detail under oath? or do you believe the president who has a track record frankly of skirting the truth on issues big and small. from the very first day in office, first full day in office, president trump was sending his advisors out to skirt the truth about the size of the inauguration crowd. and you see this in poll numbers. when you ask americans about the president s whether they think he is honest and trustworthy, he s at a pretty low number there. comey again lays out this challenge. and i think that the answer to that question, who do you believe, may not result in anything that is related to the investigation or any legal implications for the president, but it s certainly going to hurt him politically. and to have that kind of damage at this point in a presidency, i think would be pretty difficult to overcome. peter baker allow me to quote from piece by peter baker in tonight s new york times. headline for trump, the cloud just grew that much darker. thanks to mr. trum
the director of national intelligence and richard painter is back with us, the chief ethics lawyer for the bush 43 white house. steve, do you share that lawyerly instinct that we heard director comey talking about, about how important it was that everyone else was ushered out? yeah, brian, not only do i share that instinct, but it sounds from director comey s testimony like the attorney general jeff sessions and jared kushner also had that instinct. he made a point that they both tried to linger and stuck around and were ushered out at the president s insistence. i think that s a telling moment. i think we should be careful not to focus too much on the individual pieces as opposed to the broader point that comey was fired because of the russia investigation. i think these are all parts of the larger story about obstruction. carey, the democrats nonetheless are after that. that s what they want to be the lead story. they want to make that obstruction case.
moscow born american journalist and currently with the atlantic. before i get to a bit of visual arts at the hearing. where were the president s constant questions to fbi director about the status of the hack into our election system? that s the thing. when you have read former fbi director comey s prepared statement that came out yesterday there was nothing in there apparently that president trump asked him about how do we secure our electoral system, our voting systems. it was all about himself personally. when this isn t director comey was right. they went after democrat they will go after republicans. that s the point marco rubio keeps making. this isn t about parties. was it marco rubio who said
him to drop the russia investigation broadly. and then that point that you raise brian, the fact that comey acknowledged leaking out his own memo, that s something that i think the president and his surrogates are really going to be focused often in the coming days and weeks. in terms of how the president processed this entire hearing today, i am told that he was in and out of a dining room in the white house. he was watching it with his legal counsel, watching with some of his top aides but they really tried to keep him preoccupied today, brian. they scheduled a big speech, his advisors did, he started off the day meeting in the oval office with some of his top officials. and he didn t tweet. this was a whole new level of message discipline. the question is, is he going to be able to keep this going? what happens on sunday when he wakes up to all of the sunday shows? will he startweeting then? he left his messaging to his outside counsel, marc kasowitz today, and it was really a
fact that the president said that comey told him he wasn t under investigation. the fact that comey said today that the president didn t urge him to drop the russia investigation broadly. and then that point that you raise brian, the fact that comey acknowledged leaking out his own memo, that s something that i think the president and his surrogates are reay going be focused often in the coming days and weeks. in terms of how the president processed this entire hearing today, i am told that he was in and out of a dining room in the white house. he was watching it with his legal counsel, watching with some of his top aides but they really tried to keep him preoccupied today, brian. they scheduled a big speech, his advisors did, he started off the day meeting in the oval office with some of his top officials. and he didn t tweet. this was a whole new level of message discipline. the question is, is he going to be able to keep this going? what happens on sunday when he wakes up to all of