we'll see. thank to you phillip, zerlina, john. thank you for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. tonight on "all in." >> i don't want to talk about pardons for michael flynn yet. >> a "new york times" bombshell. >> can you say unequivocally no one here has discussed pardons in this case? >> the president's lawyer reportedly floated pardons for flynn and plfrt before they were charged. >> i've always found paul manafort to be a very decent man. >> tonight it the reporter who broke the story and what this means for the obstruction case against the president. then, did the special counsel just file evidence of trump campaign collusion with russia? >> that's what he said. that's what i said. that's obviously what our position is. >> plus, the president announces the firing of the v.a. secretary on twitter. and apple ceo tim cook on mark zuckerberg's current predicament. >> i wouldn't be in this situation. >> okay. >> more from kara swisher and my exclusive interview when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. at every turn, the president has tried to underminor hinder the special counsel russia investigation. now it turns out his legal team explored taking an extraordinary step to shield two of mueller's key targets. a presidential pardon. "new york times" reporting today the president's personal attorney john dowd raise theed the idea of manafort and flynn as mueller was building cases against those two men. john dowd who resigned just last week reportedly discussed potential pardons with the lawyers last summer. since then, of course, flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and is now crucially cooperating with mueller's probe. while manafort faces two separate criminal trials on dozens of charges including money laundering and other financial fraud. dowd denies the "times" story which was reported by five of the paper's top journalists and attributed to two unnamed sources. jay sekulow the last man standing also claims pardons have not been discussed and ty cobb who represents the white house, he's a taxpayer funded employee, in the russia probe released a very carefulfully worded statement. "i have only been asked about pardons by the press and have routinely responded on the recorded that no pardons are under discussion or under consideration at the white house." asked about the report today, the press secretary repeatedly just referred back to cobb's statement claiming to have no firsthand knowledge of any pardon discussions. >> did the president direct john dodd to talk to the attorney of manafort and flynn about potential pardons. >> i'm not we're of any conversations at all. >> did the president have a reaction to these revelations? did you ask him specifically? >> i did not talk to him about it specifically. again, i've been in a number of conversations. it's never come up. >> now as we know this white house does not have the best track record on things like facts or accuracy or denials that you can take to the bank. this is not the first indication the president has considered pardoning key witnesses or targets in the investigation. last summer, around the same period that was cited today by the times," "the washington post" reported that trump, and i quote here, asked his advisers about his power to pardon aids, family members and even himself according to one of those people. one day after that report was published, the president tweeted while i'll agree the u.s. president has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is leaks against us. fake news. months later after michael flynn pleaded guilty to a federal crime, signed on as a cooperating witness, the president did not rule out the possibility of granting him a pardon. >> once and for all. >> would you consider a pardon for michael flynn? >> i don't want to talk about pardons for michael flynn yet. we'll see what happens. let's see the. >> msnbc national security contributor michael schmidt is one of the reporter who's broke the story for the "new york times." first, let's talk about the timing and the context under which these discussions happened. >> so this happened last summer. this was at a time that mueller was building his cases against manafort and flynn. this was when they were trying to figure out what evidence the government had. and there was concern within the president's circle about what cooperation from these two would look like. particularly by flynn who had been around for the entire campaign and obviously for the first three weeks in the white house before he was fired. >> okay. but so the context is that the cases are building. there's a worry i guess that they're going to talk. and dowd is talking to flynn's lawyers and manafort's lawyers individually and sort of floating the idea what if the president were to pardon you? >> dowd had the lead in dealing with both of these lawyers. they had non -- they had basically agreements to work together to strategize and share information together. and it was in the course of those discussions that he raised that. now, the question is, is that was dowd doing this on his own? was he out simply freelancing raising this with them, or was he doing it at the president's behest. people that know dowd find it hard to believe that he would go out and do something like that without talking to his client. >> and there's precedent here dowd once claiming that he wrote a tweet the president sent out saying that flynn was fired for lying to the fbi even though that wasn't that plausible. dowd is denying this report. he's saying it's not true. is he lying? >> well, look, we got to a point we felt very comfortable with the information that we had. we did a lot of work on this. as you've seen some folks have gotten this confirmed, as well. when i talked to