reports and developments out this morning on that russian probe. good morning, it's thursday, july 13th. we're he on capitol hill. had a great night last night. >> great night. i made this terrible mistake. i get an invitation for crimson, something i thought they were talking about alabama, crimson tide, it was harvard. >> institute of politics. >> it was a great event. lots of fun. david rubenstein interviewed us. apparently you're harvard fellow. well, mark, you're a harvard guy. >> i used to be a member of the institute of politics. >> no, it's a great thing. >> once you learn the seek cecr fellowship handshake, it's all fun. >> and you could tell, bloomberg -- >> he was nailing you. >> he was very disturbed that i didn't wear socks. he didn't understand that. just something that the kids do these days. >> with us here on capitol hill we have senior political analyst for nbc news mark halperin. from "the wall street journal," shane harris, kasie hunt and sam stein. >> sam, it's so good to see you. how you doing? >> it's great to see you, too, guys. >> i don't think he means that. >> he doesn't. he's a dartmouth man. >> let's move on. >> we love dartmouth. my eyes were caught by this "usa today" headline that talks about russia doesn't rate in trump company. that's something that you are hearing from a lot of members that people aren't really focused on that yet. that makes a lot of sense. people have to be worried about whether they're losing their health care, whether they're going to have to take a second or third job. obviously a lot of different concerns there but obviously that's how it was and during watergate, people shouldn't be sitting here worrying about what mueller's doing right now. they're worried about their own family, whether they can make nds me ends meet. but that said, the pace on the russian probe is quickening in such a way that i think people will be focused on it for some time. >> we want to get to shane's new reporting in "the wall street journal" that u.s. intelligence agencies discovered russian people talking to donald trump months before his candidacy. investigators are reexamining what was picked up in the spring of 2015 in light of donald trump jr.'s meeting with the russian lawyer last year. quote, in some cases the russians in the overheard conversations talked about meetings held outside the u.s. involving russian government officials and trump business soshts associates or advisers. russian officials are routinely monitored by u.s. intelligence agencies and it wouldn't be unusual for discuss people who have been interests in russia. >> shane, the timeline moves back. >> right. >> before the campaign. even before the campaign some concerns in the intel community about all of the contacts between the trump organization, trump and russia. >> you put yourself back in that time frame, donald trump hasn't announced he's flirting of it, we know nothing of russian meddling in the election. at the time it's vague and it's a little unclear exactly why this is significant but it is that volume that they're picking it up so much, it's making everyone pause and look at each other and say what do we make of this. it's not till we get months down the road and the picture starts to become clearer that in behindsight that information starts to look potentially more significant. >> and the contact, any word on who exactly was part of the contact? >> we're still digging into some of that. our understanding is it it was people who were advisers and people close to donald trump. >> so you're also looking at russian money in the election going back to the spring of 2016. tell us what you know. >> this is an important piece that's going to need more attention. in the spring of 2016 european officials are picking up signs from their own intelligence gathering efforts that russian money is flowing into our elections process. it's not clear if that's going to a candidate but it's significant enough that u.s. officials pick up on this as well and they are briefed in the spring 2016 time frame, that the money flows may be an issue here as well. that also is important because that predates our public understanding that the dnc was hand. you're seeing this influence campaign maybe having roots in money flowing in the spring of 2015 as well. >> you look at all the different pieces that are out there and a little bit here, a little bit there. nour we're going back even before the election, of course the meeting. . you saw the timeline in june, the messages between the trump cam pan and outside sources more of the pieces of the puzzle seem to be coming together but there was a story reported yesterday by mcclatchy that mark halperin has been talking about for some time that adds another i think we agree, another significant piece in this investigation, new and disturbing. >> he's reporting whether the trump campaign's digital operation helped guide russia in targeting voters with fake news attacks on hillary clinton during the election. the president's son-in-law, jared kushner, oversaw a digital strategy and now the congressional intel committees and justice department want to know if the campaign pointed russian cyber operatives and bots to specific so thing districts -- one source told mcleod they would the theory has come up before. here's hillary clinton speaking about this elier this summer. >> the russians, in my opinion and based on the intel and counterintel people i've talked to, could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided. and here's -- >> guided by americans. >> guided by americans and guided by people who had polling. >> mark, this is a story that you have been following for some time now. i remember you talking to me about it a month or two ago, that there was growing concern in the intel community that jared kushner's operation, the trump campaign's digital operation may have been coordinating with the russians. >> and more broadly, as hillary clinton, political analyst and interested party said how is it that the russians were able to apparently target american voters with the kind of sophistication you wouldn't expect them to have in the kremlin about this emerging part democrats are very interested in data in place like michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania, there were tons of messages, a flood of messages in the last few weeks of the campaign. you go back to shane's reporting and you think about mueller's operation and the njts committee is across the street trying to figure out the timeline here. a lot of the activity predates donald trump's are they trying to simply beat hillary clinton? are they trying to keep their options open? the things that mcclatchy has been reporting on is when trump wins the campaign. even if hillary does win, damaged president -- >> and those were they microtargeted by the trump campaign with the help of the russians. talk about the justice department and what your reporting has unearthed. >> the significance of money in the lks, particularly if there's any evidence of cooperation, california use, between -- money trail, business hillary clinton is suspicious, did the americans say to the russians, need a lit, toehow making it available you by put it on the web. that is the kind of thing through subpoenas that ey could actually get. there are digital or money records to look at. >> kasie, we started picking it up quietly behind the scenes with republicans' growing concerns. you saw it with many conservative commentators, columnists online who expressed skepticism about the russian investigation saying hold on, got to step back, this actually is not just a passing phase. this issing is. >> and look, i do think there was a shift around when they announced bob muller. that was a way to le but to mark's earlier point about the contours of the timeline and what was going on very early in the campaign, remember what the russian m.o. has been not just here but around the world, which is to he was an agent of chaos that was potentially undermining the whole rest of the field. so from that perspective, that represents an opportunity. >> well, he remained that way throughout the entire process. >> and remains it now. >> yeah, remains it now. sam stein, two new stories out on russia. two more pieces that we're learning about that obviously bob mulle -- mueller and the justice department have to be investigating, this new digital piece that hillary clinton's been suspicious of for some time but also that we've quietly been hearing about and now we know the justice department's looking into it. >> yeah, on the digital piece, you know, i did a story shortly after the campaign where i reached out to voters who said they had decided in the last week why and how they were going to vote. and one of the things that struck me during the reporting of that story was how many of these people had picked up on or basically false or inaccurate news items surrounding the campaign and/or picked up on the wikileaks, the john podesta e-mails. it clearly factored into their votes. if you're microtargeting, you might have had an impact in that sense. with respect to shane's story, is one of the reasons there were so much chatter in the spring of 2015 not just because donald trump was entering this race, he was this new chaos candidate, but was it because they knew donald trump from his business ties, he'd been to russia, his son had been to russia, and they had the miss america pageant there in 2013 and they had a familiarity and he was the candidate they understood? >> that was the presumption among a lot of people, he's done business there. it wouldn't be unthinkable you'd hear about donald trump. it was the volume, even for someone who had the profile he did in russia and globally. >> wow. all right. >> so, mark, what's the next step as far as the investigation goes? >> well, there's reports this morning that the house intelligence committee is concerned there's not enough coordination going on with the senate. we're about to see at least on the senate side some more public hearings. >> does the senate intel committee trust the house committee? >> i think as much as the senate ever trusts the house. >> how much do you trust your little brother? >> oh, come on! good luck reporting on the house. >> you always see this when you've got house and senate committees. there's competition. >> nunez and that chaos. >> there's competition. there always is. but where there does seem to be a good relationship according to people in the executive branch and the hill there's not this tension you sometimes have seen that they want to give immunity to people. there's no sign of that. i think it's so sprawling. the fact that mueller has stepped up so quickly with every aggressive and very good people, i think you're going to see that track move quickly but i think the congressional hearings will be pretty big on beau sides in the fall. we've heard no private testimony i've heard about. you're going to see public hearings. the leaks continue. if you're the white house, that is the most dangerous thing. no one has suggested mueller's office is leaking but they may be. the leaks off the hill are going to be big. now that the house and senate and democrats and republicans are cooperating that means democrats have access to the information and they will leak it. >> mueller has ramped up his investigation but you look at your story you're reporting this morning, the mcclatchy story that there may have been digital evidence, it seems there are not enough investigators to follow all the trails out there. the money. you followed the money, great. now follow the digital imprint. by the way, we were talking before about how significant this mcclatchy story could be. this microtargeting not only could not be done by russians, it couldn't be done by 99.9% of americans that sophisticated of microtargeting before an election. it is an art. it is a political art and you have to know what you're doing. >> that's right. they had a company called cambrid cambridge a cambridge an lit -- analytico. it's going to take into account the technology they're using and what is the data. what's the information being put in the pot with the secret sauce. if that information is hacked material from the russian source, the trump campaign has a collusion situation right there. >> and the subpoenas are flying. >> the subpoenas are flying right now. so cambridge is going to be opened up? >> i think they're going to be getting a lot of scrutiny. >> still ahead, with republican efforts to appeal obamacare on shaky ground and tax reform no sure thing, the "new york tim " times'" jeffrey peters there's something more that people fear. and we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." ♪ ♪ ♪ only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. they release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. tylenol® can we at least analyze customer can we push the offer online? legacy technology can handcuff any company. but "yes" is here. you're saying the new app will go live monday? yeah. with help from hpe, we can finally work the way we want to. with the right mix of hybrid it, everything computes. whimper yap yap yap yip is your dog trying to tell you something? allergic itch in dogs is a medical condition that's more common and treatable than you think. that's why there's prescription apoquel: the revolutionary medicine that's giving millions of dogs the relief they deserve. apoquel goes to the source of the itch to provide relief in as little as 4 hours. woof and apoquel is safe without many of the side effects associated with the use of steroids. apoquel is for the control of itch associated with allergic dermatitis and the control of atopic dermatitis in dogs. do not use apoquel in dogs less than 12 months old or those with serious infections. apoquel may increase the chance of developing serious infections and may cause existing parasitic skin infestations or pre-existing cancers to worsen. do not use in breeding, pregnant, or lactating dogs. most common side effects are vomiting and diarrhea. don't wait. ask your veterinarian about apoquel today. apoquel. it's itch relief worth barking about. bark you on a perfect car,rch then smash it into a tree. your insurance company raises your rates... maybe you should've done more research on them. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates due to your first accident. liberty mutual insurance. finding the best hotel price is now a safe bet. because tripadvisor searches over 200 booking sites - so you save up to 30% on the hotel you want. lock it in. tripadvisor. your bbut as you get older,ing. it naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. the secret is an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember. you have very good people. these are very good people. we have 352 senators. it's very hard to get, you know, all we need -- we need almost all of them. you need almost all of them. and that's the hold up. and states are somewhat different. but with all of that being said, it has to get passed, they have to do it. they have to get together and get it done. he's got to pull it off. mitch has to pull it off. he's working hard. he's got to pull it off. >> that's president trump trying to step up pressure on mitch mcconnell to pass health care reform. >> there's one you miss in congress. >> bill delahunt. >> he was just a reporter's dream, a great quote. i miss him. >> he's on the judiciary committee. >> and john -- >> it was an amazing crowd. very lucky. >> what's it feel like to be a harvard man. >> what's that? >> i want it know what it feels like to be a harvard man. >> i secretly went there after winning the masters in '87, i got my degree, bounced back and forth between m.i.t. and harvard. >> you were the basis for "goodwill hunting." >> yes! >> joining us now, jeremy peters. good to talk to you. on capitol hill you have a contention that republicans are more concerned about looking not corrupt but incompetent. tell us about it. >> well, it all boils down to the question of are they able to govern. this was, after all what t vote them the house, the senate and the white house and ultimately voters did that of course. and one of the things you hear when you go into districts, i heard this a lot, especially when i was reporting on the 6th district race between handel and ossoff in georgia, come on, guys, we deliver all of this to you and you can't even pass a health care vote? it was a real demoralizing moment. while some of the energy -- or the air has come out of the balloon on health care and conservative groups like the koch networks have pulled up their anchors and is giving up, their energy is shifting toward tax reform. if you doesn't see a legislative victory for republicans on tax reform this year, this could be a really water shed moments where it will prove that under trump washington just cannot function -- >> so we talked about the front of the "usa today" saying that russia doesn't rate in trump country. right now it doesn't rate in trump country but what you've said is something that republicans have complained about for some time, the base has complained about for some time, we give you guys the house, we give you the senate, you promised to repeal obamacare and you don't do it it between 10-12, 12-14, 14-16. we give you president obama and you still can't repeal obamacare. >> you're exactly right. and i think in an odd way probably the only way that this russia/donald jr. controversy helps trump right now is it's deflecting attention away from what's happening in the building behind me and that's that the health care bill is falling apart. there a -- while they've delayed their august recess by a couple of weeks and they're going through these pant owe mime negotiations, a lot show the base, show their reporters that they're working. if. >> so, kasie hunt, you cover capitol hill. the republicans pretty much own all of this at this point. >> they do. look, to sam's point about the health care bill essentially falling apart, john mccain was reported as sarcastically saying coming out of lunch yesterday, "hey, we're votingneck week, yay, aren't you excited." there's not a lot of i don't think legitimate, see thement around this bill. lindsey graham is trying to come up with a bipartisan way to move forward. a. i'll figure out how to compromise and work with democrats and that was the overarching -- that's changed in the trump era. what democrats are hearing is under no circumstances will you work with republicans at all and that's why republicans are to a certain extent in this very difficult box where chuck schumer said i'm not letting any of you go out to try to help out when donald trump says i couldn't pass it with the republicans in the house, i need to work now with democrats? i don't care what anybody says, bluer -- it needs a lot of significant fixes. >> everybody knows the individual markets in particular, the exchanges, they're falling apart. and mitch mcconnell said if this doesn't work out, we're going to need a bipartisan fix for that. that's often how congress work somethi something. >> congratulations. >> she introduced me as politics editor -- >> i'm just joking. >> i thought you were the inspiration for eye goodwill hunting." >> i was. >> there are a number of reporters having preliminary, informal talk with republicans about things like reinsurance, co cost. keep in mind some of these marketplaces are actually doing okay but the rural areas are not doing okay. the precondition for all of this is that they take repeal and replace off the table. so everything is predicated on the vof that will happen after they i will add one more thing. trump has complicated this in ways that are understated. when he went out and cad the house bill mean, that really threw a wrench in the lobby here. you're going to vote for a bill that your own party's president calls mean? and trump during the cam pan made promises to ever cut medicaid. so there are conflicting promises that i want to go back to something jeremy said at the top, that donald trump doesn't lose the republican base through russia or through zwrout. the craziest things that he does will not lose him support as fast as proving he can't get anything done in washington, d.c. >> and they're in danger of having the yearnd with no major legislative accomplishments. >> but all we've heard for the first six, seven months is, oh, we can't pass tax reform until we get health care reform. that is all they've been talking about. >> there's two problems if you start working with democrats in the senate. this is why president obama didn't try to make the fixes in the end of is the democrats can ask for the world to. >> the fix that they're talking about, which is just ininsuring insurers. the idea that you would scrap and replace and go to reaprn -- i thought this was while the. >> i think that's more likely than they lose susan collins, rand paul and they pass a bill within the next few weeks. >> i talked to democrats who are 50/50. they think mcconnell, he's a tactician, he might be able to get it done. >> i think it's a possibility but there except for the off-the-record with fake news reporters. we'll get him to explain that next this morning on "morning joe." ♪ ♪ (burke) at farmers, we've seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything. even a coupe soup. 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does the president trust president putin? >> i haven't asked him that question. >> do they see russia as friend or foe? >> i haven't had a chance to ask that question. >> do you have an answer on that question? >> i don't but i'll get that answer to you. >> three straight days of comments by deputy white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders. they don't allow her to go on camera? >> what is it, the seven stages of grief? i'm going through different stages of looking at white house press secretaries. the first is being incredulous, the second is being insulted, the third is being angry. you get to the seventh and you just feel sorry for them, glen. i'm talking about myself. it's just the impossible job. >> why won't they let her go on camera? >> remember the unknown come being from t -- comic from the 70s? one of the days we'll walk in and they'll have a bag over their head. i'm told that the daily decision every day to have it off camera is because trump himself is making this decision. he doesn't want people on air defending him because he thinks he's the one who can best handle them. we spend all this time talking about how sean hannity is telling trump to shut down the briefings, they're thinking of moving us across the street, maybe into a starbucks. >> that would be good. >> he has jay sekulow, he has kellyanne holding up little pictures. why won't he let the white house press secretary go on camera? >> this don't have any information to impart. >> why would they have a briefing then? >> that's a good question. i think reporters are waiting for a briefing to unexpectedly break out one of these days. >> so has there been any talk among the white house press corps to stop attending the briefings? >> you can't do that, i don't think briefly. we are bound by the dictates of our institutions and by -- >> you've got to be there in case news does break. >> the biggest am of it hate is why we don't record this. i am less alarmed by the video aspect of this than the fact that, as you said, we have three straight days she's not answering questions. >> i'm less alarmed by the video aspect of it, too. obviously the tv networks would like to have the pictures but at the same time, it's about the information. nobody's getting information from the white house right now and you've got to believe -- a lot of it has to do and they know they'll be proven to be liars. >> and he would defend the president unequivocally in the most extreme language. over the course of the last coupling of months when he was still doing that job, he was saying a lot of times he sarah walsh will say i don't have that information yet. it's race. >> it's not like this never happened in previous administrations but the degree to which it happens as a rule and not the exception max pa mockery of what the daly event is supposed to be about. the governors. >> but what has not had before is you haven't had a press secretary go out, say something be contradicted by the president of the united states and then nothing happen. if that happened in previous white houses, and it had and people would turn to the president and say don't do that again. >> he comes in and taubes about how great the partnership is d and. >> you wonder what the threshold is for these people to go out and do this. but what the trump people don't quite see, which i wish they did, it benefits them to have a more open relationship with the press. >> are you sure about that? >> why it forced him to think about things introspectively. >> what if they have a president that he trump has done nothing but and then they shut it down in and i don't think there's benefits -- >> if you want to be a 38% president, this is fine. >> this is president bannon's 38% plan is working masterfully. i will say, though, here's a problem with the trump administration. let's say, okay, somebody walks in, the new chief of staff says we're going to have press briefings today, mr. president, we're going to go out and just answer every question until the first question would be "the wall street journal" story about money and contacts with the trump organization, even before the campaign started. even more troubling, they would have to answer 100 questions about this mcclatchy story that mark hall principle and others have been following for some time the fbi, the justice department, mueller now investigating possible links between jared kushner and donald trump's digital operation and the russians. >> it's an amazing story. i should give a out how -- that a lot of americans aren't at l allshe does not want to be because she'll then have to taub toss sequence in the trump white house is exactly the opposite. the focus is not on us. the focus is on donald trump. they have donald trump as their client. donald trump spins the press secretary around and and what they've chosen to do is not do it. >> and that started day one. you're talking about sean spicer. spicer was yelled at on the first day, president trump was screaming for him to get out and give the briefing on the crowd sizes and afterwards somebody in the administration told me saying you should have seen how bad it would have been he bet ak in it follows up. it's an impossible job, whether sean spicer or sarah huckabee sanders. >> if trump wants to talk to the press, he did as be prks i think mayors do that. you have two to three days a week with rudy. >> think about the problem, though. we have to go to often he can't control what he says and in prn -- in his interview with lester holt, he gave fodder to bob mueller in his tweets he does the same thing. so his lawyers have to be telling him stop talking. last week it was stop tweeting. now the lawyers have to say stop talking. >> alex has something to say to you. stop talking. all right. glen, thank you very much. up next, senator chris murphy joins us with the question why does jared kushner still have a security clearance? 