times reported several trump aides had repeated contacts with russian intelligence in the year run-up before the election. they cite electronic intercepts. just today a question along those same lines was asked of sean spicer at the briefing. back in january, the president said that nobody in his campaign had been in touch with the russians. now, today, can you still say definitively that nobody on the trump campaign, not even general flynn, had any contact with the russians before the election? my understanding is that what general flynn has now expressed is that during the transition period well, we were very clear that during the transition period he did speak with the ambassador m talking about during the campaign. there is nothing that would conclude to me that anything has changed with respect to that time period. a quick timeline with how we got here. december 29, the obama administration reveals new sanctions on russia. december 30. putin says russia will not retaliate. that same time, that same day this tweet from then president-elect trump. great move on delay by vladimir putin. i always knew he was very smart. sometime after december 30th, communications between flynn and russia s ambassador are intercepted by u.s. intelligence officials. the white house is warned about flynn by the department of justice on january 26th of this year, and thanks to sean spicer, we know the president found out the same day. immediately after the department of justice notified the white house counsel of the situation, the white house counsel briefed the president and a small group of his senior advisers. from that date on, the question is, how long did it take for the erosion of trust to occur that led to flynn s resignation? that was the reason given today. on january 28th, michael flynn was in the room when the president called russian president vladimir putin. michael flynn came into the white house briefing room and communicated for the administration to another nation state. iran is now feeling emboldened. as of today we are officially putting iran on notice. thank you. then just this past weekend, michael flynn was there as the president and japanese prime minister shinzo abe discussed what they would do to respond to a ballistic missile test by north korea. that was just 72 hours ago. so when did the erosion of trust between the president and michael flynn occur? let s bring out our panel members tonight, former chief of staff at the cia and the pentagon, jeremy bash is with us this evening. nbc s katy tur who covered the entire trump campaign from the start, and radio personality charlie sykes. good evening to you all. i m going to begin with you, jeremy. to believe this story, any of it, all of it, you have to believe that flynn called the russian ambassador and said, in effect, when these new measures come out, don t worry, we re going to have your back. and further, you have to believe that he was either acting on his own or with tacit approval. do we have that right? we have a united states that is completely at odds with anything we ve seen in foreign relations, and that is a total u.s. capitulation to all of russia s natives. the second bit of context, brian, is that we have under way at this hour, not past tense but present tense, at this hour a russian operation to influence u.s. policy to do what i just described, to force america to do things it wouldn t ordinarily do. that intelligence operation is under way. they were trying to get to the national security apparatus, including the national security adviser, and it worked. that s the whole thing. it worked in this case. our policy changed and they attempted to change it and it worked. and so that is the big question looming over all of this, which is why. what is it that caused our national security adviser and our president to do these things that are so completely at odds with american interests, and now tonight we have one of the missing pieces of the puzzle, which is possible cooperation discussion between the trump campaign and the russian government at the very time the russian government was trying to influence the campaign to favor donald trump. and jeremy malcolm nance was people is, will those suffice or do we need a joint inquiry, a select committee or even an independent review? katy tur, before we swing over to you, i want to run what is now a critical bit of on-the-fly interview in the doorway of air force one, a doorway that separates a conference room and the cockpit where the president and first lady were. the president and first lady were on their way to mar-a-lago in midair and this question came up. general flynn had conversations with the russians before you were sworn in? i don t know. i haven t seen it. what report is that? they were reporting that you talk to the ambassador of russia before you were inaugerated about sanctions. i ll look at that. katy tur, what did people think when you were in the midst of covering the only campaign for president in our modern history that had russia as such a kind of sympathetic element? what did people or the general public think or trump supporters? many of his aides seemed to have ties to russia in one way or another. paul manafort being one. it didn t make sense for donald trump to continue to be so cozy. nobody could quite figure out why he was doing so. and the campaign and the transition in the white house has never given an explanation that goes beyond, we think we need to reset relations. charlie, listen to tom freedman, one line from his column that went up tonight. we need to know whom trump owes and who might own him and we need to know it now. how serious is all of this in your view one month into this administration? it s extraordinarily serious, because nothing adds up. as katy was saying, this whole love affair doesn t add up, this explanation for firing the general doesn t add up. so who made the decision not to tell mike pence? why did they sit on all of this? if, in fact, he had done and said nothing that was inappropriate, why, then, did he feel it necessary to lie to mike pence? if, in fact, he was executing exactly what the policy would be? the cover story doesn t add up, this whole story and this relationship doesn t. here s the distinction. this is not just a matter of a scandal of somebody having an affair or something like that. this goes fundamentally to the foreign policy of the country. and i think that republicans on capitol hill need to look at this and ask themselves, do they actually want to investigate this, or do they want to appear that, in fact, they are slow walking and covering up something that may have fundamental significant to the country. katy, we learned today that vice president mike pence didn t learn until thursday, but other people knew. sean spicer said the white house concluded when this was briefed to them it wasn t a legal issue, and he said the president was proved instinctively correct. that it was a trust issue is what they re trying to make this out to be. i was speaking tonight with a senior white house source, and i asked that person why the world vice president pence wasn t told about this sooner. and the source said it was attorney-client privilege. don mcgann only told the president because that s who he is sworn to, and the president didn t tell vp pence because this was a very close hold, because they were still investigating exactly what happened. there are a lot of questions surrounding that, though, because mike pence went on national television and vouched for general mike flynn, said he did not talk sanctions. there s also a lot of questions surrounding how in the world general flynn could forget about talking sanctions when there is a lot of questions about how much of the conversation, at least one, that he had with the russian ambassador was dedicated to talking sanctions. it s not something you forget, it is a breach of protocol. even this white house official told me this was something that they cannot understand why flynn would mislead the administration about it, they cannot understand why it went on for so long. hey, jeremy, your former boss, leon panetta, who is not given to hyperbole, said something today that really got the attention of a lot of people. quote, i ve never been so nervous in my lifetime about what may or may not happen in washington. i don t know whether this white house is capable of responding in a thoughtful or careful way should a crisis erupt. you can do hit and miss stuff over a period of time, but at some point i don t give a damn what your particular sense of change is about, you can t afford to have change become chaos. i talked to him and that is a mild way of how he is feeling. leon and carla panetta made their way from ellis island, raised their children. he worked for nixon and came to congress as a democrat or for bill clinton as a white house chief of staff and budget director and then served as secretary of defense. this is a person who has dedicated his life to national security and bipartisanship, i should say. he believes that vet fabric of our government is tearing apart. the ability to protect our country is tearing apart, the ability for washington to function properly is tearing apart, and i think he s very, very worried about the tone being set by this administration and particularly about the deceit that is coming forward from the white house about this and other issues. a little bit of housekeeping there. we just showed a photo of former president trump sounding a lot different than candidate trump whenon it comes to leaks, we heard from katy, when the 11th hour continues. the michael flynn resignation this just came out. this just came out. wikileaks, i love wikileaks. amazing how nothing is secret today when you talk about the internet. we love wikileaks. boy, they have really wikileaks. they have revealed a lot. that came out on wikileaks. we re back with our panel, jeremy, katy and charlie. jeremy, you and i haven t been around forever but we ve been around long enough to be, i think, stunned as the weaponized nature of these leaks, the number of these leaks and where we can surmise they re coming from in the organization. not to impune any of your friends, but perhaps some of them from people you know, people who are in your contacts. some are motivated by patriotism, some by revengreveng it s not nice to take on career civil servants, and when they feel the home team is on fire or in danger, they will get it out through journalists. i don t know, brian. it s hard to speculate. i certainly wouldn t speculate that it s any people i know or people i ve worked with. but look, i think there is a broader issue here which is under normal