that one sentence, commending robert mueller for correcting the buzzfeed news story. as buzzfeed s news editor in chief doubles down. we stand by our reporting, he wrote. and the sources who informed it. and we urge the special counsel to make clear what he is disputing. well, it s unlikely robert mueller will say much more, you can bet the first question congress will ask michael cohen in a hearing on february 7, will be did the president instruct to you lie to congress. so that caveat, if true, morphs into what s true this morning. and the confusion is without question a help to the president, and his attorneys, who earlier this week appeared to admit for the first time there was collusion between the trump campaign and russia, in this cnn interview. you just misstated my position. i never said there was no collusion between the campaign. or between people in the campaign. yes, you have. i have not. i said the president of the united states. there is not a single bit of evidenc
government doesn t know of those who have been separated by this administration, where do you see things headed. i don t want to be accused as a former career prosecutor of seeing crimes around every corner. it doesn t mean that they re not being committed around every corner, but if we, you know, went about prosecuting all false misleading statements, whether to the american people, to congress, to constituents, we would do nothing else, as prosecutors. i also have a really hard time, i m not an immigration policy expert. but i have a really hard time with the notion that our government, the united states government, is taking control of children. they may do it lawfully in the first instance, when they say we re required to take the child into custody, when the parent, together with the child, crosses the border illegally, i get that. at what point does the retention of that child, i m going to use this word and i hope it is not hyperbolic, sort of become to look like a kidnapping,
that, everyone criticized them. and with this, the substance of the story, is actually still at play here. the fact that michael cohen said that donald trump actually asked him to lie about the trump deal, in november, let s not forget, that the special prosecutor said that basically michael cohen lied to congress, he admitted it, right, he is sentenced to it. it is just that the specifics here with robert mueller coming out and saying it, what worries me is it gives an opening to donald trump and his allies to basically impugn the credibility of not just buzzfeed but the entire media and we have seen this sustained attack on media as fake news and enemy of the american people. that s why it was deflating. everyone was waiting for it. we saw the whole week, this is the moment that donald trump goes down. and i m drinking my tea like kermit, no, it will get bottomer, it will get bottomer. we will see what happens when the report is released and next week, we will forget this and move on
great point in joe s piece. joe, i will come back to you in a moment but you bring up the fact that mitch mcconnell has real expertise, vap, like it or not, he is a guy who knows the way congress is supposed to work and you have somebody on the sidelines who could and has brokered deals in the past that nobody thought possible. as joe points out. he is known as a great obstructionist and admirers of mcconnell as a strategist will tell you unlike harry reed who was cloak and dagger who they thought was a back stabber that mcconnell has a very frank style of this kind of obstructionism that he pulls off and i would say absence and silence are good obstructionist tactics. what is better, what is a stronger no than silence. he is gone. you can t find him. i mean the aoc, you know, walking around, trying to find him is, a great set piece. but he s getting something out of that silence and absence, too, which is letting this thing continue, without having to make a strong statement, and ha
case. i want to ask you about the reaction that we saw to this reporting. more comment from congress people than one has seen here in the past a lot of people very eager to get out in front of this, to say there should be more hearings, this is a death knell, a pivot point, your reaction to that is correct the degree to which mostly democratic in congress latched on to this reporting. if any one of them were my clients, you know, if i was advising them, as i would advise everyone, is because things trickle, are trickling out, we re in a space where things trickle out, you get one nugget of information and people run with things. i would advise my client at that time if i was advising any of the candidates running for future office, or even congressional folks, to wait. they have a responsibility, and they have leadership in this, when they do oversight hearings. they have the ability to do those things then. and so i would advise, as tempting as it may be, right, to join the chorus