secretary of defense here tonight. we know last week he made a surprise announcement at his first thank you rally saying yes he s indeed choosing general james mattis for defense secretary. but the fact that two will be up on stage together, certainly notable, especially given that is the military friendly town. so donald trump hoping to cash in on the energy here almost to validate his pick for secretary of defense. and we know trump has many thank you tours and rallies ahead. just two this week alone and thursday he ll be in iowa and friday in michigan. you heard him taking credit for what he said is a $50 billion investment by softbank. what are you learning about this? reporter: i have to say not a lot of detail coming from the trump transition team or the company tonight. but certainly a little showmanship on the part of the president elect today really trotting out on the ceo of the company and trump towers there before cameras gathered. contours of the deal are $50 billion investment in the u.s. by this tech firm, softbank, saying that could create about 50,000 jobs, new jobs here in the u.s. but the timing of the detail, how it was brokered, when it was formally brokered still very unclear tonight. it is notable that in october this company announced plans with the backing of saudi arabia for a hundred billion in new investments across the world in tech companies so is still very unclear if that is part of this or a separate deal. thank you very much sunland. the money already raised so far and the fast vast majority is from saudi arabia. outfront now retired u.s. army major general. and some other great people. phillip, let me start with you. it is a very significant event tonight. this is obviously going to be big for donald trump. but to have general mattis by his side, a very significant. so far he s announced several cabinet picks. none has he given this star power of appearing side by side with him. michael flynn is going to be his proposal for national security advisor. i was with him on the campaign trail with some regularity. but first time we ve seen one of the the cabinet picks do. this mattis is generally seen as one of the more obvious acceptable candidates for the party as well. so this is not someone that needs to be bolstered. donald trump is incredible right guy who s in charge of the defense department. i find this very reassuring. for those critical of trump for the right or left concerned about how he would be as commander in chief this we should all be behind this waiver. we should all be encouraging the senate to give this waiver. base want competent, serious people in this administration. and donald trump has chosen an exceptionally competent and serious person. jim mattis, is one of the most revered generals of his generation. a big thought leader. an amazing following in the pentagon and with the military. and he has some views that differ with trump. so the fact that donald trump is willing to put this leader out, side by side with him. i don t think he s building him up. i think he s making a statement that these are the sorts of people that are going to populate my national security team. different than him on water boarding. general mattis doesn t support it. different on russia. multiple, multiple places. tonight donald trump is going to walk out. saying he s not going to vote for this waiver. this issue is a very important point in american politician zo and so o you are going to have obviously him trumpeting general mattis. general mat sis going to speak and it will be interesting to see how how long he speaks for. and then trump is no doubt going to talk about this $50 billion investment. it is not an investment yet was a they don t even necessarily have the money raised so it is very unclear. what we understand is that $50 billion softbank says they are going to invest in the united states. trump tweeted masa, softbank in japan is willing to invest. masa said he would never do this if we had not won the election. as the stunning number. what we re going to see. donald trump as we all know by now is unconventional. this is going to be an unconventional presidency with an unconventional president. he s the only one in of the 45 presidents 44 people. grover cleveland twice. that has a business background. all the others were politicians to some degree. or generals. this is the first person to go directly from the private sector without any stops in politics before that. so you are going to see a lot of this kind of thing as we go through here. and his businessman s mind working. now sure is he going to use it to political advantage? yes. but it is going to help him without doubt. so here is my question about this. when i saw the $50 billion. i said i don t get it. and i still don t get it. because there is a a lot of questions here. not all of it s been raised. the part that has been raised, comes from saudi arabia. which historically trump wouldn t want a let me stop you. you are trying to take several months later said well they weren t as shovel ready as we thought. at least he said something. let s see if donald trump said well that 50 billion is only 3 billion and we weren t able to invest it there. what if they are 2u8 able to get it done. i don t think the media will no i m sure of that. there are a couple of things that concern me. the first i worked under commerce secretary ron brown and he announced deals likes this all the time. first of all they were american companies, to announce these deals where they would bring american jobs. it is fine that and it is good for him from a marketing perspective is this is really going greet 50,000 jobs. we don t know that yeet. whether it is true are but the reason the commerce ask or the president announced these deals is because they actually had something do with it. did trump have anything to do with this deal? and is he going make any money off this deal? is he invested at all through a business partnership or anything in this company? we have no clue. that is what concerns me. we can all agree, this isn t a bad thing. it is probably at the min questidebate how much but is cannot be the seoul focus of the economic strategy. he s going to have to deal with le loopholes and the others. without that announce it is deals is not sufficient. but announcing the deals isn t a bad thing. not a bad thing per se but as the it is a bad thing if it is not more than shoemenship. i. the leader here of this company joust everyone understands he says i m go doing raise a hundred billion, biggest fund every. and in the process of raidsing it. and 40 billion comes from saudi arabia. that actually is highly relevant in this country. when you look at the merger and whether it is going to be approved. if you are a chinese company bag in you generally don t get this approved. saudi arabia, i think a lot of people would be critical of. this is so nebulous that donald trump is getting up and saying more jobs and we ll see what happens. i think it is worth noting that on softbank s part there is showmanship as well. but this is a company that owns a stake in sprint that was trying to figure out how to do this merger earlier this year. and seems very likely, wall street journal reporting seems likely they are going to try this again under the trump administration. there are politics all over the place here. we ll see how it shakes out in terms of money in terms of jobs but this is not a benif sent gentlemen coming to the united states saying here i give you all these jobs for no reason. up next, donald trump live with general mat i both going to speak and then trump and his battle today with boeing. he came out and slammed frankly america s biggest exporter over air force one. and trump s choice for national security advisor under fire for spreading wild conspiracy theories. should trump dump michael flynn? and the breaking news. live pictures of the protesters gathering at texas a&m campus this hour. you see them. a white supremacist is speaking there tonight and we ll go there live. made for real, real life. brewed generation after generation. this beer is fiercely loyal. only with moravian barley. coors banquet. that s how it s done. donald trump demanding the defense department cancel a contract with boieing for the nw presidential planes. it is out of control. it is going to be over $4 billion for the air force one program. and i think it is ridiculous. i think boeing is doing a bit of a number. we want fwoeng make a lot of money but not that much money. boeing releasing a statement which reads in part. we re not sure where he s getting that number from. right now boeing only has a contract for design and development of the new air force one. boeing is at the mercy of donald trump in a lot of ways here. that is part of the reality. however they are the biggest exporter from the united states. the second biggest defense contractor in this fight. who wins? well i think they are to some respect to the mercy of the donald trump. but there is a whole procuring process that exists in the pentagon. you can t just sign a way a massive contract. and also major repercussions for the u.s. economy if another defense contractor replaced a lot of the foreign business or u.s. business boeing would get. obviously this is probably not a good idea. i think tonight trump being up there with mattis, very good. fantastic image. trump and pence meeting with the congressional leaders, pooirn and mitch mcconnelling talk about this things day want to get past, good images. tweets like this not a great image. i would stronger recommend the ladder not the former. let s go through the time line here because i think this is very interesting. look, the chicago tribune today wrote up some comments that the boeing ceo said about donald trump. the ceo said these on friday but a appeared this morning for the first time in print. the chicago tribune. about the ceo of boeing, he s suggesting the trump teen and congress back off the 2016 anti-trade rhetoric and perceived threats to punish other countries with higher tariffs tariffs fes. that was 7:30 a.m. at 8:52 trump tweets boeing is building a brand new 747 air force one for future presidents. cancel order. we saw last week he had this random out of blue tweet about flag burning. turned out he had been watching fox news and kids burning flags on fox news. he as a history of responding to things he s engaged with in the media through twitter. the problem is this causes boeing s stock price to plummet $2 before markets opened it. recovered by the end of the day and actually closed a little higher. but now cnbc is reporting there are people who are trying to figure out a algorithm to buy or sell stock based on donald trump tweets. these are if he s doing it because something he didn t like the chicago tribune, that s iffy. not the first time he s taken on an american company. ford. verizon. not the first time he s done this. the issue we have to decide is whou everybody responds. he s clearly going to continue to do this. it is not reasonable for us to believe that suddenly on january 20th, this is going stop. we have to decide how we look at this. and people have to decide what to take on board and how to deal but if i take a step back and i said how would someone at that rally see this? they might say if the costs are out of control with $4 billion. cancel that order. this is exactly the kind of cost control i want in washington. the folks in that crowd will respond exactly that way. and they will also respond and say i ve been on air force one. it is a wonderful aircraft. 20 people can take a shower at once. twenty i m being facetious. my point is it can can withstand electromagnetic pulses. this is a phenomenal piece of . but there are cost. 4 billion i think the president elect is probably correct. let s put some green eye shades on and look into that. but that crowd is going to respond very favorable. and he s also not the first president elect that when he opens his mouth there are going to be markets that move accordingly. so it is going to happen. if problem that millions of americans have with washington d.c. and the government is that this kind of situation where we re overpaying air force i mean is terribly symbolic. but i mean we could i used to work on the house budget committee. and we could watts through thousands of pages of things where there are cost overruns galore. this is part of the problem. so they are looking at this and saying yes. this is exactly what i want the president they also say it is dated. i needs to be updated. the greatest country in the world with a plane that reflects that. absolutely true. but there was a story in the post yesterday how the defense department sought out places they could cut money and then buried the report and said they didn t want to make the cuts. donald trump could have tweeted about that this morning. the question is why is donald trump tweeting about boeing? we don t know. it effected boeing. it effects boeing stockeds and yes spin will be good as we all know donald trump fights back. and i think one of the the problems with the bush 4 administration. so you are saying he did do it well it wouldn t surprise me in the least. one of the problems was all these opponents were out there with bush live and all this thing and the white house didn t fight back because apparently the president felt it was beneath him to get in all of this stuff etc. donald trump isn t going to do that. he s not going to sit there and let somebody attack his trade policies and just be quiet. and jeffrey is right. history supporters will eat this up. but this is the problem that donald trump has not yet understood. he s not just the president now of the people who supported him who got him i elected. he s the president who even now the 2.5 million people that hillary clinton is winning by the popular vote. he has to prove he wants to be the president for everybody. they eat this up at this rally but from the standpoint of those people who were terrified of electing him. this underscores where the terror exists, because he s lashing out. he s taking issue with the american people. his supports are. to everybody should have been gotten behind that because that was atrocious. all with me next. waiting for donald trump on stage for the first time with s pick for defense secretary. that is going start any moment in now. the motorcade arriving in fayetteville and calls for trump to dump his choice for national security advisor. he and his son who his is chief of staff and . and students at a texas university this hour banning together protesting a neo-nazi who was speaking tonight on the campus just around the corner where they were. we ll be there life. we ll be back. ! as close as two friends trying to annihilate each other can be. ahh, interception! that s because with fingerhut.com we can shop over 700,000 items from brand names like samsung, keurig and sony. go to fingerhut.com to get low monthly payments and the credit you deserve. and get great stuff like this awesome flat screen tv. 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is he the right man for the job? the concern really is one of judgment and contextually how are you going to perform. i know mike flynn were well. he s a tremendous asset. the president has a personal relationship with his national security advisor. that guy can do what he wants him to do. and we can t be captured by what previous national security advisors have done. if you look at others, that is about necessarily the model this president would have in store for mike flynn. he might want him to be a bomb thrower. he may say mike, i don t want you to bring all this together. i m going to get jim mattis do that. for example. what i want you to do is poke holes in all of these good ideas. because you can speak to menessly, you are a provocative guy and i want you to kick this stuff around before it gets to me. if he had that kind of strategy i would feel a tiny bit better. i don t think he puts that kind of thought into the people he has around him. and that is why this is so freakin scary. because this is the guy who will have donald trump ears ear. donald trump has proven he acts out a lot of times based on who the last person he had in his ear was. and the fact that this guy, michael flynn and himself tweeted and retweeted flagrant outright conspiracy theories and lies about hillary clinton, about the obamas. is this someone who can t tell truth from a lie? or is he ideology that whacko that he actually believe this is stuff. either way it is very terrifying. i agree with a lot of what you are saying but when you say who s this guy going to be around him? who s going to be advising him. like mike pompeo. leader in congress on national security issues leading the cia. jim mattis. leading the pentagon. those guys are the last one s whispering in donald trump s ear. clearly that is how he acts. we re going take a brief break. live picture as we re awaiting donald trump just a couple of moments away from this big rally where he ll be speaking to voters across the country. and more breaking news. we re going to texas. protesters gathering on the campus of the texas a&m. there is a white supremacist speaking there tonight and protesters gathers en masse. find new roads at your local chevy dealer. standing by for donald trump. president elect speaking at a rally. his pick for secretary of defense jamie mattis going to be with him. they are there now. so any moment biel we ll be going to fayetteville where they will be speaking. trump will introduce general mattis and then donald trump. we ll bring it all to you live. at this hour in the meantime, outrage over a white supremacist speaking on campus in texas, half a country away. live pictures of protesters gathering. rich spencer, he s been cheering trump s victory saying it s emboldened him and empowered him and he s done so using anti-semitic language. hail trump, hail our people. hail victory. chau [ cheers and applause ] sa sara ganim outfront right now. obviously a lot of protesters out to protest in this evening. reporter: that s right. these are aggie students. texas a&m students who are upset that richard spencer is here. they call his rhetoric hate speech and you can see there are several hundred of them out here protesting and the president of the universities greaagrees wit hem. but felt like he couldn t stomp on the first amendment and kick him out. he was invited here by a private citizen. it is a private event. even still these people are very upset. they are angry and i have to tell you erin, after sitting down with richard spencer myself today it is easy to understand why. would you describe yourself as a white supremacist. i m not a white supremacist, no. but there is really no mistaking his racist message. hail trump, hail our people. hail victory. reporter: no matter how much he tries to talk around it. the fact is only white people can support what we call western civilization. reporter: richard suspensor is the self professed leader of what we call the alt-right movement. he comes across as polished and steams to be trying to dial back the neo nazi imagery he s been recognized for. so how would you go through a process of removing people who are not white is this. they have come here and therefore they could go home. you can go home again. there are ways of whether it is a direct payment. what would you say though if mexican americans or african americans said hey we re going pay all the white people to leave and go back to europe? interesting prospect. item very flexible. obviously that is not like toy to happen. and spencer is even banned from traveling to most european countries because of his views. reporter: you studied history, right? a lot of of people the reason they don t like you is because they have studied history too and they see a lot of the things that you say as being very similar to hitler and other leaders who were responsible for mass genocide. i find this all very amusing. and this is the social justice so i hav so voyeur who will say literally hitler. no i think hitler in a way now is history. he did many things that are absolutely terrible that i would never support. reporter: we re told there are only a couple dozen people inside the event space where he s going begin speaking in a few minutes and some of those are probably protester, students inside the event space. so it is hard to see how many people he actually drew in. but it is never more apparent than when you were out here koufring a story like this how divided feelings are right now. is a remarks thank you very much. my gapanel is back. jeff what is your reaction when you hear some of of nose comments from that young man and hear him say donald trump has made him feel emboldened to come out and say this things. the head of the . that didn t make hillary clinton a communist or the heir to joseph stalin. this guy is a racist. tloz other way to say this. and to be perfectly candid i think the media is giving him way more attention than he deserves. the rally that was shown at the begin, i think there was something at the washington post somebody said like there were like 235 people in the room. this guy is so far on the fringe of american politics. he has nothing do with donald trump i don t care how much he talks about it. and donald trump doesn t want anything do with him. or should. i think the challenge here is not that there is a racist speaking to college campus and college students are upset. when i was in college that happened all the time. the collage is it is happening in the condition text of what is going on in 2016. skmi recognize you are a big donald trump supporter but i think a lot of people who oppose donald trump particularly people of color who do not see what he s done before and after the election as reassuring that he s distancing himself from people like spencer. the reason why, whenever he s pressed on it he seems to grudgingly. and spencer is not alone. this is not one guy. but trump s response has not been normally we might expect a president or president elect say something like what s happening there is abhorrent and repulsive and i wish this guy would shut his mouth but donald trump s tendency is to it has to be dragged out of him. that is the point. he read it off the teleprompter and we all need paying way too much attention to these kind of things. that is the conundrum here though. jeffrey. do you pay attention to them and therefore shine the spotlight of awfulness or on it? do you ignore them with the potential that it festers and y grows? which is it? it is not going to fester and grow. we re paying attention but people of color who take a different there are no people of color in this country phillip. there are only americans and therein lies the problem. are you truly saying we need to divide people by race in this country. i think the people of the target have a very different perpetrative. what this guy is about expect things from the president. what this is about is identity politics which i have said repeatedly a is racist. and you have hillary clinton and others separating people by race and there is jeffrey, the reality is the following. you as a white american have had a very different experience in this country than me as a latina. i am sure people do not come up to you to say you should be deported. your children should be deported because they re anchor babies. they did to my other ancestors. this president has an obligation. the fact of the matter is he campaigned with a wink and a nudge to them because he never ever said and has yet to say your party [ inaudible ]. apologize for slavery yet. can we get on with this? he s yet to say in the international speech which is what he should do which is what a real leader would do or at least if a op ed to say definitively the white supremacists and everybody else who felt i was speaking to in the campaign is absolutely wrong. he should say it proactively and strongly ever moment he has the opportunity to do that. until he does that you will have latino, african american, muslims, everybody