reporters that he was planning right then and excited to be interviewed by bob mueller and the mueller investigation of potential collusion and obstruction of justice by donald trump. he gleefully told them on the record this is what i am going to do and what i learned later along with my colleague phil rucker is that very moment, he had left the room with his lawyers where he had been persuaded that there was no way he was gonna sit for an interview with bob mueller, and they canceled a tentative session that had been set up for that interview. carol, i m gonna take your word for it because i ve never seen donald trump sashay anywhere, but you spent a lot more time in the white house then i have. shannon, president biden has said very little about the january six investigation, but is there hope that these hearings will help democrats in the midterms? certainly, and there is a broader message the white house has tried to have an undercurrent here about the threats to democracy. we
guests on this thursday night. shannon petty is a veteran journalist and our senior white house reporter for nbc news digital. jeff bennett is the chief washington correspondent for pbs news hour and msnbc political contributor. and neil cocktail is the department of justice veteran and former acting solicitor general during the obama administration. he has argued dozens of cases before the united states supreme court. friends, it is good to see you all tonight. thank you for being with us. he ll let start with you, these letters that the committee sent out, it s good reading, not participation to just laying out somewhat of the narrative. an eight-page letter to ivanka trump. what did you find in there that was new to you? so much. first of all ali, trump, at this point has attracted legal action in the last 24 hours then they ve attracted russians. and that is really saying something. it s the thing you mentioned, fulton county georgia
eight pages it does not allege that which she was at the rally so the idea that her statement to the public that she wasn t at the rally, it s an interesting choice. shannon, it s your two of the biden administration, there have been some major legislative successes, and recently some major legislative failure. it was an economy that s actually performing quite well, but polling indicates that people think it s not. and the presidents polling is underwater. the white house was looking at a reset, they don t love this whole january six committee stuff. it s not the focus now. so where are they now, what s the thinking at the white house? i will say, the white house they re not so focused on january 6th, but democrats and democratic strategist have said, obviously, there s a lot that can be accomplished for the january six committee, getting to the truth about happened that day. but also, they have said, it s a good reminder to people of the way things were under the previous trump adm
white house is taking seriously, you could see in the presidents remarks yesterday that he didn t know what move putin was going to make. certainly, there are no indications of putin backing down at this point, and what has been taking place, in talks, has not resulted in any sort of de-escalation, and it doesn t seem there s many more cars left the administration has to play. now waiting to let it play out. the balls in putin s court as to what he is going to do next. shannon, you set us up well for our next segment, we re gonna get into this little bit more deeply, shannon pedigrees, shannon bennett, and b roll castle. joe biden has given vladimir putin a clear warning now, the next guest to serve as a chief of staff at the department of defense, says that putin is about to make a huge strategic mistake in ukraine. later, the do-over for the biden administration, the speaker of the house wants a major bill, to get the presidents agenda back on track. former senator al franken and b
all right. we are back. you can see shannon is in place. evelyn is in place. ambassador mcfaul is in place. i m here. someone is missing. that is the president of the united states. we have been anticipating that he would join us sometime at about 4:00 this afternoon. that would be not a msnbc exclusive. in the discussions of ukraine and russia. shannon, tell me where we are on this thing. there s a security conference in munich. active discussions with the president, secretary of state. there are negotiations or discussions that continue to go on between our highest level secretary of state and sergei lavrov. what s happening with discussions? are they discussions or negotiations? i guess people are still