Cnn White House Correspondent athena jones. You were at the president s press conference today, the first since donald trump won the election. What is your takeaway . I thought it was interesting how much time the president spent talking about what he views as some of his administrations biggest achievements. He spent almost as much time reminding viewers of the accomplishments as he did trying to ease the concerns of people that did not support donald trump, and that clip you played i thought it was an interesting takeaway. The president spoke quite a bit about the meeting he had with president elect trump last week in the oval office. They sat down and talked for an hour and a half, and his takeaway was trump was not ideological but pragmatic in a way that could serve him well if he has good people around him and a clear sense of direction. Today i asked president obama about one of the people that trump has around him, a person he has tapped to be a chief strategist and a Senior Adviser in his white house, and that is steve bannon, the former head of brightbart news. As you know it is a website that has champion ed White Nationalist themes, and so i asked the president what message does it send to the country and to the world having a person like steve bannon, having such a prominent role in your white house. The president didnt want to comment. He said it would be inappropriate for him to comment in the interest of trying to facilitate a smooth transition. He went on to say that the voters have spoken, donald trump will be the 45th president. Here is some more of what he had to say. Those who didnt vote for him have to recognize that thats how democracy works, thats how the system operates. When i won there were a number of people who didnt like me and didnt like what i stood for, and, you know, i think that whenever you get an incoming president of the other side, particularly in a bitter election like this, it takes a while for people to reconcile themselves with that new reality. Hopefully it is a reminder that elections matter and voting counts. And so, you know, i dont know how many times we have to relearn this lesson because we ended up having 43 of the country not voting who were eligible to vote, but it makes a difference. So elections matter, thats a message, that sort of theme he repeated more than once. So, don, we saw a very different tone from the president today in this press conference than weve seen over the last several weeks or longer of him being on the campaign trail, throwing barbs at donald trump and sometimes speaking in apock lip tick terms about a trump president. Today he was calm, spoke carefully and was measured and at times it seemed as if he was sending a message how a president should speak, should carry himself. It was an Interesting Press conference. How a president should conduct himself. I appreciate that. I want to bring in Washington Post political reporter. Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining me tonight. Ryan, im going to start with you. Theres word today donald trump wants his children and soninlaw to be given top security, secret security clearances. A transition official denies that and says the children havent filled out the paperwork, but does that concern you . Yeah, i think it is deeply concerning because weve been told two things now about what Donald Trumps children, or at least three of his children will be doing during the Trump Presidency. We were told during the campaign that they would be running his business and that would be how the trump family would somehow separate Donald Trumps business empire, which he says is worth 10 million, from his government service. Now, let me tell you, any of Donald Trumps competitors around the world would be very happy if they had access to top secret information from the u. S. Government. So the idea that his children will be learning about our governments secrets at the same time that they are running a multibillion dollar Global Business is the kind of thing that you would expect to see in a third world banana republic, not in the United States of america. So, again, this issue of the conflict between his companies and the corporate world and our government has not been settled at the least, and this is sort of the latest worrying sign. Just to add one detail, ivanka trumps business has tonight tweeted out an advertisement for a 10,000 bracelet that ivanka was apparently wearing on 60 minutes and is using her appearance on 60 minutes to sell jewelry. So this is completely new in american life. We have never had a president ial family that a week after the election is trying to profit off of their fathers winning the presidency. Although i think it is worth pointing out ivanka trump also did it after the convention. She had a dress she wore at the convention and her advertiser sent it out as well. Yeah, and i would make a distinction. Theres things that you do perhaps when youre running for president that really change once your father ascends to the office. I mean people were outraged when the bush brothers cashed in on the bush presidency or when, you know, Billie Carter did something embarrassing to jimmie carter, but in is a much different and more worrying level. You were shaking your head in agreement with what he was saying. Do you think his business competitors would like to know, you know, what yeah, i mean categorically. Ryan is exactly right. The thing that is interesting is donald trump has a lot of confidence and faith in his kids. Theyre close to him in business, outside of business. Weve seen them on the campaign trail. I think