David Axelrod

You don't want that decision being made in a chaotic environment or in a casual way.

You want an experienced team. You want a team that works well with the President and each other. And you want them in place over a long period of time so you can have consistent policy and implement it effectively.

These kids are just overwhelming. These kids are so inspiring, so impressive. And they are just asking us to suspend our cynicism, to throw off the political shackles that campaign contributions and threats from the NRA represent, and…

Yes, I think that -- I think that it would. I think it would be a risky move for him with his base.

The President has the ability to make a difference here. I agree with Senator Murphy, his rhetoric at the end of that session at the White House today was very discouraging.

He appeared to be blaming the alleged victims here.

You would have certainly removed at least on a temporary basis Mr. Porter from that job, handling the most sensitive documents that the U.S. government has, and you would have looked more deeply into these charges.

If no one said to him, whether it was Kelly or anyone else -- if no one said to him going into this scrum, Mr. President, if you don't do anything else, you have to express some solicitude for these women, you have to speak to their…

This has been a fiasco, and what is interesting to me, Anderson, is that the story leaked out --

The fact that there was a hold on his clearance for 13 months meant that people who needed to clear him had really deep concerns.

The fact of the matter is that Porter couldn't get clearance in the White House for 13 months.

And for Donald Trump who is going to change Washington, this seems very much like the same old game. And Rand Paul is calling him on it.

What Rand Paul is doing is pulling the cover off of all of this. And it's embarrassing to his colleagues. And he knows it's embarrassing. And he wants to embarrass them. And what his real message is this is Washington politics as usual.

There's got to be a great deal of trepidation about the prospect of this President sitting down in front of those prosecutors.

It's a slog. And you really need to think about whether you want to put yourself through that.

He would be 82 years old at the end of his term if he ran for president.

I think that in his head, he's running. I listen to him in that interview and I see a guy who's thinking, he's going to be running for president of the United States in 2020.

I think the goal is to politicize the entire discussion so that it looks like a political tug-of-war and not a legitimate investigation.

The fact is the memo was designed to try and discredit the whole probe to put pressure on all those involved in the probe.

He overruled his own FBI director, director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department and took the advice of Director Hannity on this.

I have believe that there are many members of that Congress who were deeply disturbed about this but feel compelled for political reasons to at least remain silent.

Impeachment becomes a tool that you use to get rid of Presidents with whom you don't agree politically. That's a very dangerous thing.

The notion that a President would overrule his own FBI director, the guy he appointed, his own appointee at the Justice Department, both of whom have warned that this was reckless, dangerous, had potentially grave consequences -- in order…

In a democracy party wins the White House, they have a right to make policy subject to the approval of a Congress. You may not like the policies they make, but that's our system.

I think the circus thing, I think it's an important thing to remember. Because I do think that part of the strategy of the White House is to try and turn the entire discussion into a partisan circus.