was corruption in new jersey that singed him. and already having been fired by donald trump, so as transition director, so he s through the first two hoops that every trump aide has. but my serious advice, i have been there. i worked for a president who was under federal investigation and lost the congress. he doesn t need a war-time counselor, he needs a legislature. he needs to draw the cameras and the congress attention away from investigation and on to legislation. this is a president who says he s for prescription drug reform, infrastructure. he could be he needs to hire pete king, mike rogers. that s different than what i m hearing. i mhering he needs to be more political than policy. completely wrong. bill clinton survived in part because we never took our eyes off doing things for the american people. we didn t talk about his affairs every day. we talked about legislation every day and the things we were doing to help people. that s how he got to 71% even while they were
not a lot of people in that campaign were giving serious thought to how are we going to govern. the one person who was, chris christie, dubbed to be transition director, was fired pretty early on. you know, as you talk about these people not being the most seasoned political operatives, i thought to myself, and you could tell because they cooperated with michael wolff with this book. there is a difference between cooperating with a reporter who is definitely going to be favorable and shares your point of view and has 15 books behind him or a reporter like bob woodward who is definitely looking for juicy bits but also a very respected, you know, centerpiece of american journalism at the washington post and michael wolff who has a reputation for writing buzzy books. i don t truly understand why they would cooperate. yeah, and think the best approach is to always ask yourself when you re considering whether or not to cooperate with a documentary or a book, is this
house to meet with obama right after he was elected, and they have this private meeting, obama says to him, look, national security adviser. that s a very big job. and, look, mike flynn worked for us, and i m not sure that he s up to this. and you really need to think about that. there s no indication that the president expressed to trump the concerns that the fbi had about flynn or about any of these other issues. but the president was basically saying, big job. not sure this guy is cut out for it. nick, that s two people held in pretty high regard by many americans. the sitting president of the united states, president obama, who by all accounts had a very pleasant initial interaction with donald trump in the oval office that day. and chris christie who was sort of the first establishment figure to endorse donald trump who had a big role as the surrogate on his campaign and who, until two days after the election, was serving as the transition director. both of them warned donald tr
it means he, the president, knew that flynn had done this and yet after sally yates warning he kept him in the job. and he didn t fire him because he lied to mike pence. he fired him because the washington post found bought it. i want to add to the conversation new york times washington koerncorrespondent ac national correspondent michael schmidt. let me just there s a lot of going back in time today because flynn has now been gone longer than he was ever in the white house. but mike flynn was someone i was reminded this morning who chris christie lost his job as transition director over his opposition to mike flynn. and i was reminded that chris christie and his transition team have put together binders for leadership and some of the senior posts, the senate confirmation posts under them. and he didn t put mike flynn s name on any of those lists. i ve pressed him on this show and in private about whether he
fundamentally in that there was no call from president obama that evening to me. i didn t speak to the president that night at all. did you talk to senior staff? i got a call from a member of senior staff who, as the election started to turn, who i had been working with on the transition and he said if this goes again, important to point out that you were the transition director at the time, so you had contacts inside the government. we were meeting with the white house every three weeks or so. and they said i m not saying that we think this is what is going to happen, but if your guy happens to win, how do i get president in touch with your guy because they literally had no contact at all prior to that. and i said just call my phone and i ll give you his number. but i wasn t going to give him the number then until the president of the kruyund united wanted to make the call and i turned to the candidate and he said i think at the white house they think that you are winning be