this is the limited circle that he has that he puts confidence and trust in. If you look at the Transition Team, the Transition Team members are people who have been with him since day one. He has not demonstrated an ability to expand outward and he has a ton of positions to fill at the white house and in the executive branch, and it seems he has a fairly small pool of people he trusts. Can you play this out logically for me. If donald trump gets information on fighting isis or, you know, campaign against iraq, syria and all of that stuff, would his children, don jr. And ivanka, get that information as well . Would they be weighing in on giving him Foreign Policy advice . If they have the highest level security clearance, he can talk to them about anything, right. Giving them access to you know, essentially it is a pass code. They can go wherever they want with it, get whatever information, have conversations with the president at whatever level the president deems appropriate. I mean, don, there are senior people in the white house that dont have toplevel security clearances. This is not something thats just handed out to everyone who walks into an administration. Yeah. But he has said repeatedly during the campaign that he would surround himself, ryan, with the best people. His children have no experience with policy or government. I mean is it dangerous potentially to National Security . If his children are going to be his National Security advisors . Yeah, thats insane. But this is what happens when i mean, look, he was elected partly because he didnt have any experience, right . This was a revolt against people who have experience, people who have been running things for a while. So we shouldnt be shocked that all of a sudden, you know, hes relying on people without experience. But, yeah, we should be concerned. I mean the idea that his kids should be should be given i mean i cant even believe were here discussing this, don. His children are going to get and i should say that in the pool report, i did just see that a trump adviser went down to the reporters that are hanging out downstairs at trump tower and tried to put this fire out and did say on background that trump has not asked for this and that as of right now this is not a standing request. Yeah. So well see if this goes forward or not. All right. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate it. Thanks. Straight ahead, Donald Trumps economic plans to create jobs and cut taxes. Will it work . Will it all work . Well talk about that next. Credit karma, why are you checking your credit score . 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Because nows the perfect time to learn more. Go long. President elect trump has an economic plan to create jobs. Will it work and will Congress Give him the money for the programs he wants . Here to discuss william cohen, contributing editor to vanity fair. And grover nordquist, americans for tax reform. William, priority number one is jobs. President elect trump has proposed a major infrastructure program. Will that create jobs . Yes, sure. I mean if you spend a trillan dollars on the nations infrastructure, our roads, bridges, high speed rail service. By the way president obama did something similar in his first two years in office. An 800 billion Stimulus Program that created a number of jobs as well. Yes, it will create jobs. In that sense thats great. Are those longlasting jobs, highpaying jobs, jobs they can count on for more than just the period of the building project in question . We dont know. Same question to you, grover. Do you think it will create jobs . Look, the most important thing that trump has said hes going to do is to take the corporate rate from 35 down to 15. That will create tremendous economic growth. It will take growth in the country from 2 up to 4 , which is huge. We do need to have roads and bridges, whether it needs to be done by the federal government as opposed to state and local governments is a debate. Certainly if the federal government does it under present law, the davisbacon act which has a horrific past, is a law which raises the cost of anything the federal government builds by about 25 to 33 . If we get rid of the davisbacon act with present gas taxes and other revenues, we can do a all right more building of roads. If we can get the epa not to drag out the Decision Making for years and years, that saves a lot of money. And if 25 of the road taxes that people pay were not diverted to things other than roads, which is presently what congress and the federal government does, we could have a lot more roads. We do a lot of things to hurt ourselves, diverting money, gas taxes, people pay thinking theyre paying for roads. The money is taken in other directions. The davisbacon act takes more. Lets stick to infrastructure, grover. He has been talking about cutting taxes, spending more on defense. However, will those policies increase our debt instead of reduce them . Well, the growth from lower taxes and less regulation can certainly generate revenue. It did during the reagan years, and i think thats very important. But also remember when he talks about money being invested in infrastructure, hes talking about Public Private partnerships. Looking at new roads and bridges that can be built with tolls rather than taxes. So it is not necessarily tax dollars that are being spent. What i talked about with the diversion of peoples gas taxes and davisbacon, a lots of federal money spent on supposedly on roads is not spent on roads. Okay. Talking about trickle down, and has that ever worked . I think we need a little dose of reality here with what grover is saying. The Nonpartisan Tax Policy Center examined what we know of president elect trumps proposals, economic proposals. Said they would add 7. 