who felt degraded by his campaign. that don t want to view themselves as americans but want to divide themselves by color or race and it is wrong. i feel like i am as american as you jeffrey. exactly. that is the point. but i am not treated as ones by the people who feel emboldened by your president elect. but there are always people like this in american life. and there should be lead who are speak against it. and donald trump has not done us. he denounced david duke in 2000. during this campaign he did it begrurjingly after tour fiems. [indiscernible]. half the population. he was asked to say no to david duke. he refused until the fourth time he was asked to. he did it decades ago. although when is the last time hillary clinton denounced the ku klux klan in the last four hours? my point is we re playing a game here. this is not a game. it is not a dumb game. donald trump eats goal and his goal as it should be would be to be the president of the united states of america. half of the country didn t vote for him. a lot of people would point out he lost the popular vote as well. people of color a v a different perspective on the president elect than you and i do. yes they are americans as well. do you think ben carson has a different opinion because he s black? that is true. how about the majority of people of color. the president elect if he wants to stul lead a unified united states where everybody feels confident in the decisions he s making he needs to do better than what he s doing now. no question. and what he s done is ben carson is now going to be the secretary of housing and urban development. that is his nomination. he s putting ben carson in there. the things he s doing. the actions he s take i think you will see other names emerging. different cabinet subcabinet. that will be it will be diverse. look i m listening to this debate and i sort of agree with both sides. i agree with you that more needs to be done by the leaders of our country, including donald trump to speak out against this. to make a point that the leadership of this country does not stand or traffic in that stuff. i m not we should but donald trump is not a racist. we shouldn t create these characters of im. he s not a racist. in pursuit of the presidency he s probably trafficked in some of this stuff. but he s not a racist. and in that sense i think we all should right now take a deep breath and not give so much coverage to these nut cases are that sucking up so much nut kus cases. the president elect who gives any oxygen to racists is not something that people who are the target of the race s actions are going to be comfortable. al sharpton who s been in the obama white house according to your paper 72 times. hello. is that not trafficking to the racists. al sharpton is he s anti-semiite. we were talk about the president elect donald trump. that s ule. we were talk about the richard spencer. donald trump has just arrived here at this rally. he s going to be going on stage at the moment. donald trump is going to come out. going to speak and then he s going to introduce general jim mat i his nominee for secretary of defense. general mattis will speak for a few minutes we re not sure how long and actually that could be one of the the most interesting things of the night is lounge he speaks for. and then donald trump is going to speak to voters. thousands of them are there. people who vote forward donald trump to give him that resounding victory in north carolina. and general marks this is a crucial evening for donald trump because he s doing this thank you tour. all americans are going to be listening to him. this is the second one of these but the first one where he s appeared with someone else. and he s appearing with someone else who s seen as respected in a bipartisan manner. seen as a real leader among generals in the country. someone whose not controversial. which is significant. i think with president elect donald trump and jim mattis together on the stage they both will be able to bolster themselves in a very positive way by being in the presence of the other. mr. trump gets as much out of this as jim mattis does. this is not singularly a spotlight on jim mattis. this is an opportunity to put the president elect next to a highly regarded warrior that has done some immense heavy lifting for us in the course of an entire lifetime but most recently during these wars in iraq and afghanistan. and as we wait sunland is there. what is the mood like there? thousands of people there who are waiting to hang on he and general mattis s every word. that s right erin. well people are certainly anxious given this rally is starting over an hour late. but we do know the president elect has just arrived and he ll appear on stage with general mat n is in a few minutes. so the mood here is all the trap, of a campaign rally we would have seen during the campaign. you also have some homemade signs notable that we just saw one sign in the crowd that said expose the pizza gate scandal, that being a big story in washington d.c. this week about a washington pizzeria being the subject of many conspiracy theory, fake news stories. interesting that is trickling its way here into the trump rally. but people certainly anxious to hear him speak. we know this could turn into a pep rally of sorts for his nominee of secretary of defense jamie mattis appearing together on stage in a few minutes. and other thing i think you are going to have here is safe to assume. is we know trump will be taking a victory lap for saying he s got another 50,000 jobs on his tab. counting them up. carrier first and now this another 50,000. and let s wait to see if they actually arrive or not. and i m trying not to be cynical or skeptical nor expressing disbelief. i m merely saying realistically, where is this 50 billion coming from sno when is it goin to be invested and which jobs will be created. and donald trump has the political momentum. he understands the showmanship. you announce carrier and then the next thing. it is steady drum beat now. he s very good at getting attention on the things he would like to have attention on. and quite frankly the carrier issue in this prospect of having 50,000 more jobs that is something he deserves to get some attention on. these are the sorts of things a lot of voters were looking are when they vote forward donald trump. and the fact he s doing this a month after he won the election i think is sort of the impressive thing it is warranted for him to come out and talk about even though the jobs don t yet exist. and can e he take the spotlight away from general flynn? absolutely. thinks he can sail through controversy on general flynn s peddling fake news and then just move? he s a mars master of this. and tonight he deserves credit for what s doing. because by featuring general mattis it takes the spotlight off his other problems. and generally mattis is worthy of that kind of praise. bipartisan support. supports across the military. the military veterans community. has taken different positions from donald trump. and he s an impressive individualem and the fact he s giving him this kind of air time is something. and when you see general mattis come out and one would presume he s going to be very straight in terms of what he talked about. and then tonight donald trump take two. another opportunity to reach out for the people who did not vote for him. i do actually and i agree about what was said here about general mattis s background and service to the country. he s a kind of person i hope donald trump actually listens to, more than the others donald trump has around him. especially michael flynn. moving forward i think the question is what is he going to do with these folks? is he going to take their advice? and more importantly tonight we ve seen situations where you think the focus is going to be on, for example, tonight general mattis but that the focus becomes donald trump and the focus becomes something completely different than what it was supposed to be. so we ll see. if he doesn t cake the counsel and the input from these guys mar yarks they will be gone. they will walk. good. no no. these are some incredibly gifted focus. and zblern. your point. this is unusual in the sense. secretary of defense state and attorneys general are generally not taken out to political rallies of this nature. by doing it donald trump being introduced as you see waving to the crowd getting ready to walk out. as i said we anticipate he ll
like global warming. we can t do that if people feel embarrassed to be associated with the united states. you combine that with the fact that the state department has essentially been neutered, e s eviscerated by this administration thus far and watching in real time as america and america s image withdraws from the world. do you know any republican senator or member of the house who s a republican, any party member of any party who believes the president believes he was wiretapped, who even believes he believes it? i don t think anybody knows exactly what donald trump believes and what he doesn t believe. i think what s scary to many republicans is that they ve had the opportunity to walk this back and they re putting not only the presidency and the reputation of the presidency, but the reputation of the entire country at risk, the longer that this floats out there. the reality is is congress can ask the department of justice as to whether there s a wiretap, bul but if there s an active investigation, the department of justice may not tell us, so its difficult to get to the bottom of this what do you mean, an active investigation wait a minute. well senator mccain, i think, is from the sane era of politics. here s how some other top republicans reacted including senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and chair of the senate and house intelligence committees. i think we have an existing committee, the intelligence committee, looking at all aspects of what may have been done last year related to the russians or the campaigns and we ll leave it there. have you seen any evidence of that? mr. leader no, i haven t. we don t have anything today that would send us in that direction, but that s not to say that we might not find something. i have not seen that evide e evidence. as you know, i think a lot of that was maybe a little bit the multiple tweets were perhaps a little bit strung together. as you all know, the president is a neophyte to politics. he s been doing this a little over a year. and i think a lot of the things that he says, you guys sometimes take literally. sometimes he doesn t have 27 lawyers and staff looking at when what he does. what do you make of that? that s a cover? that s explaining a guy s behavior? it s like he s he s treating the president as if he s in a crib and wants his pacy. he talks about him like he doesn t know what a tweet is. he knows how to tweet better than all of us. he gets up at 6:00 and does it. he accused the previous president of wiretapping him. there s nothing complicated about this. why doesn t mr. nunes, chairman of the committee, call up the fbi director, said was anybody asked for a fisa warrant on this? did anybody ask permission to wire this guy or not? end it. this is going to float out there for months and years. yeah, listen. i wouldn t tweet my 8-year-old like that. the fact is we would hope that an adult would occupy the oval office and we couldn t expectwo team of 27 lawyers around him to decide whether he should falsely accuse the previous president of the united states of tapping his phones. that s a ridiculous standard. and in the end, yeah, it is pretty simple to get to the answer to this question. there is no evidence that barack obama tapped donald trump s phones because it didn t happen. and republicans right now could ask the questions necessary to get at least that answer. maybe we won t know if the fbi was or is investigating trump, but we can get the answer to that question, republicans can. okay. thank you very much, senator chris murphy of connecticut. well, there was troubling reporting in the the new york times today about president trump s mood swings last weekend. according to the times, he was in high spirits after he fired off the posts, those tweets but midafternoon after returning from golf, he appeared to realize he had gone too far with his tweets although he still believed mr. obama had wiretapped him according to two people in trump s orbit. in some conversations that afternoon, the president sounded uncertain of the procedure for obtaining a warrant for secret wiretaps on an american citizen so he didn t know how you would do it but said obama did it. anyway, meanwhile, we re getting reaction on former president obama s reaction to the news. according to nbc, our network, a source close to him, told nbc news, mr. obama rolled his eyes. and the wall street journal report, he was livid over the accusation that he bugged the republican campaign offices believing mr. trump was questioning both the integrity of the office of the president and mr. obama, himself. of course, he was. i m joined by the wall street journal s carol pllee who wrot that article. and the washington post s phil rutger who s been all over this thing. carol, did you notice the way that this young, relatively young member of congress, nunes from california, i don t know much about the guy, treating the president like he s a little baby. you know, he gets a little upset once in a while, says things he really shouldn t and doesn t have the help of advisers like lawyers around him so he does things that really don t make much sense, but we shouldn t blame him because he s a neophyte. he s a neophyte. yeah. there s definitely that s a defense. that s what a criticism looks like. there s that s the republicans the republicans why are so they they re greading him on a curve. they re helping him hide. by the way, boehner, when trump was running around saying obama was an illegal ill grant frmmig kenya, people asked him, tell your fellow members it s not true, he said i don t tell them how to think. this is the way they behave in the republican party today. they re so intimidated by this guy, trump, that they just cover for him. your thoughts. well, i think, yeah, the republicans don t want to get crossways with the president. why? they also why are they afraid of him? because they have flithings y would like to actually get done in congress and don t want to pick a fight with the president. and they also are taking they re aligning with the white house in terms of the cleanup of this where you have the white house saying, well, we don t look at it, we ll look into it pane, you know, congress, take a look thal look into it. what happened, more importantly, what the democrats are doing, this winds up being a gift to them because you have people like schiff saying we re going to oblige him on his request, look into this. the white house is going to wind up getting all the things they didn t really want like hearings on this. and a further investigation into this. congress loves hearings. let s face it. they go on and on and on, get on tv, on and on and on. when do they get to a conclusion? a big one on march 20th. when you talk to white house officials as we were doing this week, this is the last thing they want to talk about. want to be talking about health care, tax reform, about angela merkel s visit next week, about all these other issues and stuck having how long have you been around? let me ask you a question about having to get flak for the president. i thought about what kind of job that would be, i think it would be a very difficult job. people like josh earnest know how to do the job well. it s doable. i ve never seen a press secretary have to deal with a president that s saying stuff he or she doesn t believe. i mean, really. spicer has ever since the crowd measurements back in january 20 he had to lie for the president which is a terrible word to do, but he had to do it. had to say, oh, yeah, 3 million to 4 million out there and all this. this time around he doesn t want to do that. he s saying, i m telling you what the president says. then somebody asked yesterday, do you believe him? he said, that s a cute question. it s not a cute question. you ask the president s spokesperson if he or she believes what the president is saying. it s a reasonable question. he has really distanced himself from that, it s interesting to watch. he said, you know, if you ask him, what you zdo you think? he says it doesn t matter what you think. it does matter. we he says it s above my pay grade. that s a tired old line. you re the spokesman for the whou white house. it s not above your pay grade. it s your job. he got into the job. decided to bt he doesn t want to have his career ruined, i can tell. he s pulling away from trump. he is not lying for him. this is a pattern in donald trump s life, he inserts things that are got necessarily true, tries to find evidence for it. did you see kellyanne s pivot the other day? he knows so many things we don t know. she didn t say she s covering for herself in this case. thank you, carol lee. thank you. it s a tough time to be a straight reporter. this is not a straight world. phil rutger, thank you. coming up, the rolling disclosure on trump s potential russian connection continues. today we learn trump s former campaign manager corey lewandowski gave carter page leave to go to russia last summer. it just keeps growing and growing. plus on this international women s day, the trump administration s considering separating women, or mothers from their children if they try to enter the country illegally. that s going to be wonderful. i mean sar castically. it s going to be table. the hardball roundtable here tonight to talk about the challenge of separating fact from fiction today and trying to get to the truth during the trump era. finally let me finish with the trump watch. you won t like this one, either. you re watching hardball where the action is. oh.not the smooch method! come on. what s going on here? you know how ge technology allows us to fix problems before they. they slow production, yeah. well, no more catchy business acronyms. wait, we don t need to smooch? i m sure we can smooch a solution! we just need to hover over the candice, problem until. just let it go. hey, sorry i m late for team building. smoooooooch! that felt right. what s wrong with you!? he s so trusting. well, when he was a candidate, donald trump said he loved wikileaks. the website that collaborated with russian intelligence to help defeat hillary clinton. well in fact, he repeatedly professed his love for wikileaks. by the way, did you see another one, another one came in today, this wikileaks is like a treasure-trove. this wikileaks is unbelievable. what we ve learned about her and her people. we love wikileaks. boy, they are really wikileaks. they have revealed a lot. boy, that wikileaks has done a job on her. hasn t it? i tell you, this wikileaks stuff is unbelievable. it tells you the inner heart. you got to read it. now, this just came out, this just came out, wikileaks, i love wikileaks. well now wikileaks, the beloved wikileaks, released a trove of what it says are cia documents showing how the agency broke into smartphones and even tvs for spying and today the cia said it had no comment on the authenticity of those documents. when we come back, we ll talk to u.s. congressman waukeen castro of the intelligence committee about the latest wikileaks dump and what we re learning about president trump s relationship with russia. back after this. that could sense vehicles in your blind spot. take on the unexpected, with six 2017 iihs top safety picks. it s clear why we re america s fastest-growing auto brand. get to nissan now for 0% financing on 11 models & no payments for 90 days. i love to see businesses that just started from ground up grow into further success. it just feels good to know that i m helping someone else. my first goal is to learn about their business, what they re currently doing in their advertising. pull some research, create a great story. trying to figure out some way of building some kind of trust in a very quick moment. you have to love to work with people. our goal, without a doubt, is that all customers are satisfied before they leave. can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with russia during the course of the election? no, nobody that i know of. you re not aware of any contacts during the course of the election? how many times do i have to answer this question? russia is a ruse. i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge, no person that i deal with does. welcome to hardball. last month, president trump denied that anyone in his campaign, as you just saw, had any contacts with russia during the election. but in making that statement, the president directly contradicted the word of russia s deputy foreign minister who said just days after the election that, there were contacts during the campaign. we now know that thee members of trump s national security advisory committee, senator jeff sessions, j.d. gordon, carter page, all spoke with the russian ambassador during the campaign. additionally just before the republican convention, carter page traveled to moscow where he delivered a commencement address ken vogel of politico reports, page e-mailed campaign manager corey lewandowski and spokeswoman asking for formal approval for the trip and told by lewandowski he would make a trip to moscow but not as an official representative of the campaign. corey lewandowski telling politico i don t remember that, i probably got a thousand e-mails at that time and don t remember every single one i sent. i wouldn t necessarily remember if i had a one-word response to him saying he would do something as a private citizen. page left the campaign in september. trump campaign officials later distanced themselves from him. late today a source close to former utah governor jon huntsman tells nbc news that huntsman was offed and has accepted the position to be the next u.s. ambassador of russia. joined by u.s. congressman joaquin castro of texas, serves on the house select committee on intelligence. also here, ken vogel who wrote the story, chief investigative reporter for politico. congressman, you re in there and i guess my question is, we know an awful lot thanks to the 17 intelligence agencies about the way russia wanted hillary to lose and if it could be really lucky, get trump to win. how they wanted to undermine our democracy. that s all on the record. we also have a lot of other things on the record. how trump romanced or bromanced the russians all through the campaign. said wonderful things about their little instrument called wikileaks, said wonderful things about vladimir putin, about everything over there, how he s going to be their allies in the world against isis, et cetera, et cetera. seems to me a lot of information is out there about the symbiotic relationship between trump and the russians. what do you know more, or can you hichbt nt at where you thins story s going? you know, chris, insaid very clearly as have others on this committee, we need to get to the bottom of one question. did any americans conspire with the russians who interfered with our 2016 presidential election? and specifically, did anyone associated with the trump campaign help those who interfered with the 2016 presidential election? when we keep seeing more and more connections between trump advisers, at least coming out in reports, these trump advisers and the russians. and so, of course, this just speaks to how important the investigation is. well, doesn t the i mean, my experience over the years is the fbi, as part of our counterintelligence effort in this country, which all other countries have, they have all kinds of electronic wiretaps and information like, leb trelectro communication, involving the russian ambassador and officials who look like they might be under cover. why can t don t we get that information out? when s it going to come? the information. the nsa s got