Supreme court. The obsession with covering everything he says on twitter and very little what he does as president thats his preferred message of communication. The administration attempting to down play the importance of the president s tweets. The policy of the social media, chris. It is social media. It is not social media. It is his words. His thoughts. It is not a policy. It is social media. After tauting twitter as an essential part of the president s strategy for months. Donald trumps Social Media Platform is a powerful way for him to connect with the people. Also education kalating his fight with londons mayor, accusing him of offering a pathetic excuse when he advised london residents not to be alarmed by increased security in the city. Offering the scathing response when asked about mr. Trumps planned visit to the u. K. His policies go against
everything we stand for. Apparently on message when he tweeted out there was a big meeting today with the Republican Leadership concerning tax cuts and health care. Said they are all pushing hard, must get it right. We are expecting sean spicer at the Podium Briefing Today and that is that meeting with congressional leaders is apparently the most important thing going on as far as we know right now. Back to you. All right, joe. Appreciate it. The president tweeting again about something very serious and it matters. During my recent trip to the middle east i stated there can be no longer funding of radical ideology. Leaders pointed to qatar. Look. What does this mean . We have angus king. Senator, always good to see you. What do you make of this . Why is the president going out of his way to undermine the white houses own message . Well, i dont think hes going out of his way to purposefully undermine it. I think hes being himself and communicating that the danger is that hes making policy almost inadvertently. I had been governor 20 years ago about a month when a friend said you have to be careful when you are having lunch or walking down the hall, you can verbally make policy. When you are the president , you cant just say what is on your mind at that particular moment and i think this is you know, this is a significant problem for the administration to then say, dont mind what this man is saying over here, you know, wizard of oz, dont Pay Attention to the main behind the curtain, that doesnt fas the straight face test. For months they told us we
are wrong for saying the travel ban is a ban. He then tweets again and again and again in an odd context, you know, in a moment of crisis for london where you would think a president would be reaching out and be conciliatory, and he says it is a ban. It has always been a ban. I want it to be a ban and i want it to be the original ban, which is something that could have a little bit of bearing on the case before the Supreme Court. Kellyanne conways husband has already pointed out that thats a compromise of the case because what the courts have been looking at is what is this really. Is this the president s exercise of his authority to limit immigration, or is it an intentional act to try to keep certain people out of the country for religious reasons . And his his comments, his extracurricular comments, if you will, have already been used in the court proceedings. So, you know, youre right. And i think it goes to the issue of realizing the power of the presidency. You can make an offhand comment that the market will fall 500 points or there will be a conflict that will arise. It is not you give up it seems to me when you become president you give up the right to be offhanded about your comments and just say whatever is on your mind at that moment. The consequences, the results are just too significant. They absolutely matter. And the suggestion they are just tweets is absurd. You can see it again and again. Look at the comey situation you will be facing. Youre one of the senators who will get to ask questions of the former fbi director on thursday. The president s tweets about comey were fundamental in our understanding of what went on there with his firing, just as it is when he went on record with a journalist and talked about it. What do you want to ask of comey . One of the advantages of being more or less junior on the committee is i get to listen to the other questions and mr. Comeys answers before i have to formulate mine. I want to get to the bottom of what were the circumstances surrounding the firing, what were the circumstances surrounding these various meetings going back to after the inauguration and was he asked to be loyal and was he asked to somehow put a tamper on part of the investigation. These are very important questions. But i have some other questions, too, that frankly, i am going to wait until the hearing to share with mr. Comey. You dont want to give us a little bit of an advance, is thats okay, senator. Do you have any particular curiously about that paragraph that stuck out in everybodys minds that the president had drafted from the white house where he thanked comey or at least recognized comey for telling him on three separate occasions that he was not part
of investigation. Do you want to know if that ever happened . Absolutely. That paragraph you refer to was in the letter where he fired comey. By the way, the last line of that letter is good luck with your future endeavors or Something Like that. It was sort of strange. But absolutely, did you reassure the president. And this is a very, very important part of this investigation. We were concerned that perhaps director comeys testimony would be not suppressed isnt the right word, but pushed to the side somewhat by the mueller investigation, but Director Mueller is not going to constrain mr. Comey from speaking to us fully and i think thats good news. We should get a full accounting from jim comey on thursday. Thats an important development. So as far as you know, the former director is not being
