let's bring in our political panel, cnn political commentator errol louis, cnn political analysts john avlon and david drucker all in the house. a fun morning for us. let's start with you, errol. general john kelly, what is likely to change with him as chief of staff? >> probably not as much as people would think. the reality is if you already have general kelly. >> john: mcmaster, general mattis at high levels of the administration, they haven't exercised any restraint people can see. people shouldn't think that having a high ranking general walking into the white house, anything is going to change. he's going to get an education, he general kelly is going to get an education. he's spent the last couple decades stand up and salute him when he walks in the room. that ain't going to happen anymore. he's going to be a little surprised how people are inclined to, from white house parlance leak, from our point of view, conduct a public dialogue, have discussions with the public and the press. i don't think we're going to see as much change as people would like to see. >> i'll push back on my fri

back with us, john avlon, abby phillip, david drucker. abby, first of all, we're all hopeful that john mccain will recover quickly. i think every republican and democrat on capitol hill feels the same way. it is the remarkable that the absence of just one senator means this thing would have no hope of advancing any further. it shows the predicament that mitch mcconnell is in. >> yeah. they have absolutely no room for error here and working with people who are just kind of watching the way the wind is blowing here on this bill. i actually think rand paul is not quite identifying the problem here. i think everybody knows this bill is not full repeal. i think conservatives are fully aware of that. the question is how bad is it and how much are they willing to tolerate. i don't think anybody is under the delusions that this is going to be exactly what they promised, but they don't want to sign on to something that's going to rhee ate a lot of unintended consequences, higher premiums and prices next year. i get the sense when i talk to people t

. >>> john avlon, ron brownstein and white house correspondent from bloomberg news, margaret talov. so john avlon -- >> good morning. >> normally a chief of staff is tasked with making the trains run on time and everything is sort of funneled through the chief of staff. the chief of staff is sptelling the president what's in place. we have no idea what his style will be like and whether or not people will still be able to go around john kelly to get to the president, including anthony scaramucci. >> the president likes military men. in fact, the national security apparatus has been the most competent and effective of his administration. there's some hope that that background that john kelly brings, his experience working for really respected bipartisan leaders like leon panetta and ron gates will bring discipline and order to this white house. the questions are, can scaramucci and his son-in-law keep bypassing the chief of staff? or will the president concede that we need to impose some structure and order on this administration? trump is going to trump people but kelly at least is

john avlon. >> i mean, that is brutal.ook, we all know donald trump lives in a trump centric universe. he's basically saying the senator from alabama, i'm so popular in alabama, he threw his hat in with me. there's no loyalty here. by the way, i'm disappointed to him and he's weak and beleaguered. that is so disloyal to say. it rips the guts out of a senator who did take a stand against popular opinion and those colleagues in the senate to support him. >> jeff sessions has a lot of intestinal fortitude -- >> is that what we call it? >> what else do we call it? >> i'll talk about it on break. >> i think it's the author in camero camerota. you say ripping the guts out, you say intestinal fortitude. >> thank you all very much. great to get your perspective. >> up next, something that is way more than a headline. the standoff at sea. those two ships are about 150 yards apart. that is nothing at sea. a u.s. navy ship firing warning shots at an iranian patrol boat in the persian gulf. clearly this was a bad situation. what does

cnn political analystion maggie haberman and john avlon and counterterrorism analyst philip mudd. thank you for be with us this morning. maggie, what does it mean? what are the highlights for you? >> the highlights are a couple different things. you have don junior, the president's oldest son, meeting with this russian lawyer at the request of an intermediary. she invited jared kushner and paul manafort to join, june 9, a pivotal moment. he had security the primary but facing a del got slog going into the convention. they were very focused on that. what donald said this meeting was strictly to talk about russian adoptions. the story changed. there was also a discussion initially about opposition research against hillary clinton. don junior's disclosure requirements are not the same as jared kushner who had joined the government. the main problem for everyone is the story changed. if they had said initially, look, this is what the meeting is about and it did include this issue about hillary clinton initially and this woman changed which is what the story said yesterday, i think tha

