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.
the state department. putting iran on notice, is this trump s new red line? hi, erin. definitely being presented as a hard line on iran. maybe somewhat blurry one at this point. but the white house is saying that it is dedicated to holding iran accountable after this latest missile launch. and it is considering a whole range of options in a response and, yes, that does include a military one. a tough line on iran at the white house today. as to have day, we are officially putting iran on notice. reporter: national security adviser michael flynn offering a cryptic warning after iran tested another ballistic missile sunday. the obama administration failed to respond adequately to tehran s malign actions including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms. reporter: the new administration making its clear it believes the missile launch violated a u.n. resolution. flynn s comments today follow its missile program. but prior tests have gone down with no more response than statements of condemnation. experts say the missile tests while provocative do not violate the nuclear deal. the u.s. and o five other countries helped negotiate. sml say that tre are those in iran who are actually trying themselves to undermine or sabotage the nuclear agreement that we reach with iran. they re trying to take provocative actions to get us to respond and get us to pull out of the agreement. reporter: president trump on the campaign trail talked about getting tough on iran but not necessarily ripping up the nuclear deal. it s a horrible agreement. i will make that agreement so tough and if they break it they will have hell to pay. here at the state department, they re not using the same language at the white house as the white house is at this point. keep in mind secretary of state rex tillerson was just confirmed today. they re not saying definitively that this missile launch violated the u.n. resolution. they re saying things like it was a defiance of it. it was inconsistent it with. it was provocative and not completely clear right now what are the options that white house is talking about. erin? all right, thank you so much, michelle. and out front now, the top democrat on the foreign relations committee. senator, this front and center for you tonight now. i know you voted against president obama s iran deal. i was a carefully considered decision. you wrote he will consequently about why you chose no. to date trump administration saying the missile test was provocative. they re putting iran on notice s that right move? well, i think the trump administration needs to work with congress. there is strong support in congress to make sure that iran understand thez cannot violate ballistic missile obligations without a consequence. we can toughen sanctions. there are other things we can do. can work with allies in regards to the violations of ballistic missile obligations. they also are financing terrorism. you need to be mindful of how we can go after them for those 5:00 test. they have human rights violations. so we understand in addition to the nuclear program, there are other issues. and congress is willing to work with the administration in a responsible way with our international partners to isolate iran on the activities. i know among your frustrations is once the sanctions dam was unleashed, when the deal happened, it s pretty hard to plug that if not impossible. you heard donald trump saying he ll sob tough on iran. if they break that deal, there will be hell to pay. do you think they should try to oipt back up? is that even a possibility on your horizon? we don t need to open up the nuclear agreement. we can deal with ballistic missile violations. there is a series of actions that we can take that can effect iran s ability to obtain weapons. so we can do. that working with our international partners. so there are steps we can take that can respond to what iran is doing. and we need to do that. so today you voted against rex tillerson as secretary of state. bees to be formally sworn in by the president. he was confirmed. do you trust him to get iran right? this is now going to be on his desk. mr. tillerson is now or shortly will be the secretary of state. we want to work with him. he will be our chief diplomat. i will do everything in my power to make sure that he promotes americans values, stand up to rush yachlt russia s activities have been very much against our interests. and we need to make sure they understand that we re going to be as tough with russia as the president just said with iran. now you have been out outspoken about donald trump s travel ban. one of the first moves he made since coming into the office along with the wall. you met with john kelly about your concerns. what did he tell you? well, he told us it was a rough beginning and that they are committed to keeping america safe. and we re committed to keeping america safe. this executive order does just the opposite. it isolates america from other countries around the world. it compromises america s leadership on the refugee issue. it promotes the anti-american rhetoric that can be used by recruiters for terrorist organizations. so what we heard yesterday was that they re committed to the policy. we believe the only thing we can do right now, what we should do, is repeal this executive order. it s offensive. it s not what america stands for. we don t impose bans on people based upon their religion. did he talk to you about how long the ban would last? whether more countries would be added? anything about their intent? i think the administration s made it clear that they intend to keep this ban in place. i think congress needs to speak and say no. this is unamerican. it s not keeping us safe. it s just the opposite. it makes us more at risk. refugees had not caused problems in our country. they re properly vetted. so i think it s now up to congress to take action to reverse what the president has done. before we go, judge gorsuch, some colleagues are threatening a filibuster. you called republicans actions in your word reckless. the big challenge for you, of course, is this. should democrats now be equally as reckless? or should they give gore susuch fair and speedy hearing? we need to carry out our constitutional responsibilities. we do understand that republicans in the senate, what they did to president obama was outrageous. but they did to the office of the presidency and not considering a supreme court appointment in a ten month period. we re suspicious thou process will play out with judge gorsuch. so we re careful to make sure we have adequate time that, we can understand all of his judicial philosophy that, we can see whether, in fact, he is mainstream or not. there is a lot of cases he was involved in that give many of us heart burn. we re asking a the love tough questions. we re not going to rush this. but you re not holding it up or support a filibuster or anything like that, right? i must tell you, it depends on how the process unfolds. hey, ready foyeah. big meeting? uh, hello!? a meeting? it s a big one. too bad. we are double booked: diarrhea and abdominal pain. why don t you start without me? 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(sighs sadly) try this. only aleve can stop pain for 12 hours. plus, aleve is recommended by more doctors than any other brand for minor arthritis pain. aleve. live whole. not part. are you ready?? you gotta be ready. oh, i m ready i mean, really ready. are you ready to open? ready to compete? ready to welcome? the floors, mats-spotless. the uniforms, clean and crisp. do your people have the right safety gear? are they protected? i m ready! you think your customers can t tell the difference between who s ready and who s not? of course they do. i m ready for you everybody wants a piece of ready. cintas, ready for the workday. reporter: a solemn day for the new commander in chief making his first trip to dover, delaware, to meet with the family of william ryan owens who was killed over the weekend in yemen. president trump called owen s family tuesday, the white house said, to recognize his sacrifice and years of dedicated service to his country. he went back, deployed 12 times because he loved his country and he believed in the mission. and knowing that we killed an estimated 14 aqap members and that we gathered an unbelievable amount of intelligence that will prevent the potential deaths or attacks on american soil is something that i think most service members understand that that s why they join the service. reporter: white house press shawn spicer clarified an issue and said in a successful raid against al qaeda, brave use forces were instrumental in killing an estimated 14 aqap members and capturing important intelligence. today s spicer sought to qualify the definition of success. it s hard to ever say something was successful when you lose a life. you never want to call something a success 100% when someone is hurt or killed. reporter: it was the first covert operation under president trump. cnn learned planning for the operation began months ago during the obama administration. but for operational reasons, including the schedule of moonless nights needed to obscure the approaching missions, it couldn t be done before obama left office. president trump authorized the mission fairly quickly. in order for an operation like this to be planned as thoroughly as you need to plan it, you often create a cell of contrarians who are poking holes in every one of your steps along the way. reporter: the team ran in trouble with drones overhead the whole time, navy seals working together with uae special ops approached the sight with the special ops team was spotted and a fire fight ensued. the terrorists took cover in a nearby building. an air strike was called in against the building. officials say 13 civilians were killed in the raiding including an will 8-year-old. her father was the u.s. born cleric that direct add tacks against the u.s. and killed in a u.s. drone strike in 2011. three u.s. service members were wounded and navy seal owens was killed. ospreys were launched to retreat the wounded. one made a hard landing due technical problems. the aircraft was deliberately destroyed by the u.s. defense secretary james mattis left a dinner saturday evening to address the mission that was fraught with risks. those things will happen in operations like this. to there is a clearly ary is assess ment. you mitigate the risk as best you can. there will often be casualties. that s just the nature of this business. reporter: still, administration officials stress u.s. commanders were able to gather computer hard drives that may provide crucial details on terrorist operations. and the white house kept this visit under wraps in private for much of the day at the request of ryan owen s family and out rev inspe of respect for the family, there were no pictures. and the last few minutes, president trum dp comment on his visit to dover. he called it very sad and very beautiful during the swearing in ceremony for rex tillerson. thank you very much, jim acosta. as jim said, the president arrived back at the white house from his visit to dover air force base with the owens family. you see him there get off marine one. and as jim said, he said it was a very sad, very beautiful visit with mr. owens family. john mcchoir, former navy seal who you just heard from and the former new york times reporter, best-selling author. the latest book the prisoner just hit bookshelves this week, yesterday in, fact. let me just start with you, alex. the raid was a success. of course, he is getting a lot of criticism for using that word because an american lost their lives and civilians that lost their lives as well. is the criticism warranted? i don t think we know what they got. it seems tactically they ran into serious problems they were not expecting. and one thing we were talking about is why they went in with ospreys which are loud and, you know, the special forces have silence blackhawks. i don t know fit was a tactical decision because of distance. you know, they re it in the middle of the desert. and the approach would have been heard using the much louder aircraft. general marks? yeah, i was going to sashgs i m not going to second-guess any decision that was made by a combat anlt commander or the commander on the ground who has the responsibility to execute this mission as to what type of aircraft or what type of personal protection the detailed planning for every one of the missions is exhaustive and they go through scenarios upon scenarios to ensure they get it right. guess what, war has costs. and things will go wrong. so, john, one of the things when alex said it depends, you know, we don t know what they got. obviously this is the second major read in yemen in two years putting u.s. lives on the line. they go in, they have something very special. something very significant. do you have any sense of what intense jens we can be talking about? first, my heart goes out to the familiar live the fallen and the wounded. i ll tell you, he put his brothers first. but the intelligence locations and any movements, anything can help us get an edge on the war on terror. alex, what you are learning in your reporting as to why, you know, we do know they were planning for this for a long time. something happened they did not expect. they re not going to have strategic surprise. these people know that we want them. right. and they know that we re targeting them. so the best thing is a tactical surprise. and why they didn t have that, i suspect there is a lot of smart people asking that question right now. in tampa, you know nshgts pentagon. and trying to understand. general marks, here s what we know. 40 people were killed. 14 of them at least were al qaeda fighters. 13 of them were civilians. six of those children. 7 of them women and, of course, the navy seal. we know they spent weeks doing this. planning this raid. how could all these civilians have ended up in the line of fire? well, you know, erin, that s what will be uncovered over the course of the next couple of days through a very, very thorough after action review on every aspect of this operation from planning, execution wit withdraw, et cetera. the thing to realize is decisions the decision point for execution is a certain time line associated it with based on how fast it takes to get to the objective, how much time you have on the objective, what are you trying achieve? and then how do you get away from that? and while you re en route, intelligence is updated. you have amazing capabilities. so that the men and women that are about to execute this operation of getting vet latest so they get a better sense so that they hopefully can overpower the objective, be as deadly and as accurate and precise as they k how civilians in the collateral damage assess ment always goes to what is on the objective that we don t want in the object sniff those assessments take place. the arrive afl civilians on the objective was identified once they got in contact. i can tell you, if they had known that in advance that, would have been an abort mission. they would have tried to clear that away. john, let me give you a chance. if they had known that in advance, right, they would not have gone ahead with this mission. forget whether these were the children of al qaeda or whatever. they were children. well, just like the general said, there is so much detail planning that goes into the type of missions. and that s because thing dozen go wrong. and good intelligence saves lives is not going to fall in our l.a. we need to risk our lives to go in and protect our country. but had we had intelligence like this we probably would have aborted. does this chase him, donald trump? no, absolutely not. as we can see, donald trump has his opinions and he does not change them in response to a sing ale attack going wrong. in my books, it s easy. but in the real world, it s hard. and, of course, do you write about a lot of these things happening as you reported on them over the years. thank you so much. all three of you. and next, go nuclear. that s what trump is telling troenz do about his supreme court pick. we re live on capitol hill to nice. plus, fashion faux pas. jon stewart sounds off on tru trump s presidential style. the president sets men s fashion and this is i saw the inauguration. super long tie. dead animal on head, boom. the future of business in new york state is already in motion. companies across the state are growing the economy, with the help of the lowest taxes in decades, a talented workforce, and world-class innovations. like in plattsburgh, where the most advanced transportation is already en route. and in corning, where the future is materializing. let us help grow your company s tomorrow - today at esd.ny.gov adios, honey, hasta la vista, baby. (sing-songy) fat guy in a little coat. that rug really tied the room together. any questions? bueller? bueller? that s the unlimited effect. stream your entertainment and more with unlimited data when you switch to at&t wireless and have directv. plus, get the amazing new iphone 7 on us. afoot and light-hearted i take to the open road. healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever i choose. the east and the west are mine. the north and the