>> dickerson: welcome back to "face the nation", i am john dickerson, tonight tom brady and the new england patriots take on matt ryan's atlanta falcons. it has been, it is the ninth super bowl for the patriots and the second for the falcons, their last appearance was in 1999. james brown, cbs news special correspondent and the host of the nfl today joins us. it is so great to have you here on a sunday. let's start with the falcons. it has been a while since they have been there. what is the game going to be like for the falcons? >> trawl, they come in offensively potent. matt ryan has had an mvp type season for sure which is award he got, look, if they can just get off to a quick start, get a lead, then they will be in good shape because new england is excellent at defusing any kind of confidence they come in with, but i am expecting a competitive game. >> dickerson: and what about defense facing the new england

offense? >> the offense of the new england, doesn't get as much credit as it should, but the defense of the falcons, young guys who really had matured throughout the season, i think they are -- on a defense, the right frame he brings about, 15 years of experience to the table, three super bowl appearances, i think he will have them in a good at a attitude natural shape. >> dickerson: so if the falcons are new to this, it is old hat for the new england patriots, how did that help for the patriots, the fact they have been to this dance before? >> the good thing is that they weren't complacent but that is because of bill belichick, he wouldn't tolerate that anyway. it is interesting john in an era of design parry in the national football league, they are the kingpins, i would imagine there are going to be a number of people tuned in to see the giants slade as well too, but, slayed too, but tom brady leads the charge on the field, immensely confident and with a huge chip on the shoulder. >> dickerson: and for, why

does he have a good, big chip on his shoulder? >> he had to take a four-game suspension at the top of the season implicated in the deflate-gate investigation, if you will. and he still maintains his innocence, so many people, looking at the saga between tom brady and the commission tore see as a my good friend was saying whether he will be up on the podium to get the award from roger goodell at the end. >> dickerson: that's right so he is looking for a ring and a little vindication. tell me also about the owners of these two teams. is there, they are a little bit different than other nfl owners. bheommon thread is, they are both excellent guys. look, arthur, to be bringing some 500 of his employees to the game speaks to the kind of management style that he has, leadership style, which is just awesome. and the players echo that as well too that mr. blank doesn't micromanage, he leaves the job to guys who are running the team. bob kraft, look, he knows not only the top people in his organization but he knows the

receptionist and all of his businesses, he knows their families, they are really involved from a very personal standpoint, and it paid dividends in terms of success on the field. >> dickerson: we now have a president who once owned a football team in his past. what do you -- we don't know who donald trump's pick is for the team, do we. >> we could probably pick who his pick is for the game. herschel walker was one of his big highs when he ran the generals or the -- so i would think because of the relationship that he, president trump has with bob kraft and it is a close relationship, i would think he is leaning in the direction, and although bill belichick the head coach of the patriots and tom brady haven't talked about it publicly, they are very strong president trump supporters as well, so i don't think the patriots, that is his choice. >> dickerson: they have been trying not to talk about politics this week. it is great to have you. >> continued success by the way. >> dickerson: thank you, sir. and we will be right back.

>> dickerson: and now for some political analysis. ruth marcus is a columnist and the deputy editorial page editor of the "washington post". ramesh ponnuru is a senior editor for the "national review", and a columnist for bloomberg view. we are also joined by amy walter, national editor of the cook political report, and "time" magazine's michael duffy who is the deputy editor, michael i want to start a with you, what kid we learn about the trump, what have we learned about the trump presidency from this now more than week long saga of the executive order on immigration? >> i think there are a couple of take aways, john, the first is that this is a white house that was keen from the start to

create an impression of action, no matter the cost to perhaps its reputation and even our alliances, and it is a white house where there are a high number of people with un fettered access to the president which means there are decisions that are made quickly, sometimes in secret, and not with the advice of all of the advisors perhaps that are needed which is not necessarily a formula for success. it is a white house where there is unusual amount of finger pointing and credit taking, both by the white house aides and the president's family, members of the family which suggest they are not all on the same page, and finally after two weeks, they are yet to have a decision process, tweeting president -- i will say one more thing, the u.s. government is perhaps the largest single enterprise in the world, has billions of dollars, billions in lots of country, everyone's life is affected by it, its reach is vast. it is not built for improv. it is a system that needs a -- it is an enterprise that needs a decision making system that is

