hi, everyone. i m jj ramberg and welcome to your business, the show dedicated to helping your growing business. it s no secret that in the world of family-owned businesses, survival can be hard. when the torch passes from one generation to the next, families can face some really big challenges. some studies say that the chance for success is less than 40%. those are not good odds. the phong family who built an empire of cribs defied the odds. their company million dollar baby has become one of the largest manufacturers of cribs in the world. but that success has come despite the family facing some really hard moments. when this pair of music moguls and the ironman slurnl plurge o $3500 striking crib, it makes headlines. the l.a.-based million dollar baby is the family-run business behind this innovative design. and over the past 27 years, the powerhouse company has delivered millions of cribs worldwide. soon after the tianenman square incident, they moved their family to the u.s. daniel had a background in venture capital and wanted in on a happy industry. most people shopping for baby furniture are usually quite happy. the pair started with one product, the classic jenny lind. the traditional spindle design. but their crib was half the price of their competitors. we imported the cost from asia, but i used american hardware. and then we assembled them in the united states. because safety was the defining thing in baby furniture. retailers were intrigued and daniel sweetened the pot by adding some highly-enticing terms unheard of at the time. there was no minimum order quantity. and it would be delivered to you. because we had it in stock. so our longest wait time would be 30 days. that was his first game-changer into baby industry. begdaniel always had a stead supply of stock and secured warehouses in key cities across the country so retailers could pick up their orders whenever they wanted. use my warehouse as your warehouse was my tag line. the phone children jason and teddy were young when their parents company started to sore. daniel and maryann never had examinations for their kids to work in the family business. i told them, you are free to do anything you want, explore the world as much as you can. we felt that they should do something on their own. but in 2004, i got sick. mary anne s sudden illness was the catalyst for tracy who was only 23 at the time to jump right in. two years later, teddy did the same. it does not mean that when you graduate you mosey into the company and now i m v.p. automatically. but in spite of the family connections, they did not come in at the top. when we were young, we were packing hardware, we were driving the forklift picking orders. down working in the warehouse. there was that idea that you have to work your way up and earn the respect of people in the company that have been here and dedicated their lives to the company for so long already. you also have to be very honest, also, about their abilities. i mean, if they do not have the ability to take on a certain higher role, then they shouldn t. it didn t take long for everyone to notice that both children possessed undeniable talent and game-changing ideas like their parents. in 2004 when tracy started, the dot com world wasn t a furniture-friendly space. luckily my first call was the buyer of amazon. no one else would answer her call, none of the furniture people because they thought amazon sold books. i go in and pitched that all our products are fedex-able. and she was like, this is amazing. we can t find anyone that can fed exfurniture like you guys. drop-shipping to big balk stores soon followed. cyber monday we shipped a thousand packages in a matter of six hours. my dad was like, great, and he s like, do you want to stay? teddy made his mark that design innovation was happening on the high-end side. so in 2009, mdb launched babyletto, a more affordable brand. despite all the success by the second generation of fongs, both children struggled with family dynamic on the work front. challenging their father was something they both tried to avoid. at the beginning it was pretty tough. i was very agreeable. we were avoiding conversation, there was a lot of resentment that was building. they also realized the importance of perfect alignment when the family faced their employees. behind the scenes we re actually very good at giving each other feedback. you get rid of all the b.s. the most important thing was not to do it in front of employees. behind the scenes, the brother/sister conversations didn t always go smoothly. and it wasn t just a sibling dynamic at play. tracy s husband eric, a former high-end architect, and teddy s wife tiffany, steve jobs former assistant, joined the team, too. their aunt julia and uncle john were also part of the clan. in 2014, daniel sparked a conversation on the way to a family dinner wondering who should he pass the ceo reigns to when he was ready. tracy is like, let teddy go first. immediately two boys came out, john and julia, he s not ready. feeling that teddy needed more time to evolve into an effective leader, daniel established a transition period where he and teddy would function as co-ceos. a decision that in hindsight both father and son regret. as co-ceo, daniel would at times make decisions without ever consulting his son. i can see where that can be a problem for teddy. everybody s kind of lost, like, am i supposed to listen to him or listen to teddy who has a different idea? daniel also became known for his sea-going effect. my dad had the tendency to come in and like poo-poo everything and fly away. so everybody is lost. the fong family decided to enlist the help of a leadership training expert and mentor. he helped smooth out all the transitional kinks and helped with overall communication strategy. in these family forums, i mean, it s really an intense feedback session. we got to have feelings, cry, you know, if someone hurt my feelings and be very direct about it. we had really great result. i m surprised by how really strong emotions that i didn t even know that existed get flushed