Former Trump pal Donny Deutsch explains the president’s gamble on impeachment

MSNBC's Donny Deutsch has a theory about his old pal President Donald Trump and his latest strategy to wriggle out of trouble.

The "Morning Joe" contributor suspects the president, whom he used to know from their days in New York City, believes impeachment is inevitable, but he's confident that Republican senators won't remove him from office.

"Rev, I'm seeing a little bit of a different show here," Deutsch told the Rev. Al Sharpton. "You and I know Trump pretty well, or used to know Trump pretty well. I don't think there's any chance Mick Mulvaney went out there on his own."

Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, admitted during a press briefing that he held up congressionally approved aid to Ukraine in an effort to press the country to investigate a conspiracy theory about Democrats and the 2016 election.

"I think Trump's bet is, 'Okay, let them impeach me, I'm not going to get thrown out in the Senate,'" Deutsch said, "'and by the way, when they impeach me, if I've set it up that this is a no big deal, keep moving on here -- yeah, there are was a quid pro quo, oh yeah, there was a quid pro quo, yeah, there was a quid pro quo.'"

"He's got the defense going into the general public in the election," Deutsch continued. "That is his bet. I believe this is, once again, the same strategy -- 'Yeah, Fifth Avenue, I shot someone.'"

"So we're sitting here talking about how this strengthens the case for the impeachment in Congress," he added. "I'm going on the premise that he's playing a bigger, longer game. The ultimate transactional day trader is looking past this."

Sharpton agreed, but said Trump's strategies don't always make sense or end up working out.

"I think you could be right in terms of Trump logic," Sharpton said. "But Trump logic is not always logical. What he is missing is the public is different in terms of their attitude than they were when he made the statement about Fifth Avenue. The majority of the public is saying they want to see impeachment inquiry or his removal from office."

"When he said he would shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him, people did not think he was going to be president," Sharpton added. "People did not think he would throw the Kurds to the dogs. People did not think any number of things. Now they've seen him in office and they're seeing it differently. He is acting the same way, you're absolutely right, Donny, he is dealing with Donald Trump logic, but Trump logic is illogical to the majority of Americans right now."