we saw yesterday, and one of the things that s interesting about it is this could have been treated in the trump team and in the giuliani approach to tv this weekend as a kind of triumphant turn of, look, the special prosecutor has said buzzfeed s wrong, and just stomp on that and leave it at that, but within that, rudy giuliani decided, and the team must have decided, actually this is a good time to also throw out there what s going to eventually emerge, which is donald trump has answered in writing that he may have been even gaungaged many t kib kinds of talks throughout the entire presidential campaign, talks about developing a trump tower in moscow, that within all the noise about buzzfeed being spanked by the special prosecutor, let s also throw this thing out there now. yeah. doesn t make a lot of tactical sense, lawrence, but, you know, i think what giuliani is, perhaps, trying to do is what we call draw the sting.
i don t deal there. i have no businesses there. i have nothing to do with russia, folks. okay? special prosecutor robert mueller seems to maybe have some doubts about that. seems to think the truth is probably something different from what donald trump said during the campaign. and so according to the new york times, one of the questions that the special prosecutor asked president trump to answer in writing is, what communication did you have with michael d. cohen, felix sater, and others including foreign nationals about russian real estate developments during the campaign? key phrase, during the campaign. and the answer is, a lot. according to president trump s tv lawyer, rudy giuliani, and that is a new public answer for rudy giuliani and donald trump. and it is an answer that actually does confirm part of what buzzfeed reported last week about donald trump s personal attorney, michael cohen, about
prosecutor and an msnbc legal analyst. and john, it does seem if you stare at the rudy giuliani performances long enough, if you rewind tape and if you try to think it through, you can sometimes find, not only sometimes, what that was all about, like, what the mission was. and it seems to me the more i stared at it, yesterday s mission was perfectly normal. normalized the idea that donald trump was talking to michael cohen and others, possibly, during the presidential campaign, throughout the presidential campaign, about trying to build a trump tower in moscow. yes. i think, lawrence, the key element here is that you have to do it in phases because if you listen to rudy for long enough, your brain is reduced to mush. true. you reconstitute your brain into a functioning organ and then you apply it and make sense of what he s trying to do. i think on first pass, your reaction to it is that the back and forth between buzzfeed and the special counsel s office late last week was an un
call draw the sting. every prosecutor knows that when you stand up and give an opening statement, you want to certainly highlight all the incriminating evidence that makes it seem beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime, but even more importantly, you want to draw the sting of any really bad evidence that cuts against your theory of the prosecution. it looks like maybe giuliani is trying to draw the sting with what is some pretty blockbuster and really damaging information that we have now come to learn. when the president stands up and we see the highlight reels where he says over and over and over again, i have no business dealings in russia, no business interests, i don t plan to build trump tower monument to myself in moscow. then only to have his own lawyer shoot that down, definitively, as both you and john say, at a moment when they should be celebrating sort of the special counsel shooting down some really damaging information from buzzfeed.
i m all over the world, but we re not involved in russia. i have no relationship to russia whatsoever. i don t deal there. i have no businesses there. i have nothing to do with russia, folks. okay? special prosecutor robert mueller seems to maybe have some doubts about that. seems to think the truth is probably something different from what donald trump said during the campaign. and so according to the new york times, one of the questions that the special prosecutor asked president trump to answer in writing is, what communication did you have with michael d. cohen, felix sater, and others including foreign nationals about russian real estate developments during the campaign? key phrase, during the campaign. and the answer is, a lot. according to president trump s tv lawyer, rudy giuliani, and that is a new public answer for rudy giuliani and donald trump. and it is an answer that actually does confirm part of what buzzfeed reported last week