So theoretically, you they he has taped people inside of the white house . He threatened comey. He said, you know, you have to watch out. He insinuated that there might be tapings. She said this about the interview that President Trump gave to Msnbc News Last year in which she discussed the firing. He was being prepped by hope hi hi hicks and thecomes team to say that the doj had come up with this memo so they could justify the fire thing of comey. And you were in on it, too . That is definitely a hope hicks Press Secretary Type of thing. So if thecomes team prepped him to lie to lester holt they prepped him everyday. Did you ask the question why we are lying . All the time. The answer was . This is how they do it. This is the Trump Administration. This is her assessment of the president s ability to do his job. They want to talk to her. Fake news. Laura trump, again the wife of eric trump, had this to say to sean hannity tonight. What an Incredible Opportunity she wasted. The president gave her a chance to make a difference and take care of people she claimed to care about and squandered it for this fictitious book. The white house has called them lies and false allegations, omarosa claims she has more information that could be damaging to the white house. Do you have any other recordings . Plenty. Anything mueller would like to see . It has office calls again i will share. Anything they want. You think trump should be impeached . At this point, yes. On that note, lets bring in the leadoff panel. Ashley parker, White House Reporter for the washington post. And mike murphy, long time republican strategist for mitt romney and judd bush and john mccain. Ashley, set the scene. You had the president steps down the hall from the Lincoln Bedroom in the residence portion of the white house on social media quoting the creator of The Apprentice denying his use of the nword. The president clearly in an aggravated state may have clearly met his match. Someone pointed out that both of these people are playing by the Reality Television rules, the spooling out of the stories in a slowmotion basis. What has this done and what will it do to the west wing . Well, first that is one of the things that the president , until recently, appreciated about omarosa. Everyone else in the west wing didnt like her. He appreciated her sense of drama and her sense of sort of Reality Showmanship and that is one of the reasons that he kept her around. What it does to the west wing is that it creates another level of headache as we have discussed. Omarosa is not credible. The president and the white house pushing back because of
their depending on the person and the day their lies or mistruths are also not credible. But in this case it puts the white house in a scandal they dont want to take part in. It Elevates Omarosa and puts the president in a horrible mood. Talking to people in the west wing a lot of people never liked her. They are happy that she is out. What they are saying publicly is what they were telling us privately for weeks and months. But having the president going out there and tweeting about this, that is a headache for everyone in there who tryied to run the government. Eugene, you have written a column that says of Course Omarosa has taped. In it, it is hard to take omarosas record for anything but lordy she has tapes and they offer vivid proof that Donald Trumps white house is part clown show, part nest of vipers. Eugene, all yours. What are we witnessing . Well, that is what we see. This is a white house full of the kind of people that tape conversations. Private conversations with their colleagues and coworkers, including in the Situation Room. She taped the Chief Of Staff of the white house, she taped the president and others. I have no doubt that she has other recordings. This is not the way that a white house is supposed to be. Is supposed to behave. As ashley said, omarosa by herself just saying that xhappened, she has zero credibility. She has little credibility as President Trump in that situation, but when sheep has documentary proof, and she has recordings and documents, those stand up. And if she is writing a playbook on how to attack donald trump, and how to get under his skin
playing by his rules. Mike, Lawrence Odonnell tonight highlighted the obvious and then set it apart by underscoring that we have never in the history of the republic had a senior aide come public to expose the president using recordings taken in the white house. Lawrences point is that we have never seen senior staff of this Caliber Hire D by white houses f the past. Yeah. That is one of the many moving parts of this. We have the Lord Of The FliesManagement Theory in the white house with constant Violence Feeding on the public institution, and now becoming the worst elements of cheesy reality show television. I look at the fight between omarosa and President Trump. They are similar people, massively ethically challenged and untrustworthy. It is like stalin grad, because they cannot be trusted and so you have nobody to the rout for. You dont know who to believe because they are both liars. I have decided that my position will be that i am going to believe the worst things they say about each other because i am closest to the truth with that. But there is real damage to the institution here. So much of her book deal, trumps profiteering, the egos, the corruption of the public institutions. I think it will pass but it