The latest Political Developments of the day and interviews with top newsmakers are featured. Order is, territory now. And i wonder if theyve had a chance to explain to the president what you reported last week, that under this beefed up postenron witness tampering law, he may have more exposure than he understands. They seem to be leaning on a First Amendment defense, which is not going to hold up if your reporting holds up hes being scrutinized for the way these fit together. What Rudy Giuliani said today is this is ridiculous, the clip you played. The Idea Obstruction by tweet. He said it was bizarre and idiotic and there was nothing to it and the president can express his opinions. The thing about the president and obstruction and collusion, you know, interference or whatever you want to call it is the president usually focuses on the russia question. He says, this is a witch hunt. There was no collusion. He repeats that over and over again. The thing is that does the president really understand obstruction . Does he understand the exposure he has there . When muellers investigators sat down with the president s
lawyers in march and said, look, here are the things we want to ask the president about. Twothirds or maybe threefourths of them were about obstruction, they were not about the president s ties to russia or the campaigns ties to russia. A lot of them, we found eight of the questions you reported on earlier this year are about Jeff Sessions. So, while as you said a lot of his allies attacked him, comey, you see them do that publicly, they do it privately, its really the questions around Jeff Sessions. He wanted an interview in december. His guys, roy cohn, he admired eric holder because he saw him as someone who protected obama. How does that kind of thinking about what your own Justice Department officials could or should do look to Robert Muellers investigators . Well, the original sin for the president and he openly says he has an interesting transparency to this he says, look, i never would have made sessions my Attorney General if i knew he was going to recuse himself. He said that out loud in public in an interview with us last july. So that is the thing that is
bothers the president the most, that he does not have someone loyal to him like he thinks obama did, or jfk did running the Justice Department. He wants someone who will do what he wants in the Justice Department. The thing i dont understand, i tried to press the lawyers on, the president could call the Justice Department. He could call Rod Rosenstein, who actually oversees the investigation. Sessions doesnt. Sessions doesnt have the authority to do it because hes recused. Et could call rosenstein and say shut this down, if not, im going to fire you and put someone else in. I dont understand if the president is that concerned this is a witch hunt why he does not do that. And clearly it is not a witch hunt. Bob mueller referred three cases that include and involve democrats to your old stomping grounds, the southern district. Where do you think a prosecutor, an investigator who is not sort of rattling around in this echo chamber, where do they see this conduct . Where does this point them toward . Well, it confirms one of the critical elements of an Obstruction Of Justice investigation, which is the
corrupt intent. And this notion that its laughable or ridiculous that you would have obstruction by tweet is actually laughable and ridiculous. The tweets are just simply statements. And any lawyer worth his salt knows that any statement by a Potential Defendant can be used against him. Mimi rucker said that. If this was a debate there have been many people for months and months and months who have gone on television including me, saying Stop Tweeting because these tweets are going to be used against you. That defense doesnt go anywhere, you pointed out the First Amendment defense doesnt go anywhere. Of course, you cant use the First Amendment as a shield to commit crimes. But this in and of itself is not obstruction. Its remarkable in many ways not the least of which as mike just pointed out, Jeff Sessions is not overseeing this investigation. So if he wants it to end, he should call out Rod Rosenstein to do it. But im not sure that that is
unintentional. In other words, i think he wants to get the message out, but have enough removed so he can have some plausible deniability and say i dont want this to happen. If i wanted to order it to happen, i would. Which of course everybody would know would be a near immediate impeachable offense. So hes walking a fine line. But as we are learning with trump and giuliani, there is more of a method to their madness than it meets the eye. And everything that they say comes from somewhere, and the difficulty for us is to try to figure out what is driving them. What do you think is driving them . Its a little more method than madness. We know where its coming from. Its coming from both of their screaming raging ids, The Fear Center of the president. Some day when i die if i go to heaven, heaven for me is going to be a poker game where donald trump is at the table with a big stack of chips. The guy has the worst poker face in the world. When he is triggered he acts out. Hes been acting out with resecretary to Jeff Sessions the first 18 months. If youre a prosecutor, youre going to look at a piece