the question is, is he really serious or simply blowing off steam or is this the beginning of trying to get the special counsel s investigation shut down? a calculation amongst some of the president s lawyers is that that would be a disaster. some of the president s friends that s his only choice at this point. michael schmidt of the new york times, thank you very much for the time. i want to bring in betsy wood rough with the daily beast. she was the first to report on president trump s personal lawyer, john dowd calling for the end of robert mueller rose probe. john hardwood is with us, editor at large of cnbc. betsy, trey gowdy had advice for the president s lawyer today. if you look at the jurisdiction for robert mueller, first and foremost, what did russia do to this country in 2016? that is supremely so important and it has nothing to do with collusion. to suggest must recall should shut down and all he s looking
at is collusion, if you have an innocent client, mr. dowd, act like it. going on to say if your client is innocent, then act like it. betsy, i was talking to michael schmidt about how the messaging from the legal team changed. what s your sense of what happened over the last 36 hours? it s been certainly an extremely% interesting 36 hours for the president s attorneys. the reality is that the president and his folks appear to feel emboldened by may be ice firing. one point that didn t get enough attention or was overshadow by all the points dowd made in the first e-mail he sent to me yesterday is he called jeff sessions brilliant and courageous. that s unequivocal, unstinting praise for the man who appears to be president trump s least favorite cabinet member. and the reason dowd praised sessions is because sessions approved the firing of doefd fbi
they send general kelly out today to say we haven t invoked executive privilege. technically that s true. what they have done, telling witnesses don t answer the question but also don t tell the committee we ve invoked executive privilege. we don t want to look like we re hiding something, so don t answer the question. if we don t allow this, it impairs the ability of any congress in the future to hold any administration accountability if we take no for an answer when it s convenient for the white house. joining us now, betsy wood rough, ron clane, and john hileman. ron cline, i want to go to this news today about steve bannon cooperating enough with the