transparent at the very least to those who are expected to execute the policies, and ideally those of us subject to them. we will find out this week whether the changes they say they have put into place last week are actually making a difference. >> dickerson: so much to unpack there. ruth, what do you make of the -- of where things are legally the at the moment? >> things are legally where they should be, which is in the courts before now a so called appeals court, i'm sorry, i couldn't reduce that, and we are going to do what we need to do in america, which is to find out, to test the legality of this, and come to a conclusion. but whatever conclusion is reached by the courts and i am assuming that donald trump administration after it finishes tweeting will comply with the rule of law, i think ther therea lot of fallout here. mike talked about how you can't run the government by improv, and vice president pence pens talked about washington niceties. these aren't just washington niceties, they are

questions about whether you can run this government and there is lasting damage here in his relationships with congress .. in his relationship with the country, which you hear terrible stories of people needing medical treatment being denied, in the relationship with his court, in his relationship with the world. and a more fundamentally, the 11 of the week to me is that we have a president who fundamentally is not understanding the role of courts, this tweet about so-called judges was not just, you know, something that we should ignore, and he doesn't understand the role of america as it has his historicalcally been in the world as a beacon of hope and welcoming place for rev geez. >> ramesh, mike pence said he didn't see it as a question of the legitimacy calling him a so-called judge, are we making too much of that in the president's reaction to this .. >> well, i think that president trump has put the vice president in a difficult situation, and

that is probably something that the vice president can expect going forward. clearly he did question the legitimacy of the judge, and one of the other things we learned about this administration from this episode that shouldn't be a great surprise is that it is quickly and defensive when it faces opposition. when it is criticized, that it is not capable of explaining itself very well and i think we have seen that over the course. and one other thing is that this administration is very, very concerned about keeping some of its promises and what i think is interesting about this order is that it seems like less of an attempt to protect the country than to make good on campaign rhetoric by president trump in a way that is a little bit more defensible legally than his initial call to just ban all muslims. if you were starting out trying to figure out the policy that there is a rational relation to national security without that previous rhetoric, i don't think

that you would have landed here. >> dickerson:. >> that's right. and the cato ins zoo it has looked into the actual terrorism as a result of refugees and found i think the chances refugee they put in one in three, one in 3.1 billion that a refugee would create a problem. so this is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. the congress on the hill thought the policy was fine but not justifies advertise what one republican said to me if he just made a few calls they could have avoided hurting the very things that donald trump wants to promote. >> i think this relationship between donald trump and republicans is going to be fascinating. we knew it coming in to this campaign. we watched the dance between conservatives and trump, republicans and trump throughout, and now that dance is going to continue in congress. but here is what we know is happening with voters is that despite the fact this president comes in with the lowest approval rating of any president

at this point in his first term, he has got almost universal support from republicans, 90 percent approval ratings from republicans. most of these republicans on capitol hill are in districts donald trump carried. only a few republicans sit in a district he didn't win. one senator in 2018 sits in a state he didn't win. their concern politically, they have other concerns but the political concern, they want to win reelection is to make sure those people that they need to support them, the voters who sit in those districts, who like donald trump continue to support them in primaries, where they could be challenged by someone to the right if they feel like that member of congress isn't adequately supporting donald trump, and to, 0 so this is what we are watching for, will there be those breaks between the president and his party, it is hard to see those breaks happening when you have a 90 percent approval rating from the very people who go out and vote for those candidates. >> but amy, we have already seen some. we saw two republican senators say this week they wouldn't

support his education secretary, we saw on the record criticisms from people like senator rob portman about the rollout of the immigration order. so i think that -- >> you write about the basic impetus of people to support, but it is going to be a big mess. >> dickerson: staying on this, ramesh, president trump said he would come to washington and be a disrupter, blow things up. if i am paying some attention, but not watching every turn of this and i look at what is happening in washington and i am a supporter of president trump's aren't i happy as can be that people are, you know, unhappy here and fidgeting there and got their nose out of joint over here? isn't that the basic where, what this all boils down to? >> a lot of people make the point that this president is more unpopular than previous presidents at this stage of the presidency, where usually a president is enjoying a honeymoon with the public. but the flip side of that is, he has got his core support,

nothing he is doing is making him popular, but nothing he is doing is threatening his approval from those voters who are his core support. i was going to stay the discomfort in the mass is all to the good in their world view, don't forget, this is a, beliefs in disruption. >> dickerson: let me follow up on this with you, michael, you mentioned improv, on the cover of type, this week, there is a way, though, or give me your sense about this, which is that there are realities that do, when you have other members of the administration looking over their shoulder, you talked about the leaks, people getting kind of attacked in the president press by blind quotes, talk a little bit about where this can get in the way of what an administration tries to do. >> well, one of the things i was trying to say earlier is there has to be some kind of internal transparency so everyone knows what they are doing. some were caught off guard by this and they look down the road and say how many times will this happen to me before i have to leave? these are private conversations

