apply. this applies for men and women or persons. all people. no man is needed. tucker: isn t there a man in the word woman? call me a person, i would be less offended. no need for woman. tucker: the revolution always heats itself, as we often put it. college exams are stressful. we counted on students to deal with that stress. at the university of utah, they have offered something else. they have a cry closet. so at first glance it seems confusing. college is the least stressful place. least stressful? sure, you go to class two hours a week and get drunk the rest of the time? it s very stressful. they are learning, they are the future. these are citizens of tomorrow. and they are learning as much as they can. they are stressed as they can be. they need this bioenergyic way to get out their stress. they need a good cry. a cry closet to prepare to take the exams from everything they learned in the classes. tucker: we don t have time to define bioenergyic. does this suggest something about their health? if you are so stressed at taking a dumb test as a dumb school, aren t you on the edge of a breakdown? don t we all need a good old fashioned cry? it s just about crying. ten minutes of crying. everyone needs a stress ball. many people own stress balls. this is an interpretation of a giant stress ball. tucker: let s say we had a war, i don t know, pick a country, china. challenge us where we had to mobilize a large of americans to defend the homeland. but everyone is crying. would anybody be left to fight the war? can you really defend a country if you are encouraging kids to cry about final exams? this is about psychological help. if everyone take as moment aside to just center themselves, ground themselves, have a cry, maybe for two, three minutes, and then go fight that war, i m sure the war would be won with people in a great state of mind. tucker: could you take a break between battles to cry? the break would have to be done before the battle. but they would be in the right mindset that they would win that battle. that s what this whole closet is about. it s about getting that right state of mind. tucker: would you want to use a closet others have cried in? i don t think i would have a problem with it. sounds cozy. google has done this. they have created ping-pong tables where people can let off steam. tucker: if a cry closet is called for, how about a petting disco, a bunny stroking station. if people are comfortable and work better after being centered and calmer, then why not, bring the bunnies in. tucker: let me ask you a macro point. i thought the idea was to get people to come out of the closet. now you are saying people go back in the closet. go in for ten minutes, get that cry so you can come out confidently and feel good. you might want to go into that cry closet right before a show and have a great show afterwards. tucker: this is like television, you don t want to be too honest. i am honest with you. tucker: if you knew a man, i could date that man, he says i m sorry, i got to cry in a closet while squeezing a stuffed animal. i m going to center myself so i can be a stronger, better person for you, yeah, i would love that person. i think that s great. it s healthy. who doesn t want to be with a healthy person. tucker: part of you would look on and say you weepy little freak, stop crying. what a strong person who understands themselves or he-self or whatever pronoun. tucker: i don t believe you for a second. i think you want to think that, this is wholesome, consistent with my ideology. on a gut level you would say stop wimperring. every place has a cry closet, it can be the bathroom at some means. everyone needs a cry closet. everyone needs a way to relieve stress and tension. tucker: up ahead, we have plenty more highlights from the liberal sherpa. we ll visit her defensively of getting consent from babies before changing their diapers. stay tuned. there s little rest for a single dad, and back pain made it hard to sleep and get up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid, plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i m back. aleve pm for a better am. otherwise, they could grow up to tolerate sexual assault. human babies can t consent to anything. they can t do anything, they are babies. cathy areu thought it was a great idea. so consent for diaper changing from babies. this raises the obvious, practical question, how would a baby give consent? well, the idea isn t exactly the baby isn t going to say yes or no, but give the baby a few moments, talk to the baby, is it okay, i m going to change your nappy, she s australian. tucker: you wouldn t say that to an american baby. it s teaching consent. teaching autonomy. i m not going to touch your body if you don t want me to. like talking to a baby about anything, mommy loves you, daddy loves you. why wouldn t the concept of talking to a people about doing something so serious, changing a diaper, be so ridiculous. tucker: you don t expect a baby to respond in a way that you can understand. again, how do you know what consent looks like? let s just do a little role playing. i m the baby. tucker: and i say i m going to make this change. and how do you express your consent or lack of consent? well, i well, if i start cry, something is wrong. you wouldn t want to make diaper changing that goes along with crying. you want me to be in a healthy state of mind. in the future, when it comes to those things, i would be a well adjusted adult. tucker: maybe the child is crying because his diaper is dirty. yeah, obviously. the parent would have to be the best judge of that. if you make me cry, you ask me and i started crying, you should take the hint. tucker: would it be like an eye gesture. you are a mom. can you read their facial he can presses and know what they are saying? ericsson said, a baby expert, from 0 to 2 are the trust years. you want the baby to trust you. nothing wrong with talking to a baby and those situations, teaching a baby how to trust. this is a moment where you are teaching your baby to trust you. i don t think the baby is supposed to give consent. you are just teaching the baby to trust you. you are asking the baby to express bodily autonomy. tucker: what if the child keeps saying no, like over a period of weeks, and you keep going in there, i would like to change the diaper, child refuses consent, that becomes neglect. teaching, talking about it during that moment. so many parents do not discuss it and the baby, they are not even used to talking about those things. so they are constantly teaching trust. it s trust issues. tucker: you don t discuss anything with a baby. you discuss everything with a baby. i m going to put this lotion on your arm. i m going to dress you. parents talk all day long. tucker: how about a polio vaccine, smallpox? you have to give consent. you can t give organs if you can t give consent. dead people with make decisions. tucker: how do they do that? you don t have to give consent after you have died. people should always give consent if their body is going to be touched. tucker: right. so if the child says no the baby indicates by crying or rolling his eyes, i don t want a polio vaccine, you don t give him a polio vaccine? it s the idea of discussing it with the baby. the consent isn t the issue, it s the idea. tucker: so even if the baby says no, no doesn t really mean no is what you are saying. the baby can t talk during the diaper years. tucker: a baby s no doesn t mean no. where does the obedience part come in? is there any part where the child learns to obey what you say or is it a give or take, a colloquy with a mute person? it s a conversation, talking to the baby. it s not disciplining. tucker: is there a point where the baby says, mom, please stop talking. or dad. tucker: go ahead and change the diaper. i don t think most dads would go for this hey, parent, stop talking. i don t think they can respond. i am touching your body. you should have the right to say yes or no. i m going to teach that concept right now during the trust years. tucker: i like the concept that kids do what they are told. do what we tell you to do. why stop at diapers? irdiapers?our cathy areu convern continues. during the chevy 4th of july sales event. now through july 9, get 10 to 20 percent below msrp on your favorite chevy models when you finance with gm financial. that s over ten thousand dollars on this silverado ltz. this 4th of july, discover why chevy is the most awarded and fastest growing brand the last four years overall. find new roads at your local chevy dealer. you rwhen you barely cliptreet a passing car. minor accident - no big deal, right? wrong. your insurance company is gonna raise your rate after the other car got a scratch so small you coulda fixed it with a pen. maybe you should take that pen and use it to sign up with a different insurance company. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. this is not a screensaver.game. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body s own immune system, thanks to medicine that didn t exist until now. and today can save your life. the leesa mattress. a better place to sleep. the leesa mattress is designed to provide strong support, relieve pressure and optimize air flow to keep you cool. today is gonna be great. read our reviews then try the leesa mattress in your own home. order now and get $150 off, and free shipping, too. go to buyleesa.com today. you need this bed. from coast to coast, americans mark this july 4 with barbecues, parades and fireworks. but it s no holiday for the firefighters battling 60 wildfires in california, utah and new mexico. thousands of people have been evacuated. one of the worst is the spring fire in colorado. it s five times the size of manhattan. three more supreme court nominees have spoke with president trump. that raises to seven the number of nominees he has interviewed. the president will reveal his choice monday. now back to the tucker carlson tonight special. tucker: as progressives have grown increasingly more radical by the day, the number of pronounces they use has exploded. at us davis the school s lgbtia produced a guide for gender pronounce they included x, y, z, yo. i want to walk you through these. i know soon i will be forced to participate at gun point. it s not forced at gun point. tucker: if recent history is any precedent, we are laughing now. how would i ask the following sentence. did she enjoy herself at the party? did zee enjoy zerself at the party. tucker: sound like henry kissinger. many universities have put out these pronoun guides. tucker: i m tracking with this now. let s try the sentence. she cooks dishes using ingredients she has grown in her yard. it would be zhe cooks dishes using ingredients zee has grown in zer yard. tucker: great job. we are going to move on now to co and cost. translate this sentence. he asked himself whether his gender pronounces were confusing. co asked co-self whether co gender pronounces were confusing. tucker: how would i say his car broke down so he had to walk here by himself. zee had to walk here by zer self. tucker: and this is different how? accepted by the lgbt university. from california to georgia have accepted these and added them to their pronounce usage grammar books. tucker: i know members of that community never heard of this. we ll try one last one. my producer promised me this is real. it s yo. they promise this is real. this is real. tucker: yo is for he and she. ya is him or her. yoself is for himself or herself. she better leave now if she wants to make her flight in time? yo better leave now if yo want to make your flight on time. yo s flight on time. pers you can choose which ever you are comfortable with. there are many pronouns. tucker: the purpose of language is communicate mutually agreed upon definitions. if i replace language that s dumber, less precise and embarrassing, how does it forward the purpose of language itself? smarter, not offensive and forward-thinking, i think, is the way we would be correctioning our language. tucker: you are right. identify forgotten the underlying assumption that all change is good. all change is good, language does change. in 50 years, this is just going to be automatic, we are not going to think twice. the transgender community has embraced this. it s not a question of grammar. tucker: there is no community. can i just say, because i can t resist, if i wake up and find out i have been drafted into some community, i m going to resist because the only community i m a part of is my family. does anybody say i m not part of your community? that s the beauty of this. you can be part of a community, you don t have to be part of a community, you can be who you want to do. you can say you don t want a pronoun. tucker: everything is monday torre. all change is good, everything is mandatory. those are the two rules we now live by. pronouns aren t the only thing, during prom season a high school student in utah dared to wear a chinese-style dress despite not being chinese. that s a war crime, as you know. cathy areu came on the set to set her straight. tucker: does this mean chinese people are wearing neckties, which is a western invention, are they committing that? she s exploiting it. she is taking advantage of a culture she doesn t know much about. i don t think a chinese businessman doesn t understand western culture. she had no idea what the dress meant and didn t appreciate it. her comment was it s just an f -ing dress. tucker: so assimilations, is the process of cultural appropriation. i come in and take parts of your culture and make them my own, i adopt your culture. now the idea is everyone stays in their own culture and hates the other culture. she didn t do this to assimilate. she wanted to get as much fame as she could and step right now. tucker: let me ask you this. when someone from dubai flies on an airplane which was invented by the wright brothers, why isn t that gets on the plane and has a glass of champagne and doesn t think of the contribution of these ohio brotherrer ins to flight? that s not cultural appropriation? they are not hurting anyone and they are not offending anyone by doing so. when she put on that dress, she hurt and offended others. tucker: she really hurt them. we have learned that wearing certain dresses is an act of bigotry. yoga is racist, too. cathy areu is there to explain how. our special continues with that, next. yogi is confident. yoooogiiiiiii!! but when it comes to mortgages, he s less confident. here, yogi. fortunately, there s rocket mortgage by quicken loans. apply simply. understand fully. mortgage confidently. get approved in as few as 8 minutes. with proskin technology intimates overnight for two times faster absorption so you can have worry free nights, and wake up feeling fresh and free for a free sample visit tena.us copd makes it hard to breathe. so to breathe better, i go with anoro. go your own way copd tries to say, go this way. i say, i ll go my own way, with anoro. go your own way once-daily anoro contains two medicines called bronchodilators that work together to significantly improve lung function all day and all night. anoro is not for asthma. it contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. the risk is unknown in copd. anoro won t replace rescue inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, glaucoma, prostate, bladder, or urinary problems. these may worsen with anoro. call your doctor if you have worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain while taking anoro. ask your doctor about anoro. go your own way get your first prescription free at anoro.com. bed in america today. find your exclusive retailer at tempurpedic.com. tucker: welcome back to our special liberal sherpa edition of tucker carlson tonight. the liberal sherpa has always been grateful to come on our program and explain that everything is racist even if nobody knew until ten minutes ago. yoga is big o big on is bigoted. yoga is racist. how is that? according to this article, many white people who do yoga, many white people do yoga, few understand the culture, history and religion behind yoga. they are enjoying it for the physical aspects of it. they are not truly understanding yoga and what it goes back to. they need to if they want to appreciate it. if not, they are getting into this viewpoint of white supremacy. tucker: if yoga is racist, is hot yoga more racist or less? all western yoga is racist, according to this author, according to this professor. yoga practiced in india has nothing to do with the yoga practiced in the western world. tucker: what about pilates? it wasn t discussed. it s being practiced by white people, white upper class. not maineer minorities. this is a white sport. tucker: that s suspect. call the police. what about taekwondo? she has a problem with the yoga in industrial, i think it was yoga industrial complex. that s what she called it. the yoga industrial complex. falls under that. tucker: if it s wrong for people in the west to practice yoga, is it wrong for the rest of the people to use the internet? we understand the internet. it doesn t go back to what yoga did to introduce them to yoga and their culture was intelligent. that was part of the movement, when it came to the united states. so the internet would not. tucker: what about like democracy? that was invented by the greeks in the west, basis of western civilization. no, no, no. yoga was a way for the indians to show colonizers to show they were intelligent. tucker: it predates the british by quite a bit. i was interested, how many people who are into yoga in the united states do you think voted for donald trump? oh, well, the author didn t touch upon that. tucker: what s your guess. someone who is very familiar with non trump voters, would you say maybe 1% of people who practice yoga voted for trump or is that too high? according to the author, many upper and middle class white women practice yoga. so many of those people voted for trump. tucker: are you struck by the fact that that series of descriptors, upper middle class, white, like that s kind of the whole argument on the left. anything that has those words attached, it s bad just because, and anything that doesn t is superior to that? yeah, according to this article, those are the people who practice yoga and do not understand immigrants and minorities and what they are going through, perhaps have more privilege and able to experience yoga and other things that other groups cannot experience. tucker: last question. in a multicultural society, which we live in, i m for the basic principle, cool things with other cultures and you should enjoy them, when did the rules change? we live in a multicultural society, but you are not allowed to enjoy things from other cultures? don t stop doing yoga. but if you do it, understand you are understanding an 8th of it. understand what people went through to introduce this to from you their culture to your culture. so having appreciation, don t just take advantage, buy the yoga gear and take advantage of this. tucker: i suspect downward dog is less difficult if you are hating you yourself. i don t think they hate themselves. tucker: up next, the blast from the past. the time cathy areu said we shouldn t call breastfeeding natural. it could undermine feminism. that s next. you made a promise you agreed to never give up to be a decent neighbor to remember the good people who rise with every challenge to remember their strength when you feel tired to serve with grit and grace you made a promise we did too the all-new ram 1500 whenshe was pregnant,ter failed, in-laws were coming, a little bit of water, it really- it rocked our world. i had no idea the amount of damage that water could do. we called usaa. and they greeted me as they always do. sergeant baker, how are you? they were on it. it was unbelievable. having insurance is something everyone needs, but having usaa- now that s a privilege. we re the baker s and we re usaa members for life. usaa. get your insurance quote today. at outback, there s one way to cook a steak. perfectly. and three ways for perfect shrimp. introducing steak & shrimp, starting at $15.99. choose bbq, garlic butter or sweet & tangy shrimp. now that s a perfect meal. outback steakhouse. aussie rules. tucker: well, a study last year in the journal pediatrics said it s unethical to call breastfeeding. coupling nature with motherhood can support biologically deterministic arguments about roles of men and women in the family, which is in sane. fortunately for us, cathy areu is not most people. here s how she described it. tucker: this is interesting, people inserting politics. why it would be controversial to call breastfeeding natural. breastfeeding doesn t come natural. there is a whole industry out there. breastfeeding isn t exactly natural. it doesn t come naturally to women. what they are saying, there is a study letting people off this guilt trip. only a woman able to feed a child is inappropriate. it s unethical and inappropriate. i m so glad women are let off the hook, finally. tucker: it s not unethical or inappropriate. it s the opinion of some physicians that breast milk is superior to form l.a. it s a debate that formula.it suggestsa different role in motherhood than men, they do because they are on the only people capable of bearing children? women are not the only ones who can feed the children. that s what they are trying to say. it s natural for others to feed the children. the whole burden is not on the mother. that s what they are trying to say. tucker: first of all, of course that s true. of course. the decision i don t think women are stupid. i interviewed a pediatrician that when a child starving for two weeks, she was not able to produce breast milk for two weeks. she refused to give the baby that formula for fear. tucker: that s a fair point. that s a shame when people feel like there is no alternativement perhaps there are some. that s not what s really going on here. this is gender politics intruding on the personal decisions that parents make. it s also blurring the lines, it s suggesting, by the way, that men can breast feed, which they can t. i don t think they can, can me? i don t know. tucker: i do now, the answer is they can t. i have four children. what they are saying is that men can feed children. they are putting a study that saying breast milk is not the only way to go. tucker: can you take three steps back? no. tucker: and acknowledge, there is something awful about inserting gender politics into something as beautiful and intimate as the first days of a child s life? maybe parents can say back off. breastfeeding is not beautiful t causes so many headaches. it doesn t come naturally for so many women. so this study is wonderful, women can step back and say, wow, it s okay to hand the bottle and the baby over to dad or my girlfriend or whatever the case may be. tucker: half of that sentence is correct. it s okay to do that. i m wondering, final question for you, because this is giving a little bit of headache. the whole subject is so crazy. if it s not natural to breast feed, how did the species get to where it is now? why didn t we die out several millennia to go? we found other ways like formula to feed the babies. tucker: in the medieval periods, where did you get it? it s been going on for the last ten years. our mothers weren t exactly into breast feeds, you have the fix r feminism, you had the revolution. it s not always been the answer. tucker: i m glad my kids are old enough to weigh into this stuff. a 30-year-old son refused to move out of his parents house. so they had to sue him. the liberal sherpa continues with that story, next. no matter who rides point, there are over 10,000 allstate agents riding sweep. call one today. are you in good hands? before discovering nexium 24hr to treat her frequent heartburn, lucy could only imagine enjoying a slice of pizza. now it s as easy as pie. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? for all-day, all-night protection. that s the heightclimbs of mount everest.. because each day she chooses to take the stairs. at work, at home, even on the escalator. that can be hard on her lower body, so now she does it with dr. scholl s orthotics, clinically proven to relieve and prevent foot, knee or lower back pain, by reducing the shock and stress that travel up her body with every step she takes. so keep on climbing, sarah. you re killing it. dr. scholl s. born to move. a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don t think you should be rushed into booking one. that s why we created expedia s add-on advantage. now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. add-on advantage. discounted hotel rates when you add on to your trip. only when you book with expedia. with tough food, your dentures may slip and fall. new fixodent ultra-max hold gives you the strongest hold ever to lock your dentures. so now you can eat tough food without worry. fixodent and forget it. it was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we re fighting for. our cancer treatment specialists share the same vision. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. specialists focused on treating cancer. using advanced technologies. and more precise treatments than before. working as hard as we can- doing all that we can- for everyone who walks through our doors. this is cancer treatment centers of america. and these are the specialists we re proud to call our own. treating cancer isn t one thing we do. it s the only thing we do. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. michael loves his mom. he wants to be with his mom. what is wrong with that? he loves his parents and he is normal. he is not ready to move on. you would think his parents would welcome him there. his mom would want to be a good mom. tucker: you think at age 30 you are not ready to leave your mom s basement where are you ready to drive car or drink alcohol or serve in uniform? we don t know if he does any of those things. he is not ready to leave his mom. it s not a basement. it s a bedroom. tucker: sorry! i didn t mean to impugn his character. right. what is wrong with loving your mother. maybe she would want to live in his bedroom in his house. maybe michael will have a mansion thanks to their support. if they didn t spend money on him and not on lawyers. tucker: if you love something, you get it for free. if i love a rolex watch, do i get it for free? if i really love it. this is a parent does a child. you are always a parent. she is always a mom. he is always a son. they should always love each other. they should not hire lawyers and go against each other in court as the mother did. tucker: but what i loved the watch and i need to know what time it is. okay? i love that watch. why would they call the cops on me if i take it? it s about responsibility. she gave birth to the child. you didn t give birth to the watch. tucker: that s true. this mother gave birth to the child. it s her responsibility. it s good for society for her to take care of this child. her child and make sure her child is ready to face the world. tucker: you can t age out of this arrangement. once you are born, you have a moral and legal right to sponge off your parents forever? i don t think it s sponging off. michael loves his mommy and wants to be with her until he is ready. tucker: are you concerned about the explosion of man-children in our society? is that good for women? women and men, 18 to 35 are living at home with their parents. a 3rd of millennials live at home with their parents. it s make america great again. tucker: it s a sad, brave new world. cathy, great to see you. thank you. that s all for tonight s special liberal sherpa edition of tucker carlson tonight.
hospital tonight. two children and two adults. this area of the ozarks being a popular tourist destination. the governor made a point today of saying that many of the victims of this tragedy were traveling here from out of state. you can see the waters of this lake calm behind me now but severe thunderstorms, again, in the forecast here in southeast missouri tonight, erin. horrible thing. kaylee, thank you. thanks to all of you for joining us. anderson starts now. good evening tonight. an exclusive interview with the attorney for alleged russian spy maria butina. the attorney joins us. that s ahead. so is the latest on the mystery surrounding what happened behind closed doors when president trump met vladimir putin. it s a mystery because the white house won t tell us or tell you. in fact, we re getting more from russia than we are from washington. we begin, though, with the president s former personal attorney and longtime fixer, michael cohen. today, we learned he had made tapes of conversations with his client and others and federal authorities have those tapes. they were seized when the fbi raided cohen including one from september of 2016 when cohen, then-candidate donald trump, were talking about paying off former playboy model karen mcdougal who as you know alleged an affair with mr. trump about ten years prior. while melania trump was pregnant and even after the birth of their son. money above and beyond an arrange nlt with the national enquirer s parent company, ami, to buy miss mcdougal s story and kill. this conversation took place two months before the election, september 2016. several weeks later, just a few days before the election, the campaign denied any knowledge of the alleged affair, or the national enquirer deal but that s getting ahead of the story. let s start at the beginning as told to me exclusively by karen mcdougal earlier this year. so tell me about your first date. our first date, i was told we were going to go to the beverly hills hotel for dinner. so he had told me that keith, his bodyguard, was going to pick me up at a certain time, and he did. and then we were driving over to the beverly hills hotel, and keith drove around to the back and he said, we have to get out here because we don t want to walk through the hotel. and at that minute, i m li, lik thinking to myself, are we going to a room? thought we were having dinner at the beverly hills hotel. in the actual restaurant. right. we did have dinner at the beverly hills hotel but in his bungalow instead. we had dinner for a few hours. we talked for a few hours. we had a great time. we were getting to know each other. we were talking about this birthd birthday. then as the night ended, we we were intimate. when you got to the beverly hills hotel, and keith said we re not going to go through the lobby, we re going to go was it to a to a room at the beverly hills hotel or a suite or it was a bungalow if h back. a bungalow. it s the one he said he always stayed at, in fact, every time i met them there, it was the same exact bungalow. and he called it the nicest bungalow they had. so i guess that s why he chose that one. but that s, yeah, that s where we went every time. well, fast forward to november 4th of 2016, the the wall street journal breaking the story of her allegations and the arrangement with the national enquirer. spokes person hope hicks telling the journal we have no knowledge of any of this. i asked karen mcdougal about it during our interview back in march. hope hicks has said catego categorically you did not have a relationship, there s no truth to this. when you heard that denial, what did you think? i think somebody s lying and i can tell you it s not me. it s a little hurtful, but at the same is time, i have to understand, like, if he were to tell hope hicks that he didn t do it, i guess i understand because he s trying to protect his family, his image, things like that. but it was definitely a little, like, wow, you re going to lie about that? okay. now, of course, it s possible that hope hicks, herself, was being lied to, but barring that, we now know that four days before the election, the campaign s chief spokesperson was lying to voters. the cohen/trump tape shows candidate trump was made aware of the national enquirer deal at least that september, two months before hope hicks said they knew nothing about it. keeping them honest, perhaps we should have known given team trump s chronic trouble with telling the truth. back in january of this year, of course, spokesman rob shaw said none of the allegations were true. here s the white house press secretary in march. look, the president has addressed these directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true. this case has already been won in arbitration. anything beyond that, i would refer you to the president s outside counsel. a month later, here s what the president said. mr. president, did you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? no, no. what else? why did michael cohen well, you have to ask michael cohen. michael s my an attorney and you ll have to ask michael cohen. do you know where he got the money to make that payment? i don t know. no. well, a few weeks later his other attorney rudy giuliani said the president did, in fact, pay michael cohen. when i heard cohen s retainer of $35,000, when he was doing no work for the president. i said, that s how he s retained? how he s repaying it. with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for michael. that s giuliani essentially coming clean on the lie his client and people around him have been telling for months. as for karen mcdougal based on what we seen so par, tfar, the has just begun. joining me now, maggie haberman who shares a byline on the breaking story today. there have been two explanations from the president s attorney, from giuliani today, since your story posted. what s his latest explanation for these conversations? and let s talk fast because the story might change again. so, we were given an initial explanation in which he indicated this was a separate payment, that this was a payment to mcdougal that was separate and apart from this arrangement mcdougal had with ami. he called back later to clarify that this was actually supposed on the tape, what they re discussing, is obtaining the rights to her story from ami. they are giuliani was strenuously denying that this should be construed as a reimbursementme reimbursement, although some i think would interpret it that way. he s adamant that it is not. i think that that has legal implications when it comes to the campaign finance piece of this. and in his telling of it, it was trump who said, let s do this properly and with a check. and it was michael cohen who either had suggested cash or didn t suggest a check in the first place. someone close to cohen has adamantly denied that version of events that suggested that the presentation in which the then-candidate was saying, let s do this all aboveboard, is not how this went down. we re obviously not going to know without hearing this. the conversation is short. it s around two minutes long. it cuts off at some point before the conversation is done. there are portions of it that are apparently inaudible in the transcript. and it will, you know, i think it will have to be heard, you know, by any of us to really understand what s being said. but what it clearly does, as you say, is undercut what the campaign told the wall street journal in october of 2016 which is that they knew nothing about this. that s obviously not true. whether hope hicks who made that statement was aware of that, i don t know. it s very possible that dronald trump didn t tell her the truth. it raises questions about the president s credibility at a time when his folks are trying to undermine michael cohen. what s amazing about giuliani s both of giuliani s explanations. the first one is this would have been they were discussing an additional payment to karen mcdougal. ami was claiming we weren t paying for her silence, we were paying her for the rights to her story, which we then didn t really believe, so we didn t publish it but we also wanted her to a columnist. if they were discussing just giving another payment to karen mcdougal, that is certainly pretty stunning. i understand why he would call back then and say actually, no, that s not what that was, even though that s what i just said it was. it was actually they were buying the rights to the story. that doesn t make much more sense. it doesn t make any sense. donald trump is not a publisher. right, trump magazine i think lasted for one or two editions and doesn t exist anymore. this would not have been a story you would have seen in it. that is also true. the distinction in the explanations i think has a legal one, as opposed to a personal one. the personal one, either way, is problematic for the president. there is no landscape in which this is a good thing for him. right. in terms of in terms of what he has said about this before. frankly, what makes the most i can t i don t know what specifically is said on the tape because we haven t heard it. what we were told by people close to both sides is this is the only and this was another point of clarification, initially we were told this is the only audio of them. then we were told this is the only one of substance meaning this is the only one that isn t, you know, call me, call me back, i ll call you. this is the only one that features a conversation of anything that is material to that search warrant on michael cohen in the first place in april. and and the your understanding is that the president had no idea that michael cohen had recorded him? no. the president did not know that he was recorded. it s still confusing to me how this recording came to be. why it s so short. and so forth. you know, we know that michael cohen had a long history of taping people, but, you know, he offer to often told people he taped himself as well as reminders of notes or to, you know, to, you know, prompt him about something side. so i think what he s doing here, he s trying to spin it as exculpato exculpatory. i can understand in a legal sense why he s saying it s exculpatory. he s saying that, look, all of this shows is that in real-time, the president didn t know that the payoff was happening and they were discussing something after the fact. it doesn t take away from the fact, i don t i m not as familiar with the new york city bar rules that john just referred to, but there is something entirely reprehensible to a client about their lawyer recording them unbeknownst to them. i mean, the wohole idea of attorney/client privilege, you re supposed to have a client be able to unburden themselves, tell you everything that they want to tell you and get your best advice. if i m doing that with a lawyer who then when he s caught in the crosshairs is turning that over, leaking it, or releasing it and commenting on it, that does some great damage to the attorney/client privilege. and as somebody i don t care how you take what your view is on trump, there s something that s just unseemly about the fact that these recordings, attorney/client conversations. jennifer, i mean, you know, the more someone always says, well, i d take a bullet for you, i d be loyal to the end to you, the less i believe them. i mean, people who generally are like that don t actually have to say that over and over and over again. and certainly, if you really are that loyal, you don t record secretly the person you re talking to. yeah, it is very strange. i think the president has a right to be angry. i mean, unfortunately, for the president, it s not a legal defense. he can t keep the recording out just because, you know, michael cohen shouldn t have done it. but that s right. and cohen is now in a position of having to decide what s he going to do? is that loyalty that would have him take a bullet enough to send him to prison for years and have him do that? that s what he s deciding now, and i think we ll know fairly soon here, as soon as charges are filed, which way he s decided to go on that. john, the circumstance certainly different between what you went through in watergate, do you see parallels in your situation and what michael cohen is thinking? there are. he has to make a decision if he s going to come forward and tell the truth. i happened to make that decision when the cover yun w-up was goi internally in the white house and broke rank. he s at that point right now. my advice to him would be to break rank and tell truth. john dean, mark geragos. coming up, why would russia s special counsel robert mueller want to from a woman who once ran a high priced new york call girl ring? known as madam manhattan. we ll ask roger stone. late e the interview you ll only see here, the attorney for the alleged russian spy joins us to talk about his client. to boo. with expedia s add-on advantage, booking a flight unlocks discounts on select hotels until the day you leave for your trip. add-on advantage. only when you book with expedia. it was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we re fighting for. our cancer treatment specialists share the same vision. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. specialists focused on treating cancer. using advanced technologies. and more precise treatments than before. working as hard as we can- doing all that we can- for everyone who walks through our doors. this is cancer treatment centers of america. and these are the specialists we re proud to call our own. treating cancer isn t one thing we do. it s the only thing we do. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. is it to carry cargo. greatness of an suv? or to carry on a legacy? its show of strength. or its sign of intelligence? in crossing harsh terrain. or breaking new ground? this is the time to get an exceptional offer on the mercedes of your midsummer dreams at the mercedes-benz summer event, going on now. receive up to a $1,250 summer event bonus on select suvs. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. . politics, they say, makes for strange bedfellows sometimes. apparently so do criminal investigations. late today the breaking news hit, special counsel robert mueller wants to talk to a woman named krisit davtin davis. she was once known as the manhattan madam who ran a high-priced call girl ring some years back in new york city. our m.j. lee has more of the breaking news. what s the latest you re learning about this? anderson, as you said, we have learned today that special counsel robert mueller has made contact with the lawyer representing kristin davis. as you said, she s a woman that some members of the public might better know her as the manhattan madam. she was ran a high-end prostitution ring in new york city. if you recall, she actually went to jail as a part of the prostitution scandal that took down former new york governor eliot spitzer. now, if there s going to be a subpoena that mueller and his team hand down to kristi in, davis, this woman, that has not yet happened. we got in touch with the lawyer who would be representi ining hf that happened. now, we do not know at this point why the special counsel, robert mueller, is interested in talking to thisle wo woman. certainly a really intriguing and unexpected twist in this robert mueller investigation. she also has a connection to roger stone, who was obviously at a time an adviser on the president s election campaign. that s right. at this point in time if we were to make an educated guess, that might be one reason why robert mueller and his team are interested in talking to kristin davis. the two have known each other for a long time. roger stone is actually the godfather to her child. davis actually did some work were roger stone including, i m told, doing some clerical work including some work related to his websites. now, mueller, of course, as we all know, has been very interested in roger stone, and has also taken an interest in some of the aides that have worked for roger stone in the past. so, again, this might be the connection and the reason for his interest. now, i do want to read a statement that we got earlier today from kristin davis lawyer. it said, kristin davis and roger stone are very good friends and she has worked on and off for him for the last ten years. roger is the godfather to her son. she is currently in the cosmetology business and she knows nothing whatsoever about russian collusion with the 2016 election. now, obviously, you can see there that she s trying to sort of get ahead of the story and make it very, very clear from the get-go that she knows nothing that robert mueller might be interested in. m.j. lee, thanks very much. joining us nonow is roger stone. thank you for being back on the program. so with mueller wanting to talk to kristin davisi, it would be the third ex-associate that s been caught up in this investigation. do you think you re a target of this investigation and that s why they want do talk to miss davis? i have no idea, thank you for having me back, anderson. first of all, last week s indictments made pretty clear i had no advanced notice of the alleged hacking of the dnc, received no materials from guccifer 2, the russians or no one else, passed no material on to donald trump or wikileaks or julian assange or anyone else. now, kristin davis is a good friend of mine. she s a brilliant woman who has paid her debt to society. i always thought it was unfair that she went to prison after the fall of eliot spitzer and he went to cnn to host a tv show. she has remade her life. she was not working for me during 2015. she worked for me during a portion of 2016. she went back to school to learn i.t. skills. she has helped me build some websites, but she has no knowledge whatsoever of any russian collusion, collaboration with wikileaks, or anything else improper having to do with the 2016 recollectioelection. can you see any situation where they want talk to her that doesn t have something to do with you? and on top of that, i guess has mueller s office been in contact with you or your attorney? i cannot imagine anything other than that question. she has been an associate of mine for over ten years. she s someone i have great affection for. i am, as m. jj. lee reported, t godfather to her son. she s a single parent. she s now in the cosmetology business. so would she have been handling e-mail sorry, i didn t mean to interrupt. would she have been handling e-mail correspondence, things like that, that would be of interest to mueller? at this juncture, mr. mueller has had full access to my e-m l e-mails, therefore, he s well aware that there s no evidence whatsoever, not in the o possession of kristin davis or andrew miller, another associate of mine who s resisting a subpoena from mr. mueller, or anyone else of collusion with the russians, collaboration with wikileaks or any other inappropriate act. in my view, in all honesty, this is a phishing expedition. perhaps it is the payback for the fact that i broke the story yesterday on infowars that tony podesta has been that the special counsel has asked for immunity for him in the manafort investigation. or the manafort prosecution. i know that has not yet been reported on cnn, but i reported it yesterday at infowars. i have multiple sources. fox has also reported it. i believe it to be true. perhaps this is payback for that. sam nugburg, a former trump aide, onetime close associate of yours was asked by the hollywood reporter what s next for you? he said roger is going to be indicted, he s a critical piece for mueller. obviously nunberg doesn t have inside knowledge into mueller s thinking or his operations though he did talk to mueller. do you think he s right? do you think you ll be indicted? mr. nunberg has no evidence wikileaks collaboration. sam is a very smart guy. i think he has substance abuse problems and, frankly, i think responsible members of the media should be very, very careful when they take what he says at face value. lastly, you told the new york times in regards to michael cohen, quote, donald goes out of his way to treat him like garbage. now that we know cohen was recording at least some conversations with his client and also vowed to be loyal to his family and country, do you think michael cohen is out for revenge on the president? in all honesty, i have not had a chance to follow the developments of the day. i know that michael cohen wanted very badly to be in the president s presidential campaign. he was not. hi wanted very badly to be in the president s white house. he was not. i honestly do not know what he knows and whether any of it is detrimental to the president. i m going to go by what mayor giuliani is and believe this is benign, but i have no special knowledge to the contrary. roger stone, appreciate you being on. thank you. thank you very much. it s now day four since the helsinki summit ended. senior u.s. officials including the nation s top intelligence officer are saying they don t have any idea or concrete idea of what was actually discussed between president trump and vladimir putin. russ russia says agreements were reached. the question is what agreements? all the requests for a transcript are redouxed, defied. we ll get into that, next. that s why there s otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it s a pill that treats psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable after just 4 months, . with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don t use if you re allergic to otezla. otezla may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. tell your doctor if these occur. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts, or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. other side effects include upper respiratory tract infection and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you re pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. this is not a screensaver.game. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body s own immune system, thanks to medicine that didn t exist until now. and today can save your life. doors. four days we asked for a readout as they say in white house press speak and got nothing, and no, the director of national intelligence didn t know anything about that, either. i don t know what happened in that meeting. i think as time goes by, president has already mentioned some things that happened in that meeting, i think we will learn more, but that is the president s prerogative. if he had asked me how that ought to be conducted, i would have suggested a different way, but that s not my role. that s not my job. so, it is what it is. again, that s america s chief intelligence officer saying he doesn t know what was discussed between the two men. interestingly, perhaps not surprisingly, russian officials continue to say they are delighted by what took place and say there are agreements reached between the two sides. the question, of course, is what agreements? since we re not getting answers from the white house, yes, we ve asked, we re going to have to go to moscow for answers because that s where we are now. matthew chance is there. so, matthew, we still don t have any readout from the white house, what are you hearing from russian officials? well, to be fair, anderson, we haven t had a readout, either, from the kremlin in terms of the sort of usual readout we d expect after a big, important summit like this. just general characterization of the summit as being positive. vladimir putin, the russian president, said that there had been useful agreements that had been made there. but having said that, there have been a number of sort of, you know, kind of revelations that have trickled through for various other russian officials, the russian defense ministry, for instance, has spoken about the two presidents in helsinki discussing security arrangements internationally. arms reduction treaties. deals over syria. things like that. the russian ambassador to the united states, he was briefly in moscow to attend a meeting here in the russian capital, said that there have been concrete agreements on eastern ukraine. and local media reports have spoken about how vladimir putin, again, the russian president, has spoken to ambassadors about the possibility of holding a referendum in eastern ukraine to decide the future of that sort of war-torn region. and so, you know, that s the kind of, you know, revelation that we ve had come to us via, bleakle from russian officials but no firm read yout of the kind we d expect. it s fascinating that vladimir putin made this offer about mueller s team going to mosc moscow, and then russian intelligence agents coming here and being able to sb interview u.s. fiofficials, interrogate u. officials that the president, apparently, i assume in one-on-one meetings and publicly talking about sounded like a great idea, sounded like really interesting or something to really seriously be considered, when most russians out of hand said that would never that should never happen. and now the white house has walked that back saying, well, the president doesn t think it s a good idea. it was i was in that press conference, and it was absolutely fascinating and horrifying, frankly, as we discussed earlier, to see the u.s. president in such a sort of, i suppose, submissive kind of role in that relationship. the expectation was, even amongst trump s critics, is that was that he was going to, you know, make a stand, at least, you know, kind of, you know, talk about all the areas of conflict between the united states and russia. but he didn t do that and he even submitted when it came to that suggestion that the united states basically give up several of its key figures for interrogation by russian authorities. and i think the sense here in moscow is that, you know, may have gone well on the surface, but did it go too far? is there a possibility of a backlash in the united states? the kind of backlash that we re seeing already that could place a further strain on relations between moscow and washington? interesting. so, you know, there are mixed feelings here in moscow, i think it s fair to say. matthew collapse, appreciate it. thank you very much. a lot to discuss with former cia officer steve hall. david axelrod, obviously key aide to president obama. david, was there ever a time you remembered president obama meeting one-on-one for more than two hours with somebody who is in an adversarial relationship with the united states and the public not having any information about what was said? all the meetings that he had that i know of were read out to the public. he had lengthy meetings with with people in foreign governments. he had a lengthy meeting with putin in 2009 that was when putin was prime minister. not when he was president. it was the regular practice of our administration and every administration to read these meetings out, but more importantly, anderson, it was certainly the practice of this administration to have people monitor these meetings, and to make sure that key national security advisers and cabinet members were advised after the meetings of what happened, and were instructive or involved in prepping the president before the meeting. so everything about this was unusual and troubling. steve, in the absence of the white house providing an account of what happened or the state department, it s really the russians are the only ones kind of doing the talking. has the u.s. lost the ability to control the narrative here? and how does that impact the relationship? it does, indeed, seem that the russians now control the narrative, which is obviously never a good thing. we re getting dribs and drabs of information. i was just reading something that there was the possibility that there was a discussion where the russians were pushing the president on not allowing ukraine in georgia, any plan for nato ascension. you know, that s obviously a very serious policy issue. not to mention all the issues with regard to syria and some very valid issues that need and complicated issues, such as, you know, ies and so forth. all of that stuff needs to be out there. there s no reason really for it not to be out there. experts need to take a look at it. congress needs to take a look at it and it let the russians be the ones who do this is a recipe for disaster because, of course, they will spin it. they have no there s no open and free press in are russia, so there s no advantage to the united states for that. it s another situation where i think the united states is lost out of this particular summit. david, yesterday it was announced the white house extended the invite to putin. in terms of the politics of it especially in the fall, i don t know if it s going to be before the midterm elections or after the midterm elections, if putin accepts the invitation before the midterm elections, and comes, does that create a huge problem for congressional republicans? i mean, won t they have to answer questions of whether they support the president s decision to host the man who yeah, i m sure. not only attacked america but continues to attack the country s democracy according to the intelligence services? i m sure the news of thisgred enthusiasm in the republican cloakrooms on capitol hill, anderson. look, this has been a terrible week. the republican party coalesced, at least the rank and file according to polls have largely coalesced behind the president. independent voters have been deeply troubled by this. obviously, democratic voters, and in many of these swing districts, this is an unhelpful issue. you see will hurt, for example, from texas, who s a former cia officer, has been very outspoken on this. he s in a very tough race in a swing district. there s a reason beyond his professional sense of outrage or whatever he feels about this that he s speaking out. it s because it is a political liability for him. so, you know, it s trump s habit to double down when he has a disaster, to be defiant about it. this invitation seems to be seems to be part of that pattern, but from a political standpoint, i have to believe that mitch mcconnell, paul ryan, and others are urging him to postpone any kind of meeting until after the election. steve, do you i think i don t think it was you, i think it was ralph larson on the program a couple nights ago who said that he wouldn t be surprised if the russians had a recording or transcript of what went on in that meeting one-on-one. do you think that s possible? and if so, how would how would that have happened? yeah, no, it s absolutely possible, and something we would have agreed on. the russians certainly have capability to do that, in a very private meeting like that, it s child s play for the russians to get audio and video on this. it can be used for a number of different things. i guess for the u.s., too, then. it s possible for the u.s., but then, of course, you have to ask the question, the guy who makes the decision as to whether or not there s clandestine taping going on is the most senior guy in the room. on our side, donald trump, on their side, vladimir putin. in a meeting like this, it would seem to me it would be much to the benefit of vladimir putin to clandestinely record this stuff so he could later trot things out and shape the conversation, say, actually the president said this and here s the clip. so, you know, yeah, makes all sorts of sense that they would do that. they don t have to. they could keep it to themselves. but, yeah, it s certainly possible and could be very useful for them in the future politically. i guess given that one of the reasons the president allegedly didn t want to have other people in the room is because he didn t want leaks. i guess since he doesn t trust the intelligence community, he wouldn t want the intelligence community bugging that room and having that tape for that very reason. now the russians now the russians can leak it for, you know, for him, for themselves. steve hall, david axelrod, thanks. a quick programming note, catch david axelrod and the axe files saturday night 7:00 p.m. on cnn. up next on 36 0 a woman sits in a washington jail tonight accused of being a kremlin spy and attempting influence american politicians. she s entered a plea of not guilty. coming up, i ll talk exclusively to her attorney about the charges against her. dear great-great grandfather, you made moonshine in a backwoods still. smuggled booze and dodged the law. even when they brought you in, they could never hold you down. when i built my family tree and found you, i found my sense of adventure. i set off on a new life, a million miles away. i m heidi choiniere, and this is my ancestry story. now with over 10 billion historical records, discover your story. get started for free at ancestry.com and now for the rings. ( ) i m a four-year-old ring bearer with a bad habit of swallowing stuff. still won t eat my broccoli, though. and if you don t have the right overage, you could be paying for that pricey love band yourself. so get an allstate agent, and be better protected from mayhem. like me. can a ring bearer get a snack around here? ron! soh really? going on at schwab. thank you clients? well jd power did just rank them highest in investor satisfaction with full service brokerage firms.again. and online equity trades are only $4.95. i mean you can t have low cost and be full service. it s impossible. it s like having your cake and eating it too. ask your broker if they offer award-winning full service and low costs. how am i going to explain this? if you don t like their answer, ask again at schwab. schwab, a modern approach to wealth management. california had the worst wildfire season on record. scientists say, our weather is becoming more extreme and we all have to be better prepared. that s why pg&e is adopting new and additional safety precautions to help us monitor and respond to dangerous weather. hi, i m allison bagley, a meteorologist with pg&e s community wildfire safety program. we re working now, to enhance our weather forecasting capabilities, building a network of new weather stations to identify when and where extreme wildfire conditions may occur, so we can respond faster and better. we re installing cutting edge technology to provide real-time mapping and tracking of weather patterns. and we use this information in partnership with first responders and california s emergency response systems. to learn more about the community wildfire safety program and how you can help keep your home and community safe, visit pge.com/wildfiresafety sex, guns and lies. that s how prosecutors say an alleged kremlin secret agent infiltrated american politics, getting close to trump allies and other republicans. russia s ambassador to the u.s. on the other hand says the department of justice case against maria butina is a farce. pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and acting as a covert russian agent. the russians set up a hashtag in their defense. her onetime poifboyfriend, paul erickson, adds to the intrigue. it s not clear where he falls into the alleged scheme. prosecutors suggest he may have been manipulated by butina who s half his age. joining me exclusively, maria but butina s lawyer, robert drisc driscoll. i want to read one between ther and the russian official she was communicating with immediately after donald trump won the election. she writes, i m going to sleep, it s 3:00 a.m. here. i m ready for further orders. the rulgs russian official says think about it. isis, understandably, what else we need to look at the american agenda. you say your client isn t a russian spy. why is she asking for further orders? i think that like most of the government s case is taken completely out of context. the twitter direct messages, by the way, most russian spies don t speak by twitter messages which are unencrypted. there are thousands of them between them. twitter direct message about picking up toothpaste in america, direct messages of pictures of kids and dogs and everything else. they both had an affinity for better american/russian relations. that tcertainly he wasn wasn t purpose of the trip to the u.s. here s the other thing the government says they have, they flagged several direct messages between her and the russian official, your client talks about going, quote, underground, going incognito and having to be quiet and careful. the government alleges the messages show her acting in a covert manner. to that, you say? again, maria never said she was anyone other than who she was. she always said she was a russian. she said she worked with al alexander to arrshin. friends with him, assisting limb him in his endeavors. any discussion of them underground or covert, versus conferences, or have more private dinners. it s interesting for someone w who s alleged to be a spy, from what i read from accounts of people at the university with her, she had a picture of vladimir putin on her phone and often spoke in defense of vladimir putin in class, which if she was trying to be incognito and be here as a spy, i m not sure that it seems she d have a high profile in defense of vladimir putin. i think if i was a spy for vladimir putin, i would actually go the opposite way and kind of downplay my like of vladimir putin. i actually asked her about that today. i read about it, i think cnn, the story about the phone cover. it s a picture of vladimir putin shirtless on a horse. so, you can imagine, you know, she had as a gag. she s the russian student and everyone knew she was a russian student. so she had i m saying it actually argues in your favor in this case which is, like, if she s trying to have a cover position exactly. it seems odd she would be publicly out there promoting vladimir putin positions in a classroom. she was head of a she was well known in russia before she even came here. she s been getting publicity since she s been in the u.s. for well over a year. if she were a spy, her relationship with torshin was disclosed in articles online over a year ago. so according to the government s theory, her cover was born over a year ago and she didn t leave. let me ask you, paul erickson, the man she had a relationship with, is he the u.s. person number one named in the indictment? it seems like he is. i m not going to confirm nor deny that here. okay. i think