chance to depose the president went up exponentially. so we know renato, that the chances of the president not knowing about this as michael avenatti was saying, slim to none. he consumes a lot of cable news, this story dominated for a long cycle when it came out. what will this mean legally for the stormy daniels case? it s certainly going to be harder for trump to argue that he doesn t need to be deposed. originally his position was, i knew nothing about this, i knew nothing about the deal whatsoever. i knew nothing about the payment, so why are you trying to bring me into this lawsuit, i have nothing to do with it. that s plausible if he really was somebody who was totally unrelated to the suit. but now he s saying, of course, i was part of this payment, i reimbursed the payments, i knew about this. well, suddenly, he has something to do with the facts of this lawsuit, which frankly, that was just common sense from day one. i do agree that from the beginning, you had to wonder
doubt that rudy giuliani and donald trump are talking about these things privately and not looping in the rest of the white house on this legal strategy. their peers, their friends, on the same page about a number of things, including disdain for the justice department. but it seems the strategy now is they re going to say it was trump s personal money that was used to pay back michael cohen, so that the heat is taken off the idea that it was taken out of campaign funds. that way, it will make it seem more legitimate. they ve also started to say that a reason why this money was paid back was in order to save the marriage, was in order to keep melania trump happy and keep the marriage from failing. so this is a whole new strategy. they re making it much more personal and they want to stay away from the political side, because of course they know that s what s most dangerous. js interesting to see how it all plays out. renato, malcolm, natasha, stick around, lot more to talk about. sti
to, you know, in the mueller investigation as to how he s going to have to, you know, claim that he has some special privilege that no other president in the united states has had. that being said, i really think that, again, this is some sort of narrative framing that rudy giuliani and donald trump have sat down over a bowl of pasta doing a bad version of good fellas and they ve decided they re going to reframe the history of this for their constituency. i think they feel their populist backers will just discount the mueller investigation. yeah, it may be for their constituents, but there will be a legal reckoning about it at some point, at least, according to the mueller investigation. let me get your thoughts, renato, on this. does he have to legally justify it, or does he have the power to do what he did? well, i think even trump s supporters and his legal team
terminate comey is one of the questions, the new york times reported on, and all of this coming as we re getting a rare look inside mueller s process. here s michael caputo on his interview. the mueller team knew more about what i did in 2016 than i knew myself. and i think they know more about the trump campaign than anyone that ever worked there. they re clearly focused on trying to identify some russian collusion. i d say the mueller team is spear fishing. i think they believe they know where they re going. they re not asking a wide range of questions. they know exactly what they re looking for and they have e-mails backing it up. and i don t think that they ask any questions they don t already know the answer to. back with me, renato maroty and malcolm nance. renato, let me begin with you, your thoughts, your reaction to that inside look into mueller s interview about what they re going after and the information they may already know. sure, i watched that entire
collusion is still very much on the table in terms of the mueller probe? really, to be honest, when i heard donald trump say that, and when i hear him constantly hammering on the word collusion, in all caps in his tweets, i feel sorry for him. because i don t know whether it is stuck in his mind and he s really believing this reality he s crafted for himself. because the problem is, it s not collusion, it s conspiracy against the united states that is going to end up being the principal, actual crime that will have been carried out if these members had coordinated, cooperated, communicated or colluded with a foreign intelligence agency or foreign power. malcolm nance with a twitter analysis there of the president s psychology on it. malcolm, renato, great to have you with us. thank you. ahead, rudy giuliani saying ivanka trump is off limits to mueller. while jared kushner is, quote,