he was the chief white house ethics lawyer during the administration of george w. bush and is currently the vice chair of citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington he joins us from minneapolis rigid and republican lawmakers some conservative media outlets a slamming the russian investigation accusing rather the most frugal being group riddled with liberal and each from bias what do you make of this plan are a lot of words i can pick out to describe robert muller. brave courageous man. loyal american liberalism ana i know who i. am i and i was in the bush white house and he was i very professional director of the f.b.i. no politicization over at the up a on to robert muller even though he was a republican he was kept on by president obama his an experienced prosecutor and he

does not traffic in any nonsense these allegations about robert muller are just false there are no problems with his tame that cannot easily be overcome he had one or two people a added dismissed from the time they have appropriate authorizations from the department of justice whether respect to the few conflicts of interest there are and this investigation of the prosecutions native births aid the united states but attack by a foreign power that is their fate with our election and we need to find out who in the united states was cooperating with that effort and i can't think of anyone better to do that than robert mueller i believe you tim a couple times when you said of the f.b.i. and i phone to be straight as an arrow. on wednesday didn't he attorney general ron rosenstein told the house judiciary committee he sees no evidence to warrant firing

mr mohler i guess you agree with that well absolutely yes the raw data as they number two man at the department of justice appointed to that position by president trump and he has made america layer of it robert mueller needs to stay in place and finish his job and that's what the president needs to make sure happens the president needs to not interfere unless we have an independent prosecutor who has been appointed by the trump ministration and robert mueller the independent prosecutor needs to finish as job and if there's any effort to fire robert mueller we're going to have a constitutional crisis in this country one of term slowish is that the president's legal team wants a second special counsel one to investigate quote obvious conflicts of interest in the department of justice in the f.b.i. and general attorney general sessions contemplated that idea how like levy is think

that might happen a second prosecutor very odd likely criminal defense lawyers do this all the time they like to claim that they investigators the prosecutors the police are corrupt. that's the usual montra of a criminal defense lawyer and nobody listens to what nobody of be listening to it here except for the fact that this particular lawyer this the fans lawyer represents the president of the united states who would have the ability perhaps to try to start a vesta getting is political opponents try to start investigating robert mueller if president trump truces to go down that road he is going to get himself and they're a serious trouble with congress congress and knock out put up with it do you think there's any chance trump would fire him over. well there is always a chance that the president would do something out of salute like crazy he certainly tweets sometimes if he's absolutely crazy but that would be the type of

dramatic. mo that would very quickly end his presidency alin the front man and then jail for obstruction of justice i should add. franken is a was us in the you've been critical of his resignation suggesting the sexual misconduct allegations against him in the senate john what do you make of the whole out franken story well i'm not happy by the fact that roger stone apparently i was on the low there a fox news. of our fox connections with their various of the accusations down here to mike and i sounds but the most important buying to me is that there be due process and there should have been a hearing with the senate ethics committee to find out what happened to find out the facts of the part of caucuses should not be pressuring in august eight senators to resign for political reasons of course later there was

a democratic governor harry would point to democratic replacement they had a senator from the jersey senator menendez has been indicted for bribery serving for over a year and the democrats didn't want to push him out because there was a republican governor in new jersey who would have appointed a replacement and those types of political considerations shouldn't play what the term means whether assad are comes or go there are those who say that to him because she just of this christian gillibrand. when she said she would do he said she would do anything. money for her campaign and that was kind of sick surely natures usa today had a new tour to sing the trump does not sit to clean the toilets in the bronco obama presidential library. how low is this getting richard well let's get her to lower me yeah i basically call the junior senator from new york are on the that's what i

siad i made it so many words oh we could read between the lines were not stupid and the president honest they should made no one that he sat out many offensive tweets they called a son of our won from massachusetts pocahontas because she has some native american ancestry and that's just rubbish. senator warner was quick to to tell them off for that and they got back to her business which is focusing on protecting the middle class. and i hope that's what this congress could get out don't play games with trump on twitter and get into a big fight with him over this foolishness focus on helping the middle class and go forward and we may just have to take him out of office though if he persists in this type of a rational. really psychologically to range by a very what's your read on the election in alabama on tuesday. well i think the voters an alibi the common sense to reject someone know rob baro there's not only

