hello and welcome to crossfire we're all things are considered i'm teetotal of well both the republicans and democrats claim victory in the wake of the midterm elections but it seems the election settled little if anything now there is a dueling investigations warfare gridlock on steroids is this what the voters voted for. cross talking after the midterms i'm joined by my guest michael flanagan in washington he is president of flanagan consulting and a former congressman in new york we have rochelle ritchie she is a political analyst and a former press secretary for house democrats and in st paul we cross to david

schultz he is a hamelin university professor of political science all right cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciate it rochelle may go to you first in new york we know what the results of the election elections are but what are the lessons to be drawn from it i mean we both have the we see the republicans and democrats claiming victory and they have their points but we still have the same kind of polarization and as i said in my introduction it looks like we're going to have dueling investigations is this what the voters voted for go ahead rochelle in new york. well you know i had a lot of hope after the election that maybe the tide had turned in maybe that the divisiveness that we saw in our country would start to diminish but as you have seen that does not seem to be the case we have the president coming out and already calling some things take news we have you know we're porters fighting with the president and so it just seems like this is going to continue but what i am proud of as far as what happened with the election is the diversity that we saw as

a result of people heading to the polls you had the first two muslim women elected to congress you had two african-american women in connecticut and massachusetts that are the first african-americans women to represent their district so this was a very exciting time as far as diversity in our country but it seems like we're right back to the warfare this you just mentioned when it comes to politics in our country and i don't think this is what the american people what i think the american people want our politicians to get to work and get things under control but now it seems that it's going to continue to be this sort of political divide and now it's going to be on capitol hill even more obviously with the democrats controlling the house and the republicans controlling the senate ok michael we. talked about diversity and that's really what the democrats talk about all the time but what about unity i think that's with three really missing you know how do we unify and in there's no one really talking about that we did have some kind of

overture president trump we'll see where that goes but we haven't gone past. surmounted the divisions here i mean the first thing you know we're going to impeach kavanaugh we're going to investigate terms tax returns to be the electorate vote for those things go ahead michael. it's a great question and i'm not sure what the it worked or it voted for. the the vast majority of americans want their government to. you know on me in this. this this creeping understanding quote unquote understanding of conventional wisdom that americans love divided government americans do not love divided government. the wall street loves divided government because they give stacey's two to two. particularly financial transactions and gives the fed a lot of power so wall street loves divided government businesses often like divided government but people do not like the fighting that i was talking about

they just don't americans are generally nice people that like people to get along and i look forward to the nancy reaching out to not the president so much although that that's her inclination reach out to the republicans in the house there is so much work that the house needs to do with itself and rochelle having had her time at the house knows how the chamber functions and how dysfunctional it's become in the last twenty years it just doesn't work like it ought to work and nancy made some really interesting remarks which kind of went under the radar after the election talking about restoring transparency to the house and trying to do other things but she was talking about house keeping house cleaning in the house of representatives and if they can restore power to committee chairman if they can do the work that needs to be done throughout all the appropriations committee get back to a budget cycle work with republicans bring back the earmark i know that's heresy but i'm a big fan of that because it allows congress to do what its main function is is to tax me and spend my money instead of that off to the administration and having them

spend it for me i mean it's these are these are things that if the house goes back to doing these things they must to get along to do them and then that getting along will get the appropriations process will get the authorization for us is the kind of oversight nancy's looking to do a bring all that back when out of which she's actually right now i guess i could be now i hasn't happened in a long time i can tell that you were in congress because you make a lot of sense here but unfortunately politics into rob's david one of the outcomes . the election i think is fair isn't it now the g.o.p. is the party of trump and never trump or sort of sensually gone now michael was suggesting that nancy pelosi talked to the republicans well this is the republican the trump republican party right now and when you have so many divison figures in the democratic party any kind of compromise is considered appeasement and that's what bothers me and so it bothers me about these investigations where russia gate

is going to go is the investigations into the d.o.j. in the f.b.i. going to be shut down completely because they don't suit the narrative of the democrats david where you know politics interrupts always go ahead in st paul ok couple things first i was never so optimistic that i thought this election was going to really bring the united states together let's say that even if the democrats had taken the house of the senate we still would have what had divided government we would have had the democrats on one side the truck and the truck trouble to party on the other side executive branch so i was never optimistic what we didn't see in this election getting to your question here is that as a result now we have a house of representatives democratic and obviously far more look at all that it was before a republican senate that is more republican and more conservative than it was before the two are moving in opposite directions you know point and finding common ground is going to be even more difficult than it was before just one observation

