Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day. This is a threat we need to take extremely seriously and to tackle and respond to with fierce determination and focus. White House Press SecretarySarah Huckabee sanders told nbc news today that President Trump instructed his team to speak at todays news conference. Asked when the president made the request, sanders didnt respond. And its important to point out, just last friday the president met with his National Security council on Election Security for less than one hour. After the meeting, the white house released a statement that said the administration would not tolerate foreign interference in elections. But it did not mention russia by name. Lets bring in our leadoff panel. Jeremy bash, former Chief Of Staff at the cia and the pentagon and three pulitzer prizewinners, carol lenning, phil rucker, both from the Washington Post, and matt apuzzo from the New York Times. Jeremy bash, the analysis in the National SecurityCommunity Seems to be the men and women in the White House Briefing room were speaking to u. S. Policy, were speaking for america, against russia, and that the president is sort of a rogue actor. What do you make of the fact that the president , even if hes a rogue act, was the push who was alone in the room with Vladimir Putin . Does it matter to Vladimir Putin, if he can get donald trump in a room alone, that his National Security officials take a tougher line . Your point is welltaken, nicolle. It was manifestly the right call and the right message for the National Security leaders to stand at the white house and warn of the upcoming election. It was a rebuke of the president s position that theres nothing to worry about with respect to russian interference. In essence what you have here is part of a broad pattern where the National Security establishment is in effect ignoring the Commander In Chief. Theyre basically saying,
notwithstanding whatever he tweets, whatever he says, whatever he does, were going to keep our head down, do our job and protect the american people. Matt apuzzo, this Performance Today in the Briefing Room caps almost a year of awkward testimony. Christopher wray testified to the fact that he had never been asked by the president to do anything from a Law Enforcement standpoint to correct this country. Admiral rogers testified that on behalf of the nsa, hes really not doing anything extra in the wake of 2016. What do you make of sort of the impetus with which these folks have to go about doing their job without the goahead or the green light from the Commander In Chief . Yeah, i havent seen anything from the federal Law Enforcement or intelligence side that suggests that the Intelligence Community is sort of sitting on its hands, sort of just, if somebody told me we had to protect the country, i guess we would. Im not talking about the basic functions of their government agencies. Certainly general hayden, former
cia director, former nsa head, called the 2016 attack a political 9 11. Certainly there is nothing happening in the government, in the executive branch, that mirrors the steps that the National Security apparatus took after 9 11. Ill go you one better. Even if everybody is on the same page and even if everybody is, you know, at the highest level of alert going into the election, theres only sort of so much you can prepare for. As an example, during the obama administration, the fbi, the cia, everybody was on alert for russian interference. And when they saw the hacking that was happening, they looked at it and said, we know this game, theyre going to seize the material and theyre going to use it for intelligence purposes. It was only when they weaponized the hacked material and started publishing it through wikileaks
did they say, oh, my god, we didnt see this coming. Another failure of imagination. Exactly. Sure, youre preparing, but do you really even see whats going to be coming down the pike . Just because they decide to play again doesnt mean the russians will go to the same playbook. Phil rucker, color my skeptical that this performance was anything other than a shiny object to distract from the fact that yesterday, the president and people close to him had a moment of concern that he may have obstructed justice or done something that looked a lot like it in plain sight. That was only yesterday. I know, it feels like dog years, it feels like seven years ago. Theyre now quibbling with what the definition of the word should is, thats rudys latest talking point. Was this Performance Today something long in the works, they were asked to submit their
