narrative that he deferred to the recommendation of a non-partisan widely respected person. instead, he has confirmed, we think we all knew two days ago, which was this. i wanted to fire him, for probably a politically motivated reason, i needed a cover to make that happen and make that go down very easily. you had the cover, and now he's erased whatever little gains he would have had among people who believe that initial incredible story. >> on that final note, sara murray, let me bring you in, in the white house briefing room. you asked two excellent questions. and a piece of that, he decided to fire comey irrespective of any recommendation. and your question was about rosenstein and whether or not -- well, why did y'all essentially throw him under the bus? >> that's right. it was interesting to see sarah huckabee sanders try to sort of address this today. she basically said, look, we didn't try to pin this decision on rod rosenstein. that's obviously a very different tone from what we heard from a number of white house officials in the past two