the second observation is there probably were some people who voted and said yes we want trust in peach we want stop investigating cetera et cetera now a certain amount of what congress is legitimately supposed to do is oversight there's a certain concepts all checks and balances but now the question is how does the democrats respond to all of it terms of moving forward as well as republicans will do two choices here choice what the next few days do the democrats go with that he is weaker of or to. go with somebody else that sends a signal in terms of who's in charge of the democratic party to do they go for what the full throttle impeachment investigations or do they do what i would recommend they do is to say pass all their legislation passed everything they want send it to the senate force the republicans to have to react to it or struck to have to react to it and then either hope it gets signed are one against them like crazy twenty

twenty these i think are going to tell us something about the role of the democratic party equally as we know that the republican party is now firmly within the grasp of donald trump ok we're going to have you back off and i love that kind of analysis rochelle in new york respond to what david had to say of the different options brilliant analysis go ahead. the first thing is peace and it is not really a popular idea whether you're asking democrats independents and obviously republicans so and i think that we have to be careful when we start talking about impeachment because even though the democrats have control of the house they will still have to have two thirds of the vote in the senate and i don't think that the senate is going to obviously vote to impeach the president still investigation the investigation is done and unless that investigation reveals some sort of criminal behavior on behalf of the president i don't see impeachment actually working or really getting the support of the american voters because it's already not a popular idea and we have to also remember that yes people did have to the polls

and vote against donald trump i think there was a poll out there said thirty nine percent of people were voting to oppose trump so a lot of people weren't even voting. in response to the to the ideas but you know as far as nancy pelosi being the speaker of the house i do think that people want to change this is a very like david said a more liberal. democratic house that we've seen before but you know i was the press secretary for the democratic policy and communications committee and we have three co-chairs and that was davis's selena and i came jeffrey's and the one that i out of those three. that is really popular on both sides of the aisle is a keen geoffrey's and you know i think that if the democrats voted jeffries a speaker obviously if you decided that's what he wanted i think he would be a really good candidate for that considering he would also be the first black speaker of the house which would be very historic and also full of those

african-american voters that are kind of split right now between being a democrat or being an independent michael one of the things we found interesting is that trump made it all about himself in the liberal media was more than willing to give their to you. still calls the shots here also i think in the wake of this election the g.o.p. is unified and unified around the president i think the of the democrats show there is a lot of splits in going going further to the left we have the old guard to low see that wants to hang around i mean it's really the democrats that have to really clean up their house and get unified because during the during the election they were all repeated the same talking points i mean i find it amazing ok the problem is is that how the democrats would be able to move forward go ahead michael before we go to the break. yeah and you steal my talking points peter and so they're venting and i mean things i want to say and you say them for me. the

biggest problem that the new democratic speaker is going to face is is getting something out of her caucus she has one of the i presume nancy she will have one of the smallest margins in history which means she'll have to get virtually a unanimous vote every time she does anything i am going on record right now predicting that she will lose some journal votes and rochelle might know what i mean by that so some ordinary regular run of the mill votes will go down as certain members of her caucus peel off to try and make a point or show her a lesson she's not going to be able to pass anything of the house with any regularity or certainty it's kind of like watching the republicans in the senate in the last congress you know will it will they get the nuff votes together or won't that you're going to be seeing that daily in the house and it will be up to the republicans to help and i think and a lot of things the republicans will be glad to help are if we can approach this in a conciliatory fashion and that's going to involve a lot of the things that your other two guests have talked about today and whether

they're going to proceed in a thoughtful let's run the go away or that political power away hold out that we're going to go to a hard break after that short break we'll continue our discussion on after the midterms. more of my guy will survive all this on a device used by professional. money. that's right these guys are completely not accountable and we're just. totally destabilized the global economy you need to protect yourself. as. most people think just stand out in this business you need to be the first one on

top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest raid in truth to stand down the news business you just need as the right questions and demand the right answer. questions no. one else so small seemed wrong but all roads just don't all. get to shape out these days become educated and engagement equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. it's hard to imagine decades after the war a nazi don't tour was still active rich in the nineteen seventies crittle had as

the chair of its board a man convicted of mass murder and slavery. a german company grown and developed so the demise of the drug it was promoted as completely safe even during pregnancy it turned out to have terrible side effects what has happened to my baby anything. yeah she said he's just. minix of it a mind victims have to this day received no compensation they never apologized for the suffering that. not only want the money i want the revenge. welcome back to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter labelle to remind you we're discussing after the midterms. ok let me go back to david in st paul immediately after the election results came

in president donald trump fired his attorney general or told him to resign jeff sessions what does that tell you is that some kind of veiled threat because he's going to have a. temporary. a.g. there that it will probably act very differently than jeff sessions because he doesn't have to worry about. being tied to any kind of commitment bs would be russia gate what was trump telling everybody. i think in a couple things he's telling he's also a couple things that he learned from the election now think about it right now there's a dose under the current lineup here has no serious chance with republicans controlling the house in the senate that they're going to do any any serious investigations of donald trump or probably act at all upon any conclusions that the dollar investigation comes with come january they'll have kind of a wild card here in terms of what the democrats may or may not do and i think why

