stepping in. so, again, i don t know who listens to that, i don t know who believes it, but more to the point i don t know why lindsey graham would even say it, it s ridiculous. est that the biggest surprise there. michael schmidt, let s bring you in here. what a long strange trip it s been for you, you re hated by kraits throughout the campaign, you re hated by republicans everyone hates you. no, during the trump presidency liberals have loved him, conservatives have hated him because he s writing true stories about donald trump then this crazy twist over the weekend where liberals are on your back again because you write a story about rod rosenstein and liberals are saying he was just being sarcastic. tell me with all of your reporting, with all of your information when we talked about wearing a wire and talked about a vote on the 25th amendment with donald trump was rod rosenstein being sarcastic that s not what the depth and breadth of our reporting showed. it showed tha
people said that he really was struggling in the moment to figure out what to do and in that period of time he threw out these different things, he threw out the idea of wearing a wire, he talks about the 25th amendment. this sort of captures the chaos going on inside the justice department as they moved towards what is the ultimate decision, which was to appoint mueller so, mike, it sounds like the man was overmatched by history at the time, perhaps he has grown into his job, but at the time it sounds like he was overmatched because what a bush league move to wear a wire to try to build up to the 25th amendment without realizing you need two-thirds of the vote in both houses to push a president out. there was no way republicans in the house or republicans in the senate would all go along with that so was he just in over his head at the beginning during that time period?
over the weekend allies of president trump threatened to issue new subpoenas demanded a second special counsel and even warned the president of a setup, all in reaction to one new york times report, that deputy attorney general rod rosenstein discussed wearing a wire to secretly record considerations with president trump and discussed invoking the 25th amendment to oust him in the days after fbi director james comey was fired in may of 2017 this led senator lindsey graham to renew his calls for a special prosecutor to look into russia probe and the president s boosters on fox news warned him. there s a bureaucratic coup against president trump being discovered here before the election the people in question tried to taint the election, tip it to clinton s favor, after the election they re trying to undermine the president. i don t know what rosenstein did, but i know what mccabe or
idea that he thinks is not a good idea, we ll be very sa sarcastic in his response. so the idea that he may have said, what you want me to do, andy, wear a wire. i 100% buy into that. i think it with as clapback to andy mccabe s suggestion to investigate the president. another thing about the meeting that people need to consider, this was a few days before rod appointed special counsel. i think one of the reasons he appointed special counsel was to get the investigation as far away from andy mccabe as possible. at this point mccabe clearly had an ax to grind with the president. i want to break that down. you re saying let s explain to the viewers. this meeting happened in may of 2017 right after james comey had been fired as fbi director. got rosenstein at justice. the andy mccabe, lisa page at the fbi, huddling about what s happening at the white house. shortly after the meeting the special counsel was appointed by roserosenstein. you re now saying, wait a
blue that s uncharacteristic of this president. this is what a lot of people who deal with him think. although the idea of the fbi wearing a wire to tape the president justice department. justice department, i m sorry. but it is it is amazing. i think it s worth noting he did not wear a wire, so that suggests, perhaps, it was said in frustration, in hyperbole. but the general idea, especially in may of last year when the firing of james comey was like a thunderbolt. i mean this was something that has never been done in american history since, you know, the laws changed to have a controversial firing of an fbi director who has a tenured term to precisely insulate himself from political pressure, it was a shock. so the fact that rosenstein thought extreme measures might