Rachel Maddow takes a look at the day s top political news stories. their way to keep trump out of the trial. abc news reports that prosecutors have been coaching their witnesses not to mention trump s name or even that manafort lives in trump tower. the judge in the case has warned that bringing up manafort s ties to trump could unduly influence jurors. there is at least one thing about this trial that is important to the relationship between paul manafort and donald trump. the first witness today was tad devine, chief strategist for bernie sanders an presidential campaign who worked with manafort on political campaigns in ukraine. the prosecution called him as their first witness to have him describe how much work manafort was doing in ukraine and how lucrative it was. before we came on the air, we got a rush version of the transcript from today s hearing. i m not going to be able to act out a whole conversation but here s one little bit of the prosecutor s opening statement worth hear. this was the prosecutor today, up until 2014, paul manafort was flush with cash and hiding a lot of it from the irs, but in from manafort s defense where they brought up gates and they said look, it s not really all about witnesses. there s a lot of paper here. you ll see it in manafort s own happened and his own e-mails. the prosecutors said we have the burden of proof here and we re happy to bear it, which i took to mean they think there s ample proof that manafort s guilty. yeah, arm chair lawyering is very dangerous but one thing that arm chair lawyers like myself heard when the indictments were first unsealed was that this was a paper case that all the evidence was in the charging documents. was there a sense in the courtroom today that this was an airtight case or was there the anticipation that this could go anywhere? i think a lot of observers still there it s a pretty strong case with gates testimony you get not only the financial machinations surrounding the offshore bank accounts but the questions of bank fraud that arose in some part during the trump campaign, these applications for large loans that went from i think the middle of 2016 through early 2017. rick gates allegedly had direct involvement in that the in doctor some of the paperwork involved. so he will be an important witness on at least some of the charges but most people i think watching believe the defense is trying to pitch to maybe get one or two kind of holdout jurors who will buy the fact that rick gates engineered this fraud and that somehow manafort was just along for the wide even though he was the one at the top of the food chain here, and he was the one really making the big bucks. he s the one with the history of doing business in this part of the world. take us through jury selection. i read in your note or some other reporting that was the most animated you all au saw paul manafort. the yeah, manafort seemed subdued for a long time in a lot of these hearings both in d.c. and virginia. he obviously ended up being jailed for the last month or month and a half or so which was something that his lawyers will tried to avoid. that seemed to dampen his emotions somewhat. today he was very involved during jury selection when they were trying to figure out which jurors to strike, which jurors who keep. he was flipping flu pads and notes at the defense table. he was chatting with several of his lawyers rather animatedly and seemed to be making notes sort of maybe striking people out or having lengthy discussions with his counsel about which of these jurors might be most advantageous to him. ultimately they ended up with six men and six women on this jury who will decide his fate at least in this first trial. i read this and i wonder this if i read this correctly. he was wearing a suit today. we ve seen other photos where he s wearing a jumpsuit. the jurors will not be informed or see any images of him wearing that jumpsuit. why would that be? they typically would not. usually the prison jumpsuits are only used for arraignments and pretrial hearings. whenever someone is exposed to the jury, they re usually brought flu street clothes, whether you re talking about a white collar case or violent kram. they re not told whether the defendant is in custody or free on bay. it s considered that would be presently additional if you see somebody brought into the courtroom in shackles a lot of jurors may think this person is dangerous or presump tubally guilty. so courts and judges are usually pretty careful that those sorts of things taking off the handcuffs that kind off stuff takes place outside the courtroom where the jurors can t catch a glimpse of it. no ostrich cope coat, right? no, it seemed like a pretty standard business suit. probably more expensive than my suit. i doubt it s one of the $10,000 or $15,000 numbers he was buying in new york. josh gerstein, senior white house reporter for politico and a brand-new msnbc contributor. we re lucky to have you. joining us former u.s. attorney joyce vance. thank you for being with me, joyce. take me through what stuck out for you. i m struck by some of what josh was talking about, that the entire manafort defense is blame that guy, my deputy. that doesn t seem like a solid legal strategy to me. just from the evidence that we ve seen publicly it looks like the government has a very good case here. as you noted, it s a paper case. that means the government will largely rely on paperwork, many pieces of paper that manafort has either touched or signed to prove its case. and they ll jazz it up a little bit. they ll have rick gates and perhaps others to narrate the case which the jury will undoubtedly find a little bit more interesting than just looking at paper. but still, with a case that have strength, you had to wonder why manafort was holding out, why he wasn t pleading guilty. and so i thought we might see a little bit of a twist today when we got a little bit of an intimation of what his defense would be during opening statements. but instead, we got the my underling did it defense which is really in many ways something of a yawner, something that juries occasionally will show interest in and occasionally even a jury will hang over that, but it doesn t seem like a strong defense here. i was surprised that we didn t see a better opener. are you able to answer the question you just put before us, why is manafort holding out? there are a couple of reasons, but frankly, we all speculate is there s someone that manafort fears more than he fears mueller. and spending the rest of his life in jail. that s one possibility. does he think that trump will pardon him and make all of this go away? i suppose that s a possibility. and then there s a third possibility which is that some defendants like to see how the evidence comes in at trial and bank on being able to cut a late deal with prosecutors if they believe the evidence isn t coming in favorably to them. so i wouldn t say it s impossible that we won t see a late plea here, but manafort doesn t look like someone who is headed that direction. and i understand that this trial is about bang fraud, tax fraurksd things other than paul manafort s time and tenure as chairman of the trump campaign. clearly, this trial is on the president s mind. this cohen flirting with prosecutors in the southern district, just based on the president s new refrain on collusion, he pivoted today. maybe it s a coincidence it s the same day the manafort trial started. flowinger is he saying there was no collusion. it s collusion isn t a crime. how does it fit into the broader puzzle about russian influence over the trump campaign? this case i think is the preample to russian collusion. this is setting the scene for manafort s past dealings and past crimes. some of it may well leak into his time with trump. but it will clearly set the stage for i think a later section of this story, and we ve seen mueller stage other cases that way. first indicting russians who were involved in social media manipulation. then indicting russians who were involved in hacking. and in both of those cases, we see the possibility that there may be a americans who were involved. now we re learning a little bit more about mueller s history with russian-backed dictator in ukraine. and it seems that this too is headed in that same direction. and could you take this case, i mean, would it be a building block if you re trying to put together some broader picture or some broader conspiracy case? because the information coming out of michael cohen s camp is putting donald trump as someone who may have had knowledge of that trump tower meeting, paul plfrt just happens to be one of the other people in that trump tower meeting. there are a lot of connections and our colleague jeremy bash said i think in september of 2017 on this network if you were looking for a russian plant, if you were looking for agent to plant on the trump campaign, paul manafort would be your guy. there s really no such thing as coincidence in law enforcement. it s remarkable that we have paul manafort who is millions of dollars in debt to the russian oligarch oleg deripaska, suddenly he shows up despite ta debt and volunteers to work for free on the trump campaign. and then during his tenure, he offers to brief deripaska on what s going on. this is a remarkable string of coincidences and i think jeremy s analysis from pretty far out will be accurate at the end of the day. so we could see this case come together certainly the special counsel team hopes that manafort will become available to them as a witness. i m sure that they would prefer to have him decide to cooperate with them. but at the end of the day, even if he doesn t cooperate, once this trial concludes, they will likely be able to compel his testimony and although it s always better to have someone testifying as the result of cooperation as as opposed to a compulsion order, manafort can likely shed a lot of light on many of these issues. joyce vance, former u.s. attorney from the northern district of alabama, we re always grateful to have you especially on nights like tonight. president trump and his personal attorney rudy giuliani keep changing their minds what the president will be asked about should he sit down with mueller for an interview. new news about what prosecutors are looking into tonight. that s next. cars, two motorcycles, a boat, and an r.v. i would not want to pay that insurance bill. [ ding ] -oh, i have progressive, so i just bundled everything with my home insurance. saved me a ton of money. -love you, gary! -you don t have to buzz in. it s not a question, gary. on march 1, 1810 [ ding ] -frédéric chopin. -collapsing in 226 [ ding ] -the colossus of rhodes. -[ sighs ] louise dustmann [ ding ] -brahms lullaby, or wiegenlied. -when will it end? [ ding ] -not today, ron. plus, it freshens breath. biotène. immediate and long lasting dry mouth symptom relief. friendly oligarch. mueller s prosecutors have described manafort s ukrainian business participant as having active ties to russian intelligence services. a memo written by rod rosenstein last summer laid out mueller s authority to the investigate whether paul manafort specifically committed a crime or crimes by colluding with russian government officials. we also know mueller s team has questions for the president on this very subject. mueller wants to ask the president what knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign including by paul manafort to russia about potential assistance to the campaign. the president s lawyers said they were willing to let the president answer questions on possible collusion but not on obstruction of justice. but now with michael cohen reportedly alleging the president knew about the trump tower meeting in advance, democrats say the president may be on the hook for both. there is credible evidence that the president of the united states has committed obstruction of justice and possibly a spircy to undermine our election. the president said there was no collusion and even if there was collusion isn t a crime. they are now unwilling to answer questions on that topic either. you said maybe you would let him answer a few limited questions on collusion. i don t want to give them a false impression. given some of the revelations of the last three our four weeks, we ve been driven further away from the idea of answering any questions from them. they don t think they have a legitimate investigationings. chuck rosenburg, senior fbi official and jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and the department of defense during the obama administration. thank you both for being here tonight. you have both banned the word collusion from any broadcast on which we all appear together. talk about how the real sort of pot at the end of the ray bow for an investigation is a conspiracy. chuck, you first. yeah, sure. i guess collusion just irks me because it s not. you re not easily iraqed. i don t tend irk easily. collusion means agreeing with somebody else to do something. that s what a conspiracy is. there s synonyms. the fact that collusion doesn t appear in the criminal code as mr. giuliani asserts is utter nonsense because conspiracy does. what the mueller team is investigating is whether folks in the united states conspired with the russians to interfere in our election. call it what you want. when they finally charge it, it will be charged as conspiracy. the notion that collusion isn t a crime is to mislead people. for the court of public opinion but not for a court of law. i just want to follow up with you. you said when had he finally charge it. are you seeing enough pieces come to light in just what is public facing in this investigation that you believe there will be enough to charge someone with a conspiracy to coordinate or receive assist, from a hostile foreign power? it s an educated guess. i hope it s a well educated guess. i hope it s a well changed guess, nicole. yes, i am. there are bits and pieces in the public record that suggest that it wasn t just russians. the timing of the hack into the dnc computers, all of that is tied to russian activity that mr. mueller recently charged when he brought a case against the russian intelligence officers. so i think there is enough. i think there are other calculations that are really important here like, for instance, whether mr. mueller believes he has the authority to charge a sitting president. there s some debate on that point. the department of justice weighed in on it in the past. and has opined that you cannot. so there s some unanswered questions but i think the pieces are there. jeremy bash, i have a well attuned ear to everything chuck says and i have never heard him say that before. i want to ask you the same question. do you see enough public facing evidence at this point to make another educated guess for us there is enough evidence now to charge someone with conspiracy to coordinate with a hostile foreign power? i don t think we know all the facts yet. i think the mueller investigation has a ways to go to eliminated those facts. if you want to understand the way bob mueller thinks about conspiracy, all you have to do is take your dog eared and underlined copy of the july 13th indictment of 12 russian intelligence officers on 11 counts because in there bob mueller and his team lay out with spes fis sit exactly what conspiracy looks like. if people want to use the google machine to research it, it s 18usc371. it s conspiracy to defraud the united states. a couple of interesting things about that statute. first of all, it states that if two or more people agree to do something to commit an offense against the united states, and one of those people actually goes ahead and does it, then both people are guilty of conspiracy and shall not be imprisoned more than five years. it s a class e felony. so the important part is that if there were people inside trump tower at the trump tower meeting or inside the trump campaign or even donald trump himself who knew what at russian government officers were doing and if the russian government officers went off and did it, even if they didn t report it back to the trump campaign, the trump campaign knew about it, mere knowledge establishes a conspiracy. and there are other places in the mueller indictment, if you look at paragraph 21d in here it, talks about how one of the gru officers create a spear phishing e-mail attack. it s clear all the other 11 defendants didn t know or participate in that, yet they were all under the indictment terps conspirators and potentially guilty of the alleged offenses. and so i think you have to understand the way bob mueller and the special counsel s office is approaching the crime of conspiracy in order to analyze whether you think there will be a charge at the end of the day. i love when both of you take me to law school. jeremy, i ll go from law school to spy novels. you heard you say to our friend earlier today preet ba harra, there s a 96% chance the reason donald trump has taken a pro putin position is because of long-standing financial ties between the trump organization and people around the russian government. you talked about one-on-one meetings, about donald trump clearing the room which is what we understand him to have done with putin. we looked up one of the other people and you made this reference too, he cleared the room when he asked jim comey to let the investigation into mike flynn go. how do those two hang together in your mind in terms of what a prosecutor would be looking at right now? when does donald trump actually want to have a private conversation? when does he want. when he s doing something sketchy. when he wants to do something where he doesn t want other people to hear what he s doing. one of the concerns that i have and many national security professionals have about the one-on-one within putin and by the way, we still don t even know if the translators were in there for the entire time or if the american translator was in there for the entire time. one of the problems with that is that there is no record of what was said and i think even to this day the director of national intelligence spoke publicly about this and secretary pompeo was questioned about this. they have not received a full debrief of what was discussed. it harks pa back when donald trump cleared the oval office so he could ask jim comey to drop charges which is clearly bob mueller is looking at in terms of obstruction of justice. chuck, i want your thoughts on that. also, if i give you a two-part question and if you could weigh in on the news tonight that bob mueller has september more cases to the southern district of new york. first on jeremy s point about closed door meetings and donald trump s appetite for them. right. so i think jeremy s spot on. the reason you throw everybody out, the reason you want something, quote unquote, off record is you re going to do something underhanded. and it seems like a number of these conversations are underhanded. i want to echo one thing jeremy said. he did a nice job explaining the lauf conspiracy. he did that well. one thing i would it doesn t require that you succeed. right? you and i could agree to robbie an bank, nicole. we could get jeremy to be part of this. he goes out and buys a getaway car and then we get stopped on the way to the bank. we re still guilty. all three of us of con sire speiering to rob that bank. so when i said earlier i think there is enough public information in the record to see a conspiracy it, i don t necessarily mean that they succeeded. or that everybody knew every part of the conspiracy. again, that s not required. what s required is that folks agreed to do something that the law for bids and that somebody took a step in that direction. it seems to be coming together to me. and on the question of robert mueller tonight referring more cases to the southern district, these were more lobbyists doing pro-russian business in the ukraine and other places? right. so it s sensible. it s not at the core of his mandate. it s not at the core of the directive to him that he look at russian interference in the election but again, you have a binary choice when you re a prosecutor or an investigator. and you come across criminal behavior. i faced this had myself in my time as a prosecutor. you either do something with it or you do nothing with it. and it s very hard for a prosecutor to do nothing when they come across kefd of a crime. so it makes perfect sense to me these other folks will get farped out to u.s. attorneys offices around the country and face the consequence of their actions. chuck rosenburg, former u.s. attorney and senior fbi official, jeremy bash, former chief of staff and cia in the department of defense, taking me to law school. i m grateful to you both. thanks for being here. coming up, president trump s new best friend is reportedly still working on missiles that could reach all the way to the u.s. more on that with one of my best friends steve schmidt after the break. but allstate actually helps you drive safely. with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast. .and brake too hard. with feedback to help you drive safer. giving you the power to actually lower your cost. unfortunately, it can t do anything about that. now that you know the truth. are you in good hands? it s a high-tech sleep revolution. the sleep number 360 smart bed intelligently senses your movement