>> For insights on CPAC, the
future of the Republican party
and the rest of the week's news,
we turn to the analysis of David
and Jonathan.
It used to scene for a few years
the road to the Republican
nomination ran through CPAC.
That does not seem to be true
this year.
When you look at who chose to go
and who stayed away.
>> Reagan used to go to CPAC,
but he was not really of it.
Then it became the party under
Donald Trump and no CPAC -- now
CPAC has gone from centrist
populism to wacky populism
what's new is that a candidate
used to be able to go to club
for growth or CPAC and these
were all different wings of the
party.
Now you've got to go to one or
the other.
If you go to one, you are seen
as an opponent of the party.
You are either on the
establishment team or the
populist team, but you can't be
on both.
>> What does it say that Nikki
Haley is going to both?
>> She's going to try, but she's
going to wind up on the
establishment team.
>> We are going to see Donald
Trump and Nikki Haley.
If you go to that room, who are
you speaking to?
>> There's a reason Donald Trump
is going there.
Those are his people.
Those are his ride or die's for
lack of a better description.
It would be a waste of time for
Mike pence or Ron Desantis to go
there, anyone who wants to be a
serious challenger to Donald
Trump.
Look at the folks that we saw
speaking on camera about what
they were concerned about.
Not foreign policy.
Not economic policy.
I would go back to state of the
union night and you made the
observation that Sarah Huckabee
Sanders in her response didn't
even talk about the economy.
I remember it was the economy,
inflation and crime were the big
issues the Republicans ran on.
Didn't hear any of that there.
That conference is now just
about white grievance and
targeting trans kids and anyone
who is not like them.
>> Steve Bannon was among those
who spoke, and he went after fox
saying that they are not
pro-trump enough.
We saw a huge admission in the
latest filings in the defamation
case, Rupert Murdoch conceded
under oath, fox hosts lied about
the 2020 election and he chose
not to stop them.
What are the implications of
that?
>> Rupert Murdoch started a
paper called Mr. Mnuchin.
A long time ago he was an actual
journalist.
Now he has gotten to the point
that you can lie on camera as
long as your ratings are ok.
Those people lie about little
things, they lied about the
results of the presidential
election.
Kind of a major deal.
They all knew what was
happening.
Murdoch is sitting there atop
this organization sort of
lightly pretending it's not
really his problem.
He has power of the corporation,
he owns it.
He could fire tucker, all the
people who were in on this and
whose journalistic integrity has
been exposed as zero.
And yet he is still trying to
politely rise above it.
It's amazing that we have a
major news organization that is
inaccurate about a presidential
election.
That's kind of an amazing fact.
>> It's huge.
It was confirmation of something
that folks on the left and just
folks paying attention kind of
suspected, that Fox News, the
news is".
They are out there blatantly
telling lies.
Then to see in black and white
as part of this case, they would
say lies on television but then
behind the scenes, they knew the
truth.
What that says to me is Rupert
Murdoch and his anchors, those
people peddling lies are
insulated from the effect of the
lies that they tell.
When you see someone saying our
ratings are going down and
that's going to affect the stock
price.
>> You are talking about some of
the private messages.
>> That means you are more
concerned about your bottom line
than the corrosive impact on our
democracy and political
discourse in this country.
That was what's really
disturbing.
And what's even more disturbing
is that Fox News isn't even
really covering this lawsuit,
which means their audience, who
should know about what's being
said about them and the
programming for them, they might
not ever know that what they are
being told is a big bunch of
lies.
>> I go back to the impact,
because their audience which is
in the millions.
If you are a loyal fox watcher
prone to distrust any
information source anyway, does
this make an impact?
>> That's the point I was trying
to make.
We don't know if they will even
know about this case as a result
and even if they do find out,
they might not trust it or maybe
they just don't care.
>> They are definitely losing
viewers.
My colleague made the core point
about fox.
Fox is not just a news
organization in rural America,
it's your community center.
It pays intense attention, lots
of good stories about cops and
soldiers.
And the coastal media get a lot
of attention in fox.
The loyalty is not only about
politics or news coverage, it's
about where people see
themselves reflected.
>> Kind of an interesting window
for president Biden.
We saw president Biden's student
loan relief plan challenged in
supreme court.
That expansion of snap food
stamps benefit also ended this
week.
There's a lot of these pandemic
era Democrat backed issues that
are being unraveled now that are
going to impact millions of
people.
Are we hearing enough about that
from the president or from
Democrats?
>> I have not heard a lot about
it.
But let's shift the framing and
the focus.
The president is in office and
the Democrats have control of
the senate.
But Republicans have control of
the house and the president is
releasing his budget on March 9.
I'm sure in that multipage
document, we are going to see
all sorts of things about snap,
maybe some things about student
loans.
We will see with the president's
financial priorities are for the
nation and targeted communities.
My question is where is speaker
Mccarthy?
Where are the house Republicans?
Budgets start in the house.
I cannot tell you what their
priorities are.
Do they carry it that the snap
benefits have canceled?
What are their priorities for
the real problems and financial
pain out there for the American
people?
That's a question for speaker
Mccarthy.
We are going to know the answer
from president Biden next week.
>> When it came to the expansion
of the child tax credit,
millions of children lifted out
of poverty.
It ended.
Millions back to the poverty
line.
>> The child tax credit is the
thing I supported most
fervently.
It really did reduce childhood
poverty.
I was surprised, but it's not a
popular program.
60% of people decided it was too
expensive, we can't afford it.
Including some Democrats.
There is a general distrust of
government, government programs,
programs that seem to give
people money for nothing, and
this sense of we spent all this
money over covid, what's
happening to the national debt.
There is not as much political
pressure as I would have thought
to keep the expansion.
I supported the part of the
program that was for Pell grant
kids.
I didn't think we should give it
to upper-middle-class kids.
I still think the supreme court
should probably strike it down.
The constitution in visits --
inventions, the budget is
supposed to start in the house.
The president can't just create
a 400 billion dollar program by
starting -- signing a piece of
paper.
It's both possible to believe in
the program and that president
should have gone through
congress.
>> We are expecting him to
announce a reelection campaign
at some point.
Some Democrats think these kinds
of issues should be a more
central part of his next
campaign.
Do you agree?
>> Absolutely.
His mantra in the state of the
union was let's finish the job.
The child tax credit, snap
benefits, student loan.
That's all part of let's finish
the job and we will see how he
prioritizes when that budget
comes out.