Characteristics required for a job in the u. S. Senate. While this is going on, the first details are emerging from a widely anticipated book, the product of bob woodward. Bob woodward of course, half of woodward and bernstein, brought us watergate and other things. Woodward who maintains the title at the Washington Post. This piece of work by our friends hit while we were on the air. Bob woodwards new book reveals a nervous breakdown of trumps presidency. So who better to talk to but their National Political correspondent robert costa. Also happens to be host of Washington Week on pbs. Bob, i know its a lot. And i know its a piece of work youve been able to read and s ubu ub s ubs ume, but walk us through the headlines. Uses the book nervous breakdown, he talks about an administrate coup detat. The book is full of vivid scenes about top advisers to President Trump plucking papers off of his desk, trade agreements, Foreign Policy decisions, to try to keep the president away from making decisions they find alarming or unhelpful to u. S. Trade policy or Foreign Policy. You have all these people around the president constantly over the last year or so doing things on their own to try to stop President Trump. Bob, ive read already on social media certain people saying half heartedly to expect a purge at the white house. Because part of woodwards method, there are people on the record, there are people putting their name alongside quotes, alongside information that the author gathered. This cant this wont do a lot for the stock of some of the people on the pay rroll in the west wing. The coming days are going to be revealing about how this administration is going to handle the book. The book was written on whats called deep background. People spoke to bob woodward, provided him with documents, dates, calendars. Its clear throughout the book woodward has been meticulous in nailing down the dates, the hours, of different conversations and exchanges. The deep background, meaning its not always directly attributed. But theyre provided by key players who participate order have firsthand knowledge of these scenes and of these moments and its a portrait of the trump presidency, of a press whos at odds with his own aides all of the time, calling them names, and his own advisers calling the president names. Secretary of defense mattis in particular comes across as someone who is privately critical of the president. What he says in response to this book will be interesting. Theres a scene recounted in your work, a summary of the book, where the president in effect orders the assassination of Bashar Al Assad of syria and its quickly and completely ignored by his defense secretary. You have the president telling mattis and other defense officials go after assad in syria, kill him, an assassination order in a sense, and mattis saying were not going to do that. Theres another scene with mattis talking to the president about the late senator john mccain who was then alive. The president , according to woodwards account, says mccain was a coward and accepted Early Release from vietnam. Mattis corrects him and says that is incorrect, sir, and the president kind of brushes off that respons. These scenes are just all over the book about people having these kinds of exchanges with the president. Its all based on woodwards reporting at this time. Also, you mentioned this, between what the president called employees of his, members of his administration, and what those around the president call him, you kind of have to keep reminding yourself this is the president of the United States and the west wing and cabinet were talking about here. It is a bleak portrait provided by bob woodward. You see an administration thats struggling to contain and guide their own president. Reluctant to say anything publicly. But privately going so far as to take trade agreements off of his desk, to pull back on some of his Foreign Policy missions. Theyre trying to keep him about world affairs. Theres a scene inside the pentagon where they try to take the president around the world and the whole scene falls apart as the generals and others in the military fail to convince the president about world order and about u. S. Alliances abroad. And you see a president isolated. A president whos also fuming constantly about the russia investigation. Scenes with his former attorney general john dowd. With the president saying i really dont want to testify after going through an arduous practice session. The president continues to say publicly he wants to testify. And so these scenes cut at the core of of what some of the president has said publicly. And he has yet to respond but, knowing the president , he surely will. Robert costa from the newsroom of the Washington Post, as everyone reacts to the reporting inside the new book by bob woodward, who has confirmed to nbc news all of the substance and on the record quotes contained in this Washington Post piece. Kristen welker over at the white house, an interesting place to be i would assume today, kristen. It is, brian and no response yet from white house officials. Let me paint the scene for you here at last check, a number of officials were huddled in the office of Sarah Huckabee sanders. That was before this bombshell came out. Now, were they discussing the hearings on capitol