circumstances, you re very concerned about leaks because they reveal intelligence sources and methods. you re less worried about them when they reveal sort of the overall conclusion or what people are looking at or investigating. and so i do take leaks seriously when they reveal sources and methods, but i think in this case, brian, we have a situation where the discussion in the press is really about what investigators are looking at, what the fbi has been probing, not how they ve been probing it or how they ve been collecting their information per se, except for some generalitiesgeneralitie important to note that without this coming forward, michael flynn would be in the white house without risk. what s worse? people in actual america are waiting for economics and jobs to come through. in the interim, here is what we have to discuss on national media. have you ever seen a situation like this inside any white house, republican or democrat? no, because nobody ever has. what do they say about karma, karma is something or other? i can t repeat it. the president actually has a point when he talks about the flood of leaks. you actually have the intelligence community in this country in open resurrection of this president. there are fundamental issues here, but what we are seeing is also unprecedented. maybe it happened under nixon. but there is a flood of leaks. and this, by the way, it is like one shot across the bow after another to the whi house. we know what you did last summer, click. we know everything, and it s a drip, drip, drip. and you wonder how this is playing when they realize they ve reached the end of spin, that the people who have this information are not going to be intimidated by tweets. they re not going to back off, and they have who knows. they appear to be showing their hand that they have everything. katy, at a simple time when reagan was president and you weren t born i was born, excuse me. i had it up to my keester with leaks, and that was supposed to be shocking. we also have in this white house four or five different centers of power and that hasn t worked itself. there are so many centers of power. if you heard it told, there s the priebus-sean spicer-katie walsh faction, and there is kellyanne conway faction, and they re all working to take down the other and fight for the year of donald trump. not to mention the white house staffers who don t really have an allegiance and who are there just witnessing this for the first time. there is a lot of folks out there who are who have their own self-interests at play who also want to protect the west wing in the way they believe the west wing should behave. i want to say something, though. it seems like when you talk about donald trump in leaks and talk about donald trump in coverage, everything is fine so long as it is favorable to him, period. and when it s not, then they are the opposition, they re the enemy. i found it interesting today that sean spicer kept bringing up charles krauthamer as a defense for the administration. when charles krauthamer was number one enemy for donald trump early on. when i brought him up and said what he called donald trump, called him a rodeo clown. he said, why would this guy say that about me when he can t even buy a pair of pants? thanks to our panel, thanks to our guests, jeremy bash, katy tur, charlie sykes. we ll have you all back in short order. coming back after the next break, the white house argues that the president is tough on russia. that s next when we continue. comments about russia s leader. i ve always felt, you know, fine about putin. i think that he is a strong leader, he s a powerful leader. i think i would have a very, very good relationship with putin, and i think i would have a very, very good relationship with russia. he s also a guy who annexed crimea, invaded ukraine, supports assad in syria, supports iran, is tryingo undeine ouinuence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the dnc computers. nobody knows that for a fact, but do you want me to start naming some of the things that president obama does at the same time? but do you want to be complemented by that former kgb officer? i think when he calls me brilliant, i ll take the compliment. putin is a killer. we have a lot of killers. do you think our country is so innocent? given those on the record comments from the president, it s a fair guess that many in the briefing room wanted to ask sean spicer a follow-up on that point today. cnn s jim acosta was the first one to get a chance. you said earlier in your comments that the president has been incredibly tough on russia. how is that possible? he has made comment after comment over the course of the campaign, the transition, where he defended vladimir putin. with respect to russia, i think the comments that ambassador hailey made at the u.n. were extremely forceful and very clear that until they that s hailey, not the president. she speaks for the president, i speak for the president. all of this administration, all the actions, all the words in this administration are on behalf of this president. i don t think we can be any clearer on the president s commitment. they all speak for the president except when they don t. remember what candidate trump wrote on twitter last may. don t believe the biased and
you can take a look. i will be on the daily show with trevor noah, if all my travel goes okay including the many flights i ve been taking just about every single day. i m looki ing forward to being back on trevor s show. if you re in the area, it would be great if you could come by. i might see some of you in a little bit in seattle. that is all for this evening. the rachel maddow show does not start right now apparently. so she is there. there you are. i am here, sorry. it was actually me and a member of our ground crew both here about to start the show together. perfect. go to it, then. thank you very much. thanks to everybody who works here who has such patient with me arriving at the set usually four seconds before this camera turns on, tonight, arriving four seconds after the camera turned on. very sorry about that. as you might imagine, as you might be able to tell from my composure right now we have a big show tonight. we have here tonight live the former secretary general of nato. very much looking forward to that interview and discussion. we have congressman adam schiff tonight the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. we will be talking to him tonight as it is intersecticrea becoming the wisdom in the house intelligence committee into trump in russia is over, not that it s over because it s complete but it s over because it has blown up. in facty the whole house intelligence committee seems to have ceased to function entirely even beyond doing that investigation. they re apparently no longer meeting as a committee to do business other than the trump-russia investigation. they apparently stopped all together. it appears like the investigation itself is done. that probe from going forward. it seems clear honestly the administration would have nothing to fear from the chairman of that committee who after all was part of the trump campaign and trump transition official himself. i don t think they re worried about devin nunes. that means if the white house has played a role in shutting down or trying 0 shut down the house intelligence committee investigation of this matter, then the reason they were so afraid of it, the man they were so afraid of in that investigation wasn t devin nunes, it was the other senior person running that investigation, who didn t work for them, who was not part of the trump campaign. that would be the top democrat on that committee, adam schiff, if the white house really did shut this thing down, if the common beltway wisdom is correct and the house investigation committee into russia is over and shut down if the white house had any role in achieving that outcome, it s because they were afraid what adam schiff was going to do. adam schiff is here tonight live. it s a big show tonight. meanwhile, today was the start of the biggest rupture in europe, since the end of world war ii. the british people voted narrowly last summer to leave the european union. today, britain s represent tich at the eu presented the formal paperwork that starts the process of the uk getting out of europe, getting out of the european union. the president of the european union ended with a statement that included these four words, we already miss you. it will take britain four years to fully extract itself from europe financially and legally. it s an unprecedented process. nobody knows how it will end up in the details. we know the bottom line result. it will result in a smaller europe and a question whether that puts more pressure than ever before of this centrifical process of scotland breaking away becoming its own kingdom. then northern ireland. as you know, it s divided in two. most is the independent nation of ireland happily staying part of the european union. and the six counties that make up northern ireland those six counties are part of the uk and like scottish voters wanted to stay in the eu, voters in northern ireland wanted to stay in the eu, too, but outvoted. if northern ireland stays part of the uk they will be forced out of europe against their will and out of the eu against their will. the border between ireland and the six counties in the north will require that border to be fortified or built up to whatever extent is required by a border between the european union and non-european union country. i m sure the building up of that border will be great in northern ireland. i m sure that won t be controversial at all. what britain did today in y prying themselves off europe and splitting up the european union that is adding a whole new impetus, dynamic to the age-old bloody question whether northern ireland should stay part of the uk or six counties in the north should be part of the united front. troubles anyone? he two national institutions that was part of that so we wouldn t have another world war ii that followed world war i, the two multi-national institutions that were created and staved in fighting off world war iii thus far the two organizations that have done the work in stopping world war iii are nato and the european union. all things considered, forever you factor in military power and economic power and international influence, i think it s fair to say the uk is the strongest and most important cornerstone member of the european union. now, as of today they are starting the process of getting out. it s happening. that alone is profoundly d disstabilizing in lots of way to the uk itself