Have the press right out here, so perhaps you just want to stay to the press. But i just want to let you know there are was him, not me. Because im with him. He was hes a tremendous talent, hes a hispanic man, he went to harvard. I do not think it is right and fair for this administrations Labor Department to have epstein as the focus rather than the incredible economy that we have today. And so i called the president this morning, i told him that i thought the right thing was to step aside. Cabinet positions are temporary trusts. It would be selfish for me to st stay in this position and continue talking about a case thats 12 years old rather than about the amazing economy we have right now. And so i submitted my resignation to the president effective seven days from today. So epstein is out excuse me, acosta is out. He had been under fire over his role in the controversial 2008 epstein plea deal that. Is when acosta was the u. S. Attorney in the Southern District of florida. Let us try and cyst throusift ts here. Hans nichols is at the white house for us. He was at that wide ranging impromptu and back and forth. We have a msnbc senior political analysts. David jolly a former republican congressman from florida, also an msnbc contributor. And former federal prosecutor carol lamm is with me and so is nbcs investigation reporter tom winter. Hans, ill start with you there at the white house. You were there with the president in that gaggle. What did we learn . We learned that the president accepted the resignation. That was unclear when the president came out, i almost thought at first he wanted to sing alex acostas praise. Then he said he accepted the resignation. He also made it clear that he wants to drew a line under this epstein affair, he wants to move on. And President Donald Trump is clearly trying to distance himself from mr. Epstein. Listen to how he described their dispute without actually going into the details of it. Andy have a falling out a long time ago. The reason doesnt make any difference, frankly, but i havent spoken to him in frob y probably 15 years or more. I wasnt a big fan of Jeffrey Epstein, that i can tell you. And now if you look the remnants hurt this man and i hate to see it happen. He was very well known in palm beach the his island, whatever his island is, wherever it is, i was never there. Find out the people that went to the island. But, Jeffrey Epstein was not somebody that i respected. I threw him out. So, craig, acosta will lose his position at the end of next week. He said hed stay on for another seven days. They have a develop that they are saying is going to be the acting director. That makes three acting direct towards. And the president ges on oes on talk about the economy, ohio, wisconsin. A wideranging discussion. Take shots at paul ryan, weighing in on iran, trying to defend nancy pelosi. Im sure you have a busy hour trying to sort it all out. It was odd, hans, to hear peter pointed this out pit dont know if he did it on the air. It was odd to hear him go after some of the aforementioned, but he never said anything disparaging about Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. I mean, i dont know i think the white houses strategy on this is to basically pretend that donald trump didnt have a relationship and if he did it was so long ago and then he severed that relationship and moved on. It is slightly given how quickly the president is to criticize members of his own party, for example he called paul ryan a baby, he didnt say anything overtly negative about epstein. But did he try to make it clear that they had some sort of dispute, the nature of that dispute is something we should all be trying to figure out as reporters, and threw him out, as the president said, of his club and didnt want to have anything to do with him. The president also tried to shift and put the onus on democratic politicians like bill clinton who did travel with epstein and tried to make that point. Clearly they wanted to move on and thats why he accepted the resig nation of alex acosta and well see how we continue to talk about this and what the strategy of the president will be. Craig. Ashley, it was two days ago that the president supports his labor secretary publicly. Talked about that support. Do we know anymore about how this played out . Was this really acostas own doing or did the president give him a nudge . Well, were still finding this out in realtime. But what we do know in talking to people that day of acostas News Conference and this week was that his position was always fairly tenuous. The message from the white house and the people in the president s orbit was not that he was indefinitely safe, it was that he had bought himself another day or two. Acosta was someone who was not beloved in the administration. Its not that he had a ton of enemies, but he and the current chief of staff had tangled a little bit. There was some frustration that he was moving too slowly on some of the deregulation pushes they wanted to see from obama era policies. So there was that dynamic. He had rubbed some people the wrong way for other things and there was a sense in his News Conference, which of course was a performance, really, for an audience of one, some people thought had he done an okay job. He sort of hadnt done himself any real harm and that was a win. And other people thought that he needed to be more animated. Not necessarily kavanaugh animated, but something a little more forceful and he kind of liked that fulltlolthroated defense. It was always kind of touch and go and as we saw he didnt even make it a