green light. that means go! oh, yeah. start saying yes to your company s best ideas. we re gonna hit our launch date! (scream) thank you! goodbye! let us help with money and know-how, so you can get business done. american express open. morning, glory, america. i m hugh hewitt. you hear me on the radio network 6:00 to 9:00. but saturday morning i am here on msnbc. i returned from the united kingdom late last night and have been following the news through the british media. to catch me up on the national news i have asked three of the belt waugh s best young reporters all rising stars in the craft of journalism to bring me and thus you on what mattered most in the past two weeks and
the week ahead. they are james hol mapp of the washington post annie lipsky, and politico playbook he every morning. welcome to all three of you. i have to begin the news of the day as president trump is tweeting this morning. let me bring people up to date with what he has had to tweet. john mccain n
he s made comments about the assassination of journalists and he s joked, his administration says it was a joke about murdering somebody whether he he was younger. this is somebody who is not a traditional leader ally like you might see in other parts of the region. yet, the president and white house have talked about this friendly relationship between the two. i think you saw that here in manila. the two toasting. at one point duterte singing a love song in honor of the president, getting up on stage and delivering this duet with lyrics like you are the light of my life, the half of my heart. so clearly the two of them working on this relationship. the president seeming to hope the good chemistry leads to good policy. again, questions on why no mention of human rights abuses here. that is similar to what we saw from president trump in china, for example, and on past overseas trips. i m thinking of the one, for example, over to saudi earlier in the year. back in may. the white house
four ships for the breaching sanctions on the regime. three of those ships fly north korean colors. the flag of the fourth ship is not clear. north korea has defied u.n. sanctions and restrictions in the past. now a north korean defector tells cnn the regime has a sophisticated smuggling network and can easily trade in banned goods. cnn s brian todd has this report for us. we have new information tonight from this defector on exactly how kim jong un s regime gets weapons and other banned material out of the country to sell on the black market. this man knows how kim gets his cash and helped him get it, funneling billions of dollars a year to the young dictator. august 2016, a freighter is heading to the suez canal. around 30,000 rocket propelled grenades made in north korea. part of what a north korean
defector describes as a smuggling to line the pockets of kim jong un. how do north korean smuggling operations work? are there people with false names? are there ships with false
trump or kim jong on? we re about to find out. they were making this the centerpiece other than tax the legacy. the legacy for 2018. his nobel peace prize he s accepted it. . you can t predict the president but the assumption would be a traditional response would be then walk away. anything other than that, would that surprise you in. they have no now go through the south koreans and their own you would assume we have to steal our spine here? you would assume that.
find out who wants this summit more. exactly. all right. you better get out of here. thanks very much. let s turn to the politics of impeachment. believe it or not it s become a hot topic with leaders in the republican party. it s not for what you think. whether you re talk about elected leaders, party leaders, even president trump s lawyers, they are warning that nancy pelosi is readying her caucus for a coup post-november. if she wants to obstruct everything and impeach the president, i don t thi
the avoiding talking about ending his nuclear program. sixth, don t try to be friends with kim jong-un. he killed his uncle, his half-brother and hundreds of others. he is a despot. those people up in canada, by the way, are our friends. and that s hardball for now. thanks for being with us. msnbc s special coverage of the summit with brian williams and rachel maddow starts right now. two volatile leaders. they have tested each other. rocket man should have been handled a long time ago. they ve taunted each other. kim jong-un issued a direct response. i will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged u.s. dotard with fire. now, they re moments away from meeting for the first time face-to-face. i hope the upcoming meeting in singapore represents a bright new future to the world. with the stability of the region and the world on the line i don t think i have to prepare very much. will their summit bring us closer to peace or peril?
this is an msnbc special