unconventional playbook of politics that president trump has long followed, using bold moves, taking the communications front away from him, that has been an area he wanted to use in the state of the union to lecture lawmakers. she s now stopping him from that opportunity. at this point pelosi speaker pelosi, a longtime inside player is playing the outside game as well. kim, you re nodding. yeah, i think we re seeing turn after turn after turn president trump underestimating nancy pelosi as a political adversary, as a negotiation opponent. he is the master of the art of the deal, right? it seems she has outsmarted him from the beginning, from the moment he thought he could bring the cameras in the white house and embarrass her and that didn t work. where do we stand now? the democrats are almost entirely united on this, and it s the republicans that are fracturing. it is nancy pelosi using her levers of power. yeah, the president might still give an address from the white house b
immediately. he said no and immediately said it was the democrats fault and tile for a national emergency. you just never know where he will jump to next, be the statesman to the national security or be a yes man to the president. today he s in competition with senator rand paul, who went to have a personal meeting with the president today to assure himself that the president was remaining steadfast in his syria withdrawal plan. he s the only one in the camp with the president, except for some other people outside of the congress. but all of the concern you see in the congress, you see among the ranks and in the military, all of the people who are telling the president, including mattis and pompeo and bolton, who originally objected this this withdrawal plan, mattis has gone and they re not being listened to. rand paul is. lindsey graham knows well enough no matter what he says, the president believes this was a good plan, that he promised in the campaign and he s going to stick with
this makes this whole middle east thing much more complicated and dangerous. heidi, give us the up side, down side of this decision. the up side it s a pure political decision. we re trying to ask ourselves why, why would this happen. like richard says, this was supposed to be the final payoff in terms of any final agreement between the israelis and the palestinians. and it seems to be not only against what all of our allies are saying, both in the muslim world and in europe, but as well against the advice of some of the president s closest national security advisers, including mattis. like richard said, those settlements in the east, that s nothing compared to this giveaway. and yet mattis himself is on the record calling those settlements creating apartheid and saying the united states pays a great price for doing this, so that brings you back to the political calculation here. if this is a president who is basically ticking through some of his campaign promises and doing it in a
the south. i want somebody who is going to make sure that we are going to protect the rights of all americans. and i think that s where people are very concerned. and i share that concern about jeff sessions. so senator shaheen, i think it s important for our viewers to have the context here that unlike many of your democratic colleagues who have been in vocal opposition to almost all if not all of the president s cabinet picks, you have not been that way on all of them. you have voted in favor of five of them, including mike pompeo for head of the cia, including general kelly for homeland security, including mattis for defense, including nikki haley, and also including elaine chao. do you believe that your colleagues in the democratic party s opposition to so many of the president s picks hurts the american people and hurts the ability of the government to function? i think there are a lot of reasons why people have been opposed to some of the president s nominees. and what we hav