And take on whatever comes next. Find out how American Express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open. Com. So the wheels are coming off a little bit. If the wheels are not yet off you are starting to hear the start of lug nuts stripping their threads and pinging across lanes of traffic while the wheels start to wobble. Theres a bit of a Freakout In Washington and were seeing it on two big stories developing tonight. Why is it always friday night . One of these two stories tonight, developing tonight that shows this freakout, one of them is about the administration itself, the other one breaking tonight appears to be about the prospect of investigation into the administration. Press, we the citizens of the United States know about the content of communications with the russian government . Michael flynn was reportedly exposed as having lied about the content of his calls to the russian government because u. S. Law enforcement or u. S. Intelligence agencies were list
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Whether a person is too close to the subject of the probe, whether Jeff Sessions would beak be more of a Trump Campaign surrogate who happened to be Attorney General rather than acting as an independent Law Enforcement officer. If sessions didnt recuse after that statement, it would have made him look even more like he was doing trumps bidding. And trump apparently didnt know that making that statement would also as just a general matter of embarrassment, make him look weak and out of the loop about a decision that was already done. Because there were reports that show the Internal Doj Process had already resulted in sessions accepting that nonpartisan Recusal Recommendation from the career staff earlier that week and that Jeff Sessions was already working with doj officials op writing the very rationale they would soon release to the public. In fact, it was barely an hour after trump put that public pressure on session
Here at the table for the hour, Steve Schmidt and matt miller. But first, to react for the first time, single threads different threads of a single story. Questions about russians and contact with people in the president s inner circle. Former cia director john brennan, lucky for us, now a Senior National security and Intelligence Analyst for msnbc and nbc news. I understand now, sitting here today, why donald trump a week or so ago said dont believe what you see, dont believe what you hear on the news channels, because when you take all these events just this week together, they paint a very compromising position for this president on the question of russian influence. I think thats right, nicolle. I think weve seen over the course of the last two years basically an effort on the part of President Trump and others to pry to inoculate Public Perceptions of what actually
happened during the campaign. First, there were no meetings. Then there were meetings, but they were focused on adopt
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Other reference in the whole Paul Manafort trial to his time on the Trump Campaign. This thing i previously mentioned about him maybe offering the job of running the u. S. Earl or the a Bank President who approved the loans for him. Thats the only other reference in the Trump Campaign thus far. Two days ago out of the blue, the manafort defense lawyer asks rick gates, did mueller ask but your time in the Trump Campaign . The prosecutor gets up and objects. The judge summons both sides to come to the bench. He flips on, i kid you not, the White Noise Machine which is a real thing. So the jury and the spectators hear crashing waves instead of the conversation. None can hear whats being said. They have this long private communication. We know it is long because we know it takes six pages to
transcribe. But we cant see the pages because they are sealed. Now, we do know after that bench conference, whatever happen there, the
apparatus than can be very concerning, because ultimately are these institutions going to hold if something happens like this again? i think what mara is getting at, it s like a two terr. it gives them political breathing room until mtg freaks out again. you know, you had mccabe over here, and how our allies are freaking out, as they assume that donald trump is going to win. as bad as that is, and as much as that s caused a freakout, if you know the intel commence, a member of five eyes, the highest level of intelligence gathering, human intelligence, electronic intelligence, and now you know