Thats beautiful. All right. Happy birthday, willie. Thanks, guys. That does it for us this morning. Stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. Happy birthday, willie. Good morning. Im stephanie ruhle. With a lot to cover today. Starting with what . Rudy giuliani revealing the president did reimburse Michael Cohen for that hush money payment to one and only Stormy Daniels. Derailing the president s previous story, making him a liar. They funneled it through a law firm. Funneled through a law firm and then the president repaid it. Mm, that was just the beginning. The president s lawyer also claims he had another rational for firing comey. Says jared kushner, hes disposable and lays out his strategy for how to deal with Robert Mueller. I have a great team to help us break all of this down. I want to walk you through all of this. Because this has been an extraordinary, lets call it, 14 hours. Giulia giulianis media tour has given us a ton to get through. But the headline is this. In trying to help the president , giuliani contradicted his clients own explanations and statements on at least two key points. So giulianis lying or trump is. The payment to Stormy Daniels and of course the firing of james comey. Lets start with the payment to daniels. Heres what giuliani told fox news last night. Having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman 130,000, i mean, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, im giving you a fact now that you dont know. Its not campaign money. No Campaign Finance violation. They funneled it through a law firm . Funneled through a law firm and then the president repaid it. Oh, i didnt know he did. Yes. Funneled it through a law firm and the president repaid him . President trump said he didnt do that. Whos lying . That makes no sense. It would seem to indicate that President Trump knew all about it. But that is not what the president said just a month ago on air force one. Did you know about the 130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels . No, no. Why did Michael Cohen make it well you have to ask Michael Cohen. Mikes my attorney and youll have to ask Michael Cohen. Do you know where he got the money . I dont know, no. So is it possible that the president repaid the loan without knowing what it was for . That seems to be what Rudy Giuliani is claiming. If he didnt know about the specifics of it as far as i know, but he did know about the general arrangement that michael would take care of things like this, like i take care of things like that for me clients. I dont burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people. So hold on, take care of things like this. Busy people. A married man running for president. Its too much of a nuisance to talk about the porn star claiming you had an affair with her and you said you didnt have an affair but lets pay her off anyway. Too much of a nuisance to deal with that. We should make it clear, this fox news interview was not a oneshot deal. Rudy giuliani talked to at least three newspapers last night. I believe after sean hannity. So that was a late night for him. Then he went back on fox this morning. In the interview with the Washington Post, he explained exactly why hes talking now. He says its a courtesy to Robert Muellers team to tell them there is nothing to see here. Quote, i want them to know, dont chase. We spend so much time chasing windmills here. According to giuliani, the circumstances prove there was no Campaign Finance violations and nothing illegal. One, he says the money was from trumps personal funds, not campaign funds. And two, he says trump did not specifically know what the money was being used for. President doubled down this morning with a long, long tweet. Insisting the agreement with cohen is not unusual. And that, quote, money came from the campaign or Campaign Contributions played no role. Role, mr. President , is rorle, in this transaction. Does that get the president off the hook . No matter where the money came from, if the intention was to use it or to influence the election, it would have to be reported to the commission. But giuliani says it is not about the election at all. Here he is back on fox, guess when, this morning. It was not for the campaign. It was to save their marriage, not their marriage as much as reputation. Lets go into that. Why did the attorney pay her the money . What was she alleging . She was alleging, although there was the contrary letter she signed that it never happened, a onetime affair, and i think when cohen heard 130,000, he said, my god this is cheap, they come cheap, let me get the thing signed up and signed off. So to make it go away, they made this cohen didnt even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job. Are you ready for the juxtaposition . Thats what were dealing with this morning. The National Prayer breakfast. The president will be in the rose garden in front of a group of pastors. Rudy giuliani also said imagine how damaging it would have been if daniels info would have been released on the night of the last debate. If the information would have negatively impacted President Trump during a president ial debate against then against Hillary Clinton, well, then, wouldnt that certainly mess with the campaign . I want to bring my panel in. Devin barrette, National Security reporter for the Washington Post. He wrote about it in todays paper. So devin was certainly up last late night. Mike