exclusive interview with president trump yesterday, still having repercussions and reporters still uncovering new nug gets. it was also president trump not answering lester holt s question. he was asking, do you have investments in russia? do you have any russian lenders or backers? and president trump didn t answer that question. sort of the humor is there s not too many people that thought president trump had some big investments in russia. people have said do you have russia investing in you? we know he didn t have u.s. banks lend to him. he has a number of different projects and at the trump taj he already settled a $10 million civil suit for violating money laundering rules. we know that his partner in the soho trump, was did business with bayrock tied to money laundering operation in kazakhstan. the president says we have an extraordinary, super fantastic law firm i love the she has it done.
you know, nixon kennedy got away with everything. kennedy got away with appointing his own brother attorney general. kennedy got us on the road to vietnam, and hated rfk because he thought rfk was going to attack him if he didn t escalate in vietnam. there s all this stuff swirling around that it gets at the se sort of psychological, you know, kind of vacuum, you know, at the heart of their self-regard and their souls. so, you know, that s that s quite similar, but again, everything with trump is turned up to 11. right. and also less strategic. and this idea stupid. let obama go. with his tweet. yeah, with his tweet. it s like what happened with his tweet is it was literally a self-incriminating tweet. this idea that wait, they re spying on me, using the fisa court. that means that some fisa judge thinks i might be culpable of terrible crimes. nixon would never do that, he knew how to lie.
already have a complete meltdown by trump. it wasn t about treason, right. imagine if the watergate break-in had been carried out with the support of the events of the union. i think you get a scale, you know, the idea of the potential scale of this thing. and rick, michelle was pointing here, seems crucial and it ties back to the president s wires, and going off about there s a sense that you know, no one plays by the rules. everyone basically is trying to screw over everyone else, and that creates this kind of leveling down and i do think we saw that kind of we see that manifested. famous quote on the nixon tapes. they re using any means we have to use any means. and this idea that the bureaucracy was just filled with kennedy people.
surface similarities both in terms of their general orientation, their paranoid kind of projecti. the idea that all of these dooe devious things are only a response to the far worse cries of our enemies which justifies anything. you have the world view that s self-righteous at the same time, but but also and then you also have the certain similarities that at the heart of both scandals are break-ins to the democratic national committee. right. but you know, this is i mean again, this is six weeks out, and you already have the recusal by the attorney and you already have a complete meltdown by trump. it wasn t about treason, right. imagine if the watergate break-in had been carried out with the support of the events of the union.
that it s easy to forget what watergate was about and how generally nixonian president trump has been over the course of his first 45 days in office. here is nixon talking to reporters in 1973. don t get the impression that you arouse my anger. you see, one can only be angry with those he respects. president trump has repeatedly railed against leaks and leakers in the early days of administration. and president nixon was so upset about leaks that in 1971 he established a unit known as the plumbers to stop the leaking of classified information. some members of which would eventually orchestrate the watergate break-in. all this business about, you know, the plumbers operation. but good god, that s totally justified, isn t it? yes, sir. shortly before he resigned in disgrace, nixon had sought to block the fbi s investigation into the watergate break-in.