blackwater founder travelled to the say chehali at theequest of a trump team to meet with a russian oligarch to set up back channel with president putin. so this begs a question why are they not going through the front channels? why are they not going through the state department, and what is it they re trying to hide with all of this? and steve clemens, why does the president in general just favor russia so much? and the back channel issue is so fascinating. jfk would have loved to have a back channel to nikita khrushchev during the cuban missile crisis. they tried to figure out how to get in cleaner communication and be understood. and so that s where credibility, personal, presidential credibility is so enormously important. it is conceivable that there would be a president who wanted to have a back channel to russia or some other power not particularly friendly to us, especially in times of crisis. but this administration can t be trusted it seems with anything like that kind of
get james comey to back down in this investigation, it was a one-word answer that he wanted to say more than once, no, no. no, no, no. next question. well, you re right, lawrence. he that s the only restraint he has shown in the last day. he was quiet for, let s say, 12 hours after the announcement of the special counsel. and as you said that very presidential professional statement was put out clearly written by his staff. but he couldn t help himself. in the morning, he came out with this tweet in the morning calling this is the greatest witch hunt of a politician in american history, which is a stunning thing to say. not only because of course nixon was famous, as you said, for considering himself the victim of a witch hunt. but i would say because all of this is self-inflicted. these are all things that donald trump brought on himself, includg thspecial counsel. there would not be a special counsel had he not fired james
and they are things that trump is doing that as indira said are self-inflicted, and give the special prosecutor more fodder, more things to look at. he may be right. the initial fbi investigation into the sort of core animating question, which is whether there was collusion between his campaign and russia may ultimately absolve him. it may not absolve people in his campaign. and that raises questions about what he knew about the people who he welcomed in to his campaign and his transition, including mike flynn, including paul manafort. but nonetheless, he is adding fodder and adding potential angles for the special prosecutor to look at when he comes out and says these things and when he tells james comey in private that he would like james comey to either drop the investigation into flynn or come out and publicly say that donald trump himself is not the subject in the investigation. gene robinson, i can t remember a time where we re learning more about a person day
have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. i look forward to this matter concluding quickly. it was a perfectly reasonable presidential-sounding white house statement about a situation like this. but everyone knew that would not be the president s last word abt the investigion. everyone knew we would havto wait for the early morning tweet to find out what he was really thinking. and of course the early morning tweet completely contradicted last night s written statement. in the early morning it was suddenly a witch hunt. so that contradiction inevitably led to this question today. was this the right move or is this part of a witch hunt? well, i respect the move. but the entire thing has been a witch hunt. and there is no collusion between certainly myself and my
the initial fbi investigation into the sort of core animating question, which is whether there was collusion between his campaign and russia may ultimately absolve him. it may not absolve people in his campaign. and that raises questions about what he knew about the people who he welcomed in to his campaign and his transition, including mike flynn, including paul manafort. but nonetheless, he is adding fodder and adding potential angles for the special prosecutor to look at when he comes out and says these things and when he tells james comey in private that he would like james comey to either drop the investigation into flynn or come out and publicly say that donald trump himself is not the subject in the investigation. gene robinson, i can t remember a time where we re learning more about a person day in, day out without that person opening his mouth saying a word. that person of course is james comey. we re learning more and more and more about his methods, about his work methods,