of evidence that are not in the public record, there arent things weve seen, there arent things like this because there are apparently well talk about this later, im sure. Theres been incredible reporting in the last week about some piece of actual contemporaneous evidence coming out through investigative reporting in new york review and books and other places. You look at what donald trump has done with Jeff Sessions consistently throughout. This is a 35fifth example. The man is desiring to obstruct justice, he wishes justice was obstructed for him. He is screaming his guilt every time he does Something Like this. Of course, the man stands up almost every day and brags about he has tens of millions of twitter followers. I have the biggest megaphone in america. Its not really like a megaphone. Its not really a not an
order. If bill clinton stood up in the White House Press office in 1995 and said, i think janet reno should fire ken starr, we would all, everyone would have had a ka nipgs. It would have been the obvious thing in the world. It is now 2018. This is the equivalent of bill clinton standing up in the White House Press office saying janet reno should fire ken starr when donald trump does it to his twitter followers, tens of millions of them, its the same thing. You know, i figured out all the reporting you and your colleagues have done about all of the white house staffers that have gone into muellers Investigation Offices and testified to all of what john heilman just detailed. Hope hicks has been with muellers investigators. Reince priebus has testified, steve bannon has testified. There are witnesses to everything everyone is talking about. The firing of jim comey, the desire to fire Jeff Sessions, the desire to fire bob mueller. What is the purpose served . Is it simply to sort of play the last card that theyre holding or the last chip to carry over
a lot of republican senators have said that and i think that is something the president actually deep down believes. So when hes lashing out, when hes scratching the itch this morning saying, you should just fire rosenstein, i think hes doing it to make himself feel good and to communicate to the public, you know, even though this does align with the white house narrative, oh, its not an order, it seems like an order to the public and thats a problem. Comey testified that it felt like an order when he asked, can you see to let mike flynn go. The proof of it is now. He can send this tweet today and there are not republican senators on the hill calling for his impeachment. There would be political consequence if he actually summoned Rod Rosenstein to the white house and fired him. What consequence i think a fair number of republicans on capitol hill name them. Do we want to make a list . Lets make a list. What republican would be mad if donald trump fired Rod Rosenstein . Orrin hatch thinks hes the
youre asking me to do a memory test of all the republicans im asking you to think of one who has courage. I cant think of any. Im not going to argue with you they have courage eli came up with one. I gave you orrin hatch. Do you want a better one than that . Well find the sound he said donald trump is the bestment ever. He said it would be an issue when trump when he grabs the third rail and he whatever he does, no one ever does anything. There is no doubt that history, that is factual. I want to ask you something about, johns analysis, mikes analysis theyre playing this card because they think they can survive impeachment. The way they got to mike flynn is because his son had Todays Special Value exposure. Im not ascribing onto donald trump the humanity of mike flynn. There is a known unknown. Do you think there is any peril for donald trump, jr. , or his daughters husband jared
kushner or his daughter. Or his daughter, any of that calculation changes, bring it on . Bill clinton had 67 approval the week he was impeached. Thats a poll number played back to me by trumps allies. Hed love the fight. Not so much if one of his children or soninlaw were in legal trouble. I think thats where it becomes more tricky. I dont know what he will do if they go after his son or soninlaw or daughter or his other son eric trump who has openly talked about russian money coming into their businesses. Im looking at two things right now. Not just the public tweets, but also his private conduct because weve talked on the show before about how hes calling around capitol hill and all the agencies, calling the dni and calling in favors to have them in private shutdown the investigation. So i think that if it in public got to the point where theyre going after his family members, we should look at his private conduct as well because as it gets closer to going after ivanka or jared or don junior, is he calling in private while
