Attorney General Bill Barr said last week that he didn't have a problem with Robert Mueller testifying before Congress.
"Now the president says no," New Day's John Berman said.
"Jeffrey Toobin, to me, it seems as if this puts a lot of pressure on William Barr. We're going to learn a lot about Barr in the next 24 hours if he responds to this. He has said he's okay with Mueller testifying in the past. Now the president says no, so is Barr the principled attorney general or is he just carrying water for the president?"
"Well, that is the question. And we'll need an answer very soon. Another development over the weekend was David Cicilline, the member of the House Judiciary committee, saying it looked like there was a tentative deal for Mueller to testify on May 15th. Cicilline walked that back a little bit, but obviously, this is a very live issue about Mueller's testimony," Toobin said.
"The Judiciary committee wants him sooner rather than later. You know, I don't know what's going to happen. The president is the boss of the attorney general. He has now spoken out. I, you know, we'll see. Ask Abby Phillips. Ask her."
Phillips said it's not clear that Trump has the ability to stop Mueller from testifying. "I mean, on what grounds would he or even Bill Barr have to stop this testimony from happening?"
Barr may do a U-turn in response to Trump's statement, which would surprise exactly no one.
"Listen, I think if he found a way to spin the Mueller report as exoneration of the president, he can find a way to spin and turn this around," former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart said.
"It really, though, is the problem of the president of having two divergent strategies. Of saying, 'I've been totally exonerated,' but the person who totally exonerated shouldn't talk about it publicly. That is -- it undermines his number one strategy. If he felt totally exonerated, he should want the special counsel to be up on Capitol Hill, talking about that total exoneration. We're now, you know, that was what the problem with the strategy, which is, he wasn't exonerated. So he's now going to try to keep him from doing it or talk about keeping -- all it will do, though, is raise the drama of when Mueller eventually testifies."
