team trapped deep inside a cave in thailand. how long will the rescue take and how much time do they have to complete the mission? speaking for the president. rudy giuliani shining new light on if the president will, in fact, answer special counsel robert mueller s questions. and scuttled in diplomacy, new reporting on mike pompeo s odd trip to north korea. a visit that raised some new questions about president trump s assertion that north korea is no longer a nuclear threat. we begin with breaking news in thailand. an operation dubbed d-day by the head of the critical rescue mission there with the eyes of the world watching intently. four members of that soccer team have been rescued. that 12-member squad known as the wild boars and its coach have been trapped for 15 days. the first four boys were seen on facebook today. writing, the fourth wild boar is out of the cave. that as work continues on freeing the rest of the team. bill neely is on the ground, and he got us up to speed. we re at a pause. they will have about 10 or 20 hours before they work on getting the rest of the boys out there. what are they doing in this interim period, bill? reporter: yeah, badavid. an absolutely extraordinary day. thailand s longest day in a long, long time. there is a pause at the minute because there were so many divers down there that they used up all the oxygen tanks. there were 90 divers in all involved and they have all just basically paused the whole operation to resupply, give the key divers a night s sleep and then somewhere between 10 and 20 hours after that operation stopped, they will start again. to recap, four boys are out. they are at the hospital. they are getting medical attention, and they are we understand, fine. the rescue commander said within the last few hours, this was a great success, better and faster than we expected. it has been our masterpiece, he said, and the thai navy s.e.a.l. team just posted on their facebook page, tonight, we can sleep well. hooyah. that s in the tradition of course, of the marines. so the commander also added one intriguing detail that the healthiest of the boys were taken out first, and we understand there are two 14-year-olds, a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old, but that still leaves eight boys and their coach back in the cave tonight. david, it was an extraordinary operation. as i said, 90 divers in all. 10 were at the apex. 10 approached the cave where the boys were, and they basically took them out underneath, one by one. underneath each diver. so each diver had a boy underneath him as they submerged into the water. the boys wearing full scuba masks and then after about a mile, they were able to reach what s called chamber three which is dry, and from there, they could walk, but all told from the place they were to the mouth of the cave, it s about two miles, and remember, these are boys who were weakened, who didn t have anything to eat or virtually nothing we understand for nine days. so an extraordinary operation. they held onto guidelines. they had oxygen lines along the way. there were divers all ago tlong way, but remember, david, this is a potential death trap because a few days ago, a very experienced highly trained thai diver collapsed and died due to lack of air. so let s not underestimate this operation. it is potentially deadly, but it was extraordinary. it was launched in very dramatic fashion by the commander who said, this is d-day. it s now or never, and the reason he said that, and you can possibly see some of it, is falling rain and falling oxygen levels. the rain really started to come down in torrents here, and that threatened to flood the caves and undo all the work of pumping those millions of gallons of floodwater out of the caves. and the second thing was falling oxygen levels. they had fallen from an acceptable level of 21% to 15% and below, and that was going to weaken not only the boys in the cave, but the divers. so the operation as you say, david, suspended for the night. it will resume sometime tomorrow morning with eight boys and a coach still down there overnight, david. bill, thank you very much. bill neely, our chief global correspondent reporting from thailand. we ll have much more later this hour, but i want to turn to politics now with president trump s lawyer, rudy giuliani, trying again to pump the brakes on an interview with robert mueller and his team and president trump. we would not recommend an interview for the president unless they can satisfy us that there is some some basis for this investigation. is this the witch hunt that a lot of people think it is, or is there a factual basis for this? facing a busy week, the president again focused on the russia investigation, calling it a rigged witch hunt and using his stock set of nicknames saying, fbi lover boy and crooked hillary. let s go to jeff, and his perspective on the appearances. rudy giuliani made three appearances on sunday shows talking about his strategy going forward. we were talking yesterday about this change in tact. the president s team trying to cast doubt on this investigation. what do we hear from rudy giuliani today? reporter: that s right. he has said he sees himself as an attorney/spokesman and that his motivation is to wage a p.r. war to undercut the special counsel investigation should the findings ever lead to impeachment proceedings