DAVID BROOKS: "I thought something important happened with the Republican views with the president.

"They were having all these meetings in the White House. And, apparently, they’d have these substantive meetings with Mike Pence or with somebody else, with staff. And they would talk through things. They would try to make some progress".

"And then the president would dip in and do something, say something extremely stupid, extremely ill-informed. And then they would all groan and live through it and wish he would leave. And then he would go."

"And so that could be a change in psychology. Everybody in the Senate has problems with the president. But if you begin to have, oh, he’s just the crazy uncle, like an attitude of contempt, then relationships between the Republicans on the Hill and the White House really do begin to change".

"It’s not some guy, oh, he has some political magic. It’s some guy who really just is annoying and gets in the way."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/

Labels: moderation: toxicity, insult