capable people around him. gary cohn s decision was apparently prompted by the president s plan to impose these tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. nbc news reports tonight that it s unclear when the president will actually sign off on those tariffs. he s now considering an exemption, a carve heat out for countries like mexico and canada. today he continued to press the case for his proposal. we have finally given american businesses a level playing field. and you ll see more of this in the coming weeks. we re bringing it back. our jobs have been stolen from us. our businesses have been taken. our factories have been closed. it s all coming back. mr. trump s tariff proposal coupled with the impending departure of gary cohn is raising concerns among top congressional republicans, some of whom believe the president
did he know about that payment at the time, though? i ve addressed this as far as i can go. the payment, did he know about the at the same time at the time? not that i m aware of, and again, anything beyond what i ve already given you, i would refer you to the president s outside counsel. stormy daniels attorney just spoke to my colleague lawrence o donnell tonight and addressed sanders claim that the case has been won in arbitration. i personally like miss sanders, i think she has a near-impossible job. but the fact of the matter is, and i m confident she didn t know it was nonsense when she effectively told that to the world. but it s absolutely bogus. it s nonsense. any claim by the administration that donald trump won in arbitration is no different than me claiming that i won the super bowl a few weeks ago. it s cleat hooey. well, on that note, here to talk more about all of it, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for the new york times and msnbc politica
more to get to. new reporting from nbc news reveals that president trump s long-time lawyer, michael cohen, is trying to silence the porn star, stormy daniels, over her alleged relationship with the president. stay with us here. last week, cohen obtained a secret restraining order. more on that later. through an arbitration process that warned daniels she ll face penalties if she starts to talk. the news comes one day after we learned that daniels, whose real name is stephanie clifford, filed a lawsuit against president trump. in it daniels alleged that an agreement not to disclose her intimate relationship with the president is invalid because trump never actually signed the document. the hush agreement as it s called in the suit directed $130,000 to be given to daniels in exchange for her silence. michael cohen says he used his own personal funds to facilitate the payment. he also said neither the trump organization nor the trump campaign were a party to the transaction. and that n
may be veering too far from core party beliefs. here to talk about it tonight, the appropriately named michael steele, former chairman of the i ve been working on that all day former chairman of the republican national committee and an msnbc political analyst. and white house correspondent for bloomberg. welcome to you both. michael, what is the level of chaos? steel and aluminum are not topics that come up in every american home every day. but when you screw around with these, and what it could cause as a counterattack? we ve seen the ripple effect already. our allies especially. which apparently no one around the president or the president really accounted for. reacting the way they did. and the truth of it is, this is a reactionary policy. this is a policy born out of things that have nothing to do with the economic foundation of our economy or the direction the president really ultimately wants to lead. it has to do with other things. and so the party right now is sitting the
both on capitol hill and within the west wing, trying to get the president to sort of tailor this decision, make some changes, and maybe even sort of scale this thing back so that there isn t this major ripple effect where our allies in europe and other parts of the world are retaliating and causing prices to go up for american consumers. so there s a lot that s in flux several days after the president first made this announcement. michael, to your point about not seeing through the consequences, this is going to affect the trump base, it s going to affect all of us who buy washer/dryers, refrigerator/freezers, cars in a real way. so are you prescribing backbone to your fellow republicans? i am. you have to at some point recognize that there is a price to be paid for all of this. a price to be paid for the chaos, a price to be paid for the lack of focus and direction. and, you know, yes, you passed a tax cut. okay? does not an administration make, that is not american economic poli