plus literally dialing up the rhetoric. president trump and president putin set to talk as counterpart tomorrow. but who s calling who? keir simmons in new york, kristen welker at the white house. big meeting today, big phone call tomorrow but it s the meeting that s not happening that s grabbing all the headlines, right? that s right. that meeting that was supposed to happen with the president of mexico which was cancelled yesterday after president trump insisted that mexico was going to pay for the wall, the president of mexico said not going to pay for the wall. that is something we have heard him say over and over again. then we learned he cancelled the meeting. president trump tried to cast it as a mutual decision. bottom line, this is a rift in a relation with one of the united states closest allies, its third largest trading partner. what happens next? the administration floating the idea of a possible 20% tax on imports from mexico and, hallie, for a very busy day. keir simmons is in new york. theresa may has to thread this very delicate needle. that s right. in her speech she was able to send a signal to president trump that, if you like, she s on his side, that britain and america see things at the same way and at the same time send a number of messages that will have been picked up and have been picked up back in the u.k. about things like nato, about russia, about iran, about a whole range issues and primarily saying to president trump, america still needs to lead in the world. so that balance she still needs to strike as she prepares to meet with the president at 1:00 eastern today. she still needs to be able to somehow build trust with him while at the same time be her own person. oh, to be a fly on the wall. if people haven t seen her before yesterday, a school mistress type. she s a serious person. why? she got a number of standing ovations but the first laugh didn t happen until about 30 minutes into that speech. so that s the kind of person she is. how will that gel with president trump? you know what she said to british journalists on the flight over here? opposites attract. i was going to ask you about the idea of president trump who is on twitter, theresa may don t even hav a twitter account. will opposites attract in this instance politically? we don t know. she does have an official twitter account. if you take a look at it, all that is on there, posted on there are clips from her speeches and official announcements. it s such a contrast. who knows. when you think about the reagan-thatcher relationship, in some ways reagan was the warm, kind of easy going thatcher was the star owner s daughter, she famously had the handbag, she was famously tough and together that seemed to gel. it s so crucial with international relations. but in a sense, though, hallie, we re talking there about the way things have been and president trump as so far seems to change so much. and that s what s so difficult for world leaders is figuring out how things will work in the future. and the real danger for the british and the real danger for any world leader who chooses to take the road which the british prime minister has is to stay as the british always has really close to washington. the danger is that president trump starts to do things that britain really doesn t agree with and how does she respond to that? fundamentally she knows that if she has washington on side, it really strengthens her negotiations with the european union, but it s full of risks. keir, i think you should hop on a train and get down to washington because there s a lot of anticipation for that meeting. thank you very much, keir simmons at 30 rock. and reaction from another key al ally, mexico. press secretary sean spicer first said there would be a 20% attack on imports. two hours later backing off after some backlash saying that s just one of many options. president trump not backing off his promise that mexico will, in fact, pay for the wall. i ve said many times that the american people will not pay for the wall. and i ve made that clear to the government of mexico. we re working on a tax reform bill that will reduce our trade deficit, increase american exports and will generate revenue from mexico that will pay for the wall if we decide to go that route. reminder, mexico says it is not going to pay for that wall mariana atencio is joining us this morning. you ve been talking to folks there in the capital. what are they saying? reporter: i ve spoken to business leaders who tell me in board rooms across this nation, they are waiting to see what president trump will do. mexicans are angry, appalled at president trump s dismissive tone toward a nation they say has contributed so much to the u.s. economy. i m here with senator armando rios. senator, what will be discussed in this meeting given president trump s executive actions on immigration and the wall? well, we need to hear the minister of economy and the minister of foreign relations. we just went there to the united states last tuesday. we need to hear their report and we need to take some actions for knowing which are the next steps too take regarding security, regarding trade. we need to have a common position with the senate, off course with president pena anyw nieto. what kind of actions are being evaluatevaluated? my position is we should stop negotiating with the united states regarding security issues, regarding anti-terrorism that we ve been working to the for the last years and that now it has no sense to keep on collaborating with an unfriendly government, specifically in the drug enforcement area. of course we need to take a look at what we need to change because we are spending so much money with some kind of relationship that doesn t seem to be in the benefit for us anymore. and what about trade, senator? what concrete actions would you consider taking? we need to change our patterns of consumption. we ve been buying a lot of corns for the states of the corn beds, specifically iowa, some of those. we need to start thinking if he wants to tax our goods that are sold there in the united states, we need to change. probably we can change we can buy the corn now to brazil or to argentina and stop buying it. it s a retaliation regarding what he s saying. thank you so much, senator. i don t want to keep you from the meeting with president pena. you heard it, possible concrete actions regarding the war on drugs and consumer products, as you heard. rachel, we were watching that interview together and you were sort of nodding and said at one point, that s exactly the issue. walk me through what you heard and what stood out to you. i any whthink what we heard there is rising tension with mexico and we can expect representatives in that government are going to feel the need to retaliate, that whether or not concrete actions are taken, we know that rhetoric coming from president trump is having some very tangible effects within mexico. so whether we talking about a trade war, whether we re talking about decreased cooperation at the border, we re talking about problems hitting american consumers, we re talking about problems with combatting the drug trade at the border. this is a partner for the united states. mexico has served as a collaborator and a partner for the last two decades. let s not forget that that want always true. put this into context for me here. i spoke with alfonso aguilar. he said, listen, this lack of a meeting with pena nieto is not a long-term problem, a 20% tax would be. is this a bump in the road or are we going to be talking about this two years ago from a turning point? i don t think that one meeting is a problem. i think over a year of aggressive rhetoric towards mexico is what we can point to as the problem. i think we can say that year of very aggressive rhetoric. every country has the right to defend itself. the united states has the right to secure its borders as it sees fi this rhetoric around we have to build this wall, making this very aggressive and confrontational, i think that s what we ll see as the turning point is the way this is addressed. so if the wall discussion was happening but with a different tone from pluresident trump, do you see that as problematic? i think if president trump was saying i think it s important to find a way to increase borders and find a way to work more closely with our partners in the region to combat drug trade, i think that would be a legitimate discussion. how real is the idea this lift could embolden the liberal wing of mexican politics and put someone into power who is more anti-u.s.? i think we re already seeing massive support for the leading candidate of the opposition, who really advocates for separating from the united states. i absolutely think this could have a very heavy influence, if not jest the wall but specifically the larger relationship. i think you re seeing a sentiment among mexicans if the u.s. doesn t play with us, we don t want to play with them. but how do they play if they re literally not speaking to each other? part what was so insulting about trump s exetive orders was he signed them the day the foreign minister was in the united states talking to his government. to say they re not talking is not true. the foreign minister was on his way to meet with the president there and drove right past and kept on going. this is a country we share 2,000 miles of borders with, over the last 250-some years, w created a relationship with. i think we shouldn t have such short-term memories and we should be worried when we see someone not walking in the door to have that conversation see that has illustrative. much more coming up on president trump s tense relationships with mexico. after the break, we re joined by juan vargas. or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. find out how american here you go.picking up for kyle. you wouldn t put up with part of a pizza. um. something wrong? so when it comes to pain relievers, why put up with just part of a day? you want the whole thing? yes, yes! live whole. not part. aleve. oh the fishes will laugh as they swim out of the path when the ship comes in by the hollies and the seagulls they ll be smilin and the rocks on the sand it s so peaceful out here. yeah. introducing the new turbocharged volkswagen alltrack with 4motion® all-wheel drive. soon to be everywhere. whfight back fastts, with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums just like the people every business is different. but every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. whether it be with customer contracts, agreements to lease a space or protecting your work. legalzoom s network of attorneys can help you, every step of the way. so you can focus on what you do and we ll handle the legal stuff that comes up along the way. legalzoom. legal help is here. . the president of the great nation of the most powerful nation in the world, please grow up, be or try to be a real president. that s former mexican president vicente fox on morning joe. he has never been shy about his feelings. let s bring in the congressman from california. you have a seen eke punique per. he says not only will mexico not pay for the ball but the relationship with our neighbor is at the lowest point in decades. interestingly i was an observer when he got elected. he broke the old pri monopoly in politics. it is time for donald trump to grow up. we have a great relationship along the border with mexico. with one of the things i was thinking about is a lot of the deaths happened on the mexican side. we have a great relationship with law enforcement with mexico, locally, at the state and at the federal level. we work with mexico quite closely to make sure that a lot of the problems they have with the narco traffickers. are you working closely or do you plan to work closely with the trump administration? are you having conversations? where do you see an opportunity to work with republicans on this? it s clear the president is not going to simply change his mind like that? it s true. we have to try to work together. independe i m a democrat and i m very progressive, however, we didn t win. he won. unfortunately he s a bit of a caricature president. he doesn t seem to be a real president at the moment but there s a lot of serious people around him and we re trying to work together and we have to work together. we have a long border here. i represent the entire california/mexico border. we have lots of positive things going on. the things happening here along the border have been very good for both sides. we want to make sure that continues. we can t when you get all this heavy, awful rhetoric that is affecting our relation sishipre. i m going to work with the administration as well as i can. i m on the national prayer breakfast on thursday and i ll see him then. what do you plan to say to him when you see them then? chill out! read the bible a little bit. chill out. he s there for a religious person. look at matthew 25. when i was a stranger, you welcomed me. that s what jesus says. why don t you pay attention a little more to the bible. i think it will make things better for everybody. he s been probably hearing that message a little bit as he s been promising this border wall for 18 months, i think. if he moves forward of building this wall, what are your options? we already have the fence. in some areas, we have three walls. so they ve already built these. i kind of laugh when people talk about this. they put these things in saying this was going to stop immigration. it didn t. people got bigger ladders, they tunnelled underneath. unless he wants to put up a fourth fence, a fourth wall somewhere, we already have it. if you start at the ocean, literally 150 yards into the ocean, they have all these gigantic pillars and the three border mountai border fences go to the mountains and they you can t build anything. the first one didn t work, the second one didn t work, the third one didn t work and i assume the fourth one s not going to work either. democratic congressman want vargas of california, we re going to get you on our schedule after that meeting with president trump. right now tens of thousands of people are expected t gather not far from where i m sitting right now near the washington monument for the annual march for life. history being made with vice president pence addressing the crowd. you re looking at live pictures before the rally begins. we ll head there live after the break. i am totally blind. watry.duo fusiong heartburn relief? duo fusion goes to work in seconds and lasts up to 12 hours. tums only lasts up to 3. for longer lasting relief.in one chewable tablet try duo fusion from the makers of zantac your date with destiny has arrived. let s do this! new cinnamon frosted flakes are finally here. sweet cinnamon and the frosted crunch you love. well? tastes like victory t. tastes like victory. they re great! the wife of saeed maruk. she faces 20 years behind bars. today we will see more involvement in the anti-abortion rally with the attendance of vice president mike pence. this is historic today, mike pence, the first sitting vice president who ever come and speak live to this group. a lot of excitement and optimism in this crowd. for the past eight years there s been a feeling that there wouldn t be able to advance their agenda much under the obama administration. now they say this is a whole different ball game. so a very optimist being crowic. i want to talk to women who drove out here from ohio. this is the first time you ve been to the march? it is the first time i ve been here. i felt like i was drawn here and i was supposed to be here for a reason. i believe this is the reason. and what s your feeling under this new administration? are you feeling more optimistic? we ve heard that from a lot of people. i am feeling more optimistic. i feel like tha the pro-life movement, the agenda, is going to be more heard from. okay. and what do you hope to get out of today? what s the message you d like to tell the rest of america? well, i think the reason i m here is because i honestly believe president trump has brought god back into washington, d.c. and back into the white house and i am just thrilled to be here. and what are you hoping to hear from the vice president today when he speaks? well, i m excited to hear what he has to say. i think it s going to be encouraging and uplifting. it s a new day in our country. that s what we re hearing from a lot of people in the crowd, this sense of optimism moving forward. nbc s kristen dahlgren live for us on the mall. thank you. president trump plans to speak with russian president vladimir putin on the weekend about what the white house is saying about the russian sanctions on the other side of the break. if you have medicare so don t wait. call now to request your free decision guide. it could help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that works for you. these types of plans have no networks, so you get to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. rates are competitive, and they re the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. remember - these plans let you apply all year round. so call today. because now s the perfect time to learn more. go long. donald trump had toward putin in the campaign. a lot of eyeballs. i don t know if there s going to be any ears listening in. i doubt they re going to tap their own phone calls but maybe. stranger things have happen. a hint from kellyanne conway. she made it very clear that lifting sanctions on russia would be an option. have a listen. all of that is under consideration and certainly in addition to improving relations with different leaders around the globe. if vladimir putin wants to have a conversation about how to defeat radical islamism, we re listening. two years ago it was then president barack obama who initially had to drag angela merkel along on sanctions with russia because there s so many economic ties between germany and russia. one other quick note on this meeting here, mattis will be meeting in the tank with the joint chiefs and president trump. they had dinner a couple of nights ago, all they white house about a two-hour meeting to discuss a range of issues. so we ll see whether or not there are actually any tasking orders or presidential directives to the present gone saying come up with some new plans to accelerate the plan. and mattis has been sworn in. he got his hair cut at the pentagon. the price is $12. you go in, you ask for a hair cut and they have one question, civilian or military? i ll get back to you on whether he asked for a civilian or military. hans, i don t know what we would do without you. thank you, pal. ambassador, hair cuts aside, i want to get your reaction on what we just heard from kellyanne conway. she said the lifting of sanctions on russia is under consideration. overall reaction to that, perhaps unsurprising maybe? this administration likes to lay out a lot of different options and create leverage for possible concessions. isis remains the priority for president trump and lifting financial sanctions is the priority for mr. putin. you can expect some kind of a combination there. this is the first call they ll have had and i think there will be pleasantries and introductory discussions as well. with president putin, my advice is to engage. there is nothing inevitable between conflict between the conflict with the west. butgage with russia from a position of strength. engage but beware. how does donald trump actually do that and will he do that? will that message from theresa may get through when the president has talked repeatedly about wanting a better and stronger relationship with vladimir putin? we ve also heard president trump talking about rebuilding our nuclear arsenal or updating it, talked about military investment. i think he s going to have a two-track strategy to project m america s defense and military capabilities will be robust but we need an ally in the fight against isis and radical islamic extremism. the challenge is going to be what happens in europe with nato. will there continue to be this tit for tat in overflights and reckless actions by mr. putin on the frontier of europe? in this phone call nato might come up. is there a way that donald trump could step in it with vladimir putin? england and theresa may are no fans of mr. putin. so inevitably i think there are a lot mine fields but i don t think they re going to take place in this phone call. this is going to be an opening gamut. i think that everybody s going to be reading between the lines but this is really going to be about just resetting, a poor choice of words, that s the clinton policy. but reestablishing a rapport with the russian leadership and of course it s going to be fraught with all kind of complications. ambassador stewart holliday. appreciate you being here. president trump talking about waterboarding, talking about how he believes it is actually an effective interrogation methods and experts in the field agree. is he right? plus other recent comments when we come back. can i give it to you straight? that airline credit card you have. it could be better. it s time to shake things up. with the capital one venture card, you get double miles on everything you buy, not just airline purchases. seriously, think of all the things you buy. great.is this why you asked me to coffee? well yeah. but also to catch-up. what s in your wallet? with not food, become food? thankfully at panera, 100% of our food is 100% clean. no artificial preservatives, sweeteners, flavors, or colors. panera. food as it should be. i own my own company. i had some severe fatigue, some funny rashes. finally, listening to my wife, went to a doctor. and i became diagnosed with hodgkin s lymphoma .that diagnosis was tough. i had to put my trust in somebody. when i first met steve, we recommended chemotherapy, and then we did high dose therapy and then autologous stem cell transplant. unfortunately, he went on to have progressive disease i thought that he would be a good candidate for immune therapy. it s an intravenous medicine that is going to make his immune system evade the tumor. with chemotherapy, i felt rough, fatigue, nauseous. and with immune therapy we ve had such a positive result. i m back to working hard. i ve honestly never felt this great. i believe the future of immunotherapy at ctca is very bright. the evolution of cancer care is here. learn more at cancercenter.com appointments available now. nitrites or artificial ham has preservatives.tes, now it s good for us all. like those who like. sweet those who prefer heat. sfx - a breath of air and those who just love meat. oscar mayer deli fresh. sweet! i checked, everything s there. wait a minute. hey. hold on, i can explain. you better have a good answer. switch to geico and you could save a ton of money on your car insurance. why didn t you say so in the first place? i thought you s was wearing a wire. haha, what? why would i wear a wire? geico. because saving fifteen percent or more on car insurance is always a great answer. waterboarding used to be used because they said it reall wasn t torture. it was the one step slightly before torture. i mean, torture is realtor ch t. i spoke with people who said absolutely it works. absolutely. that is president trump talking about waterboarding as an effective tool in the war or terror. is he right? when you look at the idea of torture being effect iveffectivo you the experts say ? you look at james mattis who says i never found it effective. and those are the voices from donald trump s own team and donald trump said those voices with matter to him but then you end up going to what obama administration say, director leon panetta saying about water boarding and he ended u admitting that waterboarding was part of how they ended up getting to bin laden. so it was used. you still have so many people on donald trump s team who says it s illegal but possible. here in philadelphia the murder rate has been steady, just terribly increasing. so, mark, is the president right sp. hallie, you look at the numbers. in 1990, there were 500 murders, in 1916, 277. in donald trump s defense, the numbers have gone up very slightly in the past couple of years, but in the totality, philadelphia the crime is much lower than it was a decade or two decades ago. we know the president loves to talk about polls. that s been pretty consistent from the beginning. he s been talking about some that he says americans loved his inaugural speech. he s actually not wrong, right? you look at a gallop poll who said it was excellent or good. in today s environment, 53% sounds good. let s look at the comparison of other presidents and their inaugural addresses. in his second address it was 65% said it was good, his first speech was 81%, president bush s 62%. everything is relative. up next we re talking about the potential political fallout on a tax from mexican imports. what s the blowback going to be if americans start feeling the effects of that tax in their wallets? just like the people who own them, every business is different. but every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. whether it be help starting your business, vendor contracts or employment agreements. legalzoom s network of attorneys can help you every step of the way so you can focus on what you do. we ll handle the legal stuff that comes up along the way. legalzoom. legal help is here. everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. [ park rides, music andoooh!d sounds ] when your pain reliever stops working, your whole day stops. [ sighs sadly ] try this. but just one aleve can last 12 hours. tylenol and advil can quit after 6. so live whole. not part. with aleve. and check your sunday paper for big savings. it raises prices on consumers goods, consumers in the u.s. will be paying for the wall, not mexicans. is this a huge risk of blowback? it has the potential to start a trade war. one