you re on the right track. can you sigh exactly what her relationship with erickson was, was she using him to gain access to the nra, to republican elite? no, i mean, i think that they have a personal romantic relationship. and they have for about five years and they attended lots of events together over time. was she using sex as a means to manipulate erickson? there was some indication there was one report she complained about being no. and i think it s very unfortunate, the government kind of dropped those allegations without any evidence the other day in open court. i vehemently asked the government for any support for those allegations about trading sex for things because i frankly find it kind of offensive just because she s an attractive woman that that s the direction people go in. i haven t seen any evidence of that and well, i think someone from the school said the men she hung out with seemed to be above 60 which sort of struck them as odd. but there were handwritten notes found in her apartment. in particular, one said how to respond to fsb offer of employment. how do you explain that? i believe those notes were found in another apartment of person one. right, in person one s handwriting. in person one s handwriting. i don t think it s up for her to explain that. but i will say this. that as the fsb is offering full employment either to subject number one, who she s in a relationship with, or to her, that s certainly again raising questions. i think that anyone who is russian has to meet with the fsb when they go back and forth and frequently is asked at the airport what they re doing in america, if they had any information for the fsb. what would happen if the fsb approached her gun rights group or not group. i think those kind of things were discussed by her. but talking about employment, if the fsb is talking about full employment, that s of concern, no? again, and if there were any evidence she was employed by the fsb, you know, but there s just there s just none. have you ever represented erickson? no. and so bottom line, in terms of what your clients want, is it a plea deal, a return to russia? something else? my client s innocent of the charges. so what she wants to be is we re going to establish that the government cannot prove the case here. the government has brought a case into the foreign registration act, which by the way, no one was ever prosecuted under. essentially it s a registration statute saying if you re going to do certain activities in the country, you have to register with the attorney general of the united states. so they re acknowledging that everything they did is legal under u.s. law. i appreciate your time. thank you. thank you. let s check in with chris and see what s coming up on cuomo prime time. it s an interesting distinction legally between being innocent and the government not being able to prove a case. usually lawyers avoid the word innocent because it means you know for a fact your client did absolutely nothing wrong. usually there s an ethical hurdle that comes with that. tonight bewe re going to be takg a look at the cohen tapes, what they mean, what they don t mean, and why they re coming out now, which, surprise, surprise, i don t think is a coincidence my friends. we re going to take people through that and talk about what vladimir putin did with his first chances to prove a friend to trump. that s the show tonight. all right. seven minutes from now. thanks very much. just ahead, a look at the cnn special report, the trump show, tv s new reality. that airs at 10:00 p.m. eastern. brian stelter is the host. he joins us with details next. ds the plan they want, without paying for things they don t. jet-setting moms can video-chat from europe. movie-obsessed teens can stream obscure cinema. it s like everyone gets their own flavor of unlimited. (chuckles) it s a metaphor. simile, not a metaphor. hm. well played. (vo) one family. different unlimited plans. starting at $40 per line. buy one of our best phones and get one free when you switch. all on the network you deserve. for my constipation, my doctor recommended i switch to miralax. stimulant laxatives forcefully stimulate the nerves in your colon. miralax is different. it works with the water in your body. unblocking your system naturally. miralax. now available in convenient single-serve mix-in pax. until her laptop crashed this morning. her salon was booked for weeks, having it problems? ask a business advisor how to get on demand tech support for as little as $15 a month. right now, buy one hp ink and get a second at 30% off at office depot officemax know what? no, what? i just switched to geico. .and got more. more? got a company i can trust. that s a heck of a lot more. over 75 years of great savings and service. you can t argue with more. why would ya? geico expect great savings and a whole lot more. of homeland. when a story breaks do you talk about that, how to make that a part of show? it s the first thing we discuss every morning in the story line, especially now when the news cycle is so crazy. breaking news, defending putin. breaking news tonight, a stunning shake-up at the white house. is this something germane to the story that we re telling? a porn star and a major staff departure, just another day in the trump white house. we were all utterly, utterly blown away. we are all trying to adapt to trump s american. veteran show runner a line shaken. is it fair to say hollywood is a hub of the so-called resistance? it s no secret that hollywood leans progressive and there s a certain dangerous presumption that everybody that walks into the room is going to share your politics, and not everybody does. people feel insulted. journalist selena zito. people in the middle of the country believe that hollywood only portrays things in a certain way, as though they are the butt of the joke. that their views aren t respected. i m joined now by brian stelter, host of reliable sources. it is fascinating to see this. i mean it s not only the trump presidency has changed the way we cover news. the news cycle itself just is amped up in a way, the speed of it now, it s not like anything i ve ever seen. yeah. that affects hollywood as well as us in the cable news world. it affects these show runners producing sitcoms and dramas who normally didn t care much about what was going on in washington, but now there s this pressure, partly from the audience, to be reacting to what s going on in the real world. it s hard to compete there. a lot of this stuff seems like it comes out of hollywood, and yet, you know, they risk being left in the dust if they do a storyline and then, you know, the next week a whole new turn has taken place. that s been a through line in these conversations. which spent months talking to tv s top producers, as well as critics who watch all these shows. they have said there have been a number of times they have to rewrite scripts. for example, on cbs s the good fight, there was a reference to stormy daniels suggesting she was just a flash in the pan. people moved on. well, as had been made clear, people have not moved on from those stories. avenatti always in the news. they had to rewrite that plt line, change that part of the script. that s happening all the sometime now. on the comedy side, we re seeing so many jokes at the president s expense. perhaps too many. it is clear in left-leaning hollywood, they do feel they re part of the resistance. i m wondering if there s a fatigue factor in hollywood either among viewers, people want a break from that? there s always a desire for escapism. because we live in this age of peak tv, there s something for everyone. there s more shows than ever talking about the president, taking him on. there are also plenty of shows in the opposite direction. look, i ve been wanting to binge watch the americans on fx. it recently ended. it s all about russia, all about the cold war. it feelsic lie could learn a thing or two from it now. there s a lot of shows like that that help you process the day s
this sunday, turning against trump. the president s long-time personal attorney, michael cohen, is apparently prepared to say the president knew in advance about the infamous trump tower meeting with russians. it appears the president s former attorney and confidant is ready to talk. and cohen releases a tape discussing buying the story of a former playmate who says she had an affair with trump. what financing? we ll have to pay something. and we ll pay with cash. no, no, no, no, no. rudy giuliani attacks cohen. the man is a liar, a proven liar. not long after praising him. the man is an honest, honorable lawyer. just how big a threat does cohen pose to president trump? my guests this morning, former trump political advisor sam nunberg and republican senator rob portman of ohio. plus guns and poses. maria butina loves guns, cultivated conservatives and is now in jail, arrested as a russian agent. does she hold the key to an nra/russia connection? and base politics. today marks 100 days until election day. it s democratic enthusiasm versus trump loyalty. joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell, eddie glaude jr. of princeton university, wall street journal columnist peggy noonan and matthew continetti. editor-in-chief of the washington free beacon. welcome to sunday. it s meet the press. announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is meet the press with chuck todd. good sunday morning. perhaps nothing better illustrates how president trump wants his supporters to see the world than this moment from his speech to the vfw on wednesday. what you re seeing and what you re reading is not what s happening. that s right. what you re seeing and what you re reading is not what s happening. okay. despite his orwellian phrasing, one bit of news president trump does want people to know is happening is that the economy grew at a rate of 4.1% in the second quarter. it s the highest since 2014 under president obama. but beyond that, the news was not good for the president this week. there were increasing signs of a democratic blue wave in the midterm elections. now exactly 100 days away. we learned federal prosecutors are seeking to interview allen weisselberg, mr. trump s chief financial officer and someone who knows as much as anyone about how the trump organization and mr. trump personally has done business and with whom. but there were two other stories that got the most attention this week and they both involve the president s now former long-time attorney, friend and fixer, michael cohen. not only did cohen release a tape of him discussing hush money payments to a playboy model, he appears to be prepared to tell the special counsel that mr. trump knew about the infamous trump tower meeting with russians in advance. if michael cohen tells that version of events and if he could prove it, it could turn out to be the game changer, even for members of mr. trump s own party. is michael cohen lying? for more than a year, president trump and his surrogates have denied that he knew of the june 2016 meeting with kremlin-connected agents at trump tower that included his son, his son-in-law, and his then campaign chairman, who is now behind bars. no, i didn t know anything about the meeting. do you tell your father anything about this? no. it was such a nothing, there was nothing to tell. the president said he became aware of it very recently, right before this came out, and that s when he was notified. and just this week, the president repeated, i did not know of the meeting with my son. sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam. that someone? the president s former personal lawyer and fixer, michael cohen, who is floating himself as a possible witness, making it clear he is willing to tell special counsel robert mueller that mr. trump knew about and approved of the meeting beforehand. this is about truth versus lying, and ultimately donald trump is going to be done in by the truth. cohen is under investigation for bank fraud and possible campaign finance violations by federal prosecutors in new york city, who are examining his role in mr. trump s campaign as well. on tuesday, he released this tape through his lawyer, which appears to reference a hush money payment two months before the election to keep a former playboy model quiet about an alleged affair with mr. trump. we ll have to pay something. and we ll pay with cash. no, no, no, no, no. i ve got no, no, no. just months ago mr. trump s lawyer, rudy giuliani, praised cohen. the man is an honest, honorable lawyer. but now he s been lying all week. he s been lying for years. he s lied all his life. mr. trump is desperately trying to keep the russia issue from consuming his presidency. just 26% of voters approve of his handling of the relationship between the united states and russia. secretary of state mike pompeo was grilled this week even by skeptical republicans after mr. trump s two-hour private meeting and press conference with russian president putin. it s the president s public statements that create concern amongst senators on both sides of the aisle. some of these statements actually achieve important policy outcomes for the united states of america. some of them do. yes. and some of them are very damaging. and now mr. trump is ducking questions from the press more frequently, refusing to answer questions ten times since the release of the michael cohen recording on tuesday night. mr. president, will you go to moscow? let s get more insight into this relationship between the president and michael cohen. i m joined now by sam nunberg, he was a political advisor to president trump before and then again during the 2016 campaign. welcome to meet the press. it s an honor. so let s start with this. just a simple question, right, which is you ve seen these two interact quite a bit, president trump. help us understand the relationship between president trump and michael cohen. michael was one of the closest people i ve seen with the president, highly devoted to him, a sense of loyalty that i thought, at least, until this week when i learned that he was taping him in person, a sense of loyalty that was, yes, he would take a bullet for him. he would do anything for him. and is it your sense that michael cohen basically just handles things? is that when you hear the term fixer, the president has a problem he handles them? is that how he was known around trump tower? yes. this was in michael s purview. issues like this were. these are michael s responsibilities. i want to play an excerpt of the tape that michael cohen s legal team released. here it is. i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david. yeah. you know, so that i m going to do that right away. i ve actually come up and i ve spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with so what are we gonna do? funding. that exchange, i know you weren t there for it. i m not going to sit there and assume you were there for it. familiar, though, that style of exchange, back and forth between the president and michael cohen? once again, the idea michael was taping him in that office, when i heard that i felt like i was in the 26th floor of trump tower. remember, they never consummated this transaction so there s no idea there is an fcc violation. yes, these sound like the conversations you would hear in private. you said michael cohen was very loyal and devoted right. to mr. trump. did you ever see mr. trump be loyal to him? ultimately, i felt that he wasn t. i sympathize with michael. i understand the way michael feels. i have felt like that. with that said, chuck, with somebody like me who has defended michael publicly, when he takes lanny davis out of the clinton crypt and decides to start talking about watergate releasing these tapes, it s a bridge too far. are you saying you no longer count yourself as a friend of michael cohen? you did just a couple of days ago you did? no, he is a friend of mine. i like him personally. once again, i feel bad for what his family is going through. but vis-a-vis his professional relationship with the president, it s highly unethical, if not if not getting disbarred for what he did. who s telling the truth? in terms of? who s telling the truth here? whose word should we take here, michael cohen intimating what the president knew about these various payments or the president s word that he knew very little about it all? but there was no payment. but let s say we hear this conversation, but ultimately if you re asking me who do i believe, the president or michael cohen with what michael cohen may say, for instance, what michael cohen says now that the president knew about the russia meeting in advance, i would believe don jr. and the president in light of learning that michael was taping conversations, the way michael was conducting himself behind This Sunday-morning public-affairs institution is network TV s oldest program, but it s certainly no dinosaur as it continues to be a prime forum for. anything illegal vis-a-vis the trump org and this goes to michael s private businesses which the president gave him the latitude to conduct in trump org i don t think they should have and perhaps they even knew then or suspected he was taping conversations with the president. why do you think the president didn t want to offer him a pardon? i don t think the president has obstructed this investigation. he understands now that he cannot fire robert mueller, he cannot fire jeff sessions, he cannot fire rod rosenstein because that would go down the watergate model and that s what they re going down to ultimately get his impeachment. michael cohen ever tell you who knew about this trump tower meeting? remember, i was fired in 2015. i had not been in trump tower. i was sued earlier right, i understand. then you were brought back and forth. you ve had a weird relationship in trump world. i never discussed this with michael or anyone, by the way, about the meeting after it was reported. what i did say, what i did say was when i saw that statement that was given initially to the they have not trust me, donald trump knew he was under the limelight. he had you know, he had a contract with nbc. everything that was done was on the up and up. that s what i believe, at least. all right, sam nunberg, i appreciate your coming in and sharing your views and helping me out. thank you very much. now, let me turn to the elected side of things. joining me now is republican senator rob portman of ohio who sits on the foreign relations committee and was one of the senators who grilled secretary of state mike pompeo this week on the trump/putin relationship. senator portman, welcome back to meet the press, sir. chuck, good to be on with you again. let me start with the michael cohen situation, because he is now contradicting something that donald trump jr. said under oath to congress. whether it was under oath or not, lying to congress is a crime. donald trump jr. told the judiciary committee that he did not tell his father about anything of the trump tower meeting before or after. michael cohen apparently is contradicting him. should michael cohen be called before the judiciary committee and clear this up, sooner rather than later? i think the mueller investigation is probably the place this should be cleared up. but, you know, that s up to the judiciary committee. if this is something that let me ask you this. you as a republican senator, would you want to see the judiciary committee sort of clean this up since they have gone down this road, or you would say punt? you would tell senator grassley your advice would be leave it alone? well, i think it s going to be a he said/he said issue so i think it s probably better that this goes through the regular process, which is ongoing, chuck. i think the mueller investigation ought to be brought to an end also. i mean we need to have the facts lead to the right conclusion and so i support the investigation, i have from the start, but we do need to wrap it up and, you know, i m not an expert on michael cohen, never met the guy. i have been on the judiciary committee, i haven t been i was there for practically the entire hearing and it lasted several hours. what i liked about it is that he laid out very clearly and consistently what our issues are with russia, the fact that we continue to have policies in place that are very tough, tougher, frankly, than the previous administration, toughest sanctions since the cold war. we re arming the ukrainians, which is something as you know i pushed the obama administration and the trump administration on. we re finally doing it so they can defend themselves. we just gave them another $200 million. we re sending more troops to europe. we re doing exercises in eastern europe, not making the kremlin happy. and we re pushing back in other ways. we talked about the global engagement center, which pushes back on disinformation and propaganda coming from russia, which i think is long overdue and i commend secretary pompeo because he put that in place and is using it aggressively. so chuck, it s interesting, there are concerns, as i expressed after helsinki, of an inconsistent public posture as to russia, but in terms of policy, i think the administration is doing things that we were not going to be prepared to have those discussions. so let s be prepared. look, i supported talking to north korea as long as we were prepared. of course we should talk to them. we are two superpowers and have nuclear weapons and need to talk. if you re going to ending up with a better relationship, it s only going to happen about being consistent and clear and realistic about the issues between us. you asked an important question to secretary pompeo when you said how come the sanctions seem to be working, it hasn t changed russia s behavior. you want more sanctions. why do you think it hasn t worked, is it the president s rhetoric? well, it s a great question because we do have unprecedented levels of sanctions, certainly since the cold war, and we re talking about