john avlon, a central question in all of this is, what did trump know and when? did he know about this meeting? and what was his potential role in crafting don junior's initial statement last weekend? >> well, look, i mean, you know, the question of what then-candidate trump knew and when did he know it is the kind of thing that will be determined by a larger investigation. what i think is more significant as we fill out the pattern of deception we've unfortunately seen is that jared kushner, who attended this meeting, forgot this and many, many, many other meetings with foreign leaders. he keeps have to update his paperwork for -- in exchange for the security clearance he holds working in the white house. that's hard to rationalize. and you can't rationalize it because there's no good reason for it. if a series of meetings that are high level are avoided, it's because people don't want you to know about them and then they got caught. they were trying to pretend this didn't happen, and then it was no big deal, it was about adoption and then the e-mails were relea

we have cnn political analyst john avlon, realclearpolitics' amy stoddard and "the washington post's" car reason demirjian. >> give us perspective, john, on the abc poll that finds president trump at 36% approval. >> it is an unprecedented low in the history of polling. no president has been this low. people closest are people like gerald ford. major reason for that is he pardons richard nixon. that's the kinds of contemporary political baggage we're dealing with. bill clinton, also, this may be the most instructive parallel, really gets creamed in the public poll numbers, particularly low at the five-month mark. he brings in david goering ginn, fellow cnn analyst, a member of the reagan administration, nixon administration to try to steady the ship. he eventually subs out his chief of staff in favor of leon panetta. that makes all the difference. he took the poll numbers in rough shape because of a series of small scandals and redid the way his white house operated. >> no sign that the trump white house has changed at all. they face continuing disapproval over the russia drip, drip,

let's bring back john avlon and a.b. stoddard. in terms of the where we are and what the concern was about the end run around the traditional process -- what we were told was, they did this for seven years, so expedite it. it seems they're chasing tails right back to where they started which is box out the democrats, the amendment process will be somewhat of a farce and let's get it as lean as possible. pull as much money out as possible to pass along in other parts of the agenda. >> that's right. keep it moving and don't look at what this hand is doing. the ultimate cruel political irony is when nancy pelosi said you've got to vote on the bill before you can see what's in it. used in campaign ads, they are doing part of that today. look at the individual parts. don't look at the whole picture. there is no whole picture. we'll improve it behind doors and then see what the ultimate bill is. all we know is the skinny repeal which would remove the individual mandate, remove the companies required for coverage, remove the medical devi

i want mary bruce to stand by as we bring in john avlon. you mentioned, john, jeff sessions still out there. big criticism from the president all week long. you also heard the president gettingng that transgender ban by his joint chiefs of staff saying they're not going to implement that bill until they get morethe president, of cours senate and the house passing russian sanctions to the president over some objections that he's had previously. now that's on his desk as well and, john, you broaden out this week and look at the last seven months heading into the august recess and running out of an tiffs to describe what's going on here. we've never seen anything like it before. >> we haven't. this is a level of chaos that we have just not seen in any modern white house and can't imagine being in the past. there's been no significant legislative achievements. last night's high drama moment with john mccain was decisive for the republicans' core campaign promise to repeal obamacare because they never could agree on what they would replace it wit

joining me now to discuss, cnn political analyst john avlon and cnn political commentator, margaret hooverlittle reality check. must those republicans in the senate be afraid of countermanneding the president because he's so strong with the base? >> don't be afraid, senators, stand up for what you think is right and here's why. conventional wisdom in washington is almost always wrong. these folks feel like trump's got enormous power and their conservative base will turn on them if they stand up. but here's the deal. let's look at the actual data. because everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts in 2016, 17 senators in red states outpaced the president, and here's why that's weird. normally republican presidential candidates and democratic presidential nominees have coattails, they carry the party with them. not true with donald trump. particularly in a couple of key states that won him the election. let's take a look, senator grassley in iowa. trump did well, grassley did eight points better. ohio, always critical in an election, rob portman, six points better. rob jo

john avlon, the idea of the president of the united states. you two across to trump and american values. you leave the interplay at home. he didn't do that. he wound up echoing something we often hear from russian intelligence intelligence. they bring up weapons of mass destruction and how that was wrong. odd to hear it from an american president? >> odd to hear it from a president. incredibly odd to hear it on a foreign trip. he was going to step up his game and he understood the statesmanship. he goes out of his way to raise all of the teamedemons and figh domestic policies. he questions the obama administration and their act, with record to russian hacks and questions our own intelligence agencies. he had to condition firm how many intelligence agencies there are. this elevates it to a new level because it's dangerous to have a president not defending american values. and it puts the pressure an enemy that recites russian talking points and muddles consensus about with everyone else, that there was russian hacking in the election and this i

