seems to be intentional that this administration is just withdrawing from maybing our case around the world. matt, we ve been speculating this morning as to why the president didn t fire flynn right away, whether it was incompetence, whether it was some kind of loyalty or whether there was something else going on here that we don t yet know. what s your theory as to why this went on for 18 days like that? that s really the central question that s hard to answer. it could be that the president is loyal to mike flynn, he was his buddy on the campaign trail or it could be something more nefarious. it could be mike flynn when he had those conversations wasn t freelancin freelancing. he might have been acting with the authorization of the president-elect. it could be related to the campaign. wouldn t you sum it up as arrogance, incompetence and possibly something nefarious. exactly. that might explain why trump to this day is unwilling to separate himself from mike
which she warned them that general flynn had been compromised in a big way. thisn those heads up that she disclosed that were given to the white house, what did we learn about exactly how the trump administration is characterizing everything pertaining to michael flynn? what we saw was that this wasn t just some casual mention at a cocktail party. she gave very formal notice and both she and former director clapper made it clear when i asked them, when you say one thing on a tape and then you lie to the vice president and say something publicly, couldn t that be material for blackmail? and they both definitively said yes, it is. i think that s what we have to remember here. they decided to keep someone on for 18 days and, in fact, two days after having this warning, allowed him to sit in on an hour-long telephone call between the president of the united states and vladimir putin. this is just not something that
serious people. david ignatius, do you not hear the same thing i ve heard a couple of times you live in washington so you might hear it more frequently. one of the problems, one of the central problems with this issue and other issues in the white house is the total chaotic nature around the president. there s no strong chief of staff. there s no strong voices to give him some direction, advice, counsel that he adheres to and this is what happens. mike, i do feel that but i felt that especially at the time that these events were happening. the white house is somewhat chaotic now. it was really chaotic back in january. the knives were out. flynn himself was jockeying for position. i went in to interview flynn in this period between when sally yates had delivered her warning and when he was fired, and he was struggling to defend himself, explaining his plans
struggled with this afghanistan problem as much as anyone in the military when he was there under general petraeus is now going to be the key decision maker. it s said that he feels that this augmentation of troops makes sense. i think it s a tough decision for president trump. he talks about wanting a winning strategy, but very few people who look at afghanistan think there s a win other than finally getting some diplomatic process and coalition that draws the taliban in. mike, we ve been there for 16 years, and the afghanistan army still can t fight for themselves. we re going to have to make the decision. apparently culturally they are incapable of doing it because they re too divided, too many tribes or something. if the president puts more troops in, we re going to have
up defending mike flynn when he finally decided it was time for him to go. what was it that was limiting trump s reaction. were there issues of his own that he was struggling to think through. did he see this as a democratic attack on him? we just don t know. i think those are the central questions, what was trump thinking? lie after lie after lie. it s interesting, mika, that donald trump referred to the investigation of general flynn as a witch hunt which explains that even after he has all of this information, even after he fires him himself, he is still for some reason trying to defend this man who did things that were indefensible. it does raise questions about the amount of money that trump has probably gotten funded through russia for all of his personal interests. but the bigger issue is every lie chips away at this presidency and every untruth