and automatically adjusts. so you wake up ready to run the world. the new sleep number 360 smart bed, from $999. tired of constantly battling lingering smells in your home, like pet, shoe, and body odors? for long-lasting, continuous freshness, try febreze plug. febreze plug provides 45 days of freshness, with a unique dual chamber design that alternates between harmonized scents for a continuous renewal of fragrance. plus, febreze plug is formulated with odorclear technology, which cleans away odors instead of just masking them. for freshness you ll notice week after week, try febreze plug. [sfx: mouse click] but climbing 58,070 steps a year can be hard on her feet, knees, and lower back. that s why she wears dr. scholl s orthotics. they re clinically proven to relieve pain and give you the comfort to move more. dr. scholl s, born to move. do you believe that them continuing to build icbms would violate the joint declaration from singapore? what we re going on is the commitment that chairman kim made to our president. and that is the commitment to denuclearize. that s something that we certainly anticipate that he will hold up his end of the bargain. and his commitment on that. in terms of that specific report, i ve seen it. we re all very well aware of that report. that would fall into an intelligence matter which is something i m not going to be able to get into. really? you think he s going to hold up his end of the bargain. that was heart nauert punting on a report that are intelligence is showing it north korea is continuing to produce ballistic missiles and work on their program even after the summit in singapore between trump and kim jong-un. the west says work is under way on at least one intercontinental ballistic missile able to reach the united states. iranian president han hassan rouhani trump announced he would meet with no preconditions, a baffling offer from an american president. an offer that iran waste nod time turning down. joining us is steve schmidt republican strategist from our days at the white house and on the campaign trail. let s put this out there. you and i worked for someone who could see russia from her house so we can ascertain whereby donald trump is operating from ignorance is bliss or whether he seriously as h has a thing for these dictators. what s your take? let me just say former republican to begin, but look. nonpracticing is what i like to say. right. at the end of the day, donald trump made the world profoundly more dangerous with his reality show diplomacy in singapore. of course, kim jong-un is not honoring the spirit of the agreement and they re working on intercontinental ballistic missile which one day a miniaturized nuclear warhead will sit on top of that could reach the continental united states. she s up there spinning the american people. the intelligence agencies which are forwarding the information are under constant attack by this administration. so roughly for 40% of the country, doesn t matter what the intelligence agency says. what matters is what trump says. now, thankfully, it s a minority of the country but it doesn t change that in actual reality, the country is more endangered because we had an unprepared ignorant president go over there with the same level of rigor that he would plan an apprentice episode with meat loaf and lil jon. how does the intelligence you pull the right thread through all three. the intelligence on north korea didn t ever point to what donald trump declared at the end of that summit that they re no longer a threat. the intelligence community didn t point to or support anything that donald trump said and this is just what we know of what was public at the press conference in helsinki and the intelligence on iran suggests that the deal that the president pulled us out of was better than anything he s likely to get on his own. how does the intelligence community be a client who is so disdain it will for dismissive or willfully ignores the evidence base and the fact-based intelligence on all three dangerous regimes? well, they can try to be him and be him they do. but at the end of the day, he s the president of the united states. he believes what he believes and and there s more than enough news reports to suggest that he doesn t want to hear anything that he doesn t want to hear. of course, the iranian deal had verifiable components to it. he pulled us out of that. he achieved a remarkable feat of putting the united states opposite the european union, russia and iran with iran having the high moral ground with regarded to fidelity to the agreement. the agreement reached in singapore with north korea which he s violating the spirit of was nos verification protocas whatsoever. this is all nonsense. again, it s reality theater but with deadly deadly consequences. it was the strategic aim of the north korean regime, one of the most evil and violent in the world, a slave regime to, elevate its leader to maximum standing on the world stage and they achieved that by standing next to the president of the united states. this has been the work of decades and kim jong-un knows his nuclear weapons guarantee him insurance from invasion by the united states. so donald trump played all of his cards, pushed all the chips into the middle of the table, and he s left with the pair of twos. what he proved himself to be was inexperienced, naive, ignorant and a fool on the world stage. that was insided by every other adversary of this country. i want to ask you if you re surprised not a single politically appointed national security official has resigned over what you just described is obvious to everyone in this country and around the world in the american president. i m shocked by it that there are so few men and women of principle that there aren t more sally yates out there, that there aren t more people who say enough. particularly when we see a president of the united states going behind closed doors with vladimir putin agreeing to who knows what, saying who knows what, making who knows what guarantees to putin, what promises to putin, what promises to turn another eye of putin acts in the baltics or anywhere else on the globe. he insults the canadian prime minister. he attacks the british prime minister. he insults and attacks the chance lore of germany. he questions and degrades nato. he questions the need for the european union. is he an agent defacto of russia s foreign policy. the foreign policy he s advocating the bipartisan consensus that existed pretrump between republicans and democrats would have recognized his foreign policy as clearly in the middle lane of the kremlin s strategic centers. and to see it being advanced by an american president is as disturbing as it is shocking. your we r reward for ticking off vladimir putin s entire honey do list for donald trump. there s a head scratcher of a theory being floated about the midterms. is it possible that donald trump actually wants the republicans to lose, that he wants democrats to take over the house? steve, i m looking at you for the answer. that s next. [music playing] (vo) from the beginning, wells fargo has supported community organizations like united way, non-profits like the american red cross, and our nation s veterans. we knew helping our communities was important then. and we know it s even more important today. so we re stepping up to volunteer more and donate over a million dollars every day. so our communities can be even stronger. it s a new day at wells fargo. but it s a lot like our first day. sis, including reporters being heckled by the crowd and the president claim thawing need to show an i.d. to buy groceries. he obviously doesn t shop. for the record you do not. back with us is steve schmidt, republican strategist and old friend from our days at the white house and on the campaign trail. are you buying this the president actually wants the republicans to lose? i want imagine anyone more obedient than devin nunes at the house intel committee. well, it s going to turn out great for him like when he fired james comey. he wanted that too, right? it s been terrific for him. look, at the end of the day, i would think the last thing that donald trump wants is chairman adam schiff with subpoena power. and that s exactly what he s going to have. i do think the democrats will take the majority in the house of representatives. now, the interesting aspect of it is this. he may look out and see an 18-person democratic field and pray that a socialist is nominated by the democrats believing that you know, in his view, that if there s two unelectable candidates, one of the two unelectable candidates is going to win. he had a razor thin margin of victory. he won by 78,000 votes across three states, losing the popular vote by 3 million people and his approval numbers at their highest are mired in the low 40s. now, if you look at the special election results and you re a strategist working for the house republicans, you re saying, there s no republican safe in any district that is under plus 25% trump. that means you could be in a 20% trump district and lose in this midterm election. now, when the tsunami hits, and we consider its aftermath, what will be left of the republican party is not a chastened party not something that said we were blown out by trump because the members who are left are going to be in districts that are plus 25% plus 30% plus 33% trump. it will harden the resolve of the party and its faithful to trump not away from him. as the republican party is wrinking, as people like me are leaving, fervor for leader is intensifying but the strategic problem is that it s getting smaller. the smaller the party becomes, the more intense, the more extreme the more devoted to its leader but it s on a diminishing point of return on the curve. and that s trump s fundamental strategic problem heading into 2020 is that overwhelmingly, the vast majority of americans don t think he s doing a good job, think he s a bad president. think he s compromised by a foreign power, think he s dishonest which he is, of course, think he s corrupt, which he is, of course, and thinks he s lawless, which, of course he is. steve, lets me ask you, so his base wasn t big enough for him to have drafted a victory speech on election night. donald trump didn t think as much of his own base as some people make them out to be, that they re this as you just said, he won by a razor thin margin. how are republicans marching off the cliff after him if his base wasn t big enough to elect him in his own mind? because in the instinct for self-preservation that all politicians have has run through the republican party since the rise of the tea party movement, what these members understand in a world where the politicians pick the voter because we know longer live in a country where vote ares pick the politicians there s there s susceptibility to a loss generally speaking is not in the general election. it s in the primary. faithfulness to trump precludes a primary challenger from their right by a trumpest candidate. that s the epidemic of cowardice we see. there s no one literally willing to lay down a political career to stand up for principles that they cherished and held dear until i guess say 18 months ago and since that time, everything that these republican members as a jen proposition once believed in they no longer believe in or still believe in or just too scared to say it out loud for risk of offending trump. the die is cast on this one for sure. that s former republican still a strategist, steve schmidt. thank you for staying up with us facebook is not naming names but somebody on the social network is acting a lot like the russians did during the 2016 campaign. more on that story ahead. (vo) why are subaru outback owners always smiling? because they ve chosen the industry leader. subaru outback holds its value better than any other vehicle in its class, according to alg. better than rav4. better than grand cherokee. better than edge. make every adventure a happy one with subaru outback. get 0% apr financing on the 2018 subaru outback. but it s tough to gete enough of their nutrients. new one a day with nature s medley is the only complete multivitamin with antioxidants from one total serving of fruits and veggies try new one a day with nature s medley. my mom washes the dishes. .before she puts them in the dishwasher. so what does the dishwasher do? new cascade platinum does the work for you, prewashing and removing stuck-on foods, the first time. wow, that s clean! new cascade platinum. well, esurance makes it simple and affordable. in fact, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved an average of $412. that s auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. paying too much for insurance that isn t the right fit? well, esurance makes finding the right coverage easy. in fact, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved an average of $412. that s auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. esurance. an allstate company. booking a flight doesn t have to be expensive. just go to priceline. it s the best place to book a flight a few days before my trip and still save up to 40%. just tap and go. for the best savings on flights, go to priceline. now i m gonna tell my momma that i m a traveller i m gonna follow the sun now i m gonna tell my momma that i m a traveller i m gonna follow the sun transitions™ light under control™ push specific candidates but did promote activity around devicive social issues. facebook says it has been unable to identify who is behind the accounts and says it found ties to the russian company that special counsel robert mueller led online influence operations in the he 2016 presidential election. facebook has dumped 32 more accounts for engaging in similar behavior just three months before the midterm elections. as nbc news reports, that s only part of the story. nbc news reporting in announcing the investigation into these 32 accounts, facebook did not reveal the depth to which some of those accounts went in terms of stoking racial tension inc e inciting division. nbc was able to retrieve some of the pages facebook deleted. i review of those found efforts totes target people based on liberal politics as well as hispanic heritage. facebook did not reveal some of the most devicive content which was deleted. kara swisher, thanks for being with us. you are the facebook truther. what s wrong with facebook? the friends are back. the baby pictures are back. no, the russians are back. the russians are back. they never left and they didn t catch them the first time. it s nice they re telling us they re catching russians now. i want to know why they continue to thrive on the platform. the problem is fundamentally the platform. while a plowed facebook for putting it out before the news reporters get it, i do not applaud them for not doing something about it. i this i they re trying all kinds of different techniques. but instead of just telling us about it, i would rather them do it and rid these things off the platform. they get kudos i guess for announcing it. i played that game of putting news out before reporters get it. it s usually because pressure is bearing down on you. i guess my question is, what s wrong with the culture? one that this is still happening and two, they have to be backed against the wall before they reveal something that doesn t sound like very many pages. if there are 32, maybe there are 32 more. there s more and more. when this happened maybe a year ago, i remember talking to a facebook executive. if there s one cockroach, there s a lot. you have to understand it. this is a choice where the creation has gotten away from them. they don t know the how to monitor it. listen, it s really difficult. they ve made a fortune off of this company and in terms of eating up social media and eating up digital advertising revenue. so it really is critically important they figure out how to change their system so this doesn t happen or these tools are not used for nefarious ways even if there s always bad people knocking at any media in history. this is unprecedented. it s problematic i think. we ve talked before when they ve been staring down the barrel at more regulation and perhaps being regulated like a media organization. is there anything that would change their conduct? is there anything that scares them? i don t know. what scares them, i did an interview with mark zuckerberg, how do they keep changing in order to do something like this. they don t want to seem to let go ofern certain tenets around free speech. the issue is free speech is not free of consequence. so the question is, what are they going to pay for what they re doing and how they re thinking about it and how will they deal with it as it moves forward. this is play the form that is very easy to manipulate. they ve got to figure out a way to make it not easy or they re going to be regulated. that s their biggest problem. it s not an easy solution but they re we paid and they ve made a lot of moin off of this and now have to fix it. the human being who s run this company. do any of the human beings have a guilty conscious about being a tool to carry out vladimir putin s goals and meddling with our delcracy? i think so. a lot of people internally are. obviously mark showed a lot of remorse in that interview. at the same time he said he wants it to be an open platform. he got into trouble because he didn t defend holocaust deniers and people who are wrong with a right to be on the platform. it s a complex issue for someone who is not well versed in the humanities. that s the problem. this is a human problem. the people that are deciding these things who have enormous power don t really know how to deal with it. that s where there s going to be a problem no matter what because of that. kara swisher, i love seeing you and appreciate your time tonight. that does it for us tonight. i ll look are for you tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. eastern. now it s time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. will we look for you tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. also? i used to be the resident
Get a jump on the day s news with Christine Romans and Dave Briggs. manhattan. he talked about paul manafort being one of the top five clients. they expect to call more vendors to the stand today. this is a fast-moving trial. prosecutors told the judge they expect to wrap the trial next week. dave. jessica, thank you. cnn jessica, thank you. cnn has learned that tsa is planning to eliminating screening at 150 airports. they also say the proposal would come with a small undesirable security risk. a tsa spokesman saying the documents confirm a debate within the agency. two of the september 11th attackers first flew from portland, maine. a small airport there would be less secure. cnn s rene marsh has the latest from washington. reporter: dave, this would be a major change for travelers and a shift in how tsa uses resources. the proposal, the agency is considering, calls for elimination of the tsa screening at small and medium sized airports that operate commercial plane was 60 seats or fewer. operating theory is treerrorist are not interested in the smaller airports and they are targeting larger airports. big or small against anybody you can go after. so the opportunity to go after a 50-person passenger jet is very attractive. reporter: the concern is the lack of imagination for how bad actors could exploit security weaknesses at smaller airports. after our story broke, tsa sent talking points communicating how to respond at airports nationwide. a final decision has not been made. dave, kaylee. police in phoenix have arrested an employee at the facility holding migrant children on charges he mostle mostlessmostles lefted he molested a 14-year-old girl. a witness describes seeing the suspect kiss and inappropriate touch the victim to. southwest spokesman says they work with law enforcement to bring the full force of the law to bear when warranted. ahead, the plane crash in mexico caught on video from inside the cabin. so how did 103 people survive all this? more from mexico city. next on early start. and it s time to get outside. pack in even more adventure with audible. with the largest selection of audiobooks. audible lets you follow plot twists off the beaten track. or discover magic when you hit the open road. with the free audible app, your stories go wherever you do. and for just $14.95 a month you get a credit, good for any audiobook. if you don t like it exchange it any time. no questions asked. you can also roll your credits to the next month if you don t use them. so take audible with you this summer. on the road. on the trail. or to the beach. start a 30-day trial and your first audiobook is free. cancel anytime, and your books are yours to keep forever. no matter where you go this summer make it better with audible. text summer5 to 500500 to start listening today. know about cognitive performance? as you d probably guess, a lot. that s why a new brain health supplement called forebrain from the harvard-educated experts at force factor is flying off the shelves at gnc. forebrain s key ingredients have been clinically shown to help enhance sharpness and clarity, improve memory, and promote learning ability. and now every man and woman in america can claim a complimentary bottle. just use your smartphone to text the keyword on the screen to 20-20-20. scientific research on cognigrape, a sicilian red wine extract in forebrain s memorysafe blend, suggests not only sharper recall, but also improved executive function and faster information processing. your opportunity to get into harvard may be gone, but it s not too late to experience a brain boost formulated by some of their brightest minds. just text the keyword on the screen to 20-20-20 with your smartphone to claim your complimentary bottle of forebrain. do it now - before you forget. that s the keyword on the screen to 20-20-20. 