Ill tell you something about nancy pelosi that you know better than i do. She is not a racist, okay . She is not a racist. For them to call her a racist is a disgrace. Paul ryan was not a talent. He wasnt a leader. He wouldnt give subpoenas. Whereas nancy pelosi hands them out like theyre cookies. We begin today with the biggest headline out of that trump session with reporters, the hasty and important Trump Administration cabinet shuffle. The labor secretary, alex acosta, says hes stepping down. That less than 48 hours after secretary acosta defended himself to reporters. Wednesday acosta insisted the nonprosecution deal he gave to accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein a decade ago was on the level. Today the labor secretary 234r5 flanking the president on the south lawn said he didnt want to be a decision and that he made this decision. The boss, though, didnt hesitate to accept it. He explained it. He made a deal people were happy with and 12 years later theyre not happy with it. But i want to let you know, this was him, not me, because im with him. As far as im concerned, i watched alex yesterday. I thought alex did a great job. Alex, i think youll agree, i said you dont have to do this. He doesnt have to do this. Lets get straight to Kaitlin Collins live at the white house. Is this as presented a Decision Just by the labor secretary on his own . Reporter john, the president said alex acosta called him this morning and came over to the white house to offer his resignation because he saw the epstein deal as something that was going to hang over the administration. While the president said, hey, its alex acostas idea to resign, not mine, this certainly comes as a relief to the president who based on our reporting had been voicing skepticism about acosta and whether or not that News Conference he held had done enough to calm the uproar over his role in Jeffrey Epsteins plea deal. We reported initially the president , who urged alex acosta to go out and defend himself was favorable in his initial reception to that press conference, telling people he thought he did a fine job. After the president was hearing criticism from other people who thought alex acosta had not done enough to defend himself in that press conference where he did not offer an explicit apology to the reporters and didnt answer my question about whether or not thats a deal he would make again today, the president started to get hesitant about acosta and started questioning why the victims werent notified in that deal. Something that has been one of the sharpest points that alex acostas critics pointed out. In the end that is why many people in the west wing yesterday were skeptical about the labor secretarys future. It had been more than 24 hours since the president told him to go out and do that press conference and he still hadnt had any public praise on how he had done. Leading to that question today and that odd appearance on the kout lawn where we learned alex acosta will no longer be serving as the labor secretary, therefore putting another acting secretary in the president s Cabinet Meeting ahead of next weeks Cabinet Meeting here at the white house. Another acting. A big day at the white house. With me in studio, dana bash, olivier knox, margaret talev. We have no reason to doubt otherwise. Alex acosta decided were heading into the reelection year. Jeffrey epstein is in court tomorrow, this will carry through the election year. I dont want to catch all these p harpoons and being a distraction to the president. Did he make the right call . I dont know if its the right call but theres a court case unfoedle in new york. In a very public setting we will see every day, every other day, every week, every month, well hear about the dozens of girls that Jeffrey Epstein allegedly assaulted. It was going to be an issue the white house would have to answer every single day. Every new revelation would call into question alex acostas decisionmaking in that sweetheart plea deal and every new development would have reporters to say, mr. President , is this the type of person you want serving in your cabinet. Im glad you underlined the legal part of this because thats where most of their problems come from. The political stuff is that we get constant revelations. But hes going to be in court. One assumes hell fight these charges in court. As the court case continues, you have all the hearings, all the motions, all the documents, plus all the reporting, mind you. Part of the reporting that got secretary acosta in trouble was miami herald reporting that the victims felt mistreated by him and more and more details and they were willing to come forward. A lot of factual questioning the presentation he gave, saying he was just putting lipstick on it and glossing it. Yes, i made a tough call, a hard call and ignoring a lot of facts, people said. The goal of this press conference was to put all of these questions to rest and get the story behind him and it didnt end up doing that. It ended up putting more questions out into the public sphere and causing the white house to wonder whether they would get more questions about this. President trump has a couple of different relations to this case, not only his labor secretary being the chief prosecutor who struck this deal but also President Trump has a longstanding relationship in the past with Jeffrey Epstein. There are pictures