Kate Bolduan gives a fresh take on todays top stories. Letting him ask about obstruction but doing so in written answers and limiting inperson questions to questions that dealt with things that events that happened before President Trump was inaugurated, focus on the potential collusion questions and nothing about obstruction of justice. All of these debates over whether they will sit down are going on while giuliani is saying President Trump does want to sit down with him, he is expressing interest. Its the legal team that has the reservations about that. This is happening while the president is continuing to lash out at the Special Counsel. Thats because the president believes he can sway Public Opinion to agree with him that this is a witch hunt and be on board this investigation has gone on too long, that its a witch hunt. Whether or not that pans out is up to the president s twitter feed and whether he can convince his supporters. Stand by to stand by. Great to see you. Thank you
Alex Witt hosts coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Two items, the Collusion Case and the obstruction case. What would the president consider sitting down two with the approval of his attorneys . How much has this conversation evolved . Well, i think we have to take everything Rudy Giuliani says with a grain of salgt. And when were only hearing about these conversations from him, it is very unclear to me how accurate he is in relaying those conversations. But if it is true that giuliani is considering a response to mueller and that they are continuing to negotiate about this interview, it surprises me a little bit. Mueller has the carrot of a subpoena. And i think most legal experts including me believe that if this were to go all the way to the supreme court, that donald trump would have to sit for testimony in front the grand jury. But what it tells me is two things potentially. One is i think bob mueller doesnt want a fight. He doesnt want the li
actors. of course the first amendment does not protect you from private businesses, it protects you from the government. and we have a story up on axios right now saying that scholars telling us that these trump lawsuits against the social media platforms and their ceos are doomed. and we have a quote in there that says, yes, social media companies are powerful but they ain t the government. no. mike allen of axios, thank you so much. thank you. it s always great seeing you, talking to you. hope to see you again soon. mika, mike is so right. it s been humorous. i say humorous. it s been funny to watch these phony populist, the harvard, stanford, yale boys, and you name it, these ivy league schoolboys that are supposed to be so smart talking about facebook and twitter like they
announcer: axios one big thing is sponsored by bp. all right, joining us now from washington, d.c., the look at axios a.m., the cofounder mr. mike allen. great to have you with us on this tuesday morning. what is the axios big thing? the axios one big thing is the paid race for 2020. so 90 days till the iowa caucus. today one year to the year election. and axios has exclusive figures about ad spending so far in the presidential race. here s the surprise. this race is being fought online like we ve never seen before. all the time that i was covering politics it was all about the airwaves. but look at this. 57% of spending so far has been
talk to us about that. yeah, d.c. needed a new business, right? so this new shadow industry is trying to help companies gain the system to get exempted from president trump s tariffs. so these tariffs on goods imported from china already cost businesses billions. ceos warning they re going to have to pass it along. but you can apply to the u.s. trade representative, had is part of the white house, to get exempted. so far 44,000 people have axios courtney brown spent weeks going through this data and discovered that only 10% of people were getting those exemptions. so much money s at stake. you hire lawyers, there s new firms specializing in trying to get you exemptions. but a spoiler, it doesn t necessarily work. this process is so opaque people really aren t sure if that money s well spent. live in washington, d.c. for us, mike allen from axios a.m. we re going to be reading axios