investigative reporting. so if the president sort of different from what we heard from sarah huckabee sanders in the briefing, to me it sounds like it backfired. it was tweet, then, jim comey releasing the memo and then the appointment of bob muler to special counsel. right, well, the president uses twitter to needle people sometimes. he does lots of things with it. but one thing he does and i think that s kind of what he was doing with comey. it s certainly i thought it was a bad idea from the beginning, but he used it in the campaign, the tweets, and then i think they probably worked to his advantage, but trying to use them in government is a very different thing, and you create impressions, probably, that you don t want to create and have things going a course that you can t control nearly as well as if you were more traditional. i m the tweets worry me. but gloria, i want you to weigh on this as well.
better. but i think what sean today and a lot of people are telling the president is that you would make things a lot worse if you tried to fire mueller because you d have to go through rod rosenstein who could do it and he may refuse to do it, and then you would look even worse. so i think sean is probably saying what a lot of people are telling the president, which is, don t do it. and he said, also, that the president retains the authority to do so if he wants to, but at this point, he s certainly not thinking about it. he spoke out of a different side of his mouth and director woolsey, is the president saying that mueller is an honorable man and we ve heard that from a number of people in intel. why would it matter that he and james comey actually know one another. do you think their relationship would compromise mueller s integrity, sir. no, i really don t. i don t think friendship ought to be a disqualifying effect. if he was his brother-in-law or something, then, yes, maybe
started, with a tweet. former cia director james woolsey is back with us. i m also joined by gloria, our cnn chief political analyst. gloria, let me begin with you. we ve just did this briefing, this white house briefing that s happening now that we can t cover live. apparently sean spicer has said that even though the president has the power to do so, that he has no intention of firing bob mueller. but that sounds a bit different from that interview this morning on fox. well, the one thing you can see about donald trump is that he actually tells you what s going through his head. and you can hear it from the press and himself. he s not happy that mueller is close to comey. i ve heard from people who are familiar with the president s thinking that, you know, this is this is on his mind. he also believes that mueller has appointed a bunch of people who were pro-hillary clinton and have donated money to clinton. that doesn t make him feel any
all right. let s get you now to the white house to the briefing we can t see but we can hear. this is the q&a portion with sean spicer just wrapped moments ago so here is that audio. now, and with that, let s get into some questions. john. the president this morning in an interview with fox & friends seemed to indicate that he thinks the special counsel may have some conflict of interest, one being his friendship with comey, another being the fact that a lot of the people that he s hiring, bringing on, special counsel s office, were either hillary clinton supporters and the president said some of them had even worked for hillary clinton. does he is he still ruling out firing this special counsel? nothing s changed on that. in terms of his position on
made, it seems to me, and sean kept saying i m going to let the president s comments about mueller stand, he made himself crystal clear. well, if he if indeed the president was being crystal clear, it is at least crystal clear to me that the president is looking to define mueller on his terms. he sees him as a political opponent. he highlighted in that interview with fox the too close relationship he sees with comey, he thinks it s an important point to mention that mueller s lawyers that he s hired have made political donations to democrats. he s trying to frame how the country should see mueller and he wants them to see him as a political opponent here. let s listen to that. not as a hands-off investigator. go ahead and roll it, guys. he s very, very good friends with comey, which is very bot r bothersome, but he s also we re going to have to see. i mean, we re going to have to see in terms look, there has been no obstruction. there has been no collusion.