Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Would have obstructed it. He has a right to defend himself. If he believes hes innocent, he is innocent, he should speak out. White house also moved quickly to frame trumps words as nothing more than his own personal view. Its not an order. Its the president s opinion. The president is not obstructing, hes fighting back. The president is stating his opinion. Hes stating it clearly. Hes certainly expressing a frustration that he has with the level of corruption that weve seen from people like jim comey, the president s angry. Frankly, most of america is angry as well and theres no reason he shouldnt be able to voice that opinion. But remember what the white house once told us about how we should regard what this president says on twitter. Are president trumps tweets considered official white house statements . Well, the president is the president of the United States so theyre considered official
Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Already several witnesses in on just day two. All of it as the 11th hour gets underway on a wednesday night. Good evening from our nbc news headquarters in new york. This was one more in a string of extraordinary days in our country. Because this was what we woke up to from the president of the United States. Quote, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt right now before it continues to stain our country even further. Perhaps just as extraordinary, Nothing Happened after that. It was wednesday in america and tonight Robert Mueller and his team remain on the job. The negotiations for a possible sitdown interview between Robert Mueller and President Trump. We report on the latest offer
from the Special Counsel Writing that mueller, quote, indicated this week that hes willing to reduce the number of questions his investigation asks. According to two people briefed on the n
harry, are you a member of the club despite all of the great bylines. i may be a member. you ll believe a mueller/trump meeting when you see it? in other words, i ll believe it when i see it like i don t think it s going to happen. i m a long term card carrying member of that club. i think however much they pare it down, it will be questions if he answers them falsely he ll be subject to criminal charges. there will be questions did you know flynn was under investigation? we have new reports that shows he was. there are probably half a doze other thing that trump doesn t know and mueller does and, yeah, i don t see his sitting down with them under any circumstances where there s criminal penalty and i don t see mueller situation. we knew if we needed any help that the president s words were going to be impactful. the minute we learned how many news organizations got what the president meant to say, phone
reality of the situation. it s to take out all of the disinformation. that s what you see here, they ve accused people from celebrities to politicians of a sex ring. it s pizza gate. it s amped up with the help of people on twitter, reddit and facebook. you do your work as we do ours in a free society where it s hard to limit this kind of thing. it s hard to squelch or suppress it. look at the climate this is coming up in. right. going back two years ago we saw the kremlin pushing a lot of disinformation around the election. what we re seeing now is a lot of high end production.
many lawmakers in the capital. every morning we wake up and he tweets something. mueller s going to finish his investigation. the truth is all going to come out. that s the best thing that could happen for the president and for the country. after that from senator rubio let us bring in our leadoff panel on a wednesday night. peter baker, jill colvin, john heilman and harry litman. former u.s. attorney, former assistant deputy attorney general under president clinton. peter, i d like to begin with you. i d like to read to you what sally yates wrote on social media. today our president called on our reduced attorney general as shocking as that is. what s more dangerous is we ve gotten used to it. the rule of law won t evaporate overnight but it can slip away