bipartisan look. there s something that can be negotiated on. and i understand those negotiations moving forward. there are other bills, the non-traditional infrastructure part of this, also, i mean, within the guardrails, that seems to be something where i would expect republicans and democrats to have the debate on this infrastructure bill, though, you look and see how of dilapidated america s infrastructure is, roads, bridges, airports, railroads, broadband. it s a joke. it s a joke. i remember even five years ago, flying around and flying from new york to l.a. and going on trains trains, planes, automobiles. and i just turned to mika and i said, you know well, i won t say what i actually said. i get out of l.a.x. and i say, you know, stuff don t work. things just don t work. we have gone from a first rate world power to a third rate
if the president after january 6th, has sidled up to him again. give us your analysis here. is there any sense at all that mccarthy will do anything other than march in lockstep with trump as he tries to become the majority house speaker in 2022? i don t think so. and this goes back to the other column i wrote at the daily beast. i think that kevin mccarthy is one of those republicans who could have stood up and certainly, if there was ever an opportunity, that off-ramp would have been after january 6th. he did criticize trump briefly, and then they evolved pretty quickly into, you know, it s almost like, let s count to ten and go back to our abuser, is basically what they do. i think kevin mccarthy is not a leader, he s a follower. and republicans by all counts really ought to win the midterm. they should take back the house,
and republicans start doing what they haven t done in some time and start focusing on who can get elected president of the united states in 2024. and where they re at at the moment, it s a very fragmented party, because you have the house republican conference who their theory of the case is basically, double down on trump. and you know, we need to evaluate trump and run into the midterms on trump. mitch mcconnell, his view is, ignore trump, hope that he recedes into the background. it s a strategy based on hope. liz cheney is in a third camp. she believes that the mitch mcconnell approach is dangerous and you actually need to confront donald trump and talk about it right now and excise him from the party. it s a real muddled mess, and i don t know how they resolve it, frankly. you never know in politics. the saying in politics, a week is a lifetime. liz cheney has a year or so to sort this out before
and as 22 approaches, there are reasons for republicans to feel somewhat confident. the historical trend are that the party in power, the party who has the white house, tends to lose seats in the midterms. and it wouldn t take much of a swing to put that back in the republican column. and that s why they re doubling down on trying to put january 6th behind them. that s why they re trying to. they have made the calculation that at least in the certainly, embracing trumpism, even if mcconnell doesn t like trump personally, they still believe, though, this is largely the way to go. it s a way to energize their voters to get them to turn out in 22. we ll see in 2018, that off year election, that didn t go so well for republicans, when trump s name himself was not on the ballot. we also, the white house and democrats believe that they ll have a shot to rebuke the historical trend. that if the nation has put the pandemic behind it. if the economy has roared back to life.
infrastructure. the biden administration has proposed a somewhat slimmed down version of its massive infrastructure package, but republicans still don t appear to be getting onboard at all. joining us now, white house correspondent for politico and co-author of the playbook, eugene daniels, he s also an msnbc contributor. so what areas did the white house give on and why didn t the republicans take? well, on the white house s part, there was this focus and continues to be this focus on making sure that they get a bipartisan deal on the hard infrastructure aspects of things. so there s about $500 billion, i think, missing the from missing from the original offer that they had, given senate republicans. so that includes roads and bridges. and they want to make sure there s some broadband in there. that money is still in there. still a lot more money than