CHARLES W. DENT

The President really needs to lead his base. Instead of letting Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and others, you know, get them whipped up into a frenzy, the President has to declare victory and say, look, I've additional money for border…

If you're going to declare an emergency, your remedy must address the underlying emergency.

The President needs to get off this kick of declaring an emergency declaration. That would absolutely trample Congress' Article 1 authority, its Power of the Purse authority.

He has not laid out a coherent plan for operational control of the border other than just saying I want a wall from sea to shining sea.

The President wants $5.7 billion. We know that. The question is, what is he willing to give up?

One of the challenges in negotiating with President Trump is that he does not have fixed policy positions, and they shift.

The party that's making the policy demand that owns the shutdown.

I think the president ought to take the deal that Nancy Pelosi is offering. I would actually take that deal.

Look, the president owns this shutdown. He pretty much admitted as much.

The party making the policy demand, if you don't give me the wall, I'll shut down the government, guess what, you own the shut down.

It makes absolutely no sense. The party that makes the demands of a policy initiatives, in this case the wall, or defunding Obamacare or DACA, is the party that will own the shutdown.

I'm sitting here in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, let me tell you what? People are not happy when they see the secretary of defense resign, repudiate Donald Trump's worldview. They're concerned about global stability, treatment of allies…

This is just terrible for the country and I think as center right conservatives, people ought to stand up and say this.

This is utterly reckless. We all know how this is going to play out.

The President had a deal on border security, and DACA, the Dreamers. He walked away from it.

I saw several Democratic senators auditioning for President of the United States. That's what I thought I saw today. And I think this is a -- the sorry spectacle.

I do have confidence in the strength of our institutions.

It's outrageous that the president thinks the Justice Department should only go after, prosecute their political enemies and lay off their allies.

I think if the President were playing smart politics here, he would probably nominate a woman just to try to mitigate some of the damage on the abortion issue.

We should support the president when we agree with him. But when we disagree with him, it's OK to check him from time to time, and if he goes off the rails.

But the issue right now is its loyalty to the president. So, if you disagree with him or if you criticize him, you're seen as somewhat of a traitor or treasonous.

The bigger issue in my view is credibility.

I said had the shoe been on the other foot, had a Democratic president, you know, paid off, you know, a porn star for $130,000 I'm sure we as Republicans would be holding hearings ad nauseam.

If a Democratic president had paid off a porn star to keep quiet while he was president I suspect we'd have oversight hearing and I suspect there should be some oversight hearings to get to the bottom of this.

I think we have to have a thoughtful discussion about where the VA can best meet the needs of the veterans in that system and where maybe a community option would be better to serve the veterans.