dowd today, he said i don't know what we would have pardoned flynn for. he said i don't know what flynn did wrong. he said comey and salliates had said that flynn didn't do anything wrong. i don't know he would pardon him for. this mirrored some of the reporting we had done that showed that dowd was telling people close to the investigation that he and the president thought the case against flynn was flimsy and that there was nothing there. so that added up in terms of what dowd was telling us on the record today. >> so he raises this according to your reporting with both lawyers while they're being investigated by mueller. they're ultimately indicted. what if the president were to pardon you. what happens after that is floated according to your reporting? >> well, that's the thing. it looks like manafort was not interested in it. manafort has long pain maintained his innocence. he said he's done nothing wrong and thinks this government overreach and says he wants to fight it. flynn went and accepted a plea agreement from mueller. he did not count on a pardon from trump. now, why did he do that? we don't know. it's probably a safer path maybe to go with mueller. maybe flynn's lawyers were concerned that taking a pardon would be obstruction. we don't know. but in the end, flynn does accept a plea agreement last november and has been working with mueller since then. >> michael schmidt, great reporting. thank you. >> thanks for having me. >> richard blumenthal is a member of the senate judiciary committee calling on the justice you department to protect the investigation. your reaction to the reporting the president's own personal attorney floats the possibility of a presidential pardon as both men are being targeted for possible indictment ultimately indicted by the special prosecutor. >> it's powerful damning evidence of obstruction of justice particularly corrupt intent. it has to be investigated by the special counsel. he has to talk to dowd and under oath. and if the attorney/client privilege is an obstacle, he may be able to pierce it because of the crime fraud exception. and a complete investigation of this aspect of possible obstruction of justice is absolutely necessary by the special counsel. >> michael schmidt in the times" raising the possibility of obstruction, i want to read this. mr. mueller's team could investigate the prospect mr. dowd played offers to thwart the inquiry. the legal experts are divided whether such offers might constitute obstruction of justice." do you have an opinion on that? >> the conventional wisdom is that the pardon power is very broad. virtually limitless discretion. but it's not so broad it can be used to commit a crime to stymie or thwart ar investigation, that is for a corrupt purpose. and so what we have here is potential use of that power to commit a crime to save himself to stop or stymie an investigation. the second point is that those cases about the broad and limitless discretion of the president are very old. they date from 1867 and 1871 and i think a court viewing what the president's done here would be absolutely furious at his contempt for the rule of law, not to say he hasn't demonstrated contempt for the rule of law continuously as president but in this instance, his misconduct goes to the core of the integrity of the criminal justice system. and i think that they could well make an exception or in effect rewrite the rule so as to apply and restrict his unbridled supposedly discretion. >> so there's a lag here. it's a little hard sometimes to keep track of the chronology right? we know the president tried to get don mcgahn to fire the special counsel last year. we only find out about it months later. this reporting about last summer, this being floated we're finding out about it now. the reason i raise that, you and a bunch of your colleagues had a lot to say yesterday about protecting mueller. it seemed to me out of nowhere. chris coons and thom tillis statement about protecting mueller. a letter from senate democrats and you say trump tweets becoming more extreme requiring -- saturday night massacre now looming larger. was there is something that set you off yesterday? >> really a combination of factors here as the pressure on the president grows greater. the erratic and extreme tweets that he has been sending. the prospect of three witnesses cooperating, three very potentially powerful witnesses with evidence against him. and his perhaps growing fear and bob all perhaps these kinds of threats from his surrogates and others in congress that they would stop the investigation. what i've asked the top officials of the department of justice to do who may be in the line of succession, rod rosenstein, if he's fired, that they commit that they will not fire robert mueller that they will in no way restrict his authority and that they will continue the investigation without any interference. that's very important to avoid the kind of constitutional con fla ration that we saw with the saturday night massacre which occurred because ruckelshaus and richardson made the same kind of pledge and raised the country's conscience about the nixonian excess of power. >> i want to be clear though. did you not get some side effect behind the scenes can intelligence or warning or something passed to you finger at me for committing a crime, i have the corrupt intent to impede, influence and undermine the investigation and i would be guilty of obstruction of justice for doing an innocent act which would normally be an innocent act of advising a client because what's in my head my intent is corrupt. >> right. that's really crucial thing to keep in mind here. tuck take legal actioning that because of the intent of legal action is actually illegal and obstruction of justice. >> that's exactly