Ayman Mohyeldin hosts coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. he walked that fine line. he was just very critical of the investigation. not going after mueller in a personal kpcapacity. but with the tone of the tweet we just read, he is really trying to assign mueller a motive as to why he s going after trump eluding to things like he didn t get the job, nasty business relationship that went sour between the two men. do you think this is a different tactic now that we re seeing that he s building up for the past several months? he s been going after mueller for a while. i do think we re at a critical moment here. there s a lot of of expectation that mueller is building to some more indictments, to some more cases and there s that obstruction report that he has been working on for some time. and there s a generally belief that he s not going to do anything after labor day. he doesn t want to be accused of interfearing in the election in the same way that james comey mueller? it feels as if something is building. i was at the justice department on friday. shortly after republican house effort to try to impeach or censure rod rose instein because speaker paul ryan didn t agree it with. rod rosenstein was withstanding this pressure as does bob mueller. the person who appears to be operating under some more intense pressure is the president who as you pointed out today has been tweeting again about mueller. that s because doj now announced two indictments against russians for information warfare and for hacking and other types of offenses. and the question is will the special counsel unveil indictments of any americans who were involved in those activities before the midterm elections? that combined with the looming trial of paul manafort which starts this week in virginia and the increasing pressure under scandal for the last half century from watergate to iran-contra and white water, there have been public hearings and the key witnesses testified in public. this is nonsense what we re getting now with the counter spin. chuck grassley and dianne feinstein and richard berr and mark warner at intelligence, they could subpoena michael cohen tomorrow, have him testify in public. we can learn exactly what he has to say, exactly who was there, who his other witnesses were. they can bring back donald trump jr., have him testify in public. and we can air this and the public can evaluate for themselves who is telling the truth here. but this spin, counter spin is really not doing anybody any favors and it s clouding the issue. i thit shate to say this but think you re asking for a lot from congress. it is their responsibility. absolutely. they say they want to investigate this and yet everything is behind closed doors and all we get is spin from two sides. you re right. i was just trying to be a little sarcastic there. i appreciate your point. rick, i want you to watch giuliani claiming that cohen doctored at least one of the recordings. take a listen to this. now i ve listened, unfortunately, to mshany, many hours of tapes. and the man is a pathological manipulator, liar. i didn t know that. i didn t know him well. he s capable, i think, unfortunately of doctoring tapes. he hasn t done that, hard to do it now since we have an expert all over it. rick, i know that you worked on two of jew lagiuliani s camp. what is your reaction there? what is the strategy that you think he s going after? i think it s important to remember the rudy you re seeing is a performing rudy. he is playing the role of the junk yard dog attorney deaverfeg his client to the hilt. i don t think rudy believes that the tapes are doctored. i don t think he but you can expect him to do the very sort of, you know, upper style rudy, the big character because it s newsworthy. it keeps the base of trump s support, you know, gives them a sort of model to go after, a talking point to follow. and so the fact that he s going to play that role and he s going to play it with all this sort of big over the top assertions and stuff, it s just important to remember, like i said, it s performance. it s a piece of performance art as lawyering. who has more perceived credibility here, trump or cohen? both of these men, an argument can be made against them. how do you see this being played out? i m going to go with the people who have the subpoena power. the people that have the subpoena power are the prosecutors and the southern district of new york and the special counsel s office. those folks know far more than we do. and they know who telling the truth and who is not telling the truth. they likely already got phone records and corroborating evidence to give a sense of who here is shading and not shading and by how much. i d also point out that to the extent congress wants to delve into the issues seems like kind of doesn t. that could get in the way of the on going criminal investigations. so for now we re left with these actors both with motivations to improve on a story which may or may not be true. shading the truth. and though important thing is what evidence a grand jury sees in new york and d.c. and virginia. yeah. to michael s point, at the end of the day, we re all still left in the dark here. no transparency whatsoever for the public. thank you very much for joining us. michael, stick around. you ll be back later in the program. what if the tape of michael cohen and president trump s conversation was altered? we re going to discuss. plus, the ultimate will they or won t they right after the president invites putin to the white house, putin turns around and says he invited the president to russia. the possible power play behind the special invite. you might take something for your heart. or joints. but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. let someone else do the heavy lifting. tripadvisor compares prices from over 200 booking sites to find the right hotel for you at the lowest price. so you barely have to lift a finger. or a wing. tripadvisor. then you might have a dcondition called dry mouth.? biotène is clinically proven to soothe and moisturize a dry mouth. plus, it freshens breath. biotène. immediate and long lasting dry mouth symptom relief. bundle and save big, but now it s time to find my dream abode. -right away, i could tell his priorities were a little unorthodox. -keep going. stop. a little bit down. stop. back up again. is this adequate sunlight for a komodo dragon? -yeah. -sure, i want that discount on car insurance just for owning a home, but i m not compromising. -you re taking a shower? -water pressure s crucial, scott! it s like they say location, location, koi pond. -they don t say that. on the heels of the controversial summit in helsinki, an encounter is in the works this time on american soil. i think this meeting is very important for everyone. all right. the white house says the next summit now won t take place until after the first of the year. national security adviser john bolton saying they want to wait until the witchunt or mueller probe is over. but some are speculating there could be another reason for the delay. no one really publicly endorsed that idea. a lot of people said it was a bad idea. he is an adversary. you don t invite him to the white house. all right. so russian president putin returned the favor inviting trump to visit moscow, something president trump is considering. we are ready to invite president trump to moscow. be my guest. he has such an invitation and i told him that. i am ready to go to washington as well. i repeat, once again, if the right conditions for work are created. so is this now the beginning of a budding new bromance and how can russians benefit from this relationship? russian tv took to the streets of moscow and asked what do you want from mr. trump. watch? all right. so trump may have some fandz s russia. but germany s defense minister delivered a scathing critique in an interview and he said, the u.s. president lacks any strategy in dealing with russia. a trip to moscow may be just what trump needs as things start to heat up back here at home. as donald trump s former personal lawyer jumped camp and released a damming recording of a conversation he had with trump, how much political damage has been done? did michael cohen betray you? all right. and then there s this trolling. the russian pop star who helped facilitate the 2016 trump tower meeting between don jr. and the russians, taking a cheeky jab at the president in a music video featuring a trump look alike. wish you at least could be honest i wish that you told me the truth but you keep complaining and every time that you go you got me so good i wish you would be honest the lyrics there. all this could make the president anks shuxious. what about the rest of us? trump anxiety disorder is not an official diagnosis but therapists know the symptoms. to talk about the trump-putin dynamic, i want to bring in my panel. the former white house director and democratic strategist and back with me once again, michael isakoff. great to have you with us. is this normal? give us a sense. you spent time at the state department. dueling invites from superpowers with neither side really seeming to know about the other offer or invitation in advance, is that something that is common practice? no, none of this is normal. big surprise. usually the way this works is that an invitation is discussed at length by both sides before it is officially extended, meaning that staff on both sides, the foreign ministry and state department all know about this in advance. and lots of planning goes into it. it s usually an invitation to the white house. it s a reward for good behavior or extension of good will as it was for example with india to increase economic ties. in this circumstance, donald trump extended the invitation to putin to come right during the election and everybody was shocked. how do you invite the adversary who is accused by your intelligence agencies, by your congressional leaders of interfearing inte interfering in the election and then you off the cuff invite a former kgb head of this operation to come on your home turf? on top of all of that, putin played completely i coucoy, he not accept or decline the invitation for five days until trum health care pl trum health care plan to officially withdraw it. that was a power play by putin. putin is saying can you come to moscow as an extension of that power play because it gives putin the home turf advantage. and not to mention, nobody forgets that moment when dan coats, director of national intelligence was told about the invitation from the white house and his reaction and surprise to that. michael, let me play you the sound bite from the secretary of state. he was grilled on what came out of that first big trump-putin meeting. take a listen to this. there were many things that came from what i view as incredibly important meeting between a president trump and president putin. one that i think the world will benefit from when history is written. all right. and to my recollection, he is not yet articulated what came out of this meeting. why then have a second meeting, mike signal what do you think is the real motivation behind having a second meeting since there was nothing announced in the first one? who knows? we don t know what was said in that first one. and pompeo doesn t either. all he knows is what the president told him and one does have to wonder how accurate and fullsome the president s account would have been? it does appear that the russians have a much better handle on what was exchanged between president trump and president putin at that meeting than anybody in the united states government. so, look, the fact that they want to have a second meeting without any sort of really detailed accounting of what took place in the first one is a little bit odd at best. yeah. they re not even announcing or articulating a series of meetings or steps that they can say could lead to this, you know, like some working group. working agenda. absolutely. adrian, speaking of agendas, let me read this to you. this is the national security adviser john bolton. he put out a statement that reads the president believes that the next bilateral meeting with president putin should take place after the russia witchunt is over. so we agreed that it will be after the first of the year. is that the real reason here for this delay or is it because putin s visit was unpopular in the first place not to mention among the president s own party it drew a lot of criticism? sure. i think it s the latter as opposed to the former. but i want to make the point here that fact that our national security adviser of the united states of america, the person who has the ear of the president on national security matters probably more so than anybody else in the administration is actually calling a very serious investigation into russian meddling and into our elections. russian interference for that matter. clear cut interference. a witchunt in an official white house statement is just you just can t believe this is actually happening. we see this time and time again. of course john bolton on fox news consistently disparaging the mueller investigation is one thing. now he s national security adviser. again, you know, every day i think i m not surprised by something the trump white house does because so many things are chaotic that come out of that administration, something manages to shock me. let me draw into your expertise once more the state department i should say the white house, excuse me, is no longer publishing readouts of the president s phone calls with world leaders. how problematic, how disturbing is that? or is it not? extremely disturbing because even though those reports used to be fairly anondine, it is talked about and counter terrorism policies and economic cooperation, at least it gave a sense of what parts of policy and strategy the two leaders were talking about. and the readouts again go to the broader understanding that the executive branch is ultimately beholden to the american people. and we are able to get information. that is of the most importance in maintaining our system of checks and balances. and maintaining the integrity of our democracy. this is just another step by denying us basic information about what our president is talking to other world leaders about. it allows donald trump to make the presidency about himself and not about the american public. it also leads me to believe that sometimes those other world leaders if they re adversaries could spin the message the way they want to. they have been. we ve been hearing all about this from the russians. every aspect. so they now are winning the public affairs campaign about what s going on in the war on syria, what is happening in iran. they re now claiming u.s. support that may or may not exist because we don t have an accurate readout from our own president. michael, let me get your final thoughts on how this putin-trump bromance plays out with our allies. we played a sound bite from the german defense minister saying there is no american strategy to deal with russia. it goes beyond just the lack of strategy, right? there s no doubt they re going to be remembered far more than anybody else about that summit and events leading up to it. because there you had the president unvarnished taking what he really thinks. and what really thinks is the russians didn t really attack our election. it may have been somebody else. what about the dnc server, all this, you know, sand dust that he s been throwing out there. and if that s what he s saying in public after meeting putin, we can presume he was saying he was saying something similar in his private talks with putin. that is really astonishing. i want to echo that point made before, the idea that john bolton is now adopting the political spin of the president calling the mueller investigation a witchunt is really remarkable. he has a serious job and he s supposed to be an honest broker dealing with national security crisis around the world and see him indulging in the president s political spin is not good. absolutely. always appreciate your insights. thank you for your time. stick around for us. we ll touch base in a little bit. all right. still ahead, bad blood. the president s legal team severed ties with michael cohen s lawyers. what it could mean for robert mueller s investigation and serious allegation business giuliani that someone altered the tame between the conversation between donald trump and cohen z th. but does that even matter? 