Sunday School 7/8/18

Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!

That's right -- three of the five major Sunday classrooms gave us a big old helping of Rudy Giuliani today. Let's take a look and see how consistent the president's special mouthpiece attorney was in his appearances, shall we?

First up? Rudy and George, on ABC's This Week; here are the highlights:

• regarding former Trump 'fixer' Michael Cohen's interview last week, Rudy said the president shared his opinion, that Cohen should cooperate, there's no reason to believe he did anything wrong, the president did nothing wrong, what happened to Cohen was horrible
• on what Cohen might say to Mueller's team, no concerns there as long as he tells the truth, we're home free
• there have been on discussions of a pardon for Cohen, it would just muddy the waters, and anyway there's no reason to even think about it
• as far as Rudy knows, the president didn't tell Cohen to make the Stormy Daniels payments, he didn't know about it at the beginning, some foggy point down the road he found out
• there's still no timeline for Trump to sit down with Mueller, but he really wants to, and
• they have to consider that the Mueller investigation is unconstitutional because it violates the Appointments clause, according to several people.

On MTP, Rudy and Chuck Todd talked about and around a number of subjects, with these highlights:

• on his previously saying the 4th of July was some kind of important date on the question of whether Trump would talk to Mueller, Rudy says they'll now need to know some factual basis for the investigation, because so far there's no collusion found by Mueller or by anyone else including the Trump team researching the collusion issue
• Trump's admission that he misled the public about writing Donnie's statement was just an incorrect recollection, no big deal mostly because nothing ever came of the meeting
• yes, the president's anxious to sit down with Mueller because he's done nothing wrong, but it's the lawyers like me that are keeping him from doing so, because the investigation is so biased, not Mueller himself, but the investigation is, and someone needs to investigate the people on the team and read their texts, but the president wants to testify if there's any basis for the investigation
• it's OK if Cohen testifies, he's not going to lead Mueller to the president
• there's no problem with Trump sitting down with Putin, he has to, no matter what the Senate report says about Russian interference, and he is ready to regularize things with Putin but Putin will have to meet Trump more than halfway.

And finally, on CNN's State of the Union, Rudy and Dana Bash chatted on similar subjects, leaving us with these highlights:

• even with all of the leaks, no one's found any factual basis for the investigation, but if there is one the president would be happy to sit down with Mueller's team, and I don't mean evidence of a crime, just some suspicion of one would be nice
• the president can't just fire Mueller, even though this is the most illegitimate investigation ever, and biased and what a mess, but if Trump fired him the media (the enemy of the people, as we know) would say Mueller was fired because Trump was guilty
• Comey is the biggest villain in all of this
• There have been leaks, lots of leaks, they leaked reports, they leaked meetings, they leaked about Manafort and Cohen
• The Trump team has seen everything Mueller has, 1.4M documents, they've debriefed everyone important and so they know that Mueller has nothing which is why he's pushing for the interview with Trump
• We're not banking on him not issuing a subpoena, but if he does issue one, we'll quash it because you can't do that unless you have a really good case that the information you're looking for can't be found any other way
• Mueller wants to interview Trump's Chief of Staff General Kelly, that's being handled by some other attorney, we're saying no because hey, let's see the texts from Mueller's team since this is all after the Horowitz report showing how corrupt everything is
• No, I'm not trying to delay the end of this until after the midterms, I want to get it over with, I'm not worried about any political considerations, but Mueller can't indict, there's no basis for that, but impeachment is what everyone's talking about, look at Maxine Waters and I have to listen to what everyone is saying not just the leaders who aren't saying this but how do I know they're not lying?

I love that last part -- how can we possibly know that everyone else isn't lying? - coming from a guy who's boss lies with extraordinary ease, with great conviction and great results.

See you around campus.