telling that to other officials but not the president? >> what happened in june was the president had told mcgahn to call rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who is overseeing mueller, tell him that mueller had these series of conflicts and had to go. the president pushed mcgahn to do this over the span of a few days and eventually, mcgahn got fed up. he knew this was something he didn't want to do. and he told the folks around him he was going to quit. around that time, the president backed down and stopped pushing him to call rosenstein and he stayed on. >> mcgahn didn't want to do it or perhaps felt legally he could not do it. michael schmidt with the "new york times" with the big story. thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> stepping back for a moment, this reporting has two three lines. the first is the president talking to the mueller witnesses. the second is what we've been