Analysis and discussion of the day s top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence O Donnell. actually was. so in the credibility fight, ruth, who do you think is going to have the upper hand? well, in the credibility fight you have to ask a few questions. one is who has the greater motive to lie here? one of the things we ve learned, say, from robert mueller is if you go to him or his investigators with a false story and lie to them, you are going to get in a lot of trouble. so if michael cohen is not telling the truth here because he is looking for a deal from robert mueller and he peddles an untrue story, he s going to get himself into a heap of trouble. on the other hand, president trump has some motive here to lie because it would be a very big deal, in fact, if, a, he knew about this meeting and if he had been lying to the american people about it all along. the second thing, and dan can speak to this, is if you ve got a witness who or somebody who may have some credibility problems, you are going to look for corroborating evidence. what do the other people who allegedly heard this say? what happened with these phone calls around the before and after the meeting to the blocked number? who were they? what was don jr. s practice in terms of telling things to his father. it is not a simple he said he said swearing contest. you can bring in other facts to buttress your case. one of the things you want to use to assess the credibility of someone is generally people don t lie against their self-interest. so if michael cohen were to get on the stand and he were to admit to all sorts of wrongdoing and crimes and he were to say, by the way, these other people did those with me, generally you credit somebody like that because he s admitting to his own criminal conduct. if he s saying, oh, i m pointing the finger at somebody else. i didn t do it. then that s more speaking in your own self-interest, and there is more motive to lie. right now, isn t it in michael cohen s self-interest to go out and claim these sorts of things in order to make it appear that he is more he s more of a valuable informant or cooperator, i should say, against donald trump with the special counsel. if he s more valuable to cut a deal with rather than somebody just to try to prosecute. it is interesting because we love this. you know, we re sitting on television and michael cohen is saying, oh, donald trump was there. rudy giuliani is saying he s a liar. this normally only happens in a courtroom when there is cross-examination and someone calls the cooperating witness a liar. it almost never happens in public. the reason is because most cooperating witnesses are guided by their lawyers and they know to be quiet in public. michael cohen, if he s acting in his self-interest, will be quiet because this is not helping him at all. you have a piece in the daily beast today where you say free advice for michael cohen from ex-federal prosecutors, shut up. yes. he s not helping his cause by doing this. and to your point about, oh, let s flag this for the sdny or for mueller that i have this information, he doesn t have to do that in public. he has an incredibly able and capable and experienced lawyer who is very used to having these conversations with prosecutors, who are used to having those conversations with defense lawyers. that s the proper way to do it. this is only hurting him. regardless, it is getting ugly certainly in public. here is a new report from emily jane fox of vanity fair. there is an increasing sense inside cohen world that trump s former attorney is ready to torch the man he once vowed to take a bullet for, telling allies about a treasure trove of material he could inleash to create headaches for trump. there is a lot more to come, he has said. there is a lot. jason, what do you think of that? i mean, the thing is, katie, cohen is really just confirming what most people with common sense would have assumed about president trump anyway. remember, prior to cohen, donald trump used to hang around with rory cohen. if this guy was his fixer, it is highly likely that cohen has all sorts of dangerous information about him that he could reveal. the reason this is playing out in public is, one, a lot of these guys like to get on tv and, two, this has become a large spitting match. there are egos involved. cohen is not any more ethical than trump, but he may have some valuable information. that s why rudy giuliani is out there running his mouth and contradicting himself every day. none of these men, whether it s the president, a lawyer for the president, a lawyer protecting himself seem to really respect the rule of law or the norms of how an investigation is supposed to happen. the associated press is reporting that the trump tower lawyer, the meeting that was between don jr. is a lot more well connected to the kremlin than she claims to be. she was a ghost writer that received assistance from the interior ministry in a case involving a client. she is not being honest about her involvement with the kremlin. there were problems about the initial statement of what was actually happening at the trump tower meeting. donald trump saying he had nothing to do with it. what else are we going to learn, ruth? can t wait to find out. but, you know, we were told in the original solicitation to donald trump jr. precisely who she was. she was identified as a russian government lawyer who was offering information about hillary clinton because the russian government, donald trump jr. was told, wanted to see donald trump elected president. don t need more than that. what would a responsible patriotic person do in a situation like that? they would call the fbi. at the very least they would say no thank you. what did we have? we had this meeting? and then what do we know? donald trump helped to orchestrate a lie about it when it was discovered. then he lied and his people lied, his lawyers lied about whether he was involved in orchestrating that lie. now we need to find out is he lying or telling the truth about whether he knew about the meeting at the time. guys, we also have something of an anniversary to celebrate. it is now two years to the day that donald trump called on russia to find hillary clinton s missing 30,000 e-mails and then i had this exchange with him. let s look. russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. you said the russians he has no respect. you said i welcome them to find those 30,000 e-mails. well, they probably have them. i d like to have them released. does that not give you pause? no, it gives me no pause. if russia or china or any other country has those e-mails, i ll be happy to see them. we know that the investigation really got started to get interesting into the trump campaign and what they had to do with russia because of that exchange because people in the intelligence community were like what is going on, why is he saying that? why would donald trump call on russia specifically to find hillary clinton s e-mails. prosecutors are trained not to believe in coincidences. that doesn t mean that they don t exist. but you re always skeptical of coincidences. so when you see him say something like that and then it later materializes that russia actually did have those e-mails, you naturally ask yourself what did he know. that is, i m sure, a significant focus of the investigation. the same is true with this? how far is it to make this connection? what proof will they need to make that a definitive connection? there will be internal e-mails, memos, text messages? there is all sorts of documentary evidence in this day and age with communications. and that will also be the case as relates to this trump tower meeting. when trump promises a big speech on hillary clinton that is supposed to follow this meeting and then the meeting is a fail and that speech never happens, the same kind of thing is going on in both instances. daniel goldman, thank you very much. we appreciate it. coming up, president trump and vladimir putin have now invited each other for more talks. but are they talking about how russia is reportedly working to discorrupt the election this fall? while president trump is celebrating strong economic news, some republicans are sounding the alarm about the midterms. of the pacific ocean. we re the most isolated population on the planet. hawaii is the first state in the u.s. to have 100% renewable energy goal. we re a very small electric utility. but, if we don t make this move we re going to have changes in our environment, and have a negative impact to hawaii s economy. verizon provided us a solution using smart sensors on their network that lets us collect near real time data on our power grid. (colton) this technology is helping us integrate rooftop solar, which is a very important element of getting us to our renewable energy goals. (shelee) if we can create our own energy, we can take care of this beautiful place that i grew up in. the president is open to visiting moscow. that was what the white house said today in response to russian president vladimir putin, who invited president trump to come to the russian capital for yet another meeting between the two world leaders. not only did this invitation come on the two year anniversary of donald trump s invitation to russia to hack hillary clinton s e-mails, but it also came just hours before president trump met with his national security do counsel for their election on security. the white house released a statement saying, quote, the president has made it clear that his administration will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections from any station state or other malicious actors. but nowhere are the words russia or putin, despite the fact that many people in that very meeting today have concluded and believe that russia meddled in the 2016 election and that russia will try to meddle in our elections again. in fact, just this week we learned about the first identified target of russian meddling in the 2018 elections. the daily beast first reported that the russian intelligence agency behind the 2018 cyber attacks targeted senator claire mckas kl. in a statement, the democratic senator, who is in a tough re-election campaign said, quote, while this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. i will not be intimidated. i have said it before, and i will say it again. putin is a thug and a bully. joining us now, a former cia operative and former independent presidential candidate. also back with us, ruth marcus. a couple days ago, donald trump tweeted the following. okay. people probably happy about that. he s saying yes to that. based on the fact that no president has been tougher on russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the democrats. huh? they definitely don t want trump. vladimir putin last week that he wanted donald trump to win. what is donald trump doing with a tweet like this? he s doing what he always does, try to muddy the water. so it becomes a he s i m rubber, you re glue. absolutely. i know it sounds childish. but actually i think it works. when i say it works, i m not saying it is a good thing. but what happens is and i talk to americans across the country. they re busy. they re getting their kids to school. they re working hard to make ends meet. and what they hear, they get bits and pieces of this back and forth where somebody says the president is doing this thing wrong or he s this or he s that and the president uses those same words against them. and people just throw up their hands and say, look, i can t tell what s going on, what s true, what s right, what s wrong. and they give up and turn off. that s one of the most alarming things. it is a seemingly silly tactic that does have an impact, unfortunately. last week i was filling in for this show, and i told people what my favorite analogy for trump is, which is he has a white shirt. he gets a stain on his shirt is. instead of changing his shirt because there is a stain there, he s just staining his shirt with whatever he has on hand. and then people look and they say, oh, the shirt is supposed to be like that. i heard you say that, and i agree. ruth, it is not just the president who is throwing this sort of stuff out. it is now his national security advisor. john bolton, who before this, i guess, was a very strong russia hawk. but now he s saying the president believes the meeting should take after the russia witch hunt is over. so we have agreed it will be after the 1st of the year. what is john bolton doing, ruth? i first met him many years ago when he was an official at the department of justice whose investigation he was now trashing. and that s just really shameful. i think that comment was one of those audience of one comments we see from administration officials so often. that s just a comment that s sucking up to the president using the kind of language the president likes. but i want to say something. i think everything evan said was right. but i think he s actually being a little too kind to president trump. i know that s not your usual mo, evan, which is in this way. it is not just that it s i am rubber, you re glue. the president is laying the potential predicate when he talks about the russians intervening now on behalf of democrats to do something that he liked to do in the 2016 campaign, which is to complain that it is rigged. so if the democrats win, is it going to be because the election was rigged? is it going to be because the russians rigged the election for them? this is a very, very dangerous argument for him to be make sin i m glad you brought that up. this is one of the things when we talk about the 2016 election, this is one of those things that people don t remember very well, what donald trump was doing in the last month of the election. we talk about wikileaks a lot. but he was also going out and claiming that there is a global conspiracy run by the media elites trying to keep him out of office and keep the every day man donald trump supporter, the working man down. they are trying to do this because they are trying to protect their special interests. he was saying these dog whistle sorts of things at the end of the campaign. when i read that tweet about they definitely want the democrats, i read it in the same way, which is that this is him laying the ground work for a rigged election because he thinks the democrats have a good chance of winning in the same way that he thought in 2016 he was going to lose and hillary clinton was going to win. when he wins, it s the biggest, most amazing, most historic victory and, you know, no matter what the popular vote was. but if he loses, he is just going to do everything he can to dismiss the legitimacy of it. and that is actually really what the russians want. they want americans not to be able to trust in their democracy or trust in their elections. and he is aiding and abetting them when he does this. this sort of thing is not going to help. current and former officials tell mbc news that 19 months into his presidency there is no coherent trump administration strategy to combat foreign election interference. and no single person or agency in charge in the white house took issue with that. no such strategy has been made public or even mentioned before. evan, they don t i mean, they don t seem to have a strategy in place. there is not a strategy. that s there is not a whole of government strategy. individual agencies and leaders within agencies are certainly taking the action that they can take. but the president has certain authorities, authorities to bring these agencies together, authorities to coordinate their efforts, authorities to deconflict their efforts, to make sure they re efficient and effective. without the president s leadership, we can t respond the way we need to respond. when the office doesn t fall for the phishing scam, is that just luck? is it just luck that she didn t fall for it? is it just luck that somebody didn t click on an e-mail? because it was made to look like it was coming from the microsoft server saying you need to change your password. the prompt looked legitimate. it just brought you to a fake website where they were able to use that to get into the e-mail. sure. is it just luck that somebody didn t by chance click on it this time. i think everyone is getting smarter, especially in campaigns about needing to protect information. but i would say that i would shy away if i were her, if i were the senate and i m sure he gets this very well from conclusively stating that she hasn t been effectively hacked. she won t know that until it s too late. that s the reality. so, you know, i m very concerned. and i think we re going to see microsoft has already acknowledged that other 2018 candidates have already been hacked. over time we re going to learn and i have reason to believe that we will, that other candidates in difficult races, democrats in the senate, are being attacked. and the reason for that is they are vulnerable and the result of their elections will impact the president and his you know, his longevity potential as president if he is impeached in the house. what happens in the senate really matters. it will likely hinge on a couple of races. there is also, remember td triple c e-mails that russia was able to get a hold of for the 2016 election that haven t really made an appearance quite yet. so we ll see what happens with that. evan mcmillan and ruth marcus, thank you very much. the trump administration went to court today. that is next. some republicans are worried that the president will overhype the economic successes because not everyone is feeling the benefits. is this at&t innovations? yeah, wow..this must be for one of our new unlimited wireless plans. it comes with a ton of entertainment options. great, can you sign for this? yeah. hey, uh.. what s in that one? that s a shark. new and only with at&t, you can get unlimited data, 30+ channels of live tv, and your choice of things like hbo or pandora premium. more for your thing. that s our thing. visit att dot com. that s confident. but it s not kayak confident. kayak searches hundreds of travel and airline sites to find the best flight for me. so i m more than confident. how s your family? kayak. search one and done. the winter of 77.uring i first met james in 5th grade. we got married after college. and had twin boys. but then one night, a truck didn t stop. but thanks to our forester, neither did our story. and that s why we ll always drive a subaru. your hair is so soft! did you use head and shoulders two in one? i did mom. wanna try it? yes. it intensely moisturizes your hair and scalp and keeps you flake free. manolo? look at my soft hair. i should be in the shot now too. try head and shoulders two in one. you know how painful heartburn can be. for fast-acting, long-lasting relief, try doctor recommended gaviscon. it quickly neutralizes stomach acid and helps keep acid down for hours. relieve heartburn with fast- acting, long-lasting gaviscon. we have one to two fires a day and when you respond together and you put your lives on the line, you do have to surround yourself with experts. and for us the expert in gas and electric is pg&e. we run about 2,500/2,800 fire calls a year and on almost every one of those calls pg&e is responding to that call as well. and so when we show up to a fire and pg&e shows up with us it makes a tremendous team during a moment of crisis. i rely on them, the firefighters in this department rely on them, and so we have to practice safety everyday. utilizing pg&e s talent and expertise in that area trains our firefighters on the gas or electric aspect of a fire and when we have an emergency situation we are going to be much more skilled and prepared to mitigate that emergency for all concerned. the things we do every single day that puts ourselves in harm s way, and to have a partner that is so skilled at what they do is indispensable, and i couldn t ask for a better partner. the trump administration has missed a court ordered deadline to reunite 2,551 migrant children with their parents. in a show down with the aclu in a san diego courtroom today, the government argued that all eligible children have been reunified. in the hearing the government revealed that 1,820 children have been reunited with their parents. so what are the next steps for these newly reunited families? i cording to the government, 1,000 families could face imimmediate yaimmeed ya imimmediate yalt deportation. 392 families are still being detained and being held in ice custody. this still leaves 650 children the government deems ineligible for reunification because their parents have already been deported. we should never forget these are numbers. these are children. this isn t an accounting exercise. these childrens lived have been changed bicep ration and detainment at the hands of the u.s. government. here are some of those children in their own words. nine-year-old diego told the washington post, i felt like a prisoner. i felt like a dog. they always kept the boys and the girls separate and they punished us if they went near each other. they told us to behave or we d be there forever. i didn t cry the first day, but i began crying all the time on the second and third day because i missed my mother. the majority of the other girls in my cell were also crying the whole time i was there. the lights were always on. there were no windows and i didn t know whether it was day or not. i never got to see my mom until we left the facility. a phone call between a detained seven-year-old boy and his mother in goin was captured. . . that boy is seven years old. the aclu has asked the court to block any deportations for seven days upon notice of the family s reunifications. the judge will issue an order on this matter and next steps for the 650 children still waiting to be reunited with their families. but at today s hearing the judge noted this problem cannot repeat. what was lost in the process was the family. there has to be a procedure or protocol in place. joining us now from san diego. jacob, what is the latest? well, katie, the name of the game was to reunite the 2,551 that the trump administration separated from their parents and put into the cages like the ones i saw down in texas. the reason why i wanted to come down here today to the court in san diego was to see if the trump administration was going to reunite the children beyond those they deemed eligible for reunification, about 1,800 of them. we ve been asking them if they had any plans to do so and they wouldn t say to us if they did. it turns out in that courtroom today, it became very clear they had no plans to reunite what they called ineligible children only because the judge has said now he will issue an order to reunite 651 ineligible children with their parents, including 431 what he called missing parents, parents that have already been deported outside of this country and can t actually get back in the country in order to be reunited with the kids. that may end up happening at all. that s on top of the 1,000 reunited families that have orders for immediate deportation. that s what that other order is about. we didn t get it today. but we expect it over the weekend or monday to either stay those deportations so the aclu can get to them or not. jacob, hold on. when you talk about ineligible parents, i think that word can be a bit confusing. the government is using it to make it a blanket statement. people will assume that that means all of those parents have committed crimes or there is something dangerous involved. is that what that word actually means? no. absolutely not. let me be clear. the kids in that ineligible category were separated in the exact same way from the people say came with from the kids that were in the el gbl category as well. there is a small group in that category of around 650 at this point of children whose parents have committed some form of crime. we don t know the seriousness of that crime. and that came out today inside the courtroom. the largest portion of that group are the 431 parents that have already been kicked out of the country without the children and the children now are sitting here in the united states with no way to actually get back to those parents and the parents certainly categorically can t come back into this country to be reunited with the children. they are stranded here in the united states at this point. that s all that ineligible really means. the aclu is arguing that a lot of those parents that were deported didn t actually understand what they were doing when they signed the waiver for deportation, that they were told they were going to be reunified with their kids pretty quickly after they were deported only to realize there is no process in place to get them their kids back quickly. for many of these individuals that were fleeing such places at guatemala were not native spanish speakers. even when people were trying to explain the paperwork, they didn t know what they were signing. we have seen cases where a father was promised he was going to be reunited with his child on the airplane only to find his child was not there and he was already in flight. what we re seeing now and hearing is that a lot of nongovernment ngos are going down to find needles in haystacks and identify these parents so they could do the government work to reunite these folks. and katie what i tell you is that the government had no plan. they said they were going to use this as a deterrent. they crafted this to exact pain on people already fleeing horrendous conditions. these folks were trying to defend their families to give their kids a better shot and instead of following international asylum laws, this government exacted completely the opposite. the un has said what the government did is violating the rights of the children and we have to figure out how to quickly reunify the parents. we rely on the numbers that report this story because we can t get to a lot of these families. they have already been deported. we can t locate them and we can t get to any of the kids. the government has been keeping cameras out, so you don t get to put a face adequately to these stories. i think the problem with that is that you re not getting the full impact of what s going on and what it is like for these children to be inside these detention centers away from their parents and how scary that must be. katie, some of these children can barely speak. so we are finding stories with the parents saying that the child does not recognize them. it is because they haven t seen them for two, three, four, five months as well. thank you very much. and coming up, the economy is doing great according to the president. so why are some republicans still worried? that s next. woman: it felt great not having hepatitis c. it s like a load off my shoulders. i was just excited for it to be over. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it s been prescribed to more than a quarter million people and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni your doctor will test to see if you ve ever had hepatitis b which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after harvoni treatment. tell your doctor if you ve ever had hepatitis b, a liver transplant, other liver or kidney problems, hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. ready to let go of hep c? ask your hep c specialist about harvoni. with 102 days until the midterm elections, president trump took a victory lap today after it was reported the economy grew at a rate of 4.1% in the second quarter. we have accomplished an economic turn around of historic proportions. that right there would be news to fdr. the associated press said trump s claim is false. said the economy was on the upswing when trump took office in 2017. cnbc john s harwood put today s number in the context of other presidents which shows this quarter would rank fifth best under obama, fifth under bush, 13th under clinton, fifth under george h.w. bush and fifth under reagan. trump also made a prediction based on today s numbers. these numbers are very, very sustainable. i happen to think we are going to do extraordinarily well in our next report next quarter. i think it is going to be outstanding. the new york times reports today that economists outside the administration caution the latest acceleration is unsustainable in the long term and could raise the risk that the recovery will flame out in the years ahead. trump has to be careful not to overhype this. there are still areas of the country that have not fully come back, and that s trump s constituency. today s economic growth numbers, the unemployment rate very low at 4% and the dow above 20,000 indicate that the economy overall is strong and it is where donald trump gets his strongest numbers in the polls. a new poll shows trump s job approval at a dismal 48%. but an nbc news wall street journal poll shows a majority of voters 50% approve of the job trump is doing on the economy. that same poll shows voters said the economy and jobs are their number one issue. the old political wisdom says it is the economy, stupid. but does that still apply in the trump era? so many things have taken place, but the economy is the strongest ever. i think that s going to have a very positive impact. and i am going to work very hard. i will go six or seven days a week when we re 60 days out and i will be campaigning for all of these great people that do have a difficult race, and we think we are going to bring them over the line. i believe because we re doing so well as a country and with the economy i think we re going to be surprising a lot of people. jared and jason join us next. lean on me. mmm. lean on me. you might be missing something.y healthy. your eyes. that s why there s ocuvite. ocuvite helps replenish nutrients your eyes can lose as you age. it has lutein, zeaxanthin and omega-3. ocuvite. be good to your eyes. us. everything is the best or the worst with the president. i feel like trump is gu guy. everybody is the best or the worst with that guy. economists are going to debate whether donald trump deserves any credit or whether it s tally as good as it looks because what you re seeing in wages is not as good as these baseline economic numbers. wages aren t rising. when you talk to most people out there, they re seeing the dow is up and everything is plugging along and unemployment is down. they might say donald trump is doing a great job. look at this be one of our recent polls. voters in blue wall state in trump country rate trump on the economy. four in ten voters in all three states. this ismy p michigamichigan, wi minnesota say the committeecono improved. a fourth say it s not improved. what s breaking through? i don t really think the big gdp number that we got today is breaking through in the way that trump and the white house would like it to because we just have this long term structural inequality problem in america. people understand that in the form of their paychecks in they hear gdp is going up 4%. they hear the stock market is going up big time. they recognize their paycheck in real terms has been pretty flat. that doesn t mean people aren t benefitting from a strong labor market. there s more job quantity than quality. given the range of the statistics that you just rattled off, you d think that the folks impression would be better than it is. it s not hurting the president by a long time. it s not as much as it would if it were reaching more people. how are the democrats seizing on the message the fight against donald trumps. it s about income equality. they will talk about the fight for 15 and those other issues. we have some voted for him because he was a republican. some who voted for donald trump because they wanted change. even those the economy is good, his numbers are still trash. americans are used to a halfway decent economy but see the policies he s engaging in. they see what s happening with russia, the kids being locked in cages. that doesn t make people happy during a midterm. if the economy got worse, it would damage trump and the republicans but a good economy is not enough to save them this fall and not enough to save this president. donald trump s win is attributed to economic anxiety. is that a word that was mask something else that s still there? that is a word that was masking something else. as somebody teaching in ohio at the time, donald trump support ran across all socieconomic levels. this was about ethnic identity. this was a certain swath of american voters who think that changing demographics in america is dangerous and wanted someone to fight back against the obama era. the idea of economic anxiety is the greatest strength of this president s it s never been true. what we will see and if this is a non-sustainable economic growth that we re having, if the economy goes back, we can imagine his number will go into the 20s. one number that s not good for donald trump is the deficit. trump s tax cuts are causing a trillion dollar deficit. the new york times has a new article about it. what is the deficit going to mean for regular folks? probably not nearly as mump much as you might think. people put the deficit really low on their list. what matters is kind of what s showing up in your pay kmcheck how you feel about the general economy. inflation is very real to people. that s been ticking up lately, by the way. in terms of budget deficit where that might show up is in the following lane. somewhere out there, nobody knows where is the next recession, the next downturn. what you re going to hear from the congress is we put too much spending on the credit card, the debt to gdp ratio getting close to 80% and we can t afford an economic terms, you don t have the fiscal space. so i think at the end of the day, the deficit isn t going to resonate until perhaps in a downturn when congress points and said here is why we can t help you. thank you very much. tonight s last word is next. we re the most isolated population on the planet. hawaii is the first state in the u.s. to have 100% renewable energy goal. we re a very small electric utility. but, if we don t make this move we re going to have changes in our environment, and have a negative impact to hawaii s economy. verizon provided us a solution using smart sensors on their network that lets us collect near real time data on our power grid. (colton) this technology is helping us integrate rooftop solar, which is a very important element of getting us to our renewable energy goals. (shelee) if we can create our own energy, we can take care of this beautiful place that i grew up in. ito take care of anyct messy situations.. and put irritation in its place. and if i can get comfortable keeping this tookus safe and protected. you can get comfortable doing the same with yours. preparation h. get comfortable with it. sweat the details. noticing what most will never notice. it s what you do. when the thing you re making. isn t a thing. it s your reputation. the all-new ram 1500. comfortably, the most luxurious truck in its class. and why more people are switching to ram than ever before. jushis local miracle ear t at helped andrew hear more of the joy in her voice. just one hearing test is all it took for him to hear more of her laugh. and less of the background noise around him. for helen, just one visit to her local miracle-ear is all it took to learn how she can share more moments with her daughter. just one free hearing test could help you hear more. laughter.music.life. call now for your free hearing test from an industry leader: miracle-ear. now for the good news, the mimi johnson little league team beat the capital hill little le league to win the district of columbia championship. the tournament has been held for 31 years. it s the first all african-american team to win. the team was established in 2015 for boys and girls in ward 7, an economically challenged area of washington. one of three women added to the roster in 1953 as a novelty. she turned out to be a star. johnson died this year at age 82. before the big game tuesday the boys made sure to make it clear who they played for. they cheered. i used to think, i know i can t do this because they wouldn t let the white boys play with the black boys, you know. the black boys not players so
