For the second time in three weeks, the vote on the Health Care Bill gets postponed, this time its because of the absence of senator john mccain recovering from surgery. The question now will be, will republicans have the votes to pass the bill when mccain returns . I believe as soon as we have a full contingent of senators, that well have that vote. Its important we do so. And after serving nine years behind bars, o. J. Simpson could soon be a free man. First up for you on this sunday, President Trump let one lawyer take all the questions today about russia and his sons meetings with russian nationals last year at trump tower. Jay sukalow at times tried to distance the president s actions from his sons. He tried to shift the focus to ousted fbi director james comey, and called Robert Muellers investigation a witch hunt. Most of the interviews focused on the meeting that has dominated the headlines for a week now. Take a look. Do you know for sure everyone that was at that meeting with donald trump jr. . No, i dont represent donald trump jr. , and i do not know everyone for sure that was at that meeting, i can tell you the president wasnt aware of the meeting and did not attend it. When did the president become aware of this meeting . Well, the president said he became aware of it very recently, right before this came out. Is it possible as the president s lawyer to say the president knows of no other meetings with his Campaign Staff and russians . The obviously, the president has been very clear on that. He said he has no had no meetings, was aware of no meetings with russians, was not aware of this one until, really, right before it all broke. Isnt it kind of important whether or not what donald trump jr. And manafort and kushner did, isnt it also important whether or not its legal, whether or not its wrong, whether or not its ethical . Youre conflating so, youre conflating, jake, three perspectives here. The legality, was the meeting and what took place legal or not, of course, as almost every legal expert says its not illegal, and then youre trying to put a moral ethical aspect to it, and its easy to do that in 20 20 hindsight, but not when youre in the middle of a campaign. But do you expect what we heard from the president s pick to run the fbi is the fbi should have been notified . Well, ive wondered why the secret service, if this was nefarious, why the secret Service Allowed these people in. The president had secret service at that point. That raised a question with me. Doesnt it show intent and willingness on the part of don junior and jared and Paul Manafort to collude with the russians . And Natalia Veselnitskaya had close ties to people in the kremlin. Well, number one, the discussion was if it was going to be about russian Opposition Research that a russian lawyer had, the fact is, you know that goes on in campaigns all the time. Opposition research is a big part of campaigning. It doesnt go on with the russians all the time, jay. But look, heres what happened. First of all, nothing happened, no exchange of information. And then we turn to the polls. New out this sunday, one showing the president with the lowest Approval Rating nearing the sixmonth mark for any president going back 70 years. Only 36 of americans in this abc news the Washington Post survey back President Trumps performance so far. But an nbc news the wall street journal poll shows in american counties which fuelled trumps election win across the country, his support stands at 50 . When we break down the numbers in surge counties where the president did much better than mitt romney, the number goes even higher. In flip counties that once backed president obama, mr. Trumps rating goes the other way. It dips to 44 . Nbcs Kelly Odonnell is in new jersey, not far from the president s golf course retreat, where he is at this weekend. Kelly, so much to digest today. Main headline, well start with this, is the issue about what the white house is saying regarding the polls and as well as regarding russia. Reporter well, as we often say, richard, the white house is not talking about this, in the official capacity of the white house, they are focused on other things. And when we had a briefing today looking ahead for the week, they are talking about their domestic agenda, buy american, manufacturing, those kinds of things, so we have to separate the white house officially is not engaging in this, not even commenting on the polling numbers. What we did see, and you played clips of the president s personal lawyer hired outside the white house, whos been the chief spokesman on television for the president , weve not heard from the lawyers at least publicly for Jared Kushner and donald trump jr. , who are, of course, involved in this, but each has a separate lawyer or teams of lawyers. So, for the president , this is kind of a quasi white house fight, but it is separate from the white house. The president himself has used twitter, as he so often does, to sort of mix things up today, raising the issue of why his son is being, quote, scorned by the media. He raised that against hillary clinton, raising her, talking about deleted emails and that sort of thing, so he is defending his son. Also, trying to discredit the media and the reporting on this. Also talking about that new polling where the president says that the polling around the election time was certainly inaccurate, but in his view almost 40 isnt so bad. Of course, its 36 . So the white house has a lot of issues on its plate, trying to look ahead, take care of its own agenda, try to have something positive going forward. The president , whos in the middle of all of this, feeling the need to defend himself. Legal advice was he not talk about these things, but he does it with feisty fighting spirit, especially defending his son and going after the news media. That has some traction with some of his supporters who are also critical of the coverage, but as we heard through a number of those clips