fit with the team. my understanding is they are not looking for a new lead to deal with the special counsel's office or that investigation. but that he basically would be playing the role of someone doing day to day, essentially picking up some of the duties that the white house counsel typically fills. the problem is in this case the existing white house counsel, the current one, don mcgahn, is a witness in the special counsel probe, and that has limited a lot of what he can do in terms of his interactions with the justice department, in terms of his interactions with the president. so the idea would be to have somebody who could do that. flood is a pretty heavy hitter for that kind of a role, for any kind of a role in-house. the fact that he comes with experience with impeachment before is seen privately by a lot of people around the president, whether the president would acknowledge this or not, as a positive. >> just in terms of the presidential reaction, contrary to what he says, you've had extraordinary access to him. you've covered him for a long time. the hillary flunky comment, i'm not even sure where that comes from. do you have any sense why this particular article prompted such personal criticism?