out. despite the expected multigenerational struggles that come with many family-run ventures, the fong family has turned million-dollar baby into a booming $70 million business. currently with eight brands under their umbrella. and through it all, the fongs continue to learn some invaluable lessons. you can be the bridge between the employees and your father and mother. you have a special relationship with the ceo. you have his or her year. how do you bridge this gap? what conversations have been missing? what has not been talked about that needs to be talked about? i told him that you just need to build your team. and i think that is also very crucial in terms of family transition, the older generation to be willing to let the generation actually start hiringing its own people and take on the senior positions rather than the old people just occupy the space. it s just been a wild ride. who new baby furniture would be this exciting? he s a third generation garmento and true visionary in the world of contemporary fashion. andrew rossen is the unstoppable force behind the billion-dollar brand theory known for its wardrobe essentials. he s been running the company for the last two decades. and we recently visited their new york headquarters where he shared his designs for enduring success. one of the things that i think is critically important today about a brand like ours is to be much more curated. i just don t want to make a lot of clothes to fill up racks and stores. i want to make the perfect pieces. it allows us to really consider each piece and make each piece as best we can. and the companies that are really winning are those companies that have really made a discdiscerning decision. this is what we stand for. i m curious by nature and i think that to be open-minded to listening and observing and learning is an important ingredient of needing to be successful. our company has been around 20 years. and i don t want the company s way of operating to get stuck in an old paradigm of business. i bring lots of people in from the outside to coach us on the digital age and the methodology and structure of modern companies. and i want to work hard and raise top digital iq of our company. our manufacturing and design and merchandising iq is very high. but our digital iq is something we have to really work on. i think it s very important to collaborate with companies outside of our own. two companies coming together and collaborating on a product idea or a concept can be very innovative and we can develop unusual things that way. we collaborate with shoe companies, we collaborate with jean companies, i think that combination of like-minded brands working together creates some very exciting opportunities for companies. is that fabric good? this is nice. when i came up with this concept of theory 2.0, i wanted to take people that were three and four layers down that didn t really have a voice in the company. and give them an opportunity to have a voice. so i put together a group of 15 people that you called innovators working group. what i asked them to do was to think about what kind of initiatives would they like to be part of and start. one of them was a capsule collection geared towards younger people, millenials. and, in addition to that, we put together a women s entrepreneurship program. and our company is all about entrepreneurial spirit. and we wanted to support women entrepreneurs and put together a whole series of talks around that to educate people inside our company as well as our customers. we started something called theory for good where we allowed customers to bring back old theory clothes. and we would take the old theory clothes and give them to an organization that supported people in the workplace that needed clothes but couldn t afford them. this is our new good will program. it s sustainable from the farm where sheep were raised, it was woven into fabric and the factory where the garments were cut and sewn. when i started theory, it was a phenomenon from day one. and now we do close to a billion dollars in global sales. you never know what things are going to happen. in media company, there are all sorts of twists and turns you re faced with. my dad taught me not to look back, to keep looking forward. when we turned 20, everyone said to me, oh, well, we got to celebrate 20 years of theory. and i said, i don t want to celebrate 20 years of theory. what i want to do is think about how we are going to prepare ourself for the next 20 years. and how we re going to do things that nearly set ourselves up to be able to be successful 20 years from now. according to our next guest, the one thing that all great leaders and all great organizations have in common is trust. trusted leaders are followed. as trust increases, costs, problems and skepticism go down and morale, productivity and innovation go up. ultimately, if things go right, that leads to higher revenue. david is the ceo of the trust edge leadership institute. i was so impressed with the talk he gave recently that i invited here on the show to share his thoughts with you. so good to see you again. great to be here. i loved being in the audience. so now better that i get to ask you questions myself. so you talk about, let s focus on the trust of your employees. it sounds, of course, it s important for your employees to trust you, but how important is it? this year in the trust outlook, our global study, 6,000 people, ten countries, the number one ahead of being, you know, getting a pay raise, ahead of more aon ttonomy, ahead of a better environment, employees want to trust their leaders more anyone else. i ll follow you. so tell me, let s say i m leading a team here, i think i m trustworthy, right? but somehow i created an environment where people aren t that happy. i ve given them benefits and raises, we are all very clear. somehow it feels like people don t trust me. what am i doing wrong? i m not being deceitful. right. but the a-traits came out of the research, the eight components of the most trusted leaders and brands. you start to look at those as an