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 Harbrun, 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'll 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

Robert Mueller. And Trump was obviously somehow fixated with Manafort. And I think that's what

his agitation was about. The question is, did Manafort in the end function as a decoy that diverted Trump's

attention from the true peril he faces from Michael Cohen? Michael Cohen worked for Trump for over a

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