We bring you the latest on the Trump administration - rising tensions with media, the executive order on ACA, withdrawing from TPP and more; plus, a look at the Women's March that rocked not only Washington, D.C., but all 50 states across America and over 30 countries worldwide.
Monday politics: What to watch for in President Trump’s first full week in office
President Trump’s first week as POTUS begins with plenty to discuss following his first few days and actions in office.
Already, tensions between the media and President Trump are surfacing. On Saturday, Sean Spicer made his first official appearance as White House press secretary, and in a briefing that lasted less than six minutes he called out the media for their coverage of the inauguration, including an erroneous report that was later corrected by a TIME Magazine reporter alleging that a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been removed from the White House. Spicer also took issue with photos that were tweeted out comparing crowd sizes at President Trump’s inauguration to those at President Obama’s first inaugural in 2009.
Mr. Trump has wasted no time getting the ball rolling on some of his top priorities, including signing an executive order that directs federal agencies not to enforce big portions of the Affordable Care Act. He withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on Monday and says that he plans to meet with Canadian and Mexican leaders to discuss the renegotiation of NAFTA, though he has not said specifically what he wants to do with the decades-old trade deal.
We’ll also take a look at which Trump cabinet members will be confirmed this week on the heels of word that Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who had been reticent to declare his support for Secretary of State nominee and former Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, will vote in favor of confirming him for the post of top U.S. diplomat.
Guests:
Matt Rodriguez, Democratic strategist and founder and chief executive officer of Rodriguez Strategies. He is also a former senior Obama advisor in 2008; he tweets
Charles Kesler, Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books
Burgess Everett, congressional reporter for POLITICO who’s been following the story on Marco Rubio’s backing of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state; he authored the recent article, “Rubio to back Tillerson, effectively ensuring confirmation”
Can the Women’s March become a sustainable political movement?
The final numbers are still not in, but Saturday’s women’s marches have broken records already.
And comparisons are already being drawn, to the Tea Party Movement, to Occupy Wall Street, and to the feminist movement. If you were out for Saturday's anti-President Trump march in Downtown LA, the size of the crowd and the varied messages probably led you to ponder what comes next.
Does opposition to the President lead to a new Tea Party-like political movement within liberalism, or something more diffuse?
Guests:
Cathleen Decker, political columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where she’s been writing about this weekend’s women’s marches
Karsonya "Kaye" Wise Whitehead, Associate Professor of Communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland. Her teaching and research focuses on the intersections of race, class, and gender
Kate Zernike, national correspondent for The New York Times and author of “Boiling Mad: Behind the Lines In Tea Party America”