length of time on this. the language which he s used about this going on for months or years. although hyperbole suggests that, you know, the thing that he s concerned about the most is this policy commitment on the wall. and i think that s because he s thinking about his core supporters who at the end of the day is the first constituency that president trump thinks about when he takes action. what are the possible political ramifications of doing that? because he doesn t really even though he s playing to hiz base we re talking about maybe 39%. it s not a great support there. so really is this something that he could win going forward, pushing this for a very long shutdown? because he s publicly declared he owns this shutdown. i think that if he could he probably would carry on and just basically play the game of chicken with the democrats where eventually these hundreds of thousands of americans who are affected by it might push their
and perhaps longer, will keep that deal alive, long enough for european allies to convince the president not to blow it up, for congressional republicans to convince the president not to walk away from the deal, et cetera. when it comes to health care, though, for now and you saw the president talking at the value voter summit, some of the moves on health care have involved taking away coverage of birth control and that sort of thing. that absolutely is red meat for the base. one of the longer term questions is how some of those members of his base will feel when they themselves lose health benefits as a result of some of these changes. those are the people who are more most at risk of losing it is the trump voter. but go on. certainly in terms of two things, number one, this move toward the association and the shorter term medical coverage which he announced yesterday and then the subsequent move today, last night and today that looks
on was right on track to what he wants to hear and a lot of his actions are right on track where they think the president ought to be. so in both words and deeds he s been very appealing to the values voters and i suspect they re going to then this political traction for the next three years because they want to maintain their policy influence over the white house and of course the president wants to maintain this part of his base. so president trump also reignited his war on christmas rhetoric. they don t use the word christmas because it s not politically correct. you go department stores and they ll say happy new year or they ll say other things and it will be red they ll have it painted, but they don t say, well, guess what? we re saying merry christmas again. [applause] i mean, happy new year and merry christmas. sorry. thank god, don. they re two different things, but i m just saying. honestly, i mean, come on. have you guys really been to a place and someone has not sa
this is made up. margaret. well, it s all for the it s for the base. i can t even tell you sorry if maria is going. look, i was going to say thank god that the president addressed this, don, because i know that this is what keeps every single american up at night. this is a huge problem in the country. so i m glad the president is focusing on it. i m being facetious for those of you political crack to thiz base. why do you say that? yes. it is absolutely political crack to his base. because, to margaret s point, the audience that he was speaking to today eats it up. and what is so ironic about the words that have been used today is they re absolutely right. it is a moral compromise. i would go even further. these christian values voters have made a deal with the devil. this is a president who during the campaign said he has never even asked god for forgiveness and didn t even know what that little white waiver thing was. and so this is also a group and this is what i th
at removing those subsidies. that s going to have an effect on millions of people, and many of those millions of people are trump supporters. and the question politically is will they blame him or will they blame barak obama. the question substantively is what s going to happen to coverage for those americans. well, he certainly will blame barak obama. and it s interesting because he has fooled his base into saying that it is fake news, that the exchanges obamacare is collapsing and into believing it. and then when they start losing health care he s going to say you re losing your health care because of obamacare, because of the former president. david, if congress doesn t act on this iran deal excuse me, jim, if congress doesn t act on this iran deal, democrats don t come to the table on health care, is it on trump or congress? is president trump attempting to skirt any of the blame of failure here? well, if you listen to the president s words today, he said if congress doesn t