counterintelligence operation especially on the president of the united states without layers and layers of review. and that s done to protect everybody involved. there has to be i m convinced there s even more. there s signals intelligence. there s intelligence from our allies, human intelligence, and more information before the fbi could take the dramatic step of opening up a counterintelligence operation against the president of the united states. and then we have to look at it, now you have these and we find something. where are we? what s ultimately the difference between if he is an agent of a foreign government or if he s an unwitting agent of the foreign government? this is an important point. the president is saying i was never a russian agent, if you will. but as michael schmidt points out in his piece, the fbi was looking into whether he was unwittingly being used by russia, so the president wouldn t have known about it. right? well, there s a big continuum from being
reporting in the new york times. still ahead on morning joe he s brimming with excitement. he never breaks. aww. we get a smile. just the facts, ma am. just the facts. he looks a little tired. he was up with some of us on bryant s show last night. you don t sleep, do you, michael? this is not about me. let s go something else. you know what, by saying it s not about you, you made everything about you. no. no, he did not. great job, thank you very much. you know he s like me, he doesn t like the spotlight. just keep it all right, coach. we ll take you through rose anne s fast fall yesterday after the ugly tweet. what it means for the network that fired her. and the president, who counted her as a key supporter. plus, north korea looks to
investigation that he knew would come back to him, he s berating his own attorney general and yelling at him. for doing what any lawyer would have to do. it s an obvious call for most people that jeff sessions would have refused to recuse himself because of his role in the campaign many other things, we know having talked to enough people, everyone at this table knows and michael schmidt points out in the piece, this has been the part of the investigation that s stuck in the craw of president trump since the beginning. talk about from the beginning. again, you got to go to state of mind. look at the fact that before any of this started out, sessions recuses himself, trump freaks out. sessions doesn t tell the truth about his meetings with russians, jared doesn t tell his truth about meeting with russians. mike pence doesn t tell the truth. bald-faced lies, saying we never met with any russians during the campaign. you go back and you look at their state of mind.
they all were lying about contacts with russians and donald trump freaking out about an investigation, really hadn t even begun. and the frame around all of this is that donald trump believes it was the job of the attorney general to first and foremost be loyal to him. he thinks it s his attorney. not to get to the bottom of what happened or and to protect him. protect him in the investigation. we have michael schmidt with us, he s the co-author of this report, new york times reporter michael schmidt. michael, let s talk about that day down at mar-a-lago. as you point out, the president of the united states berated his attorney general at mar-a-lago. but still, jeff sessions refused to recuse himself. what was that moment like? what was that conversation like? and did sessions at any point consider not recusing himself? well sessions had to fly down to mar-a-lago because the president needs to resign travel