also delegitimizing this. part of what he s going to say, right, if they indicted this is a witch hunt. the stormtroopers, quote/unquote, are moving in. he is setting this up in a way
destroy evidence, and as a result, we cannot give him sort of advance warning, you know, regular subpoena that we re coming in to get the documents. because we believe, even though he s an attorney, even though most of the documents may be protected by attorney/client privilege, but the belief that he may destroy these documents is so high, based on what we heard, what we ve observed, we need this no subpoena. we need to get these documents. how do republicans read all this? we know trump s base isn t going anywhere. but i mean the republicans that you know and love and have worked with for years. the base, trump supporters who aren t going anywhere as a witch hunt. republicans for gop leadership. mitch mcconnell s he s stayed away. leadership has known for a while that it s not getting better. that s an oxymoron. you look at how mitch mcconnell has been handling the
bill. this moment feels different. so many people have said that. you have watched these gun debates evolve in the past and go nowhere. are you anticipating there will be legislative change? i think it s different in terms of public sentiment. if president trump wants to show serious leadership, it can be different. no question there s a compromise to be had, you heard john reed say he s not willing to go in certain places, but if trump says so, he ll go there. this reminds us of the immigration issue where there s also compromise to be held. didn t he open up the meeting with congressional meeting with members and it was exciting and then this shows donald trump wants to get something done. three or four days later it was, no, i have these conditions and they couldn t get anything passed. and you re absolutely right. and i think that s what makes it so dynamic. and the the question is have the politics changed? does trump understand it s in his own interest, i would say. the bas
the senates who were coming from red states. exactly. there is a lot of chaos and a lot of unprecedented things that happened in this administration. but there is a political reality that remains. which is you need 60 votes to proceed with any legislation. republicans have 51. so they they are in control of congress but not complete control of the senate. and they were able to put kind of a wedge between the democrats two wanted to stick on the ground and shut the government down, to fund daca if it meant shutting the government down and the others that you just mentioned who are going to be in the states running for for re-election in states that trump won trying to make the case to their voters, i m a deal maker too and i could work with republicans in congress just as well as democrats. so they were put in a big position here. i think the democratic party is going through something now which is they have a very rustive, active base that they want to mobilize in the elections.
republicans that steve bannon suffered a loss here. and really embarrassed the republican party. and certainly even though mitch mcconnell has to be sick to his stomach to lose a ruby red republican seat in the senate, there is an element of victory for those republicans who have wanted to see the party move away from the influence of steve bannon and perhaps think that trump s base isn t quite as dominant as it seemed in the presidential election. and so there s a swirl of things here and ron brings up an excellent point about house moderates who are running in districts. they re already a little bit squeamish about some of the things the republican party has been pushing. this type of wave could really wipe them out and so across the board, the white house political operation in terms of the 2018 midterms but also legislatively and how congress is able to move forward, you know, the president s hand is weakened there. so when you talk about a shock wave, i mean, the implications