well donald trump is now in a fight with 9/11 families. as only donald trump can be. donald trump once told the lie that i immediately exposed, which made him immediately tell him to make him stop telling the lie, that he lost hundreds of friends on 9/11. that is possibly the most grotesque lie donald trump has ever told. about himself in a personal way. he lost tons of friends on 9/11. he lost zero friends, zero friends on 9/11. at the end of this hour, you're gonna hear what's 9/11 families are saying about donald trump hosting a saudi financed golf tournament at his golf club. donald trump, taking money from the saudis. and defending 9/11 families in the process. that's in the next hour. as 76 defendant donald trump looks at the final chapter of his life, he knows tonight that he is likely to spend the rest of his life as a defendant. he's already a defendant multiple times in different kinds of civil lawsuits, including, most importantly, and most dangerously, to donald trump, lawsuits brought against defendant trump by capitol police officers who are suing donald

and what did donald trump do? he grabbed a bag of popcorn and start watching tv, instead of doing would any reasonable commander-in-chief would've done. it's devastating. >> barry, a lot of people are asking, what should the prosecutors be doing. let me phrase it a different way. you have experience as a defense attorney. and i'm imagining -- imagine a world in which donald trump had a really good criminal defense attorney which, so far, we haven't seen that -- but if he did, would that criminal defense attorney be telling donald trump are his possible criminal liabilities in the testimony that was delivered last night? >> i think a good criminal defense lawyer would tell him, mr. client, you are in big trouble, mr. president. you have seen a case that is very simple for them to prove. a lot of people want to talk about whether it's seditious conspiracy. prosecutors really charged the hardest crime to prove. all they have to show is a significant crime, interfering with congress's certification of the vote, an off

for 187 minutes on _ accuses donald trump. for 187 minutes on january _ accuses donald trump. for 187 minutes on january six, - accuses donald trump. for 187 minutes on january six, this i minutes onjanuary six, this may him and unbridled destructive energy could not be moved, not by his aides, not by his allies. moved, not by his aides, not by his allies-_ moved, not by his aides, not by his allies-— his allies. not only was the former president _ his allies. not only was the former president accused l his allies. not only was the | former president accused of sitting idly by while the violence raged, witnesses say his actions made things worse. i think that in that moment for him to tweet out the message about mike pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the fire. hopes of a deal between ukraine, russia and turkey to

trump when everybody in your newsroom wants donald trump to be defeated and then donald trump is defeated. the elections over joe biden is the declared winner and church bells go off and fireworks go off. you just assume everybody around the world is just like me. they're all celebrating when it had absolutely zero to do with our election yet. somehow these three news outlets put it on the air as a reaction to our election. this is the deception that i see that reporters subjected themselves to an effort to get trump where they allowed them to put their guard down and put anti-trump information on the air time and time and time again, it wasn't that they were wrong. it was that they were out to get trump and put things on the air that they didn't check. so we've been talking a little bit about the past in terms of the fact that you were the press secretary for george w bush. now you sound as if you are supportive of donald trump, is that right? is that a correct assumption? i'm supportive of accurate journalism, and that's why i wrote my book. i haven't made my mind up yet about donald tr

trump. donald trump's case look, every, everybody needs a hero and donald trump found he has invited me to put biden always says he has ukraine's back. you believe him? i think the ukraine that it taken us a while there been some missteps. the, by much the whole democratic world has as rally to be great too crazy, and this is more that can be done, especially can remember quite as a quite developed country ukraine at the same time as it is fighting a war, has to deliver pensions as operate hospital services has to keep children in school in the cities where the war is and the bandpass to deal with this vast refugee diaspora. all of that cost and mormon amounts of money. while they fight a fight in which we are all at. once we are all involved, russia dismisses criticism of its ukraine invasion by talking about western hypocrisy. look what they did in iraq, 20 years ago. they say, put, you know, the point doesn't have 100000 people died in iraq for a war based on 2 big lives didn't. but what kind of point is that, excuse me, when i fire this rocket into an apartment building, because

