welcome to our viewer in the united states and around the world. i m christine romans. and we begin with donald trump s arrest and arraignment in the classified documents case. the washington post reports that trump rejected efforts by one of his lawyers to cut a deal with the justice department to return the documents and avoid indictment. post says chris kise wanted to negotiate with the doj back in the fall after the fbi found more than 100 class filed documents at mar-a-lago. but cnn spoke to sources close to trump s legal team and they cast doubt on whether that was a real opportunity to settle. and merrick garland is depending the special counsel behind the trump indictment, jack smith. paula reid has more. reporter: speaking for the first time since former president trump was indicted mr. smith is a veteran career prosecutor. reporter: attorney general merrick garland standing by special counsel jack smith who was prosecuting former president trump and ad
strauss. good morning. you heard pence and haley calling the charges serious but reiterating that the former president deserves his day in court. what do you make of how the xwop field is reacting and positioning around the president s indictment? two things. first, everything that we saw in the past few clips underscores what pollsters have seen for a while, that there is an immovable base of the republican party that won t change their position and stop supporting donald trump. nothing will change that. no event will affect that in any serious way. and the other thing we saw here is that there is a healthy sort of skepticism toward various other institutions in the united states. and trump represents a defiance in a way to all of that. there is a large sort of sense of embattlement and trump embodies the polar opposite of
say hey, how are you? what s your name? as opposed to coming to me with an attitude or embattlement because i m already going to be on the defensive because of the life that i have lived and it s not a chosen life. it really is in you. it is not a chosen life. it is in me to identify as transgender. i would love to continue to have this conversation. and i think that there is we should be able to have these discussions without yelling at each other and offer some understanding about that s true. this community. and at the very least, look, you can love what dave did or hate it or whatever, but i think you re right i m a comedian. i am a comedian and i m telling you, i got three dogs in the fight. i have to be fair to all three. but at the very least we re talking about it. and i think we should use this opportunity to continue to have these discussions in a responsible, productive way. absolutely. flame, i can t wait to come see you. and if i do come i want to sit
team if you ve got one guy that thinks he can really solve this? i want to go around the horn on a topic in all of this legal this legal warfare, this battle, embattlement donald trump has been engaged in the last week has sort of gotten lost. a week ago all we were talking about was because of the cohen raids that donald trump was really right on the brink of firing rod rosenstein and trying to bring the mueller probe to an end. that receded. we got recorded in the middle of the week rose not stein had gone to trump and said you re not a target. that somehow eased trump s mind. that s why he seemed to calm about it at the press conference at mar-a-lago on wednesday. now we have new reporting that says, no, no, no, trump is still on the brink of firing rosenstein. i want to go quickly around the horn here and start with betsy. ask me this question on the basis of your reporting and everything you know, is rosenstein in serious jeopardy at this moment? donald trump goes back and for
consequences should be and if so. to go back to brian s points. do you see the floor under president trump, the political floor under him. both becoming more secular and more diverse in the last two years for the first time in american history white christians are less than a majority of the country. that s something new in american history. and many there s a sense of embattlement around that demographic change. the president has been very skillful from the beginning at speaking to people who feel culturally demographically and economically displaced. they feel he s their voice. regardless of the other controversies swirling around him that fact remains true. that holds the floor underneath him despite the controversies. we have so much more to talk about. thank you so much for now. we appreciate it. still ahead, security experts are scrambling now after a massive wave of cyber attacks