so drop by and seize the savings! walgreens. at the corner of happy and healthy. if you have an image in your head for general douglas macarthur, it s probably this one, right? the iconic hat, the awesome sunglasses, before biden, right? douglas macarthur s sunglasses, obviously the giant corn cob pipe when he was the commanding general for u.s. troops in the korean war china sent hundreds of thousands of chinese troops over the border into north korea to help the communist side in the korean fight and general douglas macarthur went to president truman when that happened and he told president truman that he wanted the united states to wage war on china in response. this is how the defense contractor, fat leonard, bribed officers of the u.s. navy s seventh fleet. in exchange those officers would allegedly give him classified information about the movement of u.s. navy ships and confidenti confidential information about other contractors that fat leonard would use to undercut them so he got the contracts. they even reportedly fed him information on criminal investigations into the bribery by his company so he could keep beating the rap, so he could stay ahead of the criminal investigations. fat leonard built himself a $200 million business supplying u.s. navy ships in ports abroad and he built himself that business by stuffing u.s. navy officers full of foie gras and cognac and other stuff. for example there was in may 2008 what the indictment describes as a raging multiday party with a rotating carousel of prostitutes in attendance party historical memorabilia related to general douglas macarthur were used by the participants in sexual acts. thankfully the indictment does not spell out which memorabilia was involved or which acts. i what do they have of macarthur s in the suite? i will say pictures of at least one hat and one corn cob pipe have been put on the internet over the years who say they have been been to the douglas macarthur suite so there s that to go on. but i feel like this story, the fat leonard story is amazing in its own right but because it s so amazing it s a really specific piece of evidence as to where we re at as a country right now because it seems impossible that a scandal this lurid with details like this hasn t taken over your newspar. it s impossible that somet this big and over the top d ridiculous is not a scandal of national fixation. but it s really not. it s really not because honestly, where we re at as a country, as scandals go this thing can barely compete. there s no room in the scandal-absorbing part of our brains anymore because so many things are cooking all at once right now. for example there s the case of the health secretary tom price who bought and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in health care companies while he was writing and sponsoring and voting on legislation that would affect the price of those stocks in some cases he was buying stock in multiple companies then days later taking action as a congressman that would have the effect of inflating the value of affect of inflating the value of that stock he just bought. aspects of his stock trading while he was chairing an important health committee in congress were reported by the wall street journal, by cnn, by propublica, by time magazine, tons of places but republicans still confirmed him as secretary of health and human services well, sometimes that stuff comes due, news becomes history and now tonight propublica has a hair raising report that when preet bharara, the u.s. attorney in manhattan, when he was fired last weekend unexpectedly and suddenly by the white house, one of the cases preet bharara was overseeing at the time according to prublica was a criminal investigation into tom price and his stock trades while he was in congress. propublica is citing one source in their report. we tried all day to get further comment from anybody involved. the white house told us they weren t aware of any criminal investigation into health secretary tom price. despite repeated efforts to reach tom price himself and ask him if he has been notified he is the subject of a federal criminal investigation we got no comment from tom price or his department, from hhs about it. and, in fact, we didn t even get a no comment. we literately got no comment. we got dial tone, nobody home. nobody even there to tell us no. usually what you get is i ll call you right back and then they never call. we got nobody. if anybody out there knows how to reach the department of health and human services, let us know. we couldn t get a single freaking person to answer the phone all afternoon long today. www.sendittorachel.com. this tom price thing this is the kind of thing that will hopefully result in congress making inquiries, it s no small thing for a cabinet secretary to be under federal criminal investigation just as it s no small thing for a u.s. attorney to be fired when overseeing an investigation, if that is what happened here. so that s a big potential scandal and we can t get anything out of the administration on it. maybe congress can. that said, congress is busy right now on monday morning in a normal universe the biggest thing going on would be the start of the confirmation hearings for neil gorsuch, the nominee to be the next supreme court justice. that is obviously a big deal. those hearings are expected to go on for four days. starting monday democrats will likely oppose him in large numbers if not unanimously. they may act procedurally to slow roll his nomination as long as possible. substantively democrats appear to be focusing on his work defending torture and his enthusiasm for guantanamo during the george w. bush administration, but lines of inquiry can be hard to predict before these things get started. so we will see starting monday morning. that said i have to tell you even the confirmations for a supreme court nominee are likely to be overshadowed bthe other hearings that are starting on capitol hill at the same time on monday morning. monday morning 10:00 a.m. eastern we get the first public congressional hearing into the links between the new administration and russia. former intelligence director james clapper and fbi director james comey are due to testify monday morning in the first open session testimony that we ve got about the russian intervention into the election to help donald trump and any ties that may exist between russia and the trump campaign. we have reporting our hearts out on this all day and i can tell you there are a lot of rumors circulating right now as to what director comey will testify about on monday. what he will or won t describe in terms of ongoing investigations into links between trump and russia but despite our best efforts it s rumors only, nothing we can report with confidence as to what comey is going to say. in this case we ll learn what he has to say by waiting. he s going to be testifying monday morning. also today the other inquiry in the senate they made their first announcement about what will be their first public hearing into the russian attack on our election. senator richard burr on the left, senator mark warner on the right announced today about a week and a half after we get comey and clapper testifying on russia on monday, a week and a half later on thursday, march 30 we re going to get the senate starting their inquiry into russia as well and the senate hearing, something i would sign up for if it was a college class and i was still a surly college student. look at the title. i have to say, this sounds awesome disinformation, a imer in russian active measures and influence campaigns. really? and it s in two parts, the first part in the morning is going to be the history and characteristics of russian disinformation campaigns and the second part is the role and capability of cyber operations in support of those activities. yes, please and can i sign up for office hours now with the t.a. and the professor. that sounds great. what s the title again? disinformation, a primer in russian active measures and influence campaigns. i would read that if that was a novel. but that was just announced today. that s going to be on thursday, march 30. and we also got a related big piece of news today in the form of something that basically in the form of something that wasn t announced. you might remember earlier this week the nsa, fbi and cia all got a letter from the top republican and the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. that letter asked about this guy, michael flynn. you know, it s a scandal in itself. it is a scandal surpassing and even eclipsing the alleged use of douglas macarthur memorabilia in a u.s. navy sex and bribery ring in manila. it s a scandal of immense proportions that the national security adviser had to get fired 24 days into his tenure because of the content of his communications with a foreign government, with russia. that s an enormous scandal in its own right. one that has a lot of unanswered questions still around it. one of the important things that remains unexplained about michael flynn s firing as national security adviser is how anybody knew what he was talking to the russian government about. michael flynn s calls with the russians were apparently listened into by u.s. agencies who were surveilling those calls. it s one thing to listen in on russian government officials but americans are not supposed to be surveilled by u.s. agencies unless there s a court-ordered warrant that says it s okay to do so. michael flynn was surveilled. why? was michael flynn the subject of a warrant? if so, tavis warrant for a criminal investigation? was it a warrant for a counterintelligence investigation? and in either instance, if he was on the warrant, if there was a court-ordered warrant to surveil him because of one of those types of investigations, how did the white house end up appointing him to be national security adviser under those circumstances? so the cia, the fbi and the nsa all got a letter demanding that information about michael flynn by today. why was mike flynn surveilled? why was mike flynn why were his contacts with the russians surveilled by u.s. agencies. tell us by friday, march 17. tell us by today that letter sent to the nsa, fbi, cia, sent to them by one of the committees that oversees those agencies, fbi, cia, nsa, they can t refuse to hand over this information to the intelligence committee. but apparently they re not doing it. i almost can t believe it. this is really, really not normal. the intelligence chair p out a statementoday crcally worded but what it says is that of these three agencies who were sent this letter told to explain this michael flynn thing, of told to respond to this, of nsa partially responded. they say they will fully respond by the end of next week but the cia and fbi haven t responded at all. they haven t said beep, at least not by 9:00 p.m. eastern time. that s nuts. that s impossible. that s at least not normal. that is at least a really big national security deal. i know it seems like an arcane thing about who you you agencies like the fbi and cia won t hand over information like this to the committees that oversee them, that s a big national security deal. that s not the way things work . those agencies may not want to hand it over, but they have to. they certainly may not want to release that information publicly but they really do have to release it confidentially to the committee. these agencies are overseen by congress, they cannot say no to a request like this from congress, but apparently they re not answering. that s really strange. what s going on with that? one possibility is that mike flynn ended up on that surveillance in error. that it was done improperly or illegally they shouldn t have in that case the fbi and the cia may be trying to get its ducks in a row because it may be people who work to those agencies are about to get in big trouble. another darker possibility is that there is some damming information about michael flynn, about him being the subject of a warrant and maybe the trump administration folks who head up the cia and department of justice are impeding because it will look bad for mike flynn and the administration. i don t know. we don t know. but the fbi not responding to the intelligence committee? that doesn t fly. our constitution doesn t work that way. they have to respond and their non-answer is a big deal. the russian attack on our election last year, the unexplained connections between the trump campaign and russia during that time, during the time of the attack, the strangeness, particularly, the strangeness of the fbi in its treatment of this matter, it s unsettling it s unsettling not just because this is one scandal among so many scandals for this young administration, so many scandals that some are being ignored because they re not big enough to warrant attention amid other scandals. right? this is unsettling not because it s one scandal but because if the worst is tru if the presidency is effectively a russian op, if the american presidency right now is the product of collusion between the russian intelligence services and an american campaign, that is so profoundly big we not only need to stay focused on figuring it out, we need to start preparing for what the consequences are going to be if it proves to be true. we need to start thinking about how we re going to deal with the worst revelations if they do come to light, if they are proved true. so tonight we re doing a special report. tonight what we re going to do with most of the rest of the show is we re going to start to try to do that thinking. tonight we are going to talk to some of the people who were the first victims of what happened to us as a country when the russians launched the attack. real people who got hit first, who saw it up close and got hit in realtime. they haven t told their story of how they experienced it and what damage it did at the time before the country figured out what was going on but they re going to do that starting tonight starting here. that s our special report, it starts next. it s the phillips lady! anyone ever have occasional constipation,diarrhea, gas or bloating? she does. she does. help defend against those digestive issues. take phillips colon health probiotic caps daily with three types of good bacteria. 400 likes? wow! try phillips colon health. it s just a date. i can stay. i m good. i won t be late hey mom. yeah. no kissing on the first date, alright? life doesn t always stick to a plan, but with our investment expertise we ll help you handle what s next. financial guidance while you re mastering life. from chase. so you can. li don t want to pry. grown man now. dad. but have you made a decision? i m going with the $1000 in cash back. my son. .a cash man. dad, are you crying? nah, just something in my eye. the volkswagen 3 and easy 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[ meow ] [ sneezes ] try clarispray clarispray provides unsurpassed relief. it s 24 hour, non-drowsy and prescription strength. free yourself with clarispray, from the makers of claritin. new staffer got there his job got suddenly very weird because something weird started happening in the campaign and it became his beat, his unexpected responsibility to try to make sense of it, to try to explain it, this thing nobody planned for which is that russian government hackers had broken into the democratic party s computer servers, helped themselves to anything they wanted. those lifted documents and e-mail stolen from the democratic party and ultimately from the chairman of the clinton campaign ended up becoming ammunition in an attack on the u.s. election, an attack designed to weaken the democratic candidate, weaken the democratic party, disrupt their strategy, disrupt their communications and ultimately help the republican candidate, donald trump, win the election. it s easy enough to say that now but in the moment, in the chaos of the campaign it was hard to persuade the public to pay attention to that bigger picture, that the election was being disrupted it was being tilted. it was being externally operated on by a foreign government in favor of the candidate that that foreign government preferred. but for that new clinton staffer whose job it was to deal with this, this was his life. he was living this everyday. as that campaign nightmare was playing out it became this new staffer s job to learn everything there was to know about this hacking so he could explain it to the world and answer everybody s questions about it. he watched this hijacking of our election in realtime, he saw clues about what was happening early on, he had to figure it out fast, firsthand, live, and now as the country is woken up to the magnitude of what happened to us last year that staffer is ready to talk about it and i think his perspective on what happened is valuable in terms of us really understanding what happened and starting to unravel it. joining us now for this special report is glen caplin, his responsibilities included answering questions about wikileaks and russia. thank you for getting a babysitter and coming back. thank you for having me back. i want to hear this so i m glad you were able to come back so you started to tell thus story last night. i want to start again at the beginning. from your perspective what happened first? what was the first thing that got weird? well, the first thing that got weird was the washington post broke the story in mid-june that the dnc had been hacked and that was the first it started to get weird that you didn t have any indication before that report? that that had happened? we had indication once the report was happening, they reached out to us for comment and we were aware of the story a day or two before it broke but that contact was the first we were aware of the dnc hack, that was the first time it got weird. where it got disturbing was when a couple days later guccifer 2 through d.c. leaks started dumping that information. and guccifer is guccifer 2.0 is like a hacking nom de guerre? it s a persona? it s a persona that is believed to be russian intelligence by cyber experts. and the guccifer 2 leaks ended up on d.c. leaks web site which is something that didn t exist prior to the campaign. nobody ever heard of. correct. and that dump was a massive amount of data, of documents that was not user friendly and was very harto get your arms around. it didn t get an enormous amount of attention. what kind of documents was it? it was all internal to the democratic party. was it donor lists? donor lists, research, books, which is a compilation of clips of vulnerabilities of yourself and your opponent, a donald trump research book. so democratic oppo research on donald trump. right, but remember at that time donald trump wasn t paying for self-research so the fact that that research book was in there was quite interesting to us. and we believed very from the first dump that this was intended to help donald trump and undermine hillary clinton and the democratic party. this wasn t about her trying to hurt both sides or just undermine the election itself. i remember reporting at the time that in the case of the oppo dossier the democrats oppo dossier on donald trump there is that being published in june meant that any ammunition the democratic party politically had against trump was then spent. was this out there. it felt like a gift to donald trump. . yeah. that research book being out was not hurtful to donald trump. that was a gift to donald trump. that was one of the tells that very early on this was about hurting us. so that happened when? mid-june. what happened next? well, what happened next was the wikileaks dump on the eve of the democratic convention. so if you think about it, this is sort of three shifts, the first is a dump of information in the first place. the russians have done espionage for decades. that s not new. every campaign for going back for years has probably been surveilled and there s been espionage. it was the information actually being weaponized and put into the public arena that was new. what do you mean by weaponized? put in the public arena as opposed to collecting information for a foreign government s information and knowing what campaigns are thinking and things like that, which is the normal rather than them stealing it to use for themselves as the russian government, they were redeploying it into the american bloodstream to have an effect on the way we were dealing with each other as americans. correct. you talked about how there was a big shift, an operational shift that you saw between that guccifer the first leak and the wikileaks one, that it was more sophisticated in terms of how it could be weaponized, how it could be used here. correct. i hadn t i want to get into more detail with you on that in just a second. glen caplin, senior spokesperson for the hillary clinton campaign specifically on the issue of the russian attack at the time. we ll be right back with more. you have access to in-depth analysis, level 2 data, and a team of experienced traders ready to help you if you need it. it s like having the power of a trading floor, wherever you are. it s your trade. e trade. start trading today at etrade.com with 9 lobster dishes.est is back try succulent new lobster mix & match or see how sweet a lobster lover s dream can be. there s something for everyone and everyone s invited. so come in soon. can make any occasion feel more special.ie so she makes her pie crust from scratch. and sprinkles on brown sugar streusel. so that you can spend more time making special moments with your family. marie callender s it s time to savor yep. we ve got