right. that's why using the pardon power to obstruct this investigation it doesn't make any difference if it's the pardon power or any other legal if your intent is to impede. >> paul, you're nodding your head. >> yeah. so timing and context is everything here, chris. so remember, flynn is the target of a grand jury investigation. manafort is about to be indicted. their lawyer, trump's lawyer knows that they're going to be pressured to snitch on trump. so trump's lawyer goes to their lawyers and says, let's see if we can work out a little something something. my client happens to have there extraordinary power to pardon anybody. you know what i'm saying? the legal term for that is obstruction of justice. the fact that the president does have there pardon power doesn't mean that if he uses it to thwart an investigation against himself that it's not obstruction of justice. so again, it's the same as when he fired comey. he has the constitutional power, the legal authority to fire comey. but it's still evidence of his corrupt intent. >> this brings to us this tricky issue that is we're moving forward which is the case for obstruction seems to me very strong just on the face. if this weren't the president, if we're talking about someone else, all the actions he's taken. but the question of what does that amount to in the absence of him having some sort of underlying thing that he did or what mueller could even do with it. >> you could do it by itself. all of the watergate figures were convicted for obstruction of justice. there wasn't any. >> not the president. you're saying the people around him. >> around nixon, all people around nixon were convicted for obstruction of justice. there was no proof john mitchell, the attorney general broke into the watergate or was involved in that. it could be brought as a separate crime. however, i think here you're going to see an underlying crime that the obstruction is going to be the motive for. and that i think is going to be critical to this prosecution. >> paul. >> i always agree with my man, nick. he's right. i don't think mueller would bring an obstruction case without collusion. here's the thing. trump is sure acting like michael flynn has the dirt on him and trump is acting like he will do anything to prevent that dirt from coming out. the good news from our democracy is that special counsel mueller already knows so flynn has pled guilty. he's cooperating with mueller. so mr. president, a pardon at this point won't do you any good. >> that's the other question. i mean the idea -- there was this period where it seemed like pardon entered the discussion. that's when we got are you going to pardon flynn on the white house lawn. we got the tweet and reporting. we're now getting reporting later it was on the table. you wonder if that will resurfaces at some point. >> look, even if he does pardon him, you still have the state attorney general in new york who canning come in and fill the vacuum. there are crimes under the new york penal code that are better than some of the crimes that can be used under the federal criminal code. >> spoken like a real prosecutor. >> if you had a choice between rikers island and club fed, what would you take? >> what about the idea? i mean, what is the metastory here with dowd? it's a strange thing for us to be learning this right now. i don't know who the sources are. but it's interesting to me that dowd leaves and now we're getting this presumably not from the dowd himself. what do you make of that, paul? >> you know, the president doesn't so much like lawyers as fixers. so he gets these people to do things that i think are questionably in terms of ethics but they do it. at some point they start to have regrets. dowd has now resigned. his posture publicly was he wanted the president to cooperate with the investigation, but he did not want the president to go into an interview with mueller because he knows that mueller would eat the president alive. so i think i can imagine -- i can't imagine a more difficult job than being a lawyer for donald trump. my sympathy goes out to these guys. >> nick and paul, great to have you both. next, how robert mueller may have just drawn the most direct line yet between the trump campaign and russian collusion. the window into the russia investigation in two minutes. so in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like, "wow, maybe i'll glow too if i book direct at choicehotels.com." who glows? just say, badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com. a farmer's market.ve what's in this kiester. a fire truck. even a marching band. and if i can get comfortable talking about this kiester, then you can get comfortable using preparation h. for any sort of discomfort in yours. preparation h. get comfortable with it. special counsel robert mueller may have drawn his most direct line yet between the trump campaign and russia. in a newly filed document mueller reveals the signatures of an individual he describes as person a a business associate of the former chairman paul manafort and crucially former deputy chairman rick gates. "that gates and person a were directly communicating and here's the significant part, in september and october 2016, right? this is after manafort leaves gates is still there right before the election that that was pertinent to the investigation. fbi special agents assisting the special counsel's office assessed that person a the person gates is talking to has ties to a russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016." according to "the new york times" a person with knowledge of the matter identified person a as constantine klimik. msnbc contribute ker natasha bertrand covering the intelligence community and terrorism analyst malcolm nance, the author of "the plot to