in the congress. the battle seems to be working. you have two national polls now showing that the number of americans who approve of how mueller is handling the investigation is dropping. now to the other topic that giuliani is saying now, he plans to contact the special counsel team this week, monday or tuesday to inform him of his new demand that the special counsel has to meet these certain conditions before the president would agree for an interview. mueller would have to demonstrate that president trump committed a crime and that his testimony is essential to the investigation. rudy giuliani says the president s busy schedule this coming week provides the perfect window for the legal team and the special counsel team to have this conversation. so tomorrow night of course, you have got this primetime reveal of the president s supreme court pick. about to shape the court for a generation later in the week. he has this whirlwind spin on the world stage. he heads to the summit in brussels, and that would be overshadowed by the possible of a pending trade war as the president imposes tariffs on trade partners and continues to conflate trade issues. he then heads to the uk for a meeting with theresa may, and then all of that building up to putin. the president and white house officials tell us the president intends to bring up russia s election interference even though we know the president has are y routinely downplayed it, and the federal intelligence investigation, he views as politically motivated to undercut his victory and political standing, david. i want to check with you the progress the president is making to select to be the supreme court justice. we another circuit judge, tom hardiman, the third circuit in philadelphia is now under consideration. we have this list of three judges. tom hardiman reappearing from the president s long list. tell us about him, and what the president is doing with regard to the list as he is in new jersey. first, he was the runner-up last time around when the president ultimately settled on neil gorsuch, and he has a great story to tell. thomas hardiman was the first in his family to go to college. he drove a taxi. his father owned a taxicab company, and he drove a taxi to raise some money. he is a known quantity and he serves on the same circuit court as president trump s sister. he is also according to some reporting, one of the choices of senate majority leader mitch mcconnell. mcconnell thinks according to new york times reporting, he would be easy to confirm. perhaps easier than some of the other folks on the list. we should say though that republicans behind the scenes are doing some battling, providing reporters with conflicting information to sort of get their chosen nominee to the top of the list here. so the caveat of course, is that the president we don t know who he is settling on, and we won t know until tomorrow night. jeff bennett at the white house. thank you very much. i want to turn to matthew nusbaum, and our msnbc political contributor. let s start about this news with tom hardiman. the president has talked to these candidates. mike pence, the vice president has been talking to them as well, and he has had assistance from don mcgahn, the white house counsel as well. who do he want in this job? how important is personal rapport as this president looks for somebody like a supreme court justice? i think you hit the button because oddly personal rapport is one of the biggest factors and i say oddly because trump should be looking at the policy positions or the legal rulings of all of these candidates because that s how it will play out in the supreme court. in that context, somebody like kethledge who has been a big proponent of executive authority, you would presume he would be attractive to the president, but trump considers him quote/unquote boring and he has fallen to the bottom of the list. hardiman is somebody mcconnell has been pushing hard, and marian trump barry got her original position on the court through roy cohn s advocacy when he worked for trump as a lawyer. he is susceptible by lobbying individuals and he is susceptible to the personality around him. he has to navigate the split in the republican party itself between the populist wing and the conservatives. as soon as he makes this announcement tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m., the politics really kick into high gear. you have seen the lobbying within the republican party so far, betting on each different horse here as we await the president s decision. what is that politicking going to look like, and that apparatus that has to sell this candidate not only to the republican party, and people in the senate, but perhaps red state democrats as well? this is going to be an all-out effort for trump and this white house. they see this as a legacy-making, legacy-defining move, a judge who could be on the court for three or four decades. they have assigned key staff including a principle deputy press secretary who will lead on this. they are going to be going all out with a lot of cover fire from their friends, the federalist society, the heritage foundation. at the end of the day, this will come down to the senate, and how much mitch mcconnell can sort of keep his caucus in line, get those folks like lisa murkowski and susan collins to support the candidate. the white