a mouthbreather. well, just put on a breathe right strip and . pow! it instantly opens your nose up to 38% more than cold medicine alone. so you can breathe . and sleep. shut your mouth and say goodnight mouthbreathers. breathe ght. meaning? meaning traces on the actual documents. you could tell there was russian language on. it. so you could tell it was russian hackers? correct. now we re going to last week timed on the eve of the convention, highly searchable user friendly search function, we could very easily cull the wheat from the chaff in terms of the e-mails and reporters were able to very quickly search for the bernie e-mails or the dws e-mails. that got metastasized very quickly. you said in the earlier leak you talked to somebody who was an expert in these things who told you the russians were good at obtaining stuff but bad at deploying it for propaganda purposes. the second round, the second level of the attack cured that problem for them. correct, and the guccifer 2 persona claimed publicly to have given that information to wikileaks at the time. what was the affect on the campaign? obviously the timing was insane i m going to? this all happened the day after the end of the republican convention, the weekend literally on the eve of the democrats convention. what was the effect? it created a lot of stress on the campaign at the convention, there s no question about that. but it s hard to overstate how disturbing it is to have this unprecedented intrusion in our democracy. and we tried very hard to tell that story from the candidate herself, she spoke about it in all three debates. campaign chairman john podesta spoke about it, campaign manager, robby mook. communications director, all down the line. we tried to tell the story of this unprecedented disturbing intrusion in our democracy and unfortunately didn t stick. the coverage tended was more about what was in the e-mails as opposed to why the e-mails existed, who is responsible for putting the e-mails into the public discourse and why. and that was frustrating. and your job was to try to explain this to people in a way that would make them get it, it was just a completely unreceptive media environment. i think there are a couple lessons that need to be learned. i think political campaigns have a lesson to learn because this is not a theoretical threat, this is a real and present danger for every campaign going forward. this is something they have to deal with. so political campaigns have to learn the lesson of how they protect their information going forward. i think 3w45ed needs to learn the lesson of how do you cover something like this when an adversarial foreign government wants you reporting on the details of this information. in the end, none of the e-mails themselves were particularly damaging but for the last 35 days of the election it was a head wind that was constantly in the news and what does government do? and that s why it s disturbing to see a president who rather than taking this issue on doesn t believe the intelligence. did you feel like you had support from the administration in terms of dealing with this as a national security concern or a crime? the administration on october 7 attributed this hack to the russian government but what happened on october 7 was after the announcement you had the access hollywood tape and then an hour later you had the first dump of podesta e-mails. from wikileaks. so one wonders if there s a coincidence or not. on that point, there s air force basely a very these signs point in a worrying direction, it was addressed by jen palmieri, i want you to comment on that and i ll bring campaign manager robby mook into the conversation after this break. we ll be back with glen caplin and robby mook right after this. stay with us. it s the phillips lady! anyone ever have occasional constipation,diarrhea, gas orin bloatg? she does. she does. helpefend agnst those digestive issues. take phillips colon health priotic caps daily with three types of good bacteria. 400 likes? 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[ upbeat music ] strut past that aisle for the allergy relief that starts working in as little as 30 minutes and contains the best oral decongestant. live claritin clear, with claritin-d. we re back with more on our special report on russian interference in the flexion as it happened. we ve been talking with glen caplin, a senior spokesperson for the clinton campaign. he got a very early very close look at the russian attack on democratic information. i want to bring in his boss, rob robby mook who ran the clinton campaign. mr. mook, thank you for joining us tonight. my pleasure. let me ask you about this point glen was make about how frustrating it was to feel like you guys were describing this accurately, you were putting appropriate emphasis on what was going on here about the outrageousness and the unique nature of the fact that russia had interfered in the campaign but it just couldn t be heard. i know you well enough to know from our conversations on the air to know you were frustrated. looking back with a few months in hindsight do you feel like there s anything different you could have done? is there something you wish you could have changed about the way you handled it to make people understand better? it s a good question. i think we were frustrated because as glen said, when the story first came out in the washington post it was a one and done. i know when that first leak through wikileaks happened at the dnc i was on tv sunday morning trying to point to the fact this was the russians and part of a strategy and i think most people just treated it like spin and i think part of that is just because it was so unprecedented. it seemed like something out of a spy novel or something. in retrospect, i wish we could have tried to muster more national security officials to work with reporters and background them to really understand how it wasn t just that this was very possible but it had to be true based on, as glen said, there were russian there was russian language in the metadata, the hackers that went into the dnc, they were observed for a little while before they pulled up the drawbridges and they were working russian hours. they weren t working on russian holidays. it was totally clear that this is what s happening and i wish we could have done more to provide that information so it didn t seem so fictional really. and it s partly that maybe people didn t believe it, they weren t prepared to believe it but also even if they did believe it, i m not sure people understood just how unusual and radical a departure this is from the way things go. we all hear about there being data breaches in private companies or government agencies all the time and we ve sort of it s become background noise. this was an international atta by a foreign power to try to change our politics. that s right and to be honest with you, to this day it s not being taken as seriously as i think it should in some circumstances and i don t know that the urgency is there to try to root it out. because it s not just the fact that they steal information and selectively leak it out, there s also a network in place through social media to disseminate disinformation as you said russian active measures to create confusion or spread things that aren t true. if we allow these sorts of behaviors to remain and become entrenched in our political process it could have enormous impact on the legislative process. that s what i m worried about we complain about super pacs and how they over time through punishing legislators who don t vote the way a corporation or wealthy people like that legislators start to fall in line and they make a decision on how to vote with the idea that punishment could come and i m concerned a legislator could say i m not going to take that vote against russia because they could hack into my personal e-mail, the e-mails of my family, into my campaign, we cannot allow that to happen, we . that s why we have to take action to flechbt in the future. the prospect that this wasn t just a russian attack but it was a russian attack in which the trump campaign was come police sit is obviously yet further levelful concern. i have one last queion today the ale direct therapy. a high intensity tens device that uses technology once only in doctors offices. for deep penetrating relief at the source. aleve direct therapy. or is it your allergy pills? 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coastal city of sinpo, home to north korea s submarine base, u.s. pacific command saying it was a failure, almost immediately after launch. and what i have experienced in the past when i m inside this count country, it s never reported in the state-controlled media. of course a successful launch would be a lead story with pictures of the north korean leader overseeing the event. given that this appears to be this test appears to be a failure, probably most north koreans, the vast majority, will never know that it happened, ana. and, will, explain the difference between this failed launch and an actual nuclear test. reporter: so north korea has conducted a number of missile launches since the beginning of last year, three dozen missile tests. it s fairly easy for north korea to fire these. they probably don t have a warhead inside the trajectory, has them falling in the waters off the korean peninsula. there was a simultaneous missile launch last month where three missiles landed within 200 nautical miles of the coast prompting a coastal village to do north korean missile drills for the first time they ve had mi missile drills since world war ii. so certainly troubling for the citize citizens? gentlem in japan. there s a lot of people looking at the radar to monitor these missile launches. nuclear tests are different. these are conducted at an underground nuclear test site. they dig these tunnels deep into the mountains and they can withstand a nuclear explosion. we ve seen the size of north korea s nuclear explosions according to analysts looking at things like seismic activity because these create an artificial earthquake essentially. the explosions are getting bigger. north korea is trying to develop a larger nuclear weapon. when the tests happen, the u.s. and south korea and china will send up sniffer planes and they ll put out radiation detection equipment to try to see if radiation has seeped into the outside environment. in previous tests they have been contained to that tunnel area. the north koreans looked closely at what president trump did when he dropped that moab, the mother of all bombs on the tunnels in afghanistan because in some quarters here it was perceived possibly as a threat that the u.s. may try to drop a similar bomb on underground tunnels in north korea. they wonder would the u.s. actually try to attack their nuclear test site, is that one of the strategic targets that could come into play? this really is things are always it tense on the korean peninsula. this is the most tense that i ve ever experienced in 11 trips to this country. and we really don t know how the trump administration will respond and what kim jong-un is going to do. we do know that the president of the u.s., president trump, has been briefed on this latest missile launch that failed, and we he are expecting a statement from the white house any moment. as soon as we have that, of course, we will bring that to our viewers here. in the meantime vice president mike pence is en route right now to seoul, south korea. he s expected to land there in a few hours. paul his there. how are they responding to this new development? we know there s going to be a national security council meeting in it a little less than half an hour. this is a meeting where all the top leaders of the country will be trying to figure out what kind of response they can give to north korea. clearly they ve had a lot of experience and practice of this. it s very difficult to see what kind of different statement we will see. they always say in the past they have a readiness posture. they say they will strongly respond if this continues but, of course, it s very difficult to see what they can do beyond that and, of course, keep in mind there is political stalemate in this country at this point. there isn t a full president. there s jups an acting president as the previous one has been imprisoned on a corruption scandal this is a very tricky situation that the vice president pence is arriving in. the fact that the people he will be meeting, the acting president, won t even be in power in a few weeks time. but certainly what the south koreans want at this point is guarantees, continued guarantees that we saw from the secretary of state, from the defense secretary in recent weeks, that the united states is going to stick by south korea. ana? paula hancocks and will ripley reporting from both south korea and north korea. we appreciate it. stay with us. back here in the u.s. the threat posed by north korea still looms over the trump white house. i want to bring in my panel now. cnn military analyst and retired l lieutenant general, cnn intelligence and security analyst and form earp cia operative, and from the world policy institute jonathan crystal. jonathan, somebody asked president trump if the massive bombing in afghanistan that will ripley referred to this week was a message to north korea. we heard will say some of the people in north korea certainly thought it was a message to them. well, this was the president of the u.s. s answer. will this send a message to north korea? i don t know if it sends a message t. doesn t make any difference if it does or not. north korea is a problem. the problem are be taken care of. so, jonathan, what was your reaction when you heard that? i don t think it s news. dropping a bomb on a country that we have been bombing regularly going after terrorist groups and taliban fighters, the fact that it s a larger bomb i don t necessarily tie those two things together. now it could be that we re showing the north koreans what we have in terms of our armaments and what we re willing to use. just as they are doing. north korea when they conduct missile tests, part of this is to show this is what we re able to do. we will be able to target bases nearby. we haven t seen evidence of that yet. that s the message they re trying to send when they assassinated kim jong-un s half-brother. a part of that was to show we have vx nerve gas and we re willing to use that. both sides have an interest in showing what they are capable of doing. and with the hope that it actually alleviates the tension and allows people to walk back. so, general hurtling, when we were hearing from will that these nuclear test sites are underground, it does make you think about why they use this moab, the mother of all bombs in afghanistan because there were caves and tunnels, could the u.s. military use that kind of weapon to attack the nuclear sites in north korea? i ll push back a little bit on this, ana, and say they certainly could but it wouldn t be effective and it would not be the weapon that you would use to hit some of the tunnels and some of the complexes in north korea but there are other weapons systems the u.s. has that could certainly do that. this whole discussion of the m.o.a.b. has been interesting to me because i know why they use ed it in that particular area against that particular target and it was really coincidental that it occurred right at the same time this event was occurring in north korea and right after the missile strike in korea. it had no connection whatsoever. this was a tactical command earp s call on the ground. now that s the reality. the perception and the second and third order, if other countries believe that we would use weapons like this and certainly it does send a message but that was not the intent in this particular situation. i m sure of that. bob, could north korea launch some kind of a nuclear test now after this failed missile launch to save face? yes, i do, ana, and i think they will. as the president goes on about taking on north korea with or without the chinese, the north koreans, normal reaction will be to keep going and keep going stronger and we will continue launching nuclear weapons. our problem is, and i keep on going back to this is absence of intelligence. we do not have sources in north korea. it all has to be done remeetly from satellites. their army is quite remarkable. it can move divisions without us detecting them until the last minute. so whether they will or not is a supposition on all of our parts but my guess is as long as the rhetoric stays the way it is, they re going to set up a nuclear test very soon. and i want to go back to will for that because i know, will, you have been there on the ground this past week, and you have witnessed and heard of other military movement from north korea. what do we know about the preparations that have been happening very recently leading up to a potential nuclear test? reporter: well, we are not allowed to get close to the nuclear test site but the satellite imagery from a couple days ago had showed vehicles, personnel, equipment at that nuclear test site leading people who have been observing this nuclear test site for quite some time to their analysis shows they believe it s primed and ready for a sixth nuclear test. as far as responding to actions by the united states, we heard some very strongly worded responses to the uss carl vincent, which isn t anything new. north korea has many times threatened a nuclear attack to rain fire on the united states and its allies. so that s not new. what is new there was a special forces operation that pyongyang conducted last week. it was the same day that we saw the images of the special forces were released on the same day we saw kim jong-un in person at the ribbon cutting of a new sky scrape earp he ordered built here in pyongyang at the moment we were attending this event with the north korean leader, their state media put out these images of kim jong-un overseeing xan dough commandos jumping out of a plane. when i was chatting with government officials at the military parade yesterday, i was told that special forces operation was in response to tweets from president trump about north korea and about china needing to solve the north korean nuclear problem. those same officials also said that, frankly, they re not concerned about increased economic pressure from china. clearly chinese trade is helping this country in the capital city. we re not allowed to get outside of the capital. we don t know what life is like. clearly their living standard is lower but we don t know because we re not allowed to go there but chinese trade with north korea jumped up nearly 40% in the first quarter of 2017 and despite five nuclear tests china has been reluct aant to really expert a tremendous amount of economic pressure on this country because they don t want to see a destabilized regime, a humanitarian crisis of north koreans flooding across their border, but they also most certainly do not want to see any sort of military conflict between the united states and north korea. in the chinese view that would be catastrophic. let s go back through what we know of the last year or so. we know the last actual nuclear test was in september of 2016. meantime this year there still has been a lot of activity of these missile launches that we ve seen. in fact, this would be the fifth missile launch attempt just since february. and what we re learning about this latest missile launch that failed is the u.s. defense official now telling us that early indications is that this failed missile was not an intercontinental ballistic mi missile. general hertling, what s your take on that information? what we saw in the parade today, both the cia and the dia analyst, defense intelligence agencies, are looking at the films and the satellite imagery from the parade today. there were a couple of key items that occurred in the parade, one was a longer missile that went through the parade longer than the kno-8 and kno-14. it was brabd new. it was the first time they showed submarine launch ballistic missile. that s important because it s showing that their missile program is growing. but if they wanted to literally show that they had a successful launch, what they re most concerned about is something called a cold launch. that s with solid fuel versus liquid fuel in the rocket. i don t mean to turn into a geek here but what it does, it allows the north koreans to pull a missile out and fire it immediately because it s been prefueled as opposed to taking a missile on the launch pad and then taking a lot of time to fuel it up. when that happens, it s not detected. they can also launch it out of a canister like a submarine so it will pop up and then the rockets ignite and then it goes on. that s the most important thing they re looking at now as well as connecting a weapons system to the missile which they have not done yet. i would guess my guess would be this was a short-range ballistic missile they fired out at sinpo. we do know this was the same area they launched the last one that scud missile of some sort from the submarine zone there on the port city of sinpo. thank you so much for that analysis. everyone stay with me. we need to squeeze in another break. much more on our breaking news. north korea with a failed missile launch just hours before vice president mike pence is due to arrive in south korea. we will go live to mar-a-lago where the president has been briefed and also to china, a country with enormous influence on north korea. we ll have much more on this day ahead. if you have tingling, numbness, or muscle weakness. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily .and it may take longer than usual for bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots. plus had less major bleeding. both made eliquis the right treatment for me. ask your doctor if switching to eliquis is right for you. it has long been called storm of tiny bubbles, the champagne of beers. if you ve got the time welcome to the high life. we ve got the beer miller beer to suzanne who is in florida with the president. we ve learned the vice president was also briefed before he lands in south korea. what more can you tell us? reporter: we are getting a report from a senior administration official aboard air force two traveling with the vice president on his way to seoul, south korea. i want to read you what we have at this moment here that the vice president, mike pence, briefed on what the vice president s office called a failed missile launch from north korea, that pence was in contact with president trump, and that this was relaid to recorders aboard the plane, that pence was briefed on the situation in north korea within an hour of his departure from anchorage, alaska. air force two was flying. expected to land, arrive about 3:30 p.m. local time or 2:30 eastern time. we know that when he does land on his agenda, ana, he ll be talking with the acting president of south korea about the situation. as you know the president he briefed and informed. we are expecting a paper statement from the president himself on this. also to let you know had is something that they were preparing for at mar-a-lago, certainly expecting much more. not a failed test but a sixth nuclear test that did not happen but the deputy traveling with the president here in florida who has been briefing him. this is not a nuclear test. officials are saying it s still possible. that could happen at any moment. to beijing. matt rivers is there with us. matt, china, of course, is a key player in all of this. a key ally to north korea. what are chinese officials saying about these developments in north korea? no official response as of yet from beijing but government officials here are very consistent in their positions. what will happen later on today the chinese will come out and ask all relevant sides to refrain from provocative actions. they say they are in clear violation of u.n. security council resolutions levied against north korea in the past. but what the chinese want to happen here is what they re calling a grand bargain. between kim jong-un and donald trump. to create lasting peace would be to go back and so far that has not been the track the trump administration wants to take. they say that china wants to use economic leverage, to get kim jong-un to stop developing the weapons. now president trump tweet this had on thursday. he said i have great confidence that china will properly deal with north korea if they are unable to do so. the u.s. with its allies will. so how is that sentiment being received, matt? when trump tweets, they rarely take the bait. the trump administration has taken a 180 on china when it comes to the way they re reacting where he praised xi jinping profusely and pointed to the fact the chinese stopped importing coal as a sign china is working hard to solve the problem. they stopped importing north korean coal. that s how they bring currency into the country. on the flip side very shortly after that press conference trade data show it was up nearly 40%. they re extending the line in pyongyang. in terms of how the chinese moves forward, they re not willing to cut off pyongyang entirely. is china providing some of the material? well, you have two different ways china is alleged to have been a part. because of that amount of trade they are providing hard currency and they do that in a number of different ways. they make sure they can operate. north korean labor comes over here. there are thousands and thousands of north koreans that work in china every day. they buy things like seafood and other minerals. there is a way china is contributing to this. we appreciate you reporting from beijing. news on the expected u.s. response to this failed launch. you re live in the cnn newsroom. cash back cards make earning bonus cash back so complicated? they limit where you can earn bonus cash back to a few places. .and those places keep changing every few months. the quicksilver card from capital one doesn t do any of that. with quicksilver you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. leave complicated behind. what s in your wallet? like @pigskinsusan15, who writes, now my boyfriend wants to talk on sundays. just so many words. your boyfriend s got it bad. maybe think about being single until the start of the season. when this bell rings. .it starts a chain reaction. .that s heard throughout the connected business world. at&t network security helps protect business, from the largest financial markets to the smallest transactions, by sensing cyber-attacks in near real time and automatically deploying countermeasures. keeping the world of business connected and protected. that s the power of and. just me.your me and my four daughters.. there s a lot of dancing and pageants that go on in our kitchens and living rooms and things like that. i ve had to learn to accept certain things like the fact that my toe nails and finger nails are going to be painted constantly. but it s really awesome to watch them at their own things. they re great kids. all of them. whatever home means to you, we ll help you find it. zillow. mar-a-lago. what have you learned? reporter: it is a very brief statement i m going to read to you this is from the secretary of defense coming through in our e-mails saying a statement by secretary of defense jim mattis on a north korea missile test. the president and his military team are aware of north korea s most recent unsuccessful missile launch. the president has no further comment. it is as simple as that, ana, very brief. we were told earlier cnn learned by a u.s. official it would be a very understated response, very intentional. not to give attention to north korea and that is the strategy, the tactic of the white house this evening. it has been looking to see whether or not north korea would, in fact, do anything on its national holiday. it was after that holiday this failed missile launch open kurd and the white house has chosen to respond in a very low key manner. they do not want to give any kind of undo attention or credit to north korea. all of this, as you know, as the vice president is on his way to seoul, south korea, to meet with the leader there. ana? we are learning that south korea national security council will meet tomorrow to discuss where they go from here. suzanne malveaux reporting where the president is this evening, very understated response from the u.s. president. acknowledging this missile launch failed and really nothing beyond that. no further comment. i want to you bring in my panel, retired army lieutenant general mark hertling, a fellow, jonathan kristol and former state department official jamie me metzel. it was medium range, officials are kind of on edge and they aren t sure where this is going to go next. they re tracking it with reconnaissance capabilities across the peninsula. you saw the release by pacific command immediately saying they tracked it. it was off the launch pad and then exploded thereafter. they will have aircraft and satellite overhead. they will be tracking from radar to ships at sea and will have intelligence sources watching this and the focus is certainly going to be on sinpo where the missiles are launched from. that s their test facility. that s where the nuclear test could occur, where it s occurred in the past. all of those places are being watched. as you know they have the ships across the sea he, all the patriot missiles are alert in south korea, the carrier task force are ready to shoot anything down that threatens japan or south korea. there is a readiness factor. what i found interesting the statement that suzanne just read came from the secretary of defense and not the president s office. that seemed odd to me. why is that? because the secretary of defense, rightfully so, will not comment on what comes next but if the president was informed you would think the presidential spokesman would say something as opposed to the secretary of defense. that s just the way in the past it s been done. president trump has changed his protocol on this, i assume. jamie, welcome to our conversation as we are continuing to dissect and figure out what s going to happen in north korea especially how the u.s. might respond. what do you make of this response. let me read it to you one more time. the president and his military team are aware of north korea s most recent unsuccessful missile launch. the president has no further comment. the statement coming from the defense secretary james mattis. it s very interesting. president trump put a lot of fre pressure on the north koreans and the chinese put pressure on the north koreans. the north koreans had three options. it was the goldilocks options. they could go big, a nuclear test. this he could go middle which would be some kind of pre-icbm or something moving to the development of an icbm. and then they could do the minimal, the smallest. if north korea, this was all of this hype and pressure and north korea didn t do anything, then on monday everybody would be saying president trump won. he put all of this frepressure the north koreans and they are very rational actors. this was as little as they could do to not create a bigger crisis. and yet trump is so unpredictable. you ve written about this maneuvering between kim jong-un versus president trump, two people who both are somewhat unpredictable. how do you see this maneuvering taking shape as we get this statement. i think that as jamie was saying, kim jong-un has proven to be a rational actor and these continued tests also make sense. they are not random. they come at times of anniversaries and political events in the region such as trump meeting. and the japanese prorm was here. and they want to see what they can get away with. i would actually say that in some ways kim jong-un is behaving as a more traditional leader than trump is. well, that s interesting. that is not a value judgment, obviously i m not i do not favor kim jong-un in this, but he is limit testing and seeing what he can get away with because he has this new president who has said, you know, options one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten are on the table. he s not going to tell anybody. does that scare you a little bit, that unpredictability and that now kind of silence about what could come next? it makes me a little bit nervous but, you know, the actual guidance that he asked for from the pentagon which was just released i think within the last 24 hours basically says watch closely and wait. containment is not a radical difference from any of the policies of the past. and if trump devers to the defense department and to the experts on this i could breathe a little bit easier. but if he leaves it to himself and thinks that kim is some like young kid who doesn t know what he s doing and is going bonkers, that would make me very nervous. and one thing that kim is actually calling president trump s bluff because the question for the north koreans is how much pressure are the chinese ultimately going to put on pyongyang? and the north koreans are betting there s a limit to how far china will go because, still, china values north korea as whatever it is, and there s no love lost between them. china would rather have even a hostile nuclear armed north korea on its border than a reunified north korea potentially to the united states. president trump has real limitations to what he can do and kim is calling that bluff in a very smart and strategic way. stay with me. we have to squeeze in a quick break. we have been continuing to follow this news out of north kor korea. a missile that failed. it failed almost right after in the city of sinpo. a military parade, on a major holiday there celebrating the birth of the founding father in which they displayed all kinds of missiles or at least mock-ups of missiles including what they say is an intercontinental ballistic missile. we ll continue to follow this and be right back with more information. it s league night!? saved money on motorcycle insurance with geico! goin up the country. bowl without me. frank. i m going to get nachos. snack bar s closed. gah! ah, ah ah. i m goin up the country, baby don t you wanna go? i m goin up the country, baby don t you wanna go? geico motorcycle, great rates for great rides. sfx: engine revving (silence) how to win at business. step one: point decisively with the arm of your glasses. abracadabra. the stage is yours. step two: choose la quinta. the only hotel where you can redeem loyalty points for a free night-instantly and win at business. itbut one i think with quesa simple answer. we have this need to peek over our neighbor s fence. and once we do, we see wonder waiting. every step you take, narrows the influence of narrow minds. bridges continents and brings this world one step closer. so, the question you asked me. what is the key? it s you. everything in one place, so you can travel the world better. read that to you. this is retired general james mattis saying, quote, the president and his military team are aware of north korea s most recent unsuccessful missile launch. the president has no further comment. and with me now from pyongyang cnn s will ripley and also alongside me here in new york, senior fellow and former state department official jamie metzel. to you first, will. you have been there to north korea 11 times. you spent the last week on the ground. you were there for the parade. since you are about 12 hours ahead eastern time in the u.s. give us a sense what the feeling is on the ground in north korea right now. reporter: there s a real sense of defiance after the north korean leader unveiled his growing missile arsenal. we were speaking with people after the parade. asking them about the sixth nuclear test and that did not happen and what people did by showing the two never-before-seen intercontinental ballistic missiles was perhaps even more powerful because it was a way to show what they have in their s arsenal, missiles that could potentially deliver a nuclear warhead to the mainland u.s. we don t know how far along these missile mock-ups are. it s standard practice for countries to put mock-ups on s display. they wouldn t put the real thing in front of crowds of hundreds of people in close proximity to their all of their national leadership but they do say that they are in possession of viable weapons and that they continue to test and continue to develop. so the mood is defiance. the mood is optimism that the united states were to take military action against north korea that they could respond in force and potentially, you know, use these weapons. so, jamie, i m wondering for you when you look at what we see in that military parade and then we learn that they ve done this launch of a missile that failed thankfully, why do you think they would have done a missile launch should they have had the capability of doing a nuclear test instead. because they were under a lot of pressure. president trump certainly has raised the temperature in the region. china has put a lot of frepress on north korea. and there was a risk. if they did take if they did have a nuclear test this time, they didn t know what was going to happen and there was additional variability. if they did nothing, the story on monday would have been that they did nothing. kim backs down and that would have weakened him. this was really the pour ij is just right kind of position by the north koreans and that s why there s a whole lot of theater. will mentioned these missiles and nobody knows whether inside those canisters there are missiles or livestock or anything else, but this is all about theater and symbolism. it s bad for kim it didn t work. everybody is positioning and trying to figure out where they fit relative to china, the united states and the koreas. we know that vice president mike pence is on his way right now to south korea. this was a visit that had been planned well in advance of all the developments of the past week in terms of this heightened escalation of rhetoric between north korea and the u.s. if you were mike pence and heading to south korea now all that s happened in the last few hours, what is your priority when you re on the ground in south korea? the biggest thing is to reassure the south koreans the united states south core can alliance is strong. they recently impeached their president. they re a month away from their elections and how the u.s. is handling north korea is a critical issue in those elections. this is a very, very complicated environment that vice president pence is stepping into. do you think it was odd that the president of the u.s. department come out and issue a statement himself? it was odd but everything is odd that this president does, and so we re certainly if there is a playbook, it s a different playbook than we ve known or the world has known. and right now yet he hasn t withheld from tweeting. yeah, well, who knows what he was as a matter of fact in the car over here we were looking at his twitter and it was the wrong twitter, like a fake donald trump account talking about who would trust somebody who has a bad haircut. and we were thinking, did president trump really tweet that? we just don t know. in the world there s a level of insecurity about what donald trump could do and so we re seeing a little more caution from north korea. there s much greater level of variability in the world and that is very dangerous. right. jamie metzl and will ripley, thank you. no one s the same without the game of football. like @pigskinsusan15, who writes, now my boyfriend wants to talk on sundays. just so many words. your boyfriend s got it bad. maybe think about being single until the start of the season. there s nothing more than my vacation.me so when i need to book a hotel room, i want someone that makes it easy to find what i want. booking.com gets it. they offer free cancellation, in case i decide to go from kid-friendly to kid-free. now i can start relaxing even before the vacation begins. your vacation is very important. that s why booking.com makes finding the right hotel for the right price easy. visit booking.com now to find out why we re booking.yeah so we know how to cover almost alanything.ything, even a coupe soup. 