is doing damage to the country and the Documentary Evidence as the other panelists and as you have said breaks it through the depressing reality show circus into real, true things that show you just what it is like inside the white house. Yeah. Sooner or later here we are talking about the presidency that belongs to all of us. Ashley, at least there are Nondisclosure Agreements. I read your reporting on this tonight. Fill the audience in on why it would be a problem. Nondisclosure agreements are coin of the realm in places like hollywood and other industries that people agree e never to talk about what they see and read and experience, and why is that a problem in the west wing when working for uncle sam . Well, first of all, Nondisclosure Agreements are basically for all intents and purpose when you are a Government Employee and serving the public and not pledging your loyalty to are trump personally are unenforceable. People can sign them or not sign them, but as we have seen, they are very hard to enforce. The fact that President Trump, and we at the post have gotten our hands on a copy of the Nondisclosure Agreement that he had people sign in the campaign and one that he tried to get people to sign in the white house described to ux and a copy of the one that omarosa was urged to sign after she left. The fact that they are so
pervasive in President Trumps orbit and the white shouse a key point that the president at the top is fostering a culture of leaks and infighting and audio recordings and back stabbing where you have staffers as omarosa articulated on the Network Earlier today who said that they learned from the president that you need to tape thing, and you need to have fodder on the enemies to deploy and need to behave in the duplicitous ways to survive. So that is the culture that we are seeing. The ndas were his attempt to halt it, but it certainly did not work. I am go to play something for you, eugene. Lets remember who omarosa was from the Pbs Frontline documentary after the election. Every critic. Every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump. It is everyone who has ever doubted donald. Who ever disagreed or challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe. Eugene, that was then. That is who she was then. We see who she is now. Do you think the president and the white house would do well to have a certain amount of fear for what this woman knows and has in her possession . They definitely should. She is trumpier than trump. What trump has on his side is going into any scrape is complete and utter shamelessness, and he will do anything, and bite, gouge, kick, scrape, and lie and do whatever he has, and he doesnt have that, those boundaries and she has even fewer boundaries than he has. And she, certainly will match him sort of transgression for transgression in a fight like th that. I do think that they have reason
to be concerned about what tapes that she has. About what she will say. She has very little credibility without Documentary Evidence. But she believes in putting it out there massively. I think that there will be, you know, we wont be able to shut her up. Mike, of course no discussion of American Politics over the last few decades has been complete without a mention of mark brunette. I am kidding, but unbelievably mark burnett, he of los angeles and Reality Television show fame is now like it or not a public certifier of the president on a pretty key point that omarosa has been holding out. Yeah. His entire reputation is at stake and he ought to be thinking about that. One footnote, for her regardless of the dreg beat dreg violence, but for her to tape to a
conversation in the Situation Room is a huge breach of professional White House St Standards and she should be prosecuted for it. Just for her actions. All right. We will take it. Actually, parker, Eugene Robinson and a Notet The Go Out on when we hear from mike murphy, and thank you all for coming out on this monday night. The president s lawyer sends more mixed messages about if and when donald trump might meet with mueller and contradicts himself over what trump has said and not said and families coming apart before our eyes. We are just getting underway on a monday night. The president said i never this wifi is fast. I know i know i know i know when did brian move back in . Brians back . He doesnt get my room. Hes only going to be here for like a week. Like a month, tops. Oh boy. Wifi fast enough for the whole family is simple, easy, awesome. In many cultures, young men would stay with their families until their 40s. The president said i never i never said anything about flynn. Comey said that he told me to see if i would give him a break basically. So we have three defenses to that under Article Ii Of The Constitution You Cant Question why the president has the power to say something. Number two, what he was saying is perfectly justifiable. He didnt say, you must or you have to, but just consider can it. And number three, he never said it. That is Rudy Giulianis latest response to questions about now the infamous meeting of President Trump and now fired fbi director, james comey. Over the weekend giuliani backtracked that the president did in fact ask comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn and