pasco, the host of the slates daily podcast. And matt welswelsh, editor at l for reason, the monthly libertarian magazine. You heard giulianis arguments. Does it get trump off the hook as far as Campaign Finance . No, for mere fact the money may have been routed or funneled through intermediaries doesnt absolve all Campaign Finance law issues. Because the critical issue is whether or not there was an in kind contribution. Some kind of benefit. So it doesnt get President Trump out of the woods on Campaign Finance law. In addition it doesnt i think i see what rudys trying to do. Trying to say, oh, well, no, it came from the president so he didnt violation Campaign Finance law because a candidate is allowed to contribute as much as he wants to his campaign. However, number one, theres potential reporting violations. And number two, everybody in that stream of commerce there, all these intermediaries, all these funnels entities, are potentially in violation of Campaign Finance law too. In addition to that, you have potential tax issues. If this was paid without getting the proper tax documentation and paying proper taxes on a payment. It wasnt a gift. We know that. So it was a payment in return for something. We have a contract that shows that. So there are a number of different issues that come up. We havent seen President Trumps taxes so we dont have all lets assume all of that is true. I feel like we keep going in the circle. Campaign finance violation. Why isnt anybody charged with anything . Well, thats a question for the u. S. Attorney, the Southern District, the special counsel. If im just taking a look at what the special counsel is up to, for the most part, theyre waiting until their investigations an co s an investigations completed. And their investigations completed, when its completed. Theyre not going to charge any of the big players, if they have to all, until they have all the counts they want to bring at once. There may be an exception. With certain people like flynn, they may be holding off until later so as not to alert other defendants. Typically the u. S. Attorneys policy is to charge everything all at once. So Rudy Giuliani now saying this is what lawyers do. I do this for my clients. You know, fixing things. Hes now claiming this was to help President Trump save his marriage. Hes also saying its not just 130,000. Hes been invoking numbers like 460,000 to make things like this go away. So hes immediately suggesting to an inquisitive investigator out there, mm, maybe, what are those things out there. I think its important to point out the time line here. Giuliani yesterday said trump only found out about this two weeks ago. But hes just paying hundreds of thousands of dollars out for no apparent reason . Giuliani and trump are over a barrel because as soon as they raided Michael Cohens office, mueller knew this. They knew this number. At minimum. So what giulianis trying to do is surface this information and get it out there in the court of Public Opinion and try to say please, mueller, dont investigate this little bit. Its a risky strategy because giuliani himself, like trump, is not very good at this. Hes not very good at talking out loud in such a way that doesnt invite more investigative followups, particularly because he because the campaign, the election, the effect upon it. Because he does these fox news interviews as though hes sitting on the Upper East Side with four other guys over the age of 65, forgetting that the world is watching, including Robert Mueller. At this rate, Robert Mueller will not need to subpoena President Trump because theyre giving it all right there on fox news with sean hannity. Devlin, what was your biggest takeaway, after sitting down, getting all this information from giuliani . Because at the very least, its confusing. Well, sure, its confusing. Its important on two levels. One, it contradicts statements that the president made to the public. Thats a big deal in any situation. In contradicting the president , we need to remind our viewers, the president s lawyer contradicting the president , what does that mean . It means the president lied to the American People or his lawyer is lying to the American People about the president. So just digest that. Right. While thats an important thing, in some ways, thats the best possibility option here for trump and his legal team. Giuliani is clearly trying to close the door on the issue of Campaign Finance. But in attempting to close that door, he opens like three or four other windows. Some of which include Campaign Finance law. So, you know, his own statements contradict the argument at times that hes trying to make. Thats very problematic for how this is going to go forward. And one of the things that really stands out to me, in giulianis conversation with us last night, he said something along the lines of this was this was paid for, Michael Cohen was reimbursed for a bunch of stuff he did during the campaign and this was one of those things. I mean, honestly, that just opens up a huge can of worms beyond the can of worms they have in front of them. Can i ask you what time were you on the phone with rudy last night . Pretty late. It was after the fox interview. Before the fox and friends interview, if that helps. Were talking somewhere between 11 00 and midnight. And the president signed off i turn to you on this, michael. Rudy giuliani said the president signed off on this. Yes. Given how important this