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say goodbye to slow downloads, slow backups, slow everything. comcast business offers blazing fast and reliable internet that's up to 16 times faster than slow internet from the phone company. say hello to faster downloads with internet speeds up to 250 megabits per second. get fast internet and add phone and tv now for only $34.90 more per month. call today. comcast business. built for business. joining us now, member of the foreign relations committee, chris murphy of connecticut. good to have you on the show this morning, senator. jared kushner's security clearance, he should have one, right? he's a white house advisor. >> yeah. i think the bigger question is why jared kushner still has a job. there seems to be two scenarios here. either jared kushner didn't tell his speep youperiors he had thi meeting. if that's the case, then he's subject to the same problem that got michael flynn fired, that he was exposed with this lie. he was potentially compromised inside the white house. if he doesn't get fired, then there's clearly a double standard. the other option is that he did tell people that he had this me meeting, that he changed hiss disclosure forms, and people continued to lie about their campaign's contacts with the russian government. either scenario is damning for this white house. i think there's likely there's a double standard. nobody should normalize the level of lying coming out of this white house. in any other white house, someone with this breach of trust likely wouldn't have a job anywhere. >> senator, i know you have a lot of suspicions, but what should he be fired for? >> michael flynn was fired because he was compromised in the sense that he had met with the russian government. he had not disclosed that to his superiors, and thus, he could be in a position top corrupted. it appears the same thing occurred here. that if he had not alerted the individuals who had been out consistently saying on behalf of the white house that no one there, no one on behalf of the campaign met for the russns, then that potential for corruption existed for jared kushr as well? >> isn't it even more simple than that if you're bob mueller and building a case or an employer looking at an employee, this employee did not report three meetings be three russians on a disclosure form. the u.s. ambassador, or the russian ambassador to the united states, a russian banker with connections to the kremlin, and a meeting with a lawyer who said that she was, in effect, an agent for the russian government that was going to help tip the election for donald trump, and you didn't report that on your security clearance form. those are three instances, and isn't that a felony? >> well, listen, i don't know what the legal standard ultimately is going to be here, whether there's a conspiracy charge, aiding an abetting charge. >> i'm talking about just not filling out the form. >> it says that at the top of the form. it's pretty clear when you fill out the forms. if you don't provide full disclosure, you're committing a crime. given the fact that the campaign thought it was important enough to send the campaign manager the son of the president, and the son-in-law of the president, it's hard to believe that none of them remembered it. and listen, i think at this point you have to assume this isn't the end of the disclosures. we are getting a drip, drip, of new information about meetings between the trump campaign and the russian government that only come out when independent journalists disclose them. i think you have to assume this isn't going to be the end of the information we dead get about the meetings or the substance of the meeting between the trump campaign and the russian government. >> on that note, i wonder if you think that donald trump junior's explanation, donald trump's explanation of this meeting that the president did not know anything about his son's meeting with this russian lawyer, that that seems to run counter to what we unabout the dynamics of the trump family and the extent to what trump leans on those. that's to believe his son didn't run to him information he found important enough to share with a senior advisor. do you find that plausible, and what will the congress do to try to get to the bottom of the answer, did donald trump know about the answer? >> it strains credibility to believe that donald trump didn't know about this meeting given the fact that some of his closest advisors and family members were inside that meeting. and i also think that there is no reason that we should believe the story that donald trump junior is telling today. he lied openly and repeatedly about his contacts with the russian government, and so i'm not sure why today we are all of a sudden willing to believe the story he is currently telling which is that they met with this agent, that they didn't get any good information. if he's lying about it for months and months beforehand, why do we believe he's telling the truth today. >> a lot of conservative writer are saying the same thing. we shouldn't make the mistake of believing that nothing happened in that meeting. all right. >> senator chris murphy. >> thank you. >> coming up, much more on the new reports raising fresh questions over possible ties between russia and president trump's campaign, and through it all, trump painting a rosy picture on twitter yesterday. the white house is functioning perfectly. much more on "morning joe" still ahead. ♪ binders, done. super-cool notebooks, done. that's mom taking care of business. but who takes care of mom? office depot/office max. this week, get this ream of paper for just one cent after rewards. ♪ taking care of business. somewhere along of self-discovery: a breakthrough. ♪ it's in our nature to need each other. ♪ finding the best hotel price is now a safe bet. because tripadvisor searches over 200 booking sites - so you save up to 30% on the hotel you want. lock it in. tripadvisor. i just want to review in case you run out of time. this is how it is sofar. what's the conclusion? collusion? no. we don't have that yet. i see illusion and delusion. just so we're clear, four words, conclusion, collusion, no. illusion, delusion, yes. >> so -- >> big font. >> it is. and when the fever breaks our children will look back and ask the question dad, what the hell? >> that's just -- >> my son's already asking me. >> already? >> and how old is he? >> six months. >> okay. see? >> but he's very curious. >> i have a window into the next generation. >> it's thursday, july 13th. with us in washington mark halpern, christen sole us anders anderson, josh earnest, we're only going to use audio with josh. okay? >> get the sketch artist. >> exactly. and we'll just hear from you. >> and politics editor for the daily beast, sam stein. we begin with a report that investigators are investigating. the president's son-in-law oversaw digital strategy, and now the congressional intel committees and the justice department want to know if the campaign pointed russian cyber operatives and boots to specific voting districts in specific states. they cite people familiar with the parallel inquiries. one sour familiar with the doj's probe said they doubt the russians would have known which areas to target on their own. >> first of all, let's talk about this story. you've been on it for quite some time, that the justice department has been digging into this. >> prosecutors read the newspaper. that's where they go for a lot of their leads. much of the focus for the notion of collusion has been on this question of with the wikileaks disclosures coordinated? did the russians get advice about how to use wikileaks with republicans associated with the campaign or the campaign it. this area is of interest now the prosecutors. and it's a question -- >> and especially with the time line tightened with all the things that happened in june, they've now learned about this meeting at the beginning of june. and suddenly everything stacks up with wikileaks announcements yrg everything. >> one of the remarkable thing about trump's victory was he won spending less money that be hillary clinton. the notion here is that a lot of messaging was done by bots. the u.s. government thinks it's russians. how did the russians know what to do? how did they become experts in the targeting of voters? it's imprecise, but you want to send messages that depress vote for hillary clinton or vote for trump. and this story suggests what we've been hearing for some time. they're looking at the possibility that there was some level of coordination between republicans and russians about how to target them. that could have take an lot of forms. >> it could be a very, very precise operation. i remember everybody being shocked that kennelman would target using zip codes. it's moved so far past that with the obama operation that you do microtarget people on streets in certain areas. this is something that not only the russians could do themselves without help from top campaign operatives. something that 99% of americans couldn't do, right? >> it's very complicated. it's something that a lot of folks, even who work in the political space don't unwell. the ways campaigns get data. the way you can procure a lot of consumer data from various firms and use it to make assumptions about who is a voter that's likely to vote for you. who's a voter likely to vote for the other candidate? how likely are they to vote? campaigns only have so much time, so much money. their candidates can only go so many places. you can use this information to make smart choices about yes, it makes sense to contact these voters. not to contact these other voters. and so if you are looking to get a bunch of ads out there, there was a lot of bragging in the campaign about we're doing these dark ads on facebook. the broader world, you in washington won't see them. when you talk about that and brag that you've built the death star, then people start coming around and saying hey, did you let the death star get used at all by the other side? you have, as you said, the media story around this as made it sound like this big scary data operation. that's going to draw some attention. >> be clear. the campaigns, you use the targeting in part because it's cheaper, and in part because you can get away with messages you could never put in a tv ad. the russians, and others who ever did this were doing no messages a campaign would do because it's fake and false and outrageous. when i said it was imprecise, they were throwing tons of stuff out there. not everything is a direct hit. what's scary for the future and why it's being investigated by capitol hill is you can come in now to our open system on social media and hit voters with last-minute information that cannot be counteracted by better speech. >> right. and the thing i think i've heard marco rubio say but not enough republicans have said is hey, they did this to the democrats in 2016. what if somebody else -- what if turkey or north korea decides to do it to republicans in 2018? what -- what if iran decides to do it to the republicans in 2020? republicans are being so shortsighted here but not being extraordinarily concerned that a foreign power may have used information, and microtargeted people in michigan, wisconsin, and ohio to swing a presidential election. >> one of the things we cherish is everyone has an opportunity to participate. and russia has exposed that as a significant vulnerability. there is a way to use information and run it through a model and develop a strategy to go and communicate with them even information that may not be true and is outrageous with an al tial tier your motive. that's not the sign of an effective democracy, but is it when you have people on both sides in positions of power standing up and saying we can't let this kind of thing happen. we need to investigate what happened so we can make sure it doesn't happen again. that's not anything to do with being a democrat or republican. >> it's stunning this white house and some members of the republican party call this a nothing burger or say the media is on saysbsessed with russia. um, no. it's democracy. >> they feel comfortable saying that because if you talk to trump supporters, the idea that this is not normal is a future, not a bug. they're not expecting normal. if they feel the russia story is not affecting their lives, they feel like this is the media focusing on something that's just something silly that's just a conspiracy to get the president in trouble, and that's why these voters have been so immune to hearing real arguments about why this is scary. >> i was saying one of the problems here that the president himself refuses to acknowledge that russia actually did the mettling. you have 17 agencies who say it happened but the president says it could be a 400 pound person in his basement in the community. if you're taking your cues from the president in trump country, you think it's made up and fake news and done to detract from the president's agenda. i think that's a huge problem we're not paying attention to. >> what you hear also is, and it makes loot of sense. you hear that during water gate, most americans weren't focussed on water gate even through the summer of 1974. in our house, i was pretty young, but we were really angry because the water gate hearings, we didn't have 800 channels. you had abc, cbs, nbc, and pbs. i was missing cartoons, but every day water gate would be on. and you would hear people grumbling saying when are those hearings going to be off tv. it wasn't until june or july when people started learning about the tapes and said, i always tell the story about my father who was with nixon until the last week, and then said if this guy's done half of what they say he's done, he should be out. it's not surprised people are concerned about their paychecks j jobs, kids, their health care, am i going to be able to take care of my son who is a diabetic or my mom who is in a nursing home? are the medicaid supplements going to be taking away from her? that's what people are concerned about now. that's perfectly normal. >> and just because something is being investigated doesn't mean anything happened. we should report when we know there's investigations. people on cable say we wish we could talk more about health care, but we have to talk about the latest investigation. we need to serve people interested in what's going to happen. >> this does affect our lives. >> our futures. >> but there's no doubt this is a serious matter that's going to continue to be invest dpated and we have to keep talking about it even if there's no evidence that everyone in the country is interested. >> the president told routers there was zero coordination. and when preed on his meeting with vladimir putin he said the two talked about interference for the first 20 or more minutes of their talk. the president saying did you do it, and he said no, i did not, absolutely not. i then asked him -- >> it's over. >> i asked him a second time in a totally different way. he said absolutely not. but when routhey asked if he believed the denial trump