otb. other than otb, holding up the post. meet the commish. elise jordan is here. not the commish. we have rev al here. host of msnbc s politics nation. tell us about it. young african-american dominican woman was in nassau county. had a reputation not a woke county. no, not a woke but a waking. oh! that was nice. a reputation of being tough but fair, sensitive. i talked to the mayor elect. he told me she was coming on, and my people in the county say she is tough but fair. that s what you need. strike the balance. fight crime and police reform at the same time. yeah, that s great. council on foreign relations, richard haass is here.
table today. robert traynham, a former senior adviser, now a political analyst. john heilman is a msnbc national affairs analyst and that s about the nicest thing i can say about him today. and jen palmieri and my friday date, the rev al. we are laughing because this has been an extraordinary week. it s been a whipsaw. we re communicators who follow and craft the words that politicians say. but no laughing matter to hear general mccaffrey talk about donald trump s words literally bringing us to the brink of the nuclear standoff and to hear about the leader of north korea who can be the one to avert the war. there are two things about the locked an loaded thing that have to be addressed. one is whether mccaffrey who s doing a rational analysis that is what a rational listen to the word, you say this is what a military commander would
it seems president trump won t be letting mitch mcconnell off the hook anytime soon. the senate leader now joins a long list of republicans who have been the target of president trump. among them, senator john mccain, house speaker paul ryan, attorney general jeff sessions, senator dean heller, senator lisa murkowski. the list goes on and on and on. al, you and i have talked about this idea of i think it was around when elizabeth warren defended jeff sessions, the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend. what s up with this attack on mcconnell. well, i won t say i ll defend mcconnell, but i will say come on. all the kids are doing it. i will say that i have a little, a little bit of empathy. because first of all, it was not mcconnell that would not weigh
the president or anyone else to say just repeal it which means that we will stop those millions of people from being served and we ll figure it out later. and i think that that is the most ludicrous solution when you should be sitting there trying to come out with mid ground. you have no excuse. what are you going to tell your constituents now, mr. president? you control the white house and the senate and the house. and now guess what, you can t come with a solution. it was easy when you could say, well, we re all going to repeal it because obama won t sign it. as understand earlier, nicolle. but now you re in the driver s seat. what is your experience ncuse n. you can t come up with something that 50 of you agree on, then why did you have everyone vote to put the republicans in the majority. save us from the abyss if you really didn t have a formula for salvation that you can get the majority of your people to go with. al, let me give our new
worry me about the country. i want to get to the panel. juliana glover, paul butler, now a professor and an msnbc analyst. slate columnist michelle goldberg and my friday date, rev al, president of the national action network and with us from massachusetts the man with the best summer plans that i know, robert traynham, former adviser to the bush/cheney. thanks for being here. let me start with you and if you could just weigh in as a former well, a current communication strategist, but not inside the white house anymore. what goes through the minds of the professionals as we often call folks like hr mcmaster, dina powell, people who are there trying to protect the country when they see their boss, the president, on twitter down in the gutter and fighting with cable news hosts? i would not pretend to think what they re thinking right now.