Drain the swamp. I will impose a fiveyear ban on executive Branch Officials becoming lobbyists, and a lifetime ban on officials becoming lobbyists for a Foreign Government. For too long, washington has tried to put us into boxes, age,ating us by race, income, geography, by place of birth. Washingtons politicians have spent so long appealing to competing interests that they have forgotten how to appeal to the national interest, combining the skills and talents of our people in a common cause. Aker paul ryan, i really oh, no, i have come to appreciate him. Speaker paul ryan, where is the speaker . Where is he . Beenl you, he has terrific, and you know, honestly, he is like a fine wine. Every day goes by, i get to appreciate his genius more and more. We are going to need our more engaged be and more vigilant than ever before, to help us accomplish the reforms and overcome decades of stalemate and gridlock. We are going to get it done, folks. With cabinet confirmation hearings underway, we start by looking at the team trump is building to run his administration. We sorted into four categories, the generals, john kelly to head mattisd security, james for secretary of defense, and Michael Flynn as his National Security advisor. Mark we are calling the next group the tycoons, Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, steven ross, who trump wants for commerce secretary, and the fast food mogul. Choicecmahon is trumps at the Small Business administration, and tapping carl icahn for a special role of regulatory czar. There is no shortage of d. C. Insiders on Donald Trumps team. Piebus for chief of price,sean spicer, tom sessions gotjeff the attorney general nomination, and elaine chao, married to Mitch Mcconnell. Finally, a handful of outsiders to fill other top positions. This is the group that has drawn objections from opponents in part because it includes steve , a proponent of economic nationalism and a hero of the alt right as trumps chief strategist. The, those are some of names. Broadly speaking, how is trumps team helping the president make good on his promises to drain the swamp . John it is a mix between insiders and outsiders. Thing to sayrtant is that this is the least experienced group of people ever to come into an administration in our lifetime in terms of government experience. There are some congressional people, but in the white house, very little experience running agencies, very little experience with federal government. That may be a great thing, but it will be a big challenge. We will see how well they do, but given wall street ties, corporate ties, congressional insiders, this is not a group of outsiders. This is a group that does not look populist overwhelmingly to me. Government people go Government People go into business, they have to learn how to function and a new set of rules and ethical standards. Every administration i have covered has done things that are perfectly legal, meetings and special access to donors, legal, but ethically questionable. My big question about these people with business background is that when their friends come calling or the paid lobbyists come calling, will they give them special access . Favors, but special even special access is problematic and it will be interesting to see how much of that will be in this administration. This program and many people in the press hammered Hillary Clinton when people who were connected to the Clinton Global Initiative for even just a meeting at the state department. I thought we were right to criticize it then, but lets not have a double standard. Lets apply the same standard to them as we go forward. Mark these people taking the totality of the group, a group buteople who are outsiders, there are not a lot of people who are populists reformers who will care about draining the swamp. There are few people of any interestaying special influence needs to be lower. Not just business, labor and other special interests. That. I agree with after weeks of cryptic tweets, donald finally held a press Conference Last Week to finally attempt to address concerns about this business conflicts of interest that he has so many of as he starts his new job as president of the United States. Instead of fully divesting himself, trump said he would instead turn over his Business Operations to his two oldest sons. The trump will take any profits from Foreign Government payments and donate them to the u. S. Government and they will refrain from entering into International Deals through the duration of a trump administration. Any new deals would be vetted by an ethics advisor who would be paid by the president elect himself. Mp draining swa advocates view where donald trump has landed in terms of his business conflicts . Mark i agree with those who said the only way was to liquidate his business, but i knew he would never do that, because he spent his life building the business with his family. People can look at what he did, and as i predicted he would, he went further than he might have. There were provisions that were further than i thought he initially would go. If he picked someone like ken feinberg, a respected independent auditor of these kinds of decisions, to oversee the new deals, and that person is truly independent, i think it is manageable, but if he pick somebody who is a crony or the public does not know and trust, this is not much of anything. John i think this is a disaster in the making in my judgment and the judgment of the head of ethics for barack obama and george w. Bush and many others. He should have recognized that he was going into Public Service and should have divested. If he did vested and liquidated everything, thats what im saying, should have gone the whole way. Now, there are opportunities