interesting. solid conservative, excellent legislator. i think es he s one of these people you want in congress. a person of tremendous integrity whether you agree with him or disagree. he knows full well he s going to face a primary opponent and trump will campaign against him but in the land of barry gold water, we re going to see now a defiant and maverick mccain and someone in flake with this book and his campaign is going to elevate conservativism again. the ultimately they need to find a way to govern. the to go to voters to say give us your trust to move the country in a new direction. that s not just about the economy and the government s intervention in the economy. so you have the republicans making a move towards conscience or so they say and chris, you have this other blow to the president in the form of a lawsuit, former d.c. cop accusing fox news of manufacturing a story, using the death of a dnc staffer to distract from the russia investigation. we talked to the donor at the center of it last night here. ed po towski, going to the family with a tip that revealed nothing about the truth. how big a deal is this lawsuit to fox news, part of it is met with shaun spiean spicer. and the president is alleged to have read this piece. i think that last piece you mentioned is the most important. obviously theatrics is one side of the story. is proof is soft. in h a lawsuit. so, but the fact that that allegation, that there s those e-mails are texts in which it says the president read this and wants it out. first of all, why is the president reading a story before it s published. that s number one. number two, it does suggest an involvement in a story that is, at root, in a tremendously sad story about the murder of a young political operative. that is conspiracy sheerries aside, this is about seth rich in a robbery gone wrong not according to chris, according to the police. so, the i think we are all now familiar with this sort of stuff, which is the twisting around in the shaping of events to push a political perspective. the when you have a major network again, alleged in a lawsuit when you have a major network and potentially the white house involved, it s all the more unsavory and all the more hypocritical if the charges against the white house end up being true. because donald trump s favorite thing to do is run down the so called fake news which is essentially translated news he doesn t like. this is actual fake news. this is created from whole cloth, taking grief of a family over the tragic loss of a son and trying to use it for political gain when you no he there s no there, there. let s add to this. donald trump rose to political prominence by advancing a lie about the president of the united states not being born in america. it was nonsense and a racist lie. that s how he launched himself. he s very comfortable in the murky end of swamp. that s where he s operated. that s a fact. he doesn t get the benefit of the doubt. of course he s interested in trafficking this filth. he was up there saying go wikilea wikileaks, it s so irresponsible on its face and it s rooted in something else. not only the hideous disrespect for a grieving family but that somehow what russia did to attempt to manipulate our election is a product of this deep state conspiracy instead of the intelligence agencies who make mistakes but have worked really hard to protect this country and are working to protect his administration as well whether he believes them or not. there are real threats out there from russia to the united states, to our electoral system trying to be influenced and he doesn t care about that because he only sees that as a question of his legitimacy. the that s the fund mental problem we see here. it s not hyperbole. if you start to add these together. the idea of fake news, it is lies and conspiracies that undemocratic regimes use as their currency. there s more to come on this story. because the lawsuit by rod wheeler, the detective has just been filed so there are certainly more investigation and threads that will come out. gentlemen, thank you very much for all of this. as david and chris just pointed out el oh kweptsly and you made the same point earlier this morning. it comes down to trust and that ic tas us to the other top story. the white house now admitting that the president did weigh in on whatever that means, 0en that misleading statement by his son about that meeting with a russia lawyer. take a listen to the latest spin. the statement that don junior issued is true. there s no inaccuracy in the statement. the president weighed in h as any father would, based on the limited information that he had. why do i call well would beious beiously reed reading off notes. they had been saying initially. that is called spin. so let s discuss with former federal prosecutor and deputy special counsel, peter ziedenberg. how do you see this shift from no role to weighed in. meaning full? not meaningful? why? it s of a piece. obviously this is something that s happened time and time again. anyone who goes out for the administration and stakes out a position, it s just a matter of time, it seems before that position is undercut. but i think more importantly, it really poses a legal risk for everybody who was involved on air force one and who played a part in drafting that statement. why? because this is taken you have to look at the context. okay? so this is an ongoing criminal investigation. the first thing that defense attorneys will always tell a client who s the subject of an investigation is do not talk about this case with anyone. and in particular, do not talk about this case with anyone else involved in the case. and the reason for that is if the government prosecutors find out there were conversations, they are immediately suspicious and the first thing that they re going to want to find out is what were they talking about and were they trying to match their stories, and basically obstruct justice. but you have let me just get in there the analysis to help people out with this. because the president s theory is sufficiencyargument. okay fine we weren t telling the truth when i said i didn t play a role. it s not illegal for me to shape the message. i think it s all bogus so i m going to craft my own narrative. it s certainly true that lying to the public is not a crime. and putting out an inaccurate press release is not a crime. so, i don t think anyone s suggests that in and of itself you ve got a case based on false statements made in a press release, but, step back. if you re a prosecutor and looking at an obstruction of justice case, you re thinking in your mind a narrative. the you re thinking literally already about what an opening argument would make, what would sound like in your own head if you gave it to a jury. and at least what i would be thinking they re thinking is that they fired james comey why? we have the makings let s say a theory of obstruction. the theory is that he s afraid of what the russian s investigation s going to turn over. the so now you fast-forward and you ve got this e-mail, which is highly incriminating. it basically says the russian government wants to help the elect donald trump and we ve got dirt on hillary clinton, and three of his top staff, including his son, his campaign manager and son-in-law take the meeting and attend. the view from where i would be sitting if i were a prosecutor is that s a highly incriminating meeting. and their reaction to this news is also something you want to watch. if they really believed the meeting was a nothing, a nothing burger is what they said originally, then why all the deception about what went on? and why is the president involving himself in coming up with what appears to be a false recitation of the facts. and the theory would be because he s afraid of the truth. and that feeds into this overarching nar aive it. the so in and of itself, not a im kroo. no question about it. but as a - or he just doesn t like the suggestion so trying to do everything he can to tamp it down. i want a quick take from you on this. is what the russians would call what aboutism? forget about what trump and his staffers may or may not have done, what about the clintons, speech that bill clinton gave and the actions taken buy the secretary of state and money that came into the foundation. is there anything there you believe deserves parallel concern and consideration? no. and more importantly i don t think there s anything there that bob mueller and his team is going to consider relevant. a prosecutor s going to look at the case on all fours and say is this a case i can go to a jury and persuade 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt. hillary clinton s uranium deal is not going to enter into that analysis. bob mueller s a registered republican. put in place by the deputy acting ag that trump had celebrated and relied on. former prosecutor peter, appreciate your perspective. thank you. we have breaking news right now to get to flight data reveals that that north korean int intercontinental ballistic test came within miles of the flight path of an air france passenger jet. an air france spokesperson says the test zones do not interfere with the flight paths however since north korea never announces its test, airlines do not know when or where there could be danger. meanwhile the u.s. is testing another intercontinental missile. officials say this is not in response to the recent missile tests. as we mentioned republican senators are breaking with the president on health care. the a gop senator is going to join us to talk about what they re doing and why. at the lexus golden opportunity tesales event before it ends. choose from the is turbo, es 350 or nx turbo for $299 a month for 36 months if you lease now. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. ex-poliplosive news. concocting a fake news story about a murder of a dnc staffer. reporter: there s a possibility this is a guy who provided two wikileaks, all those dnc e-mails a false story could have fingerprints reaching all the way to the white house. claiming fox conconductcted a s if it was true that seth rich gave wikileaks the dnc e-mails wouldn t that blow the whole russia collusion? reporter: that is part of this pro trump conspiracy theory. richard s theory says his death has been exploited by right wing media. at the center of the story is a wealthy republican donor. claims they were in conhoots contriving a link. wheeler worked with ba to you ski. it s very consistent with a person with my experience to begin to think perhaps there were e-mail communications between seth and kick can i leeks. rich s family says that s not true and d.c. police belief his killing was a botched robbery. the nothing politically motivated. but that didn t stop fox. it sure doesn t look like a robbery. the looks like a murder. the. after days of coverage back this may, the network retracted the story. now, months later, wheeler s explosive lawsuit says he was misquoted, defamed by fox. i do believe i was used as a pawn in this entire thing. reporter: and his suit goes much further claiming the story was coordinated with the white house. i think their goal based on the e-mails and voice mails i got from ed butowsky was to bunk this. the this whole idea something was coordinated with rod wheeler that s absolute nonsense. reporter: this text message is one the suits most eye popping claims. not to as any e. anymore pressure but the president just read the article. he wants it out immediately. the it s all you up to you. butowsky now says he was just kidding around. this was tongue in cheek talking. reporter: the white house pushing back as well. the president didn t have knowledge of the story. the white house didn t have involvement in the story. reporter: but there is a link to the white house. butowsky and wheeler met with then secretary sean spicer a month before the story came out. butowsky telling cnn he wanted to present audio. did he know why you wanted to meet with him. no. as a matter of fact yeah. because i said to sean ai was going to be in town. the my conversation with sean about this recording lasted about one minute. he said, ed, i don t know anything about it. i don t want to know anything about it. i can t do anything. reporter: spicer says it was just a ten-minute courtesy meeting. but the suit claims spicer asked to be kept abreast of developments. as for fox it calls the accusation completely erroneous. our next guest was a target of russia s meddling in the u.s. election when his e-mails were hacked and leaked. john was the conscious-nangs very much for being here. good morning. what do you think of this surreal and terribly sad story about the murder of seth rich and this new development in h this lawsuit that connects the white house with this story, rod wheeler, who has filed a lawsuit. he was the former d.c. homicide detective who says that the white house is very interested in h deflicting away from the russia investigation and trying to basically pin it on seth rich leaking this. well, couple things. the first of all, i think it was despicable that fox news was peddling that and i think what s really amazing is this now connection possibly between the white house reknow that sean spicer was at least informed. we know he went to the same podium and said he didn t know anything about it after that meeting. there are e-mails implicating the president. so it s really the lowest of the low. and on top of that, just last week, the president wined and dined shaun han nertty who was the chief and bill shine who had to resign from fox. the some reporting that shine may be brought into the white house. so the whole thing is horrible, i think, and i think that the rich family has really suffered a lot as a result of the lack of values both at fox news and the white house. whenever the white house is asked, at least in the press briefings, about the russia investigation, and anything, any of the threads, they pretty quickly deflict to well, why aren t you investigating hillary clinton. this just happened. sarah huckabee sand ders was just asked the question and you can see this plain as day. let me play this for you and get your response. you guys are focussed on a meeting that don jr. had no consequence when the democrats actually colluded with a foreign government. if you want to talk about a relationship with russia, look nor further than the clintons. bill clinton was paid half a million dollars. hillary clinton allowed the uranium to be sold. clinton campaign s chairman s brother lobbied against sanctions against russian s largest bank. if you want to talk about having relations, look nor further than there. i don t know if you can see on your screen but she s reading from notes. yeah. this is what they do. they try to divert attention. those stories she went through have been knocked down by the mainstream media. le but i think just like the seth rich story at fox, what they like to try to do is throw dust some place else so they at least give the alt-right media and fox news something to talk about. when we ought to be talking about that meeting with don trump jr. and the fact that the president dictated, according to some sources, at least participated, in a statement that was grossly misleading. think about that. this is trump family values. the kids come to the president and say, dad, it s time to come clean. we d better talk about what happened at that meeting. and what s the dad s response in no. that might hurt me. put out a grossly misleading statement, which fell apart within a couple days. what do you think is the upshot? h. they have a lot to answer for. yeah. but what do you think that somebody has been exposed to more legal jeopardy as a result of that? yeah. think that you heard that from the former prosecutor in the valerie plain case. i think they all to the o. got together, the special prosecutor, mr. mueller is certainly going to be suspicious about that. the and i think adam schiff, the ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee, i think put his finger on this. the they may not have evidence of collusion yet but they sure have evidence and this meeting is evidence of init ent to collude. don jr. s statement this is great and influencing the timing of when they might use the information. remember, this all goes back. the they like to say there s no crime. this all goes back to crimes that were committed. the hacking of the dnc, hacking of my e-mails, hacking of other clinton campaign staff e-mails. those are crimes committed by the russians, and now we know that if at at minimum, they were encouraging them to use the fruits of those crimes. i want to get to an op ed you wrote for the washington post in which you re offering free advice to the new chief of staff, john kelly for the white house from you, from your position as former chief of staff. your first tidbit was don t take the job. he s clearly rejected that advice, now that he s in the job and in the white house, what advice do you have for him? yeah. as i said, that had been overtaken by events before i wrote it. look, i have tremendous respect for general kelly. he has a very difficult job. i think day one, he got rid of anthony scaramucci, at least got him out of the communications director job. i think that the reason his job is going to be so tough is that there s a culture in the white house that really is sort of knows no boundaries, he s got to contend with a president who even after appointing him, has said that he s not going to stop tweeting. s he going to continue his current practices. so, i think he s tried to show some discipline in the white house. hopefully that will be successful. we all want the country to succeed. and he has a tremendous record of service. he s also got to reestablish relationships with leaders on both sides of the aisle on capitol hill. i think the white house, again, has no credibility. so i think it really is incumbent upon him to personally try, as a man of his word, to establish those relationships. as i noted in my op ed, he s got to be the bull work against interferen interference. at the president will try to continue to interfee what s going on at the justice department and kelly has to be firm and say we re not going to do that. that will get us into more trouble. before i let you go. just because are so close to the clintons and hillary clinton and you were obviously so involved in her campaign, are you surprised and is hillary clinton surprised at how often the president invokes her name, how often the white house talks about her. we are on monday 200 days into the trump administration and it seems that not a week goes by where he doesn t mention her. you know, it s unprecedented. you never saw that behavior from any other president who s talking about the person they beat. i think it really just bugs the hell out of him than she got 3 million more votes than he did. he keeps coming back to that. i loose sleep about that every night. but i think partly strategic to try to deflect attention from his problems, but i think he s really under her she s really under his skin, because he knows that in h the popular vote, that she beat him and beat him solidly. what does she say about that? well, look, i think she ll have something to say about that when her book comes out mid september. i think she s reflected on the mistakes that she made, what she might have done different, but i think she ll also talk about where the country is and how to move forward. that s what she s always done in her life which is when she s gotten knocked down tried to make a positive contribution coming out of that. i think that s what this ook book will attempt to do. thank you so much for your perspective. thanks for having me on. all right. so only six lawmakers have ever voted against confirming fbi director nominees. five of those noes happened yesterday whoooo. looking for a hotel that fits. .your budget? tripadvisor now searches over. .200 sites to find you the. .hotel you want at the lowest price. grazi, gino! find a price that fits. tripadvisor. the president who said that the aca should be allowed to implode and fail and he wanted to do his part by not giving the subsidies that insurance companies are relying on to keep premiums where they are specifically for lower-income people. how real is this? how sustained will it be? there s some other big agenda items to discuss so let s get the take of democratic senator ed marky who serves on the fon relations committee. forgive me skepticism but is it true that democrats are taking this gesture from certain republicans and trying to do the work of the american people instead of just playing to political advantage? well, two things happened last thursday and friday morning. first, the democrats and republicans worked together to put tobt together a set of sanctions that were done in a bipartisan fashion and put restrictions upon what donald trump could do in lifting those sanctions. and so, that was a got moment for the senate. then later on that night, on a partisan vote of the republicans tried hard but couldn t receive all of the votes of all of the members and failed to repeal the affordable care act. the and now, it seems that lamar alexander and other republicans are reaching across the aisle and i do think it s happening because i think that s the natural inclination of senators, to try to find a way to solve these problems. because otherwise, the insurance markets could collapse, premiums could rise. we have to work together. and i am very heartened that perhaps this was an inflexion point and that democrat the and republicans are going to start to work together on behalf of the american