it, the cia s got it, certainly the fbi. what s the wait for? that s a great question. you know, i ve been critical of the pace of the investigation at least in the house committee. i said last week there is a gap between what the intelligence agencies know and what the committee has been told. adam schiff, the democratic ranking member, has essentially said the same thing. so i m with you on that. i think we should be moving in a brisker pace. you see there s a few hearings on this issue that have now been scheduled and publicly hopefull start moving at a quicker pace because all americans deserve an answer to these questions and getting to the bottom of it really is fundamental to our democracy. we know what russia did to help get trump elected and as a candidate, trump repeatedly made overtures to putin. let s watch him. i think i g d get along very well with vladimir putin. i just think so. wouldn t it be nice if actually we could get along with russia? and what s wrong with are russia wants to drop million-dollar bombs on isis? i say, good. putin said donald trump is a geni genius, he s going to be the next great leader of the united states. my attitude, when people like me, i like them. even putin. russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. putin s a killer. a lot of killers. we got a lot of killers. what, you think our country s so innocent? let me go to a couple things that do matter here. certainly our policy toward ukraine. our policy toward crimecrimea. i think either administration, democrat or republican, obama who normally a republican administration, would say russia, big bear, hold back, don t be grabbing back those countries on your border so easily. you got back crimea, we ll fight about that. certainly don t make any moves on the larger part of ukraine. now we get the sense that the platform in the republican convention this year, the plank dealing with that, was changed and look at this, during the same week the trump aides spoke with the russian am babassador cleveland during the republican convention, the trump campaign watered down an amendment to the party platform that supported ukraine against russian aggression. trump s campaign chairman, paul manafort at the time, denied responsibility for the change as did trump, himself. trump also defended russia s right to seize crimea from ukraine. here he is. everybody on the platform committee had said it came from the trump campaign. if not you, who? it absolutely did not come from the trump campaign. so nobody from the trump campaign wanted that change in the platform? no one. zero. why did she soften the gop platform on ukraine? i wasn t involved in that. you know, the people of crimea from what i ve heard would rather be with russia than where they were. well now politico is reporting a ukrainian operative with suspected ties to russian intelligence consulted with paul manafort during the political o ukraine he played a role in changing the platform language. ken, what do we make of this? in they soften up the republican platform, usually a hawkish party, softened them up because they have inside operatives in the republican operation here, we ought to know about that. they re quick to say, in fact, the language in the platform ended up being tougher than it was before this amendment was proposed. wasn t as tough as not thanks to them. right. certainly. we have reporting that does suggest, in fact, there were representatives of the trump campaign who did play a role in watering down that proposed amendment that would have been much tougher. so it s yet another example where they come out with a blanket denial, say we candiddi have anything to do with the platform, turns out they did. flynn says to the vice president of all people, i didn t talk about the sanctions with the russian am bass dr. turns out he did. sessions tells the judiciary committee, i didn t talk with any russians. the biggest problem for me, they cannot get their stories zragt he straight here. if it comes out, congressman, you may be the first to know on the intelligence committee, that there was a positive role by the trump people in getting the russians to do what they did in terms of screwing up the democrats in the general election, with all the hacking and they played a role in that, would that be impeachable? if at the end of the investigation it s found the president s advisers played a role in aiding the russians who interfered with the election and the president knew about it, then that is historically significant and it s a betrayal of our democracy and certainly i think many people would move for impeachment. thank you so much. u.s. congressman joaquin castro of texas, thank you, ken vogel, for your amazing reporting these days. up next, it s international women s day. while they have rallies around the country right now, they re going on, the homeland security secretary is considering a plan that would separate mothers from their children. remember sophie s choice, if they cross into this kun this c illegally. a debate is coming up about that. this is hardball where the action is. oh yeah sure. ok, like what? but i thought we were supposed to be talking about investing for retirement? we re absolutely doing that. but there s no law you can t make the most of today. what do you want to do? 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(team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace. here s to the wildcats this i gotta try .. bendy. spendy weekenders. whatever kind of weekender you are, there s a hilton for you. book your weekend break direct at hilton.com and join the weekenders. whattwo servings of veggies? v8 or a powdered drink? ready, go. ahhhhhhhh! shake! shake! shake! shake! shake! done! you gotta shake it! i shake it! glad i had a v8. the original way to fuel your day. .onef many pieces in my life. so when my asthma symptoms kept cong back on my long-term control medicine. i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment with breo. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo is specifically designed to open up airways to improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems and may increase the risk of hospitalization in children and adolescents. breo is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop breo and prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. learn more about better breathing at mybreo.com. welcome back to hardball. around the world people are celebrating international women s day today. in the united states, organizers of january s women s march on washington use the this occasion to plan a national demonstration called a day without a woman. women. it s plural there. thousands of women abstained from their it s a great word, abstained from their day jobs and took to the streets. that s a live picture looking at right now from new york outside the trump soho hotel. they re rallying against the discrimination and division they say the president espouses. here we go. i think it s important that the country know that women are standing together against hate and division and discrimination. what we have to do now is do what we can is protest and stand up and let the country and our elected leaders know what s important to us. and so that s what we re doing. in washington, several female democratic lawmakers symbolically staged a walkout in support, there they are, in red. 21 members of the congress. we know one thing for sure, that when women succeed, america succeeds. well the other end of pennsylvania avenue, donald trump honored the day by dropping in on his wife s luncheon and tweeting on international women s day, join me in honoring the critical role of women here in america and around the world. and i have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy. the tweets drew immediate criticism because of trump s record on women. his administration is also under scrutiny for its lack of gender diversi diversity, intention to defund planned participaenthood. and to separate women and children to cross the border illegally. secretary john kelly confirmed the administration was considering that proposal. here he is. our department of homeland security personnel going to separate the children from their moms and dads. yes, i am considering in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, i am considering exactly that. they will be well cared for as we deal with their parents. joining me right now for more, maria teresa kumar, ceo of voter latino, and former campaign manager for mitt romney, katie packer. both are attorneys. you have a tough job now. we have to talk about it. sounds like sophie s choice not sophie s choice. the idea of separating children from their mothers. obviously alleged to have broken the law, come across the border, may be asylum seekers. we don t know. may be poor people looking for a job. we don t know. trying to meet some relative here. we don t know. the idea of putting out the word, hey, we re going to separate you from your kids as a way of saying we re going to make you pay for this. well, certainly the notion of separating children from their parents as a punitive action? as a punitive action. as a punitive action, is very unseemly. what i understand, though, about what he s talking about is there is an angle to this that s trying to address the child trafficking issue. that it s not just separating children from their parents that s what he said, though. it s separating kirn from adults. i understand that. were you helping him here? are you helping him? that s not what he said. there might be an angle there that could be sort of salvageable but this notion of taking children away from their parents that is the you re very good at this, katikatie. i got tell you, for mothers carrying a baby, carrying an 8-year-old. what you re referring to, secretary kelly is also looking at this idea if a parent has someone bringing over they child, they re going to charge the parent with human trafficking. that s just as bad. so this idea that we are the majority of the people that to rming right now in south america are fleeing sexual viviolence, violence, themselves. what countries? el salvador, honduras primarily. not only going to the united states, going to costa rica, belize, where they mostly have family members. what do you make of this proposal to punish people for crossing the border illegally? it s cruel. it s anti-american. do you think that will at the end of the day, you re trying to get to safety for your family, america has been the beacon of hope. most of these folks are refugees and saying if i have to get separated, i will do it. the problem is even amnesty international has found a lot of these detention systems are completely abhorrent. they re anti a lot of international rights. what should the u.s. government do? they should actually process asylum seekers and if they re not asylum se seekers, what do you do with the ones who are not seeking asylum? the yoert majority of them a. what about the ones who are? everybody believes we need to have secured borders but in a way that is not cruel. you re always good at this. it s not going to happen because it s not good policy. let me ask her about the difference between can i talk to you for a second, ask you a question? what s a difference between a republican view of international women s day and a democrats view? what s the difference between your point of view from a party point of view? well, i think for republicans everybody s feeling a little sort of protested out. like every day there s some new protest and at some point you say to yourself, you know, when is there going to be sort of a general discussion of the things that you actually object to instead of just this daily protesting of everything that trump does? and you can t hear anything because what was your reaction to trump s comments, mexicans are rapists. islamic women what do you billy bush was who listening and fluffing him on you might say gets fired, trump gets elected president. doesn t that amaze you? it does amaze me. that conversation about women. it makes him a very flawed vessel for a comment like he made today. did you vote for him? i have very publicly said i did not vote for him. i know you didn t. go ahead. i think what he brought on, the way he brought on sexual violence into a conversation allowed people to have for the first time a conversation between their spouse as and the loved ones. at the same time, what he signals is it almost didn t matter. because he won. because he con. 42% of women voted for him. no consequences. 53% of white women voted for him, too. no consequences for those actions. the reason people keep marching, these are people who may not have voted and are coming into the political process, saying what do we do next? our job is to harness sthat. you know what i learned? women say, men are all like that. i go, they re not like that. more are like that than you think. that s possible because you just defined the possibility of it. yeah. you know what thank you. back again, for the very first time, trump lost young white men. yeah. millennials have good values. millennials have good values. maria, we all know that. maria teresa kumar and katie packer. katie packer, what a great name. up next katie packer. up next, the hardball roundtable will be here. tonight separating fact from fiction and getting at the truth in the trump era. that s what we re going to talk about. finding the nonfiction in the fiction. you re watching hardball where the action is. ( ) upstate new york is a good place to pursue your dreams. at vicarious visions, i get to be creative, work with awesome people, and we get to make great games. ( ) what i like about the area, feels like everybody knows each other. and i can go to my local coffee shop and they know who i am. it s really cool. new york state is filled with bright minds like lisa s. to find the companies and talent of tomorrow, search for our page, jobsinnewyorkstate on linkedin. search for our page, at bp s cooper river plant, employees take safety personally - down to each piece of equipment, so they can protect their teammates and the surrounding wetlands, too. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. don t put off checking out your options until sixty-five. now is a good time to get the ball rolling. consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like any of these types of plans, it could help you with out-of-pocket medical costs. call now and request your free decision guide and explore the range of aarp medicare supplement plans. start gathering the information you need. to roll into sixty-five with confidence. wheyou wantve somto protect it.e, at legalzoom, our network of attorneys can help you every step of the way. with an estate plan including wills or a living trust that grows along with you and your family. legalzoom. legal help is here. seriously. this after the white house wouldn t provide evidence that former president obama wiretapped president trump s phones during the 2016 campaign. as trump claimed saturday morning. is the white house position that the president can make declarative statements about a former president basically committing a crime and then the congressional committee should look into that and basically prove it? that is not a question of prove it, is they have the resources and the clearances and the staff to fully and thoroughly and comprehensively investigate this. and then issue a report as to what their findings are. so but president trump s twitter statement shouldn t be taken at face value about what sure, it should. of course why no. there s nothing, as i mentioned to jim, it s not that he s walking anything back or regretting it, he s just saying that they have the appropriate venue. so how does a journalist get to the truth in the age of trump? joining me in the hardball roundtable tonight, three reporters who cover politics and the white house. ayesha roscoe, white house correspondent, saw her there, for reuters, who asked that question, went back and forth with spicer. david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jones. msnbc political analyst. laura bassett, senior political reporter with the huffington post. that quhestioning of a press secretary who s definitely out of his element. he obviously doesn t believe his nonsense about the president accusing the previous president of wiretapping him yet he has to say things i think you almost caught him there, should we take it as face value? i thought you d almost get him to say no. of course i take it at face value. of course we have to submit it to congress to see if that s true or not. that doesn t make any sense. that was the point of the questioning. they came out with a statement after the twitter statements which were declared, president trump said i was wiretapped, president obama did it basically. then now the white house is saying, oh, committees have to look into it and have to see whether they re concerned. that s what i was trying to get at was, well, should we take the twitter statements which were declarative suppose trump said the president, previous president snuck into the white house last night and stole my hamburgers. i mean, something really ridiculous. then say we re going to let the house and senate intelligence committee examine it. i mean, the stuff he the claims are just at what point is spicer or anybody just says i can t take this job anymore, this is stupid, this isn t worthy of my time, i m going to end up looking like a liar here. right. i think that the problem for, at least for the media, is it s almost impossible to fact check some of this stuff. he doesn t care. because, yeah, then kellyanne conway can go on tv and say, well, you know, we say, well, did you get this from a breitbart story or not? and she says, well, he s privy to intelligence that most people don t know and information that most people don t know and the president should be. how to you fact check that when she says there s information that we just don t know? you can t fact check crazy. the thing is, i ve seen people acting as if they re surprised by this. you and i know there s nothing to be surprised by this. he did this for three years about birtherism. he did this about the crowds in the inauguration. he did this about ted cruz s dad and the 3 million mexicans who voted against him in california. he does this again and again and again. we act as he s a rational actor. what are you supposed to do? ayesha, it isn t like the old ethiopia where every headline began, lion of juda said this morning and pript nt it as if i true. what are you supposed to do? ask tough questions. you have to, you know, if they say things that maybe don t seem to add up, you have to ask them for clarity and then you have to do your own digging. i think it s important for us as journalists to make sure that we re providing readers with the facts. okay. with what we know. when do you get a no on this? i ve been saying the congress job is to give him a nay. they re not doing anything, not check this stuff out. they say, oh, we re going to buy xerox machines and hire some lawyers and get officers assigned and in six months we ll get down to business, ten years later we might have congress does not move lickety-split. i mean, i thought their response to the whole wiretapping thing was really awkward. all of them were put in an incredibly awkward position of saying i don t believe what the president s saying, he s still the president, okay, we ll look into it. one guy had some guts, had some balls to put it bluntly. that was mccain. one guy. mccain called him on it. as much as he may be bitter against obama, he has contempt for trump. he said trump is obligated to prove this. i think that s a pretty fair statement. you accuse the former president of breaking the law. yeah. it just shows you how far the republican establishment has gone in self-emasculation. yeah. they will not even if crazedy is right in front of them and it s two plus two, they ll say, maybe it is five because we don t have all the facts. are they afraid of getting a nickname? what are they afraid of? i talked to one house democrat who s trying to get a republican on the bill that trump wouldn t like and the guy said i can t do it, trump will start tweeting at me. they re afraid of trump. they re afraid of the base has been trumpfied. they re running scared. they want him around to sign the medicare privatization bills and whatever they come up with, anything in health care. they can t listen, once you say the president is nuts there s no going back from that. yeah, but some of this, i would hope, would penetrate to the 35%. do you think it will? i think i mean, i think will it penetrate to objective people that are reasonably objective? i think people can be logical and look at what s happening and draw their conclusions. i think especially when, you know, the rubber hits the road and you have to start looking at policies and what s going to come out. i wonder if it s like when you get married to someone, you realize they re different than the one that courted you and you go, but i m still stuck. it s not different, though, he was like this the whole campaign. that s true. aren t you smart? thank you. the roundtable is sticking with us. up next, these three will tell me something i don t know. i should have known that. bp uses flir cameras - a new thermal imagining technology - to inspect difficult-to-reach pipelines, so we can detect leaks before humans can see them. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. resist, run for office, be a champion. tonight secretary clinton will mark international women s day at the ceremony for vital voices, a woman s leadership group that she founded. we ll be back after this. my day starts well before i m even in the kitchen. i need my blood sugar to stay in control. so i asked about tresiba®. tresiba® ready tresiba® is a once-daily, long-acting insulin that lasts even longer than 24 hours. i need to shave my a1c. tresiba® ready tresiba® works like my body s insulin. releases slow and steady. providing powerful a1c reduction. i m always on call. an insulin that fits my schedule is key. tresiba® ready i can take tresiba® any time of day. so if i miss or delay a dose, i take it when i remember, as long as there s at least 8 hours between doses. once in use, it lasts 8 weeks with or without refrigeration, twice as long as the lantus® pen. (announcer) tresiba® is used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don t use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you are allergic to any of its ingredients. don t share needles or insulin pens. don t reuse needles. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which may cause dizziness, sweating, confusion, and headache. check your blood sugar. low blood sugar can be serious and may be life-threatening. injection site reactions may occur. tell your prescriber about all medicines you take and all your medical conditions. taking tzds with insulins like tresiba® may cause serious side effects like heart failure. your insulin dose shouldn t be changed without asking your prescriber. get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing, fast heartbeat, extreme drowsiness, swelling of your face, tongue, or throat, dizziness or confusion. ask your health care provider if you re tresiba® ready. covered by most insurance and medicare plans. tresiba® ready aisha, tell me something, you re amazing, you take on spicer. just wrap im, go ahead. well, in honor of women s day, speaking of one of the most powerful women in international politics, german chancellor angela merkel is coming here, we hear top on the agenda will be ukraine and russia and also that president trump might press her on getting germany to pay its fair share on nato. i will think germany would have paid early. it will be interesting to see with how she deals with president trump. she s his equal by any standard. you mentioned john mccain because he took a strong stand on the wiretapping stuff. he s taken a strong stand on the russian stuff, the white house is enraged about john mccain and they are trying to find ways to politically marginalize him and elevate other voices within the party like senator named tom cotton. they want mccain sidelined. i m with mccain on that one. by the way, mccain will never be forgot within what he accused with that woman that accused obama being arrogant. that s profile in courage stuff. trump hasn t done one of those yet. i talked to health experts about trumpcare today and what it would do. you re saying it, aren t you? i m saying trumpcare. like people wouldn t say reagan airport for years but you re saying trumpcare right away. it restricts abortion in four different ways and defunds planned parenthood. explain the abortion piece. it would drive abortion insurance completely out of the market so there wouldn t be an option for women to have abortion coverage anymore and it defunds planned parenthood. totally? the health experts said it would drive up unintended pregnancies. so it would do away with all birth control help for people. exactly. and have the opposite. that s a counterer effort for the pro life people. anyway, i think if you believe in avoiding abortion, anyway. ais aisha, thank you, please come back. david corn, always and laura basset, yes. i m out of good words. when we return, let me finish with trump watch. you re watching hardball. finally. hey ron! they re finally taking down that schwab billboard. oh, not so fast, carl. oh no. schwab, again? index investing for that low? that s three times less than fidelity. .and four times less than vanguard. what s next, no minimums? .no minimums. schwab has lowered the cost of investing again. introducing the lowest cost index funds in the industry with no minimums. i bet they re calling about the schwab news. schwab. a modern approach to wealth management. dearthere s no other way to say this. it s over. i ve found a permanent escape from monotony. together, we are perfectly balanced. our senses awake. our hearts racing as one. i know this is sudden, but they say.if you love something set it free. see you around, giulia [ rumbling ] bp developed new, industry-leading software to monitor drilling operations in real-time, so our engineers can solve problems with the most precise data at their fingertips. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. trump watch, wednesday, march 8, 2017. we have a man in the white house who thinks nothing that s a phrase to keep handy of speaking nastily and outrageously about his predecessor. why not? when he called obama an illegal immigrant from kenya the republican speaker of the house said it wasn t his job to tell people how to think. and with him now calling the former president a criminal, no leader up there in the congress is willing to come out and throw water on the president s fish story. this isn t about how big he says his hands are or how many people he can see on the washington mall or how many elusive illegal voters he says were out there last november. it s about truth and untruth. the truth that the russians helped him win the election. the untruth that president obama had him bugged. i understand why his people want this accusation of his to disappear on capitol hill. it s an old trick. it s what spiro agnew did when he faced indictment for accepted bribes for maryland contractors. he headed to the speaker asking him to be tried by the congress. he figured the case would be
