Up 10 points. That has now evaporated. Interesting to see who turns out, a testament to the excitement level. Thank you all. That is all for this evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts right now with ari in for rachel. Good evening. Rachel has the night off. We have a pretty big show. Today was day two of the federal criminal trial of the campaign chairman. The witnesses were several people who sold the defendant clothes and houses that he bought through secretive International Wire payments. One important thing we learned from what happened today, this judge is holding muellers prosecutors to the line, limiting their questions and how they present key evidence to manafort to the jury. A former prosecutor who tried these kinds of cases and inside that courtroom today joins me to explain if what the judge is up to could hurt muellers case. There are reports tonight about the russian woman charged with trying to carry out the government influence campaign through the nra in the u. S. And
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
News, analysis and interviews with politicians and observers. Cnns Abbie Phillip is live at the white house. The president just had an event where he met at the white house with republican lawmakers. Did he clarify anything today . Reporter well, nia, the president just let reporters into the room for that meeting. It was originally scheduled to have been closed, but he said nothing. He didnt respond to questions about any of these issues floating around him. He didnt expand on any of his comments or explain, you know, his view of the situation. But what he has been doing over the last day or so, specifically in a lengthy interview with fox news that aired last night and today, is really take the lead in the administrations response to all of these problems. Theres no question the white house staffers were caught by surprise by a confluence of bad news stories. Paul manaforts verdict and also Michael Cohens guilty plea, but President Trump has been the one left to test out various stra
trustworthy prosecutor. if that report is not accurate, not correcting it would have hurt him, hurt mueller i think. so they did the right thing, and it s good the president acknowledged that. and corinnareen, isn t there lesson for democrats. we heard from congressman castro and gillibrand, even after the fact, we have to get to the bottom of this, is there a risk for democrats to celebrate things so far in advance before actually knowing what the heck things s thi things are? let me say this, it doesn t surprise me democrats jumped on this. the past two years when republicans had control of congress, they didn t really put forth a legitimate oversight on this president. what we had to really look towards was the media, who did incredible, excellent reporting on what was going on. and that s where we were learning all of our information. now that s changed a bit because congress well, we have the majority in the house, so now things have changed.
special counsel s office has not disputed. so the fact they would dispute this speaks to how egregious the buzzfeed reporting oversight was. but it also speaks to how there hasn t been another example that bad in the last year. so a lot of the the vast majority of the other reporting has been pretty close to something. david, let me ask you, congresswoman, one thing that s striking me is all of a sudden you heard president trump in a way celebrating the special counsel s office here, thanking them for coming forward like this. yep, that s right. you only heard criticism of him before. i think this put the special counsel in a real bind. part of the trump defender s strategy is make him look like he s out to get trump and not a trustworthy prosecutor. if that report is not accurate, not correcting it would have hurt him, hurt mueller i think. so they did the right thing, and it s good the president acknowledged that. and careen, isn t there a lesson for democrats. we heard fro