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No, it's ludicrous. that's a conspiracy theory whose intent is to absolve russia of what it did in 2016, which is hack our election, interfere with our election, to try to help president trump. they're trying to absolve russia. you might as well say, well, we want an investigation into whether president obama was really born in kenya. no, it's ridiculous. it's disproven. so, that's not really a clarification of any value from mick mulvaney. >> olivia, mulvaney said unequivocally he did not offer his resignation nor did the president discuss it with him and there are reports mulvaney is on thin...

Even had mick mulvaney in that initial press conference on thursday, he went to the podium to announce the fact they were going to be going to doral, the president's golf course, and also disparaged camp david. when the president put oat tweets, changing course on this, saying very clearly the g-7 would not be held at one of his own properties, he said we'll have to look at camp david as well, even though mick mulvaney had been trashing camp david and questioning its fitness for a summit of this sort. >> hans, thank you. joining me now, john harwood, cnbc's editor-at-large and olivia nutsii....

Right now they think the president should be impeached and removed from office. another 4% say he should be impeached and not removed. that's 17%. that's substantial. other surveys have shown up to 30% of republicans say they're open to the impeachment inquiry. if you start getting those numbers significantly higher than that, a couple of republican operatives have told me, if you get 30% of republican voters saying the president should be impeached and removed from office, all of a sudden the cost benefit analysis of those legislators defending him will change. >> olivia, you wrote a piece on...

Them understand what's going on. they don't think trump is a good president. they think he's done wrong. but the optimum solution for them is for him to be defeated in 2020. then there's a democratic president they can yell at. that will be better for republicans in 2022. also if trump can be defeated without them having to break with him, that will not impede their own electoral prospects. they're kind of hoping this will go away until the election. the question is whether the heat gets so substantial that they can't look away anymore and that's the drama we're seeing play out. >> john harwoo...

On fifth avenue it's hard for anybody to look the other way. >> olivia, what's your take on this? >> well, you know, i can't -- i don't think we can overstate how important it is that not only did some republicans come out to say he shouldn't do this and also the editorial of the new york post, the president's favorite paper, and now something he reads regularly. he gets it in the white house. he looks at it. even they came out and said he shouldn't do this. i think that might be enough that they were the only deciding factor, but with all of this criticism, i think normally he would just try ...