activism of the same people that barack obama was responsive to. that s got to enrage them. for them, there is no going back. the difference between donald trump and his supporters and his base is they are absolute on this. this is an issue of conviction, of ideology. there is no room to negotiate that back. trump is not a person of ideology. he is not someone who has true core convictions that guide everything he makes. he instead is flexible. this guy is all about the art of the deal and about praise. as long as he gets that positive reinforcement he s going to keep going that direction. this is the first time in this presidency that he s gotten any type of positive coverage from anywhere. if he has to throw aside the alt right and the steve bannons of the world for a while, he s willing to do that. chuck and nancy are sort of the heros of this daca saga for
the prime minister of canada and the president of mexico, and they told him the same thing. they said you can t do this. this would be really detrimental to us. trump said, okay, i ve changed my mind. there s two themes here. one, everything is more complicated than i realized. he s even said that. i m not paraphrasing, literally. and it s all more work than i realized. again, not paraphrasing. i mean is that the sense from talking to him, that he just didn t quite have a measure on the job? i think so partly. the other piece of it is he wants to maintain some flexibility. he actually prides himself in not being an ideological purist and on this issue of nafta, it s the one piece where he s had core convictions for like decades. he s been against these trade deals and yet he changed his mind this week because he was influenced by some of his cabinet officers and by his counterparts in canada and mexico. i think in his mind, he s buying himself a little bit more time here to continu
being command of the issues. his most ardent supporters, it has to be a bittle worrying that he has such flexibility. you do at the end of the day, especially his serious supporters, you want someone with core convictions. but there s some places, despite the changes, there is a general consistency. does it make u.s. policy more or less predictable? mr. trump has reverted to traditional u.s. policy. look where he is on syria is exactly where barack obama ended out of syria. not wanting major intervention there. saying assad has to go. but deterring assad from using chemical weapons. trump went a tep furtherer and did use force.
shape trump? that was a great answer. that shows a big open question about trump. does he listen to the people around him? does he listen to the best people around him? the fact that donald trump went into that meeting with reporters at the new york times and asked about his long-held campaign position that he wants to bring back torture, which, by the way, is illegal. you can t bring it back without congress changing the law. he basically said, you know what, general mattis told me it doesn t work. he didn t actually say that s the end of the story. he at least hinted that maybe i was wrong about that. so trump has always been somewhat flexible. the big story for us to pay attention to is how many of his hard, hard-edged campaign promises were just theater, were just vote-getting things and how many are core convictions. a colleague of mine at the new
he has our full confidence as our whip and will continue to do great and important work for all americans. and kevin, and you work for the man, sounds like full-throated support. and steve scalise has been as direct and honest with his colleagues about this that it was a mistake. in hindsight if he had known that, of course he wouldn t have spoken to that group. and then his core convictions. is he somebody who believes in dig otry and intolerance. this is important. let me finish. he is not somebody who believes in intolerance and bigotry and he has support from democrats and republicans and i think that is the reason john boehner is taking that stance. final 15 seconds to you, marc? again, i think it is too early to say he is a racist. the evidence is opposite. but he still made a bad choice