investigation is, given Rudy Giulianis history of, i dont know, stepping in it, does it seem to make sense that the president would aokay, not just going on tv with sean hannity, but right around midnight, you got rudy letting it rip with the Washington Post . Yes, i dont know that this entire legal team represents the epitome of juris prudence. An fec, federal elections commission, violation takes a long time. Its an understaffed agency. I think its weird you have giuliani executing a strategy he clearly wanted to execute, kind of pulling a pin in a hand grenade, just smugglely sitting there and saying see, see what we got. He didnt excole pate his client. His client is now on the hook for campaign violation. Of course he is. Im trying to figure out why. The only explanation i come up with is to some extent everything he said takes Michael Cohen off the hook a bit. And hes trying to do all this, even if it includes hes trying to do all this because hes concerned that Michael Cohen has flipped on the president thats exactly Rudy Giuliani has been out and about new york this week talking about helping the president in the case, saying Michael Cohens a good guy, we want to help them. They might not talk to michael day in and day out but they know michaels watching. To me the only logical explanation is well take a hit on a Campaign Finance violation, which probably wont be enough to impeach the president. Were unbelievably scared of the other stuff cohen knows about, say, russia dealings or former soviet republics and this does take cohen often the hook. Its not him who made the illegal violation. Maybe its an effort to stop him from flipping. This makes a lot of sense in that make all of us are looking at the wrong shiny object. Because last night, were saying with all that he could cover, woo why is he taking this turn into the Stormy Daniels nonsense . He didnt need to. Maybe thats specifically why rudy went on tv to make this point to Michael Cohen. I think the biggest reveal last night is you got to look at the way Rudy Giuliani views this case. He says they would never talk to ivanka trump because america wouldnt stand for it. I dont necessarily know thats true. Thats an accepted view of the case. He all but challenged the mueller team. He took a view of comey that i dont think all of america would share. It was very disparaging. So i think Rudy Giulianis view of this case is that people pay off people. They settle cases. It happens all the time. Ive done it. Hes done it. Everybodys done it. But everybody hasnt done it. As somebody who has been on both sides, both the plaintiffs and defense side, in making demands to large corporations, nuisance value is not 130,000. Its not 430,000. Nuisance value to a Big Corporation is 1,000. Ask any lawyer who has made a demand and a company says we just want it to go away. Its precedent. Once you pay someone, now youve done it. To Rudy Giuliani, while i cannot profess to be as wealthy as President Trump, though we dont know how wealthy he is. Weve never seen his taxes. I havent gone bankrupt four times. Ive never paid anyone off. Ive never had a lawyer pay anyone off. So thats not the way we all conduct our lives. Now i want to stay on this. Rudy giuliani appeared to contradict the president about james comey. I want to show exactly what he said. He fired him, he said, im free of this guy. He went on lester holt. Lester holts interview was as good as anybody could do. Better than i think any of the people around mueller could have done. Lester holt asked him, wihy did you do it . He said, i had to explain to the American People the president was not the target of the investigation. Eyeid agree, i thought lest holt knocked it out of the park. But heres what the president actually said during that interview. But regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey. Knowing there was no good time to do it. And, in fact, when i decided to just do it, said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a madeup story. But giuliani went further and offered a brandnew explanation of why the president fired comey. Listen he fired comey because comey would not, among other things, say that he wasnt they targeted the investigation. Hes entitled to that. Hillary clinton got that. And he couldnt get that. But trump didnt say that either. In fact, giulianis statement directly contradicts what the president tweeted last month. He tweeted, quote, slippery james comey, the worst fib director in history, was not fired because of the phony Russian Investigation where, by the way, there was no collusion, except by democrats. And we got to remember this, that all of these are selfinflicted wounds. Why . Because the president , he doesnt actually have to provide any reason for firing comey. Its his only its only his shifting explanations that have drawn all this attention. Thats what matters here. I want to bring my panel back. Danny, you mentioned it. Trump fired comey. Because he wouldnt tell him where he stood in the investigation. Or at one point he said that. Does that constitute obstruction of justice . Lets start with what the president can do. This happens all the way from federal down to local politics. Officials have certain powers. The president can fire someone like comey. He can issue pardons. These are all legal powers of the president. And he doesnt have to explain himself. He does not have to explain himself. When you get into crimes like