of two things happens if a tariff is placed on a product. that cost will be passed on to a consumer. lindsey graham talked about that in the higher tariff on tequila, which he said made him very sad. he said mucho said. he did. it would not be max exico payin for the wall. americans would. i don t know if vicente fox kicking at the ant hill helps or not. the question is how does it get paid for. the jury is still out on it. hopefully there will be more negotiation that goes into it. aisha, do you see a way that mexico could pay for it or will there be a backlash if prices of avocados and what not go up? no. and i think part of the problem is he s gone through trying to drive forward these executive orders and try and do the things he say he was going to do on the campaign. nothing in this plan is well thought out, the financing is not well thought out. i think he ll find out he can t just bully his way through. americans going to realize he sold us a bill of goods and we re not willing to pay for his bill of good and we re certainly not willing to pay for his call. we know that president trump is headed to the pentagon today the pentagon is making it very clear that general mattis opposes torture. donald trump is going to be speaking with not just russia but also germany, france tomorrow. how do you see his stance on torture playing out? it s already created some problems politically for british prime minister theresa may back across the pond. aisha, i ll start with you and chris, i want your take, too. trump has not consulted with any experts on any of these issues he s talking about. in this case we re talking about torture. he has literally running off of his gut and trying to convince us that this is the right pathway. but i think what we re going to continue to see is other leaders, members of congress, are stopping had and saying, wait a minute, we can t do that. even some of his senior advisers are saying to him that s actually against the law and that s wrong. the thing we should be talking about is how do d we end up in a situation that the president doesn t think we should be seeking counsel of his peers and advisers and other experts? the president has said he ll listen to the voices in his cabinet, people like mattis and mike pompeo, who have expressed real concern about torture. do you buy that? i don t think we should jump to conclusions about whether he s consulted or not. we have no idea who he s talking to. i think he did make se promises or charges on the campaign trail about what s he s going to do regarding torture. when you look at it, he has the same position as leon panetta. and that really does lead to a conclusion from donald trump as a candidate. this could be if you use waterboarding, it talks you to bin laden. you ve got to listen to the john mccains of the world. it s really difficult to arrive at a conclusion that torture is okay. having said that, i am confident that donald trump has surrounded himself with a group of advisers, you are mentioned mattis that, will point him in the right direction. i hope you re right. the campaign rhetoric is not the same thing as being able to govern. it s not but i don t think i m one of the few here either. sanctions, if he does lift sanctions against moscow put in place during the obama administration, what message does that sent? i think it s a good thing to improve relations with country like russia. having said that, russia has shown nothing but hostility toward us. that s why the obama administration put the sanctions in place. until we see that that hostility and those attitudes towards a dismissal of our security and process and our system of government is alleviated it, would be a mistake to unilaterally withdraw the sanctions. last word to you. i completely agree. until he gives us some room on syria and negotiating on ukraine, i don t think we need to drop any sanctions. i agree. thank you both for joining news a rare moment of agreement on our political panel at the end. i appreciate it. a live look at the national mall a week after tens of thousands of people came for president trump s inauguration, thousands of people are here for the march for life. we ll have much more. we ll right back. be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. and for just $15.99big festival of shrimp find out how american express cards and services you can pick 2 of 6 new and classic creations on one plate new flavors like sweet bourbon-brown sugar grilled shrimp and bold firecracker red shrimp are too big to last so hurry in. parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what? you could apply for a medicare supplement insurance plan whenever you want. no enrollment window. no waiting to apply. that means now may be a great time to shop for an aarp medare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. medicare doesn t cover everything. and like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, these help cover some of what medicare doesn t pay. so don t wait. call now to request your free decision guide. it could help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that works for you. these types of plans have no networks, so you get to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. rates are competitive, and they re the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. remember - these plans let you apply all year round. so call today. because now s the perfect time to learn more. go long. i am totally blind. i lost my sight in afghanistan. if you re totally blind, you may also be struggling with non-24. calling 844-844-2424. or visit my24info.com. everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. asmy family tree,ing i discovered a woman named marianne gaspard. it was her french name. then she came to louisiana as a slave. i became curious where in africa she was from. so i took the ancestry dna test to find out more about my african roots. the ancestry dna results were really specific. they told me all of these places in west africa. i feel really proud of my lineage, and i feel really proud of my ancestry. ancestry has many paths to discovering your story, get started for free at ancestry.com all right, gang. before we end the show, we want to put into context something that we ve been talking about quite a bit, not just today but over the last 24 hours, the potential of this 20% tax on mexican imports. how is it really going to affect you, your money, what happens to you when you go to the grocery store, when you go to walmart, target or wherever. i want to bring in my colleague, stephanie ruhle, for more on all of this. what does this mean for my mom or dad sitting at home outside philadelphia? or us. if you think about it, we would incur this cost. those donald trump signature suits made in mexico, when macy s cost them they cost $300, with this 20%, macy s would have to eat it or you or me, if you wanted to buy your dad that suit, it would cost an extra $60. but made in america is not a new idea, not a new concept. if you look at the way people spend money today, nobody pays retail. everybody wants a discount. the rise of amazon.com is because people want to pay the lowest amount of money and get the greatest amount of goods. to see macy s would eat the cost, macy s just closed 100 stores. margins have shrunk, companies aren t willing to pay. i know america first is a great sound bite but people don t want to spend. it s not mexico who would incur the cost, it would be the united states. and we saw a walk back, a little bit of whiplash from the team saying this was just a buffet of option, this was not the final plan. that s sort of what s extraordinary here, maybe it s a shot across the bow but it leaves so many of us wondering how trade works, it isn t simply a back tax, a tariff. even if mexico were to be hit. it s about wages. labor would move to nicaragua, move to cuba, it could move to haiti. even if you said we re going to hurt mexican companies, we don t just import, we export to mexico. they re a trading partner. they re our third biggest trading partner in the world. the question so many people are asking, does donald trump understand the trickle-down effects? this isn t like a casino owner walking away from a deal. a 20% tax, it could be your avocados, your ford fusion, your bananas. are people willing to spend more? they re definitely not. if mexico gets hit with it, its factories could move to another country. virginia senator and former vice presidential nominee tim kaine is sitting down with chuck
up to donald trump against torture. we have a very clear position on torture. we do not sanction torture. we do not get involved with that and will continue to be our position. and moments ago the mexican president announcing that his meeting planned for next week with president trump has been canceled. we are on the same page with the white house. how surprised are you every time there is a new tweet from the president? this is going to be an unconventional presidency, i think you know this by now casy. and i think we are going to see unconventional activities like tweets and that s just something we are all going to have to get used to. good derek everyone. a busy day. i m andrea mitchell in washington. president trump just arriving in philadelphia. you see air force one there. we are expecting his remarks to house and senate republicans later in this houn. he will go it s about a 20 minute ride from that airport in south philadelphia back into center city, where he is going to be meeting with the republicans, where they are in their retreat a. lot to talk about. he disimbarked from marine one earlier for the first time at andrews air force base and boards air force one. it s his first ride on the blue and white plane now that he is of course commander in chief. joining me, casey hunt in philadelphia where the republicans are awaiting him. first of all, kristen, the president tweeted earlier today, this was a precursor, all of this watching this sens sensed there was a likely cancellation from mexico. you have got a mexican president at record low popularity under great pressure at home to stand up to donald trump. president trump tweeting today the u.s. has a $60 billion trade deficit with mexico. it has been a one side deal from coming through mexico. reporter: yeah. but in rene years and recent months more mexicans have been leaving mexican people who migrated to the u.s. have been going back the other way because under economy has been getting stronger. reporter: well, andrea, this was part of a rather uncomfortable discussion this morning with house speaker paul ryan and majority leader mitch mcconnell. they were pressed on this very question about what this at that point of course we were talking about just the border wall proposal. we didn t yet have this news about the official cancel igs of this visit. but they were asked what does this do to our relationship with meksio? are you comfortable with this? and they sort of pushed those questions aside just like they did on other topic related to this. they were repeatedly asked, for example, if the border wall, if building the wall that has sparked this confrontation with mexico s president, would add to the u.s. definite simpson. they have come out and said at this retreat that there likely david muir on abc that he believes torture works but he would defer secretaries mattis and director of dci pompeo and their strong view to follow and law as long as it is the law against torture but that might revisit that. that is the message. that sends a signal to our allied intelligence services on whom we depend. certainly to the terrorists abroad who can use that tape and repopulate it of the president of the united states saying torture works. it s not something that you have heard before from a president. reporter: that s right. and even when we were having this debate during the bush presidency and after president obama pushed to make changes and have congress ultimately pass a law that restricted the intelligence community to using the techniques provided in the army field manual and outlawing those enhanced interrogation techniques that were used nobody said that toes enhanced interrogation techniques from torture. the controversy was over the justice department kind of bending over backwards as know very well to try to say these techniques were not torture. so the way that the president is approaching this is pretty unprecedented. frank lights been the issue that has probably put the congressional leaders most on the spot over the last couple of days. they have essentially said look this is settled law. we have dealt with this law. paul ryan was very blunt today saying how oftentimes lawmakers will try to talk around a question, ryan was short and to the point. he said look this is settled law. we don t think it should be changed. torture is illegal. i think you know this is something where there are very definitive breaks between the president and the way he s talking about this as well as the policy he is espousing and other republicans in his own party? in fact, you brought up a point i noticed that when you were asking questions and mitch mcconnell said i think the director of the cia has made it clear he is going to follow the law and i think all of my members are comfortable with that state of the law right now. ryan leaned in and said torture is illegal and we agree with it noting legal. he could not be more definitive. he said it s illegal three times. kristen, there is a lot of discomfort as casey has point out among the republican leaders with the tweeting with the kind of language, with sort of the way things are rolling out. they have to deal with it. they have to smooth things over. what is happening hyped the scenes in the white house as they are trying to get up to speed? we now have reports that the entire top level at the state department of presidential appoint appointees, but of career foreign service people have cleared out, have resigned as of today. reporter: and white house pris press secretary shawn spicer was just asked about that during his gaggle with reporters aboard air force one. he said he hadn t been briefed on that yet. we are waiting for their official reaction. now kristen we see the president. reporter: yes. the president is coming out of air force one. this is goio become the image of the next four years of the president coming down the steps of air force one for the first time in philadelphia. his first trip. kristen, you were saying that shawn spicer was asked about this mass departure from the seventh floor of the state department. rex tillerson was there for the first time that he know of yesterday. once it was clear that he was going to have the votes for confirmation. reporter: to your broader point, i think there was some concern about the way in which this transition was unraveling in the sense that white house officials of the obama administration were saying that they wanted more engage men from the trump transition. so i think there is some catching up that is happening. and then the typical sort of getting your sea legs that happens whenever you enter the white house. so i think both of those things are happening at the same time. going back to what you were discussing though with casey in terms of this conversation about torture this is now an issue that is overshadowing this white house. we are peppering them with questions about the remarks that president trump made last night during that interview. and of course it sets the backdrop for that meeting that he is going to have with british prime minister theresa may tomorrow. you think about the relationship with the united states and mexico, the fact that that meeting has now been canceled. the fact that that relationship has now been complicated to such a large extent by the building of this wall or at least the greenlighting of the construction of the wall. and this discussion of torture i think is going to create a very complicated backdrop as well, thorny backdrop as president trump prepares to meet with prime minister theresa may who has been insistent that they are not going to engage in enhanced interrogation methods like water boarding. i think there are going to be some tough questions and we are expecting to get some questions to both of these leadest tomorrow when they meet. the president is inside the limo. the beast, and about to proceed to center city philadelphia from south philadelphia as i say it is a about a 20 minute ride in a motorcade. they obviously don t have to stop for traffic or any other impediment as they proceed down to the hotel where they will be meeting with the republican leaders. the speech from the president is going to precede another speech later from vice president pence and then a third speech today to the gathering, and this from the british prime minister who will then be in washington tomorrow for her first meeting at the white house. we are told they will have a joint press conference. shawn spicer on the tarmac has just told reporters on air force one there will be an attempt to reschedule the meeting with the mexican president and keep lines of communication open. they are trying to smooth this over. there was a travel pool. there had been nervousness among the white house press corps about what the traditions would be taken up by this new president and his team. but they did travel with him on air force one. the press secretary did speak to reporters. all of that is proceeding at pace. thanks to casey hunt and kristen welker. casey will be there of course when the president arrives. joining me now is the maryland congressman elijah cummings. thanks for your patients, we wanted to watch the president arrive and find out what had happened on air force one. what is your initial reaction to the cancellation by the mexican press anged by the tweet from president trump earlier today that that meeting is not going to take place? andrea, let me express my condolences with the passing your father. oh, thank you kong man. with regard to this, andrea i m not surprised. you cannot bully your way around the world. clearly, there was signals were there that mexico is not going to pay for the wall and that president trump is trying to force them to. and i think and when you think about the fact that the poll numbers for the mexican president are at 12%, he probably had no choice but to cancel and so i m not surprised. also we know there is going to be an executive action later today by president trump on an investigation into the so-called voter fraud claims which we know have been discredited by every fact finder and research group. what are you thinking of that? chairman chafee said he sees no reason for a congressional investigation. and if the president wants to do it on his own he has a justice department. where do we stand? andrea, let s be clear. there is no voter fraud to speak of. and the thing that is so insulting to me and to so many others. we have seen over and over again where is that we have seen over and over where republican legislators and governors have been denying people the right to vote. in 2014, in texas, a court found that 600,000 peo were denied the right to voteecause of all these restrictive laws and voter i.d. laws. and i had said to my colleagues if they want to do an investigation do an investigation to make sure that every person has a right to vote. and that is my concern. this is a smoke screen. this is it s like chasing a rabbit that doesn t exist that the voter fraud. but the fact that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are today not able to vote because of these restrictive laws, that s a major problem. that s what we should be looking at. and i m hoping that the republicans will bring legislation to the floor of the house whereby we can restore the voting rights act because as you know the supreme court pretty much gutted it. now you have got american people and others who are being denied the right to vote. that s the bigger question. so if they are going to do an investigation, they need to do that investigation. the justice department has already signaled that it s not going to ask for a continuance. it s not going to to go to that hearing that was supposed to be this week on the voter i.d. law in texas. and you are also getting signals from the justice department potentially about the consent decrees with chicago and baltimoron the police department. yeah, yeah. how are you going to deal with that. baltimore, that s your turf. you were out in the he streets, you know better than anyone what s going on there. we are hoping that the justice department they delayed the court hearing on it. we expect that to be in front of a judge. i think once it s being ruled over by a judge it will be we ll probably be able to make some headway. but the problem is, andrea, this was a consend decree in baltimore where everybody came together, the police, the community, the religious community and elected officials, and gave a lot of testimony, came up with a plan whereby the police and the citizens could work together to make things better. and i m hoping that sessions and i do expect senator sessions to be affirmed i m hoping that he will not just yank the rug from under these decrees because they play such an important role particularly in a time when there is so much tension between police and our communities. as the ranking democrat on oversight you might be concerned what s going on at the state department. what we are hearing is mass departure of the professional levels of top people on the seventh floor. clearly they would submit their resignations as is standard for the new president but for them all to leave just as this new secretary of state not yet confirmed but on track to be confirmed is coming in it signals a real vacuum there at the state department of professional leaders. no doubt bichlt our state department people, i know many of them, worked with many of them, they give their blood, sweat and tears for our country. andrea, there is something happening here. what we are finding is that more and more peep are looking at some of the appointments that are being made by president trump. they are lookingt the policies that he s putting out. as a matter of fact just recently we got four different documents where we see that there has been put a gag order on federal employees. and so i think federal employees feel like they are under a gun. and they feel like they cannot do the job they need to do. so it doesn t surprise me. i think you are going to see even more of that. i think you are going to see something else. i think you are going to see more and more people going into the streets. in some countries, the people are afraid of the government. and i think people are trying to make sure that the government becomes afraid of the people. and i i anticipate that you are going to see more and more republican congressmen with members of their community knocking on their doris and complaining because a lot of people are scared. they don t know where we re going. they see their country changing literally by the minute. and things like torture and things of that nature, and gag orders, these are this is not the america and not the democracy that they want. as you are talking, actually, we are looking at some protests. there are protesters in philadelphia in center city philadelphia awaiting the arrival not that close but a few blocks away of president trump. thank you so much elijah cummings. we are following up on the issue of the gag orders because we are hearing from scientists at e.p.a. and usda and also where that they have been told not to use twitter, not to send out my scientific guidance to their constituencies and there have been halts in the past. we are trying to compare it to other administrations. but there is now growing a growing sense that this is an unusual so-called gag order on scientists in various departments and agencies. andrea, i think you have got to go, but real quick one of the things that when they put out the gag order, we have strict whistlelower laws that protect whistle blowers. when the administration put out these gag orders those gag orders require that they say they can still speak to members of congress. when you shut that down, i don t know what type of a country we are going towards but we have got to stop this. elimga cummings thank you sir. as you saw, president trump landed in philadelphia at this hour. he is going to address republican members of congress at their retreat. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what? you could apply for a medicare supplement insurance plan whenever you want. no enrollment window. no waiting to apply. that means now may be a great time to shop for an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. medicare doesn t cover everything. and like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, these help cover some of what medicare doesn t pay. so don t wait. call now to request your free decision guide. it could help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that works for you. these types of plans have no networks, so you get to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. rates are competitive, and they re the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. remember - these plans let you apply all year round. so call today. because now s the perfect time to learn more. go long. how to win at business. step one: suck on and point decisively with the arm of your glasses. it is no longer eyewear, it is your wand of business wizardry. abracadabra. you ve just gone from invisible to invincible. step two: before your meeting, choose la quinta. the only hotel where you can redeem loyalty points for a free night-instantly so you can prepare to win at business. book now at lq.com despite bipartisan opposition president trump says he thinks torture works. this in an interview with abc news. but i have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence. and i asked them the question, does it work? does torture work? and the answer was yes, absolutely. we are not playing on an even field. i will say this. i will rely on pompeo and mattis and my group. and if they don t want to do, that s fine. if they do want to do, then i will work toward that end. joining me now is john rizzo, former top attorney at the cia. his memoir is company man, 30 years of controversy and crisis in the cia. good to see you again. thank you. you defended the enhanced interrogation techniques at the time. you were following guidance from the justice department under george w. bush. it was very controversial. you saw the fallout on the agency from all of that. your view now about the techniques and torture and having the president of the united states use the t word, be that i mean, he wasn t even using a euphemism saying he thinks it works but will abide by the law. well, first of all, the fallout was significant, and it including falling out on me among other people about the legal side of the original problem. i continue to believe looking back at the time at the time, the program was legal. and as implemented and carried out, the enhanced interrogation techniques were effective in eliciting vital information. so that hasn t changed. that hasn t changed. that of course was disputed by the senate intelligence report. and that was very controversial. but what about what s happening now? do you now think that well what s your reaction to president trump and what he said last night? well, it was startling, to say the least, to watch words come outf the president of the united states s mouth, first of all the word torture. the whole premise, the legal premise of the original program was some of the tech teeks, while some of them were harsh like water boarding did not fit the legal definition of torture. if something is torture by definition it is illegal, it was illegal then. it was illegal then, illegal now. and regardless of whatever protectiveness or whatever criteria. to hear the president of the united states use that word in sort of an affirmative way i found remarkable. what is the impactan our foreign partners, the intelligence agencies that we partner with all over the world, especially in difficult areas where we can t go? yeah, no, i think it s going to be significant. i mean the original program generated enough controversy overseas. in that case, as i have said, we had a position, perhaps other people in this country disagree with that the program was legal. now for how is any foreign country going to allow us, allow the government to build another secret prison in their country when the president of the united states is announcing torture may go on there. they will never do that. isn t he giving a pop began de tool to the bad guys. oh, sure. the bad guys always claimed what we were doing was torture. now they can say they have the personal informator of the president of the united states. after your long career you still talk to a lot of people inside. he says when he went over there on saturday he was told by people at the agency that torture works. is that credible knowing what you know and who was there that day? i don t know who that possibly could have been. first of all, all of us who were involved in that program there are still scores if not hundreds faced what, seven or eight years of recrime nations, investigations. legal fees? legal fees, you know being called by some elements of our society torture advocates, that was me. human rights violators, goons. for anyone to say and i have not heard that i ve heard the contrary from my former colleagues. what are they telling you. they are terrified about even the possibility that they might be asked to go down this road again after all these years. so there was a draft that circulated, shawn spicer said it was not a white house document. there has been reporting by others, the new york times, the washington post that in fact was being circulated at a very high level but not briefed to general mattist or director of dci pompeo that they were in fact telling lawmakers that both of them were shocked by this. maybe it s being withdrawn or rewritten. but there certainly was a draft document circulating that they would be considering redefining the army field manual, reopening black sites, and revisiting torture, enhanced interrogations, or whatever? yeah. well, again, i just find it incredible that the cia director who is now confirmed no one bothered to tell him about this kind of draft circumstance lathe. i looked at the draft i looked at millions of such drafts from the nsc in my time. something like that f it was circulated at all, i can t imagine why no one apparently made the new cia director aware of its existence. john rizzo, thank you very much. the book is the company man qug it s good to see you. thanks. as we have been reporting mexico s president canceled his plan to visit the white house next week shortly after donald trump said maybe he shouldn t have that visit. joining me now a republican polly adviser researcher at the hoover institute who specializes in immigration reform and other domestic policy. first of all your eracks from a cancellation of a visit from our third largest trading partner, a trip to mexico city that president trump took very early in his administration, there were other meetings, actually the first meeting with a foreign leader was back with the mexican president. there is no question that our relationship with both canada and mexico are very important, mexico in particular is a important trading partner. i m not entirely surprised that the president of mexico has made the decision not to come given everything that happened in the last few days and frankly given the direction that u.s. policy is taking both with the executive order actions and the renegotiation or potential renegotiation of nafta. i also think the mexican president has a domestic constituency that would have been in real estate volt if he came to the united states. his approve ratings are in the 20s. i can t imagine what it would go to if he came to washinon. i m not surprised. his decision could have been driven largely by domestic concerns for the mexican president. remember what happened during the campaign with then candidate trump. donald trump weapon to phoenix that very same day and gave a very tough answer immigration speech in phoenix that night. what about immigration policy in this context as you look at the executive orders agreed to yesterday? well, i think the executive orders were quite stark in fact. you know, they do set out the administration s policy and clearly are consistent with at least the rhetorical direction that the president took during the campaign. i think we ll have to see as we go forward as with all of these executive orders, andrea, how impactful they will be given how the administration actually implements them. for example, there are some things that the administration could do easily such as stripping federal funding from sanctuary cities. that s something republicans have been in favor of for some time. the kruk of the wall is going to be trickier because what we are talking about is where is the money going to come from. if congress proeps the money late they are year that s a separate matter but to do it exclusively by executive order i think is more questionable. we will have to see where the scope of all of this goes depending on how her administered and implemented. greta vas success trend asked paul ryan the speaker about paying for the wall. this was that response from paul ryan to greta, for the record, yesterday. today he announced that he wants to begin building that wall? uh-huh. who is going to pay for it? first off we are going to pay for and it front the money. i think they are various ways you know your question is is mexico going to pay for the wall? there are different ways of getting them to contribute to doing it and different ways of defining exactly how they pay for it. now we are hearing from the republican retreat today that we are talking about 8 to $12 billion and that casey hunt reported that they may have funding but that they are not sure whether there is going a pay and go or an offset. right, this is the question, at what point do republicans look at this and say we have a spendingroblem as well. immigration may be different. that may be an issue priority that republicans are going to be willing to spend on, republicans on capitol hill. but in general, as a general matter we are talking about an infrastructure project, talking about tax reform, we are talking about things that all could cost money. and at some point are the fiscal conservatives in congress going to say enough? we are not willing to do this as an open encheck anymore? we are going to have to see how this develops. for now i think the members on the republican are willing to give the president the enbenefit of the doubt especially on an issue like immigration. what about the way he managis his time and communications twitter, responding to television interviews. we can see whether he is watching fox news or the today show or morning joe. he then responds in kind. it does create a challenge for his communication team. it is a whole new era we are in andrea both for the president and his staff as well as for congressional republicans. you saw paul ryan s answer, which was basically, look, the president is going to communicate how he communicates. we don t have control over that. so in some ways it does force all of these different parties to be much more nimble and to be willing to respond to things maybe that they weren t intending on responding to. in some ways it probably makes your job more exciting, makes my job more exciting but it is unpredictable, to be sure. some people might say they could use a little less excitement. but who knows. i understand. lonnie chen, it s great to see you thank you for joining us. coming up we ll be hearing from president trump expected to speak very shortly to republican law makers in philadelphia. the flags are there. the podium is there. the teleprompter is there that means it is a likely to be a set speech if he sticks to it. we ll bring it to you live. stick with us. we are on andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. crest whitestrips crest 3d whitestrips whiten. 25 times better than a leading whitening toothpaste i passed the tissue test. oh yeah. crest whitestrips are the way to whiten i am totally blind. i lost my sight in afghanistan. if you re totally blind, you may also be struggling with non-24. calling 844-844-2424. or visit my24info.com. so she only earns double miles on purchasesit card. she makes from that airline. what d you earn double miles on, please? ugh. that s unfortunate. there s a better option. the capital one venture card. with venture, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase, everywhere, every day. not just airline purchases. seems like a no-brainer. what s in your wallet? and this afternoon later this afternoon we are expecting some white house executive action to back up president trump s call for an investigation into what he believes to be widespread voter fraud where he says he believes there has been widespread voter fraud. joining me now, chris alyssa, and gene cummings. thanks to both. chris, there has been enough fact checking, glen kessler s and others to make it clear that no one backs up this claim of 3 to 5 million people illegally undocumented immigrants voting in this election. so if it seems to be the belief of one person, and certainly those around himrying to validate that or you know back up the president. it s the belief of one president who what happens to be the president of a united states with a mass iive social media microphone. i thought paul ryan s comments to greta which is essentially i haven t seen any evidence of this and he clearly thinks there is. so an investigation is the right way to do it. the problem here is let s say the investigation adds nothing to what we know, which would suggest there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. a problem here, a problem there, but no widespread voter fraud. then what does donald trump do because he has continued to insist on something that is provably false based on all the information that we have. he has been in the past not been terribly swayed by those sorts of facts. is it different if it s his administration telling him those facts? i don t know the answer to that. it seems, given that we expect an executive order on setting up some sort of investigation here on his allegations of voter fraud that we are going to find that out at some point in the future. jean cummings on this day alone we have the president of mexico under fire domestically, politically, disastrous popularity ratings at home cancelling the visit. donald trump having said, tweeted earlier today perhaps that visit should be canceled if mexico is not going to pay for the wall. we have the republican leadership waiting to hear from the president and saying that they will somehow pay for it but not explaining whether there will be budget offsets. it s between 8 and $12 billion for the kind of wall that has been envisioned. and the efficacy of that as a border argument remains to be seen. you haveot turmoil at the state department with the departure of all of the top ranking people whor would normally submit their resignations pro forma but are now leaving before rex tillerson who is presumably going to be confirmed next week before he even come to the state department and takes over. where are we on foreign policy as theresa may arrives and has to defend herself against the president s comments on torture on abc? you know, he said he was going to do things differently and bring change. he certainly has changed the way the u.s. and our allies have our conversations and what and he s changed the entire conversation around the international landscape. also with the executive orders that we now expect for tomorrow that will target middle eastern countries in terms of immigrants from there. you know, he definitely has shown he wants to be a president of action. what s confusing, though, is that there is a lot of chaos and turmoil around all of it as well. and i don t know if that s two things can blend together to become permanent change. but he is no one should be surprised as many of the things he has done because he is doing what he said he was going to do. and he s communicating it in a way that all of us who covered him, including chris and you andrea had to get used to during the campaign. and, chris, by the end of this week they will have checked the box, and he can say i promised the wall, i promised executive actions on a, b, c, and d, i ve done all of those things, i ve gone to the cia. you know, he can certainly be speaking to his base, to his constituency. and he has, as you point out a huge social media platform. l i think that s a great point which is he this is not someone who said i m going the kind of go and fidget around the edges fiddle around the edges and make things slightly better. he he came in on this idea that washington is broken, it needs to essentially be razed, r-a-z-e-d in order to make it ever sort of work for people again. and he has sort of acted on that it is amazing to me, and i was away for three of these days, andrea, but donald trump has been president for right now about six days and 45 minutes. it is a remarkable amount of things he has both done, controversies he has created in that period of time. i never thought i would say this, but there is almost too much news. now, the question always with him is how much of that is strategy? how much of it is him just making calls as he goes throughout a day? how much of that you know, is there a method to all of this? i don t know that we re far enough we don t have the proper context to say so. but this is a radically different approach to politics, to policy, to governing, to being presidential than anything that we ve seen in i m not going to speak to how milliard fillmore presented himself but that we ve seen in sort of the modern political era. speaking of the modern political era i was going to say, jean, we ve got the the seal is on the podium now. we have got the pel prompters. i see the travel pool is in the room. at any moment we might be interrupting, but jean go ahead. just a brief point. there has been a lot of action, that is very true. and there have been a lot of pictures and a lot of headlines, but so far not very much has actually change that is the harder part that lies ahead. most of these events have been photo ops where he is directing the staff to begin a project or to come back to him with a report. things like that. most of these are executive memorandums, not exactly executive orders. so it has been a very exciting first week. and he s set a lot of big things in motion but the really hard work does lie ahead. and they do have a big transition challenge because they got a late start. they had the transition team under chris christie, and then they were precipitously fired and so they had to start all over again. in a lot of agencies it s basically home alone. now it is at the state department here with a visitor, theresa may, coming to the united states for the first time. and so many vacant cease at the state department and at the nsc. they are gearing up very slowly. there seems to be action there in the room. let s see if we have time to bring in my colleague from london, kira simmons. here on the state side visit with theresa may. what we are hearing from downing street is that she is going to talk about the special relationship and the fact that both she and donald trump came to power, came to office on a populist surge. yeah. she of course with brexit, and also he with the endorsement of brexit and with the populism that we ve seen in the united states. so they have some economic basis to talk to each other. but at the same time, on foreign licy, they are not really aligned as much as one might think. they have very different views for instance towards the russians and towards vladimir putin. that s right. and you kind of summed it up there. theresa may, the british prime minister, would love, love to see a thatcher-/haig reagan style alliance that leads the new world, an economic future, a future where countries put their own interests first but trade very actively with each other. that s the kind of picture the british prime minister has put out there. but at the same time on every level there are issues here. there are issues over the question of the british approach to issues of torture. frankly, the approach is that it s illegal and the british don t do it. and any time they have been caught up in it they have tried to back out again. there are questions over donald trump s attitude towards women. theresa may has said very frankly that just as a female leader of a major country she says everything she needs to say in that respect. but this is a really important and extremely difficult diplomats will be piting their fingernails over the next two days visit for the prime minister and it s important for the president, too. because he essentially gets to look like a statesman hosting a world leader. or if there is a major faux pas then the object sit picture is put out to the world. we know they will have a joint news conference. the white house was not clear on that. the brits were waiting. they wanted it. yeah. but this will be the first joint news conference with a foreign leader here in the united states. i covered thatcher and rag app. i can tell you they were allies at a time when a lot of the otheleaders in europe and canadaame , there was a socialist president in france, and trudeau in canada, a liberal and there was a real meeting of the minds and hearts between reagan and thatcher, especially on going being strong and tough with military strength against the former soviet union but then she was the first one to say we can do business with mr. gorbachev when he took over as the third soviet leader that mr. reagan had to deal with. there are lots of difference. but i think the fact that she is a woman, the second woman prime minister in british history, and that he is a disruptor and someone who comes partly from the entertainment world does and a communicator, a real talent in terms of communicating his beliefs to the public through social media as well as through his former reality tv background makes people analogize it to ron reagan and margaret thatcher. yeah. i would add another comparison, which is that ron reagan and margaret thatcher were brilliant mass terse of alying themselves with the economic sbres interests of the working class. that is what they managed to do. thatcher is an amazing economic study because she also took on the conservatives within her own conservative party, the slow movers, the liberals as she saw them. they called them the wets. she took on the british trade union. she took on the establishment, if you like, and compare that to what donald trump is presenting himself as. and i suppose by looking at that that margaret thatcher s experience and the reagan experience, one thing you can say is that their leadership galvanized the liberal left in both countries. there were marches on the streets, there were strikes, and yet the two of them won election after election after election. now look we are not there yet with either of them. the jury is still out in both cases. but that s the kind of alliance that certainly the british prime minister would like to see. i think she d also you know like to position herself as somebody who is intellectualizing what donald trump has to say. her speech on brexit, her recent speech on brexit, trying to set out what it means, what britain wants to leave the european union, the kind of trade that britain wants to have with the rest of the word you can see as intellectualizing the same message that the president has been putting out there, but in a different way. again, though, there are so many land mines. just that news conference while it is so crucial to the british particularly as they prepare to negotiate with the europeans, equally so what donald trump says there with the british prime minister standing next to him, how she reacts to what he might say again, they will be very nervous as well as very pleased that she has managed to be the first international leader to have this kind of a meeting with the new president. we should point out hers was not the first call. right. you know, there were all the other foreign leaders that he spoke with. even speaking with the taiwanese leader and upsetting the chinese. they had to set this right. my hearing from here is there were ambassadors all over town from our closest allies who were stunned as were the media, even the trump people themselves at the election turnout. so that they were not prepared. and their memos home, to home base were not predicting that donald trump would win. so there was a lot of catch up going on. going back to the thatch herb analogy, gene cummings, you know this from the past as well that thatcher really made her mark by goingp against the coal miners in the uk. and done and ronald reagan, the pivotal moment was his firing of the air traffic controllers after that union strike, a public union strike. and that really sent a signal. in fact many people said a signal to the russians that he was somebody to deal with, that he was so tough he would fire his own air traffic controllers. jean? absolutely. absolutely. donald trump said over and over again he wants to be a strong leader and he wants the world to look at america in a different way because america has a strong leader. it s interesting where donald trump might find that moment. it s likely to be different. he s come in. you know, he s a builder. t so the first people that he brings in are manufacturers. and then he brought in the labor unions, and which ones did he pick to bring in? most of them are skilled crafts and firefighters, you know, doers. and so he and then the next day auto manufacturers. and he has talked about the auto manufacturer workers as well. so he s taking it s unlikely that it will be in the same venue as margaret thatcher and ronald reagan used to demonstrate their internal strength but donald trump clearly will seize that moment when it comes because that has been a central theme of his candidacy and now his presidency. chris, alyssa, one of the thing that theresa mayas as a foreign visitor is going to have to deal with is the unpredict. of what donald trump may say. nobody could have predicted that he in going out to the cia would talk about time magazine covers and tom brady and his own popularity and how smart he is. or how about continuing the voter fraud idea, you know, them in the interview with david muir on abc again pointing at pictures of crowds of inaugurations. this is the thing it s funny you used the word unpredictable. that s what i was thinking when they were talking because it s so hard for a republican politician obviously we are waiting to hear what donald trump is going to say at the retreat. a politician a democratic politician, a foreign leader, a reporter, a trump aide the most difficult thing with him is how unpredictable he is number one. and number two how much he seems to value that unpredict. . throughout the came he talked about we were too predictable, particularly in foreign policy. that s a fine campaign idea. it s much more difficult as it relates to diplomacy particularly in foreign affairs. as you know, this steadiness or knowing what you are going to get before everybody sits down to do the photo op is at the heart of these things, a joint press conference. not knowing that i think puts these foreign leaders in some level of political peril in that you have no idea, is donald trump going to talk about water boarding and torture and how he thinks it works in a joint press conference with theresa may if he gets asked about it? what does theresa may do if that happens? as someone who watches politics for living it s utterly fascinating. as someone who sort of practices politics as theresa may or paul ryan or mitch mcconnell do, it has to be terrifying. sort of a high wire act with absolutely no net. working without a net has worked for him all this last year and a half. yes. i mean it s got him past a 17-person primary fight and into the white house and onto air force one today. and he is the president of the united states, about to brief his republican colleagues at this retreat, meet with his first foreign leader tomorrow at the white house. it has been an extraordinary journey. and a rocky first week. and i would say the high wire act works for him, andrea. you are exactly right. we have proof of that. now, we don t necessarily have proof that it will work as president donald trump but certainly as candidate trump it did. the question is, what does it mean for everyone who is not donald trump? we saw during the campaign marco rubio for a brief two day period tried to do the trump thing, the personal insults of trump. he apologized and went away from it. jeb bush did a little bit of it. hillary clinton didn t go down with donald trump in terms of the attacks and what she was willing to say. and still lost. so the question is, yes, it clearly worked for him. will it continue to work? and then what does it mean for everyone else in the political universe not named donald trump? to be determined. well, we are might ithe middle of this very unusual first week of donald trump. and i don t think we should reach any judgments yet.
