today s breaking news from the washington post white house bureau chief phil rucker. also carol len ac who broke the news last night. barbara mcquade and that frank figliuzzi all are my favorites, all of are msnbc analyst contributors and all are on the hook to help us figure out what s going on in that building. phil rucker, let s start with you. emmet flood not a household name, but it seems to me the significance is, one, white house don mcgahn at the center of every flash point known to be under scrutiny by bob mueller, eager to lineup a replacement for himself. yeah, i think you nailed it, nicolle. this is a signal that the trump legal strategy is going to become much more aggressive and confrontational with mueller. there is an expectation that there is going to be less sort of cooperation and providing documents and more push back, pushing back against this idea of an interview, pushing back
telling me this is also significant because this is don mcgahn s exit strategy. but don mcgahn isn t just any white house counsel. he s also a witness in the mueller probe who has met at least two times, perhaps more with mueller s investigators and he s offered testimony on these four events that we know of. the sessions recusal. the flynn firing. the comey firing. and the attempt to fire mueller. we know from the questions published this week that all of those events are very much of interest to special counsel robe robert mueller. what does it say, not just your top white house attorney, someone who is part of the investigation is trying to get packed up out of the west wing? i m tired and i need to spend more time with my family. we could be looking at, i m kind of jammed up here. i was actually calling the shots on what could be answered or not answered before congressional committees by key witnesses, like bannon, like lewandowski.
and then they pardoned arpaio. i said my phone broke out, i thought you said he pardoned arpaio. he didn t call him broad shoulders. this is the party of trump. trump loves arpaio, hard line immigration stances. mike pence is going to get out there and say the same things. what s the deal with mike pence? i don t know. he should know better. he is someone who is a politician. he was governor. he served in congress. he is the vice president of the united states. easy supposed to at least politically be the grown up. yet the man from the party of law and order just revealed it to be a sham, a complete and total sham. it s shameful. why republicans on the hill remain silent in the face of this is beyond me. at this point, i expect complete silence from the republican-controlled congress on anything that this white house does, good, but especially
he does it in a way that is professional and effective. i am also told there is a unanimous belief among the president s allies the president s best legal strategy at this point in the obstruction of justice investigation is to exert executive privilege and not answer the kinds of questions detailed in the new york times this week. one attorney involved in the mueller investigation told me today that the release of the questions to the new york times was a, quote, inside job designed to get through to the president. more significant perhaps, two sources tell me that emmet flood is don mcgahn s hand picked successor as white house counsel. one adding that mcgahn views flood as a, quote, wartime consigliary. three describe him as calming and competent figure this west wing badly needs. and one source close to mcgahn says of flood, quote, you don t
rid of the site, which was their big site. he is talking about no research, no launching of ballistic missiles, no nuclear testing. and he has lived up to that for a listening period of time. i think it would be a great celebration if it works out well. and if it doesn t work out well, that s the way it goes. for more i m joined by andrea mitchell, nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent. andrea, call me a romantic, but i m hopeful, am i wrong? why not? no. it s complicated. look, the fact is he wants to do this. he is committed to it. he is praising kim jong-un in a way he never did before. one question is where do they do it? the president seems to have a romantic vision, if you will, of doing it at the dmz. that would be the most democratic place to celebrate it, as he put it. but how do you have an exit strategy if it doesn t go well and you re at the dmz? that s why many veries would prefer it be in a neutral