election cycle in which the presidential candidate takes over the dnc. no more turning over the checkbook to a presidential campaign. that is absolutely absurd that is what we do every time. time for the lid. the panel is back dan balls and ruth martin and michael steele. it s always funny, michael. you ve been there! good luck with that! give me a break, right? oh, my god. what is the reality of that? the reality is when the presidential nominee becomes the guy! trust me, that checkbook belongs to him or her! very quickly. i want to move on to the harvard conference. dan, you are in the middle of something crazy! but very quickly, ruth. keith ellison, is his candidacy toast? the adl came out noting some remarks he made about israeli six years ago. he struggled to explain them. there has been some other folks and they are very upset at schumer forri supporting him.
point. this is not in any way a normal transition for those reasons. exactly right. dan balz, i couldn t agree more with you. joining us is bill crystal, editor of the weekly standard, chief of staff to dan quayle in the bush 41 white house. bill, very strongly and eloquently you spoke out against donald trump. he is the president-elect. he s there now. what do other republicans, such as yourself and, perhaps, steve hadley or others who have served in previous administrations do when the call to service comes, or do you expect that they would be included? i think everyone has to make up his own mind. obviously, he s the president-elect. i wish him well. we wish him well. people who have the opportunity to serve and think they can serve, now they have to make sure they re not being asked to follow policies they can t in good conscience support, so forth, but i would encourage my never trump friends to be open-minded about a trump administration and willing to help. we all have an
respects this first lady and the first lady, i think, is going to try to echo some of what we heard from president obama in the rose garden here. this moment is so critical to our democracy, this transition of power. and i think that you re going to see the first lady really try to reiterate what has been said by her husband, that this moment is about making sure there s a smooth transition. reporter: it is to observers slightly jarring that given five days ago both obamas were focused so intently on trying to campaign for, obviously, secretary hillary clinton and not donald trump. but this is a time, as kristen is talking about, as we ve all been talking about, to set aside the personal, to focus on the policy and the peaceful transition of power. thanks to both of you. i know you re going to be standing by. joining me now is washington post chief correspondent dan balls, and washington bureau chief susan page. we ve seen a lot of these before, you and i, going back all the way to
in mississippi, isn t it? it is. you know, one of the big local papers talked about the fact that, you know, it was sort of odd that he didn t not only talk to me but went to such lengths for him to not get anywhere near our camera. that was on monday. and the fact that that has gotten so much attention back home just maybe six days, five days before the primary, clearly struck a nerve with the cochran campaign because wouldn t you know it today we were coming back here to washington. he had a short press conference with reporters back home and didn t ask anything that we wouldn t ask. questions about why he feels he is right to come back after 36 years in office. questions about his reaction to all of the scandal that we just explained in the piece. things like that. but they were so emphatic, clearly, about getting out there that he is talking to the press now. not only did they have this press conference, they tweeted pictures of it from his twitter account. there you see one of h
and former one, jeb bush, competed for the attention of billionaire magnate adelson, so joining me now, the washington post chief correspondent, dan balls, author of the take and dan ralston, host of ralston reports on some of the fine nbc affiliates out in nevada. welcome to both of you. . i want to start with you and start with chris christie. to me, the more remarkable thing was not him trying to get the scandal behind him, not having a press conference, but the fact that he decided, you know what, i m jumping right back into 2016. this man, he wants to run for president. and if you didn t know it, then he wanted to make sure you knew it. well, he did. and i think the other thing that s happened is, he knows he s lost some time. i mean, all of the rumbles about wealthy republicans looking to jeb bush right. lots of other activity going on, other candidates saying and doing interesting things on policy issues. he s had several months in which he s really been on the s