obviously the republican party today is not the same one of john mccain and paul ryan. we work a lot with now vice president j.d. vance. future secretary of state marco rubio. >> frump kind of gets a second charges at doing a first term. typically when a new president

well, paul ryan is the speaker of the house. and so, what are the big legislative priorities? it was a big corporate tax cut, and it was trying to repeal obamacare, and i think those probably weren't the right places to focus. on the other hand, in places where a lot of thinking and work had already been done in terms of stronger immigration enforcement, in terms of much more aggressive trade policy and confronting china, that's where you saw him get more done, and i think especially on trade, you know, ambassador bob lighthizer, who was u.s. trade representative, who's a candidate for treasury secretary now, you know, he knew exactly what needed to be done. trump gave him the power and the space to go do it, and so i think we made a tremendous amount of progress on the trade issue with china. >> now, you mentioned earlier that you're working with vice president-elect jd vance. i want to play a portion of his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination in july. >> never in my wildest imagination could i have believed that i would be standing here tonight. i grew up in mi

so, what i think he really saw in his first term was he gets to the white house, paul ryan is the speaker of the house. one of the legislative priorities was a big corporate tax cut. it was trying to repeal obama care. i think those probably were not the right places to focus. on the other hand, in places where thinking had been done in terms of strong immigration enforcement and contracting china -- confronting china, that's where you saw him get more done. especially on trade, ambassador bob lighthizer, the u.s. trade representative who is a candidate for treasury now. he knew exactly what needed to be done and gave him the power and space to go do it. i think we made a tremendous amount of progress on the trade issue with china. host: you mentioned earlier you are working with vice president elect jd vance. i want to play a portion of his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination in july. >> never in my wildest imagination could i have believed that i would be standing here tonight. i grew up in middletown, ohio. [cheers] >> a small town where people spoke their minds, built wi

you might have a paul ryan type on one side, some kind of right-wing spectrum. you might have jd vance as a pneumatic figure on the other. joe biden. -- joe biden was probably not on that spectrum. j.w.: pro-corporate federalism got. wallace: on my spectrum -- j.w.: to be loose and bluthe. -- blythe. consensus on one side or maga national conservativism on the other side. in my estimation this distinction is not as critical and financial regulation as in other areas. i was thinking through the conversation today. whether it be crypto or the rulemaking agenda or changing the direction of enforcement. i feel if you and i sat down with either jd vance or paul ryan, they would come out of the room nodding to head vigorously yes at this conversation. do you see a distinction between the two sides on our issues? j.w.: not now. as a libertarian securities lawyer and banking lawyer which is a hard thing to be, it is cognitive dissidents. i find comfort in the truck crypto alliance that is developed this election. i feel comfortable right there staying in that lane. i do

some people were asking paul ryan to run for president.osi to run for president. your job is the opposition and your job is to fight it out for congress. i think it's a waste of time to find out the next standard bearer in terms of the presidency, the fight is going to be governing in congress and jeffries and schumer, the spotlight is on them. >> is it also about the infrastructure of the party, they choose to run campaigns. 2026 is going to come very fast. >> sure. we have to think about the way we communicate. in this era, you should be talking about the economy and what you're going to do for people, not about the fight for democracy, or calling donald trump a fascist, no one knows what that word means first of all, let's back up. let's focus on kitchen table pocketbook issues. that is our way back to the majority. that is our way back to the white house. not these other fringe issues we keep talking about that don't mean anything to most americans. >> one of the most interesting things i read in the last 24 hours is that it was barron

