Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
considered official white house statements? >> well, the president is the president of the united states. so they're considered official statements by the president of the united states. >> at least one republican was willing to speak candidly about the reaction among many lawmakers in the capital. >> every morning we wake up, he tweets something, and we're supposed to respond to his tweet. mueller is going to finish his investigation and the truth will come out. >> our lead-open panel, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." jill colvin, white house reporter for the associated press. john heilemann, co-author of "game change." and harry litman, former u.s. attorney, former deputy assistant attorney general under president clinton. good evening, all. peter, i would like to read you what sally yates, formerly of the justice department, wrote today. today our president called on his recused attorney general to
shut down the investigation of his own campaign. as shocking as that is, what's even more dangerous is that we've gotten used to it. the rule of law won't evaporate overnight. but it can slip away if we let it. peter, there we have the president's own words to judge him by this morning. this is on him. i guess this is one of those lessons, we get to see if words have consequences. >> that's right. look, what's fascinating is how much this plays out in public and out loud. what we've seen from the president's tweets is him saying what would have been a scandal had, say, president nixon been found to have said it privately in a taped session in the oval office. in fact the tape that finally undid him during watergate was hearing him order his aides to tell the cia to tell the fbi to lay off the watergate investigation. here you have the president of the united states saying out loud, not in the privacy of the oval office but on twitter for everyone to read, the attorney general of the united states who was appointed by him, should
command almost doesn't matter, although it's a very, very tenuous distinction. eight not on it's not only the president that's saying this but he's saying in the same sentence, right now, it's a rigged witch hunt, it is staining our country. surely anyone who heard those words in the oval office would think he better remedy the situation or he's going to lose his job. but if what the president is trying to do in a mild way or a dictatorial way, is shut down the investigation, i'll give you three other words, which are obstruction of justice. it's a real possibility. and especially, brian, given the whole run of different tweets, all of which are admissible, he is really flirting with enhancing the criminal case against himself. >> so harry, as a former fed, you can say with some certainty
and the atmospherics in the west wing. >> our sources tell us he is definitely not happy right now. the president was watching television, watching coverage of the beginning of the trial of paul manafort this morning. we're told that this is what sparked the flurry of tweets this morning. and one confidant told my colleague jonathan lemire earlier today that the president is in, quote, a dark place. the president has been furious. it's been building over the last couple of weeks, ever since he returned from helsinki. he was furious at the media, the way that he felt that he was not given enough credit for how things went with vladimir putin. he felt like he was being misportrayed and his summit with putin was misportrayed. he felt he didn't get enough credit for meeting with kim jong-un in singapore and he has just been raging. you've got the president who feels it's not just the media who is attacking him but also the government that's coming and attacking him right now.
you've got, in addition to the manafort trial, the president has also been deeply shaken by the ongoing investigation into michael cohen, his long time fixer, and the release of that audio tape, that set him off. anyone could say today that the president is not in a good place. >> john heilemann here in new york, what is it we're witnessing? >> the president acts out. we see this over and over again, in a variety of different weighs. this is an expression of his id. he's angry and afraid. he can see the walls closing in. i think he's somewhere close to panic right now. and that's part of what's going on. he still has some degree of political calculation that's governing what he's doing, because the reality is, as has been pointed out today, if he wanted to fire rod rosenstein and try to end this investigation, genuinely end it, he could call rod rosenstein into the white house and fire him. he has the ability to do that. but he obviously thinks, rightly or wrongly, we don't know if
he's right or wrong about this, but he thinks the political consequences of that on capitol hill would be too great. if he thought republicans would all just roll over, he would clearly do it, because he does have manifestly corrupt intent. he manifestly believes he would like to shut this entire thing down. one of the great banes of his presidency is the fact that jeff sessions recused himself to this and was not as loyal to him as he thought. you've got the president making political calculations, not going as far as what his core wants him to do, because i think he would like to fire rod rosenstein. but at the same time, the outlet of twitter, and it really is, you know, we both remember brooklyn, can you imagine what would have happened if bill clinton had walked up to the white house podium and said janet reno should fire ken starr, or if he had taken to the op-ed page of "the new york times" and said janet reno should fire ken starr, that would have provoked a
cataclysmic reaction, both democrat and republican. that's a long time ago. twitter is a sewer, a cesspool, a horrible medium in some ways, beneficial in others, but it's the same thing as the podium and it's the same thing as the op-ed page of "the new york times" in 2018. >> those words are hanging out there tonight. harry, are you a member of the club, despite all the great by-lines tonight, that will believe a mueller/trump meeting when you see it? >> in other words, i'll believe it when i see it, i don't think it's going to happen. i'm a long term card carrying member of that club. however much they pare it down, it will be questions that if he answers them falsely, he will be subject to criminal penalty. and they're not going to be softballs like, did you have corrupt intent. they'll be things like, for example, did you know flynn was under investigation when you told comey to let up on him.
we've just had new reporting that shows he does. there are probably half a dozen other things that trump doesn't know and mueller does. and yeah, i don't see his sitting down with him under any circumstances, where there's criminal penalty for lying. and i don't see mueller sitting down with him where he gets a free pass for lying. so i see an impasse. >> peter baker, we knew, as if we needed any help, that the president's words were going to be impactful on twitter this morning, the minute we learned how many news organizations got "what the president meant to say" phone calls afterwards, and yours among them. >> absolutely. they're trying very hard to make the point, this is just an opinion, this is not a command. that's because they understand there is a line there, they've drawn the line, at least. he can express an opinion, he can say it should be shut down but won't actually order it, because as john says correctly, he does perceive that to be a step too far, at least for the
moment. so far he's convinced himself or been convinced that firing rod rosenstein or attempting to fire bob mueller would be -- would create such a blowback against him legally and politically that it's not worth the effort. he's trying to continue to shape public opinion, to make sure at least his base and maybe some other people believe this investigation isn't legitimate, that there is no reason to believe what they hear that might come out of the paul manafort trial, from anything else that might come out of this investigation, and to prepare the ground for what might amount to a big political battle later on when we do here more results from the investigation, either this summer or after the election. >> jill colvin, we witnessed three whole news media briefings for the month of july from the white house. they are, i should point out, 1-0 for august so far. we had one today, but the president is about to go down for ten days, rush limbaugh was able to talk to him today. is the philosophy going to be
friendlies preferred? >> i mean, that's long been the strategy of this administration, especially when they feel under fire, they try to keep the president away from reporters, away from situations where he could turn the tweets into a kind of standing press conference, gaggle back and forth, and make matters worse. i thought it was really interesting, this week it's also bill shine really stepping into his role as the new communications chief. we had a really interesting thing that happened yesterday when we were standing outside the oval office. we were waiting for the president to do a swearing-in ceremony and bill shine actually came out and told reporters ahead of time, the president will not be answering questions. you can try, but he is not going to do it. and that's exactly what happened. we're seeing this new -- we'll see how long it he'selasts, but degree of the president not engaging. >> that may be because everyone around the president is getting more serious because he could be
in serious trouble. do you think there's any acknowledgement, deep, dark, in the west wing, or in the residence tonight, that he would like to take that back today? >> i don't know on his part. in the residence, probably not. certainly a lot of us were in the building when he did what he did. to get back to the situation with mueller and the interview, you know, i think a lot of people are going to interpret in a somewhat panicked way the notion that mueller is giving ground, to limit the questions on obstruction of justice. to me it indicates a position of strength. when you look at harry litman's regulatory in "the new york review of books," we know mueller has talked to mcgahn and they have already testified to him that yes, trump had been presented with a timeline and with evidence of the fact that the fbi was investigating flynn on criminal charges before he had his conversation with comey, telling comey to lay off, that
there is memos, documentation that mueller has that he's heard from those witnesses, it all feels to me like what this is about is mueller conveying the notion that, i can cut back to half of my questions on obstruction of justice because i don't actually need that much from you, mr. president, i've already got this case basically made, it's not a position of weakness, it's a position of strength. i think that's making the president, among many other things, feel nervous and making the people around him feel even more nervous. >> does it get more highbrow than someone quoting "the new york review of books" on our broadcast? i don't think it does. thank you all for helping us out on a wednesday night. coming up for us, is the president's behavior a clue of what's to come? we ask a former fbi agent what he thinks. and later, if you were curious about those cuq's that popped up in the crowd in the president's rally wednesday night, we'll have that coming
up. "the 11th hour" getting under way beneath the dome on a wednesday night. with the new chase ink business unlimited card i get unlimited 1.5% cash back. it's so simple, i don't even have to think about it. so i think about mouthfeel. introducing chase ink business unlimited with unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase.