probably our greatest ally on earth. we are also about to have two hugely important elections in other cornerstones of europe. both germany and france are heading towards very very important national elections that will not just determine the immediate short term future of politics in those countries, determine whether or not europe splits apart entirely. the strongest antieuropean candidate in france is mauer ren lapin, the head of a party called the national front founded by her father in the early 1970s. for decades the front national ale has been the fascist party in france. he denies the holocaust, made a career accusing his political opponents eing secret jews. and about muslims being allowed to immigrant to france a position his daughter shares as she campaigns to be president of france now. part of her campaigning to be president of france last week resulted in her taking a detour to the kremlin. a weird day. nobody quite knew where mauer ren lepin had gone for the day and suddenly turned up without warning for this meeting with vladamir putin, one-on-one. the russian government is essentially openly supporting the far right candidacy of her as she runs for president in france. russian banks have made loans of millions of euros during this campaign. today at their press conference on the senate intelligence committee investigation in the trump-russia. and senator burr said there was no doubt russia after interfe interfering in our election was interfering in russia and france. and this fascist candidate in france, it is possible the reason russia likes her so much cause of her domestic politics and so right wing and forgivee ra racist. vladamir putin, i don t know how he thinks. he might see that as a feature not a bug. in st. petersburg, russia will be hosting something called the rush shall international conservative forum and want to promote the establishment of a common constant acting russian european conservative elite group uniting the political and economic call elites in europe. one of these russian conservative forums russia has hosted in 2015 sponsored by a branch of his political party and in st. petersburg. that one attracted american far right racist fringe right characters like jared taylor a prolific su do economic white supremacist. you might remember him from the alt-right gathering in washington, d.c. where everybody did the nazi salute and shouted heil trump. you know, they said it was hail trump. but with the stuff arm it was hard to read their lips and get that sitle subtleties. regardless whether they like the racist part, whether or not he likes that faction, russia likes mauer ren le pen, and one thing they like is if she gets france she will do her damndest to pry france outside as well. russia supports anything pulling apart institutions of the west. russia s overall global strategy is to knock the united states down as many pegs as it can in terms of our global standing. they want to disrupt and divide and hopefully split apart russian alliances institutions that serve as a counterweight in the world and serve as definine ing any sort of democratic liberal values western order. all stinstitutions that support that russia sees them as the enemy. they will do anything to undermine them as best they can and when they have the momentum and advantage they will take it. that russian idea by defeating your adversaries by splitting them up, promoting divisions among them and within them, it seems almost ridiculous to think about it. that strategy extends to us in america in a very specific way. you may have heard about the newly energized current federation of thealifornia paratist movement? there have been low-key low profile california in sur reksus insurrectionsist movements for year, conservative parts of california that say california should split up and the liberal and urban and minority heavy part of the state should be its own thing and the conservative rural white part of california should become a southern idaho thing or something. that kind of thing has existed a long time. what s new in california is the surprisingly slick online organized progressive seaming effort that california as a whole should secede from the united states of america. i m from california, my whole family lives in california. i know lots of people in california who have talked to me half joking or not about how appealing this calexit idea is since donald trump was elected president. the leader of the organization that spearheaded that movement, the leader of yes california, he really does live in russia. he lives in siberia. last september, the yes california guy who conveniently lives in russia, the calexit guy and right ring separatists got invited to moscow for a kremlin funded event called the globalization of russia. look it up. you will signed links to the independent republic of california, with a link. and the calexited founder that the separatists office space is being loaned to him in moscow free of charge. he said he doesn t actually know who owns the office space, privately owned who can tell but nice to have free office space for his california separatist movement he s running from russia. that is a ridiculous story, right? it is a ridiculous idea, cart n cartoonish. but it s real. imagine if your goal was to take the united states down a few g pegs in the esteem of the world in terms of global leadership and the way they looked up to the united states for help or advisor conceivably as exemsplar of democracy and power, imagine if your goal was to hurt all of that, erode all of that, if you had a chance, even a slim chance hilarious cartoonish tiny chance of splitting off from the united states, one of its 50 states on its own terms is the sixth largest economy in the world. you pry california off the united states, california has a bigger economy than france does. it would be nice to pry germany out of the eu. pry france out of the eu. the eu is splitting apart on its own. we ll do what we can to help but let s think big. t theresa may is the british prime minister tasked with managing britain pulling out of the european union she is not the politics credited with the leaving. that goes to nigel, who spearheaded the brexit campaign and he has become famous for his frequent appearances alongside donald trump and trump tower at the white house. o oddly, the day wikileaks held its press conference to crow about the fact they were rele e releasing a devastating document dump experts say essentially exposed the entire cyber arsenal of the cia, on that same day, nigel farraj was at the embassy of ecuador where wikileaks founder jul yan assange lives and gave his press conference that day. a buzzfeed director said he saw him and asked him what he had been doing? he said he couldn t remember what he had been doing inside that building. recently this past week nigel f farage has been in california to promote the effort to california splitting from the united states or at least splitting itself in two. today, the republican and democratic senior members of that senate intelligence committee announced they have 20 people on their list they want to talk to for their investigation of trump and russia. they hinted former security advisor michael flynn and sally yates are among those 20 people. they confirmed his son-in-law will be one of the people they speak to. and on the house side the house investigation may or may not be blowing up. we ll hear more on that from congressman schiff. the senate is going ahead, tomorrow, not something you want to miss if you re interested in this issue. one point about that, the last point i want to make. confirming in no uncertain terms, there is one thing the committee will not be looking at, the question of whether or not the russian attack is over, whether russia is still doing their thing, whether they are in fact collecting their payment from the trump administration now in exchange in their part throwing the election trump s way, that the committee is not going be looking at. it changes the republican platform convention or the way the president refuses to criticize vladamir putin. that s not in the scope of the investigation. i ll leave that up to you guys to report. yes, ma am. yes, ma am, next question. senate intelligence committee will not be looking whether or not this russian attack, russian campaign is over. in terms of what that committee is going to investigate, we all fully expect what the russian attack on our election was. i think our country doesn t necessarily expect but at least hopes that it will look whether russia had help pulling off that attack on our election, whether the trump campaign or any other american confederates helped them in their attack. we hope they will look at that, too, they say they will. they made explicitly clear today they will not look and not even consider questions whether russia s attack on the united states is still under way. whether anybody who might have help them in that attack last year might still be helping them today to get what they want. as richard burr said today, he hopes the press will follow that question. that part is all on us now. congressman adam schiff is here tonight, the former secretary of nato is here tonight. stay with us. [ di nour roar ] onboard cameras and radar detect danger all around you. driver assist systems pull you back into your lane if drifting. bye chief. bye bobby. and will even help you brake, if necessary. it makes driving less of a production. lease the gle350 for $579 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. doctors recommend taking claritin every day distracting you? of your allergy season for continuous relief. claritin provides powerful, non-drowsy, 24-hour relief. for fewer interruptions from the amazing things you do every day. live claritin clear. every day. you get to do the dishes.ed. bring em on. dawn ultra has 3 times more grease-cleaning power. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. call today. comcast business. built for business. we have an exclusive tonight, polling data from public policy polling out with a new national poll tonight that s a teeny tiny bit explosive. they will publish this tomorrow but have given us an exclusive first look tonight. you haven t seen this anywhere else. i will give you the top line polling result that i think will make the biggest headline. a two-part question. here s the first part. this is a national poll, a first look at these new results. here s the question, quote do you think that members of donald trump s campaign team worked in association with russia to help trump win the election? turns out a plurality of voters s says, narrowly, yes, i believe donald trump s campaign worked with russia to help him get elect. 