election. so, that s his message. but he s going to be asked again and again about the new york times story that said he was on the verge of firing robert mueller in june before his white house counsel said he would resign if that took place. a lot of people are speculating that, in fact, the white house counsel, mcgahn, is the source of the leak of this information because he s concerned, once again, that trump may fire mueller because the mueller investigation is getting closer and closer and closer to trump and to his top officials. he has a number of balancing acts going on during this conference. the picture right now that we have up is during his meeting bilaterally with theresa may, he met with prime minister benjamin netanyahu. there are things he canceled his trip to england based on the problems at the u.s. embassy. many people suspect it was because there would be widespread protests.
oh, it s obstruction. so here s the thing. i hope so. joining us by phone tonight, one half of the by-line that broke the story, michael schmidt, new york times, washington correspondent and nbc contributor who was with us here in the studio earlier this week. michael, walk me through your reporting starting at this initial point, trump s initial fury apparently comes after he learns that the investigation has followed a prong of obstruction of justice. you also make a point to say the first known attempt, my wording and not yours, that the president tried to fire mueller, i ll start there. were there others that you re aware of? we re not aware of any others well, we are aware that it was june, a month after comey had been fired and the president realized that mueller was looking at him, looking at his conduct when he was in office, had he obstructed justice, and he had come up with different reasons for why mueller should be dismissed. one of them being there had been a dispu
he is in davos for the president s trip. and in his defense, he gave a live interview on cnn tonight, it was 3:30 in the morning in switzerland. he was asked to react to the new york times story. we ll play it and talk about it on the other side. it s totally irrelevant because he actually didn t fire mueller. i find it very ironic this information is coming out while he s here in davos, while he s had great fanfare. i would love to get a look at somebody like steve bannon s phone records to see how he s talking to and how this information is out there. so interesting tri-part defense there. by the way, i d look at steve bannon phone records. going to blame bannon. it was a trifecta, very quickly. just journalism should be happy that the mooch is back, i guess. the thing about this investigation that we re hearing
this is blameless. he has a fractured and fragmenting party. if he wants to be the head of it he has to do better than what happened there. he gave the exact right formula to people that wanted to roy moore, and he said write in, somebody, anybody, and that was the margin of defeat for roy moore. what is your biggest take away, patrick? the authoritarian impulse from trump. trump s desire to re-write history and to make the point about collusion, collusion, collusion as much as possible, and said the democrats were colluding with russia left and right but offered no proof of this. his insistence on presenting the facts as he sees them and where
where he almost won when i got behind him. he also said this about roy moore. the problem with roy moore is he s going to lose the election. i endorsed him because i felt it was my obligation as head of the republican party to endorse him. never once did he say the problem with roy moore is also that he s an accused child molester. that s delicate territory for the president to talk about, because if that was disqualifying for roy moore then the dozen or more allegations would be seen in a slightly different light. he said they are all liars and will sue the women that accused him, and trump has not done that. it s something that has emboldened democrats and given them what they think could be a road map to take the senate come the mid-term elections, and trump thinks his role in all of