oprah on the left. that s interesting. oprah warned don t make it just about him. don t be negative. are they capable of that? i thought it was very interesting and oprahesque advice. not the kind of advice you would expect from someone deeply mired in politics. don t i think her phrase was don t let the opponent take your energy. don t focus all of your grievance and hatred about this person. don t, you know, harm yourself by attacking them. i don t think most political consultants will tell you when an incumbent who s an unpopular incumbent is running, it s going to be a referendum on that incumbent and the race is all about that incumbent. that would be the conventional wisdom from most political strategist. the democrat is going to attack trump and make it about his record and not so much about him or herself, whereas trump strategy will be to sort of
dismiss the candidate, protect his record. but, you know, democrats have had a tough time recently. maybe they should listen to oprah. sabrina, breaking news, the president moments ago weighed in on the gun announcement he made overnight. seeking to explain i think where he is on the age limit. he goes on 18 to 21, age limits. watching court cases and rulings before acting. states are making this decision. things are moving rapidly on this but not much political support to put it mildly. florida just voted to raise the age but it s not happening universally around the country. he s deciding not to take a stand because the politics may not be for it. that s interesting. the court case that he s dealing with is the nra challenging that new bill in florida because it raises those age restrictions from 18 to 21 for a certain firearms but it goes back to this idea that the president is not willing to put his political capital behind some of these more contentious
local so what conor lamb is doing is he is recognizing that in order to be competitive here he has to distance himself from national democrats. think back to the alabama senate race with doug jones. you didn t have a lot of national democrats going to stump for him there. chuck schumer certainly was not heavily involved in that race in part because they didn t want national democrats or establishment democrats, so to speak, to have a big presence on the campaign. i don t think that necessarily means he s going to disrupt leadership, conor lamb, if and when he were to get to the house but it certainly speaks to recognition that both the republicans and democrats in washington remain deeply unpopular when you are looking at some of these elections across the country and so the candidates who tend to do well are those who can focus mornt issues that concern those particular constituents and not get caught up in the national narrative. that s why you don t see conor
i don t like his persona, so to speak. that s why, while i m still supporting saccone, it did cause me to look a little towards conor lamb. reporter: for some like carol who are wavering even more, trump s visit didn t help. if anything, if i were saccone, i d tell trump to stay away because he puts his foot in his mouth but i look at saccone as someone who has really good background and a lot of experience. he can probably negotiate the politics. reporter: you re saying that the president s support of saccone would make you less inclined to support him? much less inclined. reporter: in the end mother and daughter will vote for rick saccone, father for conor lamb. one american family struggling as so many are and will this year to reconcile their beliefs with deepening political divisions. just to give you an indication of how panicked republicans are that this special election could be a canary in the coal mine if
a lot of democrats pointing out that she never went to a public school. she s been a fierce champion of vouchers and charter schools and spent a lot of time in michigan politics working on education, so it s bewilledering that she wouldn t be able to answer the basic questions. just one comment, john, on the trump and guns. it strikes me the thing we re all trying to adjust to with trump is, unlike previous presidents, his words just don t make policy. i remember instances with obama where he said something and the policy of the white house shifted because he said it publicly, right? with trump, it is the opposite. it does not matter what he says, it does not make policy in the white house and in congress, they just ignore it and so we have we re just adjusting to a president who s words, frankly, don t matter. we ve seen it with immigration. we now saw it in a startling way