Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Attorney for the Southern District of new york elly honing. Julia, start with you. Did somebody tell the president he could take over this investigation . Where is it coming from . Seems to just be coming out of his adlib interview as he frequently does. Sort of spins from the cuff here. Seems that this is coming from a place of increased rhetoric from President Trump. He wants to show that he has control over the situation. In fact a lot of times likes bringing up the russia investigation. Perhaps that plays to his base who thinks this is part of the witchhunt he describes treating him and others like Paul Manafort unfairly. It could be that hes watching what the coverage of the Manafort Trial, thats getting to him. Could be he sees people like don mcgahn, his white house Special Counsel speaking to Robert Mueller and heard a lot about the fact Robert Mueller could be preparing a slew of indictments to give himse
Speaking at a rally in Conway, South Carolina, Trump recounted a story he has told before about an unidentified NATO member who confronted him over his threat not to defend members who fail to meet the trans-Atlantic alliance's defense spending targets.
more leverage in order to be more flexible on diplomacy. and in order to do that, they have to get tough on russia. they recognize that and this is what they re trying to do. okay, that s strange, john. yeah. the president likes credit. he likes to be the front man. why the the one issue in which he doesn t want to be the front man and take the credit have to do with russia and election meddling? and the pushback, by the way, the senators are giving is that this should be done mandatorily. there was a quick moment, though, that was really important that i think got lost. mike rogers, former nsa for donald trump, at a conference earlier this week staid that he would brief president trump on russia and election meddling. and he said without fully explaining it, the president would say something to the effect of, mike, you know i m in a different place, than the reality of the briefing he was presenting on on russia and election meddling. that demands further scrutiny. i m glad
there was something in there that i think rang true to a lot of people who both observed this white house and are in this administration, that sometimes there are parallel paths happening when it comes to some key issues. and on russia, that is the biggest of those issues. this is another case where the administration is barreling forward towards something that they think is important to demonstrate, to give them more political coverage, so they can be more flexible in other areas. but the president is kind of on the back end of it. yes, he signed it, but he did it extremely quietly. the white house didn t even put out a photo of him signing this thing yesterday. they had a conference call with officials on, you know, some of them on background. look, this is not something that the white house, if they wanted to do this in a big way, they could have done it. they didn t. but that s because often, the president is willing to sign these documents, but he s not willing to be the front man
fancy bear behind it. the news here is that these are conservative groups that are typically not what we think were being hacked? the conservative groups who have broken with president trump or not supporting president trump and supportive of sanctions against russia? yeah. exactly. we re seeing shifting the tactics who they target. really what this tells us about the people behind this, they think on their feet. seen it with facebook, twitter. with the websites set up. they look and survey american society, say where are the weak points? where s our in. who are the people and what are the institutions we need to t t target and go after them. in this case, think tanks, those that broke with trump and went after them aggressive there. next hour andrea mitchell will interview brad smith, the chief principle officer of