that put the two men in the same place that were playing on cable news. Even Alan Dershowitz has a relation to this case so the president saw this was going to continue to turn up the heat on his administration and on his white house, on himself personally. He didnt like how it was playing out on cable news and thats part of the reason he accepted this resignation. Back in 2002, the president told new York Magazine ive known jeffrey for 15 years, terrific guy. He likes beautiful women as much as i do, many of them on the younger side. So businessman trump knew about Jeffrey Epstein and apparently knew about Jeffrey Epsteins problem. Its worse than that. Today, today, ever we time this came up in coast, secretary acosta would be in the news and today the president tried to make clear yet again, yes, we had, emphasis on had, a relationship. I was not a fan of Jeffrey Epstein. You watched people yesterday saying that i threw him out of the club. I didnt want anything to do with him. That was many, many years ago. It shows you one thing, that i have good taste, okay . Now, other people, they went all over with him. They went to his island. They went all over the place. He was very well known in palm beach. His island, whatever his island was, wherever it is, i was never there. Find out the people that went to the island. But Jeffrey Epstein was not somebody that i respected. So he was a fan before he was not a fan, lets be clear. If he could find some way to put andy mccabe on the island, youll see that. Youll see the president try to redirect. There are a couple of factors at hand here. One is that there was this whole parallel issue with acosta that some in the Trump Administration had. There were republican lobbyists, some inside the white house who felt that he hadnt been as aggressive as he could be about deregulation, about changing the climate in his role as labor secretary. That was underlying and existed before the epstein problems bubbled up. In a way, i think you dont do a News Conference like the one acosta did unless you have to. And it was kind of a let me see if i can turn it around hail mary kind of thing. If it couldnt work, i think he wanted to have some control over framing his explanation before he went out. As we have all seen, when the tide turns, if there are enough republican lawmakers in the senate, for example, who are like hes got to go, you dont always get to have the last word. That was him trying to put into context if he had to go or if he could stay. And you almost never see somebody who is on their way out getting the last word or any word, much less i mean standing next to the president praising you as youre leaving is unheard of in this administration. What you usually get if youre lucky is a tweet that you see and you first learn about your being fired or forced to resign or whatever it is. It is very unusual. The other thing thats unusual is of course every democrat pretty much had said that acosta should resign, but there wasnt the groundswell from republicans yet. They were saying lets just see how it plays out. But whether it was acosta, you can take him at his word or acosta understanding the writing on the wall because the president was like, okay, were done with this. This was not not that any of this is traditional, but this was the most traditional, humane, civilized exit of a cabinet secretary that we have seen in this entire administration. I understand that that is a crazy thing to say given the fact that were talking about rape of children. But the outcome politically is what im talking about. To that point lets show a little bit of it in the sense that alex acosta again today standing by the president s side defending, defending, youve seen some trump cabinet turnover there. Theres an acting labor secretary. You see all these other cabinet turnover. But the idea this played out in a traditional way. Many of those people on screen found out they were fired on twitter or from a hasty call by the white house chief of staff. In this case you see alex acosta standing next to the president still defending himself, still saying he thinks he made the right call 12 years ago. And then saying this is why ive got to go. I have seen coverage of this case that is over 12 years old that has input and vetting at multiple levels at the department of justice. As i look forward, i do not think it is right and fair for this administrations Labor Department to have epstein as the focus rather than the incredible economy that we have today. My point here today is we have an amazing economy. We have unemployment lower than we have seen literally in my lifetime and the focus needs to be on this economy. Would the president listen to that . Weve had a couple of recordbreaking days on wall street. Acosta is the latest republican to invite the president to please, dear lord, focus on the economy and not everything else. One thing the president said in his remarks, he suggested that the victims were satisfied with the plea deal years ago. They were not. And recently changed their mind. They were not. They were not informed about it. That to me raises a lot of questions. I dont believe that he was fretting the past few days over whether the victims were notified about the plea deal. The remarks on the south lawn suggest quite the opposite, in fact. Empathy, especially for victims, has not been a strong suit of the president. I think thats a fair statement. Well continue to watch this case. The resignation takes effect one week for today. Another acting secretary at the department of labor. Up next for us, the release of the live action mueller movie apparently getting delayed. Can you love wearing powerful sunscreen . Yes neutrogena® ultra sheer. Unbeatable protection helps prevent early skin aging and skin cancer with a clean feel. The best for your skin. Ultra sheer®. Neutrogena®. 