David Gura hosts coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Conflicting information from weekend to weekend about what the president may or may not do, david. Geoff, thank you very much. Appreciate it as always. Geoff bennett joining us from the white house. I want to turn to my panel. Joyce, let me start with you. Bearing in mind, youre not an expert on election law, but i want to stick with one point that geoff just raised there about the dangers, the legal dangers of taking a meeting with representatives of a foreign country to offer dirt here on an opposing candidate in a u. S. Election. Help us understand the legal consequences of that. Theres a very specific statute that prohibits this kind of conduct. It makes it illegal to accept or to solicit a donation or a contribution related to a u. S. Election from either a foreign citizen or a foreign government. So on its face, that prohibition would seem to apply pretty clearly. If, for instance, while running a president ial campaign, you took a meeting with russians who
wanted to give you some information that you could use to get your candidate elected. Obviously, theres lots of legal detail work that has to be done to make sure that each element of that statute would be satisfied. But on its face, this is a very damaging admission for the president to have made. I think its important to keep drawing this contrast between what we learned today and what we learned initially from the New York Times as a result of their reporting. We learned approximabout this m andrew. Im going read the first statement, we know drafted by the president initially. Those around the president said it was drafted by representatives of donald trump jr. And jared kushner. Just reading it here, we primarily discussed a program about the adoption of russian children that was active and popular with American Families years ago, and was since ended by the russian government. But it was not a Campaign Issue at the time, and there was no followup. Again, that was given to the New York Times, published back on july the 8th of 2017. Help me understand here, andrew, how much this story has evolved. How much this narrative has changed. As geoff mentioned just a moment ago, donald trump jr. Was on capitol hill. He testified before the House Intelligence Committee for six, seven hours about this meeting. How much has this story changed . Its evolved greatly. And i want to take you back to september of 2017. Almost a year ago. When donald trump jr. Testified in front of the Senate Judiciary committee. The day after he testified, senator chris coons, who is a senior democrat on that committee, his office sent out the u. S. Code statute for giving false statements to congress. He sent it out just basically as a reminder that, hey, you know, a hardy reminder, saying if you lie to congress, thats a crime. And he was in the context of donald trump jr. s interview with the committee. So there has been a healthy dose of skepticism among those on capitol hill who have been greatly involved in this investigation, and questioning the people involved in that meeting for a long time now. And you know, its been almost a year since donald trump jr. Testified in front of the Senate Judiciary committee. Other congressional committees
want to speak with donald trump jr. Again about this. And its sort of rearing its ugly head, the more we go on and the more we learn about this. And theres been a lot of skepticism about who to trust about the version of events surrounding this meeting. Joyce, i want to get your perspective here on how imperilled donald trump jr. Is. In looking at the recent history here, how this tweet came about. There was a long piece in the Washington Post today that centered on, in part, President Trumps concern, according to aides, about his eldest son, about donald trump jr. He comes out with this tweet, says hes not concerned about his son. But isnt what weve seen here todayta today tantamount to the dad throwing the kid into the pool of water. He has greatly imperilled his son by doing this. Trump, manafort, kushner, all in peril over the meeting. The president says, not a crime, its okay to meet with the
russians. But just in case its not okay, i didnt know about it. And that really looks like hes divorcing himself from the three people that we know participated in that meeting, saying, even if they committed a crime, i didnt do anything. And i have to tell you, david, thats very contrary from what prosecutors are used to seeing. Obvio often if you have a father and son involved in committing a crime together, the father will offer to plead guilty in exchange for lenience sy for th son. I cant remember a time when i saw a dad completely throw his kid under the bus like this. I want to know how much is this a focus of the investigation that is ongoing. That is, is Robert Mueller focusing on this meeting that took place in trump tower . Just want to get your perspective. Weve talked about the long view here. How much time has elapsed since 2016. I was talking with congressman Eric Swalwell just a few minutes ago about his effort to get at the truth of what happened there. Theres only one version of
