and we welcome to the broadcast aaron blake for "the washington post." aaron, your colleagues have gone ahead and verified this brennen matter was done without process, without cause, with rigor, that it was indeed political. >> it's setup actually an interesting contrast, i think, between the intelligence chiefs that you talked about who wrote that letter from bill mcraven who wrote that op-ed for "the washington post," and some republicans in the senate who have differed from this decision in the white house and don't necessarily like the idea of revoking security clearances for former intelligence officials have also been critical of john brennen. i think the white house chose this one as the icebreaker when it comes to this effort because they recognize that brennen is something of a lightening rod even among people who might be critical of this decision. so you've seen a number of senators, john kennedy from louisiana, susan collins who differed with the decision actually said she's not happy with the way john brennen has been political. they wanted

assistant attorney general for the great state of new jersey and remaining with us nancy cook and aaron blake. aaron, last night in realtime, i said the president pulled up a lester rolt. this can make the job tougher for people like press secretaries, can it not? >> yeah, it certainly can because this has happened over and over again. it wasn't just the trump tower meeting. it wasn't just the comey firing. this has been a situation in which the people who represent the president either aren't allowed to talk to him or aren't getting the straight story from him before they're put out there to offer the first version of events. i think this is actually a situation where the explanation is somewhat more damning than the lester holt interview, albite perhaps a less problematic subject. when we're talking about the holt issue, it differed from some people. he didn't directly say that he fired james comey because of the russia investigation. he said the russia investigation was on his mind when he did it, which i think is a different legal standard. in this case he's actually talking about how joh

ken dilanian, frank figliuzzi, aaron blake, thank you all.r since charlottesville, one the president couldn't condemn white supremacists and neo-nazis, we'll look at why he continues to wade into that culture war. that's next. . it's america's most popular street name. but allstate agents know that's where the similarity stops. if you're on park street in reno, nevada, the high winds of the washoe zephyr could damage your siding. and that's very different than living on park ave in sheboygan, wisconsin, where ice dams could cause water damage. but no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local allstate agents knows yours. now that you know the truth, are you in good hands? >>> this weekend makes it one year since charlottesville. undoubtedly the most racially charged period of a racially charged presidency. to kickoff this week of reflection and thought, the president is tweeting about lebron james. the nba star said the president uses sports to divide people, so here's the president's response. quote, lebron james was just interviewed

. >>> let's talk to our panel now, jacksonville winebank and aaron blake a senior political reporter for "the washington post." >> aaron, i want to start with you, trying to clarify of what the president is trying to do with this tweet. he does not have the same ring of what is the meaning of is or is not. they're trying to underscore that this is not a command from the president. >> they're focusing on one word, "should," they're saying the president was not issued a demand here. jay sekulow says this is not a demand from the president. rudy giuliani says the president's tweet s was carefuly worded so he's making it not a command. two of the president's lawyers saw this tweet and saw the opportunity to clarify it. they're making sure that the tweet does not read according to some people are reading it. they recognize how problematic it would be if it is interpreted as a command. we can add this to a long list of tweets that the president have said. >> matt miller, what's your analysis. >> aaron is right. >> this is a red line for the president to interfere into the investigation. he'

>> aaron blake, thank you as well. just when the russia/trump saga could not get any weirder. enter steven seagal. he became a russian citizens a couple of years ago. the above the law star says he's humbled and will take this honor very seriously. >>> testify, a woman known as the manhattan madame has just agreed to testify in robert mueller's investigation. >> removed facebook account and pages linked to the most controversial users. president trump targeting lebron james, he seems to be on an island. even some of his supporters are backing away from this one. alice is living with metastatic breast cancer, which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of her body. she's also taking prescription ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor, which is for postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive her2- metastatic breast cancer as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole was significantly more effective at delaying disease progression versus letrozole. patients taking ibrance can develop low white blood cell counts, which may cause serious infections tha