hes tweeting in public to try to shutdown this investigation another way, or trying to fire Rod Rosenstein another way in private Behind Closed Doors when we dont know about it . Mike, let me ask you a question about the nature, the spirit with which the president s lawyers were in touch with you and your colleagues today because you hear this sort of stonewalling out of the press briefing. The president was just expressing an opinion. If they werent worried, why are they in so much contact with so many reporters today . I think theyre very afraid of the narrative. It comes back to the issue of public opinion. And theyre trying to insulate the president from himself as much as possible. As its long been established, the president s aides and his lawyers have no control over his tweets. They have no ability to stop that. So the only thing that they can do is try and manage the fallout from it and try and say, look, hes just blowing off steam. Hes just expressing his opinions. The problem is that if thats someone sitting on their couch just kind of popping off on twitter thats one thing. When its the president of the
United States, it comes with a different weight and im not sure that everyone in the white house or outside of it thats close to the president really appreciates that. So, if you could just paint for us the picture of what mike and his colleague maggie reported last week Mueller Stitching together these pieces, how does it fit into an exhibit of Obstruction Of Justice . There are two parallel things going on that intersect, because i think that the smoke that were starting to see including from mike and maggies reporting, but also that we are starting to see from some of these Michael Cohen leaks and critically now that the Manafort Trial is starting and rick gates is a cooperating witness is taking center stage, i dont think its a coincidence that hes lashing out this way in an obstructive nature when we are starting to see in the public a little bit more of the Collusion End of things. And remember, we dont know what rick gates has told bob mueller about any russia collusion. And he was there for a lot of it. And he was very close with
limitations. But my theory on this is that it wasnt lanny davis who reported or leaked that meeting. Lanny davis has not said anything about that meeting in public. So Rudy Giuliani is trying to distract from the original source of the information, which was really him. And the thing that sticks out to me as a prosecutor is you have a cooperating witness who was at that new premeeting. That cooperating witness is required to tell the Special Counsel everything he knows about any criminal conduct. And it is not a coincidence to me that right when Paul Manaforts lawyers get all of those statements from rick gates because thats required before a trial that all of a sudden Rudy Giuliani is doing what he often has done its a pattern now, which is trying tri and get out in front of something and spin it. So i think thats what was really going on here. Mike schmidt, ill give you last word. You and your colleague maggie cover rudy. Do you have any theory or new reporting on what that head
banging was about, what that meeting was about and why it mattered so much to rudy to get out that list . I dont know the words. What was the head banging . I dont know if it works. I think the issue the Trump Legal Team runs into is the president s legal exposure is so complex. There is obstruction. There is collusion. There is a question about whether to do an interview. And these are things that if youre going to go out and speak publicly about them, you really need to be well versed in. You need to know all the facts about them. And i think they run into trouble when they run into subjects that they dont necessarily know as well as others. These are not simple investigations. They have complex legal, you know, questions around them and about the facts. And when the homework is not done, it doesnt come out right. I bang my head, too. Really quick. The Point Mike Is Making is right. They dont know everything. In fact, they dont know a lot. And so theyre learning it probably a little bit ahead of
us, but they dont know, so theyre scrambling and chasing just like we are. Not always ahead of everyone. Mike schmidt and dan goldman, you make me want to bang my head. Thank you for starting us off. Rocket docket speedyest court of the land the raid on manaforts home. New attacks on the media. Audacity of lies. He outpaces his own rate of spreading miss truths. Is he the biggest liar to hold the office of the american presidency . I think so. Youre headed down the highway when the guy in front slams on his brakes out of nowhere. You do, too, but not in time. Hey, no big deal. Youve got a good record and Liberty Mutual wont hold a grudge by raising your rates over one mistake. You hear that, karen . Liberty mutual doesnt hold grudges. How mature of them. For drivers with Accident ForgivenessLiberty Mutual wont raise their rates because of their first accident. Liberty mutual insurance. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty
are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi. . A more powerful way to stay connected. It gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most Wifi Coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. Its the ultimate wifi experience. Xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. Behind the president s hourslong seven tweet meltdown, Paul Manafort on trial in alexandria, virginia. The trial is moving at break neck speed. The prosecution telling the Presiding Judge just in the last hour that the government will rest its case as early as next week. Thats days ahead of schedule. Nbcs ken dilanian joins us from outside the courthouse to bring us the news from day two of the trial. And joining the table ben rhodes, former Deputy National security advisor to president obama. Lucky for us now an msnbc contributor and author of the book the world as it is. Maybe we should change it to the world ads it was. Ken dilanian, start us off. Day two, what has it brought so far . Well, nicolle, as you mentioned part of the news is the fast pace of this trial. Its going much faster hannah we anticipated. In part the judge is pushing the prosecutors. So much to their annoyance at times, to keep it moving, keep
