Times look modest. He once bragged he could beat michael jordan. This weekend he made a comment the president clearly didnt like and cnns Boris Sanchez is live for us at the white house with the latest developments. Any word from the white house about the president picking this fight at this time . Reporter were still waiting for official comment on the white house on this tweet to lavar ball. But in the past the president has had spats, he said the American People elected him in part because he is a fighting who doesnt back down from attack. All of this started when the president was on the 12day tour of asian countries. The president found out about it and white house officials tell us he personally asked chinese president xi jinping for them to be released and allow them to be returned home. Therm and during that process, the president actually wandered allowed on twitter whether the three student athletes would thank President Trump for his role in getting them back home. After all they were facing lengthy prison sentences, serious charges. The players did thank the president. He in return tweeted about them saying that they should be weary of the many pitfalls in life. And then on friday lavar ball spoke to espn, downplaying the president s role in getting his son back home safe. He said, quote, what was he over there for . Speaking about the president. Dont tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. Well, you saw the president s response. Suggesting that perhaps he should have let these three u. S. Citizens remain imprisoned in china because one of their parents didnt give them credit in public, ana. Boris sanchez at the white house. Thank you. Lets talk more with our panel, david zi ron and contributor and author of the truth about trump. Michael, how does this feud reveal who the president is . Well, of course it reveals how low hell go. Whenever we think that hes done about the lowest thing he can do, last week it was attacking al franken, granted franken was caught in something terrible, a terrible scandal but this is a president who has many times had many accusations against him. That wasnt enough. He had to then get engaged with the father of this basketball player. The other thing that i think we need to think about here, where the discourse is going generally. The fact that mr. Ball brags as much as he does, both about himself and his son and we now have a president who got to where he is by bragging, is really indicative of the place our society has reached which i think a lot of people really find troubling. Were at this lowest common denominator now all the time and people are sick of it. David, in some ways lavar ball and President Trump do seem very alike. He sells 500 sneakers and 300 flip flops. Ball thinks he could beat michael jordan. Which man is out of his league here . Donald trump is out of his league as president of course. What this feels like is a spat between two reality tv stars, the sort of thing that shouldnt even be spoken about on a network like cnn. Then you have to remember one of them is the president of the United States. American citizens in a chinese jail should have been left there because their father wasnt appreciative enough. The real winners here tragically are donald trump and lavar ball. Were talking about this instead of serial Sexual Assault and problems with the tax bill, which is incredibly unpopular or the fact the head of his Oklahoma State party was just indicted for child sex trafficking. Lavar is a p. T. Barnum style huksster and the president is tweeting his name. This does great things for lavar ball in nba circles, because donald trump is viewed as a bigot and lebron james words as a bum. People like steve kerr and greg pop vich have called donald trump a racist and lavar ball is not viewed greatly in the circles, but out of this hell be more an antihero than a heel. Do you agree that the president was the guy out of his league on this . They are playing this game of attention seeking. I dont quite agree hes out of his league in terms of the game on twitter. Were now in an attention economy where everybody tries to leverage retweets and hits on the media for gain. In the president s case it started out early in his life in terms of financial gain. Now its political gain. I think one thing people are missing here is the other element of this thrill for the president and make no mistake this is thrilling to him, he enjoys it very much. Is getting away with things. He said during the campaign i could shoot someone on fifth avenue and i wouldnt lose any votes. And it was with glee that he said this. And i think its because its not just saying the outrageous thing, its saying it, getting applauded for it in some quarters and really having no consequence for it in others. So many examples with that. To show him any consequences, right, right. Hes defied the political norms as we see them. David, do you think lavar ball was perhaps surprised to get a response directly from the president . It sounds like his antics usually arent necessarily focused on by a lot of people, they let them roll off their shoulders. Absolutely, this is what lavar ball was hoping for to the top of his ability. Hes one of the preeminent examples of a success in a brand based economy or as michael said, in an attention based economy. So for lavar ball, he is cracking open a bottle of champagne about the fact it happened and donald trump is happy as well. For his base, this is so highly racialized, this idea of looking at a black family and saying why arent you more grateful to me . Its something especializes in because it inflames the lizards brain of his base and he gets that level of support from the 33 who love him. While they are celebrating this the rest of us are the big losers in this. This is what is being talked about. A horrific example for the young generation coming up what we value as a society and its the sort of thing that after you read the exchange