there s a wave out there, and if so it could sweep the republicans out of a majority in the house, and that would put an absolute dead stop to much of trump s legislative agenda in the second half of his first term and put a cloud over his re-election. so he s got a lot at stake. to think about this much more carefully than he has. i think one of questions, don, we ve been focusing for a long time on how firm his base is, and it s held pretty firm. the biggest question now is how firm is the opposition to him? can he win people back? can he stop this wave in the coming year? yeah. april, do democrats and republican critics of the president who are waiting for one of these controversies to blow up or take down the president, do they need to find a new strategy? well, they re always reinventing themselves as each issue comes, be it a twitter issue with the president
cnn political analyst david gergen, april ryan, and political commentator david swerdlick. and the gangs all here. hope you had a great holiday. david, we re at the end of the 2017 and despite the russia investigation inside the white house, despite the indictments, despite many of the controversies like charlottesville, is president trump marching into 2018 living up to his name? so i don t think trump is but i think he s managed to get through this year that s been difficult for him and still have political resilience. he s at 36% overall approval rating. if you look at that poll and some about his tax plan and other specific policies, they were named popular among republicans. and his white house and political shop and republicans in general are working from the
disturbing here, which is people who felt as if they had free reign to come into a free city and terrorize our most vulnerable people. this didn t just go through that open, you know, physical violence yesterday. it began the night before with several hundred of these people who came to our town doing a torch parade yelling slogans, you know, against african-americans against jews up and down the campus of thomas jefferson. at the university of virginia. this was an unusual display harkin back to the kkk and they went right up to the doorstep of a beautiful, old, historic church where there were several hundred people interfaith gathered in prayer to launch this weekend. to try to give strength to folks this weekend. so, you had already a clash of this hatred and this intimidation. this intolerance and this terror coming right up on the doorstep of people who were trying to bring love against hate. so, i mean, it sounds like this
possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. on many sides. on many sides. the president s uncharacteristically vague and carefully written remarks have come under withering criticism from many members of his own republican party for not singling out the white nation nationalist protesters or calling the action what it is, domestic terrorism. joining me now is michael signer. mr. mayor, our thoughts and prayers are with charlottesville today. 19 others were injured when that speeding car slammed, apparently, deliberately, into the counterprotesters. what can you tell us about the condition of the victims? well, there are a bunch of folks in the hospital. i mean, right now, this is a city that is praying and grieving. three people who died yesterday who didn t need to die. but, you know, let me tell you about charlottesville. this is one of the world s truly great cities. it is the privilege of a
here. so again, it s not clear whether everything is said and done. i can tell you, though, that this city has been in a state of constant tension for the last week or so. people were preparing for this day. they knew thousands of people were expected to come out here and that is pretty much what we saw. we saw at the very least hundreds of people. and we were here just in this one section at this one intersection where some of that violent outbreak was taking place. alex. so you may have been able to hear my interview with mark newton. he is the assistant city editor with the daily progress. he said that a lot of the demonstrators were going towards a pedestrian mall area, which of course made me concerned thinking that there are people there enjoying what appears to be a beautiful saturday in charlottesville. do you know if they made their way there, if they have dispersed from there? do you have any updates on that? reporter: well, we were actually over in that pedestrian mall