David Gergen

The question is whether Dowd acted at the behest of the president, the instruction -- we don't have to debate that. It's very clear he would not act without the president's blessing.

It is not right to be dangling pardons in front of -- in a really sensitive case, unless you have something you want to cover up.

If you think three countries, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, on all three, he has been very hard-line.

I think the chances are just gone up a lot, this going to get out of the Iranian agreement.

He's talked about a fall-back position that may lead to war.

Well, two things. First of all, once again they sort of ushered someone out the door in the least gracious way you can do it.

I think you've got series of these stories coming out and a lot of women are going to say, yuck.

I think this lowers our sense of what politics we're just down in the muck.

He likes the drama. He likes the reality show quality of it.

If he's going to clean house he ought to do it quickly and reform and tell everybody OK, from now on you're safe, we're going to get -- this is our team for the next year.

It's really hard after that to find extremely talented people who are willing to come in, put their reputations on the line, work their tails off for this guy.

He's now looking for people who are much more consistent with his viewpoint.

I think the President's trying to bolster his P.R. team among other things heading toward 2018 elections.

He wants to do solo. He thinks a lot of people around him have been like training wheels. He doesn't need it anymore.

His instincts for campaigning as we know are first class but it's interesting to -- although I don't like them, but his instincts for governing are terrible.

We've never had a president that so unpredictable. That's not to say he is not doing some things right for the country, he's not say he is, you know, he is wrong on everything.

You can't turn and run on that hoc government. And very importantly Anderson, is very difficult to attract highly talented people.

Trust remains the coin of the realm in politics as in many other professions. If the leader wants to have others follow in difficult times they've got to trust him.

Right. Look, when you've got an economy that is growing the way this one is, a pretty robust pace, he's passed a major tax bill and he's sitting at 35 percent approval rating, you've got a real communications problem.

It tells you that it's impossible to be successful in that job because that job is all about planning strategy, communications strategy, themes, working it out, and you've got a President, of course, who uses Twitter to bust up all that.

I would argue it's not that they don't need one. They desperately need a new communications director who is empowered to do the job that's there, to let this president, enable the president and get other people out of the way and get him…

When you create conflicts of it, what appear to be conflicts of interest, then naturally suspicions arise about these kinds of transactions.

We're an increasing threat to our democracy because the president, the White House, and the Congress have not tried to mobilize the forces of the U.S. government and state and local governments to stop this obvious threat to our new…

No. None. None that we've heard of, anyway.

I don't think we can assume that. We remember that White House told us almost a dozen times that no one in the White House that ever talked to President, never talked about firing Mueller.