Page 4 - Establishment Pick News Today

I believe theyre kicking things off with ballots at 10:00 a.m. and this is where the winter dnc meeting is taking place. thats atlanta inside. joining us now from atlanta, nbcs alex seitz-wald. ive just been looking over your great note from earlier today. i will not give out your cell phone number at the top of that note. is it 10:00 a.m. that they start with the ballots and we might know within an hour if they have to go on to round two, round three? >> reporter: right, thomas. weve got speech...

And i think weve learned a lot of the wrong lessons from the 2016 race. tom perez would be a good chair. he may be a great chair. this is a time we shouldnt be making a safe choice. and mayor pete, im still practicing how to say his last name. >> phonetically spelled. >> he has an amazing biohe outlined. also hes somebody who recognizes it is not just opposing trump and opposing the republican agenda. its about presenting our own positive optimistic agenda, that people want something to vote for...

Nomination, former actori iacti secretary in the obama administration, good to see you. so we just heard from mariana atencio at the top of the hour at this donald trump campaign rally. people are still saying it. jobs, jobs, jobs. does the acosta selection track with that in your opinion? >> in a word, no. he is an establishment pick. hes the kind of candidate that mitt romney easily could have chosen for the labor secretary job. donald trump talked about building up middle wage, middle skill, ...

Diversity so. more of an establishment pick. andy was a multiple millionaire behind hardys and carls junior. but he was derailed for those racy commercials that the restaurants ran. acosta is a public servient. they feel confident by the fact he was confirmed by the senate three previous times going to help him. president trump over theers could of the campaign then candidate trump insisted unemployment numbers were higher than reported. you start to hear the shutter bugs. which means the presid...

Administration himself. >> thats right. and we are told, my colleague sara murray is reporting that president trump met with some of the candidates for this pick today. yesterday afternoon. so this just occurred in the last 24 hours. obviously, as things were unraveling for andy puzder, this white house had to get cracking in terms of finding somebody else and were told that this just happened yesterday afternoon. that he was talking to some of these candidates, including alexander acosta. this ...

In the most traditional way almost as if it was outsourced to the establishment in terms of the person who ran against that blachement to basically be like i know this is a good thing for you guys on the establishment, get an establishment pick and ill put him on the court. >> the president, he said tonight, he made no -- had no reservations about advertising that fact tonight. it was unprecedented what he did in terms of the campaign in terms of saying im going to develop a list, work with the ...

Thing that keeps coming up when people are talking about him is that he is in the mold of justice scalia and that is because he has written, given a number of speeches where hes talked about his approach to the constitution, how he goes about interpreting it and i think that will be something people take a close look at. >> you made one point and i want to return to this. this is a president who in his first 11 days has conducted himself quite differently than past presidents have. theres been t...

To say about it. one we have said this is an establishment pick that unites the republican party on capitol hill and around the country and fulfillment of a trump promise. his name on the list and hes in the mold of scalia but not nelve nearly as conservative. i believe now this is an open question whether the democrats can hold together the pressure from the democratic base on any democrat is going to be huge and up to mitchell mcconnell how to haneled th handle that. >> tom perez who is runnin...

Between these two men? both federal appellate judges. both relatively young. would be on the befrm quite a long time. is there a difference between them that might make one more palettable to the united states senate than the other? >> its interesting. neil gorsuch, he would be more the establishment pick, right? he is from colorado. a kennedy clerk. he has opinions on religious liberty. the conservatives really like him. he is young, 49 years old. presidents like to put young people up there fo...

Picks are outsiders. they are business people. and i think the thing that i continue to be hopeful about with the exception of the deficit because its going to play back into that, trump wants to win. he wants to go down in history as a great leader. the good news is hes not going to be beholding to what he ran on b what will work over four years. bad news for the deficit is he wont be concerned with 20 years down the road and concerned with his legacy and the least responsive to deficit issue t...