president said mexico was going to pay for. last night threatened the u.s. government to shut down because of it. mark murray in the house, normally in d.c., now get him in the building and nbc s national political correspondent steve kornacki who i begged to join me this morning. i saw him on morning joe breathing hot fire. i want to start with you, the president is asking for it. he wanted to relitigate charlottesville. charlottesville couldn t have been easier, i m going to denounce the kkk and the president didn t. what he left out last night was many sides, that hung up so many people last night. what s your take here? this is certainly a president who has been frustrated for at least a week about the media s coverage of his response, what s interesting here is the timing, of course the night before gave the speech on afghanistan and many of the republican senators who had criticized his response
certainly probed a lot of details. i would imagine that robert mueller and his team would first like to get a hold of the transcript, and go through all of the details that he talked about and see if there are areas they want to probe further to find out. this is an interesting role that he plays. he s not a journalist, he s a former journalist who is now a private investigator and so there would be no prohibition from subpoenaing him before a grand jury if that s the course they wanted to follow. the president is tossing up distraction after distraction, like last night, he aggressively went after the media, he went after congress, he went after basically anyone else who wronged him. is that going to affect the mueller investigation in any way? well, there is one piece of that that is really interesting and that is this berating of mitch mcconnell for not protecting him from the russia investigation. there is a federal statute that makes it a crime to obstruct justice by interferi
night was certainly to rev up the base ahead of challenges on the legislative front. this president has always his m.o. has been to run against the republican party and run against democrats and run against establishment as we know it. when you look at following, republicans poll numbers are much lower than the presidents and this is his way to gear up the base to take action against members of congress and there is concern among republicans that they wish he would channel that energy towards democrats and also a concern that they he channel that energy towards republicans heading into 2018. i wish i was going to win powerball later today. before we go, what does this mean for those inside the white house, high fiving since last friday and i was speaking to going steve bannon is out and we ll move the president to the center. hey general kelly, what center are you talking about? last night the president got up there and said steve bannon and donald trump forever and always. i thi
slowly but steadily. for fact s sake, this one is false too. next, trump on economic growth. last night he made a couple of claims, one, economic growth has surged to 2.6%. remember, we said we re going to try to hit 3%. well, actually, president trump promised 4% growth at the presidential debate last year in vegas and we have not hit 4%. and only the second quarter of this year hit 2.6%. the first quarter was 1.2%. so that is false and false. and on to defense spending. here s what the president said last night. we have also obtained historic increase in defense spending to prevent and deter conflict. we believe in peace through strength. well, pick your word, bigley or big time, this one is false. since 1977, there have been ten years when defense spending has gone up more than what trump has proposed for 2018.
presidency? i think that is crucial here, that difference, traditionally the president sometimes in the news, sometimes out of the news. sometimes gives a big speech on policy, other times about what s going on in prime time television or entertainment world. this president in a way we ve never seen is central not just to the news cycle but central to our culture. late night television has been built around donald trump. saturday night live built around donald trump and sports media built around donald trump. there is no precedent for a president this central to culture. when he s this central and this polarizing and this controversial and there s so much pushback from the culture against him, i think it s an untested proposition what that does to this country in terms of mass opinion and how it provides. steve brings up an extraordinary point. could one make the argument, the president is winning at hate? the country has never been this divided and people have never been this te