the beat with ari melber starts now. you were speaking to donald trump s former lawyer, now grand jury witness last night i spoke to his current lawyer, who blames everything just about on the former lawyer. i m curious what you think of it all, including your skills as an established political communicator what we re hearing coming out of this team? well, first of all, i m so glad to get to talk to you i described you behind your back as masterful it was a brilliant interview i watched it when i got home i think that what he is doing is what you said. he was engaged in political communications his defense as he described it to you was that he would have paid it either way because melania would be mad well, the federal crime isn t being charged by sdny. this is a state investigation. it doesn t seem like an apples to apples kind of comment. what i think is about to happen in this country is a giant debate about whether this was just a foot foul, sort of a b.s. kind of t
said it will be political debate, political communications, not really a legal debate. yeah, and first first of all, you laid that out so well. i happen to know sometimes i am tired after one hour you did two and you went through every single every single jurisdiction and there are many where he had some problems, just about every one. you raise important points it s not prejudging the outcome. there is strong evidence you mentioned a novel insurrection yeah well, that attack was nnov. so attacking it legally will be novel. as you say, there may be potential defenses to that. sure. and we will cover them fairly but that shouldn t be in a prosecutor s mind a reason as you say to blink boys has he benefitted if attacks, coop fusion and blinking he has a cfond l and lawyer whok the fall and that helped him i like three chats thank you for your time.
acting a.g. who carries some weight. remember, people don t realize that the government is fungible. it s not just sally yates. it has to be a collective force. it s one of the reasons that the courts have to have uniformity. you can t have the lawyers arguing it s not violating equal protection and the courts saying we agree and the other courts not holding any weight. this is directvly coming from the coop fusion with the rollout of this program. the absence of uniformity and the way to enforce it has taken a toll on the courts and they re stepping up to the plate. douglas brinkley, people are excited, this was similar to the 90s, newt gingrich and is that a fair comparison? no. what this reminds me of is 1952 when president harry truman tried to interfere with steelworkers strike.
hope we have, also how people process provisional ballots, those ballots cast by people who have some coop fusion about whether they re actually registered, how those are handled across the country is going to be a big deal. michael steele, give republicans a reason to be hopeful this morning. because right now, if you look at the state-by-state polls, there s not a reason of to it s only a point or two. but give republicans i think the benefit of the doubt falls to romney. i think a lot of folks will go into the voting booth, assess the last four years, the economy, their own personal economy and decide, look, we ve had this opportunity, it was a missed opportunity in my view and we re going to move in a new direction, number one. number two, i think the organization on the ground, i think the republicans have been very good at putting together their machine. i think the point that chuck makes can t be overlooked. yeah, there was a lot of early votes that have been cast, you k