The latest Political Developments of the day and interviews with top newsmakers are featured. About it. Something directly has him spooked. But its caused him to make a tactical error, which is to come out and essentially throw his son and his soninlaw under the bus and say, yes, they were there to get dirt on hillary clinton. Okay. Joining jared and his son under the bus was jay sekulow, one of his last remaining tv lawyers other than Rudy Giuliani who may just have the tv part of that job. Lets look at his statements now rendered as someone who has been on both sides of the question about what the president knew about the Trump Tower Meeting. When you look at a meeting when you look at a meeting, george, that took place a year before, now two years ago, the question is what law, statute, rule or regulation has been violated. No one has pointed to one. They pointed to olympic zone spir si to dee frautd the United States. That would be one possible charge. Aiding and abetting a conspiracy. Do you buy thats a serious risk for donald trump, jr. And jared, frank . And what hes actually supposed to do. So the idea he wouldnt be doing this necessarily Behind Closed Doors is i think a little bit difficult for some people to swallow. Now, whether any of that rises to the level of illegality is another question entirely, but certainly hes shown that hes not terribly careful about these, at least by outward appearances. And you write today that heres the thing. This is a tweet this is about the president s tweet yesterday morning. This is a tweet about how the Trump Tower Meeting was totally fine. Nothing illegal to see her. If you have no real concern about legal exposure from the meeting why distance yourself from it . Has anyone offered you any plausible Explanation S to your very astute point there . Yeah, i think everybody is focusing on the admission that this was in fact about opposition research. What about the fact that in the space of one tweet we have the president both arguing that this is totally much ado about nothing, not illegal at all, oh, and by the way, i wasnt involved in it at all, just in case there was something going on here. Theres no reason to separate yourself from Something Like this if there was nothing wrong about it. Cadre within every administration who is making that argument for more disclosure, you know, rip the band aid off, lets get whatever the troubles are get them out as fast as possible. Its going to be better for us in the long run politically and legally, almost always they lose for a variety of reasons. Weve heard a lot about this period. Weve not heard everything that were going to hear about that period to this point. But i think the president its an extraordinary thing. And i think its just worth Stepping Back for a second and acknowledging what just happened here. The president lies all the time. We know he lies all the time. The lies arent acceptable. 4,000 whatever hes told in eight months according to these counts. But this lie is a different order of lie. For the president to go on kind of in some kind of a fit over the weekend and basically say, just come straight out and said, you know what . The story i told you, i lied about this and im worried about my son. Im either too dumb or actually dont care, but one way or the other, i am, as frank said, he just threw his son under the
bus. I mean, the admission of it is an add myths of incredible will law. His son can be charged. The lie is an historic lie that he told. The admission is a potentially cataclysmic admission for the whole this element of the investigation and particularly for his son who his father has basically went on twitter and testified against. Frank, can you unpack that for us . We stare at those trees. We stare at the tweet as if its a tree. The forest started as a Counter Intelligence investigation by the fbi for the bureau youre very, very familiar with. And we now have the president corroborating a fact about why his son went in and met with russians. And i talked to someone who knew a little bit about this meeting and said that they always knew this was a meeting. And in attendance were russians close to the kremlin and with ties to russian government officials. Is that potentially more
evidence that the prosecutors could use, investigators could use against don junior . Theres no question here. What height of irony for a fathers tweet to become exhibit a in evidence against his son. I was joking over the weekend on the air that the folks at twitter should essentially install a popup Miranda Warning on the president s twitter account just saying, hey, you have the right to remain silent. Please use your right to remain silent. But yes, indeed. We have potentially evidence in the form of a tweet. And ironically, if the president had come out previously and just said, look, were new at this, we were voted in because were from outside washington. We didnt know what we were doing. Heres the story. The cover up is always worse than the crime. The stupidity defense. It can be deployed and its plausible. But its too late for that. The president s hubris, his inability to say i screwed up and got it wrong is going to cause his downfall. Thats where were headed today. Hope hicks, the period of time from which we know she went in and testified to Robert Mueller, questions about whether her testimony was consistent with that of other people, i think we can put their names up. Hope hicks, sean spicer, reince priebus, don mcgahn, josh rafael, their names were all submitted to the white house in that period right after that statement was crafted aboard Air Force One that turned out to be a lie. The president now agreeing that statement was