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like global warming. we can t do that if people feel embarrassed to be associated with the united states. you combine that with the fact that the state department has essentially been neutered, e s eviscerated by this administration thus far and watching in real time as america and america s image withdraws from the world. do you know any republican senator or member of the house who s a republican, any party member of any party who believes the president believes he was wiretapped, who even believes he believes it? i don t think anybody knows exactly what donald trump believes and what he doesn t believe. i think what s scary to many republicans is that they ve had the opportunity to walk this back and they re putting not only the presidency and the reputation of the presidency, but the reputation of the entire country at risk, the longer that this floats out there. the reality is is congress can ask the department of justice as to whether there s a wiretap, bul but if there s an active investigation, the department of justice may not tell us, so its difficult to get to the bottom of this what do you mean, an active investigation wait a minute. well senator mccain, i think, is from the sane era of politics. here s how some other top republicans reacted including senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and chair of the senate and house intelligence committees. i think we have an existing committee, the intelligence committee, looking at all aspects of what may have been done last year related to the russians or the campaigns and we ll leave it there. have you seen any evidence of that? mr. leader no, i haven t. we don t have anything today that would send us in that direction, but that s not to say that we might not find something. i have not seen that evide e evidence. as you know, i think a lot of that was maybe a little bit the multiple tweets were perhaps a little bit strung together. as you all know, the president is a neophyte to politics. he s been doing this a little over a year. and i think a lot of the things that he says, you guys sometimes take literally. sometimes he doesn t have 27 lawyers and staff looking at when what he does. what do you make of that? that s a cover? that s explaining a guy s behavior? it s like he s he s treating the president as if he s in a crib and wants his pacy. he talks about him like he doesn t know what a tweet is. he knows how to tweet better than all of us. he gets up at 6:00 and does it. he accused the previous president of wiretapping him. there s nothing complicated about this. why doesn t mr. nunes, chairman of the committee, call up the fbi director, said was anybody asked for a fisa warrant on this? did anybody ask permission to wire this guy or not? end it. this is going to float out there for months and years. yeah, listen. i wouldn t tweet my 8-year-old like that. the fact is we would hope that an adult would occupy the oval office and we couldn t expectwo team of 27 lawyers around him to decide whether he should falsely accuse the previous president of the united states of tapping his phones. that s a ridiculous standard. and in the end, yeah, it is pretty simple to get to the answer to this question. there is no evidence that barack obama tapped donald trump s phones because it didn t happen. and republicans right now could ask the questions necessary to get at least that answer. maybe we won t know if the fbi was or is investigating trump, but we can get the answer to that question, republicans can. okay. thank you very much, senator chris murphy of connecticut. well, there was troubling reporting in the the new york times today about president trump s mood swings last weekend. according to the times, he was in high spirits after he fired off the posts, those tweets but midafternoon after returning from golf, he appeared to realize he had gone too far with his tweets although he still believed mr. obama had wiretapped him according to two people in trump s orbit. in some conversations that afternoon, the president sounded uncertain of the procedure for obtaining a warrant for secret wiretaps on an american citizen so he didn t know how you would do it but said obama did it. anyway, meanwhile, we re getting reaction on former president obama s reaction to the news. according to nbc, our network, a source close to him, told nbc news, mr. obama rolled his eyes. and the wall street journal report, he was livid over the accusation that he bugged the republican campaign offices believing mr. trump was questioning both the integrity of the office of the president and mr. obama, himself. of course, he was. i m joined by the wall street journal s carol pllee who wrot that article. and the washington post s phil rutger who s been all over this thing. carol, did you notice the way that this young, relatively young member of congress, nunes from california, i don t know much about the guy, treating the president like he s a little baby. you know, he gets a little upset once in a while, says things he really shouldn t and doesn t have the help of advisers like lawyers around him so he does things that really don t make much sense, but we shouldn t blame him because he s a neophyte. he s a neophyte. yeah. there s definitely that s a defense. that s what a criticism looks like. there s that s the republicans the republicans why are so they they re greading him on a curve. they re helping him hide. by the way, boehner, when trump was running around saying obama was an illegal ill grant frmmig kenya, people asked him, tell your fellow members it s not true, he said i don t tell them how to think. this is the way they behave in the republican party today. they re so intimidated by this guy, trump, that they just cover for him. your thoughts. well, i think, yeah, the republicans don t want to get crossways with the president. why? they also why are they afraid of him? because they have flithings y would like to actually get done in congress and don t want to pick a fight with the president. and they also are taking they re aligning with the white house in terms of the cleanup of this where you have the white house saying, well, we don t look at it, we ll look into it pane, you know, congress, take a look thal look into it. what happened, more importantly, what the democrats are doing, this winds up being a gift to them because you have people like schiff saying we re going to oblige him on his request, look into this. the white house is going to wind up getting all the things they didn t really want like hearings on this. and a further investigation into this. congress loves hearings. let s face it. they go on and on and on, get on tv, on and on and on. when do they get to a conclusion? a big one on march 20th. when you talk to white house officials as we were doing this week, this is the last thing they want to talk about. want to be talking about health care, tax reform, about angela merkel s visit next week, about all these other issues and stuck having how long have you been around? let me ask you a question about having to get flak for the president. i thought about what kind of job that would be, i think it would be a very difficult job. people like josh earnest know how to do the job well. it s doable. i ve never seen a press secretary have to deal with a president that s saying stuff he or she doesn t believe. i mean, really. spicer has ever since the crowd measurements back in january 20 he had to lie for the president which is a terrible word to do, but he had to do it. had to say, oh, yeah, 3 million to 4 million out there and all this. this time around he doesn t want to do that. he s saying, i m telling you what the president says. then somebody asked yesterday, do you believe him? he said, that s a cute question. it s not a cute question. you ask the president s spokesperson if he or she believes what the president is saying. it s a reasonable question. he has really distanced himself from that, it s interesting to watch. he said, you know, if you ask him, what you zdo you think? he says it doesn t matter what you think. it does matter. we he says it s above my pay grade. that s a tired old line. you re the spokesman for the whou white house. it s not above your pay grade. it s your job. he got into the job. decided to bt he doesn t want to have his career ruined, i can tell. he s pulling away from trump. he is not lying for him. this is a pattern in donald trump s life, he inserts things that are got necessarily true, tries to find evidence for it. did you see kellyanne s pivot the other day? he knows so many things we don t know. she didn t say she s covering for herself in this case. thank you, carol lee. thank you. it s a tough time to be a straight reporter. this is not a straight world. phil rutger, thank you. coming up, the rolling disclosure on trump s potential russian connection continues. today we learn trump s former campaign manager corey lewandowski gave carter page leave to go to russia last summer. it just keeps growing and growing. plus on this international women s day, the trump administration s considering separating women, or mothers from their children if they try to enter the country illegally. that s going to be wonderful. i mean sar castically. it s going to be table. the hardball roundtable here tonight to talk about the challenge of separating fact from fiction today and trying to get to the truth during the trump era. finally let me finish with the trump watch. you won t like this one, either. you re watching hardball where the action is. oh.not the smooch method! come on. what s going on here? you know how ge technology allows us to fix problems before they. they slow production, yeah. well, no more catchy business acronyms. wait, we don t need to smooch? i m sure we can smooch a solution! we just need to hover over the candice, problem until. just let it go. hey, sorry i m late for team building. smoooooooch! that felt right. what s wrong with you!? he s so trusting. well, when he was a candidate, donald trump said he loved wikileaks. the website that collaborated with russian intelligence to help defeat hillary clinton. well in fact, he repeatedly professed his love for wikileaks. by the way, did you see another one, another one came in today, this wikileaks is like a treasure-trove. this wikileaks is unbelievable. what we ve learned about her and her people. we love wikileaks. boy, they are really wikileaks. they have revealed a lot. boy, that wikileaks has done a job on her. hasn t it? i tell you, this wikileaks stuff is unbelievable. it tells you the inner heart. you got to read it. now, this just came out, this just came out, wikileaks, i love wikileaks. well now wikileaks, the beloved wikileaks, released a trove of what it says are cia documents showing how the agency broke into smartphones and even tvs for spying and today the cia said it had no comment on the authenticity of those documents. when we come back, we ll talk to u.s. congressman waukeen castro of the intelligence committee about the latest wikileaks dump and what we re learning about president trump s relationship with russia. back after this. that could sense vehicles in your blind spot. take on the unexpected, with six 2017 iihs top safety picks. it s clear why we re america s fastest-growing auto brand. get to nissan now for 0% financing on 11 models & no payments for 90 days. i love to see businesses that just started from ground up grow into further success. it just feels good to know that i m helping someone else. my first goal is to learn about their business, what they re currently doing in their advertising. pull some research, create a great story. trying to figure out some way of building some kind of trust in a very quick moment. you have to love to work with people. our goal, without a doubt, is that all customers are satisfied before they leave. can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with russia during the course of the election? no, nobody that i know of. you re not aware of any contacts during the course of the election? how many times do i have to answer this question? russia is a ruse. i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge, no person that i deal with does. welcome to hardball. last month, president trump denied that anyone in his campaign, as you just saw, had any contacts with russia during the election. but in making that statement, the president directly contradicted the word of russia s deputy foreign minister who said just days after the election that, there were contacts during the campaign. we now know that thee members of trump s national security advisory committee, senator jeff sessions, j.d. gordon, carter page, all spoke with the russian ambassador during the campaign. additionally just before the republican convention, carter page traveled to moscow where he delivered a commencement address ken vogel of politico reports, page e-mailed campaign manager corey lewandowski and spokeswoman asking for formal approval for the trip and told by lewandowski he would make a trip to moscow but not as an official representative of the campaign. corey lewandowski telling politico i don t remember that, i probably got a thousand e-mails at that time and don t remember every single one i sent. i wouldn t necessarily remember if i had a one-word response to him saying he would do something as a private citizen. page left the campaign in september. trump campaign officials later distanced themselves from him. late today a source close to former utah governor jon huntsman tells nbc news that huntsman was offed and has accepted the position to be the next u.s. ambassador of russia. joined by u.s. congressman joaquin castro of texas, serves on the house select committee on intelligence. also here, ken vogel who wrote the story, chief investigative reporter for politico. congressman, you re in there and i guess my question is, we know an awful lot thanks to the 17 intelligence agencies about the way russia wanted hillary to lose and if it could be really lucky, get trump to win. how they wanted to undermine our democracy. that s all on the record. we also have a lot of other things on the record. how trump romanced or bromanced the russians all through the campaign. said wonderful things about their little instrument called wikileaks, said wonderful things about vladimir putin, about everything over there, how he s going to be their allies in the world against isis, et cetera, et cetera. seems to me a lot of information is out there about the symbiotic relationship between trump and the russians. what do you know more, or can you hichbt nt at where you thins story s going? you know, chris, insaid very clearly as have others on this committee, we need to get to the bottom of one question. did any americans conspire with the russians who interfered with our 2016 presidential election? and specifically, did anyone associated with the trump campaign help those who interfered with the 2016 presidential election? when we keep seeing more and more connections between trump advisers, at least coming out in reports, these trump advisers and the russians. and so, of course, this just speaks to how important the investigation is. well, doesn t the i mean, my experience over the years is the fbi, as part of our counterintelligence effort in this country, which all other countries have, they have all kinds of electronic wiretaps and information like, leb trelectro communication, involving the russian ambassador and officials who look like they might be under cover. why can t don t we get that information out? when s it going to come? the information. the nsa s got it, the cia s got it, certainly the fbi. what s the wait for? that s a great question. you know, i ve been critical of the pace of the investigation at least in the house committee. i said last week there is a gap between what the intelligence agencies know and what the committee has been told. adam schiff, the democratic ranking member, has essentially said the same thing. so i m with you on that. i think we should be moving in a brisker pace. you see there s a few hearings on this issue that have now been scheduled and publicly hopefull start moving at a quicker pace because all americans deserve an answer to these questions and getting to the bottom of it really is fundamental to our democracy. we know what russia did to help get trump elected and as a candidate, trump repeatedly made overtures to putin. let s watch him. i think i g d get along very well with vladimir putin. i just think so. wouldn t it be nice if actually we could get along with russia? and what s wrong with are russia wants to drop million-dollar bombs on isis? i say, good. putin said donald trump is a geni genius, he s going to be the next great leader of the united states. my attitude, when people like me, i like them. even putin. russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. putin s a killer. a lot of killers. we got a lot of killers. what, you think our country s so innocent? let me go to a couple things that do matter here. certainly our policy toward ukraine. our policy toward crimecrimea. i think either administration, democrat or republican, obama who normally a republican administration, would say russia, big bear, hold back, don t be grabbing back those countries on your border so easily. you got back crimea, we ll fight about that. certainly don t make any moves on the larger part of ukraine. now we get the sense that the platform in the republican convention this year, the plank dealing with that, was changed and look at this, during the same week the trump aides spoke with the russian am babassador cleveland during the republican convention, the trump campaign watered down an amendment to the party platform that supported ukraine against russian aggression. trump s campaign chairman, paul manafort at the time, denied responsibility for the change as did trump, himself. trump also defended russia s right to seize crimea from ukraine. here he is. everybody on the platform committee had said it came from the trump campaign. if not you, who? it absolutely did not come from the trump campaign. so nobody from the trump campaign wanted that change in the platform? no one. zero. why did she soften the gop platform on ukraine? i wasn t involved in that. you know, the people of crimea from what i ve heard would rather be with russia than where they were. well now politico is reporting a ukrainian operative with suspected ties to russian intelligence consulted with paul manafort during the political o ukraine he played a role in changing the platform language. ken, what do we make of this? in they soften up the republican platform, usually a hawkish party, softened them up because they have inside operatives in the republican operation here, we ought to know about that. they re quick to say, in fact, the language in the platform ended up being tougher than it was before this amendment was proposed. wasn t as tough as not thanks to them. right. certainly. we have reporting that does suggest, in fact, there were representatives of the trump campaign who did play a role in watering down that proposed amendment that would have been much tougher. so it s yet another example where they come out with a blanket denial, say we candiddi have anything to do with the platform, turns out they did. flynn says to the vice president of all people, i didn t talk about the sanctions with the russian am bass dr. turns out he did. sessions tells the judiciary committee, i didn t talk with any russians. the biggest problem for me, they cannot get their stories zragt he straight here. if it comes out, congressman, you may be the first to know on the intelligence committee, that there was a positive role by the trump people in getting the russians to do what they did in terms of screwing up the democrats in the general election, with all the hacking and they played a role in that, would that be impeachable? if at the end of the investigation it s found the president s advisers played a role in aiding the russians who interfered with the election and the president knew about it, then that is historically significant and it s a betrayal of our democracy and certainly i think many people would move for impeachment. thank you so much. u.s. congressman joaquin castro of texas, thank you, ken vogel, for your amazing reporting these days. up next, it s international women s day. while they have rallies around the country right now, they re going on, the homeland security secretary is considering a plan that would separate mothers from their children. remember sophie s choice, if they cross into this kun this c illegally. a debate is coming up about that. this is hardball where the action is. oh yeah sure. ok, like what? but i thought we were supposed to be talking about investing for retirement? we re absolutely doing that. but there s no law you can t make the most of today. what do you want to do? 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(team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace. here s to the wildcats this i gotta try .. bendy. spendy weekenders. whatever kind of weekender you are, there s a hilton for you. book your weekend break direct at hilton.com and join the weekenders. whattwo servings of veggies? v8 or a powdered drink? ready, go. ahhhhhhhh! shake! shake! shake! shake! shake! done! you gotta shake it! i shake it! glad i had a v8. the original way to fuel your day. .onef many pieces in my life. so when my asthma symptoms kept cong back on my long-term control medicine. i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment with breo. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo is specifically designed to open up airways to improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems and may increase the risk of hospitalization in children and adolescents. breo is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop breo and prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. learn more about better breathing at mybreo.com. welcome back to hardball. around the world people are celebrating international women s day today. in the united states, organizers of january s women s march on washington use the this occasion to plan a national demonstration called a day without a woman. women. it s plural there. thousands of women abstained from their it s a great word, abstained from their day jobs and took to the streets. that s a live picture looking at right now from new york outside the trump soho hotel. they re rallying against the discrimination and division they say the president espouses. here we go. i think it s important that the country know that women are standing together against hate and division and discrimination. what we have to do now is do what we can is protest and stand up and let the country and our elected leaders know what s important to us. and so that s what we re doing. in washington, several female democratic lawmakers symbolically staged a walkout in support, there they are, in red. 21 members of the congress. we know one thing for sure, that when women succeed, america succeeds. well the other end of pennsylvania avenue, donald trump honored the day by dropping in on his wife s luncheon and tweeting on international women s day, join me in honoring the critical role of women here in america and around the world. and i have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy. the tweets drew immediate criticism because of trump s record on women. his administration is also under scrutiny for its lack of gender diversi diversity, intention to defund planned participaenthood. and to separate women and children to cross the border illegally. secretary john kelly confirmed the administration was considering that proposal. here he is. our department of homeland security personnel going to separate the children from their moms and dads. yes, i am considering in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, i am considering exactly that. they will be well cared for as we deal with their parents. joining me right now for more, maria teresa kumar, ceo of voter latino, and former campaign manager for mitt romney, katie packer. both are attorneys. you have a tough job now. we have to talk about it. sounds like sophie s choice not sophie s choice. the idea of separating children from their mothers. obviously alleged to have broken the law, come across the border, may be asylum seekers. we don t know. may be poor people looking for a job. we don t know. trying to meet some relative here. we don t know. the idea of putting out the word, hey, we re going to separate you from your kids as a way of saying we re going to make you pay for this. well, certainly the notion of separating children from their parents as a punitive action? as a punitive action. as a punitive action, is very unseemly. what i understand, though, about what he s talking about is there is an angle to this that s trying to address the child trafficking issue. that it s not just separating children from their parents that s what he said, though. it s separating kirn from adults. i understand that. were you helping him here? are you helping him? that s not what he said. there might be an angle there that could be sort of salvageable but this notion of taking children away from their parents that is the you re very good at this, katikatie. i got tell you, for mothers carrying a baby, carrying an 8-year-old. what you re referring to, secretary kelly is also looking at this idea if a parent has someone bringing over they child, they re going to charge the parent with human trafficking. that s just as bad. so this idea that we are the majority of the people that to rming right now in south america are fleeing sexual viviolence, violence, themselves. what countries? el salvador, honduras primarily. not only going to the united states, going to costa rica, belize, where they mostly have family members. what do you make of this proposal to punish people for crossing the border illegally? it s cruel. it s anti-american. do you think that will at the end of the day, you re trying to get to safety for your family, america has been the beacon of hope. most of these folks are refugees and saying if i have to get separated, i will do it. the problem is even amnesty international has found a lot of these detention systems are completely abhorrent. they re anti a lot of international rights. what should the u.s. government do? they should actually process asylum seekers and if they re not asylum se seekers, what do you do with the ones who are not seeking asylum? the yoert majority of them a. what about the ones who are? everybody believes we need to have secured borders but in a way that is not cruel. you re always good at this. it s not going to happen because it s not good policy. let me ask her about the difference between can i talk to you for a second, ask you a question? what s a difference between a republican view of international women s day and a democrats view? what s the difference between your point of view from a party point of view? well, i think for republicans everybody s feeling a little sort of protested out. like every day there s some new protest and at some point you say to yourself, you know, when is there going to be sort of a general discussion of the things that you actually object to instead of just this daily protesting of everything that trump does? and you can t hear anything because what was your reaction to trump s comments, mexicans are rapists. islamic women what do you billy bush was who listening and fluffing him on you might say gets fired, trump gets elected president. doesn t that amaze you? it does amaze me. that conversation about women. it makes him a very flawed vessel for a comment like he made today. did you vote for him? i have very publicly said i did not vote for him. i know you didn t. go ahead. i think what he brought on, the way he brought on sexual violence into a conversation allowed people to have for the first time a conversation between their spouse as and the loved ones. at the same time, what he signals is it almost didn t matter. because he won. because he con. 42% of women voted for him. no consequences. 53% of white women voted for him, too. no consequences for those actions. the reason people keep marching, these are people who may not have voted and are coming into the political process, saying what do we do next? our job is to harness sthat. you know what i learned? women say, men are all like that. i go, they re not like that. more are like that than you think. that s possible because you just defined the possibility of it. yeah. you know what thank you. back again, for the very first time, trump lost young white men. yeah. millennials have good values. millennials have good values. maria, we all know that. maria teresa kumar and katie packer. katie packer, what a great name. up next katie packer. up next, the hardball roundtable will be here. tonight separating fact from fiction and getting at the truth in the trump era. that s what we re going to talk about. finding the nonfiction in the fiction. you re watching hardball where the action is. 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( ) what i like about the area, feels like everybody knows each other. and i can go to my local coffee shop and they know who i am. it s really cool. new york state is filled with bright minds like lisa s. to find the companies and talent of tomorrow, search for our page, jobsinnewyorkstate on linkedin. search for our page, at bp s cooper river plant, employees take safety personally - down to each piece of equipment, so they can protect their teammates and the surrounding wetlands, too. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. don t put off checking out your options until sixty-five. now is a good time to get the ball rolling. consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like any of these types of plans, it could help you with out-of-pocket medical costs. call now and request your free decision guide and explore the range of aarp medicare supplement plans. start gathering the information you need. to roll into sixty-five with confidence. wheyou wantve somto protect it.e, at legalzoom, our network of attorneys can help you every step of the way. with an estate plan including wills or a living trust that grows along with you and your family. legalzoom. legal help is here. seriously. this after the white house wouldn t provide evidence that former president obama wiretapped president trump s phones during the 2016 campaign. as trump claimed saturday morning. is the white house position that the president can make declarative statements about a former president basically committing a crime and then the congressional committee should look into that and basically prove it? that is not a question of prove it, is they have the resources and the clearances and the staff to fully and thoroughly and comprehensively investigate this. and then issue a report as to what their findings are. so but president trump s twitter statement shouldn t be taken at face value about what sure, it should. of course why no. there s nothing, as i mentioned to jim, it s not that he s walking anything back or regretting it, he s just saying that they have the appropriate venue. so how does a journalist get to the truth in the age of trump? joining me in the hardball roundtable tonight, three reporters who cover politics and the white house. ayesha roscoe, white house correspondent, saw her there, for reuters, who asked that question, went back and forth with spicer. david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jones. msnbc political analyst. laura bassett, senior political reporter with the huffington post. that quhestioning of a press secretary who s definitely out of his element. he obviously doesn t believe his nonsense about the president accusing the previous president of wiretapping him yet he has to say things i think you almost caught him there, should we take it as face value? i thought you d almost get him to say no. of course i take it at face value. of course we have to submit it to congress to see if that s true or not. that doesn t make any sense. that was the point of the questioning. they came out with a statement after the twitter statements which were declared, president trump said i was wiretapped, president obama did it basically. then now the white house is saying, oh, committees have to look into it and have to see whether they re concerned. that s what i was trying to get at was, well, should we take the twitter statements which were declarative suppose trump said the president, previous president snuck into the white house last night and stole my hamburgers. i mean, something really ridiculous. then say we re going to let the house and senate intelligence committee examine it. i mean, the stuff he the claims are just at what point is spicer or anybody just says i can t take this job anymore, this is stupid, this isn t worthy of my time, i m going to end up looking like a liar here. right. i think that the problem for, at least for the media, is it s almost impossible to fact check some of this stuff. he doesn t care. because, yeah, then kellyanne conway can go on tv and say, well, you know, we say, well, did you get this from a breitbart story or not? and she says, well, he s privy to intelligence that most people don t know and information that most people don t know and the president should be. how to you fact check that when she says there s information that we just don t know? you can t fact check crazy. the thing is, i ve seen people acting as if they re surprised by this. you and i know there s nothing to be surprised by this. he did this for three years about birtherism. he did this about the crowds in the inauguration. he did this about ted cruz s dad and the 3 million mexicans who voted against him in california. he does this again and again and again. we act as he s a rational actor. what are you supposed to do? ayesha, it isn t like the old ethiopia where every headline began, lion of juda said this morning and pript nt it as if i true. what are you supposed to do? ask tough questions. you have to, you know, if they say things that maybe don t seem to add up, you have to ask them for clarity and then you have to do your own digging. i think it s important for us as journalists to make sure that we re providing readers with the facts. okay. with what we know. when do you get a no on this? i ve been saying the congress job is to give him a nay. they re not doing anything, not check this stuff out. they say, oh, we re going to buy xerox machines and hire some lawyers and get officers assigned and in six months we ll get down to business, ten years later we might have congress does not move lickety-split. i mean, i thought their response to the whole wiretapping thing was really awkward. all of them were put in an incredibly awkward position of saying i don t believe what the president s saying, he s still the president, okay, we ll look into it. one guy had some guts, had some balls to put it bluntly. that was mccain. one guy. mccain called him on it. as much as he may be bitter against obama, he has contempt for trump. he said trump is obligated to prove this. i think that s a pretty fair statement. you accuse the former president of breaking the law. yeah. it just shows you how far the republican establishment has gone in self-emasculation. yeah. they will not even if crazedy is right in front of them and it s two plus two, they ll say, maybe it is five because we don t have all the facts. are they afraid of getting a nickname? what are they afraid of? i talked to one house democrat who s trying to get a republican on the bill that trump wouldn t like and the guy said i can t do it, trump will start tweeting at me. they re afraid of trump. they re afraid of the base has been trumpfied. they re running scared. they want him around to sign the medicare privatization bills and whatever they come up with, anything in health care. they can t listen, once you say the president is nuts there s no going back from that. yeah, but some of this, i would hope, would penetrate to the 35%. do you think it will? i think i mean, i think will it penetrate to objective people that are reasonably objective? i think people can be logical and look at what s happening and draw their conclusions. i think especially when, you know, the rubber hits the road and you have to start looking at policies and what s going to come out. i wonder if it s like when you get married to someone, you realize they re different than the one that courted you and you go, but i m still stuck. it s not different, though, he was like this the whole campaign. that s true. aren t you smart? thank you. the roundtable is sticking with us. up next, these three will tell me something i don t know. i should have known that. bp uses flir cameras - a new thermal imagining technology - to inspect difficult-to-reach pipelines, so we can detect leaks before humans can see them. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. resist, run for office, be a champion. tonight secretary clinton will mark international women s day at the ceremony for vital voices, a woman s leadership group that she founded. we ll be back after this. my day starts well before i m even in the kitchen. i need my blood sugar to stay in control. so i asked about tresiba®. tresiba® ready tresiba® is a once-daily, long-acting insulin that lasts even longer than 24 hours. i need to shave my a1c. tresiba® ready tresiba® works like my body s insulin. releases slow and steady. providing powerful a1c reduction. i m always on call. an insulin that fits my schedule is key. tresiba® ready i can take tresiba® any time of day. so if i miss or delay a dose, i take it when i remember, as long as there s at least 8 hours between doses. once in use, it lasts 8 weeks with or without refrigeration, twice as long as the lantus® pen. (announcer) tresiba® is used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don t use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you are allergic to any of its ingredients. don t share needles or insulin pens. don t reuse needles. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which may cause dizziness, sweating, confusion, and headache. check your blood sugar. low blood sugar can be serious and may be life-threatening. injection site reactions may occur. tell your prescriber about all medicines you take and all your medical conditions. taking tzds with insulins like tresiba® may cause serious side effects like heart failure. your insulin dose shouldn t be changed without asking your prescriber. get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing, fast heartbeat, extreme drowsiness, swelling of your face, tongue, or throat, dizziness or confusion. ask your health care provider if you re tresiba® ready. covered by most insurance and medicare plans. tresiba® ready aisha, tell me something, you re amazing, you take on spicer. just wrap im, go ahead. well, in honor of women s day, speaking of one of the most powerful women in international politics, german chancellor angela merkel is coming here, we hear top on the agenda will be ukraine and russia and also that president trump might press her on getting germany to pay its fair share on nato. i will think germany would have paid early. it will be interesting to see with how she deals with president trump. she s his equal by any standard. you mentioned john mccain because he took a strong stand on the wiretapping stuff. he s taken a strong stand on the russian stuff, the white house is enraged about john mccain and they are trying to find ways to politically marginalize him and elevate other voices within the party like senator named tom cotton. they want mccain sidelined. i m with mccain on that one. by the way, mccain will never be forgot within what he accused with that woman that accused obama being arrogant. that s profile in courage stuff. trump hasn t done one of those yet. i talked to health experts about trumpcare today and what it would do. you re saying it, aren t you? i m saying trumpcare. like people wouldn t say reagan airport for years but you re saying trumpcare right away. it restricts abortion in four different ways and defunds planned parenthood. explain the abortion piece. it would drive abortion insurance completely out of the market so there wouldn t be an option for women to have abortion coverage anymore and it defunds planned parenthood. totally? the health experts said it would drive up unintended pregnancies. so it would do away with all birth control help for people. exactly. and have the opposite. that s a counterer effort for the pro life people. anyway, i think if you believe in avoiding abortion, anyway. ais aisha, thank you, please come back. david corn, always and laura basset, yes. i m out of good words. when we return, let me finish with trump watch. you re watching hardball. finally. hey ron! they re finally taking down that schwab billboard. oh, not so fast, carl. oh no. schwab, again? index investing for that low? that s three times less than fidelity. .and four times less than vanguard. what s next, no minimums? .no minimums. schwab has lowered the cost of investing again. introducing the lowest cost index funds in the industry with no minimums. i bet they re calling about the schwab news. schwab. a modern approach to wealth management. dearthere s no other way to say this. it s over. i ve found a permanent escape from monotony. together, we are perfectly balanced. our senses awake. our hearts racing as one. i know this is sudden, but they say.if you love something set it free. see you around, giulia [ rumbling ] bp developed new, industry-leading software to monitor drilling operations in real-time, so our engineers can solve problems with the most precise data at their fingertips. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. trump watch, wednesday, march 8, 2017. we have a man in the white house who thinks nothing that s a phrase to keep handy of speaking nastily and outrageously about his predecessor. why not? when he called obama an illegal immigrant from kenya the republican speaker of the house said it wasn t his job to tell people how to think. and with him now calling the former president a criminal, no leader up there in the congress is willing to come out and throw water on the president s fish story. this isn t about how big he says his hands are or how many people he can see on the washington mall or how many elusive illegal voters he says were out there last november. it s about truth and untruth. the truth that the russians helped him win the election. the untruth that president obama had him bugged. i understand why his people want this accusation of his to disappear on capitol hill. it s an old trick. it s what spiro agnew did when he faced indictment for accepted bribes for maryland contractors. he headed to the speaker asking him to be tried by the congress. he figured the case would be
