swerdlich and joe walsh. david, i will start with you. this was an impromptu interview. the president said 16 times there was no collusion. he did this entire interview without any advisors or aids near by. in some ways it is reminisce sant of the campaign trail. don t you think? yeah. i think the president wanted to do two things at once. saying in collusion 16 times to make clear that he was still pushing his narrative that there is nothing to see here, nothing was done wrong, the investigation is about nothing. and at the same time, having doing an interview at lunch in florida without aids present and saying that he had confidence that mueller would be fair as a way of suggesting that he s relaxed, he s calm, there is a storm swirling about him, but that he s not worried about the ultimate outcome. surprising to hear the president take that approach given what we have been hearing from so many in his party. he says he has faith in mueller. he s not bothered by the length of t
new staff changes coming at the white house. what are you hearing? yeah. and these are not high profile staff positions by any stretch but it does give us insight into the white house thinking going into 2018 and perhaps their concern about what could happen in the upcoming mid-term elections. they are bringing in a political expert to kind of run the white house political shop. this comes after some pretty harsh criticism from the current political director there who has been criticized by a lot of former trump allies. now he will stay in place, but it will be destef know in charge of the political operation with an eye towards saving the republican house and senate coming up in the 2018 mid-terms. thanks so much. let s talk about more of this now with cnn national security analyst shawn turner, david
impression that the president thinks he could do whatever he wants with the justice department. when we look at what happens in other countries with regard to their ability to abide by democratic principals, we look at the ability for justice systems to operate independent of politicians. and so in this country i think we need to uphold that principal and i think the president has struggled to do that with some of his interference with the justice department. one word that has been used a lot is loyalty. he said it is too bad jeff sessions recused himself from the russia investigation. when he was asked whether trump thought holder was more loyal to obama than sessions had been to him, he said i don t want to get into loyalty, but i will say this. holder protected president obama, totally protected him. he went on to say, when you look at the things that they did and holder protected the president, i have great respect for that. i ll be honest. so, david, if you are jeff sessions and