a whole series of trade retaliations going back and forth this is not unlike what we've seen really over the last two years in terms of the ongoing trade battles that not only include your canada mexico but really asia as well who would have the . cruise lines in. i don't think we do know that and i think this administration has tried to pull back some of that loosening of that that occurred during the obama administration so again i you know look taken to its logical extreme that would certainly deter those kinds of travel operations from increasing their business with cuba oh sure sure we do would then. well look this is a complicated situation and this is not necessarily a partisan situation obviously the government there. you know there are questions about the legitimacy of the government there are questions about how they have

serious concerns about how they have treated their people but i'm not sure this way is the right way to do it certainly diplomatic pressure economic sanctions are probably much more effective than a drum has a really good number of administration officials shooting and acting to pass through these he said you like sat doing the do si do move more quickly move flexibility what do you make of a lot of acting and solutions. well i think it's problematic for the functioning of government when the secretary of homeland security left last week as well as the small business administrator that was the fifteenth turnover in the trump cabinet over the past just a little bit more than two years that's a record going back you know over the last forty years or so through presidents as varied as reagan and clinton and so you not only have a turnover at a senior level of government you also have and throughout the government we have

a vacancy right now running the f.a.a. which is in charge of airline safety we have a vacancy to be the bastard in mexico to time when we apparently have a national emergency on the border and so this cascades all the way down and ultimately the lack of this many permanent leaders impacts the function of government which ultimately impacts what the american people see in terms of the services that are delivered to them lou troubling his newly confirmed interior david bernhard is already under investigation by the department's inspector general in connection with a conflict of interest so many questions raised about how this administration vets its nominees what's your assessment of how they do it. well not well you know i served in the obama white house for the first four years i ran president obama's

transition we carefully vetted nominees not only in terms of their personal background but also in terms of their financial backgrounds as well and once these folks came into office we ensured that they adhere to government ethics rules what you have right now with the interior secretary is somebody who comes from. the industry the fossil fuel into or has lobbied on behalf of industries that are regulated by the interior department and he's continued to maintain those relationships while he's supposedly serving the american people and so he's crossed the line allegedly in a number of different ways in terms of advocating for policy changes that were sought by his former clients we also have another story that has led to a new class set of calls for investigations that in terms of the public schedules that he has released they've essentially removed all references to meetings with industry officials and so again it's you have to go back to this president saying

he would drain the swamp he would change the culture in washington and that's all laudable unfortunately the people that he's put into place seem to embody the very swamp that he was supposed to be training what do you make use reaction to trains for more. well it's a troubling move it's troubling on a number of respects it's probably illegal it's not clear that the department of homeland security has the authority to spend federal funds to relocate people to different parts of the country it also is troubling in an era of. it's troubling as an example of political retribution against his opponents that he's deliberately targeting states and cities that are controlled by democratic governors democratic mayors you know and what i've been encouraged by is by the reactions of

mayors in those cities who not only find this troubling but say look you know we are a city that wall comes immigrants and you saw that play out right here and where i am right now in seattle the mayor jenny durkan said look you know we don't think you should do this but if you do this we are welcoming community and so please send them here rahm emanuel said that in chicago folks in california said that as well but this taken more broadly this this manipulation of immigrants coming to this country for political purposes is very disturbing how do you think. the fire. well look this is really not just a tragedy in france it's really an international tragedy and you know all of our hearts go out to the people of france the people of paris and all those that worship and have visited this this beautiful institution i've been there as well you know in this instance is like this you know the american president really ought

to sit back in what i think is trouble so many of us is this kind of you know backseat driving that this president has done you know he tweeted out that that we ought to take water tankers and drop water on top of the cathedral you know anyone who knows anything about you know how you put out fires so that's kind of a ludicrous idea had you done that that simply would have made the situation worse and collapse probably the walls of the cathedral you know what he is doing now in terms of offering us assistance to france to repair the cathedral is entirely appropriate and i commend him for doing that although it certainly begs the question why hasn't he offered that same level of assistance to the people of puerto rico who he continues to try to again. to claim some level of political retribution against them notwithstanding the fact that there are americans thousands of americans who are still suffering there as a result of hurricane maria knows this which would sure. well i think

