magazine, we have jon harris and daryl lipman arguing trump s most dangerous enemies are inside the white house and risks being taken down by high-ranking leaders like nixon, somebody he has studied to get to this point. is there a real possibility there? i think there s a lot of truth to that and it was frankly something i hadn t thought of until we saw the first few weeks of the trump administration. it makes sense when you consider a number of his nominees to be cabinet-level secretaries have active contempt for the agencies that they ve been appointed to lead. you think about pruett at epa, betsy devos at other education and it makes sense that the bureaucrats who are there who believe in the cause and mission of their agencies would be concerned about the direction the trump administration will take them in. that s been encouraging and also encouraging to see the judicial branch step up and issue these
o reilly coming tonight, the vladimir putin comments, saying despite him being a killer, the u.s. isn t that innocent. so, tara, is this kind of lowering us in terms of a moral equivalency or the standards of what america looks like on the world stage? are we equal with russia? i think that it s interesting to see the president trying to equivocate our country with russia where they kill political dissidents, they kill, you know, they kill journalists. i wouldn t say we re on the same scale. and it s just amazing that for a president and a candidate who said america first, that he would bring america down to the level of russia. it s obviously very concerning, and you re going to hear leaders on the hill very much disagreeing with this. so, it was an offhand comment. we know that trump is not very careful with his words, but you have to be careful with your words when you re dealing with international relations. you saw that last week with the
assumptions about the true influence he really has? well, in his case, much like some of the others you mentioned, he has a long history, having been at breitbart news as the head of breitbart news, and having producing hollywood films about sort of his world view. so there s a public record people are looking at. and it s pretty interesting. unlike the figures you talked about from previous administrations, steve bannon looks at both parties as corrupt and the establishment as something in need of overturning. shaking up. exactly. so, i think that s been clear. donald trump had some of those inklings, but ever since he brought steve bannon on to the campaign as chief strategist, he s been much more confrontational and i think that s what you re seeing in the white house, he s being encouraged by steve bannon and others to keep that tone but also take dramatic steps to upset the establishment, do things differently. you know, they re saying look, washington s been gridlocked so l
different. it s the new normal. some are embracing it, others resisting hard. coming up next, the end game over the travel ban and whether president trump will give up the fight over it. . .
the american people know that the threats that we face are real. so, we have more about the legal battle that s taking place for president trump s legal ban, and it is a moment in time now where preparation is going to be going back and forth to figure out where they can move forward with the administration and the executive order. rick pildes is a constitutional law professor at new york university school of law and joins me now at 30 rock. rick, what do you make of the trump administration and trying to regather itself to go after this? is this all said and done because they got denied about the appeal from the 9th circuit? no, no, this is still very much a live controversy. so, the first thing we can say is that federal judges throughout the country enjoined the way in which they order affected legal permanent residents, detaining people at the airports, unanimously federal courts put a stop to that. now we re moving into the stage