well it wasn't always. carrying out wholesale surveillance if there you have already while i was in and who's in the us the internet has used the social l.o.l. we thought it was it's garbage real. donald trump calls his new tax plan a middle class miracle critics say it's designed to make the rich richer we'll break it down on this edition of. politicking i'm larry king president trump is calling his new tax plan a middle class miracle democrats and other critics are calling it a plan that only benefits the richest among us can the white house get its tax policies through congress is there possibility of democrats working with the president on it we'll begin with representative steve cohen democrat of tennessee

ranking member of the house judiciary subcommittee on the constitution and civil justice he also serves on the house ethics committee he joins me from washington steve before we talk about the tax cut. how we ever going to get anything changed on gun control after last vegas. we certainly should it was a tragic and awful thing that happened but as long as the n.r.a. makes ratings which is important to republicans and their primaries and also makes major contributions i don't think we're going to have enough support from members of the opposite side of the aisle we need to have common sense gun laws no no fly no byelaws restrictions on high capacity magazines and we're restrictions on assault weapons and more money in mental health but i don't think republicans will support any of that because of the n.r.a. . eighteen's and there are

a contributions destroyed the biggest mass shooting in american history. so say it . steve what's your thoughts on the tax plan. well you mentioned that democrats and critics have opposed it i would say democrats critics and analysts have opposed it will clearly give most of the benefits to people who are making over seven hundred thousand dollars a year and in the year two thousand and twenty seven eighty percent of the dollars will go to people making seven hundred sixty thousand dollars a year and more plus it eliminates the inheritance tax which is only to people whose estates are over ten million dollars if you're a married couple that means multimillions and maybe billions of dollars to people like trump and people like the koch brothers and others and in the super wealthy class the only miracle that will occur with this middle class quote unquote tax break is if the middle class believes the con job that they're being given by trump

about it the middle class will get like six hundred dollars not everybody will get anything but the average will be six hundred dollars gary cohn said that he couldn't guarantee all middle class people would get a cut the analyst said only one sixth would get a cut and then what it is it's six hundred two dollars and he mentioned a thousand dollars that's peanuts compared to what the over seven hundred thousand dollars people were getting which would be of six figures cone said people to take that thousand dollars and buy a new car. gary go to your car dealer. then they get in test. no i don't think so there will be no democratic votes the way it came out and senator bob corker one of my senators who i have admiration for has already said he won't vote for anything that's not. revenue neutral this is far from revenue neutral it's not tax reform it's a gigantic tax break to multimillionaires and billionaires. if corker is against it

he'll get a couple other people with a conscience over there it won't pass the senate either it's a dead on the livery part but since it is a proposal can't you in the us so republicans sit down with the going house and work something out of every american wants tax reform. we should have tax reform we don't need a tax cut for the wealthiest that tax relief needs to go to the middle class who need the money they're living from paycheck to paycheck and they will spend every dollar that they get back they'll spend it wal-mart they'll spend it out on amazon dot com they'll spend it somewhere that the money that goes back in the economy and that creates jobs and we need jobs and we need retailers to be making money you give it to the wealthy they're just going to put it away in there for a one k's or their retirement funds or go to tiffany's and maybe spend a little money there have you joined others who criticize nancy pelosi in church so dealing with the president. no i haven't criticized in my understand politics and

the need to gets up and down and i think what they got down was good the three month extension nancy is a phenomenal politician and shows chuck they're both outstanding experienced people who i respect. i'm not going to always follow their lead but i'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and i think they were right in this case and it's going to take a lot for me to think that they didn't do the right thing because they're smart how do you think them presume is dealt with puerto rico. terrible i think it's his heck of a good job brownie moment puerto rico obviously is suffering greatly they should have had people down there to help take those containers off the ship that was sitting there for weeks the health hospital boat that left virginia should've left the week after the tragedy but should've left immediately it's been a very slow response and he certainly shouldn't got into a contest with the mayor of san juan that was pretty neat the president and rob. do

you think tom drys who resigned to tell the newman services was an isolated case. no i think it's an abuse that several of these members of his cabinet. participated in minutia and wanted to take a private government plane first honeymoon in europe and he did take a flight to kentucky and went over to fort knox to watch the eclipse even though he said that he was from new york he was so interested in the eclipse like people in kentucky were we're all live on this earth and the eclipse was pretty amazing and he wanted to see it and so did his bride. has been bad about it there others have been bad the e.p.a. crew it he's taken flights for political purposes and personal purposes i think there is a swap. there living it breathing it swimming in it as they like it john kerry says over the weekend hint that he might leave the republican party but he also said about the democratic body that he has no idea what his stands for is in

