we'll be back in a minute. >> cohan: good evening, i'm william cohan filling in for charlie rose. rebekah mercer is the billionaire heiress who not only provided pivotal support for president trump when his campaign was flailing last september but suggest he hire steve bannon and kellyanne conway who had also worked for the mercer's. said to be hugely influential, many people asked who is this 43-year-old woman? joining me is vicky ward and correspondent for the "huffington post" highline magazine. her piece is called "the blow it up billionaires." welcome, pleasure to have my former fair colleague here at this table, as charlie rose would say. ( laughter ) this is an incredible piece of journalism. i can tell you spent a lot of time on it. who are the mercers? they've suddenly appeared of what out of seems like nowhere, yet we should know more about them. >> what's really unusual about the mercers, and particularly rebekah mercer who has become the mouthpiece of her far more reclusive billionaire father -- >> cohan: a hedge fund manager. >> former scientist turned hedge fund mana

also joining me is william cohan, here in new york. a special correspondent for "vanity fair" and author of a provocative newly-titled book "why wall street matters." i note we are taping this program before president trump's address before congress later this evening. david, you mentioned in your column basically the... republicans are backed into a corner on obamacare. what do you mean? >> president obama's health law was politically moderate health law. it was market-based, took ideas from both the right and left and essentially said we're going to expand coverage for people in this market-based way. it was to the right of not only bill clinton's plan, it was to the right of richard nixon's plan, way to the right of harry truman's plan. so if you want to expand health insurance coverage, it's really hard to do it in a way that's a lot more conservative than obamacare. and republicans did a very effective job politically of blasting obamacare, but now that they're actually running government, they realize getting rid of obamacare and

we talk to william cohan, richard edel mnl and max chafkin. >> this idea show that america has been deeply disadvantaged by trade is so-- that the tech companies are the winners in ip, in-- in it, in selling products through a global supply chain. they have affordable products that they can sell through wal-mart that otherwise people couldn't afford. and the whole mythology around job loss is just that. and so this is a really important topic that the business community compared to nafta the job on ttp was so poor and it was all lead by government and totally the opposite to 20 years before on nafta. and there is the moment for the tech companies to stand up and not just them, but also the customers. the dry cleaner or the small business person who's running it on a pc that costs $700 bucks instead of 1200. this is critical to the success of the economy forward. >> tett: all about the tech sector for the hour when we continue. >> funding for charlie rose is provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored

let's bring in bill cohan, "vanity fair" special correspondent an "new york times" columnist.why wall street matters." good morning to you. >> thanks so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> in the past you've been critical of wall street. this book is somewhat defending us. can you frame that change of heart. >> sure. i'm sure you remember antonio weis former banker nominated by president obama to become under-secretary of the treasury. elizabeth warren wouldn't even meet with him because he had wall street on his resume. to me that was a catalyst, a turning point that to me the pendulum had just swung too far against wall street, too much villainizing of wall street, too much plaming wall street for every ill that had gone wrong. i thought it was time and important to remind people about what wall street does right. i have been critical of wall street because it did a lot of things wrong leading up to the financial crisis. there's still things that need to be fixed. i thought it was time to explain to people what it does right and why we should love wall street fo

richard edelman, and william cohan, a contributor to "vanity fair" and author of "why wall street matters i am very pleased to have them all at this table. welcome. max, i would like to start with you. one of the things that put uber in the spotlight is this extraordinary video of released of travis in a cab arguing with an uber driver. this comes on top of the scandal when a female employee wrote a blog saying it is a sexist place to work. it is a combination of nightmares for the company. tell us about the video. max: it has been an extraordinary month for uber. you did not mention the delete uber campaign. this video came to our beat reporter, eric newcomer, it was passed to him by a driver. it is clearly a dash cam video of travis kalanick, the c.e.o. of uber, getting into a spirited debate with a driver. it kind of reminds me of the joe the plumber video where you have a lot of uber drivers who have long felt the company does not always have their best interests in mind and you have a driver suddenly voicing those concerns and kind of being treated in a somewhat dismissive way. gilli

