relationship with trump. did this break campaign finance laws? let s go outfront. good evening. outfront tonight, shutdown victory. president trump taking a victory lap as more than 30 democratic senators join all republicans in a vote to end the three-day shutdown. the house voting moments ago to end the impasse. the deal was done in congress and it was done by senators. that s who made the deal. the president was silent. today president trump only issued a brief statement which said in part, quote, i am pleased the democrats in congress have come to their senses and now willing to fund our great military, border patrol, first responders and insurance for vulnerable children. the short term spending deal came after mitch mcconnell, declared his quote, intention. intention to hold a debate on the dreamers in the come weeks. that s it. intention to hold a debate in a few weeks. there s no formal mechanism to repeatedly brought up this three-day bill to keep the government open but to force dedicated negotiations. not two or two and a half weeks with doing nothing and then negotiations. you re saying it s only going to negotiate two or three days. that s the point you re making? absolutely in was all supposed to be done since october 1st of last year. the republicans were too busy with that health bill trying to destroy health care for some 30 million americans and the tax bill, which plundered the national treasury to deliver a trillion dollars to richest americans. they couldn t compel themselves to deal with the fundamentals of governing. a spending bill addressing children s health care, addressing community health centers and the opioid crisis. let s talk about this issue. sarah sanders pointed out that s not only in this continuing resolution but that other things in it are also things that democrats like you care deeply about. here she is. i think democrats realize that the position that they have taken was indefensible and they had to focus on first funding our military, protecting border patrol agent, funding vulnerable children through the chip program. these were things that they didn t disagree with. they agreed with everything in the cr. she brings up funding vulnerable children. doesn t she have a point? our three-day resolution, continuing resolution also had the chip in it. we ve been fighting since last august to get this bill on the floor. this was forged and bipartisanship. it should have passed last september instantly. they held it out as a bargaining chip in a shameful practice of holding 800,000 children hostage. you re saying that you plooef senat believe senator mcconnell because he made this promise to people of his parties. kamala harris told reports she does not believe mcconnell made any real commitment to deal with immigration. do you think she could be right or you truly do trust mcconnell? i do not trust him at all. he has promised lindsey graham and susan collins, jeff flake. made promises, commitments that he has not honored. however, realize republicans control the presidency. republicans control the senate. the mcconnell has decided to put the amendment box where we put amendments so they can be brought up on floor. he s decided to put his amendments in and lock the box so no democratic amendment can be considered. that s why we couldn t put up be bipartisan understanding we had with many members of the republican party for consideration. in that type of control we realize our leverage is modest. we do hope to hold mcconnell accountable for this promise but i m not sure that we will succeed. you re being honest here saying your leverage is modest. you don t trust him. let me put it to you straight. the congressional black caucus leader said they re getting their butts kicked. talking about you guys. is he right? we wanted to attach the dream act and opioids to a must pass bill that would get to the president s desk. we failed in that effort. now we re on plan b. it did work in 2013. we re going to carry that battle forward. thank you. i appreciate you. our senior political analyst is out front. mark, i have to say at first he tried to say the promise was to lindsey graham by mcconnell. he s trying to be optimistic but i thought he was more frank later in the interview. our leverage is modest. i don t know if we ll get anything. he said we re going to hold them accountable. i m going to throw something out. senate democrats did house democrats a big favor by agreeing to this. allowing house republicans to pass this bill, this cr, this continuing resolution for a couple more weeks. it allows the house democrats, all of them who are up for re-election to take a stand and vote against it. that s interesting. i guess it s long term, short term strategy when it comes to the midterm. let me ask you, the president. i played the ad where it s illegal ill grammigrants. the white house is trying to say an outside group did this. hee here he is speaking specifically about dreamers and during the campaign to talk about the tale of two trumps. it should be a bipartisan bill. it should be a bill of love, truly should be a bill of love. i will immediately terminate the president obama s illegal executive order on immigration. immediately. we re talking about dreamers for other people. i want the children that are growing up in the united states to be dreamers also. mark, look. you put that together with the ad and you hear senator the murkley saying we don t know which president is going to show up. which president is going to show up? who knows. depends what happens tonight. a republican said this to me who is no fan of stephen miller said stephen miller is the last person that whispers this his ear and that s why we re in this problem. republicans are not happy about this. if you look at polls we know that overwhelmingly the majority of americans want the daca issue fixed. they want to take care of these dreamers. there s that small group of hard liner, specifically stephen miller and some cases the chief of staff who are whispering in trump s ear as well as senator tom cotton and that s why he s stuck on this. nobody knows how to negotiate with the president because they don t fwhoe wiknow who will com door. are they the ones pushing hard line on immigration and winning? new pressure to release a controversial memo in the russia probe. trump s bragging about low unemployment among african-americans. does he and will he get the credit at the voter box? if you move your old 401(k) to a fidelity ira, we make sure you re in the loop at every step from the moment you decide to move your money to the instant your new retirement account is funded. oh and at fidelity, you ll see how all your investments are working together. because when you know where you stand, things are just clearer. just remember what i said about a little bit o soul don t wait until february. walk into a jackson hewitt, day or night, and you could get up to $3200. so why wait? 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(engine starting up) .when it can get by on looks alone? why create something that stands out, when everyone expects you to fit in? it s simple. you can build a car, or you can build a cadillac. come in now for this exceptional offer on the cadillac cts. get this low-mileage lease on this 2018 cadillac cts from around $469 per month. visit your local cadillac dealer. gathered here are the world s finest insurance experts. rodney mastermind of discounts like safe driver, paperless. the list goes on. how about a discount for long lists? gold. mara, you save our customers hundreds for switching almost effortlessly. it s a gift. and jamie. -present. -together we are unstoppable. so, what are we gonna do? insurance. that s kind of what we do here. the influencer in chief. the white house is pushing back against the idea that it is the president s 32-year-old senior advisor, senior miller who is running the show when it comes to the president s completely inconsistent stance on immigration. when asked if stephen miller has veto power over any immigration deal today, sarah sanders said this. the only person i m aware of with veto power in this country is the president. tried to laugh it off but it s not laughing matter. it s a serious question. you heard that just discussed. former white house counselor to clinton. also our newest political commentator. paul, let me start with you. you heard sanders say stephen miller is not running the show. do you buy it? no. we thought the show was going to be the apprentice. it turns out to be who s the boss. i was honored to serve president clinton in the white house. every president has to defer on some issues. say if this was agricultural policies, he has an agriculture study at purdue, i think it would be wise to defer to secretary purdue. this is the president s signature issue and on it he has said many times, that he would sign legislation to regularize the dreamer status and he s flip-flopped because stephen miller, the staff yanks it back. we know who is running the show down there and it s president stephen miller. steve. well, i would say to that paul as long as we re talking television shows, when you say president stephen miller, i would tell you that s as laughable and fictional as the show barney miller. i m thinking of a purple dinosaur. anyone who observes, which is everyone in america, president trump knows whether it was from the apprentice, candidate trump, president trump, knows this is not a man who cedes authority and control. i have the privilege of knowing him personally. the idea he would give up control to a second president or a pseudo president is laughable in its face. what s really going on is the left realizes that they lost in this showdown over the shutdown. what are they trying to do now. they re trying to create a boogeyman in stephen miller. here s the problem. president trump ran unambiguously on a program of controlling the border and reforming our immigration system as candidate. he was elected primarily probably on that basis and now he s following through on it. he may be out of step with the mainstream media. he s not out of step with america. i understand you all disagree on the power he has. even republicans like lindsey graham says stephen miller has that power. sometimes it s not reality but perception that matters. stephen miller is getting the same headlines that upset when they applied to steve bannon. president miller shutdown. business insider, report some now referring to miller as president stephen miller. john kelly the chief of staff. how are these headlines for stephen miller and john kelly s future? there s some reporting that general kelly is looking for the exit which i would not blame him. he s an american hero and deserves our respect. mr. miller, slightly less of a hero. he s a 32-year-old guy, worked on the hill. that s fine. i never saw steve bannon overruled the president like this. the president sat down. we all saw it on national television. it was remarkable meeting. he sat in the cabinet room. tuesday meeting. senator dianne feinstein said would you sign a clean daca bill. allow the dreamers to stay with nothing else attached. no strings attached. let me read you what he said. he said yes and then move to phase two which would be come prehencive immigration reform but i think we need to do daca first. that s the president making a deal until steve miller overruled it. it s unprecedented. the idea that stephen miller, who i really respect. that makes one of us. that he s the pup i said respect steve miller. i don t loik like a staff guy overruling the president. the idea he s the puppeteer is an absurdity. he s an important voice among many important voices. he has the mandate of american people and changing this country when it comes to the economy. yet when it comes to immigration steve miller, not only is being credited by democrats and republicans with having the final word on this, whether you want to say overruled or convincing. he is passionate about immigration. he actually is the only one who has come out and take questions on immigration from the press. here he is in a combative exchange in the press briefing room. aren t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant come sboing into this country i you re telling them you have to speak english. can t people learn how to speak english when they get here? first of all, right now it s a requirement to be natural iedsed you have to be english. are we just going to bring in people from great britain and australia? i am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from great britain and australia would know english. sounds like you re trying to engineer the rational and ethnic flow of people into this country. that s one of the most outrageous, insulting and foolish things you ve said. for you that s really the notion that you think this is racist bill is so wrong and so insulting. combative to say the least, paul. to say the least in that sense i think he s reflecting the president. it s a tragic thing. the majority of americans believe our president is racist in the polling. over 50% thinks he prefers white people to non-white people. why? because he said so. he was in that infamous meeting and he said we need more immigrants from norway and not from unflattering comment countries in africa, the caribbean or central america. when you say you want more white immigrants. that that sense mr. miller is repeating the president s view which is a racist view. what s actually racist is telling minorities and i say this as a hispanic the telling minorities at election time we value you and value your vote and forgetting them between. we just shut down the government for them. for his panic americans. they shut it down for ill leega immigrants. they have done tremendous harm to the economic prosperity of legal hispanic americans. of legal african-americans. what the president is doing is saying america first no matter your creed or color. your economic prosperity norway first he said. it s my first priority. there s nothing racist about it. that s the opposite of racist. it s saying we re not here to exploit you. we re here to improve your lives. that s what president trump has done. all right. thank you both. paul you have the first. i appreciate your time. next, republicans pushing harder on that controversial memo alleging fbi wrong doing in the russia probe. why won t they let the fbi see it and respond? 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[vo] another way we re building better every day. let your inner light loose with one a day women s. a complete multivitamin specially formulated with key nutrients plus vitamin d for bone health support. your one a day is showing. of partisan talking points and nothing more than an attempt to distract from the russia probe. obviously this memo release the memo has gotten national attention. what is the latest on the push to relohse it an what s in it? i m told by key republicans they are pushing very hard to release this memo very soon. as soon as next week when the house returns to session after a rece recess. it s taking now a verecess. it alleges the fbi acted improperly by not telling the judge who has overseen the warrant that they are using part of the justification that the trump-russia dossier that included the allegations comp e compiled by the british agent. this is something the fbi has requested to review this memo. full of these republican allegations but the chairman of the committee will not give the fbi an opportunity to review this memo. i talked to one key republican earlier tonight about why the fbi should not review it. this is what he said. i m not in favor of looking at doj and fbi weighing in. they ve been less than cooperative on a number of fronts. they need to have a role in reviewing the memo first? no. they know more about what s in the memo than perhaps anybody else. at this point i think they understand the wrong doing that certainly the memo would highlight. now to release the memo the process is this. the house intelligence committee would vote to do that. it would go to the president who would decide whether or not to declassify it. if he does, the memo is public. lawmakers are seeing nearly 400 new pages of text messages involving fbi agent that was removed from bob mueller s team, some 50,000 text messages. they re saying it shows an effort by the two fbi agents. they were biassed against then candidate trump. it alleges that then attorney general loretta lynch knew they were not going to move forward on some of these charges against hillary clinton as part of that clinton e-mail investigation. republicans are raising concern as about five months of missing tex messages that were not turned over to congress. democrats are saying it s part of an effort to distract from the russia-trump investigation as republicans are starting to pursue this new line of inquiry going forward. thank you very much. let s talk about the text messages that we have. put aside the ones that are missing. let s talk about the ones we have first. as he points out some of them seem to raise red flags. where they suggest loretta lynch who was then the attorney general knew the conclusions of the fbi s investigation when she seemed to imply i ll accept whatever it is. these texts, let eets just s j clear, were made before comey made the announcements. timing looks like hell. it s her reply that seems to damming. she writes back it s real profile since she knows no charges will be brought. that s the operative text. does it look bad? absolutely. you re going to read the tea leaves the way you want to. in june of 2016, you have that phoenix tarmac meeting between attorney general lynch and the former president. that s what comey uses as the basis for coming out on july 5th and doing shotgomething unprecedented weighing in and saying we re not going to bring charges but here are things that happened. the fbi has never done that before. we have been around for 110 years. we follow the evidence. does it look bad? absolutely. it absolutely looks bad. i think a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. the only way to get to the bottom is some folks are brought forward and asked to testify under oath. what do you say, richard? i think these two people maybe shouldn t be working for the government. they shouldn t be using their official texts, phone lines to be sending messages to each other. big picture is that there was absolutely no legal precedent for charging someone with what happened to hillary clinton. we ve been over and over this. that s a 2016 story that they are trying to dig up in 2018. no legal precedent for charging someone for negligently handling classified information in an e-mail account like that. zero. talking a bt computer with hillary clinton e-mails on it. that was used to spread the rumor they are re-opening investigation. they threw the election for trump. the notion they were favoring clinton is laughable to what happened in 2016 that last week of october. absolutely. let s talk about the texts we