superficial knowledge of how the immigration system works and the president relies heavily on miller to explain and interpret it to him. let s bring in democratic strategist former adviser to the hillary clinton campaign and former nevada gop chairwoman amy tarecanen. hi. you first, what goes through your head when you hear how much influence stephen miller has on immigration policy. he s a mental midget. i ve been thinking about him since i read the washington post article. it he s not a serious thinker. he has to be placed in the context of the administration. remember this administration is largely made up of individuals who would remind us of the island of misfit toys. why? no career republicans or serious thinkers wanted anything to do with this administration at the beginning of this thing. nobody wants to be a participant
remorseless. yes, remorseless. making sure. and he s never stepped up. and he s been doing this for a very long time. so i have to believe the court is going to take that into consideration and the prosecutors are going to ask for as much as they can get on him, which will be 24, 25 years. michael steele, if you can jump in, there s so much that lifelong career republicans knew about just how dirty manafort s book of business was, before he ever walked through the doors of trump tower and took the reins as campaign chairman. but i think the new wrinkle or the new layer of information for those of us who already knew that is he functioned during the trump campaign, it would appear, as the consigliere for russians. the prosecutor said sounded to have divided loyalty between the russians and the americans. it seems to me no punishment would be too severe for someone with divided loyalities. yes, i think that s very right and i think that s
attorney to make a decision. joining us now, two career republicans who are not part of the trump party, bill kristol is the director of defending democracy together and editor at large of the bulwark. and peter wehner is a senior fellow at the ethics and public policy center. and bill, your tweet today really caught my eye, saying that republicans have struggled mightily against the label of the stupid party which was thrown at them across the aisle for decades. and you have the feeling now that that label is sticking to the people who are across the aisle from the democrats in the congress now.
and remember this, he s an attorney. whatever decision he makes you re supposed to rely on an attorney to make a decision. joining us now, two career republicans who are not part of the trump party, bill kristol is the director of defending democracy together and editor at large of the bulwark. and peter wehner is a senior fellow at the ethics and public policy center. and bill, your tweet today really caught my eye, saying that republicans have struggled mightily against the label of the stupid party which was thrown at them across the aisle for decades. and you have the feeling now that that label is sticking to the people who are across the aisle from the democrats in the congress now. yeah. and unfortunately, deservedly so in many cases. look at the republican performance. when michael cohen testified yesterday look at cpac, the conservative conference, it was always a mix of kind of youthful, you know, high jinks and some showmanship.
is the president s actions is disgraceful and he puts the country in danger. and to make this short-term political calculation and make it only about your career and not about the people you re supposed to serve is such, such, you know, a sort of a failure to uphold their own oath in office. or maybe those career republicans are saying look, we re getting our agenda done while the president is melting down, but he s not our homeboy anyway and he smack talked us for the last 2 1/2 years. if you look at the agenda, it s the kind of things that mike pence and jeff sessions absolutely want to get done. and it s not like they re longtime friends of the president. i want to bring in msnbc s garrett haake. he is on capitol hill. obviously this op-ed is going to be on the minds of democratic senators. it s on the minds of republicans as well. i doubt they ll be asking democrats have to be talking about it with brett kavanaugh. yes, absolutely. i think it s one of those things