The worst it gets for trump, the wilder the conspiracy theories get and the counter narrative. Check this out. This is a montage, a few examples talking about the deep state, terrible texts and secret societies. From what weve seen, its shaping up to be the biggest scandal in america history. This is going to make watergate look like an after thought. There are concerns about a socalled secret society. Secret societies in the fbi. The missing text, the insurance policy, the dossier. It all adds up. Abuses committed by very top officials, you cant make this up in a spy novel. A spy novel . It sounds like great fit for hanma hanni hannity. When gop congressmen talk about anti trump fbi agents, hannity ran with it. The context looked like a dumb joke, hannity dropped it. Thats how it works. They find another way to attack mueller but the message is always the same. See these mueller gate banners from hannity the other night . It says on screen investigating the investigators. Fox message is trump is the victim of a deepstate plot to ruin his presidency and remember, the president watches this stuff and reacts to it. So one day he tweets during fox and friends that the missing te Text Messages is one of the biggest stories in a long time and at night where are the 50,000 important Text Messages . This is about two fbi officials dating and texting each other. Trump totally mangled the facts about this in his tweets. Yes, the two employees did talk a lot and the doj reviewed 50,000 in total but we dont know how many texts went missing and its a moot point now since they have been found but do you see what is happening here . The more we talk about texts and jokes and memos, the further we get from the real information. Look what happened on thursday when the New York Times broke the news trump ordered mueller fired but backed off when the white House Counsel threatened to quit. They called in. There was rolling breaking News Coverage on cable except on fox. Tucker carlson ignored the story and an hour later, hannity dismissed it. The New York Times is trying to district you. They have a story trump wanted mueller fired sometime last june and our sources and ive checked in with many of them, they are not confirming that tonight and the president s attorney dismissed the story and says no, no comment. Were not going there. How many times has the New York Times and others gotten it wrong . Then after a commercial break, reality intruded. We have sources tonight just confirming to ed henry that yeah, maybe donald trump wanted to fire the special counsel for c conflict. Does he not have the right to deal with these questions . Well deal with this tomorrow night. You see that red suv, high speed place chase. Cut it off. That it is right there. Lets just turn to a video of a police chase. The challenge for us as news consumers and people like me as reporters is to refuse to be confused, to refuse to fall for all these traps, all these theories, all this noise and instead to stay focused on the huge story unfolding in washington. Lets talk about that with jackie, white house editor for the Los Angeles Times d. C. Burro and here in new york, veteran journalist and commentator and an associate editor at commentary magazine. Noah, what explains the propensity for some to buy into these conspiracy theories about secret societies and other things . There is a real legit the basis on the right for questioning the authority of the fbi in this matter, questioning whether there is abuse of the fisa courts and how unmasking happened. These are things conservative issues and conservatives that have allies should be skeptical when they sacrifice their incredibility by going down a rabbit hole. You dont have to be a professional skeptic to know fbi Counter Intelligence officials wont be actively sabotaging the presidency on the governmentish sued ce issued cell phones. When there is a quote unquote conspiracy, they sacrifice credibility on matters that are serious. Questioning the fbi is is not necessa sacrificing. Questioning the texts as another example why the Mueller Probe is legitimate, demonstrates you have an agenda. Partly, lawmakers, protrump posts need Something Else to talk about because if they have to talk about the reality of the russia investigations, that ts problem. There is a lot of problems they face doing that. Thats my view. Whats your view of the impact first in the New York Times and reported by outlets including cnn trump tried to stop mueller and talked out of it . How significant you cant under estimate the significance of the story that he tried to fire mueller and that his white House Counsel threatened to resign. It sent shock waves through the white house. Most people i talked to in the white house do not believe that trump is untouched by this investigation. You have sources in the white house . Absolutely. And yes, you know, this white house is accessible. And if you talk to people in the white house, as many of us do, you find that this mcgahn story has shocked people to their core because they understand in the white house how vulnerable now their president is. They are not willing as mccann was not willing to be part of a coverup, part of an obstruction of justice and meanwhile, the president is increasingly alone out there in terms of everybody but his base and that includes the people in congress who have been his foil thus far along with the base in saying oh, yes, this is fake news and all the rest. Its almost impossible i think for this investigation to go forward much more and those false fake news cliaims to have any resonance because the pieces are starting to fall together and one thing we know about Donald Trumps presidency is more Energy Effort and engagement is undermining, make this go away and still determined to do