the new york times suggesting that the republican party officials in a private meeting on saturday, that republicans might fare better in november if they, quote, subtract the president s divisive personality from voters minds. number one, do you think he s right, and dtwo, is that possible? no, with of course it s not possible. my midterm election is a referendum on the president, his policies and his personal attributes. look, we were walloped in 2010 when i worked for president obama, because he used his political capital to get health care through or move health care through. and the candidates who voted for that were caught up in the cross fire of that as the tea party was rising. people have concerns, as we saw in this poll, about president trump s leadership, his fitness for office, whether he s actually fighting for the little guy. that impacts people, as well. you can t just subtract the president s approval rating. it is fascinating, though, because mick mulvaney has bee
here is what we know. the president has a tendency to attack what he fears. if that holds true, he is really worried about the woodward book. trump keeps tweeting, sara sanders was talking at the press conference. she refused to back anything up with proof of errors. woodward said this morning, all of this is part of president trump s war on truth. listen. i have never seen an instance when the president is so detached from the reality of what s going on. trump fired back calling woodward a liar, repeating his false suggestion that woodward is acting like a democratic party operative. with that anonymous op-ed seeming to reaffirm some of what s in the book, whom you can trust? let s debate it. jennifer. trump didn t talk like that about woodward when he was on the phone with him. says, you are always fair.
michael, i mean, vice president pence, obviously, has been unwavering in his support for president trump publicly, even just this past weekend, amid the reporting by the new york times that some of the president s staff wonder whether someone in the vice president s team may have had something to do with the op-ed, which the vice president has obviously denied, are the president s allies and the vice president s allies always on the same page? no, they re not. and i think what you point out that the vice president s team could have been involved in this, but the vice president himself left no fingerprints is likely. when my co-author, peter eisner and i read the initial publication in the new york times, we both thought we saw the vice president s speechwriter or maybe his former chief of staff at work on that prose. so you ve got now a vice president who s racing to humiliate himself. this whole idea of there being a lie detector test, he goes one step further and says, well,
security rationale that, you know, which was sort of floated by some in the white house? no, there s no crime for writing the op-ed and there s no crime for doing what the op-ed writer suggested what he and others are doing, which is to try to undermine some of what the president is doing here. sarah sanders tried to say, well, if the person s in a national security meeting, then, you know, someone should look into what he s doing to undermine the administration. but in all of that huge federal code, there are lots of crimes there, with right? you could be a spy, espionage, leaking of classified information. but if what the op-ed writer is doing is what he said he was doing or she. . or she, no crimes there that i can see. david, you worked for president richard nixon who became unmoored, paranoid, whatever you want to call it, during watergate, but the current red alert for someone currently working for president trump, is there any precedent for that? none of which i m a
it s, frankly, i think, sad and pathetic that a gutless, anonymous source could receive so much attention from the media. so, i mean, look, of course sarah sanders would try to turn this op-ed into media criticism, but saying that it s sad and pathetic, it s not every day or every year or every administration, for that matter, that someone in the administration publishes a scathing criticism of the president of the united states, saying his leadership style is, and i m using the words the op-ed user writes, impechous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective. it s not every day that someone in the administration claims that many officials in that administration are working to frustrate parts of the president s agenda and his worst inclinations. it s not every day that someone writes, and i m quoting, we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic. that is why many trump appointees have vowed to