donald trump but would not have if they had heard stormy daniels story about donald trump telling her that she reminded him of his daughter before he had sex with stormy daniels. how do you pay restitution to the 330 million people who now live in a country where the president was accused today in federal court of conspiring to commit two crimes for the principal purpose of influencing the election? there is no campaign finance violation in history that comes close to the enormity of the crimes that michael cohen confessed to today and accused the president of the united states of ordering him to commit. leading off our discussion now, john heilemann, co-host and executive producer of showtime s the host. jill wine-banks, former assistant prosecutor. they are both msnbc contributors. we knew michael cohen had something to say but we did not know we were going to hear the words today right from michael cohen s mouth at the direction of donald trump. we did not. and i think one of
about what donald trump has to say. and i think they re both going to disclose quite a bit. rudy giuliani issued a written statement tonight saying there is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government s charges against mr. cohen. it is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, mr. cohen s actions reflect a part of lies and dishonesty over a sint period of time. your reaction to rudy giuliani. you know, lawrence, it just gets more comical by the day. i mean, the truth isn t the truth. this is if you look at the statement, it s a parsed statement. he s playing word games relating to government charges. the american people can read these documents that are available online. you ve noted them tonight. it s clear as day what michael cohen has said, that the president told him and conspired him to do these acts. and the sequence in the courtroom today, the prosecutor said it first. the prosecutor made a presentation saying that this was done at the direction of
election. michael cohen said that twice. the same motivation for each campaign finance crime. i participated in this conduct which on my part took place in manhattan for the principal purpose of influencing the election. the principal purpose of influencing the election. so michael cohen is now saying under oath that he believed and no doubt donald trump believed that in order for donald trump to be elected president the silence of these two women would have to be illegally purchased. crimes would have to be committed to elect donald trump. michael cohen is saying that donald trump ordered him to commit these crimes so that donald trump could win the presidency. tonight on a rally stage in west virginia donald trump said this. where is the collusion? you know, they re still looking for collusion.
federal court to illegally have tried to silence. well, you know, i think, lawrence, that my client deserves a lot of gratitude from a lot of people in america for her courage and her fortitude that she has shown over the last five to six months, frankly. you know, today was a very interesting day in the history of the presidency of the united states. this was the first time that you had an individual stand up in a court of law and basically point the finger at the president credibly and clamt that the president was a co-conspirator in criminal conduct. i think we re in the second quarter of a four-quarter game. i think there s a lot of additional information that s going to come down the pike. and the problem for the president he s got a lot of problems. but one of the problems is for donald trump is that so much of this now is out of his control because you have paul manafort and michael cohen. they re going to be looking to protect themselves and their families. they re not goin
lyndon johnson, who seemed to be the most powerful incumbent president and the wilest politician to be in the oval office deciding not to run for re-election. forces closed in on him and he dropped out. the next president ends up resigning the president of presidency eventually richard nixon. tonight it is not that hard to imagine either one of those things in the trump presidency. it s not. and, you know, one of the things that is so interesting about our divided country is from 1960 to 1980, we functionally had five four-year presidents. we lost one to assassination, one to vietnam, one to watergate, one, really, in the political cause of the pardon when president ford lost to president carter and carter to reagan. there was a choppy period there.