so what have you learned? reporter: well, anderson, u.s. officials tell cnn that last year the u.s. intelligence used a dossier as part of a justification to get a warrant to secretly monitor carl as one of the sources of information that the bureau has used to defend or to support its investigation. this includes approval from the secret court that oversees the foreign intelligence surveillance act known as fisa, to monitor page s communications. the fbi and the justice department would have had to present probable cause that he was acting as an agent of a foreign power, mobile engaging in foreign intelligence gathering for a foreign government. comey and other fbi officials would have had to sign off on russian spies. pai page denies he knew these were russian agents. page says he took a trip independently, that he expressed his own views and overall, he has disputed anything was illegal in his interactions with the russians. he sent us a statement that reads in part, i look forward to the privacy act lawsuit that i plan to file in response to the civil rights violations by obama administration appointees last year. the discovery process will be of great value to the united states as our nation hears testimony from them under oath and we zee disclosure of the documents. pa should also point out carter page when i interviewed him said he did get permission from the trump campaign, he didn t mention who he got permission from to travel to moscow and give that speech and he also met with several people. joining us to talk about it is our panel. philadelph phil, let s start with you, you ve been with the fbi, you ve been with the fisa courts, what did the fbi have on trump besides this dossier? i don t think this takes us a great deal forward, if you re going to go to a fisa court, that judge is going to you re going to go in with intercepts, directly from the russians with the national security agency would have picked up. you might have even sources, i want someone who i can identify who s directly in contact with you. if you contrast that with what we have here, a former british officer has an informant in moscow, maybe with a sub informant, passing that information up to the fbi, that s a game of phone that goes three or four links down the chain, the court is not going to look at that and the department of justice would not look at that as an important source of information in this case. what it means is that the fbi had a number of things they could present to the judge, this unverified dossier was a minor part of it perhaps. knowing what we know about the fisa court and how, any judge, these are serious judges that push back pretty hard when you come to them with a warrant. it suggests to me they either had corroborating information from that information in the dossier, or they had something that lent it credence. and phil you agree with that? absolutely. if you ve got a department of justice attorney, he s got a reputation for years in the fisa court. he doesn t want to have the judge to say get out of here and then go in tomorrow a. we do know from other reporting that the fbi has looked into the allegations in that dossier and did confirm some stuff and not other stuff. maybe that was part of that process. in order to obtain a fisa warrant in the first place, the fbi would have had to present probable cause that carter page was participating in intelligence gathering for a foreign government, right? the fisa court rarely turns down his applications, it s less than 1%. it s not probable cause like we state in the constitution, the fourth amendment of probable cause of a crime, it s probable cause that you could be a foreign agent. it s a standard that s easy to meet. i certainly agree that this would not do that. this is a city quite frankly that is awash in russian money, there s so much russian money on capitol hill with both democratic and republican operatives and surprising the ruble isn t accepted at mcdonald s. there s a lot of russian and chinese money in this city. so when i read in report, it doesn t distinguish him in terms of potential criminal conduct, was he an agent of russia or was he perhaps a convenient conduit to the trump campaign. these are questions that are not answered by this evidence. your point is a good one, is there still a live torpedo in the water that s not in this dossier. it is interesting that part of the problem for the trump administration is donald trump himself did say carter page was one of his five national security advisors early on at a time when he was under pressure to name somebody. you would think if there had actually been some vetting, maybe they would have rethought naming him, but clearly, it points to just the kind of, i don t know if chaos is the right word that was in the transition team at the time, they were just desperate. if you remember, most of the national security community came out against him and wrote a letter saying that they, you know, not only were they not endorsing him, they were coming out to oppose him, so he had this hodgepodge of a few people, and it s unclear how instrumental they really were to the campaign. the trump campaign says he wasn t that instrumental, he was a volunteer, he wasn t someone who was actually paid on the campaign. but the thing about the dossier, the only part of the dossier that s relevant would be the allegation that he was there on behalf of the trump administration, having conversations, quid pro quo conversations about sanctions and business opportunities. so if it s brought up in any context, does it suggest that the court bought that? it suggests to me, as anderson was saying earlier, that the fbi had something before hand that led director comey, after the embarrassment of the admission on hillary clinton, to come out again, as the fbi never does, and say they had a case open. they had their own independent investigation, and came out and said maybe there s a bit or two here, but it was not the primary source. but it may not have been the primary source, but assuming they included it in the fisa package. if carter page, we know according to carter page, he says the trump campaign cleared it for him to go to moscow, it was very possible that page was bragging in moscow, saying he had been in meetings with donald trump, he was using the russian term for the word meeting, and the rally that thousands of people were in that we all saw on television. but he never actually met with the president. but isn t this just a case of a guy who was in the campaign, but he wasn t essential, just kind of bragging in moscow about his connections to the campaign? you know, i don t think it does. and let me a name that occurred to me tonight, and of course the other side of the story is that you ve got people on the republican side saying that the obama administration was spying on the trump campaign. believe it or not, the name that flashed into my head tonight was james mccord, and for those who don t remember the name, james mccord was one of the original watergate burglars, after his conviction, he was a minor figure as it were. he sent a letter to the judge saying he was pressured to do a, b, and c and it eventually led to the resignation of president nixon. in this case, carter page is coming forward with a lawsuit which he has said tonight he s going to definitely pursue, if you think as a number of republicans do, that there is a conspiracy, was a conspiracy of the obama administration to look into this part of carter page s lawsuit is that he is claiming hate crimes against him saying that the hillary clinton campaign was against him because he was a man. we don t know if he has attorneys or can afford attorneys. i grant you all that, i m saying that once you start that actually, that s not much of a threat, when i read that statement, he s going to run smack dab into military and state secrets privilege, i ve litigated that painfully over the years. it s not like a civil case where you can go into discovery and find out who said what to who in an office. all of this is coming out of the most secret court, in some of the most classified areas of the governments, he s going to hit the state secrets privilege. he s going to find it very hard to get information. one of the things interesting about carter page is that he is desperately now trying to reposition himself as a victim, as a traitor, not as someone who s committing treason doing bizarre stuff, but he s a hero of american privacy, he s somehow going to go out here and expose all these terrible things that have happened. the problem is that this particular move makes no sense. if in fact the obama administration was going to spy on these people, shouldn t they have said something before the election? the part of the story that they continue to spin that makes no sense is, why would the obama administration go to all this trouble to spy on this campaign, to violate their privacy, do all these terrible things and then just say nothing until donald trump won? the whole thing is bizarre. the independent commission, let s get to the bottom of it. to wax tom cruise, i want the truth. i can handle the truth. where do you see this going? look, jeffrey has a good point about an independent commission which could get this all out on the table and i think the senate and house are going to go their best to get some of these facts. those who don t want an independent commission say it just takes too long, you got to get people clear, you got to get them read up, this is going to take months to go through. i just read an article in new yorker.com that the three witnesses on the democratic witness list that s been agreed to with the republicans in theory at least, carter page, roger stone and paul manafort, so we are going to hear from carter page susan rice? what i reported is all names on the republican list are obama officials, all the names on the democratic list are trump campaign officials who are related to the russian hacking campaign. so the rudemocrats want to investigate putin s intelligence service, the republicans want to investigate obama s intelligence service. we ll bring you the latest up to date in just a moment. also how a carrier battle group which was meant to sent a message to north korea, instead wound up heading south, literally heading south. details ahead. (de p breath) (phone ringing) they ll call back. no one knows your ford better than ford and ford service. right now, during the big tire event, get a $140 rebate by mail, on four select tires. the unpredictability of a flaree may weigh on your mind. thinking about what to avoid, where to go, and how to work around your uc. that s how i thought it had to be. but then i talked to my doctor about humira, and learned humira can help get and keep uc under control. when certain medications haven t worked well enough. 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. raise your expectations and ask your gastroenterologist if humira may be right for you. with humira, control is possible. ito treat your toughy nasal allergies. .listen up. unlike pills that don t treat congestion, clarispray covers 100 percent of your nasal allergy symptoms. clarispray. from the makers of claritin. if not, it goes to a runoff. in any case, democrats are treating this as a chance to try to send a national message and the president s been following it closely sending out dozens of tweets, today posting, republicans must get out and vote in georgia 6. david, how much should we or shouldn t we read into tonight s results? let me assure you, anderson, even if jon ossoff wins he s not going to win by 70%. so that number is going to go down. this district has portions of three counties that touch it. this is just the early and absentee vote from dekalb can, a big democratic county overall, we would expect knowing that the democrat reporting did quite well in the early vote, it actually is one of the things that started giving republicans pause and concern about this race. we expected him to have this early lead. i would not read much more into it than that. his number is going to come down, it is likely that the republicans did a bit better perhaps on election day voting. we ll see as the night goes on as more numbers come in. we talked about this yesterday, newt gingrich held this district for 30 years, trump won it by 1 percentage point. this is a district that republicans salivate over, because they think this is precisely the kind of distribute they can flip in 2018 and maybe take back control of the house. and you look at this district that david was talking about, it s more diverse, it s higher educated, it s wealthier, and it s younger. and all of those things put together are a nice target for the democrats. i mean having said that, they have a young, inexperienced and unexciting candidate here, but who s got 8 million $8 million million of mostly outside money behind him because they also know how symbolic this would be, of course if they were to win. it does say a lot about the fact that president trump has taken a personal interest in the election, just tonight he tweeted, just learned that jon ossoff doesn t even live in the district, republicans get out and vote. he s also aware of how a loss could work. he probably just learned that since the national congressional campaign committee have been pushing that back for a long time. but you are right, it look like donald trump is placing a bet here that oss orks oroff is goi come just below and he can come out and say, hey, republicans, i helped keep him under 50%, let s go to the runoff now, i can help you win that as well. no one has to tell donald trump that this is really about him. and he believes it s about him and in many ways it is about him. because this is high profile, it s a district that he really won by just 1%. hillary clinton won in that district, it was the first time a democrat won that district since jimmy carter. so, you know, i do think that he understands that everybody s going to extrapolate here. he does, but i think also, jon ossoff the democrat, as much as he has raised money like you said on that democratic fervor, on that democratic energy, he s campaigning heavily because it s a heavily republican district. he s careful not to do all frump bashing, some of his advertising definitely geared toward trump bashing to make his base enthusiastic. but much of it is about cut wasteful spending, get government working again, a message that has nothing to do with donald trump. and the hss secretary who they re trying to replace won by 62% of the vote. he s got to walk a really fine line here as do the republican candidate. do we have a sense of when we might know the results here? that s a great question, as soon as they count them is really the answer. my sense is we re starting to see them trickle in now, my sense is over the next hour and a half or so, we will probably see where this is going, and remember, we may know that it s headed to a runoff, let s say, before we know necessarily who the republican candidate might be. so there are different pieces of tonight. the first threshold is does jon ossoff look like he s going to be below 50%, and if so, who does he face in the runoff? where in the world is the uss carl vinson tonight, not in the sea of japan. remember when the white house said it was steaming toward north korea to send a message, it wasn t. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. and now. i m back! aleve pm for a better am. when it comes to heartburn. trust the brand doctors trust. nexium 24hr is the #1 choice of doctors and pharmacists for their own frequent heartburn. for all day and all night protection. banish the burn. with nexium 24hr. atmore than one flavor, oruch texture, or color.ing. a good clean salad is so much more than green. and with panera catering, more for your event. panera. food as it should be. pcountries thatk mewe traveled,t what is your nationality and i would always answer hispanic. so when i got my ancestry dna results it was a shocker. i m everything. i m from all nations. i would look at forms now and wonder what do i mark? because i m everything. and i marked other. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. new roundup for lawns has arrived to put unwelcome lawn weeds to rest. so draw the line. roundup for lawns is formulated to kill lawn weeds to the root without harming a single blade of grass. draw the line with roundup for lawns. tonight the uss carl vinson is not where everyone expected to be. the white house made a big show of ordering it to the sea of japan last week in the wake of north korea conducting missile tests. here s what president trump said on april 11. we are sending an armada, very powerful, we have submarines, that are very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that i can tell you, and we have the best military people on earth. and i will say this, he is doing the wrong thing. talking about kim jong-un. that same day white house secretary sean spicer drove home the fact that the white house armada was headed to the sea of japan to send a message to north korea. when you see an armada going forward like that, it s almost always in every instance a huge deterrence. it turns out the uss carl vinson was not heading to the sea of japan. the facts came to light after the navy posted a photograph showing the vinson near tunisia on saturday. how did this happen? whether it was miscommunication, or intentional misleading, what is the administration saying? reporter: let s look at the bottom line here, the u.s. navy always knows every day where all it s aircraft carriers are, right? so they had announced that this carrier group was going to head north. the implications standing in the air from both the white house and the pentagon was it was going toward the korean peninsula to be a deterrent, to be a show of force, it was never going to have any offensive capability really against a north korean threat. but not so fast, the carrier stop stopped long the way, did a number of preplanned exercises with australia jn forces, was hundreds of miles away from where everybody thought it was in that show of force. does it make a difference attend of the day? it doesn t change the military calculation, but if they were trying to message north korea, perhaps that message falling a bit flat, because it s taking that carrier a while to get anywhere near there, it s expected to be there by the end of the month. anderson. it perhaps makes a potential enemy not believe when the u.s. says a message can deteriorate into something not all that factual, the president calling it an armada, when is the last time the u.s. navy called itself an armada. and the carrier, this is a president who said he didn t want to signal what his military months are. not only did he talk about a carrier, he talked about submarines going along with it. and he talked about the submarines being stronger, more powerful, if you will, than an aircraft carrier. that s an extraordinary statement in public from a president. submarines are generally covert, they engage in covert action, they are able to spy on north korea, their communications, their intelligence, really extraordinary, for a president who didn t want to signal his months, signaling them, not getting them exactly right and also putting out a covert asset like a submarine was on the way. want to talk more about this with senior military and diplomatic analyst admiral kirby? admiral kur by, how do you know or don t know this is happening? i think there s been a little bit of a misunderstanding of exactly what was said and why. the pacific command was very clear that the carrier strike group was going to move towards or near korean waters, but they never said when, and they wanted to get this exercise done with the australians, as a matter of fact they curtailed the exercise, accelerated the start date so they could move the vinson and other ships up north. they were pretty open and honest about this. i believe it was between the pentagon and the white house in terms of filling in those kinds of details, it s easy when you see something of a statement when they say we re going to send the vinson to the waters off of korea, to think that s going to happen immediately. when ships are deployed like this, there s lots of other things they need to do and they want to knock this out as quickly as possible. is it possible that the president and the press secretary did not understand what was going on? because they were talking about it. . i know they were, and frankly so was the pacific command, they put out the fact that the ship was going to those waters, i don t think it was fully understood up the chain