held in any way by the Special Counsel in what he can talk to you. Do you expect comey to refuse to discuss any topic . Well, i do expect that he wont discuss the Russian Investigation itself. In other words, the investigation that mueller is now in charge of. What it was like or what he knew when he left. Ill be surprised if he does that. But as far as from the inauguration on and his interactions with the president , that appears to be absolutely fair game and its very important material for us to have. Senator, we anticipate your questions. It is going to be a big day. We are starting new day an hour early and we have special coverage starting at 9 00. The testimony is supposed be at 10 00. Who do you believe has the nicer tie on this morning, you or me . Well, i think the deal is were both promoting maine lobsters this morning. Full disclosures, this is from the senator, this tie. There is a Little Lobster trap at the bottom of it. I commented i liked the senator tie and in italian fashion he sent me it. Did you coordinate your outfit this is morning before you came on the air . No. I knew the senator was coming on. I wore this to ingratiate myself to him. I want you to see on my tie, each lobster has an american flag. Thats an american lobster. I do not have flags on mine, which is now making me feel inadequate. Senator, i like your shirt. The shirts are from l. L. Bean. Hey thats a maine company. Oh, it is . I didnt notice. Senator, thank you very much. Great to see you. Thank you. Good to be with you. President trump digging in, defending his use of twitter as members of his own administration say his tweets dont mean anything. Who should we listen to . Him. Listen to the president. Kind never had to. We choose real ingredients like almonds, peanuts and a drizzle of dark chocolate. Give kind a try. The beswith neutrogena® beach . Beach defense® sunscreen. Helioplex™ powered, uva uvb strong. Beach strength protection for the whole family. For the best day in the sun. Neutrogena®. At crowne plaza we know Business Travel isnt just business. Theres this. a bit of this. Why not . Your hotel should make it easy to do all the things you do. Which is what we do. Crowne plaza. Were all business, mostly. They hate i can get the honest and unfiltered message out. Thats different than the message his administration was sending out yesterday. Its not policy. It is social media, chris. It is not social media. It is his words, his thoughts. It is not policy. It is not an Executive Order. It is social policy. Please understand the difference. I think you need an understanding here. I know what policy is. You are a journalist. Are you saying we shouldnt listen what the president says . You shouldnt obsess about it for 12 minutes, chris. This obsession of covering what he does on twitter and not as a president. Lets obsess about it a little bit more and try to get the answers. Lets bring in our panel. We have Chris Cillizza and David Gregory and april ryan. April, we know you had a very Interesting Exchange in the white we will get to momentarily. Okay. David gregory, yes, the
president s words matter. Obviously he is the president of the free world. Whatever he says matters. However, he says lots of Different Things on twitter. How are we to know which ones are official . Here is what Chris Collins, congressman Chris Collins tried to thread this needle to help us understand which ones to Pay Attention to. Listen to this. Its social media. It is not social media. It is his words, his thoughts. It is not policy. It is not an Executive Order. It is social media. Please understand the difference. You take them seriously because they are our president s thoughts. However, the nuances at the end, there will be a certain filter they go through when they become official policy. Okay. David, you heard them both say they are not official policy. Well, this doesnt have to be a debate. I mean, the president is speaking in an unfilgters way. He is providing remarkable transparency on the part of any president to really let us into what he thinks, what position he stakes out. For all of his advisors, i just, you know, kind of dismiss all that. They are in an impossible position. They are allowing themselves to be sent out. He is the president of the United States, words matter. He should care about the office of the president and what that means on the world stage. He doesnt care about that, so he can offend the mayor of london right after the attack and Inaccurately Quote Him from the aftermath of the attack or he can essentially undercut his own administration on the issue of the travel ban. All of these things i think just undermine his potential effectiveness. He is a leader who wants to either respond to crisis or advance a legislative agenda. He is not doing either very well because hes only creating more
