Morning joe. It is thursday, august 23rd. Joe has the morning off. He will be back tomorrow. We have Donny Deutsch with us along with professor at Princeton University and column at New York Post and contributor editor of Weekly Standard john and sam stein and washington Anchor Katy Kay and benjamin. Good to have you all onboard with us on another very busy morning. We begin with the very latest in President Trumps former lawyer implicating him in his guilty plea yesterday. Trump appeared to acknowledge his attorneys Campaign Finance violation and then walked it back in an interview all while maintaining its not a crime and say he blamed Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his former lawyers prosecution. The president tweeted, michael
Former GOP representative Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski interview newsmakers, politicians and pundits about the issues of the day. Didnt come out of the campaign and thats big. But they werent, its not even a campaign violation. If you look at Preside
and the logic, by the way, of firing manafort. he has to fire mueller at the same time. incredible injustice. mueller is prosecuting innocent people and not fair and pardon michael flynn but none of that will change what s going on in the southern district of new york, which is more jeopardizing him than mueller is. okay. so, benjamin and then katty, please follow up. benjamin, this is a massive investigation, ultimately, about the national security of the united states of america. and whether or not our elections were tampered with by the russians which there is clear evidence that this is going on. at what point is a pardon actually witness tampering? well, so, i don t know that a pardon is witness tampering, but i have to say when i heard the president yesterday making those statements, issuing those tweets. you know, my first reaction to
a lot of people assuming it s a probability. the reality, we saw today, p papadopoulos, low-level staffer. pay no attention. paul manafort was chair of the campaign. what we know, seeing both sides, really it s been methodical the way they re going through this and shouldn t expect to see an ending in the next few weeks. a secret, one of the defendants brought in a public defender. being caught off guard. you wouldn t bring in a public defender if you knew an arrest was coming down the pike. and finally you hear, it is the white house s reaction, first of all, trying to say this isn t part of the campaign. talked about that. there is that other question hanging out there, the possibility dangling out there, certainly allies of the president out there. the idea of either/or firing manafort excuse me, the special prosecutor. pardoning manafort, some combination there, introduced by folks allied with the white house. yes. we just saw the editorial on the