But when you compare director comeys Testimony Yesterday, which was quite compelling, believable and composed to the ways the president conducted himself today at the rose garden, i think james comey is going to win any credibility contest. What is your problem with how the president conducted himself today at the rose garden . This is a serious investigation, he was standing in quite a prestigious place, the rose garden and was asked if there were tapings, he sort of swintimated there were and said that investigation could be coming soon. There is not a reality show. This is the president of the United States with allegations of Obstruction Of Justice taking place. The president did say he was 100 willing to testify under oath. Will you call on the special counsel bob mueller to depose the president of the united
his side will be more believable . Jeff sessions apparently was in the room, Jared Kushner was in the room. And apparently theres more to hear from Admiral Rogers and coats.
jackson and julian zelizer. thank you both for being here this morning. for more than six hours, lawmakers asked comey about a number of things, including hillary clinton, her e-mails, a lot of other topics that had been covered by congressional testimony for his book and news interviews. comey said the following. take a listen. after a full day of questioning, two things are clear to me. one, we could have done this in open setting. and two, when you read the transcript, you will see we re talking again about hillary clinton s e-mails, for heaven s sakes, so i m not sure we need to do this at all, but i m trying to respect the institution and to answer questions in a respectful way. julian, whaelt s the point o bringing comey back? he s also coming back december 17. look, the point for republicans is to try to discredit someone who is at the heart of this story and investigation. they ve done it repeatedly. the president in public has tried to discredit comey, which
decide this is a public relations campaign, alex. i mean this is consistent with what the president s team has been doing for a long time now. trying to discredit comey, and the mueller investigation itself. as part of a public relations campaign. it s interesting to note that some of the things that the letter talks about, that are sort of indictments against comey, aside from his leaking memos about his conversations about president trump, the other things, the way he handled the clinton email probe, going outside the chain of command. and some other things, actually sort of suggest if anything, that he was comey was being too harsh on clinton. the indictment against him that he briefed trump on the steele dossier, interestingly, is something that sort of suggests that he was actually trying to help trump. so it s sort of a a mixture of things. some things like the leaking of
communication from them. now, we did go through like five letters. we didn t get a response. then they sent us a response. i can t go into detail, but narrowing the subjects for questioning down to about two. you get a big liar like comey, a big liar like mccabe in the fbi, a guy with a conflict of interest from day one on the hillary investigation, which is why he s lying to cover his ass, of course you get that. you get bad people in the fbi. all right. so asha, what do you make of that, that this is clearly their strategy? well, this is always the defense strategy. if the facts and the law aren t on your side, go after the prosecutors and the police and discredit the actual basis of the investigation. you know, they can try to discredit comey, but he s not the only witness here. we tend to think of this as he said/she said between the president and comey, but there are a lot of actions both before
different rationale the white house presented in previous months. it s another effort to discredit comey, similar to let s remember is a witness in the mueller probe. it s a similar moment where we have seen the white house, the president himself, whether it s sessions or rosenstein or mueller, the attempt to discredit them and make them more polarizing political figures rather than law men above reproach. that way you discredit their findings, if they re negative to the president and if needed you justify the reasons why trump could fire them if it comes to that. let me go to voice because i want to ask you about style. why did trump go from these button down people like ty cobb with the handle bar mustache and sort i ve guy who doesn t street fight on television. his biggest trouble is being overlerd at lunch. then giuliani out there just spewing this stuff like a flame thrower. what s that do to a guy judiciously? how does that help the president