44% of the country believes that. 42% does not. that s good to know. the follow-up. if it turcns out if an investigation does turn up conclusive evidence the trump campaign colluded with russia to manipulate our election, do voters have a clear idea of what should then happen next. turns out they do. this is the second part of that question. ppp asks, quote, if evidence comes out that proves conclus e conclusively members of donald trump s campaign team worked in association with russia to help trumwin the election, should trump continue toerve as president or should he resign? answer, resign. the majority of the country, 53% says if he or anybody in his campaign worked to swing the election in his favor, donald trump should resign as president. so, at least for a majority of the country that would be a presidency ending development. as far as the investigations looking into this mess, there is quite a considerable national appetite for those investigat n investigations to keep going, keep digging. cnbc news is also out with a new poll today, not exclusive as they have published this already. cn cbc asked voters whether the fbi should be investigating the president s ties to russia. respondents did the equivalent of screaming a collective yes into the telephone. two-thirds of the country, almost two-thirds, 63% thinks it is necessary and should keep going. while these investigations chug along at the fbi and in congress more-or-less, voters quite clearly have questions that they want answered, they want results and it sounds like they want dramatic results if these investigations turn up a worst case scenario answer. congressman adam schiff is the ranking democrat in charge of the investigation in the house. he says from his position at that committee, he has seen evidence he would describe as more than circumstantial, that the trump campaign did collude with russia in their attack on our election last year and congressman schiff will join us in a few minutes to help us answer those questions or which ones will continue to be asked. stay with us. ho! ( ) it s off to work we go! woman: on the gulf coast, new exxonmobil projects are expected to create over 45,000 jobs. and each job created by the energy industry supports two others in the community. altogether, the industry supports over 9 million jobs nationwide. these are jobs that natural gas is helping make happen, all while reducing america s emissions. energy lives here. i use what s already inside me to reach my goals. so i liked when my doctor told me i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals by activating what s within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin. it helps activate my body to do what it s supposed to do release its own insulin. trulicity responds when my blood sugar rises. i take it once a week, and it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen and i may even lose a little weight. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable prescription medicine to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. trulicity is not insulin. it should not be the first medicine to treat diabetes or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not take trulicity if you or a family member has had medullary thyroid cancer, if you ve had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to trulicity. stop trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms such as itching, rash, or trouble breathing; a lump or swelling in your neck; or severe pain in your stomach area. serious side effects may include pancreatitis, which can be fatal. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin increases your risk for low blood sugar. common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may make existing kidney problems worse. with trulicity, i click to activate what s within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar numbers with a non-insulin option, click to activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity. with a non-insulin option, click to activate your within. ifover time it canr fromlead to cavities and bad breath that shy there is biotene, the # 1 dry moutbrand recommended by dentists. biotene. for people who suffer from a dry mouth. power. that s a bad thing for anybody in high government office. just today a long time state department employee was arrested and charged with having undisclosed and allegedly corrupt contacts with the chinese government. that person got arrested today at the state department. it s a really bad thing to have those kinds of undisclosed contacts with a foreign government if you re in the government. it s a national security disaster for somebody who has access to all the most sensitive national security and intelligence information in the government because they re serving as the national security advisor. sally yates was expected to testify about that yesterday, what she brought to the white house, what she told them about the national security advisor and his contacts with russia. that was supposed to happen yesterday. the republican chairman cancelled the hearing and hasn t rescheduled it. the senate intelligence committee said they have a list of people they want to talk to for their trump investigation. one of the people they re trying to speak with is christopher steel, a former british miis officer, the author of the partially unkribted dossier of alleged dirt on donald trump that was such a salacious scandal when it was first published in january but now reportedly partially born out by subsequent investigations. the senators have not confirmed they are trying to get christopher steel to testify before their committee but the fact they want to have put a central allegation on the dossier. that not only did russia attack the u.s. election last year, we now know they did, that russia did that with the knowledge of the trump campaign and the trump campaign promised in return they might do a few things russia might like, down play russia and ukraine as antipolitical issue in this country and agree to stoke divisions in nato, which russia sees as its greatest adversary rin the world. down play russia in ukraine and plan up things they like to yell at each other about. whether or not all nato count countries are paying their fair share for the coast of that alliance. to be fair, lots of u.s. presidents have hit that issue with our nato allies from time-to-time. that said, none of them before now went as far as presenting the german chancellor with a bill, a 3$372 billion invoice, when she visited the white house. but there were european reports last week that s exactly what our new president did when angela merkel paid her visit to d.c. european reports last week say trump gave her a bill for 3$372 billion for unpaid nato spen spending. the white house is denying it did any such thing to angela merkel. the reports raise the questions, right? how much is nato in the crosshairs right now? how much is nato potentially at risk and why? ining us for the interview tonight, the fmer secretary general of nato, former prime minister of denmark and the author most recently of the will to lead america s indispensable role in the global fight for freedom. mr. secretary general, i m ho r honored you took the time to be with us tonight. thank you for your time. you re welcome. thank you. from your five years leading nato, what did you come to understand about russia s posture toward nato? what s their strategy when it comes to nato? their strategy is exactly what you have described. it is to split the western alliance and it is to insure that people have mistrust in democracy. when i am witnessing the debate that esspewed across the atlantic, when i am following the debate here in the states, i think mr. putin has more-or-less achieved his goal. how vulnerable is nato, that alliance to the kind of splits you re talking about. obviously, there are always disagreements and points of contention to the closest of allies. the kinds of divisions and splits and sore subjects he apparently wants to push, how vulnerable is the alliance? he cannot split the nato alliance. of course, it was a matter of concern when candidate trump raised doubts about the american commitment to defending all allies. after he was elected, he has appointed a security team which has reassured allies that the american commitment is unchanged, that s good. and furthermore, he has also provo provoked, i would say a valuable discussion about the european investment both economically and politically in the transatlantic pond. they understand europe that they cannot take the transatlantic pond for granted so now we have to reconsider how can the european country do more. i hear your analysis there but i feel there s an uncomfortable tension in part of it in that you seem to be saying you are reassured by people other than the president in the u.s. government, even if you are still worried about the president himself, in terms of his approach to nato. is that essentially what you mean, that you fistill have concerns about him but not about his team? there will be a nato summit on the 25th of may. i would expect a clear signal from that summit where president trump will participate, that the american commitment to the alliance is unchanged but also that the european allies will contribute much more. when we listened to vice president pence, secretary of defense mattis and secretary of state tillerson, they have reassured the european allies about an unchanged american commitment. as britain breaks off from the eu in a process that starts today, a lot of people are foretelling the break up of europe in a bigger way, people are looking forward to elections happening in other cornerstone eu countries. do you feel like those fea are overblown? the centrifical force we see operating on alliances like the eu if not nato itself, those things are as strong as we are worried about? i have no doubts president putin opened a bottle of champagne after he learned about the brexit vote because it s in his interests to weaken the west on alliance. however, now, we have to listen to the will of the british people and get the best out of the divorce negotiations. i have no doubt the uk will now feel even more committed to nato an contribute even more to european security. anders fogh rasmussen. former danish prime minister, former nato secretary general, thank you. thank you. we have another big interview tonight. congressman adam schiff joins us, lots ahead. stay with us. my business was built with passion. but i keep it growing by making every dollar count. that s why i have the spark cash card from capital