Changed. Something really shifted in the conversations about the president. Uncomfortable questions moved into the main stream in a big way. Trumps odd behavior with Vladimir Putin is compelling so many people to ask what does putin have on trump . Has trump been compromised . All of those people, those experts, those reporters, they are looking at the fact pattern and seeing something strange, even sinister. No rational president would act this way if he werent being blackmailed on some level. You cant just dismiss the idea that putin has something on trump. Im not a conspiracy theorist but his behavior is so bizarre and against the National Interest that it certainly raises the possibility that something untoward is going on. See these concerns are now in the bloodstream in a whole new way. I dont think theres any coming back from this. Josh marshall of the liberal talking points memo put it this way, he said the press conference in helsinki made cautious prominent people start to come to grips with the reality that trump is under control of a foreign adversary. The concern is palpable. Will hurd says putin is manipulating trump, and he asks what should we do . Of course, the week of walk backs did not inspire any confidence. Too many members of the media fell for trumps cleanup act, his double negative excuse but you cant clean up actions with mere words. Trumps actions are what have brought us to this place where critics like former cia director john brennan are accusing him of treasonous behavior. Its been almost week since the summit but its still shrouded in sek row si. He has not debriefed officials in his own administration. So weve seen some trying to sound the alarm, some by speaking on the record, others by leeking to journalists so its worth noting what trump did to the coverage. According to the New York Post he reacted on twitter, saying the media is going crazy. So now people smarter than me are asking why is trump trying to bring putin to d. C. When his own director of National Intelligence says its undeniable russia is trying to reek havoc over the election process. The warning signs are going off all over the place. You can see journalists trying to trace connections, trying to get to the bottom of whats going on. But thats really difficult. At the heart of this, the story is a mystery. Are reporters covering it responsibility . Joining me is my panel now. Max, you were a Foreign Policy adviser to mccain in 2008, romney in 2012, now youre a trump critic. You look at this week, what does it add up to in your mind . I think you delivered a very good summary, brian. We are at a point we are debating for the first time in a serious way whether the president of the United States is disloyal to america. Whether the president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power. Now to be sure we have not had proof of that, but there is evidence of it. And youre seeing very serious people this is the kind of accusation in the past was only made by for instance conspiracy theorists, now youre seeing people very credible, like jim clapper, john brennan, a lot of people to know i think brennan was significant because he was cia director during the 2016 campaign and on the receiving end of briefings from our european allies who interaccepted communications. And these people are saying there is something efficiencyfi on here because there is no other way to explain his behavior. And that to me seems like a plausible supposition, even though we have to wait for Robert Muellers investigation to conclude before we have any proof of it, if, in fact, the proof is forthcoming. Is there any other solution besides waiting for the results of the Mueller Probe . I think a lot of the answers will come out through muellers investigation but are there any other ways to answer the questions that are lingering in the air . One of the things thats happened here that President Trump has done, its both made our jobs more difficult but its also, i think, created some problems for him. Which is the number of ways in which he has violated norms of transparency. We havent seen his tax returns. He has not put his bipz interus interests in a blind trust. He is going into meetings without you know, without anyone else besides a translator there. All of those things are you know, i think if theres some straightforward, innocent explanation for all of these things, it would be a lot easier to get to that if we could see some of this information and the kinds of things that we are accustomed to having when it comes to our public officials. Im worried that our journalism structures and norms are ill suited to this moment in time. Think about this cable news screen, the banner is the same size whether it says cat gets stuck in a tree or trump might have committed treason. Are there solutions to that part of the problem . To convey the stakes of whats going on to the audience . I think one of the problems, brian, is that right now if you look at some of the polling of people who either support the president or do not, both sides have kind of gone into their bunkers and even though you can take facts and figures and all of that, it doesnt necessarily convince people, so i think its more important for the media to stand back and try to deliver some type of number one, of course, facts but also do it without editorializing. I know thats very, very difficult but it immediately will be disavowed by the other side if they say, oh, its just those lets say democrats criticizes the president s. And you see this, i watch the Russian Media so its interesting to see this because there is kind of a mirror imagine, i would say, between the ultra conservative type of media in the United States and what Russian Media does. Theres very much of a loop. So i think, you know, standing as far back as we can and really not getting into the fight, the dog fight, is really important. Thats a very important point. And yet, you know, i think a lot of people are having a hard time doing that or trying to remain neutral. I think the