News, analysis and interviews with politicians and observers. Cnns Abbie Phillip is live at the white house. The president just had an event where he met at the white house with republican lawmakers. Did he clarify anything today . Reporter well, nia, the president just let reporters into the room for that meeting. It was originally scheduled to have been closed, but he said nothing. He didnt respond to questions about any of these issues floating around him. He didnt expand on any of his comments or explain, you know, his view of the situation. But what he has been doing over the last day or so, specifically in a lengthy interview with fox news that aired last night and today, is really take the lead in the administrations response to all of these problems. Theres no question the white house staffers were caught by surprise by a confluence of bad news stories. Paul manaforts verdict and also Michael Cohens guilty plea, but President Trump has been the one left to test out various stra
and indicated what progressives have been saying. we are doing what the president wants. the president said we are not going pass infrastructure until we get an reconciliation, he spent he hours and hours two senators trying to convince them. he has not succeeded yet. he is making progress and he said that he has told the senators don t give me a number. tell me what you re for and we will figure it out and the range you reported is one possibility. but the main thing was let s come to consensus in what we are for. so, yeah, the two things here. one i m saying, i like that approach. frankly, i think the numbers, you know, we have done whole thing about the price is right. the number doesn t tell you anything. the number of a thing doesn t tell you the value of a thing t the price of a thing. it could be over priced and underpriced. there s ways to spend money that are good and bad. so what he is saying is we want
cnn s abbie phillip is live at the white house. the president just had an event where he met at the white house with republican lawmakers. did he clarify anything today? reporter: well, nia, the president just let reporters into the room for that meeting. it was originally scheduled to have been closed, but he said nothing. he didn t respond to questions about any of these issues floating around him. he didn t expand on any of his comments or explain, you know, his view of the situation. but what he has been doing over the last day or so, specifically in a lengthy interview with fox news that aired last night and today, is really take the lead in the administration s response to all of these problems. there s no question the white house staffers were caught by surprise by a confluence of bad news stories. paul manafort s verdict and also michael cohen s guilty plea, but president trump has been the one left to test out various strategies for dealing with these problems, specificall
this is inevitable not before the midterms but certainly could happen after. there has been a question ever since the president started attacking jeff sessions over a year ago that he would fire sessions. the question has always been, well, would the senate, controlled by republicans but very narrowly, would they even confirm a new this was seen as a political retribution act by the president. what s sort of tying all this together, and i think you can include the president, is nobody s really sure whether there are staff at the white house, supporters in the media and in the republican party. you certainly talk to republican party on ativperatives about thi have, nobody is quite sure what s coming down the pike next. everybody is kind of i think that is what has changed from tuesday, this sense that anything could happen. right, and we have to be careful to not overplay our hand before we know what everybody else has. most importantly what mueller
giuliani said a pardon was not under consideration. is this just trying to muddy the waters? you look at the fox interview today, the president didn t rule it out. he didn t really answer the question. he did speak, you know, quite favorably about paul manafort. the white house is trying to put some distance between this. they re obviously not trying to signal anything. but we also know that the president likes pardon power. there s only so many things he can do unilaterally. it is a muscle or a tool he s flexed. we ve seen it. he commuted sentences for nine people, some of those most famous ones joe arpaio, scooter libby. he s also kind of using the language of pardoning when he talks about manafort. he essentially frames him as being railroaded by the justice system in the same way he framed pardons for these folks. and looking at it from his