for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story. let me explain what they were threatening. they were calling my children, they were calling close friends you re talking about the national enquirer? and pinning the story on my ex-husband who would absolutely never do that. and joe had the conversations he had with the white house, where they said, oh, this could go away. the president later seemed to confirm aspects of that account, watched low rated morning joe for the first time in a long time. he called me to stop a national enquirer article, i said no. bad show. that s a lie according to scarborough who has phone records and texts to back up his position. at no time did we threaten joe or mika or their children. we have no knowledge of any discussions between joe and mika. according to reporting by the
counterparts. that could be true, if he corroborated with them, in the trump campaign, that is collusion, and i want to put to bed right now some of the crazy notions i ve seen on fox news. not that i watch it all that much. you sound like the president now. these crazy notions that if there was collusion, it s not a crime. not only is it treason, you cannot as a campaign, accept foreign contributions, including money. the trump campaign included, it would be the largest in the history of the united states. the timing is interesting, i should know. about a week before this story was published, which is also
daily beast and new york magazine, the white house official who communicated with scarborough was none other than the president s son in law. i m joined now by michelle goldberg. i don t know anything other than what has been reported publicly. i have no special access into this and basically take at their word my colleagues. msnbc said they re not going to release the threats, those texts. my first thought was, if anyone in that white house is putting something like this in writing, what else are they putting in writing? or what else are they saying on the known when there s not going to be a written record. the thing about this story, on the one hand, it s so sordid and farcical and it can be easy to laugh and sneer at. on the other hand, it s deadly serious, if you have people in the white house blackmailing members of the press into better
as i call it, the fake media in many cases. and i think it s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly. flynn himself has gone silent publicly, in march, he said he was willing to be interviewed in exchange for immunity. general flynn has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it. joining me now, rachel maddow who has been covering it better than anyone. i don t know, that was pretty good. i m curious what you feel of this story. in terms of the waves it sent has not been as large as others. for me personally, the way i feel like i m putting the facts as we know them into view, seems like one of the most significant because it puts flynn at the center of something, and it gives some plausible vision of what exactly someone might be up to in reaching out to the russians. i think you laid it out
on himself, and how much he wants to take it on the campaigning. it does one other thing for me that s been clarifying. whatever happened on the first order, and the obstruction of justice, everything that happened in attempting in firing the fbi director, in obfuscating and disembling why they did so. at the center of that, is the one request that we know the president made at least according to james comey under oath, which is to lay off flynn. flynn has always been the person, sally yates gets concerned and goes over there twice, they don t fire him. they fire him, and start defending him in public. he asked james comey not to go after them. the through line here between the two parts of this story, which is whatever happens with the russians and what they were doing about trying to stop james comey for what he was doing, michael flynn is the nexus of both of those. we believe although it s unclear, we bereave the requests the president made to them may