where four passenger planes were waiting to take off. and the images coming in right now, digging for clues after four young men go missing. good evening, and it s great to have you with us here on a tuesday night, and we begin tonight with donald trump jr. s own e-mails. the president s son was told during the campaign that he was about to get dirt on hillary clinton, and he was told in those e-mails that the russian government was out to help his father win. don jr. agreeing to the meeting. a russian lawyer making the trip to trump tower here in new york city. in the e-mail exchange, told to go to the 25th floor. tonight, reaction has been swift and the white house, issuing a statement from president trump about his son. abc s chief white house correspondent, jonathan karl, leading us off. reporter: it s a startling development, the e-mails show donald trump jr. was told the russian government was trying to help his father s campaign, and that he was willing, even eager, to acc
there appear to at least have been there may have been questions about donald trump jr., his son, if so those haven t been released yet. there is a little bit of other news the president made on the topic of health care, highlighting the fact that this has been something that the republicans campaigned on, repeal and replace, something they focused on, that they voted on for years. and he said if this does fail, that he would be very angry. bottom line is he says he thinks it would be very bad, but he did again express some optimism, said that mitch mcconnell is focusing ho it very haefl right now. caseyy. peter, it sounds like based on an initial read those comments about putin are going to get some traction on capitol hill. the president has already come under a little bit of fire during that christopher wray hearing. did we hearing anything about that e-mail exchange that donald trump jr. had during in that hearing today? there are certainly were questions ho that topic.
investigators or federal investigators. we ve seen that trump jr. and other sources close to the campaign have made materially false statements over the course of this weekend. they said that the, the substance of the debate was about adoption. no. actually somebody quite different. he said paul manafort and jared kushner were not aware. his own e-mails show, no. they were cc-ed on the e-mail exchange. they were aware. lying to the public, says the new york times, not a criminal offense. lying to congress and the fbi, that is a criminal offense. quickly, dana, you and i covered politics for a while. maybe jared kushner, he was new to politics. he was not that familiar with the campaign finance laws. maybe donald trump jr., who is new to politics, not necessarily familiar with the campaign finance laws. but paul manafort, the campaign chairman, he s been in politics for 30 years. very familiar with the campaign
trump. it says that specifically in the e-mail exchange between rob goldstone and donald trump jr., is that correct? yes, that s the language that rob goldstone used, which makes it difficult to understand how in any way this is exculpatory for donald trump jr. or the trump white house. this is confirming ever that every question raised about potential collusion and refuting all of the denials from the white house about the idea that, well, there was no collusion with russia, he went into this meeting blind, didn t know who it was, this puts it in black and white, he released them to get out ahead of a new york times story that laid it out, now it is all out there, and certainly bob mueller is going to take this into account, certainly the congressional committee is going to take this into account, don t know what the white house is going to say about it, but they re in a bad spot right now. john, the other issue, of course, is that this denial
about the clinton campaign s claims that the russians were helping trump, he said, it is disgusting, it is so phony. so for donald trump jr., in july of last year, to say it is disgusting and it is so phony, there is no other way to describe this, that is a lie, given what he clearly knew in this e-mail exchange that he has sent out in june. much more to be done about this, much more to be read, john harwood and our team are going to be scouring this information and seeing what other fallout comes out of it. thanks for watching this hour of msnbc live with us. i m ali velshi. i m stephanie ruhle. i ll be watching tv for the next hour. do you know why? because andrea mitchell is in the house. time for andrea mitchell reports . great to see you. thank you very much. right now, on andrea mitchell reports, red alert. donald trump jr. releasing what he s says are the e-mails from an associate, a family business associate, saying the kremlin was offering, quote, incriminating inform