caller: yes, paul ryan. welcome to unified republican govern. and so we already saw small children having to tend to infants and basically cons -- in basically concentration camps because they were being separated from their parents and professors and doctors begging the trump administration to cease that policy because they were taking years off of the children's lives. i don't understand why anyone doesn't think that his administration will be good for children or mothers and that there won't be an abortion ban and people won't use their health care because i think states like iowa are already seeing a huge loss in doctors that offer health care to women. i mean, pap smears, anything, they're losing gynecologists. so every woman is losing access to health care. host: courtney, that's a message that we heard during this campaign from the vice president. why do you think that wasn't enough for her -- that message wasn't enough to secure a victory? caller: i'm still in disbelief that -- i just -- maybe i'm too online but i've seen a lot of people

obviously the republican party today is not the same one of john mccain and paul ryan. we work a lot with now vice president j.d. vance. future secretary of state marco rubio. >> frump kind of gets a second charges at doing a first term. typically when a new president is coming in, they've just spent all this time campaigning, making promises to supporters. and all of a sudden now all those donors, they're trying to get your support. i think it's a place where we typically see a lot of administrations really struggle. the voters look around and say wait a minute, this isn't what we were expecting at all and typically in the next mid-term election you see the president's party get wiped out. part of the piece that i-wrote and what is so important right now is to see can mr. trump remember why he was actually elected, what he's going to have to do to be a successful president or does all the attention focus on what people are talking about at mar-a-lago? host: when it comes to trump's first administration, how close do you think he got to some hof these pro-worker economi

you had paul ryan, who was a classic conservative republican in charge of the house of representatives. we had people like senator john mccain still and united states senate. they've been basically voted out those types of republicans, they pretty much don't exist anymore in the legislative branch representing the republican party. and trump himself won't be putting people like general matters in general kelly and general milly in charge. it will be people who have essentially sworn royalty to donald trump. and i think that that's a very dangerous position for this country to be in your law professor in just a few weeks. donald trump is due to be sentenced in a new york court room after his conviction. in a hush, one case, what you see happening at that appearance ends with trumps other legal cases. will they just disappear? yes, the federal cases will literally do that just disappear because he will order his new attorney general to drop those cases. and as result, you're seeing the department of justice now already starting to take action to wind down those cases worst one day. i thi

the democrats need to look back to the obama years, what mitch mcconnell was able to do and what paul ryan was able to do in terms of utilizing minority power in the legislature to gum up and to maybe make things more difficult for the republicans to get things done. host: ok. john, college park, maryland, independent. caller: i think the only solution to the problem in the middle east with israel and the palestinians is for iran to develop biological and chemical nuclear warheads and share that technology with companies like jordan and egypt, and surround israel with the threat of a nuclear strike. maybe they would stop killing all of these innocent people on both sides. if you look at the united states and russia, they both have this mutually assured destruction. i think the same dynamic would come into play, and that would make israel more amenable to a two state solution. i think those countries should develop those nuclear arms and surround israel and make israel be more open to negotiating a two state solution. host: and you are sure that those weapons would not fall into the hands o

eight years ago me and paul ryan met with donald trump trying to get him to understand this is what we'reng to do here, and he was basically saying you go figure that part out, i trust you to be in charge of my legislative agenda. i don't think that's going to happen this time. he's not going to hand this over. he's calling the shots. however, we had a 20-seat majority back then and still failed on health care because we didn't have the votes. they can't really get anything on their own with a two or four-seat majority they have now. i don't know why they're going to do even bigger things. now you're talking about big things and you have almost no margin for error. >> and they have a new rule any one member can force to vacate, to oust the speaker. on the one hand donald trump would like stability in the house. on the other hand, trump loves people getting fired, let's fire them. do you think that rule changes? >> i can't imagine that changes because other members will think that's their accountability for the speaker to hold him in line. >> it's a door in the seat. >> back then it was li

