President of the United States addressing his interactions with the fired fbi director james comey and also telling reporters what he thinks about the investigation into russian interference in the last election. I think it divides the country. I think we have a very divided country of so many other things. Reporter President Trump slamming the appointment of a special counsel is bad for the country. I restrict the move, but the entire thing has been a witch hunt, and there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but i can always speak for myself and the russians, ze zero. Reporter the president clearly distancing himself from his own campaign. Mr. Trump also denying reports that he tried to interfere in the fbis investigation into former National Security adviser Michael Flynn. Did you at any time try to urge fbi director james comey to back down on the investigation of Michael Flynn . Also, as you look back no. No. Next question. Reporter but days after asking why he fired comey i fired comey. No explanation. Director comey was very unpopular with most people. I actually thought when i made that decision, and i also got a very, very strong recommendation, as you know, from the demtty attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. But Rod Rosenstein gave senators a very different story when he briefed them thursday. He did acknowledge that he learned comey would be removed prior to him writing his memo. Reporter this as a friend of comey is breaking the silence in a new interview with pbs news hour about his conversations with the now fired fbi director. Trump fired jim comey because the most dangerous thing in the world if youre donald trump is a person who tells the truth, is dogged, you cant control. Reporter Benjamin Wittes now recalling the day of that infamous hug the day after the inauguration. Comey didnt want to go to that meeting. He doesnt believe the fbi director and the president should have any signs of a relationship or shows of warmth. Wittes describes in detail why comey was reluctant to intend. Even at 68, he tried to blend with the curtains in the hopes he wouldnt be singled out. He says mr. Trump is calculated. What he told me was it was bad enough he was there, it was bad enough there was going to be a sha handshake, but there really wasnt going to be a hug. If you watch the video, he extends his hand kind of preemptively, and trump grabs the hand and kind of pulls him into a hug, but the hug was entirely onesided. Comey was completely disgusted disgusted . Disgusted by the episode. He thought it was an intentional intent to compromise him in public. Reporter wittes says comey tried to establish boundaries with the president. He saw his role as protecting the fbi from the white house. Reporter wittes said he called to comey once as he tried to board a helicopter. To his surprise, there is no urgent matter at all, the president just wants to chitchat. He was bewildered by it and again thought it was quite inappropriate. He doesnt think the president and the fbi director should be chitchatting. He interpreted it as an effort to kind of be chummy and kind of bring comey into the fold. Cnns pam brown has reported that comey was so uncomfortable with these interactions that he rehearsed what he would say with his team before meeting with the president. Sources say the president s allies are now trying to convince him that he should stop complaining about the russia investigation while his advisers are looking for an outside legal team to represent the president through the special counsels investigation. The president is, quote, very close to naming a replacement for fbi director. The frontrunner that has been floated is former United States senator joe lieberman, but theyre already expressing concerns about naming a former top politician to the job. The president leaves this afternoon for his nineday trip overseas. First stop, saudi arabia, far away from the white house but not so far from the controversy. Well said, joe johns. Well check back in with you in a little bit. How about the tgif panel . Is it time . Cnn analyst Jeffrey Toobin and cnn commentator errol lewis. Maggie haberman, you have reported to the New York Times that advancement is withstanding. Whats the latest . Ill try to narrow down that category, but my colleague mike schmidt reported how james comey had kept these memos, these notes about the president , where he basically felt that the president was, if not trying to pressure him, trying to cozy him and curry favor with him, for lack of a better way to put it. As you have this investigation ongoing, there was a phone call where the president just basically wanted to chitchat and just wanted to talk, because this president , as we have heard repeated repeatedly, is fairly isolated. The president has been speaking to prospective lawyers given the latest in these probes. Its not a huge surprise. Given what he is facing, you would suspect he might go to somebody who has some washington experience. Thats what his current lawyers possess, but this is lawyer i expect hes not going to want to spend, and hes learning what special counsel means for everyone. Theyre all going to have to hire lawyers, they have to be careful about their phone use. Its going to be a long slug. Lets back up two steps, jeff toobin. On fbi directors in general, you want to have like an arms length, right, between the bureau and any white house. You never want any perception of chummy, hugging in the oval office