house will be running the republican relations side of this, and it will come down to mitch mcconnell s ability to win over a few members. they will put the screws on the democrats, but i think they were willing to stand up against tax reform. they stuck together on obamacare, and they are pretty good at hanging together. i want to pivot back to what we heard from rudy giuliani today. he portrayed on meet the press with chuck todd this morning. they are having to hold back, and he wants to testify and talk to bob mule sker heller and hisd he did shed light on how he is going to approach the subpoena, and he said they are confident they could quash that. what do you think the landscape rooks like if they could not agree and there would be a subpoena? there are two historical presidents. one is bill clinton. he during that special counsel star investigation voluntarily sat for an investigation, and did it inclusive of something like a closed circuit television feed to those questions. the other is during the nixon case, but that had to deal with a subpoena of evidence. specifically the tapes that were at issue. it is a completely novel issue that has no precedent in terms of whether a sitting president of the united states can be subpoenaed per se. however, there is some legitimacy i believe to what giuliani has said when he says he has been having to reel back donald trump from wanting to sit with robert mueller. i think that s ultimately that wild card factor that neither giuliani or anyone else at the white house can control. if donald trump wants it, he is going to get his way, but it will be to his folly because you can t underestimate somebody like robert mueller and the evidence we don t know about, but they have. in the deck of wild cards is one michael cohen, and that was something that rudy giuliani was asked about this week as well. let s listen to what he had to say about what michael cohen might know about the president. i m hoping michael is able to clear himself. you have no concerns at all about anything that michael cohen might tell the prosecutors? as long as her tells the truth, we re home free. michael cohen has unbranded himself of australia affiliation with donald trump over the weekend. what is your sense of what he is thinking at this point? how naive or optimistic perhaps rudy giuliani is about what he might know? it s a smoke screen for the president. smokey? it is smokey. michael cohen is not the attorney in the trump organization who knew where all the bodies were buried so, the extent that mueller s examination is going to trump s previous financial dealings. michael cohen won t know that much about it. but what s germain to the investigation with the collusion of russia, and the democratic servers by russian actors is what did michael cohen know about that? michael cohen was in the center of the trump campaign. he was affiliated with felix sater. he had financial traders with russia or the kremlin in order to secure policy changes. he might have a window on some of that, but clearly giuliani and trump don t feel very threatened by that because when cohen came out earlier last week with all of these proclamations about he would do what was best for his family and country first, you did not hear a peep from the president on twitter. thank you very much. great to see you. thanks to all of you for the time. up next, a world of trouble. what a wait, president trump, as they begins one of the consequential weeks of to his presidency with that meeting upcoming with vladimir putin. i ve been making blades here at gillette for 20 years. there s a lot of innovation that goes into making america s #1 shave. precision machinery and high-quality materials from around the world. nobody else even comes close. now starting at $7.99. gillette. the best a man can get. welcome back. secretary of state mike pompeo firing back at pyongyang s characterization of his latest two-day visit to north korea where he met with top officials, but not with north korean leader kim jong-un. the secretary calling his conversations productive, but north korea is accusing him of making what they call, gangst gangster-like demands. chief, the commitment that president trump made, and i am counting on chairman kim to be determined to follow through on the commitment that he made. and so if those requests were gangster-like, the world is a gangster because there was a williams decision at the u.n. security council about what needs to be achieved. joining me now is the president of the fund of global security foundation and he is an msnbc national security analyst. great to have you with me. we were together on the night of the singapore summit as we looked at that one piece of paper and wondered what nuance would be added. what detail would be added in the coming weeks and months. it seems like on the heels of this meeting we haven t gotten anything new to that agreement. i want to read a little bit from a bloomberg news report on the meetings that took place in pyongyang. the specifics of what happened behind closed doors remain unclear. whether pompeo annoyed his counterpart or pressed too hard, or they are reverting to their hot and cold tactics is hard to say, but they made sure to have the final word, and it was not pleasant. what s your read on what happened here? what do you think the next steps forward are here? not