don t come to me, i ll come to you. the president makes the trip up pennsylvania avenue as democrats set their priority list. senate majority leader chuck schumer was in the room, and now he will be here on the lead . a plot to kill foiled in michigan as authorities arrest a man they say wanted to kill jewish lawmakers including fwf michigan s attorney general. after six weeks of testimony and more than 70 witnesses, now the jury gets the case in the double murder trial for alex murdaugh. welcome to the lead. i m john berman in for jake tapper. we start with our national lead. moments ago the jury began deliberations in the murder trial of alex murdaugh. the jury will have to decide if murdaugh killed his wife maggie and son paul. more than 70 witnesses testified in the trial, which spanned more than six weeks. murdaugh admitted on the stand he lied to investigators about where he was the night of the murders, but he has fervently denied he committed the killings. mu
Response to your reporting. He said, quote, the New York Times story is factually incorrect. I will not respond on a story thats biased against the department and advancing their own personal agenda but let me be clear about this. Based on my personal dealings with the president , there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment. I want to give you a chance to respond to that. I also want to point out when he says there is no basis, hes talking the present tense. Hes not saying, i never thought there was a basis. Yeah. That was my read. I mean im not going to parse rods statement. I think, myself and other news outlets have all now, including cnn, have recorded the basic facts that are now in dispute. The two basic facts are rod raised the idea of wearing a wire and in a second basic fact, in a memo Andrew Mccabe road that Special Counsel has rod raced the idea of the 25th
release of the transcripts of the witnesses in the russian investigation. The republicans refused. Mr. Nunes refused
Might be to the jury? i think it s a slippery slope, john, and i ll explain why. so on one hand in the defense s favor, there are so many people in this country who have been impacted by opioids. it s a crisis. it s a crisis nationwide, so from the defense perspective, raising the specter that his opioid addiction could have led him to act irrationally and that he lied and was paranoid, this is something they believe will resonate with one or two jurors who have perhaps had personal experience either with themselves or a loved one or friend with opioid abuse. i say it s a slippery slope because on the flip side you re talking about somebody acting rationally, act k reasonably and the defense was saying alex murdaugh was not able to do that. he was paranoid. that s why he lied so long.
Donald trump press conference, september 727th, 2018. he reveals himself in press conferences and interviews and, of course, on twitter. that seems like what he s doing in the daily caller and this morning on twitter. and that s your point right here. i don t think the challenge necessarily is finding his intent in here. it s pulling it out of all the word salad. he does interviews and press conferences and on twitter. but one of the through lines in all of this going back to when he was inaugurated has been bob mueller. it s been a constant. like one of the polar stars of his paranoia. and his lashing out. there s very few subjects that define his presidency and targets for him as much as bob mueller. any time you want to look at a pressure cooker, a vice closing in around him, causing him to act irrationally, lash out at other people, it s often the mueller investigation.
Be justified seems reasonable to me. kirsten, senator santorum said this might prod the president to act irrationally. there was a tweet also telling the president to fire rod rosenstein right away. they ve been saying this for a long time. they were looking for a smoking gun as a reason to do it. unfortunately if this story is true, it does give donald trump, i think, the rationale that seems reasonable to most people if he decides to go ahead and get rid of them, even though i think it would be a rationale they ve been looking for for a long time. again, we don t know 100%. but, again, i agree with jeffrey. it s consistent with other stories we ve heard in recent days or recent weeks, whether it s bob woodward s book or the