obstruction or bribery or other crimes that depend on a corrupt intent. If you do that, plus you have a corrupt intent, in other words you do it for an improper purpose, the purpose becomes everything. An otherwise lawful act can become part of a larger illegal act or a crime as in the case of obstruction. Where if you fire comey, because lets say for example youre trying to avoid an investigation where you think you have some liability, then that is arguably an improper purpose. If youre firing comey because you just dont like his style or you just dont like his record, that is a proper purpose. And that would be totally acceptable. So otherwise the president could have said thats why he did it. Devlin, quickly, what do you make of giuliani saying that the president was, quote, entitled to know he was the target of the investigation . Is that fair . I mean, look, i dont think the president as a general rule tells anyone who was a target of the investigation they are a target until the very end of an investigation. You know, often as someones pulling out handcuffs, frankly. So the notion that the president s entitled to that i think is a frankly misunderstanding of how investigations work. But look, to dannys point, giulianis job is to try and explain that this that the president was not engaged in obstruction. But his except comments last n it closer to the issue of russia and closer to the issue of the president s anger over the russia investigation. Thats moving in the wrong direction for a defense lawyer. Its a strange statement to make. It contradicts the president. It is problematic. We got to turn to the white house. Id like to say, if i had Sarah Sanders job, today, i would still be in bed on my fifth plate of bacon watching wendy williams. But alas, sarah went to work today. And some reporters caught up with her. Heres what she said. Talk about this a bit of a disconnect between what the president said aboard air force one and the way the mayor described how that payment was made . I think its fair to say that theres ongoing litigation and the president s attorneys, who have the greatest amount of visibility into this, have spoken about this, both at length last night, again this morning. The president s put out multiple tweets on this morning. I dont have anything else giuliani was was he surprised again, guys, im not going to be able to get into many of the payments many of the payments of course came after he was president and president elect as giuliani said. Do you care to tell the American People what else he was taking care of . Again, i care to tell you what i can. Which is not a lot on this topic. Because of ongoing litigation. Im really not going to be able to get into on james comey i will happily get to address all of your last question on james comey, the story changed on james comey the payment . Again, guys, i youve spoken about this before so why can you its ongoing litigation. I cant go any further than what ive given in the past. I would refer you to mayor giulianis comment last night and this morning. Hes going to have the greatest visibility on this. Was James Comey Fired because he wouldnt tell others the president was not a target of the russia investigation . I dont know how many times i can answer once again, i am not going to comment on ongoing litigation. There are plenty of comments is there litigation in other words, Rudy Giuliani stepped in it. Id really like to not be the one to roll in it. Peter alexander at the white house. No joke, theres zero chance i would have gone to work today if i was Sarah Sanders. Wendy williams is good to watch. Talk me through what that gaggle was just like and your reaction to this. This is striking and setting up for whats going to be a remarkable day here at the white house, recognize in less than two hours from now the president will be in the rose garden, an open press event as they describe it, which means reporters and cameras are there as well for the National Prayer day. So its likely at the end of the president s comments during National Prayer day he may face some yelled questions about his acknowledgement that he had some involvement with the payment to a porn star who has accused him of having a consensual sexual relationship with him. I think that just sets up whats going to be another striking moment for the president a short time from now. As for what Sarah Sanders said there, i think it was remarkable to hear her say she was not able to speak about these, because of ongoing litigation. Remember from the podium here in the west wing, only a matter of months ago, Sarah Sanders said the president was emphatic and he did not know anything about a pate to Stormy Daniels. She then said she could talk about it. Now she says she cant because the fact of the matter is it has now been proven statements they made before simply werent true. The president himself acknowledging that he knew about that money, even if he only knew about the general arrangement, as Rudy Giuliani is now saying. And james comey, her inability to talk about that because of ongoing litigation now. Not clears their real litigation. Certainly theres a russia investigation taking place, a federal investigation, thats going on right now. All of this, though, remarkable, as you consider this was the first time we were hearing publicly from Rudy Giuliani. Coming just hours after the president announced a new shakeup to his legal team. Ty cobb, the man who