a reasonable chance of not ending well for us, and that s pure political judgment, not necessarily a value judgment. the poll is interesting and it does, as you say, separate the five out from everybody else, but i can t say that yet i see a nominee who i feel a lot of confidence behind in beating donald trump. the most interesting part of the poll, joe is the bernie sanders number, i would submit. if you go to any of the rallies in new hampshire, i have been to a few in the past couple of months, what s interesting is that in a small sense, but it s writ large, bernie sanders still has the same signs that he had in 2015, 2016. still using the same signs, and the audiences that he has, it s almost as if the batteries don t work on the remote control, and they re watching the same program they watched three or four years ago. elizabeth warren, on the other hand, she is electric. i saw her in which she explained her child care proposal, she has
that was a mess and they re trying to move away from it. the rebuke coming from the fec that came yesterday is pretty startling. let me read it in part. let me make something 100% clear. she writes, to the american public. and anyone running for public office. it is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a u.s. election. and her tweet of the statement led off saying i would not have thought that i needed to say this. part of the president s defense here, and yes, david, you can yell at me because i m now parsing words. part of the president s defense is if he thought the information he was being offered up was how did he put it incorrect or badly stated, then of course he would go to the fbi. does the value judgment matter? no, it does not. this is obviously a walk back. i don t think it s a particularly compelling or coherent walk back. what the president said this morning is i would check if it s
officials, it s obviously very troubling. the thing is there are two big ir issues here. there s the nepotism that we ve talked about since the president came on the scene. the pris can hire whoever he wants, but there are nepotism laws for a reason because you don t want family members coming on board. second issue is the giant glaring security threat here where you have these two people who against officials said, look, there are issues here, we don t think they re possibly suitable. i think the main takeaway is i know good people who have been denied security clearance pss. this is not a value judgment when we say we don t think you re suitable. but perhapsing there something in the background to say we don t want you to have access to the highest classified information in the nation, it s what is in the best interest of the company. it looks here that the president essentially overruled these officials and overruled what s best for the country. and carrie, our friend likes
highest level was less than half that. in 1980, when ronald reagan was elected president, the top tax rate was 70% at that time. if you look at the average tax rate that the top 1% was paying at that time, it was only 35%. today with the top tax rate at 37%, the average tax rate for the top 1% is about 27%. so when you actually look at what people are paying, it is not that big brother is taking away most of anybody s income. it s taking away most of those last dollars of income, and that s a value judgment. how high should it be? that s what politicians and political campaigns and elections are about. so let me ask you this. in addition to the value judgment, the fear is if you impose that sort of marginal tax rate that s very high and other similar countries don t, what s to stop all the rich people from, a, either leaving, or in america, as you just said, the rich don t pay that percentage of their income because they figure out other ways to work
whether or not whether or not it is worth it or not is a value judgment. he gets to say it. we get to ask questions. he gets to give whatever answers he wants, but his answers, worth it or not in the long run, history will say that wasn t the truth or that made no sense, and that is why we re there, we have to keep trying to do that. i went to the john kennedy press conferences also, i never had the courage to try to ask a question of him, and he was a charmer. many of the questions were like mr. president sir if you mind could you please tell us how you feel about no, come on, folks, one said mr. president, and this was to lynn don johnson, later, it is a lonely job, isn t it? i think it probably is, but we have to ask direct questions