he was there at that june 9th meeting. he s the person who came to the party through roger stone. roger stone is the person that talked to the hacker. donald trump is concerned. yeah. and, nick, we remember just up until president trump how presidents of the united states have always been ultra careful about ever commenting on a criminal investigation, pending any criminal case and richard nixon got in trouble by the understandable stumble in suggesting that charles manson was guilty before charles manson was found guilty and nixon realize whad a horrible mistake that was. that s how rare this is. jason johnson, i want to read you more of what the president has said to the new york times tonight. why he calls the fake news failing the new york times to tell them what he s thinking i do not know. anyone here who wants to offer an explanation of that, please do. but tonight he told the times, i m in the office early and leave late. it s very smooth, trump said.
is coming after, hard, jared kushner, so really what s going on? i think what you re seeing here is the impact of monday. monday was a shock and awe moment by robert mueller against this white house and it had its desired effect. these indictments against gates and manafort were much more sweeping and detailed and powerful than even those of us following the case closely expected. when the white house was saying hey this is not about collusion, this was in the past, they dropped the papadopoulos plea, which goes to the heart of collusi collusion, suggesting they may have been cooperating. this has got to be a stunning moment for this white house. in terms of trump rage though, think back to when president trump talked to the new york times over the summer and he specifically said if robert mueller goes into my or my family s finances, that s my re red line. when you looked at the level of detail mueller went into when it comes to paul manafort, the eight pages, walking through yo
of a defense, it s not well it doesn t suit the case well for the highest ranking person in the united states to say give him the death penalty. that is going to come into play. he s going to listen to those words again if that s the kind of defense they re going to launch for this individual. it s just not helpful to call him names, to say that he should get the death penalty. just be empathetic toward the people that were hurt, and gather the country together rather than saying something like this. it s not helpful. is it a jury issue at all, bill? is it possibly prejudicial to the people who may end up on a jury? is that a concern? certainly. if, in fact, a defense counsel presents, this is a mental capacity is kmini diminished, ad even the president of the united states said he should be
thread is the sort of broader politics of donald trump. the ethnocentric nationalism. he didn t react this way when a white person shot dozens of people in las vegas. he did not come and say, we have to do an immediate policy change. we need to give this guy the death penalty. he did not call for this after charlottesville when the criminal here did the exact same thing as the person in this case, driving a vehicle into a crowd. you step back from all of this and you view it in the context of his broader political appeal, it s not surprising at all. exactly. you shouldn t be surprised. norm after norm after norm. i thought we had progressed a little bit. we ve just been set back. this is who he is as steve said. he s improvisational as eli said. he is obsessed with projecting this image of strength. now people who are obsessed with projecting an image of strength
question yesterday, is this response to the attack a norm that was violated but that his supporters would love or is this one where he s actually jeopardized the case? i think it s both. and i think when you look at what he s doing there is a consistency in his response to these kind of situations. to terrorism when the terrorism appears to be carried out by somebody who is from an arab country, muslim country, not from the united states. this is the rhetoric we heard all throughout the campaign. the blood thirst. the aggression. the retribution. those are things his supporters really like. now that he s president, it is problematic. as pete pointed out. the fact these are subtle legalities, basically tells you that this never once occurred to the president because he was just answering a question. and everything is done kind of rapid fire in the moment, just read and react. that s all improvisational. but it does the unifying