apparently, they re almost there. something that is sure to come up in this endeavor going forward is whether or not the president is going to sit down for an interview with bob mueller, mano y mano or even speak to mueller. and on that front, another trump attorney, ty cobb, told the daily beast in an interview that the interview with mueller is still on the table. quote, the cohen searches, while i have taken time away from discussions with with regard to an interview, certainly have not brought those discussions to a halt. they continue, end quote. joining us now is betsey woodruff, who wrote that piece for the daily beast and joining the table in ari melber s place, the reverend al sharpton. a great man, my friend, the host of politics nation here on msnbc. bill kristol and barbara mcquade are still with us. so, betsey, you were the first one to report on the news of the giuliani joining the legal team. just tell us what how did we get from rudy giuliani as part of team trump?
2012, lindsey graham and bobby jindal. let s bring in our roundtable. betsey woodruff is a political reporter with thedale beast and danny is a republican strategist. everybody jump in here but start with jonathan. this is going to be something of a jam. they re all trying to get in. i remember all the fights with ralph nairt saying he couldn t get in, raising hell, even legal suitings, and sh going to get to the point of litigation to try to get into that door, which only holds ten people now? well, it depends on who among them is litigious. but i do think that the rules that are being put in place by fox and by others to limit the number of candidates on that stage are reasonable, in that when you ve got 18, 19, we could probably have 20 people running, you have to figure out how you can turn that debate and not turn that debate stage either into the al smith dinner, which has two rows of guests, or have
moderates and debate partners this time around. hey, jonathan, that s certainly throwing the red meat at those guys. we re not going to have me as the moderator. right. i don t know what to say. go ahead. he doesn t want a traveling circus, but, clearly, what from what we see with all the candidates announced and unannounced, that traveling circus bus, the wheels are going to fly off no matter what they do. presidential primaries are so fun. go ahead, betsey, they want to pick the candidates, they want to pick the moderator. as he just said there, priebus did, are they going to pick the questions, too? are they going to let the candidates write the questions? i don t think so. chris wallace gets republican candidates in trouble every single time they go on his show. he s an incredibly incisive interviewer. we ve seen marco rubio get in trouble, we ve seen scott walker get in trouble.
ugliness in the partisan effort to put the hell of isis entirely on the shoulders of president obama. it s as if the u.s. invasion of iraq, which broke that country apart, had nothing to do with today s iraqi turmoil. an invasion bush and cheney sold with the now provenly bogus claim that saddam hussein had nuclear weapons and a connection to 9/11. watching the republicans contort themselves in this effort is to watch them prance in front of funhouse mirror. one group says that reality doesn t matter. it doesn t matter that their claims of a nuclear iraq or an al qaeda-connected iraq were bogus. the u.s. invasion wasn t to end the idea, they say, even if it s left over $4,000 americans and over 100,000 iraqis dead. another group says that now, because the case made for the u.s. invasion was bogus, you can t blame the people who came up with those bogus claims. i know. this is hard to follow. a third group is similar to the first. it says, okay, we should have never invaded ir
candidates announced and unannounced, that traveling circus bus, the wheels are going to fly off no matter what they do. presidential primaries are so fun. go ahead, betsey they want to pick the candidates they want to pick the moderator. as he just said there, priebus did, are they going to pick the questions, too? are they going to let the candidates write the questions? i don t think so. chris wallace gets republican candidates in trouble every single time they go on his show. he s an incredibly incisive interviewer. we ve seen marco rubio get in trouble, we ve seen scott walker get in trouble. i don t think they re going to have their paws too involved in this. it s going to be tough. chris, i think you absolutely ought to be one of the moderators. it will keep it interesting and fun and keep the momentum going, at the end of the day, that s what people want to see, they want to see activity and action and see people getting energized and motivated by the debates. and the