substantial evidence that he was guilty of child molestation but also is on the record. of being anti gay. and very hostile to blocks and to sign emigrants and this is just not their merican tradition this is a country that welcomes everybody and i'm glad the people of the state a ballot bomb on may the right decision which is always thank you for your time thank you of said interim country on tuesday democrat doug jones defeated republican roy moore in alabama's headline grabbing senate race with jones when the republicans are left with a razor thin fifty one forty nine majority in the senate to talk about that and lots of other topics with our political panel in new york amy holmes political analyst and former staffer of the senate majority leader bill frist in atlanta

robin birol robin is a democratic strategist and former obama campaign regional field director or amy let's start with your reaction to the senate race in alabama i will say something very interesting who would have a predicted that a democrat winning election in alabama to the senate on his election night victory speech would quote martin luther king jr. well that is wonderful to quote martin luther king jr it shows how much progress we we've made but who would ever guess that doug jones would when lots of republicans that they saw more as a deeply flawed feely flawed candidate you saw republican leadership come out against him senate senate majority leader mitch mcconnell he if if mr moore had been elected was planning an ethics. investigation my short hot take on this is

that republicans dodged a bullet that they didn't have roy moore coming to the senate to dog them between now twenty eight thousand and twenty twenty not only with these allegations of you know cruising shopping malls and sexually assaulting teenage underage girls but also that we know judge moore to be a loose cannon once he became a senator who knew what was going to be flying out of his mouth for the next two years you know larry when i was on the show previously i'm was never a fan of judge moore i thought it was a mistake for alabamans to you know elect him to represent republicans in this senate race and as i say at the end of the day i think that this is going to turn out to be a blessing for you know washington d.c. republicans robin there are some serious who said the democrats secretly wanted more wind and they would have had him to kick around all year to the twenty eight elections he would have been one of. their anger and in that same time take

advantage of it what was your read and i understand that more is still not conceded . yes that's correct and he said that it's an god's hands i to that i say that it seems if that's the case that it seems that god has soundly rejected him and i think i hope we might know why because of all of these allegations i don't believe him to truly be a man of god he doesn't seem to practice what he preaches but you know i want to say larry i'll be honest with you here and say that i was one of those democrats that that kind of my take on this going in was that this was going to be a win win for us no matter what because if he did win we absolutely had it in the bag to punch that around and drag that right out into the twenty eighteen and twenty twenty so amy i definitely agree with you that republicans dodged a bullet here very excited that alabamans voted their conscience that the african-american community turned out in force and we won the selection based on

them i think the democratic party needs to pay close attention to that there are people that were absent from the camp a lot of people came down to alabama to work on this but one of those who was absent was bernie sanders i think that was a mistake for him and for the democratic party but overall i'm very pleased with the outcome and i think it's a good sign of things to come larry i didn't think about the bernie sanders thing amy once the this was in a good night. and he wound up saying that he knew more was doing. well do you remember larry that the president endorsed luther strange initially over roy moore and he was actually slow to the party when it came to endorsing roy moore he said and initially that if the charges against judge moore were true that mr moore judge moore rather that he should withdraw from the race and then he was convinced that he needed a back roy moore by none other than mr steve bannon who this morning i don't think

woke up very you know he didn't he wasn't sleeping easily last night let's put it that way and last night he lost lot a. out of power he lost the power to be a kingmaker and if the reports are true that donald trump is now going to be freezing out mr bannon he also lost power and terms of access to the president which we all have to remember proximity to the president is what it's all about when it comes to washington d.c. but i'd like to add one more name that i noticed didn't go down to alabama to campaign and that's hellery rodham clinton the doug jones campaign did not deploy her to try to drum up african-american support or support among white women who might have been offended by judge moore and i think that's really telling that maybe the clinton era. the sun on the clintons have set and doug jones knew that she was far more of a political liability than a benefit in alabama stay right there will be right back with more politicking right after this don't go away.

trump benefit. very much from the existing plurality system because he was so different from the other candidates if you took any one of those mainstream candidates and you put him in a head to head contest with trump. that other candidate might well have won. here's what people have been saying about redacted in the night with the six hundred full on awesome the only show i go out of my way to launch you know what it is that really packs a punch at least yampa is the john oliver of hearty americans do the same we are apparently better than food the things that i see people you've never heard of love redacted tonight the president of the world bank take. me seriously

send us an e-mail. politicking i'm with amy holmes and robin borrow rob. what about steve benen they lost in virginia he campaigned there and go as the good deeds to govern and now he goes down he makes almost. the. tears with me chastises congolese arrives what what where is steve then and go from here robin. probably to retirement maybe writing obscure blogs larry but i think that he's done stick a stick a fork in him i really just don't see a future for him other than maybe obscure things i will tell you this i've studied very carefully the trump loyalist blogs on four chan and read it and they were all