overall the last two years have been. have really tested the norms of of democracy you know and literally every single day there is another instance were the president's behavior has kind of gone beyond what his you know forty four presidents have done what i'm encouraged by is that largely the guardrails of democracy have held up not well but they have held up congress i think in particular since january of this year has. remain some kind of check on government i wish the senate would be much more forceful in that but you've seen even more recently that a number of senate republicans are starting to push back on this of mr asians actions the press has been a faithful guardian of our democracy not withstanding the attacks by the president and you've seen this heightened level of engagement among people as well and so

look these are challenging times in our country and you know. for people like me on the progressive side the you know the policy changes that this president has put through are deeply troubling but i think beyond that are his attacks on the foundations of our democracy where you go. well that's a good question roy i'm optimistic and i'm pessimistic i'm optimistic as i said by the level of engagement among the american people you saw you know really record breaking turnout in the midterm elections last year you see this constant movement among young people to be more engaged there that goes back not only to the to the very day after the president's inauguration with a women's march but also the gun safety marches as well so in the sense that people are understanding the importance of voting saying gauge in their country that i'm

optimistic about that i am discouraged however that by by these constant attacks on the rule of law on the free press on dissent in these countries and again this is not a partisan thing and if you go back to you know there were certainly strong feelings about president obama there are strong feelings about george w. bush during the iraq war but they understood that the role of these different institutions whether it was congress of the press the role that those institutions played in our democracy unfortunately this president doesn't understand or respect those other institutions lawyers always think should turn into a great having you witness. always thank you very much for more politicking going to the brick.

yard. russia says. you know we're big partners and to do. this and conspiracy it's time to wake up. to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bats and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks.

aeroflot russian and lights. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next the ball different clubs on one hand it is logical to sit in the home fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and the fresh perspective i'm used to surprising us all why not if you think. i'm going to talk about football not the or else you can think i was going to the.

by the way ways of that slide here. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world the politics small business i'm show business i'll see you then. t's holiday on how to have an international memorial awards twenty nine seat are now open for entries all media professionals are eligible whether you are a free lunch journalist work through terms of media or part of a global news conference to participate in sunday published works and video all written for. go to award. and enter now. though they say assets on their books carry their referring to bonds with a price of one hundred cents on the dollar but don't have a sale value in the market greater than maybe one penny on the dollar so again this

departure dorian gray economy all these quote assets on the central bank balance sheets if you added the all up i think the central banks and cuts have something like fifty to fifty five trillion dollars of what they call assets that might be worth mcdonald's hamburger when they have no collateral value i thought they're worthless that's a fact. that politicking return now to our political panel they are political combs amy holmes she's in new york and she fills in for us occasionally brilliantly and in chattanooga tennessee brian joyce host of the brian joyce show on talk radio. f.m. game he was sure that this question with the tax returns he doesn't want to give them up the acting chief of staff says that it's a political stunt and democrats will never see his returns what is he hiding.

well we don't know if he's hiding anything goes i mean anything well we don't know because democrats haven't said precisely what they're looking for they just want to get stacks and stacks of documents and comb through them and you know use whatever they can find against the president but here's what i think here's where i think the democrats need to be really careful this could turn into mutually assured destruction because the president of the united states he has the authority to ask for tax documents from anybody he likes so he could ask nancy pelosi or chuck schumer or any person on the other side for precisely the same documents which by the way they don't release either our congressional leaders or not releasing a full accounting of their tax returns they generally they they list kind of a range of what their investments are and such are in terms of disclosure so i'm not sure democrats should want to go down this road there's also the second issue where some of actually raised which it would be illegal if they were to publicly

reveal what they find in the president's tax returns that you're not supposed to be able to do that so i'm just not sure how productive this is going to be or if it's really good politics. but gevalt keep plugging. i think he's right that the democrats could easily find themselves falling into a trap here because trump as usual is refusing to obey by any sort of norms or rules or regulations of the presidency and the more that democrats push here i think the more dangerous it is for them they come off looking like they're begging the president for this or they're demanding this and the more trump looks like the victim now you know larry back to your question as to whether or not the president is hiding something obviously he is if you asked me to show something to you and i have nothing to hide i will show it to you on the first request this is a man who three years into this process still refuses to show these tax returns and what democrats want to see is they want to see whether or not our president the

