are generally insecure and feel inadequate in some way. but that may be as it may, that is who he is and he s president of the united states right now. so he says totally inappropriate things. and for the president to jump into the middle of a criminal prosecution is not done, but, yeah it is. and i guess my point about being surprised is that we ve sort of become accustomed to that which is inappropriate. this is the first time he s jeopardized a prosecution of a terrorist on his watch. right, right. exactly. and, you know, the idea of somehow transferring this guy to military custody and transferring him back. it s insane. and that s never going to work. it was a bad idea, but to him, it wasn t even an idea. it was almost a reflex. must be tough. therefore, must have death penalty. phil rucker, nothing tough about openly pondering and looking so unsure of himself. i think what he projected was
these things. these were people put in those positions because of their loyalty to the president not because of expertise or experience deal with these thing and likely without much knowledge of the conversations they were having in that moment and seemingly very little consideration that they would now be a matter of huge importance to perhaps that someone would have plead guilty to lying to the fbi. steve schmidt, let me read you something. we ve worked on a few campaigns. here s the description in the new york times about what eli is talking about. the donald trump foreign policy team. ongoing trump migraine. his initial foreign policy team. mr. trump surprise march to the nomination left the party s establish want openly questioning whether he had the foreign policy experience and was too much of a loose cannon to be entrusted with the presidency. his solution was to cobble together a list of men who were almost immediately written off as a collection of fringe thinkers and h
here which you say amount to collusion, but the hillary clinton campaign and the democratic national committee go out and pay for this and peddle it and that s just you don t know that we haven t covered that story. it s considered opposition research and brushed away. i ll send an e-mail to friends at fox and you can peddle your propaganda there. are you aware of anybody, as anybody who covers the white house is, that is concern of what papadopoulos has shared since he plead guilty in july. no, i m not aware of anybody. you re not aware of anybody that s concerned what george papadopoulos said? no. and you re telling the truth? i ve heard four people that are worried this is a climb the ladder process. these are people that spoke privately and off the record. right now we have indictments that have nothing to do with the president of the united states and the white house. i m not asking about the president. i am asking about your former colleagues. the six staffers
used that word. said the president is zen. so that person should go to spin doctor jail. let me give you the last quick word here. i talk to people who were in contact with the president on sunday before the news was even known and he was anything but zen. what do you make of the elaborate spin effort over his state of mind? it s not going to work because there s nothing that kills your narrative that this is a hoax like a real indictment. and charging documents that actually lay out what i think is a road map to collusion. when you put everything in the timeline together, you put the facts that mueller presented in those documents together, it looks a lot like the campaign was willing and able and had the access to collude. able is up in the air but willing for sure. all right. phil rucker, thank you so much for starting us off today. when we come back, connecting the dots. jeff sessions, low level george, and his plan for donald trump to meet with russians.
charges with mr. manafort and others are a different scope. i can t speak with any knowledge on that with the exception i think there s a distinction there. do you think the white house is doing a good job on russia? we ve got a new poll out today that says that more than half the country thinks that donald trump the washington post poll, more than half 58% approve of bob mueller s investigation and 49% of the american public believe it s likely that trump himself committed a crime. i heard earlier with a reporter on that that the number was not was a combined number in terms of i ll throw you ten points. let me shave ten points. say they are ten points wrong. the margin of error. do you think they re doing a good job if 48% of the public approves of the investigation and 49% thinks the president committed a crime? the white house is leaning in to say we re cooperating. you refuse to say that bob mueller is a man of integrity.