he really separated yourself trade wise that? to me it s up to congress whether they want to move forward but as a presidential candidate my job is to solve the problems of how we got elected in 2016 and beat them in 2020. does that make you look weak in the democratic primary field? is pretty into trump? to me donald trump is a manifestation of the fact they were in the midst of the greatest economic transformation of our country. we have to make it right for the making people, that to me is where the democrats should be focused on and what s going on right now. again if i was in congress you want to focus on the policies. i m looking at the post, you doing pretty well for an outsider. not politician. and you re kind of in the mix with castro, klobuchar in that range, you qualify for the first couple debates. who do you think is your biggest competition in the field? right now were competing to get our own names out there
personalizes all of these and in the midst of it he can t think strategically. and anybody who s covered trump knows that the full picture of what woodward is present sng only consistent with all the reporting that s been out there for the last 2 1/2 years since trump began running, it s consistent with who donald trump has been since he was about 7 years old. he ran the trump organization this way. it was a bunch of people biting each other in the back, not loyal to him ultimately, and he ran roughshod over all of them. he ran his political campaign when he ran for the presidency exactly the same way. you were in the midst of that, john. you know what that was about. and the picture that s created here is amply solidified and backed up by lots of other reporting. with the additional factor that now you have bob woodward and the woodward method, which is he triangulates with sources, he backs things up with documents. he has tapes. it s a different order of
and so clearly and we had the report last week of donald trump making fun of jeff sessions and his accent, and his southern accent. and so clearly if trump supporters in alabama understood donald trump s real attitude toward them, there might abe different support level down there. i think that s the wild card about the wood ward baward book real world impact is it going to have. you saw in the kavanaugh hearings that the gop is not going to let go of donald trump until they have some goods in the bag. tim o brieen and john heilemann, thank you for joining us tonight. when we come back, what i thought was the most stunning and revealing moment in today s confirmation hearing. it was something brett kavanaugh refused to do.
aware of. so i think if he s saying this and making this kind of concession it s not because as the times sort of quotes or suggests that team trump feels that he s been worn down but rather that he feels, as maya says, he may not need the evidence. i think he s playing with a strong hand, not a weak hand. and maya, the idea of separating out the russia collusion investigation from the obstruction of justice investigation, you can see how that can make a certain sense for the prosecutor. they are two different things. there can be intersections with them. but the president s behavior, when he s firing james comey and when he s explaining that to lester holt, that all kind of stands alone within the walls of the white house. i think that s right. you have a clear public record when it comes to trump on obstruction of justice. it makes a lot of sense that mueller would say that s not the one i have to ask you a lot about. what he really wants to know is not what donald trump knows
trump had one overriding problem that dowd knew but couldn t bring himself to say to the president. you re a f-ing liar. joining our discussion now, harry litman, former u.s. attorney and deputy attorney general under president clinton and maya wiley who served as counsel to new york city mayor bill de blasio. she s an msnbc legal analyst. and maya, in the woodward book we re seeing that john dowd is calling the president a liar and the new york times reporting that robert mueller has partially given up on the idea of ever getting an interview with donald trump and is interested in possibly getting written answers at least on the collusion questions. yeah, i think it s pretty clear that donald trump can t tell the truth on a regular basis. we know that. that s clearly something he has demonstrated in public. so it s not so surprising that someone like a john dowd, who i think has denied, it may have