week ahead. and the president has said he will make an announcement on this. making a joke of something so serious. one senior administration official sells cnn that trump has actually been amused by all the reporting of the tapes. that official saying the fall out from the tape story led to the appointment of robert mueller. the president is about to make his first public appearance since his tweet about the tapes and that is moments from now as we await the president and some comments we expect him to make live. he finally did come out and he answered the question. but he did it because there was a deadline from the house intelligence committee and raised perhaps more questions. hi, erin. that s right. we have more questions. that does not mean we re getting more answers. the deputy press secretary during that off camera briefing repeatedly said things like the president s tweets speaks for itself or the president has been very clear about this or that
hand. president trump with a major admission, taking to twitter to say he has no tapes of his conversations with fired fbi director james comey. trump tweeting this, quote, with all of the recently reported electronic surveillance intercepts and leaking of information, i have no idea whether there are, quote, tapes or recordings of my conversations with james comey. but i did not make and do not have any such recordings. now today at another audio only press briefing, the deputy press secretary, sarah huckabee sanders was repeatedly pressed at the tapes. at one point she was asked, why did the president play this game for 41 days? i don t know that it was a game. again, he s answered the question. he gave a time line in the frame in which he would and he did that. he said by the end of the week and he s done that. let s make it clear. that wasn t his time line. that was the deadline given to provide recordings by the house intelligence committee. so he could have dragged this
on. if it wasn t a game, why did it take 41 days to answer a question that he knew the answer to the whole game? certainly feels like a game and a game that actually costs taxpayers money. several government agencies were required to spend time and money trying to track down the truth because at least four agencies told cnn that they had no record of a white house recording system. here is a little of the gamesmanship from the president and his team over those 41 days. did president trump record his conversations with former fbi director comey? ? the president has nothing further to add on that. you said that you had no idea whether or not there was a taping system in the oval office. could you try to find out? sure. i ll try to look under the couches. do tapes exist of your conversations with him? no. well, i ll tell you about that maybe sometime in the future. the president made clear he ll have an announcement shortly. i think the president is going to address that i