example, clarity. all over the world, i see organizations and leaders that think they are clear when they re not. people trust the clear and they mistrust or distrust the ambiguous. they also, yesterday i m working with one of the biggest companies in the world, they also mistrust or distrust the overly complex. that company is not trusted because they might have a breath of arrogance where we have to overcomplex fi this. when we overcomplexify this, we lose trust immediately. people trust the clear, they trust the high character, they trust the compassion. those that have intent beyond themselves. we trust those consistent. so you may trust i m just going to write these down, clarity, not complex, compassionate, consistent, three more? yeah, there s committed. we trust those if you think of anybody in history or in your life that has left the legacy, your mom, mandela, martin luther king, jesus, joan of arc, they were trusted because of their commitment to something beyond themselves, often to death. so commitment is a component. connection, the ability to connect and collaborate. when you think of when general motors and ford, fierce competitors, put their rnb departments, built the new high performance transmission together when chrysler was doing it on their own, it was unbelievable they would do that and saved some hundred million dollars doing it in 90 days because they were willing to connect and collaborate. connection and collaboration. and this came out of the study, the willingness and desire to stay fresh and relevant and capable. we want leaders that put us in a place where we can stay fresh, relevant. in fact, 76% of those respondents said we would trust our company more if they just trained us more. if they just gave us development opportunities like leadership. they wanted leadership and personal development way over technical. and frankly, unfortunately to end here, i think we all know where our gaps are if we really sat there with all of those terms and said, really? really? am i that compassionate? really, am i that making it clear, whatever it is? this is a good start to help us start to think about it. it s clearly, clearly, very important. great to see you. thank you so much. great to be here, jj. when we come back, how do you combat negative and false information that is online about your company? plus, why you may want to consider creating so-called talk spaces in your office. and the people who put on the mardi gras parade in mobile, alabama, with good advice on how to meet pressing deadlines. sponsored by american express open, how to turn your ideas photograph money and know-how to get business done. ? purchase. let s do this. got it. book the flights! hai! si! si! ya! ya! ya! what does that mean for us? we can get stuff. what s it mean for shipping? ship the goods. you re a go! you got the green light. that means go! oh, yeah. start saying yes to your company s best ideas. we re gonna hit our launch date! (scream) thank you! goodbye! we help all types of businesses with money, tools and know-how to get business done. american express open. we represent a lot of different vendors in products. and oftentimes we find that there s false information on the internet. and i want to know, how we can go about combatting that and getting the right information back to the customer. so what i say is, be the expert. establish yourself as the expert. one thing you can do is just launch an e-newsletter to help create all sorts of links, tips, strategies, content, for the customer. that does two things, one, it helps them and two, it establishes you as the kind of business that really helps them. if you do that or even create a resource center on your website that does that as well, they will look to you as the expert and will love the great independent information you re going to give them. i would give one caveat. as you give the information out, remember our old friend the 80/20 rule. 80% of the content in the newsletter needs to be about helping them. if you do that, the 20% about you they will be far more interested in hearing about. when most people think of mardi gras here in the u.s., i th think they think of new orleans. but i recently learned there s a huge mardi gras festival in mobile, alabama, older than the one in louisiana. we went down there to see what it takes to put these festivities together. it is a lot of pressure and a lot of crazy deadlines. something i think probably a lot of you deal with as well. it s show time? it is so showtime. and we re feeling the pressure. but we don t make a deadline, what we don t make the deadline what does that mean, we ll lose a contract. it s never not a deadline. steve mussel and ron barnett are used to high pressure deadlines. i m working seven days a week, 10, 12 hours a day. trying to get some sleep. it s a good time to lose weight. steve is the owner of the company that builds the enormous mardi gras parade float. i think you do the best work under the gun that s what works the best sometimes. ron is the owner of barrett grier which plans some of the biggest events around the parades. in the weeks of carnivale leading up to mardi gras, ron and his company are responsible for 31 grand balls like this one. set to kick off in just a few hours. i ve got a dress rehearsal in two hours and then the event starts in about three. how many people are you expecting? out here, in the audience. yeah. oh, the ims will have 3,000 people. 