he s attacked everyone when it comes to the russia investigation. so he s clearly nervous. people in the white house are nervous about mueller is doing, but they re doing everything they can to undermine him indirectly. i think with the news report yesterday coming out from the new york times about kushner s potential illicit or inappropriate dealing with getting a loan to his business after a meeting with this massive firm is only going to make it more likely that mueller looks into the possibility of whether or not he was courting foreign investors during the transition. or trying to make money. the line blurring between the trump and kushner brand and the government service is getting blurrier, and that ultimately is what mueller is going to be looking at also is the money trail. we re going to look in that in the b block. one of the line of questioning from mueller to witnesses is did donald trump take the positions he was taking because of his business interests as an
of putin personally and very friendly to russia, even as you point out in the context of a republican primary where that was really unorthodox. it has always been one of the great mysteries of the trump campaign why he did those things. and to what extent there is private or nonpublic elements that might help explain it. and so at one level it s completely unsurprising that mueller s people are asking questions about it. these are the questions that led us to think that there was something troubling in the trump/russia relationship long before we knew about it. long before we knew about the trump tower meeting or george papadopoulos or any of that. but it is really interesting to see that those are active lines of questioning. ben, quickly, what are you looking out for next?
made, but he s been trump actually sandoval him to the point of tears last year, and this is not fun to have abject humiliation that trump is subjecting him to. i don t think we can say that word on television, shmucky. i looked it up. we ll find out. kimberly atkins, what happens when donald trump gets really frustrated, like really frustrated with the mueller probe when it gets too close to home? will he finally end up firing his attorney general, which he s been so displeased with? i can t imagine that he would. i think the people around him would remind him that firing the attorney general would set up a confirmation battle at the top spot at the justice department just when this russia investigation is ongoing, just ahead of the midterm elections. i think that s one reason jeff sessions is unbothered because
what was the public messaging going to be around had a and on down the line in all these moments, the statement on the plane. she s going to be valuable to robert mueller. guys, thank you very much. appreciate it. thank you. we should note that the markets while we ve been having this conversation have dropped down 500 points right now. that s partially at the very least because of donald trump making the announcement he did on tariffs today. we ll talk about this later in the hour and keep our eye on this. meantime, for months the belief has been that special prosecutor robert mueller was more likely to be building a case of obstruction against the president. but my exclusive nbc news reporting with carol lee found the scope of mueller s investigation is, in fact, much wider. the possibility that he still might be investigating collusion, that is not off the
attention to the question of what the u.s. side of that interference looked like. i thought your story was a really interesting portrait from a set of unnamed witnesses who have appeared in front of mueller s interviewers as to the sort of questions they re asking and therefore you can draw a certain amount of inference. but you can draw a certain amount much inference about active lines of inquiry. why did donald trump take the positions he was taking and could his business interests have been in play? one of the questions was did you see any russians around the office? did donald trump ever tell you why he was so friendly to russia, especially early on when he was campaigning in a gop primary where russia was a bug