On Morning Joe, Willie Geist asked Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence committee, for his take on the Helsinki press conference with Trump and Putin.
"You watched yesterday's press conference. 'Damaging, shameful and cowardly,' you called it. Were you even surprised by what you saw yesterday despite all you know about this president?" Geist asked.
"I was surprised, and I think many of us thought we lost the capacity to be shocked any more," the congressman said.
"But it was a stunning betrayal of the country, and inexplicable on so many levels. Whether there is this kompromat on the president, we don't know, we're trying to find out. We're trying to find out. But he certainly acts like a president that is compromised and what ultimately matters to the country is how he acts -- and he acts like the Russians have something on him.
"The only thing I'll say that runs in the opposite direction is that if he were a long-time asset of the KGB, as was possibly said in the New York magazine a week ago, his handlers would say, 'Slow down, you'll give yourself away.' Hard to imagine him with a more damaging performance than we saw this week.
"And if I could just comment on your last question, I do think this is time for people in this administration to say that they are resigning ---and not just resigning in silence, but saying they are resigning because they can't be -- they can't enable this kind of conduct, and maybe through their resignation they can prompt some change in the president.
"But I think for many people in the administration, now they need to think about the bigger service to the country by resigning in protest."
