better life for their children here. he does not see them as people and that is the reason he is not treating them as people. what do you make, i even shah, of the first lady getting involved in this? i think. i think she did. i think there s definitely a narrative where there are officials who want to us feel like she got involved. you re skeptical. i think that there is a picture being put out that she did try to. you think it s a lie. to lobby the president. i m not going to say it s not true. i think. okay. i see the little smile you got. i know that skeptical smile. you think they re trying to say trump did the right thing. he was the tough guyen at wife s a little softer and that sovietened him a little bit. ivanka. it takes the edge off the backflip. i think it s interesting they re putting this in the mouths of ivanka and melania, the first lady. why? tell me the politics.
role. she s a senior adviser. she went to the olympics as a senior adviser. she went there with a diplomat mission. she was prepared to deal with north korea, but she s also the president s daughter and she s very unapologetic about that. she talks to him multiple times a day. she s sort of trying to figure out exactly what she can do. one area where she s come under a lot of fair criticism is a lot of people wanted her to be a moderating voice. they re frustrated on is she x or is she y? they thought she could prevent trump from pulling out of paris. she explains she treats herself like any other senior adviser. so, she will not publicly contradict the administration in the way most other senior advisers would not. the interesting thing to watch for, we learned, is she will push for the issue she s passionate about but she ll be silent on the issues where she disagrees. you ll notice she did not sell the republican health care plan
their children the values of the president. that s just the reality of it. there should be that reminder for people that at a lot of folks find this all very distasteful, there s still a section of the population, still 30-plus percent of people who think donald trump is doing a good job and who still enjoy this sort of rhetoric. and ashley parker, you also witnessed all of this during the campaign and since. we see him unleashed. it seems as though he feels liberated, perhaps less control from the chief of staff kelly, who s been under fire so much. less control now that it s clear that gary cohn is leaving. and the role of ivanka, ivanka and jared, principally ivanka, is a lot of your reporting today. yeah. we actually ended up doing an ivanka profile in part based on peter alexander s great interview with her at the olympics where it s clear she s trying to straddle this is dual
that mueller s investigators want out of mueller and if it s as your colleague surmises, someone who might flip on the family member. or as michael schmidt is alluding to, if it s a window into what sorts of promises were being made during the campaign, during the transition, or even once donald trump was president. i think that s exactly right, nicolle. potentially gates could provide a lot of information to mueller. he was privy to a lot of transactions that took place at the campaign. he was very involved, for example, in the creation of the digital strategy, the social media strategy excuse me during the fall. he worked closely with jared kushner, the president s son-in-law. he was very involved in the transition at trump tower. we saw him there a lot. he helped in the room in terms of deciding some of the officials that would get positions in the government. and he was close to manafort, but he stayed on beyond manafort and had the blessing of ivanka and jared kushner during
i m being kind here unseemly and odd. we re going to break it down and you ll be as mean as me by the earned of this. i want to play something for you, phil rucker. donald trump weighed in on the question of security clearances for jared kushner. let s lips enin and talk about it on the other side. would you be willing to grant a waiver to jared kushner? i think he s been treated unfairly. he s a high-quality person. he works for nothing, just so nobody ever reports that. but he gets zero. he doesn t get a salary. so, that will be up to general kelly. general kelly respects jared a lot and general kelly will make that call. i won t make that call. i will let the general, who is right here, make that call. but jared s doing some very important things for our country. he gets paid zero. ivanka, by the way, gets paid zero. so, i will let general kelly make that decision and he s going to do what s right for the country, and i have no doubt