having any information on the de-nuclearization process. that s an excellent report by blo bloomberg on what happened there. it was clear pompeo and his team were outmaneuvered by the north koreans and including in the aftermath. this statement is clear and full. it lays out precisely what the north koreans want, and what they want is actually what the singapore summit agreed upon. it was not complete de-nuclearization despite president trump claims. it was not that the north korean nuclear threat was going to end. there were four goals. two of them were ones that north korea wanted and two of them were ones that the u.s. wanted. if you read that summit statement, that s what the north koreans are now saying. this has to go hand in hand. yes, we still are committed to the eventual de-nuclearization, but there has to be a peace treaty as part of this process. and what they call u.s. hostilitie hostilities. there has to be economic incentives here. they see this very clearly, a step by step, and what this meeting represented was the failure of the you go first approach that pompeo and bolton have championed. you do everything first. you give up your nuclear weapons and then you will get the rest of these rewards. that s not the way the north koreans want to play, and it appears they won this round. i want to get your reporting on the scope and scale of the north korea nuclear program. how it s expanded based on the intelligence smaestimates and w have seen the washington post reporting on that. it was asked if he took a hard line about progress or continued growth of the nuclear program. before we get to verification, we have to know what s happening, and what s going on on the ground. it seems to me that we re still in the midst of a lot of confusion to put it rosily about that. one of the things you want and that the u.s. wants and reasonably want is a declaration of all their sites and the material. what have you got, and then we can look at the procedures for inspecting those sites and then we can have the dismantlement. the north koreans are not rejecting that, but they don t want to do that first. in their statement, they suggested the dismantlement of their engine test stand, what they call their high thrust engine used to power their ic e icbms, could further that. that is something the north koreans haven t done. they have ended nuclear tests and testing of long range missiles, but not ending production. that s why you see the news stories of the continued work at the nuclear sites. that is something we should bargain for. good to have your perspective. thank you. sticking with foreign policy here, in a few days, secretary of state mike pompeo will arrive in brussels after a stop in abu dhabi along the way. he is going to join president trump in the capital after president trump sent letters to other people demanding they contribute more to defense. with some of the united states closest allies, here s what president trump had to say on thursday. i ll see natnato, and i m go to tell nato, you have to start paying your bills. the united states is not going to take care of everything. they kill us with nato. they kill us. germany pays 1%. [ boos ] 1%, and i said, you know, angela, i can t guarantee it, but we re protecting you and it means a lot more to you than protecting us because i don t know how much protection we get by protecting you. donald trump playing the role of bill collector in montana earlier this week. joining us is the president of the chicago council and global affairs and he was the previous ambassador to nato. i want you to react to that rhetoric of something we have heard from this president over and over again. that members of the nato alliance aren t paying enough, most of them aren t at least in his estimation, and folks in the u.s. are upset about that. just get your reaction. that s what you heard from the president. well, he is right. the allies are not paying enough for defense, and they haven t for quite awhile. this is not something new. this is a complaint that the americans have had since 1952, when we first asked the europeans to do more, and we need to continue to press to do more, but you do it in a particular way. the rhetoric of the president that you just showed that allies are killing us, is not the kind of language that one normally associates between allies, and remember. we are allies and there is a reason we are allies, and that reason is that peace and prosperity in europe is essential to peace and prosperity of the united states. that was the reason we created nato in 1949. it was the reason why we established free trading relationships so we could have prosperous and peaceful ale lies and we could trade with and not go to war with each other because you know what happens when europeans go to war with each other. that s what happened in 1914. it happened again in 1939, and twice the united states had to deploy large numbers of forces at great personal, human and financial cost to end those wars. we have now had 70 years of peace. that s a pretty darn good investment. we all remember well that first nato summit press trump went to in brussels opening up the headquarters there, and he soured that summit most people would say. what has he learned since? do you expect this to have a similar vibe to it now that he has met with a number of these european leaders one-on-one