that was a jaw-dropping story. if they were fine with it they didn t read the story carefully. it made clear don mcgahn sees himself as the white house counselor lawyer protecting office of the presidency and not donald trump. he thought he was trying to set him up. he made the decision to cooperate with robert mueller. went in there three times, 30 hours of interviews, and the white house does not know what he said. the story suggested that he talked about those episodes where trump was pressuring him to fire mueller and he was resisting because he knew it was improper. that could be damaging. he s the only witness that can give mueller this sort of intimate details of those exchanges. could be very important. dan balls, were you surprised by this, the john dean comparison in particular. you ve seen this arc play out. that s a pretty striking historical comparison. it is. to have the white house counsel in a sense cooperating fully, even if blessed by the white house initially w
potentially being set up. that was a jaw-dropping story. if they were fine with it they didn t read the story carefully. it made clear don mcgahn sees himself as the white house counselor lawyer protecting t office of the presidency and not donald trump. he thought he was trying to set him up. he made the decision to cooperate with robert mueller. went in there three times, 30 hours of interviews, and the white house does not know what he said. the story suggested that he talked about those episodes where trump was pressuring him to fire mueller and he was resisting because he knew it was improper. that could be damaging. he s the only witness that can give mueller this sort of intimate details of those exchanges. could be very important. dan balls, were you surprised by this, the john dean comparison in particular. you ve seen this arc play out. that s a pretty striking historical comparison. it is. to have the white house counsel in a sense cooperating fully, even if blessed by
barrier and it creates a gap. and i think it s one reason why there is more cynicism about politics generally. yeah, and of course, more distrust generally speaking. dan balls, congresswoman karen bass, thank you for your perspective tonight. when we continue, president trump is in search of his wartime consigliary with no roy cohn to turn to. dr. kelli ward joins me from arizona live. up next. let someone else do the heavy lifting. tripadvisor compares prices from over 200 booking sites
they can show you the way. when i read about this i don t know her, i haven t met her yet. i thought she said it wasn t going to be open to the press and maybe she wasn t clear about that. but i think that a sitting member could have advised her about that. i certainly know that i had a couple of town halls and i do town halls all the time where i had to make them private because of the immigrant community being terrified about coming. and so we had to do it where it was quiet. and i thought maybe that might have been where she was coming from. but the chief advice to her, though, is there s a lot of members of congress who are always willing to embrace you and to show you the way and to tell you what it s about and to avoid making those mistakes, reaching out to sitting members of congress. i hear she s beginning to do that. i just haven t had an opportunity to meet her yet. interesting, she did make that point about immigrants as to why she would have done this. but, dan balls,
i don t mean do go like no, it isn t truth. truth isn t truth. the president of the united states says i didn t truth isn t truth, mr. mayor, do you realize this is going to bad meme. don t do this to me. don t do truth isn t truth to me. joining me on set, chief correspondent for the washington post, dan balls. ken dilanian, former special assistant to the president and former press secretary for vice-president pence mike lauder. and white house reporter for the washington post sung min kim. thank you all for being here. i hardly know where to begin on this evening. but, dan balls, since you have spent many, many years, watched many presidents do this, have you ever seen before this kind of dissembling around what is true and what is not true in your time as a reporter covering washington? no, i don t think anybody has. we ve seen presidents who have dissembled occasionally. we ve seen administrations that have lied. we know that that is sometimes