Transcripts For MSNBCW MSNBC Live With Craig Melvin 20180208

MSNBCW MSNBC Live With Craig Melvin February 8, 2018 18:00:00

Now, Jenny Willowby did speak to the Washington Post about some of the episodes of her marriage to porter. During one of these fights, we were both yelling at each other. I disengaged and removed myself from the fight to go take a shower. And rob wasnt finished fighting i suppose. At that point he was still angry. And so he came and grabbed me by the shoulders here and pulled me out of the shower in a rage. That is her account of what happened as recorded by the Washington Post. As you pointed out, rob porter has said these have been smears and allegations that he denies. This is one of those deeply painful issues in someones personal life that has now spilled out into public view and at the highest level also of the white house. Kelly odonnell at the white house. Thank you. Two republican senators speaking out today about Rob Porter Including the man who helped get who has gone through fbi background checks, its absolutely inconceivable that what these women told the fbi agents didnt get passed along up the chain. They kind of admitted a little bit. The fbi isnt commenting on what they told the white house. They say thats internal. But if kelly knew the details, it is sort of amazing. It also raises the question of who else in the white house has an interim Security Clearance. I think those are important questions. Its not the first time focusing on john kelly there has been a question, problems with john kellys conduct. Look at this time line just dating back to october. October 19. Its when he falsely accused a Democratic Congresswoman Fredricka Wilson of grandstanding in that public event. October 30th, he said of Budget Negotiations that, quote, a lack of ability to compromise led to the civil war. This week, tuesday, he said the dreamer, saying other peoples words, but he said they were either too afraid or what caused all the stir, too lazy to sign up for daca. Receiving to the 1. 8 million the president would protect. And then just wednesday he said he stands by porter as part of a statement as a man of true integrity and honor. Ultimately he would put out a different statement just hours later saying he was shocked. Does john kelly, is he long for this white house . Well, those are all avoidable errors. Mostly avoidable by just not saying anything. Youre the Chief Of Staff, youre not the Press Secretary or the communications director. You dont have to go on the hill and take a jab at dreamers for whether or not they signed up for daca. You dont need to go on tv and talk about your interpretation of the civil war. A lot of these errors could be avoided by just not saying anything. Same thing with the rob porter statement. He did not have to put a statement out there on this issue. So while he was brought in not to be a distract, he does continue making a distract. Even this current distraction were in is also avoidable if protected. Presumably that includes Classified Information routinely. In my experience, yes. I think whats striking to a lot of us right now is that this Vetting Process could have continued all the way until several months ago. The white house is reporting that some might not have been about made aware of some of these concerns about rob porters background until as recently as november. Wouldnt that Vetting Process have occurred months ago . Wouldnt the white house have known about this way back as early as January Of 2017 . So i dont know the specifics of what the but in your experience . In my experience, you have gone through the preClearance Process and the Clearance Process with the fbi before starting position. And so i would imagine over the course of those months, whatever was known would have been known. If i can, lets ask you right now. I know theres going to be briefing at the white house about an hour from now. Its going to be a heck of a day for a person who will be a is just seems increasingly unlikely that this type of information did not make it to the very top of the administration, given the importance of this role, the Classified Information, and, i mean, not only what this says, you know, these allegations say about someone, but that they could be used to compromise him. As blackmail potentially. Thats really one of the concerns here from a National Security standpoint. Thats why the Vetting Process is so important. Lisa, one more question to you on this topic, if i can. What is that role of the Chief Of Staff from your experience . Wouldnt the Chief Of Staff have some obligation to keep the president alerted to some of the circumstances involving his own employers like the people he employed . This one doesnt have full Security Clearance . Is that a conversation a Chief Of Staff would engage the president on or is it just on the Chief Of Staffs plate al e alone . In my experience, i worked closely with the Chief Of Staff. And i would imagine that it is in his interest as well as the Staff Secretarys interest to make the president aware of what he is aware of. Given the sensitive nature of the information were talking about. Theres another member of the Trump Administration who recently departed. Omarosa. Shes currently, as you may have heard, on cbs celebrity big brother. Telling us all about her time in the administration tonight. Here is one of the first clips they released. Take a listen. I was haunted by tweets every single day, like why does he want to tweet this. Does anybody say to him what are you doing . I tried to be that person and