environmental agency has turned in her resignation. this comes as the latest blow to scott pruitt as he himself is fighting off calls to resign after a series of negative headlines and questions about ethics. pruitt likely didn t help himself with the heated interview with his boss favorite cable news channel. here he is discussing a sweetheart deal on a condo rental far below market value. president trump said he with drain the swamp. is draining the swamp renting an apartment from the wife of a washington lobbyist? i don t think that that s even remotely fair to ask that question. cnn politics senior writer juana summers is here with the latest on the story she s been covering for some time now. what else are we learning about this condo deal and also these big pay raises for these two aides? absolutely. cnn learning new details late last night about scott pruitt and this rental agreement. the top ethics watchdog puts out
that most republicans have actually been quite quiet on the issue? this is a huge deal. now that we have a probe being opened, it s just the latest headache for pruitt. this condo deal is the swampiest of the swamp situations here. anyone who lives? d.c. knows you can t even rent harry potter s broom closet for 50 bucks a night. let s be real. so it s going to be a huge problem for pruitt. what i will say is i don t think it s going to be one single report or investigation that s going to be the nail the the coffin for pruitt. this president really cares mostly about optics. you know, doing things like he went on fox news and did poorly in that interview. if the headlines keep coming out, if this is dominating the cable news, that s where you could see him run into problems. so far he s been able to hang on. kevin, to that point when you look at the spending violations
a loan from the qataris, and then when they were turned down for said loan, it s possible that jared kushner advised the u.s. government to essentially apply the force of the american state against the qataris as a kind of punishment. this is like this is corruption not just sort of, you know, i m on getting a condo deal. this is losing sight of what american interests are on behalf of whoever is paying your paycheck. yeah. people will die because of it. 100%. it s corruption on an epic scale. and the scenario you just outlined with the qataris and jared kushner seems highly likely circumstantially in fact that that s exactly what happened. what we do know for sure as we sit here and we see all of these revelations over the course of the last year and a half, we know more than we used to. but we don t know very much compared to what robert mueller knows. and so the notion that the russia story, the interference, the active meshers in the election process are somehow unrelated. th
officials all the way up frankly to the president are frustrated by what they see is kind of an unforced error, they re frustrated by the bad headlines, especially on the back of so many controversies, not just those by pruitt. his star still shines in some quarters of the white house but there is definitely a a sense of frustration over there. jennifer, thanks for being with me. thank you. joining me is john podesta, he was chief of staff for president clinton and he just wrote an op-ed in the washington post called enough is enough, scott pruitt needs to go. mr. podesta, you wrote that before the news about the condo deal. let s start with the condo deal
ethical challenges. some have done things that were really untoward not in the public interest. pruitt exemplifies the you know, place where the beams cross. so are you surprised, not surprised by his ability to endure? tom price you know, had a sort of down fall over the amount of travel he was doing. pruitt has done lots of travel, racked up real costs first class, $120,000 to italy, $40,000 flight to morocco. the condo deal. he s at war with his own administration he s running. how has he been able to survive? the one thing you have to say about pruitt, from his days as attorney general, he s a man on a mission. and he s been effective at trying to tear down the protections that epa has put in place to protect the environment and to protect people s public health.