south are mine. all seems beautiful to me. tomorrow s the day besides video games. every day is a gift. especially for people with heart failure. but today there s entresto. a breakthrough medicine that can help make more tomorrows possible. tomorrow, i want to see teddy bait his first hook. in the largest heart failure study ever, entresto was proven to help more people stay alive and out of the hospital than a leading heart failure medicine. women who are pregnant must not take entresto. it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. don t take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren. if you ve had angioedema while taking an ace or arb medicine, don t take entresto. the most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high potassium in your blood. tomorrow, i m gonna step out with my favorite girl. ask your doctor about entresto. and help make the gift of tomorrow possible. ladies and gentlemen. the president of the united states. thank you very much. just returned from an amazing visit with a great, great family at dover. very sad, very beautiful. ryan a great man. tillerson, i first want to congratulate you and your entire family and it is that an incredible honor. you bring the unique skills and deep, deep insights and i got to see it firsthand into foreign diplomacy, our nation needs to foster stability and security in a world too often trapped and right now it s trapped. in violence and in war. you understand that the job of our diplomats and the mission of the state department is to serve the interests of the united states of america to make our nation safer, our country more prosperous, and our people much more secure. and that mission you also understand the importance of strengthening our alliances and forming new alliances to enhance our strategic interests and the safety of our people. your whole life has prepared you for this moment. and you really have had a tremendous life heading up one of the great companies of the world and doing it magnificently, absolutely magnificently. i can say this is a man that is respected all over the world before you even begins. but now he s beginning his big, big and most important journey. this is where you were meant to be right here today at this cross roads in history. it s time to bring a clear eyed focus to foreign affairs, to take a fresh look at the world around us, and to seek new solutions grounded in very ancient truths. these truths include the fact that nations have a right to protect their interests, that all people have a right to freely pursue their own destiny, and that all of us are better off when we act in concert and not in conflict. and there s rarely been conflict like we have today in the world. very sad. i m excited for you. i m excited for your family. and perhaps most importantly, i m excited for our great country. though you inherit enormous challenges in the middle east and around the world, i do believe we can achieve piece and stability peace and stability in the very, very troubled times. may god bless new this journey and may god bless our very, very special and great country. thank you very much. mike, can you do the honors. thank you. [ inaudible ] please place your right hand on the bible. and repeat after me. i rex tillerson do solemnly swear i rex tillerson do solemnly swear, that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states. that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states. against all enemies foreign and domestic. zbh against all enemies foreign and domestic. that i will bear truth and allegiance to the same. and i will bear truth and allegiance to the same. i take this obligation freely. without any meantal reservation. without any meantal reservation or purpose or evasion and i will well and faithfully discharge the duties zbl discharge the duties. the office upon which i m about to enter. the office upon which i m about to enter. so help me god. so help me god. enormously long hours, tirelessly helping me and guiding me through the confirmation process and to them i will always be eternally grateful for the sacrifice they made of their time and effort this past weeks. i ve also received over the last month so many messages, letters, phone calls of best wishes and encouragement, prayers from family, friends, and colleagues who know me well. but i ve also received an enormous outpouring of wonderful messages from people all over the country whom i do not know. words of encourage ment and their prayers. and it s their message that s are going to really stand in steadfast reminder to me as i enter the responsibilities of secretary of state. as i serve this president, i serve their interests and will always represent the interests of all of the american people at all times. and again, mr. president, thank you for this extraordinary opportunity. thank you, everybody. great honor. thank you guys. rex tillerson now the secretary of state as you saw sworn in by mike pence, commenting donald trump returning from dover air force base. the body of a slain navy seal came back from the yemen raid and speaking somber and subdued as the swearing in happened. i want to bring in the washington post political reporter abby philip and mark preston as we were sitting here together watching we all noticed donald trump, yes, he was reading. he read very carefully from the prepared remarks. but he was clearly somber, subdued. zbh right. and literally had to par take in what has got to be the hardest thing to dozen a commander in chief. we often say like he s the president of the united states, leader of the free world, commander in chief. well today he had to take that responsibility to a place that nobody wants to go. he actually have got to give him props that he would get on marine one, that he would get to andrews air force base and greet the family and there be for when this navy seal s body returns. you know, we have seen these moments where he is sober. that first meeting with president obama in the oval office. you saw he was very different. i think we saw another moment like that today where the weight of the office was obviously on his shoulders. z and did he read from the remarks. they were prepared. he stwuk them. there were a couple traditional asides. it s sad as one of them. but all leave ti aside, i was very serious what he had to say. and one thing he said stood out to me. i m curious what you thought about it. he said when introducing prechl tillerson, it is a time as a nation we act in concert, not no conflict. that s very interesting that he would say that considering the environment in washington this week in particular and in just the 13 days since he s been sworn in. you know, i think the president views the world as being something that needs to be kind of revamped and rethought. and he wants the united states to look inward and what is interesting about rex tillerson s job as secretary of state is that he has to put in place a foreign policy that actually is a little bit of a departure from what past secretaries of state have done. trump wants him to help disentangle the world from conflict so that he can refocus inward on some of the domestic problems whether they re political or economic. and so that s very challenging. i think trump understands the gravity of the job that tillerson is n and also, you know, president obama mentioned when he was on his way out that there are moments in this job that remind you of how hard it s i think trump had one of those moments today. he had one of those moments as he was about to swear in his secretary of state. i did think it was significant that he read from the prepared remarks and that they included that act in concert, not conflict uk read too much into it? but a nod to i understand. that s not how people perceive me or my goals to be, but i m going to come out here and say this. leadership comes from the top and leadership needs to come from him. when president obama came in 2000, he ran in 2008 and came in as president, he talked about bringing hope and change. he certainly wasn t successful in changing washington. donald trump said the same thing. i m going to change washington. it s been a very divisive first couple weeks of the presidency. a lot of that divisiveness is coming from 1600 pennsylvania avenue. very tough ten days. in the past 24 hours, a different story. a big difference. and i would say what we saw today is very much like what we saw yesterday. this was he had a good day yesterday. the supreme court announce ment went very, very well. it was scripted. he stayed on message. you know what? he got a lot of good reviews for it. and one thing we know about donald trump, he watches television. and he is sensitive. i think he understood and we saw it today obviously was a very different situation that the mood of yesterday, we saw today. right. the demeanor. all of you staying with me. because next, donald trump, president urging republicans to go nuclear to defend his supreme court pick, announced, of course, just last night. we re live on capitol hill. plus white house sources tell cnn trump is angry with the roll youst the traff rollout of his travel ban. so who will pay the price? 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of judge neil gorsuch to serve on the high court. trump warning that his party may try to cut out democrats altogether. urging senate majority leader mitch mcconnell to allow just 51 republicans to confirm gorsuch rather than the 60 votes required now. i would say if you can, mitch, go nuclear. because that would be a absolute shame if a man of this quality was caught up in the web. reporter: democrats are firing back. that s enormously unhelpful. that s a threat. reporter: but feinstein declined to say if she would back a filibuster. do you think democrats should filibuster this nomination? i m not there yet. i can t say. reporter: liberal democrats are still fuming at senate republicans for refusing to even have a hearing, for former president obama s supreme court nominee garland and they believe gorsuch is too conservative for the job. yes, i m going to i personally going to fight as hard as i can in order to block this confirmation of neil gorsuch to the supreme court of the united states. reporter: yet other democrats say since trump is not affecting the ideological balance of the court, they should save their firepower and the filibuster for the next fight when trump may replace a more liberal justice. senator joe mansion bluntly issuing this warning to his party. if we re ever going to be back into the majority, they re going to have to learn to work with moderates if not they re going to be in this super minority. reporter: the white house is hoping to win over mansion and nine other democrats who are up for re-election in states trump won including missouri senator clair mckas kel. i want to listen and learn. but no way we should give up the 60 vote margin which is the filibuster. reporter: the battle comes as tensions turn to rage over trump s cabinet. with republicans taking an unprecedented step to change the rules in advance two of trump s cabinet nominees. after democrats boycotted a committee vote on tom price s nomination to have health and human services and the treasury department. jeff sessions is a step closer to becoming attorney general but only after a divisive vote in committee. we have an important job to do here and requires that each and every one of us understands the nominee s record accurately. it s not our job to shade his record. and, erin, to night two republican senators say they ll get to vens betsy devos to be education secretary. and that s going to require vice president mike pence to come to the senate and break a tie to ensure this nomination gets confirmed. it s a sign that no matter how controversial the nominees may be, they re going to eventually get their job if republicans stay largely united. all right. thank you. and my panel is back with me. let me start with you. senator collins voting against defe devos. she is going to get approved. those are very significant statement thez have now made to this president and to this administration. right. these two senators are the first people to go against one of his nominees. and my understanding is that this was they liked her. they sprekt respect herd but th simply didn t feel she knew enough about education. and those hearings were very rocky. she had she had a lot of problems. and in the end their phones were ringing off the hook. they looked at it seriously and they decided they wouldn t go. every republican i spoke to today said she ll make it through. but there is a little bit of concern that the fact that these two senators did this, that maybe i stress maybe someone else might flip over. then, of course, she doesn t. right. it would be stunning after all this and all these delays and shenanigans and things people despise about washington that are going on all day long that he s going to get all the nominees through. after all of the complaining. and how amazing was it a few moments ago we see rex tillerson who got four democrats to vote for him. yet, betsy devos is unable to get through unless the vice president has to goup and vote on her behalf. i do think it shows this, that donald trump didn t think deeply enough about whoe wa he wanted put into that department of education slot which is extremely important. there is a lot of money that goes into that department that has incredible amount of control with local school boards. the sense i heard was that they didn t feel she was well prepared and that people didn t she wasn t helped to prepare. but the secretary of education ends up being the one. it is really stunning. it is extremely stunning. and now we get to the issue of the nuclear option. the supreme court neil gorsuch. we had ben carton on the air earlier and refused to answer the question whether he would support a filibuster or not. i think man is incredibly qualified. yes, what happened to garland was not good. but do you think we re going to see a heated fight or will democrats do the right thing and say let s just put someone who is qualified for the job. this is who it is? i think there regardless. i think the democratic sbas where republicans were in 200 w49 obama came n they want their party to fight. and you ll see, i think, a vast majority of democrats doing. that but given the nominee, given the person who gorsuch is and the fact that he is viewed as a reasonable juryist, he is ruled as largely in the line in line with scalia which does not shift the court dra matly to the dramatically to the right, i think we ll see democrats coming over and say give this guy a chance. at least give him a chance for a vote. and, you know, we may not get to the place where mitch mcconnell has to go nuclear. because they may be able to get to 60 without that without going that far. we don t know yet. and there are some indications that, you know, the usual suspects, the mansions of the world, the folks in red states are going to give him a chance. zbh all right. let s hope. so because such a small things working add up to big things over time. thanks to awe. next, white house source telling cnn the president is upset with the way the travel ban has been handled s a power struggle brewing? 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(avo) ask about namzaric today. opioid-induced constipation. prescription opioids helped my chronic back pain, but backed me up big time. had to talk to my doctor. she said movantik may help me go more often. don t take movantik if you have or had a bowel blockage. serious side effects include opioid withdrawal, severe stomach pain, severe diarrhea, and stomach or intestinal tears. tell your doctor about side effects and medicines you take. movantik may interact with them causing side effects. have your movantik moment. talk to your doctor about opioid-induced constipation. across capitol hill. we are a nation of immigrants and we must a stark contrast to the clumsy way team trump managed the president s executive order on travel restrictions. sources tell cnn the president has expressed anger to aides at the way that was handled. the fallout still sullying the new administration, high profile gop criticism still coming in. i think this was unnecessarily confusing and the way that was rolled out. and they deserve to give more clarity to the american people on a big decision like this. cnn has learned that white house is taking steps to try to avoid such confusion even the appearance of incompetence in the future. chief of staff rins priebus will take more control of functions like executive orders. it is authority priebus already technically had but was not able to fully exert given that power is splinlterred among several strong players from trump s son-in-law to counsellor to the president steve bannen. one senior administration officials blames the sloppy rollout to irrational exuberance of trump aides eager to keep campaign promises but lacking experience to get it done right. trump aides say one of the biggest system failures was with fundamental communication, preparing not just the agency s who execute travel restrictions but are allies and advocates with talking points on how to defend it. message strategy is usually the job of white house communications director. but team trump doesn t really have one. press secretary shawn spicer does double duty. to remedy that, cnn is told that trump senior adviser kellyanne conway will take on more of the communications responsibilities. trump aides insist they re trying to course correct. organize the white house more traditionally or at least as traditional as possible with a press who himself often guides message for better or worse on twitter. dana bash is joining me now. the chief strategist as you reported, plays major role in the drafting. now that they re trying to play cleanup here, what does that mean for his role? it is hard to imagine that his role is really going to be diminished. he has been very close with the president and, frankly, i am told even priebus, the chief of staff and the president s son-in-law, they re all still working together. and more importantly, the idea that steve bannen is going to sort of somehow walk away into the sunset is not going to happen any time soon. and what people have told me since the campaign, erin, is that the president, then candidate, really saw and sees steve bannon as an equal. i don t see that happen or changing. there is something people were saying that, i remember someone close to us saying they re similar in age and experience. there was just sort of a peer for how he saw steve bannon as opposed to others. but you have some reporting there. that he s going to be taking more control. that s right. he s going to try. and that s what i sort of tried to lay out that it s not as if he didn t have that authority. he is the white house chief of staff. that is the job to make sure the trains run on time, the gatekeeper for the president. but also make sure when the president does something major like an executive order that it s thought through on all levels from the perspective of priebus, the good news is that this experience has made it more clear to the people around the praen president and the president himself that you need somebody responsible for that so this
