bob corker and jeff flake u.s. senators from tennessee and arizona respectively have announced they were tyrants rather than go through with a ring primary battles back home both have exchanged shots with the president on twitter and in interviews and their announcements this week leave their g.o.p. counterparts split over the ways in which donald trump has conducted himself since assuming office by the way all of this political drama plays out in a time when north korea stands on the brink of achieving nuclear weapons four americans are killed in an ambush in nigeria and while former top adviser steve benen promises more political casualties in his promised war against the g.o.p. so what's the latest what's likely to happen next let's talk about that with eleanor clift political commentator and author and columnist for the daily beast eleanor joins me from washington eleanor what. what do you make of the court room for your freak outs. well i think what i'm wondering is whether

the comments by senators corker and flake will accelerate the disintegration of the republican party and encourage more people to come out and speak against president trump the attacks against him this week were more about his character and the way handles the office senator corker said he's he will be remembered for d. basing the presidency it's not as much about policy differences senator flake did say that there's no room in the republican party for someone like him who believes in immigration and free trade so he brought an element of issue differences into his decision not to run again but he can't he can't win

a primary and you now have the republican party looking at trying to remake itself in trump's image as though there are all these charismatic populists around the country just waiting to be called into service they go for the candidates debate and has come up with are pretty sorry bunch but could. still vote with the majority think they did yes yes and you note a tax cut is the only real policy proposal that's on the table and senator corker has said he wouldn't support something that blew up the deficit so he might not be a guaranteed yes vote but i wouldn't be at all surprised if senator flake of voted for ten for tax cuts so yeah you look at their percentage of voting with the president and. they're well over ninety percent so it's not so much about issues

it's about the i think the embarrassment caused by mr trump and the way he has gotten into arguments with a gold star family and the way he's taunting the leader of north korea and i think there's genuine concern celestial larm that that doesn't make things better and as senator corker said some weeks ago could be putting us on the path to a third world war i won't call them flake both be replaced by people to the right of the. yes except if they if the people nominated in republican primaries are so far to the right that they can't win nationwide and you have the republican leader mcconnell reminding republicans that there were four senate seats they lost that they should've won in two thousand and

ten when you had one candidate in missouri say there's such a thing is legitimate rape and if that happens the woman's body shuts down and pregnancy doesn't occur and you had another candidate do it in a ads that started i am not a witch you had and those were those were seats there were four seats that. would have been in republican hands except the candidates chosen were deemed you know so far out of the mainstream that they couldn't win statewide why do you think . president tramp gets into these nationals personality hassles with his own party members and. i some people think it's all part of a grand strategy to distract from the ongoing russian probe but i think he reacts

emotionally. and the republican talking point is that he's a counter-puncher and when he's attacked he hits back but he spoils for these kind of fights and. he has it in his head that americans dislike weakness they like strength and so he will never apologize he doubles down i mean the misunderstanding with the gold star mother could easily have been made better with a gracious phone call saying he didn't mean to offend. her. he he like most people don't know what to say when they're confronted with such an enormous loss he could have made that better in an instant instead he with the with the help of his chief of staff on my day ed instead chose to. do some

character debasement of a democratic congresswoman and then in maintaining that the widow didn't really give an honest recollection of the phone call and that is such an unnecessary fight and the democrats had their own battle between the only sanders group into gresham's and the democratic mainstream. yes it has not burst out into the open with the same ferocity as it has on on the on the right but there's a very critical governor's race coming up in virginia an early december and bernie sanders has refused to endorse ralph northam who is a. physician a pediatric neurosurgeon who currently attending governor whose who's running for

governor against ed gillespie a former you probably remember him saying time here no that's right and so. that that's a race that the democrats really should win but they're having trouble getting the excitement among the base and getting people to turn out in bernie sanders could be a big help there if he chose to so far he's chosen not to will we have a new tax. i i don't think we should even dignify what the republicans are trying to do by calling it tax reform it's really basically just a tax cut that they're trying to cobble together and they want it so badly that they might get it but there are so many divisions already erupting. they don't know how to pay for it they were thinking of you know fiddling with the rules around for

a when kazan president trump to his credit tweeted that don't worry you're for a one k.'s going to stay the same. that disrupted the republicans who need to get money from somewhere they're also looking at the deductibility of state and local taxes which people on either coast both coast don't like in the handful of remaining republicans in the northeast are fighting that so they've got divisions within within their own ranks and they don't have any margin for error because whatever they do they're going to do without any democratic support turbulent times saying so is over right thank you eleanor clift columnist for the daily beast earlier by the way i spoke with two veterans of political campaigns and the legislative process for their reaction to the latest tumult in d.c. nina turner's the former ohio state senator and president of our revolution

