he was being chained in, he felt. and general kelly being frustrated that the president was sort of uncontrollable. so you now have general kelly threatening to resign on a number of occasions. i will say, some people say that those were sort of less tangible threats and more venting of frustration and the president himself kind of calling around asking friends how do you think he s doing, what do you think, which is never a great sign with this president. ashley, the president isn t listening to him. is white house staff listening to john kelly any longer? so the short answer is yes and no. what is striking again is that you sort of have in recent days and weeks see the sort of leaks we saw under the president s first chief of staff, reince priebus, who was not particularly respected in that white house. so general kelly certainly did lose the support of a number of staff. there were a couple incidents. one was the handling of the rob porter scandal where the staff basically bel
see these types of attacks is an indications that not all of the chemical weapons were destroyed in that effort, katy. so president trump weighing this in real time and he has a new national security advisor, john bolton, starting today. let s get more on that, ashley. it is john bolton s first day. he s a hawk on russia. how is he going to be influencing the president? well, to put it this way, john bolton is sort of overly simplistic terms is never not hawkish. that is almost always the position he is pushing. he s sort of saber rattling and bellicose. so that s what the president is going to be hearing from him. i have to say, the president on one hand, he likes that tough talk, and he sometimes likes being forceful. but in a lot of ways, ideologically, he and john bolton actually diverge. the president says america first is his view and we should be in less foreign conflicts. he s wanted us to withdraw from
it is also now clear russia has betrayed its obligations to end the regime s chemical weapons program. the president and his team are consulting closely with allies and part iners to determine an appropriate response. as president trump clearly stated, there will be a price to pay. we all on our members of the international community to share any information related to this attack and to hold the perpetrators and their sponsors accountable. and we call upon the syrian regime and russia to open the area to international medical assistance and international monitoring. and with that i ll take your questions. john. the president was pretty definitive today in saying that this was an attack with banned chemical weapons. yet there hasn t been any concrete proof of that. russia insists that there is no evidence of chemical weapons. what makes the president so sure that he is willing to make such a declarative statement? the president is confident. he s been briefed by his national securi
dishonest or trying to sort of spin the facts that make himself look better. and so the staff does some of them respect him a little less, trust him a little less. that said, they all still work for him and at least to his face are quite respectful and responsive and do what he tells them. so it s sort of a yes and no. if john kelly goes, who replaces him? that is a fantastic question. we hear all of these names all the time. i don t think they re worth repeating here because the new theory this is one that steve bannon floated publicly but one that i check privately with a number of people in a position to know there might not be a chief of staff. there might be a number of people who directly report to the president. because at the end of the day what we re seeing here is john kelly is chief of staff. he still does talk to the president more than any other person. he still does wield some influence but he s not really a traditional chief of staff. whether you replace him wi
in that it sites that the apartment was at market value and goes into other details. that s what the president was reflecting. $50 a night was market value according to the epa. yes, according to the office of government ethics. traveling spending is okay to. is he okay with pruitt taking first class travel and tripling the size of the detail spending is that okay? again, we are reviewing each of those components. i know there was a much larger number of security issues surrounding the epa administrator than in the past. but for specific questions beyond that i would refer you back to the epa. were those security issues or were those included in a police report? because there has been reporting across the country no one found death threats or police reports that jeopardized his life or safety. what are you talking about when you ? i can t kmep about police reports but i do know there have been a number of questions raised.