paused and said look, something happened and we have to find out. he later added somebody did say if he did do it, you wouldn't have found out about it, which is a very interesting point. >> i have to say, josh, we will take whatever bread crumbs are sprinkled on the ground about us. i think this is significant that he is now for the first time saying something happened, and we have to find out what it is, because we can't how a thing like that to happen in our election process. yes, he has been pushed to the wall now for nine months, ten months, 11 months. that is actually a first, though, in talking to reuters saying something happened and we have to get to the bottom of it. >> baby steps. now we need to get to a point where he's not reflexively defending his friends in russia. we need him to have an open mind and say let's take a close look at this. >> i agree. >> he has to go further. new reporting says u.s. intelligence agencies detected russian officials discussing people with ties to donald trump months before he officially declared his candidacy. "the wall street journal" reports current and former officials say investigators are re-examining what was picked up in the spring of 2015 in light of donald trump junior's meeting with the russian lawyer last year. in some case the russians in the overheard conversations talked about meetings held outside the u.s. involving russian government officials and trump business associates or advisors. russian officials are routinely monitored by u.s. intelligence and it wouldn't be unusual for them to discuss people with business interests with russia as trump did. >> let me stop right there. christen, let's go back several months. let's ask the question why did everybody in the trump campaign and in the trump administration lie over and over again about meetings with russians? why did they say we never met with any russians? why did mike pence say no, we never had any contacts with any russians? why did donald trump say that? why did everybody in the administration say that? they had to know this was going to come out, and if you look at at those denials and start stacking up the number of russians that they met with, the number of interactions they had that we know about so far that we also know are going to multiply, were they really so ignorant as to how the media worked and how the intel community worked that they didn't think all of their lies, to quote a bible verse, would vrchgly be shouted from the highest mountain tops? >> i think there was something interesting in the vice president's statement that's come out in response to all of this. a lot of this happened before he joined the ticket. in this case, i mean, you had mike pence go out and say things that were incorrect about mike flynn, and when it came to light mike flynn lied to mike pence's face, he was shown the door. there will be people given bad information internally and there are a lot of folks put in bad positions because they're being put out there to defend people with incomplete information about what happened, and so the pence statement that final line where it says this was stuff that happened before he joined the ticket, i thought was very interested. >> not as interesting as we said yesterday, putting hash tag ee 46 at the bottom. >> a little ahead of himself. >> of all the incredible things that happened regarding donald trump and russia, the fact that mike flynn was for several weeks the national security advisor, i put the top of the list. >> why? >> because of at the time what was already known about his ties to russia, and because of the things that happened during the transition, and the fact that they were warned by the fbi and the justice department this guy has some problems. they kept him in the job for several weeks. and now i believe relatively soon he will reemerge as a central figure. >> and mika, we've talked a good bit about pressing donald trump in december of 2015. three months before the first election on his bromance with vladimir putin. him saying that putin's a stronger leader and he's a great leader, and us saying but he kills journalists and saying americans kill a lot of people too. finally pushing him to finally reluctantly, distance himself from putin's assassinations. i'm starting to think the more remarkable interview was bill o'reilly's version of that at halftime of the super bowl. >> when he served it up on a silver platter. >> when he said the same exact thing to bill o'reilly after the investigation had begun, after we knew about michael flynn's lies, after people were on his trail on russia, he still was saying oh, well, you know what? putin, he may kill journalists, but our soldiers in iraq, they killed a lot of people too. >> what does that tell you? >> well, you can draw assumptions. as a father of four children, if my children were acting that way, i'd say they're covering up something. i don't know about the president of the united states, and of course, i would never jump to any conclusions, but it does seem like he fears vladimir putin. >> beyond odd. >> yeah. it's a strange thing. his refusal time and time again to criticize him. if you think about donald trump's public reputation, his way of communicating is to criticize people. it feels like it makes him look good. he even criticizes fellow republican because it feels like it enhances his position. even the implied position on health care that they need to get something done. the one person in the world he won't put down the vladimir putin. it begs the question why. >> you brought up mike pence. his press secretary could not say for sure whether pence ever met with russians during the campaign. >> did the vice president ever meet with representatives from russia? >> the vice president is not focussed on the areas where on this campaign, especially things that happened before he was even on the ticket. >> just come back to this question. if it wasn't a private citizen from russia, did he ever meet with representatives from the russian government during the campaign? >> that's stuff the counselors are looking at. >> is that a yes or no? did he or did he not? and was it relevant, in fact? >> i'm not aware of anything that i have seen. >> it's just -- let's stop at the top and say great job, bill hemmer. >> hemmer with the hammer. >> hemmer with the hammer. seriously, he did a great service for reporters. >> that was fascinating. >> he had an opportunity, and he got three brushbacks. >> why is he allowed to go on camera? >> he went outside. it was outside. different rules outside. >> isn't that -- first of all, bill hemmer, great job. second isn't it telling that mike pence's people will not say he did not meet with russians after mike pence in january said, of course we never met with russians. we were meeting with the american people. >> yeah. my sense is this is what happens when you repeatedly tell lies. people stop believing each other for good reason. that's a natural human reaction. we know now the vice president has been lied to at least twice about contacts with russia. first about flynn and then second related to sort of ruling out any contacts with russia. it's not vising to me if the vice president himself has been saying something not true about contacts with russia that his spokesperson would hedge. >> does it seem like a lot to you? >> it seems like two more than should happen when you're talking about something that's open and shut. this is not a shaded question. what cushions drussians did you with -- >> what do you think would be happen if it happened to joe bide biden? >> he wouldn't tolerate anything like that. these are the kinds of questions and the kinds of facts that should not be hard to uncover. if you're not hiding something. >> and christen also, the questions that are asked of republicans every day should be easy questions to answer. would you ever have met with somebody in the russian government, or somebody that claimed to be in the russian government bringing you information on your opponent that the kremlin was going to help you defeat? and republicans aren't just saying no, i would not. that's an easy question to answer. >> there are a lot of campaign operatives former folks that have run presidential campaigns in the past who are coming out and saying this is a red line that i wouldn't have crossed. the world of opposition research can be ugly. it's stuff that a lot of voters don't know about and probably don't want to, but there are certain lines that even the hard edged professionals don't cross. this would have crossed one of them. >> can i tell you about the reince priebus thing on sunday. for his white house chief of staff to repeat a false story after he said in the appearance i checked with our team. he suggested he went out, as the stature of the chief of staff to get the facts and came out and repeated a false story. that is not the way a normal white house would function. >> he repeated a false story that was undercut by a prepared statement that the white house made, and was signed off on by donald trump on air force one. the lawyers who were on the ground were trying to keep donald trump isolated from this. and so they're up on air force one, and they lie, make a false statement, donald trump signs off on it. >> yeah. i was actually going to point this out. "the new york times" reporting on this is fascinating. this is the thing people should understand about that plane. it's a big plane, but when it's an international flight, it's packed. autoseats are taken. there is zero chance that the president of the united states was working on that statement by himself. there were a team of people that were huddled around his desk. it takes a long time to fly back from europe. this is not just the president of the united states signing off on a lie. this is the president of the united states conspireing with senior members of his staff to help his son construct a lie that crumbled 24 hours later. >> can you imagine james baker going on a sunday show and saying i used the authority of my office to find out what happened and here's what happened? >> wow. >> and it being repudiated within the news psych snl. >> -- cycle. >> they didn't construct a lie about health care. they didn't construct a lie about cbo numbers and fudge things. the lie that was constructed on air force one with members of the staff and the president of the united states had to do with lying about covering up the real intent of a meeting that had been sold to donald trump's campaign, campaign chairman, and son-in-law, and son as an overture from the russian government to give a damaging information about hillary clinton. so this was a coverup of what was sold as a meeting where the russians were dpogoing to help be president out united states. >> it's incredible. josh, thank you. christen, thank you. >> josh, we're so glad we could get the camera on you. >> no press cameras on the press secretary. not the assistant press secretary who does the briefings. there's something strange about that. >> still ahead on "morning joe," parn bernie sanders is going to table, also amy klobuchar and sheldon white house who questioned christopher ray who apparently a lot of people liked. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. boost. it's about moving forward, not back. it's looking up, not down. it's being in motion. in body, in spirit, in the now. boost® high protein it's intelligent nutrition with 15 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for when you need a little extra. boost® the number one high protein complete nutritional drink. be up for it can we at least analyze customer can we push the offer online? legacy technology can handcuff any company. but "yes" is here. you're saying the new app will go live monday? yeah. with help from hpe, we can finally work the way we want to. with the right mix of hybrid it, everything computes. 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(flourish spray noise) share the joy. one of the strongest catalysts for information about the ties between the trump campaign and foreign governments is a ranking member of the house committee on oversight and government reform. on november 18th, 2016, elijah cummings wrote to then president-elect mike pence, head of the transition team, about the reports of incoming national security advisor michael flynn receiving payments from the government of turkey and payment to travel to moscow and appear with vladimir putin. >> flynn relation centered as a foreign agent in march after being forced out for his contact with the russian ambassador. but also last november elijah cummings wrote to pence asking him for information about president-elect trump's request to let son-in-law jared kushner accompany him to the highly classified president's daily brief. despite kushner not being vetted and at the time holding no security clearance, kushner now had to make multiple amendments to his security clearance form, one which ledo the disclosure of the june 2016 trump tower meeting with that russian attorney. for weeks couplings has been asking why kushner still has a security clearance, and that is a really good question. >> it also, mark, puts into context much of what we're saying. here you have elijah coupling on the forefront all the way back in november asking these questions about flynn and kushner. and despite that, the white house still, well, the transition team still acting in a reckless way regarding their contacts with russia. >> you have to wonder if things might have been different if some republicans at least had the attitude then that they do now about how serious all this is, and may have sent warnings to the administration that given what russia did, that kind of attitude was not acceptable. >> it's something we said last night at the harvard event. one of the most shocking things to me about the republican party is they don't stand up to donald trump. they have never challenged his most outrageous behavior. occasionally they'll say they're stocked and stunned and deeply saddened but nothing comes of that. i believe if they had pushed him harder from the very beginning, pushed him hard and said