Well talk to senator amee klobuchar who is set to question the tech billionaire. But first tonight u. S. Officials say north korea is willing to discuss denuclearization. Russia is calling a Chemical Attack on syrian soil fake news. And china is locked in the opening rounds of what may become a fullblown trade war. And for real this time, the president is acting out a riff he used throughout his campaign, determining who is a friend and who is a foe. Is that friend or foe . Is that friend . Friend or foe . Friend or foe . Hes friend. Okay. I think hes friend. Are you friend or foe . Are they friends . Friend or foe . Friend or foe . Friend. Its a choice the president has been disinclined to make where two men in particular are concerned, russian president Vladimir Putin and chinese president xi jinping. In a tweet sunday, President Trump actually criticized Vladimir Putin. In this case, slamming putins backing of syrian dictator bashar alassad. Thats on top of the toughest sanctions yet of russian oligarchs. As for china, in spite of proposing 150 billion in tariffs and the opening shots of a trade war, the president tweeted, quote, president xi and i will always be friends, no matter what happens with our dispute on trade. And somewhere in all of this are people. In the united states, uncertainty for thousands of farmers, workers and investors in a stock market which just saw its worst quarter since 2015. And in syria, people dying and struggling to breathe after an alleged Chemical Attack for which both russia and syria deny culpability. Joining me now to talk about all of this, Washington Bureau scheef for the New York Times elizabeth. Msnbc political analyst michael steele. Washington correspondent for bbc world news america, msnbc contributor and author of a new book out this week the Confidence Code For Girls katty kay. Plus washington correspondent for cnbc, kayla. Thank you for joining us this sunday night. Catty, i want to start with you to put this all in global perspective particularly as we learned of the alleged attack in syria this morning now. We know that President Trump, last time he was confronted with Something Like this, launched strikes against syria, a move that the Obama Administration declined to make. What is your sense of the significance of what we have learned this morning and how intensely the u. S. Should respond . Well, i think the president s tweets were significant, partly because he took on Vladimir Putin in name for pretty much the first time ever. But it also raises questions about what american strategy is. The president launched an attack last time against an air field. The syrians have responded a year later with more Chemical Attacks. Clearly that didnt work. I think the question for the president , who seems to want to his instinct is to want to withdraw from the middle east to bring american troops back home to have a more isolationist, Foreign National policy, and yet at the same time wants to play the strong man when there is Something Like this and retaliate. It throws into question his strategy, what President Trump wants to do, is going to do in the middle east, and whether there will be if there is another strike, any more concrete follow through in termds of strategy in syria than there has been. Elizabeth, theres been some statements coming out, early statements from republicans, members of congress who are putting blame with iran and with russia. It did seem note worth think as katy pointed out, the president in this case blamed Vladimir Putin for this. What do you make of his decision to do that . And, you know, for folks who are tuning back in to this story, how important is russias role in syria right now . Its quite important. Assad would not be there without
to stay after there was a meeting at the white house. The generals talked him into saying dont pull out. The latest conversation, though. That was thursday or friday. Right. So for now the u. S. Is staying. Again, its 2000 largely special operations troops. This is keeping those troops there is not going to prevent another Chemical Attack. Yeah. Michael steele, what is your sense of whats different here for President Trump . We saw last time this is a president , as we know, who spends a lot of time watching the news. Yeah. And images like these devastating ones oults of syria tend to affect his decision making. It does. I think he was probably moved more by those images than anything someone said to him, you know in the first instance because he does have mental blocks he puts up at times. But i think the image for him just sort of recounted and recalled for him just how sticky this is, how difficult it will be to pull out, and probably for now its going to be easier to stay given Everything Else because in the long run well, just in the short run, pulling out now just opens up more opportunities for assad to do a
