Well, good morning, everyone. Im victor blackwell. Good ard saturday to you. President trump is waking up in florida starting his christmas vacation after his first major legislative win. And the president traveling to florida after signing the tax bill into law and cheering what he calls the largest tax cut in history. Aides telling him to avoid the traditional years and News Conference for fears he could overshadow this end of the year high. Cnn is following every development from the white house. Reporter President Trump heading to his retreat in florida spending the next ten days or so over the christmas break. He did not hold his traditional year end News Conference as many president s do. But he did sign the bill into law. Were very proud of it. President trump signing the tax bill into law. His final oval office act of the year. Injecting a burst of reality show drama into the moment, the president hastily summoning reporters after white house saisai aides said he would sign it privately. Were going to wait till january 7th or 8th and do a big formal ceremony, but every one of the networks was saying, will he keep his promise, will he sign it for christmas before christmas so i immediately called. The president hoping to end 2017 on a high note presiding over the first Major Overhaul of the u. S. Tax system in three decades. He downplayed concerns of the laws on popularity with Many Americans or that it could be a weight on republicans in the midterm elections. Its become very popular. February 1st, thats when youll start to see it. Even as he blasted democrats for standing in unison against the bill, the president says he believes the rivals will come aboard next year. The democrats very much regret it. They wanted to be a part of it. I really do believe were going to have a lot of bipartisan work done and maybe we start with infrastructure. Because i really believe infrastructure can be bipartisan. Its an open question whether bipartisan ship is Wishful Thinking or a new years resolution. The president complained about not getting credit for his accomplishments. Harry truman had more legislative approvals than any other president and a record long held and we beat him on legislative approvals for which i get no credit. We asked the president if things had gone smoother if he had started with infrastructure rather than trying to repeal obamacare. I wanted to save the easy one for the one down the road. So well be having that done pretty quickly. When asked whether he had any regrets from the start of his presidency mr. Trump shook his head no. Politico first reported a memo from his hand picked chairwoman suggesting hes losing support from women voters in the midterm elections. The role of the former chief strategist steve bannon remains a question. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell made clear he blames bannon for losing a Republican Senate seat in alabama. Let me just say this. The political genius on display throwing away a seat in a red state in america is hard to ignore. At the white house, there was no traditional year end News Conference like most president s have done. All i want for christmas is to take your questions. With the Holiday Season upon us im delighted to see americans giving each other the best christmas president possible, a strong economy. In fact, President Trump has not held a formal News Conference since february. He was planning one but some advisors argued against it. That tension was clear in the oval office as aides tried again and again to escort reporters out even as the president seemed eager to talk. The president arriving in florida with a bounce in his step greeting his supporters as he started a tenday christmas break. Even though president obama and other president s have long celebrated christmas, mr. Trump has taken credit for shining a new spot on the holiday. Of course that Merry Christmas line has long been a central line of President Trumps campaign rallies. He has said that he will bring back christmas. Its always been appropriate and fine to say Merry Christmas but the president has used this and his supporters seem to like it. The president in sunny florida, a Merry Christmas from here to both of you. Thanks so much. And here now our political commentator and cnn political analyst and historian and professor at princeton, university. Good morning to you both. The president as you just heard in jeffs piece, he didnt hold that end of the Year Press Conference. He hasnt done a press Conference Since february. I want to go to the journalist on the panel here. Your thoughts on all of this . He wanted to avoid all russia questions . I think it would be difficult to manage the president s press strategy when hes gone through so many Communications Direct torrs and press secretaries. Its very hard to figure out how and when youre going to put this man in front of the cameras and i think thats why they havent had any formal press conferences. There is also a backlog just as you suggested, a backlog of bad news that is building up. And at some point theyre going to have to have a concerted strategy on how to deal with what they say as a white house about the russia probes, both by congress and by the special investigator. Hes got top aides who have been arrested who have pleaded guilty. Theres a lot of bad news that theyre going to have to manage and so i would look elsewhere than the end of Year Press Conference if there was going to be one as a place for him to try and explain all of that. And you know hes there in florida. Some of his tweets have happened when hes not the white house. Hes got a lot of time to watch a lot of television so just because he didnt do that press conference doesnt mean we may not hear from the president during his time off. Right. You have this image of some of his top staff like john kelly trying to contain him, trying to hold him back from saying anything from tweeting anything, but now that hes alone or now that hes a little more isolated on vacation, this has been the kind of moment where the tweets start. And i think the staff is looking at the numbers for the midterms. Theyre following the investigation. What they dont want is for President Trump to overwhelm his own victory on the tax bill. All right. Well, lets stick with the russia investigation. We know that the House Intelligence Committee members traveled to new york to interview long time President Trumps assistant. Shes essentially been the president s gate keeper. How significant was this interview with the president s long Time Assistant . Well, you know, its interesting. Its hard to be sure. Of course this is a person that is relevant because although we talk about her as a top assistant she actually