the president at their word, who do you believe? and then how damaging could the president s tweets about these issues be for him? i have heard it a million times over from attorneys representing clients, be quiet. shut up is what they say. yeah. i believe james comey. i think that there is no question that the president is doing himself a disservice with these public attacks. these often somewhat unhinged seeming twitter rants. i don t think it serves his cause very well, and i don t think it serves the country very well. it certainly continues the distraction that is taking away from real substantive accomplishments that his administration and congress are achieving. there s this other tweet from the president, bill, which reads in part, i had to fire flynn, general flynn, because he lied to the vice president and then here s the part we want to talk about, and the fbi. so trump s personal lawyer, as you heard, john dowd, telling nbc news he authored that tweet. he was trying to
is, that s okay. he didn t think it was a big deal either, and that s another reason why yeah. that was pretty impressive verbal somersaulting. he is defending, denying, defending, and back to defending. right, which leads you whether, in fact, he did direct michael flynn to do this. you could see he s sort of conflicted here about what he ought to say and what he you know, what should he say, what should he not say. he didn t want to he didn t want to throw flynn under the bus, but, of course, he was going to fire flynn. you know, he makes the point here that he fired him because he lied to mike pence. well, we now are raising questions about that. yes, that story was published in the washington post. they reacted to that, but did the president know before the whole mike pence imbroglio in fact what mike flynn was doing. it appears a lot of people around the president knew about this.
trail. so the president in some ways is trying to have it both ways, saying, i was in charge, i didn t direct him, but what he is, that s okay. he didn t think it was a big deal either, and that s another reason why yeah. that was pretty impressive verbal somersaulting. he is defending, denying, defending, and back to defending. right, which leads you whether, in fact, he did direct michael flynn to do this. you could see he s sort of conflicted here about what he ought to say and what he you know, what should he say, what should he not say. he didn t want to he didn t want to throw flynn under the bus, but, of course, he was going to fire flynn. you know, he makes the point here that he fired him because he lied to mike pence. well, we now are raising questions about that. yes, that story was published in the washington post. they reacted to that, but did the president know before the
congressman schiff, ranking member of the house intelligence committee, reacted today pointing to the president s past behavior regarding flynn. let s watch. the president, when he was in the process of firing mike flynn, was at the same time very defensive of mike flynn. that s the kind of conduct you would expect if the president was forced to fire mike flynn not because he lied, but because the lie was exposed. and if the president is one of those senior transition officials who was knowing of the contact and perhaps even supporting this contact with the russian ambassador, that would explain both his reluctance to fire flynn, but also why he would be intervening with james comey and urging comey to drop the flynn case. what does everybody carol, what do you make of the fact that the president, when he first came into office, said, i didn t tell good general flynn to talk to the russians but i should have or would have.
why. the president, when he was in the protsz of firing mike flynn, was at the same time very defensive of mike flynn. that s the kind of conduct you would expect if the president was forced to fire mike flynn not because he lied but because the lie was exposed. and if the president is one of those senior transition officials who is knowing of the contact and perhaps even supporting this contact with the russian ambassador, that would explain both his reluctance to fire flynn, but also why he would be intervening with james comey and urging comey to drop the flynn case. congressman, you were a former prosecutor out in california, and so you know this world very well about plea agreements and about holding a sentencing over him. mike flynn is not been indicted for failure to fire as a foreign agent, he s not been indicted for lying about his