but really when the media and the country and the rest of washington takes their assessment of a president and they say it's very hard to make a good second impression or you have to make that good first impression. so the first impression of how a president is going to govern is established in those 100 days. host: you come at it from a interesting perspective because you're a presidential historian but high level cabinet figure. what's it like to get this whole thing started and the administration started and to keep going and adhere to the guidelines you made when you were running. tevi: it's very difficult. i also ran the policy for transition in mitt romney's campaign and didn't obviously become a new administration. but there's so much to think about and so many roles you have to fill that you need to start way in advance and why congress passed a law in 2010, the pretransition act that establishes transitions for both parties leading into an election so that you don't just have from november until january to get things started but you actually have from the summer before until january because you really need that six-month period. host: phone numbers are on the bottom of the screen for our guests and tevi troy authored this book, 200 years of popular culture in the white house. we'll talk about some of the details of the book in a bit. i want to get the phone numbers up. ["what jefferson read, ike watched and obama tweeted." we mentioned our guest is the former human services deputy secretary. all this being said so far how is the president doing after 100 days? tevi: that's a great question and what's fascinating about this administration is that there are really two completely different narratives, both of which have some basis in fact and reality. so one narrative which i think you'll hear in most the newspapers, flipping through my "new york times" and "washington post" is it's a legislation in delay and they lost a number of high profile people like the national security advisor and the nominee as the labor secretary nominee is now the secretary so there have been a lot of problems and issues and some of the tweets were intemperate and caused issues like the one of president obama attacking his wires. that's narrative one. the second narrative you hear on the republican side and the conservative media is goat neil gorsuch confirmed, the second fastest confirmation of a supreme court justice in history and something that brought the republicans out to the poll to vote for now president trump, you have a strong national security team with people like mcmaster and jim matusz and rex tillerson at state and he's taken some important steps in terms of national security such as the cruise missiles of syria after they crossed the red line of using chemical weapons and people on both sides of the aisle thought it was a strong and presidential moment. you have these two conflicting narratives and both as i say of a basis in reality, as with many other things you don't necessarily have agreement. one last point. in the past you might have said well, there's that conservative perspective and let's dismiss that because the mainstream media is the arbiter but because they were wrong about the nomination process where they thought trump couldn't get it and wrong about the election where they thought hillary was guaranteed to win it challenges that prevailing narrative and gives both narratives an opportunity. host: before we get to calls what do you make of the way of health care debate has played out thus far and how important is getting something done to other aspects of the agenda? tevi: it's one way there's not two narratives. it's not worked well at all. the administration has had real challenges in getting a health bill passed through the house and there was a thought they could go forward given the republicans had gone farther with a number of mechanisms to repeal the affordable care act, even one that reached the president's desk and i wrote an article that said they were much derided for these anti-obamacare votes but shows there's a pathway to get to the president's desk and obviously they've not been able to get there though it's been deployed. the second part of your question is how important it is it. there is a lot of division in the republican party but there is an agreement on the problems of the affordable care act. the thought was if you can pass this first thing it would establish legislative momentum for doing the other perhaps more challenging thing on the agenda. host: let's go to the first call. denny from sarasota, florida. hi, danny. caller: i'm doing fine. i have two questions. first question is, are any of the trump properties charging the u.s. government for any amenities or lodgings while the secret service is guarding any of the trumps on the trump properties? tevi: i have no idea. there are two guys, rich painter and norm eisen who have been the ethics watchdogs of this new administration and they've been all over the media, one is a republican and one is a democrat and i'm sure they have thoughts on this subject. host: why does it concern you? trump is seems like profiting tremendously from the job of president. the other question is, has trump moved any of his jobs of his foreign manufacturing of ties in whatever and whatnot back to the united states like he wants the rest of our corporations to move their jobs back for to the united states? host: thanks. any other thoughts? tevi: let me give you two thoughts on this. the one on the profit, being president can be profitable. you obviously get a name recognition after $65 million for him and mrs. obama but can be problematic for your business ties in terms of how you have to sever certain ties and you have to make ethics restrictions imposed upon you. there are challenges and disadvantages. usually in the short term being president is not something financially rewarding but in the long term can be very, very awarding. but in terms of the manufacturing jobs, obviously that was something that motivated a lot of trump voters and something he talked about a lot. i think within 100 days it's hard to say if we were seeing a wholesale movement of manufacturing back to the u.s., there's other things besides the u.s. government policy that lead into this including a development of robotics and then it says certain nations should produce things they're better equiped to produce and other countries produce things they're better equipped and everybody is better off as a result. there's a bunch of other things but it's too soon to say if there's been