confidants of the former vice president said even he could not have anticipated that the president would escalate his attack so dramatically or so early. joining me the correspondent behind that reporting, nbc mike. the president has shown repeatedly no low too low. he accused ted cruz s father of being part of the assassination of jfk. before the former vice president got into this race, he was saying this. one of the final hurdles i have is knowing this president will do, stop at nothing to target his opponents. he wanted to make sure his family was onboard with it. i think they thought this was going to come in the general election contest. they didn t expect the president to engage in this near impeachment level behavior to go after them like this. we have seen the campaign respond really aggressively, especially behind the scenes. we know they re trying, for instance, tell us not to book certain guests and also doing a really aggressive job of
nonsense. the president is suggesting that the clintons could be behind it. trump has promoted conspiracy theories before. notably about barack obama, during the 2016 campaign he suggested the father of the rival ted cruz was somehow involved in the assassination of jfk. but it s worth note lg that the president s latest comes two weeks after the report from the office in phoenix arizona warned against conspiracy theory driven extremist. when the president spreads these theories he s not asking questions, he s amplifying their message from the bully pulpit of the white house and that leads some folks to believe it. that fbi special report says that social media was enabled pro mosters to produce and have greater material that larger consumers can quickly and easily access. by that standard, we need to confront the fact that the president of the united states has become one of the most powerful forces for promoting
years. so let s continue to investigate that. and trump s retweet of this conspiracy theory is not an isolated incident. it s the president using his powerful megaphone to share conspiracy theories and other falsehoods. going back even before he was president, one of the ways the president rose on the political right, of course, was sharing the false conspiracy theory that president barack obama was not born in the united states. even after the former president shared his birth certificate. and then as a candidate for president, trump shared the conspiracy theory linking ted cruz s father to the assassination of jfk. and once he became president, among many other conspiracy theories, the president suggested that former president obama had wiretapped his phones during the 2016 campaign. so all very much part of a pattern the president continuing that this weekend. quite the litany there. jeremy diamond, thank you so much. let s talk more.
this is really going to get nasty. did we not know it was going to get nasty? i guess we did. we saw this in 2016, kpa comparing hand size with marco rubio, accusing ted cruz s dad of being involved in the assassination of jfk. trump has no boundaries. skpuf and unfortunately, this is what the republican party has allowed to happen right now because there s no one keeping him in check. and i think he s got to be scared. if you look at the numbers of how trump won, he won by 77,000 votes in three states, michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania. he s down in all three of those states until pos riglls right n. and he knows if he doesn t win those states, he won t be re-elected. and how big a lie is it when trump says he would rather run against joe biden when it s fairly obvious that clearly he is worried about joe biden. well, it s not a lie if you believe it, a. but, no, it s 1,000% a lie.
the assassination of jfk. can you tell me your experience or what you know about this organization? what s at stake here, what bezos is establishing that the national enquirer is not legitimate news. we knew that. but it s an important point and then when you have the president who is friends with david pecker and he has consistently used that tabloid to strike at his political enemies, he did that with ted cruz and here he s doing it with jeff bezos but jeff bezos is now punching down because his letter is extraordinary because he imindicates not only the president in his letter but not directly and he implicates the saudis because they are they would be the first person you would go to to say where did you get these texts? it seems to be either from the government or the saudi government, likely the saudi government and that s that s a big that s a big problem.