this. so if i were president, i m not going to be president, i would call someone like brett mcgurk. but he was obviously not phoned in advance of this stuff. that just stood out to me as how hastily this thing came together. then finally the thing i would have asked him is have you heard from anyone on the hill? they are clearly enraged at what s going on, and they have a design to sort of reelback this whether it s through some formal statement. has he heard from anyone on the hill? i kind of want to know if they are backchannelling to him to get a sense of what they can do to repair this policy change. what you are seeing here is now the all-too predictable consequence of a congress that has been complicit in allowing this president to run over its constitutional role of plays checks and balances. so to sam s point, there are some remedies for congress at this point, but this is like a behavior that has escalated over time. it was after those translator notes were seized during th
election. republicans have said some objectives include emphasize on pressure for democrats to deliver, pressing mueller on anti-trump texts among fbi officials and focuses on the origins of the russia probe including use of the carter page fisa warrant. doug collins says the expectations are entirely on the democrats to deliver and ranking house intelligence committee member devin nunes suggesting this week that mueller may already be coordinating with democrats. watch. i m concerned that mueller doesn t purposely try to create a narrative and that he s not working with the democrats already. i fear what is going on right now is that mueller is working with a lot of his staff who a back channelling to the democrats. it s very possible that mueller is going to have a few little sound bites that will give the democrats what they want. and last night, house
issued their report. they were not obstructed. so that makes it more difficult. i want the get in the house intel committee ranking member, devin nunes. he has the concern ahead of mueller s testimony. let s watch. i fear what is going on right now, mueller is working with his staff that are back channelling to the democrats. it s very possible that mueller is going to have a few little sound bites that are going to give the democrats exactly what they want. do you agree with that? i think we ve seen when mueller has had the opportunity in the report and in his prior statement to backtrack himself on his statements or to somehow impugn the president beyond the conclusions of the report. he certainly has made statements that are questionable. we certainly hope he doesn t do that. he has said he s going to stick to the report. this should be a testimony about the report for him to go beyond that would be inappropriate. harris: can i ask you, when you hear democrats saying that
failure on the prosecution. that key witness is so terrible and so self destructive that they self emulate. that will be the prosecutors fault. i don t want to go down this rabbit hole too far, but the fact that manafort at sometimes was double dealing, a cooperation agreement with mueller, back channelling with the president s lawyers, is that at what point is that obstruction in your mind? it is definitely bad conduct and i guess it is possibly obstruction. people forget that paul manafort was convicted to one trial and then pled guilty to what they thought would be a cooperation agreement. they could have gone back and charged these other things, but perhaps charged obstruction like
schumer. he has been talking with trump and sort of back channelling with him throughout the shutdown, i ve been told by my sources, but i think that many people at this point, given the lack of strategy coming out of the white house, think that the shutdown will end when a deal is cut between mitch mcconnell and chuck schumer and nancy pelosi, and that s when it will really be done. we ll look for it. what we like to think as the fastest 15 minutes in television with thanks to our guests tonight. to tamara keith, to tim o brien, to nancy cook, we ll have you all back. thank you for starting off our conversation. coming up, a new opportunity for michael cohen to talk before he goes to jail. this invite, however, not optional. plus, preparing for a paul manafort sighting in federal court tomorrow. and later, bill kristol is here with us. predictions about what it will take to get a broken government up and working again. the 11th hour just getting started on this thursday nigh