hearts we weren t going to kill them. that was training. that kind of training helped prepare them for the treatment that they got. john mccain was tortured. what they did to him in the hanoi hilton and other prisoner of war sites in north vietnam was torture. we ve never done that kind of thing. never condoned it. some of our allies may have done it but we department. the bottom line is, when congress made these things illegal, they re going to stay illegal until congress changes it. neil: when i hear the president said as he did today in this press conference and that he would defer i hope i have the right wording there to his defense secretary, what did you make of that? well, i make of it donald trump became famous for saying year you re fired. if he doesn t like that the secretary of defense won t do it i know these mean well. i know jim mattis very well. he was not going to issue that kind of order and he has the authority to issue though orders. he s not going to do it. into if the president doesn t like it, he can utter those two famous words that he used on television you re fired and find a secretary of defense that will. neil: i want your take on how the president described vladimir putin. theresa may teed this up yesterday with the republicans, that, you know, look, almost like ronald reagan did for us, do you think she changed his view of vladimir putin or that she had to? the president kept saying, look, i don t know him, we ll see how things go, could go well, could go poorly. but how do you think it will go? tomorrow they ll have a phone call with each other. how do you see this relationship going forward? well, i see all kinds of relationships are affected by the fact that he s now in the oval office. there s awesome responsibility that comes with this assignment. it s not running for office. it s being in office. what the president is realizing the effect the before him is awesome. those kinds of statements that he can make during a campaign are quite frankly no longer relevant. a lot of people that expected him to i suppose stick with the same kind of rhetoric. clearly he s changed. i ve watched this man for five days in office. one of my colleagues said i wonder if he s taking valium? it s clear he s tamed down in terms of his rhetoric. it s important. words do matter in an office of president of the united states. neil: i wonder if he mixes it with caffeine. he s been busy. this is a whole administration full of workaholics. neil: looks like that. thanks, cornell. thanks. neil: oliver north. thanks. we ended up the week with a whimper but held over 20,000. our markets are doing just fine here. we ve had some surprisingly good earnings news out of technology sector, optimism about how that is going to fare going forward here only financial stocks. all the major averages up. the dow up into record territory. i want to focus on how this fall out of build a wall, who will pay for it, how that hits the peso. it picked out after we learned that the president spoke with an hour, a phone call initiated by president trump, with his counter part in mexico. that maybe just sort of helped the peso out a little bit. their stock market there, dow jones industrial, was down. we have more included the president expected to formally sign that executive order for extreme vetting for refugees. all of this occurring as he makes his way to the defense department. and the ceremonial swearing in of james mattis. of course, we should say that the general is already the defense secretary. sworn in by vice president pence. this is how important it is to the president that he by ceremony or however you want to define it, wants to one up his number 2 who swore him in himself. more after this. when you have $7.95 online u.s. equity trades lower than td ameritrade, schwab, and e-trade, you realize the smartest investing idea isn t just what you invest in, but who you invest with. i didn t think there was anything else to talk about. but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. if you re still just managing your symptoms, talk with your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. the full value of your totaled new car. the guy says, you picked the wrong insurance plan. no, i picked the wrong insurance company. with new car replacement™, we ll replace the full value of your car plus depreciation. liberty mutual insurance. neil: all right. waiting for the ceremonial swearing in of james mattis to be recognized as the defense secretary of the united states, which he already is. the vice president mike pence has done the honors here, but the president thinks this so important as it is in this day and age, the general and the defense secretary now, a formal recognition on the part of his commander-in-chief to see him, swear him in and do it himself. all right. when that happens, we re there. meantime, the president is also expected to sign an executive order calling for the extreme vetting of refugees as well as focusing on those countries that have a disproportionate number of terror going on. doctor, good having you. what will this mean? does the executive order carry the weight where we can slow down here? what would it do? neil, that s a great question. what does it mean. i think we re hearing so much about what it doesn t mean. a lot of exaggeration. the bottom line, he s following through on promises, rationale approa approach, to stop and pause immigration from countries that are havens for jihadists, countries that could hate the west and we start threatening against islamism from somalia, yemen, iraq, et cetera. the pause is 120 days. we might need 180 days. but at that event, we vet against those that believe in an islamic state. the only criticism, i don t understand why syria was indefinite. we need to message it s not just stopping immigration, it s pausing it so that we can come back to security first and second getting back to america s roots which are welcoming the immigrants that want to be free. neil: could be any second. i might interrupt you for the swearing in of james mattis. the defense secretary is on record saying that we have to take the fight to isis. we cannot give any mixed signals. i m paraphrasing. what do you think his approach to dealing with isis working with this american president? we not only have to take it to them but decimate them in syria where they exist, their money. that s the end point of not violent extremism but violent islamism. to decimate isis, you have to take away the inspiration, this islamic state jihadism. we have to fight over there. we ve been extremely absent and catering to the islamic mindset of fear of westernism. so we have to engage in the idealogical war and let the mad dog mattises of the world destroy them on the battled field. neil: i m getting a sense that this is the primary concern, back and forth and russia, back and forth about how we deal with china. but front and center right now is how we take on isis. so he s probably that is the president going to want a plan for that. and then an aggressive one. where do you see this going? well, i hope we shift the axis of domestic and global approach from violent extremism to violent islamism. hamas, the muslim brotherhood, al-quaida, they re all part of the same tree, which is this sense of islamist supremacy, the sharia state. part of the legacy groups, et cetera, they re not part of our alleys. they don t share our ideology of freedom. so we have to start to understand that the conveyor belt towards these groups to abandon this whack em all program, so they re ready and willing to advise them on that. neil: i want your take on this sort of change or slight on the part of the president and torture and how he refers to his defense secretary, that he s not in favor of the no torture and he would defer to that view. something that john mccain and others have urged as well. what do you make of that in our fight against isis and terrorists, whether that s good or bad? i think the good cop bad cop discussion between president trump and the generals is very effective. america will not be weak and we won t let our enemies determine what we do to keep our country safe. on the other hand, to be that beacon of freedom and morality. we have to maintain the geneva convention, maintain that air of enlightenment and freedom and the muslims see us asseting the standard globally rather than going to their level. i believe one that believes that we should not do things that ineffective and also not surrender and do things that wouldn t keep us safe. neil: all right. thanks, doctor. thanks for taking the time. any time. thanks, neil. neil: i want to go to colonel schaffer, retired u.s. army intelligence. tony, we re waiting for this event here, but already on the torture pivot or whatever you want to call it, tony, senators john mccain and lindsey graham have said we re pleased by president trump s statement that he will defer to secretary mattis s view on torture and water boarding. do you agree? i agree that torture has not worked by my experience. bill clear on this. i don t think we should be having a discussion regarding torture in public. it s one of those things where i don t believe for a minute we should be doing it. sometimes the implication that we can do it, the fear of that existing is an effective tool by itself. let s face it, psychologically, the fear of something is greater than the actual event. while i agree and look, i said this in my book, we talked about operation dark heart. you can break someone with psychological tricks if you know what you re doing. i agree with general mattis. i think mr. trump may have gotten some bad advice along the way somewhere. neil: as we wait for this to kickoff with the president and defense secretary, what difference does it make in the secretary seems to be held in high regard throughout the establishment. the praises, mutual, but to have for the defense establishment to have one of its own in that job. you re a great military right in your own right. we re used to bureaucrats of late. not across the board but it s been a theme. here we have a retired general for whom we made an allowance, a change to get him to the position he s in now. how important will that be? how effective in this job do you think he will be? let me give you more on general mattis. let me tell you, the two things that have really endeared him to everybody, neal, why you see a reverence for him, his integrity, his honesty. he tells it like it is. he was working with me on a project recently supporting the chairman of the joint chiefs. he was supposed to basically validate something we were doing. neil, he would show up to every meeting. he was there. you know, he would call me. i was by the capitol one day. i get this call. hey, tony, jim mattis. do you have ten minutes for me to give you guidance? oh, yeah. he s that kind of guy. he s very hands on. so what i m trying to tell you, there s a reason why, neil, that this man is so well-respected. he leads. i think in has been the one missing quality of the civilian side of the pentagon. i m sorry. ash carter was not leading. he was a bureaucrat. this is where we ll see leadership. neil: thanks, colonel. tony shaffer from the pentagon. we ll see the defense secretary sworn in ceremonially by the commander-in-chief. he s such a big deal to president trump. the president said on torture matters, whatever he wants. on me on me by switching to geico. i should take a closer look at geico. you know, geico can help you save money on your homeowners insurance too? great! geico can help insure our mountain chalet! how long have we been sawing this log? um, one hundred and fourteen years. man i thought my arm would be a lot more jacked by now. i m not even sure this is real wood. there s no butter in this churn. do my tris look okay? take a closer look at geico. great savings. and a whole lot more. so we sent that sample i doff to ancestry. i was from ethnically. my ancestry dna results are that i am 26% nigerian. i am just trying to learn as much as i can about my culture. i put the gele on my head and i looked into the mirror and i was trying not to cry. because it s a hat, but it s like the most important hat i ve ever owned. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. we re opening more xfinity stores closer to you. visit us today and learn how to get the most out of all your services, like xfinity x1. we ll put the power in your hands, so you can see how x1 is changing the way you experience tv with features like voice remote, making it easier and more fun than ever. there s more in store than you imagine. visit an xfinity store today and see for yourself. xfinity, the future of awesome. neil: all right. to the pentagon. we re moments away from james mattis getting ceremonially, as i like to say, getting sworn in by his boss, the president of the united states. we re getting word on that there s a series of executive order coming. this would make it almost 10. one is a tougher vetting of refugees from problematic regions of the world, terror prone regions of the world. the president will flesh that out in his description of the executive order. whether he says so there or we glean more there is anyone s guess. speaking of the president, we talked about this phone call that he had that he initiated with then t of mexico after the big dust-up yesterday over the wall and whether the mexicans will pay for it. he put a call in. but so that might have soothed some feelings a lit bit. the president says a 20% tax on mexico is certainly an option. he just did this interview with the christian broadcasting network. he said this tax is something that could have positive effects and would be much more positive for mexico and the united states. so we re watching this. we re watching these developments. we re getting the read right now. how much of this might have been buoyed on how this to deal with terror, what to do about water boarding and torture and all that. a lot of this has to do with theresa may in town, the british prime minister who might have played a role akin to maggie thatcher. what do you think? i do. the news conference today went very well for theresa may. she s the first world lead tore kind of meet face to face with mr. trump or president trump, i should say. let s face it, an unorthodox, unpredictable person. she got out without any expected headlines. there was a genuine walk between the two leaders and downing street will be happy with how things went. neil: they appeared to have gotten along, louise. one thing i noticed, she seemed to say, although the president did not, that nato has some value and that the president seemed to agree with that. and on torture as well. how do we think this relationship is going? it s a two-way street. donald trump used his considerable charm on the prime minister and maybe vice versa. they did seem to get along well. theresa may would say that james mattis, who is about to be sworn in, is one of donald trump s best decisions. the united kingdom has a prohibition against torture. that s not that the c.i.a. and the military wants to see. so trump carrying a big stick but listening to reason. he s getting the best of both words. you saw a lot of future cooperation, the groundwork was laid in that speech. but for theresa may to get her big win, she was able to say, mr. president, you said you