Lee, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt and New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters and in new york along with willie geist we have msnbc contributor Mike Barnacle and the president of the Foreign Relations and author of the book war of choice, richard haas. I know david especially is hoping that hes next and that hell get am rosas job. But it appears that cable tv is like the bench for the president. It looks like it. The attorney speaking on fox news amplifying or perhaps introducing the idea that the entire Mueller Investigation is a conspiracy against President Trump, that is President Trumps argument. Hes been tweeting about it that the investigation is a witch hunt and it appears he wants to surround himself with attorney who is agree with him that this is in fact a witch hunt against him. That should be interesting and again, worries about the potential firing of mueller. We begin though with that shakeup in President Trumps legal team. Michael schmidt, you and your colleagues, youre reporting in the New York Times that trump recently weighed out loud to Close Associates whether he should dismiss ty cobb. Hes a lawyer on the team who has pushed for a strategy of fulling cooperating with the special counsel investigation. According to a person who spoke with trump late on monday, the president reassured cobb that he has no plans to fire him. Im not sure what that means in part to prevent a narrative that his team was in disarray. Meanwhile, trumps lead attorney, john dowd has reportedly considered leaving because he feels that he has no control over the president s behavior according to two people briefed on the matter. Ive heard that as well. In response to the report, one of the president s personal lawyers, tells nbc news that dowd and cobb are fully engaged and continue to represent the president and his office, but the president has already made one change to his legal team, with a move that reflect as shift to omore confrontational stance towards mueller. The New York Times was first to report that joe degenova will join the president s legal team later this week. As a contributor to fox news, he has repeatedly pushed the theory as you heard that the fbi and the Justice Department have been working together to intentionally frame trump. Make no mistake about it. A group of fbi and doj people were trying to frame donald trump of a falsely created crime. They conspired to exonerate improperly and politically Hillary Clinton and also if she lost to frame the incoming president of the United States with a false crime. What they have done to the department and the fbi is undermine the confidence of the American People in federal Law Enforcement. It is disgraceful and it all stems from their animus to President Trump. He served as special counsel in the 1990s and was later hired by the new york senate to investigate elliot spitzer. It was just last week that the New York Times reported the president was talking to bill clintons impeachment attorney about joining the white house to help deal with the special counsel inquiry. Trump responded to the article via twitter calling reports that he was going to add another lawyer to his legal team false. So whats true . Well, i first of all i think that the Randall County folks wou Hillary Clinton folks would argue. Thats a bit of a bank shot. Think of the legal team is what we see in the white house, like we see within the campaign, chaos. That is whats unfolding here. Hes looking for a badgic bullet. Some way to deal with mueller and thinks theres a guy out there can do this. Every part of this white house is a episode of the apprentice and whos going to get fired, whos going to get ahead. It literally is kind of falling that way. Yeah, and you get to audition on television. If you go on fox news or anywhere else hes watching and he may hire you and put you in the administration. I was interested to hear that john dowd is worried he has no control over the president. There arent going to be many attorneys who can meet it. Do you think he was auditioning or perhaps, you know, when he came out the other day when he said the Mueller Investigation must end, do you think that was a message to the President Trump that i am on your side if President Trump was waivering about john daowd . He did want the president previously to fully cooperate with the investigation. I had a chance to speak to dowd last night. I think what happened was is that ten days ago the President Trump met with emmett flood and they did not know about this and that really unnerved them. They were wondering at the time whether they were on the way out. And im not sure if that led to this, but sometimes as we see with the president , folks start a auditioning and maybe thats what we saw when dowd went as far as he did on saturday. So david, just looking at the overall state of this presidency, how is it possible that this part of it all is not completely consuming . I think it is completely consumer. We now have a sign of how President Trump intends to fight this battle. He has chosen a scrappy cable news style infighter to be his additional advocate. Joe is not a fancy white shoe lawyer. Dowd andty cobb have pretty good pedigre