access hollywood video. jessica leeds told the times she was assigned the seat next to donald trump in first class on an airplane 35 years ago when donald trump was still flying on commercial airplanes. she said he politely introduced himself. but then after the meal was served and the trays were taken away, donald trump started putting his hands all over her and grabbing her. here is some of her video interview with the new york times. if he had stuck with the upper part of the body, i might not have gotten i might not have gotten that upset. but it s when he started putting his hand up my skirt, and that was it. that was it. i i was out of there. the other woman in tonight s new york times report is rachel crooks, who is 22 years old in 2005 when she was working as a receptionist in a company located in trump tower. here is how the times describes what happened the first time she saw donald trump in the building and introduced herself. they shook hands, but mr. trump would not let go, she said. instead he began kissing her cheeks. then he kissed me directly on the mouth. both women said that watching the presidential debate on sunday was infuriating, especially this moment. just for the record, though, you saying that what you said on that bus 11 years ago, that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent? i great respect for women. nobody has more respect for women than i do. so for the record you re saying you never did that? frankly, you hear these things said. and i was embarrassed by it. but i have tremendous respect for women. have you ever done those things? and women have respect for me. and i will tell you, no, i have not. in a telephone interview with the new york times, donald trump said none of this ever took place. shouting at the times reporter who was questioning him. mar el lago in florida where she was working as a photographer s assistant. ray charles was performing. tasha dixon, a contestant in the 2001 miss teen, let me say that again, miss teen usa pageant said this today about donald trump. he just came strolling right in. there was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or something. some girls were topless. other girls were naked. to have the owner come waltzing in when we re naked or half naked in a very physically vulnerable position, and then to have the pressure of the people that work for him telling us to go fawn all over him. and tonight robert costa is reporting from washington post that donald trump intends to make good on his threat to the new york times. he says that donald trump s lawyers are drafting a lawsuit against the new york times that could be announced at any moment. and nancy giles, a lawsuit that still sort of seems like a he said-she said in a way. but these women did tell people contemporaneously what happened. we also have a pattern of behavior from trump that is pretty clear. the thing about these october surprise series that they re not surprising at all. right. donald trump issued a statement tonight in which he said the campaign anyway said to reach back decades this, by the way, please listen to every word of this. this is so ironic in light of what the trump campaign has been up to. to reach back decades in an attempt to smear mr. trump trivialized sexual assault. and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election. maria teresa, that s the guy who reached back decades sunday night to invite women from decades ago in bill clinton s life to the debate. tonight the trump campaign says you must never, ever reach back decades. well, and he did it purposely to intimidate and humiliate his opponent in the most grossest of ways. because she could not control what happened 30 years ago that had nothing to do with her but her husband. that s what is absolutely obscene. but what donald trump has, his hardest part is actually taking ownership of when he does something wrong. the fact that we have types of him, decades long tapes of him going on howard stern, degrading women constantly, even making fun of how he actually can interact with his own daughter can make us feel uncomfortable. this is a pattern. this is who he is. if americans want to vote for him, let s be clear. this is the person who he there. is no plan b and there is no other donald trump. this is the person that we are seeing every single day. and most recently, lawrence, i think you saw he was at a pennsylvania rally, and he said look, you know that i m a snake. you voted me in. you nominated me. so he knows who he is. and now he realizes that it s women who are going to get him to the white house. i said this before. it s going to be ironic that now we have muslim american military family that is going bring him down. we have a latina beauty queen that is going to bring him down and women are going to bring him down. i want to read another piece of the statement because it is just breathtaking. he says it is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged in this story. and nancy giles, this is the campaign that firmly believes catherine willie s story about bill clinton in the white house when he was rather recognizable as president of the united states. oh, yeah. if you re going with the unrecognizable guy won t do this theory, how do you explain what they re saying about bill clinton every day? you don t. because it doesn t make sense and it doesn t follow any kind of logic. i guess roger ailes could say the same thing about his network where he employees a lot of women and he is also you know, it brings up a couple of things for me. and i want to echo something maria teresa said. and that s how gross it is he tries to conflate his action was bill clinton s. i am in no way condoning anything bill clinton did. but hillary is the candidate. and there is something kind of sexist about him kind of bypassing her and going to bill as if there is anything going there that can balance his reckless actions. anybody that watches law & order knows that if you re a defense attorney, you re going to defend even people that have done horrible things. so what is he trying to say about hillary? he s got nothing to say about her, and any kind of actions she might have done that are equating to what he did. everyone should be reading this new york times piece tonight or tomorrow. but i want to read one passage of it. because it takes you into the life of someone who has this kind of thing happen to them. this is rachel crooks. and it s her boyfriend at the time who is describing what he came home to that night. he said i asked how was your day, mr. hackenberg recalled. she paused for a second and then started hysterically crying. after ms. crooks described her experience with mr. trump, she and mr. hackenberg discussed what to do. i think that what was more upsetting than him kissing her is she felt she couldn t do anything to him because of his position, he said. she was 22. she was a secretary. it was her first job out of college. i remember her saying i can t do anything to this guy because he s donald trump. and anna marie, that is one of the looks inside one of these horrible stories. i mean, i don t know where to begin. you brought me back, quite honestly. i mean, i have to say, i am very concerned for a lot of women out there. because i was brought back by that statement by something that happened to me when i was a young woman. i would be so shocked if the other two women you re speaking to haven t had something similar happen to them. something like that happened to me when i was young and i couldn t do anything about it. that is what happens to women. that is why this is so preposterous that if donald trump wants to go to war on this, this is such a different animal than what happened with bill clinton. for one thing, as we are saying, bill clinton is not running for office. for the other thing, donald trump is a predator. he is a predator who thinks that his so-called celebrity can allow him to do anything. there are women that want to show that s not possible there are women that want to say, no it doesn t allow you to do anything, and i m going to show you by voting against you. what i just want to follow up one thing with anna marie, and then i ll come to you. i want to hear you all on this particular point that i m about to ask. i want to go, anna marie, to this perception that mr. hackenberg, that her boyfriend had at the time. it was his perception in the passage i just read that he felt that she was more upset, more upset by the feeling of powerlessness after the fact than the actual moment in his company. i think that describes perfectly what happens for woman when this happens. in the moment, you actually have some physical agency unless it s somebody a lot bigger than you, which does happen. but you can kind of turn away run away. it s afterwards when you realize you can t do anything about it and if it happens again you also can t do anything about it. this is toxic. this is completely toxic for trump s campaign. he will not recover from this. maria teresa, please go ahead. this is the silver lining. people across the country are having these conversations with their husbands, with their spourks with their sons. these are the limitation. this is when you have to have consent. this is the only thing i think will actually bring to the top how pervasive this is in our culture, and the fact that no one is going to be getting away with it is i think fantastic. i have to applaud the athletes. the athletes have come out and said this is not wanter in the locker room. this is not acceptable. you actually see men coming forward and saying we have to stop this and making sure that women feel safe in their own agency. i have appreciated that so much, hearing the athletes saying what we talk about in the locker rooms are stocks and bonds. right. what the traffic was like on the way to work. and i also have to say how much i really hate that part of what is being said by his campaign is these aren t matters that interest women. this isn t what is important. women want jobs. yeah, they want jobs, but they want to feel safe in the workplace. they want equal pay, and they don t want to feel like someone in authority can bully them or sexual assault or harass them. so this is one of the most important things i think, one of the most important issues facing this country and facing the world, frankly. so i m glad that it s getting out there and getting some steam. we have a lot of video to get to tonight, and a lot of ground to cover. so we re going to have to go to a break in a moment. i just want to nancy has made the point that on howard stern, donald trump, and we don t have the time to play this right now. we re going to play it later in the show. donald trump bragged about the fact that he owns the beauty pageants and the teenage girl beauty pageants allows him to walk into the dressing room whenever he wants, to and he picks the time to walk in there that is most exploitive. and ana marie, we have that on video. that s another donald trump confession on video that he is joking about with howard stern, that he never thought was going to come back to him in his life. but there is the confession already on video for what he is accused of tonight. yeah, there it is. this is a pattern for him not just in the way he talks about women, but the way he talks about almost everyone. i know you have been very observant about this. probably the other women on this panel have been observant. he exploits whoever he can when he can. he thinks less of people who are not as powerful as him. that means women, minorities, people who are disabled. he manipulates and controls whoever he can. and he thinks he can get away with it. i think the stern stuff is just another sign of him thinking he get away with it. he was so open with stern because he thought it didn t matter. he thought his power and his celebrity and his money would allow him to say whatever he wanted. go ahead, maria. he also and it s not just women and minorities and people of color. it s also small businessmen. right. anybody he feels that he can trample with and basically get away with it. there was a piece where a man who sold him $100,000 worth of pianos and came back and said sorry, i m just going to give you 70,000. the idea that he is above the law. he understands tax code enough to write these things off is really it s not only unappealing. wait a second, you have learned how to play the system so well that you feel you don t have to be accountable to anybody. i think that this 18-month cathartic exercise we ve been doing with donald trump is actually very good. because we actually now can have conversations on when people talk about white male privilege, he is the epitome of that. nobody else would be able to get away with what he is doing. hillary clinton is taking the stage in las vegas. we will go to her as she gets into that speech. but i just want the make the point, nancy, that donald trump has always thought this is funny. that s what you see on the tape with billy bush. it s funny. he thought it was funny with howard stern. and it s not funny. to echo what ana marie just said, not only it is not funny, but it s rude. it s disgusting. and he has gotten away with it. that s the thing. he continues to get away with it. so i think it encourages him to exhibit the same behavior as he gets way with it again and again and again. and it is not locker room talk. as if even if it was just talk, it wasn t a painful, horrible thing to lobby at someone. but locker rooms across the country have said nah-ah, we don t talk about that. i was in a lot of sports. i have never heard anybody, and i know a bunch of crude guys. and i have never heard anybody brag about sexual assault, ever, nothing like what that guy was talking about on that bus. and the rush limbaugh today discovered that the problem and he really did discover this today. he said the problem is consent. ana marie, he said the only thing liberals care about in terms of sexual behavior is consent, that liberals are okay with everything else, as long as it s consenting adults. and rush limbaugh didn t realize that yes, that is correct that is precisely the position. as rush is thinking there are all these other things that should be condemned like homosexuality and all these other things, the only things they seem to care about is sent. and he was offended. i. i think and there is a silver lining here. i remember i actually heard rush limbaugh say that live. i happened to be somewhere where he was on. he did say this in this astonished voice. another person could read that same statement much as you did and it s a statement. whereas he was shocked by it. it s really stunning. nancy giles, maria teresa kumar and ana marie cox, thank you all for joining us. i appreciate it. thank you, lawrence. we re going to continue monitor hillary clinton at that speech in las vegas, and continue with more of our guests joining us. i think he is a very dangerous man for the next three or four weeks. those interest words of the reporter who has been covering donald trump longer than anyone else. wayne barrett was the first reporter to take on the myth of donald trump in the village voice way back in the 1970s. donald trump tried to stop wayne barrett every way he could think of, including trying to bribe him and threaten him. but wayne barrett stayed on the trump beat and paved the way for so much of the investigative journalism that has been done on donald trump since then. we re joined now exclusively by wayne barrett, the author of trump: the greatest show on earth, the deals, the down fall, the reinvention. also joining us david corn and msnbc political analyst. wayne, i ve been wanting to talk to you about this for a long time. and just the simple question. as donald trump said or done anything in the last year of this campaign that has surprised you? grabbing the pussy surprised me. even those words come out of his mouth. and i was a little stunned by that, lawrence. it s great to be here with you. certainly the stories of today do not surprise me. this ability to roam the earth looking for someone to grab is not surprising at all, but saying i grabbed them by the pussy, that surprised me. and wayne, you knew him and were covering him before his big rise to fame, and certainly before he had his own tv show. do you sense that giving donald trump his own tv show, that was a kind of heroin for him, that it took all of his worst traits and amplified them? yes. i think his worst trait obviously he objectifies women. but what he really has done is objectify himself. that s why he talks about himself like trump. trump did this, trump did that. the process of objectifying yourself is totally connected to the camera. because that s his that s his lifeline. and i really think that one of the reasons he tweets at 3:00 a.m. is because there is no camera around to talk to. so the camera has become the camera has become his lifeline. and he has turned himself into an object, which is basically the great story of his life. d it s it s as if he is so disconnected from human emotion other than anger, he is so disconnected from human any form, including the children. i mean art of the deal he mentions them once in his first memoir. tony schwartz who wrote it said they were never around and he never talked about them and never interacted with them. of course they didn t live with them. ivanka was 8 when they moved out. and yet he gets great credit for raising these kids. but they haven t been close to until they could make money in his company. and so i think that the disconnect between him and the life most of us live is really profound and deep. and i want to bring david corn in for a second. david, i just wanted to read a report from bloomberg today that says bannon, steve bannon told trump staffers according to advisers who are present, this has nothing to do with consensual sexual affairs and infidelity. this is bill clinton. we re going turn bill clinton into bill cosby, meaning that s why they re not using any of the women who were allegedly involved in consensual affairs with bill clinton. they are simply using the ones who say that bill clinton behaved with them the way donald trump admits to behaving on that access hollywood video. you know, i was talking to some trump people over the weekend before the new allegations emerged. and we were just talking about the video. and they said trump has only one play, to go nuclear. and the interesting thing to me is the only nuclear play that they saw was attacking bill clinton for behavior from 20, 30, 40 years ago that had been reported, litigated, that, you know, only marginally is connected to anything you can say about hillary clinton when you had to know, this is not a surprise that donald trump was as vulnerable or somewhat is vulnerable on this front. even before these women came out. there have been already cases that had been published in the guardian, the new york times and elsewhere where these allegations against donald trump. and i think wayne makes a great point about trump objectifying himself. trump is a commodity. he is a brand. he is not a human being in a lot of ways it seems. and that s how he has been selling himself. and he seems oblivious to anything that goes on in the world outside of his own concern with his own brand, his own commoditification. and therefore i could easily see him running to wage the very type of attack that he would be vulnerable. to one last point. i wrote a story a couple of months ago that he that people around him in the start of his campaign wanted to have a vetting of him. have opposition research conducted on trump, which is kind of common for most national campaigns. he said no. now we know why. wayne, i have to say, you know sorry. we re going go live to hillary clinton now, her speech. well, he has doubled down. he doubled down on his excuse that it s just locker room talk, and i got to tell you, after he said that in the last debate, the most amazing thing happened. athletes and coaches started speaking out. from the nba, from major league baseball, from the nfl. they re coming forward and saying hey, not in our locker rooms. that s not what happens. but he is not just insulted women. he is an equal opportunity insulter. he has insulted everybody. he insulted a distinguished federal judge who was born in indiana, and he said well, he couldn t be trusted to be a judge because his parents came from mexico. he has targeted immigrants, african americans, latinos, people with disabilities. he has targeted p.o.w.s and muslims. he has also targeted our military. he has called our military a disaster. now how can you be the commander in chief if you don t respect the men and women who serve in the united states military? i think he has shown us who he is. now the question for all of us is who we are, right? what are we going to do to show i want to go back to wayne barrett as hillary clinton continues her speech there in las vegas. wayne, a point i wanted to make is i had consistently predicted that donald trump would not run for president. and i was right every time, except the last time. and the reason i was saying that is that i had been reading your reporting of back i guess when i just got out of high school. and all the reporting about donald trump in the meantime. and i saw what was there. and just your reporting alone is an opposition file unlike we ve ever seen on a presidential candidate. and i just i know donald trump knows that it s out there. i just couldn t imagine him leaping into this. were you surprised that he decided to run for president finally? yes, i was. but keep in mind even when this video emerged, part of the trump defense has been well, he wasn t running for president. yeah, yeah. and so he said and did reckless things. in fact, he ran for president for four months in 2000. roger stone ran that campaign. he tried to get the reform party line. he pulled out. and as i wrote in the book in 1988, he was flirting with it. he referred to marla as his southern strategy. he didn t think ivana would be presentable in a national campaign. and he thought that marla maples could help him carry the south. patiently he doesn t need marla to carry the south now. race will do it for him. but he has been talking about this, thinking about this. roger stone, who has been with him for 30 some years the night he was nominated, posted that this was a celebration of over 30 years of work together. and so they ve been thinking about this. and yet he would still behave while he was considering being a presidential candidate most of his adult life, he would still behave in this totally reckless way. wayne barrett, thank you very much for joining us tonight. i really appreciate it. really appreciate your perspective on donald trump. and david corn, thank you for joining us also. sure. really appreciate it. we re going to stay monitoring hillary clinton s speech. i think we re going to squeeze in a break here. and we ll be right back. ces in y life. so when my asthma symptoms kept coming back on my long-term control medicine. i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment with breo. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthmcontrol medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won t replace a rese inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo opens up airways to help improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems 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ly. do it right. we re continuing to monitor hillary clinton s speech in las vegas. these are her first public remarks since the new allegations have come up tonight against donald trump. the behavior that donald trump admitted to on the access hollywood video that appeared on friday is tonight being corroborated by several home with have come forward today to say that he did indeed touch them and kiss them without their consent. let s take a look at what donald trump admitted to in that access hollywood video. use tic tacs in case i start kissing her. i m automatically attracted to beautiful. i just start kissing them. it s like a magnet. you just kiss. and when you re a star, they let you do it. you can do anything. whatever you want. grab them by the [ bleep ]. do anything. joining us now, michael steele, former chairman of the republican national committee and an msnbc analyst. also with us tim miller, a member of the never trump movement and a former communications director for jeb bush s 2016 campaign. gentlemen, i d like to listen to what is now a more relevant tape than it was even yesterday. and that is we re going to hear donald trump with howard stern admitting that he does indeed when he owned those beauty pageants and the teenaged beauty pageants, he would indeed walk in deliberately on the girls when he knew they were undressed. let s listen to this. well, i ll tell you the funniest is that i ll go backstage before a show and everyone is getting dressed and ready and everywhere else. and you know, no men are anywhere. i m allowed to go because i m the own over the pageant. i m inspecting it. is everyone okay? they re standing there with no clothes. is everybody okay? and you see these incredible looking women. and so i sort of get away with things like that. michael steele, it s only october 12th. yeah. which means we don t yet know what the october 13th surprises are or the 14th or the 15th. yeah. no, there is clearly a lot more to come. there as you noted earlier, lawrence, a long history here that has been reported on. and now in light of these new accusations as well as what we got from last friday, i think this funnel opens up. and it s a huge, huge problem for the party. it is a huge problem for the campaign. there is no walking around this gingerly. there is no putting a good face on it. this has been dealt with, confronted directly. and i don t know how this party or the campaign does that. i just want to play something john boehner said earlier this evening where he basically was on fox news saying he didn t see how this could get worse. let s listen to this. what more could be said? in this election cycle than has already been said? so you seem to think that we kind of already know what donald trump is all about, and that nothing further could come out that would make any difference? it can t be any worse, could it? well, that s a good question. what do you think? i don t think so. and tim miller, that was minutes before the new york times posted this story tonight of these two women coming forward saying yes, he did to us what he says he did on that access hollywood video. i love speaker boehner, but this line of thinking was way, way too common within the party. and donald trump told us all we needed to know last year. the very first question of the very first debate was megyn kelly to donald trump going through all of the nasty, demeaning, harsh, cruel comments he had said about women over the course of his life. and obviously worse and lower comments have come to light since then. but we knew that. and a lot of washington leaders, including speaker boehner unfortunately said oh, ted cruz is the devil. he can t be that much worse than ted cruz. now we re stuck with this guy. and it s a major, major problem for our party. and it s going to be something we have to rebuild from for years to come. gentlemen, if you can bear with me, we want to try to fix our break structure here. so we re going work in a quick break here. we went quite a distance without a commercial earlier. a quick break here. we re going to continue to monitor hillary clinton s speech in las vegas. we will come back to that if she responds to in any way to the news about donald trump tonight. we ll be back with michael steele and a tim miller after this break. mom, clothing optional. lendingtree. when banks compete, you win. okay! .awkward. like their photo claims tool. it helps settle your claim quickly, which saves time, which saves money. and when they save, you save. that s auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance, an allstate company. click call. esurance does insurance a smarter way, which saves money. like bundling home and auto coverage, which reduces red tapewhich saves money. and when they save, you save. that some and auto insurance for the modern world. esurance, an allstate company. click or call. we have more breaking news tonight, this time from people magazine. people magazine has a report on a december 2005 incident involving a people magazine writer natasha stoinoff. she is driving what it was like for her when she was working on a story in 2005 that brought her to mar el lago and donald trump. there came a moment where she found herself alone in a room with donald trump. people magazine carries this account from natasha stoinoff breaking what happened. she said we walked into that room alone and trump shut the front door behind us. i turned around and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat. i was stunned and i was grateful when trump s long-time butler burst into the room a minute later as i tried to unpin myself. the butler informed us that melania would be down momentarily. and it was time to resume the interview. we re back now with maria teresa kumar who has rejoinedteresa, w the october 12th surprises continue almost by the minute. here is people magazine, obviously this has been a legally vetted, carefully legally vetted report. they would not publish it without that. reporting that this reporter alone with donald trump at mar el lago with melania his wife upstairs, and donald trump shut the door behind us. i turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat. that is precisely what he said to billy bush was his modus operandi. it s what he tried to do with the woman on the airplane and the receptionist. this is clearly a pattern. but your just reading that statement, lawrence was gut-wrenching. i can t imagine any viewer right now not even in tears or feeling uncomfortable. he is taking us to a very dark place. and the fact that these women are sharing their bravery with us of sexual assault, i have to applaud them. because it s something that cannot be easy. and it s finally giving voice to so many people out there that feel that they have been alone for so long. and i feel that this is we re on october 12. but not only is this a pattern, but i can expect more. and hopefully things that are not more ruthless on his ability to prey on women. and i just want to read another passage in this. it s a long report. i just want to stress, this is people magazine. that means this has been vetted by very high powered corporate lawyers who know exactly where the libel laws protect them and where they don t. they are lawyers completely unwilling to take the slightest risk with this kind of report. she says that an hour later, i was back at my hotel. my shock began to wear off and was replaced by anger. i kept thinking why didn t i slug him? ana marie was saying the same things. when women get into places where they re vulnerable, you end up feeling that you did something wrong. and that is precisely what a predator wants you to do. that s about what someone that basically practices sexual assault wants you to do. but again, i cannot put my arms around any republican that can possibly stand by his side. this is not leadership if they continue feeding this monster and saying he is okay and fit to be president. the fact that he preys on the most vulnerable, that he encounters, you can only imagine what he would do not only to the rest of the country, but now the world. there was j.r.rowling said a tweety she did want his hand on the nuclear weapons and someone said but you re not an american. but i m the world. a country which is incredibly diverse, which thrives on entrepreneurship and thought and differences. a loug someone who has clearly shown his stripes to us from the very beginning to come in and try to basically distort and destroy our balance of power. he has been a ruthless going more recently as you mentioned earlier, threatening the new york times for suing him on a story that is clearly increasingly validated, being a predator towards women. the fact that he went after a federal judge saying that once he is in office, he would basically strip him from his judgeship, and going after hillary clinton saying if he wins that she is basically going to be put in prison for a political opponent. this is not america. this is much more closely tactics that you see in russia. and something of a dictator such as putin that many folks in russia would agree than something that is done by a person running a country that has checks and balances, that has a judicial branch, that has a congressional branch, and that has the oval office. and anna ma marie, there is here about this reporter s reaction to this natasha stoinov is her name. and i just wanted to read some of it. it s too difficult to read some of it. she said why didn t i slug him. why couldn t i say anything? the next morning anger became fear. i had been up all night worrying about this. and ana marie cox, the pain that s being expressed in the aftermath of these incidents is so deep. and it s hard to read. oh, we don t have ana marie cox. nancy giles here with news the studio. this is the part where you ve seen me trying to read this. it isn t easy. it s awful, it s awful. as woman who has grown up in new york and has lived through kind of rude things that guys can sometimes say in the street, construction workers, being on a packed subway and feeling somebody pressing up against you, they re bad enough. what these women are describing is just god awful. and, you know, i can only repeat and agree with what the other two women on the panel have said. it almost doesn t seem like america. you wonder how somebody that started his campaign with such horrible things said about mexicans and the accusations, the claims that all black people are dodging bullets and living in hell and taking a judge, with his own ego and his own remarks kind of coming back to choke him, it s almost shakespearean because his ego in the end and his need to be on tv and on the radio and throughout and publicized, and a big important person, those are the exact words that are going to come back. and actions i think will haunt him. we re to be take a break. we re waiting for donald trump s threat to sue people magazine over this report. he has already threatened to sue the new york times. the times article, the people article, those articles are vetted by the very best lawyers that exist in this country. the likelihood of there being an opening for a libel suit against either one of these articles is very unlikely. we ll be right back. [click] and move only when you hear thelick th says they re buckled in for the drive. never give u till they buckle up. statement from an unnamed spokesperson of the trump campaign saying, quote, this never happened. there is no merit or veracity to this fictional story. why wasn t this reported at the time? mr. trump was the biggest star on television, and surely this would have been a far bigger scoop for people magazine. she alleges this took place in a public space with people around. this is nothing but politically motivated pile-on fiction. of course there is a lie in the trump statement. she does not say it took place in a public place. she specifically describes the door being closed. and no spokesperson at the trump campaign has any authoritative capacity to say, nancy giles, this never happened. how do you know? you weren t there. you know what i think has really brought it out is there he was at the debate, asked specifically about this. and at the debate, with millions of people watching on television, he said he never did it. and i think for anyone who was in a situation where he did grab or grope or anything like that, it must have been like a slap in the face. like the whole thing being experienced again. and i think that s why you re going to have more and more people coming out saying this happened to me. tim miller still with us, republican campaign professional. tim, is there anything they won t do for money over there at trump tower? is there anyone on that payroll of the trump campaign that when they read a story like this refuses to say this never happened? is there anyone there who knows none of them have the moral authority to make that statement? no. look, with the exception of one or two people, all these folks were hired after the convention this summer. kellyanne conway is the third campaign manager. she saw all of the op about donald trump over the last year. she saw all the nasty comments he made about women. she saw all the nasty comments he made about the disableded and hispanics and veterans. all of these people are completely, you know, in league with him and enabling him. so now they re going to have to spend the next 27 days either in hiding or continuing to put out statements like the one that you just read that lies and defends him. i don t understand what they get out of it at this point. michael steele, i guess there is just a template over there for this never happened press release to put out for whatever the next accusation is that comes out. well, yeah. they re kind of used to it by now. kind of roll it off the desk and put it out there. you know, that statement i suspect probably came probably from trump himself to say it, even though it was anonymously given. that s how they can say that. but the fact of the matter is this is just the beginning of the floodgates. you put it i think very aptly, lawrence. you know, what is tomorrow, the 13th going to offer us? what is going to be the surprise on the 14th? this is not a good space for anybody in the country. it s particularly the party in this campaign. someone is going to have to put an end to it. and the only person who can do that is donald trump. and david corn, any other women out there who had been thinking about maybe telling their stories when they see other women coming out, that can only be possibly an encouragement or possibly give them the sensation that, well, at least they re not alone if they do tell this story? every reporter who has worked on the trump beat the last year has gotten tips and leads about women and this sort of treatment. it s not a secret. and as we ve seen in the bill cosby case, the once people start coming forward, there tends to be more, not less of that. but i got to say for all those republicans out there, anybody who may be surprised, this guy for years has shown his misogynistic, racist, bullying, bigoted side. so a person like that engaging in this sort of behavior really comes as nothing other than in keeping with everything we know about him for years. and so all those conservatives who are still on the trump train and the people in congress, you guys knew. you gals knew. and there is absolutely no excuse. i salute people like tim miller. i disagree with him on almost everything else for knowing that character counts and you can see what type of guy trump was from a mile away. maria teresa, let me get a quick last word from you on this. i think it s exactly what david corn is saying. how can we as americans actually stand by and allow this person basically a free pass? every single woman that is coming out, if you notice, it s the exact same pattern. and my hope is that those women keep coming out and that they re brave and they keep having these conversations. but also we recently did a posted something on voto latino
donald trump just wrapped up his rally in vegas. sunlen serfaty is there. joining me now, donald trump did seize on the investigation but what else? reporter: that s right. he did, fred. it seems as if donald trump is campaigning with a new spring in his step and capitalizing on the e-mail server scandal. he s been relentless and today is no exception. he almost joked to this crowd, i never thought we d be thanking anthony weiner nine days out. here s what he had to say. her cell action was willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful. hillary set up an illegal server for the obvious purpose of shielding her criminal conduct from public disclosure and exposure. she set up this illegal server knowing full well that her actions put our national security at risk and put the safety and security of your children at risk. now, trump campaign officials feel this is an opening that they ve been given in this final nine days. also, something else from donald trump, going after obamacare premiums, raising potentially going up next week, that s something he s been talking about on the campaign trail and will continue to stay on the offensive according to trump campaign officials. they are looking at battleground polls that are tightening and midweek they may see a tick-up in the polls. they certainly have that anticipation and that hope, fred. sunlen serfaty, thank you so much. so as the clinton campaign continues to demand more information from the fbi about their review of the e-mails, they are also acknowledging that this scandal would have never happened had clinton not used her private e-mail server. cnn s jake tapper spoke with clinton campaign manager john podesta on state of the union . do you accept the premise that the reason we re here that hillary clinton and her inner circle, not including you, made a horrible decision to set up her private e-mail server and everything that s happened since then is her fault? look, i think she s apologized for setting up a private e-mail server, said it was a mistake and she wouldn t do it over again. it s very clear that this has been an issue through the course of this campaign. i think she obviously would like to take that decision back. but she s learned from it. and i think what s important about this campaign at this stage, with nine days to go, is who is fit to be president, who has the experience and the question of whether donald trump is too dangerous, too tempermently unfit to be president of the united states. so that s what we re going to close off and we re going to talk about the future she wants to build in building an economy that works for everyone, not just people at the top. i always hear the clinton team say that she s learned from it. what has she learned? as she s said many times, she wouldn t do it over again. it s the kind of decision that i think needed more thought, more review and i think she regrets that and i think it s regrettable and you learn and move on. again, i think in contrast to her opponent who never seems to learn from his mistakes and keeps repeating them and doubling down on them. one of the things that s interesting and one of the things that democrats in washington, d.c., are debating is whether or not hillary clinton has actually learned from this experience when it comes to people in her circle. i m not necessarily including you in that group but people who are more of a new guard even if you have a long-standing relationship with the clintons, were stunned when word of the private e-mail server was first reported in march of 2015, according to the stolen e-mails published by wikileaks and i know you say this is the russians and it s not me saying it. it s a lot of people saying it, including the government. okay. intelligence professionals say that. be that as it may you wrote, did you have any idea of the depth of this story? a clinton ally co-chairing your transition why didn t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago so crazy. you responded unbelievable. i guess i know the answer they wanted to get away with it. july 25th, do we know who told hillary she could use a private e-mail and has that person been drawn and quartered? you re acting like the server was a simple mistake but you knew this was going to be a big problem. it s easy with 20/20 hindsight. if someone had taken the steps and looked at it, if one would have definitely made a difference decision but it happened. i think it was at the beginning it was just done for convenience, but at the end of the day, it was a major problem i think as i told you, i think she s learned from it. i ve worked with her closely in this campaign. she takes hard advice, she respects people who will get up in her face and i think that the reason that i ve kind of survived through the whole campaign is because that s the kind of person i am. you certainly are. has anyone in the government provided you with the status report, john, on the investigation into your hacked and stolen e-mails? no. i ve talked to the fbi at the beginning of this, and my attorney has been in touch with them. it s part of the investigation of the russian hacks, but the scope of it, who knew what when, the fact that the trump campaign seems to have been in contact with julian assange from wikileaks quite early at least as early as august, i don t know what their investigation is finding. you re referring to roger stone saying trump confidant, let me correct myself. okay. a trump confidant roger stone, who, you know, bragged about being in touch with julian assange and talked about the fact that they were going to come after me was, he did that back in august. so what the government has learned about the interactions between assange and the russians, it seems clear that the russians were the ones who did the initial hack, how they got to wikileaks, what the relationship was with roger stone, i don t know. i assume the government is looking at that but i don t know anything more. maybe jim comey, if he thinks it s important, will let us know and come out in the next nine days. all right. john podesta this morning. we ll talk with our panel about this right after a quick break. when i started designing a bronx tale: the musical, i came up. .with this idea of four towers that were fire escapes. .essentially. i ll build a little model in photoshop and add these. .details in with a pen. i could never do that with a mac. i feel like my job is. .to put out there just enough detail to spur the audiences. .imagination to fill in all the blanks. this windows pc is amazing, having all of my tools. .right at my finger tips is incredible. all right. you just heard john podesta respond to the fbi investigation. let s talk about this with our panel, historian and professor, julian and david who is a cnn political commentator. also with the washington post. good to see you. david, let me begin with you. podesta paints this as nuance. he thinks huma abedin truly did believe she had handed over everything. so even in your newspaper today it s reported that beabedin did not use her husband s computer very much. so how is it that clinton e-mails may be in that device? i think what we know now is what director comey said. he issued this vague letter on friday which does have the clinton camp up in arms and you can certainly sympathize with hillary clinton and her surrogates saying that this was vague and, you know, overblew the investigation but at the same time, fredricka, you know, fbi director comey did say he would update congress on any new developments in the investigation and this might be a very small development but it s a development nonetheless. julian, previously the clinton campaign largely avoided talking about the e-mail scandal in rallies and in press conferences today. clinton didn t address it