Former GOP representative Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski interview newsmakers, politicians and pundits about the issues of the day. job approval rating probably has seven or eight points, maybe even a little more of what i think of as 401(k) trumpers right now. i think there are people who are looking at their statements, people who are on the right side of the economic equation any way. they see their numbers going up for all sorts of reasons. and so they re willing to not really dive in to this russian novel story that no one can quite figure out. and they re willing to suspend their bizarrely in my view, but they are willing to suspend their ordinary moral judgments about how this president conducts himself and is now representing us on the world stage. but i would not, if i were in the white house, count on that lasting until 2020. we ll see. joe, your latest column in the washington post really speaks to this entitled trump finally feels gravity s unforgiving poll and reads in part, quote, trump s stunning victory created such disorienting shock waves across washington that neither democrats nor republicans understood what the accidental president admitted to me a month after his win. the election could have been held 20 different times, but that was probably the one day i would have won. the president-elect said in december of 2016. everything came together at once. the resulting political horror show produced daily by trump has left journalists and politicians reeling but has failed to alter a few basic rules of politics. first, presidents with approval ratings in the low 40s lose their majorities in congress. second, kowtowing to ex-kgb agents erodes support with registered independents. third, lying about payoffs to a porn star and a playboy model rarely helps with swing-state voters. republicans hoping to save themselves from the political storm that will soon wipe away their congressional majorities would be well served to speak out against trump s most destructive policies, which are anti-conservative, ill liberal and sure to bring doom to the once grand old party. party could be over. it could be. first of all, john, i m very humbled to have my piece read on the morning joe. well, it s a good piece. it s what we are talking about. this is your show. two of your s, but morning joe, that s you. well. so it s good that you get your pieces on your show. i also you have pull with the guys that run the place. that was somebody else. so, it does it seems that trump s victory was so shocking that i think a lot of pundits, a lot of politicians, i think a lot of republicans have overstated his strength and his magical powers, his gravity-defying political powers. but at the end of the day, this man is still a 40% president. show me a 40% president, and i will show you a loser. no, no, no, i m serious. show me a candidate that has by the way, his re-elect, his re-elect, according to the latest merit polls, his re-elect in michigan is 28%, in wisconsin it s 31%. show me a guy with a 30% re-elect. i will show you a loser. somebody that loses midterms and somebody that loses a re-election. i just think too often people overstate his political strength because they were so shocked that he won last time. look, i think that s the shock is one thing. i think the degree to which his behavior and the ways in which he s departed from republican orthodoxy, various ways he s thrown washington into chaos, the fact that his base which is not 42%, his base is 35. the fact that those people are immovable even in the face of things that so many people object to strenuously causes us also to overfocus on the potency of the base. in the end, he s great to have a potent base. barack obama rested on his base. donald trump rested on his base and both of their bases are rock solid. again, 35, you re a loser. and even if you get those extra ones that meachum is talk about, push up to 40, 41, which is where he is right now. historically speaking that s a disaster for an inparty president, 40% approval rating, you re going to get wiped out in the midterms if everything we know from history holds true again. jon meacham, my dad supported richard nixon and supported richard nixon until the final week. we were taught growing up that walter cronkite was a communist. my dad watched him and loved him. when he said that s the way it was, he believed that s the way it was but he still believed it was all a plot by the washington post and the new york times and walter cronkite and the mainstream media to take richard nixon down who they hated. and i remember the morning in 1974 where my dad was reading the newspaper and it s just like the scales fell off of his eyes all at once. and he may have said a couple of words that i can t repeat here, the second one was damn it. and then he said, if this man by the way, this is a guy my dad had worshipped since 52. if this man has done one third of what they re saying he has done, he should be thrown in jail tomorrow. this is a disgrace. but he said that broken but after the tapes, there was no denying that richard nixon had acted abhorrently. well, this is the week. we re in the anniversary period between supreme court decision in which nixon had to turn over everything. he turns over the smoking gun tape where he s ordering the cia to block the fbi from investigating watergate, a conversation that took place i think on june 23rd. so within a week of the break-in. and we forget because in our movie-tone version of history, we naturally telescope everything. and so we think, break in. robert redford and nixon gets on the helicopter, right? that s kind of the popular version of watergate. maybe howard baker pops in if you re from tennessee. what really happened was 27 months elapsed. congressional investigate, two special prosecutors, saturday night massacre, tapes dribble out, phrases like expletive deleted enter the conversation. and the fabled moment which is big among the npr left in the country which i love, there s a lot of liberals now who are saying, where is barry gold water when we need him, which is just we should all retire when people are saying that. what they mean is that goldwater and hugh scott and john rhodes went down to the white house and they told nixon he had to go. they did it on august 5th, after the tape came out and then nixon is gone by the 8th. so these things take time. i suspect your dad s expletive deleted remarks probably happened about this point in the summer of 74. quickly to john s point, 34, 35%, that was joe mccarthy s national approval rating after the army hearings. if they take trump back to moscow in an orange jump suit, 35% of the country will be with him. that s just the way american politics works. one of the president s republican allies, congressman darrell isa says he doesn t think republicans will pay the price in the fall if the president has proven to have lied about the trump tower meeting. if he s proven to have not told the whole truth about the fact that campaigns look for dirt and if someone offers it, you listen to them. nobody is going to be surprised. there are some things in politics that you just take for granted. so you don t think this has anything long-term impact? he wouldn t be the first politician or president to misrepresent things? well, you know, businessmen listen to almost everyone that might be helpful. by the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away. darrell issa, not my dad. in that case. first of all, so extraordinary. even in my little office as a member of congress, if somebody came to my chief of staff and said, hey, the russian government or the iranian government has some dirt on your opponent, my chief of staff would have said, hey, listen, we ll get back to you in a couple of days. what s your name again? what s your phone number? we ll call you back. would immediately call the fbi. would immediately call the fbi. this is not a close call. anybody out there thinking if you listen if that s what darrell issa thinks, holy cow that is condemning. and here they keep moving the goal post for donald trump. they re lying about donald trump. donald trump didn t know. now if donald trump knew what s the big deal? no, nobody does this. nobody has ever done this. nobody has ever done this that i know of has gotten dirt on an opponent from a sworn enemy, russia, iran, you name it. never seen it in now almost unfortunately 30 years i ve been doing this and covering republicans and democrats in the presidential races and other races. the thing i want to say about darrell issa just goes to the thing he s saying here which is that republicans aren t going to pay the price if it turns out that donald trump is lying. i just want to say that actions speak a lot louder than words. donald trump is retiring from congress, right? so he can spin a rosy scenario for how republicans won t pay any price for donald trump s behavior, but it seems like on the basis of his own political calculations of what was going to happen in his own district, he may have had a different view of what the blood bath would look like this fall. donald trump has already lied about russian agents coming to his office. donald trump has already master mined the coverup on air force one where he lied and said that the meeting was about adoption, which by the way, over the weekend, a prosecutor said this is perfect to show the guilt, the conscious guilt at the time that something big happened in that room because you wouldn t lie about it if it was innocent. sure. but look, i think one of the problems we have here a little bit is that it s a bit of a he said/she said. giuliani was saying yesterday on a sunday show, there s five people who will say donald trump did not know about this russian meeting up against michael cohen. i was working in the washington bureau of the new york times in the summer of 1974, so i was sort of watching all this. meachum can contradict me, but my recollection were the tapes were the defining moment because you heard him on tape saying this. so far i don t think we ve quite seen these tapes from michael cohen. he can wiggle and twist his way out of every box people try to put him in. what s the end game for saying something like that? it s obviously clearly something you wouldn t want to support, the president lying about a meeting? lobbying money? their own personal self interest, constantly, that s all we see on display consistently. among republicans who are choosing to prop up these lies and to devalue truth and factual accuracy in the american public. and it s really disgusting. i can t believe that we re at the phase where, you know, the $12 billion bailout for agriculture because of a dumb policy decision and all of these so-called fiscal conservatives can just get behind it because they re going to go with trump no matter what and we re just seeing where people really do not stand for much except the ideology of power. think about that really quickly. again, and ron johnson and i can t believe i m quoting ron johnson because he backed down to donald trump over and over again. ron johnson correctly said this is soviet style economics. you adopt a stalin in five-year foreign policy. the five-year plan, right? and you have tariffs. you destroy the economy. and then you come in behind it and after destroying the economy for these farmers, you then prop them up with a $12 billion centralized state payoff after i just got to say a lot of farmers are already subsidized. like the big farm interests? so this is subsidy on top of subsidy on top of subsidy. but we have to cut the deficit, joe. there s a lot of deficit in washington. absolutely none. still ahead, steve eluded to it a few moments ago, we have a full fact check of the president s economic claims that he made, and some of it starts with a simple google search. why don t people why don t my friends and family just turn on the google machine? just crank it up in the backyard as elise just said, the truth has been devalued. and people must not care. that s what this president has done. mika, i don t understand. so many of his lies, so many of his claims can be completely blown out of the water with 30 seconds and just, again, borrow your neighbor s google machine. they don t care. 30 seconds. and it is a proven lie. by the way, from a thousands different accurate sources. this president started off by saying, look at my crowd size, it s the biggest one, when it was clearly the smallest and people didn t care. type in trump lie pops up. i give trump this, when he puts his mind to it, he s a master messenger and he has branded the media as the enemy of the people and took it up with the publisher of the new york times. that s right. when he is at the stage where he is comparing the u.s. press, the free press, to an enemy on the level of isis or al qaeda, that s a real problem for truth and accuracy. you are absolutely right. again, the truth is 30 seconds away. check out google. check out yahoo. check out whatever search site. got to care. msn, of course, yes. we ll get into the new york times aspect of this story in just a moment. first, let s go to bill karins on the check of the forecast. bill? joe f we can get people to do and this stop using your weather app on your phones to get the hourly forecast, we would be all set. he doesn t do that. he calls you. yeah, that would be smart. so the rain is already back in the picture of a nice weekend for so many people from the ohio valley, great lakes to the east coast. the humidity is back, too. along with it, a rainy week. a lot of heavy rain this morning through eastern north carolina moving up through virginia, virginia beach, norfolk to richmond and it will arrive in d.c. and also towards baltimore this afternoon. philadelphia north wards the rain should hold off later this afternoon towards this evening. and this week is just like what we started with last week, it s going to get humid. we ll have on and off rain all week long for the east coast. how much rain? well, this is through friday. the next five days, two to four inches of rainfall the southeast all the way through the mid-atlantic. no reason to be watering the grass this week once again. here is the week ahead forecast. i will add, it stays hot in the west and stays dry and of course we have that car fire, six fatalities and the blaze still mostly unchecked. they re just trying to protect structures at this point. as we go throughout the week, the heat continues in the west too. summertime storms in the southeast. by the time we get to wednesday, here is all the heavy rain on the eastern sea board. much of the western haft of the country remains dry and hot. finally as we end this week on friday, i think the flooding problems are going to be worse northern georgia, up state portions of south carolina and through much of the southern appalachians we have to watch a lot of the rivers and lakes and streams closely. areas like new york city, enjoy your monday. this is by far the best day of the week. low humidity, temperatures are comfortable. the august humidity will arrive as we go to the middle to the end of the week. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. the fact is, there are over ninety-six hundred roads named park in the u.s. it s america s most popular street name. but allstate agents know that s where the similarity stops. if you re on park street in reno, nevada, the high winds of the washoe zephyr could damage your siding. and that s very different than living on park ave in sheboygan, wisconsin, where ice dams could cause water damage. but no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local allstate agents knows yours. now that you know the truth, are you in good hands? you ll make my morning, buty the price ruin my day.ou? complicated relationship with milk? pour on the lactaid, 100% real milk, just without that annoying lactose. mmm, that s good. are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi.? a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it s the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. okay. so on friday president trump was very quick to celebrate the release of new economic data. why not? happy days are here again. in a hastily arranged set of remarks, the president made a number of economic statements. now, this was 4.1 growth second quarter. he was so excited about good stuff. good stuff. so what you have to do is check them out and you get a sense of whether or not he s telling the truth. let s take a look at some of his claims. okay. i am thrilled to announce that in the second quarter of this year the united states economy grew at the amazing rate of 4.1%. that s very good. he is correct about 4.1% growth. 4.1. if you can do that for a year, brother. here is thing, most economists would not use the word amazing to describe it. in fact, president obama reached that mark four times, including three times higher than trump s 4.1%. trump s quarter would tie just the 13th best quarter under bill clinton and the 14th best under reagan. so you re saying that bill clinton had 13 better quarters than yes, but trump calls it amazing. it might be amazing. 13 quarters is like three years worth of quarters, right? that s a lot of quarters. that is a lot of quarters. but i will say this, steve. i remember bush w. had, what a 5.6 or a it was like amazing when the number came across there. actually. and the economy seemed to be growing. well, here again, if he stays at 4.1 the rest of the year, i m going to say great job, great for americans, great for everybody involved. but most economists were saying, just like they were predicting the deficit was going to rise because of reckless entitlement spending and defense spending and every other kind of spending you could think of, there were a lot of economists who two weeks ago were saying, hey, we re going to have a higher quarter this time and then it s going to go back down to 2%, 2.5%, correct? essentially. we can look at some numbers and you can see both historic and what looks like it s going to be coming in the future on this chart here. so to your point oh, you have charts? that s nice. that s very nice. walked right into that. well to the point about higher quarters in the past, you can see first of all obama s four quarters of growth let me stop you right there. we ll get to all the charts. jon meacham, you look at all those numbers, it will fascinating that donald trump will say bill clinton beat 13 times, amazing, remarkable, the greatest thing ever. barack obama would have had gdp growth of over 5%. and he would get out there and give a speech of we understand that somewhere in america people are still eating rats for dinner, so we re not going to celebrate this yet. like barack obama could never embrace good news. he always had to parse it. he always had to apologize for those left behind. it s just the opposite of donald trump. somewhere in the middle is a leadership style that actually works. i think that s right. and i think this is a great exhibit in one of the running themes in the books about this era is going to be that donald trump was as much a reality show impar sar owe as he was a real estate guy. he just pretends what he wants to be true is true. and has now inflicted that faux reality on all of us. yep. one of the great ironies of we always dislike in others what we fear is true in ourselves, it s no mistake that this is the guy, no coincidence that he coins the term fake news. he s the embodiment of it. here is another one of the president s claims on friday. the trade deficit, very dear to my heart because we ve been ripped off by the world has dropped by more than $50 billion. 52 billion to be exact. the trade deficit did drop. it was also the largest it s been since 2006. according to the bureau of economic analysis. all right. so, steve, first of all, there s so much we have to correct here. i m just going to quickly say something about the trade deficit. donald trump will say the chinese stole $82 billion from another way to put that is, americans got $82 billion worth of cheaper products. so much of the trade deficit is fueled by us importing goods that are competitive that actually make working class americans lives much better. so when he goes around the chinese stealing. no, the americans have the freedom to decide for themselves. do i want to go to the grocery store? do i want to go to walmart? do i want to go to target? do i want to get these items cheaper for myself and for my family? most of the times they say yes. and they say yes. the trade deficit did play a role in this. to re-enforce a point you made, 4.1% growth we got in the first quarter, these are goldman sachs estimate and show it trailing off as the quarters go on. the other point i would make on this, if you see this red line, this is the year over year change in the growth rate. so you can see, it s gone up, it s gone down. there s nothing extraordinary, at least yet, about donald trump s growth rate. now on the trade deficit which relates to these numbers if we can look at the next chart, you ll see that in fact, this 4.1% isn t all it s cracked up to be. of the 4.1, .8% is the stimulus that president trump enacted. the spending cuts and spending increases in the tax cuts that specially destroyed our fiscal balance. ironically another .6 of the increase is the chinese importing a lot more soy beans in this past quarter to get ahead of the tariffs that are coming. so when you cut through it all, the actual adjusted, fairly adjusted base growth rate of the economy was actually 2.7%, not 4.1%. okay. so here is more from the president on friday. we ve accomplished an economic turn around of historic proportions. hold on. can we play that again? i like that one. here we go. we ve accomplished an economic turn around of historic proportions. this comes from the guy who has all of his club championships that he won in his office because he cheated. and his time magazine. and fake covers of the time magazines, the greatest turn around in american history. anybody who goes on a google machine can see that you showed part that the economy 08 was here. went up and then it has been a steady, slow, gradual, economic increase. that s good news. but it s good news from bush to obama to trump. sure. we can show that in the context of jobs f you want. so trump talks about all the jobs he s created. 3.5 million. but let s put that in some context and compare the last 18 months of obama where he created 206,000 jobs a month to the first 18 months of trump where he created 193,000 jobs a month. let me stop you here. i don t understand that because it actually looks like barack obama created more jobs per month in his last 16 months than donald trump created in his first 16 months, but that can t be true because donald trump and a lot of people on television that are news readers actually are talking about the exploisive trump economy. you re not actually saying hold on. help me out here, you re not saying, are you, that barack obama actually created more jobs his last 16 months 18 months. so it s more. close to 18 months. you re not saying that barack obama created more jobs in his last 18 months as president? god, that would be the last year and a half. that would be really hard to do, than donald trump has in the first 18 months, are you? you know, i am saying that. no. hold on. but the president says he s. statistics don t lie. wait, john, john, do you believe show this chart again. i just think because donald trump says this is the greatest economy we ve ever had. happy days are here again. donald trump has not created as many jobs his last 18 months as barack obama did his final 18 months? finally i do believe it, joe. do you really? because of the fact that i, on your advice, have become very familiar with the google machine and have been using it quite aggressively recently. i want to correct one thing you said about the steadiness of the economic growth. you want to not talk about the george w. bush part of it because that administration ended with the financial crisis that drove the country to a new depression. since october of 2010, steve, i think is correct is that is when the now 90 some months of consecutive job growth started. october 2010 with barack obama and we ve been on a steady path ever since then. what happened on september 15, 2008, was not good for the economy? i am saying that. we don t want to put bush in that same continuum. this is staggering. elise, if you talk to any trump supporte supporter, they will tell you, i support him because you know what, the economy, we have a record economy and record job growth and record this. we don t. we don t. we don t. we don t. go to the google machine and you ll see that barack obama wz more successful in creating jobs his last 18 months as president than donald trump has been his first 18 months. that simple. a lot of the role is cheerleader in chief, giving and projecting confidence in the economy and that s something that devaluing the truth. he has done that we don t need to say turn around. he takes it way too far. it s one thing to be pro business and to convince the business community that, yes, he s going to be anti-regulation, enacting policies that are more favorable to the business climate, but then just to all out lie. that does not help anything. steve, what you just said, very true. you talk to just about any business owner and they will tell you that he is more pro business. that regulatory relief helps a lot. yes, they will take those tax cuts. they don t think it was done. as well as it could have been done, but any tax cuts are good tax cuts. there is no doubt the business community is more favorable towards his policies than barack obama s policies and actually think they have somebody in the white house that actually understands what they re going through. that said, ublgd have said the same thing for george w. bush when the economy collapsed at the end of 2008. so that alone even if that is the case, that alone is not making the economy better than it was under barack obama. it s just not. and it s not. look, there s no question the business community is happy with this and that he s given them a lot of stuff, but i think what we should also talk about is the average worker and where the average worker sits at the moment relative to what trump is proclaiming as a turn around of historic proportions. the average worker, elise, if i m a democrat, i m talking about the average worker that got stiffed by these tariffs. they ll be paying more when they go shopping. they got stiffed by the tax cuts. they went to the richest americans. and they ve gotten stiffed by health care, pre-existing conditions, forget about it. donald trump and his administration are trying to obliterate protections that congress laid down when it comes to pre-existing conditions and we ll talk about lower wage growth under trump in a second. there was a really disturbing stat that i read recently something like 70% of renters 70% cost the average income coming in goes to rent in a lot of major cities. that s completely unsustainable for workers to have to pay 70% of their income every month. i don t see how we don t we ve had ten good years post the recession. how do we not have a dropping off the cliff soon? and what about wages? are they going up? they have to be going up because donald trump says they are. ivanka visits a lot of workers, and i think that helps. she also visits, iowa, by the way, but more on that later. more on that later. isn t it the ultimate litmus test of the administration whether you make the average worker better off or not. they get to meet ivanka. under obama, the average worker got pay increases of about 0.8% a year. that s after adjusting for inflation. that s that line i just put up. right. under trump, it has actually dropped to 0.3% a year. so in fact, wage increases under trump have gone from 0 .8% under obama to 0.3% under trump. right. the last two quarters wage increases these are all after adjusting for wage. the last two months they have been zero, no wage increases for the average american. just from 40,000 feet, the u.s. economy under barack obama and the first 18 months donald trump pretty good, right? again, it s a slower, gradual growth. trump will probably be annualized at maybe 2%, 2.5%. just like obama. but again, pretty good, steady growth over time. you know it s not 3%. yes. exactly. in a year of somewhat diminished expectations of what we can perform and produce, 2% is a reasonable number, 2.5% is a reasonable number. but the problem is as my last chart shows, it s not getting to the average worker. right. and the key thing about trump is that if you look through all of his policies, find me one that is actually helped the average worker. tax cuts for the rich, tariffs, deregulation. i don t think so. also tearing to shreds any hope for health care reform. health care. that would help working class americans that would take care of their kids with pre-existing conditions that would take care of the elderly. they re talking about slashing funding for nursing homes when you look at what they want to do with medicaid. democrats are salivating about taking health care out on the campaign trail this fall. i just checked the google machine on your question no trump policies that help workers. still ahead in may he called michael cohen honest and honorable. this rudy, yeah. i remember when he called michael cohen he did. honest. 100%. and honorable. but yesterday he called him a pathological liar. what? uh-huh. apparently he was the president s lawyer, though. which is kind of interesting that the president employed a pathological liar as his lawyer. i don t understand, america s mayor said he was an honest man. rudy giuliani has done a 180 on the president s former fixer. we ll talk about why next on morning joe. very confused. let your perfect drive come together at the lincoln summer invitation sales event. get 0% apr on select 2018 lincoln models plus $1,000 bonus cash. moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis was intense. my mom s pain from i wondered if she could do the stuff she does for us which is kinda, a lot. and if that pain could mean something worse. joint pain could mean joint damage. enbrel helps relieve joint pain, and helps stop further damage enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders and allergic reactions have occurred. tell your doctor if you ve been someplace where fungal infections are common. or if you re prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for heart failure or if you have persistent fever, bruising, bleeding or paleness. don t start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. since enbrel, my mom s back to being my mom. visit enbrel.com. and use the joint damage simulator to see how joint damage could progress. ask about enbrel. enbrel. fda approved for over 18 years. of the june, 2016, trump tower meeting with russians. just over two months ago on may 6th, giuliani described cohen has a, quote, honest, honorable lawyer who, quote, doesn t have any incriminating evidence about the president. rudy giuliani yeah. honest? what do we do with this character? john heilemann, you re going to have somebody be your personal lawyer for 20 years or so, i guess it has been 20 years already. not quite that long but a while. you want a guy around you who is honest and honorable so it makes sense that rudy and trump would say that cohen is an honest lawyer. he s your fixer. he s your guys with you don t want a scum bag as your fixer. you want a guy who is honest. and loyal. fast forward to yesterday and here is what giuliani had to say. uh-oh. what? now i ve listened unfortunately, fortunately for my client s point of view, to many, many hours of tapes and the man is a pathological, manipulator, liar. i didn t know that. i didn t know him well, but i knew nothing bad about michael cohen until all of this started to happen in the last couple weeks. until he stopped covering up for donald trump. former chief of staff at the ci, a and department of defense now an nbc national security analyst, jeremy bash. also here with us on set, nbc news foreign correspondent keir simmo simmons. good to be here. rudy giuliani has transformed. he s so sad that michael cohen isn t a boy scott afterall. jeremy bash, it seems to be a tale of two cohens here. [ laughter ]. he was the best fixer. he was the worst fixer. that s right, joe. look, i do think that this claim by michael cohen, we don t know yet whether it was verified, that donald trump knew in advance about the meeting in trump tower that he approved it and welcomed the support from the russian government delegation. that is potentially the most significant development in the whole russia investigation. and the reason is because up up donald trump has been able to say, you know, i don t know what my son, people in my campaign have been doing. i had nothing to do with it. michael cohen knows every single detail about the trump organization, about the business dealings in russia, he can say and testify or provide testimony to bob mueller s team that donald trump was briefed about this, he welcomed this, he knew that it was a russian government delegation and this under mines every other single claim that donald trump has made. donald trump knew enough about that meeting to get everybody on air force one and lie about it. but you ve really done a deep dive into people that were at the meeting. thanks for the dicken s reference. look, we got close to the kremlin. for example, i can tell you the billionaire was on vacation with the spokesman for president putin just last week. so they are pictured together with their wives. the whole russian heirarchy, if you like, the top of that establishment is like this. like london. i think one of the interesting insights into all of this is what we re talking about is the behavior of obscenely rich people. this is how they behave. they believe that everything that they say, if they say it is right. that s what obscenely rich people do. and their children. their entitled children they empower them to make the same kind of success. in a sense if you step back, the real connection is about how very, very rich people behave and how they behave towards each other. i think you told me when you spent some time in london that was your takeaway at least about london is it was very closely held and, you know, everything happened in london and everybody seemed to know everybody. what we re learning not only from keir but others it s even tighter in russia because as you say it depends. you have nice parks. small country, couple universities. a lot of these russians are now in london. property owners. they have parts of football clubs. i want to come back to what jeremy said about the michael cohen assertion. there s a question. will it be verified or not. are there tapes that demonstrate this. jeremy, one of the things that we know, at least from the reporting on this, is that michael cohen is saying to people that there were other people present in the meeting at which donald trump, he alleges, was told all about this meeting and what its purpose was and so on. one of those people i ll offer this not for somebody who has been named but a reasonable person to start asking about is hope hicks who was pretty much in every meeting that donald trump was in at that point in time in the campaign and who has already talked to robert mueller. talk about the various ways that s one example other ways in which the cohen assertion could be, in fact, verified. there are other opportunities to have corroborating evidence. there was a discussion in the house intelligence committee report that came out about a month and a half ago about a blocked number that donald trump jr. called before and after that meeting. obviously, bob mueller can access who that blocked number was. there will be documents, there will be calendar, other people who were in the meeting with donald trump. there are other ways to corroborate this. i should think if donald trump was briefed on this we ll know about it and it will be in the bob mueller report. i just think it s also important, now that we have so much about the trump tower meeting to remind ourselves it was not just a meeting with don t jr., it was with paul manafort and others. it was with the russian delegation. not just about adoptions it was about sanctions and what they would trade in order to interfere in the elections. i would add one thing. not just that we can speculate bob mueller might find out. i think there s a chance bob mueller already knows this stuff. he s talked to people already who would have been present at the meeting. he has this information. it s another example ways in which bob mueller is miles ahead of where we are and the things we think we might learn one day are things he might have already nailed down at this hour. i have some doubts about whether the others were led up to meet the president other than candidate. i wonder if that s true. i ve spoken many times. the idea that president trump knew about the meeting, i signed up. did they actually meet, i m not completely convinced. jeremy bash thank you very much. still ahead, president trump escalates the threat of a government shutdown before the 2018 mid-terms. and get as word of caution from some republicans. the washington post robert costa joining us us with his latest reporting. plus the president puts his fear on the mueller probe on full display launching his most personal attack against the special counsel yet. did you believe now nervous he was. just petrified. a fraidy cat situation. he was in a fetal position tweeting under a desk. he was very, very scared and the tweets were full of ties and riddled with fear. you can almost imagine him. makes me sad. it s hard. . was he shaking that bad? it s not good. we ll talk to senator richard blumenthal about those tweets and congressman eric swalwell on the committee investigating russia. morning joe is coming right back. hi! how was your day? it was good. it was long. let s fix it. play connection by onerepublic. (beep) these days, my waves get lost in the ocean seven billion swimmers man i m going through the motions sent up a flare need love and devotion trade it for some faces that i ll never know notion can i get a connection? can i get can i get a connection? can i get a connection? can i get can i get a connection? the full value oft wyour new car? you d be better off throwing your money right into the harbor. i m gonna regret that. with liberty mutual new car replacement we ll replace the full value of your car. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty i love you, basement guest bathroom. your privacy makes you my number 1 place to go number 2. i love you, but sometimes you stink. febreze air effects doesn t just mask, it cleans away odors. because the things you love the most can stink. and try febreze small spaces to clean away odors for up to 30 days. breathe happy with febreze. booking a flight doesn t have to be expensive. just go to priceline. it s the best place to book a flight a few days before my trip and still save up to 40%. just tap and go. for the best savings on flights, go to priceline. i m a red sox because i hate the yankees. i hate the yankees. we need to go out and see a mets game. they have to win a few first. mookie is cute. she likes mookie. it s monday, july 30th, 2018. still with us, john hallman. he seems sweet. nbc news foreign correspondent keir simmons. he s adorable. former aid to the george h. w. bush white house and state department elise jordan. and author of the soul of america, the soul of america himself john meacham. you earned so much money on that book, can you buy me a book. have all your relatives been calling and asking for things because you re so rich now because of that book? no. i don t actually answer the phone. we have like a green acres phone, eddie albert, we get on top of mr. drucker s store and i stay off the roof. you have arnold the pig answer the phone for you. yes. it would be cool if you got the boat. the boat paid by the soul of america. joining the conversation i have a quick question. has you re comparing 1960s sitcom animals, all right, we got a showdown between arnold the pig on green acres, the smartest animal in town too versus mr. ed, who do you go with? the pig. 100%. i liked the talking thing is kind of cool. the notion that a horse could talk, i like that. but the pig is the smartest creature. pigs are smart. my mom loves the pig. your pigs can do higher math. all right. also joining us political reporter for the washington post and moderator of washington week on pbs, robert costa. neither green acres or mr. ed is airing. and law prove for at george washington university, mr. turley. arnold or mr. ed? mr. ed. chicago cubs is the greatest baseball team on earth. wow. so he s going to start like that. cut his feed. ing? right to the news. president trump spend part of his weekend lashing out and questioning the credibility of robert mueller s ongoing investigation. in a series of tweets yesterday trump claimed there was no collusion and since he says so he thinks everyone should believe him. he called mueller s probe a witch-hunt and an illegal scam. he went on to write nervously. is robert mueller ever going to release his conflict of interest with respect to president trump with respect to the fact we had a very nasty business relationship. i turned him down to head the fbi one day before appointment as special counsel and comey is his close friend. also why is mueller only appointing angry dems some of whom who have worked for crooked hillary. including others have worked for obama and why isn t mueller looking at all of the criminal activity and real russian collusion on the democrat side, podesta dossier? nbc news reached out to the special counsel s office and received no response. so, jonathan, just curious where are you right now with a lot of things that happened over the past couple of weeks. and, obviously, donald trump lashing out furiously at the special counsel, independent counsel. it s as if he expects something to drop over the next week or two. where are you right now on the mueller investigation, what you know of it and where you think it s headed? i think the current development is very serious. he s one witness away from a potential catastrophe. if any of those five witnesses breaks and supports michael cohen this will get real bad real fast. it s not that the meeting will establish a crime of collusion even if what cohen is saying is true, but what it would mean is that donald trump jr. would be in serious jeopardy of a criminal charge. if mueller was to go after donald trump jr., i think we would see a very rapid chain of events and it would not end well for anyone. i think that donald trump very well could match his past visceral language with similar language. company start to fire people. and that would have a cascading effect. it would probably take us right to the door step of impeachment. thus far, there isn t any corroboratation from michael cohen and the fact is he s not a very credible person. unlike rudy giuliani most of us have actually heard bad things about michael cohen. he must not have been around for the past year not to hear bad things about michael cohen. cohen is not really redeemable as a witness. he needs to have support from some of the people in that room. and robert costa, what can you tell us about the attitude inside the white house, what s going on there, why donald trump went on this scream again yesterday morning. we see it in the past when the heat is turned up on him. what happened this weekend? my sources meeting with them over the weekend they are on high alert. look what s happening on capitol hill. don t ignore it with regard to the mueller investigation. you have top trump allies proposing these articles of impeachment now, a contempt of congress for deputy attorney general rod rosenstein and that option is sitting out there for president trump being proffered by his allies saying if you do want to move on mueller, if you do believe you have an excuse to go after the department of justice over this document fight you can go after rod rosenstein. it s sitting there as a political target and that has made some trump allies on edge if mueller does start to take some real action legally that the president could consider making some moves at doj. john, there a couple of back benches that are going after rod rosenstein. at the same time you have republicans in the united states senate shoulder to shoulder in support of robert mueller, in support of the investigation moving forward. you have richard burr the chairman of the senate intel committee saying last week that all the fisa warrants made sense and were logical, no wrongdoing there whatsoever. you talk about open warfare among republicans, the saturday night massacre, what is playing out between the white house and justice department, it would be 80% of the senate and, you know, probably 50% of the house republicans going after each other and the president. it would be a bloodbath 99 days out. 100%. i think but that was true, but broad support for rod rosenstein among senate republicans and even many house republicans who don t want to say so publicly, that was true before helsinki. after helsinki. the degree of strength that rod rosenstein has among everyone but the nunez caucus and mark meadows caucus who is engaging in this ridiculous impeach rod rosenstein. it s just pure kabuki. he won t be impeached. but the extent that there s a caucus that likes to make that kind of noise, the counter caucus, the broader support for rod rosenstein is off the charts after helsinki. post-helsinki you really, really have to be taking your political future into your own hands even as a reif you re going after robert mueller s indictment of what does he have, 23 russians now? and clear evidence just in black and white that they tried to rig the 2016 election. they tried to intervene, yeah. i think you can under estimate how much the russians are watching. we talk about the, you know, american foreign policy you should always view through american domestic policy. russians know that. when i speak to people in the kremlin i get a clear impression that they understand the politics here and they are making moves. so just, for example, after helsinki, some in the kremlin told me we won t talk about this any more. we need to keep quiet about this. now we had president putin offer president trump i don t like washington in the fall. you re my patsy, you come to moscow. can you under estimate that again and again. remember when i was in north korea last year and a north korean official told me we watch morning joe . huge. this country is going through this incredible angst and clearly that has to happen but don t under estimate how around the world he s being watched. the world is watching. so john meacham, where is the soul of america in the age of devalued truth, starting at the top and the relationship with russia that we could never expect? you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. lies are good starter, but they are not good finishers, and again and again in american life we ve had periods where we had distrusted institutions, we had people who thought they could put a fast one past us and sometimes they did for a time. but ultimately the great experiments in self-government that the founders put together created a document, created an ethos that because it takes into account that we re flawed, we re driven by appetite and ambition, it gave us a chance for reason to take a stand against passion in the arena. this is what the constitution was made for. what would have stunned the founders, they would have taken until 2016 to get a demagogue like this as a president. the document was kraefted to try to check our worst impulse, and joe mccarthy took four years, watergate took 27 months. jim crow took a century. you know, we ve been in dark places before. we just have to remember that what makes us best is when we re strong and when we open our arms. jonathan turley, elise here. the column about how michael cohen is panicked and that makes him dangerous. you re talking you were talking about some of the behavior that we might see if donald trump jr. is himself more imperilled. is michael cohen at this point still hoping for a pardon or any acting out or has that ship sailed yeah, no. i think donald trump is probably more likely to give hillary clinton a pardon right now than michael cohen. any pardon strategy is gone. this over mutually shared destruction strategy by cohen. i don t really get it. usually you threaten that. you don t usually commit the act. he started out with that. the pardon, i think, is no longer an option. he s putting all of his money on mueller. i m not too sure that strategy will play out for him. he s not that valuable of a witness in one sense than he is in another. his proximity makes him very draws dra dangerous to the president. but to have the lawyer say he ll try something new he ll tell the truth. that s not a roaring endorsemen. it s basically saying i m john dean without the guilt. not that great of a witness to put on the stand. jonathan turley, thank you very much. president trump used twitter to once again shut down the government for tougher immigration laws. he tweeted yesterday i would be willing to shut down government if the democrats do not give us the votes for border security which includes the wall. must get rid of lottery, catch and release, et cetera. and finally go to system of immigration based on merit. we need great people coming in to our country. trump s warning comes ahead of the september 30th deadline for congress to strike a deal to fund the government, raising the possibility of a showdown just 37 days before the mid-term elections. the potential funding battle would come amid efforts by republicans to confirm the president s supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh by october 1st. following his meeting on wednesday with senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and paul ryan president trump signaled that he was on board with the leader s strategy to fund the government through smaller packages of spending bills. mcconnell said friday talks over funding the border wall would have to wait until after the mid-terms. bob costa, i think immigration is a great issue to go into the mid-terms with to remind e around the stench around this presidency with the separation of families going on with hundreds of children who may not ever be reunited with their families again because of president trump, jeff sessions, kirstjen nielsen and ivanka trump by default since she s counselor to the president in support of families. are republicans afraid of the shutdown mika makes an important point on immigration. ivanka trump in 2016 went to the suburbs of philadelphia and vulnerable republicans right now are very unese i about the president focusing on immigration. but my sources say the president talk about this witch00, his words about the russia investigation, hammering a proposed border wall. all about juicing up that republican base because talking to pollsters inside the party and people conducting focus groups they are concerned a blue wave could be coming. the quarterly growth, the tax cut not enough to get the trump voter to come back out in the mid-term elections. it s back to the wall, back to immigration, back to going after robert mueller. that s the strategy. boy, that is, steve rattner, that s a rough strategy for donald trump and i m sure probably speaks to why recognizes are afraid. i mean coming to the district. and you ve talked about it this morning already, the times has a story on the front page but poll after poll after poll shows the rank-and-file just aren t buying this tax cut. in fact, it s deeply unpopular, especially among working class americans that republicans need. it s got a 30% approval rating. americans got to give him a little bit of credit on figuring things out. what they figured out 85% of this tax cut going to businesses or people making over $75,000. the average american gets $600. not a lot of money. on the shutdown question there s 13 legislative days between now and the election. there s a lot at risk. history would tell you shutdowns hurt the party that perceived to create the shutdown. but democrats need 60 votes in the senate. they have to get some democrats to get over the finish line. going to be awfully tough. keir, i want to talk about london again. it s on my mind. since i can t talk about chelsea. let s talk about theresa may and boris johnson, news this week, don t know if it s accurate or not, but boris johnson now is becoming good buddies with steve bannon. true? do you see those reports? steve bannon has been in the uk and has been making friends. and not just with the former foreign secretary but with others much further to the right. do we expect a challenge to theresa may from boris johnson? just to put simply what s happening in the uk is the government is hanging by a thread and what the conservative government is frightened of is if they break that thread and go for a general election spend up with a very far left labor party in power. that, by the way, would turn things upside down. the leader of the labor part in the uk has some sympathy for russia. he has interesting views on europe. the potential for things to really unravel around brexit and echo around the world economically which where things here should worry b-i guess, is great. is there a possibility of another coalition government in britain where it gets to the point where it looks like you ll have boris johnson teaming up with other right-wing parties. you need another election to have it happen. you can predict the outcome of an election, particularly the way that the electorate are these days here and in the uk. what s happening is very detail internal politics within the ruling party in britain with the big picture of them desperately trying to cling to power. keir simmons thank you very much. robert costa, thank you as well. robert, what are you working on today? keeping an eye on the mueller investigation. where is this report? when is a subpoena coming for president trump? is rudy giuliani going to don t dance around the idea of doing an interview. decisions have to be made on both sides. still ahead on morning joe from cruel to inhumane to careless and incompetent show you senator blumenthal describes the government initial child separation policy and subsequent efforts to deal with it. the connecticut democrat joins us next on morning joe . feet. & with edge-to-edge intelligence you ve got near real time inventory updates. & he ll find the same shoes in your store that he found online he ll be one happy, very forgetful wide footed customer. at&t provides edge to edge intelligence. it can do so much for your business, the list goes on and on. that s the power of &. & if your customer also forgets socks! & you could send him a coupon for that item. sfx: [cell phone dialing] no. no, no, no, no, no. cancel. cancel. please. aaagh! being in the know is a good thing. that s why discover will alert you if your social security number is found on any one of thousands of risky sites. resolution on protecting the press. we ll get to that. curious as to what you know about where the separation policy stands? we know they ended the policy but still a lot of children s lives hanging in the balance. are they going to be able to resolve this completely? hundreds of children are still separated from their parents. do we have a good number on that? are we in the hundreds? there are no good numbers. no good numbers. why are there no good numbers. why can t we get the government, why can t we get the fraugs to give us good numbers on how many children they seized from tarms of their parents and have now lost? that is the question we re going to be asking tomorrow when we have i.c.e. come before the judiciary committee. we ll have a hearing. and the question of whether this policy is a result of incompetence and carelessness or deliberate cruelty. right now what we have is benign neglect. children are separated because of the incompetence and carelessness and the policy itself and americans should be angry about it is the result of consciously and purposely inflicted cruelty. the focus on i.c.e. is misdirected. the focus is on the policy. this would be like americans being angry at tsa if donald trump decided to seize babies from mothers arms when they are going through the metal detectors. that s exactly right. that s why we ve urged the chairman of the committee, chuck grassley not just have i.c.e. but the office of refugee resettlement, department of homeland security leadership in general and the department of health and human services. they all bear responsibility. why are they still separated. what s the crux of that? are the parents deported? are the parents out of country and now the kids are stuck in america? what s happened? some parents have been deported on the promise that they would be reunited. that was a false promise. some of the parents are still in this country, but the department of homeland security doesn t have sufficient information to bring them together. we ve received closed briefings and the basic conclusion here is that this policy is a result of a conscious effort to deter asylum seekers from coming to this country by convincing them that they will face more pain here than they would by facing the murder, violence and gang warfare in their own country. so i understand that s what sessions, that s what trump wanted to happen. what i don t understand is when they implemented the policy, how were they not able to trace how were they not able to put 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds back with their parents? whose ultimately who ultimately fumbled that responsibility? and that s what the american people deserve to know. and we don t know the answer yet. we ll begin finding out tomorrow. but i think there has to be accountability. isn t it remarkable we don t know? isn t it remarkable there was a plan? there was no plan. you know when i visited the border, now almost six weeks ago, what i saw and i said it when i came back was no plan, no path, no system for reuniting these children with their parents. i looked into the eyes of a 2-year-old girl in her father s arm who faced possible separation from her father, and he was close to tears. but he had walked 30 days across mexico to escape the violence and persecution in his country simply so his daughter could live and have the opportunity to be in this country, but there was no plan to keep them together, there was no plan to reunite them if they were separated. there never was. and that is the really untold story. i feel like we have to call a time-out right here for viewers who may not understand the laws of this land. it is legal for people to come to this country and seek refugee status and when they come here that s when we re supposed to have a review. and we re supposed to have judges, courts look at it. and, of course, donald trump s answer is separate the children, deport the parents, and fire all the judges. says he doesn t want any judges any more. doesn t want any more due process for refugee status which, again, is that s the basis of our country. donald trump s parents, donald trump s mother came to america from overseas, mika s mother and father escaped hitler, came to america, mika s mother went across the atlantic, actually got the boat got hit by a german torpedo which was a thud, but escaped, escaped nazi oppression. so did my dad in 1935 came here at 17 years old. he had not much more than the shirt on his back. spoke no english. he was a penniless refugee who would have been sent back under trump s current policies. there is a legal protection but there s also a great american tradition. exactly. that s our story. exactly. we re a nation of immigrants. there s something that also is really troublesome, i mean everything about this policy is troublesome, but texas tribune had been reporting about 70 children under the age of 2 have been representing themselves at asylum proceedings. how does this happen in america? i know. sir, i want to move on to a different topic and a different venue for you which is your role on the judiciary committee. bret kavanaugh coming before you guys. you have been raising some concerns about the scope of the committee s inquiry, ability to get all the records from the time he was in the white house an also about where he stands on the question of the nixon president. i want to talk about both those things. where we are. not so much about the political maneuvering, will he protect robert mueller, how serious is the scrutiny your committee will give to this nomination. first of all, we need the documents and right now we re being denied all documents we need to review this nomination. the reason we need the documents is that there s no telling what he may have written and what s relevant when he was staff secretary to president bush. we know that on some of the issues like the signing statements related to illegal detention he took certain positions. but we need to confirm what he tells us by having all the documents. the question is what are they hiding? why are they concealing some of these documents sydney won t meet with this nominee and certainly would urge my colleagues to vote against him if we are denied those documents. second, on the issue of presidential power he has a very expansive view of what the president s powers can be. first of all, the president can refuse to enforce a law if he feels that it is unconstitutional. second, he should be able to fire the special counsel for any reason or no reason at all. and that makes him a possible deciding vote also on the subpoena power, he s questioned the validity of the tapes case. that was in the watergate area and decided unanimously by a supreme court in an opinion written by the chief justice warren burger a nixon appointee. this questioning of the issue of when the president is above the law is extremely serious. if his position is the president is above the law, i don t see how any of my colleagues can vote for him. senator, without diminishing the importance of everything you said, in the real world of politics it seems like the republicans are absolutely locked in step here on whether maybe rand paul but mostly locked in step. three red state congressmen who voted for gorsuch. is there doubt he ll be confirmed. there is doubt. mainly in these documents, if we get them, there may be bomb shells and smoking guns and other very revealing evidence that goes to his views on these critical issues, not just presidential power but also roe v. wade and his committing apparently passing the trump litmus trump to automatically overrule it, on health care issues. we need to take this case to the american people and i think the american people are going to want a check and balance on this president particularly. i think they are going to want someone who is in favor of a free press. especially with this president. so, let s talk about republicans and the mueller investigation. you, of course, have a couple of house republicans who are playing the role of vladimir putin s poodles, embarrassing themselves. on the republican side in the senate some strong words, again, from richard burr the chairman of the intel committee saying fisa warrants were actually in line and the judges, the republican judges did the right thing there. it seems that more and more republicans are speaking out strongly for, in support of robert mueller s investigation going to its end. there s no question that trump s cronies in the house are threatening impeachment of rod rosenstein, which is very impactful. and also threatening special counsel. we have republicans in the senate beginning to show some signs of resistance to this consistent concerted campaign against the special counsel. remember this campaign has been ongoing for some time, not just the president calling it a witch-hunt, but also some of his i hesitate to say stooges but surrogates in the house saying that it is all made up. we know from the close to 30 indictments and five convictions there s a lot of evidence. russians, by the way, they are not just covering for donald trump any more, they are not trump s churmps any more, they are vladimir putin s useful idiots. this is a russian story that these republican dupes in the house of representatives are covering for vladimir putin. they should get their contributions converted to r rubles now. the remarkable thing about this indictment, no way these russias were freelancing. they are military intelligence operatives under orders from vladimir putin. instead of inviting him to this country, he should be indicted in this country. and the people who are cozying up to him are simply aiding and abetting ongoing attack on this country. it continues. senator blumenthal you say stooges. we don t. richard blumenthal, thank you so much. i do like putin s poodles. there s a few republicans in the house of representatives who are literally covering up an enemy s attempt to undermine american democracy. think about how remarkable that is. how do you go back to your constituents and say i m trying to impeach the guy that is running an investigation against our enemies trying to infiltrate american democracy and undermine it. try to put that one on a bumper sticker. joe, i really think you re doing an injustice to the dogs of america. okay. senator, thank you. we ll be watching as you present a resolution today on the press as well. we ll get to that. coming up the trump-cohen drama goes public and getting ugly. we ll bring in a former judge and u.s. attorney from the office now investigating the president s former fixer. we ll be right back. this is a story about mail and packages. and it s also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they re handing us more than mail they re handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you and rb. there must be something wrong, please recheck that poll and many did check, according to gallop, trump s approval rating among republicans is 88%. at the same point in their presidencies, dwight eisenhower s approval rating was 92% among republicans and george h. w. bush s approval was 93%. four and five points higher than trump s respectively. he needs to heck chcheck his nu. he really needs to search. up next more on the conversation we were just having with senator blumenthal, that the white house had absolutely no plan to reunify the families i want separated at the border. that s next on morning joe . oh! do not share needles or pens. don t reuse needles. do not take ozempic® if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to ozempic®. stop taking ozempic® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, itching, rash, or trouble breathing. serious side effects may happen, including pancreatitis. tell your doctor if you have diabetic retinopathy or vision changes. taking ozempic® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase the risk for low blood sugar. common side effects are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and constipation. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may worsen kidney problems. i discovered the potential with ozempic®. oh! oh! oh! ozempic®! (vo) ask your healthcare provider if ozempic® is right for you. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. stay at la quinta. where we re changing with stylish make-overs. then at your next meeting, set your seat height to its maximum level. bravo, tall meeting man. start winning today. book now at lq.com information to locate hundreds of missing parents to reunite them with their children. a federal judge overseeing the court ordered reunification of more than 2,500 migrant children has ordered the administration turn over a list of all parents deemed ineligible for reunification by wednesday. let s bring in msnbc correspondent jacob for more on this. are they going to be able to track down all these families and reunite them that s the idea, mika. this thing is almost absurdly far from over. on friday the trump administration basically declared victory saying they had reunited by this court imposed deadline the eligible, what they call eligible 1880 something, 1882 children systematically separated from their parents by the trump administration. the overall number was 2,500 kids. what we learned in court from the trump administration on friday actually went down there and sat in this courtroom to listen to the judge talk to trump administration and watch them battle it out with the aclu. there were 650 kids, senator blumenthal didn t know the number. 650 is the number of children that the government deemed ineligible to be reunited with their parents and didn t reunite them. the judge stepped in and basically said there are missing parents. he calls them missing parents. go find them. the government was refusing to provide the aclu information, specific detailed information that would help them track down these folks in their home countries including 431 parents who were deported and can t get back to this country to be reunited with their children. this information being handed over by wednesday and track them down. jacob, you said 650 the trump administration saying 650 young children are quote ineligible to be reunited with their parents, ineligible on what grounds? how did they define ineligible right. that s such a good question. let me be clear. those children were separated in the exact same way at the exact same places that the kids that were deemed eligible were separated. the only issue with these children is they say some of these parents, 431 of them were already deported. that s it. they just got deported before they could get-together with their children. another small portion of that group has some form of criminal convictions but we don t know why or what kind. they are focused on 120 of these parents, who they say waived the right to reunification with their kids. but it s sort of a hard argument to buy because we know from affidavits filed in court many of those parents said i actually signed those forms in error to give up my children, i didn t understand them. they were different languages. jacob, are these judges raking these government bureaucrats over the coals? i can t imagine any judge with a thousand kids missing, 650, however many it is right now, i can t imagine any judge rake, not raking these bureaucrats over the coals and demanding that they provide answers. are they doing that? of course. the bottom line a plan for reunification if it wasn t for this judge down in the southern district here in california. he said very clearly on friday, there never was a plan. these were like a bunch of different stove pipes, doj, hhs, the department of homeland security that never even talked to each other. he said, look, step one is getting the eligible children back together. step two is you guys basically finding the parents you said were ineligible and we re going to reunite, even if i, the judge, didn t tell you to do this and come up with an actual plan to do this. and, step three, that this never happens again. all of these agencies you would think would talk to each other, all federal government agencies involved in the care of migrant children at the border, would talk to each other and they re not talking to each other. he said this can never happen again, was basically his parting thoughts in court on friday. jacob, thank you very much. pbs s front line is taking a closer look at the crisis with a new special entitled separated children at the border. here is a clip featuring an interview with former acting director of i.c.e. when you heard the tape, the pro publica published of the children waling, what was your reaction? i didn t hear the tape. come on. i did not hear the tape. i ve heard many children cry in my 34 years. i don t need to hear. can i play it for you? yes. it is a young girl who asked to call her aunt, she has the number memorized. how can you not condemn that? look, i ve seen a lot of terrible things in my 34 years. what we have to address the border. do you not sympathize absolutely. i m a parent. it is sad, but when a government chooses to enforce the law and they separate the parents being prosecuted, just like every u.s. citizen, person in this country is separated when they re arrested, people want a different set of rules for an illegal alien. and frontline correspondent martin smith joins us now. martin, obviously quite an interview. what else did you find out from the former director of i.c.e.? well, look, he takes a very simple approach to this. it was abundantly clear after talking to him that he sees this as a simple case of there s a law about how you legally enter the country and he s going to enforce it. and the president has accepted that kind of approach to this. you know, if you want to have a humane process of deciding who can come and who deserves to come, who is fleeing violence and needs asylum, you have to have judges. you have to have a robust asylum process. the president says he doesn t want judges. well, that s what judges are for. right. to judge whether or not somebody has a decent case to make. so holman says enforce the law. did you sense from him and do you sense from other i.c.e. officials and other people who tried to tackle this issue a frustration, a belief that you hear out of this administration that people in the past have brought children up with them to make their passage into the united states easier? you know, he didn t he didn t harp on that, and i have heard that from some. but, look, you know, i went down to salvador for the making of this documentary, and my producer was covering this for the last year, was in mexico, guatemala, el salvador. these people are fleeing violence and these children and their mothers or fathers need to get out of the situations they re in. they re not just looking to make this easy to get in. what s the fate of these children, especially if they can t be reunited with their families, which it sounds like is a legitimate possibility for a good number of them, what will happen to them? what do we even know of their status right now, how they re doing? well, it is an excellent question, mika. we don t know. we don t know what s going to happen. we talked to one man who was put on a plane back to salvador. his daughter had been separated from him at the border. he was told that she if he agreed to be deported, she would be reunited. eventually she was reunited with him. but there are others who went back under the pretense that if they agreed to be deported they would get their child back, which is really a violation of their right to file a claim for asylum and have a court hearing, due process. but in any way, you know, some of like was mentioned by jacob, there are people that speak a native language in guatemala who were asked to sign a form in english. they didn t know what they were getting into. there were some that were illiterate. but these are people that have legitimate claims from what i saw, not by and large criminals as is as they are described. martin smith, thank you so much. the new frontline documentary, separated children at the border premieres tomorrow night on pbs. thank you very much. thank you. thanks so much. so let s talk about the politics of i.c.e. they will be talking to the director on the hill. right now it seems most democrats are trying to distance themselves from comments others have suggested that i.c.e. be abolished. yeah. i mean, look, that tape, that interview is many democrats, certainly the base of the party, that kind of comment, the chilling tone of, well, you know, this is sad but, you know, these pembroke the law. right. that s going to fuel this debate for democrats, especially those