good or bad short-term is irrelevant. we have to solve the problem with china, because they are taking out $$500 billion a year plus. and that doesn t include intellectual property theft. and other things. and also national security. so i am doing this whether it s good or bad. whether it s good or bad. tariffs he now says could be good or bad for the economy. that may well be as close as president trump is going to get to admitting the reality of the impact of the tariffs, that they are impacting american consumers. pamela brown outfront live from the white house for us. pamela how concerned is the president and his team behind the scenes about the economy right now? well, kait, despite this public facing showing of confidence about the economy from administration officials there are concerned behind the scenes and discussions about way to offset anxiety about the economic slowdown. the president acknowledged just this afternoon that payroll tax cuts are on the table.
look, it s a fools errened to try to make sense or to try and try and find any consistency from this white house. do you believe, though, at all, kathryn, he would be it s like a double negative, the president is talking about a payroll tax cut but it has nothing to do with a looming rezbleegs republicans love tax cuts whether the economy is good or bad. good point. historically, though they are not fans of payroll tax cuts. democrats are. these are tax cuts generally that by definition go to working people. on your payroll, right? so in that sense i guess it s possible. but you have to also remember that larry kudlow isn t oh the record. the economic counsel director on the record lots of tweets, search twitter for this, saying he thinks the payroll tax cut from 2010 2009, 2010 somewhere apprehend there, was wasteful, didn t do anything to stimulate the economy, what have you. i don t know that this is
with one thing, what they know to be true. i m not blaming them. and then the president contradicting them a moment later. tell you anything about how seriously the president actually is in considering a payroll tax cut here? what it tells me is that they are not managing the message well. and that s one thing that this administration has been having a problem with since the very beginning. basically, what this president is trying to do is two things. he is trying to assure americans that they will have a decent economy. he wants more money in their pockets so they can push it into the economy and spend. possibly with a payroll tax cut. and also he wants to fix the economy. he lts wants to reassure his chances in the oval office for the second term. kathryn, the president says the economy is going gangbusters. then the president says he admits he is considering a payroll tax cut or another tax
ago. but the caliphate is gone. and their capacity conduct external attacks has been made much more difficult. we ve taken down significant risk. not all of it but a significant amount. more powerful than they were three or four years ago. that certainly is a stark contrast from what you heard from president trump. we have won against isis. we have beaten them and we have beaten them badly. when i was elected president two years ago isis was all over syria and all over iraq. we have wiped out isis in iraq. we have wiped out isis wiped oud isis. the caliphate maybe. the ideology, definitely not. according to in new report and it s a lengthy report, the pentagon independent watched isis has estimated 15,000 fighters in iraq and syria now. a resurgents.
represent a threat to our country is something that we shouldn t be hearing from the president. look, we live in a dangerous world. i think it s more dangerous than ever today. it s not only the threat from china and rash. it s the threat from isis. it s the threat from iran, from those conducting cyber-attacks again our own country. there are a lot of flash points in the world that ought to frankly keep this president awake and concerned. you mentioned russia, russia seems to be receiving welcome news today. the president offering his endorsement of bringing russia back into the g-7 which would be then the g-8. listen. putin outsmarted him. president obama thought it wasn t a good thing to have russia in. so he wanted russia out. but i think it s much more appropriate to have russia in. if somebody would make that motion i would certainly be disposed to think about it very