2012, but donald trump won in 2016. and andrea, one more piece of data. it shows there has been a little bit of erosion for donald trump in both counties, you know, on the surge, donald trump won by a combined 65% to 29% against hillary clinton as i showed you. his approval rating there is now at 56%. then in the flip counties, you end up having donald trump winning those areas by a combined 51% to 43%. and of course as i showed you his approval rating in those places is now at 44%. mark murray, fascinating data. thank you so much. and joining me now from the capital is democratic senator chris van holland. thank you very much for being with us today. great to be with you. there you see the numbers. the base is holding and outside of, you know, the washington northeast corridor, perhaps the west coast, this russia controversy, which many of you say is so fundamental to our
deregulations and working on tax reform all promote products made in the usa. this is really tough to completely turn the page on this russia controversy, as you know all too well and continues to mount, hallie. thank you very much at the white house. michael steele former adviser and plus joining us senior washington correspondent for politico anna palmer and matt visor and kasie hunt is also hanging out over on the hill. let s start to russia. michael, i ll go to you. what would be talking about today if the president wasn t on twitter trying to defend himself? we were talking about health care and the efforts to repeal and replace obamacare with something that will lower costs and help the american people. tax reform and getting our economy moving again. infrastructure and deregulation and all the things they re doing to help the american people. health care is hanging by a
reporter: look, the white house incredibly optimistic about this visit, the optics that we re witnessing, of the president arriving at the official residence of the president since the 1800s will help him turn the page on the russia controversy, which has only been deepening at home as you ve been talking about throughout the hour. we ve seen him arrive here. we re expecting him to get there he is, shaking the hand of the french president. you ll remember that initial handshake that they had at the nato summit in brussels, which got so much attention, that white knuckled, extended handshake. we saw a very different handshake today, a lot of smiles t seemed much friendlier. that is part of the goal, to reaffirm the goal of the commitment between the united states and france. france, of course, one of united states oldest allies, celebrating bastille day,
standing on the world stage with this trip, but also looking to turn the headlines from what you were talking about when you first started, all of those negative headlines back at home, the mounting russia controversy, which has now centered on his eldest son donald trump jr., in the wake of revelations and e-mails released between donald trump jr. and an intermediary, a publicist who effectively said the russian government has damaging information about hillary clinton, we want to get that to you, will you meet with a russian lawyer, donald trump jr. holding that meeting but not disclosing it. you see president trump, first lady, melania trump arriving now, getting off of air force one. president macron will not be there to greet them. they will be greeting the french president later on today where they ll have an official welcome by the french president. we also understand there s going to be a little bit of downtime for the president here, as he s coming down the steps and enterin
house for this meeting, but also from republicans themselves who say they want to get more facts out. concerns about the drip, drip, drip of information. undercutting the white house agenda. also john mccain saying, another shoe dropping in this russia controversy, and lindsey graham, the south carolina republican said, one thing you don t do as a member of a campaign. that is meet way foreign adversary. take a listen. anytime you re in a campaign and you get an offer from a foreign government to help your campaign, the answer is, no. so i don t know what mr. trump jr. s version of the facts are. i definitely, he has to testify that e-mail is disturbing, but what is equally odd to me is that the person they met with knew absolutely nothing. so i don t know why they would pick somebody for him to meet with that didn t have any information about the clinton campaign. but on its face, this is very problematic. we cannot allow foreign