The Daily - Thursday, Nov. 30, 2017

President Trump is playing a major role in shaping the Republican tax plan. So what is a businessman who ran as a populist fighting for? Also, the president shared videos on Twitter from a fringe ultranationalist group, and the move was condemned by the British prime minister. Guests: Jim Tankersley, who covers taxes and the economy for The Times; Dan Bilefsky, a Times reporter based in London. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Duration: 24m
Broadcast on: 30 Nov 2017
Audio Format: other

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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And the President's tweets are condemned by the British Prime Minister. It's Thursday, November 30th. I told you that we would be saying Merry Christmas again, right? In St. Charles, Missouri on Wednesday, the President came on stage to a bunch of Christmas trees in the background and a very happy crowd. Jim Tankersley covers taxes and the economy for the times. He was in just a jovial mood. Just three months ago, we came to this state to launch our plan to bring back Main Street by cutting taxes for American families and small businesses. He wanted to talk about tax bill, and he particularly wanted to brag. I will tell you this in a non-brag-adocious way. There has never been a 10-month president that has accomplished what we have accomplished, so I could tell you. He wanted to talk about how great everything is going on in the economy right now, about how great growth is, about how low unemployment is, and then he wanted to say, and that's even before this tax cut, which, by the way, and he kept going into these step-back riffs. Tax cuts can be terrible for me, but it's going to be great for the country. I think my accountants are going crazy right now. It's all right. Hey, look, I'm president. I don't care. I don't care anymore. I don't care. So this is the president basically out campaigning in the final days leading up to this expected Senate vote on the Republicans' big tax reform plan. Yeah. It was the president feeling like a candidate again, and he looked very comfortable and very happy, and he was a salesman. The beating heart of our plan is a tax cut for working families. That's what it is. He was talking about how great the bill was going to be for this, and how great it was going to be for that, and he was talking about being engaged with workers, and how he feels like part of the middle class, and he launched into the longest riff I've heard in a long time on his famous, "We're going to have so much winning. We're sick of winning." We can't stand winning so much. Remember, I used to say that, right? I used to say it, and that's what's happening. And it really was just classic Trump, and he just seemed almost jovial in his campaigning for the tax bill. Under our plan, middle-class families will not only see their tax bill go down, they will see their incomes go up by an average of around $4,000. So this is the biggest legislative effort by the president and Republicans since they failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act back in the summer, and I remember the conversation then was that the president was pretty uninvolved in that legislative effort. This time seems different. It does seem different. It's also sort of let's grade him on a curve. For this president, it's way more involved than he was in previous legislative effort. He has been making phone calls to senators. He has been meeting with Republicans on Capitol Hill this week to try to round up support, and he has to some degree been out in the country trying to make the case for the tax bill. He's going to a few states, held a few rallies. It's been much more than he did on health care. It is also far less, for example, than President Obama did to try to sell the Affordable Care Act when Congress was considering that. Well, why do we think it's different than with health care? Why do we think President Trump is getting more involved? I think there's two reasons the president's getting more involved. One is just he loves this issue. He feels much more comfortable with taxes he was talking against today. I'm a businessman. I don't really understand politics, but I'm a businessman. The second reason, though, is that this is a much more critical time for

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