he didn t mind being very pugnacious and he held sway as a result of that. but he left in the wake these very, very tough decisions now with biden and the enormous pressure coming from his left, mostly from the progressives to get rid of the filibuster so they can get some things done. the democrats are being blocked now, even though they have a slight majority, they re being blocked by the filibuster and there s a real push on for the voting rights bill and the democrats almost unanimously support the restoration or the protection of voting in the country and yet it may not happen unless you get rid of the filibuster. you get rid of the filibuster long term, you may have invite the very problems we re seeing now that mitch mcconnell cleverly identified way back when. it s not just the three on the supreme court. there were a rash of judges appointed by trump and they
his whole political career. he didn t mind being the bad guy. and, you know, his critics say, even to this day, that that meant contributing to the to the discourse, to the some toxic discourse that we have now. and, you know, he would probably say that might be true. but he didn t mind taking the fall for for what he saw as the greater good. and it s such a different dynamic, jim, that we re seeing today, which is that nobody almost nobody in politics to willing to put what they see as the greater good over their own political ambitions or more important thely their own political their own political reputation. and he didn t care. and that absolutely came from the fact that he felt like he had nothing to lose because he came from nothing.
i don t mean that there s deceit, i mean that confusion. trump doesn t want it to have been said today, but thursday he didn t mind. but today he minds. it is maddening. first of all, the president is not shy about contradicting his subordinates at any time, publicly or privately. aisles it s part of how he views his negotiations. he wants the wiggle room. he doesn t want anything said definitively. he wants preconditions one day, no preconditions the next. it s how he s approached this. bolton was more focused on the policy. for the president it s the personality. it s about trying to make that connection with the foreign leader. whoever that might be. often an authoritarian figure. thinking he himself, as he phrases it, the ultimate dealmaker, can bring this together, some sort of agreement that potentially could end this crisis. i was reminded the president actually said that, no preconditions, to chuck todd, when he met with him. yep. on meet the press. so yes, simp
he threw rex tillerson under the bus as soon as he tweeted out and faced all that backlash. he didn t mind that his secretary of state was out there sort of touting this. secretary mnuchin as well. you don t have to be a foreign policy expert to see right away this is a bad idea. so you do wonder how it ever got to the point where anyone thought this was a good idea, let alone the president comes out and touts it. so the next question is, okay, so the president raised the issue with putin. he didn t raise it as well as he could have. he could it was americans that were upset about it, not him. and this was the solution to the problem, right? so if this isn t it, then what is he doing? what is he doing to hold them accountable, because this was a bad idea. he recognizes it was a bad idea, but what s he doing instead. when we come back, how and why the president s son met with a russian attorney. tom freedman weighs in and says where he thinks the president is
and this was the thing that he went and said, look, we re going to start this dialogue and engage in this constructive ability for russia and the u.s. to work together to stop this kind of cyber attack. i mean it wasn t just a presidential tweet out of somewhere. this was the deliverable that they went in with to tout, and he threw rex tillerson under the bus as soon as he tweeted out and faced all that backlash. he didn t mind that his secretary of state was out there sort of touting this. secretary mnuchin as well. you don t have to be a foreign policy expert to see right away this is a bad idea. so you do wonder how it ever got to the point where anyone thought this was a good idea, let alone the president comes out and touts it. so the next question is, okay, so the president raised the issue with putin. he didn t raise it as well as he could have. he said it was americans who were upset about it, not him.