It is very healthy for a president to have a good friend, someone who can look him in the eye and tell him what's going right, but also what's going wrong, to give candid advice and not be as intimidated by the office and by the man…

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.