administration, maybe even before that, to begin to change the paradigm. is cy vance about to nail donald trump? joins me live. and high profile new york democrats join the calls for andrew cuomo s resignation, rebecca traifter reporting from inside the office. all in starts now. hello, i m chris hayes. it s still sinking in the biden administration was able to pass this towering achievement that looked improbable even in december. think back. race called for biden. clear he was winner but sitting president was doing everything in his power attempting to overturn the election through legal and extralegal means and balance of the senate was up for grabs. came down to georgia and democrats had to win two seats and had not won a senate chair in georgia in decades. but here we are. oldest man elected president, been in public life for 50 years, ran as centrist. narrow majority came together to deliver most processive comprehensive rescue package in many generations. we demo
The president frequently criticized him to other advisors saying his own press coverage had not improved. and jane mare describing the close ties between the trump white house and fox news. reminded readers that the former executive was repaunsable for cleaning up extensive abuse and several lawsuits name him as a complicit in pay offs and victim intimidation. and sean hannity became a match maker, arranging a dinner for the president at the white house and proposed shine as a top communicatio communications official or deputy chief of staff. now he s neither. what was your reaction to it? um, well, i guess i thought probably shine had just become
Fox news executive, and given the president s proclivity for fox news, i think he had designs on shine, who was a long-time friend of sean hannity, one of his closest friends. i think he thought he would see the news look generally more like fox news and i think he was disappointed when that wasn t the case. i don t think the two totally clicked or hit it off. but that s not particular to shine. he s the fifth person to hold this title of white house communications director, and you begin to see a pattern where i think it s really that nobody can really perform this job successfully in the white house for a president who does his own communications. there was also a story here in the last few days in the new yorker by jane mare about fox news. this is about how fox news has been operating its propaganda or state-run tv for the trump administration. did that have anything to do with this, do you think? the timing is certainly close.
Our legal analyst shan wu is here, alice stewart joins us and john avlon. shan, to you, let s listen to jane mare, who co-authored this new yorker piece on debbie ramirez with ronan farrow, talking on cbs this morning about the claims of political motivation here. listen to what she said. i also interviewed a woman who judge kavanaugh wanted us to talk to, as someone who would defend him. i asked her outright, she knows deborah ramirez. i said do you think politics was a motivation? she said to me, no, and she s kavanaugh s defender. nobody is really alleging politics was the motivation here. shan wu, aside from the president and the white house. shan, can you hear us? he can t hear. all right, just your take on what we heard. i think it s important to know that people are saying
James comey, the director of the fbi, would not have been able to anticipate that putting out this vague letter that doesn t really say anything, but just announces that they found some additional e-mails and let people sort of draw their own conclusions, is there any chance he could have anticipated that the republicans on those committees, all the committee heads it was addressed to, the democrats or the ranking members were cced, is there any chance he wouldn t have thought that would be immediately leaked, immediately used in the election? no, not at all. he knew exactly what was going to happen. knew exactly what he was doing. i am not one of the people that thinks jim comey did this because he s a registered republican. i actually think he did this because he has, you know always cultivated a reputation for independence and integrity. and honestly, he s let it go to his head. and he has become kind of thin-skinned in that he can t take the criticism from republicans and he s