lot more harm. So, i think the president wants to draw a line to the extent we can use that term, in the sand here. Elizabeth pointed out assad has boxed trump into a corner here. But also Lindsey Graham saying on television he has to respond now or do something, otherwise hes going to look weak in the eyes of iran and russia. Thats the kind of language that trump responds to, right . He never wants to look weak and i think Lindsey Graham is also slightly edging trump into a corner, too. Given his propensity to be challenged in that regard, you dont want him to show how much of a man he is, you know . More president than we may need in the moment. It needs to be a sober, thought through process. And i think thats where mattis and others will play an important role. Trumps approach has always been actions speak louder than words. That was his criticism of president obama. That was why last year, almost a year to the day ago, why he chose to launch though 59 Tomahawk Missiles before tweeting about it, we should mention. And why in june of last year when the u. S. Got so much as a whiff of intelligence that syria might be planning another Chemical Attack, the white house put out a preemptive statement saying there would be a heavy price to pay. This is almost as if the u. S. Has fallen asleep at the switch. You had the president just a few days ago saying he wanted to pull out. You have senator mccain saying that statement emboldened assad to actually do what it did. And now the president has to figure out whether he will act or whether that tweet will stand alone. Kenny, how much blame does the obama deserve for this situation in they said these weapons were supposed to have been destroyed. The excuse the Obama Administration gave for not crossing that red line, doing something militarily in syria
was they got a better deal. This is what the Obama Administration said. Look, we didnt need to use military forces. We got the chemical weapons out of syria. That is clearly become a myth. Weve seen it not just on this occasion. Weve seen Chemical Attacks to know not enough of those chemical weapons were taken out, when obama was about to strike syria, i want approval from congress. Congress said, we dont think so. As did the british parliament. Lets not forget the history here. Absolutely. Lets expand this conversation a little bit. Kayla, i want to turn back to you because this prospect of a trade war with china, it seems as though this seems to be like another classic case, the president says one thing one day, another thing another day. His advisors say one thing on one channel and another thing on another channel. We have some sound bites we can play in a second. How much of the decline in the stock market at this point do you think can be chalked up to uncertainty around this question . Uncertainty around what the president will do. On one hand you have his advisor saying this could be an opening volley in negotiations, which is how we hope this ends up. Kevin hassett on friday said, dont call the president s
bluff. This is something he wants to do. And the president is emboldened by being the first mover in a lot of these situations, doing something that no prior president has ever done before. That is something that really gives him a rise, and that is a situation that advisors to president s clinton, bush and obama are looking at this and say, we all agree that china needed to be held to account for its trade transgressions, but this isnt the way we would have gone about it because of the consequence. And heres the president saying, you know, im going to go there. You touched on this idea that its unclear exactly where everybody seems to stand in this. We had two of the president s advisors on television this morning talking about whether or not this was a threat or a real trade war, and if you can figure out what exactly is happening here, then youre smarter than i am. Take a look. Those tariffs will be imposed
and so here we are now in the environment where there is going to be pain. There is going to be an impact on those very communities that have stood behind him. The question becomes how they feel about that, and how they sort of translate this. The president s team, larry kudlow notwithstanding, is hell bent on moving forward on this. Thats very clear. I think navarro is more the key player than kudlow. Kudlow is for the softening of the markets. Kudlow doesnt want these big spikes the way weve seen happen over the last few days. His whole role is less about that base. Thats navarro. His whole role is about the markets. Markets and wall street. Taylor thats why members of congress are trying to take matters into their own hands. During recess you had about half a dozen gop senators who actually went to china and went to korea to try to protect the Foreign Direct Investment into their states because they know that thats responsible for billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs. And they know that thats at risk. Those Investment Restrictions you just heard Peter Navarro talking about, those could go after that very investment directly into the states at a local level. You had the Federal Reserve saying Business Leaders regionally are already citing potential tariffs as reasons why theyre not investing in their business, theyre not creating jobs and theyre very uncertain. Theyre not talking about the Growth Aspects of tax reform any more which they were a couple weeks ago. You saw President Trump tweeting saying he was going to stay friends with president xi. The one thing that is going to push the chinese to take action is when the americans or the american president forces president xi into a position where he has to respond. He cannot look weak at home. So, when President Trumpcriticizes president xi on twitter, that is disastrous than any potential chinese retaliation. I have to say i think it is the obvious the president s advisors are split on this. I think there are some, we know who they are, mnuchin and wilbur ross who want to negotiate with china. Navarro wants to hold tight, be tough. I think we have to watch the stock market this coming week and see how long trump can stand these massive losses in the stock market and see if he can hold firm because there