hello and welcome to inside politics. i m john king in washington. very busy news day. thank you for your time. five men, one room. the stability of the global economy on the line. today the white house is the stage for talks and what happens could set the country on a path towards paying its bills or on a path towards financial chaos. pluses heartbreak in waiting in alan, texas. two school-aged sisters robbed of their futures. we re learning more about the victims and the shooter who slaughtered them. his fascination with guns, police stay quiet. and donald trump s civil case goes to a new york jury after closing arguments, the focus on credibility and mr. trump s refusal to show up. but up first for us in just hours, the white house meeting that will help answer this question. can washington still work? the stakes for today s big sit-down could not be higher. the full faith and credit of the united states. the roster pools together the biggest players. president biden,
the stakes for today s big sit-down could not be higher. the full faith and credit of the united states. the roster pools together the biggest players. president biden, kevin mccarthy, hakeem jeffries, chuck schumer and senate republican leader mitch mcconnell. the task, to start staring away from a debt ceiling iceberg sitting three weeks or so kwa. the stalemate is over something american families fate fais all the time. paying the mortgage, the credit card bill, but here in broken washington, this is somehow hard. today s huddle breaks a play by both sides to wait the other out. this afternoon we get a read on how entrenched both sides are. let s begin at the white house. it s a big meeting, but there are relatively small expectations. yeah, progress has been made on one front front. that s getting president biden and kevin mccarthy in the same
but i do think establishment republicans do. i think there s this myth about the trump base, that it s only post-industrial white working class voters. he needed affluent republicans in his camp. and women. and women. who he s losing i m sure rapidly. i think when somebody like george bush comes out and says i find this reprehensible, that does mean something to a certain segment of the gop. but to tim s point, there were a lot of people who voted for president trump who are not part of the base you re talking about who felt that washington was broken, and when they look at a broken washington, they look at those who have been there for decades and decades. if your last name is bush, you re in that camp. kristen, i want to bring you back into this. all this started on monday when trump talked about calling military families. he was criticized for how he handled one of those called to the widow of ladavid johnson. yesterday watching his chief of staff john kelly come out and d
for. the number retiring is one thing, the type of retirement is another. the type of republican who came to washington expecting a very different model of politics. the model of politics we had in this country until nine months ago. but it is changing and different. do i want to do another two years, four years or eight years of this? why? does any have to do with steve bannon and the war he has openly waged on the gop? if i m a sitting congressman, if i m a sitting senator, do i really want to go to war with someone who will go to such low levels to destroy my life and reputation and family? why not end on a high note? yeah, a lot of them, you look at the names up on the screen, i don t think they are intimidated out by steve bannon. but that is the divide in the republican party. the model of the traditional establishment republicans is the model bannon wants to upend. that s the choice they are going to be confront in the primaries coming up next year.
his job, traditionally you may see that. i think what a lot of republican members of congress are realizing as establishment members is this is not a legislative presidency. this is a cultural presidency. this is a president for better or worse, whatever you think of him, this is a president who sees it as his mission to go out and change the culture of the country. he loves to get into it with the nfl. he loves to get into it on the cultural hot-button issues. if he interested in calling the leaders of congress over, haggling over legislation, it certainly doesn t seem that way. so it leaves the republican members of congress is a strange position. their traditional role, we have a republican president and majorities in the house and the senate. that traditional role, president of the party, isn t interested in having them play that. before they had a big title as a big republican in washington, the media says every time he launches into a cultural war fight, what are they going to sa