these discussions i ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. i ve enjoyed them very, very much. i was also very impressed by the remarks he made on his victory night. by the way, it s not easy winning. i know that myself. he did something i try to do and was unsuccessful in accomplishing, he won the general election. and he continues with a message of inclusion and bringing people together and his vision is something which obviously connected with the american people in a very powerful way. and our jim acosta asked donald trump whether romney will be his secretary of state. the answer, quote, well, we re going to see what happens. there s a lot to get to. mark preston, dana bash both here this evening. hello to you, both of you. mark, i ll start with you. you have some new reporting on donald trump delivering on his campaign promises and also on this, what happened at trump tower. what can you tell us? let s just start out in indiana, though, first. donald trump had made a big deal about keeping manufacturing jobs here in the united states. something that helped him win. we saw from united technologies today, which is the parent company of carrier, they put out a tweet that said we are pleased to have reached a deal with the president-elect trump and vp-elect pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in indy. let s just talk about this a little bit. there were 1400 jobs on the block in indianapolis. there were another 700 in a town nearby. carrier about a year ago said they were going to move these jobs and shut these plants down. we re seeing right now that at least 1,000 of those jobs are going to stay. you said it s close to 1,000? close to 1,000, but there are 2100 jobs that were on the line. so we still don t know what the deal is and we don t know what s going to happen to those other jobs. what we do know, though, is united technologies is also a very big defense contractor. they get about $5.6 billion a year from u.s. taxpayers. dana, before you weigh in, here s what donald trump said at a rally last april. they re going to call me and they re going to say, mr. president, carrier has decided to stay in indiana. thank you, sir. and by the way, 100%, okay? 100 it s not like we have an 80% chance of keeping them or a 95%. 100%. yeah. so, dana, we don t know the details. it wasn t 100% of the jobs. 50%. 50% of the jobs. so that s pretty symbolic. but it s better than 0%. given that he s not even in the white house yet and you have to give him his due. no question about it. look, as you all said, we don t know what the stick was to get this carrot, if you will, but what we do know is that if carrier itself sent this tweet out, it s very telling. and that donald trump and mike pence, we should say who is still the governor of indiana, are going to go there later this week and have a rally and talk about this. look, this is and was a very, very big deal. politically this announcement happened right before the indiana primary. remember, the indiana primary was the one that actually put donald trump over the top. it made him the effective nominee for the republican presidential the republican presidential nominee, rather, and ted cruz dropped out. the carrier situation happened like in the days before that primary. so this is something that has been near and dear to donald trump s heart, because of that, because of fact that jobs and jobs going overseas has been and had been one of his top issues and because of course his vice president is the governor of indiana. mark, let s talk about this last episode and the latest episode of the apprentice, mitt romney and donald trump meet for dinner. we saw some of it, there he is with reince priebus just right across from where we are at the trump hotel and tower. shocking that he would pick that restaurant. keep it in the family. first of all, jim acosta was in the restaurant and literally witnessed them having a dinner, which probably was a little unsettling, i think, for the participants. but from what i understand from people in the restaurant, somebody who witnessed this conversation was that it was very collegial, very cordial. there was a lot of laughing going on. and what i think was very telling is what mitt romney said and we showed the clip right at the very top, what he said about donald trump when he said, by the way, it s not easy winning, i know that myself. he did something i tried to do and was unsuccessful in accomplishing, he won the general election. why this is important because there had been a lot of talk within trump circles that mitt romney had to apologize if he was going to become secretary of state for all the bad things he had said about donald trump. there is no way mitt romney is going to come out and apologize in a way that was the apology in a sense? as someone in the transition orbit told me, this is the beginning of the mea culpa of mitt romney and he s saying all the right things. a lot of people said bad things about donald trump, some people who are close to them. if we could re-rack and play the tapes, why would mitt romney have to apologize and some of the others wouldn t. if we went back and re-racked the mitt romney tapes let s play some of it. here it is. donald trump is a phony, a fraud. mitt was a disaster as a candidate. he s playing the members of the american public for suckers. romney let us all down. he was a very poor campaigner. he gets a free ride to the white house and all we get is a lousy hat. romney choked like a dog, he choked. he went his promises are as worthless as a degree from trump university. i have a lot of friends. no, i have a lot of friends. by the way, mitt romney is not one of them. go ahead, mark, first and then dana. this is how dana and i usually talk to each other when we re working together in washington, d.c. that s why we re so close. all with love. all with love. the difference is, and let me pass it off to dana, is that mitt romney went out and gave a specific speech where he went to tear down donald trump and then try to run a third-party candidate against him. dana, if we played some of chris christie s remarks and even granted, they were not as harsh, even some of his campaign managers, kellyanne conway s remarks on your show. i don t understand why mitt romney needs to apologize. they don t need to apologize. what gives here? i think mark said it exactly right. they were making comments in the heat of battle because they were representing other candidates. in chris christie s case he was representing himself, he was the opponent of donald trump. mitt romney made an effort, a concerted effort to write the speech, which we remember realtime we reported he wrote himself, and to announce to the world in very, very excruciating detail but also really biting criticism about the core and character of who he thinks donald trump is and the reason why he shouldn t be president. that s really different from the others. and, by the way, this is the most recent republican nominee making that statement. it was a really monumental time. so that s the reason why. now, having said that, i agree with mark 100% that i thought the most telling part of mitt romney s remarks, first of all, that he came out to make remarks to reporters at all. and made an effort to say winning is not easy and i couldn t do it and he did it. applause to him. i was talking to somebody going into this dinner saying, okay, what is donald trump really thinking the whole time. this is somebody who s close to him, said he s thinking this guy is never going to be loyal to me. now, whether or not that s true, who knows. maybe this was a complete turn-around in this dinner and reince priebus, who was there, who is the incoming white house chief of staff we know from our reporting has been one of the biggest proponents of mitt romney as secretary of state. so, you know, it would certainly not be the biggest surprise if donald trump decided after this dinner, you know what, i m in. how much loyalty is there in politics anyway. stand by you two, because donald trump also criticized mitt romney when mitt romney was running as well. if you listen to the remarks from just this season on the campaign trail, donald trump was very critical of mitt romney as well this season. so i want to bring in now kevin sheridan, who is a senior advisor on the romney-ryan presidential campaign. thank you for joining this panel. you know mitt romney very well. these two men could not have been more different, although they both have business success in common. do you think that he will be the secretary of state in the trump administration? i have no idea other than what i read and what i see on your air. all i can say is that if donald trump wants to pick the best people for his cabinet, and it seems like that s what he s doing, his criteria seems to be he s just looking for the best people, mitt romney would be a great choice for that. now, i have no inside knowledge to what anybody is thinking here, i just am reporting on what i know from what i read. mitt romney is a turn-around artist and could obviously do a lot of good at the state department and turn that organization around and be a good secretary of state. but i have no idea what their conversation was like. i have no idea whether or not they could get on the same page in terms of being a voice and a face for donald trump s foreign policy. but, look, it s a good sign that they re talking. it s a good sign the party is coming together. i continue to believe that this is good for the party and good for the country that these two men are talking. kevin, do you agree with dana and with mark that mitt romney s criticism was sort of above and beyond everybody else s criticism and that he in some way needed to apologize to donald trump? look, i think this was very heated last year and the republican party frayed in a lot of different ways. there were some things said between candidates i ve never heard before in politics in, 20 years of politics. that s putting it lightly. some of that was donald trump saying it s other people. he got very personal with people and other people got very personal back with him. look, everybody has now come together. we ve got a unified republican government for the first time in years. this is a very good sign. does romney want this job? i have no idea. i would think that he would he would strongly consider anything he was offered, but i have no idea whether or not he would ultimately take it. kevin, dana, mark, thank you all. i appreciate it. thanks, don. when we come right back, donald trump is filling his cabinet, but what do his choices tell us about what to expect for the next four years? pridress. but once a week i let her play sheriff so i can wash it. i use tide to get out those week old stains and downy to get it fresh and soft. you are free to go. tide and downy together. you don t want to ride the 13l checkiforever, do you? 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here to discuss, new york times columnist nicholas kristof. on one level he s got the tweets, he s got steve bannon, he s got some controversial appointments. he s got the press that he s been criticizing. but then he s also making some headway in his transition. what strikes you the most about this transition and his cabinet? i guess a couple of things. one is for a populist, some of the folks who are going to be storming washington aren t carrying pitchforks, they re carrying swiss bank accounts. we have penny pritzger in the obama administration was the first billionaire ever to serve in a cabinet position. i mean so far we it looks like we ll have wilbur ross as commerce secretary, we ve got betty devos as education secretary, trump himself and who knows who else will come along in the trump cabinet. and i guess i d also say that some of the first appointees, bannon, mike flynn as national security advisor i think sent waves of terror around the world. if the secretary of state is mitt romney, is dave petraeus, something like that, i think that will be reassuring from a pretty low bar. we have been looking at these twitter storms and you mentioned all these people, the bannons and so forth. in the midst of that also while that was happening the twitter storms came. do you think that was a distraction from some of the people he was appointing and the conflicts of interest? yeah, i think some of the twitter storms were an intended distraction. i think that when we in the media try to cover some conflict or some other issue, then trump has been very, very shrewd at unleashing some tweet and we all go scurrying off after it, like dogs chasing a car. so i think he s been quite effective in manipulating us to that extent. i must say, though, president obama put out exactly one tweet as president-elect and it was a very noble thing about thank you for bringing about change. and it really is kind of different to have a president-elect watch a tv show and fire off these tweets into the ether. i mean you kind of wonder if that s how he s going to try to manage the world over the next four years. it is very interesting, especially when a lot of them are not true at all. one wonders what happens at president, because it s not just i mean he s the president-elect, the whole world will be watching. they re watching now. but when he s president it s a different story. the comments of the lowliest press secretary are vetted 18 times because people around the world are watching it, the president even more so. the notion that the president is going to be watching what s happening in north korea and firing something off that will shape the world i think is really troubling. he said his second meeting with mitt romney tonight and here s what romney had to say about it. listen to this. i happen to think america s best days are ahead of it. i think you ll see america continue to lead the world in this century. what i ve seen through these discussions that i ve had through president-elect trump as well as what we ve seen in his speech the night of his victory as well as his people he selected as part of his transition, all of those things combined give me increasing hope that president-elect trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future. thank you. he says we re going to see what happens next. what do you think happens next? well, that wasn t an apology but it was certainly that donald trump is a phony, a fraud. a long way from that. i do think that it would be a shrewd appointment by trump. everybody is going to forget about the bad blood in the past and what is the u.s. doing about it. i think romney doesn t know a lot about foreign affairs, he s not immensely experienced in it, but he does inspire confidence on the part of just about everybody. i think at the assistant secretary of state level he would be able to attract t top flight republican talent where rudy giuliani would not. do you think it bothers donald trump that mitt romney appears more presidential than he does? if you were looking at the two standing together, you would think mitt romney was the president. you certainly would. and president-elect trump is sometimes seen as just a wee bit insecure. on the other end, he said he wants a secretary of state who looks the part. you know, romney is from central casting. some people have pointed out that during the campaign that actually when you do the transition and you re establishing a cabinet, the governing is actually the toughest part of this. do you think we re going to see a difference? i think he s actually making headway. i think he s putting his cabinet together pretty quickly. he is putting his cabinet together really quickly. i m i really am troubled by some of the appointments. mike flynn the idea of mike flynn as national security advisor and trying to listen to what pentagon is saying, state department is saying, trying to formulate a foreign policy, you know, i can t imagine him being appointed by any other administration. some of the other appointments i think are much more mainstream and trump is not an ideologue. he s an empty vessel for ideology. he s also not an interventionist. if you re going to have a really impetuous person, it s better that he be a noninterventionist. there s pretty classic republicans and he talks about draining the swamp but these folks have been around for a while, most of them. i know you re troubled by some of them. besides that, does any of that surprise you or feel like a new breed? elaine chao knows washington really well and she was a shrewd pick. if you re trying to have infrastructure and spending and one of the obstacles is senate republicans who are worried about how to finance it, then the wife of the senate majority leader is probably a pretty shrewd lobbyist on your behalf. so i think so far it s been a mix. i think it s still a little bit too early to see how the overall shape of the cabinet will be. and a lot will depend where does betsy devos take education. pretty unclear. always a pleasure. we re glad you re okay. i heard about your ordeal on twitter, harrowing. well, i m all well now. i testified against the guy today. look it up, if you guys are interested in what happened. when we come right back, donald trump suggests if you burn the american flag you should lose your citizenship. does he really mean it? 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it was a very difficult one because i think he was torn on the one hand. he was very patriotic, and on the other hand he understood that given the court s precedence, that this kind of protest is speech. mr. trump, of course, is having to get acclimated to the rather rarefied air of the presidency, and it looks as if we are in for a long acclimation. well put, brian. that was i like that remark. so donald trump has often praised, alan, he s praised justice antonin skacalia and he talking now he praises justice scalia because he doesn t know anything about justice scalia. he just knows that he was a conservative member of the court and he was pandering to the hard right. what worries me more about donald trump is not the flag burning. most elected politicians would vote to ban flag burning, so that s a close question. what i m worried about is anything donald trump doesn t like, he d like to ban. he d like to ban criticism of him. he s like to ban the large media. he thinks that as president he s going to get his way, and it s going to be free speech for me but not for thee and it s going to come home to hurt him if that ever happened. if he ever eliminated the laws of li bechbel, he s protected b first amendmet. what would happen to his twitter account? the good news is presidents as powerful as they are don t get to change constitutional law. that s up to the courts. that s up to the justices. that s certainly true. but i do think that the troubling aspect of this is not his expression his opinion about flag burning, which as alan points out a lot of people share, if you look at his tweets and statements since he was elected president, there is this extreme sensitivity to criticism, whether it was the protests in portland right afterwards, whether it was the cast of hamilton, this is something that yes, it s fine to express your first amendment rights, but when you re president, i think we all have to be a little worried if you are talking about stifling the rights of others. brian, i want to read this is a tweet because as recently as february 2013 donald trump seemed to have different views when it comes to freedom of speech. this is in february of 2013. if freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led like sheep to the slaughter. he was quoting george washington. so on this and other policies, it s hard to know where he stands. are these kinds of flip-flops is it going to be a problem for him when it comes to the law and how people understand it? maybe not, because there were 11 years in a row when the house and the senate voted on well, actually the house voted to have a constitutional amendment, from 1995 to 2006, banning desecration of the flag. it never got through the senate. but he could always, because of the vagueness of the tweet this morning, he could always say that what he suggests and hopes for is a constitutional amendment that would strip people of their citizenship if they were convicted of burning the flag and have other penalties as well. i think it s vague enough that he could be saying that he supports that. now, the interesting thing is, would he actually, for example, vet supreme court nominees based on whether they would agree to go with what had been the minority in the 5-4 votes of 1989 and 1990 and overturn that 27-year-old precedent. if that s his priority, we are in real trouble. the situation now is perfect. everybody hates flag burners. they lose in the court of public opinion. why should we bring them in front of the court of law and make them martyrs. the situation is perfect. it ain t broke. why is he fixing it? he s the president-elect. i get what you re instant mating here but i don t know if everyone hates flag burners. i think people think it s your right as an american it s your right to wear swastikas too but everybody hates those who wear swastikas. i defend their right to say it. i don t think it s the same thing. i think people burn the flag well, some people burn the flag because they feel like they re not represented in this country by government. many minorities, many people who are underrepresented in the country feel that way. people burn people wear swastikas because of hate. those are two different things. so i don t think everyone hates flag burners. most people would defend the right for people to do it, but they don t necessarily like it. i would defend a football player s right to kneel down during the pledge of allegiance but i wouldn t do it myself. free speech for me but not for thee is the most common form. everyone wants to censor what they disagree with. that s what s so great with the first amendment. it s the radicals on the hard left who are trying to censor and the radicals on the hard right and president trump should not join those two groups. we ll be right back. if you re totally blind, you may also be struggling with non-24. calling 844-844-2424. or visit my24info.com. just checking my free credit score at credit karma. what the??? you re welcome. i just helped you dodge a bullet. but i was just checking my. shhh. don t you know that checking your credit score lowers it! just be cool. actually, checking your credit score with credit karma doesn t affect it at all. are you sure? positive. so i guess i can just check my credit score then? oooh check out credit karma today. credit karma. give yourself some credit. sorry about that. like bundling home and auto coverage, which reduces redney. tape, which saves money. when they save, you save. that s home and auto insurance for the modern world. esurance, an allstate company. click or call. the first amendment contains the principles that make america what it is. so does donald trump really want to change that? back with me alan dershowitz, jeffrey toobin and bryan garner. bryan, let s start with you. let s take a look now at the first amendment. this is a short passage and is a huge amount of what makes this country great. congress shall make no law expecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or the press or the right of people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. so donald trump has spoken out about many of these rights publicly as a candidate