by removing jeff sessions at this point in sort of holding the ball or investigation hostage a little bit here gives gives that his truck gives himself some leverage in which terms of perhaps. shutting down the investigation as a message to the democrats to say that if you move on anything i'm just not going to cooperate or perhaps in the situation here and to say to the democrats may do something i'm just going to get rid of bob muller at this point and therefore i'm going to have a fight directly with you and if i fight directly with you what does that do that plays incredibly well with my base twenty twenty if i'm running for reelection so i would use this as a stick as a little bit set a little bit of this threat a little bit of this to teacher remover kind of like a chess match terms of saying that if you are going to now investigate or do more against me i am going to respond in way to try to protect myself so it's it's an interesting set of the numerous going ok the same on the same thing moshe let me

quote donald trump in his tweet here if the democrats think they are going to waste taxpayer money investigating us at the house level then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all the leaks of classified information and much else at the senate level two can play the game what are your thoughts we show. you now this test i sat you know mentality that where a sane on capitol hill is really embarrassed saying i mean this investigation started. republican controlled house and senate as i think said the president basically picked matthew would occur because he would have for had already came out and said that the russian pro was going too far and that rod rosenstein needed to put some sort of limitations on the this investigation that muller was conducting so we know why this is happening and it's happening because the president doesn't want the truth to come out and that's the bottom line and as i said before if the

truth does come out and the president was involved in some sort of criminal behavior he you know the only way that he's really going to end up being impeached is if the senate approves of that and so i think that it with a kind of backfire on republicans if it is found that the president was involved in some sort of criminal activity and they said well forget it will forgive him anyway and we're not going to impeach him as a result of that i think that would backfire maybe not so much for trump's trump supporters but for those loyal conservatives they're really conservative principles i think that it would backfire on republicans for those people michael where you know where you know not because you know russia gate is in predicated on a crime unlike watergate for example there is no crime there and they're investigating if there could be a crime everything is turned upside down i think that would trump is saying is that if you want to continue this then i think it's fair game what about all of that

leaking in unmasking all of which is not been touched at least as far as we know in the public here i mean there's a lot to find out which the liberal c.n.n. and amisom b.c. complete almost completely ignore but there's a lot out there go ahead michael. well yeah let me let me unpack just a little bit something that your other two guests liking think lost over i think they might be coming from a premise that they're something even if it's not illegal to investigate i'm going to come from the premise that trumps to nothing wrong and the motors investigation is largely political and always has been what he's managed to find are all sorts of ancillary things about people around him. man a fourth and others and things that they've done previously in their life and and a bunch of russians who will never show up in court are ones that do will show up by proxy but it's not developed into anything that affects the president directly and i think he is coming from

a place where he knows it never will because there's nothing there so i think what you always hope that that sessions would do and didn't and what rosenstein would do and didn't and what what his new acting a.g. will do is that limit man a fourth and say focus on me focus on whatever you think i've done or whatever you think my administration has done or my campaign as the case may be focus on that let's have a report let's get it over with and let's get it done and leave all the ancillary matters out including what my taxes look like and all the other things the democrats would love to drag forward for fun and profit this is i think the reason that sessions is gone is because he couldn't put his arm around the investigation more not not so much to hide for trump but to focus and say let's do this and get it over with you know david it also i think very simply is that trump would like to have his own a.g. i mean i don't think that every other president has had that privilege i think trump would like to have the same go ahead you want to jump in and same paul go

ahead a couple things here first as you say is that you know let people say well to do something wrong you've got something wrong with your premises here i mean part of why we have the investigations to watch is to actually fight some of this stuff out so i'm has it's. which is why. where the other in terms of the something or good not just in iraq also keep in mind that that not all special prosecutors and not all prosecutors wind up going to get something to investigate and wind up indicting and then they find other stuff that's out there so this whole argument of sort of saying it's fishing trip or prosecutors or fishing trips or it's sort of political you know i kind of cast that off to the site that's sort of partisan like we've done it i don't you know i'm sorry i don't usually interrupt but that's that that's not i'm sorry that's that's not partisan language if you're there to find out wrong official wrongdoing in the sake of government and you wind up fishing and you wind

up finding money laundering in the ukraine from fifteen years before that's fine and that's going on and i would love to have time stand and his care if it's automatic part of the job of the special prosecutor to be doing that this is this is a god and if your wife or my wife were attacked in the same way one of millions survive it we just couldn't do that so i mean what i'm saying is if you want to focus on the russia russia investigation please do and everything associated with that and that's all well and fine and if you find somebody that you didn't go after originally involved in this my goodness yes burn them down but if you're just grabbing people that might be associate with the president to set him on fire for something they've done years ago that's the stuff that you should make the referral to the a.g. make the referral to the state prosecutors or whomever and move on this is not what he was commissioned to do and it's ok lance done it it's fine it's great but that's where the thing is that's why it's being kept alive it should be stopped ok david been assured point and i'm going to rochelle go ahead finish your point david i'm sorry david i so i am sorry david and i have a pro that's the point of the program go ahead david first i was going to say is

