Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. A source says Michael Cohen is prepared to tell Robert Mueller that donald trump knew about that meeting before it happened. He did not participate in any meeting about the russia transaction. The president . The president did not. Im happy to tell him, he wasnt there. He wasnt at the meeting. The meeting with the russians. How can you be sure that the president didnt know beforehand . Youre saying its just a he said, he said. Nobody can be sure of anything. Earlier this evening, a long time former Trump Organization employee said this about the possibility of such a meeting occurring without trumps knowledge. Based on my experience working with trump and everybody that worked for trump, something major, something newsworthy, something press worthy, would always go before trump. Always. I think that he would have told donald about the meeting and then if it didnt amount to anything, it would have
The 11th moThe 11th Hour gets on a monday night. Good evening from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 557 of the Trump Administration, 99 days now until the mid term elections. And this might go down as the day we witnessed a change resulting in the new defense strategy. On the part of the trump team. Its about something Rudolph Giuliani has started to say, and tonight, mark at the New York Times has put it this way. In the days after the 2016 president ial election, Donald Trumps advisers had an unequivocal message about contacts between russians and members of the campaign team. There were none. In the ensuing months as numerous such communications were revealed the message changed. There was no collusion with russias effort to disrupt the election. On monday President Trumps
Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Which was four of the six. That meeting never ever took place. It didnt happen. Its a figment of his imagin
he has such faith in himself, believes he s his best salesman, his best spokes man, he thinks he can get in there and acquit himself. anita, elie correctly points out it got personal this weekend and now tomorrow begins manafort. tomorrow night, as luck would have it, the president s holding a rally in florida. what is that likely to be like after just reading his twitter feed this past weekend? right, i mean, what have all of them been like? even his official speeches have turned into political speeches. even his official speeches have turned into places where he pushes back on this investigation, talks about the 2016 election, and everything else. so, we can definitely expect that to be tomorrow in florida. obviously it s a rally for a particular candidate but he tends to take these and just kind of talks about really whatever he wants. so you can bet he s going to push back on manafort. he s going to push back on mueller. he s going to push back on all this.
others today say more than once, collusion is not a crime, what is it? he s right. collusion is not a crime. it s something, i think, the president made up. you just showed the graphic. the president s the only one who s ever said the word collusion. robert mueller and his team have never used that word, collusion. of course conspiracy is a crime and of course receiving aid from foreign nationals in an election is a crime, and obstruction of justice is a crime. but it s word play and it s so flimsy and it s so transparent that i think, again, it s another sign of desperation, and you know, as jonathan said, they re trying to sort of they have nowhere to go. and so they re trying to play semantics and it s another sign that they re panicking. so jonathan, the president today allowed that he d be perfectly willing to sit down with rouhani of iran with no preconditions. now the mueller interview is something different. where do those chances stand? i think we saw singapore, we ve
which was four of the six. that meeting never ever took place. it didn t happen. it s a figment of his imagination or he s lying. giuliani s last comment there referring to cohen, quote, lying, is part of his evolution on the president s former personal attorney. just a few months ago, giuliani called cohen an honest, honorable lawyer. by last week, however, he had switched to calling cohen a pathological liar, a man who s been lying for years. finally, the president went directly at robert mueller over the weekend, as you may have seen. there is no collusion. the robert mueller rigged witch hunt is an illegal scam and is robert mueller ever going to are release his conflicts of interest with respect to president trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty and contentious business relationship. i turned him down to head the fbi one day before his appointment as special counsel and comey is his close friend. well, let s, at this point, bring in our leadoff panel for a