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(vo) progress is in the pursuit. audi will cover your first month s lease payment on select models during summer of audi sales event. the agreement is in effect over because he s making it clear that he s going to try to hurt the president. we can t give him information. he obviously isn t going to give us information. all right. the battle lines are now drawn. the president s legal team is on the attack following the release of michael cohen s secret audio tape this week. rudy giuliani is leading the charge as you saw there adding yet another line of attack as he goes after cohen and the tape s credibility. we have determined the fact that he tampered with the tape in a sense that he abruptly mid conversation turned it off. i think they put it out because they want the doctored version to obscure whatever else might be on that tape. we ve had it analyzed and it is no way to tell if he did it at the time or if he went back and added it out of portion. because it goes on to another subject. it stops abruptly and goes on to another subject. now i listened unfortunately to msh many, many hours of tapes and the man is a pathological manipulator, liar. i didn t know that. i didn t know him well. he s capable, i think, unfortunately, of doctoring tapes. hasn t done. that will be hard to do it now su since we have an expert all over it. strong words there from giuliani. joining me now is a former federal prosecutor. glen, great to you with us. let s pick up on the last point. he is talking about the tapes and the possibility that the tapes were tampered with. if it is somehow found out that the tape at least the one that we heard publicly so far was indeed doctored as rudy giuliani claims, how damaging would that be for cohen s defense? well, if we actually had evidence that michael cohen doctored the tape for a particular outcome to make the president look bad, obviously that would be damaging. that is something as a career prosecutor i would take into account. and i would have to really drill down on if i were meeting with michael cohen and his lawyers deciding whether to bring him on as a cooperating witness. but i have to say this really seems more like a continued disinformation campaign by mr. giuliani. and here s why i say that. first we heard that the tape will completely exonerate the president. then mr. giuliani turns around and says well the tape was doctored. and this is a common refrain. we heard mr. giuliani say michael cohen is a good and honest lawyer and then he turns around and says michael cohen is an absolute liar. but if i can drill down on one thing mr. giuliani said on tv this morning, i think it tends to highlight exactly what we re dealing with here. and what mr. giuliani s real intent s here s one thing he said this morning. i wrote it down. i ll quote it. i don t want to be inaccurate. mr. giuliani this morning said that michael cohen said the following, i only made the payment that being the ami, karen mcdougal payment, because i personally love the president and milana and that s why i made the payment. mr. giuliani then props that up as gospel. take it to the bank. and because he said that, the president is completely exonerated from campaign finance violations. this is the typical bait and switch that we see defense attorneys try to pull off every day in courts in cases. they say the man is an absolute liar. you can t believe anything he says. then they turn around and says this one piece helps my client. take it to the bank, believe it. i think that s why i suggest we re seeing a massive disinformation campaign designed to really impact the sort of public perception in the event this actually plays itself out in an impeachment hearing. then as a former federal prosecutor, how do you deal with the fact that you have two men whose credibility is to say very bad? i mean you have michael cohen and the president both known for fabrications, for lies, misstatements. how do you then try to piece together an argument when you have two men of that background? here s how i would deal with it. if michael cohen were coming to me and wanting to cooperate, we would sit down in probably four, five, six very lengthy debriefing sessions. we would have the million plus documents and other materials that were seized during the search warrants executed on michael cohen s home, hotel room, business. we would walk through them one at a time to make sure everything michael cohen said could be backed up sposhgts, su and corroborated. we would go beyond that. he would get his cell side information to see where his phone was at any given time. for example, when michael cohen said i was in a meeting with the president when i overheard the president being told about the upcoming meeting, the trump tower meeting with russian operatives, we would want to check michael cohen s cell phone records and his cell side information to see if the cell phone put nipple thhim in that location. we would painstakingly try to confirm, corroborate every single thing michael cohen is saying and only if we believed he was being truthful would we decide to offer him a cooperation agreement. and it certainly seems that is something that is at least unfolding now which is another indication of how long this investigation into michael cohen and what role he could play continues. glen, great to have you with us. thank you for your insights as always. thank you. today marks 100 days until the mid terms. president trump is ready to stump six to possibly seven days a week plus he is ramping up the attacks on democrats, threatening another government shutdown if democrats don t support immigration reform and build him the wall. could the president be feeling the pressure of a blue wave? 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well, certainly it s 100 days before. effectively, this is first judgement day. this is going to be an election that is a referendum on donald trump. democrats are enthusiastic about turning out to vote. and republicans really have two choices. they either are going to be running to defend donald trump and turn out the base or running to distance themselves from him. either option as a republican is not great because that s not talking about your own district and your own message about what you delivered to the public. democrats have an advantage. even now in the polling you soo he that donald trump is losing the independence that helped get him elected. that is upholding in arizona and ohio and florida. he is down less than 40% which is not what a president with theoretically a winning economy, he should not be in that position right now. that s why we re seeing him tweet about things like the border wall, potential shutdowns. he is desperately trying to figure out a way to rally the base and get himself past november elections. i m trying to figure out why he is asking democrats for funding when he promisesed that mec promised that he coumexico going to pay for the wall. there is a political analyst that says democrats for the first time are actually favored to retake control of the house in the midterms and according to the hill report, he shifted 17 house races in favor of the democrats. still several vulnerable republicans including representative pete roscam seeing the races move from likely republican to tossup in the ratings. what is making republicans in some of these districts so vulnerable? what do you see as the vulnerability? well, the vulnerability is the fact that donald trump is the president of the united states. look, democrats have 23 seats that we need to regain control of the house. democrats are also leading 10 points on the generic ballot which means that if a democrat and republican are going head-to-head, the democrat has automatically a ten point advantage in a lot of the swing districts. that is a significant attribute for democrats running and going into the mid terms. you know, look, one reason why donald trump is making some of the immigration and the nfl, whenever he goes into the panic mode he starts delivering red meat back to his base to motivate them. you have got to keep in mind that republicans are going to be home house republicans and democrats will be back in the districts for a full month. there s town halls. their going to be hearing from hearing from angry constituents. the president and republicans have done nothing on health care reform. they want to sabotage the aca. they passed a tax bill that is in favor of the rich. this is a great situation that the democrats are in going into the fall. and again, you know, the other factor here is that democrats do need to take back the house because we need to have some sort of subpoena power and control over balance of boyar between the house and the senate. so andrea, i know you spend a lot of time as a congressional reporter on capitol hill. you heard president trump talking about the fact he s willing 60 days out from the elections to be on the campaign trail, six to seven days a week. is he going to be welcomed by these republicans? do these republicans want to see trump campaigning for them in their districts? the thing so interesting about this year, you have moderate republicans up for re-election in districts that hillary clinton won, sometimes by double digits. carlos in the 26th district in florida. dana rohrbacher out in california. these are folks that, you know, i don t know if the president s help would actually benefit them in their congressional districts so what these candidates and these incumbents have to do is really distinguish their own brand from what the president is offering. what we saw this morning from the president s tweet about the border wall funding is that number one he s drilling down on the base which is something that s worked really well for him and will continue to work well for him as we get closer to the midterm elections. he also realizes he won t get any border wall funding after the mid term elections. i don t anybody in their right mind think there s going to be more republicans. if anything, fewer. the big question is whether the democrats retake control. we are seeing how hard it is for him to secure that border wall funding. and he knows he s seeing the writing on the wall. if he doesn t get it now, he won t ever get it. it will be hard to pass his agenda one way or the other. let me ask about demographics, particularly about the record number of women running in 20178. 309 women have filed for u.s. house races. many galvanized by an anti-trump sentiment. the recent protests against the family separation at the border has impacted women voters but let s talk about women running for office. how will this play in the midterms? my favorite topic, thanks for asking me about this. look, women are fired up, ready to take back their country. they re angry at trump for his policies, misogynistic behavior. we are seeing this on the democratic side. if a woman is running against a man in a democratic primary statistically the women will win. you have many who are fired up. at 2016, you know, should have been the year of the woman because hillary clinton was the democratic nominee for president. really 2017 and 18 is the years of the women because they re so fired up and motivated like never before. let s switch gears really quickly. i can get your reaction to this interesting exchange that unfolded on twitter this morning. the president tweeted out, had a very good and interesting meeting at the white house with sulzberger, spent time talking about the vast amounts of fake news by the media and how that fake news has morphed into phrase enemy of the people. sad. as you can imagine though there was a response from the new york times publisher a.j. sulzberger who felt it was responsibility to respond. i told the president directly that i thought his language was not just divisive by dangerous. although the phrase fake news is untrue and harmful, i m far more concerned about his labelling journalists, the enemy of the people. i warn his inflammatory language will lead to violence. andrew, as someone who does cover capitol hill, how is this likely to play out, this attack by the president against the press? are we hearing other senior republican leaders not side with the president on this subject matter? right, senior republicans on capitol hill have denounced the president or at least troyed to distance themselves from him when he launches against the journalists in general. as i said before, this really goes back to the president wanting to drill down on the base and make sure he has his base in his corner and this they show up to vote in the midterm elections. i think that s something important for him. i will note that in a follow-up tweet later this afternoon i think he started a thread in which he talked about how sort of the news media operates. he said it s dangerous when journalists reveal the internal deliberations of the government. i think that s our job. a lot broad sized that the president launches are not only meant to advance the political agenda but they re misinformed more generally. it s generated a toxicity against the press and about the security and safety of the news agencies across this country. thank you. that ll do it for me this week. join me at 5:00 to break down the major stories of the week and reach out to me on social media. join me friend kasie hunt at 7:00. and first up, it s meet the press. how do you win at business? begin your journey at ancestry.com in the movies, a lot of times, i tend to play the tough guy. but i wasn t tough enough to quit on my own. not until i tried chantix. chantix, along with support, helps you quit smoking. it reduced my urge to smoke to the point that i could stop. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions with chantix. serious side effects may include seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking or allergic and skin reactions which can be life-threatening. stop chantix and get help right away if you have any of these. tell your healthcare provider if you ve had depression or other mental health problems. decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. use caution when driving or operating machinery. the most common side effect is nausea. my favorite role so far? being a non-smoker. no question about it. talk to your doctor about chantix. no question about it. any paint can change the way a room looks. but only one can change how it feels. century, from benjamin moore, is the first-ever soft touch matte finish paint. its revolutionary texture unlocks 75 unprecedented colors, each with exquisite depth and richness. it s a difference you can see, touch, and feel. that s proudly particular. century. only at select local paint and hardware stores.
the white house for clarification on that. they have yet to respond to our questions. there is previous reporting out there about conversations president trump has had privately with some, including his own white house counsel, don mcgann, making complaints about what he sees as conflicts of interest on behalf of robert mueller. according to four separate sources who spoke to the new york times earlier this year as part of a tirade president trump went on against robert mueller, he complained mueller left his virginia golf club over a disspews because of golfing fees. a spokesperson for the special counsel told the washington post that was inaccurate. president trump, if you recall, it was reported, tried to fire robert mueller until his counsel, don mcgann, threatened to resign at which president trump backed off. again, this is the frustration of president trump of his own attorney making bombshell The latest news and information from around the world with host Ana Cabrera. here he is attacking mueller and the press and immigration policies of the u.s. is trump going back to his greatest hits here or are these attacks somehow different? it does seem like there is a late sunday barrage of these. this has been a tough week for the president, not the least of which is because his long time attorney and counsel, michael cohen, obviously this past week, we have seen it so dramatically, turned against him in a tense and offering evidence to the public and presumably to prosecutors that could implicate the president. it seems if the tweets are a sign of his mood, it is not a happy state where the president is just now. and we also learned this week, robert mueller is looking at the tweets as part of his investigation and here he is going after him on twitter. you re a defense attorney, you The latest news and information from around the world with host Ana Cabrera. darned with the facts. it seems like it doesn t matter. i was looking the other day at a study the president was told 2100 lies, he tells five lie as day. it s really disheartening because it doesn t appear to be about the fact, about getting your base to believe that the investigation is a witch hunt. the investigation has no substance, the investigation is all about going after me. that s a shame because if he should focus on substance and really focused on politics. all the news about michael cohen this week is coming a bit of a drama before our eyes, we learned a few days ago, trump s former attorney, michael cohen is willing to tell mueller trump knew about that 2016 meeting before it happened. if true, what could this mean for the president? there are a couple of stories this week and the other story cnn broke earlier this week was the excerpt of the tape michael cohen recorded his client as he the fact of special counsel closing in on him and has a southern district investigation. at the end of the day, you see there would be an opportunity for him, based on the proximity to the president, to know what s going on. if he is a person that s not credible or has no veracity for 15 years, why did you keep him around? it makes no sense. the issue whether the president knew or didn t know about this meeting, i don t think it has any legal significance. did we really need michael cohen to tell us about this meeting? was there not enough circumstantial evidence with blocked phone calls relating to don jr. with the president saying two days before the meeting he was coming out with a speech, that was circumstantial. as to the issue of an actual meeting, it s okay it s not okay it s not like a deposition he lied at, he lied to the press and he has become very adept at that without consequence. at the end of the day if he knew about the meeting, it s not illegal to have the meeting in itself. it s the substance. it may have a lot of political significance but on the legal side i don t think it has significance. we will see what robert mueller does about it. obviously part of the southern district of new york who has cohen s case. thank you both. we have more news on this deadly california wildfire taking another life, more in just minutes. live in the cnn newsroom. are you taking the tissue test? 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[ claps hands ] ooh i m not hearing the confidence. okay, hold the name your price tool. power of options based on your budget! and! we ll make heaven a place on earth yeah! oh, my angels! ooh, heaven is a place on earth [ sobs quietly ] lest drive an update from the california fires, the death toll and people missing are climbing, six people dead at least and it s become even more dangerous. it s explosive and what firefighters have already seen, and they have seen plenty. at least 700 homes destroyed. just 5% containment, barely worth mentioning. one that was just mentioned at the news conference in redding is entirely man made. they mentioned drones. we have noticed there are drone footages online of folks flying drones over this fire. that poses a huge safety risk to our folks. if you fly, cannot. we have to ground all our aircraft if there s reports of drones over the fire. it s quite the process to get them out of the area and chase that down after finding where they re coming from. we ask you please refrain from flying drones over the fire. covering this fires all week, dan, from redding. officials they they will soon be contained. reporter: they have said they will be turning a corner for days but things seemed hopeless. the commander said quote we are feeling more optimistic today and finding good progress. i think by tonight you will see containment percentages increase. what that means we don t know. right now, it is 5% contained. but any spike would be welcomed after the residents felt paralyzed. you have 38,000 people under evacuation order, you can t get a hotel in the area. the evacuation center is full and people i m sure are anxious to get back into their homes. this is one of the subdivisions we have seen all day, and underscoring the random nature of the fire, one burn down to the ground and the one next door completely standing. the containment numbers will go up. i have to tell you, this area does remain under a red flag warning, supposed to be windy tonight. i think officials are cautiously optimistic. difficult to see some of those images. up next, the community is coming together for those helped to evacuate. they re getting big help. celebrity chef guy fieri next in the newsroom. first, christine romans. wall street will get one of the biggest earnings report this week, apple, set to report tuesday after the closing bell. the stock is up 15% this year and climbed steadily the past month. apple insiders will be looking closely at the future of the business. investors will be keeping a close eye on tariff related headlines and profits and the july jobs reports are due to be out friday morning and expecting 200,000 new jobs, right in line with recent months. the big question is the jobs rate, will more people enter the labor market in june and people are confident enough to come off the sidelines to look for work, a good thing. the federal reserve also meeting this week and we aren t expecting a rate hike and won t be a press conference from the fed chief jerome powell. he will start doing a press conference after every meeting next year in part to tell people what he is thinking. let s get started. show of hands. who wants customizable options chains? 