from the shows today, there are experts looking at this on the intelligence committees and are involved in the investigation who see real areas of concern that need to be pursued. It will take time for that to unfold, but this is a very difficult time for the Trump White House now that there is an example of a meeting and a range of stories that go around it that only raises more questions and is not calming this down. Richard . Latest reporting there from nbcs Kelly Odonnell, very close by to the president this afternoon. Thank you, kelly. I want to bring in msnbc contributor and former fbi double agent, author of how to catch a russian spy. Also alan smith, politics writer, and sarah westwood, all three. Lets start with you, allan. You heard all of the statements and we, of course, are taking excerpts from the five interviews that came from jay sekolow. Some of the defense hes made is this parallel to ukraine, right, and supposed aide of hillary clinton. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, first off weve seen in recent days that the Trump Defense teams defense is collusion, what laws are broken, its gone from no collusion happened to collusion is not illegal, if this specific meeting took place, if what they are describing is what happened. And then the teams also trying to connect it to this politico story from january about how a dnc operative met with members of the Ukrainian Embassy to get information on Paul Manafort. They are saying this had an effect on what happened to Paul Manafort later in the campaign when he was eventually ousted based on that ukrainian ledger, so they are making an argument the dnc did this, they are falling again on the campaign and really trying to sort of muddy the waters on necessarily what was wrong with this meeting with donald trump jr. Are those two examples the same . No. I dont think they are. I mean, clearly, theres an attempt to put a moral equivalency here, which i dont think is going to pan out. Taking a little bit of a turn here, lets focus for a second on what the russian intent was. I think thats an important part of this. Its clear to me someone whos worked with the russians that there was clearly a desire to try to make contact with the trump circle, trump orbit, but also a second thing. The types of people they are using. Weve heard a lot of these werent russian officials, they have perhaps ties to russia. That is a textbook example of what we would call a cutout. And it goes back to the other part of a russian intelligence operation. You have the mission objective, but you also want to make sure theres nonattribution, so to me this sounds like something the russians would do and that the russians were quite worried about being compromised and having attributions. Certainly you can see that in the fact they used people where the ties to russia were perhaps questionable. Softer touches, if you will, and connections. Absolutely. Sarah, as you look at the response here and we heard there from Kelly Odonnell nothing fir official, but there are tweets from the president from time to time, and one today, he said here with all the fraudulent reporting, fake news is distorting democracy in our country. There again eluding to the reporting coming out here. Not seemingly that jay sekolow or any member of his team can keep the president from coming out with statements at some point could hurt him. Absolutely. I think thats probably why they sought to keep the president isolated from this information for as long as possible. They didnt bring him into the circle until just a few days before this news was set to break, even though the reporting suggests that his legal team was aware of this meeting weeks, if not months before it emerged. Clearly President Trump knows hes kind of winning every time hes hitting the media, at least in the eyes of his base. They love that. Its a political victory for him, its easy, its cost free, and he can blame his troubles on the media and in the eyes of his supporters, the information is coming from the media and it continues to buoy him, this fight that hes having, with the press even though its not really taking on the allegations themselves head on, its his way of coping, though, and it has helped him navigate previous controversies. Theres been some movement in his legal team, intimating there. Allan with ty cobb onboard, hits the ground running with a new week starting tomorrow, really today, but in terms a work day tomorrow, whats that mean in terms of what he brings to the party . It signals President Trump is increasingly taking this seriously, this is another criminal defense attorney added to the team, the teams getting beefed up. They know theres more coming here. Hes the man, though, in the space . Absolutely. Hes highly respected, known as one of the top people in washington, and representing some of these issues. Navid, when you see who was in the room with trump junior, and weve gone through the names before and understand there are six were confirming here on msnbc news, put that together. Its certainly been said this is pretty critical of the steps by which have been used in other situations by the russians. This is part of the playbook. Thats absolutely right. What we would call it is a dangle. In fact, while we dont know the names of the other people in the room, what would be a game changer if one of those people was, in fact, an official russian government employee, official, or connected directly to the russian government, but this is the standard, you know, operating procedure for them. They were clearly trying to probe and see if they could get into the campaign and see if there was a friendly port. You know, i think the person on the americans, on the u. S. Side that is perhaps in the biggest legal jeopardy is Jared Kushner, because what you see here, while this was a reactive action by the trump campaign, that is to say the russians came calling, they accepted the meeting, what you see is different, Jared