told us the president's words on twitter count in this investigation. as we've been saying so far tonight, just days ago, "the times" reported that mueller is examining all the president has said about sessions. he can throw this morning's tweet on the pile. clint watts, former fbi special agent, his latest, "messing with the enemy: surviving in a social media world of hackers, terrorists, russians, and fake news." and shannon pettypiece, white house correspondent for bloomberg. clint, i have to ask you, if you came across the type of behavior we are seeing from the nation's chief executive in your old day job at the fbi, how would that alter your investigation? what would that do? >> it just adds to the pile. and it continues the timeline. i think several interesting things about this obstruction angle is, we're hearing some negotiation from the mueller
team about taking written responses to questions and then sitting down for an interview. i'm sure -- >> isn't that just to get him in the door? >> it is. and it could play very much to the president's disadvantage strategically, because as we've seen, the president doesn't like to read very much. i doubt he's actually going to be the one crafting up all these statements. he'll be working with his legal team. >> that's probably correct, yes. >> he'll have to go in and understand and know what the statements are that are on the paper and be able to speak to those. the other thing, the president is at a huge disadvantage, he doesn't know everyone that mueller has talked to, what they have told him, and what documents, texts, e-mails, phone calls they've had with each other behind the scenes that also match up to a timeline. we've seen just here on nbc news where the president has said, well, comey, when i got rid of him, it was because of this russia thing. so these are public things that are very damning. the timelines are damning. even if he did not actually obstruct, it's just the attempt
to obstruct that can be held as a charge. so in terms of how the investigation progresses, it seems to me the mueller team probably has all the data it needs to ask these questions, have the president come in. and that is going to be very difficult, i imagine, for the president to negotiate and be consistent both with the written statement and with the timeline that's been laid out in front of them. >> shannon pettypiece, any acknowledgement by those around the president that his tone isn't always that of an innocent man? >> absolutely. his lawyers, his legal advisers, you know, around a year ago, when he first started building up the legal team, really emphasized to him that you cannot be making public attacks against mueller personally or against this investigation. and they were successful for a while, if you remember, back to the summer last time, where trump would say no collusion, and he pretty much tamped down any personal attacks on mueller. but that strategy he felt wasn't
really working for him. and there was a moment, really particularly after the michael cohen raid, where he took the gloves off. and he had already been starting to test the waters, he had already been racheting up this rhetoric about a witch hunt. he had been told that this investigation would be done by the end of 2017 by his lawyers. it wasn't. he continued seeing indictments coming from people involved in his administration and campaign. that moment, that michael cohen raid, was really the moment he said, forget this, the gloves are coming off, i'm going on full attack mode. rudy giuliani was brought in with the specific, you know, point or goal of being the public attack dog against mueller. so this is a conscious strategy at this point. and it is a major shift from where we were a year ago when the legal advice was, stay cool, let's cooperate, and try and get this thing over with quickly. >> and shannon, you also wrote about the state of play in the "will mueller and trump sit down."
it looks like mueller is trying to say whatever you need to do to get the guy in here and get him in the door. >> that's typically how these negotiations work. and to the point the guests were making earlier, does it look like mueller's caving, mueller really knows the answer to a lot of his answers. to the point clint was making, to some extent the trump legal team does know what the documents are out there, they know what the witnesses have said to some extent. but mueller has many, many more pieces of this puzzle than the president's legal team does, and he knows the answer to many of the questions he's going to ask. he wants to get those on record. around obstruction, one of the main ones is to determine the president's intent. so yes, if they have to concede on some areas to get to the areas they really want, that's what they're doing, and that's typically for how these things go between a prosecutor and a defense lawyer in any of these sort of carefully choreographed negotiations. >> clint watts has agreed to stick around. we're going to put his web
training to use when we talk about the newest fringe group we saw last night at the president's rally. so clint, our thanks for now. shannon pettypiece, our thanks as always for coming on. coming up, incredibly expensive men's wear, million dollar home. why are transfers from bank accounts in cyprus the latest on the manafort trial, from a reporter who was inside the courtroom today, when "the 11th hour" continues. ♪[upbeat music]
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the trial of former trump campaign chairman paul manafort enters its third day tomorrow in federal court. as you know, it's the first trial of what we're calling the mueller era. prosecutors today started establishing how manafort made his money in ukraine and how they contend he hid it from the u.s. government. they presented piles of evidence to illustrate manafort's lavish lifestyle and more importantly, the manner in which he paid for things, largely through foreign bank transfers. we're guessing not a lot of members of our audience have paid for things through foreign bank transfers. the president, who has sought to distance himself from his former chairman, did weigh in today, writing, quote, looking back on history, who was treated worse, alphonse capone, legendary mob boss, kill and her and public e number one, or paul manafort, now serving solitary confinement although convicted of nothing? where is the russia collusion? daniel goldman, former assistant
u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, and rachel winer is with us, reporter for "the washington post" who was inside the courtroom today. rachel, thank you for being with us, i'm sorry about the long day this makes for. talk about what was presented today, and the judge's theory that he's not allowing photographs to be displayed in court but he's going to allow the jury photos when they go off some day to deliberate. >> i think that's in part because he wants the trial to move quickly. he's been adamant about that and it's worked so far. they're way ahead of schedule. they were supposed to take three weeks and now the government says they will finish their case next week. he may not want a commotion knowing how much media coverage this case is getting. but at first it seemed like he might not let them show the jury these fancy suits at all. in the end they did come in, just at the end of the day. but they did get pictures of the $15,000 ostrich skin jacket, and also i think an $18,500 python
jacket and all sorts of other very expensive suits. >> the man likes jackets. councilor, a couple of questions for you. first of all, this is a nonsequestered jury. the president of the united states is tweeting about the defendant in a way they can all see, proclaiming his innocence. where do we file that? what do we do about that? >> well, it's tricky. the judge will instruct the jury, as every judge does at every trial, do not read about the case, do not watch television about the case. but this is a different world where we're dealing with twitter. i don't know whether the judge -- maybe rachel knows -- has instructed the jury not to read twitter. but that's almost what the judge needs to do. they're not sequestered in the way that, you know, we're used to with the o.j. simpson trial, for example. but they likely have been instructed to not pay attention to any news, do not read newspapers, because of the prominence of the coverage. >> let's interrupt our
conversation to ask rachel. have you heard such a charge from the judge? >> yes. judge ellis has made very clear. i'm not sure he knows what twitter is, he'll be the first to say that at 78 he is not up on any sort of new media. but he told them don't read anything, don't look at anything, don't look anything up on your computer. he always says, you know, i would say don't look it up in an encyclopedia but i'm the only person who does that. don't talk to your family. assuming they hold to that, it's possible they don't see the trump tweets. but you can walk into a coffee shop and it might come across your vision. >> that's right. dan, we did hear, he gave the government lawyers a couple of brushback pitches today, some chin music. they keep hammering the lavish lifestyle, the expensive ostrich jacket. you can overplay that hand, i guess. >> well, to the judge, you can
overplay the hand. >> it's not a crime to be a rich guy. >> it's not a crime to be a rich guy. but you have to understand the context of this evidence. it's not just that he lived a lavish lifestyle. although that is relevant to sort of his motive, particularly when the money dried up after he stopped working forri iaviktor yanukovych. you also have to be able to show in a tax fraud case that what you declared for your income tax is less than you actually earned. one way to do that is to show what question call in prosecutor world, unexplained wealth. how can you be paying out $6 million in cash if, for example, and i haven't seen his tax returns, you only declare that you made $1 million? so it is very relevant evidence. and i think what the judge is just getting a little frustrated with is, don't try to over -- as you point out, don't try to oversell it, that's not really what's relevant, what's relevant is the money, not the