shots because why . Because there are often occasions when the fbi has to investigate matters relating to the white house. This is precisely the situation we find ourselves in now where the fbi was investigating the trump campaign, many people relating to him, and you dont want to have the perception that the fbi director is friends with, on the team with, allied with the president. The complication there, of course, is that the fbi director and the president have to interact to a certain extent about National Security, about all sorts of Cyber Threats to the country. So how you draw the line between ch chumminess and a professional relationship is something every president is supposed to navigate with the fbi director, and obviously comey felt uncomfortable. Comey has some questions to answer as well. This is going to be a credibility contest, right . So we do have one little test moment. We have this man, Benjamin Wittes, who gave one rendition of what this moment was about which well play for you, and well show you the hug at the same time and see if it reads true. Heres the sound from comeys friend. If you watch the video, he extends his hand, and comeys arms are really long, and he extend his hand kind of preemptively, and trump grabs the hand and kind of pulls him into a hug. But the hug is entirely onesided. So one guy in the hug is shaking hands. Comey was just completely disgusted by disgusted . Disgusted by the episode. He thought it was an intentional attempt to compromise him in public. What did you see in the hug, errol . Is it a onesided hug . Look, its a plausible interpretation of what might have been there. On the other hand, if he felt that strongly, thats something that disgusting that might happen to him, maybe you dont go to the event. Maybe you beg off. Maybe you send a tersely worded message to the white house that you dont want to be a part of this. Maybe you try to rely on the attorney general. At that point i guess the attorney general did he sesigna you need some room, you need some clarity. The questions are all very well taken for all the reasons jeffrey just described. There ought to be some distance between the fbi director and the president. If the president clearly doesnt want that distance to be there, it then falls on the fbi. If comey didnt navigate it to his satisfaction, i dont know if he has anybody else to blame. But the maybes matter that errol is laying out here. This memo got a lot of heat. Boy, he thought to write it down contemporaneously, this must have been a big deal. Not a big enough deal to do anything about it, and if we know something about james comey, its that if he thinks something really matters, hell break protocol. Hell do things that nobody else has done before and have huge political impact, but not about President Trump. Does it mitigate the impression that he was really offended and thought it was really inappropriate . This has become a big republican talking point in response to this whole controversy. If it was so bad, why didnt comey Say Something . Its a legitimate question, there is no doubt. Wittes says he didnt actually maybe think it was so bad, that he thought it was manageable. But if it was manageable, its hard to argue at the same time it was an obstruction of justice as a crime. So that is somewhat in trumps favor. But from comeys perspective, you can think for much of this period there is no attorney general at all, that sessions hasnt even been confirmed. Fair point, so who would he have gone to . Then very soon after sessions is confirmed, he recuses himself from the russia situation. And also, and this is, i think, the main point, comey thinks, look, if i dont pass the message to my subordinates, there cant be any obstruction because they wont even know the president is making this inappropriate contact with me, so i will protect the bureau by dealing with him one on one and then not disclosing it. I think thats the argument. Lets get to more sound from this friend of comeys, because obviously the question why does comey think he was fired. This guy has apparently talked to comey since the firing. Hes not divulging any information from that conversation, but this is his own opinion on why he thinks james comey was fired. Trump fired jim comey because the most dangerous thing in the world, if youre donald trump, is a person who tells the truth, is dogged, you cant control, who is as committed as comey is to the institutional independence of an organization that has the power to investigate you. What do you think of that, maggie . I think there is some truth to that. Its impossible to know what was in the president s mind considering he has now given several explanations for jim comey, yesterday reverting back to the earlier explanation how it was a recommendation from the department of justice. But i think that you have to look at, on a basic level, donald trump takes things very personally. He tends to see any kind of criticism or any kind of anything that he considers uncomfortable as a personal slight, he tends to overreact, he tends to stew on these things. He had been thinking about this, according to all of our reporting, for several days. And i think he had been thinking about it, frankly, going back to the transition when he saw comey testify before the senate when comey talked about being slightly nauseated at the prospect that he had influenced the election. I think trump took that very personally. So i think you can have what the friend of comeys