different smoke screens. and i think it s going to be our job to knock them down and keep everybody focused on what we do know about this story. and, wendy sherman, when the president talks about the phone call, he lies about it constantly. lies about it even though we have the rough transcript of it that shows that the president is lying about it. but then when he s asked the central question today about that phone call, he couldn t he couldn t come close to an answer and basically ended up with, are you talking to me? right, this is a man who is clearly cornered, is going to blame everyone else except himself. standing next to the president of finland, who looked like he wished, you know, he could drop through a hole in the floor to get away from this. at the end of the press conference saying to the president, he hopes that our great democracy continues. hint, hint, hint, mr. president.
before congress the day before, quote, as you saw yesterday that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named robert mueller. an incompetent performance but they say a lot of it started with ukraine. whatever you can do, it s very important that you do it, if that s possible. zelensky follows yes, it s very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. for me, as a president, it s very important and we are open for any future cooperation. now, it s very important there, robert, the president zelensky then starts talking about giuliani. we know he s been calling, he s going to come over, and he says without donald trump even talking you about biden, he looks past crowd source, he looks past all the other smoke screens, right? because those were all that was just a smoke screen before the ask comes in. and then he goes, we re going to help you with, quote, that
pretzels. and by 4:00 in the afternoon they said, wait a second, the quid pro quo, we re not going to fight on that ground because it s so obviously, as david freund said i could prove this to any jury any time and if i couldn t i should be disbarred that there s a quid pro quo. they retreated from that position and by late afternoon they were saying that the quo was successfully separated from the quid. but of course it wasn t. what was so fascinating, and we always have people talking about how donald trump speaks like a mobster and cohen saying everybody knows how this guys talks, right? so the president says i would like you, after he asks for the javelin, he says i would like you do this favor because our country has i would like you do us a favor, though. then what i find so fascinating about it, he throws out crowd strike and then he throws out hillary s emails. it s like three quick smoke screens.. and zelensky picks it up
chris lynch, thanks for being with us this morning. we are with you and with the people of christchurch on this horrific day. thank you, john. joining us now is clarissa word, levi west, and juliet kiam, former assistant secretary of homeland security and national security analyst. clarissa, we want to start with you. obviously you have done long investigative pieces and specials on extremism throughout europe and beyond. and so what is the status of this right-wing extremism? it s clear this is a growing problem not just in the u.s., europe, but across much of the world. we ve spent the morning combing through this 87-page rant, manifesto, whatever you would call it. it s very difficult, i think, to know how much of this is sincere, how much of it is intended to sort of throw up smoke screens, how much of it is
running interference for trump and laying smoke screens because they are trying to fight this first and foremost in the media and trying to win control of the narrative and sort of win hearts and minds how to think about this the problem with rudy, he s actually really bad at remembering what the facts are, remembering the details of a story. he s appear to only read an hour before he goes on tv and he steps over himself all the time. i don t think trump cares about that i think trump is happy to have pit bulls out there that jump at the media and gnaw at people s knees and raise doubts about the quality of a prosecution, and i don t think trump is going to get rid of him any time soon. should we be listening to him? i thought after having to walk it back, what s the added value of listening to somebody that doesn t seem to know the story, can t remember the most basic facts of it? are we doing ourselves a