at the white house? how worried are you that he could scuttle the summit? i m concerned. i don t care there is going to be much difference in the rhetoric that the president will bring to nato this time around, and by the way, he will do it on the heels of a failed g7 summit where we, the united states and post-trade sanctions on our allies for national security reasons, arguing that depending on steel imports from countries like canada or germany was a national security threat. so the financial situation remains the same. the allies are spending more on the defense. according to the white house, not enough, and we now have this add added trade dimension to it. we will have a tough summit. one that will leave the allies more divided rather than more united and it s unfortunate if it, in fact, turns out that way because with increased investments by the europeans and with the deployment of european and american troops flashed forward in eastern europe, we have bolstered defense and we have a stronger and more capable nato. last question here. i want you to look at this summit in concert with the one that comes after it, being president putin. writing in the new york times about how this could be an effective meet fg he took the winds from the summit, and rode that into helsinki. if there was a unified voice he used with those allies, that would be a different things entirely. how optimistic are you with that second summit t o, the one taki place in helsinki? it depends very much on how he manage the first summit. if we come out of the brussels meeting with the allies fully united and the president claiming a big win, which he can by saying the europeans are doing more in defense and look what a little pushing has been able to accomplish, showing that we are capable and willing to defend every single country of nato, he then arrives in helsinki with a strong, united nato behind its back, and can make the case that aggression against ukraine is unacceptable and needs to be reversed, that the violation of the cease fire that putin and trump negotiated back in last july in syria is something that needs to end, and that the kind of interference that we have seen in american and also european elections needs to end. so the possibility of a great summit is there. it all depends on what happens in brussels. thank you very much. that s the former ambassador to nato. appreciate the time. my pleasure. up next, the rescue of the world is watching 4 of the 12 boys. we ll get a live report from thailand on their condition and the race against time to save those boys. we came here for the. and we got to know the friends of our friends. and we found others just like us. and just like that we felt a little less alone. but then something happened. we had to deal with spam, fake news, and data misuse. that s going to change. from now on, facebook will do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy. because when this place does what it was built for, then we all get a little closer. booking a flight doesn t have to be expensive. just go to priceline. it s the best place to book a flight a few days before my trip and still save up to 40%. just tap and go. for the best savings on flights, go to priceline. just for a shot. with neulasta onpro patients get their dayr back to be with family, or just to sleep in. strong chemo can put you at risk of serious infection. in a key study neulasta reduced the risk of infection from 17% to 1%, a 94% decrease. neulasta onpro is designed to deliver neulasta the day after chemo and is used by most patients today. neulasta is for certain cancer patients receiving strong chemotherapy. do not take neulasta if you re allergic to it or neupogen (filgrastim). an incomplete dose could increase infection risk. ruptured spleen, sometimes fatal as well as serious lung problems allergic reactions, kidney injuries and capillary leak syndrome have occurred. report abdominal or shoulder tip pain, trouble breathing or allergic reactions to your doctor right away. in patients with sickle cell disorders, serious, sometimes fatal crises can occur. the most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. ask your doctor about neulasta onpro. pay no more than $25 per dose with copay card. my secret visitors. hallucinations and delusions. the unknown parts of living with parkinson s. what plots they unfold, but only in my mind. over 50% of people with parkinson s will experience hallucinations or delusions during the course of their disease. if your loved one is experiencing these symptoms, talk to your parkinson s specialist. there are treatment options that can help. my visitors should be the ones i want to see. we turn back now to the dramatic news. the cave operation dubbed d-day. four boys were pulled out. they received treatment at the mouth of the cave. then they were transported to an area hospital where an entire floor is dedicated to their treatment and recovery. with more on the massive multinational effort to bring these boys and their coach home safely, we have a coordinator of the u.s. national cave rescue commission. i want to ask you first of all, how much of a template there is for a rescue like this. over the last few days, we have heard what they have been weighing, how they might go n how difficult this might be. is there a template for a cave rescue like this one? well, from a