of command what the schedule looked like, leaving singapore, heading up to australian waters. i don t know exactly where the breakdown was, but i think that was where the breakdown was, not that anyone lied or tried to mislead. not that they were not going to get into the north korean waters, just what it was going to do in between. what message do you think this sends to north korea? do you think it has an impact? i think it s certainly an embarrassment that it was ant clear cut move in rapid fashion as to what was conveyed. the bigger message is that we have a strong naval presence here and we re not afraid to exercise it and operate it where we need to. and clearly they got that message, because as you saw, they acted quickly and vigorously as to any suggestion that the carrier strike group was going to be off their coast. coming up, there s breaking news tonight that bill o reilly may be out of fox news after his latest sexual harassment claims, a source says that exit talks are under way. we ll talk about that nec. we are sikhs sikh americans we believe in equality tolerance and respect for all. because sikh values are american values. we are doctors pta moms patriots we are americans we like game of thrones im obsessed with star wars ive seen every episode of sponge bob because thats what my daughters like to watch we we are sikhs. o reilly s advances. joining me now is cnn media correspondent brian stelter, and cnn media analyst bill carter. brian, what are you learning? that there will be a board meeting on thursday, involvng the murdocks, the men who control 20th century fox. and by the end of the week, we ll know if bill o reilly is going to be back on the air or not. there s clearly a sense inside fox that this is coming to a conclusion quickly and that o reilly is unlikely to come back to his program. nothing s official until we hear it from rupert murdock or his sons. o reilly is a it s crazy that o reilly wouldn t be helming his show on fox. and that advertiser boycott, those advertisers abandoning his show, all of that adding up to a situation that s untenable for the murdocks. if it s true that o reilly is on the way out, it shows how important ad dollars are when push comes to shove. is this just about ad dollars or the atmosphere inside fox? you have fox worrying about getting access to sky tv in eveni england. i think it s extraordinary, but i think the pressure on fox has just mounted to an incredible degree, almost an unbearable degree, because even if they re to bring o reilly back, people are not going to let up. people are picketing outside the building, i don t know how they get out from under this, and another woman adding to the mix, it just goes on and on, the drip, drip of this, and they feel like they have to get out from under it. the new accusations that are being made, your client says that this occurred back in 2008? yes, she says that she was a clerical worker back in 2008, she did not work directly for bill o reilly, she worked for a different broadcaster, she said he treat ed her very, very well. she said that bill o reilly would call her hot chocolate, she s african-american, she found that very offense. he would leer at her, at her cleavage, at her legs, he would say yeah, baby. he would make comments about her after she got off the elevator. she told me about this eight days ago, we talked to three witnesses who corroborate back in 2008 she told them, she would come home from work and tell them that bill o reilly was sexually harassing her. by the end of the time she was there, she was very depressed and it was taking a toll on her. there was a hot line people could call, they could raise objections, that s the obvious question, was anything said at the time? i talked to a fox news employee today, i want to call the hot line, i don t have the number. the reason i have the hot line, is because i had another case against fox news. so we called the hot line, and again today, with my new accuser, she and i together called the fox news hot line. so i want to thank fox news for that invitation to call the hot line and i hope other women who have been harassed call the fox news hot line. you know, i want to say while i can be a little sarcastic about it, this is very, very difficult for the women. you know, i spent yesterday and today with a new accuser. she was very stressed, crying, she couldn t eat, she couldn t sleep. this is very hard on women. and that s why i m doing all of this at no charge. these two women are not asking for a penny, they re doing it because this is about accountability, enough is enough, stop hurting women, stop damaging women s career, stop inthreatening women that if they don t sleep with you that you ll end their career. this is obviously something the board is considering, what would it say about fox news, about the culture there? it would say one thing that o reilly has tremendous lawyers, he s got lawyers lined up with him tonight who are saying there s a left wing smear campaign happening trying to tear him down, those people would be fighting with fox to remove him. there s this contract, this legal language, fox believes it can if it wants to remove o reilly right away. they renewed his contract a short time ago? but that new contract has what fox says is more leverage against o reilly, an easier way to remove him now that there s new allegations against him. but fox has prided itself on not being like everything else, about not bending to pressure. his sons do not like the stain that they feel is being placed on their brand. for fox news, as brian was saying, a while ago, it would have been inconceivable that bill o reilly would not be on fox news, the amount of money that he s made for that company, the amount of time he s worked there, the ratings that he gets, but in tv, no one is in dispensable. bill o reilly is going to have a new gig, as i understand i mean we re all ultimately expendable. and i include myself in that as well. i do think fox has really had one signature star from the beginning. right. it s bill o reilly. this is really a remarkable situation to have your signature star. and i think the one thing that s maybe under appreciated here, is that the fox audience is not going to like this, they re not going to take well to this, that it looks like fox is giving in to what they think is a feminist plot or a left wing plot to get rid of their favorite broadcaster. i think they ll be a backlash of sorts. i mean fox will plug in some other star, but the audience might not like that they caved into this kind of pressure. president donald trump has been support ty of bill o reilly, saying that he doesn t think o reilly did anything wrong. my phone is ringing off the hook and we re not going to stop until we get accountability. in the latest statement that i saw from o reilly s attorney, as brian mentioned, he s making allegations that this is a left wing plot, that there s a political organization behind this. are you being funded by some left wing political organization that is out for bill o reilly? if only, anderson, my clients are not asking for a penny, i am not charging any of my o reilly accusers. i flew out here on my own nickel. and mr. o reilly s attorney is being highly paid for defending an accused serial harasser. the search is over for the man police say posted video on facebook after having killed a 74-year-old grandfather in cleveland, how the search ended next. blue moon is brewed with valencia orange peel, for a taste that shines brighter. for my constipation, i switch laxatives.ed stimulant laxatives make your body go by forcefully stimulating the nerves in your colon. miralax is different. it works with the water in your body to hydrate and soften. unblocking your system naturally. miralax. when you re close to the people you love, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. with taltz, up to 90% of patients had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. in fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. do not use if you are allergic to taltz. before starting you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you are being treated for an infection or have symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz. including worsening of symptoms. serious allergic reactions can occur. now s your chance at completely clear skin. just ask your doctor about taltz. now s your chance at completely clear skin. when this bell rings. .it starts a chain reaction. .that s heard throughout the connected business world. at&t network security helps protect business, from the largest financial markets to the smallest transactions, by sensing cyber-attacks in near real time and automatically deploying countermeasures. keeping the world of business connected and protected. that s the power of and. hey, bud. you need some help? 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(vo) introducing the all-new subaru impreza. the longest-lasting vehicle in its class. more than a car, it s a subaru. east of cleveland. units, psp is behind a white ford fusion on buffalo road heading out of wesleyville into erie. reporter: this video captured by a local business s surveillance camera. police ended up ramming his car with one of their vehicles. instead of surrendering, he shoots and kills himself. i want to officially announce that the search for steve stephens has ended. reporter: how was he caught. an employee as a mcdonald s was his undoing. the employee that was working at the time recognized him or thought noticed the car was ohio tags on it and it was a white fusion. took his money and he pulled to the next window. she stepped out of there and called the state police right away. reporter: the killer ordered chicken nuggets and french fries. told him it would be a minute for the fries, which it wasn t. he didn t want to wait, which was fine. he took his six piece and didn t want money back and headed out on to buffalo road. the mustninute he turned right buffalo, the state police were behind him. reporter: there was suspicion he might be in erie because of a ping from his cell phone in the area. as far as the pennsylvania state police, we had no knowledge of a ping. reporter: a more solid lead, this casino where he had been seen. this statement issued before he was located. the gentleman has been here on property one time so far this year based on his play. reporter: where the murder happened in cleveland, a woman witnessed the killer getting away and feared for her safety. i feel a little better. i m think eing he might come ba and terrorize everybody, so i feel better. reporter: the fear is lessened. the sadness for family members of robert godwin is not as they prepare for his funeral. authorities do not think stephens killed anybody else despite his saying on facebook he did. the potential for more violence from him over because of the quick thinking of a mcdonald s employee. i m very proud of my staff and how they handled it. gary joins us. you say authorities don t think he killed anybody else. is that possibility going to be actively investigated? reporter: absolutely. law enforcement want to make sure they re not missing anything. they have extra forensic evidence. they have his vehicle. they have his weapon. they re going to be interviewing people. they want to find out, for example, if anybody harbored him over the 45 hours between the time he committed murder and the time he committed suicide. i do want to mention that mr. godwin will be laid to rest this saturday. our thoughts are with his family. i talked to two of his daughters last night. they are extraordinary people. another incredible note to the story. i spoke with two of his daughters, a son-in-law who talked about what an mazing man he was. in the midst of their pain, they said they forgave the killer. watch. he taught us about god, how to fear god, how to love god and how to forgive. yes. each one of us forgive the killer, the murderer. you do? we want to wrap our arms him. we absolutely do. we don t i honestly can say right now that i hold no no animosity. in my heart against this man. extraordinary to say that. they met with the killer s former girlfriend at her request we understand today. the on the video the suspect posted on facebook, the killer made robert godwin say the name of his former girlfriend. said it was her fault that he was about to kill mr. godwin. today she met with the godwin s family, his daughter says they hugged and cried together. she told she was sorry and they told her they didn t blameler h at all. the fbi investigation into russian meddling into the election and connection to trump associates. what we learned tonight next. moms know their kids need love, encouragement and milk. with 8 grams of natural protein, and 8 other nutrients to provide balanced nutrition. moms know kids grow strong when they milk life. with all the things you ll provnever learn from a book. expedia. everything in one place, so you can travel the world better. this is the schmidt s yard. and, oh schmidt, that s a lot of dirt. but there s plenty of time for scotts outdoor cleaner plus oxiclean to work it s magic. all while being safe to use around plants and grass. guaranteed. this is a scotts yard. wenit gave me a leafput in the names almost right away. first. within a few days, i went from knowing almost nothing to holy crow, i m related to george washington. i didn t know that using ancestry would be so easy. we re topping this hour with breaking news. a special house election with potentially national impact. john ossoff, a front runner right now with 38% reporting, he is leading several rivals with 60.6% of the vote. if he finishes tonight with 50% or more, he avoids a runoff and does send a message to republicans nationally, including the president. we will update you throughout the hour and throughout the night on cnn. we also have a significant new development in the trump russia investigation. it centers on the dossier compiled by a former british intelligence officer on the subject. as you may know, cnn has not and will not be reporting on the contents of the dossier. we never have because we have yet to verify it. however, we do have new reporting that suggests the fbi
wbr id= wbr0 /> wbr id= wbr0 /> this evening, the rachel maddow show starts now. early for a change. i have something to spend this time doing. exactly. thanks, my friend, appreciate it. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. very happy to have you here tonight. who here is old enough to have ever used a typewriter? i took typing class and it was on a typewriter. i m that old. typewriters started off with a mechanism that looked like this. you pressed a button on a keyboard for a specific letter, but then a little arm, a little bar would swing up from the guts of the keyboard and smack that letter into the inked typewriter ribbon, and thereby pressed the imprint of that letter on to the paper, right? so that was the mechanism. each keystroke on the typewriter would cause a piece of metal to fling itself up toward the paper. a different little bar with a different letter on it for each keystroke. that was how they started out. but then in 1961, ibm changed all of that. ibm invented a whole new kind of /b> wbr-id= wbr600 /> electric typewriter, where instead of each letter, each number, each character having its own little type bar that would swing up and on to the paper every time you hit a keyboard a stroke on the keyboard. instead, selectric typewriters had this little ball, like a little kiwi or golf ball, they called it the font element and you could change out that ball for a different ball if you wanted to have a different font to type with. and the innovation here was that with the selectric, instead of a distinct and different piece of individual piece of metal, flinging itself up at the paper for every letter that you typed, now it was just this one piece of metal. this little ball that would rotate and pivot to position the appropriate letter or number or character in line with the ribbon to make its mark on the page. it was a big engineering advance in terms of the way typewriters worked. and it definitely changed typing. but it turns out it also changed spying. because starting in the 1970s, wbr-id= wbr1200 /> soviet union invented secret small technology that could be fitted inside an ibm selectric typewriter. and they disguised it really well, so the only way you could find this thing was by x-raying the typewriter and knowing what you were looking for. but what their spying device did inside of a selectric typewriter is that it could detect the movement of little arms and pushrods inside the selectric typewriter that pivoted and rotated that ball as you typed the letters and numbers that you wanted to put on the page. they put a device inside selectrss typewriters that could detect the change. if you were sensitive enough to detect the movements inside that little arms and pushrods that moved the selectric ball. and for eight solid years, for those eight years, everything typed on those 16 ibm selectric typewriters was beamed directly to the kg. and the only reason the u.s. figured it out in 1984 is because another country that had been bugged this same way by the kgb figured it out in one of their own facilities and since they were our ally, they tipped us off that maybe that we should check this. hey, you guys using selectric typewriters? particularly at your embassies and coonsulates in russia? you may want to get them x-rays and check for that particular sophisticated bug that the russians made up and we have found them using against us. so those compromised those 16 compromised ibm selectric typewriters, those were an intelligence disaster for the united states for eight solid years as they broadcast everything typed inside the embassy. but they were finally discovered in 1984. and when that got found out in 1984, that was the time when we were finding out a lot of other things that were very, very bad about our embassy and the russians spying on us and spying on that embassy around that time. one of the biggest scandals, one of the biggest failures ever on the part of the united states when it came to spying and russia started in 1969, when then president richard nixon came to hard-fought agreement with the soviet union. and the agreement was that the soviets would be allowed to build a new soviet embassy in washington. and we, simultaneously, would be allowed to build a new american embassy in moscow. that was agreed to after much negotiation in 1969. they weren t actually ready to start construction itself in moscow until a decade later in 1979. but if you think about that time in modern u.s. history, this was a very chilly part of the cold war, right? and by the time the u.s. was ready to start construction on our new embassy is no guo in 1979, the sure fact that that embassy would be a target of advanced russian spying operations was very much on american officials minds. it was very much in american news. i mean, this was this was a front and center concern about building a new embassy in moscow. not just because u.s. and russian spies were always targeting each other, but also because, right before we started construction, we had just discovered a major russian intelligence operation for them to spy on our existing facilities in moscow. this is a news report from 1978, the year before we started building the new embassy. part of the reason i want to show this is because it s relevant to this story, but part of the reason i want to show it is because of the amazing graphics in this news report. watch. the most recent soviet/american rift involves the discovery of yet another soviet listening device in the american embassy in moscow. events of this kind are not always made public, but this one, discovered on may 25th, was disclosed by american officials today. ford rowan has the details. the russian kgb agents operated out of an apartment building just across the street from the american embassy. they used a cable which ran from the listening post through a secret tunnel under the street into the embassy basement and up a ventilating shaft to the seventh floor. american personnel found surveillance equipment in the shaft, including a disc-shaped antenna-like device. during the search, the americans surprised a russian agent who fled from his listening post. so in 1969, nixon had agreed with the russians that they would get to build a new embassy here. and that we would get to build a new embassy there. and all through the 70s, we continued to discover the russians bugging our existing embassy in our kbloediplomatic facilities in russia, including them having a secret tunnel under the street into our embassy as late as 1978. but then in 1979, we started building our new embassy in moscow. and it s now clear in retrospect that in that decision, we made what is now quite obviously, in retrospect, an absolutely ridiculous error as a country. right? and this was a high-level negotiated thing. the highest levels of the administration were involved in negotiating this fact that the russians get to build their embassy and we get to build our embassy and it s simultaneous and there s a big team of high-level people negotiating the exact terms that the construction will be managed. this is something the government worked really hard on for a number of years. but somehow at the end of that progress, the u.s. agreed to a process that had a major flaw. see if you can figure out what it was. on the russia side of the equation, when they were building their embassy in ing, their part of the deal said that all building materials would be constructed on site. they had soviet officials on site overseeing every aspect of the construction, down to the level of every single beam, every single board. everything that went into that embassy was cut and cast and assembled at the building site under their own people s supervision. and just to be doubly safe, every component that went into building the rnks gembassy in washington, d.c. was x-rayed piece by piece as it was put together to make sure there was no funny business, no cia bugs for the russian embassy. nothing had been concerted into the construction materials somehow. that was the russian side of the deal. the american side of the deal was different. the american side of the deal, for our building in moscow, u.s. government negotiated that, yes, american workers and american officials would be responsible for all the finish work, like, the fine work inside the building, but when it came to the basic guts of the building, like the beams and the concrete and the pre-cast floor panels and all the columns, those would all be prefab manufactured in soviet facilities by soviet workers and then brought complete on to the construction site where the u.s. would watch, basically, while the russian workers assembled our new embassy for us in moscow. who made this deal? so, yeah, like, american workers got to put in the windows and the doors and stuff. but when it came to the actual building building, that was built by the russians for us. ah, that was very nice of them. they controlled the design, all the fundamental construction, building of that embassy in moscow started in 1979. by honestly, by 1979, by 80, by 82, the u.s. realize we had a serious problem on our hands with that building. the 7,000-pound pre-cast pieces of the building were arriving at the building site to be installed in the new embassy. they were arriving completely made. people who were in charge of making sure the embassy wasn t going to be spied on said from the very beginning, whoa, this is going to be a problem. the u.s. had security engineers reviewing the construction materials as best they could, but the russians were running the design and the construction process. by 1982, the u.s. government was so worried that we had secretly dispatched a specially trained team of bug detectors for the still under construction building. and i kid you not, they were trained rock climbers. they put dudes in rock climbing harnesses and special cold weather gear that had been