described by the way is the next step for bernie sanders movement she joins me from cleveland. and lenny chen lan he was in san francisco that he's a research fellow at stanford's hoover institution and a former staffer in the george w. bush administration he was also an advisor to marco rubio's twenty sixteen presidential campaign here's that conversation watch was still with you lanny arizona senator jeff flake announced that he will not seek reelection he said we must never adjust to the courses of our dialogue with the tone set at the top. of the breidbart people are already taking credit for this what do you make of it lanny well it's too bad you know jeff flake was one of those voices that i think was trying to get toward consensus always trying to figure out a way to find an answer but in this era of politics he's

a little bit of an accurate as i'm larry quite frankly so i think it was probably the writing on the wall he probably figured there was no way he was going to be able to beat kelly ward and other challengers who were going to be running against him in the senate in arizona next year and so he stepped aside but it is unfortunate because i do think he's a good man i think he was quite a good senator. as in our he is an ardent conservative do you expect him to vote against many of the bush group of the proposals for the rest of his term. larry i don't know that he will i mean on tax reform for example a lot of the views that he has are reflected in the tax reform package that's being developed now between the president and the congress so i think on that count i see him being supportive of the president's agenda he was supportive on the repeal and replacement of obamacare effort i expect that that will not change i think really what jeff flake is speaking out against this is speaking out against the tone and the tenor and the way in which the message is conveyed as you said in his message

the coarseness of our politics but from a policy perspective i think in many ways he will still be very much in lockstep with mitch mcconnell on the republican leadership on these issues are new what are your thoughts on all of this. lanny's point he brings up about the coarseness and what senator flake is saying i think he's dead on i mean but when you have a president that tweets all day long he goes after people personally you know this is not just about issue disputes which is that's what we are cussed accustomed to in the body politic you're sad believes one way our side believes another and then even within political parties themselves you have people a little more conservative than the people who are a little more liberal but to have a president that is constantly attacking people personally this has become problematic in our political debate and the fact that even though i probably would not agree with not even one thing with senator flake in terms of policy positions

what he is talking about regarding the buyer mitt of politics and the fact that it has become so detrimental so deadly so vicious i think he's right this illusion. of the president. about bob corker colu competent a lightweight who he couldn't get a lick to don't catch you in his home state current group used troop of debasing our nation. right and he and don't forget now senator corker support it now president trump and what a difference eight or eight or nine months make or he's going after this senator in such a way just because he is voicing his concern about the tenor and tone that the president has set even before he got elected so i want any everybody to be clear president trump was never of the republican party so people are saying that this is making it

harder for tax reform or making it more course within the relationship between the republican party in the present he was never one of them i mean he won he beat out sixteen other people to become president of the united states of america and he didn't do that by being a quote unquote republican more with our blue group than. right after this. about your sudden passing i've only just learned you were a south in taken your last wrong turn. your attitude up to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry finally i could so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my chest. i remember when we first met my life turned on each breath. but then my feelings started to change you talked about war like it was a cave still some are fond of you those that didn't like to question our ark and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not leave

a funeral the same as one enters the mind it's consumed with death this one quite different i speak to you now because there are no other takers. to the claim that mainstream media has met its make. under margaret badger there was a transition away from public housing and government assisted government underwritten public housing and they sold off all the council estates as they're known people bought into the units across the country and they became the land owning the new land owning neoliberal gentrification under the current government in the u.k. it's another socialist scheme of government underwriting property but not for their

poor people they do it for the rich people. should anyone and you go there to resist the american designers or to just. be a terrorist doing it in the. like a model that has been happening with i.b.m. and then got a bunch of the mules out of on. the back to politicking before the break i was speaking would mean the turner former ohio state senator and president of our revolution and former advisor to marco rubio's twenty sixteen presidential campaign lenny chen who's also research fellow at the hoover at stanford's rabbit hoover institution and here's the rest of that

conversation lanny. it's very interesting you worked for george w. bush last week he made an extraordinary speech he was talking about trump he didn't mention trump but it was obvious where he was going what's going on in the party that you're a member of. well look i think parties have these really difficult divisions and it happens from time to time i think we've seen it in the republican party in the past we've seen it in the democratic party in the past as well one thing about george w. bush and it's funny larry how many of my friends who are progressive now are saying to me boy i really miss church w. bush that really says something about the politics of our time you know george w. bush i consider to be an extraordinary man i thought he was an extraordinary president in a lot of ways for him to make those comments which look i don't think anybody can doubt that they were directed in part at least at that the current president for george w. bush to make those statements really kind of demonstrates how far down the rat hole

