Morning joe. It is thursday, august 23rd. Joe has the morning off. He will be back tomorrow. We have Donny Deutsch with us along with professor at Princeton University and column at New York Post and contributor editor of Weekly Standard john and sam stein and washington Anchor Katy Kay and benjamin. Good to have you all onboard with us on another very busy morning. We begin with the very latest in President Trumps former lawyer implicating him in his guilty plea yesterday. Trump appeared to acknowledge his attorneys Campaign Finance violation and then walked it back in an interview all while maintaining its not a crime and say he blamed Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his former lawyers prosecution. The president tweeted, michael
Former GOP representative Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski interview newsmakers, politicians and pundits about the issues of the day. Didnt come out of the campaign and thats big. But they werent, its not even a campaign violation. If you look at Preside
cohen is flipping, turning state s evidence and that the chief executive of the nation s laws is coming out against turning state s evidence. this saline that has been crossed. again, we cannot go back. this should be examined thoroughly by historians the moment at which our nation turned a corner and unless republicans behave as if this is an abuse, a serious abuse, perhaps even an impeachable abuse we ll very much regret this moment and what we lost in it. there was an interesting strategic shift in the fox news clip before the previous one. a new defense. it started with well it s a witch-hunt. then you can t believe what people are saying. then it s not really a crime. his newest defense is well i m doing such a good job. he literally said the words out of his mouth were you would be poor without me. talk about a fascist line. john harwood, he literally said they can t impeach me because i m doing such a good job, the stock market would crash and
and the logic, by the way, of firing manafort. he has to fire mueller at the same time. incredible injustice. mueller is prosecuting innocent people and not fair and pardon michael flynn but none of that will change what s going on in the southern district of new york, which is more jeopardizing him than mueller is. okay. so, benjamin and then katty, please follow up. benjamin, this is a massive investigation, ultimately, about the national security of the united states of america. and whether or not our elections were tampered with by the russians which there is clear evidence that this is going on. at what point is a pardon actually witness tampering? well, so, i don t know that a pardon is witness tampering, but i have to say when i heard the president yesterday making those statements, issuing those tweets. you know, my first reaction to
it and there are many examples we have in our collection of false and misleading claims where he has said things repeatedly, even though it has been fact checked as families. but this gets to it a different level. this is a continuing sustained effort to mislead the american public about what happened here. it s a kind of thing i would expect only to do, i hope, only once a presidency where you can actually document that this was a deliberate effort to lie, and i think the evidence is pretty clear that that s what we have here. so, you document that he s told over 4,000 untruths and now this is a lie. what does this mean for our democracy? when, for example, if i am not telling the truth i m more comfortable in retreating into my silos, into spaces with people i trust. president trump s repeated lying seems to be only the very basic
we have someone who is going to be our national security adviser and indeed was for a number of days, and now the administration who was fired. the administration nearly two months old and he s already talking about turning state s evidence and wanting immunity from prosecution. i think we re going to have to figure out what he wants to say, and there needs to be serious consideration given to his request for immunity by the house and senate, also by an independent prosecutor. but those decisions should be made by people who are not politically driven and that s what continues to shock me here that there is so much politics surrounding a matter that s critical to our national security. russia has been trying to undermine western democracy since the 1917 communist revolution, and they just play a little different playbook now. and they are doing it in france as we speak. so we need to address this. it s a national security issue and if these politicians want to play politics with