one. with it, i earn unlimited 2% cash back on all of my purchasing. and that unlimited 2% cash back from spark means thousands of dollars each year going back into my business. which adds fuel to my bottom line. what s in your wallet? whfight back fastts, with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums that $100k is not exactly a fortune. well, a 103 how long did it take you two to save that? a long time. then it s a fortune. i told you we had a fortune. get closer to your investment goals with a conversation. c mohappy birthday! i survived a heart attack. i m doing all i can to keep from having another one. and i m taking brilinta. for people who ve been hospitalized for a heart attack. i take brilinta with a baby aspirin. no more than one hundred milligrams as it affects how well it works. brilinta helps keep my platelets from sticking together and forming a clot. brilinta reduced the chance of another heart attack. or dying from one. it worked better than plavix. don t stop taking brilinta without talking to your doctor since stopping it too soon increases your risk of clots in your stent, heart attack, stroke, and even death. brilinta may cause bruising or bleeding more easily, or serious, sometimes fatal bleeding. don t take brilinta if you have bleeding, like stomach ulcers, a history of bleeding in the brain, or severe liver problems. tell your doctor about bleeding, new or unexpected shortness of breath, any planned surgery, new or unexpected and all medicines you take. talk to your doctor about brilinta. i m doing all i can. that includes brilinta. if you can t afford your medication, astra zeneca may be able to help. why pause a spontaneous moment? cialis for daily use treats ed and the urinary symptoms of bph. tell your doctor about your medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have a sudden decrease or loss of hearing or vision, or an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis. there s always something to report. who at the white house gave you access to the intel? guys, there s nothing to report. i appreciate it. thank you. did the white house know? the white house know about the intel before you were briefed about it. thank you, guys. i ve answered all the questions over and over again. the house of the intelligence committee is a popular man these days, and i m sure because he s a nice guy but no explanation for his middle of the night excursion to the white house last week to view secret documents from a secret source he then called a press conference to talk about the next day and ran back into the white house because he said he needed urgently to brief the white house what he had just learned at the white house the night before. until that makes sense, expect more scenes like this of him being chased downapitol hill hallways by inquiring reporters. here s a very simple part of it. the question of who let him in? who went bzz so he could open the gate? who cleared devin nunes to enter the white house grounds last tut night? that last tuesday night. that is an answerering question the white house should be able to answer. monday this week, two days ago, the courthouse promiswhite hous would work on getting that information. they have not provided the information and reporters are starting to get ancy about it. do you have any information to live up to the commitment you made on monday to provide more detail how that happened in a process you just told us yet again is above board and totally appropriate? i don t have anything on that for you at this time. have you looked into it? i have asked preliminary questions and have not gotten answers yet. no, i don t have anything further on that. sean spicer not saying who let the intelligence chairman onto the white house grounds that night. that information is probably easy to find. you can t check white house visitor logs online the one ofs we got used to being posted by the obama administration and those have been offline since president trump took office. but the white house does presumably keep a log. they know internally. michael isikoff says sta staffers are speculating documents may have been handed to devin nunes by a lawyer named michael ellis that previously worked for nunes on the committee and hired this month to work. and until we get the simple answer to a question like that the house intelligence committee investigation will remain basically on ice. still no date for this week s hearing supposed to feature testimony from acting attorney general sally yates and probably be no hearings at all until at least after the easter break. time to start getting ready for easter now, you guys. as of today, all nine members of the democratic committee have called on him tory cuse himself from the investigation. it is temperamenting it is dead and everybody should pivot away from it and instead arrerest th hopes on the senate investigation. one person i m sure who doesn t believe that, congressman schiff. thank you for joining us. appreciate you being here. good to be here. what can you do updating us on the status of your committee, the question everybody has on their mind whether or not this investigation is still live in the house of representatives? here s the situation and you certainly introduced interest the right way, we can t have a credible investigation if one of the members let alone the chairman is freelancing and can t have an investigation where the chair goes to look at evidence and basically says, i alone can see this evidence and i will only share it with the president. not as if this is just keeping democrats out of the loop, that would be one thing but none of the committee members have seen this, none of us, democrats or republicans know exactly who he met with or what he saw, we only have his representation. you just can t conduct an investigation that way. we certainly want to get back to the business of serious investigation. we have never stopped our work, not through this, but we re not going to stop our work. i do think it s important, as i said all along, this credibility being conducted in a nonpartisan way. now, i think we have this cloud over the investigation in the sense many people have raised questions is the chair truly impartial? is there some distance between the chair and the white house? until those questions are cleared up i don t know how much credibility our investigation is going to have. from a pure numbers perspective, senators burr and warner today said they have about 20 witnesses scheduled for their investigation. they have seven professional sta staffers working on this. can you tell us anything in terms of the house side metrics like that for your committee? sure. we have probably a roughly equivalent number of staff cleared to work on this investigation, so the resources, although very small, frankly, on both sides of the capitol, are about the same being devoted to the investigation. our witness list is probably about the same size as that in the senate. i do think we ought to be making sure we go through all the documents we want and obtain the documents before the witnesses come in. we don t want to have the witnesses jammed on us before we re able to do the preparation for those witness interviews. but it s, i think, very much as you described or the senators described, same witnesses probably for the most part and the same staff resources devoted to it. congressman schiff, one of the terms that happened today was the chairman of your committee you called on to recuse himself in this investigation, he took some shots at you and the other democrats on the committee. if you have just a moment, i d love to get your response from the chairman if you can stick with us one more segment? sure. congrsman adam schiff stays with us after the break. it s a big one. too bad. we are double booked: diarrheand abdominal pain. why don t you start without me? oh. yeah. if you re living with frequent, unpredictable diarrhea and abdominal pain, you may have irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d. a condition that can be really frustrating. talk to your doctor about viberzi, a different way to treat ibs-d. viberzi is a prescription medication you take every day that helps proactively manage both diarrhea and abdominal pain at the same time. so you stay ahead of your symptoms. viberzi can cause new or worsening abdominal pain. do not take viberzi if you have or may have had: pancreas or severe liver problems, problems with alcohol abuse, long-lasting or severe constipation, or a blockage of your bowel or gallbladder. if you are taking viberzi, you should not take medicines that cause constipation. the most common side effects of viberzi include constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain. stay ahead of ibs-d. with viberzi. the battle has begun. soldier versus soldier. army versus army. nation versus nation. evony: the king s return. download now and play for free. (i wanted him to eat healthy., so i feed jake purina cat chow naturals indoor, a nutritious formula with no artificial flavors. made specifically for indoor cats. purina cat chow. nutrition to build better lives. but when we brought our daughter home, that was it. now i have nicoderm cq. the nicoderm cq patch with unique extended release technology helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. it s the best thing that ever happened to me. every great why needs a great how. ways wins. especially in my business. with slow internet from the phone company, you can t keep up. you re stuck, watching spinning wheels and progress bars until someone else scoops your story. switch to comcast business. with high-speed internet up to 10 gigabits per second. you wouldn t pick a slow race car. then why settle for slow internet? comcast business. built for speed. built for business. joining us once again is congressman adam schiff. he is the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. thanks for sticking with us. you bet. devin nunes said today that, quote, it appears that the democrats aren t really serious about this investigation. he said, quote, as far as i know, they have done very little to even look through the documents that the intelligence agencies have provided. i just wanted to get your response to that and find out what you think he is talking about there. you know, i m not sure, rachel. and i don t want to get into a back and forth with the chair. i will say this. we ve submitted witness lists to the majority. we offered the majority and for days we made this offer to try to get things started. and that is if they would like to bring directors rogers and comey back in closed session, we re fine with that let s schedule that