nick, what do you think the stakes are for the white house in this fuller picture being painted? two schools of thought emerging. one, the damage has been done to the fbi, some polls showing republicans now distrust the fbi more than they did before this whole episode. another school of thought being that this was such a that the president s moved on to smearing the fbi agents who were one of his favorite targets. where do you come down? look, i don t think he has much to lose by allowing it to come out. i think the damage is done. he does most of the damage to the fbi on twitter and by transmitting his thoughts to fox outlets that have amplified his message. the debate over the memo is mostly taking place like in the intelligence. the real battle is over the public perception of law enforcement and its legitimacy. i think he is winning the battle against illegitimacy. john sykes, can you sort this out, the ongoing war with the justice department?
worried about russia. i laughed out loud. it was a laugh-cry when i got to that section. he had to get this into the hands of a republican because they used to care about russia. i have to say i love reading this piece. and when the liam neeson movie comes out, escaping cybers, i can t wait to see it. exactly, from jared and ivanka on a ski slope. i look at this as a larger problem. it s not just the u.k. it s also andrea merkel in germany. israel. israel. we have had relationships with you for years and not only are you saying we re incompetent and not good leaders, you re not trusting the long-term intelligence agencies we have used to keep peace on this planet the last 50 years. that s where this becomes a problem. everybody, every single one of our allies in nato looks at what the apartments of president is doing with steele. i don t know if i want to work this guy. i don t know if we can. i have to bring charlie in on this new reality of republicans.
i was your guest at bastille day and it was one of the greatest parades i ve ever seen. we may do something like that on july 4 in washington down pennsylvania avenue. i don t know, we re going to have to try and top it. they laughed, it sounded so farfetched people in the room laughed when he said it. but here we are five months later talking about president trump s desire for an official military parade. the white house is insisting it s all still in the early preliminary stages, but if this does happen, here s the club the united states would join. north korea, china, and russia regularly hold these types of marches. according to the washington post, quote, trump has long mused privately and publicly about wanting a parade. but a january 18 meeting between trump and top generals in the
doesn t, it puts the fbi director and quite frankly department of justice in a trap. do they come out publicly and start rebutting the republican memo line by line and therefore appear to be politicized, which is the worst thing you can do if you re the director of the fbi. or do they hopefully allow this to come out and let it speak for itself. let s speculate. i ve been led to believe one of the things that s inaccurate in that memo is the idea that the fisa court wasn t aware of christopher steele s feelings about the president. or as you have said, other people have said, i think you said, who do people think informants is it a bunch of nunns and kindergarten teachers? informants one way or another mike flynn is a source, an informant now for bob mueller who may have questionable credibility because he perjured himself. talk about the informant pool in general. so, look, we don t recruit sunday school teachers as informants. the question is whether or not that source does a
but, nicolle, back to your point about the role rob porter played, we can t underscore enough how important he was to the operation of this white house. in particular, to john kelly s mission to bring order and some discipline to what had been a very chaotic west wing. rob porter is one of the few people there who has any past government experience, who is a professional in terms of working in the government, working in politics, and working with policy. and i think it s one of the reasons why last night and again this morning john kelly was trying so hard to help save his job and keep him there. hallie jackson, what explanation do you have for the fact that i m sure you re hearing the same sorts of rumblings i am. yeah. there is a lot of tension between john kelly and other members of the white house staff. i put together a quick list before we came on the air. people were critical about him calling the president uninformed on the topic of immigration. people thought he drew a