Page 644 - Predecessors News Today

>> the president signaled the u.s. would increase troop levels in afghanistan but did not offer numbers. mr. trump also put no end date on americas longest war by design. so how is the presidents path to victory different from his predecessors? athena jones with more on the presidents speech from arlington, virginia. >> reporter: good morning. president trump laid out a new plan for u.s. efforts in afghanistan and south asia, emphasizing the importance of a regional approach to preventing terror...

>> well, you know, almost everything that could go wrong went wrong. to begin with donald trump did not understand what all of his predecessors eventually learned, which is that you cannot govern effectively without empowering a white house chief of staff as first among equals to execute your agenda and also tell you what you do not want to hear. reince priebus was never empowered in that way. the most successful models have been james a. baker iii under reagan, leon panetta under bill clinton. ...

Service of our predecessors who possessed it come to mind when i hear the senator referred to as the worlds greatest deldelibiv body. im sure there are times when it was and i was privileged to witness some of those occasions, our deliberations today, not just our debates, authorizing government policies, appropriating the funds to impmeim implement them. they can be sincere in principle, but theyre more partisan, more tribal more of the time than at any time i can remember. our deliberations ca...

His predecessors were. the person closest to him was bill clinton, but then some of them, kennedy, eisenhower had soaring highs of 75%, 73%. what do you see? >> i think the comparison is good. it tells you both the danger that trump and his party face but also show you you theres time for recoveries. bill clinton was reelected in 1996, bun then the -- two things about the cnn poll. one, his numbers with republicans and non-college-educated whites are down. that means hes hurting with the republi...

Talked about fake news, the fact that the polls dont represent what is happening. that he has been the most successful president, particularly in these early days of his administration, more than his predecessors, youre right, the messages discordoned, remember, nicole, he woke up to new polls which showed that his approval rating dipped and dipped among some of his core supporters. so i think this came at a time when he has been consistently pushing back against those narratives throughout the ...

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Can make the case, but the people who hate them have gone crazy, sometimes hilariously so pure it heres the latest attack. not only is the president and immoral russian stooge, hes fat. >> is the president fit, and i want to read part of it. in the modern history of american presidents, no ones had less interest in his own health. he does not smoke or drink, but as fast food, red meat heavy diet, his aversion to exercise and a tendency to gorge on television for hours at a time put him at odds w...

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Of a wrap up press conference, just as we saw in putin, we saw in angela merkel, macron did it as well. even the turkey president did. but absent in this effort was donald trump. his predecessors have done so. so its an issue of what has been customary. and, you know, donald trump bucking the trend on this. and you dont find that unusual? >> i feel that the evidence of this g20 summit suggests that donald trump not just on a press conference where he talks at length about russian interference is...

Complicated thing. you have to go through channels. thats now how it is now. this presidency, people come and go. lots of people -- you can walk into the oval office. reporters have access. thats how we know these things. how are they describing the general way the place is working? >> that is exactly right. far people -- theres more of an open door policy for president trump than his predecessors. president trump in his be a career and politics talks to a lot of people. some of those people pai...