our support for you depends on your behavior, your responsible actions and we're not going to allow you to be this reckless. i do think if they'd been pushing earlier, along with elijah cummings, things would be different today. >> joining us today, democratic senator sheldon white house of rhode island. good to have you on board this morning. >> good to be back. >> any opinions on jared kushner's security clearance? does it make you incomfortable? >> we have an overdue answer to our letter requesting information about reviewing that security clearance. >> does anybody even know in washington whether he still has a security cleearance or not? >> i think we would know if it were withdrawn, but i'm not certain. >> why can't we get that answered by the white house? why won't the white house answer that basic question? >> my guess is they're uncomfortable with the answer so they're stone walling. there's a lot of trouble getting a lot of questions answers, all questions pointed with problem with the administration and problems with the russia relationship. >> how can you get help answering the questions? >> ultimately a subpoena. that gets back to your point about when will republican chairman, republicans have all the gavels in congress right now, authorize those subpoenas. and i can't speak for other committees, but i do sense that chairman grassley is getting personally irritated about the lack of response, and he's vented a few times about how senators are entitled answers to their questions. everybody is spielentitled to a answer. at some point he has to make good on that talk. >> what about chairman burr? he's received high marks for being cooperative. would chairman burr send over a subpoena asking his question? >> i do not know. it's a little bit less intel's jurisdiction. it's a little more judiciary and homeland security, but there's nothing to prevent them from doing that. but it's part of a general failure to stand up on their part that's really standing out now. >> sam stein in. >> yes. senator, if you have the opportunity to ask one question, you got in a room with the president, an opportunity to ask one question about the entire saga related to russia and possible collusion, what would that question be? >> show me your tax returns. it would be really simple. >> kind of all starts and ends there, doesn't it? >> it's pretty obvious that -- i think he's the only president or presidential candidate not to reveal his tax returns. there is credible information to suggest that the tax returns would reveal contacts with russia. he is exactly the model of the business mark that the russians target in their election interference strategies which has been written up over and over again, and he won't do it, and that can be by subpoena. it would be easy. we had a hearing in our sub committee yesterday, and the witnesses said yes you have the authority to do this. it's exactly the kind of investigative information that's necessary to understand what went on. >> connect the dots. >> senator, on the issue of the tax returns, i think if there's one thing that hillary clinton's campaign proved it's that democrats can't just be against trump. they can't just keep giving voters reasons to dislike trump. voters already dislike him enough. what's your advice to the party for what they should be for in 2018 in order to take back the house and maybe the senate. >> i think it will depend on a lot of local races. you don't win congressional races from washington. you win them in the home district. i think that becomes a more pertinent question in 2020. i think this question of trump, it's not just a question of co-you dislike donald trump? we are all as americans part of an ongoing experiment in citizenship and in governance, and for the first time it has really turned sour here in this country, and basic institutions of government are being attacked and challenged in unprecedented ways. what it means to be an american. what it means to be part of the fourth of state is being challenged. thank god for the work you've done recently on this, but the president is busy calling your legitimate work fake news to delegitimize what you're doing. it's not just a question of opposing donald trump when he does these things. it's a question of standing up for stuff that a lot of americans bled and fought and died for over many generations. and the idea that this crowd in the white house gets to take that down is just wrong. >> absolutely. >> you like most democrats get positive review to the president's nominee. christopher ray, if he's confirmed, will the concerns you have about the russian investigation being compromised or whether the fbi has integrity go away? >> i think it helps. i have confidence in borob mueller. i have confidence in rob rosenstein. they seek the approval of each other rather than the president. i think ray string thengthens t. he did a great job. >> it goes away, the process -- >> well, the concern that he would try to interfere doesn't go away. the concern that they would give in to it, i think, gets very significantly reduced? . >> sounded yesterday that he was not going to pledge his loyalty to anybody. >> i hope so. >> he seemed independent. >> we're hearing from peter alexander. he's reporting he was at the white house this morning pressing them on the issue of jared kushner's security clearance asking about it, and the white house had no comment. again. >> and no answer to our letter, and on you go. >> why would the white house respond to that question? americans have a right to know whether jared kushner has a security clearance or not. >> i think they've proven that whether americans have a right to know or whether the answer is truthful doesn't matter to them. they'll say whatever is most useful in the situation of the moment, and whether that's not telling the truth like that bogus press release they put out of air force one, or whether it's stalling information yrg they'll do that. these people have no conscience about telling the truth or about being transparent. >> thank god there's a separation of powers and let's hope that people who work behind the building, republican and democrats, work together to get answers that the american people have a right to know. >> the temperature is climbing in congress among republicans. they're getting increasingly fed up with being put in harm's way by presidential and white house misbehavior. i think it's getting ready to boil over. >> because there's the base, and then there's the law. and you're going to have to make a decision. >> and independent voters. there's only so far you can let the base take you before you lose your election with the independent voters. >> coming up, jared kushner didn't read to the end of the e-mail chain is being reported. sent to him by donald trump junior. and so he didn't understand the russian promise that it contained, but you have to look at the subject line. but all he would have had to do is read the subject line to understand what the meeting was about. more reporting on that when "morning joe" returns. whoooo. going somewhere? 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oh, sorry, most broadcast and sports channels aren't included. and you can only stream on two devices at once. this is fun, we're having fun. yeah, we are. no, you're not jimmy. don't let directv now limit your entertainment. xfinity gives you more to stream to more screens. >> president trump says there was nothing wrong with his son picturing a purported offer from the russian government to discuss information that could help them win the 2016 election. the scrutiny comes -- continues for the trump tower meeting in which donald trump junior gathered top campaign aids jared kushner and paul manafort after being promised information that would incriminate hillary clinton. asked if he wishes his son had not taken the meeting the president said i think many people would have held that meeting. whether he wished he knew, the president said it was a wild time, and we would meet with many people. it was a 20-minute meeting, from what i'm hearing. many people and many political pros said everybody would do that. many people, and many political pros said everybody would do that if you got a call and said listen, i have information on hillary clinton or the dnc or whatever it was, they said, most people are going to make that meeting, i think. the president said he didn't know anything about the meeting until a couple of days ago. this week's new issue of "time" is entitled donald trump junior red handed. the russia sandal hits home. we are joined by michael sharer and jeremy bash. i'm just -- i actually just want to back up a little bit to i guess the claim that jared kushner had no idea what the meeting was about because he didn't read further doubt on the e-mail. is it possible when the subject line said what it was about? >> who knows what was on his mind, but that's something investigators will ask him. they'll show him the e-mail and said do you recall this? did you see this? why did you go to this meeting? it's strange that he didn't know. this is a meeting set up by his brother-in-law with the campaign narm encredulity expressing support? i will go only a lamb and say he knew. >> as we said yesterday. >> very comfortable with that. >> we had a guest that pointed out, there was a phone call also, a follow-up phone number reported meeting took place. and this campaign brought together the most important people in the room and don jr. lied a couple days ago saying february e nobody knew what the meeting was about. he forwarded the e-mail. >> in july of that year, done jr. was on cnn saying it was ridiculous and a lie that russia was helping the trump campaign. even though he had already taken the meeting at that point. i think for jared kushner, the more pertinent question may be when did he remember this meeting with regards to his security clearance application? the story that his lawyer has told is that he in haste submitted his security clearance initially left off most if not all of his contacts when he realized he made that mistake, he corrected it. there is a level of intent that matters there. if it's -- >> he corrected it before. >> he corrected it before this story came out. >> and how many times has he revised his security? >> we don't know. i think the statement from his attorney suggests it has been more than once. >> right. >> and it seems to me at least from the reporting it seems to me he's done it in a way. he remembered the ambassador and then the banker and now it seems that -- >> and what his people have said is that until this e-mail was resurfaced more recently, he had forgotten entirely about this meeting. >> that the meeting had just slipped his mind. >> uh-huh, good luck telling that to bob mueller, with somebody that says we're coming and we're going to help you when the election. >> banker, ambassador, a lawyer, a lot of people in russia. >> talk about what your cover story says about done jr. and his place i placement in all this now. >> i think the most interesting part of this is that trump has always treated family differently. in this white house, family continues to be treated differently. you saw the breakdown that happened this week between the legal team, which was supposed to be the thing that brought some professionalism to the way the president was responding to this crisis. and trump. and the family members around him. i think it's been proven again that when it comes to family, the idea that you can have a structure around the president that functions like a conventional whourks like a normal structure, that functions like a normal legal response operation sort of breaks down. because the president will always choose to and maybe not will, always has consistently chosen to go on full offense to deny as much as he can and that's the way he handles these things. >> i'm just looking at backing up on this meeting and looking at the initial statement that came out that was crafted collectively apparently, that this meeting was about something completely different. and then that unravelled and turns out to be what some might call a lie. >> on to what. >> what will it take to compel the president, his advisers, to really provide some answers on connections with russia? what more does one need to see happen to prompt republicans maybe to ask for a subpoena? >> well, i think what we want to see is whether or not manafort for flynn who are fought blood to your point and not family actually turn and whether or not they talk to some lesser charge or failure to disclose charge. in flynn's case, he actually is accused of lying to the fbi on january 24th in his interview, manafort has other issues, whether they turn and testify against the family. they've never liked the family. in some way the family took control of the campaign and pushed others out. so there have been these rivalries. the most important thing is part, it was a part of a issue and russian government effort to support your father's campaign, what were the other parts? and clearly, if you are kushner or manat fort or done jr., they didn't seem to be surprised, there were acts of influence, there was cyber hacking, potentially these bots you described earlier and these efforts to support donald trump directly by the russian government. >> i think another important word the president kept calling his son transparent, he kept praising done jr. for being trance parent. what this episode proved they are not being transparent. they knew the e-mails existed. they knew they were omitting information. the only reason they would do that rationally is they thought the e-mail would never come out or at such a future date that people would have forgotten about this and it wouldn't matter anymore. they chose when the question was asked not to give the full information until they were forced later. >> it feels like it's unraveling. it feels like things are getting hot, hotter and they're digging themselves deeper. >> well, this, i think the reason why this story was so significant is this was the first direct link between the senior levels of the campaign and a russian efforts to meddle in the elections. we few about the russian election to meddle. we had not seen that until the campaign. >> and the specific language of intent for russia to come in. the russian government to come in and influence elections. jeremy bash, thank you so much t. new issue of "time" magazine is coming up. we are bringing a member of the senate judiciary committee and senator bernie sanders from the washington post, bob woodward and george will all join the table. mike allen breaks down the biggest casualty of all the trump can cals, the dumbing down of normal. it's that straight ahead on ""morning joe." ♪ binders, done. super-cool notebooks, done. that's mom taking care of business. but who takes care of mom? 