Transcripts For MSNBCW The 11th Hour With Brian Williams 201

Five days after a gunman killed 58 People Police are still searching for what led him to commit the massacrement the 11th hour begins now. Good evening once again from our nbc news borrow in los angeles. Im ali velshi. Brian has the night off. Day 260 of the Trump Administration brings us two new comments from the white house about a cryptic and potentially alarming statement that the president made. But it brings us no closer to an answer as to what he was talking about. Here is how it started of the last night the president met with members of the military and their families and standing next to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff he said this. You guys know what this represents . Its the call before the storm. Whats the storm . It could be the calm before the storm. What storm, mr. President . We have the worlds great military people, i will tell you that. And were going to have a great evening. Thank you all for coming, by the way. Thank you. What storm, mr. President . Youll find out. Give us a hint thank you, everybody. Thank you. Reporters asked the president today what that storm might be, and with a wink for someone in the room, he kept the mystery going. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. What did you mean by calm before the storm . Thank you very much. Youll find out. Then within the hour reporters had a chance to ask the White House Press secretary too. Here is how Sarah Huckabee sanders answered those questions. Can you clarify the president s comments . Was he referring to military action when he said calm before the storm . As weve said many times before, i know the president has, as i have from this podium on quite a few occasions, were never going to say in advance what the president s going to do. And as he said last night, in addition to those comments, youll have to wait and see. But how seriously should the American Public or american adversaries for that matter take these comments . Is this a joke . Was it serious . I think you can take the president protecting the American People always extremely serious. Hes been very clear that thats his number one priority, and if he feels that action is necessary, hell take it. You said the president wants to preserve an element of surprise, why would he dangle hints about his actions in the first place . I dont believe he did. All right. Todays press briefing also touched on a question that hassling erred in the news this week amid nbc news reporting about the escalating tension between the president and secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Sources said tillerson called trump a moron, and after a running theme has emerged in this white house with employees either resigning or getting fired on fridays, American Urban Radio Networks reporter april ryan asked the very question that many in the room had on their minds. And today is friday. Could we expect a resignation today . I dont think so, april. David. We also have a new gut check on how the country views our president. A new Associated Press poll found 32 of people approve of the way trump is handing his job. 67 disapprove. And then theres this. Just 24 of people think the country is headed in the right direction. That number has dropped 10 points since june. Our leadoff panel tonight. White house bureau chief for the Washington Post Philip Rucker and chair of the journalism ethics at the Pointer Institute and curtis lee National Reporter for the los angeles times. Welcome to all of you. Philip, let me start with you. Does Sarah Huckabee sanders know what the president was talking about when he said this is the calm before the storm . Does anybody likely know what the president was talking about . Well, nobody that ive talked to today knows what the president was talking about, but i think the president was trying to kpukt two things with those remarks yesterday. Number unwith, that he has the power to create a storm if he so chooses as the commander in chief. He liegs to remind people of his powers. And number two, we have to remember that hes a reality show producer. This is what he did for many years with Great Success at the apprentice. He likes to keep people guessing. He wants you to tune in tomorrow for the next episode and he doesnt want you to change the channel. I think he might be kind of playing this out a little bit for that effect. Now, we could all be surprised this weekend. There could be some sort of military action. I dont know. Certainly, you know, things are tense in a number of areas in the world, but theres no indication at this hour that something imminent is plapd. He is the master of the tease, but what some of the reporters in that room wanted to know is is there going to be a friday night resignation, most people assumed she was asking about Rex Tillerson. Well, i think thats certainly who she was asking about, but i think there are a lot of people who are wondering that the only resignation that is going to help them rest would be donald trump resigning, and that obviously is not happening i imminently or anytime we know of. It goes back to what bob corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said which is that he was hoping and praying essentially that Rex Tillerson was not going to be forced out or resign because he said essentially earlier this week this is one of only three grownups in the room along with general mattis and basically mcmaster, who he said are keeping this country, john kelly, rather, the chief of staff in the white house, who are between this country and chaos. And i thought it was really interesting that the White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders took the time to say no