going on at a very high level because they are worried it won't be -- the even where the policies they are executing fit with their campaign rhetoric which i think is a great point or done in ways that make refugees enjoying a 45 percent support in the public, there are simple matters of whether you can keep an administration moving forward on a broader agenda if you don't loop them all in at the start. so they will have to do that and also have to learn there will be disagreements at the highest levels that they will have to work through. and some of these people who are as michael alluded to, general matusz, general kelly, secretary tillerson over at the state department, i guess i shouldn't call them generals anymore, they are now secretaries, i apologize, these are big figures who have their own reputations, and who the administration relies on for those power for reputation. they are some of the ones that are in conflict with this. >> indeed. and i think we are going to see going forward the degree to which they are willing to tolerate this kind of improv process that puts them in this

difficult position going forward. and so i think you are going to -- you saw from the white house this week a conversation about how they were going to need to put a more orderly process in place. donald trump set this up, by the way, by putting steve bannon and reince priebus, the chief of staff in the chief strategist, explicitly equivalent levels, every president in every white house learned that lesson that doesn't work, you need to have a chain of command. >> anybody who ever what happened the campaign, versus how the campaign existed too, it was always a sense of chaos or -- >> that's right. everything was about if we learned anything throughout the course of 2016 into 2017, donald trump, is donald trump, is donald trump, that is not going to change. you know, one of the other substitute promises of the campaign is i am going to run the government like a business, and he brought into the most senior positions generals and ceos who believe in a chain of command, thrived in the chain of command, rose through a chain of

command so he will have to reinstate something if he wants to keep them. >> dickerson: and who many people thought would help him reign in his impulses those people. we will take a quick break here and be right back and talk about the supreme court, things overseas, a lot more, stay with us. ,,,,,,

>> dickerson: and we are back with more from our political panel, amy, i want to start with you. we talked about some ragged edges of the trump presidency, but one that didn't seem to be -- what went well is naming of the supreme court pick, kept it quiet, picked a lot of conservatives like -- do you see it that way? >> yes, and it got a great reception on television, good rating, president loves getting good ratings. this is -- when i talked about this dance this is another part of the dance, right? if you are going to have members of congress that complain about the mess since and, messiness with the rollout and even a some of the issues they may not agree with that a the president is pushing forward .. but then it seems that almost minutes later he is able to present them with something that they desperately want, like regulatory reform, a conservative supreme court justice so they are going to be constantly tested, are they going to wait for a tax reform bill but we have to go through all of this other stuff that is

messy and we don't agree with and maybe it is more disreceive that we want, dismissive, disreceive that da .. that we want it to be, so that is going to be a constant cross pressure on these members. >> dickerson: i am going to ask you and get your reaction and throw this in as well, isn't this pick .. the culmination of a very cage situate and smart moafl by mitch mcconnell long ago when president obama had a chance to nominate somebody mitch mcconnell said, no way, donald trump, then candidate donald trump, president trump said during a debate, he said the message to mitch mcconnell is delay, delay, delay. that meant whoever the republican nominee was was going to be somebody who everybody voting for them knew was going to pick the choice on the court and it kept liberals from having another seat on the court. so in retrospect, that was quite a move by the senate majority leader. >> absolutely. and it was a move that faced a lot of second-guessing at the time, particularly at times when clinton was way ahead of trump in the polls, a lot of republicans were saying, maybe we should just confirm garland, obama's nominee because clinton

may put in somebody more liberal and it turned out that not only did that not happen but the supreme court vacancy was probably an issue that helped propel trump to victory. the exit polls do suggest that the supreme court was more of a motivating factor for trump voters than it was for clinton voters. ruth, will the court, presuming that -- or assuming for a moment for the purpose of this questions that judge gorsuch gets on the court will it be more conservative than when scalia was on the court or the same or what is your thinking? >> there will be some really wonky changes involving how deferential to be to administrative agencies and that will depend on whether you are reviewing the more or less conservative -- whether you are reviewing an obama administration order or a trump administration order. i think that the importance of this nomination, we all kind of know how it is going to end as you suggested, is kind of what happens in the chapters leading up to the conclusion of him being nominated, because that will tell us whether there is