i'm not gonna use the exact words that donald trump june. he used but these were the voices of reason, the present donald trump wasn't listening to his inner circle people that he should have been missing too well, it was in dalton junior's case. clearly it was because he was worried about the sort of legacy he was saying, look, the last 4 years will just be remembered for this now to that's that, that was the main motivation for him. and it didn't seem that he was as concern as, as early as we didn't see the bit way was going. this can't be happening on capitol hill. yvonne could trump again. yes. she tried to get donald trump to use the, you know, to try and get the tweaks to demonstrate to stay peaceful. but then we heard that there was a discussion amongst trump's aids about or should we say use the word peaceful is acknowledging the violence. going to give the media when a narrative about trump support is now we're not going to do that in the entropy did an action also, you know, fox news hosts republican congressional leaders. you know

donald trump considers. he's there for conversations about seizing voting machines. he's there whetehr a plan is floated to send false letters to state officials saying the doj, the justice department has found fraud and they should reconsider their election results. he's there when bill barr offered to turn in his resignation to donald trump and donald trump accepts it after bill barr concludes there is no widespread fraud in the election. and he is there on january 6th when donald trump is in the oval office in the dining room and cipollone and others come in to tell him to try to call off the mob as they are storming the building, and donald trump refuses. according to cassidy hutchinson's testimony, the white house aide that we all saw testify last week that he was there when donald trump said that he was accepting of the mobs endorsement of hanging mike pence, that he thought they had the right idea. there may be other things that we don't even know about. i'm just saying what i know. pat cipollone woul

to donald trump. so we know that james murray is a trump guy in every sense important to donald trump or donald trump would not have promoted him. to director of the secret service. in april of 2019, all of the democratic candidates for president had announced their candidacies and polling showed donald trump running far behind joe biden with joe biden at 51, and donald trump at 42. donald trump knew just like 2016, there was absolutely no way he was going to win more votes than the democrats. donald trump knew he was going to come in second with the voters, and his only hope was the electoral college, and this time, donald trump didn't want to take his chances with the electoral college. if it came to it, donald trump was obviously willing to try to change the outcome of the electoral college, and that is exactly what he did, and that is what he was still trying to do on january six. cassidy hutchinson testified that tony ornato told her, in the white house, that donald trump tried to go to the capit

donald trump was the author. we, the people, for ourselves and our posterity, should not let donald trump be the finisher. thank you. and i yield to the vice chair. >> thank you very much. i want to thank our witnesses for joining us today. members of the select committee may have additional questions for today's witnesses. we ask that you respond expeditiously in writing to those questions. without objection, members will be permitted ten business days to submit statements for the record, including opening remarks and additional questions from our witnesses. i'd now like to turn things to chairman thompson for a few closing words. >> the members of the committee and i appreciate and thank all persons who have come forward voluntarily to provide information to help protect our democracy. and our work continues. as we've made clear throughout these hearings, our investigation is going forward. we continue to receive new information every day. we are pursuing many additional witnesses for testimony. we will reconve

trump, agents of donald trump, anything involving donald trump. if they communicated, that they want to know about. that subpoena not, framed in your article tonight along with the information about marc short, these two grand jury witnesses who were just there, and others apparently that you are aware of who have been asked many questions about donald trump, how would you describe the level of focus on donald trump in some of the grand jury testimony? >> you know, here is a moment where i would like to say kudos to my colleagues on this byline along with me. josh ducey who covers nearly everything, spencer chu who covers the u.s. attorney's office. all of them applied into this territory for many, many days to try to unearth what these details were. what the team learned was that so much of particularly marc short's conversation with the grand jury was dominated by what did trump say, and what did trump do? what did trump tell his lawyers? then what was trump's reaction to that? that description over and over again of the grand jury prosecutor wh

republicans that have worked for donald trump, not worked for donald trump. not every candidate wants to be in their late 70s when they run for president or possibly become president. so you have republicans in their late 50s to 60s, early 70s by the time the campaign starts that are not simply going to wait around for 2028 or 2032. they'll look at an open seat and give it a shot now. though trump remains very strong with republican voters, a lot of the struggles he's had in the key primaries where he has endorsed candidates who have lost, have made republicans who want to take his place think it is worth giving it a shot. then you ask the question, could youngkin compete with trump? we don't know. he could fall on his face. when you have democrats coming after you, instead of the media, it is a different ball game. he presents as a contrast. a throwback to a 1980s, 1990s style, sunny conservative who is still very conseconservative. if you look at his recor, they can accuse him as being a centrist, but he is not one. that's why people who like him believe he