2,800, 3,000 people. we hung out with the two business owners and the pressure was on. their clients expected a lot and there was no wiggle room whatsoever on the deadlines. right through these last moments steve and ron seemed incredibly at ease. you seem amazingly calm to me. well, if i was real high strung i would not do mardi gras balls for a living. how do they do it? why no screaming, no drama? how do steve and ron manage these deadlines with such calm? each of them has their open style but both include making sure their employees know they re part of a team. what s the secret to you getting people to getting stuff done on time? the secret is i give them the opportunity to be part of a crazy, wonderful art group and they have the opportunity it s like being in a fraternity in college. they fit in. they found their niche. they see something huge going on. and they feel like they re part of it. both ron and steve use time lines to do this and intermediate deadlines along the way. but we all know even the best of plans can get derailed. then you have sickness or injury. you lose people. so the schedule is usually they work for the first two or three months and then you throw them out the window. the excitement of the final deadline itself eventually gets the staff moving as they start to see things coming together. on the other hand it s trickier they say to get their employees jazzed about meeting the less exciting mid project goals. ron said it s all about attitude. you can put a little excitement in it. you can make them part of the excitement on any level at any time. and it does work. steve and ron also both credit part of their confidence to hiring people who understand their style. the only way we get it done is having people who know what they re doing. they say that they have their own quieter way of letting employees know they need to step it up. if something is going to hell or the employees are having a bad time, i get very quiet and methodic and they listen to me. when you get quiet, does everyone get nervous? they know this is your version of yelling at them? bingo. you re correct. they get it. by keeping their eyes on the big picture. they each become an island of clarity at the center of the big storm. because they re surrounded by people they trust and they don t let the chaos distract them from the end product. you can t get too caught up in or you ll just drive yourself crazy. we now have the top two tips you need to know to help grow your business. let s introduce our panel and get their advice. financial expert, a best selling author and the creator of future file a legacy planning system. and the ceo of the advertising public relations and social media firm. good to see both of you. you too. you have a new business when i see you. i do. i m the consummate entrepreneur. so congratulations. what s your tip for growing a business? the top tip if you want to create a really amazing competitive advantage for yourself and do it on the cheap all you need to do is to be helpful. i know this sounds very woo woo but i feel like business owners are doing the minimum they can go to get by these days. if you do out of your way a little bit, do the right thing, make sure it s not taking away something that s food for you, but by doing the right thing you can create a huge competitive advantage. let s say you have an opportunity to present at a trade show, or a client that s not a good fit, not just turn it down but actually create that referral to somebody you know. so you re providing value to the person who asks you and you re providing value to somebody in your network. here s the thing, people have connections, some don t. that s all people who like you and you like. when you re doing business you re doing business with people. exactly. so the more i like doing business with denise the more she s the first person i call. you create that awe then tick relationship. it s something you can do that s easy. i want doesn t cost you anything other than a little bit of your time. it s fun too. all right, denise? every time i say to everyone how you re doing, it s busy, busy. i actually a year ago banned that from my own good. it s so annoying. everybody is busy. but go ahead. why are so we busy? you re starting a new business, don t have enough people or too many people and we have to get as much done as we can. so at our office what we have done is we have created a way for people to talk and be productive. we have what are called dedicated workspaces so i m sorry, dedicated talk spaces. if you ll have a conversation with anyone more than five minutes long you can t do it at the desk, around other people in a common area. because all that s going to do is distract everyone else. we all like working together, so it becomes fun. we want to talk. we don t want to take that away but we don t want to be distracted. if you know it s more than five minutes, you go away to the talk space and what s this? five minutes is distracting. if you re in the middle of the epiphany and somebody says, hey, what was that thing you needed? if you re in a serious mode of competition, we took a cue from the hospitality industry. we created these do not disturb tag. if they see this hanging they know unless it s an emergency, there are few true emergencies stay away. right now it s not on all day. an hour or a half hour, that you need to get done what you need to get done. you have to make sure that you don t disturb yourself. other people honor these things but it s hard to honor it yourself. turn off your devices. don t go down the rabbit holes. write it down. and then do that in that half hour, an hour. i want this in public. i want to wear this when i m in public what it s in an airport. i do not want you to disturb me. i think this is genius. you never want to sit next to me on the plane, i m always going hi. i m so not about it on the plane. i don t want to talk to anybody. nobody sit next to me. great advice. thank you. this week s your biz selfie comes from kasan in st. louis. they are a family owned agency that provides in home care. incredibly important service. thank you for sending that. now, why don t you pick up your smartphone, take a selfie of you and your business and send it to us @your business @msnbc.com. don t include to include your name, the location, anything really interesting or cool about your company. use the #your biz selfie. thank you so much for joining us. we love hearing from you so if you want to get in touch, just send us an e-mail to your business @msnbc.com. also, if you like the show head on over to our website. we posted all of the segments from today s show and a whole lot more. we also put new content and conversations up every single day on our digital and social media platforms as well. and that s one more thing. we have a new podcast called been there, built that. i get to five in with some of the smartest founders and business owners in country to find out how they built their brands. until next time i m jj ramberg. remember, we make your business our business. sponsored by american express open. helping you turn your ideas into reality with money and know how. so you can get business done. oh. nuh uh. yeah. ahhhhh. mm-mm. oh. yeah. ah. agh. d-d-d. no. hmmm. uh. huh. yeah. uh. huh. in business, there are a lot of ways to say no. thank you so much. thank you. so we re doing it. yes. start saying yes to your company s best ideas. we help all types of businesses with money, tools and know-how to get business done. american express open. welcome to politicsnation. another week, another terrible shooting massacre. 