actually its the president keeping this country in chaos. Obviously those remarks obviously are bothered donald trump. Lets play this for our viewers so they can hear this exchange. Lets watch. Id like to ask you about senator corker and some of the comments he said earlier this week. He said basically thats whats keeping the country separated from chaos and he said that there are other people in the white house that are, you know, putting forth policies in a coheernt fashion. Do you have any response to senator corkers statement . Look, guys, i think that the president is the one thats keeping the world from chaos. He has an Incredible Team around him thats helping him lead that effort. Court i didnt say, i was in las vegas earlier this week when the president landed there and most of us were expecting to see general kelly, his chief of staff with him. It turns out that this whole tillerson situation had caused general kelly to stay back and try and manage that. Rex tillerson came out and made a statement. Didnt entirely deny nbcs reporting that he had called the president a moron, but did say that he hadnt considered resigning. But now theres reporting tonight that even general kelly continues to mull the idea of resigning. Thats interesting, because i mean, general kelly has just been in his position fr a couple months of the and i remember, you know, the night that he the night that Anthony Scaramucci was let go. That was kind of the day that general kelly, it was his first day there. He asserted himself there. Well, will trump is he going to tone it down, is he going to listen to a general. Will he stop tweeting. That was a big question. And we see months later, weeks later that President Trump is going to be President Trump. We saw that during the charlottesville back and forth and him saying that both sides were to blame. Weve seen his comments about kim jongun, calling him little rocket man and using social media. His protests against africanamerican players in the nfl who are kneeling. And were really seeing that general kelly, i mean, he can kind of manage the staff, but at the end of the day, the president is going to be the approximated. Hes going to do what he wants to do, and i think weve seep that ever since general kelly has stepped into his position. Phil, lets talk about this poll, this ap poll. I want to talk about this 24 . Only 24 of respondents say that the country is moving in the right direction. What do you make of in . Its an incredibly low number. And its so striking because some of the economic caters are quite strong, with the the stock market set another record. Thats right. Unemployment is low, stock market is high. Thats right. And it has been throughout the year. It also was, you know, at the end of the obama term, the economy was really improving. So clearly things are on the upside out in the country and people dont feel good about the direction of the country. Now, thats partly because of the issue with wages, that wages are just not going up and keeping pace. But the other issue is theres judge u. S. So much chaos and uncertainty and instability in turmoil in washington, in the government. The republicans have control of both houses of congress, as well as the white house and yet have not been able to pass any significant legislative achievement here. And i think a lot of people feel anxious about that. And, you know accident when we travel out in the country and interview voters they feel apg shus about it and, you know, well see what time will tell, but that is not a good number for President Trump or for the Republican Party as they look to the midterms of 2018. So theres an Interesting Development here. Axios is reporting that President Trump has reached out to senator Chuck Schumer to talk about health care, of all thingsment so when things start to look chaotic at the white house, the president can often surprise us. I cannot imagine what that conversation was, and no one, while weve been able to get reporters who have told us that theyve heard this has gone through the grapevine that this conversation has happened, no one seems to know what the content of the conversation would be. What could President Trump possibly be trying to get from Chuck Schumer on the matter of obamacare . There couldnt be two men more on opposite sides more than these two are on this issue. And of course, this is happening the very same day that the president has removed that requirement that obamacare, you know, insurers provide contraception as part of the package. I mean, look, the speculation is that hes reached out to Chuck Schumer in an effort to try to, once again, try to repeal and replace obamacare, an effort that, you know, has already a lot of effort that be put into it by the republicans and by trump himself and it hasnt gotten anywhere. I think donald trump saw that the one bump he got recently was from this deal he made with chuck and nancy, which was the deal on the Government Debt limit and also on immigrants on d. R. E. A. M. Ers. And i think hes trying to get a little wind out of that. Now, you know, it was very important that you said that only 24 of americans this this latest ap poll think that were on the right track because this was also the first time where we see the number of republicans who say they think hes doing things on the right track fell below a majority. So maybe hes just trying to grasp for popularity wherever he can get it at this point. Reaching across the aisle worked for him last time. What do you make of these numbers . Because theyre low even by the standards weve become accustomed to. Absolutely. The poll in june showed that basically republicans were on board with the president. And weve seen a 15 drop essentially with