remarks, or were they asked to change the topic from the mess the president created yesterday with his Early Morning tweet about getting sessions to end the russia investigation . I think this has been building for some time. We saw dan coats a week or two ago raise some alarm in that interview with Andrea Mitchell in aspen. Weve seen alarm is a good way to put it. Let me show you his answer about helsinki. Lets watch that. In the runup to the helsinki summit, u. S. Officials, ambassadors to nato, ambassadors to russia, said the president would raise the issue of malign activity with president putin. He didnt discuss that, at least at the press conference. Youre saying today that the president has directed you to make the issue of election meddling a priority. How do you explain the disconnect between what you are saying, his advisers, and what the president has said about this issue . Im not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened in helsinki. Why not . That is amazing. I mean, this is the problem, right . It was only donald trump and Vladimir Putin in that room with their translators. That was by design, because trump didnt want there to be any notetakers, didnt want there to be any paper trail or official governmental record of what was discussed, what was agreed to, what trump said, what putin said. Now you have u. S. Government officials not sure what happened in that meeting. Theres yet to be a public briefing by the administration. But what we have in moscow is the kremlin doling out details from those conversations characterizing it as trump making verbal agreements with putin in ways that favor russia, and were not getting similar information from the united states. Its now about 2 1 2 weeks. Carol lenning, do you get the sense that anyone in the white house is making the president eat some spinach, if you will, and ramp up the rhetoric and the language from the white house that shows some window into the president or his white house recognizing that russia is a threat and that pretending that it isnt is bad politics for this white house . I think its clear that while some may try to give him some spinach, hes not eating it. Take, for example, the tweets. After watching a lot of Cable News Television about the Paul Manafort trial, the president tweeted something that would only add to a normal prosecutors view that he is making threatening or urging statements about shutting down a criminal probe. Hes making those tweets during an ongoing criminal trial which is pretty interesting and sensational as well. And there was nobody that was going to stop him. When i asked his lawyers that morning what are you suggesting to him, that he should not do this, they said, thats not really our role here, the president does what he wants to do, this is his megaphone, no ones going to take it away from him. You can see that if you take the white house posture at the beginning of the mueller investigation, it was very much, we want to do everything we can to avoid a subpoena fight. Thats not where the president wants to be. I think youve heard giuliani say publicly now that were not really concerned about an indictment, we think this is ultimately a political question. So theyre fighting a political fight. If they can take this sort of complicated story and make it, theres a witch hunt, bob mueller is out to get the president , him and his team of democrats, and now he wants to infringe on the power of the president , if he can make those Talking Points stick, then, you know, he can maybe win some support among republicans. For impeachment. Were not talking about the legal setting. Yeah, this has nothing to do with indictment. This is all about impeachment. This is all about staying in office and keeping your poll numbers up. Jeremy bash, i think that gave the president the solace that you would think it would, if hes safe from any sort of legal proceeding and all he has to do is malign the Special Counsel to the point where all the republicans in the house wont vote to impeach and the senators wont vote to convict him, he wouldnt be acting like such a loon. What do you make of his comments tonight, his railing at the media and the conduct he displayed in that tweet yesterday . This is part of a larger pattern here, nicolle, where the president fundamentally doesnt want to succumb to the rule of law. He believes in the rule of man or a man, he believes in himself. He does not believe he should be subject to questioning by the Special Counsel or anyone investigating his conduct or the conduct of Anyone Around him. It obviously sets a tremendous negative precedent for the office of the presidency. It signals to the rest of The Body Politic that the president
does not want to conform to the law. He wants his Law Enforcement officials to extinguish any scrutiny of his own conduct and his own arbitrations. Carol, your colleagues have written about the president s rally tonight, calling it attacks on the media going up to ten, attacks on mueller at the same volume, all while mueller seems to be closing in. Well talk about that more after the break, but as the investigation seems to be closing in on people in his orbit. The white house and particularly the president are gearing or girding for whatever report and findings of Robert Mueller that come out. They believe theyll come out before the start of september. So i agree with what jeremy said. Theres a big effort to discredit that work, to call it a hoax, to call it a witch hunt. But part of discrediting that work is to also discredit reporters who are reporting on it and learning about new witnesses who have been subpoenaed and discovering new contacts between russia and the Trump Campaign and learning new things that trump said about getting rid of sessions. All of these reports in the paper are things that he is telling people over and over again, dont believe what you see, dont believe what you read, dont believe what you hear, look over here, that stuffs not true. Its part of the whole package of saying, im not a bad guy, there was no collusion, being friends with putin is great, and whatever you hear later about bob mueller from these reporters, its not really true. And the dirty underbelly of this is when people are reporting, its often testimony that the president sees when he sashays across the white house, 80 of the white house staff has been before Robert Mueller and his investigators. Thats correct. The reports are accurate and