and the open hearing. but what they re really trying to do is essentially prohibit sally yates from testifying publicly. we re not okay with that. we think the public has a right to know what led up to the firing of michael flynn. why did the president wait so long after learning that michael flynn had lied to take action or even inform the country it had been misled i think unwittingly by the vice president. these are questions that ought to be aired publicly. and i don t think we ought to use the subterfuge. and somehow we re prohibited from doing two things at once. let s schedule both hearings. i think it s certainly more than a reasonable request. and we re waiting to hear back from the chair. i know you re hoping for the best. i ve been told you re going to meet with chairman yourself tomorrow. if things don t go well, can you envision a scenario in which you and the other democrats on the committee would hold an unofficial public meeting somewhere that wasn t tenically a hearing of that committee in order to have publ testimony or do public questioning of somebody like sally yates if the chairman won t convene that? rachel, i think what s going to happen really regardless of whether the chairman recuses himself or doesn t. the investigation is going to go on. it has to go on. the only question is how credible will it be? but democrats are going to continue to work in a very straight forward way. we re going call all the witnesses that we feel are relevant and appropriate. we re going to follow the evidence where it leads. if the majority walls off certain things, we ll be very public about it. i imagine they re going to continue to want to call witnesses and move forward. i do think to get back to a point you raised at the outset, one of the things that the russians have done is they have used financial entanglement in europe to try to exert influence over business people and politicians. that should not be beyond the scope of our investigation. well need to look at this issue as well. and so i don t think we ought to write off anything. some of the witnesses on our list do pertain to. for example, why there was this opposition at the republican convention to an amendment that would have been in support of providing defensive weapons to ukraine. if that changed as a result of anything that ambassador kislyak did or any other coordination, we ought to find out about it. i do disagree with my senate chaian counterpart. i think these are well within the scope, at least of the house investigation. congressman adam schiff, the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. congressman, thank you for your time tonight. i really appreciate it. thank you. what he just said there about financial entanglements and that should be part of the investigation, that s really important, and it s news that he said it. stay with us. we ll be right back. with advil, you ll ask what sinus headache? what stiff joints? what time of the month cramps? what nighttime pain? make all your pains a distant memory with advil the world s #1 choice what pain? advil. on a perfect car, then smash it into a te. your insurance company raises your rates. maybe you should ve done more research on them. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise your rates due to your first accident. liberty mutual insurance. a 401(k) is the most sound way to go. let s talk asset allocation. -sure. you seem knowledgeable, professional. i m actually a deejay. -[ laughing ] no way! -that really is you? if they re not a cfp pro, you just don t know. cfp. work with the highest standard. trust #1 doctor recommended dulcolax. use dulcolax tablets for gentle dependable relief. suppositories for relief in minutes. and dulcoease for comfortable relief of hard stools. dulcolax. designed for dependable relief. today two high-ranking former aides/appointees of chris christie were sent to prison for bridgegate. the days long traffic nightmare dreamed be uppity christie administration to punish a mayor who didn t endorse christie s
question. why isn t adam schiff saying, yeah, let s go look at it? instead just like yesterday when he said he ll go look at it. let me finish. he was almost about to sign the invitation for comey to come testify, but suddenly, there are stipulations. there was no reason to have stipulations. same thing today. he was invited jack, you re rewriting jack, you re rewriting history. stipulations, what are you saying let me answer the question. i know this not because i ve talked to him, but because i ve read the documents and read the public reporting which you can read as well and you probably already know, which is that he was willing to sign the letter. in fact, he said today, he s willing to have comey and rogers come in behind closed-doors testimony, but he also wants a guarantee that clapper, that yates, and others are going to testify openly and that hasn t been assured. even today, he still hasn t gotten assurances from nunes that s going to occur. and jack, let me also ask you, if you were devin nunes right now and say you just walked into this, unwittingly, do you think you were set up for this? or were you a part of it? or is this just innocent? that all of these if you look at this timeline, if you look at the timeline, everybody is i m a former english major. i know about foreshadowing. every action was foreshadowed from the president to sean spicer and suddenly devin nunes is over at the white house. i mean, it just chairman, other than collusion, what is the explanation here? i really do not think that the white house and i say this are respectfully, but i don t think they re organized enough to have such orchestration of this in a way jack talk to by the way let hold on, jack. if you call this orchestration, you know, god help us all. because that s not orchestration. no, but what you re assuming is that the president said, okay, on monday, i m going to say this. sean, on wednesday you re going to say that. and devin, on friday you re going to do this. i don t think that s possible. wait a minute. wait a minute. what we re forgetting about the ryan lizza s reporting. ryan, explain your reporting, because you have a senior white house official saying i mean well, explain. a senior white house official who would have had, if he wanted it, access to this information. but, i mean, the bottom line is, he knew what nunes was going to say on monday, before he said it. so, that right, he told you, watch what nunes is going to say. he s going to lay the predicate and he referred you to a hill article, which talked about incidental collection. ryan, the question is, why would somebody hate his job or his employer so much that he would be that disloyal? i mean, i understand how it s useful to you, if i had that kind of mold, but that sounds like a real sleazy person, frankly. and i m not going to make that the subject. but i want to get back to adam schiff. well, we were talking about the hearing and i was asking what we should expect but he s undermining his team. if he goes around saying things are you surprised that a white house official would leak something, from this white house? it gets back to what we republicans say about the deep state but jack, they wanted us in the press to focus on incidental collection. i don t know how they re there. jeff, we haven t heard from you. other than collusion, is there any explanation for this? well, i do think that devin nunes is such a uniquely clueless individual and so out of his depth in this whole investigation that ascribing too much planning and motive to him might be wrong. but it is true, also does that mean you re on my side? i m not sure. i think your side basically wants to make the whole thing, what did evelyn farkas know and when did she know it. it s like, who cares? and who is she? but the question that i think, you know, that we need to focus on, is, what is the underlying truth here of what were the relationships from the trump campaign and the russian government. and russian oligarchs. and how can that information come to light in the most fair and efficient way? i think it s quite clear that the house intelligence committee is a hopeless mess. the senate judiciary committee seems to be doing a better job. but giving devin nunes any responsibility for this, and trusting him to be doing the public s good as opposed to donald trump s good is just it s a fool s game. it seems to me, actually, i was thinking about it tonight. i think that the senate committee is going to come out with a very balanced report that some people are going to like. the house committee report is going to be called political regardless of what they find. because both parties, you could argue, have been very, very political and running to the press, as opposed to what warner and burr are doing, it s a totally different approach. and burr gloria, we ve got to go. and they re doing an investigation into russia, period. not into leaks. well, they should be! i want everybody on the panel. to our viewer who just joining us, president trump s former national security adviser, who was fired for lying about contact with russia, is now offering to testify to the committees investigating that contact and talk to the fbi as well, in exchange for immunity. the wall street journal broke the story just about two hours or so ago. we re doing our own reporting, just a short time ago, general flynn s attorney put out a statement. it reads in part, quote, general flynn certainly as a story to tell and he very much wants to tell it. no reasonable person who has the benefit of advice from counsel would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution. the story first broke in the wall street journal. i spoke with correspondent carol lee in tonight s first hour. take a look. carol, first of all, what have you learned that former national security adviser michael flynn has offered to the fbi and others? well, we ve learned that through his lawyer, he has had conversations to achieve some sort of immunity in exchange for his testimony, or for cooperation, in terms of the fbi. those discussions, it s our understanding, have happened in recent days. there s a statement out now from michael flynn s lawyer, saying that he would agree to testify under certain circumstances and that they have had these conversations and his lawyers are saying that they re concern is not so much that michael flynn has something to hide, they re saying he doesn t or he has something he should be concerned about, but in this political environment, he would not be treated fairly. and so, he s asking for immunity from any prosecution to be able to give his testimony and cooperate and not have any