flooding standpoint, there is a template. from the length and difficulty of the rescue and the technical resources necessary, no there really is no template. this is pretty much set the new bar. i want to read here from the washington post writing about what happened in that cave about this first part of the rescue effort. according to infographics released by the thai government, the boys were each attached to a diver with another position behind them as they made their way through the dark, murky waters that clogged the cave s passageways. each boy because fitted with a face mask, connected to an air tank at especially narrow part, boys had to be released from their backs and rolled. how impressive is this? you know what s involved in rescues like these. to get boys, many of whom we gathered don t know how to swim, and they were trained over the last couple of days, how monumental an undertaking was this? it was are you there? yeah. how monumental was this? this was an incredibly monumental undertaking. the good thing was they had a few days to work with the boys to get them some training to get their strength up a little bit, and develop the trust from the boys with the people who are rescuing them, and that trust was very, very important to the success of the mission so far. also, during that time that they were doing the training, what they were doing was psychologically preparing the boys for what they are going to do as well as giving them something concrete to do to help their own situation, and that is immensely important not only for the immediate morale, but for the long-term repercussions for these youngsters. with the u.s. national cave rescue commission, thank you very much for the time. you re welcome. up next, revolving door. a cable news executive joining the trump administration as rumors swirl about chief of staff john kelly s future. what does the turmoil mean for the administration that has already seen more turnover than any white house in recent history? woman: i stay active by staying in rhythm. and to keep up this pace, i drink boost optimum. boost optimum with 5 in 1 advanced nutrition helps support muscle, energy, bone, normal immune function, and vision. boost optimum. be up for life. well, bill shine lost his job at fox news, but he has a new one at the white house. plenty of folks are wondering if his role at fox will create more problems for the trump administration. joining me now is gabe sherman of vanity fair, and he is also the author of the book, the loudest voice in the room. gabe, great to have you with me here. let s start with bill shine and what he s bring to the white house. how did this come about first of all, and what vision might he have for changing the communication shop in the white house? bill shine was brought to the white house by trump s closest outside adviser, sean hannity. he was for years, sean hannity s producer at fox news before he ascended into the management ranks. sean hannity brokered that introduction and helped develop that relationship. he brought bill shine to the white house several months back at a dinner with the president, and clearly they hit it off, and. president wooed him into joining the white house. bill shine does not as we were talking briefly, he does not have experience dealing with the press which is going to be part of his brief here at the white house. he was a programming executive. he was roger ailes right hand man, and he is going to be responsible for broadcasting the white house s message and dealing with the national media. that is clearly not part of his background, but donald trump felt because he has that connection with the right wing fox audience, clearly he knows how to get that message out there. there is some public scrutiny at him after the tweets his wife allegedly sent out. in and around the sexual harassment scandals at white house. it seems clear this white house didn t care about that. clearly not. i think of it almost as an act of trolling. bill shine was too toxic for fox news. he was forced out in the wake of roger ailes sexual harassment scandal. because of these questions swirling around his involvement. he was known as roger ailes enabler. he was one of his closest confidants and knew about his dirty tricks and harassing private investigators. he knew about the extent of the sexual harassment problem at the network and didn t help either clean it up or cover it up in some instances. this is a hire that has a lot of baggage and it opens up donald trump to his own women problems. clearly this white house does not matter does not care about that. he was not named communications director. that position still sits vacant. sarah huckabee sanders doing that on an interim basis as she is also press secretary. as donald trump became president, five individuals have held that position of communications director. you see them there. bill shine, not communications director, but filling a role of that capacity. he ll oversee communications as chief of staff. i think it s clear the communications director is donald trump. never before have we had a president who communicates with the media and the public in such an open way. i mean i m just struck by how few interviews and how articles we read during the obama years about what president obama was saying or thinking behind closed doors. there was a much more disciplined