and as the president-elect. do you think he understands how sacred this passage is? well, i mean you could make the argument that cynically he does and that he is perhaps doing what i suggested earlier and going for a constitutional amendment. but you could also make the argument that our president-elect needs a basic lesson in civics. the separation of powers and civil liberties and what they mean in this country. you know, it s cynical in the sense that this declaration this morning appeals to the let s say the hoy paloy sense of patriotism. the only people who will disagree and be upset are experts or highly educated folks who understand what civil liberties mean. go ahead, jeffrey. i m not sure. i actually think i give sort of the american people a little more credit than that. i think people understand that the government shouldn t be deciding what sort of speech is permissible and what s not. i don t think that s necessarily an elite point of view. i do agree that flag burning does bring out the anti-free speech spirit in a lot of people, but i think this is a sufficiently core value that it s not a matter of income or education or age. i think most people get it. i think most people, however, if you put a poll out, most people would say that the first amendment should be amended to prohibit flag burning. by the way, the liberals are trying to amend the first amendment too. not me, but they want to prohibit citizens united and to limit fund-raising. i don t think anybody left or right should tamper with that amendment. prior presidents have tried to. president adams, even jefferson famously said given a choice of governments without newspapers or newspapers without governments, he would take newspapers without governments and then he served as president for eight years and said i ll never read another newspaper again, they re full of lies. that sets me up for my very next question and maybe you can answer it. he said during the campaign that he wanted to make it easier for journalists who reported negative stories about him to be sued for libel. do you think he has a deeper ambition to silence critics or control dissent? absolutely. there s no question in my mind that if he had his way, he would say i get to say what i want on twitter about anybody else but you don t get to say what you think about me. again, it s for me but not for thee and we have i don t agree with senator mccain that we should ignore this. we have to fight back and we have to tell him that we, the american people, whether we re experts or the ordinary folk, are going to fight to defend our first amendment. do we have john mccain s sound bite because you just mentioned it, but go on. it s just important to remember in the context of all of this that the press at this moment is very unpopular too. he hasn t had a press conference in months. he hasn t answered questions from the press. he doesn t have a press pool following him around the way other presidents-elect have. so it s not like we are embraced by the public as their representatives, and i think that he knows that. and that was why when he had rallies, you know, particularly with his core supporters, the press would be in a pen there and he would say they re scum, they re despicable, and people would cheer. so it s not just that we are embracing the constitution, it s that, you know, we re perceived as an interest group too. we are not necessarily seen just as the public s representatives. you mentioned john mccain. manu raju caught up with him earlier. i have not been commenting on mr. trump. i will continue not to comment on mr. trump. he said that the people who burn the flag should be prosecuted. what do you think about that? there was a very close decision by the united states supreme court. i do not approve of burning the flag. i think there should be some punishment, but right now the supreme court decision is that people are free to express themselves that way, but i do not approve of it and i think there s other ways for people to express their views rather than burn a flag that so many americans fought and died for. even said lose citizenship over it. he said people should lose citizenship. i m not going to comment on mr. trump s comments. i have not and will not. so he s commenting without commenting. bryan, what do you make of that? well, in 1989, justice kennedy in agreeing with the prohibition of any ban on flag burning, justice kennedy said the american flag protects even those who hold it in contempt. and that is one of the great ironies here is that the flag is a symbol it means so many things to so many different people but it fundamentally is about american core values. and it does protect those who hold it in contempt. let s hope it continues to protect them because he has control over appointments to the supreme court. and all he has to do is appoint one more justice, fill the scalia vacancy, and the first amendment could be in danger. that s why i think the senate has to play a very important role in making sure that the president doesn t through supreme court appointments eviscerate our basic constitutional rights. one of his signature policies that he has mentioned is banning some muslims from coming into the country and if possible registration of muslims. would that undermine another aspect of the first amendment? that s a very interesting question and a lot would depend on how it was framed. you know, presidents have control of the borders. they can decide on quotas from certain countries. you know, immigration policy is obviously a power of the federal government. you certainly could not have a policy that said all muslims are not allowed in the united states, and that was how he initially phrased that proposal. he s sort of backed away from it lately. i don t know where it currently stands. but i think it s complicated constitutionally and it may be simply that he doesn t have the right to do what he wants to do. bryan, i want to ask you because donald trump has a scotus vacancy to fill. he said he would look for a justice in the mold of scalia. what do you think scalia would say to him about this issue and about the first amendment? i think he would say leave the first amendment alone and leave the texas versus johnson decision and i canmkeman, the t decisions the supreme court held flag burning is protected speech, leave it alone. but you say that he has this vacancy to fill. no, this was obama s vacancy to fill. there was a very long period of time where the republicans would not allow the vacancy to be filled. i wouldn t be surprised if there was some democrats who would say this is not trump s vacancy. we re going to keep this empty, quote senator cruz. what s wrong with 4-4. we ll wait for there to be another vacancy, but this is not trump s vacancy to fill. that may be a position some senators will take. i really enjoyed this conversation. thank you very much, gentlemen. thank you, sir. thank you, bryan, i appreciate it. thank you. coming up, donald trump campaigned on his promise to drain the swamp in washington, but do some of his cabinet picks tell a different story? 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[and her new business: i do, to jeanetgo. jeanette was excellent at marrying people. but had trouble getting paid. not a good time, jeanette. even worse. now i m uncomfortable. but here s the good news, jeanette got quickbooks. send that invoice, jeanette. looks like they viewed it. and, ta-da! paid twice as fast. oh, she s an efficient officiant. way to grow, jeanette. get paid twice as fast. visit quickbooks-dot-com. when you think of saving money, what comes to mind? your next getaway? connecting with family and friends? a big night out? or maybe your everyday shopping. whatever it is, aarp member advantages can help save you time and money along the way. so when you get there, you can enjoy it all the more. for less. surround yourself with savings at aarpadvantages.com donald trump it filling his cabinet and so far the position of secretary of state is open. the night is still young. maybe we ll hear something. let s discuss. cnn political commentator sally cohen and former adviser crack kingston. so far mitt romney said we ll see. we ll see. it is a cordial. all right. so let s discuss. sally, you first. we know that trump had dinner with mitt romney tonight. if he picks romney has his secretary of state, what does that say about him, about trump? ah, that i mean, i don t know, that his capacity for forgiveness is unparalleled. i mean, it would actually be a pretty stunning thing frankly given the things he said trump picks romney. i do think that s more interesting in the other direction f.romney, who tried to take a very principled stand in the campaign decides, yeah, you know, power is more important than principles and this person when i bashed as you uniquely disqualified, unqualified to be leader of the free world, i m now going to actually go help him and serve his dastardly agenda, that would be a pretty low mark for romney works you know, for all his shortcomings i think people saw as a pretty moral and upstanding person. i take that representative kingston has a few words to say about this. i would say this. i think mitt romney is a guy who wants to serve of. you know, public service, once you get bug you have it until you die and i think he s a guy who has some game left in him and he wants to answer the call of the country, and i think there s a great charm in america that when the president of the united states calls and asks you to do something you certainly want to do it, and in this case it might only be an interview, but mitt romney is stepping forward, but, you know you think it s real, jack. do you think he would donald trump would pick him? i think it is real, but i also think that kellyanne conways comments were real and those were echoed by congresswoman collins and congresswoman marcia blackburn. and probably donald trump as well because she wouldn t go off the reservation as well. and there would be some concern about it from the base and sale has put an interesting perspective it, and the base, as you know, don, and i had the honor of being a frequent visitor on your show during september and october, and there were some bleak days. there were some tough days and most of us in the foxhole may have looked around and said who else is in the foxhole passing the am anything, and if you did not see somebody and now they are up there for cabinet consideration, you tend to think, oh, man, that s a little bit bothersome, burks again, let me say this. he needs to get the guy who he likes, somebody who is going to implement his policy and known. and that s officially known as a kingstonnism. go ahead, sally. a very interesting perspective to think about, look, you know, donald trump won the presidency, won the electoral college, but the majority voters did not vote for him, and yet he has shown stunningly little interest appealing to that majority of voters who did did not support his presidency, is many of the republican voters who pull the lever only because they disliked him less do you think if the situation had been reversed do you think hill hill s supporters would be reaching out to embracing i m not talking about even the supporters, i m just talking about the candidates. hill hill would be ensupporting people who supported donald trump. look at the presidency of president obama who in 2008 won a pretty strong margin, a very large mandate and yet he hand his cabinet appointed moderates, conservatives, republicans, really looked for an ideological experiential diversity. general flynn is a democrat. one of his first and highest ranking cabinet members, advisers is general flynn. he is a democrat. yeah, and so was donald trump once. i don t think it counts at this point in that sense. well, you know, sally, i think no matter who he picks you may have a concern about that and i understand about that, but he won the election and it s his right to pick whatever he wants. sorry to call you jack, you are representative. jack works, i m fine. in an interview with usa today here s what knew the knew the said. this is even a bigger job than i thought. what s your reaction to that? well, and in reference to being secretary of state, is that the context? that s what knew the knew the said that donald trump told me, pardon me for not putting that out there. i think that s true. i think in a matter who you are, whatever you re elected to, city council or mayor or congress which i ve experienced or certainly president, you re just amazed, wow, there s a lot more to it than i thought and i think that s just part of the process that you go through, and i think other president-elects have said the same sort of thing, but i do want to say this, that i think donald trump is being a student of this job. he is going out and he s careful interviewing people. the weekend before last, he interviewed 20 people over the weekend, which is exhausting, but he s listening to different perspectives. michelle rhee, for example, another democrat he did interview and betty devos, they disagreed on common core and came to a meeting of the names and nikki heal, of course, was opposed to him but he s put her in the cabinet. got to run, representative. so he s reaching out and i think he s doing a lot of things right. i feel like he s being very patient. thank you both. appreciate it. when we come right back, donald trump chooses a wall street big wig for treasury secretary. will that sit well with his voters? 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[ laughter ] donald trump filling out his cabinet tonight but is he leaving mitt romney hanging? i m don lemon. no decision despite the dinner tonight with romney. with the clock ticking is romney still in the running and a dramatic day in the trial of michael schrager, the white police officer charged with the murder and shooting death of
big backlash after president obama commutes the sentence of chelsea manning, how did this move affect interaction among those who leaked classified material. the president-elect making preparations for his presidential inauguration friday as more democrats decide to boycott. and a critical day on capitol hill. the man charged with overhauling obamacare faces the senate after the education nominee runs into pushback. good morning, everyone, welcome to early start. i m christine romans. i m john berman. 92-year-old former president george h.w. bush has been hospitalized in houston, that s according to local media. his office chief of staff gene becker tells the houston chronicle that president bush is doing just fine. although the reason for his hospitalization not immediately disclosed. he was not planning to go to the inauguration this friday. we don t know how this will affect george w. bush whether he still plans to attend. george h.w. bush has been in the hospital over the last couple years battling health issues. he s enjoying life and staying current on public affairs. we wish him the best. the president commuted the 35 year prison sentence of chelsea manning the former army private convicted of leaking 750,000 pages of documents and videos will be released in may. no word from the trump team yet regarding the decision on manning. but the move has stirred up significant controversy. the president made the decision over the objection from his own secretary of defense ash carter. manning released the secret documents in 2010 through wikileaks which has been advocating for her release. of course in the past election, wikileaks and its founder julian assange released documents that were hacked by russia with the aim at helping donald trump win the election. let s get to nic robertson from london. nic, what are you learning? the white house has commuted manning s sentence because she has accepted responsibility. she has shown remorse. twice in the past 12 months, she s tried to commit suicide over six years. that was the rationale over it. we have in london julian assange, held of wikileaks, holed up in the ecuadorian embassy since 2012 because he said he was being held unfairly by the united states for investigation there. if you will ignore that alarm for the moment. it normally goes off this time of the day. however, what we understand from assange, in the last few days, he tweeted that he would in fact hand himself over to u.s. authorities if president obama commuted manning s sentence. that has now happened. now, we had a tweet from assange s lawyer saying he s ready to follow through on the commitment that he made. that, however, is a very interesting development. at the very time, as you say, donald trump is coming to office, wikileaks allegedly played a role in the leaking of information. it did play a role in the leaking of information that had been hacked from dnc computers. and therefore you arrive in this very interesting situation where assange is almost offering apparently, i don t know if it will happen, to hand himself over to the next administration, who on the surface appeared to have helped. unclear. or uncertain at best whether or not we can take julian assange s word on whether or not he will turn hills over. nic robertson. glad the call only your porsche is going off. i wish. julian assange claimed victory. thank you to everyone who campaigned for chelsea manning s clemency. your courage and determination made the impossible possible. on capitol hill, the commutation from democrat was harsh from republicans. joe manchin said the shortened sentences were dead wrong. it gave a green light to hacking and cyber attacks. this is wrong. it s treason and espionage. should have been 35 years. republican lindsey graham told dana bash manning stabs his fellow soldiers in the back by releasing classified information and putting their lives at risk. president obama by granted clemency to manning, slapped all of those who serve honor aeblg in the face. and john mccain, a grave mistake that i fear will encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline. and devalues the courage of real whistle-blowers who have used proper channels to hold our government accountably. scott pruitt tapped for the away. nikki haley, ambassador for the un. tuesday was a tough day of questioning for the education nominee, betsy devos. let s get the latest from cnn s phil mattingly, he s on capitol hill. john and christine, week two of confirmation madness kicked off on tuesday. it was really one primarily hearing everybody was focused on. and that is the president-elect s selection to be his next education secretary. betsy devos. now, she s well-known in political and education circles for a couple reasons. politically, she comes from a family and she herself, some of biggest donors in the republican party. as part of that donation, a part of where their money goes, education reform, charter schools, and big issues that betsy devos have focused but have made her a prime target for democrats. and that s certain shown in her confirmation hearing. take a look at this explaining between senator elizabeth warren and betsy devos primarily on how much experience the nominee actually has. mrs. devos, have you ever taken out a student loan from the federal government to help pay for college? i have not. have either of your children had to borrow money to go to college? they ve been fortunate not to. have you had any personal experience with the pell grant? not personal experience, but certainly friends and students with whom i ve worked. so you have no personal experience with college financial aid or management of higher education? reporter: now, even though there were consistent attacks from democrats and outside groups, particularly public school teachers, labor unions have been targeting her nomination. she has a lot of heavy support jeb bush obviously, the tormenter or tormentee, if you will, of the president-elect throughout the republican primary process has come out in support. a lot of support. a lot of republicans who feel like betsy devos represents the direction they want to go when that comes to federal education policy. they ve gotten big behind her nomination. there s expectation that she will be confirmed barring some late breaking development we haven t heard about yet. and now who comes next, guys, no question about it, today s hearing tom price secretary of health and human services the biggest one on the docket. probably this week. maybe for the entire administration. think about the number one policy issue for the president-elect. repealing and replacing the affordable air act, tom price has a huge role in that. not only because he has the expertise working on capitol hill, as a doctor, but also in that role. he can do a lot unilaterally to help that process along. but he has major problems as well. democrats with pointed policy questions for him, but also pointed questions about tom price s ethics. how he operated on capitol hill, our own manu raju on capitol hill about his trading. senate democrats point to that. that might be a problem. keep a very close look on it and tom prices answers them today. wilbur ross faces lawmakers today. ahead of that hearing the famed investor has reached an agreement with federal officials. if confirmed he will step away from invesco and its subsidiaries including his firm wilbur ross and company. and he will sell shares of apple and boeing. he has hedge funds that you can t just sell them overnight. boy, do i know that. yeah, john, a problem you have. and he nine passive investments he will keep those involving real estate and shipping. pay close attention to what he says about trade. sources tell cnn that trump aims to give a bigger role on trade negotiations. ross said his first goal would be to renegotiate nafta. this is somebody, over the years, i ve interviewed him many times, he s very aware of trade between u.s. and china is. you say, oh, it s somebody who has bought companies and offshore jobs, a few thousand since 2004 according to a reuters report. but he knows how the world workings and how companies have suffered. that s what he does. he buys stuff from industry. he knows about textile and steel where people have been hammered and lost jobs. we ll be watching very closely, what will he say, what will tom price say when they are grilled, perhaps, by the senators. we ll discuss that and much, much more, with our panel coming up next. suck on and point decisively with the arm of your glasses. it is no longer eyewear, it is your wand of business wizardry. abracadabra. you ve just gone from invisible to invincible. step two: before your meeting, choose la quinta. the only hotel where you can redeem loyalty points for a free night-instantly so you can prepare to win at business. book now at lq.com the markets change. at t. rowe price. our disciplined 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questions, zach, about what the administration, incoming administration wants, versus what the congress wants. that s right, donald trump said pretty recently he might be interested in insurance for everyone. that had a lot of people on capitol hill scratching their heads. these republicans who want to repeal and potentially replace obamacare which is a law that sought to provide insurance. for everyone. there s a lot to work out. the details. if you re going to repeal obamacare, is it going to take insurance from a bunch of people. republicans on capitol hill see, i think, maybe a slower path than donald trump. at least that s what it seems like. there