let s talk about general motors. you slammed the company for corporate greed at its worse after its announcement it s laying off 14,000 workers including almost 2,000 in ohio. this comes after the trump administration imposed sweeping tariffs, which you have supported, gm told the commerce department in june, quote, increased import tariffs could lead to a smaller gm, a reduced presence at home and abroad, for this iconic american company and risk less, not more, u.s. jobs. gm said in june that tariffs could cost jobs. was it a mistake to stand with president trump s tariffs? what gm executives never tell you in these statements is that the stock buybacks they did in large part because of the huge tax cut that the president gave them, including more incentives to move offshore, but the billions of dollars in tax cuts have ended up in gm executives pockets. they have done lit ral over the last three years $10 billion of buybacks.
it was a relevant fact they would have liked to have known that then-candidate trump was trying to do business with russia. we know michael cohen said he was in contact, close and regular contact with white house staff while he was lying to congress about this deal, the trump tower moscow. do we know anything about whether or not the white house was aware that he was lying? i m not aware of that. obviously, this was just the plea arrangement with michael cohen. and clearly, most of these characters who were around donald trump, none of them have exactly a sterling record of telling the truth. right. but i have to believe that the special prosecutor has more details to come. you said on thursday it might not be a coincidence that mueller waited to announce michael cohen s new plea until after he received the written answers to his questions from president trump. are you suggesting that president trump was less than truthful in his answers to robert mueller? i m not suggestin
and i are going to reserve that final judgment until we get all our facts. we still need to see people like michael cohen back before our committee. but we do know this. pretty clear. that the russians, not only did they hack into the e-mails, not only had their stolen other information, but they were very forward leaning in terms of offering this information to the trump campaign. and it appears that a number of the senior trump officials or trump campaign officials continued to lie about those kind of contacts. i wonder, though, if there is a narrative here that is different from the one that a lot of americans were thinking it was, which is, for instance, in march 2016, president trump suggested or then-candidate trump suggested easing sanctions against russia for the invasion of crimea. he was in the middle of also trying to curry favor with putin to have this very lucrative deal. trump tower in moscow. a trump tower deal that supposedly they were going to offer putin a $50 mil
out a deal over dinner. he agreed not to raise tariffs on chinese products next month in exchange for an agreement by china to purchase more american goods. joining me, sherrod brown of ohio. senator, congratulations on your re-election, by the way. the white house also said the u.s. and china have said a 90-day countdown clock for broader negotiations over intellectual property rules, cybersecurity issues. you sent a letter to president trump urging him to stay aggressive on trade with china and not just to agree to any deal for the sake of an agreement. do you think the deal as it s shaping up right now is good? i can t tell. i think it s important to step back and understand why all of this with china, and that is that half the world s steel capacity is in china, half of the world s aluminum smelting capacity is in china. they had a history of cheating. the whole point of tariffs is they re a temporary tool to reach a negotiation and to make
that president trump spent a lot of time bad mouthing practically every male member of the bush family, george h.w. bush, george w. bush, jeb bush, and there was no love lost between the bush family and the current president. take a listen to this from president trump yesterday in argentina. do you regret any of your comments about bush and his family in the past? thank you very much, everybody. thank you. do you regret any of your comment about george h.w. bush or his family in the past? thank you very much, everybody. thank you very much. it seems like that could have been a moment. it was not a moment. i think in some ways it was, actually. i think it s an acknowledgment that he has. but he s not a guy that says i m sorry. but i think even in that tacit response of saying nothing, it s an acknowledgment.