first lady melania trump firing back at president trump s first wife, ivana for calling herself the first lady. i have the direct number for white house but i do not really want to call him there because melania is there. i do not want to cause trouble there because i m basically first trump wife. i m first lady, okay? let s bring back chris cillizza and a.b. stoddard and let them handle this. here is how a first lady spokesperson responded to that. mrs. trump has made the white house the home for baron and the president. she is honored by her role as first lady of the united states. she plans to use her title and role to help children, not sell books. there s clearly no substance for this statement from an ex. unfortunately this is only
reporter: vice president pence and senior aid kellyanne conway coming to the president s defense. they find tweets hike this to be incredibly irresponsible. reporter: not everyone in the president s inner circle thinks the public feud is good for trump. trump needs corker s vote to get the legislation past and he has already alienated another top senate republican, john mccain. rex tillerson is expected to come to the white house for lunch with the president today not long after reports that tillerson referred to the president as, quote, a moron in a newly published article in forbes magazine. the president s counterpunch is, quote, i think it s fake news but if he did that, i guess we ll just have to compare iq tests and i can tell you who is going to win. chris and alisyn? okay, joe.
i know him well. he is expressing a concern that is shared by an awful lot of members of the senate, even republican member. though they re not speaking out about it. they re not. he is the one publicly saying, if nobody else is rising to defend him or have his back. not yet. if you look at the last couple of months, republicans who have pushed back against the president, whether it was over health care or other issues, you see that bob corker isn t by himself. i will tell you that in the halls of the senate, the conversations about the president s judgment are they take place all the time and have been for months now. bob corker has just given voice to things that many are thinking and saying on the republican side. i know you want to talk about the puerto rico relief effort. we ll get there in a second. in terms of harvey weinstein, obviously, hollywood mogul, he is accused of doing despicable yeah. these allegations are low-life behavior. grotesque. unacceptab
talk about, but we have to talk about everybody else. the nfl was a brilliant play by the president to distract from other things he s getting beaten up on, and rightly so. in the sconservative one, you make the case you have to coalesce from what you are, but the nfl thing is exactly that playbook that worked so well for the president. i m sorry, works so well for the president. these lefties and big money versus the working man. he made the sale. liberals one to ruin our traditions. it s completely nuts. what i say in the book is, i have an open letter to conserves and liberals.
from the ranks of government. yes, we had congressman sean duffy on yesterday. i ve got to tell you, it wasn t a very cogent or compelling case he made. he felt the president is doing a good job in puerto rico and elsewhere. it s not the strongest kind of rebuttal. where are the defenders? you have a handful still, chris, very few in the senate. largely new york members in the house and very hardliners who were with trump from the beginning in the house. but there aren t that many. what you re essentially seeing here is there s not many defenders of trump and very few attackers of him either among t them. 242, almost 300 people who could offer a critique or criticism. they re not doing that either.