2 trillion in debt to over 10 years to the national debt, which donald trump correctly said is quickly approaching 20 trillion and something we should do something about. Instead, his proposals would add another 7. 2 trillion in debt. That would make us a highlyleveraged entity as a nation, 150 of gdp, which would rank us up by greece. Only japan would have more debt as a percentage of gdp. We know donald trump knows a lot about highly leveraged entities, Something Like four to six of his businesses that he was involved with went into bankruptcy. And so i mean hes been called the king of debt. Maybe were going to see that in the next four years in this country. Go ahead, grover. Im sure you want to respond to that . No, it is just the same nonsense we heard during the reagan year. If you grow at 4 instead of 2 a year, during the reagan years theres no guarantee of growing 4 of the year. Thats the number donald trump pulled out during the campaign. Theres no evidence of that, that this will in any way lead us to 4 growth. In any way. Go ahead. Yes, there is. What we had during the rageon years with lower tax rates and some deregulation we grew at 4 a year. During the obama years with stimulus spending we grew at 2 a year. The difference is 5 trillion more in revenue, not by raising taxes but more people working. 5 trillion goes a lot to reducing debt, and people who dont use dynamic scoring miss that, whether they call themselves nonpartisan or whatever, it is not very good economics. So it is very important to understand there would be another 12 Million People in this country today working if we had grown at reagan rates rather than obama rates. Thats the pain that americans are seeing. Thats the damaged families and households and neighborhoods of 12 Million People not working. We need to get growth back. That comes from lower taxes, less regulation, and i think more serious infrastructure spending. I think better by states than washington. Can i just jump in here because i remember the reagan years. Reagan is a lovely guy, many people loved him. Havent we row romanticized those years because we were in a recession during those years as well. What im measuring is when they had the recession and when they started to come out of it, reagan growth started the year 1983 when reagan cuts kicked in. From that point with the lower rates you had strong nick growth going out more than a decade until our friend George Herbert walker bush decided to raise taxes and put an end to that. Go ahead. And we got a huge disparity in incomes in this country as a result in the reagan years. Bring down inequality. It sounds like any time something sounds like trickle down people become concerned about it because it does not seem to work for any president who tried it. Am i wrong . Trickle down economics what left winger call a tax cut across the board. It was 22 across the board for everybody who pays taxes. Whats the trickle down part, it was across the board tax cut taking corporate rate from 35 to 15 when were competing with europe which has 25 average corporate rate, were harming ourselves under present law. The key to what grover is saying is 4 growth rate. It is easy to say on national tv and harder to do. Reagan did it. Lets see if trump can do it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Coming up, are you still feeling afraid even after the election . Youre not alone. Stay with me. Whythen get worse . Nks taste chalky . Introducing protein shots from 5hour energy. Protein shots from 5hour energy are smooth and tasty, and still deliver 21 grams of protein with 100 calories. Theyre great for workouts, no matter how you work out. Whether youre going for reps. Or laps. Or distance. You gotta try it. Period. Protein shots from 5hour energy. Great taste. 100 calories. 21 grams of protein. Ro. Almost half of allamericans and more than threequarters of Hillary Clinton voters say they feel afraid since Donald Trumps victory in the president ial election. Thats according to a new gallup poll. Here to discuss aman vansandt, host of ayama fix my life on the oprah winfrey, which im addictioned to. Thank you for coming on and giving us your words of wisdom. Thank you for having me. We hear a lot of reports of anger and violence, more incidents now than after september 11th. Thats according to southern poverty law center. What do you say to people that feel anxious or fearful . My first thing would be breathe, take deep breaths and fear not. There is nothing to fear. You know, don, when i break down on the side of the room my first call is to aaa balls i know theyre going to bring me help. I want to give aaas i believe will support us. First one is acknowledgements. The second one is acceptance. The third one is action. We have to acknowledge, don, that this didnt happen to us. It didnt fall out of the sky. It is not like a stroke or a heart attack that suddenly came upon us. We created this. We created this in so many ways. Notice that i said we. So one of the things, another a, weve got to eliminate the againstness. We have to ee lem nate the againstness and acknowledge how we created this. We have to acknowledge half of the people voted, who voted think the way this candidate spoke or the president elect spoke. They think that. On some levels we knew it. We knew it but we wouldnt discuss it because in many ways we have normalized disrespect. We have normalized vial speaking. We have normal