people. now, there s no guarantee. there are a lot of other issues issuesissues. the budget ceiling, tax bill. but hopefully this is a new phase after seven months of donald trump saying it s my way or the highway. it s the rule of trump, not the rule of law. maybe we are moving on to a new era where the senate exerts its constitutional powers and lets the executive wait for the united states to dispose. the president can propose but now the senate seems to begin to understand and work towards having us exercise our prerogatives as well. is so how do you reconcile this suggested move away from what you could call tragic comedy and towards comity, and threats about not going with republicans on the debt ceiling which is upcoming in september. how real it this intention to try to work with the other side? my concern is over the issue of surveillance and this tension that exists between privacy, liberty on the one hand and security on the other hand. as each one of those devices becomes more and more ubiquitous, we have to decide whether or not we want legally to have a back door be built into every device so there will be ubiquitous surveillance in our country. i think that in the public statements that were made, i did not hear an answer which gave me confidence that that balance towards the protection of the privacy, the protection of the liberty of americans was basically a part of his philosop philosophy. the i ve been working on that issue for 20 years going back to the clinton administration trying to build a clipper chip into every one of these devices. it s something i continued along with another senator to raise concerns about in our country. so it was policy not personal when it came to chris ray. that leads us to the last topic, which is if you want to talk about congress taking its power back, in your case, the senate, there is no topic that goes under that heading more directly than the abrogation of constitutional duty to declare war that congress has, not the president, and giving presidents, not just trump, obama before him, bush before him, arguably, clinton before him that you ve given away that duty and want to start debating the authorization for use of military force. the to remind people we re still operating under one written in 2001 yet the world changed so much. wh what are you hoping happens. in 2001 we voted for the use of military force. it was after two planes were high jacked from logan airport in boston and flown into the world trade center. we wanted justice for those who had perpetrated that act. the now we re 16 years later. no one who voted for that authorization for the use of military force thought it would be used as a blank check to take us into country after country after group after group. so it s time for us to begin a new debate about which countries, which groups, which level of force, which types of force can be used under that 2001 authorization. we need a new authorization. and then we need to have sunset provisions included so we periodically redebate how that new authorization is being used. we haven t had a full-blown senatorial or house debate on this issue in 16 years, and no one who voted for that first authorization ever imagined how that power would be used. and there s a suggestion that congress has been ducking their duty allowing presidents could carry the ball. let s see if that schajs. stay on the story. thank you for being on. okay. the chris. i m going to read sports now. the an i credible play you have to see to believe. the indians outfielder austin jackson flipping over a wall to make a catch. we have all the details in the bleacher report. but first an ohio man overcomes adk shn to become an iron man 28 times over. recovery can be real. and that is the subject of this week s turning points. everything bad that happened in my life and everything that is now currently good in my life is a direct result of my real mother committing suicide when i was three and a half years old. le when i was growing up i felt abandoned. i felt angry. depressed. i took my first drink of clol at the age of 13. for the next 13 years, i was a full blown alcoholic, cocaine, heroin, crack. i got my awakening at the age of 26. received my third drunk you can driving charge an that s when i decided to turn my life around. the day i quit, i went cold turkey. exercise helped me deal with depression, from wanting to use drugs again. what made me pursue the iron man was simply the enorm myty of it. but i didn t know how to swim. i wasn t a bike rider and wasn t running. about six years into my sobriety i started doing the iron man. i ve done 28 around the world. we want to talk about how awesome it is to be sober. my inspiration was simply helping other addicts to show them what can be done when you re not using drugs. i never in a million years thought that i would be alive. let alone doing what i m doing today. and that s the best message i can deliver to someone who s currently battling addictions. turning point. i m a concrete mason. i own my own company. i had some severe fatigue, some funny rashes. finally, listening to my wife, went to a doctor. and i became diagnosed with hodgkin s lymphoma .that diagnosis was tough. i had to put my trust in somebody. when i first met steve, we recommended chemotherapy, and then we did high dose therapy and then autologous stem cell transplant. unfortunately, he went on to have progressive disease i thought that he would be a good candidate for immune therapy. it s an intravenous medicine that is going to make his immune system evade the tumor. with chemotherapy, i felt rough, fatigue, nauseous. and with immune therapy we ve had such a positive result. i m back to working hard. i ve honestly never felt this great. i believe the future of immunotherapy at ctca is very bright. the evolution of cancer care is here. learn more at cancercenter.com appointments available now. what, what? pepsoriasis does that. it was tough getting out there on stage. i wanted to be clear. i wanted it to last. so i kept on fighting. i found something that worked. and keeps on working. now? they see me. see me. see if cosentyx could make a difference for you- cosentyx is proven to help people with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. .find clear skin that can last. don t use if you re allergic to cosentyx. before starting cosentyx, you should be checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. if you have inflammatory bowel disease, tell your doctor if symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. never give up. see me. see me. clear skin can last. don t hold back. .ask your dermatologist if cosentyx can help you find clear skin that lasts. all right. talk about incredible. any major league outfielder can make a catch. but are they willing to give up the body to do so? we may have seen a certain choice for catch of the year. make your witness in the bleacher report. chris if anyone s going to see a highlight, this is the one. it s still trending number one. unless superman gets signed by a team, cleveland s austin jackson will have catch of the year. watch this. this guy stretches out like my waist line after waterfall house. s he 30 years old somehow keep the an eye on the ball while jumping and running into and flipping over the wall at fenway park into the bullpen. he robs red sox hanley ramirez of a home run. he can t belief it. the they didn t even know if he was going to make the roster after spring training. but sacrificing the body. unreal. . indians ended up losing to the red sox 10-12 in this one but austin jackson winning in my booj of book. i do that all the time but by accident. let me just tell you the only inaccurate thing he said. wire is in ridiculous shape. makes me look like a chub by toddler. good stuff. next. that wasn t it. no. we have more. no, wifi. wifi. it s not a question, it s a thing. take on summer right with ford, america s best-selling brand. now with summer s hottest offer. get zero percent for seventy-two months plus an additional thousand on top of your trade-in. during the ford summer sales event get zero percent for seventy-two months plus an additional thousand on top of your trade-in. offer ends soon. if you ve got a life, you gotta swiffer i found the perfect come in this afternoon. oh. no. no! when the unexpected strikes. don t worry we ve got you covered. the hartford strikes back. time for the good stuff. cafe owner makes a mean cup of coffee. realizes the people coming there are really craving kindness as much as anything else. we recalled a mother who couldn t get her kids down for a nap. just wanted coffee. well you are you re in luck. because you re having a bad day your coffee s free and go pick out a pastry. humanity. so it s part now what she s made a pay it forward campaign. you write down your needs or what you can provide, and it s usually taken care of about i the kindness of strangers. the how s that idea? i love this idea. enough for another book? thank you for always working in h amanda wakes up. i know that you are midway through it. all done? well, last night i picked it up because i wanted to read it for the fifth time and it got even better. oh, my gosh. i m so happy to hear that. tonight, chris will be hosting don lennon s show, cnn tonight at 10:00 p.m. you did a spectacular job last night. she was dead asleep. cnn news room with poppy harlow and john berman is going to pick up right after the break. when heartburn hits fight back fast with new tums chewy bites. fast relief in every bite. crunchy outside. chewy inside. tum tum tum tum new tums chewy bites.
green writes candidate trump seemed indifferent but changed his mind when he tried it out in a speech in january of 2015 and the place went nuts. the u.s. economy may hinge now on a throwaway catch phrase that just happened to catch on. more from cnn s sarah mur rich. has the white house offered any more information following the president s threat about shutting down the government? aside from what you saw from sarah huckabee sanders today, they haven t really given us an indication of why the president decided this is something he would be willing to shut down the government over. they also didn t offer any real explanation as to how he squares and acts like this with what you showed was a regular campaign promise. a notion that this wall was going to be built and american taxpayers wouldn t be on the hook for. since he became president, the president of mexico has made one thing very clear to president trump. they re not paying for that wall. the last time the government shut down was 2013. what happened if the administration follows through with this? the republicans are urging the president not to move forward with a plan like that. they paid the political price for this in 2013. they led to the government shutdown and the headlines were brutal and they came out every single day, stories about preschools that were closed, kids that couldn t go to preschool, programs that doled out formula for infants for low-income mothers. soldiers were killed in afghanistan who came back to the united states and their families couldn t get death benefits and couldn t get the government to pay for their funeral costs. that s the tiny sample of what happens when you shut down the government. that s the reason they re telling the president, this is not going to go over. joining us to talk about the wall, and mexico not paying for it, is jorge ramos. hor ray, for this president who ran on the whole idea that mexico was going to pay for the wall, to now be talking threatening to shut down the u.s. government, should congress not provide funding for the wall, i mean, that is a huge flip-flop. it s a big change. but i think president trump hasn t told the truth to the american people. he has to tell the people that on january 27th, according to the washington post, he had a conversation with mexican president. president pena nieto told him many times that mexico is not going to pay for the wall. and then president trump said, according to the transcripts, that he preferred that this was not going to be discussed in public. unfortunately for nieto, he didn t agree to that. right from the beginning, mexico said they were not going to pay for the wall. that s where we are right now. and on the other hand, the wall is really a stupid idea. because there s no invasion coming from mexico. the undocumented population has remained stable for over a decade. over 45% of undocumented immigrants come by plane or with a visa. even if you have a big, beautiful $20 billion wall, it s going to serve no purpose. if is interesting that in that call with the mexican president, that the president had, as you said, leaked to the washington post, the transcript of it, president trump seemed more concerned about the mexico president just publicly talking about mexico not paying for the wall, saying it would look bad for president trump. he seemed almost more concerned about the optics of it, and sort of the political ramifications for him. exactly. it was a matter of perception. and he even threatened president any eta. he said. there will be problems with the trade between mexico and the united states. that s where they are right now. they re negotiating the deal. the fact is that mexico from the beginning, everybody knew, i knew, that mexico was not going to pay for the wall. that was done during the campaign. now president trump has to tell the truth. the president s supporters will point out that crossings, across the southern border, have dropped dramatically, apprehensions have dropped dramatically since president trump took office. you and i have talked about this before. i think in the past you said fear works in stopping people from coming across. does the president deserve some credit for using the bully pulpit to reduce people crossing over? i would say two things. first of all, fear works, yes. i think president trump is incredibly unpopular in america. among some of the most hated people in latin america might be president trump and sheriff arpaio. on the other hand, it was before president trump arrived to the white house when we saw a declining in the number of mexicans coming into this country. so much, that right now, more mexicans are leaving the united states than coming to this country. it is not entirely because of donald trump, but yes, i have to admit that the number of immigrants trying to cross illegally from mexico to the united states has been reduced, of course. in the president s speech, you mentioned joe arpaio, he spoke about joe arpaio in his speech in phoenix, strongly suggesting that he will pardon sheriff joe arpaio, or the former sheriff, who we should point out, his immigration crackdowns led to a federal conviction for federal contempt of court. if the president does pardon sheriff arpaio, it certainly played well in the crowd in phoenix. i m wondering what it says to latinos across the united states many who see arpaio as a lightning rod in immigration issues. first, sheriff joe arpaio is not another fine person. sheriff arpaio violated the constitution. sheriff arpaio discriminated against latinos. sheriff arpaio has been accused and proven guilty of racial profiling. in other words, he s been accused and proven guilty of racist behavior. it s also startling to many people he s talking about pardoning joe arpaio just days after drawing a moral equivalence between, you know, neo-nazis and those who were protesting against them. i mean, how much moral capital has he lost, do you think, in the recent days? well, a lot. you know, we are not the problem. it is not the it is not us that we are making up things. here we have a precedent when the past has made racist, sexist and xen ohphobic remarks. this is a president who equated white supremacists to those protesting racism. this is a president who described very fine people, those marching with neo-nazis. so clearly, the problem is not with us, it is with president trump. you know, i ve been hearing people saying that he s unfit to be president. and that he shouldn t be in the white house. well, in a democracy like ours, the one who wins the election, stays in the white house, and he won the election. but i m getting ready for four years with president trump. but this means also that we as journalists, we have the responsibility to call him out if he lies. and he lies a lot according to the washington post, more than 1,000 times since last january. we have to say he s lying. if he makes racist statements, we have to say he s making racist statements. the deal is this, when in doubt, more journalism. if he attacks us, then more journalism. that s what we should do. jorge ramos, appreciate your time. thank you. thank you. just ahead tonight, call it republican warfare, sism and what it signifies when it comes back. update on the white nationalist when he was armed to the teeth. well, cried a lot when facing the consequences for his hateful acts. there are 24 hours in a day. tempur-pedic helps you get the most out of every one of them. only proprietary tempur material precisely conforms to your body. you get up to twice as much pressure relieving power, so you won t toss and turn. and tempur-pedic is the best at minimizing motion transfer from your partner. you ll sleep deeply. and wake up, feeling powerful. now through september 17th, save up to $500 on select adjustable sets. find your exclusive retailer at tempurpedic.com over the course of 9 days sthe walks 26.2 miles,. that s a marathon. because he chooses to walk whenever he can. and he does it with support from dr. scholl s. only dr. scholl s has massaging gel insoles that provide all-day comfort to keep him feeling more energized. so he even has the energy to take the long way home. keep it up, steve! dr. scholl s. born to move. when you switch to progressive. as easy as saving $600 winds stirring. too treacherous for a selfie. [ camera shutter clicks ] sure, i ve taken discounts to new heights with safe driver and paperless billing. but the prize at the top is worth every last breath. here we go. [ grunts ] got em. ahh. wait a minute. whole wheat waffles? [ crying ] why! it s the blowout event!ual save 10 to 70% off on all clothing and shoes. and up to 70% off on outdoor life for him and simply styled for her! plus hot deals on jeans for kids, starting at 8.99. hurry - sale ends september 4th. no splashing! wait so you got rid of verizon, just like that? uh-huh. i switched to t-mobile, kept my phone-everything on it- -oh, they even paid it off! wow! yeah. it s nice that every bad decision doesn t have to be permenant! ditch verizon. keep your phone. we ll even pay it off when you switch to america s best unlimited network. senator corker recently had this to say about president trump, and the head of his own party. the president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. he also recently has not demonstrated that he understands the character of this nation. white house spokesperson sarah huckabee sanders was asked about senator corker s critique. i think that s a ridiculous and outrageous claim. plenty of complaints that the president is alienating some of the people he may need to make his presidency a success. i want to talk to former obama senior adviser and campaign adviser jason miller. jason, sarah huckabee sanders saying corker s statements were ridiculous and outrageous. the comments came from a sitting republican senator in the white house. i wish they had picked a bigger fight here today. this really goes to the culture war that i think helps sweep president trump into office, where you have the washington elites on one side and the rest of the country on the other side. look, in washington, if they don t like the way that you talk or act, or you don t sit around all day studying roberts rule handbook of order, they start launching these vicious attacks against you. i m not saying president trump is immune from criticism, not at all. but they re attacking the stability or competence, or comments like fitness, this is making it a personal attack well above and beyond. i think these it s important to keep in mind that president trump, not only defeated the democratic establishment in the general election, he also beat the republican establishment in the primary. so this really sets up what s going on here. now, we do have to bring it together because we do have republican majorities in both the house and the senate. and i think this is pivotal as we head into the fall. the folks on the hill need to get with the program and get behind our president. van, is this just a problem of washington no, it s sad to hear him say that. somebody s got to be able to give the president real feedback here. i think the problem you have now is anybody who gives critical feedback automatically becomes a part of the establishment and therefore, you don t have to listen. bob corker is not a part of any establishment that you would be against. he is a i m from tennessee. had eis a strong conservative, but also a no-nonsense common-sense kind of conservative which we used to celebrate in america. he s basically trying to give the president some honest feedback. you have somebody trying to give president some feedback and say, listen, you re not meeting the criteria yet. this guy now gets thrown under the bus? if corker is not conservative enough and doesn t have the heartland credentials to critique the president, nobody does. bob corker wasn t insulting, going out of his way to insult the president, i don t think. do you think he was? do you think his critique was that harsh? he was essentially saying that it was kind of a gentle critique, if anything, saying the president hasn t yet done this. and more