bill cohan. >>> here's what else is coming up on "the halftime report." >> financials seeing a huge run-up over the past year, but losing steam recently. oppenheimer is raising some red flags. >>> plus we're tracking the desks winning and losing trades so far this year in our quarterly report. if you followed steve weiss' call on january 24th, you'd be up 13% in that trade. scott and the halftime traders are back in two minutes. with e*trade's powerful trading tools, right at your fingertips, you have access to in-depth analysis, level 2 data, and a team of experienced traders ready to help you if you need it. ♪ ♪ it's like having the power of a trading floor, wherever you are. it's your trade. ♪ ♪ e*trade. ♪ ♪ start trading today at etrade.com please repeat the objective. ♪ thrivent mutual funds. managed by humans, not robots. before investing, carefully read and consider fund objectives, risks, charges and expenses in the prospectus at thriventfunds.com. >>> we're back. welcome back to "the halftime report." financials the top performing s&p sector this hour. oppenheimer reiterating its

joined now, political reporter from the daily beast, william cohan and professor christina greer. you think about the distraction here? >> what do i think about the distraction? i'm of two minds. first of all, i think that the media is on to trump if he is this kind of mad political genius, who is kind of puppet mastering the way people are talking about him or gods must be crazy situation where we're reading way more intelligence into what he's doing as to what's actually there. >> a coke bottle falls out of an airplane into a rural village. >> and the tweets are the coke bottle. >> for folks that haven't seen the movie and the rural villa r villagers are giving too much credence to the meaning of the coke bottle. >> right. there's a lot of randomness and rage and just noneffort in terms of trump. i think it's what comes naturally. >> the flip side of that, william, is a toddler may not be able to describe some strategy of game theory of working over their parents and yet a toddler can, through emotion of trial and error try to achieve outcomes. is it possible that he's very emot

bill cohan. >>> it's a busy morning on "squawk alley."e'll talk to recode kara's swisher at south by southwest in boston. and pandora's ceo joins us. and the deal of the day, intel buying mobileye, $15 billion. brian krzanich joins us first on cnbc later this morning. this is a mobile trading desk, so i can take my trading platform wherever i go. you know that thinkorswim seamlessly syncs across all your devices. the market's hot. sync your platform on any device with thinkorswim. only at td ameritrade. >>> the president this morning holds a listening session with people he calls victims of obamacare, as house republicans defend their health care plan ahead of the official omb report. there is this week, the debt ceiling showdown, trump's first budget. maya guinness is president of the committee for a responsible federal budget. always good to talk to you. good morning. >> nice to be with you. good morning. >> front page of "the washington post" -- historic cuts in trump budget. i wonder, this has to be something you're happy about. >> we

we talk to william cohan, richard edel mnl and max chafkin. >> this idea show that america has been deeplyadvantaged by trade is so-- that the tech companies are the winners in ip, in-- in it, in selling products through a global supply chain. they have affordable products that they can sell through wal-mart that otherwise people couldn't afford. and the whole mythology around job loss is just that. and so this is a rea

whether to celebrate or denigrate wall street, that is focus of new book by best selling author william cohan it matters and give us a sense of how it matters, because the president seems to have a bipolar relationship with wall street. >> not only the president but the former democratic nominee hillary clinton has a bipolar relationship. >> absolutely. >> i don't think elizabeth warren and bernie sanders have a bipolar relationship, a one polar relationship. i think there's a relationship. there's a fundamental misunderstanding. no one has been more critical than i have. i spent 17 years there, 13 years writing about it. there was so much wrong doing adg up to the financial crisis. after that, there was a prosecution of wall street executives. that led to this, i think, swinging of the pengulum. it's easy, no one is going stand-up for wall street. i don't like being in that position. that's why i wanted to write this book, to put it in perspective. we needed a fact based debate about why wall street is important. they are the left venn trical. it's the envy of the world in terms of what it d