full week. I want to, david jolly, come to you for a moment. You watched all of that play out. Sure. I also found it a bit unusual on two occasions during that 30minute tirade they pointed out that alex acosta was hispanic for no apparent reason. But beyond that, what else struck you about what we just saw and heard from the president of the United States . First is a subtlety, craig, that i think everybody should take note of. There was no moral conviction in acosta resigning or in donald trump accepting the resignation. This was all of a transactional nature, a political insulation, if you will. Millions of americans heard that, particularly past survivors of sexual assault, heard this was a transactional moment for the president and acosta, not a moral one. I think what we know, as ashley alluded to, is the secretary of labors position particularly on the hill was going to grow untenable. Certainly there would be confrontations forthcoming. But you also have to look at the politics of the next 16 months. This would be very akin to a roy moore situation, although on a much graver scale that the president would have to wrestle with. When it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, call that though the president has denied it vehemently, his attorneys have as well, the epstein matter touches donald trump in a way roy moore never did. Donald trump was named in one of the allegations against Jeffrey Epstein back in a civil complaint in 2016, something that trump cant vehemently deny. But nonetheless, it is his Social Circle and donald trump needs to get away from this as quickly as he can. And cukudos to the journalists staying on top of it. Lets bring in tom winter here. Lets talk a little bit about this case that seems to have brought all of this to a head right now. The Jeffrey Epstein case and acostas handling of it back in 2008 when he was prosecutor there in southern florida. Well, i mean, i think, you know, we got here today for a couple reasons, for the journalistic efforts of the miami herald. Certainly we got here for another reason, because in february the judge who had been overseeing a lot of these six cases, the judge in the Southern District of florida in the Miami Federal Court essentially said, hey, you guys broke the law when you put together this deal and you didnt know the fight victims. On top of that, this is something that acosta wasnt being straightforward and wasnt being really forthcoming with at his press conference. He said and you guys led them to believe that you were still going to prosecute him even though youve got this signed agreement. So it was a couple of Different Things that got us to this point. Then i think on monday when everybody saw that another federal jurisdiction, the Southern District of florida, prosecutors here in manhattan were able to go after him and included a lot of the same conduct that epstein had been doing in florida that was under acostas purview back then, people looked at this and said why couldnt you have charged this at the time . This is pretty cut and dry the type of behavior and the things that hes alleged to have done. And by the way, he pleaded guilty to some of this stuff. I think when everybody looked at it in the totality, saw some of the contra dra dictions that were playing out in the press conference were we had the discussion here on msnbc earlier this week where i was going through what the state had found and found clear violations of federal law that they didnt even consider. The child pornography, thats an automatic for federal prosecutors. Youve got an image, an underage girl, boom, put it together. So i think i think we got to a point here today, and i can tell you its going to keep getting worse for acosta as more comes out, as more of these files from back then come out and are reported on and as we hear more from vfederal investigators here in new york. Ceremony, as a former prosecutor what do you make as acostas actions as u. S. Attorney and the resignation today. Remember, alex acosta was not just the United States attorney in the Southern District of florida. Back up for two years prior to that, he had been the assistant attorney general at the department of justice in washington as the head of the civil rights division. If anybody should have known how to appropriately treat victims of a sex trafficking crime, it should have been alex acosta. So to take in the very weak position he did as the United States attorney in miami and really let Jeffrey Epstein off the hook in the way did he, was was pretty bad. And, you know, in his it struck me really in his press conference the other day it sounded more like a Closing Argument the defense might give if they were trying to defend alex acosta. He said that, well, the crime victims rietsd act didnghts act to these young women because they didnt bring a case. But his own office in miami told the victims they were entitled to rights under that act. And they actually argued to the Defense Attorneys for epstein that the victims deserved notice under that act. So he was he was going against what his own prosecutors had argued in miami. Sthoifrpg t so i think the options for him were narrowing down, he just didnt have much choice at the end of the day having been found by a federal judge to have violated the law. Heres more of what the president said about his now outgoing labor secretary. He made a deal that people were happy with and then 12 years later theyre not happy with it. Youll have to figure all of that out. But the fact is, he has been a fantastic secretary of labor. And alex called me this