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nope! get internet on our gig-speed network and add voice and tv for $34.90 more per month. call or go online today. welcome back. we have some images right now of the president here as he heads back to d.c. after spending a weekend in his golf club in new jersey. see him there walk from, i believe that s air force one or marine one. i guess marine one would make sense, given the color of it. he s walking past reporters. every now and then he ll take questions. we ll see if he does this time. he has been on a twitter storm as we ve been reporting here the last few hours, going after robert mueller, now getting on air force one to make his trip home arriving off marine one and back to the white house he goes. he s heading back to the white house. if you can believe it, midterm elections are right around the corner, just 100 days away now. president trump to make a big push in california and pennsylvania and florida. analyzing how republicans can maintain control in congress and how democrats can pull off a congressional victory. watch. 100 days now to the midterm elections, new cnn rankings give the democrats a reason to feel more bullish to take over control of the house of representatives. to the campaign trail, a look at the current state of play. let s look at the house. 235 republicans, the majority. see the red seats, democrats in the minority with 193. that s the state of play in washington. let s look at our new rankings on the campaign trail. 235 republican seats, rewarning only 158 of them as solid republican going into the final stretch of the campaign. 29 likely, 18 lean republican, see the yellow or gold, 27 toss-up seats, strong number for democrats, 182 solid, nine likely, 12 lean democrat seats. how do democrats get to the majority. here is their dream scenario, win the likelies and dreams, 230, if they run the board, well in excess of what they need to be the majority. again, that s a dream vision. it does show you how this is well within their reach in the final stretch. one of the reasons they re so bullish, look at the toss-up seats. of the 27 toss-up seats, 25 are currently held by republicans. 25 of the 27 toss-ups are currently republican held seats, only two held by democrats. with the wind at your back the reason democrats are more optimistic. more of the democrats into the red and their standing today is even better than the beginning of the year. look at the republican numbers, 177 solid to begin the year down to 158 solid now. more seats have moved from dark red solid republican this way towards the democrats. democratic numbers are up, 182 now. 176 in january. a lot can happen between now and then. heading into this final stretch democrats believe their odds are quite good at taking the biggest prize this november, control of the house. thanks, john king. let s discuss with senior writer and analyst and steve cortez, from president trump. you just heard the news. are you worried? i am worried and i agree with him. history argues for the democrats. a president s first term is usually disastrous, obama and reagan and they had a good second term but had trouble in the first election. it gives me optimism. i think they will win if they can just resist from being crazy. i used resist on purpose. i m not sure they can resist being crazy. we ve heard the most radical wing go crazy, abolish i.c.e. and cortez. if they go there they will jeopardize what should be their victory and the second way they lose if they keep going back to the impeachment. if we want to win as republicans we have to put trump de facto on the ballot. make the case, i think it s accurate, democrats will impeach this president if they take control of the house and i think they can score an upset and energize the deplorables to convince them this is really a trump re-elect. when you hear about the economy it s so strong and you hear if the economy is so strong you have good political power. as john king just reported, are there signs to be encouraging. yes, on the encouraging side we know donald trump s approval rating is up, that s a factor. if it s near 50% it s not and not anywhere close to the 50% now then republicans are almost certainly cruising for a bruising. the economy that has been good since the beginning of the year hasn t moved the numbers at all. even though trump s approval rate is up, congressional ballot is still bad for republicans, but if that is seven, plus eight, plus nine to election day it seems to me democrats will take control of the house of representatives. we have enthusiasm for democrats right now. hold your thought because i want to read what trump is tweeting. he seems to know what gets his supporters motivated. he s going back to a topic he knows will fire up his base, immigration. from another tweet today, i would be willing to shut down the government if the democrats do not give us the votes for border security, including the wall, must get rid of the rotly, catch and release and finally go to a system of immigration based on merit. we need great people coming into our country. do you think the wall is worth the government shutdown? i certainly do. this was the foundation he was elected on. nothing gets his base fired up than these issues. it s smart politics and good policy. he won 230 congressional districts. if congressional republicans would embrace him and his vision they would keep the house. the reason of the house is very much in doubt and i was worried because far too many house republicans have been establishment squishes and not embraced the 2016 message of sovereignty and populism. if they embrace it, a real immigration bill, border security, ending visa lottery and catch and release. if we actually did that before november i wouldn t be worried at all about us keeping the house. a government shutdown, you think his voters would say, yeah, it s worth it? before the election? isn t that going to hurt some of his voters? look, it might. we had two this year. the country s not exactly falling apart, as a matter of fact, quite the opposite. things are going great in this country. two shutdowns already and it hasn t been armageddon. it s worth at least playing brinkmanship. we need to take risks as republicans. i agree with the article and what john king said, the table is set for democrats. if we re not adventurous and bold we will lose control of the house. if we lose control of the house, they will impeach trump and not good for the country and obviously not president trump. let s get him on the ballot. the way to do that is immigration. do you agree? i agree immigration is good for republicans. i believe republicans are more enthusiastic about immigration than democrats are. i do not agree if they tied themselves to trump, it would be good. donald trump has 42% approval rating. if it s not better than that, it s over. there hasn t been a president whose party didn t suffer in the midterm elections. normally the president s approval rating at this point holds to the election. the one time it didn t happen was jimmy carter. we still have 100 days to go. at this particular point it s bad for them. independence, a whole other piece of the puzzle, right? exactly. we re talking about donald trump s base. the republican party will carry 90% of the voters donald trump won in 2016 in this midterm election. if that 10% we re looking at of his base that voted for him in 2016 but probably because they didn t like hillary clinton, and she s now not on the ballot. if that goes over to the democrats this midterm it will be a democrat landslide. thank you for being here to discuss politics and beyond. we ll have you back soon. up next, we turn to california where the fire ravaged redding is being forced to evacuate. they re getting help from that celebrity chef on the right, guy fieri next in the newsroom. stop fearing your alarm clock. with new ! zzzquil pure zzzs. a drug-free blend of botanicals with melatonin .that supports your natural sleep cycle. .so you can seize the morning. new! zzzquil pure zzzs. dinner date.meeting his parents dinner date. save up to 15% why did i want a crest 3dk early white smile? so i used crest. crest 3d white removes. .95% of surface stains in just 3 days. .for a whiter smile. that will win them over. crest. healthy, beautiful smiles for life. bundle and save big, but now it s time to find my dream abode. -right away, i could tell his priorities were a little unorthodox. -keep going. stop. a little bit down. stop. back up again. is this adequate sunlight for a komodo dragon? -yeah. -sure, i want that discount on car insurance just for owning a home, but i m not compromising. -you re taking a shower? -water pressure s crucial, scott! it s like they say location, location, koi pond. -they don t say that. test test democrats on that senate intelligence committee say the white house is not taking the election seriously. one of the main challenges is the new way russian hackers could mess with america, no longer just voter registrations. state sponsored hackers seem far more interested this year in demonstrating that they can disrupt the american electric utility grid. than according to the united states intelligence officials and technology company executives. is that what you re hearing from your sources as well? actually, the director of national intelligence had a briefing of reporters last week to walk us through some of the things they re seeing russia is doing. russia is looking at elections and also looking at things a lot more disturbing for national security officials, they re probing electricity grids, probing the various things you would need to keep communities running, the kind of thing perhaps in a military conflict you might interfere with if you were a country like russia less military powerful than the united states but perhaps the u.s. might reconsider some sort of strike against moscow in a conflict if moscow was threatening to bring all of the u.s. power grids down. describe a worst case scenario if they get inside the power grid. could they trigger black-outs or destroy the electrical equipment? what could they do to things in place? what they could do is probing various power plants and probing utilities so perhaps they could trigger some sort of black-out city by city. they ve also been doing things like probing utilities, possibly to get personal information. it s not really clear. some of these probes are disguised as criminal hacks, but what u.s. intelligence officials believe this is, is laying the groundwork for future conflict in what they call a gray zone fight, where it measures short of war. they might be planning to do some of these things but do it in a way that is completely deniable so that they can cause chaos in the united states and u.s. economy, maybe pull down a market trading floor. but be able to say, hey, it wasn t us. i wonder about the approach because we know when it comes to elections there are a few senate democrats who have had their office attacked and russia is still trying to interfere in the midterms as well. microsoft told us at the aspen forum there were three different lawmakers who had their campaigns interfered with so far and we had the head of cyber command tell us he has set up a specific department to deflect and detect russian interference of various types. he didn t give us too much detail on that. what that does tell you is that even though president donald trump seems to go back and forth whether russia did try to hack or would try to hack, the professionals in the national security community are telling reporters, we re watching this, we re aware of it, and trying to message to moscow, we have your number. yet, when it comes to this potential election interference, national security officials are telling cnn they re operating with no coherent strategy from the top, all these different agencies essentially having to fend for theirselves without direction or support. is it important to be on the same page and have a united cohesive strategy? you do hear complaints they d rather see something like the counter-terrorism fight, where you have all the different elements of u.s. national power working together to target those who would do us harm in terrorism. but you ve got the national security advisor, john bolton, who is no fan of russia, and some of his staff, who are looking at this. i think you will see them coalescing towards some sort of unified strategy. failing that, the different elements of national power doing what they do besty which is fighting each different arena and hoping that that is enough. kim dozier, great to see you, thank you very much. thank you. tonight on cnn, the only limitation is imagination. follow the rog degrees of animation from theater trailers to saturday morning and primetime tv on the web. the history of comedy on cnn at 10:00. art it intelligently senses your movement and automatically adjusts on each side to keep you both comfortable. and snoring? how smart is that? smarter sleep. to help you lose your dad bod, train for that marathon, and wake up with the patience of a saint. the new sleep number 360 smart bed, from $999. smarter sleep will change your life. i love you, basement bathroom of solitude, but sometimes you stink. febreze air effects doesn t just mask, it cleans away odors. because the things you love can stink. (electronic dance music) we actually saved $50,000. and that s just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we re building a better california. people who know president trump worked for his companies and even wrote books about him say there is one universal constant about this man, that you can count on him to stretch the truth even outright lie if it suits the situation. that s not a new facet of donald trump s personality. here s gloria borger. reporter: from the election itself in many places like california, the same person votes many times. you probably heard about that. they always like to say, oh, that s a conspiracy theory, not a conspiracy theory, millions and millions of people. reporter: to the inauguration. we had a massive field of people. you saw that. it went all the way back to the washington monument. reporter: to statements like this. what you re seeing and what you re reading is not what s happening. reporter: donald trump has had a fraught relationship with the truth, one that goes back decades, to the building and selling of trump tower, where barbara rez managed the construction. he pointed that princess di was looking for a trump tower in trump town. reporter: that didn t happen? no. but it made the papers. reporter: veracity wasn t a part of it, getting the buzz out there? yes. reporter: about trump? did you guys laugh about it? yeah. nothing so terrible about it. like puffing, like exaggerating. reporter: tony schwartz, co-author of trump s art of the deal has a name for this. i came up with this phrase, truthful hyperbole. i called it an innocent form of exaggeration. now, i can call it something i actually sold for $2 million and say ten million and that becomes truthful hyperbole. the problem is there is no such thing as truthful hyperbole. the truth is the truth. hyperbole is a lie and they don t go together. reporter: they didn t go together during during the troubled opening of trump s casino in 1990 when some of the slots didn t work. when the hotel commission went there coaching day to check out things had been done, many things hadn t been done, they shut down a third of the slots. reporter: slots critical to the casino s success. the slots were the prime for the casino. to shut down a third on opening day was humiliating and disastrous. it was done because he doesn t have an organization in depth. reporter: that wasn t the story trump told. something could go bad like the opening of the taj, and he would say, it s because we had so much business here this happened, not that the system broke down, not that we didn t know what we were doing, we had so he could lie about everything and he did. the slots were so hot, nobody s, again, nobody seen people play that hard and that fast. so it blew out the slots? they blew apart. too much use? donald is so wrapped up in hyperbole that it s almost constant lies. you know, whether it s the littlest things where, you know, if you had 2,000 people at an event, you know, he would say there were 5,000 people at an event. and he got away with it. there is no belief system. if it will work, i will say it. if it stops working, i ll say it s opposite. and i ll not feel any guilt about feeling it s opposite because i don t believe anything in the first place. reporter: switching gears is what he had to do after his press conference with putin, attempting to walk back this remark on election interference. my people came to me, dan coats came to me and some others and they said they think it s russia. i have president putin. he just said it s not russia. i will say this, i don t see any reason why it would be. in a key sentence in my remarks, i said the word would instead of wouldn t. the sentence should have been, i don t see any reason why i wouldn t or why it wouldn t be russia. seeing it from his perspective, doesn t make a zirve distinction between what is true and false. his distinction is what will work and when will not work. reporter: and what happens when he is challenged with facts? what does he do? he has a genius, you know, perverse genius for turning any situation into something that is evidence of his brilliance. even if it s not true. reporter: gloria borger, cnn, washington. from washington to the other side