and influence their coverage. trump denied this but scarborough said he has receipts. he says he has text messages proving that there were communications between trump aides and scarborough. essentially what scarborough says happened is they keep reaching out to him and saying if you call up the president and apologize, the enquirer won t be mean to you. we ll get the piece to go away. some analysts said that sounds a lot like black mail. now trump said actually it was scarborough calling me trying to stop the story and i said no. either way, both men seem to be confirming that trump has weaponized the national enquirer. back with me now the panel, carl bernstein, kelly mcbride, olivia nuzzi and ben ferguson. i m told scarborough doesn t want to show these text messages because he uses these people as sources, anonymous sources. he doesn t want to burn them. i think it would help to have some evidence to back up his assertion. what do you make of this idea the president could be using