Do that was demoted. And this interview, well, pruitt did with fox news definitely didnt help things. I was misinformed. Have you made mistakes . I think this is something that needs to be corrected. Do you take responsibility . A mistake by my team. Do you take responsibility . Im fixing it. Do you take responsibility . Im fixing the problem. In the face of that, the president told reporters that he thinks pruitt is doing a great job. I think that scott is doing a fantastic job. I think hes a fantastic person. Trump denying today that he is planning to replace sessions with pruitt. Sarah sanders telling cnn the white house does not, quote, have any plans for personal changes at this time. Which is pretty much what this white house says every time there is a new rumor of a staff shakeup. It is not exactly a statement you can take to the bank. This is a president who proved again today that he will say whatever he wants whenever he wants. This was going to be my remarks. It would have taken about two minutes. But that, would have been a little boring. A little boring. You have to admit, that is humorous. But it is a president who absolutely has no regard for facts. The facts dont suit his purpose at all, a president who turned his planned remarks on tax reform today into a tirade on immigration. Theyre not putting their good ones and remember my opening remarks at trump tower when i opened, everybody said oh, he was so tough and i used the word rape. And yesterday it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobodys ever seen before. The president offering no evidence to support that claim about the caravan of migrants from central america. Theyre fleeing violence and risking lives to come here. Then there is another of the president s factfree claims. Many places like california, the same person votes many times, you probably heard about that. There was like to say that is a Conspiracy Theory. Not a Conspiracy Theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. Its Conspiracy Theory. He is spreading a Conspiracy Theory again, there is absolutely no evidence, none, that millions of people voted illegally and the fact is the president himself disbanded his own Commission Investigating voter fraud back in january. His i. T. Director in a sworn you Court Document saying the commission did not create any preliminary findings. That means they found nothing. So they disbanded the commission. And today the president for the first time breaking his silence about Stormy Daniels. Did you know about the payment to Stormy Daniels . Why did Michael Cohen make it . You have to ask michael. Michael is my attorney. As a rule to ask michael. Do you know where he got the money to make that payment . No, i dont know. The actress Attorney Says we look forward to testing the truthfulness of his lack of knowledge concerning the 130,000 payment as he stated on air force one. And then there is this. Sources saying that Corey Lewandowski said im not answering your fing questions. But facts is what americans deserve. The real question is will we get them . Lets discuss now. I want to bring in our senior white house correspondent, jeff zeleny and molly ball. Good to have both of you on. Good evening. Jeff, we could start with any number of breaking stories today. Lets start with the president expressing confidence in his e. P. A. Chief scott pruitt and despite the ever growing list of controversy surrounding his cabinet official, he even floated replacing sessions with pruitt this week. What do you know about that . Don, certainly a number of developments here today. But as for scott pruitt, we do know the president has been thinking about this for several week we know that Jeff Sessions, attorney general, is the most, you know, the biggest member of the cabinet with a target on his back. He is furious for him for more than a year for recusing himself in the russia investigation. One way around confirming a new attorney general is to appoint an acting attorney general. The only person who can be appointed as an acting attorney general is someone who has been confirmed by the senate already. So scott pruitt, the former attorney general from oklahoma, a member of the president s cabinet, could have slid into that role. So we know the president has been thinking about that as early as this week. But the question now, don, is that out the window given all of these allegations . We know the president is watching that interview on fox news. He is watching it, im told, just off the oval office in the study and did not think it went very well. He was trying to clean it up but, of course, you know, as we learned more about what scott pruitt is doing, how he is leading the agency, the president is torn by two things. One, he likes what he is doing in a substantive matter. Conservative groups like what he is doing by rolling back a lot of obama era regulations. But he does not like the he license plates this is generating. Does he believe he is fit to be a member of his cabinet . One reason this is different than the other cabinet secretaries, scott pruitt has a lot of support because of what hes doing at the e. P. A. , much different than the v. A. Or the department of, you know, health and Human Services with tom price, on and on and on. This case is different. Okay. So im glad you laid that out. Listen, i have a long list of infractions from pruitt, molly. Sure. Ill read some of them. Im wondering why there is not on file. He rented a room for 50 a night from the wife of a prominent lobbyists, pricey plane tickets, a family trip to disneyland, trying to secure big pay raises for aides which he says he didnt know about. Then today we learn that pruitts security detail was asked to use lights and sirens had when traveling through d. C. Plus, reporting that several epa officials were side lined or demoted when they raised concerns about pruitt. Again, i can only imagine if this happened