thank you very much. good luck. i know you ve been in puerto rico for quite some time i hope you and the crew are getting what you need down there as well. nbc s kristen welker is at the white house with the president s latest comments on puerto rico. something struck me when i was talking to gabe when we were talking about the response and the pace of the response. something we didn t see during harvey, at least while harvey actually after harvey happened and during irma in florida, is the president took a real break from starting fights on twitter. he did pardon arpaio, but he did pivot back. it s notable puerto rico happened a number of days ago and the president, while they were suffering, while they still didn t have any power, while the aid was not coming, while people
to that s what he did. tara, does this send the message that if you are loyal to me, i will pardon you, don t workers i ll take care of you? it sends a couple of messages. not only does it send that, that also could have greater implications when it comes to the special prosecutor in the robert mueller case and perhaps the people who are loyal to the president and decided they don t want to follow subpoenas let s say, a federal subpoena by the federal prosecutor, dochbts worry abo don t worry about it, nod and wink, the president will pardon you. but it also says some also. let s not askct as thoetd examps that people are giving that other presidents are pardoned people that are controversial pardons and i happen to agree with those examples, so you are acknowledging that the arpaio pardon was controversial. and it is for a few reasons. joe arpaio, god bless him, he s trying to say that i m
the gorka news i think is different. but the joe arpaio pardon for sure, donald trump is saying i m doing this, he is an ally of mine, i agree with what he did and to hell with what the law says, i have the power and i m pardoning this guy. the backlash to the pardoning of joe arpaio has been swift and forget about the timing. anita gupta went as far as to warning that a pardoning of arpaio, quote, will not be a dog whistle to the so-called alt-right and white supremacists because bull horn. is this the right message to be sending right now? well, i got to tell you, donald trump can t win for trying. what he did was he was told by the democratic mayor of phoenix i think it was please don t pardon arpaio when you come even though i know you want to pardon him and you ve talked about it, so don t do it because there will be violence. so trump didn t do that. he actually being a alaska wo
this all began. maria teresa, i think you have the mike issues fixed. but no surprise in any of this with arpaio getting this pardon, but are you surprised at the way the president did it. if he wanted to do it with no regrets himself, why use blanket coverage of hurricane harvey to put it out there. well, thomas, what we re seeing with this administration is that they like to do news dumps on friday night when they feel that, yes, they re doing something wrong but they don t want to call attention to it. not only did he pardon arpaio but he officially signed the transgender military ban again under the auspices that no one was going to cover it sufficiently enough because we had a category four hurricane alert and texas was in a state of emergency. what we should be worried about, though, is that as raul laid out, this is actually going to set precedent not just for pardoning arpaio but for other government officials that may have gone wrong by the law fwhau stand with the president
news sent a single ward. joel pollak posted #war. he explained what the president must do now. the key to the administration s success will continue to be whether it sticks to the agenda on which donald trump ran for president. and in many ways, he has, indeed, stuck to that agenda since taking office in january. and the issues are what bind him to his base. it s not personalities. it s not even steve bannon. it is his performance on those issues. but if he veers away, if he pulls an arnold schwarzenegger and tries to reinvent himself as a liberal, we will see that support erode quickly. president trump heads to arizona tomorrow where he will stop along the border before a campaign rally in phoenix. where he can shed more insight about whether he will pardon arpaio. arpaio was found in contempt