we even had the president's own polster coming out in the last day or two saying people were giving the president bad political advice. the question is will the president throw in with other jump-start candidates, will he start with the traditional republican candidates and how much will they be looking for his support or will they try to put some distance between themselves and the white house going into this contest thinking that they might personally be more popular than the president is in these 2018 contests. >> trace: right. the donors and so forth going forward. i have to ask you. paul ryan, about him stepping down in 2018. you put any weight in that at all, josh? >> yeah, we're reporting that here from politco, a number of his associates believes that maybe not step down but he won't run for re-election as speakner 2018. he plans to return home at that point. seems like there's strong indications that that is happening. something of a succession process is already coming into