for corruption and this Administration Higher than we have ever seen before. I expected to be a corrupt administration, and he will be sued practically on one for violating the constitution, so his administration on day one will be entangled in litigation. Mark he has to give a deposition. Why pick ken feinberg . John its the right thing to do. This is just wrong. Im not ready to roll my standards back. Mark i agree. It is wrong, and i wish he had liquidated his business. You are dealing with the reality of going forward. He needs to appoint someone like can feinberg, someone truly independent who has a public reputation so that if trump does the wrong thing, he will resign. If its not that, its worse than the system we have right now. We will talk about donald trump and his quest for congressional term limits right after this. We will take a quick commercial break. Mark president elect on a trump has repeated his pledge to shake up washington, and they bigly part of that is to impose term limits. We have more on how that might play out on capitol hill. Donald trump talked about draining the swamp, and one of the elements was to impose term limits on congress to include sixyear limits on house members, three terms, 12 your limits on senators, two terms. This will be harder to implement, and it is not something he has talked about as much since he won the election. The last Time Congress looked at term limits was 1995 after the Supreme Court said it is not constitutional to impose term limits on members of congress. Ae only vote that resulted in majority was well short of the two thirds needed to advance the amendment to the senate. There was another similar result ar, and itng ye has not been tried since. If he decides to go for the grassroots campaign, it might be awkward for a republican to ignore. There is a warning for people who watch government closely. Up increasing the power and not decreasing the power of lobbyists because members who are in office for less time tend to rely more on the help of outsiders, usually paid lobbyists, as opposed to people who have been in Congress Long time and have developed expertise of their own. Donald trump has banned registered state and federal lobbyists from serving in his administration. Branch, trumpive has decreed a five lobbying ban, and they lifetime ban on advising Foreign Governments. Swamp draining advocates view these moves, and with a make a difference . John i dont know what the swamp draining advocates think, but i know what i think. Mark are you prodrain . I am prodrain and antilobbyist. I dont think it will get anywhere. Mark if its a constitutional amendment, then it wont the unconstitutional. John it is bad for democracy. , people can go in and vote those people out. Im not for it and i dont think it will pass. Mark it is interesting, people say they think the trump skeptics, ive asked them why he is doing these things, pure symbolism or does he believe it. Lobbyists very effectively, so it will be interesting to see, the clinton and Obama White House had limits on lobbyists and allowed exceptions. John many exceptions. Thingit will be and just to see if trump has exceptions. You do start to lose people. Live is protected by the first amendment. It will be interesting to see if he supports this vigorously. People thought trump would have trouble recruiting people into government. Some people have said no. Respected person when in, Rex Tillerson, john mattis, hes gotten some good people to agree to work in his government. In this case, hes getting good people and that is good. Look, this stuff is, term limits will never pass. I am a little less against it than you are. The evidence will be pretty quick and coming. By the end of the first year, we will be able to say has this made a difference in having government move less toward special interest and more towards working class, real americans . We will know after one year or less. Next, donald trump, executive actions up his sleeve after this. John donald trump has promised to withdraw from the tpp deal and create a plan to counter and investigate immigration and fees of fraud to executive actions. Meanwhile, the relationships trump builds will be bigger than any policy moves throughout his career. Joining us now to talk about how much trump can be expected to get done in washington dc, good to see you. Let me start with you. After a president ial campaign in which Many Republican members of congress were openly or privately opposed to the notion theynald trump, and now have to work for him. So how is it going . John, there has been a big fall ofe since the 2016, and they had some very critical unrestrained things to say about him in a way that Party Members dont generally say about their president ial candidate. Now he is the president elect and they have to work with him. There are you a number of people who have been nominated to important cabinet positions like Jeff Sessions and or who have the ear of the incoming president , and i think that will matter a lot, chris collins, duncan hunter. These people were on board the trump train early and will have the ear of the president. Leadership, he is trying to work with paul ryan, have mcconnell, trying to a Good Relationship with these people because he knows they are critical to his agenda. John josh, trump is charming. He is a charming guy if anybody has ever met him. To the extent you have seen it, what is the sign that trumps charms are working at this early phase . That his charms are working on republican members . Is the tone from republican members, generally positive. If you speak to people around trump, they say he will make a point of entertaining and bringing people in. He is a very sociable guy in a way that president