capricious, ash tear or made sense. the supreme court in boumedin struck it down saying it was not an adequate substitute for habeas. that s correct, senator. your role was to find out a way to engage congress on the detainee treatment because it was your view that congress, being involved, would strengthen the president s hand? as a lawyer? yes. i was not a policymaker but i did advise. as a lawyer. as did many others. there were very other many fine lawyers, too, senator, who advised the administration that engaging congress would be a good idea, because we had read our youngstown and our justice jackson. any lawyer i think who understands this area of the law would suggest the president is stronger when he has congressional support. the signing statement. is it fair to say there was a conflict between the vice president s office and other parts of the bush administration about what the signing statement should say or look like? that s my recollection, and that s about all i can recall. i remember it very well because vice president cheney s signing statement was going to be we have an inherent authority to do whatever we think we need to do and there were a lot of other people saying no, you don t have the authority just to set aside a law. you have to have a reason to object to it. so i just want the public to understand that, when it comes to this man, i ve seen him in action, in very complicated emotional matters, where we had one group of people who could give a damn about the terrorist and other people who wanted to criminalize what i thought was a real world fight and we tried to find thatide ound, and in a 5-4 decision, t supreme court struck down my proposal, and we fixed it later with a huge bipartisan vote, so that every enemy combatant today has a habeas proceeding where the government has to prove you re an enemy combatant and if they reach that conclusion you can be held under the law of war as long as you re a threat to our nation. is that a fair summary of where we re at? that s my understanding, senator. along the way we, your legislation did prevail in the d.c. circuit and the supreme court. of course it was a close call, it was 5-4 as i recall. that proves that five people can be wrong. whul i disagree i certainly respect the court s decision. you re not going to get me to comment on that neither. not even going to try. the bottom line here is there will be more legislation coming regarding the role of the government and gathering information, but from sort of a civics point of view, which senator sass is going to take you through, there s a difference between the law of war and domestic criminal law. do you agree with that? yes, senator. that a common criminal, the goal of the law is to prosecute a crime that one individual or group committed against another individual or groups. that s correct? that s right. the law of war is about winning the war? well, senator, there are how you fight the war there are as you know, rules about that, too. right. laws about that. yes and we re fighting an enemy who has no rules that would do anything, and i ve been in the camp i don t want to be like them, i this i that s their weakness and the strongest thing we could do is stand up for a process that stood the test of time, which is intelligence gathering and a humane way, because they would cut our heads off doesn t make us weak because tut the heads off. it actually mak us stronger over the arc of time, so that s my commercial about that. so there will be more litigat n litigation, and there nare no bd guys or girls when it comes to challenging precedent, do you agree people have a right to do that. to challenge precedent? yes. every person is allowed to come to court to bring whatever claim they have. that s how our system works. that s how brown versus board of education came about. exactly right. let s talk about roe v. wade. what is the holding of roe v. wade, in 30 seconds? [ laughter ] the holding of roe versus wade in 30 seconds, senator, is that a woman has a right to an abortion. it developed a trimester scheme in roe that specified when the state interests and when the women s interests tend to prevail. okay. so let me just break it down. the court said that there is a right to privacy, that the government can t interfere with that right in the first trimester. beyond the first trimester, the government has more interest as the baby develops, is that fair to say? that was the scheme set forth. i think medical viability was the test that the court used. well, that s the test that the court came around and applied in casey, in 1992. okay. and viability became more of the touchstone rather than a rigid is it fair to say that medical viability 1992 may be different than it is in 2022 medically? senator, i m not a scientist or a doctor. i would suggest that medical viability may change as science progresses, so you may have people coming in and saying in light of scientific medical changes, let s look at when medical viability occurs. that s one example of litigation that may come before you. i have legislation that says that 20 weeks, the unborn child is able to feel excruciating pain and the theory of the legislation is that the state has a compelling interest to protect an unborn child from excruciating pain, which is caused by an abortion. i m not asking you to agree with my legislation. i am saying that i am developing, we re one of seven nations that allow wholesale on demand unlimited abortion at 20 weeks, the fifth month of pregnancy. i d like to get out of that club, but we re going to ha a debate in this body, in the house, about whether or not we want to change the law to give an unborn child protection against excruciating pain at 20 weeks, because you can, the standard medically is that if you operate on an unborn child at 20 weeks the medical protocols are such that you have to provide anesthesia because you don t want to hurt the child in the process of trying to save the child. so medical practice is such when you operate on an unborn child at 20 weeks, which you can do, you have to apply anesthesia and my theory is let s look at it the other way, should you allow an abortion on demand of a child that can feel excruciating pain, is that what we want to be as a nation? does that run afoul of roe v. wade. i want to make the argument there is a compelling state interest at that stage of the pregnancy to protect the child against death that is going to be excruciatingly painful. you don t have to say a word. i m just letting everybody know that if this legislation passes, it will be challenged before you, and you will have to look at a new theory of how the state could protect the unborn, and here s what i think. you will read the briefs, look at the facts and make a decision. am i fair to conclude that? senator, i can promise you no more than that and i guarantee you no less than that, in every single case that comes before me no matter what the subject matter. this is a situation that may develop over time because 70% of the american people side with me on the idea that at 0 weeks we should not be in the club of seven nations that allow abortion on demand because that s in the fifth month and that doesn t make us a better nation. there will be people on the other side saying no, that s an emotion of roe and it will go to the court, maybe if it ever passes here and the only reason i mention this is that everybody who wants to challenge whatever in court deserves a person like you. person like you, no matter what pressures are plied to you, will say over and over again, i want to hear what both sides have to say, i want to read their legal arguments, look at the facts and i will decide. that to me is reassuring and that s exactly the same answer i got from sotomayor and kagan. no more, no less, and we can talk forever about what you may or may not do. if you do anything different than that, i think you d be unworthy of the job. now, about what s going on in the country with president trump whether you like him or you don t he is president, but you have said several times that he is not above the law. is that correct? yes, senator. you told senator leahy if there was a law passed a muslim could not serve in the military you believe based on current law that would be an illegal act. senator, yes, i see that having all sorts of constitutional problems under current law. so if we have laws on the book that prevent waterboarding, do you agree with me that the detainee treatment act prevents waterboarding? yes, senator, that s my recollection of it firmly. so in case president trump is didn t agree with president obama, but i understood why he picked sotomayor and kagan, and i hope you can understand why president trump picked neil gorsuch, and hope you ll be happy with that, because i am. thank you, senator. we will recess until 12:45. all right, there you heard it, with a joke about who else president trump might have chosen, whether or not it would be a television judge or a tv figure. nonetheless, he has chosen neil gorsuch of the state of colorado, who has gotten along very well during the morning session. remember the ground rules here. every senator gets 30 minutes of questioning, so this is going to take hours more to spool out. here we are 12:12 eastern time, in what is normally andrea mitchell s dayside shift. we ll be getting to andrea, she s among our guests standing by to talk to us about what we ve witnessed. ari melber from the legal side of things has been watching along with us. ari, i think the expression in english is it s tough to lay a glove on this guy. i didn t see a single glove laid on him. he performed himself admirably, calmly at almost all times and with detail, but never much candor about his views, which many experts would say he s not supposed to. anyone who has been watching your coverage, brian, over this morning would know this was a highly substantive discussion. we ve talked a lot about what s abnormal in washington these days and the fbi unusual hearing yesterday. this was a normal and even proper vetting of a potential supreme court nominee. the issues i count that were discussed, the travel ban, guns, torture, abortion, federal power, money in politics, guantanamo, obamacare, and a broader sort of roving discussion of judicial if the senate in fact does vote on neil gorsuch and he is confirmed as mitch mcconnell pledged to do by april 7th, chuck grassley, the chairman of the committee says maybe april 3rd, then gorsuch would be on the court in time to hear the last couple of weeks of oral argument at the end of april, but he could also be there theoretically in time to hear an appeal of the president s executive order on immigration, if it gets to the supreme court. one of the hawaii cases, one of the two cases that, in which judges have said that the president s order is unconstitutional is from hawaii. the chief lawyer who argued that case is neil catchall, a former chief solicitor in the obama administration, solicitor general s office. he s also the same one who introduced and glowingly praised neil gorsuch yesterday. so it s a small town in that sense. pete williams in our washington bureau, watching all of these various backs and forths with us, the confirmation hearings of judge gorsuch. we want to bring back jennifer palmie palmieri, former communications director for hillary clinton, who has been very patient waiting to come back on the air with us. jennifer, you wanted to talk about something that is actually a very generous and magnanimous view that you hold about the campaign that you lost to, the trump presidential campaign, specifically the way they took on judicial nominations. yes, i do. early on in the hearing, it was brute up that judge gorsuch was on a list of potential nominees that the trump campaign put out over the summer, examples of who he would appoint to the supreme court and i very much remember that day, because we knew and the clinton campaign just how potent an issue the supreme court is for a conservative for evangelical voters and trump promised judge gorsuch he s never spoke within donald trump about abortion, but trump promised many times that he would only appoint somebody who would overturn roe v. wade and this issue is so important, i think it probably put him over the top and pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan, states that clinton narrowly lost that passion is enough to put it over the top. i remember looking at polls after that letter came out, two times, with the list of judges that he would appoint and again trump promised to only appoint somebody who would overtun roe v. wade and we saw republicans come home the first time it didn t sustain and over the summer and he lost evangelical voters. in the end we saw that start to close after that third debate. we really think it was about the supreme court. i think it s more important to his base that he gets judge gorsuch confirmed because he believes he will overturn roe v. wade, a vote to do so, than it is to get health care done. that s how strongly people feel about it. jen, that s interesting. did you think that is something they owned? was there a reciprocal move you could have made, even if hindsight, or did you just think this was kind of their lane and territory they had cleared out? yes. and there was nothing you could do to match it? you know, we had the same passion on our side, right? we had the same passion of people who want to, that are concerned about appointing a justice that would do anything that would undernine roe v. wade so it s not as if you don t see the passion for us, but i think on our side it was the combination particularly in those states, michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania to have a lot of catholic voters, a lot of evangelical voters swle. combination of that plus what happened with the comey letter, what happened with wikileaks and the emails that ate up so much of our press time, those factors combined ultimately cost us this election, but i don t think that people appreciate just how important it is to his standing that he get this confirmation through with his own supporters, and also that i take judge gorsuch at his word he didn t talk to trump about this view about his views about roe v. wade but as my twitter feed during the hearing has shown, and certainly the talking points are being sent to me by democrats on the hill, reminding everyone the heritage foundation signed off on this, on judge gorsuch as well as part of that letter. no one would do that if they didn t think they could count on his views to be where they want them to be when it comes to women s reproductive rights. so far certainly in a television era he has been centralcasting federal judge candidate for the supreme court. jennifer palmieri former xhoun ki communications director for hillary clinton thank you for your patience and joining us on the air. we ll fit a break in. we have many, many more guests waiting to share with us their opinion of how this morning session went, day two, but entering the heart of the order, where the confirmation hearing for judge neil gorsuch is concerned. right back after this. he didn t ask you to overall roe v. wade? no, sir. what would you have done if he had asked? senator, i would have walked out the door. it s not what judges do. okay, i don t do it at that end of pennsylvania avenue, and they shouldn t do it at this end either, rantfully. respectfully. ffect. they also know you need to get your annual check-up. ffect. now prepare for your check-up with one touch using the mycigna app, where you can find a doctor in your plan s network to save money, manage your health and more. need to be thorough. i just want to find a used car start at the new carfax.com show me used trucks with one owner. pretty cool. [laughs] ah. ahem. show me the carfax. start your used car search at the all-new carfax.com. i just had to push one button wto join.s thing is crazy. it s like i m in the office with you, even though i m here. it s almost like the virtual reality of business communications. no, it s reality. introducing intuitive, one touch video calling from vonage. call now and get amazon chime at no additional cost. [kids cheering] [kids screaming] call the clown! parents aren t perfect but then they make us kraft mac & cheese and everything s good again. more doing chores for dad per roll more earning something you love per roll bounty is more absorbent, so the roll can last 50% longer than the leading ordinary brand. so you get more life per roll. bounty, the quicker picker upper hearings, and lord knows at this pace what tomorrow will bring. kasie hunt was on capitol hill for the president s comings and goings and remains there, and kasie, you mentioned appropriately before the meeting that members of the house have their problems with leakage and what leakage has come out of the president s session? we ve had a number of republicans we talked to over the course of the morning about what the president said behind closed doors. he actually did not spend the majority of his time talking about health care. he kind of ran through as he is want to do, he talked about his crowd size in louisville last night, he did tie that in to health care. if we don t get this done we re not going to have crowds like that. he ticked througthe other things and says he s done in the initial days of his administration, and he also said on health care i think somewhat critically that he thinks that many of these republicans would face primary challenges if they vote no on this legislation, that this is their historic chance to repeal and replace obamacare to follow through on that critical campaign promise. brian there s still and one of the most important things around this visit for house leadership and for republicans is about the optics. it s about feeling like the president is taking the time to actually come up from the white house to capitol hill, doesn t happen very often, usually works the other way, and to stye them yes, this is what i am behind, because the reality is a lot of these members are going to have potential political problems if they vote in favor of this bill. that s why you re seeing in particular moderate republicans who might actually be in swing districts, if the president s approval rating is down where it is he s got all of these issues with the fbi hanging over his head, what is necessarily the reason why you would walk the political plank as tom cotton put it, over in the senate, to do this on behalf of the president or on behalf of leadership. so the reality here, this is paul ryan s bill but going to be on president trump to close the deal here, and i think if they can t get this done on thursday, it goes to the floor and fails, i think that would be an incredible difficult moment for both the president and for the leadership here, even if they simply full back, because they know they don t have the votes, that would be a serious blow to his agenda so there s quite a bit at stake going into the end of this week, brian. kasie hunt up on the hill where i should specify i was talking about people leaking details of meetings. kasie, thanks. let s go to andrea mitchell who is usually on the air this hour, every day on this very network and andrea, such an interesting two-day period of hearings. yes. here we are on live coverage in our in studio inevitable game of who does he look like. we have decided gorsuch is somewhere between pete carroll and tom bergeron. yesterday we saw mr. comey playing the role of eliott ness. is a neck-snapping transition and yet as casey reminds us, we ve got real legislation coming up before this week is out in what is only the early stages still of this trump administration. exactly, and the comey testimony yesterday, brian, was so overwhelming in its impact. its political impact. it s going to affect health care. it s going to affect the thursday vote potentially. it s going to be now that we know there has been since july a counter intelligence investigation that could reach all the way to the white house. it involves the trump campaign, trump associates, whether or not there was collusion with the kremlin, and the relationship of this administration with moscow, which is another issue i want to get to in just a moment, and that can affect everything. so despite the i think ham-handed attempts by the white house to push back against it and te my reality the grownups on the hill in both parties know that this say very big deal and this will not be over any time soon. it could be a cloud over this white house for months, if not years, because these counter intelligence investigations go for a long time, as comey said it s only just getting started and at the very moment when the question of the u.s. and this administration s relationship with russia is front and center, as you first reported last night on the 11th hour, we get word that the new secretary of state is not going to go to nato. this only exacerbates the very damaging meeting with chancellor merkel on friday, and how badly that went. the fact that the president was questioning germany s commitment to nato, which is front and center. she is the strongest economic and military partner we have. the fact as you also were interviewing former ambassador from uk, peter west last night and he was talking about how awkward the relationship is with britain because of the white house pushback suggesting that false claim of a wiretap by the president against former president obama could have originated in british intelligence, not true. no apology offered or received. so therere a lot of issues here and today to return to gore sufficie, i think that this has been a slam dunk in terms of his initial q&as. you ll see some of the more intensive questioning but they have not as you put it laid a glove on him. senator feinstein and senator grassley both under some pressure, certainly the democrats under a lot of pressure because of what happened with merritt garland, and they are getting criticized by the, you know, left wing of the party for not going after him harder but they have not been able to, you know, shake this guy. he is obviously the consummate witness and a good performer in the hot seat there. what senator feinstein was particularly going after his role in the justice department in the bush white house when the torture issues were up, because she was the chairman of senate intelligence and the sponsor of that torture report, which was so controversial, which the cia so deeply resented, and he in answer to her question said that he was on the gentler side of the advisories as to how to roll back the mccain torture guidelines, so that in his writings as a lawyer in the justice department, are very much going to be examined here by feinstein, who as you know the ranking democrat on this committee, but so far, he has not been shaken. andrea mitchell in washington, stand by. i want to bring in someone you and i both know and that is know ma tottenberg of npr fame and know that tottenberg fame. hi, guys. hey. how about andrea s last comment there, that this judge is the consummate witness, and ours that he is out of central casting? he certainly looks the part and they haven t been able to get much out of him, but i would have to say that i think he s not a complete natural. he seems extremely practiced to me, and that isn t going to hurt him. what would hurt him is if he actually answered some of these questions. it s given the democrats a platform to go after republicans, not just about the garland nomination, but trump, the way trump put together his list, farming it out to two conservative organizations to help to make up the list for him instead of doing it himself essentially, and having his own justice department or his own advisers do it, so i don t think it s totally worthless for democrats but they don t have the votes. it s just really simple. they don t have the votes. nina, going back, looking at the modern era of the court, let s go as far back as say suitor or brennan or even justice white, whose name was already invoked this morning. there have been ideologs and non-ideologs, people who have changed before our eyes organically, famously, justice brennan