of the country in celebrity chef knows all too well what people in the fire zone are dealing with right now. last fall a fire forced had imto evacuate his northern california home. how did he respond? he set up a mobile kitchen and he fell his evacuees and first responders. now he is helping out again. guy is joining us from reading, california. guy, thank you for spending time with us. northern california is your home turf. first, i just want to ask you, what are your thoughts about what you re seeing there? it s unbelievable. i mean it s unbelievable to see what folks are going through. but it s even more more unbelievable of just how great this community is and all these folks that have come together and the salvation army. i mean we re in tough times as a world with all of the things going on. boy, you take a moment like this and you really see what america is made of. a lot of great people coming together. i m a big fan of food network. i know how busy you r kudos for you taking action to help in the response. what is your plan? you know, the salvation army has been on the ground in reading and reading is a great place right here in northern california. i mean i come here for years as a kid. and they got involved right off the bat. and people are displaced. the fire is down and you can t see the sun. they need water and it s a regular basis. even my team and i got involved and my son and i and his buddies and a bunch of mine loaded up the caravan from the wine country and drove four hours up here and just working arm in arm with the salvation army and local chefs and residents and everybody helping out ee vvacue. that is quite the undertaking. what it is like to try to, i guess, respond in that way, to try to feed that many people on just a moment s notice? you know, it s not the simplest thing but when you have a lot of people around you, i mean we got volunteers, probably have 20 volunteers right now standing in a parking lot at shasta college and made a make shift kitchen setup with one of the trailers and a bunch of stoves. and, you know what it is? the salvation army has people that are giving them great support. we have a group called operation barbecue relief getting involved. they re going to be here with a couple big trailers. more and more people are finding the shelters and the opportunities that the shelters have. a lot of them don t know where to go and what to do. but salvation army is going to help set it up. cooking for that many people, we just did lunch for we just did lunch for 750 and getting ready to do dinner for the same group now. trying to keep the menu interesting. but i know folks are always asking me how can i help? what can i do? if you go to gosowarmy.org. they can go on and make a contribution. people need clothes and just life necessities. but they re a really great group to work with. guy, food is comfort especially during these difficult times for people. so thank you for what you re doing there, for giving back to that community and again, for just raising awareness of how people can help. we appreciate it. we re back in just a moment. how do you win at business? 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reporter: you were talking about tests up at the top. i can tell you there s one other test right now for the courts, that is to find a fair and impartial jury. 65 perspective jurors were ushered into the court on the ninth floor of the courthouse in virginia. the judge first describing the charges against paul manafort to them, including bank fraud, conspiracy and failure to report offshore bank accounts. of course, that s where they re going to fight this case out over the next two or three weeks. after doing that, he began what is traditional for any judge, and that is to question the jurors about whether they know any of the attorneys in the case, introducing all the attorneys and the defendant paul manafort to them. then essentially trying to get at a question of whether any associations these jurors might have would affect their ability to reach a fair and impartial verdict in this case. of course, no one responded affirmatively. they have moved on to private and personal questioning. the main goal, of course, to get a jury and handle this case, this most important case for the special counsel and the russia investigation, paul manafort, the former campaign chairman. joe, quick, lay out the reporter: he was the campaign manager. you can call him whatever you want at this point. lay out the stakes for paul manafort if convicted. he could spend the rest of his life in prison? reporter: absolutely. enormous stakes for him, as you said. cnn counted up all the charges. if he had to serve them end to end, it would be 305 years. of course, a big question in any of the cases, whether such a sentence would be served what s going on, c cnn legal analyst jennifer collins and glen kershner. the performance of rick gates, he committed almost all of the crimes with manafort. he will testify about what they did and what makes manafort guilty on the charges. i m actually keeping my eye out for when a cooperator testifies, the defense can question him about other crimes and other bad acts he has done if it goes to honesty, even if they have nothing to do with the charged crimes. we may actually get a chance to see some of what the mueller team knows and what rick gates can testify about what did he during campaign that may be improper, dishonest, illegal, including potentially russia collusion. rick gates was part of the campaign for much longer than manafort was, through the election, even up to the inauguration. we may get a glimpse into some of what rick gates has told the mueller team more than what comes out as far as the charges in this trial. i m keeping an eye on that. and glen, this it s all just starting today. could manafort, as it is starting, but is there time for him to cut a deal with bob mueller? how does this work? you know, i think there s still time for him to plead guilty. i was a federal prosecutor for 30 years. i had defendants plead guilty the day of trial, after opening statements and midway through the trial when the defendant saw there was a mountain of evidence. it s a different question whether he can still cut a deal with robert mueller. i actually think if robert mueller really wanted or needed manafort s testimony to continue to build his case, i think we would have seen a deal cut some time ago. can he still plead guilty? yes. is mueller likely to extend him a plea offer? almost certainly the answer is no. an interesting take on why manafort might not want to cut a deal. he is afraid of russia. listen, we have seen what has happened over the uk with some former russian operatives who turned evidence against russia and tried to flee the country. we have seen them poisoned. it was not the first instance. it may very well be that manafort is concerned that if he were to cooperate, perhaps he would anger russia and perhaps they would try to reach out and touch, so to speak, him or some of his family members. witness fear and intimidation is a powerful motivator. in my experience, it s one of the things that will keep a potential cooperating witness from coming on board and turning state s evidence. that s interesting. chris christie today said that the case is remarkably important for the credibility of bob mueller. do you see this as a big test for bob mueller? i think it is a test for bob mueller. you know, you have to remember, there are 12 jurors here, regular, everyday people. it only takes one of them to hang this case. you never know what happens in a trial and in the jury room. i wouldn t say it s a terrible thing for mueller if he doesn t get his conviction here. they can always try it again if it s a hung jury. it s a big test for mueller. but you do have to remember, there s a crap shoot with who the jury is. we have to suspend judgement and see how it goes. all of this is happening in the public eye. ifoverwhelming, that s going to show the mueller team has done a good job and they brought a powerful case. it s not 100% about what happens when the verdict comes back. i mean, i asked this of chris on the political front. from the legal side, this trial isn t about any russia collusion on its face. right? rudy giuliani very clearly wanted to make the case yesterday that he does not think paul manafort has anything on president trump. what does this mean though for president trump? i agree with you that on four corners of this case, the evidence that we expect to see, it doesn t really implicate russian collusion. i really think we need to keep in mind that when we investigate these large-scale races, racketeer and corruption organization cases, it s usual for prosecutors to return a series of indictments. i have to tell you, i know we have seen two indictments of paul manafort, one in virginia, one in d.c. paul manafort may be the rare defendant who will find himself on the end of a hat trick of indictments. i don t believe they are done with paul manafort. that means stand by to stand by, i guess. great to see you. thank you so much. appreciate it. keep an eye on what s going on when they come out. coming up, president trump says north korea is no longer a nuclear threat. why then is kim jong-un reportedly working on new missiles? step forward, step back, step to the side. where are we now? details ahead. the white house is looking at a new tax cut for, well, some of the country s wealthiest americans. they don t think they need congress to do this. aren t they called the legislative branch for a reason? stay with us. let your perfect drive come together at the lincoln summer invitation sales event. get 0% apr on select 2018 lincoln models plus $1,000 bonus cash. $23 a month. selectquote found anna, 37, a $750,000 policy for under $22 a month. selectquote s secret? they comparison shop select group of great companies like these for your best rate. give your family the security they need. at a price you can afford. since 1985, selectquote has saved over a million families millions of dollars on life insurance. call the number on your screen. or go to selectquote.com. discover what over a million families know. we shop. you save. discussions are ongoing and they re going very, very well. we have no rush for speed. we have no time limit. we have no speed limit. we re just going through the process. but the relationships are very good. that was president trump just two weeks ago saying there s no rush when it comes to getting north korea to denuclearize. today the washington post reports there s signs that north korea may be doing opposite. new satellite images and other indicators show that they could be working on building new liquid-fuelled missiles, this happening outside pyongyang at this facility which produced the first ballistic missiles capable of reaching the united states. what now? joining me is bruce clinger, former cia deputy commissioner. great to see you. if confirmed, what does this reporting tell you about their weapons program now? it shows that all of the programs are continuing and perhaps even expanding. the last several weeks, we have had intelligence leaks or non-government satellite imagery analysis indicating that the expansion of the programs. there s no reduction in the arsenal. there s no reduction in the production capabilities. is that flatly a breach in violation of the handshake agreement between trump and kim jong-un from singapore? it may not, per se, be a violation of the singapore communiq communique, because there was no deal reached. it goes against the spirit of the singapore summit. it doesn t seem consistent with a government that s about to abandon all of these programs. most importantly, it s a continuing violation of numerous u.n. resolutions, which not only preclude nuclear missile tests, but require north korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. how does the u.s. get a good assessment? that s always a continued question, a tipped problem. with no inspectors on the ground, can the u.s. verify, can the u.s. really trust what north korea is saying? if we have an agreement, we have to have verification. the same kind of provisions we had for verification of the inf treaty and fce treaty with the soviet union and warsaw pact. if we don t have verification, then we don t have an agreement. right now, it s perhaps not a violation of the singapore summit. but we can t verify anything. what north korea needs to do to convince us that it is willing to denuclearize is provide a full and complete data declaration identifying all of its facilities, the size of its nuclear and missile arsenal. then we would have to move on to inspections of declared facilities. then eventually challenge inspections of non-declared facilities. bruce, president trump last week, he was still really remained optimistic about it all saying that discussions are going very, very well in his words and also when he said, there s no rush for speed, there s no speed limit, there s no time limit. at what point do you think the administration needs to set some ben benchmarks, set time lines? right. secretary of state pompeo is in pyongyang a few weeks ago. afterwards said that they made progre progress. north korea very quickly and very imfemphatically denied progress and criticized pompeo denies they would do things the u.s. wants them to do. the administration has abandoned its maximum pressure policy in favor of what pompeo called patient diplomacy. the president has said there are 300 north korean entities that we re not sanctioning. that s equal to the same number that the obama and trump administrations have cumulative cumulatively sanctioned in 5 1/2 years. it has adopted the obama administration policy of strategic patient. two steps forward, i don t know how many steps back. it s hard to know. great to see you. i appreciate it. thank you. coming up, another tax cut. this time, who needs congress to do it? can they really do that? the trump administration seems to think so. details on that next. big dreams. and big plans. so how do i make the efforts of 8 employees. feel like 50? how can i share new plans virtually? how can i download an e-file? virtual tours? zip-file? really big files? in seconds, not minutes. just like that. like everything. the answer is simple. i ll do what i ve always done. dream more, dream faster, and above all. now, i ll dream gig. now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america s largest gig-speed network. tax cuts, republicans in congress have long pushed for them and passed a big tax reform package earlier this year. what was all that fighting over? the white house is considering another tax cut while cutting out the middleman. we mean the lenggislative branc. it would impact wealthy americans. allison kos ticostik is joining now. at the heart of this are capital gains taxes. those are the taxes you pay when you cash out of an investment. you pay a capital gains tax. if this plan actually happens, it means that the super wealthy would pay less in taxes. if this plan goes through, according to the new york times, the trump administration is looking to change the way capital gains taxes are calculated. their idea is to index capital gains taxes to inflation. the best way to illustrate this is with an illustration. this is a good one from the new york times showing if a high earner spent $100,000 on stock in 1980 and you sold it for a million dollars today, that person would owe capital gains taxes on $900,000. if the original purchase was indexed to inflation, the original investment would be $300,000. that would reduce the gain to $700,000. essentially saving investor tens of thousands of dollars in taxes. who does this benefit? it benefits the super rich. one study found 97% of the benefits of this plan would go to the top 10% of americans. two-thirds of the benefits would go to the top one-tenth of americans. can the administration do this? that s up to question. what the trump administration is looking to do is bypass congress all together and use regulatory powers. we know that george w. bush, when he was in office, had looked into this. it was discovered that there wasn t any legal standing for it. if the trump administration does try to get this through, you can bet there will be a lot of legal challenges. let s just stand by and see. everyone loves a legal challenge. with me now, molly ball and phil mattingly. who knew it was so easy to get tax cuts through? forget the benefits or non-benefits of a cap gains tax cut. going around congress, it was so easy. what was all the fighting about? how is this going to go over on the hill? if you can skip the filibuster, skip the filibuster. this has been pushed by conservatives for a long period of time. one of the primary backers is one larry kudlow who owns a prominent place in the white house economic team. i think when you listen to what steve mnuchin said about this in the past, there s a recognition this might be dicey on the regulatory side. there s a reason it s not been done. if you go back to the bush administration, they did a legal analysis of this. decided they couldn t do it. the justice department, the legal counsel put out a policy notice saying they didn t think they could do it. there s been shifts in laws s st might open the door. are they willing to push this? one thing i heard from my tax friends on the right is, even if this is challenged on the legal side, even if it s defeated on the legal side, just the short-term burst of the asset sales might have a boost in the economy that would be effective on growth and might for a short time might be worth it. that might be the whole ball game. i guess the bottom line is congress isn t going do it. they re not doing more tax reform. you figure out ways you can do this. this is an idea. will they pursue it? we will see. molly, is this just a trial balloon? it could be. they obviously are saying they are considering this, not that they are necessarily going to do it. as phil said, might wind up in court if they were to do so. on the political end of things, i read this as the administration trying to send a positive message to the business community and to conservatives to fiscal conservatives. both of those groups have beenu and are looking something from the administration to mollify them, to placate them. so this would be something that would sort of say to them, we haven t forgotten about you. some free traders are worried these tariffs actually could have a very negative economic affect in the near term. the administration looking to tell them that it is still on their side. the flip side is that democrats think this goes perfectly with their message that the tax reform bill of last year was a giveaway to the rich. one reason