suggested being more cooperative in terms of this russia investigation was on his way out, retiring. And emmett flood, a blue chip d. C. Attorney would be coming in which was signaling a much more adversarial approach here. Just a series of startling developments this morning. It is stunning. Sarah sanders, if she sided with rudy, the president would be a liar. If she sided with the president , rudy would be a liar. Were in for quite a day. Up next, we need to remember that giuliani is part of trumps legal team in the Mueller Investigation. Hes not just a surrogate out there doing media. So what do his blitz of interviews reveal about trumps legal teams strategy defending the president from the special counsel . Plus, all of this comes as the president s legal teams in flux. Longtime attorney ty cobb stepping down. The president replacing him with the famed impeachment lawyer. If you recognize the name of emmett t. 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All right. That was President Trumps lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, comparing the Mueller Investigation to the investigation into bill clinton more than 20 years ago. Despite only being a member of President Trumps legal team for the last couple of weeks, he is already upending its media strategy. This all comes as longtime trump attorney ty cobb is on the way out. I wonder if he is already in tahiti. He was previously the president s lead white house attorney for the Mueller Investigation. Trump of course replacing him with emmitt flood who advised president clinton during his impeachment. Just a few minutes ago, preet ferrara tweeted from a purely legal and competency perspective, trump should follow giuliani long before sessions, rosenstein. Preet going for it. I think prwise, trump has always had his eye on the fact he had this base and he could convince his base and thats why all his people go on fox in this entire this entire affair is played out under the less than intense withering questioning of fox hosts, and still they screw up. So i do think that there is a political element to it. You want to stay in office as long as you can and perhaps convince the people who got you elected the first time and that part is working. So everyone from the outside can look at legal jeopardy and all of us can say your arguments dont hold water. But its working for that intended audience. But when an indictment comes, it doesnt matter if its working. I guess i should say if an indictment comes. But it does seem that the law does not care about pr. The law will charge based on violations of the law. And so this stuff, i dont know, i get the impression that its just trying to widen the time horizon. As long as they can. To play out the string. But theres no great strategy at the end for escaping some sort of legal prosecution. I would actually dispute that it is working as a strategy to get the base. It is on some level but its also sawing off the branch that youre putting your surrogates out on. Trump has changed his stories so many times about so many things that the people who defend him end up looking bad. Hes a terrible client. You cant fire giuliani. You have to fire yourself. Hes a bad, bad, bad client. So hes going to get bad lawyers out there. Because he cant get a good defense lawyer. Hes also a bad ally. If youre out there, theres members of the House Freedom caucus, which is just shameful in my point of view, people like mark meadows, who are out there running interference for the president. But the president changes his story. Constantly. About everything. So theyre defending this. Theyre hyping uranium one or god knows whatever it is this week. Agitating for the impeachment of rosenstein. Towards the people who are torturing the president. So its going to make them look worst, which makes them look less electable. When this thing ends n s up in congress, which it will, you have a worst defense. It undermines the exact people he needs to support where hes at. That assumes that he has something defensible. If theres nothing defensible that you can put out there, you do your best just to confuse everyone. And to at least tend to the people who will believe you no matter what and have the sense of grievance and think of the world as us against them. I think its going to make them less electable. Youll not have enough of those people out there. Then, danny, walk us through the strategy of bringing Rudy Giuliani on. We know that the president is more and more isolated. He shares the same sensibility with rudy. Rudy has been extraordinarily loyal to the president. But what does it signal . I mean, having President Trumps reckless sensibilities, does that put the president in a better place . Heres the thought i had. Emmett flood came on around the same time as giuliani. I dont see giuliani traveling to review terabytes worth of documents in a warehouse somewhere. Thats what emmitt flood and his team of absolute Stellar Associates is going to do. I have no relationship to this firm but rudys the media guy . Rudys the media guy, exactly. Goes in front of fox news and trump trusts him implicitly. Believes in his power as americas mayor. As a former u. S. Attorney. And trusts him on air. On the other hand, and even rudy said in the interview last night, look, hes my friend. He trusts me. Then behind the scenes youve got emmett flood. Who really in many ways should have been the first choice. Maybe its a strategy