media has really done an go ahead. Go ahead, jill. Well, i was going to say, i still think that you can do that. And what i would say is, you know, all of this manipulation of the media, of course, has been going on for a long time, digital manipulation, cyber, et cetera. But i think the American Public didnt really realize all of this until relatively recently. Certainly 2016 brought it to the fore. So i think the media would be very helpful to people if you say, this is how propaganda is done. In other words, you are being manipulated and you dont have to say by whom, because a lot of sides do it. But to stand back and instead of saying its your guy or against your guy, just say you are being manipulated by facebook postings, twitter, et cetera, and you have to be a more sophisticated consumer of that information. Lets show a President Trump tweet, whether its propaganda or not, he said earlier, the Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war. Max, do you want war with russia . This is another example of trump feeding the russia propaganda line. This is what putin says, either you have to appease russia or there will be world war iii and trump keeps repeating it. Just to follow up on the previous discussion about the media, brian. I think the media has been doing an outstanding job, look at the summit where it was questions from routers and the Associated Press that got the president in hot water that got the media to ask does putin have something on trump. And the fact that putin didnt really deny it, he deflected rather than denied and admitted he favored trump in the 2016 election, which destroyed one of the trump lies which is that putin wanted Hillary Clinton in there because she would supposedly be weaker. So i think the media has done a very responsible job about covering this debate about treason and the compromising information and so far. But its not going to convince the hard core followers, its flabber gasing to see that 70some percent of republicans approved of helsinki. Trump seems to be so deep in putins pocket, this is a turn around. I grew up in the 1980s when republicans were denouncing useful idiots, people wanting to cooperate with russia. Now theyre the useful idiots. For a former republican like me thats dismay. Maybe we need to communicate it in different ways if the message is not getting through. Karen, go ahead. Where i would fault the media, it goes to proportion. Especially with social media where small things look big and big things look small. Trump is very good at creating distractions or, you know, drawing distractions. So by the end of the week, you know, when his patriotism is being questioned hes back to nfl players on their knees. And by friday we had another story about a playmate and everything does sort of get into the news feed and i think its really difficult sometimes for news consumers to figure out which of these things is really important and fundamental and which of these things is a distraction. I think the dilemma for the media is how do you deal with trumps lies, the fact that he lies all the time in his tweets and says things that are flatly untrue. But in reporting them, youre essentially repeating the lie. Thats a problem with the Wire Services that will say trump says x i think on a show like this or the New York Times or the Washington Post you have greater context of the stories but trump is a master of getting his lies past the gate keeper and manipulating the media to get his message out, which is why most of the public is opposed to the Mueller Probe or that the fbi was helping Hillary Clinton. Its a campaign of confusing that keeps rolling on. When we come back, two more experts talking about the defense of President Trump how these friendly sit downs have kept the president and their viewers in an alternative reality. It can detect a threat using ai, and respond 60 times faster. It lets you know where your data lives, down to the very server. It keeps your insights from prying eyes, so theyre used by no one else but you. It is. The cloud. The ibm cloud. The cloud thats built for all your apps. Ai ready. Secure to the core. The ibm cloud is the cloud for smarter business. Secure to the core. [music playing] across the country, we walk. Carrying flowers that signify why we want to end alzheimers disease. But what if, one day, there was a white flower for alzheimers first survivor . What if there were millions of them . Join us for the Alzheimers Association walk to end alzheimers. Register today at alz. Org walk. Happy anniversary dinner, darlin. Can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra . Oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. A drop of dawn and grease is gone. Trump versus trump. One reason why theres such a stark divide in america, such a disconnect between trumps true believer and his detractors is that there are always two narratives about what hes doing. This week there was one summit but two trump stories. Let me show you what i mean. When trump publically sided with putin on monday, the press didnt blink. Anchors and experts called out the concerning behavior. You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an american president. This is nothing short of treasonous because it is a betrayal of the nation, he is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. We are living in a national emergency. That was the consensus view. Even some fox news stars said trump screwed up. But his most loyal promotors, like lou dobbs said something else. Trump disappointed the left wing media, i think the president handled himself perfectly. Even trump new it wasnt perfect because he came out the next day and clarified what he said and said he still supports inintel. Thats all the trump media needed to hear. The president comes out to clarifies his remarks today. He made it clear he had misspoken. You have witnessed the single worst 24 hours in the history of your main stream media. The guy is doing what hes supposed to be doing and that is protecting us. What do you make of it . What