to these things. some is brand new. the admission trump knew about the payments is something we didn t know before. the statement for the reason for comey s firing is new. i imagine that the investigation will take the information and use it as a lens to go back and look at the information and evidence they ve gathered previously, and may even inform questions going forward. i think they ll view it with a bit of a grain of salt. is this now the truth that we re hearing? it s different from what we ve heard from official channels in the past, or is it an effort to spin a more innocuous narrative. the other possibility is rudy giuliani is trying to calm down michael cohen to say this is not a campaign finance violation. michael cohen has nothing to worry about based on the facts as i m describing then. and so, therefore, he has no incentive to cooperate with robert mueller or the southern district of new york. that may be part of what the strategy is about to prevent cohen from feeling t
it s trade or north korea, on a whim, it s all about me. you re going to see a more erratic, less expert-driven administration than we ve even seen thus far. isn t it stunning that we re now calling rex tillerson an expert, when from the get-go we were saying is this guy qualified for the job. evan, i want to say on the cia director-designate, gina haspel, you re an ex-cia guy. this woman oversaw a secret prison in thailand and also pushed for videotapes of waterboarding to be destroyed. the aclu says she was, quote, up to her eyeballs in torture. what does it mean for the agency and your former colleagues to have somebody like this in charge? i do think that was a dark time in our history and mistakes were made. and she was a part of that, although i think that i m told she s sort of learned from that, as i think the agency and
roll him and they didn t. and now this thing is most likely going to go through. and you ll have to say to your constituents, we chose not to have a voice. again, the reason they didn t meet with the president was because of his student tweet before the meeting saying there was not going to be a deal. the senate republicans have a majority. they can tax the tax bill all by themselves. i would love to work on a bipartisan basis with the democrats. there are democrats that want to vote for tax reform. i don t have any objection to tax reform, but i do have an objection if it raises taxes on the middle class. and we would have loved to work together, but the republicans chose not to do that. they chose to have a very partisan process for the tax bill. that s what we re seeing. isn t it stunning when you think about it. here we are, the stupid tweet by the president. this is 2017. i think back to being the kid in school saying pledge of
course, who because it s they control the congress, they are going to come out probably today with what they call a dynamic estimate of the growth effects of this bill. but, john hold on, stephanie. let me just finish the point. let me finish the point. if, in fact, they show as other centrist modelers have shown that the bill doesn t generate very much growth and doesn t generate very much revenue, that is going to make it a more difficult vote for people like jeff flake and bob corker and jim langford and jerry moran who say they are concerned about the budget deficit. so watch that jtc score which will come out later today. isn t it stunning, though, that john mccain would come out as a yes hours before you re getting the dynamic scoring which is important? yes. i m very surprised about that. i figured that john mccain would wait for that data. the joint tax committee said they were trying to produce it last night. but it was a big rush. they weren t able to.
think you re a part of a change in a culture that s going to make a difference for their generation. also this morning, senator franken joining 18 of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in calling for an ethics investigation. in addition, democratic senator kristin gillibrand told the new york times she believes former president bill clinton should have resigned after having an affair with white house intern monica lewinsky 20 years ago. i think that is the appropriate response, but i think things have changed today and i think under those circumstances there should be a very different reaction. isn t it stunning we call it the lewinsky scandal? it was the clinton scandal. she was appointed to succeed hillary clinton when she left to become president obama s secretary of state. msnbc s garrett haake joins us live on capitol hill.