Transcripts For MSNBCW Morning Joe 20170321 : vimarsana.com

MSNBCW Morning Joe March 21, 2017

Now put over people who have very important work to do to lead this country. So the faster you can get to the bottom of this, its going to be better for all americans. What a day in washington, the chairman of the House Committee. What a way to phrase that, a big, gray cloud that you put over it. That would be like bonnie and clyde saying why are you chasing me. Swiftly with the bureaus investigation. Director comey officially confirming that investigation in yesterdays hearing, a probe into ties between the russian government and President Trumps campaign. And the white house perhaps seeing where the investigation might be heading suddenly distancing themselves from former Campaign Paul manafort and security adviser Michael Flynn. That was baghdad moment saying Paul Manafort was a bit player. Well start with that among our guests this morning former director of the cia and nsa retired general Michael Hayden. Ranking member of Senate Intelligence committee will be joining us. Welcome to morning joe. Its tuesday march 21st. Were on capitol hill. We have david ignatius, executive producer and cohost of the circus, showtime and analyst for cnbc news mark halperin. Msnbc political analyst and former chair of the Republican National committee Michael Steele and reporter for the New York Times michael schmitt. Were going to take a moment. Such an embarrassment. How do you put in context what happened yesterday. I saw a lot of reporters covering it almost at a loss for words. Its fairly easy to put into context. Anybody that goes beyond this, i think for one side or the other is exaggerating. The first thing that came out was, obviously number one, donald trump was lying barack obama with the wiretap. We knew it but now for sure. We knew it but got confirmation from the fbi and justice department. They have absolutely no information, neither did clapper, neither did the republicans or the democrats that run the committee. You can put that aside. Number two, the fbi is investigating donald trump and his team. Wow. Thats shocking. Number three has to be the followup. There was only one person on election day when americans went to vote that was under investigation by the fbi, and it was not Hillary Clinton. And history will look back and ask and wonder why. A thousand times over why Hillary Clinton was the focus of the fbi investigation and the news following that and why the person whose team was actually under investigation, when americans went into the voting booth and selected him as president of the United States, was actually the one under investigation. Thats the difference right there. Hillary was under investigation. While in the case of trump it was trumps team. No. They are all under investigation, theres no excuse for that. Im trying to think were talking about collusion. It made me sad to see how republicans on the House Committee absented yesterday. The fbi director comes and actually reports, mika, that theres an investigation between the white house, the president s campaign and collusion with russia. And all most House Republicans wanted to talk about was how the reporters got the information to get out to america that their president , the white house, and the Campaign Team is under investigation for collusion. Theres so many metaphors that are apt and appropriate. I am glad i know the republicans in the senate will not cover themselves. Im going to say it and i say this word very lightly, with shame, with shame that was shown by some members on the Republicans Committee by continuing to go after talking about possibly the felony and arrest of reporters, listed Barack Obamas name. He listed lynchs name. I can go on and on. It was one of the most shameful performances at a time at a time when america is at a turning point. Were an investigation between active president of the United States, his Campaign Team, and collusion with russia. The entire election in question. Republicans proving yesterday, at least in the house, not that way in the senate, at least in the house, that they are completely incapable, mika, of actually investigating this down the middle. Can you imagine being Hillary Clinton watching the proceedings yesterday . All right. Were going to get to much more of the fbi directors hearing in a moment but first real quick. Rapidfire. Quick takeaway. Yesterday was a turning point in this story. It just felt different. Comeys calm, deliberate voice going through really much more strongly phrased charges than we expected, his rebuke of President Trump on the question of his accusation of illegal activity by obama, and head of nsa equally rebuking trump for having brought in the British Spy Service gchq and accusing them of aiding this. I think it will be very hard now for trump and the Trump White House to use the same tactics of distraction and throwing out new charges. And i think the period in which they attack the Intelligence Community and thought they could get away with that, i think thats over now. The country this isnt fake news. We all watched it together. We lived this together. Its not something coming at us from some other place. Weve now experienced it. We shared the feeling we had during watergate. Were watching with horrid fascination. Nobody, mark halperin, looked at the director of the fbi or the admiral up there and thought, this is fake news. Those two presented themselves in a way, they had facts, they had details. And its hard to brush that away. It may not be fake news but i continue to be critical of comey unlat legal deciding when to reveal things on investigations. Its completely improper. He did it in the case of Hillary Clinton, he did it in the case here. Compelled. If the public is interested in something ill reveal an ongoing