you point to tv hosts and commentators mocking donald trump and those who voted for donald trump which is, i think, even the more important point. >> yeah. it's one thing to make fun of a candidate in american life, that happens all the time, but too often -- and i begin with the anecdote of don lemon, he and his panelists mocked half the country. they ridiculed and made fun, they laughed out9 loud at people who voted for donald trump, and that's the snobbery, howard. it's killing good journalism. you cannot do that to the american people. the right shouldn't do it to the left, the left shouldn't do it to the right, but don lemon did it, and i called him out on it. howard: is it journal withism just to do that? look, you say it's understandable journalists don't like donald trump. they pick fights with him, he picks fights with them and vice versa. what happened to the notion of, yeah, we don't particularly like this guy, but we have some obligation to be fair to him? >> and this is what journalism has changed since i was white house press secretary. back then media was liberal, but th

then donald trump announced -- the congressman from new york. then donald trump announced he did not want any investigation and then kevin mccarthy pulled the plug on that and turned against the commission they had been advocating, five republicans, five democrats, equal subpoena power. that was gone. at that point speaker pelosi said we will not sweep this under the rug. we will have a select committee in the house of representatives and at that point mccarthy brought forth the slate of people. speaker pelosi accepted a majority of them, but not those who were involved in the event, including jim jordan, who was at meetings related to january 6. at that point mccarthy said we will not include anyone at all. then speaker pelosi said we are still going to have a bipartisan committee. that is why we have bennie thompson as the chair, we have liz cheney, the chair of the republican conference on the house side, adam kinzinger who you know is a distinguished vet and is still in the service today. we have operated in a bipartisan way. you will note t

trump, still love donald trump. why is that? why do they feel this flawed candidate, the flawed person, they still feel like he's the best guy for them. what is it about what joe biden and the democratic congress is doing today in washington and across the country that makes them feel like donald trump is my only choice or the best choice for me? because that's what they're doing. it's not donald trump versus nobody. it's donald trump versus what's going on right now. and i think that's what's happening. >> that's interesting. why do you think it is? i mean, it's not -- there are legitimate reasons, right? people think that washington is ignoring them. they still think that. >> they want a fighter. >> they still want a fighter. >> people do want a fighter, and the challenge at the moment, you have a divided country. so different sides want a leader that's going to fight for them. what you need to do is change that narrative and recognize that we succeed as a nation when we come together and take on those common chal

now, throughout all of this, donald trump continues to be, well, he continues to be donald trump. he was in arizona over the weekend, stopping for the states election, denying republican candidate for governor. and of course, making himself out to be the real victim of january the 6th. >> if i renounced my beliefs, and if i agreed to stay silent law, and if i stayed home and took it easy, if i announced that i was not going to run any longer for political office, the prosecution of donald trump would immediately stop. you know that, right? it would immediately stop. they would go on to the next victim. >> it is not clear at all, tonight, that donald trump will be able to wriggle out of this one. we will see, though. leading off our discussion tonight is paul butler, a professor of law at georgetown university, and former federal prosecutor. jill wine-banks, who served as assistant watergate prosecutor. they are both msnbc legal analysts. and also with us, stuart stevens, a veteran of five republican presidential campaigns, and author of it was all a lie: how the republican party b

the white house counsel is donald trump's top lawyer. we know he was a witness to so many of the things that donald trump did. in his testimony already before the congress that cipollone thought the trump was in danger of getting indicted for every crime in the book. if you want to know how serious this is, i think we can just take a look lawrence at donald trump's reaction to the thought that his top lawyer is going and testifying before congress tomorrow. trump issued a statement that really was kind of a rare soft touch. this is totally not trumpian. it didn't undermine cipollone's credibility, he didn't call him sully names like whatever donald trump would normally do. that's trump think that he does when he scared. with cipollone, he is terrified. so what he is doing is kind of buttering up cipollone and talking about privilege and this is not hoping cipollone will assert executive privilege, assert attorney client privilege and as you say, there's not a with of privilege about this stuff. this was a sure loser and every court where

