January 22, 2019

So Rudy Giuliani is confusing people again today.

"So, Mike Barnicle, I think it would be a sad exercise to figure out what's going on with him. What about the story? What about pulling back big picture? Do his errors and misstatements and lies matter in the long term?" Mika Scarborough said.

"We don't know, Mika. We don't know if they're lies, if they're just mistaken statements that he makes --it's so hard to follow him," Barnicle said.

"The New Yorker interview you referenced, here's another example in the New Yorker. He's talking about the Buzzfeed story. From the moment I read the story, I knew it was false. Rudy then says 'Because I have been through all the tapes, I have been through all the texts and all the e-mails, and I knew none existed.' The interviewer says, 'What tapes have you gone through?' 'I shouldn't have said tapes,' Giuliani said. The level of incompetence he brings to this, whether it's planned or unplanned, only he knows. And Jim, I have never seen this before in a representative of the president of the United States, but we are continually getting into uncharted waters seemingly by the hour."

"To be clear on one thing, Rudy does talk to Trump all the time," Jim VandeHei said.

"So when he comes out there and he goes on Meet The Press and then calls the New York Times and says he definitely was involved in this Moscow deal 'from beginning to end on the campaign,' it is hard for me to believe he was just freelancing and that he misspoke. Twenty-four hours later, he comes back and says, ah, that's not true. Why? Because his admission would be one of the biggest bombshells we've had since the beginning of this Russia investigation.

"He was essentially on the record admitting that a candidate for president of the United States was working on a multi-billion dollar business deal with Vladimir Putin's Russia while Russia was trying to tip the election in his favor. That fact set is devastating for Trump. It goes to the heart of what Mueller is looking at. I find it hard to believe he just happened to say that. Because ge knows what is in those written answers from Trump to the special prosecutor. He knows a lot more than we do about what Mueller knows. Is this a big deal, is that a big deal, this is a big deal. It goes to what would Russia have that they could dangle over the head of the president when he was president or a candidate. They know what was going on in the Moscow deal.

"If Trump was involved and it was more extensive than we were led to believe, that's a big deal," VandeHei concluded.

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