Kushner trying to set up meetings with, in fact, kislyak and that is, perhaps, a trend that we will be hearing a lot more about. New york times mentioned very clearly laying out how this is not new stuff to him. He had gone through and is very aware of the dynamics of how to conduct a meeting and keeping it covert if need be. Sarah, finally, these poll numbers when we look at the counties that were essential to President Trump winning, and we look at what nbc news and the wall street journal found, this topic of russia and health care not resinating. Right. And thats something that democrats have some of them started to realize and been weary of diverting all of their energy into pushing these russian allegations because it doesnt necessarily resinate with some of the voters that democrats will need to flip in 2018 and in future president ial elections. The where you see President Trumps numbers starting to fall, its been a steady decline. It hasnt dropped sharply every time weve seen a russianrelated controversy, but the steady decline can be attributed to the stagnation of his agenda, and you can more or less draw a Straight Line between that and the russian controversies, which are whats paralyzing his agenda, but folks are responding more to the fact that nothing is getting done than the fact that President Trump looks like his Administration May have been misleading about the russian allegations. What were seeing so far, somewhat bullet proof for the most part in terms of these counties that we polled. Sarah, allan, thank you all for your great conversation. Thank you. Despite the polls showing historically low popularity, President Trump still has a support of millions of americans. Later were going to visit one of the ohio counties where trump did extremely well last year to see what people there think today and what they think of him now. Plus, acquitted of murder and convicted of robbery. After nine years behind bars, o. J. Simpson is now up for parole. Next, his chances of finally becoming, potentially, a free man. Whoa youre not taking these. Hey, hey, hey youre not taking those. Whoa, whoa youre not taking that. Come with me. Youre not taking that. Youre not taking that. Youre not taking that. Mom, im taking the subaru. Dont be late. Even when were not there to keep them safe, our Subaru Outback will be. vo love. Its what makes a subaru, a subaru. Nitrites or artificial ham has preservatives. Tes, now its good for us all. Like those who like. Sweet those who prefer heat. Sfx a breath of air and those who just love meat. Oscar mayer deli fresh. Sweet introducing the easiest way to get gillette blades noo text blades to gillette on demand text to reorder blades with gillette on demand. And get 3 off your first order i wasnt there to hurt anybody. I just wanted my personal things and i realize i was stupid and im sorry. I didnt mean to steal anything from anybody, and i didnt know i was doing anything illegal. I thought i was confronting friends and retrieving my property. So im sorry. Im sorry for all of it. Yeah, back to 2008, o. J. Simpson there pleading for mercy at his sentencing hearing then. His bungled attempt to retrieve memorabilia from a Vegas Hotel Room ended in a conviction for Armed Robbery and a 33year prison sentence. Hes spent now nine years behind bars and now 70 years old, simpson will again make his case for leniency when he appears before the nevada parole board thursday. Once a hero and actor, his star fell when he was accused of murdering his exwife and her best friend in 1994. Simpson was acquitted but a civil jury found him liable and ordered him to pay 25 million in damages to the brown and goldman families. Simpson claimed he was trying to get the memorabilia back to pay the civil judgment against him. Joining me now, defense attorney and former prosecutor, karen de soto. Good friend of the network, certainly. Karen, would that work as he goes forward to the parole hearing, that sort of approach . Welt, he already went up for parole actually in 2013 and he got it, so, you know, theres certain factors that the parole board look for. Obviously, the goldman and brown murders are not supposed to be considered. How that works unconsciously, though, richard, is another question. But they look at such factors like his age. We know simpson is now 70. It is actually a first conviction, right, so even though the goldman, that was a big deal, but he was not convicted, so that cant be considered, and his behavior. Those are the factors that are going to be considered. Hes been through the process in 2013, and i see no reason why in 2017 anything has changed. Will he get it . Yes. I believe that hell get it, because he already got it once, and there are no behavior problems that im aware of. There could be, but lack of any behavior problems, i dont think hes going to have a problem whatsoever. Now, he is one of those quote, unquote, star inmates. Is he going to get special treatment . Well, of course he probably does get special treatment. However, the parole board has a certain set of guidelines. Its the same throughout the whole entire state of nevada. Does he get special attention in prison . Probably, he is o. J. Simpson, so celebrity does need to be in consideration and his coconspirator got out of prison on appeal, the Appellate Court feeling he was tainted by o. J. s celebrity. When we look at what might happen next, if he does get out, what will happen with him . Well, he could be a reality star. Many folks have done it. We all know about the book he wrote in prison, which got a lot of, a lot of attention. Would he be eligible for reality shows . Sure. Would a large portion of that money have to go back to the browns and the simpsons . Yes, just like the proceeds of the book. What would happen with the browns and simpsons in that case . No other chapter . Well, theres lots of chapters left, because he did file bankruptcy court. When he got the 600,000 in advance for writing the book,