previous administrations didn t do this was because of the legal authority. another reason is that when you give a big tax cut, you take away a bunch of government revenue. that increases the deficit. we have seen this administration, this congress not being particularly concerned about the deficit and debt. that would it s hard to find a deficit hawk on capitol hill anymore. let s just be honest. let s talk about there are two strategies when it comes to a possible government shutdown yesterday. the president said, if i don t get border security, i don t get the wall, i would have no problem doing a shutdown. republican leaders seem to be trucking along with their fingers in their ears. they don t seem to be going along with it at all. there s the actual strategy, the one that republicans and democrats are pursuing. then there s other strategy, whatever the president is thinking at any given moment. i m not knocking the president on this in the sense that, this is a key policy priority for him. he has made clear he wants to fight about this. the reality, the people on capitol hill republicans on capitol hill understand is that fight is coming. all they are asking right now is, let s have it in december. you want the shutdown fight, fight over funding for the wall, we do it if december. in the meantime, pass appropriation bills. the interesting part about the process is the reason it s working on capitol hill is because of president trump s threat back in march to veto any future giant spending bill. he is the reason things are working on capitol hill. they are working on a bipartisan basis. we know the fight is coming. please wait until after the election. please wait until after the election. please. donald trump getting in his own way. that s so interesting. molly, the wall street journal has this this is what the editorial board was writing about and wondering if donald trump cares if republicans lose control of the house in november. with this kind of key line, mr. trump may not welcome a democratic house, but he also height not fear it as long as republicans keep the senate. more than even most republicans, mr. trump always needs a foil. nancy pelosi would be from central political casting. i don t think donald trump wants to lose the house. i don t think republicans want to lose the house. there s a growing sense that it may be inevitable, no matter what they do. there s also a sense that while trump is an asset on campaign trail for most republican senators and senate challengers, because they are in states he won, he is not necessarily an asset for a lot of candidates in tricky house districts. republicans very much want him to keep his attention on the senate, keep his focus on the senate and not pay so much attention to the house where a lot of those candidates don t actually want him to come campaign for them. trump doesn t like to lose. i don t think there is any three-dimensional chess going on where he has made the strategic assessment and decided he prefers to lose the house. given it may be inevitable, there may be a silver lining. again, i will say, i don t play chess and i don t play three-dimensional chess well at all. we will stick with checkers. thank you. coming up, lawmakers on capitol hill are grilling administration officials. we are looking live at the hearing right now. over the president s zero tolerance policy at the border that has hundreds of immigrant children separated from their families despite the deadline of last week. one senator saying the administration is turning these kids into orphans. what s next? that s next. there s a lot to love about medicare. there s also a lot to know. the most important thing? medicare doesn t pay for everything. yep.you re on the hook for the rest. so consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. a plan like this helps pay some of what medicare doesn t. so you could end up paying less. and these are the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. selected for meeting their high standards of quality and service. call unitedhealthcare insurance company now to request this free decision guide, and learn more. like, medicare supplement plan, give you the freedom to go with any doctor who accepts medicare patients. it s nice to have a choice. and your coverage goes with you, anywhere you travel in the country. we have grandkids out of state. they love our long visits. not sure about their parents, though. call unitedhealthcare and ask for your free decision guide today. right now on capitol hill, you are taking a live look, lawmakers are grilling administration officials about the federal government s efforts to reunite families separated attat the border. feinstein saying that the policy may now have permanently split up families. listen. it s not an exaggeration to say that the policies of president trump and attorney general jeff sessions may essentially orphan hundreds of immigrant children. the president sees it differently tweeting this. a highly respected federal judge today stated that the trump administration gets great credit for reuniting illegal families. what the president did leave out is what else the judge said. the criticism, this. the government is at fault for losing several hundred parents in the process. that s where we go now. here is the latest that we know. the government says it reunited more than 1,400 families with kids age 5 and older. 711 children taken from their parents are still in government custody. 431 of those are children whose parents have already been deported. the government acknowledges that. joining me to discuss is lee geller. he is with the aclu leading the lawsuit over the separations at the border. thank you for coming in again. the government says as of last week that the deadline was met in their view. you say what? the deadline was not met. the reason they re saying it was met is because they took out all the kids they con reunite. of course, the deadline is met if you only say that they need to reunite those kids who they have reunited. that s what they did. they self-defined who they are going to reunite and said we met the deadline. what about all those parents who have been deported without their kids? they need to be reunited. when you look at those the latest numbers, it s more than 700 children are in government custody. the government says, the families were ineligible to be reunified for various reasons. what happens to the 711 kids? the judge has made absolutely clear he wants them reunited. what he has said is by thursday, we need to de this thursday? the government needs to give them a plan about what information they will give us to track down those families who have been deported. the government is not doing it on their own. the judge recognizes that. the judge is is it on the government? how are they going to track parents down? you know what s unfortunate? the government doesn t have a plan. the government shifted the responsibility to us to find these parents. we will do it because the government is not. what we need is information from the government, any relative the government may know about, any last known address. something to help us. are you confident you are going to be able to reunite these kids? i m hopeful. we will see. we re not going to give up. we have ngos all over this country and abroad who are going to be looking for these parents. we hope the government will do the right thing and give us any information they may have that will help us. do you think they are not going to provide theresistant t the information? the judge said you need to be on a timetable. the judge said i will give you credit so far. he is by no means letting them off the hook for these others. just to be clear, the judge the same judge said this policy is brutal, offensive and unconstitutional. the parent has the government has lost track of parents. what i think the judge is really saying is, i m going to keep encouraging you to keep this process going. by no means is he suggesting the government is off the hook or what they did was acceptable. this hearing is ongoing on capitol hill with government officials about this. one official was speaking to chuck grassley. i want i will listen for the first time with you what he says about these family reunification centers. listen to this. with regard to the frcs, i think the best way to describe them is to be more like a summer camp. these individuals have access to 24/7 food and water. they have educational opportunities. they have recreational opportunities, structured as well as unstructured. there s basketball courts, there s exercise classes, there s soccer fields that we put in there. they have extensive medical, dental and mental health opportunities. what s your reaction to that? i m shocked by that. to begin with, the facilities are not that good. let s just assume that they are palaces. the trauma is being caused by separating little kids from their parents. the entire medical community has overwhelmingly come out and said, you take a little child from their parent, it doesn t matter where you put them, they are causing trauma. it may be lifetime trauma from being separated from their parents. interestingly, they tried to say that in court, visit some of the facilities. the judge shut them down. it doesn t matter what the facilities look like, the trauma is from separating the child from the parent. every night the child is going to sleep thinking, am i going to see my parents again. it doesn t matter whether they are in palaces. they certainly are not palaces. that s a shocking statement. i had the head of the american academy for pediatrics on. the doctor said, this equates to child abuse, what s been seen. you are going back to court. is the fight over? it seems that the government says we have done what we can. is the fight over now? it s absolutely not. the judge has made it crystal clear. he got us on the phone early monday morning to say, i want a plan to find these missing parents. he is calling them missing parents. the other thing is we want specific information about the parents who the government claims have criminal convictions. the judge made it clear, unless it s a very serious criminal conviction there s another bit i wanted to ask about. the government one of the officials was asked and said parents that did return to home countries without their child did so after being provided an opportunity to have that child accompany them on the way home. the parents declined the offer. i think this was open a call with reporters. do you dispute that? we absolutely dispute that. we need to talk to the parents. it s possible that a few parents fully understood their rights and said, i m going to leave my child behind. from what we know, it s absolutely clear the parents have not understood their rights, thought their child was coming with them or just didn t understand they were leaving their child behind. the way the government is presenting the choices to these parents is so misleading and coercive. we dispute that. another deadline this thursday. thank you. thanks for having me. the saga continues. coming up, firefighters in california could use some help themselves from the weather as they try to contain more than a dozen wildfires. it looks like they re not going to get any help any time soon. it is just growing bigger, wider and more deadly. is there any end in sight? what they re doing to keep up with it. we will take you there live for an update. e ourselves on making it easy for you to get your windshield fixed. teacher: let s turn in your science papers. tech vo: this teacher always puts her students first. student: i did mine on volcanoes. teacher: you did?! oh, i can t wait to read it. tech vo: so when she had auto glass damage. she chose safelite. with safelite, she could see exactly when we d be there. teacher: you must be pascal. tech: yes ma am. tech vo: saving her time. [honk, honk] kids: bye! tech vo: .so she can save the science project. kids: whoa! kids vo: safelite repair, safelite replace reporter: well, kate, i have to say after days of very grim news, firefighters appear to be turning a corner. this fire is now 27% contained, and it seems to be burning away from populated areas. now, that does not mean that the threat is over, but it does mean that thousands of people can start returning to their neighborhoods. we saw a community meeting last night. obviously a lot of anxious folks, but a lot has to happen in order for that recovery to occur. you have to clear the streets of debris. you got to get the power back on. you got to clean out all the downed power lines. in the meantime, you do have these 17 major wildfires burning across california. as you can imagine, resources are stretched so thin, and this is just the beginning, really, of wildfire season, the peak of it is in late august and september. kate, let me show you where we are. this is the lake redding estates neighborhood. this is one of the many neighborhoods leveled. every too many y every time you look at this, it takes your breath away. you see all this charred debris. as you can imagine, the cleanup is just going to be immense. back to you. oh, my god. just look at that. absolutely leveled. ashes everywhere. have you met any of the residents of that neighborhood yet? reporter: we have. we see them, you know, in evacuation shelters. we see them out and about throughout the community. they re not letting people in here yet. only journalists can get in here, and of course all the firefighters and crews. at this point, it s too unsafe. absolutely. dan, thank you so much for being there. long road ahead for everybody in that neighborhood and so many more. appreciate it. coming up, it s the first big test for special counsel robert mueller. the president s former campaign chairman in court, day one of paul manafort s trial under way right now. the very latest from the courtroom coming up. ordinary stains say they can do the job, but behr premium stain can weather any weather. overall #1 rated, weathers it all. find our most advanced formula exclusively at the home depot. tap one little bumper and up go your rates. what good is your insurance if you get punished for using it? news flash: nobody s perfect. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise your rates due to your first accident. switch and you could save $782 on home and auto insurance. call for a free quote today. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. just for a shot. with neulasta onpro patients get their dayr back to be with family, or just to sleep in. strong chemo can put you at risk of serious infection. in a key study neulasta reduced the risk of infection from 17% to 1%, a 94% decrease. neulasta onpro is designed to deliver neulasta the day after chemo and is used by most patients today. neulasta is for certain cancer patients receiving strong chemotherapy. do not take neulasta if you re allergic to it or neupogen (filgrastim). an incomplete dose could increase infection risk. ruptured spleen, sometimes fatal as well as serious lung problems allergic reactions, kidney injuries and capillary leak syndrome have occurred. report abdominal or shoulder tip pain, trouble breathing or allergic reactions to your doctor right away. in patients with sickle cell disorders, serious, sometimes fatal crises can occur. the most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. ask your doctor about neulasta onpro. pay no more than $25 per dose with copay card. everyone else, no way. we let calls from any of your devices come from your business number. them, not so much. we let you keep an eye on your business from anywhere. the others? nope! get internet on our gig-speed network and add voice and tv for $34.90 more per month. call or go online today. welcome to inside politics. i m dana bash. john king is off. jury selection is under way right now in the trial of former trump campaign chairman paul manafort, the first trial for special counsel robert mueller and his team. plus, on the road again. the president travels to florida to campaign for a republican candidate, and he s telling aides to add more to the calendar. and while the president adopts