kimberly atkins and aaron blake. kevin, here's the thing. in the last 24 hours. there are big questions. we learned things how this is going to get laid out. we don't know a lot of things. what are your biggest questions? >> the biggest questions are whether or not we'll get to a full space force. there's agreement space needed to be elevated and more attention. secretary of the air force and the general in charge, more man than a year ago asked for attention. like u.s. special operations command. which means all services fun nel into it. of the manage anybody that -- they deploy the troops out where needed. whether in europe, pacific or some other thing. space force, an equal service. that's where it gets dicey. and you have a whole lot of polite smiling at the pentagon, saying we're going hand this off to congress and everyone in congress is kind of saying, okay, let's bring it because it's got to come next year in the budget. >> congress has to approve a new branch. >> there's not a whole lot of full support. >> before i get to that. i th

aaron blake writing it is damaging to his credibility, davis is his lawyer and spokesman which meansims came from cohen himself, cohen wasn't a fantastic witness before, he is a worse one now. charlie has been laughing since we started this segment. >> unbelievably, a worse witness now than he was before. last week it was a rough week for donald trump derangement syndrome sufferers. you had the verdict in the manafort trial, the conviction and then guilty plea with michael cohen and everybody went hyper overdrive hysterics thinking this was going to lead to the impeachment of donald trump but when you clear away the underbrush you find out the manafort trial had nothing to do with it and michael cohen stuff at best pretty troubling accusations leveled by a troubling witness and the idea that michael cohen knows what fcc laws and what campaign finance laws the president violated, he is not a very good lawyer. a week later it looks a lot different than it did last week. shannon: does it feel different to you? >> a little different but that is different as it does for charlie over there

one illustration of this era was posted on twitter by aaron blake, senior political reporter over at "the washington post." he wrote the following. quote, list of people charged with and pleading to crimes. trump's second campaign manager. trump's deputy campaign manager. trump's national security adviser. trump's foreign policy adviser. trump's first campaign manager, battery charges later dropped. trump's first congressional endorser. walter isaacson, a distinguished fellow of the aspen institute, if you ask me, he's a distinguished person of any kind. biographer of franklin, einstein, kissinger, jobs, and da vinci and professor of history at tulane in his spare time. welcome back to our studio. what do you make of his choice of those who words, corruption and cruelty? >> they're very simple words. they're very true. and they go to the heart of what's going to be a problem for this administration, because it is a lot of corruption. just people at the trough, for money, simple corruption. and it gets -- you know, sleazy, congressmen on the white house lawn, getting phone calls to du

strategy specifically when it comes to robert mueller, take a listen -- or take a look at what aaron blake and "the washington post" is writing about today. warning that a prolonged investigation is potentially going to reflect poorly on mueller. the prolonged nature of the whole thing has also some potential strategic value for the trump team and negative consequences for mueller. polls suggest that americans are gradually growing impatient with the investigation and in some cases are warming to trump and his allies' arguments against the legitimacy. the longer this goes on the more the feelings have a chance to fester and the more people might begin to doubt that mueller has the goods. now take this reporting from axios on giuliani's media strategy for the mueller probe. giuliani is publicly setting up mueller with expectations. he must know mueller can't meet them. there is no way mueller is wrapping this thing up by september 1st and there is no way mueller will agree to an interview with trump on the condition he won't ask two of the critical questions about obstruction of justice. by

ann >>> we are back with "the washington post" aaron blake and politico's anna.start with you anna. your sources are talking about what we were. ohio especially election. >> we reported today you're going to see money coming on the republican side. my sources are saying look for democrats to also increase spending. 35 years this seat in r-plus 7 has been in republican hands. >> it kind of escaped notice earlier in week when it was reported that robert mueller the special counsel has referred to the cases about these potential violations, foreign lobbying from tony podesta, others, referred them to the southern district of new york just like michael cohen of course. my sources tell me this is a reflection of the fact mueller is very much focussed on people who are related to the russian investigation. now, of course, that's not terribly surprising but i think it does counter what the president is saying, what his allies are saying, which is that the manafort case has nothing to do with russia. we're just focussed on bringing down a guy because he was involved with