is saying as being true, but i dont think that was at the top of trumps mind, i think it was more instinctual and basic. Errol, lets not forget who james comey is in our political context. He said he felt nauseated by it. He was also seeing as inducing nausea by democrats for what he did. Good word. I had to look it up. Its one thing we learned in this new thunderdome. The idea that james comey was right for the picking shouldnt be ignored here. The democrats had been calling for his ouster. The timing here, trumps comments about what it was that was bothering him, certainly negate the idea that this was about hillary clinton. But he was a good target and hes shown he could break protocol before. There was plenty of coverage for this move had it been done sooner. We heard repeatedly that the president was surprised at the reaction. He thought democrats would side with him and say, yeah, we were ready to get rid of that guy. He seemed to be surprised in part, i think, because james comey was a controversial figure, a more skilled practitioner, somebody with more political experience than donald trump might have simply said, we want a new approach to this. I dont like what happened during the election. There are questions surrounding him. Im sure hes a good man, but im going to make a change. Thats what another president might have done. That, of course, is not what donald trump has done. There would have been a rationale for getting rid of comey. But when trump came in initially when he was nainaugerated, as t Russian Investigation gains more speed, he opens himself up to it. The president keeps saying there was no collusion. Everybody stick around, because next, President Trump denying any collusion between his campaign and russia, calling this investigation, as we saw on twitter, a witch hunt. Does his defiance, does it change anything . Our panel will discuss that next. 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President trump doubling down, calling the russia investigation a witch hunt and denying any collusion with russia. But listen closely here. I respect the move, but the entire thing has been a witch hunt, and there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but i can always speak for myself and the russians, zero. We have maggie haber man, errol louis and a. B. I can speak for myself, a. B. , and the russians, zero collusion. What do you think . This is the first time weve heard the president sort of sounding like he might be separating himself from people who worked on his campaign. A number of them are under investigation for connections to russians. Roger stone, carter page, Michael Flynn and paul manafort. Thats not one, two, thats four people. We know his son snuck into not the front entrance of trump tower during the investigation. You heard all along this was a witch hunt, but thats the first time we heard President Trump sort of say i can speak for myself, and i think that was noted by everybody. So that goes a little bit to the substance of this, but how about that line before, maggie, to the politics of the situation . I respect the move. No, he doesnt. And thats the problem, that i get that this could be a little scary, i get that theyre talking to lawyers. But the politics of this were corrosive, largely generated by the president , i think, objectively. But if he didnt break those tweets yesterday, i believe the new cycle would have been unity in washington, d. C. , finally well get to the bottom of this. If theres nothing there with collusion, good, and well find out how to stop the interference going forward, well get better information. But he didnt. And isnt that why were in a new cycle of negative appraisal . We are here because at the end of the day, i mean regardless of the question of collusion, and to be clear, i dont know what they actually think they mean when they keep saying collusion, but regardless of that question, we are here because the president fired james comey, and because he then went to blame a recommendation by the Deputy Attorney general that the Deputy Attorney general told senators yesterday that he knew comey was going to be fired before he wrote that letter. I think if Rod Rosenstein did not feel like he had been compromised in some way, im not sure we would be seeing a special counsel now, and we are, and the president is reacting to it. And the president has this habit and he did it all throughout the campaign of getting trapped in this sort of chainreactive, negative, selfinflicting wound cycle. I think its agreed to the president and congress are getting weary of this. They had this Golden Moment of governing and the control of white house and congress to be able to pass an agenda and every day gets plunge sbd into this and you are correct, the only person plunging the president into this at the moment is the president , but he will never, ever see it that way. He will always see it as people coming at him. What you say about Rod Rosenstein, i think that was significant, errol, you see all these senators coming out of this hearing where he was answering some questions. The original story from the white house was, well, based on recommendation from the new leadership at the top of the fbi, Rod Rosenstein is the one recommending x, y and z, and later we saw the president on with lester holt, and he said, no, its not by my recommendation but myself. Why would rosenstein write the memo if he already knew that trump was going to fire comey . Rosenstein was in a position