Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. After his ukraine work dried up. And that is important because thats when he went to one of trumps closest friends and said i really need to get to trump. And then offered to work for trump for free. How and yes became the Campaign Chair is still a weird so far unexplained thing. Today in Court Prosecutors began laying out the evidence for the Dire Straits Manafort was in when he joined one Trumps Campaign for free. Thats something to keep an eye on as the trial goes forward. Joining me, senior white house political reporter, a close observer of the manafort case cynic it began. He was in the courtroom today. And i get to announce that as of today, he is an msnbc contributor. Ive seen some of the early reporting that there were audible gasps. Take us through some of the more audible moments. Well, this reference as having embezzled from manafort was something that grabbed my
was there a sense in the courtroom today that
time you already saw both sides taking sides. mitch mcconnell said no trial no, witnesses we are going. senator schumer says there is going to be some witnesses even though he doesn t have the power to do it. what he is trying to do rattle some of those in tough states like cory gardner. susan collins, lisa murkowski and make them side with him and say hey for my election future, for my constituents, maybe i need to see some of those trump officials. , however, on the other side. doug jones would get in a lot of trouble in alabama if he doesn t side with mitch mcconnell. steve: right. brian: as well as some other republicans. joe manchin for example, has indicated he doesn t see much case here. steve: it s not only the president s political future at stake today. it s also members of congress it. is historic though. we thought we would try to frame it so you understand what is happening today and what has happened in the past. ainsley: i woke up this morning and i thought gosh no matte
collusion, he pivoted today, maybe it is a quince against it is the same day as the trial no, longer is he saying there was no collusion. now he s saying collusion isn t a crime. now does this fit into russian influence over the trump campaign? this case i think is the preamble to russian collusion. this is setting the scene for manafort s past dealings and past crimes. some of it may well sbleek his time with trump. it will clearly set the stage. and we ve seen mueller stage other cases this way. indicting russians in hacking. and we see the possibility that there may be americans who were involved. now we are learning more of