That does it for us tonight. Well see you again tomorrow night. Now it is time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Ow good evening and welcome to our special labor day edition of the last word. We are now 64 days away from election day and the latest nbc news wall street journal poll shows 50 of voters want democrats to take control of congress. 42 want republicans to keep control. We are now 64 days away from and eight of those 25 now it is time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. That does it for us tonight. It is either that or an orange jumpsuit. The book comes two weeks to the day Michael Cohen testified under oath that the president personally directed him to break the law in an effort to win the white house. Wi yet in the White House Press no, but that is true. Mentioned it quickly. , not like, you know and i would certainly have thought that maybe you would have called the office. But thats okay. Ill speak to kellyanne. I am a little surprised that she wouldnt have told me, that she just walked in im talking to bob woodward. He said he told you about speaking to me. But you never told me. Why didnt you tell me . I would have been very happy to speak to him. All right. So what are you going to do . So i have another bad book coming out. It goes on. And you know, i what you can count on is that ive been very careful. Evelyn, are you on . Yes. Evelyn duffy, whos my assistant hello, evelyn. She transcribed all the tapes because with permission i taped people for hundreds of hours. Good. And i think theres nothing in this book that doesnt come e from a firsthand source. Is that correct, evelyn . But are you naming names or o do you just say sources . The names were do you name sources . I mean, are you naming the people or just say, you know, people have said . I say at 2 00 on this day the following happened and everyone whos there including yourself is quoted. And im sorry i didnt get to ge ask you about i mean, you do know im doing a great job for the country. Oh, yeah. Im sure he knows that. Hes got tapes. Thats what the Trump White House really did not understand until today, if they understand it even now. And bob woodward played one of those tapes publicly today. That phone call with the president. Ly to try to show the white house what he has. And then he told the president in that phone call, i taped people for hundreds of hours. And so now tonight donald trump knows that bob woodward taped members of the trump team for hundreds of hours. No one works harder at trying to find out what has happened inside the room in washington than bob woodward. And no one has more sources than bob woodward. When bob woodward was working on a book about the Clinton White house called the agenda, he came to me because so much of the Clinton White house agenda had to pass through the Senate Finance committee where i was the chief of staff. And i will never forget, Bob Woodwards first question to me, with no smalltalk, no beating around the bush, he wanted to know about what happened in a meeting with president clinton and congressional leaders in the cabinet room at the white house. And so his very first question to me was everyone in the cabinet room meeting says that you were taking notes, can i have your notes . If those days there were plenty of reporters who were trying tot get me to tell them what happened in the meetings in thee white house, in the senate et majority leaders office, in the speakers office. But no one ever asked if he or she could have my notes. Bob woodward always goes for the best possible sources and notes are always better than human memory. Many years later, when i was no longer working in government, i visited Bob Woodwards home a few times, where much of the vi space is devoted to his office, where his assistants are constantly transcribing audio recordings. E he gave me a tour of the workshop, a place where you can see decades and decades of archived audio recordings, recordings that are the Building Blocks of the Investigative Journalism that has so often e become the defining version of a presidency, the woodward version. What bob woodward calls the best obtainable version of the truth. And so tonight bob woodward has tapes and the white house has press releases. The most damning quotes in the excerpts of Bob Woodwards book that were already released todaa from the president s former criminal defense lawyer john dowd. De bob woodward describes a rehearsal session with the president where john dowd pretended to be Robert Mueller asking the president questions. The Washington Post reports that in that rehearsal session Donald Trumps answers were stumbles, contradictions, and lies until the prevent eventually lost his cool. This things a god damn hoax trump erupted at the start of a 30minute rant that finished with him saying i dont really want to testify. The book then describes a meeting john dowd with had he Robert Mueller and muellers deputy James Quarles in which dowd explained why he didnt n want the president to testify. Im not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot and you public that transcript because everything leaks in washington and the guys overseas are going to say, i told you he was an idiot, i told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. Go what are we dealing with this idiot for . After that meeting with Robert Mueller john dowd gave the president the following advice. Dont testify. Its either that or an orange jumpsuit. The president then said, ill be a real good witness. You are not a good witness, dowd replied. Mr. President , im afraid i just cant help you. And the next morning john dowd quit and he left an opening on trumps defense team that has since been filled by rudy giuliani. Inum leading