directly when she was in florida but the camp did release this explainer video. so is it enough? well, she s going to have to be out there talking about what is going on. they are talking about her and podesta until that interview on raising questions about comey and about the entire process. but you can t let that consume everything she does. it s important that hillary clinton also keeps talking about her agenda and, frankly, her attacks on donald trump. otherwise, if she s just talking about the e-mail story, it will be all anybody hears about. so david, you re alluding to this, that it s a promise that comey made that he wanted to keep everyone abreast. he didn t want to be in the middle of this necessary but through his transparency, he is. so could he or should he have anticipated that this would result just a few days before election day? yeah, i think it was foreseeable when he sent that letter to control that it would throw the election into a little bit of a scurry in these last nine days. in the last two weeks, fredricka, donald trump has been closing on clinton in the polls prior to this information coming to light. our own washington post poll this weekend shows it s a two-point race nationally and it s tight in several of the key swing states. what it s doing is not necessarily changing the entire dynamic of the race. again, we don t know what is in these e-mails or what was on this laptop or device that was recovered from huma abedin or anthony weiner. we know it s making it difficult for hillary clinton to make her closing argument in the last week of this race, which is what she was starting to settle in and do. she came out of the debates sort of the winner of those three debates, certainly the debates were trying to knock down a narrow polling lead and now she s got to defend this and it s frustrating her aides, including john podesta. the relationship between huma abedin and hillary clinton, very, very tight. huma has been working for hillary clinton since she was an intern in 1996. so now you ve got this scandal potentially and the relationship with anthony weiner and that investigation. so might this mean a prelude to a split between a clinton and huma abedin in the midst of all of this? it sure could. and even if this doesn t have a detrimental effect on the election for her, i think both with this particular situation but all of her advisers, it raises a question we ve heard about hillary clinton. if she always surrounds herself with the best advice and surrounds herself with the best people and so i think this is clearly going to be a case where there s serious consideration, you would imagine, to severing this relationship after this is done. all right. so much more ahead, david, julian. stick around. we have a lot more to tackle. the fbi is under pressure to give more details about its review of this e-mail involving a clinton top aide, huma abedin. so coming up, you ll hear from a republican lawmaker who has spoken to director james comey about the inquest. so find out what comey and lawmakers actually know about huma abedin s e-mails. that i . we met when we were very young. i was 17, he was 18. we made the movie the book of life. we started doing animation. with the surface book, you can do all this stuff. you can actually draw on the screen. so crisp. i love it. it s almost like this super powerful computer and a tablet had the perfect baby. it s a typewriter for writing scripts. it s a sketchbook for sketches. .it s a canvas for painting. you can t do that on a mac. are coming, and california will suffer budget deficits all over again. so vote yes on 55. because it helps our children thrive. all right. the pressure is on. fbi director james comey to release more details about the bureau s review of e-mails possibly linked to hillary clinton. definitely related to huma abedin. the e-mails were discovered on a computer that anthony weiner shared with his wife. robert goodlay told abc s this week that he encouraged comey to give the american people as much information as possible about the discovered e-mails before the election. you mentioned classified information. how do you or mr. comey know that there s classified information involved here if you haven t seen the e-mails? well, we don t know. and we don t know what the basis was for mr. comey making the decision to further pursue the case. we don t know whether that s informants, whether they ve had access to looking some of this information, we don t know what the basis was. we do know they know something is there. cnn investigations correspondent chris frates joining me live now from washington. chris, tell us more about what goodlay had to say. so far, it seems that comey is not telling lawmakers much more than what he s saying publicly. look, at this point, it s nothing. here s how he described his conversation with fbi director comey. did mr. comey tell you he would be coming forward with more information? he did not. his answer was with regard to a number of questions i asked him that he was not going to answer those questions at this point, meaning the conversation i had with him and mr. conyers. but with regard to mr. comey making a mistake, i think that he is very conscious of the controversy that s existed in the fbi. so despite the call by both democrats and republicans for comey to release more information, the fbi director is really not budging here. that s largely because he doesn t even know yet what s in those e-mails. and so chris, how odd is that, that director comey would not know what was in the e-mails but would construct a letter to the hill ? there s a reason for that. the fbi doesn t have permission to go through those e-mails yet. they are trying to get their approval. the government needs a new warrant because it only covers the investigation into abedin s estranged husband, anthony weiner. they need to get a new warrant for these newly discovered e-mails. right now, they only have a warrant to investigate anthony weiner. it s unlikely we ll have any answers to the big question here, which is, what is actually in these e-mails, until after the election, fred. chris frates, thanks so much in washington. and we ll be right back. mornin . hey, do you know when the game starts? 11 hours. oh. well, i m heading back to my room. oh, wi-fi password? super bowl, underscore houston underscore 51, underscore super bowl, backslash 51, backslash houston. got it. 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that s right. we got the impression that the fbi made this disclosure to members of the congress and in that letter jim comey, the fbi director said that he had been briefed on thursday. what that letter doesn t say is is when the fbi first learned of this and we re told by law enforcement officials that we ve been talking to that they had this in their possession for weeks. we first reported cnn first reported back on september 22nd, just over a month ago, that the fbi that the u.s. attorney in manhattan and the fbi were seeking possession of anthony weiner s communication as part of this sexting investigation. we re told that soon after that, they were able to get these noon indications and they were able to look at the e-mails and that s when the team in the fbi new york office discovered there may be huma abedin e-mails that related to the hillary clinton investigation. they stopped doing their work immediately and brought in the team that had been handling the e-mail investigation and they started looking at that. so by early october, it certainly was clear that there was something here, that it was pertinent to the clinton investigation. so what we are trying to get clarification from the fbi on is why it took so long for any of this to be known. perhaps if they had disclosed this back then, the reaction from the clinton camp would not be so severe. they feel it was revealed so closely to the election that it could have an affect on the election and certainly now it will have to be looked at much more closely simply because now we know the fbi was in possession of this information for weeks and only now disclosed it. so evan, might it still be the case that while the fbi investigators knew about these e-mails weeks ago that perhaps they only informed director comey on this past thursday as comey has stated? well, we know that there were several officials at the fbi who had knowledge about this because there was some deliberation inside the fbi about what to do, about how to proceed. obviously everybody knows inside knows about the rules about not disclosing information that is politically sensitive close to an election. it s a policy drilled into everybody there and they all know that this is something that is very sensitive. and so that might have been part of the deliberation. we don t know exactly what was the hang-up, what was the reason why they kept this under wraps for weeks and weeks and only disclosed it on friday. part of the accusations was because of concern that this would leak out anyway and they were concerned that if it did, it would appear that the fbi was covering up for the clinton campaign. they did not want it to appear that way. that s why they decided to disclose this to members of congress in a letter on friday. the question is, if they knew this so much earlier and they thought it was important enough to disclose to congress, why wouldn t they do it earlier this month? and the damage and the reputation to the fbi and all of the questions that jim comey is now getting might have been softened a little bit. it s not clear whether that might have made a difference, but certainly that s the question that everybody is asking right now. and then why would not a search warrant have been applied for weeks ago upon the discovery as opposed to now we re hearing discussions of a search warrant are happening? that s right. exactly. that s another question we re asking, which is, if you had dealt with this back in early october when you certainly had a clear picture that this was related to the ongoing to the clinton investigation, then why didn t you start taking those steps then? again, the clock was ticking simply because there is a poll tea at the justice department and the fbi that you don t take certain investigative steps within 60 days of a an election. that s the policy. even if they had done this in october, it still would have raised the same problem. i think the question that the clinton campaign now certainly has and it s a legitimate one, is perhaps if you had done this earlier, it would have given time to reveal this and for the voters to have all of this information, certainly not ten days or 11 days out to only learn this. fred? evan perez, thank you so much for your reporting. we ll check back with you. thank you so much. also, straight ahead, the trump campaign reacting to this new inquiry and the rising obamacare costs. what we ve got is not working and i m very glad that obamacare continues to form the core of his message even in light of the new fbi investigation. i m my team s #1 fan. yay. sports. i ve never been #1 in anything until i put these babies on. now we re on a winning streak and i m never taking them off. do i know where i m going? absolutely. we re going to the playoff. allstate guarantees your rates won t go up just because of an accident. starting the day you sign up. so get accident forgiveness from allstate. and be better protected from mayhem, like me. where do you think you re going-going, girl? girl, where do you think you re going? .here s the challenges you re going to have. and we can get it confirmed through our quickbooks. and what steps are we going to use to beat these obstacles before they really become a problem. [announcer] get 30 days free at quickbooks.com welcome back. i m fredricka whitfield. donald trump has zeroed in on one of his primary target issues, blasting obamacare, which he did again today at a rally in las vegas. trump called for health care to be repealed and replaced. earlier today on state of the union, jake tapper questioned the campaign manager about the presidential candidate s knowledge of the health care law. let me ask you a question about health care. there are real questions about whether donald trump understands how obamacare works. take a listen to what mr. trump had to say in florida. all of my employees are having a tremendous problem with obamacare. this is another group, is that a correct statement? you look at what they re going through with their health care is horrible, because of obamacare. after he gave that statement the general manager of trump s property attempted to correct the record and said 99% of trump s employees are insured through the hotel meaning they have private insurance. how can mr. trump be the one to replace obamacare if he doesn t seem to understand how it works? he does understand. his employees are the lucky ones, jake. they don t have to suffer under obamacare he s talking about the rest of the country, so many who have. he s the right person to repeal and replace it because obamacare is an unmitigated disaster, reminds us how intrusive, invasive and expensive the federal government can come in our lives under the guise of helping people. he was in arizona yesterday and told them that their premiums are expected to rise by 116%. will cnn or anybody else ask mrs. clinton today when she s visiting arizona? we see these other premium mailboxes and clicking onto their computers and getting notice their premiums are about to explode. it is reprehensible and deplorable to coin a phrase that americans are choosing between paying the rent, feeding their families and keeping of their health care. president obama lied 26 or 27 times telling people if you want to keep your doctor you can keep your doctor. no, you can t. people see a lack of quality, a lack of access, a lack of control and increase in price something under the guise of the affordable care act. the question for hillary clinton is what would you do about it? is obamacare 3.0 in the offing or the bernie sanders supporters who want to us move to single payer system? either way, she should own obamacare, she should be asked what she d do about it. donald trump says he d let you compete across state lines to buy your health insurance much the way you buy your auto insurance and other services. he would immediately remove the obamacare penalty which is hurting many people, and he of course would allow a more patient-centric health care system which would give us all health savings accounts so only you can control your own health care spending, what we ve got is not working, and i m very glad that obamacare continues to form the core of his message, even in light of the new fbi investigation. we ve had a great week in large part because mr. trump is talking about obamacare. all right. let s bring back our political panel now to discuss all of this. back with me is cnn political commentator david swirdlick and julian zeli sdplchzer. before we dive into the rising premiums, let s revisit this breaking news through which our evan perez reported, he s learning that the fbi knew of these new e-mails when it seized or received this anthony weiner computer back in september 22nd. so they ve known of these new e mays f e-mails for weeks now contrary to what director comey said learning about it this past thursday. we don t know if that was withheld from him for that period of time. so julian, how much bigger of a mess has this now been made? well, it becomes a bigger mess with every hour and the more questions raised about why the fbi did this and the process through which the decision was made obviously plays into the concerns that have been raised by the clinton supporters about the entire process through which this is being conducted but it s a reminder, especially without any evidence at this point of any kind of smoking done data that there s a danger of handling these kinds of stories so close to an election without knowing what the facts are. and so david, how do you see it? how much more, you know, potentially complicated does it come? right. well, if director comey has the timeline wrong, that s a problem and he ll be scrutinized for it. if, in fact, the fbi knew about these e-mails or whatever it is that s on this device in september, that should have been disclosed, at least what we know and based on evan perez s reporting sooner in the process, not 11 days, which was friday, before the election. that being said, you know, the complaints come from the side that i think is having to struggle with them in a political politic political context. this is throwing a wrench into the clinton s closing argument. back in july when director comey was coming out and making what was also not really a typical fbi protocol statement and speech explaining why he was not recommending criminal charges to the justice department against secretary clinton, it was republicans complaining. and i think that goes to the fact that both sides in this are sort of, you know, pleading their own case and understandably so but director comey really is in a very difficult position here. all right. let s shift gears to this affordable health care and rising premiums in certain jirks decisions. donald trump seizing on that saying he s going to and has committed to repealing and replacing you heard from kellyanne conway being challenged and whether donald trump has a clear understanding about the affordable care act. julian, you know, this is in step with what the gop has been saying for a very long time, it wants to replace and repeal. how does this assist donald trump? yeah, look, this has been an argument we ve heard from republicans for many years now. it actually faded in this campaign as other issues took up air time but it s come back because of the rising premiums. many would argue it s part of the story overall. we have far fewer people uninsured but symbolically, the news that premiums have risen on some people will rise is very potent, especially post e-mail story. i think donald trump has the opportunity to use that as another rallying point for the republicans. david, is this advantageous? at least in the short term, yes. julian is right, broad-sweeping policy issues it s been more about the character of the two candidates and them trying to knock each other down rather than to put forward a broad, comprehensive policy agenda. i also think that you played the clip of kellyanne conway talking about the dire state of obamacare. i think that was exaggerated. you can t blame the trump campaign to seize on this and make their argument that they are the change candidate, that people should rally to them because the obama administration and clinton administration have not delivered. whether that s true, it s a fair argument for them to make. does donald trump have to elaborate any further, give any detail about what kind of replacement he would envision? he s still behind even though the polls have tightened and even though he s doing a lot better in national polls, she is still in the lead and she still has an advantage in the electoral college and he comes with many liabilities as well. i don t think voters have forgotten that. he has a lot of pressure to get out there and show that he can actually handle some of these policy discussions in ways he has not demonstrated. so he shouldn t think that he can coast in this final week because he should also remember that he s coming from behind at this point. all right. julian, david, thank you so much, gentlemen. appreciate it. we ll be right back. s to make t. first, all customers who have been impacted will be fully refunded. second, we ll proactively send you a confirmation for any new checking, savings, or credit card account you open. third, we ve eliminated product sales goals for our retail bankers. to ensure your interests are put first. we re taking action. we re renewing our commitment to you. for millions of baby boomers there s a virus out there. a virus that s serious, like hiv, but it hasn t been talked about much. a virus that s been almost forgotten. it s hepatitis c. one in 30 boomers has hep c, yet most don t even know it. that s because hep c can hide in your body silently for years, even decades, without symptoms and it s not tested for in routine blood work. if left untreated, hep c can cause liver damage, even liver cancer. but there s important information for us: the cdc recommends all baby boomers get tested for hep c. all it takes is a simple one-time blood test. and if you have hep c, it can be cured. be sure to ask your doctor to get tested for hep c. for us it s time to get tested. it s the only way to know for sure. husband, anthonyweiner. the e-mails were discovered during an investigation of weiner, accused of sexting an en underage girl. brynn gingras joins me from new york with more. we know that anthony weiner started in congress in 1999 and then two years later, hillary clinton would become a part of the senate. they became even more entwined when weiner started dating huma aberde huma abedin, who clin described as her second daughter. anthony wee weiner remaking quiet. he s made no comment and hasn t been seen leaving his manhattan home this weekend, as questions remain what e-mails were discovered that launched the justice department to reopen the case into hillary clinton s use of a private e-mail server. weiner once stood in harmony with clinton, serving on capitol hill at the same time. weiner was a charismatic, political rising star, who had his eye on clinton s confidant, huma abedin. opposites attracted. the two marries in 2010. bill clinton officiated the ceremony. however, marital bliss soon faced a bomb shell. i m announcing my resignation from congress. reporter: weiner surrendered his political post after texting a picture of his crotch, as the couple were expecting a child. huma gave him a second chance and he asked the voters of new york too, as well. but more crude conversations with women surfaced. the final straw for huma abedin came with allegations that weiner sexted with an underage girl. huma abedin announced she was separating from her husband, and now this jolting the election before voters head to the polls. weiner is cooperating. no comment in regards to the recent developments. thank you so much. appreciate it. coming up, we ll hear from donald trump and hillary clinton supporters. what they think about this growing fbi investigation. anyone with type 2 diabetes knows how it feels to see your numbers go up, despite your best efforts. but what if you could turn things around? 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they found nothing so far. all right. we have so much more straight ahead in the newsroom. it all starts right now. hello again, everyone, and thank you so much for joining