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Not a signed and sealed agreement yet, but the plan is to delay the special counsels appearance one week, from next thursday, july 17th, to july 24th instead. This comes amid bipartisan complaints on the House Judiciary Committee. The initial agreement with mr. Mueller did not leave enough time for questioning. Manu raju is tracking this story up on capitol hill with the latest. Whats happening . Reporter thats right. It looks like its very possible that this hearing could be delayed by a week. Its not final yet. Jerry nadlers office says its still at the moment on for wednesday. But talking to members on both sides, its pretty clear that the agreement was just not satisfactory to a number of members because initially what the special counsel had agreed to under subpoena was to come for two to two and a half hours for the House Judiciary Committee and the same amount of time for the house intelligence committee. That would leave about half of the members on the House Judiciary Committee not enough time to question the special counsel and a number of members do want a chance to question, saying they should be able to press him as well. One member, hakeem jeffries, told us this is not about ego. Its not about trying to be in the spotlight. Its about getting to the truth. Every Single Member of the House Judiciary Committee on a democratic and republican side should be able to participate in the hearing in some way, shape or form. Whats the reason . Why do members need to be asking questions . Why do you need your time in the spotlight . I dont think anyone has suggested that they should have time in the spotlight. I think at the end of the day the American People would be better served if we spent as much time as possible communicating the importance of the stakes of this hearing as it relates to an incredible attack on our democracy. Reporter the initial agreement about 22 members of the House Judiciary Committee would get a chance to question, split roughly between both sides. That would leave about 20 or so members not being able to allowed to question, more junior members, which is why we heard the pushback. One other reason were hearing from the possibility of this delay is that the Justice Department has raised concerns about deputies. Muellers deputies from testifying behind closed doors before these two committees. Democrats im told want more time to negotiate to bring in those deputies after they had previously agreed to testify, so all this being soared out on this busy friday. But it looks like its headed to a potential delay of this very highly anticipated testimony. John. Appreciate the reporting there. Lets bring it into the room. On the surface, theyre working out the details, theyre trying to get more time to keep everybody happy, delay it a week. Given what weve been through and given how we know, mueller was reluctant number one. Muellers former boss, the attorney general of the united states, doesnt want him doing this at all. He called it a spectacle the other day. Could this collapse or are we just having a scheduling issue . So its already moved beyond the point of a scheduling issue. What weve been hearing behind the scenes is questions about whether they have nailed down all of the terms of how this testimony will work. This only works in the democrats favor if its a dignified process that mueller himself is not like the whole time. So is he going to answer any questions that are procedural that begin before that may 17th date when he took over. Are the questions going to be structured in a way where any new information actually emerges . Whats going to happen with the other attorneys who were working on the mueller team . If those details arent pinned down, this doesnt work. The notion that this problem is coming because of democrats exerting pressure on nadler rather than mueller or the Justice Department or the white house exerting pressure is kind of insane. Thats the last thing that jerry nadler should have to worry about. But that is such a key point. Yes, everybody has been waiting for mueller to testify. People wanting mueller to testify. But democrats have some to gain but they have a lot to lose here, a lot to lose if it goes south for any reason, especially if its Robert Mueller himself who makes clear that he is not comfortable with the format. Theyre already going to be battling the fact that every single republican will try to undermine mueller and the democrats at every single turn. They have to get their ducks in a row. If it is just a scheduling just a need a little more time to figure those things out, worth it. And just to add to that, the one person who has the most at stake here, meaning the president of the united states, made clear again today he thinks this is all a farce. How many bites at the apple do you get . Weve gone through 500 witnesses, 2,500 subpoenas. I let them interview my lawyers because