hill . Was it a preplanned meeting . We dont know. As you know from your time covering the white house there are often meetings here throughout the day. One thing is certain, they have their eyes trained on those fireworks on capitol hill and now on these bombshell revelations. They surely know this book, these excerpts were going to come out. Theyre undoubtedly trying to craft their responsepy expect well get something from them in short order if not a president ial tweet. What is so striking to me, brian, about these excerpts weve read so far, to some extent, they connect the dots of so much of the reporting weve done here. The tone and tenor really echo the discord and, at times, chaos that we witnessed here. Remember, nbc news reported that john kelly referred to the president as the an idiot several months ago. We also reported that his secretary of state referred to him as a moron and then some months after that of course we saw the ouster of his first secretary of state. Its wholly consistent with i think so much of our reporting and specifically surrounding the idea of a president ial interview. In conversations with the president s attorney, they have been very concerned about him sitting down with special Counsel Robert Mueller for this very reason. Out of concern that he might per viewer himself. What we see in woodwards book is really a further exmondplor as to why they have so many concerns. A point you just raised, will we see some wholesale purge here at the white house . My money is we wont likely see a purge. Will we see some departures . That is certainly possible. But this president seems to in his second year really want to project an air of stability beyond that initial chaos we all witnessed. As chief of staff, john kelly, not only is he still here but the white house announcing he plans to stay through the end of term. So that is significant. Its a significant development. And i think that it shows this president is loathe to sort of cut people off. Is he going to sideline his chief of staff . Has he already done that . By all accounts, he has. Will that happen to some of the people quoted in this book . That is very possible. Still no briefing on the schedule, brian. The president has an event at 1 30. Were hoping they open that up to reporters so we can ask them a few questions. I also wanted to share with you and members of our audience a piece of audio, bob woodward, well known for his reporters methodolo methodology, for keeping copious notes and wherever possible recordings of interviews. This, the following is when he was able to reach the president by phone late in the present sews. The book presumably had already gone to editors and maybe even publishers. He reaches the president in this snippet and they talk about in effect why didnt you call me before this. Well play it, talk about it on the other side. I take it very seriously. Ive done books on eight president s going back from nixon, obama. And i learned something about reporting, frankly, mr. President. Good. Ive got to go talk to people and see them outside of the white house and outside of their offices and gained a lot of insight and documentation and its, you know, its a tough look at the world and administration and you. Right. Well, i assume that means its going to be a negative book but, you know, im sort of 50 used to that. Thats all right. Some are good and some are bad. Sounds like this is going to be a bad one. Thats kind of the tone and tenor of the conversation. The president keeps lamenting, well, no one told me, who did you tell you wanted to talk to me . Why didnt you call me directly through my secretary . That kind of thing. Its really a remarkable exchange, brian. You hear bob woodward tick through all of the different people he requested an interview with through the president. Some of them even u. S. Senators. Why did that message not get to the president s desk as he claims . We dont know. What we do know, according to that conversation, is those requests were turned down. That the administration, the communication staff here ultimately determined that they didnt want to make the president available to bob woodward. Was that ultimately a miscalculation in the end . Or is it a sign of a white house that was in crisis and was trying to have a better grip on its communications . We dont know that yet. Were hoping we get to ask the president later on today. More interesting day than usual. An already interesting white house. Cykristien welker. Andrea mitchells been listening to this conversation and reading up about whats known about the book. Just knowing about human nature, one thing this would allow the president to do is say no one called me, no one asked me for a comment, i would have told them a much different story than is portrayed in this book. On the audiotape, theres an additional part of that transcript thats released where, by the way, bob woodward asked for permission, telling the president hes recording him and the president said thats fine. He has Kellyanne Conway come into the room and job the conversation and bob says to Kellyanne Conway, you know, i asked you, and she does confirm, yes that request to talk to the president was rejected. Then the president says why didnt you ask hope hicks, why didnt you ask soandso. Hes deflecting it as much as he