for those of us seeing those headlines and wondering what was behind this, it s amazing to know this many months later that the fbi was actually taking those developments seriously enough to think that they needed to investigate them, and they still, as you pointed out, are the subject of the special counsel. now it s mueller s job. we now know that at least 16 trump official contacts, trump business orbit with russia during the campaign. we didn t know all that back then. we didn t know the president was lying about the depth of his russia business dealings. the fbi did know about this because they do the counterintelligence work. you read it. can you imagine being the junior fbi agent in the room. is the president the question is the president. huh? it s a really stunning development and again, we do know that mueller has been looking at this overall question but the idea the fbi was so concerned and had felt like they had reason to be concerned that the president himself may h
race mongering, and there s no way they re going to give the president what he wants on this wall. i think the other point is the idea that you can have a president who would shut down the government and then gets what he wants. that s the kind of person that i think democrats and probably republicans don t want to set either. so the democrats are incredibly dug in on this. you wonder if the president has missed his opportunity for this. he came into office in the main promise on the border wall. it was two years ago. there s been a midterm election since then. and, you know, using this a lot of people support the border wall. not a lot of people support using the national emergency as the excuse. remember a year ago, we were coming out of a shutdown a year ago. a shutdown that was over an immigration dispute a year ago. so, you know, there s a logical disconnect here for a lot of voters. to your point about the timing. the president had his own party. ran the show for two years.
comey. he revealed classified information to the foreign minister. if you go back to those days, we re already investigating russian meddling. should we be worried? do we have to be worried about the president of the united states? well, right. and what my colleague s reporting describe, these are not idle questions the fbi agents sit around and sort of toss about. they had to have solid reasons for wondering these things. they don t just open a counterintelligence investigation because they re musing about some potential far-fetched idea. clearly there was enough questionable activity on the part of the president, enough things had happened to make them very concerned that they needed to answer these questions, and they were legitimate questions in the eyes of these investigators. and you saw that the one of the major issues was is this something that the president is knowingly participating in, sore this just something he s become caught up in unwittingly? those were the question
white house. my reporting shows that trump is in no rush to make appointments or nominations to most of these spots. why? because there s a thought in the oval office that these acting chiefs are more beholden to the president now than they ll ever be. it s important in this moment if you are trying to squeeze $5.6 billion out of the pentagon, out of a jim mattis-less pentagon for a border wall between mexico and the u.s. also sounds a tad undemocratic. nia? i talked to a handful of democrats in south carolina. primarily black democrats. the subject was joe biden. beloved in south carolina but they had some harsh words to say about joe biden. a lot of sentences started with, i love joe biden, but he isn t showing any sense of urgency. he hasn t reached out to many folks in succeouth carolina. they have no idea what he s going to do. they have heard from warren and booker and even like merkley as
that the president has been having these meetings with putin. and he s been taking notes from interpreters, not legislate oth letting other people in the room. no detail of his face-to-face meetings with putin. if there is no reason to be concerned if there is nothing untoward, if putin doesn t have anything on him, why are his interactions with russia so clouded. why always these actions he takes that raise more questions? if you know that people are interested in whether you have a relationship with russia, why don t you take steps to make your interactions with putin more transparent. make sure there are more people in the room and those notes are disseminated more broadly. he never takes that step. it could be a question for him right now. he talked about the idea these meetings were open. if they are open, why can t you release some of those transcripts now and have a follow read out. even in that interview with judge jeanine he said this is ab