consequences should something arise that could be criminally prosecuted. and i think, in your story, you cited the fbi as well as the house intelligence committee and the senate. the house intelligence committee spokesman for chairman nunes has said that michael flynn has not asked for immunity. the lawyer s statement does talk about the house intelligence community and the senate. i just read it very quickly. it doesn t directly mention the fbi, is that correct? no, his statement i just took a quick look at it. it does not. but the fbi is obviously a natural place to go and fear trying to seek immunity or if you re going to be investigated. we know that the fbi had interviewed michael flynn a couple of months ago, when he first was under scrutiny or it was reported publicly that he was being his communications with russian ambassador were being investigated. and other potential communications between him and russian officials were being looked at. and he was, at that time, interviewed by the fbi and so, it would be it would make sense for him, obviously, to have that discussion with the fbi, because they re conducting an investigation. and then, obviously, the house and senate intelligence committees are, as well. i guess the statement i mean, when i first read the statement from chairman nunes spokesperson, saying that he had not asked for immunity before the house intelligence committee, it seemed at odds with your reporting, but also the lawyer s statement. but when you read the lawyer s statement closer, it basically it doesn t use the term immunity. so and the lawyer does say that they have had talks with the house intelligence committee. so really it s kind of maybe a question of semantics. it s maybe a question of semantics, but if you look at the lawyer statement in our discussions with various sources, you know, he is seeking immunity. what he s asking for is to be able to cooperate and to deliver testimony in exchange for not being prosecuted in some way, leading chants of lock her up, the guy on, i think it was meet the press, back in september a year ago said, people asked essentially, people asked for immunity have committed some sort of a crime. you don t ask for immunity unless you ve committed some sort of a crime. he s now asking for immunity. it s an incredible development. jeff, appreciate it. joining us now is cnn s senior political analyst, david gergen and the multi-facet is, david axelrod. x files pod caster now host of the x files on tv premires saturday night at 9 which know. looking forward to that. david gergen, you said earlier tonight that, quote, the clouds are darkening over the white house tonight. any way you look at it, and congressman kingston was trying to spin this as or trying to say this was a good thing for the white house. any way you look at it, this doesn t seem to be good for them, no? anderson, first of all, we ve never had a national security adviser embroiled in a legal dispute that potentially has criminal implications since john poindexter back in the reagan years overs the iranian arms deal. we ve never had never, ever had a president in the first hundred days whose white house is so embroiled in controversies that are increasingly suspicious. so, yes, this is very bad news for the white house, darkening clouds. i m not quite sure how they deal with it, but, you know, if the national security adviser is ready to sing in exchange for immunity, you know, that has to be worrying to them. because, you know, this goes to the heart of what the investigation and the fbi is investigating two central issues. one is, to what degree did the russians throw the election toward the president. but the second issue is, to what degree were the russians colluding with trump associates. and michael flynn is right at the top of that list. and to have him now asking for immunity, you know, sends this message that there s a there is a fire here of some sort. and what we ve been seeing for the last two or three weeks is the effort to create a lot of clouds, so we can t see the fire. but the flynn story says there is a fire. david axelrod, flynn was of the president s national security adviser, one of his closest advisers, not just in the white house, but on the campaign trail up until six weeks ago. what s your reaction to all of it? he was an integral part of the trump campaign, when the trump campaign was a very trim operation. and as david said, the danger for the white house here is, i mean, the link that will make this a full-blown crisis is if a link can be made between people in the trump campaign organization and russians or others who are familiar with the fact of the hack and what was to come. and i think that s the big question that people are asking. and flynn would be one of the people who you would look at most closely, because of the ties that he s had in the past, because we know he s had conversations with kislyak, perhaps others. so, this is, this is a really, really alarming development from the standpoint of the white house. and i quite agree with david. you know, part of why people are so keenly interested in this and following this so closely is the freneticism in which the president has reacted to any charges of collusion with russia and these charges he s dropped from time to time to try to divert the discussion. so this is a big deal. and by the way, it comes at a particularly inconvenient time, because on the very day that this news surfaces, we learn that one of flynn s appointees in the white house was involved in this nunes escapade. so, it really it couldn t be worse. this is this is, as david gergen would say, a bad news day at the white house. right. i mean, david gergen, not only somebody that flynn appointed to the national security council, but someone who the new head of the national security council, the new national security adviser, tried to get removed from the national security council. and according to the reporting by matthew, of the new york times, president trump himself intervened to stop that removal. i want to play a clip of something that general flynn said on meet the press back in september. i spoke about this. he was speaking about secretary clinton and the people around her asking for immunity. let s play that. the very last thing that john podesta just said is no individual too big to jail. that should include people like hillary clinton. i mean, five people around her have had have been given immunity to include her former chief of staff. when you are given immunity, that means you ve probably committed a crime. now, we should say, i mean, he was, you know, clearly had a political reason for saying that. you can argue that somebody can ask for immunity for a whole bunch of reasons and it s not necessarily because somebody s committed a crime, david gergen. that s very true, but at the same time, it s generally true that somebody asking for immunity to protect themselves from criminal prosecution. and it s also true that the lawyer s at the same time for general flynn, which came out tonight, cnn has been reporting on, says in the last line that this is all about protecting his client from prosecution. so that seems to be the central motive behind it. and i think the point you made about h.r. mcmaster, who was highly regarded in the military, and is now the national security adviser to general flynn s successor, and tried to oust this person. tried to send him off the staff. because flynn had recruited him. and this same person was deeply involved in giving stuff to nunes and the collusion with nunes. tried to fire him, and the president personally intervened? i ve never heard of anything like that anderson. and it happens you know, i hope for the country s sake, frankly, i hope for the president s sake, that this is more smoke than fire. because i think it would be calamitous for the country if it went the other way. but they re behaving in such a suspicious way that it has to make you doubt. you know, when sean spicer stands up there and says things that you know are not quite true, it makes you doubt. i just wish for the country s sake they would come forward, be honest, let s face it, let s deal with it, and let s move on. because it is not helpful to have a corruptful president. if that s what this comes to, it s extremely bad news for the country. and this is how these scandals unravel. and they tend to morph into other stories as events develop. so, now there s going to be a great deal of interest in exactly why this young man who mcmaster wanted to fire, who flynn brought to the national security council was saved by the president. and it also raises the question of whether he had a pipeline to the president in some way. i mean, the big question and if he had a pipeline to the president, why did he need nunes to pass along information? exactly. and the curious thing about the whole nunes, as lindsey graham said, inspector clouseau episode, is that he goes down to the white house, he gets briefed on this information, and then he breathlessly runs back to the white house the next day to tell him about the information that he had obtained the previous day, from the white house. and so, you know, it is a it is a hot mess right now. and i just can t david axelrod is so on point on this. and i think he speaks for a lot of people who have worked in white houses over the years. people who work there feel so privileged. think really want their presidents to do well. they want it to be clean. and this is just a deeply disturbing, you know, moment for an awful lot of people who have tried hard. i think, anderson, one other thing that should be said. i was one who was really disturbed by general flynn s behavior at the convention, when he led those lock her up chants. it was kind of a low point in the campaign of 2016 and perhaps in presidential campaigns over time. and so, you know, it is the height of irony now that he finds himself in the position that he s in. yeah. again, the ax files 9:00 p.m. eastern on saturday night here on cnn. up next, we ll check for reaction on capitol hill to all of this. a lot happening tonight when we continue. yeah, at first i thought it was just the stress of moving. [ sighs ] hey, i was using that. what, you think we own stock in the electric company? i will turn this car around right now! there s nobody back there. zillow. in a statement, michael flynn s lawyer says he certainly has a story to tell. joining us with reaction from capitol hill, cnn s jessica schneider. what are you hearing? reporter: out here on capitol hill, no direct confirmation as to whether or not they ll take general flynn s lawyers up on that offer, for testimony in exchange for immunity. you