this hour as well. after reports surface odd wednesday that mexican president nieto would likely cancel his upcoming to the white house president trump tweeted yesterday morning the u.s. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with mexico and it has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of nafta with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost. if mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall then it s better to cancel the upcoming meeting. later in the day the mexican president confirmed via twitter the meeting was off. speaking to a republican conference in philadelphia, president trump said it was a mutual decision and assured lawmakers about managing the wall s multibalance dollar price tag. i-say the american people will not pay for the wall and said that many times. we are working on a tax reform
cetera, et cetera. then he cites other experts that tell him it contradicts what james mattis say. i think you re right, joe. one hand red meat to the base and not use torture because he will. reporter: james mattis as his shield. i think we should say what kind of reaction and consequence this approach will have. we have never seen it before. kasie hunt, amid all this, he spoke at the republican conference. how did that go and tell us about it. well, this question of torture, for example, is one that i think very neatly encapsulates challenges for trump right now. they don t understand this is something he is talking about and it s a unique example because normally, you know, republican leaders come up to microphones and they are asked to explain whatever tweet it is that donald trump has offered up
a lot of people very concerned about that. but i wouldn t think barack obama s administration would want george w. bush s administration putting out statements on global warming. no. i think that is not unreasonable. the state department, by the way, is a tremendous bureaucracy where even the tiniest statement goes through this clearance process of dozens and dozens of bureaus. so it s not like people are going to be speaking out officially on their own. they were reluctant to do that any way. that is par for the course not a big deal. unlike the bad lands national park clearly in north dakota where they started tweeting things by themselves on climate change and got into trouble. that stopped quickly. that stopped. part of media is everybody has an avenue of communication. they can do things by themselves. rick, you wrote this piece in the atlantic. the end of the american century. a line in there trump s administration is the death nail of the american century. what d
self-grand diesing fantasy. it matter the president of the united states seems incapable of publicly admitting any error on. it matters that trump s need for adulation appears to be insatiable. they pulled back a little bit and said it s one of many options and donald trump says we are doing it. it s hard to look through where the truth is. exactly. if you re on twitter all day, it s just like you reeing whip-sawed and story aft story after story. it s on, 20%. ybe it s not. maybe it is. last night in the interview, maybe i made up my mind on the supreme court, maybe i haven t. and so you have the president and spokesman going back and forth and coming out with policies that ultimately will be
meat. again, i just wonder how much of this are for the people who voted for him? well, a classic example is on a thursday, the cia is akin to the nazi, germany, way they treat people. on saturday, he is up to the cia and says no one loves the cia more than i do and standing in front of the wall with all of the former agents from around the world. but an extension of his campaign, frankly. this is the same way that he campaigned and we do have to remember, this is the president that the people chose under the electoral college. he is doing everything that he said at that time that he would do. not entirely consistent with it, but the style that got him to where he is. to your point, this is a president who lost to hillary clinton and it s not necessarily a clean statement as the one you made because i think there is a lot of support he still needs to gain. it s not a president completely elected by the people. he won the popular vote and