president of the united states is being financially controlled by russian all of us and those rumors have been hanging over donald trump since before he ran for the presidency his own son has admitted that they got the financing for their golf resorts from the russians i would like to know if my president is controlled by russian oligarchs i want to find out ok we should go on from there amy this week president trump restated his hope of transferring illegal immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities what do you make of that. well it's certainly been fascinating to see the reaction of the democratic party and leaders of sanctuary cities saying wait a minute wait a minute we didn't really mean it we can't handle all of these people coming here he says even cher who i would assume you actually know larry tweeting that you know we don't have room we can't handle it we have all of these homeless people

including homeless vets you know we cannot be absorbing all of these illegal immigrants and i think what needs to be said that isn't said enough is that many of these illegal immigrants crossing crossing our borders from that northern triangle they are coming here seeking asylum which they are not going to get and a lot are abusing the asylum process a lot of the smugglers are intentionally overburdening the asylum process so that people don't get their court dates they don't have to worry about it for years and years and years as they're living in the united states and putting down roots there's a very important statistic that viewers need to know in f y i fiscal year two thousand and sixteen only twenty thousand four hundred and fifty five people from all over the world were granted asylum in the united states that's it and among mexico and central america roughly only sixty six hundred well we're getting more than that per month most of these people will not get asylum most of them know it

but they hope the asylum process is so-called up that basically it is a get out of jail free card randi. immigration. i don't think they are well yes i do think they're anti immigration but i think more than that they're just pro trolling democrats you know to this to this policy if that's what you want to call it of dumping illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities and people seeking asylum into same story cities look larry i think i bring some unique perspective to this because i grew up in a sanctuary city i grew up in somerville massachusetts one of the most densely populated cities in america it's been a sanctuary city for thirty years that has a lower rate of violent crime lower not higher than the american average i think first of all amy is wrong some leaders of sanctuary cities have said hey if you want to give us the these illegal immigrants coming across the border on the magaluf that i think i did never out sorry more weeks i think i think democrats i

will agree with this i think democrats have messed this up in the sense that they're universal response should have been number one this is a stupid idea much like a lot of the ideas coming out of this white house but number two sure some are way they're great people i have a lower rate of violent crime and by saying to every city than you do in your nonsense where he said he and i'll take all the illegal immigrants you want i think democrats kind of messed that up what do you make of these he's going to zoom in dream appointments to keep up with it amy and the president said it's been that way because you keep should men judge and through the events a purge we're going to go along with that being secretary. well we have seen the president firing a lot of people particularly in the last week or two i've resigned fire where they pushed and they jump i think that they were pushed and that the that this administration has had a very high turnover there's also a second reason why they might be acting you know having that terminology is for

particularly for positions that require senate confirmation and not to have these ongoing battles about the president being able to staff his own administration so so long as they're acting then they don't go through that process but getting back to the immigration point you asked if the president is against immigration while in point of fact legal immigration has actually gone up under president trump to about just over a million than his present predecessor the united states normally takes in about one million illegal immigrants per year so i don't think it's fair to say that the president is against illegal immigration since it's actually gone up since he's become president brian what do you make of those young man's in south bend indiana how much noise you gonna make to you and pedal again xenu easy the new obama. i think he's going to make a ton of noise and i'm incredibly impressed by this man i mean larry what more can you say about people to judge the harvard graduate rhodes scholar afghanistan war

veteran that worked for mckinsey and company one of the top consulting firms in the entire world the man speaks seven languages are sitting president can barely speak one the guy is he is clearly i would go ahead and say he's probably the most impressive candidate out of anybody democrat or republican now you know it'll be interesting to see just how steep this meteoric rise is but i think it's going to be very very difficult for republicans to run any kind of negative slander campaign on this man if they do they're going to run themselves into that they could find themselves in a very difficult position too because you know obviously mayor pete is gay and i think that's one of the few things one of those sort of unwritten things that you don't necessarily unsaid things that you don't want to say. and i think the more maybe they go down the road of trying to attack him that way just last night i saw

