is spent discussing the abdulmutallab interrogation and the handling of this matter is a bad time for the democrats. they want to get off this issue. it doesn t look like they hand it properly. there are a lot of questions. they want to be talking about anything except this. megyn: there are questions about whether president obama s handling of the war on terror factors into this. this poll shows his approval ratings are falling. they are at 46%. that s down 4% just from january. you can see the disapproval rating is going up. how much do you think that the abdulmutallab situation, the ksm trial in new york factor into that. as the joke goes, it can t help. the thing that strikes me about it is between those two polls the president gave his state of the union speech in which he
letting things happen, word get out that the ksm trial would not be in new york, the president didn t stand up and say i changed the venue of the trial and overruled my attorney general and let it be known it will not happen there and let it be known health care is number 4 on the agenda, and i think he s pulling back and retreating from the aggressive agenda and and i don t think he ll say it. i think he ll have a rebound, actually if voters think he s not trying to jam all of this stuff down their throats and the obama agenda is in retreat, and even the president might have a little bit of a rebound in the polls. martha: dana fa reno said the administration made it difficult to have a civilian trial given what they they said, for instance, robert gibbs, qsm, quoting, will meet justice and meet his maker and i don t think a person in this country would not like to see the trial a done deal but it raises some questions and i think we ll have to wrap it up on my side there,
another huge issue. it was a real landmark issue for the president and his attorney general. they wanted to do thing differently with regard to prosecuting terrorists. they have had to backpedal in a serious way with this, pulling this issue out of new york city. and now the question is, gitmo is back on everyone s list. just, you know, it was going to be closed by now and do you see that as the path? will we see the trials go back to guantanamo bay and politically how tough is that for the president. it is likely to happen. i think the other alternatives are not acceptable and are foolish, when you think them through, as having the ksm trial in new york, and, the president it will be a few days to backtrack, but he s better off getting it behind him and obama has been interesting the last couple of weeks and has not made a clean break, and a lot of conservatives urged him to do and some of his own party was and he has not said, i made a mistake but presidents don t often do that b
are they still going to be in new york? we re back with the panel. charles? what a great demonstration of the presumption of innocence. [ laughter ] i mean, if there is a rationale and there isn t, but if there were ever a rationale for having the k.s.m. trial in new york in front of a civilian court, it was for america to demonstrate the rule of law and the majesty of our justice system. and here you get the spokesman for the president of the united states saying on sunday the guy is going to be found guilty and executed. the president essentially saying the same. attorney general has said essentially the same. it s like being the westerns where they say let s hang them but give them a fair trial first first. you know, if you are going to have the president and high spokesman in the administration speaking in this way, ahead of a trial, it poisons the jury pool, meaning the whole american electorate, the whole american
it is you have been. karen, your response? democrats in new york are calling on president obama to move this ksm trial. michael bloom bettered is hardly a republican out there with republican talking points. he left the republican party. the member of congress who represents manhattan wants this trial moved. you know, the bigger i think political picture here is that how much political capital is president obama going to burn on this issue? he s already burned through a lot of political capital in his first year. and he has a long way to go from here to november and the end of the year to get through some sort of tmdomestic agenda. how much is president obama really going to stand up and fight for his attorney general? i don t think he will. karen, if it s the wrong thing to do, then why don t the republicans allow the president to fall on his sword with this decision because the conviction rate in civilian court is far