photograph. and so he's trying to stress that and keep things moving. >> and rachel, what was this hint today in court that rick gates, star witness, former manafort assistant, may not end up taking the stand? >> so one of the prosecutors, assistant u.s. attorney, did say gates may or may not testify, and obviously that caused a lot of commotion. but i think there's not much to it. always prosecutors, when told not to put in some evidence because a later witness will testify to it, will say, well, we haven't -- we're not sure that person will testify, so we should put it in now, just to make sure they can account for any possibility, you know, whatever might happen to rick gates. and so i think he was just doing that the way prosecutors always do, not recognizing in this case the amount of attention that would get. and he did immediately sort of walk it back and say that's
nothing particular to gates, that's true of any witness. it would be shocked if rick gates didn't testify. he is the key witness in this case. and the defense is planning to blame everything on rick gates. but i'm sure prosecutors were expecting that and have prepared him for that. >> councilor, i have time for a yes or no. will he or won't he testify? >> yes. but, and i know i gave you a one-word answer once, but the prosecution did not include gates very prominently in their opening statement. so that would indicate they would certainly be calling him. and the fact that they didn't is interesting. it means they're giving themselves room not to call him. remember, they didn't try this case with gates as a witness, so it's possible to prove it without him. >> our great things to our two guests, daniel goldman, rachel weinor, thank you very much. coming up, you may have seen them displaying the letter "q" prominently at the trump rally
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most pills only block one. and six is greater than one. flonase sensimist. one of our guests last night who was in attendance at the trump rally in tampa mentioned seeing members of the fringe right wing, including a conspiracy group the members of which display the letter "q" prominently. we saw it in the crowd, on signs, on shirts. the "q" stands for qanon. the group got its start on the web. they believe they've received intel from a top government source, a mole at the highest reaches of our government, and there is no end to the false rumors they have pushed including a smear effort headquartered on youtube alleging several democratic politicians and others are pedophiles involved in a global child sex ring. they believe that trump is made
to appear as more of the cover. it goes on from there, a local news crew interviewed a "q" c conspiracist. >> it all started when the president was meeting with military leaders and said this is the calm before the storm. this launched us into -- the "q" intelligence has been talking to all of us, letting us know what's going on behind the scenes, the covert battles raging between the deep state and president trump and his military alliance. >> what will you do about it? >> spread it, combat the mainstream media. we're fighting a battle on all fronts here. >> so there is a "q" coin among other things. here is the comment from trump that gave this group a lot of fuel. a photo op during a white house dinner for military commanders and their spouses. and note what the president says
here, which would normally be filed under the kind of toss-off comment the president sometimes makes. >> what this represents, the calm before the storm. >> reporter: what's the storm? >> reporter: what does that mean? >> the calm before the storm. >> reporter: what storm, mr. president? >> we have a lot of military people who will tell you that. thank you all for coming. >> reporter: what storm, mr. president? >> you'll find out. >> reporter: give us a hint. >> thank you, everybody. >> the calm before the storm. nbc news reporter ben collins covers this digital world for the network and has been looking into this group and writing about them. we've asked clint watts, former fbi special agent to stick around and be a part of this. ben, did i get their motives and some of their beliefs right?
and what else should we know about them? >> unfortunately you got it all right, there's not much to know about them. this is basically fan fiction, a conspiracy theory that donald trump is doing anything right and anything that looks like he's doing wrong, he's doing the right thing. they misconstrue typos to make it look like he knows what he's doing. people on the internet who can't grapple with the reality of the situation have decided to take out all this disinformation on their political enemies. they've accused people from celebrities to politicians of being part of a child sex ring that simply does not exist. we thought it was over with pizza-gate but it amped itself up among people on twitter, facebook and reddit. >> clint, you do your life's work as we do ours, in a free society, where it's hard to limit this kind of thing. it's hard to squelch or suppress
it. look at the climate this is coming up in. >> right. and going back two years ago, we saw the kremlin pushing a lot of disinformation around the election. what we're seeing now is everybody adopting those techniques. so there's a lot of artificial production in terms of social media, social bots, amplification. you're seeing very high end production. the videos are very good. which makes them more convincing. you're seeing them spread very rapidly in a much quicker way. the key phrase there, the calm before the storm, if you're a good social engineer and pick out these phrases that are catchy with the audience and combine them into a conspiracy that seems convincing to people who don't know the details. i'm not just worried about russian disinformation, i'm worried about american disinformation, because it's a public safety issue. a lot of these conspiracies, we've seen people show up with weapons, we've seen shutdowns, police emergencies that have come from it. if you look at this, it's got all the elements of what would maybe be an uprising or
advocating for violence or nudging people towards it or even political upheaval. i think it's a dangerous phenomenon especially when you see it tied to the president and his rallies. >> ben, in the immortal words of my late mother, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. what's the danger? >> we've already seen it with pizza-gate. a man walked into a pizza parlor and shot it up, assuming there was a child sex ring in the basement, trying to investigate it. with qanon, there is a guy who blocked the entrance to the hoover dam a couple of weeks ago. since he's gotten into jail, he's sent a bunch of wild letters to the president, talking about qanon conspiracy theories. there's a guy in arizona, tucson, who has for the past few weeks, he got a felony trespassing charge because he believed a homeless camp was a child sex trafficking camp. it had nothing to do with it.
he was live streaming it until youtube and facebook until facebook finally brought all this stuff down. this stuff has real life consequences. people putting up "q" signs at trump rallies is not going to help it. >> clint, how much do you fear that this group is getting a wink and a nod from the right people to not stop? and what can the government do in a free society? >> yeah, i think it was a little over a year ago i talked -- you know, part of the reason this works is because we have politicians in this country that are doing influence operations that are very similar that we see to foreign media influence. and i think the other big thing is, we had a hearing today in the senate, the senate intel committee, you know, was talking about social media and disinformation. and people can make fake news, they can make manipulated truths. they can make conspiracies faster than social media companies can identify them and swat them down. and in that lag time, we have lots of changes happening. one in four people no poll in texas don't think they should
have their children vaccinated. four in ten don't actually think it's a bad idea for russia maybe to meddle in our elections. so these are having real changes in our society. it's breaking us up and dividing us. it's a us. it's a efficient technique for hidden man popularities. those people that can mine and figure out what grabs with an audience which can produce the content can drive major events in our country political public safety. you can get people to show up under false auspices with rifles. this is a dangerous situation. if our politicians are maybe not tamping it down but not saying much about it or letting it go because it might be beneficial in the near term, it could be devastating to our country in the long-term. >> people can show up with guns they have compiled on a 3-d printer. the president's next rally is tomorrow night. wilkes-barre, pa. another rally this weekend in ohio with we'll watch for this and see who urns out in both
cases. we'd love to have you both on again on the subject if you'd agree to that. thank you so much for coming on. it's a disturbing topic. ben collins, clint watts. appreciate it. much more ahead "the 11th hour" when we come right back. for your heart... your joints... or your digestion... so why wouldn't you take something for the most important part of you... your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.
