maximum stress, stress on our allies, stress on our institutions to try and compensate when he goes off in directions that are hard to fathom. david, what did you think? so much of the coverage has been about his embattled relationship with the media and taking on the press. i always think when it s the press versus trump, trump wins that. the country doesn t care about us getting our questions in or anything like that. so i first want to sort of dismiss that. but if we re properly assessing this president and this man, this is a man who is consumed, with his relationship with the press. he is obsessed with his own media coverage to the point it seems it is supreme to everything else at his job, on his december income the oesm offi oval office. so then it becomes something you want to look at because what has him so consumed by media coverage and how distracting is that from the job at hand? rebecca, your thoughts. i absolutely agree with
unemployment under president obama was cut in half, stock market was up about 12,000 points under president obama. there are many situations that were stabilized around the world. president obama and the republican members of congress put tpp in place, president trump already has scrapped that. think about, david axelrod, what president obama ip heanher eight years ago when he took office. there were a couple hundred thousand u.s. troops in iraq and afghanistan, the dow jones was below 7,000, unemployment 700,000, 800,000 jobs a month were being lost. president obama eight years ago, he really did inherit a mess. yeah. look, there s no easy time to become president of the united states. but if you want to consider what it s like to really confront crisis, then you should have walked in the door, as this president did, president obama eight years ago, the quarter before he took office the economy shrunk by 8.9%.
with flynn talking sanctions with the russian ambassador before mr. trump took office. in fact, he said, i would have directed him to do it if i thought he wasn t. did the president just endorse highly inappropriate, possibly illegal behavior by one of his subordinates? that s a statement by the president that hopefully the white house will correct because very frankly, although a national security adviser who is serving a new president and he was not in that position, but obviously had been designated as such, has the right to talk to ambassadors and to make contact with others. but to talk about steps on sanctions that would undermine the policy of the existing administration at the time comes very close to the line of violating the logan act.
president trump said he decided to hold a surprise news conference today to take his message straight to the american people and what a message it was. david axelrod, what did you think? well, i think that in certain ways it was a surreal performance, but not in the context of donald trump. it was a surreal performance for a president. but it was very consistent with the donald trump we saw during the campaign, and he seemed to, you know, be reveling and playing that role. the question is, is it consonant with the office of the presidency, the responsibilities of the presidency. i think that s the question that s troubling a lot of people tonight. what do you think? is it? no. i think that i ve always said what you say as president can send armies marching, markets tumbling, and facts do matter, and, you know, all of these things seem not to be impactful on him. and so i think it s going to put
important to present to the president so that the president can make a decision about how to handle that crisis. that s what concerns me, is that if we had a crisis at the present time, i don t see the mechanisms within the white house to deal with that kind of crisis and that concerns me. president trump as you know made the trip to the cia that you used to head on his first full day in office in an attempt to smooth things over with the intelligence community, but since then, he s renewed his attacks on intelligence agencies accusing them of con spiring them to leak classified information, in his words, just like russia. earlier he compared the intelligence community to nazi germany. you served as director of the cia under president obama. is his relationship with the intelligence community beyond repair? for the sake of the country,