Did the president direct Rod Rosenstein to write this moment mow . The president lost confidence in director comey and hed be considering letting director comey go since the day he was elected. But he did have a conversation with the Deputy Attorney general on monday where they had come to him to express their concerns. The president asked that they put those concerns and their recommendation in writing, which is the letter that you guys have received. Thats not true. They didnt come to him. The truth is as nbcs Pete Williams reported today, trump called those two to the evil office and informed them he wanted to fire comey and asked if they would agree with him. Why does the Trump White House continue to put out stories that cover up his determination, his personal will to kill any more progress in digging into his russian dealings during the election . Well, the question of course answers itself. If President Trump expted bipartisan praise for firing fbi director james comey, he was certainly mistaken on that point. The news hit like a bomb late yesterday, and in the 24 hours since the president has come under mounting criticism from democrats and several republicans. Today, the president defended his decision. Mr. President , why did you fire director comey . Why did you fire director comey . Because he wasnt doing a good job very simply. Its because he was doing a good job. Meanwhile of course democrats today dismissed the firing as an effort to impede the Russian Investigation. They called for a special prosecutor beyond trumps reach. Lets watch. There is little reason to think that mr. Rosensteins letter is the true reason that President Trump fired director comey. I dont think anyone thinks this is unrelated to the russia investigation, and thats exactly why i think a dramatic step needs to be taken to restore public confidence, and that step ought to be the appointment of an independent counsel. Is it coincidence that we found out yesterday that grand juries have been empowered . You know, it certainly feels like this is in response or in connection to a growing scope of the russia investigation. I will vote against any confirmation of an fbi director unless there is support for a special prosecutor. Well, the president s response, democrats have been complaining for months and months about director comey. Now that he has bn fired, they etend to be aggrieved. Phony hypocrites. There was more news from the senate today. The Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to Michael Flynn for documents related to russian interference in the election. The committee had already requested them, but flynn declined to cooperate. Im joined by the moderator of meet the press right now, chuck todd. The New York Times glenn thrush and carol lee. Thanks for coming on, chuck. Youve got a lot of reporting. Id love you to share with me now if you could background about what is trump what do you think is the atmospherics, finally to sort of blow his lid on this thing and saying were getting rid of this guy . I think the fact that comey was everywhere over the last week. That comey became synonymous with the russia investigation now. That comey was being trotted up on capitol hill a lot to update various committees for normal reasons, accountability reasons. We know that. And he was essentially, with each appearance, appeared to be making it clear that this investigation was gaining steam, was getting more serious, that there was more to it. And i think the constant, you know, throw in the fact that when director comey said it made him mildly nauseous that he somehow became part of the president ial campaign there the end, i dont think that sat well with the oval ofce. We now have this reuters repor that fleshes it out even more tonight, chris, which indicates that the president was particularly peeved that director comey wouldnt give him a headsup on what he would say on capitol hill. So i think its that whole combination there where he felt as if comey was just not going to be someone that was i dont want to say let him off the hook, but was going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. I was wondering. I mean in your position, maybe im have more freedom to express opinions in this role at hardball, but i think is analysis id love your answer on because youre pretty smart about this. Heres the question. He probably knows what comey knows about the russia connection to the extent there is something to it, the relationships involving manafort, certainly flynn. Right. He would know all the conversations hes had with those gentlemen in the roles of his surrogate and campaign advisers. So he knows what he knows. But he also must wonder what comey doesnt know and will find out. And he made a calculation. Im getting rid of a guy now. I can handle what he knows now. He cant destroy me with what he knows now. But if he keeps up with this with 20 or 30 investigators, and he keeps digging and digging, he will reach a point where what he knows is too much for me. That would explain to me a politicalssessment of why he fired the guy. An take what hes got w. I dont know what hes going to have in a year. I dont want him to get to there. Well, let me throw in one more angle here, which is he may not know what comey knows because he may not fully know the extent of what some of these folks may you know, we dont know for sure that if folks acted on his behalf to work with the russians, its possible they kept trump himself out of the loop. Maybe trump himself knows this. Maybe he knows that there was they tried to give him plausible deniability. Theres a lot of ifs on that. But let me go to the other aspect of this. If you watch donald trump through the years, he doesnt run away from controversy. He will run toward it, especially if he believes it is almost a way to muddy things up, cloud things, or delay things. Yeah. What does the comey firing do, chris . Right now it you cant help but ask yourself while it may give new momentum to more people