reporting that kelly, you know, even after the photograph of rob porter s ex-wife with the black eye surfaced would seem to be credible evidence in the eyes of many, kelly was still defending porter internally and he was advocating for him to keep his job. so, kelly seems to be trying to keep his own job now and restore his reputation inside the white house by presenting a new account of events. jeremy we don t have jeremy yet. let me stick with you, phil rucker, and ask you about your reporting in your paper in the new york times about the timeline, individuals who were in possession of information in a normal white house. i think both the post and the times, our news organization has gone so far to point out how abnormal it would be for a white house counsel to become aware either by a staffer or by the fbi, in this case it sounds like from the reporting that mr. porter himself made don mcgahn, the white house counsel, aware of allegations that existed about domestic violence.
like this isn t just about a president who doesn t read, but a president who doesn t tend to, what george w. bush and i m sure president obama thought was the gravest aspect of the presidency. it s right. so on those day when he didn t actually have a pdb session, we can assume he got no intelligence. that s very dangerous because on any given day the president can be talking to foreign leaders. he ll be making decisions that affect national security. what pdb editors do is tee up in the book that morning information that is specifically relevant to the president s day. and so to philip s reporting, i think it s a fair point that if the president is not given a book to read, even if he misses that oral briefing, he needs to be able to absorb that information. if the washington post reporti reporting is correct, again, that is saying the president is missing out with regards to defending national security. on the other hand, you know, on the days he didn t have
we got calls from folks about that meeting that john kelly tried to present a version of events that simply does not match the public record that s been offered by the white house. but it also doesn t match the behind-the-scenes reporting that we ve done at the post that you guys have done at msnbc and elsewhere. kelly tried to say to staff and asked them, by the way, to distribute this message to their subordinates to everybody working at the white house hears it, that he took decisive and immediate action within about 40 minutes of first learning that the allegations against rob porter were credible. that does not match up with the statements that the white house press secretary sarah sanders made on wednesday or with the account that raj shah, the deputy press secretary, gave publicly on thursday, or with the statements that kelly issued publicly and we know from our
their best-case story? well, it s not a good story for this white house. there seems to have been an institutional bias against believing or even trying to hear out the stories of these women. rob porter s ex-wives. there seems to have been no effort by the white house to hear their accounts. they didn t really do anything with the information they got from the fbi and they kept rob porter in place. they didn t only keep him employed, nicolle, they kept empowering him. he came in as the staff secretary, but he s become a really influential figure in the last couple of months. as almost john kelly s right hand. there was some speculation he might even be named and titled the deputy chief of staff, but he certainly functioned that way in helping control the access to the president and helping prepare all the briefing materials that the president saw. they knew there was a problem and didn t do anything about it. and the other problem based on the reporting i ve been doing today and one
advances or knew about it from other employees. and you know, there was a rank of allegations that we heard. i mean, i think one of the main things we heard involved a lot of the reporting we had centered around the salon and the spa at the wynn in las vegas. and you know, there was a range of things we heard. i think one of the things was that mr. wynn often wore very short shorts in the salon when he would get pedicures. and exposed himself to the employees there. in other cases, he would often have services performed in his private office, massages or manicures, and many of the women there said they were deeply uncomfortable with comments that he made and that he would make advances toward them as far as trying to kiss them, in one case, you know, in one case actually in the salon, one of