going to go away if he were smart, he would take a step back. does he have the right to ask him? did you really say that? he has the right to fire him because he thinks he said it. i wouldn t fire him but i would call him in. hey, knock it off. now go back and put bad guys in jail. he has the right to do it. is it right to do it, that s the question. if he resigns, the president has an easy path to putting noel francisco in there. a man it is assumed would be much more amenable. do you go that route? heck no. the law of unintended consequences will kill you. you fire james comey and you re going to have an easier path than a russian investigation and you get robert mueller. fire rosenstein. i don t know whether someone who comes in temporarily will say something different. i can see them saying, my job is to keep the seat warm until we
he s going to fire rosenstein. i don t see that happening at all. all right. chris, laura, thank you for your time. i appreciate it. thank you. when we come back, bill cosby led out of court today in cuffs. how he went from being known as america s dad to facing three to ten years in prison.
correspondent, evan perez. what are you learning about the strategy behind calling rosenstein to testify in the coming days? well, wolf, now you have the president s allies in congress, matt gates and mark meadows, now saying they want to bring rosenstein to testify. perhaps as soon as this week about this this story in the new york times about his comments, allegedly made invoking the 25th amendment and about wiretapping the president. they think that bringing him to capitol hill and making him testify under oath will do a couple of things. it will certainly make rosenstein have to answer those tough questions, and people behind the scenes are advising the president not to fire rosenstein. instead to let this happen. because they believe that rod rosenstein will be damaged as a result of that hearing. he ll either have to resign or certainly they believe will make the politics a little bit better for him to be pushed out by the president. so that s what the president is hearing
and that could last almost as long as reasonably the probe might go. and just think about the toxic politics at play down there in d.c. keep in mind, once a new deputy ag was confirmed, they would take over both of rosenstein s current roles. but, practically, that s the difference. politically all right, now, i m going to argue this more in the closing, but there is a third option that may be better than fired or resigned. well, what else is there? that s because we re looking at it in this binary way, fired or resigned. the third way is, nothing. i will argue in the closing, while the president doing nothing with rosenstein may be the best course. all right, the other big story of the night, judge brett kavanaugh isn t waiting until thursday to clear his name. he appeared on television tonight, and our next guest s name came up in the interview. michael avenatti is back in the fray. how does he fit into this drama?
presidency while you re overseeing an investigation fireable? probably. probably, depending on the context, to even joke about it. look, i look back to general mattis reaction when he was asked about some of the things in the woodward book. he said, not only would i not say those things, i would not tolerate them at the department of defense. we should not have a different standard for the department of defense and department of justice do we know for fact that mattis didn t say those things? what we have with mattis is a denial and we don t have a denial with rosenstein is that true? you don t like those two denials from rosenstein? what i don t like about those denials is that he does not complicitly deny saying that he raised the prospect of wearing a wire on the president. you think he s a little cute in the denials? i do. and if you look at him, he really does leave that prospect open. but it s unfair to the country for you and i to be having this discussion