sessions confirmation hearing testimony and his forgetting his meeting with russians in his confirmation testimony. let s listen to what al franken said on this program about that. there s no other conclusion that you can come to other than that he was lying and was committing perjury. and now let s listen to what donald trump said to the new york times about that very same thing. donald trump said, jeff sessions gave some bad answers. he gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren t. john heilmann, there s the president of the united states coming as close to agreeing with al franken about his own attorney general s confirmation hearing testimony as you could imagine. yeah, and i think, lawrence, that the other thing about which he probably now agrees with senator franken is that i think he now thinks it s time for jeff sessions to resign. you ve made the case for why the attorney general needs to resign
this particular issue and everyone has their right to be outraged about whatever they want. i m curious as a veteran how you see it. we don t get the same outrage about nuclear north korea. we don t get the exact same outrage about a terror attack in man chester that killed a little girl. i m curious your thoughts on that. look, jenna, i m looking at this through the lens of national security. and the defense department, a number of admirals and generals, even secretary mattis in his confirmation testimony pointed to drought, famine, natural disasters and other effects of a warming earth of climate change as a senate security issue. and those issues lead to failed states that terrorist groups are taking care of that we have to deal with. i d like to see the united states continue a leadership role. whether we do this through an accord or the private sector, we do need to, from a military standpoint, even a national security standpoint, deal with
our borders which is why we consolidated them all in one cabinet level department. now, because isil has effectively outsourced terrorism to home-ground bound extremists, we need to focus there as well. i hope that this administration will do that. i know my successor believes in that. he said that at his confirmation testimony. but i think that needs to be a major, major focus. before i let you go, mr. secretary, you still hopeful that donald trump can be a great president two months in? we have to remember this two months may seem like two years, but two months is not a very, very long time. and i hope that there is considerable on-the-job learning. every president grows in office. every president makes mistakes, learns lessons in office. and for the success and the sake of the country, i think we all
on the question and my staff recommended recusal. they said since i had involvement with the campaign, i should not be involved in any campaign investigation. the attorney general called allegations he acted as an intermediary between the trump campaign and russian intelligence as false and baseless. attorney general sessions he will clarify as confirmation testimony to the senate judiciary committee. there, he said he was caught offguard by democrat al franken s question about a media report concerning allegations the russians have a damaging dossier on then-candidate trump. attorney general sessions said he correctly stated he had no contact of a political nature with the russians but will now explain his meetings with the russian ambassador. in the september meeting, sessions said the request came out of the blue to meet with him and to this day, he does not understand the motive.
or russian diplomats as other senators have indicated. that s not necessarily uncommon. it s the testimony, where he said that it didn t happen and sessions defensors are saying look this conversation took place in the context of a discussion about the election. but it s harder to reconcile what he said in his testimony with what s come up. dana: you saw paul ryan saying let s not get ahead of ourselves. but then you other republicans like senator collins saying he needs to recuse and clarify his confirmation testimony. i think he ought to clarify his confirmation testimony certainly. there will be enough questions about his ability to be fair given that testimony that i think he ought to consider a recusal. on the other hand, i think democratic calls for him to resign over this are premature. we heard more from him. dana: if we could switch gears for a second. you had a really interesting article about isis and the state