4:12eastern time. the plane crash in mexico with 103 passengers and crew members survived was all captured on video from inside the cabin. take a look. [ screaming ] [ bleep ]. unreal. ashley garcia took that video from her seat on the plane. she spoke about the ordeal to cnn last night. honestly, it was something that i would have never imagined. it is always been such a big fear of mine and to have it actually happen is insane. when it was happening, i thought this cannot be true. the crash investigation just getting under way. more than 100 survivors trying to explain how they made it out alive. leyla santiago has more from mexico city. reporter: dave and kaylee, we are learning more about the accident and survivors. we understand more than half of the 103 people on that aeromexico flight were from the united states. many are connecting here in mexico city. as we have spoken to them, they told us when they got on the flight, it was raining outside. there was wind and something, some wind gust is how they described it, brought the plane down. there was a dash to get off the plane and then they saw flames and smoke. many, all, we have spoken to say this was a miracle. now the investigation begins. the investigators have been able to recover the black boxes and say they are in good condition and they will be critical in getting a better understanding of the sequence of events and what led up to that plane coming down. even the ntsb has sent some investigators to look into it. in the meantime, many survivors are saying they are just lucky to be able to tell their stories. dave. kaylee. lucky indeed. priceless royal artifacts stolen from the swedish cathedral in a daring plot. making off with jewels belonging to former monarchs. they were taken from the cathedral west of stockholm. they were stolen from the motor boat. the items stolen were part of the funeral regalia from the king and queen. it pales in comparison to the swedish culture history. president trump ratcheting up the pressure on the trade war on china. stock futures pointing to loses this morning. global markets dropping. u.s. stocks finished mixed. jobs reports on friday could bring fresh relief. u.s. trade rep will consider raisi raising tariffs from 10% to 25%. both u.s. and china have not imposed tariffs on billions of dollars, but the president s mission here is clear. the bottom line is the president will continue to hold china responsible for their unfair trade practices. this has gone on for long enough. he will do something about it. there will be a public comment period running until september. then the administration will make a final decision. it is never too late to make things right. 20 years after stealing from her job, a woman repays her debt with cash and apology. we will be back on early start in just a minute. ohio state university placing head football coach urban meyer on paid administrative leave while investigations if he knew the domestic violence allegations over fired coach zach smith. meyer says he was aware of the incident with the smiths in 2009, but did not know a 2015 allegation. courtney smith told meyer s wife about it and she believes the head coach also knew. here is what she told the sports stadium network about the alleged 2015 abuse. came to my home. he wasn t happy. we got into an argument. when i stood up to him, he didn t like it and took me and shoved his hands up against me up against the wall. my daughter was clinging to my leg. he obviously it registered with him what he was doing. he took my son and left. you can watch the full interview at watchstadium.com. urban meyer says he and the athletic director agree being on leave during the investigation will facilitate the completion. zach smith s attorney says once he get a chance to tell his side, it will be corroborated by police. this is a man that could be probably elected governor in the state of ohio tomorrow. this is the most prominent person in the state. the second highest paid football coach in the country. you know him personally. i do. urban meyer has been a man of upstanding character. the thought he knew and denied knowing and did nothing is really troubling. i think this could be a tipping point in the sport and in the college sports landscape for him to be put on paid leave while investigating what he knew and what he did not do. it will have an incredible back drop. and against the me too era, he could be in trouble. led us know what you think let us know what you think about it. next, houston police believe a 20-year old grudge is the reason for the murder of the arrest cardiologist. the doctor was killed two weeks ago while riding his back. pappas has not been seen for two weeks and evidence in his home links him to the killing. he is very dangerous. we need to get him into custody. we think he is suicidal. we should assume he is armed. this man is dangerous. this man is capable. this man has some skills. cnn called a phone number for pappas real estate company on wednesday, but it went to voice mail. that is also a number listed on the firearms auction web sites as well. a former waitress trying to make amends 20 years after stealing money from her employer. owner of elcharro received $1,000 in cash and apology letter. the woman worked for her in the 1990s while attending the university of arizona. the woman said she stole from the restaurant. she wrote, it has been 20 years, but i carry great remor e remorse. please accept my apology and this payment. may god forever bless you and your family. the first time being away from home going to school. so not only are they coming to school, they are learning about life. i think it is one of the life lessons that our family tries to instill in our employees and it is a good feeling to know she felt she needed to take care of this and i really respect her for it. the woman who sent the letter added she was a terrible waitress and fired before she could pocket more than a few hundred dollars. how long had that been eating her up? and the money. were you a waitress? never. i believe everyone should. ahead, the special counsel is willing to limit questions of obstruction of justice, but robert mueller has one condition. the president has to answer them in person. the president pushing his lawyers to let him sit down with robert mueller. the special counsel now willing to limit questions if the president meets face-to-face. terror at smaller u.s. airports is not a big concern for the tsa. the agency eliminating screening at 150 smaller airports. and one of the nation s top college football coaches put on leave. urban meyer is accused of ignoring domestic violence allegations. what did he know? a shocking story in the state of ohio. no one more prominent in that state today. welcome back to early start. i m dave briggs. i m kaylee hartung. 30 minutes past the hour. robert mueller offering a tradeoff this morning. the special counseling suggesting he would re counsel suggesting he would reduce the number of obstruction of justice questions if the president sits down with mueller. the president s lawyers offered to provide written answers to obstruction questions. trump legal team wanted the interview limited to things before he took office relating to collusion. the new york times reporting that the president is pushing his lawyers to do an interview. he believes he can convince them this is a witch hunt. but rudy giuliani is not on board yet. he always has been interested in testifying. it is us. the team of lawyers that have reservations about it. the source tells us the two sides are talking, but taking baby steps toward each other. it did not take long for the president to fire up his twitter feed. he is calling on jeff sessions to put an end to the rigged russia investigation now. was president trump just venting or was this an order from the top? we get more from cnn s jeff zeleny at the white house. reporter: dave and kaylee, president trump has made no secret about the discord for the investigation. he called on the attorney general jeff sessions to bring an end to the russia probe. the white house quickly responded this was all about the president s opinion. not a directive to end the investigation to the attorney general. we asked press secretary sara sanders. how does she know it is opinion or presidential directive. when he tells you as a member of his staff, how do you know it is opinion? the president makes it clear. the president is not obstructing. he is fighting back. the president is stating his opinion and clearly. he is expressing the frustration. reporter: no question the russia investigation continuing to consume at least some of the president s bandwidth here. the president is traveling for another campaign rally this week. he is campaigning for the midterms. after that he will end up in new jersey by late this evening. he will start summer recess vacation there. the russia investigation and all the fallout is sure to follow him. dave and kaylee. jeff, thank you. president trump is monitoring the paul manafort trial closely. he is comparing his former campaign chairman to the former mob boss al capone. he is asking where is the russian collusion. he plans to question his bankers when the trial resumes this morning. paul manafort s lifestyle was the focus on monday. there was a shocker from the prosecution about who may not take the stand. we get more from cnn s jessica schneider. reporter: dave and kaylee, this is a swift moving trial that saw a number of issues on day two. prosecutors floated the possibility they may not call rick gates to testify. they could have just been bluffing. it sent shock waves through the courtroom. rick gates was the former associate to paul manafort. he worked as deputy during the campaign. rick gates has pleaded guilty to two counts in washington, d.c. he is currently working with the special counsel s team. the defense team has said they plan to use rick gates testimony against him to discredit him. to say rick gates was the embezzler and flipped on manafort to help himself. interesting development there. prosecutors called a flurry of witnesses, including an fbi agent who is part of the pre-dawn raid of paul manafort s condo last july. he talked about the hundreds of documents they seized and the loan applications with paul manafort s name on it. there were a number of witnesses called to represent paul manafort s lavish lifestyle. one employee from a high-end men s clothing store in manhattan. he talked about paul manafort being one of the top five clients. they expect to call more vendors to the stand today. this is a fast-moving trial. prosecutors told the judge they expect to wrap the trial next week. dave and kaylee. cnn has learned that tsa is planning to eliminate screenings at 150 airports across the country. this move to save $115 million a year, but it also comes with a small, but undesirable security risk. a tsa spokesman saying the documents confirm a debate within the agency. two of the september 11th attackers first flew from portland, maine. a small airport there would be less secure. cnn s rene marsh has the latest from washington. reporter: dave, this would be a major change for travelers and a shift in how tsa uses resources. the proposal, the agency is considering, calls for elimination of the tsa screening at small and medium sized airports that operate commercial planes with 60 seats or fewer. operating theory is terrorists are not interested in the smaller airports and they are targeting larger airports. national security experts disagree. the message is attack any way you can go after. so the opportunity to go after a 50-person passenger jet is very attractive. reporter: the concern is the lack of imagination for how bad actors could exploit security weaknesses at smaller airports. after our story broke, tsa sent talking points communicating how to respond at airports nationwide. a final decision has not been made. dave, kaylee. former president obama is weighing in on the first round of endorsements. he endorsed 80 people up and down the ballot. gavin newson is one from california. one name not on the list is alexandria ocasio-cortez. her primary win suggests the party is shifting too far left. obama is expected to endorse more people ahead of the campaign in several states. a sharp rise in insurance costs for those covered under the affordable care act may slow down. the wall street journal cites lower numbers for insurers. in florida and georgia and michigan, you may see prices drop. also helping the slowdown is states like california seeing healthier enrollees and markets have stabilized now insurers have had a few years to compare costs like maine to use programs to protect against unexpected costs. the trump administration rolled out new rules on thursday. those plans to don t have stick to all of the protections. it is a risky alternative which is not right for everyone. bottom line is shop around if you are in the market. unbelievable video coming up next. this week s plane crash in mexico caught on video from inside the cabin. how did 103 people survive this? more from mexico city next here on early start. can you think of anything nothing is more important than taking care of your brain. and now you can, with forebrain. claim your complimentary bottle by texting the keyword on the screen to 20-20-20 with your smartphone. do it now - before you forget. that s the keyword on the screen to 20-20-20. with 103 passengers and crew members survived was all captured on video from inside the cabin. take a look. [ screaming ] i m so scared. [ bleep ]. ashley garcia took that video from her seat on the plane. she spoke about the ordeal to cnn last night. honestly, it was something that i would have never imagined. it is always been such a big fear of mine and to have it actually happen is insane. when it was happening, i thought this cannot be true. the crash investigation just getting under way. more than 100 survivors trying to explain how they made it out alive. leyla santiago has more from mexico city. reporter: dave and kaylee, we are learning more about the plane accident as well as the survivo survivors. we understand more than half of the 103 people on that aeromexico flight were from the united states. many are connecting here in mexico city. as we have spoken to them, they told us when they got on the flight, it was raining outside. there was wind and something, some wind gust is how they described it, brought the plane down. there was a dash to get off the plane and then they saw flames and smoke. many, all, we have spoken to say this was a miracle. now the investigation begins. the investigators have been able to recover the black boxes and say they are in good condition and they will be critical in getting a better understanding of the sequence of events and what led up to that plane coming down. even the ntsb has sent some investigators to look into it. in the meantime, many survivors are saying they are just lucky to be able to tell their stories. dave. kaylee. leyla, thank you. priceless royal artifacts stolen from the swedish cathedral in a daring plot. making off with jewels belonging to former monarchs. they were taken from the cathedral west of stockholm. suspects escaping from across the sea in a small open top motor boat. the items stolen were part of the funeral regalia from the king and queen. the stolen artifacts pales in comparison to the swedish culture history. it sounds like a george clooney movie. it sounds like the crown. you know, beer sales are slumping. one brewer thinks it found a new ingredient to spark higher revenues. we ll explain next. these folks, they don t have time to go to the post office they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps.com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the amazing services of the post office only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4 week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/try and never go to the post office again news rocking the college football world as ohio state university places urban meyer on paid administrative leave while investigating the domestic violence allegations over coach zach smith. meyer says he was aware of the incident in 2009 involving the smiths, but not 2015. courtney smith believes her husband told the head coach about it. here is what she states about the alleged 2015 abuse. came to my home. he wasn t happy. we got into an argument. when i stood up to him, he didn t like it and took me and shoved his hands up against me up against the wall. something he did often. my daughter was clinging to my leg. he obviously it registered with him what he was doing. he took my son and left. you can watch the full interview at watchstadium.com. urban meyer says he and the athletic director agree being on leave during the investigation will facilitate the completion. zach smith s attorney says once he get a chance to tell his side, it will be corroborated by police. greg schiano will not take over. it will be ryan day. houston police believe a 20-year-old grudge is the motive in the murder of the doctor. a man whose mother died on the operating table is named the suspect. the mother of joseph pappas was the patient of dr. hausknecht. evidence in the home of pappas links him to the killing and he has not been seen in two weeks. he is very dangerous and we need to get him in custody. we think he is suicidal. we should assume he is armed. we need to find this man. this man is dangerous and capable and this man has skills. cnn called a phone number for pappas real estate company, but it went to voice mail. that number is also a number on a listing of firearms web sites. california authorities hope they have turned a corner on the carr fire. temperatures are expected to hit near 100 degrees again today. the fire has burned 121,000 acres and is 35% contained. it is now the sixth most destructive fire in state history. more than 1,000 homes have burned. everyone who was reported missing in the carr fire has now been accounted for, but six have died. the redding police chief says many arrests have been made in connection with looting. a former waitress trying to make amends 20 years after stealing from her employer. the owner of el charro in tucson received a surprise envelope with $1,000 in cash and apology. the woman worked there in the 90s while working for the university of arizona. she said it has been 20 years, but i carry great remorse. accept this payment plus 20 years of interest. may god forever bless you and your family. the restaurant owner was floored. the young person being away from home for the first time going to school. they are going to school and learning about life. i think it is a life lesson that our family tries to instill in our employees. it is a good feeling to know she felt she needed to take care of this and i respect her for it. the woman who sent the letter added she was a terrible waitress and glad she was fired before she could pocket more than a few hundred dollars. two new jersey brothers knocked it out of the park searching through collection of old baseball cards. they found five topps cards from 1952 mickey mantle. $1 million value. the most valuable cards are currently part of the auction that runs through august 19th. let s get a check on cnn money. wall street looking at a lower open. stocks are down following the mixed results yesterday. corporate earnings over concerns of trade and investors are trying to sort through both. tesla with the biggest quarterly loss in history, but the stock is still set to pop because investors feared worse. the company burned through $400 million in cash reserves last quarter in part to ramp up production of the model 3. tesla still has more than $2 billion in cash leftover. investors see a sustainable path forward. that is pushing the stock up 10% in the pre-market trading. the stock is down for the year and lost 11% this month. elon musk also apologizing for the rather bizarre earnings call this month when he called analyst questions boring and refused to answer others. a joint venture between coors and marijuana company called hydropothicary is bringing a beverage to canada. the drink will hit store shelves following the legalization there. it will not contain alcohol and it will start selling next year. part of the effort to boost sales after relavenue beer has been slowing. it seems the young people, 21 to 27, drinking far less beer than a decade ago. i would include myself in that. tequila. that s what we re thinking about at 4:59 a.m. early start continues right now. the president pushing his lawyers to let him sit down with robert mueller. the special counsel now willing to limit questions if the president meets face-to-face. terror at smaller u.s. airports is not a big concern for the tsa.