are a lot of unanswered questions here. greg, i know you read the wall street journal every morning like i do. big headline, dollar sinks as trump talks it down. first of all, he has shattered protocol and grown with generations, honestly, of protocol, u.s. president talks often the dollar. what s going on here? two things astonishingly, christine, number one, you re right, no president, no treasury secretary has ever talked about the dollar. it was considered very inappropriate to do that, number one. number two, does he really want a weaker dollar that would bring the united states a less attractive place to invest in? investors have believed that a strong dollar is fundamentally good. now he may reverse that. what s the plan to that? do you think he was thicking off the cuff with nomination of wilbur ross for something more traditional? a lot of cabinet nominees can say stuff during hearings. but trump s the man. whatever he says is going to nominate. if that s what he really believes in a weaker dollar, that s astonishing. this hearings have been revealing versus what the nominees say versus what the president-elect has said. last night, donald trump was speaking to a group of diplomats in washington, d.c. and he was talking about rex tillerson. i think there are a number of interesting things about the sound bite you re about to hear. let s listen. and we have great respect for your countries. we have great respect for our world. we have a man that i wanted right from the beginning, rex tillerson. and these lights are bright but he s around here somewhere. where s our rex. what a job, thanks very much, thanks, rex. i think it s tougher than he thought. he s led this job. he goes into a country, takes the oil, he goes into another country [ laughter ] it s tough dealing with politicians, right. i d like to engage in the parsing of what trump said, first of all, he said he s the man i wanted right from the beginning, rex tillerson. we don t believe that to be the case, right? there was mitt romney and rudy giuliani. and then donald trump is trying to rewrite history. and the other part i thought fascinating i think it s tougher than he thought. tillerson is facing very tough questions from republican marco rubio. when i heard him say tougher than we thought. i was wondering if donald trump believes this confirmation process overall with all of his nominee s may have been a bit tougher than he thought? it certainly seems like that. we saw tough questioning for his education secretary pick. there was tough reporting on tom price on his stock purchases from cnn s manu raju. we haven t yet seen a scheduled hearing for his labor secretary andrew puzder. the list goes on. each one of these people have had some difficulty. i think the one person who hasn t had any difficulty so far was the one that everybody expected to have the most difficulty, that s jeff sessions. yeah. what he says about china and the relationship between u.s. and china is potentially game changing. is this why people elected donald trump. because they wanted a game-changer. when he talks down the dollar, when he threatens china, he is changing the game. that s exactly why he was elected. what do you want to hear, greg, from him about pro-growth policies in this inauguration speech? he s writing it himself, as people tell us. obviously, a really huge speech. most of these speeches are forgotten within a day or two, john kennedy s wasn t. i think he has to talk about healing but for the markets, christine, he really needs to emphasize tax reform. he really hasn t said enough of that in the last few weeks. we don t have any details. we question, greg, whether he s in lock stop or walking down the same path. these incredibly detailed or yentzed. he s in charge of all of the details on the inauguration. apparently, he s getting into the deep leads on the tax reform bill. he made some very controversial comments a couple days ago, indicating that this bill might be tougher than we thought to get ennaacted. we know that companies want to see tax reform. we re happy to hear them say, hey, we re creating jobs. guys we ll talk about this again in about 20 minutes. i want to hear the nominees positions on tim raines. major league baseball. actually not baseball that announced 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of leaks under future administrations? just two days now before president-elect president-elect. [ ing president trump. as more democrats boycott. and a big day on capitol hill hill. obamacare faces the senate the day after the education nominee ran into serious pushback. welcome back to early start, everyone. i m john berman. it s nice to see you, i m christine romans. we do have breaking news i want to tell you about, 92-year-old former president george h.w. bush has been hospitalized in houston. this is according to local media. let s get the lacest on this from athena jones live for us in washington. athena, what have you learned? good morning, it s concerning and the details are still coming in from the houston chronicle. his chief of staff told them that he said he s doing fine. doing really well. doctors have a couple theories about what is causing his ailment. but that he s responding to treatment. and is expected to be discharged in the next coming of days. now, of course, george h.w. bush the oldest former living president he s been hospitaled a few times in the last few years for various ailments he was hospitalized in 2012 for bronchitis and ended up staying in the hospital for two months. he was hospitalized again in 2014 for shortness of breath. and in 2015, he had a fall at his house in kennebunkport maine. and he is 92 years old. and he s also done some things that you wouldn t expect as an older person. he s celebrated four major milestone birthdays by jumping by parachuting out of an airplane. so he s been active. but this, of course, could affect his son s plans, bush 43, george w. bush s plans, for attending the inauguration on friday. we ll have to see what happens as details come through. we wish him well. his staff says they expect him to be home, according to local reports within a few days which is something they have signaled before when he s gone in for these types of incidents. athena jones in washington. two days to go before a new president takes office the outgoing president drops a big surprise that may have a huge effect on futureser leakers of government secrets. president obama rocking washington by commuting chelsea man s 35-year prison sentence. now set to be released in may. there has been no response so far from donald trump or the transition. but the move is whipping up immediate controversy and a backlash. and not just from republicans. a senior official tells cnn that mr. manning s shortened the sentence over objections of ash carter. manninging released doubt in 2010 from wikileaks. which has been adds vo indicating her release. julian assange leaked documenteds with the intelligence agency that were hacked by russia with the help of helping trump win the election. julian assange here head of wikileaks is holed up in the ecuadorian embassy because he believes he ll be extradited to the united states for his accusations of being involved in the leak of wikileaks that chelsea manning gave to him. chelsea manning released because she has shown remorse. because she has accepted responsibility. because she has served six years so far. and tried to commit suicide twice in the past two years. a victory, that s how zbrjulian assange is gauling this commutation. however in the last few days, julian assange has tweeted that he would hand himself over to u.s. authorities if president obama commuted his sentence. his lawyer in the past hours said that julian assange will make good, will stand up, or stand up and follow through with everything that he has said. now, it remains to be seen if he will walk out. doors of the ecuadorian embassy. please been in there because swedish authorities want to question him about alleged sex offenses in sweden. he had said if he went to sweden he feared he would be sent to the united states despite the fact there s no extradition treaty between sweden and the united states. what does this amount to? well, potential if julian assange carries through with what his lawyer says he will carry through, essentially, he ll be handing himself over to donald trump and his administration. as you say, when there are questions about the role that julian assange played in essentially pafacilitating the leaks that russia provided, believed by intelligence authorities that had intended to put donald trump in office. what will julian assange and authorities question him then. nic robertson in london, thanks. moments after the clemency announcement, julian assange tweeted victory. thank you for everyone who campaigned for chelsea manning s clemency. and the response from capitol hill, reaction from democrats muted and very harsh from republicans. west virginia senator joe manchin, a conservative democrat said the short sentence was dead wrong and gave a green light to hacking and cyber attacks. it was wrong. treason and espionage, should have been 35 years. republican senator lindsey graham told cnn s dana bash manning stabbed his fellow soldiers in the back by releasing classified information and putting their lives at risk. president obama by granting clemency to tang step slapped all of those in the face. and john mccain, a grave mistake that i fear will encourage further acts of espionage and undermine discipline. and devalues the courage of real whistle-blowers who have used proper channels to hold our government accountably. this morning, we re told that the president-elect is finishing up the writing of the presidential inaugural address. this one they claim he is writing himself. cnn s jeff zeleny. john and christine, two days before trump takes office he s putting his finishing touches on his inaugural address. we re told he s writing it himself after watching and reading several addresses and ones from history. studied president ronald reagan s and even president barack obama. the president-elect made a trip to washington for the first inaugural event the chairman global dinner featuring diplomats from around the world and mike pence and some of their top contributors. he s returning to new york to spend the final day in trump tower before moving on thursday. now, washington is alive with activity with all of the traditional transfer of power. president obama gives his last press conference today at the white house. even his four key confirmation hearings unfold on capitol hill. now, the list of house democrats boycotting the inauguration continues to grow. now more than 50. so far, no senate democrats have added their names to that list. that s important. trump will need the cooperation of some of them to get the agenda through congress. but it s also important to remember starting friday. republicans control the house, senate, and the white house for the first time in a decade. a new wilderness for democrats if they re protesting or not. john and christine. jeff zeleny, thanks so much. as jeff just mentioned president-elect donald trump was briefly in the nation s capital last night. he attended a dinner. the president-elect was quick to praise former exxonmobil ceo rex tillerson, his pick to be secretary of state. and we have great respect for your countries. we have great respect for our world. we have a man that i wanted right from the beginning rex tillerson. and these lights are bright but he s around here somewhe place, where s our rex? what a job. thank you very much. thanks, rex. i think it s tougher than he thought. he s led this job. he goes into a country takes the oil. goes into other country. [ laughter ] it s tough dealing with these politicians, right? he s going to be so incredible. the confirmation hearings are tougher than perhaps rex tillerson thought. he faced questions from marco rubio, rubio has not committed to whether or not he ll vote to confirm rex tellillerson. donald trump claiming another victory. the bottom line, clearly executives do not want to anger the incoming administration and there s a big question if this is good public relations. not really a real change that their truly globalized business models. here are the automakers releasing press release in recent days. ford promising 700 jobs in michigan. fiat chrysler and gm will invest billions of dollars over the next five years. 4500 new jobs some of those were promised well before donald trump was elected. so the question here, are these company responses to trump s call for more american manufacturing for more american jobs? or are these simply employment shifts now with the hope of lower corporate tax rates potentially in the future which would, of course, pay for all of this? here s the reality check. the number of carmakers that make car and auto parts nowhere where it was in 2011. automakers just hit back-to-back annual sales records in 2015 and 2016. the bottom line of the industry. what a lot of folks are talking about this morning is how all of these companies really want donald trump to know that they are and have been creating jobs in the u.s., because they don t want to anger him and be at the other end of a 35% tariff on their industry. flip side is we didn t hear from american apparel playing off workers or macy s laying off 10,000 workers. what does it mean for the nominees who will be on capitol hill today? we ll talk to our political panel, next. only glad has febreze to neutralize odors for 5 days. guaranteed. even the most perceptive noses won t notice the trash. be happy. it s glad. i need to promote my new busi can make that happen.et. business cards? business cards, brochures, banners. pens? pens, magnets, luggage tags, bumper stickers. how about foam fingers? like these? now, get 15% off making your company stand out. staples. make more happen. but i keep it growing by making every dollar count. that s why i have the spark cash card from capital one. with it, i earn unlimited 2% cash back on all of my purchasing. and that unlimited 2% cash back from spark means thousands of dollars each year going back into my business. which adds fuel to my bottom line. what s in your wallet? play marian hill. are you down, d-d-down, d-d-down, d-d-down, down, down? are you. down, d-down, down, d-d-d-d-down, down, down, down? down, d-down, down, down, d-d-d-d-down, down, down, down? are you down, are you down, are you d-d-down, are you? the world is full of surprising moments. they re everywhere. and as a marriot rewards member, i can embrace them all. the new marriott portfolio of hotels now has 30 brands in over 110 countries. so no matter where you go, you are here. join or link accounts at members.marriott.com. all right. donald trump set to take the oath of office in just two days now. this is crunch time for the senate to confirm its cabinet nominees. let s get to the expert, digital managing editor zach wolf and chief strategist greg valliere. let s look at the head liner for today, tom price for hhs. what he plans and wants to do with obamacare. what he says about obamacare. but also wilbur ross, the commerce secretary, who, you know, wants to redesign nafta. and redo our relationship, zach, with china. these are no small feats. no, they around small feats. and they re kind of core to trump s message so it s going to be really interesting to hear what he has to say, whether the commerce department and ross are going to play a heightened role in the presidency than they have in the democratic one. i want to say what donald trump said overnight. he s continuing this feud with john lewis. john lewis said he s boycotting the inauguration because he said that donald trump will not be a legitimate president. john lewis said this is the first time he would have done that. apparently washington post is reporting that he did not attend in 2001 because george w. bush was not a legitimate president. listen to what he had to say. i think for him to have grandstanded. i think he s just grandstanded john lewis, and then he got caught in a very bad lie. as far as other people not going, that s okay. we need seats so badly. i hope they give us their tickets. you re looking at the inauguration speech. the address on friday. one of the things that investors you talked to want to see some kind of outreach from donald trump. have we seen that yet in the transition? do you expect to see it on friday? we haven t seen a lot of it john, i think he s got to make it clear that he s willing to work with democrats including chuck suchumer who he called a clown a few weeks ago. if he wants to get infrastructure done and tax reform, he needs democrats. i think it could hinder his ability to get a lot done. by the way, we should note if you look at his approval rating during this transition, historically low. 52% disapprove of the transition. this just doesn t happen. it s getting worse. what s happened during the transition has made things worse for him. i told both you and christine, my new year s resolution is not to underestimate donald trump. everybody in this town did this last year to their regret. i think he has votes on everything. many of his priorities will get done later rather than sooner. for the first time you ve got both chambers of commerce run by the republicans. the markets expect there will be growth quickly. what is the guess here between what donald trump says and doesn t tweet, and working with republicans to actually get all of these things through? well, i think the thing you notice from cabinet nominees as they come up maybe you don t always listen to everything donald trump says. you have to wait and see what he does. we ll have to see what the details are on legislative proposals, on obamacare, on tax reform. we haven t seen any of that yet. we don t know how this sausage is going to get made at all. so, there s a lot of work to do for these guys. greg, you ve got him out there talking down the dollar. i mean, breaking tradition and protocol and saying the dollar is too strong. i mean, that just doesn t happen. yes, america voted american voters who voted for him voted for a game-changer. but he s changing a game that maybe i m not sure he knows that he is. yeah. sometimes, his words, he may feel, aren t all that significant. but when you talk down the dollar, that has a big impact on the markets. and if he s going to break all pre precedent, no president or treasury secretary has ever done this, talk down the dollar, the markets may not like that. it s interesting, guys, both of you, you ve seen companies that have said they re going to add jobs and make investments in the united states. in many cases, these are investments already planned before donald trump. or the pace of planning with walmart, essentially what they ve been doing. has he already changed these companies have very quickly changed here. they re telling what they re going to do in the u.s. so as not to anger the u.s. president? i think a out la of companies are going to be looking over their shoulder before they do anything. i think there s a new element of almost fear that s been injected but my bottom line, as long as it s stock market stays pretty good, as long as the economy stays pretty good, trump should stay in fairly good shape politically. greg valliere, zach wolf, great to have you with us. tiffany and company is an iconic company. its flagship store near trump tower. guess what s happening, what is it like to have the white house north as your neighbor? we re going to check in on cnn money next. the arm of your gla. it is no longer eyewear, it is your wand of business wizardry. abracadabra. you ve just gone from invisible to invincible. step two: before your meeting, choose la quinta. the only hotel where you can redeem loyalty points for a free night-instantly so you can prepare to win at business. book now at lq.com tadirectv now. stream all your entertainment! anywhere! anytime! can we lose the all . there s no cbs and we don t have a ton of sports. anywhere, any. let s lose the anywhere, anytime too. you can t download on-the-go, there s no dvr, yada yada yada. stream some stuff! somewhere! sometimes! you totally nailed that buddy. simple. don t let directv now limit your entertainment. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. russian president vladimir putin comes to the defense of president-elect donald trump. the russian leader said the salacious but unsubstantiated claims in that 35-page dossier on donald trump are obvious fabrications. the russian president calls the accusations part of a campaign to undermine the result of a u.s. presidential election. joining from us moscow, jill dougherty, now a global fellow at the woodrow wilson center. again, it was almost shocking to hear vladimir putin use the colorful words that he did use in defending donald trump. it was really an amazing moment there at the kremlin, news conference everything is going along actually pretty boringly. then at the very last moment, last question, about all of this material. and president putin just laid into the outgoing obama administration saying there s a political battle under way in the united states to undermine the legitimacy of the trump administration. and to, as he put it, tie his hands and his feet from doing what he wants to do. then he got into that unsubstated salacious material ends up talking about prostitutes. here s what he said. translator: did trump really come to russia and meet with prostitutes? first he s a man who has organized a beauty pageant and socialized with the most beautiful women in the world. it s hard to believe he came to meet with the low social class of although they are the best in the world. the russian president also said that, yes, president trump, when he waevnt a president, he was just, as he put it, rich american, came to moscow. and then he said that doo you think that our security services run around with every single billionaire who comes to moscow, again, he said, that s nonsense. jill dougherty, thanks so much. the man suspected of killing an orlando police officer and his pregnant girlfriend is now in custody after being on the run. police arrested markeith loyd with. police said after the struggle they put loyd into the handcuffs that belonged to the slain officer debra clayton. to put her handcuffs on the bad guy that she was trying to catch when she was killed is just significant. it s meaningful to her family which i did tell seth clayton about. it s meaningful to her opd family as well. and markeith loyd faces two murder counts. we will check in on this investigation as as soon as we can. all right. 56 minutes past the hour. time now for a check on your money today. cnn money stream donald trump sending shock waves through the global currency markets. trump says the u.s. dollar is too high. trump says our companies can t compete with them, china because our currency is too strong and it s killing us. the dollar dropping to its lowest level in a month after a huge runup that trump promised to put in place. the dollar was strengthening after optimism with trump and policies. there s a historical norm that donald trump has just shattered. recent presidents don t talk about the value of the dollar. usually, treasury department only office that discusses it publicly and then decides if the u.s. dollar for interests, a strong u.s. dollar makes is just incredibly important not to talk about the value of the dollar. it really roils markets. donald trump play by those rules. the dow future is pointing higher. average ride of a three-day losing streak. shares in asia and wall street higher overnight. and oil is dropping. fifth avenue doesn t look like this anymore. that, of course is the opening to the 1961 film breakfast at tiffany s. although it does sound like that. moon river from the speakers every day. today, the store front is mobbed by people trying to get a glimpse of trump tower which is nearby. guess what, that has hurt tiffany sales. revenue dropping during the busy shopping season. it didn t mention the president-elect himself instead, blaming the recent election-related activity. the flagship store accounts for 2% of all sales. others like cartier have upbeat results. it seems the trump effect weighing on tiffany s now you ll be humming moon river for the rest of the day. thanks for joining us, i m christine romans. i m john berman. new day starts now. chelsea manning is serving a sentence and will continue to serve that sentence. when eye combine the excessive sentence with the humanitarian considerations obama just thought of commuting her sentence. i m not going to see it. never invited. it s a shame these people don t want to be a part of what people transfer power. i hope they give us their tickets. vladimir putin said accusations of spying only undermine the incoming president-elect. we re very proud of the cabinet members we have put together. i think there s a very good chance he will not be confirmed. you can t say definitively today that guns shouldn t be in schools. announcer: this is new day with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. you re watching new day. january 18th, 6:00. according to reports by the houston chronicle and the tv station khou at this hour, george h.w. bush is in the hospital. the 92-year-old is being treated at a houston hospital after falling ill. there are no specific details about what that illness might be. the nation s 41st president has had several health issues in the last year. let s get to cnn s athena jones live at the white house with the breaking details. right on the eve of the inauguration. what do we know. exactly. good morning, chris. well, we know from local reports that his chief of staff tells the doctors have a couple of theories about what might be causing his ailment and is expected to be discharged the next couple of days. he had a series of health issues over the last several years and it s always concerning when someone of such an advanced age is hospitalized he was hospitalized as a precaution. he spent about 7 days in the hospital that te
