president obama. he accused his predecessor of not calling the parents of fallen soldiers with expressions of pride and sorrow. let s listen. the traditional way, if you look at president obama and other presidents, most of them didn t make calls. a lot of them didn t make calls. right. he was asked to clarify. earlier you said that president obama never called the families of fallen soldiers. how can you make that claim? i don t know if he did. no, no. no. i was told that he didn t often. and a lot of presidents don t. they write letters. excuse me, peter. i do a combination of both. sometimes it s a very difficult thing to do. but i do a combination of both. president obama i think probably did sometimes and maybe sometimes he didn t. i don t know. that s what i was told. that s what i was told. that s what i was told. thank you. we were told by peter alexander the truth, which is previous
the first casualty of president trump s cabinet, tom price finally submitted his resignation bowing to the pressure of this white house after day after day of questions about his air travel both on private planes as well as military air kraft amounting to a million dollars or so. even after he said he would pay back some $52,000, that did not sit well with this president. we asked the president on friday if he still had confidence in his secretary. it was clear that he didn t. fit s not a question of confidence. i was disappointed because i didn t like its cosmetically or otherwise so i don t like to see somebody that perhaps there s the perception that fit wasn t right. so certainly private planes were one big concern of this president but it was more than that i m told. health care was one of the reasons that tom price was brought into the cabinet in the first place. he was supposed to lead the charge to repeal and replace obamacare. that of course didn t happen.
washington ed doitor. good morning. how much of this, we just heard the president say and i want to focus first of all on tom price. the president said he didn t like the optics of this. how much of this resignation forced resignation as we understand it was about the planes? was it about the optics? was it about a man who couldn t get health care through? i trust the reporting so if there was this underlying problem i m sure there was something to that. on the other hand, when he talks about ap ticoptics, this is a president who watches a whole lot of television and day after day there were these negative headlines. in this case, this wasn t some sort of abstract problem. you know, when there were problems with some of the other members of the leadership team about what they knew or didn t know about russia, about private conversations, we don t really know what happened. everybody i think understands luxury travel, flying around
do. i will always be grateful for their confidence in me. over the last few weeks, i ve thought long and hard about this decision. i ve explored the options, i ve listened to so many people and considered whether this was something that i needed to take on. but in the end, what i ve always felt was the right decision remains the right decision today. now is not my time. i have a commitment to new jersey that i simply will not abandon. wow. well, you know, howard, i m going to be cynical here. how many times have we heard, i want to spend more time with my family, when you ve been fired. and here we have a guy who says, i want to spend more time with new jersey. now, was that a veiled shot at palin for skipping a job she d been elected to? was that a veiled shot at rick perry, who has plenty of time to run across the country, and he s still governor of a bigger state than new jersey, and he s got all the time in the world to go running around the country. or a shot at mitt romney, who
or a shot at mitt romney, who couldn t get re-elected governor of massachusetts. how many bullets were in that gun today? just a thought. i m being nasty. yeah, no howard? well, look, i think if you remembered the speech that chris christie gave out at the reagan library, he basically said in that speech, i m the only guy who has the record to show the way forward in the reagan style, in the ronald reagan style. that speech itself was full of very sharp elbows, which is one of the reasons people thought, maybe this guy is the big tease. maybe he wants to do it. sure. because he was saying in that speech, i m the only guy who s got the right credentials. so this is just a follow-up to that. yeah, there was a big strip tease. and when you come out with all the feathers, you re basically a feather dancer. christie suggested being a conservative doesn t mean you can t compromise. let s listen to his argument for