between these two particular gentleman, you want to shower with steel wool. Did the sports world take note of what lavar said regarding this . The fact he did seem ungracious, the fact his son was able to get back home from the scenario that he could have been much worse, clearly. I mean, thats the big win though. For lavar ball. Partly because there are other stories out there about this. Trump is saying they could have been in jalz for years but the reporter who works for espn said it was going to be a couple of weeks, were not sure what he meant by years. The state department did heavy lifting on this, same state department that donald trump has hollowed out to such a degree. There are difference shating stories how much credit he deserves, but its more than him begging for that credit early on. I hate to say the phrase unpresident ial because it sounds like such a cliche but you look at this and think to yourself, my goodness, were in new territory. Michael, what do you make of the president s willingness to go after the father of a College Basketball player but stay mum on candidate roy moore. The president does not hold his tongue but he has selective criticism. Yeah. He is very selective and theres a calculation here. One of the things he pointed out was that the president sort of signaled the gain ahead of time when he said will they thank the President Trump. He was baiting them. Then they thanked him and he got what he hoped he would get. Really in exchange for doing his job. Every president would have done the same thing, you know, youre in the country where a couple of your citizens are in trouble and make an appeal. So theres that action taking place, where hes avoiding discussing roy moore, its because theres a price to be paid if he steps into that controversy. Theres a possible loss for him. He already saw that his favored candidate in the alabama primary didnt prevail luther strange. He has to back moore, the republican. Right. So he has been burned once there. And theres a balance of consequences that he doesnt want to risk in the case of the basketball players and mr. Ball, he wasnt taking any real risk. There was nothing he could lose but he could gain where his base was concerned and so he made the move. All right, michael dan tone yoe and david zyron, thank you. Lets turn to the Russian Investigation we have new developments there tonight. The attorney for Jared Kushner spoke today with our evan perez this afternoon and this comes amid new revelations on the june 2016 trump tower meeting where they met with a russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. The man who set up the meeting with that lure in an email is now breaking his silence. He says he is ready to talk to investigators. Publicist Rob Goldstone tells the times of london that he puffed up his email about what sort of dirt he had on clinton and i quote, i could have said that the russian attorney believes she found a black hole or believed santa is real. It really didnt matter. So when trump jr. Replied if its what you say it is, i love it. I just thought my teaser had worked. More on that coming up. First evan perez interview with abbi low lowell. Watch. It is divulging into political gotcha games. If committees selectively leak parts of interviews or send me letters through the media or turn Jared Kushners clear email there should be no contacts with anybody in a foreign country into what they call is a missing document, they are undermining their own credibility. The issue of russia interference in the 2016 election is a serious one. But these Committee Actions are not. So what i hear you saying is you dont believe theres any missing documents and you dont really plan to provide any additional documents . Let me be clear. We told the judiciary committee, we would work with them if there was anything else that was relevant. That undermines the seriousness of their endeavor. So do you not plan to allow another interview with the Senate Judiciary committee . That seems to be what they are asking for. Mr. Kushner has been very clear, hell cooperate as he has been voluntarily with all bipartisan requests from committees and anything relevant. Hes done it and hell do it again. In these cases as you know, the perception is often as important as the facts. And the perception that has been built here is that Jared Kushner perhaps has something to hide because these committees say that hes not being as forthcoming as others have been. They received the same request, same broad request for documents and they provided documents that Jared Kushner did not provide. Is there a problem with Jared Kushner lets be clear again. In my communications with the Senate Judiciary committee i said take these documents and lets talk about what else is relevant. They jumped the gun to make a media event. Any perception that mr. Kushner has been anything but not only cooperative but you look at the contents of the emails hes the hero. There shouldnt be contacts with foreign officials or foreign entities, thats what they should Pay Attention to and not create a partisan gotcha game. The perception is built because of the sf 86, the fact he didnt disclose those contacts at first and the fact that these documents they say are missing that were provided by others when you say he did not disclose on his fs86, a misperception. It was sent first time with a hit of a send button before it was complete. Then within days and weeks it was completed. Thats just silliness. It took a couple of months hundred additional contacts. A couple of months to get it thorough and make sure it was complete, thats not atypical in this process. Joining us now to talk more about this interview and the growing russia investigation, David Drucker and ken vogle. What he focuses on is this. He said i was only telling them were going to voluntarily give you this stack of documents and after you look through them, if you need more documents, just come back to