Transcripts For MSNBCW Morning Joe 20180530

Welcome to morning joe, its wednesday, may 30th. With us we have pulitzer winning prize columnist, editor of the Washington Post and msnbc political analyst, Eugene Robinson. Political writer for the New York Times and msnbc political analyst Nick Compasori and nbc news correspondent and host of kasie d. C. On msnbc, kasie hunt on set. Still good with that . Are you sick of that yet . Dont get sick of that. I love her show on sunday night. It gets you ready for the week. Kasie d. C. You have been waiting a long time. Just to talk to her, willie . Its been worth the wait. Its been a long ride. And cj behind me, hes been waiting, too. There he is. Were going to get to the rose anne story, that was staggering in just a minute. Great action i think by abc. Quick, too. They acted quickly. Theyre on the west coast. When this stuff broke they went at it. Anybody that has friends who work on the west coast, they dont get into the office until about 11 30. They have lunch at 1 00 and then, they got to go to a thing by 3 00. Its pretty crazy. Absolutely horrendous what she tweeted. Really raises issues about the level of racism that people dont even understand is you know, simmering between below the surface. I mean gene and i talk about how great it was when abc did that. It was great what they did. I think i read a tweet yesterday, this never happened in history of television when the number one show got canceled. She was front and center, the first person that came out in the upfronts. This cost millions of dollars. At the same time you do have to say a little caveat here, you this knew what they were hiring. They knew what they were hiring. They knew that, they knew in the past, they knew she had tweeted racist thing about susan rice when she was in the white house for example. Comparing her also to an ape and all of these paranoid fringe rightwing crazy things that she tweeted and if reports are to be believed, and i think they are, obviously theyre aware of all this. They are sort of watching all this. And thats one reason it moved so fast. Because they have this sort of, this sort of record and saw this was so clearly over any rational line. This isnt going to get better. This isnt redeemable. So they said you know, were going to, if were going to end the show, when we do that, how about now. And they just decided to move very quickly and i think that was the right thing to do. She overnight is blaming ambien for the tweet. Shes got a series of tweets, she said what i tweeted was reprehensible, i deserve what i got, but she said ambien was the chief culprit and has spent overnight retweeting and replying to tweets that had a lot of what aboutism suggest other things that people said were worse and they kept their job. So her apology is not a fully heartfelt. Afterwards, one of her tweets this morning is oh, guys, dont try to justify what i say. After retweeting about 20 people who tried to justify what she said. Were going to have much more on this story coming up. But theres bigger news to cover. A lot going on. A new report that claims President Trump put even more pressure than previously known on attorney general Jeff Sessions. With trump urging the nations top Law Enforcement officer to intervene in the russia investigation on his behalf. After sessions recused himself in march of 2017. The New York Times reports that according to confidantes and former Administration Officials, sessions had flown to trumps maralago resort in florida, because mr. Trump was refusing to take his calls about a pressing decision on his travel ban. But when they met, mr. Trump was ready to talk, but not about the travel ban. The president objected to sessions decision to recuse himself from the russia investigation. Mr. Trump berated mr. Sessions and told him he should reverse his decision. An unusual and potentially inappropriate request that sessions refused. The times reports that special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the episode, suggesting the obstruction investigation is broader than the firing of fbi director james comey. This follows reporting from the Washington Post that mueller has been examining trumps efforts to oust sessions last summer in a barrage of public and private attacks. The special counsels team interviewed sessions in january. This is incredible. It really is. Willie, another example of long before all the scam artists on capitol hill and all the scam artists in socalled conservative media came up with all of these plots and twists about how this began and barack obama is tapping trump towers and barack obama, the deep state is out of control. Here you had donald trump from the very beginning, without even knowing anything that was going on, going so wildly out of the way to influence an investigation that he knew would come back to him, hes berating his own attorney general and yelling at him. For doing what any lawyer would have to do. Its an obvious call for most people that Jeff Sessions would have refused to recuse himself because of his role in the Campaign Many other things, we know having talked to enough people, everyone at this table knows and Michael Schmidt points out in the piece, this has been the part of the investigation thats stuck in the craw of President Trump since the beginning. Talk about from the beginning. Again, you got to go to state of mind. Look at the fact that before any of this started out, sessions recuses himself, trump freaks out. Sessions doesnt tell the truth about his meetings with russians, jared doesnt tell his truth about meeting with russians. Mike pence doesnt tell the truth. Baldfaced lies, saying we never met with any russians during the campaign. You go back and you look at their state of mind. They all were lying about contacts with russians and donald trump freaking out about an investigation, really hadnt even begun. And the frame around all of this is that donald trump believes it was the job of the attorney general to first and foremost be loyal to him. He thinks its his attorney. Not to get to the bottom of what happened or and to protect him. Protect him in the investigation. We have Michael Schmidt with us, hes the coauthor of this report, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt. Michael, lets talk about that day down at maralago. As you point out, the president of the United States berated his attorney general at maralago. But still, Jeff Sessions refused to recuse himself. What was that moment like . What was that conversation like . And did sessions at any point consider not recusing himself . Well sessions had to fly down to maralago because the president needs to resign travel pan part two, because of the first one had been messed up. But he wasnt taking sessions calls. He realized the ban had to be signed. They sent sessions down to florida and the thing that trump wanted to talk about was the travel ban. The president was obsessing about it. If you remember this is the same weekend that the president tweeted about the wiretapping. Sessions recusal set the president off. The president s original sin, the thing that leads to mueller. The president is convinced that Rod Rosenstein overtook overseeing the investigation, from sessions, never would have appointed mueller. And he would not have the cloud over the administration that he has. As we point out in the story, this is something the president has talked about as recently as the end of last year. The idea of sessions coming back to unrecuse himself. To legal folks, the idea of unrecusal is a baffling idea. Its a very creative legal idea. Something that a lawyer would probably not come up with the idea of doing. The concept of. But this is something that the president is obsessed about. He has, hell speak about it publicly in july when we sat down with him, he said he would not have made sessions his attorney general, if he knew he was going to recuse himself. Nick, its so fascinating again to hear what donald trump and the entire team said about Jeff Sessions. During the campaign. That he was the most brilliant mind on capitol hill. That he was the one man they could trust to be with donald trump. Donald trump said he was so brilliant, he could appoint him any cabinet position and he would do an extraordinary job. They were thinking about appointing him as secretary of state. And attorney general. They went down the list. And then theyre asking him to do something that no lawyer would ever do and not recusing themselves in that position. And then going on and saying well we want to you reverse your recusal, which is even more impossible. I think its so cute. That this president thinks that attorney generals are supposed to be their personal lawyers, and by cute, i mean completely ignorant. Something that a 4yearold, while smearing chocolate on the side of a wall might think. Thats actually not cute at all. Not cute at all. Actually pretty depressing. It sucks when they do that. An important thing here, put it in context, Jeff Sessions is the ultimate trump loyalist or was at this point. He was one of the first people in the party to endorse the first senator. First senator, lets say that again. Jeff sessions throughout the entire campaign was the ultimate trump loyalist, and the only member of the republican establishment early on to support donald trump. And hes flying down to maralago because the president is in florida when he could be in d. C. To sign something that is the centerpiece of one of his central policies. He had a golf game with fabio. And when he gets there, he berates them about this. This decision. Which was obviously the right decision. So just think with all that context, how important this recusal must have been to the president. And you look at the fact pattern at that time. The various meetings with gulf leaders, with russian agents before. I mean it just adds up and puts new a state of mind that the president obviously felt that he was vulnerable. And kasie, it goes back to this this is what prosecutors do, this is what lawyers do all the time state of mind. What was their state of mind at the time of x. What was the mind at the time of y . Why did they do that the night before the murder . Why did they do that the night before the burglary. It doesnt make a lot of sense. In this case, why is donald trump freaking out so badly that Jeff Sessions has recused himself for an investigation that has not even begun . Well, freaked out so much. Michael schmidt mentioned this offhand. But sessions has to fly down there because the president is not taking his attorney generals phone calls . I mean about something thats happening. The last time i refused to pick up my phone, if somebody really important in my own life kept calling. Its an extraordinarily petty way to react to something and really i think says a lot about. And give Jeff Sessions some credit here for doing the right thing on an action of recusing himself. In a big way. Mike schmidt, all of these months since then, why hasnt President Trump just gotten rid of Jeff Sessions. This is guy who has infuriated him. He believes that Jeff Sessions is the reason for a lot of his troubles. Why not just get rid of sessions . He tried to in july. He went to Reince Priebus in july and basically said, you got to get him to resign. Priebus stalled out the president over that weekend. The president backed down. This was over the time that the president was attacking sessions publicly. The president would really like to get rid of him. But republicans in the senate have said they will not confirm another attorney general. And they have sort of boxed the president in on this issue. Theyve said that getting rid of sessions would be going too far. Tough remember, because sessions is recused, if the president puts someone else in as attorney general, they would oversee the investigation. They would be above Rod Rosenstein and as long as they dont recuse themselves, they would be in charge. And they would have a chance to do whatever they would like with mueller. So the republicans on the hill have sort of stopped the president from doing what he would like to do. The president talking recently with someone that he would like to do it maybe after the mid terms, get rid of sessions after the mid terms, but sessions and rosenstein have survived longer that a lot of other folks in that cabinet. Kasie, republicans let him do it because sessions is a member of the club and hes beloved by hardcore conservatives. He is. And finally theyre not going to allow donald trump to fire a lawyer for doing what a lawyer is supposed to do in his position. And recuse himself. This is one place where for all of the conversation about what republicans will or wont say in public to condemn or not condemn the president when he says something that is offensive, they have stood in the way to the extent that they can, on this. And it is i think been made very clear that there is no, there is basically no way that if the president were to fire Jeff Sessions that he would get another attorney general. Which would leave the department in Rod Rosensteins hands. And by the way, have you seen gene, Rod Rosenstein in press conferences, hes so scared of donald trump, hes just shaking. Actually ive never seen a man less concerned about President Trump. Thats a look of a man that is holding four aces. So much of what exactly what are you going to do . Hes not going to do anything to him. Hes not going to be able to get rid of sessions. If he went ahead and did it, any how, the first question any confirmation hearing if indeed there were a confirmation hearing for new attorney general, is will you recuse yourself to eliminate the possibility that the president is going to interfere with the election and he would have to prerecuse himself. Weve been rightly critical for republicans for not standing up for the extremes in the breaches of constitutional norms, i agree with kasie, in this case, the message has been sent. Which is, youre not getting rid of the attorney general and youre not getting rid of Rod Rosenstein. So were going to get to more of this coming up. Michael schmidt. Thank you so much for your reporting, well be reading your reporting in the New York Times. Still ahead on morning joe hes brimming with excitement. He never breaks. Aww. We get a smile. Just the facts, maam. Just the facts. He looks a little tired. He was up with some of us on bryants show last night. You dont sleep, do you, michael . This is not about me. Lets go Something Else. You know what, by saying its not about you, you made everything about you. No. No, he did not. Great job, thank you very much. You know hes like me, he doesnt like the spotlight. Just keep it all right, coach. Well take you through rose annes fast fall yesterday after the ugly tweet. What it means for the network that fired her. And the president , who counted her as a key supporter. Plus, north korea looks to supersize its position. How about a burger joint . Yeah, it factors into the nuclear negotiations, believe it or not. 