were 100% behind nato. that s what she gets to take home today. neil: now, it s what happens and what he says after that, right? sometimes he can clarify a position. he was never anti-nato. just the way the structure is that had to be examined. where do you see this and the role of this relationship going forward? with the united kingdom, it will go fine. i think the statements he s made on nato, i do think he will pull back a little bit. i was interested when he was pushed on the issue of torture, he side-stepped it and said well, it s up to defense secretary mathis. i rely on him. he has the experience and expertise. i ll take his recommendations. very smart, like a politics the way he side-stepped that. overall, louise is right. the headlines in the british media late this afternoon is that donald trump is 100% behind nato. he shook a few trees when he said that perhaps nato was out of date and needed updating and people needed to contribute more. make no mistake, there are things that theresa may and donald trump don t agree on. the iran deal, i think. the torture for sure. and nato possibly and sanctions on russia. i thought it was clever they didn t talk about the russian sanctions issue before the news conference today. they saved that for after. neil: they did dance around a couple things. louise, this is an area real quickly. they could talk soon here where europe seems to like the idea of america first, right? american might reasserting itself or saving the europeans of that burden. seemed to be a welcome development. and the british, you know, neil, have greeted trump that other people need to do their fair share. where is france, where is turkey? neil: all right. mike pence and james mattis at the pentagon. good afternoon. mr. president, chairman members of the joint chiefs of staff, leadership of the department of defense, men and women of our armed forces. distinguished guests. thank you for being here today for the ceremonial swearing in of general james mattis as the 26th secretary of defense of the united states of america. it is a high honor for me to be with you here today. you look around this room, we stand in a place of honor. the hall of heros. the names of 3,498 american patriots are inscribed on these walls. each of these performed personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty and received the medal of honor as a consequence. it s humbling for us to be among their names. and to be with all of you. secretary mattis is soon to mark his 50th anniversary in the service of this country. during more than four decades in uniform, secretary mattis commanded marines. he led an infantry battalion in iraq in 1991, an expeditionary brigade. secretary mattis commanded u.s. joint forces command nato supreme allied command for tr s transformati transformation. he commanded over 200,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, coast guardsmen and marines across the middle east. now mr. secretary, your president has called you to lead all of the armed forces of the united states. he and i have the highest faith in your judgment and your courage and your dedication to this nation. so on behalf of president trump, it is my great privilege to issue the oath of office. if you would place your left hand on the bible. raise your right hand. repeat after me. i james norman mattis do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that i take this obligation freely, and without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which i am about to enter, so help me god. congratulations. thank you. [applause] thank you, mr. vice president and mr. president. thank you very much for your confidence in me and welcome to the headquarters of your military, your always loyal military where america s awesome determination to defend ourself is on full display. i would tell you that you ve made clear, mr. president, your commitment to a strong national defense and the americans honored in this hall remind us of our strength as a nation of patriots. on behalf of your department, i want you to know that after more than a decade of war, our longest war, those serving today have been tested and you can count on us all the way. we re grateful for you to be here, show your respect for us on a day when former secretary of defense, bill cohen, former secretaries are here. it s a reminder that this department stands in perpetuity as the defender, the sentinels and the guardians of the nation. thank you for your confidence in me, mr. president. total confidence. thank you very much. [applause] that s total confidence. believe me. i d like to first congratulate general james mattis, now secretary mattis. secretary mattis has devoted his life to serving his country. he s a man of honor, a man of devotion and a man of total action. he likes action. he is the right man at the right time and he will do us all very, very proud. i m honored to stand here today among so many patriots. you are the backbone of this country. you are the spirit of this nation in every sense. the men and women of the united states military are the greatest force for justice and peace and goodness that have ever walked the face of this earth. your legacy exists everywhere in the world today where people are more free, more prosperous and more secure because of the united states of america. you have earned and ensured for our children the glorious right of freedom bestowed on us by god. we stand today in the hall of heros, great heros, a testament to the undying courage of those who wear our nation s uniform and who have received the highest distinction, the medal of honor. this is a sacred hall that all of our nation lives between these walls. these walls tell the story of those intrepid americans that gave everything, risked everything and fought with everything they had to save their fellow warriors and warriors they are, believe me. warriors they are and to save our wondrous liberties and to save this god-blessed land. they shed their blood and poured out the love from their hearts to protect our home. we are in awe of their valor, tremendous valor, and we pledge our dedication to every single family serving our country and our flag. that is why today i am signing two executive actions to ensure the sacrifices of our military, are supported by the actions of our government. they will always be supported by the actions of our government. believe me. first i m signing an executive action to begin a great rebuilding of the armed services of the united states. developing a plan for new planes, new ships, new resources and new tools for our men and women in uniform. i m very proud to be doing that. [applause] as we prepare our budget request for congress, and i think congress is going to be very happy to see it, our military strength will be questioned by no one but neither will our dedication to peace. we do want peace. secondly, i m established new vetting measures to keep radical islamic terrorists out of the united states of america. we don t want them here. we want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. we only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people. we will never forget the lessons of 9-11, nor the heros that lost their lives at the pentagon. they were the best of us. we will honor them not only with our words, but with our actions. that s what we re doing today. i am privileged to be here with you, and i promise that our administration will always have your back. we will always be with you. i just want to thank you very much. [applause] i want to just extend a very special congratulations to a great man, and that s secretary mattis. i think he s going to lead us so brilliantly. he s a tremendous soldier, always has been. he s a general s general. every general that i spoke to, they just i won t say that they all said he s our favorite, but they did. he s our favorite. he s a special, special man. so i want to bless him and god bless you and god bless america. secretary mattis, i have no doubt you re going to do an outstanding job. thanks very much for accepting this responsibility. thank you. [applause] this is the protection of the nation from foreign terrorist entry to the united states. we all know what that means. protection of the nation from foreign terrorists entry into the united states. and i want to thank everybody. many great heros, great warriors. we have tremendous respect for you all. thank you for being here. [applause] chairman michael mccall with us right now. these latest orders are what do you the rebuilding of the armed services i can see. what will cause some controversy among some, what does he mean by extreme vetting of refugees? what changes now versus before he signed that order? it s a safer day for americans with one stroke of the pen. he closed off more terror pathways than the past eight years under president obama. this is nothing really new. it s something that mayor rudy guliani and i briefed the president on during the campaign. each extreme medium though that was produced, judge mukasey. it talks about the high threat overseas and ramping up the vetting process to make sure we don t have any more san bernardinos in this country, orlandos. all these areas where people come in to the united states and perpetrate terror attacks. i applaud the president for doing this. also, one thing that i don t think he mentioned will suspend the refugee program in particular, the syrian refugee program indefinitely. that s a very significant campaign promise that he s followed through with today. i just talked to general kelly before this interview about this executive order. and i will be working with the secretary in the congress to help implement these executive orders. does it mean, chairman, that if you have or you come from a country with a lot of tearist incidents that we would go slow on allowing you to come here or is it just you know, terror hot beds? these are basically seven terror hotspot countries will be denied every visa, every application will be suspended for 30 days until the dni and the secretary of homeland security can sit down with the fbi as well to determine, you know, this vetting process as to who are we letting into this country. we have seen in the past, we haven t even used social media to determine who we re letting into this country. countries like iran, iraq, sudan, libya, yemen. they all have a very high level of isis figures present in those countries. they could potentially get into our country through the visa process. so i think this will strengthen our homeland security and i really applaud the president for what he s doing. neil: chairman, as you know, there s a back and forth and some tension between ourselves and the mexican government over this wall that the president wants to build. insists the mexicans will pay for it. he made a call himself to the mexican president today, spoke upwards of an hour. don t know what the results of the call was. to try maybe to make nice, i don t know how you d describe it. in a later interview with christian broadcasting, said i m still for the tax, some sort of tariff without calling it a tariff on goods coming in from mexico to pay for this things. are you open to that? you think that is doable? you know, we re looking at creative ways to pay for this. we will have a border emergency spending bill in the congress coming up in the next couple months. i ll be working with secretary kelly on what the wall will look like, aviation technology assets. on the front end, we ll appropriate the dollars out of congress. on the back end, we re looking at some creative ideas like the border, adjustable tax rate. right now we tax experts but not imports. neil: i hear the 20% figure come up or something like that. it s a bit arbitrary. it s a little early to be we re looking at all sorts of ideas in the congress. again, right now, we currently tax experts and not imports and punish american manufacturers. very consistent with the trump administration theme here to protect america first. we re looking at this awed of paul ryan, looking at it, in terms of a revenue enhancer that would bring the number of i was told, about a trillion dollar investment in the united states. so if that is a way the president can say mexico helps pay for the wall, that may not be a bad idea. neil: thanks, chairman, michael mccall out of austin. the read on that and what to make of this, the president sort of retargets our border and tries to make sure that we re safe, lieutenant colonel tony shaffer back with us and colonel mcguinness. the wall is going up. it s a serious wall and its happening. the president is throwing a lot of ideas out there, border tax, a host of other ways to technically have the mexicans pay for it. we would kind of pay that, the american consumers would, but i guess the devil s in the details. what do you think of that, that this is the best way to go about it? well, the president just following through on a campaign promise. he s going to defend this country. obviously includes building a wall in his opinion, raising thousands of border agents and getting serious about those that try to come into this country, especially as the chairman said moments ago from seven countries that are known to produce islam mist terrorists. so i think the president is just following through with all of these things that long ago he promised. he s credible. he sounded i think proud to be there, something that we haven t heard in awhile quite frankly and standing there in the hall of heros with 3,500 names etched in the wall behind him sends a very clear and a warming message to those of us that work in the building and those of us across the world that seek and reinforcement, the strengthening and america first. neil: tony, one of the things he talked about is reinforcing the border, whether the mexicans pay for it or we do, it s going to happen. what do you want to see? people talk about a physical wall. some say that s not feasible across the entire border. someone that looks after our security, worried about it, what would you like to see? militarily, as patton said, you know, these obstacles are not adequate without other things. so the concept is good but you have to do intelligence preparation, the battle space. you have to look at this in depth. the mexicans have been terrible about not just allowing mexicans across the border. many refugees are from honduras, any other latin america countries. they re just coming through. we have to look at how to create a defense in depth and to include then stopping terrorists and other folks being able to penetrate the border. this is what has been horrific the past administration has handled that. it s not about wall. it s about building multiple concepts and looking at using intelligence where you think people are building up to come across. you have to look apartment counter drug, tunnels. i d like to base this on john kelly taking over dhs, another military man, a marine. we ll see more complex thinking, much like who was produced when the border was conceived about five years ago. neil: switching gears a little bit, robert. vladimir putin s name came up today at the press conference with theresa may, the british prime minister and the president once again said what he said before. i don t know vladimir putin. i hope that i can get along. i don t know if i ll like him or disliking him. but we ll see. how do you think that s going along? seemed like the day before with republicans gathering in philadelphia for their retreat, that the british prime minister was saying kind of a new version of, all right, that s fine, trust by verify. play off the old ronald reagan line. are you in that camp? i m very concerned about the russians. they have increased their capability across the board. vladimir putin is just the tip of the iceberg. most of the russian people support him. the attitude that comes through in their media and to the american public i think from vladimir putin is indicative of what they feel. they have very strong ambitions. they want a restoration of what they had one time prior to the end of the cold war. putin has made no pretense about that. he wants that. we ve seen expansion of their capabilities in places like syria, which is indicative of their foreign policy. they re pushing hard in the baltics and of course in the ukraine. so across the world, russia is a threat. i hope president trump can negotiate with mr. putin and find some sort of reconciliation so that we re not so confrontational. make no secret about it, the russians are a threat and we need to deal with them appropriately, but i would be very hesitant about taking the first step. let them make that. neil: we know about a phone call tomorrow between pvladimir putin and see how that goes. we know from theresa may that the president still stands by nato. he didn t say that. she did, that he said that. i don t know what the true case is. how do you feel that is going along and how you feel europe is reacting or whether easing up now on it s initial concerns about the president? look, i know for a fact that nike flynn has had discussions on what i call nato 2.0. we were quiet we talked about this a little bit. there s a group of us quietly working to advise the chairman of the joint chiefs, a guy name james mattis was the validater. we ve been looking at this for a while. one of the recommendations we made before this came up, let s look at how we can make 24th centu century relevant. i mentioned this to mr. trump in august. they were thinking, how do we make nato relevant. i d like to believe what you saw is an outgrowth of donald trump s self-education to figure out how to sustain native and make it more effective. neil: thanks, gem gentlemen to say nothing to your service of the country. he s been president for a week. wow! more after this. the kids to get a repair estimate. i just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. my insurance company definitely doesn t have that. you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance is depression more than sadness? it s a tangle of multiple symptoms. trintellix (vortioxetine) is a prescription medicine for depression. trintellix may start to untangle or help improve the multiple symptoms of depression. for me, trintellix made a difference. tell your healthcare professional right away if your depression worsens, or you have unusual changes in mood, behavior or thoughts of suicide. antidepressants can increase these in children, teens, and young adults. trintellix has not been studied in children. do not take with maois. tell your healthcare professional about your medications, including migraine, psychiatric and depression medications to avoid a potentially life-threatening condition. increased risk of bleeding or bruising may occur especially if taken with nsaid pain relievers, aspirin, or blood thinners. manic episodes or vision problems may occur in some people. may cause low sodium levels. the most common side effects are nausea, constipation and vomiting. trintellix did not have significant impact on weight. ask your healthcare professional if trintellix could make a difference for you. neil: the president signing two orders, the one to beef up military service, the other to be more aggressive in vetting refugees. you notice how he does this and the patterns? no white house spokesperson is announcing them. he does them live, explains why he is signing them, why is it important. we ve never seen that before. we usually find out later, the president signed an executive order. that s nice. why this different approach as part of the entire new approach of one president trump, the impact is bigger than you know,