we've gotten in terms of the political dialogue and really an effort to elevate it back to hopefully an area where we can have civil disputes because that's not where we're at right now do you think we're going to reform the tax code. i certainly don't agree with the way that the republicans are doing it i mean to give the one percent and even less than the one percent more tax cuts meanwhile the majority of the people especially the working poor and middle class bear the burden of that to starve government in that way and not use the people's money for the benefit of the people i don't necessarily think that that is the way to go at all so i'm not sure and the republicans are really looking for a win you know i don't support their win but they're looking for one legislative when they have not had any but this president certainly does it doesn't make it easy for republicans and what he's proposing does not make it easy for many of the democrats to support i believe that the democrats put out a letter to the president august the first if my memory serves me correctly in

terms of the things that they want to see in the tax reform plan let me do that do we know what's in the plan. we don't know exactly larry there's been a lot of discussion about different kinds of provisions you know we had this idea a couple days ago floated that they might try to curb benefits to four hundred one k. plans which of course are personal retirement plans that employer sponsored i think that would be an unfortunate idea i think the president very i think correctly said that would not be a good way forward but what we do know larry is that overall they're trying to see rate reduction on both the corporate side and the individual side they're trying to figure out a way to get all this money that's parked overseas to bring that back home and they're trying to figure out a way to raise wages for the average american worker by cutting the tax burden so we'll have to see what actually happens but you know larry we've seen these fights before the devil is always in the details. nina trump has said that if they don't pass some tax reform they'll be dire consequences for the republican party do you

agree do you think they have to pass something they need some type of legislative victory dire consequences i mean the president is he threatened the party even before he became president even before he ran as their nominee and so i'm not surprised that he is threatening them now i mean he his approval rating is at all time low but within the faithful faithful part of his base they still believe in what he's doing so you know this dowsing back and forth with the president about who will have a consequence and who will not we will see we we know that he is he's a fighter in that way and so when he makes that kind of threat he'll be out there doing it in between him and bad in who knows what's going to happen to the republican party let me ask you you ben is he a plus or a minus as you shoot. well right now i think he's he's disruptive he's talking about potentially taking on some of the incumbent republican senators i recognize

what he's trying to do is to channel some of this populist energy but it's not helpful right now and we've got a number of speaking on behalf of republicans we've got a number of republicans who are up for reelection in very difficult states we've got opportunities in other states to potentially pick up additional seats in a republican majority and to create a sensually intra party fights to create fights between republicans in states like indiana or missouri or west virginia where there are potential opportunities for republicans i think is problematic but we'll have to see you know i mean bannana still trying to decide which candidates he's supporting where he's going to play i think it's too early to tell but so far at least the signs don't seem particularly positive to me switching subjects a little need a double from sun a personal check twenty five thousand dollars to the father of corporal dillon baldrige the u.s. soldier killed in afghanistan in june and he make of that is it appropriate. i'm

not so sure so he picks this in and condolences to the family and just for all of our men and women who are out there on the front line for us but is this family today with family will it be tomorrow when you do that kind of thing you you make it hard because how how will he decide not to do that again for some of the family so i'm not so sure that it is appropriate because if he's not going to do it for all you know why would you do it for one lenny what do you think. yeah look i mean i think this whole discussion you know over the last couple of weeks particularly around the operation and me share and what happened there i mean there's a lot of big question marks about exactly what went wrong but clearly something went wrong we have the last tragically of these brave men who served in our military and in this particular situation like i think of the president decided he wanted to help out he's certainly entitled to do that i don't see a problem with that i think the question becomes going forward how do we prevent this from happening again how do we make sure that our brave men and women who are

put in harm's way are are well equipped and they're ready to go and don't face a situation like this one where apparently they were ambushed i think that's the question we all need to be focusing on not whether the president cut a check to some guy or not what do you make of the fact that so many in congress didn't know about a thousand members of the u.s. military in nigeria they said no and so hopefully they're going to have the hearings to really get to the bottom of this there's no way that that should be going on in any country in the world and the congress not know about it. and the american people need to know about what happened there in a deeper way let me john mccain who has taken some saloon as a troop legally is calling for a war powers debate in the aftermath of nigeria you think you get that. i don't know if he'll get it but i but i think senator mccain's absolutely right we have to take a careful look and this is not just by the way a trump thing this is something over the last several administrations where you