17 people, students and administrators at a high school in florida murdered by a former student. the weapon of choice a high powered assault rifle. president trump called it quote, a scene of terrible violence, hatred and
the last mass shooting. student survivors make their voices heard about the massacre at their school. why they could be the key to getting affecting change. and new this morning, president trump going on a tweet storm and targeting the fbi in his own national security adviser over the special counsel s russian indictments. in one tweet late last night, saying, very sad that the fbi missed all of the many signals sent out by the florida school shooter. this is not acceptable. they are spending too much time trying to brooprove russian collusion with the trump campaign. there is no collusion. back to the basics, make us all proud. in another tweet, general mcmaster forgot to say the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the russians. and that the only collusion was between russia and crooked h, the dna and the dems. remember, the dirty dossier, uranium, speeches and podesta and company. this started yesterday morning when hr mcmaster told experts in munich that the indictments show evidence of russian meddling are now beyond dispute. vice president pence also breaking with president trump over his response to the special counsel s russia indictments in an interview airing tomorrow. there s no question that russia interfered, perhaps with other countries in our electoral process. and it is absolutely essential we take actions against individuals who attempted to interfere with our democracy. later today president trump will meet with house speaker paul ryan at mar-a-lago to discuss legislative priorities. and nbc s kelly o donnell has more on president trump s reaction to the russian indictments. reporter: good morning, dara. president trump has found something that he really likes in the new sleeping indictment coming from the special counsel s investigation. and he s using that to try to make a larger point that his own campaign did nothing wrong. while it is true, the department of justice says that none of the americans who came in contact with this specific russia-based scheme had any knowledge that russians were behind it. the special counsel s investigation goes beyond these particular alleged crimes. and that investigation is not yet complete. a string of tweets defending himself, again saying there was no collusion. but the president did not condemn the indicted russian plotters. the national security advisers said there can be no more denying sophisticated russian interference in the 2016 election. with the fbi indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain. reporter: calling it incontrovertible negates the president s words of doubting russia s role. the russian president believes he did not meddle in our election. reporter: candidate trump remains devisive. it could be something on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay? reporter: but the indictment alleges a skillful roos where russians used these kinds of social media posts with inflammatory, political messages to stir discord. they enticed unwitting american voters with signs russian operatives requested. and many spread the russian-made messages on their own pages. democrats accused president trump of failing to take action. imagine if fdr denied the japanese attack happened at pearl harbor and did not react. that s the equivalent. reporter: so far the president has talked vindication, not retaliation. kelly o donnell, nbc news, traveling with the president in florida. thank you, kelly. let s bring in jonathan allen for nbc news digital and kevin scoreli for bloomberg tv. thank you for being here. thank you for having me. good morning. jonathan, why attach the fbi and the russia investigation to this tragedy in florida? i think the president has two visions here. one is to show what happened in florida, at least partially on the fbi, and also he s trying to make sure that as many americans as possible believe that there was no collusion. and what is interesting about this is, we still haven t really heard the president condemn this russian activity in the united states. and his argument is that the fbi should be paying attention more to the threats that they re getting domestically rather than what is going on with russian interference, ignoring the fact that the two things could go on at such a large bureau at the same time. and ignoring the fact that the special counsel s actually at a larger department of justice office, not the fbi. let me play for you what the white house deputy press secretary said last night on fox. let s listen. now we know they were trying to sew seeds of chaos and disrupt the very core of our dmak democracy. the president was outraged when he heard what they had done in this election. and we cannot allow this to happen again. kevin, this goes to what jonathan was saying, it s been nearly 48 hours since the indictment and the president has not publicly condemned russia for meddling in the election. and i think americans want to hear the alleged outrage. and with that much president from himself, is that