a wholesale change in manufacturing. host: take us deeper into health care. here's the piece you co-wrote in february. the headline, trump wants health insurance for everybody and here's how the g.o.p. can make it happen. knowing what we know about the process thus far, move it forward. tevi: this is a piece i wrote with lonhi chen on the romney campaign and move administration and how the republicans shouldn't say the democrats are for universal coverage but we're not. from a rhetorical standpoint the republicans are better off saying we also want universal coverage but have a different pathway to get there and the republican pathway is to talk about reducing the cost of health insurance, thereby incentivizing more people to purchase it. the democratic approach was to mandate the insurance and subsidize it for some and not everybody swiesed and the costs went up because of number of regulations via the affordable care act. it's a different way of going about it and what we were recommending. him host: it's possible we'll see a change in the leadership and i know they've been looking to respond on the health care amendment. in case you don't know what it is, it materialized last week and does the following, the community rating environment which they call it which prevents insurers from charging higher people yumes to sick people. make sure would they cover a range of services such as prescription drugs and is the latest and what they're focusing on now. you think they'll get there? tevi: they have to get somewhere and i think they politically are in a place they need to pass something on health care because they can't tell their voters we're doing something about health care and get rid of the a.c.a. and not do anything on it. what that is limited in large part by the configuration you have in congress meaning you don't have 60 votes for republicans in the senate and you are limited through the use of reconciliation or the budget reconciliation project and can you pass things with 50-plus votes in the senate but have to be within a certain box and that box is both time contradicted and has to be within the context of the budget ruse and policy restrictive which has to be related to budgetary issues and not larger regulatory issues. host: what to you make with the presidential leaders and relationships? tevi: it's extremely important and jimmy carter famously messed things up early on in his administration by not giving the democratic house leadership sufficient tickets to the inauguration and he didn't want to deal with the house leadership and that caused him problems. ronald reagan, even though he was opposed to them on policy grounds they would have a great relation with tip o'neill. before 5:00 they thought crazy and after 5:00 they would sit around drinking and tell stories and had personal relationships. president obama be took a hands off approach on these questions and don't think he met with members as much as he should have and in fact there was one time people said he should meet with mr. mcconnell and he said you meet with him if you think it's a good idea. i'm sure mitch mcconnell watched that clip and probably did not enjoy hearing that. i think it's important to establish good personal relationships. and from what i'm reading, trump is working hard to do that and is calling members and having more conversations than obama was. that said, there is significant policy divides within the republican party but between the republicans and having the leadership over for a bowling night won't solve all the problems. host: as we talk the president sent this tweet in the last couple minutes talking about relations. the democrats without a leader have become the party of obstruction and only interested in themselves and not what's best for the u.s. we have james calling from texas. democratic caller. hi, james. caller: good morning, sir. my question is about president's trump use of the mar-a-lago estate for government business and hosting foreign leaders. and i think he's restricting access of the senate and the house of representatives to speak with those foreign leaders. also, i'd like to know what is the ethical repercussions of him using basically what is his own property for these things. isn't that unethical and why can't he use camp david, for example, which has been traditionly known to meet with leaders. tevi: he makes a couple interesting points. on the use of some kind of alternative white house, nixon had key biscayne, bush had the ranch in crawford, do you do have often president with their n second residences and they hosted foreign leaders there and seems prestigious and seems something like like. you also have camp david which is established so that the presidents could have a place to get away from washington and it's relatively easy to get there and also has all of the communications and security requirements that a president has to have when he goes on vacation. i think that's what james is getting at, why doesn't he use this vacation home? i read a quote president trump said camp david is very nice for five minutes and gets a little dull. i don't know about that. i've never been to camp david or mar-a-lago. host: good morning, bill from the independent line. caller: one comment on the 100 days is that the illegal immigration is way down and the quote i've seen in congress, the congressional meetings is out the poll effect of policies and rhetoric that happens that brings more people in based on what they think might be happening. also, what i wanted to ask you is being in the bush administration and being experienced to all the questions and 9/11 commission meetings with transition, i'm really concerned about the 100 days and having his cabinet set up in terms of national being y and just overall ready in case something happened. i thought the 9/11 commission was very instrumental in trying to make sure that transition happened quickly so the president would be stood up and ready to go in case something would happen in that fragile period of time where that transition is happening. has that cabinet been sufficiently stocked? host: thanks for calling. tevi: that's a really good question and something i spent time about and wrote a book about presidents and disasters, should we wake the president and i like to deal with this how they deal with investments and crises. in this case president trump did a good job in getting his national cabinet set up and the national security team is in place. at the same time, i'm concerned the subcabinet, people below the categories are not yet here and you