are we going to repeal and replace obamacare with something better? this is the covenant that we made with the american people when we ran on a repeal and replace plan in 2016. we are designing a system that is not going to lower costs, and that is the big deal. by removing the mandate of a government-mandated, you must buy this program or you will pay a penalty, and eliminating choice, we are enacting, i think, very strong conservative flat numeric values and health care that give all-americans more choice at a lower cost. i think that should be a very positive message. make no mistake, the president is very proud of the product they produce. we are going to try to make this bill better if we can, but right now, where it is, it is not what we told the voters we were going to do. shannon: tonight, as president trump finds himself in sell mode, we will delve deep into the divisions. page david mcintosh, president of the club for this year, he just met with the president within the last hour but he is going to tell us whether he was convinced by mr. trump s pitch. then governor scott meeting with the new here to tell us what he thinks the pill is a good start. we begin with key congressional correspondent mike emanuel on the hill. two relevant committees getting a first crack at this republican health care package. this hour, lawmakers continue the work on this bill. democrats have convicted mack accused colleagues are trying to rush the bill through before they ve gotten an assessment of the price tag and overall impact from the congressional budget office. my inquiry is, again, if i can say it, if you ll let me say it is, after the last two months of saying we were going to use this, that we were not going to try to jam things down speak of the gentlemen have a parliamentary inquiry. now you work doing exactly that. what is your inquiry . republicans came out against the package yesterday, president trump tweeted that he feels sure his friend will come along with his new and great health care program and the senator offered this response. i do agree with the president, and i talked with him this week, i agree that obamacare is a disaster, and i agree that we should repeal it. i think that is where the unity is. then we re going to have to have a debate over replacement. fox news has confirmed in the house republican conference meeting with steve scalise today, as to members if they are with the president on health care or with house democratic leader nancy pelosi. i think they should be with their constituents, and their constituents have a lot to lose if they go along with this. it is interesting to see the figures of the people who supported president trump who are on the affordable care act. they say the president is in sell mode, and many sources say that will be critical to getting this done. part of that offensive is expected to include budget director at mick mulvaney inviting members of the conservative freedom caucus to the white house next tuesday night for a little pizza and bowling. shannon: a bit of a bowling summit. all right, make. thank you very much for the update. joining us now, david mcintosh, president of the club for growth who called bill, a warmed, substitute for government health care but he just met with the president. it is pitch work? david, let s find out. how did the meeting go? there s been no secret that you ve been been a big critic. we shared those concerns, criticisms of the bill, with the president. i can say, i was encouraged because he was listening. yes, he was selling, he said, we ve got to get something done, i am pushing you and the congress to get a bill through so that we can repeal obamacare. we pointed out that the house bill isn t the best vehicle for doing that. they don t fully repeal obamacare. they keep some of the taxes that he passed. they keep the expansion of medicaid, and the worst thing for us is, they don t create competition against across sta. people will end up spending as much of the do now on their health insurance bill. and the promises that republicans made were, we are going to repeal it so there will be competition, free market, you can pay less and get better health care. shannon: you are not convinced this does that in any way. the most encouraging thing, shannon, the president and his team said, yes, we get it, this needs to be changed. we encouraged him to michael push them to change it, we want to work with you to pass a better bill. shannon: something people have really been looking forward to come up when the criticism first bubbled up, the president tweeted out, we re going to get that. are you confident that will happen? also, we had on congressman kevin brady, the chair of one of the committee s tackling this right now. i pressed him on whether they are going to let people make substantive amendments. you want to know that that input is going to be taken great are you convinced from your meeting with the president tonight that this thing will happen? i am convinced the president is going to push for it, i m not convinced the house leadership is taking input from conservatives. they haven t from the beginning and that is the mistake they are making on this bill. i think they should do is allow amendments to fully repeal obamacare and then work from there to bring back a free market bill and a process that will benefit all americans because health insurance will be cheaper and they won t have to have all of these constraints and mandates that the obamacare builders. keeping a lot of that is the big problem with the house bill that they are working on. shannon: they have got it price tag, we know it is not free. i want to ask, where you come down on the issue of we had senator lee on last night, talking about reintroducing the whole obamacare repeal from 2017, would you support that is a different vehicle? i think that is when you could easily pass in both houses. once they start making changes and ryan starts adding things back in that look like obamacare, you start losing votes. yes, i think that is a good starting place for them. i think they could take the ryancare bill and get rid of the changes and keep obamacare provisions and then the ryan-caret bill could be good too. there are some good things in their. shannon: i see icu of adopted the moniker that a lot of folks i don t love the bill are now calling it ryancare. thank you for giving us some intel and insight into your meeting with the president and keep us updated. i am encouraged by the president pushing them to keep changing until they get a good bill. shannon: david mcintosh, thanks. here now, florida governor rick scott, and met with speaker paul ryan today. i know you spent a lot of time meeting with the president one on one. what do you make of what we have so far. would you pass it as it is written now? you know my background. i ran the largest hospital in the country, this is important to me, we know obamacare is an absolute mess. the president inherited a mess. i am encouraged that we having a real conversation here. i m going to make sure it is fair to floridians, but i am encouraged, and i m going to work to make sure i want to make sure that we get a bill fair to floridians and make sure people have access to health care. the problem here is, costs are too high, whatever we ve passed has to focus on costs. shannon: what do you say to those who say they don t see in this bill any evidence that it will bring that cost down? we got to focus on cost. if you look at access is 100% tied to cost. that is my focus. on top of that, whatever we do, i have got to fight for florida, and i m going to. shannon: let s talk about medicaid, floor did not take the medicaid expansion, that is a hotly contested issue. there are some senators who are conservative g.o.p. senators who say, listen, if you don t keep the medicaid expansion going, it has been critical in my state, you may lose my vote. there conservatives say, we don t even like that is continuing for three years. where d you come down on this? you made a very bold choice you thought was best for your state. sure. we know the way they have done obamacare, it is not sustainable, costs have gone up, taxpayers are not going to build pay for it, it has caused premiums to go up. just got to be repealed. in the meantime, i ve got to fight for florida, and i m going to fight for florida to make sure it is paired for florida. we didn t do the expansion because we knew it was not sustainable. i ve got to make sure that whatever passes is fair for our state. i want people to get access to health care, but like you said, we ve got to focus on the cost side. shannon: what about across state lines? is that something you support? absolutely. you want to drive down health care costs? i whatever insurance you want, make sure you have more competition, across state lines, and reward people for taking care of themselves. those three things will drive down costs. shannon: what you make of the tax credits? especially the freedom caucus and others say that it is just another word for an entitlement and that is not something they can vote for. this is way better than obamacare. this bill, if this bill passes, it is way better than obamacare. i think there are a lot of things we can improve on. i want people to have access to health care. i want them to be able to afford health care. i think this is a great starting point. i think we are going to keep working on it. shannon: florida governor rick scott. thank you, governor. breaking news this hour, fbi on the hunt for a mole inside the cia. makes a very rare statement about this latest massive leak of classified information. ahead, former cia contractor james mitchell, the man who personally interrogated the mastermind of 9/11, on the dangers these leaks pose to our nation. plus a california mother of two struck and killed by an intoxicated driver, we are now learning he was known to be in the country illegally, deported five times previously. we ll debate that case just ahead. knowing the history that he had come out with the and so forth, just a slap on my hand and sent back. he came back. it should have been done like that. that shouldn t have been done like that. -i would. -i would indeed. well, let s be clear, here. i m actually a deejay. 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(team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace. don t let the food you eat during the day haunt you at night. nexium 24hr. shuts down your stomach s active acid pumps. to stop the burn of frequent heartburn. all day and night. have we seen them before? banish the burn with nexium 24hr. central intelligence agency, the fbi launching an investigation to find the person who leaked the sense of classified information as they search for the next manning or snowden. we ll be joined by james mitchell, the man who personally interrogated 9/11 mastermind khalid sheikh mohammed. first, ed henry live in washington with new details. hi, ed. we are told the leak involves the entire hacking capacity of the cia. that part, and pursing a revelations about how it has the capacity to break into smartphones, turn smart tvs into microphones that record our conversations and could actually kill someone by hacking into a car that is connected to the internet. the cia has just released a statement acknowledging that this is a very damaging leak, of course, that could jeopardize american personnel and operations. the cia also insisting that while they have these tools, they are not using them to spy on americans. a spokesman declaring it is important to note that the cia is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals at home including our fellow americans, and the cia does not do so. the cia s activities are subjected to rigorous oversight to ensure they comply fully with u.s. law. the white house meanwhile today also jumped into the fray. we will go after people who leaked classified information. we will prosecute them to the full extent of the law. this is playing with our nation s national security, notes mcnutt should be taken lightly under this administration. tech company scrambling tonight, apple declaring about 80% of their users have the most updated operating system that fixes vulnerabilities while samsung simply said privacy is a top priority. as for the hunt for the mole, telling catherine herridge there are three scenarios, an insider who is an employee or networker, or a network cyber breach or some combination of the two. shannon: ed henry live in washington. here no, dr. james mitchell, author of enhanced interrogation techniques pretext for being with us tonight. thank you for having me on. shannon: we understand there is officially a federal criminal investigation, how in the world today go about tracking this. i asked our inside team to tell them, how many contractors are the cia, they couldn t break it down, but they said within the intelligence community as a whole, at least 27,000. the assumption is that it is a contractor. because that is what it has been in the past. but it could be anyone. the other question that you asked me about how they are going to go about tracking these folks down, i really don t think we should talk about that. at least people who know should be talking about that, because the very reasons we don t want to hacking tools release does, we don t want them to know the methods we are going to use. what we need to do is relentlessly hunt these folks down because they are not just placing american personnel at risk, they are placing american lives at risk. shannon: so it s not a contractor, are you saying you do believe it was maybe a cyber breach from outside? it could be an employee, it could be a cyber breach, it could be a small band of people. one of the things that we ve done in this country that disturbs me a little bit is that we have romanticized this subculture of hackers to the point that they have become almost a tribe where they have become called heroes, and that the cool thing to do is to get into the hard places to get into and then to sort of give people a peek into their underwear drawer, so to speak, right? that has somehow become a way of taking scalps, and that s a problem. particularly if it is an employee of the government or a contractor or it is some sort of a breach, we need to find that, we need to find those people, and we need to stop them. shannon: who benefits from this? who benefits? criminals benefit. they are talking about doing more releases, and if they release the source code, that is particularly dangerous. not only would criminals have that but the bad guys would have that as well. every day somebody from al qaeda and isis gets up and tries to figure out a way to kill americans here in the united states. imagine if they could launch a catastrophic attack simultaneously with some sort of cyber warfare weapon attack as well. it makes us incredibly vulnerable. a second side effect of this thing is, i know a lot of people have criticized me because of my involvement in interrogations. one of the weird side effects of releasing this kind of information is, you make people like me that much more necessar necessary. we have these surreptitious, clandestine ways of getting information, now you have revealed all of that, so it is going to be harder to do that because they are going to protect themselves. and if they can go invisible, then they can plan attacks. shannon: yes or no, are you confident that our investigation will find the person or persons responsible? they will if they re not politically correct about it. i know that there are those on the left and on the right who, like a sacrament glamorize these leakers like snowden and manning as if they were some kind of culture heroes or some kind of called heroes. and i think that is a mistake. they are traitors. they should be treated like traders. because it s not just the cia personnel or the intelligence community personnel or the military personnel or our state department people who are in danger. it is american lives and american citizens. shannon: all right come on, thank you for your insight. we appreciate it. thank you, ma am. shannon: here now, ari fleischer, and marie harper ma. how do you begin to tackle this issue, now the cia is having to talk about things, although they are not publicly confirming or denying the authenticity of this material, having to talk about sources and methods, i know that others are talking about it, our enemies are seeing it. how do stem the bleeding at this point question mike it is a huge problem. the cia statement you just read is an important one because it made several points that americans need to realize. nothing in this set of documents that was put out talks about anything directed against americans. it puts out information about activities that, quite frankly, we believe the cia should be doing, going after terrorists, criminal drug gangs, people trafficking in person periods nothing in this that was directed against americans. that is important. but it also does incredible damage to this contribute to the doctor was absolutely right in your previous interview. the bad guys now have information about how we go after them, and that is a problem. i have faith that the fbi and the intelligence community will find eventually whoever did this. absolutely, this is a problem. shannon: ari, what problems does this raise? channing, great question, that s one of my first thoughts, anybody who works with us, we know we can put our lives and their hands. this makes them scratch their head and say, we want to work with the americans, but is it safe for us to do so? this is a calamity. i think dr. mitchell made a very good point when he stated that we cannot celebrate the edward snowdens of the world. they are some of the lowest, most vile criminals. they put our country at risk, americans at risk, and they should not be celebrated. they need to be condemned. one of the things i hope comes out of this is that they return edward snowden test so he can go on trail and get what he deserves. shannon: marie, do you think it is time for him to publicly renounce and collect wikileaks. he at one point said, i love wikileaks, he made comments. they are not doing things to benefit the united states of america, and a lot of people think we haven t done enough to go after them, to shut them down, to come up with real punishment for people who are feeding them information. what would you like to see from the white house on this? absolutely. i think a full denunciation of wikileaks. there were a lot of national security experts, you re absolutely right, both republicans and democrats, who were very uncomfortable with how donald trump embraced wikileaks because they were helping him politically. wikileaks is an organization that had already done damage to the united states with the chelsea manning documents. they are an organization that is trying to undermine u.s. security, and i want the white house to come out and fully criticize them, denounce them, and make clear that what they are doing is completely abhorrent and they will find the source inside the government of these leaks. shannon: ari, is this a golden opportunity for the president to step out on this issue? you ve been at the heart of the communications. the president is in a jam and he put himself here on this issue. a president that called on them to release even more information to wikileaks. i was always uncomfortable with russia interviewing with our election and finding wikileaks to be a conduit. and it happened to benefit donald trump politically. that is a route that i think is close to him, unfortunately, because of choices he made early. wikileaks is not the issue here. the issue here is traitorous americans that have done this. i presume that they are americans. the people who are associates, contractors, in all likelihood, and i m stunned this could happen twice, had been at the national security agency and haven t hear the cia. there has got to be a better way to protect our assets and our information. it bothers me from the inside that he could happen within months. shannon: and wikileaks tweeted out today they have only released 1% of what they have from the cia. ari, maria, good to see you both. speak up thanks. shannon: still breaking tonight that you will not want to miss, and alleged iraqi insurgent entered the u.s. with a fake i.d. lawmakers calling for an explanation as the shocking details unfold. we got that just ahead. +2 unthinkable crimes allegedly at the hands of illegal immigrants, one involving a young man now charged in the gruesome decapitation of his own mother, the other claiming the life of a mother of two who was struck by an illegal immigrant who was driving, allegedly under the influence. david wahl and richard fowler are here on those cases next. it so was taken away from us that it is a pain you cannot describe, you know. and it is fair and it will be for the rest of our lives. in the state of texas. actually making your body feel better. that s exactly what tommie copper does for people everywhere. they call it wearable wellness, and tommie copper has infused it into everything they do. why not experience the difference tommie copper can make in your life? 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hi, shannon. let s begin in california where 42-year-old sandra duran, just an hour after leaving church, was struck and killed in her car by a drunk driver. police say the intoxicated driver, 45-year-old estuardo alvarado was fleeing the scene of another traffic accident at a high rate of speed. and the reason this case is generating so much outrage is because, since 1998, alvarez had been deported five times and had been arrested in los angeles more than five times, including for two previous duis, driving without a license, several charges of drug possession and resisting arrest. alvarez is now being held on $2 million bail, and if he were to be released, which is highly unlikely, immigration agents have issued a detainer to taken into custody. the family of sandra duran say they don t want this case to be used against illegal immigrants just trying to make a life, but they also believe california authorities share in the plane. listen. speak up knowing the history that he had with the duis, it was like a slap on the hand and sent back, and he came back, and it shouldn t have been done like that. separately, 200 miles east of charlotte, north carolina, and illegal teenage immigrant from honduras has been charged with killing his mother. police say 18-year-old oliver funez decapitated his mom because he, felt like it. when police arrived on the screen, they spotted the suspect carrying both a butcher knife and his mother s head. this two younger siblings were inside the house on mike unharmed at the time. he is a so-called dream are protected under docket. his attorney says that he has significant mental issues. shannon? shannon: trace, thank you for spelling out the issues for us. joining me now with more, david wall cannot attorney and president supporter, and richard fowler, fox news contributor. good to see you both. interestingly enough, david and richard, i m sure you re aware of this too, the victim and the drunk driving crash, her sister is an l.a.p.d. officer and said, not only are we grieving, i am worried about how many other families this is going to happen to create david, is this the president s best argument on this issue? the two public officials that owe them an apology are the mayor of l.a. and the chief at l.a.p.d. allowed to stay in l.a. after he returned to the united states after being deported five times. on top of that, we risk losing, and l.a. county, 3.4 billion, with a b, dollars of federal funding, and as far as the young monster who beheaded his mother, how do we know he wasn t adjudicated criminally insane in honduras? we don t know that, because of people crash the border, we can t do a background check. that is why the wall is so necessary and that is why mr. trump is so hard on getting it build. shannon: richard, even the woman s family, her father has said, i don t want her case to be used to hurt other people who were coming here in good faith to be immigrants who need to make a living, desperate to escape their home countries. even he, who just lost his daughter, said he doesn t want this to change the entire conversation. and that is what makes this issue so hard, shannon. you think about stories like this that are devastating and depressing, and those folks shouldn t be in the country. then you have case from the miami herald a couple of weeks ago, a man that came for economic freedom, being deported for minor traffic offenses. we have both sides of the coin, and it s not working. the reason my, donald trump, while i understand while he has put this executive order forward, this is a stopgap measure. they need to get bold and say, we are going to actually have comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship. right now, america is operating on 1980 1980 immigration laws,a 1980s have called and asked for their laws back. now that donald trump has the white house, he has the senate, and he has the house, let s get some competence of immigration reform done so we can fix the problem spread stolen said we are on a temporary pause, for some of this, you re okay with this, i have a lot of issues with people who are in this country who are under investigation, according to the fbi. david, does this begged the question, like richard said, like this is time to get something done on capitol hill that will be a more permanent solution? channing, 1986, ronald reagan passed the amnesty act. everybody thought that would cure the problem. they said, we ll give everybody amnesty, after that, strictly enforce it. the bottom line is, we have immigration laws, people in europe waiting in line for years to get into america, saying, wait a second, everybody that sneaks up from the southern border, we have to make special accommodations for them just because? it doesn t look that way. mr. trump is focusing on the hardest core criminals like mr. alvarado, who wouldn t have been here, by the way, if he had been given sanctuary in this city and a president that it actually enforce the law. shannon: we have to leave it there. he was somebody that had previous drug charges and drunk driving charges as well. one of the cases under the administration will be focusing on. richard, you cited something else. we thank you both for being her here. up next, a story that is still breaking at this hour. a probe from a republican lawmaker claims and i rocky. suspect is inside the u.s. after lying his way into the country. just minutes ago, we got exclusive reaction from the justice department and the white house. breaking details next. plus, as a day without women protests continue, we will examine whether this does more harm than good. old me i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals by activating what s within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin. it helps activate my body to do what it s supposed to do release its own insulin. trulicity responds when my blood sugar rises. i take it once a week, and it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen and i may even lose a little weight. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable prescription medicine to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. trulicity is not insulin. it should not be the first medicine to treat diabetes or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not take trulicity if you or a family member has had medullary thyroid cancer, if you ve had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to trulicity. stop trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms such as itching, rash, or trouble breathing; a lump or swelling in your neck; or severe pain in include pancreatitis,s may which can be fatal. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin increases your risk for low blood sugar. common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may make existing kidney problems worse. with trulicity, i click to activate what s within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar numbers with a non-insulin option click to activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity. i did. n t. hat? 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navy not a permanent ban but some time to look at things and get some work done. marc was talking about a different thing. these weren t refugees, these were people coming in on different kinds of visas. the refugee system is actually incredibly rigorous. it takes two years. there is, like, a 20-step process that refugees have to go through. and the overwhelming majority of refugees are desperate people, many of them women and children, many have fought with or served as translators for our troops on the battlefield and are living in a enormous danger and some of these countries. so, no, i don t think the pause makes sense. shannon: what do you make of the fbi s announcement that 1,000 domestic cases of potential terrorism they are looking at, 300. they say a third of those cases are people who came here as refugees. well, there is a big difference between investigations and arrests. shannon: true. if you look at the data, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks in the united states, of which, thankfully, very few, people who have lived in the united states, either were born here or were citizens or lived here for a long time. people who come as refugees very, very rarely commit crimes. people that come as immigrants commit crimes and lower numbers than citizens. so this is not a serious problem. shannon: we are almost out of time, want to make sure i give marc a quick final word here. sure. it s not only refugees that are part of the pause. it is other people with visas. the fact is, we know people who have come here on visas and fooled our screening system and carried out terrorist attacks. the woman in the san bernardino shooting, she came here and killed 14 people. the underwear bomber, his father went to a u.s. embassy and said, my son is a terrorist. they didn t revoke his visa, he came in at almost blow up a plane over detroit. shannon: all right, marc and matt, good to hear from both of you. protests and strikes across the country as a day without women with fewer women at work in fewer kids at school. katie pavlich here to debate. definitely doesn t have that. you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance afoot and light-hearted i take to the open road. healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever i choose. the east and the west are mine. the north and the south are mine. all seems beautiful to me. to take advantage of this offer on a volvo s90, visit your local dealer. celebrating women to bashing president trump. trump does not have respect for women! but he also doesn t know the power of women. we know our value, and we know that america doesn t function without us. shannon: katie pavlich is a news editor at town hall.com, and kathy arue is a liberal editor. good to have you both with us. all right, kathy, i want to start with you. is this more about promoting and celebrating women, or is this more of a continuation of the women s march which was clearly, and washington, about saying, this is not our presidents, we want nothing to do with him. it is a continuation of the women s march. they did say this is the fourth-largest event that they are planning, 4 out of 10 events in the first 100 days of trump s presidency, to protest him and his stance on women and what he has done for women, which isn t much, and what we expect from him isn t much, and by putting betsy devos in office, it is hurting teachers. many teachers have already taken to the streets and are protesting. process team trump and betsy devos and the record so far. it is a protest. shannon: katie? your reaction 20 saturday? it is hard to take the line about betsy devos seriously when hundreds of teachers refused to show up at hundreds of parents had to scramble to find child care. a separate issue. in terms of what happened today, i think that women that showed up for work today deserve a lot more credit than those who did not, and as far as what these women are allegedly protesting, in the last month, president trump has assigned two pieces of legislation investing money into specifically putting money toward women entrepreneurs and the sciences. he has also developed a new correlation between the canadian government and the u.s. government to promote female ceos and business. and, of course, there is ivana trump, who is a close advisor ivanka trump, who is very progressive in her issues, child care, maternity leave, paid maternity leave. in terms of what their goal is, i m not sure, but i think the focus should be only one who showed up for work and did their job, climbing the ladder based on their merits and the work they do and earning respect that way rather than throwing temper tantrums. but women did show up for work today, and if they did show up, they are wearing red to show that they are with the women who did not show up. the point of not showing up, a day without women, a day without a woman, is the point, can schools function without women? and teachers and nurses are the most underpaid women in the country. for teachers not to show up they are underpaid and they are overworked. very aware of that. shannon: what we have had this particular events today had hillary clinton won? i don t think hillary clinton would have overruled the policy that takes the away the public polling shows that americans are against that. thousands of women are going to die as a result. katie, i ll let you take that, i ll let you respond preach to go thousands of women are not going to respond paid it is a fact paid it is not true at all. that is not true at all. in terms of how we move forward here and help with the goal is, national women s tape was originally founded in 1909 by the american socialist party. nothing has really changed to this day. this was a march about liberal women, liberal policies, policies, taxpayer-funded abortion, which the majority of americans disagree with. it wasn t about all women. pro-life women were specifically told they could not go. kudos to those who showed up. shannon: katie and cathy, thank you for your time, and we re glad you both showed up for work today, along with me. we ll be back. i did active duty 11 years.my in july of 98. and two in the reserves. our 18 year old was in an accident. when i call usaa it was that voice asking me, is your daughter ok? 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that s all the time we have left this evening. please stay with the fox news channel for all night, continuing coverage of this breaking news. the president firing the fbi director james comey, bret baier is next. we will see you back here. an important show tomorrow. bret: a massive political shock wave hits washington. i was flabbergasted, to say the least. the president did not fire the entire fbi. he fired the director. speak with the goal was to act on recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general. the administration has to answer the question why now? bret: president trump writing the letter that he believes comey cannot lead the fbi. essentially puts the nail in the coffin for president trump to fire him. bret: tonight, new questions. did the president hint at comey s firing a month ago? we will see what happens. it s going to be interesting. bret: what happens next in the russia investigation? catastrophically compromise the investigation. the investigation going on in the intelligence committee. bret: we have all of the angles covered. a special edition of special report starts right now. good evening. welcome to washington. i am bret baier. the reality tv star billionaire businessman who made you are fired a catchphrase used it this afternoon and what is turning out to be one of his most controversial moves yet. president trump s dismissal of james comey has rocked washington. democrats tried to link the action to the investigation of a possible connection between the trump campaign and the russians before the elections. demands for a special prosecutor are louder tonight and democrats are jumping to watergate comparisons. john roberts starts us off from the north lawn. good evening. fbi director was fired for usurping the authority of then attorney general loretta lynch, but he announced the results of the investigation into hillary clinton s emails last july. the president s opponents were quick to make the firing about him and not the fbi director. there were handshakes from his police escort on the tarmac in los angeles as james comey boarded the fbi jet for the final time. while it was the president who fired comey, white house or the state was the newly minted deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who had lost confidence in comey. sources say rosenstein, confirmed 14 days ago, assessed the situation and determined that comey should be replaced. democrats who had recently praised s integrity, could not question the man, only the timing. the first question the administration has to answer is why now. if the administration had objections to the way director comey handled the clinton investigation, they have those objections the minute the president got into office. but they didn t fire him then. why did it happen today? exactly when comey s tenure became a problem is unclear. in this march speech to boston college, comey seemed to think he was safe. you are stuck with me for about another six and a half years. testimony last week appeared to seal his fate. director comey had lost the confidence of the rank and rank-and-file within the fbi. he certainly i think lost the confidence from members of both sides, republicans and democrats in the house and senate. most important, he lost the confidence of the american people. the president s attitude toward comey has been a roller coaster. last july, he was incensed at comey s decision not press charges against hillary clinton. today is the best evidence after that we ve seen that our system is absolutely totally rigged. it s rigged. after comey reopened the investigation in late october, president trump did an about-face. it took guts for director comey to make the move he made. when the two men met after the inauguration, got a warm handshake and a pat on the shoulder, and whispered words from the president. three hours before the firing, press secretary sean spicer was asked about comey. does the president still have full confidence in fbi director james comey? i have not asked the president. the president showed no reluctance or regret in firing company. in his letter writing while i greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that i am not under investigation, i nevertheless concur with the judgment of the department of justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau. some democrats, pennsylvania senator bob casey called the firing nixonian. others claim that president was trying to derail the russia investigation. insisted rosenstein appoint a special prosecutor. the ink was barely dry on the termination letter, and white house officials were saying it s time to get past the notion that the trump campaign colluded with russia. we have heard that time and time again. we heard it in the testimonies earlier this week. we ve heard it for the last 11 months. there is no there there. it s time to move on. white house feels that has plenty of political cover and its firing of james comey, pointing out that the recommendation came from a man who was recently praised by democrats. bret: john roberts, thank you. by all accounts, very few people in the fbi saw this coming. but james comey had become a magnet for controversy with another serious blow to his credibility just to coming a few minutes before his dismissal was announced. catherine herridge has that story. half-dozen former fbi agent told fox news tonight that the bureau was blindsided by the decision including the fbi director who was traveling in los angeles. if comey had known, at the agent said, he would ve sent a personal email to the workforce. the agents said comey had become a polarizing figure and his testimony before the senate did not help his case. two sources tell fox news the unmasking scandal was part of the white house calculus to fire the fbi director james comey. republicans accused comey of slow walking records through congress about americans swept up in foreign intelligence. there should be a record somewhere in our government for a request to unmask regardless of who made the request. while there is an extensive paper trail showing who made the request to unmask trump campaign associates, including mike flynn, the director only acknowledged in march the fbi probe began nearly a year ago. that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the trump campaign and the russian government. and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and russia s efforts. multiple sources told fox last week s senate testimony showed comey refused to acknowledge his mistakes in the clinton email case, specifically his public statements where critics that he took on the role of prosecutor, insisting investigators must find intent, which is not in the criminal statute. although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. comey told senators he would do it all over again, including the decision to reopen the clinton email case 11 days before the election. i stared at speak and conceal. speaking would be really bad. there is an election. concealing in my view would be catastrophic. not just to the fbi but well beyond. explaining comey s dismissal, the deputy attorney general wrote the fbi never conceals investigations. it is not publicly discuss them. in his hearing, rod rosenstein was nine to metal on the russia probe. it s an issue of principle that as a nominee for deputy attorney general, i should not take action. acting fbi director andrew mccabe. in 2015, his wife ran for a pistole. he spent 27 years at the fbi, rising to deputy director. he was at the heart of the post-9/11 investigations. he most recently served as tsa administrator. becoming the president of anderson university in indiana. he is said to have a strong personal relationship with the vice president. tonight he was not returning phone calls praised you one thank you. let s get some analysis now from ron haas, former assistant director of the fbi. he works with the law enforcement legal defense fund. you spent almost 30 years at the bureau. you worked alongside james comey in your last year there. your reaction tonight. shocking. of course, i work in the d.c. area, so i am subject to the hypocrisy on capitol hill, the politics that have swirled around the clinton investigation and the russian influence on the investigation. i am not totally shocked. i knew there had been voices within the fbi, friends and associates of mine outside the fbi who have been critical of how far the doctor went last year in july. some of his comments. and they agreed with rosenstein s assessment that the director went too far. but i will tell you, having worked with jim comey, he has the heart of a boy scout. he has a moral compass. i think jim comey has slept well with the decisions he s made. i think we heard some of his justification for those decisions in his testimony last week. i don t think the director has missed a lot of sleep because he things he did wrong. my experience with him, i was the director of criminal. i tens of thousands of cases under me, and this director is not one that s ever going to come to you and say here s the result we want in this case or in any given case. it s about finding the truth and looking at the facts, understanding how the fax line up with the law and doing the right thing. the fortunate thing i think for america is this institution is bigger than jim comey. i do think he was widely respected and appreciated for his service to the organization, but the fbi is bigger than one person command the organizational contingent move forward. their work is to keep america safe and to get to the truth. you and you are part of the crew who believed he was boxed in essentially by loretta lynch s action with former president clinton? i look at hillary clinton s own decisions as being the original sin. the timing of the clinton investigation was entirely owned by hillary and her staff who kept it quiet for as long as they did. it gave the fbi a limited amount of time to investigate during the run up to the election. he knew he was under a clock, and then went loretta lynch met with bill clinton on that tarmac, it casts for the shadow on the ability of the department of justice and the fbi to come in the american public s eyes, run a thorough investigation. bret: do you buy the layout of the administration s actions saying it is tied to rosenstein s assessment that he was just approved. he looked at the details and it points back to the original july event as the explanation why he s getting fired. do you buy that this is the reason he s getting fired? i don t buy that. i think the timing lines up fairly neatly against that, but if jim comey committed a mortal sin in his position as fbi director, loretta lynch could have asked the president last july to fire him. she could have said i m going to fire you. i m going to make the recommendation for because last summer. could have done it again in the fall if they were inclined to. president obama could have taken this step if that much faith was lost. i think this was just an opportune time. bret: using this administration you think this administration was looking for that time? i do. bret: you are not happy and how this happened? not at all. jim comey traveling to the west coast. if this is your assessment, call him into a face-to-face meeting and give him his due. he is a good public servant. we heard reference to it in one of your warm ups, he saw the fbi is the pinnacle his career in public service. he certainly left a job that was paying a lot more for a lot less pressure than this job to come back and run the fbi. i think he did that as a true blue american and true and honest public service in his time there. he wanted to finish his tenure. bret: he didn t answer a quet testimony about the investigation into russia and the possible connections. in the letter that president trump sent out today informing him that he was firing him, he said, the