wishful thinking he will do that any time soon. he did tweet that it was an anti-america attempt by the russians and released the public statement on friday, but we have nod heard directly from the president on camera regarding this. so i think, you know, there s only a matter of time until he s going to be faced with questions on that. the early morning tweet storm stood out to me because of the criticism of the national security adviser general hr mcmaster. we talk about how palace-intrigue stories influence policy. you have right now a potential division between chief of staff general john kelly and general hr mcmaster, the national security adviser, that has been rumbling quietly beneath the surface for quite some time. so for the president to criticize in a tweet general mcmaster would suggest that that division is still boiling over now with their internal response to the indictment. and, of course, throw in vice president pence, too, because he said it is absolutely implicated. jonathan, one of the biggest takeaways is that a campaign official from florida reached out to the russians in august of 2016 and another official who has not yet been named was contacted by the russians. but meanwhile, our colleagues have spent the weekend digging up old tweets and footage from rallies dating back to 2014, which this particular russia interference campaign began. so jonathan, don t these indictments make it harder for president trump and his allies to claim vindication? i think what we ve got going on here, dara, is an investigation into russian meddling and what special counsel mueller has shown, i think, without a doubt, whether or not he s able to hold convictions or to even extradite russians, what he showed without any doubt is that there was russian attempts to meddle in the u.s. election. this is a sophisticated plot, essentially in the intelligence operation, that he s laid out in his indictments. and i think what is important for everybody to do is to wait to see what special counsel mueller s concludes. and right now what you ve got is people, you ve got the white house claiming vindication, you have people on the left saying this is just more evidence that it s likely there s fire where there s smoke. and, you know, i think it s worth watching this play out a little bit. can i quickly jump in real quick on this? because this is like a russian spy novel run amok. i mean, when you look at the silicon valley companies that are named in this from facebook, in particular, to twitter, to instagram, that the russians were essentially using american business institutions to divide people along gender and race and orientation. the question at some point for congress has to become, what are we doing to better protect ourselves in 2018 and 2020? and a minimum of four years doing that as well. kevin, on this, senate judiciary chairman chuck grassley who often tweets at the president tweeted this last night, the next president trump that you talk to putin, tell him to butt out of our elections and quit the cyber warfare interference in our democracy. with this outrage out of washington, do you see action on the russian sanctions or anything to force president trump s hand in some other way? look, what happened on friday was that indictment, dara, is the most aggressive push that the united states has taken since by sanctioning 13 russian individuals, 3 russian businesses, the most aggressive steps they have taken, but to your point, we have not heard directly from president trump about his own thoughts on this. the key word that jonathan pointed out is that for the folks who were met with as far back as 2014, they didn t know. but how do we present this? there are a host of bipartisan bills being put forth in the senate, in particular, but led by senator amy clobichar trying to better pollster security to protect the institutions. but this should be nonpartisan, to protect the bedrock of our democracy and americans trust in the inindustry tugs in the business community. and silicon valley has a role in the accountability of this to step up to. and is john kelly looking to overhaul the security clearances this week in the ousting of the latest white house aide. what does the overhaul look like? and will it do anything to solve the white house s problem that more than 100 of the staff can t get beyond the interim phase of their clearances? i think that remains to be seen in terms of how the process ends up working out. but this is a problem for the white house. it s a problem for the country. it s a problem for national security that you have people who are unable to get these permanent clearances, having access to higher intelligence. and to, i think, one of the ways in which we see this manifest is there are not a lot of people around president trump who have a tremendous experience in the national security and intelligence space. and part of that is because he hasn t been able to hire people who have that experience. to kevin s point a minute ago about congress in silicon valley taking a role in combatting what has gone on with russia, we have not seen the white house, it s really astounding that the white house has not been engaged in an effort to combat this cyber warfare. i think it s, you know, i think it s not and overstatement to say what we saw from russia was an act of war. and yet the white house response to that has been so incredibly muted and in some cases has actually been the president trying to undermine the idea that the russians were involved in the 2016 election. and i m sure there will be more to come. jonathan allen, kevin scirili, stay with us. we have much more coming up. another investigation, one more missed signal about the accused gunman in the florida high school massacre. stay with me, mr. parker. when a critical patient is far from the hospital, the hospital must come to the patient. stay with me, mr. parker. the at&t network is helping first responders connect with medical teams in near real time. stay with me, mr. parker. .saving time when it matters most. stay with me, mrs. parker. that s the