would be in the seat. we wanted him to know what was going on. the three of us knew. we brought pat in. no one else aside from jeff clark, of course, knew what was going on until late that sunday afternoon. we chose to keep it close-holed because we didn t want to create concern or panic in the justice department leadership. at this point i asked the acting a.g. what else can i do to help prepare for this meeting at the oval office. he said you and pat should get the aags on the phone. it s time to let them know what s going on. let s find out what they may do if there s a change in leadership. that will help in form the conversation at the oval office. pat set up that meeting. we got most of the ags on the phone. very quickly explained to them what the situation was.
he said he would go in to the white house to make sure he was at the meeting and he would be supporting the justice department s position as he had been doing consistently. three, i called steve engle. i was at the department. it was a sunday. there had been some reasons i needed to be there. mr. engle, i called at home and asked if he would god to the meeting, which he did. it proved to be quite helpful. number 4, i asked rich donoghue and pat who had previously been my chief of staff to get the department s senior leadership and let them know what was going on, which they did. and then eric hirschman called me to tell me that he was going to the meeting and he would be supporting the department of justice position as well. so i knew that the meeting was on course and that i would have a number of people supportive of the department of justice s
they all have. i remember that pat buchanan was brought in for this very job after he had long since been in the nixon white house and he ran the white house, didn t he? he was the communications director. he did a fabulous job but his predecessor was having problems. they brought pat in. he knew exactly what to do. he knew reagan well. they got along. the fix worked. i think really what you are seeing here is president trump is trying to get this in his own fashion to work the way he wants it, and he probably won t stop tinkering with it until that s done. jen, you worked in the obama white house. do staff changes matter? they can matter. and they can be moments of reset and moments of opportunity. our first communications director on the obama administration was only there for three months. and a change was made. so that s not uncommon. but that alone doesn t solve every problem. you need to bring somebody in to
ways seems to be coming apart. now he cannot get the exchanges going, it will be a year or two and congress voted to repeal the medical device tax with 79 senators voting against that and premiums are going up, doctor shortage now at 140,000 predicted in the next 10 years. workers are poised to lose their coverage, the opposite of what he promised. that s hurting him, too. isn t it? the pole data shows that the american people continue to be against obamacare. they don t believe it will save the money and with the exchanges disappearing the prime element of compensation is gone. bottom line, politically, the lack of leadership, the drift in the country, the fact that the president s lost the agenda, and control of the agenda. quickly, pat in.
established after the great depression. the lesson that the surest way to save capitalism is to regulate it in public interest. the surest way to create socialist is for everyone to experience the economic consequences of counting only on the goodness of the hearts of mr. potter and fabrice tourre. you agree with that, pat in. you can t have dog eat dog capitalism. when you ve seen what happened up there on wall street, frankly, something has to be done. i m halfway between democrats and republicans on this. i can t wait for glenn beck to turn the column into another obama socialist attack. we ve been trou a tragedy, another political traj dirk as it took two years to get to the point where we re putting in new rules of the road for wall street. but of course you need regulation. it doesn t work without it or a dog eat dog capitalist there s this ritual flogging, washington loves to call people