allen, columnist for roll call and co-author of shattered, inside hillary clinton s doomed campaign. we also have usa today washington correspondent paul singer. we ll start with you, jonathan. with this justice department led by this attorney general and although he has recused himself from the question of the issue of looking into the russia connection question, they re leading the vetting of these potential candidates for the fbi. will this choice, whatever it might be, pass the smell test when they do make one? well, i think it depends on who the person is, jeff sessions and his deputy rod rosenstein have called into question their independence by essentially inventing a reason for james comey s firing as president trump said in that interview with lester holt that he already decided to fire them before they came up with the justification so i think people will be watching, what do they come up with through this process? is it somebody who can be expected to exonerate presi
conversation with our colleague chuck todd and secretary rex tillerson who made his first appearance on meet the press today talking about sort of the fallout of the comey firing and how that affects the rest of the administration. here s an excerpt from their conversation. i am devoted to helping the president achieve his objectives, helping him be success f successf successful and i have to earn his confidence everyday. what s the line between service to the president and it was so the country, sir? i will never compromise my own values, chuck, that s my only line. my values are those of the count country. so the question of where is the loyalty factor, the political factor that might go into a high-profile job. of course, the fbi director has a ten-year term. that was done to try to span more than one presidency to remove some of the politics from the position. at the same time, the president does have the ability at will to
us to our first pulse question of the day. do you agree or disagree i trust president trump to nominate a new fbi director with integrity, experience and independence. let s get to our reporting. kelly o donnell has been following this. she s at the white house on this sunday. good day to you, kelly. some reporting saying a name possibly this week, right? potentially by friday. how likely does that look from what you re learning at the white house? well, the guidance we ve been getting both from the president directly and those working on this with him is that they want to do it quickly. they haven t identified a day, they haven t set a specific timeline but the president wants to move quickly and part of trying to get a better understanding of that is the reporters who were with him on air force one yesterday asked if it was possible before his foreign trip. he leaves for saudi arabia this coming friday and he said maybe even before that time. so that s the window we re looking
a long day of interviews happened saturday. about 11 hours of time where the attorney general jeff sessions, deputy attorney general rod rosenstein met with this field of eight candidates. it was originally going to be four. they felt they should just keep pressing on. these candidates were available to come in for personal meetings so they brought in eight individuals who have legal, law enforcement, intelligence and political backgrounds. all have had substantive careers and are being interviewed for this position and so what we understand at this point is that s the first round of interviews and they could have that field narrowed a bit and then the president is expected to do some phone calls or meetings or personal interviews as well. now, he has been at his gulf club in virginia for much of the day. we are told by advisers he is making calls and having meetings, we don t have any indication if it is related specifically to the fbi search but some of the qualities, some of the cha