wanting a look into the investigation, it actually stalls it right now. And perhaps this entire cloud over the investigation into why will delay it even further. Just follow the way he handles the tax returns. Some days he says, nobody cares about that anymore. Other days he will say, well, as soon as theyre under audit, i do want to release them, and theyll come out in due time. But all of it is a delay, delay, delay. Right. So i wouldnt underestimate that being part of this motivation, knowing eventually this could come home. But if you delay things long enough, you dont know what might interrupt it in between. Okay. I think theres a delay aspect to this that i think is part of the calculation. Thanks, chuck. Nbc news reported today a senior congressional official with direct knowledge told nbc news that james comey briefed congress in recent days that he had requested more staff and money for the Russian Investigation from Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein. I spokesman for attorney general Jeff Sessions said the report is entirely false. Let me go to glenn thrush on that and carol lee. Thank you, gentleman and lady. This newspaper thing, i keep telling people theres nothing hotter than print right now. You first, carol. What do we know about the pressure on trump generally . What are the pressures on this guy who may be guilty, who may be thinking he might look guilty . He may worry about what his people might have done to make him guilty. Theres a number of pressures. This has something that has been hanging over his administration from the start. By all accounts, anyone you talk to in reporting out this russia investigation story, things were heating up. It was getting more intense. Obviously theres subpoenas being issued. Theres grand juries. That was not lost on the white house. What we dont know is how much of that was connected to this, directly connected to this decision. We do know the president was increasingly frustrated with director comey. There were a number of things going back to when he wouldnt defend his tweet saying that president obama had wiretped trump tower. He was annoyed by that. He jt lt like he wasnt his guy. This is a president that really doesnt like that and feels totally fine taking action. We were ready to go to press last night at 7 00 before the comey firing with all kinds of examples of what trump has done to deflect attention from what this problem is. But if you look at what carol just mentioned, glenn, look at this. News about the extra people that are going to be put on, testimony by congressional people. Have said that comey said he was going to add more forces to this investigation. The word of this Northern Virginia special rather, grand jury. Certainly i thought the power of maybe im just a political romantic, but i thought the power of sally yates testimony on monday just blew me away. I said wait a minute. Trump doesnt like hard News Reporters and he doesnt like Public Servants. He doesnt care about opinion people like me. He worries about straight reporters who give us the news because theyre his enemy because the facts are his enemy. He doesnt like Public Servants because they play it straight. He says, get them out of here. I want politicalable acolytes d me. Look at the store he gave today. He gave it to tas. I grew up with tas. Theyre the bad guys. Their official Moscow News Agency is the only reporter allowed in the room while hes meeting with two russians. The only three people defending him on the russian connection are the two russians here and the one in moscow, Vladimir Putin. Look, he doesnt want james comey running around with a blank check to investigate him. This is a guy who has proven to be entirely out of control. Theres some reporting out there that comey in meetings with trump refused to give trump his full loyalty. Can you imagine the president asking an fbi director for loyalty . This is a guy in terms of the president of the United States who has requested nondisclosure agreements from his private employees. I think what were seeing here but comey knows this now. Of course. Comey has got this to take with him in his next role in this life, which this guy may ask for a vow of obedience from me. The calculation that the president made is comey is less dangerous outside complaining about him i think it is the calculation. Hes worried about what he can do inside if he keeps working. If you look at the president s statement where he said comey told him on three different occasions that he was not understand investigation, theres a real question there whether the president doing that gave his executive privilege and frees comey to talk publicly about that, for the hill to subpoena any documentation on that. So he kind of there are a number of ways in which they expanded a story that they were trying to contain. Chuck, part of this i have to call it a coverup. I think it is one. But bringing in the a. G. , the deputy a. G, building the case, having them write the letters at his direction. And all the letters just happened to focus on last year, not on the russia investigation. And then getting out the word to somehow the people over at the fbi dont really have faith in this guy. The story has bounced back today that they do have f in him. The word im getng today is that special agents believe he was one director who would look out for them. He wasnt a bad guy as they see it. I want to pick up on something glenn said because i think it is an important part of this story. Look, President Trump was considering this for a bit of time, and a lot of people the more people told him, you cant really do this right now, the more people tell him he cant do something, then that makes comey appear more powerful. The more people tell him he cant do something, the more likely he is going to do it almost in defiance. Exactly. And while politically this makes no sense, it was his way of sending a message, hey, im not afraid of doing Something Like this. And i think the