an effort by some in the government or democrats to embarrass him. he doesn t think it s a really issue. and so you see then him deciding to treat this as a pr issue. saying there s nothing to conceal. nobody did anything wrong so we re going to fight. we re going to fight all comers and not going to treat the special council as legitimate or congressional inquiry as legitimate. there s evidence of that throughout including when it s so close to home where he s got his own son involved in a meeting with russians where he can be compromised, that is something he knew would be so debilitating because of the publicity it would generate, or worse, that he decides to get personally involved and dictate the statement, and then deny it afterwards and have others deny it. you had a couple of layers of trouble with this statement. the initial statement. the first one was boy, these guys are blind to the fact this wasn t about adoption, it was about sanctions and getting put tin s money back.
not obstruction of justice. it is a cover-up. he was clearly directing a k cover-up with that meeting. it was a meeting to seek dirt on hillary clinton. it s also problematic to use taxpayer resources to not only protect your son from legal trouble but to protect him from problems that were conducted from a campaign. if he brought staff into that discussion and used resources a aboard air force i to keep his son from getting in trouble, that provides support for the staff as well. he did like anybody would. i m not sure it s true in the concept of a criminal investigation. ultimately if we take a step back here, that s what this is about. this is a criminal investigation that involves him and his family, and there were attorneys
proven to be categorically false. the meeting was not about russian adoptions. it was about damaging information on hillary clinton and that s the reason that the meeting ended up on don jr. s calendar. paul, you and i are old dogs and we ve seen a lot of people come in and out of this town. get it all out, get it all out on your own terms, get it all out as soon as possible. and according to the reporting in abby s paper, the president was advised that and it is true. everything comes out, believe me, i ve lived this. stuff you never want them to know about comes out. so go ahead and say it if it was benign, that it wasn t about adoption. say it. according to the sources the post has, the president was advised to be completely tran transpare transparent, go ahead and put it all out and he decided not to. it s a huge problem. it s not a crime to lie to the washington post, it isn t lying to the public is really what it is. it is lying to the public, and that s terrible, but
to put this on the president i think is incorrect. the involvement of his son is a concern in the russian involvement. if it is true, it certainly is a concern, but i don t know that it is. if we had the e-mails available to us, you would understand the whole meeting wasn t about adoption. the e-mail chain shows it was about the russian government wanting to help the trump campaign. i don t think the statement helped don jr. i don t know what role the president played, if any. here s what i would suggest. that when you put out a misleading statement, it s going to be hard to convince people to stop looking at other things. the other big question lingering here at the white house is whether the president would sign a bill that would limit his ability to ease sanctions on russia today. the white house said the president would sign that legislation. congressional leaders were not concerned the president would veto the bill. the measure has enough support in congress to override th
polls to 36% in the washington post. to his difficulty in persuading senators to sign up for the healthcare bill. when you re at 36% that s the perception you re a weak president. it s much harder to ask senators to take hard votes. jeff, is it do you agree that sean spicer said something that s not true. i will say this. i do think when you re getting your message out, whatever it is. it should be clear and crystal and out there from a to z. everybody should be on the same page. he says one thing the if the president tweeted something completely different. this can happen. you want to make sure as best you can that it doesn t happen. i don t get i get the mixed messages. i understand how it happens. particularly in this white house. but for sean spicer to say there s no evidence this had anything to do with anything other than adoptions. when we have seen the e-mails.