it gave no means of tracing this back to the source, but it had a lot of information in it about things that had been happening in trump tower. and it appeared to be from somebody inside the transition or inside trump tower who was concerned about what this person was seeing. and a lot of what s written or conveyed in this letter has sort of come become true over time. it s taken a while for a lot of this stuff to surface, including this detail about this discussion over a back channel or a private channel of communications with moscow. again i just want to i m trying to sort of bend over to read this as charitably as possible. so i mean is it possible that they were setting up lots of different back channels with lots of different foreign leaders? well, we don t i mean i suppose it s possible. clearly they were in communication and meeting with a lot of leaders, a lot of foreign leaders. most of them, as you point out, were coming through the front door, not the back door. the behavior here is part of what s interesting and newsworthy, i think, right? the way this was all handled. the context here, of course, is that these are meetings with russian officials just weeks after an election that russia had spent months in an unprecedented sort of campaign, attempting to upend or interfere with. so i mean it s really i mean on the one hand, you can argue sometimes that it s appropriate for incoming administrations to have contact with foreign governments and so forth. certainly. but this was extraordinary. yeah. greg miller, remarkable reporting. thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate you hopping on the phone. absolutely. thank you. joining me now, sabrina siddiqui, political reporter for the guardian, and nicholas johnson, axious editor. i m almost out of words, sabrina. i don t know what to make of this. this seems bizarre and certainly incriminating. yes. i think that so far, a lot of the leaks have pretty much provided more specificity to what we already knew, that there were communications between members of the trump transition team and russian officials. but this is the first time that we re seeing one of the president s senior most advisers actively seeking a back channel with moscow and also deliberately you know, they re saying it was an oversight, but we do know leaving this meeting off of his request for a security clearance. and the question is, was this just another sign of the complete inexperience that this particular administration had coming in, or was there something more nefarious going on? i think the investigators are really going to hone in on the fact that kushner did not disclose these meetings previously and also the fact that he has held other meetings such as with a russian bank that was subject to u.s. sanctions at a time when this administration, on its way in, was advocating for a shift in u.s. policy toward russia. nicholas, there s also to me, what s so important about this story is the centrality of kushner. y yesterday there s reporting saying he s not the subject of investigation but being looked at. we ve had other names in the trump orbit that have been circulated. flynn constitutionall flynn crucially. manafort, carter page. this is the most central figure in the administration calling the shots here according to this reporting. right. it doesn t get closer to the president. that s exactly right. as my good friend wrote, there is no one like jared kushner who is as close to the president, who has his hand involved in so many issues with the president. the news that he was a person of interest in this case means a huge time suck for the white house having to deal with these kinds of issues. remember what the fbi was looking at was what was happening in that meeting. now we know it was in the me meeting which only made it more interesting. i think the line the post quoted with the russian ambassador, that he was taken aback by this request is absolutely incredible. yeah, using russian facilities. i mean you don t have the words for how anomalous that would be. ni nicholas, let me ask you this because you do a lot of reporting about what happens in that white house. the story from the white house about general flynn s calls to kislyak on sanctions day, calls that the white house and flynn did not tell the truth about, the nature of which they did not tell the truth about. the story from donald trump is that he didn t tell flynn to talk to kislyak about sanctions, but it was fine, and he would have if he hadn t. right? that s the donald trump line. given the relationship between the president of the united states and his son-in-law, jared kushner, how plausible is it that jared kushner sets up a meeting with the ambassador to russia to set up a secret back channel without the knowledge of the president-elect? i don t know how plausible it is, but what we do know is that it wasn t on that form. they said it was an oversight. i think what we re learning, that the white house is coming to deal with, they re building this war room to fight against, as this investigative apparatus spins up to look at these kinds of things, they re going to find all of these kind of discrepancies, every little oversight like this will be found by investigators and some of it might be leaked in the press. that s going to become a steady drum beat every day at 5:00. friday, holiday weekend, it s still coming out, and the white house needs to be able to respond to it. i want to play what sean spicer said about kushner s omission. this is really crucial. the clearance process is a serious process. people have to fill out those forms. at the top of the form it says very clearly if you omit knowingly or withhold the truth, you re committing a felony. jared kushner has very good, very adept, expensive lawyers. so he knows what he s doing. he omitted this meeting from that form. when they were caught omitting it, this is what sean spicer had to say about it. throughout the campaign and the transition, jared served as the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials. you re acting as though there s something nefarious about doing what he was actually tasks to do. what s nefarious is that here you now have flynn and kushner in really intense contact with the russian ambassador. right. not telling lying about it. lying about it. right. you have both flynn and both kushner, while seeking security clearance, failing to disclose the extent of their contacts or communications with russian officials. as you note, that is a felony offense that is punishable by up to five years in prison. and i think that to sean spicer s point, on the question of whether or not there s something nefarious going on, this latest report that kushner was seeking this back channel in order to communicate with moscow directly undermines actually the rationale that the white house has put forward for a lot of these meetings. if you recall throughout the last couple of months as these revelations have come forward, they have said that, well, look, this is just a routine part of the job, that any incoming administration sits down with foreign dignitaries, and there s nothing nefarious or inherently wrong with doing that. well, there is some things certainly nefarious or wrong with seeking to keep out of the to shield, i should say, your communications with officials in russia, and i think this truly is, compared to a lot of incremental updates we ve seen in recent weeks, a significant development. i completely agree as someone following this full time, 16 hours a day at this point, and mapping little this is a very major development, an extremely salient and important bit of information we learned tonight. really, really remarkable. sabrina siddiqui, nicholas johnson, thanks to you both. i want to give the context for the washington post report tonight. because the meeting described between kushner, flynn, and the russian ambassador is one of several contacts between members of the trump team and russian officials both during the transition and the campaign, interactions they seemingly did not want anyone to find out about. was there any contact in any way between trump or his associates and the kremlin or cutout they had? i joined this campaign in the summer, and i can tell you that all the contact by the trump campaign and associates was with the american people. i m just trying to get an answer. yeah. of course not. why would there be any contacts between the campaign? of course not. why would there be any contacts? that claim made on the record, on air, by the vice president of the united states, mike pence from january, is simply not true. it is false. last week, reuters reported the trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with russian officials. jeff sessions met twice with the sim russian ambassador, sergey kislyak, who keeps popping up, last year. sessions didn t disclose those meetings and had to recuse himself from the russia investigation after they became public. michael flynn had repeated and largely undisclosed contacts with the same russian ambassador last year. he was eventually fired for lying about the content of their conversations. and jared kushner met with both the russian ambassador and a russian banker named sergei gorkov, a graduate of russia s spy school, whose bank is controlled by members of vladimir putin s government. kushner also did not initially disclose those meetings. even put ago side the disclosure issue, it s just really weird for a campaign to have so many contacts with officials of the russian government. last week, paul begala, who worked on bill clinton s 1992 campaign at a very different time of u.s.-russia relations, just asked how many campaign veterans had in their campaign. romney 2012 stuart stephens responded simply, nyet. joining me now, a former ambassador to nato, and malcolm nance, msnbc trim analyst. as someone who is familiar with diplomacy, familiar with international relations, and the protocols by which governments talk to each other, perhaps incoming governments may talk to each other, what do you make of this story? well, it s a remarkable story, and as the press and the investigators figure out what was happening, we will get to the bottom of it. it is true that during transitions, i was a member of the obama/biden transition in 08- 09, that during transitions it is not unheard of for incoming officials to have contact with foreign governments. certainly that happened in our case. we did it with allies. we talked to the french and the brits and the germans, and it might be appropriate to have one or so conversations with other countries, including an important country like russia. the idea of establishing a separate, outside the mainstream communication channel, which is what is reported in the washington post, really is something different. it takes a president-elect who has no formal authority, none whatsoever, and starts the process of having relations and in this case secret relations with another country, presumably not only not because they want to hide it from the russians, but they want to hide it from the u.s. government. and that is different to say the least, if not strange. yeah. malcolm, you ve been covering this, and to me part of what s so incriminating really for lack of a better word and i don t want to say there s necessarily something underneath it all necessarily obviously. this is circumstantial, is the deception. you can say relationships with russia are important. they ve become dysfunctional. our administration ran openly and publicly on setting a new course of russia relations. that was clear. that was not hidden. and we want to talk to the russians, and we want to talk to the russian ambassador because we want to get off on a good foot. they could have done that in the open. of course. they have the right to do that in the open because they are the incoming government of the united states. there is nothing wrong with that. i d like to put this into a better perspective for the audience because i understand that, you know, everyone wants to be a little cautious about this. and we should be cautious about it. it needs to have the amount of respect that s due, due to this breaking news. but had any individual other than these individuals who worked immediately for president trump, performed these actions at any time in the sf-86 security clearance process, they would have immediately had their clearances pulled. they would have had their jobs terminated. some of these contacts are so suspicious that they would have warranted their own counterintelligence investigation. this nation is in a counterintelligence investigation. they are in a spy hunt over at the fbi, and now we have this story. should it prove true, of an american citizen who is the senior adviser to the president of the united states, attempting to establish what we call in the intelligence community covert communications with a hostile nation s potential intelligence agency or senior leadership. that brings you that crosses the line to the espionage act of 1917. this cannot be explained. put aside the other 18 contacts with moscow. this one incident requires jared kushner and all of his immediate staff to have their clearances pulled right now and to have the fbi descend on there and to determine whether this is hostile intelligence in the white house one step from the president. have you experienced in your time when there have been revelations of someone omitting something as salient as this on their clearance form? yeah. i ve had that happen, and not myself, but i ve seen people who have inadvertently left off contacts with germans, who left off contacts, you know, with people in the course of their duties. their clearances were temporarily suspended as a matter of course. the counterintelligence agencies and the counterintelligence divisions of all of the intelligence agencies take these omissions very seriously. they re almost as bad as leaving off very bad financial data, which is blackmailable, which is why they take this seriously. just because this is the office of the president does not give them a pass. and right now i am way beyond believing this is suspicious. i am pretty far beyond this to the point that this is now sinister. there is no way that this can be explained. i mean from the intelligence perspective. yeah. you know. from the diplomatic perspective, perhaps. but there just is no way that if this is true that he wanted covert communications with the russian using russian cryptographic systems in the hopes that we didn t have those things broken, then this is now espionage. to go back to your point, having first hand experience of this, being in a transition, which, again, transitions are strange, right? at one level, it s the incoming government, so there s some degree to which you have the capacity to talk to foreign governments, but also you have no formal vested constitutional powers. you would never, ever, ever have a meeting in which you would suggest to a foreign ambassador to use their diplomatic