in sorrow than in anger, and in grief than attack. jason? anderson, i think i viewed it a bit differently and i think a lot of trump supporters did as well. it didn t seem to be, say, a criticism of a specific issue or maybe criticism of particular remarks. i think it was in the wake of charlottesville, i think that s what the general time frame was. but the way that the remarks were delivered seemed to be an overall rebuke of president trump s character. that s the way that it came across to me. if senator corker didn t mean it that way, he should clarify that. that is definitely the way it came across. putting all that aside for a moment, here s the bottom line. for the past eight years or so, ever since president obama came into office, and the democrats were in control and republicans got both chambers back, we ve been wanting to pass tax reform. we ve been wanting to repeal and replace obamacare. we now have a president in the white house who will sign all of those. so republicans need to pass these bills, they need to get it done, get it to the president so he can sign it. these are all things as republicans we ve been running on for years. now we ve got to go do what we ve been promising to do. van, has the president helped that effort to get those things done by going after certain senators? what he said makes perfectly good sense. the president has been doing everything but focusing on tax reform. he s been tweeting, kind of like apologizing for, you know, weird nazi stuff. the president has not done himself a good service. i think that s what you ve got people like corker listen, i would vote against corker 12 times a day if i could. i m no fan of corker. but corker is saying, you are letting us down. his surrogates amplifying that. not doing character assassinations against corker. one more thing to say is simply this. if the president were as focused on this tax stuff as we re talking about, the new cycle would be totally different. and corker would be applauding him. corker would be the main one saying, thank you very much, sir. you just validated corker s concerns. update on america s most famous weeping white nationalist. talking tough in charlottesville right after the melee that killed heather heyer. i would say it was worth it. we knew we were going to meet a lot of resistance. the fact that nobody on our side died, i d go ahead and call that points for us. the fact that none of our people killed anybody unjustly i think is a plus for us. and i think that we showed our rivals we won t be cowed. well, it s easy to talk tough about not being cowed when you re surrounded by your fellow fans of fascism. not so easy to talk tough when a few days later you re back at your home, wanted on several felony charges, you re scared and you re lonely. that s when christopher cantwell turned on the camera and began sniffling about his fate. the whole entire point of this, i m watching cnn talk about this as violent white nationalist protests. we have done everything in our power to keep this peaceful. you know? what options do we have left. if somebody would like to inform me of that, then i will be grateful to you. i really will. christopher cantwell turned himself in last night. today was arraigned on two counts of illegal use of tear gas. bond was denied and a preliminary hearing set in mid-october. a lot more ahead tonight. the president also went after james clapper today. in a moment, i ll ask former cia michael hayden what he thinks about this, did clapper go too far or is he spot-on. hurricane harvey heading to the texas gulf coast. the latest on when it may hit, where, and how hard, when we continue. it s the sears semi-annual blowout event! save 10 to 70% off on all clothing and shoes. and up to 70% off on outdoor life for him and simply styled for her! plus hot deals on jeans for kids, starting at 8.99. hurry - sale ends september 4th. theso when i need to book tant to mea hotel room,tion. i want someone that makes it easy. booking.com gets it. and with their price match, i know i m getting the best price every time. visit booking.com. booking.yeah! delicious and powerful, and full of nutrients. so there are no artificial colors. no artificial flavors. no artificial preservatives. and no artificial sweeteners. .in any of the food we sell. we believe that the food we eat connects us to the natural world and to each other. we believe in real food™. whole foods market. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day men s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus heart-health support with b vitamins. one a day men s in gummies and tablets. this dive into the classicbster. crab lover s dream or new dueling crab legs with dungeness and snow crab. only during crabfest. now this is seafood. and hurry in to enjoy our new crab melt, part of our seafood lover s lunch weekdays just $9.99 change the way you wifi. xfinity. the future of awesome. as we ve been discussing, the president did what he thought should be done which is attack on twitter. the president went after james clapper who criticized him for his rast in phoenix on tuesday night. this is what clapper said on cnn which got under trump s skin. i really question his fitness to be in this office. i worry about, frankly, you know, the access to nuclear codes. joining me tonight retired general michael hayden who served as nsa director and as you might expect, knows clapper well. first, i wonder what you make of clapper publicly questioning president trump s fitness after his speech in phoenix. he said the event was downright scary and disturbing. i actually saw jim s comments live during your coverage after the speech in phoenix, anderson. i probably wouldn t have gone there, certainly with the language that jim used. but, you know, truth in lending here, i signed a letter about a year ago along with about 50 other people like me questioning the competence and stability of then candidate trump to do the kinds of things we expect a president to do. so i understand the concerns that jim raised there. as the president has your concern increased, does it remain the same? has it decreased? we were concerned going in. and i have to say, anderson, in all honesty, the performance of the first seven months, particularly when the president s a bit on his own, and not relying on the structures of government, really hasn t done much to make me feel better about the decision-making process, the experience, the appreciation for both history and consequences, that you d expect a president to have. as someone who worked in intelligence throughout their entire career, and has studied the unraveling of government, the unraveling of societies, how countries fall apart, how they rebuild, i m wondering what was going through your mind in the last week and a half or so in the wake of charlottesville? i m not just talking about the president s comments about it, or lack of comments about it, but just about the fact that there is, you know, there was a torch-lit march of hundreds of what appeared to be young american men chanting, jews will not replace us, and other, you know, literally nazi slogans. and the response to it. so, most of the countries in the world that we care about also have those fringe elements. so i think they recognize that. more importantly, i think they re looking more broadly at the response of our government and society. intelligence folks, anderson, respond to the priority intelligence requirements of their presidents and prime ministers. and i m saying this without exaggeration. i can imagine in both adversary and even in some friendly countries now, intelligence chiefs are being given new priorities by their political masters. what are your thoughts on the stability of the current administration? who in the american government speaks authoritatively for the american government? what are the possibilities of political violence in the united states? and anderson, those aren t predictions. what i m simply saying is, is that the range of possible outcomes for these foreign intelligence services, the ones they have to look for, the range of possible outcomes has shifted. and these are now included in them. those are the kinds of questions that other intelligence services are now looking at us to determine answers. that s really extraordinary. that s the kind of thing the u.s. intelligence services would look at for, you know, i don t know, moammar gadhafi, or any foreign government that had internal strife and internal issues. that that is now on the table that is something that foreign governments would want to examine in the united states, who really speaks for the u.s. government. that s a stunning idea that and i understand why it would be a question. because the president says one thing in a tweet, and the secretary of state says something else, then you have general mattis having to travel around and say other things to other countries. sure. and anderson, again, i wasn t trying to be predictive here. or even suggesting they were trying to be predictive. but you know, intelligence services are inherently pessimistic. they always look to the dark side, because that s where they get their questions. so i m telling you, my judgment is, other services are beginning to kind of go through their files and try to draw judgments on those kinds of issues here in the united states. and anderson, we ve had this conversation before. the veneer of civilization can be pretty thin from time to time. we are not immune from the kinds of things you suggested we look at in other countries. general hayden, i appreciate your time. thank you. thank you. president trump gets his information from watching television or maybe something someone whispered in his ear. we learn how kelly is trying to control that flow to the president. white house chief of staff is attempting to control what information gets into the hands of the president. a move designed to eliminate internal competition and help the president make decisions. all according to a new reporting to get back to doing what you love. ensure, always be you. what s going on here? um.i m babysitting. that ll be $50 bucks. you said 30 dollars. yeah, well it was $30 before my fees, like the dog-sitting fee. and the rummage through your closet fee. who is she, verizon? are those my heels? yeah! yeah, we re the same size.in shoes. with t-mobile taxes and fees are already included, so you get four lines of unlimited for just $40 bucks each. and now get zero down on the hottest smart phone brands like samsung galaxy. more reasons why t-mobile is america s best unlimited network. there are the wildcats til we die weekenders. the watch me let if fly. this i gotta try weekenders. then we ve got the bendy. . spendy weekenders. the tranquility awaits. hanging with our mates weekenders and the it s been quite a day. .so glad we got away weekenders. whatever kind of weekender you are, there s a hilton for you. book your weekend break direct at hilton.com and join the weekenders. [woman 1] huh. can t find my [woman 2] oh no. [woman 1] oh, it s fine. [woman 2] yeah, totally. it s fine. but like.is it fine though? because, i would maybe be worried.really, really, really worried. uh.do you want me to go back and look for it? i will. i mean a lot of bad things could happen. you need to call the bank. i don t know how else to tell you, you need to shut that card off [woman 1] it s off. [woman 2] what? [woman 1] i can turn it on and off in my wells fargo app. [woman 2] huh! i feel better already. [woman 1] good. and reports before they get to the president. the president still wants to access his smartphone, twitter feed and news reports. a white house reporter who wrote the story, nancy, is general kelly s new system a way to get the president to conform to tradition or the staff to conform to tradition, or both? really, it s both. this idea of having a clear policy-making process is not new. it really dates back to both democratic and republican administrations. the thing is, it s just taken the trump administration seven months to get to this point of setting up a process to get all the ideas to the president, to make all the make sure all the stakeholders are heard. and that wasn t something that kelly s predecessor reince priebus was able to do. it was something reince priebus tried to do, but didn t have the power. it seems general kelly just commands more respect in the white house. i think he s also instituted some things that priebus wasn t able to institute, like access to the oval office, who s going to vet the information. and so far, the entire west wing staff, including the president s children, are really listening to him and following his orders. it remains to be seen if this process will stick. it seems like it s much more disciplined right now. some people in the white house, particularly policy experts, are feeling much more optimistic that their ideas will be heard and personality won t necessarily trump these decisions that real policy could filter into the decision-making of the president. kelly can t control all information of the president, particularly this president who clearly reads his twitter feed, because he s retweeting random strangers, watches a lot of tv news, a lot of cable news at all hours of the day it seems like. you re right. no one can control what the president decides to tweet, what kind of television he watches, which advisers he calls late at night and on the weekends. what kelly can control are the people around the president and that hasn t been done before. if you can control 99% of the white house, that s a victory in this particular white house, to have information go through him. at least for him to feel like he s in the loop, and that he s vetted what s reached the president s desk. nancy, stay with us. i want to bring in david and paul. paul, you worked in the clinton white house. this is the way most white houses work. it came out of the military for eisenhower, chief of staff, military position. process matters a lot. this president seems to have little regard for process. i think what general kelly is doing is very important. the most important square foot of real estate on the planet is this, between the president s ears, what goes into that head. the most important person in the world, most powerful person in the world. the problem you raised, though, even if people and paper are controlled by general kelly, which they must be, and i hope they will be, information coming from twitter, from cable news, from the guys at the locker room at the country club, that s still going to be impossible to get your arms around. david, all presidents absorb information differently. some like more images, more data, long essays. clearly the way this president seems to absorb information, i mean, a lot of it is from television, is stuff from twitter. so even if the if general kelly s controlling the position papers that are going in to the president or what lands on the president s desk, there are all these other things he can t control. correct. you have to learn how you learn. and that people either learn by reading or they will learn by essentially talking and watching. president trump is clearly in the latter category. he does not read very much at all. everything is distilled down. i do think whether or not you are for trump, this is an important step forward to get more order in the white house. paul is absolutely right. the white house is still the most powerful office on the earth. you want it to be as well organized as possible. will this system work? let s wait and see. it was tested last week, frankly, when this system produced the statement that the president read on monday after charlottesville. and then he broke loose on tuesday. and it destroyed everything he said on monday. i do think that if i might say one more thing that the system of general kelly, the person he s appointed to run this system is rob porter. rob porter is a first-class guy. i ve known him for a long time. i ve known his family. just a fascinating father/son story. rob porter now does the domestic and will be doing all the vetting for president trump. his father did the same thing basically for president bush sr. rob porter was a rhodes scholar. his father, roger porter, is a good friend and professor at harvard, rhodes scholar. they re the only two father/son duos in history to be rhodes scholars. david, can i ask you, can he tell the president no? i think general kelly probably can t. they have to go to him. i remember this, probably before you even joined the clinton white house, in the first couple of months, president clinton wanted to call the deputy assistant secretary. john podesta, awesomely powerful job. he stood face to face with president clinton and said, no, sir, no, you re not allowed to call that guy. we re working through a process and then it will come to you when it s ready. it s not your job to circumvent that process. which was terrific. i hope mr. porter and mr. kelly will do that with this president. i do think that general kelly has more leverage than anybody else who s been around. if he walks, it will be so destructive of the trump presidency. everybody knows that. nancy, you talked about this a little bit. how is the rest of the white house staff i mean, if you know through your reporting reacting to the system that kelly s put in place? you re say ivanka trump, jared kushner, what, do they make appointments through kelly to see the president? i ve talked to a bunch of white house officials in the last few weeks about the changes kelly has put in place and the process. the president s children are behind this. there s a sense broadly in the white house, not just with ivanka trump or jared kushner, but broadly throughout the white house with gary cohen, with national security people, with policy experts, that they are honestly a little bit tired of the chaos. and they want to see ideas presented in a more coherent way. they want to feel like their ideas are heard. that they have a chance to make their case as well as other people. and i feel like people are looking for a change. so far they re willing to respect kelly, because they re tired of it, too. that was one of the concerns, about having ivanka trump and jared kushner, family members in the white house, in an office setting, if the boss kids were there. you wonder, are my ideas going to be heard because the kids have much more direct access. we ll see how this works out. nancy, thanks very much. coming up, we ll tell you about hurricane harvey bearing down on the coast of texas. people preparing for the worst. which cities could be hid hardest and when. a watchdog group is asking whether a government trip was a cover for something else entirely. you push yourself every day. tempur-pedic helps you recover every night. tempur material provides up to twice as much pressure relieving power. so you won t toss and turn. through september 17th, save up to $500 on select adjustable sets. tempur-pedic sleep is power. it s the blowout event!ual save 10 to 70% off on all clothing and shoes. and up to 70% off on outdoor life for him and simply styled for her! plus hot deals on jeans for kids, starting at 8.99. hurry - sale ends september 4th. steve chooses to walk over the26.2 miles,9 days. that s a marathon. and he does it with dr. scholl s. only dr. scholl s has massaging gel insoles that provide all-day comfort to keep him feeling more energized. dr. scholl s. born to move. i expect a lifetime guarantee. and so should you. on struts, brakes, shocks. does he turn everything to gold? not everything. at midas we re always a touch better. book an appointment at midas.com tom sater joins us with details. so, where is this storm headed and how strong is it going to be? anderson, the latest advisory from the national hurricane center that came out at the top of the hour puts it about 270 miles southeast of corpus christi. the winds remained steady, still a category 1. it getting stronger. our concern is here. if you look at the gusts at 10 a miles per hour. this will reach gcategory three status. 