supplied by eddie bauer and in the dead of night, in the dead of the moscow winter, with temperatures dipping to 40 degrees below zero, they had these guys, these specialists, repelling down the sides of the building under construction with specially made x-ray machines to try to find all the russian bugs. and boy, did they find a lot of russian bugs. new york times did a great recap in 1988 as to what had gone wrong with the case of the bugged embassy. quote, they discovered interconnecting systems so sophisticated they couldn t be removed from the steel and concrete columns, the beams, the pre-cast floor slabs, the sheer walls between the columns. they found electronic packages where a piece of steel reinforcement in the flooring should have been. they found resonating devices that allowed the russians to monitor electronic and verbal communications. one engineer who worked on the site from 1980 to 1982 said, quote, we found things that didn t belong there, based on the shop drawings. we found cables in the concrete. and it wasn t like some low-level hack job. it was very sophisticated. ron kessler from the washington post later wrote a book that touched on this subject, a book called moscow station. he explained in his book how some of the bugs the russians put in in the construction process were found in places where metal beams were welded together and they would make the bugs out of materials that had the same density as the metal in the joint, so even if you did x-ray that joint, you wouldn t detect them. so, the u.s. government negotiated for that building in 69, started build it in 79. by the early 80s, they d gotten rock climbers to be rebelling down the outside of the building in the dead of night saying, uh-uh, this place is intrinsically bugged. by 1985, they stopped working on it when it was two-thirds done and kicked all the russian workers out. and then the government appears to have had no idea what to do with their partially built, r n ruinously compromised kgb christmas present that the u.s. taxpayers had just funded to the tune of many millions of dollars right in the heart of moscow. and then on top of all of that, the kgb won again at the u.s. embassy, when for the first time in the history of the united states a u.s. marine was charged and convicted of espionage. kgb had sent young female officers to seduce and then blackmail u.s. marines who were providing security at the existing american embassy facilities in moscow while the new one was under construction. kgb knew it was illegal for the marines to fraeternize local russian women, so they did their best to get those marines to break that rule and then they squeezed them. they threatened to expose their wrongdoing unless these marines helped them out. so lots of young, attractive kgb officers got all sorts of access to u.s. embassy facilities. in the worst instance, the marine who was convicted of espionage and served nine years in prison, he apparently handed over blueprints for the embassy facilities. and then as thatoney trap scand public in 1987, the story also finally went public about the kgb embassy construction scam fiasco, and how russia was able to sew intrinsically compromise the basic building bones of our embassy. reporter: the new ambassador to moscow, jack matlock, arrived today. his first job, secure the embassy. the state department has asked the nation s top-secret national security agency to sweep the agency before secretary of state george schultz arrives in ten days. while marines allegedly compromised the current embassy, lack security was just as damaging next door at the new embassy now under construction. these officials believe the new offices are bugged top to bottom. they recommend the building be torn down and re-built from scratch. the cost, more than $1 billion. when the soviets built their new embassy complex in washington, they insisted all building materials be constructed on site. each beam and board was skr scrupulously x-rayed. but according to intelligence sources, american officials in moscow, were quote, outplayed from the start. soviet workmen pre-cast the concrete off-site without american supervision. workers on-site say security was a joke. the result, sophisticated listening devices embedded in foundations, floors, and walls. nbc nightly news ann gairls reporting in 1977. this is a big deal. the senate voted more than two to one that then secretary of state george schultz shouldn t go to moscow as long as our embassy couldn t be rendered safe for his visit. led to a big tit for tat fight with the rupssians where we bot expelled lots of people in both countries. and also led to a very frustrated and angry ronald reagan. i wanted to come in here to tell you that im deeply concerned over the breach of security in our embassy. the united states will not occupy our new embassy building in moscow unless and until i can be assured that it is safe to move into a secure embassy environment. mr. president, if the gorbachev changes his mind, will you then allow soviets to become re-employed at our embassy there? and how extensive is the problem in other soviet block embassy? we are investigating the whole area of embassies. so, listen, frank is going to take all of your questions, unfortunately, and i m not ducking you, i tried to answer a fe few. if mr. gorbachev changes his mind? i think we should have our own person. would you rehire soviet person to rework there. no, we should have our own personnel. president reagan left office after serving two full terms in january 1989, and in january 1989, as one of the last things he did as president, ronald reagan recommended that the entire u.s. embassy in moscow just be torn down, razed to the ground, start over. five years later in 1994, the u.s. sort of, partially, did that. some of the embassy was demolished and new top floors were installed. top floors. installed by u.s. workers, using u.s. materials, under u.s. supervision this time. so at least those top floors of the embassy could be made secure. however, they did just pop those top floors on the top of the old infected base of the building that we let the russians build for us. it was a ridiculous 25-year saga, that embassy. today, andrew higgins, moscow correspondent for the new york times reports on a new decision that has just been made about that embassy of ours in moscow, a decision made by the u.s. state department, under secretary of state rex tillerson. according to this new reporting, the u.s. state department has awarded a no-bid contract for security at the embassy, $2.8 billion contract. that curt contract has gone to, quote, a private russian company that grew out of a security business co-founded by vladimir putin s former kgb boss, a veteran spy, who spent 25 years planting agents in western security services. quote, security guards at the american embassy in moscow and at u.s. consulates in st. petersburg, yes cattierinburg and vladivostok will be provided by elite security holdings, a company closely linked to former top kgb. his name is victor budanov. he and vladimir putin worked closely together as kgb officers. he has been vocally support of president putin. he helped start the firm. it s now run by his son, dmitry. so, you know, what could g wrong? the firm that will now be screening visitors to the u.s. embassy in moscow, in other words, handling security matters at the u.s. embassy in moscow is a russian firm, linked not just to russian intelligence, but specifically to vladimir putin s former colleague in the kgb, who rose to run counterintelligence for the soviet union. and at this point in the story, i would usually make some joke about, hey, why not just hand them the keys? but literalliterally, they re g be running security at the embassy, so they are going to have the keys. again, a no-bid contract awarded by the state department under rex tillerson, first reported today in the new york times. why would you do that? president trump returns from his longest overseas trip tonight, even though it was a trip to asia. he still managed to squeeze in three meetings with russian president vladimir putin on this trip. despite the fact that the white house never confirmed in advance whether or not those meetings would happen, luckily for us, the kremlin and russian media was able to let us know that those meetings had happened, as our soonest notification as americans. after his meetings with putin, president trump found time to make extensive and uniformly supportive comments about putin and russia. i believe that he feels that he and russia did not meddle in the election. i believe that president putin really feels, and he feels strongly, that he did not meddle in our election. what he believes is what he believes. and, you know, people don t realize, russia has been very, very heavily sanctioned. they were sanctioned at a very high level. and that took place very recently. it s now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken. really sounds like quintessential trump, right? it s the kind of thing you heard from trump every day. it s time to get back to healing the world. isn t that the way our president typically talks? the great healer. remember the art of the heal ? remember? the president s attitude toward the russian federation and russian president vladimir putin is unlike his evident relationship with anybody else. let alone the president of a country that is not just an active adversary, but a country that was aggressively involved in our domestic affairs last year, to the point where the previous administration kicked out tons of their diplomats, closed their diplomatic facilities in the united states, and made unprecedented declarations from the unified american intelligence community expressing alarm about what putin and russia had done. so in terms of what s going on there, between our president and putin, we still don t know. he behaves toward hum tim the we behaves towards no one else. in terms of the president s campaign, the investigations into the links between the russian attack on our election and president trump s campaign include now known contacts between the trump campaign and a russian lawyer and a russian lobbyist and a russian-linked academic and a russian who said she s putin s niece and a russian military intelligence veteran and a russian oligarch, and russian energy executives and also the russian deputy prime minister. and, of course, the russian ambassador. attorney general jeff sessions today upgraded his memory stick once again to declare to the house judiciary committee that despite his previous denials that he d had any information about any russian contact by members of the trump campaign, he now does recall that he may be had been aware about some of those contacts during the campaign. he insists that his evolving statements on these matters is all truthful. is all true. it s all innocent. he insists that he s consistently told the truth, even though his story has consistently changed. we don t know everything the trump campaign was doing with all of these russian contacts, while russia was interfering in the election to help trump win it. but after russia interfered to help trump win the election and then trump won the election, the trump administration has continued to behave toward russia in ways we don t have to speculate about. we don t have to wonder about. we can see it. i mean, look what they have just decided to do with security at the beleaguered u.s. embassy in moscow? look at how rex tillerson has decimated the u.s. state department. look at how the president has expressed how russia has really been very heavily sanctioned and now it s time to get back to healing the world. look at how secretary of state tillerson has closed the office at state department that administers sanctions. look at even the basic stuff about russia being able to announce the behavior and meetings of our president before we can. look at the president inviting russian officials and a guy with a bag of camera equipment into the oval office without ever telling the united states media that that was happening. so the russian press would break news of that first. s and and then once they were in there, he told them code word protected intelligence that had been gathered by one of our allies that he did not have permission to share. russian attacks on our election last year is an unprecedented thing. but time and time again, the behavior of the administration towards russia since they ve been in office is just previously unthinkable submission. whatever happened during the campaign, it really appears to not be over. it s not just what they did back then. it s what s happening right now. of thoughts and dreams that scatter you pull them all together and how, i can t explain oh yeah, well well well youuuu you make my dreams come true well, well, well youuuu topped steak & twisted potatoes at applebee s. eatin good in the neighborhood. whstuff happens. old shut down cold symptoms fast with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels. the republican foreign policy platform with mr. flynn at any point during the campaign? i don t recall it. in january, were you notified when the administration was notified of mr. flynn s lie and his susceptibility to russian blackmail? i don t believe so. did you at any point discuss with michael flynn the possibility of then candidate trump or his surrogates meeting with the russian government? i do not recall such a conversation. did you know that flynn was working for the turkish government while acting as a surrogate for the trump campaign? i don t believe i had information to that effect. did you know that he was working for the turk issue government at any point after the election? i don t believe so. california s zoe loftgren trying today to get attorney general jeff sessions to remember anything, anything at all, regarding trump national security adviser, michael flynn, from the time of the trump campaign, when jeff sessions was supposed to be in charge of national security issues on that campaign. given reports of the very serious legal jeopardy that mike flynn may now be in, given the recent indictment of the trump campaign chairman and his deputy, given the guilty plea and cooperation of a trump foreign policy adviser, whose role on the campaign, the attorney general, was reportedly overseeing, did today s testimony by attorney general jeff sessions shed light on whether he himself may be in legal jeopardy, either from the russia investigation, or from anything else that has grown out of it. what did we learn today? joining us now is matthew miller, he s the former chief spokesman for the justice department. mr. miller, thank you so much for joining us. really appreciate it. of course, thank you. i want to ask you first about mike flynn. i wanted to play that slot from that sound from zoe lofgren today, because i found it remarkable that sessions is essentially making it seem like he s never heard of mike flynn, he certainly didn t know anything salient about him. even once mike flynn was in office and everybody learned that he had been working for the turkish government, jeff sessions was pretending, at least to my mind, that he has no idea who he is. how serious is mike flynn s legal jeopardy right now, as far as what we know? and does it matter if people on the campaign pretend they didn t know? mike flynn s legal jeopardy has been great for a long time. and it s gotten bigger, just based on the reports that nbc has broken in the last week or so, where we ve learned that not only was he acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the turkish government, not only did he potentially lie on his security clearance forms and lies to the fbi about his conversations with the russian ambassador, but he may have been discussing ining receiving $15n in exchange for either a kidnapping scheme, by one telling of the story, or for helping facilitate the extradition of a turkish cleric who lives in the united states, who the turkish government has been trying to get for a long time. and it s really important with respect to the rest of the investigation, because the president s exposure and potentially the attorney general s exposure largely centers around obstruction of justice, at least as far as we know. and that all started with sally yates warning to the white house that mike flynn was somewhat of a national security risk and that caused, you know, the president to start a series of meetings with jim comey, asking for a loyalty pledge, asking him to back off the flynn investigation, that are really start central to all of this. so if the flynn on that point there, just to be clear. if the flynn underlying investigation, that james comey says he was being pressured about by the president, if the flynn underlying investigation was about not promptly registering under the foreign agent registration act, or if it were about something that s the kind of thing that s turned up in the manafort and gates indictment, something about bank fraud or tax evasion or something like that. would that be a different quality of obstruction of justice than if what flynn s investigation was about, was actually a violent felony like attempted kidnapping? you know, not necessarily. you can be convicted of obstruction of justice, even when there was no underlying crime that is ever charged by the department of justice. but when you look at this, with you know, you always are looking for the most compelling narrative you can tell a jury. that s what prosecutors will tell you. but in this case, when you re looking at a compelling narrative that would ultimately be subject to an impeachment proceedings, most legal experts agree that s where this would end as it relates to the president himself, it is a much more compelling theory if you can show that the reason that he was asking jim comey to back off on mike flynn was not just because flynn was a friend of his or that he thought flynn was a good guy, but that he knew that flynn had underlying legal jeopardy that would cause him serious problems, and even worse, if you could show that those serious problems extended into the administration itself. so if there were acts that mike flynn took while he was a national security adviser, for example, asking to speed up this extradition or asking to start this extradition while he was potentially takie ing $15 milli in bribes, that would make that story about donald trump obstructing justice much more compelling. matthew miller, former chief spokesman for the justice department. this was a marathon hearing today. thanks for helping us absorb it. much appreciated. thank you. we ve got a lot more to get to tonight. stay with us. that s the new man, huh? yup. getting kinda close to my ride. wow. now, 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that isn t a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become? i m tom steyer, and like you, i m a citizen who knows it s up to us to do something. it s why i m funding this effort to raise our voices together and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment. a republican congress once impeached a president for far less. yet today people in congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who s mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. and they do nothing. join us and tell your member of congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what s political and start doing what s right. our country depends on it. brooks, a republican from alabama, has been in office since 2011. i have to show you his picture now. because in this next clip, congressman brooks is moving awfully fast and you may not recognize him. do you believe the women? click, click, click, click, click, click. hey, you re from alabama. can we talk about roy moore! sir, i have a question about roy moore. that s tom llamas of abc news tonight running after congressman mo brooks and doing so in dress shoes. and doing so very well, holding the handrail for safety. well done. judge moore has become an albatross around the neck of the republican party. he has put them in a tough spot. republicans do not want to look too friendly to him, given the allegations against him. they don t want to look too supportive, but they really would like to keep that alabama senate seat in republican control. and all the beltway hand-wringing and all the running from reporters down staircases might make it seem like there s no obvious and easy way out here for republicans. but you know what, there is totally a way that would totally work. they have done it before. and it worked way better for them than running away down the stairs. they could totally do something. hold that thought. we are the driven. the dedicated. the overachievers. we know our best investment is in ourselves. we don t take no for an answer. we fight for what we want. even for the things that were once a given. going to college. buying a home. and not being in debt for it for the rest of our lives. but we re only as strong as our community. who inspires and pushes us to go further than we could ever go alone. sofi. get there sooner. this was the front page of the washington post on november 22nd, 1992. so less than three weeks after the big presidential election that year. packwood accused of sexual advances, alleged behavior pattern counters image. four-term republican senator bob packwood of oregon had just been re-elected three weeks before. but then there was this bombshell scoop on the front page of the washington post, spelling out ten alleged incidents dating back to his first year as a united states senator. quote, in some cases, the women said the behavior took place when he d been drinking. several said he was abrupt, grabbing them without warning, kissing them forcefully and persisting until they made clear they were not interested or had pushed him away. eventually, 19 women in total came forward to accuse senator bob packwood of sexual misconduct. the senate ethics committee opened an investigation into him. they investigated bob packwood for 33 months, during which time the republicans regained control of the senate from democrats. even with republicans in charge, the committee refused senator packwood s repeated requests that he should be allowed to participate in public hearings on the matter. they said no to that. they proceeded on their own terms. and after that 33-month investigation, the senate ethics committee released a report. a ten-volume damning report on senator bob packwood. it was over 10,000 pages long. it weighed 40 pounds. for a while, it made for some nong-rated reporting on the nightly news. the committee released more than 10,000 documents, including embarrassing excerpts from packwood s diary. in them, the senator claims to have had sexual encounters with 22 members of his staff, some in his office, some described in explicit detail. he wrote, she has the most stunning figure, big breasts. needless to say, i did not stop myself. he also wrote that it was his christian duty to make love to one staffer. even more potentially troublesome, the committee laid out how diaries were altered by packwood, in what was deemed an illegal effort to cover up and obstruct the senate investigation. the matter was referred to the justice department for possible criminal charges. senator bob packwood had held out for 33 months. but after that 10,000-page report from the senate ethics committee, he quit. he quit that same day. senator bob packwood was done. he resigned before he could get officially expelled from the u.s. senate. he resigned in tears on the floor of the senate. and the person who forced that, the chair of that senate ethics committee, who went so far as recommending federal charges against his fellow republican, who whipped his committee to vote for an unanimous expulsion vote for bob packwood, who rolled out that 40-pound indictment against his fellow republican to make sure that senator bob packwood would resign, the chair of that ethics committee who played such hai r hardball on that issue, who made all of that happen was a republican