donald trump cares about donald trump, and the other variable that we have to think about here is donald trump's calculation about an early announcement for support that it is what in his mind thinks will prevent that indictment from coming down, so when you add that element of an early announcement as a trump legal strategy to lower the pressure that he knows is coming his way, it becomes all of the more desperate an action and all of the more demanding of total loyalty from anyone in the republican party and god forbid the republican that does not show that loyalty and kiss that ring because trump will come after them. ron desantis, by the way, knows that better than anyone. >> thank you both for joining us tonight. >> thank you. >>> up next, breaking news from "the washington post" that the justice department is investigating donald trump's actions as part of its criminal probe of the 2020 election. more on that when we come back. probe of the 202 it's a storm that crashes, and consumes, replacing thought with worry. but one thing can calm uncertainty. more on that when we come back a

except donald trump. but it is the people who decided to humor him, people who stayed quiet, let him cry it out as his rhetoric escalated, his lies escalated and the dangerous people he tapped in to organize, they're the reason we're all here today. take former white house counsel pat cipollone whose testimony to the january 6th select committee we heard for the very first time yesterday. >> there was a real question in my mind and a real concern, you know, particularly after the attorney general had reached the conclusion that there wasn't sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election. when other people kept suggesting that there was, the answer is what is the end. at some point you have to put up or shut up. that was my view. >> there was never any fraud. there was never any fraud, there was never any evidence. pat cipollone knew the president was lying and spreading those lies. he knew it was dangerous and he knew precisely what those dangers were. he would do anything, he wanted to t

yeah, i absolutely, i believe there is already sufficient evidence to indict donald trump. i firmly believe that he will be indicted separately in georgia. we know the grand jury is meeting right now. i mean, my goodness. he is on tape. clearly intimidating, the top election official in georgia literally saying just find me the votes, the i need in order to declare me the, the winner. the irony of all his schemes, of course, is that even of one state flipped, he still wouldn't be close to the actual number that he needed. he needed at least 3 states to flip a. but, you know, for someone like donald trump, that sort of practical thinking wouldn't come into the picture and my biggest fear i wrote an op ed in the spring of 2016 about donald trump in a philadelphia newspaper. and i said, donald trump is different than any previous democrat or republican, or a wig, who came before and, and sought the presidency. because deep down, he is not a small di, democrat. he's obviously not a capital d democrat, but as i small d democrat, he does not believe in democracy. think of all of

donald trump twice. i voted for him none. i also want donald trump and his element to be indicted. i think that this now is on merrick garland and while that is the shift from republicans and democrats because democrats now want merrick garland to take action. and whether or not donald trump is indicted, this are people around him who should. >> scott, i want you to weigh in but first, take a listen to what republican congressman adam kinzinger had to say about that issue of criminal charges. he is another member of the committee. >> we have proven different components of a criminal case against donald trump or people around him in every hearing and i think taken in totality this represent s the greatest effort to overturn the will of the people to conspire against the will of the people and conspire against american democracy we ever had. it's up to justice now to make a decision. >> i don't know whether he will be indicted. i've always felt the georgia i've always felt the georgia case was actually mor

the guy at the bus, the big guy, donald trump. you worked for donald trump. the most serial liar to ever occupy the oval office. the most pathological liar that i have ever covered in 20 years of journalism. and the people assembled in that room together on january 17th, where there to overturn american democracy and declare himself essentially president for life, and keep himself in power. you are either stupid, disqualified, or incompetence and you would never hold another job, my god. because donald trump was not shy about the fact that he would never accept an election loss, he was quite public about it. he said it before he took office back in 2016. do you make the same commitment that you absolutely, sir, that you will absolutely accept the results of this election? >> i will look at at the time. i'm not looking at anything, now i will look at it at the time. >> there is a tradition in this country, in fact, one of the price of this country, is the peaceful transition of power and no matter how far flooded campaign, is that the end of the campaign, that

we knew that donald trump -- it was known donald trump did want to go to the capitol. obviously he commands the mob to go there on january 6th, but the fact that days ahead of time key rally organizers are saying this is going to be an unexpected announcement, and we can't spread this too widely. we can't let the national park police know. that added a level of sort of clandestine behavior that i think adds an extra layer onto what we already know about the way trump was acting around january 6th, that he didn't want too many of his most sober advisers to know about what he was planning to do with the crowd directing them to the capitol. that was probably my largest takeaway. obviously the implication from liz cheney that there was potential witness influencing or witness tampering going on by the former president was a major development. and we also learned a lot more information about that completely crazy december 18th meeting inside the oval office, and then i think we saw, also, donald trump's power over the crowd, about how he could command them to go to the capi