hear it from many positions. they're not nominated and is better to get them set up and the etc.s. i would let the caller know and comfort the caller in that we do have career officials in all levels of government who handle these things and are trained in handling these things and look back to 2009 in the obama administration, swine flu broke out in march of 2009 and at the time not a single senior person had h.h.s., the department of health and human services had been confirmed. none of the new obama people had been confirmed and i think the h.h.s. career officials acquitted themselves very well in that situation. they used the actual bush plan i'd worked when i was working in the house and the h.h.s. bird flu fan and we had fewer deaths some the swine flu year than you do a typical year. host: here from domestic policy from 2007-2009 and specialized in crisis management creating enter governmental consensus, all aspects of policy development and tragedy and outreach and coalition building. tevi troy is currently president of the american health policy institute. what does that operation do? tevi: a small think tank that was kept up of a couple years ago and we look at employer sponsored health care. there's something about those covered under the affordable care act and programs with the medicaid expansion. 177 million people are covered the employer sponsored care. although nine times people covered in the employer sponsored market and there's not enough attention paid to this or policies directed towards making sure this market works and if employers for example say they're not continuing to provide insurance we have a much bigger hole and challenge to deal with than getting people covered with the 20 million people on the affordable care act. host: moving on to atlanta, a independent caller, robert. caller: good morning. my impression from the first 100 days is based upon trump's ying, the hypocrisy, the cly ptocracy, the nepotism with jerod and ivanka, the tweeting and sort of childish behavior with angela merkel. and your guest seems like a reasonable fellow whose politics and opinions i might disagree with but he can't possibly be proud of the way this president has behaved and the impressions he's given over the first hundred days and you just showed a tweet which shows this type of inthemmerity and childish behavior. tevi: i don't think i'm displaying pride in this assessment but trying to give an assessle as a historian who looked at this stuff and someone who worked at the white house in trying to give a sense of where things are. i do think roberts' narrative is one a lot of people are talking about and it seems probably the prevailing narrative and was a lot of discomfort with the tweets and having people in the family work in the white house. at the same time, i'm trying to see if there's another side to this and there are lot of people accepting the other side as well and 96% of trump voters say they'll continue to vote for trump. so i think it's incumbent upon all people, especially after this last election where we weren't quite sure what was happening and things ended up in a way very different than what everybody predicted, so i think it's important to recognize there's a whole bunch of perspectives out there. host: let's transition to our " in the , "200 years white house by our guest, tevi troy. what are you focusing on here? tevi: this looks what presidents sought out and what inputs they took in, whether it was in the early days of the republic and we didn't have c-span or tweeting and they either read or went to the theater. those were the two big opportunities they had for taking in culture and the bible is very big among our earlier presidents and read the bible and knew it well and james madison went to princeton to study hebrew so he would under the lessons of the bible better and over time with technological improvements we had the development of more opportunities and culture inputs and presidents have taken advantage of them but sometimes been at the leading edge of them. o in the book i talk about what presidents have used to getting education and entertainment and how it shaped them and their presidencies. george w. bush for whom i worked was a huge reader and read all the time and would read 65-90 books a year and was in a reading contest with karl rove and they are serious books about history and biography. president trump is a big consumer of cable news and he often reacts to what he hears on cable news. so knowing what a president is taking in is important for figuring out who they are and approaching things. president obama, they said he watched so much espn that people in washington would advertise on espn so they could be sure president obama would see the ad. what a president takes in is really important for not only how you influence them but understand how they think. host: you write about a challenge that's faced american presidents for two centuries works do they wish to be men of the people or higher understanding, which trade is more helpful to getting reacted or for governing and can a president summitly handle both qualities? how does he share his opinion to the culture and communicating he has the character to hold the highest office in the land? tevi: thanks for the careful read. that's the essential question i'm getting, "what jefferson watched and obama tweeted." if you want to connect to the people you have to show a level of concern and interests. i think what president trump was good at on the stump, he watches a lot of tv so he understands what people themselves watch and could connect to people on that level. president obama watched a ton of tv as a child growing up in hawaii and understood what most american people take in. at the same time when you're president you need to be able to have a graf it was so you n't want to hang out with -- grvitus so you don't want to be hanging out with tv stars but in addition to that you need to think of serious issues of strauth and politics and philosophy and need to be grounded in serious works. host: i want to get back to calls but connect it to the correspondents dinner, do you think it was a mistake for the president not to attend and what do you make of the dinners anyway? tevi: i was very upset with of nminhaj, he made jokes c-span and i would like to defend them. host: they're in the script every year. tevi: he said only nine people are watching c-span and i can attest there's more than nine people watching. that said, look, if you're the president, you don't necessarily want to go in there and get blistered by a comedian. president obama, it was a little different, when comedians would attack him, they attacked him in a very gentle way and jon stewart said obama is going to visit israel and the manager in which he was born. that's alluding to his define inspiration and making fun of him and with trump the jokes are rougher and can see a president not wanting to go there especially a few years ago at the white house correspondents dinner president obama did a comedy routine and was helped by judd a toe in this routine that really listered then not candidate donald trump and then private citizen donald trump, and i thought he put on an ok face but he was unhappy in an uncomfortable moment and now he's president and i can understand why he didn't want to revisit that circumstance. host: thanks for waiting, independent caller. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. just came out of a nursing home/rehab after my fifth joint replacement. the first four were all treated the same, because i was alone i went from surgery, three days in the hospital and then went when i got teaching in o.t. and ended up leaving before -- they would sign me off but if i wasn't reaching my end date, whatever it was, i don't know what it was, but i never came past it and didn't come close to it. this fifth time i had to fight to stay in and actually had to make an appeal to medicare because i was getting oppressively pressured to check out of the -- well, first wanted me to go to assisted living which would mean i would have been responsible for my own medication and you know, meals, whatever. i was on my own and just under the auspices of a nursing home d i guess that defines medicare's requirement that i have attention the first two weeks after coming out of surgery. and -- host: a question for our guest? caller: i want to know, i didn't think medicare had changed. i know the republicans have wanted to change it in some kind of way and of course it saves money if i'm home and paying for care. but i could have overdosed with -- oxycodone, and it's all over the country and people are getting addicted. i couldn't manage it, it knocked me out and i'd wake up in pain and take it again and it was only the nursing home rehab that said no, you have to wait four hours. so i'm wondering what is changing under -- behind the scenes because i watch c-span regularly and listen to npr and didn't know any changes. ing for was in writing as far as how my treatment would go. i was told by mouth this was going to happen and not in any detail. host: thanks for calling. tevi troy? tevi: first i wish you a speedy recovery and sorry about your medical difficulties. in terms of major changes to medicare, alexis is right and i'm glad she's watching c-span and right. there have been no major legislative changes to medicare, but there is a larger issue which is that medicare is long-term headed for bankruptcy. around 2030 or so we are looking at a possible trust fund effectively running out of money. , thethat in mind, medicare government program itself is constantly making adjustments and medicare puts out many new regulations and year, so they are constantly shifting and trying to find ways to save money because there is a lot of money going out the door, a lot of fraud, so there is frequent adjustments. patientr is a medical -- medicare patient, as is my father, and she said they keep changing the policy. it happens a lot but not necessarily rated to test related to the change in policy or politics in washington. caller: as far as property is concerned, it was built by -- the department said they gave it to the government. the government was a white elephant, the maintenance and whatnot. so he bought it and made a beautiful place out of it but it is doing great. we just have to get congress to work together. paul ryan -- paul ryan and mitchell, we have to keep these laws. host: final thought from our guest. guest: i agree i would like to see some kind of why partisan accommodation in congress so we could see laws passed for serious long-term issues we have like medicare's financial challenges. with that said, in contrast to what was said last night, i am a big fan of c-span. host: thank you for talking to us this morning. the president of the american health policy institute, and author of this book "what jefferson read, i watched." thank you for your time this morning. we will take another short timeout and will continue to talk about politics. uygur andwill be cenk we will talk about the opposition to the trump presidency by conservatives, and later we will be taking calls from high school students only as we discussed the advanced placement u.s. history exam and what students can expect. we will be right back. ♪ >> tonight on q&a, the house of truth, a washington political salon and the foundations of american liberalism. we talk with around snyder. -- we talk with brad snyder. they met regularly in the early 1900s to debate politics and the future of the country. >> i think everybody associated, frankfurter, brandeis, race was not a salient issue for them. they cared about the rights of workers and it took all of her wendell holmes junior and some of his opinions including a court case which found for the first time that the mob dominated criminal trials of southern blacks violated due process laws. that is the first time the supreme court struck down a criminal conviction under state law. linking the idea of fair criminal trials with race. at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. piecc chairman a. schu proposed reversing the obama administration's regulations on the internet. a proposal to reverse the mistake of title ii and return to the regulatory --mework that served our's our nation so well during the clinton administration, the bush administration, and the first six years of the obama administration. asked chris lewis thoughts on the impact of the proposal. >> we think the roles that we got in 2015, the net neutrality rules, are working. they are wildly popular, the overwhelming majority of americans want to have clear rules to protect an open internet, so we are concerned he is going down a path to review and potentially repeal all or some of those rules. >> from the internet's inception, it was free. there was not a problem. there was no dystopian controlled internet with isps or anybody interfering with people's ability to post content or use applications. communicators," monday night 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> washington journal continues. host:

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