is a lot of anxiety with the president about the stock market. And we will be watching you, kayla, for all of the information on that on cnbc. Thank you so much for your time tonight. I really appreciate it. We also do here on msnbc want to make a correction to an earlier report on this network. Msnbc has been reporting today that the nse is set to meet on syria tonight. We reached out to the white house and the nsc and they have not confirmed that to us. We will continue to report out this story and keep you up to date on it. But for now, up next, we are just getting started. Senator Amy Klobuchar is standing by. She is set to grill Mark Zuckerberg on capitol hill this week. Plus. This was going to be my remarks. It would have taken about 2 minutes. The hell with it. [ applause ] that would have been a little boring. Never boring. New reporting, republicans may have a new messaging strategy for the mid terms. Impeachment. Well explain that when we continue on kasie d. C. You know whats awesome . Gigspeed internet. Lets fix that. Lets give this guy gig really . And these kids, and these guys, him, ah. Oh hello. That lady, these houses yes, yes and yes. And dont forget about them. Uh huh, sure. Still yes xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. Now you can get it, too. Welcome to the party. Welcome back to kasie d. C. Facebook is facing sharp criticism following the revelation that the data of at least 87 million users was compromised by Consulting Firm cambridge analytica. The companys ceo, Mark Zuckerberg, is slated to testify before two committees in congress this week to explain among other things why it took the Social Media Giant so long to notify its users that their data had been stolen. Heres Senate JudiciaryCommittee Member john kennedy putting it as only he can. Mr. Zuckerberg has not exhausted himself, being forthcoming. We had one hearing. Mr. Zuckerberg sent his lawyer, very bright, very articulate, could talk a dog off a meat wagon, but he didnt say anything. But my biggest worry with all this is that the Privacy Issue and what i call the propaganda
issue is too big for facebook to fix and thats the frightening part. Senator john kennedy, ladies and gentlemen. For more i want to welcome senator Amy Klobuchar from minnesota who sits on the Senate Judiciary committee and has been a leading voice on this issue and on pressing these Tech Companies. Senator, thank you very much for being here. Thank you, i appreciate it. I dont know if i will be as fun as senator kennedy. Ill try. I think you can be. Ive seen you give speeches. He and i together called for Mark Zuckerberg to testify before any of this blew up just because we thought all the Tech Executives should come before the Judiciary Committee and figure out whats going on with privacy and violations and then this happened and now hes coming. What is your top question for Mark Zuckerberg . What is the one answer you feel
like he really needs to give, you and americans . How do you fix this . And this is really about 87 million people. We know lately in the last week found out it was 37 million more than we thought, and that is literally the combined population of california, texas and new york. Thats how many peoples facebook profiles were given to a russian professor, russianamerican professor who then somehow gave did to cambridge analytica. We still havent gotten to the bottom of what happened. Although a whistleblower, wiley was on Meet The Press this morning with chuck todd. He said its possible that this information is housed in russia, that he doesnt rule it out that some of it has been housed there. Obviously these are some of the kind of questions we want answered. But i think whats really important, and there will be a bunch much senators asking questions, so not just dwelling on the past, but how they are going to fix it moving forward. We actually have a clip of that interview that Christopher Wiley did with chuck. Lets look at a little bit of t. It was quite clear early on
steve bannon absolutely wanted to use it for, you know, republican candidates and the early projects that, you know, we started to apply the research to were indeed altright candidates in the united states. So, just to put that in a little bit of context, steve bannon was on the board involved heavily in cambridge analytica. What is your view about how this data was used . Does facebook understand, and do you believe that this was explicitly to help the Trump Campaign . We dont know that. Thats one of the questions im sure someone will ask. But the key here is you put yourself at risk when you start giving peoples data away. People think theyre taking an innocent psychological quiz. None of them thinks that their information is going to actually be given to a political consultant. I dont care if its for a republican or democrat. They dont think that. And thats their problem. They have built a product with no locks on the doors and no alarms, and now they are finally coming forward and saying that we want to fix some things. The other piece of this is political ads. Something that ive been advocating for now for over a year, and we have a really good bill that Lo And Behold the honest ads bill. And they are now going to support as of last week. Facebook is supporting the bill and they are voluntarily going
to be putting out all these ads, both Candidate Ads and issue ads. And thats critical. The issue ads piece of it. Thats things like black lives matter protests that were manipulated or used differently to try and incite, we think, political im