posts and things that he was said to have written in the run-up to the shooting. president trump promised to help coordinate a federal response including, he said, tackling the difficult issue of mental health. yes. this is sort of a rich comment from the president. of course he talked about mental health. he didn t talk about guns. didn t say the word once in a seven-minute comment. pretty astonishing, in fact. even if one buys that the issue is mental health, trump ought to put his money where his mouth is. if you look at his budget, also released this week, he axes lots of sources of mental health services for americans, including through medicaid. there are hundreds of billions of dollars in his budget that are cut from medicaid. and medicaid serves something like a fifth of people who have mental illness in this country, a quarter of people who have serious mental illness. basically one out of every ten medicaid dollars spent goes towards mental health. this is incredibly in
seemed when you don t have an opening statement, it s like, why are you doing this? they felt the need to take questions. we re all for it, please. more press conferences. we want them out there. but he seemed to be element lamenting the fact of his stat us in washington. a lot of people were scratching their head after that press conference. he was asked if he has the quote/unquote juice to get his second term agenda actually accomplished. he spent several minutes explaining why that would be so difficult. in fact, the only thing he seemed to express optimism about was immigration. he didn t talk about guns. he didn t talk about a grand bargain. so there wasn t an overarching theme. in terms of why they had this press conference, i think so much has happened since there s no doubt. there was a lot they felt they had to get on the table. he looked so tired. he looked angry. well, he came across frustrated. i think he is genuinely. he wasn t enjoying the presidency at all.
be pro business, but also pro people and figure out the right calibration. the brilliance of bill clinton, he, unlike almost any other politician in our lifetime, almost always finds that calibration that appeals to liberals and centers. doesn t have to put himself out there. elizabeth warren put herself out there. bill clinton knew how to reach democratic voters in north carolina, in virginia, in tennessee, in arkansas, across the southeast. he didn t always win those states but that s a gift he had and again, i wonder if we re going to see the president tonight realize that he needs to move a bit more to the center away from some of the things that jim was saying the democrats have been talking about this week. one of the reasons barack obama is president obama, is that he did learn the lessons of the 90s in 2008. remember this was not a radical left wing campaign. right. he didn t talk about guns.