dennis astor, john boehner, paul ryan gong. these are the types of things that have been tradition. nancy pelosi has been this democratic backbencher but has not carried it that way. she has been a force on television and she was potentially pivotal in president biden's this vision to stand down as democratic nominee for the white house and remains this powerful operator, working alongside the rest of her caucus and the leadership. that's. untraditional they may still be trying to navigate that. you have mitch mcconnell, now a rank-and-file senator with a vote. how does that work in concert with john thune? it will be fascinating to find out. but who are the dissenting voices in the republican caucus for the more controversial things donald trump wants to do? we saw in president trump's first term susan collins and lisa murkowski were dissenting voices, does mitch mcconnell join that group? senate republicans can lose only three republican votes and get that majority for things donald trump wants to do. if mitch mcconnell sometimes joins the caucus of dissenters, there is very littl

maybe she will go there and quote paul ryan at her event she is also going to origami county.t is where appleton is. great minor league baseball park. there you can see this has been fairly red recently. donald trump won by ten points four years before that. he won by 13. so what harris wants to do is keep the margins closer here, a little bit closer like it was four years ago. finally, she's going to milwaukee democratic stronghold. the most populous county in the state. she wants to run up the margins here. now one thing i want to talk about in wisconsin, i'm going to use this tool for the first time. i hope it's more of a magic wall, not a mughal wall here. so i hope it works. i want to talk about how the vote is counted in should say wisconsin. the polls close at 8:00. okay. and you can see four years ago well, fast forward a little bit. you can see 9:00 945, 10:00. it's going back and forth. and then at about 11:00, what happens? donald trump starts to go ahead 50% to 47%. why well, it's because they're counting the in-person election day vote largely in wisconsin. you ca

paul ryan, powerful speaker of the house, trump's own chief of staff was the former chairman of the republican party. this time around, political analyst paul mitchell points out, trump is the republican party. voters wanted donald trump. they wanted donald trump potentially without the guardrails that he might have had in the prior administration. and definitely if the house and the senate are republican controlled, donald trump would be able to get a lot more of his agenda done. now, one of the most common questions i've been getting this morning is, well, what happens now to trump's various criminal cases to remind you there are two federal cases brought by special counsel jack smith and two state cases. the federal cases are easy. trump will be in charge of the person who's in charge of the justice department. and if he chooses to, he can say, just end those cases. the case brought in the state of georgia over election interference. that's fuzzy. while there's a federal standard that the criminal cases can't be pursued against presidents, there's no established law saying fani willis can't

i would say paul ryan tried to do some of that. but there is certainly more work to do.some questions. we got a hand in the front. go ahead and shout and i'll repeat the question. we have a mic coming. >> as you discussed the election you very much focus on the economy and inflation. interestingly even in the "new york times," while this may be have been more about cultural issues, you called it authenticity and style, do you think the cultural issues played a big difference in this election? or would you dismiss them somewhat as stylistic? >> i would say it's unique that trump was able to -- i think he needed to after the candidate switch, further the idea that kamala harris was maybe a little bit extreme on some of these issues by highlighting her past record, by highlighting her statements from her 2019 campaign. there is still a benefit for a candidate who -- the candidate who is perceived as more mainstream. ironically if you look at the public opinion data, that's been trump over the last few election cycles where he is actually perceived because he has sort of mix

second big thing he talked about is i'm not going to be like those paul ryan style republicans and catchers also security. i'm not going to do that. that was just a consistent -- and cut your social security. >> that was throughout his entire political run. act two-point about democrats. the sorts of fights is important because visa controversies can be very clarifying and can signal to voters that yes, in fact, the party has changed. maybe i should take a second look at the person who is actively, is actively shaking things up and upsetting the apple cart. as far as the substance i agree with you. i agree with you this is something absolutely over the next few years is going to have to be dealt with. it's better i think from eight legitimacy oldman solution standpoint that it gets done in a bipartisan fashion. >> i agree and i was a don't have to come to the degree that cutting medicare and social security is understood to mean cutting peoples benefits, you don't have to do that. you can means test the benefits. you can reduce the cost of healthcare so that delivering the benefit is less e