morning and he wanted to see me and i actually said, well, we have the press right out here, so perhaps you just want to say it to the press. Hes a tremendous talent. Hes a hispanic man. He went to harvard, a great student. And in so many ways, i just hate what hes saying now. Because were going to miss him. Ashley, this is just the latest departure from this trump white house, and i think we have a screen here, full screen where we can show folks at home, the number of people who have left the administration so far. There are a lot of names on the screen from 2017 to 2018, and now the 2019 as well. Were going to keep the screen up for a little bit so folks can try and digest some of these. But the reality is, this is a president that has a number of acting secretaries, right, ashley . He sure does. I think secretary acostas departure now makes will be the fifth sort of acting open position. Its worth noting he also has an acting chief of staff. And the president , when you talk to people in his white house, he actually kind of likes this. He likes keeping people, he believes it keeps them a little off balance, a little more in his debt, kind of struggling to please him because they dont have that job security. Although, again, lets be clear, as weve seen, the president even a full cabinet secretary whos not acting, he can fire them with a tweet or an impromptu gaggle as we saw today. So its not real job security, but he doesnt mind keeping people off balance. It worries people who are sort of advocates of Good Government and traditionalism on the way this is done, but for the president himself, hes not actually particularly concerned about this. Hans nichols, the president also spent some time going after former Speaker Paul Ryan. Yeah. For folks who arent familiar with this new found feud, as it would seem, bring us up to speed on what led the president to unload on paul ryan. So paul ryan had given an interview to a reporter who was writing a book, that book came out. And in that book theres some critical comments about the president saying that paul ryan prevented President Donald Trump from making bad decisions because President Donald Trump wasnt that familiar with the workings of government, the levers of power. That was essentially paul ryans argument. For President Donald Trump, that was too much. He attacked him at at one point he called him a baby. He said hes an ineffective speaker. All but called him a lightweight. That was before and after he spoke about paul ryan two times in the between there he defended nancy pelosi as a democrat saying shes not a racist and that alexandria ocasiocortez knows better. So at the same time hes criticizing a Republican Former speaker whos out of power who is in private life, hes defending speaker pelosi, rising to her defense, and its just yet again another example that when the president feels however criticized, he fights back. Sometimes he almost seems to have a little regret, and i meat get dinged for this but ill give you a quick example. The president almost expressed contrition for the u. S. Ambassador kim darrochs, or uk ambassador of the u. S. That he was let go because the president most recently has been told that now departing ambassador darroch had said some nice things about President Trump as well. So some contrition for President Trump about darroch the whole darroch situation, but unloading on paul ryan. Just to remind folks about what he said about paul ryan. Heres just a snippet of the president on the south lawn. Here he is. Paul line let us down. Paul ryan was a terrible speaker. Frankly, he was a baby. He didnt know what the hell he was doing. Just a smattering there. We also, david jolly, found out a little bit more about the i. C. E. Raids, it would seem. The president saying that these are, in fact, going to start happening on sunday. But he also said were focused on criminals, were focused on if you look at ms13, we take those people out, we take them out very legally. They all have papers. It was it really didnt seem to make a whole lot of sense. No. Look, this is a campaign for imagery for this president. What he should have learned from 2018 is the imagery of separating families, in other words, going into somebodys home and pulling somebody out with the deportation order does not work for him politically. You have to ask, is it just rooted in cruelty or is it the politics of his base . But, craig, if i could reindividuals it a clip you played where he said there was an epstein deal and 12 years later people dont like it, who is the president blaming there . Is he blaming the press . Is he blaming the victims who now are coming out and saying he shouldnt have gotten this deal . Because at the end of the day when trump talks about draining the swamp and points at d. C. , i think a lot of americans look at these High Net WorthSocial Circles that insulate and overlook crimes by their peers out of some type of social deference what the president is doing here very subtly is very dangerous and i dont think we can overlook that. Thank you, everyone. We are also following more breaking news on this friday morning. The big hearing set for next week where Robert Muellers expected to testify. Those hearings may be delayed. Were reporting out this news right now. We will have more on the possible delay right after this. Possleib delay right after this. When you have diabetes, dietary choices are crucial to help manage blood sugar, but it can be difficult to find a balanced solution. Try greattasting boost glucose control. 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