your party divided. our party is somewhat divided indeed there is some more liberal wing and more centrist wing which i think is unfortunate because we all have the same basic ideals it's just some people realize the practicality of getting things done and the need to make compromises and get elected. we have some differences between the bernie weighing and the hillary weighing and then there's the jill stein weighing that should have been with us so there are splits in our party but on basic fundamental aspects of risk having a fair and just tax system looking out for people's human rights and the dignity of the individual support for civil rights and making america a more perfect union as time goes on i think both sides of our party agree the republican party doesn't have that i think the freedom party stands for no spending at all there's a bunch of people over there that don't build. even the first amendment and don't

believe in people of america who are of other than a christian religion and other than of the white race they have the same rights as others thank you steve as always you're welcome larry to spend some time now with our panel joining me here in studio is lamb hegemon research fellow at stanford's hoover institution served in the george w. bush administration and the department of health and human services and was an advisor to marco rubio in twenty sixteen campaign and policy director for mitt romney in two thousand and twelve in washington our own friend eleanor clift columnist for the daily beast political commentator and author a lot of subjects to get into we'll start with a lot he puerto rico is going to be trumps katrina well it certainly looks like it could be i mean the dynamic here is very very problematic and by the way larry this is all self-inflicted wounds for the president right he's coming along tweeting

attacking personally now the mayor of san juan i mean these are the sorts of things that presidents generally don't do so if you think about this as an opportunity for the president really to bring people together around natural disasters usually these are things that end up being advantages for presidents in the long run this case seems to be somewhat different and a lot of it's of his own doing you're republican right i am i disappointed i am a little disappointed in the way in which he's gone after people i think it's fair to defend the response of the government i think fema is doing a lot on the ground i think they are trying to do to the best of their abilities to deal with the situation but then to go and attack the mayor to basically allude to this being the responsibility of the puerto rican that somehow their fault that strikes me as being beyond the pale i don't know what do you make of. that attacking people personally is this president's trademark and maybe it speaks to his base but i think to. to most americans it it it's it's it's crude language and

it's misplaced to call the puerto rican people in grates and say they expect everything to be done for them. maybe he could think that but it's not the kind of thing that people end up saying now in fairness administration is now scrambling to get resources there but they last a full week really and i think he's going to bear that accountability and i think to call it. bush's trumps katrina is maybe a little overstated but we haven't seen the end of what's happening yet in puerto rico i mean there could be health outbreaks the hospitals really still are not functioning people can't get around this still no electricity so i think we have yet to see the full dimensions of the tragedy that's unfolding there lonnie i know donald trump for a long time he is a sucker for compliments and students in the book and this is

a personal defect on something well i you know obviously the idea of someone liking complements maybe not unusual but i think in his case he seems to really thrive on it he seems to really gain energy from it you know the adulation the praise he gets at these campaign style rallies when he goes out around the country . definitely feel him but i think the bigger question becomes larry what is the president's ability to execute on the basic things that he's going to be required to do to do well in office and certainly disaster response is one of them if you look at what he did with harvey and also with hurricane irma those were high points i think those were very much strong points for the president and it's unfortunate that in this situation he's getting the marks he's getting in part because it does seem that the government response initially at least was not exactly what it should've been but all those both things that lonnie mentioned were reactive. right and they happen to be in states that voted for him it's awfully hard not to think

there's a lack of political momentum to come to the rescue of the people of puerto rico goes there are no votes there for him it's a territory they don't even vote for president and he probably regards it as a largely democratic place when the mayor of san juan basically pleaded for help saying people are dying here his response where the democrats have told her that they got to get trump so he took puts everything in personal terms he overreacts and other people don't flatter him he flatters himself saying you know this is the the greatest recovery effort ever so i think you know we're getting used to his personality quirks if you will and i don't know if that's a good idea to get to get used to that because it's still it's beyond the pale for any chief executive to behave the way he does love me anyway should stay right with us we'll be right back with lots more after the break. about your sudden passing i

phone lee just learnt you were yourself and taken your last wrong turn. your act caught up to us we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry. so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest this thing that i never got off my chest. i remember when we first met my life turned on each one. but then my feeling started to change you talked about war like it was again still some are fond of those that didn't like to question our arc. and i secretly promised to like it one does not leave the funeral the same as one enters mind it's consumed with this one to. speak to us there are no other takers. that mainstream media has met its maker.

our culture is awash in lives dominated by streams of never ending electronic hallucinations that merge back fiction until they are indistinguishable we have become the most deluded society on politics as a species of endless and needless political theater politicians more than just celebrity are two ruling parties are in reality one party to corporate and those who attempt to puncture this. breathless universe up to be designed to push through the cruelty and exploitation of the neo liberal or opt for so far to the margins of society including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for corporate money that we might as well be mice squeaking against an avalanche but squeak we've lost.