a lie. Are you hearing any reporting from your sources about either the role hope hicks may have played in providing information about the conversations the president was prone to have with close aides about what the experience was like in the mueller room . I am hearing they pushed back on it. Thats not why she was there. Theyre not going to say thats the reason. The list you have is interesting because most of those people dont work there any more. One thing about President Trump is you can leave, but youre still kind of in his orbit. Right. You can check out other than pour don mcgahn. Don mcgahn is still there. You can see this is an interesting time. What youre going to start to see is the president right after this vacation next week is moving straight into campaign mode. Right. He says he might be on the road five, six times a week. White house says maybe a little less. Got to find five or six candidates. Hope hicks is going to be out there. Sean spicer is already on the road. Theres going to be a temptation for him to talk to these people about what happened, what they said, what they didnt say, you know. Right. Could you just insert the word irresistible before temptation, that would be do you have any new reporting whether or not the president is going to sit for an enter rue with Robert Mueller . No, still his attorneys are saying, dont do it. And he still wants to do it. And you can see just from these tweets that hes bursting. Hes bursting, he has more admissions. We also put together the evolving defense of the Trump Tower Meeting. At some point Robert Mueller isnt going to need to interview him. Hes going to tweet out hes
got all the questions. Heres what we have. When the New York Times broke the story about the trump tower more than a year ago, don junior dismissed it saying it was primarily about an adoption program. That statement drafted, of course, as weve been discussing aboard Air Force One on the way back from the g20 summit. Donald trump admitted on twitter this was a meeting to get information on an opponent. That is one glaring inconsistency. Another On Whether Trump was involved in drafting the statement. Jay sekulow said days after the story broke, the president wasnt involved. Months later trumps attorneys admitted in a memo sent to Robert Mueller the president dictated it. On whether trump knew about the Trump Tower Meeting in the first place, the official party line is trump knew nothing about it. Thats what donald junior testified to before the Senate Judiciary committee back in september. Of course now nbc news is reporting trumps former fixer Michael Cohen is prepared to tell Robert Mueller donald trump did know about the meeting beforehand. Lets a lot of flips and flops with the president and his legal
team which raises a key question on their outstanding claims that nothing came of the direct offer from russian nationals to offer damaging information on hillary. Do we still believe that to be true or is that a Known Unknown . Robert mueller has indicted close to two dozen russians. Almost everyone in the trump orbit has a lawyer and is either a witness or a subject of an investigation. And it seems like its a Known Unknown whether or not they gleaned anything there of value. Its 100 a Known Unknown. We dont know the answer to that question at all. What we know is that from that point forward, from july, august, september, october, with an extraordinary did egree of relentlessness, there were coordinated messages coming out of the kremlin, social media accounts coming out of the kremlin and the Trump Campaign. Without any Investigative Authority and subpoena power i can tell you just with google. You can see the two of them working hand in glove. Right. So, is there on a circumstantial basis, should we
accept the notion that nothing came out of that meeting . I think youd be out of your mind nothing came out of it. We have not proven anything like conspira conspiracy at this point, but if there is nothing there, there is no reason it is not there. If its there, im betting bob mueller is going to be able to prove it. Frank, give you the last word on this question. How does that look to Robert Mueller . Yeah, when look, when youre building an obstruction case, youre trying to prove inat any time i intent. All the subsequent statements lying about the meeting shows intent to obstruct. So it clearly has value. Whether it happened or not, whether dirt was provided or not doesnt essentially matter if it goes toward obstruction. All right. Doesnt sound good. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. When we come back, the star witness in the Manafort Trial gets ready to take the stand. Hes one of the original Trump Campaign aides charged in the
mueller probe. His name Is Rick Gates and he may be one of the only people who can connect the dots between Paul Manafort, the russians and the trump president ial campaign. Donald trump goes negative on lebron james in what may be a political miscalculation. Donald trump will have blood on his hands for his attacks on the media as the enemy of the people. Stay with us. This is your wakeup call. If you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, month after month, the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. Ongoing pain and stiffness are signs of joint erosion. Humira can help stop the clock. Prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. Humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. Serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. Before treatment, get tested for tb. Tell your doctor if youve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if youve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flulike