presented him with a list of things he did, and now we have mbs. it s no secret there s some very serious human rights violations in saudi arabia. impunity has consequences. you let leaders know they can do worse. i think that s what happened in the case of mbs. my theory is that right now it may well be in the interest of saudi arabia, of turkey and the u.s. to agree on some kind of a fall guy who did this. why? to protect saudi arabia. to protect the crown prince. certainly in saudi arabia s interest to fine some fall guy. why would it be in turkey s interest given how strong turkey has been in saying this is saudi arabia s fault. because turkey doesn t want to rupp puture relations with s arabia. if they can find some face saving way that yes, there was a killing, it happened in the consulate, but that it wasn t necessarily mbs. if they can prevent that rupture, i think erdogan would welcome that and i think trump would welcome that.
this is such a breach of international norms and the idea that saudi arabia may set up a fall guy to claim this is some kind of rogue operation, this is like o.j. simpson looking for the killer. it seems odd because they ve been denying it repeatedly. if the reports are true they re going to try and find a way to confirm it, that would be interesting. i d wonder if there s any consequences for them, out right denying it and then confirming it. it s also important to know what the evidence shows so far. what we know is that jamal khashoggi is on surveillance video, shane, walking into the saudi consolate in turkey. there is no surveillance video of him walking out. nbc news is reporting that he looked at his text messages before he got into the saudi consulate. there s a read receipt. once he is in there, he s not seen a single text message. the evidence we know of we can confirm is right there. the president presumably has access to a lot more intelligence than any of us do
why haven t republicans done that? they don t want to see what s in them. based on what we ve scene from the new york times story we kind of know what s in them and he made up this audit story and wasn t being truthful and republicans will benefit from establishing the precedent that you cannot occupy that desk without releasing your taxes to the public because they will utilize that in the future against a democrat. again, this huge story about donald trump and his taxes comes out two weeks ago, it s buried with the kavanaugh news. when i was on the road it s also one of those things that people haven t even heard of. they haven t even heard of that story which makes me wonder if you push through with this idea that the president should be held accountable, there should be transparency, we should as a country know if he s trying to cushion his own wealth if he s making foreign investment deals or foreign policy decisions based on what he has in his bank account, why aren t dem
national conversation like it was in 2014 for republicans who are obsessively focused on retaking the levers of government. i do not see that among republicans. i see cultural issues and a lot of them have almost nothing to do with electoral politics. i see them receding from the conversation. the cable news environment which i loved very much is not like the national environment. i don t see the kind of enthusiasm that i see on cable news in the general electorate. to his point about what constitutes enthusiasm, whether it s rage, anxiety, what it really comes down to is whether or not the united states that gave trump the presidency in 2016 wants to basically endorse or push forward him and his agenda into the next two years. it is bigger than our average sort of collection of individual races you usually see in a midterm. this will determine his level of strength going into the last years of his presidency. if the republicans keep the house, keep the senate, it s a huge validation
understanding from talking to some sources today that i think that that s a view that the united states probably is prepared to believe that the turks have that. it s not clear that they ve handed anything over. so now we re in this interesting point where the turks may have some kind of more definitive information about what happened inside the consulate. it s not entirely clear they ve sent that over to the americans, so if the americans can independently try to corroborate it, but now the president is going out and offering a theory about what happened while we re getting reports of a saudi theory about to emerge. it s a mess really. we haven t really seen as a definitive answer from any side about what happened to this journalist. but this falls into a pattern of the way that donald trump embraces dictators. the way he embraces leaders who have histories of very severe human rights violations. vladimir putin, which he acknowledged in the 60 minutes interview, kim jong-un, which