launch a criminal investigation, of donald trump. the leaking from the grand jury, almost never comes from the investigators or the grand jurors, but it usually does come from the witnesses themselves, who have every legal right to reveal publicly everything that happened in a grand jury room or the leaking comes from lawyers for the witnesses or associates of lawyers for the witnesses or friends of lawyers for the witnesses. when prominent people in washington d. c. like marc short testified to the grand jury it's in virtually impossible for that to remain secret the other way we will get strong indicators of the progress of the federal criminal investigation of donald trump, or court filings by the justice department. and so we learned today that federal investigators obtained a second search warrant to look at the contents of the phone of john eastman, the trump attorney who advocated using fake electors to the electoral college, to fraudulently overturn the presidential election. a court filing today by the justice department say

, i'll take donald trump? what does that tell you about where we are and what does -- what has this committee put in front of the country in such a stark, naked way that you can't turn your eyes away from and that signature moment and what the capstone of the day, walking into the residence, the sun is set, the fires are still burning up on the capitol and the president's response is damn, you know that mike pence really disappointed me. so i don't know what more clarity we need. we have his mind, the mens rea, we understand it now was i don't want it say i lost the elections. after everything we've been told, everything we know, i don't want to say that. republicans mccarthy. you told him and he's still saying i don't want to say it. so what's your response? okay. okay. we just won't talk about it, mr. president. >> yeah. >> this is where we are. we have an election coming up and people have got to look at this. >> yeah. i mean, look, pete strzok, i want to show you congressman raskin makes a similar point in

is what donald trump just did a crime? the answer is, if it falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear, it doesn't make us? and if trump commits crimes nobodies there to indict, him isn't really a crime? does it really matter? with all these things, our jonathan, are either crimes on their own, stand-alone crimes that could be brought like inciting an insurrection or obstructing an official proceeding. but everything else he has done, he did to the overall conspiracy to do fraud or defenses against the united states. and a federal judge already found them, by a preponderance of the evidence, that trump and john eastman committed together. so again, it is time for overt law enforcement action. >> yamiche, you are there on the north lawn of the white house and pebble beach. we've been talking about the silence among republicans, both to what's donald trump has done to the party but also the silence of republicans in terms of their reaction to the eight hearings on the january six select committee. there is another inter

i'm wondering who is willingo go to for donald trump. >> in a statement -- >> donald trump may end up go to jail. who in the secret service wants to go to jail? >> a spokesman claims some of the data that was lost during a pre-planned devicement program that began on -- >> whatever. >> -- january 2021, before the dhs probe into the insurrection even began. he also notes, the secret service has been fully cooperative with the dhs investigation. >> but hold on. let's take that down because it is nonsense. he -- >> unless -- i wonder who ordered that, if it happened. >> the inspector general ordered copies of those text messages and said they deleted them after the inspector general ordered them. so secret service wants us to believe the inspector general's lie. somebody is lying. somebody needs to be hauled before congress to testify. >> it seems like a huge stretch at best. >> let's bring in nbc news correspondent julia ainsley. she covers the department of justice and the department of homeland security. julia, help us out here. we heard many reports that donald trump politicized the

all about donald trump. we've heard cipollone's junior counsel, we've heard people who talk to cipollone. including, you know, the witness last week cassidy hutchinson, who is amazing, and poised, and gave direct testimony about what's cipollone said. but hearing it from the horse's mouth, and what he said to donald trump is the most important. we -- from saint certain, things claiming bogus privileges in the like. and i sure hope, cipollone is a very good lawyer, i hope he recognized those claims what they are, which is bogus. but, we don't know the contours, we don't know what happened, but i have to say those witnesses there for eight hours, it doesn't seem like a witness that is invoking much privilege. it certainly can happen, and can have some cheap conversations that trump probably really wants the american people to not learn about. we will have to find out tomorrow. >> phil, the committee is expected to zero in on a meeting that took place in the white house on december 18th. where trump and his all

