absolutely nothing wrong. you stand by that? i do. i never mistreated anyone on my watch in 42 years. that was nbc s morgan radford reporting. in the state, o reilly s lawyer claims the new york times story ignored evidence taken under oath, adding the reporting was based on unsubstantiated allegations, anonymous sources and incomplete or stolen documents. president trump claims he contacted almost all of the gold star families of military personnel this year. but reports say an e-mail from the pentagon tells a different story. later this morning, joy reid talks to frederica wilson about the condolence call that has become so controversial. i m ginny and i quit smoking
happened. if anything, what you do is you explode the deficit, the wealthy and well off save the money, put it into things other than creating jobs for middle class americans, and wages will remain stagnant. that was the record of george w. bush, that was the record during ronald reagan s tax cuts and if it happens again, it will fail again. we ll do everything we can to stop it. i want to ask you about former president obama on the campaign there in the gubernatorial race in virginia. among the theory that or concerns that black voter enthusiasm is waning, they say the sentiment goes beyond that of virginia, and new jersey, and more should be done by the party about all of this. what are your thoughts? well wi, certainly in the context of president barack obama s historic eight-year tenure, he was always going to be a very difficult act to follow because he would naturally be a vehicle to create a great deal of enthusiasm among
error. as josh said, he could have handled this so much better by saying, if i was misunderstood, i apologize, i respect the service. and instead he s elevated it into this national week long fight that has no end in sight. he went after a gold star family on the campaign, this is territory he s gone down before and knows it doesn t end well. he s incapable of restraining himself and admitting any kind of error, apologizing in any kind of way. to the tweet about the dossier, the president again asking the justice department to interfere in the russia investigation, which is centered on him and his campaign. is this another sign of president trump feeling the heat or do you think these tweets feel a little different to you? the strange thing to me is that the president seems a lot more focused on the dossier than almost anybody else. it is really it seems to have shaken him through the whole investigation, unprompted and insisting that what is in the dossier is not true.
trump, who diminishes and tarnishes everybody around him. this should have been an easy thing to do. with any other president, you call the widow back, you apologize, end of story. but this president is incapable of empathy, incapable of apology, and that has to be hugely frustrating to john kelly. speaking of kelly, he opened up about his own experience, you talk about empathy and sympathy for him, i don t think there was anybody whose heart didn t go out to him as he talked about having lost his own son in afghanistan. that notwithstanding, do you get a sense of how much influence he has or doesn t have in this white house? first of all, you know, he was eloquent on the subject of his son, he was eloquent on the subject of the fallen soldiers. but, again, he veered off and lost control when he went after representative wilson. and i think that, you know, as
so she made a lot of this public. did she not? yes, but i will say that the conversation around how calls were handled which started when the president talked about i call everyone and president obama didn t call everyone and, again, these calls should have stayed private and became public, and in the same way that when, you know, president trump offered $25,000 to one of the fallen soldier s fathers, and then the money never arrives, he goes to the press, so he s made what were private moments very public, which has invited the recipients to also bring that to the press. this has become a media storm where it wasn t one before. that in itself is a sad, sad state of affairs. one that he brought on himself. yes, robert. just very quickly, if i was the white house press secretary or senior adviser in the white house, this is what i would have done. i would have said, mr. president, the widow and the family has the right to do whatever they want with that call. that s their call.