i know mattis a little bit. i know him more than some, less than others as a reporter i ve kept in touch with him in the last year and the recent month. i think he s going to be a guy who knows the press well, knows washington well, knows how much he has to communicate what s going on. the idea of any off-the-rails mad dog is not true. this is a guy who is welcomed into washington salons even when he disagrees with everything washington is doing. he has that kind of respect. quickly, guantanamo, hans nichols mentioned at the top of the hour that may come up in president obama s speech next hour. as we know, president obama campaigned on, i m going to close it down, it s shrunk and trump credit sidesed that decision and called for bringing back waterboarding on the campaign trail. so, what happens to guantanamo bay? it s not shut down. not going to shut down. the obama team blew it when they let congress pass a bill and
their income taxes go up a single dime. the senate passed a bill like this. democrats and the house are ready to pass one, too. all we need is for republicans in the house to come on board. rick: the chairman of the foreign civic pac, outreach director for john mccain s presidential campaign. ryan clayton is a democratic campaign consultant, founder of 100 proof politics.com. good to see you. our first chat since election day. ford, let me start with you. i am an optimist at heart. and i saw the lawmakers more than from that meeting at the white house yesterday. they sounded like there might be an opportunity to get a deal done. what do you think? i m hopeful. they re clearly striking the right public tone, but i m not all that confident. i think that s really going to happen here is we re probably going to agree to a framework and put a stop gap in here. we re going to buffet up against the debt creel not guilty march. this is a little fiscal cliff, a
businesses. and then let s make sure these corporations but ryan, to do that, we have to fix the corporate tax code as well. rick: let me jump in and try to sort of steer you guys here a little bit. ford, we heard the president a minute ago in his weekly internet address say let s have congress pass a bill right now is that will guarantee the tax rates below 250 for families will not be raised. he said let s do that number we ll negotiate the other stuff after that. let s start with that. the senate has done it. should the house do it? the house should do it, but make sure they get the right framework in place. what president obama is really trying to do now is play russian roulette with the nation s fiscal health and essentially the republicans need to agree to that. but they need to get more compromise. the president said he wants to compromise, but he s shown no impetus to compromise because he said if he don t raise the rates on the top 2%, then it will go up for everyone.