attacking steve bannon last night and saying that they should've. from the get go was stuck with donald trump's recommendation of luther strange and they were definitely having some regret that they followed steve bannon and now are blaming him so i really just i think it's a bad day for steve bannon i just don't see a way ahead and i'm glad because i think that the republican party needs to cut ties with that and he basically hijacked it he was planning on taking the straight into twenty eighteen and continuing his hijack of the republican party and i'm glad that i think we've cut that off for the past larry any one thing and it will not a good terribly they're going to get a tax bill right. well they're working on it and the breaking news is that they are very close to a deal between the house and the senate you know reconciling these two versions and then taking it to a vote next week christmas has always been the deadline for this tax bill so

they've always been under the gun to get this done and whatever happened in terms of the alabama race republicans on capitol hill know they need to deliver before twenty eighteen they need to deliver tax reform so i think they feel added pressure now that next year they're going to. even slimmer majority only fifty one votes so getting tax reform done right now is essential and going back a little bit to steve bannon the other thing that last night you know kind of hung around his neck is that he doesn't pick winners he picks losers and following his advice is not a good idea so we're going to see you know if his patrons can see continue to back him the mercers at least father the father mercer has already said that he's withdrawn from breitbart his daughter rebecca will still be involved but a lot of the sort of mystery and hype and glamour around steve bannon i think is fading. the tax. side is an. absolutely

larry i've got a prop right here holding up a roll of toilet paper i mean i know you can't see but from so that we can now file we can now file our taxes on a single sheet of beautiful paper so this is what i'm going to file mine on because i think that it's really crap for the middle class i think it's no good for this actually imposes a poor tax of two percent that's not good and you know i know that it's going to help the corporate fat cats and people making in excess of four hundred thousand dollars a year but this just does not it's not what donald trump and vision and as far as truly helping the middle class i see this is a pittance they get what about a one percent one point one percent tax break but when you consider some of the other things that factor into this the potential loss of their home values if we change anything at all about the mortgage interest deduction there's there are problems here and there especially problems for small business owners so i do have concerns and i will be continuing to call this out i mean do you like the plan is

as you we don't know its final form yet i was going to say we we actually don't know exactly what's going to be in it and when it comes to say the mortgage. interest deduction rate what they're talking about is seven hundred fifty grams i'm not sure how that hurts low income people who certainly don't have million dollar homes so i wouldn't put that on the table as something to be upset about in terms of low income earners but i have a concern that previous estimations of the senate tax bill for example neil cavuto over at fox business he said they ran the numbers and found that it would only save the average family sixty five dollars per paycheck i would have liked to have seen that number be a lot bigger now i'm someone who is very supportive of cutting the corporate tax rate not for corporate fat cats but so that they can rev up the economy create more jobs. well that's that's interesting we're going to see you know i was on your show discussing this with j.p. morgan chase economist and he said we. don't necessarily say it right away because

you have to plan a year or two three years in advance so a lot of the benefits from lowering the corporate tax rate won't necessarily be felt before two thousand and twenty so you can imagine the democrats are going to be running against that between now and then a couple of other areas rather than democratic senator kristen gillibrand the said president trump should resign over allegations of sexual assault on trump tweeted that gillibrand begged him for campaign donations and then said he said would do anything for them would you make of that whole brouhaha. i'm trying to recall the response who gave the response that said that any president that calls her a whore is unfit to clean the toilets in the obama presidential museum so you know that struck me it's a problem i think that donald trump faces i think now twenty accusers and i definitely think that following last night's victory that we are going to see this

be a big issue what i anticipate in the road ahead larry though are more smoke screens i'll tell you this i had i'm a former army of a veteran army ranger and i had some army veteran buddies reach out to me some who are still in the service that said that they were actually they voted for donald trump and they are now concerned that he's going to ramp up more provocations with north korea as a smokescreen to to distract from what's going on right now with muller and the allegations of sexual misconduct of his own and they themselves had concerns as far as that goes and i understand those concerns and respect them larry i mean are you concerned. i did not read president trumps tweet that way i mean it was certainly an attack and it was aggressive some might even say belligerent but i didn't see it in the lead anywhere you would do anything or does anything do anything that should

