investigating michael cohen in the first place, what was it that got their attention. and we just don t know the answer to that. jill wine-banks, what did you take away from what we learned here? there was a lot that was redacted, we know the feds, while they didn t listen in on michael cohen s calls, they did track who those calls were from and who he was reaching out to. we learned that tactics used against the mafia were used against michael cohen. pen registers are often used in mafia cases. and as pete just said, we don t know why they started the investigation but we do know it involved bank fraud and money laundering. but it also involved the possible information that he wawas acting as a representative of a foreign government. it s a lot of evidence against him. none of it is linking it to the president. but one thing leads to another
if there was no electoral college. you would go to the major media markets. you wouldn t go to iowa, wouldn t go to montana, wouldn t go to new hampshire. i think any proposal to get rid of the electoral college, i understand the concern, and the concern is real, that we ve had two presidents get elected without winning the popular vote. but i agree with charlie, that s not going to happen. on gillibrand, i think it s a brilliant answer. there is criticism in the democratic community about her statements about franken, about her criticisms saying bill clinton should have been impeached. i think the way she handled that last night shows how long she s been thinking about running for president and how very nuanced her argument is. you ve seen beto stumble in his first five days because running for president is hard, and you see someone like kirsten who has been thinking about running since she was in congress, much less the senate, and obviously thought about how to deal with this issue
and now we had information that linked him and crimes to the president, because remember, the indictment makes the president individual number 1, an unindicted co-conspirator. once you start, it doesn t end. that s the reason i also don t think the mueller investigation is going away soon, because there s still a lot of untied loose ends that need to be fully investigated, and it will be over when those investigations are completed. i m glad you mentioned that, jill, because, pete, we re learning today that rod rosenstein is sticking around for a little bit longer. and that has sort of led to questions about whether that means that the mueller probe is going to continue on. we had thought that perhaps it was wrapping up. what does that news tell you? not much. i assume it means that he wants to hang around because he thinks the mueller report is coming soon. he initially had said he would leave early on after barr comes in. then he said maybe he would leave around mid-march.
captivity that senator mccain endured, his decades-long record on public policy. he attacks him in these vicious personal terms, i think that this is one of those attacks, one of those things, flaws in the president s character that makes a lot of republicans very nervous, very uncomfortable. but at the moment he continues to have sky high approval among republican voters. i was going to say, why does he have that sky high approval? john mccain s colleagues in the senate are afraid to break with this president. i think until and unless we see some sign that the president s popularity among republican voters is fading, republicans who face a primary election in the next two years are going to be very, very leery of challenging him openly. michael steel, donna edwards, you re going to stick with us. ahead, heating up. why climate change is a top priority for voters in the flood-ridden midwest, ahead on andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. ly on msnbc pay for what i need.
msnbc contributor yamiche ail sin do alcindor. and msnbc contributor charlie sykes, editor in chief at the bulwark. robert costa, for our viewers to note, we re watching the president of brazil arrive here at the white house. those are the live pictures we re seeing as we chat about 2020. but bob, there are so many candidates, obviously, in this field. it s starting to kind of be at the top of the headlines, sometimes to president trump s chagr chagrin. and we mentioned this idea of a frontrunner. what s your sense of how this field is shaking out right now between beto o rourke s money and biden looming on the horizon? what s important at this point more than the polling is the message of each of these candidates. and today s split screen between president trump and the democratic field is quite revealing. there s a disconnect between