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Clinically proven helioplex® provides unbeatable uva uvb protection to help prevent early skin aging and skin cancer all with a clean light feel. For unbeatable protection. Its the one. The best for your skin. Ultra sheer®. Neutrogena®. See whats possible. It was President Trump himself who said number one, i didnt collude with russia, but if anyone connected with my campaign did, i want the fbi to find that out. It looks to me like the fbi was doing what President Trump said i want to you do. Find it out. Im even more convinced that the fbi did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got. And that it has nothing to do with donald trump. You know, thats a guy, thats a guy who is going to be able to tell his grandkids what he did when he was in washington, d. C. And and you know, its interesting, alex, we dont usually do this, but alex, i mean you have a theory, you think that maybe hes there because paul ryan is keeping him there as a safety valve . He doesnt want to fire devin nunes, but he wants him there as a safety valve . Yeah, we got kasie a little bit more on this who spent time look at alex. Im asking you, alex. A lot of people have made conjecture, a lot of criticism with paul ryan with how hes acted in this probe. They think that he put trey gowdy there as kind of a check on nunes, his own way of saying nun nunes, we going to keep you in check here. And trey gowdy has time and time again, trey gowdy has been a responsible, Reasonable Voice in this process. I know alex was right. Not always coming down on the side of the fbi or justice. Hes weighted, hes been pretty balanced. Hes been willing to say there are potentially abuses of fisa. If there are abuses of fisa, we need to know about it et cetera, thats been the party line. Weve talked a lot about paul ryan, criticized him. He has not felt as though he could fire devin nunes, theyve been friends for a long time. But essentially hes elevated gowdys role behind the scenes. He was in the meeting with the gang of eight when rosenstein went up there. Thats very unusual. Which you did not hear any democrats kicking and screaming about. Theres a rein for that, its because gowdy as viewed as the adult in the room. As somebody who is im surprised he was as straightforward in that fox clip as to say im going to defend the fbi. This is a guy, trey gowdy devoted his life to the Justice System in our country. He wanted to be a judge. He got into a political role. Benghazi made it toxic. Being in this Republican Congress its very hard for him to step back, to hold himself back in the face of all of these attacks on the Justice Department. You hear the term, willie, officer of the court. Youre an officer of the court. You have a responsibility to uphold the rule of law and to conduct yourself in a way that upholds the rule of law. And that makes sure that, that justice is served. Theres no doubt when you see that clip and when you see other clips of trey gowdy over the past six months, this is a guy who sees himself first as an officer of the court. And secondly, as a member of congress. Theres no question. And it was an interesting day on fox yesterday. Because that was congressman gowdy, you had shep smith saying the claim of a spy was baseless and you had judge andrew neopolitano, who has been a defender of the president through and through, the president calls him judge in napolitano. Said its baseless, he said it looked like Standard Operating Procedure in intelligence gathering to him and thats a guy who has defended the president really from the beginning. Heres a clip of shep smith superstar, soon to be musical love him. President trump accusing the special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team of a whole new set of conspiracy theories. Unfounded . Not based in fact or reason . With no evidence to support them. The president says, back up. The president says that Robert Mueller and his team are meddling in the mid terms. Theres nothing to support that claim. And the socalled rigged russia witch hunt is not a witch hunt. It has resulted in charges against four former trump associates, three pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. About russia. President trump has also claimed the feds spied on his campaign with an informant. The president calls it spy gate. Fox news can confirm it is not. Fox news knows of no evidence to support the president s claim. Thank god for him. Well fox news, i mean judge napolitano, fox news newsgathering force. Doing what i would say, doing what i thought republicans always did, and that is stand up and defend the rule of law, stand up and defend the fbi. The fbi. And the factual record as we know it, right . Defending real facts as opposed to alternative facts. Well, we dont always do that. But i know but in this case, theyre actually doing that. Its admirable. And the middle of the fox lineup, thats an extraordinary thing. Its actually surprising and a testament to the president s ability to inflict and change the entire conversation around his actions. This investigation began as an effort to warn his campaign that they might be penetrated by russian intelligence and then it discovered that in fact perhaps the Trump Campaign was open to getting help from russian intelligence and russian agents and now were here. And its amazing again that this is even something that has to be debunked on fox news. This is one more example of the president , mika, doing something that hurts his own cause. And many of us around the table, many people in the media, when they first started talking about going you know, nunes, wanted to you go to the Justice Department and get the fbi in here. A lot of people said well, yes, sunlight is the best disinfectant and when they see what happened, this is not going to be good for donald trump at the end. Here we are at the end. Its not good for donald trump, you have trey gowdy saying god bless trey gowdy for saying this, that the fbi did it by the book. Sufficient shep smith saying the fbi did it by the book, confirming that fox news says the fbi did it by the book. Judge napolitano saying the fbi did it by the book. Thats about five conspiracy theories that donald trump dug up from his bag of conspiracy theorys that included ted cruzs father shooting jfk in dallas. I almost forgot about that. Theres so many its not even funny. Can you throw out now. Got bless the fbi and by the way, Christopher Wray has been doing an extraordinary job. Up next, the rise and fall of rose anne again, well hear from Valerie Jarrett responding to her racist tweet. Welcome to holiday inn thank you wait, i have something for you every stay is a special stay at holiday inn. Save up to 15 when you book early at hollidayinn. Com save up to 15 when you book early when it comes to strong bones, are you on the right path . We have postmenopausal osteoporosis and a high risk for fracture, so with our doctors we chose prolia® to help make our bones stronger. Only prolia® helps strengthen bones by stopping cells that damage them with 1 shot every 6 months. Do not take prolia® if you have low blood calcium, are pregnant, are allergic to it, or take xgeva®. Serious allergic reactions, like low blood pressure; trouble breathing; throat tightness; face, lip or tongue swelling, rash, itching or hives have happened. 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The person who is walking down the street, minding their own business and they see somebody cling to their purse or walk across the street. I want to mention that bob wider eiger the ceo of disney, who called me before the the announcement. He apologized, he said they had zero tolerance for those ragist, bigoted comments and he wanted me to know they were canceling the show. Good for bob eiger, i have to stay bob, that was extraordinarily important, first of all. And secondly, no matter what Nick Confessore said about the last jedi it was an extraordinary film. Dont listen to the critics. Ryan johnson did an extraordinary job moving that series along. I had to do that for my son. He said if you ever get a chance i loved solo. It was a very good movie. It was not that star warsy. I totally disagree. It was classic stuff. Im, yes. Dont get me talking about star wars. We took jack, i got to say and yes, we are going to talk about race in america because its the most important thing, but number two, first, i will say i was shocked at solo i will tell you when solo and lando boom, it clicked. I did think this is the beginning, man. Nick wants to finish. I think we should talk about national issues, like racism in america. Its not rogue one. But its great. Do your sons Like Star Wars stuff . Of course, are you kidding . I havent seen solo but ive seen everything else. What have your sons said about 7 and 8 . Youve anyone seen one star wars, have you . Are you kidding me . I know the entire mythology, i actually thought 7 was a bit better than 8. But, but 8 is the middle of a trilogy, so youve got to you know, theres a certain inconclusion at the end, right . Theres an ambiguity at the end. But the message in 8 is you know we have everything we need. You cant get that time back in your lives. The message is, kids, its the democratization of star wars, we dont need jedis any more. Even kids sweeping in a stable on the outer edges of the universe can be a part of the resistance. Because of the force. The force is there. And can we just clear that up. Hans first. Here at the table we dont have any fuel for the spaceships any more. And han you know a lot more about star wars than i expected. I know a lot about star wars. Lets go to the most important thing and im sorry that mika delayed this very important conversation. You cant get that time back. Were going to see solo at 9 09. White house correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author of the best seller the soul of america he is the soul of america, jon meachum. We want to ask jon about star wars because he was writing his fourth book on shays rebellion and the frenchindian war. So you mean the reboot of shays rebellion is going to be good. Willie has been supportive. Its going to be exciting. Shays rebellion, this time, its personal. So yamish, you know i guess were praising abc for what they did and how quickly they moved, it was great that they called Valerie Jarrett. At the same time, a lot of people, heres the daily news cover of rose anne dressed as a nazi, a lot of other people are saying i dont praise them so fast because they knew what they were getting. Where do you fall in that debate . I mean i think that yes, abc knew they were getting something who was provocative and getting someone who was probably going to make headlines. Probably make some people uncomfortable. When i would watch stories about the show, the fact that she didnt like her muslim neighbors and back and forth about whether that was an appropriate way to talk about those issues in the show. The important thing is in this case she not only picked a pretty racist tweet she picked someone who has a lot of sway and has a lot of power. Valerie jarrett if youre going to be racist, thats the wrong person to pick to talk about. Valerie jarrett obviously apart from being an adviser to the Obama Administration, shes someone i think a player in washington. Someone who a lot of people respect and as a result, shes not going to just be maybe some, some person that you see on the internet, who you could throw racist things at, but who maybe doesnt have the power to fight back. I think what we saw was rose anne thinking i can be a little bit more, i can tweet this and be a little bit more provocative than usual because now i have the number one rated show and i have all this kind of cache, and what you found out is that racism in america in 2018 sometimes still gets you fired. Not all the time. But sometimes. And how wonderful that even in the age of trump there are lines, there are still lines. Exactly. Lets talk about another tweet she did yesterday. We want to focus on valerie. We love valerie. Valerie is a great friend of ours. But i think yamiche is right. If she had just attacked george soros and made the equally contemptible claim that georg jr the nazis, thats the sort of lie thats allowed to fester out. Had she not gone off valerie, then george soros would have had to absorb this again and again. Im sure that george soros has funded causes to try to stop me when i ran for congress. We dont care, we dont treat people that way in this country. This is a blood libel against george soros. That you know gained traction despite being totally falgs on the false, on the far, far rightwing paranoid fringe and is kind of out there. Thats where rose anne lives these days. Shes out there on that fringe. And so you know, without the Valerie Jarrett tweet you would have seen all this other stuff. And if you were an abc executive, i hope you would have recognized that you have, a star out there who is saying number one deeply offensive things and number two, its going to continue. Because this is not the first time. This is a continuing pattern. So i hope they would feel they had a decision to make, they might not have made it as promptly as they did with the jarrett tweet. I understand the chance they were taking in the creation of the show. Which is a bigger conversation. I remember having a conversation with some abc executives that they were working very hard to contain her. Because they realized they had a problem. But they wanted the show to be representative of a different sides of the country. And they did think they were doing something important. Yes and i really do understand what they were trying to do. So i think it was a great move yesterday. The thing that sort of is the background of all this is that the president can be racist and nothing happens to him. You can imagine the next steps in the rose anne had they not done that. There would have been outrage. They did the right thing. And advisers advertisers would have pulled out. You know jon meachum, so this goes right to the heart and the soul of america. I want to talk about another pop culture this year. And mika and i watched homeland it was an extraordinary season. The extraordinary thing about homeland is how realistic it is. There was one moment that did not ring true to me. And it sort of reminds me of where we are right here. And it was after an fbi agent had been shot along with some survivalists. And the wife of the fbi agent who had been killed in this sort of ruby ridge scenario where the town was all ginned up. She walked halfway down the ill, a black woman in an allwhite church and everyone turned around and started hissing at her and shouting at her and i said you know what, that doesnt ring true. Because thats not who we are as a country. We can say awful things online and even protest. But a woman coming to mourn her husband is going to be embraced by any community in america. And sure enough, the homeland writers true to form had the mother of the sort of survivalist leader go up, hold the womans hands, bring her to the front row and i said thats the soul of america. So its a long way of saying, what happened yesterday is the soul of america. We make a lot of mistakes, we elect leaders who make even more mistakes. We embarrass ourself time and time again. But at the end, there are still lines even in the age of trump where people would stop and say no, enough, this is not who we are. Yeah. I think the day absolutely represents this idea of the soul of the country. Its not all good, and its not all bad. It was what rose ananne barr tweeted, goes back to the revolution, our race, the pejoritarian view of race in america and anybody who says that racism is not part of america is not in touch with basic facts in reality. But the other part of the soul is dr. King and all men are created equal. And what bob eiger did yesterday. And thats, this is the struggle we, we undertake every day. And it really is a question of will our better angels prevail. Our better angels prevailed yesterday. Another thing that happened yesterday it seemed to me, you just showed a couple of the moments of it, is theres an interesting little shift going on over at fox news. About the president. And about his ambiguous relationship with reality. And whether its Shepard Smith or trey gowdy, saying or judge napolitano saying look, what the president is saying is not true. And if you and i said that, it would give the online people something to do the rest of the morning. If they say it, wow, you know maybe that reaches some folks who have decided that they are going to check their skepticism about this president at the door. Because they think that People Like Us are reflectixively agai him. If were going to get through this and i think we are, it will take people like better angels to come out and carry the day. You know, yamiche the president is not responsible for what Roseanne Barr tweeted yesterday. But shes been so linked to the pop culture representation of him and the defender of those who voted for him. Which is part of the reason the show succeeded because that was viewed as the kind of show that just wasnt on tv, on leftleaning tv. But yesterday when the White House Press secretary as you know was asked about this, the white house couldnt muster a condemnation of the tweet. Asked whether or not roseanne should have been fired, sanders said, thats not what the president is looking at. We have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now. In other words rather than saying we saw the tweet, we found it reprehensible, but the president has bigger things to look at. Why is it do you expect that the white house and President Trump couldnt come out and mention even, and condemn especially a tweet by roseanne, someone hes been quick to celebrate when she succeeded. Called her when the ratings for the First Episode came out. I mean i think its because this president really doesnt like to apologize, really for anything, even things that arent particularly done by him. But are done by people in his orbit. I think its not really shocking that they wouldnt come out and say that roseanne was super wrong. I think the other thing that happened here is that roseanne, the reason why she felt the need to not only tweet this, but then to defend it for a little bit, she was retweeting followers who said were all liberals believe that everyone has dna with monkeys so we should look like monkeys, she was for a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, she was trying to double down. But ch is a big echo to what President Trump does. Every time he has an issue with race, thinking about the charlottesville conversation when he was saying there was violence on both sides, at first he tried to walk it back and then he went to his gut and tried to double down. In this case roseanne realized in her doubling down, it wasnt going to work and she wasnt President Trump and i think a lot of republicans are starting to realize that President Trump can get away with things that they cant. She had to end up backing up. This president isnt, i think im still very much waiting for President Trump to really talk about whether or not roseanne was, whether or not it was right to cancel roseanne, i think hes going to start saying that abc was wrong and roseanne was unnecessarily fired. I think hes going to come to her defense. You know, kasie you and i have been looking at roseannes twitter feed up until a few minutes ago. Yes she apologized initially. But what shes been doing overnight is retweeting defenders of her. She has one tweet that reads i feel bad for potus, he goes through this every single day. A victim of a twitter mob. Astonishing. I think yamiche is right. When you watch the old clip of the president talking about roseannes ratings, looking out at the crowd and saying shes representing us. Gene one thing, too, i covered the 2016 campaign. There was a lot of disaffection in the midwest. Rooted in a lot of things that are not racial. That are not buoyed by racial animus, people who are struggling day to day. This was one of the few tv shows that represented workingclass americans. And it just streaks me as particularly unfortunate that this is the way there has to be so many people out there who are watching this and saying these people say they represent hme, but i dont feel this way. This can be done without the hideous racism, right . I mean you can, you can believe that President Trump was right on trade and tariffs. That hes right on other things without the kind of racism that we heard from roseanne bar. In fact before the firing yesterday, just on twitter i was seeing staunch conservatives coming out and saying this is beyond the pale. You know, this is theres no other choice, Eric Erickson and other who is were just saying get this, theres only one thing abc can do, and they have to cancel the show. So lets take it a step further as well, gene. You can also think that identity politics, and Political Correctness goes way too far. That people are being turned into snowflakes on college campuses. You can take a hardcore view there, and still be offended by this, because theres a lot of people by what is now called identity politics and Political Correctness. Political correctness. They were horrified at what happened yesterday. There is a line, thank heaven there is still a line. This is so far beyond it. The point you make, kasie, trump supporters. Theres a lot of them, not majority, theres a lot that are diverse in their views, just like any huge group of people. Its so damaging to the entire project of trying to knit the country back together. Its just it portrays such a characterture of who these people are. Are there people backing Roseanne Barr up, absolutely. Is what abc did knitting the country back together. I said this before, jon meacham, and liberals from the northeast who never spaent lot of time in the south have scoffed at me, never heard any of my friends born in georgia, i moved to mississippi, lived in northwest florida the red neck riviera. I lived in gainesville, florida, when i went to law school. Tuscaloosa, alabama, i had most of my friends just middle class, white guys, born in the middle of the century. I can say i never heard anybody talk this way. Not in my circles, not many my church, not anywhere. And thats when the media is reporting what roseanne is saying and the people are supporting what rose anne is saying. This offends a lot of people, but maybe your experience is different than mine, i just never heard people talking this way and, of course, in first grade i was in an integrated school on the outskirts of mississippi, maybe thats what sort of defined my existence from 1969 forward, but people didnt talk this way. No, no. I totally agree and my experience is similar with that. It seems to me that one of the things the president , if he wrestles with these things at all, is perhaps wrestling with is perhaps whether he has to wade into this or whether he chooses to is in many ways the wages of his having governed by pop culture and by tweet. Most president s could get away with staying out of this kind of thing, but hes got to unfortunately hes created this context in which expect him to wander into this. He was in nashville yesterday. He said talk about how africanamericans had voted democratic for 100 years, which would surprise those africanamericans who were not allowed to vote until 50 years ago. So, thats in some ways actually the more important thing that was said yesterday. And so it shows that this is an on going conversation. I know we have to wrap. Ill just say that i do get snail mail and emails from people of this vile racist sort. I do get them. And i dont believe i believe as meachum does that this is a fringe, but it is out there. For sure. Were not saying they do feel emboldened and feel they have a voice that they didnt feel before. You know whats put it out there, whats put it out there is social media, facebook, twitter. People who would never say things in schools or in churches or in baseball when youre watching Little League baseball games, but theyll say it in their basement and theyll type it and theyll. Thanks to President Trump, here we are. Thank you very much. Well be right back. 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And we found others just like us. And just like that we felt a little less alone. But then something happened. We had to deal with spam, fake news, and data misuse. Thats going to change. From now on, facebook will do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy. Because when this place does what it was built for, then we all get a little closer. Whats wrong with bill karins . Hes a dirty man. Coming up, the New York Times peter baker on what donald trump can learn from bill clintons interrogation by prosecutors 20 years ago. Plus, President Trump is still trying to revive talks with kim jongun despite intelligence saying north korea will not get rid of its nukes. Thats incredible. They have a concession theyre going to give. Did you hear about that, willie . With a burger joint. If its a crystal or an in and out, im good with that deal. Okay. Its a tease. The Risky Business also hold on a second. No. Where does the president eat . He eats mcdonalds. Its got to be mcdonalds. He does because hes a yankee. Do you want peace or war in the Korean Peninsula . Im playing the odds. Thats all. Im playing the odds. Risky business of speaking for the president all next on morning joe. But there will still be pain. It comes when your Insurance Company says theyll only pay threequarters of what it takes to replace it. What are you supposed to do . Drive threequarters of a car . Now if you had Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, youd get your whole car back. I guess they dont want you driving around on three wheels. Smart. With Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, well replace the full value of your car. Liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. electronic dance music we will build new strength into our country. We will breathe new hope into our communities. And we will do it all with these big, beautiful hands. Look at these hands. I just dont even want to. Welcome back to morning joe. That was last night . What does that even mean . Look at these hands . Thats our president. Its wednesday, may 30th. What was that about . Still with us we have the Washington Post Eugene Robinson is with us. Join the conversation. Republican Campaign Strategist and msnbc political analyst Steve Schmidt. National correspondent New York Times mark leibovich. We had a special green room, too, you know. You did . He stole my brush. Oh god. Also with us these two guys are going to if you hear one of the two end the answer to a question, who loves you, baby, call what did i say off the air . What did i ask you . Okay. Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times peter baker. Washington bureau chief for u. S. Today, susan page and moderator of Washington Week on pbs, robert costa. This is big. This is big. So mika i dont know whats wrong with mika, why shes acting the way she is. Were not going to have her read the script on Jeff Sessions quite yet. I really want to. Im curious on what you got on what happened yesterday with abc, roseanne. President s nonresponse and basically americas overwhelming response that there are still lines in the age of trump. Well, it was a stone cold racist comment. It wasnt a joke. It was mean spirited. It was vile. Abc knew this about her going in. And what they tried its okay to take a chance, right . They were trying to contain her. I do know that from insiders there. You wouldnt be in business with her. No. You would not be in business. You wouldnt be in business. None of us would be in business with her. But they said, hey, we want to be in business with this person because they can make a buck. They can monetize it. And so, you know, this whole notion that abc has acted appropriately and lets applause abc. B. S. They knew exactly who they were getting in bed with. She made it what, six weeks, six episodes and we saw it. And the president , we shouldnt be surprised and we talk around this all the time, but after charlottesville, you talk about good nazis. When grow down to alabama and do the nfl thing, which i said at the time is pretty proverbially pretty close to shouting the n word in front of an all white crowd in alabama, hes a stone cold racist. Lets not forget he started his campaign saying mexicans were racist, 2015 he talked about banning 1. 5 billion muse limbs because of the god they worships. In 2016 he denied knowing david duke or knowing anything bad that the clan had done in the past. In 2017, charlottesville. 2018 accused hispanics of being breeders. He also again, he mucked it up. So youre not exactly sure who he was calling animals. Stone cold racist. The guy knows what hes doing. He may have pointed back to a gang, but the message was sent. Immigrants are animals. The world has gone upside down in the last couple of years in this regard. Its now more difficult to just say directly whats plainly and clearly in front of you, racism, right . To call it what it is by its name, right . Then to say the actual racist words. And i dont know when that happened over the last two years, but he is a racist. Mark leibovich. President of the United States is a racist. Thats correct. I dont think you are. I thought you said mark. Our president. Sad day. I will say this, it is racism, but its also Donald Trumps silence here there was talk all day yesterday what will he say . Hes doing a rally tonight. Will this be charlottesville 2. 0 . What will he say to wink for this or try to sort of get on the side of the victimhood that Roseanne Barr was embracing implicitly by defending herself through the retweets through the night on twitter. That itself is a dog whistle. That itself shows him and shows everybody that he is on the right side of Political Correctness. I mean, Roseanne Barr is being silenced, right . Being silenced by the networks. But he didnt say anything . He didnt. That itself is very telling. What Sarah Sanders hes got Kim Kardashian coming in today. Were going to be talking about. Hes got more important things to say. Whose husband, you know, whatever, was sucking up to him, i guess, even though hes got nasty lyrics. He probably saw this was not going to play well. But whats interesting is he did not defend her last night. Maybe hell defend her today. Did not defend her last night. No, he didnt because i think look, he must have seen what the reaction was and she was gone. And so why, you know, he thinks of donald trump first. He doesnt think of Roseanne Barr first. But the thing about it between her apology and this morning is that she has assumed the cloak of victimhood, right . Yeah. So overnight shes the victim now. She said shes the victim. Shes being silenced. And this is in the dna in this era of trump. Trumps a victim. Everyone is a victim. How many people buy in to that with roseanne . Quite a few. There was one tweet that was very telling. Now we see what potus goes through everyday. I mean, they are absolutely of a peace of the victimhood that theyre being wrongly accused and not wrongly accused, just silenced by the forces that are silencing all of us. So bob costa, you covered President Trump for closely for a long time. Do you expect well hear something from him in some form today whether its in a tweet, a shout at a pool spray or Something Like that . It seems to me he has trouble sitting on the sideline of a big National Conversation . Inside of the white house talking to advisers there yesterday, they said that its not so much about the president s restraint at this moment is that Roseanne Barr may have outlived her usefulness to the president. He has walked away from people who have been close to him like roy cone at key moments in their lives in the past few decades and is willing to walk away from roseanne if she does not serve a purpose for him politically anymore. It made sense for the president to call her when her ratings were sky high and she was a national story. The president wanted in on that. My sources say. But at this moment hes not sure exactly how this is going to play out. So were seeing not so much restraint but a calculation. But what if she becomes a martyr for his base because there are a lot of people who support the president if you look online and listen to people on television who are rallying around her. If that happens and shes elevated in that way, does he then step out and says hes one of us . Shes already put on the victimhood cloak, right . The conservative movement, the republican party, if you go back to the era of Ronald Reagan in the 80s, it was pick yourself up, pull yourself up. Whether its marer tos you or not. Victimization, victimhood is the high octane fuel of the trump era. It makes the trump mobile go. And she is the victim now. Before we go to the next story which is our top story. Did hear last night hear anybody defending roseanne on cnn, msnbc or fox . Not on television. Twitter. Not on television. Its early. Curt schilling was a big defender. Its early. Give it a day. I think the president will. I think he cant help himself. I think his staff the freaking out right now, praying to god he doesnt tweet about this. Maybe. I also dont think that theres a lot of people who are very quick to the argument that, well, look what bill mahr said. Theres a lot a what aboutism. She also apologized. She tried to say it was a joke. It wasnt a joke. It was a stone cold racist thing, but now shes backing up from that. Shes in the victim lane now. Well see. Give it a day. Lets get to our top story, albeit this was a fascinating conversation, but a new report claims that President Trump put even more pressure than previously known on attorney general Jeff Sessions with trump urging the nations top Law Enforcement officer to intervene in the russia investigation on his behalf after sessions recused himself in march of 2017. The New York Times reports that according to confidants and former Administration Officials, sessions had flown to trumps maralago resort in florida because the president was refusing to take his calls about a pressing decision on his travel ban. But when they met, mr. Trump was ready to talk but not about the travel ban. The president objected to sessions decision to recuse himself from the russia investigation. Mr. Trump berated mr. Sessions and told him he should reverse his decision unusual and potentially extremely inappropriate request that sessions refused. The times reports that special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating that episode, suggesting the obstruction investigation is broader than the firing of fbi director james comey. This follows reporting from the Washington Post that mueller has been examining trumps efforts to oust sessions last summer in a barrage of public and private attacks. The special counsels team interviewed sessions back in january. Susan page, again, weve been talking about state of mind. Even before this investigation started. Of course republicans have been trying to stir up attacks against the fbi and the Justice Department now to say that all of this started at a very inappropriate place, but from the very beginning, when donald trump was accuses barack obama of tapping his phones in trump towers and spreading all of these other lies, he was sufficiently frightened enough to take the extraordinary step of continuing to demand that his attorney general reconsider his recusal. Which means that he knew he was headed for very choppy waters. You know, the attorney general at the very last moment cancelled from the gridiron dinner in 2017 and now we know why. It was to go down to maralago. Lots of speculation that night about why he pulled out of the dinner at the very last moment. You do get the sense that we are coming to a head on the Mueller Investigation, at least the part of it that relates most directly to President Trump which would be the obstruction of justice assertions or allegations by some. You have a sense of this investigation is coming to a conclusion that they are really close to the point where they would fish or cut bait on whether President Trump himself will testify in the sense that there may, in fact, be an inclination on the part of the special counsel, if possible, to wrap that part of it up soon enough that he cannot be accused of meddling in the midterm elections, which is one of the more recent charges were hearing from the white house. Peter baker, this underlines the president s mentality and his view of the presidency which is that he is a king surrounded by a court of people, including his fbi director of whom he asked loyalty, james comey at the time and now were learning of Jeff Sessions who he directly suggested your job is to protect me, not just to be loyal to me but to protect me from this russia investigation. Its the way he viewings his role and the way he views government. Yeah. He doesnt even hide it. I remember the interview he did Maggie Haberman and mike schmidt and i did in july of last year when he first raised publicly this idea that he never would have appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney general had he known that Jeff Sessions would recuse himself from the russia investigation. He made it very clear in the interview that his view was that Jeff Sessions was there as attorney general to be loyal to the president , not to oversee an independent investigation or oversee an independent Justice Department. That goes against the grain of our sort of post watergate understanding of how this should work. Now, theres nothing in the constitution that says the president cant choose his own people and fire people he thinks are not loyal to him, but since watergate, we had this idea that basically investigations that might touch on the president or his people are meant to be shielded from his control in some fashion or another. And Jeff Sessions understands that. He took that action by recusing himself. He said that somebody who was part of his campaign should not be overseeing the investigation into a president. Thats something that President Trump doesnt accept. Peter, you reported on and wrote a book about the impeachment of bill clinton. What is donald trump and his team, what are they learning from that time period . Yeah, look, this is 20 years ago. It was hard to believe it, joe. You and i lived through all this. A lot of us lived through all this. Its obviously a very different situation in the sense of what the allegations are. Theyre different types of president s. Its not a direct comparison, but there are some echos, you see, from the impeachment of 20 years ago. The attempt to undercut the investigators, right, to turn the subject from the conduct of the president to the conduct of the pursuers, to say that this is a witch hunt. Thats a phrase you heard in 1998, to say that this is partisan. Remember, the Clinton White house thought that ken starrs office was a nest of republicans who hated clinton. You hear President Trump say that bob muellers office is a nest of democrats who hate him. President trump is led by republican bob mueller. There are some similarities. The point is that clinton survived in part by making sure that it was seen as a partisan effort. The republicans certainly played into that at the time. But as long as it was going to be seen through a red blue lens, they would never get enough votes in the senate to throw him out of office. You see that happening today. Peter, at the same time, though, big difference is that ken starrs investigation dragged on for years. I think there was one indictment. Bob mueller has been going for about a year. Were up to close to 20 indictments, including some of the president s well, the president s top people in his campaign and the president s top people in his National Security apparatus. Yeah. Starr did have several indictments including the sitting governor of arkansas at the time and others. The whitewater part of the investigation dragged on for years. It was very frustrating for the Clinton White house. You hear echos of this when donald trump talks about how long this investigation has been going on. And you know, the difference is that i go through this thought exercise what if bill clinton called louis freeh, the fbi director to the white house that day and said i want you to investigate how ken starr had a spy in my circle. That would be linda tripp, lets say. And i want you to turn over to congress all of your interview notes from monica lewinsky. Can i answer that question for you . Yes, please. We republicans would have burned washington to the ground that afternoon. Its so ridiculous. Bill clinton would do 1 1000th of what donald trump is doing right now and all republicans would talk about the great constitutional breech that was occurring. Take a step back. Bill clinton had no use at all for janet reno his attorney general during that period. But at no point do i remember and peter can speak to this were there ever any stories about how he wanted her to actively try to protect him from this investigation. Never once. And he did not like janet reno at that point. And yet, never any suggestion of undue influence. And susan page, you were there as well. And i will bring this up again. Just to drive the point home how little interference there is between a white house and an fbi. One time during travelgate, an fbi agent came over and talked to two members of bill clintons Communication Team and republicans were screaming and howling about it for months. Yeah. You know, peter talked about some of the lessons that you might learn if youre at the Trump White House about the clinton experience. Theres one other lesson, which is president clinton was pretty relentless about focussing on issues other than scandal. He focussed on a lot of smaller more domestic issues while his investigators were really pursuing this watergate scandal and the associated scandals. And i think we see a little of that now with President Trump. I think one of the reasons he is so interested in making sure this north korea summit goes forward is because it is an effort to talk about Something Else to show him being president ial on another front and that is one of the effective offsets from the clinton experience during a time of investigation. You know, bob, getting rid of Jeff Sessions or the idea of his unrecusing to use a term that was the New York Times yesterday hasnt worked for the president , but what they believe at the white house, as you know, is working for them is creating a cloud of suspicion around the russia investigation, introducing the term spygate last week, suggesting again and again that there was a spy. We heard interestingly enough from trey gowdy, the republican who was at the gang of eight meeting who saw some of the intelligence that the fbi acted appropriately, he said that yesterday on fox news. Along with shep smith and some others. But does the white house believe this strategy is working . In other words, whatever bob mueller comes out with when ever he comes out with it, there will be enough suspicion about his motives that perhaps america wont believe he has to offer . They believe it. Inside of the white house is working with Rudy Giuliani to come up with a public strategy to go after the credibility of bob mueller. And there is some minor relief, sometimes great relief that the president has not moved on the attorney general or on the Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein or on the Mueller Investigation in any kind of formal way that hes not going to have some kind of saturday night massacre of his cabinet or of that investigation. And at this point, they know this could change, at this point hes willing to just focus on the public battle, which has its own consequences for the country and our politics. But that is where the war will be waged if he has to fight a subpoena or he has to fight any kind of report that mueller issues this summer. Do you have any background on trey gowdy . We were just wondering whether paul ryan was sending trey gowdy around with devin nunes as a safety valve because congressman gowdy has acted not only like a congressman but also like an officer of the court. Yesterday saying the fbi acted appropriately. In fact, lets play this really quickly. It was President Trump himself who said, number one, i didnt collude with russia but if anyone connected with my campaign did, i want the fbi to find that out. It looks to me like the fbi was doing what President Trump said i want you to do. Find it out. I am even more convinced that the fbi did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got and that it has nothing to do with donald trump. Thats true. Its also significant, especially at 7 00 p. M. On fox news. Bob, is trey gowdy sent as a safety valve for paul ryan . You have any info on that . He is more of a reflection on where many House Republicans are at this time. So often we talk about chairman nunes and congressman meadows the trump allies in the white house are talking to the white house who are there to show solidarity on the russia probe, but there are many like chairman gowdy and other republicans facing a possible blue wave this fall and theyre wary with the fight with the department of justice and theyre more institutional men and women in the Lower Chamber who want to defend those institutions and let this investigation play out. We understand thats how most where most senators are, but are you saying you think the majority of Republican House members are that way, too, where trey gowdy is, respecting the fbi, respecting the Justice Department, respecting the rule of law, wanting this investigation to go to its proper ending . Theyre not confident about it, joe. But if you look at the actions that moderate republicans have taken on immigration recently, you do see the beginning, the bubbling up of some kind of centrist revolt in the house gop a quiet one, not a confident one, but there is concern that if this wave is coming, are they really going to align themselves this summer and fall with President Trump, with chairman nunes, or do they have to like gowdy did last night stake out some kind of independence from this administration . Robert costa, thank you very much. Mark leibovich, susan page, peter baker, thank you all many. Still ahead on morning joe, an online piece in the atlantic calls him trumps right hand troll. How Steven Miller is crafting the president s policies behind the scenes. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. It can grow out of control, disrupting business and taking on a life of its own. Its multicloud complexity creating friction. And slowing innovation. With softwaredefined solutions, like hpe onesphere, you can tame the it monster. Hewlett packard enterprise. Clouds, apps, and insights faster. But prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered. In jellyfish. In clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve shortterm memory. Prevagen. The name to remember. Jbut hey, its a fun challenge. Do is a challenge. And our tempurpedic helps us make it all work. It gives us the best nights sleep ever. I recommend my tempurpedic to everybody. The most highly recommended bed in america. 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The result of her talks with president ial soninlaw and adviser jared kushner. Vanity fair reports that it will likely be in the oval office along with White House Counsel Don Mcgahn and discuss a 62yearold woman serving a life sentence without parol for firsttime drug offense. Thats another signal of what some prisoner reformers see as an era of the celebrity pardon. The president has recently boasted about support from kardashians husband kanye west, who tweeted of trump among many other things, we are both dragging energy first of all. Stole that from us. Because willie and i always talked about how it feels a Little Charlie sheen tiger blood. Maybe took it from there. Trump tweeted back, thank you, kanye. Very cool. Thanked him again on fox news and nra convention. Kanye is known to use profanities in his lyrics, last night President Trump admonished his 2016 component Hillary Clinton for jayz lyrics. The only way she filled up the arena was to get jayz. And his language was so filthy that it made me like the most clean cut human being on earth. Hed stand up there before those crowds and by the way, without any musical instruments, i had much bigger crowds than he was drawing. But hed stand up before those crowds, and hed use the f word and hillary would sit back, oh, im in trouble. Im in trouble. Please dont have him use that kind of language anymore. And then hed finish and everybody would leave and shed be standing up making a speech to 400 people. You know, president s worried about decorum. Of course. We can look at kanyes lyrics. He loves kanye. But we ought to have a lyric reading here with kanye west. Yeah. And then secondly i dont think he looked like the clean cut candidate. This was the same time that the access Hollywood Tape had come out. The same exact type that he was talking about. So you could compare jayzs lyrics. Half the people in the crowd are going jay who last night . I noticed last night, by the way, i was flipping channels. We dont want that anymore. Its boring. Weve seen it before. A woman was yawning behind him. And i thought, you know what, season 2 of the apprentice president is were seeing a lot of the same thing that we saw in season 1. This is going to go the way of the bachelorette at some point. 17 seasons . No, please. No. How many sharks did the show have to dump before its i was critical of Hillary Clinton having jayz and beyonce. She was. I didnt think it was a good idea. But he pauses for boos at certain places and they werent coming last night. He paused for a boo at george w. Bush and it was just listen. Again, the schtick is growing old, and some point hes going to mention george w. Bushs name and people are going to start applauding. Hes going to mention george h. W. Bushs name and people are going to stand up. Theyll mention jayzs name and people will go like this. Go on brush your shoulders off. Hopefully hell never mention George Herbert walker bushs name because again hes not worthy enough to mention that great mans name outloud. No, hes not. No person so unworthy would ever be called upon to say anything about a man so worthy. But listening to that, when you consider we have men and women in harms way. Yes. 17th year of war in combat right now. And you watch that, its so profoundly frigen stupid theres not a word for it. Stupid. This is the president of the United States. What a tragedy this is for a generation of kids, right, who will have lost in their experiencel memory that barack obama or george w. Bush or people my age, Ronald Reagan, we got a generation of kids imprinting this is what the president of the United States is. Its a tragedy. Lets wait and see how the run of this reality show ends. It may be actually a pretty good life lesson. It may be like rose anne. That doesnt drive me crazy, i just find extraordinarily dumb is it continued mention of Hillary Clinton. It would be hes obsessed with her. George w. Bush he cant quit her. 2006 were still talking about john kerry at rallies. Thats sad and thats pathetic. Lets bring in lawyer not sad or pathetic. Hes the man who ran the justice rights both Richard Nixon and gerald r. Ford. General stanley. Nice to be here. I want to follow up on what peter baker wrote the great article on what donald trump is learning from bill clintons experience. You were right there in the middle of Richard Nixons experience. Compare whats going on, what happened in 73, 74, what happened in 98, 99 and whats happening now. Well, the peter baker article is right about partisanship. In other words, he talks about the lessons that trump can learn from president clinton. We need to look at the lessons clinton learned from nixon. Once nixon lost the bipartisan or once he got a bipartisan objection to him, it was all over. The moment when he knew he had resigned was when goldwater and baker came to him from the republican side of the side we know how the democrats feel, but mr. President , we as republicans have the same problem but at that point he quit. Clinton smartly as baker says did not follow that path. He very smartly made sure that it stayed partisan and as baker has pointed out in the off year, this year, 20 years ago, the off election year, the democrats who everybody knew were going to lose won. They actually won five seats. Thats very unusual. And i think its because the country all said this is way too partisan for us to go with. Uhhuh. You ran the Civil Rights Division and then the Justice Department. Back in the day, right . I wonder if you can just talk about talk about roseanne and race in general here. Can you reflect on whats happening in the country right now . Well, in because of vietnam the country was more polarized than ever. We tend to forget that. The day i came to work in may of 1970, there were helicopters all over, there were troops lining all the bridges into the city. If you went drove inadvertently into the wrong place, you were arrested. Rounded up sort of like south america, put into rfk stadium, 10,000 people. Part of the city had burned down. There was an m 60 machine gun. This country was in bad shape in terms of how its driven. Is it that way today . No. Is it still rifen today in certain ways . Absolutely. It helps put certain things in perspective, that is theres more Media Attention to what is happening. More of a dialogue. That dialogue that happens is pretty rough. People are angry on both sides, but we havent taken to the streets and thats a big difference. Steve, thats so important. Mika and i said it before many times. We saw ken burns documentary on vietnam. Its amazing how much happened. And we got to 68. Cnn, by the way, had a great documentary on 1968. You look at 68. You look at 69. You look at kent state. And then you hear people saying this is the worst its ever been. You have to roll your eyes. You have to worry but its not. Now the question is when you watch the burns documentary, where are we . Are we in 65 . Are we in 66 . He certainly does. What is materially different between this era and that era is this we have never, ever and i mean ever seen a period in American History where the attacks on our institutions are coming from within. Yep. From our elected officials, a complete and total abrogation of the Constitutional Responsibilities of the congress. Things could crumble. Of the oversight. We havent seen that before. Nixon in 73, 74, not a saint. No, no no. He had the plumbers. He wanted to go after the fbi. Absolutely. He attempted to use the cia as a cover at one point to get the watergate investigation dismissed. That didnt work. Nothing ultimately worked and he had to resign. So, clinton learned that lesson, keep it partisan and he was able to do that. The lesson that clinton did not i dont know if he didnt learn the lesson, but he wasnt able to do was to stay out of testimony. The reason he was impeached was he went into a perjury trap. He testified in connection under oath in connection with the paula jones civil lawsuit and that led to the impeachment. Now the impeachment didnt lead to a conviction, so you can say its a wash, if you want. But lets dont forget that that the big difference between what happened then and what might happen now is testimony under oath. They would know that testifying under oath as clinton did is a pretty dangerous thing to do. For sure. Stanley, thank you so much. Come back, please. Thank you. Coming up, a new immigration crackdown from the Trump Administration. Its intended to reunit undocumented minors with their parents, but some are worried the policy will keep parents from actually claiming their children. Morning joe is coming right back. Im allbusiness when i travel. Even when i travel. For leisure. So i go national, where i can choose any available upgrade in the aisle without starting any conversations or paying any upcharges. What can i say . Control suits me. Go national. Go like a pro. Gives skin the moisture it needs and keeps it there longer with lockin Moisture Technology skin is petal smooth after all, a cleansers just a cleanser unless its olay. Whoamike and jen doyle . Than i thought. Yeah. Time for medicare, huh. I have no idea how were going to get through this. Follow me. Choosing a plan can be supercomplicated. But it doesnt have to be. Unitedhealthcare can guide you through the confusion, with helpful people, tools and plans. Including the only plans with the aarp name. Well that wasnt so bad at all. 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Relief and remission within reach. By staying in rhythm. And to keep up this pace, i drink boost optimum. Boost optimum with 5 in 1 advanced nutrition helps support muscle, energy, bone, normal immune function, and vision. Boost optimum. Be up for life. The Trump Administration is looking to roll out a new plan to crack down on children illegally crossing into the u. S. By themselves. Senior Administration Officials tell nbc news that the white house will soon require fingerprints from parents coming to claim their Migrant Children from the department of health and human services. Immigrant advocates said the new policy could discourage parents from claiming their children over fears of being identified and deported. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials under the Obama Administration reportedly proposed a similar plan in 2016. Hhs officials at the time pushed back saying the idea could delay family reunions and possibly intimidate parents from claiming their children. Speaking aboard air force one yesterday White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders addressed recent reports about the separation of children from their parents at the border, saying thats not what the president wants. But earlier this month, attorney general Jeff Sessions announced the administration planned to do just that. If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you. If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you. And that child may be separated from you as required by law. Immigration is among the president s central issues and perhaps no one is driving that harder than Steven Miller, the 32yearold Senior Adviser is playing a key role in crafting the president s policies behind the scenes. Joining us now staff writer at the atlantic, his latest piece trumps righthand troll profiles the president s speech writer and top aide. He did go on camera very early on and it did not go well, so theyre keeping him behind the scenes but he is very active. Tell us about what Stephen Miller basically does for President Trump. Yeah. So hes Stephen Miller is Donald Trumps chief speech writer and senior policy adviser. And hes probably the most strident and influential kind of immigration restrictionist in the white house. He has the president s ear. Hes often the point man on immigration issues. And i spent time talking to Stephen Miller in his office in the west wing. The thing that i was most struck by was the degree to which he actually enjoys generating controversy. He likes the fact that the president S Immigration policies are so controversial that they drive so much outrage. To him, thats a feature not a bug. And so, thats an important prism to filter all of these kind of immigration and policy developments through. Theyre not afraid of controversy. In fact, they count it often as a political win. And i think that while Sarah Huckabee sanders and others in the administration are saying the right things, this isnt what the president wants to do behind the scenes there are certainly those in the white house including Stephen Miller who are enjoying the fact and reveling in the fact even that there is so much outrage over there. Mccay, its willie. Good to see you this morning. You make the point in your excellent piece that the guiding factor is triggering the libs or melting the snow flakes are his first principles. Does he believe all the things he said or is he actually the highest ranking troll in the country . Well, so this is an interesting question. Its the one that i wrestled with the most while writing this piece. And the conclusion i came to is that he does generally believe in the policies or principles behind the things that he says, but what he does is he tries to articulate them in the most provocative, most offensive way possible, calibrated to agitate as a way to persuade. Thats what i think is so interesting about him and what makes him such an important and to some kind of frightening figure in this administration. Kasie. Mckay, this is somebody who is really a survivor in a white house that has seen an incredibly high, if not, historical levels of turnover in its first months and year plus. What is Stephen Millers relationship with john kelly like . How has he survived all this time . And which one of them is really driving the immigration policies . Thats a great question. You know, i talked to several congressional aides during the course of reporting this piece, and one of them told me that Stephen Miller and john kelly really work hand in hand, especially on these immigration negotiations on capitol hill that kind of blew up earlier this year. Stephen miller was publicly seen as the point man on that on those talks. And it is certainly true that he had a lot of influence, but he had thing baaing of john kelly. One of the reasons that miller has been so successful and kind of surviving in this white house amid all the shakeups and departures is because hes content to be a staffer rather than a star. Unlike people like steve bannon who flamed out early, he doesnt try to present himself as the principal. Hes not out there trying to get publicity everyday. Hes really content to kind of do his work behind the scenes. And because of that, he actually has more of the president s trust and more of john kellys trust. And that actually makes him more powerful, i think. Nick . So i have a question for you, mckay, about the central theme of your story here which is the rise of trolling as an ideology. And the question here is what happened from what you reported here when a movement becomes kind of devoted a bit less to ideas and policies and more to provocation, to the very act of battle with the other team, with eliciting reaction from the other side. How is that important in the age of trump and what does the future look like for this movement . That was actually the thing that most interested me about this piece in the first place. The piece covered Stephen Millers High School Years and college years. And in a lot of way, it was a pioneering campus troll. Ten years before, you know, conservative student groups started to invite people to their universities to kind of kick up controversy. You know, i think it is really concerning to say the least that huge swaths of this rising generation of conservatives are more interested in, you know, triggering the libs in their words and doing things that outrage the other side than in advancing their own ideas. And the more that this generation comes to power as they grow up, as they gain jobs of influence, like Stephen Miller has, i think its going to have real repercussions not just on the culture wars and the discourse, but also on actual government policymaking. Well be reading your profile of Stephen Miller online for the atlantic. Appreciate it. Coming up, burger diplomacy . Apparently fast food is playing into the Nuclear Standoff with north korea. Could a quarterpounder help lead to world peace . I put together some really impressive deals, but this thing youve pulled off, its amazing. A big n tasty for just a dollar. How do you do it . Whats your secret . Youre a man of few words. I like that. My gums are irritated. 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Denuclearization or charcoal broiled. One of the two. According to a cia assessment, north korea has no intent of giving up its Nuclear Weapons any time soon, they officially tell nbc news. The report also says kim may be considering opening a western burger franchise in pyongyang, evidently as a sign of goodwill. Peace breaks out or at least delicious happy meal. Exactly. One wonders what the north koreans will think of this. The basic conclusion of the cia report is the consensus of experts on north korea, which is hes not going to give up all his Nuclear Weapons. Hes not going to say, okay, come take them. Its a vast nuclear apparatus that north korea has built. In the best of situations, it would take years and years to dismantle if he agreed to that, and by the way, we dont know its truex tent. So thats not on. The thing about the burger joint is new, and i guess this would be a gesture to who . I dont get it. To the president. 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Get your coupon for 20 off services, technology and more at office depot and officedepot. Com. Shes one of the highest paid, most successful women in america. She has a household name and her face is known to millions. Tonight, though, she is scorned by some, pitied by others. Roseanne barr. She made a racial tweet to president obama. Those two reports on nightly news come nearly three decades apart. Welcome back to morning joe. Im glad youre back for this one. Im always here. The cal ripken of morning television. Wednesday, may 30. With us, we have Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and nbc political analyst Eugene Robinson. Political writer for the New York Times and msnbc political analyst nick composori, and host of msnbc, kasie. So when this stuff broke, some people werent even in the office because friends who work on the west coast dont even get into the office until 8 30. Then they have lunch and they have to go to a thing at 3 00. Its crazy. Its absolutely horrendous what she did, what she tweeted, and really raises issues about the level of racism that people dont even understand is, you know, simmering below the surface. To say Something Like that in this day and age. We talk about how great it was what abc did, right . It was great of them. I think john padori tweeted yesterday this has never happened in history where a tv show got canceled. This costs millions and millions of dollars. At the same time, you do have to say a little caveat here they knew what they were hiring. They knew what they were hiring. They knew in the past, they knew she had tweeted an equally racist thing about susan rice when she was in the white house, for example, comparing her also to an ape. And all these other sort of, you know, paranoid friends, right wing crazy things she tweeted, and if reports are to be believed, and i think they are, obviously they were aware of all this, they were sort of watching all of this, and thats actually one reason they moved so fast, because they had this sort of record and saw that this was so clearly over any rational line, this isnt going to get better, this isnt are redeemable, and so they said, you know, were going if were going to end the show, when do we do that . How about now . They decided to move very quickly and i think that was the right thing to do. She also is blaming ambien for the tweet. She said, what i tweeted was reprehensible, i deserve what i got, the rest of it, and said ambien is the chief culprit. And then overnight has spent time retweeting and sending tweets that other things people said were worse and they kept their job. Her apology is not fully heartfelt. One of her tweets this morning is, oh, guys, dont try to justify what i said after retweeting about 20 people who tried to justify what she said. Were going to have much more on this story coming up, but there is bigger news to cover, believe it or not. A lot going on. A new report that claims President Trump put even more pressure than previously known on attorney general Jeff Sessions with trump urging the nations top Law Enforcement officer to intervene in the russia investigation on his behalf after sessions recused himself in march of 2017. The New York Times reports that according to confidantes and former Administration Officials, trump had flown to his maralago resort in florida because mr. Trump was refusing to take his calls about a pressing decision on his travel ban. But when they met, mr. Trump was ready to talk, but not about the travel ban. The president objected to sessions decision to recuse himself from the russia investigation. Mr. Trump berated mr. Sessions and told him he should reverse his decision, an unusual and potentially inappropriate request that sessions refused. The times reports that special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the episode, suggesting the episode is broader than the firing of fbi director james comb. Th the special counsels team interviewed sessions in january. This is incredible, really. It really is. Willie, this is just another example of long before all the scam artists on capitol hill and all the scam artists in socalled conservative media came up with all of these plots and twists about how this began, and barack obama is tapping the trump towers and barack obama and the deep states out of control. Here you have donald trump from the very beginning, without even knowing anything that was going on, going so wildly out of the way to influence an investigation that he knew would come back to him that hes berating his own attorney general and yelling at him for doing what any lawyer would have to do in his position. Its an obvious call that Jeff Sessions would refuse to recuse himself in this wrong campaign, and Everybody Knows this has been part of the investigation that has stuck in the craw of President Trump from the beginning. Talking about the beginning, again, you have to go to state of mind. Look at the fact that before any of this started up, sessions recuses himself, trump freaks out. Sessions doesnt tell the truth about his meetings with russians. Jared doesnt tell his truth about meeting with russians. Mike pence doesnt tell the truth. Just baldfaced lies, saying we never met with any russians during the entire campaign. Afterwards you go back and you look at their state of mind. They all were lying about contacts with the russians, and donald trump freaking out about an investigation that really hadnt even begun. And the frame around all of this is that donald trump believes it was the job of the attorney general to first and foremost be loyal to him. He thinks its his attorney. Be loyal to him, be loyal to the president and protect him through the investigation. We actually have Michael Schmidt. Michael, lets talk about that day in maralago, because as you point out in the article, the president of the United States berated his attorney general at maralago, but still Jeff Sessions refused to recuse himself. What was that moment like, what was that conversation like, and did sessions nature point consider not recusing himself . Well, sessions had to fly down to maralago because the president had to reassign part 2 because the first one was messed up. But he wasnt taking sessions calls, but he realized the ban had to be signed. So he sent sessions to florida and the thing the president wanted to talk about was sessions. This is when the president tweeted about the wire tapping. The recusal really set the president off. To the president its the original sin. Its the thing that leads to mueller. The president is convinced that Rod Rosenstein, who overtook overseeing the investigation from sessions never would have appointed mueller and he would not have is the cloud over the administration that he has. As we point out in the story, this is something the president has talked about as recently as the end of last year, the idea of sessions coming back to unrecuse himself. To legal folks, the idea of unrecusal is a baffling idea. Its a very creative legal idea, something a lawyer would probably not come up with the idea of doing the concept of. But this is something the president is obsessed about. And hell speak about it publicly. In july when we sat down with him, he said he would not have made sessions his attorney general if he knew he was going to recuse himself. Nick, its so fascinating again to hear what donald trump and the entire team said about Jeff Sessions during the campaign, that he was the most brilliant mind on capitol hill, that he was the one man they could trust to be with donald trump. Donald trump said he was so brilliant he could appoint him any cabinet position and he would do an extraordinary job. They were thinking about appointing him as secretary of state and attorney general. They went down the list. And theyre asking him to do something that no lawyer would ever do in not recusing themselves in that position, and then going on and saying, well, we want you to reverse your recusal, which is even more impossible. I think its so cute that this president thinks that attorney generals are supposed to be their personal lawyers. And by cute, i mean completely ignorant, something that a fouryearold while smearing chocolate on the side of a wall might think. Its actually not cute at all. Not cute at all. Actually pretty depressing. It sucks when they do that. The important thing here, to put it in context, Jeff Sessions is the ultimate trump loyalist or was at this point. He was one of the first people in the party to endorse his candidacy. Lets say again, Jeff Sessions, throughout the entire campaign, was the ultimate trump loyalist and the only member of the republican establishment early on to support donald trump. And hes flying down to maralago because the president is in florida when he could be in d. C. To sign something that is the centerpiece of one of his central policies. He had a golf game in fabio. When he gets there, he berates him about this decision, which was obviously the right decision. Just think with all that context how important this recusal must have been to the president , and you look at the fact pattern at that time, the various meetings with the gulf leaders, with russian agents before it. It just adds up and puts you in a state of mind of president obviously felt that he was vulnerable. Kasie, it goes back to this is what prosecutors do, this is what lawyers do all the time. Right. What was the state of mind at the time . Why did they do that the night before the murder . Why did they do that the night before the burglary . It doesnt make a lot of sense. Well, in this case, why is donald trump freaking out so badly that Jeff Sessions has recused himself for an investigation that has not even begun . Well, and freaked out so much. Michael sort of mentioned this firts ha firsthand, but sessions has to fly down there because donald trump is not taking his phone calls . Im trying to remember the last time i refused to pick up my phone and somebody equally important in my own life kept calling. Its an extraordinarily petty way to react to something and really says a lot about it. Give Jeff Sessions some credit here for doing the right thing on actually recusing himself. In a big way. Michael schmidt, let me ask you the obvious question, then. In all the months since then, why hasnt President Trump just gotten rid of Jeff Sessions. This guy infuriated him. He believes Jeff Sessions is responsible for his troubles. If he had stayed in there, we might not have the Mueller Investigation. Why not just get rid of sessions . He tried to in july. He went to Reince Priebus in july and basically said, you have to get him to resign. Priebus stalled out the president over the weekend and the president backed down. This is when the president was attacking sessions publicly. The president would like to get rid of him, but republicans in the senate said they would not confirm another attorney general, and theyve sort of boxed the president in on this issue. They said getting rid of sessions would be going too far. You have to remember, because sessions is recused, if the president puts someone else in as attorney general, they would oversee the investigation. They would be above rod rosenste rosenstein, and as long as they doen dont recuse themselves, they would be in charge and they would have the chance to do whatever they like with mueller. So the republicans on the hill have sort of stopped the president from doing what he would like to do. The president said he would like to do it after the midterms, maybe get rid of sessions after the midterms, but segz assions rosenstein are some of the longest members of the cabinet. A member of congress, a republican, said this on fox news the same day that jack smith backtracked the white house. Well talk about that and why its important. But first heres bill carrington with a check on his forecast. We wouldnt want to do that. That would be the responsible thing to do. All right, we have a lot of stuff going on. We still deal with alberto and flash flooding. Six tornadoes reported yesterday and a lot of large hail. These pictures come from oklahoma and these were good old sized texas and oklahoma size hailstones. It looks like golf balls or easter eggs there on the lawn. They did do a little bit of damage. About 1 Million People are at risk of severe storms, and once again well watch western oklahoma. Lets get to the flooding situation. Overnight we have a dam that looks like its about to fail. They ordered evacuations for about a thousand people in oklahoma and florida. They still say damage is imminent. Right now water is going around the edges of the dam. The structure itself has not given way. Also a lot of heavy rain in central alabama. Flash flood warnings for montgomery, and a Flash Flood Warning in western portions of kentucky, too. The other story is the heat. If its not raining where you are, its extremely hot. Were going to be 99 in austin, lubbock 105 should break your record. This texas heat will begin to expand with chicago hitting 90. The heat index wont feel nice in dallas. It will feel like 104 and all my dallas friends are always complaining about whats ahead this upcoming summer, because this may has been brutal, one of the warmest mays weve ever had. Its foggy in murky in washington. Youre watching morning joe. Bk direct at choicehotels. Com you always get the lowest price on our rooms, guaranteed . Lets get someone to say it with a really low voice. Carl . Lowest price guaranteed. What about the worlds lowest limbo stick . How low can you go . Nice one, carl. Hey ive got an idea. Just say, badda book. Badda boom. Badda book. Badda boom. Nice. Always the lowest price, guaranteed. 