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with the new chase ink business unlimited card i get unlimited 1.5% cash back. it's so simple, i don't even have to think about it. so i think about mouthfeel. i don't think about the ink card. i think about nitrogen ice cream in supermarkets all over the world. i think about the details. fine, i obsess over the details. think about every part of your business except the one part that works without a thought your ink card. introducing chase ink business unlimited with unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase. chase for business. make more of what's yours. see that logo? last thing before we go is loosely about twitter. it's said nearly a quarter of our u.s. population is on twitter. every day, more people join up and more people drop out. the latter mostly because twitter is so often where human souls go to die. it can be a cesspool of anger and hatred with no way to know
who is a russian. way too easy to be anonymously hateful. that is why when you come across a truly indispensable twitter account, preferably someone you admire, someone you already know and like, it can be so useful and refreshing. and that's where michael beschloss comes in. is he a long-time friend of this broadcast and truth be told of this broadcaster. and more than that, he's one of the great presidential historians and authors of our time. michael's twitter feed does not disappoint. just in the last few days, he has given us richard nixon jumping off a limo, midtown manhattan, 1956. gerald ford's cue card from when he took the oath of office and an early selfie taken by a young jackie kennedy. but then today, there was this from michael and we couldn't help but notice it said "the 11th hour" right there on the cover of "newsweek" from this
Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
would have obstructed it. he has a right to defend himself. if he believes he's innocent, he is innocent, he should speak out. >> white house also moved quickly to frame trump's words as nothing more than his own personal view. >> it's not an order. it's the president's opinion. the president is not obstructing, he's fighting back. the president is stating his opinion. he's stating it clearly. he's certainly expressing a frustration that he has with the level of corruption that we've seen from people like jim comey, the president's angry. frankly, most of america is angry as well and there's no reason he shouldn't be able to voice that opinion. >> but remember what the white house once told us about how we should regard what this president says on twitter. >> are president trump's tweets considered official white house statements? >> well, the president is the president of the united states so they're considered official statements by the president. >> he's willing to speak candidly about the reaction by
many lawmakers in the capital. >> every morning we wake up and he tweets something. mueller's going to finish his investigation. the truth is all going to come out. that's the best thing that could happen for the president and for the country. >> after that from senator rubio let us bring in our leadoff panel on a wednesday night. peter baker, jill colvin, john heilman and harry litman. former u.s. attorney, former assistant deputy attorney general under president clinton. peter, i'd like to begin with you. i'd like to read to you what sally yates wrote on social media. today our president called on our reduced attorney general as shocking as that is. what's more dangerous is we've gotten used to it. the rule of law won't evaporate overnight but it can slip away
if we let it. there we have the president's own words to judge him by. this is on him. this is one of those lessons we get to see if words have consequences. >> what is fascinating is how much this plays out in public out loud. what we see from the president's tweets is him saying what would have been a scandal has like president nixon been found to have said it privately in a taped session in the oval office. the tape that finally undid him in watergate was hearing him order his aides to tell the fry to layoff the watergate investigation. here you have the president saying on twitter the attorney general who reports to him should shut down the investigation directly. and it is in fact both surprising and yet not surprising. it's the kind of thing he's done for a year and a half. we have kind of as a society gotten accustomed to it to some extent. >> harry, i don't walk around quoting u.s. code. for god's sake i don't comment on that. particularly on this argument you started hearing from someone late today as twitter still seems to so many people as a medium. this could still be kind of slow rolling obstruction in plain
sight and the three words in the obstruction portion are if you're trying to influence, intimidate or impede an officer of the court. how is this not that? >> how is this not that? exactly right. and in some ways the notion of whether it's preparatory or a command almost doesn't matter although it's a very, very tenuous distinction. it's not only the president saying this but he's saying the same sentence right now. surely anyone who heard those words in the oval office would think he better remedy the situation or he's going to lose his job. but if what the president is trying to do in a mild way or a dictatorial way is shut down the investigation, i'll give you three other words which are obstruction of justice. it's the -- it's a real possibility and especially, brian, given the whole run of different tweets, all of which are admissible. he's really flirting with
the flurry of tweets. one confidante said that the president is, quote, in a dark place. the president has been furious. it's been building over the last couple of weeks. he was furious at the media the way that he felt that he was not given enough credit for the meeting with vladimir putin. putin was portrayed, he felt like he didn't get enough credit for meeting with kim jong-un in singapore. and you've got a president who feels the media is attacking him and the government is coming in and attacking him right now. you have in addition to the manafort trial on television, the president has been deeply shaken by the ongoing investigation of the audiotape and that set him off. the president is not in a good place. >> john heilman, what is it we're witnessing? >> we're witnessing a combination of the president acting out what we've seen over and over, this is an expression of his id. he's angry and afraid and he can see the walls closing in. i think he's somewhere close to panic right now, and that's part of what's going on. he still has some degree of political ability. if he wanted to fire rod rosestein, he'd do that. we don't know whether he's right about this. he thinks there's a political consequence on capitol hill. if he didn't think there was political consequences, if he thought they would all role over he would do it. he manifestly believes that he would like to be shut the suit down. so you've got the president still making political calculations, not going as far as what his -- i think his core wants him to do. at the same time the outlet of twitter, it really is, you know, bill clinton. can you imagine if bill clinton had walked up to the podium and
said, janet reno should fire ken starr. that would have provoked a cataclysmic scandal and a cataclysmic counter reduction, both democrats and republicans. the twit it's a heck of a me it's beneficial in other ways. it's the s ed 201 harry, are you a member of the club despite all of the great bylines. i may be a member. one confidante said that the president is, quote, in a dark place. the president has been furious. it's been building over the last couple of weeks. he was furious at the media the way that he felt that he was not given enough credit for the meeting with vladimir putin. putin was portrayed, he felt like he didn't get enough credit for meeting with kim jong-un in singapore. and you've got a president who feels the media is attacking him and the government is coming in and attacking him right now. you have in addition to the manafort trial on television, the president has been deeply shaken by the ongoing investigation of the audiotape and that set him off. the president is not in a good place. >> john heilman, what is it we're witnessing? >> we're witnessing a combination of the president acting out what we've seen over and over, this is an expression of his id. he's angry and afraid and he can see the walls closing in. i think he's somewhere close to panic right now, and that's part of what's going on. he still has some degree of political ability. if he wanted to fire rod rosestein, he'd do that.
we don't know whether he's right about this. he thinks there's a political consequence on capitol hill. if he didn't think there was political consequences, if he thought they would all role over he would do it. he manifestly believes that he would like to be shut the suit down. so you've got the president still making political calculations, not going as far as what his -- i think his core wants him to do. at the same time the outlet of twitter, it really is, you know, bill clinton.
can you imagine if bill clinton had walked up to the podium and said, janet reno should fire ken starr. that would have provoked a cataclysmic scandal and a cataclysmic counter reduction, both democrats and republicans. there are a lot of things about twitter. it's a heck of a medium in some ways. it's beneficial in other ways. it's the same thing that the op ed is in "the new york times" in 2018. >> those words are hanging out there.
harry, are you a member of the club despite all of the great bylines. i may be a member. you'll believe a mueller/trump meeting when you see it? >> in other words, i'll believe it when i see it like i don't think it's going to happen. i'm a long term card carrying member of that club. i think however much they pare it down, it will be questions if he answers them falsely he'll be subject to criminal charges. there will be questions did you know flynn was under investigation? we have new reports that shows he was. there are probably half a doze other thing that trump doesn't know and mueller does and, yeah, i don't see his sitting down with them under any circumstances where there's criminal penalty and i don't see mueller situation. we knew if we needed any help that the president's words were going to be impactful. the minute we learned how many news organizations got what the president meant to say, phone
calls afterwards, i know yours was among them. >> absolutely. they're trying to make the part, this is an opinion, not a command. that's because they understand there is a line. that's where they've drawn the line. he can express his opinion, they can say he wants to shut it down. there may be a moment he can change his mind. he's been convinced and fired rod rosenstein, firing bob mueller would create such a blow back against them? what he's trying to do is in effect continue to shape public opinion to make sure his base and maybe some other people believe this investigation isn't
legitimate. there isn't no reason to believe what might come out of it that might come out of this investigation and to prepare the ground with what will lay the groundwork when we hear about the investigation. >> jill colvin, we mentioned three whole news media briefings for the month of july from the white house. they are, i should point out 1-0 for august so far. we had one today. the president is about to go down for ten days. rush limbaugh was able to talk to him today. is the philosophy going to be friendly as preferred? >> i know that's been a problem. if they're trying to keep them into a standing press conference, go back and forth and make matters worse. i thought it was really
if he pulls over -- i can cut back to shave of my questions on obstruction of justice. i've already got this case basically made. it's not a position of weakness. >> does it get more highbrow than someone quoting review of "new york times" best seller books? i don't think so. thank you for helping us out. coming up for us, is the president's behavior a clue of what's to come. we ask a former fbi agent what he thinks and if there were problems that popped up at the rally last night? you are not alone. we will have the track fringe conspiracy grouch behind them. beneath the dome on a wednesday night. are you ready to take your wifi to the next level?
