they definitely need to unite. right now they re not united. when republicans were in the minority after democrats took over, they very quickly became a force to be reckoned with. they couldn t be ignored. they pushed procedural things through in the house, i won t bore you with all of that, but they did become a real political force and it helped propel them back into the majority in the house and later the senate. democrats, we have to see who is going to lead this effort and how much fight they re willing to give. and also picking their battles. you can t go after every single one of trump s cabinet picks or they won t be answer is seriously. it s going to look nakedly political if they don t choose their battles. eight is a long list, we ll see how many of them they fight on and for how long. phil, i want to shift gears to this issue of russian intelligence. we heard president-elect donald trump say he knows things other people don t know and that he ll tell us tuesday or wedne
block all or part of any repeal, the extent to which they re going to cooperate with republicans on getting rid of some elements of the affordable care act, and keeping some others. and so that s kind of a complex question for them. the president wants to talk to them apparently about that. and some of the other things that republicans may want to change, fix, tweak, what have you. the president over the weekend was tweeting quite a bit, trying to sort of cement his legacy, if you will, talking about some of the areas that he feels were a success, including the affordable care act. there was this tweet that went out that said after decades of rising health care costs, today nearly every american now has access to the financial security of health care. so that s on the agenda. sudden, jo as you said, john, the president is going to chicago next week to
that hillary clinton actually got more votes by almost 3 million than president-elect trump did. so more americans actually preferred her view, the democrats view of where this country wants to go or where they wanted to take this country than they did president-elect trump. so with that in mind, when you move forward, republicans have to understand they don t have a mandate, and that what president obama was able to accomplish these past eight years, he did with the support of the majority of the american people. and if they don t keep that in mind, they re going to be a complete failure for the next four years. even with what you re calling a mandate for president obama, democrats lost 70 seats in the house, they lost 11 senate seats, ten governorships, and obamacare, his signature legislation, may be repealed. steve cortes, that s a pretty
along with the trump get-along. perhaps we ll get information that we don t currently have right now because we don t know much about mr. trump himself and his business dealings, let alone folks such as tillerson. this will be really important. democrats are only going to be as good as the information they have. research will be very key here. steve cortes, simone just gave you your argument, that under president obama republicans confirmed those nominations much more quickly. that was eight years ago. i ll give you another name, merritt garland, who will not be heading to the supreme court. i think john, in fact, we ll reap what we ve sown, which is victory. when i look at the team donald trump is assembling, i m a child of the 80s, one of my favorite shows was the a team.
said from the beginning, which is it s not perfect, let s work together to fix it, to make sure that the 20 million americans that have health care don t lose it, to make sure that americans with preexisting conditions can continue to get health care coverage, which is one of the big, big great things that obamacare has given us, and to make sure that kids can continue to be on their parents health care until they re 26, expansion of medicaid, et cetera. hopefully republicans will keep an eye on that moving forward. it will be a complicated discussion. whether it s a one-sided discussion, we ll wait and see. thanks so much for being with us, maria, steve. happy new year. the president-elect claims he knows things that others do not when it comes to russian hacking. according to one of donald trump s biggest critics, that s an effort to manipulate the american people. that critic joins us live. plus a warning from north korea. the secretive regime claims it s close to testing a m