sector on email, brandon buck, an analyst that was an aide to paul ryan and john weiner and ashley f10t harris and advisor to biden and obama. >>> do you believe chairman jordan, he is never going to do any of this? >> if you are about to do something illegal you wouldn't go on cnn and announce it. what do you expect him to say? i don't think nancy pelosi has anything to worry about. >> what i could see happening is use of the irs for audits or having a loyalty test within the federal government were civil servants are now asked to somehow pledge allegiance in a way that changes the nature of service. he is going to use authority in ways we have never seen before. the threat of that is more appealing on the campaign trail than implementing. >> to the point, going after civil service and putting in loyalists, who would then do the things rational folks in the first term stopped him from doing. he did try to get the attorney general to arrest joe biden. with things like schedule f, where he would be able to fire all sorts of people at will and put them people that would do what he wants

and then again, there's also the sort of paul ryan republicans who wanted cost cut social spending, who were part of this equation too. and it all has to get resolved somehow. trump is trying to actually split the difference on the abortion issue, saying in some states, abortion will be legal and that's fine. in some states, it will be illegal and that's fine. whether he's allowed to get away with that ultimately long term, i don't know, but it doesn't seem that a portion is what actually drove a lot of votes in the selection was really weird about this selection is that joe biden had a sky high. dow jones average in the stock market, he had historic levels of unemployment in the country. we had an economy that was growing and inflation, which had really been a problem for him. i think one of the biggest problems that drove america's choice and their view that america was on the right track was clearly on the substantial decline. but you had americans didn't kind of feel the vibe of that. donald trump was able to deliver to working class americans, the sense that they're going to do bet

so, what i think he really saw in his first term was he gets to the white house, paul ryan is the speakerthe house. one of the legislative priorities was a big corporate tax cut. it was trying to repeal obama care. i think those probably were not the right places to focus. on the other hand, in places where thinking had been done in terms of strong immigration enforcement and contracting china -- confronting china, that's where you saw him get more done. especially on trade, ambassador bob lighthizer, the u.s. trade representative who is a candidate for treasury now. he knew exactly what needed to be done and gave him the power and space to go do it. i think we made a tremendous amount of progress on the trade issue with china. host: you mentioned earlier you are working with vice president elect jd vance. i want to play a portion of his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination in july. >> never in my wildest imagination could i have believed that i would be standing here tonight. i grew up in middletown, ohio. [cheers] >> a small town where people spoke their minds, built with t

so, what i think he really saw in his first term was he gets to the white house, paul ryan is the speakere house. one of the legislative priorities was a big corporate tax cut. it was trying to repeal obama care. i think those probably were not the right places to focus. on the other hand, in places where thinking had been done in terms of strong immigration enforcement and contracting china -- confronting china, that's where you saw him get more done. especially on trade, ambassador bob lighthizer, the u.s. trade representative who is a candidate for treasury now. he knew exactly what needed to be done and gave him the power and space to go do it. i think we made a tremendous amount of progress on the trade issue with china. host: you mentioned earlier you are working with vice president elect jd vance. i want to play a portion of his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination in july. >> never in my wildest imagination could i have believed that i would be standing here tonight. i grew up in middletown, ohio. [cheers] >> a small town where people spoke their minds, built with the

. >> reporter: paul ryan. >> exactly. they won on their own. so many of the people in the senate were hand picked by donald trump. so many of the people we've seen in washington have gone down to mar-a- lago and kissed the ring. this is a very different dynamic here and i'm told he's been reveling in it. in the win, in what washington is going to look like. i think it's interesting he didn't stop and try to talk when he was at jba, which he could have. the airport he landed at. he's saving the moment for him appearing with house republicans as a leader and then saving the moment for him appearing here next to president biden, which says a lot about where his head space is. >> reporter: of course, eight years ago, obama welcomed him into the oval office and now joe biden is. pam, obviously, trump is reveling in this. it's not the sense of the white house, but it's going to be a remarkable moment none the least. >> i spoke to a source who said this honeymoon is very different for trump. he's really reveling in it and it's a completely different w

