Counsels report, his current attorney, Rudy Giuliani, drops this bombshell about the Trump Campaign and russian collusion. Watch this. I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign. Yes, you have. I have no idea i have not. I said the president of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here, conspired with the russians to hack the dnc. Lets be very clear about that. That is a complete aboutface from what the president s attorney has said over and over again. Regardless of whether or not collusion would be a crime, is it still the position of you and your client that there was no collusion with the russians whatsoever on behalf of the Trump Campaign . Correct. That counterintelligence probe yielded no evidence of any collusion on the part of the president or maybe anybody else for that matter. This probe from the nature of the questions and Everything Else we know has again yielded no evidence of collusion. Theres a good reason why. It never took place. We have an allstar panel to break all this down for us. Kelly odonnell is live at the white house, phil rucker is the White House Bureau chief for the Washington Post and an msnbc political analyst. Jake sherman is a Senior Writer with politico and coauthor of the playbook. Me mimi rocah is an msnbc legal analyst and military reporter Courtney Kube is live for us at the pentagon this hour. First lets go to the white house. Kelly, i know that your colleague, kristen welker, just spoke to Rudy Giuliani on the phone. What is he now saying about his response last night about whether or not there was any collusion with the campaign . Sounds like hes flipflopping once again. Hes pushing back that if it appeared he was changing his position that was only subconsciously and he is focused on really trying to cling to the client relationship here. He has also sort of summarized his conversation with our colleague, kristen welker, with a now written statement in just the last several minutes where the former new york mayor and private counsel to the president says i represent only President Trump, not the Trump Campaign. There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form. Likewise, i have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked for the campaign. And the only knowledge i have in this regard is the collusion of the Clinton Campaign with russia, which has so far been ignored. That is the latest statement from attorney Rudy Giuliani. So this is reframing what has been a longtime narrative. The president , his associates, his legal team saying there was no collusion. As we explained many times, collusion itself is not a crime. Conspiracy would be a crime. But no Improper Conduct between the campaign and any operatives from russia. In the drip, drip, drip of the investigation, weve seen how there have been a number of associates of the president s who have been charged and in many cases pleaded guilty or were convicted for an array of crimes that deal with financial matters, not telling the truth and so forth. Now the focus is giuliani saying he only speaks for the president , which for any attorney would be a pretty standard thing. But it certainly changes the impression that has been left for a very long time. No collusion has been one of the goto mantras of this administration, the president an his outside team. In addition, of course, we know the president had submitted written letters to the special counsel and giuliani telling our colleague, kristen welker, if he had known that there had been a counterintelligence probe opened by the fbi in 2017, and we dont know the product of that because that was swept into the Mueller Investigation, he would not have cooperated at all providing written answers from the president. He says because that would make this an illegitimate investigation. So that is certainly new information from the president s defense, that he would not have provided any info if they had known about the counterintelligence probe. Again, we dont know of anything publicly that suggests that the president was working on behalf of russia. But fbi agents had suspicions for a specific number of reasons. So phil, let me get your thoughts because i know you just spoke to giuliani not too long ago. Give me a sense of what his mood was like and how this bombshell flipflop played out the last couple of hours. More importantly, do you get a sense that hes caught or at least found himself in a situation where he has changed the narrative on the Defense Strategy . Well, i just spoke with him on the phone in the last hour, and he said to me it sounds like very similar things that he said to kristen welker. He is sort of calmly trying to clean this up and create, build some distance between his client, the president , and others who worked on the campaign. He just reiterated the point that he can say definitively on behalf of his client that trump did not, you know, collude or conspire with the russians but that he does not speak for the campaign, he does not speak for others on the campaign. He says hes not aware of any sort of collusion or conspiratorial activity from people who worked on the campaign such as Paul Manafort, who was for a time the Campaign Chairman. But that he could not say so definitively because theyre not his clients. It does seem to be a reframing of this talking point from the trump world and an attempt to create some distance, to separate the president from others who could become ensnared with additional charges or findings in the mueller report. So you teed me up perfectly for mimi because i wanted to get your thoughts legally on this. Are we making too big of