don t have. the other issue is we have five months of texts that we do not have. all the inappropriate phone calls to the russian ambassador, the national security advisor, michael flynn. that s a strange time line, let s say the least. they say these are missing because they were switching their sam sung phones. have not answered whether it s these two people s messages that are missing or perhaps others. do they owe it to us to get to the bottom of that? i think they do. at a minimum it fuels conspiracy theories. they look at this and go five months. one month after the election through the transition which is the greatest period of time we re look at this counter intelligence investigation into russia meddling into our election. yes, it s going to have a huge impact. under normal circumstances, and i ll disagree with richard on this. i would leave this in the office of inspector general. they are apolitical and they do great work. under the current set of circumstances we re dealing it, i think a special prosecutor needs to be appointed. i want to give you chance to respond. information about the fbi. they won t give it to the fbi for the fbi to look at. democrats say it s political who have seen it. when you put all this together, is there any reason to have a second special counsel or is that ceding to conspiracy theoryists. i would have a special counsel. what i blame president obama for is not having the fbi be on top of the situation with the russians interfering in our election. you re saying you would do a special counsel? no. i think congress, needs to investigate why the fbi wasn t on top of the the russians messing in our election. in 2016, why were the obama administration slow to deal with this. we had the russians interfering in our election, the fbi was aware of it. they just sat around in 2016 and did nothing. it s not this stuff in this report. this is irrelevant to the big picture of what happened in 2016. there was an investigation. just because the president didn t push it at the time because president obama thought it would tilt the election or he thought hillary was going to win. exactly. there s always been an investigation into that. we worry about china, north korea, russia meddling in our election. that investigation was under way. thank you both. next, a complaint just filed with the justice department over stormy daniel and alleged hush money paid to silence her about an affair with donald trump. did the payoff break the law. trump taking credit for gains that benefit african-americans. does he deserve it? i don t see a lot of what he s doing that has affected the black community. there s a vacation at the end of every week with hilton. whatever type of weekender you are, don t let another weekend pass you by. get the lowest price when you book at hilton.com we can go down this what do you think? never been in love by cobra starship feat. iconapop woo! yeah! it s good! it s refreshing. this is what our version of financial planning looks like. tomorrow is important, but she s only seven once. spend your life living. find an advisor at northwesternmutual.com. with advil s fast relief, you ll ask, what pulled muscle? what headache? nothing works faster to make pain a distant memory. advil liqui-gels and advil liqui-gels minis. what pain? advil liqui-gels and advil liqui-gels minis. pssst. what? i switched to geico and got more. more savings on car insurance? a-ha. and an award-winning mobile app. that is more. oh, there s more. mobile id cards, emergency roadside service. more technology. i can even add a new driver. .right from her phone! geico. expect great savings and a whole lot more. michael cohen has just told me that your complaint is baseless along with the allegation that president trump file ad a false report. what s your agent? the argument is that michael cohen is an agent of president trump. he s president trump s personal lawyer. he was the head lawyer at the trump organization at the time of this payment to stormy dan l danie daniels. we allege two violations. two different types of violations. one is pretty clear that the president or someone closel related to him spent $130,000 to influence the election. hush money to prevent embarrassment of the president with an individual with whom he had an affair who was talking to major media outlets at the time. this came about a week after the access hollywood tape went public. violation number one, failure to disclose an expenditure by the trump campaign committee in the amount of $130,000. the second violation that we allege is possibly having occurred is if this money did not come from president trump, there was an illegal campaign contribution. if it came from the trump organization, that s an illegal contributi contribution. if it came from another individual, that s an illegal large contribution. that s your logic there. as i said, michael cohen is telling me your suit here is baseless. obviously, daniels has denied the affair. trump also denied via trump s attorney. i guess the question for you if you cannot prove it was hush money that was paid to her, does that take away your case? do you have to prove it was money to shut her up? we don t have to prove anything. the legal standard for filing a complaint like this one at the federal election commission is it s there reason to believe the law was broken. they have subpoena power. it s the dent of justice job to investigate. they like wise have subpoena power. it looks pretty obvious this was hush money payment given the timing, given the reporting that ms. daniels was talking to major media outlets. she was negotiating with media outlets about appearing and given an interview a view years prior to in touch magazine with great detail about the alleged affair. does it matter if donald trump knew about the money? if michael cohen went and did this without trump s knowledge, does that take away any concern about the campaign? it definitely matters. if he was acting without donald trump s knowledge and authorization and completely without any knowledge or authorization by other trump campaign committee staffers. this will not be. it s not a contribution to the trump campaign. our complaint is invalid. it should not be prosecuted. i highly doubt that was the case. we re talking about donald trump s personal lawyer who seemingly orchestrated this whole thing. he set up the llc. i m pretty sure an investigation would reveal that donald trump was fully knowledgeable about this. of course as you point out it was tone just before the election. thank you very much. i appreciate your time. thanks so much for having me. next, some gains for african-americans in the past year on unemployment which trump is taking loud credit for. does he deserve it? the white house spending out pictures of donald trump working. i don t know if that s what this is. can i just call it out. sometimes you just have to see that what you see looks a little strange. was he posing? i couldn t sleep and get up in time. then i found aleve pm. aleve pm is the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i m back. aleve pm for a better am. you can do it. we can do this. at fidelity, our online planning tools are clear and straightforward so you can plan for retirement while saving for the things you want to do today. -whoo! while saving for the things on thousands of hotels, cars and things to do. like the fairmont mayakoba for 59% off. everything you need to go. expedia. of being there for my son s winning shot. that was it for me. that s why i m quitting with nicorette. only nicorette mini has a patented fast dissolving formula. it starts to relieve sudden cravings fast. every great why needs a great how. they always refer to me as master sergeant. they really appreciate the military family, and it really shows. we ve got auto insurance, homeowners insurance. had an accident with a vehicle, i actually called usaa before we called the police. usaa was there hands-on very quick very prompt. i feel like we re being handled as people that actually have a genuine need. we re the webber family and we are usaa members for life. usaa, get your insurance quote today. a place with 24-hour fvalet servicee and a boutique salon a place with all day arts and crafts it even has a day spa a place that s so much like home, because well. it is home home instead senior care when you need personalized care in the comfort of home. why create something this extravagant? 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that s a tough question for me to answer. reporter: parks is one of the 88% of black ohioans who did not vote for trump in 2016 and he does not appreciate some of his rhetoric when talking about black people. including recently calling african nations shithole nations. her tax preparing business was hit hard during the great recession but bounced back. while she deserves trump deserves credit, she doesn t think some of his policies are going to help her. i believe it is going to help the very rich. athena, it is incredible because they are giving credit but credit and votes how big is the gap between the two? i think it could be big. they are giving credit but only on the stock market. some people say they are not in the stocks. so they don t benefit directly. we spoke to several black voters off cramera as well as on camer. you are not seeing a lot of support growing. thank you so much. and next, is this donald trump working hard during a shutdown? is that what working hard looks like? jeanne moos is next. do you want the same tools and seamless experience across web and tablet? do you want $4.95 commissions for stocks, $0.50 options contracts? $1.50 futures contracts? what about a dedicated service team of trading specialists? did you say yes? good, then it s time for power e trade. the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. looks like we have a couple seconds left. let s do some card twirling twirling cards e trade. the original place to invest online. tonight some people are saying the president who loves to put on a show is doing just that during the shutdown. here is jeanne moos. reporter: there was a time when president trump was proud of his messy desk. look at my desk. reporter: whether in the oval office or trump towers. successful people have a lot going on on their desk. reporter: not much going on on this desk. online critics weren t buying it. i do conduct most of my most important work with a phone in my hand and nothing on my desk while staring vacantly off into space. this the photoy you take while sitting in the president s desk. the white house probably decided to release the desk photo because everyone kept saying the president i don t think that donald trump did a heck of a whole lot. reporter: nixon could have used a dozen paper weights. but trump wasn t the only president to have his desk sanitized. critics on twitter put stuff there. stuff like a toy train, a toy phone, a cheese burger and diet coke. some imagined he was calling his wife. or maybe on hold with the white house comment line. we look forward to taking
political conquences for what i was doing. i am an inspector general. it was one of the staff directors for one of the committees on the hill that we work with a lot. i don t want to name his name. he is no longer there. tucker: political considerations could have no bearing on this? absolutely not. you are not a d or an r. you are an ig. those are the letters that matter for you. this guy is just a pawn of the right. a shill of the right and attack the messenger. tucker: you heard complaints from the intelligence agencies, their information was on an unsecured server. you bring concerns to the congress and you are dismissed as a right wingplant? absolutely. that s a good point. the agencies were unhappy about what was going on. they were not happy their information was not protected the way it should have been. this was seen as cavalier. when we heard about this to begin with, an unsecured server, we looked at each other and said who does that? what rules apply to that? then a senator sent a letter over asking us to take a look at it and we did. tucker: a scandal then and now. thanks for joining us. joined by fox senior political analyst brit hume. now that the passions of the campaign have cooled, that seems like the campaign politicizing a non-political process of assessing whether information is secure. that seems like a scandal to me. it sound as if this man was doing what it was his job to do: bring this information forward and take it to congress. accountability rider there. tucker: give us perspective. it strikes me as improper for a political campaign to coordinate with government agencies about a matter related to national security. is it? well, i think it s common, but different dealing with classified information which has a special standing in our system. national security implications. what this man was clearly was doing was trying to bring to the attention of the authorities on the hill something that a case where classified information had been badly mishandled. recklessly one might say. what he got was interference from a political campaign. that may have happened in the past, but it s never become public. i have never heard of it. i think is highly unusual. everybody said look, you have to be careful here. this is explosive stuff. it could affect the outcome of the election, which is the calculus you know was in the mind of james comey trying to figure out what to do with this investigation. he wrote ahead of time before his investigation was done a memo declining her to charge her. in the end he doesn t, but he came very close to outlining what could be a solid case against her in the famous news conference he held. this is the kind of thing that happens when politics enters into this decision. comey it was a justice department decision. you have a compromised attorney general with the famous tarmac meeting with bill clinton and so on. all adds up to another case outlined here of political interference with matters that ought not be political. tucker: exactly what you don t want from our government and designed to shake our faith in it. thank you. a man from somalia kidnapped and raped two women. he is still in this country and not in prison. we will tell you why next. you owned your car for four years. you named it brad. you loved brad. and then you totaled him. you two had been through everything together. two boyfriends, three jobs. you re like nothing can replace brad. then liberty mutual calls. and you break into your happy dance. if you sign up for better car replacement™, we ll pay for a car that s a model year newer with 15,000 fewer miles than your old one. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. whstuff happens. old shut down cold symptoms fast with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered. in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember. more on that story. a refugee from somalia was in the united states for less than a year when in the summer of 2011, he admitted he raped 2 women in salt lake city. he was just 14 at the time. he said he sexually assaulted a woman at knife point outside of her home and the next night broke too another s woman s home and raped her and forced her to give him $400 for his first day in ninth grade clothes. he was charged with felony rape and kidnapping. he pleaded guilty and was sentenceed to a juvenile detention center. his family testified in the somalia refugee camp he was sexually assaulted himself. after serving six years, he is about to turn 21 and is aging out of the juvenile system. the judge from the 3rd district court in utah sentenced him to 5 years probation. telling him she would not bat an eye to send him to prison if he violate his probation. he told her i was a monster. i didn t know what i was thinking. i was a very stupid kid. one of the victims before the sentencing of probation told the judge she was terrified at the thought of him being out on the streets. some believe he turned himmed around. the victims are concerned. tucker: thank you. over the weekend it was a fascinating piece with the title america is running out of muslim clerics and that s dangerous. according to the article the administration s travel ban is causing a perilous shortage of islamic clerg they is terrifying because with no imamto guide them muslims could turn elsewhere for directions with radical consequences. according to political, young muslims may turn violate. there is a shortage of episcopal priests in this country. did chuck schumer demand that we import more buddhist monks? they told us it s safe to admit more muslims and if you question it, muslim extremistists might kill you. immigrant activists are pressuring congress to bring amnesty to daca recipients. the trumped is ending daca. there has been talk of a deal but one has not appeared. the executive of the national immigration forum joins us. thanks for coming on. i think there are 2 sides to this argument. it s a complicated one. i wonder about the priority it s been given. there are tens of thousands of people living in america. the middle class is dying younger. millions addicted to drugs. why is the fate of daca the number 1 item on the agenda? that s a good question. historic presidents are the presidents that surprise you. president trump has an opportunity to surprise us. he can improve our national security, grow our economy and be the first president in decades to do so. president bush and obama were unable to do so. for president trump to force democrats on the table on a border security measure, ensuring that daca recipients pass criminal background checks and grow our economy, because they contribute to our economy and make sure they own the american dream. the best part is by doing this, president trump is meeting the needs of 79% of republican voters and realining the party for latino voters. tucker: he surprised a lot of people by winning the presidency and he ran on a platform of building a wall and deporting people who are here illegally. why not do that? that s what he promised to do. you should he should be acting according to his promises. would you be excited for him to do that? on september 5th of this year, president trump wanted a solution that said, makes everybody happy. let s make sure the daca recipients are protected from deportation and continue to contribute to the economy. in terms of border security. we believe we need smart border security. spend billion dollars on the border where guns, drugs and money are being smuggled. that s point of entry. tucker: it s all a lie. to grant a pathway to citizenship. u.s. embasses around the world grant a million green cards to people. i have never understood why we would not ask that of people. that s another great question. that s why congress needs to come together as republicans and democrats to create an immigration system that meets the needs of american workers when their families. our immigration system doesn t do that. we have talent going overseas and jobs going overseas. tucker: pick cities. cities are flooded with immigrants have high unemployment and tons of poverty. you are not answering by question. why is an american living in a country in economic decline should grant citizenship to people legally be number 1 on my party list? that s my only question. i will be the first person to say that the immigration system needs to serve the needs of the american worker and their families. southern idaho, 3rd largest dairy industry. the only way that grows is with an immigrant work force that creates jobs for residents. tucker: you would have to explain the economics of california who has more poverty than any state, but nice try. thanks for joining us. up next why everyone has let her get away with it. things than rheumatiod arthritis. before you and your rheumatologist move to another treatment, ask if xeljanz xr is right for you. xeljanz xr is a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well. it 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 your doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. xeljanz xr can reduce the symptoms of ra, even without methotrexate. ask your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. elizabeth warren spending 9 years pretenting to an american indian to get a better job. that s called fraud. some called the use of pocahontas a racial slur. who is the racist here? this man can t get the bloated hedge fund known as brown university to return stolen american indiana. we support him. he joins us tonight. great to see you. before i ask about elizabeth warren if you ever run into her in a tribunal gathering. an undate on your effort to reclaim land you say brown university stole from their ancestors? have you gotten the land back from brown? they signed an agreement a couple of weeks ago. we are going through the process. moving forward in a positive manner. but no, they have not given the land over yet. tucker: did you take our advice and stage a protest on the quad? no, we didn t have. i think once they saw the last interview i did with you, the tenor of the conversation changed a bit. we appreciate the support and awareness. tucker: we are on your side. they claim to be sensitive. are they really? elizabeth warren, how does it make you feel. she claims to be an american indian and gets a 6 figure job in an ivy league school. you just want the land your ancestor his back from brown university. have you gotten a tenured position at brown? no, absolutely not. i think being from the region where we are from, the eastland wood lands, it s an insult. we struggle on a daily basis with the stereotypical views what have an american indian is supposeed to look like. to throw out is a bit of an insult absolutely. tucker: why do you think one ivy league university supported the contract to elizabeth warren and the ivy league university you are dealing with has blown you off for so long? there is a lot of speculation. perhaps the circle she moves in. perhaps she knows how to play the game. it needs to be addressed. tucker: she has never taken the $89 ancestry.com test that could settle this. have you ever run into her at any gatherings? is she a well known american-indian? i have not seen her around. i don t want to peek on behalf of all indian folks across the country. i have not run into her. i could not say yay or nay. tucker: there are not a lot of american indians in new england. you feel like you would know about it? i would imagine that someone would have bumped into her at some social gathering. i can t say that i have. tucker: okay. we can t confirm it but suggests she is lying. we wish you success and keep apprised of what happened. the press had a meltdown over the president s comments over pocahontas acting like they were the worst atrocity since wounded knee. it s an element of racism because he knows he can use it to stoke the most controversy. not only did he say that, he was standing in front of a portrait of andrew jackson. this is not just about name balling. it s about a bigot. it s always sort of poking and prodding and making jokes and making attacks at the expense of people who are not white. tucker: how do all of the dumb people get on tv. this man watches it for a living. what gets me about this, you have someone who falsely claimed to an a minority to get a job reserved for members of that group, american indians. totally lieed to make money and that s cool. yet someone who jokes about it is the bigot. how does that work? well, look, the narrative, tucker, that president trump made an unnecessary inappropriate comment during a solemn ceremony. tucker: i thought it was hilarious. i am happy to be in the minority. half-and-half. everything in this country is half-and-half. the media overplays its hand like it does every time. not all but most. the narrative became that senator warren is an innocent victim of a racial attack by the president of the united states. i looked at the questions during the white house press briefing yesterday. this is a break down per the official white house transcript. questions about elizabeth warren or pocahontas? 7. number of times racial slur or racially relating to the name pocahontas? 7. number of questions about the access hollywood tape. 4. about roy moore? 2. the number of questions about sitting democratic center al franken who just held a press conference saying he was staying in the senate despite several accusers coming forward including photo evidence of him groping a woman asleep. one. number of questions about democratic congressman john conyers. zero. tucker: this is why roy moore will get elected. the media is so irresponsible. if you don t like what trump says, i get it. i can see why people would be offended. what i don t understand is why elizabeth warren gets a pass. how is this different from wearing black face or mocking someone ethnicity to profit from it? i don t know why that s okay. because the context is being left to the side. what was the context here? trump was not directing his insult to those navaho code talkers. he was mocking a sitting u.s. senator for pretending to be something she was not to advance her career. this was during the 90s. harvard was under a lot of pressure to hire minorities. every interview with elizabeth warren yesterday after the fact, this is barely touched. she barely pressed on the question. the answer she gives is her mother and grandparents told her when she was young what herreraittage was. tucker: that s a crock. she could end the mystery. this is a metaphor for the whole system designed to help the oppressed but benefits the entitled like elizabeth warren. the sons of african dictators benefit from promise designed to help the needy. as i get older and go through enough holidays and research my heritage, i don t put it on an application or tell harvard that s what i am. she stands by. calling out wall street for gaming the system. she did as well. tucker: a woman accusing john conyers of sexual harassment joins us next. i love kiwis. i ve always had that issue with the seeds getting under my denture. super poligrip free. it creates a seal of the dentures in my mouth. just a few dabs is clinically proven to seal out more food particles. try super poligrip free. when food is good and clean and real, it s ok to crave. and with panera catering, there s more to go around. panera. food as it should be. our recent online sales success seems a little. strange?nk na. ever since we switched to fedex ground business has been great. they re affordable and fast. maybe too affordable and fast. what if. people aren t buying these books online, but they are buying them to protect their secrets?!?! hi bill. if that is your real name. it s william actually. hmph! affordable, fast fedex ground. 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we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i m pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we re not the lowest. even if we re not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us. tucker: melanie sloan was the director of citizens for ethices and responsibility in washington and senior advisor at american oversight and a former federal prosecutor and a congressional staffer working on a committee under congressman john conyers. she now says conyers harassed her. at first nancy pelosi did not believe that account. just because someone is accused, is it one or two acquisitions? john conyers is an icon. they have not come forward. you don t know if you believe the accusations? that s for the ethices committee to review. tucker: after speaking directly with sloan pelosi changed her mind. i was surprised by the reaction from nancy pelosi who is a champion of women and told us to believe the women. why wouldn t she have called you before weighing in on the question? i think she may not have known about he. the whole thing blew up over the thanksgiving holiday. when she spoke with me yesterday, 45 minutes by phone, she was clear she believed me and apologizeded for her statements on meet the press. that was big of her. tucker: she took a ton of heat. including from me. tucker: she is the ranking democrat in the congress. john conyers reports to her. she is in charge. she could find out who you are. why wouldn t she have done dill against on something as important as an accusation of sexual harassment? i don t know. i agree with you. it was a terrible performance on meet the press. it was very disappointing. i reached out to her office sunday morning and i was very disappointed. i said i was unhappy about it and i came forward. it was upsetting. nancy pelosi did call yesterday and apologizeded. we spoke not just about the allegations but about the more important issue what have congress should do now. tucker: i am surprised and not surpriseed to hear all of the people coming forward to say yeah, of course, conyers is a creep. cookie roberts said all of the reporters not to be alone with him. why did it take this long? i don t know why it took this long. for the same reason it s taken so long in so many industries. everybody knew about harvey weinstein. these things were well known for years and years. women are dismissed and allegations are denied. when i did try to talk about tucker: i had no idea about roger for whatever it s worse. that s stilly. you are a former prosecutor. you would not be dismissed. i was. when i talked to people about john conyers 20 years, i talked to any number of people including a reporter who checked my story with somebody else in conyers s office and they told them i was mentally unstable. he said i can t do the story. tucker: it seems like a lot of what is going on is conyers is useful and there are no enemies on the left for liberals and no one wanted to criticize him. maybe if his politics was different, the outcome would be different? that s possible. people should be slow to throw stones because i think we will see this on both sides. i am sure there will be others. tucker: i agree. there are creepy people on both sides. i thought pelosi s response was so telling. she said he an iu-conn icon. i like the way he voted. but she said that doesn t give him license for this contact. i agree with you that the meet the press performance was wrong. she walked it back and said that doesn t give him an excuse. not a license to mistreat people. does great stature allowing him to mistreat women? tucker: or mistreat the staff. they had to baby sit their kids. that was more what happened to me. i was not sexually hars asked. congress conyers was horrible to me. i walked in on him in his underwear. tucker: thank you. in his underwear. that s your congress. a billionaire donor is spending $20 million to impeach the president. why? next. when you have a cold stuff happens. shut down cold symptoms fast with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels. we re on a mission to show drip coffee drinkers, it s time to wake up to keurig. wakey! wakey! rise and shine! oh my gosh! how are you? well watch this. i pop that in there. press brew. that s it. so rich. i love it. that s why you should be a keurig man! full-bodied. are you sure you re describing the coffee and not me? tucker: tom is a billionaire democratic donor and a big investor if fossi ilile fuel li. he will spent $20 million on a tv ad campaign call for the president s impeachment. the recent of many who have joined that cause. i don t think there is any question that he has , in fact met that standard for impeachment. it s very important and urgent we get him out of office. the president obstructed justice. the remedy is impeachment. impeach 45! [cheers and applause] i didn t hear you. impeach 45. [cheers and applause]. thank you. tucker: mark green has been around democratic politics at many levels. he will assess the impeach trump campaign. there is disagreement among democrats about whether trump should be impeached before mueller finishes his investigation or after. let s say that happens. what happens next. would be you be happy with president pence? i disagree with earnest progressive democrats let s not impeach trump because pence will be worse. we don t know that. justice hand wrote let justice be done even in the heavens fall, closed quote. if donald trump committed impeachable offenses, the law should do what it is spaceed to do. supposed to do. tucker: the last president was impeached. committed perjury and you said it doesn t rise to the level. this is totally political. please. excuse me! clearly it s a political process. ford said impeachment is what the majority of the congress thinks. it s not judicial or they would have given it to the supreme court. if someone wants to impeach barack obama, it s a joke. as we speak 45% of the people think donald trump should be impeached. 41% think he should not. something is going on. i am admitting that i think it would look bad to try to impeach before the mueller process has been completed on the chance that exonerate or indict trump. the house republicans will do nothing independent of trump. it s a compromised jury. tucker: they are from the same party. of course they are not for impeachment. stair is spending $20 million. maybe it would be better for the cause, liberals to, spend that money helping the millions of americans who are addicted to drugs or can t find jobs or living on the streets in liberals cities across the country or will make less than their parents did. why not solve those problems and you win? a liberal icon starter doesn t listen to your advice on how to spend his money. stire is worth $1 billion. the reason he doesn t want to do that, i think, i don t know stire, only one person in the world would provoke a nuclear war with north korea because of his infantile tweets. only one person would allow the consumer protection bureau be eliminated because business donors don t like it. tucker: here s the point. hold on. trump got elected for a reason. the middle-class is dying. trump was not elected. tucker: right. don t give me the people think this. the people opposed him. tucker: oh, right. all of those dead white guys came back and made him president. mark, good luck. all right. north korea fired a missile, a test earlier today. it could reach the united states. they have not fired a missile that went as high as today s did. a whole new thing. the president responded a minute ago. we will tell you what he said. , you may be at increased risk for pneumococcal pneumonia that can take you out of the game for weeks, even if you re healthy. pneumococcal pneumonia is a potentially serious bacterial lung disease that in severe cases can lead to hospitalization. it may hit quickly, without warning, causing you to miss out on the things you enjoy most. prevnar 13® is not a treatment for pneumococcal pneumonia. it s a vaccine you can get to help protect against it. prevnar 13® is approved for adults to help prevent infections from 13 strains of the bacteria that cause pneumococcal pneumonia. you should not receive prevnar 13® if you have had . . h. help protect yourself against pneumococcal pneumonia. ask your doctor or pharmacist about prevnar 13®. from our family to yours. may all your wishes come true this holiday season. ohhhhhh, ou! guess what i just got? uh! i used to be spellbound hello again. i used to be spellbound hi. i used to be spellbound that s a big phone. in your arms. [screams] ah, my phone. you built the flame that warms my heart, but lying and cheating has torn us apart and i m moving on. tucker: president trump just responded to north korea s new missile launch today and did it on twitter. the president tweeted this quote after north korea s missile launch it is more important than ever to fund our government and military. the dems shouldn t hold troop funding hostage for amnesty and illegal immigration. now they can t threaten to