increasing those, which actually i support. but my question was very simple, which is they haven t backed off in terms of the illegal annexation of crimea. they haven t backed off in terms of what they re doing on the eastern border of ukraine, which is a hot war, as you know. they haven t backed off in terms of supporting the murderous assad regime. so are the sanctions effective or not? now, some would say they have been effective to get the kremlin s attention but they obviously have not resulted in the kind of actions and reactions that we would expect. so my question is how can we more effective and targeted in the sanctions. my sense is, chuck, that the better way to approach this is to actually go after folks in russia who are influential, including some of the oligarchs who support president putin and really to be more effective in targeting those sanctions. but i am interested in hearing back from the secretary for my question. let me ask you i want to move to the supreme court. i know we ll begin start the confirmation process beginning. there s a bit of a fight over what papers in the archives should be there. democrats believe republicans are asking for a limited amount, only looking at brett kavanaugh s time in the white house counsel s office. since brett kavanaugh himself has talked about his time as staff secretary in the white house, that that s important too. shouldn t the answer be release all the papers of his time in the bush administration? well, i ve served with brett in the bush administration. by the way, incredible guy, humble, a good listener, compassionate. i think he s going to do very well at the hearing. as you ve probably seen in some of these poll numbers in some of these states that are red states where you ve got a democratic senator, he s very popular. people want to see him confirmed. so i think in the end he will do very well. in terms of the issue on document production, it ought to be documents that are relevant. in other words, when you re staff secretary, which was his job, there are millions of documents literally that go through your office. you re the gatekeeper, you re the traffic cop. it s not substantive. so i think when he was associate counsel to the president certainly. his 200 opinions are important so those are the relevant documents. but to go on a fishing expedition into millions of documents that he had nothing substantive to say about i think would be a mistake. frankly, it s not in the democrats interests to do that because it s going to postpone this even closer to the election, which i m not sure that they want. rob portman, republican senator from ohio, i m going to have to leave it there. thank you for coming on and sharing your views, much appreciate it. thanks, chuck. thanks for having me on again. when we come back, the panel and what the breakdown with the trump/cohen relationship could mean for the russia investigation and the future of the trump presidency. and it turns out another employee of president trump s may pose an even bigger threat to the president. (vo) why are subaru outback owners always smiling? because they ve chosen the industry leader. subaru outback holds its value better than any other vehicle in its class, according to alg. better than rav4. better than grand cherokee. better than edge. make every adventure a happy one with subaru outback. get 0% apr financing on the 2018 subaru outback. money managers are pretty much the same. all but while some push high commission investment products, fisher investments avoids them. some advisers have hidden and layered fees. fisher investments never does. and while some advisers are happy to earn commissions from you whether you do well or not, fisher investments fees are structured so we do better when you do better. maybe that s why most of our clients come from other money managers. fisher investments. clearly better money management. need a change of scenery? the kayak price forecast tool tells you whether to wait or book your flight now. so you can be confident you re getting the best price. giddyup! kayak. search one and done. -we re in a small room. what?! -welcome. -[ gasps ] a bigger room?! -how many of you use car insurance? -oh. -well, what if i showed you this? -[ laughing ] ho-ho-ho! -wow. -it s a computer. -we compare rates to help you get the price and coverage that s right for you. -that s amazing! the only thing that would make this better is if my mom were here. what?! an unexpected ending! crooked hillary s lawyer. gee, i wonder if they helped him make the choice. cohen versus trump, peggy noonan, what do you make of this? i thought it was very interesting when you said to sam nunberg, so, who s telling the truth here? i think his answer was more or less i think trump. do you know what i mean? could that be a fair interpretation? it felt like he put a lot of caveats in there. felt like there were a lot, well, on this yeah. one of the things i m curious about is where the heck does this go? you have a sense, as you watch the story, that more tapes will come, more testimony, more this, an e-mail, whatever, and we ll find out, yes, the president kind of knew about the trump tower meeting. someone wanted to share information against hillary clinton. he said sure, let me know how it goes. if that is true, where does that get you? what is our end point there? that doesn t prove criminality. it proves poor judgment. it proves a lack of sophistication within his campaign organization. normally these russians would come in off the street and meet with extremely low-level people, not top level oh, my gosh, it s out of a daniel silva novel, it s so unsophisticated. that s high praise. which is what i keep yeah, it is high praise. but that s what i keep thinking of it as. but still if the moment comes where we find out trump knew about this meeting, what does that mean? you know, first of all, we ve heard this kind of denial, right? so on air force one when he denied the payment to stormy daniels and then giuliani comes out and we realize he s lying. so he lies a lot, donald trump. so to ask who s telling the truth between cohen and trump is like asking who s the more trustworthy in the mob, right? sammy the bull or this guy. that s not really the issue. the issue is the evidence, that s the question, the evidence. what is being put on the table here. and what i think cohen s tape reveals is intent. and the difficult part about the collusion claim is the intent claim. and if there s intent here, then which the tape suggests, then we have a stronger case around collusion. i talked to a few republicans this week who the combination of the disastrous helsinki summit with this news, matthew, is starting to make capitol hill republicans very nervous. i m sorry, senator portman, he didn t like those michael cohen questions. he didn t want he didn t want to have anything to say. there are a lot of other republican senators, they don t seem to be as ready to just take the president s side as they were even two weeks ago. they like the trump administration would rather like robert mueller go away. and i think cohen s claim that the president knew about the trump tower meeting is basically a message to robert mueller and saying that this claim, given the evidence, if he has any, which he has not produced to date, would help you, robert mueller, in your construction of an obstruction of justice case against the president. that s where it seems to me the mueller investigation has been trending for some time. this would be another bullet point in that eventual report to congress where robert mueller would say, yes, the president interfered with this investigation. but from what we know of robert mueller, he either has evidence already to corroborate this. he will not be relying on michael cohen as a key witness. one has to think that a lot of people, people including in the trump orbit, say, look, this meeting took place one floor in trump tower away from where the president was at that time, the candidate trump was that day at that time. he then went to a fund-raising lunch with don junior. the possibility the probability that the son did not tell the father before or after this meeting or both is just so hard to believe, plus the two blocked phone calls, one before, one after, that the republicans on the house intel committee would not let the democrats subpoena. so mueller either has those phone records and a lot of other corroborating information or not. if this is going to go any place, it s not going to rely on michael cohen. just a small thought. in a funny way, i think the cohen stuff and the meeting and the payoffs, check or cash for the playboy person, that has had a funny way of obscuring the really big story of the moment, which was helsinki, a two-hour meeting about which we know nothing. no american note takers. exactly. and then an obsequious and fawning for me as an american to watch embarrassing joint press conference with president putin. that is huge historic and scandalous. what about the mike pompeo hearing after? i was surprised that senator portman thought that secretary pompeo did so well. in fact for three hours almost unanimously the members, republican and democratic and not just bob corker who s retiring, went after pompeo because not on a personal level, but because he was giving the party line pretty much and not explaining what happened in that two-hour meeting. and their fear is that he does not know, that mattis does not know, that no one knows what happened. and they are saying do not and that s what the leaders said to the president when they went and got him to postpone the return visit right before the midterms. they do not want him going into another private meeting. first of all, no president, especially one as unschooled in foreign policy, the kremlin is putting out that he agreed to a referendum on ukraine, the kremlin is giving us the readouts. we don t know i thought susan glasser put it well. she said for hours pompeo insisted that trump s tweets and incendiary comments were not the sum total of those policies, but it s a tough argument to make about a prickly boss. the policy has not changed, pompeo insisted, but the real question remains what the policy is in the first place. yes. and in this sense the michael cohen news came as a relief, i think, to a lot of republicans. yes. it s the case that when the spotlight is on russia, when the spotlight is on michael avenatti and stormy daniels, the president s base rallies to him. i was struck by the week that donald trump was elected president, his personal favorability rating according to gallup was 36%. last month gallup asked the same question. donald trump s personal favorability rating was 36%. nothing changes. that s what i always say about every week. everything happens and nothing changes. i m going to pause the conversation here. when we come back, the curious case of a woman named maria butina. was she a russian spy and could she be the key to a connection between the russians infiltrating the nra? tell your doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common, and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. xeljanz xr can reduce the symptoms of psoriatic arthritis. don t let another morning go by without talking to your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. where she had recently graduate with a master s degree in international relations from american university. on paper she was a student and a gun rights advocate known around campus for having pride in her homeland and defending russian interests in class discussions. at the same time, investigators claim she was a covert agent funded by alexander torshin, a russian oligarch, with close ties to the kremlin. at his urging, investigators say, she worked to gain access to american political operatives, conservative politicians and political groups, including the trump campaign and more importantly in this story the nra. joining me now is someone who has done a lot of reporting on butina and russian intelligence efforts in this area, michael isikoff, co-author of russian roulette. of course a former colleague here at nbc news. welcome back to meet the press. good to be with you. all right. you are facebook friends with maria butina. that s true. i know you did it for your reporting. yes. so how did you first discover her? i started hearing about her during the 2016 election as somebody who kept showing up at conservative political events, cpac conferences, national prayer breakfasts, nra meetings, conventions. she met with nra leaders when they went to moscow and hosted them. and it struck a lot of people as odd. what is this woman doing here? she was extremely flirtatious. she tried to maintain contact with a lot of influential republican lobbyists, activists. she had this very close relationship with this guy, paul erickson, conservative activist in south dakota. but what really got my attention was the alexander torshin connection. alexander torshin, who you mentioned, was a deputy governor of the russian central bank. he was a close ally of putin. most importantly, he was under investigation by the spanish national police for money laundering. in fact he had these ties to this organized crime money laundering gang in spain. the spanish national police had him on wiretaps he was going to be arrested. they were planning to arrest him. he was referred to by the organized gang leader as el padrino, the godfather. they were all set to arrest him when he was going to fly in for a birthday party in majorca. he got tipped off and didn t go. all this time he s flying in and out of the united states with butina meeting with nra leaders and republican activists. so in the criminal complaint against her when they decided because they thought she was going to flee, i want to read this e-mail. it s a bit some rough english but it s in her words. it s an e-mail they put in there that essentially explains i guess what her plan was. it says here that she has discovered the central place and influence, and they refer to in the political party one meaning the republicans, plays the gun rights organization here is nra. the nra is the largest sponsor of the elections in congress as well as sponsor of the cpac conference and other events. again, a little broken english from her but this was all part of this plan. it was an e-mail she sent to paul erickson. this was an infiltration plan. exactly. that was very savvy insight. the way the goal here was to change the republican party s attitude towards russia. traditionally hostile but it was sort of the john mccain view of russia is what they assumed all republicans were. and the way to do it was through the nra. who has more influence with republican members of congress especially than the nra. they spend more money, they re the most powerful special interest group. so the idea was butina sets up this russian gun rights organization to forge this alliance with nra members as a way of influencing the republican party. let s go back to paul erickson. yes. she s been now romantically linked with him. i guess they lived together in south dakota perhaps or shared some sort of right. apparently not totally willingly on her part but she felt this was part of her obligation and duty. she wrote this e-mail to him at the time to sort of like ask him am i wording this correctly? it was sort of to get his is he witting or unwitting here? we don t know. there s good reason to believe he s under investigation himself by federal prosecutors, and i think one goal is to get her to flip on him about what he might know. but i do think torshin is the key. i think he s the ultimate target here. he s been sanctioned by the u.s. one other thing we should mention, remember, butina, for all the work she s doing, did one big service for the kremlin. july 2015 just a few weeks after trump announces his candidacy, he goes to freedomfest, this libertarian event in las vegas, and takes a question from the floor from butina. what would be his position on sanctions that are damaging both countries, and trump gives this full-fledged five-minute answer in which he says if i m elected, you won t need sanctions. i know putin, i can get along with putin. not a top issue in the republican political debate at the time but very important for the kremlin. they had him on the record saying he would roll back sanctions. you ve been doing investigations a long time, a couple of decades now. let s raise up to 30,000 feet. we ll focus sometimes on the russia/trump angle or the nra. this larger investigation is going to be known as what? it looks to me like a russian infiltration campaign on all levels of the conservative movement on this country. is that what happened? that s exactly what seems to be happening. this was every much as part of the russian influence campaign as the cyber attacks, the phony facebook ads, the twitter bots, all of that. i ve got to say just one thing i know you have a hobby horse. i ll let you go. go. dereliction of duty on congress part. why every major political scandal in the last half century, watergate, iran contra, you name it. public hearings by the congress, key witnesses testify under oath before the tv cameras. none of that has happened here. all behind closed doors, including butina by the way. we should be seeing these witnesses. they should be hauled up. grassley and feinstein could call michael cohen up tomorrow, subpoena him, have him testify in public. don t let lawyers spin. let s see it for ourselves. it s a good point to end on. michael isikoff, thanks for coming on. good work, sir. don t forget his book, russian roulette. when we come back, the democrats big blue midwestern wall came crashing down on them in 2016. are we seeing signs it s being rebuilt? the risk is unknown in copd. anoro won t replace rescue inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, glaucoma, prostate, bladder, or urinary problems. these may worsen with anoro. call your doctor if you have worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain while taking anoro. ask your doctor about anoro. go your own way get your first prescription free at anoro.com. no one had gotten that close since ronald reagan in 1984. now, president trump s success in those midwestern states was fueled by his appeal with rural and working class voters. now new nbc news/marist polls show him slipping in the midwest. president trump s approval rating in those three states michigan, wisconsin and minnesota, deep underwater. he did not break 40% in any of those states and his disapproval is above 50% in all of them. this could be as much about tariffs, by the way, as it is about his overall job performance. tariffs are hitting those three states particularly hard. of course the president has two more years to make up for those numbers, but the midterm election is just 100 days away. republicans are facing uphill battles in elections for the house, senate and for governor. in fact in our poll voters in each of those states say they prefer democrats over republicans in this year s congressional races. and guess what, these states have a lot of big races to watch this fall. they re home to nine republican held house seats currently listed as battlegrounds by our friends at the cook political report and there are four senate races all with democratic incumbents, one each in michigan and wisconsin and two in minnesota. plus each state has a governor s race. right now our polls show support for democrats in those races as well. president trump has traveled to all of these states but the numbers suggest democrats may be rebuilding their big blue wall, at least for the midterms. when we come back, president trump says he plans to spend six or seven days a week campaigning in the fall. why that could really help some republicans and really hurt others. announcer: coming up, end game and postgame, brought to you by boeing. continuing our mission to connect, protect, explore and inspire. and tank. and tiny. and this is laura s mobile dog grooming palace. laura can clean up a retriever that rolled in foxtails, but she s not much on articles of organization. articles of what? so, she turned to legalzoom. they helped me out. she means we helped with her llc, trademark, and a lot of other legal stuff that s a part of running a business. so laura can get back to the dogs. would you sit still? this is laura s mobile dog grooming palace and this is where life meets legal. we really pride ourselves on making it easy for you tech: at safelite autoglass, to get your windshield fixed. with safelite, you can see exactly when we ll be there. saving you time for what you love most. kids: whoa! kids vo: safelite repair, safelite replace tand, our adulte children are here. so, we save by using tide. which means we use less. three generations of clothes cleaned in one wash. those are moms. anybody seen my pants? nothing cleans better. put those on dad! it s got to be tide. difficult race. do you think they want donald trump campaigning for them? is it depends on where they live. the closer they are to a city or a suburb, the less likely they are you want the president to connell mcsha come campaign for them. he is less likely to cede to his opponents. i think he plans to take an active role in the mid terms. make the argument as it already is of the mid terms about him and the truth is that may actually lead to a republican advantage because the big danger for the republicans is, one, those never hillary moderates vote democrat, but two, the trump base doesn t show up. and his presence may actually inspire them to vote if he national eyes national izes the election. it s interesting, it does seem to be this intensity issue on the left and the right, less on the left, the trump intensity, gulf in the middle. right independents look like democrats. it might be the tariffs. that so-called blue wall that didn t appear, collapsed for clinton, tariffs are hurting farmers, soy prices are down, wheat. end of october they ll see prices and other industries around them. john deere and others are all going to be affected by this. i was interviewing pat toomey from pennsylvania. with steel and aluminum, we have so many more manufacturing jobs that rely on the price of steel and aluminum than the steel woerkers. he s against them as are other republican senators. i just spoke to a government official in south dakota who said we re worried about our farmers here. however, one number we haven t said this morning 4.1% said it at the beginning of the show. all right, at the beginning of the show. but in this conversation here. you know, i know it s only one quarter. we had the last such quarter in 2014. but the white house made the most of it when people hear 4.1% growth, maybe we re on target for 3% this year. people have a little more money in their pockets. consumer confidence is up. taxes are down slightly. when you ve got all that, that s going to have an impact, too. it s a big bumper sticker. apart from tariffs, there is a certain amount of economic push up that s going on. perhaps wages have still flat lined. what s interesting to me is it s not so much the middle. it s those new voters, those folks that you don t ordinarily count. so you have an excited democratic base, folks who are motivated because of trump. and then you have folk that usually don t show up, usually don t show up to vote. was yo cortez was interesting not because she was a democratic socialist. it s who she got to the polls. 