Pushed into telling these kinds of stories ? no, he can t, because it s just something we don t believe. every time trump gets near, he is dragging mcmaster with him. he tried to change the conversation with stefanopolous, but he also later in the interview tried to defend trump s remarks about comey as sort of, well, he s trying to get himself more latitude to be able to discuss things with the russians, he s trying to put this behind him. he can t put it behind him. it is an ongoing investigation. it s still happening, comey or not, and the idea that he would say these awful words about somebody who once worked for him also to people who are not our friends, joy, is also kind of stunning. so mcmaster is in an impossible situation. it is interesting to watch. you have all these figures who have long been extremely respected among republicans, whether it is jim comey who is about to be a republican.
End of the story. that s what they want it to be. he s apologized on all his shows, he said he explained himself and can now move on but i don t think everybody is going to move on now, fredricka. certainly abc wants this to be over but there are some republicans, some conservative commentators who say this is not enough that stefanopolous has to be removed from all election coverage in 2016. i don t see that happening, but clearly for some people why not? why wouldn t anybody see that happening? i heard that former rnc chair jim gilbert make that point, and we are talking about the race for the presidency 2016. whether it be on his show this week and it s all about politics doesn t this conflict of interest these donations, present a problem in any political presidential race kind of coverage since hillary clinton is in the race? my impression is that abc has made two calculations here. one calculation is because abc came out right away and defended him, supported him and said t
They can move through this and not have a brian williams kind of story. he didn t come up as a reporter as a journalist. he was an analyst, he worked at the clinton white house, then became an analyst and suddenly a news man that abc eventually selected to become the faith of the network. you have to wonder what is that stake for abc as a network? yes, they ve stood by him so far. they ve come out with a statement or two. but if it does nothing more than that isn t that potentially damaging for the network? i view it as a forever story among some people. in some cases among conservative critics who want to use this against stefanopolous for a long time but i think you re raising an important point which is this large issue of trusting the network. you want to trust the people delivering the news to you on television. in stefanopolous case he s
Supposed to be the man who announces the next president. he ll be the main anchor at election 2016. if they start to see stefanopolous has taken a hit on his credibility, they could see him change in their support for him. we did see that happen with williams. nbc was certainly out there doing market research putting their finger in the air a little bit to see how the public was reacting. and they saw that williams did take a massive hit to his credibility. but that was a very very different case and of course the case got a lot more attention than this case has gotten so they re probably not comparable. i don t know two networks two leading news mans men two leading news men. now the network has big problems and a lot to consider to allow him to continue on. there are so many great charities to donate to but if you re george stefanopolous and you have millions of dollars to give away why the clinton
Stick by that and be unwavering in their support. i think the second calculation is that none of the leading contenders of the republican nomination for president, except maybe rand paul and we also heard from ted cruz. those are the only two big candidates we ve heard from that have said anything very negative about stefanopolous. we haven t heard marco rubio or jeb bush or scott walker or many of the others who have been given chances to criticize stefanopolous to actually do so. why is that? maybe it s because they want access to his big audience. maybe they want to make sure they can get on good morning america or they can get on this week and if they re too critical that may be in jeopardy. here s another reason too. a lot of republicans actually do respect stefanopolous as a journalist. it s been almost 20 years since he left the clinton white house, he has evolved a bit in that time and he has reporters who come to his support. maybe that s why they believe