a lot of breaking news tonight and that s on top of even more big developments all day long. in just the last hour or so, new reporting on the president and his attorney general, jeff sessions, who he publicly shamed yet again today. according to the washington post, russia s special counsel mueller is focusing on the first time the president did that, if you remember, back last summer, and whether it was or is part of an attempt to obstruct justice. also the sudden departure of white house communications director hope hicks, and late word on a presidential berating she got in the run-up to it. a source telling cnn that he s furious hicks told the house intelligence committee that she s lied on his behalf, white lies she s called them, whatever that is. in addition tonight in an exclusive conversation with bob woodward and carl bernstein about what they are seeing in this white house and the inevitable comparisons with watergate and the nixon administration. they don t talk about it
with rob porter. this had nothing to do with the comments she made yesterday to the house intelligence committee. when she said that from time to time she has to tell little white lies on behalf of the president, what this official did not say to me was that this did not have anything to do with the mueller investigation. obviously we ll have to see if that comes to light later on. but according to this white house official, this is something that has been building up for some time. it s something she wanted to do. as you saw, the white house put out glowing statements from the president and the chief of staff praising hope hicks. and the president, in fact, in his statement left the door open to working with hope hicks in the future. keep in mind the president just announced his new campaign manager this week for the 2020 election. he may have a communications director in mind for that campaign. it does seem weird, though, that today of all days, suddenly it s the decision to announ
so it does not surprise me that he would have some concern about how bad the news coverage was over that. i m sure that s not the reason as our reporting indicates, you know, the rob porter situation was obviously not easy for hope hicks to go through as she was in a relationship with him. this has been building. but you were talking about the emotional crutch that she is for the president. i don t know how to convey, but she is so close to the president. no communication staffer in any white house that i know of would spend as much time in the oval office with the president, at the president s side as hope hicks did. she also was so emotionally invested in this, which is why i think we hear of this being a rather sort of emotional, tearful good-bye that she was giving today because she is a pure loyalist to the president. jen, i mean you were white house communications director. you know the job. what do you make of this departure? well, one, i think there s no question hope, by a
his communications director. or take your pick. or going after his attorney general yet again. any of those things, exactly. with me here is jen psaki, david chalian, and gloria borger. it s hard to overstate the importance of hope hicks. people at home, maybe they ve seen pictures of her. during the campaign i remember doing interviews with then candidate trump and it seemed like the whole campaign for a while was just trump, corey lewandowski, and hope hicks. totally. she s always been around. she s the trump whisperer. she is completely, 100% loyal. she s young, and she is, as one source said to me, is very close to trump. he said, she is his emotional support, period. that s what he has. and he predicted to me with some trepidation that without her there, the president would go iran to what into what he called a tailspin. it s not only that she s gone. his former body man, security guard who has been with him forever, keith shilling, he s
also left. when you look at the people he was close to originally, you had corey lewandowski he was close to, hope hicks, keith schiller, and he s got problems with jared now, which means he probably has problems with ivanka. and melania hasn t been happy with him because of the stormy daniels story. so this is a president who is more and more isolated, sort of on the personal side really. kelly, general kelly is cutting off his phone conversations with all of his old friends. so he s kind of alone. david, i mean a source told cnn a source close to the white house told cnn that the president berated hope hicks about the statement that she had made yesterday. yeah. i mean we know that this president responds to the headlines on the news coverage that he consumes, and it was a terrible day of news coverage for hope hicks between her testimony last night and, you know, i mean everywhere this morning it was like hope hicks, white house communications director speaks on behalf of th