thinking of running for president in 2020. you have kristin gillibrand now, elizabeth warren on the strong we must abolish i.c.e. front. we have people like kamala harris who say we have to fix it. fixing i.c.e. is the easy position. in the democratic party where there s so much energy on the far left in the base but if you abolish i.c.e., what replaces it? for the moment all i want to say is that the political dynamic is going to pull democrats to the left. you have a couple of big voices saying we must abolish it. it will become a litmus test. if you want to run for president, you have to say you will abolish it or radically reform it. still ahead on morning joe , we will bring in a former prosecutor who has sharp advice for the president s former fixer, michael cohen, and a retired judge who says some members of congress need to be investigated for trying to intimidate the deputy attorney general. plus, democratic congressman of eric swalwell. morning joe is coming right back. am i willing to pay the price for loving you? you ll make my morning, but ruin my day. complicated relationship with milk? pour on the lactaid. it s delicious 100% real milk, just without that annoying lactose. mmm, that s good. lactaid. the real milk that doesn t mess with you. and for chocolate lovers, try rich, creamy lactaid chocolate milk. happy anniversary dinner, darlin . can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra? oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. ohhhh.enough already! we need to see a doctor. ask your doctor about myrbetriq® (mirabegron). it treats oab symptoms of urgency, frequency, and leakage. it s the first and only oab treatment in its class. myrbetriq may increase blood pressure. tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or have a weak urine stream. myrbetriq may cause serious allergic reactions. .like swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, or trouble breathing. if experienced, stop taking and tell your doctor right away. myrbetriq may interact with other medicines. tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. common side effects include increased blood pressure, common cold or flu symptoms,. .sinus irritation, dry mouth, urinary tract infection, bladder inflammation,. .back or joint pain, constipation, dizziness, and headache. need some help managing your oab symptoms along the way? ask your doctor if myrbetriq is right for you, and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. but every time i look at him he s campaigning. wow. president trump is i ll go six or seven days a week when we re i ll go six or seven days a week when we re 60 days out, and i will be campaigning for all of these great people that do have a difficult race, and we think we re going to bring them over the line. wow. president trump is known to contradict himself while on the campaign is he really? is he really? never happens. i wouldn t that s hateful you would say that. yes. this time he is contradicting himself being on the campaign trail. okay. the midterm vote is 99 days away. while the president is not on the ballot, his presidency certainly is. good morning, everyone. welcome to morning joe. 99 days away. oh, that s so how did that happen? well, i mean this has gone so quickly. i would think you would want it to be 99 days. closer to this being over. nine days away would be great. please end it. 99 bottles of beer on the wall. something like that. let me ask you, because obviously 100th day yesterday, people were talking about it. what is the state of play right now? there s always a back and forth and there will be more back and forth as we move forward, but where do the democrats, where do the republicans stand in terms of confidence on whether trump s going to be stopped or whether everything he s done the first two years are going to be validated? i think if you looked over the course of this year, people broadly think democrats are likely to retake control of the house. still kind of a coin toss in the senate. about a month ago you heard republicans getting sort of this surge about optimism that maybe they could hold on, that the economic news and some other things, and trump not having created, at least by his standards, too much chaos for them that things were swinging a little bit back in republican s direction, and then helsinki happened. yep. the separation of families on the border happened, other things that blotted out all of the things that republicans want to talk about. they all came to the forefront, and now today democrats incredibly, incredibly confident and optimistic and republicans privately back to pessimism and thinking the house is probably gone and we maybe are going to hold on to the senate, but the blue wave feels stronger than 30 days ago. think of the three things that happened in the past 30 days. first of all, south korea has gone south. secretary of state pompeo admitting that the north korean s haven t slowed down and in fact may be creating more secret sites to build nuclear weapons. that north korea deal went down the drain. john already talked about helsinki. and lying over all of this, and i know it is something you will relate to very much, after katrina there were so many evangelicals who i went to church with that we were, you know, we would do daily relieves after katrina over to mississippi and louisiana and they were shattered. their faith in george w. bush was shattered by what they saw on the ground in mississippi and louisiana, that nothing was being done. the question is where are the children that mika has repeated over and over again. i m hearing from evangelicals that have supported him, this is not who we are. well, and you can hear about the russia investigation constantly, but in my opinion that s not going to move voters. but my mom, my sister-in-law, they voted for trump. they to not like these babies who are separated from their parents, and that s a story that is just an albatross, as it should be. right. i mean torturing children on the border of our great nation and it is something that donald trump can t run away from. but they can they can vote according to their pocketbooks, steve ratner, and for that many are doing, you would say, pretty well. well, i mean in fact john jr. said not everybody. john jr. said, then i ve heard other people say this too, that barack obama never even got above 2 percentage points for one quarter. isn t that amazing? and donald trump got 4.1. i mean never. we re going to do a little fact check on that, but the fact is that obama got about 4% i think in three-quarters. but, look, the tax cut is still incredibly unpopular. only a minority of americans support it, and there s a story on the front page of the times today about how republicans are not even campaigning on it. john will know more about this than i do, but i think there are 42 open republican seats right now, not running for election. you know how hard it is to flip an incumbent so these are open seats democrats can take on in the house. and you have dana rohrbacker running, too, and if he would stop speaking russia maybe the republicans could hold down that seat, too. devin nunes putting a hammer and sickle in the o of the gop which is distracting. you know, it is interesting. we always say that people vote their pocketbooks, and been saying this for a very long time, that they don t in off-year elections. we ll see what the 4.1 is in the third quarter. most economists say it is going to go back down significantly. but we shall see. but, you know, in 94 becoill clinton had a great economy but he was seen as out of touch with the mainstream of america, and there was a massive republican title wave. 2006 the economy was going pretty darn well, but, again, it was post katrina. it was in the middle of iraq. nancy pelosi became speaker of the house. people don t always vote their pocketbook in mid-term elections. often they vote in reaction to what they ve seen in the past two years on cultural issues or even a leadership style. yeah. and the political science on this is always pretty clear, which is it is a base-motivated election. the economy i think is pretty safe to say is much more a driver in a presidential year. my own view with no evidence whatever so nothing new there is that the approval rating, the trump job approval rating probably has seven or eight points, maybe even a little bit more, of what i think of as 401(k) trump pers rigers . i think there are people looking at their statement, people on the right side of the economic equation anyway. they see their numbers going up for all sorts of reasons, and so they re willing to not really dive in to this russian novel story no one can quite figure out, and they re willing to suspend their bizarrely in my view, but they are willing to suspend their ordinary moral judgments about how this president conducts himself and is now representing us on the world stage. but i would not, if i were in the white house, count on that lasting until 2020. we ll see. joe, your latest column in the washington post speaks to this. it is entitled trump finally feels gravity s unforgiving pull. and reads in part. trump s stunning victory created such disorienting shock waves across washington that neither the democrats or the republicans understood what the accidental president at mighted. he said in december of 2016, everything came together at once. the resulting political horror show produced daily by trump has left journalists and politicians reeling, but failed to alter a few basic rules of politics. first, presidents with approval ratings in the low 40s lose their majorities in the senate. third, lying about pay-offs to a porn star and a playboy model rarely helps with swing state voters. republicans hoping to save themselves from the political storm that will soon wipe away their congressional majorities would soon would be well-served to speak out against trump s most destructive policies which are anti-conservative, ill-liberal and sure to bring doom to the once grand old party. the party could be over. no. it could be. first of all, john, i m very humbled to have my piece read on the morning joe. well pride of place. it is a good piece. it is what we are talking about. your name is morning joe. this is your show. but morning joe , that s you. my music going as well. so it is good that you get your pieces on your show. i also, mika you have pull with the guys that run the place. i have cleaning products to be selling at the half hour. no, that was somebody else. so it does it seems that trump s victory was so shocking that that i think a lot of pundits, a lot of politicians, i think a lot of republicans have overstated his strength and his magical powers, his gravity-defying political powers. but at the end of the day this man is still a 40% president. show me a 40% president and i will show you a loser. no, no, i m serious. show me a candidate that has by the way, his reelect his reelect, according to the latest nbc marris polls, his reelect in michigan i believe is 28%. in wisconsin, it is 31%. show me a guy with a 30% reelect, i will show you a loser, somebody that loses mid terms and somebody that loses real electio reelection. i think too often people overstate his political strength because they were so shock that he won last time. yeah. look, i mean i think the shock is one thing. i think the degree to which his behavior and the ways in which he has departed from republican orthodoxy, various ways in which he has thrown washington into chaos, his fact that his base which is not 40%, but 35 or something, the fact those people are immovable even in the face of things people object to so strenuously causes us to over-focus on the base. barack obama rested on his base, donald trump rested on his base, agent both bases are rock solid. again, 35, you re a loser. even if you get the extra ones that meacham is talking about, you push up to 40%, 41% which is where he is right now, that s historically a disaster. you will be wiped out in the mid terms if everything we hold from history holds true again. still ahead on morning joe , don jr. met with russians at trump tower in 2016. yes, he did. and the explanation why and who knew about it has changed multiple times. it was about adoptions, right? no, it wasn t. now a top republican in congress suggests that story may change yet again. we ll talk about that, but first here is bill karins with a check on the forecast. good monday morning. this will be an active weather week once again with flooding concerns and more fire risk and of course all atext is on the carr fire that is just on the border of redding. already five fatalities including two firefighters. we have seen 500 structures, hundreds of homes have been burned. it was 110 degrees for four straight days last week, it will be about 100 to 105 for much of the upcoming week, no rain in site. the containment, again, less than 10%. it is extremely difficult for these firefighters. imagi imagine being on the front line, the heat from the fire and the heat from this time of year. we have strong thunderstorms out of oklahoma overnight. dallas catching is break, they re weakening just in time. eastern portions of oklahoma and abilene, texas with strong storms. the humidity and the rain is back in the mid atlantic region. these are tropical downpours moving from maryland and delaware. there s a possibility for three inches of rain today alone. potential flooding on the east coast. extreme heat and fire weather on the west, and unfortunately not a lot changes. even into wednesday, there s the heavy rain in the east, hot in the west. 102, boise on wednesday. finally we end this week just like last week, with all of the wed weather and the flood risk in areas of the southern appalachians, carolinas through the mid add lan titlantic regio. this will be wettest weather in boston, which we have already done. new york city on the northern fringe of the heavy rain this week. maybe an inch or two this week. areas to the south, a lot more. enjoy today, nyc, the sunshine while you have it. you are watching morning joe. we will be right back. thing sayr like a beach trip, so let s promote our summer travel deal on choicehotels.com like this. surfs up. earn a $50 gift card when you stay just twice this summer. or, badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com whenshe was pregnant,ter failed, in-laws were coming, a little bit of water, it really- it rocked our world. i had no idea the amount of damage that water could do. we called usaa. and they greeted me as they always do. sergeant baker, how are you? they were on it. it was unbelievable. having insurance is something everyone needs, but having usaa- now that s a privilege. we re the baker s and we re usaa members for life. usaa. get your insurance quote today. are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi.? a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it s the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. ma one of the president s republican allies, congressman darrell issa, says he doesn t think republicans will pay the price in the fall if the president is proven to have lied about the trump tower meeting. if he s proven to have not told the whole truth about the fact that campaigns look for dirt and if someone offers it you listen to them, nobody is going to be surprised. there are some things in politics that you just take for granted. so you don t think this has any long-term impact? he wouldn t be the first politician or president for that matter to maybe misrepresent things and he gets over it? well, you know, businessmen listen to almost everyone that might be helpful. yeah. by the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away. darrell issa. which is why darrell issa, not my dad, in that case first of all, we re going to run the table here because it is so extraordinary. even in my little office as a member of congress, if my if somebody came to my chief of staff and said, hey, the russian government or the iranian government has some dirt on your opponent, my chief of staff would have said, hey, listen, we ll get back to you in a couple of days. what s your name again? what s your phone number, we ll call you back? would immediately call the fbi. would immediately call the fbi. this is not a close call. anybody out there thinking that if you listen if that s what darrell issa thinks, holy cow! that is condemning. here they keep moving the goalposts for donald trump. they re lying about donald trump, donald trump didn t know. okay, now if donald trump knew, what s the big deal? no, nobody does this. nobody has ever done this. nobody has ever done this that i know of, has gotten dirt on an opponent from a sworn enemy, russia, iran, you name it. never seen it in now almost unfortunately 30 years i ve been doing this and covering republicans and democrats in the presidential races and other races. the thing i want to say about darrell issa though that just goes to the real the thing he is saying here, which is that republicans aren t going to pay the price if it turns out donald trump is lying, i want to say it just like actions speak a lot louder than words. darrell issa is retiring from congress. uh-huh. right. so he can spin a rosie scenario for how republicans are not going to pay any price for donald trump s behavior, but it seems like on the basis of his own political calculations of what was going to happen in his district, he may have had a different view about what the blood bath is going to look like this fall. and donald trump has already lied, steve ratner, about russian agents coming to his office. donald trump has already masterminded the coverup on air force one where he lied and said that the meeting was about adoption, which, by the way, we saw over the weekend an attorney, a prosecutor say this is perfect to show the guilt, the conscious guilt at the time that something big happened in that room because you wouldn t lie about it if it was innocent. sure. but, look, i think one of the problems we have here a little bit is it is a bit of a he said/she said. guilliani was on one of the shows basically saying there are five people that will say donald trump didn t know about the russia meeting up against michael cohen. you know, i was working in washington for the new york times in the summer of 1974 and i was watching all of this, and meachem can contradict me, but in my recollection the tapes were the defining moment because you heard him on tape saying this. now, maybe michael cohen has tapes that are equally condemning, but we haven t quite seen them. he has been able to wiggle and twist and worm his way out of every box people tried to put him insofar. but at least for darrell issa, what s the end game of saying something like that? it is obviously something you wouldn t want to support, the president lying about a meeting. lobbying money. with russian agents. their own personal self-interests constantly. that s all we see on display consistently among republicans who are choosing to prop up these lies and to devalue truth and factual accuracy in the american public. it is really disgusting. i can t believe that we re at the phase where, you know, the $12 billion bailout for agriculture because of a dumb policy decision and all of these so-called fiscal conservatives can just get behind it because they re going with trump no matter what. we re just seeing where people do not stand for much except the ideology of power. think about that really quickly. again, ron johnson i can t believe i m quoting ron johnson given the fact he has backed down to donald trump time and time again. but ron johnson correctly said it is soviet-era-style economics where you first of all adopt a stalin five-year foreign policy. the five-year plan, right? and you have tariffs. you destroy the economy, and then you come in behind it, and after destroying the economy for these farmers you then prop them up with a $12 billion centralized state pay-off, after, i just got to say, a lot of farmers are already subsidized. like the big farm interests. so this is subsidy on top of subsidy on top of subsidy. but we ve got to cut the deficit, joe. right, thank you. there s a lot of serious deficit hawks in washington. yeah, absolutely none. all right. coming up, rudy guilliani opinion of michael cohen has transformed over the past two months apparently. the shape shifter. he s like the next man. quite a metamorphosis. apparently so have cohen s opinions of the president. what it all means for the next significant stages in the russia probe straight ahead on morning joe. raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens brown paper packages tied up with strings these are a few of my favorite things but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredients originally discovered. in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. booking a flight doesn t have to be expensive. just go to priceline. it s the best place to book a flight a few days before my trip and still save up to 40%. just tap and go. for the best savings on flights, go to priceline. meeting with russians. just over two months ago on may 6th, guilliani described cohen as an honest, honorable lawyer who, quote, doesn t have any incriminating evidence about the president. all right. so let s stop right there. can we keep it up for a second? so rudy guilliani, honest what to we do with this character? if you are going to have somebody be your personal lawyer for 20 years or so, i guess it had been 20 years already. i don t know how long it was. not quite that long, but yeah, a while. still, you want a guy around you who is honest and honorable, so it makes sense that rudy would and trump would say that cohen is an honest lawyer. of course. he s your fixer. you don t want a scum bag as your fixer, a guy who is honest enough you can relax. and loyal. and loyal. fast forward to yesterday and here is what guilliani had to say. what? now i listened unfortunately, fortunately for my client s point of view, to many, many hours of tapes, and the man is a pathological manipulator, liar. i didn t know that. i didn t know him well, but i knew nothing bad about michael cohen until all of this started to happen in the last couple of weeks. until he stopped covering up for donald trump. joining us, former chief of staff at the cia and department of defense, now an nbc national security analyst, jeremy bash. also here with us onset, nbc foreign correspondent keir simmons. good to have you both with us today. good to be here. rudy guilliani has transformed in so many ways and some of it is heartbreaking to watch. yes. it is just so sad michael cohen isn t a boy scout after all. jeremy bash, it seems to be a tale of two cohens here. he was the best of fixers, he was the worst of fixers. that s right, joe. look, i do think that this claim by michael cohen, we don t know yet whether it is verified that donald trump knew in advance about the meeting in trump tower, that he approved it and that he welcomed the support from the russian government delegation. that is potentially the most significant development in the whole russia investigation, and the reason is because up until now basically donald trump has been able to say, you know, i don t know what my son, i don t know what people on my campaign have been doing, i had nothing to do with it. but if michael cohen, the person who knows every single detail about the trump organization, about their business, about their business dealings in russia, if he can say or provide testimony to bob mueller s team that, in fact, donald trump was briefed about this, he welcomed this, he knew it was the russian government delegation, think it undermines almost every other claim donald trump has made about the russia investigation. donald trump knew enough about the meeting to get everybody on board air force one and concoct a lie about it, but you have done a deep dive into people who were at the meeting. yeah. you talked to some i know them. thanks for the dickens reference, by the way. look, it is close to the kremlin. for example, i can tell you that the billionaire behind the meeting was on vacation with the spokesman for president putin just last week. so they re pictured together with his wife. so i mean the whole russian hierarchy if you like, the top of that establishment is like this. is like london, everybody knows everybody. yeah, us british guys, russian guys, same kind of deal. i think one of the interesting insights in all of this is that what we are talking about is the behavior of obscenely rich people. right. this is how they behave. so the russian oligarchs, they treat people like pawns. that s what many rich people do. they believe everything they say if they say it is right. that s what obscenely rich people do. and their children, their entitled children, they empower them to go and try to make the same kind of success. so in a sense, if you step back the real connection is about how very, very rich people behave and how they behave towards each other and treat the world. coming up on morning joe , our next guest is accustomed to judging things and he calls the push in congress against rod rosenstein a, quote, baseless, shameful campaign. a former u.s. district judge for the southern district of new york joins us straight ahead on morning joe. [music playing] (vo) from the beginning, wells fargo has supported community organizations like united way, non-profits like the american red cross, and our nation s veterans. we knew helping our communities was important then. and we know it s even more important today. so we re stepping up to volunteer more and donate over a million dollars every day. so our communities can be even stronger. it s a new day at wells fargo. but it s a lot like our first day. that s what it is all about. he had a right to say to comey, give flynn a break. there s no investigation at the time. not only that, he didn t tell him don t investigate him, don t prosecute him. he asked him to exercise his prosecutorial discretion because he was a good man with a great war record. i ve been asked that many times, take the man s life into consideration, either go easy on him or this time you can pass on him. you do sometimes. how about trying to create a new crime. no collusion. now we have obstruction by tweet. whoa. i don t think the congress tweet. yeah, obstruction happens this way. hey or there s a gun. it doesn t happen by he has 80 million followers. a lot. sitting here looking at the federal code, trying to find collusion as a crime. it is not. collusion is not a crime. everything that s been released so far shows the president to be absolutely innocent. he didn t to anything wrong. what is that? that s what is that, federal prosecution for fools? yeah. of course, rudy doesn t talk about how the president of the united states. debasing himself. kept out of the oval office and told the russian foreign minister and russia s ambassador to the united states, i fired the fbi to get pressure off of us, he s a nut case, wouldn t drop wouldn t drop the russian investigation. time and again, there s evidence that he was pressuring comey to drop the russia investigation, and when he didn t trump admitted he fired him because of it. it is really hard to know where to begin when you watch something like that. i wonder what s hard who believes that? well, it seems like didn t seem like anybody was questioning him. go to the google machine, and you see that everything he said is just foolish. yeah. and actually doesn t line up with what actually happened. joining us, former assistant united states attorney in the criminal division of new york. and member of the house judiciary and intelligence committee democratic congressman eric swalwell of california. good to have you all. thank you, guys for being here. judge, let me start with you. how do you even begin to try to figure out what rudy guilliani is saying there, when he s a former u.s. prosecutor like you, understands my successor. yes. understands that investigations have to run their proper course, and you just can t shut down an investigation after actually the united states government s figured out that the russian government was actively trying to undermine our democracy. i think it would be a crime to shut down this investigation early, and that people seriously try to make that argument makes absolutely no sense. there s an awful lot of material here that has to be coordinated, and the idea that you would cut it down early or the idea that you can dismiss the conversation that the president had with jim comey so cavalierly, it has all of the hallmarks of a criminal case. yeah. get the witnesses out of the room, and then the president doesn t say i was just trying to help a friend. he said, it didn t happen. judge martin, you have a column in the washington post entitled, the baseless, shameful campaign to discredit rod rosenstein. in it you write in part this. the claim that deputy attorney general rod rosenstein or anyone else involved in the fisa application the something inappropriate is wrong. while freedom caucus members call for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate rosenstein, it mayer more appropriate to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate an attempt to corruptly obstruct justice by members of congress who so obviously use their office to intimidate the deputy attorney general and to undermine the credibility of special counsel robert mueller s investigation. judge, you have republicans in the united states senate who agree with you, that the fisa judges, the republican-appointed fisa judges, did the right thing. and anybody who looks at that warrant application, reliability is the key. what does it say? this man has provided reliable information in the past. you ve got an informant like that and he s not somebody with a criminal motive or any obvious motive. another interesting thing is that in the second in the first renewal application, they put in there that steele became so upset when comey went put out the letter saying they re reinvestigating hillary clinton that he went public. so it was very clear that steele was somebody who was very interested in hillary clinton succeeding. so, congressman, i will ask you what i asked senator blumenthal before. do you look at the republicans in the senate, people like richard bure, head of the intel committee, chuck grassley, it seems that most republican senators are saying do the right thing, let him continue his investigation until we know all of the facts about how the russians tried to disrupt american democracy in 2016? they re giving us hope they have the bipartisan legislation to protect bob mueller. they should bring it to a vote immediately. i think it is really unacceptable that mitch mcconnell won t, but also their investigation is our last chance to fully understand what the russians did. you know, bob mueller can only tell the world what he can prove beyond a reasonable toubt. there s a lot of other things we can learn to protect our ballot box you may not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that congressional should have been able to prove. we should put it in the hands of experts and elders to tell you how we are so vulnerable, who worked with the russians and what the government response was. we have 200 members of congress on board bipartisan, but we need to take it outside of the capital because we don t know what to do if it happens again. daniel goldman, you a former ex federal prosecutor, have free advice to offer to michael cohen, which is to shut up. but could he help himself by talking to an extent or why shut up? can i as a guy who only practiced law for a couple of years and just practiced insurance defense for the most part answer that question? no, it does no good. no good at all? why isn t this guy shutting up? when we say shut up, it means shut up in public. obviously he should run in and talk to the southern district. that s what i was figuring. the only explanation i can glean from this is because he who he the primary target he would testify against is the president and his sort of surrogate rudy guilliani who are on the attack constantly, that michael cohen i think is trying to burnish his own image in the public. he s playing a pr game in the public which really doesn t matter to robert mueller or the prosecutors in the southern district of new york or all of the people who his life is in their hand. not only does it not matter, it hurts his cooperation. right. a prosecutor does not want the evidence in an investigation out there in public for a variety of reasons. first of all, it will make cross-examination easier against michael cohen. but more importantly, other wys necessaries will be able to change their testimony to fit the evidence that they would not have known. they can prepare. that s why it is not helpful for the prosecution for michael cohen to be talking. judge, he is only undermining his ability to get a good deal from the southern district, right? i think they are unhappy with what he s doing certainly, an obviously it will depend on how much good information he can give them and how much corroboration there is for him. elise? so do you think that members of congress have been obstructing justice in the russia investigation? they re stopping justice in the russia investigation. we saw that when we would bring people in like don jr. or michael cohen and ask direct questions about the trump tower meeting and don jr. would refuse to answer. you know you have subpoena power and you don t have to take the rue fu refusal, but each time we would say, make donald trump jr. answer, but they would say, no, we re here under a voluntary scheme, which is what they set up. they protected them at every single stop. since they ended their investigation we learned about cambridge analytic, about roger stone s extensive contacts and we re learning more and more about michael cohen. these guys are going to learn the hard way in november i m afraid. daniel, we really need to look at this from 30,000 feet because in the past we talked about the house members protecting donald trump. but is it not fair to say that after mueller s last round of indictments a couple of friday go ago where the united states government actually identified russians that were trying to undermine american democracy, that at this point if you are trying to stop mueller s investigation you re not just a dupe for donald trump, you re a dupe for vladimir putin and you are getting in the way of an investigation that s trying to get to the bottom of how the russians tried to undermine american democracy? that indictment set forth how the russians went forward, at least in one way to infiltrate our election. right. what bob mealer has not ton at any point and i think this is intentional, he has not included any evidence of american involvement in any of what we call collusion. collusion is shorthand for conspiracy to defraud. why has he done that? for a couple of reasons. one is what we talked about with michael cohen. he doesn t want to let the public or other witness he know what evidence he has. two, i think he wants to wait and make a very measured and complete decision as to whether and what extent americans were involved. so he s going to keep it all confidential because there may be people that aren t charged that should not go be named in public or there may be people who will be charged. but he s basically gathering all of the evidence and doing what a professional prosecutor would do. right. and then he is going to make a final decision as to who is going to be charged and with what, and he s not going to leak anything and he s not going to let anything out there. but i do think he s going to indict people. i think when that indictment drops it is going to be a bombshell. judge, finally, what s next? what do you think is next? think dan is right. i think mueller is not going to do anything until he has the whole thing put together, because if you have to put out something devastating to the president, you don t want to put out little pieces one at a time. uh-huh. member of the intelligence committee, congressman eric swalwell. former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, daniel goldman. former judge for the southern district of new york, john martin. thank you all. thank you all. up next, president trump suggests the media is putting american lives at risk. it is just one of several lines of attack from a weekend war of the tweets. we will run through it briefly next on morning joe. preparing classic campfire trout. say what? trout. trout. all right. you don t think i need both? why does he have that axe? make summer go right with ford america s best selling brand. now get 0% financing for 72 months plus $1,000 ford credit bonus cash on a great selection of suv s. during the ford summer sales event, get our best offer of the season 0% financing for 72 months plus $1,000 ford credit bonus cash. 0% financing for 72 months plus you ll make my morning, buty the price ruin my day.ou? complicated relationship with milk? pour on the lactaid, 100% real milk, just without that annoying lactose. mmm, that s good. during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. pml, a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. this condition has not been reported with entyvio. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections or have flu-like symptoms or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn s treatment isn t working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. we are off to okay, out of the room. so john, really quickly, you sent me something from buzzfeed. all i got to say, it s about time. charles koch has done what i ve wanted republican donors to do for a very long time. enough of this nonsense. this is an anti-free trade, anti-immigration, anti-nato, anti-american in many ways, policy, group of policies, that aren t conservative. like, you know, like i said last week. they re not only anti-conservative, they re ill liberal policies. for libertarians like charles koch, enough s enough. they re actually running ads against republicans in pennsylvania. they re running ads for heidi hide heightcamp. they say they re more willing to strike out against trump s radical big spending policies. the koch brothers are at the center of a network of conservative money that s going to spend $4 million in the course of this midterms. they have been basically a partisan group for a long time. what charles koch said in these interviews around their big aspen-based yearly conclave this past weekend was we made mistakes. right. it was a mistake for us to be purely partisan. we should be about our ideas and not about party because now our party s been hijacked by this president who s not really conservative. we re now going to change the direction of our spending and we re going to spend money on people who uphold conservative and libertarian principles. and we re going to try to punish those republicans who have capitulated to the president, particularly on issues like trade, that are not conservative or in line with their philosophy. it s a big, if they follow through on it and make spending decisions consistent with this new line, it will have a big impact. for people like you and me who are have always been conservative/libertarians. you probably a little more libertarian, be a little more conservative. you sit there and go, wait a second, this is the biggest spending group of republicans since the last time republicans respective if their spending listen, biggest spending bills ever. tariffs. trump and republicans picking winners and losers. and then they have a socialist bill to bail out farmers who are already being bailed out. some huge agricultural companies are already being bailed out. this is socialism. why should charles koch spend his money right, and go against everything that he always has stood against. you know who is upset though, joe, steve bannon says that yn they should just get in line and they need to get on board and the master political strategist of roy moore s yes, yeah. i think that probably means charles koch is doing something right. mike, why we re off delay i ve always said careful, loopy. why is that only directed at me? i ve spoken at groups before like club for growth and always told them if you give americans a chance to vote for a real democrat, a republican spending like a democrat, they ll vote for the real democrat every time. and these are big government republicans. some of these policies are just downright socialist. no, you have to do what you do here day after day and keep calling them out on this. the thing for the farmers. even bernie sanders probably looked at that and said, wow, i don t know if i would go that far. trump enacts emergency policy to enact tariffs that hurt farmers and then he enacts an emergency policy to blow 12 building more dollars on the first emergency he enacted. that is socialism. you re picking winners and losers and you re picking them badly. joe, this is the gas lighting of the american people. he s like president gas light, okay. and this is the problem. you call him a day trader, okay. this is what happens when you govern from news cycle to news cycle. and you don t like the reaction to the news cycle. so you overreact the other way. you know what this reminds me of, this is marie le pen who dumb conservatives in america said, oh, we love her. stupid republicans in america said, oh, we hope she wins. she s a socialist. she s a socialist who happens to be a racist at the same time. that s what they re getting here. they say, oh, well give us two supreme court justices and we will vote for a socialist who adopts vladimir putin go to loopy. you know who also likes her, steve bannon, a big fan of le pen. when you look at what we re talking about here, the spending decisions, is this the first sign of the donor class maybe being a force for positive change in the republican party? only if they scare him enough. because all he cares about is john, is his own political ambition. john, think about sorting through that tweet storm of yesterday. but i always look for good news somewhere, okay. so when he was talking about angry dems yesterday, i think, okay, this is a new video game. forget about angry birds. we now go to angry dems. demonizing the other people. but guess what, what happens in 99 days? james carville said something to me the other day. you know who s going to change the narrative in this country, women are. i agree with that. fundamental realignment. women are fed up. it is right? you know, charles koch, other big republican donors, could literally change tomorrow not by scaring trump but by scaring republicans who have been kowtowing to a guy who has an anti-trade policy, socialist redistribution of income, plans to cover up his tariff policies. those congressmen, congress