republican support for how the president is doing. With all the things that President Trump does out there, with charlottesville or nfl mayors, everyone says well, how will this exact his base . And its sheg in these months his base is employing down. In that poll its interesting to see that 60 of americans felt like they didnt believe that the president was doing well with race relations. And thats been at the foreof a lot of peoples minds these last few months. Last week we saw the president going after puerto ricans, the mayor of san juan over twitter. Its really interesting to see the different views. But i think the key part of that poll is the republican support thats starting to drop. And phil, do you think this decision today by the president to roll back the requirement that insurance policies and employers cover extra sepgs for women at no additional cost with no copays, do you think thats a play to the base . Its a play to part of his base. Its a play to the social conservative, the evangelicals which are part of a natural part of the Republican Party base. Theyre not necessarily the people we think of as trump voters. But certainly, you know, this issue of religious liberty is something that the president has spoken up about at various points of his presidency. Its something we know that Vice President mike pence cares intensely about. Im want surprised to see this change happen and clearly its something that hes trying to do for the Republican Party for those religious conservatives sploo all right. Were going to get into that a little more later in the show. Thank you. Coming up, the latest on the russia investigation and news on the author of that salacious dossier. The 11th hour continues after this. As it relates to the steele dossier, unfortunately the committee has hit a wall. That was the story from the Senate Intelligence committee on wednesday. Chairman richard burr was talking about that salacious donald trump dossier that surfaced after the election allege lg the Trump Campaign had colluded with russia. And the man burr is talking about is the author of that report, a former British Intelligence officer named christopher steele. Nbc news now reports one source close to steele said that in late September Steele relayed to washington through an associate that steele in fact would be happy to meet with burr and senator mark warner of virginia. The committees rapging democrat. Phil rucker is back with her. And joining the is conversation cory core der row who is now at georgetown law. Welcome to both of you. Kerry, let me start with you, whats your interpretation of this . Well, it was a little bit unusual for senator burr to be so public about the interest he had and maybe the difficulty that the committee has had in getting to mr. Steele, so he obviously was very publicly letting mr. Steele know that they still want to talk to him. And probably theyve been in some kind of negotiation regarding him coming on board and being able to speak to the committee. What i would think is that mr. Steele, from his perspective, hes got to be most concerned about the protection of his sources. So whether it trurns out that te information in his report turns out to be true or not and some of it is true and other parts are not, the verification of how he obtained his information is whats going to be of interest to investigators. And he, on the other hand, is going to want to protect the sources of information that he relied upon. And so i would think that that would be at least one of the big sticking points between the information that the committee might want to solicit from him and what he is willing to provide. And again, just to distinguish, is there a difference . If you are Michael Steele and you are concerned about your sources, is there a difference between talking to bob mueller and team versus talking to the Senate Intelligence committee . Sink there is, because we have to remember the investigation into the russian interference in the election did not begin with the special counsels office. It started as an fbi investigation, i would presume, and so what happened is those investigators who were working on that investigation got rolled under the supervision of the special counsel. So if mr. Steele is a former Intelligence Officer he would have been used to working with other Foreign Intelligence Services like fbi agents and so he would understand sort of the parameters of the secrecy by which that interview would take place. He would have less experience. Obviously there would have been no reason in the past for him to be working with and talking to congressional investigators, and so i think he would probably be more cautious, particularly because theyre deliverable is a report to the public. And its christopher steele, by the way. I misspoke his name. Phil, lets talk about where this fits into the whole investigationment when this report came out, it was a shock to everyone. Yeah. Then it was determined that some of it was hard to confirm. I want to refer back to the written statement that former fbi director gym comey gave to the Senate Intelligence committee before he testified before that committee in june. In it he referred to a phone call that he had with the president in march, writing he said he had nothing to do with russia. He had not been involved with hookers in russia and had always assumed that he was being recorded when in russia. He asked what we could do to lift the cloud. Where does this dossier that clearly gets under the president s skin stand in this investigation as far as you can tell . Well, first of all, youre right about it getting under the president s skin. When the dossier first became public a couple weeks before the inauguration, trump w