MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski said her old friend, President Donald Trump, was visibly terrified as the special counsel probe moves closer to him and his family.
The president has been lashing out at Robert Mueller and his investigators and apparently engaging in witness tampering on Twitter, after the special counsel accused his campaign manager Paul Manafort of lying and his longtime attorney struck a cooperation agreement.
"We know him, Joe -- look at him," the "Morning Joe" co-host said to host Joe Scarborough.
She said his distracted behavior at the G-20 summit in Argentina betrayed the worry that had clouded his entire personality, and she said the president hardly resembled the man she's known for years.
"There's a lot more going on in his head than we know, just like there's a lot more going with Mueller probe than we know," Brzezinski said. "Something is going on with him -- his behavior, his demeanor, everything is changed."
"It's clear to me, I'll just say my assessment from knowing him for quite a long time, he's deeply troubled -- either how much trouble he's in or someone in his family is in," she added. "That's all he cares about, or his financial future. Something is going on. He's deeply troubled and behaving very differently than the person we knew."
After a commercial break, Brzezinski returned to her assessment.
"What you are watching before your eyes, when you see him on television every day, in my opinion, is a man who is finally, in 74 years of his life, finally being held accountable for his actions," she said, "and he does not know what to do, and I think that's what we see when we watch his behavior and his strange lurches away from people."