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from day one i want a strong military, he doesn't want to see that. we will be exporting energy. he doesn't want that. he wants to have hillary where she would like to have wind mills. he would much rather have that. when i hear he would much rather have trump, i think probably not. >> welcome back to can the "morning joe". >> it's an alternate universe by the way. for so many reasons we don't have three hours more to explain everything at bare actually straight out of the twilight zone. >> all right. so try a conversation here on capitol hill, we have winning associate editor for the washington post bob woodward, columnist for the washington post george will. member of the judiciary committee, democrat ic senator f minnesota and senior analyst for msnbc mark ham person is with us as well. >> bob, we pointed out you became an independent last summer. >> i did. >> yourself, how does it feel? >> light headed. i mean, it's, sure, i mean, you don't feel implicated. >> you don't feel implicated. >> wow. >> was it a difficult decision for to you make. >> no, as soon as paul ryan endorsed trump, a few weeks after saying that what trump had said about the mexican judge from northern indiana. >> right. >> that it was a textbook case of racism and i said well the normalization is now going to be complete, the republican party will of necessity i guess if they understand necessity. >> bob, where do we find ourselves? obviously, explosive details about this meeting. now we will be talking about the mcclatchey report a lot of people have been following sometime quietly. mark halperin was shaking it down a month ago about the possible digital coordination between the campaign and russians micro-targeting the way russian would know how to micro-target wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. where are we? >> there's a theme here. it was george cannon who's the author of the containment doctrine in the 1940s who talked about the treacherous curtain of deference shown high officials or presidents. and i think the question here is, who can really talk to trump? because he is on the verge, if not in the fact of losing control of this presidency. and so -- >> jared kushner can rall talk to him or ivanka. >> but you do some reporting on this and you get mixed reactions. people insisting oh, yes, i can tell him the truth. but you two know trump so well, i'm not sure he wants to hear the truth in any cases, so you've got to break through that barrier, that curtain. >> just to be clear, he will listen and then it won't hold and the perfect example of this. >> in short spurts. >> with what happened with the lawyers. who said, stay away, have nothing to do with this. you're in serious, serious trouble. while the lawyers were on the ground and donald trump's flying back from europe, he calls everybody together and they put together a statement which lies and is revealed as a lie the next day about the meeting between don jr., jared kushner, manafort and a russian lawyer who said i'm representing the russian government. >> that's the curtain of demps, somebody needed to say to him in an emphatic way, stay out of this. this is not your job. and it's not. and look, let's face it, on a range of economic domestic issues foreign affairs issues, trump has a series of decisions in the coming months that are monumental. he's got to be in a way where he's focused on those important decisions and it also raises the question of what's the psychological impact on him being in this environment as you so well know, he hates not winning. he's not winning now. >> and george, all the report out of the white house from the washington post, from the "new york times," from every white house reporter is that he's obsessed with this story. he watches hours of cable news every day. he is out of control yelling at tv sets, and we haven't seen him for three days now. >> and the wall that the mexicans will pay for not getting built t. glistening trillion dollars of infrastructure is not we heard from yet. his tax reform is still one page or 227 word and seven numbers him nothing is moving forward on this. and everything we know about the modern presidency is that by labor day of the first year your momentum is spent. that's counting. presidencies that had a honeymoon period which he, of course, didn't. >> george as a conservative, and i was explaining this last night. some people asked me about being an independent, they said, why would you leave the republican party? what is conservative about the party right now? there's tax reform is not moving forward. they the only entitlement has to do with medicaid in a way that is not going to pass, they're not talking about medicare or social security, they're not talking about real tax reform and in a meaningful way that will pass, education reform will never pass, children in the inner cities aren't going to have to plead to go to the schools that their parents want them to go to. all the things you fought for, longer than me, entire lives. it's not happening despite the fact there is a monopoly behind us of people who call themselves republicans. how do you go back to the base and say we couldn't get anything done despite the fact we owned washington, d.c.? >> well, did you notice they're not going back to the base. they will hunker down here two extra weeks. knowing that, there are about 40 legislative days left, it depends on how long we sit here, 40 legislative days left before the fiscal year ends. fiscal year. we are supposed to have appropriations bill t. one thing republicans used to say, they're not the nicest people in the world. when you make the machinery come, they can't get appropriations bills passed. there has been no improvement whatever in what the restoration of what's called regular order. >> bob, that's another thing i said last night about republicans. they said we republicans, we don't care whether you like us or not. we're the people that are supposed to come and say, we will balance your budgets. we will be responsible with foreign policy. we will be pharaoh and focused and rational in what we do in our approach towards government and we're going to leave the place cleaner than how we found it. it's just the opposite has happened since 2000. bicker deficits. becker debts. republican versus rolled into town over the past 15 years, they have been reckless fiscally and it's even worse now. >> and the deference is not just people in the white house or the administration, the u.s. the republican party that and as you so well know any of these matter to fix them, you don't do it in a week, it is a very long process and so, where is the control of the trump presidency? and it's not there. and everyone's going to pay, not just republicans but democrats who are going to pay. the public is going to pay. >> the american citizens are going to pay if this continues. when have you this kind of chaos going on, we have put out an infrastructure bill, i've always believe thad the president should have led with this. he knows there's support in the democratic party for bridges and roads and doing something on broadband. instead, he went right to that refugee order and every single time, the theory has been they go to the devices moment instead of finding those sweet spots, whether it's apprenticeship, work force training, doing long term on tax reform. it isn't happening when it should. you can't do that when there is chaos. our job is to govern. so we'reagenda. we work with republicans where we can. i hope with the health care debate we can step back and work together on ideas like making those exchanges stronger, senator mcconnell mentioned last weekend, farmer prices are out of control. why don't we pass some of the bipartisan bills we have now? unleash the power of 41 million seniors to negotiate prices under medicare part d. there are things we can do. >> and they're not being done. joe mentioned the new report from mcclatchey that investigators are examining whether the trump company's digital operation helped guide russia in helping voters with fake news attacks on hillary clinton during the election. the president's son-in-law jared kushner oversaw digital strategy and now the congressional intel committee and the justice department want to know in the campaign pointed russian cyber operatives and thoughts to specific voting districts in specific states. mcclatchey sites people familiar with the parallel inquiries and one source familiar with the doj's probe told mcclatchey they doubt the russians would have known which areas to target on their own. >> mark halperin, you have been following this for some time. after the election the trump campaign was proud to talk about where to find the votes in wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania and ohio. it's something that jared headed up. >> he's very proud of. he enlisted the members of the team reporting from houston. >> so they can microtarget these areas, newer voters were and could snatch these states away from hillary clinton. and now it appears the russians also knew how to microtarget with facebook, fake news stories and other ways. what can you tell us about your reporting? >> reporter: well again, these messages were not to encourage and celebrate donald trump but also to discourage votes for hillary clinton. there is no doubt now that that was something done by the trump campaign. there is no doubt now that was something done by russians and others spreading false information and the questions that according to mcclatchey is being investigated and is now of great interest to capitol hill and something hillary clinton talked about publicly, was there any sort of coordination between u.s. entities and foreign entities to make sure those messages were targeted. >> what u.s. entity, specifically? >> reporter: well, potentially people as i say with the trump campaign, maybe the campaign, itself, is being investigated. it doesn't mean it's true. but the suspicion is as we talked about earlier the russians might have the wherewithal all to create these messages and the sophistication to figure out what might work. but to figure out where they should actually go, what lists to use, what contact information to use, that's something that obviously there should be more expertise in the united states for that. >> right. >> >> reporter: if there was an openness to coordinating, a part of why the done jr. e-mail chain is resonating, there was at least at that moment. if there was into 2016 into the general election an openness to coordinateing, it's not necessarily ill local, depending on what happened, it would be politically explosive, but that is why people vote on the hill and in mueller's officer are interested in this question of card nation and again, you can try to launder that, can you try to hide some of that but there will be a digital trail and investigators entaken it. >> who targeted these voters? what outside groups targeted these voters? >> lots, part of what as people are doing post-more tells on the election and -- post more mort more tems, there was too much focus on wikileaks and coordination thered on intent there not enough on these messages particularly on facebook where they came from, how were they coordinated, who produced the videos that often accompanied them. how did these people decide which fake messages would have the most resonance, that is a professional sophisticated task and as you said, very few people in the united states are u to it let alone overseas. >> didn't you s before it was cambridge the mercer's outfit that helped the trump campaign do this? >> that was one of the firms working on it for the trump campaign and again the question is where did these other fake messages, which often were resident, reenforcing messages from russian bots, which is what investigators think. how is it that those messages occurred in tandem? was there any connection, any coordination? that's being looked at. there is no public evidence it's true. that's the suspicion, we talk about donald trump being obsessed with watching cable news, hillary clinton is comparably focused on these questions of where did this stuff come from and was it coordinated? >> senator. >> we we heard time and time again how the hillary campaign wasn't as good as the trump campaign when it came to mistargeting and social media. >> that may be true. but if you start to learn that the reason is that the trump campaign was colluding with a foreign entity, that's a whole another world. so the campaign finance laws actually say, which you could lead to criminal prosecutions, they say you can't take anything of value a candidate or anyone associated with them, you can't take of value from a foreign entity and in one case it was found to include information and so i don't know all the facts here, i'm a former prosecutor. i like to wait until i see the facts. but this is a very grave matter. >> that is why we have bob mueller. that's why the hard of hearing i believe for christopher ray for the fbi yesterday was done in such a serious fashion and the judiciary committee. we feed people in place that will get to the bottom of this. >> a very important issue. when this all gets washed out and it may take months or years, it may turn out that all of this effort however it gets defined did impact the election, conventional wisdom now is, oh, it had no impact. but the votes in those