champagne down pennsylvania avenue. there are only two places where america s popping champagne; the white house and the corporate boardrooms including trump tower. the gop tax scam is about bleeding the middle class dry to pad the pockets of corporate america and the wealthiest 1%. paul: joining the panel, wall street journal columnist and deputy editor dan henninger, columnist kim strassel and mary anastasia o grady and editorial page writer kate odell. why did they succeed on taxes when they failed on health care? right. that is one question, because you would expect a failure to make it harder to succeed. but i think here the health care failure really focused the minds for the gop that, for them, it was do or die for their majority in 2018 to get a tax bill passed. and it wasn t always clear they would choose do. [laughter] but also i think there was a rougher consensus on what a tax something to behold from both directions. [laughter] paul: some of it s phony, i must say. [laughter] i would say so too. but what look, the important message that has come out of this is i think both sides have wondered at times be there s value in working with each other. and what this has shown is that there is value. that the entire party benefits. so those republicans who have been a little wary of this president, they re still going the go after him when he s off course, but i i think some of them were worried that, you know, it wasn t to their benefit to work with him at all. they ve changed their mind, and donald trump realizes there s no benefit of calling mitch mcconnell and paul ryan a bunch of establishment phonies. they can get stuff done. paul: and not a single democrat, kate. how do you explain that? well, i think in some sense the party has moved left since 1986 when democrats helped write the the 1986 bill. not alone just pass it. you had bill bradley from new and you don t want to be hostage to that prettily. we ll see next politically. we ll see next year. democrats are relying on opinion polls because the press has been very negative about this. 17% of people think they re not going to get a tax cut. about 80% will. and as that develops over the course of next year, i think attitudes towards this bill are going to change, and democrats are going to be standing there saying we were against the whole thing. paul: all right. still ahead, as company like at&t, comcast and wells fargo react to the gop tax plan, we ll take a closer look at its economic impact in 2018 and no matter how the markets change. at t. rowe price. our disciplined approach remains. global markets may be uncertain. but you can feel confident in our investment experience around the world. call us or your advisor. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. the morning walk until. it. wasn t. don t let type 2 diabetes get between you and your heart. even if you reach your a1c goal you are still at risk for heart attack or stroke. talk to your health care provider today about diabetic heart disease. and find out more at heartoftype2.com. your heart and type 2 diabetes. make the connection. music yea, you can be the greatest you can be the best you can be the king kong bangin on your chest you can beat the world you can beat the war you can talk to god while bangin on his door you can throw your hands up you can beat the clock you can move a mountain you can break rocks you can be a master don t wait for luck republican tax cut, promising they ll create jobs and bring entrepreneurs back to the united states. scott hodge is president of the tax foundation which released its analysis of the bill this week. among the highlights, over the next decade the plan will boost gdp by 1.7%, raise wages by 1.5% and add 330,000 new jobs. so, scott hodge, welcome. good the you back. thank you, paul. pallone: i m looking paul: i m looking at that economic impact, and, you know, it s not all that large, and it s not as large as some of the predictions, your analysis of some of the proposals as opposed to this final legislation. what happened in the end to reduce your expectations? well, paul, there are really two economic stories here. one s the long term, and the other is the short term. and as you know, so many provisions in this bill have been sunset after about seven years that the long-term prospects for growth are quite small. and you re seeing it there in those results. that s really the result of only cutting the corporate tax rate. now, in the short term because we have five years of temporary full expensing for capital investment, we are seeing a great deal more growth. and that is, in fact, we see the economy growing instead of 2% growth, about 2.4-2.5% growth over the next couple of years. so really unless we see a lot of those temporary provisions made permanent, we re going to see a lot of this taper off at end of the next decade. paul: okay. but as you know, congress is always elected every two years, a new congress, so they can do what they want with the tax cold, and i guarantee you they will. sure. paul: but if you re saying some of those provisions like expensing, if that s extended, then you re going to get the greater growth in the future too. as a good example of that, we modeled this plan as though it were permanent and found it would boost the long-term level of the economy by 4.7%. paul: okay. so about three times what we got because of all the temporary provisions. so there s a great deal of promise here if all of it s made permanent. paul: okay. one of the reasons they didn t make it permanent is they had to fit the numbers inside that ten-year budget window that congress has concocted for itself. exactly. paul: so they can revisit this policy and extend those if need be. i want to talk to you about some of the criticisms leveled at this bill, one of which is that this is really a tax increase on the middle class as nancy pelosi says. is that true? [laughter] no. in fact, everybody gets a tax cut in the middle class. in fact, even the liberal tax policy center brookings said this plan will knock over four million people, low income people, off the tax rolls, increasing the amount of non-payers to about 48% of all filers. that s incredible. that means, actually, this plan is much more progressive than what the left is owning up to. paul: okay. now, people also say, well, look, the business corporate tax cuts here are permanent, but the middle class tax cuts go away, therefore, it favors business. well, as you know, lower corporate tax rates eventually translate into higher productivity and higher wages. there s a ton of economic research to show that that s true . and so we re actually showing that wages will rise by at least 1.5%, probably even more as we go on through the next decade. paul: all right. another criticism, is this an incentive as the washington post wrote for businesses to move capital overseas because of the new, basically, a minimum, corporate minimum tax? goodness no. i think that the 21% corporate tax rate will be a tremendous incentive for companies to bring a lot of those activities back. in fact, i think it ll bring a lot of activity from foreign-owned companies to the united states. i think the people that ought to be worried here are the politicians in germany and france and japan who have extremely high corporate tax rates now. we ve leapfrogged over them from becoming one of the least competitive countries to now one of the most competitive tax systems in the entire world. paul: in fact, there s a study out of germany from last week that suggested exactly that, and i suspect you re going to the see germany and france and maybe other countries cut their corporate tax rates as well to stay competitive. now, the other big criticism that s leveled here is the deficit. it s basically saying, you know, it s a 1.5 trillion formal number that they allowed under the tax bill to increase the deficit. and some people say it s going to be much larger than that because of the sunsetting tax provisions that we discussed earlier. what s your response to that? well, even with a modest economic growth that our models suggest that this plan will generate, it s going to generate about $5 trillion worth of new gdp over the next decade, and that s in turn going to produce about a trillion dollars worth of new tax revenues or for the federal government. so the overall cost of this plan will call from about $1.5 trillion to less than $500 billion. that s $50 billion a year in order to get $5 trillion worth of new gdp. i think that s a pretty good trade. paul: but is there a chance that, in fact, it could actually generate more revenue, if we get growth up to 3% for two, three, four years, it s going to be even higher than that. yes. especially if they re made permanent, we are going to see growth continue, and that s all good for federal treasury and the economy. paul: thank you, scott, appreciate it. when we come back, despite strong sign that is the gop tax bill help the economy, polls show that americans are less than enthusiastic about the plan. so can republicans sell it to voters ahead of the 2018 it s all pop-culture trivia, but it gets pretty intense. -ahh. -the new guy. -whoa, he looks -he looks exactly like me. -no. -separated at birth much? we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i m pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we re not the lowest. even if we re not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us. what this represents is a promise that each and every one of us made to the american people last year. it is a promise that is kept today. we have a simple message for our republican friends: republicans will rue the day they passed this bill, and you can bet democrats will make sure of that. paul: republicans and democrats on capitol hill spinning very different tales of tax cut. so how will the bill s passage play out in 2018? we re back with dan henninger, kim strassel, kate odell and wall street journal columnist william mcgurn. all right, dan, can republicans sell this thing, and what do they have to do to sell it? well, it s not as though they re trying to sell merely an idea. they have passed an enormous tax reform, the entire tax code. they have reduced tax rates, indeed, on the middle class, on corporations. you ve got perhaps $2.5 trillion of overseas money being repatriated back to the united states. the economic effects, i think, are going to be pretty significant, and they re going to have to wait until at least mid year to see what s happening. and then they re going to have to be able to cite that as a result of what they did in passing this bill. against that we just saw tax chuck schumer saying this is a disaster. there is an almost mindlessness to the democrats opposition on this bill. they re the ones who presided over less than 2% growth for eight years of the obama years. you ve come up to the possibility of rewriting the tax code, and they say we will not participate not only will we not participate, they have no alternative other than to oppose what is going on. paul: paychecks in february withholding will increase, kate. presumably, that will help if you actually have a job and you get more take-home pay. but why is the bill so unpopular now? well, i mean, we ve had press coverage that, as we ve discussed, has been very skewed, and people perceive they re getting a tax increase when they re not. and, yes, we ll sort that out in february. i think also it must be fun to be chuck schumer and get to predict armageddon and have no one hold you accountable when it happens paul: or if it doesn t. excuse me. the left is making this argument corporations have said, hey, we re going to give $1,000 bonuses to some of our employees, and the left saying, hey, what s $1,000? that tells you more about the worlds they live in than it does the gop. paul: pretty extraordinary, at&t, $1,000 bonus for 200,000 employees, comcast for another 100,000 employees. a lot of companies starting to do this. and the response is, oh, well, you know, who cares? that s just p.r., well, a $1,000 check, elle take it. right. i think that gets to the real question for 2018. it s not the political question. a lot of people that would normally vote democratic put donald trump in office because they thought he was going to recover the economy in some way and make their lives better. and the question is whether they feel that. and this $1,000, for families or, you know, for a mom or dad saying this might be a new tv or piano lessons for someone, it s really foolish, i think, to dismiss. and if you look at the democratic i mean, the party says their stuff, but you were a football player in college. this is the 12th man on the field is the crowd, the press, the coverage of the tax cuts. victims of trump tax cuts and so forth, it s just it s mind-boggling. paul: go ahead, kate. no. i was just going to add these bonuses that we re seeing, they re the icing on the cake. what we have been talking about for several months is when you cut corporate taxes, you spur investment and make workers more productive. that is what leads to long-term wage growth. not that companies decide to give away more money that they keep directly at the end of the year. paul: and yet, kim, we have often seen in some midterm elections which usually help the opposition for the party in the white house, sometimes a faster economy, faster growth doesn t necessarily translate into votes if the president himself is up popular. unpopular. so that s still a risk here for the republicans. correct. and the time frame here is short in that, look, this bill will have some immediate effects. we ve seen that from corporations. and it will help long-term growth or longer-term growth. how quickly that kicks in and the sense of well-being that a growing economy leaves with people and they connect that to a president who on a daily basis often manages to offend people. we just saw what happened when you had the president and his poor approval ratings hanging around the neck of ed gillespie who was the republican running for governor in virginia, and he lost and lost fairly badly in a state that, you know, should have been getable. so this is, i think, the bigger question is can the republicans running in the midterms run on that tax success without necessarily running hip and hip with an unpopular if he still is at that point? yeah. and it s going to affect politics next year. the republicans talked about wanting to reform medicare and social security. mitch mcconnell said at the end of the week i m not doing that unless i have democratic support, taking a big piece of legislative activity off the table. paul: all right. still ahead, deputy fbi director andrew mccabe grilled on capitol hill this week. his testimony reportedly raising more questions than answers as republican lawmakers get set to republican lawmakers get set to issue new republicans did or did not learn about this infamous dossier and the fbi and doj s use of that in their decision to launch a counterintention probe into president trump. paul: this is the steele dossier, the so-called steele dossier. the steele, yes. that was commissioned by the democratic national committee and the hillary clinton campaign. mccabe was asked about what they did, and he was at great pains to stress all the efforts that the fbi and doj went to corroborate some of the allegations in it. but what s interesting here is, apparently, in the end he had to admit that the only thing that they could find in it that was true was that a trump satellite operator, carter page, once traveled to russia. nothing else. so i think that raises more questions because if they couldn t find anything true in it, were they nonetheless still using it as part of a probe or as a justification for getting wiretaps on trump campaign officials? paul: and carter page has admitted he took a trip to moscow. right. if this is the only thing they had, then the question is what did they use, if they used it at all, in the application for a fisa warrant? paul: which is extraordinary. just step back for a second. they basically asked a court, if it s true, based on a dossier commissioned by the opposition campaign to have the fbi able to spy on a presidential campaign. which almost a year and a half later the assistant fbi director canner verify only one fact, the travel fact about page? it s really outrageous. the house, other committees are becoming involved, oversight, judiciary, and they need to see the fbi files. there s a file in this case, they need to see those files. the other larger question is the more the investigation goes on, the more the questions are about the investigators. it doesn t mean that bob mueller s dishonest, but when he first assembled this team, we were told these are strict professionals. they re entitled to their opinions. we have an fbi agent who s supposed to be a counterintelligence guy squawking to his mistress, you know, about trump and opening himself up to all sorts of vulnerability to blackmail with an affair. of we ve got andrew wiseman who, you know, applauded an obama holdover for defying a presidential order. we ve got bruce orr, his wife is working for the people that produced the document. do you get the word professional when you read those actions? and it s, i think they re largely discrediting themselves. paul: but none of this, of course, relates to the credit, to the central question, dan, of collusion. yeah. paul: senator mark warner who is the ranking democrat on senate intelligence said this week that he thinks, actually, there s more fire than smoke, and he s not releasing any details, but he thinks this is the biggest thing he s ever going to do in his professional career. and he warned the president if you fire mueller, this is a constitutional crisis. yeah. well, coming up with sayings here, there s a little boy who cried wolf over and over again when there was no wolf, and no one would believe him. i mean, after listening to bill go through all of these issues, roll back to why we are here. way back in january the story of collusion emerged, and every media outlet paul: the allegation the allegation. every media outlet in washington was running stories based onion mouse intelligence sources anonymous intelligence sources that there was collusion between the trump campaign and the russians. then we get a special prosecutor. we roll all the way up here to december, one of the top officials at the fbi, mccabe can, goes and appears before i can t think, and the best he can give them is that carter page visited somebody in russia. [laughter] so the members of congress in these committees and the american people are at the point of asking what is going on here with this investigation? why haven t we reached a closure or further to dan s point, go back to the beginning. devin nuñes was ridiculed paul: chairman of the house intelligence committee. was ridiculed on, a crazy man for what he s doing. they trumped up some charges against him in the ethics committee which were dismissed but designed to handicap the investigation. look, i think the house and senate are getting close to answers, and if you watch the hearings now and you watch, for example, christopher wray deal with congress paul: the fbi director now. and rod rosenstein, congress wants the documents. it s extraordinary we have federal agencies telling the elected representatives of the american people that they can t see the documents they need to do their job. i think, i think there s more subpoenas coming, and i think there s going to be some contempt findings if they don t turn this around. paul: briefly, bill, do you think the democrats want trump to fire mueller? oh, absolutely. why would he fire mueller now when his team has become the subject of discussion? i mean, i think he has the constitutional authority to do it paul: you think it would be unwise. unprudent to do it at this point. and now we need more questions about the investigators. paul: all right. still ahead, amid rising global threats, the president outlined his administration s national security strategy this week. what it tells us about the emerging trump d after my dvt blood clot, i had a lot on my mind. could this happen again? was my warfarin treatment right for me? my doctor told me about eliquis. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots and reduces the risk of them happening again. not only does eliquis treat dvt and pe blood clots. eliquis also had significantly less major bleeding than the standard treatment. eliquis had both and that turned around my thinking. don t stop eliquis unless your doctor tells you to. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding don t take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. if you had a spinal injection while on eliquis call your doctor right away if you have tingling, numbness, or muscle weakness. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily. and it may take longer than usual for 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. both made eliquis right for me. ask your doctor if switching to eliquis is right for you. the best simple pasta ever? california walnuts. the best simple dinner ever? great tasting, heart-healthy california walnuts. so simple, so good. get the recipes at walnuts.org. we face rogue regimes that threaten the united states and our allies. we face terrorist organizations, transnational criminal networks and others who spread violence and evil around the globe. we also face rival powers russia and china that seek to challenge american influence, values and wealth. we will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest. paul: that was president trump outlining his administration s national security strategy this week in a speech that identified the growing global threats to the united states and called out key national rivals by name. so what does it tell us about the emerging trump foreign policy doctrine, and does the rhetoric match the administration s actions so far? let s ask cliff may, he is president of the foundation for defense of democracies. good to see you again, cliff. what s the biggest takeaway we should have from the president s new strategy? it strikes me as hard-headed, realistic, coherent, very different from president obama s last national paul: how? how different, why is it different? how? so i would say in this way: president obama essentially believed that america s role was to lead the international community from behind and allow the arc of history to bend towards justice. [laughter] i would say that president trump believes that we should be leading from the front, our allies, we should be worrying about the military threats we face from rogue regimes as well as revisionist powers and that if the arc of history is going to be bend, we re going to have to bend it. paul: you know, i think the strike aring thing there is the revisionist powers reference, in my estimation. he mentioned two countries by name, china and russia. he said they are attempting to change the global order. they are attempting acts that are contrary the american interests, and we need to counter them as competing powers. now, that s very different than president obama. do you, do you agree with i mean, is he right in identifying those two countries? are they the main threats? i, they are the main threats. they may not be the most imminent threats, but they re the main threats. china is, clearly, a long-term threat and has very important plans for to be the hegemon of asia and then to go beyond that. the things they re doing in other parts of the world. russia is much weaker than china, but russia is not, as president obama thought, a country with which we can get along if we just reset relations because we have loads of common interests. keep in mind that both russia, china and i would say iran as well, these were all in history great empires. paul right. they all are angry they are not great empires again, and they intend to be great empires again. and they have various means and strategies to get to that. we have to recognize that and not think that we can just sing kumbaya and all get along. paul: well, and i should mention the strategy does say, look, we can deal with these countries. it s not as if we re implacably hostile to them, but you need to address, in fact, the challenge they pose, and we need to do so from a position of strength including the military buildup which i have to say so far we haven t seen very much of. so that s why i want to ask you about the connection between rhetoric and policy. have we seen in this first year a real connection between that strategy and implementation, practically speaking? only a little bit. i mean, i am hopeful, as i think you are, that this tax reform means that the u.s. has growth not at 1.8%, but at 3, 3.5 or even higher. we need a fast growing economy. only if we are prosperous and strong economically can we do a all the things we need to do including economic warfare which backs diplomacy, including a much larger and stronger military than we have now, one that no nation can match. it should be absolutely clear that nobody can, that nobody can challenge us. if they can challenge us, they will. so peace through strength is an important part of it. has that been implemented yet? it has not. but hopefully, this is the blueprint for what president trump will try to build starting in 2018. having a national security strategy before the end of the year is pretty good compared to other administrations that have off taken longer to do this. paul: another thing that s reassuring about it particularly from the campaign rhetoric that president trump had was the reliance on alliances. he basically said the strategy says, look, we need to depend upon alliances as a force multiplier for american influence and power. and for nato and east asia, that s very reassuring. that is, indeed, and we should have better relations with those or who are allied with us. we should have worse relations with those who don t. the u.n. vote yesterday at the u.n. which was a poke in the eye from a lot of nations that we give a lot of money to should be something and i think it will be that we re very cognizant of going forward. i think also, and this surprised people, this was not at all an isolationist or non-interventionist national security strategy, and it also made the point that one of the strengths of the u.s. is that it is a free country, that it is democratic. we may not want to go abroad nation-building, but we do want to support reformers and those in other countries who have the same values we have. you can say that s kind of conventional conservativism or even neoconservativism. i kind of find it reassuring. paul: okay. so what s the biggest, the president s biggest success so far in the first year? i guess i would suggest it s probably the defeat of islamic state in iraq and syria. would you agree with that? i think that s an important one, although i think there s a challenge there. because if the defeat of the islamic state redownsed the islamic republic of iran, that will be an impyrrhic victory. right now i do think james mattis and h.r. mcmaster understand the threat that iran represents as it s trying to build an empire that will include iran as the major power in iraq, the major power in syria which will be its client. it almost pretty much runs lebanon through hezbollah, and, of course, it s fighting in yemen. i do think that there is a recognition among the sunni-arab states that this is a huge threat and that the u.s. and israel are needed to counter the threat of iran. so, yes, it s a good thing that isis is defeated, but we can t stop there. paul: big questions. all right, thank you, cliff may. appreciate it. thank you. paul: when we come back, a nuclear deal at any price in a new report says the obama administration killed a criminal probe into hezbollah during negotiations with iran. those details are next. group s drug trafficking operation. a billion dollar business that smuggled cocaine into the united states. we re back with dan henninger, mary anastasia o grady and bill mcgun. mary, what s the core allegation here? well, the dea, after 9/11, began doing more investigations in latin america, particularly many colombia where there was a drug trafficking organization going from the farc which is a rebel group that traffics cocaine and a lebanese organized crime unit that was connected to hezbollah. and that was called operation titan. that grew and combined with other things into something called project cassandra. and that operation was, basically, going after the innermost circle of the connections between cocaine trafficking from latin america and the leadership in hezbollah that is backed by iran. paul: and the claim is that that was shut down by obama administration because it would have offended iran which, of course, hezbollah s a militia more or less of iran. yes. and not only do the dea agents say that as they got close to in this inner circle, they were stymied at every turn by the administration, but they also say that the administration did not go after the big fish that they had indicted. and one of them was a lebanese arms trafficker, and two of them were very big cocaine traffickers from venezuela. paul: okay. the obama officials deny this. what s their defense? well, the administration says look, you know, this is just the dea. there s the cia, there are many more agencies in washington that are trying to stop terrorism. and sometimes you don t want to close in on a particular suspect because it would give away a larger operation that s important. and, but the problem with that defense is, for example, there s written testimony from are a former treasury official from a former treasury official in the obama administration in which she says that, basically, they were told to back off hezbollah and iran issues because of the negotiation going on regarding nuclear, nuclear power be arms in iran. yeah. paul, the interesting thing, three points, the politico story also said that not only did the u.s. back off, but that iran had made the request, and-a show of goodwill. they knew they had a problem with these groups, and they asked them to do it. so it was in response to manager from tehran. two, a lot of the dug business is controlled by drug business is controlled by terrortists. there s a lot of money for it, so we shouldn t be surprised. and, three, should we be surprised that the obama administration i think wasn t it ben rhodes that called the iran deal the obamacare of the second term? is this was a priority for them. ben rhodes bragged about how he manipulated what he called dumb and naive journalists who knew nothing into reflecting the administration line. so why should we be surprised when we you were learn something like this? paul: and, dan, why this matters, hezbollah is the militia of iran, and they are using money that they have they have now assembled 160,000, an estimate, missiles that could be aimed at israel in the next conflict. and i think we re headed towards another, maybe not soon, but eventually, another israel/hezbollah war. yeah. well, you know, i think what happened here was the obama administration made a choice. in obama s mind, the iran nuclear deal was the most important foreign policy thing he was going to achieve. he thought it was going to bring more stability to the middle east, and i m sure they thought that this dea administration investigation into hezbollah was a second-level priority. paul: sure. okay? they made that choice. paul: sometimes you have to make those choices in government. that s right. except that hezbollah is iran s primary proxy in the middle east. they fight for them in iraq and in syria, and as they you were t suggesting, they have hundreds of thousands of missiles aimed at israel, and we may yet pay the price for that prioritization. paul: briefly, mary. i don t think we should underestimate, iran is deeply into venezuela, hezbollah blew up the i jewish community center in 1994. that s a danger too. paul: all right. we have to take one more break. when we come back, hits and misses of the week. david. what s going on? oh hey! that s it? yeah. everybody two seconds! dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance. through the tuition assistance program, every day mcdonald s helps more people go to college. it s part of our commitment to being america s best first job. each of these food boxes represents a gift of life for people here in israel who are in desperate need. these are very difficult times for israel and the jewish people as the government spends more and more of it s resources for battling terrorism. the situation has become a crisis. every week the lines get longer and longer. this $25 food box will provide one desperately needy family here in israel with food, with hope and with a note inside each of these saying that it is from christians and jews in america who seek to bless them. israel and it s people need your help now. you can make a life changing difference by calling and saying that you will give a $25 food box to help a family in need in israel. thank you and god bless you for your support. they ll learn is if you drive too fast, they ll come off the rails, because even kids are smart. this is a miss for amtrak whose own engineers have not mastered this concept and, again, killed three passengers in washington state. it s also a miss for congress that continues to subsidize an outfit that has a safety record like this. it s time for it to end. there are better uses for taxpayer money. paul: all right. mary? a hit for sparks therapeutics. this week it got approvals for an injected gene therapy that treats a genetic eye disease that causes blindness in some 3,000 americans. now, the price hasn t been announced yet, it could be as much as a million dollars, but i think the larger point is that cures for genetic diseases which even a decade ago seemed hopeless are now coming on line, and if history is any guide, they will be more and more available to the general population. paul: a very exciting time in drug discovery. bill. paul, remember charlie brown when he was assigned to go out and get a christmas tree, and he brought this pathetic, little tree back, and everyone mocked him? that s happening in rome now. the mayor of rome gets a miss for putting up this tree that has been nicknamed mangy by the romans. some think it s a symbol of rome s decline, but it s being mocked everywhere for all the needles that it s shedding. paul: dan. every year the maris poll asks people for the single worse, most annoying word that they can think of, and this year for the ninth straight year in a row, the most annoying word out there is whatever. [laughter] who can doubt it? now, they didn t even include my own personal favorite which is when you to a sales transaction, the salesperson goes, no problem. [laughter] to which i say, no comment. paul: all right. that s it for this week s show. thanks to my panel. thanks to all of you for
those guys in pennsylvania and west virginia will not help him. the kids are coming to washington in two weeks. maybe a million of them demanding something be done. he can t hide in the white house bunker when kids and teachers say you have to do something. at that 340e789 it, hope hicks, his most loyal person walks. there s a lot there. you ve seen the unraveling of the power structure. veteran republican operatives, seasoned military figures and the family and inner circle. hope hicks, if josh rafael. jared kushner is supposed to carry on our most secret sensitive negotiations? hope hicks leaving, josh leaving. on guns, republican feeling the heat. rick gates turning on him, flynn already turning on him. manafort about to. on guns the republicans are feeling the heat. suburban voters in places like philadelphia want to see gun control. republicans know the nra gets base voters to come out. they need to show some movement. that s why you saw the president today trying to show movement. he s got to deal with the appalachian wing of his party that doesn t want to do anything about guns. conner lamp is not talking guns. mieke, thank you for joining us. this is a political mess. it s about what is this president going to do in his situation? he s increasingly isolated. for a man who values loyalty, there is no one willing to go down with the ship with the exception of the family. dianne feinstein is 85 and she s sticking it out. this woman is 29 and she s going to spend time with her family? what family. i m sorry. it sounds like the thing you do when you ve been sacked. i ve got to spend more time with my family. everyone is fleeing the ship. they cannot get anyone else to replace them. not only was jared stripped of his clearances, but all these other white house aides. now they don t have anyone who can do the basic block attack for the white house. as many mistakes as they ve made, expect far more because they don t have anyone who can help him. they always say you don t make new friends at the white house. i m wondering if at the meets anybody who could be the next flack for him. the fifth communications director trying to explain him to the country. he does what he wants to do, and by 7:30 in the morning you have to explain what he meant at 6:30 in the morning when he got the times and started rattling off his thoughts. i m giving you credit. it s a thankless job. the reason why hope hicks is the fifth person to have it in 13, 14 months. it s hard who might want it next. it s not just that she s been in that job. she has been somebody who kind of had a connection to him that few other people had. the people he s been close to e that he came to town with as he says he s an advisor on foreign policy. if you ask rex tillerson or defense secretary jim mattis, is kushner the senior adviser making these negotiations? no, he s a confidante of the president. the reason he s there and the reason kelly is sensitive about going after him too much is he s family. can they visit on weekends at mar-a-lago? they want to be close to the flame. they re getting a piece of the action. what do you make of this, mieke? i m not a genius. i know the american and world history. nepotism is a problem. the roman negatives didn t do well. going with family members, we see all the time, leads to you lower quality advise ersand outcomes. if they want him to be a good will ambassador, shake some hands and do things purely slolic, they re only in it for the symbolism anyway. he s an official greeter. yeah. maybe ivanka went to the olympics for that reason. yesterday the post reported officials in the white house were concerned that kushner was naive and being tricked in conversations with foreign leaders. jonathan swan reported the trump family and don junior in particular was angry at the overwhelmingly negative coverage about jared last night and feels general kelly is hanging jared out to dry. is he? you in your sourcing, do you sense or sniff out the possibility that mr. kelly doesn t love mr. jared kushner? i don t think he does. based on my reporting, he says i m the chief of staff. you can be family or you can be employees. if you choose to stay, you re going to be employees. of course, that has caused tensions. you can fully be an employee and still be the president s son-in-law or his daughter. this has created all this tension within the white house. even general kelly with four decades of experience in the military is finding it troubling to try to move forward and make some decisions. there s an irony go ahead. it s not just that this is some vendetta family versus staff. kushner has huge security vulnerabilities. the reporting we saw that foreign governments are trying to influence him through his business. what did he do wrong that won t allow the fbi to clear him? he s had meetings with foreign people he wasn t disclosing. when you re dishonest with investigators, that s a real red flag. he has foreign businesses that create huge vulnerabilities for leverage from foreign countries that want to get to him. are people like ron dermer and bebe and people like that using this guy as a slight figure they can manipulate? that s what the reporting was. that s what the reporting suggests. the post reported, my colleagues two weeks ago, the fbi is still doing its background investigation on kushner. that s why he s