cohn to quit. bill, i start with you. gary didn t quit but maybe he s put himself in a tougher position. to say the administration must do better, the administration didn t do anything. one person did donald j. trump. what position does this put gary in? well, stephanie, this is a very clever move from gary, i think, as you would expect. he s nothing if not savvy. given his interview to the financial times allowed him to talk about what the administration wants to d from a tax reform proposal, which is about to hit, obviously, and they of been working very hard on this. on the other hand, he knew he was probably going the get a question about charlottesville. i think he answered it as best he could. i obviously called on him to resign. i think this puts him in a very tough position, especially if he didn t clear it with the white house. i think, stephanie, this may be the signal that gary cohn knows he will not be fed chairman, that janet yellin will be
politics. new report says the white house won t release its tax reform proposal. did you hear what i said? instead it will rely on the gop-held house and senate to take the lead on the issue. it follows yesterday s report from bloomberg that says republican leaders were expecting relevant committees in house and senate to start the effort. i want to bring my panel in on this one, mike lupica and bret stevens. tell me i m reading this wrong. the president has started a narrative in the last few weeks, i came to do all this, it s the congress, they do nothing, they suck. the only people whose approval rate rgs lings are lower than t president are his fellow republicans in congress. does the president see the writing on the wall that tax reform is going the way of health care and simply leaving us to blame it on congress? this is donald trump s way of saying look, ma, no hands. this is sort of preemptive political self-cover he s providing. think about major legislation in the past or
white supremacists to the counterprotesters. as a part of that interview in the financial times, he also underscored the fact he thinks the administration needs to d more. another quote. he says, i have come under enormous pressure both to resign and to remain in my current position. he goes on to say, as patriotic american, i am reluctant to leave my post because i feel a duty to fulfill my commitment to work on behalf of the american people. but i also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks. that is strong language, steph. the word distress really highlights how much gary cohn wrestled with this decision of whether to stay or whether to go. i think the context here is incredibly important. this interview comes before the administration is about to roll out its tax reform proposal. of course gary cohn will be a big part of that push. i think that he probably felt it was important to get ahead of the criticism that he was gefting for deciding to
i mean, when do republicans back their back up and stand up to the president that has been in many ways a distraction in chief? well, what i think we need to do is use the article 1 legislative powers that we have to put forth a reasonable hopefully bipartisan tax reform proposal that will stop incentivizing capital to leave the country and bring it back here and invest in creating those jobs you talk about and we can move forward on some kind of infrastructure program to repair those defective bridges, to make it easier and cheaper to get projects built and accomplished. does speaker ryan to your knowledge have a real plan to have such a bipartisan effort go forward in terms of infrastructure, in terms of tax reform? i mean, has speaker ryan reached out to congresswoman pelosi and the democrats and really started trying to frame this so we will not see what we ve seen with
the president is the ultimate decision maker. he will let us know. katy? the president tweeted that tax reform is going well but you just said that he got very frustrated with the lack of progress in the senate. does the white house still stand by its august deadline on tax reform? just so we re clear, there s two separate issues. one is the talks that secretary mnuchin and other members of the staff have had and the reception that they ve gotten to the president s bold tax reform proposal is extremely welcoming. i think the president in general finds it frustrating the way some of how the senate operates. again, i m dating this back to the hold-up that they had on some of these unbelievably well-qualified nominees. so they are not we re not we don t want to mix those two issues together. i think he feels very encouraged by the reception that he s gotten to tax reform. secretary mnuchin talked about,