there are no perfect comparisons to the process we used with clinton or the process used with nixon. the question i think end of the day is, has the democrats approach to this process been reasonable? despite all the exercised and energetic complaints certainly by the ranking member and others this morning, i think you have to step back and look at the path they ve taken and say, look, they have given the president the opportunity certainly to participate today. he s chosen not to. subpoenaed witnesses. he s blocked the witnesses. so there are equal process fouls probably on both sides and the end result is one people should be comfortable with. bottom line, dana, do you think the hearing today so far at least, you think it s not likely to move the needle when it comes to public opinion. is it doing anything in terms of democrats that might be wavering or any republicans wavering? in the house? perhaps, but i still think that hearing from people
something we weren t initially hearing, this three-phase idea. we re going to pass this now, do more stuff later. is that going to be compelling to republicans wavering right now? they ve been saying that for a while now, that s the message that s been conveyed to members and it hasn t resonated. the big question is how hard does donald trump lean into this? does he bully use the bully pulpit to put pressure on republicans in the house and senate who are calling it obamacare light and obamacare 2.0. does trump fight that or does he support it in a more modest way with some nice statements and not really push it to the next level, which is what i think republican leadership needs at the moment. quickly, about 30 seconds. but it sounds like donald trump maybe has more clout, more jce with these republican members than the hou speaker. there s no contest, particularly with the freedom
that pitch potentially get you to 218? i mean, i think it does, maybe. because president trump, even though he s broadly unpopular for a new president is still very popular among republicans and particularly in republican districts. however, with that said, this is a real test for conservatives because there s been a long criticism of the republican party among conservatives that republicans are always selling out. and they re too weak. trump, during the campaign, exploited that to his benefit by coming across as this really strong leader who wasn t wasn t afried stand up to democrats. so now you kind of have a clash of these two things because you have a bill that concedes a lot of ground to the left, but you also have president trump who s supposed to be the strong man in the room who s embracing it.
clearly the reaction to this bill has been very harsh and critical. there haven t been many clear opponents of it, proponents of it aside from leadership and the white house. with that said, you know, i m sure you remember during 2009 and 2010 how many liberal democrats said they couldn t support anything that didn t have a public option or various other measures and things got done. so ultimately, it s going to come down to are republicans so dead set on doing something that doing nothing isn t an option and eventually that propels them to come to an agreement? we heard the president there just a few minutes ago saying this is everything he campaigned on saying he s predicting a speedy recovery on this. how much clout does he have here? if he s calling up republican members or if he s going out in public and saying hey, this is a test republicans, are you with me or are you against me, does
united states of america, this is one way of looking at the political divide. this is how each county voted last fall in trump/clinton election. republicans love this map because there s a lot of red space on it even though it was very close. republicans do very well, trump did extremely well in rural areas. all told, he won well over 2600 counties in this country. the democratic support, meanwhile, looking at metropolitan areas, around philadelphia, washington, d.c., heavily in california. democratic vote much more narrowly bunched. so what monmouth university did, they have a poll and took a look at a couple different regions of this divide. so remember, 3,143 counties in the country. how about this, the trump counties. these are 2500 plus counties where he won a landslide last fall, by more than 10 points. and look, they re happy with