Joe Lockhart

one of the things that Sarah Sanders did is she normalized this idea that it's OK to view the press as the enemy of the people.

I used to brief twice a day because I saw it as an opportunity. I saw it as an opportunity to tell the country, here's what the President is trying to get done and at times to say, here's what his opponents are trying to do to stop him.

I mean, she already had an impossible job because Donald Trump lies as easily as he breathes.

There is this culture of dishonesty that starts at the top.

But at the end of the day, Democrats are going to have to decide, are we going to let them bury this report or we're going to take the necessary steps to expose the report?

I think Don McGahn feels like the wild card here. Thirty hours, never debrief by the White House counsel, the new White House counsel. That's what I think they're worried about.

It's hard to overestimate the damage President Trump has done to our political climate when comments like this go virtually unnoticed. We've all become numb to the lying, bullying and physical threats the President makes almost daily.

He intimates here that he's got the military on his side in a political battle. What does that mean? Take it to its logical extreme, which is if he doesn't get his way, if the voters aren't with him, he has the military. That has real…

He has undermined institutions purposefully since he's taken office, even when he was running.

But if you put aside -- and I'm not going to defend someone leaking something -- that one of the possibilities you mentioned is this was taken and put aside for the special prosecutor, the other possibility is very alarming.

But the political question is the optics of the President of the United States tying the courts up for the next year or two to cope himself from going in and telling the truth to the prosecutor are very bad political optics.

It's the oldest rule in politics and very few people in politics follow it.