can. It is an extraordinary conversation that is revealed there as you and kristen were describing. I wonder how the president retains john kelly after the quotes, where he is quoted here as saying hes off the rails, hes crazy, hes an its yod. Direct quotes from others that were in the room. The incident to assad, or the threat to assassinate assad, the order to secretary mattis, was back when there was a chemical attack. Theres one involving the joint chiefs chairman joe dunford on whether or not they should go and strike north korea. Some very important Foreign Policy issues here. And the adviser taking documents off the president s desk so he would not sign those documents to get out of trade deals. Theres an aspect to todays hearing. Its hard to define. You can kind of feel it in the air. That is among the democrats, almost an effort to appeal to the public. They probably wish to appeal to constituents in the states where these republican senators represent. Absolutely. Almost a footrace, concurrent with the damage racking up and charges racking up against this white house. Absolutely. Youre talking about the socalled red states, West Virginia and indiana and north dako dakota. Youre talking about heidi hide c height camp and joe manchin. Those three senators under enormous pressure to vote with President Trump. And joe manchin is popular. A former governor. But that is a lot of pressure. Also of course the republican senators Susan Collins and slice mur skou ki who might be wavering because of women concerned about the roe v. Wade issue. An also effort to gin up the democratic base. Because democratic voters are not been as concerned in voting over Supreme Court issues as have the republican base, the evangelicals. Its always been a better issue for republicans in midterm elections and in president ial election years. I think its an alarm bell to try to dell democrats this is a generational decision, pay attention. Andrea mitchell in washington. We note the local time is 1 14 eastern time. We note that chairman grassley has decided, well, i may be the only member of this committee to sit down but im sure as heck going to sit down. So hes seated. The rest of the room has yet to fill in. Were going to take one final break. We wont miss a moment of the resumption of this hearing. Our live coverage continues on the other side. If you have psoriasis,. 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They attacked the president for attacking the independents and they applaud the judiciary for standing up to the president. I just listened to some of my colleagues here, one of them spent 18 minutes attacking the personal integrity of justices of the Supreme Court. He said five justices had been bought and sold by private interests. Accused him of deciding cases to the benefit of favored parties. So i think its pretty clear a double standard and we shouldnt have to tolerate such double standard. And particularly from a press that is a policeman of our whole democratic process. That without a free press, our government would be less than what it is. And it seems to me thats something that i hope some of you will take into consideration. Probably wont. But at least i said my piece. Then i also senator, several senators have brought up about the 6 and the 99 and things like that that i thought i ought to clear up because i could say myself that when i first started finding out how much paper judge kavanaugh had on his record, i mean, for his background, i started talking about 100 a million pages. Then when we finally got 488,000, then i could say i got about 48 of of what we ought to have. But theres a good explanation why we dont have it. So i want to read. Some of my colleagues keep saying that we have only 6 of judge kavanaughs white house records. But that 99 of Justice Kagans white house records were made public before the hearing. This is fuzzy math. My colleagues calibrate the phony 6 figure on two inaccurate numbers. First, theres the 6 figure count. Based upon their historical practice before the unprocessed emails and attached attachments are actually reviewed. When kavanaughs white house emails that we received the pages being significantly less. One reason is because were able to use technology to call out the exact duplicate emails. Instead of having to read 13 times an email that judge kavanaugh sent to 12 white house colleagues, we only had to read the email once. Second, the 6 figure counts millions and millions of pages of documents that we never yeastyeast requested or needed. We received 100 of the documents we requested from judge kavanaughs time as an executive branch lawyer. While we may have received 99 of Justice Kagans white house records, we received zero records from her most relevant Legal Service as a solicitor general, the federal governments top Supreme Court advocate. We received much less than 99 of the records as a lawyer. And we didnt receive 60,000 emails from Justice Kagan so 99 is an overestimate. Even though we never received them, Justice Kagan solicitor general records were much more needed at the time because kagan was a blank slate as a judge. Instead, unlike judge kavanaugh, with his 12 years of Judicial Service and over 10,000 pages of judicial writings on the nations most important federal circuit court, just kagan had zero years of