News, analysis and interviews with politicians and observers. Cnns Abbie Phillip is live at the white house. The president just had an event where he met at the white house with republican lawmakers. Did he clarify anything today . Reporter well, nia, the president just let reporters into the room for that meeting. It was originally scheduled to have been closed, but he said nothing. He didnt respond to questions about any of these issues floating around him. He didnt expand on any of his comments or explain, you know, his view of the situation. But what he has been doing over the last day or so, specifically in a lengthy interview with fox news that aired last night and today, is really take the lead in the administrations response to all of these problems. Theres no question the white house staffers were caught by surprise by a confluence of bad news stories. Paul manaforts verdict and also Michael Cohens guilty plea, but President Trump has been the one left to test out various stra
like i didn t live without him. i understood michael cohen very well. turned out he wasn t a very good lawyer, frankly, but he was somebody that was probably with me for about ten years. and i would see him sometimes. i would see him sometimes. not very often. it s like i talked about manafort. manafort was involved in the campaign. he was the chairman who helped the president win the campaign, of course. the one strategy i do see is steve bannon brought it up, so did trump this morning. this idea of the democrats are obsessed with impeachment. i think that is one strategy you re going to see. if you listen to nancy pelosi, she expressedly keeps saying we re not going to do impeachment. she s the democrat. that said, you are seeing this idea in terms of rallying the base. i think you re going to hear that more and more. and this idea, rachael, that whatever cohen did wasn t really a crime. you heard that from donald trump in this interview.