me. And he says, they then leaked to the press that there were missing documents. So what hes doing is, he very carefully has said to these committees, what you ask for ill fly but you better be pretty specific what you ask for because hes only going to give that. Hes being very lawyer like and not very sensitive to the Public Relations aspect of the problem. And yet it seems the ask, it sounds like was similar for other players or other characters in this whole russia puzzle. When it comes to transparency everyone got the same request and others turned over documents that kushners team did not. At what point do they need to acknowledge the optics of that . The optics from the beginning on this has been one of a campaign that has either been hiding something or has been a bit of a keystone cops situation and that has sort of colored the perception of the russia investigation and the Trump Campaigns role in the investigation. I think its very possible that all of this is very innocent. A lot of times coming from the private sector where you have people not involved in politics in a big way in the past. All sorts of disclosures you need to file and things you need to do. There are records you should really keep about your contacts and its possible that the Trump Campaign especially thread bare the way it was, not really built up like a traditional president ial campaign, wasnt prepared to keep all of these records and then wasnt really prepared to provide the kind of documentation that was required and so we see these sorts of mistakes. I think the issue is its happened in a wide range of areas, whether its the attorney generals not being able to remember whether or not he met with russian officials, whether or not it was kushners document dump or document disclosures and all of it looks very suspicious at least to people who investigate these sorts of things. On that note, on that note, sorry, i dont mean to interrupt its important to note not just a lot of different people who are having similar failures to remember or not be forthcoming. Kushner himself has had multiple opportunities to be more transparent and has not given the full story. Remember, he had to update his security clearance form i think at least three times because he kept not revealing certain meetings with russians. Yeah, and i think that his lawyer did a good job of probably satisfying people that think the russia investigation is a big hoax and should go away. But it was very, very lawyerly. It was couched in language such as things that are relevant as opposed to things that are supposed to be turned over. Things like that. I think that just adds to the perception that its possible theres something here to investigate. Ken, i want to bring you in. Did the lowells explanation take the focus on Jared Kushner . No, in fact it highlighted the way the parallel investigations are building on one another to expose holes in stories to expose lapses in document production. The reason why these documents were flagged in the first place, these emails were flagged as having been missing from kushners production is that others produced them and maybe to the Senate Judiciary committee or intelligence committees and the ability to compare stories between investigations or between individuals involved in the same investigation, has allowed these congressional investigators to really paint a fuller picture and to put more pressure on Jared Kushner on his lawyer, on others to fill out the information that others have given. Otherwise they are sort of being pitted against one another, being pitted against one another anyway. And you have to figure that special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators are doing this even more so. Lets discuss Rob Goldstone, the publicist who emailed donald trump jr. To set up the 2016 tower meeting. Goldstone saying hes eager to talk and says he was just the go between guy. Could goldstone be in legal jeopardy himself . Well, i dont think goldstone is likely to be in legal j jeopardy himself but hes going to add a whole humorous aspect to the investigation. You look at his facebook feed and everything else, i mean, the guy always looking for a laugh and publishing pictures of himself and the president at tables in russia during the Miss Universe contest that are all going to be now all over the press. He was the link or at least one of the links between the Trump Campaign and the russians, the first one. Hes the one who said listen, i represent this russian pop star whose father is a tycoon who has links to the attorney general. This is when this whole thing linking the trumps back to the russians directly started and hes got a central role in that. This is going to be very interesting to see what he comes up with. Ken goldstone saying if im guilty of anything and i hate the word guilty, its hyping the message and going the extra mile for my clients using hot button language to puff up the information i had been given. I didnt make up the details. I just made them sound more interest sg what he told this reporting with the sunday times. In terms of actual evidence in muellers probe, how important might that email be that he sent to don jr. . It could be hugely important. He asked about the legal exposure, not necessarily so much for him hes not even an american citizen as i understand it but for an american citizen to be kplis it in. Tracting aid from a foreign organization, that would be illegal. His promise of providing dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Trump Campaign, thats a pivotal thing for them to look at. Its also interesting to hear him use this explanation which youve heard from a lot of folks who have been held up as potentially holding a key to any potential actual collusion between the Trump Campaign and russians saying i was just exaggerating, you also heard that explanation from one of the russians in that meeting, ru russianamerican guy, he said for years he had bee