saving sites until after christmas. bret: mike emanuel on the hill. thanks. let s get some analysis from former house speaker newt gingrich, author of the new book understanding trump. he joins us from arlington, virginia. thanks for being here. good to be with you. bret: you have been through a number of these battles, these fiscal clips in your time. how do you look at this, about one, getting tax reform across the finish line, whether republicans can do that and two, dealing with all the loose ends on funding the government. there will be a little bit of a mess. the tax bill will be less of a master they are close to working out a deal. i think they probably will meet the president s goal of getting it on his desk the week of the 18. it s good for the american economy. we are above 3% real growth.
of trickle out, it s possible we re understating it. the testimony also contradicted page s earlier comment that he only exchanged greetings with russia s deputy prime minister. in an e-mail sent after the trip he expressed strong support for mr. trump and a desire to work together toward devising better solutions for a vast range of current international okay. so a vast range. what exactly green teas. it s more than that. and are there any other country that discussions like this are happening? no. absolutely not. further more, shortly after returning, page congratulated members of the trump foreign policy team on july 14th, 2016,. further, quote, excellent work on the ukraine amendment. a reference to the trump campaign s decision to intervene to water down a proposed amendment to the gop s ukraine
particular needle. this is the one thing where if he was being very careful about those words, he wasn t being quite careful enough. kasie, democrats were already upset about jeff sessions testimony before the committee believing that he had not been truthful. how does the information in the past several days from carter page and papadopoulos, how does that increase the pressure on the attorney general? i think it adds to it s another piece of the same story we ve been hearing over and over again. i think that point is well taken here. and i do think that jeff sessions is under more pressure than we maybe continually focus on. i mean, he has on the one hand people have jumped to his defense because the president had seemed to potentially threaten to fire him in the context of all of this. so i think the jeopardy that he is now in as these details kind
deal that is very significant. it certainly makes the world on edge a little bit calmer. joe, you and i and mika have been talking on this show now for months about the diplomatic strategy that lay behind these comments about little rocketman seeming to take the edge of nuclear war. all that time, there has been an effort to set the table for diplomacy. trump is telling us now the last fork has been laid down. we ll have to see what he s really got. how do you gauge the optimistic behind the scenes from people in the administration and people have been hammering this out do they believe they can get a deal? when we say a deal, i think we should correct that to say the beginning of talks. it will take a long time. can we have a start toward a frame that helps us step back from a missile being launched
that s why they re on edge. it s a state barack obama won twice and harrisburg won a year ago. he s the ultimate insider, establishment figure. he ran the rnc. he worked in the george w. bush white house, he ran mitt romney s campaign in 2016. yet he s working on the nflers knowling, he sent a model out four republicans to run using what they think is the best of from ump to get votes, it s maintaining who they are? reporter: it s certainly a test case, willie. it s been the challenge for dplespy. he clearly is a little bit personally comfortable with all of this. vaughan hilliard, our nbc reporter tried to get him to answer questions about the president days ago on the trail. he literally ran from the cameras.