40% of georgia, many don t vote. her job is to get them out. that s a big job, getting them out. it s important. matthew, i want you to comment on something else, the koch network has been having a meeting this weekend. wow, i want to put up this quote from brian hooks, president of the koch foundation. the divisiveness the white house is causing long-term damage. when in order to win on an issue someone else has to lose, it makes it difficult to unite and solve the problems of this country. there was even some hints among some at the koch network meeting. you know what, maybe this partisan strategy isn t working. the kochs are philosophical libertarians greatly opposed to the tariffs andrea mentioned as well as to some elements of more hawkish republican policy donald trump embraces. it wouldn t surprise me there would be a lot of criticism at this meeting. this argument about the future of the conservative movement, where libertarians fit in, those moderate suburban republicans. the backbone of george w. bush coalition, are they still republicans? these are all questions that are going to be sorted out in the next two years. yes, and in the two years beyond that. this is all evolving. we ll see how it plays out, if trump plays the culture war card. i don t know if the young people are going to come out, the new voters you re talking about are going to come out. productivity is platflat. that 4.1 is a a great number now. all right. finally before we go, we have a little anniversary to celebrate today. as i mentioned earlier one of us at this table is celebrating 40 years at nbc news. she s appeared at meet the press 211 times, not including today. joining me for our interviews, andrea mitchell, white house correspondent for nbc news. andrea mitchell of nbc news. nbc news chief correspondent foreign affairs. should clarence thomas take a polygraph test? senator, you said what you re for. with all due respect, gentlemen, there is a perception out there people in power, particularly in congress here washington, are a closed club. ms. mitchell, take a look at the e-mail trails. i cover the state department. that is factually not correct. andrea mitchell. andrea mitchell. a if it s sunday, it s meet the press. andrea mitchell, 40 years. started as a kid. how is it possible? high school reporter. yeah, i was going to say. how does it feel? it s been this show of all shows, above all programs, is the heart and soul of nbc news. and i have been proudest of appearing here. my folks always watched it. i watched it as a kid through all of our wonderful moderators. the legacy continues with you. some of the best uncomfortable questions you ve asked male senators. it s been interesting, i ll say 2 this. you were asking questions about the culture before anybody else was doing it. the culture has been so toxic lately, we forget we ve had previous difficult times here. the resilience of this country and of the news media is extraordinary and profoundly moving. but the fact that we ve got big problems still to solve in our society. which means you re not going anywhere. you have a lot more stories to report. thank you. and we have cake to eat. that s all we have for today. we have work to do on this cake. thanks for watching. we ll be back next week because if it s sunday, it s meet the press. you can see more end game and post game sponsored by boeing on the meet the press facebook page. (vo) why are subaru outback owners always smiling? because they ve chosen the industry leader. subaru outback holds its value better than any other vehicle in its class, according to alg. better than rav4. better than grand cherokee. better than edge. make every adventure a happy one with subaru outback. get 0% apr financing on the 2018 subaru outback. your insurance rates a scratch so smallr you could fix it with a pen. how about using that pen to sign up for new insurance instead? for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. and i don t add up the years. but what i do count on is boost®. delicious boost® high protein nuritional drink now has 33% more protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals boost® high protein. be up for life. boost® high protein. when you combine ancestry s with its historical records. you could learn you re from ireland donegal, ireland and your ancestor was a fisherman. with blue eyes. just like you. begin your journey at ancestry.com in the movies, a lot of times, i tend to play the tough guy. but i wasn t tough enough to quit on my own. not until i tried chantix. chantix, along with support, helps you quit smoking. it reduced my urge to smoke to the point that i could stop. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions with chantix. serious side effects may include seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking or allergic and skin reactions which can be life-threatening. stop chantix and get help right away if you have any of these. tell your healthcare provider if you ve had depression or other mental health problems. decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. use caution when driving or operating machinery. the most common side effect is nausea. my favorite role so far? being a non-smoker.
A weekly report on economic developments features interviews with business leaders, information on investment opportunities and financial advice. well as the e.u. beginning to buy more soybeans from american farmers. we are seeing real progress. american exports are on the rise. this is a strong economy and leadership on improving our trade relations for american jobs andworkers. when do you expect them to announce another solid trade deal. will you be able to announce them before the midterm elections. we are encouraged about the free trade agreement. the u.s. trade representative continues to believe there is a possibility before we get to labor day we might have a reformed nafta agreement. those details are still being worked out. look, the president came into this administration with the belief that for too long americans, our economy, our workers are being taken of reelection. you have andy barre in kentucky saying the bourbon makers are being hurt by retaliation in europe. we have many companies complaining about high prices. we think a better trade agreement with the european union will benefit every american. we respect members of congress. it s remarkable to think about all of the progress we have made has been a partnership with majorities. it s an unprecedented level of democrat obstruction. it s amazing to think in the last year and half we have faced more filibusters called by chuck schumer and the democrats in the senate by a factor of four times more then any administration going all the way back to the carter administration. we respect members of congress. we respect them standing up for interest in their district. we are grateful for the support they provide and re remain confident that it will win for their districts. the lack of democratic support brings you to my next question. is this a ploy to remind the american people that yours is the party of tax cuts before the midterm elections. the truth is you won t get any democratic support for that. do you think the eaxon my needs more stimulus. we worked closely on tax cuts 2.0. the realty is before christmas of last year president trump signed the largest tax cuts and reform in american history. going forward. we don t want policies that diminished the economy. when you travel across the country you sense the confidence. like a steelworker said in granite city, illinois yesterday. he said we are back. i sense that all across the country. people see in president trump someone who has a boundless confidence in the american future. also they see a president keeping his promises to cut taxes, roll back red tape, unleash american energy and the people are responding. the second quarter numbers 4.1% growth. on track for 3% growth. after 16 years that averaged less than 2% growth. it s a testament to the leadership. it s a testament to congress and the republican majorities that supported the president. also the confidence of the american people and president trumps vision. that is being robbed by the chinese. let s talk chana for a moment. they are using tariffs to get the chinese to stop stealing intellectual property. they have been transferring technologies. are tariffs the answer. they won t admit they are doing it. when you look at the trade deficit around the world. maria, as you know half of that is with china. for two long china has had unfettered access to the american economy and consumer. american companies have faced significant barriers. this is a real threat. this is absolutely essential that we protect intellectual property from being stolen from interest in china. we end the tok technology transfers that exist. as the americans take a strong stance and pursue a policy of raising barriers until we receive a reciprocal relationship with china. based on the relationship tractor trailer forged and some things he said on those issues. many reported for the first time talked about those who prospect intellectual property. we believe raising those issues and recognizing the need for a fair and balanced trade relationship gives us hope we can improve the relationship. president trump will continue to stand strong until we receive free and fair and unreciprocal relationship. i ll ask about you and the president and the white house. was it necessary to throw out kaitlin from cnn, what happened? let me say, this administration believes in the freedom of the press. president trump and our entire administration have provided extraordinary access to the media. the president answers so many questions. i can assure you we ll continue to do that. maintaining the decorum that s due at the white house is an issue. i m very confidence with any network this will ensure the access of the american people to this administration. this is incredible progress. on this day she was the reporter. she was repping representing everybody. i just remain very confident. look the relationship between any white house and press corp. is always, you know, it s always healthy and robust and occasionally represents disagreements. i m confident they will be able to workout the relationship in a positive way. every network and news organize will continue to have access. we stand for the freedom of the press in this white house. more of my exclusive interview with the white house coming up. follow me on twitter at maria bartiromo. we have a lot coming up. more with vice president and lindsey graham. that s auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. the president s efforts to roll back tape med with incredible object instrumentation. with this administration we faced four times more filibusters in our first two years then any of the last administrations going all the way back to jimmy carter. what the president and i believe as we travel across the country is that we need to communicate our majorities and have more republicans in the house and senate. as more americans see what the president is doing and enthuse enthusiastic about the commitment and america standing tall and fighting for american jobs. those same americans should know we have only be able to do that because the partners on capitol hill will continue and build on the momentum of the economy with more partners. all right, a quick break. more from my interview with mike pence. plus a showdown in turkey over a pastor. senator lindsey graham is coming up live. we have a lot to cover this morning on sunday morning futures. ron! soh really? going on at schwab. thank you clients? well jd power did just rank them highest in investor satisfaction with full service brokerage firms.again. and online equity trades are only $4.95. i mean you can t have low cost and be full service. it s impossible. it s like having your cake and eating it too. ask your broker if they offer award-winning full service and low costs. how am i going to explain this? if you don t like their answer, ask again at schwab. schwab, a modern approach to wealth management. are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi.? a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it s the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. welcome back. in my exclusive interview with mike pence he expects brett cave isn t that true tkavanaugh to be the election. so far many agreed to met with judge kavanaugh. judge brett kavanaugh is a man of integrity and a judge with extra ordinary record of service on the court of appeals. literally one of the most distinguished minds in the country with a proven record for limited government and second amendment and religious liberty. what i would say is judge brett kavanaugh deserves a fair hearing and deserves their support to be confirmed as the next justice of the court of the united states. many try to make this about abortion. is this about aban abortion for. the president was looking for a judge with extraordinary credentials and intellect. judge kavanaugh has that philosophy. he has a proven record. that s what the president made this nomination about. that s what we ll carry to republicans and democrats in the senate. we will remain confident before the fall is out the judge kavanaugh will be justice kavanaugh. you will meet next week of the families of the remains being sent from north korea. a lot of people are very emotional about this. why are you going to meet with those families. president trump asked many eato do many things on this behalf of the president. i ve never been more humbled to be asked to represent him as the remains of the american heros of the korean war to ride back on american soil. my dad was in the u.s. army. he fought in combat in the korean war. he fought or pork chop hill in some of the battles that took place there. he came home with a metal on his chest. my dad has been gone now 30 years. he raised us to understand that he always that you go heros of the korean war were the ones that didn t get to come home. the fact that this president sitting down with kim jong-un to negotiate the denuclearization of the korean peninsula also had our fallen heros on his heart should tell you everything you need to know about president trump. we are deeply moved and hon be - honored to be there when our boys come home. i know america is watching with enough emotion. you and the president have spoken about large sanctions against turkey a nato ally. you threatened to improse them about the they don t release the american pastor under house arrest. the united states will impose large sanctions on turkey on pastor andrew brunson. you will go the whole way with this. you will put sanctions if not released? pastor andrew is an innocent man. he s a man of profound christian faith that mensterred in turkey for more then 20 years. he was swept up in arrest in 2016. there is no credible evidence of wrongdoing. this was a year without being charged. for the last several years he has been in a turkey prison. president trump and i engaged the a turkish government directy to release him and send him home. those negotiations have been on going and continuous. we welcome the news this week that turkey made the decision to transfer the pastor to home arrest to his apartment in turkey. i spoke to him and his wife shortly after they arrived. pastor andrew should be freed and allowed to return to his family, to his home, to his church, and nation of the united states of america. the trust is. as i said earlier this week. pastor before yo andrew at homes not good enough. we are prepared to bring sanctions against turkey until pastor andrew before yo is free. have you received a response from turkey? we have heard from certain officials in turkey but we have made it clear that this innocent man of faith should be released and allowed to return to the united states. we will continue to take a strong stand. we ll bring sanctions against turkey. thank you so much for joining us. thank you so much. since my conversation with the vice president the state department said secretary of state pompeo spoke to the foreign minister saturday about the case of pastor andrew. the secretary and minister will continue to address other issues of concern. turkey s president said they won t back down in the threat of sanctions. after my interview with the president. that interview took place in the eisenhower executive office. he took me on a tour of his private office inside the west wing. a place that s full of history. he showed me a photograph of his father second lieutenant edward j. pence receiving the bronze star for his service in the war. as well as the metal itself. he showed me both of pitch he proudly displayed. this is rare gleams tomorrow morning. join us tomorrow morning. still ahead senator lindsey graham is here. judge brett kavanaugh all discussing this on sunday morning futures. this is next. let s bring in senator graham. it s gotta to see you this morning. thank you for joining us. thank you. a lot to talk about. north korea, my thoughts, the only reason we are moving forward is president trump convinced north korea ehe was serious about them giving up their nuclear program. having the remains returned to the united states is much appreciated by the families in the country as a whole. we are looking for complete irreversible, verifiable denuclearization. china is trying to run the clock out. if i were president trump i would keep the pressure on and be willing to walk away. the only way to get a deal that matters is to convince them we will stop the nuclear program if we have to. do you think the north believed that now or has it been emboldened? i think china is undercutting president trump when it comes to north korea. i believe they believe they won t allow them to hit the homeland. he set his policy in stone. complete, verifiable, irreversible. iran is watching, russia is watching. the only way to get there is to put a deadline on this. president trump said he wanted this to happen. i see the timeline slipping. that worries me. the only way we made progress is because trump has been strong in the eyes of north korea. you have to stay strong. i don t want a war with north korea. there will be one in china s backyard. i hope china understands that. let me move onto it other nuclear power. do you want to see sanctions put against russia? 