facilities to evade american intelligence detection, right? no, because our transitions don t tend to be hostile takeovers from one government to the next. they re transitions and we move from a process of having one person elected and taking the time for the government to get in place and the idea of hiding from the from your own government what you re trying to do is definitely something new. and it may reflect a suspicion that clearly the president-elect and his team had for the intelligence services. remember during the campaign and during the transition, he had some choice words for them. and it may be that out of naivete, they decided to do this. i m not prepared to come to any conclusion here. we have an investigation ongoing. the fbi for sure will look into this as well as everything else. but from a larger diplomatic standpoint, there is this very restraining time, the 72 days between election and inauguration when one government is fully and 100% in control, but it s leaving, and another team is has no control whatsoever, but it will on january 20 at noon take full responsibility for everything that happens. let me ask one more question. malcolm, i want to come back to you on that. but let me just follow up one thing because you wrote, you know, part of the subtext here is that, you know, this candidate, candidate trump, was quite clearly more disposed to be pro-putin and pro-russia and that we should get along with russia and that was a public policy stance he took while the russian government was engaged in fairly significant measures to engage in criminal espionage and sabotage. but you wrote about the nato meeting in which here he is, you know, six months after having become the president of the united states, still essentially doing some of the things that vladimir putin would hope for him to do in terms of his relationship to nato and what he said at that meeting. yeah, clearly he s pursued a very consistent policy when it comes to russia. he has did during the campaign made very clear that he thinks vladimir putin is someone you can deal with, that he can deal with, at least trying to have a positive relationship with russia was worth having. and he s continued to have that position as president, even to the point that coming to nato headquarters where many of the allies he was greeting there now see russia as their greatest security threat, frankly ignoring the russian threat and even omitting any sign that the united states under donald trump is committed to the collected defense provisions of the nato treaty. it s consistent with his campaign and what has happened since. it is inconsistent with the narrative that somehow he is turning around and becoming more mainstream or moderate on these kinds of issues. malcolm, i want you to stay with us. i want to bring in paul butler, a form federal prosecutor, a professor at georgetown law. to malcolm s point about security clearance revocation. there s a very strong case that jared kushner may have committed a felony on his clearance form. what do you see as the sort of legal exposure here, paul? i think you re right, chris. this afternoon, jared kushner was a long way away from being prosecuted. now, this evening, i think he s about two accesteps away. he s probably a subject of the fbi special counsel investigation. why? because what was he trying to keep secret? that s the kind of thing that raises prosecutor suspicions. he wanted to have these top-secret, private conversations with the russians. who didn t he want to know? now, he has plausible deniability. he could say that he was suspicious of the obama administration. but if that s true, why didn t he disclose that on his security clearance forms? every public corruption prosecutor, including me, has prosecuted cases like this. when people intentionally withhold information, that s a felony. and, malcolm, you re murmuring in agreement. you also said that you thought under the espionage act. what did you mean by that, malcolm? right now, let s just take it from the perspective of every intelligence watch officer in the world who is watching this program right now. and we have millions of them. that s millions. there s thousands of people who are out there, who are on duty right now watching this, who have top secret sci clearance, knowing that in one instance, even a fraction of this would lose their clearances. they ll have to ask themselves the question they would ask in any counterintelligence environment, and that is this. why? what is the motivational device that jared kushner, should this story be true because we don t know if it s entirely true. we don t even know what the source of this was. the russians themselves could have leaked this story in order to create chaos. but why would he want to hide, covert his communications from the u.s. government, believing that he would want to be able to use a facility obviously that would have more secure communications to create a back channel that u.s. crip tow logic collection couldn t get? that right there alone is covert communications. that is indicative of espionage activity of an american citizen that is working in league with a hostile government. and right now there is no fbi counterintelligence officer in the world right now that does not believe that if this story is true. and, paul, it strikes me true in terms of the legal exposure for jared kushner. there s now a question about the president, and the president obviously doesn t have legal exposure in the way that non-presidents do because our remedy for presidents that break the law is impeachment. but, you know, jared kushner works for the president of the united states and worked for the president-elect at the time, and has been reported about 100 times a day as his closest advisers. you got to wonder that investigators have to be looking at the president at this point, right? before mike flynn was the key to the big fish, and the big fish was either the president, the vice president, or someone high up in the white house, like the president s son-in-law and senior adviser. so we know that mike flynn has a story to tell. at least that s what his lawyer claims. he wants to snitch, but he s not going to talk unless he gets immunity. immunity is a long way away. but with kushner s involvement, that s a lot more incentive for the special counsel to try to turn flynn to see if he s got the goods on both kushner and the president of the united states. this is maybe a silly technical question, but is that is immunity the kind of thing that special counsel robert mueller is invested with the authority to offer? absolutely. the problem is so is the senate intelligence committee. so there s got to be negotiations between the house committee, the senate committee, and the special counsel. the special counsel should get priority, but, you know, in the oliver north case, the case got messed up. his conviction got overturned because of this confusion about immunity. that s a good lesson for all those folks to learn. there s no talk about sanctions, right? so this is the sort of shoe that seems like perpetually about to drop. we had an interesting situation, which of course there s a policy agenda here. in some ways, the words from donald trump have been quite sort of russia-friendly, but there hasn t been significant or substantive alteration of policy in terms of sanctions particularly. gary cohn, adviser to the president, seems to indicate that was possibly up for renewal. he walked that back. how significant would a meeting with putin be under these circumstances? well, i think a meeting between the u.s. president and the russian president, which is already on the agenda for july when both of them are at the g20 meeting in hamburg, is perfectly appropriate. the united states and president trump has met with many leaders, and it s appropriate to have a meeting with vladimir putin even given what is going on here at home. as long as the investigation is going on and we don t have anything more than an investigation, it s up to the president of the united states to continue to govern and to run the foreign policy of our country, which includes the potential for meeting and having dialogue with the russians. that said, the issue of sanctions is a little different. sanctions were imposed, and there are a whole set of them. there s one set of sanctions that was imposed after the annexation of crimea. there was a second set impoesed after it became clear russian forces were directly engaged in eastern ukraine in military activities. and of course a third set of sanctions that was imposed by the obama administration in late december of last year in retaliation for russian interference in our elections. and these are u.s. sanctions. they re not nato or anybody else s sanctions though europeans have similar sanctions as well. and lifting any of those without a fundamental change in russian policy strikes me as sending absolutely the wrong signal at this point. the russians are still in ukraine. they still have annexed crimea. they are still in violation of every norm of international behavior by interfering not only in our but many other elections. and the least we can do is to keep the kind of sanctions and keep the kind of pressure that we ve had for the past few years. all right. ambassador, malcolm nance, and paul butler, thank you all for joining us. ahead, more on the breaking news tonight where for the second night in a row, all eyes turn to jared kushner. that after this two-minute break. three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do? 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[ sings high note ] ultra strength, new from alka-seltzer. enjoy the relief. for years, centurylink has been promising fast internet to small businesses. but for many businesses, it s out of reach. why promise something you can t deliver? comcast business is different. we deliver super-fast internet with speeds of 250 megabits per second across our entire network, to more companies, in more locations, than centurylink. we do business where you do business. all right. we continue to follow the breaking news of this hour. the washington post reporting that president trump s top adviser and son-in-law, jared kushner, proposed setting up a secret and secure communications channel between trump s transition team and the kremlin during a meeting with the russian ambassador, sergey kislyak, at trump tower last december. prior to the last two days, all eyes were on trump associates michael flynn, paul manafort and carter page and their ties to russian officials. but now the focus is squarely on jared kushner. joining me now, contributing writer and talk of the town editor, author of ivanka and jared s power play. and david cay johnston. lizzy, it is a fantastic profile that you wrote. thanks. i guess the question is like how who is this person at the center of this? it seems to me this is a person who has now been charged with a set of responsibilities that he is, from all outside perspective, entirely unprepared for. i think that s true. i think he s had definitely a unique life up to this point. i mean something that strikes me as like almost as sort of greek tragedy aspect of this is that the defining event in his life, which happened i guess when he was 24, was his dad being under federal investigation and being sent to jail, which forced him he was a law school student, and he then became the head of this family real estate business, ran that business for a couple years. while his father was in prison? yeah. he became the head of the family, the head of the business while his dad was in prison, and flew down to alabama every weekend to be with him. his father was prosecuted for a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances in which his father essentially attempted to trap a sibling with sex workers. is this correct? yeah, it s something like that. it is a i don t know. like it s a very baroque we don t have to get the details but it s definitely one of the more new jersey stories i ve ever read in my entire life. but his dad was is a very successful real estate mogul in new jersey, and he ran a business started by his father, jared s grandfather. and there was a family feud essentially between charles kushner, jared s dad, and his brother. and it escalated into a bizarre sort of revenge plot that involved jared s dad paying a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, which was then taped and sent to his sister. and this is blown up. it s investigated by the fbi, prosecute the by chris christie of all people. yeah, so chris christie was the federal u.s. attorney. and david cay, the idea that this there s something just remarkable about the fact that jared kushner, you know, is engaging all this, having seen firsthand the force of law of the federal government, right? i mean to omit something from your security clearance form, having the experience that he has had. right. well, hubris is absolutely a central element in this. but jared kushner is not naive here. as lizzie pointed out, and it is an excellent profile she wrote. he ran the family business. he s negotiated a number of deals including the most expensive building exchange ever in new york city, a nearly $2 billion deal. this is a cutthroat business that requires a great deal of attention to detail. and to suggest that, you know, jared kushner didn t understand the consequences of proposing this back channel meeting, i mean i ll tell you what. i m willing to excuse a drunk in a bar or a 13-year-old boy. jared kushner, no way. their excuse, however, is going to be for sure, well, he didn t really understand. yeah, well, then why isn t it on your disclosure form, and why in the world did you want a back channel to begin with? one thing i will say that s a characteristic of his dad and of donald trump and a lot of real estate people is a huge appetite for risk, which he took by getting behind this campaign and running it, and which his father took by spending $1.8 billion on an office building in manhattan. which is now leveraged to the hilt. yes, which is in trouble financially. yeah. chris i want you to follow up. if i can just make one other point. please. that there is not a hundredth of an inch of separation between donald trump, jared kushner, and mike flynn even after he was fired. so i think it s perfectly reasonable to then figure that donald trump was not the unwitting victim of this meeting that kushner and flynn had with ambassador kislyak. lizzie and david, many, many thanks. appreciate it. joining me now, one of his soon to be colleagues, one of the colleagues of the newly elected montana congressman, a story we were going to get to tonight that we have blown out because of this news. maxine waters of california, congresswoman, your reaction to the news from the washington post tonight? well, my reaction is perhaps one of sadness rather than of kind of i told you so. i just i ve always known that with the proper investigation, connecting the dots, you know, illuminating the facts, that we were going to find out that there certainly was collusion. i named a number of the allies of this president early on. i did not name jared kushner. i didn t quite understand what his role was. but now it s very, very clear. and his attempts to establish this back channel and to use russian facilities to do it certainly speaks to criminality. and his inability to understand that he absolutely had to disclose his meetings and his involvement with russians, and now trying to claim that he just overlooked is not acceptable and not believable. and so i m a little bit sad because i see us moving steadily to the point where we re going to unveil all of this collusion, all of those persons that were involved, and it leads right to the president of the united states, which i ve always believed. and so let the investigations go on. let the information unfold. the fact of the matter is right in the midst of this campaign, the transition team, all of that, we have had these allies, including manafort and flynn and carter page and jared kushner. all of them have been involved for quite some time with the kremlin, with putin, and with the russian government. so i m i m a little bit sad about it, but it s going to unfold. it s going to be revealed. congresswoman, the dnc, i believe, has called for kushner s security clearance to be revoked, and i ve seen similar calls from some of your colleagues. i talked to someone last night, he said, look, this is a professional decision. it shouldn t be the subject of political interference. this is for professionals to review. what do you think about it? well, first of all, we shouldn t have to call for it. it should darn near be automatic that his clearance is revoked. there s no way that we could know at this point and i believe the washington post would not have revealed this unless they absolutely had done everything that they needed to do to vet all of this information. and so his security clearance should be automatically revoked. we shouldn t have to fight for it. we shouldn t have to demand it. it should be just done. you talked about the president. we have not heard from the president directly in quite some time. he was on a trip. he did not have any press conferences. it s been quite a while since he has sort of faced questions, particularly in the wake of all these revelations. do you think it s important the president himself speak to this? yeah, of course i do. of course we can t believe anything that he has to say. you know, he has consistently lied just about everything. but, yes, i would want the president to come forward and say something because he has to know by now that this is close to him, that you cannot be his son-in-law and be his top adviser and not know what he was doing. and so i d like to know what he would say about this and see if he would at least attempt to tell the truth. i don t think so because if he does, that would cause him to be leading right into impeachment, i believe. congresswoman, thank you for your time as wls. you re certainly welcome. much more to come after this quick break. we ve done well in life, with help from our advisor, we made it through many market swings. sure we could travel, take it easy. but we ve never been the type to just sit back. not when we ve got so much more to give when you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. ameriprise when it comes to heartburn. trust the brand doctors trust. nexium 24hr is the #1 choice of doctors and pharmacists for their own frequent heartburn. for all day and all night protection. banish the burn. with nexium 24hr. p3 planters nuts, jerky and whaseeds.at? 