that. Given how far weve come, how close do you think we are to knowing what happened in that meeting, and who is going to be the individual, how are we going to determine when the president knew about this meeting . Evwell, i think its going t be up to the Special Counsel to determine that. Weve seen republicans at least on the House Intelligence Committee, which congressman swalwell sits on. They have closed their investigation while he and the other democrats on the Committee Want to continue to interview witnesses the more we learn about these contradictory and conflicting statements from people involved, particularly in the trump tower meeting. I will note that the president in his tweet is correct in a sense that people do often take meetings in a president ial campaign regarding Opposition Research about their opposing candidates. What is not normal about this meeting was that it was about, a. , information that was stolen. That is, you know, the dirt on Hillary Clinton that the russians allegedly hacked, and that was disseminated via wikileaks. And number two, it was a meeting in which half the participants were citizens of a foreign government, and in a couple of
their cases, directly connected to the kremlin. And theres a lot of debate on capitol hill about this right now, particularly between the leaders of the republican and the Democratic Congressional committees Congressional Campaign committees, that is, about to what extent wican thei candidates use information that they know is stolen, maybe stolen by a foreign government, as part of their campaigns, even if it is in the public domain. Thats something that will continue to be debated on capitol hill as we get closer to the midterm elections. Joyce, last question to you. Were dealing with somebody who cant seem to get his story straight. At least thats one thing that were dealing with here. I want to play a little tape from last night, the president heading out to ohio for this rally, ahead of the Special Election on tuesday. Lets take a listen to what the president had to say. We have got to stop it. Weve got to stop meddling. Weve got to stop everybody from attacking us. But there are a lot. Russias there, chinas there. Hey. Were doing well with north korea, but theyre probably there. Weve got to stop everybody. Joyce, your perspective on donald trump, the client. Use that example there. As i said a few minutes ago, you have the National Security advisers to the president coming out and saying, were focused on russia. Theyre the ones who intervened in the last election back in 2016. They are trying to intervene in the mid terms, as well. And in elections subsequent to that. You hear President Trump there saying what he said before. Could be russia, could be other countries. How hard is it as an attorney to deal with somebody who is at this basic level an unreliable narrator . It is really difficult. And i actually feel really sorry for the lawyers trying to get control of their client here. You can envision them this morning as they saw this series of tweets coming out, wanting to physically put their hands over the president s hands and take the phone away from him so he had to stop tweeting. These are very damaging. And although trump is trying to realign his position in the court of Public Opinion and with his base and is perhaps being successful in that regard, this
series of tweets and shifting excuses and stories will also be carefully tracked by prosecutors, and it may well come into play as evidence in a prosecution, because one thing that juries understand is that someone who lies about the reason for a meeting and changes their story over time is someone who has good reason to hide what was going on at that meeting. Former u. S. Attorney, joyce vance. Stick with us. Im going to bring you back later this hour. My thanks to the daily beast. I appreciate your time here on this sunday. After the break, were going to turn to another tweet the president may regret. That being his attack on lebron james, which is sparking anger from all sides of the aisle in los angeles and cleveland. And is getting pushback from Donald Trumps own family. G news bundle and save big, but now its time to find my dream abode. Right away, i could tell his priorities were a little unorthodox. Keep going. Stop. A little bit down. Stop. Back up again. Is this adequate sunlight for a Komodo Dragon . Yeah. Sure, i want that discount on Car Insurance just for owning a home, but im not compromising. Youre taking a shower . Water pressures crucial, scott its like they say location, location, koi pond. They dont say that. But prevagen helps your Brain Locwith an ingredientoi pond. Originally discovered. In jellyfish. In clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve shortterm memory. Prevagen. Healthier brain. Better life. [music playing] ceo the employee of the year, anna. vo progress is in the pursuit. Audi will cover your first months Lease Payment on select models during summer of audi sales event. Did he say
mike, i want to start with you. Get your reaction to the president s tweet and the backlash thats followed. But it strikes me, when you look at it in contrast to the event last night, he didnt talk about it in ohio. Its another example of the president , with real bombast, saying something on twitter, saying something in a statement, but then not doubling down when he goes to a place where it would actually very acutely matter to people. Yeah. And also not be popular. So i think perhaps we give President Trump some credit for knowing how to rile up the passions, especially of his base. Its a tautology. His base is the people who love him. So, yes, the people who love him are going to love him. But we compare it to maybe the nfl anthem speech, which worked for him. No matter what you think of the issue, he would say, and i think theres a case to be made, that it worked for him. This was not like that tweet for a couple of reasons. I think this just was a spasm of anger. It was illconsidered in the moment. And the very fact that his wife, with unbidden unbidden, has