off our discussion now, john heilemann, National Affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc. Hes also cohost and executiveb producer of showtimes the circus. An tim obriens with us, executive editor of bloomberg opinion. Hes the author of trump nation, a book about donald trump. And msnbc contributor. And david frum, a Senior Editor for the atlantic is the author of trumpocracy. John heilemann, youve done this kind of work that bob woodward has done, youve done it on then campaign trail, most famously and most widely read, game change and other books. Your assessment of how this battle is going so far as we come to the end of day one of the Trump White House versus bob woodward. Well, about how you would p have expected it to go, which is to say very well for bob woodward and very poorly for the white house. Or the white house has had has been lucky in some sense in its enemies, although everything that weve read so far from the woodward book, at least the excerpts and the reporting on it is very consistent with what we saw in Michael Wolffs book. It is the reality that whatever you think of fire and fury Michael Wolff is a more easily attacked messenger than bob e kn woodward. Again, without even being mean to Michael Wolff although there are issues with Michael Wolff. Bob woodward is the gold standard. Right . And i think there is and bob woodward has been in this crossfire before. Many times before. And look, hes got again, you said im familiar with it. I am. Theres a really very high premium. If youre going to do a book on deep background where youre going to say im going to quotem verbatim from meetings, from notes, from peoples recollections, the pressure it puts on the reporter is that you are never going to be able to do what donald trump is trying to play the game with bob woodward about. Who told you that . Woodward has said with these people he will never say i got this directly from jim mattis, from john kelly. The likelihood is he spoke to all of them. But he will never come out the reality is in many of these situations hes going to have that same quote knowing how bob works, hes going to have it from the speaker, from the person who heard, it from the people that other people in the room, other people they told about it. And memorialized perhaps in emails and notes of the conversation. Hes never going to say who the source is. But because of the fact that woodwards been doing this for so long and because so many of his books have withstood the at kind of criticism that come in all administrations of deep background books, because his books have held up so well to scrutiny for so long hes in a position of extraordinary power and although there are white house officials coming out saying i didnt use this word, i didnt use that word, what theyre not doing is quibbling with the gist of the reporting and in many cases some of the e people who are quibbling with the specific words are proven liars in the past. Again, bob woodward not a proven liar. If quite the opposite. Heres the president s latest lob in the battle tonight. Hes tweeted, the woodward book has already been refuted and t discredited by general secretary of Defense James Mattis and general chief of staff john kelly. Their quotes were made up frauds, a con on the public. Likewise other stories and quotes. Woodward is a dem operative . Notice timing . E . Tim obrien, various white houses have accused at different times bob woodward of being of the opposite party whenever these books come out. Its interesting that trump even now cannot help himself but give free publicity thats going to boost sales to this very pu critical book just like he did to omarosa and just like he did to Michael Wolff because he personalizes all of these and i the midst of it he cant think strategically. And anybody whos covered trump knows that the full picture of what woodward is presenting is only consistent with all the l reporting thats been out there for the last 2 1 2 years since trump began running, its 1 consistent with who donald trump has been since he was about 7 years old. He ran the Trump Organization this way. It was a bunch of people biting each other in the back, not loyal to him ultimately, and he ran roughshod over all of them. L he ran his Political Campaign when he ran for the presidency exactly the same way. You were in the midst of that, john. You know what that was about. And the picture thats created n here is amply solidified and backed up by lots of other reporting. Di with the additional factor that now you have bob woodward and the woodward method, which is he triangulates with sources, he backs things up with documents. He has tapes. So its a different order of magnitude from any kind of reporter that trump has ever dealt with before. In the same way that the Mueller Investigation is of a different order of magnitude on the legal side. Er but let me just say on this for a second as you were a different kind of reporter than trump had ever dealt with before when he dealt with you, and he ended up in court with you because he was stunned that you were the one who he could not con on the question of how rich he was. So and you won the lawsuit against him ai and i had tapes. And you had tapes. Of the depositions and so forth. But talk about trump, when hes up against something he doesnt understand because you experienced that with your own n book about trump and his business. Well, the tricky thing here is he is constantly up against things he doesnt understand because hes impatient, hes ignorant, and he has no real sense that hes vulnerable to anything. Hes been protected his whole life, first by wealth, then by celebrity, and now by the presidency. And hes never really suffered the consequences of his phenomenally