not getting the clearance. they re still doing field work on all his foreign meetings. this is so much march of the second year. then candidate trump hammered hillary clinton for her handling of classified information. let s watch him in action and what he says about his rivals. we also need the best protection of classified information. hillary s private e-mail scandal which put our classified information into the reach of our enemies disqualifies her from the presidency. this was not just extreme carelessness with classified material. which is still totally disquali disqualifying. this is calculated, deliberate, premeditated misconduct. in my administration, i m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. okay. peter, so he gets elected president and flips. he starts giving all the classified information to his son-in-law that can t pass muster with the fbi. he s talking about background checks for buying guns but doesn t believe in them for people getting classified information. he s got a real credibility problem here and it s his family that s causing it. your thinking. > you re right the classified information was a big theme of his in the campaign and the question then becomes, are you living up to the standard you yourself set. what he s doing is still on the attack against hillary clinton. you saw just today in his tweet assailing jeff sessions for not having an investigation into how the obama administration handled the fisa warrant of carter page trying to make sure that the focus is on the democrats as much as he can. it s a tough battle when you re the president of the united states. you re in office right now. it s your conduct and your staff s conduct at issue. right now, of course, jared kushner s in the spotlight. one of the reasons you bring in family on a staff like this because you want somebody you can trust. the downside is it s harder to fire somebody if they mess up. well, he didn t have to fire hope hicks. you know trump as well as any reporter. how does he operate with all these moving parts, hope splits, his son-in-law is a problem, his daughter he gives her big opportunities. not problem there. the son is don jsh is no help. yet he relies on the people that are no help. who does help him? how does he get through the day and night? how does he do it. how does he do it? at the end of the day based on my experiences over the years was candidate trump and president trump, he s a loner. he relies on staff, hope hicks provided him with media information. he was his own strategist. he saw the republican primaries and said i m going to try to dominate that through the media. i ll do it my way. we keep talking about this staff are coming and going. if you know trump, at the end of the day, it s him alone choosing to be alone, making decisions. and as a reporter, you step back and say that s what i ve always encountered. who does he call up and say i m in trouble here. can you help me. is it tom barak? he loves working the phone. he s more candid on the phone. sometimes he doesn t want to hear what people have to say. he ll flesh out ideas with them. people will say i spoke to trump last night for 45 minutes. what did you say? he spoke for 44. this is who he is. he s a complicated figure. and people work for him. they re friends with him but no one really controls him or ever has controlled him. i think back to my access hollywood conversation with him. he told me you don t know the life. i ve been through everything, personal problems, political problems, financial problems. and he said it was him alone after access hollywood watching television, watching the crowd outside of trump tower. you think how does he go without hope hicks or steve bannon? it s always about him at the end, not the staff. sinatra. sinatra in the white house. that s what i hear. thank you, peter baker, robert costa and mika, you were great tonight. come up, as if the chaos inside the white house wasn t enough, trump s feeling heat from two big sources right now. nbc news is reporting tonight the special counsel robert mueller is zeroing in on whether trump knew about that stolen democratic e-mail cache before they were released by wikileaks and reports mueller is he digging into trump s business dealings with russia right now. on the home front, trump s also under pressure on guns. today he seems ready to get behind a bill that strengthens background checks and raising the minimum age to buy an assault rifle. he s got to do something in the wake of the deadly shooting in florida with all the young people coming to washington in march. another stein he s under pressure, he s back at war with jeff sessions. he called him disgraceful today. his own attorney general after the attorney general opened an investigation into surveilance abuse and now sessions is hitting back. finally, i ll finish with trump watch. he won t like this one. this is hardball where the action is. get to spend more time together get more from your spring break getaway with exclusive hilton offers. book yours, only at hilton.com i m walkin wow! nshine i m walking on sunshine wow! applebee s handcrafted burgers. any burger just $7.99. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. today the country paid tribute to america s pastor, the late reverend billy graham. the leader who counseled presidents more than 60 years was afforded one of the country s greatest distinctions as his body lay in honor at the capitol rotunda. he became only the fourth private citizen to receive that honor, the first since rosa parks in 2005. graham ministered to people from all walks of life from heads of state to every day americans. today he was honored by all of them. it was something to see, that wooden coffin sitting in the capitol rotunda surrounded by all that history. we ll be right back. and tank. and tiny. and this is laura s mobile dog grooming palace. laura can clean up a retriever that rolled in foxtails, but she s not much on articles of organization. articles of what? so, she turned to legalzoom. they helped me out. she means we helped with her llc, trademark, and a lot of other legal stuff that s a part of running a business. so laura can get back to the dogs. would you sit still? this is laura s mobile dog grooming palace and this is where life meets legal. this is a tomato you can track from farm, to pot, to jar, to table. and serve with confidence that it s safe. this is a diamond you can follow from mine to finger, and trust it never fell into the wrong hands. this is a 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involved in their strategic release. as the u.s. intelligence community concluded over a year ago, putin himself ordered the operation that ultimately hacked it the accounts of the democratic national committee and that of hillary clinton s campaign chairman john podesta. those e-mails were then disseminated to the public through wikileaks as part of russia s influence campaign to help elect trump over clinton. among his lines of inquiry, mueller is questioning witnesses about the public overture that trump famously made to russia just after the first stolen e-mails were released when trump embraced their efforts and called on the kremlin to find more of clinton s e-mails. did you call on putin to stay out of this election? i m not going to tell putin what to do. why should i? i will tell you this, russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. ha. ultimately today s reporting makes clear that robert mueller s determined to find out when and how trump learned of the damaging e-mails russia possessed back then. as miriam roca told me on monday, anyone who knew of russia s efforts and advanced their scheme could be implicated in a conspiracy charge. let s watch her. someone within the campaign if they were aware of those efforts and had knowledge of them and took symptom step to further those efforts, the goal of that conspiracy by others, then they could be liable for that conspiracy themselves. i m joined by senator richard blumen tal, randall eliasson and kath i turco authored that report for nbc news. this is fascinating. let s start with the fact of preknowledge. if the president knew about what the russians were up to in terms of podesta s e-mail, the dnc stuff and knew they were out to help hillary, i m told by miriam and i guess this is common knowledge among prosecutors, if you advance the cause of a criminal activity, a criminal conspiracy, you re a co-conspirator. that is the big question. what did donald trump know and when did he know it. you played the sound bite a moment ago of that news conference from jewel 27, 2017 in the middle of the dplashlg convention. the hacked e-mails from the dnc had just started to come out. donald trump was asked about this. remember, had he taken these friendly positions towards russia and people were wondering why and what would trump say to this? would he tell russia not to meddle in our election. you heard what he said, russia, if you re listening, i want to see hillary clinton s e-mails. investigators want to know if that call meant meant he knew not just about the hack of the dnc but the hack of the clinton server e-mails, podesta s e-mails which didn t come out till october. how did he know about that if he did? they re also looking into roger stone, one of trump s early campaign advisers. was a staffer on the campaign till august 2015. the campaign said he was fired. roger stone said he quit. investigators want tooid if he continued to be an unofficial part of the campaign and if so, what did he and trump talk about? could have about been some sort of liaison between the two of them and could it have resulted in a back channel potentially with whoever had the hacked stolen e-mails. roger stone in august of 2016 was tweeting how it was going to be john podesta s turn in the barrel. a month later, the same day as the access hollywood e-mail, those podesta e-mails come out. that would help trump because he was facing so much scrutiny for what he said on that tape. senator, either stone is jeanne dixon, he s a clairvoyant or just knows stuff. how did he know it would be john podesta s turn to get hacked? there was some real facts here that make this timing deeply damning to donald trump. not only the prafgs roger stone but also remember george papadopoulos who has been convicted in his plea agreement it, he acknowledges that he knew in april months before wikileaks actually released the e-mails that they had been stolen by the russians, that they were in fact likely to be released. george papadopoulos is a foreign policy advisor to donald trump. one who wants to ingratiate himself falling all over himself to make himself more friendly and impressive to the trump campaign. and there s additionally his son donald trump jr. who in a series of messages given to the judiciary committee, now made public, indicates a familiarity with wikileaks and with those stolen e-mails. what did he tell his father and when did that happen? so there is a ladder here of criminal culpability that the special counsel is following pieces of the mosaic are coming together. it is damning and extraordinarily significant. randall, when you re in a losing campaign, you look for hail mary opportunities, something that might change the game. you do. you re desperate. if somebody comes along and says i ve got dirt on your opponent that could break her campaign you know that s what you need to win. now, putting aside whether the russia involvement changes the result of the election, in the middle of last summer of 16, trump thought he needed somebody 0 change the campaign. it doesn t surprise me he was take dangerous steps and listen to people like roger stone and papadopoulos to get anything he could to change that election around, which i was losing. of course, go ahead. is that a conspiracy if he tried to help the russians? we were told by miriam yes into it all depends what mueller uncovers in terms of the facts. 13 russians who s colluded illegally to influence the election have been charged with conspiracy to defraud the u.s. there s an underlying crime. that same crime applies to americans if they worked with the russian to illegally influence the election. conspiracy is all about proving intent and knowledge. that seems to be what mueller is probing now, what did the president and others now about the russian involvement, hacked e-mail and were they involved. even that public admission, request by the president, will the russians please put out more stuff on hillary, could that be a crime since it s so obviously open? there s nothing sneaky about that. that doesn t bowl me over. if there was a secret conspiracy going on, the president is unlikely to announce it publicly at a campaign event snuch randall, from the day this russian thing came about, on a positive side, i thought trump may be trying to pull off a grand deal in the middle east, somehow the deal with syria he hasn t said a word against account russians from day one up till recently. not a word against them. everything around the context, the package of his relationship with the russians is good will, don t say a word against a terrible dictator. does that tell you anything what his motives are here? that s definitely part of the entire picture mueller is looking at, circumstantial evidence. trying to put the pieces together. why is he not willing to say anything negative? in that same press conference that you cited where he lauded the russians and asked them to go find other hacked e-mails he said he would he consider lifting sanctions and recognizing russia s annexation of the ukraine and publicly, as well. to go to your point, i agree that it is not itself a crime to have said that in public. but it is evidence. all of this stuff really counts as very important evidence. a story that broke moments ago, the washington post is reporting that special counsel mueller has been investigating a period of time last summer when this is 17 summer that, trump seemed to determined to drive jeff sessions from his job. that s according to people familiar with the matter who said a key area of interest is whether those efforts were part of a month s long pattern of attempted obstruction of justice. katy it your on this, the president has never gotten over by the decision of the attorney general he put there, jeff sessions to basically pull himself out of the whole question to recuse himself with the whole question of picking a special counsel, allowing the deputy attorney general to pick one and to set this whole train running toward him, this prosecution by robert mueller. is this all part of that, this effort to try to ruin and force out as part after obstruction effort the attorney general he put in there because he got this thing going, this prosecution? it seems like the anger he has about robert mueller he s taking out on jeff sessions which is why we saw flare ups like we saw today. clearly he is not happy his attorney general is not protecting him. he said as much on television in interviews. he thinks the attorney general should protect him. eric holder in his mind protected president obama. jeff sessions should be protected him, appointing a special counsel and allowing this to continue is not or excuse me, recusing yourself and allowing this to happen is not protecting donald trump. so he s frustrated. i don t have that piece of the puzzle quite yet on whether the special counsel is asking directly about that line on jeff sessions on obstruction. but i can tell you, chris, that those who have sat for interviews say that it seems like they know what they re doing and they very something pretty concrete pretty clear on donald trump himself. and not just on the obstruction angle but rather on the coordination or collusioning and. yeah, it sounds like they ve got all three vines working including the laundering, too. that red line has been crossed already. i think trump s going to crazy on that. senator richard blumenthal of connecticut, thank you, and randall and katy tur for her reporting. up next, the trump white house is also feeling the heat on another front. guns. trump knows he has to do something or certainly look like he s doing something for the next couple of weeks. this is hardball where the action is. how do you chase what you love with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis? do what i did. 