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[ cheers and applause ] i should not have treated that reporter that way, and for that, i m sorry, mr. ben jacobs. note what was missing there. there s no indication whatsoever he reached out personally to ben jacobs to actually apologize. no apology for defaming him with a statement from his campaign that read, in part, and i quote here, jacobs grabbed greg s wrist and spun away from greg, pushing them both to the ground. both ben jacobs and another reporter who witnessed the assault, of course, categorically denied that happened and said the only aggressor was soon to be congressman gianforte, an assertion backed up by the aud yoeaudio of the assault. quote, it s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer barbecue. that statement which we now know was a complete and total lie, a fabrication, that was issued by a person by the name of shane scanlon, gianforte s spokesperson. that s shane right there. we asked shane to come on the show tonight, and we ve reached out to the gianforte campaign for comment with no reply. right now shane scanlon, as far as we know, has not apologized for his defamation. he has not apologized to ben jacobs for maligning him in public and lying about him, and he has not apologized to everyone who published or broadcast the fish tissuous statement that he put his name to. one hopes for his own sake that he did not give that version to the police because if he did, that s a crime. greg gianforte is going to be a member of congress, and if he takes shane scanlon to washington with him, anyone who has business with the office of montana s only congressman should know that if you re dealing with shane scanlon, you re talking to a liar. if he s willing to lie about a violent assault committed in front of witnesses, he will be willing to lie about anything, which means that anything shane scanlon says to reporters, to voters, to anyone else, is completely worthless. mmmm. mmmm. mmmm. ugh. nothing spoils a moment like heartburn. try new alka-seltzer ultra strength heartburn relief chews. it s fast, powerful relief with no chalky taste. 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[ sniffing ] [ seagulls squawking ] thank you, gracias. great win in montana. oh, thank you. in italy, the president congratulates greg gianforte unprompted for his win. vice president mike pence, who endorse asked campaigned for gianforte, curiously fell silent after gianforte was cited for body slamming a reporter. pence s press secretary, we aren t going to comment. pence however tweeted today, congrats on great win and gracious speech, looking forward to having you help donald trump make america great again. liam donovan, cornell belcher, michael, let me start with you. you re a veteran reporter, covered politicians. you ever seen anything like that? no. but things soar crazy now. my first thought was it probably helped him. i mean, that s the thing. you hear kelly trump gets a sword, kelly says you could use it on the media. you hear lindsey graham in congress talk about to the photographers back in your cages. i mean you had greg abbott today, governor texas, joke about using a gun on reporters as well. enemies of the people. we re supposed to be enemies of the american people. that s what they re saying. ben jacobs, i don t know if you ve met him, he s the nicest guy. nobody stopped to think about, what is he asking this guy about? health care. about a budget projection. yes. think about it. that s what got him nuts. i think that maybe the problem with the health care thing is that a fact arose. that millions of people are going to get thrown off health care. that makes a guy really uncomfortable. liam, it felt to me we crossed the rubicon with gianforte. a lot of people made a lot of excuses for donald trump. donald trump always seemed to sui generis figure, that he was unique, that people would forget anything for donald trump. that s right. here s gianforte, who cares about this guy except for the fact he s running for congress, and people were able to marshal the same muscles that they ve exercised in excusing donald trump to excuse this guy. it is pretty remarkable. i think part of it was the fact that this is less than 24 hours out from the polls closing. and i think that partisan motivated reasoning is a pretty strong thing. it s a little bit spooky. as gianforte apologizes, if you talk to the people on my twitter mentions, i think they would say he s got nothing to apologize for. that was the other weird thing. because the line had been, everyone saw that the statement was transparently fabricated. that wasn t what people said. what they said instead was that he you know, he had it coming. you know, there was some excuse for the violence. cornell, to michael s point, my sense is that actually the performance in the early vote, which is about 75% of votes, and the same-day voting election day, wasn t actually that different. one of the things i think we ve got to be careful about is reading too much into special elections. that said, i m going to read a lot into the special election. what i think you see consistently is happening across the board here, this is a really red place, and but what you see consistently happening in these elections that have happened since trump is that the republican margins are shrinking. you re taking these 20-point districts and making them into a 7-point district. which i think ultimately means more districts are in play. because democrats can spread resources and put more into play. the fact that republicans had to spent so much money in montana, a place where trump won by 20 points, to get a 6-point video, i think bodes well for democrats. but to this point i think we re seeing little by little the romanticism about the american voter being eroded away. because they are accepting this kind of behavior. and they re rewarding this kind of behavior. yeah, michael? it s just decency. it s the thing you teach your kids. if you go to the playground where donald trump used to run around in queens, keep your hands to yourself, don t insult people there s a whole list of rules. in the playground? yeah, for 4-year-olds. and here we got people running for office, but it s really i do think he s right about to look at this election, the republicans didn t do quite as well as you might think. but the democrats didn t have much of a candidate. a folk singer. i guess they were figuring, trumpians will like a folk singer in a cowboy hat. here s what i would say, he was authentic to the state. he s not a carpet bagger, he s a real montanian. but he has no political experience. he hadn t paid hi bills, he s like me. fy ran for office wbr id= wbr34200 /> i d vote for you for mayor. but not in montana and not against the guy who made millions in his basement. let me ask you this. i want to pivot to this. it seems weird not to bring this into the conversation about the news tonight. for you, liam and cornell, both acute observers of political trends. i mean, my sense, liam, there s two things happening here. one is republicans are not going to distance themselves from the president regardless of whatever the latest russia revelation is. because they ve made a political calculation that, as ben franklin said, we must hang together. surely we ll hang separately. do you think that s accurate, that s right? something like that. i think the presence of this special counsel now sort of gave them a little bit of breathing room, a little bit of out, something of a catch-all answer when asked about this sort of thing. we ll see if that prevails through this newest revelation. but wbr id= wbr34670 /> i think that will be their catch-all answer. the way i look at this is, if you see republicans start to back away from the president, and i wrote a piece about this in politico. it was very good. i think it s a function of /b> them cutting bait on the legislative agenda. while the legislative dream is still alive, they feel they re in the red zone, they re not going to pass up that opportunity. that point about the red zone is clear. is key. because basically i think the thinking is as you spell out in that, you get unified government once every 25 years, maybe. that s wbr-id= wbr35000 /> wbr-id= wbr35000 /> your shot to pass your stuff. and so whatever donald trump does and whatever is revealed about him yeah, i think, also when the next time they re going to get a shot at medicaid? there s not many times you get a chance to leave disabled people on the street, so let s get at it, let s not worry about donald here. cornell, there s been a really interesting some interesting data about how much people are paying attention to russia as opposed to the domestic legislative agenda liam mentioned and michael mention the. my sense is that the russia stuff is really hurting the president s approval ratings, but in special election districts when the president himself is not on the ballot, things like the ahca are more sale i don t want. what do you think of that? i do think domestic stuff is more salient. however, you don t want to go into a midterm with a president who has really horrendous approval ratings. you can see the midterm elections and what happens when the president s numbers are down. the problem for democrats is, his numbers aren t going to get any his numbers are already at historic lows. this idea that just a bad sort of unpopular disapproval number of trump can help us win? i think that is a blind spot of democrats. huh, interesting. we have to also be about something, right? i think some of our economic populism that we re hanging so much our hat on, i think, you know, it had some traction in montana but i don t think we re going to win these red districts that we need simply about sort of railing about the elites and economic populism. we ve got to be more as operational, we ve got to have something to say about our value to red district voters. that s a really smart guy.
welcome to watters world. i m jesse watters. how fake news is getting trumped. you hear that? that silence is the sounds of the trump-russia collusion scandal dying. a few weeks ago if you turned on your television, all heard was this. collusion between trump associates and russians during the election. members of conservative s presidential campaign had repeated contact with russian intelligence officials. jesse: but this is all a diversion. if anybody was getting played bid russians, it was the obama administration. it started with this pathetic stunts. we want to reset our relationship. we ll do it together. okay? jesse: hillary tried to reset relations with a button and she misspelled the word reset. her state department gave russia access to 20% of american uranium production capacity related to a shady clinton foundation if donor. and imaginew if trump was caught saying that. when mitt romney labeled russia as america s biggest geopolitical foe, barack obama mocked him. the cold war has been over for 20 years. jesse: wit when putin invade ukraine, obama respond by sending food, not weapons. hundreds of billions of dollars were sent to iran. that deal was so iran wouldn t nuke up. and president obama cut a deal with cyrideal with syria. he used chemical weapons on his own people. president obama got played again. if syria lied about their chemical weapons? isn t it likely iran lied about their nuclear program? likely. the left began smearing trump as a putin puppet because they couldn t accept defeat. we herd the words special prosecutor, and even impeachment. president trump launched missiles into syria on russia s doorstep. president trump characterized the relationship this way. white now year not getting along with russia at all. we may be at an all-time low in terms of a relationship with russia. he had this to say about bashar al-assad. putin is backing a person that s truly an evil person. this is an animal. jesse: secretary of state rex tillerson and red the former red the riot act. putin refused to be seen with him in public. the russians have scrambled ships off the coast of syria. i have never been as worried as i am today about the possibility of war with russia. jesse: so with the fution-trump smear campaign up in smokes, look what democrats are reduced to. help me connect the trump-russia dots. submit your tips and we ll follow the evidence and post online. so democrats are setting up an internet tip hotline. congress has subpoena power and the fisa court and they are asking joe smith from arkansas if he has any tips. obviously they have nothing. almost as if they didn t think anyone would notice, the media dwropped the russia battle and launched a new attack. from the a flurry of flip-flops. here is the problem with nato, it s obsolete. it s no longer obsolete. from the a different tone from a country he previously called an enemy. a change from the on chain today as a punching bag. we can t allow china to rape our country and that s what they are doing. passenger dragged off the united flight. and watters world takes on the swamp. can affect how your mouth feels and how you feel. discover act dry mouth, specially formulated to soothe and moisturize your mouth. and try new act dry mouth spray for relief when you need it. and try new act dry mouth spray stay with me, mr. parker. when a critical patient is far from the hospital, the hospital must come to the patient. stay with me, mr. parker. the at&t network is helping first responders connect with medical teams in near real time. stay with me, mr. parker. .saving time when it matters most. stay with me, mrs. parker. that s the power of and. y282uy ywty isis is make a tremendous amount of money because they have certain areas of oil they took way. some in syria and some in iraq. i would bomb the [bleep] out of them. jesse: donald trump fulfilling his campaign promise to bomb the [bleep] out of isis thursday. the air force dropped the mother of all bombs and at least 36 terrorists were killed. the moab is the largest non-nuclear weapon in existence. it was built in 2003 and was never before used in combat until a few days ago. joining me is dr. sebastian gorka. i want to read two treats from a soldier? in afghanistan. he says i lost my legs because the government failed to use the tools we had. after losing a green were receipt, potus sent a new message towards the cowards who killed him. dr. gorka, this weapon was available for the last 10 years. why is it just being used now? because finally we have leadership and president, commander-in-chief, president trump who understands diplomacy without force to back it up is nothing. we have had a spineless administration for 8 years under president trump. i can tell you one thing, jesse. i met donald trump in 2015 and within five minute i knew something about this man. he is a patriot. he loves his country, and most all he loves our men and women in uniform. this is why he took the action he took to send a clear message not just to the taliban or isis but to everybody out there to thinks that the last 8 years is america. it s not. jesse: way hear is the previous administration is so concerned, they didn t give the commanders in the field license to use this type of weapon, and from what i know now, they take so many precautions to make sure civilian casualties don t occur, they fly multiple drones out over the targets and unleash this thing. tell me about the psychological impact this has on isis and and, and all over the world. you are absolutely right. from day one in the white house, a tier 1 operator told me the morale is incomparable. everyone knows the soldiers and marines, they are allowed to do their job now. we unleashed the military. what you talked about the last 8 years. we have declassified open source reports of people in theater, pilots who aren t allowed to even gang terrorists, isis on the ground unless somebody back in d.c. or a command center sees on the same video feed that the bad guys are down there. that s an 8,000 mile screwdriver. we didn t even do that during vietnam. you