white house counsel and members of his staff and communications team have been meeting with republicans for weeks, like mike lee, ted cruz, lindsey graham, to iron out strategy and messaging and figure outside disagreements beforehand, disagreements whether that whistleblower, whose complaint led to this entire impeachment process should testify. meanwhile, the president is sounding confident, ask today if he thinks impeachment will stain his legacy. listen to what he said. are you worried, sir, about the stain impeachment might have on your legacy? not at all. it s a hoax, a big fat hoax. reporter: president trump is struggling to grasp the reality he will likely be impeached by the house. his attorney has not been, and preparing with dozens of attorneys for a trial in
people are tired of it. most expect house democrats do this by christmas. thank you very much. of the president is saying, if you re going to impeach me, do it fast. what is all that about? he says he wants to do it quickly so he can call witnesses and pursue their atlanta christening. the white house is saying they are calling it a mockery of law and announcement this morning. if the democrats effort to succeed and impeach president trump, he would be only the third president in america that would be impeached. he was asked whether he was worried about his legacy. president trump: no, not at all. it s a hoax. it s a big fat hoax. in a statement, democrats sham impeachment is an attempt to overturn the result of a free
threat and if there is a threat it will be met very strongly, but we will be announcing whatever we may be doing. may or may not be doing. what would you like to see the u.n. do with regards to iran and the crack down. well, the u.n. has been involved very much with us. we are already dealing with the u.n. and dealing very well with the u.n. they are very much involved with respect to iran and other things with us. thank you all very much. appreciate it. nbc news white house correspondent kelly o donnell at the white house. kelly, your biggest takeaways? reporter: well, you saw a kind of subdued president trump there when asked about the potential stain on his legacy from impeachment where we have seen him on twitter and in other occasions really lashing out at democrats, in this instance he said, no, he didn t think and then called it a hoax, a big fat hoax. similar tone from the president, clearly not wanting to engage on impeachment at a time when he might have wanted to giv
at the white house. i think we have some of those comments. kelly? lunch and a lot of good things will happen. i appreciate you all being here and kelly, congratulations, you re doing a fantastic job. thank you all very much. moving along well. it s moving along very well. [ inaudible question ] we will have to see but right now we re moving along, we re not discussing that but we are having very major discussions on december 15th something could happen, but we are not discussing that yet. we re having very good discussions with china, however. are you worried, sir, about the stain impeachment might have on your legacy? no, not at all. it s a hoax. it s a hoax. it s a big fat hoax. on iran depending on officials are saying that you are considering possibly sending more troops to the middle east because there is a threat we will announce whatever we do. we ll announce. certainly there might be a
special counsel directly contradicted president trump on the russia probe. watch this. i have president putin, he just said that it is not russia. they are doing it as we sit here. it is not an interference. they have information. i think i d take it. i hope this is not the new normal, but i fear it is. this just came out. wikileaks, i love wikileaks. how do you react to that? well, probably problematic is an understatement. whole big fat hoax. just a hoax. it was not a hoax. it is a total witch hunt. it is not a witch hunt. so you heard there bob mueller contradicting the president on several points. democrats may not have gotten their, quote, smoking gun moment, but wouldn t you also agree that what we just heard there from robert mueller is damaging to the president as well? disagreeing with robert mueller isn t an impeach bl offense. let s remember where the goalposts were at the beginning of the week adam schiff said that robert mueller would be