showing up. they were of course in the news in charlottesville as well. let s bring in annie carney joining us from politico tonight we re happy to have her thank you for being so patient. she is the white house reporter at politico anita kumar remains with us. annie the we need to get you on the record for everything you ve been overhearing and witnessing tonight. donald trump seems to rhetorically have doubled down this evening. that s for sure. for anyone who thought was that last night and tonight were a one two punch to get away from the charlottesville comments would be wrong, that maybe that was the staff plan but that wasn t donald trump s plan. what does it mean? what does it mean for the the chain of command in the west wing? what does this mean for the directorship of the new chief of staff general kelly. well one thing that really struck me actually was that you saw during the rally trump call
that s exactly right. i mean, setting aside the fact that trump does have a point that mitch mcconnell and the republicans in congress probably should have had a more throe legislative plan to repeal obamacare given that they talked about it for seven years, criticizing mitch mcconnell for for not protecting him fl russia is just like we ve seen the president trump criticize jeff sessions for not protecting. it s something he has been utterly unable to get out of his head. he has fixated on it. he goes back and forth all the time. it s just his it s his achilles heel. seller hold that thought aneat he he is talking fw the attempts to take away our history what he calls our history. we are going to protect american industry. we are going to protect the american worker. no longer will we allow other countries to close our factories, steal our jobs and
him tonight if if most americans are probably not they re peshl not going to follow the speech. but you know if this is the theme that donald trump continues to hit this this you know notion that the system is corrupt it s beaten him down, it s beaten you down. the people, the elites they don t take you seriously. they mock your values and i m here to stick it to them. that s what he won on. if he continues to push that i think he ll do quite well with the core support sfleers anita what happens when fres comes back in town? oh it s going to be really interesting. what he did tonight and what he is basically doing every day in telling the sfat, telling mitch mcconnell, telling congress how to act is not going to help him. i mean none of the things are helping berating members, going against some of them, you mentioned jeff flake. but tonight he just had an opportunity not to do that.
congress like so many mts have before. jeremy, a man who ran as a teal maker kind of still repeating his bona fides tonight using as i said some of the boilerplate language that could have been cut apaced. moug can he attribute hits problem the log jams, the lack of progress for how long can he blame that on others? i mean that s the question every republican in congress right now is asking themselves. because that will then determine whether or not they are able to cut and run from donald trump which a lot of them privately say they want to do. but they have something called their own political base to worry about. and trump does remain quite popular though his popularity has slid and slid quickly in the last week, week and a half. he has that base. that base is pretty solid. i do nink though listening to
he mentioned again changing the rules of the senate. mitch mcconnell does not want to hear from donald trump how he should run the chamber. what s going to happen is they re going to have to make a decision when they re opinion on the spot in washington about how close willy they will align with him whether he was involved in the legislative process or not they all need a win the question is how will they do that sno. roblt costa i was thinking of you and the piece you publish. the date line was somewhere over the southwestern united states it was in 2015 you got a taste of the political trump on a long flight with him on his plane and then a rally. tell us about that event and tie it to tonight. it really hasn t changed that much. i was with then candidate trump back stage at the same place the phoenix convention center. i flew with the president when he was a candidate from phoenix back to new york. he was watching fox news the