investigation. he said clearly i have not seen evidence of collusion between the trump campaign and russia. trust me, if there were direct evidence of collusion, it would have already been leaked out by now. so at times the hearing centered more on sally yates forced exit from the justice department, senator ted cruz was one of the senators to press yates about her decision not to enforce president trump s controversial immigration ban, a move that ultimately let to her being fired. are you familiar with 8 usc section 1182? not off the top of my head, no. it says, quote, whenever the president finds the entry of any alien or class of aliens in the united states would be detrimental to the interest of the united states he maybe proclamation and for such peesh yod as he shall deem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or non-aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants or impose any restrictions he may deem appropriate. would you agree that is broad
department spokesperson, now an msnbc justice and security analyst matthew miller. let s start with chris murphy. chris, has there ever been a president from the state of connecticut? stop it. leave him alone. that s a great intro. no, i don t think there has been. how exciting, if politico is right, there may be one in 2020. congratulations. i ve got re-election in between now and then. okay. don t look past your next appointment, as they say. let s get serious here. what was your takeaway from all the testimony yesterday from sally yates? i do think it s stunning that sally yates had to explain to the white house the problem of having a national security adviser who was compromised, lying internally to his colleagues and had deep and long connections to the russians that may allow them to try to turn that to their benefit, the fact
central question. it now goes why did he like to mike pence, the vice president, to why did the president act the way he did. what did trump know about flynn s conversations with kislyak. what was his conversation back in december? i think those are the next set of issues people are going to focus on. i think the washington post did a survey of how many untruths the president told today and it was an average of 4.9 in the first 100 days. this presidency, you can argue this president is completely incompetent, maybe even has some issues medically, who knows? who knows? this presidency cannot afford anybody weak around him, not one person, and there are several and it s all just pouring out every day and we re becoming desensitized to how bad this is. and giving more material to saturday night live.
russian government. we certainly seem to be getting closer to that moment. matthew, you worked with sally yates. tell us about her. i think what people saw yesterday was what we saw yesterday, she s fearless, non-partisan. someone who came up as an assistant u.s. attorney. wasn t she appointed by bob barrr. she s so impressive. a republican. not a liberal republican. worked for bob barr, prosecuted the mayor of atlanta and in jail. prosecuted terrorists, the olympic park bombing. a career person who became the deputy attorney general and she s fearless. you brought up something very interesting in the testimony. it does raise questions about why she was fired. if you take the sequence of events leading up to her firing, we re all looking, of course, at that executive order, but she
for the nsc, trying to hold on to that job. i think the white house to be honest seems somewhat better organized today than it did then. the president is somewhat more confident of what he s doing. but this mystery endures, and the president tried to undermine sally yates credibility in a tweet yesterday before she testified, very defensive reaction. i just don t think that s continuing to be a wise strategy for the white house. this is going to play out. it s serious, the language she used made clear there are legal issues the justice is weighing. as pat leahy said, it was childish, a great word for that. yesterday morning president trump suggested a question for yates tweeting, ask sally yates under oath if she knows how classified information got into the newspaper soon after she explained it to the white house counsel. senate judiciary chairman chuck grassley obliged. next question. have either of you ever been an