real battle for the heart and soul of the party. the question to all my fellow republicans is, where do you stand? what kind of party do you want? and what kind of party do you think the american people are willing to accept? not one that capitulates, not one that gives in, but one that stands up on principles and ideals like reagan and eisenhower and bush. even abe lincoln, remember him? that was the party that did some great somethings. and now we re just condensed, brian, to this match over, you know, as you put it, the drama inside the west wing. not happy stuff, but boy was that well put. two gentlemen that really bring it on the thursday before christmas, no less. friends of our broadcast both. peter baker, michael steele, thank you both very much. coming up, after a break, mitch mcconnell looking forward to cooperation in 2018. he said it, is it too good to be true, though?
and questions about mr. kushner s conduct, his meetings during the transition, and a lot of speculation right now about his fate. so that s really what we re looking for, but back to what donald trump could do about robert mueller, you know, as we know, he can actually fire him, rod rosenstein would have to fire him. we could be looking at a saturday night massacre situation, if trump tried to make that happen and rosenstein didn t want to do it and resigned. it would be the next person up. there are some standards in place, and there s a justice department set of rules that say mueller can only be fired for good cause, for misconduct, for conflict of interest, not just for any reason, brian. good cause is usually a high bar, a high standard, especially among legal types. jill wine-banks, we have noticed that mr. mueller doesn t put out a lot of press releases. in fact, i can t remember the last mueller press release, but if they did, maybe they would say, hey, we had this meeting
about it reflects in your view, the view of others, perhaps just partisanship. are you talking to ken dilanian? i m sorry, i knew we were leading into a first segment with two kens. ken vogel of the new york times. sure, this is as you sort of suggested in your intro, brian, the interest in mccabe, is part of an effort to discredit the fbi as a whole. and the goal seems to be more about discrediting, undermining bob mueller and the special council s investigation. we see this, a number of prongs in this effort, including highlighting these text messages between these fbi agents that spoke critically of donald trump. we see this in questioning mccabe, we even see this in the uranium one, the reviving of the uranium one investigation, which seems to be less about getting to the bottom of the actual substance of this uranium one deal, and more about questioning