there is no paul ryan leading the establishment with republican party now. this will be more populist and a much more anticorporate elite and much harder on immigration that it was the first time around. i think you can fill out the policy implications from that as you go along. clearly this is donald trump's party and he is in control with the roster of people he did not have the first time around who will be loyal to him and will execute on that mission. as you say, an overwhelming mandate winning all seven of the battleground states will be seen in this party and in washington, d.c. as a strong and clear mandate for donald trump to do what he said he would do. >> it is trump's party now, number one. number two is he has the house and the senate with a slightly bigger majority than the most recent house and the senate with a couple of votes there. he certainly has green lights to do an awful lot this time around. i know we will be hearing more from you. >> meantime as the president builds his administration, let's look at what the business community expect

mcconnell runs the senate and paul ryan, they submitted to trump on a lot of stuff but it was not trumpo fluke is there going to be a traditional branch within the republican party that can fight back and push back for powers, power struggles, trump was still learning his way around washington and out sourced a lot of the policy to the hill. that is not the place we are in right now. trump has a strangle hold on the republican party and he knows what he wants to do and he is putting people in place that are more in the maga trump line than the old school republican line. so, the question is, are these guys going to have the political juice or willpower to challenge him on any of this stuff? i guess there have been some signs the answer is not completely no. my expectations it will be close to 0. >> frank wrote a column for msnbc arguing that president biden right now should order background checks on all of trump's cabinet picks in case trump does not plan to do it, what do you think? >> democrats will try to do everything they can to get the information about gaetz out and slow it down

joining me, tonight is a former senior adviser to house speakers paul ryan and mark fayne are. a staff writer at the atlantic and a congressional reporter for punch bowl news. melanie, will start with you. of these nominees, who comes up the most when you talk to republican senators or their staffers as being the most at risk. >> there two names, tulsi gabbard nominated for the director of national intelligence and pete hegseth nominated to leave the pentagon department. with tulsi gabbard, would have heard from republicans is had she been nominated for cia director, that would've been a redline. they are willing to give her more consideration given it's a lesser role but there is a lot of concerns about the fact that she once visited secretly with the president of syria and this secret trip. she parroted talking points that have been russian propaganda. the list goes on. she was on the tsa watch list at one point. there are concerns behind-the- scenes from republicans and pete hegseth, their sexual assault allegations and concerns about his qualifications. what i will say is t

and a lot of people from the establishment, paul ryan, leading the charge to overturn obamacare. and all of that really failed in trump's eyes. so now you have him leading the party. he's essentially dictating what party leadership looks like, what the party's agenda is, and they're sort of reshaping themselves in his own image. now it's up to him, really. leadership races aside, to dictate what the agenda looks like, and project 2025 is a big difference. wh act in 2017, they had no replacement. that was why jm ohn mccain voted against it. now project 2025 at least gives him a first draft of what they might want to do. >> and the senate republican majority could be the majority for some time. the 2026 map is not good for democrats again. the point is that things can be -- they could be in the minority for some time, the democrats. >> this is fewer seats than they had in 2004, when george bush came back into office and democrats flipped that one election, but flipped it in missouri and montana and places where this version of the party has been declining without a way out of it. w

the liz cheneys and paul ryans aren't around. >> but it could also be a one-seat majority, brendan, meaninging anyone in a midterm, do you read anything into the fact that republicans have gained a net of two seats so far, but democrats are ahead in at least one republican seat that haven't been called. even if it goes to republicans, it's going to be incredibly narrow, and i'm wondering if that tells you anything in an election where donald trump won resoundingly? >> well, any new president, any congressional majority is going to say they have a mandate. he could have a two-seat majority, and they'll say they have a mandate, and they won't be interested in bipartisanship. >> yeah, i would never suggest that. >> as senator klobuchar was talking about, there may be some bipartisan issues on the margins, but the house will say if the senate is trying to do bipartisan things, the house will say we don't want you to bring it up on the floor. we just got elected to a majority, we were given a mandate to do conservative things, and that will be the entire mind set of the entire conference. >> rig