16 in warnings, blue tropical storm but well inland from houston to austin and san antonio but this gives authorities a better idea where ground zero will be. after midnight friday night into dark hours of saturday night north of corpus christi, this will be the first major hurricane to make landfall anywhere in the u.s. in the last 12 years. the problem is not so much landfall, it s what happens afterwards. notice we got a little kink here. this is concerning. all the models are in good agreement. where do we evacuate people? we lost a dominate steering current. look at the computer models. they go around in this bird s nest. the last thing you want to see a hurricane of this magnitude stall for days. if it makes landfall friday night, it s possible we may still talk about this tuesday and so instead of just going south or north, some models bring it back offshore to regain strength. everything you see here in purple is ten inches and white is 20 to 30. that s significant. we re going to be following it very closely, tom. it s not a hurricane, perhaps an eclipse, at the center of this next story. an instagram post is an example of what not to do on social media. also probably better not to then attack a mom from oregon who left a negative comment. all of that free advice holds even if you re not the wife of the secretary of the treasury. was that whole trip a rouse to get a good view of the solar eclipse? randi kaye has more. reporter: it was billed to a trip to kentucky and on board the government plane, treasury secretary steve mnuchin and his wife. they were joining senate majority leader mitch mcconnell. i will be only the third secretary of the treasury that s ever actually gone inside ft. knox. reporter: as exciting as that sounds, government plane included, may have been a rouse so the mnuchins could view the eclipse, all compliments of u.s. taxpayers. this was the first eclipse in a contiguous path since 1979. ft. knox had 100% totality. it s being investigated by a watchdog group. citizens for the responsibility and ethics in washington is requesting all records xerng plane ride. the group suggested the government plane was used for a trip that, quote, seems to have been planned around the solar eclipse to enable the secretary to secure a viewpoint in the path of the eclipse s totality. worth noting, this instagram post from mitch mcconnell s press team showing the two men at ft. knox. look closely, notice the pair of special viewing glasses in mcconnell s hand? the watchdog group is digging to find out how often secretary mnuchin has used government planes for travel in lieu of commercial planes and the justification for that use. this marks the second time this week that mnuchin and his wife are taking heat for this very trip. upon landing in kentucky, his wife posted this photo on instagram, flaunting her wealth and tagging a series of luxury designers. that led to an instagram spat with an oregon mom who was offended by linton s post writing in response, glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable. just seemed ridiculous, and quite frankly, offended me as someone who paid for part of their trip. reporter: instead of letting it go, louise ripped into the mother of three calling her adorably out of touch, suggesting she go chill out and watch the new game of thrones. there s probably a better way for her to spend her money than make me feel bad about my cute, simple life. reporter: she once played maria antoinette on this party episode seen on csi. she s since changed her instagram posting to private. she said, i apologize for my post on social media yesterday as well as my response. it was inappropriate and highly insensitive. has the treasury department said anything to defend this trip to kentucky and the eclipse viewing? we checked in and the spokesperson for the treasury department said this was official business to discuss tax reform and that later in the day the majority leader, secretary mnuchin, kentucky s governor and a few others visited the gold depository at ft. knox. we re told this is a planned trip previously scheduled for august 2nd but was postponed. there was no statement about this eclipse viewing and the treasury told us that secretary mnuchin is reimbursing the government for his wife s travel, which apparently is a long-standing policy when civilians travel on military aircraft, anderson. randi, thank you very much. tonight, the incredible story of elian gonzalez who at the age of 6 was at the center of the most famous custody battles. 17-year-old elian is speaking out now. you may be surprised at what he has to say. that s going to be at 10:00 p.m. tonight on cnn. coming up next, the gop infighting. the president firing back at republican leaders on capitol hill. the new 360 smart bed is part of our biggest sale of the year where all beds are on sale. and right now save 50% on the labor day limited edition bed, plus free home delivery. ends saturday! there s nothing more important so when i need to book a hotel, i want someone who makes it easy. booking.com gets it. and with their price match, i know i m getting the best price every time. visit booking.com. booking.yeah! it s the blowout event!ual save 10 to 70% off on all clothing and shoes. and up to 70% off on outdoor life for him and simply styled for her! plus hot deals on jeans for kids, starting at 8.99. hurry - sale ends september 4th. no splashing! wait so you got rid of verizon, just like that? 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form of government when you find yourself working at the very top of it and knowing you re in some crazy grade school recess yard where the big skid sticks the other kids with nicknames, brags about himself like some dangerous clown, and you having to take it every day, every minute? that s hardball for now, thanks for being with us. all in with chris hayes, starts right now. tonight on all in. did you undercut the secretary of state today with the iq comment president president floats an iq test. senator bob corker called the white house an adult day care center tonight multiple new detailed reports supporting the adult day care method of managing the president. and what it means for the country. senator corker is certainly entitled to his own opinion. then blockbuster new assault allegations against harvey weinstein. please come in. i m everything i m a famous guy. i m feeling very uncomfortable right now. little bob corker up by working recording his conversation, was made to sound a fool and that s what i m dealing with. like so many statements lie this president that claim is false. according to audio cork i could new the phone interview was on the record and had aides on the line making a recording of their own. i know they re recording it and i hope you are too. yeah, i am. according to reporter jonathan martin, after they got off the phone corker s aides made sure he had recorded the call. they wanted to ensure his extraordinary charges were precisely captured. as the president s retaliatory tweet today demonstrates twitter remains one of his few unsupervised activities and it s apparently one he relishes are according to politico the president has on several occasions walked down to the oval office in the morning and told aides he knew they didn t like the tweets he sent earlier. they re not presidential, i know, he said, with a mocking tone on the word presidential. it s one example of how the president chafes to restrain his impulsive outbursts and defuse the ticking time bomb in the oval office. almost an open secret in washington that bob corker s now saying py want to put in context the conversation i had with a prominent republican who literally was saying they imagine general kelly and secretary mattis have had conversations that if trump nunch are lunched for the nuclear football, what would they do, would they tackle hill, physically restrain him, from putting the country at perilous risk? that is the kind of situation we re in. wait, that s the conversation you had with a very senior republican musing about what would talking about these are the conversations that they have very good authority, are taking place inside the white house. i would say this mar-a-lago strategy is a sort of emblematic of how general kelly does not want the president to be out of his sight. and i think that s a very serious story that all of us should be talking about. the idea being that this is one of the recurring themes, that the president who is it s not crazy to sate most powerful person in the world. yeah. and has the authority to precipitate nuclear war. kelly speaks to his character. and his stature and his integrity. so yei don t think this is the case behind the scenes they re egging him on, i genuinely think they re trying to a daily basis to do the right thing. that said we re in a situation where the president thinks of himself as someone who is not beholden to advisers. this again is uncharted water. i think the question will be, going into the sort of pressure cooker of trying to get tax reform and others, if the president seems like he has nothing to lose, what does he do next? if he can t get any legislative agenda coming up on the one-year deadline of his first year in office, what happens? do they feel that, do you think, in the white house? oh, clearly, without question, they know the clock is ticking. that s why you re seeing the drumbeat of stories. the pressure inside is ratcheting up. gabe sherman, amazing reporting, thank you for sharing that. congressman dan donovan, a republican from new york agenda. he set out a very ambitious agenda, chris. he wanted to do health care, he wanted to do tax reform, he wanted to do infrastructure all in the first year of his presidency because he realized in a two-year election cycle like we run in the house, you get more things done in the first year than you do in the second year. i think he s getting frustrated. he s using the bully pulpit to try to push his agenda forward. as you have seen, he s seen talking to democrats to see if he can make deals to get more enough people on board that he can get some of these things passed to the american public. he promised the american public he would make america s interests first. you think the reporting, you any the on the record statements by senior member of your party in the senate, bob corker, and the constant drumbeat of reporting in which aides to the president speak about him in terms of someone who has to be controlled, a wayward toddler, volatile, you think all of that is wrong and invented, the whole corpus of that is just people with bias or making it up? no i think you said it before, chris. are we getting spin from insiders, people around? are we getting accurate information? you hear people saying that. you hear people saying that the president wants to move the agenda forward. so chris, you re getting different interpretations. you said before about his tweets. the president does that so he can get his message unfiltered out to the public without anybody interpreting what do you think, honestly, when you wake and up see that he called bob corker little bob corker and he said the new york times set him up, and that s clearly not true, that s an untrue statement. it s belied bit tape, we can agree on that. i wonder what s your reaction as a republican member of congress? the president has always had nicknames for a lot of people. and today everybody s making a big deal about how he s comparing his iq to other people. those things are the president s way of making some things just making them down to earth. so i think he s not getting the credit he deserves for trying to and certainly health care, i don t know that the president you just fundamentally don t buy this whole notion that kelly and tillerson and mattis and all these people are just sitting there trying to mind this man that they fundamentally think is so volatile they might have to tackle him if he goes for the nuclear football? i don t think so. i think rex tillerson, general mattis, and general kelly, are advising the president using their years of experience to give him the best advice that they could give him, and that they re going to carry out his mission. i hope you re right and the reporting s wrong. congress man dan donovan of staten island, appreciate you being here tonight. betsy woodruff is a politics reporter of the daily beast. mckay, it seems we ve turned a corner. i don t know if it s because more things are coming out or because of the tillerson battle or because corker finally said this on the record. i feel like this perspective is essentially an open secret in washington among lobbyists, hill an anti-establishment insurgency, gotten into office, then kind of conformed somewhat to the norms of washington. they re seeing trump hasn t done that and i think it s alarming a lot of people. to the tillerson point about the stakes here, to give people context in case they hadn t seen this quote, forbes asked about the moron comment, i think it s fake news but if he did that i guess iq tests can tell you who is going to win. which the white house later said was a joke. he said he didn t undercut anyone. that s to me is the thing that it s easy to lose sight of the stakes here and the reason corker s speaking out is you heard what gabe sherman said. ultimately he s threatening north korea over twitter. he s about to decertify the iran deal. you ve got two massively high-stakes nuclear issues on the table. the president is treating the way that he treated running against ted cruz in the primary. right. these are extraordinarily consequential issues. and it s kind of easy to talk about the language being used. corker s tweet about adultdy care. and treat this like a situation that s amusing. butful the top-level, long-term republican operatives that i talk to about this presidency don t treat it like it s funny. no, they re scared. right, grief and keep concern, exactly. i think it s important that people recognize that. when it comes to looking at what happened between trump and corker, i had a number of conversations over the course of the day with people familiar with his thinking. and the sense that i get from those conversations is that charlottesville was a really important moment for corker in terms of shifting how he talked about trump. he hadn t been shy about criticizing trump prior to that. but when that happened, that s when corker first said that he thought trump hadn t yet evinced the stability to be president. he really went after trump as an individual in terms of his character, in terms of whether or not he as a human being was able, at that particular moment, to lead this country. and then the tillerson piece is also really important. corker is one of the few people on capitol hill to actually have a close, productive working relationship with tillerson. he chairs the senate foreign affairs committee. when the president goes after tillerson, when he tweets he s wasting his time, when he pooh-poohs the work of the state department, my understanding is that s something that very much rankles corker. corker and staff have put a lot of time and energy into trying to help tillerson, trying to help him manage these really complex issues, including iran and north korea. for cork tore watch the president turn around and just torch all that can t be easy. and part of the stakes here, to betsy s point about this sort of the kind of policy vacuum, whether it s daca, which steven miller is basically destroying by himself on the hill, like you just get the sense that there s total vacuum about what the agenda is and what the government s going to do, and it s filled by the impulsivity of the man at the top who at any moment could careen off course based on whatever stimulus he receives. this is i think also one of the reasons that you re starting to see republicans like corker more willing to speak out. i mean, also let s be clear here. corker s also retiring. that s a big reason that he s able to speak out. right. but that doesn t mean the substance of his critique doesn t matter. i think the thing that s happening, though, you mentioned it earlier, the legislative agenda is a disaster. it s entirely boss that i believe we ll get to the end of this year without a single legislative accomplishment from the trump presidency and this republican congress. and republicans on capitol hill who were willing to hold their nose, bite their tongue, for months when it came to donald trump, because they wanted their tax cuts, because they wanted their obamacare repeal, are starting to say, look, if we re not going to get anything done, then i have a lot less incentive here to hold my criticism to myself. mckay, betsy woodruff, thank you. thank you. the explosive sexual assault and rape allegations against harvey weinstein, the audio recording of a police sting, and the household names coming forward. attorney gloria allred s client said she left the industry after encountering wane stein. repeatedly asking for a massage or initiating one himself. today in the new yorker more than a dozen accusations against weinstein, three that go beyond sexual harassment to allegations of rape. farrah, a nbc news tributer, calls weinstein s behavior well-known among colleagues 16 former, current executive asks assistants at weinstein companies told me they witnessed or had knowledge of unwanted sexual advances and touching associates with weinstein s films and in the workplace. they and others describe a paper of professional meetings that were little more than thin pretexts for sexual advances on young actresses and models. one of the women is ambra gutierrez. she was 22 when she first weinstein in 2015 and went to nypd after she says he groped her in his office. the following audio obtain the by the new yorker and published was reportedly recorded the next day as part of a spring traition. ambra agreed to meet weinstein and spoke to him about the hallway of his hotel as he tries to pressure her to go to his room as she repeatedly refuses. i m not going to do anything, i swear on my children, please come in. on everything, i m a famous guy i m feeling very uncomfortable right now. please come in now in one minute, when you want to leave why yesterday you touch my breast? please, i m sorry, just come on in, i m used to that you re used to that? yes, come in. no, but i m not used to that. i won t do it again, come on, sit here. sit here for a minute, please? no, i don t want to. if you do this now you will [ inaudible ]. never call me again. okay? i m sorry. nice i promise you i won t do anything. i know but yesterday was too much for me. i will never do another thing to you. five minutes. no criminal charges were ultimately filed in that case. a spokesperson for weinstein says he denies any allegations of nonconsexual sengs and says he never retaliated against women who rejected his advances. in yet another blockbuster story the new york times revealed more accusations against weinstein including on the record a-list oscar-winning hollywood actresses like gwyneth paltrow and angelina jolie. a 91 of outlets, more than 20 women have now accused weinstein of everything from harassment to flat-out rape. the women range from paltrow and jolie to women who left the entertainment industry entirely, in some cases they say because of weinstein. attorney gloria allred is representing one of weinstein s accusers, the mother of attorney lisa bloom, who had been individualing weinstein before resigning from that role saturday. your client is no one.someone tell me the accusations she has against weinstein. what she reported in her news conference today was that he invited her to pitch a screenplay that she had done to him, that they started out in the restaurant, that the restaurant then said, well, they re closing, and that he indicated that she should come up to his office. and the office was in the hotel. this was at the sundance film festiv festival. and that she had heard rumors and she said that she asked mr. weinstein in front of a camera at the hotel to promise and swear that he would not do anything, essentially, to her, if in fact she went up to his office in the hotel room. she indicated that he did do that and that she went up to the hotel room, to the office, and they continued to discuss her pitch. for her screenplay. and then she reported in the news conference this morning, she alleged that he came out in a bathrobe. in her words she said buck naked. and her allegation was that he wanted her to watch him masturbate. which she did not want to do. she was able to get out of there. but that was a very disturbing situation for her, very upsetting. and she spoke out today because she knows there are many others still who have allegations against mr. weinstein. but who do not want to go public because it may be that they re afraid of retaliation, or to other reasons having to do with the industry. and so she felt that she wanted people to know that we have a process that we ve invited mr. weinstein to participate in. because in addition to the therapy that he indicated he would be getting and the pain that he has acknowledged that he has been responsible for, for some women, we d like to invite him to help to provide justice for any person who is alleging that she s a victim of mr. weinstein. so we re inviting him to waive, in other words give up and agree not to assert the statute of limitations which is an affirmative defense, in other words, saying it s too late to file a claim if this happened years ago. right. and to agree with us on a retired judge who could then conduct a trial, that s an arbitration, and then decide after the alleged victims can present their evidence, mr. weinstein can present his defenses, who the judge finds should prevail. if they find that the victims have presented a preponderance of the evidence and should prevail, the judge can decide damages according to proof at trial. if, in fact, the judge finds in favor of mr. weinstein, then, in fact, he can announce that publicly. so he ll have due process. the alleged victims will have due process. and then that s a fair system to have these allegations resolved. not the court of public opinion only. but in an actual legal process. he seems like he has retained attorneys and is going to fight this. even if he expressed contrition in that first statement. and had retained your daughter, who has parted ways with him, i know you were asked about that this morning and said you guys have different decisions on different cases. it seems to me like he s going to fight this tooth and nail. is that your expectation? well, my daughter is with a separate law firm. and so she s not representing the accusers, i am. and i love her and respect her and she can represent whomever she wishes because that s her own law firm, not mine. and i know she ll make good judgments about that. what do i expect him to do and through his lawyers? well, this is actually a very reasonable process, as far as we re concerned. very fair. right. to everyone involved. and i think it would help him to restore his reputation. because i think, chris, it s likely that harvey weinstein is going to want to come back and produce films in hollywood. even if it s not through the weinstein company. yeah. and so this will be an important positive step forward where he can reach, we