suleiman, the former security chief accused by his own people of torturing them over the years. the chant from tahrir square today was no suleiman. mumbarak must go. suleiman must go. and now we wait for the light of day.
establishment in egypt heard is, i m not out of the picture from mubarak. i m still in the game. and so those folks in the egyptian establishment, i think, remain on the sidelines, convinced that despite what they see in the streets, the egyptian establishment, the military and mubarak s franchise running the show is still largely in the same place it was a week ago. steve clemmeclemons, let me you, is the u.s. government now on the sidelines? what is the status of the relationship today versus just 12 hours ago between this administration and, say, vice president suleiman? the white house is trying to send a signal that it wants to be constructive, wants to be engaged, wants to see the military do the right thing. but it s trying to keep them out of its comfort. and it believes like things it just saw is nowhere near enough to satisfy the expectations of the people in the street. you always hear the obama white house say, ultimately the
won t leave until september, that folks that we re talking to this morning are somewhat, i won t say cautiously optimistic, that may be going too far, but cautiously encouraged by the developments overnight. according to u.s. officials we re talking to, there is no dispute now that mubarak has handed over all his authority to the vice president suleiman. but, again, nuances prevail here. and nobody s sure how long that will last. but there is some encouragement here this morning that, number one, that the protests so far among the hundreds of thousands in cairo and across egypt have been somewhat peaceful. and that the military is standing by its earlier commitment, apparently made both publicly and in private to u.s. officials, that they would not fire on any of the protesters. hey, mik? chuck? do we have any evidence that yesterday s communication breakdown, frankly, between what
you reported, people in the white house, including, as we reported all day, members of mubarak s inner circle, who believed they had had an understanding with mubarak that he would step down, the chief of mubarak s own political party said on camera that mubarak had agreed to step down and that some time during the day he changed his mind. when the protesters heard that mubarak said he won t do it, and then suleiman came out and said that he is now accepting the responsibility, people started chanting, no suleiman, no suleiman. that s why we re hearing the army coming out today. go ahead. i m all fired up and going with lots of information. no, i ve got to ask you this, though. because you tweeted at some point yesterday that the profile of mubarak is the longer it takes for him to make a final decision, the more stubborn he gets. is that simply what happened? i had one person describe it to me. he called an audible. they really thought this was a
there will be free and fair elections, that there will not be repercussions against the protesters, that the emergency law will be lifted as soon as the demonstrations are done. so the army is now saying, we know you don t trust the process, we will make sure that this happens. and look, president mubarak transferred his power and is now off to sharm el sheik. but the protesters are still out. richard exactly. and he s transferred the power to none other than vice president suleiman, who seemed to dig in with mubarak. i know white house officials were incredibly perplexed and frankly frustrated by suleiman s statement. do the protesters trust him? isn t he part and parcel of this regime? reporter: they do not trust him anymore. i think suleiman had a very good reputation among many egyptians a couple of weeks ago. now they see him as having cast his lot in with mubarak. and yesterday, when everyone was expecting mubarak to announce his resignation, including, as