president. if my memory serves me correctly, the president has been on the record saying that what kind of man recuses himself, what kind of man does this had he known that he was going to recuse himself he perhaps would not have appointed him in that position. it will be interesting to see if that qualifies to what you were saying earlier. well, he has said that. and jeff sessions, in fact, did do it. and, in fact, he stayed in there. he wasn t fired. so if you re the president s lawyers, you re going to argue, well, he didn t fire him when he didn t do it. that s evidence that he didn t want to obstruct justice. fair point. but he certainly talked an awful lot about how he wanted to. thank you so much. donald trump trying to buy back decades of dirt the national enquirer had on him. i m talking to a high ranking executive at the national enquirer s parent company. back in 30 seconds.
he s run his campaign, how he s run his life. and why would the presidency be anything different? i think, too, when we re thinking about obstruction of justice and what is it the president is trying to get around this, et cetera, et cetera, we have to keep in mind that this is a man who has never had consideration for the actual for rule of law and order and norm. richard, let me get your thoughts really quickly on don mcgahn, the kind of flip-flopping if you will as to whether or not he was pushed out, whether he is stepping down on his own, it seems to be some mixed signals coming out of the white house, or i should be clear, the president s twitter feed today. how do you see this playing into the fact that you had him recently interviewed by bob mueller for nearly 30 hours and then the way the president tweeted about him, that it was my decision for mcgahn to leave. don mcgahn talked to robert mueller because he had an obligation to. he s a lawyer for the president in his o
of reaction from republican side of the aisle. it s been much more muted saying, well, look, it didn t happen and we ll worry about it if it does. you heard leader mccarthy there claiming he has confidence in mueller but well, i think two things. one was, i was here for the saturday night massacre and the nixon white house thought that was going to unleash their ability to deal with what was going on and it was another nail in the coffin. there ought to be a lesson in all of that. did they really think at the time we look back and realize what a catastrophic error that was. they thought that was the right thing to do, that their base would support them and that the president had a legal grounds for doing what he did. in this case and the climate in which we now live, people move on in a hurry. he didn t fire him. he didn t get close to firing him because the white house was pushing back and he knew what the response was going to be on the hill. i think for the country, chuck,
on in a hurry. he didn t fire him. he didn t get close to firing him because the white house was pushing back and he knew what the response was going to be on the hill. i think for the country, chuck, it s a non-issue. i think that they moved on. i honestly think in the next year there will be three big factors. one is the economy. if it continues to go, roar on, people will put aside the other concerns they have and say, enjoy the prosperity. the other one is, what does mueller find? do we hear from him this year? just down from that is what happens from immigration. i think those are the three big factors that are in play out there for the country. that s they re paying attention to. rich, there was part of me that thinks could be this be a trial balloon to see if he gets away from it? last time republican reaction was, whoa, don t do it. this time considering they ve softened the ground on mueller, you heard leader mccarthy, it s possible this was a trial balloon. i think if you
purposes. martha: the other obvious thing here, marie, is if it was discussed, the story says it was discussed, he didn t do it. a lot of things get discussed and argued about, and fought over in the course of business in the course of the presidency, but he didn t fire him ultimately. what s the big issue considering that? that s true, but it s still very disturbing and problematic. donald trump can turn to a camera and call the story fake news even though we and other outlets are confirmed at least parts of it. he cannot do that when bob mueller put them under oath and asks him about it which he will because of this is part of the questioning of the obstruction of justice peace that top speed is looking at, the firing of jim call me, asking for mueller to be fired. he s going to have to answer very detailed, very specific questions and he cannot use the excuse of fake news.