probe. Ive never heard of this standard and i think its a dangerous one to set. Do you think he had any choice but to reveal this yesterday. Id like to know. When you have republicans that were on the Judiciary Committee like Lindsey Graham saying we expect you to come, we expect you to testify, we expect you to tell us. Members of congress would like to know a lot mark, mark, mark arent you glad to know . Americans have a right to know that the sitting president of the United States is being investigated for colluding with the russians. But its been going on for a while. Why is he revealing it now . Dont you think americans have a right to know the president of the United States is being investigated by the fbi for collusion with the russians . I dont think it helps the probe to have it publicly disclosed. Thats the standard reason. The reason im saying, the biggest thing i have is what you said. It makes a mockery of our system to have a hearing pout oversight and investigation where the party thats running the committee is just trying to defend the president. It makes a mockery who actually prompted this, Michael Steele . Where did it start . Did it start with tweets saturday morning that were lies . We can eequivocally say the president was lying saturday morning when he was, i dont know, four or five tweets. I think the former president of a felony. Its one of the problems for sean spicer and everyone else going out there, including members of congress, to your point, joe, going out there trying to put a different angle on this. This began at one time and place with one individual and that was the president with a tweet. The word that struck me yesterday morning more than anything else was tone deaf. The way the members proceeded down republican. Republican members was tone deaf. The country is objectively looking at this. The country doesnt want to believe something nefarious happened between the president , the russians, et cetera. They have objectively looked it it from the very beginning. If you look at the polls, this is one area where republicans even want an independent investigation. Republicans, two out of three americans want an independent investigation on these russian ties, americans care, even in trey gowdys district they care. Yet i was shocked by what i saw yesterday and i was so seldom shocked. Thats what struck me because of that very point. Lets play some of this out. While the fbi hearing was going on white house Secretary Sean Spicer had the task of holding his daily press briefing. When questioned about the testimony up to that point that the fbi is investigating russia ties to the prump campaign, spicer seemed to try and distance the administration from former members of that campaign. Now that we know theres an ongoing very investigation by the fbi, does the president stand by comments that hes not aware of any contacts his Campaign Associates had with russia during the election . Yes. And the second one is, has anyone from the white house can i just amend sure. Just to be clear. Im trying to think through this for a second. Obviously general flynn. Before the election. Im not aware of any at this time. Even general flynn was a volunteer of the campaign. Obviously theres been discussion of Paul Manafort who played a limited role for a very limited amount of time. Mark, youre laughing. Flynn, i was told throughout the entire campaign was the most trusted person close to trump. He flew everywhere with donald trump. He was side by side with donald trump. Nobody was with donald trump more than anybody else. Day and night by the way. Paul manafort was the genius. He was the guy who was going to get the delegates. He was the guy who was going to help trump win the nomination. I hear this from trump and everybody on the inside. Flynn in particular, wired by his side. The fact that hes a volunteer doesnt do anything to diminish the huge influential role he had on all sorts of things, obviously Foreign Policy. Its strange when youre trying to establish credibility on this to make an assertion about flynn and manafort. It flies in the face of the facts. David, we were all there. We all saw it. We all watched it. How does sean spicer do a baghdad bob. Talking to a room full of reporters who were there. And saw flynn get on the plane with donald trump. Thats whats changed, whats different. We did watch this. Nobody it tell us it was fake, created by journalists, we watched it. By the end of yesterdays hearing, i thought even the republicans, even trey gowdy talked in a different tone. Theres a large gray cloud over the presidency and us as republicans and its not going to go away until this is resolved. That was a statement by republicans. It isnt fake. Its going to run its course. We want you to do it quickly and decisively but we know now this cant be changed. What did you make of trey gowdys testimony. Questioning. Questioning. Double that with sean spicer, how did the republicans do yesterday . Thats the problem. Again, the sense of trying to protect something that really you cant. Just let it run the course. Be honest and open. I think a lot of folks are saying around the country before hand, just do the hearings and get it behind us. So the problem as a politician, like trey gowdy or anybody else who might defend the president just to try and get close to him or get something out of him because youve got actual work you want to do, isnt this president proven as lying repeatedly as someone who cant be trusted. You dont know if hes going to be with you now or later. That gets in the way of something the members want to do. Big agenda paul ryan and the house team laid out. That type of thing gets in the way. Not worth it. Here is the problem. They are playing to a limited, small base of people now. Just looking at republicans, not looking at broad, generic