Hello, it's Thursday August 24th, 2017, and I'm Nancy Cook, your host, and you are listening

to Politico's Nurdcast. Here are the data points that we're going to talk about this week.

62. That's the percent of voters who say President Trump is doing more to divide the country

according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

Criticisms of Trump have been heightened in the wake of his response to Charlottesville, which continued this week with

a rally in Phoenix where the president meandered from the teleprompter to criticize the

media and double down on the assertion that the statue's removals are taking away from our culture.

We're also going to talk about the number 603 billion.

That's the amount of defense spending in Trump's proposed budget for the next fiscal year.

President Trump promised a historic increase in defense spending, and that's a key number

given the fact that he promised to send more troops to Afghanistan in his primetime address on Monday.

Before we jump in, some housekeeping notes.

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questions or comments at nerdcast at politico.com., let's dive in.

Joining us this week we have White House reporter Josh Dossy.

Hi, Nancy.

Thanks for coming on.

And then we have Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Michael Crowley.

Hey Michael.

Hi, thanks for having me.

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