putin at his word, and the not get into objeabsolving kim jong nothing goes on in the hermt kingdom without kim jong-un knowing it doesn t pass the straight face test. they grab the kid, rough him up. he gets brain damaged. what? no, no, let me explain something here. i m saying, where president kim said i didn t know he was going to be killed. that s ridiculous. i m just saying that could be the scenario. i think it s reprehensible and the president should have said this is a terrible thing. we re going to hold them accountable. he shouldn t have said what he said. it s clear i don t think anybody in america is saying that s okay to say. there isn t an american in north korea that it s
saying if i don t get from the democrats what i want, if these negotiations don t turn out well, then i ll just declare a national emergency. i don t know a single federal judge that would allow that to pass, what my old torts professor called the straight face test. it s just a joke. you make an important point. a lot of defenders on the republican side of this declaration are pointing to the fact that we are currently under 31 national emergencies dating back to president carter. but as you say, those are very different from this perceived national emergency where the president didn t get funding and he s using this as a political tool to get what he wants for a perceived national emergency. joyce vance, i m curious what you think about the potential legal peril the president might face or how long this could be tied up in courts. do you believe that a court will uphold a national emergency in this case. you know, i m going to go out
argument, go to plan b. donald trump s arguments regarding this payoff and suggesting it s not a conspiracy and suggesting that it wasn t related to the campaign, that s just not going to pass anybody s straight face test. it s not going to pass any judges or prosecutors or juries straight face test. i wonder if the republicans will think it suffices. and i think, joe, the timing of the discussion you ve been having here about this being clearly related to the election, last night we learned even someone more damning about why this would be seen as a legal and political blend, and that is it goes back to august 2015 when you had trump in the room with cohen and pecker about, hey, i
happen without his knowing. so if mbs doesn t know about it it doesn t happen. yeah, he s in total control. he s the guy that locked up the rest of his family in the ritz and started a war in yemen. went to war in yemen. he s doing things on his own. and the guy who we re sanctioning by the way, the treasury department. is his right-hand man. who tweeted last summer, i don t do anything, i don t do anything on my own, i only work for the king and the crown prince. i mean it doesn t pass the straight face test that mbs wasn t involved in this. and i think the president s statement that you know, the feelings of the c.i.a., the c.i.a. doesn t do feelings. they do assessments of facts. and i hope that this week we can have a broader briefing from the c.i.a. and we ll get more information on this to a broader group of senators. so more than just the intelligence committee?
what do you make of what is going to happen after thursday? i think it s hard to predict what his answers are going to be. depending on the answers, we ll have more know. he s done everything to stop this investigation and was just said, it doesn t pass the smell test or in my case, i say the red face test that he didn t know what whittaker stood for which was trying to stop this investigati investigation. the thing that comes to my mind is it was on the day before thanksgiving that we learned during watergate that there was an 18-minute gap in the tape of a critical conversation. i m just like wondering is this the pre-thanksgiving surprise and it will be interesting to see what the results are. it will be the equivalent of