republican constitt wauency out there. Its a limited base. That base is tied to trump. They dont want the blowback and noise. That was my sense watching a lot of that hearing playing to that particular base as opposed to doing the objective thing and putting it out on the table. Ive seen it before, ive seen it before, i saw it in 2006, started in 2005. I had a friend in 2005 who said he wanted to run for congress in 2006. I said dont do it, a big wave is coming. Republicans have to understand right now if this continues, and this is awfully early to say this, if this continues, at least in the house, and there were a lot of senate seats, they are going to be shocked Election Night if they dont take care of themselves. If the Republican Party doesnt start taking care of themselves and stop making fools of themselves for a guy who is going to keep tweeting lies and nonsense. They cant chase that around. They cant defend the indefensible. They cant see what a sad and grave time this is for our country. Youve certainly seen it in the senate with senate republicans. Sure, theres some heroes there. Mitch mcconnell, ben sasse, Lindsey Graham, john mccain, susan collins. Ben sasse on the show this morning. There are a group of republicans who stood up from the very beginning and said, wait a second, like Mitch Mcconnell, just volunteered it in an interview. You dont think youre subject to judicial review. Were all subject to judicial review. Then he was like wilford brimsly. Yeah, they are pretty smart there. There are some other people smart in washington. Its a big morning. Im not painting the Republican Party with one broad stroke. There are conservatives, moderates, independent republicans showing their true colors and putting country first. Here is more of fbi director james comey yesterday confirming there indeed is a counterintelligence investigation into russian influence on the 2016 election and any ties between the russian government and President Trumps campaign. We have taken the extraordinary step in coordination with the department of justice of briefing this congresss leaders, including leaders of this committee, in a classified setting about the detail of the investigation but i cant go into those details here. Some folks may want to make comparisons to past instances where the department of justice and the fbi have spoken about the details of some investigations. But please keep in mind that those involve the details of completed investigations. Is it fair to say youre still relatively early in your investigation . Its hard to say because i dont know how much longer it will take. But weve been doing this all this investigation began in late july. For counterintelligence investigation, thats a fairly short period of time. Putin hated secretary clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference against somebody he hated so much. They dont like nato. They think nato circles and threat bs them. Would they like to see sanctions go away. Yes. Expressed an admiration for putin. I hope youll reformulate the question. Mr. Putin would like people who like him. They will be back in 2020, they may be back in 2018. One of the lessons they may draw from this is they were successful because they introduced chaos and collusion and sowed discord and doubt about our democratic process. As we go forward here, theres a Senate Intelligence committee which joe said would probably be more bipartisan process. What do we know about what they plan in terms of hearings and investigations. Comey says this thing is just getting under way. Its many months in. What do we know about what they are actually doing as part of this counterintelligence investigation. Counterintelligence is actually the fbis second highest priority behind counterterrorism. We usually dont see them make cases with this. Their best wins in that area are done secretly. They are usually not indicting people and bringing them before court. That will be different here fl comey will know they really took a look at this and dug into it. They have been looking at it since july. Theres a team of analysts and agents at the fbi put together to especially work on this. As he did say, we are early here. We really dont know what they found. Theres no real indication they have gone out and done interviews and really tried to press people, these aides, to try and find out more and use leverage against them. Thats that. On the senate side, the interesting thing there will be to see what burrs tenor is, will he act like nunez. That gives him the opportunity to push more for select committee or independent commission. Warner needs burr to put pressure on the agencies like fbi to give them evidence and other stuff they have collected in their investigations. Whatever happens here its going to take a very, very long time because comey is going to want his agents to really, really get to the bottom of this. This is much more complicated than the email investigation. This now involves lots of different players operating abroad. People in russia where the fbi cannot operate openly. So this is not going to be just like, oh, well be done in a year here. This is something that can even draw into maybe take three years, four years into the next campaign. David ignatius. Michael, in a typical fbi investigation, youd seek to go after the lower down people. Youd try to pressure them to testify against higher ups. Youd flip these witnesses to assemble a criminal case. Do you think thats how this will proceed as they move toward the more Prominent Trump Administration and personalities. As you your self first reported about general flynn, theres a lot of folks here in trump world who look to have some type of exposure that we know about, different types of contact, different types of viol

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