no offense. but i called a lot of people, and i m getting the same story that you re getting, that there is serious concern about michael cohen. he is also a guy, though, that has told reporters for a long time, including this vapt fa va fair reporter, i m the guy that would take a bullet for the president. he s told me that as well. why do you think there is a new story about michael cohen surfacing now that he s not quite that loyal? obviously loyalty is incredibly important to this president. it is something that we ve been writing about and talking about for a long time in terms of all of the people surrounding him, whether it be hope hicks, keith schiller or other staffers who served in the white house. they ll obviously be called, too, before robert mueller and be demanded to tell the truth. with michael cohen, it is a whole different story because of how far back he goes and no doubt, we were wondering the same thing yesterday as we embarked on that reporting assignment tryin
spending that has drawn a lot of attention, that being this $43,000 soundproof booth that he built in his office to avoid the prying ears, listening devices that he thought might be eavesdropping on his conversations. it was cast as a security measure. it was done in a way that was deemed to have been outside of sort of agency protocol and agency contracting rules. so the agency looked into it. now we have the white house looking into it. i think that s a pretty good sign that the tide might be turning or at least that there is scrutiny coming from within the white house in a way that we hadn t seen before where president trump had been just kind of knee-jerk on the defensive saying scott pruitt was doing a good job. what exactly was he doing in morocco? do we have any more reporting on that? why he was there talking about liquefied natural gas, which is not part of his purview? why he needed a layover in paris? this is all very much
unfolding information that we re trying to get at. we don t have a lot of it because the information that they did release and his schedules had a lot of redact n redactions and a lot it s yet another instance where there wasn t a top of transparency. even today pruitt was traveling in the midwest. we were trying to get plans about his schedule and we did not hear about it. we see on twitter he stopped by the mascot museum which we didn t even know existed. but it s another example of him traveling in a way where the press is not made aware of it and there is not a ton of transparency built into the way he is doing it. the chaos surrounding pruitt, could it be affected by the uneasiness over mike pompeo s confirmation? they are finding it much more difficult to get their secretaries sab net secretaries confirmed now than maybe they had hope.
virginia average lot, a lot has been going on in west virginia in the last few decades when it switched from democratic to republican. this is a wild primary. you put the choice well. is don blankenship going to be the next donald trump, at least from west virginia or is he going to end up like roy moore. if you forced me to pick today i would certainly pick roy moore but you never know. the national and state republican lead remembers apoplectic that he is doing as well as he has been doing in both public and private polls. balls at least they think and they are republican leaders. they think that he would lose rather badly to senator joe manchin. i m a little confused how a man who opened a mine that had an explosion that killed 29 men can be doing well in a state comprised of coal workers. you know, katy, you have got a lot of company. we have all been food for years,
for or against mike pompeo. those on the senate foreign relations committee that i ve spoken to the last few days say they re glad he s willing to do this. it shows that he does have the president s trust and would be someone that could handle these very sensitive things. but it is not in and of itself enough to convince people who had problems with his record over a longer term, with comments that he s made about american muslims or the values of diplomacy over the long term to switch their votes. the short-term big problem for pompeo right now is rand paul, to be quite honest. and the democrats on the foreign relations are committee who amongst themselves can make it, if not certainly cannot stop him from moving to the floor but can make it very embarrassing for him as potentially the first secretary of state as long as we ve been doing this, to come through that committee with an unfavorable recommendation. that s why you see the president leaning on rand paul yesterday. a lot o