real. Part of what you have going on here is the president is a former television producer. He cant stand turning on cable news and seeing producers, real producers, making different judgments than he would make. If it were his choice, this entire show would be about the remains coming back from hawaii and Vice President pence greeting them and how wonderful the optics were in helsinki with pute and in how big his crowd was in pennsylvania and the gdp numbers from last week. But there are other issues on the agenda that he wishes he could just erase. Everyone is sticking around. Were going to squeeze in a quick break. On the other side, why Robert Mueller wants to talk to a russian pop star who made a music video recently with a donald trump impersonator. And what the first daughter had to say about one of her fathers most polarizing policies. The 11th hour is just Getting Started on a thursday night. Ahh. Summer is coming. And its time to get outside. Pack in even more adventure with audible. With the Largest Selection of audiobooks. Audible lets you follow plot twists off the beaten track. Or discover magic when you hit the open road. With the free audible app, your stories go wherever you do. And for just 14. 95 a month you get a credit, good for any audiobook. If you dont like it exchange it any time. No questions asked. You can also roll your credits to the next month if you dont use them. So take audible with you this summer. On the road. On the trail. Or to the beach. Start a 30day trial and your first audiobook is free. Cancel anytime, and your books are yours to keep forever. No matter where you go this summer make it better with audible. Text summer17 to 500500 to start listening today. And lets you control your network with the xfi app. Its the ultimate wifi experience. Xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. Rudy giuliani tells nbc news tonight that trumps legal team plans to respond within days, possibly by monday or tuesday, to Robert Muellers latest interview offer. Kelly odonnell reports that guiliani says the legal teams message to Robert Mueller is,
quote, you can question him about collusion and not postpresidency. Giuliani also says if mueller issued a subpoena, trumps lawyers could win the fight about whether he testifies. Giuliani says about trump, he wants to clear himself because he didnt do anything. Giuliani reports that the legal team will make a decision in a week to ten days. Nbc news also reporting Robert Mueller has requested an interview with Emin Agalarov, the russian pop star who helped set up the june 2016 Trump Tower Meeting with donald trump jr. And several russians including an attorney linked to the kremlin. In testimony to the Senate Judiciary community, donald trump jr. Said he didnt recall
speaking to the russian pop star about the meeting but in an interview with vice news earlier this year, Emin Agalarov admitted that he did. I said, they can help resolve things you would be interested in, if you could spare five minutes of your time. Obviously don junior, being don junior, said of course. I know what that meeting was about, i set it up. It was about nothing. Also tonight, one of muellers grand juries will get to hear testimony from a long time aide to long time trump political adviser roger stone. A federal judge tossed out a challenge from Andrew Miller who tried to block subpoenas from the Special Counsel. Miller worked with stone during the 2016 president ial campaign. Two other known Stone Associates have also been called to testify. Still with us, jeremy brash,
carol leonnig, matt apuzzo, and phil rucker. Jeremy, talk about the significance of these russians now being subpoenaed by Robert Mueller, what is he trying to do, what is he trying to prove, and what will he do next . The agalarov worked with trump to build the Trump Tower In Moscow during the president ial election in 2016, it started to take shape in late 2015 and early 2016. They are the ones who went back to the Russian Government and said, we would like to send a russian delegation to trump tower to talk about how were supporting the campaign in june 2016. Theyre integral to the ties between the trump family, the trump organization, and the Russian Government. They were the gobetween. Just because you are a Cheesy Pop Star Doesnt Mean that youre also not a cutout for russian intelligence. Matt apuzzo, this Trump Tower Meeting has long been a flash point in questions about obstruction, because of what
both your papers reported about the cover story about what that meeting was about. It now seems to be a flashpoint about conspiracy to collude or coordinate with an american adversaries. Thats where the two stories come together. As jeremy said, this is part of the Russian Governments effort to help donald trump get elected, and the Trump Campaign response was, i love it. Theres that. And when reporters started to ask questions about this, were you straight with them and were you trying to conceal the truth from the american public. And in tamping down reporters questions, were you kind of also tryin