under any other administration, why isnt this a five alarm fire . Drain the swamp, remember . You are making trump look good or not . I think trump used this from the perspective on policy and with his base and as jeff is saying with conservatives. Pruitt is making him look good. They keep him popular with republicans in particular. On the other hand, does this scandal make trump look bad . Unlike sessions, pruitt hasnt done anything that trump regards as disloyal. So does the scandal rise to a level of making trump look bad . It certainly could turn that way at any moment. We have seen trump turn on a dime. He decides that a scandal is too much and cuts the person off. Almost everyone in the cabinet is not someone he has a close personal relationship with. If he does feel personally loyal to you, he will keep you on through all manner of things. Can i ask you this . Im just looking at the numbers here. Fine, you know, these helping the base. But just looking taxpayers are paying for this. If you just look at it. So 70,000 for two desks. 100,000 a month private plane charter. More than 43,000 to secure a booth. 18,000 to spend on the prep work, 25,000 on the booth itself. Security detail nonofficial business, 17,631 for a trip to morocco. First class plane tickets following hurricane harvey. 330,000. Just over 120,000 that his trip to the vatican. And then, over 2 million for his security detail alone. Thats a lot of taxpayer money. Come on. Im not defending it at all. It is pocket change in the scope of a multibillion, trillion dollar federal budget. But im just trying to understand, you know, where trump is coming from and when he decides someone is worth firing and when hes not. Frankly, its impossible to understand. It seems to come down to which side of the bed trump woke up on. At this point, i think he is conflicted as he said on air force one between believing that pruitt is a good person who is doing the right things on policy and then believing that the scandals like this do make him look bad. Okay. Don, the bigger question is scott pruitt was a leader in the he was leading member, the attorney general from oklahoma leading this fight against Climate Change and other matters. I think the bigger point is this fits into the theme of the president not hiring the best and brightest. Some of these things, this administrator is accused of doing and has done certainly would not pass the smell test in any, you know, county attorneys office, state senators office. It is striking to me how flagrant he has been of some of the rules and things. So i think it goes again about the quality of person he is hiring. That said, what the output of his office is very important to a lot of business leaders, conservative groups. So do not take that into account. That is more important than that 50 a night apartment here in washington. Thank you both. I appreciate your time and your reporting. Now, i want to bring in james fellows, National Correspondent for the atlantic. James, good evening to you. The president floated the idea rev placing attorney general Jeff Sessions with pruitt. With all the scandals swirling around him, is there a tone deafness here do you think . I guess the calculation that Donald Trumps making all along is that playing to the people who got him to office is the strategy that keeps him in office. Every other president in modern times has found it worth while to try to expand beyond the constituency that got him there. So this is an extension of what weve seen now for year and four months. And then there is the president in West Virginia today, james. It was billed as an officially white house event and he spent time talking about electoral politics. You know, you took note of this, these immigration comments. What stood out to you . What stood out is two things. One is on the fact of immigration. This is a reprise of the way donald trump first introduced himself a year and a half before the election. Theyre sending rapists, not our best. Not only is this insulting to the country of mexico but its really out of touch with the way that the fiber of america is now. Been doing long reporting project with my wife over the last couple years. The only places you find this kind of raw antiimmigrant sentment is where immigrants arent and arent planning to come. West virginia of all 50 states has the lowest proportion of foreign born people there and thats where you can have this kind of rhetoric. The places where immigrants are coming on the whole for all of the adjustment difficulties, people recognize this as part of the american renewal. That is one strike thing. The other is Donald Trumps on going sense that he is a character in a tv show as opposed to someone leading a nation, leading a government, having people follow what he wants to do. So this is, again, its what got him here so he is sticking with that. But it is unusual. A character do you think he is playing to his base . Im wondering if there is a strategy looking towards the mid terms. Certainly, the performance of congressional republicans, which i think historians looking back on this time will be even more focused on than the way donald trump himself behaves. The fact that they will not challenge him on anything suggests they still are more afraid of challenges from the right, challenges from trump loyalists than they are of challenges from the middle. And so maybe they share the same calculation that donald trump does which is the most important thing he can do is to rally the people who are originally behind him and just keep playing this same theme. I guess we wont have weve had incremental market tests of that with the special elections, most of which have gone the democrats way. For the next six months were talking about the stakes in the midterm election. That is the real market test of the strategies. James, lets talk about there are a few themes that youre seeing in President Trumps favor recently. Tantrum, strategy and vengeance. I was thinking about this in the trade negotiations with china. As we discussed before, i lived in china for a long time. And you see on the one hand i think that Donald Trumps strategy towards china in a way its like the build a wall rhetoric towards mexico. If mexico had 1. 