and orderly process of getting the message out. donald trump likes to kind of be in realtime and use his twitter and sort of daily gaggles with reporters to get his thoughts out there to the world. that makes someone s job to organize and structure a message almost impossible because whatever the communications director does, the president is going to basically disregard it and do whatever he wants. you look at john kelly, the chief of staff who said from day one, he is managing down. he is not managing up. yes, he tried to shape the message in some capacity. maybe earlier on than he has been now, but what does this mean for the larger apparatus of the administration? yeah. you look at who is calling the shots. having bill shine in there, how does that change the relationship john kelly might have to him or the president? i have been hearing that john kelly is telling people he hopes to make it a year, right? in august, that will be the one-year mark as his time of chief after staff. it s just further evidence that the president wants yes people around him. john kelly has been moved to the side. he is now forcibly involved in major policy or staffing issues and so the president wants people like john bolton, larry kudlow, and now bill shine who will report directly to him and execute things on what he wants to do. there is not really a formal chief of staff at this point, and he is the chief of staff of his own white house. gabe, thank you very much. thank you. he is a special correspondent for vanity fair. up next, seeing red. the democrats and republican leaning states as the senate prepares to decide on president trump s pending pick for the supreme court. let s do this. 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(oh!) going out for a bite. going anytime. rewarded! learn more at theexplorercard.com welcome back. i m david gura. a new name has emerged as a fourth contender for the supreme court vacant seat. judge thomas hardiman is now on the short list. that is according to the new york times. judge hardiman served on the third circuit court of appeals with president trump s older sister, maryanne trump barry. she recommended him last year to mr. trump as a good choice for the as democratic senators in red states running for re-election face a tough decision on whether to vote for or against the president s pick. joining me now is robert barnes, who covers the high court for the washington post, and hugh hewitt, an msnbc contributor. hugh, let me start with you and this news being reported by the new york times. you had thrown your support mind judge kethledge, the michigander. this is what i heard about judge hardeman. people close to the process said the president had found him likeable, but comparatively dull and some conservatives who support his guided mr. trump s thinking about the courts have voiced concern about judge kethledge on issues like immigration. let me get your reaction to that, and what does that tell you about the process the president is using here to pick the next justice of the supreme court? good afternoon, david. i think the president has done a masterful job of setting up a huge audience for whomever he introduces to the american public tomorrow night. that is a big win for getting some momentum out of the blocks for your nominee. what he s got to be careful about is having a spin-out. a harriet miers kind of disaster because of unvetted or late arriving concerns about a nominee. or the worst of all worlds, david souter. this case, johnson being played by rick santorum, vis-a-vis hardeman. i think the nominee who puts the most points on the board is raymond kethledge. i don t know any of these nominees, but he touches religious liberty, he is very solid on the second amendment. he has a conceal/carry permit. so i still think i wouldn t write off raymond kethledge and wouldn t be surprised if the president was head-faking the new york times. robert barnes, on that point, the question is, what do we know about this point? to hugh s point, the president wants to have this big reveal. he did that with neil gorsuch. he s trying to do that again. when you look at the gamesmanship, when you look at the politics surrounding this, how is this crucible different from what you have seen in the past when presidents have put forth nominees? well, you know, you have to sort of separate other presidents from this president. yes. and i think this president, as hugh said, very much wants a big reveal. he got that with gorsuch. you ll remember that he kept it fairly quiet until just before the announcement. and, you know, i think that he likes all the speculation about it. you know, our reporters are hearing the same thing about hardeman, that the president has been asking a lot of questions and talking about him this weekend while he s in new jersey. but, you know, i think that there are four finalists and i think we ll see a lot of jockeying back and forth as the supporters of those people, you know, try to make their points and see who can get his ear. this was, of course, the subject of some debate on the sunday shows today. let s take a listen to what the senior senator from south carolina, senator lindsey graham, had to say about this. this is a nightmare for red state democrats to pose a highly qualified nominee, and all four of these people are highly qualified, been on the