his ties to russia. This was giuliani on cnn sunday. I want to be clear what happened in that conversation with comey about Michael Flynn. What did President Trump say . There was no conversation about Michael Flynn. Mr. Mayor, you told abc news last month that you said that the president told comey can you give him a braeak. Now you are saying i never told abc that. Thats crazy. You are saying that President Trump and james comey never discussed Michael Flynn . That is what he will testify to if he is asked that question. This is what giuliani said last month. How is he a good witness for the president if the president was asking or directing him in his words to let the Michael Flynn investigation go. By that time he has been fired. Meanwhile trumps legal team is expecting a response for a
sit down with mueller. They are expecting the response sometime this week. The two teams have been going back and forth on terms, and most recently giuliani said that the president would answer questions about collusion but not about obstruction after comeys firing would be off the election. Limits and now the Trump Legal Team is setting time limits. Mr. Giuliani said the president is open to talking to mr. Mueller under limited conditions but in a new development said mr. Trump would not sit for an interview after september 1 because it would interfere with the midterm elections. Here to talk about all of it is the former assistant u. S. Attorney with the eastern and Southern District of new york and sam stein is back with us, politics editor of the daily beast. And sam, beginning with you,
because you can say whatever you wish. Is this just letting it fly . Can i say whatever i wish . Well, within reason, but it is a family broadcast. It is probably not professional i geuess. It is lettinging it fly. It is not a coherent legal strategy by any stretch. It is not an effective one and not even effective p. R. Strategy. For a while it is clear that Rudy Giuliani is not there to serve the president as a lawyer in the traditional sense as a lawyer, but as a political hinchman, and part of the task, i can surmise from this is to muddy the waters and to insist that things that he said a month ago he never said to keep moving the dates and the negotiation goalpost, and when he gets out of this is not entirely clear except for the fact that they have convinced a fair chunk of the population essentially that what Robert Mueller is doing is the equivalent of a political witch hunt. Here is out there to trip donald trump up in any fashion, any way
po possible, and that Robert Mueller is just inclined to find any wrongdoing wherever he can find it, and it is not pertinent to anything that happened in the 2016 election. I will say this to a certain degree, they have been successful. The polling shows that opinion of the Mueller Probe has dropped precipitously among the republicans, but most explicitly among the viewers of fox news which is where giuliani and the trump fans do their news watching. But it is not entirely unsuccessful. And tonight, he went after john brennan the steele dossier as opening up a new front. Counselor, does any of this matter . Does any of what rudy is saying immediately affect his client other than the ways we talk about on television, and how much of this is the staff the of Robert Mueller paying attention to . My answer to that is none. Don has received notoriety for a brief meeting that many politicians would have taken and most importantly and to the best of my knowledge Nothing Happened after the meeting concluded. First of all, people pointed out you dont hear the word using that phraseology to the best of my knowledge. That is what we lawyers use. Are you struck by anything else there . What is striking is that it does not matter. We know that events did happen after the meeting. We know wikileaks released a lot of material. We know that it came on certain strategic time periods of the campaign that this material was released, but for a legal theory, it does not actually matter. If you are talking about conspiracy which is what we want to be talking about as opposed to collusion, you dont have to have something to have happened. For conspiracy, all you needed was an agreement between two
people to do something illegal and they took one step. So whether something happened to his knowledge or not, it is kind of irrelevant from the legal perspecti perspective. Hardball tonight chris asks omarosa do you have Anything Mueller would be interested in and she makes a point to say if he calls me again, absolutely. Did that get your attention . Yes. Yes. You know one of the underlying elements of the book toured is that she feels deep regrets and has receipts. How deep they go is intriguing. Putting aside what you think about her character and ethics. Obviously there are criticisms of both, she is producing hard tapes and they do matter in the court of Public Opinion and to the court of law. I do want to go back quickly to the don jr. Statement that the president put out. One of the clause that struck me and not the lawyerly one, but the clause that any politician would have taken that meet iing
and that is utterly ridiculous and that is not true. Most politicians would have referred the inquiry to the fbi, because that is what you do in those situation, and it goes to a bigger issue that i have which is that people promising dirt on your opponent who had ties to the russian government has become accepted as something that just happens. Part of it is the pr campaign and what the Trump Campaign has done. It is a remarkable thing. I keep thinking that if t