trump about a payment to playboy model karen mcdougal before the 2016 election. could be a recording of a recording, we re not sure yet. that they can probably determine. you re right. we may never be able to determine that but we have determined the fact that he campered with the tape in the sense that he abruptly mid-conversation turned it off. giuliani told abc news we have complained to them that michael cohen has violated the attorney/client privilege publicly and privately. in a statement to nbc news, lanny davis, cohen s attorney, fired back saying mr. giuliani seems to have been confused. he expressly waived attorney/client privilege last week and repeatedly and inaccurately as proven by the tape talked about and talked about the recording, forfeiting all confidentiality. joining me now is timothy bag. loyalty in trumplandia is a one-way street. he doesn t have much loyalty towards the people around him apart from his nuclear family. sometimes his wives but not even often with his wives. he doesn t build strong teams, he doesn t build people are authentically loyal to him. everything is transactional. but cohen up until now cultivated this idea that he was almost like family. he had this weers one-way loyalloya fierce one way loyalty to trump. if he believed that, why did he tape him. i think these were insurance policies michael cohen was drawing down in case trump was throwing him under the bus which trump was trying to do. michael cohen is not a classic attorney. he didn t go to court for donald trump. he went after donald trump s around trump are just like trump, seeking power and fame and that need for that power and fame outweighs anything else. it s why rudy giuliani was spurned, he wanted to be secretary of state, he thought he would be secretary of state. trump not only threw him under the bus by not making him secretary of state but he also made comments about rudy giuliani s appearance and rudy giuliani still came back and is on tv because it s more about their wanting the power and fame on the platform. he was humiliated by donald trump. was summarily tossed out of the white house. he hired anthony scaramucci. he was not treated well. he s still out the there with a book that what we heard about it displays loyalty. sam nunberg who was dismissed from the trump campaign was on meet the press this morning and this is what he had to say about michael cohen, somebody he In-depth interviews with leading newsmakers, plus discussions with America s preeminent political minds. likely during the speech when he previewed the dirt that was that he was going to announce about hillary clinton that he was talking about the trump tower meeting but at the same time he said who cares, it doesn t matter, e-mails were weren t discussed during the meeting. i said how do you know? he said will it s clear nothing came of the meeting so even if he did approve of it it s not a big deal. he s making excuses for the presidents in a way we ve seen by all of trump s allies who have been trying to discount this idea that trump approved of this meeting with the russians to get this dirt. it s interesting, michelle, because we talk a lot about the religious right sticking with donald trump through thick and thin and not caring. for them they believe he is bringing about policy that in their mind is pro conservative christian and so they don t care about anything else so at least some ideological reason for sticking with him no matter what. when it comes to these people, these are not ideologues, a lot that michael cohen committed some horrific act, it might have been criminal conduct in releasing those tapes and they want to get to the bottom of who released the tapes. lanny davis says he didn t release them. i believe lanny davis. i have questions about rudy giuliani s boasts during the campaign that he had sources in the new york fbi that somehow he seemed to have really a lot of knowledge about the investigation into hillary clinton but we ll have to do that for another show. i want to come back to this as a strategic matter because if this idea of finding new loyalists, if it s strategy it s strange. why would you tape things? to exculpate yourself. and cohen is not only someone who frequently taped his clients and people, he said there were other people in the room when he heard donald trump be told in advance about the trump tower meetin meeting. all mueller has to do is bring other others. he s gathering evidence he can present to a jury to show a fact pattern that shows culpability and willful misbehavior. we know when donald trump jr. took the meeting in trump tower, jared kushner was aware of it and manafort was aware of it. they all said boo without running upstairs and getting their father s approval. that s the way the company ran. and that was a significant development. donald trump jr. was excited. it beggars the imagination he didn t tell his father. the other thing i think about in terms of trying to set whether it s a strategy or not, you can t discount this is a highly unsophisticated ill informed morally rudderless group of people who can t shoot straight and aren t very bright and they re now colliding off each other like pinballs. who wins? can i add something, joy? i m putting my lawyer hat on. from a strategic point of view, if you think about this in a sane manner, which is what you and the panel are doing, you don t understand what rudy giuliani is doing. if you put on a different hat and think to yourself his job is not to i can t believe that anyone thinks it s the way to be impeached or indicted. every statement he makes about michael cohen or bob mueller or comey or hillary clinton, this is about the president s base and getting the president reelected in 2020 and getting republicans in the house in 2016 because donald trump s base doesn t care about any of this. they don t care about his infidelity or lies and they are able to sit back and say yes he hired somebody related to the clintons and he s awful and they re out to get my man, they re out to get our president. that s the strategy in this. the only person people are talking about impeaching is rod rosenstein. rod rosenstein, that s who the committee to protect the president are talking about impeaching. thank you all. coming up, everyday it seems we re hearing more and more and more horrific stories of children separated from their families by the trump administration s zero-tolerance immigration policy and the challenges they face even once they re back together. more on that next. a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don t think you should be rushed into booking one. that s why we created expedia s add-on advantage. now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. add-on advantage. discounted hotel rates when you add on to your trip. only when you book with expedia. families as the trump administration scrambled to meet a court-ordered deadline to reverse some 2500 migrant family separations by this past thursday. that leaves hundreds of families still separated including more than 650 children who the trump administration has deemed ineligible for reunification. according to government numbers, 431 parents have been deported without their kids. and the other deal is not over, even for migrant families who have been reunited as the trump administration pushes to have them deported as well. joining me are the msnbc correspondents who have been covering this story, tirelessly. mariana atencio and jacob soboroff. 2551 total migrant children taken from their parents, more than 1800 reunited. a thousand already have executable deportation orders. in your reporting, what happens to a parent that s been deported. how are they supposed to get their kids back? i have spoken to one of these parents, her name is lourdes de leone. she s in guatemala, her son leo is six years old in a shelter in new york, they haven t seen each other in two months. this mother says she thinksing she signed a document for her child to be sent back to her once his legal proceedings ended in the u.s. but when i spoke to her she said i wasn t sure what i was signing and she s waiting for her child to be put on a plane by i.c.e. and sent to her. she s contacted the cannes lat, she s given i.c.e. a ticket. she s waiting for a travel itinerary. but everyday that goes by, we were talking about this before, you remember when you were lost for a couple hours, she gets to talk to her six-year-old son once every eight days. from rural guatemala. everyday that goes by is anguis anguish. friday i went down to san diego because i wanted to hear from the court itself and the administration in person whether or not the government had any plans at all to reunite what it call these ineligible kids, the 650 of them that mariana has gone to track down and that they made no commitment to in advance of the court hearing. the judge basically said you have to come up with a plan to find these 650 missing kids and i ll tell you how you ll have to do it. let me say what march ishe has extraordinary, she s gone to home countries found parents that have been deported and tried to help match them up with their children. that s the onus that ice on the aclu and ngos around this country but different count rise throughout the world where we have sent those parents back to and given them no opportunity to link back up to their kids. a judge is going to issue specific guidelines for the government to turn over to the aclu so they can locate these parents and children with as much detailed information as possible to try to put them back together. he basically called this step two. step one was kind of like an atta boy way to go government. you put together 1440 that you said were eligible, your own basically goal line you said for yourself. but there were 2551 total not just 1440. i want to know what they mean by ineligible. how can you determine someone is not eligible to have their own kid back? let me say clearly the kids were separated in the exact same way from those in the eligible category. they came into this country and were taken in a systematic identical way from those that were quote/unquote eligible. ineligible means maybe 430 of them that they were gone. some may have criminal convictions. that s part of what the judge ordered the government turn over to the aclu. the government has been focusing on this 120 they say relinquished their rights to their children and gave up the right to go back with their kids but the aclu says clearly if you look at affidavits filed in court, not all these parents knew what they were doing. they gave away their kids and said can we have them back? now there s no process for them to get them back. and sometimes the red flags are something as simple as a name change. i have been speaking to a mother inside the detention facility. we were one of the teams that went in there to speak with her. she s separated, detained. i have to say it s one of the most heartbreaking conversations i ve had because she s in prison. i spoke to her through a glass window on a prison-like phone and she says everyday i m being told you re eligible for reunification but there s a holdup, another holdup. i spoke to her on thursday. it s sunday. she s still in there. and she s in a detention facility like a criminal. it s not illegal to seek asylum. she s in a place they refer to as alpha three. so it starts to sound like a dystopian thriller here. we can t avoid what happens when we don t confront this racism and xenophobia straight on. that s why it s so important. you guys are doing the real work. i said to this mother what do you want our audience to know sunday? and she said don t forget us. i want to play a couple things. let s listen to kirstjen nielsen who claimed that it is the parents fault if they don t have their kid. how can you reunite parents with their kids if they ve been deported? well, that part is up to the parents so the parents contact us we will work with them but as you know the way the process works is the parents always have the choice to take the children with them so these are parents who have made the decision not to bring the children with them and will continue to work with the court to understand how we can comply with the order. do the parents always have the choice to take the children with them? have they made the choice not to bring their children home? some parents were being given signed document this is according to the aclu documents in another language, in english, made to sign documents in a room with other parents, other people, they re in distress. this is mental health issue when they re signing these documents so the aclu is saying they don t have the proper mental state, they re not given enough legal consultation to know what they re signing. i want to play very quickly jacob, this was congresswoman jayapal was on our show and i want to know if this is still going on. take a listen. i will tell you families are still being separated. i went with a group of eight members of congress and we went to the ursula processing center which is the epicenter of where these kids are being separated from their parents. that s still happening. jacob, are family separations still happening? according to the judge in the ca case, he didn t present definitive statistics but he said he expects separations to continue to continue. he said for valid reasons but he says there needs to be a process to undo these separations. he made clear he expected separations to continue into the future and it was a messess right now of historic proportions that needed to have a systemic way to undo it and the last thing i want to say is one thousand of the parents, 1440 reunited with their kids have orders or deportation right now so the aclu is basically scrambling to help them undo those orders of deportation nod to basically have asylum casesry heard if they were heard in error or if they made a fatal mistake under duress. the deportation rate for kids without lawyers, 88%. i went into immigration court, joy, for unaccompanied children which are the children that were separated are now deemed unaccompanied. after an hour-long proceeding, 14-year-old child asked what is a lawyer? and they re not entitled to one. and no cameras allowed so if we don t keep going there we won t know those stories. thank god for you two. please keep up the work, please keep coming back, we re going to stay on this story because you guys are on it and making sure we know what s happening. it s horrifying. up next, putin and the late-night threats of war with iran. just another day in trumpland. in gas and electric is pg&e. we run about 2,500/2,800 fire calls a year and on almost every one of those calls pg&e is responding to that call as well. and so when we show up to a fire and pg&e shows up with us it makes a tremendous team during a moment of crisis. i rely on them, the firefighters in this department rely on them, and so we have to practice safety everyday. utilizing pg&e s talent and expertise in that area trains our firefighters on the gas or electric aspect of a fire and when we have an emergency situation we are going to be much more skilled and prepared to mitigate that emergency for all concerned. the things we do every single day that puts ourselves in harm s way, and to have a partner that is so skilled at what they do is indispensable, and i couldn t ask for a better partner. on friday, the sixth mission impossible film hit theaters and it s on its way to becoming the number-one movie in the country. among the stars, ving rhames. like any good star, he s been doing press for the movie and he had this harrowing story on sirius xm. he said two years ago he was at home watching tv when four police officers showed up at his house, rang his doorbell, and when he opened the door pointed a 9 millimeter handgun in his face. ving said and the santa monica police confirmed that the officers were responding to 911 calls made by neighbors reporting that a large african-american man was breaking into the house. here s a thought number one, know who you live next door to, you might live next door to ving rhames and don t call the police on your neighbor for entering their own house, whether that neighbor is a celebrity or any other large african-american man. really just your neighbor. up next, the dictators strike. it treats oab symptoms of urgency, frequency, and leakage. it s the first and only oab treatment in its class. myrbetriq may increase blood pressure. tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or have a weak urine stream. myrbetriq may cause serious allergic reactions. .like swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, or trouble breathing. if experienced, stop taking and tell your doctor right away. myrbetriq may interact with other medicines. tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. common side effects include increased blood pressure, common cold or flu symptoms,. .sinus irritation, dry mouth, urinary tract infection, bladder inflammation,. .back or joint pain, constipation, dizziness, and headache. need some help managing your oab symptoms along the way? ask your doctor if myrbetriq is right for you, and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. essential for the cactus, but maybe not for people with rheumatoid arthritis. because there are options. like an unjection™ . xeljanz xr. a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. xeljanz xr can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz xr can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections, lymphoma and other cancers have happened. don t start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts and higher liver tests and cholesterol levels have happened. your doctor should perform blood tests before you start and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell you doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. needles. fine for some things. but for you, one pill a day may provide symptom relief. ask your doctor about xeljanz xr. an unjection™ . later this year. trump wasn t always so flattering toward the north korean dictator. previously threatening him with fire and fury the likes of nothing the world has ever seen. now trump turned that tactic on iran, launching a war of words over twitter writing to iranian president rouhani, never threaten the united states again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which throughout history have never suffered before et cetera, et cetera he cautioned. joining me, now colonel lawrence wilkerson, former chief of staff to secretary of state colin powell and trina parsi, author of losing an enemy. thank you for being here. i am struck, rula, by the symmetry the way donald trump is now talking at the iranian regime and the way he talked at the north korean regime. is it possible he could do the same pivot where he talks tough and tries to be friends? no, actually. the whole team around him believe that iran is evil, he s being pushed by think tanks, by neo-cons who support and where are the cheerleaders of the iranian war. what we are seeing is a play book of the iraq war and by countries like saudi arabia and israel who are adamant about taking out iran. except this time the price of that war would be by far much more disastrous than iraq. this is a country of 18 million people that control the strait of hormuz where one-third of oil shipments go from there. the iranians started reacting to that rhetoric saying well, we might actually seal off that strait and this will lead to skyrocketing of oil prices, the radicalization that we ve seen in iraq we ll see by far much more but we ve seen another thing we never expected. two houthi missiles hit one oil tank in the red sea pushing the saudis to stop the shipment of oil. the iranians will not react well to threats or any kind of invasion, occupation of their land. this is a strong country that is used to these sanctions. trump is waging a financial war against them and the war is those sanctions after he violated the agreement. when he pulled aside the iran deal. let s put up the map. the strait of hormuz, just to show, you you have iran, oman and the united arab emirates. iran the neighbor of iraq. that strait is where much of the persian gulf oil has to zblavl two million barrels a day. and they control it. let s get the response that the ironian leader had to donald trump s threat. he said you know this war will destroy all you possess. you will start this war but we will impose its end. therefore you have to be careful about insulting the iranian people. and this was president soleimani in a speech in arabic. i want to go to you colonel wilkerson because you have been on the show with dire predictions that we seem to be moving back in the direction we were before the attack on iraq. do you still feel that way? i do. you have people like the foundation of defense of democracy, my old friend john hanna with me at the u.n. security council when we lied about iraq s weapons of mass destruction, you ve got them pushing hard on behalf of israel almost as if they were douglas s off office of special plans but outside the government. they re manufacturing intelligence and bringing pressure to bear with regard to israel and issues pertaining to israel and war with iran so you have almost the same road map that we had in 2002 and 2003 now being employed and orchestrated by john bolton, the national security adviser with respect to iran. it s very concerning. and trina parsi, mike pompeo has been a part of this. he gave a speech at the reagan library last week. i ll play that and come to you with a question. the proud iranian people are not saying silent about their government s many abuses and the united states under president trump won t stay silent either. in light of these protests and 40 years of regime tyranny, i have a message for the people of iran. the united states hears you. the united states supports you, the united states is with you. that sounds like the rhetoric we heard about iraq before that invasion. does it to you? it certainly does and it reminds us of another thing the bush administrations found iraqis and iraqi americans begging to get bombed and this is what pompeo tried to do in los angeles to get iranian americans to validate the trump administration s bellicose approach towards iran and claims this something they re doing because the iranian people support it and i think that s a falseho falsehood, it s very clear the iranian american community is frustrated with the government and iran and the corruption and political repression but they re not jumping over to think donald trump is the answer to their problem certainly not the answer to lack of democracy in iran. mindful of how donald trump is undermining democracy in the united states. especially since he pulled out of the iran deal which was the best hope of bringing iran it s a mow midwest i can policy issue. it s a distraction from allegations of treason and for his lawyer paying off hookers and playboy playmate bus there s another issue. while he s doing this, he s negotiating with the taliban and conceal ago big chunk of territory to them. america spend trillions of dollars in afghanistan and iraq. they lost two wars, now we want to trust the guy that stood near putin and believed him and backed him against his own intelligence. we want to trust this leader to send american boys and girls to fight a war that we know they will lose? it will trigger the worst radicalization but also terrorist attacks across the world. he doesn t care because it s about winning the next election for him. he doesn t care about human lives. imagines if those trillions of dollars were spent on infrastructure in america or to give people in flint clean water. or to turn the power back on in puerto rico. exactly. colonel wilkerson, donald trump came in with the skepticism of the intelligence community and use the false info about iraq that led us into that w war as his basis for skepticism of the cia. now he s brought in the john boltons of the world. he seems to believe what you say is cooked intelligence to go to war with iran. it s a strange set of circumstances. it is burr i see a design in it. and i think the design is what the jesh man foreign minister said when trump announced he was going to violate the jcpoa that it was based on domestic politics. i think trump s actions now regardless of where they are and how bellicose are based on titillating his base for the november midterms and i think we ll see anything trump thinks is necessary to do that is policy and that scares the bejesus about me. we were just treated to donald trump s allies in conservative media saying their sons should not have to go to war for montenegro meaning the nato alliance is not worth fighting for even though nato stood up for us after 9/11. how is that same base okay with a war with the country four times the population of iraq. it was sad to see the recent polls indicate the trump base would follow trump on an issue as going to war with iran. which many people thought no, they re very isolationist but i want to throw out another scenario. not that this won t deteriorate in military conflict but i think instead of pursuing regime change they will be pursuing regime collapse. the difference being in regime change you would change the regime and take responsibility. regime collapse means you collapse the regime and you re content with chaos takes place in iran, no regime at all and have that create a scenario in this the iranian energy is consumed internally in order for it to not a pose a threat or challenge to the u.s. s allies internally. this is what we ve seen in libya and iraq and syria which is in no way democratization. it s chaos and instability. i wonder how are european capitals reacting to the idea that we would have chaos. they would pay the price. they re already paying the price of the biggest crisis of refugees that went to their countries, triggering these nationalists and xenophobes and neo-new zeala neo-nazis to win one election after the another. it s sta ee s time to start thi fiscally in a wise way, and also morally. we re treating the iranians, the iraqis, the palestinians, puerto ricans like pieces of garbage on a game, on a chase game for political reasons. it s time to utterly get out of this solutional thinking because americans will be first and foremost paying the price. american people, even conservatives who voted for trump will send their daughter tos die so he can get reelected. this can never happen again. the price we paid in these 17 years is for iraqis, one million iraqis died. iran already controls iraq. they can trigger them any way in any moment. they have external powers they can trigger against mesh interests. we need to think about that. probably the biggest winner of the invasion of iraq was iran. absolutely. and syria, too. rula jibril, trita parsi, colonel wilkerson, thank you all. up next, the owner of america s team pushes a very un-american policy. stay with us. what will you discover with a lens made by essilor? together in a single lens. essilor ultimate lens package. purchase the essilor ultimate lens package and get a second pair of qualifying lenses free. essilor. better sight. better life. the full value oft wyour new car? you d be better off throwing your money right into the harbor. i m gonna regret that. with liberty mutual new car replacement we ll replace the full value of your car. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty as far as the vote we had as a league in the spring, that doesn t impact our team. our policy is that you stand at the anthem towing the line. dallas cowboys owner jerry jones isn t budges from his position that his players must be on the field and standing for the national anthem. that s despite the league putting on hold a policy mandating that players either stand for the anthem or stay in the locker room. donald trump quickly praised jones for his comments even though jones criticized him forgetting involved. it is problematic from my chair and i would say in general the owners chairs, unprecedented if you think about it. but like the very game itself, that s the way it is and we ll deal with it. joining me is jamil smith, senior writer at rolling stone. good to see you, my friend. before we get to jerry jones and this policy he implemented, i have to play for you one of the members of the dallas cowboys, the quarterback, dak prescott, talking about his attitude of protesting the anthem. no, i never protest during the anthem. i don t think that s the time or the venue to do so. the game of football has always brought me such a peace, and i think it does the same for a lot of people, a lot of people playing the game, watching the game, a lot of people that have any impact on the game. when you bring such a controversy to the stadium, to the field, to the game, it takes away from there, takes away from the joy and the love that football brings a lot of people. jamil, i think a lot of people anticipate thad the dallas cowboys, if they re ordered to do it, people s livelihoods are on the line. it may be surprising to people that some of the players affirmatively want that they re not being forced. right. i think what dak prescott is saying here is i would like to be a dallas cowboy beyond my rookie contract. i think that that s really all you can take from that. there are a lot of black players, especially in the civil rights era that are positioned to distract or retract from the activism of their colleagues. i think we have another example here. i think i m morale larmd by what ezekiel elliott said, when he said this is america s team and we don t do that. america s team is not some moniker that was conferred upon them by god or some kind of legislation. it is the name of a film that was made in the 70s by nfl films, bob ryan, the producer at nfl films, my former colleague, created that slogan and then they ran off with it. really, what are we fighting about here? we re fighting about essentially marketing. that s what we have in the anthem before these games. we re having marketing for the military, marketing for the country. i don t see what any of that has to do with football. let me play for you there are very different views of different players around the league about how they feel about this policy. here is philadelphia eagles safety malcolm jenkins with a different take when he spoke to nbc s lester holt. we can talk about social issues and still have a great game. we talked about domestic violence for a whole year. we had commercials, we had things on the field. nobody had an issue with that. we talk about breast cancer for a whole month every year, we wear pink on the field, we do dedications, have the moms out there before the game. no issues with that. we start talking about black issues and issues of race, now all of a sudden, we just want football, we don t want the extra stuff, we want to watch the game. can t have it both ways. no, you can t. people are not trying to have it both ways. yahoo! finance has an article out in january on a survey where 32% of people said they stopped watching in support of donald trump. 22% said they stopped watching in solidarity with players kneeling. 