power of and. in the 2018 lexus es and es hybrid. lease the 2018 es 350 for $339 a month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. when you ve got no plans but with your comfy pants, grab a marie callender s roasted turkey & stuffing. with mashed potatoes and made from scratch gravy. spoiler alert, things are about to get good. because me time calls for marie callender s. let s team up to get the lady of the house things are about to get good. back on her feet. and help her feel more strength and energy in just two weeks yaaay! the complete balanced nutrition of (great tasting) ensure with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. ensure. always be you. and when you switch to esurance, in the modern world, it pays to switch things up. you can save time, worry, hassle, and yup, money. in fact, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved hundreds. that s auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. and with ancestrydna liveson sale for just $69, now is the time to discover yours. you can find out where you get. .your precision. .your grace. .your drive. and now, with more than 150 ethnic regions to connect to, only ancestrydna can put your greatness on full display. save 30% now at ancestrydna.com. we all want to know you know, the new, new thing. with xfinity s retail stores, you can now see the latest. want to test drive the latest devices? be our guest. want to save on mobile? just ask. want to demo the latest innovations and technology? do it here. come see how we re making things simple, easy, and awesome. plus come in today and ask about xfinity mobile, a new kind of network designed to save you money. visit your local xfinity store today. new information in the florida high school shooting. investigating the suspect s home life a year before the shooting, they closed the inquiry after finding nikolas cruz to be low risk despite his plans to buy a gun. his unnerving behaviors would show videos of him cutting his arms on snapchat and his nazi symbol on his backpack. funeral services for three of the fallen services come today on the heel os of a large gun control rally in ft. lauderdale on saturday where surviving students took to the stage to advocate for change. because of these gun laws, people that i know, people that i love have died. and i will never be able to see them again. those elected officials out there today that refuse to take action, take action from the special groups. stop. if the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face it was a terrible tragedy and how it should have never happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, i m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the national rifle association. joining me now is former fbi agent and msnbc terrorism analyst clint van zandt. great to have you here this morning. what do you make of this finding the suspect at low risk of harming himself or others? does this surprise you? no. so many agencies dropped the ball on this. i mean, the social services investigated him. the sheriff s office investigated him. there was a mental health examination and service that he had for a year. the fbi missed one small and one massive tip that should have led us to stopping this guy. all of the agencies that we should have counted on to help us, we say if you see something, say something, the public said something. and all of these agencies let us down. let s talk about that. because the lack of the follow-up from the fbi after someone called in the tip from a suspect, this is a man from mississippi who noticed a comment on one of his youtube videos that said, i m going to be a professional school shooter . so federal agents interviewed the tipster but came up short. what went wrong here? well, they should not have come up short. now, i say this with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but they shouldn t have come up short. they should have run that lead down. i understand they get 1,300 leads that come into the tip center every day. that s how the fbi s accounting that somehow they missed this massive tip concerning the shooter. but again, that is their job to run these down. and one person doesn t do their job. that s the weakest link in our investigative chain. and that chain broke multiple times and allowed this to take place. the shooter is responsible, no doubt about that, but multiple law enforcement and psychological and social service agencies could have caught this guy before he fell. nobody did that. clint, the fbi says the tip should have been assessed as a threat to life and forwarded to the miami field office for an investigation. had the tip gone through the proper channels, what could the fbi have done to stop the shooting? yeah, look, you and i don t have to be criminal profilers to say there was enough information to say this was going to be bad. whoever took that phone call should have immediately gone to his or her supervisor and said, this is so critical it needs to go to miami right away. miami would have grabbed it, touched base with the sheriff s office and in some combination gone out and interviewed this young man. and, you know, there are a number of states in the united states that have red flag laws. that says if a judge has presented evidence, if somebody presents a threat to himself or others, we can take the guns away to resolve the incident, the situation. perhaps if florida law enforcement would have had that information, noting they went out to his house 30 different times anyway, if they would have had that information, if they could have held those guns until we resolved this young man s psychological condition, there would be 17 people alive today, i believe. right. so many ifs in this horrific tragedy. and president trump, he tweeted out yesterday that he s very sad the fbi missed all the many signals sent out by the florida school shooter. it s not acceptable and they are spending too much time trying to prove russian collusion with the trump campaign. there s no collusion. get back to the basics and make us all proud. is this plausible from