regulator, so it s not clear if he s bending donald trump s ear on this the thing to keep in mind, though, is we re still a pretty decent distance from this election. if you look at one of the things that happened in the access hollywood tape there was still another month in that campaign. and during that month people s attention turned. it went to the comey letter, wikileaks are releases. it will be interesting to see if roy moore can actually have people brush aside alleged pedophilia over the next month, but there s a lot of time left. donald trump if he can bide his time for a short period of time, he will be in the clear. it s almost the exact length of the time as it was for the access hollywood tape. we ll see how it plays out. thanks. i really appreciate it. coming up, roy moore s wife says he absolutely will not step down from the race sfiet all the women coming forward to say he sexually harassed pursued or in one case molested them when they were teenagers. what she an
denial is the best way to get through this. and that s that s the thing. people knew about the access hollywood tape and the accusers and they voted for him anyway. i think he s thinking if i could get through that, if i could whip the election against hillary clinton who had this entire apparatus work not guilty her favor, i can sort of squeak by now. it also is a strategy where he is kind of this dovetails with his whole anti-media strategy. the washington most is out to get me. and so i think this also works in his favor to kind of back roy moore in many ways because it is kind of what he has been saying all along about himself. well, we ll see how it continues to play out. we re going to get a break in now. next on the president s relative silence on roy moore after lashing out at al franken.
look, i think i basically agree. he s taking a gamble. it s a gamble he took on the hollywood access tape. just shrug it off. the voters stuck with him. he won the election of the he s trying to do the same thing here. if he slugs it off long enough, that s old news. i don t want to get into that. we ought to talk about something else. we just passed a big tax bill. that s what s important. if he just slugs it off and gets through, roy moore wins, that will be a gamble that paid off. i do think, though, that times have changed since the access hollywood tape. at that time people stuck with him because they had great hope that he would deliver jobs, all sorts of promises, obamacare and all the rest. and now that they re not seeing that happen and he s not getting good marks, i don t think people are as anywhere near as hopeful or patient with him as they were then. he poke the bear last night with the frank instien. it s one thing not commenting on moore, but when you re going to co
they re not getting it. the president is taking an enormous gamble and that is if he can just stay silent long enough, get up in there in that election and roy moore can pull it off and get a vehicle to her, then this will all go away. it s one of these classic cases that americans debt it and they do care. so baby phillip, there was a remarkable line of push back from the white house today. sarah huckabee sanders said the president hasn t admitted doing anything wrong. senator franken has. that s a pretty giant loophole that they ve created here considering the access hollywood tape. that s right. and i think it s also a little bit it s almost a little too convene. i mean, there are some differences in this case. there is a photo of al franken doing something that most people agree is pretty horrific. and there s no such photograph of donald trump doing that. but there is an audiotape as you just played which. white house seems to believe can be easily dismissed. i think there
nobody has more respect for women than me. this came just eight days after the hollywood access tape. rex tillerson is denying tension between himself and the president. in a new interview also refusing to say whether he once called the president a moron. nbc s kelly o donnell has the latest. reporter: the nation s top diplomat being diplomatic. the president s a very unconventional person. as we all know in terms of how he communicates and likes to create action. secretary of state rex tillerson out front defending himself in part by attacking washington. this is a town that seems to relish on the gossip rumor, innuendo, feed on it. feed on it in a destructive way. one uncomfortable word, moron, causing tillerson grief. not going to dignify the question. question follows reports by nbc news tillerson called the president a moron after a july