interview that donald trump wanted to break the law. the secretary of state is talking about the president he served under and is saying that donald trump actively sought to break the united states laws. it was reported that right after rex tillerson came into office and he was in the oval in february donald trump had just been inaugurated, that donald trump was speaking to him about the foreign corrupt practices act and why couldn t we get rid of it. and rex tillerson had to explain, well, that exists to actually help americans and to help american businesses abroad. we need to keep those laws in place. but why was donald trump so fascinated with breaking laws as president? i m just kind of hurt because i thought dumb as a rock was mine. that s what he said about me. he did, because you are from southern poland, so it always goes
in and that these generals he would like to cast in the movie aren t going to do everything he wants them to do and say yes to everything that he wants, you know, he sours on them. we ve seen whether it s michael flynn or general mcmaster, his national security adviser and john kelly and even james mattis his still defense secretary but we ve seen him and the president be at odds and most recently the president rejected mattis advice on who to name as the next chairman of the joint chiefs and caught him off guard with that announcement over the weekend. so, you know, the president had this idea or he liked the idea of these generals, these tough guys that he thought would work for him and then he didn t so much like the reality. of course, carol, you bring up the point of the president ignoring james mattis suggestions and then catching him off guard. that s why who the next chief of staff is just isn t going to matter because he doesn t follow anybody s advice.
us. peter baker and former justice department spokesman now an msnbc justice and security analyst matt miller. matt, you just tweeted your first take on the president s tweet this morning about michael cohen s payoffs, writing quote, i don t think his lawyers will want him offering this public defense of the daniels-mcdougal payment. he ll talk himself right out of the defense that he didn t know it was a crime and that s kind of a smocking gun in itself is it not? a little bit. look the one thing the president had going for him, obviously we saw the prosecutors in the southern district of new york friday claim that he directed michael cohen to commit a crime. i think the best legal defense he would have had to that allegation is that there s a very high bar for campaign finance crimes. you have to know it s a crime. a higher bar than exists for
control president through impeachment, through accountability up on capitol hill. that doesn t seem to be a possibility in our current political environment. so the question, joe, that i m starting to focus on is this notion of when you have a president who wins the white house through fraud that occurs during the election, should he still be insulated from prosecution? because if that s true, then your best defense is a corrupt politician is winning and if you win you can no longer be prosecuted, at least for a while. but it s a difficult constitutional question that we will have to work through. fascinating. joyce vance, thank you so much. carol lee, thank you for your reporting. still ahead on morning joe, axios takes us through what we learned from the special counsel s filings. plus, new reporting details what might be the breaking point for some republican senators when it comes to the russia probe. but first, bill karins with a check on the severe weather hitting many
amid these new filings and accusations from prosecutors president trump continues to deny any wrongdoing and insists there was no collusion with russia. sir, did you direct michael cohen to commit any violations of law? no. no. no. on the mueller situation, we re very happy with what we are reading because there was no collusion whatsoever. there never has been. the last thing i want is help from russia on a campaign, but as far as the report that we see according to everybody i ve spoken to, i have not read it, there s absolutely no collusion, which is very important. the last thing he wanted was contact with the russians, help from the russians. the washington post this weekend counting at least 14 encounters between russians and his campaign. this does not happen in american