hard to keep these things under wraps? they aren t a surprise so it makes me wonder what are the underlying details of these relationships? did something happen in these relationships we don t yet know about that would reflect poorly on him additionally? we don t know. i want to play another remarkable moment from the interview. we ll get your reaction on the other side. did he ever compare you to any of his kids? you know, he s very proud of ivanka, as he should be. she s a brilliant woman. she s beautiful. she s, you know, that s his daughter and he should be proud of her. he said i was beautiful like her and, you know, you re a smart girl and there wasn t a lot of comparing, but there was some, yeah. i heard a lot about her. shannon? i heard a lot about her, that was interesting in the way she sort of paused and took a moment before then. but, i mean, it does fit with the president trump that we know
i m sorry. i wouldn t want it done to me. i m sorry. shannon, powerful moment there, the questions aren t going away. the white house didn t answer any, but they re going to have to ultimately. they ll try to and deny for as long as possible. the story hasn t caught some people feel like the story hasn t caught as much traction as we would have seen it catch in other administrations because of all the noise and everything else going on. and my sense around the white house has been there are so many other dramas de jure this is a roundi rounding era this thing going on. being able to see the person, look them in the eye through the television in a way, mcdougal s interview was compelling, seemed genuine. we have stormy daniels. i think that adds a new layer, texture to the story. it becomes a bit more real to people who are watching at home.
his life more difficult. the fact that he has had this fawning attitude toward mr. putin has not said anything negative about him, i think continues to say to me that he does have something to fear and something very serious to fear. brennan s assessment there has a lot in common with another long-time member of the intelligence community, former fbi special agent clint watts who joined us on this program here last night and got our attention with this comment. he owns the president. putin does, whether it s witting or unwitting, he owns him. he is doing everything that vladimir putin would want to be done, which is undermining u.s. stature around the world. with that, let s bring in our lead-off panel on this wednesday night. jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press. shannon petty piece white house correspondent for bloomberg and hei hei heidi. welcome to you all.
russia and certainly refuses to personally chastise president putin. shannon, were it not fear and loathing, in your view why was the reaction to this particular leak so very different? well, there is a perception within the white house that this was done to embarrass the president. our reporting lines up with a lot of reporting jonathan was laying out there. why would someone want to embarrass the president? well, there is a feeling that there is a very deep divide inside the white house right now between really much of the foreign policy community that wants the u.s. to take a much stronger, more aggressive stance on russia, and the president and a few of his allies who you can see from that tweet still make this argument that we need maybe we don t need to be their best friend, but we need a construct. relationship with russia. we still need them on economic issues, energy issues, we need
necessarily, that trump tower in moscow never went through, but it could be that the russians were invested in him. when you look at, for example, some of the billing real estate deals down in florida and the fact that when you go around his properties, there are russians everywhere. so, shannon, we always try our best to separate news, actual developments from shiny object distractions. i suppose we ll have that job tomorrow when the president issues what he s going to issue on china. can you preview that for us? there is not too much i can say about that at this point, but that is another one of these relationships, as with russia, where within the administration there are large divides about how to handle the issue of xi and of these term limits. when we talk about democracies and supporting democracies, is this a moment where we should come out and say something? the white house has not. are they a friend of ours or are they an enemy when it comes to