gates, of course, was not cooperating until after the charges were filed. they were prepared to proceed without rick gates on board. they have all the documentary evidence. like jeff just said, these are individual income taxes that paul manafort lied about, not to mention some properties on which there was mortgage fraud, had nothing to do with rick gates in the hamptons and in brooklyn. he is going to have a really hard time ping all of this on rick gates, for sure. the push from the president s allies arguing that paul manafort was nobody on their campaign, he only worked there for four months, i think the president said 49 days at one point. they can try to put all the distance they want between him and the president, but he wasn t the coffee boy. he was the campaign chairman. i think the smarter tactic here is to remind people over and over these charges have absolutely nothing to do with the campaign. and even the witnesses being put forward have nothing to do with the campai
can come to when they ve only had five press briefings in the last month of june, and only three press briefings this month. i mean, that is historically at a very low level. now, one thing we should point out, anderson, at this rally tonight, the president went after what he calls fake news. he even talked about fake polls, even though he touted a poll that he said that he had seen saying he was the most popular republican president ever. it s hard to understand how you can have fake polls but also tout polls showing you being popular. but anderson, despite the president going after the press, he just hadn t given us opportunities to ask him very many questions. and i think there really is no other reasonable conclusion other than they just don t like the questions that are going to be asked right now. you know, i ve been trying to talk to white house aides about this, and one of the things you hear, and they ve said this before in the past is that, well, when the president has a spee
a crime, colluding about russians. okay. you start analyzing the crime. the hacking is the crime. the hacking is the crime. yes, that certainly is the original problem. the president didn t hack. of course not. he didn t pay them for hacking. well, in the strictest sense, both president trump and giuliani are correct. there is no statute against collusion. joining me to deconstruct, retired colonel ralph peters. so, colonel, the change from the president, from the months and months just repeating that there was no collusion, to just about any question asked about russia, now saying in addition to that, collusion is not a crime, the fact that giuliani is saying that, as well, does it seem there is a strategy behind that shift? a strategy of desperation, if a strategy at all. collusion outright may not be a crime in and of itself, but anderson, treason is a crime. collaborating and conspireing with a hostile foreign power against the united states is a crime. receiving ma
lack of press briefings. you know, the president himself still hasn t directly answered questions about why his campaign lied about their involvement in trying to buy karen mcdougal s rights the rights to her story from a.m.i., which the campaign claim they had no knowledge of, they knew nothing about the deal, nor has he answered any questions about your reporting that he allegedly knew about the trump tower meeting in advance. this president and this presidency and this white house has no interest in the truth, as we have known it in every other presidency. this president and this presidency has an interest only in its own propaganda, its own lies, its own version of events that have nothing to do with real existing information. you know, i went to jack kennedy s press conferences, starting with his third one. i was copy boy at the time. and if you were to go back and
putin. i mean, there are fundamental things, bits of information that the american people deserve, and, you know, the bottom line is this president doesn t believe that he has any obligation to share that information with people. he calls the press the enemy of the people. he conflates his political interest with the public interest. and he thinks that reporting is a hostile act. yeah, the fact is we re not even sure he has told his secretary of state or his secretary of defense exactly what was discussed with vladimir putin in that meeting. it s not clear from their own from pompeo s testimony that he really has a full read-out from the president. right. carl, you fought with many white houses over the years trying to get your questions answered. nixon s secretary ron ziegler had a famously adversarial relationship with the press. how would you describe things