pass any bill she would if i did see it as sexual is and they thought that senate and in fact i thought that senator warren's response to donald trump was slut shaming senator gillibrand was really odd because he has to do with say that a woman who is premiss q.s. is being attacked for her free and open lifestyle so i think a lot of people are getting this wrong and they're using terms and throwing them around a really odd and strange and unsavory ways of getting back to my concern about. ramping up for north korea i'm concerned about north korea ramping up against the united states and as far as wag the dog i. a raw ironic that this is be used to attack president trump if when we all remember back during clinton and impeachment he shot off some missiles into sudan and a lot of people interpreted that as trying to distract from his ongoing problems with impeachment and monica lewinsky and what about robin the thoughts on the status of the russian probe particularly increasing accusations that the mother

investigation is biased. i can understand and appreciate the concerns that have been brought forth this week and i'm glad that person i think they've been removed appropriately so i do not think this is bias robert miller's put together a team of experts and i'm glad that donald trump honestly has getting out of the way of this for the most part because he really needs to just for the for the best optics and to sort of sanitize his presence presidency and get the faith of the country back to him because his his approval ratings just keep sinking and going into twenty eighteen and twenty twenty that's just not a good thing for him this is going to be a stain on his presidency probably forever so the best thing that he can do honestly is step aside let them do their job and if there are any problems far as there being any type of collusion or anything like that those people do need

to be held accountable and do need to step aside but there are plenty of other investigators who could take their place larry and the i think that's the key word plenty of other investigators that don't have these conflicts of interest and you know there is such a thing as the appearance of conflict of interest which is how can the american people have faith and trust in the determinations of this investigating body if you find out that they're tweeting about it or start texting one another about how they hope hillary wins that they think donald trump is a disgusting man when you find out that the guy who's the assistant deputy attorney general four doors down from the attorney general his wife worked for fusion g.p.s. the firm that hired the dossier that bought the dossier during the time that that happened and might have been a pipeline from the dossier to the f.b.i. we're learning so many bizarre and again to use the word unsavory connections

between this investigative team and l. for it's to attack and undermine the president ited states again should the american people trust their conclusions and that's where this whole thing about robert muller he is as you know long a long lifetime republican stout republican well as we all know there were plenty of republicans who didn't like donald trump and opposed his candidacy and said so out loud so just because he has an r. behind his name doesn't necessarily mean that he's going to be fair in the treatment i don't know i hope so but i'm sort of shocked that he would assemble a team that on the face of it would be so vulnerable to the attack of political bias when in the end of the segment then you probably won't see until after the new years. rather than the. dissension in this year under drum. this year in her tribe what i think that he did right was actually reaching across party lines with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer when the going got tough and i

respect that i give credit where it's due i also think that his appointment of nikki haley was brilliant she's done a marvelous job but there's plenty of things that i take issue with and frankly there's not enough time to discuss that right now larry but i did want to put it where it's to me to you i know you're an independent well how do you think of this year oh i really appreciate what robin just said i forgot about that whole chuck schumer make it simple let's see it because it's been such a roller coaster i think everyone can agree when it comes to this this presidency one of the things unfortunately that's been revealed over the last year is the bias of the press how many stories have had to be retracted because the press is so eager to not only be first but be the first to bring down the president on the one hand that that makes me really sad and disappointed on the other hand you know what transparency is the best disinfectant disinfectant so for this to be exposed i think that american news consumers have to be a lot more savvy

a lot more sophisticated than this past year has taught them that thank you both very much happy holidays happy holidays larry and to thank you thank you for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things don't forget use the politicking hash tag and that's also this edition of politics.

it would seem the more the anti trampers push to have the president removed from office the more we learn about the media in such places as the f.b.i. how they really work to date the investigation known as russia gate has revealed preciously little we're learning there was collusion elsewhere. we first like when you on the us come to arms because. if somebody would've been told me to spend my life for two point computers i'll talk to some of the sort it was clear.

every night all we were attacked by the arabs we were attacking them and we will extremely shocked and saying that's not possible oh. such sentiments and then disorder simple myself from the. host without a cause of war we've all gotten over do all the. believe much second class citizens in the on call. the troops like and like to give my hope that there is no room to be able to live together without to. come. that's all the politicians will make people afraid that we have better relations with russia better relations with the united states already do enforce laws of nationalism in brussels and the european union that is

the real reason and that is something i thought strikes. us regulators voted to scrap net neutrality despite protests in washington critics say the move could create a so-called internet for the elite. president vladimir putin concludes his annual marathon q. and a session with journalist something more than seventy questions in almost four hours. and palestinian protesters clash with israeli police in a nonstop wave of anger over jerusalem as muslim nations reject the u.s. role in the middle east peace process for more on these stories head to r.t. dot com coming up next dutch freedom party leader filters isn't the guest on so i've been getting his views on the future of your.