to an end as he stated many times. we look forward to that happening. the president is not obstructing, he s fighting back. the president is stating his opinion. he s stating it clearly. he s certainly expressing the frustration he has with the level of corruption that we ve seen from people like jim comey, peter strzok, andrew mccabe, there s a reason the president is angry. frankly, most of america is angry as well. there s no reason he shouldn t be able to voice that opinion. once again as i stated earlier, the president stating his opinion. it s not an order. he s been crystal clear how he feels about this investigation from the beginning. you said a moment ago the investigation itself is corrupt. the mueller investigation, you mentioned comey and strzok. the entire investigation based off dirty, discredited dossier that was paid for by an opposing campaign. The latest news from around the world with host Brooke Baldwin. at a public rally and yet people trying to yell over and defending them from doing their jobs and yelling their network sucks on live tv. do you support that or not. we certainly support free will do of the press, we also support freedom of speech and we think those things go hand in hand. what s she saying there, kaitlan? she took an interesting tactic, brooke, blaming the media saying they report too much on national security interest and reveal too much intelligence sometimes, which is an interesting approach that had nothing to do with what was happening at that rally last night. i think the reason the white house was asked this question was not simply because the crowd at the president s rally was championing this, it happened when the president was a candidate. of course sarah is right, they do have free speech to say whatever they want. the point of this is the president himself retweeted a video of those supporters of his chanting at jim acosta saying that. that s why the white house is getting the questions. it s not simply that it happened but the president retweeted it and seemed to endorse it happened on his own twitter feed where the white house says he s expressing his opinions. jeff, you were in the room. when that happened, what was the reaction in the room? the reaction, sarah sanders said on the one hand, yes, the white house does not endorse any of that. as kaitlan said, that s not actually true. actually the defense of this, going back to how she says the press needs to act responsibly. no question that is accurate. but then she brought up a debunked, absolutely false statement really from more than a decade ago about a cell phone conversation of osama bin laden being reported on. it was reported at the time, that was debunked literally a decade ago. sarah sanders was reading that from the podium as a fact using it as an example of how she says the press is not responsible with national security measures. that was their prepared response to something that happened last night, going back decades ago to something that has been debunked. the reality is the white house has done very little to push back on the violence atri ralli and conversations atriali s at. the majority of people are interesting, kind and courteous. there are always a number of people who are chanting slogans like this. that certainly gets attention. but the white house drew itself into this, as kaitlan said, because the president endorsed it. brooke. jeff and kaitlan, thank you very much. back to the president s tweet this morning on sessions and questions of obstruction, with me harry litman, former u.s. attorney, deputy assistant attorney and cnn national security analyst and former fbi special agent. great to have both of you on. harry, let me start with you, you ve got it, on this tweet where you essentially have the president ordering his own attorney general to end the investigation into himself and campaign and russian interference that already clearly produced dozens of concrete results not to mention the new york times last week broke the story that the personal counsel is looking into trump s tweets into their wide ranging obstruction inquiry. do you think, sir, on the face of it, is the tweet obstruction of justice? you know, on the face is one thing, but the basic question about whether it s strong evidence of obstruction, is it a command or kind of suggestion. man, it s a mighty thin distinction. he uses the word should. but he says right now it is staining our country. it s a rigged witch hunt. i think if i were in the oval office and hearing the president of the united states use these words, i would take it as an order. by the way, order or not, it s still solid evidence of obstruction. the big we is going to be, is he trying to shut down the probe and why. yeah, it certainly doesn t help him. the times does report it. but he should have known this from his lawyers months ago. each and every one of these tweets is totally admissible. it s not simply the individual ones. as you put them all up against one another and follow the sequence, it really spells out someone who is ordering this probe to be shut down. asha, you heard sarah sanders say, no, no, no, this wasn t an order. this was trump s opinion. he s simply expressing his frustration. you have the president s attorney then soon after, rudy giuliani, saying, no, this was his first amendment right of free speech. to harry s point he said should, didn t say must. but aren t these tweets official samts from the white house? how do you read this. yes, they have been construed as official tweets. we know, for example, travel ban litigation his tweets were used as evidence of what could have been his intent in promulgating that. brooke, i just want to point out the irony, when he s stating these things and freedom of speech but i think it was only a week ago he started to strip high national security officials of security clearances for expressing their opinions. right. one thing i just want what i see in addition to what harry said about the pattern of obstruction, he s clearly feeling heat. it could be for the manafort trial and what he s afraid will come out. let s remember mueller that indicted 25 russian nationals and 3 russian companies. that can t make putin very happy. this is starting to uncover, embarrass and expose their operations here. i have to wonder in that private meeting one-on-one, whether he has pressure coming from another direction that we don t know about to try to get rid of this investigation. harry, just going along with this tweet and i want to move onto manafort, if trump made this request in private, this order or whatever you want to call it in private, wouldn t mueller then be like green light, interview witnesses, who was in the room just as he has for comey and conversations around michael flynn. wouldn t that be similar? completely. so that s right. you would go through and ask how would a reasonable person have construed this kind of eruption from the president and especially the giuliani statement it s just first amendment is a real non-s.e. s r sequitur. it s just speed. how would you take it, et cetera. it s right flat out in front of us. i don t think it takes much of a strong inference to say trump is trying to issue an order here. the point you make is good, sessions is recused to either a bizarre order to try to carry out. rod rosenstein, leads you to wonder, does he understand that. the other piece you didn t hear from russia today, not only did russia attack and interfere in the u.s. elections in 2016, they are still doing so into the midterms this november. so asha, even if this wasn t an order, why would this president why would the white house want this whole investigation to be shut down because of russia currently? that s the question. once again, these are going mueller is equally going after russians as much as links potentially between the campaign. if the president was being sincere when he stood walked back his walk. i can t remember where we are in the walk backs to the walk back, he believes the assessment that russia interfered in our election, this cannot be a witch hunt. this is finding the people responsible for that election interference and that cyber attack. so you know, it s trying to have it both ways and very puzzling. asha and harry, thank you so much. great, great point. thank you both on that. coming up next, we want to get to paul manafort and the trial at the courthouse in virginia. day two of the form early campaign chairman. details on why one of the star witnesses may not testify. gut wrenching video of aeromexico plane crash and its aftermath. amazingly every single person on board that plane survived. in just a couple minutes we ll talk to the teenager who shot this video. later members of a conspiracy theory group show up at the president s rally last evening in tampa. we will explain who they are and why they were there. stay with me. i couldn t catch my breath. it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats. they said i had afib. what s afib? i knew that meant i was at a greater risk of stroke. i needed answers. my doctor and i chose xarelto® to help keep me protected from a stroke. once-daily xarelto®, a latest-generation blood thinner significantly lowers the risk of stroke in people with afib not caused by a heart valve problem. warfarin interferes with at least 6 of your body s natural blood-clotting factors. xarelto® is selective, targeting just one critical factor. for afib patients well managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® compares in reducing the risk of stroke. don t stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your risk of stroke. while taking, you may bruise more easily, or take longer for bleeding to stop. xarelto® can cause serious, and in rare cases, fatal bleeding. it may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. get help right away for unexpected bleeding or unusual bruising. do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. before starting, tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures and any kidney or liver problems. learn all you can to help protect yourself from a stroke. talk to your doctor about xarelto®. when we switched our auto and home insurance. yourself from a stroke. with liberty, we could afford a real babysitter instead of your brother. hey! oh, that s my robe. is it? when you switch to liberty mutual, you could save $782 on auto and home insurance. and still get great coverage for you and your family. call for a free quote today. you could save $782. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. a bit of this. why not? your hotel should make it easy to do all the things you do. which is what we do. crowne plaza. we re all business, mostly. promise anything. even though they mention what they might hear about rick gates, maybe they didn t want to promise he would take the stand. the defense attorney will hold them to having failed to keep a promise. the second reason is more seemed like they were having a little trouble getting some of the testimony through with the fbi agent. the judge was getting frustrated and wanted them to move the documents in through mr. gates. the prosecutor does not want to wait to put in evidence. you never know what s going to happen during a trial. no, your honor, let s let this witness move documents then they are in evidence and you can do what you want with them. it may have been more games manship and to try to throw the defense off saying this is all mr. gates is doing. the other development, just ran through fancy ostrich jacket, watch, clothes, apparently the prosecution wanted to show these photos of these lavish items to the jurors and the judge said no. the judge said specifically plp manafort is not on trial for having a lavish lifestyle. why would the judge make that call. first the prosecutors are trying to paint the details, get out their story. they wanted to get out onthe narrative this guy was funding his lifestyle with money he didn t declare income taxes for. they wanted to show the jurors this isn t a little amount of money, serious amounts to buy big things, fancy clothes, clothes that most people on the jury don t buy and fancy cars. which would have potentially resonated with the jurors and the prosecutor wanted that. the judge is trying to say, we re not going to convict someone simply because they are wealthy and how they spend their wealth. it has to be they lied to the irs and lied to the banks. that s the only crime there. each side is fighting to tell their narrative right now and the prosecutors want to say ostrich jacket every time every day until closing because that says, hey, that s a person who knows how much money they have. he s not being duped by his assistant, rick gates. apparently they aren t allowed to say the word oligarch. it s a hard one to pronounce. rich, rich russians. last question. do you think in the end paul manafort will testify, take the stand. very unlikely. most defense attorneys caution against that at every turn. it s very risky, very hard not to get caught in some type of inconsistency and really not necessarily sure there s much upside. sarah coyne, thanks. thanks for having me. a girl that survived the plane crash and pulled out her phone and started rolling. this is her video of the aftermath. we ll talk to her and an expert about what went wrong but how 103 people survived it. him and believe he may be suicidal. the doctor was shot while cycling to work on july 20th. and now to this story here out of mexico where it s being called a kind of miracle. aeromexico jet crashes and burns near the airport. when you look at these pictures, somehow all 103 people on board managed to survive. watch as a passengers records the moment. this is strong wind gusts, brought down this twin-engine jet moments after takeoff. can we say how extraordinary this is, when you see this plane make this nosedive, crash, full fire and everyone on board survived. you know, it s actually getting to be more typical, more the rule than the exception. there have been many recent plane crashes, for example air france in toronto, singapore, in taiw taiwan, asiana, more survived than not. crasheses improved to help people survive the crash. before then you think no one survived a crash. not so anymore. federal aviation association said over 80% of accidents no one dies. incredible. it s incredible. what happened? well, i think if given this tape, often passenger cell phone recordings can be extremely helpful in investigations, and it will be on the black box but the weather played a role. so many have wind shear, detection, these microbursts are so powerful they can literally drive a plane into the ground. a lot of the study stemmed from delta air lines flight 191 which crashed in dallas. tomorrow will be the 33rd anniversary of it, august 2nd, 1985. there aind shear, microburst, drove a plane into the ground. it s important to know this, not only can it put a plane in the ground. excuse me we re going to trump s personal attorney rudy giuliani. i said it just yesterday on fox that we believe that the investigation should be brought to a close. we think they are at the end of it. they should render their report, put up i guess if we were playing poker, we re not, put up or shut up. we have everything to believe they don t have anything. the president has done anything wrong. they don t have any evidence he did anything wrong. they have evidence up this alley and that alley, chasing things about cohen. we found out t scl. week before that t horo report cast doubt on the legitimacy of the clinton investigation and in particular this one. although in the clintonvestig hy were biased but no effects of bias. in this investigation they ren . that s still investigated. they had such a severe bias they shouldn t hav been involved in it. i don t know what the consequences lawyer, one of the consequences would be you re going to attack the legitimacy of the investigation. the attorney general see this as a directive? no, it isn t at all. as we said immediately, it s an opinion. he used a medium he uses for opinions, twitter. one of the good things about using that, he s established a clear sort of practice now that he expresses his opinions on twitter. he used the word should, he didn t use the word must. there was no presidential directive to follow it. he didn t direct him to do it and he s not going to direct him to do it. is he still interested in meeting with mueller? he s always been interested in testifying. it s us, meaning the team of lawyers, including me, that have the most reservations about that. as lawyers, i don t know, you all watch television. i don t know if you find a lawyer on television that ever thinks their client should testify. why should we believe that, though? everything he says indicates the opposite, he doesn t want to? really? i haven t heard him say that. i ve heard him say i want to be interviewed if my lawyers can reach an agreement on what the ground rules will be. we ve had a hard time doing that. we re still i m not going to give you a lot of hope it s going to happen. we re still negotiating. we haven t stopped negotiating. the most recent letter, they sent us a proposal. we responded to their proposal. they took about 10 days. yesterday we got a letter back for them. we re in the process of responding to their proposal. why doesn t he fire rosenstein. he wants the investigation to come to a conclusion and not interfere. what s why this whole obstruction of justice is nonsense. if he wanted to obstruct it, he could end it. then you could battle whether he has the legal right to do that, which i think he does. he s not going to do that. he has made it clear he wants it to run its course. on the other hand he s a person with a first amendment right to defend himself, first amendment right to express his opinion. as a president it s more important to express his opinion. these kind of allegations can do damage to the country, not just the particular president. if he believes he s innocent and he is innocent, he should speak out. you said the other day conclusion is not a crime. some people said you re moving the goalpost. no, no, no. i said that from the very beginning. you know, jeff, it s like an alternative argument, which is a little too subtle, i guess. he did not collude. there is no evidence he colluded. in the alternative, conclusion is not a crime. so if you wrote a brief, you d say throw it out on the wall, no conclusion. if you don t want to throw it on the wall, throw it on the facts. do you think obstructing is a crime? of course it s a crime. you said the president under article 2 of the constitution, i m not fog to tell you my opinion of it because i haven t gotten to the conclusion of researching it. under our conclusion if the president is acting within his capacity as president and he fires someone, that can t be questioned. now, is there a narrow area where you could question him? i don t know. we don t have to deal with that. he had legitimate reasons for firing comey. just look at the horowitz report about his investigation of hillary. look how he started the investigation. look how he ended the investigation of hillary, rather. the whole who areal in the bureau was under serious questioning while he was there. a host of reasons. he wrote memo. a legal defense under article 2 and factual defense. if he didn t have article 2 he didn t obstruct anything. the cases say this, not all of them but many, the best proof is in the pudding. he didn t obstruct the investigation. it s been going on for a year and a half. they talk to every witness they want to. they haven t asserted an executive privilege. they have every single document. unlike other presidents, who had every right to do it, but we didn t assert executive privilege. thank you. thank you. i didn t witch it. i understand there was a big development but i don t know. okay. so this is obviously rudy giuliani, this is the president s attorney. he s at this campaign event in new hampshire and he was caught by reporterses. he s made news, he was on cnn with allison cammarata this week. the latest thing this week was conclusion isn t a crime. let s read from headlines we heard from rudy giuliani now. talking about a lot coming from the tweet the president sent out earlier this morning essentially saying his own attorney general should end this, in his words, witch hunt, this entire investigation where mueller was appointed not, by the way, by the ag but rod rosenstein, deputy attorney general. saying the mueller team, they don t have anything. saying this whole investigation needs to end, we heard from sarah sanders in the briefing. reiterating about what the president said in a tweet, it wasn t a directive, it was an opinion. no, they don t want to fire rod rosenstein. so let s go to harry litman, former u.s. attorney who is back with us. i ve got to tell you, the point in the end, harry, where you heard rudy giuliani say he did not collude. on the other hand conclusion isn t a crime. i m getting lost or confused in all the spin. yeah, i think that is the country. they backed away from no conclusion, to, well, maybe conclusion isn t a crime. i think here it s a misnomer. they haven t been talking conspiracy. the bigger point is his assertion about the legal and factual defense, the notion that under article 2 the president can t violate, be guilty of obstruction of just, something the supreme court has announced. on the facts, it doesn t really matter where the investigation has