john avlon. welcome to you both. no set agenda for thi no specific briefing for the president. but what would constitute a successful meeting for the white house? >> reporter: i think a successful meeting would be they establish a good working relationship with president trump clearly laying out the grievances the u.s. has with russia. you heard some of those in his speech yesterday about ukraine and the support of the assad regime in syria and that putin gets the message that trump is not his friend and that he will remain tough. as for bringing up the hacking, there are certainly those who do not think the meeting will be a success unless he brings it up, george. >> and, john, the president, tough talk in his speech yesterday but in that press conference he seemed to take the putin line on hacking. >> and this is the dichotomy of donald trump, right. scripted donald trump was very tough on russia yesterday in a very well written speech standing up for western values but in private and at press conferences he tends to freelance and fall in line with the putin line and that's g

let's bring in our panel, cnn political analyst john avlon, cnn senior legal analyst jeffrey toobin and cnn politics reporter and editor at large chris cillizza. >> for the people who went to bed before 9:00 p.m. last night -- >> which is us. >> and i mean us. they have no idea where health care is. even if you stayed up past 9:00 p.m., you may have no idea. i have a helpful graphic to show everyone. this will clear it up. so they passed in the afternoon a motion to proceed, the senate did. then they had 20 hours of debate still in progress. then -- this sounds fun to me. there will be a vote-a-rama. >> you think that involves drinks and dancing. sadly it doesn't. >> is there dancing? >> it's actually the least popular amusement park ride. >> there's only dancing around the issues. no actual cha-cha. >> we are on a roll. someone help us. john, where are we with health care? >> we are in a thicket of senate procedu procedures, a very popular thing for the american people to pay attention to. this matters. the procedural hurdle was cleared yesterday and today is going to be a series of vo

we have white house correspondent for bloomberg news margaret tall leave and john avlon and alex burns. alex, i want to start with you because you had a comprehensive article over the weekend in "the new york times" about how frustrated republicans have grown with the disarray and chaos in the white house. are these republicans like john kasich who never had much faith or are these loyalists who are starting to turn? >> it's pretty much everybody, alisyn. what you're hearing from trump loyalists not anger at the president, but everybody else. it includes republicans on the hill and in the white house who are close to the president but not the president himself. it's a new phase of the way republicans in the grassroots and at the leadership level across the country are thinking. >> why aren't they? >> they see him as a newcomer to washington who has received a lot of bad advice and has been mistreated by republicans on the hill. whether they are right about that or not, i do think if you sort of play off the next couple steps of this, listen to what the president has been saying about c

we also have political director for cnn david chalian and cnn political analyst john avlon. this other topic that came up this second undisclosed meeting with the president. you asked and the president responded. here's what the president said. i said hello to the president. really pleasantries more than anything else. i actually talked about russian adoption with him which is interesting because that was part of a conversation that don had in that meeting. >> did you know the time that they had the meeting? >> i didn't know anything about the meeting. >> so meg, interesting. he's saying he talked about adoption there almost coincidentally and brings it up that his son's meeting was about that also. what was the suggestion there, that this was a topic that was important to the russians? what was your read on it? >> that was my read on it. not that the u.s. president raised it. i want to be clear because we don't know specifically what happened and he didn't say so some of this is speculation. what's interesting is talking about russian adoptions is really related to talking

. >> john avlon, that investigation still at the heart of president trump's anger. >> absolutely. and it is the highest stakes investigation we've seen. every step of the way president trump gives every indication of trying to shut it down one way or another but what the senate is saying if you fire jeff sessions we won't confirm a replacement. that is a strong signal that they recognize that mueller's investigation cannot be derailed and these are as high stakes poker as you get right now. >> no question about that. thank you all very much. much more sunday on "this week." robin. >> let me ask you this. many people feel this chaos at the white house, it's kind of like, look over here, look over here so you don't look here at the major issues facing the american people. >> i don't think it's distraction, i don't think it's strategy. i think it's impulsion. i think it's personality of the president. i think he tolerates this to some degree, one thing we're seeing play out. the question is how long can a white house go on with open warfare like this. >> i know you'll talk about it s