12% said they stopped watching in support of colin kaepernick. is there a likelihood you ll see a lot of people start to boycott? that s certainly possible. on the left you heard a lot of noise about people continuing to boycott the league, considering the fact that colin kaepernick and eric reid, his former 49ers teammate who joined him in kneeling at the beginning both don t have jobs at this point. eric reid visited the cincinnati bengals on a free agent visit and was told he wasn t welcome essentially because he was unwilling to promise not to protest. i think what malcolm jenkins is saying is making an interesting point. breast cancer is something we can all agree exists. unfortunately racial en justice in this country is not something that everyone in the country agrees exists. when you have that dilemma at the heart of it, you ll have this back and forth. when the president is getting involved, it becomes an entire mess. let s not blame the players for the political mess that this has become. let s blame the people who are upset that we can t talk about racial injustice in this country. given the stats, who would get the benefit of the boycott? would it be donald trump for destroying the nfl for not kneeling or would it be african-americans who want to not stop black players from protesting the injustice. we have to consider that 70% of the players are african-american, we have to see that they can vote with their dollars. i think they should use their power to do so. but i think that trump is going to make an issue of this no matter what. it s not much of a factor. always a convenient foil for him. he ll continue to do it. jamil smith, thank you. have a great day. more am joy after the break. o! -how many of you use car insurance? -oh. -well, what if i showed you this? -[ laughing ] ho-ho-ho! -wow. -it s a computer. -we compare rates to help you get the price and coverage that s right for you. -that s amazing! the only thing that would make this better is if my mom were here. what?! an unexpected ending! your hair is so soft! is if my mom were here. did you use head and shoulders two in one? i did mom. wanna try it? yes. it intensely moisturizes your hair and scalp and keeps you flake free. manolo? look at my soft hair. i should be in the shot now too. try head and shoulders two in one. you might or joints.hing for your heart. but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. the kayak explore tool shows you the places you can fly on your budget. so you can be confident you re getting the most bang for your buck. alo-ha. kayak. search one and done. produced presidency of donald trump. to be clear, the white house banned a reporter simply for asking questions that the president didn t like. in a statement press secretary sarah huckabee sanders said, quote, at the conclusion of a press event in the oval office, the reporter shouted questions and refused to leave despite repeatedly being asked to do so. subsequently our staff informed her that she was not welcome to participate in the next event. shouting questions at the president is not only not unusual or uncommon, it s been standard procedure for decades of u.s. presidents. perhaps the most prolific at the art of the shouted question, former abc news white house correspondent sam donaldson. mr. president, paul voelker said you ve got to do better than a one-year freeze of the budget to impress the markets. are you going to do better than that? i ll be on the phone to him every day. saying you re not going to meet your own targets? maybe i m keeping the target secret. fiscal 88. we re still working on the whole thing, sam. the trump white house claims they respect an open and free press. let s bring in tara dow del, business and marketing consult. joe conason, editor and chief of national memo and michelle bernard. joe connie son, i ll go to you first. the washington post reported donald trump has been venting about banning reporters for quite some time before his office finally did one. at various moments he s vented to aides about what he considers disrespectful behavior and impertinent questions from reporters in the oval office. he s asked retaliatory action be taken against them. quote, these people shouting questions are the worst according to a current official. why do we have them in here? is this a lack of an understanding of the way it works or an author torn mindset in you view? joy, i was about to use the a word, the authoritarian word. he can t put them in jail, at least not yet. the best thing he can do from his point of view is to ban them from his presence. that, of course, doesn t answer the questions he refuses to answer. but in his view at least, it allows him a measure of vengeance or retribution against reporters who dare to ask questions that he doesn t like. of course, the hiring of bill shine as the deputy chief of staff, communications director of the white house from fox news where they also ignore the questions and subjects that they don t like is in perfect congruence with this kind of mindset. let me read for the audience, the white house correspondents association statement, we strongly disagree with barring one of our members from an open press event after she asked questions they did not like. this type of retaliation is wholly inappropriate and wrong-headed and weak. that s oliver knox. speaking of bill shine, he responded to this by saying, denying the ban ever happened. phil is it the right move to ban a reporter? could you ask her if we ever used the word ban? what word would you use, bill? what word would you use? ask her if we ever used the word ban, then i ll answer the question. your thoughts on the handling of this by shine? i think that s the first on-the-record comments by bill shine since he got his job as deputy chief of staff for communications. that s not an auspicious start for him right there. secondly, it s important to point out this is exactly the role he played for roger ailes at fox news. he emboldened him, encouraged him, enabled him. not a check on his worst impulses. i ve heard that donald trump wanted the reporter banned. others thought it wasn t a good idea. bill shine is being an accelerant on donald trump, not a brake. tara, the thing about donald trump is his obsession with the media throughout his career. he s wanted to cultivate the new york tabloids. he wants the new york times to respect him. this idea that now he really despises the press, is it the flip side of this desire to be loved by them and not getting the love and now thinking what i can do is just punish them. the presidency actually allows him to do these unprecedented things that he s always wanted to do. yes, he wants it. trump is all about vengeance. yes, he wants vengeance on any member of the media that doesn t properly kowtow to donald trump. at the same time he absolutely wants media attention and he is creation of the media in many ways, of the tabloid media. much of it was infamy but it s still fame and he s a product of that. i want to say something about bill shine. his job, his role is to facilitate trump s worst impulses and figure out how to make them palatable and maintain the base. at fox news, the trump base is he played a key role, bill shine in creating the trump base. he created it with roger ailes. that s what enabled donald trump to be elected and exist today. i think people should not discount that. he understands the base better than anyone else because he created it. i wonder, michelle, if their perception of the size of that base may be, that they 345i be listening to donald trump rather than looking at the data. donald trump lost by millions of votes, lucky that he won by 77,000 votes in strategically important states. is there any salient see that if you just keep the base on ten that somehow he thinks he can be re-elected with just them. he doesn t seem to have an interest in anyone outside that fox news audience. joy, you have to remember that all the facts you just stated are considered fake news by the president and all of the members of the administration and his staff. if you look at it from their perspective, he won the election. the popular vote doesn t really matter. he s got in his belief millions of people who are on his side, who believe the media is an enemy of the state because they are an enemy of donald trump, at least from his perspective. that s what they re banking on. they re banking on millions of people who are thrilled by the prospect of donald trump making black and brown people and women across the country the evil bogeyman who is taking away people s jobs. not technology, not the 21st century workforce, but black people, brown people and women. that s what he s banking on forgetting re-elected. and making the media the enemy of the people. let s get breaking news in here this morning, gabe. i m not going to read the whole tweet, but donald trump tweeted he made with a.g. sulzberger, the publisher of the new york times and said he spent time talking about the vast amounts of fake news, morphed into a phrase enemy of the people. the new york times put out a statement. he said my main purpose for accepting the media was to raise concerns about the president s anti press rhetoric. i said it was increasingly dangerous, that although the phrase fake news is untrue and harmful, i m far more concerned about his labeling journalists the enemy of the people. i warned this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence. donald trump, because he also has cultivated, he wants the new york times respect, what do you think the result of the meeting would do? i m torn. on the one hand, i think having a dialogue with the subjects you cover is important. on the other hand, i worry this was a stunt that a.g. sulsz berger was used as a prop, that going into this meeting and donald trump seizing the narrative and tweeting out first his take on the meeting allowed him to shape the narrative to his supporters. i don t really know what the times really thought getting out of the meeting, if they thought donald trump s behavior would change in any way. the thing that s so fascinating about it is sulzberger in his statement is talking about he tried to stress to him the physical threats to journalists as a result of the things he s saying, not just in the u.s. but around the world. donald trump goes out and tweets the press is the enemy of the people. it doesn t seem to have had an immediate impact. absolutely not. we have to say this is really disturbing what he s trying to do to the media. he s trying to turn the media for his base, not for the rest of us, but for his base he s trying to make the media an enemy, not just of him, donald trump, but an enemy of theirs as well he wants the people to view the press as people, not just black and brown people and media, but the media as people seeking to hurt them and harm them and plants that victim mentality which is what fox news has cultivated over the years along with race baiting. we have to be clear how disturbing this is. this happens in other countries that we don t want to be like. joe conason, there s a risk of turning the media into a supp can t. that is not the typical american way. the adversarial relationship between journalists and politicians is quite standard for mayamerica. it is. joy, the thing about this meeting is, i think it was fine and perhaps necessary for the publisher of the new york times to go to the president and say, listen, your rhetoric is unacceptable. it s putting journalists in danger and runs gechbs the whole idea of a free press. the second thing about it that i think could be useful is mr. sulzberger now knows what it s like to deal with donald trump. he found out. you go to donald trump, you put the case to him. you act reasonably, you tell him what s wrong with what he did, and this is what he does to you. i think that s a good lesson for the publisher for the new york times to learn in person. the sort of end game here does seem to be whatever is going to come out of the mueller probe in ensuring that a certain percentage of americans don t believe anything they hear about the mueller probe if it s written in the new york times or heard on cnn or nbc, that it will just be discounted. is there a risk that that will undermine the whole country reacting universally you would think in a bipartisan way to this idea of our election being attacked by a foreign power, that that now becomes a simple matter of partisanship? absolutely. the fact that everything we witness every single week, there is some other fact that comes out that is so amazing that we all sit back at least people who are rational sit back and say, for example, what will i take for a republican majority congress to step up and protect the democracy that they have sworn to protect, and we keep seeing that the bar keeps rising higher and higher and higher and higher. the bad conduct, the inflammatory rhetoric is all being ignored. i fear that eventually we ll get to the point where this will come down to partisan lines. the president s base is going to look at anything that robert mueller comes up with and say fake news. gabe, what is the fox news end game here? i mean they have a very solid base that will never leave them and will never leave trump. full stop. but long term, what is the end game? if you then keep this deeply entrenched base that is incredibly isolated from everyone else in the country they are a minority of the country, 26%, 27% of americans are republicans. that hard isolated base, is that a long-term business strategy in the mind of rupert murdock. they ve had those conversations inside fox news, the murdock family included. rupert murdock prizes one thing and one thing only, his profits. right now fox news is tremendously profitable. the younger generation, especially his son james murdock, has been concerned about the eroding demographics of the network s audience. the average age creeps up every year. i think the conversations are playing out. in the short term it is a valuable business. and in the long term, yes, it s going to change, but that s not rupert murdock s priorities. on the other side you have competitors who want to encroach on that audience, notably people like sinclair. they may be able to protect the president from impeachment with this strategy. i wonder if there s any thought about what this does to the country long term. any thought among the republican media? i doubt it, joy. there s a lot of thought in the rest of the country about this. the truth is for the great majority of the country the president s conduct and the question of his relationship with the kremlin is a very live issue and a grave concern. there s a minority that believes any nonsense argument that s set forth to defend him, but over time i don t think that will prevail. lastly, any chance that at some point fox decides to make a break, if mueller comes out with something really, really i think that is, joy, the key question about the future of donald trump s presidency. i ve had very senior republicans say that what is keeping donald trump propped up, the only thing, the firewall between him and a total collapse in this presidency is the fact that fox news is continuing to cheerlead for him. if you have him telling the audience that donald trump is no longer viable, the trap door is open and he s falling through. gabriel sherman, thank you very much. tara, joe and michelle will be back. donald trump wants real fair farmers help from the tariffs. shirley sherrod has more on what she thinks about that. stay with us. i ve always looked forward to what s next. and i m still going for my best even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there s a better treatment than warfarin, i m up for that. eliquis. eliquis is proven to reduce stroke risk better than warfarin. plus has significantly less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis is fda-approved and has both. so what s next? seeing these guys. don t stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don t take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily and it may take longer than usual for any bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. eliquis, the number one cardiologist-prescribed blood thinner. ask your doctor if eliquis is what s next for you. cardiologist-prescribed blood thinner. i ve been making blades here at gillette for 20 years. there s a lot of innovation that goes into making america s #1 shave. precision machinery and high-quality materials from around the world. nobody else even comes close. now starting at $7.99. gillette. the best a man can get. trade policies. i had the chance to speak with an agricultural official who was fired. shirley sherrod had a lot to say about the bailout plan and who she thinks could get left out. ms. sherrod, thank you for your time. thank you. so just to jump in, you spent something like 40 years working on behalf of the rural poor in georgia before joining the obama administration and the department of agriculture prior to and we ll talk a little bit about the way you left the department of agriculture. i wonder in the context of your life s work, working with royal folk, farmers in georgia. what do you make of what s happened to american farmers as a result of the tariffs the trump administration has put on and this idea of a bailout for the agricultural industry. well, i ll speak specifically about black farmers and farmers in general. black farmers are always hurting. we have this saying that when white farmers have a cold, we have pneumonia. that s basically what happens with us. i worry about what s happening with the tariffs, and even though they put a press release out yesterday saying they re making $12 million available, will black farmers be treated fairly with this? it s never been the case. it would be great if that would happen now, but i don t have much hope that it will. one of the issues has been that black farmers, but also small farmers, have not had the same access to the federal pots of money made available to big farm industries and the big companies. have you experienced that the federal government has ever reached down to the smallest farmer and particularly to african-american farmers, but really to all small farmers? you re correct. i think back to the 70s when farmers were being pushed to go fence row to fence row with crops. it s the big guys who made it big and small farmers who attempted to do that really got hurt. you remember in the 80s we had the farm crisis, we lost a lot of farmers, we lost a lot of black farmers, and black people lost a lot of land. small farmers hurt. so we have to deal mostly in local markets. what will that do? what will losing these markets in the world do to farmers who have tried to deal locally? it s going to put more products on the market. the ones who will be hurt will be the small guys. that s the small farmers we work with throughout the south. ironically you were pushed out of the administration. they later, of course, apologized to you, but in 2010 when breitbart.com and the tea party went after you for a speech you gave to the naacp in georgia which they misconstrued and edited in a misleading way, how ironic is it to you, ms. sherrod, you have real silence from the tea party world on the idea of essentially providing welfare to federal farmers because of something this administration did to them with the tariffs? that s exactly what it is, it s welfare for people who are well off. you can talk about taking away s.n.a.p. benefits and so forth for the poor, but this is welfare, and no one is thinking of it in that sense. why do you suppose that the same people who denounce the s.n.a.p. program which used to be called food stamps which, by the way, helps farmers, because people spend that money on produce. w that s correct. why do you suspect that those who denounce welfare are okay with that? i wish i had the answer to that. maybe we could figure out how to get to them. they have pushed large farmers for years. they don t think of the small guys who help communities survive. we ve lost we have people who are suffering out in these counts where you don t have a large population, the small farmers who live in there can help keep the whole community operating in the way it should. we just think about the big guys in this country. it s the small farmers who keep these communities operating like they should for people who live in them. those who have followed the work of civil rights know the sherrod name is synonymous is synonymous with long-time work in the area of civil writes. you wrote a book published a few years ago in 2012. give us some advice. this is a scary people for a lot of people. a lot of people are afraid. we re seeing a lot of race-based violence out there and people are scared. what kind of advice would you give to people how to stand up to the politics of fer? well, we can t stop working. you look back to the civil rights movement, how we stuck together to get the gains that we have, we have to live through these periods. we can t forget what we know. we can t forget to do what we know how to do. so we need to work together in every way we can work together, is what we need to do. that s what we ve done through the years. that that we can do, we try to do it. just to get people to understand kind of what how many small farmers are even left? i think when we used to think of the family farm, we thought of the basket of the country. that s not true anymore. when you look at who they say a farmers, that number is going down. what person would want to go into this struggling the way you have to struggle. it has to be in the heart, and it is for a lot of people. farming becomes a part of you. taking care of the land becomes a part of you, helping to feed your community becomes a part of you and it s something you want to do, it s something you can do. you are executive committee of the southern rural black women s initiative. talk a little bit about the work you re doing now. in fact, that s why i ve had to come to this area. we have a three-state project consistent of women throughout georgia, alabama and mississippi. we ve start a co-op, we do asset development work, we do civic engagement work, we work with young women in leadership and so forth. it s rewarding work because then you can have some influence on young women who are coming forward today who want to do good work? their communities but need some guidance in being able to figure out what to do and how to do it. i don t want to get you pulled into politics but there is a black woman running for the governorship of your state, stacy abrams. can she wen in a state like georgia? we re going to do everything we can. i will say i will do everything i can to help her. i m hoping she can be successful with that. we thought we wouldn t it would be 100 years before we get a black president. that happened. i would say, yes, it s probably and should be possible in the state of georgia to see that kind of change. absolutely, i would like to say she lost her son tragically in race-based violence is running, foo. black women in georgia seem to have something special about them. what is it about you black ladies in georgia? we just have to figure out how to survive and we go for it. shirry sherrod, thank you for being here. we hope you ll come back to new york often. okay, thank you. thank you. she is great. i want to take a quick moment to wish speedy recovery to georgia congressman john lewis who was hospitalized yesterday after falling ill on a plane. the spokesperson for the congressman said he was hospitalized for routine observation and is expected to be released today. get well soon, sir, we absolutely need you. more am joy after the break. the in-laws have moved in with us. that s confident. but it s not kayak confident. kayak searches hundreds of travel and airline sites to find the best flight for me. so i m more than confident. how s your family? kayak. search one and done. is part of a bigger picture. that bigger picture is statewide mutual aid. california years ago realized the need to work together. teamwork is important to protect the community, but we have to do it the right way. we have a working knowledge and we can reduce the impacts of a small disaster, but we need the help of experts. pg&e is an integral part of our emergency response team. they are the industry expert with utilities. whether it is a gas leak or a wire down, just having someone there that deals with this every day is pretty comforting. we each bring something to the table that is unique and that is a specialty. with all of us working together we can keep all these emergencies small. and the fact that we can bring it together and effectively work together is pretty special. they bring their knowledge, their tools and equipment and the proficiency to get the job done. and the whole time i have been in the fire service, pg&e s been there, too. whatever we need whenever we need it. i do count on pg&e to keep our firefighters safe. that s why we ask for their help. sometimes the label is everything. this week ivanka trump announced her name sake fashion line is shutting down. following months of boycotts and scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest with her job and her father s white house. although ivanka says she s closing the line to focus on her new life in politics, the brand may be closing for another reason, bad business. sales spiked during the 2016 election but have dropped in the past 18 months amid backlash to the trump administration s policies. as new york magazine s the cut put it, karma is a triple markdown. coming up, donald trump s tv lawyer rudy giuliani is making the rounds this morning defending his client by attacking his client s former lawyer who has tapes. that should work out well. more am joy after the break. whether visiting the airport lounge to catch up on what s really important. or even using those hard-earned points to squeeze in a little family time. no one has your back like american express. so no matter where you re going. we re right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don t do business without it. don t live life without it. with my bladder leakage, the products i ve tried just didn t fit right. they were very saggy. it s getting in the way of our camping trips. but with new sizes, depend fit-flex is made for me. introducing more sizes for better comfort. new depend fit-flex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit. alicewhich is breast canceratic that has spread to other parts of her body. she s also taking prescription ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor, which is for postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive her2- metastatic breast cancer as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole was significantly more effective at delaying disease progression versus letrozole. patients taking ibrance can develop low white blood cell counts, which may cause serious infections that can lead to death. before taking ibrance, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection, liver or kidney problems, are pregnant, breastfeeding, or plan to become pregnant. common side effects include low red blood cell and low platelet counts, infections, tiredness, nausea, sore mouth, abnormalities in liver blood tests, diarrhea, hair thinning or loss, vomiting, rash, and loss of appetite. alice calls it her new normal because a lot has changed, but a lot hasn t. ask your doctor about ibrance. the #1 prescribed fda-approved oral combination treatment for hr+/her2- mbc. there s a lot of good things going on. i appreciate my profession might disagree. they always do. policies matter a lot and i think the president deserves a victory lap. team trump including white house economic adviser larry kudlow want you to believe trump has rescued the economy. has he? our guests are back with me. okay, ms. tara, business lady, the economy was terrible when it was under this is four, john harwood treating the strong 4.1% growth touted by trump on fixing the economy, it ranks fifth to what happened under obama. trump, magic magician, sourc sourcerer. once again, lying. we re laughing, u be in fairness to the seriousness of what he s doing, it is again gaslight iin. we cannot let that go. what trump understands is the value of the headline. he knows there s a large portion of the population that s very busy that s only going to see the headline and they re not going to read below the headline which is why it s so important that democrats strategically push back. trump inherited a good economy. president obama inherited an economy losing 800,000 jobs a month. he s basically riding the natural tra jekt arjectortrajecp is riding of obama s economy. what s interesting, michelle, you have this sort of thinking that the economy would magically fixed the day donald trump was inaugurated, even though the economy is substantially the same, but the things that an mate the republican party don t anymore. here is larry kudlow talking about the sky high def sits talking about paul ryan, donald trump and mitch mcconnell s tax cuts and whether or not they re ever going to go away. is president trump ever going to try to reduce the deficit? yes, yes, of course. the effects of this economic growth boom are going to be a major important factor, very important. right now it s raising the deficit though. right now the tax cuts are raising the deficit. sometimes in the short run in order to invest in the economy, lower tax rates do yield lower revenues. i reckon it will take a year, maybe 18 months to start turning that around. michelle, if deficits don t start going down in 18 months, then what will they say? i can t even begin to fathom what they will possibly say in 18 months. i guess they ll probably find a way to blame it on either hillary clinton, barack obama or the fake news. what s interesting is frankly, i guess a little sad for diehard republicans is this is proof that this is no longer your daddy s republican party. if deficits don t matter, if the fact that the president is now isolationist, anti trade, and we re already seeing his trade policies are having a disproportionately negative impact on the people who voted him into office, what does the republican party stand for? they re anti trade now, they re isolationist, they don t care about deficits. i don t know where they go from here. it is interesting. joe, you wrote about i tell people please read it, it is one of the greatest books on the insane political era of the 1990s. as a zunt of bill clinton. part of the reason he survived impeachment with high approval ratings was the economy. the economy was genuinely great in the 1990s as a result of the policies during that era, the political policies, some of which he gets credit for. donald trump is not politically benefiting from what you might call the obama economy. the economy is strong. low unemployment rate. wall street has seemingly not reacted even to the tariffs. it s still going up. why isn t donald trump benefiting from that or the republican party? they don t seem to be benefiting at all. i d say there are a number of reasons, joy. one is trump always steps on their own message. michelle is right, the headlines matter and we have upwards of 4% right now. he will find ways to make sure that message is overshadowed by bad news including the russia investigation, his latest tweet storm, the fact he s attacked all our allies and he s become a stooge of the kremlin. all those things step on the good message for him about the economy. but the other piece of it is that all of the policies that he s actually responsible for aside from the tax cut which is deficit spending are hurting his base, are hurting lots of americans in and out of his base, the attempts to cut medicaid, all the attacks on health care, the tariffs that are costing people jobs all over the country, the tariffs that are causing so much trouble in farm country. these issues are uppermost in many people s minds. they have to affect his poll numbers every day. it is interesting, tara, and i think i might have said this to you before, but i have a theory that the idea that people vote on the economy is fiction. it isn t true. people vote their values, unless the economy is really bad in which case you see wave and change elections. on the issue of tariffs that joe mentioned, they are hurting the states where donald trump won where he s popular. it doesn t seem to be impacting the people. the people who like him, still like him. this is larry kudlow, free trader, defending the tariffs and doing what is more important to the base than what the tariffs are doing to their pocketbook. people say, well, president trump s tariffs are damaging this, that and the other thing. i say don t blame president trump, he inherited a hornl trading system, including the world trade organization, mostly china, but not only china. he s trying to fix it. he hit two buzzwords, world trade organization, global lichl, china. if they re not blaming obama, they re doing one of those two things. i will say that s more important to his base than what s happening to their pocketbooks. i think the culture war is very important. that s why we hear on fox news, the war on christmas, the nfl. thoos things are important. if the economy is bad and people are hurting bad, that s when the economy truly does matter. i do think for some people there is a problem because remember wages are not growing. in some instances wages are going down. so maybe that doesn t matter for trump s base, for the people who are very much a part of the cult. but if you re someone who is not part of the cult and you re seeing this massive tax cut that all these corporations are getting, that your employers are getting and your costs have gone up, student loans, all these things are going up, i think there is movement around the economy for those people. i think as wages continue to remain stagnant, i think people will feel it. people aren t stupid. they may not get to see everything beyond the headlines as i said earlier, but people do i think the pocketbook issues affect it. i think the issue is democrats need to take advantage of that and make sure they re repeatedly messaging to the fact that these tax cuts by and large benefited the wealthiest top billionaires in this country. what s it doing for you? absolutely. the democrats learned through the obama administration that president obama s personal popularity and the improvements to the economy from things like the stimulus, some people were getting health care for the first time, it sure as heck didn t benefit democrats. it was discounted people would vote to repeal their own obamacare, not even realizing it s my medicaid, not their medicaid. i wonder if that disconnect, it ends up hurting the republicans because they don t benefit from anything that makes him popular. it will eventually hurt republicans. i want to quickly go back to your statement about bill clinton. here is the irony in all the analysis we re doing today, bill clinton was more of a republican than donald trump was. a lot of his policies actually benefited donald trump s base, nafta, the north american free trade act, welfare reform, the organized crime bill that the clinton administration passed, a lot of things democrats didn t like at the time. bill clinton was smart about it. he went after blue dog democrats, went after republicans, he garnered their support. those policies inure to the people who voted donald trump into office. if donald trump wants credit for a good economy, maybe he needs to govern more like bill clinton and barack obama did. the irony, joe conason, all those policies turned the liberal part of the democratic base against hillary clinton because they blamed her for it. yeah. there s much nuance that was missed in all of that. but i wanted to say, joy, the most important thing to remember about donald trump is his biggest broken promise on the economy which is infrastructure. that s an issue that really ought to cut with the electorate across the board. they have failed to do what they ought to have done with infrastructure over and over again, and that is a really, really salient issue for all kinds of working class people. absolutely and paid no price for it. tara, joe, michelle, thank you all. have a great sunday. before we go to break, you tweeters may have seen this this morning. rudy giuliani tweeted out a single word, you. we would like to think that he meant you at am joy are trending. or maybe this. you, you got what i need but you say he s just a friend friend you say he s just a friend w jumbo snow crab with tender dungeness crab. or try crab lover s dream. sweet, juicy king crab and jumbo snow crab cozied up with crab linguini alfredo. even our shrimp is crab-topped! so hurry in and get your butter-dunkin game on! cause crabfest will be gone in a snap. and now bring home the seafood you crave with red lobster to go. call or order online today. you crave with red lobster to go. you might be missing something.y healthy. your eyes. that s why there s ocuvite. ocuvite helps replenish nutrients your eyes can lose as you age. it has lutein, zeaxanthin and omega-3. ocuvite. be good to your eyes. booking a flight doesn t have to be expensive. just go to priceline. it s the best place to book a flight a few days before my trip and still save up to 40%. just tap and go. for the best savings on flights, go to priceline. i hope so. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn s disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. what is your problem with val? val is a disloyal. did she come put money or your books? did she visit you? $500 on your books on day one. she called me on the phone. what did she want to talk you about changing up your lifestyles, your ways. you re not a thug. drug dealer. you went to jail on a fire technicality. did i? yes. how are we supposed to know that hipsters is so flalabmmabl. it tells stories of two friends. i spoke to the writers and stars of the movie. take a look. all right. i have to start by asking what on earth you re playing with there in we are much better funded show than i thought.? in funded show than i thought. in show than i thought.in we are m show than i thought.n we are muw than i thought. we are much bet than i thought. we re building a high-rise on your set. i hope that means we re going to get better food. you might. but you might not be able to eat it. better food that i ll have to send a friend to get it. you ve got this great film out blind spotting. gra congratulations. ten year to get it done. less than a month of filming. that s a good filming making lesson for people that want to go into the business. tell us how this came about. so tennish years ago, more than that, 11 or 12 years ago. one of our producers while scouring the internet came across a bunch of rafael s poetry videos and reached out to him asking if he thought this kind of heightened language might translate to film. we had been working together for a bunch of year at that point already mostly making songs and music videos, things like that. a couple years later he introduced justin keith to me and the four of us decided we would embark on this journey to figure out what a film would be that had the spine of verse. we decided it should be set in oakland, california because that s place we know very well and we re from the bay area. we knew we wanted it to star us. that s as much as we knew. the rest is figuring out who miles and collin were. trying to make sure the film felt appropriate to the moment. a lot of updating happened. those were the things we knew going in. i wonder about this idea of making a film where you started in the obama era when the race kfrl conversation is the thing people want to have and finishing it in this current era and whether that struck you guys as you were editing film how the country with changing? we re writing this film over the course of ten years. the conversation of the country has changed. i don t know the people who wanted to talk about race in the obama era and the people who don t want to talk about race are still the ones who don t want to talk about it now. that s a presidential shift, not a cultural shift. one of the things that really happened while we were working on this film is when oscar grant happened, this as very prominent thing that everyone talked about. it was on the news cycle all the time and protests and riots. thinking we have this footage that shows shotgun would happen and we would all stare at this and change the way we were functioning as a society and that didn t happen. more and more tapes have piled up and perfect evidence has come about and nothing has happened. now we have film that we landed on that s about the idea that a group of people can all watch the same thing, can all see the same circumstance and view it differently. that s what we wanted this movie to be about. that unconscious inference. congratulations on this film. a great effort. anybody who is experienced gentrification, i live in brooklyn, we 100% identify with it. don t make us wait ten years for another one. we ll do our best. thank you so much. you can catch the full interview on joy.msnbc.com. (vo) what if this didn t have to happen? i didn t see it. (vo) what if we could go back? what if our car. could stop itself? in iihs front-end crash prevention testing, nobody beats the subaru impreza. not toyota. not honda. not ford. the subaru impreza. more than a car, it s a subaru. let someone else do the heavy lifting. tripadvisor compares prices from over 200 booking sites to find the right hotel for you at the lowest price. so you barely have to lift a finger. or a wing. tripadvisor. you made moonshine in a backwoods still. smuggled booze and dodged the law. even when they brought you in, they could never hold you down. when i built my family tree and found you, i found my sense of adventure. i set off on a new life, a million miles away. i m heidi choiniere, and this is my ancestry story. now with over 10 billion historical records, discover your story. get started for free at ancestry.com
