peters join me. jeremy, the vanity fair article says, the first to go would be john kelly and h.r. mcmaster. it also says gary cohn had been lobbying to be chief of staff and quit when he didn t get the job. is there any indication that kelly or mcmaster are on their way out? nothing more than what s been speculated on for weeks and months at this point. this is one of the familiar rituals of chronicling the trump white house. aide, insert name here, is rumored to be about to depart. it s been going on with h.r. mcmaster for months. gary cohn of course finally decided he was going to go this week. what s happening with general
and step aside given how quickly the climate has intensified here. i have to say, i thought exactly the same thing as jeremy as i was looking at those interviews yesterday. the one thing that strikes you is when he said, he couldn t say if there might be any other accusers. is this potentially out of his hands right now? oh, yeah. anna, sorry. i think he s doing his best right now to do damage control. he s been consistently on message, apologetic, saying he wants to earn back the trust. those are kind of the right things when you look at this as a pr crisis moment. but if you are trying to think of, how do you stem the tide? how does he turn the page here if in a week or to months more women come forward, that s going to be a big problem. like jeremy was saying, i think this is a real issue with the senate, with the congress in general of this seems like it s a club. this plays into the fears and the skepticism that many people that are voters in the country have about what is
kelly is a little different, from my understanding of the matter. what s happened there is the people close to general kelly in the cabinet have told him that they don t think he should abide with the type of ritual humiliation that president trump subjects so many senior aides to like jeff sessions. so they have basically given him the green light to just quit if president trump humiliates him as he s done with so many of his other aides. now of course general kelly doesn t need their permission to go, but they ve encouraged him, saying more or less you shouldn t have to put up with this, so don t. okay. what about gary cohn, jay? is he out of the white house for good? or as you heard the president say when he was holding that meeting and singing his praises on his way out, he says the door is open, you may come back and return to the white house. what s the likelihood of that happening? where would he go? like jeremy was saying, i think gary cohn has left the
with politico and tim conroy. jeremy, let me start with you. is there anything you think the senator can say now that we haven t already heard from him, as garrett said in those interviews with some local reporters that could help change the equation for him? i was struck yesterday by how contrite and controlled he appeared. he was asked point blank, the most important question to come out of that interview, do you know if more women will be coming forward here? he said he couldn t answer that. i think right now it s less anything al franken can say and more what potential accusers may come out of the woodwork that could really jeopardize his political future. all things being equal, right now he looks as if he can save his seat, but if there are a flood of new accusations, it becomes very difficult for him not to not matly face pressure