out that someone is having difficulty obtaining a permanent security clearance and certainly, once the fbi flags them, if it was someone like rob porter who was working so closely with the president and handling such sensitive information, it would be incumbent upon the chief of staff and white house counsel to find out what is up and what these allegations are, so if they didn t do that, certainly they would have seen the pictures and found out about the protective order and much more. so this idea they didn t know, and once they found out last week, they acted quickly. again it doesn t make a lot of sense. it was either negligence or again, willful blindness. kimberly atkins thank you for joining the conversation. my pleasure. coming up can john kelly survive his handling of the rob porter story. and rachel brand is
just last week and as soon as we found out we moved within hours, it just isn t true. it s another denial. even though sarah huckabee-sanders said today that domestic violence should be taken seriously and is taken seriously by this white house, the facts belie that. so does the fact that the president still, at this point, has not acknowledged these women, not acknowledged these accusations, has only given statements in tweet and in person defending rob porter. ruth, one of the reasons that previous white houses respond more fully in these situations is that they believe the questions will never stop if we don t get out there and respond to a certain amount, at least, of the information. this white house believes that the questions will always stop on any given particular controversy because they always have. remember when john kelly for example got caught lying about congresswoman wilson, the white
only last week that they got any idea that there was a problem with rob porter is just, regardless of what set of facts you believe, is just wrong. we know that there was a problem with his permanent security clearance, he didn t have it more than a year in and we knew that months beforehand, the white house was notified of this fact. we know that the fbi notified don mcgahn about problems with that security clearance. we know that an ex-girlfriend contacted the white house when she found out that hope hicks was dating rob porter to inform them of the abuse allegations. there was a protective order issues, there were blog posts. if the white house was unaware of this situation, it was because it would be a case of the most willful blindness in history. so the idea they can say it was
evidence in this case, it also stands to reason that a chief of staff and a white house counsel, when they are when they find out that someone is having difficulty obtaining a permanent security clearance and certainly, once the fbi flags them, if it was someone like rob porter who was working so closely with the president and handling such sensitive information, it would be incumbent upon the chief of staff and white house counsel to find out what is up and what these allegations are, so if they didn t do that, certainly they would have seen the pictures and found out about the protective order and much more. so this idea they didn t know, and once they found out last week, they acted quickly. again it doesn t make a lot of sense. it was either negligence or again, willful blindness. kimberly atkins thank you for
mean. donald trump couldn t bring himself to say a word of sympathy to rob porter s former wives and there s no reason to think he feels anything to the victims of violent men. he has never condemned domestic violence. the white house press secretary was asked about that today and she said she was condemning domestic violence and so that s the same thing as donald trump condemning domestic violence, because she speaks for donald trump, except when she gives those answers saying i have no idea what president trump thinks about that because i haven t spoken to him, therefore, i cannot speak for him. nbc s pierre alexander tweeted this. trump has 47 million followers and has tweeted 37,000 times. if he wanted to the condemn domestic violence post-porter allegations, seems there would be a simple way to deliver that message without sending sarah