Reporters are always supposed to be demanding more access and more transparency. So the day that there isn't some friction between the White House press corps and the White House is the day that somebody in the press corps is not doing their job.

When the president offered me this job, he told me that if there were situations in which I needed to speak to him or I needed his advice or I needed to ask him a question, that I could go into the Oval Office and I could ask him.

I try to most effectively and persuasively present our argument, in a way that gives other people the information they need to decide, on the merits, the wisdom of the path that the president has advocated.

The President and first lady did hold a private party at the White House over the weekend, but given the private nature of that event, I don't have a lot of details to discuss from here.

Even now, hearing the debates about Medicaid, the suggestion that somehow we could save money by cutting Medicaid strikes a chord in me personally. It seems there are some other ways we can save money rather than making it harder for people like my aunt to get health care.

My mom and my grandmother definitely were (Democrat supporters). It wasn't a sense that, "Well, we vote for Democrats no matter what," but it was sort of the sense that, "Democrats are typically the ones that are looking out for working people like us."

If it gets to a situation where it turns into a debate, look, the person that I'm debating is the person that is writing the story or presenting the broadcast. They're not going to write the story in such a way that shows they lost.