obstruction investigation. he can throw this morning's tweet on the pile. here with us to talk more about it, clint watts, former fbi special agent. his latest "messing with the enemy, surviving in a social media world, hackers. i have to ask you if you came across the type of behavior we're seeing from the nation's top executive in your old day job at the fbi, how would that alter your investigation? what would that do? >> it adds to the pile. it continues the time line. several interesting thing about this obstruction angle, hearing negotiation from the mueller team about taking written responses to questions and then sitting down for an interview. i'm sure -- >> it adds to the pile. it continues the time line. several interesting thing about this obstruction angle, hearing negotiation from the mueller team about taking written responses to questions and then sitting down for an interview. i'm sure --
>> isn't that just to get him in the door? >> it is. it can play very much to the president's disadvantage because strategically, he doesn't like to leave very much. he'll be working with -- so he's going to have to go in and understand and know what the state said, the president is at a huge disadvantage. he doesn't know everyone what mueller has talked to, what they have told him and what documents, texts, also match up to a time line. we've seen here on nbc news. well, comey when i got rid of him, it was because of the russia thing. these republicans are very damning. even not actually obstruction. it's the attempt to be struck in terms of how the investigation progresses. the mueller team probably has all of the data it needs to ask the questions, have the president come in, it's very difficult for the president to be consistent with the written statement and the bottom line. >> any acknowledgment by those
around the president that his tone isn't always that of an innocent man? >> reporter: absolutely. his lawyers, his legal advisors, you know, around a year ago when he first started building up the legal team really emphasized to him that you cannot be making public attacks against mueller or against this investigation. they were successful. last time trump would say no collusion and he pretty much tamped down in the personal attacks on mueller but that strategy he felt wasn't really working for him and there was a moment -- there was a particularly activist michael cohen raced and he had already been testing the water and the rhetoric. he had been told this investigation would be done by 2018 with his lawyers. he continues to see involvement from people in his administration and campaign. that was the moment he said, forget this. i'm going on full attack mode. rudy giuliani was brought in to be the public attack dog of the client. it is a major share we were when the latest advice. >> you wrote about the latest stage and looked at it in another way, it looks like
mueller is trying to say whatever you need to do to get the guy in here, get him in the door. >> that's typically how these negotiations work. >> yes. >> to the point the guests were making earlier, doesn't look like mueller is caving. mueller really knows the answer to a lot of his questions and the point clint was making, to some extent, the trump does know what the documents are out there. they know what the witnesses have said to some extent. mueller has more, many, many more pieces of this puzzle than the president's team does. he knows the answer. he wants to get those on record. around obstruction, one of the main ones was to determine the press's impact. >> they want to give us and that is typical for how things go. any of these sort of, you know, carefully core rio graphed negotiations. >> he's agreed to stick around and we're going to put his web training to use.
clint, our thanks for now and shannon, our thanks for coming on. coming up, incredibly expensive men's wear, wire homes. why are transfers from bank accounts in cypress. when the 11th hour continues. paul manafort enters tomorrow. prosecutors talked about how manafort made his money in the ukraine and how they contend he presented it to the united states. they have piles of evidence on how he paid for things largely through foreign bank transfers. we're guessing not a lot of members of our audience have paid for things through foreign bank transfers. the president who has sought to distance himself from his former chairman did weigh in today writing, quote, looking back on history who was treated worst, alfonse, killer or paul than ford. coming up, incredibly expensive men's wear, wire homes. why are transfers from bank accounts in cypress. when the 11th hour continues.
how he paid for things largely through foreign bank transfers. we're guessing not a lot of members of our audience have paid for things through foreign bank transfers. the president who has sought to distance himself from his former chairman did weigh in today writing, quote, looking back on history who was treated worst, alfonse, killer or paul than ford. darling now serving solitary confinement although convicted of nothing. where is the russia collusion. that's our president. here to talk about it, daniel goldman. and rachel is with us. i'm sorry for the long day this makes for. talk about what was presented today. the judge's theory that he's not allowing photographs to be displayed in court but he's going to allow the jury photos when they go off some day to deliberate.
>> that's in part because he wants the trying to move quickly. he's been adamant and they're able to move. they were supposed to take three weeks and the government says they will fin next week. you might not want a person knowing how much media coverage this case is getting, but it seems like he might not let them show the jury. in the end they came in, they came in at the end of the day but they did get pictures of the $650,000 ostrich jacket and i think an $18,500 python jacket and all sorts of other very expensive suits. >> man likes jackets. counselor, a couple of questions for you. first of all, this is a nonsee questered jury. the president is tweeting about the defendant in a way that they can all see proclaiming his innocence. where do we find that?
what do we do with that? the judge will inspect the jury. do not read about the case. do not watch television about the case. this is a different world where we're dealing with twitter. i don't know if the judge has instructed the jury not to read twitter but that's what they need to do. we're not see questered like the simpson trial, for example, but they have obstructed the two not to read any newspapers. >> we have to interrupt our conversation to ask rachel, have you heard such a charge from the judge? >> no. i'm not sure he knows what twitter is. at 78 he will admit it. he always says i would say don't look it up in an encyclopedia, but i'm the only person who does that. don't look it up online. assuming they hold to that, they haven't heard the trump tweets. you could be in a coffee shot and it might come across your
vision. >> dan, we did hear he gave the government roles a couple of brush back pitches, shim movement. they keep showing the lavish lifestyle. you can over play that hand. >> not a time to be a rich guy, but you have to understand the context of this. it's not just that he lived a lavish lifestyle although that is sort of his motive, particularly when the money dried up after he stopped working for kovich in 2014, that he wanted to continue this lavish lifestyle. you also have to be able to show in a tax fraud case that what you declared for your income tax is less than what you actually earned. one way to do that is to show what we call in prosecutor world, unexplained wealth. how can you be playing out $6 million in cash, if, for example, you only declared that you made 1 million. it is very relevant evidence. i think what the judge is getting frustrated with is don't try to over sell it. that's not really what's relevant. what's relevant be is the money
not the photograph. so he's trying to stretch that and keep things moving. >> rachel, what were the hints that rick gates, star witness, former manafort assistant, may not end up taking the stand? >> so one of the prosecutors did say gates may or may not testify. obviously that caused a lot of commotion. but i think there's not much to it. always prosecutors when told not to put in some evidence because a later witness will testify to it will say, well, we haven't -- we're not sure that person will testify so we should put it in now to make sure they can account for any possibility, you know, whatever might happen to rick gates. i think he was doing that the way prosecutors do and he did sort of immediately walk it back and saying particularly that's true of any witness. it would be shocking if rick gates didn't testify. he is a key witness in this case. >> yes. >> and the defense is planning
to blame everything on rick gates but i'm sure prosecutors were preparing for that. >> counselor, i have time for a yes or no? >> yes, but -- i gave you a one word answer. the prosecution did not include gates very prominently in the opening statements. that would indicate they would always prosecutors when told not to put in some evidence because a later witness will testify to it will say, well, we haven't -- we're not sure that person will testify so we should put it in now to make sure they can account for any possibility, you know, whatever might happen to rick gates. i think he was doing that the way prosecutors do and he did sort of immediately walk it back and saying particularly that's true of any witness. it would be shocking if rick gates didn't testify. he is a key witness in this case. >> yes. >> and the defense is planning to blame everything on rick gates but i'm sure prosecutors were preparing for that. >> counselor, i have time for a yes or no?
>> yes, but -- i gave you a one word answer. the prosecution did not include gates very prominently in the opening statements. that would indicate they would certainly be calling him. the fact that they didn't is interesting. they didn't try the case with gates as a witness. >> great thanks to our two guests. terrific segment. daniel and rachel, thank you both very much. coming up, you may have seen them displaying the letter q. they are a conspiracy group willing to believe, say, perpetuate just about anything. their story when we come back. (man) managing my type 2 diabetes wasn't my top priority. until i held her. i found my tresiba® reason. now i'm doing more to lower my a1c. i take tresiba® once a day. tresiba® controls blood sugar for 24 hours for powerful a1c reduction.
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they got their start on the web. they received intel from the top of the government. there is no end to false rumors they pushed including a smear effort on youtube alleging several hollywood celebrities. they believe the mueller investigation is about obama and clinton and trump is made to appeal more as the cover. it goes on from there. a local news crew interviewed a q conspiricist at the trump event. >> qanon stormed the great awakening. he said, this is the calm before the storm. that launched us into the q being military intelligence. talking to all of us. letting us know what's going on behind the scenes, letting us know the covert battle. >> what can you do?