4 billion people, where its something that sounds good and sounds threatening and sounds like it is being tough, meanwhile, the chinese are much more even though theyre vulnerable to trade wars and they have lots of trade practices that need to be addressed, theyre much more strategic and calm and revenge the best sort of cold and saying okay were going to target boeing which is your leading exporter. Were going to target soy beans and pork which is the farm states. And so theyre just doing it as if they have a plan as opposed to sort of an emotion. So i think that difference between emotion and plan is the one were seeing with the trade threats coming from one side and the other. Mr. James fallows, appreciate your time. Thank you so much. When we come back, remember whether President Trump said over and over and over hed only choose the best people for his administration. Now it seems the only constant in this chaotic administration is scandal. Whatever happened to draining the swamp . As a control enthusiast, 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. Hey, im curious about your Social Security alerts. Oh well alert you if we find your Social Security number on any one of thousands of risky sites, so youll be in the know. Ewww being in the know is very good. Dont shake ahhh sign up online for free. Discover Social Security alerts. A cockroach can survive heresubmerged ttle guy. Underwater for 30 minutes. Wow. Yeah. Not getting in today. Terminix. Defenders of home. And im the founder of ugmonk. Before shipstation it was crazy. Its great when you see a hundred orders come in, a hundred orders come in, but then you realize ive got a hundred orders i have to ship out. Shipstation streamlined that wh the order data, the weights of , everything is seamlessly put into shipstation, so when we print the shipping ll everythings pretty much done. Its so much easier so now, were ready, bring on t. Shipstation. The number one ch of online sellers. Go to shipstation. Com tv and get two months free. President trump came to washington with a mandate from supporters that, is to drain the swamp. Now a year into his presidency with scandal surrounding the cabinet, things are looking a little swampy. My guests are joining me now. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Good to see you. Ana, youre up first. What is your reaction to all of this pruitt news tonight . One more episode of, you know, as the trump world turns. One more episode of the inconsistency and hypocrisy of this Trump Administration. He came in promising transparency, promising to change the status quo, promising to drain the swamp. And what weve seen he is just brought an entirely new species of swamp things into d. C. A lot of them are rich. We thought, you know what . He is appointing all the rich people to the cabinet, and theyre not going to have to be corrupt. Turns out theyre just as construct but his base doesnt seem to care. I think the rest of us are watching this and eating popcorn and drinking soda wondering what is the next shoe to drop . The interesting thing is, you know, every day i come in im not surprised anymore. Im just like well, here it is. But im just sort of surprised, scott, that, you know, small Government Conservatives are not really saying anything about this. Especially when you considering how much money, you know, scott pruitt seems to be spending or wasting, however you want to put it. And then sources telling cnn the president considered replacing sessions with the e. P. A. Administrator as recently as last week. Does this seem like the attorney generals position is always in jeopardy here . Well, a couple things. Number one, i think scott pruitt is under attack largely because hes been the most Effective Member of Donald Trumps cabinet. They have not gotten a lot of things done. But at the e. P. A. , scott pruitt took the mandate seriously and he has systematically systematically dismantled the regime. Who is attacking him . I think hes under attack from all quarters. Hes under attack from disgruntled employees, a lot of people right now because hes been effective. I think this has nothing to do with anything but his flat effectiveness. That is really first of all, i dont think hes under attack. I think hes doing things that are despicable and that should be your position. I mean, im shocked to hear you as a republican not starting out with saying this is not what our party stands for. The corruption, taking money, taking advantage. Wanting special privilege. That should be the opposite of a conservative point of view. What kind of a nanny state are you in favor of now because you have the Trump Administration up there in washington, d. C. . Look, i think that that scott pruitt had some judgement issues on a few things. I also think some of the things hes been accused of are not true but regurgitated as though they are. He didnt buy expensive desks. There was a proposal and didnt come to pass. They didnt have a charter jet service. There was a proposal and didnt come to pass. His travel patterns are not different from any anybody in the Obama Administration. He is operating on travel the same way his predecessors did. He worked for the Obama Administration, let him respond. I hope lisa jackson is not listening to this. I hope she is some place doing something because her head just blew off her shoulders if you said she was spending millions of dollars to go to disneyland that is just not true. I understand that the level of defensiveness. We want to defend people on our own side. But were hurting the country when we defend anybody doing anything.