court, know what they re doing, mainstream judges. so red state democrats are going to have a very hard decision. let s tick through a couple of them. senator heidi heitkamp, joe manchin of west virginia, senator joe donnelly. you could talk about the role that michigan senior senator might play in all of this. hugh hewitt, help me understand the political parameters of this. we don t have a nominee yet, yet we have seen a lot of lobbying on capitol hill already. the new york times reporting that mitch mcconnell is backing either two candidates, raymond kethledge or thomas hardeman, suggesting they would have an easier path to confirmation. help us understand the divide in the republican party when it comes to the short list. it s the key question, david. you ve got to make sure that senators colin and murkowski do not lead. you can t take points off the board. and they will be very hard pressed to vote against either judge kethledge or judge hardeman, i believe. on the other hand, how do you get heidi heitkamp, joe manchin and john tess extra under the most pressure, claire mccaskill? i think it is easiest to lose one of the two republicans with judge barrett, because she s so new to the bench, and has had the sparkup with dianne feinstein. it is easiest to bring democrats with judge kethledge. i m afraid you might have the base spin on hardeman, and on cavanaugh. so that s why i keep coming back to kethledge. robert barnes, a question about diversity on the bench. everyone sitting on the supreme court bench right now went to harvard law school or yale. there is some indication the president might be interested in pulling someone from another school. judge kethledge, a wolverine, and judge barrett, of course, went to rhodes college in tennessee, i believe. how important is that? how does that manifest itself on the bench over the years when you have people who have come from different parts of the country or different educational backgrounds? well, i think that what you see is when their backgrounds are very different, they are very different. i don t know that what law school they went to made much of a difference. i mean, justice thomas and justi justice sewed my your went to yale. i guess i don t put that much stock in that. the president last time was very proud of justice gorsuch s ivy league credentials. and so i think it s who gets along who the president feels most comfortable with, not where they went to school. great to speak with both of you. robert barnes who covered the supreme court for the washington post. my thanks to hugh hewitt. thank you very much for the time. thank you, david. we ll head back to thailand in our next hour. four boys rescued from the cave. eight more remain inside. the latest on efforts to save them, as well. most people. but on the inside, i feel chronic, widespread pain. fibromyalgia may be invisible to others, but my pain is real. fibromyalgia is thought to be caused by overactive nerves. lyrica is believed to calm these nerves. i m glad my doctor prescribed lyrica. for some, lyrica delivers effective relief from fibromyalgia pain. and improves function. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions, suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worse depression, unusual changes in mood or behavior, swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling or blurry vision. common side effects: dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain, swelling of hands, legs, and feet. don t drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don t drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. with less pain, i can do more. ask your doctor about lyrica. if you re eligible, you could pay as little as $25 a month. this time, it s his turn. you have 4.3 minutes to yourself. this calls for a taste of cheesecake. philadelphia cheesecake cups. rich, creamy cheesecake with real strawberries. find them with the refrigerated desserts. ca with my bladder leakage, the products i ve tried just didn t fit right. they were very saggy. it s getting in the way of our camping trips. but with new sizes, depend fit-flex is made for me. introducing more sizes for better comfort. new depend fit-flex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit. hey, everybody. i m david gura at msnbc headquarters in new york. thai officials decide now is the time to rescue that young soccer team trapped inside a cave. part one of the operation is a success. as for the rest of the mission, we will only get that answer in the hours to come. full schedule. president trump preparing to return to washington, preparing for what may be one of the most important weeks of his presidency. what lies ahead as he faces some of our most critical allies, allies he has not been afraid to criticize in recent days. and gangster wrap. secretary of state mike pompeo responding to north korea s claims that his recent meetings there were gangster-like. plus, new name. the person you haven t heard of that s now on top of president trump s list to become the next justice of the u.s. supreme court. we begin this hour with breaking news from the country of thailand, the latest on what was dubbed d-day by the rescue mission leader in an effort to extract 12 boys and their coach out of that flooded underground cave. four boys have been brought
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