it moving. Hes preventing them from going into certain areas. To the has been mostly a story about purchases by Paul Manafort of luxury goods, paid for by Wire Transfer from Bank Accounts in cyprus. Theres been a parade of witnesses including from Elite Suit Makers in beverley hills, where Manafort Pent 334,000 over two years on suits. Another suit company said he was one of their top five customers. He bought a 2 million house for his daughter in alexandria, 67,000 for a mercedes. 3 million in improvements, the contractor was just on the stand, at his homes in the hamptons, in brooklyn and manhattan, over four years. All of it came from Wire Transfers from cyprus. Heres the important point, nicolle. The defense in their opening said theyll blame all the illegal conduct on rick gates. Theyll say gates was managing the business and if anything wrong happened it was his fault. In every single one of these transactions, the prosecutors would ask the witness have you heard of a man named rick gates . No. Did rick gates have anything to do with Wire Transfer to you . No. The ostrich jacket, ridiculous defense. That was yesterdays story. Are they sticking to that . I imagine nobody that was a vendor to Paul Manafort knitted a suit or stitched a suit or put in a counter top or dug a pole for a Swimming Pool for rick gates. Thats right. So im not sure how much the prosecution is tailoring this case to thwart the rick gates did it defense. It certainly seems to be one aspect of their thought processes here. Theres one thing they want to show the jury how extravagant his lifestyle is. The judge is adamant hes not on trial because hes rich. The prosecution is trying to put in evidence about a pool house in the hamptons. Judge wouldnt let it happen. There were pictures of suits the judge wouldnt let the jury see. That is still up in the air. Amid Donald Trumps talk of hinting around of potential pardon for Paul Manafort, this trial does not seem to be going well for mr. Manafort today. Ben, one of the backdrops of all this is the meticulousness of Robert Muellers prosecutors. I remember when the indictments were unsealed, all of the legal analysis was these were paper cases. On paper they looked air tight. What do you make of sort of that was a bipartisan analysis of the way muellers prosecutors, his investigators had gone about their investigation. It was actually echoed by democrats and republicans, including on fox news when the russians were indicted a couple fridays ago, they had the key Stroke Evidence and it spoke to the meticulousness of muellers investigators. What do you make of a fact that on a day like today donald trump strongly orders or suggest his Attorney General fire mueller or end the probe and no one does anything . John tried to think of a
republican, orrin hatch, he was talking about his brilliance. He tweeted you keep taking that shot. You want to have this fight again . Its 4 28. You have a minute to come up with one more name. John mccain. Brian corker. Individuals of conscience who believe in the rule of law should denounce this blatant effort to obstruct justice. Congress must warn trump of dire consequence. Should we hold our breath . What youre going to have is a collision between tua approaches to the truth. There is the donald trump approach and the bob mueller approach. Now, when we were in is one even one approach is the truth . What i remember, nicolle, when we were in the white house, which wouldnt even comment on ongoing legal cases that had to do with other people. Never mind us. We were very careful not to comment on Certain Supreme Court cases. Thats the norm of how you deal with these things. Trump is trying to create an
alternative reality where he is the victim and the objective truth doesnt matter. What i also will tell you, i worked with bob mueller. Bush appointee i worked with him, too. Yeah. I remember when there was a terrorism case of a potential bomb on board cargo. Bob mueller sat in the Situation Room days after and he personally recreated the printer and the cartridge that went in there. He had methodically put together these facts to nail the case against the Terrorist Group that had done this. He is going to be methodically building the facts here. And ultimately what is going to happen is a collision between the reality that bob mueller can layout for people and the lack of Objective Reality that donald trump is seeking to create with his chaotic tweet storms which violate any basic respect for the rule of law in this country. Ken dilanian, that is every person that has worked with Robert Mueller in government has a story like the one ben rhodes just told. I worked with bob mueller after 9 11 and there was account after account like this. People that worked with him in the 90s in San Francisco in the Tech Industry was just beginning