a deal in terms of what the attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said last night and what hes saying this morning, or is he in fact trying a new legal strategy that were just perhaps witnessing the beginning of, which is as phil and kristen said, giuliani was trying to do, distance the president from the campaign . So this reminds me of many trials ive seen where and its the point in the trial where you have multiple defendants and they start turning on each other. The defense goes from none of us did it to he did it, no, he did it. That never ends well for any of them. If i were Paul Manafort right now, i would be thinking, wow, i really should not have lied to mueller because this president and his attorney are going throw all of us under the bus if they need to. I dont think that will work, by the way. The strategy here that giuliani is doing of trying to distance now, it just has absolutely no credibility, which is why it wont work. If that were the case, lets assume lets suspend reality for a minute and assume that were the case, that they had been saying all along that other people in the campaign may have colluded but the president didnt, then from day one they would have welcomed this investigation. They would not have called it a witch hunt because it would have been a legitimate investigation, something that the president would have wanted to get to the bottom of. Who in my campaign was colluding with the russians . I didnt have anything to do with it. Lets find out, lets hold them accountable. But of course thats not what they did. They called it a witch hunt, they tried to delegitimatize it because trump knew at a minimum and possibly more. Let me pick up on a point that phil made and that was the need that giuliani had this morning to address the comments he made last night. Why would you think that Rudy Giuliani felt the need to, quote, clean it up . Well, because i think what he said last night was very incriminating for that reason. He almost essentially conceded, okay, people were colluding. It just wasnt the president or he didnt know. And that is that is a big admission in and of itself. I dont think that that is the end of the story. I think, you know, well see how the facts play out, but i think to even assume that hes correct about the president not knowing or the president not being involved is a huge leap right now. But even if you accept that, it is a big admission, yes, to say that people for giuliani to admit that people in the campaign essentially were colluding. Jake, i wanted to get your thoughts on all of this, because this obviously changes a bit of the game for democrats who are probably going to look at this, especially now that you have the house in the control of democrats, youve got adam schiff and others really pushing forward with a lot of oversight. How does what we just witnessed over the last couple of hours with Rudy Giuliani, some of the explanations we just heard here, you know, add more load to the democrats in terms of what theyre going to want out of this investigation and oversight . So lets accept what Rudy Giuliani said they front end, that it wasnt the president and it was his campaign. So democrats on capitol hill could say, great. So were going to call in everybody that might have been on the campaign. It was a relatively small operation. It wasnt a huge 200, 300person campaign, it was a small number of people who could have been in touch with foreign agents of any kind and they can come to capitol hill and they will be in public on television describing or at least being asked about their contacts or whether they had any contacts with anybody that might have been an agent of the russian government or somebody representing the interests of the russian government. Its striking to me because the white house here, if you talk to anybody who is interested in the white houses wellbeing, its in the white houses interests to really clamp down and say very little publicly that they dont want investigated on capitol hill because democrats control the house, which is a huge problem, something the white house hasnt become accustomed to yet. So the less, the better frankly at this point for the white house. Rudy giuliani is not following that rubric at all and set a road map for how investigative committees, not only adam schiff intelligence committee, beelijah cummings, potentially foreign affairs, judiciary, a lot of people have oversight over this sort of thing. I think were going to see this play out over the next couple of weeks and months. I can certainly imagine that. Mimi, let me get your thoughts on one other Significant Development at that. The wall street journal is reporting that Michael Cohen paid a Small Tech Company i believe the amount of 50,000 for that i. T. Company to rig online polls in favor of the president. I think going back to as far as 2015. Michael cohen tweeting out this morning saying what i did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of and he tagged real donald trump and potus. I truly regret my Blind Loyalty to a man who doesnt deserve it. Is this a signal that this investigation has gone into possibly another violation of Campaign Finance laws . Yes. I mean i have never thought that the Southern District was done with its investigation. I think all signs have pointed to theyre going on. This could be information that they were well aware of. It may not be. Maybe this was one of the areas that cohen didnt want to get into. We just dont know. But they know. And whether cohen is telling the truth about this being at the direction of donald trump, it rings true to me and i