hope, a positive outcome on these numerous claims against him. and it s good for many of the alleged victims too because some of them don t want to speak out publicly. some of them just would like to have access and this help. i anticipate we re going to hear from more of them. gloria allred, thank you for joining me. kellyanne conway and others bizarrery trying to score political points on the harvey weinstein scandal but have they forgotten who was elected president? steve bannon, former white house chief strategist, breitbart chairman, went online to level threats against the republican party. on the heels of a senate victory in alabama, bannon says he s going to support primary challenges to almost every single republican senator next year with one very notable exception. remember, i said i m going after the republican establishment. and we re going to go after them. we re going to challenge as a coalition coming together that s going to challenge every republican incumbent except for ted cruz. huh. except for ted cruz? why does ted cruz get an exception? and why incidentally are you again wearing two button-down shirts under a blazer? you mean this ted cruz? lyin ted. you re a liar, whoo. bible high, bible high. puts it down and then he lies. donald, you re a snivel coward, leave heidi the hell alone. this man is a pathological liar. he doesn t know the difference between trues a between truth and lies. why is ted cruz of all people getting the gloves-off treatment? people familiar with bannon s plans told bloomberg cruz is considered conservative enough and is thought to be moving toward the populist approach bannon favors. bannon and cruz share a pait criterion, someone who bannon appears utterly unwilling to cross. the reclusive conspiracy-mongering billionaire behind ted cruz, steve bannon, and the trump agenda right after this. me right now, isn t he? yup. (butch barks at man) butch is like an old soul that just hates my guts. (laughs) (vo) you can never have too many faithful companions. introducing the all-new crosstrek. love is out there. find it in a subaru crosstrek. our guests can earn a free night when they book at choicehotels.com and stay with us just two times? fall time. badda book. badda boom. pumpkin spice cookie? i m good. book now at choicehotels.com daughter rebecca redirected the super pac, run by kellyanne conway, to support donald trump instead. the mercer connections to trump, the breitbart movement, and the alt-right go deep. they reportedly funded milo yiannopoulos last seen by all in singing america the beautiful at a white nationalist bar with white nationalists giving nazi salutes. cambridge an lit ka, a research firm that worked for the trump campaign. robert mercer is quite the character. the new yorker reported people who know him say he believes bill and hillary clinton have been involved in murders and that black people are better off economically before the civil rights movement and that humans have no inherent value other than how much money they make. according to one former employee, bob thinks the less government the better, he s happy if theme don t trust the government, if the president s a bozo he s fine with that, he wanted it to all fall down. i m joined by the former spokesperson for breitbart news, kurt bardella. how instrumental are the mercers as sort of a force behind breitba breitba breitbart. they re the life blood of it. at the end of the day what matters in politics are outcomes of elections. the way you get there is with resources and money. the reason why people are taking steve bannon s attack and assault against the republican establishment so seriously is because they know it s not just steve bannon. it s steve bannon with a benefactor that has very deep and unlimited pockets and resources to put into these type of elections and races and make them at the least competitive, if not to outright have enough money on win them. it s one thing when you have a lunatic like steve bannon and breitbart at the fringes putting up ridiculous headlines, it s another when they have enough money to build an entire political action network that can be incredibly effective in the political process. there s also the fact going back through the sort of reporting today, i guess i didn t quite grasp or i did but had forgotten how crucial they were financially to bright wart going from essentially a collection of blogs to being a media company. they were the sort of they staked it, the money and capital it needed to become the platform that it would become. right. remember, in the wake, immediate aftermath of andrew breitbart s passing are there was a lot of questions what would happen to breitbart, would it survive, is it a viable platform without their namesake behind and it active? all of a sudden here come the percent is with deep pockets giving breitbart that second lease on life, and in fact giving them the resources that made them even more impactful having even more of an audience, being able to use social media to grow their following. they are so much more impactful because of this money. we re seeing now them deploy that. they re not just a media company really functionally, they re a political action network. that s the key point here. this is the the percenters made a variety of investments that are all sort of working in concert. you ve got reporting that rebecca mercer would call up someone at breitbart and say she wants them to do a story on a conservative whose app has been kicked out of the itunes store, and lo and behold there it is, bannon writes an e-mail being like this is a victory. they have avenues for their political intervention, whether it s a super pac, bannon, breitbart, money the candidates, came bridge anylytica, a diverse portfolio. it creates a self-is staining ec echo chamber. to reaching the president of the united states. one of the most terrifying anecdotes so far in the new kelly regime at the white house is trump had asked, where s my breitbart news? think about that. the commander in chief wants to get his information from platforms that are basically self-sustaining propaganda machines. that s terrifying. let me ask you this. i followed your career for a while, watched you go through various iterations. when the way you re talking about breitbart is hard to square with you working there. how do you come to you re talking about this place as sort of this contemptible hornet s nest of conspiracy theories, deleterious actions to the country. when did you realize that? so i m sure a lot of your audience right now is wondering, how can chris have this guy on who worked at breitbart in the truth is this. when i first came across breitbart, it was after andrew died, steve had talked about wanting to build a platform that told and chronicled the story that was going on on the center right. there was a lot going on there and i thought, yeah, that story should be told, that s interesting. what i didn t sign up for and didn t realize i was getting into was someone that was as frankly crazy as steve is, who also had this political saegd and wanted to build this ecosystem to prop up someone like donald trump. when i saw that happening i decided i need to get out of this, this isn t right for me, i don t want to be a part of this, i don t feel good about this. so i made the decision to resign and become a to speak out and tell as much of the truth as i can about who these people really are. do you view bannon and breitbart and the sort of trump world as essentially a kind of united front mercers? yes. bannon has said his goal is to destroy the establishment, to destroy the pillars of the establishment that keep this republic going. and the fact that it goes from bannon to people that are as funded with mercers and the resources all the way to the white house, that is an incredibly dangerous alliance that can do a lot of damage to this country. kurt bardella, thank you. next, a very quotable thing 1, thing 2. by listening to an thiaudiobook on audible.ame and this guy is just trying to get through the day. this guy feels like he can take on anything. this guy isn t sure he can take it anymore. unwavering self-confidence. stuck in a 4-door sedan of sadness. upgrade your commute. ride with audible. dial star star audible on your smartphone to start listening today. jimmy s gotten used to his whole yup, he s gone noseblind. odors. he thinks it smells fine, but his mom smells this. luckily for all your hard-to-wash fabrics. .there s febreze fabric refresher. febreze doesn t just mask, it eliminates odors you ve. .gone noseblind to. and try febreze unstopables for fabric. with up to twice the fresh scent power, you ll want to try it. .again and again and maybe just one more time. indulge in irresistible freshness. febreze unstopables. breathe happy. so we created the only bed that adjusts on both sides to 9 out of 10 couples prefer a different mattress firmness, your ideal comfort, your sleep number setting. you can even see how well you re sleeping and make adjustments. does your bed do that? the most amazing part is they start at $699. that s $200 off our queen c2 mattress during the final days of our fall sale. ends sunday. visit sleepnumber.com for a store near you. thing 1 tonight, the president s use of punctuation. you may have seen the president tweet that he launched at bob corker in which he called the tennessee republican little bob corker. you may have noticed in addition to the nontraditional spelling of little, there s a spray apostrophe after the e. that s not a big deal but we spotted another trump trend. you have lying ted cruz. i nicknamed him lyin . how would you spell that? lyen. with a big apostrophe. that s thing 2 in 60 seconds. it s not just a car, it s your daily treat. go ahead, spoil yourself. the es and es hybrid. experience amazing. all right, one of our favorite internet things are sites that collect unnecessary quotation marks seen out in the world. some examples, a sign written please use caution on the stairs. smart lipo by a real plastic surgeon. if you are pregnant please inform the technician. good for what laugh, no harm done. if you are looking for unnecessary quotation marks we found the mother lode. the twitter guide of the president of the united states. donald trump quoted just found out that obama had my wires tapped in trump tower. there s no need to put the phrase wires tapped in quotes unless he meant something necessarily. when i say wiretapped, those words were in quotes that really covers. wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff but that really covers surveillance and many other things. and nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes but that s a very important thing. i m not sure that s what quotation marks are for. but wait, there s more. if the ban were announced with a one-week notice the bad would rush into our country during that week. a lot of bad dudes out there. i would have far less reason to tweet. and intelligence agencies should never allow this fake news to leak into the public. so with all of the people coming in, we ll have problems like you wouldn t believe. she wants 550% more coming in from syria than the thousands and thousands that our president has coming in. than our name suggests. we re an organic tea company. a premium juice company. a coconut water company. we ve got drinks for long days. for birthdays. for turning over new leaves. and we make them for every moment in every corner of the country. we are the coca-cola company, and we re proud to offer so much more. over the past year arguably the most powerful men in media, in homtd, and in pollties have all been accused by multiple women of various degrees of predatory sexual behavior. roger ailes, chairman and ceo fox news channel, roger ailes was forced out after multiple ak sigsz of misconduct. harvey weinstein was fired from his own company over the weekend over further accusations of sexual predator taking surfaced which he dnlz. and then there s the president of the united states, almost exactly one year ago the famous access hollywood was released which we don t need to play because everyone remembers that taip, but what is not always remembered is what happened right after that tape was released. woman after woman came forward, noorl a dozen all, accusing donald trump of inappropriate behavior and sexual assault. the new york times spoke with accusers who said donald trump groped her during a flight in the early 1980s. it wasn t until they cleared the meal that somehow or another the armrest in the seat disappeared and it was a real shock when all of a sudden his hands were all over me. i hesitate to use this expression, but i m going to and that is he was like an objecting toe pus. it was like he had six arms. he was all over the place. when he started putting his hand up my skirt and that was it. that was it. i was out of there. the other thing we seem to have collectively forgotten is the way the presidential candidate who denied all the ak sigsz, attacked the women who accused him. when you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said i don t think so. i don t think so. whoever she is, wherever she comes from, the stories rl total fiction. i was sitting with him on an airplane and he went after me on the plane. yeah, i m going to go after you. believe me, she would not be my first choice. that i can tell you. man. you don t know. that would not be my first choice. mere is what trump said about other women who accused him of sexual assault. she s right. she s a liar. she is a liar. she s writing a story. check out her facebook page. you ll understand. hey, one came out recently where i was sitting alone in some club. i was sitting alone by myself like this. and then i went wa so somebody. every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. total fabrication. all of these liars will be sued after the election is over. [applause] what do you how are you processing or thinking about the weinstein story a year after that story about the president? yeah. watching those clips was toughment i haven t seen those since. they re pretty bad. i remember that week on the campaign. that was, i think, the hardest week psychologically on the campaign. and it was funny because you would watch snl that night and they would cut to us partying and popping champagne. that was not the mood. there was a lot of women in that office and listening to the cheers as that man suggested that these women were too unattractive to assault. there was no political upside to that. the fact that we didn t even know he was going to win at this point, but the fact that somebody had come that far with that kind of backing making that kind of statement already showed that we were much farther gone as a country than i had previously realized. i think at this point aside from the perpetrator s, for the most part believe there are decades of women who all come forward with the staple story at this point thank god we tend to believe them as a story. yeah. when he said in that access hollywood tape he said something like when you re a star, they just let you do it. the women in the the 53% of white women, the majority of men who voted for him proved that right. up that s why i think it s so extraordinary we see these latent consequences now finally. for weinstein. jess said they believed him or didn t care. i think for the most part they believe that that is how men behave. yeah. even harvey wine sustain, no one would say it s okay to do what he s alleged to do. they knew he was a creep. they knew he liked pretty girls. this is such an entrenched part of the culture that this is the way men behave towards women that i think we ve normalized it. the weinstein story sent me back to a gq profile of ted kennedy because i ve been thinking about this. there s on the record ak sigsz of him sexually assaulting a waitress there. she s kaultd up into a room. she is tackled on to a table. this is published in gq. and for years conservatives have screamed bloody murder about ted kennedy from chap akwid particular to that and there is some part of people who think but i like ted kennedy and i like his politics and i m willing to look the other way. i feel like trump, there is some impulse to be like, wait, but he s no. it can t be true about him. excuse away the worst parts of it but then say well, fine, nobody is perfect. this is not about the moral character. that s the classic bill clinton conundrum and ironically the only person who paid the price was hillary clinton. obviously systemic miss on the ground any that s why you call it systemic. but there is in fact a partisan point that i think needs to be made. with we talk about roger ailes or bill o reilly or donald trump, these men who have these values who treat women this way have become somehow the bloodstream of the modern republican party and it is seen in the policies that they enact that are also intended to make women feel powerless. but the argument from conservatives about weinstein and they have been running because they think it val dates him this guy gave a hundreds gave a few million yon collars. roger ailes became the architect of the modern republican party, the most important piece of infrastructure that they have is fox news. i would also invite these conservatives over to feminine land in this universe we ve been critiquing it s the same to say that liberals have excused ted kennedy and bill clinton. if you look hard enough and listen to what fem nisz are saying, present company excluded you can hear there is a critique. it s not a male female thing, but in a society where men have a monopoly on power and especially in television, in entertainment where very far people have the power to decide whether somebody gets work or not and it s a very subjective assessment where looks are a part of the game people talk about casting couches like this cartoonish that s going to happen. but the question is, again, the commonality here is male abuse of power, male monopoly on power. and maybe one party has policies to address that, but no party is immune from that kind of abuse. that s very well said. i should say that the sort of feminist writers that i follow, no one is apologizing for harvey weinstein. i think the sangt money of hollywood. there is a lot of people implicated in this in hollywood who knew what was going on and who can be very self-righteous about i just want to make sure that we turn to the men in hollywood. yes. that s right. because i m hearing all of this where is the actresses that he s worked with, why aren t they saying anything. i don t want to hear from women about the abuse of male power. i want to hear from the men that are most complicit in allowing that kind of thing to happen. i want to get your reaction to kellyanne conway. it was sort of bizarre to watch. this was a year ago. i remember when the tape came out. i remember the accusations of the president of the united states, person after person, again. he is accused of sexual assault. he boasted about sexual assault. this is kellyanne conway. it took hillary about five minutes to blame batman s rampage but five days to sort of kind of blame harvey wean steen for his sexual assault. sister, you are working for a sexual predator. i don t know where you can get off criticizing anybody for anything in this realm and still look at yourself in the morning. it s just not it s so far beyond the pale. i can t even imagine the kind of mental shutting down that she has had to do to be able to comments on a story like thoo while working in a white house for that man. well, this is the thing. nobody does this in a vacuum. so many people didn t come forward is because they owed harvey something, they want something from him or they blamed themselves. or they thought would happen to them is what happened to the bem who accused the president of the united states. she wore a wire, right. the women who went to the police on the harvey weinstein case, they declined to prosecute despite the fact that he basically admitted on tape that he assaulted her. she did everything that you ask of a victim, why didn t you if to the police. she did. she went back to him wearing a wire. and his legal team smeared her so badly that the cops wouldn t prosecute the case this they understood they already had. we went back to look at those rally take place. the president of the united states these women are are liars. exact same playbook we hear time and time again. thank you for your time today. all right. that is all in for in evening.
