to their reputations. joined now by jeffrey toobin. jeffrey, you look at this, there is lobbying done in washington. but when you look at these payments, were these actual consulting deals or were they buying access to the president? after all michael cohen is the president s personal lawyer. they were buying access. but most of lobbying is buying access. what i don t understand about this controversy is what do people think is going on in washington? the whole business stinks. and the idea that michael cohen is somehow worse than all of the other lobbying these companies done, it is mysterious to me. cory president trump campaign manager is doing a thriving business. why do you think people are hiring him? because of his great policy expertise. no, because he s opening doors. all of the ex-senators, evan bye, john lowe, trent lott and they pay him because they could
all these experts that we have. these people don t know what they are doing. they say, donald trump needs a foreign policy adviser. supposing i didn t have one, and i have a lot of people, i met last week with a lot of people, all good people. but supposing i didn t have one, would it be worse than what we are doing now. the people, the experts, and i m not knocking them, i m just saying the world is a mess. we have helped to make it a mess. welcome back to hardball. that was president trump during the campaign dismissing anything, well, experts. while trump may not value policy expertise, he loves tv personality, jobs in his administration. let s bring in our hardball round table for this circle. so for you for the defense here, does he like fix his own teeth
mess. we ve helped to make it a mess. welcome back to hardball. that was trump during the campaign dismissing anything well, experts. them. while trump may not value policy expertise he likes a good tv permanent. given the candidates who are being considered for jobs in his administration. let s bring in our roundtable. share michael singleton, stephanie president of emily s list and alicia roscoe from reuters news service. shermichael, does he like fix his own teeth when he has a cavity. the maybe. does he fix his own plumbing? if he does like certain kinds of experts but not the big kind. there is value in having people with experience and knowledge in certain subject areas. those individuals have guided previous presidents and leaders across the board how to make the proper decisions for organizations and countries. it s interesting when you
time in a long way. you served in the obama administration and there s a justifiable president obama ran against. i mean he talked about how corrupt and rigged the system was what do you say to people who read this article or look at the trump administration and say, ever was it thus. like this is just the way washington works, it is sort of corrupt, people trade favors for influence? look, chris, lobbying has been around as long as we ve had a government. but what i m struck about in this piece is how brazen the selling of access is. say whatever you want about obama s commitment to ethics, but this is really pay-to-play. this is not about hiring people who have policy expertise or understand arcane set of policy. it is selling access to the president, and now more than ever there are more ways to do that. you can sit in the lobby of the trump hotel. you can book an event at mar-a-lago. you can even tweet a photo of yourself with a silly baseball hat and the president might retw
corrupt and rigged the system was what do you say to people who read this article or look at the trump administration and say, ever was it thus. like this is just the way washington works, it is sort of corrupt, people trade favors for influence? look, chris, lobbying has been around as long as we ve had a government. but what i m struck about in this piece is how brazen the selling of access is. say whatever you want about obama s commitment to ethics, but this is really pay-to-play. this is not about hiring people who have policy expertise or understand arcane set of policy. it is selling access to the president, and now more than ever there are more ways to do that. you can sit in the lobby of the trump hotel. you can book an event at mar-a-lago. you can even tweet a photo of yourself with a silly baseball hat and the president might retweet that. this is really not about just the insider s who are selling the access. it is about the susceptibility of the president to flattery.