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President and say, yes, in fact, his comments were racist, there is a problem there. and, of course, they're racist. lawmakers, they get involved in the job because they want to make a difference and they want to make a change. so the sign that ilhan omar, our congresswoman, wants to make changes is a sign that she loves the country, not the opposite. >> the immediate offenses of the president's tweets aside, did the president have a successful week in achieving his goal of making the far left the face of the democratic party? >> he's clearly trying to draw the battle lines very starkly. and h...

Which the justice department makes those decisions. in any case, berman was off the case, recused. what the times says is the president or the white house ask whitaker to put bemplen back on, and whitaker said he couldn't do that or declined to do that, because berman was recused. the justice department spokeswoman has a statement pushpush ing back to some extent, pointing out that when whitaker testified, he said, quote -- at no time has the white house asked for nor have i provided any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation. i was go...

Investigation or other investigations." so a pushback to some extent against the story. >> hard to know what the parsing in that means. is that an absolute denial? is that a "new york times" is reporting is wrong? >> well, the statement is just as gave it to you. i think -- i think that the gravamen of the statement is that. -- >> but a promise or a commitment is not the same as a request. >> and this was into michael cohen. so i'm wondering whether that's the distinction. >> the question was -- or any other investigation. or any other investigation. >> so the white house -- okay. so this is -...

We've seen. >> to that point, he pressured jeff sessions. what we've heard about the campaign, they didn't make a direct request. the statement is there was no promise or commitment. isn't there something different between whitaker promising or committing to change out the person working on the investigation to the president, asking him, hey, man, can you work on that? like, is there a situation where the statement that we're getting from the doj is some world-class wordsmithing? >> i'm going to let the department of justice speak for themselves on that. >> fair enough. all right. well, thank ...

And then again when he was asked by congresswoman zoe lofgren about it, she says -- she was asking him -- i'm looking back at the trip -- generally speaking this issue of whether he was asked to do anything about the russia investigation, and he says -- i can assure this committee before being appointed -- before appointing me to this position, the president did not ask for nor did i provide any commitments, promises concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation. of course, that was before appointing him. the times story says that he was asked about this while he wa...