David Gergen

If the Democrats lose that race, they're going to be demoralized, but if they can win that it's going to charge them up for the 2018 in getting candidates.

It's extremely unusual, so early in the term for former presidents to break ranks.

He has this compulsion. When he's facing criticism and must be feeling embarrassed about it to lash out at others and to blame others.

There's an important norm about the presidency and about the way we act with each other in politics that this president seems to want to destroy.

It really -- it does send a signal, at least a couple people in the inner circle. And Paul Manafort was in the inner circle as a chairman for a period of time. They just can't deny that.

It does raise the question of whether trying to flip Manafort or not, was he knows enough now? That certainly indicates that he's in great legal jeopardy.

I think this was a vulnerability that Trump had, because he wasn't counter fighting a system. So he didn't have the powerful inner circle of people who really knew what was going on in Washington advising him.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, the more they can pile up on him, you know, the multiple charges then the incentive to cooperate goes way up as you will know.

It could be -- as I say, it could be -- it could have weight to a case against the president.

Does this add to a sense that there was an intent just as David Axelrod said, was there a motivation on the part of the president to shut Mueller down?

I do think that General Kelly has more leverage than anybody else who's been around. You know, if he walks, it will be so destructive of the Trump presidency. And everybody knows that.

I think that, you know, Carl Bernstein and I have been trying to argue here and Carl has been very forceful on this, that the issue of stability, the president's emotional and mental health is going to become increasingly important focus…

That's absolutely true, Anderson, and many, many Republicans have not spoken up against the president, but they have also dodged speaking up on his behalf.

I think these people speak for far more. People are telling these neo-Nazis are a fringe group. They hate, but we far outnumber them.

I'm confident that at the end, we're not going back to Jim Crow. This country has changed dramatically. There is goodwill on the part of a huge number of whites now. I don't care what this president does. He's not going to be able to turn…

This is a man with such massive insecurities. We haven't seen anybody in the White House with such massive insecurities since Richard Nixon.

I believe when I worked for Richard Nixon, ultimately, he needed to leave office, just as most of my colleagues at the Nixon White House. We thought he was posing a threat.

He so clearly sees the world differently than most of us do. And he, in creating once again an equivalence between the neo-Nazi and people who came to protest what the neo-Nazis are saying, you know, it's just so unacceptable to masses of…

It is abnormal and it is not appropriate for his duty, and then not to disclose it only arouses further suspicions about what the hell is Donald Trump's obsession with Vladimir Putin, and why won't he be straightforward about it.

It's really kind of this White House faced up to duties of the President here at home. And that is to be president of all the people, not just your base.

When the President says he's just going to let Obamacare fail. What that means is he is going to let a lot of Americans suffer.

If the president had brought his own interpreter so there were two people there, one an American, one a Russian interpreting, you had a record on the American side, and if the White House then disclosed it, I think we would be saluting the…

When you demolish, when you get rid of your and destroy your moral capacity to lead, you are a weakened figure for the rest of the time you're there.

Every politician would take this meeting. That often happens in domestic politics.

Yes. Absolutely. Listen, you know, let's take with regard to this particular meeting. They have been trying to hide what happened at this meeting. They have covered it up.