three states, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania were so close and if you have a well directed targeted campaign on certain voters, you can do it. i hate to go back to this but in this nixon case and watergate, the initial reaction was, oh, there's this absurd burglary. well, when you look at it, in fact, the nixon operation of espionage and sabotage, nixon picked who he was going to run against, picked a weaker candidate, so we now know these things just don't happen and they can have immense impact. >> george, hillary clinton may not have gone to wisconsin, but the russians apparently did. and it could have had a huge impact if you tally up the vote totals of the wins that made donald trump president of the united states. it's pretty narrow. it's focused. >> bob mentioned a moment ago how obsessed mr. trump is with winning. he's obsessed and hasn't been from the first hours of this presidency with his haunting suspicion that he's not quite legitimate. because he lost the popular vote. hence, all the uproar about the photograph taken from the top of the walk monument. i don't want to deepen his paranoia by mentioning the fact that it was taken by my son-in-law, the photographer for reuters. but from the very beginning, the obsession with numbers. >> a lot of obsessions. >> it goes back to the deep insecurity which is part of his personality that has denied by everything that's happened since the votes were cast on november 8th. >> so, senator, i know you don't want to get ahead of the facts. we have facts in front of us. for example the facts that donald trump jr. put out, himself, the e-mail chain. which he sends to jared and paul manafort with a subject line that was pretty revealing. what does that tell you? is it possible -- is it possible they can claim stupidity and say they're so stupid they didn't -- i do not mean, i'm saying it appears that they're putting out a message that they didn't understand really what was going on? is that at all in the rem him of possibility when you look at it from a prosecutorial point of view? >> i don't think anyone one u running for family, they are high up campaign people the top people that surrounded donald trump that they must know that you cannot get information from a foreign entity. >> that that is illegal. >> that that has no place in our democracy. and the fact that they can't even draw that moral line is more than concerning. but i don't buy that, that stupidity -- >> mika, what a defense, how ironic the very people that spent every day saying, oh, those people in washington are idiots. they're morons. we're new yorkers, we're real estate developers, we know how things run. we're smarter than everybody else. >> yes. >> now for them to come back, oh, we're just babes in the woods, we had no idea what was going on. manafort going back and forth. >> in fairness, we all get e-mails, e-mail chains and so forth. >> right. >> and there is suspicion and that's fair, but there certainly is not proof on this. >> but you don't go back and say, oh, i love it, i love it. right. he's saying, oh we have this information from russia. he writes back, he did read it. he wrote back i love it. >> the subject line talking about hillary clinton and russians, confidential. >> but how many e-mails do you get and this is in the middle of the campaign, he did -- sure, it's suspicious and this is the wonder of e-mails, you start putting them towing, the "new york times" did a great story about three hours after this meeting trump was out saying, oh, we're going to put out dirt on hillary clinton. so you start doing this, investigate it. i think it all still can be done in a fair minded aggressive way and not start leaping to conclusions that are not there. >> we are not making conclusions. >> oh, no. >> i can leap to this conclusion, if have you the campaign chairman, palm manafort sitting -- paul manafort in office with the president's son and the person running the campaign. they're not sitting there to say hi to somebody. they have been directed, this is significant. there were phone calls, george. this e-mail suggests there was a follow-up phone call before they came there. the subject line is, regarding russia-clinton, private and confidential. that was forwarded to paul manafort again not a babe in the woods. he started in 1976 with gerald ford. he worked under james baker. he doesn't accidentally show up at meetings. >> remember when the now president campaigned as an outsider, he meant outside the normal norms customs, habits and dispositions of american politics. he said watch me campaign. my persona is what you are getting. more than a program. they voted for a persona. the persona was lock her up. all of these things people said you can't say that he says, of course i can say that. i tell it liket is. so overturning the norms of american polics was a campaign promise. he kept it. >> the thing is he is now continuing that, not signing the sanctions bill, lobbying against the sanctions bill, against the very country that tries to influence our election. it continues on and on and on in the decisions he's making in the presidency for the american people. so this isn't just about some actions in a company. it's the norms are continuing to be broken and it's up to your former party, the republican party, i think, to come to and george's, to come to the front now and join us in saying, we got to get the documents in these investigations, we have to move forward and certainly we need to keep bob mueller in place. >> can't i say the normal is not evidence. it is not proofr. george is absolutely right. i mean these people were disconnected from the traditional normal system. >> that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot there. and it needs to be investigated and i believe it's going to be investigated. blue but i think the tone of kind of oh this means something when there are alternatives and explanations is to be too much in a hurry. >> i think the ability to find many alternative explanations to the three most important people surrounding the presidential candidate t. russians are saying they are coming a tpd russian government wants to help elect donald trump president of the united states over hillary clinton is strange credulity. >> it's a big deal. but, you know, all of these things and the former prosecutor the senator will tell us in prosecution, you need to look at actions. what actions followed from this? and we don't know yet. i just think that. >> we'll see. >> let's get gently into the area of conclusion. >> but our issue right now in washington is we can't step gently away from the work we have to do. which is different than this investigation, which i agree, you have to look at the law and make decisions, we have to move forward. wee have this iran sanctions bill. we have to move forward on. they have stop messing around wit. we have to move forward on the negotiations, but that's the point. is somehow he has to be a bit more like obama and compartmentalize some of these things so we can move forward. >> senator, let's talk about yesterday and ris ray. >> yeah, trump's nominee for fbi director, how is it going? >> he did a tremendous job. i was impressed in a low key way. i think the big take aways when he said he was going to be independent of the white house. when he said it wasn't a witch hunt. when he told lindsey graham, yes, someone should call the fbi if they got a call on the campaign if russians wanted to give them dirt and mostly i thought he was the right person at the right time. there was a dignitary in how the committee handled the hearing, showing the gravity of the moment for this country. he had that at his core. we need to get this done and put him in place. >> thank you very much. thank you both on the panel. ahead, senator bernie sanders joins the table. we'll be right back. lock it in. tripadvisor. >> i am sitting in the oval office with a pen in hand waiting for our senators to give it to me. for years they have been talking about repeal, replace, repeal replace. i think they passed it 61 times, repeal and replace. but that didn't mean anything because you had the minority for republicans. they didn't have the majority. if they ever did obama wasn't going to sign it. >> joining us now a member of the democrating leadership, independent senator bernie sanders of vermont. it's great to have you back here on the show. >> great to be with you. >> he's not walking about ruling out 2020. >> where do we find ours if 2017 in washington, d.c. if july of 2017? >> i think at a frightening place, a place where people all over this country are scratching their heads, they're incredibly worried about the temperament of this president. i don't have to tell you anything about that. but what we should not also ignore it's not just temperament and his stupid tweets. do not forget for a second the policies he is proposing are the most destructive policies being proposed in our lifetime. this legislation he is urging congress to pass would throw 23 million americans off health insurance. how many of those people will die, we don't know. thousands of them will. that's what we are talking about. that's not me. that's a number of studies. this is legislation that would cut medicaid by $800 billion. last night i had a telephone conference town meeting with 15,000 vermont people calling up, my kid has a very, very serious illness. we're spending a fortune off prescription drugs, what happens if medicaid is cut if i don't know what i can tell them. >> obviously in vermont, rural health care matters. and the states, donald trump won, a lot of states i lived in, georgia, mississippi, alabama, florida, rural health care matters. >> yep. >> talk about how these cuts in medicaid will actually disproportionately hurt many of the very people who voted? >> joe, i have spent the last month going to pennsylvania, to kentucky, to west virginia, to ohio to make just that point. the reason you have groups like the american hospital association, not the most progressive group in the world opposing this ledges london attacks, they understand it can make satisfy annual cuts to medicaid, they will disappear. where do people go to get the care if he's talking about taking away, republicans talk about rights and freedom and choice, 2.5 million women have chosen planned parenthood, trump did well with the working class people. are you an older work, making $40,000 a year, you are 60 years of age, your premiums will more than double. >> what happens in nursing homes? >> thank you for raising that, it's not talked about enough. >> my mother is in a nursing hope right now. i look at people around her. i know for them medicaid is a lifeline not only for them, but for their families. >> two-thirds of nursing home care is paid for my medicaid. so somebody's mom is there with alzheimer's. you don't have a lot of money. maybe you have a kid with a severe disability. what happens? >> and then on top of all of this, i mean, this is almost when you say it, people don't believe you. but it is true, they want to give $500 billion in tax breaks, 200 billion to the wealthiest 2%. more tax breaks in insurance companies tan drug companies. here you have a nation where you throw 22 million people off health insurance to give tax breaks to billionaires. >> that is why. in the last poll i have seen, 12% of the american people support this absurd legislation and that is why. the ama, the american hospital association, the aarp, every major health care organization in this country opposes this disastrous bill and that is why the republicans have not held one public hearing on this. they don't have the guts to go forward, hear from the doctors and the nurses. >> mark, what's your optimistic scenario for the rest of the year about what washington might do? >> i hope we beat this thing, i hope we pete this thing badly. i hope that trump supporters in rural states understand what he told them during the campaign he was going to stands up for working class people was nothing but a lie. if you think the held health care bill is a disaster. take a look at the budget, 3 trillion in traction breaks, the top 1%. massive cuts in education in health care in all of the programs the working families feed. he is not to be exposed for the fraud he is not just focusing on his temperament and tweets but on this extremely white wing policy paid for by the coch brothers and other billionaires. >> if they look at the policies and how it impacts tear likes, he has a base, it's there. >> le has a base the base is shrinking the more people learn about his policies himse. he ran an effective campaign and said, you know, i'm going to take on the establishment and i'm going to stand up for the working class of this country that has so long been ig ford and in my view of the democratic party has not done a good job in standing up for the working class of this country. i think he captured that sentiment pretty effectively. >> why not? where did the democratic party go wrong? >> for the past many, many years the democratic party hack spending too much money raising money from its wealthy friends, turning its back on rural america, turning its back on the working class, talking about deregulating wall street talking about not paying attention to the needs of people whose standard of living has been in decline. now obama in my view did a reasonable job. we were better off after his eight years economically than when we came in. the fact of the matter, 40 years in this country the middle class has been declined we are locking at 52% of all new income is going to the top 1%. have you large multinational corporations making billions without paying a nickel in taxes. the average american understands that, working two or three jobs, all of the wealth and physical going to people on top. who is talking to their needs? who is going to kentucky and mississippi and alabama and say we're prepared to take on corporate america and wall street and the big money. >> i was going to ask, you are as far as i can tell the only senator caucus on states on his or her own to talk to voters about healthcare in their communities. you