assume to many people because of what we know about trump and how, you know, things operated. That he would not have let this amount of money be paid without knowing what it was for and what was going on. But, you know, you cant just take cohens word for it. There will be other evidence that prosecutors and investigators either have or will get. You know, theyre not going to just blindly accept what cohen is saying. If what cohen is saying is true, it certainly does raise possible additional criminal Campaign Finance questions. If trump knew, the campaign should have reported this as an expenditure. Im sure that did not happen. Phil, i know you spoke to giuliani. Did he comment at all about that new report, Michael Cohen saying that he was doing this at the behest of the president . You know, we were really focused in our conversation on the Mueller Investigation and sort of the collusion questions there. But clearly the president s legal team is also paying close attention to whats developing in the Southern District of new york and they expect that to go on for some time, sort of recognizing that the Mueller Probe could potentially be nearing an end over the next few months but the separate investigation in new york will go on for a while. It seems like its far from over. Lets switch gears for a moment, guys. I want to talk to you about the 27th day of the Government Shutdown. Our own Garrett Haake just caught up with the speaker, nancy pelosi, moments ago. Watch this. Madam speaker, any response from the white house on your request no. Our request was lets talk about it when we can do it when government is open and the people here to protect us are getting paid. So give us a sense of what nancy pelosi is trying to do with the state of the union. Youve heard a lot of the republicans on the other side of the aisle saying this is a political stunt, political theater. Is there a chance this could backfire against the speaker . Im not entirely sure whether it will back fire but its well within her prerogative. She is the head, and this is something the white house seems to be getting accustomed to in realtime. She is the head of a coequal branch of government. Shes number two in line to the president and has the prerogative to schedule the state of the union when she deems it necessary and fit. It does have the political benefit of kind of a kick in the back to donald trump and a sign that hes not welcome in the capitol when the government is shut down. But her point is this, shes not going to have the state of the union and have people protecting the capitol, the entire government in the capitol when theyre not getting paid. Thats her prerogative. And clearly republicans are sheri chafed and Steve Scalise said he will find a place for the president to speak if nancy pelosi puts off the state of the union. But i think its a position that democrats broadly speaking are very comfortable with. That while the president and House Democrats and Senate Republicans and democrats are not able to keep the government open, theyre not going to have this event that is very ceremonial and a lot of pageantry. By the way, does require a huge commitment from the federal government to protect this building when the entire government, every cabinet official besides one is here. So it doesnt seem on its face ludicrous. The white house says it is indeed ludicrous and dhs and secret service can protect the building at this time. But pelosi does not want to do so when theyre not being paid. Dhs and secret service saying preparations for the state of the Union Happened a long time ago, well beyond the 27 days of the shutdown. Phil, let me get your thoughts on this article that you wrote because you write of Nancy Pelosis strategy here. You say she has been deliberately trying to get under the skin and to talk to him in a way that he understands, referencing President Trump. The president as most of us have watched, he does like political brawling, but hes somewhat refrained from attacking nancy pelosi so far at least personally. How much will these giuliani and cohen developments add to the pressure that hes facing and make him lash out . Some have suggested that perhaps hes refrained from attacking nancy pelosi because shes also the gateway to impeachment should they decide to do that in the house. Thats right. Our reporting shows that the president is convinced that pelosi could potentially be an ally regarding the impeachment question. He sees her as somebody who will prevent impeachment hearings from proceeding or beginning, getting off the ground, rather. And somebody frankly that he hopes to eventually be able to make some deals with. When theyre talking about the shutdown negotiations, the president has also been floating, for example, infrastructure spending. Thats an area where both he and democrats are in agreement and he has an idea, the president does, that she may bowe a partn with him, somebody to come to the table for a bipartisan deal. Some of the president s allies say that is foolish and naive and point out that Speaker Pelosi has no reason to deal with President Trump and faces pressure from the Democratic Caucus to take trump down and hurt him politically. Nonetheless, that explains i think why trump has not gone after pelosi the way he has other foes, including chuck schumer, the Senate Democratic leader who trump calls cryin chuck. Theres no nickname for nancy pelosi right now. I was going to say thats a fair point. With all of this happening, Courtney Kube, the president about to make his way to virginia to speak at the pentagon, preview for us what he is expected to say given wh