hack america." it's a little complicated. let's start with your kilimnik is who, natasha. >> kilimnik is a ukrainian russian dual citizen and worked for manafort and gates for years. he was essentially their translator. he worked for rush bean military intelligence as a translator and got his training there. he left and went to work for another institute in the '90s. he was recruited from that institute by phil griffin, one of manafort's top spokesman in ukraine to do all this translating work. essentially u.s. intelligence officials now believe that he still has those ties to russian military intelligence that he had back when he was training there as aylilinguist. paul manafort and rick greats in touch with someone who had russian military intelligence ties during the campaign there be drawing the most direct line as you said between the campaign and russia that we've seen. >> not just that. a reminder to folks because this character has arisen before. remember when the e-mails come out, paul manafort gets the job on the campaign and sends an e-mail to someone in ukraine and says has this is russian oligarch seen this? the person he's sending those e-mails is this individual, is that right, natasha? >> correct. he went with constantine in may and another time in august they met in person. at least one conversation, they did discuss the presidential campaign. not only did they exchange e-mails they also met face-to-face twice during that year. >> klimnik is on the ground. manafort is is e-mailing him as using it as a means to get made whole with a shady russian oligarch. malcolm, this question of ties to russian intelligence, that terms ties is nonspecific. i never know what to do with it. people would say ties to terrorists and organized crime, ties to intelligence. how should we interpret that here? >> well, first off, klimnik's background as a translator is not just a transer, he was was russia military intelligence. they don't just produce translators to do point to point upon interpretation. he was either a human intelligence officer or from their signals is intelligence side which means he's still out there collecting intelligence on people and that was his background. when he was in the ukraine working with manafort as the translator so to speak, he was also a liaison. he would have to be. every good translator is the middle man 0 who gets you your points of contact. >> right. >> also hands off information. klimnik being tied to russian intelligence cook he is no longer an active service officer, he's a civilian in direct communications with known intelligence officers and is still handling people for them. >> so now here's the thick thng popped out to me the most. it is a little confusing. this document from mueller was in the charging of alex van der zwaan who was the one working with manafort and gates and was convicted or pled -- pleaded to lying to the investigators. right? here's the thing that is fascinating about this. during his first interview with the special counsel's office, he admitted he knew of that connection betweening the intelligence connection between person a and russian intel stating that gates told him person a was a former russian intelligence officer with the gru. natasha, the issue now becomes did gates know that klimnik was working with russian military intelligence as is he talking to him during the campaign? >> well, the special counsel says he at least told van der zwaan he was former gru. that was an open secret. whether or not he knew he was still connected to russian military intelligence during 2016 kind of remains to be seen. it's interesting because what we also see in the filing is that mueller deems this pertinent to the investigation and thinks kilimnik is a valuable tie weave the trump campaign and russia. the fact that he's now using gates' words against kilmnik base essentially denied ever having ties to russian intelligence. he was trained at a school for translators but says he was never recruited by the intelligence services. the fact that gates and phil griffin manafort's spokesman are saying it was an open secret is pretty remarkable. >> what do you think, malcolm. >> i think it's remarkable in the fact that he actually traded on his past links to russian military intelligence that that's what his job was in the past. there's no way you could be running around this sphere of influence within moscow dealing with oleg deripaska, yanukovych, all these big player lose are very close to putin and not have this particular springing between pulled in one way or the other. >> right. natasha and malcolm, thank you. >> thanks, chris. >> and another trump cabinet firing announced on twitter. the member of trump world taking his place right after this. ♪ always discreet quickly turns liquid to gel, for drier protection that's a lot less bulky. always discreet. digital transformation actually what does ithappen?o make it takes dell technologies, a family of seven technology leaders working behind the scenes to make the impossible... reality. we're helping to give cars the power to read your mind from anywhere... and we're helping up to 40% of the nation's donated blood supply to be redirected to the people that need it most. magic can't make digital transformation happen... but we can. tonight at what we call effectively the southern white house. seems to be the most convenient location. everybody always wants to go to the southern white house. are you going to be at that meeting? >> you heard about it, right? that would be great. all about the va. >> yes, have you heard about the meeting about the va we're going to have tonight at the southern white house that you the head of the va won't be at? donald trump today announced that david shulkin account man seen nodding is stepping