Interviews with political figures and news updates. they re speaking from the same playbook. but this is a tough line to walk, andrea. ken dilanian, you had dan coats, head of national intelligence, questioned about the dissonance there. let s watch. in the run-up to the helsinki summit, u.s. officials, ambassadors to nato, ambassadors to russia, said that the president would raise the issue of malign activity with the president. i m not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened at helsinki. ken, it does seem that dan coats and the rest of the team have still not been briefed on what happened during that private one on one. and that s remarkable, andrea. dan coats is the nation s top intelligence official. he needs to know these things, he needs to understand where the russians are coming from, and what potential negotiations took place between the president and the russian leader. this news conference was such a fascinating mixture of cynical meddling. that s not saying whether the president has given authorization for cyber operations. as of a few months ago, i m told, cyber command did not have that authorization from president trump. that s terribly important, obviously, for us to be going on offense. admiral stavridis, general nakasone had this to say, let s play exactly what ken is referring to. general, have you been ordered at all or authorized to conduct any offensive cyber operations in response to this? so my guidance and direction from the president and secretary of defense is very clear. we re not going to accept meddling in the elections. it s very unambiguous. again, that answer is ambiguous. but there were some hints from secretary of defense jim mattis that we might be ready to undertake offensive cyber responses. let me start by pointing out that surreal disconnect between the president and his four intelligence professionals. this is kind of like pearl harbor in terms of an attack on the country, andrea. and this would be as though after the pearl harbor attack you didn t get the president coming out, instead you got the chiefs of the army, the navy, the marine corps, saying we re going to prosecute, we re going to go forward, we re going to defend the nation. this is a time when you really expect the president of the united states to be speaking to the american public. so let s really underline the strange aspects of this historically. in terms of offensive cyber, i know general nakasone well, he s a straight shooter. he s trying to keep on the inside highly classified information there. we have a great deal of offensive cyber capability. to date, we have chosen not to deploy it. i think that s a mistake. i think it s time we started to look quite seriously at a range of offensive cyber actions in order to retaliate for this ongoing russian activity. look, the thing with russians, andrea, they have an old proverb which is that when you are probing with a bayonet and you encounter pu countecounter mush. when you hit steel, withdraw. we ll have to show some steel in the cyber world. i hope general nakasone is prepared to do that. i would like to hear more, at least to the congress on a classified level, about what options are on the table. let s time we took this more seriously than we have to date. and russia also misbehaving according to treasury sanctions today on north korea. that s something you know very well, what we re doing at sea, even, there s a talk that there s a multilateral naval force. i want to talk more about this dissonance factor. this is the president talking about kim jong-un and north korea at that rally last night. what i did with north korea was great. i got along great with chairman kim. i got along great. i got the hostages back. didn t have to pay anything. they re not testing any more nuclear. they haven t had a test in nine months. and you know what else? they re not sending rockets over japan and they re not sending missiles over japan and they re not launching missiles anymore. they haven t launched one in nine months. at almost that exact moment, the secretary of state, admiral, was in the air, heading to singapore for a meeting of asian nations where he s going to talk about north korea and about compliance with sanctions. and he was telling the press on the record that they are cheating and that their neighbors are cheating. russia, china, others are cheating, breaking u.n. sanctions, which we now see the treasury acting on today. indeed. another remarkable disconnect. and, a, it tells you that the political season is really unfolding, and clearly the president is just throwing red meat, red ribeye steaks to his base. but that is not doing our nation much good in terms of our security. and secretary pompeo is in exactly the right place, which is to evince frustration, to take action. and i think that if we are going to be serious about choking off north korea, it s going to require an international naval task force so that we can avoid the kind of sanction busting that we know russia and china are doing right now. here s the good news, andrea. at least we re still on a diplomatic track. and i will give the president credit ca credit, there have not been any further nuke tesclear tests or launches, but that program is continuing to build. we have to stop it. i think secretary pompeo is our best bet. thanks so much for that, admiral stavridis, ken dilanian, and kristen walker at the white house. breaking news, houston police department announcing the man suspected of killing a local cardiologist, a well-known cardiologist, has now been found dead. police say that the apparent murderer committed suicide. dr. mark hausknecht was killed bicycling to work. he formerly had treated president george h.w. bush. he was celebrated in his field and he was tracked on a bicycle by this alleged killer who has now been found apparently a suicide. coming up, alternate reality. president trump declaring russia was not happy about his presidential victory. really? despite vladimir putin saying the exact opposite at that summit in helsinki? time for our reality economic. stay with us. you re watching andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. and i m stillt even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there s a better treatment than warfarin, i m up for that. eliquis. eliquis is proven to reduce stroke risk better than warfarin. plus has significantly less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis is fda-approved and has both. so what s next? seeing these guys. don t stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don t take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily and it may take longer than usual for any bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. eliquis, the number one cardiologist-prescribed blood thinner. ask your doctor if eliquis is what s next for you. cardiologist-prescribed blood thinner. are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi.? a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it s the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. directly contradicting what vladimir putin told the world in helsinki, that putin did want donald trump to win the 2016 election. also contradicting of course his own national security cabinet only hours earlier in that unprecedented white house briefing. joining me now, charlie sykes, contributing editor at the weekly standard, and michael steele, former gop chairman, both msnbc contributors. charlie, you re in wisconsin, in the heartland. what are people there saying about what we re seeing as dissonance, but perhaps it s working? well, this is the definition of cognitive dissonance. it was truly remarkable listening to that briefing yesterday and realizing that what they were saying contradicts what the president was saying, then watch them go out at that rally and once again undermine and undercut that entire message. if the point was to rally the nation behind confronting the russian attack on our democracy, the president clearly cut them off at the knees. now, is it in fact working? i m not sure. obviously the president s base is still behind him. but i think at this point in the midterm campaigns, we have to ask whether or not these rallies and sort of the bizarre dark forces that he s unleashing at these rallies is actually going to work with those swing voters or those soft republican voters who are going to be determining who controls congress. the other thing about this, though, was that he was actually doing something for lou barletta, one of his favorite republican congressmembers. but barletta is running against a very popular democratic senator, bob casey, and casey has a long, the, his family roots are in that district. but you have to win the suburbs of philadelphia in that state. michael steele, as a former republican chair, you know that s not the way to reach out to the people in the suburbs. it is not. and i think that s one of the pennsylvania is a bellwether for a number of important races coming up this fall. and the fact that the president is so narrowly playing to a base, he feels good in that setting, he s having fun, he s riffing and cussing and doing this and the folks are loving it. to charlie s point, the rest of the country, the independent voters, center/right democrats and republicans, are looking at this and going, what is this all about? there is nonan inclination right now, i think, andrea, to empower that kind of mindset in washington any longer. and that s why you see the numbers for the president dropping. that s why you see the generic ballot for republicans holding on to the congress moving away from them. it s because of moments like we saw last night. you also see the tariff wars. out where you live, charlie, wisconsin is being so hard-hit in dairy, in all kinds of ways. the farmers are being hit. and also the auto industry is potentially going to be hit hard by aluminum and steel. again, china today saying that $60 billion in retaliatory tariffs are heading our way. well, yes. i mean, you think about the jobs numbers we had earlier today. you would think donald trump and the republicans would be cruising with these economic numbers. but you have this cloud of the tariff wars over the economic numbers. we re the home of harley-davidson, iconic american company that s been attacked and vilified by the president. the larger point that michael is also making is that donald trump is this huge gravitational force distracting republicans from being able to talk about the things they want to talk about. they want to talk about the economy. and yet donald trump keeps throwing out this chaff, keeps stepping on their own message. i can t help but think these attacks on the media, the rise of unhinged conspiracy theories, won t play well in the suburbs and swing area of states like pennsylvania and wisconsin. this stuff that works with the base, the polling is hard to figure. yes. we don t know what the mueller probe is going to be, and he s played that well in terms of demonizing mueller and any result of the investigation that comes. and at the same time, talking about a government shutdown, against the advice of every republican leader in the house and senate. you actually are raising a very important underlying point, i think, andrea, about, okay, so how does this really play out, given all these other variables that are still yet to fall into place, from mueller to whether or not the president actually pursues a policy of shutting down the government sometime between september and october. for donald trump, that s his ace card. that s what he keeps up his sleeve, the idea that we re guessing, we don t know how these things play out. some of this is defense and offense at the same time for him, where he goes out here to sort of encapsulate himself in the love of crowds like this that sort of protect him from whatever may come from a mueller probe, for example. but it also gives him that leverage to push back if he wants to and threaten the party, ostensibly, with shutting down the government, and to, quote, say to them, you guys go deal with that, i m having fun over here, you go deal with the mess that s created over there. it s a different form of throwing a bright shiny object and people following it down a rabbit hole. he s throwing many bright shiny objects in the air at the same time. and the question for the party is, are the voters paying attention to any of those, are there really focused on, okay, what is my situation right now going into this november election? job numbers and all that notwithstanding, how does this play for me? and i think, back to your point about swing voters, i think those swing voters are moving away from the trump circus and focusing more on the fact that they want something a little bit different and this ain t it. i wonder how many evangelicals and family value folks, however we define that, are worried about the children and are also worried about the fact that we had to bleep the president of the united states at a public rally because of profanity today. maybe we didn t have to. let s talk about that later. turning now of course to the effort to reunify migrant families, with our thanks to michael and charlie, the trump administration is today trying to shirk the responsibility to reunite more than 500 children still in government custody. msnbc s jacob soboroff who has been on top of this border crisis from the very beginning has the latest from a court filing, jacob. reporter: that s right, andrea, we have a court filing that came in from the aclu and the trump administration, the parties in this case. first, an update on the numbers. remember, 2,551 children overall were separated from their parents by the trump administration in a systematic way that had never been done before. as of yesterday during this filing, 572 of them still remain in government custody. they have been calling this category ineligible for reunification. that word does not appear in the latest court filing, but essentially it s the same group of kids we were talking about before. 410 parents from that group were deported before they were able to be reunified with their children. what is most extraordinary, andrea, but what we learned in this latest filing late last night is that the administration is essentially suggesting that the aclu now go take responsibility for tracking down and reuniting these children with their families. to say this as clearly as i can, the party that separated these children from their parents is now saying, look, we got sued, if you guys want to reunite these kids, you go find them yourself and we ll do our best to help you do that. it s pretty extraordinary. the last time i looked, we did not vote for the aclu to be running the government, or dhs, or anything else in this country. i think we voted for donald trump and his cabinet. that reporter: that s exactly right, andrea. the aclu is essentially defending themselves from this proposal, proposition, that will be talked about in court later today, by saying that the government essentially has endless resources. they have as much money, as much personnel as they possibly can. i talked to an administration official today who basically said, look, the aclu is on the air all the time talking about this issue, people are raising money to find these children. it s a preposterous theory, quite frankly. jacob soboroff, thank you so much for taking the time to bring that to us. coming up, lifestyles of the rich and infamous. did paul manafort cook the books to support his very expensive tastes? we ll get the latest from the courthouse and from the world of fashion. stay with us, right here on andrea andrea on msnbc. oh! oh! ozempic®! (vo) people with type 2 diabetes are excited about the potential of once-weekly ozempic®. in a study with ozempic®, a majority of adults lowered their blood sugar and reached an a1c of less than seven and maintained it. oh! under seven? (vo) and you may lose weight. in the same one-year study, adults lost on average up to 12 pounds. oh! up to 12 pounds? (vo) a two-year study showed that ozempic® does not increase the risk of major cardiovascular events like heart attack, stroke, or death. oh! no increased risk? ozempic®! ozempic® should not be the first medicine for treating diabetes, or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not share needles or pens. don t reuse needles. do not take ozempic® if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to ozempic®. stop taking ozempic® and get medical help right away if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, itching, rash, or trouble breathing. serious side effects may happen, including pancreatitis. tell your doctor if you have diabetic retinopathy or vision changes. taking ozempic® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase the risk for low blood sugar. common side effects are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and constipation. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may worsen kidney problems. i discovered the potential with ozempic®. oh! oh! oh! ozempic®! (vo) ask your healthcare provider if ozempic® is right for you. with the new chase ink business unlimited card i get unlimited 1.5% cash back. it s so simple, i don t even have to think about it. so i think about mouthfeel. introducing chase ink business unlimited with unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase. where we re changing withs? contemporary make-overs. then, use the ultimate power handshake, the upper hander with a double palm grab. who has the upper hand now? start winning today. book now at lq.com. the first week of the bank and tax fraud case against paul manafort wraps up later today, as prosecutors describe the defendant s financial accounts and years of extravagant spending, especially on closets-ful of custom tailored suits including examples that are so fashion forward, we had to bring in an expert to help the legal eagles out. joining me now, justice reporter julia ainsley. harry litman, former assistant attorney general. and our expert washington post fashion critic. robin, first to you. pictures are not permitted to be shown of much of this in the courthouse to the jury. but we ve seen the pictures. can you tell us who spends $15,000 on an ostrich jacket and what s the difference between python and ostrich? what does this tell you, if you were doing a psychological profile of the person wearing these clothes? the choice of something like that ostrich or python, these are exotic leathers. they are, one, not that readily available, and they are also extremely expensive, and they are quite distinctive. someone who decides that s the way they want to go is someone who wants people to notice their clothing and who wants people to sort of see how expensive it is. i think it s also interesting that a lot of the suits, we re talking about custom made suits. but you can t really distinguish them from something that might have been purchased off the rack. they don t have any sort of particular personal flair to them. it s more about the cost. and certainly it s about the volume. and i think a lot of that suggests to me that this is someone who is not so much interested in style as they are interested in quantity and price tag. conspicuous consumption. at the same time, according to the evidence, julia, that has been produced, especially the bookkeeper the other day, this was a man who was dead broke by the time of 2016 when he was volunteering to work for donald trump for nothing. that s right, andrea. the bookkeeper testified yesterday that around 2015 to 2016, the bottom really fell out for the manaforts. and today we ve been able to get more into the finances as we ve heard from the person who put together the tax returns for both mr. and mrs. manafort as well as the partnership, the company that manafort ran with rick gates. he said an interesting thing just now as i was leaving the courtroom, not only did manafort obscure some of the sources of his income, he did tell him about the foreign bank accounts in cyprus, but he asked him to lie. he said, will you please say this is a private presence where my wife and i stay in new york so we don t have to pay taxes on it. and he wrote back and said, it s never been my understanding that it s your private residence, in fact it s a rental, a business expense, and you need to pay taxes on it. we re seeing that it s not just that manafort didn t keep track. he willfully, knowingly obscured these data points in his finances. that s exactly what the prosecution needs to prove in this case, that it was knowing and willful. harry, as the former prosecutor, how damaging is it that the judge here, who is apparently very well-respected by his colleagues, with his taking a very forceful role in arguing and directing both prosecutors and defense on how they should frame questions, even, and in keeping pictures of all of this extravagant closets full of clothes, in keeping those pictures out of evidence so the jury doesn t see them, how damaging is that to the prosecutors attempt to put some, you know, visual elements together as well as just these data points? he s tough. i ve tried in front of judge ellis, and he seems to get a special flair out of really pushing on the prosecution. i don t think it s the case, however, andrea, that they ll see none of these. many of them were admitted. he refused to have them published, which is to say, passed along to the jury. but the jury in the eastern district of virginia will see them when they re deliberating. but how damaging? you know, a little bit. a little bit of flavor. but look, i think overall, prosecution is a storyteller s art. and they are definitely being able to pursue their story in broad strokes this week. and in particular, i think heather washkuhn has emerged for nominee for best supporting actress yesterday, not that she s acting, but she was a devastating witness, i think. credible, position of trust, sees everything, and really buried him with the bookkeeping details. so we ve had to date, setting the stage of the ukraine, then the ostrich jacket, and now all the bookkeeping stuff. even without the pictures, it s all going in very well. they ll see many of the pictures anyway later. and i think the stage is now set for rick gates to come forward and tie things up, probably no later than early next week. and robin givhan, from your article in the post, you wrote, a man should not be prosecuted for his fashion choices. although maybe in some cases they should. those choices show who the man believes himself to be. manafort wasn t interested in bespoke fashion. he wasn t buying designer brands as proof of tribal membership. he wasn t hunting down elusive products as testament to his cultural cache. for him, it s about accumulation of monopoly money, having the most expensive stuff. on top of his landscaping and everything else, what s so remarkable, after the bookkeeper testified the bottom had dropped out, he was still living at that level. when people are buying this kind of merchandise, as the fashion industry well knows, it s not just about, you know, buying a jacket or a suit or an overcoat. it s really about creating a sort of personal public identity. that s whatwe we re really seei here. it s not just about labels and brands. it s about identity. finally, harry, when we talk about this trial, we have to also remember there is an undercurrent here, as we ve been talking about it all week. it s not about russia, it s not about the campaign, but it s showing how much he was in hock to the russian oligarchs, even though the judge said you can t use the term oligarch in the courtroom, that is in the back of the jurors minds. it certainly could be. the bookkeeper testified while he is the campaign manager, they re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. they can t pay health insurance. he s got over $1 million in credit card bills. it paints an absolute portrait of financial desperation. and, you know, you ve got a financially desperate guy running the campaign of a major political party. it s a recipe for political disaster. thanks so much, robin, thank you for your fashion turn and your great analysis today. and julia of course, and harry litman, great weekend all, thanks. coming up, full court press. the president intensifying his attacks on the media. has he gone too far? you re watching andrea mitchell reports only on msnbc. introducing zero account fees for self-directed brokerage accounts. and zero minimums to open an account. we have fidelity mutual funds with zero minimum investment. and now fidelity has two index funds with a zero expense ratio. because when you invest with fidelity, all those zeros really add up. so maybe i ll win saved by zero about medicare and supplemental insurance. medicare is great, but it doesn t cover everything - only about 80% of your part b medicare costs, which means you may have to pay for the rest. that s where medicare supplement insurance comes in: to help pay for some of what medicare doesn t. learn how an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by united healthcare insurance company might be the right choice for you. a free decision guide is a great place to start. call today to request yours. so what makes an aarp medicare supplement plan unique? well, these are the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp and that s because they meet aarp s high standards of quality and service. you re also getting the great features that any medicare supplement plan provides. for example, with any medicare supplement plan you may choose any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. you can even visit a specialist. with this type of plan, there are no networks or referrals needed. also, a medicare supplement plan goes with you when you travel anywhere in the u.s. a free decision guide will provide a breakdown of aarp medicare supplement plans, and help you determine the plan that works best for your needs and budget. call today to request yours. let s recap. there are 3 key things you should keep in mind. one: if you re turning 65, you may be eligible for medicare - but it only covers about 80% of your medicare part b costs. a medicare supplement plan may help pay for some of the rest. two: this type of plan allows you to keep your doctor - as long as he or she accepts medicare patients. and three: these are the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp. learn more about why you should choose an aarp medicare supplement plan. call today for a free guide. today s senior living communities have never been better, with amazing amenities like movie theaters, exercise rooms and swimming pools, public cafes, bars and bistros even pet care services. and there s never been an easier way to get great advice. a place for mom is a free service that pairs you with a local advisor to help you sort through your options and find a perfect place. a place for mom. you know your family we know senior living. together we ll make the right choice. a few days ago, i called the fake news the enemy of the people. and they are. they are the enemy of the people. the press honestly is out of control. the level of dishonesty is out of control. particular with us. don t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. they can make anything bad because they are the fake, fake, disgusting news. the fake, fake, disgusting news. that was the president of the united states last night to a crowd in pennsylvania, using the press again as a foil to whip up the crowd at that campaign rally in wilkes-barre. on the same day his own daughter ivanka said she disagrees with her father, calling the press the enemy of the people. she said she would not do that herself. let s get the inside scoop from a pair of reporters who are well-experienced in those attacks and rallies during the campaign and ever since. ashley parker, white house property at the washington post and a pulitzer prize winner. and jeremy peters, reporter for the new york times and msnbc contributor. ashley, watching that last night, it really does come to mind that this is his main foil in the midterm elections. it sure is. and this has been his foil since really the very beginning when he started his campaign. what s interesting to someone who has traveled and been at a lot of those rallies, the mood can kind of differ. there are some rallies where he attacks the media as a foil with a hard edge of menace and it can feel dangerous, uneasy, or unsafe. last night he was clearly agitated, kept returning to the media more frequently than he has in recent weeks, especially at a rally. he did it in a way that was a little bit shticky, part of the trump show, the audience played their part, they booed and jeered us but didn t seem particularly angry. they were sort of smiling as they booed us. there s some element where it s part of the show and some element when he s really angry and it seems like he s really trying to incite the crowd against the media. the anger levels are hard to predict. it raises the question, first of all, how safe it is for the media. sarah sanders yesterday under intensive questioning from jim acosta, a frequent target and antagonist back and forth with the president, raising the question about the enemy of the people quote after ivanka trump said she disagreed with that, sarah sanders wouldn t say she disagrees. she said she works for the president. mike murphy, a republican strategist, last night had a modest proposal as to what the media should do going forward. cover it with a pool reporter. i don t think there s any need to put on the show that frankly the president uses for his base supporters. it s good box office for trump. the question is the journalistic realities which is that they re being used and abused. i m not saying don t cover him, the rallies aren t newsworthy, certainly on north korea and russia and other things they certainly reinforce many themes that we have to cover, but ashley and jeremy, should we be there in force so that he looks out, as he said, it could be the academy awards looking at all these cameras, why not pool it, treat it like an oval office event? i think that the level of hostility with which he s treated the media, as ashley pointed out, certainly escalated in recent weeks. and this phrase, enemy of the people, while he s been using it for about a year and a half now, is especially insidious, because let s just go over the history of where that phrase comes from. leaders like stalin have used this phrase. it comes from joseph 12stali. exactly. don t you dare question my authority. trump is doing something slightly different, basically says those people who dare to criticize me are criticizing you. they aren t just our political opponents, they are enemies, they are bad people, they are exercising bad faith. and that includes not just the media but anybody who dares to question or really investigate what donald trump is doing, whether that s bob mueller or whether that s the media. ashley, it does undercut not only our core values and our constitution and the first amendment, but a longstanding tradition of secretaries of state and presidents speaking out for a free press even when they have been angry for the press, certainly bill clinton was in my own experience, jimmy carter at times, certainly w. bush as well as with perhaps better reason, bush the father, angry. and ronald reagan, angry at us. but they always had news conferences, had organized interactions with the press, not just off-the-cuff interactions when they chose to. and they never barred reporters from publicly covered events as this president has. that s right. relationships with other presidents, other politicians, have certainly gotten antagonistic but we haven t seen anything like this. the president is not someone, even when he goes abroad, he doesn t go abroad to export democratic or american values there. the irony, as you point out, of the president really going after the media and really not standing up for them or even the first amendment is that he more than any modern politician is a creation of the media. in a lot of ways, president trump doesn t exist without the media. so as much as he attacks us and, you know, recently barred a reporter from attending an event, he also looks back in the crowd and he is desperate to see all those cameras pointing at him and all those red lights on and all of those headlines. and a lot of his behavior in office is reflective of the media coverage. not such a bad idea from mike murphy, at least worth pursuing. thank you so much, ashley, thanks for being out there for us, and jeremy of course as well. coming up, controversial praise. an african-american pastor calling president trump, quote, the most pro-black president in his lifetime. really? we ll get reaction from the head of the national urban league, coming up next. stay with us. your digestive system has billions of bacteria but life can throw them off balance. re-align yourself with align probiotic. and try new align gummies with prebiotics and probiotics to help support digestive health. truly personalized cancer care. specialists focused on treating cancer. using advanced technologies. and more precise treatments than before. working as hard as we can- doing all that we can- for everyone who walks through our doors. this is cancer treatment centers of america. and these are the specialists we re proud to call our own. treating cancer isn t one thing we do. it s the only thing we do. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. tell me what policy that you are signaling out of this administration that s been so pro-black. first of all, happy 40 years on msnbc. thanks a lot. when i heard the pastor, i wonder if the pastor have been living on saturn or uranus or neptune. that deserves the fake, fake news academy award. it is such a misstatement of fact and reality. h bill clinton appointments and his important work in helping to vitalize urban america or barack obama putting the first african-american in the attorney s chair and george w. bush, you had two black secretaries of state. it is not the kind of statement that deserves any response because it is a fake, fake news narrative. i also want to point out what george w. bush trying to combat the aids in africa. it was george bush working with several other advocacy groups. it is astounding given the impact on healthcare with proposals tripping down affordable healthcare and eliminating preexisting conditions, who is that going to hurt? the least empowered among us and clean water and clean air. if you look at all the deregulation, who s most impacted? the people of urban communities, many of whom are minorities. many of these whether education or justice or arena really would serve to reverse gains that were made under the obama years. the affordable care act narrow health disparities and we had stronger enforcements of civil rights lost. any on that that s not good public policies for urban communities and communities of color. loud ascertations and the real facts of what we are facing today and the tremendous contributions of the prior presidents. i want to point out one quick thing, the propaganda efforts on facebook and others to create more divisions which started with black lives matter and charlottesville and others and ferguson even before 2016. let me say this, those efforts by russia are despicable and they are hateful and those involved and aided should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. i expect law enforcement shut russia interference down. it could be russia today or another set tomorrow. get your happennds off american democracy. stop trying to manipulate the way we think. stop trying to undermine the system that gives people the chance to elect their own leaders. thank you so much mark morial, we ll be right back. thank you. it is time now for your business of the week. chances are you have an e-mail in your inbox right now. how did the two founders turned into a half billion dollars business without taking a dime of outside funding. we tell the story this sunday on 7:30 a.m. eastern on msnbc. sponsored boo i the powerful backing of american express. don t do business without it. back every step of the way- whether it s the comfort of knowing back every step of the way- help is just a call away with global assist. or getting financing to fund your business. no one has your back like american express. so where ever you go. we re right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don t do business without it. don t live life without it. neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair works in just one week. with the fastest retinol formula to visibly reduce wrinkles. neutrogena®.
Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. house and some speculations as to whether or not or how much the president knew that these individuals were fact making these specific statements. how much would he have been known of the exact wording that came out of these officials? well, the administration says it was the president s idea. he very much wanted them to come out but it is unprecedenteunpre. we never seen anything like it. it was clearly aimed sending a message to the people that they are taking this problem seriously. critics point to that, we are less than 100 days before the midterm, why did this briefing happened several months ago or a year ago. kristen welker is live with us at the white house. thank you. let s bring in jonathan allen and former senior director cyber security at the white house and john mclaughlin, it is great to have all of you. jonathan and allan, let me begin with you. i want to read from your piece on msnbc.com. you wrote a two-piece event, you shall sha is trying to undermines the democracy. who are people to believe her? the president or the country s top experts and officials in this matter? i think in terms of the mechanics of all this, the russians influences the 2016 elections and attempting the do again in 2018, hacking our democracy. you have to go with the national security professionals here. the president s argument that this is all a hoax is a political argument. it is not one based on facts or based or any search he s done on the intelligence. we should believe as though officials said there is a serious threat from russia in this election than the last. the president yesterday again with the hoax, his crowd and base, you know at this rally and i was there last night, they want to hear that. they want to hear that what he s doing is trying to have diplomacy with russia and trying to make a better world and they want to hear that his election is credible because they all believed in it. he obviously is worried of the legitimacy over the course of time and he said both things that the russians interfered and he believed vladimir putin when he says he did not interfere and having any degree of variance on that opens the door to those who would call it a hoax as he has. christopher, i want to get your take on the statements that came from the national security team and whether or not the white house is on one hand doing this for purely theatrical or optical reason when we see what the president is saying out there to his campaign and the messaging that s coming out we saw earlier in the day. is the white house taking the russia threat seriously? i think there are people in the administration who are doing a lot of good work. i welcome the conference yesterday although as people said that conference could have happened over a year ago but better late than never. there seems to be good initiatives. if the president is under cutting that message. you have a conference like that for two purposes, one is to raise awareness so the american public is taking it seriously and two, to send a message to putin that this activity is unacceptable and if he does it again, there will be consequences. that effect is under cut by the president s statements either not saying anything at all or saying statements like he did last night and throughout the period where he under cuts those officials who are out there. if i am putin and i look at that and you know what i can bare the cause and the messaging is mix and i will do it again. director mclaughlin, let me pick off on the points that christopher just raised. explain to us anybody who ran an agency, why the president s message is more important than a specific order. what if he s behind closed doors as we heard from officials that the president has directed us to do x, y, and z, why should we be so concerned of what he s saying in public? well, first, eamon, we don t know what the president said to get that conference underway. and, i think the main problem thinking back to my own experience that within the executive branch, i know all of these national security officials. i am sure that individually they are doing the best they can and doing what their agencies can do. unless you can have direct public and direction and mobilization from the president, the executive branch does not move as vigorously and bringing all the power of the federal government to bear. what s lacking is a coordinated mechanism to pull together in a powerful way of what all of these agencies and officials can do. i think we are witnessing something that is in my 40 years in government here a positively, on the one hand these national security officials saying what they said and on the other hand hearing the president calling it all fake news. it leads to that question, do you believe what you are told by white house communication or do you believe what you see or hear with your own eyes. that s a terrible dilemma to put in front of the american people. obviously you believe what you see and here. despite the president actually saying that last week. do not believe what you are seeing and reading when he was attacking the press. chris, what s your level of confidence of any attempt of interference can be blocked this late in the game so to speak? yagain, i think some good things going on. chris wray talked about some of those efforts. we heard from the deputy in aspen last week, my confidence were pretty low that they ll be able to block it. we don t have the top level officials of the white house coordinating all these efforts. you will recall that national security adviser bolton got rid of this coordinator position at the white house, one that could bring a lot of inner agencies efforts together and seemed like they are doing a good thing. we unless it is you know nunified, in a vulnerable place. director mclaughlin, is there any significance in this action other than the north korea link than the russia bank? it is a good thing to do and reenforces there is a sense of two separate governments working here. officials who carry out these steps which are all well-advised and the president who seems to be giving a different message entirety and under cutting the effects of it. putin will hear about the sanctions but he s also hearing from the president of what he says. i have been told the by the russians that sometimes these strengthen him. i am going to ask you to stick around for us, christopher painter and director mclaughlin, thank you both for joining us. how the trump administration wans to hand off the responsibility of reuniting children separated from here parents at the border. and campaigning gop voters just may not be into you. and follow the money, former trump campaign, paul manafort, open the books at his trial. not so cute when they re angry. and we covered it. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum keep it comin love. if you keep on eating, we ll keep it comin . all you can eat riblets and tenders at applebee s. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. another anti-wrinkle cream in no hurry to make anything happen. neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair works in just one week. with the fastest retinol formula to visibly reduce wrinkles. neutrogena®. are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi.? a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it s the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. correspondent who s been following this story jacob so soboroff. it is great to have you with us. it is hard to wrap my head around in a little bit. what is the government s argument that it is up to the aclu that should be responsible for reuniting these families? this has been a slow motion train wreck of a disaster and it continues to sort of amaze and astonish in every turn. the government separated these children from their parents in a way we have never seen before. as a deterrent, john kelly, is now saying the aclu who wants to do sued them to reunite the 551 kids separated from their parents should be responsible for it, basically because they wanted to happen. it is an impossible thing to understand. the government is the one that has been ordered by a judge to do these unifications and now they re saying because of aclu and another ngo s on the ground, they should be the one to do it. they should essentially take the lead. there are about 572 kids remains in the government s custody. regardless of whose responsibility it is, it literally falls on the government in the first place. no, there is not. that s what is coming together right now in court. i was looking over some of the things that both the defendants and plaintiffs are talking about among themselves that they want to be shared between each other. i should remind everybody, 410 of the 572 are parents who are already been deported. they re outside of the united states and they were deported before it was possible for them to be reunited with their children. we are talking about simple stuff. phone number of parents and birth certificates of children. if a child or parent speaks an indigenous language, what language do both the child and parents speak. there is no centralized database and there was no centralized database and now it was clear al along months after, they still don t have this figured out. the administration is sitting on information that ll allow the parties to find these parents. what kind of information do you think the aclu was referencing there that can facilitate the unifications? we know. they re called a-number, that s given to a person. anybody that s apprehended by the border of control. they say these numbers con train a treasure-trove of information that ll make tracking down these people particularly outside the country in order to reunite them far easier. the latest court filing the government says we don t think it is necessary to give over the a-file because there is a whole other list the aclu wants. it is bickering about information when remember we are talking about 572 kids that are still sitting in u.s. government custody after being systemically taken away from their parents and held by the u.s. government. that s what it is about. 572 kids are still in custody of the u.s. government. jacob, i know you have been following this story from the beginning. you have been doing encredibinc. what are you looking for this? we have to hear what the judge says. the aclu when i was in court last friday down in san diego, do you really need all this information to unify these kids to their parents. it is going to be critical to see what the judge says as far as proposals by the government. if you clap back at them for a lack of a better term, hey, why don t you guys take the lead. we know you will stay on top of the story, keep up with the excellent report, appreciate it. thank you. the alejandra juarez have lived in the united states for 21 years. she thinks the decision to come here back then saved her life as an escape from the violence she faced at home. juarez has two daughters. the older one will stay in florida with her father and juarez s husband, the younger one will move to mexico to be with her mother. juarez has a message for other military families. they re breaking my family apart. they don t care that he served our country three times. before you enlist in the military, think twice. before you marry an immigrant, think it twice, think is it really worth for you to serve this country because look at how they are treating me. they plan to keep fighting and praying. why support at the white house is so kruscrucial to win primary. is the president s endorsement is as valuable in the general election. how republicans will walk a fine line with their president. still nervous about finding a new apartment? yeah. but popping these things really helps me.relax. please don t, i m saving those for later. at least you don t have to worry about renters insurance. just go to geico.com. geico helps with renters insurance? good to know. been doing it for years. that s really good to know. i ll check em out. get to know geico. and see how easy homeowners and renters insurance can be. so let s promote our summer travel deal on choicehotels.com like this. surfs up. earn a $50 gift card when you stay just twice this summer. or, badda book. badda boom. book now at choicehotels.com if yor crohn s symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn t worked well enough, it may be time for a change. ask your doctor about entyvio, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohn s. entyvio works at the site of inflammation in the gi tract and is clinically proven to help many patients achieve both symptom relief and remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. pml, a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. this condition has not been reported with entyvio. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections or have flu-like symptoms or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn s treatment isn t working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. save $200 on this dell laptop i we worked with pg&eof to save energy because wenie. wanted to help the school. they would put these signs on the door to let the teacher know you didn t cut off the light. the teachers, they would call us the energy patrol. so they would be like, here they come, turn off your lights! those three young ladies were teaching the whole school about energy efficiency. we actually saved $50,000. and that s just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we re building a better california. republicans with primaries still to come. they want to look to tennessee for two big lessons. experience in washington could be a liability instead of an asset. endorsement from president trump could push you over the top. those are the big take away our congresswoman diane black, she ran as a trump endorsement. she lost to business executive bill lee last night. our political kmoocommunist andk tyler and he s also a political msnbc analyst. gentlemen, great to be with you. the primary this season to lose a bid statewide office without president trump s endorsement. how significant and how important is president trump s endorsement in the primaries? well, i would say it is significant. the problem is it is a quagmire i see a lot of republicans running to gain trump s endorsement and the argument is who s going to help trump with his make america great again of his agenda. if you get out of the primaries, the republican national committee is really the republican national cult. it does not have any coherence and therefore having a broader appeal and becomes more difficult. during the general elections these republicans who gained and won their party nominations because of trump endorseme s en. i am going to get to that point in a little bit. your colleague, amber phillips, wrote this today which i thought it is interesting. it is not coincidence of the first election cycle that he became president promised to drain the swamp and declaring the political system as rigged that nearly half a dozen gop lawmakers have lost their primaries for higher office. does the fact that the president campaign so hard on draining the swap has a ripple effect on the gop? well, it may have a ripple effect on the republican party. the president has tremendous leverage over republican lawmakers because he may be struggling a bit in the polls. he s mr. popularity compares to incumben incumbents and republicans in congress. i think the president is having a great deal of success in this in part because he s looking and seeing where are the winners and who s going to be winning these contests and he tends to side with the winner. it clearly has a huge impact in these primaries. you know certainly we have seen that close to here in virginia that it is something of an albatros. she s now going to face a moderate democrat, rick bredesen. how do you try to win against a democrat like bredesen. republicans did not lose tennessee, so this should be a no brainer or not a contest. now i believe that it is going to be a close race and i do think bredesen was a popular politician from tennessee is going to be able to make a case that this is referendum on trump. that s all he ll need because if the president is even 40% in tennessee, and against everybody else, he s going to win. i think you go out every single day and make a case that why to send a message and this is not the way the country wants to go in. let me play this. he made this pitch for impeaching president trump. take a listen. you should join the movement of 5.5 million americans who had enough. not just with trump and trumpism, but also by the attempt of washington insiders to bury this uncomfortable truth that he needs to be removed from office. so on one hand you got him making this pitch for impeachment and there is no doubt of trumpism and anti-trump has energetic the wave. you alienate folks but also energize the red base. democrats are going to have to win in districts that trump won. these guys do not want to get on board with the impeachment plan. everybody knows if you really want to impeach the president, the thing you need to do is elect a democratic congress. the problem with tom putting forward of this litmus test has this reverse effect and whines up putting democrats who would be winning in december can be losing. thank you both for joining us. thank you, eamon. if the house or the senate both flip in washington are going to change drastically, you bet the headlines of political play book this morning really put it accurately saying what the white house should be worried about. we are going to talk a little bit about that. a anna palmer, it is great to have you with us. walk us through this prediction a little bit. why are things going to change very quickly if in fact the house or the senate potentially pl flipped? i think what you would have is democrats are going to be in power to subpoenaed the white house agency. democrats don t have really power unless they control the chamber. one thing to point out is stunning, if you look at the over sigte committee and the staff would double if they took the majority. people are looking at paper trails and yes, there is impeachment and this is everything from tax and the president s taxes to what which agency is doing and whether the man te manifest on air force one. i want to ask you about that. the house over site committee back in 2010 and 2011, he investigated of bank bailouts to corruption. so and that is just one very simple basic example. how eager are democrats to investigate the president and what kind of investigations are we going to see from like the most significant to the most frivolo frivolous? i think there is absolute frustration of how this white house has worked and how they have done everything on over turning the epa rules. i think you are really going to see things that are not as sexy but could have big implications of in terms of what s happening with obamacare. how are those decisions being made and how are industries and different companies using this administration to get their agenda passed. those types of things can add a lot of stickiness with the lel t electorates. we know that nancy pelosi hi against president trump. are we likely to see an escalation of that rhetoric if in fact democrats win control of either chambers of congress. certainly nancy pelosi and a lot of senior democrats have been saying to candidates out on the trail or some of their colleagues, let s pump the brakes, we need to win first. it is impossible particularly in the house to slow down the calls for impeachment if they do take control of the chamber. makes everything comes this november that much more, anna palmer, thank you very much in d.c. thank you. paul manafort was racking up a tab on landscaping. how he managed to stay afloat and why this fits into the case being made against him. a new report saying jared kushner seems ready to roll out his long await peace plan for the middle east. the problem is no one seems to know what s actually in it. stet name. but allstate agents know that s where the similarity stops. if you re on park street in reno, nevada, the high winds of the washoe zephyr could damage your siding. and that s very different than living on park ave in sheboygan, wisconsin, where ice dams could cause water damage. but no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local allstate agents knows yours. now that you know the truth, are you in good hands? lifestyle. our julie ainsley is joining us live. great to have you with us. bring us up to speed. reporter: today is not as sexy and flashy as the ostrich and python jackets as we see. we are going through the meat and potatoes of the case here. they have been kmexamining and w they are crossed examining. what we are hearing is that phillips never told he was also asked to lie. we got to see e-mails that paul manafort sent to him saying, presumably to get a loan, you will be contacted by these people. tell them that the property that my wife and i have in new york is not business related. he said flat out, i am not going to tell them that. it is clear at this point that paul manafort s journey when things have fallen out economically for him around 2015 and 2016, he was getting to a desperate point and that s the case that the prosecution is making. he s a desperate person who would have done a lot in order to keep living that lavish lifestyle. let me pick up on that point. that s an important point in this trial. we learned from testimonies from his bookkeeper that manafort as you said is in dire of financial by the time the 2016 campaign of trump came around. what s the significance of this in. we are not going to hear the words of donald trump or russia come up in this case but there is a narrative that s being laid out here of a man the president did hire to be his campaign manager and he was in some someone that made the decision to be a campaign manager totally for free. when he was making decisions like he was in 2016 to do a pro-russia platform, why was he feeling compelled in that way if he was not getting paid anything from trump. that s not something we may not get an answer to. we ll see how mueller may use those pieces going forward. it will explain why mueller puts so much pressure on manafort. it is a lot of speculations of rick gates and what role he s expected to play in this trial. he pleaded guilty. what can we expect to see from him when he takes the witness stand. reporter: i am glad you point that out. at first, it seems like a question whether or not rick gates would testify. we heard from the prosecution that they ll bring him forward. we should expect him in the middle of the chain s of witnesses. he s been called into question, we learned that he also signed off on those fraudulent forms or at least gave information to fraudulent numbers. they kind of put him in the middle so he s not the one filling up the case when the jurors go to make deliberations. rick gates work hand in hand with manafort through all this. he knows about the bank accounts and his work in ukraine. he went further and worked on transition. there is a lot we ll hear from rick gates and that s the most interesting day of this trial. do you know what day he can take the stand, julie? reporter: we don t. almost everyday we walk in we are not sure of who ll they ll call. there is a long list of potential witnesses of prosecution. we know that the prosecutions think they can rest sometimes next week which makes us think we should be on the look out. julia ainsley, appreciate it. the white house is ready to roll out the middle east plan with the president s son-in-law leading the charge. can they get the results they are actually looking for? a week from sunday marks the one year of anniversary of deadly clash between protester and white nationalists. msnbc will share the story of the former white supremacist who has dedicated his life. it will be on sunday august 12th, watch here on msnbc. it s be prescribed to more than a quarter million people and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni your doctor will test to see if you ve ever had hepatitis b which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after harvoni treatment. tell your doctor if you ve ever had hepatitis b, a liver transplant, other liver or kidney problems, hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. ready to let go of hep c? ask your hep c specialist about harvoni. gimme two minutes. and i ll tell you some important things to know about medicare. first, it doesn t pay for everything. say this pizza. [mmm pizza.] is your part b medical expenses. this much - about 80 percent. medicare will pay for. what s left. this slice here. well. that s on you. and that s where an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company comes in. this type of plan helps pay some of what medicare doesn t. and these are the only plans to carry the aarp endorsement. that s because they meet their high standards of quality and service. wanna learn more? it s easy. call unitedhealthcare insurance company now and ask. for this free decision guide. inside you ll find the range of aarp medicare supplement plans and their rates. apply any time, too. oh. speaking of time. about a little over half way and there s more to tell. like, how. with this type of plan, you ll have the freedom to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. great for staying with the one you know. or finding. somebody new, like a specialist. there are no networks and no referrals needed. none. and when you travel, your plan will go with you- anywhere in the country. so, if you re in another state visiting the grandkids, stay awhile. enjoy. and know that you ll still be able to see any doctor who accepts medicare patients. so call unitedhealthcare today. they are committed to being there for you. tick, tick, tick, time for a wrap up. a medicare supplement plan helps pay some of what medicare doesn t. you know, the pizza slice. it allows you to choose any doctor, who accepts medicare patients. and these are the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. whew! call unitedhealthcare today and ask for this free decision guide. stay at la quinta. where we re changing with stylish make-overs. then at your next meeting, set your seat height to its maximum level. bravo, tall meeting man. start winning today. book now at lq.com trump administration is staffing up its middle east team for the peace plan roll out. trump officials have promised the most comprehensive package ever to resulting the conflict of the emerging plan. it has not described with a small amount of detail. joining me now is our counsel l jonathan allen. jonathan, i will begin with you. this is the first time in months that the plan is going anywhere. how seriously do you sense this administration is taking this task? it s a big issue for the president. i go to rallies across the country. his political rallies across the country. one of the most consistent and loudest applause lines is when he talks about moving the u.s. embassy in israel to jerusalem. it s something that he promised folks he would do, and he did it. so that s something and he sees that as part of the larger peace plan. i think what you are what the problem is here is that you ve got some negotiators in this who have not been dealing with these issues very long. you have some negotiators seen in the middle east as extremely pro-israel and in some cases potentially anti-muslim. the president himself, obviously, had the travel ban, the first couple versus struck down by the court because they were seeing as being religious. so there is a lot to be done here. it was easier to part the red sea than to get peace in the middle east. gail, the ap is writing that palestinian leaders in part for the reason that jonathan just mentioned there, they are going to be hostile towards any proposal from the trump administration given his decision to move the embassy to jerusalem from tel aviv. is there anything that is going to allow this administration to work through a serious peace plan if the palestinians have already said anything that arrives with jerusalem as the capital, israel is dead in the water? we have all talked about how the middle east peace plan is the graveyard of optimism. it also is a home of pragmatism, right? so the trump administration seems to be thinking maybe we can use economic development and dollars to really shake up a stagnant status quo. there are a lot of folks on all sides who would say, look, you have absolutely no chance. in some aways this plan benefit from the real reality of low expectations. the question is can you break through what has been a really frozen status quo, and can you use dollars and development to do so. and as someone who has covered the middle east, i know so much of the devil is in the details of these issues. sometimes it comes to bloc by bloc maps. i feel like the president sometimes is approaching this from a general perspective in being pragmatic with the financial incentives to the palestinians. is there any sense of realism that the palestinians can be offered a big chunk of change to win over their concessions? i think it s really a start. can you start with economics and developments? you know this, ayman. so many people, you talk to them and what they want is a chance to send their kids to school, the chance to know their children will come home and to have a better future. if you can break through a frozen political process and really zero sum game until now and say, listen, there is a shot. we will use economic mechanisms to help with day-to-day life, then perhaps you have a shot. i think washington right now really does think there is no chance, and i do think this plan benefits, actually, from those very low expecttations. there is a possibility for people on the ground that pragmatism may carry the day in terms of economics over politics. jonathan, the israel issue has always been a bipartisan issue on capitol hill. has it become more politicized with this president, with the decisions he has made about jerusalem, and can that come back and bite the president or haunt the president, the gop in the way the support for this particular israeli government has become so one-sided? ayman, it s not just the president. this is also something that has been sort of a fraud issue on the democratic side. if anything, i would say republicans are unified in being pro-israel. you have this sort of globalist wing of the republican party establishment wing that has been there. you have the evangelical krishs that feel that way. millions of voters are not jewish but are pro-israel. the republican party has been very unified behind president trump on this. on the democratic side you have seen an erosion of support for hawkish pro-israel policies over time and that ranges from people who are more in favor of the palestinians than they are of the israelis to believe who believe israel s beth path is a more dovish path and consider themselves pro-israel but less hawkish. the democratic party very frail on this right now. gail, you are in touch with diplomats and others overseas. what should we expect the reaction to be both in the middle east and among our european allies who at some points have taken very different positions on issues like the embassy move to jerusalem? well, i think there are two things to watch. i think four letters are overshadowing this discussion, which is iran. so as much as this is about a middle east peace process, if you talk about what the gulf states plus egypt plus israel have been relied upon recently, what they have come together on is the concern about growing iranian influence in the region. in many ways that has overshadowed what s going on with the palestinian people and the question of the palestinian people s future. and so the question i have is how will the gulf states react? do they really see, do we see a desire for them to open their wallets? somebody will have to pay for this economic development and strzok. then if you have the gulf states on board and if you something that the palestinian people can get behind, i do believe europe will follow on this. but really the question i think is how does this affect the iran discussion and how do the gulf states come out. so to that point, jonathan, politically speaking does it make sense for a president who has been somewhat challenged on the foreign policy side, doesn t have a lot of successes he will argue he has successes with north korea and russia. now you have the jcpoa being torn up. does it make sense for the president to release this plan or announce this plan before the midterms or wait post-midterms? i think it makes sense before the midterms, particularly if it s one that as expected is, you know, sort of weighted towards israel because it motivates his base. all right. ga gail, jonathan, thank you very much. we ll be right back. i tried the patch. they didn t work for me. i didn t think anything was going to work for me until i tried chantix. chantix, along with support, helps you quit smoking. chantix reduced my urge to smoke. i needed that to quit. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions with chantix. serious side effects may include seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking or allergic and skin reactions which can be life-threatening. stop chantix and get help right away if you have any of these. tell your healthcare provider if you ve had depression or other mental health problems. decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. use caution when driving or operating machinery. the most common side effect is nausea. i can t tell you how good it feels to have smoking behind me. talk to your doctor about chantix. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. your hair is so soft! save $200 on this dell laptop did you use head and shoulders two in one? i did mom. wanna try it? yes. it intensely moisturizes your hair and scalp and keeps you flake free. manolo? look at my soft hair. i should be in the shot now too. try head and shoulders two in one.