News, analysis and interviews with politicians and observers. News, analysis and interviews with politicians and observers. damaging. both the combination of the michael cohen revelations and also the fact that mueller is still going. it s causing a lot of people around the president to worry, and they re also worried about the midterms. they re worried mueller might drop something before the midterm elections that could be devastating to republicans. and trump also seems to believe that possibly if he talks, it could bring this investigation to an end more quickly, but there s not necessarily any evidence of that. yeah, i mean, it s interesting the way that trump seems to think that he could charm mueller the way that he thinks he s done with kim jong-un and with other world leaders. if he gets in the room, he can win them over. this is of course a very different situation. the other thing that is interesting where giuliani is saying put up or shut up, the irony in that is that bob mueller is perhaps the only person who we haven t heard from. yeah, yeah. he has shut up. he never speaks. he speaks through indictments, which he s had a lot of. he speaks through his court filings, but he doesn t talk himself. so you have giuliani out there talking a lot. you have president trump talking a lot. you have michael avenatti in the other case and lanny davis. you have a lot of these lawyers talking, but bob mueller himself is relatively silent, which his supporters may want to hear more from him given the way his opinion numbers have taken a dive. he s sort of the epitome of talk softly and carry a big stick. you know, he s doing that a lot right now. we re seeing his actions but not his words. rachel, yesterday we saw the president lashing out and his reaction to this and this whole idea of whether or not his tweet was a directive or an opinion or just a suggestion or him blowing off steam. of course, the white house, we re going to play a clip of all the ways the white house has talked about the president s tweets and whether or not they re opinion or directives. here you go. it s not an order. it s the president s opinion. the president is stating his opinion. he s stating it clearly. there s no reason he shouldn t be able to voice that opinion. should the attorney general see this as a directive? no, it isn t at all. it s what it is. as we said, it s an opinion. he used his he used a medium he uses for opinions. policies are statements and statements are policies. it goes both ways. that s absolutely not true. i make lots of statements. they re not u.s. policy. i misspoke. it is the case. the president calls the ball. his statements are, in fact, policy. the president is the president of the united states, so they re considered official statements by the president of the united states. pompeo there switching it up in the same conversation there. yeah, but to go back to the president s tweet yesterday, it s got to be the toughest job in washington, speaking for the president and also being his lawyer. yes, they re arguing he said mueller should end the probe, not he must end the probe and that s a difference. he s just expressing his opinion. but look f t, if the president the united states says something should end and you work for the president of the united states, you see that and you got to be nervous about it. of course, the fbi, they re going to do their job. they re trying to tune this out and just want to get this done with. but going back also to the obstruction of justice and why he doesn t want to answer questions or why his lawyers do not want to answer questions on this, there s a lot of thinking out there that mueller might have a more solid case on obstruction than he does on the russia interference thing. so they don t want the president to talk about this, but again, trump and his tweeting, he just wants to go out there and put it all out there. this could be a real legal danger to him. it deals with state of mind. that s one of the biggest problems for the president s lawyers. it s about what were you thinking when you did, not what happened when. i think that s why it s tricky for him. that s when you open up the president to saying all kinds of things that you may not have wanted him to say. when he sat down with lester holt, he basically started that process by saying, when i fired comey, i was thinking about the russia investigation. that s a big red flag for his legal team. when it comes to something like yesterday, again, this is about the court of public opinion. president trump understands news cycles. i think we can all agree to that. it was the first full day of testimony in paul manafort s trial. if the president had not stepped in and created his own side story, all of the coverage that day about the russia probe would have been about manafort and the trial. instead, everybody knows the top four paragraphs of every story became president trump on the offensive on twitter. and do we expect more of that? i mean, i know it s hard to say. daily. they would have stronger ground to stand on if he did only use it for opinion. he uses his twitter feed to fire people, to announce policy. it s a realtime look into his mind set. so it s not like he s only using it for his opinion. i think his team is doing all that they can to turn this into a semantics argument. clean it up, yeah. we ll have to leave it there. before we go to break, some major news on wall street. apple just became the first american public company to reach $1 trillion in value. apple shares surged to an all-time high just moments ago after the company reported better than expected earnings this week. for context, amazon clocks in at about $900 billion. google and microsoft both worth more than $800 billion. we ll be right back. yeah, it was during testimony from one of the witnesses where the prosecutors were asking questions related to rick gates. i think in an effort to move along, the judge said, well, you re going to have rick gates here testifying, so why don t we just move along here. when rick gates comes in, you can ask him these questions. the prosecutor, i think without thinking, just quickly said, well, we may or may not call him. certainly that signaled to a lot of the reporters in the room, well, whoa, this is the first time we re hearing that gates may not be coming in. as you said this morning, i think seeing some of the news reports, the prosecutors came in and wanted to make it very clear to the judge and to the defense team, yeah, we do intend to call rick gates, and that could happen, as you said, tomorrow, as early as tomorrow or monday. and gates of course had come under some pretty withering criticism, this idea that he might not be such a reliable witness. yeah, certainly i think that s what the defense wants. they seem to he seems to be key to their defense. they re blaming everything on him. they said so much in the opening statement. it s clear they re going to stick with their guy and intend to bring him before court. we ll see what he says. as we watch this trial, we re also watching trump s reaction to the trial. we saw it yesterday. one of the things that s interesting, and politico has this report, in terms of the white house s talking points and having people talk about this trial, this is what they found. more than a half dozen of trump s most vocal tv surrogates told politico that they weren t provided white house or campaign talking points on the case, as is customary for important headline generating matters. some interpreted that as an attempt to keep them from talking about the trial on tv and to starve it of oxygen. donald trump did not get that message. he s not starving it of oxygen. he s providing some oxygen. there seem to be from the white house paul mana-who, like he didn t work for the campaign. trump obviously having a different perspective. there s also another explanation, which is they don t have their act together to come up with talking points to send out. in this white house, that s a real possibility. i think this idea that there s a grand plan around this manafort trial is not quite right because they have settled on as close to something as this as nothing to do with us. that s not a fully baked plan. it s fairly limited in its scope. obviously the president is undermining that every day he talks about it. so this is the white house still trying to figure out exactly where to position themselves on this. as many people have pointed out, the manafort trial is being handled by the special counsel. as much as they say this has nothing to do with his time as campaign chairman, there is a fear that there is something they don t know about that could come back to haunt them. one of the things coming out in this manafort trial, his lavish expenditures and his extravagant lifestyle. 30-plus bank accounts in three countries. who among us doesn t have 30-plus bank accounts in three countries? seven homes, 6 million on luxury items and services, 3 million in home improvements, $900,000 at a men s clothing store, $123,000 car. and the jackets, of course. $18,000 on a python jacket and $15,000 on an ostrich jacket. i think there s also some sort of vest to go with it. you ve got to have the vest to go with the jacket. just some of the fun, i guess, in this trial. here s the importance in this. this is how the prosecutors are showing he was living this lavish lifestyle. he was using money, overseas money, money that he had parked in these overseas accounts, and then was wire transferring a lot of this money to these vendors, to this suit guy, the guy making his suits. that s what the prosecutors are using this for. the judge has taken some issue with them showing these photos. the other thing important in terms of the president, when we hear from rick gates, it s going to be interesting to see how the president reacts to that. he worked on the campaign. we know how the president feels about disloyal people, the idea that rick gates cooperating flipped. we don t know everything rick gates is providing to prosecutors. but the reason why all this is important, the ostrich clothes or whatever, it s like a shiny object. the reason why this is important and interesting is because paul manafort had long-standing, well-established roots to the russians, the pro-russian ukraine leadership at the time, deep ties to that world. the question is, how did the russians get anywhere close to donald trump? we know the answer. this establishes the answer. between rick gates relationships and paul manafort s relationships. that s the first nexus, and it s proven again and again, at least with some of the alleged financial ties they re trying to bear out. that s what they ll get at today. yeah. the question for the president and the president s family and some top aides is did that ever jump to the next level? did it ever move out of manafort and rick gates world into trump land? but we know that s the establishing basis of a lot of these relationships. another thing that came up in court today was whether or not paul manafort would testify. we ll just have to wait and see. nowhere close to that. up next, an endorsement from president trump is highly coveted these days, but does it pay off at the polls? one candidate says absolutely. r it s a game changer here in pennsylvania. president trump is more popular here today than when he won in 2016. call or go online today. as endorser in chief, president trump is very much on a roll. most of the midterm candidates he s backed this year have won their respective primaries. these are just a few of them, and he s keeping his foot on the gas for republicans in several other states. he was in florida on tuesday pushing congressman ron desantis for governor. he ll be in pennsylvania later today stumping for congressman lou barletta, and saturday in central ohio campaigning for a state senator running for congress. but the president s endorsements haven t always worked. his guy, of course, lost in that pennsylvania special election back in march, and remember he backed luther strange then roy moore in alabama, both of them lost. but the president is clearly reveling in this string of winning endorsements. my polls are great, but the question is, is it transferable? now, it certainly was with florida because you saw ron desantis, who s gotten a tremendous you know, many, many points. the governor of georgia, where he was down by five and won by 40 after i endorsed him. if you take a look at congressman donovan from staten island, he s down by 10 and wins by 24. so we ve had a lot of impact. and that s why i m going around. man, he s clearly enjoying this. kind of looking at the polls and in the weeds on this. the value of his endorsement seems to have gone up. he wants to do more. and he doesn t name brian kemp in there, who s running for governor in georgia. the lack of familiarity with these candidates is kind of interesting. and it s not like he s ushering in ideologues. he s not backing people because of their ideology, often. he s backing them because they like him. he s ushering in a new group of people who really like donald trump. you see that with ron desantis and some of his ads in florida. they re really hugging close to trump. that does you know, it s part of the enduring parts of his presidency, the support he still has within that base of the republican party. they re all, you know, clinging to him in ads, which is unusual at this time of year, for people to be clinging to an incumbent president ahead of a midterm cycle that typically is not very good for an incumbent. rachel, is there any more method to what he s doing, other than if the guy likes trump he s going to get out there and endorse him? it s all about loyalty. i would say almost 100%. of course, party leaders will obviously ask the president to back someone they re worried about, which they re going in ohio right now. most of these guys he s backing have done something for the president. ron desantis, who s polling ahead in his run for governor, because of trump has been on tv time and time again blasting the russia investigation, defending the president, saying this is all a witch hunt. you talk about lou barletta. i remember when he was the first person on capitol hill to endorse the president in 2016. the president clearly never forgot that. he started a whole trump caucus thing. the president s endorsement is the top prize for republicans, even though he doesn t have the greatest polling right now. if you look at the support amongst republicans, it s the greatest of any other president in recent modern history in terms of favoritabability ratin. it s the ultimate prize. he is incredibly popular. he is one of the most popular republican presidents that we ve seen among republicans. he s polling at something like 84% among republicans. and you see that. that s why people want his endorsement. the other thing that s interesting, though, is if you look at the kind of enthusiasm he brings among republicans, he also brings out opposition among democrats. it s at an all-time high. the question is what s going to matter more? the opposition that democrats feel towards this president or the loyalty that republicans feel for him come midterms. i think the loyalty part is if you re a republican, you can t do without it. it may not be enough to overcompensate for what the democrats are doing, but as a republican, you cannot go into a general election without really firm support from your fellow republicans. but that being said, i mean, the battleground for control over the house is going to be in the suburbs. where are democrating going to democrats not only going to be able to get their base out but those conflicted moderates in the middle, the one-time republicans who are maybe a little more disenchanted with trump than others, maybe who have stopped identifying as republicans. particularly subyou aurban w women, college egtsducated wome. honestly, anyone who says they know doesn t know. that being said, it doesn t diminish the value of trump s endorsement if you are a republican. you cannot go into a general unless you ve solidified your base. it is kind of fun to see the president lay a little groundwork to give himself space if it backfires. hearing him say things like it ll be interesting to see whether my great popularity transfers. the big test will be the general election, right. it s one thing for his endorsement to matter in a primary, but come the general election, for instance, if you re barbara comstock, you don t want him anywhere near your campaign. although, if you re barbara comstock, it s kind of baked in the cake already. that s sort of it s like a self-fulfilling prophesy. the republican lawmakers who will be craving president trump s visit and endorsement are inherently not barbara comstock. so it s sort of the geography is destiny problem for a lot of these folks. you don t want the president campaigning against you, but if he s campaigning for you, there s some place where is that really helps turn people out. there s some places where that just reminds democrats and swing voters to don t like president trump, why they want to turn out the other way around. every president in a midterm year craves being as relevant or as important as he is in a presidential year. president obama went through this also. and the second time around in 2014. he wanted to be out there, but he was benched in a lot of places. president trump has not exercised the same discretion, but so far his instincts about where to go and the places where his team have been able to maneuver him have been pretty smart. and he always highlights the same things when he tweets these endorsements, something that philip bump discovered in the washington post. basically tough on crime, strong on the border, and he s going to offer you his full and total endorsement if you meet that criteria. we ll see what happens in november. coming up, thanks and see you soon. the president tweets out praise for kim jong-un. [burke] at farmers, we ve seen almost everything so we know how to cover almost anything. even vengeful vermin. not so cute when they re angry. and we covered it. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum make cars more fuel efficient. now, the epa and transportation departments cite safety as one reason for the rollback, arguing it would make cars more affordable and allow more people to buy safer cars. 20 state attorneys general say they are prepared to go to court to challenge the clean car rule. the white house says north korean dictator kim jong-un sent president trump another letter yesterday. president trump thanked kim for that letter in an overnight tweet, but it s still unclear what the president means by i look forward to seeing you soon. this morning, vice president mike pence complimented the president on his negotiations to bring home the remains of u.s. troops killed during the korean war. he secured not just a promise to create a pathway for denuclearization and peace, but he also secured a promise to bring our boys home. today is the court deadline for the trump administration and the aclu to present their plans to reunite 500-plus immigrant children who are still separated from their parents. but as these children wait to see their families again, ivanka trump said the family separations battle was a low point for her during her time so far in the white house. that was a low point for me as well. i feel very strongly about that, and i am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children. these are incredibly difficult issues, and like the rest of the country, i i experienced them in a very emotional way. do we know what ivanka trump did to actually help the kids get back together? i mean, she s sort of sitting there as like a bystander, if she was just only witnessing the whole thing and not actually working in the white house. we know a little bit. this is an issue she talked about behind the scenes with her father. we know her position on this behind the scenes is as she describes it there, that she didn t agree with the policy. but how did she go to the mat? what effect did it have? did it have more to do with the public backlash? those are the sort of things we don t know. this just reflects the kind of nuanced position that you have when you have family members serving in either an official or unofficial kind of advisory capacity, which is that they have to weigh their family loyalty to the loyalty of their own convictions and that they have to be discreet enough to be able to come home for dinner once in a while. there s always been this tight rope she s walking, rachel. she s sort of in the white house but not of the white house on any number of issues. yeah, this interview created some buzz. we were talking about this in the makeup room and also during the break. does she have political ambitions? i mean, she just sold her company. she s showing that she s going to be here in washington, at least for the foreseeable future. she s tried to paint herself as the more pragmatic trump, the trump whisperer who can talk to her dad and bring him closer to something that, you know, both parties can get behind. but again, she could really get hit for not, for instance, speaking out publicly on the family separation issue until it was over. she hasn t pushed back a lot on her father publicly at least. and it takes a lot less courage, i think, to