less as direct orders, than as simply how the president talks. interesting. one former adviser said that people have become conditioned to wait until mr. trump had raised an issue at least three times before acting on it. he did say it out loud the other day. that, is that number one, two, or three, willie in. there was the same reaction we got from the white house when the new york times reported this in january. is that the president says a lot of things in the course of a day, we don t take them seriously all the time. new york times reporter michael schmidt joins us now. he contributed to this report. michael, there s a ton in here. we ve said time and again on the show, as people have said, he ll never fire bob mueller. if for nothing else, than for his own self-interest. as he knows this would lead to a crisis and could cost him his presidency. it appears time and again in your now second report that he is entertaining the idea of firing bob mueller and in fact sarah sand
place to criticize him when you talk about the gassing and the chemical attacks on as you said on young children. it would be hard not to criticize him at this point. kasie, we had senator tim kane on and his concerns over syria that it should go through congress. this shouldn t be unilateral action coming out of the oval office. there should be renewed mission for military force and go through the way wars used to be prosecuted which was to be approved by congress before they took place. does that run through the mind of this white house at all or is he just going on his own here? willie, i think the tweet speaks for itself in that regard. you know, i had talked to one senior senator yesterday, one key senator on this, who said that they were expecting a private briefing from senior administration officials on what the plan would be in syria as early as this morning. it seems as though that may have come across in these tweets
smart of him after the fact. it made it seem a lot less sinister and he was much less threatened. i do know michael very well and michael every time i talked to him, i am loyal to the president. i am loyal to the president. i can say, michael, you got to protect yourself and your family. michael at this point, for whatever his emotional, legal, personal reasons is devotely, devotely, devoutly loyal to this president where i can t understand it candidly. i will see it as this unfolds, two days ago it was not about russia. it was not. it was about banking and finance. when you scratch that scab, there s a lot of puss coming out of it. thank you, donny. donny, i don t know if you know this or not and maybe it s because nobody comes up to you and talks to you in public spaces. never. people tell willie, mika and i they love watching the show and sit there and watch it with
today and host of kasiedc on msnbc kasie hunt. laser rock. now msnbc contributor, clint watts. we must now, though, stop what we re doing and head out to hong kong where willie geist is standing by at the tweet desk. i don t know if we have a delay here, but willie, jump in. sounds clean to me. good. we were just talking in our last segment about the potential of an attack from syria and potential russian response. well the president wait, can i ask something. hold on one second. willie, if you re in hong kong, why are you looking to your right? i m looking at my producer right here, my hong kong based producer. listen to this tweet, from the president of the united states, russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at syria, quote, get ready russia, because they will be coming. nice and new and smart. you shouldn t be partners with a
was thinking or maybe he s right, they re over his shoulder. i don t know. here we see the president s inflicting come pulses when it comes to syria. he saw the pictures of little children being gassed. he wants to strike back and look decisive as he did a year ago. on the other hand, he wants to get us out of syria, as he said last week. that was last week. and that was last week. madeleine albright among others suggested that the president s words last week emboldened assad that they was free to launch this chemical weapons attack. the scary thing, every decision he is making now is against the backdrop of this donald trump right now. and that s particularly frightening. yes, it is. yeah, but you know, though, willie, again, nobody is defending the president s language. nobody is using defending the president s use of tweets. at the same time, this is who this president is.