hagar, take the tweet about iran, the protesters in the street. it s delivered in a uniquely trumpian voice through a uniquely sort of trumpian medium, twitter. that s different than the past, but the message he s conveying there is, hey, if the united states has some solidarity here with these protesters, that seems to be the message that a lot of americans would expect any president to be sending. that s true. i think the message, aside from his small and actually false jab regarding president obama and money towards the iranians, i think aside from that, i think the message was right to support the iranian protesters and certainly their basic human rights. if i were his communications adviser, i would have never advised to do something like that over a tweet. it s too informal. it doesn t speak to the seriousness of the issue. i would have advised a for formal, written statement followed up by some actions that show the support for the protesters. but that s very typical of presid
it s successful. it puts other countries off their game. so i think we have to bear in mind, what we may see as disruptive and unsuccessful, he probably sees differently. i just want to know, like hagar, i think for the president to stand with the people of iran in this period when they re out in the streets, i think that s good. i think you would want an american president to do that. trump could go too far in how he expresses it, but i think the fact that he s in solidarity with them, he says the world is watching, that s what he should say. david ignatius and hagar, it s a conversation we ll probably return to at some point this year. president trump, meanwhile, has a busy to-do list for the new year, but will 2018 be the year democrats take control of congress. that is ahead. you re watching hardball. dad! dad!!! can you drive me to jessica s house?
two, the presentation of foreign policy, obviously, very different than we ve ever seen with the president. but the substantiative policy, how many breaks have we seen in terms of what has traditionally been u.s. foreign policy? we have seen some breaks. i think relationships with traditional u.s. allies like the united kingdom, germany, are worse than i can remember them being, in many years, maybe ever. certainly in modern times. i think relationships with our potential adversaries like china and russia, this president has been much more accommodating in his personal statements. we have a new national security strategy that s more hawkish. i think, strangely enough, trump probably thinks that this style, bombastic, public comments, tweets, this very disruptive style, i think he d probably say
back on the hill. checking and balancing. john, quickly here, the folks implementing this stuff, we hear about the president himself. how efficient is the white house operation? it s growing more so in terms of getting policy done. that is one of the impacts john kelley has had on this white house is to better organize, more efficiently be able to roll back policies like this. i also suspect, i know this was done quietly over the last few days, it may not stay quiet long. republicans like to undo democratic accomplishments, this president does it with zeal. i think he will like to tout some of the things he s done, especially if he believes it helps businesses and undoes some of the obama-era environmental regulations. to tell you this coming in through twitter, president trump responding to north korean leader kim jong-un, north korean leader kim jong-un stated the nuclear button is on his desk at all times, will someone from his depleted and food-starved regime please infor
matter that they work with republicans in trying to pass legislation, because their constituencies are more moderate, those democrats certainly may be willing to work with the president. i don t think that they will, though. and i think that the russia probe actually is a bigger shadow than the white house clearly seems to imagine in this particular moment. i also think that to jonathan s point about welfare reform, i think that some of these pushes that the white house may do, they have to align with what paul ryan and mitch mcconnell want to do. and so paul ryan wants welfare reform, that s probably what they re going end to up doing in the congress, regardless of what the white house wants, because this white house essentially has been pushed to the side, because trump is not a good communicator on legislation. and john, let me ask you a different variation of that. john talks about the base of the republican party. midterm election coming up this year. paul ryan wants to keep the