president, while i greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that i am not under investigation, and he continues on. if that happened on three separate occasions, isn t that the wrong thing for somebody to do to tell somebody they are not under investigation? yes, generally. we are not exposing to anyone who the subject of an investigation is. the facts are the facts, they may change from tomato tomorrow, and so what i may reassure you about today may change entirely tonight. that is a mistaken path, assuming it happened. i think that is a big assumption. bret: thank you for coming in. when this special hour of special report continues, more on james comey, his firing an hour we got to this point. stay with us. do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. and why a leading car brand counts on us to keep their dealer network streamlined and nimble. businesses count on communication, and communication counts on centurylink. got to this point. before james comey became the seventh director of the fbi, he was born in new york, raised in new jersey and married to his college sweetheart prayed he prosecuted martha stewart while serving as the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and in 2003, the 6 8 comey was nominated by president george w. bush to be the deputy attorney general. the next year, colby had a showdown with top administration officials because they tried to get a hospitalized attorney general john ashcroft to reauthorize an nsa program from his hospital bed. i thought i witnessed and effort to take advantage of a sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general. comey admits he was a registered republican for years but ended up being nominated to lead the federal bureau of investigation for a 10-year term by a democratic president. he doesn t care about politics. he only cares about getting the job done. comey confronted the rise of isis, telling 60 minutes he preferred the term loan rat to a lone. lone wolf. although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. comey revisited the server investigation. clinton has placed blame on-call meet for trump s win. the relationship with the winners seemed cordial enough. james. he has become more famous than me. comey s testimony about russian interference was not satisfying many in the g.o.p. because he wouldn t say for sure he would probe damaging leaks the white house police came from the last administration. can you assure them that if it s going to be investigated? i can t. but i hope people watching know how seriously we take leaks of classified information but i don t want to confirm it saying that we are investigating. as recently as march, comey thought he would be around a lot longer. you are stuck with me. comey testified last week that late in the presidential campaigns when wrestling with whether to speak to congress about the clinton investigation or conceal details, he prayed for a third door, but it wasn t there. today comey was shown the door. bret: thank you. brit hume has seen a lot. he is our senior clinical analyst, joins us tonight. good evening. get your reaction to the day and the reaction to the reaction. it s been quite a storm, which i fully anticipated the minute i heard it. politically, there would be hell to pay. the democrats have attacked the timing of this. it is hard to attack the substance since so many of them didn t like comey. trump suggested he ought to be fired a long time ago. the second thing is that he views it as a basis for calling for an independent prosecutor, which has been their mantra. they are all saying it. there s a handful of republican senators misgivings. richard burr of north carolina. this firestorm may involve republicans as well as democrats, in which case the travel for the trump administration is likely to be prolonged. bret: we have seen a few administration officials out in defense, and a short time ago we got the presidents tweet. i m sure it s not not the last, but he says: cryin chuck schumer stated recently, i do not have confidence in him james comey any longer. then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp that was a short time ago. he is right on the facts, that is what chuck schumer said. somebody mentioned it to him when he had his comment tonight, a reporter mentioned it in a prelude to a question which i thought would end up with the question being why did you change your mind? it went somewhere else but he slipped away without having to deal with it. that s true of a lot of democrats who have been critical of this. bret: senator schumer has called all democrats to be in their seats in the senate at 9:30 tomorrow morning for some announcement and i m sure a call for a special prosecutor will continue. does that have more heft now today, considering this action, even though the administration is trying to decouple and point fact the hillary clinton email investigation in this review by the deputy attorney general? it may, but it s not something that congress can force, and it s not something likely to be the subject of legislation which could presumably for such a thing. they can make noise about it. the pressure may become so intensely firestorm so flaming that the administration would feel compelled to go along. it would certainly help the democrats because in that regard if there were a shred of hard evidence that there had been collusion between the trump campaign and russians to defeat hillary clinton. so far, that hasn t arisen. there is plenty of evidence that they tried to interfere, and that is something that would be easily subject of a bipartisan investigation and there s no real reason to believe an investigation of that by itself would not be supported by the trump administration or any investigative agency. bret: quickly, the administration and maybe even the president are going to meet with russian officials tomorrow. what wonderful timing. [laughs] bret: as always, thank you. what s your reaction? let me know on twitter. at @bretbaier. use the hashtag #specialreport. on facebook at facebook.com/bretbaiersr. coming up, we ll talk about this day, the surprising firing of the fbi director, james comey, and what s next. an expanded panel jointly after the break. with roundup precision gel®, you can finally banish garden weeds without harming precious plants nearby. so draw the line. just give the stick one click, touch the leaves and the gel stays put killing garden weeds to the root with pinpoint precision. draw the line with roundup precision gel®. and be sure to check out roundup® with sure shot wand. another good-for-the-garden product from roundup. say no to this because of my bladder? thanks to tena. not anymore! only new tena intimates has pro-skin technology designed to quickly wick away moisture. to help maintain your skin s natural balance. it goes beyond triple protection from leaks, odor and moisture. so you can 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control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. learn more about better breathing at mybreo.com. the mission. upholding the constitution. the fbi can the the presiden fire an fbi director. i would be sad to leave this mission and businesspeople. boston college as a leader on thinking and educating on these issues. it s a great place to have it. hope you will do it many more times. you are stuck with me for another six and a half years. i would love to be invited back again. bret: well, no. james comey, fbi director, fired today by president trump. he was in l.a. about ready to give a speech, a recruiting speech, talking to fbi agents and found out he was being fired watching a television inside the office. he got official word from the fbi here in washington. let s bring in the panel. james james rosen, a.b. stoddar, syndicated columnist charles krauthammer. let s start with the first panel about why, why he was fired. james. james comey was fired because, due to many sets of eyes, in the congress, within the ranks of the fbi they are in the great american public, and most notably at the white house and in the department of justice, james comey had become a law unto himself. this was most clearly demonstrated in this series of times where he gave congressional testimony where james comey seemed to make up comey s rules as comey went along. as to what he was free to disclose about different investigations and when he wasn t free to disclose things pretty would tell lawmakers he had special authorization from the department of justice to confirm that the fbi is investigating alleged contacts between the trump campaign and the kremlin. but if asked about unmasking or asked about leaks and other issues come he would say i m not authorized by doj to say anything on those matters. way back on july 5, he told us nobody at doj knows what i m about to say, and then he launched the extraordinary moment where he sought to impeach hillary clinton rather than proceed with an indictment. bret: the administration points to the new deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein rod rosenstein, a memo that s attached to the letter that president trump put out. saying i cannot defend the director s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of secretary clinton s emails and i do not understand his refusal to accept the judgment he was mistaken. as a result, the fbi is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes under pledges not to repeat them. the director cannot be expected to implement the corrective action. that is a direct response to his testimony on capitol hill in which he said he felt nauseous about what happened. but he wouldn t change what he did. the agency had to correct a statement he made huma abedin s emails. everything james said about james comey s credibility problem is. i think in the days to come the why is going to be blurred if there is reaction within the fbi if we learn that inside the trump white house this did come from trump and not come up from president trump himself and not a recommendation made on the basis by the deputy attorney general. bret: if it was top-down, not bottom up. there are indications this might have come from trump. we are going to have to wait and see what happens. there is a lot we don t know tonight, but it s the timing, obviously that s more in question tonight then the why. spewing democrats putting out all kinds of statements. chuck schumer saying senators need to be seated at something tomorrow morning. democrats are united they want a special prosecutor. i think they are going to bang the drum on this for weeks if not months. the republican statements are more interesting for you don t have anyone defending call me. what you do have those questions about the timing. richard burr has questions, senator ben sasse, you re getting statements saying we don t understand why he did it now. if president trump had a problem with the director of the fbi, why didn t he get rid of them on day one or week one? i think this goes to your point, was it rosenstein who believed this or was it trump? trump was praising comey on the campaign trail eight days before the election. he said comey had real guts re-invoking the hillary clinton email scandal. it will be interesting to see if trump can explain that now and give a different answer. bret: president trump now, then candidate trump. take a listen. is it too late to ask him to step down? no, it s not too late, but i have confidence in him prayed we ll see what happens. it s going to be interesting. that is why i am asking for i want to give everybody a good, fair chance. it took guts for director comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had trying to protect her from criminal prosecution for you know that. it took a lot of guts. i really disagreed with him. i was not his fan but what he did, he brought back his reputation. he brought it back. bret: charles. well, now he lost it again. what is so striking is how on both sides, we have heard situational ethics. this is situational sensibilities. when what comey was doing was hurting trump come he was a bad guy. then when he did what he did come he was a good guy. the democrats are even more critical. the reaction tonight. if mount st. helens exploded at midnight tonight, you would get, within an hour, 18 democrats demanding a special prosecutor to look into the issue. everything leads them to demanding a special prosecutor. i wouldn t take them seriously. again, what they are talking about is smoke. after six months, eight months, a year? no hard evidence whatsoever of collusion. i think the reason comey is gone is because generally speaking we say if you make enemies on both sides, you must be doing something right. with him, he made enemies on both sides and he was doing a lot wrong. he had no one to stand up for him. in the end, he had so angered the two sides so many times switching back and forth that he was left without any allies. you can interpret this as rosenstein coming in and thus that is the timing, or as suggested by a.b., trump doing it. you would get the deputy attorney general to draw up the document which would be the execution documentary that s how you would do it. we still don t know. bret: the reason the deputy attorney general will be doing it is because the attorney general recused himself from the russia investigation because of meetings he had with the russian ambassador. we will be back with the panel after a quick break. ort and diarrhea. ort i tried lifestyle changes and over-the-counter treatments, but my symptoms keep coming back. it turns out i have irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d. a condition that s really frustrating. that s why i talked to my doctor about viberzi. .a different way to treat ibs-d. viberzi is a prescription medication you take every day that helps proactively manage both abdominal pain and diarrhea at the same time. so i can stay ahead of my symptoms. viberzi can cause new or worsening abdominal pain. do not take viberzi if you have no gallbladder, have pancreas or severe liver problems, problems with alcohol abuse, long-lasting or severe constipation, or a bowel or gallbladder blockage. pancreatitis may occur and can lead to hospitalization and death. if you are taking viberzi, you should not take medicines that cause constipation. the most common side effects of viberzi include constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain. stay ahead of ibs-d with viberzi. does the president still have the full confidence in fbi director james comey? i have no reason to believe i have not asked him. i have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about it. last time he did have confidence but you re not sure. i don t want to start speaking on behalf of the president without speaking to him first. you and that is one way to answer it. sean spicer at 2:00. democrats pounced with a familiar line. this is senator leahy. the president s action in the way it s been handled is shocking. no one should accept president trump s absurd justification that he is concerned that fbi director comey treated secretary clinton unfairly. this is nothing less than nixonian. we have adam schiff from the house intelligence committee to take this action without addressing the profound conflicts of interest, it hearkens back to a similarly tainted decision by president nixon. a lot of tweets. we are back with the panel. our resident historian, particularly on water kate coming watergate, james. hillary clinton probably wishes she enjoyed some nixonian lock. he ran five times in the national ticket, something only fdr also did. nixonian should mean more than watergate. here, if these comparisons are apples to oranges, when president nixon fired that special prosecutor, archibald cox, watergate was already 18 months old. it had begun with a definable crime, breaking and entering at the dnc headquarters and there had been convictions. quite incriminating. here we have, this alleged russian occlusion story, not a single crime yet established. in the investigation has really got no place that the public can see. so it seems to me to do a disservice to president trump to liken this firing to president nixon s. i would say this president, donald trump, especially for a new president, is discharging presidential power in a very assertive way, and a way that theoretically should cheer conservatives who bemoaned the erosion of presidential power. bret: 109 days paired he has fired his national security advisor, moved out his deputy national security advisor, fired the acting attorney general. he has fired the fbi director. he, as most presidents do, fired the 46 u.s. attorneys. he did it in a different way, kind of sudden. a lot has happened. he s the most unorthodox political figure in modern american history. he acts on a whim. that s why the statements from the press secretary at 2:00 can never be relevant at 5:00. he makes decisions very quickly on his gut, and i would say with this move, he played some political jujitsu. for regular americans not in washington and not following every single light of our james comey and sally yates, they know james comey is a guy who cost hillary clinton the election. that is how he s defined. i think trump smartly knew that and knows that now democrats who put out all the statement saying we don t like comey. he cost hillary the election. we lost confidence in him. now they have to say why did you dump him? they put chuck schumer in a tough spot when he was asked why in october did you say you lost confidence in comey but now you say the utter hypocrisy on comey. the other part of this is, again, as opposed to what nixon and watergate invoked every minute and a half by democrats, this is a scandal in search of a crime. after all of this time, show us the evidence of a crime. if there were any of that, i think there would be a real firestorm over real stuff. right now, it s a firestorm gotten a lot larger. again, over allegations of collusion that nobody has been able to demonstrate actually occurred. bret: to be fair, sally yates was asked about that and said there s a classified investigation going on. in the former director of national intelligence, clapper, said he reported up to his point. democrats are acting as if it s been shown, as of the way the only way to understand that is that it s a cover up of a crime. they haven t produced any evidence of a crime. bret: final thoughts, a.b. after a quick timeout. allergies with nasal congestion? find fast relief behind the counter with claritin-d. [ upbeat music ] strut past that aisle for the allergy relief that starts working in as little as 30 minutes and contains the best oral decongestant. live claritin clear, with claritin-d. hi..and i know that we have phonaccident forgiveness.gent, so the incredibly minor accident that i had tonight- four weeks without the car. okay, yup. good night. with accident forgiveness your rates won t go up just because of an accident. switching to allstate is worth it. comey go. bret: looks like the oj drive from l.a. his former fbi director james comey and ellie headed to the airport. the administration s point of view from sarah huckabee. a.b., what s next? the white house as to expected name soon. what does that look like? back to the previous discussion, what s next is grand jury subpoenas issued for associates of michael flynn. the fired national security advisor. this is actually not a joke of investigation. it s not smoke looking for a fire. put the democrats talking about mixing over here talking about nixon over here. there are multiple and visit multiple investigations into russia and the election. real investigations going on within the fbi. until and unless those are concluded, in your words, we don t know what we don t know. donald trump never acknowledges, in fear of the potential political peril of the collusion suggestion to which there has, you are right been no evidence presented part of an ongoing investigation. he refuses to acknowledge the gravity of the political interference by the russians. here, in brexit, in france, anywhere. it will continue to happen. everyone of these committees says so, all the experts say so. this investigation. we are going to learn whether or not he decided on impulse to fire james comey or it was truly the recommendation of the deputy ag. what is coming next is that the russia thing isn t over with. bret: meantime, the russians are meeting with the trump administration tomorrow. when jim comey came out in july of 2016 and announced they would be no prosecution of hillary clinton, the clinton email server investigation was 14 months old. after the new york times broke it in march of 2015. think how much evidence about hillary clinton s conduct in the server case, including the memo where she ask someone to send her something classified nonsecure was in the public domain by the time mr. comey announced the decision. almost a year into the legend of russian collusion case, how little information there is in the public sphere toward a judgment of yes. are going to have a confirmation hearing on fbi director. can president trump choose anyone who is respected by the other side that can continue this investigation? is going to be a tough sell. there is going to be a war on capitol hill over this. it s going to be the number one issue. the number to reach was going to be when did the president decide? was it his decision or not? what s impressive is that this story did not leak into that happen which is very unusual. the tick-tock will depend on a leak which we haven t had yet. bret: special report was interesting at 5:55. we will wrap it up for you after this break.