an operational perspective? no. you know, our president is confusing apples and oranges or apples and basketballs, i don t know which it is, but to suggest that an investigation run by the department of justice may have used fbi investigators had anything to do with the tip center dropping the ball, i mean, this makes no sense whatsoever. for years, i believe you have to respect the office, but not necessarily the person in that office. saying something like that makes that statement even more and more challenging. clint van zandt, great to have you here this morning. thank you so much for your insight. and a programming note, alex witt will be speaking to former presidential candidate jill stein later today about the special counsel indictment that says the russians got to help stein s campaign. that s coming up at noon eastern. u tell your insurance cy they made a mistake. the check they sent isn t enough to replace your totaled new car. the guy says they didn t make the mistake. you made the mistake. i beg your pardon? he says, you should have chosen full-car replacement. excuse me? let me be frank, he says: you picked the wrong insurance plan. no. i picked the wrong insurance company. with liberty mutual new car replacement™, we ll replace the full value of your car plus depreciation. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. fthere s flonase sensimist.tchy and watery near pollen. it relieves all your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don t. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist. this is food made to sit down for. slow down for. put the phone away, and use a knife and fork for. and with panera catering, it s food worth sharing. panera. food as it should be. president trump tweeting last night, just like they don t want to solve the daca program, why didn t the democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the house and senate during the obama administration. because they didn t want to. and now they just talk. let s bring back jonathan allen and kevin scirili. we hear the president s rhetoric, what are the realistic visions after this? what is the reality here? las vegas four months ago, only four months ago. by the way, there s some chatter on capitol hill about improving mental health or enforcing the laws that are already on the books. but, i mean, just pull the fdc records of the nra. it s like we do this every couple of weeks, dara. $50 million put into the 2016 cycle, $30 million went to candidate trump, i m sorry, $20 million to candidate trump, $30 million to six senate races like ohio and yes, florida. and onthank, we heard that powerful sound earlier from one of the survivors of the shooting, so is there a sense that the gun debate will be different this time around? because we re hearing from the high school students as opposed to the parents after the sandy hook shooting? no. there s no indication it will be anything different from the legislative perspective, republicans are afraid of primary challenges if they move on gun control. away from their base. democrats are afraid of primary challenges if they move away from their base on gun control to try to compromise. if there was going to be gun legislation, all the democrats coming out against the nra would have to compromise with the nra. and that is fraught within its own peril. so i don t think there s likelihood of a change. did the democrats miss the opportunity, jonathan, during the obama years to fix this? i mean, the president is right. president trump is right they chose not to do anything on gun control. obviously, there was enough republican power to block them, but early on in president obama s administration, they could have had one or two democrats believe this is a toxic issue for them in swing states and perhaps it was. and so, he s right about that. at the same time, it s unclear to me from the tweet that president trump thinks gun control is bad idea. and kevin, real quick, are there any republican that is will push back to the nra? yes, senator pat thume and joe manchin. so there s hope. kevin scirili, thank you for your time. that will do it for me. i m dara brown. at the top of the hour, politics nation. stay with us, your business is up next with jj ramberg. we are the tv doctors of america, and we may not know much about medicine, but we know a lot about drama. from scandalous romance, to ridiculous plot twists. 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Invaluable lessons. you can be the bridge between the employees and your father and mother. you have a special relationship with the ceo. you have his or her year. how do you bridge this gap? what conversations have been missing? what has not been talked about that needs to be talked about? i told him that you just need to build your team. and i think that is also very crucial in terms of family transition, the older generation to be willing to let the generation actually start hiringing its own people and take on the senior positions rather than the old people just occupy the space. it s just been a wild ride. who new baby furniture would be this exciting? he s a third generation garmento and true visionary in the world of contemporary fashion. andrew rossen is the unstoppable
Tracy s husband eric, a former high-end architect, and teddy s wife tiffany, steve jobs former assistant, joined the team, too. their aunt julia and uncle john were also part of the clan. in 2014, daniel sparked a conversation on the way to a family dinner wondering who should he pass the ceo reigns to when he was ready. tracy is like, let teddy go first. immediately two boys came out, john and julia, he s not ready. feeling that teddy needed more time to evolve into an effective leader, daniel established a transition period where he and teddy would function as co-ceos. a decision that in hindsight both father and son regret. as co-ceo, daniel would at times make decisions without ever consulting his son. i can see where that can be a problem for teddy. everybody s kind of lost, like, am i supposed to listen to him or listen to teddy who has a