tucker carlson on fox news making some very very old homophobic comments about mary pete and i think the further they go down that trap which i think a lot of republicans probably will they're going to find themselves in a trap but as it stands right now i mean this guy is a very very impressive candidate amy does you know you. people to judge he doesn't worry me interests me and for many of the reasons that we just heard from brian in terms of his personal accomplishments are tremendously impressive but one thing that was left off to left off of that list is that he's only thirty seven and i think that youth might you know count against him and youth and inexperience as we know is something that ronald reagan i was able to make quite a good joke about the other thing about mr putin judge is that he's a mayor of a relatively small you know mid sized town one hundred thousand people that's actually known for having quite a high crime rate so i think you know once we get past you know selling selling the man the personality and in seven languages in the rhodes scholarship and so forth

when it gets down into policy what he's accomplished as mayor that he could be vulnerable we don't know right now we're in the honeymoon period but we know how even periods are short and there's certainly going to be a next democratic candidate to come along i mean the field just keeps getting bigger and bigger chunks is holding a campaign rally in wisconsin on the same nights and you will white house carles funds dinner in washington. that cleavage is not ending is. what can we say here larry you know i i as much as i criticize this president i would like to find some kind words to say about him but the man is a coward he is just straight up a coward he seeks the safety of his base he seeks the safety of people he knows will will just bow down and praise every word that comes out of his mouth and he's afraid to appear at the white house correspondents' dinner i mean it's it's

a get we're in waters that are absolutely unprecedented waters unchartered waters i mean is it something that's really that important no it's not important but if the man was a real man you know like ronald reagan like barack obama like george w. bush he maybe suck it up buttercup and show up at the white house correspondents' dinner and have a laugh at himself he cannot do that because he is straight up a coward the president of the united states is a coward i hate to say it but it's true in this is just the latest example amy you know he did have a lot of fun and that there are going to all of those and there's not a lot on the kid themselves why would he not go. i've been to them as well actually was the white house correspondents dinner where he stormed out with milady when president obama was you know taking his shots at donald trump i was sitting right on the aisle and i saw the expressions as they were walking past me in fact a lot of journalists think the white house correspondents dinner is absurd and

don't go and have their own alternative functions friend of mine dana milbank he's told me at lake about what sort of self-congratulatory smug event it is and there's also another corresponds dinner for radio and television that many presidents don't show up to have been to them where the president wasn't in attendance his vice president or members of his cabinet so this whole idea that he's cowardly because he's not going to go there are plenty of people who think that this event is already bloated overrated and needs to be taken down a peg thank you guys need see again soon thank you larry. bryan joyce that robin. thank you for joining me in this edition of the politics number you can join the conversation on my facebook page intrigue me opinions engine don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all those edition of politicking.

aeroflot russian and lives. in a world of big partisan lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bad and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the

hawks. there of russian airlines. is it finally over have we finally reached the expiration date of the russia gate conspiracy hoax probably not by definition conspiracy theorists are never satisfied but a few things are for sure confidence in government has taken a hit and the reputation. and the media may never be pretty.

best's her cocaine is where four bucks for the under fifty to everybody used. cocaine you can smoke it this is worth. thirty. twenty. two this is about a fifteen people smoke this one figures. you go for these drugs in any city in the united states that she was. or want to get about the. make money. and that's what. my body told me that i belong with the poor if my thoughts my mind. and then

along with the girls. of surgery still be of any particular. person doctor. i was born a male had a sex change when i was thirty years old. i've now been living as a woman for twenty eight years and i fully regret this. problem should have gone away from by now but they hadn't so these surgeries are nothing more than plastic surgery i've had several female to male friends and you look at it and you just go oh god you paid for that it's horrible nobody can change genders is impossible. is delusional it's a mental illness. this is now one of my own flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out man.

the much similar report dispelled two years of media speculation on trumpet russia collusion but that hasn't silence the attack on the us president with the democrats finding a new angle. no collusion no obstruction the president troops engaged in the destruction of justice certainly obstructing justice multiple attempts by the present to mislead the country. government in libya accuses france of supporting rebel forces in a conflict has killed hundreds of calls to. the kremlin and this is the first meeting between the north korean leader kim jong un at the time and place yet to be honest. and aside finite man or a.