paul ryan did in 2017 when trump won.friction, i guess, between the two of them. when trump won, it solved a lot of problems. i think my johnson won't have too much trouble keeping the gavel. they may make him sweat a little bit. i do think that donald trump can be maybe the hammer for house republicans, keep them more in line a little more than they were able to. with that all said, this majority is going to be tight and they will try to do some big things. my johnson has seen time and time again in kevin mccarthy before him, if you don't have a reinforcing majority, everything is hard. even the easy stuff is hard. there are teams and they will need democrats. when they fund the government, they will try to increase the debt limit, there is no way republicans, with majority will be able to pass that around so they will have opportunities for leverage and there will be force bipartisanship at that point. it will be interesting to see how republicans tolerate things like that when they are forced to. >> jesse, what brendan

got a huge laugh in the lunchroom at mar-a-lago. [ laughter ] biden also had words of praise for paul ryans. >> she's been a partner and a public servant. she ran an inspiring campaign, and everyone got to see something that i learned early on and respect so much. her character. she has a bam bone like a ramrod. she has great character. [ laughter ] >> jimmy: that's right, she's got a sternum like a shingle-banger. [ laughter ] i think that might be the first time anyone has used the word "ramrod" in about 50 years. [ laughter ] biden and trump are planning to have lunch together soon. the last time trump saw biden i think was at the debate. the last time most of us saw biden was at the debate. [ laughter ] biden is in a powerful position right now. thanks to trump's buddies on the supreme court, the president has immunity from prosecution for official acts. i say take that sucker for a ride. [ laughter ] i would confiscate clarence thomas' rv and go on a little potus immunity road trip, if you know what i mean. [ cheers and applause ] the other good news for trump is trump might not even

buck served as president to speaker john weiner as well as steve advisor communications to speaker paul ryan. michelle goldberg is an opinion columnist with the new york times and they join me now. brendan, you know your way around a republican caucus. you know that it's got some internal factions. there's some personalities. there can be some beef. i get the bull cases that with trump as the leader, everyone falls into line. you don't have anything like what you had last time around. >> that's an optimistic case and i think there are some things that they really want to do that donald trump will probably sort of forced them to get there. i'm thinking about tax reform. does the tax law expire, and you kind of have to do something, and i think just out of political necessity, they'll figure out how to do that. but there are things that kind of have to do, as well, that they may not want to do, like funding government, mike johnson is about to do a short term spending bill into march and at that point they're going to have to do something and they are probably going to ask for a bunch of money

joining me now, brendan bock, an msnbc political analyst was also an aide to paul ryan and john weineratic strategist, former communications director for vice president harris and former adviser to presidents biden and obama. okay. do you believe, brendan, you tell us, do you believe chairman jordan that, oh no, he is never going to do any of this? >> i will say this, if you were about to do something illegal, you wouldn't go on cnn and announced you were about to do it. what you expect him to say in that moment, of course? i don't think that nancy pelosi has anything to worry about. i don't think that adam schiff has anything -- i don't think the justice department is going to come bring charges against any of those people. what i could see happening is use of the irs for audits, or having some type of loyalty test within the federal government were civil servants who are not political appointees are now asked to somehow pledge allegiance to donald trump in a way that changes the very nature of government service. i think he is going to change -- use his authority in ways that we have