president. tonight donald trump talking up his new administration. i m very proud of everybody, the cabinet members. we have put together a team i think the likes of which has never been assembled before. cnn justice correspondent perez. president obama decided to commute chelsea manning s sentence. she was the army private who gave sensitive military document said to wikileaks. this announcement came as a shock to the intelligence and national security apparatus off the united states. there was a lot of consternation about this simply because of the recent history with wikileaks. the leak of 750,000 documents really launched wikileaks into what we know that it is. and given in the 2016 election, the obama administration made a big deal that they served as an arm of the russian intelligence services which stole documents and released them through wikileaks to harm the campaign of hill hill. a lot of people were surprised by this decision. she was supposed to serve 35 years which was deemed a very harsh sentence but she served under seven years of that. so the reaction certainly from the national security officials i ve talked to have been a little bit of kaungsination, disappointment and you hear from some of the republican critics of the pds who have used terms like treason, shameful. so there s a lot of reaction to the president s announcement. last week wikileaks said if obama grants manning clemency, aauchg will agree to u.s. extradition. what is wikileaks saying now? not so fast. eve. the folks at wikileaks was surprised. they re declaring victory and asaange are saying they want to know what thejustice department s intention is. there s not been any public charges against assange. repeatedly he said one reason he s there is he believes the united states wants to bring him to be on trial in the united states as you know he sler there partly because he s facing these unrelated sexual assault charges in sweden. so tonight we re hearing from his lawyers that they want to know what the justice department intends to do. have they decided to drop this case? do they want to bring charges against assange? they want clarity. i want to bring you now cnn political comment air and cnn politics executive editor, analyst, and good evening to all of you, panel. daved, this is upsetting law makers on both sides of the aisle. what do you make of the president? why did he do this? the fact that he released it today was with knowledge of a press conference. he clearly expects to get this question first. i think part of the answer will be that chelsea manning acknowledged the crime and served seven years which is langer than would be normal under the circumstances. beyond that i don t know what his thinking was. and i think it s positive this didn t come at midnight thursday night. so he can explain his decision to the country and the world. not a pardon. to what daved was just saying. a little bit of insite from people familiar with the president s thinking. that they do believe as david was pointing out, that there s a fundamental difference between snoweden and chelsea manning. manning fessed up, surved time. was tried and was sentenced. i also think that another part of their thinking was manning had served and that the term itself, 35 years was without historical precedent, quite extreme and another factor in this was that manning is a transgender in a male prison and there is a humanitarian side to all of this. why didn t you move chelsea manning to another prison then.? and i think we ll get the answer from the president on that tomorrow. we know that the intelligence community was agast at this. we know lots of a people that highest levels of the defense department were agast because they believe it sets a bad precedent. if you cup sidder the destings between the two men. snoweden and manning need to be considered separately. and a hard case for the president to make. let s talk about the presidential ramifications for that. more so republicans. we haven t heard a lot of out cry from democrats yet. they don t want to look sympathet took kmb who might bow considered a krader. frrts for the republicans that are outraged by this and it s fine. and andry. they ve got to be careful what they say right now because wikileak sthz same organization that helped undermine, according to our intelligence committee, came in and tried to tinker with and influence our election. which leads us to russia. and the idea that they have many republicans have passively expressed outrage over the interference of russia and the selection. speaking of that, wikileaks is claiming victory. right. and trump has seemed to express this idea that wikileaks is on our side as long as they re revealing information that is helpful to the publicing to evaluate their situation or evaluate their political choices. that s a tricky place to be because we don t really know who s behind wikileaks. we know assange. but we don t know who are these people behind the twitter account, the various websites and trump s determination that they are on our side as long as they re revealing information about hillary clinton is only works so long as wikileaks isn t coming after him or the other republicans. he will tell you it s good because it helped him out. i want you to wang. president obama also pardone pa general. he s out pacing his predecessors. i think the fact that how many people he s pardoned who have been nonviolent drug offenders. he went all the way as his proponents would have gone but he s go having to more comutations than regan, the clinton, and two bushes combined. i do think, at the same time, as you would say, she got 35 years too harsh. when you have a 35 year prison sentence to 1/5 of that, many are going to think that s too lenient. she was in the eyes of many americans, a traitor. the defense department and among national security people. so dwroob think you have to keep that in your mind. . this was a strong statement that people who all nonviolent offenders should not be filling our prisons. we d be better off to divert them and wurng with them. and some of them served sentences disproportionate to the crime they committed this was a policy statement and he s used his power to make that statement. and that by the way is a bipartisan opinion that there needs to be something done about these sentences which were disproportionately effecting people of color. and even nonlibertarian republicans are ready to move forward with this like this. there s a huge movement to do away with the large prison population in large because it is extremely popular. i got to say one more thing about chelsea manning. in a way chelsea manning gave birth to wikileaks. this is going to be difficult to the president to explain to the american people and we re going to hear the constitutional lawyer explain this. how the person who gave birth to wikileaks is somebody who should get all these shelves and snowden needs to be where he is. we understand the differences but a traitor is a traitor and i think the president is going to have to explain that. and some would believe she put the troops life in danger and that some died. and of course the president s thought about all this. stick with me, everyone. donald trump is still three days away from taking office. a new world order already taking shape. be the you who doesn t cover your moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. be the you who shows up in that dress. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don t give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: 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yet but a new world order already taking shape as we come to you live from washington. and we re back with david axalrod, and david guergen. i want to ask you about it poll numbers. he s coming in at the lowest approval numbers. 40% for bush and 61%. so 40% for trump and 61 for bush. are you surprised by that? what s surprising is that bush in 2001 after bush/gore and a contested election that was decided by the supreme court still had had 61%. and donald trump has said he doesn t trust these numbers and if i were him i think i d say the same thing but when you look at the other numbers in our poll, people may not think that that transition is going well but they have high expectations for him. 71% believe he s going to create better jobs for people who need them. 61% say he s going to negotiate great trade deals. would they argue those numbers? he didn t tweet about that. but like many presidents and you remember this from president obama. 84%. exactly. he s going to have some living up to do to those expectations. i know he s out celebrating as he should be but the polls were actually not wrong. the fact is the polls predicted that hillary clinton would win nationally in the range that she won. some of the state polling was wrong but we shouldn t propigate this notion that all of the polling was wrong. i ve been saying that since the election so i m glad you said that. if you look at the national numbers and the popular vote. and donald trump is the most transparent candidate in the sense that if he doesn t like a poll, it was a terrible poll. our cnn poll matches up against every other poll we ve seen. in addition to that, there s a number that totally surprised me. nearly 9 out of 10 republicans have a favorable view of donald trump. to me that is shocking. i would not think it would be that high. do you have the polling before? because it was low. it was higher when he got elected. when obama came in, he had almost double this level of support and it was an enormous sense of good will and because he seemed so powerful he got things done early on. i just want to tell people what s on the screen. this is donald trump and his motorcade. heading back to new york city. he attended the chairman s global dinner. the first of the inaugural celebrations to be held. heapal are going to see? he s going to have to live here and washington s a great place to live. yes. he s going to have to live here. it s just fine. i want to ask daved about the governing. how much -ing. it does make it difficult, thaul though he tuz have control of both chaemers. but the rules have chavls as well. so it gives him more latitude there. i think the most important point to make is he krd used this transition period to reach out and stow base of a about 40% raechg. if he wants to grow as a president, he needs find way to get beyond the people supporting him. can we talk about the new lurld order teld me. they say the germans are ang re, laders at made theo are yooyunchg yurvs, no one knows where he is headed spepts one plat plates. i think the word order. there s a new world 37 the question is wler or not they re going to be legal. this is a lot of work to have done during the oil the waters the way he had. this is undestilled, unmodified donald trump. he said he wants to end these trade deals. he wants to change immigration policy. but he didn t like nato. i think what has been surprising to people is the fact that he hasn t given barack obama any space to finish his term and he s started criticizing foreign leaders from afar before he enters the it oval office and i think people abroad are wondering what is he going to do next? and does he understand the impact one final question, david. what do you think of what she said that before he s insert himself into the world stage before he s elekted. i don t think we should be surprised. i think we should be shocked. i don t think any president elect has done any damage as he has. this is serious stuff. when you go after angela merkel who is our best friend and strongest ally in europe, you make cozy with all the populous movements trying to destabilize movement and tear down the anti-establishment. and he s got the chinese furious. the only people he s got two friends, putin and the other s netanyahu. so i think this has been a really important week symbolically. it was interesting how president zhi of china stepped the to the vacuum to assert that no longer is america the leader, china, under his leadership is going to be the champion for free trade and the champion for climate change. that is a remarkable very interesting. and we ll be here recording it for history. tell our viewers that tomorrow, 9:00 p.m. the end, inside the last days of president obama. and listen to this. this is the white house where reporters are gathered and everyone s here. we re all had waiting to find out what will be said, what will be said publicly. the first couple of days immediately after the election, other than the statement the president delivered in the rose garden, i was basically the only democrat in the country out publicly answering questions and that s the nature of the job. but all of the questions centered on the painful outcome of the election. obviously the trump message resonated with the majority of the voters. what happened last night? does the president feel the results were some sort of rejection of him? this is now real. surely the president must have some real concerns right now. listen, i want to be real clear. the election s over. those briefings were difficult for me and my staff. this isn t just a job, just a 9:00 to 5:00 gig to pay the mortgage. this is something people feel called to do. this is progress over the last eight years. okay. it s going to be interesting to see what the incoming administration s relationship with the press will be like. the end inside the last days of the obama white house right here tomorrow 9:00 p.m. up next. grilling donald trump s cabinet picks. is depression more than sadness? it s a tangle of multiple symptoms. trintellix (vortioxetine) is a prescription medicine for depression. trintellix may start to untangle or help improve the multiple symptoms of depression. for me, trintellix made a difference. tell your healthcare professional right away if your depression worsens, or you have unusual changes in mood, behavior or thoughts of suicide. antidepressants can increase these in children, teens, and young adults. trintellix has not been studied in children. do not take with maois. tell your healthcare professional about your medications, including migraine, psychiatric and depression medications to avoid a potentially life-threatening condition. increased risk of bleeding or bruising may occur especially if taken with nsaid pain relievers, aspirin, or blood thinners. manic episodes or vision problems may occur in some people. may cause low sodium levels. the most common side effects are nausea, constipation and vomiting. trintellix did not have significant impact on weight. ask your healthcare professional if trintellix could make a difference for you. three days to go until donald trump becomes president. some of his cabinet nominees facing tough conformation hearings. john meacham and the story and author of destiny and power. and law professor that university off minnesota. and former ethics under president george w. bush. what did you think of the commuting of the sentence of chelsea manning? the timing when wikileaks is in the news so much, it just didn t seem like something he would do. but he s very careful and articulate, looked at this case. i thought he would do something more but this is the big there s usually one. this is the one hitting roith now. but mark rich pardoned him and created a lot of havoc. but there s still time. i think there will be more. this is going to dominate the presser tomorrow. do you think we ll see more? i m not sure. obviously. i think he wants very much to go out with grace and decorm. so i would imagine that dropping something in the very last minute that might run into thursday and friday is probably unlikely but that s just a guess. you were surprised by this one? i was. and i think i agree with doug. this was the opening shot in what has become this new reality for us. of leaks, of emails becoming part of the public s fear almost instantaneously. as doug says the president obviously thinks these things through. and wanted to do it. let s move on and talk about the fate and up in the air. do you think anyone is in. danger of not being confirmed? you know, just watching you from a far, it look ezlike there s questions about the secretary of skas and whether it will come out bpding on what senator rubio does. i noticed the sec rerty of enlication nominee had had a rough day. and obviously the questions bouts price are probably the most dramatic. and you mentioned betsy duvos. getting grilled earlier today. listen. my question is i don t mean to be rude but do you think if you were not a multibillionaire, if your family has not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the republican party that you would be sitting here today? as a matter of fact i do think there would be that possibility. i ve worked very hard on behalf of parents and children for the last almost 30 years. richard bernie sanders pulling no punches. she admitted her family donated $30 million to republicans over the years. does this look bad given trump s promise to drain the swamp. looks like we got a lot of rich people going to this administration. they ve given a lot of money to politicians. do they reflect america? do they reflect the people who voted for donald trump? i don t think so. the concern is we have a director of education who knows much about the need for public schools. and whether she s just going to focus on for-profit education. so they need to look at her financial conflicts of interest going forward and same with all the other cabinet nominees. a billionairer who has been nominated for secretary of commerce. he s go having to conflicts of interest going to the had job and we have congressman price who apparently was stock jobbing while serving on key congressional committees and i think there s very serious concerns about his stock trades that need be addressed before they confirm him. so i m very concerned about quite a few of these nominees. you said that shows an extreme lack of judgment. hold on. douglas first. i think price might be the one in trouble right now. if he can t escape this, he might be the one the democrat democrats hone in on. trying to repeal the affordable care act is getting under their skin. you think it shows a lack of judgment? it s insider trading. if you purchase or sell securities while in possession of material nonpublic information you learned from your job whether it s the united states government, the wall street ore anywhere else. so i m amazed we d have a congressman buying and selling health care company stocks before introducing bills to effect the very same companies and i m hearing well, his broker bought it without him andal why would they set opdisdlegzary cramp in. i mean, this could be i m not saying it is but it looks terrible to have this kienld of thing going on by a member, much less than a cabinet pembers the democrats need to get one of trump s trump sics and looks like they re circling on price. this is very, very troubling. this is not some broad legislation, cut all medicare and effect some large company like johnson and johnson. this is a narrow specific company that dealt with hip and knee replacements. thee feds it in and a beak after he buys it, it s not grandpa but close. if he knew about it, it could very well be a violation of the law. if it plays out as chuck schumer is saying doesn t sound good. what s your reaction? the democrats would like to get some scalp here and if congressman price is that, it would give them something in what is otherwise the most dismal of weeks for them. in a dark season. but it s very rare for a nominee to go all the way to the floor and lose. 1989, john tower did. usually they make the political choice and pull them before hand hpon for and a test of trump s traulerance. to read the political patterns and react to them. or does he sternly insist this is his nominee. donald trump has held one press conference as president elect but he is tweeting up a storm. are we looking at a twitter presidency? john meacham and richard painter. i think the initial answer is probably yes but we don t know. i ll put it this way. he had his first press conference last week. it was the first one in 167 days. we know he spends lots of time holed up in trump tower yet reaches millions through his constant flow of tweets. is this the new way the it white house is going to communicate with the public? i have no idea what they re going to do. but i didn t call that a press conference. the reporters were getting chewed out for asking questions and if that s the way it s going to be, i guess that s the way president trump wants to do business. tweet out and then take a couple of softball questions and send them home. but the bottom line is the american people are going to expect a president who addresses their concerns and who is willing to answer tough