pedigrees. Theyre well known as defense lawyers. Joe is a street fighter and hes going to do for the president what he does on cable tv. The president is going to clearly fight this in the media. If you wanted a lawyer whos going to fight it in court you would have chosen emmitt flood or somebody else. This is a sign of where were going to go and its going to get rougher. Could it get ugly or uglier despite all that . Despite the president s heightened attacks on the special counsel investigation, witch hunt and all that, yesterday, trump called the investigation a total witch hunt with massive conflicts of interest. When asked about the need for legislation, second Ranking Senate republican john cornyn told reporters quote, i dont think thats going to happen so i think its not necessary and obviously legislation requires a president ial signature and i dont see the necessity of picking that fight right now. He also called rhett tick on mueller unhelpful and if trump fired him quote, the consequences would be so overwhelming and here is senator orrin hatch. I feel confident he wont be fired. Muellers an honest man. Hes a decent guy, but you know, theres some differences of opinion between the administration and mr. Mueller, but muellers a very, very tough guy. Why are you so confidence that he wont do this . Because i think it would be the stupidest thing anybody could do. That may be drew, but the confidence that orrin hatch and john cornyn displays, i dont think a lot of people would have thought he would have fired james comey. They dont know where the president will go on it. They dont know whether the president would appear on the guidelines of any legislation at this point. This is an old story and it gets to the root of mu man nature being so unpredictable and the human nature element is that everyone, including a president of the United States always gets nervous and a little frightened when the cops are about to knock on the door and this is whats going on here. And Michael Schmidt, i would like to ask you, the disarray within the president s legal team, the chaos that has been created here, how much of it has to do with their apprehension about what might be about to happen . Well, theyre coming up on probably the biggest decision theyve had to make during the investigation, which is whether to sit down with mueller for an interview. And theyre deeply divided about this. The president who thinks hes his best smokesman really wants to do this. He thinks he can go in and explain to mueller how he did nothing wrong and hes not going to say anything to get him into trouble. Dowd thinks this is a terrible idea. Theyre concerned. They know this is a president who does not tell the truth often and would go on and on and could easily get himself into trouble where he in that part may not have criminal exposure. Or he could be on to something. Attacks against the socalled deep state the president and some republicans may be taking hold. More americans now believe that National Policy the being manipulated or districted by a deep state, that according to the newest Monmouth University poll. 6 in 10 americans believe that government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. 26 say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials. Why this view of the deep state seems to be growing, 24 are somewhat familiar with the term and 63 are not familiar. However, as monmouth described the term as unelected military officials who secretly manipulate or direct National Policy, nearly 3 in 4 americans said they believe that the deep state exists. One in five said it does not. And i think if the facebook story and Cambridge Analyticas that were coming, well be doing that a lot more later, but this is real. And this president may be on to something whether its right or wrong. This is i dont think you can look at that any other way in that its a direct result of what weve seen the president try to do which is sew doubt about people in the administration, whether its the fbi and other agencies, and weve seen since he came into office him do this every single day, whether its on twitter, whether its things he says publicly, whether its from the white house podium, and clearly this is having an impact and this is the battle that he has been fighting while his lawyers may want to fight a different one. And richard haas, sewing doubt in the members of the fbi and the cia and saying things that arent true like they are democrats when theyre republicans. This is the beginning of something potentially dangerous . We used to talk about american exceptionalism and now were increasingly looking like everybody else and thats not a compliment and coming back to something you raised before, mika, this is not happening in a vacuum. Over the next two or three months this administration is going to face three enormous decisions, what to do about these tariffs, and what to do about the Iran Nuclear Agreement and the idea that it is consumed by this chaotic churn of people and what to do about this investigation, the combination of the two, again, this is about as bad as it gets. As bad as it gets and david, chaos, one one Foreign Policy disaster, im trying to think of the right word, one wrong