that he has referred things to other prosecutors such as the york yet science people like colin and so forth like that so to say that he hasn't been doing that i'd say that's inaccurate the second thing is you know that let's say somebody is investigating one crime as a prosecutor and the uncover others and for you to say well hacked because you were just. one thing and done another you should should ignore the other ones that's really not a good argument what i'm getting at here is that yes it was put together to look at what was happening with russia finding other things that are going on out there and get i have no idea what's going to follow at this point what people say what are they what's what's going to conclude he could very well conclude that his best acacias over the president did nothing wrong nobody else did wrong you conclude i hope ok all right david david david let me jump in because i want to i want to talk about other things here because i have my my whole attitude about this whole hoax is that if there was something out there it would have been leaked on loan long time ago anyway let's move on michelle i want to go to

a different topic here if the democrats take a very hard line position visa v. donald trump don't do the democrats fear that they could create a red undertow since in two thousand and twenty since there was no blue wave in two thousand and eighteen well i think that there was a little bit of a blue wave democrats did pick up more seats than what they had well i sit in historical lows and historic polling historical lows for midterms but go ahead keep going. well it well i think that you also have to consider that seventy seven percent of this country is divided fifty five percent or so do not approve of this president and thirty nine percent of voters voted against have so it'll be interesting to see what happens in two thousand and twenty and let's keep in mind that it really seems that what we saw in the midterm elections is that the democrats really did win the popular vote if you will i mean they picked up seven gubernatorial. the governor elections they won those which they really weren't

expecting to when we were still on hold to see what's going to happen in georgia as well but i think this is a good indication for democrats that people are sort of fed up with what they're seeing happen with this president and look it's not just about his policies yes the economy is doing great that's wonderful but when it comes to health care and when it comes to some of the or the the races rhetoric that we see coming from this administration people do not like that and it's funny because it's like we have this whole fear mongering thing happening with this immigration caravan or these illegal immigrants they were trying to come into our country and now we're not even hearing about it so i think that the president will side and other fear mongering tactic to get his base out of ok and i think that they're almost i mentioned we're almost out of time we are waking up to we're almost out of time want to give michael the last word here i really hate i really hate how in d.c. and c.n.n. race beat all the time through these campaigns i think it's going to continue

michael michael to final question forty seconds is it a good idea for the democrats to continue to. work against trump in the way they do in the media because it doesn't seem like a we will he wobbles but he doesn't fall down michael go ahead. where you're go a little bit longer and you're on your show because you're on your show trump is like a black hole and i meant that in a good word the more garbage that's thrown out of the bigger and stronger thrives on conflict. if i were a democrat i would avoid giving this to him and i don't think of democrats in the media in the same breath i think the media are there to sell soap and they'll do whatever they have to do to do it i think the democrats have an opportunity to separate themselves out and be able to do what needs to be done and that's manage the business of government from the people's house and i hope that they will do that and i think if they do they'll find republicans very very well said to end the program many thanks to my guests in washington new york and in st paul and thanks

to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. you next time and remember. there's a break here in rwanda why says terrorists. bad memories. twenty four years ago this country song. to the world. after the genocide there are women in rwanda. children women to fix the broken.

ministries police forces and city administrations of many countries depend on one corporation that doesn't like will still be on the board doesn't. just damas down the guns. woods as that's on into this it's been proprietary software you don't know the source code isn't that a such a security risk when you have a black box operating in the public eye to microsoft's dependency puts governments on design. threat and not only that some think off message more than that so we close the office of the assistant is it still in the news this is really the local the more the folk the more suck the this you all do some of those with. these this is the. one who started on me the old vision stopping there was and still holds a fund is up and his cards on the fine. good

will to the truth of his to some it will be my will for sundry of the syria. rolls going to say i support the reserves with the most historical. disney and with . a lot of fellows on the problem as well because i am. just. going to. look at a scene that i know is that bad deal but you also look at the model your body is

good for with most of the food and so much more but just trust the fluid souls of. the moon you were born you must. move. protests across the us soft a president trump for south attorney general jeff sessions some who initiated by the big gates this nomination but are starting again. his removal. in texas for. betraying feminist values. votes in favor of the state's republican for the. i'm very tired of being castigated as some sort of racist simply based on my skin color or you who interests are you represent if you're only as a white woman we're presenting the best interest of other white women then we absolutely have a problem absolutely.