americans did not read the mueller report, and he also knows that yesterday was a big deal. the russian special counsel dominated the tv news, standing between the flags of the trump justice department delivering a ten-minute just-the-facts reading of his bottom line conclusions. most damning, the special counsel making clear on camera what he could not say, that the president of the united states is not a crook. if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. we did not, however, make a determination as toss whether the president did commit a crime. americans searched mueller on google more than 500,000 times wednesday. that sparked an interest and americans hearing from mueller for the first time in two years, it explains why the president spent 17 minutes on the south lawn today. president wants the last word or words and doesn t care if the words include lie after lie
it s now been refuted. the president on the south lawn today responded on camera with a rare note of appreciation for t for the special counsel. here s the president. i thought that the buzzfeed piece and maybe equally as bad the coverage of the buzzfeed phony story, it was a total phony story. and i appreciate the special counsel coming out with a statement last night. i think it was very appropriate that they did so. i very much appreciate that. i think that the buzzfeed piece was a disgrace to our country. it was a disgrace to journalism. and i think also that the coverage by the mainstream media was disgraceful. this gives the president an argument to make again and again to use this instance to challenge other stories that will certainly come to pass and obviously, the russia
enormous amount of leaks. the fact that this continued for two plus years is really extraordinary. it speaks to a degree of secrecy around these meetings that the president simply does not have around other meetings with world leaders as josh just pointed out. it s just a very different way of handling putin and a lot of people just want to know why. it s perplexing. david, back to you on the shutdown and the market change. last week the president walked down and talked to reporters and he said i almost certainly will invoke a national emergency. today it s the opposite. i have the power to. i m not going to do that. and a rejection of lindsey graham s offer here. why don t we give it, like, three weeks. if dems don t compromise you can shut the government down. he made it clear saying i m not sure if we re close to a deal that this could go on a really long time. that s what i heard from the president on the south lawn today. a commitment to a dug in strategy that is likely to kee
on saturday, it was supposed to be one of the high points of this summit here. now that means all of that will go away. the optics, the white house knew, were not good. the president sitting alongside with vladimir putin, but erin, there are real consequences for all of this, but they will still likely cross paths with each other on the sidelines of this summit. we ll see what comes of that. jeff zeleny, thank you. and obviously, our group is back with us. gloria, you know, the timing here, it s not something what i find interesting is ostensibly, they found out last night, team trump found out last night that michael cohen was going to do this, but the president in some sort of, it would appear, once it broke, the reaction to it, it appears to be emotional, his canceling of the putin meeting. it does. we saw his tweets, which he said, you know, was because of the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to ukraine from russia. but you saw the president on the sou
statements about his conduct with the president, prosecutors will prove it not just through cohen but through evidence that confirms what he is saying. ruth marcus, your take on that? well, i i wanted to pick up on something else mentioned earlier which is this extraordinary statement to the new york post that manafort pardon is on the table. the president also repeated that on the south lawn today. i ve really liked their take on this. that to me is extraordinary to signal to a potentially serious, potentially fatal witness against you. maybe not fatal but serious witness against you. that he could be in line for a pardon that to me is close to obstruction in plain sight. let me also say the president today again said that michael cohen is weak and a liar, unlike other people.