the president when he was speaking with comey was trying to shut it down for so-called corrupt motives basically to keep it coming home to roost in the white house. so i think both it s factual and legal defenses don t really hold up. it has been a series of statements, restatements and revisions from rudy giuliani in the last few weeks who seems at peace with it. another statement from rudy giuliani, harry, stay with me, julia, he have you standing by as well. giuliani on this whole will the president sit with mueller for the interview, he said the mueller team counter-offered on this trump interview, might that be a reason why the president seems so rattled today? we don t know yet. it seems a big hint. we re reporting i m trying to report right now about what this letter from mueller actually said. we don t know. we know they had not heard from mueller. it was radio silence for a while. perhaps they heard something back that could have agitated him, although i into with a source earlier that said that wasn t the case. it is an important piece of information rudy let out there. we need to unravel this. otherwise his arguments are the same that the president said should and not must. i don t know about you, if the president of the united states said to me, you should do something and i worked for him, i don t think there s a lot of difference between those two. but i think they are trying to slice the salami, because an order could be interpreted as more obstructive than just a kind of a suggestion that, you know, i hate this investigation and you ought to make it end. as you knowr brooke, sessions has recused himself. so he can t actually fire mueller. he would have to ask rosenstein to do it, if he could ask him at all. which he just said they don t want to. right. they don t want to. look, the president has wanted all these people gone. we know that. he s tweeted about sessions, he s tweeted about mueller, he s tweeted about rosenstein. this is not new. the president doesn t like any of these people even though, by the way, as you know, he has appointed each and every one of them except for mueller whom rosenstein appointed. harry litman, if you re robert mueller, the special counsel here and you re obviously looking at the president s tweets, taking in what the president s attorney is saying on television, what are you thinking right now? first i m thinking this is all admissible. much of these might be designed to play to the base or whatever but each and every tweet is going to be a piece of evidence that s going to go to the critical issue in obstruction. we know for sure he tried to shut down the probe. the question will be did he have so-called corrupt intent. was he basically trying to keep protect his own skin and that of his family. each of these is going to be significant. i think they are also significant in the aggregate, brooke, because the more the president sort of waffles and says different things and back pedals and changes the narrative, the more it looks like the truth is, in fact, something he knows he has guilty knowledge about, which is he s trying to shut it down for selfish reasons. let me jeff toobin is joining us. i m told he s at there he is. jeff, you re there in new hampshire. were you there when giuliani was talking to reporters? did you just hear what he said? yeah. that s why i m here is i m following mayor giuliani around. i thought he said something interesting i had never heard him say before. he said, well, this was on twitter where he gives his opinion, and it s not the statements on twitter are known to be opinions as opposed to presidential directives. i don t know what exactly to make of that. official white house statements. well, that s the other thiet. i believe sarah sanders in the past said these were official white house statements. that distinct was something new i hadn t heard before. i don t think if it s legally significant but it s an attempt to draw a line between what he says on twitter and official orders that he gives. i don t know if that would hold up legally. i don t know how you would test that. that distinct that distinction the mayor drew is one i hadn t heard before. saying the mueller team reaching out and counter-offer for interview between the president and mueller team. tell me more about what the president said and your interpretation of that. one thing he has been saying all week, i ve been with him much of the week, ten days ago we responded to their latest proposal for the interview but we hadn t heard back from them. today we just heard back from the mueller office in terms of their latest counter-proposal. this has been going on for months this drama about will he testify, will he not testify, these negotiations. based on everything i ve heard from the mayor, notwithstanding the president s professed desire to do this. it certainly seems like no interview is happening. that then raises the question of whether mueller will issue a subpoena and are we off to a multi-month legal battle that could wind up in the supreme court. just in terms of a voluntary agreement to testify, that sure looks unlikely based on everything i ve seen. just lastly back to giuliani regard to this tweet, it wasn t a directive to the attorney general, it was the president s own opinion. he was the one who said he didn t say we have the tweet highlighted, he said attorney general jeff sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt. it s not like he said must, which sounds mighty reminiscent to me, jeff, who said on the would, wouldn t think. yeah. you know, again, when the president of the united states says to a cabinet member, you should do something, that skhur sounds like an ordered to me, whether it s on twitter or not. the interesting distinction the mayor was attempting to draw moments ago, oh, well, it was on twitter so it s more of an opinion rather than a directive. people can evaluate as they choose to. okay. all right, jeff toobin, thank you so much in new hampshire. gloria and harry, thank you. beautiful, beautiful this time of year. quick break and back with more on this breaking story next. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely. but allstate helps you. with drivewise. feedback that helps you drive safer. and that can lower your cost now that you know the truth. are you in good hands? and the wolf huffed and puffed. like you do sometimes, grandpa? well, when you have copd, it can be hard to breathe. so my doctor said. symbicort can help you breathe better. starting within 5 minutes. it doesn t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. doctor: symbicort helps provide significant improvement of your lung function. symbicort is for copd, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. it should not be taken more than twice a day. it may increase your risk of lung infections, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. grandpa: symbicort could mean a day with better breathing. watch out, piggy! (giggles) get symbicort free at saveonsymbicort.com. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. automatically adjusts on each side to keep you both comfortable. and snoring? how smart is that? smarter sleep. to help you lose your dad bod, train for that marathon, and wake up with the patience of a saint. the new sleep number 360 smart bed, from $999. smarter sleep will change your life. the website for touted plans for 3d printed firearms went dark overnight. federal judge blocked a deal the texas based non-profit reached that essentially makes it illegal to print them online after president trump said 3d guns don t seem to make much sense, sarah sanders is blaming the department of justice for approving the settlement. the department of justice made a deal on the president s approval. on those regards, this administration is glad it is delayed to support the already decades long rule on the deal that prohibits a wholly plastic gun. i wanted to follow up on this today the defense distribute the company behind this have already distributed the plans for these guns. so what now? over a thousand people were downloading this. they were teasing they were going to put it out today. they put it out a couple days ago. there was before the temporary hold, he didn t seem so worried. listen to what he said right then. i already upload the plans. the ship has sailed. it s throwing information out. it s irrevokable. no one can take it back. those blue prints are there. people have taken of the site. you don t see them. there is a hearing next ike e week the judge before said there are some serious issues here first amendment issues. it will be interesting to see how this plays out. as we said yesterday, tremendous implicationles. back to our breaking news, the president beats the jeff sessions should end the russia investigation. his attorney rouge rouge just weighed in. stay with me. i did mom. wanna try it? yes. it intensely moisturizes your hair and scalp and keeps you flake free. manolo? look at my soft hair. i should be in the shot now too. try head and shoulders two in one. moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis was intense. my mom s pain from i wondered if she could do the stuff she does for us which is kinda, a lot. and if that pain could mean something worse. joint pain could mean joint damage. enbrel helps relieve joint pain, and helps stop further damage enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders and allergic reactions have occurred. tell your doctor if you ve been someplace where fungal infections are common. or if you re prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for heart failure or if you have persistent fever, bruising, bleeding or paleness. don t start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. since enbrel, my mom s back to being my mom. visit enbrel.com. and use the joint damage simulator to see how joint damage could progress. ask about enbrel. enbrel. fda approved for over 18 years. i knew at that exact moment . i m beating this. my main focus was to find a team of doctors. it s not just picking a surgeon, it s picking the care team and feeling secure in where you are. visit cancercenter.com/breast so let s promote our summer travel deal on choicehotels.com like this. surfs up. earn a $50 gift card when you stay just twice this summer. or, badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com another day, another recall on some food you may have in your refrigerator. they are warning accidence of salad wrap products could be making you sick. dozens of beef, poultry and salad items were sold at popular chains like kroger s, trader joe s, sell by dates july anything through july 23rdful so if you think you might have something like this in your refrigerator, you can log onto the usda website, usda.gov. i m brooke baldwin, thanks for being with me. let s go to washington, the lead with jake tapper starts right now. thanks, brooke. guiliani just told mueller, put up or shut up. shut up.
Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with in-depth reporting and investigations. attorney general jeff sessions should stop this rigged witch-hunt right now before it can stain our country any longer. bob mueller and the democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to the usa. the key sentence, attorney general jeff sessions should stop this rigged witch-hunt. that s what the president said. he said stop it right now. it sounds like the president, who chief executive wants to see jeff session, who works for him and the russia investigation ended right now. that is what it sounds like, because that is actually what the president wrote. unless, of course, you believe his press secretary and tv lawyer who scrambled to try and convince the public that what the president said about what he wants to see happen and happen right now was in no way a directive to actually make it happen and happen right now. no, according to them, it was only some guy s opinion, the guy who happens to be president, commander in chief. now stopping this investigation, it s complicated. sessions would have to recuse himself. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein might have to be Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with in-depth reporting and investigations. they re considered official statements by the president of the united states. doh! spicer. so the white house used to claim that the president s tweets are not just idle opinionating, they re official statements with the power of the white house behind him. how many times have people working for the president said the president s tweet speaks for itself or words to that effect? except for today s tweet. that apparently doesn t speak for itself. that needs a spokesperson and a tv lawyer speaking for it, sweeping up after it, quietly trying to wipe it off the bottom of their shoes. when the president of the united states says one of his subordinates should do something and do it now, how is that just one guy s opinion? it all smacks of another effort that was made recently to suggest that the president didn t really say what everyone heard him say. and a key sentence in my remarks, i said the word would instead of wouldn t. the sentence should have been i don t see any reason why i wouldn t or why it wouldn t be russia. sort of a double negative. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with in-depth reporting and investigations. the story centers on talks between the president s legal team and robert mueller over a possible presidential interview. we now have a better idea of the terms mr. mueller may be offering. evan perez and gloria borger got the story. evan joins us by phone. what do you know about where these negotiations stand right now? well, anderson, there is an important concession by the special counsel in this latest proposal. we re told that they finally got a response from the special counsel, first time in almost a month that they ve heard back from the mueller team. and in this proposal, they are essentially asking, they re suggesting that they re willing to limit the number of obstruction questions that the president would be asked, but that he would still be asked some of those questions in a sit-down interview. so the president s team has been proposing this idea of a take home test. i like to call it a take-home test where the president gets to write answers to some questions about anything related to things that happened after he was inaugurated as president. so anything having to do with obstruction would come in this written test, so to speak. and so that s where they ve been pushing. and so you now have at least some movement from the mueller team. but keep in mind, anderson, they re still insisting that they want a sit-down with the president, and some of those questions will cover this very important question of obstruction of justice. do we know at this point where things stand about any questions regarding collusion? well, the collusion question, believe it or not, the trump team has been open to having the president answer those questions, you know, if there is a sit-down interview. now keep in mind, anderson, i think rudy giuliani said this in his statement today that the lawyers do not want trump to do any interview at all, but obviously they have a client who is insisting that he does want to do an interview. he wants to sit down with robert mueller face-to-face because he believes if he doesn t, he s going to get crucified politically. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with in-depth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with in-depth reporting and investigations. an act possibly of obstruction of justice. it is remarkable the extent to which the president and the white house are continually walking back things that the president has said. he says them very clearly. whether he s thought about it or not, but in this case, he wrote it out. it wasn t just a slip of the tongue. and now they re saying oh, kind of ignore what he s actually said when in the past they ve said no, that s what the president actually believe. absolutely right. and in fact going back in history, the president of the united states actually has fired people on twitter. right. so to say should stop when it s the commander in chief has real instructional meaning. do you believe this is obstruction of justice, this tweet? it s certainly very powerful and credible evidence of malign and corrupt intent, which is an element of obstruction of justice. and oven the most difficult to prove. it is a threat, plain and simple, brazen and blatant. its purpose and effect is to threaten and intimidate the special counsel. but there is also a subtext here, anderson, which is all of the president s surrogates, his cronies on capitol hill that are calling for the impeachment of rod rosenstein who controls this investigation and the other kinds of intimidation coming from my colleagues unfortunately, very unwisely on capitol hill on the republican side. do you think the investigation can be properly completed without an interview of the president? no. the president has to be interviewed. because to figure out intent? to know what the intent was, to give him an opportunity to clarify what he meant by these kinds of tweets and a variety of others that he has sent and conversations and other points he may have made privately. a lot of it is in the public eye, but some of it may be privately known only to mueller at this point. mueller knows a lot more than we do. if you were the president s attorney, though, you would not want him to sit down with robert mueller, would you? given what he said in front of vladimir putin on a world stage with cameras rolling that they then have to walk back, oh, i said wouldn t, i meant would. what he would say to robert mueller, there is just no telling what would come out of his mouth. that s why i think you re seeing this reluctance and constantly moving of goalposts by rudy giuliani about what he would accept as a condition for sitting down. remember, just a couple of weeks ago, he said there has to be proof of a crime committed by the president. you have to show us your evidence. before we ll sit down with you at all. now they re using other goalposts. and i think that ultimately, they are very, very reluctant, and understandably so because the president is a tinderbox of potential perjury. senator blumenthal, thank you very much. appreciate it. other views now joining us. alan dershowitz, author of the case against impeaching trump. cnn legal analyst anne milgram. professor dershowitz, this reporting that mueller s team is willing to reduce the number of questions that ask about potential obstruction, do you this that s going to be enough to get the president to sit down? well, it s a very smart move by mueller because it s not about quantity, it s about quality and substance. if they can just get the president to testify about what his motive was in firing comey or about why he spoke to comey about being going soft on flynn, those are potential perjury traps. so mueller is very smart to reduce the number if the result is that he can get trump to sit down and talk to him. the lawyers are not happy about this. the lawyers do not want the president to answer any questions because that would subject the president to a possible 1001 prosecution, that is lying to a prosecutor. so and remember too, the lawyers are saying to him, look, you don t have to answer questions about your intent. we have a very good privilege argument that will probably prevail in front of a court. if you had the right and the power to fire comey, then you cannot be questioned about why you did it any more than senator or a congressman or a judge can be questioned about why they rendered a decision or a vote. so i think in the end, it s going to be very unlikely that the lawyers will lose this battle and the president will actually sit down and expose himself to a possible perjury trap. professor, you use the term perjury trap. it s only a perjury trap if someone wants to perjure themselves. no, that s not true. well, no one is being forced to lie. it s a perjury trap correct me. well, i will correct you. if you have the president saying something that he believes is truthful, and then you have another witness, cohen or manafort or one of the others contradicting him without regard to who is telling the truth, you could get a perjury prosecution. so i ve often advised clients who have insisted to me that they will only tell the truth. i say to them, but it is possible that any other witness will tell the truth different than yours? and if the answer to that is yes, in 53 years i ve never had a client sit down with a prosecutor, innocent, guilty, or in between. so you re absolutely right that for the most part if you re completely innocent, the risks are lower. but there are risks even if you re innocent. if you have people who are being squeezed. remember judge ellis has said about manafort they re not really interested in him. they re trying to squeeze him. and he used a term, a term i have used for years. sometimes you can squeeze a witness into not only singing, but composing. if you can get a witness to compose, it really does become a perjury trap. but the biggest perjury trap is having a witness who is prone to lying. no quebec it. and also i think the way the professor s describing perjury, it makes it seem like if there is two