have arguably president sending men and women into harm's way without proper authorization i do think this is something that the congress needs to take a serious look at they need to figure out where do their powers an authorization stop and word of the president's begin and i think it's an appropriate discussion to have but larry again is one of those things a substantive argument which i don't think we're going to get to because we're too busy arguing about the other stuff the stuff that arguably doesn't matter nearly as much as the bigger questions around the scope of power and military deployments and who ought to be doing what how do you think nina he will do on the twelve day trip to asia. only god knows i mean the president certainly has not invoked confidence or any of our war world leaders whether they be in europe africa or asia one can hope that it goes well but with mr cuomo you never know. lenny all five living presidents recently gathered in texas raising money for hurricane

victims. did a special tape for it to the new have times published an interview with jimmy carter who said he's willing to go back diplomatically the north korea why not take that shot. well look i enjoy jimmy carter you know as somebody who served in a number of different roles sometimes well sometimes not as well i think if there's an opportunity the president should absolutely take him up on it i don't see any reason why we wouldn't want to deploy people regardless of their political party regardless of their persuasion in solving difficult problems i think the challenge with north korea is that we've got to wonder if jimmy carter's got the right point of view on this and i think that's something that the president's going to have to determine but i appreciate that the former president wants to get involved and i don't see any reason why you've got good people you wouldn't want to want to send him out to do things to improve our likelihood of having for example a diplomatic resolution with north korea or in other cases around the world do you

think nina oh absolutely at some point this is really about america and it's about humanity all across the world so if president carter wants to do that and president trump sees that as useful he should definitely take him up on that and i do commend president jimmy carter for being willing to be part of the solution here because that is rare especially in this politically charged environment where people are just trying to get one up on each other instead of trying to find a solution so i applaud president jimmy carter or not i do hope that president trump will take him up on that and let these see the republicans passing some major legislation in the months. well they're going to have to larry before december eighth deal again with the debt ceiling and the financing of government so that's one thing i do think that there is momentum there for tax reform or tax cuts wherever they end up because they realize that unless they get something done to the question you asked earlier there will be some significant electoral results and

electoral issues that will be raised if they can't get something done between now and next year so i do tend to think that there will be some activity exactly what remains to be seen but i do think there are opportunities that they're going to need to seize on if they want to have a good twenty eight hundred midterm cycle meaning as a major supporter bernie sanders where you see you party going in the twenty eighteen elections. well hopefully progressive i mean senator sanders is still right now the most popular active politician in the country across all groups whether it's people color african-americans hispanics women overwhelmingly democrats overwhelmingly by eighty percent and so we're seeing lots of progressive movement especially on the local levels we just won a big victory in the south larry in birmingham alabama what ran the would be and ran as a progressive a young african-american millennial running as a progressive and we're seeing that kind of stuff happen all over the country on the local level and hopefully we can take that to the state level and federal level

and beyond me god knows the democrats have their share of problems right now but i am hoping that we will continue to push a more progressive agenda to lift the women men and children of this country when we were only twenty eighteen. i think it's going to be a very competitive election cycle i think both parties have some internal issues that they're working through now i think a lot of this though frankly larry it is going to come down to the public's perception of the president and i think if president try if the economy and president trump if the perception there continues to be that there are problems i think that will trickle down to the republican candidates for congress i think if there's a perception that things are going better then i think things will be better for them but i do think that in midterm elections particular that first midterm election of a president's new term which is what we're coming into now a lot of it is a referendum on the president and what the president has or has not been doing nina lenny thank you both so much for your time today thank you thank you thanks for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on

my facebook page treaty of kings they exude over the get use the politics. and that's all for this edition of politic. about your sudden passing i phone lee just learnt you worry yourself in taking your last turn. 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 chest. i remember when we first met my life turned on each other. but then my feeling started to change you talked about more like it was again still some more fun to view those that didn't like to question our arc and i secretly promised to never be like it's one does not leave a funeral in the same as one enters the mind it's consumed with this one to. speak

to us there are no other takers. claimed that mainstream media has met its make. for over a year we have heard nonstop but somehow in some way trump colluded with russia to win the presidential election though we have yet to see the evidence of this however it appears more likely it was the democratic party who did the colluding. but also. to the ship between. now and a fairly strong. study done by a well respected scientists. do chemicals that. really

increase the risk of cancer. known to use. this is true by independent scientists need industry. and station for my time as well as the others why is that the meat lobby. doing if you want to learn more. about. big business against. all.

spain's prime minister urges the senate to suspend catalonia autonomy and dismiss its leader members will vote in about an hour on whether to take direct control of the region these are live pictures from barcelona where people are campaigning for independence also this hour with a target stops us from advertising on its platform in the latest attack on russian media and the multibillion dollar cyber security industry could be about to double in value in the coming years under the constant threat to the internets.