the evangelical pulpit, can they teach one thing, preach one thing on sunday and something different on tuesday when it comes time to vote? chris, i think this is about a child, a 14-year-old girl. this makes it different than some of the other allegations, you know, for better or for worse and i think that that s something that was immediately recognizable to all of the republicans, certainly that i talked to now. now the question is going to ultimately be, if he doesn t withdraw from the ballot, is there a mechanism in the senate? could they refuse to seat him? i think howard s right, it s not the end. the law is the, the law is if he were to stay on the ballot and to win the secretary of state of alabama has the power to declare it nul and void. so there still is a chance in alabama technically for him to be knocked off after the election ironically. that s going to be the question for republicans in congress. do they push for those things? do they push to actually take an
be very explicit here. these groups seem to believe they have a friend in donald trump and the white house. i don t know why they believe that, but they don t see me as a friend in the senate, and i would urge the president to dissuade these groups that he s their friend. but homeland security tom bosser doubled down on the argument that there s more than one side to blame. the president not only condemned the violence and stood up at a time and a moment when calm was necessary, and didn t dignify the names of these groups of people. what they fouvend when they showed up were groups from outside that showed up on both sides looking for trouble, dressed in riot gear, prepared for violence. joining me now msnbc political analyst howard feinman and editorial director at the huffington post, and joe watkins, republican strategist and former bush 41 aide and fordham university s christina grier author of black ethnics, race, immigration and the pursuit of the american dream.
he said it more than once here. he also said inside the fbi he didn t have a lot of support and he was a very bad fbi director. we know there is a lot of criticism of comey, democrats don t like him, republicans don t like him, whatever. but one thing our reporting continually shows is he was pretty good at running the building. people inside the fbi liked him. they thought he was competent. they may have questioned some of his judgment on e-mails and the trump investigation, but they trusted him as a leader and they certainly didn t think he was crazy. and he was loyal to the troops. correct. correct. and these are people that said, look, we don t always agree with him, but we have respect for the fact that he s independent and he does what he thinks is right. to me, not the smoking gun yet, but the admission that he was worried about the russian investigation. he still is, but he was telling his russian friends, and they look like they re yucking it up together, lavrov and kisl
be, quote, close to the president. according to these people who have not further identified the official. anyway, the probe is said to accelerate in the coming weeks. that doesn t mean criminal charges are near. meanwhile, in another development, james comey has agreed to testify in an open hearing before the senate intelligence committee that will be scheduled after memorial day, which is coming up quickly. for more on both of these huge stories, i m joined by the new york times michael schmidt, the author who co-wrote today s big scoop, national correspondent leslie clark and director howard feinman. we ve got althe breaking stories today. michael, tell us about today s meeting and what did the president say about comey? and why the exposable commentary about the guy being a nut job to an adversary country? the president has done this with comey, as he s tried to explain. he s tried to make him look crazy, like a nut.
he can say i didn t have my attorney general, we didn t have the whole thing in order. we moved there s a way that somebody who was willing to admit a mistake could easily do but i m very dubious of whether he ll do it in this case. by the way, one of the candidates for solicitor general who would be the person who would argue this case before the supreme court if it gets there is none other than kellyanne conway s husband george conway, a major lawyer in new york. let s see if he gets that job. yeah, kellyanne conway who was issued a rare repudiation today from the republican chair of the house oversight committee for urging people buy the president s daughter s items. jennifer rubin and howard fineman, thank you very much, appreciate. it thank you. our coverage continues ahead. new york attorney general eric schneiderman says tonight s ruling is a huge win for the idea that no one is above the law.