symptoms or sores. Dont start humira if you have an infection. Help stop the clock on further irreversible joint damage. Talk to your rheumatologist. Right here. Right now. Humira. So we know how to cover almost weve anything. St everything even vengeful vermin. Not so cute when theyre angry. And we covered it. Talk to farmers. We know a thing or two because weve seen a thing or two. We are farmers. Bumpadum, bumbumbumbum come fly with me, lets fly, lets fly away. Statements that he made to lisa page showing bias. The number 4 at the department of justices wife working with the people at gps, fusion gps and the steele dossier. There is a new foia request against former minority leader harry reid and his potential action there. We know that Christopher Steele talked about the dossier 12 times after President Trump tried to initiate a conversation about that 12 times after President Trump was elected, so yes, there is frustration the white house is consistent in their attacks on the russia investigation. Stepped up in recent weeks as new reports signal muellers probe may be speeding towards trumps inner circle. His aides showed sunday performance in the twitter attacks over the weekend. Why Arent Mueller and the 17 angry democrats looking at meetings concerning the fake dossier and all the lying that went on in the fbi and d. O. J. I cant read this. More Looney Bird Stuff from the president and the people following him in line. Heres the punch line for the president. People close to the president believe he may be increasing his legal jeopardy byicontinuing t speak publicly. He himself is under scrutiny for possible obstruction of justice. Joining our table elise jordan, msnbc political analyst and now this is so awesome, cohost of the new podcast words matter with our friend steve schmidt. John, frank and aaron are still here. Reading it, i feel like im doing my part. We have very savvy, smart viewers. Doing my part to spread his lunacy. This is the irrational response to what is a very rational evidencebased, factbased investigation into him. It drives him crazy because bob mueller, someone who is part of the legal team told me today, bob mueller is following the facts wherever they take him. They seem to be leading him deeper and deeper into trump tower. It seems to be all of trumps team has to defend him with is
to dig into his own craziness with these tweets. There would be times during the campaign where donald trump, you know, i believe it was about august, mid august, where he started to tank. It was after he had attacked the kahn family. And he calmed down a bit in his rhetoric. He started to stabilize and the polls went up again. He went through a period with the Mueller Investigation where he wouldnt tweet about it. He seemed to be somewhat listening to his lawyers. That has gone all out the window. You can tell he thinks attacking it is a witch hunt. You look at his response, i think there is a line, stay with me here, that runs through attacks on lebron james and his wife sort of receiving to, i dont know, give lebron a little bit of the benefit of the doubt there. Im looking forward to the unified field theory. Hes addicted to cable. If he could just watch fox, which he should, that would be
my advice. He seems lunatic. He sees the other stations, he sees the Manafort Trial, he sees lebron on cnn and tweets about it. He sees the cohen stuff. He seize lanny davis talking about what cohen could tell mueller if mueller decided to use him. I mean, he is obviously now running from his own sort of awareness of what he might be in trouble for. Yeah. I mean, yes. Look, he is omnivorous. Hes amusingly obsessed with don lemon who he calls the dumbest person on television. He cannot take his eyes off don lemon. I find it creepy. I dont mean it that way. I mean, look, for someone who is supposed to be the dumbest person on television, what are you doing watching him, mr. President . He also had the best own in twitter history, too, when he tweeted that donald trump locks children up. Lebron james puts them in school. Right. I think thats what put melania over the edge. Look, hes obviously wholly triggered, at the same time again, one doesnt want to get away from that. Yes, its getting crazier because there is more the walls are closing in. A lot of different metaphors around this. But its getting more serious for him. He is triggered. He does watch television. He hate watches morning joe. All those things are true. Yet at the same time, if the reality is that your legal jeopardy and political jeopardy are getting worse, the only youve done that worked in is push up muellers negative with the republican voters, its worked, its not surprising hes doubling down because he doesnt have anything else. Thats the only tool hes got. Aaron, i heard last week before he sent out the tweet on thursday, calling on sessions to end the mueller probe, that he was, again, Musing To Confidants about firing sessions. Is that still a flash point . Thats still something people are having to go into muellers investigators to answer questions about, isnt it . It seems like this is something that keeps coming up. Its not just firing sessions. Its maybe firing rosenstein, maybe firing mueller. We get this dribbled in piecemeal as it comes out. Hes talked about firing or somehow getting rid of all these different people. I think suggests this is part of a pattern of behavior and theres got to be, as with every aspect of the Mueller Investigation, we probably only know five to 10 of whats actually happening just because the special counsels office is so tight lipped about everything else. So, yeah, i think that thats a reasonable conclusion to draw here. 5