you don t think if mitch mcconnell and paul ryan went to trump and said you ve got to fire this guy, we can t support his agenda, he d have been fired right there. the issue for the fall is that donald trump has disgraced the office of the presidency and these are just going to be examples of the insidious corruption. there will be plenty more between now and then. alexi, what do you think? how much are the republicans going to have to answer for scott pruitt on the campaign trail? i think as long as democrats fold this in the corruption angle, they will have to answer for him and we ve seen that already in the a better deal platform democrats have rolled out. corruption is a big part of that and that extends to scott pruitt, ryan zinke, ben carlson, the mueller investigation, stormy daniels. you see it being used by nancy pelosi, chuck schumer, tom steyer in california in his impeachment campaign and ads associated with that. so i think the larger corruption scandal and sort of
out during the midterms and say, you know, i m the president, we re the party that will drain the swamp? i think that s part of it. i don t think anything is impossible for trump. he is perfectly capable of declaring himself to be draining the swamp even as we see things like this happening which are, you know, objectively very swampy looking. i don t think that he suffers from cognitive distance from that regard. we have a story this time magazine about how serious these revelations are and what they add to, what we know about these ongoing scandals. it s a major development which can be hard to stand back and appreciate because there is such a drumbeat. it feels like there s always something, but this is potentially a big deal because of the corruption angle and, you know, strategist, political experts who i talked to say, voters are confused by the whole russia thing. they don t feel like it effects them. when you talk about corruption,
democratic senators have a point of curiosity also. they want to take a look at this. what would be the thought there, michael? what would they be looking for? well, this again is the corruption angle, whether or not this money was being paid to cohen so that cohen could influence the president s thinking about the at&t/time warner merger. if there was an effort there to corruptly influence the decision making around that antitrust action, that would be actionable, potentially and that s what something that federal prosecutors or congress or somebody like an ig should look in to, and of course, if you re an at&t shareholder, you re going to want to know about that as well because you don t want your company that you re a shareholder of engaged in conduct like this that could lead to exposure by the sec or otherwise that will work out to the detriment of the company that you re a stock holder of.
he s taking this step now out of sympathy for the iranian people. i was going to say i don t think he necessarily has to pull out of the deal in order to use the sanctions especially the human rights and corruption angle. it gives him the ability to pressure. there s a way to add voice to the issue without making the u.s. the central character or protagonist. spotlighting human rights abuses, providing perhaps some communication support as iran cracks down on the internet, and galvanizing others particularly european voices to speak out on behalf of the protesters i think is important. they ve said they re doing that but they ve had trouble getting the europeans onboard because of concern that they don t agree with president trump on the nuclear deal, vali, and they don t agree with some of his more explosive tweets. the other issue is when is it that you do these things, with 20 deaths or with 2,000 deaths? and i think it looks like at
relationships and admiration for dictators overseas. i believe that he has some of the same ideas about leadership or domination that they do. i think he is dishonest with the american people. where are his tax returns? we don t know much about donald trump. okay. mr. trump is an imperfect candidate. imperfect? you are kind. you said both candidates are corrupt. absolutely. why do you call mr. trump corrupt? you may not agree with him. he may have made ill-advised statements and so forth. but corruption? i don t see the corruption angle. well, i certainly do. this is a man who manipulated our system for his own personal gain. i view that as corruption. i view his unethical he atlanhasn t broken laws. i haven t said he broke laws. that s what corrupt means. not necessarily. i think he is unethical. i think he is somebody who would exploit our system. he doesn t understand the constitution. i think he is somebody that doesn t respect the separation of powers. this i