senator as well as others, and they re very concerned with these five conversations the president had that, you know, if he had the teleprompter he spoke about what they told him to speak with, but when he did not have the teleprompter he spoke from the heart and when he spoke from the heart, sometimes that ruffled the feathers and it made you wonder. it made many people question his moral authority. tim scott being a van guard leader, have a few still like j.c. watts, even mikeel steele, you have these black leaders who are very concerned. it s important for the president to talk to someone who is on the hill, who can help him get things through even though it s tough right now. april ryan, thank you so much. good to see you again. thanks, brooke. you too. and just a quick reminder to all of you, tonight here on cnn, hillary clinton talks to anderson cooper about what happened in the 2016 presidential race and so much
intensified under president obama. and i think they carried over into the trump administration. so do you agree with that? is it fair to pin the blame for charlottesville on president trump? you know, yes, i do think he shares a tremendous amount of responsibility. because i think that my friend j.c. watt is setting up a strawman to knock him down. everybody knows. every third grader knows that america used to hold slaves, took land from native americans. we all know about that. but what we expect leaders to do is to advance us and move us forward. i do not agree that president obama intensified racial tension. in fact, what i m seeing is multiracial unity against the neo-nazis out there. and what i m seeing is businesspeople even saying, look, we don t want any part of that. and that was a multiracial group among that business council. so i think the truth is that donald trump has not done what we expect presidents to do which is to heal the country, to push
somebody. he s made himself clear as far as i m concerned. what s even clearer is, yeah, boston, great turnout, people are rising up, they re organizing. but also in durham, north carolina, they re doing the same thing, in new orleans, all over this country. people are saying we have we fought a bloody civil war and we went through a civil rights movement. we re not going back to the bad old days. we are going to cling to our solidarity. we re going to cling to this one america idea and i m proud to see people out there exercising their first amendment right. yes. let s talk about former oklahoma congressman j.c. watts who spoke with my colleague, chuck todd, this morning, about charlottesville and the president s role. here s j.c. watts take. one thing i will agree with president trump on is this. the racial divide didn t just happen when donald trump got elected. they didn t just happen when president obama got elected. i think they were probably heightened. i think they were
formidable opponent with deep pockets. the man s name is president trump. the president is his own enemy s list and ready to spend his own money against republicans who opposed him. trump has spoken of spending $10 million out of his own pocket to defeat an incumbent senator of his own party. and president and ceo of watts partners, jc watts. this is getting pretty hard ball out there, pretty rough. trump has about ten members that don t want to go along with his repeal and replace thing. chris, good luck trying to whip jeff flake into line. i think the people that you talk about targeting the people who are opposed to the hall j carea bill, rand paul, flake, collins, i just don t think that dog will hunt and say i will spend my
politics as in life, when you find yourself in a ditch, you dug it yourself. i think the situation republicans find thefl selvmsel talking about repealing for last seven years, and now nothing is happening and right now you ve got a very interesting situation because you ve got the dynamics that said moderates are opposed to it, conservatives opposed to it. when you see senator from kansas saying he s got problems with the health care bill, that tells me that a lot of people that voted being sick of government, they are say, we re not sick of government and health care and other things that provide benefits to them. why don t you stay in congress, jc? this is smart. i think the dog caught the tire and doesn t know what to do with the tire. if you know what i mean.