then. Maybe it is. Except for the fact that little problem that the words of an attorney combined his or her client. An attorney making statements ostensibly on behalf of his client and thefr following that up with we had a phone call and the president said i liked everything you said. So any argument that rudy was just going off script has been foreclosed. I mean, obviously, though are gone rudys words. So thats the big difference. If Rudy Giuliani is a surrogate on the campaign trail, kellyanne conwaystyle, spinning, spinning, spinning in the other direction, its okay, you can walk away from that. But as the president s lawyer, does it carry a lot more binding weight . Well, its an interview he does with a tv show. He seems to be tipping his hand. Of course they can contradict that. We just saw a strategy where giulianis strategy was to tell everyone that trump lied. So why cant they have a next strategy and say yes, giuliani was inaccurate. I dont think they have a good hand to play. Everything that were saying assumes, well, if they had played it differently. The underlying facts are so bad. Im just trying to get from them the signals theyre giving about what they think theyre most have been rabl vulnerable on. To me, think theyre signaling that russia, thats what theyre unbelievably worried about. Why would he take trump as a client . That i dont know. He had to be interviewed some months ago or some years ago and maybe for whatever reason said no. But he is essentially suited to handle this case. The challenge is going to be not only what trump tweets but now what Rudy Giuliani says. And whether its on tv or in a deposition. What Rudy Giuliani says can be binding on trump. Sounds like were going to have to get you a cot at 30 rock, youre not going anywhere. Coming e ing up, rudy giuli interviews. He blasts mueller as not objective. Demanding trump receive the same treatment Hillary Clinton did. Plus, landing in china to try to avoid a trade war. This morning, new reports that china, please Pay Attention to this, has stopped buying american soybeans. 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Weve made it possible for the people who live here to lead healthier lives and thats invaluable. Welcome back. Im stephanie ruhle. During his appearance on fox and friends this morning, President Trumps lawyer Rudy Giuliani attempted to draw a comparison between special counsel Robert Muellers investigation and the fbi inquiry into Hillary Clinton he emails during the 2016 election. If you do if for clinton, maybe theyd like to give all the things that clinton got, like the memo written, like no under oath, like the lawyers making up his mind before he interviewed her. And your lawyers in the room, all of whom are witnesses, sitting there making signals at you. With me, hue hoogh hewitt. And my panel. Hugh, are the two investigations comparable . No, theyre not. I think what Rudy Giulianis been doing, stephanie, is laying the predicate for turning down a president ial reply to a subpoena. In fact, all ive seen from the tweets and the commentary. This is not related to Stormy Daniels. Its all about the president preparing to say no to a Robert Mueller subpoena to appear before the grand jury by citing all sorts of other instances of judicial processes incompleted. So i think thats whats gone on here this morning. In doing so, hes offering Robert Mueller and others a treasure trove of new leads as he somewhat goes off the rails. Im not sure its off the rails. I think hes very on the rails for their strategy. But hes giving them a lot of leads. A lot of leads outside the Mueller Investigation writ for what he ought to be investigating. Does a president have to respond to a grand jury . That has never been decided. Some law professors say yes. Thomas jefferson thought no but hes lost. Its gone on for a long time. I think the president wants to litigate that all summer long. I think he thinks it helps him politically and diverts attention. He directly contradicts the president making him a liar. How is that good strategy . Because he wants to delay any kind of proceeding against him from the russia investigation. He cant fire muelle th would be terrible. He cant fire rosenstein. That would be and put in someone like hhs secretary aczar. All he does is cloud it up and keep moving forward on things like north korea, on the iran deal. Winning in the polls. Even as this becomes more marginal, more an area for cable fest talk, but not of great concern to voters. Put this in perspective. If the strategy is lets make moves to show the people that the president is a liar, because the president being a liar is better than digging deep into the russia investigation. How does that sit with you . He doesnt confess to being a liar. He directly contradicts President Trump and what President Trump had to say about Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen and the payment, making the president a liar. But in the tweets this morning, he says he was not. Rudy gave him a way out. The only thing that threatens this president is impeachment. What would advance impeachment be a grand jury subpoena, to which he responded. As a decision to litigate whether or not the president has to enter the decision. Maybe no inquiry, maybe two, three hours. I think its all about the grand jury subpoena, stephanie. If this is about the grand jury subpoena and keeping the president in the oval offi, what about his family