storming the presidency by joshua green. i spoke to him earlier. so, the narrative that surrounds bannon, i think he s on the cover of time he was called the great manipulator, he s running the show there. how does that jibe with reality? bannon had a lot of influence. i don t think he was ever the puppet master that he was portrayed as being. what he really was was trump s ideologue and pit bull. the portrayal enraged trump because eventually it cost bannon a seat on the national security council. he got put in the dog house. didn t get let out until a month ago. that was because of the public perception? everybody yeah, trump does not want tomorrow anyone co-starring alongside him in his presidency, particularly not somebody who is seen as pulling trump s puppet strings. right. like when he said to comey in that meeting, you re more famous than me. that sort of seems like
choices are going down. these are real concerns for constituents of these members. i think as they see an overall and total commitment of this, it s making them feel a lot better about not just this bill but phases two and three. matt? reporter: two questions both on health care. first one, is the president open to moving protections addition for pre-existing conditions from the bill? i think that s been something he s very clear needs to stay in there. reporter: secondly, about this essential benefits protection. obviously among those is maternity leave. how would remove that jibe with the president s promise during the campaign to expand maternity leave? this would take it out and insurers would no longer have to provide that. again, i don t want to get into a benefit by benefit discuss here. there s a lot of concerns, as i just said to blake, part of the reason premiums have spiked out of control is because under obamacare there were these mandated services that had to be
ruling. first is, we re not only talking about the rights of individuals with other kinds of visas abroad. we re talking about their u.s. citizen family members, and what about that per federal immigration laws with loved ones who are abroad. i want to make sure that we re looking here, the constitution protects us all, but secondly the only groups affected are not hypothetical set of individuals on foreign soil attempting to come in. leyland: all right. robert, does that jibe with sort of your understanding of the law here? i think that s very unclear that there s a constitutional right of people outside the country who don t have another kind of right to get in by green card or a visa. and i think this gets back to the point of you know, standing in this case is very dubious to begin with, that the state of washington or the state of hawaii or california, i don t think they can assert the rights of those people. i mean, if they could, state
apartment building, and a number of others. when you hear donald trump talk about killers in this country, what is your reaction as a reporter who s been there and someone who has covered these things? it s funny he said well, i probably shouldn t say it s funny. but it s interesting that he said this at a time when one of putin s more critics is in a coma in a hospital in moscow having been poisoned, it seems, a second time. he was poisoned a year ago, he survived and now it appears they returned to finish the job. this isn t surprising coming from donald trump. he has talked about putin being a strong leader and he didn t pack off these claims when it was pointed out to him that strong leader, in putin s case meant killing or jailing his opponents. you know, it seems to kind of jibe with the president s notion of a strong and good leader as a kind of action hero who, you know, kicks his opponents in the throat. and what s worrying is, you
can. maria: and mick mulvaney, the nominee who he has chosen for his budget head, office of budget and management, said, look, we have got to teal with the entitlements to deal with the entitlements, with $20 trillion in debt. you re very concerned about retirement. do you want to find a way for better security for workers when it comes to retirement? right? we have to have a way to find, to protect pensions right now. people have worked 20 and 30, 40 years, they have been promised these pensions, and we ve got to make sure that we fulfill that promise. and we re going to need some type of bipart an approach to that bipartisan approach to that. we have a proposal, and we re going to try and work with them on that and whoever s head of the treasury. maria: what about the minimum wage, sir? president trump has been very clear, he thinks it s too low, he thinks it should go higher, but he wants the states to deal with it depending on where you live. maybe there s a different cost of