question that some have is does this send a chill down the spine of other sort of, you know, nonpartisan or less partisan government officials as they go in . I i think thats a message the president hopes that it sends to some. Yes. When it comes to this thing, this whole idea of, look, hes the boss. And i can tell you this. A lot of people told him this was a can of worms, that you you know, this is not the time. Your window had passed. And it was like wait a minute. Im the president. I can do it. That was the message they put out today after the fact. Chuck just made the point here that they want to send the message, im the boss. Then his people, the Vice President on down,verybody put out the word, hes strong and decisive. My wife had an uber driver from ethiopia last night. He said this is like our continent where all the leaders want to stay in power. Thats all they want. Im the strongman. Dont mess with me. Thats the lesson they formally put out from the Vice President on down. Im strong. Im a strongman. Speaking of strength and relative weakness, lets just talk a little bit about what mike pence did today. Mike pence was trotted out by the way, our reporting shows that mike pence was one of the people who really drove this, who encouraged trump to fire comey. Pence goes up on the hill, spins this tale which we know from our reporting is demonstrably untrue, that this was all done at the behest of the department of justice. This was not true. When pence was making this statement, there was reporting widely that it wasnt true. Then Sarah Huckabee sanders, who is sitting in for sean spicer, goes out and essentially discredits the story that the Vice President is saying. Chris well, she did say that they came to the president with the call to fire the guy. Right. But she also said like three seconds later that the president had been mulling this for months and months and months and youre right. That was contradictory. So the real story is he wanted to get rid of comey in the worst way, and he took all the heat for it knowing the heat is better than what he wants to keep secret. Again back to if you make a calculated decision to take a lot of heat, you know whats being kept secret is worse. But the thinghats baffling about this is that there was a way to fire james comey that would not have had this sort of backlash. You could have had your stories straight. C they just went about it in this very hamhanded way. Their stories correct each other, and it adds fuel to the fire that theyre trying to cover something up. Very trumpian. Anyway, thank you, chuck todd. You cant not be yourself. Carol lee and glenn thrush. Anyway, chuck, thank you. Its great to have you on. Got to be me. I think i know that song. Coming up, Vladimir Putin. Heres another gotta be me. Reiterates that russia had nothing to do with comeys firing. This comes as trump hosts the Russian Ambassador and Russian Foreign minister. Three people in the world agree with trump it had nothing to do with russia. Theyre all russian. Less than 24 hours after comey is given the boot. Plus sally yates, pretty bahar ra and james comey. Besides all three being fired by donald trump,thy also have one thing in common. They were all investigating trump and his campaign ties to russia. Were they getting a little too close for comfort . I think. And later the fallout from trumps decision to ax comey continues. Democrats are furious while the republicans dont know what to make of the shocking decision. Finally let me finish tonight with trump watch. He wont like it. This is hardball, where the action is. Whats that . P3 planters nuts, jerky and seeds. I like a variety in my protein. Totally, thats why i have this uh trail mix. Wow minty. P3 snacks. The more interesting way to get your protein. How to win at business. Step one point decisively with the arm of your glasses. Abracadabra. The stage is yours. Step two choose la quinta. The only hotel where you can redeem loyalty points for a free nightinstantly and win at business. When james comey was investigating Hillary Clintons emails during that 2016 campaign, then candidate trump had nothing but glowing words to describe the now exfbi director. In his latest last month, he said he had confidence in comey. Lets take a listen. It took guts for director comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where theyre trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that. What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back. Hes got to hang tou because theres a lot of a lot of people want him to do the wrong thing. I respect the fact that director comey was able to come back after what he did. I respect that very much. Oh, and theres james. Hes become more famous than me. [ applause ] was it a mistake not to ask jim comey not to step down from the fbi at the outset of your presidency . Is it too late now to ask him to step down . No, its not too late. But you know, i have confidence in him. Whats going on here . Hard to believe he was talking about the same man he announced as could not, quote, effectively lead the bureau. Well be right back. Im dr. Kelsey mcneely and some day you might be calling me an energy farmer. Energy lives here. Can lead to sleepls nights king you feel helpless. Take control of your sleep you fall asleep 33 faster. And wake up recharged with all the benefits of a good nights rest. Take control of your sleep with unisom®. But weve got the get tdigital tools to help. Now with xfinitys my account, you can figure things out easily, so you wont even have to call us. Change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. Add that premium channel, and watch the show everyones talking about, tonight. And the bill you need to pay . Do it in seconds. Because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. Go to xfinity. Com myaccount a day after firing the man in charge of investigating the president s ties to russia, President Trump rolled out the darpe for russias foreign minister sergey lavrov. Firs