members . Want to share what he had to say about jared kushner. About his soninlaw, talked about him. I guess jared is a fine man, you know that. Men are disposable. But a fine woman like ivanka, come on. Hugh hewitt, what in gods name is Rudy Giuliani talking about . I have no idea how to interpret it. He went in, expecting to talk about Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen and the president. Wasnt prepared for the jared question. Did not have an answer for it. Came up with an incoherent response. I think the issue is jared is on jareds own. If Robert Mueller comes for jared, hes going to be on his own. Weve seen no indication theres any kind of evidence between jared and the russia meddling in our election. I go back to the original writ of the special counsel. He is to look into the collusion charge. He can refer it to the Southern District of new york. I go back to Rudy Giulianis implication that you cant simply go to the first daughter, a la, the princess, ivanka trump. Shes a Senior Adviser to the president of the United States. Shes a partner in the trump family business. Intimately involved in real estate transitions in panama, the Trump Soho Hotel and also in turkey. This is not just the first daughter, a fine woman. Gentlemen, you want to weigh in. I think he was absolutely right. This is the strategy. Hes an impeachment attorney. This will be the big legal question that needs to be played out. The watergate, this is a key pivotal moment, trying to subpoena the tapes from the white house and the Supreme Court ruled you have to turn them over. We dont know the outcome of that. And some of that is going to be played in the court of Public Opinion as well as the court of law. Collusions not even a legal charge. It allows him to go wherever the evidence takes him. I want to ask hugh a question. We on this panel all agreed it sure seemed like giuliani put his client on the hook for a Campaign Finance law violation. Especially when you add the comment to fox and friends. What if that came out in the last debate . I like to get out of my intellectual silo. What do you think . You didnt see it that way . No, i did. I thought he might be giving up a, you know, small charge on Campaign Finance reform fec sort of thing, which is not an Impeachable Offense in the eyes of most americans. In exchange for buying a way out of going before the grand jury on collusion. Gentle men, i believe, stephanie, i believe this is all about how do you bring the Mueller Investigation to an end without firing mueller, without firing rosenstein, because those are Impeachable Offenses. You give up an fec violation. At worst. If mueller can even go there under his writ, and i dont think he can, but at worst you give up a little bit of terrain for defensible lines. Its all about defensible lines. You think this is a Winning Strategy . I didnt say that. Its going to be a political strategy that will be played out over the summer and if the Supreme Court were to rule that a grand first of all, if mr. Mueller goes to the mr. Rosenstein gets authority to issue a grand jury subpoena, which he must do, it will be litigated in the court all summer long. Against the north korea south korea agreement, against all the other negotiations. Maybe the hostages coming home today. Against the economy grows. I think its the 1998 elections in replay. First time as strategy, tragedy. This time, becky wright is played by Michael Cohen. Im just naive girl from jersey. If you didnt do anything, nobody would have to flip on anything. If you didnt do anything, there would be no lesser charge to cop to. Guess im just a farmer. Thanks, gentlemen. Up next, trumps Economic Team lands in china, trying to and i cant speak, trying to avoid a trade war, but with a reported division inside their own team. Remember, peter navarro, larry kudlow, steve mnuchin. Can they strike a deal with china if they cant agree as one . The subtext to all the conversationings with china, those impending negotiations with north korea. According to seth meyers, the president is fired up. President trump is triggered by the leaks about special counsel Robert Muellers investigation and his instinct is always to be on the offensive. So yeah, real good time to meet with the leader of north korea. Before he leaves, lets also give him a bunch of red bull and remind him hillary won the popular vote. vo i was born during the winter of 77. I first met james in 5th grade. We got married after college. And had twin boys. But then one night, a truck didnt stop. But thanks to our forester, neither did our story. And thats why well always drive a subaru. With tough food, your dentures may slip and fall. New fixodent ultramax hold gives you the strongest hold ever to lock your dentures. So now you can eat tough food without worry. Fixodent and forget it. Attention homeowners age sixtytwo and older. One reverse mortgage has a great way for you to live a better retirement. Its called a reverse mortgage. Call rfree information kityour with no obligation. It answers questions like. How a reverse mortgage works, how much you qualify for, the ways to receive your money and more. 