to boom have stories of his sort of early affinity for technology and for using technology to solve crimes. I wonder if there is any sense from the defense that they are going to ultimately be outmatched by this precision and meticulousness, that pardon is their only play. If they have that sense, nicolle, they are certainly not sharing that with anyone. In fact, i talked to a representative of mr. Manafort who expressed confidence today that there was a good chance of acquittal here. I dont know if thats bluster, but he is certainly spending a lot of money on these lawyers. These are highpowered lawyers he has on his behalf. Look, we can see it in this trial how well prepared and meticulous the investigation was here. The contractor from the hamptons was just on the stand talking about how he spent hours with an fbi agent going through every single invoice that he ever sent to Paul Manafort matching it up with the Wire Transfers. Most of that will not be introduced in the trial, but thats the kind of work, the hours of work that went into
pinning all this down. Document case, paper case about illicit money transfers, lot of intensive investigation. And this is only one small piece of what mueller is managing in this russia investigation. Eli, you coined the term trump tells. There is behavior that reveals something else. What were the trump tells in that seventweet tweet storm . Hes a terrible poker player. Hes doing it all the time. Its not a very difficult question to answer. You see in some of the tweets about the Manafort Trial specifically, the president is both distancing himself saying he worked for me for just a little while, even after manafort was moved from the campaign, he was still involved. He was involved through the transition. Those are the facts the president is trying to divert attention from those facts. But at the same time, he also has this inclination to portray Paul Manafort as a victim of this witch hunt. This is a choose your own reality country at the moment because it is incredibly divided and the reality donald trump wants people to choose is that this is a witch hunt and
everybody caught up in the investigation is somehow a victim. Its about 13 anger 17 now, 17 angry democrats. Its a partisan threat. Never mind mueller is republican. Never mind his credentials are impeccable. This is what the president is repeating over and over and over again to the public. It says something about his nervousness. But also says something about his belief in his own ability to gaslight the country and to convince a significant amount of americans to buy his reality. Hes like malkovich. He sees its over and starts throwing the oreos all over the place. Its the same thing. He plays the guy with the really flor id russian accent. I have nothing else. Thank you very much. When we come back, a jar look at Donald Trumps sustained attacks against the media and the erosion of what used to be democratic and american norms. U. So no matter what you trade, or where you trade, youll only pay 4. 95. Fidelity. Open an account today. Its a hightech revolution in sleep. The new sleep number 360 smart bed. It intelligently senses your movement and automatically adjusts on each side to keep you both comfortable. And snoring . How smart is that . Smarter sleep. To help you lose your dad bod, train for that marathon, and wake up with the patience of a saint. The new sleep number 360 smart bed, from 999. Smarter sleep will change your life. Phone Ringing a Phones Offers big button,ecialized phones. And volumeenhanced phones. , get details on this State Program. Call or visit and accessoriesphones for your mobile phone. Like this device to increase volume on your cell phone. Phone Ringing get details on this State Program call or visit
those boos were for jim accosta. Thats what it was like for him last night in tampa. White house correspondent jim accosta, in case you were curious what that looked like from his perspective, he shared his first person view on his twitter account. What happened in that video didnt get the president s son eric trump any pause at all. He tweeted the video from a different angle with the caption, truth. Guess what . Guess who retweeted that . The president of the United States. Classy guy. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about this in todays briefing. Her first answer was a recounting of the responsibilities of the press. So theyll try it again. Do you support that or not . While we certainly support freedom of the press, we support Freedom Of Speech and we think those things go hand in hand. Joining us now, the New York Times were not going to air that any more. Lets make that the last sarah Huckabee Sanders clip at 4 00. That is it. It makes me sweat. That is vile. The previous answer it makes me sweat. This is someone who complains about a restaurant that exercises their First Amendment right to kick out someone obliterating democratic norms t made me sweat. The prepared answer where she talked about the responsibilities of the press and talked about Osama Bin Lauden is a pack of lies. The prepared answer was a pack of lies and we got that. We got it. Were going to get into this. Heilman set up lies. Im gathering myself. Lets watch some lies. Oh, oh. Is honoring president obama. He is the founder of isis. We have more legislation