paul ryan said he did not want to be speaker of the house and was speaker of the house two weeks later, nobody knew who mike johnson was in september 2023. it is hard to determine who gets into leadership and when you have a competitive leadership race like this, we' ve not had one this close in the senate since 2,006 so this doesn't happen very often that you really have a barnburner on the leadership race especially in the senate. lauren: 20 we are waiting. maybe there's a possibility the three competitors for this position, john thune, the ultimate winner will speak to the press and other senators might discuss their votes as you are indicating. we do know a little more about the vote itself, it was 29 votes for john thune, 24 for cornyn and away we go. you were mentioning as well about the speaker race and how that's much closer and more contested convention when they've gone through that process repeatedly. mike johnson has a tenuous hold assuming republicans hold onto the house and he got a big, he is my guy from donald trump earlier today. what did you make of that? >> we talked

for more, let's bring in jeff stein -- for both speaker paul ryan and john boehner.st things first, we are doing this just as volunteers. there's a hope, what does that mean? what do they get out of? >> unlike the senate candidate, cabinet appointees the senate is vetting, musk and ramaswamy will be able to do all the recommendations, all this work with the white house, with the president without having to go through senate vetting, senate disclosures, which would require divulgence of potential conflicts of interest that are tons of federal agencies that have direct federal oversight over musk's many businesses from spacex to tesla that he has been complaining about throughout the duration of the biden administration, and by doing this, by setting up this meme-based joke, doge, he's going to be able to recommend to donald trump and the rest of the white house what they should do without having to say -- >> these are just nonbinding recommendations, right? this is just stuff the white house -- brendan and i were joking before, brendan said you're taking this maybe mo

i was a capital hill reporter back then, and paul ryan and mitch mcconnell were leading the republicanty. there were centrists, establishment republicans that were willing to stand up to trumpet you think of john mccain and the infamous thumbs down, delivering that blow to repealing obama care. a lot of those numbers are gone. there are only two republicans left in the house that voted to impeach 10, of the 10 that initially voted to impeach him. overall, we have to be prepared for the idea that there may be some battles that republicans choose to fight, but they are going to be very reluctant to stand in trump's way on just about anything. >> the transition team is looking at the possibility of recalling several generals to active duty for possible charges, including retired army general mark milley, who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during the withdrawal. the report also says, it is not clear that the trump administration would pursue treason charges, and instead, focus on lesser charges that highlight the officers involvement. " they want to set an example" said th

blueprint strategies, and juan c wright and brandon buck, former press secretary to vp candidate paul ryan. thank you both for being here and i'm glad to have you in studio. this is a real treat. let's look at the state board of elections in north carolina. reports a $450,000 in -- 450,000 increase in voter since 2020. clearly both candidates have been claiming -- rather focusing heavily on it now. are democrats doing what they need to win over this special group of voters? >> we know it's got donald trump's attention. the fact he is there so late in the game says the campaign is releasing something they're worried about. instead of being on offense in the midwest, they are playing defense in north carolina. the thing we have to keep an eye on of course is turnout and i know that is kind of a joke but donald trump flipped the script on what we typically think of. we think of high turnout elections and now that is reversed. now we sing high turnout elections will benefit donald trump so if you see long lines, that's great and i'm glad everyone is voting but if you have a lot of unaffiliated

barrasso plans to make his economic agenda the senate and the house's economic agenda and this is not paul ryan'sentially a maga congress here and stylistically, we're starting to see the norms that trump always leaned against and bursting through in his first administration and this will be trump's washington when he comes back to it. that is really the big difference from his first administration. you lay it out so well. amy, let me ask you because you spend your life studying these numbers and these patterns and here we saw a pattern-shattering, vent. and it was a big win and a decisive win. >> i think going back to the theory of the case, the theory of the case was pretty clear for both sides which was you have an electorate that is angry, dissatisfied, frustrated with the direction that the country is going in, frustrated with the economy. both candidates were trying to be the anti-status quo. both candidates were trying to be the change candidate. they each had headwinds to that, right? it's hard to be the change candidate as vice president and he comes with a lot of the baggage for that. w

