Trump ignores questions about new book

T TV Saturday 06/January/2018 14:17 PM
By: Times News Service

President Trump ignored questions about a critical new book as he departed the White House for Camp David on Friday to meet with top Republicans, telling reporters instead that the stock market was doing well and that the new tax cuts "are really kicking in". Rough Cut (no reporter narration).
Following a tumultuous start to 2018, President Donald Trump departed for Camp David on Friday to huddle with top Republicans on a two-day retreat to lay out legislative priorities for the year and discuss a strategy for pivotal November congressional elections.
Two days after explosive comments by Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, put the White House on the defensive, the president will sit down at Camp David in Maryland with party leaders, including House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican establishment figures who Bannon has criticized in the past.
Trump achieved the first major legislative victory of his presidency in December with a tax overhaul long sought by his party and its supporters.
The president is eager for more victories, and the White House has targeted infrastructure policy and an overhaul of welfare programs as top priorities.
Immigration legislation, in particular a plan to protect hundreds of thousands of young adults who were brought to the United States illegally as children, is also on the agenda.
While Trump and McConnell want to work on infrastructure first, Ryan is more interested in tackling so-called entitlement programs such as welfare.
A White House official said the timing of legislation would be discussed as well as the political priority of giving Republicans substantive issues to highlight ahead of the November midterm elections in which the party will battle to keep control of Congress.
All 435 members of the House and a third of the 100 members of the Senate will be up for re-election. A Democratic takeover of one or both chambers could stifle Trump's agenda.
The meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat follows an uproar over a new book's account of an inept Trump White House.
In the book, Bannon was quoted as calling a meeting involving the president's son and son-in-law with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign "treasonous." Trump broke with Bannon on Wednesday after the comments attributed to his former advisor in author Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" were made public. Trump said Bannon had "lost his mind."