this latest scandal from, you know, many say donald trump jr. is to where the white house is, i think donald trump, the president loves to kind of control the narrative. he did his television interview, the first one in a long time that wasn t on fox news. he did an interview with reuters. this is a preview in terms of where he thinks the biggest kind of win for them is to say this is nothing. i was at the capitol yesterday, i ll be there today. and let me tell you, senators and house members think this is a big deal, republicans and democrats. and they are very excited and interested in terms of pressing, you know, don junior and some of these other people about what exactly happened in this meeting. let s talk about that, parry, because don junior is not in the administration, he s not michael flynn, and some of these other threads do seem to kind of evaporate after awhile. why are the don junior e-mails in a different category? i mean, mainly because this is the first kind of ex
welcome back to hardball. what was president trump up to? joining us now for the answer in los angeles is a good friend of president trump, tom barrack, he was recently the chair of the presidential inaugural committee, he s going to help us understand what we saw today. i ve been playing offense. i want you to play offense and defense both. tell us why donald trump seemed to be on a rant today. chris, i think it s just trump being trump and doing what he believes he was sent there to do. so the dialogue is upsetting but at the end of the day, the parry and thrust is a great thing. there s never been a greater interest in journalism or the first amendment, there s never been a greater understanding how does a white house administration move legislation.
this is a man who has said, he ran on a platform of bigotry, of racism, and xenophobia, and nativism, and he wants to he wants to end immigration. he also talks about banning muslims. he talks about banning people based on their religion. it s absolutely inconceivable. and i think president obama ari, if i can i think president obama did the right thing by making this much more difficult for donald trump, if he chooses to try to register people. peter, go ahead. i don t think there s any difficulty for donald trump to do whatever he wants, although this program is curtailed. there are other ways to accomplish what trump may or may not want to. i don t take him at his word. i take him at his action. i want to wait and see exactly what he does. as you pointed out, parry, if we take him at his word, we re going to all become schizophrenic, if we haven t already. i ve got to push back against that a little bit. he is the president-elect of the
so how should we see what donald trump is saying? it doesn t seem nuanced at all. it seems he s saying i m going to punish companies who move jobs overseas by putting a tax on whatever they sell back here. doesn t seem like it s part of any coordinated subtle negotiation. oh, i think it is. this is the parry and thrust at the beginning of a discussion. all these thunderstorms you re hearing are the preface to a serious conversation. i think what you see this president-elect saying is we re going to have serious conversations. what happened in this election was a recall. it wasn t that president obama was bad. it wasn t that the policies were bad. it wasn t that they failed tremendously. it was that america wanted something different. and something different is making everybody accountable. just drawing clear lines. so part of the clear lines are we re going to have an equal battlefield. just so you understand, just for the people watching, because this audience is very engaged. t
anywhere. they are not moving out of your district if you are a congressman. we found out who these politicians are, these men are, and we found out their own moral character is questionable. everyone is going to have to answer the question where did you stand when this person was running for president. you were for him. for him. for him, for him, for him. joy said that and at some level it s true. in a historical sense when they write the history books, but in terms of the parry and thrust of everyday republican politics, do you think that s going to change things?