being at the party where all of this happened say they have no memory of either of incident or the party where it was said to have happened. and then there s the politics. there was a shift this week in tone from republicans from let s hear everyone out to full speed ahead. judge brett kavanaugh is a man of integrity. brett kavanaugh, fantastic man. a stunningly successful individual. it s going to happen. it s going to happen. we re going to plow right through it and do our job. and i believe that judge brett kavanaugh will soon be justice brett kavanaugh and take his seat on the supreme court. it s worth mentioning that senate democrats are still pushing for an fbi investigation before the hearing gets under way. with that, i want to welcome in my panel this evening. with me onset, political analyst and fornler chairman of the rnc, michael steele. washington correspondent and msnbc contributor, catty kay.
outcome? it doesn t seem to me like senators on the republican side are open to having their minds changed particularly. i think that raises the issue of why we should be having an fbi investigation. i ve spoken to members of the fbi who said absolutely, we could investigate this. would it be dispositive, we don t know that. but there are certainly things we could do. we could talk to judge mark judge. we could ask him those questions and go through her yearbook and his yearbook. there are things that could be done if we really wanted to get to the bottom of what happened and find out whether she s telling the truth, whether her memory serves her correctly or whether he is telling the truth and those steps are not being taken. let s bring in democratic member of the senate judiciary committee, senator chris coons of delaware. thanks for taking the time to be on the show tonight. thank you, kasie. let s start with the plan that late last week started to
now to the fallout from the rod rosenstein scoop. the new york times reports that a week after james comey s firing, deputy attorney general rod rosenstein suggested secretly recording the president in the white house. it discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th amendment to remove the president from office. the times said of people briefed on the events or memos written by fbi officials, including andrew mccabe. the justice department sources tell nbc news that rosenstein was joking when he discussed wearing a wire during one of the meetings. a spokeswoman told the times the same thing. other sources said rosenstein confirmed he was serious about the idea but also followed up by suggesting other fbi officials interviewing to be the new director wear a wire as well. we should point out that rosenstein has issued not one,
were other motives. he was blind-sided by this. he felt used, he was new on the job and felt like something needed to be done both to deal with the comey firing, deal with the ongoing investigations of the fbi that related to trump and somehow bring order back to the justice department. the purpose of wearing the wire, i mean, as we said, nbc news is reporting said it was sarcastic. the times says it s serious. what s goal of wearing a wire? this is one of the open questions. we don t know exactly why he said he would do that. presumably, it would be because he wanted to go into the white house and find proof that something was amiss. that things were not being handled well or managed well. as you can see from the impromptu firing of jim comey. certainly that s not a well-managed situation and you have to wonder what s going on. we take a step back and look at the stories the times published on friday, we look at the book that came out, omarosa s book
style and consider that we could have offered to dr. ford an appropriate hearing by including an fbi background check, by inviting or compelling mark judge to testify, by bringing in the former fbi agent who administered a lie detector test to dr. ford that she passed or by calling in front of the committee expert witnesses on the dynamics of sexual assault and how it affects memory. any of those steps would have improved the quality and the even handedness of this hearing. instead, the republican majority rejected all of them. have you made up your mind about who you think is telling the truth here? i have made up my mind that i m voting against judge cave kna kavanaugh. i focused on presidential power concerns which are well outside the mainstream. i also believe dr. ford. i think we should have a hearing where it s possible for her to have a respectful opportunity to