white house correspondent for time magazine. brian, by the way, is the author of this week s cover story that included the troubling cover imagery which to the president may count as an official time magazine cover since such things we know are important to him. jill, welcome back. i note you started nato, went to the uk, all the way to helsinki. you lived to tell the tale. i know that some events don t always occur to you in the moment. you re doing your job. a comment that other people can judge as weighty later doesn t land the right way. i imagine all of this did, and what was you don t do opinion, but you do give take away. what was your takeaway from this week? i mean, this trip was something that was just whiplash the entire way at every stop. precedents everywhere. exactly. insulting your host. from the very first moment he sat down at that breakfast before the nato festivities
started acting like somebody who might be willing to cooperate, that was something that unnerved the president. he has been wary about this, about michael cohen, who has been so loyal to him for so many years. he didn t really contemplate that he would actually maybe flip on him. and now the fact that he appears willing to do that i think is something that has rattled the president a little bit. it does come at the end of a really difficult week. and clearly, people close to michael cohen say they gave no indication that he was the one who put this tape out there today, but they did say that he is indeed pretty fed up with being treated the way trump has treated him over the years, and that he does likely plan to cooperate and do what he has to do. matt apuzzo, you were trying to get in there. yeah, i guess i would just say that my colleagues and i, this is not something that look, i m on vacation. this is not something i was going to keep that secret for you. that we cam
talk about your writing as soon as i m done with this quote. this from your cover story this week, and it s on the overarching topic of russia. trump is bruised by the idea that russian election meddling taints his victory, those close to him say, and can t concede the fact that russia did try to interfere in the election regardless of whether it impacted the outcome. it s a notable quote, brian, because here we are in the position of kind of hoping we find out from the russians some of what was discussed in a two-hour-plus closed door session between two super power leaders. well, it s so extraordinary that in this presidency we always have are to rely on the other country the find out what was discussed in a lot of these meetings, and that we re finding out more from the russians than from the white house about what president trump and president putin talked about. and, i mean, one of the most extraordinary moments this week was of course when the president
recording. i don t know the answer to that, and the status of the trump/cohen relationship is obviously a strained one at this point. you know, my colleague maggie haberman reported that when trump was told by the way, mr. president, this tape exists, his response was why would michael do that to me? so i mean, he feels betrayed by the existence of the tape. i think you heard from lanny davis comments here that they feel as if they are being betrayed by the mischaracterization of the conversation, at least in their view. this isn t the relationship it once was. obviously michael cohen at one point said he would take a bullet for the president. we ve heard plenty of indications that michael cohen feels that he if push comes to shove, he is not going take that bullet for the president. barbara mcquade, a neck-snapping change of subject to the manhattan madam.
journal poll, going to come out sunday. maybe a more comprehensive look at this question about the views on the summit and how they re affecting the overall assessment as trump as president. that s the question. approval rating, does it go down, does it go up? does it stay the same sning we re going to get a look at that on sunday. thank you so much for that. that really does change how the story is reported. a huge chunk of the population. steve kornacki at the big board force. another break. we re back with another one of the poorly covered stories of this past week.