bad decisionmaking. Until he actually stares it in the face. It clicked with him a couple wc months ago that don jr. Might ee un suddenly be vulnerable in the Mueller Investigation. In our case i dont think he ever thought the New York Times or my publisher would he retain attorneys to back me up. He then never thought they would get him for two days, for two eighthour depositions in which we put his own tax returns, his own bank records and business t records in front of him. And he was found on dozens of occasions to have lied. And that went into the record. And he essentially created a Rosetta Stone for understanding the kind of pathology and the world that trump exists in. So one of the reasons he gets into these situations is because of who he is. One of the reasons he survives them is because of who he is. And in that tape, that conversation with him and inof woodward, hes very blase about the fact that hes trying to lie his way out of never knowing l that bob woodward tried to interview him. Theres no real fear in it. Hes playing pingpong. Yeah. And david frum, thats one of the great things about the tape that bob woodward released todays theres a tape of donald trump and everything about it is false. I mean, its just quite obvious. And people should go online and listen to the whole thing. Where hes telling a recurring lie throughout the whole thing, which is that no one told him about this interview request and then bob woodward presses him just on one, on Lindsey Graham. He goes oh, well, okay, Lindsey Graham told and its kind of a look into the way trump operates with every lie he can k get away with he will try. It is a really important tape to listen to because what you also hear is as he is nailed on the lie by woodward, very elegantly and politely, the president becomes at the beginning hes relatively suave by his standards. An he becomes angrier and then ultimately incredibly selfpitying. Meanwhile, he summons in kellyanne conway, whos caught in a lie too. And again nailed elegantly and politely. And she has a very different method. First she tries to brazen it out, then she throws other people under the bus. Then she finally desperately changes the subject. The thing i find myself thinking about a lot as i review these first stories from the book, and of course well all want to read the finished product, i understand as i think about it the James Mattises and the general kellys. Theyre staying to serve the country. Ys and i understand why they have to they feel they need to protect their position. To me donald trump is what he is and bob woodward is of course the elegant and eminent figure that he is. Im puzzled by the gary cohns, the h. R. Mcmasters, the Rex Tillersons, the people who obviously talked to woodward, who obviously have unburdened themselves of their sense of thb extreme not only unfitness but danger to the country by this president. Are you going to do anything more than talk to a reporter months after the fact . Why didnt you resign together . Why didnt you on the day you left gary cohn, you are telling me that the president cannot remember that if you take a piece of paper off his desk that it was there, two hours later he then forgets the paper was ever there and he intended a catastrophically bad policy butd it was his policy and he cant remember it . Why didnt you share that with a committee of congress at a time when it was relevant . S why now and why anonymously . I understand its hazardous. But you know, a lot of americans have had over the centuries takn a lot of risks to defend the country. Its not so much to risk getting an angry negative tweet from this president compared to what other people have done in order to defend your country. And david, one other phenomenon were seeing just in these excerpts, and youre right, were going to have to see the whole book to analyze this. Es but it does seem like that the people who are swimming away at from this titanic that is the Trump White House or rowing away in their lifeboats, however you want to put it, are very eager to tell bob woodward extremely negative stuff about the president , which means it seems like theyre very eager to try to claim a space in the sane world as fast as they can. Reince priebus and as you say gary cohn and others who appear to be sources for this book. Yeah. Well, and i think many of them are obviously capable people and some of them probably morally fine people. I have a lot of respect for people like gary cohn and Rex Tillerson too. But own it. Stand up. Dont be anonymous. And dont wait. Dont give it to bob woodward. Were glad to have it in any way it comes. Ny but why not at the time . One of the questions presented by this book is should you serve this president . For people who are doing it for the right reasons and are in National Security roles, i commend them and thank them for serving the president. T but if you are going to leave or if youre forced out, make your resignation count. Do it in a group. Do it on the same day. And then immediately spell out in detail why youre doing it. David frum, tim obrien, john heilemann, thank you for starting us off tonight. When we come back, the most revealing moment in the kavanaugh confirmation hearing today came when Brett Kavanaugh refused to shake the hand of a man whose daughter was killed in the mass murder at her high school in parkland, florida. That man, Fred Guttenberg, will join us and tell us what he wanted to say to the nominee. Also tonight, we have more revelations from Bob Woodwards book and the New York Times is reporting that special prosecutor Robert Mueller has made the president a new offer. But its an offer that the president s lawyers might want him to refuse. 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