i have recused myself in the matters that deal with the trump campaign. that statement by the attorney general on thursday came after the washington post revealed that sessions met twice last year with russian ambassador sergei kislyak. sessions scrambled to clarify. in retrospect i should have slowed down, but i did meet one russian official a couple of times and that would be the ambassador. sessions met with kislyak on july 18th, after speaking with a group of ambassadors in the republican convention and he met again with the russian ambassador at his office on september 8th, just three days after president obama took a hard line on russian sanctions in a g-20 meeting with vladimir putin. since the election, trump and his surrogates have repeatedly denied any contacted between the campaign and russian officials. i m telling you it s all phony, baloney garbage. all of the contact by the trump campaign and the associates was with the american people. you are not aware of any contacts during the course of the election. how many times do i have to answer this question? i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge no person that i deal with does. but the sessions reversal is one example of a growing list of admissions, dragged out of the trump administration after reporting on contact between trump associates and russian officials. there is now former national security adviser michael flynn who had publicly denied he had discussed sanctions and phone conversations with kislyak in december. after reporting detailed phone calls, flynn reversed himself and was forced to resign. jared kushner, reports disclose he was part of a december meeting with kislyak at trump tower. then there s mr. trump s former campaign chairman paul manafort. in july he denied that to appease the russians. the campaign fought to have the republican platform not include weapons for ukraine. it did not come from the trump campaign. i don t know who everybody is, but i guarantee you. nobody from the trump campaign wanted that change in the platform? no one. zero. but former trump policy adviser j.d. gordon tells abc nbc news that manafort was not forth right with us. gordon says he was in the room and told the committee chairman that the amendment was a, quote, problem for the campaign. gordon also met with the russian ambassador at the convention and then there s carter page, a one-time trump policy adviser who was also at that meeting. he has changed his story about meeting with russian officials. i had no meetings. no meetings. but on thursday, page s answer changed. did you meet sergei kislyak in cleveland? did you talk to him? i m not going to deny that i talked to him. by the way, we contacted paul manafort last night and he told us, quote, he has always been forthright with us and had no knowledge of the platform change until the sunday after the convention so he could haven t authorized the change. joining me is senator marco rubio. republican of florida. welcome back to meet the press, sir. thank you. good morning. good morning. you traveled with the president on friday down to florida on air force one. and on saturday morning the president went on a tweet storm accusing former president obama of illegally having him wiretapped. do you have any insight? first of all, did the president talk to you about this on friday and do you have any insight on what precipitated all of this? we never discussed that, number one, and i have no insight into what exactly he s referring to, and i would imagine the president and the white house in the days to come will outline further what was behind that accusation. i ve never heard that before, and i have no evidence or no one s ever presented anything to me that indicates anything like that. in the days to come you guys are going to ask him and i imagine he ll answer it. for what is it worth, as a member of the senate intelligence committee, if there was a wiretap on donald trump s campaign isn t that something that you would have been made aware of? the term wiretap is thrown around very loosely by a lot of people so we have to understand exactly what they re talking about. i don t have any basis, i never heard that allegation made before by anybody, and i ve never seen anything about that anywhere before. but, again, the president put that out there and now the white house will have to answer to exactly what he s referring to. it s such a serious allegation. it is either, if it s true, it s an extraordinary political scandal and if it s not true, it s an extraordinary political scandal. fair? well, if it s true, and i just hate speculating about these things. this is the president of the united states on your behalf? clearly, if that were true then there s no doubt that it would be a very newsworthy item with a lot of discussion about it, and if it s not true then obviously one would ask themselves why would you put that out there. what was the rationale behind it? i didn t make the allegation and i m not the person that went out there and said it. i ve never said that before. i would not say that to you today, and i have no basis to say that. if the president and the white house does they ll lay it out over the next few days and we ll be interested to see what they were talking about. are you concerned that the president has a credibility problem? we can go back to the birther business, 3 to 5 million illegal votes and now this wiretap thing that you say you re not aware of. this is the president of the united states. can we take him at his word? first of all, i would say the president has gotten elected and in many ways he s doing what he told the people he was going to do. a lot of this outrage is donald trump is doing what he said he would do if he were elected and you see that reflected in the public polling where a large number of americans are saying he s doing exactly what he said he was going to do, and that s what people are mostly focused on. is the president s style different than mine? absolutely. is he an unorthodox political figure? absolutely. that s what people voted for and that s what they wanted in this election. wherever those facts lead us and we ll allow people to make judgments based on those facts. given that there have been reports that the white house reached out to your chairman of this intelligence committee richard berg of north carolina. some democrats are concerned, including mike warner are concerned that the credibility of the intelligence committee s investigation is now at peril because of this. is there a point, and i know you believe you guys can do this. you have tweeted that you guys can do this yourselves in the intel committee. is there a point that it might be better for the political process to take politics out of this and have a special prosecutor, whatever youant call it, and put this sort of out of congress right now? not now. i certainly don t think we re at that point at this moment and here s why. the job of the intelligence committee is not to be a law enforcement agency. the job of the intelligence committee is to gather facts and evidence to go through counterintelligence programs and intelligence programs and understand all of the evidence and the facts that s out there about how the russians did this and why they did this, et cetera and put this all in a report and that s our job to gather facts and i ve told everybody i m not going to be a part of a witch hunt and i ll also not be part of a cover-up. i want to put the facts out there wherever the facts lead us and that s what the senate intelligence committee will do. i will tell you this, if it s not what we do and if it s not the product we produce i will be among the first people out there on this program and out there that i did not sign my name on the report because it gave irrelevant facts that the american people deserve to know. we re a finder of facts, a collector of facts and we will put that in the report and people will make those judgments based on those facts. right after the fbi director comey briefed the intelligence committee, i believe it was about in fact, it was exactly february 17th, you tweeted the following. i am now very confident senate intel committee i serve on will conduct a thorough bipartisan investigation of interference of putin influence. i understand that was what you were briefed on, but what gave you more confidence to tweet that than before that day. first of all, because i m interactive with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and what i have very strongly is every member of that committee is interested at arriving at the facts and the truth. no one is looking at this from a political angle and everybody at the end of the day understands what the job is, understands that the credibility of the committee is on the line and we want to arrive at the truth. everyone in there is prepared to go where the facts lead us irrespective of what the implications will be politically. i am very confident of that. i remain confident of that. if that changes then i will be the first out there to say hat committee is no longer capable of doing their job and we re not at that point, thankfully. you said you re not going to participate in a witch hunt and that is words that the president has used to describe all of this. the more he does that, is that an irresponsible use of phrase right now? i don t know why. he obviously feels very strongly that he s being accused of things that he hasn t done and there s hysteria in the media and he has the right to say. he has every right to defend himself and that s what he s doing. my use of the term has to do with the following and that is i want to go where the truth is irrespective of its political implications. wherever the truth is where we re going to go and everyone else needs to be committed to that principle, as well. and i believe in the intelligence committee that we are and if that changes, as i told you, i ll be the first among them to say it. do you believe the intelligence community s assessment that the russians interfered in this election and did so to try to benefit donald trump? well, i ve never doubted that the in from back in october i ve been telling people, i was in the middle of my campaign, and i refused to talk about wikileaks because it was the work of a foreign intelligence agency trying to influence our elections. the key is not just to understand what they did, but how they did it because they ll try to do it again and again, not just to influence elections and to influence political debates in washington, d.c. i want to make sure that we don t spend so much time focused on things that may not have happened that we don t focus on the things that actually did happen because they re happening now in france. they re happening now in germany and it will happen again in this country if we don t learn from it. senator marco rubio, republican of florida. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. always a pleasure, sir. thank you. thank you. on thursday before attorney general jeff sessions recused himself from any investigation involving russia and the trump campaign, chuck schumer from new york joined a growing list of democrats calling for sessions to resign. on friday afternoon president trump released that photo and called him a hypocrite. on this , senator schumer joins me now. good morning. good morning to you, sir. there are so many tweets to keep up with. happily talked with putin and his associates and took place in 03 in full view of press and public under oath. would you and your team, that s you challenging them under oath. let me ask you this, this morning the president s press secretary came out and said the following, reports concerning politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. president trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into russian activity the congressional intelligence committee exercise their oversight authority whether executive branch powers were abused in 2016. is that a fair ask of this administration? well, look, president obama has flatly denied that he has done this, and either way, chuck, the president s in trouble if he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong and beneath the dignity of the presidency. it is something that really hurts people s view of government. its civilization warping, and i don t know if any president democrat or republican in the past has done this. it shows this president doesn t know how to conduct himself. on the other hand, if it s true it s even worse for the president because that means that a federal judge independently elected has found probable cause that the president or people on his staff have had probable cause to have broken the law or to have interacted with a foreign agent. that s serious stuff. either way, the president makes it worse with these tweets. is he trying to divert this here? yeah. the president denied this. i don t have any doubt that president obama has been telling the truth. if they want to investigate it, sure, but the real point is we need a special prosecutor to investigate what went on in the trump campaign transition and presidency. let me ask you let me start with that, actually. please. do you no longer have confidence in the intelligence committee to do this on the senate side to conduct this investigation? let me answer that in two parts. first, the intelligence committee has congressional oversight, and yes, i have doubts about chairman burr. he first denied that they should investigate and when pushed by mike warner he said, okay, we ll investigate and then of course at the administration s request he went to the president and said something is wrong. that s taking sides in the investigation. the faith i have in the intelligence committee is in mike warner and the democrats. they ve been holding burr s feet to the fire and they will look for another alternative if chairman burr doesn t pursue this. there is another point to this. people mix up the two. the other is, of course, whether the law was broken and whether the trump campaign was complicit in working with the russians to influence the election. that needs a special prosecutor. rod rosenstein, he s a career man, he will be before the judiciary committee for his nomination for deputy attorney general. i am urging him at that hearing to say that he will appoint a special prosecutor to look into this because it s on the executive side that any investigation is done and any criminality is put forward. let me ask you about this specific charge, what you were just talking about with president trump, this idea that there may have been a court order surveillance of some form or another. you re part of what s called so many gangs on senate side and you re one of the gang of eight on intelligence matters, the most sensitive intelligence matters. you re briefed on this. is it fair wouldn t you have been briefed if the fbi had gone to a fisa court to get surveillance of a foreign government involving the trump campaign? wouldn t you know this? i don t comment on classified briefings. it s fair to say can you why not, if you know this information why not share it at this point? as i said we have a problem of trust and it goes to what you just quoted of ben sasse. you cannot comment on classified briefings and i m not going to violate those rules. okay. so sorry. but we are to sit here and wonder and ponder. well, no, if we have a special prosecutor they will get to the bottom of all of this and that s what we need. a special prosecutor is much better than letting a lying department person do it for three reasons and this is in doj guidelines. first, a special prosecutor has much more freedom day to day, who to subpoena and what documents to look at and the path of the investigation. second, the special prosecutor can only be fired for cause. so if they re hitting some real stuff they can t just be gotten rid of by sally yates was gotten rid of by the trump administration when she didn t do what they wanted and third, they have to report to congress so we really need a special prosecutor, and i m hoping that rosenstein will agree to that and make that say he s going to make that happen at the committee meeting. i know our committee members will be asking him about it. let me ask you this. congressman adam schiff, the top-ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee has implied that the fbi has not been forthcoming in their various briefings. you get these briefings. would you is he correct? do you believe the fbi has not been forthcoming on what it s doing with the trump campaign? well, let me just say this. the fbi is the premier investigative agency here in our government, and i believe that they will do their job and get to the bottom of this without political interference. right, but do you believe they have been withholding information from congress? well, there are certain kinds of information that can t be given to congress that, you know, or all of congress that s classified or that can t be released and there is a prosecutorial sort of way of doing things that you don t comment on ongoing investigations. so in this case, you wouldn t level the same criticism that congressman schiff has? i m just saying i am i believe they will get to the bottom of this. i hope they will, and if they don t, they ll be it will be a real dereliction of their duty. you have full confidence in the fbi right now? i gave you my answer. senator chuck schumer. democrat from new york. thanks, chuck. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. coming up, did the obama white house really leave a trail of bread crumbs about the trump/russia connection? 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the point was there someone inside the trump campaign that was working with them and did the president know about that and were they successful? and i think on those latter two questions we have no idea. no evidence. there s no evidence. i just heard chuck schumer suggest exactly what he did. we know that this is the case. there s nothing there. especially this recent discussion about jeff sessions which is the kind of height of the ludicrousness of this, okay? if jeff sessions really was a mole working for the russian government he probably would have found a better place to have met with them than his public senate office surrounded by his aides so the meetings are not necessarily what matter. they don t prove anything. the one thing i will say this on these meetings is there any substance? they do have this pattern of oh, yeah, i forgot i had this meeting. as many in washington have suddenly forgot, mr. schumer, for instance about meeting with russian ambassador. but there is a difference? i don t know. you don t think there is a difference between those two? no. if you headed to a meeting and a bunch of ambassadors head to you, you wouldn t remember that? that i understand. after the mike flinn situation do you not try to correct the record? i agree, there is no evidence, that s why we need a special prosecutor and independent commission and we need to see trump s taxes. there is an awful lot of smoke not to be a fire and you ve had three people resign. the idea that i ll forget about a meeting with russians when there are news stories every day coming out about how russia has tried to influence what s happening in our country is kind of breathtaking, and i ve got to side with marco rubio on this. look, he talked about he wasn t going to talk about it because he understood that russians are trying to influence our election and will continue to try to do something about it. this is a threat to our country, right? and the idea that russia is different from other countries, russia is very different from other countries because we have a history of the cold war with russia that apparently we thought was over because we have a short history lesson and view of the world and putin paused and clearly, they are clearly trying to influence and dominate the world than we ve seen in a long time. i would be sympathetic to your argument if over the last eight years i would have heard it from people in your position. the problem is, for the last eight years when the russians have been exactly the same, putin has been anathema, he has been screwing us in the middle east, to put it plainly, he s ben interfering in everything is blunt talk now. thank you very much, donald. but honestly speaking, the part of this is this is partisanship. if we could have a normal discussion about russia with obama and trump? fair enough. take partisanship away from it and put it to a special prosecutor then and take politics out of it. a special prosecutor doesn t fix it either. the problem we have at the moment is if you did what trump said and he put it all out there, there would still behalf of the country that didn t believe it was true and we have no faith in the public institutions. how do we restore the faith and how does congress do it? special prosecutor is not a good idea. their goal is to get someone in the end and they will follow any rabbit hole that they can go until they re not investigating the thing that they began with. you do believe congress and the commission? think maybe we are at a point where you need a rob silverman type commission that we had in iraq intelligence that is bipartisan. i don t know what kind of powers would have, congress would have to decide that, but i neutral arbitrator because we need to know if there was wiretapping going on. just for the record, some of us took russia very seriously. during the last eight years. just to put that not in the white house. i m not talking about the white house. some of us in the press. my point and what worries me is this, government moves at the speed of trust, and right now there is so little trust. we have a completely polarized environment and somehow we have got to restore that because i don t see how the president will be able to solve any of these big issues, immigration, debt, health care at the level of polarization that we have right now. i think we ve exemplified it here a little bit. we ll pause the conversation and pick it up, i have a feeling on the other side of the half hour, but coming up is a man who may know more than anyone about russia s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. it s james clapper. he joins me next. you totaled your brand new car. nobody s hurt, but there will still be pain. it comes when your insurance company says they ll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do? 