obama was not. Obama was not eager to socialize, back slap, and do the things president s do. Trumps advisers say he will be doing that, but the quality that trump instills is not friending this, but fear. A lot of republicans are afraid of getting in Donald Trumps crosshairs, so we will have a honeymoon where people are deferential to trump because he was elected and he is the big man on campus. Trumps Approval Rating stays where it is, extraordinarily low for an incoming president , will that make republicans less cautious about crossing him . Personally, i dont think it will, at least not at first. We are in such a polarized age that making historical comparisons, politics is not the same as it was in 1980 when Ronald Reagan came in or 1992 when bill clinton was elected. There will always be 50 of the country that is strongly against trump, i would imagine, so i dont necessarily see that as a problem for him. The potential problem is that if he does not get off to a fast start in the 100 days, if they repeal obamacare and they do not have a replacement, he does not look at a guy who can fix americas problems and make everything terrific, then you see the support erode and it becomes dangerous for trump. Mark president obama explored on some major pieces of was it possible to get a bipartisan deal and bring some republicans over on his big domestic policy efforts . In the end, he didnt. Ryan, mitchat paul mcconnell, other members of the republican leadership, are they interested in trying to craft these major bills, on tax reform for instance, in a way that might draw democratic votes, or ram things through with Republican Party line votes . Republicans have unified control of government. They will get the first byte of the apple. They will have paul ryans here in crafting this. Mitch mcconnell has his own goal on tax reform. I think they will see where unity is and get the vast majority of them on board. Ryan has a big majority to work with than he does not need democrats to pass anything. Mcconnell will need a democrats if hes going to try to pass something outside of democratstion, which can filibuster, so mcconnell will have that problem in a way that paul ryan did not. John stick with the rhinemcconnell thing, mcconnell was chilly to trump during his rhine, ryan was openly hostile towards trump. Was openly hostile towards trump. There seems to be almost like a weird bromance. Talk about the different relationships and those two big figures on capitol hill. Your assessment is right. Mitch mcconnell was quiet for the general election. On trumpd commenting when asked, and when he was forced to, he would say as little as he could get away with. Paul ryan made it a point to convey that he was uncomfortable with a lot of things that donald trump was saying and talking about in the president ial campaign. That is changed. There are areas where there could be significant tension, because ryan is cut from the traditional limited Government Conservative school of thought, and trump is not a limited government guy. A 1 trillion infrastructure package. The more he pushes on these things outside the school of thought that ryan comes from, that is where we will see the attention. Ch mcconnell is encrypted is a cryptic figure, but he is also a savvy operator and realizes this is a onceinalifetime opportunity under unified control government. Close observer of steve bannon, who has had meetings on capitol hill and has talked to members of congress, but has maintained his low profile. Roledo you know about his in crafting policy and managing congressional relations . , i dont thinkon he has a major role in either of those areas, at least not a frontal role. His interactions with congress have tended to be negative in his capacity as chairman of breitbart news, and he is not a guy with a mind for policy. He is somebody more concerned with maintaining trumps image as a populist, a builder, a doer. I know that steve bannon has talked about the need for infrastructure, and yet if you look at how the republican agenda is lining up, the first thing it looks like republicans will do is repeal obama care. That is not a big issue. Notor right now, it does appear to me that Stephen Bannon is exerting a lot of authority over what trump is doing. As with things all trump, that could change in an instant. Thank you very much for being on the show. We will be right back to talk about one of the day prizes of Donald Trumps election victory, the chance to fill that open seat on the Supreme Court. We will be right back with that. I am prolife. The judges will be prolife. In terms of the whole gun situation, we know the Second Amendment and everybody is talking about the Second Amendment and they are trying to change it. That was our soon to be president of the United States in a 60 minutes interview talking about the types of judges he will nominate to fill Supreme Court vacancies. Trump announced he will announce his first pick within two weeks of taking office. Mitch mcconnell refused to give president obamas pick a hearing last year, turned heads with this stern warning for democrats. I noticed my counterparts announced that their goal was to never fill the Supreme Court vacancy. That is an expansion of the biden rule. In 1992 was the senate would not confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of a president ial election year, which was my view last year. In the schumer said Second Bush Administration that they would not confirm a Supreme Court nominee and the last 18 months of president bush 43s tenure. Apparently there is a new standard now, which is to not confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all. Something thes American People simply will not tolerate and we will be looking fo