speaker boehner was confronted with on, for example, immigration, comprehensive immigration reform, paul ryan certainly had a little bit of that. but boehner certainly dealt with that and was unable, if not able to deal with that party within his own party, within his own caucus. is there anything with what you saw this past tuesday could, could give republicans, if they do pick up the house, but in the senate, and at the white house, any possibility of what the senator was saying about being more humane? >> i don't think there is any appetite in the republican party for what we were talking about in 2014 to the 2017 area, talking about how to deal with people who are here, path to citizenship, earned right, all of those things. that's out the door at this point. the immigration is obviously central to republican politics today, but all about enforcement. i think how donald trump handles that issue early on is going to be very much defining of his term. we know that he's talking about a mass deportation. i think everybody -- democrats need to recognize that donald trump ran on immigration bec

when i was there in 2017 he deferred on the legislative agenda to paul ryan, you and mitch mcconnell figure it out, i trust you. that wore down over time quickly. he felt like he understood better than a lot of people and now he's not outsourcing his agenda to anybody. he's not outsourcing his cabinet decision to say anybody else. it's his administration and he's going to be driving these things and you're going to be seeing some outside of the box picks for his cabinet and a senate that will be happy to confirm just about anybody he chooses. >> i'm curious with don jr.'s influence, do you see his influence different than you would see an ivanka influence, for example? >> absolutely. don jr., obviously, is much more in tune, i think, with that podcast crowd as we're calling it that donald trump ran, so that the young men, the online, the influencers, that that's his world. ivanka tried to play down the middle as sort of the business, you know, straight down the middle republican-style politics. he's got a very different view. he's going to see who excites people, who are true donald

then 2017 and i know it all starts to blur together but in 2017 when mcconnell ran the senate and paul ryansubmitted to trump on a lot of stuff but there wasn't the sense of was the trump win a flute, is there going to be a more traditional branch within the republican party that can fight back and push back for powers. there were power struggles. trump was still learning his way around washington and kind of outsourced a lot of the policy to the hill. that's not the place we are in right now. donald trump has a stranglehold on the republican party, and he knows what he wants to do, and he's putting people in place that are more in the maga trump line then in the old-school republican line. the question is, are these guys going to have the political juice or willpower to challenge him on any of this stuff. i guess there have been some signs that the answers and completely know what my expectation is it's going to be pretty close to zero point >> frank figliuzzi wrote a column for msnbc arguing that president biden right now should order background checks of all of trump's cabinet picks in c

maybe the house has remade their image and there's not a lot of independent types, liz cheney and paul ryan's anyone intimate or means you lose the majority, hakeem jeffries becomes the speaker of the house, do you read into the fact that the republicans did a net of two seats so far but democrats have at least one republican seat that hasn't been called, hakeem jeffries said the house isn't in play, even if it goes to the republicans, it is going to be incredibly narrow and i wonder if that tells you anything in a moment when donald trump gets re-elected resoundingly, what do you read of that disparity? >> any new president is going to say, he could have a two seat majority in the house and he's going to say they have a mandate and there's not going to be any bipartisanship. i think the culture of that conference, the idea that senator amy klobuchar was working on, there might be some margins. and they are going to say, if the senate is trying to do bipartisan things, the house is going to say we don't want you to bring that up on the floor, we have no interest, we just got elected to majori

this will not be a speaker like paul ryan was with strength and credibility, it will be donald trump. and the cultural issue is a part of it. he started doing this in 2021 and started talking more about transgender issues which he implemented at the executive level but did not run on. without congress you do not need congress to do this there will be executive changes that affect the way the government treats gender medicine and there will be fights over those pretty quickly. the elon musk part of this and rfk jr. and other examples of how trump brought people into the party who do not agree with the message but they did not -- look back 10 minutes -- 10 years ago when senator palin was attacking democrats. and that is the rfk jr. policy. there are a bunch of items that he ran on and he is assigning people to deal with that are not contiguous with what republicans have run on. they just have been giving this to him and we do not know how this will work. we do not know what role that elon and rfk jr. will have. they should have portfolio roles. it is not like you are putting him up for