senate republicans right now is the departure of mattis, the syria policy and who the next secretary of defense is. this is a very bad time for us to not have stability at the pentagon. james mattis, as you know, is beloved by the entire rank and file in the military, and this is a loss, and the president who knows how beloved james mattis is to not be able to contain himself before his acting cabinet at the table and to trash him that way is simply astonishing. there are republicans we know across town today just dismayed he would speak this way. we have not heard from any of them. thank you so much for being with us this morning. stick around with cnn all day to see this historic day in congress as the new house and senate begins their new work.
all presidents would have to cough up ten years of tax returns. too late for donald trump, since he is already in office though they will get to that as well, but their first order is they don t want to be in the predicament, it sounds like. there will be a lot of legislation that the house passes that is going to end up being largely symbolic because it s not going to go anywhere in the senate. they will have to balance that. and a lot of the members that are coming from more republican-leaning disstrebgtri they will have to balance the symbolic votes. i am saying in terms of policy there will be a push to not focus on the president, to focus on what they promised in terms of economic policy and taxes and things like that. there will be a lot of pressure from that blue dog conservative democratic wing that pelosi is going to have to keep in check with the very active progressive
the tense confrontations over the president s decision to withdrawal troops from syria, and they are having to instead of pushing a proactive agenda alongside the president and battling the democrats and helping the president battle the house democrats, they have to spend a lot of energy confirming the cabinet nominees, and the first on the batch for the new year s seems to be barr, and his hearings will be held on january 15th and 16th, and those hearings will be important to watch, not only because of the importance of the attorney general in the u.s. government, but also democrats and some republicans will also have a lot of questions about mr. barr s views on the mueller probe. he has written a memo casting a skepticism on the counsel s investigation, and that issue has been so central to the justice department and we can
congress, when the house, which is the people s house gets more diverse before our very eyes. not only the house. let s not forget in the senate, marsha blackburn who is the first woman elected from tennessee, and arizona has two senators coming in, and that s also a first because there were not one to begin with. there are bright spots for diversity in both chambers. you are absolutely right, what ab said, in terms of republicans. i love the first day of congress, there s so much promise and hope and everybody is there with their families and kids, and as lauren detailed it s an exciting day, but there s this pull because the government is shut down, and with it the enormous responsibility of opening the government, and how are they going to do that?
did not do that poorly in the house races there. unless it was beto that inflated those numbers. let s look at the context. yeah, it s a fascinating table because we are going to be talking about the polls from now all the way up to the primary, and what we see is actually most of the time the polls, at least in the recent history have done a good job of getting who the nominee was going to be, whether it be hillary clinton, barack obama, or al gore. so it shouldn t be surprising giving where some are polling, but michael ducacus was polling at 1% at this point in 1988 and went on and won the nomination. by and large it s good to be first or second in the polls? i would rather be at the top instead of the bottom. we are talking about new year s resolution. you have important numbers.