had a pretty important title and a pretty important role. I think what this gets to though is the interaction between the special investigator and the Congressional Committees. So the Congressional Committee may not have had a deep or expert kind of set of questions to probe her with. On the other hand they could have turned up information that the special investigator that the special council could in fact make use of and once you Start Connecting certain dots even a seemingly insignificant piece of information, how did the president react to that piece of news or was the president in the room when certain conversations took place, it can really start to sort of fill in the picture and so its hard to say exactly what will come of all of this. I would suggest that if she did the right thing and did what her attorneys undoubtedly told her to do which is to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it will help somebody, possibly the special investigator more so than Congress Fill in some of the blanks on what happened during the campaign. Speaking of congress and their investigation of course nancy pelosi putting out a letter this week telling paul ryan, make sure this this russia investigation that is happening, all of them that are happening in the house, that they keep on going. However paul ryan responding to her, we actually have that statement from paul ryans folks. He essentially says to suit her political agenda, leader pelosi would like to see this investigation go on forever. That is obvious and he goes on to pretty much say whether it concludes next month, next year or in three years, she will say it is too soon. Heres what we do know. This has become very partisan, these investigations on capitol hill. Are they approaching the point where theyre just going to be irrelevant because now both sides have gotten so partisan . I do think the republicans are in the middle of a campaign to try to discredit the entire investigation and weve seen in the last week an acceleration of the rhetoric that the special counsel is biased towards the democrats and more of a hardening of the partisan tensions on capitol hill. I dont think the partisanship necessarily subverts the process, but ultimately this does have to be handled in a political arena. This will turn back the congress and if the republicans are in control of congress and really dont want to do anything about this, they do have the capacity to let it fizzle. And Robert Mueller has a big task ahead of him, not just to investigate, but to make something of the investigation. And worth noting the majority of americans do support the mueller investigation. 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But with historically low Approval Ratings can the president push this agenda forward . The panel back with us now. Let me start with you. The president referred to the infrastructure proposal which is forthcoming as the easy one that hell be able to bring democrats in on. Is it . Oh, no. There are a couple of problems. Number one, victor, is that the president s proposal for infrastructure as least as it was laid out during the campaign involves bringing private industry in and having them receive tax cuts in exchange for doing infrastructure projects. Democrats immediately reacted to that. Its the furthest thing from what they would like to see. What they would like to see is flatout Government Spending and have it work its way down through the traditional road projects, transportation bills, rebuilding of ports and so forth and so on, so theyre sort of miles apart, maybe not in the overall dollars that might be committed or even the list of projects that should be tacked but the methodology is fundamentally different so its a mistake to think that democrats will simply come on board. From a historians perspective, big infrastructure spending, building things, historically is popular with both party to show this is how were moving our society forward, but this could get in politics like everything else. No it should be an easier piece of legislation. The president is not incorrect in that members of congress in both parties are very desire rous to have money come into their districts for these kinds of programs, but there is a fundamental difference on what infrastructure policy means, one for the president , its about using private contractors for democrats its not. And second, look, the tax bill is also low hanging fruit and he should have received some democratic votes on that and he didnt. So not only are there differences in terms of policy, but the parties are at logger heads and its going to be hard to get democrats to say yes to anything that President Trump wants at this point. Lets go back to february and i want you two and our viewers to listen to what the president said. This was during his joint address to address to the joint session of congress about infrastructure. To launch our National Rebuilding i will be asking congress to approve legislation that produces a 1 trillion investment in infrastructure of the United States financed through both public and private capital creating millions of new jobs. So that was almost 300 days ago, erol, will this plan coming from the white house, will it be really coming from the white house or will this be Something Like we saw for the health care fight where hes going to sign on to something that really is birthed through congress . Well, hes going to need a lot of cooperation and its going to be very tricky. One thing that stands out, victor, is that when he made that promise or when he made that suggestion that was a trillion and a half dollars ago. I mean, now because of the tax cut, the money is essentially gone or spent if you want to think of it that way. Over the next ten years if you want to add a trillion and a half dollars to the deficit youre not going to add another trillion dollars to the infrastructure. One thing that probably wont be available, i its safe to say they wont be able to do it with 51 votes. They wont be able to slide that through as a budget bill. They kind of maxed out the nations credit card. If the trillion and a half dollars ago and now you want to spend another trillion, the money is gone, that is unless you start cutting spending, listen to the question of entitlement and where that discussion will go in 2018 first from House Speaker paul ryan and then from senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell. Will Congress Take up entitlement spending next year . Yes, we will. I think the democrats are not going to be interested in entitlement reform. Who wins here . Well, i think well see how it plays out, but theres a good possibility that at least an early look at this is going to be on the tabl