it. Thats still going to work. Thats becoming more and more apparent and more frustrating to him. What his allies do is claim its fake news or say its old news but try to change the subject. Here is how fox and friends handled this on friday morning. Check it out. There is a big story apparently the president of the United States last june wanted to fire robert mueller. Right. Well, the president says that the fake news. That happened last june. Its something we have to tell you about because its a headline. What do you think about that . Do you care . Carl, when you see that reaction, do you even care about this . Are they doing a disservice to their audience . Look, were in the midst of a cold civil war as i said in this country and the shock troops in the cold civil war on one side and the cold civil war is at fox news. Fox is hugely important. Its a Political Force in this country such as weve never seen in the last 40 years, maybe the dominant Political Force of changing mom tipolitics. We should not minimize them. We need to look at what it is is their agenda is which has nothing to do with the news and yet, there are good reporters over at fox and if you talk to those good reporters over at fox, they will tell you this investigation is serious business, that they dont know where its going but its not going away, it has the president of the United States, members of his family, members of his close business associates, his organization, they are looking at his finances and looking at his campaign and transition to see if anything untoward happened in terms of abusing the office, they know this. So i think here is the dilemma. That the ts the story. Part of the story is republicans enabled trump to do this. They enabled trump, particularly republicans to continue to throw this smoke screen out there and say no, this is about trying to say im an illegitimate president of the United States. Hes a legitimate president of the United States and lets say that loud and clear and legitimate president s of the United States are subject to investigation and held accountable to the law. Hes attempting to evade the law and that is more and more apparent and in the last week since that mcgahn story, i think youre starting to see among republicans and well see how long mcconnell and they maintain silence on this. I think well start to see mr. President , you have got to stop da me dem meaning and undermine thing investigation. The various conspiracy theories and alternatives. As a reporter in washington for the l. A. Times, what do you do . How much time do you spend trying to debunk or fact check to figure out versus covering the real issues carl is describing . Spend too much time fortunately, its abbreviated because the conspiracy theories have no basis in most cases. When you see some of the things debunked in the past year, you know, you go from the trumps claim that obama had wiretapped him and 3 to 5 million illegals voted for Hillary Clinton and thats why she won the popular vote and the dnc staffer seth rich was assassinated and they kept it up even after the morning parents just begged people to stop. You spend time on it. Its time that could be better spent on real news but you can find its baseless. I was struck when you had the clip from sean hannity or fox, the fox and friends person who said well, we have to tell you about this, the fact that mueller was or trump trump tried trump tried to pyfire muelle and don mcgahn threatened to quit. We have to tell you because its a headline at the New York Times. These stories dont get in the New York Times unless they are real. There are four Anonymous Sources but i can tell you, you know, those editors though wknow who sources are. The idea they are saying were districting when the distraction is on the other side doesnt pass the laugh test. There is something notable to me, since thursday night, other outlets confirmed a lack of an attempt to deny it. Trump called it fake news quickly. There hasnt been a statement from the press secretary. There arent allies denying it, denying it. I dont have knowledge it might have happened. Peel a people are being careful to not deny it because they could be in trouble with mueller. The speculation is a lot comes out of mcgahns office and we can go down why that would be the case. It doesnt look good for the white house if that were the case. Because these are detailed and have insider information, that sounds reasonable to me. We can we should probably note that when donald trump spoke with the New York Times in july, he said this is supposed to be about russia. If this goes towards my finances, that would be a red line for me. That was the republican line and its not irrelevant. That should have been the republican line. Unfortunately, they have been swinging at every pitch, aiming for the raft toers and medalin their argument. Not what the probe is going to find. I think they are doing themself as disservice. You cant separate the money from this investigation. There is two strategies mueller has, follow the money, follow the lies. Thats where hes gone. We know little about his investigation except nothing from muellers shop. Ist its been very closed. There are 20 or so lawyers that have a good look what mueller is doing and if you talk to the lawyers, they understand this reached a point of real parol for the quiUnited States and th president knows the parol. We need to zoom out and tell the big picture story. Bannon uses base. There are people you will talk to who believe in donald trump that will tell you look, wherever this goes, if somebody in his family is is ndicted, if there is an obstruction, he may go to his base and stay in office by appealing to that base, whipping the country up and he certainly is the kind of person that thinks he might be