Reforms, adding into this mix, of course, this is now a Midterm Election years year. Things are not easy in an Election Year so that adds into this complicated agenda they have. Up here on the hill tomorrow white house aides will be meeting with top congressional leadership trying to work towards that Government Potential Shutdown Showdown that we might have in a couple weeks and this weekend, speaker of the house, paul ryan, and Mitch Mcconnell, will be heading to camp david to meet with the president about the legislative agenda ahead. Also changes in the senate. Al franken, minnesota senator, Stepping Down Today and then all eyes on utahs republican orrin hatch, will he run for an eighth term . What are we expecting . Thats right. This is frankens last official day. Tomorrow his replacement, tina smith, will be signed in. He steps down amid multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. That officially ends his term here in congress today. Of course utahs orrin hatch, this is a big ques
Thats it for me. Im gigi stone woods. The news continues right now with my colleague, david, whos been tweeting this whole hour constantly. Thank you very much. Great to see you. Good afternoon, im david gura at msnbc headquarters in new york. We start this hour with President Trump who is spending the weekend at his golf resort in bedminster, new jersey. The president ending his week touting fridays economic numbers. Secondquarter gdp growth of 4. 1 , that is the fastest pace since 2014. Hes not been able to change the subject, avoiding all questions about the latest revelations from his former personal Attorney Michael Cohen who nbc news reports is prepared to tell investigators that President Trump had prior knowledge of that nowinfamous june, 2016,
view that meeting differently perhaps in light of what we heard on that tape, in light of what weve learned this week. Cnn reporting, other outlets following here, that Michael Cohen is willing to testify that donald trump did know about
we have put forth articles of impeachment. i am very proud of the committee, six committees have been working on this for a very long time. this is nothing swift about it. but it is urgent. speaker pelosi also explained why the charge of bribery which she has accused the president of committing was not included in the final articles of impeachment. you yourself accused him of bribery. why did you decide not to make bribery one of articles of impeachment. i myself am not a lawyer. sometimes i act like one. and not as often as i act as a doctor, i practice medicine on the side, without benefit of diploma, too. this was a decision recommended by working together as committee chairs are attorneys. and the articles are what they are. they are very powerful. they re very strong. and they are a continuation of a
full article 1 constitutional powers which includes an impeachment investigation. it s where i have thought we needed to go all along. but we certainly needed mr. mooul tore come before us to help us do that. to bring the case to the american people. why not hold a full house vote to formally open an impeachment inquiry? i don t think that number one, it s not necessary. judiciary has the oversight and investigation to include the possibility of bringing forth articles of impeachment. and at this point, i don t know that that would be successful in the house. because notice what happened here. the special counsel did two years worth of work. delivered his confident shlg report. and then for a month, the attorney general barr hand picked by this president did exactly what the president has done. and obstruct the information from the american people creating public confusion. people actually got news reports that there was no wrong doing in it. when there s sweeping wrong
more conservative colleagues on the republican side are about the effort? it remains to be seen. the speaker of the house, paul ryan, indicated that these charges in no way rose to the serious level of high crimes and misdemeanors. i think the view amongst all of us on the hill, democrats, and hopefully reasonably minded republicans, is that these articles of impeachment are not worth the paper that they re written on. and it exposes the great hypocrisy of the republican party. they ve claimed for years that they are party of the rule of law. yet they have regularly supported a president who has gone after the fbi, gone after the special prosecutor, gone after career law enforcement officials, and now they ve put forth articles of impeachment against the republican-appointed deputy attorney general for nothing short of his alleged failure to turn over documents. are you kidding me? when we have a president of the united states whose campaign possibly engaged in a criminal conspiracy