going to be a sequel, because that is the really important thing here, whether justice kennedy would choose to retire as he may be tempted to do, whether -- what happens if another justice -- liberal justice who really could change the balance of the court in a much more significant way than justice gorsuch would, and there is a lot of moving pieces here that have to do with whether the nuclear option will be triggered and people will be confirmed with justice -- >> dickerson: talking about that, the nuclear option, the republican leader on the republican side, breaking a democratic filibuster if there is one, how do you see it playing out? >> yes, well, i think ruth handled the question, he will eventually get in. the nuclear option is tricky for the democrats, it is tough. their base is dying for blood, they would really like to see gorsuch what they did to garland and see this group of democratic leaders, who is not particularly

heavily left put up a fight and especially with all of the folks, the left on the street and the protest es that emerged after the trump election, and those fighting the deport sphuch is a basic litmus test and that is usually complicated for not just nancy pelosi in the house but in the senate because they are facing this question coming on taxes, and on spending, and on trade, they are going to have to decide over and over again whether to fight even if they can't win. >> and really, i am sorry to interrupt you, it is not really a question for them, because their base is going to demand it, but i think that the question of the nuclear option isn't just complicated for democrats, it is not necessarily in their interests to play it but it may be inevitable. it is the problem for republicans because justice kennedy, all eyes on justice kennedy as he watches this, does he really want to be, set off this kind of confrontation if he leaves. >> does he really want a nominee who would only take 51 votes for confirmation to succeed him. >> dickerson: and in terms of

the republicans -- >> there is also a division as to whether the rules should be changed and i do not believe there is currently a majority in the senate for changing the rules, that's one of the reasons mcconnell cash. >> dickerson: to break the filibuster and go the nuclear option. >> that could change as this process moves forward. it may be that republican senators and republican voters, are sufficiently enraged by democratic obstruction, democratic fill busters that votes materialize, but that is something i think mcconnell is very mindful of, in addition to his own concerns institutionally about changing the rules. >> dickerson: is there anything, amy, that chuck schumer could get by pushing this, using this as a bargaining chip, knowing he is going to essentially not be able to block the, block the nomination or block the confirmation, but -- >> but hoping -- you certainly get a medal for good behavior, and mitch mcconnell will say -- that is why it is interesting to me to hear folks say, well deposits democrats shouldn't go all in on this one, let the vote come down, you are basically just replacing one conservative with another. you save the big fight for the

next one. and if mitch mcconnell wrote the nuclear option at the next one, he has than opportunity to do it at two points. >> dickerson: ramesh what is your view, we will switch quickly to russia, what do you make of president trump's comments to the bill o'reilly. >> vice president pence said there is no moral equivalence that trump was drawing between the united states and russia. you could have fooled me, it sure sounded as though that was exactly what trump was saying and it is what trump has said before and it is really an astonishing comment for a president of the united states to make. if you think about the thing conservatives complained about from president obama in terms of allegedly apologizing for country, this is much, much -- this is magnitude worse. >> dickerson: and happening in the context of the last week of the russian or ukraine separatists depending, skirmishing in eastern ukraine which has been basically dormant for two years, so these comments coming about our view of russia as to the signals of russia of

how to proceed with the former soviet blocks blocks states. and the previous am bass for to the united states said the dire situation in eastern ukraine demands strong condemnation to russia, that is one message from one part of the government. who do yo you may attention to, the president or the u.n. ambassador? >> i pay attention to the president because me is the head of this government. i agree with everything ramesh said, it is unimaginable that a president of the united states would say this, and i would also point to the very lukewarm readout that was given of the president's conversation with head of the ukraine, it was a conversation about border conflict. it is not a border conflict. there is a border conflict -- >> there is no border anymore. >> dickerson: quickly. >> also a president who explicitly ran saying i did not support the iraq war, i think we are spending way too much type -- he is willing to criticize american foreign policy

throughout, i would not be surprised if it continues. >> dickerson: thanks to all of you and we will be back in a moment. >> how long until impact? less than a minute. what do you want to do, sir? listen carefully... if we all switch to geico we could save 15% or more on car insurance. i like the sound of that. geico. because saving fifteen percent or more on car insurance

>> dickerson: that's it for us today. thank you for watching. be sure to join us next week. we will have our first look at what some of those who voted for president trump think of the administration's efforts so far. until then, from "face the nation", i am john dickerson. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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