putin allies. now why mary opal? well. you can see. why on the map, because where mariupol is and how it forms a potential land bridge for arms between occupied crimea and war-torn donbas. between coded messages about crimea and secret meetings with russian spies where they asked nicely for trump to please give them the city of mariupol it is clear that putin s bloodlust for ukraine and trump s for the right house where interconnected enter intertwined for the very beginning. we are back with jim and mark. mark we, are talking about this press conference on the break and how we all followed, we are listening to the emails because they have been intersected with jim colleagues in the station of hillary. but really, the commitment to give back crimea turns out to be the enduring geo political comment. right. if you line up the timeline as you just did, you have the trump statement about crimea, you have the urgent message and sequin eating in a cigar bar a date later, two days later. a
well it s fascinating, joining, now jim ruttenberg writer at large for the new york times, and jonathan mueller, a staff writer for new york times magazine, our consulting produces firmer talks and part of influence, and the series interviews they re exclusive reporting, and happy to have them here. thanks so much, i appreciate it, jimmy to start with, you the largest media empire in history, give us some perspective of how big and powerful, and profitable of the murdoch family empire is. just look at what they have here in the united states the fox news channel, the fox broadcast network, the wall street journal, the new york post. in the uk, they have the sun, the times of london, they control a lot of that newspaper marking, they control a lot of the news market in australia, a lot of the english speaking world they control news, and a lot of entertainment. and it s not always the journalistic integrity is not always there when it comes to the murdoch s media empire.
tweeting about a rigged witch hunt, the mueller investigation. can you imagine this white house under investigation by a dozen congressional committees? just thinking about you, you guys have described him as a pressure cooker getting ready to blow. yeah. you shifted my thought to the psychological impact this would have on this president. well, it s paralyzing for the staff and for the president himself. especially if these investigations are personal for trump. if they somehow look at his personal conflicts, his business dealings that sort of trump hotel and what s going on there, the emoluments clause. either the legitimacy of his election or the amount of his wealth or the conduct of his business, his family company, that will just get him going and set him off. and i imagine the democrats will try and do some of that. it s part of their tactic to shape the terms of the debate, as jim was laying out. phil rucker, thank you very much. just more for you guys to cover. we re k
significance? well, its significance is sort of in the kind of grubby nature of the whole thing. this is the president of the united states, a man who has presented himself as a billionaire, a master of high finance. and this was more like something you see on an episode of sopranos. it s a very simple little scheme where you re just padding an invoice and providing no service for it at all. but it has potentially more ramifications than that because there are tax implications. they were in essence dodging a gift tax that could still be claued back by irs and new york authorities. they were also passing along those inflated invoices to their tenants and applying for rent regulation i m sorry, rent-regulated rent increases based on those invoices and that could result in some kind of action, too. those tenants were, in essence, paying more all those years than they really should have. you talked about the sopranos. when jim comey wrote a book he talked about his first meeting abou
november 6th. 500 bucks to the first candidate who puts that in an ad. the first question, is this a conservative media-fueled high or durable shift in voter moods and trends? if republicans are in such great shape, why, according to axios, did the white house form a working group to figure out how to deal with investigations that a democratic-run house may launch after the midterms. here to sift through the developments, some of our favorite reporters and friends. washington post s phil rucker from orlando where the president spoke earlier. bill kristol, founder and editor at large. former chief spokesman for the justice department and jim ruttenberg, truly one of my favorites, media writer for the new york times. phil rucker, let me start with you. you should start with jim. he s so outvanced the rest of us. i m gobsmacked by how the