oval office and beyond that, matt whitaker was put at the justice department in part because he was seen as a trump loyalist. some of his comments about the robert mueller investigation had caught the attention of the president and people in the white house. that s really the reason why he was elevated to the position as chief of staff. and now as acting attorney general. but the president saying that in response to questions about whether or not this appointment is even legal, he didn t answer that really at all. but he said matt whitaker is very respected. even though one of the problems is that the white house is caught unaware, according toour sources, by how many republicans, not just democrats, but republicans are calling into question whether this appointment was constitutional in part because matt whitaker is not senate confirmed and now being placed over the helm of the law enforcement agency of the federal government. so the president there expressing what i think we have bee
the question is now that he s in the job and let s see how long he s in the job, will he be telling donald trump things about the mueller investigation? will he be slowing the mueller investigation down in any way? these are big concerns? why would he say and greg, you told our producers that obviously he was lying when he said he didn t know matt whitaker and we played the clip of him a month ago. it s donald trump. he s distancing himself. whenever be in gets into a little bit of trouble that was fast. well, paul manafort worked on the campaign a couple of days, steve bannon. this is the way trump operates. when there s trouble, he runs in the other direction. even though you have it on tape, it doesn t seem to matter. but it really does indicate that he understands, at least, that there are problems with
the day. and he didn t answer it. that s definitely the posture he took. chris, from sources inside the white house, to our kaitlan collins, they re surprised by the negative reaction to whitaker. and also are telling her that it wasn t widely known among staff that he commented so many times on the special counsel s investigation. how could they not know? yeah. i would advise there s a really good website, it s called google.com. chris. it s popular with the kids. you can look things up on there. like matt whitaker, mueller. i know this because i did it when matt whitaker was named acting attorney general. it will produce comments he s made to you, kate, he s written an op-ed for cnn. he talked a fair amount about this, and fiy, he had a twitter feed, too. in any other administration, i would say, oh, they re sort of playing possum here.
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investigation, a critic of robert mueller, was he being placed there in order to rein in the mueller investigation? something he had suggested in the past would be a good strategy for president trump. so i wanted to know whether president trump thought that was something that whitaker had the power to do or ought to do, whether he thought whitaker should leave the russia investigation alone. the president just didn t answer the question. he criticized me. but i think we still want to know the answer to that, so i really hope that s something that at some point in the near future reporters will have another opportunity to ask him. pretty strong suspicion it s not going to stop you from asking again. thank you so much. joining me now, cnn special correspondent jamie gangel. politics reporter chris cillizza, and shimon prokupecz. great to have you here. jamie, your reaction was the same as what abby just said. it s a really fair question. it s also in my view, isn t