then all the people around him attacked me. Should we be worried . Dont say that. Because we are worried but i need you to say no its going to be okay. Its going to not be okay. She says no, its not going to be okay. First of all, to our audience, thats real life as it exists right now. Thats a former adviser to the president whos now on a Celebrity Show that debuted this evening, saying its not going to be okay, that things are really bad behind the scenes. What do you make of that . I mean, omarosa is omarosa. She obviously got on the president s radar by being on the presideshow and john kelly clear she finally had to go. Reince priebus disliked her, thought it was a joke she was in the white house at all, wasnt able to get rid of her because of her previous relationship with the president. Shes someone whos been a hangeron for years. She has the ability to do real damage. No one in the white house was exactly clear what she was doing all day when she came to work. But she was in meetings that she wanted to walk into. They tried to keep her out of them. She could cause damage from the outside. The advice you would give if they were listening to a former clinton Staff Secretary is what . I think its a serious position with a lot of responsibility and it deserves a lot of attention in terms of how thats being conducted. Its nice to meet you in person. Thanks for being here. Shannon, thanks so much. Now to the race against the clock in the latest Government Shutdown showdown on capitol hill. The senate today expected to pass a bipartisan Spending Bill that should happen later this afternoon. But the deal, at least its future, seems uncertain still on the house side. I just think its a bad deal. Are you going to vote for it . I doubt it, unless i hear something else. This Spending Bill is a debt junkys dream. Im not only a no, im a hell no. Democrats could also derail the deal. The Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi taken to the house floor, speaking in support of dreamers. Their situation not mentioned in the senate bill. Msnbcs Garrett Haake is on capitol hill for us. Speaker ryan a short time ago addressed the dreamer issue. What did he have to say . As importantly, are there enough democrat votes to help the republicans if the Freedom Caucus and other conservatives are not on board . So this bill should go through the senate, no problem. Despite the fact it doesnt deal with immigration at all. Thats because leader mcconnell has promised theres going to be this open process on the senate floor next week to deal with immigration and specifically deal with daca. Nancy pelosis protest yesterday was to try to convince paul ryan to do the same thing. Well have an open process. A bunch of bills come to the floor. She called it a queen of the hill process in which the best proposal that gets the most votes wins. Paul ryans not ready to do that, but he did say today he does want to see a daca fix get on to the house floor. Heres part of his remarks on this from earlier this morning. I know that there is a real commitment to solving the daca challenge in both political parties. Thats a commitment that i share. To anyone who doubts my intention to solve this problem and bring up a daca and immigration reform bill, do not. We will bring a solution to the floor, one the president will sign. We must pass this budget agreement. So we can get on to that. So please know we are committed to getting this done. Peter what drives democrats crazy is that one clause in his statement there, a bill that the president will sign. Democrats in the house or senate have said look, the senate is going to let us have a completely open process. Let the senate be the senate and craft the bill and come what may with the president. Paul ryan wants to have assurances that something that comes out of the house wont get a veto. As anybody who tried to get anything done with the president , his opinion on it goes back and forth and that has driven democrats up the wall when it comes to trying to get legislation done in the house. Do they knock it back and get another shortterm extension or wrap it up soon . It will get done today. Theres no reason to think there will be significant problems in the senate. In the house, youll lose folks from both the far right and the far left who are upset about the cost of this or the fact that theres not anything in it for on the immigration issue. But theres a lot in here the democrats actually like and that individual Democratic House members want to claim some credit for. They want to get something done. So i think its more likely than not when people wake up friday morning their government will still be open. Best case scenario, the process of governing from crisis to crisis is done for al while for all of our sakes. Now to other Breaking News were watching today. Another wild ride on wall street. You see the board next to me. The dow tumbling today, at times over 600 points after mondays historic drop. For more on the dow, now down approaching 500 points, cnbcs sue herera joining us. A lot of people thinking they need to take a little peptobismol. You can excuse people for getting a little seasick. What is causing the instability today . Is there any reason to believe this thing finally settles down . I think its going to be a few days before we see this market settle out. We had that big selloff on monday. If history is any guide, markets tend to retest those low levels at least once before things steady out and i think thats what were seeing today. Were down about 600 points on the Dow Jones