passed, including the record was harry truman. I broke that record. I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. Thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Black homeownership just hit the highest level its ever been in the history of our country. Congratulations. Weve broken the alltime record in the history of the republican party, alltime record. My numbers are better right now than Ronald Reagans numbers were with jimmy carter. Winning the Electoral College is very tough for republican. Much more than the popular vote where people vote four times, much tougher, much, much tougher. All those clips had in common they were of course lies out of the commander in chiefs mouth. White house chief correspondent peter baker. At the table as i mentioned jim
rutenberg. Must be fun. It seems like watching a tally of the president s lies, 4,229, seems like the time it takes someone to type that number and hes told three more. I guess what is the point of and what is the value of what used to be a pretty heavy currency when i was working in politics, im sure for you guys, the fact check . Ill tell you something, there is a key set of numbers that came out sunday from cbs news did a poll with ugov. For strong trump supporters, 91 he is the most trust the source, more than their families. The media, Mainstream Media was at 11 . This is among his supporters . Among his strong supporters. The enemy of the people, we have to love him. Peter baker, let me ask you about the conduct at the press
briefing today. The New York Times publisher, im guessing thats your boss, was in with the president not making any the New York Times specific case, but simply talking about the effect around the world when the american president calls the media, generally speaking, the enemy of the people. I know its uncomfortable to talk about yourselves and your role. We have a lot of freedom, we are by and large safe to go about doing our jobs. What was, what was the publisher of your paper trying to convey and what are the concerns to be a White House Reporter under this president . Well, look, i dont know about Cause And Effect. Thats obviously something that is going to be debated. But there is a real concern these days in our newsroom and other newsrooms about the safety of journalists. There has been for a lot of time. Its hard not to watch what happened in annapolis just a few months ago, maybe two months ago the gunman who showed up, not related to the president the white house. The environment is so toxic. It is a rising concern among journalists. Feeding into that concern, to hear a president sit there and talk about enemies of the people
to encourage crowds, not just to disapprove of the media or criticize the media, but to heckle and jeer and behave in the way you saw in that tape. That thats what a. J. Salisbury was talking about. Overseas, foreign correspondents are in hazardous places. Authoritarian regimes take what they see happening here and use it as an excuse for much more draconian measures in their own countries that have put journalists, both foreign correspondents and domestic correspondents at risk. He was trying to get through to the president there was a consequence for words and he was hoping for an audience that would be receptive. Im struck your boss and my old boss used the point between his election free press. In almost identical language, we didnt like everything written about us. On the contrary, we were one of the people covering my old boss. We disliked a lot of it, id a
lot of late night and Early Morning talks with both of you. Peter, we are committed. There was something sacred, there was this third rail where complaining about the content of the conk was one thing. But i could never imagine president obama, vicepresident biden or george w. Bush permitting that kind of conduct, that kind of menacing threatening conduct at any of their events. In fact, when they traveled overseas, your boss and mine used to protect the American Press that traveled with them and advocate for their access. Yeah. The problem here is the fact checks, we get caught in mistake. That was the value of them. Here you have a president who is hostile to the truth and hostile to a media that can hold him accountable. What i worry about, nicolle, is all around the world, in russia, in china, in venezuela, in many countries, there are regimes that are hostile to the press. We used to advocate on behalf of independent journalists. We advocated to get in both of our administrations, get journalists out of prison in
places like saudi arabia, friends of ours, right . And now trump is just giving a green light to every thug, every dictator around the world who is calling their own media fake news. So this is going to have much broader impact than just the United States where it is insidious enough where people are believing things that arent true because theyll believe Anything Trump says. I think around the world, this is dealing a huge blow to the media which is really the only source that can always hold power to account. And if no one holds power to account, there is massive abuse of power. And i dont want to be a source truther, but the truth is a lot of Trump White House officials are sources to all of us. Everyone at this table has heard from people in the Trump White House. Every one of us and i wont check anyones phones, has at least half a dozen white house staffers. They are the most vain group of political people i