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i would certainly hope so. obviously, i can t speak officially anymore, but i will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that i oversaw as dni, there was no wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. i can t speak for other title 3-authorized entities in the government or a state or local i was just going to say, if the fbi had a fisa court order for surveillance, would that be information that you would know or not know? yes. you would be told this. i would know this. if there was a fisa court order. something like this absolutely. at this point you can t confirm or deny whether that exists. i can deny it. there is no fisa court order. not to my knowledge. of anything at trump tower. no. that s an important revelation at this point. let me ask you this, does intelligence exist that can definitively answer the following question, whether there were improper contacts between the trump campaign and russian officials? we did not include evidence in our report and that s nsa, fbi and cia with my office, the director of national intelligence that had anything that had any reflection of collusion between members of the trump campaign or the russians, there was no evidence of that in our report. i understand that, but does it exist? not to my knowledge. if it existed it would have been in the report? this could have unfolded or become available in the time since i left the government. at the time, we had no evidence of collusion. there s a lot of smoke, but there hasn t been that smoking gun yet. at what point should the public start to wonder this is all just smoke? well, that s a good question. i don t know. i do think, though, it is in everyone s interest. in the current president s interest, in the republicans interest in the democrats intere interest, in the country s interest to get to the bottom of all of this because it s such a distraction and certainly the russians have to be churdling about the success of their efforts to dissension in this country. so you feel your report does not you admit that your report doesn t get to the bottom of this? it got to the bottom of the evidence to the extent of the evidence we had at the time. whether there s more evidence that s become available since then or there are ongoing investigations will be revelatory. i don t know. ? there was a conclusion that said that it s clear that the russians did so and in an attempt to help donald trump? do you believe that? yes, i do. what s not proven is the idea of collusion? that s correct. when you see this parade of officials associated with the trump campaign and first they deny any conversations and now we re hearing more. does that add to suspicion or do you think some of this is circumstantial? well, i can t say what the nature of those conversations and dialogues were, for the most part. again, i think it would be very healthy to completely clear the air on this subject, and i think it would be in everyone s interest to have that done. can the senate intelligence committee what are we going to learn from their investigation, do you think, that will move beyond what you were able to do? well, i think they can look at this from a broader context than we could, and at this point i do have confidence in the senate intelligence committee and their effort. it is under way in contrast to the house intelligence committee and we just last week agreed on their charter and importantly in the case of the senate intelligence committee this appears to me to be truly a bipartisan effort, and so i think that needs to play out. if, for some reason, that proves not to be satisfactory in the minds of those who make those decisions then move on to a special prosecutor. the new york times earlier this week, and as i was introducing you, this idea that they sort of left a trail, maybe lowered classification can you walk us through how that would work? did they lower levels of classification? was that a fair read of what was done in the last few weeks of the administration? actually not because of the sensitivity of much of the information in this report our actual effort was to protect it, and not to spread it around and certainly not to dumb it down, if i can use that phrase, in order to disseminate it more widely. we were under a preservation order from both our oversight committees to preserve and protect all of the information related to that report in any event. let me ask you one other final question in the infamous dossier that was put together by this former british operative named christopher steel. why did you feel the need to brief the president on that at the time? we felt that it was important that he know about it, that it was out there, and without respect to the veracity of the contents of the dossier, that s why it was not included as a part of our report because much of it could not be corroborated, and importantly, some of the sources that mr. steel drew on, second and third order assets, we could not validate or corroborate. so for that reason, at least in my view, the important thing was to warn the president that this thing was out there. the russians have a term, an acronym called kompelat that either they will generate, if it s truthful or contrived, and it s important, we felt, that he knew of the existence of the dossier. have you done this with other presidents? have you had to brief them about unverified intelligence? yes. i had occasion in the six and a half years i was dn ito tell president obama certain things and we could not validate or corroborate, but we thought he ought to know it was out there. james clapper, i have a feel on do you expect to testify on capitol hill about these things? i don t think there s any doubt. we ll see you on tv some time soon and thank you for coming on and sharing your views? thank you very much, sir. when we ve come back, we ve seen almost weekly demonstrations against president trump, will they translate into democratic votes or will they turn to the left? we ll get that answer a lot sooner than you think. that s next. but with my back pain i couldn t sleep or get up in time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. and now. i m back! aleve pm for a better am. welcome back. data download time. can all of the anti-trump momentum that we re seeing on the left result in actual election victories for democrats this year? well, there are three special elections coming up. two of which may help us answer that question. the montana at-large congressional district vacated by the new secretary ryan inky zinke and the georgia 6th congressional district that includes the northern suburbs of atlanta with tom price. let s take a look at montana, a state that s very rural, in other words, this should be trump country. those are all groups that they did well in november. this is a seat republicans have held since 1997. thing is montana isn t like other places and while they hold the senate seats, the democrats doold the her senate seats and the governor was elected with donald trump on the ballot. the democrats can win here. might give them hope for other rural places. if the republicans win maybe that the trump army is still with them. the story in georgia s 6th congressional district is different. it s more diverse, higher educated and well-to-do, and it s been trending more and more blue over time. john mccain and mitt romney each won the district by double digits over barack obama in 2008 and 2012. donald trump only beat hillary clinton by 1% in 2016 even though price won his reelection by 23 points. so it is the kind of place that it might be showing signs that it is slipping away from trump s version of the republican party. so if the democrats win there it will say something, but if they can t win there, then it starts to raise questions about whether they have any hope at all in 2018. but guess what? if they win one or both they will suggest they have real momentum going into next year s midterms and i can tell you this, house republicans will start panicking this year if they see those results come in badly for them. when we come back, the story the white house hoped everyone would be talking about this sunday morning. k through your allergie. introducing flonase sensimist. more complete allergy relief in a gentle mist you may not even notice. using unique mistpro technology, new flonase sensimist delivers a gentle mist to help block six key inflammatory substances that cause your symptoms. most allergy pills only block one. and six is greater than one. break through your allergies. new flonase sensimist. dtry align junior probiotic.th digestive balance? so she can have a fraction dominating. status updating. hello-yellow-belt kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support with align junior. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand, now for kids. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. yes. but i have to ask myself, would we be talking about this at all if at all if he had not tweeted that out? we d talk about the russia angle. talking about sessions. right. but he actually made two pieces of news here this morning, not just he said there s no court order and assuming he was not careful with the words, it sounded fairly categorical to me, but the other one that was there is simply no evidence of collusion, at least while he was there, which was until very recently between the trump campaign and russians. what we talking about for the last three weeks? so this is waking up at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, tweeting out one of the most damming accusations one president could make after another, and then talking about arnold schwarzenegger. that is not and then 18 holes. nonpresidential, nonadult behavior. that is juvenile. the fact we have a president engaging in that is deeply disturbing. he s going to have to go to europe very soon and interact with other european leaders, world leaders, what do you think if you re a world leader in the meeting what do i say? what would he say about this meeting? he s everywhere we look. we talked about this before. i quoted my friend, there s a difference between formal and moral authority. this president has formal authority, but no moral authority. that s going to hurt. it s like like you have to wonder, is he playing us? right? we spend all this time talking about this, and it s like, you know, is he really bait and switch? is he die baht call in the way he plays this? it s hard to think sort of this was not thought out, so is he playing the american public? by the way, though, we have reporting, so tuesday night went well for him. right. wednesday went well. right. hi apparently is angry that sessions rescued himself. this is the part of donald trump now that never gives an inch. he can t look at the reaction of the speech and understand how much it helped him to stay on script and sometimes and not tweet about schwarzenegger. put down the twitter account. there were polls after the speech, 82% who watched it thought he looked presidential, and the words in it, i mean, it was it was uplifting. it was a good speech laying out the policy agenda, putting the burden on democrats to work with him and get some of his agenda done, and then, yet, we re talking about twitter again. no discipline. it s got to drive people in the white house crazy. coming out of that it does. both presidents would roll in into momentum. for the week. you talked about districts that are up, you can t beat something with nothing, and unless the democrats have c candidates, i believe, for pro-growth, patriotic, and want to build the country one community at a time, there s no reason to believe they re going to take huge political advantage. john wrote a good column here getting at this. he said this, just in general about the democratic party, because democrats and liberals opposed every appointment, every policy, every word from the trump administration, they damaged their effectiveness as a political force against it, in danger of limiting the ability to bring the stock trump voters they need to grow us illusioned by the side. do you believe that? absolutely. they are doing themselves damage by constantly calling on everybody to resign. they go to death con 5. house republicans did it all the time. ridiculous then, right? it is ridiculous on the part of all of them. congress needs to be taken seriously. congress just needs to start passing bills. congress doesn t actually need to play a game. this is where i don t get chuck schumer or nancy pelosi. don t, you know, vote against every nominee. don t go against everything the president says. why not try to work with the american people to pass an agenda and get reelected? this is where i put the political hat head on, not the serious grownup hat. the political hat. you know, you can make the same argument about the tea party and what republicans did, but they were crazy like foxes. you have to generate energy among your base for fundraising, but also this, the problem in midterm elections is not just the presidential election voters changing minds, but the problem with midterms is there are different electorates. there s different turnout in midterm elections. if democrats shrink and give energy to the base, it s a good thing. i have to pause it here and sneak in a break. president trump calling for an end to trivial fights right before starting a trivial fight. we ll be right back. coming up, meet the press end game brought to you by boeing, working to build something better. and while it s okay to nibble in public, a lady only dines in private. try the name your price tool from progressive. it gives you options based on your budget. uh-oh. discussing finances is a big no-no. what, i m helping her save money! shh! men are talking. that s it, i m out. taking the meatballs. hi, i m frank. that s it, i m out. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation. had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated. had to talk to my doctor. she said, how long you been holding this in? (laughs) that was my movantik moment. my doctor told me that movantik is specifically designed for oic and can help you go more often. don t take movantik if you have a bowel blockage or a history of them. movantik may cause serious side effects, including symptoms of opioid withdrawal, severe stomach pain and/or diarrhea, and tears in the stomach or intestine. tell your doctor about any side effects and about medicines you take. movantik may interact with them causing side effects. why hold it in? have your movantik moment. talk to your doctor about opioid-induced constipation. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. meet the press endgame is brought to you by boeing, always working to build something better. back now with endgame i teased it. let s hear from the president on tuesday night. it was something that s back now with end game, and i tuesdeased it. let s hear from the president tuesday night. something quoted a lot in the last 24 hours. the time for small thinking is over. the time for trivial fights is behind us. and then, of course, after president trump accused president obama of wiretapping him, he did, as you pointed out, threw in schwarzenegger, he s note voluntarily leaving the apprentice, but fired by pathetic ratings, not by me. sad end to a great show. the only thing missing was #sad. right. you brought it up, it s you do, shake your head at it. you do. the president doesn t have message discipline. that s what was said. we talked about the democrats before. when you talk about wanting to win again in the midterm, they need to do something that s going to appeal to those people who voted for donald trump. talking about russia, calling on people to resign is not going to appeal to them, anger, i think, you ll agree with this, anger doesn t actually win elections. doesn t anger work in midterms? cornell put on the political hack hat. is that the only reason democrats are in washington? to win and have power? by the way what? no, no, no, they ve been look, they have promised their voters some things that they would like to get done, and, by the way, who better to work with than donald trump who loves to make a deal? by the way, this guy is one of the least ideological presidents ever in the white house. you know, chuck, a few more mornings of 6:00 a.m. tweets, and people will take away his football, and i mean, the nuclear codes. yeah. mitch mcconnell said my job is to make sure that the president obama is a one-term president. they are there for the power. that s not a good thing, but both sides play it. of course, no, i m not suggesting otherwise, but if you did care about policy goals, you got an opportunity in donald trump. and power in anything. and i have to turn off the cameras, but you can keep debating. that s all we have for today. once again, three hour show packed in one hour. back next week, i promise, if it s sunday, it s meet the press. okay, continue. go ahead. you can see more end game and post game on the mtp facebook page.
senator lindsey graham whether or not there is an investigation ongoing into the donald trump campaign and those contacts that allegedly occurred with russian officials during the presidential election. since they have not confirmed the existence of an investigation, they have not even confirmed with senators, so in a private meeting between graham and whitehouse on march 2nd, james comey would not tell these two senators whether or not there was an investigation ongoing, even though they sit on a judiciary subcommittee investigating the issue of russia. comey according to sheldon whitehouse said he would confirm whether or not that investigation is occurring by this hearing that they re having tomorrow in this senate judiciary committee subcommittee exploring russia s meddling in the election. eastern yoeuropean elections as committee and the top democrat mark warner told me going into the briefing there s no evidence whatsoever even though he met with james comey last week. one other senator demanding more information is senator john mccain, who said it s time for the administration to explain if there s any evidence there. what s your reaction to saying that need more time to respond to the wiretapping claims? i hope this they can ascertain as soon as possible the answer to that because americans need to know if indeed former president wiretapped the trump towers. that is a violation of the law and of the utmost seriousness. we need to know the answer. reporter: if there s no evidence, what s your reaction? let s wait and see. let s wait and see what the results are. the american people need an answer and deserve an answer. reporter: the question is whether or not the fbi or the justice department will respond each in a private setting or a public setting and if they don t respond privately there been questions that james comey will get at a march 20th house hearing where they ll be discussing this issue of russia interference in the election but also the senate intelligence committee announcing today they plan to have their own public hearings later this month and senator mark warner also wants to hear from some trump associates about the contacts with russian officials including roger stone, the former trump adviser, who admitted to some contact with russians during the campaign season. manu raju, appreciate that. van jones has a town hall coming up thursday night. jason miller here. our chief political analyst analyst gloria borger is here. and ryan liz sa from the new yorker. paul begala joins us. the congressional budget office clearing this up. i think we ll find what we all know, that there was no collusion between the trump campaign and foreign governments or foreign entities. this is absolutely ludicrous. it makes no sense. the fact look, the election is over. donald trump won. he s now president of the united states. it s very clear that there is this effort of folks whether it s the career bureaucrats or insiders or people who are upset that applecarts are getting tipped over, they re still trying to delegitimize this presidency. dangerous for the country. tomorrow hopefully they ll make clear this is nonsense. van, is it an attempt to delegitimize? it s such a weird thing because i think if the shoe were on the other foot obviously people would want to know, did barack obama conspire with the chinese? you guys med made up kenyans and muslims and all kinds of stuff. if the tfbi says they are not hillary s election. that was a big exception comey created. i m deeply distrustful of mr. comey. he needs to know, he s walking into that hearing tomorrow, before that, he was attorney general of the state. he knows the justice department well. knows the questions to ask. by the way, lindsey graham is a pretty good attorney as well. he s said on the record he ll be tough if they don t come and respond to the questions he s already asked about any alleged allegations of wiretapping by obama. in a way it s return to normalcy. we ve had so much happening in the media and leaks and what not, and now you have some adults who are serious on how to be prosecutors coming into a room and maybe actually having some closure. and it would be awesome if that closure were to clear the president. i think it s entirely possible especially the democratic party, have been so quick to jump on this and attack the president. the president has been right a lot of his predictions, whether it be sensitive materials on computers, the rise of he could come out and say this is what i know, he could call the fbi and say release the information, i know it. there s a process. a second ago you said there was no investigation. now you re saying he might confirm trump was right about the surveillance which would mean there s an investigation. there are a lot of things we don t know and will find out. the president knows. he can declassify anything he wants. he could call up james comey or anybody else and say, you know what, declassify this. why not? let the american public know that i was somebody was listening in on my phone conversations. i think ultimately or microwave. i think part of the thing that i think trump s defenders need to take some responsibility for is that if this happened, this is a huge crime committed by obama against not just trump but against our democratic process. you don t handle it with a tweet. you don t throw it out there in this way and create all this hoopla because, guess what, if trump is right, you ve got a whole country to hold together. this is a massive constitutional crisis. he devoted three tweets to it. my point is even if you guys are right i think what you re seeing is if this is a precursor to how donald trump handles major issues and constitutional crises, you have real problems. doesn t it bother you? you wouldn t advise him to handle something this serious in this way, would you? he has a clearly different approach. the secretary of state has a different approach. president of the united states, most important position in the world, to van s point, a tweet, you know, in advance of an arnold schwarzenegger tweet, the best way to accuse the former president of the united states, one of the greatest crimes. the media have attacked the president over and over for his presentation style. if it works for him he ll keep going back to it. the russian hacking. he s an extraordinary salesman. i don t take that away from him. he s le legitimately my president. he was also illegitimately helped by the russian hack. he s trying to divert attention from that by attacking the former president obama for doing something monstrous which i don t believe at all. to believe his theory, you have to believe that barack obama subverted the constitution, committed an outrageous crime, to spy on donald trump and it took that spy material and hid it, allowed trump to become president and went off water skiing with richard branson. very smart. next, is the white house trying to have it both ways on the gop replacement for obamacare? 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(woman 2) how about a plaque? i have to drop this. my arm s getting really tired. unlimited on verizon. 4 lines, just $45 per line. where s the car? it ll be here in three.uh, four minutes. are you kidding me? no, looks like he took a wrong turn. don t worry, this guy s got like a four-star rating, we re good. his name is randy. that s like one of the most trustworthy names! ordering a getaway car with an app? are you randy? that s me! awesome! surprising. what s not surprising? how much money erin saved by switching to geico. everybody comfortable with the air temp? i could go a little cooler. ok. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. i wanti did my ancestrydna and where i came from. and i couldn t wait to get my pie chart. the most shocking result was that i m 26% native american. i had no idea. just to know this is what i m made of, this is where my ancestors came from. and i absolutely want to know more about my native american heritage. it s opened up a whole new world for me. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. tonight, the white house trying to have it both ways, replacing the obamacare replacement bill, liking some but dismissing another part. the other part is estimate that 24 million fewer would be insured under the legislation. the reaction has been intense all day with moderate house republicans shy eight way from the bill, a number of senate republicans calling it dead on arrival, democrats salvaging it. the president facing pressure to how he squares the cbo projections with his promise of hi hi health insurance for everyone. jim acosta. reporter: it s rare moment president trump passes up on a chance to speak his mind but he did when asked about the congressional budget office analysis of the proposal to replace obamacare. this is the american health care act, the president is proud of it. reporter: the white house pushing back on the cbo score of the health care plan that found 14 million americans would be uninsured by next year, 24 million by the year 2026. as one top gop source put it, the headlines are terrible. cbo coverage estimates are consistently wrong. reporter: the white house did concede scores of american, perhaps millions, will be without health insurance if they re no longer mandated to buy it under obamacare. would you concede there will be some coverage losses? perhaps in the millions? that will there would be millions of people who will not have health insurance as a result of what you re doing? well, again, sure, except you have to look at the current situation. reporter: press secretary sean spicer tried to explain how the republican plan satisfies the president s promise to cover every american. the president is okay with millions of people no, he s not. right now they re not getting that. by giving them more chois at a lower cost, more americans can buy health care for their family or themselves or in a lot of cases for their business without paying the penalty. is system now is not working. reporter: even though the white house is rejecting the cbo s predictions on coverage it seems they like other parts like a reduced deficit and reduction in premiums. the cbo is saying just with what we re doing, first prong alone, 10% decline in the original market. that s a significant reduction. we re talking about bringing costs down and increasing choices. reporter: cherry-picking of data is low-hanging fruit for democrats. all this hocus-pocus language that they talk about, well, you re not going to be able worried about costs but then they don t seem like they re that much worried about coverage. and so what i m saying to them is that the american people need coverage. jim joins us now. i understand the white house is working on changes to the bill. what are you hearing? reporter: they are working on changes with republican leaders on the bill. if you need to add to your washington jargon, a so-called managers amendment. i talked to a republican source involved in the process who said these managers amendments are typical with any bill of this size and that at this pointitis not envisioned that they re going to have major changes made to this piece of legislation but if you re listening to the handwringing on capitol hill among republicans they are talking about coverage right now, not covering americans but covering their rear ends in case all this blows up in their faces. no question, if they want to get this out of the house, a lot of republicans are saying privately they re going to need changes to the bill. jim acosta, thanks. now more on political side effects, some in the republican party. phil matting hi has the latest from capitol hill. jim acosta was saying the white house working with republican leaders trying to make changes. what are your sources telling you about the effort? the process hasn t been helpful. when i talked to senior gop leadership officials say they the white house was on board with the bill as is. the white house was on board with the strategy included not making major changes going forward. every time the president tells conservatives this is up for negotiation, every time the press secretary stands in front of reporters and says there could be major changes, that undercuts this effort entirely. there s a lot of concern inside gop leadership circles right now that what the white house is doing is not helping the process at all. in fact, it s making their job difficult. i think jim hit on the crucial point here. as it currently stands, house republican leaders even as much of their conference remains unsettle are not planning major changes to the bill. every time the white house says the opposite, that creates more problems as they try and wrangle votes. what would republican leaders like to see from the white house to get it passed? sell. they don t want individuals coming to capitol hill and meeting with leaders. they want the president himself starting to bring the hammer down. he s traveling tomorrow, going to have a rally in nashville on health care. those types of events are helpful. but the reality remains when i talk to gop sources that the president is going to have to come down hard, particularly on conservatives. conservatives where he s very popular in his district. at some point he ll have to lay out an ultimatum. it can t be glad handing or pizza parties and bowling. he has to tell members it s time to get in line. short of that, they ll be short of votes. what are your sources telling you about what it might look like in the right place? what i m hearing a lot of is the focus obviously has been a lot on conservatives and for good reason. they ve been the most boisterous about their concerns. the real concern up here especially amongst house leaders is the moderates. if you look at the coverage number, if you look at some of the issues the conservatives are picking on right now, if those issues start to move, if some of those changes that white house officials say they re open to actually come to be, those moderates start to leave enmass. the reason is simple politics. these are the individuals that serve to lose their races in these swing districts if these major changes are made, if this the concerns about the coverage numbers are not assuaged at any point. that more than anything else why you see republican leaders telling the white house, look, you need to stay unified with us, you can t freelance because those are the members that in the end they believe will be the hardest to bring around. phil mattingly, thanks. back with the panel. you have to white house pushing back on the cbo report but only kind of part of it, embracing other aspects. they like the deficit reduction part of it because it reduces the deficit $337 billion over ten years. but much of that comes from the cutbacks in medicaid to the states. that s what the moderates are upset about. and i just have to ask a question after listening to phil. if you re a republican house moderate, why would you go out on a limb and vote for this bill if you know it s going to get changed in the senate? then you ll be on the record voting for something that is unpopular in your district and mitch mcconnell in the senate has already said we re this won t be the final bill. unless they can get together on what they re going to do, the house members who have to go first on this are saying why am i going to walk the complaint for you in the senate? today was a big day under the radar. conservatives starting to real hi move against this bill. we ve seen breitbart for a couple days. eric bowling on fox news saying this is not good. chris ruddy, the news max guy, says we need a more populous plan. conservatives are walking away from this. tom cotton saying there is no bona fide conservative, u.s. senator from arkansas, doesn t like this at all. i think donald trump has to make a decision. it either needs to be cut and run, abandon this, sell out paul ryan, or stay and fight. but he has to decide because when you say fight you mean back the current you have to go to those conservative members of congress and say you ran on this for the last six years, you side you wanted to repeal obamacare. you promised you were going to repeal obamacare. this is your chance. if you don t do it, i m going to campaign in your district and imgoing to tell all of your constituents that you lied to them. jason? what should the president do? i m continually bewildered how the republican party didn t have a bill. as somebody who s helped to elect a lot of these conservatives and republicans, i think what have you guys been doing? a couple things. one, i was glad to hear an openness to potentially making changes that there might be a managers amendment, a little inside baseball, clean this up. several things we need for success for this bill. one, a much better job of making it clear to the american people or reminding them this bill obamacare is heading off a cliff. look at the raitts going up the white house has been hammering that message. still i think people don t realize the urgency that we need to act here. i think the second part we need to do is make sure it s clear how people are going to benefit and how they ll be helped by passing this particular piece of legislation. the third and final piece is this is the time, now we ve seen what the hill has been able to come up with ryan care or whatever the bill is. the president needs to engage and say he s the negotiator in chief. if we re going to save this i think dan prefers the term trump care. couple things. this is the most important part of the overall drama because up until now trump has been able to say i am the deal maker. i know how to make deals. nobody makes better deals than me. so far he s made every mistake he can possibly make in trying to put this thing together. he s negotiating against himself, he moves in one direction, signals another, he s undermining his own position and his partners . if you watch this closely, it may turn out that he hasn t read his own book. he doesn t actually know how to negotiate. quick break. more with the panel on this. have republicans promised too much on health care and which voters stand to lose the most or gain? 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what would happen is he let paul ryan write the bill and the people who voted for trump are the losers in the paul ryan bill. if you are poor, white, rural, older american, you re getting less assistance from the government to buy health insurance on the individual market in this bill because there s not the subsidies. not as generous as in obamacare. or if you re just over the poverty line and in one of the states they expanded made cade, you could lose that. you listen to those clips. trump on sort of the welfare state has a very different view than sort of the neolibertarians in the republican party and what s so interesting is he has a faction in the white house who are nationalist pop you lis and have a different view of the paul ryan party. this health care bill does not represent that view. this is the ryan wing of the party, not the trump wing. it s not just that they don t like each other but they have complete hi different world views. paul ryan believes like a ronald reagan, jack kemp philosophy, and, you know, you could argue that the bannon/trump wing is liberal. they have not brought through what an alternative plan would be. it would be populist and what this bill is not is populist. trump got elected by the white working class, an older white working class. they get hammered by this bill. bloomberg looked at which counties get more and which get less. by 3-1 counties that voted for hillary get more. why? because there s a $600 billion tax cut that only applies to the richest americans. which rays the question the it starts to go south, why would donald trump go down with it? this is off brand for him. one of the things donald trump has been to brilliant about during the campaign is understanding his message, understanding who his voters are and speaking to them when other people weren t. hillary clinton certainly wasn t the same way donald trump was to the point paul was making and ryan that this is paul ryan s plan and he s not speaking to chose voters. go back to what i said, we need to focus on the choice and competition aspect of this to create more health care opportunities for people. the president, when he was running in the campaign, talked about being able to buy insurance across state lines, talked about small businesses being able to pool together, talked about expanded hsas. i know the folks on capitol hill are saying because of the reconciliation process, current mechanism, they can t do it. if i were in the white house, advising the president, i would say load it up on the same day, you ran on this, off mandate, put it to the democrats, especially democrats up in 2018, make them take this society voetd because this is something the president won on and let s go and watch the democrats sweat a little. democrats are standing by watching. what i noticed during the campaign was that trump would do these things where he would stick up for poor people, he would stickum for the needs of people, even stuck up for planned parenthood, people forget that, and while he was doing that, we were aten toich the heart land, this particular mix working. i don t think the people in washington, d.c., who are in the republican party, hooray, we now have all these majorities, understand how they got those majorities. they didn t get them based on a paul ryan world view, whatever his positive points are. that wasn t what won. what you now have is a guy who has a philosophy when he remembers it that actually is for though folks. it won t work. the question is, if the president is for universal health care and ryan s bill is for universal access in some way, shape, or form to health care, the president wants to guarantee health care to everybody, it won t be popular but that s what i m going to do. what does he do? he doesn t love paul ryan. paul ryan doesn t love donald trump. we know that. now he s stuck. it s an arranged marriage and they re stuck with each oh. does trump wul away from ryan and say we re starting all over again or does he go down with the ship or betray the people who voted for him? i think this is where the president steps in and saves this bill and approves it, makes it something that go ahead and get through. do you think he can do that? i think so. he s the negotiator in chief. of course he can go and get this thing through. again going back to the point that leaving obamacare in place as it is isn t an acceptable option. see the premiums going up, people s access to you have to do something about it. [ talking over each other ] opposition is easy. proposition is hard. what you guys are failing to do as a governing party is put forth something you can agree on. we re your fans. [ talking over each other ] help us to make it work and your party let people wither on the vine, refused to expand medicaid, did horrible things to people in your own state. now you get a chance to governing and governing is hard. i ll take to jorge ramos about what steve king accused him of. jorge ramos stock and trade is identify between race. trading tools, give you access to in-depth analysis, and a team of experienced traders ready to help if you need it. it s like having the power of a trading floor, wherever you are. it s your trade. e trade the search for relief often leads here.s, today there s drug-free aleve direct therapy. a high intensity tens device that uses technology once only in doctors offices. for deep penetrating relief at the source. aleve direct therapy. controversial remarks saying we can t restore our civilization with somebody else s babies. he doubled down. attacked jorge ramos and mapged to make another inflammatory remark. jorge ramos stock and trade is to identify and trying to drive wedges between race, race and ethnicity to be more correct. when you start escalating the differences then you end up with people at each other s throats and he s adding up hispanics and blacks who he predicts will be in greater number than whites in america. i will predict the hispanics and blacks will be fighting each other before that happens. what he meant by that he can explain. but jorge are ramos, the target of his comments. jamie:s me. first of all, your reaction to congressman king s comments about you. what s your response saying you re trying to drive a wedge between race and ethnicity? the fact is that this country is changing. this demographic revolution, i call it the latino way. it is not what i think but what is happening. the census bureau projected in 2044 nonhispanic whites will become a minority. not something that i want or decided. that s the way it is. congressman says you re celebrating that white people are demographically becoming a majority minority in this country. i m celebrating is the diversity of this country, which i find incredibly beautiful. the essence of the united states is its diversity. the essence is it s a multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial country created by immigrants. that declaration of independence which we know all men and women are created equal, that s what i m celebrating, the diversity. what i m concerned about is what he s saying and that he might with the support of the white house or some in the white house, he might want to make america white again. that s not the united states that i know, not the united states that i celebrate and love. when it comes to the congressman s original tweet that the u.s. can t restore it civilization with somebody else s babies he s standing by that but amended it saying if you can go anywhere in the world and adopt these little babies and put them into households that were already assimilated to america, they will grow up as american as any other baby. essentially, his whole notion is such a rejection of the belief that immigrants to this country actually add to the culture, that it s not just about, you know, kind of adopting that culture is a changing thing and that s a positive thing that we learn new things from new people who arrive. what can you expect from a member of congress that once compared immigrants to dogs or who once proposed to electrify the walls between mexico and the united states? that s what he s saying. whose babies is he talking about? the united states is already changing. before doing this interview i was checking the latest numbers. right now, anderson, all the babies being born in the united states right now more than half are minorities. do you feel he is using sort of code language? his original tweet was in support of talking very much against muslim immigration, wants to shut down mosques in the netherlands. those are code word. using culture or civilization, he means he wants america to be white again, he wants to take us back to 1965 when white nonhispanics were about 85% of the population. that won t happen anymore. everything changed after the immigration act of 1965. a tweet of his last night, he tweeted make western civilization great again, again that idea of western civilization versus the rest of the world basically. remember, this was never a white country from the beginning. there were native americans before the pilgrims came here. africans came in the 17th century. spanish was being spoken here before english in 1513. so this has always been a diverse country. and i think that s exactly what we have to celebrate and to protect. also the notion of who is american now when you look back when irish immigrants were coming here in large numbers. there were there was a huge movement against irish immigrants. now they are, you know, part of they are just a american as everybody else who s an american citizen here. it s very much how you view what an american is i mean that changes over the decades. exactly. and, you know, lately, some people don t like the fact that i ve been saying that this is our country. it is yours and mine and ours. when i mean our country, i mean it s ha tino, white, african-americans, natives, asian. there is a push at least on left to try to attach congressman king s comments to the president. is that fair? sean spicer today said i think the president believes this not a point of view he shares. he believes he is president for all americans, i ll leave it at that. i want to hear him tomorrow. he s giving an interview to fox news tomorrow. i would like to hear president trump saying no i do not agree congressman king. that would be fantastic. that s a question for the interviewer. on the other hand, we have to remember trump during the campaign made many racist remarks. he criticized mexican-americans for being rapists and criminals and drug traffickers and that s false. many are making the comparison between congressman king and president trump it s for a reason. something trump said on june 16th, 2015. modern life dese president trump s taxes, we ll be right back with that. so you don t miss his first birthday. tickets, i need to see your tickets sir. i masterpassed it. feeling like father of the year: priceless masterpass, the secure way to pay from your bank don t just buy it. masterpass it. including the full-sized introducingsprintercedes-benz family of vans. and the mid-sized metris. .if these are your wingtips. .if this is your gourmet latte. then these are your vans. vans for professionals. strictly professionals. best commercial van residual value according to alg and starting at just $25,995. mercedes-benz. vans. born to run. it can seem like triggers pop up everywhere. luckily there s powerful, 24-hour, non-drowsy claritin. it provides relief of symptoms that can be triggered by over 200 different allergens. live claritin clear. their leadership is instinctive. they re experts in things you haven t heard of - researchers of technologies that one day, you will. some call them the best of the best. some call them veterans. we call them our team. i use what s already inside me to reach my goals. so i liked when my doctor told me that i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals by activating what s within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin. it helps activate my body to do what it s supposed to do release its own insulin. trulicity responds when my blood sugar rises. i take it once a week, and it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen. and i may even lose a little weight. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable prescription medicine to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. trulicity is not insulin. it should not be the first medicine to treat diabetes, or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not take trulicity if you or a family member has had medullary thyroid cancer, if you ve had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to trulicity. stop trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms such as itching, rash, or trouble breathing; a lump or swelling in your neck; or severe pain in your stomach area. serious side effects may include pancreatitis, which can be fatal. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin increases your risk for low blood sugar. common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite, and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may make existing kidney problems worse. with trulicity, i click to activate what s within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar numbers with a non-insulin option, click to activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity. this is cnn breaking news. brakieaking news right now, white house putting out the subject of trump s taxes. that s right. the white house is trying to get ahead of a story that is floating ot there, it s about to be reported that president trump back in 2005 pa$2005 paid $38 m in taxes on $150 million in income. there s a report out there that his 2005 tax return was obtained and that s where that information is coming from. and so the white house is trying to get ahead of this story, because obviously, the president has refused time and again to release any of his tax returns, but of course it looks like the 2005 return is getting out there. we have obtained a pretty scathing statement from the white house. they are none too pleased about this. let me read this and put it up on the screen. it says you know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law for a story about two pages of tax returns. mr. trump was one of the most successful business men in the world. he paid $38 million on an income of more than $150 million as well as paying tens of millions in other taxes such as sales and excise. and this illegally-published return proves just that. it is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns. the president will focus on tax return that will benefit all americans. so anderson, it does appear that even though the white house did not want this information out there, they didn t obviously want this tax return made public, they re not disputing what s in that 2005 tax return. as a matter of fact, they re trying to get ahead of the story by essentially giving the rest of us some of the pertinent information there. this just goes to show you, and i think this escalates the desire of many out there to obtain these tax returns. it makes it the holy grail of all holy grails, when it comes to covering president trump when it s this closely-held secret, when he doesn t want to release his tax returns to this extent. i think it s just going to make people to want to see those tax returns even more. we should point out during the campaign, then candidate s trump s reasoning was he s under audit. his own attorneys put out a letter explaining that tax returns if memory serves me, up to 2004 or something were no longer under audit. i might be wrong about the year, but theoretically, those returns could have been released because they weren t under audit, but still, donald trump refused to release any tax return. and that s right. there was that story that came out in the new york times, there was a metro desk reporter obtained one of the tax returns for then candidate trump and it showed something in the magnitude of $1 billion in losses in his casino businesses. and that essentially allowed the rest of the world to extrapolate out that he was able for many, many years, perhaps 18 or so years to not pay any income taxes. hillary clinton tried to make that an issue during the campaign and donald trump still won the presidency. that is why you hear him say time and again, if americans care that much about my tax returns, they would not have made me president of the united states, and he does have something of a point, although you do have a lot of democrats in washington, even some republicans who would like to see the law changed to require candidates in the future to release that information to the public. it has been tradition to release this on their own, donald trump buck tha bucked that tradition, blaming it on the excuse that he s on a routine audit. i think donald trump deep down inside feels like the public doesn t care enough about this, so he s just not going to do it. but it does raise the possibility apartment spectre that every once in a while, one of these is going to leak out and cause a mess for this white house. back now with the panel, also joining us, philip bump. what do you make of this? we re understanding their is is supposed to be one return from 2005 and the 1040 form. what s really important is we don t really have that many tax returns. if you go back to 1975, there s been a handful of times we ve learned how much donald trump has paid in taxes. but how much he paid in taxes is probably the least interesting part of what could be contained in that tax return. we d like to know how much he gave to clarity, how muharity. where he earned his income. that s the big question. what donald trump just got ahead of the $38 million, that s interesting. we didn t know that before. but it really is the tip of the iceberg. and the charitable contributions. because during the campaign he said he d given tens of millions to contributions, echoed by his vice president. there are a lot of questions about overseas business dealings and whether tax returns would give us indication of dealings in other countries and where.
like global warming. we can t do that if people feel embarrassed to be associated with the united states. you combine that with the fact that the state department has essentially been neutered, e s eviscerated by this administration thus far and watching in real time as america and america s image withdraws from the world. do you know any republican senator or member of the house who s a republican, any party member of any party who believes the president believes he was wiretapped, who even believes he believes it? i don t think anybody knows exactly what donald trump believes and what he doesn t believe. i think what s scary to many republicans is that they ve had the opportunity to walk this back and they re putting not only the presidency and the reputation of the presidency, but the reputation of the entire country at risk, the longer that this floats out there. the reality is is congress can ask the department of justice as to whether there s a wiretap, bul but if there s an active investigation, the department of justice may not tell us, so its difficult to get to the bottom of this what do you mean, an active investigation wait a minute. well senator mccain, i think, is from the sane era of politics. here s how some other top republicans reacted including senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and chair of the senate and house intelligence committees. i think we have an existing committee, the intelligence committee, looking at all aspects of what may have been done last year related to the russians or the campaigns and we ll leave it there. have you seen any evidence of that? mr. leader no, i haven t. we don t have anything today that would send us in that direction, but that s not to say that we might not find something. i have not seen that evide e evidence. as you know, i think a lot of that was maybe a little bit the multiple tweets were perhaps a little bit strung together. as you all know, the president is a neophyte to politics. he s been doing this a little over a year. and i think a lot of the things that he says, you guys sometimes take literally. sometimes he doesn t have 27 lawyers and staff looking at when what he does. what do you make of that? that s a cover? that s explaining a guy s behavior? it s like he s he s treating the president as if he s in a crib and wants his pacy. he talks about him like he doesn t know what a tweet is. he knows how to tweet better than all of us. he gets up at 6:00 and does it. he accused the previous president of wiretapping him. there s nothing complicated about this. why doesn t mr. nunes, chairman of the committee, call up the fbi director, said was anybody asked for a fisa warrant on this? did anybody ask permission to wire this guy or not? end it. this is going to float out there for months and years. yeah, listen. i wouldn t tweet my 8-year-old like that. the fact is we would hope that an adult would occupy the oval office and we couldn t expectwo team of 27 lawyers around him to decide whether he should falsely accuse the previous president of the united states of tapping his phones. that s a ridiculous standard. and in the end, yeah, it is pretty simple to get to the answer to this question. there is no evidence that barack obama tapped donald trump s phones because it didn t happen. and republicans right now could ask the questions necessary to get at least that answer. maybe we won t know if the fbi was or is investigating trump, but we can get the answer to that question, republicans can. okay. thank you very much, senator chris murphy of connecticut. well, there was troubling reporting in the the new york times today about president trump s mood swings last weekend. according to the times, he was in high spirits after he fired off the posts, those tweets but midafternoon after returning from golf, he appeared to realize he had gone too far with his tweets although he still believed mr. obama had wiretapped him according to two people in trump s orbit. in some conversations that afternoon, the president sounded uncertain of the procedure for obtaining a warrant for secret wiretaps on an american citizen so he didn t know how you would do it but said obama did it. anyway, meanwhile, we re getting reaction on former president obama s reaction to the news. according to nbc, our network, a source close to him, told nbc news, mr. obama rolled his eyes. and the wall street journal report, he was livid over the accusation that he bugged the republican campaign offices believing mr. trump was questioning both the integrity of the office of the president and mr. obama, himself. of course, he was. i m joined by the wall street journal s carol pllee who wrot that article. and the washington post s phil rutger who s been all over this thing. carol, did you notice the way that this young, relatively young member of congress, nunes from california, i don t know much about the guy, treating the president like he s a little baby. you know, he gets a little upset once in a while, says things he really shouldn t and doesn t have the help of advisers like lawyers around him so he does things that really don t make much sense, but we shouldn t blame him because he s a neophyte. he s a neophyte. yeah. there s definitely that s a defense. that s what a criticism looks like. there s that s the republicans the republicans why are so they they re greading him on a curve. they re helping him hide. by the way, boehner, when trump was running around saying obama was an illegal ill grant frmmig kenya, people asked him, tell your fellow members it s not true, he said i don t tell them how to think. this is the way they behave in the republican party today. they re so intimidated by this guy, trump, that they just cover for him. your thoughts. well, i think, yeah, the republicans don t want to get crossways with the president. why? they also why are they afraid of him? because they have flithings y would like to actually get done in congress and don t want to pick a fight with the president. and they also are taking they re aligning with the white house in terms of the cleanup of this where you have the white house saying, well, we don t look at it, we ll look into it pane, you know, congress, take a look thal look into it. what happened, more importantly, what the democrats are doing, this winds up being a gift to them because you have people like schiff saying we re going to oblige him on his request, look into this. the white house is going to wind up getting all the things they didn t really want like hearings on this. and a further investigation into this. congress loves hearings. let s face it. they go on and on and on, get on tv, on and on and on. when do they get to a conclusion? a big one on march 20th. when you talk to white house officials as we were doing this week, this is the last thing they want to talk about. want to be talking about health care, tax reform, about angela merkel s visit next week, about all these other issues and stuck having how long have you been around? let me ask you a question about having to get flak for the president. i thought about what kind of job that would be, i think it would be a very difficult job. people like josh earnest know how to do the job well. it s doable. i ve never seen a press secretary have to deal with a president that s saying stuff he or she doesn t believe. i mean, really. spicer has ever since the crowd measurements back in january 20 he had to lie for the president which is a terrible word to do, but he had to do it. had to say, oh, yeah, 3 million to 4 million out there and all this. this time around he doesn t want to do that. he s saying, i m telling you what the president says. then somebody asked yesterday, do you believe him? he said, that s a cute question. it s not a cute question. you ask the president s spokesperson if he or she believes what the president is saying. it s a reasonable question. he has really distanced himself from that, it s interesting to watch. he said, you know, if you ask him, what you zdo you think? he says it doesn t matter what you think. it does matter. we he says it s above my pay grade. that s a tired old line. you re the spokesman for the whou white house. it s not above your pay grade. it s your job. he got into the job. decided to bt he doesn t want to have his career ruined, i can tell. he s pulling away from trump. he is not lying for him. this is a pattern in donald trump s life, he inserts things that are got necessarily true, tries to find evidence for it. did you see kellyanne s pivot the other day? he knows so many things we don t know. she didn t say she s covering for herself in this case. thank you, carol lee. thank you. it s a tough time to be a straight reporter. this is not a straight world. phil rutger, thank you. coming up, the rolling disclosure on trump s potential russian connection continues. today we learn trump s former campaign manager corey lewandowski gave carter page leave to go to russia last summer. it just keeps growing and growing. plus on this international women s day, the trump administration s considering separating women, or mothers from their children if they try to enter the country illegally. that s going to be wonderful. i mean sar castically. it s going to be table. the hardball roundtable here tonight to talk about the challenge of separating fact from fiction today and trying to get to the truth during the trump era. finally let me finish with the trump watch. you won t like this one, either. you re watching hardball where the action is. oh.not the smooch method! come on. what s going on here? you know how ge technology allows us to fix problems before they. they slow production, yeah. well, no more catchy business acronyms. wait, we don t need to smooch? i m sure we can smooch a solution! we just need to hover over the candice, problem until. just let it go. hey, sorry i m late for team building. smoooooooch! that felt right. what s wrong with you!? he s so trusting. well, when he was a candidate, donald trump said he loved wikileaks. the website that collaborated with russian intelligence to help defeat hillary clinton. well in fact, he repeatedly professed his love for wikileaks. by the way, did you see another one, another one came in today, this wikileaks is like a treasure-trove. this wikileaks is unbelievable. what we ve learned about her and her people. we love wikileaks. boy, they are really wikileaks. they have revealed a lot. boy, that wikileaks has done a job on her. hasn t it? i tell you, this wikileaks stuff is unbelievable. it tells you the inner heart. you got to read it. now, this just came out, this just came out, wikileaks, i love wikileaks. well now wikileaks, the beloved wikileaks, released a trove of what it says are cia documents showing how the agency broke into smartphones and even tvs for spying and today the cia said it had no comment on the authenticity of those documents. when we come back, we ll talk to u.s. congressman waukeen castro of the intelligence committee about the latest wikileaks dump and what we re learning about president trump s relationship with russia. back after this. that could sense vehicles in your blind spot. take on the unexpected, with six 2017 iihs top safety picks. it s clear why we re america s fastest-growing auto brand. get to nissan now for 0% financing on 11 models & no payments for 90 days. i love to see businesses that just started from ground up grow into further success. it just feels good to know that i m helping someone else. my first goal is to learn about their business, what they re currently doing in their advertising. pull some research, create a great story. trying to figure out some way of building some kind of trust in a very quick moment. you have to love to work with people. our goal, without a doubt, is that all customers are satisfied before they leave. can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with russia during the course of the election? no, nobody that i know of. you re not aware of any contacts during the course of the election? how many times do i have to answer this question? russia is a ruse. i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge, no person that i deal with does. welcome to hardball. last month, president trump denied that anyone in his campaign, as you just saw, had any contacts with russia during the election. but in making that statement, the president directly contradicted the word of russia s deputy foreign minister who said just days after the election that, there were contacts during the campaign. we now know that thee members of trump s national security advisory committee, senator jeff sessions, j.d. gordon, carter page, all spoke with the russian ambassador during the campaign. additionally just before the republican convention, carter page traveled to moscow where he delivered a commencement address ken vogel of politico reports, page e-mailed campaign manager corey lewandowski and spokeswoman asking for formal approval for the trip and told by lewandowski he would make a trip to moscow but not as an official representative of the campaign. corey lewandowski telling politico i don t remember that, i probably got a thousand e-mails at that time and don t remember every single one i sent. i wouldn t necessarily remember if i had a one-word response to him saying he would do something as a private citizen. page left the campaign in september. trump campaign officials later distanced themselves from him. late today a source close to former utah governor jon huntsman tells nbc news that huntsman was offed and has accepted the position to be the next u.s. ambassador of russia. joined by u.s. congressman joaquin castro of texas, serves on the house select committee on intelligence. also here, ken vogel who wrote the story, chief investigative reporter for politico. congressman, you re in there and i guess my question is, we know an awful lot thanks to the 17 intelligence agencies about the way russia wanted hillary to lose and if it could be really lucky, get trump to win. how they wanted to undermine our democracy. that s all on the record. we also have a lot of other things on the record. how trump romanced or bromanced the russians all through the campaign. said wonderful things about their little instrument called wikileaks, said wonderful things about vladimir putin, about everything over there, how he s going to be their allies in the world against isis, et cetera, et cetera. seems to me a lot of information is out there about the symbiotic relationship between trump and the russians. what do you know more, or can you hichbt nt at where you thins story s going? you know, chris, insaid very clearly as have others on this committee, we need to get to the bottom of one question. did any americans conspire with the russians who interfered with our 2016 presidential election? and specifically, did anyone associated with the trump campaign help those who interfered with the 2016 presidential election? when we keep seeing more and more connections between trump advisers, at least coming out in reports, these trump advisers and the russians. and so, of course, this just speaks to how important the investigation is. well, doesn t the i mean, my experience over the years is the fbi, as part of our counterintelligence effort in this country, which all other countries have, they have all kinds of electronic wiretaps and information like, leb trelectro communication, involving the russian ambassador and officials who look like they might be under cover. why can t don t we get that information out? when s it going to come? the information. the nsa s got it, the cia s got it, certainly the fbi. what s the wait for? that s a great question. you know, i ve been critical of the pace of the investigation at least in the house committee. i said last week there is a gap between what the intelligence agencies know and what the committee has been told. adam schiff, the democratic ranking member, has essentially said the same thing. so i m with you on that. i think we should be moving in a brisker pace. you see there s a few hearings on this issue that have now been scheduled and publicly hopefull start moving at a quicker pace because all americans deserve an answer to these questions and getting to the bottom of it really is fundamental to our democracy. we know what russia did to help get trump elected and as a candidate, trump repeatedly made overtures to putin. let s watch him. i think i g d get along very well with vladimir putin. i just think so. wouldn t it be nice if actually we could get along with russia? and what s wrong with are russia wants to drop million-dollar bombs on isis? i say, good. putin said donald trump is a geni genius, he s going to be the next great leader of the united states. my attitude, when people like me, i like them. even putin. russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. putin s a killer. a lot of killers. we got a lot of killers. what, you think our country s so innocent? let me go to a couple things that do matter here. certainly our policy toward ukraine. our policy toward crimecrimea. i think either administration, democrat or republican, obama who normally a republican administration, would say russia, big bear, hold back, don t be grabbing back those countries on your border so easily. you got back crimea, we ll fight about that. certainly don t make any moves on the larger part of ukraine. now we get the sense that the platform in the republican convention this year, the plank dealing with that, was changed and look at this, during the same week the trump aides spoke with the russian am babassador cleveland during the republican convention, the trump campaign watered down an amendment to the party platform that supported ukraine against russian aggression. trump s campaign chairman, paul manafort at the time, denied responsibility for the change as did trump, himself. trump also defended russia s right to seize crimea from ukraine. here he is. everybody on the platform committee had said it came from the trump campaign. if not you, who? it absolutely did not come from the trump campaign. so nobody from the trump campaign wanted that change in the platform? no one. zero. why did she soften the gop platform on ukraine? i wasn t involved in that. you know, the people of crimea from what i ve heard would rather be with russia than where they were. well now politico is reporting a ukrainian operative with suspected ties to russian intelligence consulted with paul manafort during the political o ukraine he played a role in changing the platform language. ken, what do we make of this? in they soften up the republican platform, usually a hawkish party, softened them up because they have inside operatives in the republican operation here, we ought to know about that. they re quick to say, in fact, the language in the platform ended up being tougher than it was before this amendment was proposed. wasn t as tough as not thanks to them. right. certainly. we have reporting that does suggest, in fact, there were representatives of the trump campaign who did play a role in watering down that proposed amendment that would have been much tougher. so it s yet another example where they come out with a blanket denial, say we candiddi have anything to do with the platform, turns out they did. flynn says to the vice president of all people, i didn t talk about the sanctions with the russian am bass dr. turns out he did. sessions tells the judiciary committee, i didn t talk with any russians. the biggest problem for me, they cannot get their stories zragt he straight here. if it comes out, congressman, you may be the first to know on the intelligence committee, that there was a positive role by the trump people in getting the russians to do what they did in terms of screwing up the democrats in the general election, with all the hacking and they played a role in that, would that be impeachable? if at the end of the investigation it s found the president s advisers played a role in aiding the russians who interfered with the election and the president knew about it, then that is historically significant and it s a betrayal of our democracy and certainly i think many people would move for impeachment. thank you so much. u.s. congressman joaquin castro of texas, thank you, ken vogel, for your amazing reporting these days. up next, it s international women s day. while they have rallies around the country right now, they re going on, the homeland security secretary is considering a plan that would separate mothers from their children. remember sophie s choice, if they cross into this kun this c illegally. a debate is coming up about that. this is hardball where the action is. oh yeah sure. ok, like what? but i thought we were supposed to be talking about investing for retirement? we re absolutely doing that. but there s no law you can t make the most of today. what do you want to do? 