your launching and our team got special report. this bugs you and me as well enough by basically everything that you think you know about civil society have broken down. there's always going to be somebody else be one step ahead of the game. we should not be in business normalizing mind. we don't need people that think like this on our planet. this is an incredibly tense situation. back to politicking on woodlawn he chen research fellow at stanford's inst hoover institution he was in the george w. bush administration in the form of health and human services he did not fly private and eleanor clift columnist for the daily beast beast political commentator and author on money. trumps tax plan he's calling it a myth. class miracle that doesn't benefit him at all well there's

a couple things i think that there actually are number of elements of this that are pretty standard republican fare in terms of rate reductions particularly on the corporate side but also on the individual side simplification a lot of these themes are what you'd expect from a republican tax plan so in that sense i think you'll get widespread support certainly from republicans you know in terms of arguing he's not going to benefit from it i probably wouldn't do that if i were him i would probably avoid that line of argument because generally speaking if you're going to do rate reductions at the top you're going to benefit people who make a lot of money so but i think this is one area where he is going to get support and i think it's going to be a lot easier to move through this even though tax reform the tough issue a lot easier to move through this than obamacare repeal and replace was a few weeks ago if they didn't get it passed eleanor. i think this could be headed for a nother car wreck. they only need fifty votes because with vice president pence's vote they would get over the majority threshold but they have not come up with

a way to pay for this tax cut it would just add a trillion and a hair for i think to the to the to the debt and you still have some republicans who think that the republican party is the party of fiscal restraint so i think that's a problem i also hear grumbling at the white house they're blaming paul ryan and mitch mcconnell for loading up the thing is they put it and they they the the lowest rate. has been bumped up from ten percent to twelve percent how do you lower the corporate rate and the rate for people at the top and raise the rate for the people who are least able to afford it on the theory that they need to have a bigger stake in the system i mean that just doesn't ring true and then the estate tax is going to be another red line if they want to get rid of the estate tax which right now is five million dollars per person and you know claim this is for the

middle class that's a nonstarter for democrats are not going to get any democratic votes so they may not be able to hold fifty votes together i mean this is a problematical plan. well i look i think the estate tax cut i think the reason why republicans have always been for it is because first of all they see it as aspirational and i think a lot of americans don't clearly fall in that category was something it could someday think that they want to and so that's why they include it with respect to the rest of the plan i think tax reform is very complicated i think there's no question that all of the tradeoffs all the different interests that are involved in tax reform make it difficult but the republicans realize there's tremendous political pressure here they've got to be able to get something done and if they can't get this done then what comes next what else is there that's left before we get to the midterm elections. what eleanor that that you're right they have nothing else but and and but they pledged to repeal and replace

obamacare for seven years and they couldn't do it so i don't underestimate the divisions within the republican party on tax reform it's a lot more complicated than it looks on the surface they are one loophole that they're focusing on closing is the deduction for state and local taxes you're going to have republicans in the northeast and in california not going to be able to vote for that that directly hurts their constituents so and you can take almost every provision that they've suggested has powerful lobbies arrayed against it. why is he having such trouble passing in the thing let me well here's a couple things first of all the republican party to eleanor's point is divided i think there are a lot of complications there's a lot of stratification there that people didn't realize existed you take the obamacare issue there were some real sincere policy differences between republicans tax reform is no different there certainly are differences there so you have a party that's divided but you also have a situation where the president hasn't built up

a ton of trust with his fellow partisans in congress it's not like republicans feel real great about sticking their necks out for the president when they did that with obamacare repeal and then he would probably come back and say it was a mean bill as you recall with that discussion around obamacare so the party is divided the president is seen as somewhat of an unreliable ally i think you combine those two things it makes things very challenging no no what's your read on him getting involved with the n.f.l. players. i think i've never seen a president so eager to roil existing grievances and racial tension in this country i think it's a direct play to a lot of the fans in the stands and a lot of people who support him and i think the polls show a lot of people think that what he said was right. but i think it's it's it's it's a terrible role for a president to be playing when when a president should be

a unifier and i must say so far in the wake of the tragedy in las vegas he has he has said the right things and does seem to understand that this is the time to really try to bring people together he didn't do that with the with the fight with the n.f.l. players and i think it's actually evolved to a point where it's now become a show of solidarity among players and managers and fans to some extent with everybody now standing so maybe it'll sort out in the end but i think his the reasons that he gets involved in these fights are very cynical and very political you know lonnie and his former cia director john brennan came out in support of the players but years ago i interviewed general wallace scream he was tom of them marine corps this is before you were born during the vietnam war and i asked him about for testers and he saluted that he said that's why our marines are fighting

