almost everyone in power claims to believe it. the push to war in syria, by the way has united politicians have both sides. lindsey graham and howard dean typically agree on very little. not much at all. but today they are both calling for war in syria. graham is ghanelding massive attacks on the syrian military, dean is going even further than that on twitter, he called the president, quote: a wimp for merely sending thousands of troops and launching tons of bombs at syria. that s not enough for howard dean who you may remember once ran for president as the peace candidate. tonight he wants total war in syria. television pundits, of course, strongly agree. this morning the foreign policy team over on msnbc exexplained that it s far more important for american troops to fight in syria than it is to secure our own border here in america u watch. there is no question that now all these years later is donald trump s challenge. he has to take action. he has spoken to macron. what he ought too do is a using chlorine gas last weekend? well it, wouldn t. assad s forces have been winning the war in syria. the administration just announced its plans to pull american troops out of syria. having vanquished isis. that s good news for assad. and about the only thing he could do to reverse it and hurt himself would be to use poison gas against children. well, did he it anyway, they tell us. is he that evil. please. keep in mind this is the same story they told us last april. do you remember that? it was almost exactly a year ago. the new administration announced it was no longer seeking to depose assad from power. regime change was no longer our policy. the usual war chorus in washington starting yelping and he used sarin gas. there was video. we bombed a syrian air base in response to that. at the time this show asked the obvious question are we really sure assad did that seems weirdly timed and counter productive to him. shut up, they explained of course we are sure. what an unpatriotic question. but, of course, they were lying two. months ago the secretary of defense admitted that actually we still have no proof that assad used saharause saringas. propaganda. manipulate americans like so much of what they they say. we have seen this movie before and know how it ends. for the sake of argument, let s assume they are not lying this time. let s assume assad did just use sarin gas against kids. is he perfectly capable of that i m not defending his moral character. if he did do, it would that be worth starting a war over. chaos, many thousands would die. in fact mike likely see the genocide of one of the last remaining christian communities in the middle east and we ought to care about that. some of the dead, of course, would be american servicemen. a new war would cost us tens of billions of dollars. maybe hundreds of billions. would it make america safer? would it make the region more stable? let s see, how exactly did regime change work in iraq and libya? doesn t matter. say our moral leaders on cnn and everywhere else. astros cities like this cannot be tolerated. okay. but let s be real, we do tolerate atrocities like this all the time. for example, there is a devastating famine killing children in yemen right now. the saudis are calling that famine. should we drop tau tomahawks on riyadh not according to youtube. pictures are essential. in real life, syria is a highly complicated place. with assad gone. who would run it exactly? do we have another strong man in place to install? or is it our hope that he a stable democracy will magically appear in the wake of this protracted civil area? who exactly are these moderate rebels you hear about. the ones we are supporting with your tax dollars? a lot of them turn out to be islamist crazies. the city with a chemical attack just occurred is mostly controlled by the army of islam. radical group called for establishing an islamic state under sharia law in syria. that group s founder called for exterminating all she a muslims and aloe whites from the country. we are supposed to wage a new war on this group s behalf. why is that exactly? back in 2013, when the syrian civil war was still in its early days, one onlooker weighed in on twitter. here is part of what he wrote. quote: we should stay the hell out of syria. the rebels are just as bad as the current regime. what will we get for our lives and billions of dollars? zero. in another tweet he said, this quote: let the arab league take care of syria. why rich arab countries not paying for such a tremendous cost of such an attack. another tweet he said. this what will we get for bombing syria inbesides more debt and conflict. , you know who wrote that donald trump. he was write right. that s one of the reasons he got elected president. now the same people who brought you a dying american middle class, undefended american borders, and endless pointless wars in countries you could not find on a map are telling the president he has got to depose assad for reasons that are both unclear and demonstrably dishonest. by the way, it may happen. but, before it does, congress ought to consider a brand new constitutional amendment. let s call it the lindsey graham amendment. and here s what it would say. congress shall topple no government until it finishes rebuilding the last government it toppled. and furthermore, talk show generals shall be required to personally visit the battlefield of every war they advocate for. end of amendment. that would have an immediate and positive effect. let s hope it passes. roger wicker a republican representing the state of mississippi. he joins us tonight. senator, thanks for coming on. thank you. tucker: what is the american national security interest that would be served by regime change in syria? well, if you care about israel, you have to be interested at least in what s going on in syria. we re fighting isis there. iran is seeking to dominate the whole region. i think we have national interests in syria. but, let me say this about what candidate trump may have said or what he said before he was a candidate. you know, there is information you receive when you are president of the united states that you really don t have as a candidate. and i appreciate the president putting a team around him that i have confidence in. secretary mattis and general dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, i think are going to give the president good advice. john bolton starting today and i think. tucker: there are smart and decent people around him. tell him what he needs to hear. tucker: there is certainly a lot of those people are smart. but i just want to get back to the core question that i think a lot of voters have which is what the american national security that is served. you say you care about israel. i do care about israel. what s the american national security interest that would be changed by regime change. can you think of downsides, death, cost, et cetera. how would this country become safer by overthrowing assad. i m not sure regime change is still our goal there it was the goal of barack obama and hasn t really been our stated goal during this trump administration. but, defeating isis in iraq and in syria is still our goal. and i think that is in the national interest. tucker: but wasn t defeating isis one of the goals of the assad government? of course, isis was a radical sunni group. assad is allied with the shiites. he was fighting isis as well. why wouldn t we if we believe isis is the main enemy, functionally find ourselves on the side of assad? well, you re correct in this sense. and you are correct in many ways. it s complicated in syria. there is no question about it. i mean, the there is not a bunch of white hats and a bunch of black hats. tucker: right. i will give you that. we are and we re not in the business of regime change. so i would challenge that but, it is within our national interest to make sure isis is defeated and we are we have almost got the job done. i just think it would be a mistake to pull away at this point. i m very interested in the questions you are asking about whether there is some sort of a hoax or whether this poison gas attack really didn t happen was done by someone else. tucker: i m not suggesting that. that s a question that mr. putin is asking and he has a right to ask it and so do you. i find myself on the other side of the issue. tucker: i m not sure i understand that implication. that s the question he asking. tucker: slow down, senator. that s not relevant to why i asked the question. i hope you are not trying to impugn my motive tying me to putin as some on the left do. let me ask again, we were told a year ago that the sarin gas attack in syria was committed by assad s regime. we learned two months ago that we don t really know that that we were lied to about that. i would think as a u.s. senator you would have an interest in getting to the truth because the chute matters, doesn t it. i think it s perfectly fine for someone in a position like you to ask that question. tucker: why aren t you asking the question? well, i have been listening to a lot over the last year. and for my purposes, i m convinced that bashar assad was very much involved in the attack a year ago. the united nations security council. tucker: what makes you think that? based on information i have heard. i think. tucker: can you characterize it for us because the secretary of defense i m sorry, i wouldn t typically interrupt you. you suggested i was somehow allied with putin. can i press you on this question. secretary of defense. i m suggest thawing asked the same question that he asked. tucker: so i must be a russian agent. i get it? i m not saying that at all. i m not saying that at all. tucker: it s an obvious question actually. the secretary of defense said we didn t have proof but you apparently have proof that the secretary of defense doesn t have. could you characterize it for us? no. why? i m not going to get into that further. tucker: okay. so are you satisfied that we know for a fact that the assad regime acting against its own strategic interest was behind the chlorine gas attack this weekend? and as i was about to say, tucker, the u.n. security council is looking at that very issue right now. the president of the united states has concluded that, in fact, bashar assad was involved in this. and was responsible for it. tucker: okay. i assume he is making that statement based on the best facts can get from the secretary of defense and from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and his incoming national security advisor. tucker: okay. well i guess putin and i would like a little more detail on that before we launch a new war on the basis of it. do you think that s a fair question to ask? i think you are asking interesting questions and they need to be asked. tucker: okay. where i come down is that we have a strategic interest there. and it doesn t make sense for us to leave without getting the job done. i would be results-based in syria rather than time line based. tucker: okay. well, that was revealing. thank you, senator, i appreciate it? thank you. tucker: steve patnos knows a lot about syria. he spent two years as the hogs damage of he will news arhe wille we saw the pictures so something happened. one of the first questions is the assad regime the only group in the region that possesses these weapons? of course not. we have videos. and i have been in conversation with these people. lived with them for two years. i know what their goals are in life. they are interested in carrying out an ex a war of extermination against their enemies, particularly the against the syrian, against the syrian government, they are more than willing to use any weapon whatsoever. anything it takes to rid themselves of their enemies. i m quite per situated that theisituate per persuaded their goal is annihilation of. ambition to exterminate the enemy. i have no doubt this is something that they desire. it s their dream. they believe they own this land that god gave it to them and that they should kick the other people out. kill them. tucker: so, since you spent years as a captive and are familiar with some of these groups, characterize for us, if you will, some of the rebel groups that the united states appears to be supporting and that we hope will take the place of the assad regime once they are deposed? i mean, i can give you this characterization. can i tell you that the people that we believe we re supporting, as soon as we give, you know, a nickel to these people it goes in 10 different directions. they divide every asset that s fungible up among themselves. we don t know who we are giving our guns and our money to. we just don t. even though we clear them we vet them and retrain them. we don t know what happens once they go into the country and it s just it s unexplored emptiness, those places that the rebels control. the reason we cannot investigate and figure out who actually committed these chemical attacks is because every time, any outside person that goes into these areas, is either disappeared or ends up in a cage or tortured or will have his head cut off. it s really quite impossible to explore the origin of these crimes. it s true that there are a number of possible culprits. but, before we go starting any wars, we should investigate properly and we can t do that now because we cannot access the scene of the crime. tucker: thank you for reminding us how complex this all is and you of course have firsthand experience with it theo padnos i appreciate it? you bet. tucker: you have been hearing it every day on the other channels defending america s own borders is immoral while invading a war in syria is a real one and imperative. does anyone believe that? why are people saying that exactly. colonel doug mcgregor author of the book margin of victory. people make the case against using force to protect our southern borders but in favor of using force to protect the territorial integrity of syria. what do you think? well, i think it s lunancy to be perfectly blunt. it s a crazy idea. first of all, the united states armed forces at least as far as the constitution is concerned exists principally, primarily to defend the united states. that includes its borders against foreign penetration and for 150 years we have tried to defend those borders for 100 of those years we had the united states army on the border. from 1867 onward, we built 40s. we had thousands of troops down there. all the generals that commanded our forces during the second world war served on the mexican border. we have been dealing with criminality, corruption, forms of terrorism for decades. and this is not a new problem. people need to understanding mexico is america s soft underbelly. before world war ii and the rainbow plans, we recognize that mexico presented a threat because mexico also sides with our enemies. mexico sided with germany during world war i against us. mexico was the principle platform for the kgb and western hemisphere all through the world war. mexico is hostile to us. and for the last 40 or 50 years, anyone heading north in mexico who said they wanted to go to the united states got to ride on public transportation for nothing. now, add to that the drug trafficking, which is now capitalized on corruption on a scale never before seen in the history of that country, and then the millions and millions and millions of people that have penetrated our border, then look at the nexus of terrorism and criminality in the caribbean basin where we intercept every day thousands of communications in farcy, in arabic, in russian, in chinese. it doesn t take a genius to figure out we have a real conflict in mexico and we ignore at great peril. we are already spending billions to deal with the consequences of illegal immigration and the criminality here. we have criminals in our jails. costs us hundreds of billions of dollars every year. this has got to stop. donald trump said he would control the border. it s time to put the military on the border. the national guard is nice. but the national guard is not experienced in this. the regular army is. we have thousands of people with experience. tucker: yes. we need to put them on the border and we need to secure it then we can rotate the national guard through. tucker: thank you for that plain explanation, colonel. i appreciate it. okay. tucker: remember that caravan of migrants coming up from central america. the media said they were dispersed in mexico. but most migrants in one van say they are coming here anyway. and if they get to california, they will find a state in civil war over sanctuary cities so they will get to stay. one politician from that state next. allergies with sinus congestion and pressure? 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and why don t they have a right to? well, let s this caravan of people these are asylum seekers, right in this is really a multinational problem. a lot of like what is happening out in syria, where the many governments have to deal with these people. yeah, it is. as you know this is something that happens every year. over the years we have seen that a majority people end up in mexico and end up staying in mexico. this is really mexican problem. this is not a problem here in the united states. the sanctuary city thing is an entirely different issue. tucker: no, no. related to daca. tucker: before you make policy, you have to agree on what s true. and who has rights and what are they? and so my question is, every country in central america and i have been to six out of seven, is less good to live in than the united states. so, all the population of central america could plausiblably claim asylum here. do we have a right to say no? and how many. absolutely. tucker: can we say no to? if we have that right, then why is no one in statewide office in california invoking that right? why are they saying we don t actually have a right to keep people out. no. what they are saying in california is that california is not obligated to enforce its federal immigration law. that s always been true. we can agree on that. that s not what these sanctuary city policies are really about. sanctuary city originally, if you look back at 20, 30 years ago when it first state-of-the-arted was enacted to protect the daca type people. and 70% of americans believe that we need to deal with daca. even our president believes that. if the president would do that, it would make it a lot harder for us here in california to defend our sanctuary city policy. there is no question about it. tucker: let me ask you this, let s say you had 5 million migrants from central america show up in california tomorrow, claim asylum, all of them were admitted. would the state get poorer or richer? i don t know. that s a good question. depends how they get assimilated in our state. once they are in our state they could go to any state. they could go to your state, mexico, nevada and elsewhere. i can tell you for san francisco it would be difficult because they would end up living on the street because it s so expensive here. s that true 44% of all households in california don t speak english at home. that s a foreign culture living within the larger culture. is that a problem? me by way of example, my father was an immigrant. my first language was italian. i have assimilated pretty well in the united states. that s the american dream, right? tucker: no, no. but 44% of all of households. a lot of these are not people that arrived yesterday, last year, 10 years ago. they arrived a long time ago. and still speaking foreign language at home. that s a problem no not assimilated as immigrants. that s the sanctuary city policies that are protecting people from certain incursions. there is no question about it that we are accepting people here in california. we build bridges, not walls. that being said, the federal government does have a right to enforce federal immigration policies. tucker: i m not sure i even understanding your answer. here, let me ask you one last question. the outflow from california middle class navin important californians is overwhelming. it s all over the news in your state. i know have you seen it politician are spending majority of their time talking about how to help people here illegally. do you worry that you are not pays enough tension to your own people, to your own middle class and they re leaving? oh, every day all day long. we are spending more and more money just by way of example here in california. our city budget used to be $3 billion. not 15 years ago. now it s $10 billion and we have people running for mayor that want to add, you know, billion-dollar bonds. there is no question it s getting more expensive. some of the liberal policies are very expensive. we need to look inward instead of outward to make sure our own are taken care of. we re at a tipping point on that. tucker: you are the first person seeking office in california on the left who has said that thank you. joe, good to see you. good to see you, too. tucker: first it was guns they were going to take them away. now they are going further in london which is a city and kind of a country now. the mayor is going after knives. how long until the left comes after your buck knife? plus bill de blasio s regime is pretty tough on guns. guess what one of his top aides was just caught with? illegal gun? we will tell you when we come back nick was born to move. 3 toddlers won t stop him. and neither will lower back pain. because at a dr. scholl s kiosk he got a recommendation for our custom fit orthotic to relieve his foot, knee, or lower back pain, from being on his feet. dr. scholl s. born to move. i m sorry, leo. i know i m late. traffic on the ponte vecchio on a monday. always late. oh! my wallet! un momento. card lock from capital one. instantly lock your card. in case your card goes. arrivederci. mona! that smile. technology this convenient. could make history. what s in your wallet? we re finally back out in our yard, but so are they. the triple threat of dandelions, lurking crabgrass and weak, thin grass! introducing the all new scotts turf builder triple action. this single-step breakthrough changes everything. it kills weeds, prevents crabgrass for up to 4 months, and feeds so grass can thrive, all guaranteed. only from scotts. our backyard is back. this is a scotts yard. up to 90% had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. with taltz, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. don t use if you re allergic to taltz. before starting, you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection, symptoms, or received a vaccine or plan to. inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz, including worsening of symptoms. serious allergic reactions can occur. ready for a chance at 100% clear skin? ask your doctor about taltz. try it for as little as $5 a month. tucker: a possible war with syria seems like an important news tore but it s not the important news story of the day. not the most important. cnn revealed their view of that this afternoon. when they cut away from nikki haley at the u.n. to this. we must not overlook russia and iran s roles in enabling the assad regime s murderous destruction. russia and iran have military we re going to brake away from nikki haley s testimony before the u.n. security council. we have breaking news just in. the new york times just reported that the fbi today