have encountered in my political life. It is a fascinating paradox. Then youll hear either from the Press Secretary or from the president himself. If you see anonymous sources, its not true. Its like, come on. Right. Its very interesting. But the thing that is really starting to dawn on me, its obvious in a way, the novelty is now gone, we can agree. We have what is a sustained attack and i dont think we even understand the full consequence of this. This is starting to really take hold in a way i dont think we first saw. I dont know where its going to end up. I hope there is some kind of pull back, but im not expecting one. Salen aera peters articulate has happened, not happened, Cause And Effect as peter articulated in this climate journalists were targeted. Absolutely. We saw at his rallies during the campaign. Katy tur had a lot of verbal abuse, she had to be escorted out by security. Im worried because were coming up on a year of charlottesville, the anniversary of charlottesville. Hes about to go out on the road to campaign for republicans in the midterm elections and have multiple rallies just like this where this is just going to be
repeated over and over and over and something potentially could happen because you have a mob basically being incited by this rhetoric, chanting build the wall. Build the wall is something children are being bullied with that phrase now, latino children in america are getting told, build the wall, as almost like a slur. Im worried about the fact you have the combination of rallies that hes going to be holding ahead of the midterm elections and this fervor against the media and youre going to have them in the pool at all of these rallies and that is a dangerous combination. John. Last night we saw the emergence of people who ascribe to a conspiracy called qa non. What is that . A cornucopia of Conspiracy Theories many of them are dangerous. A tin foil hat, they used to be purged. Were they at trump rallies . They are out in the open. Theyre at the white house. They work at the white house . In the oval office we have a
conspiracy theorist. Thats true. Peter baker, how do you cover this president with the appropriate level of skepticism for the 4,229 lies hes told in 558 days . How and why do you continue to go to press briefings when the Press Secretary lies from that podium day in and day out . Well, look, you know, obviously thats our job, is to scrutinize what president s say. Your president , bens president , we did take our responsibility seriously in trying to test what was said by president s at the podium. Try to give additional context if we didnt feel it was being represented in a three dimensional way. Youre seeing Something Different here. This is not an ordinary politician. This is not an ordinary president who spins or, you know, is selective about the truth. What you see here is day after day, tweet after tweet, statement after statement that is just filled with false information, false assertions. And it is a hard thing for journalists because its not our
job to be the opposition. Its not our job to be nana, pants on fire. It is our job to hold people accountable. When somebody is so off the reservation when it comes to factual statements as this president is, its a huge challenge. I think the Washington Post has done a great job with their Fact Checking tally that theyve done. I think the Fact Checkers we have in the bureau in washington have done a fabulous job with their columns. It us didnt seem to be getting through to a lot of people. Thats the real impact of whats going on. Real quick. It is our job to call b. S. When b. S. Is out there, a fundamental part of our job, along with afflicting the comfortable. Were luck any this Country Journalists dont get killed. Happens every once in a while. But not that often. In 2017 looking at this over here, there are 46 journalists killed. You get big numbers, too many that are working in dangerous places around the world, or dealing with people like the putin government, or people who
get shot. We dont want america to become that place. And whether the president means to or not, the rhetoric that he espouses is it makes it more dangerous and maybe were lucky and no journalist will get killed because of it. I dont think anybody here wants to be in a position where were tempting fate and creating an environment that is more hostile, where things are in this hot house world we live in right now. Its so polarized and so venomous and people are going to end up dead. Its not overstating that is a world we could end up in. The president is doing less and thats really irresponsible. To a final point, he could turn the heat down in a nanosecond. He could do it in a day. He could make the pivot. With his words. I would bet my last dollar he wouldnt lose a single one of his supporters. All right, no one is going anywhere. I cant get enough of any of you. When we come back ill ask ben about his helsinki hang over. Welcome to the place. This part is up to you. A Medicare Supplement plan helps pay for some of what medicare doesnt. Call Unitedhealthcare Insurance Company today to request this free decision guide. And learn about the only Medicare Supplement plans endorsed by aarp. Selected for meeting their high standards of quality and service. This type of plan lets you say yes to any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. Do you accept medicare patients . I sure do so Call Unitedhealthcare today and ask for your free decision guide. Oh, and happy birthday. Or retirement. In advance. Ive been Making Blades here at gillette for 20 years. Theres a lot of innovation that goes into making americas 1 shave. Precision machinery and highquality materials from around the world. Nobody else even comes close. Now starting at 7. 