Industrial average. Thats better than 2 . The nasdaq is off better than 2 as well. Now, complicating all of this is that Interest Rates are moving higher. Now, that indicates that the economy is somewhat healthy. But it also has traders convinced that the Federal Reserve might be more aggressive in raising rates which is going to make car loans more expensive and your mortgage more expensive. So its that kind of mixed bag of the good news is the economy is healthy enough to sustain higher Interest Rates. The bad news is they may go higher sooner rather than later. All of that put together, plus the political rhetoric in washington, certainly is not helping. And there are a lot of professional traders out there who are saying, you know what, im going to get out of the market right now until things calm down, until we see whether or not we fund the government on friday, to see whether or not we get a debt limit increase. Thats the big one for the market. So there are a couple of key hurdles ahead. Ahead of that, a lot of traders are saying im out of here for now. Hopefully some answers to those questions as early as this evening. Sue herera, thanks very much. Nice to see you, thanks. Comie ing up here, an nbc exclusive. A Top White House official saying the russians did penetration Voter Registration rolls in several states in 2016. Whats the Trump Administration doing to stop it from happening again . House Committee Chairman devin nunes, a wall to divide democratic and republican staffers. The details on a story thats developing as soon as were back. You know whats awesome . Gigspeed internet. 2016 election. And in an nbc news exclusive, Cynthia Mcfadden reports the russian government penetrated the voter roles of more than 20 states, leading up to the election. Successfully compromising several of them. A Senior Intelligence official with direct knowledge of the top secret report says several states had their voting Registration System successfully compromised by the russian government. This, after u. S. Officials had previously revealed 21 states were targeted. We asked Homeland Securities Chief of cyber net security about that secret document. And i cant talk about Classified Information publicly. We saw targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of that 21 were actually successfully penetrated. Reporter the fear, russia would remove voters names from the roll, creating chaos, potentially tilting the election. We termed the probing of databases was coming from the russian government. Reporter johnson was dhs secretary when these russian intrusions were taking place. U. S. Intelligence knew by the summer of 2016 the hacking originated from russia. Two months later, they told the public. Should you have done it before october 7th . Any time you make a difficult National Security decision, somebody says why did you do that, and somebody else says, why didnt you do it sooner . Reporter it turned out voters names were not removed in 2016 but what about this year . My worry is that since that time, a lot of states have done little to nothing to actually harden their cybersecurity. I would not agree with that assessment. I would say they have all taken it very seriously. Reporter nbc news reached out to those 21 states. California and texas among others say their voter system was never attacked. I stand by the list. This was a snapshot in time. With visibility that the department had at the time. Cynthia mcfadden reporting there. Joined now by ken dilanian, security reporter for nbc news. This goes to heart of one of the fundamental questions weve been trying to resolve for the last yearplus now. Why isnt this president , this administration, doing more to try to crack down on a repeat of what we may have experienced last time . Look at this statistic. Nearly 80 of responders in this Survey Monkey poll, we just did this, say they are somewhat or very concerned the nations Security System might be vulnerable to hacking. I guess the question is why isnt the administration doing more to prepare for 2018 and even for 2020 . The good news is, as cynthia reported, we cant say the Trump Administration is doing nothing. There is a team of people in the department of Homeland Security who are reaching out to states to try to shore up their voting system, find vulnerabilities and patch them. But a lot of experts say thats a small scale incremental approach to a national problem. And as you said, there really has not been any leadership on this from the oval office to sort of explain to the American Public what the stakings are and as a result it seems clear that many states do not realize how vulnerable they are. As you saw there, some states are not even convinced they were, in fact, penetrated or hacked. And for example, 11 states still dont have paper backups to their electronic ballots. It wouldnt take a massive intervention. Right. It would only take a small number of votes being changed in a small number of Battleground Counties or small changes in voter rolls that could really throw the system into chaos. To be cleeshgs the challenge isnt just what were doing here to protect themselves from that infiltration. But what message, at least a lot of americans or critics of this white house say, what americans and the administration are doing to send a message in effect to punish russia for its actions in the last election, correct . Thats absolutely right. Because youre never going to be able to protect every voter system or any system from cyberattack. So

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