raided the offices of president trump s long-time attorney michael cohen. tucker: well, that raid reported solid connected to the stormy daniels story. cnn covered wall-to-wall and of course stormy disanels way more important than any war with syria. that s cnn s position. is it mark steyn s position he joins us tonight. author and columnist. [laughter] mark, the priorities become really clear. you cut from the u.n. we may go to war, stormy daniels news breaking. did you see that? yeah. i saw this new film chappaquiddick over the weekend. and after ted kennedy has his car accident, his dad, joe kennedy, calls in all the old kennedy fixes. and they are thrilled because chappaquiddick happened at the time that man was about to set foot on the moon. they thought this is great. if man sets foot on the moon for the first time ever, this will bury ted s car accident and we ll be okay. you can bet that that if man set foot on the moon for the first time and they raided trump s lawyer s office, that trump s lawyer s office would absolutely crush one giant step for mankind, would burr requesty it. it would be on the foot of page 37 and no one would ever know man had landed on the moon. that s the priorities over on cnn. tucker: you have stormy daniels pictures to accompany it. as i said to you last time it s a perfectly good sex scandal and now $130,000 campaign finance infraction that robert mueller and the fbi are going to pursue to the ends of the earth in necessary. they don t care how many dollars they spent on $130,000 campaign infraction. i like my scandals to be about sex not campaign finance. tucker: i agree. way less appealing when 2 becomes campaign finance. the mayor of london khan is vowing a crack down on knives. cutting implements following a crime wave there. there is never a reason to carry a knife and vowing to punish all who do. meanwhile in new york, in related news, bill de blasio aide region again stephens arrested after caught with illegal handgun in her car. what do these add up to other than like the end of western civilization? it s interesting to me in britain because i believe the national cutlery association has come out strongly against background checks for people who want to own knives. you know, they are thinking that, you know, if you outlaw knives only outlaws will have knives. and i use the term cutlery seriously because people use what s at happened. i was in a french village, two summers ago, and a lady and two of her daughters were felt to be were in their bathing suits and mohammed next to them went full allahu akbar and stabbed them with the fork. the fork he was having breakfast with and a helicopter had to fly in and helicopter, the wounded. people use what s at hand. the reality in london as katie hopkins said on your show a couple of nights ago is that 85% of last month s stabbings perpetrators and victims are basically the result of modern immigration policies too tie what you were talking about with the general about the border, that s the issue. if you don t have a border, if you don t have a security perimeter at the border, you wind up having to have security perimeters over everything else. including. tucker: that s exactly right. cutlery displays in london supermarkets. tucker: when you have a population that can t control itself you can t have rights is the problem. no. tucker: de blasio s aide gets caught with illegal handgun is this like peta running the butcher shop? is there anything more hypocritical than this. basically this is his advisor on criminal justice matters. and she is in a car that s filled with marijuana smoke with handgun on which all the identifying marks have been rubbed off. and i think, again, this gets to a point we come back to time and again, increasingly we live in a land where the laws don t apply to certain people. you know, he will pull some strings. she ll skate. and if you re connected. if you are part of a governor s or a mayor s detail, you will be fine. if you work for someone important, you are fine. and if you are just some guy living in some subdivision, you don t need a gun. you don t need nothing. and. tucker: exactly right. it s that division. tucker: class system. it s awful. that s and american. tucker: an an economy to match. wish had you more time. see you in two days. millions of americans meanwhile addicted to opioids. could the phone in your pocket be as addictive as narcotics? possible. talked to a doctor studying that question. he joins us next. n t use it. wish we got money back on gym memberships. get money back hilarious. with claim-free rewards. switching to allstate is worth it. with expedia you could book a flight, hotel, car and activity all in one place. you wouldn t accept from any one else. so why accept it from your allergy pills? most pills don t finish the job because they don t relieve nasal congestion. flonase allergy relief is different. flonase relieves sneezing, itchy, watery eyes and a runny nose, plus nasal congestion, which pills don t. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. and 6 is greater than 1. start your day with flonase for more complete allergy relief. flonase. this changes everything. tucker: millions of malcolm jenkins are addicted to opioids. tens of though sands die from them every year. there is another addiction crisis going on that gets no coverage at all. tens of millions of measures are hopelessly addicted to their electronic devices. particularly to their smart phones, online video games and lots of other things that big tech has gotten rich on. it s a big deal. dr. david hill is chair of the american academy of pediatrics council on communications in media. he says that smart phone addiction is a crisis for our society. dr. hill joins us tonight. doctor, thanks for coming on. when you say it s an addiction, what sense do you mean that? clearly an addiction that the average person checks their phone 70 times a day. in the clinical sense is it addictive? i don t think anybody would say it s addictive, tucker. in fact, the dsm 5, the current manual that psychiatrists use specifically carve out that there is not really a diagnosis called tech addiction. now, there are a couple of diagnoses that they think are worth investigating. and those are problematic internet use and internet gaming disorder. those sorts of problems are thought to affect up to maybe 8%. the numbers differ from 4% to about 9% or 10% of american youth. but, whether that s an addiction in the same way opioid is an addiction. you are looking at 116 americans killed every day on average by opioids. nobody would say that cell phones are killing 116 people a day. tucker: of course not. are they degrading our society? are they making it difficult for people to continue linear thoughts to read books, to concentrate and i know dsm definitions change over time, would you say it s a compulsion? it certainly seems to meet that threshold. you know, anything that gives us instant pleasure is something that we can become dependent on. at the point that we are ignoring the other needs we have in our lives to pay attention to these things and get that sort of pleasure, then it becomes a problem. we deal with children and the biggest problems that we see in children related to smart phone use or screen use or particularly sleep, obesity. there are some concerns about attention. nobody has proven that smart phones cause adhd. that s a popular theory. but the science is not out there to really draw that line. there has been a lot of concern about rising rates of depression and anxiety. tucker: yeah. that are coming along at the same time as rising rates. there is an author jean twin, she has worked on that, and her argument is that the phones came first and then the psychiatric problems. so maybe the phones caused the psychiatric problems. but i think more conservative researchers would stop at least one step short of that. and, you are aware of this distinction between correlation and causality. many people see a very strong correlation but i don t know that most experts in the field are quite ready to jump to causality. tucker: i know a lot about the correlation between a lack of research and not really knowing what the truth is. i don t think there has been a lot of research on this thing which is ubiquitous in our society and wasn t 10 years ago. i mean, i don t know why we don t know more i guess is the question. we are almost out of time. do you have a thought on that? many of my friends and co-workers are working on this issue right now. the research is burgeoning. it takes a while to do a good study. the technology is moving fast. so once you get a study the in bag, the technology has moved away. i would support more money dedicated towards research because this is huge. tucker: it s changed everything and we haven t paused to think about how. exactly. tucker: i don t think we will. doctor, thank you. good to see you. thank you. tucker: the ceo of facebook mark zuckerberg is testifying on capitol hill tomorrow. fox, of course, will be covering that testimony live tomorrow afternoon. we hope you will watch. why will be. well, the boston marathon, probably the most famous marathon in the world says that biological male also now be allowed to compete as women in this year s race. what does that mean? what are the requirements to considered female and is this arrangement fair to women? that story is next. feel the clarity of non-drowsy claritin 24 hour relief when allergies occur. day after day, after day. because life should have more wishes and less worries. feel the clarity and live claritin clear. whoamike and jen doyle?than i thought. yeah. time for medicare, huh. i have no idea how we re going to get through this. follow me. choosing a plan can be super-complicated. but it doesn t have to be. unitedhealthcare can guide you through the confusion, with helpful people, tools and plans. including the only plans with the aarp name. well that wasn t so bad at all. that s how we like it. aarp medicare plans, from unitedhealthcare. testosterone levels. what are the rules exactly. bail slay psychotherapist and she joins us tonight. my case isn t to make the case against transgenders. i think biology is real and we shouldn t ignore it that s not really the point i want to make. i want to sincere questions about what qualifies you as a biological man to compete as a woman because there is an actual fairness question here to women. what does that mean exactly for the purposes of the boston mayor ton? so what the boston marathon it seems like to me has done and i have been reporting on transgendered athletes for a long time now. and i think what they did was they adopted the policy that was set forth by the u.s. track and field committee, which followed what the u.s. international i m sorry, the international olympic committee also set forth as to what to do with transgendered athletes. so they have if you identify let s say you are born a man but identify as a woman and you qualify as a woman and you are able to compete as a woman on the day of the race, but you have to qualify and compete in the gender in which you qualified for if that makes sense. tucker: it doesn t make sense because it doesn t answer the basic question which is what are the criteria for qualifie qualifyina woman? men have physical advantages that are inborn, biological. it puts them at sort of a great advantage over the women against whom they are competing. how do i qualify as transgender female athlete? why couldn t any man say i identify as a woman now and beat a lot of women unfairl unfairly? thee receip rerhetoricly the. it s not as if these athletic committees are asking for a full history of these athletes. if a man decided to compete as a woman and ran all those qualifying races as a woman, then on game day, they are allowed to compete as a woman. now, the interesting fact here. tucker: what are the criteria? but what are the criteria? how do we determine if someone is a woman for the purposes of competing in the women s event? like how do we other than a person s word for it? historically, you took a blood test. well, so here s the issue. what they do is they ask for you to present a government i.d. so, it s what you identify as. not necessarily what you are born as. and where this issue gets a little bit more complicated and will get more complicated as time goes on is that states now are starting to say that people have the choice of being considered nonbinary and checking that off on their government ids. so, if you have one point 4 million people now in this country identifying as transgender and transgender is relative term for many things that fall under it. and then you start issuing states are issuing government ids. tucker: i get it. so there are no rules. we are just making it up as we go along. it s fine if the purpose is to make people feel good. i get it. i m not attacking anybody. if there are actual prizes at stake or jobs or marathons. it might be nice to have some rules. we are out of time. nell, thank you. good to see you. tucker: are pandas in fact sex crazed killing machines? 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the u.k. over brexit? julian joins me. we ll talk about donald trump and kim jong-un. plus swamp watch. but you may not know about the european union that will blow your mind. you will see clearly while the u.k. voted to walk away. later, you ll get a receipt as i take you on a tour of some of my favorite spots right here in london. let s get to it. joining me here s cohost of america s newsroom, sondra smith and douglas. the director of the data analytical company. sondra, i m so happy you could join us. coming up on the first year anniversary of the show. you are there on our first show. i m so thrilled that were in this incredible setting. you have been covering the wedding over the last few days and during the ceremony, what are your reflections? there is love in celebration they have the power to change the world. they re going to get to work this week. steve: there so much and we ll talk about all the time. these things that divide us and people getting so angry about politics and everything. even the skeptics are not that convinced about the real family. there s something about the fact that everybody was so happy. i feel like in you know you can people either love the royal family or they do not. those that are obsessed with following the close from the pageantry of the family. sometimes it six applican extra. but the world could look on and appreciate them expressing their love in a public way. royal weddings have taken on a much more public nature. william and harry are so immensely popular and respected for their military service. their love for their mothers that they lost at a young age. that they snuck out of the catholicastle the day before juo greet those who are gathered. they talk to kids and. steve: the theme of the show is positive populism. the wedding is a hundred% positive. an address was stunning. a lot 11 the wedding. but let s talk about some of the news we been covering. not a lot of love going on right now between europe and the u.s. over the iran deal. just while the celebrations were being prepared here on friday, european leaders got together and decided to take a completely different view on the iran deal. to basically try to keep it a live. seems to me there s something going on with the e.u. and trump. whatever he is for they are against. we see a profound difference in outlook between the european elites in the united states. in europe, the ruling elite likes to think in terms of post nationalism. only if they were reasonable to them what they be reasonable back. there s a lot of self-interest. french and german companies with very fat contracts. steve: we covered that last week. you re right. there s a huge financial interest. so there s some naivety on the self-interest. combined let s taking them in a dangerous place. your believe somehow if it allows the deal to continue it will contain a threat. we know actually the deal signed wasn t much of a deal at all. iran agreed to pause nuclear weapons but it did not stop or put an end to it. we can see that iran has some proxy wars and that s a denial. steve: that s at the president a point he made. what about this attempt will they get anywhere? i think they ll have to give up. no european company is going to run afoul of the united states. we seen some in this no-nonsense approach from america. i don t think any european company will want to part of that. the leaders of france and germany we seem go to washington to deal with donald trump. but if you do business with iran you re going to get in trouble. that was an interesting relationship developing their. america got a glimpse of th that. when they first invented macron and the president was knocking something up his shoulder and said i want you to look perfect you are perfect. there is a friendly nature but we knew why he was there to urge the president to stay in the steel. and then michael says it s not perfect but it s what we have. that was his case as well. as what we have now we can work on something better for the future. so what happens to that relationship? with macron in the president? so friendly but clearly the president is putting his foot down. it s great that they get along but europe is going to have to shift their position. the united states has an orthodox approach and i think europe will have to shift. steve: some people say that s how it will turn out the real outcome is that the chinese and russians are going to get in there. china is going to want to do business. i believe india does business with iran. the united states is looking at what s in the interest of the united states. ultimately you have to recognize have to pay attention to that. as the united states is putting your defense bill. that s a great point. going back to macron, she did not come to this president for some to try sam. will be fascinating to see how the president continues to react and respond with the european nations. a lot of the elites in europe believe the rest the world is going to become like the european union, and the reality is, iran and china and the rest of the world is nothing like the european union. i think they will have to adapt. i don t think that s what people want. this is been a huge opportunity for the president to grow his relationship with the world leaders in a public way. we ve all been watching what the future the deal will be. i think marco made her views on this very clear a macron talking about the businesses in the threats that we are hearing coming from that. it will be something to watch. steve: there s many times and form policy in the west that trump is a great disruptor. perhaps it s making people challenge the assumptions about how to handle north korea, iran and many issues around the world. steve: that seems to be the way it s going. the notion of really upending the traditional way of doing things is key. maybe the experts in the state department got it wrong. steve: imagine that. thank you so much. jillian is standing by to talk about what happens next after reports of step backs with talks with north korea. later north korea is not the only country with the swan. liberty mutual stood with me when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night. hold on dad. liberty did what? yeah, liberty mutual 24-hour roadside assistance helped him to fix his flat so he could get home safely. my dad says our insurance doesn t have that. don t worry - i know what a lug wrench is, dad. is this a lug wrench? maybe? you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. savings on the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it senses your every move and automatically adjusts on both sides to keep you effortlessly comfortable. and snoring.. does your bed do that? right now during our semi-annual sale save up to $700 on sleep number 360 smart beds. ends soon. the first survivor of ais out there.sease and the alzheimer s association is going to make it happen. but we won t get there without you. visit alz.org to join the fight. steve: it feels like the history making some of between president trump a north korean leader is on for next month. that s after the threats from north korea to back out. over tests in the area and denuclearization. what to a stand to gain up the summit happens? joining me now we have former white house national security jillian turner. we have been here thinking about the wedding and getting excited but a lot happen on north korea. there are developments that were significant. the president finally nominated an ambassador to south korea whose the current commander of the the form policy community washington rejoice because they been calling for the administration to do this for months. that finally happened. i will take some pres pressure f the president. if the summit goes for the president plans to raise the issue of cyber hacking with kim jong-un directly. that means we ve known for years that north korea is a cyber menace to the u.s. and they poke around in our electric grids and hack e-mails. but the president committing to racists brings it up a level makes it a top-tier national security issue. the other major development is that the united states diverted some of our planes from the airspace that was with the north koreans. that was trying to pull them back in so the june 12 summit can go forward. people jumped on the spat over those exercises. that trump doesn t know it is doing is falling apart. they were gleefully jumping. when that happens you think maybe his strategy is working. there is a piece and foxnews.com that explored why north korea is acting up, because the president has them in a corner. it could be assigned the president strategy is working. absolutely. it s his it s a scenario where the song has been sung many times before for like 20 years. it could go either way. i don t think anyone who tells me they know the outcome knows what they re talking about. the more you know the more you don t know. but for the back-and-forth gestures away every little move is so important is because were still technically at war with north korea. the korean war of the 1950s ended without a peace treaty in place. we back south korea and it leaves us in a perpetual state of the default for us is that were enemies. the president really wants this to happen though. i think it s become his number one priority. i get the sense from covering the administration that it s become his number one. the president made really clear that he did not agree with the comparison of the national security advisor john bolton made around libya he said it will be like libya not to not end well. the president said no. he said the goal is for north korea to become a normal, rich country. that s a smart take on it. that would be something that would appeal to kim jong-un to get back into the normal life of a prosperous country. when kim jong-un hear something like that he ll think i ll end up deposed and possibly doug, this is not what i signed up for. of course there will be problems. i was surprised to see hear them say that. then were left wondering if it does happen what gets accomplished. what is made public as we all anticipate the details of it. i think we would love to be a fly on the wall. i was thinking that for this particular meeting it s almost as if what the president says coming out of the meeting matters more than what actually happens in the meeting. when you have the bumps in the road toward the summit. like the secrecy of the meeting before the confirmation hearing, it s amazing what led up to this. i just get this strong sense that the president s critics for which we know there are many, whatever they say they want this to fail. they don t want the president to have the incredible, unexpected triumph. i don t know. if this meeting happens i would think the president would be wildly praised for getting this done. even with bumps along the road at many times it looked like it was not working and it was getting really messy. a question i was asked was is the summit a success in and of it so. meaning if they leave the summit and they say it went well but nothing happens on the tail end of it, and that happens a lot. does that still qualify as a success because it s the first time a president has met with the dictator. steve: the fact that they are sitting down talking is incredible. it s interesting because if we don t get total denuclearization out of the north koreans it leaves, not a staying, but maybe a check mark in kim jong-un s corner because the president has stated it is a goal. with all the uncertainty into world leaders who are effective of keeping their cards and their bag. they do not display or broadcast the next moves. we are left wondering a lot of things. you said when we got down here, just don t know. steve: that s what makes it so fascinating. we will keep talking about it. it s very unexpected development that he could be on the brink of something historic in an area nobody has gotten into. of the president has put a lot of steak in his relationship with world leaders. and he puts a lot into it with his own powers of persuasion. that will be interesting to see in this case as well. when mike pompeo left the meeting with kim jong-un not really praising him but say he seems like a different guy. steve: i remember him saying that we can do business with that, with the sky. it s a defining moment. thank you both for being here. one of the leading proponents of the brexit movement joins me after the break. later, swamp watch takes on the shady e you. stay tuned. sleep plays a huge role in my life because no two days are alike. on my tempur-pedic, the sleep i get is better than any other mattress i ve ever tried. i recommend my tempur-pedic to everybody. the most highly recommended bed in america. now ranked highest in customer satisfaction with mattresses by jd power, and number one in comfort, 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(giggles) get symbicort free at saveonsymbicort.com. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. steve: joining us now, a leading figure in the probe brexit campaign. a lot of the time i get asked, douglas, back in the u.s. they are very interested in brexit. they see a similarity between the reason brexit happened in the recent donald trump was elected. they asked me, how is brexit going? i come here and it s not going anywhere, what s going on? it s been two years since we voted to leave. seventeen and a half million people, the largest mandate in our history. two years on the political elite are trying to stop it. they re trying to say the results and the voters were misled and betrayed there something underhand about it. the second thing, they re trying to use the laws and court cases and political appointees to try to change the brexit legislation so that we leave in name only. this is the most extraordinary and outrageous a possible decision. let s explore that. believe in name only, what is that mean? there several people in the elite, but also in the media that are trying to keep the u.k. in the e.u. by the back door. some of these institutions remain as a key institution. steve: let s get specific. i think it s important that people understand what s going on. there s a few institutions in the e.u. that the single market steve: that seems to be what people are talking about. it would essentially be remaining in the e.u. some politicians think people are too stupid to know the difference. they can keep us tied to the institutions and say here s your brexit which is not acceptable. some say you can leave the european union but not have control over your regime. some are saying were not to set an end date until we have our final bill from but they can draw this out for years and years. the house of lords put down 15 changes. imagine if instead of having unelected setting congress imagine you have an assembly that existed entirely of hillary clinton appointees. imagine if they re all ivy league east coast preppies. and they are trying to deliberately stop brexit. let s explain how that was possible. where is tresa mahon this? her job was to deliver brexit. she said brexit means brexit method i m going to deliver. what s her role? there several leading politicians that want them to leave there also several advisors around in the cabinet that want to keep the u.k. in the e.u. i think she s getting conflicting advice in her own cabinet. there people want to stay in the e.u. in some kind of customs union. so they re pretending that they re leaving but it means you don t actually have control of the key areas of policy. the key government of driving this process don t see brexit at this opportunity. it s an incredible opportunity for britain to step proudly into the world and have a free trade deal with united states and other countries. instead of seeing it in a positive terms many see it as next her size and damage. and there being defensive and minimalist about it. they re negotiating with one of the most difficult bureaucratic obstructionism ever known. and unless you go about this with guts and determination and vision as to what could change, nothing changes. i think our audience will recognizes from was going on in america with donald trump. you have the bureaucracy against him, the republican party against him, many of the courts, but when you think will happen? is the vote that was so clear going to be honored or not. in the end i think it will be. there s millions of people in the u.k. and they thought this vote would mean something. it is about liberty in bringing power back to the people. there be people coming to the streets protesting if this doesn t happen. theresa may will probably find a very weak deal with the e.u. but should get a leader that comes in and takes that control. in their standing in the way. were out of time on this. were going to be talking about your book and will get back into this business. thank you both very much. so why would the u.k. ever want to leave in the first place? swamp watch takes a trip across across the pond. i can t miss investigation is up next. it kills weeds and greens grass, guaranteed. this is a scotts yard. 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they can t wait to investigate everyone else, they can afford it. the campaign found shocking expenses by the european officials. in a single year they spent a quarter million on quartering, 23000 on chauffeurs, and over 1000 chocolate. they re trying to cover up their spending was shady accounting. they spent 54000 euros at hotels and labeled it commission policy and legal advice. when they spent over 3000 euros they describe it as agriculture and rural development. and when the science officials spent 22000 euros at a hotel they called it direct research. direct fraud more like. the whistleblower found 130 million pounds discrepancy between two sets of hooks in 2001. she tried to raise the alarm with the bookkeeping. she was fired. that s one of many corruption scandals that have plagued the e.u. in recent years. in 2012, john valley resigned in and influence peddling accusation over politicization over an 18 million-dollar kickback from the tobacco industry while overseeing tobacco -. goldman sachs investigated and are now looking into a meeting with european commissioner vice president in late 2017 to discuss trade and defense issues. a meeting they said was personal and private. rights. here s another example, in marcd in the third step down after a british newspaper reported they agree to propose legislation in return for bribes. it would not be a proper swamp without a vast lobbying industry. they published a report but it was so damaged that they tried to delete it from the internet. according to the report, in 2015 there over 8000 registered lobbyist associated with the european union. the lobbying transparency was actually they only register if they feel like it. so the estimate of 8000 lobbyist is likely underestimated. the corporate europe observatory says there s between 15 and 30,000 lobbyist. a 2015 report found you officials recorded over 4000 meetings with lobbyist and six months. including google, general electric and others. the lobby fact website says top ten companies spent a combined total of 39 million euros every year. that s just reported on a voluntary basis. the revolving door spinning around nicely. an organization found 50%, half of all those working in the biggest lobbying firms previously worked in one of the e.u. institutions. from 2009 - 2010, six out of 13 departing commissioners move from public office into corporate or lobbying jobs. no wonder they tried to delete this after is published. that s what they mean by the right to be forgotten data loss. european union has a hard time reconciling the interests of the united states. guess what they came up with two promote corporation and common identity? a 30-meter long, 44-meter high yacht. what a perfect symbol of this on accountable, correc crops, globt want. no wonder britain voted to leave. that s the next revolution we need. tell me what you think. next, we ll talk about an amazing book, rebel. don t go away. automatically as on both sides, for effortless comfort. right now during our semi-annual sale, save up to $700 on sleep number 360 smart beds. ends soon. a cockroach can survive heresubmerged ttle guy. underwater for 30 minutes. wow. yeah. not getting in today. terminix. defenders of home. this is frank. sup! this is frank s favorite record. this is frank s dog. and this is frank s record shop. frank knowns northern soul, but how to set up a limited liability company. what s that mean? not so much. so he turned to his friends at legalzoom. yup! they hooked me up. we helped with his llc, contracts, and some other stuff that s part of running a business. so frank can focus on the beat. you hear that? this is frank s record shop. and this is where life meets legal. to california schoolsd, need big change. marshall tuck is the only candidate for state superintendent who s done it before. less bureaucracy, more classroom funding. marshall tuck for state superintendent. marshall tuck. not the conservative guy, travis allen. what about this john cox? talks a big game. but what s he done? a chicago lawyer? huh? thirteen losing campaigns - seven in illinois? cox lost campaigns as a republican. and as a democrat. gave money to liberals. supported big tax increases. no wonder republicans say cox is unelectable in november. no wonder republicans say marshall tuck will change that. in california, 3 million kids can t read at grade level. tuck turned around struggling schools, raising graduation rates over 60%. marshall tuck for state superintendent. marshall tuck. steve: welcome back. working to discuss tonight swamp watch in the e.u. i think this is all corruption you have to look at the accountability. most people don t know where the money is going. here were seen the very same thing. is captured by the big business and so on. a lot of what we see is big business going to brussels lobbing the rulemaking and getting things made on diesel recognition and doing it because they want to make the world a better place. what you re really doing is making sure they get commercial advantage using the regulatory system in the beltway to read the rules for their advantage. let of ordinary businesses and people feel like they re excluded from the process. it s not just morally corrupt and bad for the environment, i think it s making the economy less competitive. one of the reason why is there s fewer jobs in the center of the world economy it s now the back. all of these regulations are making them a bad place to do business. a lot of the arguments he made in your book, loved your book. rebel, how to overthrow the oligarchy. so tell us the main argument. i think populism is a good thing. the problem is were told by the elite that populism is problem. the way the elite rigged the economy is what is the underlying problem. there s a number of parliament that after 12 years the political processes rigged by career politicians. i felt bad every month getting a paycheck from the taxpayer. i felt bad about as a libertarian and wrong as a taxpayer. we have all these things that they think you re entitled to have these things at the public expense. no wonder they are in favor of mark government high taxes and telling us what today. steve: this aligns neatly with the growth and big government. how do you see it? we had to find how tax money is wasted. infrastructure projects very much wasted. it s unfair to taxpayers kids ordinary people who work hard just want to pay their taxes and even when the state does things that appear to be good what they re doing and i discovered this is there subsidizing the payroll a big corporation by subsidizing those who pay low wages. in the united states and in europe we see welfare programs where governments take tax mon money. when i was a new member i thought it was a good thing and i wanted to live in a world where people are not struggling to pay their bills every week. what s going on is governments are encouraging big employees to pay their staff low wages and hoping the taxpayer will top the amount subsidizing low wages. i think that s the root cause of problems we have. the collaboration between big government and big corporation to keep wages low and top them out. steve: you all have to buy his book. it s really important. next a go on a tour of some of my favorite spots in london. please join us after the break. wish we got money back on gym memberships. get money back hilarious. with claim-free rewards. switching to allstate is worth it. where we re changing withs? contemporary make-overs. then, use the ultimate power handshake, the upper hander with a double palm grab. who has the upper hand now? start winning today. book now at lq.com. the first survivor of ais out there.sease and the alzheimer s association is going to make it happen. but we won t get there without you. visit alz.org to join the fight. . i was wondering if an electric toothbrush really cleans better than a manual. and my hygienist says it does but they re not all the same. who knew? i had no idea. so she said, look for one that s shaped like a dental tool with a round brush head. go pro with oral-b. oral-b s rounded brush head surrounds each tooth to gently remove more plaque, and oral-b is the first electric toothbrush brand accepted by the american dental association for its effectiveness and safety. my mouth feels so clean. i ll only use an oral-b. oral-b. brush like a pro. we danced in a german dance group. i wore lederhosen.man. when i first got on ancestry i was really surprised that i wasn t finding all of these germans in my tree. i decided to have my dna tested through ancestry dna. the big surprise was we re not german at all. 52% of my dna comes from scotland and ireland. so, i traded in my lederhosen for a kilt. ancestry has many paths to discovering your story. get started for free at ancestry.com. . steve: welcome back to the next revolution from windsor, england. i lived here in london for several years, and i had the chance over the last few days to visit some of my favorites. i visited ainsley earhart. you had a great day yesterday going on all the famous sites. when you live in london, it s made up of a bunch of different neighborhoods. they re so special. that place is kenwood, do you remember that from notting hill, the movie? i do, that s right. julia roberts was down here. this is it? this is it. i used to come here all the time, close to where we used to live. it s owned and run by english heritage, anyone can come free, it has rembrandts and it s in the beautiful location. every morning when i lived here, i used to live down there, i d go for a run, and it was so special to be able to do that. especially when you think about the view you get from here. i know you went on the london eye, nice view of london, but nothing like that view. wow! that is what you call a view. this is the only place you can basically see the entire city laid out. beautiful. steve: so amazing. i could run. right? steve: we ll be talking of running, if you are thirsty. let s go get a drink. steve: i think that s a good idea. i ve always loved where we are, it s right at the heart of north london. all the time i lived in london, this is where i lived, my friends were around here and it was fantastic, and this is the pub we re going to go to, it is so special, and i would love walking up here and you see it. this is so great, yes! this is your life? steve: yes, this is where i used to hang out. we are in your favorite pub why. is that? steve: so many amazing memories. 20 or so years i lived in london. loads of different times we come here in the evening or the weekend. one special story that comes to mind? steve: one of the more recent was just before i moved to america, and i remember just being here and i remember rachel, my wife, calling. she told me our second son, in fact, was a boy. we didn t know the sex of our child and i got the news. it s a boy. so it s a very special memory. but there s so many from this place. you came in here and got another pint. steve: exactly. speaking of which, i think it s time we had a drink. okay. when we walked in here, steve, you were giving me advice about the beer. steve: anyone coming to london and wants to order a pint of this delicious beer, you cannot say a pint of london pride, you have to order a pint of pride. a pint of pride. steve: pretty spot on. teach us how to pour. 45 degrees just under the nozzle. you don t want it spilling out. you do one good firm pour. there we go. a little bit more. that s pretty good. here we go! cheers to pride. cheers to pride! that is all tonight from windsor. my thanks to our panel, chloe wesley and gillian turner. you can learn more about the next revolution by following us at next week turning point usa candace owens will be one of our guests, back in los angeles. i m steve hilton. see you next sunday when the next revolution will being televised.
and later, my conversation with senator kiersten gillibrand. but first we are following a wave of breaking news. rudy giuliani tells the new york times and nbc news robert mueller will seek to conclude his investigation into collusion with russia by september 1st. so far we have not heard anything from the special counsel ourselves. robert costa from the washington post reports an important asterisk. that deadline might hold true if the president sits for an interview. at the same time, president trump ordering the justice department to investigate an if in fib informant who was used in the early stages of the russia probe. the president tweeting, quote, i here by demand and will do so officially tomorrow that the department of justice look into whether or not the fbi/doj infiltrated or surveilled the trump campaign for political purposes. as for the president using the power of his office to intervene in an ongoing justice department investigation, maybe we shouldn t be too surprised. you look at the corruption at the top of the fbi, it s a disgrace. and our justice department, which i try and stay away from, but at some point i won t. looks like some point was today. we are also hearing tonight from the justice department as well to talk about all of this, i m going to bring in my panel with me on set. senior writer for politico and coauthor of the politico play book jake sherman. chief washington reporter and msnbc contributor kimberly atkins. former special assistant to the president and former spokesman for vice-president mark lauder. nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken dilanian. and joining us by phone is the new york times reporter michael schmidt who broke that story on the mueller probe time line. michael, you are with us, of course, by phone. i want to start with you. can you walk us through your conversation with rudy giuliani, what you learned about the time line going forward? we know that the trump administration had been saying they think it s time for this to be wrapped up. giuliani has had a series of meetings with mueller. in one of them two weeks ago, mueller s team volunteered this. they brought up this, and what giuliani said that date is an end marker. if the investigation goes beyond that point, if there were findings that come out after that, that is too close to the election. he calls that, quote-unquote, comey territory, referring to what happened during the 2016 election where comey had to make public statements before the votes were taken. and he giuliani very concerned about that and about the impact that could have on the president. he s trying to put a marker down about that september 1st date. did you get the sense that if, in fact, this, the investigation didn t conclude by the september 1 date, that mueller would simply put the investigation on hold or would he be making a commitment to not release any findings before the election in that intervening time, or is this a pledge that, no, all of our investigative activities have going to be finished by this day? well, it s a great question. who knows what could happen between now and then. other things that mueller may have to look at and what could delay this. but what folks say is regardless of what mueller does, it s a political decision. if he were to release something before the election, it certainly would have a political consequence. if he didn t, it would have a political consequence on the other end. it is such an important thing, such a big decision that no matter what he does, there will be an impact. what will mueller do? will he if he feels the president won t sit down, will he feel comfortable subpoenaing the president in the months before the election or would that be interfering too much with that? i don t know. michael, before i let you go, very quickly, i want to get you to weigh in on a story we are about to talk to the rest of the panel about, which is all of the news that broke about the doj and the fbi and the informant. does the department of justice feel right now as though they are under real serious pressure that could leave them in some real trouble? or do they view this as simply the president distracting with tweets? well, this seems to be the latest sort of fascinating dance that rod rosenstein has had to do in regards to balancing what the president wants and sort of following the rule of law. and in many of these cases, they have referred things to the inspector general as a way of showing that they re doing something, but not going so far as to open a criminal investigation. and this to me looks like rosenstein, once again trying to keep the president at bay, trying to keep house republicans that have been breathing down his neck off of him, by saying, look, we are going to do something. at the end of the day, the inspector general s investigation is a serious thing, but it is not nearly as serious as a criminal investigation so it is not the full mounting. michael submit, thank you for your time tonight. we ll be following your reporting. as michael was just talking about and we had started to delve into this conversation about the department of justice and they have now asked the inspector general to expand their current review in the wake of the president s tweet request. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein releasing this statement saying, quote, if anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action. it is worth remembering this tough talk rosenstein had a few weeks ago about some republicans impeachment threats against him. i can tell you there were people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite sometime. and i think they should understand by now, the department of justice is not going to be stoextorted. we re going to do the rule of law. any threats anybody makes is not going to affect the way we do our job. so, ken dilanian, you have been spending probably far too much of your weekend reporting on this story, but we very much appreciate it. i m hoping that you can kind of cut through what has been i think a very confusing thing for people to try to sort through here. the department of justice clearly coming under incredible pressure now from the sitting president. what do you make of the statement, the fact that the department of justice and rosenstein himself came out, felt that they had to respond to it, and in what context would you put the degree of significance? i think this is a very shrewd move by rod rosenstein because who can argue with is that statement? of course they should take a look and see whether anything was inappropriate about this placement of an informant. it s a huge deal. let s not kid ourselves. the idea that first, trump said there was a spy in the campaign. that s not what happened. clearly there was an informant who went to talk to americans who worked for a presidential campaign sent by the fbi, potentially other intelligence agencies. that is a major deal. it is perfectly important for the inspector general to scrutinize that. can you imagine the levels of approval that would have taken, the attorney general of the united states to make that happen? they re critical about the steps they take. the reason is they were deeply concerned about potential russian infiltration over members of the trump campaign. that s what this investigation is about and that s what we ll find at the end of the day a. were they looking for or did they feel they had evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the parts of these people in the campaign? we don t know the answer to that but let s remember this began as a counter intelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. really what they were trying to figure out is were the russians exercising improper influence over any of these people? were these agents agents of a foreign power which has its own definition of law and allows for its own kind of surveillance. one of the techniques they do is they send informants to talk to people and potentially record their conversations and see if they re going to incriminate themselves. and have we, to our current public historical knowledge, have we ever seen anything like this before in history sfla no, i don t think we have. there is no precedent we know of for this happening, and it speaks to the level of significance of this investigation. but what i also find amazing is the fbi let voters go to the polls in this election without disclosing that they had suspicions that some members of the trump team were agents of a foreign power. that s a decision that will go down in history and will be debated for years to come. yeah, of course in the context of them talking more than they normally do about the hillary clinton investigation. mark lauder, i want to talk to jake sherman about how some of this came out vis-a-vis the house and their pressure, but from the administration s perspective, i realize you re not there day to day any more, but in your conversations with people that you worked with, what is the sense behind the scenes in the white house of how significance this is? obviously we re dealing with a new cycle where the president tweets and we rocket from one thing to the next to the next. this strikes me as something that potentially has a bigger, more lasting as ken pointed out historical significance. how angry are the white house and aides about this? the president is frustrated about it rightfully so. from an anger standpoint, i think they re sharing the just the sheer shock of the matter like many of the american people that the fbi used a foreign someone who is connected to the intelligence community, both the american and british intelligence communities sent them in to spy on the trump campaign and that is something we have never seen before. and it s at a historic level and something concerning. jake sherman, let s talk about how some of this has come about because of mark meadows has, and company, have gone to war with rod rosenstein and have been pressuring the department of justice on a whole host of things. and to our knowledge the speaker, paul ryan, seems to be going along with it. there had been some pull back when it seemed as though the white house was willing to try and protect sources and methods. but that clearly has blown up now. yeah, it s really fascinating you kind of have a trio of republicans, devin nunes, mark meadows and jim jordan who have been beating the drum very loudly on capitol hill. even when it seems like the white house wants to play it cautiously and wants to play it carefully and the president is definitely receiving counsel that he ought to play it carefully, you have these three guys that have the president s ear, especially meadows and jordan and nunes who is close to the speaker of the house paul ryan who has been his friend almost two decades. so, it helps in the sense that he has this back up. he has this kind of echo chamber that will go on tv, these three guys who will go on tv and say what he wants them to say and kind of i think helps spur them along a little bit. kimberly atkins, you ve been reporting on this all day. what are you learning from your sources behind the scenes at the white house? it s unclear. we don t know what the president means by this tweet. we don t know if he s going to ask for some sort of formal criminal probe or whether this i.g. report that deputy director rosenstein said he would undergo would be enough. we don t know if this is just because it s sunday and he was home and had a lot of executive time and he was angry about this, or if this could lead to some sort of constitutional crisis tomorrow if he asks deputy attorney general rosenstein to do something that he doesn t want to do, and perhaps it leads to the sort of a new saturday night massacre, monday morning massacre, if you will. so people are waiting to see exactly what this means. there is still a lot of unknowns, but there is a lot of concern that this could be a big deal. ken dilanian, the president seemed to have some of his facts not totally right on friday when he was tweeting about this. at least that s what i talked to several white house officials over the weekend who essentially said that, wow, okay, parts of the tweets that were not 100% on point, that the president clearly understood the overall implication of this. do we have any indication how the president learned about this? was it just news reports? was it some other way? we ve also been doing some reporting on our team about rand paul talking about the cia and all of this. i mean, where do the facts stop and we tip over into that s a good question. we don t have clarity. we know devin nunes has been trying to get some of this information from the justice department. he s in a fight with them. he wants the name of the informant. the justice department has been resisting that. at the same time you have news reporting going on including by me. i published a story on friday about a professor who fits the profile of the person the times and the post later, hours later named as the informant. our story says we aren t saying this guy is the informant, we haven t confirmed he s the informant. there are people talking around this investigation about various people who met with george papadopoulos and carter page and who those people thought were suspicious encounters. so, it s not clear how donald trump knew, but it s not surprising that this is coming out. we are just getting started tonight. still to come, inside another meeting that donald trump, jr. had at trump tower and that is also raising eyebrows. plus, we ll talk about stalled efforts to improve school safety and gun safety when former secretary of education arne duncan joins me exclusively. plus the house passed major sexual misconduct legislation. why is the senate dragging its feet in bringing those sweeping changes? my conversation with senator kiersten gillibrand. kasie d.c. back right after this. uhp. i didn t believe it. again. ooh, baby, do you know what that s worth? i want to believe it. 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and there were briefings given to the trump campaign about counter intelligence threats and what who you should and shouldn t meet with. but, look, this is a hugely significant development in this story, i think, kasie, because what we have here essentially is two additional very wealthy and powerful countries that appear to have tried to influence the american election. whether crimes were committed or not, and mueller is investigating that. and there is a question as to whether the saudis and the marauders were working with the russians because there are long-standing ties between the nati nations and their intelligence services. look at what the saudis and emirates have gotten from the trump election. siding with them in the dispute against qatar, the saudi leader puts his enemies in the ritz karld t carl ton. they said little about t. this is going to come into play. this is a hard story for people to understand, but as it permeates the consciousness we ll realize what a significant development this is. mark, how do you explain what ken is talking about here? i look at it as it looks like a company that was obviously affiliated with foreign interests pitched an idea to the campaign about influencing social media. shouldn t the campaign have called the fbi or at least let somebody know or know not to take meetings like that? i mean, let s set aside the uae for a second. ken s good point. this is still an israeli social media specialist saying i ll build these tools for you to help you win. it seems like on its face that s illegal. you get these requests from just about every political consultant. would you have taken that meeting? would you have advised the vice-president i would not have taken that meeting. that s my decision to not do that. right. you know, i think this is just trying to make connections and but having worked in politics for many years, you would have, had you gotten this request, you feel as though you would have felt it was suspicious and something perhaps that would be ill-advised? i can t speak to that. i probably would have not taken the meeting. if i did, i probably would have taken their multi-million dollar idea and gone to my american digital company and said, what do you think of this and what can we do with it to make it work through the proper channels? but so, i don t make a lot of this. when it comes to the connections ken was talking about some of the actions there are very real reasons why a lot of these things were done with uae, with saudi arabia, the decisions that were made. they ve been very supportive of getting out of the iran deal, which the president was strong on saying that. so i think while we can try to make connections that are broader, i think when you look at the actual policy decisions that have been made, the president has been very clear for why he made the decisions that he s made. it has nothing to do with a meeting in august of 2016 with a couple of business projects in mind. ken dilanian, we have to go here. i m going to let you go for the evening, but very quickly, of all of the news that s broken out the last three days, what do you think is the development we are still going to be talking about that will be the most significant? i actually think the informant issue because it s so historically significant as we discussed. it shows the lengths to which the fbi was going to investigate this. some people will criticize it, some people will praise it. it s a meaningful development, kasie. ken dilanian, appreciate your insights. just ahead, education secretary arne duncan said students should stay home from school until gun laws are changed. he joins me live. that s up next. it s just a burst pipe, i could fix it. 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they were like, they don t know. then after that we heard more shots and the teacher screamed at us to run. so, everyone started running, taking offer. i heard four more shots. i jumped the students fence and ran to the car wash. some girl got shot in the kneecap apparently and she was limping towards us. we were scared for our lives. nobody should go through this. nobody who feel that in school. this is the place we re supposed to feel safe. those were just a few of the heart breaking recollections of friday s mass shooting at santa fe high school in texas. ten people, eight students and two teachers, were killed when a 17-year-old gunman opened fire. the state department confirmed yesterday that among the victims was sabika, a pakistani exchange student. here s one of her classmates describing the last time she saw her. we ran into the classroom. sabika were with me. other people couldn t make it in the room. we closed the doors. she was coming into the class that we were in so we all ran. i didn t see her. i didn t look back and see her behind me running. all i know, last time i saw her. sabika was just 17 years old. jake sherman, we are having this conversation yet again this year. and nothing in the wake of all of the shootings we have sat here and discussed, nothing has happened in the congress. and it seems as though that s likely what s going to happen again. yeah, that s right. but i will say i do notice, and you probably notice this, too, but there is a sentiment among republican members of congress, i think it s a creeping sentiment that they are on the wrong side of this. so many republicans have told me off the record that they are worried that they are losing a generation of voters who are growing up in these in this climate where school shootings are regular. that no one that i ve spoken to on capitol hill there were a few who believe there is really no one that believes arming teachers is a solution to this. there s no federal there s no way congress will pass anything like that. so, what do you do? and i think that s the question a lot of republicans are grappling with. i had one republican tell me, i think it was on the record, but i ll leave it off the record out of an abundance of caution. if trump took a consistent position on this which is we need to do something and here s what i want to do, it would it could get through congress. i think that people are waiting for that and he s gotten close to that line, but then walks it back and goes in another direction. the last time he tagsled tck this, he went too far and it spooked people who support gun rights. i want to show our viewers, to your point, about the sentiment on this issue changing. here was the republican governor of texas talking about the shooting. take a look. we need to do more than just pray for the victims and their families. it s time in texas that we take action to step up and make sure this tragedy is never repeated ever again. mark lauder, that s language that democrats have been using more often than republicans. but this is the second time we ve seen governor rick scott in florida, also republican, do the same thing. and then the question is what do you do? saying we need to do something, but you need to identify what it is that you re going to do. because if we re talking about the proposals following the tragedy in parkland, none of those things would have stopped the tragedy in santa fe because it wasn t a semiautomatic or an assault rifle. it wasn t not something a background check would have caught because this is a teenager who it was illegal for him to have a gun. he got them from his father or took them from his father who legally obtained them. it s illegal to saw off a shotgun. it s illegal to take a gun on a school. none of those laws stopped this and so what can we do? is the question. i think republicans are struggling with a broader picture here. they are struggling with the influence of the nra and the growing sentiment among young people that the gun culture in our country needs to change. and while for a long time the nra support has sustained them in a very appreciable way, they are understanding there is a ground swell of change and they re trying to sort of seems, trying to moderator move their message a little bit. i don t think that the changes are going to happen in congress or even in the state houses. it s going to happen with the culture of the country and if the republicans find themselves on the wrong side of that, they ll have big problems for a long time. to talk more about this, i want to bring in former education secretary under president obama, arne duncan. secretary dunk an also served as the ceo of chicago public schools. now he s managing partner at the emerson collective. mr. secretary, it s nice to see you tonight. thank you for your time. good evening. thanks so much for having me. let s start where we left this conversation off. you are pushing for and you can explain this as well students to essentially say, i m not going to back to school unless i feel safe. do you think it s at the point where the ground swell might be enough politically because it s affecting such a wide array of students of children in america that there could be significant changes on something that s been so calcified here in washington? well, i think we have to create a tension that hasn t existed yet. only that kind of creative tension can push people to confront an issue they ve been able to run away from, hide from so long. there is a fork in the road as a nation. either this body count, this loss of life, the killing of innocent children is acceptable or it s not. if we decide it s unacceptable, then we have to do some things we have never done before because everything done to this point has been a failure, has been ineffective. it s time to think much more radically. time to do things differently if we want to breakthrough and make not just our children, but every citizen of america much safer than they are today. so, what should be done? i mean, one of our panelists has raised the point, every time something like this happens, legislation is proposed that is often targeted to change a database or ban a bump stock. but at the end of the day, those measures in the most recent extreme we have dealt with would not have stopped in this particular situation. if even those small changes can t get through, i mean, how is it possible that something more sweeping could be done? well, again, we have to be much more radical than we ever have so we can t just keep doing the same things. so, teachers have walked out and had strikes to raise pay which is absolutely the right thing to do. our young people led by florida have walked out. it s time for us as parents, it s time for us to step out. we re failing to protect our children and say enough is enough. something has to happen. and you think about, again, it s a radical idea, it s controversial. it is intentionally provocative. you think about as we go back to school after labor day with the november election right behind that, what if the young people were to say, we re not going back to school, what if young people and their parents would work together to try to get major legislation passed. if it works, fantastic. if it doesn t, hold those elected officials accountable. we have to do something so different than we have other ever done if we expect different results. what would you propose the legislation should include that could stop these things? it s very simple. again, it s not going to stop every shooting. your point is well taken. there are some basic things that are wildly supported across the political spectrum today. criminal background checks, banning weapons of war, assault weapons, putting money into the impact of gun violence research behind that. those are things that are universally backed that would be so effective in reducing many, many shootings. i have to say i get so frustrated people say we should harden schools. here s my question, here s my retort to that. how do we harden recess? how do we harden dismissal time? how do we harden bus trips? tougher question. how do we harden summer? places like right here in chicago where we see violence is way too high, we can t do that. we have to do something practical about guns, about the easy availability of guns. the united states has 4% of the population and 42% of guns. the level of violence, the left of heart break, the level of tragedy is directly proportional to the universal access to gnun to anyone who wants them. are there school safety measures you would support or urge democrats to support? for instance proposals about fewer entrances, other basic things that have been applied to our airports and other places? yeah, that s all taken around the mar jintgins. let me be clear. more than 99.7% of people killed by guns last year were not in schools. so, we can talk about school safety, but we have to talk about movie theaters. we have to talk about concerts. we have to talk about malls. we have to talk about people who are worshipping in church. we have to talk about congressmen who are playing baseball on a baseball field. so, all of that, again, is just minor. it s tinkering. it s almost a smoke screen. we have to look at the real issue. and i will say that our young people led by students from parkland, florida, south and west sides of chicago, june 15th are going to start to lead a march, going to start to fan out across the country. do voter registration. do town halls. our young people hopefully coupled, partnered with us as parents have to step up, take the country in a radically different way. this level of carnage, this level of heart break is unacceptable. it just cannot continue. we have to do something radically different as a country. and we are, of course, already seeing heightened voter registrati registration numbers among young people. thank you for your time tonight. really appreciate it. thank you. just ahead, states of play pits two staceys against each other in georgia. going to take you inside the jaw-dropping race for governor when we come back. uhp. i didn t believe it. again. ooh, baby, do you know what that s worth? 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[ claps hands ] ooh i m not hearing the confidence. okay, hold the name your price tool. power of options based on your budget! and! we ll make heaven a place on earth yeah! oh, my angels! ooh, heaven is a place on earth [ sobs quietly ] ooh, heaven is a place on earth i want some more of it. i try so hard, i can t rise above it don t know what it is bout that little gal s lovin . applebee s new bigger bolder grill combos. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. this is bill s yard. and bill has a no-weeds, not in my yard policy. but with scotts turf builder weed & feed, bill has nothing to worry about. it kills weeds and greens grass, guaranteed. this is a scotts yard. savings on the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it senses your every move and automatically adjusts on both sides to keep you effortlessly comfortable. and snoring.. does your bed do that? right now during our semi-annual sale save up to $700 on sleep number 360 smart beds. ends soon. with my bladder leakage, the products i ve tried just didn t fit right. they were very saggy. it s getting in the way of our camping trips. but with new sizes, depend fit-flex is made for me. introducing more sizes for better comfort. new depend fit-flex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit. the dccc lost his primary to a more progressive candidate. she is running on medicare for all. in georgia, intense primaries for governor will reach critical mass on tuesday. the democrats there are both named stacy and even showed up to a recent debate wearing basically the same shade of blue. i have to say i sympathize that is totally happened to me before. this race has exposed, however, a divide within the party. joining me now from atlanta is political reporter for the atlanta journal constitution greg. greg actually finished moderating both party s debates today. greg, let s start by talking about the democratic race. it s gotten very intense. for viewers who haven t been following this day to day minute to minute the way you have, what do these two women each represent and where are they divided? well, they represent a test of competing strategies in georgia. stacy evans is more of a conventional democratic strategy in georgia. she s going after moderate suburban independent voters who used to be democrats, who steadily fled to the republican party. she thinks by leveraging trump and appealing about the hope scholarship which is a popular lottery funded scholarship in georgia she can start winning them over. stacy abrams says that is a recipe for disaster. the last four democratic candidates for governor tried the same approach and failed. she is hoping to energize a new generation of left-leaning voters many of them minorities who rarely cast ballots in these elections by trying to appeal to them on a left leaning platform and someone who would be the first female black governor in the u.s. history. greg, i want to show our viewers a little part of that debase that you moderated. here s one of the questions from today. your opponent argued your strategy in this campaign is all wrong, that you are not working to convert the right voters, and then there is that whisper campaign that suggests that statewide georgia will not elect a single african-american female as governor. how do you respond to those attacks? i don t think my skin color, my marital status or my background other than the background of being someone who has worked hard to serve georgia for the last 11 years should be the deciding factor. the bottom line is this. i am the most qualified candidate, democrat or republican, running for this office. so, some dog whistling there about her marital status and, you know, this potential question that the democratic party is grappling with broadly we heard bernie sanders talking about at the beginning of our segment which is to say if they nominate somebody who is farther to the left, can a, basically red, maybe turning purple state like georgia elect somebody like that statewide? what s your take? that s the big question because on the republican side there is a five-man field and they are being drawn even further right than what we re seeing in georgia. there is always a race to the right in georgia politics in the republican primary. this is a very far race to the right. there is a question of who can appeal to those candidates in the center. who can sort of answer that goldilocks problem come november. and it s happening on both sides because the democratic candidates are also being drawn to the left. again, we have had generation, at least a generation of centrist sounding democratic candidates who run as nra democrats, pro gun. now for the first time both democratic candidates stacy evans and stacy abrams are calling vocally for gun control. jimmy carter s grandson cast himself as an nra democrat. i was going to say most of our viewers remember the last democrat or one of the democrats on the national stage jimmy carter. let s talk about the republicans. i m glad you brought it up because in the closing days of this race, a number of republican candidates have been focusing on illegal immigration. i m brian kemp. i m so conservative i blow up government spending. i own guns that no one s taking away. my chainsaw is ready to rip up some regulation. i got a big truck just in case i need to round up criminal illegals and take them home myself. yep, i just said that. brian kemp just said that. offering a truck to deal with illegal immigration. candidate michael williams, not to be outdone, upped the ante with a bus. a deportation bus, seen here experiencing engine trouble on the side of the highway. and here is michael williams in an interview with reporter doug richards from nbc s atlanta affiliate 11 alive. please note, his press flag off to the side. you re not breaking the law? what s there to be scared of? are you scared of it? so, if i saw this bus coming through and i was an immigrant, would you see that as being provocative? no, absolutely not. this country was based upon immigration. we wouldn t have america if it wasn t for lawful legal immigration. so, the issue isn t immigrants or legal immigration. it s those coming to our country with complete disreexpect for our laws coming here illegally. what about color? i don t care [ bleep ]. is it color? i did say color. i don t care what color you are. clearly. i m going to have to bleep you out. no, no, the back of the bus says mexico, right? okay, carry on. doesn t the back of the bus say mexico? is this interview going to bleep your own bias, i have to feel that s where we re going. is that the case? i m asking reasonable questions of your candidate. chop it all up. reasonable is not asking about color. yes, it is. it is reasonable to ask about color when how? because the back of the bus says mexico on it so you re talking about particular types of immigrants. the majority of our illegal immigrants seth, i don t know why you and i argue. doug richards, our political reporter. we should know that gentleman, michael williams, is very far back in the polls. mark lauder, i would like to ask you is this clearly these candidates are chasing president trump and his rhetoric on immigration. but is this a healthy future path for the republican party, especially if in these primaries these candidates keep getting pushed so far on this issue? primaries generally push the voters to the extremes in both parties. that seems like a pretty pushing to the extreme. deportation bus. what i would tell you, the leading candidates from what i understand are focusing on an economic message. while they are showing their support for the president, georgia is a very economically diverse state. it s successful. there is a message to keep that going especially with the national economy right now. obviously you ve got candidates from the outside who are trying to get themselves a bump to the polls here at the last minute. not sure on either side it s going to work. greg lucine, do you have a prediction for how your election is going to play out? brian kemp, you saw his first commercial, he put that million dollars behind that commercial and another provocative commercial. the poll got him into second place. he might be the front runner for the number two spot in the runoff, so, you know, one of my colleagues who wrote a column saying basically deportation bus for michael williams might not be going forward, but the deportation truck will still be rolling through the summer. so, i don t think we ve heard the last of brian kemp. greg, i m looking forward to your reporting the next week. kimberly atkins, mark lauder, thank you. just ahead, kiersten gillibrand and ted cruz are sponsors of a bill that can t get a vote in the senate. my sit-down with the senator from new york up next. but not so much about what market volatility may do to their retirement savings. that s because they have a shield annuity from brighthouse financial, which allows them to take advantage of growth opportunities in up markets, while maintaining a level of protection in down markets. so they can focus on new things like exotic snacks. talk with your advisor about shield annuities from brighthouse financial- established by metlife. 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and that s why exxonmobil scientists think it s not small at all. energy lives here. let someone else do the heavy lifting. tripadvisor compares prices from over 200 booking sites to find the right hotel for you at the lowest price. so you barely have to lift a finger. or a wing. tripadvisor. .the only eye drop. .approved for the signs. .and symptoms of dry eye. because dry eye can mean. .more than. .just dryness. xiidra may provide lasting relief. .starting in two weeks. one drop in each eye, twice a day. don t use if you are allergic to xiidra. common side effects include eye irritation, discomfort or blurred vision when applied to the eye, and unusual taste sensation. don t touch container tip to your eye. .or any surface. after using xiidra, wait 15 minutes. .before reinserting contacts. chat with your eye doctor. .about xiidra. welcome back to kasie dc. in the annals of the things you may have frorgten but we haven t. new allegations against a celebrity figure. celebrity chef is under investigation for possible misconduct. it was reported by 60 minutes you may have forgotten what happened on the front in washington, but again we haven t. months after a wave of sexual harassment allegations swept across capitol hill the senate has not acted on a plan to overhaul the outdated reporting system. now more than 100 days after the house passed its bill, senator kirsten gillibrand is trying to force the issue and make the senate do the same. enough is enough. we ve waited 100 days. this is widely bipartisan. we have to fix the rules here. it is broken. today if you are harassed in one of these houses, you might have to wait up to three months to even report it because there s a month of mediation, a month of counseling, a month of cooling off. it s outrageous you shouldn t have to wait three months to report. the second thing that needed to be fixed is taxpayers are paying for these settlements. if you have a member of congress found to be responsible, the taxpayer pays that settlement, that s not right. what s the sticking point? i m not sure. i m working with a bipartisan group of senators right now who are trying to negotiate a final resolution to get a bill on the vote and vote for it as early as next week. there might be people out there that look at this and says if someone is elected to congress and sexually harasses someone, they should have to pay the money out of their own pockets, not the taxpayers. exactly. that s what the bill does. it would be the only thing appropriate in these circumstances. you need to hold the members of congress if they re harassing people in their office. this has come to the forefront this year, most recently the attorney general in your state stepping down. you also called for senator al franken to step down, you took significant backlash for that. do you have any regrets? no. sometimes these cases come with people you have trusted and maybe loved, but you have to be able to have clarity on this, even when it s hard. especially when it s hard. that s why we need transparency accountability with regard to our attorney general he did do the right thing stepping down. but those allegations of violence were horrific. so we need a full and complete investigation. one question this has raised for a lot of at least democratic women i ve talked to who work in and around campaigns is sometimes they feel their politicians run and their sometimes their male politicians have, in schneiderman s case, he backed the me too movement. said this is something i want to fight against. and you find out that conduct is still being carried out. do you think the democratic as a whole needs to do soul searching. the question comes down to do we value women? if we don t, we won t take these cases seriously. we have to hold people accountable and i ve been looking on changing the rolls in all institutions. if you can t hold the favored, the powerful accountable, then you re not going to be able to stick up for that woman who may never be in a place she can call out her perpetrator. the me too movement is really just the beginning. we have to fix the problems we have where it s built to protect perpetrators, congress is that. what do you say to people who look at this and say she s running for president in 2020. this is something i ve worked on each in institution that prey on women and don t value them. i ve been working on it in all of these contexts on a bipartisan basis for many years. hillary clinton, obviously, failed to crack the glass ceiling first in 2008 and then in 2016, do you think a woman could get elected in 2020? without a doubt. i think what hillary clinton accomplished inspired women worldwide to say i can run for the toughest job and ask women and girls to strive for their ambition and the leaderships and opportunities they should take. my thanks to senator kirsten gillibrand for that conversation. when we come back, ben wittes joins us to talk about president trump s attempt to force the issue of with the doj. wish we got money back on gym memberships. get money back hilarious. with claim-free rewards. switching to allstate is worth it. this is bill s yard. and bill has a no-weeds, not in my yard policy. but with scotts turf builder weed & feed, bill has nothing to worry about. it kills weeds and greens grass, guaranteed. this is a scotts yard. the kayak explore tool shows you the places you can fly on your budget. so you can be confident you re getting the most bang for your buck. alo-ha. kayak. search one and done. with dell small businessout your technology advisors you get the one-on-one partnership you need to grow your business. the dell vostro 15 laptop. contact a dell advisor today. no matter when you retire, ensure you still have income
and other countries are taking advantage of that. what do you think about the scope of our presence at some of these rule setting meetings? what are your plans for the future? senator, we need to be there. we need to be active. we need to be capable. we need to be value added. we need to come prepared to engage and work for america s interests in these multilateral discussions. i think you described wto in this article. sounds like we share that sentiment. i couldn t tell you why we weren t there. i don t know if it was an absence of people or the absence of focus. i view those as important to get the international rule of law that s in accord with our view and not the chinese view in that particular instance. you have concerns and i will do my best to make sure we re there and we re capable. appreciate it, that answer. i want to get a little bit of clarification with respect to an answer that you gave senator menendez at the outset coming back to that meeting with the president on march 22nd. senator menendez has asked you director to separate each and every element of that. there s just it is a minefield, senator murphy. i want to be i want to be on the far side of the line with making sure that i don t create challenges for the special counsel s office, for the two legislative committees they re engaged in this. so with all due respect, i just i think there were things that relate to the special counsel anyway by refusing to condemn attacks on the special counsel i mean, really over the line attacks that aren t shared by republicans here in congress, you are frustrating the work of the special counsel because you re associating yourself with some very poisonous political attacks. senator, i have worked diligently myself and i have put demands on the team that works for me to go out of our way to make sure we were delivering for each of those three investigations. it is difficult. they ve asked for complexion information that was classified. we ve shared information that goes well beyond what has previously been shared. we ve done so with the am of ensuring that the special counsel and the senate intelligence, house intelligence committee have the information they need to conduct their investigations and you should know we ll do that today and tomorrow and if i m confirmed at the state department, there as well. in the time i have remaining, coming back to the authorization question in syria. you said you bleach telieve the president has the authority to strike syrian forces. what is the what statutory authorization do you draw on to make, to come to that conclusion? senator, i believe that the president has that authority. he certainly has it under article two of the constitution. what s the limiting factor, then, with respect to article two powers? if he can strike syrian forces with no existing statutory authorization? senator, there are rings of law review articles written in answer to that very question. it gets it s a highly fact-based analysis. there are scores of attorneys strewn throughout the cia, throughout the state department, throughout the white house. give me one limiting factor. yes, senator, i would if you go if you make a commitment, right, if you make a commitment that would be traditionally viewed as a class cat case for war, then the constitutions are required. this has been a tussle for the legislatist branch for an awfully long time. you know my views. i think it was senator kaine who said coming from the place you do have deep respect for what it is you all are looking for. normally a limiting factor would be an imminent threat or attack on the u.s. there s a very definition in the war powers act. there s statutory definition that s contained there as well. i can t recite it it s an attack the war powers refers to an attack on the united states. there s been no attack on the united states from the syrian regime, correct? senator, that s correct. and there s no imminent threat of attack on the united states from the syrian regime. i m just trying to be very careful. yes, i think that s correct. at the end of my time, but i don t think we re to the bottom of this question yet, thank you. senator, i m trying to you re asking me today to conduct complex legal analysis with legal conclusions and so i do want i know what s important and so i m trying to do my best. i m at the same time trying to make sure i don t have some statement i made i understand i parsed the language correctly. to the extent there s not an identifiable constraint on article two power, we re out of the business of declaring war. if i could, i ll use another 30 seconds of my time. i think that even on this committee, there s wide disagreement over that. i know senator sheehan and myself, i saw public statements over last few days. both agree that the president has the ability to make surgical strikes. president obama carried on for months activities against libya i disagreed with on policy basis, but he had that authority to do so. least he claimed he did. so look, i think this is a subject of debate. and i think it s proven of our witness to not try to analyze the very details of that on our own committee. we would debate that on both sides of the aisle at length. but i thank you for having this conversation. we ll look forward to having the follow up. thank you, chairman. director, congratulations for your nomination. thank you for your service to the nation. thanks for coming by and visiting with me. taking the time to discuss the critical issues of national security. and i concur completely with you and the presidential authority to use a military force in syria. i wanted to stay with syria for a few moments if i could. because what we ve seen assad has continued to use chemical weapons, killing thousands. we have been following the senate foreign relations committee hearing for president trump s nomination for secretary of state mike pompeo. we will go back to that hearing in just a moment. we have some breaking news to bring you. in the last hour, president trump talked about syria. he said that he is still having meetings about what action the united states might take against the assad regime there. and that a decision will be made fairly soon. courtney kube joins me now with some breaking news that the president and his team will certainly be taking into account. courtney what have we found out? well, my colleague ken dilanian and i have learned today the u.s. now has blood and urine samples from some of the victims in this attack in syria last weekend and those samples according to u.s. officials tested positive for chemicals, both chlorine the majority were chlorine but there were also some that tested positive for a nerve agent. they re not saying for certain whether that was sarin. but historically the syrian regime has used a combination of chlorine and sarin. there s also other intelligence that has come in now that is pointing to this. u.s. officials are now fairly confident that, in fact, this was the syrian regime that carried out this attack, craig. so one thing to keep in mind is a pattern that we ve seen out of the syrian regime. when they re attacking an area, going after an area, they will pound it with mortars, with artillery, for weeks, for months, however long it takes to take back the area. when they get towards the end, when it look like the area s about to fall for the regime, they have historically, you know, in the past they have used chemical weapons to be sort of the last straw that breaks the camel s back, that takes out an area. what we have seen now is that in fact that region that area where this chemical weapons attack was carried out over the weekend has now fallen to the regime. that would be consistent with their past behavior. what we now know is there are blood and urine samples that have come from victims of this attack over the weekend and they have tested positive for chemical weapons, craig. as you are certainly aware, the syrian the official syrian line is that it wasn t them. we heard from the ambassador to the united nations earlier today and yesterday. to what degree of certainty are these officials confident that it was, in fact, bashar al assad who was behind these attacks? well, you ll often hear intelligence officials talk about level of confidence in a low-level or high-level. the people i spoke with were not willing to characterize it as one or another. they would not give me the actual analysis. but they are saying now they have increasing evidence that, in fact, it was the syrian regime that carried this out. you ll recall last april in 2017 the sarin gas attack that they responded to by hitting a syrian airfield. there was overhead, there was photos of a crater in the road. after the tomahawk strikes, u.s. military spoke about how they had evidence of how the chemicals, when they after they were struck, after they struck, how they dissipated into the area. we don t have that kind of specificity at this point. we are hearing more and more now that there s more confidence that, in fact, it was the syrian regime that carried out this attack. there have also been some talk that other countries were conducting similar tests on samples. do we know any more about that? not from any of the u.s. allies. we no thknow that opcw, an international monitoring organization, has been granted the authority to come in and test. one group we ve heard from is the russians. they said they ve gone in on the ground and vehaven t found any evidence of chemicals. now it seems the united states has something that is more tangible. people might be wondering where does the u.s. get this? there s not any u.s. military on the ground operating near this area where this attack occurred last weekend. but they often will get samples from, you know, other u.s. elements that might be on the ground there. they get them from ngos, from human rights groups that in the area. historically, they have been able to get these kinds of samples that allow them to run forensics after an attack. all right, breaking news here, again, from courtney kube, our military national security correspondent there in d.c. syrian samples testing positive for chemical weapons. that according to at least two sources, two official sources. the question now of course becomes what next. we will continue to follow that story. for now, let s go back to the confirmation hearing for mike pompeo. this of course president trump s nominee to be secretary of state. historic analysis there is not optimistic. that is, it is a almost a talsman. that there is not enough coercion. there is not enough capacity for kim jong-un to make the decision to give up his nuclear weapons arsenal. i hope that tailsman is wrong. that s the effort we ve been engaged in. your point about the sanctions is relevant about a chance to talk to a whole handful of people who were involved in the six-party talks. in each case america and the world released the sanctions too quickly. we didn t have the verifiable deal we hoped we had had. and in each case the north koreans walked away from that deal. the intention of the president and administration to not do that. before we provide rewards we get the outcome. it is a tall order. but i am hopeful president trump can achieve that through sound diplomacy personally and through the offices of the state department. the final question with regard to human rights, the rule of law, i appreciate your opening statement and the comments about your commitment to human rights around the world. because if we don t who will. you know, secretary of state, again, your commitment to promoting and protecting these principles across the globe are key so i appreciate your comments. thank you. senator. thank you very much. earlier it was note ed thd that oath, you ve taken it several times, to support and defend the constitution. recently, president trump has talked about a domestic enemy. saying that the execution of a search warrant by the u.s. law enforcement authorities on michael cohen s office constitutes an attack, i quote, an attack on our country in a true sense. do you agree that is an attack on our country? senator, i have always believed the rule of law matters. i continue to believe that. multiple times, individuals have asked me to comment on statements that others have made. friends of mine have made. adversaries of mine have made. those who are coming after me. today, things that i believe. i believe deeply in the rule of law and will continue to do so. do you think that the rule of law does enable appropriate warrants? absolutely. thank you. turning to north korea, john bolton said it s legitimate for the u.s. to respond to the current necessity by striking first. secretary defense mattis had a different view. saying war with north korea would be catastrophic. do you lean more towards john bolton s view or secretary of defense mattis view? i lean more closely to the president s view. which is to continue the pressure campaign. to build a coalition. a diplomatic coalition around the world. to put pressure on kim jong-un such that we can achieve the united states goals without ever having to put one of our young men and women in harm s way. does the president have the constitutional authority to conduct a first strike on north korea without authorization from congress? senator, again, i m not going to comment on a hypothetical with complex legal matters. well, you ve done so before, back a while, when the question was in regard to committing resources in libya. you put out a statement regarding a letter to barack obama informing him the administration had been in violation of the war powers resolution unless authorization from congress is obtain order the military withdraws operations from libya by sunday, june 19th. and then you commented and you said specifically the country that country, libya, does not pose a threat to the united states, nor do we have vital interests there. did you believe, as you said then, that there is a constitutional limitation on the ability of the president to conduct war without an authorization from congress? yes. thank you. in that context not so long ago there is a lot of discussion that in regard to syria, if president obama put grounds on the troop in syria it would constitute a foundation for impeachment. we had members of the senate, including members of our armed services committee, members of the house and i ll just quote one of them, representative jones said no president, democratic republican, should have the authority to bypass the constitution or the will of the american people. he said if one of our troops goes to syria and is killed, i will introduce articles of impeachment. did you share the view it would be in violation of the constitution? senator, i don t recall if i did or if i made a statement with respect to that at that time. i simply don t recall. just to clarify, in the case of libya, you did see that there was a line being crossed? yes, senator, i believed that. the argument at that point was under our nato mutual defense and nato action, but you still felt that didn t give the foundation for action in libya? yes, senator, i believed what i think you said described as a letter, not a statement. i believe what i said in that statement. it is an issue of great concern here, the boundaries. certainly i think some of your earlier caution about presidents succeeding their constitutional authority are caution we d like to hear in your role as secretary of state. it s often the case when people make the journey. will you not forget the constitutional responsibilities? senator, i promise you, i will take equal consideration in the same way did i that day in 2011. as i have done in a cia director. i will continue to do that. john bolton noted it was legitimate for the u.s. to response to the current necessary posed by striking first. do you agree with that? senator, could you i m association might you repeat it? john bolton argued that it s legitimate for the u.s. to respond to north korea s nuclear weapons program by striking first. do you agree with that? again, i don t want to wade into a hypothetical about what conditions it might be appropriate, not appropriate. we re a long ways from that. john bolton argued that cuba was developing bye logical weapons and it was appropriate for the united states to go to war against cuba. did you agree with him? senator, i m not going to his words speak for himself. no, it speaks for him, but he s not here. you re here. i am deeply aware of that. there s a factual did you agree we should go to war with cuba? no, senator. how about i haven t at any time said we should go to war with cuba. how about in regard to his beliefs that hussein had hidden weapons of mass destruction and we should go to war with iraq? senator, i think i may not have expanded efetch ain t he. i ve read the history. the intelligence community had that assessment and was incorrect about its assessment at that time. i ll just note, the reason i m asking you these questions is there s a lot of concern in america and a lot of people are paying attention to this hearing. they re asking the fundamental question, are we assembling a war cabinet of john bolton and mike pompeo that are going to result in devastating counsel qu consequences and perhaps engaging in another poorly thought view mistake like our war on iraq that has resulted in a huge loss of american lives, a huge loss of american resources, enormous instability, including iran developing an enormous track of influence from iran through iraq through syria to lebanon and yemen and people want to know whether or not your views are close enough to boltons in his advocacy of force in virtually every situation, that we are going to have a very dangerous arrangement on the key two advisers to the president of the united states. if the chair will indulge. i really won t. many people have gone significantly over time and i m just one minute. well, since you re begging, go ahead. thank you. not begging. in fairness. senator, i m sorry, might i get you to reframe the question or ask the question one more time? i apologize. yes. many people in america you heard the question. just answer it. if the are you forming a war cabinet? yes, senator, i ve been part of this cabinet. i watched it thoughtfully deliberate about all of these things and i can tell you every day at the forefront of our mind is how can we find solutions that avoid us that achieve the american objective but avoid us putting a single american in harm s way. if i continue as a cia director, i will continue to hold that in the forefront of my mind. thank you, thank you very much. senator portland. thank you, mr. chairman. director pompeo, thank you for your willingness to step up and serve again. i imagine it s hard to leave the cia, given your tenure there, which was successful, where you ve built a lot of close relationships. but you re taking on a new task. it s a different task. cia is primarily an organization that informs policymakers. now you get to be a policymaker. i think you ve got a good background to do so. i m enjoyed getting to know you over the years. weep talked about some tough issues. we talked about soft power. and kind of the suggestions made today, a guy with your back ground, particularly military background, do you really believe in diplomacy and soft power? you ve got an impressive background. you were on the house intelligence committee. you were number one in your class at west point. you also went to harvard law school. i won t hold that against you. and you re magna cum laude, but you did serve in the military. you served as a cavalry officer patrolling, as i recall, the iron curtain at the time. and so i guess my question for you is, because there s been suggestions that you d be too quick to turn to military options, how would you respond to that? senator, i said this i can t recall if i read it this morning but it was certainly in my opening statement. there are few people like soldiers who appreciate diplomats and good diplomatic work. you train, you prepare, you want very much to be prepared if america calls upon you. but you are counting on the fact that there will be diplomats around the world resolving these challenge, pushing back on these conflicts, preventing the very activity given you you have my commitment you know who you sound like, you sound like colin powell. i ll take that as high praise. well, look, for those who wonder can you be a military officer and also be a good diplomat, i think he is someone who proves the point. highly regarded at the state department. combat officer. like yourself. someone who had a strong military background. and he was very effective at the diplomacy part. and of managing the foreign service as well. something you and i talked about a lot in our meeting was your management approach. and i told you i thought that our morale problem at the state department was real and we needed a fresh start there. i enjoyed working with secretary tillerson. i think his lack of appointees being confirmed by this body was one of the problems. but for whatever the reasons, there s a morale problem. and i m not going to ask you to repeat what you said to me in private. i was encourageld because you didn t talk about the drill sergeant. i heard that today. because i ve been i ve been listening as well today. and but you did in our meeting talk about the respect you have for the foreign service. and your beliefs that you cannot just improve that morale but get people motivated, feeling like they re important, make a difference. there s a lot of talk about libya today. and your views. there s talk about syria today and what s going on in terms of the decision making. let me broaden this a little bit and ask about something that our committee s struggling with right now. which is this notion that we have an aumf, the authorization for the use of military force, that dates back to 2001. and 2002. and has not been updated. how do you feel about that? do you think we should update the aumf? i do, senator. i actually was part of a team on the house side some years ago to that worked on that, worked with that on the white house. we weren t ultimately able to be successful. i do believe it is important that we achieve that. that we have a new set of leaders in the united states congress who also provide that authorization. i think the one we have works. i think it provides the authorities that the president needs today. but i would welcome working alongside you to achieve i think you used the term refreshed aumf. i think it s very important. honestly, i don t think it s not inappropriate to say that some in the administration have not been as forthcoming to try to get to a decision here. because a number of us believe that it ought to be flexible as to reach, as to groups. we do believe the president has inherent authorities within the constitution as commander and chief that need to be respected. but it s just not tenable to say we re relying on aumf that goes back to 2001. that was, you know, 17 years ago. so we would like to work with you on that. in our meeting, we talked about how russia and other countries, china included, have pursued extensive disinformation and propaganda campaigns. i think we re kind of missing out on that. both with the diplomatic front with the state department and the military front. it s kinetic, it s military but it s also disinformation. other countries have figured that out. most of them, like iran and russia and china and others are using north korea, using disinformation in a very sophisticated way. it wasn t just about our election, which i believe the russians did meddle in our election. and i think it s well beyond that. by the way it happened before, it s going to happen after, unless we do something about it. these operations use a range of tools, cyberattacks, hacking, troll farms. go on social media. they fund think tanks. organizations. senator and i have done a lot of work on this. to set up a global engagement center to give it the funding it needs to be able to push bag. i d like to know your views on that. specifically, do you agree with me on the severity of the threat that s posed by foreign government propaganda disinformation to u.s. interests and to our allies? yes, i do. i think it s a real threat. one that has been underappreciated for years now. it has become cheaper, faster, less attributable. so its power has increased the capacity for malign actors to use these information toolings in ways they just didn t have available to them 20, 30 years ago. it also makes stopping it more difficult. and require a more comprehensive effort. we ve had a small role at the central intelligence agency pushing back against it. and i know there s been lots of talk about the global engagement center. in the event i m confirmed, i promise you, i will put excellent foreign service officers, excellent civil service officers on the task of developing out that capability and using it his in a robust way. i m encouraged to hear that. we made progress getting some funds starting it up. will you commit to helping implement this in an aggressive way, including ensuring we have the right staff there to be able to pursue this critical mission? i will, senator porter. i just got back from ukraine. i only have a minute and a half left. i just got back from ukraine. and as you and i talked about, ukraine unfortunately is ground zero for what s going on to figure out the disinformation. but it s beyond that. i was out at the contact line and saw the military activities as well. do you support the continuation of providing defensive lethal weapons toe ukrainians? senator, i do. would never recognize the d annexation of crimecrimea? obviously, it would be a president s decision but yes, i think it would be completely inappropriate to do that. because of its aggression in campaign should remain until russia implements the agreement, halts its aggression? i do, senator. we re beginning the second round now. they ll be five minutes. i haven t heard from so you ready? might we take just five minutes? yes, we ll take a five-minute recessi and convene again at 1:40. thank you. we have been watching the senate foreign relations committee confirmation hearing of mike pompeo. we heard from senator corker. senator corker from tennessee, chairman of this committee. they re going to be taking a five-minute recession. while they do that, we will try and unpack some of this. the hearing started shortly after 10:00 this morning. trump s nominee facing questions on russia, facing a number of questions on the mueller investigation. also the rule of the state department itself. pompeo serving as a cia director, he was tapped to fill that slot at state after the resignation of mr. trump s first secretary of state rex tillerson. we call it a resignation but it would appear to most that mr. tillerson was ousted. joined, now, by nbc news capitol hill correspondent garrett haake. nbc news white house correspondent kelly o donnell. p.j. crowley, former assistant secretary of state under obama. wesley clark, former commander. and garrett, let me start with you. just outside that hearing room. what is the consensus so far there on mike pompeo s appearance? i think pompeo has probably helped himself so far today. has been the stance he s taken thus far on russia as a hostile actor in the united states corner of the world. and on beefg beefing up the state department in general. i want to play a little bit of sound of those kinds of moments just for a second. what behavior has the kremlin shown it indicates it wants to get along with the united states? please share it with me. senator, i take a back seat to no one with my views. threat that is presented to america from russia. will you argue that we need to go ahead and imt pliplement rest? yes, ma am, everyday. if i may take just a moment. please. there s more work to be done. there s more work to be done on other sanctions, provisions as well. vladimir putin has not yet received the message. i spoke with special counsel mueller who interviewed me. requested an interview. i cooperated. at statement department there are too many holes, too many unfilled positionings. everyone s stretched thin. craig, so if the russia pror portions of that tape will help pompeo with democrats. his other answers to questions about mueller, whether firing mueller, firing rosenstein would be a violation of the rule of law. he gave very noncommittal answers to the frustration of a number of the democrats on the committee. that could potentially still pose a problem. the answers about syria and the potential about the united states government to use force there is something that obviously was displeasing to some of the democrats and at least one republican rand paul who has said he plans to vote against pompeo s confirmation. i suspect we ll see senators trying to drill down when the second rounds gets started. also confusing to a lot of folks watching and listening. who have been following mike pompeo s career. one of the senators in the room noted when he was a congressman, he was opposed to the idea of a president unilaterally striking other countries without congressional approval. whether it be libya or syria. now all of a sudden, that s a position that seemed to have changed to a certain extent. p.j., let me come to you, sir. mike pompeo, is he a shoo-in? i don t think he s a shoo-in. but i think he has some shown that he is qualified to be, you know, the secretary of state. there are some, you know, questions. i thought senator booker had some very sharp questions about, you know, his personal views regarding things like gay rights and how that might influence how he manages his department or represents american values around the world. by the same token, i think he had he showed a strong institutional imperative in sharp contrast to rex tillerson. he understands the importance of resources. as we just talked about, he understands the importance of having a full team on the playing field. general, it was also interesting to hear mr. pompeo acknowledge that he does not have any evidence that iran has not been in compliance with a nuclear deal. general clark, what else has struck you so far? the first four hours of this hearing, 3 1/2 hours of this hearing? so i thought it was important that he said diplomacy first. use of force when diplomacy fails. i thought he struck very closely to the middle on this, on the issues of supporting the president s view. he wouldn t come down on bolton s side on some of these issues. i know there s concern about the president s authority to use force. democrats need to ask these questions. but the truth is presidents of both parties have used force without congressional authorization in the past. so i think we have to be very careful and whatever the concerns might be about the current president, still have to recognize that you have to preserve the authority of the office and so thus far from what i ve heard from pompeo, i think he s been very middle of the road. mr. pompeo, if confirmed, replaces rex tillerson who is a washington outsider to say the least. what do we know about how pompeo s leadership style would differ from a rex tillerson? well, i think you can see both in pompeo as well as in bolton definitely more alignment with the president on how to deal with issues like iran, taking a more hard line and more holistic stance, navigating around, but i think overall what you re seeing is this recalibration. recognizing this emerging great power competition with china with russia. that will increasingly become the focus in a host of spears from trade to security issues. syria is just a piece of that in that broader u.s./russia competition. i think we need to be looking of course at north korea and when we talk about arms control, this was something that the president raised a couple of days ago and the combination of the development of disruntive technology is creating a more unstable paradigm. you label that with a nonproliferation threat. and that really captures the picture of what bolton and pompeo are going to be focusing in on their recommendations to the president. what are you hearing from the white house on both how pompeo is doing and any plans for syria? well, i have been in the west wing. this is all through the different offices on television and favorable comments about the way he has possessed himself and responded. also important to remember mike pompeo, unlike prior cia directors, spent part of every day with the president, just about every day, personally delivering his daily briefing. in past administrations, it was often a high-level intelligence staffer. so going forward, if confirmed, pompeo would likely be seen around the world as somebody with a direct and close relationship with the president, something that did not exist in the tillerson era. something that did exist if you think back to clinton and rice with george w. bush. that relationship critically important. in terms of the syria issue, our reporting suggests a meeting this afternoon with the president and his top officials from the national security counsel to review the next days of options or to have an update. the president himself saying he would have a meeting today and that decisions would be made some time soon. so there is a sense here there is additional progress and discussion going on. not a sense of imminent action based on just observation in the west wing right now. there s been news that the president expected an adviser to look at rejoining tpp, the transpacific partnership that trade alliance if you will that he withdrew from roughly a year or so ago. what more do we know about that? well, it was intended to be a hedge against china in the world when the united states was part of the transpacific partnership. today meeting with lawmakers and governors who represent states that have a big agricultural presence. who fear the impact of china, u.s. trade, trade war or tough trade relations. so what the president did according to senators who were there is instruct kudlow, his new director of the economic council and u.s. lighthouser, the u.s. trade rep, to get to work on reconfiguring a transpacific partnership as a way of bringing the u.s. and allies in a power bluff to try to counteract the economic force of china. this is a big move when you consider the president very ceremoniesly got out of that agreement and of course he has been a trade centric president through much of his rhetoric as a candidate and now in office. all right, kelly, thank you. big thanks to all our panelists. let s go back in and listen. new jersey senator bob menendez questioning mike pompeo. just give me the elements so the other objective is to achieve a diplomatic outcome such as there s more stability. so this is a diplomatic task. so that we get to a place where the syrian people can ultimately govern themselves. our goal is to make that a post-assad syria one day. let me move to another part nearby in the world, iran. is it in the united states national security interest to withdraw from the agreement without a strategy for what comes next? senator, i m confident that whatever course the administration takes, we will have a strategy. so you re answering question it is in the national security interest to withdraw because you have a strategy? it is in the national security interest no matter which course we take on, we should develop a strategy to achieve the objectives that i think we all share to prevent iran from if the president unilaterally withdraws in may, what does the administration intend to do? what will you be recommending in terms of reinstituting the sanctions on iraq and on those countries who engage with iran? as an active policy discussion around all those issues and how this will proceed, the objective is very clear. the on je objective is to fix t short comings of the iran deal. does that mean snapping back sanctions? i don t want to speculate. i m not here s the problem with the nominee, director. you want me to put my faith in you. but i can t do that blindly. i have to have some sense of what you ll be advocating. is it to put bangback sanctions? because the sanctions depend on whether the europeans are going to be in sync with us. if they re not and we push back sanctions are they going to ultimately come along with us or are they going to reciprocate and say we re going to put sanctions and tell our companies not to do it? if we don t snap sanctions back? this is the critical question that i m look to understand what you will advocate for. it s not that you come as a candidate here who hasn t had dealings in this issue. as the cia director, you have had dealings with this issue. wi that s what i m trying to glean here. i have at the deep urging of the sitty avoided being policy discussions. some have critiques me for entering those discussions toomp. with your permission, it s hard to hypothesize about what the conditions will be in may and how close we ll be. to speculate on how we might respond. it s difficult. i know that what you re asking. it s a hypothetical situation about which we still have a number of facts that are unavailable. i was asking you for a strategy. not goals. i don t think a strategy is one you presently occupy. so it s just make it a lot easier for me when i have to vote on you to understand what you ll be advocating for. senator gardner. thank you, mr. chairman. director, thank you again for your testimony. i think you ve done an incredible job today. challenging us and also being forth being very forward in your answers. i appreciate that today. and it will serve you well as secretary of state. i look forward to supporting you. there s been some news that was made. while you were in the testimony earlier today by president trump. i think he s directed according to the news reports ambassador lighthighser along with larry kudlow to open up the new possibility of reengaging in the transpacific partnership. and so leading into this question on china, the national security strategy released into 2017 says china and russia challenge american power, influence and interest, attempting to erode security. to expand its state model. china is using economic inducements and implied military threats to persuade other states. i talked about the militarization of the south chinese seas. they re planning to conduct life-fire exercise in the straits of taiwan. can you talk about this perhaps including even tpp, how that can counter china s influence and what we need to do? to make sure we have a policy toward china? senator, i was that news was news to me. but i ve watched the administration and by the way, for my i supported of record is clear. there is an economic component to what china is trying to do. we need to be engaged. it is a diplomatic component to the economic activity as well. we need to be deeply engaged there. i m confident this administration will do that. thank you, director pompeo. talking a little bit about southeast asia and our challenge right now, how many fighters right now from southeast asia do you think are in syria today? how many how many islamic fighters from southeast asia do we estimate are in syria? senator, i don t recall the number. there are many. have we seen those go and return to southeast asia as well? we have. how is our coordination with those southeast asia nations, philippines, other places in terms of addressing, monitoring and combating as they move back? without giving too much detail, it is better in some places than in others. but much as we deal with our european partners and our partners in the middle east, we do our best to track these president trump just started speaking at the white house. these are scheduled to be comments on tax cuts for american workers. we do not know if he is going to be taking questions but let s listen in. special place, special building right behind us, the white house. we re going to discuss our massive tax cuts that are growing paychecks all over our country, they re creating jobs and expanding the american dream, just like we said would happen. that s the way it s happened. i want to thank all of the members of congress here today who helped us pass these incredible tax cuts and reforms into law. for years they haven t been able to do it. they were unable to do it. not since ronald reagan and we topped that one. but they called it tax reform. we discussed that. right? we discussed it. i said we have to call it, not tax reform. nobody knows what that means. that could mean a tax increase. we have to call it tax cuts. so we called it tax cuts and jobs. and guess what? we got is passed. i also want to recognize a great friend of mine and a man who s doing a fantastic job, vice president pence. mike? stand up. thank you. and members of my cabinet. they are working tirelessly. we have secretary mnuchin, secretary acosta, administrator mcmahon. thank you. please, stand up. and all of the members of congress and senators, thank you and congressmen and women, thank you very much. most especially i want to thank all of the american workers in the audience. we have a lot of them who have traveled here from all over the country. they wanted to be with us. this event is dedicated to you, the hard working americans who make our nation run. you love your country. you provide for your family. you re proud of everything you ve done. you ve got that great extra strength that other people don t have. and you cherish a wonderful thing called our great american flag. and now because of our tax cuts, you can keep more of your hard-earned money. larry kudlow s very happy about that sitting in the front row. right, larry? good. he says yes. married couples won t pay a dime of income tax on their first $24,000 of income. a typical family of four earning $75,000 a year will see their tax bill slashed in half. nobody thought they d ever see that. they ll have a lot more money to spend. and we didn t get one democratic vote. that s tough. in fact, i have to say, they want to increase your taxes. if they ever got into power, they have stated that they want to increase your taxes and spend money on things that you don t even want to know about. so we ve doubled very importantly the child tax credit. they want so many other things and people have wanted other things, and frankly, we fought very hard. we ve taken care of our military for the first time in many, many years. $700 billion. we re going to have the strongest military that we ve ever had. and can you think of a better time to have it? right? this is when we need it. we re going to have it. $700 billion. and next year, $716 billion. also in that bill, $6 billion for opiod and helping us out with that horrible, horrible problem. the fact is, we don t care about the donors and the special interests. we only care but and your family and, really, making america great again. that s what we care about. that s why we re here. from the day i took the oath of office, i ve been fighting to drain the swamp. and sometimes it may not look like it, but believe me, we are draining the swamp, and there are a lot of unhappy people. you can see that every day. all you have to do is turn on the news. every time you see me hit, you know i m draining the swamp and people don t like it. but we re also defending the american worker. we re making incredible trade deals. we re taking nafta, one of the worst deals ever made in the history of trade, and we are redoing it. and it will be a fair deal for the americans. we lost thousands of factories and millions of jobs because of nafta. thousands. think of it. thousands of factories. millions of jobs. we re turning it around. already chrysler is coming back with auto plants. many companies are now in michigan, ohio, different places, pennsylvania, they re building beautiful brand-new auto plants. nobody ever thought they d see that happen. we ve created 3 million new jobs since the election. unemployment claims are at their lowest level in nearly 50 years. think of that. 50 years. something i m very proud about, unemployment rates for hispanics and african-americans have reached the lowest levels ever recorded. ever recorded. think of that. very proud of that. remember i used to say at rallies, what do you have to lose? guess what? what do you have to lose? you have the lowest levels ever recorded for african-americans, hispanics. i m very, very happy about that. and by the way, for women, the lowest levels in 19 years. so we have really good numbers. and something a lot of people didn t think was going to happen wages are rising at the fastest pace in over a decade. we re cutting record numbers of regulations. we ve cut more regulations in a year and a quarter than any administration, whether it s four years, eight years, or in one case 16 years. should we go back to 16 years? can we do that? congressman, can we have that extended? you know the last time i jokingly said that, the papers started saying he s got despotic tendencies. no, i m not going to do it. unless you want to do it. that s okay. we re also unleashing american energy and american energy independence. we re now an exporter of energy. we re doing ten think of this 10 million barrels a day. nobody thought they d see this. 10 million. in fact, it is going to now be 10.6 million. we re crackdown on unfair trade deals. we re taking strong action to secure our border, stop illegal immigration and restore the rule of law. and we ve passed the biggest tax cut and reform in american history. more than 5 million workers have already received a tax cut bonus, a pay raise or a new job, thanks to these really massive tax cuts. millions more millions more are getting higher take-home pay. no one has been more energized by our tax cuts than american manufacturers. with us today is the president of the national association of manufacturers, jay timmons. where s jay?
justice sotomayor said, look, even though the commission may have made commissioners may have made disparaging comments about religion, this was assessed by other entities, by courts, and there was no need to say that the context here affected t case. that these two individuals did face discrimination and it should be read as that. so they were the only two that broke off, but as i say, justice kennedy, i think he wanted to caution everyone in the courtroom, and probably anyone reading this opinion, that this is a very small step in the case of these particular men. again, justice ginsburg and sotomayor said otherwise, but i think it really opens the door to what would come next from the next case. i would just add one other thing, justice kennedy noted that in 2012, when this had happened, colorado was not is interesting, how this is going to play out over the next six months or so. and i said, well, explain. he said, well, is going to bed by republicans as an effort for freedom, for ligi going to help us with our base. but in the near term, he thinks that it is actually going to hurt republicans a little bit because it is going to be framed as discrimination or this is what he thinks by the media, that in fact that they re allowing discrimination to move forward. now, whether or not this plays out in the midterm elections we ll have to see what happens, but whenever y talk about religious freedom, these are the kind of hot button issues that do get people out to vote. so i would expect conservatives and republicans to really play this out. you know, john, kennedy was the deciding voice in the 2015 gay marriage decision, writing the majority opinion here. in your view, is this decision by the justices complicatin things or clarifying things with regard to gay rights in america hearing. that s what it is about, giving both sides a fair hearing, but i don t think he undercut his decision in obergefell from 2015 at all. and i think, t s why he was able to draw in the votes of people on the far right, and people on the far not the most extreme left, but enough on the left to make it seem better than the usual 5-4 decision, which is what it was in 2015. yeah. this is far from over. this case, though, decided. guys, thank you very much, i was just handed a first statement coming from the attorneys who were representing the baker representing masterpiece bakers in this, jack phillips. jack serves all customers. he simply declines to express messages or celebrate events this violate his deeply held beliefs, creative professionals who serve all people should be free to create art consistent with their convicts without the threat of government punishment. that from the attorneys representing jack phillips of masterpiece bakers who just won before the supreme court. thank you all so much. coming up for us, president trump says he has the absolute right to pardon himself as his lawyer rudy giuliani says trump could shoot james comey and get away with it. what s going on here, honestly. that s coming up. plus, bill clinton gets heated over questions about monica lewinskying he doesn t owe her a personal apology. does he see that scandal in his political past any differently in the age of the me too movement? we ll play it for you. you can be the judge. sleep disturbances keep one in three adults up at night. only remfresh uses ion-powered melatonin to deliver up to seven hours of sleep support. number one sleep doctor recommended remfresh. your nightly sleep companion. available in the natural sleep section at walmart. parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what? you could apply for a medicare supplement insurance plan whenever you want. no enrollment window. no waiting to apply. that means now may be a great time to shop for an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. medicare doesn t cover everything. and like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, these help cover some of what medicare doesn t pay. so don t wait. call now to request your free decision guide. it could help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that works for you. these types of plans have no networks, so you get to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. rates are competitive, and they re the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. remember - these plans let you apply all year round. so call today. because now s the perfect time to learn more. go long. have done nothing wrong? followed by this, the appointment of the special counsel, his spelling not mine,. despite that, we play the game because i unlike the democrats have done nothing wrong. so where would president trump get such y pardon idea? hello, rudy giuliani, once again. he has no intention of pardoning himself, but he probably doesn t say he can t. that s another interesting constitutional argument, can the president pardon himself. it would be an open question. and rudy giuliani is on a role, again. he went on to make another shocking claim to the huffington post saying the president could have shot former fbi director james comey and not be prosecuted. here is the quote. if he shot james comey, he would be impeached. the next day. impeach him and then you can do whatever you want to do to him. it is a theoretical argument and clearly an extreme example, of course, but what are they trying to do here? joining me right now, senior white house correspondent at the huffington post who conducted this interview with rudy giuliani. what did you think when r uni told you that? i was very interested in how far they would take the argument they can do basically that they want. they seemed a very regal expansive view of the presidency. when it came out that he could end any investigation, i was curious what else could they what other kind of investigations could he stop? i said, well, what if hypothetically he you got angry at james comey and shot him instead of firing him. mr. giuliani said, yeah, includes that, no crimes. they would have to impeach him first. and confident that that would happen very quickly. i m struck also by how often and openly rudy giuliani seems to be talking about impeachment here when it seems the furthest thing from what the president would like. that also is starting to tell me it is looking something like a strategy. what does it tell you? strategy, i m not so sure about that. you know, the mayor likes to talk to a lot of folks about lots of different things. and we asked him questions you get an answer at least. i was expecting to say, well, no, that s an outrageous thing and just a crazy hypothetical and i m not even going to answer that. he was he went there. he said, yeah, any crime means any crime. and with the president, he s immune from that while he s in office. so it is not surprising then that the presi had that tweet this morning about he can pardon himself because it is obvious he s thinking more and more about that. but we also heard two, maybe more than two, two things about rudy giuliani, it is he speaks for the president and also that the president himself is suggesting he does not speak for the president because he doesn t get his facts straight. do you at this point get a sense now that rudy giuliani speaks for the president? well, i don t know. depends on the time of day, i guess, what day honestly. you get all kinds of answers when you ask things of the white house, right? i mean, we had that statement multiple statements from the white house about that statement aboard air force one, that he dictated, did he not dictate and that that letter they sent to the special counsel s office in january, turns out,yeah, he did dictate it. so, i think we re getting about as much accuracy and consistency with rudy giuliani as from the president or from the white house generally. not a high bar at this point. s.v., thank you for coming in, appreciate it. my pleasure. so, as s.v. was talking about, rudy giuliani comments came after the new york times had a confidential letter that jay sekulow and john dowd at the time sent to robert mueller in january and claimed the president cannot obstruct justice because the constitution gives him the authority to, quote, terminate the inquiry. in that same letter, a buried bombshell, the president s attorneys admitting the president, quote, dictated, that s a key word, that first m misleading statement from donald trump jr. about the purpose of his meeting with the russian government lawyer at trump tower during the 2016 campaign. here is a quote for you, you have received all of the notes, communications and testimony indicating that the president dictated a short, dictated a short but accurate response to the new york times article on behalf of his son donald trump jr. his son then followed up by making a full public disclosure regarding the meeting including his public ttimony that there was nothing to the meeting and certainly no evidence of collusion. nothing to meeting, we can debate for days that we have discussed that quite a bit when we said he would love to get dirt on hillary clinton. regardless, the president s involvement in that misleading statement was something sekulow and the white house denied and denied and denied and denied when the news of the meeting first came out. that was written by donald trump jr. and i m sure with consultation with his lawyer. that wasn t written by the president. the president didn t sign off on anything. the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement. it came from donald trump jr. he certainly didn t dictate, but, you