a.b. stoddard from "real clear politics." president wanders off script and he may do so now pick let's listen in. as mike that is a very good group i will tell you. i see them undercover of all the magazines every week. every month. high fred. on my fred. that is great. thank you monica for your incredible leadership of the white house. you really have done an incredible job and you have worked so hard. i want to say everyone here is proud of you. especially these folks like you. that is the future. i want to thank you, honey. i am thrilled. [applause] i am thrilled and honored to be here today to launch the national council for the american worker. joining us for the announcement is secretary wilbur ross. secretary, good. second alex acosta. education, acting secretary peter o'rourke, director mulvaney who has worked so hard on the is. small business, thank you linda. and jared, fantastic job. chris, incredible. what a group. nobody knows. all stand up, fantastic job, andrea. please stand up. [applause] really great. thank y

a.b. stoddard, columnist for real clear politics, rachel bade and sean turner. nice to have you here.el, that number is stunning because of the outcry we heard from every republican lawmaker. how do you see it. >> republicans across the country who obviously are sticking with trump and don't see this whole press conference with putin and his agreeing with putin or rather taking putin's word about not interfering in the u.s. election as a problem or reason not to support the president. that's why on capitol hill this week i think we'll see republicans take a cautious approach when it comes to this. republicans on the hill are very concerned about the president's tone toward russia and they want to do something about it and from talking to them they feel like they're separate from him and if the president isn't going to push back they need to do something, whether it's passing resolutions supporting the intel community or a resolution that would increase sanctions on russia should they interfere again in 2018 which a lot of them think russia will. but they won't attack the president per

a.b. stoddard is here with us from real clear politics and friend of the program. hello. >> hi, shep. >> shepard: your thoughts. >> well, the news about mr. weiselberg, who is an incredibly pivotal figure in the life and business dealings of donald trump makes the allies of president trump a little nervous because beyond hush payments to adult film stars, the concern has always been that the mueller probe or the probe of the southern district of new york could get into the financial dealings of the trump organization and potential financial crimes. that's why we saw president trump say emphatically a year ago to "the new york times" that would be a red line for mueller to go into his business dealings. it has to remain the probe on russia, whether or not there was collusion with the campaign and meddling by the russian federation and the russia government. he does not think it's permissible, appropriate for the special counsel to look into his business. so the idea that both michael cohen is being investigated and part of that -- the feds could be talking or in new

a.b. stoddard associate editor at real clear politics and "the washington post" columnist marc thiessen.anel. >> thank you. >> bret: your thoughts looking back at this week and where we have ended up now at the end of the week. >> donald trump's press conference and his performance was cringe-worthy and watching him try to walk it bass was cringe-worthy as well. if you look at his russia policies, they are pretty good. in fact, there is a dramatic improvement over his predecessor. expelled 60 russian diplomats over chemical attack in london. gave military aid and just today they announced $200,000 more in military aid to the ukraine. imposed new sanctions on moscow for violations on inf treaty got nato to quick in more. twice bombed assad putin's ally. if vladimir putin was trying to gets more pro-russia policies out of his support for donald trump, it kind of back fired on him. >> bret: on capitol hill, a.b., the outrage was kind of really high at the beginning of the week. it kind of petered out but then it is at a steady kind of outrage, right? >> well, the news of the second summit w

a.b. stoddard, he was asked did you have any idea the government was going to do this to you? >> i'm asking honestly do you have any expectation your government will do that? >> i do. i don't expect president trump to do it, but there's a lot of good people in the trump administration. they know how crazy this is and i hope they understand that by not responding to these outrageous claims, somehow some symmetry between an alleged cockamamie money laundering scheme, there is no symmetry to that and they have to push back publicly because if they don't it's yet one more victory for vladimir putin. >> your thoughts? >> it's so interesting what's happened since the walk back which seems like a long time ago now. the two letters and an a p-- apostrophe, it sounds like the cover they wanted to go back to business as usual. they want the focus of the conversation to be on how to confront russia and how to assure our allies in europe. they want it off of trump. >> you just named three things they're never going to get. >> but with this sort of dramatic question that maggie haberman --

a.b. stoddard of real clear politics. and mollie hemingway from the federalist.mber but there seems to be a difference of opinion among experts about whether on the one hand this is sustainable or whether it is something of a blip or an aberration because there was a surge of exports, people trying to get in under the wire from the president's tariffs taking effect. where do you come down on this? >> well, no one can argue that it is not a remarkable number. and then you cut taxes, you reduce regulations, and this is what happens when you release the animal spirits of the u.s. economy. it happened under jfk and reagan and george w. bush and it's happening again. so there is no surprise there. i don't know if the 4 point percent growth is sustainable. probably not. but i could see 3% being sustainable for a period of time based on what we have seen so far. and also, what's impressive here is not only the pace of growth, chris it's how broad these effects are being felt against different demographic groups, women, blacks, hispanics, people who have left the workfor

a.b. stoddard associate editor at real clear politics and mollie hemingway senior editor at "the federalistation all along, steve, has said, listen, we are are going to level this playing field. and if it takes us doing this battle, we're going to do it. how is this playing? >> yeah. they were launching this unapologetically, i think. if you go back and look at the things they said, they didn't expect to be at this point. listen to peter navarro and the comments he made in march. what he said was there won't be any retaliation. we are too big and powerful. there won't be any retaliation and here we are. if you go back and look at steve mnuchin's comments from may he said this isn't going to effect us. this isn't going to be the big deal that people are talking about. and we are. he said he would put the trade war on hold. and here we are. we are here because you can't rhetorically start a trade war like this and hope to control all of its various implications. i think what we are see something mexicans, chinese, and probably soon to be others taking seriously what the president said. taking

a.b. stodda stoddard.a striking reversz al the way the president spoke to the sun about theresa may, about brexit, her rival boris johnson. and what he said when he was standing next to her this morning. however, despite all of that, theresa may when asked did she feel undermined by president trump, she said no. what is your read? >> reporter: i think we're faced with that position that 3rd has put us in before, which is which president trump do we believe. the one that we heard this afternoon or the one that spoke to the sun newspaper. by the way there are helicopter s helicopters, two helicopters look to be like delivery of the that reason one helicopter have landed here. we were expecting president trump to touchdown here before taking off to see the queen at winds windsor. so quite possibly that is president trump touching down here. don't have confirmation of that yet. but i think president trump is essentially asking us what he said this afternoon to suspend our belief that we shouldn't believe that