questions. is it going to be a lot of tough questions facing him when he s president. and this is not a partisan issue. we don t want people coming in. who are going to enrich themselves. we shouldn t have members of congress engaging in insider trading and by the way, if the president is going to be on twitter, i think the office of government ethics has ever business to be on twitter as well and they should haul them into congress and chewing him out for expressing his opinion, which i happen to agree. twitter s not my favorite form of communication but if that s the way people want to do it, so be it. here s how douglas this is how ashley parker and philip rutger write. he seems more kwumertable with a little body. his mega phone and scheegz allowing him to flowed out a message undiluted. i think there s a risk every time donald trump gelts gets in front of a microphone. you can t know what to expect. and i think we re seeing the death of a press conference as we know it. that s been a sacred bid in american history. i think donald trump s going to add more people to the conferences but perhaps move them to the side and really just try to beat up on the so-called establishment press and use twitter and retweets to get his message across. to richard s point, he said it was just him beating up on the press. he is so aggressive with people. he says it like he means it but then he won t take a tough question. i don t know the origins of it but he s used the press when it s in his advantage. every interview, he has every magazine cover of anytime donald trump s been anywhere. he worships him when he s positive. btd i think it s almost being dig torrial and browbeat them into the ground and we see that in places around. i want you to listen to this because this is donald trump in a recent interview on fox talking about his use of twitter. i don t like tweeting. i have other things i could be doing but i get very dishonest media, very dishonest press and it s my only way i can counteract. like i m going to be close to 50 million people including facebook and instagram. i m going to be close to 50 million people. so when people misrepresent me because the press is very dishonest, unbelievably dishonest and when people misrepresent me and i at least have a way of saying it s a false statement. now f the press were honest, i would not use twitter. i wouldn t have to. it s interesting because he s sitting in an interview with the press to get the message out there. what he means is the press puts his words out and it s dishonest the way we do it. we play his own words back on television. you think he s going to continue to tweet? i suspect so, if i were betting. one of the things we ve learn hadded is if your donald trump and all these unconventional things have led you to first win the nomination, then win president, you re not going to change. . . we all complain and worry about when he goes beyond the bounds in tweeting. whether it s attacking congressman lewis or weigh in on sets schwarzenegger. it s like the old charley brown tlv fagtelevision. and trump is talking to the remarkable base of support he has. every great political leader has mastered the means of communication of their time. jefferson and lincoln wrote well and quickly. franklin roosevelt understood the radio. kwendy and regan, television. bill clinton understood cable scission investigation aurl eon he mastered social media and reality television and that s where a lot of the country is. and here s foot for thought into the break. barack obama held 16 press conferences to announce his cabinet nominees. bill clinton held 17. george w. bush, 14. and donald trump has held one. we ll be right back. be the you who doesn t cover your moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. be the you who shows up in that dress. who hugs a friend. who is done with treatments that don t give you clearer skin. be the you who controls your psoriasis with stelara® just 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis. before starting stelara® tell your doctor if you think you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. always tell your doctor if you have any signs of infection, have had cancer, if you develop any new skin growths or if anyone in your house needs or has recently received a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions can occur. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. most people using stelara® saw 75% clearer skin and the majority were rated as cleared or minimal at 12 weeks. be the you who talks to your dermatologist about stelara®. as after a dvt blood clot,ital i sure had a lot to think about. what about the people i care about? .including this little girl. and what if this happened again? i was given warfarin in the hospital, but wondered, was this the best treatment for me? so i asked my doctor. and he recommended eliquis. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots and reduces the risk of them happening again. yes, eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots. eliquis also had significantly less major bleeding than the standard treatment. both made me turn around my thinking. don t stop eliquis unless your doctor tells you to. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don t take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. if you had a spinal injection while on eliquis call your doctor right away if you have tingling, numbness, or muscle weakness. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily .and it may take longer than usual for bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots. plus had less major bleeding. both made eliquis the right treatment for me. ask your doctor if switching to eliquis is right for you. our breaking news tonight, with three days to go in his administration, president obama commuting the sentence of chelsea manning, a former soldier convicted of stealing and laboring classified documents. i want to discuss this with the author of audacity. i want to start with tonight s breaking news, the president commuting chelsea manning s sentence, what s your reaction to that? he s clearly running to the fn earn line. he s going to use every last day and every last minute to enact as much change as he can. and the president has done a lot in eight years as president, and we can focus on it day to day, but you almost have to pull back and really remember how much he s actually done this his two terms. it s a lot. you said a legacy that will prevail. and as you know now, many in washington are trying to dismantle his signature legislation, which is the affordable care act. how much of your book did you have to change on november 9th? i added material. i didn t have to change that much. i know everyone jumped to the conclusion that donald trump was going to wipe away everything barack obama did. but the reason they made that mistake is they thought obama didn t do much. he didn t get that much done, that s why it would be easy for trump to stop it. he got a lot done, and his change was broad and deep. it will be hard for trump to uproot it. we re seeing it with the affordable care act. there s demonstrations. republicans still don t have a plan to replace it. they re aphrase phrasfraid of will wreak. republicans don t know what to do about this law. tomorrow s the president s last press conference. what do you think he s going to talk about? and more than that, what are some of his biggest achievements? economic rescue, the auto bailout, obamacare, climate culminating in the paris climate accord, the first international agreement to limit climate change. dodd-frank, education reform, tax changes, raising taxes on the rich and cutting them on people in the middle and at the bottom. those are the big headline ones, and i think there s plenty more as well. why do you think a misreading and misrepresentation of obama s achievements helped lay the ground work for donald trump s win? you know, i think liberals have a bit of a hard time being in power. we tend to get very excited. i m a liberal. we tend to get very excited and agitated when things get taken away. that s why people are rallying for the affordable care act and they never rallied for it when obama had it all under control. they don t like to rally around leaders. so liberals have complained about every democratic president, the same way going back to roosevelt. there s a lot of complaints about obama, and even the people who liked him said he s just not getting things ton done or the republicans are blocking him. that s the misconception i wanted to address in the book. what do you think they should do now? they should use barack obama as a model for a successful president, saying their is this president that got it right. we should listen to his voice and defend his achievements. explain why you think president obama is in such a unique position once he leaves office this friday? right. we haven t had a president like this, who s young, popular, hasn t had a scandal, doesn t have a successor protecting his legacy, he isn t dead, he s young, he s there, and the person who s succeeding him is trying to get rid of his achievements, but he s much more popular than the person coming after him. we had bill clinton who was popular but disgraced by scandal at the end of his term. ronald reagan was old, and other presidents were not very popular. obama is the most popular and trusted politician in america. so he has a chance to speak up when these issues come up. thank you so much. straight ahead in the next hour. president obama s stunning decision tonight, commuting the 35-year prison sentence of chelsea manning, the former army intelligence analyst, convicted of leaking thousands of pages of secret government documents. and they re absolutely right. they say that it s hot. when really, it s scorching. and while some may say the desert is desolate. we prefer secluded. what is the desert? it s absolutely what you need right now. absolutely scottsdale. captions by vitac www.vitac.com just hours left in his presidency, barack obama making a stunning decision. this is cnn tonight, i m don lemon in washington. president obama commuting the sentence of the army intelligence analyst who was accused of leaking thousands of government documents. tell
who s next? that will do it for this hour. i ll see you tomorrow from washington, d.c. katy tur is already there in our nation s capitol. good to see you. craig cannot wait to see you here. hopefully it won t be raining or windy. thank you for sticking around with me this hour you at home. we are live at the nation s capitol where inauguration fests are fast moving. frump s approval rating is at a record low as the president-elect squares off once again civil rights icon john lewis. and as the list of lawmakers refusing to attend his swearing in only continues to grow. will it be trump who turns all this around? can he quiet his critics by delivering on the mountain of promises he made during the campaign? all of this drama unfolding as trump s interior nominee takes the hot seat this hour on capitol hill followed by h pick for education seth. we begin with donald trump entering the presidency as the least popular president in four decades. approval rating is at or no under 40%. john mccain chalks that up to him being unfocused. he seems to want to engage with every wind mill that he can find instead of focusing. reporter: others chalk it up to lack of outreach. he hasn t picked a single democrat for his cabinet. hasn t sat down with hillary clinton to figure out how to connect with her voters. he is and not just fighting with john lewis, he is disrespecting lewis s congressional district, the people, by saying their community is falling apart and crime infested when it is not. as politico put it, donald trump has done more to court vladimir putin than the 74 million americans who voted for other candidates or the tens of millions who did not vote at all. that s part of the reason a growing number of lawmakers say they will sit out this inauguration. the inauguration is a way of welco welcoming in someone to the president me and honoring them and respecting them. i don t honor him. i don t respect him and i don t want to be involved with it. reporter: joining me i nblz s kristen welk. and live on capitol hill, casey hunt. she is where the hearing for the education nominee betsy devos will get underway a little bit later today. kristen let s start with you. trump is brushing off the negative polling. tell me what s going on within the transition. is there some concern about where he stands right now and his ability going forward to unite this country? reporter: that s right. donald trump is brushing off those polls, katie, saying they are yet another part of the rigged system. but when you talk to transition officials they stress a couple of points. one, that his inauguration will be focused on unity. that s going to be a big theme that we can expect. and internally, they try to kinds of shift the narrative away from some of what the president-elect has put forward publicly. for example, when it comes to this big rift with the intelligence community, you see president-elect donald trump doubling down. and of course outgoing cia director john glennen slamming him overnight hadn his exit interview with the wall street journal saying flatly he never leaked any information excoriating president-elect donald trump for some of the comments he made about intelligence commercial including comparing the leaks to nazi germany. privately they say look ultimately the president-elect does havrespect for the intelligence community but it s something that hasn t been reflected in if public comments of the president-elect himself. it s hard to see how he convinces the american public of that. of course katie you know better than anyone this is how he functioned as a candidate. this worked for him. this is what got him to the white house. so the sense he is all of a sudden going to aidan done this posture of constantly being in a state of conflict abandon this posture of constantly being in a state of conflict is not going to happen. is there over there on capitol hill who maybe thinks that donald trump has a point with all of this and this fight actually isn t so much his fault? well, katie, senator john mccain did call this a stain on congressman lewis and what he has had to say throughout this. but i think overall people here on capitol hill have tended to be on john lewis s side. and you saw marco rubio for example, introducing him as a speech over the weekend in miami. just having glowing words for congressman lewis and what he has done for the country, what he represents, what he did during the civil rights movement. so i think that there is much more support for congressman lewis over donald trump in this than there is support for donald trump. of course it is driving this boycott that is growing now, over 50 house democrats say they will not come to the inauguration at the end of this week on friday. it s in many ways it s unprecedented. we do know that lewis of course did not attend george w. bush s inauguration in 2001 over concerns about florida recount and what happened there. there were other democrats as well that joined him in that. but this is a pretty large group, and i think it underscores all of the things that you said at the top of the show, the divisions in this country still so raw. and when you talk to democrats up on the hill, you know, their feeling about donald trump s inauguration is apocalyptic, really, they do not feel this is another were it jeb bush, marco rubio, any one of those 17 people that ran against donald trump, i m not sure you would be seeing the same level of emotion and focus on this. talk about betsy devos. she is going to have her hearing later today. you are there. what are you expecting to get out of that, any fireworks? right, this is the senate health education labor and pensions committee room. it s actual low a really small room even my capitol hill standards. a lot of the other hearing rooms we have seen have been larger. that will do two things from an optic perspective. it one it will limit who is in the hearing room. but two if there are protesters who make their way in here it is very easy to disturb the proceeding. in fact, very difficult, the space is very tight. we have people waiting in line who are wearing t-shirts. she is somebody who definitely generated opposition from activist democratic groups, teachers unions. because she and her husband, billionaires have financed a lot of efforts in michigan around the republican party, around school choice, vouchers, charter schools, thing thatave really generated a lot of optician from public school teachers, public school supporters, things around those lines. there have also been questions about the forms she submitted. her hearing was delayed from last week. we don t have her office of government ethics form although the committee has her financial information. i think you can expect questioning awe along those lines? we are her hearing later. we want to show you a live picture of the hearing room for represent ryan zinky. he is the nominee for the interior. he has just walked n. we will keep an eye on that confirmation and the confirmationless coming up. kristen walker at trump tower. casey hunt on the hill thank you as well. meanwhile let s talk more about the democrats who are refusing to show up to donald trump s inauguration. republican congressman chris collins reacted to his colleagues sitting it out earlier today. my opinion is what john lewis is doing, he s pouting. he lost. it s like a spoiled child. and we ve seen with it the others. they can t get over the fact they lost. who do spoiled little kids do? they run around and throw a tantrum. that s what we are seeing. they are pouting. frank lesion it s somewhat enjoyable to watch. johning me now the former national spokesman for the ted cruz campaign ron nehring. and former democratic congressman harold ford jr. ron let s start with you because you are sitting next to he moochlt you heard chris collins calling the democrats who are sitting it out spoiled little babies. certainly there is an argument to be made that they are not ding to the attempt to unify this cntry. but what do you think about donald trump? is he doing enough outreach to those voices that don t agree with him, to the voters that did not elect him had. he was not elected by the popular vote. and it was close in the districts where he wound ultimately in the electoral congress. do you think that he needs to do more to potentially lead by example? let s look at what happens in 2000 when then governor george w. bush did not win the national popular vote. he won the presidency anyway. he moved forward in a way that united the country in the aftermath of 9/11 and ultimately was a successful president who won a second term in 2004. i think leadership has to work in all directions. particularly we have to see the democrats attending the inaugural ceremony. i think that s important because we have to show the world that american democracy works and it s working well on behalf of the people. at the same time i think it s important that leadership run in the other direction as well. certainly we saw right after donald trump s election he met with president obama. he had a lot of nice things to say about the president and so on. we need to have that ability to communicate with people who don t necessarily agree with us in order to move the agenda forward. it s going to be his agenda, but ultimately he has to be involved. what is the message that the world is getting right now about politics in this country? right now it is a transition. that s the vast majority of the news coming out of this, it s process oriented. when the rubber meets the road and we start applying policies so on and so forth. is this playing into the narrative of say someone like vladimir putin wants outhere, democracy is not nctional, look at america. he wants to create chaos inside of america and inside europe and the european union. that s why it s important for democrats to show up a at the inauguration to show that the process is accepted by all and we are going to move forward. harold, what do you think? do you think democrats need to show up for this? do you think the fact of their not going is them sticking to their principles and where they stood in opposition to donald trump during the campaign or is it time to show the international community that despite a very heated campaign americans can get along and they can move on from that? to build on your point, katie, the purpose of an inauguration i believe is to demonstrate to the country and obviously the world a peaceful transfer of power. and ultimately, that s what an inauguration is about. you like to see your candidate win and your party prevail. if anyone has earned the right to talk about voting and election outcomes and fairness, john lewis has certainly earned it. i probably would have taken a different position but i understand he has the right to make that choice. i do hope that if you recall george w. bush he reached out to me and others shortly after the election and after he was sworn in and i met with him along with other groups of democrats probably on four or five different indications. that s a playbook. i hope that president trump takes a page out of that book and reaches out to the john lewiss and others who will not attend and say let s work together. ultimately that s what he is going to be judged on and the members of congress are going to be judged on as well. w just got sound from congressman lewis who spokeith a colleague of mine. let s listen to what they talked about. reporter: today you said you lost all sense of fear in your life. why is that so important when you speak up against anyone, especially in light of the current situation with mr. trump? well when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just and i saw segregation and discrimination as being unfair. the action of rosa parks, the words and leadership of dr. martin luther king jr. inspired me. and if it hadn t been for dr. king and rosa parks and so many others, i wouldn t be the person that i am today. harold, in addition to the john lewis news, we also have a lot of news about donald trump s favorability numbers and the favorability of some of the policies he planning on instituting. he campaigned on repealing obamacare. that s no secret. looks like that s what congress is moving to do at this point. but there is a new poll out that shows that 45% of people are for the health care plan, the affordable health care act. only 41% think it is a bad idea. talk to me about whether this administration or republicans in congress are going to see those numbers and think twice. and if they don t, what are the democrats going to do in order to make sure that they, if they can pay for that vote down the line? republicans and democrats but republicans will have to rencile their outright political desires as they have articulated over the last few years with the reality of people being covered, more people being conferred. and based on that poll and other polls you have a pleuralality of americans who think that before you repeal you have got to reform or replace it. even mr. trump implored them not to repeal without a reform in place. because there are lives at stake, meaning their people whom are covered, children whom are covered and one of the more pernicious parts of what they tried to do in this house is they rejected a program that would have protected children under the children s health insurance program i hope that chris collins who led us into this, he said two weeks ago on i hope that ron is right. i hope that w. bush s modelling of working with democrats he he worked with teddy kennedy right away on his no child left hyped act. if trump is serious about reforming health care there are a number of democrats who i think would be willing to work with him. if he is serious and sincere about doing some of these things in a bipartisan way like w. bush was when i was in congress 16 years ago. if he is serious, ron, is there a way for them to get it done as quickly as he wants it to get done? he said within weeks? or are we going to see donald trump get frustrated with it? if he does get frustrated, does it matter? it s congress who has to find a bill and live with that bill? clearly this is a challenge. obamacare is a multidimensional issue that has to be tackd. one thing that s clear, republicans repeal and it replace it with something else. in terms of the debate that happens in washington it s important for republicans to articulate what we are for, not just what we are against. everyone knows we are against obamacare, repealing it. but what are we for, what does the health care system will be like post obamacare? that is ultimately what s going to draw votes to the replacement. that s some of the criticism of the democrats, they have had six years to deal with it but it s something they haven t come up with a coherent idea to fix. thank you ron and harold for joining me. talking about obamacare, we are going to ask you, our microsoft pulse question, do you believe in a historic wave of support for obamacare? we ll convince republicans to keep parts of the law. tell us what you think at pulse .msnbc.com and we ll revalue the results later in this broadcast. we re live on what donald trump s inauguration means on the international stage. this as confirmations are beginning on the hill hill. we re keeping an eye on it on a business o day again. d. n t. . wow. you grilled that chicken? . day again. . day again. . day again. . day again. . day again. . day again. . day again. . yday again. . day again. . introducing smartmade by smart ones. real ingredients, grilled and roasted using the same smart cooking techniques you do. you own a grill? smartmade frozen meals. it s like you made it. and you did. n t. ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. now in kids chewables. i ve got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn t pay all my medical expenses, i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. 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[ male announcer ] you ll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. see why millions of people have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. don t wait. call now. happening on capitol hill right now, trumps pick for secretary of the interior, congressman ryan zinky of montana is before a senate committee for his confirmation hearing. while this is not considered one of trump s more controversial cabinet picks he is expected to take tough questions over his opposition to selling or giving away public lands and his support for the keystone pipeline. meanwhile russian president vladimir putin is accusing the obama administration of trying to unmine donald trump s legitimacy n. a news conference this morning in moscow putin defended trump and trashed the obama team accusing them of trying to set donald trump up for failure. it is the latest example of putin and trump propping each other up. response to vladimir putin? where were you going on a friday? that right there, president obama declining to answer questions about putin after surprising outgoing press secretary josh earnest at the regular white house briefing earlier today. the bill neely joins us now from moscow. he was in the press conference with the russian president. bill my question to you is what exactly is vladimir putin trying to achieve here? reporter: kate, first of all, he didn t have to say these things. this was a news conference. but he chose to. he chose to defend donald trump. extraordinary that a russian president is riding to the rescue of an american president-elect three days before the inauguration. interesting, too, he didn t use obama s name once. obviously, no love lost still between them. but here s what he said about the obama administration. he said we re seeing a continuing heated political discussion and argument in washington, d.c. even though trump had a conclusive victory. the aim of that struggle, he said is to undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect. to tie donald trump s arms and legs to prevent him from realizing his promises to the american people. that includes improving russian/american relations. and vladimir putin also for the first time went on record on that unverified dossier containing certainly allegations against donald trump which donald trump has vigorously denied. vladimir putin said they were obviously false allegations. and he said the people who spread those allegations are worse than prostitutes. one other thing that was interesting, katie, vladimir putin, in comparing the situation in washington, d.c. today used the analogy of ukraine in 2014. in other words, he s comparing the atmosphere in washington to a coup d etat or a revolution. vladimir putin saying the obama administration is trying to unmine donald trump s legitimacy. quite extraordinary, katie. bill neely in moscow where he has cleared moved since we ve seen him every single day lately over there. meanwhile in washington, d.c. the city is preparing for up to a million people to visit in the coming days for the president-elect s inauguration. that number, including both donald trump supporters and the demonstrators expected to protest the 45th president. nbc s chris jansing is live here in washington for us. chris, what s going on? reporter: the skies just opened up and they are hoping that doesn t happen on inauguration day. but we are getting the first look at what just a very few cameras will see. and that is take a look at that podium. that is where dronld j. trump will take the oath of office. history is made at noon on friday. vips will be up here, members of congress, as well as supreme court justices. more vips who will be down there. but then there will be this expanse of people. 250,000 people that they are going to have ticketed. they think half a million or more may gather on the mall in order to be at least within some proximity of what happens here. let me take you on a little tour, if i can. let s come up here. so this, as we come around, that s where the main cameras will be. you can see that huge super structure that is there. people ask how much is this going to cost? $200 million. some of it is about the money that goes into just making all this happen. the flags are out now. you can see it s all bedecked. but in addition to that, the major amount of money is security. and i just talked to the person who is in charge of all this. there is something called the joint congressional committee on inaugural celebration. and a senator once told me that his major concern has always been security. that s what the most money is spent on. he is feeling confident right now. everything is in place. one more little thing. when you go up those blue stairs and you see that the plastic is protecting the red curtain that donald trump will walk through, even that walkway has plastic on it. they want to make sure everything is just perfect for friday at noon. chris, there is something called perfecting the walk and talk. you do that so well. you have just perfected the art of walking upstairs and talking, the stare master and talk is how i m going to dub it. chris, thank you so much. reporter: i don t need a gym. on a totally different story, and a much more serious subject, the outgoing cia director defending himself and the intel community densz donald trump who continues to doubt the eyes and ears that keep americans safe. next up, has the relationship reached a point of no return? 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[vo] quickbooks introduces he teaches lessons to stanley. and that s kind of it right now. but rodney knew just what to do.he got quickbooks. it organizes all his accounts, so he knows where he stands in an instant. ahhh.that s a profit.instant. which gave him the idea to spend a little cash on some brilliant marketing! ha, clever. wow, look at all these new students! way to grow, rodney! know where you stand instantly. visit quickbooks.com. all finished.umm. you wouldn t want your painter to quit part way. i think you missed a spot. so when it comes to pain relievers, why put up with just part of a day? aleve, live whole not part. painter: you want this color over the whole house? our top five headlines we are watching at this hour, the nation s largest automaker general motors said earlier today it will be investing $1 billion in its u.s. factories. the move is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs. the announce men comes two weeks after donald trump s quote big border tax threat. the president-elect tweeted just last hour, thank you general motors, and walmart for starting the big jobs push back into the u.s. to california, where the wife of the gunman behind florida s pulse nightclub shooting appeared in court today. noor salman faces charges in connection with her husband s rampage that killed 49 people in orlando in june. her attorney claims she had no knowledge of her husband s plans ahead of the attack. an american woman is among those confirmed killed in a shooting in a mexico nightclub this week. she died when a gunman opened fire at bpm s electronic music festival. turkish officials arrested a suspect in the attack on the istanbulightclub that left 39 people dead. authorities officially suspended the search for malaysian airlines flight mh 370 after three grueling years of searching. efforts to find the plane s black boxes were unsuccessful. the family members of the 239 victims on board are advocating for an extended search. more fuel to the fire between trump and his intelligence community. vladimir putin s comments on the unsubstantiated dossier came hours after brennan said he was angry when there are allegations about leaking or about dishonesty or lack of integrity that s where i think the line was crossed. a tense haefr. joining me to discuss it former cia director james woolsey who is now the chair of the foundation defense of democracy. jim we were talking during the break. you don t think it was appropriate for director brennan to come out and fire back at donald trump in this way? well, he is going to be the president of the united states in four days. and it would seem to me that a less angry response in public would have been far preferable. the state department is apparently having stress and anger management seminars. maybe they need to invite some of the cia people to the state department. why is the state department having anger and stress seminars? i don t know. i just saw it in the press this morning. it s because really the senior people i think in state and the cia, most of them, thought they were going to have hillary clinton as their boss, and they liked that idea. and they are having, some of them, a difficult time coming to the terms with the fact that s no not the case. talk to me about donald trump, though. he compared the leaks to him living in nazi germany. that is take it pretty far. bad call. does director brennan have a does he not need to respond in order to uphold the reputation of those that he employs, the cia operatives around the world that are working right now? i think that s the one thing he could quite reasonably have responded to. but i don t think he is doing a service by getting into the pit and getting angry back. i think he needs to speak respectfully to the soon to be president of the united states. jim, you were an adviser on the trump transition up until recently. tell me about the circumstances surrounding your departure. were they not talking about your opinions and if they were talking to you now, what would you tell and advise donald trump to do? i helped with the press appearances and so forth but i wasn t being asked to do anything else. and i was being carried on chirons as an adviser on the transition and i really wasn t advising anybody. i didn t want to fly underal colors so i asked them to remove my name from that list. what would you tell donald trump right now that his remarks and relationship with the intelligence community, yes, brennan is outgoing. he is not going to be in charge. but the officers are not political. they are career officers. and is there a feeling among those in the cia that, you know, among those faces that we don t see every day that their new president is not somebody who believes in them or believes in the work they do or the advice this they gave. i think there is anger and difficulty on both sides of this. everybody needs to calm down. they need to get out of the business of talking to the media and the public on this. does that include donald trump and his transition. they need to talk to one another. yes. and they need to start working together because they are going to have to run spies for the country and write intelligence al sees for the country. and they need to do a good job. and they need to have the confidence of the president and his near advisors, secretary of state, secretary of defense and so forth. are you confident that folks like pompeo and mattis will get the ear of donald trump in an unvarnished way and maybe against the advice of general mike flynn? or do you believe general mike flynn is going to color what they say and ultimately get donald trump to ma a decision. i don t think either pompeo or mattis is going to have trouble getting his views through mike flynn or anybody else to the president. these are extraordinary, very able individuals. i think they were carefully chosen. i think they have very fine reputations for good reason. and i think they will call it the way they say it, which is actually what donald trump toll them to do before the press. he said are you confident he is going to have a different relationship with the intelligence community once he takes office? say mike pompeo or general mattis or whom ever goes to trump or somebody from the fbi goes to trump and says you know what, the russians do have some information on you. is he going to listen to them going forward now that they are his? i think anybody would listen. i was surprised that they went first to members of congress before they went to him. if something comes in that s clearly junk like this stuff was, and you decide that, you know, the president to be needs to know about it because some of it is about him. you go first and foremost privately to him and say look we have looked at it we know it s junk but you need to know about it. i think you go first to him. i don t know why they would go first to somebody else. jim woolsey sporting a very sharp spy jacket. that s what i call it a spy jacket. thank you for being here. enjoy your inauguration week. thank you. next up trump s words versus his actions can he walk the walk after all the talk and tweeting. we ll hear from supporters outside the beltway and what they have to say about donald trump s walking the walk and talking the talk. and also what supporters have to say. sorry of mangled that. when you ve been making delicious natural cheese for over 100 years like kraft has, you learn a lot about people s tastes. honey, what do you want for dinner tonight? 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he seems to be a different guy behind the scenes. that seems to be the case, telling people one thing and doing another. how effective can he keep that going forward is everyone going to bend to his will? i don t think for very long. it serves him well in business. he likes to create the chaos, it works well in his negotiating deals. when you are trying to advance an agenda, which is conflicted, requires buy in from congress, it s difficult if no one knows what where you are going to go. when you look at the meetings he has had over the weekend and you basically district the caucus and the leadership when you say thing about tax reform and about obamacare that run counter to what people on the hill think they have got the president-elect to agree to. it s really confuse. right now there is optimism. there will be a hon o moon phase where they say he just says stuff and we are not going to take him literally but we are going to hope he is going to pass our legislation, take care of it and he is going to sign it. but if it doesn t go that way i think it s going to be messy. how does that happen? low poll numbers? going up against republican orthodoxy? who is going to take the lead saying no to him if anyone does? i think that falls on leadership. i think rank and file republicans are very scared of finding themselves in trump s cross hairs being tweeted about, or opposed. trump has flexed his muscle and the house ethics flat getti republicans to back away from that after he criticized that. nobody wants to pick a fight with him just yet. but i think if there are priorities they all share and they disagree with the president they are going to have those fights. that s going to be an uncomfortable moment for leadership but they are going to do it. trump is driven in poll numbers by success. he doesn t want there to be failure by gridlock not being able to repeal and replace obamacare effectively. i think we will see give and take, too. we are getting rained on. i don t know if you can see this on the television but rain is flying in. folks that don t necessarily agree with him go to trump tower and they all say it was a great meeting. what is going on behind the scenes? why is he feeling people one thing, telling al gore talking about climate change and then going over and nominating somebody who is a denier of climate change for the e.p.a., somebody who is suing the e.p.a.? i don t know why. i think a lot of people take the meetings because they respect the office, want to give him the benefit of the doubt. they want to help educate him, bring him around to their view on the policy issues he may not have a background, gritty nuances of the policy and so they want to educate him. i think trump s mo is always to sort of say what he thinks his audience wants him to say. he wants to have a good relationship. he likes people to come away saying nice things about him. but are these substantive conversations that are affecting him? right me would you haven t seen much evidence. it begs the question of who is really in control. nice to see you in person, my friend. now on to our microsoft pulse question, do you believe that the historic wave of support for obamacare will convince republicans to keep parts of the law. 54% of you say no. 46% of you say no. there is still time to vote, go to msnbc.pulse.com. after the break, an inside look at where trump supporters stand just hours before he takes the oath of office. first our viewers are giving their two cents on the trump administration in a special on line series we call deer mr. president . i think you are a solution to those unheard voices that have been ignored for the last eight years. and i want you to know that we re behind you and we are looking forward to making america great again. and make stuffing from scratch. so that you can spend time on what really matters. marie callender s. it s time to savor. i own my own company. i had some severe fatigue, some funny rashes. finally, listening to my wife, went to a doctor. and i became diagnosed with hodgkin s lymphoma .that diagnosis was tough. i had to put my trust in somebody. when i first met steve, we recommended chemotherapy, and then we did high dose therapy and then autologous stem cell transplant. unfortunately, he went on to have progressive disease i thought that he would be a good candidate for immune therapy. it s an intravenous medicine that is going to make his immune system evade the tumor. with chemotherapy, i felt rough, fatigue, nauseous. and with immune therapy we ve had such a positive result. i m back to working hard. i ve honestly never felt this great. i believe the future of immunotherapy at ctca is very bright. the evolution of cancerare is here. learn more at cancercenter.com appointments available now. hi! hey! i ve made plans for later in case this date doesn t go well. same here. wouldn t it be great if everyone said what they meant? the citi double cash card does. earn 1% cash back when you buy, and 1% as you pay. double means double. for donald trump hope to see after he s sworn into office this friday? yahoo news sent halle bailey on a cross country road trip to what they called america s forgotten places. she travels from the rust belt to the meks conborder to talk to those who supported donald trump during hess election asking what they hope for in his presidency. first stop, erie, pennsylvania. i expect first of all that he is facing more challenges than any president because he is facing such opposition. what do i want? i want to see borders again. i want more of our businesses coming back. i m not optimistic that you can change the world in one day, i hope that 18 months to two years his policies being implemented and really actually making changes. who better to talk about this, than holly bailey, thank you for joining us. you went on this road trip and talked to naldrump s voters. are any of them paying attention to what we pay attention to on a dily basis, what did donald trump tweet, what s going on in his confirmation hearing, who is he picking a fight with today? is that on their radar? a little bit but not as much as we would think. mostly they are caring about jobs, caring about donald trump delivering on things he promised, the industry, bringing jobs back to their towns. several we talked to brought up the twitter account and said they wished they would not use it as much but generally the stuff that we are caught up in as the media it s not so much. you went to nine places one of them was truth or consequences which i think is a great name for a town. did any of them see a reason to doubt him before he takes office? were they expecting him to become more presidential as he had promised on the campaign trail? i mean that s one of the things that i thought was interesting about this trip is that you and i covered donald trump. we were at these rallies full of tens of thousands of adoring people who seemed to cling on his every word. but one of the things i noticed from talking to people on this trip they realistic about him. they see his tlaus know his flaws and voted for him knowing his flaws including not being very presidential. what do they see that the democrats didn t see or those who didn t vote for him didn t see. what do we find appealing or promising that others don t. it s funny because we talk about people that supported barack obama in 2012 and 2008, the motivations behind that. hope and change. yes. and when you talk to people in the middle of the country, they bring up these terms. hope and change, that s what we see in him. i said that s how they described obama obama. and he said did they? i didn tnow that. his favorability ratings are not good. i know you got back from the trip a couple of weeks ago, but did you see cracks? if he doesn t come up with building a wall, if he doesn t end up banning all muslims from coming in this country. if there are still terror attacks is that going the make them question donald trump? i think on some issues, yes. what issues? jobs. jobs? that s the one major thing that everybody said, jobs, we need jobs, we need the economy started again. i know that s so vague but that s what they brought up. pocketbook issues like that. and so i mean we mentioned again like the talk about twitter. i mean people were like put that down, we don t want you warring with other people. we want you focusing on the jobs. i think people gave him leniency on how long they expected him to get something done. they didn t expect it overnight but they do expect it to happen. this is a man from yuma arizona. he voted for donald trump but he had some issues about the border wall. where trump is going, the word wall bothers me because it s not even partially accurate. it can t be done. uavs, towers, sensors, technology that will be the wall. but when you say wall to people. and they picture the chinese or the berlin wall. or the israeli wall. now the israeli wall, there s a wall. but that s not going happen in america. we cannot do it. but we do need to scour our border. so they took him seriously not literally. right. not only on what he says on tweets and whatnot but on some of his campaign promises. that goes to my question about jobs. he often comes out and claims que credit for things he didn t do or claims more credit than he deserves for things. carrier being an example of that. do they see through that? do they see the shades of great there? yes. that was one thing that came up. we were traveling around the time that the carrier issue brought up. he went and toured the facility in indiana and someone mentioned that to us. but you know, he said that this person we spoke to about it was in candy hook, kentucky, in elliot county, a county that had never voted for a republican since its first election in 1872. and basically he was saying we need our jobs here. they are very practical, more so than i think people would think. we ll see how they react going forward. of course donald trump in office officially in just a couple of days. holly bailey from yahoo news thank you for joining me. it helps having a show, your friends get to come and sit and talk about things with you. the president in chief crashing today s white house press briefing and triggering some tears. and an unusual taste sensation. do not touch the container tip to your eye or anyurface. remove contacts before usi xiidra and wait for at least 15 minutes before reinserting them. if you have dry eyes, ask your doctor about xiidra. that s a good thing, eligible for medicare? 