The days biggest political and news stories, with interviews and reporting from around the nation. Charge of an investigation and a guy who is the subject of an investigation that just got more profound. We have to preface everything, ari, with if the account from Michael Cohen is true, blah, blah, blah. So if the account is true, it is a tremendous change in the landscape. What it does is show us two things. One, that donald trump, from the very beginning, was in on an attempt at collusion, an attempt to conspire with a plot that was described to donald trump jr. As a secret operation by the kremlin to help trump. So if trump knows about that from the very beginning, and is in on it, i think that has a lot of legal, but even more so, political implications. Plus if hes told about this, and even if nothing came out of the meeting, remember throughout the whole campaign and up to now he keeps denying or dismissing the russian operation. Could have been a 400pound guy in a basement. The
aggressively. does that make him obsessive and emotional in dealing with these open legal probes? yes, indeed. he s clearly an obsessive guy. he is obsess ive sometimes strategically, sometimes reactively. to give you an example of the obsessiveness strategically is when he says no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. what is he doing? he is hoping, he has learned that if he repeats it often enough, even if it is totally false, visibly false. people, or a significant number of people will start to believe it. state of mind, state of mind, state of mine is what we will take from that. this is a series and we are going to try to go a little bit deeper. tony schwartz, i appreciate you being a part of it. thank you. up ahead, moments that have left many of us speechless. also a. practicing note of course i will be in more rachel maddow tonight on msnbc. (vo) what if this didn t
trying to limit the news and negative info that reaches him. schwartz writes trump s grip on reality will continue to diminish as he faces criticism, accusation and criminal indictments. what happens to a leader who embraces this kind of bunker mentality to avoid stress? is trump seeking kind of a narrow minded cocoon of a tortured snow flake deluding himself to believe that all critics are just haters, and accountability is what his enemies want? i m reminded of aubrey drake graham once said, i got enemies, got a lot of enemies, got a lot of people trying to train me of my energy. we turn to tony schwartz. ceo of the energy project. drake is known as an emotional celebrity. and the problem in that line, which reflects a real thing, is overidentifying any criticism as trying to destroy you rather than deal with it. does trump have that problem also? this piece i have done with
condemnation of his bizarre embrace of putin, followed by one of of his most loyal fixers saying trump did okay the meeting at the trump tower. those two stresses are linked. they pose intricate questions. which brings us to our new segment with a special friend of the beat, tony schwartz. this is called state of mind. and we aim to get to the root of some of the bigger issues in our society here. now, many people hesitate to admit how stress and emotion impact decisions, especially if they fear it could look weak or irrational. tony schwartz argues that kind of blind shot is even larger for trump, tony says, who insists he has a flawless temperament. i have a great temperament. i have a great temperament. i have one of the great temperaments, a winning temperament. we need a strong temperament. and that s all it is. that temperament being tested, and trump s own aides are coddling it at times,
been on fallback friday? no, i have not. could it perhaps happen today? it could happen today. a year in we will take you. i would hope to get both of you in some day as well. thanks to each of you for being part of our top of the news coverage here. coming up, new reporting on how trump s legal team says they might, quote, bury michael cohen. michael avenatti is here live. coming out of his court fight in the stormy daniels case. plus, we re debuting a new series today with tony schwartz, author of the art of the deal, and talking about the pressure facing trump. all that, plus, of course, fallback friday and our most awkward moments of the year. you re watching a special edition of the beat on msnbc.