making of a president. thank you for joining me. reports are dribbling out about what happened in this meeting at the white house, eric cantor trying to give an account in which he describes the president of walking out, which i think is proof cantor now knows what a horrible, horrible political choice it was for him to proudly and loudly walk out of the meetings earlier. well, i was just talking to white house sources earlier this evening just before the show began and they tell me yes, the president ended the meeting but cantor s position has been overblown, his account is overblown and say the president did express frusation after a long meeting in which they discussed many things, but in the end the president s position was this everything happening in this room is what the american people hate about this town. he said that the negotiators, the house leaders had until friday to figure out a deal and
megaphones in which they have trumpeted their distrust of barack obama s strength of character and his command of presidential power. as of tonight, the one person who we know is not panicking about what to do next is barack obama. eric cantor, however, has just described the meeting tonight at the white house this way to reporters. he, the president, got very agitated, said that he had sat there long enough, that ronald reagan wouldn t sit here like this, and that he s reached the point that something s got to give. a democratic aide tells nbc, cantor s account of tonight s meeting is completely overblown. joining me now is richard wolffe, msnbc political analyst and author of renegade, the making of a president. thank you for joining me.
he, the president, got very agitated, said that he had sat there long enough, that ronald reagan wouldn t sit here like this, and that he s reached the point that something s got to give. a democratic aide tells nbc, cantor s account of tonight s meeting is completely overblown. joining me now is richard wolffe, msnbc political analyst and author of renegade, the making of a president. thank you for joining me. reports are dribbling out about what happened in this meeting at the white house, eric cantor trying to give an account in which he describes the president of walking out, which i think is proof cantor now knows what a horrible, horrible political choice it was for him to proudly and loudly walk out of the meetings earlier. well, i was just talking to white house sources earlier this evening just before the show
backing down on appeal to quote him. that s not going to stop us from making incremental changes. repealers in the moment. first the president s side of this. richard wolf, the author of renegade, the making of a president. richard, good evening. good evening, keith. why maine? i mean, your speculation as to why maine and is there an official explanation. there is an official explanation. not because of the votes even if the president does call it the great state of maine. what you re seeing is they talk first of all about the number of small businesses in maine. this was technically about small businesses on the economy and in terms of the benefits and health care. and they also mentioned the independent streak that you see in voters in maine. here s where you get in to speculation. there is no more independent streak or visible streak than on the national stage for two senators and the president went out of his way to talk about
clancey that is responsible for the state of the veterans administration and have the office of the medical inspector investigators look into a matter that they re not even qualified to investigate. neil: when david shulkin was running things there, did he ever talk to you or anyone on his staff talk to you? i accessed communications with shulkin on numerous occasions. i had an exchange with former secretary shulkin about this particular manager. neil: what did he say? he said he would look into it. he was concerned about the issues raised about the profanity-laced tirades from neil: but leading the profanity laced it is. it s nasty stuff. i don t want to get into the weeds of that. but on the charges that you were making of a lack of improvement or progress on care for veterans, wait times, et cetera, when shulkin was there, did he talk to you about that? we had e-mail exchanges.