Were looking forward to that the beat, 6 00 p. M. Eastern week nights. But more importantly the Rachel Maddow show starts right now. Good evening, rachel. Good evening, ari. Thanks. Much appreciated. Thanks for joining us at home. It is friday. So that means the news has again a little nuts again. I feel like there is nothing predictable about American News cycles anymore other than the fact that the cuckoo pops out of the clock reliably every friday night. Thats one thing you can count on. Its friday. Things are nuts. Tonight is no exception. Tonight the cuckoo has popped out of the clock. And over the course of this hour, actually, were waitsing for the next big thing to happen on two very important stories. Ill just tell you flatout, we expect to be covering developments in both of these stories over the course of this evening, potentially into the overnight hours tonight. As i speak right now, its 9 00 p. M. Eastern, and this hour is going to be crucial. Republicans have just issue
Expose the chaos consuming the administration and discuss Recruiting Cabinet Members to invoke the 25th Amendment so they would remove president trump, your dual elected president from office for, quote, being unfit. This all took place during rosensteins second week on the job after he fired comey based on Rod Rosensteins recommendation. He didnt even have to like james comeys shoes and he could have fired him. Rosenstein thought he might be able to persuade kelly and the white house Chief Of Staff to invoke the 25th Amendment. Rod rosenstein wanted to wear a wire and secretly record a sitting president of the United States in both the 25th Amendment, a silent coup against his boss by him, mccabe, others,
all against a dual elected president. We are experiencing tonight a massive constitutional crisis and, frankly, this is designed to set up the president. Ill explain what this is about in a minute. Tonight, Rod Rosenstein, he is publicly denying this report, calling the story inaccur
Advice of Career Lawyers in the Justice Department. It wasnt just a whim of Jeff Sessions, this was a serious consideration went into this. Im sure Jeff Sessions didnt want to recuse himself but that was the advice he got. The president has been loudly lamenting sessions decision to do just that. Sessions pushing ban on his part saying essentially that the actions to have department of justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations, thats the thing that he shot back, your thoughts on that . Yeah, i think the other thing was that was the beginning of the statement, at the end of the statement he mentioned that the people in his department and him are committed to advancing the rule of law and i think that was a very important thing too because hes basically suggesting there that donald trump is trying to get the Justice Department to do his bidding is trying to avoid the rule of law, rule of man rather than rule of law, i think Jeff Sessions had strong words there
Response to your reporting. He said, quote, the New York Times story is factually incorrect. I will not respond on a story thats biased against the department and advancing their own personal agenda but let me be clear about this. Based on my personal dealings with the president , there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment. I want to give you a chance to respond to that. I also want to point out when he says there is no basis, hes talking the present tense. Hes not saying, i never thought there was a basis. Yeah. That was my read. I mean im not going to parse rods statement. I think, myself and other news outlets have all now, including cnn, have recorded the basic facts that are now in dispute. The two basic facts are rod raised the idea of wearing a wire and in a second basic fact, in a memo Andrew Mccabe road that Special Counsel has rod raced the idea of the 25th
release of the transcripts of the witnesses in the russian investigation. The republicans refused. Mr. Nunes refused
The idea of possibliy resigning. Whats unclear is how serious that was. Whether he said Something Like i am willing to resign if the president wants me to or whether he said i intend to resign and im going to do it on monday. We dont know the exact nature of those conversations. Eli, i want to hear about your reporting. I want to show our viewers what phil rucker is talking about. Lets watch. I have a message for the president tonight. Under zero circumstances should the president fire anybody. If you are laying a trap for donald trump, this might be exactly how youd do it. Okay, professor, what will President Trump do now . Well, if hes smart, hell take advantage of this and not fire either any of these people, not mueller, not rosenstein, and not sessions. So this is important point because i think a lot of people are really scared after the
rosensteins people to come out and say, he expects to be fired. His people were putting that out to what end, we dont know at this point but cer