to reporters painting a picture of deep dysfunction in the west wing and in many cases grave short coming in the president himself. today chief of staff kelly who is described in some of the reporting as feuding with the president or on the verge of departure, voluntary or otherwise went before reporters and basically said they have it all wrong. when i read in the morning i read the i won t tell you what i read, but watch tv in the morning, it is astounding to me how much is miss reported. i will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are operating off of contacts, leaks, whatever you call them, but i would just offer to you the advice. i d say you re maybe develop some better sources. some person that works way down inside an office or well, just develop some better sources. well, cnn was at that briefing. she joins us now. do we know why general kelly decided to make this appearance today? well, anderson, it seemed
that s why looking ahead, tax reform if this doesn t happen, then it s going to potentially really change the dynamic and change the answer to the questions you just asked. and just to add one really quick thing. i think that what the $64,000 question that nobody knows the answer to is how much is president trump s personal popularity and his personal fate tied to that agenda, right. it s unclear. and so on capitol hill there s a lot of nervousness about do you back away, and if you back away, is that too much? do you embrace him and then risk take all the risks that that entails. the uncertainty is what adds to some of the confusion. yeah. thank you all. appreciate it. just ahead, does one of the president s closest friends think that this white house is in crisis. and later the president s tweet on puerto rico seems to treat the american hurricane survivors there differently from the american hurricane survivors in florida, texas and pretty much any place else we can remember
quite well in the sense that, as michael was saying, he was very self-deprecating. he was jovial. he sort of got the toing and froeing of what it takes to work with the press and want just against the press. quintet, also the idea that according to kelly his only frustration is the media that he has no frustration about trying to keep the president on message or away from twitter rants. what else is he going to say? but it does seem to fly in the face of a lot of reporting. i think that s right. i do think that general kelly s influence is expanding in this town. loo being at the new pick for department of homeland security. she s a deputy of general kelly here at the white house. she is going to be the secretary of homeland security unless there s a major problem up on capitol hill. look, i was talking to a couple of different sources today about the president s twitter habits. one of those sources said, and this was somebody who worked on the campaign, works in the administration
it was also perfectly clear that he knew mr. trump would be watching. is that basically an audience of one. right. what struck me was the tone was incredibly untrump like, right. kelly came out. he was jovial with the press. he didn t come out and attack like sean spicer used to do or like president trump often does at press conferences. he was sort of bantering. he went out of his way to kind of soften the edges of some of the and kind of walk back some of the things that the president has tweeted or said. but at the same time there were moments that you can tell he got in a quip against the press knowing full well that president trump is watching and part of the way that kelly and others communicate with this president is through the television set. kelly did seem to suggest that much of the white house press corps is relying on bad leaks from low level sources. he did and that s his job to say that. you know, i m not sure what
he doesn t neat twitter for that. and i was told by somebody he talked to not long after that that he went back to the residence and watched cable television at night, that night and laughed, because he did that on purpose. he wanted to throw that out there in order to just stir things up because he enjoys doing that. that is the kind of thing that general kelly, nobody, they re not going to change him because that s who he is. mikeel a, it s also interesting because time and time again people from this white house have come forward and said there s no chaos here. i remember the new york times reporting early on reporting about president trump s attitudes towards the attorney general that he was mad about the attorney general, and the white house was saying, oh, no, there s nothing to that and lo and behold the president starts tweeting publicly about the attorney general and making public comments. it does seem like time and again we ve heard nothing to see here and then all of a