the base say that the president did a deal on daca and did not do anything on the wall, but his base would collapse in despair. i really don t think that s true. but the president has a difficulty here. i think in his heart, and in his plans, he wants to do something for these kids, these daca kids, but he s got a tough row to hoe to keep his base inside the tent. just for our viewers awareness, this is donald trump. he s holding a prison reform roundtable. this is something that was really led by jared kushner. he s taken this concept under his wing among his other portfolio of things including middle east peace, trying to find a way to reform convicts as opposed to mere incarceration. it s interesting because this seems to go against what jeff sessions, the attorney general, would have wanted and in funding that s being proposed for more
i recall during the obama administration and being schooled. why are you so obsessed with this issue? people move on. to my point, if you brought legislation to the floor and they don t do it legislativlegi will democrats say what about magazines or this rifle or this or that. that s the issue. that s part of it. i agree with republicans and gun control and i stick to believe it when you see it. it s easy after a shooting like this to say we will consider it and this is horrific. i was covering the gun control debate after newtown. a classroom of dead children prompted congress to do nothing. it s not about the policy issue. even if they do support it, but what are afraid of is this primal instinct of gun owners in their base say if you regulate background checks and bump
something through reconciliation. i think they may have had something short term, the landmark next saturday. there is concern they re going to get bad reviews. not a single major legislative initiative having gotten through either house of congress. and i think they have also concluded it s hard to do anything else unless you do something about this very fundamental promise on health care. it s hard to do the tax bill because you don t get the tax numbers you re going to get. it s a numbers issue when it comes to the tax bill. that s why i think president trump has, in fact, reversed himself from the idea of moving on to the next thing and they ve circled back. now, actually members of the freedom caucus are optimistic that they found something that they can work with moderates and get at least through the house. they figure you leave the question of the senate to the senate. wow, mitch mcconnell s nightmare. they don t want this thing. bill, that they know they can t pass handed
my sense is that donald trump has turned a corner in the last several weeks. it feels like this isn t a left versus right thing as much as it s sort of an incompetence versus competence thing. you brought up in the previous block about donald trump s base being impenetrable, a cult following, but when you see him taking shots during the campaign, here s a banker, does his base say, wait a minute, i thought he was a man of the people, why is he hanging out with those guys? does it penetrate in that report? one thing that came to mind was coined by trump s cult, is making globalists great again. i m reminded of the last primary where trump stood out and began chanting goldman sachss and said
says there s something to be said about being the underdog. one of the great gift that is i ve had in my political career is that no one ever think that is i could ever win anything. [ laughter ] the gift of being underestimated is a wonderful gift. [ laughter ] and i think we might have seen a little bit of that last night. last night santorum s trifecta reshuffles the republican race. the question tonight is can he sustain it? dana bash is back in washington with us live tonight. dana, he s off to texas today to raise money. is that priority number one now that everybody s suddenly paying attention again? it is priority number one. and i just got off the phone, john, with the senior santorum source who said that on their web site today they raised twice as much excuse me, had twice as much traffic as they had after he won iowa and raised three times as much in donations on his web site as he did after iowa. he said they re not sure exactly how much that is yet,