reporting on this as well and was talk to go rob at the time as to expanding his possibilities, maybe becoming deputy chief of staff, maybe taking on some other role. this is why he was brought in. i guess my question is, is his personal involvement clouding his judgment or ability to hit the brakes, take a breath, call everybody in, find out if a timeline can withstand scrutiny, know that they can turn a page when this has dominated headlines for a week. presidents do that as a last resort a lot of the time. should it be a first resort? i ve gone through this on other issues where, for a while there, they re in that hole and they keep digging. then somebody on the machine says we could drop the shovel and maybe not do this and they pull in reporters for background briefings. they apparently did that here off the record with a couple
holder said, i am not surprised, i am disappointed. and i am concerned with how this sets a standard for what is or isn t acceptable as society navigates how to handle domestic abuse moving forward. they could have handled all of this differently. i think this will be the latest example that falls under that bucket. it s a difficult one in the sense that rob porter worked for the white house. the president has publicly defended him. but should someone at the white house reach out to these women and saying, if you tae ake offe to that, we apologize? how should they handle this? the president privately has condemned porter. all the report ing is consisten on that, that he called porter bad garbage and that he s a sick person. but publicly he cannot bring
short-circuit it. had not been completed yet. factually not true. there are stronger words you could use for that, but that s factually not true. it s wrong, at least based on what the fbi director said when shimon is reporting. in this context, as i was walking through the capitol to come over here today, i ran into a top aide of a member close to the white house who showed me his phone with rob porter s statement on it and just said, oh, man, this is as bad as it gets. there is a contention among white house allies here that not only do these stories not add up, but what the fbi director said today makes this already confused, discombobulated process significantly worse. this is a screw-up. a white house who seems to get
reporters. from those reporters coverage, i would say it did not work. they did this as a last resort. we had the the state of the union with jeb bush where they eventually explained what happened. in the bin laden raid, they eventually had to sit down and explain what happened. they ll only do this after they examine every other avenue. this is in your reporting today. they called in four white house reporters with rob porter in the room. he was trying to explain this away. sarah huckabee sanders arranged this, am i right about this? sarah sanders arranged a meeting with four influential reporters. but this was after the photo of porter s first wife had emerged with a bruised eye, and i noted it was inconsistent with the white house s timeline, with john kelly s timeline of having to move to get rid of porter 40 minutes after that photo had emerged or taken swift action. and my reporting was really
away from scandals you would think would sink any other administration, this is a white house doing what past white houses have done and you don t get in trouble for it. you can continue to throw other things in the way, and they re now in trouble and have a lot of explaining to do. it s lasted a week. we know from everybody s reporting, just about every news organization that covers the white house. the president is on the phone. he s frustrating. he s vent to go his friends and associates, why can t this go away, why does the media do this to me? does he get and do the people at the top of the white house get that this is bigger than they thought to begin with. this man has allegations of abuse by two ex-wives and he s in one of the most tight-knit spots in the white house. do they get that? it seems they do get it, because was it sara araj who said last week they could have