Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline,” Washington Post contributor Jennifer Rubin said the earlier confusion over the potential ouster of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was the Trump administration’s attempt to “see if he would go quietly.”

Rubin said, “I think what you saw here was an effort, a game of chicken, as one former U.S. attorney said to me. An effort to get Rosenstein — to see if he could be bullied into resigning. To see if he would go quietly. When that was impossible, they backed off a little bit. And I think the reaction from Capitol Hill, from the media, was sufficient to back them off. But this is a temporary stay of execution.”

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