president trump just got a blistering salvo from another republican senator, arizona s jeff flake, who slammed the president on the senate floor while announcing he won t run for re-election in 2018. flake, a trump critic who has been attacked repeatedly by the president, said reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior from the top of our government is dangerous to a democracy. he accused the president of the united states of undermining america s norms and values. and that came after the president went to capitol hill to talk tax reform with senate republicans over lunch. but there may have been cases of indigestion as the meal was proceeded today by a breathtaking war of words between the president and senator bob corker, who will also not run again in 2018. after corker urged the white house to leave tax reform to the professionals, the president lashed out on twitter, claiming falsely that corker helped president obama with the iran far too many principles. we were not made great as a country by indulge in or even exall thing our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, calling fake things true and true things fake. we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are. this spell will eventually break. that is my belief. we will return to ourselves once more, and i say the sooner the better. reporter: just a remarkable speech there on the floor, and he got a standing ovation from some and a round of applause from some in that chamber this afternoon. now, the white house, wolf, in response, they suggested it is time for flake to retire. sarah sanders saying this is a good move and called his comments petty today. somebody trying to get a headline or two on his way out the door. flake in an interview with our colleague jake tapper later went on to say that he did have a very narrow path to his re-election, given the political climate of late. he said it s not enough to be conservative, you have to be angry about it. wolf? all right, sunlen, thank you very much. sunlen serfaty up on capitol hill. president trump s latest personal feuds are eclipsing a move to push ahead with one of the biggest items on his agenda. let s go to our senior white house correspondent jeff zeleny. jeff, the president is getting in his own way once again. that s what it certainly seems like. reporter: wolf, it does, indeed. we saw the president there making his first visit to meet with senate republicans during their weekly lunch. this whole idea was to sell his tax plan to rally support for that tax plan, but at the end all of it was overshadowed by this widening gop civil war. president trump on capitol hill today trying to sell his tax plan and revive the agenda of a fractured republican party. but only an hour after leaving with a wave and a smile, republican senator jeff flake delivered a stinging rebuke of the president. we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. they are not normal. reporter: flake s announcement, that he would not seek re-election, and his blunt concession that he s no longer comfortable with trump s republican party there is an undeniable potency to a pop list by mischaracterizing our problems and giving into the impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people. reporter: came on the same day the republican picked a new fight with senator bob corker, chairman of the foreign relations committee. it was an extraordinary moment for a party in power. white house press secretary sarah sanders called flake s decision to leave the senate good news and blasted his speech as inappropriate. i notice that a lot of the language i don t think was befitting of the senate floor. reporter: she also defended the president s fight with corker. he s a fighter. we ve said it many times before, the people of this country didn t elect somebody to be weak, they elected somebody to be strong. reporter: after corker said in a round of wbr id= wbr6217 /> morning television interviews that the president should leave the details of tax reform to congress, mr. trump issued a searing attack on twitter. corker, who couldn t get elected dog catcher in tennessee, is now fighting tax cuts. seven minutes later, the president added, corker dropped out of the wbr id= wbr6375 /> race in tennessee when i refused to endorse him and now is only negative on anything trump. look at his record. the senator fired off this rebuttal. same untruth from an utterly untruthful president the extraordinary exchange between a republican president and one of the party s senior statesman devolved from there. corker who also decided against seeking re-election next year said the president did not refuse to endorse him. /b> no, it s not accurate. you know, nothing that he said in his tweets today were truthful nor accurate. he know it is. people around him know it. i would hope the staff over there would figure out ways of controlling him. reporter: when asked by cnn s manu raju if the president is a liar, corker had this to say. the president has great difficulty with the truth. on many issues. reporter: asked whether he would support him again, corker did not hesitate. no way. no way. no, think that he s proven himself unable to rise to the occasion. reporter: taken together, the decision by flake who also has quarrelled repeatedly with mr. trump, underscored the challenges facing the gop and potential complications to the president s agenda. reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is, when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. and when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else, it is dangerous to a democracy. reporter: the move stunned republicans and overshadowed discussion of a tax plan the party still hopes will be the one major legislative accomplishment of the year. house speaker paul ryan was among gop leaders trying to extinguish the unusual and to many the unseemly civil war. so all of this stuff you see on a daily basis on twitter this and twitter that, forget about it. let s focus on helping people reporter: now, all of these talk of early retirements certainly are putting a smile on the face of steve bannon, the former white house chief strategist here, who an ally said that he called the resignation for the retirement of jeff flake was another scalp. but, wolf, the question is this, despite all of their stronger rhetoric, senator flake and senator corker were reliable voters with this white house, voting with him some 85% to 90% of the time. the question is, how do both of these affect the midterm elections and trying to get anything accomplished, particularly that tax reform plan. wolf consider. all right. very important. thanks very much. jeff zeleny over at the white house. let s get some insight now from our specialists. david chalian, let me start with you. i want you to listen to senator flake calling on his republican colleagues to not remain silent but to speak out when they see these kinds of abuses going on. listen. what do we as united states senators have to say about it? the principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics. because politics can make us silent when we should speak, and silence can equal complicity. i have children and grandchildren to answer to. and so, mr. president, i will not be complicit or silent. how extraordinary is it, david, to hear a senator tell his colleagues, you must not be complicit? i can t think of an example of something like this that i ve seen. i mean, on the same day, wolf, we heard senator flake tell his colleagues, we must stop pretending, we have fooled ourselves long enough. what is different about what senator flake did there is that he is doing something different than corker and mccain, he s challenging his fellow republicans to take their heads out of the sand. on the same day that we heard senator corker say that the president of the united states is debasing our nation, not living up to the job and showing no ability to turn it around. he s thrown his hands up and basically declared the trump presidency a failure. one senator from the president s party declares the presidency a failure and the other is urging with a moral plea to his colleagues to not ignore what s going on anymore. i have never seen anything like it. it truly is extraordinary. everyone stand by for a moment. republican congressman will hurd of texas, a member of the house intelligence committee, is joining us right now. congressman, thanks very much. do you share that feeling of obligation to speak out against president trump and his policies and what he s doing when he goes against your values? well, wolf, i think you and i have had enough conversations that you know i m going to agree when i agree and disagree when i disagree. the residents of the 23rd district of texas elected me to be their representative. i m always going to be honest and talk about what i believe is important. so that s what i stick to. you heard senator flake call on your party, the republican party, to defend the values of this nation. so what will you and your colleagues do right now, a critical moment as these other republican senators are suggesting, to heed that call? well, i think one of the things that we re going to do is we re going to make sure more hardworking taxpayers have more money in their pockets by continuing to do tax reform. we re going to make sure we continue to have strong national security. you know, the fact that nine months from it s been nine months and we re talking about the defeat of isis and looking at how do we, you know, change the tide of problems in afghanistan. these are the things that i m focused on. you know, i ve missed some of this back and forth and tit for tat because i was in a hearing looking at how do we, you know, protect our voting infrastructure from political ads, from outside forces like the russians? and so i think for many of us, we re going to continue to do our job that residents sent us up here to do and focus on that. we re going to get to those that russian interference in the u.s. democracy in just a few moments. but you have spoken out repeatedly here with me in the situation room, to call out president trump, for example, to apologize after his remarks about the violence in charlottesville, virginia. but the house speaker paul ryan, the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell today, they dismissed all of these fights. do you think republicans, congressman, are being well-served by their leaders right now who remain silent in the face of a lot of this outrage? well, i wouldn t i don t think i d necessarily characterize it the way you did, wolf. i know speaker ryan was pretty clear about his opposition after charlottesville. i think he has spoken out on a number of times. i haven t kept track, but i do think it s important for all of us to do what we think is right and do what the folks that elected us sent us up here to do. and for me, whether it s a president of my own party or a president of another party, i agree when i agree, i disagree when i disagree. think that we can learn that we can disagree without being disagreeable. i think that is something that is important and we ve got to show that as an example up here as elected officials. if we can t do it, our kids won t be able to do it and our grand kids won t be able to do it. i ask the question because the speaker paul ryan has said he doesn t have any major disagreements with the president of the united states. which seems to be in stark contrast to what we heard today from these other two republican senators. senator flake s powerful speech, as you know, follows that very harsh criticism of the president by senator bob corker, who is the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. publicly condemned president trump s impact on national security and foreign policy. his position as a role model for children. he says he s not a role model. and his relationship with the truth. he keeps saying the president is not telling the truth. do you share those concerns? well, like i said, i didn t hear all of all of that, wolf, i m sorry. it s a little loud here. and also i didn t see what he said earlier, but for me when it comes down to it, i m going to agree on things that i agree on, i m going to disagree when i don t when i disagree. i m going to stand up for what i think is right and my own brand of conservatism. i always have to remind people, we didn t elect an emperor, we elected a president and he is one member of the party. now he has a pretty big bully pulpit, but the republican brand is larger than just any one individual, and the fact that we can have this kind of conversation amongst ourselves and, you know, spilling out into the open, i think this is a sign that you can see there is not group think when it comes to the republican party. there certainly is. senator corker, senator flake, they apparently feel they can speak more honestly now that they re not running for re-election next year, but do you and other republicans privately share the concerns they expressed? you speak to your fellow republicans on the house side all the time. without mentioning names, do they share those concerns? well, look, wolf, i think most of my colleagues i talk about, you know, they share their opinions. they re not afraid to say it publicly and in private, so, you know, i haven t had those conversations, but i also can t say i can speak for all, what, 247 of my colleagues in the house or the 52 in the senate. you held an important hearing today, congressman, on political ads, on social media. right now if you see a political ad on facebook or another platform, you don t know who paid for that ad. do you believe that should change? well, i think what we have to remember is we have to separate political advertising from others, and when it comes to express advocacy like vote for this guy or don t vote for that guy or issue advocacy, call your congressman and tell them to vote against x, y or z, this is regulated by the federal elections act. there are a number of court cases. there is the mccain/feingold law. political advertisement and speak whether it s new immediate or or old media are handled the same way. the foreign agent registration act, and this says that, you know, vladimir putin can t buy or shouldn t be able to buy an ad in on broadcast or on print media and say don t send tell your congressman not to send defensive weapons to the unitkrainians. this is an area we can focus on and make sure we re addressing the problem of russian influence. political advertising is difference from political disinformation and we need to have a counterdisinformation strategy in how we deal with this issue that the russians have been doing for decades in europe and trying to do here in the united states. ultimately the russians goal is to undermine trust in our democratic institutions. we can t let them get away with that. the president said it s all a hoax, the russian investigation that you and your committee and others are investigating. the special counsel robert mueller. it s also a hoax. what do you say to the president when he says that this is not serious, it s a hoax? well, in my 9 1/2 years as an undercover officer in the cia, i don t know too many occasions where the nsa, the cia and the fbi actually agreed upon, you know, a number of analytical judgements. it was clear the russians attempted to undermine trust in our institutions. you know, we still don t have enough understanding of the magnitude of some of these social media ads, but we do know that the russians didn t manipulate the vote counting machines. so russian activity to try to undergird trust in our institutions is a big deal and i think many folks within this administration have talked about how russia is an adversary, not an ally and one of the biggest threats to our country. you don t hear that from the president of the united states. other aides, national security aides of his, they speak like you re suggesting. the president does not. all right. we ve got to leave it right there. i know you ve got to go vote. congressman will hurd, thanks so much for joining us. always a pleasure, wolf. all right. we ve got our panel here. we ve got a lot to assess. there is breaking news. we ll be right back. i would hope the staff over there would figure out ways of controlling him when they know that everything he said today was absolutely untrue. you said he s an untruthful president. yes. are you calling no question? no question. i don t we grew up in our family not using the l word, okay? but, yeah, just, i mean, they re provable untruths. unfortunately, i think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue. is the president of the united states a liar? the president has great difficulty with the truth. on many issues. all right. so, gloria, other republicans, 52 republicans in the united states senate, most of them attended this luncheon with the president today. do a lot of them share the view of senator corker, senator flake? think of what a stunning day this was. they went into that luncheon with the president, wolf, and they applauded him. they didn t discuss the elephant in the room. at that point, there was only one elephant in the room, not two. they knew about the corker statements. they applauded the president. didn t discuss it. they come out, jeff flake goes to the senate floor and just laces him not only to the senators whom he calls complicit and the republican leaders, but it was an indictment of trumpism. i was compiling a bunch of words today that the president has effectively been called. now, senator corker wouldn t call him a liar, but he did call him a liar. donald trump was called today unstable, venal, immature, dangerous, reckless and undignified. those are my words. some of them i share with the speech that senator flake gave. this was an unbelievable day, where a sitting president of the united states was called all of these things, was told that he was dangerous and two sitting senators said that the president of the united states lies. not only to the american public, but to foreign leaders, and as a result it has put our country in peril. and those senators go in that room and they applaud the president. because what is important to these senators is that they want to get tax reform done. and flake made the point, how important is your agenda when it comes to larger issues about the presidency or the values of this country? and i don t know that anything will change as a result of this, but i certainly think this is a historic moment in our nation s history. certainly nothing that we have ever witnessed. you know, biana, senator flake said he will not be, in his words, complicit or silent. the implication being, of course, that other republicans are right now being complicit and silent in the face of all of this and the reaction we did hear from the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, the house speaker paul ryan, they said you ve got to move on and talk about big issues. they really didn t even want to address these charges by their fellow republicans. yeah, i think senator mcconnell s reaction to senator flake, that was the most emotional gloria, we were talking about this earlier. for mcconnell. that was the most emotional we ve seen him. this clearly took him by surprise as well. you could see that he sympathized and probably maybe part of him envoyed the fact that senator flake could be so honest. clearly senator mcconnell has his own agenda, but looking at just this past year, they ve not been able to pass any legislation with this president. why they think within the next few weeks, given everything else that s going on, given the fact that the president seems to undermine them every single day via twitter, why they think they re going to be able to get tax reform done if they can t get health reform done is beyond me. something else that struck me, though, when you heard senator flake was the normalization. it s not normal. what we ve seen transpire in this country over the past year. what we ve seen transpire in washington. it is not normal for a president to get into a fight with a gold-star family. it is not normal for a president to be belittling people via twitter within his own party, whether or not they re in his own party or not. it s just something we ve never seen before. and i think what was striking is what we heard from both senator corker earlier in his interview with manu raju and what we heard from senator flake in his interview with jake tapper was that both republican senators when asked said this president is not a role model for children in this country. that is quite striking and that, you know, in a sense it s heartbreaking, the president of the united states not to be a role model for people within his own party. i can t imagine democrats not being able to say that with past presidents of other parties. no doubt that mitch mcconnell was emotional. i saw him speak on the floor. he s emotional because senator flake is a dearly loved fellow conservative in the senate. he is well-respected among his colleagues. i have no doubt that mitch mcconnell was emotional. what he s not is actually heeding senator flake s words in any way. if you look at mcconnell s statement and paul ryan s statement afterwards, i mean, the most mcconnell said was, i appreciated hearing his words. that doesn t sound to me like mitch mcconnell was sort of woken up into leading his conference in a different way to respond to the criticisms that corker and flake are putting forward. i agree with gloria. think this is not going to change much at all. sarah sanders is absolutely right when she says from the white house podium that bob corker and jeff flake are in a different place from where the republican voters are, primary voters in their states. they were likely potentially to lose those elections. they are out of touch with the party and mitch mcconnell understands where the where all of his voters are and his members voters are, which is why i don t think you see him joining jeff flake s cause, no matter how emotional he might be with the good-bye. i think jeff flake said he isn t in the same place as the voters. he knows that. he basically admitted that he was going to lose and he s kind of hopeful that this shall pass, but he made the case that the voters determine what occurs in congressional and in senate races. and he knew that he was, what, at 18% in the polls. he knew that he wasn t going to win. so, you know, he got out rather than run that kind of a race. he said he wouldn t be true to his values. bianna, go ahead. no, i m not saying that in any way the administration is going to change or we re going to see much change in the larger picture within the party. i think, in fact, i think the president and the administration may be emboldened by what they saw. these two senators went after the president. the president went after