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when those patriots wrote the constitution here in philadelphia, they created the commander in chief to protect us from enemy attack the justice department just indicted 13 russians for an electronic attack on america. so what did this president do? nothing. he s failed his most important responsibility - to protect our country. the question is: why is he still president? cleaning floors with a mop and bucket is a hassle, meaning you probably don t clean as often as you d like. for a quick and convenient clean, try swiffer wetjet. there s no heavy bucket, or mop to wring out, because the absorb and lock technology traps dirt and liquid inside the pad. it s safe to use on all finished surfaces tile, laminate and hardwood. and it prevents streaks and hazing better than a micro fiber strip mop, giving you a thorough clean the first time. for a convenient clean, try swiffer wetjet with a money back guarantee. brand power. helping you buy better. but some of us make somethinge make sommuch more. dinner. mom would be proud. with blue apron, any night is a chance to see what cooking can do. that it will no longer carry high capacity magazines and will raise the age limit for gun purchases to 21. and late today, walmart announced too would raise the age limit from 18 to 21. today president trump hosted another discussion on school safety and guns with a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushing both sides to get something done. so as we continue to mourn the loss of so many precious young lives in parkland, florida, we re determined to turn our grief into action. i really believe that. i think that the people at this table want it. i see some folks that don t say nice things about me. and that s okay. because if you turn that into this energy, i ll love you. i don t care. we re going to be able to do it. at times the president seemed willing to go further when it comes to guns. you can buy a handgun. you can t buy one you have to wait till you re 21. but you can kind account weapon used in the school shooting at 18. it s something you have to think about. if you add concealed carry to this you ll never get it passed. i d rather have you come up with a strong, strong bill and really strong on background checks. but republican leader who have control of the house and senate are reluctant to take on the nra. i m joined by charlie sykes, author and eddie glod, professor at princeton and an msnbc contributor. i had a sense that trump knows he has to do something. he has to do something at least on background checks. even that could be tricky. maybe in raising the age for an assault rifle purchase up to 21. i m worried that isn t going to pass muster with the appalachian guy like toomey and mansion. they didn t look very happy today when the president started to talking about racing the age to buy an assault rifle. you have to watch some of the video where he talks about his support for grabbing guns without due process. if barack obama had said some of the things trump said, everybody in that room would have had their hair on fire. my advice would be give it a couple days. this reminded me a lot of that immigration meeting where he s sitting around the table talking about an act of love. i will sign whatever you bring up because one of the things that was clear is he wants to do something but he is profoundly ignorant of the policy. i think he s going to find out how deeply engrained the power and the authority of the nra are. so it continues to be. but some of the things that he said there mark a dramatic break with the nra and puts his fellow republicans at a very awkward position which makes me think that again, give it a little time to see whether or not when he goes back in and his staffers say you can t do this and wayne la pierre is on the phone screaming at him, whether or not you might see the kind of reversal that you saw after that immigration love fest. yeah, i agree. eddie, i get the feeling watching so much of this is about geography. if you represent west virginia, you have to be careful not to break with the rituals like teaching your son or daughter how to use a gun. the fact that joe manchin looked a little easy when the president started to talk about raising the age to buy an assault rifle. right. i think charlie is right. this is classic trump theater. he feels the pressure. he wants to be seen as a man of action. and he s feeling the pressure of those young students down in florida who are pushing the agenda. so i also think that you know, he hasn t quite got his mind around the different constituencies and how difficult this nut will be to crack. and so we ll see once he gets back to the white house whether or not he s going to flip like did he with the immigration issue. i think we need to take this meeting at face value. we don t know what s coming afterwards. eddie, while you re on, look how he set up the choreography today. he put dianne feinstein, the foremost advocate for limiting sales of assault rifles. she s the one you think of as go to for stopping the sale of assault rifle. two seats to his right, a strong gun control person, chris murphy of connecticut. he seemed like he wanted to what do you call it, not flinch, clinch like a boxer losing a round. he wants to stop the action a little bit and look like he also said i want to have a bill both sides agree with. i m not sure if he doesn t think this is one issue that s going to hit him in the burbs and he better be careful if he looks like the obstacle. if we were dealing with a traditional political actor, that would make sense. i don t know what trump s political cue lus, how he thinks. i don t know what they are. so it seems to me that it would make sense on the one hand that that choreography that you just described would suggest that he s up to something. but again, i don t know what s going to happen once he gets back to the white house. what s interesting about the room, he s talking about gun violence in america. did you see any block congress members in there? you think about gun violence affecting black communities in this country? there was no one in the room. to give you a sense of who matters in trump s mind. it could be a suburban show, too. it could be about the areas for this 2018 lacks will be decided. you re smart about that. i didn t notice. that s the kind of thing i should have noticed, the absolute lack of diversity in that room. thank you for bringing that up. that s the thing that has to be brought up all the time in any meeting in any political setting in this country the need for diversity. thank you very much. thank you, eddie glaud and charlie sykes. with the walls closing in, trump is lashing out attacking attorney general sessions over the russia probing his actions, his attorney general s, disgraceful. you re watching hardball. it s what this country is made of. but right now, our bond is fraying. how do we get back to us ? the y fills the gaps. and bridges our 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trump finds himself under the spotlight of special counsel robert mueller s investigation. one of his most loyal advisers hope hicks is calling it quits today after admitting to investigators yesterday she tells whitize for the president. and trump remains under pressure when it comes to gun control. in the face of forces beyond his control, he s act true to form lashing out at a favorite target believe it or not, attorney general jeff sessions who he picked to be ag. trump asked on twitter, why is jeff sessions asking the inspector general to investigate potentially massive fisa abuse? isn t the ig an obama guy. why not use justice department lawyers? disgraceful. sessions fought back saying in a statement as long as i am the attorney general, i will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor. let s bring in the roundtable. carrie johnson, justice correspondent for npr, beth for nbc news and msnbc, and seth herndon national political reporter for the boston globe. gentlemen and ladies, pick your poison. he s got to do something on guns because the students and teachers are coming at him. he s going to do something about mueller because mueller is getting into his role in working with the russians to get himself elected president. it s getting in close. that s what he s looking at. what else? the guns thing, the mueller thing and hope hicks, the one constant in every picture he has there is she, a young person. a very important person to him. good-bye, i m leaving right now. maybe she planned it. i said today, dianne feinstein is sticking around at 85 and she s leaving at 29 because he wants to spend more time with her family? i m going to pursue other ambitions when you get fired that s what you say. why is she leaving? this crew, mueller is let s go after sessions. he s still blaming jeff sessions for allowing robert mueller to come at him. that s right. nine months after special counsel robert mueller was appointed, president trump is still upset with his most loyal ally jeff sessions another attack this morning on sessions. disgraceful. the difference is jeff sessions fought back for the first time. he said as long as he s the attorney general, he s going to discharge his duties with honor and integrity. the justice department is going to follow the constitution, not the orders of president trump. he wants his justice department leader to be roy cohn. he wants to be a dirty trickster for him is what he wants. he s talked about that. jeff sessions is not playing ball. robert mueller is here to stay. it appears jeff sessions is here to stay too even though the president now seems toe desperately want him to quit, sessions says he s not going anywhere for now. neither is robert mueller as he inches closer to president trump. what the hell is going on with hope hicks? they put out a lot of slop today. i shouldn t knock any reporter. they re the best in the business. especially maggie. to put out, she was always planning to leave . no news here. yes, it s news. our network tonight said a shocker. she was up at the house intelligence yesterday admitting she told white lies for her boss. they ve renders her basically ineffective. why did she say that? kennedy said he has a cold and has to go back to the white house. he didn t have a cold. she was saying when he s in the office i ll say he s not in the office or he can see a visitor when he probably could, he doesn t want to. sorry, when the word is out of your mouth, white lies you re no longer effective. i know she s a very loved at the white house, very loved by trump and his family. how effective has she been? trump is his own communications adviser. is she there when he s up at 6:30 in the morning choosing what target to tweet when he tweeted at sessions and called him a disgray? by the way, right at the same time that paul manafort was arriving at district court to be arraigned. it was a bad morning for communications by president trump. waiting for him to roll. let s talk about guns. i keep thinking of when the doug boys arrived in world war i, the situation change and germany was going to lose and the brits and french were going to win. this new force of students and teachers are so credible, when they go on television, everybody stops and listens. and they give a sense of credibility to the gun control issue and the sense of raw emotion. we know these are kids who just went through that. you can see in this meeting today that trump at least believes that he can believes rhetorically take on the nra. he s at least saying at least to republican senators you know, you are too scared of the nra. it s time to take them on. that s the truth. who knows. by the way, that s not a white lie to say they re afraid of the nra. we re going to stick around. roundtable is sticking with us. you re watching hardball. ncomb from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don t. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. flonase. we ll be back with the hardball roundtable. back after this. even a red-hot mascot. [mascot] hey-oooo! whoop, whoop! [crowd 1] hey, you re on fire! [mascot] you bet i am! [crowd 2] dude, you re on fire! [mascot] oh, yeah! [crowd 3] no, you re on fire! look behind you. [mascot] i m cool. i m cool. [burke] that s one way to fire up the crowd. but 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 .again and again and maybe just one more time. indulge in irresistible freshness. febreze unstopables. breathe happy. we re back with the hardball roundtable. kerry, tell me something i don t know. since the terrible shooting that killed 17 people at the high school, some disreputable companies have been markeding backpacks saying they re bullet proof. the justice department came out today and said the doj doesn t test anything other than body armor for police. any marketing you see about these being bullet proof, don t believe it unless it s coming from a reputable source. that s disturbing. chris. hope hicks served 168 days as white house communicates director. anthony scaramucci served ten. by my calculations she has served 16.8 scaramuccis. she s got the record. fun fact for the last day of black history month. good for you. this is a white house that has no african-americans among the top lanks of the commissioned officers. our reporting says that s the first administration since omarosa left. you mean top people. among their top ranks of commissioned officers. first time it s happened in a long time. thank you. we ll be right back. i ll be right back. -ahh. -the new guy. -whoa, he looks -he looks exactly like me. -no. -separated at birth much? we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i m pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we re not the lowest. even if we re not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us. wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. the toothpaste that helps prevent bleeding gums. if you spit blood when you brush or floss you may have gum problems and could be on the journey to much worse. help stop the journey of gum disease. try parodontax toothpaste. want us to do about what woulthis president?fathers i m tom steyer, and when those patriots wrote the constitution here in philadelphia, they created the commander in chief to protect us from enemy attack the justice department just indicted 13 russians for an electronic attack on america. so what did this president do? nothing. he s failed his most important responsibility - to protect our country. the question is: why is he still president? going to do something about guns, nothing great. just something. the reason he s taking action is that group of students and teachers from parkland, florida insys he do it. the game-changers, forces for action donald trump want becoming his enemies especially when they arrive for the big rally in the nation s capital of washington, d.c. on march 24th. these students and teachers are tilting the country toward action. doing nothing is not an option for the president. trump doesn t want to get ahead of those in congress. he wants the lawmakers to take the lead. he had dianne feinstein sitting right next to him today, the lawmaker most associated with banning assault rifles like the ar-15. he knows no bill will pass muster that fails to deal with that, the availability of easy to use mass killers. today trump showed himself eager to get action going on guns. he was carrying on a lively respectful, actually respectful conversation with chris murphy from connecticut. one of those wayne lapierre yea
the president of the united states with nobody but the special prosecutor and perhaps the president of the united states knows what he has been up to. the way the media has been playing it up. either the obama administration lost its security clearance or didn t get security clearance and that wasn t big news back then. i think we may see the end of jared and ivanka. this is not normal. let s be clear. it is not normal to have a public spat with the attorney general over his independence. i agree with what the president said. the president should be telling the attorney general what he wants done. they tell me they are worried about it because they say this has a different feel and he s spiraling, kind of lashing out, out of control. howie: is the press overdramatizing these developments? and why are the purpose dids slamming ivanka trump for challenging a question about her father s accusers. the press remains sceptical over why so few journalists are giving this president credit for challenging the nra. and alec baldwin says he s sick of playing president trump. i m howard kurtz and this is media buzz live from washington. hope hicks who i first met in the first week of donald trump s campaign stunned washington by re-signing. a communications director whose voice few americans have heard. president trump: she is a little shy, but she is really talented. hope, say a couple words. merry christmas, everyone, and thank you, donald trump. howie: conflicting accounts of what she said on capitol hill. mollie hemingway, and ed henry and capri cafaro. mollie, losing hope, very clever. hope hicks who stayed behind the scenes is being cast by the press as the latest sign of utter chaos at the white house. molly: there seems to be a cyclical nature to the stories. the press every few weeks or every few months how things are spiraling out of control. a couple of months ago it was donald trump s mental health that was in question. clearly this white house is different from other white house. but i don t think anonymous sources have been serving our journalists very well. not only because they frequently turn out to be false. and also because reporters don t seem to understand this white house and president. howie: a lot of these anonymous sources seem to be in or around the white house. hope s departure came after that closed door testimony where she is alleged to have acknowledged white lies on the president s behalf. she didn t try to spin it. she just said i m out of here. ed: the press put a negative spin on something donald trump did? this is the same song playing over and over again. when you played those clips, is it live or mem oorkd or memorex. but to be fair and balanced, the white house is feeding it. there are people inside the white house other fringes of the white house, advisors to the president. some people puff themselves you have and they are not really advisors. but i have never seen a white house where people like to dump on themselves and dump on the president. howie: others saying gary cohn may quit after the battle on tariffs, h.r. mcmasters. isn t it true that ultimately these are all staff. sure. there is no question the media is trying to really i think amplify the issue that there is turnover. they are trying to create this narrative that this rapid turnover is faster than it has been in any other white house. i did a little bit of digging. i consume media from a bunch of different sources. just a cursory research i did, npr headlined, trump containment team loses influence as chaos at the white house gets worse. cnn, fueling trump s chaos. so it goes on and on. abc news, trump white house in disarray creates openings for u.s. rivals. how where no offense to hope hicks, she has been inning flungs. been been very influential. as every staffer is. howie: washington post anonymous officials say it s pure madness at the white house. jared kushner lost his top secret clearance. i wonder if anti-jared sources want to push him out. molly: if you are going to use anonymous sources it s clear to know how you are being used. there are factions warring against each other at the white house. howie: ne new york times, president trump is frustrated with mr. curb her. the new york times mr. kushner. a new york times story that curb numbers real estate company got $500 million in loans. no direct connection, no under case he got below end rates. ed: jared kushner rarely speaks. i think what s been going on. there was a leak that came out of nowhere. donald trump on drudge is running for reelection and brad parscale is going to be the campaign manager. my understanding from people inside trump world, this was clearly leaked by jared kushner. kushner is looking for his way out. six months or a year from now. but they were locking that down, parscale is doing that. and that gives jared a way out. howie: all presidents are running for reelection. capri: i think there has been an intrigue surrounding this power couple and i think there are people inside and outside the white house who don t know what to make of this. howie: they never liked the fact that two members of the president s family where high-level advisors. capri: they almost want them to fail. ed: the media has been out to get jared and ivanka. howie: let me get to this last point, the president himself stirring the point on twitter. asking the attorney general to investigate potential fisa abuse. why not use justice department hours? disgraceful. i say that s an important story because it goes to the independence of the attorney general. molly: i think it s also a media tweet. by putting it into this tweet and attacking sessions, which is abnormal for most of presidents, completely non-abnormal for this president. you are forcing people to explain the context, this issue of fisa abuse. the media should be running hard on this story, and they are not. howie: sessions didn t push back. he put out a statement saying he conducted himself with honor and integrity. then you have the leaks that the president is furious with sessions. ed: there was a report that the president said he would replace sessions now but for the fact it would take a year to replace