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(team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace. here s to the wildcats this i gotta try .. bendy. spendy weekenders. whatever kind of weekender you are, there s a hilton for you. book your weekend break direct at hilton.com and join the weekenders. whattwo servings of veggies? v8 or a powdered drink? ready, go. ahhhhhhhh! shake! shake! shake! shake! shake! done! you gotta shake it! i shake it! glad i had a v8. the original way to fuel your day. .onef many pieces in my life. so when my asthma symptoms kept cong back on my long-term control medicine. i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment with breo. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo is specifically designed to open up airways to improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems and may increase the risk of hospitalization in children and adolescents. breo is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop breo and prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. learn more about better breathing at mybreo.com. welcome back to hardball. around the world people are celebrating international women s day today. in the united states, organizers of january s women s march on washington use the this occasion to plan a national demonstration called a day without a woman. women. it s plural there. thousands of women abstained from their it s a great word, abstained from their day jobs and took to the streets. that s a live picture looking at right now from new york outside the trump soho hotel. they re rallying against the discrimination and division they say the president espouses. here we go. i think it s important that the country know that women are standing together against hate and division and discrimination. what we have to do now is do what we can is protest and stand up and let the country and our elected leaders know what s important to us. and so that s what we re doing. in washington, several female democratic lawmakers symbolically staged a walkout in support, there they are, in red. 21 members of the congress. we know one thing for sure, that when women succeed, america succeeds. well the other end of pennsylvania avenue, donald trump honored the day by dropping in on his wife s luncheon and tweeting on international women s day, join me in honoring the critical role of women here in america and around the world. and i have tremendous respect for women and the many roles they serve that are vital to the fabric of our society and our economy. the tweets drew immediate criticism because of trump s record on women. his administration is also under scrutiny for its lack of gender diversi diversity, intention to defund planned participaenthood. and to separate women and children to cross the border illegally. secretary john kelly confirmed the administration was considering that proposal. here he is. our department of homeland security personnel going to separate the children from their moms and dads. yes, i am considering in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, i am considering exactly that. they will be well cared for as we deal with their parents. joining me right now for more, maria teresa kumar, ceo of voter latino, and former campaign manager for mitt romney, katie packer. both are attorneys. you have a tough job now. we have to talk about it. sounds like sophie s choice not sophie s choice. the idea of separating children from their mothers. obviously alleged to have broken the law, come across the border, may be asylum seekers. we don t know. may be poor people looking for a job. we don t know. trying to meet some relative here. we don t know. the idea of putting out the word, hey, we re going to separate you from your kids as a way of saying we re going to make you pay for this. well, certainly the notion of separating children from their parents as a punitive action? as a punitive action. as a punitive action, is very unseemly. what i understand, though, about what he s talking about is there is an angle to this that s trying to address the child trafficking issue. that it s not just separating children from their parents that s what he said, though. it s separating kirn from adults. i understand that. were you helping him here? are you helping him? that s not what he said. there might be an angle there that could be sort of salvageable but this notion of taking children away from their parents that is the you re very good at this, katikatie. i got tell you, for mothers carrying a baby, carrying an 8-year-old. what you re referring to, secretary kelly is also looking at this idea if a parent has someone bringing over they child, they re going to charge the parent with human trafficking. that s just as bad. so this idea that we are the majority of the people that to rming right now in south america are fleeing sexual viviolence, violence, themselves. what countries? el salvador, honduras primarily. not only going to the united states, going to costa rica, belize, where they mostly have family members. what do you make of this proposal to punish people for crossing the border illegally? it s cruel. it s anti-american. do you think that will at the end of the day, you re trying to get to safety for your family, america has been the beacon of hope. most of these folks are refugees and saying if i have to get separated, i will do it. the problem is even amnesty international has found a lot of these detention systems are completely abhorrent. they re anti a lot of international rights. what should the u.s. government do? they should actually process asylum seekers and if they re not asylum se seekers, what do you do with the ones who are not seeking asylum? the yoert majority of them a. what about the ones who are? everybody believes we need to have secured borders but in a way that is not cruel. you re always good at this. it s not going to happen because it s not good policy. let me ask her about the difference between can i talk to you for a second, ask you a question? what s a difference between a republican view of international women s day and a democrats view? what s the difference between your point of view from a party point of view? well, i think for republicans everybody s feeling a little sort of protested out. like every day there s some new protest and at some point you say to yourself, you know, when is there going to be sort of a general discussion of the things that you actually object to instead of just this daily protesting of everything that trump does? and you can t hear anything because what was your reaction to trump s comments, mexicans are rapists. islamic women what do you billy bush was who listening and fluffing him on you might say gets fired, trump gets elected president. doesn t that amaze you? it does amaze me. that conversation about women. it makes him a very flawed vessel for a comment like he made today. did you vote for him? i have very publicly said i did not vote for him. i know you didn t. go ahead. i think what he brought on, the way he brought on sexual violence into a conversation allowed people to have for the first time a conversation between their spouse as and the loved ones. at the same time, what he signals is it almost didn t matter. because he won. because he con. 42% of women voted for him. no consequences. 53% of white women voted for him, too. no consequences for those actions. the reason people keep marching, these are people who may not have voted and are coming into the political process, saying what do we do next? our job is to harness sthat. you know what i learned? women say, men are all like that. i go, they re not like that. more are like that than you think. that s possible because you just defined the possibility of it. yeah. you know what thank you. back again, for the very first time, trump lost young white men. yeah. millennials have good values. millennials have good values. maria, we all know that. maria teresa kumar and katie packer. katie packer, what a great name. up next katie packer. up next, the hardball roundtable will be here. tonight separating fact from fiction and getting at the truth in the trump era. that s what we re going to talk about. finding the nonfiction in the fiction. you re watching hardball where the action is. 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( ) what i like about the area, feels like everybody knows each other. and i can go to my local coffee shop and they know who i am. it s really cool. new york state is filled with bright minds like lisa s. to find the companies and talent of tomorrow, search for our page, jobsinnewyorkstate on linkedin. search for our page, at bp s cooper river plant, employees take safety personally - down to each piece of equipment, so they can protect their teammates and the surrounding wetlands, too. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. don t put off checking out your options until sixty-five. now is a good time to get the ball rolling. consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like any of these types of plans, it could help you with out-of-pocket medical costs. call now and request your free decision guide and explore the range of aarp medicare supplement plans. start gathering the information you need. to roll into sixty-five with confidence. wheyou wantve somto protect it.e, at legalzoom, our network of attorneys can help you every step of the way. with an estate plan including wills or a living trust that grows along with you and your family. legalzoom. legal help is here. seriously. this after the white house wouldn t provide evidence that former president obama wiretapped president trump s phones during the 2016 campaign. as trump claimed saturday morning. is the white house position that the president can make declarative statements about a former president basically committing a crime and then the congressional committee should look into that and basically prove it? that is not a question of prove it, is they have the resources and the clearances and the staff to fully and thoroughly and comprehensively investigate this. and then issue a report as to what their findings are. so but president trump s twitter statement shouldn t be taken at face value about what sure, it should. of course why no. there s nothing, as i mentioned to jim, it s not that he s walking anything back or regretting it, he s just saying that they have the appropriate venue. so how does a journalist get to the truth in the age of trump? joining me in the hardball roundtable tonight, three reporters who cover politics and the white house. ayesha roscoe, white house correspondent, saw her there, for reuters, who asked that question, went back and forth with spicer. david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jones. msnbc political analyst. laura bassett, senior political reporter with the huffington post. that quhestioning of a press secretary who s definitely out of his element. he obviously doesn t believe his nonsense about the president accusing the previous president of wiretapping him yet he has to say things i think you almost caught him there, should we take it as face value? i thought you d almost get him to say no. of course i take it at face value. of course we have to submit it to congress to see if that s true or not. that doesn t make any sense. that was the point of the questioning. they came out with a statement after the twitter statements which were declared, president trump said i was wiretapped, president obama did it basically. then now the white house is saying, oh, committees have to look into it and have to see whether they re concerned. that s what i was trying to get at was, well, should we take the twitter statements which were declarative suppose trump said the president, previous president snuck into the white house last night and stole my hamburgers. i mean, something really ridiculous. then say we re going to let the house and senate intelligence committee examine it. i mean, the stuff he the claims are just at what point is spicer or anybody just says i can t take this job anymore, this is stupid, this isn t worthy of my time, i m going to end up looking like a liar here. right. i think that the problem for, at least for the media, is it s almost impossible to fact check some of this stuff. he doesn t care. because, yeah, then kellyanne conway can go on tv and say, well, you know, we say, well, did you get this from a breitbart story or not? and she says, well, he s privy to intelligence that most people don t know and information that most people don t know and the president should be. how to you fact check that when she says there s information that we just don t know? you can t fact check crazy. the thing is, i ve seen people acting as if they re surprised by this. you and i know there s nothing to be surprised by this. he did this for three years about birtherism. he did this about the crowds in the inauguration. he did this about ted cruz s dad and the 3 million mexicans who voted against him in california. he does this again and again and again. we act as he s a rational actor. what are you supposed to do? ayesha, it isn t like the old ethiopia where every headline began, lion of juda said this morning and pript nt it as if i true. what are you supposed to do? ask tough questions. you have to, you know, if they say things that maybe don t seem to add up, you have to ask them for clarity and then you have to do your own digging. i think it s important for us as journalists to make sure that we re providing readers with the facts. okay. with what we know. when do you get a no on this? i ve been saying the congress job is to give him a nay. they re not doing anything, not check this stuff out. they say, oh, we re going to buy xerox machines and hire some lawyers and get officers assigned and in six months we ll get down to business, ten years later we might have congress does not move lickety-split. i mean, i thought their response to the whole wiretapping thing was really awkward. all of them were put in an incredibly awkward position of saying i don t believe what the president s saying, he s still the president, okay, we ll look into it. one guy had some guts, had some balls to put it bluntly. that was mccain. one guy. mccain called him on it. as much as he may be bitter against obama, he has contempt for trump. he said trump is obligated to prove this. i think that s a pretty fair statement. you accuse the former president of breaking the law. yeah. it just shows you how far the republican establishment has gone in self-emasculation. yeah. they will not even if crazedy is right in front of them and it s two plus two, they ll say, maybe it is five because we don t have all the facts. are they afraid of getting a nickname? what are they afraid of? i talked to one house democrat who s trying to get a republican on the bill that trump wouldn t like and the guy said i can t do it, trump will start tweeting at me. they re afraid of trump. they re afraid of the base has been trumpfied. they re running scared. they want him around to sign the medicare privatization bills and whatever they come up with, anything in health care. they can t listen, once you say the president is nuts there s no going back from that. yeah, but some of this, i would hope, would penetrate to the 35%. do you think it will? i think i mean, i think will it penetrate to objective people that are reasonably objective? i think people can be logical and look at what s happening and draw their conclusions. i think especially when, you know, the rubber hits the road and you have to start looking at policies and what s going to come out. i wonder if it s like when you get married to someone, you realize they re different than the one that courted you and you go, but i m still stuck. it s not different, though, he was like this the whole campaign. that s true. aren t you smart? thank you. the roundtable is sticking with us. up next, these three will tell me something i don t know. i should have known that. bp uses flir cameras - a new thermal imagining technology - to inspect difficult-to-reach pipelines, so we can detect leaks before humans can see them. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. resist, run for office, be a champion. tonight secretary clinton will mark international women s day at the ceremony for vital voices, a woman s leadership group that she founded. we ll be back after this. my day starts well before i m even in the kitchen. i need my blood sugar to stay in control. so i asked about tresiba®. tresiba® ready tresiba® is a once-daily, long-acting insulin that lasts even longer than 24 hours. i need to shave my a1c. tresiba® ready tresiba® works like my body s insulin. releases slow and steady. providing powerful a1c reduction. i m always on call. an insulin that fits my schedule is key. tresiba® ready i can take tresiba® any time of day. so if i miss or delay a dose, i take it when i remember, as long as there s at least 8 hours between doses. once in use, it lasts 8 weeks with or without refrigeration, twice as long as the lantus® pen. (announcer) tresiba® is used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don t use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you are allergic to any of its ingredients. don t share needles or insulin pens. don t reuse needles. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which may cause dizziness, sweating, confusion, and headache. check your blood sugar. low blood sugar can be serious and may be life-threatening. injection site reactions may occur. tell your prescriber about all medicines you take and all your medical conditions. taking tzds with insulins like tresiba® may cause serious side effects like heart failure. your insulin dose shouldn t be changed without asking your prescriber. get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing, fast heartbeat, extreme drowsiness, swelling of your face, tongue, or throat, dizziness or confusion. ask your health care provider if you re tresiba® ready. covered by most insurance and medicare plans. tresiba® ready aisha, tell me something, you re amazing, you take on spicer. just wrap im, go ahead. well, in honor of women s day, speaking of one of the most powerful women in international politics, german chancellor angela merkel is coming here, we hear top on the agenda will be ukraine and russia and also that president trump might press her on getting germany to pay its fair share on nato. i will think germany would have paid early. it will be interesting to see with how she deals with president trump. she s his equal by any standard. you mentioned john mccain because he took a strong stand on the wiretapping stuff. he s taken a strong stand on the russian stuff, the white house is enraged about john mccain and they are trying to find ways to politically marginalize him and elevate other voices within the party like senator named tom cotton. they want mccain sidelined. i m with mccain on that one. by the way, mccain will never be forgot within what he accused with that woman that accused obama being arrogant. that s profile in courage stuff. trump hasn t done one of those yet. i talked to health experts about trumpcare today and what it would do. you re saying it, aren t you? i m saying trumpcare. like people wouldn t say reagan airport for years but you re saying trumpcare right away. it restricts abortion in four different ways and defunds planned parenthood. explain the abortion piece. it would drive abortion insurance completely out of the market so there wouldn t be an option for women to have abortion coverage anymore and it defunds planned parenthood. totally? the health experts said it would drive up unintended pregnancies. so it would do away with all birth control help for people. exactly. and have the opposite. that s a counterer effort for the pro life people. anyway, i think if you believe in avoiding abortion, anyway. ais aisha, thank you, please come back. david corn, always and laura basset, yes. i m out of good words. when we return, let me finish with trump watch. you re watching hardball. finally. hey ron! they re finally taking down that schwab billboard. oh, not so fast, carl. oh no. schwab, again? index investing for that low? that s three times less than fidelity. .and four times less than vanguard. what s next, no minimums? .no minimums. schwab has lowered the cost of investing again. introducing the lowest cost index funds in the industry with no minimums. i bet they re calling about the schwab news. schwab. a modern approach to wealth management. dearthere s no other way to say this. it s over. i ve found a permanent escape from monotony. together, we are perfectly balanced. our senses awake. our hearts racing as one. i know this is sudden, but they say.if you love something set it free. see you around, giulia [ rumbling ] bp developed new, industry-leading software to monitor drilling operations in real-time, so our engineers can solve problems with the most precise data at their fingertips. because safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. trump watch, wednesday, march 8, 2017. we have a man in the white house who thinks nothing that s a phrase to keep handy of speaking nastily and outrageously about his predecessor. why not? when he called obama an illegal immigrant from kenya the republican speaker of the house said it wasn t his job to tell people how to think. and with him now calling the former president a criminal, no leader up there in the congress is willing to come out and throw water on the president s fish story. this isn t about how big he says his hands are or how many people he can see on the washington mall or how many elusive illegal voters he says were out there last november. it s about truth and untruth. the truth that the russians helped him win the election. the untruth that president obama had him bugged. i understand why his people want this accusation of his to disappear on capitol hill. it s an old trick. it s what spiro agnew did when he faced indictment for accepted bribes for maryland contractors. he headed to the speaker asking him to be tried by the congress. he figured the case would be