100%. i will give president trump credit for being tough on russian that obama. that s without a doubt clear. army, the ukraine, expelling diplomats. it s not working, maria. this week was good news for me in two ways. the president with a national security council on friday. that s presidential leadership i ve been looking for. i talked to homeland security folks. the good package is coming out of the administration. pompeo told ma then degrees he would work with myself and put new sanctions on the table with russia. i m come out with sanctions on russia. what we were doing is not working. we won t see putin come meet with the president at the white house. let me ask you about the micheal cohen news. he taped his clients which seems unprecedented to me and rudy giuliani said they tampered with the tape. the one thing about micheal cohen is i ve never seen a lawyer act this way. when it comes to micheal cohen you should be suspicious of what he says. people like him will make things up. i spoke to richard yesterday. he appeared before congress talking about a lot of things. this idea he told trump about the russian meeting before it happened is to us knew news. mr. cohen, if you have something new to say you need to come and say it under oath. in terms of him saying it under oath is that a possibility. will he testify again. i don t know but i m tired of having president trump in the media. mueller is the leaker of stories in the news. this is new information about the russian meeting regarding president trump. i ve been lawyer all my adult life. that s the media strategy. i know what he said in the past art president trump not knowing anything about the meeting. he s on record and if he has something new to say don t leak it to nbc news. come to the committees and say what you have to say under oath and to ever american. i would be as yo suspicious of l cohen. i have to talk to you about iran. i ll do that after the break. we are back with lendcy graham. seems like the trump administration has a bid to create new security and political alliance with the middle east. give us the latest in terms of your viewpoints. i ve never before more pleased for president trump then iran. he s working to isolate iran. the european union needs to help us. instead of doing business with d.i. auto who ask a religious nazi. our friends should break the back of the regime. i like the idea of withdrawing from the agreement. he took the money and spent it on military. they are headed with the women. keep it up secretary pompeii yo. regime changes are coming to iran. then there is ch china. does it straighten the unity of the u.s. together to go up against china s bad behavior. that s the only way when it comes to china. the european union and the nations are being effected by trade practices. this is how the movie ends. the airbus and that hurts boeing. they have a 10% tariff made in america. it s two and half percent. let s go and ged rit of this and reunite. if you stay in the wto you will have new rules to abide by. kick them out or we get out. he s been tough on china, that s for sure. yes, he has. let me ask you do you have to votes to confirm brett kavanaugh. he s expecting a confirmation before the midterms. there is a lot of doubt when it comes to brett kavanaugh. i have zero doubt he will be on the supreme court. he s highly qualified and well deserving. the president couldn t have chosen better. he will get confirmed with democratic votes. all right, we will see which one they will be meeting with next week. thank you so much. see you soon. the house republicans are working to declassify key portions of the fiza document. we ll have more next. every page is blacked out. i would like to ask you about that. you basically said, look, this has to be declassified for the american people to understand. tell us why? it s like groundhog day. if you remember a few weeks ago we were talking about the heavyvy heavy redactions done on what they were doing. they had been totally redacted. the media was attacking the republicans work. this is another situation where the fisa document. there is so much that s redacted, maria. yeah. if you notice the left and mane stream media said. we were exonerated once this came out. we put-out the memo or the dirt used to get the fisa warrant. now, if you look at what they are saying but the really juicy stuff is the stuff that proves collusion and how bad page really was. that s what is redacted. that was the news report after 48 hours. once they found that back in june to declassify up to 20 pages. you will hear nothing. they don t want transparency for the american people. the president has the letter from us. i think his lawyers are looking to declassify it. as soon as it comes out the better off we are. what s left is what is redacted. yeah, that s what i would like to ask you about. i read this in the wall street journal. devin was washington memo number one. what else is in the application is worse. you identified a specific number. can you tell us what could possibly be worse than using an unverified peace of nonsense to get a warrant to spy on an american citizen. there is the problem. the mainstream media and left can say what is really bad is the public can t see. it redacted. the realty is that s not the case. they have been providing over site of the issue. several members have been going through it piece by piece. we are contax cuts den conift when the american people see it that will be shocked. has the president read the unredacted portion? i have no idea what the president has or has not read. all i know is we sent him a letter back in june asking him to reclassify the 20 pages or more. the more the better. i think most of what we would like to see are 20 pages in the last fisa. seams like the midterm elections are that much more important. we wouldn t know any of this stuff without your committee and colleagues and over site. we wouldn t know half of the stuff tax cuts took place in the 2016 elections. what happens if the house flips and takes the majority? well that s what i said in the wall street journal interview. i stated that i m quiet confident because i ve seen this played before. there is a stall game going on. they are trying to stall as much as they can that the republicans would lose the house in the fall. this would shutdown everybody. rod wouldn t be held for contempt. all of the investigations will be shutdown and you will be left with media narratives saying oh, what the public can t read. what s blackout is what s really bad. that s why the sooner the president declassifies the better. the american people need to understand how important it will be to get out and vote in the election. tell us were the investigation stands right now. is rod rosenstein preforming? what i can tell you is there was a move late last week to begin impeachment. i think there are grounds for impeachment and we should hold them accountable. congress has given them way too much power. the way i understand it is the judiciary committee and over site committee got commitments that documents will be provided. we are suppose to see those this week. in addition to the interviews/deposition they will begin in august. they will conduct interviews with very important witnesses that need to be interviewed as we get to the bottom of the russia gate scandal. let me ask you with what s going on with twitter and shadow banning. are they censoring conservative views and speakers? yeah, i hod no idea what shadow banning was. i had no clue. for several months people have been contacting me saying i tried to find you on twitter. i couldn t find your account, why is that. then we had a report that came out where there were four people in the house of representatives and four elected officials that were quote-unquote, they don t call it shadow banning. there was a trap were people couldn t see our twitter feed. that was mr. gates, mr. jordan, and myself. it looks like they are censoring people. they ought to stop it. we are looking at legal remedies to go through. mr. chairman. thank you so much. ..
The day s biggest political and news stories, with interviews and reporting from around the nation. The day s biggest political and news stories, with interviews and reporting from around the nation. The day s biggest political and news stories, with interviews and reporting from around the nation. thursday, a sanctions bill against russia. this will be a heck of a lot easier if there was a white house who actually carried and was willing to get in the fight. clearly continuing, the russians are not going to slow down. the last point is the problem that hangs over this entire news tonight. it appears the fbi and facebook are acting in realtime, which indicates some learning compared to 2016. the president himself though hasn t only undercut past intelligence about russia attacking in 2016, he also says he doesn t think it s happening now either. is russia still targeting the u.s., mr. president? press, let s go, make your way out. you had a chance to speak with the president after his comments. the president was said thank you very much, and was saying no to answering questions. i m joined by msnbc terrorism analyst malcolm nance. and harvard law professor johai platform to stoke fears on the right. so if we don t stop it right now, it s going to get worse. i m a long-time readeri er o your work. you are measured and precise. i bring to you some of the numbers which don t suggest a wide or large scale, but anytime you have something like this with an election it is important, in a democracy. let me read to you what we re getting from facebook. 290,000 accounts were following the pages. the events they caught were about 30 in america. and the spend quite low when you think about all the midterms going on, $11,000 on 150 ads. that s what s been caught in realtime. your analysis? good to be with you again. and i think we should all be happy that facebook is responding, and that they re actually cooperating, both with federal agencies and with independent researchers. the first strike of a larger effort? we don t know enough to know whether what facebook has done is enough or they re just finding a little bit. what we do know is when we look at the data from the election itself, this is a very similar pattern. they seem to be jumping on bandwagons that are already there. they re trying to show some success. but largely they re not driving the effect, just like they didn t drive the concerns with voter fraud that the republicans were pushing. they re not driving the resistance to i.c.e. they re not driving the rejection of the white house supremacists. so i think it just needs to be taken in context. they are trying to they re trolling us. they re trying to make us feel like our democracy is not safe because of them when, in fact, it s internal divisions with very long and deep roots. let me press you on that. really pushing us. let me press you on that and i m going to natasha. your claim you just made would suggest they want us to find this and be scared, facebook revealing they do this as whoever is doing it, trying even harder not to get caught. how do you square that? to yochai first. oh, i have no doubt that they are trying to do it, and that what they re trying to do, if americans were working with them, is illegal. they re trying to cover up. right. they are professionals trying to do their work. okay. the problem is that we need to not overstate how important they are. right. let me go to natasha then, your analysis? yeah, i think that one of the things that worried me the most about this announcement was obviously not the scale of it, 30 is a relatively low number, but it was the fact that it seems like they re getting more competent, that they re learning how to cover their tracks more efficiently, that they ve really begun to adapt now that they know they re in the cross hairs million people. that s another part of my concern, facebook may not know the full extent right now of how many accounts are operating on its platform, and whether many of these accounts are actually totally sleeper accounts that will become more active around the runup to the election. that goes through a time when a company has been hammered on stock prices spending more on security. the trump cam page, the digital director, has always been clear facebook is how they won. take a look. i understood early that facebook was how donald trump was going to win. twitter is how he talked to the people. facebook was going to be how he won. and facebook is how he won. i think so. i mean, i think donald trump won. but i think facebook was the method. it was the highway in which his car drove on. malcolm? well, you know, i don t want to bring this down to a discussion as to whether there. yochai, brief rebuttal. it s important to be to look. but if you look at the data from the election, and you look at specific allegations, like the account that drove the voter fraud story, that account that s in the mueller indictment starts communicating seven days after donald trump as candidate is pushing voter fraud, after he goes on hannity and o reilly. then to step back and say the russians shaped the elections as opposed to looking at the piece that you just showed about the importance of facebook and focusing on targeted advertising, on making sure that facebook targeted advertising is fully transparent and is available for the public to look at. if we focus on the russians, because we give them too much impact, first of all we accredit them. and second, we divert their attention from where facebook might be having mass effect, which is in the targeted behavioral marketing that s not transparent enough. and we don t have targeted behavior i don t recaal marketi rundown. it s still a question of vigilance versus overreaction. i hope to get you both back on together. natasha stays with me later in the show. up next, the democrats top russian investigator in the house, congressman adam schiff is here live. and the breakdown of everything that happened in the manafort trial. later, a legal breakdown on something you may be discussing a lot all week, yes, collusion is a crime. i will hear from a republican cabinet member under bush who now says it is clear donald trump is unfit for office. if that s not all, d.l. hughley is back, on the show about his book how not to get shot and other advice from white people. i m ari melber, and you re watching the beat on msnbc. and it s also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they re handing us more than mail they re handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you sfx: [cell phone dialing] no. no, no, no, no, no. cancel. cancel. please. aaagh! being in the know is a good thing. that s why discover will alert you if your social security number is found on any one of thousands of risky sites. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. save $200 on this dell laptop you need a higher standardigher standard of craftsman.hip, see for yourself at the lexus golden opportunity sales event. lease the 2018 es 350 for $329 a month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi.? a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it s the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. joining me live is congressman adam schiff, ranking member of the house intelligence committee, which has been quite busy today with face book s revelation on new attacks with the midterm elections, thanks for being with me tonight. good to be with you. people who are following this news as it breaks, or may have heard at the top of the show, two qualified experts disagree on the level of intensity, what does this new revelation mean about this attack on the midterms tonight? we need to view this in combination of what we learned a week ago from microsoft. two of the vectors the russians used in the last election they appear to be using again. in both of the mueller indictments, they re using social media surreptitiously to divide americans, to accentuate the fault lines in our society. they re hacking or attempting to hack political campaigns, we saw claire mccaskill is one of the targets of this, and that she was a target the same week that donald trump was evidently saying publicly that she needed to be defeated. that has an echo of july of the election year in which donald trump said publicly, hey russians, if you re listening, hack hillary clinton s e-mails. on that date they did try to hack the clinton campaign. congressman, respectfully, to push you on that, he would probably be on record against the reelection of most any incumbent democrat. that s certainly true. but it also looks like the russians may have been listening when he called for claire mccaskill s ouster. the timing, again, is very suspicious. the timing of that attempted hack of her campaign took place not months after he mentioned claire mccaskill. and it wasn t like there was a tremendous volume of campaigns that were the subject of attack. according to to microsoft, there were only three, and that was one of them. so the timing is certainly suspicious. but it looks like, because they ve identified similar actors to the russian hackers of the dnc, that the russians are using using both of these modalities, hacking of campaigns, surreptitious social media again to influence our elections. i also want to get your report card here on what is a giant and powerful corporation, facebook. because in ways that no one, i think, would have predicted, many years ago, they have become a key platform and utility, if you will, for how we do democracy and civic discussion in this country. you and others have been critical in the past. i want to read how mark zuckerberg is assessing this tonight. security isn t a problem you completely solve, but we re learning and quickly too. we re vesting heavily to keep people safe. what grade to you give them, and how true does that statement feel to you given how much more you know than most of us about the back room pressure to get this company to act responsibly. it s a work in progress. i m pleased they came forward with this announcement today, even if they had to caveat it and say we can t definitively say this was the russian government, but there are links to this troll farm in st. petersburg. that s what we need them to do. we need this to be timely. they referred to events that it appears, again, that these russian trolls are trying to organize in the united states and victimize real people and get real people involved in protests or count protests without knowing that they the impetus originates in russia. in the real world. what does it say to you that already the markings, or the overlap at least of russian operations, what does that say to you about this attack we re learning about tonight? just what we expect. the russians won t be so blatant than last time. they re not using the same ip addresses. they re going to hide their hand. and facebook clearly acknowledges that in their statement today. which means facebook will have to do better sleuthing. also, facebook acknowledges we need to make sure our intelligence community and cooperating and there are challenges, there s a free flow of information and i m concerned that we learn from microsoft about this attempted hack of three campaigns. they would have informed the fbi or the department of homeland security. i would have thought we would have been notified in congress about this. none of that happened. it didn t go up through the food chain. there wasn t the kind of whole of government response there should be, and that alarms me getting closer to the midterms. does that relate to leadership or lack thereof from the trump administration? unquestionably. there are, i think, people at the midbureaucracy level trying their best at the homeland of security, and at the top of the intelligence community. but there s no one at the top saying this is a priority of our administration, you need to work with each other, talk with oecheer. instead we got the guy at the top saying this is all a hoax and a witch hunt. which now tonight feels very real as undercutting something that is actually relevant to how we choose the body you re in, the congress. we ve gone several minutes, congressman schiff, without discussing rudy giuliani. i would like to rectify that by showing the comments he made that are both bizarre in how he did it, but relevant in the sense he s the lawyer for the president talking about a potential meeting that might add culpability. take a look. there was another meeting that had been leaked, but hasn t been public yet. there was an alleged meeting three days before. according to cohen, or according to the leak, he says there was a meeting with donald jr., with jared kushner, with paul manafort, with gates, and possibly two others, in which they, out of the presence of the president, discussed the meeting with the russians. we checked with their lawyers, the ones we could check with, which was four of the six. that meeting never, ever took place. it didn t happen. is this important in any way, and does your investigation look at whether there were such meetings that could suggest greater culpability about this potential collusion and conspiracy? well, we certainly tried to look into this. but all too often the majority on our committee was uninterested in getting the answers. so when witnesses stone walled us and refused to answer, the republicans were unwilling to subpoena them or compel them. we weren t allowed to follow the evidence where it was leading. but here you have giuliani saying, okay, there was a pre-meeting, and then he quickly corrects himself, an alleged pre-meeting. he s all over the map. but you can look at the statements he s been making, along with the president s confirmation of the new defense strategy, collusion is not a crime, and you can see that plainly they feel there is evidence that the president knew in advance that this is what they re worried about, that evidence is going to come forward, that the president knew in advance of the trump tower meeting, so they re shifting to a okay, even if there was collusion, even if the president was involved in collusion, it s not a crime. but, of course, the crime is conspiracy. so they re playing a word game. but nonetheless i think this kind of throw everything you can at the wall strategy of rudy giuliani doesn t really serve the president s interests very well. but it is telling. you know, the only other point i would make on this is that i think that they re clearly spooked by michael cohen. and they re making the leaks, not michael cohen, it seems, at least as far as the sum of it is concerned. and i have to imagine that they might have gotten this information if there had been a joint defense of some kind with michael cohen and these other counsel, that michael cohen has now opted out of because it seems to be they re very specific about this pre-meeting that they are you know, six members or eight members, and they ve talked to four of the six or six of the eight. they re using a great many particulars, and they clearly, i think, want to try to get this out there, and minimize it before michael cohen does. but i just don t see that it s going to be all that effective a defense strategy. well, that s the weird part. rudy ju rudy giuliani is insisting this dinner never took place, but everyone had sushi. congressman adam schiff, thanks for being here. thanks, ari. up ahead, i break down the central government on trump s idea that collusion is not a crime. that s wrong. it is. i ll explain in 30 seconds. edge of the box, willingham shoots. goooooooaaaaaaaallllllll! that.was.magic. willingham tucks it in and puts the championship to bed. sweet dreams, nighty night. as long as soccer players celebrate with a slide, you can count on geico saving folks money. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. pressure, what pressure? the players on the. the other top story tonight, after all the guilty pleas and charges today is an unusual point in modern american history. the campaign chair for a sitting president facing trial for crimes that could give him life in prison. mueller s prosecutors throwing the book at paul manafort today, and that s a bad association for any white house at trial like this. though prosecutors do say they do not expect russia to come up, meaning this trial is not expected to breakthrough answers on collusion. and that actually makes it quite odd that this is the week that trump and his allies are bringing up collusion, not to say it never happened, but to claim, as we ve been reporting tonight, that it s maybe okay even if it did. the argument is that collusion is not a crime. even if more evidence comes out about it, that s okay. they also argue that those rookies in that meeting did no better, which doesn t really apply to a veteran operative like paul manafort. colluding with foreigners to impact a u.s. election is a crime. let s go through it briefly. one, it s a crime to get anything of value from foreigners. two, it s a crime to defraud the united states. three, it s a crime to steal things, whether you steal objects like everything that was ripped off in watergate, or you steal e-mail, which is what is at issue in mueller s latest indictment. and finally, four, it s a crime to engage in a conspiracy of any of those other crimes. so collusion is not only a crime, collusion involves at least four crimes. those are the legal facts. now, in fairness, we will note here as we have many times on this program, no american has been charged with any of those crimes. in fact, bob mueller may never charge any americans. so that could be a good thing if you are rooting for this white house to escape any collusion culpability. but these are crimes. they do exist. and that s what makes it so odd to watch the trump team s evolving defense. collusion is not a crime. and so the fact of the matter is that we re a long way away yet from having anything to talk about here. collusion is not a crime. only in anti-trust law. you can collude all you want with a foreign government in an election. there s no such statue. but what crime? right. can anybody identify the crime? there s no evidence of colluding with the russians. it s not a crime. collusion is not a crime. there s not any evidence of any collusion here involving our client that drum beat, of course, escalated this week with rudy giuliani s interviews and a presidential tweet today. they never used it. is the main thing. they never used it. they rejected it. if there was collusion with the russians, they would have used it. i ve been sitting here looking at federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. i don t know if that s a crime, colluding about russians. i m bringing in john flannery and seth waxman. back with me as well. john, take it away. well, these guys sure shouldn t be teaching first year law criminal law. there s also not, in the code, you won t find colluding with russians either. but the definition that we re concerned about is when two or more persons commit agree to commit a crime, that is the crime of conspiracy. and if you are considering the fact of what collusion is, again it s two or more persons agreeing to commit a crime. so you can t subtract the crime, the object of the agreement and say, well, collusion s not a crime. and i suppose what they re saying is the technical word collusion, they can t find it in the code. but the elements of a crime is how we define it. in section 371 yeah defines it that way. it s a collusion conspiracy. correct, yes. and interestingly if you just take the june 9th meeting, you may have the pre-meeting that rudy doesn t know happened or not. you re talking about the sushi dinner. yeah, sure. and then on june 8th, the russians put the stolen e-mails and other information from the dnc and the dccc online. the next day they re at the tower, and we re to believe that they talk about adopting russian children rather than what the e-mail said that put together the meeting that said russia likes trump for president, and we want to help you. and they have a meeting. and afterwards we see that they do it. right. let me go to seth on the stolen property piece. if material was stolen, and just went around the world on the internet, and that s the end of it, then you could make the argument that that just happened, right? the problem is that in their defenses they seem to be closer to the idea, and i want to be very fair here, it is not alleged that they personally received the stolen material yet. but if they did, receiving stolen material, depending how you do it and what you do with it, can be criminal, and there are precedents, which is what we lawyers tend to look to, seth i want to reach back into the vault for this fantastically interesting corollary where when the gore campaign received material helpful to it but they were concerned it might be stolen on bush, they immediately called the fbi. take a look. somebody had stolen it, evidently, from the bush campaign. and mailed it to my close friend tom downey who was going to be bush the bush stand-in in debate prep. it wasn t mailed from moscow, but it was mailed from texas. we immediately turned it over to the fbi. and tom recused himself on the whole debate process. seth, how does that figure into the analysis? sure. i mean, that can be aiding and abetting, or an accessory after the fact, someone commits a crime, hacking into computers, and then shares that information with you, knowingly, and you make use of it, that can be an aiding and abetting crime, or an accessory after the fact that under the criminal statues and penalties you as an aider and abetters are as criminally responsible as the principal who conducted or committed the act at first. you offer up four crimes at the outset of your piece there, and i ll offer up another one, federal bribery. i ve been jumping up and down for months, as you know, writing op-eds and tweeting out that federal bribery statue, 15-year offense, criminalizes a this for that exchange. dirt on hillary in exchange for a promise to lift or reduce sanctions on russians, that is a classic quid pro quo. as you and i talked about in the past, because that bribery statue has that unique language that makes it applicable to people sworn into office and candidates, it puts it right in the whole house of this meeting. and that hammer of the 15-year penalty is far greater than conspiracies to defraud the united states or election campaign finance violations. and that s the kind of hammer federal bribery, and it can be a predicate for reco, on a services fraud, even 20-year offenses. that s the kind of crime federal prosecutors used to flip seniors or chief lieutenants of conspiracy. seth waxman, citing the term of art in federal precedent when when the bribery liability attaches to a nominee might be a more impressive legal point than anything you ve said, i don t know. i don t want to pit you guys against each other. natasha, on the wider ambet of this, walk us through your analysis of the wider politics of this, why are we hearing about this as the manafort trial begins? what kind of tell do you see it as? what s interesting about this talking point is that it actually emerged in the right wing media around the time that jim comey was fired as fbi director. so it seems to emerge anytime there s kind of a crisis going on. with regard to the president s position within the russia investigation. so now we see it emerging, just after this lev ration that michael cohen is willing to testify to prosecutors that, you know, trump not only knew about the trump tower meeting, but actually approved it. and, of course, days before the manafort hearing, which is not going to focus on collusion or russia. we saw today in the opening statements it really didn t have anything to do with that. it has to do with bank fraud, tax fraud, et cetera. still, there has to be a nervousness there. looming over the entire trial is the fact that paul manafort is at the center of questions about whether this is not a new talking point. it s been out there. it seems to kind of resurface every time the white house seems really scared about something. but it s definitely one that is a conscious effort to shift the goal posts here. john, did you ever see there will be blood the movie? no, i didn t. there s a great scene in there, where he keeps screaming, i drank your milk shake. that s what seth feels he s done to you legally in the segment. i m not taking sides. i want to give you a final world, if seth was, indeed, the more arcane legal analyst tonight, not taking sides. in the case of bribery, it takes only two to tan go, and therefore it s not treated the same as conspiracy. necessary to bribery is that there be at least two people. the thing that s interesting to me about a conspiracy is you don t actually have to achieve the object of the conspiracy. if they had the meeting and they had these conversations to advance the conspiracy, that is to do a quid pro quo with russia, they re stuck, even if they didn t do anything after that. now, i believe that they have, and your question is, will we ever find out that any person or persons is involved in this, i think you can take that to the bank. your point about how many involved goes to how hard it is to prove the case. anyone watching at home, wondering what law school is like, it would be like if this segment lasted three years, who wants that? my special thanks to our great experts tonight. up ahead, beyonce breaking a color barrier at vogue. d.l. hughley getting serious on shootings in the trump era. trump is now officially, quote, unfit for office, and she wants him to resign. the governor joins me for her first tv interview since making that statement. that is next. go your own way copd tries to say, go this way. i say, i ll go my own way, with anoro. go your own way once-daily anoro contains two medicines called bronchodilators that work together to significantly improve lung function all day and all night. anoro is not for asthma. it contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. the risk is unknown in copd. anoro won t replace rescue inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, glaucoma, prostate, bladder, or urinary problems. these may worsen with anoro. call your doctor if you have worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain while taking anoro. ask your doctor about anoro. go your own way get your first prescription free at anoro.com. wants that? first tv interview since making so-so pizza? not in this house. cause that s no so-so family. that s your family. which is why you didn t grab just any cheese. you picked up new kraft expertly paired mozzarella and parmesan for pizzahyeah! kraft. family greatly. the full value oft wyour new car? you d be better off throwing your money right into the harbor. i m gonna regret that. with liberty mutual new car replacement we ll replace the full value of your car. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty resign. she makes out her case in a new piece where she says trump is unfit to be president, and she s calling on fellow republicans to put aside the gop label and demonstrate the leadership our country needs by calling on this president to step down. christine todd whitman joins me. this is your first interview since this piece came out. i appreciate you coming to the beat with it. pleasure, good to be here. what moved you to state this now? the behavior s been building, the erratic behavior of the president, but particularly the way he handled the meeting at nato and the european union, and then the meeting with putin. i m sorry, when you diss our allies in the way he did, treat them the way he did, and then you cozy up to somebody like vladimir putin who is not our friend, he is not going to be our ally, and he, to my mind, really forgot his oath of office to protect and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies, foreign and domestic. and, frankly, putin is somebody with whom you ve got to deal very strongly, and you cannot assume that he is going to be your friend. do you think that conduct, which took you to this position, reflects bad judgment on the part of donald trump, or potentially something worse? certainly bad judgment, without a question. there s bad judgment there. whether it s anything worse or not, i think we ll find out over time. it s hard to know with this president because it changes so, every day within a day you ll get two or three times you ll get a different story and a different take on things coming out of the white house itself. so it s hard to know whether there s anything more behind it rather than just bad bad judgment and the fact that he likes strong men. we know that, he likes kim jong-un, thinks he s a great guy. here s somebody who offs half his family, and anybody who disagrees with him. putin is the same way. the kinds of things he s done, i just got back on saturday from the republic of georgia, not our state of georgia, but overseas. sure. and you see there, i was doing a preelection mission, and you see the heavy hand of russia always in the background. i mean, they re not playing in this election as much as they have in past ones. but the kinds of things that we re seeing today, the fake news, the influence that they re peddling, the fear mongering that they re doing, it s very reminiscent of what we see happening in this country, and it s very, very disturbing if you care about the united states of america. you re a former republican, elected official. i am. the party has long touted itself on national security, on service, on loyalty to the united states. what do you think when you see this republican president and his allies say even if they did collude with russia to impact the election, that s not a crime? i find it extraordinarily offensive. i don t care if it s a crime in the code book or not, it is best interests of the united states. you do not collude. for a president to get up there and say of course, again, the story has changed right along. first there was no collusion, and well, it doesn t matter if i did or not. it does matter. and words matter. that s the other thing about what happened over there in europe. it s the words that he uses, the language that he uses, that confuses people, that undermines our country as a world leader, that has now started to isolate us, and we re going to need allies. they re important. we ve worked with them before. we need them. and putin is never going to be our ally. neither is kim jong-un. your counterpart, chris christy, you both held the same post, republican governor of new jersey. he once claimed to be a moderate, he has been very loyally defending donald trump. what happened to chris christy? well, i mean, i think he i know chris well enough to think that he believes now what he is saying. and he is a supporter of the of the republican president. i think it goes that far. and i think at some point he was hoping for a little higher position than he s been able to get there. but even so, he is higher than nothing? higher than nothing, yes. i think he was hoping you didn t say it, i said it. you said it. he has no position. he has no position. i was hoping he was going to have a position. but also, it s because he s a loyal republican. i mean, there are people who will tell you that well, some of the e-mails that i ve gotten and tweets, postings since that op-ed have been anatomically challenging, shall we say. but the language used, which is really too bad, well it s 70/30 in favor, versus against. but and there have been a few of those who are against who are thoughtful, whose positions i understand, i get it, i respect them. the rest of them, it s just the kind of language you wouldn t let your fifth grader use. right. and when we worry so much about bullying in our schools, and the outcome of that, i think we ve got the world s number one bully at the head of the country. not good, not good for us long-term. governor whitman, speaking to some of the reaction you ve gotten, i know a lot of other people have been heartened by this at a time where what s happening in this country has raised questions about who will stand up. it s very interesting to see your piece. i appreciate you coming on the beat to talk about it. governor christine todd whitman. up ahead, d.l. hughley joins me. are signs of joint erosion. humira can help stop the clock. prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. help stop the clock on further irreversible joint damage. talk to your rheumatologist. right here. right now. humira. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered. in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. times more likely than white men to face a killing by police. all too often, the conversations can focus on the victim s behavior. what were they wearing or how did they act, what were they doing in that neighborhood anyway. my next guest has written a book on this topic. you may know him for his comedy for the points that he makes on this issue. d.l. hughley. the book is how not to get shot. and other advice from white people. if you are the author of the book, i don t think you are white people. no. but they are so adept to telling us what to do, how to comply. i think america just doesn t have a problem with americans, african americans, people of color being slain by the hands of the police. you will hear white group saying most policemen are good apples. i wonder what you are doing in this book as a successful black man where you are using the book to explain you don t have to personally be murdered by an officer to have it affect your rights, your personal rights the way you feel walking around with your family. the book is simply this. it is not an indictment of society, but it is an inspection of can. there is always a presumption of innocence on one or a presumption of guilt. if we are who we say we are, we should be this is what it is like. here is tim scott who i know you, and i know him a little bit. and i don t think you agree on a lot. here he is speaking on this very issue. in the course of one year, i have been stopped seven times by a law enforcement officer. not four, not five, not six. but seven times in one year as an elected official. you can t find a black person in this country that can t tell you about a negative experience they have with police. a lot of us don t know who we are. they know who we are from the media. i don t fault the police because they are enacting a mission statement. and that mission has been in communities of color, not to protect and serve, but keep us where we belong. every time there is an interaction with the police, the propensity to spiral out of control or some unintended consequence. the confluence of profiling and then the escalation. we are only seeing the worst, worst cases. this is a daily grinding reality. thank you for coming on the beat. the book, how not to get shot and other advice. from yes, white people. thank you. appreciate it. and it s also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they re handing us more than mail they re handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you can world-renowned artist red hong yi use the chase mobile app® to pay practically anyone, at any bank? yes. but this isn t for just anyone. chase. make more of what s yours. but behr premium stain y can weather any weather. overall #1 rated, weathers it all. find our most advanced formula exclusively at the home depot. but it s tough to gete enough of their nutrients. new one a day with nature s medley is the only complete multivitamin with antioxidants from one total serving of fruits and veggies try new one a day with nature s medley. there s also a lot to know. part a that s your hospital coverage, part b is all the doctor stuff. the most important thing to know? medicare doesn t pay for everything. and guess what that means. yep.you re on the hook for the rest. that s why it s important to consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. a plan like this helps pay for some of what medicare doesn t. so you could end up paying less out of your own pocket. that s nice. and these are the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp. selected for meeting their high standards of quality and service. it feels good to have someone looking out for you. want to find out more? call unitedhealthcare insurance company now to request this free decision guide, with aarp medicare supplement plan options to fit your needs. and learn how this type of plan works together with a part d prescription drug plan. here s something else good to know. with a medicare supplement plan, you have freedom. freedom to go with any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. you re not restricted to a network. ever. and if you need to visit a specialist, you ll have a choice there, too. your coverage goes with you, too, anywhere you travel in the country. we have grandkids out of state. they love our long visits. not sure about their parents, though. call unitedhealthcare now to learn more and ask for your free decision guide. want to apply? go ahead, apply. anytime s a good time. remember, the #1 important thing, medicare doesn t pay for everything. a med supp plan could help pay some of what s left. and this is the only plan of its kind endorsed by aarp. that s the icing on the cake. i love cake. finding the right aarp medicare supplement plan for you could be just a quick call away. so.call. for you could be just a quick call away. experience the versatility of utility at the lexus golden opportunity sales event. lease the 2018 rx 350 and rx 350 awd for these terms. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. one more thing to tell you. beyoncé is breaking a color barrier at iconic vogue. taking over the september ishyou sh issue. first time they have r had interesting way to take over the magazine. that does it for me. hardball starts now. crime and punishment. let s play hardball. today paul manafort, the president s campaign. facing years in a u.s. prison. whatever you choose to call it, it is past. for a year and a half our country has been contorted into a reality tv show.