pressed back and said i disagree with that, perhaps shows theres no political hay to be made out of this moment when he was mad, where he was insulted, where lebron james called him divisive and he seemed extremely determined to prove lebron james right. Using the Spasm Metaphor here, there have been a series of spasms that might make one wonder if there is a condition more than anything else. The president singling out an individual. When you look at how hes done it and what hes said about another athlete and another person of color, there is a trend thats emerging here, pretty clearly. Well, theres absolutely a trend. And i think that youre right. The individual, the athlete, the black athlete that he is Dog Whistling right now, that needs to be considered. Youre talking about a very successful black man who has started a school to serve underserved youth in akron, and frankly, taking over the role that the government should be taking in this situation. And then calling him unintelligent. That is a very coded word. And i think the language that is used in this situation is very deliberate. Calling don lemon, the interviewer, the dumbest man on television, as well, mike. And i just want to get a sense from you here about how he could have gotten from that interview what he did. Shes bringing up the point he was on there to talk about this school he started, this Public Private partnership for underprivileged children in his hometown of akron. He talked about sports as a unifier, from a very personal perspective. This is something that made him see race differently. How do you see this getting perverted the way that it did . I think its through Donald Trumps lens, which is a very thinskinned. And egotistical lens. All he heard were the parts that applied to him. I do have to say, because ive heard this idea, and its not a bad idea, that it is racially specifically racially insensitive and a racial pattern of Donald Trumps. Lets throw if there the fact that he has tagged members of congress, Maxine Waters low i. Q. Individual. But i went back. He very frequently criticizes
the intelligence of all sorts of people. Hes done it about chris matthews. Hes done it about robert de niro. He called bill moyers a dummy. It seems to me the more likely explanation is that while he may be racist and in my opinion he is, that he has this freefloating vitriol that attacks people who attack him, and attaches itself to people who he doesnt like. Maybe he doesnt like black people more than he likes white people. Maybe thats whats going on. But i actually cant i actually dont see a definite pattern where he singles out africanamericans for being unintelligent more than he does for many other people. Just want to throw that out there. Recently, though, in the context of Congressman Waters in particular, it seems like something thats true. Some of those examples i mentioned, jon stewart another one. Those go back before he was running for president. Calling people dummies online. I want to ask about the response to this and there have been a host of athletes who have responded to what the president tweeted. As we mentioned, the first lady has responded as well. What do you make of that . What does it say to you about the Sports Community more broadly taking mikes parallel here, looking at the National Anthem controversy. Whats different you see here about the response to this . Well, its actually kind of hilarious, because donald trump said, i like mike in his tweet to kind of fan the flames a little bit about the lebron james versus Michael Jordan debate. And then Michael Jordan came out and said that he stands with lebron, essentially. On the melania front, i think were giving her a little bit too much credit, if you ask me, for going against the grain in the white house. And she also said, you know, i would be very willing to visit the school that lebron james is starting. On lebron james front, i dont know if he would be willing to have melania over, especially after some of the things shes said on the other side, being for the Birther Movement and everything like that. The support from the Athlete Community i think is very telling. Because, yes, while trump has questioned the intelligence of
people of all walks of life, i think in this very specific case, he is speaking to his base who maybe has a little bit of resentment against athletes that they see as playing a game for millions of dollars, where now you have lebron james taking the millions of dollars that hes making and putting it to good use. Mike, its a peculiar thing. I dont associate this president with athleticism or athletics. The code she just referenced there, i like mike, its this bizarre version of i like mike he has a strange relationship with sports. Yes, he encountered a lot of golfers through the trump administration. Whats your take on that, his engagement with athletes and sports more generally . I think he likes celebrity. And so as athletes have gained in celebrity, hes into that. I also think i know he has been a Boxing Promoter and he liked the fact that when he was promoting boxers, leon spinx,
hes attracted to the strong man during his rallies. Bobby knight would show up. And he owned a usfl team and destroyed that league. He tried to own the buffalo bills. If only that had happened maybe, you know, he would be causing Roger Goodell headaches instead of lebron james and everyone else. More headaches. Mike pesca, thank you very much. Certainly this conversation is going to continue. Up next, decision imminent. We could be just days away from finding out if President Trump will sit down for an interview with Robert Muellers team. Maybe a few more days away, in light of the tweet this morning. A look at what the terms of that interview could be. Observe this total, unabashed freak, mark. Not the kind of freak who wears a suit of armor to a renaissance fair. Nay, noth