he declined to comment on whether he s planning on firing rosenstein. norm? well, rod rosenstein is one of the finest public servants that our justice system has ever seen. i ve known him for a quarter of a century. and he may be exceeded in that capacity only by bob mueller. they re two outstanding men, both rock ribbed republicans, and i think it s just terrible that the president, apart from the legal issues, which are profound, erin, it s atrocious that we have a president of the united states who threatens criminal prosecution against his adversaries for doing what? following the law. it was not a close question to appoint a special counsel. it was required under the law. like the sessions recusal was required. so, you have a president here who s run amok. he s off the rails. no wonder he s a named subject
the end there. there has been reporting that trump has considered firing rosenstein. he has not. but he did order former white house counsel don mcgahn to fire mueller. mcgahn refused, threatening to resign first. he also cooperated with the special counsel s investigation, sitting down in interviews spanning some 30 hours. mcgahn and the rule of law held the line. and then there s trump s laughable, phony allegation of rampant voter fraud. experts say it doesn t exist. because he lost the popular vote to hillary clinton, trump tweeted this right after the election, okay? in addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, i won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. he harped on this claim, attacking the very foundation of our democracy and established a
investigation and hired special counsel robert mueller himself a former fbi director and a man who has a stellar reputation in law enforcement, hired him to run it. trump hated that move but failed to realize that by firing comey, he himself triggered a more intense investigation. so as we know, the president rails against it every chance he gets. this is one of his unhinged tweets from yesterday, okay? here it is. the inner workings of the mueller investigation are a total mess. they have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. they are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. they are a disgrace to our nation and don t care how many lives they ruin. a total witch hunt like no other in american history, all caps at the end there. there has been reporting that trump has considered firing rosenstein. he has not. but he did order former white
firing rosenstein and the impact that that could have had on narrowing and constricting the mueller investigation could easily have been perceived as evidence of the intent to obstruct justice. seems like the safer course for him is to make his piece with rosenstein and work through it. and david from the president at minimum got to show rosenstein who is boss theoretically by order him to come on this plane ride with me and spend some time talking there. but it could be the president is just waiting until after election day to fire him. because there s not a lot donald trump wants rosenstein affirmatively to do. there s things he wants him not to do. so the pulse check is this the day when the president is pressuring rosenstein either to shutdown mueller or quit be fired by somebody who will? and that didn t happen today. and every day that doesn t happen is a good day. david frum, max boot, joyce vance, thank you all for joining us tonight.
course rosenstein reports dr directly to the president on a number of matters. but it s hard to know what to make of this. was it all theater or was the president really interested at one point in firing rosenstein but then pushed back from that? i think that that latter explanation is more likely. because for this president firing rosenstein and the impact that that could have had on narrowing and constricting the mueller investigation could easily have been perceived as evidence of the intent to obstruct justice. seems like the safer course for him is to make his piece with rosenstein and work through it. and david from the president at minimum got to show rosenstein who is boss theoretically by order him to come on this plane ride with me and spend some time talking there. but it could be the president is just waiting until after election day to fire him. because there s not a lot