so they can protest if we didn't allow them to protests what are we fighting for you know i mean there are certain core american values a freedom of expression the ability to redress one's grievances with with the government i mean those are basic things but i think you know trump is doing this because he figures that in part these n.f.l. players honestly the most sympathetic group in. no i think a lot of people particularly in his political base view this as a fight worth having for the president the notion that people are unwilling to stand for the national anthem seems at least to this proportion of americans and perhaps even many americans as being somewhat inappropriate in little do you feel well i i personally would not express myself in that way but i recognize that everyone's got a right to do it in the way they're going to do it. own on saturday secretary of state rex tillerson acknowledged for the first time direct direct contact with

north korea to talk about things a day later trumpets we are told works he's wasting his time trying to negotiate with the little rocket man save your energy reps will do what has to be done what is the alternative to diplomacy. well sarah huckabee sanders address that on monday in her briefing with the press and she basically said that this administration is not going to talk about the nuclear tests that they will only engage with the north korean regime about three americans who are still being held there. you know the alternative to them to diplomacy is not something that we want to do and so i think i don't get the president stepping over his secretary of state's attempts to foster some sort of conversation with north korea if you're talking

you're not shooting so i don't know where this goes but i think people generally who pay attention to north korea are very are very very nervous about where this president might take us the new world as you've written well the notion of directing gaze met with the north koreans that would be certainly i mean and if that is indeed happening. at a government to government level that that would be relatively unprecedented but what i do think is. this is a very difficult situation to resolved diplomatically we all know that no one wants the military option part of the method to the madness here maybe a little bit of good cop bad cop quite frankly and this is part of the negotiating style of donald trump that he wants people to feel as though he's unpredictable he wants people to feel as though they're not going to know what he's going to do next and rex tillerson is a relatively conventional secretary of state he's doing what he's doing but in some

ways trump might be setting this up deliberately some would argue maybe i'm giving him more credit than he deserves but nonetheless it probably going to brew well well but what i'm saying is i think there's a strategy here potentially or you think go more james clapper the former head of the n.s.a. pointed out that in north korea kim jong un his father his and his grandfather they are the founders of. their country as we now know it and they are regarded as day it and to insult them the way this president has died they broadcast it or blasted i should say all around the country and it just rallies the people who feel like the west is attacking their leader i don't see how that's productive what do you make of moore's nomination on the republican ticket in alabama and apparently a certain winner may not be but you know at this juncture and he's pretty much

way over the limit it to me we can call him out of the mainstream i think i think that would be appropriate but you know this is going to be a very difficult electoral cycle for republicans if they're having to fight one another in addition to fighting democrats because remember going into this cycle particularly in the u.s. senate the electoral map actually looks very good for republicans and so the only way that they really going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here is if they're fighting among some so. and unfortunately it seems as though steve bannon and forces affiliated with mr bannon are intent on dividing the republican party in states like arizona and nevada where potentially the republicans will have to defend and that might make it difficult also to pick up in places like north dakota and west virginia so watch to see what happens but this is not a particular auspicious start john kerry sick oh no said that he might he might leave might leave the republican party he said he was asked whether he might split from the g.o.p.

he said no not at this time and then went on but if the party can't be fixed i'm not going to be able to support the party period. well i don't really know what the party stands for anymore and if. the ban in wearing of the republican party manages to take over in these other races and basically nominating candidates who can win in a republican primary but can't or shouldn't win statewide i mean i think we're more could win in alabama but i don't think it's necessarily true that as alabama goes so goes the rest of the country so this is a case where the republicans could be devouring their own to the benefit of the democrats and frankly i think i think the republican party needs needs to implode and to read to redefine itself it it's lost its way as a republican money how concerned are you are you are you optimistic it's hard to be optimistic i think i am concerned i'm concerned about

a few different things one is the certain ideological split which in some ways always existed existed in the republican party the conservative movement but i'm also just concerned because there doesn't seem to be a core message of course set of policies that republicans have really been able to rally around i mean the one thing that if you ask republicans about the tenure of the president so far almost invariably they'll come back to well he's gotten a steel gorsuch and he's got good judicial appointments and you know that may be true and those are important but that doesn't make a governing agenda so some point republicans got to figure out what are they for we're going to fight for and to do it in a unified matter to be a great party again oh no are you optimistic or pessimistic i agree with everything lanny just said and i think that's why the tax reform or tax cut package is so important republicans basically cut taxes and if they can even do that you know what does the party exist for oh i'm not i'm not optimistic although i have to say someone on the progressive side sort of enjoying the republicans

basically devour each other. but i'm also smart enough to know that we don't know how the bernie hillary divide is going to play out and there is there are divisions on the left and also made up this is a divided country eleanor loni thank you so much issue thank you thanks for your time today and thank you for joining me on this edition of politicking member you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me of kings things and don't forget use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking . about your sudden passing i phone lee just learned. taken your last wrong turn. caught up to us we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry. so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my.