speak out against it now after families are now being reunited than it would have been at the time. but i do think that it s like a joke of waiting for president trump to pivot. speak to a broader electorate. ivanka does seem to try to do that more, to speak to a broader slice of the electorate whereas president trump is always speaking to his base. so she does have a little bit of that. there are real questions about her efficacy in the white house in the time she s been there. she says she stays in order to make an impact on what she can, but the reality is trump hasn t moderated on almost anything, including many of the things she says she cares about the most. i think that s why people are sort of skeptical about her, especially at times like this when she after the fact speaks out forcefully against something everyone thought was outrageous at the time. all right. we ll have to end it there. next, former senator al franken won t rule out another run for office. what his democratic colleagues are saying about his possible return. hi, i m joan lunden with a place for mom, the nation s largest senior-living referral service. for the past five years, i ve spoken with hundreds of families and visited senior-care communities around the country. and i ve got to tell you, today s senior-living communities are better than ever. these days, there are amazing amenities, like movie theaters, exercise rooms and swimming pools, public cafes, bars, and bistros, even pet-care services. and nobody understands your options like the advisers at a place for mom. these are local, expert advisers that will partner with you to find the perfect place and determine the right level of care, whether that s just a helping hand or full-time memory care. best of all, it s a free service. there is never any cost to you. senior living has never been better, and there s never been an easier way to get great advice. call today. a place for mom you know your family, we know senior living. together we ll make the right choice. but if something happened to you. you need life insurance! and chances are selectquote can get it for you for under a dollar a day! selectquote found michael, 38, a $500,000 policy for under $23 a month. selectquote found anna, 37, a $750,000 policy for under $22 a month. selectquote s secret? they comparison shop select group of great companies like these for your best rate. give your family the security they need. at a price you can afford. since 1985, selectquote has saved over a million families millions of dollars on life insurance. call the number on your screen. or go to selectquote.com. discover what over a million families know. we shop. you save. now he says never say never when asked about running again. i miss the whole job. i love that job. i love the job of senator. if i say anything there, you ll put it in the story. so i i don t know. i don t know. i haven t ruled it out. i haven t ruled it in. franken s friend and former colleague senator amy klobuchar didn t exactly get behind the idea of his comeback. al made his own decision to resign, so i don t see this in the cards that he s running right now. this isn t just wild speculation. he s the one saying he hasn t ruled it out. i guess i m just wondering, would you like to see him back in congress? i d like to see him back doing good work and using his skills and his passion for public service in a way, but that doesn t mean he necessarily has to run for office. that would be a no for amy clo klobuchar. that s just so uncomfortable. it s noteworthy, too, because klobuchar was a friend of franken s for a long time. she was not one of the first women to ask him to resign, so she s saying stay away. he should probably stay away. let s be clear, he can try, but he will not succeed. just revisiting some of the allegations against him alone would sink any campaign he would try right now. we re talking about groping, forcible kissing. this stuff is not acceptable in this day and age, and women are speaking out. that s going to poison him for the rest of his life. i just don t see a comeback. one of the things we saw, gillebrand was really one of the first people out there. she s received some blowback. this is what she said. if standing up for women who have been wronged makes george soros mad, that s on him, but i won t hesitate to always do what i think is right. it goes on to say that if somebody does something wrong, you have to speak up and be counted, whether it s president trump or a democratic colleague. something of a gift for amy klobuchar, this thing coming up, in some ways. but this is a bad conversation for democrats. they do not want to be talking about this again. in part because it brings up really deep tensions and bitterness among some democrats who feel like he was pushed out prematurely and others who feel like krirsen gillibrand used this as an opportunity to raise her profile at a time when she s thinking about running for president. it s better for democrats to have al franken not even talking about coming back, but kristen gillibrand is going to use it to her advantage. distancing herself from him is not exactly the worst thing. and i m not surprised frarnkn is doing this. he was fairly defiant in his farewell speech in the senator and hadn t ever really apologized or admitted any wrongdoing at all. you got the sense he was leaving because of the pressure, not because he had come to his own conclusion that he needed to leave. but if you re a democrat, you don t want al franken on tv giving interviews at all right now. he seemed to realize what he was saying and sort of saying like, this is going to be a story if i say it. then he goes ahead and says it. i think he hasn t given up the dream, but i agree with rachel. no way. seems like a no go. next is a big upset brewing in texas. a new poll shows in striking distance of ted cruz. a new poll in texas is giving democrats at least a little bit of hope that they can pull off an upset in this year s senate race in texas. democrat beto o rourke is losing to senator ted cruz by just six points. he s still a long shot to be sure, but o rourke has also raised more money than cruz and has had more cash on hand as of the end of june. o rourke is running as an unabashed liberal in texas. he s pro-choice, wants an assault weapons ban, a path to citizenship, an obamacare public option, and cruz says o rourke sounds like he s running in massachusetts, not texas. matt, you have a great piece in town & country magazine. you asked the question, can a person who looks like kennedy and sounds like kennedy win in texas? yeah, and you re right he does sound like he s running in massachusetts. he s an unabashed progressive. he talks about gun control in a state that is heavily armed. he talks about immigration issues, against the border wall in a state with the longest border with mexico. he talks about climate change in a state that deals a lot with the energy sector as an important part of its economy. so he is talking up these issues all around the state and getting a lot of reception among democrats. but there s still a big question. it s still texas. this is the shiny object for democrats every couple years. we saw wendy davis, for instance. and they always lose. i think beto is seeing a lot of momentum on this. he s polling closely. fundraising is coming in, a lot of it from out of state as well, as democrats look to this as a hot race. and what s your sense, rachel? is ted cruz scared? should he be? if he is, he probably shouldn t be. this is texas. but this is a sign of the blue wave coming. it s not just ted cruz who s experiencing this. there s a bunch of house freedom caucus members, hard core conservatives, who are in safe seats, or used to be safe seat, and are now having to run a real race. he ll have to be careful, but it s texas. cruz will be fine. that s the thing. i feel like this is the white whale, lucy and the football. but we ll see. maybe this year will be different. we re waiting for the white house briefing to begin. wolf blitzer is going to bring that to you live when it happens. he picks up on our coverage right now. hello. i m wolf blitzer. it s 1:00 p.m. here in washington. wherever you re watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. any moment, the white house press briefing is scheduled to begin. it comes as we learn of a new proposal from the special counsel robert mueller to president trump and his legal team, talk to me in person and i won t ask you as many questions about obstruction of justice. that s the mueller proposal we re told. this development could be what potentially set the president off yesterday when he tweeted that his attorney general jeff sessions should end the mueller investigation right away, right now, his words. so now is this an offer the president will accept? we re going to find out presumably soon enough. while we wait for this press briefing to begin, i want to bring in the veteran journalist carl bernstein. his reporting with bob woodward during the nixon administration helped expose the watergate cover-up that led to president nixon s resignation. carl, thanks so much for joining us. i m anxious to get your perspective on what we re seeing right now. let s start with the latest offer from robert mueller, the special counsel. he says he ll limit the number of specific questions on obstruction of justice if president trump will talk to him in person and not simply do it in written form.
The latest news from around the world with hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow. reporter: well, poppy, probably the headline at this point is, out of the earshot of the jury this morning, judge t.s. ellis who is a veteran of these sometimes complex and controversial criminal cases in eastern virginia advised attorneys on both sides in an attempt obviously to avoid any prejudicial inferences being drawn by the jury, told attorneys on both sides to avoid, if they can, the use of the word oligarch. and that s important because some of the bosses and people in power in ukraine have been referred to as oligarchs. obviously the meaning of oligarch is a member of a power structure in which the power rests with the few, as opposed to suggestion or inference that an oligarch might be a criminal. this case is the defense strategy and the defense strategy here, susan, is my client, paul manafort, knew nothing, did nothing wrong, hands are clean. it was all his deputy, rick gates. that s a bold move, especially when you think about the fact that rick gates could be a key witness in other the other trial and other charges against manafort tied to russia. what do you make of it? that pretty plainly is the strategy. i think one thing to keep in mind though is this isn t going to be gates word against manafort s. in these types of financial crimes, these types of financial investigations, there is a huge amount of documentary evidence bank records, wire transfers, tax forms. and so the notion here that this is really going to come down just to gates word against manafort, there really is going to be a lot of evidence a lot of documented evidence. so i think sort of anyone who s looking at at least what we know in public really has to be baffled that paul manafort would choose such a risky strategy to go to trial in the first place. once he s made that choice, maybe this is the strongest sort of tack to take. let s talk about that choice. he did make a clear choice and is the only one so far to make the choice of the americans charged not to cooperate with mueller. we know from the new york times reporting yesterday he s told friends he thinks he s innocent, he thinks he will be acquitted as prosecutors look at this. many of them thinks he faces a huge uphit battle toward acquittal and that this is a big, big challenge for him. last hour, a guest said he has a lot of information on a lot of people and if he flips, could he be in jeopardy. why do you think manafort has not cooperated? well, as i said just a moment or two ago, i think he feels like i s playing with house money. he can go through this trial and if he loses, the prosecutors will still take him in. i was a federal prosecutor but you re not going to get as good a deal. correct, i do agree with that. but the thing he s facing is a significant jail time either way. even if he were to cooperate, The latest news from around the world with hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow. the man at the center of the controversy. when i touch you like this it s so hard to believe but it s all coming back me. baby, baby, baby. all you can eat is back, baby. applebee s. cle.is a hassle.th a mop and bucket. swiffer wetjet makes cleaning easy. it s safe to use on all finished surfaces, .trapping dirt and liquid inside the pad. plus, it prevents streaks better than a micro fiber strip mop. for a convenient clean, try swiffer wetjet. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. save $200 on this dell laptop (vo) imagine a visibly healthin 28 days. purina one. natural ingredients, plus vitamins and minerals in powerful combinations. for radiant coats, sparkling eyes, and vibrant energy. purina one. 28 days. one visibly healthy pet. rewards me basically aeverywhere.om so why am i sliding into this ski lodge with my mini horse? 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it is more of the same, just hyped up a little more, amped up a little more. this is what donald trump does. the reaction i ve heard from so many republicans, whether on the house or senate side, is disappointment that this is the latest step the president s gone. here s why, poppy. we just had great gdp numbers that came out on friday. we ll have the jobs numbers that come out this friday. these are opportunities for the president to hype up what he s doing for the economy. he he should proclaiming these numbers with bagpipes, they re so good for republicans. this is what they want to talk about in november. the mueller investigation is not what they want to talk about and firing mueller or firing jeff sessions is not a good road for republicans to go down politically or obviously if you re talking about the principles in governing. robby, dana bash has some interesting reporting that the president is really concerned that the mueller probe, you ve got the manafort trial, just going on right now, getting a lot of attention, that that will just fuel opponents and critics of his. the polling numbers though from cnn show the opposite. they show at least americans confidence in bob mueller and the russia probe is waning. right? 48% in march, 41% now. do you think the president s fears are real or imagined? well, i think the president should be concerned that he s in deep trouble because it looks like he is and it looks like a lot of people around him are. we learned this weekend it looks like he may very well have obstructed justice in this particular case. that s why i find it particularly ironic that he seems to be continuing to try to obstruct and end this case so publicly. i m not so worried about those polling numbers. i think first of all, the president s just driving a strategy here to make this another partisan fight. so that s why you see the separation in those numbers. the bigger issue is we just need to get the truth. we need to let mueller do his work and come out with the report. i think the report is going to be quite damning and i think the american people will have to face that evidence. i have a similar concern to doug, actually, that i think real you shall use are being obscured by this food night that the president s creating. we just learned yesterday the president s administration is trying to go around congress to cut taxes even more for millionaires. congress should be apoplectic about that but the republicans seem to just be taking that lying down, conceding their power and constitution to the president here. it is just incredible! we are not talking about it. we had a whole segment in the last hour. my fault, i went long with senator ed markey in my interview. we didn t get that in. with you doug, the administration and treasury department has said it is looking at ways to change indexing. it is very complicated but basically how investment would be taxed when it is sold. this would disproportionately help the wealthy. bush administration looked into doing it and said, no, you need congress to get behind us on this one if we actually wanted to do it. what s your read on what this would look like for republicans and at least the administration looking into it? it is a bit schizophrenic. there is no republican that will tell you we don t like tax cuts however we can get them. republicans typically before donald trump was president talked about a strong congress versus a strong executive. during the obama years quite often democrats cedeed power to the presidency. congress is receding in power. somebody who puts the privacy of congress first, that s troubling to me regardless of what party or what administration is doing it. regardless of what i think about the tax cuts which i think have had a great impact on the economy so far. robby, let me ask you about hillary clinton. she is getting out there more, speaking out more, she is putting her money where her mouth is, donating to these 19 different candidates. as someone who ran her campaign and as someone who looks at the party right now that s sort of identifying who do we stand more with? are we more the party of nancy pelosi or alexandria acasio ortez. i think the future of our party and our success is in these candidates in districts who are running for office. i think she s doing the exact right thing which is to get behind these people and help them win. i think we create these false battles, so to speak, in washington, d.c. about, is the party about this person or that person. the party right now is about winning these individual house districts and the candidates in these house districts are very different because our party is very different regionally. at the point that we are in a presidential primary, yeah, we have to pick somebody to lead our party and we can have that. i think she is doing the exact right thing, get in there and help these people win in these individual races. that s an interesting point. we ve got to get it more defined as we head in to 2020. i want you both to listen to what the president said last night. he was talking about voter i.d.s. then it went a bit odd. listen. we believe that only american citizens should vote in american elections. which is why the time has come for voter i.d., like everything else. voter i.d. if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card. you need i.d. that s not true, doug. but putting that aside for a momen moment, what s he trying to say? having been to a grocery store as recently as yesterday i know that s not true for that gallon of milk i had to buy. i m not sure what the president is trying to say here. i m somebody who supports voter i.d. laws but also knows too often republican state legislatures make it then harder for people to get i.d.s, primarily in african-american or minority neighborhoods, which is a real problem when you are trying to demonstrate you aren t doing this in any kind of ham-handed way. it is not clear what the president is trying to say here which, unfortunately, is often the case. thank you both, robby, doug, thank you for being with us and pivoting on the breaking news. less than 100 days until the mid-terms. facebook this morning is sounding the alarm. social media giant says it is pulling suspected russian-linked accounts trying to influence the elections. are you one of them? ahead. this is your wake-up call. if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, month after month, the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. ongoing pain and stiffness are signs of joint erosion. humira can help stop the clock. prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. help stop the clock on further irreversible joint damage. talk to your rheumatologist. right here. right now. humira. your digestive system has billions of bacteria but life can throw them off balance. re-align yourself with align probiotic. and try new align gummies with prebiotics and probiotics to help support digestive health. are you in good hands? this morning facebook has shut down a network of accounts it says were possibly russian-linked. this raises a lot of concern that russia s still actively trying to interfere in u.s. elections. on a conference call just yesterday, facebook s chief operating officer, sheryl sandberg, said, quote, security is an arms race. it is never done. let s go to dylan byers who joins me now from los angeles. this is scary and it is still happening and facebook saw it and is trying to do what it can about it. do we know for sure this is linked to russia, these accounts? well, we don t. facebook did has not publicly acknowledged that it is linked to russia but in private, in conversations with lawmakers, they said that it very much appears to be linked to russia. but that is ultimately a responsibility that facebook wants to put on congress and reasonably so. look, since 2016, it s become harder for facebook to clearly identify ties to russia. part of the reason for that is that the efforts of the people behind these misinformation campaigns, they ve grown much more sophisticated. so when sheryl sandberg says, this is an arms race, this is something that isn t going to end, it is for that very reason. so facebook powers time, money, manpower into this issue. 