but i also have to see exactly what this is. if i look at the policy that the obama administration had toward the war in afghanistan it s not that much different from what we heard tonight. so i think we have to figure out, you know, what the president said is going to be really significant and what is going to be a change and what s going to be different. i think you were right to highlight the way in which the president called out india and wanting india to play a larger role in afghanistan. this of course is the will trigger all of the gravest fears in the pakistani military and the pakistani deep state. so one last question for you. the issue about that andrea raised about the privatization plan that we heard floated. i won t believe it s dead until i see a stake in its heart but it s is it possible if they are really considering taking the u.s. military out and putting in thousands of private contractors under eric prince s leadership to run this as a for-profit private ente
says was designed for the alt-right. so how will his departure impact the president s agenda? let s bring back the panel to discuss, maggie haberman, abby phillip and errol louis. bannon will weigh in commercial if you re going to be talking about afghanistan because this is such a fundamental part of his philosophy, we should be out of there, the president supposedly bought into it and that leads us to tonight. look, there were many issues on which the bannon clashed with almost everybody else within the white house and certainly afghanistan was a huge piece of that. he believed that the u.s. should not be further drawn in and then he, you know, was advocating this privatization plan that was pushed by somebody named eric prince who was a relative of a cabinet secretary. as it turns out that did not go through any of the normal chams, it was all this side process that bannon had going. i do think that bannon sees himself as the keeper of this
partnerships, things that are not built around federal spending. that may make it harder to get it approved through congress. the president is going to go on the road this week as well. he s going to go to the cincinnati area to talk infrastructure. where rivers come together at key points in the united states. decaying roads, decaying bridges. the parent making the case, $25 billion cost to the economy. he ll make the same case on the road. but we re also told the actual details of the bigger infrastructure plan are weeks if not months away. so what is the president doing here? that s the thing. it s a frestretch to call it an infrastructure plan. it s more to call it a privatization plan. when the president spoke about infrastructure on the campaign tail, he did talk about the crumbling roads and bridges and airports. this doesn t build those things. now, it may be a net benefit for travelers. it may be an improvement to the air traffic infrastructure. but it s not building thing
being a deficit hawk this guy has not been a deficit hawk. he s not he was the leader of the wing of ultrasupply siders. george w. bush was quite a supply sider. he was arguing that deficits don t matter. and paul ryan was to his right saying no, the tax cuts are too small, bush wanted to privatize social security in 2005. and paul ryan was the leader with this privatization plan, that added $1 trillion in debt, so much debt that the bush administration said this is irresponsible. he voted for the bush tax cuts. he voted for the wars, everything that exploded the deficit. how did he gain credibility as the deficit cutter? it s quite a con. it s hard to think of a word for what he s done other than a con. now there s always the case that when democrats have the white house, republicans start framing their ideology in terms of deficits. and stop framing their ideology in terms of deficits when they actually have power. and jared bernstein i have to turn to you. please for once
about $1 billion to the state. but what do you expect? this is the same rick scott who ran a company at the time it was involved in the largest medicare fraud case in u.s. history, and he walked away with a $10 million severance package. pretty good deal, huh? the same rick scott who is pushing a medicaid privatization plan which would benefit his own health care company. tonight in our survey, i asked, should responsible gunowners speak up about gun legislation? 99% of you say yes. 1% of you say no. insurance giant aig is thinking about suing the federal government after the taxpayers build a them out. remember that story? pretty disturbing story of corporate greed. bloomberg view columnist william cohen is here with reaction. we ll break it down. stay with us. she keeps you guessing.