senator from kentucky named mitch mcconnell. the committee has heard enough. the senate has heard enough. the public has heard enough. the evidence is compelling and it seems to me the appropriate response would be resignation. reporter: both senators specifically challenged packwood s claim that he was, at worst, guilty of over-eagerly kissing women. he used physical coercion against his victims, frightening them, and causing them severe emotional distress. reporter: mitch mcconnell, now the senate republican leader, he really did lead the charge against one of his own republican colleagues in the early 90s, ultimately making sure that senator bob packwood had no friends in the senate and had no rational choice but to resign, in tears. and as republicans deal with a not-quite-exact but weirdly similar situation on their hands now, now a republican candidate for senate, accused of sexual misconduct against teenagers, honestly, there s no one better suited in the united states senate to manage a crisis like this. to end a crisis like this, than mitch mcconnell. there is no one who has more apt experience for how you make a problem like this go away. calling for roy moore to drop out of the senate race in alabama is a thing. calling for alabama voters to reject him and vote for his opponent instead, that s a thing. but roy moore isn t just trying to win a random contest. he s trying to join something. he s trying to join the united states senate. and that body has considerable say over whether or not roy moore gets to do that. and yes, they could wait until after the election to start working then on expelling roy moore once he gets to washington, but the senate could also begin holding hearings on roy moore right now and his fitness as a potential united states senator. they could start taking care of this today, and mitch mcconnell absolutely knows how to do that. it s not like this is a dilemma with no way out. they could start this now. the model is there, it s their own history. they invented this model. they have done it before. great steve kornacki joins us next. stay with us. cd s, baseball cards. your old magic set? and this wrestling ticket. which you still owe me for. seriously? $25 i didn t even want to go. ahhh, your diary. mom says it is totally natural. $25 is nothing. abracadabra, bro. the bank of america mobile banking app. the fast, secure and simple way to send money. coaching means making tough choices. jim! you re in! but when you have high blood pressure and need cold medicine that works fast, the choice is simple. coricidin hbp is the #1 brand that gives powerful cold symptom relief without raising your blood pressure. coricidin hbp. they always refer to me as master sergeant. they really appreciate the military family, and it really shows. we ve got auto insurance, homeowners insurance. had an accident with a vehicle, i actually called usaa before we called the police. usaa was there hands-on very quick very prompt. i feel like we re being handled as people that actually have a genuine need. we re the webber family and we are usaa members for life. usaa, get your insurance quote today. republican senators and the republican senate campaign committee all cutting ties with him, despite all that, nbc news reported that as of last night, the rnc, the republican national committee, still had 11 national party operatives on the groundworking in alabama, trying to get roy moore elected to the united states senate that was last night. tonight those republican field operatives have now left alabama. the rnc has ended their work in alabama. and as of tonight, the rnc also is no longer part of the fundraising agreement that it struck with the roy moore campaign. sort of knew it would happen eventually. didn t know it would happen that fast. but now it s just the roy moore campaign and the alabama republican party fending for themselves. they think they ll win that senate race next month. and a lot of alabama observers think they are right. then what? joining us now is the great steve kornacki, national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc. steve, great to see you. great to be here. i had john archibald from the birmingham news last night. he says even what the fifth accuser coming forward and describing her as very credible in alabama terms, he still thinks roy moore is going to win. what do you think? it s certainly possible. to put it in some perspective, you ve got to go back to 1996 to find a senate race in alabama that was even a single digit race you. have you to go back to 1992 to find a democrat who actually won a race there, and that was richard shelby who switched parties midway through the term. so that s the history they re up against here. on the other hand, it s possible he could still lose this race. roy moore last ran for office in alabama in 2012 for chief justice. on the same day mitt romney was on the ballot for president. mitt romney won alabama with 62% of the vote. roy moore got 51% in the race for chief justice. so even before all of this, he was an unusually polarizing figure in alabama. i know that was a statewide race, not for federal office. federal office could introduce more polarization into the race. it s certainly possible he could lose the race. if there is ever a circumstance where republicans could lose you re looking at it right now. but you can t look at this history and say roy moore is certain to lose this thing. it is possible he ll get elected. and what do you make of the washington machinations today what the republican party could or might do to basically rid themselves of him to keep him out of the senate or to expel him from the senate if he does win? if he does win, look, it s hard when you look at the statements that are being made right now about the intent to expel, and also the rationale for expulsion. the comments being made about roy moore s character, about roy moore s actions, these look like comments that will be very difficult to walk back from if you re a republican. so the republicans won t be able to change their mind? it s hard to see them saying eh, the people spoke. they ve already said look, there is an election, but we re not going the wait for the election to say this man is unfit to serve in the united states senate. so you then look at a scenario where, okay, if he does win and the republicans stick to this what they re saying right now about expulsion, they would seat him. the senate ethics committee would launch the investigation. you just went through what happened with packwood. and that s the threat that mcconnell, that s leverage that mcconnell, if he has any leverage with moore it s that. it s the threat of hey, you re going to have to go under oath. you re going to have to answer questions about this under oath. it s very different than a generic comment you re going to make to a reporter or something. you can t duck the ethics committee like a reporter. that s the leverage right now. if he gets elected, he gets seated, the ethics committee opens the investigation. they could then find grounds for expulsion. they could vote to expel. the seat would be vacated and we go right back to estimate process we just had. the governor would appoint somebody. a special election could be called. roy moore could run in the special election. well could be in circles here hi, could run again, right. could mcconnell delay his swearing in? no. the swearing in is not something the court rulings are clear on that. because there was a fight in the house about 50 years over adam clayton powell. and the court was emphatic that when it came to seating a member, if a member is elected, there is no choice. you to seat the member. when it comes to expulsion, if they do move to expel and moore warn to have had challenge in court, that could get having. this about actions that preceded his election to the u.s. senate there is some legal theorys on this that you can only expel for actions that actually occurred while somebody was in the senate or while somebody was in thousand. this is unexplored legal terrain. we haven t had an actual expulsion since 1862. certainly there is a difference right now it seems between seating and actual expulsion. if he does win and they do have to seat him, it s up to mitch mcconnell whether or not he has committee positions, how they handle the expulsion investigation or any proceedings there. and as we know, mitch mcconnell is good at that sort of thing when he wants to be. he is experienced too. steve kornacki national political reporter for nbc news and msnbc. good to see you. new news tonight from last week s election there is a lot to chew over. a lot to chew, to chew specifically. that s next. it s all phh.culture trivia, -the new guy. -whoa, he looks -he looks exactly like me. -no. -separated at birth much? we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i m pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we re not the lowest. even if we re not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us. 40 million americans are waking up to a gillette shave. and at our factory in boston, 1,200 workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we re bringing you america s number one shave at lower prices every day. putting money back in the pockets of millions of americans. as one of those workers, i m proud to bring you gillette quality for less, because nobody can beat the men and women of gillette. gillette - the best a man can get. public service announcement. again. those teeth are still waiting for somebody to claim them. somebody left these false teeth behind in a these specifically. these teeth in a portland, maine voting booth on election day a week ago tonight. now, a very helpful elections clerk scooped them up and kept them safe, and a local paper put out word in the portland press herald that the teeth have been collected, and these clean, lovely choppers are waiting for their rightful owner to come reclaim them. and really, people have looked everywhere. today the news reached the republic of malta, which i m telling you is 4,000 miles and an ocean away from portland, maine. the hunt for these poor lost teeth has circled the globe. but still a week later, nobody has claimed them. you would think that somebody missed them. we spoke to the portland city clerk s office today. they told us that one person called about the teeth yesterday morning, but, quote [ laughter ] quote, the questions he asked did not match the dentures we have. so this raises interesting questions. did more than one voter lose a set of teeth in portland, maine while voting last week? what happened to the owner of
nbc news, a source close to cohn said the decision to resign was abrupt. entirely due to irreconcilable differences based on trump s tariff plan. the white house said today the president will sign the plan by the end of this week. both democrats and republicans have warned of the risk of a trade war. axios reports cohn considered the announcement a personal embarrassment. he had boasted to his wall street and hamptons buddies he had kept the president on the right track on trade. there s growing alarm now of a potential brain drain at the white house coordinating to the associated press. cohn s departure sparked fears of a larger exodus. the president tried to preempt the concerns yesterday. let s watch. the white house has tremendous energy, tremendous spirit. it is a great place to be working. many, many people want every single job. i read where, gee, maybe people times. the times is reporting president trump spoke to witnesses about matters they discussed with special counsel robert mueller. they reported the special counsel in the russian investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which president trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters. the first vold don mcgahn and the second reince priebus. as the times reports, legal experts says trump s contact with those men most likely did not rise to the level of witness tampering but potentially a problem and shared them with mr. mueller. we re joined by new york times reporter mike it will schmidt who broke the story. this is odd in the sense that i do you as a nonlawyer that this looks like the wrong thing to do. you shouldn t be talking to people who have just talked to the prosecutor because it suggests you re riding helicopter on these people. number one rule is investigations don t talk to witnesses, don t talk to prosecutes. and leave that alone. the president has largely disregarded that advice from his lawyers. it s particularly interesting because the president got into so much trouble for trying to talk to comey and that was disclosed this is head scratching for a lot of people watching it. what does this tell us about the intensity factors in the white house in terms of the president trying to check on what s coming at him? i think the president can t help himself. he s curious and he wants to know as much as he can and he wants to try and find out as much as he can about the mueller investigation. and you know, obviously anyone in his situation would be curious in that way, but the problem is that it creates this appearance that doesn t look good to mueller because it looks the two of them. thank you, mike schmidt from the new york times for breaking that story to us while we got it from you. let me go to ashley parker. this seems to be i want to get to the crazy empty house at the white house where everybody seems to be leaving. but this question where the president is now denying he told mcgahn to fire comey. well, it seems like in reading that article which again is not my story, but is that he pushed, the president denieded that to mcgahn and mcgahn gently reminded the president that actually, sir, you did ask me to do this. this gets to sort of a central problem the president has which is he often when he s saying something in the moment, he says what he wishes it to be. and then he seems toes genuinely believe it. some people would say he was lying to mcgahn, other people would say he was simply misremembering. but it makes him a very unreliable narrator and hard to deal with. it s one of the reasons his lawyers are res stoent have him go before them and certainly something verbal rather than written questions and a reason you re seeing the exodus in the white house. he s difficult to deal with and people are finally saying i ve had enough. i guess, peter, the question is how do you restrain somebody who can t remember that you weren t restraining him last time if he doesn t have a conscious memory what he s told people to do, how do they think they can influence what he doeses? very challenging client for any lawyer, of course. michael was right and ashley is right. this is one thing lawyers make clear to their clients, don t talk to witnesses even if you have nothing but benign intent, it can easily be misinterpreted. going back to the bill clinton era when the monica lewinsky case and he calls in his secretary and leads her through i m sorry, like don regan who goss an inflated idea who he was. he thought he was prime minister down there and the president reagan was some sort of old time sort of hanging around hindenburg type that didn t matter anymore. he learned he was not in fact in charge. does this president need these people that think of themselves that is important? does trump need gary cohn or people like him around him? he doesn t seem to want them. look, if you hire the former president of goldman sachs pretty important job as your chief economic adviser, then you know, i think he expects you to follow his advice on fundamental things. things fundamental to him. but trump trumpet to the world he was a protectionist. when cohn arrived he knew he was going to work voluntarily for a protectionism and then he says i can t believe protectionism is going on here and it was and is. cohn is making perhaps i think made the mistake, people treat this man as if he s a 2-year-old. he can be humored and you make excuses for this. but he can be led in that of this direction. he s not a 2-year-old. he s a grown man who has been like this all his life. and knows exactly what he s doing. going back to the first story, he knows he s not supposed to talk to witnesses but okaying. > figures people will say trump will be trump. trump will indeed be trump. he s our president right now david jolly, somebody may go to the white house thinking they can put the president of the united states in a play pen and pacify him and keep him there while they run the place themselves. the president puts his staff people in play pens. gary cohn didn t think the job was big enough for him, trump thought it was and was unsatisfied. is this a 10% of whatever, are we making a bigger story, everybody s making this into a huge story. all the major papers say there s a problem with trump in the traffic, people coming in and out of the white house is too swift, it s not healthy. is it nor not important? no, this is a big story. the country needs experts around had president whether you agree with their ideology or not, when it comes to the economy and national security, we need people smarter than the current president advising him. look, they re leaving for one reason. and it s donald trump. there s an old ax yox in industry that s true in politics, you never leave a good job but you do leave a bad boss. donald trump is incapable of knowing the seriousness of this office. we ve become conditioned to accept the condition of mediocrity. cohn left if you ve got a shot at protecting a shred of your reputation, you leave the white house now. with cohn out, an commercial nationalist like peter navarro seemed to be on the rice in the white house. in june of 2016 is, he appeared on hardball along with alf cole president richard trumka where he offered this bizarre defense of his candidate donald trump. let s watch. donald trump is has a platform that you guys are dreaming about. he is taking every step. he s a fraud. the afl-cio has recommended for a president to take. he s a fraud. that may be but we re going to find out. that may be. your workers don t believe he s a fraud. they believe that he is the guy. you just said it may be that trump s a fraud. what did you mean by that? here s what i mean. trump says he s a fraud. i say we ll find out. my view is your workers don t think he s a fraud. i don t think he s a fraud which is why i m supporting him. that was a strange ashley, that was a strange defense of your candidate saying he may be a fraud. i don t know. what s his name, nunberg said that roger stone may lie. i don t know he may lie once in awhile. these people s defense of each other is narrow simply in terms of loyalty but not qualifications or basically professional morality. sure. in this white house, the tone starts at the top. and the president demands absolute loyalty. you do see that. and there are sort of weak defenses of one another. that s not taking into account all the ways people are publicly knifing each other. there is a sense among a lot of people in the white house that they re not actually that loyal to trump personally. he is sort of this vehicle or vessel for them to try to move their opinions. as is in the case with kae gae, when they re unsuccessful they ll leave. that is the damning praise from people who don t always respect the boss. peter baker, that would suggest why we re getting great reporting out of the white house. they don t rest the guy. usually you had your manifest responsibility to have a moral commitment to the boss, you believed in the person. you worked for them for that reason. and that was the only reason you worked for them. they weren t replaceable parts, these bosses. i don t understand how people think about this president as somebody who happens to work with them but doesn t deserve their respect or loyalty but ratted out pre day to the press. i m not knocking your sources but they seem to be prolific. they re everywhere. yeah, you make a good point. there are definitely people in the white house who believe strongly in president trump and his agenda, believe strongly in his presidency. it is true a number of people in the west wing are more jaundiced about him. they roll their eyes at night with friends and colleagues like hit critics do. they tend to talk outside of school a little bit about what they re encount kerring because they re frustrated. they may be there because they believe in his agenda but not in him, they may believe they re helping the country get through a difficult time. you re right, not everybody there is a complete loyalist. david, you ve been a politics. have you ever had people working for you that you thought were really just there out of career ambition no, love or affection for you or even honor for you? did you have anybody like that around you? well, no. if you saw it, you smoked it out. and respectfully to peter s point, he s being very generous to a lot of white house staff. they re there largely a number of underqualified people there out of self-interest. only people who believe in his agenda are the steven millers of the world. those are the wrong people we want in the white house. that makes it a happy hunting ground for journalists. it does. you ve never had a leakyer administration. what does it tell you about the quality of the administration? there are a lot of mediocrities in the white house. this is a rough jury. i have to respect. i do respect this jury. it is tough and coming in in i would say in a geet attitude. they re guilty. thank you ashley parker, michael schmidt was on the phone. i thought he was on a ship to shore phone. peter baker, eugene robinson and david jolly. the legal battle between adult film star stormy daniels and donald trump. she says the nondisclosure agreement she signed isn t valid because the president didn t sign it. do trump and his attorney have a fighting chance to keep her quiet? that s ahead. plus, more new details about the russian investigation as robert mueller s investigators digging into secret meetings between trump allies in the say shell islands. the uae and the trumps threat of a trade war opened up a gaming rift between the president and many republicans. and it could smother over the economic message they hoped would cut their losses in this year s midterm elections. the happy talk about the tax cut ain t so happy right now. finally, something that happened 507 years ago next week. this is hardball where the action is. ng for a house. but one day we re sitting there and we decided that, something needed to be done about what was going on in our inner-city. instead of buying a house, we decided to form this youth league. these kids mean everything to me and i just want to make sure i give something positive to do. wow, that s amazing. that s a blessing right there. to know that someone out there cares and is passionate about what we re trying to do in our communities. you excited? yes. yeah, we re gonna to look good right? yup. awesome. alright come on, bring it in man. love these guys right here. alright come on, bring it in man. burned me up and down, shno way to cool it. every time you kiss me it s like sunshine and whiskey applebee s handcrafted burgers. any burger just $7.99. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. do you want clean, stain free dentures? try polident. the four in one cleaning system kills 99.99% of odor causing bacteria, cleans where brushing may miss. helps remove stains and prevent stain build up. use polident daily. attorney general jeff sessions traveled to california today to formally announce that the trump administration is suing the california over its immigration policies. in a speech top california law enforcement officials, sessions blasted the state s so-called sanctuary laws saying it made it impossible for federal agents to do their jobs. and crack down on illegal immigration. he said the laws are being pushed by radical extremist who s want open borders. governor jerry brown accused the attorney general, catch this, of trying to apiece his boss, president trump. this is completely unprecedented. for the chief law enforcement of the united states to come out here and engage in a political stunt, make wild accusations, many of which are based on outright lies, that s unusual. i do think this is pure red meat for the base, and i would assume but this is pure speculation, that jeff thinks that donald will be happier with him. i m sure donald will be tweeting his joy at this particular performance. jerry brown, still amazingly state-of-the-a state-of-the-art. we ll be right back. get an extra day by the pool get to spend more time together get more moments to remember there are some things you can only get when you book with us. get more from your spring break getaway with exclusive hilton offers. book yours, only at hilton.com when you have something you love, you want to protect it. at legalzoom, our network of attorneys can help you every step of the way. with an estate plan including wills or a living trust that grows along with you and your family. legalzoom. where life meets legal. he s taking this action on today. a lot of the amount of misinformation that s out there, some of which has been disseminated by mr. cohn and others she believes it s important the public learn the truth what happened. trump s long time personal lawyer michael cohen has previously said trump denies the allegations and sarah huckabee sanders reiterated that point earlier today. let s hear her. the president has addressed these directly and made very well clear none of these allegations are true. this case has already been won in arbitration and anything beyond that, i would refer you to the president s outside counsel. well, the civil suit a copy of which first obtained by nbc news says daniels had a relationship with president trump from 2006 to 2007. it then alleges years later during the 2016 presidential campaign, mr. trump and his personal lawyer michael cohen pressured her that would be stormy daniels, into signing a nondisclosure agreement or hush agreement for $130,000 and a guarantee that she would not share any texts, photos or information about the alleged relationship. mr. cohen previously said he used his own personal funds to an fail tate the payment to daniels and neither the trump organization or campaign of trump s was party to the transaction. a copy of the agreement appears as evidence in the lawsuit. while president trump is not named in the document, the suit alleges stormy and trump entered into the agreement under pseudonyms daniels as peggy peterson, trump as catch this name, david dennison. the signature line for denison you can see there is blank. he didn t sign it. michael cohen has not responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit. yawn dowd we know him has declined to comment. for more, katie from miami. you ve got a big question. what s this all about? who is going to win. so as a legal perspective, stormy daniels has a little bit of an uphill battle. california law stands for the proposition just because you didn t sign an agreement doesn t mean it s still not enforceable. what do i mean by that? why did she get $130,000 and why did she take that pone if it wasn t to keep her silent. the reality is, is she going to prevail in court? you know what, michael cohen seems to think not. he has run to a private arbitrator and gotten a preliminary temporary injunction keeping her from speaking out. stormy daniels has taken the high road by going to the court and seeking a declaration whether or not that agreement is enforceable and asking the judge to basically set the playing field for any potential litigation between her, donald trump and michael cohen. i didn t realize the power of this nondisclosure till i heard today one of the provisions was if she did talk about the alleged affair with the president, backing in what, 2006 or whatever, 2007 that, she would have to make a payment of $1 million. i sound like austin powers, a million dollars every type she says anything. that s right. is that a familiar feature of these nondisclosures that kind of panel? it is called a liquidated damages provision. it does say each breach, not just in total, chris, but for each breach of this disclosure agreement or nondisclosure agreement, donald trump could get $1 million from stormy daniels and get his $130,000 back. as you noted at the beginning of the segment, it s michael cohen s money which begs the next question why is he spending $130,000 of his own money if it wasn t to affect the outcome of the election we just had. have you seen any contract like this where they charged somebody who violated it because they said something to a talk show host enforced for like a million dollars? has that happened? i guess i would have heard about it. it s the collectibility factor. is stormy collectible a million dollars for each, the answer is no. the other thing is michael cohen himself is talking about this violating the confidentiality of this agreement. so it seems like everybody involved here as unclean hands in one way or another. last question, why is she doing this and filing to get out of the contract? i keep thinking she goes on 60 minutes or another talk show. how much money can you get? nobody around here seems to know what kind of money is involved. is she doing a mini series on it? how much can you exploit ow of this thinging? ing. > it depends how salacious is your interest in this. they could do a tell all that gets her maybe a million bucks. donald trump is somebody that everybody s interested in. maybe people want to know about his pro clive vits. maybe she s interested in sharing. > it doesn t seem to interest. people especially the cultural right. i still say he never would but if barack obama had been involved in something this seedy, they would be jumping up and down in joy on the right attacking him as a she s ball instead of giving this guy a bye. a mulligan that s his mully cuban. and katie phang, thank you. robert mueller has a new cooperating witness in the russian probe. he could have lots of info on secret meetings between the trump team and the russians offshore. interesting where they agreed to meet, russians and trump people way far from here where nobody would be have caught them doing it but they did catch them. hardball is coming back with more action. pass please. i m here to fix the elevator. nothing s wrong with the elevator. right. but you want to fix it. right. so who sent you? new guy. what new guy? watson. my analysis of sensor and maintenance data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days. there you go. you still need a pass. you wouldn t accept from any one else. so why accept it from your allergy pills? most pills don t finish the job because they don t relieve nasal congestion. flonase allergy relief is different. flonase relieves sneezing, itchy, watery eyes and a runny nose, plus nasal congestion, which pills don t. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. and 6 is greater than 1. start your day with flonase for more complete allergy relief. flonase. this changes everything. the influence of foreign money on trump s activities and askinging if george nader funneled money from the emirates to the president s political efforts. perhaps more significant is nader might shed new light on a meeting he attended in the seychelles a remote chain of islands in the indian ocean just before trump s inauguration in january of 2017. it was there that erik prince, the founder of the private security company blackwater and informal adviser to the trump transition met with nidder and the crown prince of the uae and joined bid a russian oligarch who they saw as a conduit to the russian government. prince said the meeting was not related to business. but the new york times reports emirati officials had a very different impression. at the meeting the officials believed mr. prince was speaking for the trump transition team and a russian fund manager kirill represented mr. putin. i m joined by jeremy bash, former cia chief of staff and national security analyst and a former u.s. acting solicitor general. first jeremy on this meeting. walks like a duck, talks like a duck. what s this meeting with a russian right before the inauguration out in the say shells? it appears to be another secret trump putin back channel, appears to be an effort by russian oligarchs to find individuals close to the trump team. erik prince in addition to being the founder of blackwater is also the brother of one of trump s cabinet members, betsy devos. who did the president get connected with first, erik prince or betsy devos? i m curious about the relationship. betsy devos has been a republican fund-raiser for many years. erik prince was holding himself out as someone having access to the trump inner circle. that probably peaked the confidante of putin. what would be the topic? it could have been about big policy issues like sanctions. prince was involved in a lot of counter-terrorism partners of the united states. it could have been about business. it s interesting bob mueller got a grand jury subpoena, a cooperating witness, he held someone at dulles airport. nader. this individual who was at the meet who brokered the meeting and bob mueller is very interested in what was discussed. one last question. do we know whether the lebanese american business guy who was in the seychelles if there was there present at the russians were dealing with the trump guy? was he overhearing the conversation? there are reports in the times, he attended the meeting. according to the times, he once worked as a consultant to blackwater. the transcript of prince s testimony to the house intelligence committee shows he did not disclose ha george nader was present at the meeting. in fact, adam schiff asked specifically did you meet anyone else in the seychelles from your company or any other shays there? and erik prince said no. that is suspicious. neil, what do you make of this case and who you thinking what mueller s up to and fishing way offshore to a meeting in the seychelles right before the inauguration? jeremy is right saying there s evidence here there s some sort of russian thing going on. it further illustrates the narrative rule number with trump is there s always a russian. this is another russian we haven t heard of before. it furthers the collusion conspiracy piece that one has been, that, mueller has been looking into. there s a separate piece of the story which is the uae and whether or not they might have influenced the election. it s a federal crime section 3121 says for a foreign national interfere with to give money to a u.s. campaign and there s angations in that new york times article that says that oh, the uae might have been doing that. that s something mueller will be looking at. it s important to read that story in light of what you just reported a few minutes ago the new york times story about michael schmidt about trump actually coaching witnesses or saying hey, what did mueller ask you about. talk about the law. what s the law say about debriefing people after they ve been interviewed by the people with mueller? what s the legal status? it is one of the most dangerous things do you. as a lawyer, as a defense lawyer, you would always tell your client, do not talk to witnesses because you ll get accused of witness tampering. whether or not you did or not, there s an intent standard. it looks so bad. basically you ve got donald trump acting like a two-bit criminal and saying to witnesses like priebus, what did you say? were you nice to me and so on. that is horrible. i m a defense lawyer. i love a challenge. i represented bin laden s driver. bin laden s driver acted with far more integrity in every stage of the investigation than donald trump has so far. this is just the published report what we know. if you re mueller you re looking at this and saying heavens me, what is this guy up to and what is he hiding? one last thing, mueller already knew this. i guarantee you 100%, he didn t have to wait for the new york times half an hour ago, that is priebus s lawyer bill burck is an excellent lawyer. i m sure priebus told his lawyer exactly what happened in the oval office and the very first thing burke did was pick up the phone and call mueller and say here is what happened. here s two questions from me. what was trump if trump was talking to these people like mcgahn who had talked to the investigators, would he try to find out which direction they were going in and why does it seem like he s tampering if he talks to them after their testimony? because it s not there s no like a one-time thing where you go in and that s it, no. there s often repeated interactions between a witness and law enforcement. so he could be seen as coping them for future testimony. exactly. it looks like they re getting their story straight. not only that, but he was coaching mcgahn. like the menendez procedures with the phones hooked up together. they taped together the phones. it looks like he was coaching mcgahn to say remember, i never told you fire bob mueller. he had to say did you tell me to fire mueller. . it shows the president was not even telling it the truth to his own guy and the president did want to fire bob mueller. why did he tell him that, to get a different testimony out of had im. to say publicly you ve got to cover me. he s scripting the guy. maybe it doesn t rise to the level of formal crime of witness tampering. we re talking about the president of the united states in the oval office doing these kinds of shenanigans. whether it s a crime or not, it is the most poor judgment imaginable. nobody s shocked. thank you sir. up next the white house threat of trade war sparked a real war between trump and the republican leadership in congress. they re worried his latest move could cripple them. they want to talk tax cut from now till november. now he s talking trade. you re watching hardball. you might take something for your heart. or joints. but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally found in jellyfish, prevagen is the number one selling brain-health supplement in drug stores nationwide. prevagen. the name to remember. my job is to help educate our first responders on how to deal with natural gas and electric emergencies. everyday when we go to work we want everyone to work safely and come home safely. i live right here in auburn, i absolutely love this community. once i moved here i didn t want to live anywhere else. i love that people in this community are willing to come together to make a difference for other people s lives. together, we re building a better california. president trump has tried to dismiss the chaos engulfing his white house by saying he likes conflict. he s got plenty of that. his decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports led to the resignation of gary cohn. it s put trump at war with his own party. watch this. there s a high level of concern been interfering with what appears to be an economy taking off in every respect. the best way 0 characterize where i am and where our members are is we are urging caution that this develop into something much more dramatic that could send the economy in the wrong zpleekz every now and then we ll have a different approach how we should tackle problems. but it should acknowledged there is a problem here. we want to make sure it s done in a prudent way more surgical so we can limit unintended consequences. the working class voters elected republicans in 2016, that s who we need to be responsive to. my hope is either this doesn t get implemented or gets implemented in a fairly small way. unbelievable. the new york times reports the plan is revving up republican doubts about trump. and than it could have big implications for the midterm elections writing republicans are banking that a robust economy they can attribute to their tax cuts and roll backs to overcome the deep disapproval of mr. trump personally. they don t want to do anything that could threaten economic gains. meanwhile politico reports the proposal is allowing democrats to hug trump when republicans have been trying to position the opposing party as detrimental to trump s economy. people from the rust belt have rushed to praise trump. so will trump s conflict provide an unsuspected unintended boost to a blue wave? we ll tackle that next with the roundtable. are defined by the things we share. and the ones we love. who never stop wondering what we ll do or where we ll go next. we the people who are better together than we are alone. are unstoppable. welcome to the entirely new expedition. cohigher!ad! higher! parents aren t perfect, but then they make us kraft mac & cheese and everything s good again. thisreally passionate about- i really want to help. i was on my way out of this life. there are patients out there that don t have a lot of time. finally, it was like the sun rose again and i was going to start fighting back now. when those patients come to me and say, you saved my life.. my life was saved by a two week old targeted therapy drug. that s what really drives me to- to save lives. welcome back to hardball. battle between president trump and congressional republicans couldn t come at a worse time as two polls out today paint a grim picture for the party s prospects this november. a new monmouth university polls shows democrats hold a nine-point. 50% for democrats, 41 for republicans. the quinnipiac poll has democrats leading 48-38. that s of likely voters. these are important votes. the jeff mason from routers, karine jean-pierre from move on org and adolpho franco from rnc surrogate. talk about the two things that republicans from my limited inside view of the republican party, which is okay, you can start with this, running on tax cuts because it s a good positive for everybody. everybody gets a different piece of the pie, some big, some small. everybody gets something. they didn t want to talk about anything else. trump wants to burp out something that causes confusion to get off whatever he has to get off. he starts talking about trade. is that the plan? i don t think he s burping something off. why did he do it? wasn t this a centerpiece of his campaign. not now. what do you mean not now? go ahead, you re right. now is a perfect time to do what i think he has done very successfully in other settings. he caught his leadership off board. he caught them off guard on other issues in the past. today, already the white house is talking about carve outs. today there s mr. kushner in mexico this is part of the president s first of all plan. do you know who likes it? sherrod brown, bobby casey, joe manchin. democrats are jumping on this because they said this. they re allowed to do whatever it is they want that s going to help them. more power to them. you don t agree with them? no, here s what i ll say. in 2016, bernie sanders won west virginia on a progressive economic message by 51% in the primary. it resonated. what did he talk about? about health care for everyone, about raising the minimum wage. there is a way to talk about the economy that dras are not doing a good enough job about it in a holistic economic plan way which we re not doing that, just about a small sector of the population. why should republicans talk like democrats? i m talking about democrats. i agree with that. talk about it in a way that resonates. that s what i m talking about. we deeb this had a lot during the campaign. bernie sanders constantly talked about trade. constantly. that was a centerpiece. and wait, and hillary clinton backed away from tpp. bernie sanders, donald trump and pat buchanan on trade. there is very little difference but in this respect, president trump has run a populist nonconventional agenda. on this. i think this has been consistent. i think the bottom line is, this suggestion quickly that somehow he s isolated, the secretary of treasury is still there. gary cohn will have a job in the administration. the perception and the talk, the chat here and everywhere else, i ve been pushing back on this is this guy s home alone. all the big brains left him. he doesn t have smart people around him. is that a true story? i don t think he s home alone. certainly he s lost a lot of important people. he s still going to o got mad dog mattis. hope hicks was a huge, huge funs in his administration. i d like to go back to. getting rid of a guy that doesn t agree with him, gary cohn doesn t agree with him. he said he likes having conflict and people give different views. the proof of that will be when we see who does he appoint to take over for gary cohn? does he like to continue having that chaos or not. what happens when your party loses 30 seats in the house. not going to lose 30 seats. what happened to the blue wave. we ll talk in november. it s texas. up next these these will tell me what i don t know. you re watching hardball. 3, 2, 1. not cool. freezing away fat cells with coolsculpting? now that s cool! coolsculpting safely freezes and removes fat cells with little or no downtime. and no surgery. results and patient experience may vary. some rare side effects include temporary numbness, discomfort and swelling. ask your doctor if coolsculpting is right for you and visit coolsculpting.com today. for your chance to win a free treatment. talks between the u.s. and north koreaing. > so the olympic helped. the president thinks so. wow. without dennis rodman. go ahead. puerto rico estimates that there will be an additional 200,000 more puerto ricans from puerto rico residing in the mainland by the end of this year. because of the hell out there. yes, because of the hurricane and what s going on. i think the thing that i wanted to add to that was what happens after november is we re going to start talking about 2020. if you look where they re going. they all go and. north or south? new york or florida. moving to florida. let s not forget donald trump. of to everyone s surprise, the president tomorrow will announce the tariffs and carveouts and more surprisingly, he will announce miss gae cohn s replacement will be larry kudlow or i like larry. thank you, karine jean-pierre. we ll be right back. today, innovation in the finger lakes is helping build the new new york. once home to the world s image center, new york state is now a leader in optics, photonics and imaging. fueled by strong university partnerships, providing the world s best talent. and supported with workforce development to create even more opportunities. all across new york state, we re building the new new york. to grow your business with us in new york state, visit esd.ny.gov. announce. when heartburn hits fight back fast with tums chewy bites. fast relief in every bite. crunchy outside. chewy inside. tum tum tum tum tums chewy bites. imagine if the things you bought every day. earned you miles to get to the places you really want to go. with the united mileageplus explorer card, you ll get a free checked bag. two united club passes. priority boarding. and earn fifty thousand bonus miles after you spend three thousand dollars on purchases in the first three months from account opening plus, zero-dollar intro annual fee for the first year, then ninety-five dollars. learn more at theexplorercard.com announcement with foreboth. we ve just seen terrible forces unleashed he said still watching at blank tv screen. something bad will come of this. god knows where this is going to lead. nich on who maintained an outsider s connection with the country s nervous system knew the way the kennedys stirred the country for them and against them. there were those in the country rear guard segregationists can organized crime figures, communists hard right as well as hard left who hated jack but hated bobby more. bobby refused to show fear. he challenged students using defermts to avoid vietnam while the poor kids got drafted. when dr. king was shot kennedy went into an african-american neighborhood and told the people the dred news. right to the end he depended gun own eners join him in keeping weapons from the hands of the criminals and mentally disturbed. he waded into the crowds of his supporters exposing himself risking his life in his