99. Gillette. The best a man can get. Ben, i spoke to someone close to donald trump who has long banged me over the head with the hes too incompetent to collude excuse for why he cant be found guilty of collusion. On obstruction, hes like, eh. Ten minutes after helsinki, he called me and said, you know what, maybe i was wrong. Maybe putin has something on him. What do you think . I had the same reaction. You know why . It was the whole week. If you were sitting in the kremlin writing the script for what the president of the United States should do that whole week, you would have him trash our nato allies and cause a crisis in that alliance, go out of your way to pick a fight with angela merkel, go up to the uk and further scramble their Politics Around brexit. And then tell the whole world youre going to sit alone in a room with Vladimir Putin for 90 minutes, lavish him with praise and trash your own intelligence community. Literally it looked like the russians had scripted not just that meeting but the entire week. I dont know how you possibly explain what leads donald trump
to do that. Well, try. Try. The worst Case Scenario is that there is something going on here. I guess like whats second worst . The second worst is that donald trump just assumes that he has so many skeletons in his closet he just hates europe and loves russia . What is second . Second is that trump knows there are skeletons in his closet, financial and otherwise. He just assumes that putin has that information and could put it out. The other is that hes more sympathetic to authoritarians than he is democrats and he looks at putin and says i want to have the kind of money and power that that guy has. He finds him more admirable than he does theresa may or angela merkel. I think its all of these things, by the way. Maybe Vladimir Putin made a hard pitch for that. We dont know what they talked about for two hours so one can only speculate. But i think the idea that he is going to get richer off of these deals that he may be making with putin, i think thats it doesnt mean that theres no
tape somewhere, but i think its really about the money. Peter baker, jeremy bash on this network made a point when he sort of looked at the fact that donald trump was in a room, as ben just said, alone with Vladimir Putin and theres a question about whether or not translators were even both in there. That one of the flash points in the Mueller Investigation is when donald trump cleared the oval office and wanted to be alone with jim comey to askts s sort of above board. Theyre usually to do something sketchy. Well, look, one interpretation is, of course, is any president is wary of leaks seem particularly m unusual that this one is clearing the rooms for conversations that seem so problematic, so fraught and so related to this investigation thats going on. It wasnt just that he cleared the room with jim comey of his
aides, he cleared of the Attorney General who was jim comeys boss at that time, who tried to stick around. He didnt want the Chief Of Staff ithat kind of conversatio. Comey said in his autobiography he had only had two meetings with obama alone ever. One of them was before he was appointed and the other was during the discussion of all these racially charged shootings. And so its it does Raise Suspicions and thats the one reason why president s dont do it, because it does Raise Suspicions. Why ask for that kind of chatter out there. You dont know whats happening in that room, and thats what people are going to talk about. Obama ever clear the room for a oneonone meeting with an american adversary . No. You need somebody in there precisely to be able to read out the meeting to the rest of our government and to our allies. And that was obama, not donald trump. Our allies are wondering what happened in there, did he sell us out . Answer thd so later the adve cant make a claim that could be false. We have to sneak in one last break. Well be right back. Or plan for tomorrow . At kpmg, we believe success requires both. With our broad range of services and industry expertise, kpmg can help you anticipate tomorrow and deliver today. Kpmg. A 500,000 policy for under 23 a month. Selectquote found anna, 37, a 750,000 policy for under 22 a month. Selectquotes secret . They comparison shop select group of Great Companies like these for your best rate. Give your family the security they need. At a price you can afford. Since 1985, selectquote has saved over a million families millions of dollars on life insurance. Call the number on your screen. Or go to selectquote. Com. Discover what over a million families know. We shop. You save. With my bladder leakage, the products ive tried just didnt fit right. They were very saggy. Its getting in the way of our camping trips. But with new sizes, depend fitflex is made for me. Introducing more sizes for better comfort. New depend fitflex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit