Oversight, aggressive oversight. we re now entering the golden age of oversight with house democrats and 81 letter requests going out to individuals around the trump orbit. second presidents turn to foreign policy. here we had the first major foreign policy failure of the president s second two years of his term and i think our troops and military and our intelligence professionals will be on high alert in the pacific-asia region in the aftermath of hanoi. a lot they can focus there. thank you both for being on. coming up the state of new york wastes no time following up on the leads michael cohen offered to the house oversight committee now going after the trump organization s insurance records. plus new evidence that north korea may be preparing for new missile tests despite kim jong-un telling donald trump other wise just last week. nbc s andrea mitchell will join us with that reporting ahead. morning joe is back in a moment. .
President would consider, actually increase the economic sanction, toughen the sanctions instead of lifting them as kim jong-un wants. but there s been a division certainly between john bolton s tougher line and the president s willingness to quote trust but shall we say not verify. incredible turn of events. and incredible information coming forward. we know you ll be following that. andrea, i want to get your take on the politics at the moment and tissue of oversight with this presidency, especially given the fact that you covered the clinton presidency and dealt with a lot of these issues and confronted these questions. first of all can congress be stopped from getting access to donald trump s tax returns and what s your take on the many, many requests for documents? reporter: well, it s clearly a case where there have been many, many precedents in past administrations. republican as well as democratic
Insurance practices, all of it being under investigation. democrats still weighing up, having to weigh up as mike of suggesting earlier the political cost that they are looking to rush to impeachment of any kind that they promised they would do for their voters is enact some oversight. this is what they are doing. then this, a new report claims president trump pressured his high ranking aides to grant a security clearance to his daughter senior white house adviser ivanka trump against their realmations. three people familiar with the matter tells cnn that the president pushed then chief of staff john kelly and white house console don mcgahn to make the decision on his daughter and son-in-law jared kushner so it did not appear as if he was intervening in the clearance process. after kelly and mcgahn allegedly refused, trump granted them their security clearances which is within his power, but countered to public denials from
Receive congressional letters that s kind of the most mild form of oversight. that s just step one. of course the committee can subpoena individuals, subpoena documents, put people under oath. people could be granted limited immuneilty for testimony so congress has a number of investigative tools. mika, if you look at those numbers we put up earlier. the quinnipiac polling. despite all we side american people believe michael cohen s testimony versus what they heard from president trump you still have 60% say pump the brakes on impeachment. you heard that from nancy pelosi. it s a message we continue to hear from some democrats. let s follow the facts. what do you make of that number? two things. it s two separate tracks we re talking about here. one, the staggering numbers from the quinnipiac poll, 64% of americans seem to believe that the president committed criminal acts prior to his presidency.
Does the president then have to, is he compelled to give up documents and answer questions, or can this just go on forever? i think because he doesn t want to do it. that s where we ll get into the courts. this will ultimately be decided by judges not the white house counsel or by congress because the white house is going to claim that they have executive privilege and everyone i talked to at the white house says they see this as harassment, they see this as the president laying out they tell me the president laid out his stance on this the day after the mid-term elections if democrats want to investigate me they are going to have to they won t be able to work with me on anything else and i ll say that s harassments. as a result this president is pushing back because he s not used to a congress doing oversight. rick tyler, democrats are doing exactly what they promised to do in lead up to the mid-term elections. if they got power they would look into the president s life.