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gets down to business, massive protests illustrate deep opposition and anxiety. my body, my choice. your body, your choice. inside politics, ing the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters now. welcome to inside politics. i m john king. thanks for sharing your sunday morning with us. day three of an already plenty eventful trump presidency. across the country and the world, saturday was a day of protest. the crowds were giant, and the anti-trump message crystal clear. we are not here to be debunked. we are here to be respected. we are here to be nasty. i m nasty. we will not be silent. we will not play dead. we will fight for what we believe in. now we know presume loves big crowds, except when they are not his so a day that began with a solemn tradition, a prayer service at the national cathedral veered quickly into a trump white house lecture, absent facts, mind you, about yes, of all things, crowd size. first the president. i get up this morning and i turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. i said wait a minute. i made a speech. i looked out. the field was it looked like a million, a million and a half people. they showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. the backdrop for the president there, the cia s most hallowed ground, the wall of the fallen and the stars behind the president representing 117 cia agents and officers who died in the line of duty, died to keep us safe and then the first white house trump briefing or in this case angry screed. no questions allowed. just press secretary sean spicer reading a statement. the photographs were intentionally framed a way in one particular tweet to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the national mall. no one had numbers because the national park service, which controls the national mall, does not put any out. got that. the president spokesman at that podium no one had numbers. no one. so there was no official crowd estimate, but this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period, both in person and around the globe. well, if there are no numbers, how can he say that? well, the boss told him to. with us to share the reporting and their insights mary katherine ham, peter baker, jeff zeleny and nia-malika henderson. i wish we were talking about his speech, the new washington, can he get this done but let s start with this because the president of the united states decided yesterday he wants to talk about this. why? this is important to him. i think that is part of this. i think that s clear that sean spicer got the orders to go out and tell that story. i think the new york times knows it s important to him and re-tweaked him with that tweet that was the picture side by side, and i don t think the media should pretend it s not tweaking him sometimes and it s been perfectly professional. a symbiotic relationship where he gets mad which will continue to drive coverage and i m not sure it s good for the issues we re talking about. that s a part of this story. i get that. i get that, but he s the president of the united states now, and he does like these fights. he likes these arguments with the media, no question about that, but whether you re a trump supporter out there or whether you re someone who is saying he s make up facts, blaming the media for the fight with the intelligence agencies which is not true. none of this is going to get that guy in michigan who voted for donald trump and not hillary clinton a job. that s right but it s the idea central to trumpism. there s villains. there were a number of villains, the obama administration, the cia, the 17 intelligence agencies at some point as well, and he can t really necessarily go after those folks anymore and paint them as victims, so what s remaining at this point i think are for him is the press, and he knows that these fights are going to engage the press. they are going to bind his supporters together. they need a villain as well and so it does keep them engaged, attached to him and bound together. but if they need a villain, he won. it is remarkable what he did in the campaign. it s remarkable he took over the republican party and remarkable he won the election. he s the president of the united states. he did lose the popular vote and republicans have a 52-2 48, very narrow majority in the senate and smaller majority in the house, even if he keeps all of his people, can he govern keeping his people stoked and mad at us? that s the central question and context of all of this matters. doing it on a day not when washington was quiet, not when nothing was going on. the central thing happening in washington around the country and indeed around the world which he knows because he consumes media were all these other protests so i think he wanted to, you know, sort of game the refs a little bit by talking about his crowd sizes. an interesting window into how we all sort of assess this new president came from a friend of his last night on cnn, tom barrett, who came on and said he said the way he interacts is different. we ll just have to get used to it. i think that that s the central thing here. none of this matters. he knows how to complain and pick a fight with the media. what he doesn t know exactly is what he s going to do next, the order of things. this is easy for him, but i m not sure how long it is going to wear well with his supporters. he s an outsider coming in and other outsiders who come in, whether jimmy carter or ronald reagan from different points of view then took over a government and became ultimate lit establishment. some of them did it better than others, and he is now struggling with the idea that he is now the establishment whether he likes it or not so it s in fact better or easier for him to find people to continue that sort of pugnacious fight because it s a revolution, a move president and he has to have somebody to go after. debate over crowd size. won t get anybody a job or raise or lower the price of gas. it is though i think important, and i said this last night on the air, if you re a trump supporter out there and every time he questions the media, pick up your laptop and super computer that is your smartphone and check out these facts yourself but the debate over crowd size means nothing but the credibility of the president of the united states and the credibility of his press secretary should mean something to everybody. not just of those who cover the white house but to those who voted for mr. trump or those who didn t so let s set this aside. the pictures don t lie. here is donald trump s view. donald trump looking out. you heard the president looking out he saw there. no question, it does not matter. plus, washington s a democratic town. maybe that in and of itself. barack obama was making history as the first african-american president. look at the pictures, okay. president obama had had a bigger crowd. donald trump s got a great crowd there. president obama s is bigger. president obama s view and president trump s and this is abraham lincoln s view, looking up. there s just no question there are more people at the obama inauguration, who cares. no longer the president. donald trump is the president of the united states. sean spicer cherry picked metro ridership numbers in his briefing yesterday. it s just not necessary. who cares. it s not a big deal. too esare numbers we know donald trump does like. those are the metro numbers right there. metro ridership for the first obama inauguration are higher than the trump inauguration. not everybody gets there by metro so that s just one look at it. again, i wish we weren t having this conversation. one last thing. we know donald trump likes neilson ratings, cited them last week in trashing schwarzenegger saying he got much better ratings, he did when he was running the apprentice go the . wow, television ratings just out. 32 million people watched the inauguration. 11 million more than the very good ratings from four years ago. that s actually true. he tweeted it out, but look, he skipped 2009. donald trump, the other day, 31 million people almost most. that s impressive. barack obama, making history as the first african-american president in 2009, 7 million more people. if you said that we could have moved on. chairman and very good friend of donald trump and very good real estate and investor and look at him last night when he was asked on cnn why. why can t the president focus on jobs and trade and on the new relationship he wants to have with russia and focus on his promise to eradicate isis on the first of the earth and why on the first full day of office deal with crowd size? it all stems from a tweet. not worthy of all the time of how we got started and what up set him was that. a tweet from a new york times report their got re-tweeted in the national parks service and the allocation of apples to apples and oranges to oranges is complicated. and i m sure the president takes delight. you can bait donald trump with a tweet. starts with donald trump s temperament and donald trump himself has said that his temperament is the same as when he was a first grader, right? he is someone who needs attention and needs validation, a.i. think that s what we re seeing. that s what we ve seen throughout the campaign. size and all sorts of ways has mattered to him and so he s going to continue these fights. he s going to continue to seek the salvation. how he knows to be successful. going to the same script again and again. look, you guys wrote me off repeatedly again and again and again. this works for me. why stop now. he may be right but is rewriting the rule book. his colleagues around the world are a different set of people. they are leaders. how do we think his leaders have the president of any country reacted to this? it has to be laughter. look what donald trump is doing on his first day, talking about crowd sizes. now it s a clean slate, a different picture going ahead and it the the diplomats here who have to write home what s happening on first day in office. must have been an interesting memo. love to see some of the cables. again, i don t think crowd size matters at all, but but truth and credibility over leadership, including us. if you re a trump supporter watching at home and you think we get things wrong. use your power. you have access to the internet and check our facts, too, but reminded he should tell you the truth, too. this the president of the united states going to cia headquarters, his first stop, an important stop and wanted to tell people at cia i got your back. i respect you. that s good especially after what happened during the campaign and during the transition period but this from the president of the united states, his explanation of why some people think he s at war with intelligence agencies. listen here, this is simply not true. well, i have a running war with the media. they are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. [ applause ] ? right. and they sort of made it sound like i had a feud with the intelligence community, and i just want to let you know, the reason you re the number one is exactly the opposite. sort of made it sound like he had a war or running feud with the intelligence community, like we made it up. here s donald trump. what s happened over the years. i mean, it s been catastrophic, and in fact i won t use some of the people that are sort of your standards, but i won t use them because they have made such bad decisions. i think it was disgraceful, disgraceful. that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake, and that s something that nazi germany would have done and did do. donald trump in his own words there. i want to quickly get in this tweet as well. did this several time. the intelligence with the word intelligence in quotation marks on so-called russian hacking was delayed until friday. perhaps more time needed to build a case. very strange so we did not fabricate war with the intelligence community. we covered it. he said what do we live do we live in nazi, germany, suggested in that tweet they were tooking the books. why can t he just don t mention, it don t restoke the fight and say i m here to tell you i got your back. i mean, he s donald trump. i stopped waiting for him to change a long time ago but i do think there s a line he could walk here if he were different where you say, look, there have been intel failures in the past. there have been politicized leaks. i think he has a bone to pick with some of that that s legitimate. he refuses to be a guy who can walk that line and say also the servants who do such a good job. for what it s worth there were cia folks in that audience and from some reports inside the room it was not just trump staff applauding him at times, so there s another part of this story as well and it s complicated as far as who works there. without question. i talked to someone who was in the room though last night, a government official and i will identify them like that and said they were very uncomfortable the senior leadership was not applauding, rank and file who wanted to be there on a saturday were applauding and when donald trump said you all voted for me, part of the military, the cia, not how they see themselves, not quite accurate. it was very awkward to be, you know, framed to be doing that and talking about everything else, about going to iraq potentially, taking the oil. all of these things which simply won t happen for his first speed out of of the gate an interesting one. he said we should have kept the oil and maybe we ll get a chance to do it again. he should have had a prompter probably in a prepared speech. didn t seem like he did. i think the return of the teleprompter is inevitable. up next, the new president s early actions and what they tell us about the first 100-day agenda and for this politicians say the darnedest things. listen to this. when a courtesy call on a senator sounds like, well, something else. thank you so much for coming into my office. did you enjoy meeting me? i hope you re as much fun on that dais as you were on your couch. well may i rephrase that, sir. please, please, please. oh, my lord. oh, my lord. well, i think we found our saturday night live sound bite. how can you cut a perfect 4 ounce portion of liquid gold velveeta without even touching a knife? ta. da. with 4 ounce, individually wrapped velveeta mini blocks, dinner s never been easier. introducing four ounce, individually wrapped velveeta mini blocks. the easiest way to make this. and this. and this. with perfectly-portioned velveeta mini blocks, you ve got endless, melty gold. audi pilotless vehicles have conquered highways, mountains, and racetracks. and now much of that same advanced technology is found in the audi a4. with one notable difference. the highly advanced audi a4, with available traffic jam assist. i won this 55 inch tv for less than $30 on dealdash.com. visit dealdash.com for great deals. and start bidding today! welcome back. a have big weekend ahead for the president. several key cabinet picks face votes on capitol hill. they are looking at immigration to trade and regulation and some of the executive actions coming today. already signed a new executive order that allows the trump administration to repeal parts of the obamacare. it s imperative for the executive branch to make sure the law is being efficiently implemented and take all actions consistent with the law to minimize the unwarranted economic and regulatory burdens of the act and prepare to afford states more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market. the president had the parade and stood outside and reviewed the parade. first real executive order it. it keeps in spirit his campaign promise to act on day one to repeal and replace. how quickly do we expect to see the actual cabinet agency okay, ohio, can you do this this, montana, united healthcare we ll let you do this. that remains up in the air with the crowd size discussion. one thing i wonder about trump and i want to be open that i ve been wrong about his strategy such that it is very many times and i wonder if all the sound and furry actually allows people to do more of the handiwork on things like obamacare because there s so many band which hath given to the everyday fights that there s not a lot left for oh, let s go over the details of obamacare and the democrats can bring up all their people who say they are being hurt and perhaps more actually happens legislatively that way in the shadows of all the sound and furry. i don t know if that s the case but it sometimes feels like that s what s going on. things have to happen legislative. he did sign the executive order, something he said he would do, but the reality here is this has to be changed on capitol hill, and there will have to be a law that he has to sign. the replace part does. i don t know if it was part of the strategy or not because it s hard to read what they are doing and hofn they don t want to explain to us and they say here it is. that s their right, not a criticism and is this in some ways, whether by design or not, sort of a 2 x 1 to tell congress you better move fast because other agent sits of government with sway over the law could issue their rules could get messy and could come down to the democrats benefit if it gets messy. without question. obamacare is not just, you know, the health and human services agency, it s a sweeping law across the government. this thick or this thick, so i think that but there still is not a consensus on what is going to happen on capitol hill in terms of this legislation so, again, obamacare is not going away overnight and they are still grappling with how a to replace it. it s not going away overnight but president obama and the democrats have laid the bed and set table. what donald trump is going to do is push the boundaries of executive power to use that without having to wait for congress to make changes, hand who did that first? president obama. when the healthcare act was passed used his executive power to interpret and reinterpret other people said was going beyond the law and now you ll heart complaints from the democrats the exact same way. ignoring the law and using his mother to gut it unilaterally and there will be an interesting back and sglort is the gutting about the individual mandate, is that where they can sort of reinterpret whether or not you can get waivers in different ways not to have to pay that individual mandate. that s the money. which, of course, funds. the agency filled in so many of the blanks there and they can change those blanks. i think that s the fascinating part. he won. let s see how messy. another action they took on the first day from the department of housing and urban development was to suspend, the obama administration tried to lower premiums on fhl loans, low income families, lower the mortgage insurance premiums. that was supposed to take effect and hadn t and the new administration came in and said stop that. we want to take a look at it. see if they keep ittant a. chuck schumer, the democratic leader, see him next program on state of the union with chuck schoumer. here s the reaction when they put that housing had effort on hold. it took only an hour after his positive words on the inaugural platform for his actions to ring hollow. one hour after talking about helping working people and ending the cabal in washington that hurts people, he signs a regulation that makes it more expensive for new homeowners to buy mortgages. they have every right. new administration, to i think take a look. the question is we ll see what they do going forward but that s just a snapshot of where the democrats want to go with just about every argument that they can. donald trump campaigned to be a populist and said he was going to help you working class people and their saturday he didn t mean it. i think they will continue to make the argument but it might be more helpful to make the argument to trump. you don t care about debt. and trump might be sure, that s a good point. this is the weirdness of donald trump because he s not an ideological creature because there are people in the administration who are and this may be him saying, look, this is my administration. first full week in office and we ll start to get some flavor of the new sheriffs in town and how it works because during the campaign we saw the competing power centers and it worked for him. he has steve bannon his strategist and reince priebus chief of staff and son-in-law jared kushner a key adviser and new oval office and we have pictures of the new oval office. these are the gold drapes. president had red drapes. jared kushner to the president s right, his son-in-law, vice president and chief of staff reince priebus, a photo that shows us the change, but what do we expect? as far as how he governs? the power centers. i think the office placement is interesting and how how we know the proximity to the president, but i think these things shift hey lot. jared kushner seems to be a sable, kellyanne conway comes in and out of the orbit and steve bannon we hear almost nothing. from that will be the puzzle of the entire presidency and i think trump acts on his gut so if there owes an adviser that gets in the room and has had a different idea he likes it he s going to go with if. and not clear who can tell him no of that group. saw a little bit that have in the last 24 hours. up next, massive protests coast to coast to put the new president on notice. just investigate, or can the left now borrow a page from the tea party? and you re talking to youro doctor about your medication. