you use your informant base to try to gather information. there s nothing on its face that seems inappropriate about this. then is it smart for everyone who says rosenstein is making a huge mistake, he s doing exactly what the president asked him to do. to michael s point, if this is standard operating procedure, given you ve got paul manafort and carter page in the house and the fbi did behave according to protocol, why not say yes, mr. president, you want to know all this innocence, sure, here you go, and we ll tell everyone in the room. because if they don t, it only furthers another conspiracy that he likes to push, which is this deep state, which by the way, mike pompeo, current secretary of state, who was asked about the deep state, said no, sorry, nonexistence. rosenstein is operating in a world where somehow this devin nunes has become this powerful in the united states government. a guy who constantly makes you
over there. if you step back from it, the president in his own words is telling us really that this is just sort of a branding exercise, the ap reported earlier this week that he s told people it s important to use the terminology of spy gate because he wants it to sound sinister. he s misquoting james clapper in tweets this morning, basically saying that clapper admitted to there being spies in his campaign, when really clapper did no such thing. you could see the president s desperation yesterday leaving the white house, saying everyone is calling it spy gate now. that s not true. he s trying to do that. he s engaged in a branding. he s trying to pound this into the american psyche. just like he has with the phrase no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. the only three people he speaks to are rudy giuliani, sean hannity and himself, then he s right, everyone is calling it spy gate. michael, do you think that these briefings change the narrative for either side? no, and i thin
days, and now you re seeing democrats being able to steer this thing back. that s sort of exactly the point. it was that memo gate that nunes said was going to be the biggest thing ever. it turned out to be, and i steal this word from republicans, a nothing burger. so this massive meeting that the president called for, let s see how it turns out. my panel, eli stockle, he covers the white house for the l.a. times. michael isinkoff, author of russian roulette. and my friend, a columnist for the daily news. mr. stokel, two briefings, more people in the room. that s good for reporters for you and me, better chance of leaking. who is this a positive for, democrats? certainly the fact they re having two meetings does give democrats the opportunity to question whether or not this is really on the up and up, and the white house is really playing into that, saying first that john kelly won t be attending the meeting, then sending him