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Eunice, what should we expect to get out of these talks because a small winning headline is a giant win for team trump . And china is playing for keeps. Well, thats right. There is a lot on the line right now for both countries because a trade war would be costly. At the end of the talks we could hope we could see some sort of mutually acceptable agreement. The feeling on the ground is that it is going to be very challenging to come up with a grand resolution or even have some partial level of success because even before they came out on to this trip secretary mnuchin and other officials indicated they hope to talk about and make progress on a wide range of issues, cutting the trade deficit, the forced technology transfers, chinas industrial policies all on the agenda and the Chinese Industrial policies are seen as core to the countrys National Economic agenda. So getting china to change the practices is going to be a really big ask. Also, my sources in the Chinese Government have said that there was very little preliminary work done on this trip. The standard is that working level people get together with their countries asks and hash things out for senior level officials. My sources said this didnt happen this time around. Because of that there is a big questionmark as to how much can be achieved in what amounts to about a 24 hour period of discussions. It is certainly a different kind of rodeo. Some would say President Trumps strategy is it is so crazy it just might work. President obama was absolutely predictable for china. He wasnt really doing anything. Does the unpredictability of President Trump and even his team who within his own team dont agree with one another, could that work in some crazy way to our benefit . Im not sure. Its also so crazy it might not work. The president and his team are asking china to reduce its 375 billion trade deficit with the United States by 100 billion. There is no clear path to get there. We could sell china a lot more liquefied natural gas and change the math in the deficit. We could penetrate Financial Services if china were serious about opening up to u. S. And other foreign firms and could address the issues that we know are outstanding. Not having a unified position on this, having my old friend larry kudlow going at it hammer and tong over how to approach International Trade policy is a rather difficult spot to be in. As eunice said, given that none were on the ground doing the preliminary work that would lead to a constructive meeting you have to doubt that this will result in the outcome that is desired by both parties, certainly not at this juncture. Lets talk about how it is impacting at least some of the American People. We are hearing that china is shunning u. S. Soybeans saying, quote, the Worlds Biggest Oil seed processor just confirmed one of the biggest fears, china has essentially stopped buying u. S. Supplies amid brewing trade war. That has to be massive since they buy half of our u. S. Soybean supply. Absolutely. Its interesting that you mention that because soybeans and the fact that china had stopped buying american soybeans for the past two weeks was highlighted on Chinese State tv today. Both sides want to get leverage and the chinese want to show the americans that they are serious. I think the soybean issue is a really interesting and telling one because american soybeans are really important for china. China is as you said a big share of the imports and also they use those soybeans for meal for their pigs and pigs and pork is a really sensitive asset in the country so yet they are now willing to use this in a trade conflict. A lot of people in the Agricultural Industry who i speak to here say this jt is a sign of how serious china is and how fiercely they will play this game if they are pushed to the wall. I think what is also interesting is how it really highlights that the Trump Administration is dealing with a political system that is very different from the United States. This is a one party system and if the government decides that it wants to have some antiamerican action it will. So it will if it says it will not buy if there is a trade war then it just wont buy. You are seeing that already with soybeans. The farmers in the United States many of them are President Trump supporters. We have mid terms coming. President trump has to get reelected. We have to leave it there. We are out of time. You know how i have to end the show. I want to end it with you but i have to end with good news because no matter what im not good news . Of course, you are. Congratulations on your success. Thank you so much. No matter what there is always good news somewhere and we think good news rules. We also love it when good things happen to good people. Do you remember the extraordinary american who disarmed the gunman in the waffle house shooting that took place last month . He was on ellen yesterday talking about his love of basketball when this happened. Do you have a favorite player . Dwyane wade. Why is that . I like the way he carries himself off the court. Lets see how he carries himself out here. Come on out. [ cheers and applause ] how awesome is that . Dwyane wade, i love him. James shaw, im a fan. The president might not have thanked james shaw but every chance we can get we will. Thank you to ellen for making that happen. Ill see you at 11 00 a. M. Wi Rudy Giuliani is still talking. He is hitting up fox to drop bombs that the white house doesnt know how to diffuse. Why did the president say he knew nothing about the payment to the porn star when the president s lawyer says he definitely did . No good answer today from 1600 pennsylvania avenue. What might be illegal . What my be