This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to The Americano podcast with Freddie Gray.

Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency for the new Spectator USA website.

I'm joined today by Jacob Halbrun, who is editor of the national interest

and also author of They Knew They Were Right, The Rise of the Neocons.

So Jacob, we just had the news that Michael Cohen has admitted that he lied about how long negotiations over the Trump Tower in Moscow went on for.

And this would sort of suggest that the president either sort of deliberately misled the public

or sort of willingly ignored Cohen's or just didn't know that Cohen was lying.

How significant is this? I mean, it feels like

Trump has been worried about the Mueller investigation for a few days. He's certainly been

tweeting a lot about it. Is this what he was worried about? It's hard to know with precision

because there's a story in the Washington Post that just came out that says that the acting attorney general

Mark Whitaker was informed of the forthcoming

plea, but the article suggests that

he may not have informed Trump of it and that this could create tensions between Whitaker and Trump.

I do think it appears that Trump's was fixated with Paul Manafort and thought that he had

performed an end run around the Mueller investigation because Mueller came down hard you may remember just a few

days ago on Manafort and tomorrow there will be a court appearance by Manafort's counsel

Mueller is asking for sentencing as quickly as possible with Paul Manafort and Manafort's

counsel was collaborating or if you wish

colluding with the Trump legal team to the displeasure of of Robert Mueller and

Trump was obviously some have fixated with with Manafort and I think that's what

his agitation was about.

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