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This is a story about mail and packages. And its also a story about people. People who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams theyre handing us more than mail theyre handing us their business and while we make more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. That your business is our business the United States postal service. Priority you it was President Trump himself who said, i didnt collude with russia, but if people think i did, i want the fbi to figure that out. The fbi is doing exactly what he said to do. I would think the fbi did everything they wanted to do and it has nothing to do with donald trump. Thats a guy who is going to be able to tell his grandkids what he did when he was in washington, d. C. And, you know, its interesting, alex, we dont usually do this, but alex, you have a theory. You think that maybe hes there because paul ryan is keeping him there as a safety valve. He doesnt want to fire devin nunes, but he wants him there as a safety valve. We have kacie with a little more on this who spent time on the hill. Look at alex. A lot of people made conjecture of paul ryan and how hes reacted in this probe, and they think he put trey gowdy there as kind of a check on nunes as a way of saying, nunes, were going to keep you in check here. And trey gowdy has, again, time and time again, trey gowdy has been a responsible, Reasonable Voice in this process. Alex is absolutely right. By the way, not always coming down on the side of fbi or justice. Hes waited. Hes been willing to say there are abuses of fisa. If there are abuses of fisa, we need to know. We talked a lot about paul ryan, criticized him. He hasnt felt as though he can fire devin nunes. Theyve been friends for a long time, but essentially he has affected gowdys role behind the scenes. He was a leader of the gang of eight when rosenstein went up there. That was unusual but you did not hear democrats kicking and screaming about it. Its because gowdy is viewed as the adult in the room. I was surprised he was as straightforward as to say, im going to defend the fbi. But trey gowdy devoted his life to the Justice System. He wanted to be a judge. He got into a political role. Benghazi made it toxic. He probably couldnt have gotten confirmed. But being in the Republican Congress, its very hard for him to step back and hold himself back in the face of all the attacks on the Justice System. So hes leaving. You hear the term, willie, officer of the court. Youre an officer of the court. You have a responsibility to uphold the rule of law and to conduct yourself in a way that upholds the rule of law and that makes sure that justice is served. There is no doubt when you see that clip and when you see other clips of trey gowdy over the past six months, this is a guy that sees himself first as an officer of the court, and secondly, is a member of congress. There is no question. It was an interesting day on fox yesterday, because that was congressman gowdy had shep smith saying the claim of a spy was baseless. Then he had judge Andrew Napolitano who is a fox news legal analyst who has been a defender of the president through and through. The president calls him judge napolitano. He calls the fact that the president placed a spy in the fbi baseless. He said it looked like standard of Office Procedure and intelligence gathering for him. Thats a guy who has defended the president from the beginning. And to an to be a music star. President trump accusing the special counsel and his team of a whole new set of conspiracy theories. Unfounded . Not based on fact or reason . With no evidence to support them, the president says, back up. The president says that Robert Mueller and his team are meddling in the midterms. There is nothing to support that claim and the socalled rigged russia witch hunt is not a witch hunt. It has resulted in charges against four former trump associates. Three pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about russia. President trump has also claimed the feds spied on his campaign with an informant. The president calls it spygate. Fox news can confirm it is not. Fox news knows of no evidence to support the president s claim. Thank god for him. Honestly. And fox news. Judge napolitano, fox news newsgathering force. Again, i will say, doing what republicans always did, and that is stand up and defend the rule of law, stand up and defend the fbi. The fbi. And the factual record as we know it, right . Defending real facts as opposed to alternative facts. Well, we dont always do that. We should be doing that. Its admirable, and in the middle of the fox lineup, thats an extraordinary thing. Its actually a surprising testament to the president s ability to inflect and change the entire conversation around his actions, that this is even an investigation. This began as an effort to warn his campaign that they might be penetrated by russian intelligence. Then it discovered that, in fact, perhaps the Trump Campaign was open to getting help from russia intelligence and russian agents. And now were here. But its amazing again that this is even something that has to be debunked on fox news. But the thing is, this is one more example of the president , mika, doing something that hurts his own cause, and many of us are on the table. Many people out in the media, when they first started talking about going nunes wanting to go to the Justice Department and get the fbi in here. A lot of people said, well, yeah, and when they see what happened, this is not going to be good for donald trump at the end. And here we are at the end. Its not good for donald trump. You have trey gowdy saying and god bless cia gowu trey store saying this, saying the fbi did it by the book. Confirming fox news said the fbi did it by the book. Judge napolitano saying the fbi did it by the book. Thats about five conspiracy theories that donald trump dug up from his bag of conspiracy theories that included ted cruzs father shooting jfk in dallas. I almost forgot about that. Theres so many, its not even funny. That you can just throw out now. Coming up on morning joe. Africanamericans vote for democrats, for the most part, the vast majority. Theyve been doing it for over 100 years. As noted on twitter, it wasnt until 1965, just 53 years ago, that some of the voting barriers in america were broken. Well talk about that and the continued fallout over roseannes racist tweet next on morning joe. How do you become americas bestselling brand . 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Thats because your home is filled with soft surfaces that trap odors and release them back into the room. So, try febreze fabric refresher. Febreze finds odors trapped in fabrics and cleans them away as it dries. Use febreze every time you tidy up to keep your whole house smelling fresh air clean. Fabric refresher even works for clothes you want to wear another day. Make febreze part of your clean routine for whole home freshness. First of all, i think we have to turn it into a teaching moment. I worry about those out there who dont have followers to come to their defense. The person walking down the street minding their own business and they see someone cling to their purse or want to cross the street. The ceo of disney called me before the announcement. He apologized. He said that he had zero tolerance for that sort of racist, bigoted comment, and he wanted to know before he made it public that he was cancelling his show. So i appreciate it. Tone does start at the top, and we like to look to our president and feel that he reflects the values of our country, but i also think every individual citizen has a responsibility, too. Its up to all of us to push back. Our government is only going to be as good as we make it be. And as reverend alden taught me, people have to be hard and people have to listen. The special on racism, responding to Roseanne Barrs racial tweet. The conversation obviously got to a fever pitch when that tweet happened. Reverend alden had talked about, hey, a lot of progress has been made. Weve come a long way in the last 50 years but we still have a long way to go. Heather mcgee took part in last nights town hall. Also with us, gop counsel, contributor for the daily beast, sophia nelson. Sophia is out with a new piece on the daily beast, Corporate America has a big blind spot on institutional racism. So, willie, roseanne has been, i guess, up all night, tweeting all night, and after first initially apologizing it seemed like a heartfelt apology she has now undermined all of that with one bizarre tweet after another all night. She apologized last night repeatedly to Valerie Jarrett. She said i blame myself for this tweet. She literally has been up all night, including a few minutes ago, retweeting people who are trying to make her a martyr in this situation. She retweeting fraudulent, fake tweets that she say show what about what she believe shows hypocrisy. Remember the day of the trump tower fire . There was a tweet that said, one person is dead in the trump tower fire. We hope its the president. She never tweeted that. That was manufactured by somebody. Roseanne has retweeted that. She is once saying this is my fault and i shouldnt have done it. And on the other side of her mouth, shes retweeting conspiracy theories and garbage that say shes no different from all these other people who have been persecuted. And nick, you showed me a bizarre tweet from her. Its just crazy. For a person who was on ambien a couple nights ago. She probably should have taken more ambien. Instead she was up four hours ago saying she thought jarrett was white, then before thought that she thought jarrett was saudi. There is a lot of speculation about jarretts race, but the point is she used an innocent racist comment, apologized for it, and then undermincomments or and undermines the whole thing. Tell us about what we dont understand. It does more than make a parallel for whats unkind and cruel, but it undermines someones humanity, in a way. Thats exactly right. It wasnt a bad joke about her. Look, she didnt compare her to a giraffe or a crane or Something Like that. Or it wasnt donald trump talking about someones wife. Were in a moment where we think were postracial for so long, and then were given a master class in racism, and some of us havent even had racism 101 to be able to identify this. In our history, africanamericans were likened to an earlier point in human evolution. Its not just any animal, its specifically an animal that sort of came close to humanity but not quite. Right. Now, the purpose for that was to say that, therefore, my ancestors, who were enslaved, were not fully human, did not have human rights, civil rights, could be separated from their children, raped, tortured, killed. And then more recently, were not because we were not as evolved, were not shouldnt be empowered with the ability to selfgovernment. Shouldnt be real full citizens. Thats why this susan rice, she also called susan rice an ape. Thats why this ape terminology came up again so much when obama was president. It was this idea we shouldnt have someone who was not so much a human running our government. Sophia, as we said last night on the special, when you dehumanize somebody, which, by the way, is what nazis have tried to do, what fascists have tried to do despite who their opponents have been. When you dehumanize somebody because of the color of their skin, that allows you, then, to do anything else you want to do to try to make those political enemies subjugate to your will, whatever that will is. Joe, a couple things. I think roseanne represents an ignorance, and im going to use that word intentionally, an ignorance of many whites in this country who simply dont really have a clue about race, racism, the use of your words, what you say, how you interact with people, and i think social media has given license to people to say anything and not understand that there can be repercussions. Stop right there. That is so important, social media. I was just saying a couple hours ago, i grew up in alabama, mississippi, florida, georgia, the deepest of the deep south. People didnt talk this way. The white people i was around in church, in school, they didnt talk this way. But social media, oh, my god, its just like lifting up a rock. What people would not say, First Baptist church in meridian, mississippi, they will now go home im not picking on that particular church, but you know what im saying people will now go home and tweet something or Say Something on facebook or retweet a racist tweet. Absolutely. And to follow that point, the president of the United States of america has set the tone. Weve been talking about this for since hes been in office. When he does this and he kind of cuddles up to the guys in sho charlottesville who are marching with torches and saying anything. When he hedges when david duke says something, and when he talks about the nfl players, it sets a tone. So roseanne, and people like her, and remember, her show had a lot of fanfare when it came back for this new season, right . Lets face it, 20 million viewers, most of that is middle white working america. I grew up in Roseanne America in south jersey. I grew up in that world. I know it well, and the people i talked with didnt talk like that either, joe, but there is a new license that says we can do this. A new license. I think whats critical, i want every american to go and read jeffersons notes to the state of virginia. 