Overwhelmingly people in 1998 said yes, the president of the united states is guilty of a crime. should he be removed from office? overwhelmingly, the answer the voters gave was no. they needed democrats if they wanted to throw clinton out and convict them. democrats saw those numbers and said safe to stay with the president and bill clinton survived. let s takie impeachment out for a moment. president clinton, 66 approval as you said. president trump, and we will see it in a moment, here it is, donald trump 42% right now. why is there such a disparity between their popularity? is it because i mean, listen, donald trump has been plagued by controversy. he has been accused of being a rays racist, zeno phobe, et cetera. the context, obviously, this is latest trump story hitting after endless controversy since he became a candidate really.
Divisive president is accused of breaking in the law in order to cover up a politically dangerous extramarital affair. the president s party plays defense kwhiel twhile the oppos begins to call for impeachment. the year is 1988 and the president is bill clinton. many have pointed out the parallels between the two scandals. how similar are the situations in with me msnbc national political correspondent steve kornacki and author of the upcoming book, preorder it, the red and the blue. the 1990s and the birth of political tribalism. steve, how similar are we between now and 1999? you put it out there. the main similarity, and you can see on the board, compare the headlines from when the clinton scl clinton/lewinsky scandal broke. you had in 1998 a president accused of a crime. the crime was perjury. it was lying under oath.
Republicans for two specific congress ma congressmen and their conduct, it s a good talking point. this is not draining the swamp. the swamp is getting thicker. we would say he is not responsible for the conduct of collins is he responsible for the conduct of cohen? maybe not manafort because manafort d these things before he was involved with trump or maybe not with trump s knowledge. michael cohen, i mean that s directly implicating the president. michael cohen is directly implicating the president. his only implication he has is are on these two payments to women, to mcdougal two serious campaign but as far as his lawyer, lanny davis said yesterday, multiple interviews, not with you, but he said he doesn t have any new information on the trump tower so is russia the only crime that the president is able to commit that would hurt him? is that what you are saying? if there is nothing going on with this russian collusion and investigation, the idea that you have
Of the reasons they are going for sessions to be pushed out is because rosenstein has not been answering their subpoenas and sessions has shown that he has no real authority recused himself? he fully recused himself. he didn t have to fully recuse himself from the entire investigation. that s the issue. that s why i was quite surprised on your reporting there. i think it s interesting that the talking point against what michael cohen is saying is that this has nothing to do with russia as if the president can it only matters that the president committed that crime and the other crimes he may or may not have committed, that s nothing. on the campaign finance, he pled guilty to that. that has not been adjudicated. i can make a sound argument the moment he walked into the court he pled guilty and the judge accepted it. period. end of story. he didn t have a jury of peers but he pled guilty. the judge accepted his testimony and allocution in court. i was there. th
Of this farmland are getting murdered by blacks because they it s a racist thing and it s a hate-filled crime, not entirely correct and not so easy to define, right, greg? exactly. south africa has a terrible crime problem. its victims are black and white, urban and rural. south african farmers, as the few people in rural areas who do have resources, they tend to have cash and guns and cars, are therefore a target. and so, yes, they are victims of crime. but it seems that it is very prosaic criminal actions rather than any sort of racially based attacks in the main. so, what s the president doing here? well, i think he s doing what he does often in these united states, and that is, he s trying to distract from this cloud that he s now clearly under with the manafort convictions and with the michael cohen taking a plea. he goes to race and what better