down to be replaced by the president's personal physician. no, no, not that the personal physician. the man who once wrote that the trump would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency." not that one, this one, dr. ronny jackson who coincidentally said there year the president was just one pound shy of obesity. joining me jennifer ruben of the "washington post." there's a pattern here. there's a bunch of patterns. one is leaving shulkin out to dry which he likes to do. two is not firing him in person and three picking someone that he knows personally. >> and someone who has gilded the lilly to put it mildly on his behalf. a fourth would be someone who has absolutely no qualifications for the job simply because have you been a doctor does not mean you're qualified to run mammoth bureaucracy with embedded management issues. he hasn't been a hospital administrator or run a large organization. way back when when the senate used to consider its job serious and would go through a vetting process they would say to people like this i'm sorry, you're not qualified for the job. what trump knows is that the republicans in the senate will rubber stamp just about anyone he sends up there. he will send up anyone and he will send up someone who has no qualification other than the fact ha he's personally loyal and willing to sort of shade the truth for the president. that's a bad thing for the united states. >> we should say that dr. ronny jackson is well respected that he was in that position before obama world people sang his praises. i want to bring in former senator barbara boxer to ask you this. if i'm not mistaken, this is maybe the second largest administrative job in the federal government. is this person qualified for the job? should the senate confirm him? >> i don't know enough about him which is right away saying what? this is a huge operation. it's got hundreds of thousands of employees. it's headed toward i believe $200 billion. one of the largest entities. but i think what this is about is follow the money. because i think the problem that shulkin had outside of the fact that he had some ethical lapses but by the way, nothing like others in the administration which we could get into such as zinke or mnuchin or carson, just to name a few. it's really that will shulkin went slow on privatization. and when you say follow the money, that's the answer. you know, i know this because i've seen it over the years. and the veterans administration has a lot of problems. and shulkin was starting to fix those problems. obama and trump. but the whole goal here is to you know, frankly take all that money and give it over to some of donald's friends. i think that's what this is about. i think there's going to be a whole lot of screaming from veterans organizations who don't want to lose the va. >> i want to be clear because there's a lot of reporting that supports that. nancy at the pel's statement today mentioning there's been a long-standing effort to privatize the va and interpreting the shulkin battles happening inside were essentially a proxy war over that policy direction. there's also the question, jennifer of the harriet miers test. jonathan swan i think reporting someone told him off the record this is harriet meyers again, he tried to elevate her to the supreme court and republicans said no. >> right. well, unfortunately, that sort of check on the system doesn't happen much. and although i think there are good and real policy debates that are going on and will be going on, i think shulkin very much like the other people that senator boxer named did dig his own grave. abusing once gent taxpayers' money by paying for a vacation for himself and his wife. perhaps not being entirely honest and then becoming kind of a paranoid lunatic having people stand guard, going to war with his staff to the point it was becoming an embarrassment even for this white house i suppose. so i would go back a couple steps and say listen, shulkin may not have been the right person for this president toe have appointed but we know as we know with pre other position whoever comes next is going to be worse. and that's going to be the pattern throughout the administration. he was starting with a very local talent pool to begin with because people who were honest and capable, who had criticized him took them out of the running or he took them out. you begin with a lower than average starting pool. now that he's circling through and throwing these people off, each successive replacement gets worse and worse and you're down to people who are only there because trump met with him once or they said weather wanted to say or they were good on tv. you remember this guy was good on tv. he gave a press conference that was one of the better ones that anyone in this administration has given. that's enough for donald trump. >> senator, it seems to me if your concern and i think a lot of concern by democrats and others about the future of the va that this is one of those times when the appointment itself becomes a kind of point of action of rallying to have exactly that fight. >> absolutely it does. it's a very important point because if you listen to the veterans, they don't want to lose the va. they really don't. but again what you see with donald trump is, how much he can really help his friends. i hate to bring up russia again. but you talk about oligarchs, you talk about people who have basically taken big companies that belong to the country and they stole it. you know? and that's a whole other show you could do. but there is a big -- there are many people out there who are champing at the bit to get that $200 billion. i think that's what's important. it's what's important are the vets themselves. let's hear what they say. and i don't think you