i ll be the contrarian here. i know people are consumed with the fact he has ties to the clintons. but he s a lawyer. lawyers represent all different kinds of clients, some whose views line up with theirs and others whose views don t. i think he ll do what good lawyers do, give his client the best defense he can, whether he ll be working on the legal end of things or more on pr, damage control, image resuscitation. he ll do the best he can for his client. and putting aside, nancy, the lanny davis connection to the clintons and the clinton orbit, either been shoring up his defense or signaling something to donald trump for the last week. what do you read into this? i think initially my impression he was signaling to trump and trump s kitchen cabinets and all the surrogates, almost a plea for help he definitely wanted to be in the president s good graces. but really this week i think we ve seen a real change in tone from him.
increased, you know, these increased storm and extreme weather experiences, the more the republican party is going to have to look at this as a spending issue. nancy, goes back, boat of these iss these issues go back to what do people at the kitchen table hear? they re hearing it must be for a bunch of rich people showing up at fund-raisers and they complain the most about their taxes. there is a sense from the 2012 presidential campaign where president obama successfully painted mitt romney as this out of touch who wanted to protect tax breaks. romney helped that along with his 47% remark. he absolutely did. but by the house republicans continuing to sort of harp on spending cuts and taxes and things like that, they re sort of continuing that message from the campaign and what some party members are saying, look, we need to scratch the scenario. we need to move away from that. i talked to some democrats who are arguing that they have to dump the phrase climate
and nancy cooke is the economic and fiscal policy correspondent. welcome to you both. thanks. it seems as if this is basically about the same thing. which is how do the republican party look like they re in touch with the average american? you focus, nancy, on the middle class stuff. yeah. so, really, there s this debate right now. a bunch of intellectual policy and strategists that are really focused on the republicans winning the white house in 2016. the house republicans and those in power, look, if we want to win the white house, we need to talk about things that middle class americans care about. education, you know, lower taxes, things like that. but house republicans are still really focused at this point on tax reform and budget cuts. things like that that it s harder to translate and talk about to the average american. they re not winning the tax issue. if you look, always split down the middle. it seems that some people arguing that they re too, almost view taxes as a
0 i d call it a cover up. i would call it a cover up in the extent that there was willful removal of information, which was obvious. it was obvious. now, there are two parts to the benghazi allegations. one the white house engineered a coverp and altered the talking points to protect themselves politically. the evidence to support that allegation seems to be fading as we learn more about the state department s role in changing the talking points and pushing forward. the second allegation is the one that has a bit more legs. they were changed after a bureaucratic knife fight in which the state department and cia battled over what will be made public. why was there a battle? as we now know at least 12 separate drafts of the talking points initially requested by the house intelligence committee. the cia first draft included language saying islamic extremists with ties to ala cada participated in the attack and referred to cia warnings, describing at least five other immediate subordin