>> spread it. combat the mainstream media. we're fighting a battle on all fronts. >> there is a q coin. here is the comment from trump that gave this group a lot of fuel. a photo op during a white house dinner for military commanders and their spouses. note what the president says here which would normally be filed during the toss off work. >> what's your thoughts? >> talk. it's a storm. >> what's the storm? >> military people, i will tell you that. >> what storm, mr. president? >> you'll find out. thank you, everybody. >> calm before the storm. nbc news reporter ben cohen covers this and has been looking into the group and writing about them. we've asked clint watts, former fbi agent to stick around. ben, i guess their motives and beliefs, what else should we know about them? >> unfortunately, you got it all right. there's not much to know. this is a conspiracy theory that donald trump is doing everything right. anything that looks like he's
>> military people, i will tell you that. >> what storm, mr. president? >> you'll find out. thank you, everybody. >> calm before the storm. nbc news reporter ben cohen covers this and has been looking into the group and writing about them. we've asked clint watts, former fbi agent to stick around. ben, i guess their motives and beliefs, what else should we know about them? >> unfortunately, you got it all right. there's not much to know. this is a conspiracy theory that donald trump is doing everything right. anything that looks like he's doing it wrong is the right thing. they've misconstrued typos to make it look like he's in on it. at the end of the day this is a situation where people on the internet can't grapple with the
reality of the situation. it's to take out all of the disinformation. that's what you see here, they've accused people from celebrities to politicians of a sex ring. it's pizza gate. it's amped up with the help of people on twitter, reddit and facebook. >> you do your work as we do ours in a free society where it's hard to limit this kind of thing. it's hard to squelch or suppress it. look at the climate this is coming up in. >> right. going back two years ago we saw the kremlin pushing a lot of disinformation around the election. what we're seeing now is a lot of high end production.
the videos are very good which makes them more convincing. you're seeing them spread very rapidly. the key phrase there, the calm before the storm. what you can do if you're a good social engineer and you can pick out the phrases and combine them into a conspiracy it seems more convincing to people who don't really know the details. i'm not so much worried about russian disinformation, i'm worried about american disinformation. it's a public safety issue. we've seen people show up with shutdowns, if you look at it it has all of the elements of what would be an uprising. so i think it's a really dangerous phenomenon especially when you see it tied to the president and his rally. >> in the immortal words, it's all fun and games until something goes wrong. >> we've already seen it with the pizza gate. a man walks into a pizza parlor
and shot it up assuming there was a child sex ring in the basement. there's a guy who blocked the entrance to whoever dam. since he's gotten into jail he's sent a bunch of wild letters to the president. there's a guy in arizona who has for the past few weeks, he has a felony trespassing charge because he believes that a homeless camp -- he was live streaming it on youtube and facebook until they brought it down. this has real life consequences and it's happening all the time now. the people putting up q signs at trump rallies is not going to help it. >> clint, how much do you fear this group is getting a wink and a nod from the right people to not stop and what can the government do in a free society? >> part of the reason why this works is we asked politicians
that we see foreign media influence. we had a meeting in the senate. the intelligence committee was talking about the media and disinformation. they can make manipulated truths. they can do that faster than they can identify them and swap them down. in that lag time we have lots of changes happening. one in four don't think they should have their children back united. four in ten don't actually think it's a bad idea for russia maybe to medal in our election. >> this is like breaking something and dividing it. those people with sophisticated technology that can mine and grab an audience and can slickly produce content can drive major events, political, public safety. you can get people to show up with rifles. this is a dangerous situation
and if our politicians are not tamping it down or not saying much or are letting it go, it could be really devastating to our country in the long run. >> in this world we've seen people can show up with guns they've compiled on a 3-d printer. the president has a rally in ohio. we will watch for this and see who turns out in both cases. we'd love to have you gentlemen both on again on this subject if you'd agree to that. thank you so much for coming on. disturbing topic. appreciate it. much more ahead on the 11th hour when we come right back. we are back just quickly with some reminders for you, especially our friends who time shift our broadcast. you can watch us any time you please by downloading the msnbc app. right there on your phone. you can listen live each night
with some reminders for you, especially our friends who time shift our broadcast. you can watch us any time you please by downloading the msnbc app. right there on your phone. you can listen live each night on sirius xm satellite radio. we're also available as a podcast. completely portable. really no reason why you'd ever have to miss a single broadcast of the 11th hour. another break. when we come back, how it is that richard nixon got caught up in the name of this broadcast just today.
broadcast and truth be told of this broadcaster. he's one of the great presidential historians and authors of this time. michael's twitter feed does not disappoint. just in the last few days he has given us richard nixon jumping off a limo, mid town manhattan 1956, general ford's cue card from when he took the oath of office and an early selfie taken by young jackie kennedy. but then today there was this from michael and we couldn't help but notice this it said the 11th hour from this week back in 1974. indeed, for richard nixon it was the proverbial 11th hour as articles of impeachment were marching towards him. nixon announced his resignation august 8th. he remains the only president ever to do so. michael remains one of the great sources of history on social
Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
already several witnesses in on just day two. all of it as the 11th hour gets underway on a wednesday night. good evening from our nbc news headquarters in new york. this was one more in a string of extraordinary days in our country. because this was what we woke up to from the president of the united states. quote, attorney general jeff sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt right now before it continues to stain our country even further. perhaps just as extraordinary, nothing happened after that. it was wednesday in america and tonight robert mueller and his team remain on the job. the negotiations for a possible sitdown interview between robert mueller and president trump. we report on the latest offer
from the special counsel writing that mueller, quote, indicated this week that he's willing to reduce the number of questions his investigation asks. according to two people briefed on the negotiations. in a letter sent monday mueller's team suggested that investigators would reduce by nearly half the number of questions they would ask about potential obstruction of justice. two people said it's unclear which topic or topics would be left out. michael schmidt and maggie haberman wasted no time. they wrote, quote, president trump pushed his lawyers in recent days to try once again to reach an agreement with the special counsel's office flouting their advice that he should not answer investigators' questions. mr. trump has told advisors he's eager to meet with investigators to clear himself of wrongdoing.
in effect, he believes he can convince the investigators for the special counsel, robert s. mueller, that this is a wish hunt. >> he's always been interested in testifying but it's us, including me, that have a lot of reservations. they sent us a proposal. we responded to their proposal. they took ten days and we got it back and now we're in the process of responding to their proposal. >> again, all of this comes as the president escalated his attack on the russia investigation. here's what he said in this particular tweet, this is a terrible situation and attorney general jeff sessions should stop this rigged wish hunt right now before he stains the country any further.
this whole obstruction thing is nonsense. if he wanted to obstruct it, he would have obstructed it. he has a right to defend himself. if he believes he's innocent, he is innocent, he should speak out. >> white house also moved quickly to frame trump's words as nothing more than his own personal view. >> it's not an order. it's the president's opinion. the president is not obstructing, he's fighting back. the president is stating his opinion. he's stating it clearly. he's certainly expressing a frustration that he has with the level of corruption that we've seen from people like jim comey, the president's angry. frankly, most of america is angry as well and there's no reason he shouldn't be able to voice that opinion. >> but remember what the white house once told us about how we should regard what this president says on twitter. >> are president trump's tweets considered official white house statements? >> well, the president is the president of the united states
so they're considered official statements by the president. >> he's willing to speak candidly about the reaction by many lawmakers in the capital. >> every morning we wake up and he tweets something. mueller's going to finish his investigation. the truth is all going to come out. that's the best thing that could happen for the president and for the country. >> after that from senator rubio let us bring in our leadoff panel on a wednesday night. peter baker, jill colvin, john high heilman and harry litman. former u.s. attorney, former assistant deputy attorney general under president clinton. peter, i'd like to begin with you. i'd like to read to you what sally yates wrote on social media. today our president called on our reduced attorney general as shocking as that is. what's more dangerous is we've
gotten used to it. the rule of law won't evaporate overnight but it can slip away if we let it. there we have the president's own words to judge him by. this is on him. this is one of those lessons we get to see if words have consequences. >> what is fascinating is how much this plays out in public out loud. what we see from the president's tweets is him saying what would have been a scandal has like president nixon been found to have said it privately in a taped session in the oval office. the tape that finally undid him in watergate was hearing him order his aides to tell the fry to layoff the watergate investigation. here you have the president saying on twitter the attorney general who reports to him should shut down the investigation directly. and it is in fact both surprising and yet not
surprisi surprising. it's the kind of thing he's done for a year and a half. we have kind of as a society gotten accustomed to it to some extent. >> harry, i don't walk around quoting u.s. code. for god's sake i don't comment on that. particularly on this argument you started hearing from someone late today as twitter still seems to so many people as a medium. this could still be kind of slow rolling obstruction in plain sight and the three words in the obstruction portion are if you're trying to influence, intimidate or impede an officer of the court. how is this not that? >> how is this not that? exactly right. and in some ways the notion of whether it's preparatory or a command almost doesn't matter although it's a very, very tenuous distinction.
saying, would you look at this? >> not only -- and they didn't just jump to it this morning. i mean, they've been looking at the tweet carefully all the way through. the whole kind of pattern of tweets where he goes back and forth and seems to be dancing around the notion of the two other words from the statute, corrupt intent. we're going to put these altogether and see if we can make a case for his wanting to close it down basically to protect himself, the white house and his family. no doubt just like any other statement it's sort of silly to say it's on twitter or white house stationery. it's a statement from the president of the united states and it's admissible and they are analyzing it. >> jill colvin, tell us what you and your colleagues are reporting about this president and the atmospherics.
