puzzling about what it means for a while. on why he s leaving, there simply wasn t room in the white house for general kelly and for steve bannon. general kelly wants hierarchy, he wants order, and steve bannon is exactly the opposite. but take the latest flap here in the last couple of days, and that was steve bannon giving an interview saying that war with north korea is impossible. he d considered cutting a deal, that the united states leaves korea altogether in exchange for the north koreans becoming nuclear free. that didn t go over well. that is totally in conflict no, didn t go over well. and so the generals in the administration had to scramble to tell allies and friends that simply isn t u.s. policies. so you can see why kelly wanted him out. and he obviously got the president to agree. it s ironic that it happened in the same week that steve bannon had one of his greatest victories and that it was the president s tuesday response to what happened in charlottesville. tha
president s ear. it was the final last straw for bannon. but, david, if bannon is going to war for the president, why didn t he just stay in the white house? kate, you re often more effective outside the white house than you are in. i ve seen that in past administrations that when people get frustrated when they re outnumbered and bannon was outnumbered by the team that kelly assembled. and it just wasn t room in it in this white house for him to be there with kelly. it was supposed to be kelly or bannon. i will tell you i think the president wouldn t have done this unless he knew. unless he lets bannon go and clean house, that kelly wasn t going to stick around and the other generals wouldn t stick around. there were a lot of people disgusted over what happened in charlottesville. i don t think steve bannon was the architect of what trump said about charlottesville. it came from the president
a fairly low profile for the first month in office as secretary of state. it looks like he zbenintends top that. he s not traveling with a press pool. reporter: this has been a subject of some controversy notably with the state department press corp. that he s not bringing along jury roournalists on his plane. they were told originally there wasn t room. then it came out he was going to be bringing journalists from a website called the independent journal review which is supposed to have conservative leanings. when asked about this, the state department spokesman said, well, the effort was to try to broaden exposure to media outlets that haven t traditionally gotten
there s even more of an opportunity for biden to still make his views knowing he tried himself on the idea that he can communicate very effectively with the kind of with whom hillary clinton struggled. from rust belt states that she lost, including pennsylvania, biden s home, those are the kind of voters he believes he can communicate with effectively and he can presumably still do so even if he is officially in retirement. a lot of democrats since the election certainly asking that what if question. what if it was biden at the top and not hill rip? of course he wishes he d be talking that way before the election, before they told him there wasn t room for him in the democratic race. what about this question of obamacare? republicans have been talking since it was enacted more than six years, they ve been saying repeal and replace. now for the first time since it was enacted, they re going to have the numbers at least on paper to do it. i know president obama s going to be talking to
news. take a look at this tweet that he sent out last night. he said that the u.s. consumer confidence index is at its highest point in more than 15 years. thanks, donald. perhaps there wasn t room to also say, thanks, obama. don and poppy, because he s inheriting, of course, president obama s economy. but it is true that economists are saying because that donald trump is coming into office, consumer confidence is at a record high, at least in the last 15 years. jeff, thank you so much. remember the people who said the market would tank 20% if he got elected. didn t happen yet. a lot of people said he wasn t going to be president. not correct, as well. let s discuss with senior political analyst and senior editor at the atlantic ron brownstein and jackie kucinich. let s talk about this war of words that is playing out over trump tower. don t know if it is happening