was he supposed to do take a gun out and shoot putin . There you have it, two trumps for two entirely different media ecosystems. And the result was that the base held. Brand new today a Washington Post abc news post found over all 33 approved. But if you break it down by party you see 66 of republicans approved of his performance. Lets bring in the washington corresponde correspondent for washington magazine. What did you see in the protrump this week in the talk shows, radio hosts, web bloggers, were they trying to create confusion or defend trump no matter what. It was interesting to see the mild criticism initially from the people at fox news that are typically pretty much in defense of him, they dont sound unlike his own press shop but that was short lived and everyone got back on track defending himself and giving him the benefit of the doubt in a way that if you are just looking at this on t objectively and taking his statements for what they are this week you really cant do with a straight face. It didnt surprise me because we usually see this from fox news. Its not as though its a departure from them to take his side. But more and more i think there is just no difference between what his own press shop says, what someone like Sarah Huckabeesanders says and what any of the hosts on fox news, they really are just an extension of the white house communication shop to the extent bill shine is now inside the white house. To your point the president gave four interviews these week, three of those four were with his friends. You cant call them interviews. Theyre really conversations where they are allowing him to kind of just spit ball. We need a different name for them, i agree. The third one was with cnbc, a friendly chat and the fourth was with nbc nightly news david glore, do you think he asked tough questions . He was the only one to find out what happened in helsinki . Had. Its tough in this climate. He did ask followup questions, some firm questions, i would say firm rather than tough. I would tell you something that bothered me if you look at the body language the way they sat there, glore was leaning back, trump was leaning forward. I would like to see him leaning forward to press trump. There were so many times he could have followed up, like when trump trashed brennan and the former intelligence officials, you know, i think it wouldnt have been out of line to say you just called him a total low life . Is that language appropriate . It would have got combative and im guessing the bosses at cbs wouldnt have liked it. But this president as you said earlier, demands different kinds of coverage and we have to be firm at every point with him. So i would have liked to see glore be more aggressive. But on the other hand as a Network Anchor man he has a different posture in terms of institutionally of how he can behave in that interview. The other problem with trump is that you dont get anything from him. Cbs was saying they got him to admit he holds putin accountable. Well, he sort of said that, he said hes in charge of the country i would hold him accountable. He said i would hold him accountable. Wait, hold on, he attacked the country. But then trump, i dont know if it was before or after because its all a blur with him, of lies, he said it could be the russias, could be a lot of other people. So you got nothing out of him. I think with trump you need to press harder. I smile because i criticize chris cue mow sometimes on the morning show when he would go after somebody, i think thats how you have to go after trump. Id love for chris or anyone at cnn to get an interview with trump. Let me show you one part of the interview where trump trashed the media. The level of dishonesty in your performance is high. The press covered the substance and the wording accurately. I dont care what they covered they didnt cover my meeting. Because we werent in the meeting and we have no idea what happened. I was watching that and i was thinking that would be a good time to say, what happened in the meeting, release a readout, transcript. But its easy so sit here and criticize jeff or the network, but i would say hes a very difficult interview and i was thinking this week while watching this interview and thinking about his performance, the journalist, about pierce morgan, who did an interesting story from air force one during this trip about his interview with donald trump and his time on air force one and he explained hes obviously a longtime friend of donald trump, he was on the apprentice, hes not a journalist like you are or i am, but he was very critical and explained that his approach to that interview is because donald trump is going to say what hes going to say, instead of hitting him over the head i think with a hammer is how he phrased it in the piece, he wanted to get his answer on as many different topics as possible. He wanted to get him on the record as much as possible on as wide array of topics as possible. I think thats an interesting strategy. The key might be to find somewhere in the middle where you do follow up, you are critical, tough when he says things that are outright lies, but tyou dont want to spend th entire time having an argument, i think we have a hard time getting an interview from not just his friends at fox news, there is value to getting him on the record as much as possible on every newsworthy topic we need to hear from him on. Im not sure, getting him on the record we have a concept of youre on the record, you said this, it means something. I think with trump, thats what i was trying to say, it doesnt mean anything to him. You mean on the record, contradict himself the next day. Immediately. So when pierce morgan gives that strategy of getting him on the record, i think in some ways its meaningless and youre giving him a forum to run all of this stuff out there he didnt care if its true or not. I disagree. They were sort of having a friendly conversation but i think because he is so rarely interviewed by actual journalists from actual main stream outlets who are g