were present at the creation. you were there for the now famous remarks. donald j. ump wants to ban all muslims from entering this country. even though this was 3.0, even though he complained this was the watered down version of what he wanted, how can he not see this as a straight-up vindication? we know already steve bannon sure does. it may be a vindication. it s also a reminder of who are the ideological anchors in this administration. you remember back in 2017, attorney general jeff sessions, for all of his quarrels with the president, he is still there directing policy on the border. stephen miller is still there. steve bannon is gone. john kelly who was then the homeland security secretary when the travel ban first came out. he was on a helicopter when he first heard the news. it s the people like sessions and miller inside of this administration who are driving policy, and it s a reminder too, brian, the courts are going to be on the ballot this fall for the midterm elections
those at the helms should be given credit. we ll see how it progresses with the meeting between the south and north this week. as always, we appreciate your analysis. thank you. well, french president emmanuel macron arrives in the u.s. monday, the first official state visit of donald trump s presidency. he is set to address a joints session of congress, it is the next step in what has been a bumpy relationship between the two leaders. melissa bell reports from paris. reporter: the strikes may have been carefully coordinated, but the row that followed was anything but after the president claimed to be driving policy in syria. translator: president trump said the will is to disengage in syria. we convinced him that it was necessary to stay. reporter: it took less than five hours for the white house to respond denying that its policy had changed.
kind of leadership and let alone response that would be sort of in line with whatever the crisis is. and i that s not a political statement. how could you look at what happened this week and think this is a group of people that i have confidence in if something were to happen. but i actually i have known julian a long time, but i do disagree in one sense. i think some of these stories about the sort of absolute corruption of what s going on in the white house and the potential that jared kushner in particular was driving policy or meetings based around the ability of countries to pay to support the kushner enterprise is really scary for national security. one, it s because we now it s possible that kushner was looking out for himself and not america s interests, but you also have to remember, we have allies out here, not just enemies, not just people who want to manipulate jared kushner. allies who are looking at a world order that s kind of scary
really do have a different approach to things, and we shouldn t lose sight of the effect of that. they want to turn the responsibility of this wonderful city back to the states. they bloo evidence the states should be driving policy more. they believe less in top-down regulation. they believe more in highlighting if they fall in line with donald trump, more about jobs and individual responsibility. so that s a very big part of where they re coming from. we ve had plenty of people who have been brought into these jobs with great expertise who failed and others who have been clueless who have succeeded and failed, too. it s a mix. i think that s what we re seeing now. i know you have new reporting on steve mnuchin, the guy up for treasury secretary. there are concerns about him, too. a lot of concerns. when you talk to republicans, there s no question they ve had wounded nominees going forward. because of the dynamics on play an capitol hill, because democrats don t have enough on th
remains to be seen which nominees might get scrutiny from republicans and which one democrats will go over. i don t anticipate either of these guys, if the confirmation process is well run, i don t anticipate either of these guys having confirmation problems. the bigger question from a policy point of view is who will drive economic policy in this administration? we don t know who will be head of the national economic council. these guys are not people with experience in government in a way that leads you even with a bob ruben, i don t have a sense of what policies they re going to care about or whether they re going to drive policy. right now this is basically they re going to do trump s bidding because neither one of them have a history of driving policy and most of them contributed to the democratic party. the bigger problem maybe they get confirmed, nick, but donald trump and his success and failure depends on wisconsin, michigan, ohio, and pennsylvania. he s not president of the