discord within his administration. He himself is erratic, so we dont know where he ultimately will land. But what hes saying is absolutely what he thinks and thats the bottom line. And that is the utility in it, Chris Cillizza, this idea that he can be all over the place. Yeah, and very often we dont get any access to that with our leaders. We dont see the vagaries and the iterations and tbecause the get filtered. So doesnt every single tweet, every iteration, every twist matter . Yes. In fact, i would argue it matters more than many of the statements we get. So davids point certainly out of his staff and out of official such as they are president ial statements. I watched that Chris Collins interview with wonderment and amazement because basically whatChris Collins did in that interview is make the exact case for why we should pay a ton of attention to Donald Trumps tweets. He essentially said, this isnt like an official statement thats filtered through a bunch of people. This is just the president talking. The president said the same thing. Thats the point. Hes talking about us. The irony is nobody wants him to tweet more than we do. I want him to tweet every second, you know . Yeah. This is him breaking with he has been i guarantee you, look, chris, i know how the media works. There is no one in the media who says, man, i hope Donald Trump Tweets less. That is not a thing that happens. Then the people who tell him to tweet less are people on his staff. So, look, again, i would urge people if you have not watched that Chris Collins interview, go back and watch it because it is the tortured logic of trying to explain something that is unexplainable. Why hes his tweets are
basically the most authentic representation of him but also not official policy because they havent been filtered six ways to sunday. Thats right. So, april, there you are on the front lines, right at the White House Press room every day trying to make sense of all of this, trying to figure out what to Pay Attention to, what to prioritize, what to take seriously and literally whatnot to and trying to get answers and what is your experience like when you make these points to whoever it is and you have to listen to them do these verbal gymnastics. It is tough. It is very tough because logic says one thing and theyre saying another. And you use the operative trying to make sense, trying is the operative word. But then you have the president of the United States going to chris and david, who made excellent points. He comes and just upsets the apple cart with what they are trying to do. He is the leader of the free
world. He is the president of the United States. And words matter. His words matter. Theyre archived. He shakes markets. He changes policy. Whatever he thinks and we watch on twitter, we take that more so as fact than what they are saying at that podium because he is their leader. He is their boss. He is the leader of the free world and what he is thinking is actually coming out. Then you hear it just does not come together or mary that well. There also seems to be a window, david, into this Deepening Discord that the president has with those around him. The reporting in the times this morning about how he feels about Jeff Sessions and whether he recused and obviously it Wasnt An Accident he talks so much about the travel ban in the context of the doj doing the wrong thing. But for him to, with a clear mind, according to his tweets this morning, go out there and contradict what he knows what his surrogates are saying, that
tells us something also, doesnt it . It tells us a lot. President ial leadership has a singular aspect to it, right, that there is an aspect of leadership that comes from the top, that comes from the president. But government is very much a team effort. Thats why you have a team of advisors who help you wade through information, work through complicated issues and reach a decision thats the best decision that you can possibly make under the circumstances. In this case, we have evidence here and the tweeting is just symptomatic of it, of a president who is simply not listening. So when he says that social media is not policy, he has a point. What matters is not where you start, but where you finish. But we dont know where the president is going to finish and what we often know is that wherever he starts is where he himself would like to finish and may well finish if hes not listening to the advice around him. And the tweet gave us a better reckoning of what he
wants out of the Executive Order on travel than the official position. He says he want it is original. But we dont know where it will finish, to davids point. Thats not what the Supreme Court will decide on. The Supreme Court is going to rule on the constitutionality of the order before it, which is the second one. Right. But if the president , he started the muslim ban. He called it that, said he wanted it. He wanted the final word. He says he didnt want that. Of course hes the final word. The Supreme Court is the final word. Thats of the legality of the order. What that order is is up to the president. He signs it and drafts it. Thats why it is called an Executive Order. Panel, well spare you having to weigh in on all of this. Thank you very much. New details about Terror Attacks on london. We know the identities of all three attackers. One of them was known to british authorities. In what context . Live ahead. I guess i was born with a crayon in my hand. I feel like i am ready to take on the day. I dont have aches and pains from the previous days training and i feel like myself. I wake up feeling stronger. A better surfer. A better me. Now through june 11th, save 600 when you buy select tempurpedic Adjustable Mattress sets. Find your exclusive retailer at tempurpedic. Com. Live at the market scene with the latest. Have what you learned . Reporter so we know now who these third attacker is. He is 22yearold, an Italian National of mor rock can decent. He was living in east london. They say he was not on their radar or A Person Of Interest. However, italian Authorities Say he was A Person Of Interest to the Italian Police because he had been stopped a couple of years ago carrying a oneway ticket to istanbul. They have listen to believe perhaps he was trying to travel to syria. This raising questions about how it is or why, rather, italian authorities were not kbh co