asked the delight question. what we did in the last 7-10 days, it s not about syria. it s not just about afghanistan. it s about sending a message to anybody out there who doesn t take america seriously and think they can threaten us or our allies or our partners. that s why the president is the master of the deal. jesse: i think isis got a message pretty clearly. if you are going to die, you don t want to die like that with your lungs pouring out of your skull. i think they will have recruitment problems after that. we have seen the tomahawks fly into syria. you see this moab over in afghanistan. describe in a few words your interpretation of president trump s grand defense strategy. very simply there is two members of the cabinet who come from the same marine corps division. that division has a motto and formal one. the motto is no better friend, no worse enemy. the idea that we are going to lead from behind which an oxymoron. the idea that our strategy will be strategic patience means doing nothing. we are saying to the world, american values, american safety, and we are going to protect and help our allies, but this isn t the bush administration. this isn t about invasion and occupation. that has not changed. it s important for your viewers to understand. donald trump on november 7 is president donald trump today. this is not a neocon administration or interventionist one. it s an american one that will stand up to evil around the world. jesse: some people on the left are very upset at the term tomahawk missile. the mother of all bombs they thought was sexist. funny how these people think. and i don t understand it. but dr. gorka thank you very much for appearing on watters world. take a look at the comedian who is emceeing the white house correspondent s dish. donald trump is white isis. wisis. draining the swamp watters world style. i want to be real. just be real. where are all the moderate white conservatives? i mean, come on. they have a responsibility to step up and speak out. every conservative isn t the same, i know. but it s easier on my brain to be irrationally afraid of an entire group of people. jesse: president trump won t thereby, but hundreds of liberal journalists will be. joining me now is the past president of the white house association, you were even the president at one time of the association. what goes into book someone like this. this guy kind of seems like a hater. i can t tell if he s kidding or not. ed: i ended up getting conan o brien. he was a big name and was on a comeback. in private conversations i had with him, i thought he was somebody who was excited to get the big stage again and i thought he did a great job. jesse: you pre-interviewed conan to see if he was okay to do the gig. ed: you don t want to censor. but it was clear conan understood there is a balance there. you are going to take some shots at the president. but this year s pick, there won t be balance. it will be 100% bash trump. he s not there to defend himself, but that s his own decision. you will be in store for a night that s non-top hitting the president. jesse: it will be a lame dinner if the president is not there. but you will be there so i guess you will make up for it. ed: i look forward to seeing you. jesse: i won t be there. i m not sure if i m allowed back. sean spicer got into a little trouble and had to clean it up. we didn t use chemical weapons in world war ii. you had someone as despicable as hitler who didn t even sink to using chemical weapons. he brought them into the holocaust center. i understand that. but in the way assad used them and dropped them into the middle of town. jesse: the press secretary apologized and clarified. you used to sit in the chairs where you lobbed questions at the press secretary. what is it like being in the room when you can feel a gaffe unfolding in real-time? ed: i remember being in the room when president obama said what are you going to do about isis. and the president said we don t have a strategy to deal with isis yet. in real-time, did he really just say that? that was on the democratic side. now the republican side. the first clip you played, it was shocking enough that sean spicer was trying to say hitler didn t do these things. but then to talk about holocaust centers like they are rest stops on the jersey turnpike. i think they were concentration camps, not holocaust centers. sean spicer admitted quickly he maid he made a horrible mistake. you will see some piling on and piling on, even though apologized. jesse: it s a feeding frenzy. i want to show you a clip of chris matthews saying the exact same thing. roll this. don t use chemical weapons. we didn t use them in world war ii. hitler didn t use them. we don t use chemical weapons. it s no deal. jesse: there wasn t the same outrage when matthews said that as spicer. i started reading the book on the flight, your jackie robinson book, i recommend it to everybody. it s a great read. there it is. ed: you said i could barely read, you didn t know i would write. but now that you said you love the book, i m okay again. jesse: later in the show, watters world talking politics in the swamp. up next, new information that may change your mind about the united airlines scandal. watters world investigates an debates. 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. we can t stay here! why? 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[ ] jesse: we have all seen this viral video showing dr. david dao dragged off a united airlines flight. there are many questions surrounding what led up to this infamous event. the flight was scheduled to take off from chicago at 5:40 p.m. during the boarding process passengers were told the flight wasover booked and they were looking for passengers to give their seat for a $400 voucher and an overnight stay in a hotel. then they were told four passengers had to get off. they upped the offer to $800 and an overnight stay. the supervisor says four people would be randomly selected to leave. it s done by computer. one couple and a woman were chosen and left. then dr. dao was selected and according to witnesses became quote very upset. two security officers from the chicago department aviation were brought in to assist. i am not going. i am not going. i don t go. i don t go. jess report officers yanked dao out of his seat hitting his head on an armrest. they then drug his limp body count aisle. he then returned to the plane and ran to the rear, his face very bloody. a medical crew attended to dao and the plane was cleaned before taking off. monday evening. united ceo sent a letter to employees saying they followed followed procedures, even calling dao disruptive and belligerent. there was a lot of backlash on social media and the company stock limited $1.4 billion. then munoz is change his tune. do you think he s at fall in any way? no. he can t be. he was a paying passenger sitting on our seat in our aircraft. and no one should be treated that way, period. jesse: thursday we heard from david dao s side. united airlines in this case is responsible. what happened to my dad shouldn t happen to any human being regardless of the circumstance. jesse: ? 2004 the doctor was convicted of obtaining drugs by fraud or deceit. he was trading prescription pain killers for sex. he was sentenced to five years probation and lost his medical license. however he got it back in 2016. joining me to tackle all of this is commercial airline pilot. and arthur wok. if this guy doesn t leave and you are saying get out of here, you have got to go, what do you supposed to do if he s not going to cash in on some of these vouchers? you nighted airlines had no right to remove him from the airplane. there is a contract of carriage that most people don t know about it s 50 pages long. in that contract of carriage united had no justification to remove him. he was a lawful passenger who paid for his ticket. he was seated. the flight was not oversold. e was not denied boarding. he was board. he purchased a ticket from chicago to louisville, not from chicago to a hospital. united airlines had no right to remove him. jesse: i guess the aviation security dies ar security gue not exactly hostage negotiators. kathleen, is there anything fishy about this guy snow runs back on the plane. he refuels to comply with orders from aviation security officials. we have some stuff in his back history that may or may not have anything to do with that. what s your take on his character even if it doesn t matter. if he said okay under duress i ll get off this airplane. he was heard saying i m going to sue united airlines. that s before everything escalated. if he student and said under duress and protest i will step off this airplane and went forward with a lawsuit, it would be interesting to see if he would have his day in courted. there is a contract of carriage. and so if an airplane has to due to stlaib, they had to get this crew in position for their flight the next day to kentucky. it would be interesting to see if he would have won. they obviously would have blown any case they would have had. jesse: arthur, respond to that point kathleen just made. if there is language that says if you have got to get your guys to louisville for work, you can eject a passenger. how do you respond to that? there is no such slang tbhaijt contract. the section the lady is referring to talks about strikes. that s the only labor issue. there was an american airlines flight from chicago to louisville leaving one hour later. they could have put the crew on that flight. they could have put 0 members on the flight deck itself in the jump seats. there are two jump seats on the airplane, and in the form of everything else, because they loaded the airplane with their passengers, they could have put them in a limo it s a four-hour ride from chicago to louisville. a limo could have taken everybody necessary to louisville. jesse: let me ask you this. this guy kinds of strikes me as a litigious guy. will we see him in his next public appearance all wrapped up in bandsages like a mummy, ready to launch some $10 million salute against these people? what do you think? or is the customer always right? what i think is the public once great about this is they will get an education. a few years ago we got passengers bill of rights because they were held hostage on tarmacs. so that s been addressed. congress is looking into this. but the public needs to understand, technically though this is united airlines, it s a wholly separate airline is republic airlines. a different set of pilots with a different set of rules. jesse: is that a russian? that could be another whole scandal we could be looking into. gotta run. i love delta airlines. all right? still to come within watters world watters world heads to texas to drain the swamp one rat at a time. we have some great designs coming in. i think the wall is going to start pretty soon. jesse: but powerful people are trying to stop the wall from being built. advil liqui - gels make pain a distant memory nothing works faster stronger or longer what pain? advil. we re out ink,nk! not ink. printing doesn t have to be painful. now, during hp savings month at staples, get up to $180 off hp printers. hi hey you look good. thank you, i feel good. it all starts with eating right. that s why i eat amaz!n prunes now. they re delicious and help keep my body in balance. i love these. sunsweet amaz!n prunes, the feel good fruit. tbut with lightning fast shifts instant. and dynamic track-tuned suspension, what the road demands, the gs delivers. experience high performance through high technology, in the lexus gs 350 and gs turbo. experience amazing. anyone ever have occasional constipation,diarrhea, gas or bloating? 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this whole pushback on the wall, jesse is they don t want trump to succeed at fulfilling another campaign promise. the only endangered species is the american citizen being hurt by illegals. that s what this is about. they don t want to fulfill another campaign promise just like you showed earlier. they jumped all over him modifying his position and saying he was a flip-flopper. no, he was listening. he did what you do as a leader. if you have to modify it at that point when you have all the information, you are not a flip-flopper. you are a leader. the wall is going to be built. jesse: do you believe paul ryan doesn t want president trump to succeed in building the wall? or do you just think games are being played here? i just think games are being played. i don t believe paul ryan doesn t want the wall to be built. there is a lot of speculation. you know that because of what you do. what happens is you get some of the people that are against it and they can take one word and one phrase and speculate that that means he doesn t want the wall to be built. secondly when they talk about the money is not going to be there. i think also that that s something they have come up with to fit the narrative to try and kill the idea of the wall. but it s not going anywhere. jesse: do you think president trump is getting involved in the design details for the wall or do you think that s showmanship, thinking he s going to put a big t on every brick? i think that he will be involved in the final selection. but he doesn t have time to dot thicss and cross the ts. but the final selection i believe he will be involved in because that s what he has done for many of the big prongs he has done for his business over the years. jesse: i think if you pony up some dough, you get a special section that trump wall that s electrified. we can start zapping things as they try to cross. thank you very much as always. i just want the sign to be put up on the other side. we ll kill you if you cross this wall. jesse: i think that will send a clear message. happy easter on that note. coming up. watters world attempts to drain the swamp but it was harder than i thought. remote moisture sensors use a reliable network to tell them when and where to water. so that farmers like ray can compete in big ways. china. oh . he got there. that s the power of and. jesse: you ready to drain the swamp? sure. jesse: let s do it. maybe i what feel more manly if i didn t have pink ear muffs. we get out there it s because of politicians. we have problems in our swamp too. the swamp in washington is just like the swamp here. trump is going to get rid of all the swamp vermin. jesse: what kind of creatures are we expecting to see out here today? allocators, snakes, but all of these creatures are nothing compared to the creatures that live up in your neck of the woods. jesse: that s true. this neck of the woods voted heavily for donald trump. absolutely. jesse: these people understand donald trump s message. it seems like the rest of the country doesn t understand the people down here. you hear he didn t win the popular vote. when you take the middle america and working class people, we are the ones who built this country. it s the first time in my life i was proud of the man i voted for support. when you go up for the trump sticker. they figure out the swamp guy. if you ever came up to new york, do you think you can handle it? i can handle anything. can i bring my gun? jesse: i don t know if deblasio will allow that. do you have anything to eat here? depend on what you can shoot. jess i got him. i got him. you can pick it up. jesse: with my hands? yes, with your hand. jesse: i can t do it. oh, ahh! okay. ahh. let s do it, let s do it. you guys are disgusting. we are going fishing. we are starting over. my daughter, don t tell her i let you use it. what are we trying to catch out there? my little girl could probably show you a few pointers. jesse: i ll try not to take offense to that. oh, oh! you are a professional fishermen and we caught zero fish. that was a piece of trash. hey, watters. i m t roy and this is my world. jesse: we ll have t roy up in new york in a while to see how he handles my world. up next, tweets of the week. gs . live claritin clear. every day. see you around, giulia what powers the digital world? communication. like centurylink s broadband network that gives 35,000 fans a cutting edge game experience. or the network that keeps a leading hotel chain s guests connected at work, and at play. or the it platform that powers millions of ecards every day for one of the largest greeting card companies. businesses count on communication, and communication counts on centurylink. la quinta presents, how to win at business. step one: ask the presenter to go back a slide. well played. you just tossed a mind grenade into into your colleagues dulled senses. look at them, what did i miss? he one-upped me once again. step two: choose la quinta. and your la quinta reward points can be redeemed for everyday purchases on the go so you can win at business. learn more at lq.com today. at red lobster s lobsterfestime. any of these 9 lobster dishes could be yours. so don t resist delicious new lobster mix and match or lobsterfest surf and turf because you won t have this chance for long. hey, need fast try cool mint zantac. it releases a cooling sensation in your mouth and throat. zantac works in as little as 30 minutes. nexium can take 24 hours. try cool mint zantac. no pill relieves heartburn faster. jesse: dr. phil writes, jesse watters you are a degenerate. dear fox news, can we have