completely different versions of events, someone can be charged with perjury. in my experience as a state and federal prosecutor, that s not the case. to prove perjury is a very high standard, and you actually have to be able to prove to a jury that one version of events is false. again, i tend to think the same way most people do, that, you know, if you have nothing to hide and you re going to tell the truth, you should go in and talk to the investigators. that s why you re not a defense lawyer. that s why you re not a defense lawyer. if you were a defense lawyer you would understand completely. it s enormously risky to go in and tell the truth if somebody is telling a different truth, and if prosecutors have an interest in promoting the truth that the other person is saying. it s just too risky. if i could switch a little, i think it s worth debating this question of perjury, but i ll tell you my view. my view is that the president doesn t want to go in. so we talk about whether or not the lawyers want him to go in or don t want him to go in. and i think that mueller very much wants anymore. so what we re seeing a little bit is this dance. my view is, look, people tell the president not to tweet. he tweets all the time. if you were his lawyer i assume would not have told him to send that tweet this morning, yet he is pretty unstoppable. so my view is if he really wants to go in, he s going to go in. i think we ll know soon enough whether it s true that he wants to tell his side of the story. professor, the tweet from the president this morning saying the attorney general jeff sessions should stop the investigation, the white house said it was an opinion, not an order. i wonder how you read it. previously the white house has said these are statements by the president. they hold the imprint of that. well, i don t know what the tweet was intended to do because he s telling sessions to stop the investigation. sessions doesn t have the power to stop the investigation. sessions is officially and formally recused. he is not permitted to take any action to stop the investigation. if he really wanted to stop the investigation, he would direct rod rosenstein to stop the investigation, or he would fire mueller, which he has the power to do legally, but not politically. politically he does not have the power to fire mueller. it would be enormously costly to him. nor does he have the power politically to fire rosenstein. so he s just, you know, puffing off about sessions when sessions has no authority to stop the investigation at all. anne, is that how you see it? that it s just kind of puffing off? to me it s pretty stunning that we re in the middle of this national conversation that started last week about the president s tweets and whether or not he is obstructing justice in tweeting about wanting to stop or influencing an investigation, and then he literally sends a tweet this morning talking about wanting to stop the investigation. and so whether or not he could actualize it and make it happen strikes me as almost not the point here. the point is that please. finish your thought. hold on. just finish your thought. i thought you were done. the conversation about tweets to me is tweets can absolutely used against someone in a court of law. people s words are used against them all the time. and it is one of those things where to me the tweets will be looked at all together, and there are multiple tweet that i think could pose legal jeopardy to the president. so obviously, you know, it s stunning to me that he would be tweeting about this today. professor? i just want every american to think about what it would mean if we started prosecuting any american, the president or anybody else for expressing strong views about the unjustness of a prosecution. any defendant feels that the prosecution or the investigation against them sun just. every one of my client has railed against prosecutors. threatening prosecution. now of course that s right. but he doesn t have the power to stop it through sessions. and he really doesn t have the political power to stop it. i want to talk about the civil liberties implications of basing a prosecution on cobbling together public tweets. obstruction of justice takes place generally but you know they re not basing it on tweets. you certainly know they ve been amassing evidence now for quite some time. but it s almost all public. it s almost all public things he did, acts that he was entitled to do under article 2. it s an extraordinarily week obstruction case. you have no idea what the evidence they gathered is. well, we know what the public evidence is. that doesn t mean anything. we know the tip of an iceberg. if there is look, if he did what nixon did and paid hush money or told his people to lie or destroyed evidence, of course that s obstruction of justice. but engaging in public outrage at a prosecution that he honestly feels is unjust has to be protected by the first amendment, whether you re the president or anyone else. all right, professor dershowitz, appreciate it. anne milgram as well. what went on today as the case continues to speed through court. also, why the government s never ending why they never ended up calling their star witness, excuse me. and next, the rage at trump rallies and the president s encouraging of it. we re keeping him honest, when we return. today. now that you know the truth, are you in good hands? if todays a attempt at downplaying the tweet could be comical at times, this next is not. it s downright disturbing. it s something the president encouraged people to do, something he s repeatedly encouraged people to do. what you re going to see are otherwise respectable people, fellow citizens, fellow americans, people you d say hello to on the street shouting profanities, making obscene gestures, emptying their rage on members of the press attend of last night s rally in tampa. take a look. so it gets worse, as you ll see in a moment. one of the things that s alarming about this, besides the very real potential that this kind of angerer can lead to violence is instead of taking steps to tamp down the anger or curtail the protesters or just admonish them, the president of the united states has encouraged them, even retweeted some of the video out to his millions of followers. and if you think anyone in the white houses that courage or conviction to criticize what the president is encouraging, you would be mistaken. here is sarah sanders generically condemning violence, something that did not happen last night, thankfully, but saying what did actually happen. the president condemns and denounces any group that would insight violence against another individual, and certainly doesn t support groups that would promote that type of behavior. so she was trying to steer the conversation towards far right conspiracy groups like qanon, which we ll talk about more. and even then as you ll see, she lumped them together with the press, suggesting there is some kind of equivalence between the two. in fact, there was another reporter in the briefing pointed out, that s not the issue. at issue, at least not for now it s not the issue. the issue at hand is the kind of open display of rage last night that the president is encouraging in rallies and on twitter. now here is some of the video that cnn s jim acosta put up on instagram. i want to play through it a couple of times. first what cameras saw and then with portions highlighted so you get a better idea of what jim and other reporters were surrounded last night in tampa while simply doing their constitutionally protected jobs. [ chanting ] [ bleep ]. stop lying! tell the truth. tell the truth. right there. so that s what it sounded like. i just want to play it again with certain things highlighted, because, you know, it s easy to lose it in the crowd. it starts with a man shouting f the media. and everyone you see here, they could be your neighbor that. could teach your kid science, they could be in your carpool. they could be saying prayers next to you in church. but at these rallies that potential church goer might be raising a middle finger shouting as another man does stop lying, stop lying into the camera. now there is another lady who first raises one middle finger. this lady right here is very charming. then she raises both fingers southing you suck, you suck. you re only seeing less than a minute of it. but this kind of thing went on a whole lot longer. the president saw fit to encourage it on twitter. and again, sarah sanders did not see fit to condemn it simply without reservation. the president, as i just said, does not support violence against anyone or anything. and we ve been very clear every single time we ve been asked about that. when it comes to the media, the president does think that the media holds a responsibility. we fully support a free press, but there also comes a high level of responsibility with that. the media routinely reports on classified information and government secrets that put lives in danger and risk valuable national security tools. this has happened both in our administration and in past administrations. one of the worst cases was the reporting on the u.s. ability to listen to osama bin laden s satellite phone in the late 90s. because of that reporting, he stopped using that phone and the country lost valuable intelligence. so as for the last part of what she said there, the part about reporting accurately and fairly. yes. certainly people in the media have gotten things wrong. i ve gotten thing wrong. certainly not often, but when we do, we correct it as fast as we can. the same cannot be said of sarah sanders or the president or others in the white house. keeping them honest, though the example sarah sanders mentioned there about osama bin laden and the phone, that s actually not true. the washington post fact checkers ran it all down 13 years ago. by the time the story sarah sanders was apparently referring to ran in september of 1998, bin laden had apparently already stopped using his satellite phone. in fact, cnn s peter bergen, who has reported extensively on this as early as 1997 met with bin laden. bin laden s men were already concerned about electronic sr surveillance. filed the bin laden phone leak under urban myths. now we ll see if sarah sanders corrects herself in a few minutes or a few hours or in a few days or whenever she happens to have a next press conference. we doubt it. we ll see if she holds herself to the same standards we hold ourselves to. joining us is cnn political analyst david gergen. i always try to use the example if the president was a democrat and you had, you know, a democratic president encouraging people at rallies to scream at reporters. yes. reporters would be outraged about it. if they were screaming at a fox news, you know, get off the air and when anybody does that, that s abhorrent. yeah, i agree. there are some reporters of other networks who are coming to the defense of cnn on this and jim acosta in particular. you know, the publisher of the new york times went to see the president recently, and he made the point to him which i think is exactly right. the whole charges about fake news is very, very disturbing, but the serious issue is when the president starts calling the press enemies of people. right. that s an old phrase. it comes out of the stalinist background, and it really makes them sort of traitors to the country. and there were some hint offers reporters being called traitors last night. if you put that, the enemies of people together along with a rally that has a mob quality to it, and then along with the culture of gun violence, that s a very combustible mix. also sarah sanders then talking about enemies of the people, traitors, she is talking about revealing classified information. there are so many examples of reporters holding back on reporting things at the request of intelligence agencies so that sources and methods are protected or lives are not endangered. an operation i ve been involved in many other occasions when the head of the cia or someone, the secretary of defense or the president himself might call a publisher and say would you please withhold this. right. because here s what s at stake. when we had our hostages in iran, you know, for those 4 hundred plus days, no leaks. they were protected the whole time by press who knew they were in there, but didn t want to endanger their lives. so we have a president when he comes in, takes an oath to protect the constitutional rights of all americans. and what this president and this white house seem to not to accept is that that s their responsibility at these rallies, to ensure that a free press can exercise day to day work. it s interesting because the president has spoken about the importance of the second amendment. right. many times. you expect the president, and again, i know donald trump is a rule breaker, and that s why he got elected, and people wanted to see things shaken up. be you do expect the president to defend the constitution of the united states. exactly. and to explain the intricacies of the constitution. right. and the sometimes uncomfortable difficulties that the constitution enforces on the country. and that s not something this president has done or really seems willing to do in any way. i m afraid it s as if he s read parts of the constitution like the second amendment but is not terribly familiar with other parts of it like the first amendment. but i will tell you this, anderson, what we saw last night is what we saw frequently in sarah palin rallies way back when in the early part of it. and john mccain, who was her running mate and presidential nominee went out, went to those rallies and said stop it. let s end this. that is the president s responsibility. unless he stops this soon, if there is violence against any reporter that s tied to this, the blood is going to be on his hands. it seems one doesn t want to predict anything, but the idea of violence occurring, somebody whose disturbed being motivated by this rightly or wrongly in their certainly in their mind they would be right. but even if it s not what the president said. right. just this kind of a mob atmosphere, violence, it doesn t take much. it doesn t take much. and then we got this new element of the qanon, which we re reporting on. a lot of people not a lot, but a number of people there last night with shirts saying with the q on it. but there are a lot of conspiracy theorists. conspiracy theorists are known to act on them. and sometimes use violence as in the pizzeria situation. david gergen, appreciate ifft. thank you. day two of the paul manafort trial. prosecutors are urging the judge speaking through their case. there is a lot of tonight what the government says was paul manafort s lavish lifestyle, including details of the $15,000 ostrich jacket. the latest from the court just ahead. t water heater failed it rocked our world. we called usaa. and they greeted me as they always do. sergeant baker, how are you? they took care of everything a to z. having insurance is something everyone needs, but having usaa- now that s a privilege. agent beekman was one step ahead of them.dits stole the lockbox from the wells fargo stagecoach, because he hid his customers gold in a different box. and the bandits, well, they got rocks. we protected your money then and we re dedicated to helping protect it today. like alerting you to certain card activity we find suspicious. if it s not your purchase, we ll help you resolve it. it s a new day at wells fargo. but it s a lot like our first day. experience the versatilityy to of utility. with the highest form of luxury and the highest function of capability, you can be in your element. in any element. experience a range of suvs, perfect for any adventure at the lexus golden opportunity sales event. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. but it s tough to gete enough of their nutrients. new one a day with nature s medley is the only complete multivitamin with antioxidants from one total serving of fruits and veggies try new one a day with nature s medley. vendors to the stand. these are employees at mercedes-benz, also high end retailers in manhattan for luxury men s clothing. and all of these vendors, they said the exact same thing. they said that paul manafort paid them through wire transfers, through these offshore accounts. and these were really some heavy price tags here. paul manafort paid contractors about $1.13 million for home improvements. he also paid close to $500,000 to a men s clothing store boutique, as women as $123,000 at that car dealership, mercedes-benz. so really what prosecutors are trying to do here, they re trying to lay out exactly how manafort got all of this money from his ukrainian lobbying, and also how he tried the hide these payments in these offshore accounts as well as these shell accounts. anderson? i was very confused yesterday about the notion of an ostrich coat which i thought meant ostrich feathers. sadly it doesn t. there were pictures introduced into evidence? there were pictures. sprurs plenty of pictures not only of the illustrious ostrich coat but luxury watches and luxury clothing that paul manafort had. what s interesting is they have entered it into evidence. however, the jury has not actually seen these photos. the judge has wanted to keep this case moving along. so when prosecutors tried to enter the actual photographic evidence, when they tried to publish it so the jury could see it in the courtroom, the judge said no, let s move along. the testimony is enough. however, the jury will see these pictures once they go back into the jury room after the case, both sides have rested. when they go into their deliberations, of course they re not allowed to watch tv, not allowed to see any of the news articles about this trial. so likely, anderson, they won t be seeing it on your show or elsewhere. but yes, they will get these pictures that show just how lavishly paul manafort lived. the ostrich coat is a little disappointing now that i ve seen the pictures. did the prosecution say why they might not call gates as a witness? you know, it s quite possible that the prosecution was just bluffing here, because when they said we might, we might not, it actually came during questioning of an fbi agent. and he introduced some of the evidence that they got during this raid of paul manafort s condo last summer. and one of the items said gates agenda. as soon as that came up, the judge stopped the proceeding. again, the judge has been very vocal here, and the judge said why are you questioning him about something gates did? gates work product. if you re going to have gates up here testifying. that s when prosecutors said, well, we might, we might not. so it s possible it was bluff. it s also possible they re trying to throw the defense off their game because of course the defense has said they will rely on rick gates testimony, essentially to discredit him as the real liar, the real steeler, the real embezzler. it remains to be seen. there were also more details that came out today about the raid on manafort s house. that s exactly rite. they had an fbi agent on the stand who was present for that predawn raid last july at paul manafort s condo right here in alexandria, virginia. he really laid out what happened. now at the time there were some reports that this was a no-knock raid, that fbi agents just burst into the home. this fbi agent said no, we actually knocked three times, waiting before each and every knock. and then when there was no answer, we entered the home with a key we had. that s when we saw paul manafort standing there. of course paul manafort has portrayed it as him being stunned. fbi agents at this point did take hundreds of documents, all of which they re relying on heavily in this case for their prosecution. anderson? jessica, i appreciate it. joining me now to discuss cnn senior legal analyst preet bar radar w . first mgates may not take the stand. clearly the defense is putting a lot on saying gates is the villain here. as an additional matter the government made the decision to sign up rick gates as a cooperating witness to give him potential leniency from the judge if he testifies truthfully, et cetera. they made a determination that gates had substantial assistance to give to the government. but when it comes down to trial, when the rub arer meets the road, it may be true that they re bluffing. but also as sometimes is the case, you see how the evidence goes in and if the documents speak for themselves and if the other testimony so clearly sets out the violation of law, in this case, some of those being paul manafort had an interest in a foreign bank account, didn t disclose it. that s not very complicated. you don t need a lot of commentary. may not even need rick gates. rite. the problem with rick gates, with every cooperating witness, it s someone who is testifying a little bit to save his own skin. right. so you always have that layer of it. and they re going to go after him because of that. right. and one of the things gates plead guilty to is lying to the fbi. not just any kind of lie to the fbi, lying in the context of trying to get a disposition for himself. so that subjects him to a lot of cross-examination, which we withstand all the time in trial. it s a balance of trying to see do we have enough evidence that speaks for itself without having to call this person who is going to