know, he, like i said, he weighed in,ggestions like an woulddo. let s get to it. with me now, kim waily, former assistant u.s. attorney who worked in the clinton whitewater investigation, joe lockhart, cnn political commentator, and joining us, former republican congressman charlie dent. let s do this. congressmen, someone is lying, either the president or his attorneys. do you care to take a bet? well, i don t know what the president shared. i have n idea what the president shared with his attorneys. could be the attorneys were stating what they thought was the truth as they knew it. but clearly someone is not telling the truth here, either the president or the people who spoke on his behalf or both. it is pretty inexcusable, really indefensible. joe, look, lying to the media, lying to the american public, is not a crime. but this is so blatant on the dictate the statement, dictate the statement. he did not dictate the statement, absolutely he did dictate the statement. i don t think you can find another example, but this is today s outrage du jour. if you were in your old job, what would you do with this today? if i was in my old job, i probably would have left several months ago. i would be here talking to you about how the president doesn t have a the difference is the timing here. when he told jay sekulow and sarah sanders before january i didn t do it, he knew mueller hadn t spoken to the people in the room. now they have written this letter because he knows the people have gone in and underwrote, told mueller what really happened. so i think it is another example about trump s lack of any sort of concept of how important the truth is, and the fact that he ll put anybody out to say anything to protect him and everybody is just sort of cattle to him. all about protecting him. and, kim, why would they ever admit this to the special counsel? is it they had to? what do you think? no, i mean, that entire letter is unnecessary. there are two issues here, one is people are talking about whether it is truthful or not. of course, lying to the press is not illegal, it gets to why the president s lawyers don t want him to sit down and testify under oath, because he s extremely vulnerable to criminal liability for perjury. the second question has to do with obstruction of justice and the letter goes into that in great detail, did the president make decisions with the corrupt intent to flout the criminal justice system to the extent to which it is engaged in a legitimate probe of russian interference with our election. and that really gets to state of mind and the evidence including this little fact is mounting that the president certainly had that intent. now, then we get into bigger constitutional questions as to whether he can be indicted, if he s indicted, prosecuted and convicted by a jury, then could he be pardoned? i think the president is making a case, a very complicated, i think obfuscating one for the american public, that he can pretty much do what he wants and i think it is actually a good thing that that s now being put out in the open because it is so outrageous as a matter of democratic theory, we all need to pay attention to it. congressman, i don t want to go down the rabbit hole of can he or can t he pardon himself or is this special counsel constitutional or unconstitutional because i think the question is really why is the president doing this? well, call me old-fashioned, but i do not believe that the presidential authority is absolute. and i think we talk about pardons, you know, this process should be done in a thoughtful, considered manner. i have been involved with some individuals who wanted pardons, and there is a process that should be observed that the justice department conducts, and i don t think these pardons should be handed out on a presidential whim or to send a message or to retaliate against a certain prosecutor. i m deeply troubled by this. and i m very concerned that the congress has given up a lot of its article one authority over the years, didn t start with this president, this has been going on for a long time. we have seen executive actions under president obama and others and congress needs to step in and assert itself. the founders established congress the first branch of government, article one, and so i think this notion of absolute presidential power is absurd. guys, stick around. if you can believe it, i won t let you leave, a whole lot more to discuss and doesn t have to do with president trump at this moment. coming up, bill clinton gets testy when faced with questions about the me too movement and monica lewinsky, saying he doesn t own lewinsky a personal apology. that s next. hey! we didn t have a homeowners claim last year so allstate is giving us money back on our bill. well, that seems fair. we didn t use it. wish we got money back on gym memberships. get money back hilarious. with claim-free rewards. switching to allstate is worth it. the line between work and life hasn t just blurred. it s gone. that s why you need someone behind you. not just a card. an entsupport system. whether visiting the airport lounge to catch up on what s really important. or even using those hard-earned points to squeeze in a little family time. no one has your back like american 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their percentage in the bar. i had nothing but women leaders iny office since i left. you are giving one side and omitting facts. but you didn t apologi her. i have not talked to her. do you feel you owe her an apology? i do not i never talked to her. but i did say publicly on more than one occasion that i was sorry. that s very different. apology was public. joe, kim and congressman dent back with me now. joe, what is your reaction to president clinton here? it is interesting because i think it highlights the vast difference between what it was like 20 years ago and today. i think in that interview he succumbed to being the victim and feeling victimized. and the reason that the president succeeded 20 years ago is he didn t do it then. he made it about the country, he did apologize, he did all of those things. and i think in that moment you re seeing donald trump a little bit. and i am not comparing them on any other level beyond the terrible strategy it is to make himself, you, the issue here, and to be victimized. he was not the victim then. donald trump is not the victim now. what is going on with the president now is all of his own doing. and i think, you know, but i think politicians and human beings at times go through and are treated unfairly at certain points and they forget the, you know, both the underlying issue and what the best strategy is to just move on. but, kim, the question that craig melvin posed to the president was looking back through the lens of me too now, do you think differently or feel moreresponbility? you were an attorney at the whitewater case. does clinton s response suggest to you he sees this differently? it was an unfortunate response, hard to watch. i think there are a number of things going on here. number one what joe mentioned, which is a broader picture with respect to accountability at the highest levels of office. i think it is unfortunate that president clinton didn t take this moment in time to send that message to the american public. number two has to do with whether there was any criminal wrongdoing, people ask me all the time, they make comparisens between president trump and the clintons. i said, listen, i was there, i can tell you there were smart, really good prosecutors. if there was a prosecutor a crime for which there was a reason to prosecute, those people would have been prosecuted. there wasn t anything there. so the clintons were vindicated. but the third piece really has to do with monica lewinsky. she was hurt and this was trauma for her and trauma for her family. and it wasn t abuse of office on the facts. that is really unfortunate that at this point in time that aspect of it can t be put to rest because the public reports are that she s really struggled understandably. she was a young woman and i do think what happened in the white house is notnconsient with what we reeeing people being held accountable for and it is unfortunate again, the president didn t take this moment to take responsibility for that part, for the harm and the hurt that was caused to a woman that has had to live with it every day of her life. and congressman, i also am left wondering how is bill clinton, who is now kicking off a book tour, thatas the for the point of the interview, not prepared to answer this. who knows why he s not prepared. but i ll tell you what, as a former chairman, of the house ethics committee, i can tell you that had a member a male member of the house of representatives done what bill clinton did in the in his office, with an intern, and had been publicly discovered, that member would be out of office by the end of the day. and it would go something like this. would be summoned to the speaker s office and have a conversation, and it would be a letter placed in front of you that you re expected to sign. it would be your resignation letter that s how it works. this is before the me too movement. i ve been through this. i can assure you of that, joe, please, i see members resign this year, franken a whole list things are changing. if you go back over time and you ll have more cases of taxpayers paying for the defense of members of congress who have sexually harassed members. so idea that if a member of congress over the last 20 years i didn t say sexual harassment, joe. i didn t say look, i said what bill clinton did in the office with an intern, i can t say it on television, we know what it was,ut had a member of congress done that in his office, with an intern, i guarantee you that they would be forced from office. almost immediately. and history shows just the opposite. but i will say this, i don t understand not in recent years. i am truly struck, joe, how bill clinton who is as polished a politician as they come, can t answer the question. he seemed truly caught off guard, which blows me away, he goes from do you look at this differently is the question that craig asked, good on craig for continuing to push, and he goes to and don t believe that i got out of this free, scott free. i think what he failed to do was separate the two issues. he was treated unfairly. he was impeached for something that should have never gotten there. on the other hand, he did do something wrong. and he has publicly acknowledged he has publicly apologized. to him, multiple times when he did it. but he didn t separate those two things and i think it goes to it wasn t his best answer. joe, in the present and looking forward, is this everything you need to see, the democratic members of congress need to see to answer yes or no if they want bill clinton campaigning for them now. they ll make the the era of the me too movement. they ll make their own decisions on that. and i thinke s beenet to the democratic party over the last 30 years. i think that s, you know, i don t think anyone would dispute that. going forward, i think if he did another interview tomorrow, you need to separate those two things and then i think the i think he s got an answer to it. joe, thanks so much. congressman, thank you. kim, great to see you. thank you so much. new trouble for epa administrator scott pruitt, new trouble. how democrats say pruitt used staff to run personal errands including trying to buy a used mattress from a trump international hotel during his controversial apartment search. we ll learn about it. that s next. join t-mobile. and get netflix included. so your family can watch what they love in more places. get an unlimited family plan with netflix on us. and right now, buy one samsung galaxy s9 and get one free. i ve got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn t pay all my medical expenses, i looked at my options. then i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. 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[ male announcer ] join the millions of people who have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp, an organization serving the needs of people 50 and over for generations. remember, all medicare supplement insurance plans help cover what medicare doesn t pay. and could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. call now to request your free decision guide. and learn more about the kinds of plans that will be here for you now - and down the road. i have a lifetime of experience. so i know how important that is. garlique.® more breaking news, yet another potential ethics problem for epa administrator scott pruitt. rene marsh has the details. what does this have to do with a mattress from the trump hotel? interesting details from democrats with the house oversight committee. they interviewed a top epa aide recently and now they re releasing new details from that interview with that aide. they say that walking away from that interview it became apparent that scott pruitt has been using his personal staff there at epa to run personal errands for him from house hunting to even getting a good price on a used mattress from the trump international hotel, a plush euro pillow top mattress to be exact. this is all coming from an interview that house oversight committee members had with one of pruitt s top staffers. this staffer, her name is millan hobs, she also describes herself as a personal friend of pruitt, she also said that she, during her work time and work hours, did house hunting trips for him. according to her interview , she searched for severalental properties for pruitt and his wife for several hours a week over the course of several months, touring more than ten of those properties during work hours. and that is what the potential violation is, according to democrats. they say it is violation of the rules for a federal employee to be working in this manner outside of any epa duties to do something like this for scott pruitt. they say that essentially this is an example of federal employees using the public office for private gain. that is the latest to come out of that interview. and the latest ethics issue to be stacking up against scott pruitt now. ren , great to see you, thank you so much. women may not need chemotherapy after all. what you need to know next. to severe crohn s disease. then i realized something was missing. me. my symptoms were keeping me from being there. so, i talked to my doctor and learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn s disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. 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. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. with tripadvisor, finding your perfect hotel at the lowest price. is as easy as dates, deals, done! simply enter your destination and dates. and see all the hotels for your stay! tripadvisor searches over 200 booking sites. to show you the lowest prices. so you can get the best deal on the right hotel for you. dates, deals, done! tripadvisor. visit tripadvisor.com we believe nutrition is full of possibilities to improve your pet s life. we are redefining what nutrition can do. because the possibility of a longer life and a better life is the greatest possibility of all. purina pro plan. nutrition that performs. liberty mutual saved us almost $800 when we switched our auto and home insurance. liberty did what? yeah, they saved us a ton, which gave us a little wiggle room in our budget. i wish our insurance did that. then we could get a real babysitter instead of your brother. hey, welcome back. this guy, right? (laughs) yes. ellen. that s my robe. you could save $782 when liberty stands with you. liberty mutual insurance. a project this difficult and this large, and that was citi. preserving affordable housing preserves communities. so we are doing their kitchens and their flooring and their lobbies and the grounds. and the beautification of their homes, giving them pride in where they live, will make this a thriving community once again. a major development in the battle against breast cancer. and it could save thousands of women battling breast cancer without the use of chemotherapy. researchers say by using genetic testing on tumors they can determine whether or not a patient needs chemotherapy or will be treated just as well with other treatments. the results, 60,000 women a year could skip toxic chemotherapy treatments in the united states. that s a new sign of hope for the 260,000 new breast cancer cases expected just this year. the study was published in the new england journal of medicine. joining me now is the lead author of the study, dr. joseph sparano. thank you for coming in. thank you. good morning. good morning. for every woman walking into their doctor today, receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, what do they need to know? what do they need to ask? well, chemotherapy is typically recommended to help reduce the risk of occurrence after potentially curative surgery. up until now we haven t really had great tests to help to decide who really benefits from chemotherapy and who doesn t. so what we did was a trial to integrate this test into the decision-making process. and we confirmed that for the vast majority of patients chemotherapy is not necessary. it is pretty amazing. it almost flies in the face of everything that we have thought until now. if you have cancecancer, the be course of action to be safe if you will, is to have chemotherapy. what do you say to a woman who says, why not just chemo just to be safe? well, that was that was the recommendation we gave up until yesterday. we now have the results, it was essentially like rolling the dice, in terms of trying to figure out whether a specific individual was going to be the one who was going to benefit from chemotherapy, but now we have this test that can help us determine who what did you think when you saw the results coming in? well, you know, it s amazing. i mean, this test has been available for about 15 years. we integrated into our clinical practice. it has resulted in the decline of chemotherapy. about two thirds of the patients who had the test, the result produced a finding that was still in the gray zone where a patient still had a substantial risk of recurrence but where we chemotherapy would benefit them. and now we have that information and we know that chemotherapy is not beneficial. it s pretty amazing when i was looking at and of course i am no docr and play one on tv, but when you see the statistics of recurrence for women who received chemotherapy and women who received hormone therapy when they re in this gray zone, there was no statistic difference in recurrence, it was amazing. yeah, that s absolutely right. i think what s important to emphasize, though, is that all these women received standard care, standard surgery, radiation. they had surgery and also the endoe krin therapy, the critical component is the endochrine therapy. it requires that women take their hormone therapy to prevent a recurrence. this does not mean they don t need any therapy. it s to ensure the good results that we see. doctor, as i was r through about your study, it had me thinking about the women who took part in therial and who took part in the study and how they took a risk, right, not knowing if going withochemo wou help or hurt them? what s your meso them today? thank you. thank you for all of us. yeah. the trial really wouldn t have been possible without them. and this was these are the people who deserve the most crit, the individuals who the woman who volunteered for this trial and there were over 10,000 of them. just amazing. wow. thank you, doctor, for doing the study, putting it out and now it seems like a new day in terms of the battle against breast cancer and what this means for women. great to see you. thank o much. thank you. coming up for us, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake in hawaii sending ash plumes up to 8,000 feet. while nearly a dozen people have gotten stranded in an area cut off by lava. we ll go there live to try to get an update. we ll bring you there. 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(wife) nope! switching to allstate is worth it. that s confident. but it s not kayak confident. kayak searches hundreds of travel and airline sites to find the best flight for me. so i m more than confident. how s your family? kayak. search one and done. i love you baby applebee s 2 for $20, now with steak. now that s eatin good inhe neighborhood. scott, what are you seeing? reporter: hey. one of the big concerns that we re seeing out here is people being stranded by lava. right now, thi white smoke that you see in the distance, this is something called lava haze or lazend it is a potentially deadly gas. it s also a sign that the lava has entered the ocean. that is bad for the people who live on the left side of yoursc you can see there quite a lot of them. a couple hundred homes in the right now from this lava that is heading toward the n. right now this front of lava, this lava flow, is about half a mile wide. and between it and where we are obviously is those couple hundred houses. you can see just how much is entering and how much smoke is created. there s actually a bay there. you can t really tell from here just because the so much smoke that filled it up. if you look over to the right side, ty, want to look to the right side of the smoke there, it s hard to see but you ll see black smoke coming up. that s a home burning or that is a structure of some type burning. and so, we re seeing that from time to time, those flareups of that dark black smoke. the y, you want to go to the left here, you can see through the haze that fissure that s feeding all this. we re about 7 or 8 miles away from the main fissure located in the leilani estates ighborhood. and you can see it from here, shooting some 200 feet into the air. even from where we are, it is bright in the distance. the only t that s obscuring it right now is a little bit of smoke. as you mentioned, there were about a dozen people who were stranded by lava just on south side of this lava flow. there were actually three that were rescued over the weekend, now they re down to nine. these people an t in any immediate danger per se, the reality is they have no water, power, land line service, cell phone service out there either so essentially they are cut off from the rest of the island. on one side, they have literally a river of molten lava and on the other side they have the pacific ocean where we are and there aren t have many good access points on this side. and so really they re kind of on their own. and so, if they re looking for help, essentially authorities have promised to fly helicopter flights over there looking for smoke signals. maybe someone writing s.o.s. on their lawn, anything they can do to get the official s attention and get rescued. but for right now, we have no way to know exactly how many people are over there, where they are and whether or not they re in need of any kind of help. and scott, when you re pointing out where the lava haze is kind of threatening these homes over to the left hand side of our screen, do you know if those where those are in relation to the fissure, they re not in danger of lava flow but they are in danger of that haze? reporter: yeah. so they are definitely in danger of the lava haze.