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. ready for a new chapter? talk to your rheumatologist. this is humira at work. donald, let s talk as friends. you re not off to a great start, man. i thought you d be better at this. however, i m glad to see so many people showed up to your inauguration. oh, wait. that s the woman s march. one day your country could be as happy as we are here in russia. we are not divided, you know, like you, because all our people because all our people are so glad for their freedom. had a little fun on saturday night live last night. leave it to you to decide how much you like that or don t. a lot of ways to dissect what happened across america yesterday but this much is indisputable. it was a remarkable show of force. take a look. this is here in washington, d.c., the national mall was packed throughout the day. the marchers even, look there, leaving had a present for the president outside the new trump international hotel just a few blocks from the white house. see what happens to those. that was more, boston, new york, chicago, denver, los angeles, march organizers say more than 670 demonstrations across the united states, plus an international element, paris, london, barcelona, melbourne, among the overseas sights were companion rallies to the marches here in the state. a lot of different causes and different priorities and one unifying force, the new president. president trump and the republican congress are ready to ram through laws that will tilt it even heard. now we can whimper. we can whine or we can fight back. me, i m here to fight back. i m here to fight back. massachusetts senator elizabeth warren there. let me translate for you guys. that was mayor marty walls, and senator ed markey behind it if you want to translate your inner bostonian. impressive crowd, without a doubt, no matter where you looked, here, big cities around the countries. most of the big cities were blue cities, democratic cities, but to the point that these people turn out, what to make of it? an impressive display of first amendment rights. is it the beginning of a democratic version of the tea apartment or a big day of venting? one of the things, it s clear that democrats and progressives needed this. i ran into democratic congressman lake on friday and said, you know, how are you holding up and getting through this and he pointed to the vad can a th the vod cha that he was drinking so they certainly they needed this display of numbers and strength and these half but the question is does a leader she merge from this? if you look at the trump coalition, it s clear that it s bound by race, religious and to a certain extent class. for democrats and progressives, there s such a wide, you know, sort of spectrum of demographics, diversity in some ways is their strength but in some ways it s a burden because it s incumbent upon i think a leader to emerge that can bridge all of those different class and racial divides that the progressive coalition has. i think elizabeth warren there, you know, that might have been her 20/2201 2020 announce. the democrats can mark in the street, he won and i thought john psaki had a very interesting blog post. it will give people a chance for their activism rather than moving on to their daily lives. are more liberals going to move to ohio hand michigan. wisconsin, yeah. going forward, is this the liberal tea party? perhaps, but i don t think we know that yet at all, and what we don t see is any sign of working together or moving forward to help some of those problems out there, and that is something that will hurt everyone. we started there with elizabeth warren. you saw some massachusetts politicians behind her in boston. a lot of democratic politicians speaking here in washington and elected officials speaking across the country. also a lot of celebrities involved, including two here in washington. several here in washington. i ll give you an example of two here. you re a celebrity and have a place firm and you choose then how to use it. first, america ferrer. our dignity, our character, our rights have all been under attack and a platform of hate and division assumed power yesterday. we will not go from being a nation of immigrants to a nation of of ignorance. making her case there and then had a little different from madonna. yes, i m angry. yes, i am outraged. yes, i have thought an awful lot about blowing up the white house. but i know that this won t change anything. we cannot fall into despair. memo to madonna, the first amendment is a wonderful thing and everybody has the right to exercise it as they see fit, but when you talk publicly about blowing up the white house you tend to get a phone call from the secret service. yes. again, you know, we can make fun of some of the statements. my big question about this is where does it go, and just to say the president-elect the president, i m sorry, sorry president trump, he s president. watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election. why didn t these people vote? celebs hurt cause badly. now, they have every right they can be out there 365 days a year, just shocking, 366 in a leap year, have every right to be out there. his point is you can make this point. give me a chance but they clearly don t think they are going to get much. many of them did vote and were involved, but here heegs the good news for this march is that a celebrity-laden joint rally in a big urban center is exactly what won hill hill election. right. you have to have a change of tactics and i do think you re right that people needed this manned there s a wide swath of people who are represented there. unfortunately, the organizers of the group decided to cut out a pro-life feminist group called new wave feminists explicitly after realizing we don t want them part of the coalition. that was a last opportunity to reach out to many women who are on the right or more moderate on abortion who are very critical of trump and very worried but they did not take that opportunity and i don t think that bodes well for reaching out to people in wisconsin and michigan and ohio where you need to do that to make that difference. usually you lose for a reason. you don t have enough votes so you should be trying to expand your coalition. and the messages from the podium are not well designed. how many people in that audience i was wondering across the country voted for jill stein. or bernie sanders. show i think that the democratic party is not going to rebuild itself on marches and rallies alone. it just isn t. you make a great point about including groups. the first real test, look at vote registration numbers and their organizations founded out of this. the first real test will come in the mid terms and a lot of people looked at the tea party marches, that s nice and a lot of people out in the street. is it just venting and they proved themselves, particularly in the republican party and stunned their own party. see what happens as this goes forward. michael flynn jr. is the son of the national security adviser to the president of the united states and has had a history of conspiracy theories, has had a history of race-baiting on twitter and a history of a whole lot of things that aren t very pleasant. here s what he tweeted during the rally. what victory, women already have equal rights and equal pay in this country, what more do you want, free mani/pedis? #womensmarch. the new administration doesn t need distractions like this, but silence. or do they thrive on them. or do they thrive on them. i m sure michael flynn jr. is happy that we read his tweet on the air. sort of mastered internet troll. the last one was him recommending the work of a guy who engineered 9/11. up next, was america first. we know america first was donald trump s inaugural theme and had a powerful figure for party figures listening just a few feet away. this is the food system. but what if it didn t have to be? at blue apron, we re building a better food system. where we value quality and flavor over quantity and shelf-life. where chefs and farmers work together to make farms healthier, grow higher quality ingredients, and deliver them in-season, ripe and ready to cook. because food is better when you start from scratch. blue apron. welcome pack. the new president s inaugural address was trademark trump, a dark view of crime and violence, an america first populist promise when it comes to trade and national security and a blunt rebuke of the political establishment, democrats and republicans alike. for too long a small group in our nation s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed. the establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country. that all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment. it belongs to you. one of many remarkable moments in the speech, and let s talk about the agenda going forward, but he ran as an outsider and ran as much against the republican establishment as he did against the democrats. ran as much against washington and in the end he made it personal about hillary clinton, but it was delicious. he was standing there and right over his shoulder, you know, the former president, barack obama, but also bill clinton and jimmy carter and george w. bush, but speaker ryan, leader mcconnell, the people he has to do business with. it was a remarkable you guys are the problem. he s really the first arguably independent president we ve had at least since early days of the republic. he s a republican. i don t want to minimize that. but the truth is he didn t feel beholden to either party and made very clear in this speech, not a republican speech. didn t talk about tax cuts or the size of government or about a lot of things republicans would normally want to hear him talk about. he had other things he did talk about that were republican about eradicating isis and so forth, but it was a very much the speech of not just an outsider but somebody who who is sending a signal to the republicans as much as the democrats you ll not your man. i m the people s man in his view, the leader of a movement. america first. and i want to hold up newspaper headlines as we go through the newspapers. brisbane, australia, done of a new era and international for one more. stoke home sweden america first so the message was received, not just here in the united states and around the world and when says america first he s said throughout the campaign, and you can get flavor of it in his speech. he s not going to reflexively project american force around the, not going to reflexively meddle in other people s business around the world and he also talked about protection in the context of trade, not free market republican or neo-conideas. i rather enjoyed the first part of the speech which was just accurate. people have not prosper the in the way the establishment told them they would prosper and that s why his message works. later it got in into our destiny and i ll deliver you from the carnage, and i m a morning in america person. it was not my thing, but i i m an ideological person. the country is not ideological. his message is populist and it s popular. it s popular because people have been failed, and i think his opponents underestimate that at their political risk as happened the entire election. it s just really simple, right. it s i ll fix your schools. i ll make your communities safer and i ll give you jobs, and anyone really across the democrat demographic spectrum can get into that messagebled i think you re right. i think people underestimate how appealing that is, how appealing it is to to have this president who really almost sounded like a coach, right, who is rallying the team to victory against against the establishment, against the rest of the world, and i think he knows that that crowd does have very different feelings from the republican party in terms of trade. they see trade. they see globalism in a very different way than this than this current republican party. i find it fascinating to hear you talk about how washington works and that outside game and talking to the american people and talking to the world very disdainful of the establishment and very much saying you guys are the problem and you screwed it up and i m here to fix interest and when he went inside he was yukking it up with them signing the papers and making jokes with the republicans and just as more even more so with the democrats, showing off the art of the deal guy. the horse trading, look, let s be honest. whatever you think, he can t get things done without their votes and they are pretty narrowly divided. fascinating what, peter said he s not beholden to either side and watching him in those moments, that s something that we hadn t really seen before, watching him interact with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi. he does want to have a successful president circumstances of course, or he wouldn t have done this, watching those deals always more important. he was talking to the american people and had he been talking around and spoke to the members of congress looking east, much more important. the question is he has a lot of competing power centers inside his west wing. i m told he wanted to have an optimistic speech. he was watching the ronald reagan speeches and even obama speeches and jfk speech. i m not sure this speech will be remembered as an optimistic speech because it wasn t. it was pretty dark. the words that will be remembered is american carnage. as you get to that point. want to hold that up. peter is the leader writer of this story. donald trump s hometown newspaper as we like to say, small little town, new york city, but it s also a national and international newspaper but this american carnage stops. a very vivid phrase. american carnage, and i think you can make the point that a lot of americans do follow left behind. a lot of americans voted for him because they felt like they had been ignored and forgotten, but that s not necessary lit experience of all americans or a lot of americans and to talk down the country as a whole is a surprising thing to hear in an inaugural address. what you ll hear over the next four years is why he s made it a better america and how the statistics that obama would talk about heading out now will be trump statistics about, you know, job growth. and they are good statistics, right? he s been handed a an economy that s certainly much is much stronger now than the economy that that obama was handed. you know, and there s a promise. there is the american carnage that is the fault of all these people behind me and it s the promise that he s going to deliver the country to a different place. i mean, almost sort of a religious undertone with him as the savior. he also did something interesting at the end where he outright said speeches don t matter anymore and gave a very brief speech. that was an explicit reference and a lot of people being taken by the speeches a. that you can is over. the hour of action here hand another challenge in the speech was to reach out. 54% of the country did not win for him. won the electoral college victory. he is the president of the united states and has to deal with that as he governs all of america. a lot asking how would we reach out to critics and those who didn t vote for him and african-americans and latinos who might have doubts about him. listen here. when you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. a new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights and heal our divisions. it s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots. interesting. it s he has his own way of speaking, but it s interesting language. without question, and, again, i think it matters what he s going do with this. his relationship with the chuck schumers and interestingly what happened at the lunch. mitch mcconnell asked for a change of seats and asked to sit next to president trump and moved over senator blunt and the had had a private conversation, as private as you can have in a statuary hall. he wished him well, mcconnell. exactly and talked about please don t say all these things about tax reform and obamacare. come to us. we want to work with you, so that relationship is still building. i thought it was so fascinating about friday, seeing our president our 45th president for the first time. he has virtually no relation shipments or short relationship with all the people that he has to deal with. that is going to be a fascinating part of his growth that we don t know how this will end. they want him to talk less because they don t want them to get boxed. i want this, this and this. everybody sit down and a look not at who grabbed the most important real estate next to donald trump in the oval office? these birds once affected by oil are heading back home. thanks to dawn, rescue workers only trust dawn, because it s tough on grease yet gentle. i am home, i am home, i am home crammed into your brand-new car. i m so sexy, you can t keep your hands off me. do it again. there you go. i can do whatever you want. except keep your eyes on the road. now would be a good time to have new car replacement. so get allstate and be better protected from mayhem, like me. it s good to be in good hands. abdominayou may have ibs. ask your doctor if non-prescription ibgard is right for you. ibgard calms the angry gut. available at cvs, walgreens and riteaid. and they re absolutely right. they say that it s hot. when really, it s scorching. and while some may say the desert is desolate. we prefer secluded. what is the desert? it s absolutely what you need right now. absolutely scottsdale. we surround our table with reporters, not pundits for a reason. we close each sunday by asking them to share a nugget or two from their notebooks to help you get out ahead of the big political news around the corner. nia-malika henderson. one of the things that s going to be interesting as former president obama figures out his post-white house years is whether or not he officially weighs in on this dnc race. of course, his guy, tom perez, the former labor secretary, is running as well as michael blake who is running as the vice chair, an obama staffer. he s said very complimentary things about both. michael blake is actually using some of obama s former fund-raisers in chicago to fund his race. it will be interesting to see if he officially endorses and if it matters. it will be a real test of what kind of juice he has, and we also know that there s some dnc members who blame obama for the dnc essentially taking a lot of resources away from the dnc as he was president. a test of clout in the early days. jeff zenl? well, it s location, location, location and real estate and more than other things hand no one knows that as donald trump. as the trump administration settles into the west wing the fight is on who will get which office, always one of the more interesting things in a new administration. reince priebus, the chief of staff, i m told will have the chief of staff s office which has a fireplace as we all know, long conference table, access to outside, butting fromly i m told that jared kushner will be sitting in a smaller office but the one that is closest to the oval office. david axelrod had that office and david plouffe years before that and karen hughes i believe had that office. on the second floor of the west wing is kellyanne conway, occupying the office of valerie jarrett and once upon a time hillary clinton back in the clinton years. the rest of the offices are still being filled in. i don t think she ll hang old historical pore freights in that office. peter? we talked about crowd size and one of the things interesting to watch in the next few weeks is how the trump administration deals with agencies it s now in charge of and had a great example of this. moy colleague from the new york times tweeted out on friday pictures we ve all been looking at of the different inaugurations and then re-tweeted by the national park service which is normally in charge of that patch of ground and got in trouble for that. the trump people didn t like that and the national park service went offline hand their twitter account suspended and a real interesting period, agencies in the government which are suspicious of this new president deals with the new president as they are suspicious of him. he is the new boss. we ll see how it plays out. mary katherine. looks like there s a different cia pushback, general hayden who served under obama and bush and i don t know what the deal is with the holdup on pompeo given his credentials, they are pretty impressive and he spoke to the concerns people have about the interrogation techniques. the man said he s going to follow law and come to congress if he thinks there should be a change, not a big deal. it s interesting because there s been so much foyer between cia and trump that on the other side a respected veteran is coming out and saying, look, let s get this moving, the national security operation is important. northern because general hayden has been very critical of the new president and donald trump and stepping him with him here. mounting pressure on the new administration to kick its personnel search into the higher gear. many of the two, three and four jobs of the cabinet agencies remain unfilled and it s those positions that have giant influence over day-to-day white house operations. the administration promises a stream of steady announcements in the days ahead and team trump is having a hard time, the number two department at treasury. wall street veteran steve mnuchin support president s choice for a top job and mnuchin is hooking for a washington hand has number two and the transition reached out recently to jeb hensarling who was passed over for the top job but has no interest being the deputy. that s it for inside politics and early weeks for the big new year and hope to see you then. that s tomorrow at noon. up next state of the union with jake tapper. tis, and you re talking to your doctor about your medication. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. ready for a new chapter? talk to your rheumatologist. this is humira at work. it helps put some distance.. between you and temptation. clinically proven to help reduce hunger between meals. from metamucil, the #1 doctor recommended brand. president trump. donald trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the united states. congratulations, mr. president. promising to be the people s president. this moment is your moment. and putting his stamp on the pomp and circumstance. i did it my way