analyst and friend of the show onset with us, senior political reporter for the "washington post" aaron blake and white house correspondent for the pbs news hour, yamich e. it's your story driving this and our reporting confirms yes the president has talked with his legal team about the possibility of impeachment if dems take the house but there's real concern that there's not enough of a strategy for the storm that may be headed the president's way. what are you hearing? >> that's exactly right. what we're hearing based on reporting is that the president has talked a little bit about impeachment but does not seem overly concerned about it and he has not importantly given any directive to his team, to his lawyers or white house staff to try to prepare a plan of action for what to do. so the result is he has rudy giuliani as a personal lawyer but doesn't have a full sort of legal team that's prepared to defend him in impeachment proceedings. he also in the white house does not have a fully staffed white house counsel's office or communications infrastructure to handle what is expected to be an

. >> ashley is calling aaron blake in the washington post reminds us today of the federal statute that prohibits retaliating against witnesses, which james comey, andy mccabe and sally yates all are. to the statute is whoever knowingly with the intent to retaliate takes any action harmful to any person including interference with the lawful employment or livelihood shall be fined upped this title or imprisoned not more than ten years or both. >>> so he's also under investigation by someone who i'm told is simply investigating crimes and deciding whether or not to charge and prosecute them. that's the mueller investigators. >> well, i mean, the president has actually shown no reluctance at all to continuing to add to the number of things that the special counsel can investigate. and what's really shocking here, maybe not so shocking, is that we've heard virtually crickets from the congressional republicans. and instead we've heard more voices this time than at any other time actually agreeing with the president of the united states. and i think what disturbs me most in this is that, fir

to point out something that i hadn't considered until today, until this was pointed out to me by aaron blakegton post" -- at the washingt"washington post." and he says it was from elie honig, who was on our air last friday. she argues that donald trump, if he decides to revoke the clearance of somebody like james comey, it's not necessarily just within his purview to do so, that he could actually run afoul of the law. listen to what elie said last week. >> what i don't know that everybody understand is it's a federal crime to retaliate against somebody who is a witness. i don't know that brennan qualifies as a witness. he is more of an investigator. keep that if mind if the president follows through with his threats to pull james comey's clearance. clearly, comey will be a crucial witness here. it is a federal crime, 15, 31, for providing truthful information to law enforcement. >> here is the statute. section 1531 e. whoever knowingly with the intent to retaliate takes any action harmful to any person including interference with employment or livelihood of any person any truthful informatio

i wanted to read you something from an aaron blake column in the washington post and get you to comment about it. cohen like manafort is widely viewed as someone would could flip on trump and is under investigation for things apparently unrelated to the campaign. the obvious difference was manafort was a key figure in the campaign and had existing ties to russian interests that could conceivably be involved in the case's future. while cohen may know derogatory things about trump, manafort may be viewed as a potential collusion witness. so, joyce, give me a read on that. >> it's possible that that's the correct take. manafort could be far more central to collusion between the campaign and russia than the bank fraud and tax fraud prosecution he's currently going through would suggest. in other words, mueller could have indicted the leading edge perhaps to convince manafort to cooperate with him down the road. but manafort might still offer a great deal of help to mueller discussing, for instance, the history of financial back and forth between trump and russia. he can talk, of course, abo

. >> eugene, let me put up something that aaron blake wrote today. this is what hiring the best people look like. people that pleaded guilty, michael cohen, michael flynn, rick gates, george papadopoulos. we'll get a verdict today with paul manafort. and indicted his first endorser in congress, chris collins. so this is the best people for you. >> this is what you elect donald trump as president of the united states. this is who he is -- >> a criminal enterprise? >> this is the kind of people he surrounded himself with. you know, paul manafort is on trial for tax fraud, bank fraud. everybody around this table knew about paul manafort, knew about his reputation. you know, and so this wasn't -- this is not at all far-fetched. >> it was an open secret in washington. he had a dirty book of business. sman th explain that. >> that was an open secret. he represented a string of bad guys. he was that kind of lobbyist and influence peddler for bad people basically. that was well known. and you could -- it's not a leap to wonder about suspicious financial tran