1781. You need to read it because you need to understand the context of what your earlier guest was talking about and which this country of twas founded. Why are we acting shocked that racism is on the table . It will always be on the table until we talk about how this country was founded, and could slaves actually live here after being freed . Jefferson writes about this. He was conflicted about it. He wasnt sure it would work out. Yes, weve made progress, but we keep having these hiccups and interruptions because we havent had the conversation about race and about black people and how weve dehumanized them. Thats important. Im hearing a lot now, and herman kane made the point on fox yesterday. He said, abc was just looking for a reason to get rid of roseanne because she supports the president , she has conservative meanings. It was the number one tv show that was printing money. Thats even more ignorant than the 999 text. Lets go back to sophias point. What is the conversation that needs to come out of this . I think yesterday was a very interesting example of two different conversations about race and the working class. Because i volunteered in a pro bono way to help revise starbucks response to what happened in philadelphia. Because they came to me and to charilynn eisefelt and said, yes, were going to talk to trainers but were also talking to racist experts who can put this in context. The materials are now available on line, the documentary that was made as part of the training, and people talk about this in so many different ways. But the bottom line, this was nearly 200,000 working class people who go to work every day, parttime, retail, front line workers who many of whom never got an he heducation about wher these racist stereotypes came from. The racialism that sort of erupts from you are not common sense. They have been drilled into us to justify a racial order that many of us dont want to have anymore. This was driven by President Trump, though. You can use social media as a lens. You see in fast food restaurants and Public Places people taking video of racist incidents. And you can see the way people act, and maybe they feel a license to act that way because this president i will quote Steve Schmidt is a stone cold racist. Im sorry, i quoted someone else and ill stand right by it. But i have been the first to say, though, remind everybody, when they talk about how racist this country is, ive been the first to point to barack obama winning over 50 . I think we are the only majority white country on the planet that selected a black man or woman president of the United States. But thats it. The racism that barack obama and Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett and everybody in that white house endured on line, on twitter, on facebook and on capitol hill. And on capitol hill. It started there. I dont think you can say it started with donald trump, because Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama and barack obama were being dehumanized on social media every day. Im saying its a renewed license that is inspired by this president , and then the other point i was going to make, and nick, jump in, is that it is great to see Corporate America stepping up and doing the right thing because this president will not. So it may be ill tell you what. So maybe it was in the shadows, and now with donald trump, it has come out of the shadows more. I think a person can vote for barack obama and still be racist or have some prejudices. I think we all have prejudices, and what other people talked about, which is important, is that they have the tendency to erupt the ties of tension. Sometimes they are expressed very explicitly. There is a lot under the surface. People were asked to approach it with empathy to see where it comes from or why it survives in our society so powerfully. Why do we talk about how our leaders need to be role models . We talk about that because these are the people that we put into positions of power that we look up to that in theory we can say to our kids, hey, you can be like that person someday. Why do you think they came up with a show . Because of trump. Right, the president of the United States is not a role model. We talk about it all the time in the context of women. He is not a role model on race. He has not approached hthis isse the way we say to our kids about how you treat people. How do we heal all of this . How do we move forward . I do think what happened yesterday, which was an unbelievable amount about racism in the town hall last night, all over social media, every single news outlet in the country had something about what was happening at starbucks. That is a first step. Sadly, we do have to go back to basics right now. Its almost as if this Fragile Union of ours has to reboot in the era of trump, which is an understandable, and in some ways, unpredictable backlash to president obama, about eight years at the grassroots of people really feeling anxiety because the social order they knew was being upended by having a black family in the white house. Thats what got trump in the white house. Its both a backlash against barack obama and trump being the amplification for that. I think its high time we have a truth and reconciliation process. When america doesnt have the basic facts about what jim crow looked like, how it affected my mother who grew up in it. We need to start at square one, and then we also need policies to help us have more integration. People dont simply live near each other, go to school near each other. Our schools are more segregated now since brown v. Education. And i hope the Silver Lining of donald trump being in office is that everybody from Corporate America to the next leadership of this country realizes that. Weve got obviously weve got blatant racism that expresses itself in anger that we see donald trump doing, david duke, others from time to time, whether its charlottesville, et cetera, et cetera. But theres also the latent racism that you talk about in your piece in the daily beast that will impact black americans, hispanic americans, other americans and they may never know about it. Every single day, the silent, latent racism in Corporate America. Last nights town hall every day racism, and kudos to joy and chris. They were amazing because they were bringing this point up, joe, that this stuff happens every day. I get annoyed when we have interruptions like roseanne and others, because what this gives people is the excuse to say, oh, roseanne is crazy, and the man who was threatening to call i. C. E. On him, they may be wacko, but i want people to know this stuff happens all the time and its not videoed. We walk in stored, we get accosted in restaurants, killed in a house of worship by a racist in south carolina. Mika, to your point, i think Corporate America is stepping up, and i want to be clear that the reason i believe abc and starbucks responded the way they did as swiftly as they did is because of two black women that were sitting in the room at the table, Rosalind Brewer at starbucks is the ceo. Shes an amazing woman. She was at the table and she was able to look her ceo in the eye and say, we have to deal with this same thing at abc. You have people at the table who have the power and authority to say, guys, we cant do this. We have to own it, we have to deal with it, and then we have to move beyond it. This speaks to the inclusion point. White women in the room, women of color and men of color in the room is critical to us moving forward as a country. We talk a lot about movies here. I want to bring up another movie that changed, i think, the way a lot of movie executives look at decisions they make. Black panther. It was the number three grossing movie of all time, and it showed. Companies have to be on the right side of history, and they need to understand that they are not just playing to white audiences anymore. Can i Say Something about black panther . I grew up as a scifi nerd, and i was in that audience watching that movie for the first of the three times that i saw it. And the scene, sort of the part of the climax where its two africanamerican women, young women, sort of doing the thing thats going to save the day. Im rooting, im in the moment, and tears are running down my face. I looked at my husband and said, why am i crying in the middle of this action movie . I realized its because i grew up my whole life totally able and willing to project the hero moment onto what was always white men. Luke skywalker, captain kirk, everybody. It was just always someone who didnt look like me. As a child i didnt care, light, i ma right, i made that leap. To see for a black tech nerd saving the day, both of whom were women was so powerful. It made me realize white americans see that themselves as heroes, as multi dimensional heroes every single day. Thats a missing part of it. Thats why demos honored the writer of black panther at our annual dinner this year. We were like this is an important piece of the puzzle to make it clear that other people can be heroes, too. That shapes your psyche and makes you realize you can do anything. We watched it for the third time this weekend at our house. We bought it on apple tv. My kids are 8 and 10 and their heroes are chadwick boseman, gal gadot. They see them as superheroes, not superman or spider man. It comes up through generations and takes time. Those are the people they elevate as heroes. And i dont like bringing up star wars on the show here we go. In disneys reboot, all the heroes in seven, eight, rogue one im trying to get my daughter to watch. All the heroes are women. Nothing similar to how you were feeling but i remember getting so excited at the end of seven watching this smaller woman. She was a hero. It was believable. I just thought, this is a revolution just like black panther. Any woman in America Young girl in america can look at that and say, im the hero. Heather mcghee, thank you very much. Sophia nelson, thank you. Well read your column for the daily beast. We appreciate it. Up next, President Trump just tweeted about Jeff Sessions. Oh, great. Well read it to you next. Youve tried moisturizer after moisturizer but theres one. That blows them all out of the water. Hydro boost water gel from neutrogena®. With hyaluronic acid it goes beneath the surface to plump skin cells from within and lock in hydration leaving skin so supple, it actually bounces back. The results will blow you away hydro boost and our gentle exfoliating cleanser from neutrogena® just moments ago President Trump launched a string of tweets quoting congressman trey gowdy who did a morning interview a short time ago. The president typed quoting gowdy, i think what the president is doing is expressing frustration that attorney sessions should have shared these reasons for recusal before he took the job and not after. If i picked a chief Law Enforcement officer and they told me, oh, by the way, i cant participate in the most important case in the office i would be frustrated. Thats how i read that. Senator sessions, why didnt you tell me before i picked you . There are lots of really good lawyers in the country. He could have picked somebody else. And i wish i did. Wow. Especially after what trey gowdy said yesterday, god bless him, i dont hold that against trey gowdy. He may not be focusing on the timeline, but as we have explained on this show before when President Trump said, i wish you would have told me before, Jeff Sessions would have had to have had a delorean to send him to the future that would have allowed him to understand that his testimony before the senate would put him in a position and the events of the transition and the campaign would have put him in a position after he faced tough questioning before the senate to make him recuse himself. There is no way sessions could have told the president before he was appointed as attorney general that he had to recuse himself because the very actions he committed that made him recuse himself happened after he was appointed. I know its post fact america. But unfortunately we dont have a delorean to take us back to the future. That doesnt cut it. Joining us now, congressman john delaney of maryland. Last summer, the congressman was the first to declare his candidacy for president in 2020. Today hes out with a book entitled the right answer, how we can unify our divided nation. How divided we seem this morning. Indeed. How do wie do it . We have to get back to core american values, telling the truth, compromise, coming together. The title of the book comes from kennedy. He said we should not see seek the republican or democratic answer. We should seek the right answer. The American People arent nearly as divided as our political leaders are. It takes the American People to step forward and demand Something Different from our government which is to come together. I think the central question facing this country more than any piece of policy is how we take this fractured nation and start bringing it back together so we can start doing things for the American People. Thats whats happened for decades. Right. We havent done the things we needed to do to prepare the American People for a world thats changed fundamentally. You write in this book you call yourself a son of a Union Electrician and grandson of an immigrant. Yes. It strikes me thats the challenge in how we knit the country back together if we had barack obama and this reaction. You know, you come from these communities. How do you have this conversation when people are so far apart . You know, i dont think the American People are as far apart as the political leaders or the media no disrespect intended think they are. If you go to iowa, new hampshire. I have done 19 trips to iowa and new hampshire, 185 events on the ground in those states. You talk to people there and listen to what they are looking for. Theyre just looking for people to prioritize whats important to them. Theyre much less interested in the inside the beltway fights that we engage in day in and day out. Pew research did a study where they said 40 of the American People couldnt handle a 500 n unexpected expense. Those people arent that interested in a lot of the stuff we talk about. What they are interested in is what are we going to do for them . Are we going to prioritize their interests. Thats true of democrats, republicans. There are two grand narratives in running for president. The first is they can bring us together. Right. The second is the wrong jerks are in charge and we have to get rid of them. Right. Bringing us together is often successful in different ways. Yes. But it was spectacularly unsuccessful in 2016. Why is the country now ready when we seem to be more locked into trench warfare like one side has to win. Donald trump is the punctuation of bad politics in this country and the American People are figuring out we need a different direction. I have conversations with my four daughters. I tell them in life you will always approach a fork in the road. There is an easy path and a hard path. Its always better in hindsight to take the hard path. If you think about where we are in politics now the easy path is to keep piling on partisanship, the divisions. It sells. It gets more twitter followers, gets more actions on facebook. The hard path, but the right thing to do is to be intentional about not dividing the country. Trying to bring the American People together and have a conversation about some of the things we agree with each other on as opposed to always talking about the things we disagree on. The book is the right answer. Its out now. Thank you so much. Thank you, congressman. Thank you for having me. What a day. A big day yesterday. We have talked about roseanne and also you look at trey gowdy going on fox news, saying the fbi did everything right, shep smith saying fox news can report the fbi did everything right. Big day. It was a big day in that regard and a big day just a moment ago when donald trump said, again, i wish i had not chosen Jeff Sessions as my attorney general. What does that mean for the future of Jeff Sessions . We may find out today or in the near future. That does it for us. Stephanie rule picks up the coverage now. You have handed off a lot of news for me this morning starting with the right to recusal. A new report reveals the president asked Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal from the russia probe as he continues to push his conspiracy theory, otherwise known as a nonsense lie of a spy in his campaign. So how do you like the fact they had people infiltrating our campaign . Can you imagine . No fact there, sir. Barred from tv. Abc cancels the Roseanne Barr reboot after the actress posts a racist tweet aimed at former