>> the confidence of this president, he is definitely not happy right now. the president was watching television, watching coverage of the beginning of the trial of paul manafort this morning. we're told that's what sparked the flurry of tweets. one confidante said that the president is, quote, in a dark place. the president has been furious. it's been building over the last couple of weeks. he was furious at the media the way that he felt that he was not given enough credit for the meeting with vladimir putin. putin was portrayed, he felt like he didn't get enough credit for meeting with kim jong-un in singapore. and you've got a president who feels the media is attacking him and the government is coming in and attacking him right now. you have in addition to the
both democrats and republicans. there are a lot of things about twitter. it's a heck of a medium in some ways. it's beneficial in other ways. it's the same thing that the op ed is in "the new york times" in 2018. >> those words are hanging out there. harry, are you a member of the club despite all of the great bylines. i may be a member. you'll believe a mueller/trump meeting when you see it? >> in other words, i'll believe it when i see it like i don't think it's going to happen. i'm a long term card carrying member of that club. i think however much they pare it down, it will be questions if he answers them falsely he'll be subject to criminal charges. there will be questions did you know flynn was under investigation?
we have new reports that shows he was. there are probably half a doze other thing that trump doesn't know and mueller does and, yeah, i don't see his sitting down with them under any circumstances where there's criminal penalty and i don't see mueller situation. we knew if we needed any help that the president's words were going to be impactful. the minute we learned how many news organizations got what the president meant to say, phone calls afterwards, i know yours was among them. >> absolutely. they're trying to make the part, this is an opinion, not a command. that's because they understand there is a line. that's where they've drawn the line. he can express his opinion, they can say he wants to shut it down. there may be a moment he can change his mind. he's been convinced and fired
rod rosenstein, firing bob mueller would create such a blow back against them? what he's trying to do is in effect continue to shape public opinion to make sure his base and maybe some other people believe this investigation isn't legitimate. there isn't no reason to believe what might come out of it that might come out of this investigation and to prepare the ground with what will lay the groundwork when we hear about the investigation. >> jill colvin, we mentioned three whole news media briefings for the month of july from the white house. they are, i should point out 1-0 for august so far. we had one today. the president is about to go down for ten days. rush limbaugh was able to talk to him today. is the philosophy going to be
acknowledgment, deep dark in the west wing or in the residence don't that he'd like to take that back today? >> i don't know on his part. in the residence? probably not. a lot of people in the building wish he wouldn't have done what he did. when you get back to the situation with mueller and the interview, i think a lot of people are going to interpret it in a somewhat panicked the way. the notion that he's giving ground. to me it indicates a position of strength that he -- when you look at this new reporting. if it's true that mueller has already talked to -- we know he has talked to previously mcbegan and they have already testified to him that, yes, trump has been presented with a time line and evidence of the fact that the fbi was investigating flynn before he had his conversation with comey telling comey to layoff. there's memos, documentation
president's words, just days ago the times reported that mueller is examining all the president has said about jeff sessions as part of his wide-ranging obstruction investigation. he can throw this morning's tweet on the pile. here with us to talk more about it, clint watts, former fbi special agent. his latest "messing with the enemy, surviving in a social media world, hack eers. i have to ask you if you came across the type of behavior we're seeing from the nation's top executive in your old day job at the fbi, how would that alter your investigation? what would that do? >> it adds to the pile. it continues the time line. several interesting thing about this obstruction angle, hearing negotiation from the mueller team about taking written
responses to questions and then sitting down for an interview. i'm sure -- >> isn't that just to get him in the door? >> it is. it can play very much to the president's disadvantage because strategically, he doesn't like to leave very much. he'll be working with -- so he's going to have to go in and understand and know what the state said, the president is at a huge disadvantage. he doesn't know everyone what mueller has talked to, what they have told him and what documents, texts, also match up to a time line. we've seen here on nbc news. well, comey when i got rid of him, it was because of the russia thing. these republicans are very damning. even dpe not actually obstruction. it's the attempt to be struck in
terms of how the investigation progresses. the mueller team probably has all of the data it needs to ask the questions, have the president come in, it's very difficult for the president to be consistent with the written statement and the bottom line. >> any acknowledgment by those around the president that his tone isn't always that of an innocent man? >> reporter: absolutely. his lawyers, his legal advisors, you know, around a year ago when he first started building up the legal team really emphasized to him that you cannot be making public attacks against mueller or against this investigation. they were successful. last time trump would say no collusion and he pretty much tamped down in the personal attacks on mueller but that strategy he felt wasn't really working for him and there was a
moment -- there was a particularly activist michael could he heen raced and he had already been intesting the water and the rhetoric. he had been told this investigation would be done by 2018 with his lawyers. he continues to see voompt from people in his administration and campaign. that was the moment he said, forget this. i'm going on full attack mode. rudy giuliani was brought in to be the public attack dog of the client. it is a major share we were when the latest advice. >> you wrote about the latest stage and looked at it in another way, it looks like mueller is trying to say
whatever you need to do to get the guy in here, get him in the door. >> that's typically how these negotiations work. >> yes. >> to the point the guests were making earlier, doesn't look like mueller is caving. mueller really knows the answer to a lot of his questions and the point clint was making, to some extent, the trump does know what the documents are out there. they know what the witnesses have said to some extent. mueller has more, many, many more pieces of this puzzle than the president's team does. he knows the answer. he wants to get those on record. around obstruction, one of the main ones was to determine the press's impact. >> they want to give us and that is typical for how things go. any of these sort of, you know, carefully core rio graphed negotiations. >> he's agreed to stick around and we're going to put his web
training to use. clint, our thanks for now and shannon, our thanks for coming on. coming up, incredibly expensive men's wear, wire homes. why are transfers from bank accounts in cypress. when the 11th hour continues.
friel much paul manafort enters tomorrow. prosecutors talked about how manafort made his money in the u skran and how they contend he presented it to the united states. they have piles of evidence on how he paid for things largely through foreign bank transfers. we're guessing not a lot of members of our audience have paid for things through foreign bank transfers. the president who has sought to distance himself from his former chairman did weigh in today writing, quote, looking back on history who was treated worst, alfonse, killer or paul than ford. darling now serving solitary confinement although convicted of nothing. where is the russia collusion. that's our president. here to talk about it, daniel goldman.
and rachel is with us. i'm sorry for the long day this makes for. talk about what was presented today. the judge's theory that he's not allowing photographs to be displayed in court but he's going to allow the jury photos when they go off some day to deliberate. >> that's in part because he wants the trying to move quickly. he's been adamant and they're able to move. they were supposed to take three weeks and the government says they will fin next week. you might not want a person knowing how much media coverage this case is getting, but it seems like he might not let them show the jury. in the end they came in, they came in at the end of the day but they did get pictures of the $650,000 ostrich jacket and i think an $18,500 python jacket and all sorts of other very
expensive suits. >> man likes jackets. counselor, a couple of questions for you. first of all, this is a nonsee questered jury. the president is tweeting about the defendant in a way that they can all see proclaiming his innocence. where do we find that? what do we do with that? the judge will inspect the jury. do not read about the case. do not watch television about the case. this is a different world where we're dealing with twitter. i don't know if the judge has instructed the jury not to read twitter but that's what they need to do. we're not see questered like the simpson trial, for example, but they have obstructed the two not to read any newspapers. >> we have to interrupt our conversation to ask rachel, have you heard such a charge from the judge?
