ALSO – EXCLUSIVE WITH SEN. MARK WARNER: GIULIANI “KEEPS HAVING TO READJUST HIS STORIES AS MORE FACTS COME OUT”
PLUS – REP. LIZ CHENEY EXCLUSIVE: “WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAS PUT FORWARD IS NOT AMNESTY”
JAN. 20, 2019 – Today on Meet the Press, Rudy Giuliani said for the first time that conversations and plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow remained an “active proposal” and “went on throughout 2016” saying it “could be up to as far as October, November.”
When pressed on this timeline, Giuliani, lawyer for President Donald Trump, told moderator Chuck Todd that President Trump “can remember having conversations” with Michael Cohen about Trump Tower Moscow as late as October or November of 2016.
On the BuzzFeed reporting, Giuliani said he is “100 percent certain” that President Trump never asked Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. “To answer your question, categorically, I can tell you his counsel to Michael Cohen throughout that entire period was, ‘Tell the truth.’ We thought he was telling the truth. I still believe he may have been telling the truth when he testified before Congress.”
When asked about collusion between the campaign and Russia, Giuliani said, “Of course I don’t know everyone on the campaign. To my knowledge there’s no collusion on the campaign.” He continued, “I represent the president, I know his knowledge directly talking to him. And I’m in a strange position of having been intimately involved in a large part of the campaign. I know what I know from that, no Russian collusion.” Watch the full interview.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also joined the program for an exclusive interview and said Giuliani’s new timeline on Trump Tower Moscow conversations “is news to me. And that is big news.” He continued by saying, “It’s remarkable that we’re two years after the fact and just discovering it today.”
Sen. Warner also said that this news “reinforces the fact that we have to finish our investigation” and that “we need to have Mueller finish.” He continued, “I don’t often feel bad for Rudy Giuliani. This morning, just seeing that interview I almost feel bad for him. He keeps having to readjust his stories as more facts come out.”
When asked about the debate surrounding border security and the government shutdown, Sen. Warner said, “What the president proposed yesterday – increasing border security, looking at [Temporary Protection Status], looking at the Dreamers – I’ll use that as a starting point,” but insisted that the first step has to be opening up the government saying, “We cannot reward the kind of behavior of hostage taking.” Watch the full interview.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), chair of the House Republican Conference, also weighed in on the president’s recent border security proposal saying, “What the president has put forward is not amnesty” and that it is a “purely partisan game” that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing and that “she ought to stop it for the good of the nation.”
Rep. Cheney also responded to President Trump’s remarks yesterday that the territorial caliphate controlled by ISIS in Syria has been reduced by about “99 percent” in two years, saying that 99 percent is not enough. “We’ve got to ensure that ISIS is destroyed. Because if you walk away before they’re destroyed, then they have the ability to create safe havens.” Watch the full interview.
New York Times Chief White House Correspondent and NBC News Analyst Peter Baker, Host of NPR’s “1A” and NBC News Contributor Joshua Johnson, SVP of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and NBC News Contributor Danielle Pletka, and NBC News National Political Reporter Heidi Przybyla joined the broadcast’s roundtable for insight and analysis on the week in politics. Watch the full panel.
Read the full transcript of Meet the Press this morning and follow the show on Twitter and on Facebook for the latest.
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