20,000 staffers dedicated to this issue, to combating misinformation. even then, it is a game of whack a mole. they can only monitor problems like this and bring them to the attention of lawmakers, and then effectively put the ball in their court. if there s a victory here for facebook this week, it is that they got ahead of this problem and notified congress about it ahead of the 2018 mid-terms as opposed to the last election cycle when they didn t really take the problem seriously until after the fact. right. so seriously that they saw their stock drop a lot last week because they say we re putting privacy above profitability right now to try to correct course on this. thanks for the reporting. let s talk more about this now with michael daniel, former cyber security coordinator and special assistant to president obama. nice to have you. thank you for having me. so, you said, look, it is not surprising that facebook found this kind of activity and we know from all our u.s. intelligence agencies that they were going to do it again. but the when you look at what the head of cyber security policy at facebook says. these bad actors have been more careful to cover their tracks, in part due to the actions we have taken to prevent abuse over the years. so they re saying it is even harder to detect this time around. why? well, the actors in this case would be doing exactly what nathani nathaniel, the head of facebook s cyber security policy, said there, which is they are taking steps to make sure that it is difficult to do forensics. they are masking their activity where they re coming from, how they are doing it, how they re setting up the accounts. they are taking steps to make sure that it is more and more difficult to conduct the types of forensics that would tie this activity back to malicious actor. so won t they just keep adjusting and won t they just keep changing and making it more difficult as facebook and google and twitter work to keep up with them and eliminate the threat? sure. i mean that s how it s always been in the cyber security field. as the malicious actors make a change and the defenders adjust, then the attackers adjust again. miss sandberg s comments about it being an arms race is a very apt analogy. i want you to listen to something that vice president mike pence said just yesterday here in new york. really pointing his finger back at the white house in which you work. you work leading cyber security under the obama administration and here s his read. the last administration all but neglected cyber security. even though the digital threats were growing more numerous and more dangerous by the day. in 2014, a foreign government actually hacked in to the white house network itself, and yet in the face of constant attacks like that, the last administration too often chose silence and paralysis over strength and action. hindsight being 20-20, do you believe the obama administration could have done more on this front? i think that s a very interesting interpretation of history there. i think if you asked any cyber security expert, they would tell you that no administration has done enough to combat this threat. including the bush administration prior, which i also worked for, the obama administration, and this administration. the important thing is we all have to step up our game going forward and increase the level of operational collaboration between the government and the private sector, increase our collaboration with our allies and like-minded governments around the world and do more to bake in security from the very beginning and the kinds of i.t. devices we re using from our cars to our refrigerators. where do we go from here? i mean if facebook is going to throw all this money, resources, energy, at this, if government is stepping up in the way it is, is this just the new reality? i think it very much cyber security is one of the great threats that we face as a nation in the 21st century, and it is something that we are going to have to come to grips with as a society and we are going to have to invest across the board in greater resilience as a society, in increasing our digital defenses and increasing our ability to $23 a month. selectquote found anna, 37, a $750,000 policy for under $22 a month. selectquote s secret? 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interesting. i think one thing we should note, people don t realize, he put up all of these blueprints. he actually put them up a couple days ago and over 1,000 people had already started downloading them. so i did have the opportunity to speak to cody wilson before the temporary hold. i asked him what he thought about the president weighing in. you had president trump weighing in. he talked about this being a first amendment issue. listen. president trump tweeted that he s looking into 3-d plastic guns. he said this doesn t seem to make sense. what s your response to the president? i don t sell 3-d guns. so, the president will understand that in time. are you worried that the government reverse its decision? like i told you, i already uploaded the plans. the ship has sailed. it is public domain information. it is irrevocable. no one can take it back. giving people the ability to 3-d print their own guns wouldn t make it feasible for felons, minors, mentally ill access to those firearms. are you worried about those repercussions? i don t believe access to information is ever a bad thing. i know people can use information for bad things. but this isn t a justification to what? stop a publisher from speaking? who would you keep a minor away from printing a 3-d printer when these are online and folks can do it with the click of a button? do public libraries perform background checks on people before they read books? that s just not how speech and publication works. it is legal for you to make a gun in this country. it is illegal for you to make a gun. you re violating the law. that doesn t mean that that possibility prevents people from being able to legally share and freely access this information. just doesn t work that way. is it the case of the 25-year-old man who went on a shooting spree in santa monica with a homemade ar-15 killing five people. are you worried that the implications offi democratizing this type of information would lead to similar type of deaths? is democracy dangerous or not? right? account people be trusted or not? you like to push the limits. do you think felons, minors, mentally ill folks who are able to click and download and print, do you think they can be trusted or do you think there should be more government oversight over what you re doing? no, i definitely don t think there should be more government oversight. i believe people can publish this information legally under the first amendment. was it right, should you do it, again my answer is yes. i believe that i should. i believe in what i m doing. when i m called a provocateur, that somehow takes away the seriousness of what i do. i m only doing it for no. i believe in what i m doing. if people have an internet resource of some type of encyclopedic scope, they should allow more rapid innovation in this space. chuck schumer s out there with a bill today saying no, guns should only be the way they ve always been. it is a depressing world to live in. there s less to hope for when things have to be frozen, things have to be managed. i found it profoundly unromantic. i think people would say it is depressing to think about living in a world where a lot of people who shouldn t have access to handguns are readily able to make them from home. unfortunately, we have always had the law on our side. wow. yeah. inspires the imagination for him, for others i think very worrying. there s another hearing set on august 10th so we ll hear more then next week. this is someone that does not do a lot of interviews so thank you for getting him to talk and bringing it to us. you ve interviewed him a number of times over the years. who is cody wilson? he calls himself an aen na anarchist. last time he created a crowd funding site to give room to neo-nazis and trolz who wals wh to raise money for their causes because they were kicked off facebook and twitter for hate speech. this is something he s been doing since 2013. he really pushes those limits. it s become a national conversation. this fight is far from over. this is only a temporary stop. thank you. ahead, i d rather be helping than feeling sorry for myself. amazing words interest a california father who lost the home that he, his wife and children share in the raging wildfires across the state. he and his wife will join me next. keep it comin love. if you keep on eating, we ll keep it comin . all you can eat riblets and tenders at applebee s. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. california right now was 35% contained. just 35%. the weather that has made the carr fire so hard to fight is not expected to change until this weekend. more than 115,000 acres have burped so far in the rugged outskirts of redding. almost 1,000 homes have been lost, six lives have been taken, and four more people unaccounted for overnight. joining me now, david and ava, dave is a pilot for the california department of forestry and fire protection, and one of the homes destroyed was theirs. thank you both for being here. i m so, so sorry. thanks for having us. you know, dave, you said something extraordinary. you said, i d rather help than feel sorry for myself. so walk us through what you ve been doing on the front lines since losing your home. i really don t think i m doing anything different than thib el anybody else in my position would have done. everybody i work with i think approaches the job the same way. we do this every day. across the nation. and i really don t think that i don t feel that i did anything special. it s just once i saw my house gone, it was there s going to be plenty of time to go back through the remains and see what we can salvage and move forward with our family. we re seeing these aerial shots of where your home was and it is just gone. everything is gone. ava, you are the mother of two children. have you a 5-year-old, savannah, 7-year-old dylan. as you ran through the house obviously getting them and getting the few things that you could, how did you explain this to your kids? i didn t have much time to say anything to them. i was starting to pack up the bags when i saw the fire coming over the ridge. so we had a little bit of time. i packed up the horses and the dogs in the meantime. then in the morning i said you just got to wake up, we have to go on a little adventure. we pulled out of the driveway, they thought they were going on a little adventure. how are the kids doing? i think they understand a little bit what it means that our house is gone since they know about fires since their dad fighting fires all over the place so they are not too unfamiliar what it can do. but it is still hard to realize that, oh, we lost this and this isn t there anymore. so we just said it s okay, we all together, we re safe. and that s it. it s just you know, as you say, it is just material things. but david, you know being on the front lines helping fight this, it s also lives. you have at least six lives lost in the biggest of the fire, four more people unaccounted for. for americans across the country watching who have never lived in the reality of being threatened by wildfires, just how just how striking is this to you and what do you want them to know? i would say that is, by far, the saddest thing. my heart goes out to the people who have lost not only everything they had but they ve lost a loved one. that s the part that really gets me. i don t even know how i would cope if i lost anybody. yeah. it s extraordinary what you are doing to help right now in the midst of everything. i know you say a lot of people would do it, but i done think everyone would respond the way you are, david, going back on the front lines to help. thank you both for being with us. our thoughts are with you and with your kids. thank you very much. of course. hang in there. so we just talk about lives lost and i want you to hear from one grandfather who lost everything. the man who lost his wife and his two great grandchildren in the carr wildfire in california cried this morning as he told us that he wished had he been there to protect them. melody, 70, emily, 4 and james, 5. he says he went to the doctor that day, he thought the fire was far enough that his family was safe. it quickly turned so fast that his wife and great grandchildren could not escape. i got out and run toward the house and i got down there and some guy was blown over by the fire. i helped him get out. but i still went down there. they stopped me, wouldn t let me go in. those are my babies, that s my wife. i should have been laying there with them. i should have i should have went regardless of what anybody said. it is heartbreaking. our thoughts are with them and everyone in california that is suffering right now. we ll be right back. the fact is, there are over ninety-six hundred roads named park in the u.s. it s america s most popular street name. but allstate agents know that s where the similarity stops. if you re on park street in reno, nevada, the high winds of the washoe zephyr could damage your siding. and that s very different than living on park ave in sheboygan, wisconsin, where ice dams could cause water damage. but no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local allstate agents knows yours. now that you know the truth, are you in good hands? humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. help stop the clock on further irreversible joint damage. talk to your rheumatologist. right here. right now. humira. america s best-selling brand. now get 0% financing for 72 months plus $1,000 ford credit bonus cash on a great selection of suvs. during the ford summer sales event, get our best offer of the season: 0% financing for 72 months plus $1,000 ford credit bonus cash. all right. so the nba continuing to embrace sports betting in partnership with mgm. commissioner adam silva s been talking about this for a long time. what s the deal? the nba has been the league that s been the most supportive of legalized gambling. now they are the first to have an official partnership with a sports betting separator. this bleacher report brought to you by ford going further so you can. the nba announced yesterday their nop exclusive deal with mgm resorts. espn reporting that s a three-year deal worth $25 million. it allows mgm properties to use nba and wnba branding. silver has said in the past he believes the nba should get a 1% integrity fee for each wager made on the nba. that s not part of this deal. but silver still says this pa partnership is good for the fans. whether it is bricks and mortar casino or using his app online. it is an experience that both mgm and the nba worked on together where the consumer is first and foremost. a forgettable season for the mets reaching its low point last night. nationals putting an absolute beat-down on the mets. they were up 19-0 after the fifth and went on to win 25-4. it was the worst loss in mets history. it got so bad at one point the mets broadcasters just started reading out of the media guide to pass the time. hard to believe the mets won 11 of their first 12 games this season. that seems like a lifetime ago. the receiver on end of the minnesota miracle has been rewarded with a rich, new deal. the vikings signed stefan diggs to an $85 million. he was just a first round pick coming out of maryland. he got emotional yesterday when speaking about his dad who passed away in 2008. my dad sat me down a couple months before he passed away. he just told me that, look after your brothers, look after your mom basically look after your family and it meant a lot to me. i m happy that i can look at my mom and smile and tell her that everything going to be okay. yeah. diggs posted a picture of his mom after he flew her out for