ringed west virginia, kentucky, iowa. two questions for you, one is should your colleagues be doing the same. the second is is it odd, you are fought a notable defender of obama car you want single payer, here are you the public face almost of the party's defense of obamacare. >> of course it's not odd for me. that's what my job is. py job is to go to a state like iowa this is the most do you know what state saw a significant decline in the number of uninsured from 20% to 7, 8%. % of kentucky, they are made real progress. how do you have a united states senator representing a state that is extraordinarily wealthy. i will throw 30,000 people in my state off health insurance. all over this country, people feel helpless, powerless is there. >> they're scared. >> they're scared. they don't know what to do. i this i what we got to do is remake american democracy. i go out there and say have you the power, stand up, fight back, organize, we are beginning to see this all over the country. those are exactly the states that need to be visited. that's exactly the people who need to be reinvigorated to understand what american democracy is about. >> does the rest of the democratic party get that? do your friends in the senate get that? >> i'll let you answer that better than agree. >> does there neetdz to be new organizations or simply the dnc and grass roots. >> i think we need major efforts if building grass roots organizations. one thing i will tell you having gone through many of these states, they're extraordinary people out there. blew my mind. we went to west virginia. the guy gets up there. young man, 30 years of age, rusty, he talks about his struggle with testicular cancer, life and death struggle, so articulate. such a beautiful guy. there are people like that all over this country. when media sometimes they were a divided country. in many respects, we are not divided. when only 12% of the american people support ugly legislation that would do what this legislation would do. american people want to raise the minimum wage, rebuild our infrastructure, not the wealthy to have tax breaks but pay their fair share of taxes. we bought the to go out and bring them together. democrats have ignored them too long. >> senator bernie sanders, thank you, always to have you on this show. still ahead, president trump is in paris this morning perhaps trying to improve on this white knuckle handshake with emanuel macron. when we come back, we'll get to an associated press piece that asks the question, does the president really have a friend named jim who won't go to paris anymore? anymore? we'll explain that ahead. and i'm an arborist with i'pg&e in the sierras. the drought in california has killed trees on a massive scale. any of those trees that fail into power lines could cause a wildfire or a power outage. public safety is the main goal of our program. that's why we're out removing these hundreds of thousands of hazard trees. having tools and technology gives us a huge edge to identify hazard trees. my hope is that the work we're performing allows that these forests can be sustained and enjoyed by the community in the future. together, we're building a better california. >> this morning president trump is in paris invited by the french president to celebrate bastille day. >> that's good. >> trump's visit there remind the associated press the president's friend named jim. >> jim won't go to paris anymore. >> would you? >> jim wouldn't. we we heard this over and over in the campaign. jim, paris isn't paris anymore. >> on the campaign trail and as president. >> i have a friend, he used to like france, used to. he was going to france and i said, how's your trip going? he goes, where, pedestrians? i'm not going to france, because france is no longer france. >> i have a friend every year he goes to paris, i haven't seen him. pa paris, the city of light, for years, paris, paris, i see him a month ago, how was paris this summer? io go to paris. it's no longer paris. i have a friend a very substantial guy. he loves the city of light. he loves paris. i haven't seen him in a while. i said, jim, let me ask you a question, how is paris doing? paris, paris is no longer paris. >> he's making stuff up. >> according to associated press, it's unclear whether jim actually exists. the president has never given his last name. and the white house has not responded for the press to comment. you know what. >> he's obsessed --? he is not saying anything, they won't say exactly who jim is. the new yorker even went so far as to contact famous jims who know trump. >> no. >> none of them panned out. who ill the world waits or social media, wondering if he had an imaginary friend named jim? >> i was thinking kerry. >> jim neighbors, perhaps. >> i think the late jim neighbor, gomer pyle. >> jim comey? >> oh my god. >> he made someone up. he made up a fake person >> i will go with comey. >> accesss of liberalism. >> that's what trump is referring to. >> i'm a little confused. how has paris changed? how are they not there anymore? >> already a lot. >> more places to buy shushcy than baguette. that's probably what the president doesn't like. a back baguette go to the gym. >> so many best friend twins. >> still ahead, new reporting about attorney general jeff session's security form dealing with contacts from the russian government. why the justice department is now defying a court order, always a comfortable situation when the justice department defies court orders, keep it right here on ""morning joe." ♪ ♪ award winning interface. award winning design. award winning engine. the volvo xc90. the most awarded luxury suv of the century. this july visit your local volvo dealer to receive sommar savings of up to $4,500. this july visit your local volvo dealer at bp's cooper river plant, employees take safety personally - down to each piece of equipment, so they can protect their teammates and the surrounding wetlands, too. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. theto me than my vacation.tant so when i need to book a hotel, i want someone who makes it easy to find what i want. booking.com gets it. and with their price match, i know i'm getting the best price every time. c'mon, gary! your vacation is very important. that's why booking.com makes finding the right hotel for the right price easy. visit booking.com now to find out why we're booking.yeah! this proof of the trump campaign's collusion may have cost the president something he loves even more than his son. one white house adviser admitted the russia story will get worse and worse and you can't just really say anymore, "fake news." i know how donald trump's going to feel about that. sad. so tonight, we bid a fond farewell. >> we are fighting the fake news. it's fake, phony, fake. you notice now they're using -- everybody's using the word fake news. where did you hear it first? fake. >> up next, why the biggest casualty of all the trump administration scandals could be the dumbing down of what we consider to be rmal. that's ahead. plus, new reporting from npr on the justice department defying a court order. keep it right here on "morning joe." boost. it's about moving forward, not back. it's looking up, not down. it's being in motion. in body, in spirit, in the now. boost® high protein it's intelligent nutrition with 15 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for when you need a little extra. boost® the number one high protein complete nutritional drink. be up for it can we at least analyze customer can we push the offer online? legacy technology can handcuff any company. but "yes" is here. you're saying the new app will go live monday? yeah. with help from hpe, we can finally work the way we want to. with the right mix of hybrid it, everything computes. when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night, so he got home safe. yeah, my dad says our insurance doesn't have that. what?! you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. we, the people, are tired of being surprised with extra monthly fees. we want hd. and every box and dvr. all included. because we don't like surprises. yeah. like changing up the celebrity at the end to someone more handsome. and talented. really. and british. switch from cable to directv. get 4 rooms with hd, dvr, and every box included for $25 a month. going somewhere? whoooo. here's some advice. tripadvisor now searches more than 200 booking sites to find the hotel you want and save you up to 30%. trust this bird's words. tripadvisor. we are -- we're going to get to some new reporting this morning, very important, but first mark halperin would like to offer an apology. >> i lost my head. i was thinking of someone else, i won't say who it was. not only is it good news he's alive but he could be the gem president trump is referring to. >> i think i nailed it. >> jimmy glick. >> a new report from npr tho morning saying the justice department is defying a court order and not disclosing the part of attorney jeff sessions' security forum dealing with contacts with the russian government. a u.s. district court judge ordered the agency to provide the information within 30 days back on june 12th. the deadline passed on wednesday. an ethics group filed a freedom of information act request in march and has been suing for the documen documents' release. joining us now the co-founder of axius, mike allen. >> more smoke. >> and the sure consequence of this is more leaks, that every time they stick it in the eye of the government, of the norms, of governing, you get the permanent government coming after you. this is one of trump's big problems. he has everyone against him now, establishment republicans, even people who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. businesses who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. intel. the bureaucracy of a deep state, whatever, every time you do something like this, it's poking the bear and the permanent government always wins. >> you declare war against everybody. everybody fights back. now, patrick moynihan talked about defining deviancy down. you're talking today about, well, defining dumb down. tell us about it. >> at the top of it, we talk about the fact that the president of the united states has on air force one approved a cover-up of something that his son did. of course he did. that's not normal. that's not okay. the president of the united states arranges his schedule to he can watch the press briefing and critique it as if it's "sportscenter." no, that's not normal. that's not okay. and day by day in this whirlwind, and we have the new jaw drop every day and we think, oh, yeah sh, so what's tomorrow? no. no. the president of the united states has attacked the mayor of london after a terrorist attack. of course he did. what do we have for tomorrow? that's not normal. >> not normal. >> are the republicans -- >> and not okay. >> growing wary of this? >> you know this from their conversation. they said it's subtle, you don't say anything, you don't defend, and this is his big problem, is that there's no affection, there's no loyalty to him, and so republicans on the hill are with him now, but they want president pence, you know that. when the chips are down, very few of these guys will go to the mat or expend any capital for him. >> not anymore. >> think about what used to be considered abnormal, right? the stories that caught our attention back when, for example, bill clinton and how everybody went into a frenzy of how his ais were wearing short sleeves in the oval office. with george w. bush, it was the failure of his -- some of his cabinet secretaries to make it through senate confirmation. these were huge stories at the time that basically look quaint now when you consider how low the bar is, the standards have fallen. >> i would argue that bill clinton's presidency started the process that we're seeing accelerated now at 100 miles per hour in the trump presidency. there were some very abnormal things and inappropriate things happening within the clinton presidency that were overlooked and even defended not only by the men in the administration but some of the women as well. >> and mike as you well know -- >> opened the door for this -- >> as you know, mike, before monica lewinsky, bill clinton -- >> and all the others. >> bill clinton's lawyers, his staff would come to the hill and would say things in testimony that everybody knew was false and would be proven false, and that became the new normal. >> wasn't as abnormal as this but -- >> not even close. >> we've been debating whether or not there was a crime here. like the montages that "morning joe" has been playing, out there saying things that are just not even arguably true. this is a theme we've seen in the west wing and you see this from your conversations, too, that there was a lot of -- because this white house was always besieged, no given story soaked in. but what we're seeing with this is this is different. they're seeing that this is the toughest thing that has hit them and there's nothing they can do. like it's all outside counsel that's dealing with it, and so inside they feel very helpless. >> and the bar just keeps getting lower and lower for republicans saying, yeah, but there's no blank here. yeah. there's no crime here. yesterday i saw in the daily color, what donald trump jr. did, that's not treason. that's the bar. >> the bar is unbelievably low. >> all right. that does it for thus morning. >> on that happy note. thank you, everybody. >> all the best to you. >> stephanie ruhle, or jimmy glick -- stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> on that happy note, thank you mika and joe. good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle and we are talking about american in paris. president trump meets the french president moments from now, but he cannot escape the scandal du jour. an nbc news exclusive, video of donald trump in moscow celebrating the key figures involved in the don jr. meeting. i like russia. i like him. >> the president speaking out in a new interview saying anyone would have take than meeting. plus one more try.

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