Hello everyone, this is Eric calling from Northern Virginia where I'm making dinner for my kids and honey lemon lavender ice cream for my lovely wife.

This podcast was recorded at...

203 PM on Thursday August 9th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this. I love you, Bri. All right, here's the show.

What a nice house! That's very sweet!

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly round up of this week's political news.

We're going to talk about Paul Manafort's trial, that interview between the special counsel and the president,

which may or may not ever happen, why President Trump and the Trump administration are sometimes at odds,

and a white nationalist rally in Washington, D.C.

I'm Tamer Keith, I cover the White House.

I'm Aisha Roscoe, I also cover the White House.

I'm Ryan Lucas, I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Marlaison, National Political Correspondent.

And Ryan, I want to start with you and a phone call you had yesterday with one Rudolph Giuliani.

What was that about?

Well, it's about this, a letter that the President's legal team sent to the special counsel's office this week,

with a counteroffer about a possible presidential interview with the special counsel's office as part of the Russia investigation.

This is the long-running saga between the President's legal team and special counsel Robert Mueller's office.

Giuliani wouldn't get into the specifics of what the offer was, but he said that it was a serious offer.

It's something that if the special counsel's office can agree to, they can sit down and get this actually done.

But he also said kind of confusingly, he said that this was the last best chance that Mueller might have to secure Trump's testimony.

But then he also said it's not a final offer.

...