was, eisenhower s greatest regret as president. where do you put judge gorsuch on the spectrum of ideologues, people who have a fixed north star before arriving on the court? i actually don t know. if you look at his society so to speak, his mother, his friends, how he got on this list, you d have to say he s going to be a very, very conservative judge, but he is a very well respected judge also, and it s very different to be on an appeals court where you re carrying out the law as established by the supreme court, and when you have the chance to change it. he was, as i said, a little disingenuous in some of his answers today. for example, when he was, as andrea pointed out, when he was asked about some of the, his memoranda and the torture memo thing and he said i haven t seen that. they ve been in the newspapers. clearly his aides, his handlers have that material, so it can t be that he hasn t seen that material. he also said when asked about for example campaign finance law, he said that there was a lot of room to regulate expenditures and there really, i have to say as somebody who reads these opinions, i think the supreme court has said congress cannot regulate expenditures and cannot even really define corruption, what is corruption beyond what is almost a bribe, a quit pro we could, so i think he softened what the law in fact it in order not to answer some things directly. but he did it skillfully, and i don t know the answer to your question, brian. is he an ideologue, how much, i have no idea. that s probably a good thing, know ta totenburg you have by my count no reason to think senator grassley will be wrong you have six minutes to get back downstairs from the sky box into your seat in the hearing room. thank you so much. we love havingou and you were very good patient waiting for us. thank you. nina totenberg of npr. we ll be back and rejoin the course of the hearing live in and progress right after this. i have no difficulty ruling against or for any party base other than based on what the law and the facts in the particular case require. there s no such thing as a republican judge or a democratic judge. we just have judges. in in country. i leave all the other stuff at home. and i make a decision based on the facts and the law. (vo) love. i got it. i gotcha baby. (vo) it s being there when you re needed most. love is knowing. he s the one. (vo).it was meant to be. and love always keeps you safe. we re fine. (vo) love is why we built a car you can trust. now and for a long time to come. the all-new subaru impreza sedan and five-door. a car you can love no matter what road you re on. the subaru impreza. more than a car, it s a subaru. e trade s powerful trading tools, give you access to in-depth analysis, and a team of experienced traders ready to help if you need it. it s like having the power of a trading floor, wherever you are. it s your trade. e trade there s nothing more important than your health. so if you re on medicare or will soon, you may want more than parts a and b here s why. medicare only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. you might want to consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like any medicare supplement insurance plan, these help pick up some of what medicare doesn t pay. and, these plans let you choose any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. you could stay with the doctor or specialist you trust. or go with someone new. you re not stuck in a network. because there aren t any. so don t wait. call now to request your free decision guide and find the aarp medicare supplement plan that works for you. there s a range to choose from, depending on your needs and your budget. rates are competitive. and they re the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. like any of these types of plans, they let you apply whenever you want. there s no enrollment window. no waiting to apply. so call now. remember, medicare supplement plans help cover some of what medicare doesn t pay. you ll be able to choose any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. whether you re on medicare now or turning 65 soon, it s a good time to get your ducks in a row. duck: quack! call to request your free decision guide now. because the time to think about tomorrow is today. cohigher!ad! higher! parents aren t perfect, but then they make us kraft mac & cheese and everything s good again. there s nothing more than my vacation.me so when i need to book a hotel room, i want someone that makes it easy to find what i want. booking.com gets it. they offer free cancellation if my plans change. visit booking.com. booking.yeah. one of my democratic colleagues said it is important to know whether you are a surrogate for president trump or particular interest groups. are you? no. of course not. asked and answered as they say in courtroom law. we are back and we ll be going back in the hearing room for the confirmation hearing of judge gorsuch to the supreme court. among our guests who have been so patient and waiting for all this testimony, two commercial breaks and all of our talking is former rnc chairman michael steele. mr. chairman i d love to what you what i asked know ta totenberg. how much of an ideologue do you find judge gorsuch? not much. he doesn t wear it on his sleeve, one of the strengths going into this and why it s going to be as we ve seen so far and probably for the remainder of the hearing so difficult for democrats to lay a glove on him. he understands where that bright line test is for a judicial nominee, in answering the types of questions that would project into the future how he would decide a case or reflect back on the past what he thinks of past jurispruden jurisprudence. so he s found that sweet spot anwearing it comfortably, if you will and i think the rest of the afternoon will be interesting to see how effective the democrats can be at getting close to pushing some buttons with the judge. where real politics are concerned, michael, it would take a lot, correct? yes. to turn this man away. it would be. i mean, i ve said for some time now, brian, this is not the hill the democrats want to have this fight on. this judicial nomination by president trump changes nothing on the court. the ideological, philosophical balance, if you will, remains the same. the real test for both parties will come in a subsequent future nomination if that should ever happen but this right now is more for democrats about merritt garland than it is about judge gorsuch and that s what animates the base of the democrats politically and puts democrats in the senate on the stick trying to figure out how do we navigate this. david suitor, people change. they change organically. this is a 49-year-old father of two teenage daughters who lives in a culturally liberal part of the country in boulder, colorado. people just change. they do. if you notice the judges who changed on the court are republican nominated judges so the reality of it is, in the end of it we don t know what we re ultimately going to get with this judge, as a justice, and that we ll see probably 10, 12 years from now. michael steele, thank you very much. into the hearing room we go, senator kur bin of illinois starting the questioning. we ll be back during breaks. you weren t involved in the drafting of the mccain section of the bill on the treatment amendment. senator, that wouldn t fit quite with my recollection. please. my re-election is senator mccape and senator graham wrote the legislation with input from the department of defense and the department of justice and a whole lot of others besides. and i was one voice among a great many and that in terms of when it was struck down, handon held the detainee treatment act only applied prospectively and then several years later, gosh, i want to say it was 2008 maybe the court came back around in boumedin. what i m driving at is the mccain section relative to cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and i assume or i hope you ve had a chance to glance at the emails that senator feinstein gave you. you said in your email, you wanted a signing statement to the effect that the view is mccain is best read as essentially codifying existing interrogation policies. what interrogation policies did you think the mccain amendment was essentially codifying? senator, i haven t had a chance to look at that. sorry, i scarfed down a sandwich over the break and i d be happy to read it, but i m not sure what i can answer you here sitting off the top of my head. it s been, it was 12 years ago and i m doing the best i can with my recollection. my recollection it i m trying to get this leap from your of this email i understand over 100,000 pages of emails. exactly. i think the department of justice produced something like 200,000 pages of stuff. i will concede that point, but your lack of memory at the moment and contrast that with the mccain bill, nt that you which i supported outlawed waterboarding. waterboarding was still happening and you were saying in your email i want to essentially codify existin interrogation policy. there s an inconsistency there whh we have to wait until the second round to resolve. i okay. okay. let me read something to you and ask you for reaction is a statement that was made about eight days ago by a congressman named steve king of iowa, and here s what he said. you cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else s babies. you got to keep your birth rate up and you need to teach your children your values and doing so you can grow your population, you can strengthen your culture, you can strengthen your way of life. the reaction to that statement was overwhelming. civil rights leader congressman john lewis called it racist. the republican house speaker paul ryan said he clearly disagreed with king s comments, went on to say the speaker clearly disagrees and believes america s long history of inclusiveness is one of its great strengths. what would your reactionstateme? senator, i can talk about my record, and i can tell you that as a federal judge, when a defendant comes to court with an allegation that the sentencing judgents based on his ethnic iity, me an my colleagues, my colleagues and i have removed that judge from the case. i can tell you that, when an immigration lawyer fails to provide economy counsel time and time again, i ve sent him to the bar for discipline. i can tell you when it comes to access to justice, i ve written on this topic, i ve worked on this topic for the last six years, together with many wonderful people on the rules committee, trying to make our civil litigation system cheaper and faster, because it takes too long for people to exercise their seventh amendment liberties and i can tell you together with my colleagues, we found the level of representation of inmates on death row was unacceptable in our circuit, a whole bunch of us, i can t too much credit, tried to do something about it. i can tell you that when prisoners come to court pro se handwritten complaints and something that might be meritorious in them, a point re. can you describe your relationship with professor john fennis? sure, he was my dissertation supervisor. when did you first meet him? hmm, whenever i went to oxford, so it would have been 199 2? well, it could have been 2 or 3, somewhere in there. and what was his relationship with you or you with him? he was my dissertation supervisor, and i would describe that as a relationship between teacher and student, and he was a very generous teacher, particularly generous with his red ink on my papers. i remember sitting next to the fire in his ok fordoffice, something out of harry potter and he always had a coal fireplace burning and sometimes whether i was being raked over the coals. he did not let an argument that i was working on go unchallenged from any direction. so that was over 20 years ago that you first met him? whatever it is, it is, yes. do you still have a friendship, a relationship with him? i, last time i saw him, gosh, when he i know i saw him when he retired, and there was a party held in his honor, and i remember seeing him then and that was a couple years ago. did he know you were from it must have at some point come out in our conversations, i don t know. and do you recall saying some words of gratitude for his help in writing your book? he did not write my book, senator. he did not help write my book. i wrote my book and certainly expressed gratitude to my dissertation supervisor in a book that s basically my dissertation. i think you were quoted as saying in 2006, you thanked fennis for his kind support through draft after draft. and there were a lot of drafts, senator. i mean, golly, that was a very tough degree. that was the most rigorous academic experience of my life, and i had to pass not just him, but an internal examiner and an external examiner, and that was hard. that was hard. in 2011, when notre dame ran a symposium to celebte his work, yo recall your study under him and you said it was a time when legal giants roamed among oxford spires. oh, yeah, yeah. you called him one of the great scholars. well, and oxford has a stable and it s part of the reason why it was such a privilege. here is a kid from colorado and i got a scholarship to go to oxford. i d never been to england, to europe before and at oxford at that time, john fennis, joe razz, ronald dworkin, h.l.a. hart was still alive then. i ll read a couple of statements from professor fennis. in 2009 he wrote about england s population, he said england s population had largely given up bearing children at a rate consistent with their community s medium term survi l survival. he warned they were on a path to quote their own replacement as a people by other people s more or less regardless of the incomers acompassibility of psychology, culture, religion, political ideas or visions or the worth or viciousness of those ideas and ambition answer went on to say european states in the early 21st century move into a trajectory of demographic and cultural decay, population transfer and replacement by a kind of reversed colonization. had you ever reared that before? nope. had you heard it before? no, not to my recollection. could y distinguish with what he said and what congressman steve king said? senator i m not here to answer for mr. king or professor fennis. i m talking about your reaction to these things. do you feel that what professor fennis wrote about purity of culture and such is something that we should condemn or congratula congratulate? senator, before i expressed any view on that i d want to read it and i d want to read it from brieginning to end, not an excerpt and senator, i ve had a lot of professors. i ve been blessed with some wonderful professors, and i didn t agree with everything they said, and i wouldn t expect them to agree with everything i ve said. let me ask you this specific one. it was 1993, and you were at oxford and this is when i believe you first met this professor. professor fennis was tapped by the then colorado solicitor general timothy timkovich to help defend a 1992 state constitutional amendment that broadly restricted the state from protecting gay, lesbian and bisexual people from discrimination. during the course of the deposition, which you gave in support of that effort, fennis argued that anti-pathy toward lgbt people, specifically toward gay sex was rooted not just in religious tradition, western law, and society at large. he referred to homosexuality as beastality, in the course of this as well. were you aware of that? senator, i know he testified in the case. i can t say sitting here i recall specifics of his testimony or that he gav a deposition i guess the reason i m raising this is, this is a man who apparently had an impact on your life, certainly your academic life, and i m trying to figure out where we can parse his views from your views, what impact he had on you as a student, what impact he has on you today with his views. well i guess, senator, i think the best evidence is what i ve written. i ve written over, gosh, written or joined over 6 million words as a federal appellate judge. i ve written a couple of books. i ve been a lawyer and a judge for 25 or 30 years. that s my record, and i guess i d ask you to respectfully to look at my credentials and my record and some of the examples i ve given you are from my record about the capital habeas work, about the access to justice. i ve spoken about overcriminalization publicly. those are things i ve done, senator. and what about lgbtq individuals? well, senator, there are, what about them? the point i made is they re people. and you know of course but what you said earlier was that you have a record of speaking out, standing up for those minorities who you believe are not being treated fairly. can you point to statements or cases you ve ruled on relative to that class? senator, i ve tried to treat each case and each person as a person, not a this kind of person, not a that kind of person, a person, equal justice under law. it is a radical promise in the history of mankind. does that refer to sexual orientation as well? the supreme court of the united states has held that single sex marriage is protected by the constitution. judge, would you agree that if an employer were to ask female job applicants about their family plans, but not male applicants, that would be evidence of sex discrimination prohibited by title seven of the civil right act? i d agree with you it s highly inappropriate. you don t believe it s prohibited? senator, it sounds like a potential hypothetical case that might be a case for controversy i might have to decide and i wouldn t want to prejudge it sitting here at the confirmation table. i can tell you it would be inappropriate. inappropriate. do you believe there are ever situations where the cost to an employer of maternity leave can justify an employer asking only
we ll show you the ballots on the senate floor after the brutal silencing laugh night of senator elizabeth warren. the decision s by the judges of the ninth circuit which may come later this week could test the limitations of presidential authority and expected to be ultimately be appealed to the united states supreme court. today president trump defended his authority and attacked the judges who will render that decision as well as the court system, itself. i listen to lawyers on both sides last night, and they were talks about things that had just nothing to do with it. i listened to a panel of judges and i ll comment on that i will not comment on the statements made by certainly one judge, but vi have to be honest that if these judges wanted to, in my opinion, help the court in terms of respect for the court, they d do what they should be doing. i mean, it s so sad. we haven t had a decision yet, strong point. so he invited the discussion by the court as to who has the ultimate responsibility for keeping america safe. and the answer, we have a division of authority, we have a separation of powers. we re the only country in the world withhere the you disjudic equal to the presidency. of course the judiciary has a role to play in balancing the need to keep us safe against constitutional violations such as those alleged by the state of washington. so i think the justices will eventually decide this case, but the judges yesterday focused on the right issues, on standing, whether the washington state has standing, on whether the injunction should be rescinded. i think the injunction won t be rescinded. i think the solicitor general is going to have an uphill fight when it comes to the supreme court on the mares merits of t because i don t think he s persuasive when it comes to making an establishment case, an establishment clause argument. how do you know, mr. purcell, how the president came to this decision to issue ordthis order? how do you know he didn t it for the most political reasons, i promised to people who voted for me i d do some kind of ban, i m going to do something like this. i don t think we re going to only face dangers from those sempb k seven countries. we might. this will get me through the night. how do you know it wasn t intended to stop muslims from coming into country due to their religion? how do you know his mind? if it s not written in the order. it s common to look behind the state of motives for a governmental action. the same action can be constitutional or not depending on what motivated it. for example, if a city passed an ordinance saying you have to shovel your sidewalks on saturday mornings, that might be perfectly fine but if the reason they did it was to block orthodox jews from living in city or discriminate them, then it s not fine and it s unconstitutional. here it s an incredible amount of evidence that the president was motivated at least in part even on religious grounds. it cannot say we re going to help people who are persecuted because they re christian and not help people who are persecuted because their muslim. the american people saw a candidate, trump, who could be quite nimble, the three of us know how nimble he can be. shifted from saying it was going it be a muslim ban, unconstitutional, to say it was going to be a ban of a country or origin or where people are coming from. i go back to the case of pr president obama signed, those seven countries determined to be insufficient in their vetting procedures. there s no way to know what they were letting go on in their countries, themselves. there was a ban on people who had gone through those countries or at least more serious vetting procedure. they wouldn t get visas automatically for ending up going through europe. question is if that was close enough suppose obama had issued this executive didn t th bill was strong enough, i m going to go ahead with an executive order on the same countries. would you have the same suspicion the president of the united states had religion in mind to punish a religion? would you have that same suspicion of president obama or president clinton? a couple of points s about that, chris. first of all, what was in place before, what congress passed and what president obama implemented was nothing remotely like this, was not a ban of people traveling from those countries. it was a denial of visas. it was they did not get a waiver from the normal right. visa requirement. second, as i was saying before, you do have to look at motives. the exact same policy, and the supreme court had been very clear about this, i m sure professor dershowitz would agree, the exact same policy can be constitutional or not depending upon what motivated it. if the motive was to argumetarg people based on their religion, it s unconstitutional and that s what we re alleging here. the supreme court also said if there is a good secular purpose, secular motive, don t you think even when trump i don t defend him, i don t like this mollpolicy at all. i hope you win the case. thank you. don t you think when he said muslim ban he had in mind a ban against people who would bring terrorism to the country? he doesn t really care about punishing muslims. if he did, he would extend the ban to 25 or 30 muslim countries. he focused on the muslim countries that he thought risked islamic terrism. remember, the difference between the obama administration and trump is obama wouldn t use the term islamic extremism or islamic radicalism or islamic terrorism. trump uses that term and that s his right. he was elected president. isn t he entitled to implement that policy by saying it is that we re focusing on and, therefore, it s no accident that we re focusing on seven countries that are muslim. we re not including armenia or israel or any other country, by the way, if he did include armenia or israel, would you say that solved the problem because here you have a christian country and a jewish country as well? well, chris, let me if i can go back to your first question, i mean, i do think we have raised very serious questions about whether security was really what motivated the president in issuing this order. if it was really about national security, one of the points we ve been making our case, why didn t they figure out before they issued it whether it applied to half a million people who are already here on green cards from these seven countries. ? if those people are a threat, those are half a million people who are already here. the white house hadn t made up their mind before they i m not an attorney but let me ask you the problem. this comes down to human ability, our ability to read minds. used to have guys like dunninger who go around audiences. i remember that. would go around, say i know what s in your mind. we found out those were cons. nobody can read somebody else s mind. studying politics 40, 50 years, i thought you can t tell what s in a politicians mind because there s always a mix of things, always self-interest, almost always. some kind of grander interest. some kind of doing the job they were elected to do or wanted to have the job. it s always a mix of things. how do you know this is a ban purposely an anti-muslim ban when knowing trump like we all know, his show business is so much stronger than his depth, always bigger in when he s trying to sell than what he s thinking. he wasn t against the iraq war. he said he was because that works. you really think he s pro-life? he says he is. it works. could it be if you followed a pattern of his behavior, not what he said, what rudy giuliani said, what he said before, follow how trump works. it s what will work. that s what he does. could it be he s doing this to get through the night? going to do some kind of ban, my people up in erie, pennsylvania, youngstown, ohio, were counting on him to do something, so i m going to do something. of course i m not just worried about those seven countries. the guys who attacked us on 99 /11, egypt with the brains and the thug s came from saudi arabia. it could be it s just another day in politics for donald trump and how do you know that s not true or the other is strew ortr doesn t like muslims? how do you discreetly think through all that and come out and say i m a judge, i m going to tell you what he was thinking. i don t know the answer to that, do you? how do you know what anybody elis thinking? i can t read the president s mind. what i can cite is the things he said publicly which it provides a shocking amount of evidence really right off the bat of how this was intended. and our argument at this point, remember, you know, for those who aren t lawyers, normally you don t have to prove discriminatory motive until later in the case after you ve had a chance to get evidence and that sort of thing. one of the points i was making yesterday was that there s already a rather stunning amount of evidence that this was intended to target muslims before we ve even had any opportunity to look at anything like, you know, e-mails between giuliani and the president s staff or conversations that happened between people about the goals. i do think, agn, the fact that this was done in such an irregular way, at it s not requested by the national security agencies, it was barely if at all reviewed by then, there s a lot of that s where my head was going, that it was political. i m sorry, you ve been a great guest and you re doing great public service. i want to get back to professor dershowitz. you said you re rooting for mr. purce wil purcell, explain, unpack that if you can. i think the policy is terrible. i think the president should rescind it, go back to the drawing board, do exactly what mr. purcell said, go through the national security council, consult with his new attorney general and draft a rule that would pass constitutional muster. i don t like this law. so i hope he wins, but on constitutional grounds, i think he has a weak case on establishment clause. and if you re asking oliver wendell holmes once said the job of a lawyer is to predict what the courts dwoil in fa s will d. i predict he will win the early rounds and may win in the ninth circuit because the ninth circuit has judges who are both liberal and conservative. when it comes to the supreme court, it s going to be a very, very hard sell on the establishment clause particularly. there s going to be a difference between people in the country, green cards certainly, people in the country legitimately, and the family from yemen who have never been in the country, they just apply for a visa, they want to come in, they have no constitutional right. and i think the state of washington will have a hard time proving that they have standing to assert the right of the family in yemen to come into the country for the first time. so, yeah, i hope he wins, but i m not sure he s going to. okay. thank you so much. noah purcell. allen dershowitz. thank you so much for your brains. anyway. we continue to watch the ongoing vote in the united states senate to confirm senator jeff sessions of alabama to be the next attorney general. that vote coming after an unprecedented day, unplus de of protests on the floor of the senate as republican majority leader silences senator elizabeth warren for reading a let r by dr. martin luther king s widow. we ll have an exclusive interview with tim kaine coming up, the 2016 vice presidential candidate, when we return. this is hardball, where the action is. your insurance company won t replace welcome back to hardball. we continue to watch the united states senate, right now holding a confirmation vote on alabama senator jeff sessions for attorney general. earlier this evening, senator tim kaine of virginia delivered an impassioned speech opposing this confirmation. doing so, senator kaine told the story of richard and mildred loving, the couple jailed in 1959 when interracial marriage was illegal. here s senator kaine. 