him. now they re both gone. in the president s eyes, he won. the question is, he won the battle, what about the war? what legislation are they going to be able to pass and what happens if these senators are replaced by democrats? they re not gone yet. both going to be united states senators for 14 months. another year, exactly. not going to run for re-election, but still january, 2019, they re going to be united states senators. there is much more to assess. we re following the breaking news. how do we say that this fall, specialists. glory, senator corker, who is the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, well plugged in on all things national security, international relations. listen to what he said because he suggested that the president of the united states has an impact, of course, on global policy that is potentially a very dangerous man. do you think the president is a threat to national security? i think that there are people around him that work in an effort to contain him. that would be secretary mattis and tillerson and general kelly there as chief of staff. well, that almost seems to accept the premise of the question, if he needs to be contained. i do think when you have the kind of issue we re dealing with in north korea, where we have a very unstable leader there, when you send out tweets into the region to raise tensions, when you knee cap, which is what he s done publicly when you knee cap your secretary of state, whose diplomacy you have to depend upon to really bring china to the table to do the things that need to be done, back channelling in some cases to north korea. when you knee cap that effort, you really move our country into a binary choice which could lead to a world war. so, yes, i want him to support diplomatic efforts. not embarrass and really malign efforts that are underway to try to get some kind of diplomatic solution here and i think most people would agree with that. what does it say, gloria, when the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, a republican, says the republican president of the united states could lead the u.s. to world war iii, as he said before. suggested it once again today. it represents a threat to u.s. national security. so the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee believes that the president of the united states is dangerous. that s what it says. it says that he believes that this president could get us involved in a world war. and this is coming from a republican. this is not coming from bernie sanders or hillary clinton for that matter. this is coming from bob corker. this is not the cause the president said that he couldn t get elected dog catcher. this is because he knows something about foreign policy. he clearly talks to the secretary of state rex tillerson very much. they are close. and i think what we are seeing in that is the chairman channelling the secretary of state here, probably through the conversations that they have had privately. you know, this is why it s so important, wolf, of what you said before. there are 14 months left. bob corker s not leaving congress next week. so think about how the person who is in charge of america s foreign policy from the legislative branch, the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, is going to work with the person who is in charge of our foreign policy, the executive branch, the president of the united states. over the next 14 months with some very serious challenges facing us and they re clearly not on the same page, and by bob corker s telling today, he doesn t think they re capable of getting on the same page. and, by the way, rex tillerson probably won t be around for as long as bob corker s going to be around. you know, bianna, i want to point out, rex tillerson reportedly calling the president of the united states a moron over the summer. it follows former president george w. bush without mentioning the president by name a very serious critique of the president by the former president, republican as well. senator john mccain also bitterly critical. none of this is happening in a vacuum. none of this is happening in a vacuum at home and you have to remember that all of our allies and adversaries abroad are watching what s happening here as well. senator corker, when he says that the president knee caps the secretary of state, that says something because there is a protocol that traditionally foreign leaders, foreign dignitaries speak to certain people, they go to either the president, the secretary of state. who do they talk to in certain situations? the secretary of defense. here they see sort of this hodgepodge of different policy being thrown out left, right and center, sometimes vee via twitter, and you can understand why it s jarring for our allies, potentially an opening for our adversaries and thus i think that s what senator corker was talking about, that it puts us in this unstable position where you don t know whether or not you can rely upon the united states to come to your aid. and also, they don t know foreign leaders don t know whether they can rely on the president s word. and that s important. because if they can t trust the president s word, because as we ve heard from these senators, that believe that he has a strange relationship with the truth, as in he lies, well, then what do they have? if you can t listen to rex tillerson because he doesn t speak for the president, then who do you trust when it comes to our foreign policy? you know, i want you to point out what a truly extraordinary day this has been. wolf, no matter what happens in terms of outcomes out of this or the fallout, this is a day for history books. starting with this morning, seeing bob corker, senior statesman in the republican party, out on the morning shows blasting the president, followed by these amazing set of words he put together in his roaming interview with plamanu raju, yo then come in the afternoon and you have jeff flake trying to grab his party by the lapels saying he s not going to stick around for this because he has to answer to his children and grandchildren and that he believes his colleagues are being complicit in something that is dangerous for the country. this will go down in the history books no matter what or if something comes of it. all right. everybody, stick around. there is a lot more to assess. also coming up, a prominent critic of vladimir 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advice that s right for you. investment management services from td ameritrade. president trump was supposed to impose new sanctions on russia back on october 1st. so far, the administration has not done so. in the meantime, a prominent critic of the russian president, vladimir putin, now stands accused of a notorious and mysterious death. but william browder contends that russian officials are trying to silence him by making false accusations. cnn s brian todd has been looking into the story for us. what are you finding out? tonight we have obtained documents from putin s prosecutor to fire bill browder. putin is furious with browder, because browder exposed a scheme including putin and his cronies. tonight, vladimir putin has a well-known whistle-blower in his crosshairs. a man who has exposed putin s alleged corruption. in putin s russia, there are no good guys. reporter: russian prosecutors are claiming that this man, american-born financier, bill browder, conspired to murder sergey magnitsky, an investigative lawyer who browder himself had hired to blow open a tax fraud scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars, benefiting people linked to putin. i think it s totally absurd. it shows that putin has effectively lost his mind and he s totally rattled about the magnitsky act. reporter: the magnitsky act is an american law, spearheaded by bill browder, which sanctioned individual russians close to putin. putin is furious over it. he takes very seriously the threat to his economic interests. reporter: browder, who once ran a hedge fund in russia, hired magnitsky because browder believed russian officials were ripping him off. after magnitsky exposed that tax fraud scheme, magnitsky was jailed. he got sick in a moscow prison and died in 2009. browder believes because russian officials purposefully didn t care for him. sergey magnitsky is dead. he suffered terribly and is dead because he was my lawyer. reporter: putin and his aides have repeatedly denied browder s allegations and now they claim magnitsky s death was all browder s idea. translator: underneath are the criminal activities of an entire gang, led by one particular man. i believe browder is his name. reporter: cnn has obtained from bill browder a letter from a top russian prosecutor to justice officials in moscow, asking them to investigate browder and an unidentified person, employed by the british intelligence agency, mi6, accusing them of a, quote, criminal plan to take actions aimed at the termination of rendering medical care to s.l. magnitsky. it s also absurd because of the implication which russians themselves would deny, that somehow mi6 or bill browder are able to control what russian prison officials do. how exactly would that work? reporter: when we interviewed browder recently, he spoke of being targeted by the kremlin in an even more menacing way. what are the security threats you have received? they ve the russian government has made numerous death threats against me. they want to kill me. they would like to kidnap me. they would like to have me arrested and sent back to russia. the kremlin denies wanting browder dead. now, cnn got no immediate response from the british intelligence agency, mi6 to the russian prosecutor s allegations. we also reached out here in washington and in moscow to russian officials to ask them what specific evidence they have against bill browder and mi6 tying them to the death of sergey magnitsky. we didn t immediately get a response to that. but vladimir putin has called browder s charges of corruption against him garbage. wolf? brian, this isn t the first time that putin s gone after bill browder with legal action, right? that s right, wolf. putin s regime has accused browder of committing financial crimes in russia. they ve even convicted him in an sench ya of those allegations. he refutes those charges, but the russians have issued five interpol arrest notices for bill browder. they re trying to get him captured and take him back to russia where browder believes they re going to kill him if they get him. brian todd reporting for us. thank you very much. coming up, there s breaking news. two republican senators have had enough of president trump. both will not run for re-election and both deliver blistering attacks on the president, saying hays ining h the united states and undermining american values. we were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. how much money do you think you ll need in retirement? then we found out how many years that money would last them. how long do you think we ll keep oooooohhh! you stopped! you re gonna leave me back here at year 9? how did this happen? it turned out, a lot of people fell short, of even the average length of retirement. we have to think about not when we expect to live to, but when 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a spokesman for manafort says it s 100% false to suggest this meeting including any discussion of contributions to the trump campaign or the republican party. when donald trump jr. talked about the meeting he called it nothing and manafort said he was on his phone most of the time. the whole contact took how long? 20 minutes or so. 20 minutes. and jared left after five or ten. yes. like she said and paul manafort. on his phone. the whole time. like i said it was pretty apparent this is not what we were in there talking about. it does appear manafort was on his phone to take notes. nbc s reporting says manafort ses notes typed on a smartphone described by one source as cryptic were turned over to the house and senate think you know. i m not answering about any particular eggs vexes. i can t talk about that in a classified setting. i want to be careful in open setting. i carefully chose the words. like look i ve seen the tweet about tapes lordy, i hope there are tapes. jeremy they re making the case this guy who chooses not to comment publicly in front of congress is somehow reckless and a leaker. james comey is cautious, he is a professional, a career law enforcement z officer and a career prosecutor. he of course served as assistant u.s. attorney. the idea he is unreliable i don t think goes far with, particularly with bob mueller. after all of course comey replaced mueller as fbi director. they re sort of similar on the outlook op law enforcement. just coming back to the original point about undermining the argument about obstruction. the statute says who ever by threat or by force tries to impede a federal investigation. it doesn t say who ever in brackets unless you re the president, no president is above the law. and of course the firing was not the only basis upon which someone might investigate the president for obstruction. he osk took jim comey to the oval office and said please drop the investigation. is wasn t just the firing. there are multiple avenues to pursue with respect to obstruction of justice. michael they are pursuing multiple avenues. we know your last by line reported that mueller s team is interested in talking to senior trump administration officials. we have seen reporting that mueller is working with the irs. we learned last night that he is working possibly with new york attorney general eric snyderman to have state charges brought that can t be pardoned by the president. in your opinion what thread of the investigation are they pulling the hardest on? i think what we are seeing is a very aggressive prosecutor, especially on the manafort front. we saw him last month execute a search warrant to go into manafort s house. that is a very that s a big move for a prosecutor to take, especially at a time when manafort said or was trying to say publicly that he was cooperating. so i think what we are seeing a a lot of a lot of things here. we ll see a lot more of this in the weeks and months to come. the president is going to have a lot of stories come out about subpoenas, about interviews, about people going before the grand jury, and there is just going to be a lot of these as we go forward. the interesting thing will be when does new information that moves our understanding of what happened changed? it s one thing learning about a subpoena or someone being interviewed. it s another thing when we learn of actually new information about things that we didn t know. and sometimes we re able to do that. and sometimes we re able to break through and provide new context to things sometimes we don t. but i think this will go on some sometime now. jill, to michael s point, the pressure that has been brought to bear on paul manafort, his business associates, his family, there is some sense that the the investigation is leaning on him heavily. and there are others who think that the pardoning of former sheriff joe arpaio might have been a sending a message to paul manaforts or michael flynns saying hold tight i ll pardon you if it goes wrong. what do you make of the fact that possibly robert mueller is working with new york attorney general eric schneiderman. i think it is a message. i was appalled by the pardon in and of itself. you are forgiving a contempt of court which cannot enforce judicial proceedings if it can t hold a witness in contempt or a defendant in contempt. and it was for violating civil rights. it s bad in and of itself. but i heard it definitely as a message, hang tight, don t worry. you may lose the fifth amendment privilege because i ll pardon your original crime. but i ll also pardon you if you refuse to testify. i think it was a very bad thing. i think it is a very good thing that the state attorney general is now involved because that is something the president cannot obstruct. and he cannot impede it because he has no power against the state. so that s that s a good thing. and i think that they should work together zbloolgts jeremy that s really the first salvo of that sort. because there are a number of states that can claim some sort of harm if this is still having to do with the russians attempting to intervene in american elections. there are a number of states targeted by the russians according to reports we ve seen. so robert mueller has a lot of ammunition if he wants to start partnering with state attorneys general in guaranteeing donald trump either can t fire him out of this thing or can t pardon his way out of it. this is clearly as my knowledge said a sprawling, ride-ranging and aggressive investigation by the special counsel. he has built a strong team, a large team, experienced team. and it appears from everything we are learning that working in a careful hurry to figure out whether or not charges ought to be brought and figure out what to report to congress which with will ultimately hold the impeachment decision in its hands. michael is to too wide ranging? you know the president did warn that robert mueller will cross a line if he starts getting involved in donald trump s financial affairs. well robert mueller is getting in manafort s financial affairs. one assumes about the moscow hotel in donald trump s moscow affairs. there s been questions in the past about special prosecutors before. what we had before is the prosecutors were appointed for an indefinitely period of time and they had the abilitying to on and investigate whatever he wanted. but based on the pliks what s going on in the country mueller could investigate a lot of things for a lot of times and there would be few things to stop him. at the end of the day the acting the deputy attorney general acting as the attorney general because the attorney general rekuzed himself from this stuff will have the say in whether there are prosecutions to be made here. but mueller has the power to look at different things. and what usually happens with the special counsels is that they look at things and find things because they dig through a lot of things. they get a lot of information back. they subpoena things. talk to people compel them to talk to them. when you are doing that you re going to kick stuff up. it happens. let me ask you then because you made the point that we have to wait until the next thing that shows that we made progress in this investigation. what are you look for? is there some direction in particular that you are looking for to happen next. no we re just looking for new information that gives us a better understanding of things that happened before and a better understanding of you know database, look there was a meeting that happened in june of 2016 between the trump campaign and the russians. we only know so much about it. we only know the emails we had about it and the differing explanations we got from some of the folks there. you know if we were to learn what other folks in the meeting, the russians had to say about that or what you know direction they got, or or anything like that that expands our understanding of things. we look for things that spa expand and can provide larger context to the facts. that s what we are searching for. jill back we we first learned of the meeting you said while we only find out what other people leak or what people publicly put out as donald trump jr. did with the emails robert mueller has more power to get more information than what we are learning today about things found on paul manafort s phone indicate that he is using some of that power. absolutely. and i want to point out in terms of the timing that we were appointed in may for the watergate case. and we returned indictments in march of the following year. so that s about nine months. and we were looking at a very narrow set of allegations. i think here the mandate that mr. mueller has is quite broad and can allow him to look at a lot of other areas. so it could take way more than the nine months before you would ever have any kind of an indictment. and also, i want to point out he has the power to give a report to the congress which request be as we did, a road map to impeachment. it was decided by our special prosecutor at the time that we should not diet, that impeachment was the correct procedure for the sitting president. since then can be ken starr to a took years and went from a real estate deal to a blue dress, so showing how broad the investigation can be, he has ha memo that says it would be perfectly proper to diet a sitting president. so mr. mueller might be able to do that. but he also has the option of rurpg a report to the congress to show how the case could be built for impeachment. jeremy last word to you, what are you looking for next? well when michael cohen the trump organization main lawyer and the one who was the architect to of the deal to billed the trump tower testifies in the house committee you ll sigh information come out about the financial ties. as we follow the money i m looking at that testimony. jeremy, michael and jill thank you all three of you for joining me. with congress set to return to washington next week how could the latest developments in the investigation affect this white house? our political panel reacts when the 11th hour continues. hey you ve gotta see this. c mon. deepening the rift with russia. the administration is not expelling any russian diplomatic personnel from the united states. nor did it tough the staff at russia s mane embassy in waekt. of the robert costa national political reporter. vivian salama, incoming nbc news national reporter. our white