house correspondent s association hat on, this entire fake news term, i think it is used to try to undermine a free press, and it s our job to reject that and focus on doing our jobs. there s nothing fake about the words that were in black and white in this e-mail exchange with donald trump jr: he said i like it when i was offered the information from a lawyer connected with the russian government. there is an investigation. the fbi really is investigating. all the school yard commentary about ratings, no one is coming back and saying what about your ratings? your approval ratings are in the tank. should we? no. that s the point. the press is not supposed to engage in that. this is really school yard stuff that they re doing. and i think anderson rose above it which is what he should do. bill, jeff, thank you very
question whether there s true intent to collude, this notion that oh nothing came out of it. intention to collude or coordinate or whatever you want to call it is frankly bad enough and something that i think we haven t heard enough explanation about and it s not the way campaign professionals in any campaign that i ve ever seen would behave. josh, that takes us to the second part of the fact check i ll ask you about, which is that this was a short meeting and nothing came of it. what about that? we don t know that. i mean, you know, not to rag on steving but i mean your answer and i think the way a lot of people have been talking about this has been sort of taking the president at his word that nothing came out of this meeting. i think, you know, these are people who have been lying a lot about a lot of things and we should be very open to the possibility that something did come out of this meeting. you ve seen that in an e-mail exchange. it looks like there was a phone call as we
pressed over that e-mail exchange with don junior, the meet he had with the kremlin-linked lawyer. he really stuck to his talking points i think because he s looking for a reset for the narrative at home as well, andrea, as he continues to deal with the deepening crisis over the russia matter. i think what you saw is these two leaders really trying to show the unity between the united states and of course one of its oldest allies that the critical moment, something that will benefit both of them quite frankly at this very early stage in their relationship. but of course macron has been very insistent, adamant that the paris climate agreement needs to move forward with or without the united states, and even though both of these leader did discuss a willingness to discuss the paris climate agreement, it s not clear there will be any tangibles that come out of it at least on this trip, andrea. finally on a couple other quick national security points, michael schmidt, they seem to be ove
had this drum beat now of him saying there s nothing there. and then you read the e-mail exchange with him and to go to your question, is it collusion and is this something that would be prosecuted? i ve listened to a number of legal experts talk about this and basically they re in unison when they say there s not a federal statute that s going to attack that. is there a political mechanism so go after it? certainly. if a foreign state if a foreign state actor comes to a campaign and says we have something of value to offer you, it could be money or derogatory information about an opponent i think that s an issue they re going to be looking at. there s very legal precedent but it does raise some big questions. i want to listen to a little bit more of don jr. in that interview because he s talking
congressman gowdy to say that. if you re looking at this thing and calling balls a and strikes, that e-mail exchange between don jr. and gold stone is a smoking gun. now, what s behind that, where else that went, what other link analysis they can put together that s going to determine whether or not they can find a crime there. unseemly yes, criminal? difficult to say. and you heard gowdy there. republicans on the hill, these questions will not stop. how do you expect them to answer them? how do you expect all of this to impact the agenda? the agenda is totally on the side burners right now. maybe mitch mcconnell can pull a rabbit out of his hat with health care. i think they would love to move on to something else but anything is going to be compromised in terms of this president helping them pass it until they can get past all of this and pay attention to what