able to. Thats an awful lot of speculation and looking ahead. Not me saying it but people who know trump that believe that thats the way he is going. Instead of saying fake fbi. If mueller is Still Standing and so far mueller is standing and doesnt look like trump despite his efforts has been able to cut him off at the knees and hes not going to be able to. If mueller is Still Standing and comes after him in the convincing way, forces pardons or a report that leads the congress to look at action, trump is betting no matter what happens, he can survive this by this being a part of this cold civil war and fanning the flames of that base. To our panel, thank you so much, jackie, noah, carl, great to see youall. After a break here, more on this topic with a lawmaker whose having to reckon with it every day. There are Practical Implications to the alternative universes of information. Well talk about it with a congressman right after this. Tht vacation when you can squeeze one in between friday and monday at hilton . Theres a vacation at the end of every week. Whatever type of weekender you are, dont let another weekend pass you by. Get the lowest price when you book at hilton. Com mvo we had support from the synagogue, the churches. When disaster strikes to one, we all get together and support each other. Thats the nature of humanity. Ill stand by you. Ill stand by you. And ill never desert you. Ill stand by you. This is frank. Sup this is franks favorite record. This is franks dog. And this is franks record shop. Frank knowns northern soul, but how to set up a limited liability company. Whats that mean . Not so much. So he turned to his friends at legalzoom. Yup they hooked me up. We helped with his llc, contracts, and some other stuff thats part of running a business. So frank can focus on the beat. You hear that . This is franks record shop. And this is where life meets legal. For the last switch months there is an endless number of news conversations what would happen if trump were to fire robert mueller. I cant count how many discussions there have been but we know it actually happened back in june. President trump tried to fire mueller, moved to do it and stopped by don mcgahn. All of those conversations turned out it already happened and none of us knew it. It makes you wonder how many other secrets are being kept and how much else mueller knows that we dont know yet. When that New York Times story came out on thursday saying trump ordered muellers firing, i wondered what was sean hannity saying back in june . Could have influenced President Trump . Was he fearing on fox . We went back and looked. This special counsel mueller needs to be shut down immediately and mueller and Rod Rosenstein recused themselves, resigned immediately. He should recuse himself. Hes incapable of carrying a fair and inpartial mpartial investigation. Mueller needs to end it now. That was back in june. Its been similar rhetoric, not just in june but vent recently g from republican lawmakers. I want to know how that affects things on capitol hill. Joining me say democratic congressman member of the Counter Intelligence and Ranking Member of the subcommittee on the cia. I wonder, congressman, how it affects how you do business on capitol hill when you have colleagues trying to undermine and tear down the investigation. The president doesnt have to fire mueller. In directly, we see the credibility under attack every day on the House Intelligence Committee by republicans and house judiciary committee. What i hear from colleagues is words that are parroted by sean hannity. The efforts to perpetuate conspiracy theories and go after somebody who received the bronze star and serve in vietnam and awarded the purple heart, appointed by a republican president. You have to stoop low to discredit mueller but they are willing to do it. The effect is they are going to also, the Collateral Damage will be thefe fekeffect on law enfort and the case is diminished. You see the fox news effect in action because you hear similar comments from Television Hosts and lawmakers. Here is the bigger point and i wonder how you view this as a lawmaker yourself. When we have these two alternative universes of information, these alternative realities, some americans consuming reporting from the New York Times and cnn, others consuming Rush Limbaugh and sean hannity, what is thefect effec the country . Is it doing damage . The feedback, thefect on l e the moral and the duty to protect the ballot box is also looming because we have an election coming up in november of this year. We have the president ial election in 2020 and weve done nothing to secure our country from another hacking like that occurred from russia. Its not disputed that russia attacked us but we have put in zero reforms to fix that and im afraid that thats part of the republican effort to try to protect the president. They are unwilling to do anything to protect the next electi election. Thats probably the biggest part of the story. We know there was this russia interference and not a lot of steps to take action against it. There were sanctions, however, werent there . Yeah and tomorrow is the deadline for the president to impose them. The Congress Overwhelmingly voted to put sanctions in place against russia and its military and intelligence officials however the president delayed and delayed and delayed. The final deadline is tomorrow. When people ask what evidence is out there aside from the indictments that weve seen and the contacts they failed to disclose, i think the president s unwillingness to impose sanctions against russia shows he feels like he owes then something because he did something for them. What about Silicon Valleys role in this. You represent part of california out there. There is talk about how facebook and