attract a lot of terrible cross-examination. but they could still call him to the stand. potentially. but he would have less power if the prosecution hadn t hasn t called him and put a lot of weight on what to what he has to say. you to be careful what you wish for. in some ways rick gates presumably that the government signed him up has the baggage, yes. but also probably has a lot of devastating commentary he could give about the intent of paul manafort. so if the defense calls him up, that could still come out as well? it could all come out. then the prosecution would cross-examine as to all the other things. it s unclear. it will also be very bad for the defense i think in some ways if they don t if the prosecution doesn t call rick gates, even though the defense can call him, they made a big show of how treschl rick gates would be. it s a little bit of a different circumstance when it becomes a defense witness versus a prosecution witness. interesting. the idea that manafort was paying for all this stuff directly with wire transfers, a, i didn t know you could do that at stores. but is that is that legal? only ostrich coat stores, apparently. but it just seems if he is not paying taxes on the stuff, isn t it idiotic for him to get wire transfers from offshore banks into stores? doesn t the government track that? there is a lot of idiocy in crime generally, and it seems that paul manafort is no exception to that. it seems like he was making a loft money. he could evade taxes on that money. what s interesting in some of the reporting that we ve seen about the trial is that the prosecutors are making a big deal of how he spent the money, the lavish lifestyle, the ostrich coat, you talked about it some length this evening, which can sway the jury and have the jury feel, well, this person was motivated by greed and was cheating in a way that is offensive to the jury, but you do have to be careful about that. you can overdo it and you can be not proportional about it. and jurors begin to see if you re piling on. i wasn t there at the trial. i assume it was done elegantly and proportionately. but you do have to be a little bit careful because it doesn t matter if he was spending mohr money on an ostrich coat or for his mother s surgery, the crime was the crime. and how he spent the money doesn t matter, necessarily. i have to say looking at the coats, it s not sort of oh my god, i can t believe he bought that brown coat. it s like a bunch of coats. i m not familiar with ostrich. i don t care ostrich. i thought it was going to be feathers in which case i m a wool guy. a wool guy. all right. give it time. a few years in tv you ll be ostrich. i follow you. preet bharara, thanks. the why is thes considering not screening thousands of passengers? the cnn exclusive report in a moment. on. it looks like emily cooking dinner for ten. the beat goes on. it looks like jonathan on a date with his wife. la-di-la-di. entresto is a heart failure medicine that helps your heart. so you can keep on doing what you love. in the largest heart failure study ever, entresto was proven superior at helping people stay alive and out of the hospital. it helps improve your heart s ability to pump blood to the body. don t take entresto if pregnant; it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. don t take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren, or if you ve had angioedema with an ace or arb. the most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high blood potassium. ask your doctor about entresto for heart failure. yeah! entrust your heart to entresto. the beat goes on. including nasal congestion, which most pills don t. and all from a gentle mist you can barely feel. flonase sensimist. across the united states without being screened. that s according to internal documents obtained by cnn. the documents from june and july outline an elimination of security screening at small and some medium-sized airports that operate commercial planes with 60 seats or fewer. tsa s recent cost analysis estimates the move could save $115 million that could be used to bolster security at large airports. i think it s stunning that this is even being seriously considered. reporter: the approximately does not list which airports could be impacted, but says screening would be eliminated at more than 150. tsa currently screens passengers at 440 airports. according to the proposal, passengers and luggage arriving from these smaller airports would be screened when they arrive at major ones. their operating theory is attacks with small aircraft would not be as attractive a payoff to terrorists because the potential for loss of life would be less than what terrorists could achieve with larger planes. national security experts disagree. isis, their message is attack in any way you can, big or small against anybody you can go after. so the opportunity to go after a 50-person passenger jet or aircraft is going to be very attractive to the group in terms of its messaging. reporter: in an e-mail to cnn tsa said, this is not a new issue. the regulations which establish tsa does not require screening below a certain level. so every year is the year that tsa will reconsider screening. cnn asked tsa to point us to that regulation. the agency has not responded. 20 tsa employees recently met to evaluate the cost-saving proposal that could mean less hassle for thousands of travelers. the group determined the plan could increase security vulnerabilities at airports. but overall the risk is low. rene joins us now with more. i understand there have been some new developments just sinced your story broke. right pl anderson, after our story broke tsa sent talking points out to all of its senior leadership communicating just how to respond to the many inquiries at airports nationwide. and the talking points note that a final decision has not been made. and it goes on to say that tsa remains very committed to its very core mission and it says that any potential operational changes to better allocate limited taxpayer resources are simply part of predecisional discussions and would not take place without a risk assessment. and you know, it is cnn s reporting that there was a risk assessment completed. is this the first time tsa s considered this? in your statement it seemed like something that every year it s kind of under review. right. and some of our sources who ve been at tsa for quite some time push back on whether they re being loose with the word consideration. we do know this. the idea was floated as far back as 2011. it met a lot of zrivs from cities, states, the airline industry and even congress. the proposal has since been resurrected. but the people within the agency who are veterans who ve been there for quite some time say this is different. this proposal involved a cost analysis as well as a risk assessment. they say that doesn t happen every year, anderson. all right. rene marsh, appreciate it. want to check in with chris, see what he s working on for cuomo prime time at the top of the hour. chris? well, you and i disagree about twitter. i say that the tweets matter, especially the president s. you tell me not to go so heavy on twitter in general. but tonight i win. and here s why, anderson. i m going to make a case tonight. we re going to point out on the magic wall why the tweets matter on two levels. why they may matter to prosecutors and not as opinions but as potential admissions. and why they matter on a larger part of our political reality right now with the introduction of the president s new conspiracy pals of q anonymous. i should point out i m not saying the president s tweets or tweets in general don t matter, i m just saying your tweets. you need to back off a little bit. you don t need to put your heart into them. i stretched what you usually say to effect and to play for advantage. but you are telling the truth. you usually limit it to just to me. it just wasn t as helpful to me in this argument. i just think you d be happier in general. maybe not. anything s got to help. i ll still foul on instagram. chris, very much. david gergen mentioned early in the program, chris just mentioned as well, we re going to take a look at pooshl element of trump rallies including last night members of this group called qanon. their movement is just now surfacing to a large audience. we ll detail what it is ahead. d, booking a flight unlocks discounts on select hotels until the day you leave for your trip. add-on advantage. only when you book with expedia. together, we re building a better california. you may not know very much about a group called qanon, a group that emarbitrations a wide variety of these theories. qanon- s presence is growing. randi kaye tonight has an explanation. reporter: qanon is a fringe group built on conspiracy theories and devoted to donald trump. the q represents a real person. someone who is anonymous who claims to have access to government secrets. intel that he or she refers to as crumbs that are revealed in dark corners of the web. those so-called classified secrets, all of them false, then are shared on websites like facebook, twitter and youtube. some of the conspiracy theories that have been shared under the banner of q, that the las vegas concert shooting was actually a botched attempt to assassinate the saudi crown prince. and that president obama and hillary clinton are actually the ones under investigation by robert mueller, not the trump campaign. also that trump was pretending to favor putin so it would force an investigation into the democrats. the group seems to have grown stronger last year after the president said this. you guys know what this represents? i don t know maybe it s the calm before the storm. reporter: weeks later someone calling themselves q began to post cryptic messages in an online thread called calm before the storm. q claimed to be a high-level government insider. followers believe q even flew on air force one. at one point qanon had falsely suggested certain hollywood celebrities were pedophiles, posting video of the alleged victims on youtube. another theory that gained steam, lies about slain dnc staffer seth rich. explosive developments in the mysterious murder of former dnc staffer seth rich. reporter: one of the theories posted read q bombshell. debbie wasserman schultz ordered seth rich s murder. and suggested someone has put together some very significant qanon bread crumbs and baked a bombshell loaf of bread. police say it was a botched robbery. wasserman schultz called the rumors vial. more recently qanon evangelists started bombarding a reporter for the conservative website the daily caller insisting he ask about qanon at the white house briefing. he refused to do it. i have people commenting on my personal instagram photos saying i m a coward who needs to do my damn job and ask about q. so yeah, it was like a nonstop of three, four days of online harassment. reporter: while it s unclear how many people believe these lies, awareness of qanon really began to mushroom after the so-called pizzagate conspiracy. a wild theory that falsely connected high-ranking democratic officials to an alleged child trafficking ring at a pizzeria in washington, d.c. but people believed it. leading to one man opening fire on the restaurant. no one was hurt, but some worry it could be a precursor of violence spawned by the group s outlandish claims. randi kaye, cnn, new york.
A newscast reviewing and analyzing top stories of the day as they happen. that and $300 billion after that. basically the entire u.s. trade relationship with china. initially on the next tranche of $200 billion, the president was thinking about levying attacks of 10%. this afternoon we re going to learn that the president is going to up that to 25%. the belief here among his trading economic team that china continues to be a bad actor when it comes to trade and they need very strong influence, if you will, to try to get china to change its ways. listen to what sarah huckabee sanders. the president has made some head way the e.u. in terms of lowering trade barriers, taking steps towards levelling the playing field. does the president and his team believe that is possible with china without taking some real punitive measures? we d like to see the playing field levelled. the president as both he and i think about 15 members of his administration have said repeatedly, we d like to see the unfair trade practices stop. until that happens, the president will hold their feet to the fire and put pressure on china and he s not going to allow american industries and american workers to be taken advantage of. so here s the calculation that the white house is making. the united states buys about $500 billion, maybe more than that of goods from china every year. china buys $130 billion of american goods. if it comes for a tit for tat war, the u.s. believes they can last longer. $130 billion on the chinese side versus $500 billion on the u.s. side, the calculation, shep, is that they have more bullets to fight a trade war than china does. shep? shepard: thanks, john. the white house echoed the president s false tweets claiming the dossier is the reason for the russian elements of it that are confirmed true. no part of it to fox news knowledge has been confirmed false. the special counsel, robert mueller, is a registered republican. the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who appointed mueller is also a republican. attorney general jeff sessions who swore in rosenstein is also a republican. president trump, a republican appointed sessions. the dossier is 35 pages of research memos. christopher steele wrote it. he s a former british intelligence agent. a research firm called fusion gps compiled the memos. they allege conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russian government to help mr. trump win the election over hillary clinton. republicans supporting marco rubio hired the research firm. when mr. trump won the nomination, the group stopped funding the research and the clinton campaign took it over. in virginia outside d.c., it s day two of the criminal trial of the president s former campaign manager, paul manafort. it s the first trial resulting from robert mueller s investigation. today we learned the government s star witness may not testify. prosecutors are describing paul manafort as the mastermind behind a multimillion dollar scheme to evade taxing and banking laws. the judge said manafort s lavish lifestyle is not on trial. he blocked mueller s team from showing the jury pictures of a closet full of clothes. the prosecutor said manafort dropped $15,000 on a jacket made of ostrich skin. rick gates pleaded guilty in the mueller investigation and has been cooperating in the federal government in its investigation. he was expected to testify against his old boss but prosecutors say that may not happen. paul manafort faces more than a dozen charges including bank fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy. he s pleaded not guilty. these charged are connected to the rob lobbying he did in ukraine. president trump has repeatedly said there was no collusion. peter doocy is live at the courthouse. peter? shep, the photos the mueller team wanted to show today of paul manafort s $7,500 cashmere suit or $9,500 cream trousers were taken in the fbi raid. the court s seizing agent was on the stand. he testified that when agents showed up unannounced, they knocked, waiting 30 seconds and repeated that three times. nobody answered. at which point they used a key to get in. the fbi agent would not say where the key to manafort s condo came from. that account from the fbi does dispute earlier accounts there was no a no-knock raid because they say that they did knock but it had no impact. however under cross examination, the fbi agent said he s not surprised. nobody came to the door at 6:00 a.m. but what the special counsel is doing, demonstrating that they don t want to use a paper trail, computer files, paper files of transactions that were seized that show that manafort was spending a lot of money they allege from the hidden accounts from international wire transfers. they want jurors to see the actual physical high-dollar clothing that manafort was allegedly using this money for. the judge said that it might be prejudicial to present photos in addition to the transfers and he stress add again today like yesterday, it s not illegal to be really rich and throw money around, shep. shepard: why doesn t the judge want the mueller team to use the word oligarch in the trial? the judge thinks that oligarch has a pajorative meaning. so he thinks that if the mueller team will describe the people that manafort was doing business with in the ukraine as oligarchs, it might be prejudicial again. he said these are people that finance campaigns like the judge said the koch brothers as opposed to criminals. when the judge give instructions like that to the defense or mueller team, he asks the jury to leave the room so the six men and six women from virginia that decide his fate are not there to see the judge pushing back. shepard: peter doocy, thank you. dozens of troops killed in the korean war could be making the journey home. north korea agreed to return the documents the remains and we ll have the details coming up after this. allergies with sinus congestion and pressure? you won t find relief here. go to the pharmacy counter for powerful claritin-d. while the leading allergy spray relieves 6 symptoms. claritin-d relieves 8, including sinus congestion and pressure. claritin-d relieves more. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. how it s done? please. real people with active psoriatic arthritis are changing the way they fight it. they re moving forward with cosentyx. it s a different kind of targeted biologic. it s proven to help people find less joint pain and clearer skin. don t use if you are allergic to cosentyx. before starting cosentyx you should be checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms of an infection. or if you have received a vaccine, or plan to. if you have inflammatory bowel disease tell your doctor if symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. mitzi: with less joint pain, watch me. for less joint pain and clearer skin, ask your rheumatologist about cosentyx. shepard: dozens of u.s. troops killed in the korean war may finally make the journey home 60 years later. north korea agreed to return the remains. the caskets set to arrive in hawaii hours from now. the north koreans included a single dog tag, no other information. it could take months if not years to identify the remains. dan springer live in honolulu where the vice president mike pence will be on hand for a ceremony to mark the arrival of the remains. hello, dan. this is a big deal to many americans, including vice president pence whose son is in the marine corps now and his father was a korean war hero. he fought in the war and honored with a bronze star. this is important today to anyone who has wore the uniform. it shows how far the u.s. government will go to bring its war dead home. we had the pleasure to meet a bunch of veterans. they get together every tuesday and been doing it the last 20 years. ten of them will take part in the ceremony as part of the honor guard. among them, herb shriner. his younger brother, alan, killed in the war. his body did come home. however, more than 7,600 did not. i know how it feels to have somebody that lost their lives for freedom to come home. i feel it. i feel bad for those that cannot identify to receive their dead or brothers when they come home. today s ceremony will take place in about four hours from now. about a mile away from where we are. then they ll be brought back here, the remains brought back to this building behind me. this is where the real work will begin. this is where the defense powmia accounting agency or dpaa, will get to work to try to identify the remains of those brought home. they re the best of the best in the world doing that. since they have one dog tag, they will use a lot of science including dna. dna has been used to identify positively about 60% of the cases. it s a painstaking process that the people that do this know matters. one of the few countries in the world that spends this efforts and time and money to bring closure to our military families. each one of those families has been made a promise by the u.s. military to come home. we re the end of that promise. the dpaa has many sets of remains in their building here all the way back to world war ii and they will get through the work of trying to identify the new 55 boxes. the 55 boxes may contain perhaps hundreds of individual service members killed in the korean war. shep? shepard: dan springer, thanks. lawmakers apparently trying to send a message to president trump. congress can get things done. in the last hour, the senate wrapped up a frenzy of budget votes after the president threatened to shut down over spending. we ll give you details coming up on the fox news deck this wednesday afternoon. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, are you okay? even when i was there, i never knew when my symptoms would keep us apart. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira can help get, and keep uc under control when other medications haven t worked well enough. and it helps people achieve control that lasts. so you can experience few or no symptoms. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, control is possible. a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it s the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. shepard: president trump s threat to shut down the u.s. government over border wall funding may have lit a fire under congress. the evidence is, the senate passed a spending bill which has approved seven of 12 annual spending bills. the deadline to fund the entire government is october 1. chad pergram is with us now from there. the president is demanding exactly what, that the congress is not willing to give him? he s demanding funding for this border wall. in the 7 of 12 bills, none of which address the homeland security spending bill, which is where the wall money would reside. they passed 7 of 12. the president threatened in march to not approve another big bill like they did back then. the omnibus. what they re doing, taking a volkswagen approach here, the mini buses where they put a batch of three bills together. one group, legislative branch, the v.a. the bill they passed today, 98-6 with the department of energy and the interior department. agricultural spending. so what they re doing is doing the mini buses. they re not going to get to that homeland security bill until later. this is the gop message. we re going to work in august. we get the spending bills done. the problem is the president is tramping on their message which leaves chuck schumer very upset. we re working in a remarkably smooth bipartisan way. we hope that is a predent of things to come. we hope to work together and not let outside forces mess that up, not to mention any names. our immigration system is completely broken and he s begging and has been for can congress, particularly democrats, to step up and do their jobs, stop kicking the ball down the field and work with him to fix our system. it s that simple. again, this was the approach by senate republicans to work and try to pass some of these bills in good faith to show the president that they were passing these pieces of legislation and still he s stepping on their message. when the president talks about a government shut down, i remember talking to a republican congressman some years ago, the tactics of forcing a government shut down to get your way. trying to force a government shut down for political games is like trying to break dance around nitroglycerin. shepard: are republicans expressing concern about this talk of a government shut down? absolutely. i talked to richard shelby yesterday from alabama. he called the president s approach mind boggling. this would seem to affect house republicans more significantly. there s 40 plus open seats there. if you have a government shut down before the mid-terms, that s a problem. might not affect the senate as much because the field favors democrats over republicans. a lot of folks said we had a government shut down in 2013, 2014 in the mid-terms. we won the most seats in the house. we seized back control of the senate there. what is the problem? the difference is doing this before the mid-terms what in a government shut down happens just as they re trying to confirmed brett kavanaugh to the court? two ways you can read this. you have a shut down and they have stepped on the message again. maybe he s not confirmed by october 1. mitch mcconnell said that could drift into october and sets it back a couple weeks. they re playing with fire here with a potential government shut down, especially as it pertains to brett kavanaugh. shepard: chad, you re the man. thank you. coming up, the family of a missing college student molly tibbets speaking to fox news. we ll hear from her boyfriend and what he has to say about how he s been demonized since she s disappeared. flames on a plane never good. what started a fire on a packed passenger jet next. motorcycle revving motorcycle revving motorcycle revving motorcycle revving no matter who rides point, there are over 10,000 allstate agents riding sweep. and just like tyrone taylor, they know what it takes to help keep you protected. are you in good hands? one person said the phone blew up and everybody went running. folks said they were about 100 feet from the gate when it happened. they evacuated the plane and nobody got hurt. rescuers saved five people from a collapse in pennsylvania. that is according to officials in faith county. happened during heavy rain and high winds. no word on their condition. tens of thousands of lightning flashes reported in arizona during a thunderstorm. tens of thousands. happened monday. we just got the video. national weather service reports 4,000 strikes and 35,000 flashes during the storm. the storm knocked out power across the phoenix area. the news continues from fox news channel after this. i promise to have and to hold by finding him a $500,000 policy for under $26 per month. and found kathy, 37, a $750,000 policy for just $22 per month. since 1985, we ve helped millions of families by finding them affordable coverage by impartially shopping highly rated insurers offering over 70 policies. dad, you re coming right? you promise? you promise? you promise? i promise. shepard: today marks two weeks since college student molly tibbets went missing. her father speaking to fox news about his daughter and telling us about her life and things that he believes we should know. i ve been telling people, you know, the genius of molly was her ability to make everything about other people, to be generally honest and asking questions. maybe not talking aboutherself, that s what really endeared her to have everyone in the community. molly s boyfriend, dalton jack, also talked to fox ne. molly had been staying there at his home to wat the dogs when acco the stement. police the laste anydy saw her that we know of was during the run. dalton, the boyfriend, says his family is not worried about molly worried about him as well. i ve extremely worried about me and, you know, the way the public is, yow, demonized me a little bit. evybody is thinkingbo me after this is all over and she s back safe. shepard: we re focusing on her. po theave gotte more than 200 leads about where molly might be and the police have thanked the news media for their efforts to publicize this. hi, eric. molly tibbets is 20 years old and vanished near brooklyn, iowa. an hour east of des moines. a heart breaking story. a student at the university of iowa. last seen jogging at night. she lived at her boyfriend s house for the summer. she s an avid jogger and regularly ran 40 minutes a day. law enforcement ruled out anything by her boyfriend, dalton jacks. he was in dubuque at the time that molly was said to disappear. they were scheduled to be in the dominican republic. they were high school sweet hearts. his family says any suspicions about him are wrong. i don t want to go racking it through my brain thing what happened, what happened. just driving myself insane. i know everybody else around here is. you have to lead by example. i love you and i miss you and i want you to come home. it s heart breaking to go through what he and the family has been going through. shepard: tell us more about the search. the search is continuing and going on ever since she first vanished. friends and neighbors and others have gathered. they ve been going through corn fields and big farms. volunteers and the number has been growing. molly s family hoping for any information that can help bring her back. authorities say her disappearance and their words are not consistent with her past. everyone knows everyone. everyone talks to everyone. you can t do anything there without someone seeing it. so we need to get that person or persons to come forward with that information so we re getting the message out. the bottom line is, somebody knows something. who is that somebody? molly s father says no amount of information is too small that people should come forward to police. shepard: thanks, eric shawn. wild fire alert. crews are trying to get a handle on one of the most destructive fires in california history. the fire in the northern part of the state has destroyed 1,000 homes. it happened around the city of redding. it s forcing nearly 40,000 people to leave their homes. the fires killed at least six people so far and just one of more than a dozen big fires burning in california right now. the fox business network s hillary vaughn is live in redding. hillary? shepard, some of the 32,000 evacuees are waiting to get back in their neighborhoods. there s pockets of devastation that look like this behind me where the houses are completely levelled. you may see a chimney a door frame. everything else ash. homes are a shell of the home still exists. there may be valuables inside. cal fire posted signs to prevent residents sifting through what valuables may be left behind. there s some hunting trophies that sur 5ed the fire. there s some sets of tools. again, residents completely blocked from going inside. the culprit behind this devastation is the carr fire, the sixth most damaging fire in california history. i went to the fire line to get a look. here s what i saw i. what you see burning behind me is the carr fire. it s the sixth most destructive in california history. it s 35% con taped. it all started by a car breaking down on the side of the road. engine fire, setting up sparks and igniting what is called a monster. it s so erratic and volatile. firefighters are having a hard time beating back the flames. it s killed six people, including two firefighters and it s wiped out entire neighborhoods and whipped up a fire tornado that terrorized the community of redding. shepard, that smoke that you saw hit any face is the wind changing directions erratically. that s what s causing these firefighters a lot of challenges. overall, the state has spent $119 million just on fire suppression. not the cost of the two structures that has been lost. that s almost a quarter of the fire budget and we re a month into the budget. shepard? shepard: thanks, hillary. a priest on board a plane that crashed in mexico says the weather was so bad, he thought the pilot might call off the flight. that s what he told one of the producers on this program. the aero mexico flight crashed at take off during a storm of hail, rain and strong winds and every person on board survived. it happened in durango state, about 500 miles north and west of mexico city. the priest says he broke his arm but is okay and is calling the outcome a miracle. the governor there says all 99 passengers and four crew made it out alive. the pilot was seriously hurt. some images for you in the slide show this afternoon. the pictures are incredible. i was looking at this on my phone. like how in the world did everybody survive this thing? red cross workers here carrying somebody on a stretcher. airline workers are walking away from the burning wreckage. rescuers took dozens to the possible mostly with minor injuries. firefighters rushed to the scene. the plane crashed in a field near the airport. experts say they re not surprised everybody survived. they say airports are designed with fields around them in case something like this happened. it certainly looks like it broke in half and there s a fire. so i don t know. here s some passengers walking through that field to red cross workers that got to the scene quickly, we re told. analysts say companies are making planes with new improvements to make survival more likely. they ve made seats stronger and now use less flammable material. here s smoke billowing in the sky as passengers walked away. anita vogel with more. an amazing story. yeah. eye witnesses say they saw the plane dropping rapidly from the sky. you can imagine the panic all the way around. as you mentioned, weather reports indicated is severe scattered storms. the governor of durango says the plane was hit by a sudden gust of wind that caused a sudden descent. the wing hit the ground and two engines came off. the aircraft made an emergency landing. air 5 people suffered injuries. 49 people were taken to the hospital. there was fire and a lot of smoke, but people managed to get out anyway they could. i ll read one of the spanish translations here. a passenger said a hole opened behind us. i unbuckled my son s seat belt and got out that way. we jumped. the back was full of smoke and more people were trapped. that s an eye witness account from one passenger. apparently the pilot was the most seriously injured person requiring a surgery. even he is expected to recover. as far as the safety record of this airline, aero mexico, its last deadly accident was in 1981 when 32 people were killed when one of the planes crashed on landing. the president of the airline said the president was in perfect condition and had just had maintenance in february. even though it seems like weather was to blame here, mexican aviations said it will actually take months to know the exact cause of the crash. nonetheless though, shepard, a lot of very lucky people on board. back to you. shepard: a big change in healthcare could mean cheaper insurance for you. critics are warning you get what you pay for. the details coming up. (man) managing my type 2 diabetes wasn t my top priority. until i held her. i found my tresiba® reason. now i m doing more to lower my a1c. i take tresiba® once a day. tresiba® controls blood sugar for 24 hours for powerful a1c reduction. (woman) we d been counting down to his retirement. it was our tresiba® reason. he needs insulin to control his high blood sugar and, at his age, he s at greater risk for low blood sugar. tresiba® releases slow and steady and works all day and night like the body s insulin. (vo) tresiba® is a long-acting insulin 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. (man) i found my tresiba® reason. find yours. (vo) ask your health care provider about tresiba®. covered by most commercial health insurance and medicare part d plans. when you barely clip a tpassing car. minor accident - no big deal, right? wrong. your insurance company is gonna raise your rate after the other car got a scratch so small you coulda fixed it with a pen. maybe you should take that pen and use it to sign up with a different insurance company. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won t raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty hi, kristina. you re right, she s are short term policies that have been around awhile. you can have them for a year and then you can renew them every year for up to three years. so it sounds great. an alternative for the affordable care act, president trump said he wants to provide a cheaper option to the affordable care act. but there are some differences. there are differences. what are you getting with the short term policy? that does not cover a lot of aspects that the affordable care act covers like mental health, prescription drugs. you can t automatically get it every year. you have to apply for it. you can t apply for federal subsidies. if you re sick or any pre-existing medical conditions, then you may most likely will not be eligible for the short term plan. it could be costly and should you become sick when you re on the plan. let s say you get diagnosed with cancer. you could be hit with high costs. the plan will be cheaper the affordable care act is $393. the short term policy is cheaper, around $124. still doesn t cover everything. could be eligible in october. that s when they plan on releasing it. shepard: kristina partsinevelos, thanks. apple could be the first u.s. public company to be worth $1 trillion. so if you had invested $2,500 in the company in 1984, you would have made more than a million dollars by now. let s see apple is trading at the moment. up close to 6%. 5.38% on the session at 201.38 usd. susan lee is here. the stock is $2 away from crossing the trillion dollar mark, right? last night they put in strong numbers. there s this transition period where you pay for apple phone and i pay, apple tv, the itunes. the i services. giving cash back to investors, this is a perfect storm. that s why you re looking at the shares rallying big. there was a time when they cut back on the production. shifting to the eight and praises going down. people wondering is apple not going to exceed their goals? yes, exceeded them. yes. that s why the average selling price went up. we have a new iphone cycle coming up. shepard: and they re worried about tariffs in china. yes. apple makes the phone in china and sells them in america. so far they ve been unaffected by the tariffs. but they re looking closely. if we have the 25% of $200 billion of goods, apple could be caught up and you ll have to pay more. tim cook saying the tariffs are taxed on the consumer. they have to pay the tariffs, this will lower economic growth. that s not good for america. shepard: john roberts was talking about how the president believes we have more bullets than china in a trade war but that comes from the dollars of people s wallets. everything cost more. susan lee, nice to have you in. thank you. shepard: people in california could vote in november on a plan to breakaway from the united states and create their own country. insert your joke here. now supporters are adding a new twist. a buffer zone between the new nation and what they call donald trump s america. that s next. woman: it felt great not having hepatitis c. it s like a load off my shoulders. i was just excited for it to be over. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it s been prescribed to more than a quarter million people and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni your doctor will test to see if you ve ever had hepatitis b which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after harvoni treatment. tell your doctor if you ve ever had hepatitis b, a liver transplant, other liver or kidney problems, hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. ready to let go of hep c? ask your hep c specialist about harvoni. - (phone ringing)a phones offers - big button,ecialized phones. and volume-enhanced phones., get details on this state program. call or visit and accessoriesphones for your mobile phone. like this device to increase volume on your cell phone. - ( phone ringing ) - get details on this state program call or visit shepard: you may have heard about folks in california trying to break part of the state away from a separate country. the group has a plan to give away nearly half the state to create and independent native american nation. you can see how everything would be divided. the native american nation is there in orange. organizers have until october to gather enough signatures to get this on the ballot. jonathan hunt is taking us on a ride up the flagpole. tell us about this thing here. shep, the idea is that when california, not even they secede, all federal lands in california from the southern border of mexico to oregon will be given to native americans creating what organizers call the first autonomous native american native in california. why not do something wrong to right the native americans and give them back their land. and claims it will have a minute mammal minimal impact on california. and now louis marinelli and his supporters have until october to gather signatures of registered voters to put the proposal up for a vote, shep. shepard: there s politics involved here. yes, surprise surprise. certainly in the eyes of number of calixax, the plan would create a buffer zone between donald trump s america and the new independent california republic. most of the federal land being handed over to native americans under this proposal would be on what might be considered the more conservative leaning section of california. and marinelli disagreed saying our campaign is not motivated by the political power in washington. we re motivated by the fact that california is a distinct society with the capability to govern itself. this campaign is different than the proposal to split california into three, which was blocked by the california supreme court, which said it was to different to be dealt with in a ballot initiative. that could be a ball sign for the cal exit proposal. the president says we ll see what happens. shepard: we shall see. top of the hour headlines minutes away. gas, bloating, constipation, and diarrhea can start in the colon, and may be signs of an imbalance of good bacteria. only phillips colon health has this unique combination of probiotics. it helps replenish good bacteria. get four-in-one symptom defense. the nation s largest senior-living referral service. for the past five years, i ve spoken with hundreds of families and visited senior-care communities around the country. and i ve got to tell you, today s senior-living communities are better than ever. these days, there are amazing amenities, like movie theaters, exercise rooms and swimming pools, public cafes, bars, and bistros, even pet-care services. and nobody understands your options like the advisers at a place for mom. these are local, expert advisers that will partner with you to find the perfect place and determine the right level of care, whether that s just a helping hand or full-time memory care. best of all, it s a free service. there is never any cost to you. senior living has never been better, and there s never been an easier way to get great advice. call today. a place for mom you know your family, we know senior living. together we ll make the right choice.