him. it s one thing after another with the media pile-on. when sessions is out there and you have people from the obama days saying independence from the justice department is so important. they apparently slept through the obama administration. molly: the media have a conflict of interest moving this story. it s a felony to leak hassified information. the media themselves are the men fisheries. howie: imagine how the press would play it if sessions conducted the investigation himself rather than giving it to an i.g. a reminder to our california viewers. i ll be speaking tomorrow at the reagan library at 6:00 p.m. signing copies of my book. when we come back. the president scolds republican senators for being afraid of the nra. but the president is more interested in debating his personal bravery. patrick woke up with back pain. but he has work to do. so he took aleve. if he d taken tylenol, he d be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong. a few years ago, me and my wife was actually saving for a house. but one day we re sitting there and we decided that, something needed to be done about what was going on in our inner-city. instead of buying a house, we decided to form this youth league. these kids mean everything to me and i just want to make sure i give something positive to do. wow, that s amazing. that s a blessing right there. to know that someone out there cares and is passionate about what we re trying to do in our communities. you excited? yes. yeah, we re gonna to look good right? yup. awesome. alright come on, bring it in man. love these guys right here. bullied people into making concessions on gun control. president trump: you know i believe, you don t know until you test it. but i believe i would run in even if i didn t have a weapon. i think most of of the people in this room would have done this, too. the most of object joke toughly cowardly man who ever occupied the presidency something not even people who were shot at in combat would have said. howie: it ends up in my view of overshadowing background checks. mollie: it s a dynamic of when the president says something stupid, the media overreacts. there was a story about how he interest wrupted an armed robbery. howie: a hypothetical comment. mollie: in real life he interrupt an armed robbery. it s so bad that the media has been so involved in pushing gun control. everything we learn about the parkland shooting is a failure of government. the media pushing a disarm narrative is dishonest. capri: that s what happens every time. er time there is a school shooting. i say that as someone who is endorsed by the nra and had a school shooting in my district. howie: when the president said he was criticizing the deputy sheriffs who did not go in. he said it in front of the cameras and there was an avalanche. i m struck by the fact you said disarm yourself narrative. the president seemed to be trying to find common ground. but there is less debate about that and less credit to the president for at least appearing to take on this powerful group that backed him. capri: here is what i say coming from the democrat perspective. president trump what he said publicly, i think has given people hope that there is finally going to be some kind of activity surrounding this issue because there hasn t been any coming out of congress. and the white house can t do it alone. they have to do it with congressional howie: the president was talking about dealing with the mentally ill. he said take the guns first. mollie: mike pence is talking about gun violence restraining orders. if you are worried about someone committing violence with a gun, you can get a restraining order. then trump talked and said let s get rid of due process. that s a horrific thing to hear from a president. that s what supports the narrative that he s a tyrant. yet the media who is so quick to speak out. they didn t even notice these violations of the second amendment or constitutional protections. capri: they latched on to the fact that he said one thing in a public meeting. howie: the president said i met with the nra at another time. the nra makes it look like he s back them up on other things. ed: we all scream for more access to presidents. i did it when i was running a white house correspondents association. he s opening up these negotiations. but it s transparent and open and we are seeing the sausage being made. howie: instead of having to rely on leaks. howie: it makes for good television and we ll see if it makes good policy. the flap over the nbc question to ivanka about the women accusing her father. it s all pop-culture trivia, but it gets pretty intense. -ahh. -the new guy. -whoa, he looks -he looks exactly like me. -no. -separated at birth much? we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i m pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we re not the lowest. even if we re not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us. wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. my healthy routine helps me feel my best. so i add activia yogurt to my day. with its billions of live and active probiotics, activia may help support my digestive health, so i can take on my day. activia. now in probiotic dailies. 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. when it comes to travel, i sweat the details. late checkout. .down-alternative pillows. .and of course, price. tripadvisor helps you book a. .hotel without breaking a sweat. because we now instantly. .search over 200 booking sites .to find you the lowest price. .on the hotel you want. don t sweat your booking. tripadvisor. the latest reviews. the lowest prices. howie: a hacker or hackers targeted the miami herald creating a bogus fake news story that a middle school faced an attack spreading fear. alex, some hack were created two fake tweets under your name, totally bogus. what do those tweets say? the first tweet showed a real tweet i sent but they changed the fluent center saying changed the photo in the center, and they asked did you see the shooter, was he white? howie: how realistic did these tweets look? they looked real. they were either photo shopped, and had the blue rare tie on it. it set up an explosion online. people thought it was race baiting and thought it was coming at the story with an agenda. the tweet about the shooter s race took off more than the tweet asking for photos of dead bodies. howie: how do you fight back? a lot of people never find out the tweets are bogus. i was trying to get the stories of these victims and survivors out. every time i opened twitter it was an avalanche of people screaming at me. howie: in the middle of this heartbreaking tragedy. jack dorsey, the founder of twitter said he didn t have a fix for the problem but he might run solutions by you. what was your reaction to that conversation. i am interested in the solutions they bring forward. but i respect there is not a scalable solution and i understand twitter doesn t want to censor viewpoint. howie: it s good that founder of the company called you, but they have to find a way to fix this. alex harris, thank you for joining us. howie: next dave bossie. message to ivanka trump. you are a presidential advisor, that question is totally fair game. it s not just that she has taken and job with a formal title. she has taken on the issue of me too rrp and women s rights. it was a rude question and you know he would never have asked anybody else that question and the only reason he asked her is because she is the daughter of donald trump. howie: cathy areu and kristin tate. kristin, let s start with nbc. was there something out of line with an nbc correspondent asking ivanka trump to weigh in on the women who accused the president of having affairs or sexual harassment. kristin: this is why so many americans hate the media it was an attempt to embarrass ivanka trump. ivanka made herself a top dwoft official and she cannot exempt herself from tough questions about the president just because the president is her father. i think what s making conservatives angry about this is we rarely see the left being asked questions like this. they were untouchable subjects with hillary clinton. howie: she did answer the question, but kristin says it was and obnoxious question but not an unfair one. cathy: the made what does have the right to ask the big questions. the sad part is we aren t hearing answers from ivanka like we would like to anymore. but i m glad the media is still asking the big questions. the clintons did have lots of questions asked. chelsea clinton was asked about her father s behavior in 2016. so they are not ruling out ivanka trump or the trumps in any way. the media is doing what it does best, asking the questions. howie: whether ivanka answered the question or didn t answer the question it was meant to make news. but was it asked because she was the president s daughter? if you had the same situation at the olympics and it had been kellyanne conway would nbc ask that question. or was it because she was the president s daughter? kristin: probably a combination of both. we all know the media despises the trump administration. 95% of media coverage of trump during the first year of his administration was negative. ivanka is an independent strong woman who caused her own path in a business surrounded by strong men. but because she is the daughter of the most of hated man in modern political history, she is subject to vicious attacks. howie: ivanka trump in the past generally got good press for her career in new york. i wonder what you think underlying this is a kind of a resentment. we talked about jared kushner, too. that they shouldn t be there. they shouldn t have these jobs. but even if you believe that as a journalist, aren t they entitled to fair coverage. cathy: they are getting fair coverage. if it was anyone else, these people probably would have been kicked out of the white house already. howie: why would ivanka trump have been kirked out of the white house. cathy: they are such a distraction. kristin: you can t get kicked out for being a distraction. cathy: she was selling her dresses on qvc. no one has on that in the history of our politics. here is my father, he s running for president, buy my dress. howie: i understand questions about jared kushner because he s entangled in the russian investigation. ivanka trump becoming a distraction? i think we are seeing here, i wonder kristin, whether you think there is just sort of an an misananimus following this c. do you think this is driven by press negativity? kristin: yes. the media is probably overblowing the amount of chaos in the white house. trump has a bold, brash personality, he tells it like it is, and that probably does cause conflict in the white house be especially those who are used to the swamp. the heritage foundation found trump accomplished 63% of his agenda goals in the first year. howie: cathy, do you think the chaos is overdram tightsed? over dram dram dramatized. cathy: the media has to report on it. they are telling the facts. howie: great to see you both, cathy and kristin. the press says the white house is being damaged by this bad press. does alec baldwin really want to stop playing the president? what is your take? dave: it s unfair for people to be doing that off the record and it s detrimental to our country. it s not factual. you look at what the president is doing and how this country is moving forward on the economy and peace through strength. howie: you are saying the white house is smoothly functioning right now? dave: everybody can have their pun on how this white house should run. washington, d.c. has been broken for a long time. you have a non-politician get elected. somebody who is not part of the establishment. and he s a change agent. that s what got him elected. and he s doing things differently. that disrupts the status quo in washington and makes people uncomfortable. he s got his make america great again agenda, he made promises and he s keeping them. howie: scaramucci rrp said the following. fear and intimidation does not work in a civilian environment. it s messed up. it will be up to the president to figure out if he wants to fix it. howie: fear and intimidation. dave: i think anthony has his opinion. and i do get concerned about the more the of the morale of the staff. but this president through this leadership, the economy is now starting to soar. his actions keep that place running because they know, the people inside that building know they are part of what s making america great again. howie: you worked with hope hicks during the campaign. was her decision to leave spurred by the huge coverage of her house testimony? dave: i m a huge fan of hope hicks. i believe she is one of the nicest, most of thoughtful and incredibly hard working people i have ever had the pleasure of working beside. she had the president s ear and that s been known for years. i m glad she has been that person who has been able to be somebody who is close to this president. howie: she is joining the wave of those who are leaving. dave: there is no easy time for somebody like her to leave. whether it s that day or another day it will still be the same coverage of why and when. she ll stay in touch with this president and be part of his orbit but be on the outside. howie: there has been a wave of negative stories with jared kushner. do you think the press has tonight for jared and ivanka and would like to see him go back to new york. dave: it s so unfair. it seems to be the sport in this town to kill those who come here to work. jared and ivanka come here to serve all americans in those posts they currently hold. helping the president. jared and ivanka are volunteers. they don t take a salary. they take this beating for nothing. howie: the wall street journal saying mr. kushner and ivanka have to decide if they would serve themselves and the president better by walking away from their forker white house role. dave: jared is under attack. would it be better for him to leave? i personally am one who would tell jared if he was listening to me to say, i wouldn t walk away from this. i would say to the president, i serve at your pleasure and i will be here as long as you want me. howie: do you think the press is giving the president enough credit and any credit for at least in some measures challenging the nra? dave: he challenges conventional wisdom. that s what he has always done. howie: why do you think the press has not given his him due in tackling this emotional and controversial issue? the democrats even though they say they want a solution. they only want their solution which is to grab the guns. it s similar to the immigration debate. i believe the press is on the democrats side. i believe the mainstream media does hold out on those issues towards the democrats side of it. the immigration issue, the president tried to make concerted effort to try to meet them wasn t the republican orthodoxy, it was something they wanted to get done. they hate this president more than they want to see this country succeed. howie: dave bossie, thanks so much for stopping by. after the break. alec baldwin claims he s fed up mocking donald trump and the president punching back hard. aq, little things can be a big deal. that s why there s otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it s a pill that treats psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable after just 4 months, . with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don t use if you re allergic to otezla. otezla may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. tell your doctor if these occur. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts, or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. other side effects include upper respiratory tract infection and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you re pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. not even whites. howie: alec baldwin on snl says it s become agony to play donald trump on saturday night live. the president didn t like that. an hour after my next guest report on baldwin s jabs tweeted this. alec baldwin whose dying career was saved by playing me on snl now says it was agony for those who were forced too watch. howie: is baldwin being a bit disingenuous when it has brought him so much fame to mock a president he clearly december pie he despises.you know,e president s tweets about celebrities because he s trying to make a point. i think this falls in the latter categories. but poll after poll shows the american people don t like this behavior from the president. so you would think he would take that into consideration. but the president s desire to settle scores trumps the polling. howie: i think even people who aren t crazy about the president s tweeting think he has the right to hit back against a guy who hits the president. i think the american people will give the president some slack on this. he usually does have some semblance of a point as to why he s tweet being that. but on the flip side of that,er time he tweets about one of his enemies he gives them an incredible amount of publicity. this works in alec baldwin s favor because a sneak peek is being aired about his talk show. maybe more people will tune in to watch. howie: the former apprentice celebrity omarosa is taking another shot at the president and his white house. it s all i had what my word. oh, freedom, i feel like i just got freed off a plantation. howie: she said because i was black nobody would talk to me at the white house. carley: she is getting serious criticism for using something as serious as slavery to her time at the white house. she created a career and identity off knowing the president. now she has created a new identity of being president trump s number one critic. her main goal is to create as many headlines as possible. howie: plantation slavery was way over the line. still to come, a plea for help from twitter which has been rocked by a whole lot of problems. there s little rest for a single dad. and back pain made it hard to sleep and get up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid. .plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i m back. aleve pm for a better am. coming at you with my brand-new vlog. just making some ice in my freezer here. so check back for that follow-up vid. this is my cashew guy bruno. holler at em, brun. kicking it live and direct here at the fountain. should i go habanero or maui onion? should i buy a chinchilla? comment below. did i mention i save people $620 for switching? chinchilla update got that chinchilla after all. say what up, rocco. howie: fox s executive vice president and executive editor has retired. moody is leaving shortly after his offensive peace on the u.s. olympic committee saying its slogan should be darker, gayer. fox pulled that from their website. twitter has been accused of censorship and political bias. good for dorsey to ask for experts to submit proposals for problems facing twitter. let me know what you think on twitter @howard kurtz.