it doesn't necessarily depend on donald trump, but i will say, even if it's not donald trump, whoever plays that playbook, the donald trump playbook, the best, is the guy who's going to win this. it's the guy who's going to win the hearts of these people on these message boards. some of the places they talked about in, on these forms that they talked about, in these hearing today, that were filled with racial slurs and horrific stuff, talking about killing people, you know, how it's time to go all the minorities and stuff. those places are still very, very active. but they are not -- but the affinity of donald trump isn't there anymore. it's this culture going on. >> yes, but this before trump, there was never someone who was in the white house who was winking and nodding at them, right? you had a presidential debate where the sitting president said, stand back and stand by. so without someone with that kind of visibility influence in and seniority, does the movement have such power. is there is else who right now could say, come to washington, and they would? >> i don't think so. but

she was a house manager for the second impeachment of donald trump. representative, could have you, back thank you for being with us. i was saying to you before we lost you last time, i wouldn't have thought that there could be more detail that you offered in your presentations during the second impeachment about what happened at the house, but it is kind of interesting to hear about all the background, and all the other things that were happening simultaneously. what does it make you think about? because i think you might have more detail about what happened that day than most people, because of the preparation you had for the second impeachment. >> sure, you know, it just really ties in so well and really provides so much more flesh to what we outlined in the impeachment. of course, you, know we were doing this a month after the insurrection itself. a month after the mob came to the capitol, and the select committee has had a tremendous opportunity, and it really utilized that to bring in so much more evidence. particularly, the people who are unwil

and that donald trump considers. he is there for conversations about seizing the voting machines. he's there when a plan is floatedch to send false letterso stateoa officials, saying the d.o.j. and the justice department has found fraud and they should reconsider they're election results. he's there when bill barr turned, offers to turn in his resignation to donald trump and donald trump accepts it after bill barr concludes there is no widespread fraud in the election. and he's there on january 6th, when donald trump is in the oval office, in the dining room, and cipollone and others go in to others to tell him to call off the mob as they're storming the building and donald trump refuses. and accordingre to cassidy hutchinson's testimony, the white house aide thatin we all w testify last week, that he was there when donald trump said that he was accepting of the mob's endorsement of hanging mike pence, that he thought they had themo right idea. so, and there may be other things that we don't even know about. i'm just

trump was lost, donald trump was not giving up. it's donald trump, what we saw in that very moment, has shaped the last year and a half and potentially shaping the republican party and his presidential candidacy in 2024. >> that's absolutely right. i mean, we heard a lot of scary stuff last night. you know, for me, it was the secret service agents on mike pence's detail who we learned were calling their famiies to say good-bye because they felt their lives were put in such danger by the mob. but you're absolutely right. john heilemann is right, that he was calculating on, certainly by january 7th, certainly earlier, he was calculating how he was going to play this. how he was going to maintain the fiction that the election had been stolen from him, and so he couldn't say the election was over. he can never say the election is over because he was -- he knew he was going to make that central to his attempt to remain the most powerful figure in the republican party, perhaps to run for president again. to be this powerful figure in ame

the 6th, donald trump gives a speech of the white house at the ellipse. and that's what we picked things up like from a, from in this, in this hearing about speech ends at 10 past one. what happens and the 187 minutes a 3 hours, 7 minutes to 4, 17 pm. when donald trump sends out a video message in a tweet, telling his for his to go home in that interim, his supporters of march to the capitol. as donald trump asked them to do, and some of them have reached the capital's defenses and the course, then we have all those scenes where so familiar with that. that ranch that was going on here inside, inside congress, what was doing analysis address? we have a pretty good idea what he was doing already. he was watching on tv and rather enjoying it all. but what we're going to get now from to live witnesses who are in the white house at the time, as well as various witnesses who have video depositions, including the pony white house, legal advice that actually we just had today. donald trump's executive assistant, which is which is something that many people didn't

the establishment does not like donald trump, the elite doesn't want donald trump. look at all the negative coverage of donald trump. we have seemingly no ability. you know what, maybe we just have no desire to learn the lessons of the past. >> 2016, of course everyone said hillary was going to wind down to the last minute. none of the three major news networks carried donald trump's speech live. is there message there? i've been saying for weeks the press seem determined to knock out both trump and biden by saying they are growing sentiment in their parties and these polls showing that neither one should run in 2024. >> fox not covering it was more of a departure for the consistency of their coverage for donald trump. there is this other sort of shadow in the room. mike pence was the subject of timely news in the january 6 investigation. both in terms of trump knowing he was in danger and also in terms that he was taking action when trump was not on that day. as will said, he is in a very precarious position with the republican base. it is difficult for him to navi