this. good morning. pose a question for you. should we go ahead, though, and play the tape of the president and michael cohen in september of 2016 discussing what would then be an actual payment to silence the story of karen mcdougal, former playboy playmate that alleged an affair with the president. here is an important part of the discussion. correct. so i m all over that. and i spoke to alan about it. when it comes time for the financing, which will be what financing? we ll have to pay something. you mean pay with cash? no. the president getting down to the nitty-gritty of how the payments will be made. and just leading into that part of the conversation there, when this conversation began earlier on the tape, the
for taping that conversation about a former playboy model s payoff. if cohen was on the fence about flipping, the president may have pushed him over for good. we ll talk about all of that and the consequences not only for the southern district of new york case against cohen and possibly the president, but also the mueller investigation coming up on morning joe. you re turning onto the street when you barely clip a passing car. minor accident - no big deal, right? wrong. your insurance company is gonna raise your rate after the other car got a scratch so small you coulda fixed it with a pen. maybe you should take that pen and use it to sign up with a different insurance company. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won t raise their rates because of their first accident.
what do we know about michael cohen s part of it, which explains so much of the president basically becoming so unmoored this weekend. michael cohen in september of before the election, two months before the 2016 election, secretly record this conversation in which he talks to trump about essentially a second payment being made to ensure that this model does not speak out publicly. this is part of the stuff that the feds took from michael cohen s office and that the authorities in new york are looking at as part of this larger investigation into what michael cohen was doing and whether these payments violated any election laws. now, the question is, is that will the feds be able to hold on to this stuff? there s a question about whether there s attorney/client privilege. does not look like the president is going to assert that, so they ll allow the authorities to have this. the president s lawyers say this may be personally and
javers. let s start with you. you talked about this past week and you have the michael cohen tape coming out and all the chaos surrounding that. talk about the white house. again, dysfunctional place from the very beginning. but just talk about just how volatile this past week was with the helsinki summit, trump claiming that he forgot to insert a word, the next day trump changing his term and this weekend after the cohen tape his head blowing up like a character off of looney tunes, explosion off the top. and all cap tweeting this weekend, what s how is the white house trying to contain the damage? look, they re compartmentalizing it in many ways. i was in helsinki with the president. it was a fascinating trip. when we see this fracturing of the michael cohen/donald trump relationship.
they understand the depth and breadth of the mueller investigation, what the issues are there for the president. they do not feel the same confidence about the new york investigation. they just don t know where it s going. and they don t know what the president s true exposure could be there. and there s some questions about whether the president and cohen have been as candid privately about their own lawyers about the extent of their relationship. wow, really, that would be a surprise. so carol, tell us so there are tapes now. and man there are tapes from michael cohen. what does it say about the president s circle that his most trusted and loyal guy who would take a bullet for him was secretly taping him in conversations that could be sensitive and incriminating? it s a great question and it s something that i was thinking about through all of this which is these are two individuals who are almost cut from the same cloth. i mean, michael cohen has essentially played the