move and chaos could turn into Something Else. Its a really dangerous time. Real challenges for an inexperienced president , thank goodness we have very good people in the military. I just want to note one thing about this deep state poll. Its a very dangerous thing when most of the country begins to believe that a small group in the country is manipulating decisions. Weve seen that historically in countries that begin to break down. Ive spent much of my life reporting from countries in the middle east where people believe that, that conspirator yal idea that politics is imbedded. If the United States is becoming a country like that, people have to fight for democracy. If most people think my vote is stolen, it doesnt matter then you get into that it appeals to that feeling that people have and you begin to go over the edge, so i take that poll finding very seriously. I do too and mike, as you point out, every day, this is not what people are thinking about. This had to be explained to people in the poll exactly what it was that was being polled. Because theyre thinking about today and tomorrow. And their wallets. This could be creeping in. Mika, david is exactly right. And there are arguably two great tracts that have been written throughout history. One is the bible and the other is the constitution of the United States of america. Nd america is an idea. Its not a democracy, its not a republic before it is an idea. And the idea that 74 according to the Monmouth University poll believe as david pointed out there is a deep state run by a military political intellectual hoo hierarchy apart from government and this is the gift weve gotten from donald trump. This is the gift weve gotten from him sur surrendering to Vladimir Putin and causing chaos in the country. The stunning refzlations involving the data company with ties to the campaign. New overnight the Washington Post reports that a package headed for austin, texas, exploded at a fed ex facility in texas this morning. There was a call about an explosion, injuries are unknown at this time. This would be the fifth explosion tied to the incidents in austin. Officials say its clearly the work of a serial bomber. Also this morning, the Weinstein Company has filed for bruptd any in the wake of the allegations against harvey weinstein. Its assets will be acquired by a dallas based equity firm. It would nullify all nondisclosure agreements. Harvey weinstein used nondisclosure agreements to silence his accusers. Those agreements end, effective immediately. It calls it an important step toward justice and this story from arizona. Uber is halting its selfdriving car tests after a woman was struck and killed by one of its Autonomous Vehicles while crossing the street. Cameras captured video footage of the accident from inside and outside the vehicle and the federal investigators are on the case. This is the first pedestrian death by an autonomous vehicle. And still ahead on morning joe, just a day after worldwide news that Cambridge Analytica exploited data from facebook users there is this headline to deal with. Suggesting sex workers and spies could be used to influence elections. But first lets go to bill karins with a check on another noreaster. Three storms and significant travel issues over the next 48 hours. The university of jacksonville southern was hit, the dorms were hit. Some of the roofs have been torn off. Thankfully those students are on spring break but theres questions of where theyll return to. A lot of hail damage in alabama also. Theres some f of the pictures there and hundreds if not thousands of cars with extreme hail damage in northern alabama especially coleman county. So we still have the wind damage for charleston, to savannah. These are the end of these storms that are clearing on out. New thunderstorms so we do have a chance of isolated tornados, jacksonville, myrtle beach, those are the areas included. 65 Million People at risk for this noreaster. Boston, philadelphia, new york, eventually down to d. C. 6 to 12 inches likely areas north and west of baltimore and d. C. Up towards the mountains. D. C. I have you 3 to 6. Baltimore 4 to 8. Most of this accumulates wednesday and the heaviest of it, new york city, hard ford, providence and boston. The Weather Service forecast is almost double my numbers here so well see how it all plays out and funlly Southern California could get five inches of rain in the next few days. Theyre expecting mud slide and debris flows in that region. Theyre trying to get people out of there to protect their lives. So washington, d. C. , 3 to 6 inches of snow. Tonight youll mix in with some sleet. The snow for you is going to be wednesday morning into wednesday afternoon. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. You could simulate confidence or you could experience it for real at the lexus command performance sales event. Lease the 2018 nx 300 for 339 a month for 36 months. Experience amazing at your lexus dealer. This is a tomato you can track from farm, to pot, to jar, to table. And serve with confidence that its safe. This is a diamond you can follow from mine to finger, and trust it never fell into the wrong hands. 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