1r50 years ago the supreme court struck down interracial marriage in this country, but mr. president, the case started with a couple who having nowhere else to turn thought if we write the attorney general, surely he will be a champion for us and he will help us redress this horrible wrong. that s who the attorney general needs to be. i m joined right now by senator tim kaine of virginia. of course, i love the fact you went back to bobby kennedy. i can t think of a better person i thought you would, chris. yeah. let me ask you about the i salute for you that especially since you represent the commonwealth of virginia. right. that movie is a great movie, actually called loving and it s about loving, actually, not just a family name. let me ask you about this charge from elizabeth warren and, of course, it was initially made by ted kennedy and it was made by coretta scott king. is it fair to judge a person s soul or their conscience, whatever you want to call it, their being, by who they were 30 years ago? 31 years ago? is that fair? greta van susteren before the show brought it up, she offered it as a rhetorical question. i offer it again to you. is it fair? chris, if you don t have any oaf oa other evidence, i m not sure that s completely fair. it would make you ask questions but it would not be completely fair. in my speech on the floor, and look, senator sessions and i, we know each other. i m a friend. we have gone on codells together. i don t think he should be attorney general because his voting record in the senate, even recently, suggests he s not going to be a champion for civil rights. so i m not making a judgment about his character let s go to bobby but i m making a judgment about whether he can be a champion. let s go to the bobby kennedy if he gets a letter tomorrow morning when he s attorney general from an african-american man or woman, 80 years old, say i don t have a driver s license, one thing i want to do is go to the score when i want to go to the store, vote easily. are you going to help me? do you think jeff sessions will help that person? i don t have the confidence that someone writing e ining inn voting rights or immigrant writing in worried about being deported. i don t think they ll feel confidence. in fact, i don t think they ll write in. the attorney general needs to be seen as a champion for civil rights and that s not been senator sessions record on lgbt equality, on voting rights, on special education. people won t see him as that champion that they saw bobby kennedy and others and that was one of the reasons i decided to oppose him. we ve had people who have risen up from their roots, may come from a part of the country that was segregated, people like that, klan members, bobmembers. bobby byrd. have risen above the local thinking, parochial thinking. you don t think mr. sessions is capable of that? the deep south. he s not able to transcend that and become a true american lawkeeper? chris, i haven t seen the evidence. here s an example. just a couple years ago the supreme court struck down a big chunk of the voting rights act. i know. section 5. he said that was good news. and when we tried to put together efforts to fix the voting rights act, fix the problem that the court said was a problem, there s an easy fix. he s not been engaged in that. i m with him on the armed services committee. we had a bill to ban torture by any agency of the united states government that got support from more than three-quarters of the senators, very bipartisan. this was a year ago. jeff sessions was one of the handful of people who would not sign on to a torture ban. i don t want an attorney general serving with a president who says he thinks torture is okay, who thinks torture may be fine. an attorney general needs to be a check, independent check against an overreaching executive especially in this case. i just don t see senator sessions as being able to do that. how s it going for you and secretary clinton thesedays? i mean, we think about you. i do once in a while. i wonder because i think you did a good job running and, you know, the zeitgeist wasn t quite right. had more to do with the zeitgeist than anything else. the mood of the country was what is your feeling about the whole election? it seems kind of surreal, chris. i wake up some mornings and it seems like the campaign was a dream and i wake up other mornings and thinking i might be living through some alternate reality now. so it was a this is the reality, senator. this is i got to by the way, we just got the word, 51 senators, majority, just voted for will you be able to work with him? oh, absolutely. i ll be able to work with him. but look, i just you know, for this variety of reasons, i ll go back to the other question, though, for me, the best thing was to go right back to work. like you, i m a religious person. things happen for a reason. even if you can t figure it out. but the one thing i know is i m supposed to be in the senate. and i think the trump presidency is going to be a very important test of all the checks and balances in our system. of a senate with power even in minority. of the power of the press. of the ability to peacefully protest. of the power of the article 3 branch of the courts. every check is going to be tested. and i think the system s going to be vindicated because the checks are going to work. but we re going to have to work hard at it every day. well, as a fellow i tell you something from outside our normal conversation at church, this is from a rabbi. i give this to people who are going through a hard time. he who gave me burdens also gave me shoulders. i love that. yeah, that s a great that is a great we can handle what s thrown at us. thank you so much. it s great to have good work to come back to. thanks, chris. you re lucky to be where you are. we are, too. thank you, tim kaine from the commonwealth of virginia. much more coming up on the hot, hot dispute over senator elizabeth warren. we re going to get into that situation, how it s energizing a lot of people. women especially. not just women. this is sort of like the what do you call it, this is the lighting fluid to the democratic base i think. it s going to light them up. we ll be right back. a meeting? it s a big one. too bad. we are double booked: diarrhea and abdominal pain. why don t you start without me? oh. yeah. if you re living with frequent, unpredictable diarrhea and abdominal pain, you may have irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d. a condition that can be really frustrating. talk to your doctor about viberzi, a different way to treat ibs-d. viberzi is a prescription medication you take every day that helps proactively manage both diarrhea and abdominal pain at the same time. so you stay ahead of your symptoms. viberzi can cause new or worsening abdominal pain. do not take viberzi if you have or may have had: pancreas or severe liver problems, problems with alcohol abuse, long-lasting or severe constipation, or a blockage of your bowel or gallbladder. if you are taking viberzi, you should not take medicines that cause constipation. the most common side effects of viberzi include constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain. stay ahead of ibs-d. with viberzi. the leather condemned jeff sessions, then the u.s. attorney for the southern district for alabama, for using what she said was, the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens. anyway, a few minutes after senator warren read from that letter, the following scene played out. let s watch it. they are mothers, daughters, sisters, fathers, sons and brothers. mr. president they are mr. president. the majority leader. senator impugn the motives and conduct of our colleague from alabama as warned by the chair. said, senator sessions has used the awesome power of the office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens. i call the senator to order under the provisions of rule 19. mr. president, i am surprised that the words of coretta scott king are not suitable for debate in the united states senate. i ask leave of the senate to continue my remarks. is there objection? object. i appeal the ruling objection is heard. the senator will take her seat. the senator will take her seat. well, those words are going to be rumored that rarely used provision, by the way, rule 19 said senator chance not, quote, impu to another senator any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming. here s how senator mcconnell defended his action. senator warren was giving a lengthy speech. she had appeared to violate the rule. she was warned. she was given an explanation. nevertheless, she persisted. today senator warren said she didn t think she was violating the rules of the senate. here she is. this is coretta scott king talking about the facts as she saw them, that he used he, jeff sessions, used his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens. she s not calling names. she s just describing what happened. do you think it the facts may her, but we re not in the united states senate to ignore facts. i m joined right now by senator jack reed of rhode island. thausk y thank you for coming on. looks like the argument whether jeff sessions is attorney general is over. he now is attorney general. he s been confirmed by a majority of the senate voting. what do you make of the argument of rule 19 and elizabeth warren? republicans made a mistake to silence elizabeth warren. americans are aware of coretta scott king s letter. shwas reading a historic document by an icon o the civil rights movement describing the behaviors that she observed so i think it was a vast extension, attempt to all the senators were allowed to read the same letter. i think there was a grave mistake made. what do you make of that letter, the influence on hr thinking? you may have already decided but do you think that letter is condemnatory? what would you say about that letter from mrs. king all those years ago? 31 years ago. i think what the letter describes was coretta scott king s view of senator sessions based upon her experience, her knowledge. i think it was sincere. it is more than 20 years old, perhaps close to 30 years old. but i think it was written with, you know, a meaningful and sincere intent by mrs. king. how do you think this is going to hurt or help your colleague from massachusetts? i would think this is the best thing. you know, however it happened, it seems to me mitch mcconnell, the republican leader, has given her the most national attention in a positive way she could ever get. i don t think anybody is holding against her what she said in quoting mrs. king s letter, in fact, they re saluting herb f i it. on the other hand, people are going to rally to her and say she has punspunk, the stuff we looking for on the democratic side. you re exactly right. showed not only great eloquence but great determination. she didn t want to be seated in silence. she wanted to participate in the debate in the senate. i think she also viewed she was reading a historical record, not making a deliberate personal attack against any other senator. thank you so much. honor to have you on, sir, senator reed of rhode island. anyway, there was strong reaction to senator warren s speech last night and senator mcconnell s rebuke of her. isn t that a nice big liblical ? rebuke. etch even hillary clinton weighed. she was warned, given an explanation, nevertheless, she persisted. clinted added in her own words so must we all. i m joined by washington post s robert costa. both are mns mns political snbc analysts. what was your reaction to this whole thing? first of all, personally, what it meant to you as a womb, an, citizen and what do you think the political fallout is? i thought elizabeth warren could not have done anything on her own to have helped herself as much as mitch mcconnell just helped her. he gave her a massive platform both in terms of her own favorability and personal brand. elizabeth warren up until now had kind of been a little l bbi more silent compared to winn wh snappers that have been trying to harness the progressive energy. it became a trigger point, some of the key bloof the base, bothr african-americans, they felt like he wasn t just silencing her, he was silencing coretta scott king, words of her and also women. it became a flashpoint for women who saw in that a form of bullying. chris, i went on twitter an some of the male trump voters who often troll journalists were using the word, shrill, and words that came up also around clinton she wasn t shrill. let me ask you about women, generally growing up, in school, i m sure you ve been through this. you re a different generation than me. the boys do all the talking. the girls are much more reserved about this. is it that primordial? i think it is. if you recall, that became a flashpoint as well during the campaign with hillary clinton being shushed. who did that? i think it was during a debate. might have even been i think it may have been sanders. it was sanders, yeah, actually. that became something that then helped her with women again. i think, yeah, that that brought back a lot of memories maybe for a certain generation of women who feel like if they are speaking in a certain tone or too aggressively, that it is somehow seen as shrill or yeah, i know. not pleasant for males who may be trying to assert themselves in the same way. that definitely was something hillary clinton expressed during the campaign was that when she felt like when she raised herb voi voice and tried to be impassioned about something, it was viewed differently than when her male counterparts did the same thing. you can see how she adjusted her language after the initial debate when that happened. thank you. let me go to robert costa. this you know, this is stupid politics by mitch mcconnell, i think. unless they want let s be political here for a second, not in terms of bad manners or whatever, male/female relations, whatever, could it be that old mr. wise old al mitch mcconnell wants the democratic progressive left to take over the party because he thinks it s easier to beat in kentucky when the next election is held there? he wants the party to sweep over to the progressive side with senator warren leading the band? that would be a long-term chess play. i think this was an important political moment for the left. for democrats, chris, who saw in 2016 african-american voters across the country in many of these swing states that did not turn out in the traditional numbers along the obama coalition and now you see the democrats not just going after economicssues with people like senator warren but going after the racial issues surrounding the trump presidency. and how does that fit with elizabeth warren? the racial because she was quoting from coretta king. well, she s bringing up the racial issues that surround some of these nominees. right. the one thing that haunts sessions is the 1986 confirmation hearing he had for another judicial post. this is something that beyond the populism and nationalism that sessions represents, he represents also in democrats minds this racially charged element of the republican matter and as they look to 2018 and 2020, they need to rebuild their coalition and part of that rebuilding is getting voters on the left active on these issues again, reminded about the importance of these issues as these confirmations come through. well, both questions, i ll start with you, i m going to go to you, robert, why is trump, the president, why is he jumping on these judges before they rule? he just wants to antagonize these guys. he s been doing this, though, throughout the campaign. it started i see it as not just judges, chris, anybody who gets kind of in his craw. you know? the media, the judges, any institution. the cia. that gets in his craw. well anyway, i ll leave it at that. quickly, robert, you ve been following this guy like a bird dog. why does he make it hard to agree with him? the buck stops on that desk. agree wh that principle with a lot of latitude. here he is talking trash talk to the judges. i find it hard to say, oh, yeah, you re right, keep it up, buddy. it s hard to say because everything for president trump is a fight. you look at his entire career. real estate, television, the tabloids. he relishes a public fight and it s about the negotiation in the public sphere. that s what s it s all about. frank sinatra all over again. thank you. up next, president trump s once again attacking judges. this time the three-judge panel on that ninth circuit court of appeals that is actually weighing right now whether to reinstate his travel ban. it comes as trump continues to paint a dark and many people think a scary picture of the world. a fear appropriate, if not to actual reality, certainly appropriate to his agenda. what he wants. this is hardball, where the action is. uhhh- and i was wondering if your brokerage offers some sort of guarantee? guarantee? where we can get our fees and commissions back if we re not happy. so can you offer me what schwab is offering? what s with all the questions? ask your broker if they re offering $6.95 online equity trades and a satisfaction guarantee. if you don t like their answer, ask again at schwab. trust number one doctor recommended dulcolax constipated? use dulcolax tablets for gentle overnight relief suppositories for relief in minutes and stool softeners for comfortable relief of hard stools. dulcolax, designed for dependable relief my doctor said moving more helps ease fibromyalgia pain. he also prescribed lyric bromyalgia is thought to be the result of overactive nerves. lyrica is believed to calm these nerves. for some, lyrica can significantly relieve fibromyalgia pain and improve function, so i feel better. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling, or blurry vision. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs and feet. don t drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don t drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. with less pain, i can be more active. ask your doctor about lyrica. court biased, so i won t call it biased. we haven t had a decision yet. but courts seem to be so political and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what s right. right now, we are at risk because of what happened. i listened to a bunch of stuff last night on television that was disgraceful. it was disgraceful. president trump also tweeted this morning that if the u.s. does not win this case, as it so obviously should, we can never have the security and safety to which we are entitled. politics. that s how he ended it. never. this afternoon, democratic senator richard blumenthal from connecticut, of course, met with supreme court nominee neil gorsh. here s what he said gorsuch had to say about the president s comments on the judiciary. he certainly expressed to me that he is disheartened by the demoralizing and abhorrent comments made by president trump about the judiciary. well a spokesman for gorsuch, himself, confirms the nominee did use the words disheartening and demoralizing in regards to what it was doing to judiciary from trump s comments. joining me, angus king, independent from the state of maine. senator king, what do you make of this, because it s not hearsay, apparently we now know gorsuch s people have said, yes, that s what he s said. he s demoralized. e believes it demoralizes the judiciary to be told they re prejudice by the president of the united states. that s what drutrump basically said. if i had a client who was going to bad mouth the judge while the judge was still considering the case, that in itself makes t s no sense. the deeper problem is just a lack of deep understanding or any understanding of the constitution and the separation of powers to deliberately, and i think it clearly was deliberate, he said it, to try to delegitimize an independent co-equal branch of government in doing their job and talk about you didn t play the clip where he said any high school student would know what the right answer is here. it just it s overstepping the bounds. i mean, it as you can tell, m kind of speechl it really is extraordinary and it undermines the whole system. he s preparing a way for people to say, oh, yeah, political judges and all that. these are people appointed by jimmy carter, george w. bush and barack obama. that s the essence of our system, division of power. there has to be some respect to the system, it seems to me. senator king, we have no time tonight. it s a busy night. thank you for coming on from maine. independent voice. absolutely. up next, the democratic resistance may have turned a corner after what happened in the senate overnight. will progressives use it to build a movement? what happened to elizabeth warren against trumpism. could she be the new champion of the resistance, if you will? the hardball roundtable is coming here next. you re watching hardball, where action is. did you know 90% of couples disagree on mattress firmness? enter sleep number. she likes the bed soft. he s more hardcore. you can both adjust the bed for the best sleep of your life. right now, save 50% on the ultimate limited edition bed. go to sleepnumber.com for a store near you. king arthur: ready! washington: charge! empress wu: charge! (in chinese) king arthur: charge! let your reign begin. evony, the mobile game. download now. why pause a spontaneous moment? cialis for daily use treats ed and the urinary symptoms of bph. tell your doctor about your medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have a sudden decrease or loss of hearing or vision, or an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis. wheyou wantve somto protect it.e, at legalzoom, our network of attorneys can help you every step of the way. with an estate plan including wills or a living trust that grows along with you and your family. legalzoom. legal help is here. conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship. well, democratic criticism of senator sessions was then seen as purely political. listen to the rest. charges that she was making against jeff sessions are demonstrably false. they re slanderous. they re ugly. and it s one of the crutches you know, when the left doesn t have any other arguments, they go and accuse everyone of being a racist. his unpleasantness, that guy, ted cruz, is immeasurable. the latest clash of one of the president s cabinet picks, grassroots opposition continues to grow. i m joined by our round table, david avella, republican consultant, chairman of gopac! have to say it with the exclamation point. michelle bernard, re-elected again. and jonathan, writer for new york magazine, author of a great book audacity: how barack obama devefied his critics and created a legacy that will prevail. who won, who lost with mcconnell, mitch mcconnell rebuking elizabeth warren? who won nthat fight? mcconnell, keeping the vote going for session tonight. elizabeth warren wins because her e-mail list is bigger, her fund-raising has more money in her account. who was right? who was right? elizabeth warren. okay. tell me why. absolutely, elizabeth warren wins and the country wins because her just the appearance of the way he spoke to her and what he said and then you turn on the television this morning, and you see male pundit after pundit saying it has nothing to do with the fact that she s a woman, it doesn t matter, it s just that his constituents don t like her. it does matter. how do they know? i go into this thing with dunninger, this thing about reading minds. judges tell me they can read trump s mind. you can t read anyone s mind but there s something you learn in the law that it is not just i agree. you can t always tell intent but if tsh. i agree with you. michelle, would never said ted kennedy they would have never told him to shut up when he was talking. michelle brings up that men came out and was critical of elizabeth warren and she read mrs. king s letter. let me read you his niece s comment. it s almost like a bait and switch. stir up the emotions in the name of king and my name is alvita ki king and play the race card which she s attempting to do. i want to ask you if you can justify the senate rule. i understand why they have a rule, you can t criticize anoth another senator. when the senator is the nominee, you have rules you can t criticize the person you re debating? isn t that insane? that is the rule. think about everyone else who has been criticized. really just pick out one look at a lot of senate rules and maybe think they are absurd orrcane or out of step, but the reality is they are the les. now if trump they don t always enforce them. if chuck schumer was in charge just as harry reid did last night, he probably would change a rule he didn t like. you let ted cruz you think mcconnell is trying to help elizabeth warren? i don t think he likes her. i don t understand why i thought elizabeth warren 2020, thank you for giving us our first female president. i know, i m a historian around here, i love my jobs go back to 1966, lbj, nixon one time made him the nominee in 68 by attacking him. i compared it to the gag rule in the 19th century. you couldn t it s in your article. that s right. it made the issue bigger because it made the issue about are we allowed to debate this question? it put more attention on it. this is what the democrats are down to. go. they don t have the white house. they don t have the senate. they don t have the house. they only have, what is it, 17 of 50 governors. they only got a mere 31 what s that got to do with look, all they have to do is shout and scream. that s all they ve done. millions of women who showed up to protest on the march. they have the millions of muslims we got to go. many women are supporting donald trump s absolutely. 