know, the leadership should come from anyone but the vets. and let's hear what they say. they've put their lives on the line. they're suffering from ptsd. they need a va that they can trust and that they can know is there for them. >> yeah, it's the largest, the closest thing we have to socialized medicine in america. jennifer ruben and barbara boxer thank you. listen to senator boxer's new podcast fight back which launches tomorrow. ahead, an msnbc special event. as the country learns more about the power and influence of silicon valley in ways good and bad, i co-hosted a town hall with one man who knows the silicon valley as well as anyone. apple's ceo tim cook. plus tonight's thing 1, thing 2 starts next. lergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms lergy pills? including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. flonase. as being your moste note important note. so ave-ma. if you nail that then you're golden. i look where the rim and the net meet. put that basketball right on those hooks, and that's what i lock in on. let's talk about the equation of cooking. ingredients and execution. ingredients are controlled by somebody else. execution is all about you. the idea of pardons for paul manafort as robert knewer was building his cases there, twitter blew up. congressman eric swalwell said breaking russian evidence unearthed. friend of the show matt miller tweeted this is just straight up corruption. forever lever trump has to try and impede the investigation he has used from harvard professor laurnds tribe, pardon me? more obstruction of justice and then we noticed this one from twitter user george conway who commented simply this is flabbergasting. and we agreed, george conway. husband of donald trump's top adviser kellyanne conway. it is flabbergasting. george conway's rogue twitter account is thing 2 in 60 seconds. mine's way better. pardons. >> is the white house prepping pardons for everyone? >> the answer is no. i discussed this with the president directly. that's another part of the hoax. his point is exactly what he says at the end of that tweet which is that why are we talking about -- there's nothing to pardon, no one to pardon. there's no presidential crime. >> hmm. nothing to pardon, no one to pardon. right on message. unfortunately her own husband appears to have gone way off message calling the news trump's lawyer did discuss pardons flaesh gasting and that is just the latest in a series of tweets from george conway where he appears to be trolling the trump white house. mr. conway was a quiet infrequent twitter user till this month when he unleashed about 200 tweets and retweets roughly half of which are critical of trump. george conway has a right to his own opinion no matter who his wife works for. we know how kellyanne feels about a man's right to tweet. >> literally people will seriously say can't you delete his tritt twitter app. it's not for me to take away a grown man's twitter account. whe options chains? it's not for me to take away a grown man's twitter account. options fees? are you raising your hand? good then it's time for power e*trade the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. alright one quick game of rock, paper, scissors. 1, 2, 3, go. e*trade. the original place to invest online. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember. have you noticed that donald trump is laying very low like lock down level low. >> for five straight days, the president of the united states has not made a single public appearance. but while trump stays hidden his legal problems keep growing. last night shortly after he appeared on this program, michael avenatti filed a motion in federal court seeking to depose trump and lawyer michael cohen for no more than two hours. if he is successful, trump will have to explain what he knew about the $130,000 hush money payment made to daniels shortly before the election to cover up her alleged sexual encounter with trump. >> what we want is we want the truth. we want to know the truth what the president knew, when he knew it and what he did about it as it relates to this agreement, we're going to test the veracity off the truthfulness of mr. cohen his attorney's statements. we're confident when we get to the bottom of this, we're going to prove to the american people that they have been told a bucket of lies. >> a hearing on the motion is set for april 30th. federal judge ruled d.c. and maryland may proceed with a lawsuit against trump alleging that trump's business dealings violated the constitution's ban on receiving improper emoluments or payments from individual states and foreign governments. at issue is the trump international hotel in d.c. has has become a magnet for foreign officials since the election. the plaintiffs claim those officials are effectively making an illegal and unconstitutional payment to trump and that the arrangement has hurt nearby businesses. then of course, there's trump's own legal team. ten different lawyers have either turned down offers to work for the president or left his team as he has continued to grapple with robert mueller's investigation, a situation that prompted a defensive sounding trump top insys many lawyers in top firms want to represent me in the russia case. trump has finally found someone willing to take the job kind of. trump's legal team has elevated a little known atlanta attorney named andrew ekonomou who is already assisting one of trump's personal attorneys to a more significant role on the legal team. no word whether trump is still looking for more people willing to defend him. it's safe to say this particular president could use all the lawyers he can get. your top-rated thing. that five stars, two thumbs up, 12-out-of-10, would recommend thing. because if you only want the best thing, you get the #1 thing. directv is rated #1 in customer satisfaction over cable. switch now and get a $200 reward card. more for your thing. that's our thing. call 1.800.directv just say, badda book. badda boom. nobody glows. he gets it. always the lowest price, guaranteed. book now at choicehotels.com you wouldn't accept from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don't. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. flonase. biggest tech company, tim cook of apple. i asked him what he thought of the facebook scandal and about regulation. >> we've never believed that these detailed profiles of people that have incredibly deep, personal information that is patched together from several sources s sources should exist. that the connection of all of these dots, that you could use them in such devious ways if someone wanted to do that, that this was one of the things that were possible in life but shouldn't exist. >> right. >> shouldn't be allowed to exist. and so i think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation. that is the best regulation. because regulation can have unexpected consequences, right? however, i think we're beyond that here. and i do think that it's time for a set of people to think deeply about what can be done. >> my co-host asked about the issue of privacy. the apple ceo did not hold back. >> we're looking at every app in detail. what is it doing? is it doing what it's saying it's doing? is it meeting the privacy policy that they're stating, right? this is something that we've always felt, you know -- >> mark zuckerberg, what would you do? >> what would i do? i wouldn't be in this situation. >> okay. [ laughter ] . >> and back with me is karen swisher and my co-host for that apple town hall. what did you think of that, karen? >> well, it was something else. he came to play, i think. he really did make a lot of statements, it was a great conversation on a range of issues, not just facebook but education and privacy. but him calling for regulation, calling the situation dire was really striking, because people think of silicon valley as a monolith. it isn't, there are a lot of people who disagree with each other there. >> one of the things that was most interesting is seeing that in real time. the business model for apple is different from google and amazon, so he was happy to talk about those flaws and weaknesses of those other business models. i thought the exchange on amazon, another one of the sort of big titans of silicon valley is interesting. i wanted to play that and get your reaction. take a listen. >> we're not doing the beauty contest kind of thing. that's not apple. [ applause ] . >> what do you think about the beauty contest model? i'm watching them line up to essentially throw subsidies and hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to get them to come. and now what do you make of that kind of competition? >> i think that each state, i think a great thing about the u.s. is, is freedom. and i think if states want to compete for things, then god bless them. i think that's, that's sort of, that's a part of america. and so i don't, i don't condemn it. i think it's their decision. but from our point of view, we didn't want to create this contest, because i think, because i think what comes out of that is you wind up putting people through a ton of work to select one. and so you wipnd up, that is a case where you have a winner and a lot of losers, unfortunately. i don't like that. >> what did you think of that? >> i thought that was striking. i mean, a lot of people, amazon's done a great job in getting people interested in amazon and what it's doing to bring jobs to the u.s. and i think they've created a contest, and he was sort of giving it the back of the hand. >> it was interesting to watch more broadly just sort of his world view and how he's approaching this. the ethos of silicon valley struck me there. it's strong. it's almost like a catechism for a lot of them, this idea of mayor tokcracy. do you think his world view is technically distinct? or is it what those in the valley share? >> they're from an older bunch of companies. google and facebook are newer. am's been arou apple's been around for a while. he's more experienced. and what he as tryi's trying to used the word dire. you about but i think he showed that tech companies are different. it's not a monolith. he was pushing the silicon valley line, we can help. you don't have to be scared of us and the future. >> they have, i think, apple a little less so, though i think they may be in a similar situation, but it's interesting to watch conservative media go after facebook right now. facebook and google. and the ways in which they are facing critics on both the left and the right, which i think is a dangerous and perilous political situation for them. >> i think everybody is sort of angry at them. and the idea, this stuff has been going on for years, but i think because of trump all this political stuff has entered the picture and created divisions. and they are at the center of media, the center of distribution of communications, so it feels like their platforms have been plmisused. youtube more than anything. and i think people feel that something's happened here that isn't quite so friendly and wonderful. as tech has been. tom freedman wrote about it today. the first inning was wonderful. the second inning, maybe an ill will mo -- little more difficult. >> he was outspoken on immigration, essentially, daca. >> he called it appalling and said guns should not have been fired and thought it was against, he made a moral argument about the idea of daca and keeping these dreamers in this country. >> yeah, karen swisher was my co-host for today's event. we did it in chicago at a high