note, i wish you a very good night. from across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late with me and i ll see you at the end of tomorrow. tonight, the defense makes its case for reasonable doubt. the real argument was michael cohen cannot be trusted. michael cohen is the goat. the greatest liar of all time. the judge s sharp rebuke to trump s attorney. he was livid. he was livid as he should be. reporter: and the prosecution tells the story of a conspiracy to corrupt a presidential election. steinglass says the value of this corrupt bargain cannot be overstated. trump was overtly discussing the story to avoid it being published. this scheme could very well be what got president trump elected. tonight, rachel maddow recaps the closing arguments with lawrence o donnell, alex wagner, jen tsaki, and all in the courtroom. plus nicole wallace, chris hayes, ari melber, stephanie ruhle. as trump on trial begins. now. thank you for joining us tonight. w
phone call between giuliani and u.s. secretary of state mike pompeo. this took place the day after giuliani handed over materials with unproven claims about former vice president seen here, joe biden and his son hunter. documents show that mike pompeo spoke with giuliani briefly twice in late march. the first time occurring before giuliani handed over that information. it was the second conversation facilitated by the white house. for that call, giuliani s assistant reached out to president trump s then executive assistant madeline westerhouse, seen mere with rick perry. giuliani s assistant said she was getting nowhere through regular channels, end quote. he asked how to get giuliani and pompeo in touch. a lawyer an associate of
we see it again, and again, including the footage crisis of 2008. in the end, and in this characters they take their blood money and head to st. bart s for thankings giving and laugh. they get away with it every single time. it would be nice that people like the sacklers got what they deserve. it might make the rest of us les cynical. madeline westerhouse was the perjury assistant to president trump. she worked hard and did well at her job. it s hard to find anyone in washington who doesn t like her. yet now, she s unemployed and humiliated. she made a mistake of eating dinner with a washington post reporter named phil rutgear and made a couple catty remarks about the president s daughter. that can happen at dinners where wines served. what s stunning, what is really unusual is what happened next. the meal was explicitly off the
woodruff who we talked to in the last hour. she said it s sad that he felt he had to go out on twitter and say, i love tiffany. that s just painful to say that. i m sure you have similar agreements on that, but the white house could have kept this story under wraps if westerhout was not forced to resign. did they have no choice but to remove her, or could it have slipped under the radar? i think it could have slipped under the radar. trump sort of had to be persu e persuaded to do something about this, but as kelly was saying, this can get you in trouble even if it s said off the record with reporters. the president cares about his family, obviously, and has it very dloes close, and it
to be off the record, but you don t say things that are hurtful to people. john harwood, cnbc editor at large. john, that tweet offering praise but caution as well. what do you make of that and do you expect a tell-all book? no, i wouldn t. i think that as the president said, the whole thing was unfortunate. you had an assistant that wasn t being discreet with reporters and somehow that got back to white house officialofficials. i don t know if it was tiffany westerhout herself or reporters blabbing a little bit. the sad thing is what the content of those communications supposedly were, and the fact the president seems motivated to