>> no. i'm not sure he knows what twitter is. at 78 he will admit it. he always says i would say don't look it up in an encyclopedia, but i'm the only person who does that. don't look it up online. assuming they hold to that, they haven't heard the trump tweets. you could be in a coffee shot and it might come across your vision. >> dan, we did hear he gave the government roles a couple of brush back pitches, shim movement. they keep showing the lavish lifestyle. you can over play that hand. >> not a time to be a rich guy, but you have to understand the
context of this. it's not just that he lived a lavish lifestyle although that is sort of his motive, particularly when the money dried up after he stopped working for kovich in 2014, that he wanted to continue this lavish lifestyle. you also have to be able to show in a tax fraud case that what you declared for your income tax is less than what you actually earned. one way to do that is to show what we call in prosecutor world, unexplained wealth. how can you be playing out $6 million in cash, if, for example, you only declared that you made 1 million. it is very relevant evidence. i think what the judge is getting frustrated with is don't try to over sell it. that's not really what's relevant. what's relevant be is the money not the photograph. so he's trying to stretch that and keep things moving. >> rachel, what were the hints
that rick gates, star witness, former manafort assistant, may not end up taking the stand? >> so one of the prosecutors did say gates may or may not testify. obviously that caused a lot of commotion. but i think there's not much to it. always prosecutors when told not to put in some evidence because a later witness will testify to it will say, well, we haven't -- we're not sure that person will testify so we should put it in now to make sure they can account for any possibility, you know, whatever might happen to rick gates. i think he was doing that the way prosecutors do and he did sort of immediately walk it back and saying particularly that's true of any witness.
it would be shocking if rick gates didn't testify. he is a key witness in this case. >> yes. >> and the defense is planning to blame everything on rick gates but i'm sure prosecutors were preparing for that. >> counselor, i have time for a yes or no? >> yes, but -- i gave you a one word answer. the prosecution did not include gates very prominently in the opening statements. that would indicate they would certainly be calling him. the fact that they didn't is interesting. they didn't try the case with gates as a witness. >> great thanks to our two guests. terrific segment. daniel and rachel, thank you both very much. coming up, you may have seen them displaying the letter q. they are a conspiracy group willing to believe, say,
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q con spspiricist at the trump event. >> qanon stormed the great awakening. he said, this is the calm before the storm. that launched us into the q being military intelligence. talking to all of us. letting us know what's going on behind the scenes, letting us know the covert battle. >> what can you do? >> spread it. combat the mainstream media. we're fighting a battle on all fronts. >> there is a q coin. here is the comment from trump that gave this group a lot of fuel. a photo op during a white house dinner for military commanders and their spouses. note what the president says here which would normally be
filed during the toss off work. >> what's your thoughts? >> talk. it's a storm. >> what's the storm? >> military people, i will tell you that. >> what storm, mr. president? >> you'll find out. thank you, everybody. >> calm before the storm. nbc news reporter ben cohen covers this and has been looking into the group and writing about them. we've asked clint watts, former fbi agent to stick around. ben, i guess their motives and beliefs, what else should we know about them? >> unfortunately, you got it all right.
there's not much to know. this is a conspiracy theory that donald trump is doing everything right. anything that looks like he's doing it wrong is the right thing. they've misconstrued typos to make it look like he's in on it. at the end of the day this is a situation where people on the internet can't grapple with the reality of the situation. it's to take out all of the disinformation. that's what you see here, they've accused people from celebrities to politicians of a sex ring. it's pizza gate. it's amped up with the help of people on twitter, reddit and facebook. >> you do your work as we do ours in a free society where it's hard to limit this kind of thing. it's hard to squelch or suppress it. look at the climate this is coming up in. >> right. going back two years ago we saw
the kremlin pushing a lot of disinformation around the election. what we're seeing now is a lot of high end production. the videos are very good which makes them more convincing. you're seeing them spread very rapidly. the key phrase there, the calm before the storm. what you can do if you're a good social engineer and you can pick out the phrases and combine them into a conspiracy it seems more convincing to people who don't really know the details. i'm not so much worried about russian disinformation, i'm worried about american disinformation. it's a public safety issue. we've seen people show up with shutdowns, if you look at it it has all of the elements of what would be an uprising. so i think it's a really
dangerous phenomenon especially when you see it tied to the president and his rally. >> in the immortal words, it's all fun and games until something goes wrong. >> we've already seen it with the pizza gate. a man walks into a pizza parlor and shot it up assuming there was a child sex ring in the basement. there's a guy who blocked the entrance to whoever dam. since he's gotten into jail he's sent a bunch of wild letters to the president. there's a guy in arizona who has for the past few weeks, he has a felony trespassing charge because he believes that a homeless camp -- he was live streaming it on youtube and facebook until they brought it down. this has real life consequences
and it's happening all the time now. the people putting up q signs at trump rallies is not going to help it. >> clint, how much do you fear this group is getting a wink and a nod from the right people to not stop and what can the government do in a free society? >> part of the reason why this works is we asked politicians that we see foreign media influence. we had a meeting in the senate. the intelligence committee was talking about the media and disinformation. they can make manipulated truths. they can do that faster than they can identify them and swap them down. in that lag time we have lots of changes happening. one in four don't think they should have their children back united. four in ten don't actually think
it's a bad idea for russia maybe to medal in our election. >> this is like breaking something and dividing it. those people with sophisticated technology that can mine and grab an audience and can slickly produce content can drive major events, political, public safety. you can get people to show up with rifles. this is a dangerous situation and if our politicians are not tamping it down or not saying much or are letting it go, it could be really devastating to our country in the long run. >> in this world we've seen people can show up with guns they've compiled on a 3-d printer. the president has a rally in ohio. we will watch for this and see who turns out in both cases. we'd love to have you gentlemen both on again on this subject if
you'd agree to that. thank you so much for coming on. disturbing topic. appreciate it. much more ahead on the 11th hour when we come right back.
hateful. when you come across an indispensable twitter account it can be so useful and refreshing. that's where michael beschloss comes in. he is a long time friend of this broadcast and truth be told of this broadcaster. he's one of the great presidential historians and authors of this time. michael's twitter feed does not disappoint. just in the last few days he has given us richard nixon jumping off a limo, mid town manhattan 1956, general ford's cue card from when he took the oath of office and an early selfie taken by young jackie kennedy. but then today there was this from michael and we couldn't help but notice this it said the 11th hour from this week back in 1974. indeed, for richard nixon it was the proverbial 11th hour as
place. they found a man dead in the road on another street and the incident where police say a van drove into three people on the road, leaving them injured. at this stage, it is unclear what condition those three people are in. we know they were run over by a van. at the moment, we have not heard anything on camera from nottinghamshire police. we have had a statement which came from the chief constable. in that statement she said it was an horrific and tragic incident claiming the lives of the people. we believe these incidents are linked and we have a man in custody. this investigation is at early stages and detectives are working to establish what has happened. we ask the public to be patient while inquiries continue. a number of rows in the city will remain closed as the investigation progresses. we have
have been —— fire engines that have been deployed. i think the crucial thing to point out from the police statement is their investigations continue. this is very much what we are looking at, and active crime scene. a31—year—old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder. three people have died in with these incidents. three other people are in hospital. it is not clear what condition they are in. these are areas that are normally busy. we are getting close to lunchtime there. the area around the market square usually packed with people but at the moment it is still cordoned off and the chief constable earlier said she is asking the public to be patient while inquiries continue. she said at this time, a number of rows in the city will remain closed as the investigation progresses. it
there is a man in custody. this investigation is that the early stages. it says crucially a number of roads in the city will remain closed as this investigation progresses. just to recap, i have been reading this as we go along, police in nottingham say there have been three separate incidents, one man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after three people were killed in the city and another incident which was linked to the first one was in milton street where a van attempted to run over three people, those three people are currently in hospital, we don't know which hospital in the city, and the third incident, just to be clear, with some magdala road where a man was also found dead —— was on
there is a man in custody. this investigation is that the early stages. it says crucially a number of roads in the city will remain closed as this investigation progresses. just to recap, i have been reading this as we go along, police in nottingham say there have been three separate incidents, one man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after three people were killed in the city and another incident which was linked to the first one was in milton street where a van attempted to run over three people, those three people are currently in hospital, we don't know which hospital in the city, and the third incident, just to be clear, with some magdala road where a man was also found dead —— was on
which she said this is an horrific and tragic incident which has claimed the lives of three people. we believe these three incidents are all linked and we have a man in custody. this investigation is at its early stages and a team of detectives is working to establish exactly what happened. she asks the public to be patient while the inquiries continue but she said a number of roads in nottingham city will remain closed as the investigation progresses. it is unclear from that statement is whether the roads remain cordoned because the investigation is continuing, or whether there is any threat that persists, although police have cause have said they have arrested a man over these three separate incidents, a 31—year—old man who has been arrested on suspicion of murder and who remains
which she said this is an horrific and tragic incident which has claimed the lives of three people. we believe these three incidents are all linked and we have a man in custody. this investigation is at its early stages and a team of detectives is working to establish exactly what happened. she asks the public to be patient while the inquiries continue but she said a number of roads in nottingham city will remain closed as the investigation progresses. it is unclear from that statement is whether the roads remain cordoned because the investigation is continuing, or whether there is any threat that persists, although police have cause have said they have arrested a man over these three separate incidents, a 31—year—old man who has been arrested on suspicion of murder and who remains