president barack obama s first year, when republicans drew out the negotiating process around health care reform for months before voting against the president s signature bill and turning the legislation into a political cajole for the better part of a decade. as someone who served in that administration are you worried ma president biden is squandering precious time courting republicans who ultimately will refuse to work with him? the president and his team moved very fast on the american rescue plan. that was passed roughly 50 days after he took office. he set the memorial day deadline for infrastructure. you re not going to meet that deadline. what is clear is they understand time is the most precious commodity a president has, and as far as i can see, i don t think they re going to give these negotiations more than a couple of weeks because the president understands and he s committed to trying to show the american people that he tried to reach across the aisle, but it
things that i m hearing, as i move around the country, it is not just trump the person, but it s trump policies. trump in many ways is moving to try and eliminate, if not eliminate where he can a lot of the things that this country made progress in, in terms of dealing with jobs and dealing with not having the rich get these crazy tax breaks and dealing with things like criminal justice system that s fair. and voting rights. so it is not just trump who is appears abrasive as a personality, but his policies. they are stacking the federal courts with judges that are scary to many of us in the civil rights community. absolutely. his signature bill was to raid the national treasury for $1.5 trillion. $2 trillion if you include interest, and distribute to the
heading there for a high stakes meeting over that shutdown. and republican tracks are now beginning to show who will be the better deal maker. border buildup even as the president is locked in a bitter battle with congress, he s making major moves to deploy more u.s. troops to the border with mexico. and calls to impeach trump, the white house fires back and congress reacting after a freshman congresswoman uses an expletive as she vows to impeach the president. we re going to talk to a congressman who s actually leading the charge on that front. we start with the shutdown and politics. democrats increasingly confident while cracks are now beginning to form that once unified the republican front starting to appear. any moment now we are expecting to see a victory lap for nancy pelosi and house democrats. she s already held an event with white house democratic women. next, she ll tout democrats signature bill for this session. after that she and congressional
the program are hugely popular, you re not going to get rid of them, even republicans won t do, until this thing crashes down, and republicans are forced, they don t want to do it, but forced into negotiating a plan that all americans can live with, that s the answer. does anyone doubt that? here s the thing, though. show me a democrat that s genuinely been willing in the senate. in the senate. let s just for a second even with democrats even when democrats had a much better standing with barack obama in the white house, they refused to deal with the problem how do you know? there were more problems than obama care. how do you know? you wouldn t start, you wouldn t let him in the room. ben, listen no, you wouldn t let him in the room. paul tried. democrats refused to move on obama care, to change anything to it, because it was their signature bill, and nancy pelosi and harry reid didn t have any conversation okay.
congress, has no history of being on the hill. i don t know what he could have done. to me, this is more about donald trump lashing out and not taking responsibility the way he d lash out at democrats in the presser right after this didn t pass. he blamed the democrats. zero republicans voted for obamacare in the house. zero. the problem, donald trump could not get republicans to rr rally around his signature bill, jared being there or not doesn t matter for this. i don t think he s blaming jared. the white house denied this, by the way. also, we know people are intentionally leaking things to try to make the trump administration look bad or contentious. did president trump take responsibility for the bill s failure? absolutely. i think he realized this is hard work. you know, trying to come to washington and drain the swamp. which we haven t had someone do. it is hard to come in and take on the establishment who is established, meaning they have roots down in this town, to buck