42% voted for trump. the roundtable is sticking with up. not black women. we voted the right way. that out. we re going to stay, this, by the way, as you can see is where the action is. hey, need fast heartburn relief? try cool mint zantac. it releases a cooling sensation in your mouth and throat. zantac works in as little as 30 minutes. nexium can take 24 hours. try cool mint zantac. no pill relieves heartburn faster. .stop clicking around.travel sites to find a better price. the lowest prices on our hotels are always at hilton.com. so pay less and get more only at hilton.com. dearthere s no other way to say this. it s over. i ve found a permanent escape from monotony. together, we are perfectly balanced, our senses awake, our hearts racing as one. i know this is sudden, but they say: if you love something. set it free. see you around, giulia yesterday in new york, first lady melania trump settled a defamation lawsuit against a blogger for running a false story about her. the defendant in the case issued the following apology. i had no legitimate factual bases to make these false statements and i fully retract them. i acknowledge these false statements were very harmful and hurt to feel mrs. trump and her family and therefore i sincerely apologize to mrs. trump, her son, her husband and her parents for making these false statements. that s all i ve got to say. we ll be right back. from the first moment you met it was love at first touch and all you wanted to do was surround them in comfort and protection that s why only pampers swaddlers is the #1 choice of hospitals to wrap your baby in blanket-like softness and premium protection mom: oh hi baby so all they feel is love wishing you love, sleep and play. pampers but when we brought our daughter home, that was it. now i have nicoderm cq. the nicoderm cq patch with unique extended release technology helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. it s the best thing that ever happened to me. every great why needs a great how. heck, i can get you over $600 in savings. chop, chop. do i look like i ve been hurt before? because i ve been hurt before. um, actually your session is up. hang on. i call this next one junior year abroad. back with the round table. david, tell me something i don t know. in february, a special election in delaware will decide majority control in the state senate. if democrats lose they will be down to a mere five states where they have the governor s office and state legislatures. not good is it? it is for the republicans? not good for the progressive conservatives. and he s smiling. he should, he s a conservative. go ahead. i am going to predict the fifth circuit four, harken back into the 1950s into the 1960s led by three white men all republicans, another white male, a democrat, paved the way for all the civil rights legislation of today, i think the ninth circuit will do the same with the decision on the washington case and immigration ban. fact from my book the share of corporate profits wall street accounted for was 30% before dodd/frank, went down to 17%, almost half. we ll see if it goes back up under trump if he refinancializes the economy. thank you very much jonathan chait, david, and michelle. when we return, let me finish with trump watch. you re watching hardball. trump watch, february actually, february 8, wednesday, 2017. a disturbing thought for tonight. could the cross currents in this case of the trump travel ban have kept us from the central constitutional question? suppose you re a judge and you have to decide whether to step in and stop a president from carrying out an executive order dealing with national security? if it s clearly unconstitutional the answer is easy. if the order says islam is the country s enemy and its beliefs should be kept from our borders the could should act and bluntly. however since the order refers to the same countries the united states congress has already identified as being dangerous, does such an executive order deserve to be denied? i know how hard it is to separate the executive order without reference to the previous statements and mayor giuliani or from who the president is issuing the order but wouldn t it be reasonable for judges to do just that why? no judge no matter how fail or brilliant has the ability to tell what the president s purpose is with any real
i have recused myself in the matters that deal with the trump campaign. that statement by the attorney general on thursday came after the washington post revealed that sessions met twice last year with russian ambassador sergei kislyak. sessions scrambled to clarify. in retrospect i should have slowed down, but i did meet one russian official a couple of times and that would be the ambassador. sessions met with kislyak on july 18th, after speaking with a group of ambassadors in the republican convention and he met again with the russian ambassador at his office on september 8th, just three days after president obama took a hard line on russian sanctions in a g-20 meeting with vladimir putin. since the election, trump and his surrogates have repeatedly denied any contacted between the campaign and russian officials. i m telling you it s all phony, baloney garbage. all of the contact by the trump campaign and the associates was with the american people. you are not aware of any contacts during the course of the election. how many times do i have to answer this question? i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge no person that i deal with does. but the sessions reversal is one example of a growing list of admissions, dragged out of the trump administration after reporting on contact between trump associates and russian officials. there is now former national security adviser michael flynn who had publicly denied he had discussed sanctions and phone conversations with kislyak in december. after reporting detailed phone calls, flynn reversed himself and was forced to resign. jared kushner, reports disclose he was part of a december meeting with kislyak at trump tower. then there s mr. trump s former campaign chairman paul manafort. in july he denied that to appease the russians. the campaign fought to have the republican platform not include weapons for ukraine. it did not come from the trump campaign. i don t know who everybody is, but i guarantee you. nobody from the trump campaign wanted that change in the platform? no one. zero. but former trump policy adviser j.d. gordon tells abc nbc news that manafort was not forth right with us. gordon says he was in the room and told the committee chairman that the amendment was a, quote, problem for the campaign. gordon also met with the russian ambassador at the convention and then there s carter page, a one-time trump policy adviser who was also at that meeting. he has changed his story about meeting with russian officials. i had no meetings. no meetings. but on thursday, page s answer changed. did you meet sergei kislyak in cleveland? did you talk to him? i m not going to deny that i talked to him. by the way, we contacted paul manafort last night and he told us, quote, he has always been forthright with us and had no knowledge of the platform change until the sunday after the convention so he could haven t authorized the change. joining me is senator marco rubio. republican of florida. welcome back to meet the press, sir. thank you. good morning. good morning. you traveled with the president on friday down to florida on air force one. and on saturday morning the president went on a tweet storm accusing former president obama of illegally having him wiretapped. do you have any insight? first of all, did the president talk to you about this on friday and do you have any insight on what precipitated all of this? we never discussed that, number one, and i have no insight into what exactly he s referring to, and i would imagine the president and the white house in the days to come will outline further what was behind that accusation. i ve never heard that before, and i have no evidence or no one s ever presented anything to me that indicates anything like that. in the days to come you guys are going to ask him and i imagine he ll answer it. for what is it worth, as a member of the senate intelligence committee, if there was a wiretap on donald trump s campaign isn t that something that you would have been made aware of? the term wiretap is thrown around very loosely by a lot of people so we have to understand exactly what they re talking about. i don t have any basis, i never heard that allegation made before by anybody, and i ve never seen anything about that anywhere before. but, again, the president put that out there and now the white house will have to answer to exactly what he s referring to. it s such a serious allegation. it is either, if it s true, it s an extraordinary political scandal and if it s not true, it s an extraordinary political scandal. fair? well, if it s true, and i just hate speculating about these things. this is the president of the united states on your behalf? clearly, if that were true then there s no doubt that it would be a very newsworthy item with a lot of discussion about it, and if it s not true then obviously one would ask themselves why would you put that out there. what was the rationale behind it? i didn t make the allegation and i m not the person that went out there and said it. i ve never said that before. i would not say that to you today, and i have no basis to say that. if the president and the white house does they ll lay it out over the next few days and we ll be interested to see what they were talking about. are you concerned that the president has a credibility problem? we can go back to the birther business, 3 to 5 million illegal votes and now this wiretap thing that you say you re not aware of. this is the president of the united states. can we take him at his word? first of all, i would say the president has gotten elected and in many ways he s doing what he told the people he was going to do. a lot of this outrage is donald trump is doing what he said he would do if he were elected and you see that reflected in the public polling where a large number of americans are saying he s doing exactly what he said he was going to do, and that s what people are mostly focused on. is the president s style different than mine? absolutely. is he an unorthodox political figure? absolutely. that s what people voted for and that s what they wanted in this election. wherever those facts lead us and we ll allow people to make judgments based on those facts. given that there have been reports that the white house reached out to your chairman of this intelligence committee richard berg of north carolina. some democrats are concerned, including mike warner are concerned that the credibility of the intelligence committee s investigation is now at peril because of this. is there a point, and i know you believe you guys can do this. you have tweeted that you guys can do this yourselves in the intel committee. is there a point that it might be better for the political process to take politics out of this and have a special prosecutor, whatever youant call it, and put this sort of out of congress right now? not now. i certainly don t think we re at that point at this moment and here s why. the job of the intelligence committee is not to be a law enforcement agency. the job of the intelligence committee is to gather facts and evidence to go through counterintelligence programs and intelligence programs and understand all of the evidence and the facts that s out there about how the russians did this and why they did this, et cetera and put this all in a report and that s our job to gather facts and i ve told everybody i m not going to be a part of a witch hunt and i ll also not be part of a cover-up. i want to put the facts out there wherever the facts lead us and that s what the senate intelligence committee will do. i will tell you this, if it s not what we do and if it s not the product we produce i will be among the first people out there on this program and out there that i did not sign my name on the report because it gave irrelevant facts that the american people deserve to know. we re a finder of facts, a collector of facts and we will put that in the report and people will make those judgments based on those facts. right after the fbi director comey briefed the intelligence committee, i believe it was about in fact, it was exactly february 17th, you tweeted the following. i am now very confident senate intel committee i serve on will conduct a thorough bipartisan investigation of interference of putin influence. i understand that was what you were briefed on, but what gave you more confidence to tweet that than before that day. first of all, because i m interactive with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and what i have very strongly is every member of that committee is interested at arriving at the facts and the truth. no one is looking at this from a political angle and everybody at the end of the day understands what the job is, understands that the credibility of the committee is on the line and we want to arrive at the truth. everyone in there is prepared to go where the facts lead us irrespective of what the implications will be politically. i am very confident of that. i remain confident of that. if that changes then i will be the first out there to say hat committee is no longer capable of doing their job and we re not at that point, thankfully. you said you re not going to participate in a witch hunt and that is words that the president has used to describe all of this. the more he does that, is that an irresponsible use of phrase right now? i don t know why. he obviously feels very strongly that he s being accused of things that he hasn t done and there s hysteria in the media and he has the right to say. he has every right to defend himself and that s what he s doing. my use of the term has to do with the following and that is i want to go where the truth is irrespective of its political implications. wherever the truth is where we re going to go and everyone else needs to be committed to that principle, as well. and i believe in the intelligence committee that we are and if that changes, as i told you, i ll be the first among them to say it. do you believe the intelligence community s assessment that the russians interfered in this election and did so to try to benefit donald trump? well, i ve never doubted that the in from back in october i ve been telling people, i was in the middle of my campaign, and i refused to talk about wikileaks because it was the work of a foreign intelligence agency trying to influence our elections. the key is not just to understand what they did, but how they did it because they ll try to do it again and again, not just to influence elections and to influence political debates in washington, d.c. i want to make sure that we don t spend so much time focused on things that may not have happened that we don t focus on the things that actually did happen because they re happening now in france. they re happening now in germany and it will happen again in this country if we don t learn from it. senator marco rubio, republican of florida. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. always a pleasure, sir. thank you. thank you. on thursday before attorney general jeff sessions recused himself from any investigation involving russia and the trump campaign, chuck schumer from new york joined a growing list of democrats calling for sessions to resign. on friday afternoon president trump released that photo and called him a hypocrite. on this , senator schumer joins me now. good morning. good morning to you, sir. there are so many tweets to keep up with. happily talked with putin and his associates and took place in 03 in full view of press and public under oath. would you and your team, that s you challenging them under oath. let me ask you this, this morning the president s press secretary came out and said the following, reports concerning politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. president trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into russian activity the congressional intelligence committee exercise their oversight authority whether executive branch powers were abused in 2016. is that a fair ask of this administration? well, look, president obama has flatly denied that he has done this, and either way, chuck, the president s in trouble if he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong and beneath the dignity of the presidency. it is something that really hurts people s view of government. its civilization warping, and i don t know if any president democrat or republican in the past has done this. it shows this president doesn t know how to conduct himself. on the other hand, if it s true it s even worse for the president because that means that a federal judge independently elected has found probable cause that the president or people on his staff have had probable cause to have broken the law or to have interacted with a foreign agent. that s serious stuff. either way, the president makes it worse with these tweets. is he trying to divert this here? yeah. the president denied this. i don t have any doubt that president obama has been telling the truth. if they want to investigate it, sure, but the real point is we need a special prosecutor to investigate what went on in the trump campaign transition and presidency. let me ask you let me start with that, actually. please. do you no longer have confidence in the intelligence committee to do this on the senate side to conduct this investigation? let me answer that in two parts. first, the intelligence committee has congressional oversight, and yes, i have doubts about chairman burr. he first denied that they should investigate and when pushed by mike warner he said, okay, we ll investigate and then of course at the administration s request he went to the president and said something is wrong. that s taking sides in the investigation. the faith i have in the intelligence committee is in mike warner and the democrats. they ve been holding burr s feet to the fire and they will look for another alternative if chairman burr doesn t pursue this. there is another point to this. people mix up the two. the other is, of course, whether the law was broken and whether the trump campaign was complicit in working with the russians to influence the election. that needs a special prosecutor. rod rosenstein, he s a career man, he will be before the judiciary committee for his nomination for deputy attorney general. i am urging him at that hearing to say that he will appoint a special prosecutor to look into this because it s on the executive side that any investigation is done and any criminality is put forward. let me ask you about this specific charge, what you were just talking about with president trump, this idea that there may have been a court order surveillance of some form or another. you re part of what s called so many gangs on senate side and you re one of the gang of eight on intelligence matters, the most sensitive intelligence matters. you re briefed on this. is it fair wouldn t you have been briefed if the fbi had gone to a fisa court to get surveillance of a foreign government involving the trump campaign? wouldn t you know this? i don t comment on classified briefings. it s fair to say can you why not, if you know this information why not share it at this point? as i said we have a problem of trust and it goes to what you just quoted of ben sasse. you cannot comment on classified briefings and i m not going to violate those rules. okay. so sorry. but we are to sit here and wonder and ponder. well, no, if we have a special prosecutor they will get to the bottom of all of this and that s what we need. a special prosecutor is much better than letting a lying department person do it for three reasons and this is in doj guidelines. first, a special prosecutor has much more freedom day to day, who to subpoena and what documents to look at and the path of the investigation. second, the special prosecutor can only be fired for cause. so if they re hitting some real stuff they can t just be gotten rid of by sally yates was gotten rid of by the trump administration when she didn t do what they wanted and third, they have to report to congress so we really need a special prosecutor, and i m hoping that rosenstein will agree to that and make that say he s going to make that happen at the committee meeting. i know our committee members will be asking him about it. let me ask you this. congressman adam schiff, the top-ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee has implied that the fbi has not been forthcoming in their various briefings. you get these briefings. would you is he correct? do you believe the fbi has not been forthcoming on what it s doing with the trump campaign? well, let me just say this. the fbi is the premier investigative agency here in our government, and i believe that they will do their job and get to the bottom of this without political interference. right, but do you believe they have been withholding information from congress? well, there are certain kinds of information that can t be given to congress that, you know, or all of congress that s classified or that can t be released and there is a prosecutorial sort of way of doing things that you don t comment on ongoing investigations. so in this case, you wouldn t level the same criticism that congressman schiff has? i m just saying i am i believe they will get to the bottom of this. i hope they will, and if they don t, they ll be it will be a real dereliction of their duty. you have full confidence in the fbi right now? i gave you my answer. senator chuck schumer. democrat from new york. thanks, chuck. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. coming up, did the obama white house really leave a trail of bread crumbs about the trump/russia connection? for investigators to find a bit easier? i ll ask james clapper. brought to you by keytruda. to learn more, go to keytruda.com. needs a stable fo. a body without proper foot support can mean pain. the dr. scholl s kiosk maps your feet and recommends our custom fit orthotic to stabilize yo fndation and relieve foot, knee or lower back pain from being on your feet. dr. scholl s. hi, i m frank. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation. had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated. had to talk to my doctor. she said, how long you been holding this in? (laughs) that was my movantik moment. my doctor told me that movantik is specifically designed for oic and can help you go more often. don t take movantik if you have a bowel blockage or a history of them. movantik may cause serious side effects, including symptoms of opioid withdrawal, severe stomach pain and/or diarrhea, and tears in the stomach or intestine. tell your doctor about any side effects and about medicines you take. movantik may interact with them causing side effects. why hold it in? have your movantik moment. talk to your doctor about opioid-induced constipation. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. fixodent plus adhesives. there s a denture adhesive that holds strong until evening. just one application gives you superior hold even at the end of the day fixodent. strong more like natural teeth. i don t know where to begin here, but tom friedman, it was jarring, president trump accusing president obama, and obviously, i guess it was an attempt to distract, but i don t know how this distracts from the russia story. it was beyond jarring, really, when you think about it, chuck. this is such a serious charge. under normal circumstances it would be a six-column headline in my paper and i think any other paper and a serious person before he made such a charge would have brought together the congressional leaders and briefed them on it, and brought together the intelligence community and the fact that he lobbed this on twitter at 6:00 in the morning is shocking. i think we have to keep one thing in mind, the big picture. e bipicture, chuck, is russia is not our friend. vladimir putin is not our iend. he has very specific goals. he wants to fracture nato. he wants to fracture the european union so it won t be a threat and he wants to destroy the ability of the united states to lead a western alliance. right now in moscow they must be clinking vodka glasses because for less than the cost of a mid 29 they have thrown the west into complete disarray. it doesn t matter what you think of their intentions was, look at our country right now. what the russian intentions are and what happened during the election are two very different things. it s not just the russians who want to interfere in our election. lots of countries want to interfere in our elections, lots have tried. remember the chinese and al gore? the point was there someone inside the trump campaign that was working with them and did the president know about that and were they successful? and i think on those latter two questions we have no idea. no evidence. there s no evidence. i just heard chuck schumer suggest exactly what he did. we know that this is the case. there s nothing there. especially this recent discussion about jeff sessions which is the kind of height of the ludicrousness of this, okay? if jeff sessions really was a mole working for the russian government he probably would have found a better place to have met with them than his public senate office surrounded by his aides so the meetings are not necessarily what matter. they don t prove anything. the one thing i will say this on these meetings is there any substance? they do have this pattern of oh, yeah, i forgot i had this meeting. as many in washington have suddenly forgot, mr. schumer, for instance about meeting with russian ambassador. but there is a difference? i don t know. you don t think there is a difference between those two? no. if you headed to a meeting and a bunch of ambassadors head to you, you wouldn t remember that? that i understand. after the mike flinn situation do you not try to correct the record? i agree, there is no evidence, that s why we need a special prosecutor and independent commission and we need to see trump s taxes. there is an awful lot of smoke not to be a fire and you ve had three people resign. the idea that i ll forget about a meeting with russians when there are news stories every day coming out about how russia has tried to influence what s happening in our country is kind of breathtaking, and i ve got to side with marco rubio on this. look, he talked about he wasn t going to talk about it because he understood that russians are trying to influence our election and will continue to try to do something about it. this is a threat to our country, right? and the idea that russia is different from other countries, russia is very different from other countries because we have a history of the cold war with russia that apparently we thought was over because we have a short history lesson and view of the world and putin paused and clearly, they are clearly trying to influence and dominate the world than we ve seen in a long time. i would be sympathetic to your argument if over the last eight years i would have heard it from people in your position. the problem is, for the last eight years when the russians have been exactly the same, putin has been anathema, he has been screwing us in the middle east, to put it plainly, he s ben interfering in everything is blunt talk now. thank you very much, donald. but honestly speaking, the part of this is this is partisanship. if we could have a normal discussion about russia with obama and trump? fair enough. take partisanship away from it and put it to a special prosecutor then and take politics out of it. a special prosecutor doesn t fix it either. the problem we have at the moment is if you did what trump said and he put it all out there, there would still behalf of the country that didn t believe it was true and we have no faith in the public institutions. how do we restore the faith and how does congress do it? special prosecutor is not a good idea. their goal is to get someone in the end and they will follow any rabbit hole that they can go until they re not investigating the thing that they began with. you do believe congress and the commission? think maybe we are at a point where you need a rob silverman type commission that we had in iraq intelligence that is bipartisan. i don t know what kind of powers would have, congress would have to decide that, but i neutral arbitrator because we need to know if there was wiretapping going on. just for the record, some of us took russia very seriously. during the last eight years. just to put that not in the white house. i m not talking about the white house. some of us in the press. my point and what worries me is this, government moves at the speed of trust, and right now there is so little trust. we have a completely polarized environment and somehow we have got to restore that because i don t see how the president will be able to solve any of these big issues, immigration, debt, health care at the level of polarization that we have right now. i think we ve exemplified it here a little bit. we ll pause the conversation and pick it up, i have a feeling on the other side of the half hour, but coming up is a man who may know more than anyone about russia s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. it s james clapper. he joins me next. you totaled your brand new car. nobody s hurt, but there will still be pain. it comes when your insurance company says they ll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do? drive three-quarters of a car? now if you had liberty mutual new car replacement™, you d get your whole car back. i guess they don t want you driving around on three wheels. smart. with liberty mutual new car replacement™, we ll replace the full value of your car. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. hi! hey! i ve made plans for later in case this date doesn t go well. same here. wouldn t it be great if everyone said what they meant? the citi double cash card does. earn 1% cash back when you buy, and 1% as you pay. double means double. ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. now in kids chewables. but with my back pain i couldn t sleep or get up in time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. and now. i m back! aleve pm for a better am. one reason give was to make it easier for government investigators, in particular congress, to uncover that truth. james clapper, a career intelligence officer was the director of national intelligence for more than six years under president obama. he spearheaded the report that was released in january that concluded that the russians hacked the democratic national committee e-mails and interfered with the 2016 election. and mr. clapper joins me now. welcome, sir, to meet the press . thanks, chuck, for having me. let me start with the president s tweets that maybe president obama ordered an illegal wiretap of his offices and if something like that happened would this be something that you would be aware of? i would certainly hope so. obviously, i can t speak officially anymore, but i will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that i oversaw as dni, there was no wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. i can t speak for other title 3-authorized entities in the government or a state or local i was just going to say, if the fbi had a fisa court order for surveillance, would that be information that you would know or not know? yes. you would be told this. i would know this. if there was a fisa court order. something like this absolutely. at this point you can t confirm or deny whether that exists. i can deny it. there is no fisa court order. not to my knowledge. of anything at trump tower. no. that s an important revelation at this point. let me ask you this, does intelligence exist that can definitively answer the following question, whether there were improper contacts between the trump campaign and russian officials? we did not include evidence in our report and that s nsa, fbi and cia with my office, the director of national intelligence that had anything that had any reflection of collusion between members of the trump campaign or the russians, there was no evidence of that in our report. i understand that, but does it exist? not to my knowledge. if it existed it would have been in the report? this could have unfolded or become available in the time since i left the government. at the time, we had no evidence of collusion. there s a lot of smoke, but there hasn t been that smoking gun yet. at what point should the public start to wonder this is all just smoke? well, that s a good question. i don t know. i do think, though, it is in everyone s interest. in the current president s interest, in the republicans interest in the democrats intere interest, in the country s interest to get to the bottom of all of this because it s such a distraction and certainly the russians have to be churdling about the success of their efforts to dissension in this country. so you feel your report does not you admit that your report doesn t get to the bottom of this? it got to the bottom of the evidence to the extent of the evidence we had at the time. whether there s more evidence that s become available since then or there are ongoing investigations will be revelatory. i don t know. ? there was a conclusion that said that it s clear that the russians did so and in an attempt to help donald trump? do you believe that? yes, i do. what s not proven is the idea of collusion? that s correct. when you see this parade of officials associated with the trump campaign and first they deny any conversations and now we re hearing more. does that add to suspicion or do you think some of this is circumstantial? well, i can t say what the nature of those conversations and dialogues were, for the most part. again, i think it would be very healthy to completely clear the air on this subject, and i think it would be in everyone s interest to have that done. can the senate intelligence committee what are we going to learn from their investigation, do you think, that will move beyond what you were able to do? well, i think they can look at this from a broader context than we could, and at this point i do have confidence in the senate intelligence committee and their effort. it is under way in contrast to the house intelligence committee and we just last week agreed on their charter and importantly in the case of the senate intelligence committee this appears to me to be truly a bipartisan effort, and so i think that needs to play out. if, for some reason, that proves not to be satisfactory in the minds of those who make those decisions then move on to a special prosecutor. the new york times earlier this week, and as i was introducing you, this idea that they sort of left a trail, maybe lowered classification can you walk us through how that would work? did they lower levels of classification? was that a fair read of what was done in the last few weeks of the administration? actually not because of the sensitivity of much of the information in this report our actual effort was to protect it, and not to spread it around and certainly not to dumb it down, if i can use that phrase, in order to disseminate it more widely. we were under a preservation order from both our oversight committees to preserve and protect all of the information related to that report in any event. let me ask you one other final question in the infamous dossier that was put together by this former british operative named christopher steel. why did you feel the need to brief the president on that at the time? we felt that it was important that he know about it, that it was out there, and without respect to the veracity of the contents of the dossier, that s why it was not included as a part of our report because much of it could not be corroborated, and importantly, some of the sources that mr. steel drew on, second and third order assets, we could not validate or corroborate. so for that reason, at least in my view, the important thing was to warn the president that this thing was out there. the russians have a term, an acronym called kompelat that either they will generate, if it s truthful or contrived, and it s important, we felt, that he knew of the existence of the dossier. have you done this with other presidents? have you had to brief them about unverified intelligence? yes. i had occasion in the six and a half years i was dn ito tell president obama certain things and we could not validate or corroborate, but we thought he ought to know it was out there. james clapper, i have a feel on do you expect to testify on capitol hill about these things? i don t think there s any doubt. we ll see you on tv some time soon and thank you for coming on and sharing your views? thank you very much, sir. when we ve come back, we ve seen almost weekly demonstrations against president trump, will they translate into democratic votes or will they turn to the left? we ll get that answer a lot sooner than you think. that s next. but with my back pain i couldn t sleep or get up in time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. and now. i m back! aleve pm for a better am. welcome back. data download time. can all of the anti-trump momentum that we re seeing on the left result in actual election victories for democrats this year? well, there are three special elections coming up. two of which may help us answer that question. the montana at-large congressional district vacated by the new secretary ryan inky zinke and the georgia 6th congressional district that includes the northern suburbs of atlanta with tom price. let s take a look at montana, a state that s very rural, in other words, this should be trump country. those are all groups that they did well in november. this is a seat republicans have held since 1997. thing is montana isn t like other places and while they hold the senate seats, the democrats doold the her senate seats and the governor was elected with donald trump on the ballot. the democrats can win here. might give them hope for other rural places. if the republicans win maybe that the trump army is still with them. the story in georgia s 6th congressional district is different. it s more diverse, higher educated and well-to-do, and it s been trending more and more blue over time. john mccain and mitt romney each won the district by double digits over barack obama in 2008 and 2012. donald trump only beat hillary clinton by 1% in 2016 even though price won his reelection by 23 points. so it is the kind of place that it might be showing signs that it is slipping away from trump s version of the republican party. so if the democrats win there it will say something, but if they can t win there, then it starts to raise questions about whether they have any hope at all in 2018. but guess what? if they win one or both they will suggest they have real momentum going into next year s midterms and i can tell you this, house republicans will start panicking this year if they see those results come in badly for them. when we come back, the story the white house hoped everyone would be talking about this sunday morning. k through your allergie. introducing flonase sensimist. more complete allergy relief in a gentle mist you may not even notice. using unique mistpro technology, new flonase sensimist delivers a gentle mist to help block six key inflammatory substances that cause your symptoms. most allergy pills only block one. and six is greater than one. break through your allergies. new flonase sensimist. dtry align junior probiotic.th digestive balance? so she can have a fraction dominating. status updating. hello-yellow-belt kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support with align junior. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand, now for kids. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. yes. but i have to ask myself, would we be talking about this at all if at all if he had not tweeted that out? we d talk about the russia angle. talking about sessions. right. but he actually made two pieces of news here this morning, not just he said there s no court order and assuming he was not careful with the words, it sounded fairly categorical to me, but the other one that was there is simply no evidence of collusion, at least while he was there, which was until very recently between the trump campaign and russians. what we talking about for the last three weeks? so this is waking up at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, tweeting out one of the most damming accusations one president could make after another, and then talking about arnold schwarzenegger. that is not and then 18 holes. nonpresidential, nonadult behavior. that is juvenile. the fact we have a president engaging in that is deeply disturbing. he s going to have to go to europe very soon and interact with other european leaders, world leaders, what do you think if you re a world leader in the meeting what do i say? what would he say about this meeting? he s everywhere we look. we talked about this before. i quoted my friend, there s a difference between formal and moral authority. this president has formal authority, but no moral authority. that s going to hurt. it s like like you have to wonder, is he playing us? right? we spend all this time talking about this, and it s like, you know, is he really bait and switch? is he die baht call in the way he plays this? it s hard to think sort of this was not thought out, so is he playing the american public? by the way, though, we have reporting, so tuesday night went well for him. right. wednesday went well. right. hi apparently is angry that sessions rescued himself. this is the part of donald trump now that never gives an inch. he can t look at the reaction of the speech and understand how much it helped him to stay on script and sometimes and not tweet about schwarzenegger. put down the twitter account. there were polls after the speech, 82% who watched it thought he looked presidential, and the words in it, i mean, it was it was uplifting. it was a good speech laying out the policy agenda, putting the burden on democrats to work with him and get some of his agenda done, and then, yet, we re talking about twitter again. no discipline. it s got to drive people in the white house crazy. coming out of that it does. both presidents would roll in into momentum. for the week. you talked about districts that are up, you can t beat something with nothing, and unless the democrats have c candidates, i believe, for pro-growth, patriotic, and want to build the country one community at a time, there s no reason to believe they re going to take huge political advantage. john wrote a good column here getting at this. he said this, just in general about the democratic party, because democrats and liberals opposed every appointment, every policy, every word from the trump administration, they damaged their effectiveness as a political force against it, in danger of limiting the ability to bring the stock trump voters they need to grow us illusioned by the side. do you believe that? absolutely. they are doing themselves damage by constantly calling on everybody to resign. they go to death con 5. house republicans did it all the time. ridiculous then, right? it is ridiculous on the part of all of them. congress needs to be taken seriously. congress just needs to start passing bills. congress doesn t actually need to play a game. this is where i don t get chuck schumer or nancy pelosi. don t, you know, vote against every nominee. don t go against everything the president says. why not try to work with the american people to pass an agenda and get reelected? this is where i put the political hat head on, not the serious grownup hat. the political hat. you know, you can make the same argument about the tea party and what republicans did, but they were crazy like foxes. you have to generate energy among your base for fundraising, but also this, the problem in midterm elections is not just the presidential election voters changing minds, but the problem with midterms is there are different electorates. there s different turnout in midterm elections. if democrats shrink and give energy to the base, it s a good thing. i have to pause it here and sneak in a break. president trump calling for an end to trivial fights right before starting a trivial fight. we ll be right back. coming up, meet the press end game brought to you by boeing, working to build something better. and while it s okay to nibble in public, a lady only dines in private. try the name your price tool from progressive. it gives you options based on your budget. uh-oh. discussing finances is a big no-no. what, i m helping her save money! shh! men are talking. that s it, i m out. taking the meatballs. hi, i m frank. that s it, i m out. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation. had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated. had to talk to my doctor. she said, how long you been holding this in? (laughs) that was my movantik moment. my doctor told me that movantik is specifically designed for oic and can help you go more often. don t take movantik if you have a bowel blockage or a history of them. movantik may cause serious side effects, including symptoms of opioid withdrawal, severe stomach pain and/or diarrhea, and tears in the stomach or intestine. tell your doctor about any side effects and about medicines you take. movantik may interact with them causing side effects. why hold it in? have your movantik moment. talk to your doctor about opioid-induced constipation. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. meet the press endgame is brought to you by boeing, always working to build something better. back now with endgame i teased it. let s hear from the president on tuesday night. it was something that s back now with end game, and i tuesdeased it. let s hear from the president tuesday night. something quoted a lot in the last 24 hours. the time for small thinking is over. the time for trivial fights is behind us. and then, of course, after president trump accused president obama of wiretapping him, he did, as you pointed out, threw in schwarzenegger, he s note voluntarily leaving the apprentice, but fired by pathetic ratings, not by me. sad end to a great show. the only thing missing was #sad. right. you brought it up, it s you do, shake your head at it. you do. the president doesn t have message discipline. that s what was said. we talked about the democrats before. when you talk about wanting to win again in the midterm, they need to do something that s going to appeal to those people who voted for donald trump. talking about russia, calling on people to resign is not going to appeal to them, anger, i think, you ll agree with this, anger doesn t actually win elections. doesn t anger work in midterms? cornell put on the political hack hat. is that the only reason democrats are in washington? to win and have power? by the way what? no, no, no, they ve been look, they have promised their voters some things that they would like to get done, and, by the way, who better to work with than donald trump who loves to make a deal? by the way, this guy is one of the least ideological presidents ever in the white house. you know, chuck, a few more mornings of 6:00 a.m. tweets, and people will take away his football, and i mean, the nuclear codes. yeah. mitch mcconnell said my job is to make sure that the president obama is a one-term president. they are there for the power. that s not a good thing, but both sides play it. of course, no, i m not suggesting otherwise, but if you did care about policy goals, you got an opportunity in donald trump. and power in anything. and i have to turn off the cameras, but you can keep debating. that s all we have for today. once again, three hour show packed in one hour. back next week, i promise, if it s sunday, it s meet the press. okay, continue. go ahead. you can see more end game and post game on the mtp facebook page.