house reporter jonathan la mere. vivian, let me start with you. in august earlier this month, the president said this about the russian decision to cut that the 755 u.s. staff members in russia. let s listen. i want to thank him because we re trying to cut down on payroll. as far as i m concerned i m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people, because now we have a smaller payroll. there is no real reason for enemy to go back. vivian there is a journalistic term for that. i think it might be weird. that was just a strange response that the president had to another country ordering 755 staffer foss not do their work. the president has always seemed to do this tap dance with russia. whether with the russian investigation, whether it has to do with the diplomatic relation was russia. he has never outwardly accused russia he has never outwardly embraced the intelligence community in the country that feel confident that russia was behind the hacking of the u.s. election in 2016. he says that it was probably maybe russia but also probably other players involved. and so the diplomatic rift that we ve seen kind of manifesting itself over the course of the administration s time in office has been fascinating but it hasn t coming from the white house. a lot of it is coming from the other members of the administration, whether the state department, u.n., ambassador nikki haley. they re the one who is have gone after russia tried to take the tougher stance while the president distances himself not touching the hacking thing except for shortly after the first meeting with president putin of russia. and so it s really fascinating to see all of this going on with the back drop of the investigation taking place where the president kind of gives a little bit of leeway to russia, not wanting to get involved but still insisting he had no collusion. a lot of people concerned about this. they say if he didn t collude if nobody in the campaign cluds if he is absolutely confident about it why doesn t he just come out and take a tougher stance. that s what we saw with the clip is that he doesn t quite do that. he falls short of that. and that raises so many questions where a lot of people say, well is there something he is trying to hide? what is the issue with the president not taking the strong stance. that is the question. jonathan, let me ask you, to vivian s point he is getting advice from somebody he had to do something, right there had to be a response to the 75 a american staffers. this is a small portion of that. it s a very measured small response to it. but to whose pressure did he bough on this? is it rex tillerson, the the state department what s going on. certainly the state has suggested that some sort of response was necessary. but the president, to vivian s point, has never gone there. i was part of the small group of reporters traveled with the president when he made the comments. and later the sarah huckabee sanders suggested he was kidding. no one thought that. it was odd. what we know about the president is this when he feels pressure he goes the other which. he does not like the idea of being managed. we see that in the white house now with the new chief of staff all the story lines the west wing staff in line but yet seems to have no control over the president himself. in fact, in recent weeks it feels like the twitter feed from the president has become more lively, as if to prove a point that he can t be controlled by the chief of staff. and when it comes to russia in particular he seems to lash out particularly when there are developments in the investigation that seem to come close to home. robert to vivian s point that he is getting guidance from someone and to jonathan s point that he chaffs at the control. you had a by line on the story pukd in the new york times washington post i m sorry unless something changed since last i read it where it says donald trump resists being handled says roger stone, a former trump adviser and long-term confidante, no one tells him who to see what he can say. general kelly is trying to treat the mushroom keeping him in the dark and feeding him expletive. we re seeing the generals around the president, general mattis at the pentagon, trying and of course general mcmaster, foreign policy adviser. that includes russia. they adopt more of the traditional foreign policy view in the republican party and even in the democratic party when it comes to the hawkish position towards russia. you see in this administration a balancing of that traditional hawkish view with the instincts of the president and perhaps the secretary of state tillerson when it comes to having a bit of a softer touch with russia. all of these forces are combined in how the united states is responding to these types of questions. and vivian, to that point, this business of russia and sanctions on russia, and taking a harder line on russia, is the one area that the president splits so clearly with his own party on. when it came to the sanctions against russia and iran and north korea in congress, there was a veto proof majority. this is not even an area that the president had the smallest bit of influence amongst republicans and certainly zero amongst democrats. this is not a winnable road he travels. that s right. actually when the sanctions took place, he actually came out very strongly against them in a statement put out that day that was really surprising where he supported the actual notion of sanctions, the legislation itself but said that the bill was problematic. he was did he cited a lot of issue was it particularly the effort by congress to essentially clamp down on the executive power. he said that it gave them too much power and took away his power to have any authority on the issue of sanctions in particular. this raised a lot of concern because it was a three-part package with north korea and russia and iran. in particular the russia sanctions caused a lot of issues with regard to the language of the bill et cetera. so the president came out strongly behind closed doors where he was pushing back hard on congress trying to limit the ability to pass this or actually just slowing the process down. it was interesting to see after it was passed, signed into law, in statement by the president where he said, i m still not happy with it. it s not a good bill but we have to go forward with it for the sake of national security and the best interests of the country. he is not making it a secret that he takes issue with in, even after it s law. at last, jonathan, the president has work to do. he has a harvey aid bill that has to get passed. we re seeing reporting tonight that the initial effort is going to be about $5.5 billion but could be in the tens of billions of dollars. there is a resolution to get done by the enof december are else there is a government shutdown and then the tax cuts. he has work to do with congress and that s not been successful so far. not at all. he himself has suggested he might be in favor of a government shutdown if it means freeing up funding for the border wall which is the signature campaign fromz from his run for presidency. but this is a president repeatedly has had a hard time marshaling his own party. which includes both houses of congress to enact his legislation. his leadership during the health care bill was spotty at best. at times it seemed he was getting in the way of the republicans trying to pass the bill. sending mixed messages in meetings or on twitter. eventually it was down in defeat. what has that led him to do? turn on members of his party even further. calling them out. suggesting perhaps that senate majority leader mcconnell should resign if he can t get health care done. to this point, as much as they outsourced the health care plan it seems they may be going that way with tax cuts as well. sounds clearly. and we may find a similar lack of executive leadership to get things done. bob costa, in fact the president in unveiling the not really tax cut plan, the president said the word the name congress many times. he kept on talking about how he doesn t want to be disappointed by congress. maybe congress will come around on this thing. but in the efforts to get this border wall done, the harvey aid may come in the way of that. because the border wall the president says is $10 billion. other estimates republican estimates are 15 to 25 billion. i ve seen estimates upward of that. that harvey aid may eat that up. and that may actually be a blessing in disguise for republicans because the sources i was talking to today on capitol hill. they say the harvey aid package is likely to be bipartisan in support and also likely puts the border wall fight on the shelf until the next fisk alyear fight budget fight later in year in december. it s easier to pass the budget by just having the harvey aid package be the sole main addition rather than the border funding. instead of having wall funding i think we can expect border security funding. something with democratic votes that s not the concrete of the wall. robert costa, vivian, jonathan, thanks to all three of you. coming up is there a rift between the president and the top man at the pentagon? when you don t get enough sleep, and your body aches, you re not yourself. tylenol® pm relieves pain and helps you fall fast asleep and stay asleep. we give you a better night, you re a better you all day. and for your daytime pain relief, try tylenol® extra strength. you re a great example for our country right now. it s got some problems. you know it and i know it. it s got problems that we don t have in the military. and you just hold the line, my fine young solars sailors with airmen, marines. you just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each or showing it, being friendly to one another, that americans owe to one another. we re so doing gone lucky to be americans. welcome back to the 11th hour rgs. defense secretary james mattis took steps today to squash reports of a growing rift between himself and president trump. in an impromptu q and a session with reporters at the pentagon mattis called the idea that the speech you saw to soldiers you had showed disagreement to the president ppt if i say six and the. says half a dozen they re going to say i disagree with him. . the executive editor of defense 1 and msnbc national analyst among the reporters with secretary mattis today. kevin great to see you. this has definitely piled on to a list of things that people are talking about in terms of some of the closest people around president trump breaking with him. we of course know about the departures from the white house, gary cohen, the senior economic adviser made comments not agreeing about how president trump dealt with charlottesville. then we saw rex tillerson say something on fox news. then this tillerson video was shone. but it wasn t the only thing made people think that mattis and trump are not on the same page. you believe he is trying to fix that. right. so the a couple of things happening here. mattis he walked into the press bull pen today not the briefing room. which he has done throughout the year. it s been his thing. we might get some word he was there. he wasn t specifically walking down to make some grand statement about what s going on with him and trump but it was the first thing he was asked. that was what we spoke about. the a few things happened in the last week. one was the video you showed which was a pep talk. a walk up to the troops and gave them the mattis speech he does. a lot of us heard that many times. in that he references we re divided back home and hope we can get back together. a lot of people took that and ran with it, probably too much. he hadn t had a chance to talk about it today. exactly what he said. he comes back to say, look he actually told us it s in the transcript, that he was thinking of trump s own speech. he had been up early that morning to watch the afghanistan speech where if you remember trump tries to bring unity to the country. he said fs thinking of the president s own words and people saying i was come out against the president. let s give him that. yeah. we also had an instance i m going to play this to you when reporters were asking him about the president s tweet on north korea that where he said the time for talking is over. here is what general mattis said. the president this morning tweeted that talking isn t the answer. are we out of diplomatic solutions for north korea. no. we re never out of diplomatic solutions. so that was wednesday. that was just after the president tweeted that the time for talking is over. one could say that was bad cop good cop but that was within hours direct contradictsen what the president said. and here is how mattis explained it. he said ifd asked about dploltic solutions i was not asked about the tweet. we said did you see the tweet and he said i did what you did you think. he said look the president tweeted we shouldn t be talking to north korea. i agree with the president. we aren t talking to the north korea. there are other diplomatic actions. at the same time nikki haley was in the u.n. the security council was meeting. there are economic means. that is on the table. he said i agree with the president but on the tweet i wasn t asked about that. a people in the press spun it the wrong way again. all of led to the bigger question, is he at odds with president trump and should he do something about it? i asked him directly about this idea of every time trump does something that half the country disagrees they all said the generals should resign. i know the answer i ve heard it from mattis i asked him to say it on the record. he laid out his own reasons why he serves and is there. it s an answer you can imagine. he is a solar s solar he was asked to serve the president. that s what he does. people are way ahead of themselves if they think mattis, kelly or mcmaster are going to resign in protest over anything. it would have to be a real dereliction of duty kind of thing. not just carrying out trump s orders or legal policies. all right kevin we will watch closely. interesting story that we continue to follow. kevin thank you. hold that line. coming up from harvey to charlottesville and the president picking fights on capitol hill. august 2017 was anything but quiet. we look back at 31 wild days in trump s america. headlines this just this month and his attacks on republican leaders on capitol hill. senior white house staff departures and the first solar eclipse to cross the u.s. in 99 years. and now the president faced the first major natural disaster as hurricane harvey struck texas as a category 4 hurricane. joining me now the white house reporter for politico and our reporter for bloomberg whose tweets today remiepded us just how much happened during the past month. i ve got them on the screen. there are more than 12 things. 12 things but they re actually a combination of different things. which of these many events have happened in the last 31 days do you think are the most impactful, the most important? other than that ali a pretty slow news month right. i would say there are a lot of things president trump says and does that i believe in the long haul get washed away in the tied of history. but there are a couple of things this month that happened that will never be forgotten. the top of which i would say is charlottesville, the neonazi violence and the president s ee give indication of this with the counterprotesters. this gets to the heart and soul of this country. is this a country giving quarter tots neonazis who want a ethnic o state or is it going to stand for american values the constitution protection pretrial and return dateless of background. i certainly think the president s reaction to this, the lack of unequivocal clear condemns opened the pan doora box of violence. that s point number one. the second thing is very important down down the road is the president attack on republican senators start wg mitch mcconnell and four others. he needs these people to get any legitimating agenda through that s standing the test of time and that can t easily be reversed by his successor. he risks potentially being a legislative lame duck early in the presidency. annie let me ask you yesterday mike allen and his folks put together a list like the last one we looked at. and then mike had the thesis had the president three weeks ago done something differently in charlottesville, we d be talking about a president who did the right thing there and then when hurricane harvey comes along he gets a second chance to do that. and it actually could have changed the way we ve looked at the entire presidency. do you buy into that? sure, but trump had four i think opportunities to correct himself on charmtsville. he didn t want to. that theory of the case is assuming a completely different president than who donald trump is. if we do that there is a lot of possibilities. let me ask you one other question. what we have seen since charlottesville but before harvey was the departure of steve bannon. a lot of people said when steve bannon is dewon we ll see what his indistinct really are on his own. you know, i really do wonder we spent a lot of time writing about the factions in the west wing and the staffers who is influencing the president. i do wonder how much how the stories will age when more and more we re seeing the departure of many west wing aides. and not a lot of changes in the president s behavior that at the end of the day, a lot of this is trump being trump. that the influence of the aides at some level could be overstated. annie and sahil stay with using. donald trump pledges $1 million to harvey relief. happy to tell you that he is would like to join in the efforts to a lot of the people that we ve seen across this country do, and he s pledging $1 million of personal money to the fund. went on to say the president would take suggestions from reporters of groups and organizes that have been effective in providing aid for those affected by the storm. this is not something the president has a great reputation with. he doesn t pledge all that much in terms of charitable organizations and that that he has pledged he often has he has had in some instances a tendency to not follow through. there will be people who look to make sure he follows through on this. it s a pretty important pledge. it s a nobl gesture. it encourages people to help out. like i said, there will be people who want to be sure he does it. if so, good on him. it s been sort of a no win week for the president when it comes to how he dealt with harvey, he went earlier than some said he should have, he went to places they said he shouldn t have, they criticized him for the hat he was wearing, with not sort of empaw thighsing with folks. tonight we saw advice president pence go to rock port and did things more like what we re used to seeing the president do. he had his gloves on. he had his jacket off. he was hugging survivors. what do you make of all the criticism. is it a temperature pivot in a tea pot. i think no win is overstating it. he avoided a george w. bush katrina so far. this is not going to go down in history as a giant crisis of his presidency or a giant flub. he messed up the optics by not meeting any victims of the storm and he s going back saturday. we ll see if he has a compassionist empathetic moment. pence today clearing brush showed more what we expect politicians to do in these situations. he criticized his hat. he hasn t messed up a critical recovery so far, and i think that for the most part, aside from criticism of the margins, this isn t going to be a another crisis of august like we were talking about in the previous segment. thanks so much. we appreciate your analysis tonight. coming up a time of crisis in texas has brought out the worst in some people. it s also brought out the best in so many more. this window will not last for long. lendingtree is the only place to compare up to 5 real refinance offers against your current mortgage - for free. are you sure you have the best rate? take 3 minutes and find out right now. because at lendingtree, when banks compete, you win. warning that price gouging will not be tolerated. is similar warning issued by the texas attorney general. i spent my career covering the economy, lauding the the capitalist system is not at its best when it provides the chance to profit from a catastrophe. it is morealy wrong to profit off the suffering of others in times of disaster. it s also illegal. companies big and small have apologized this week as images appeared online for evidence of price gouging for things like gasoline and water. bear business ends at the door of disaster. in the time of crisis, you set aside the potential of profit but the rest of us share our wealth with those who have lost theirs. that stands in stark contrast to people like this, the remarkable heroism of those who rush to the aid of victims. to the donations that americans make from the privacy of their phones to the striking images of people waiting in line not for aid but to volunteer their time, their valuable time in the service of their fellow citizens, that s what you re looking at here. we have seen so many images this week of the best of america and what can be accomplished when people put aside differences and work together. it will be a long road for the recovery efforts in texas, but these volunteers, these heros are proofing that in the end, our better angels will prevail. that is our broadcast for tonight. thank you for being with us. i ll see you back here tomorrow morning at 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. eastern time. good night from nbc headquarters in new york.