know, out here on capitol hill, we have heard from a spokesman for the house intelligence committee. they say that there has been no request from general flynn, and in addition, the senate intelligence committee, just not commenting on this. but of course, like you mentioned, somewhat of a tantalizing offer from general flynn s lawyers, saying that, yes, he has that story to tell. he will tell it, if the circumstances permit. but no reaction just yet here from capitol hill. yeah, richard burr, who s the senate intelligence chair, he did mention michael flynn yesterday. what did he say? it was interesting, anderson. you know, yesterday, chairman burr held that press conference in advance of the senate intelligence committee hearings that started today. and in that press conference, you know, he was asked, who exactly are you talking to? he said there were many people on that list of people he wanted to talk to. he said general flynn, of course, is one of those people. i reached out to general flynn s lawyers yesterday. they confirmed to me that, yes, general flynn s lawyers have been talking to the senate intelligence committee. they re saying general flynn himself has not been talking to the committee. but it remains to be seen whether any deal is in the works. whether any deal will actually happen. anderson? jessica schneider, appreciate the update. kerstin powers, paul begala, matt lewis, julia kayyem, jeffrey lord, and back this hour, jeffrey tubin. julia, you said a few days ago you thought this could be in the works. we don t know quite yet what he s willing to proffer and whether he ll speak without the immunity we re hearing about. but just going back a little bit, this shouldn t be that surprising for people who know about how these cases unfold. several months ago, we learned about that weird interaction regarding flynn and sally yates. her concern, the former deputy so the idea that this goes directly to the oval office, we re not there yet. these cases take a long time, but certainly, this is basically, horrible news for the white house at this stage, though. paul begala, as somebody who worked in the clinton administration and saw some tough days there, what do you make of this offer by flynn s people? i think julia is spot-on. i would add to it that immunity does not immunize you from perjury. the most important thing for all these witnesses is to tell the truth. and you know, i know the prosecutors want to prosecute people. but what i want, i just want the facts. i want the truth. it s why i ve been wanting an independent commission as well as a special prosecutor, to kind of keep the politics out of it. but believe me, at the white house right now, they re tight. they re tight right now. there s a knot in their stomach. because somebody who knows an awful lot has now volunteered to share that. and it may be that everything he knows is just all sweetness and lights and puppies and unicorns and then that s just great. then it has good news, as jack kingston was arguing to you in the last hour. but it s just not. it s just not. it s like saying, a tumor is good news because you ll lose weight. yeah, maybe. if ain t good news. jeff toobin, if everything he says is, look, there s no there there, everything s fine, everything i did was aboveboard, why would prosecutors give him immunity for him in order to say that? if they don t feel there s a reason? well, it depends. i mean, you know, they want a complete picture of what happened here. and he is such an intricate integral player in so many parts of this story, i mean, he has had enormous numbers of contacts, it seems, with russian government officials, with people associated with the russian government. if you want to know what the trump campaign was doing with them, you want to talk to mike flynn. even if there was nothing illegal about what he did. i mean, sometimes prosecutors in an effort to just get a complete story will give someone immunity, even if they don t implicate other people in criminal behavior, just because they are so critical. but, again, i keep returning to this. you know, witnesses are important, but documents and tapes and transcripts, they are even more important, because they are not subject to the people lying. these tapes exist in the world, and if the judiciary if the intelligence committee and the justice department are doing their job properly, and i think they will be, they ve got to see that first, before they make an agreement about giving anyone immunity. jeffrey lord, i want to re-read that first line from general flynn s attorney, that statement they put out. he said, general flynn certainly has a story to tell and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit. isn t that something that would put a chill through washington, someone at the heart of it saying, they have a story to tell? only if you have a story to hide. i m not at all convinced there s anything to hide here. there seems repeatedly to be no there there. but let s find out. i mean i m all for this. and i find it very interesting in the whole tale of devin nunes at the white house, that there were quote/unquote leaks of classified information to the chairman of the house intelligence committee, this is a mammoth story, but when the obama administration leaks like a sieve to the new york times and the washington post, this is no big deal. this is why you need to get all the players on both sides from president obama on down, on both sides, in front of some committee or commission or whatever and testify and let s find out. kerstin, i want to play what general flynn said when he was talking about immunity for people around hillary clinton during the whole e-mail server story. this is what he said last september. the very last thing that john podesta just said is no individual is too big to jail. that should include people like hillary clinton. five people around her have been given immunity, to include her former chief of staff. when you are given immunity, that means you ve probably committed a crime. so, kerstin, is there any way for the white house to put a good spin on this? no. i mean, look, this really makes him a hypocrite, because it s actually not true that you ve necessarily committed a crime if you get immunity. so he s a hypocrite. that s a minor offense in washington i think. it looks bad for him. the bigger issue is, if there is a russia connection, mike flynn knows about it. and this is somebody who was with donald trump for a long time. he had a lot of face time with him. he was very much there during the manafort period. he knows where the bodies are buried. and he s embittered. this is somebody who s not happy. he was fired by the white house after being left to twist in the wind. so if he wants to get back at anybody, now is the time. and as people have pointed out, he s also obligated to tell the truth. now that he s struck this deal, if there s a story to tell that implicates the white house, he has to tell it. and matt lewis, probably another good example of why attorney general recused himself, because it s his department who would be making a deal with general flynn and the two of them were close advisers throughout the campaign. in hindsight, it looks like a really good move that attorney general sessions did that, even though donald trump, president trump, at the time, didn t want him to do it. it s one of the few things that i think the trump administration has sort of gotten right, you know, when we see this mess with nunes everything and like that. look, general flynn is somebody who has been with the campaign and in the administration very intimately, as kerstin said, he knows where the bodies are buried, if, in fact, any bodies are buried. and i have to say, i think i feel like today was a turning point in this story, at least in terms of the way the media is going to cover this. that s bad news for donald trump. this feels like now you re in the feeding frenzy. i think that this story is going to be really the dominant story going forward now, for, you know, we ve had this period of time, where the news cycle, it s every day, donald trump tweets something and he could change the narrative. i don t think that s going to work anymore! it feels like something changed today. and again, why do you why would your lawyers say that you have a good story to tell and that you want immunity if you don t. paul callen was saying earlier, legal analysts, those are very provocative words for defense attorneys or for any attorneys to use. we ll continue the conversation next, beyond all the drama that we ve been talking about tonight, a former obama official is taking heat, accusing her of leaking classified information. she says her words are being twisted. you heard her name, evelyn farkas, earlier used by jack kingston. we ll talk about her, ahead. [ male announcer ] customink knows saturdays can be crazy. crazy. [ chuckles ] [ male announcer ] you get it all started. you bring them all together. [ chatter ] .and sometimes cart them around, too. and when it comes to making custom t-shirts that make the event, you do it all with customink. with the best collection of styles and graphics to choose from, it s easy to go online and create custom t-shirts and more for all of life s events. free shipping and on-time delivery is guaranteed. go to customink.com to get started today. report that at least two white house national security staffers provided house intelligence committee chairman devin nunes with intelligence reports. in a day of fast-moving developments, the white house also released a letter inviting house and senate intelligence committees to review new documents related to the potential unauthorized disclosure of classified information about u.s. persons. here s the part that grabbed our attention. quote, in light of recent disclosures, regarding possible inappropriate accumulation or dissemination of classified information, eg, the comments of former deputy assistant secretary of defense, evelyn farkas, our hope is that the committee will continue to investigate the following questions. goes onto outline five question. what grabbed our attention is the mention of evelyn farkas, a name that s new to most people, but a name that jack kingston brought up in the past hour. in recent days in certain circles, she s become a major talking point. randi kaye reports. a former defense department employee from the obama administration, now taking heat for saying this earlier this month on msnbc. that the trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their the staff, the trump staff s dealing with russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. reporter: her name is evelyn farkas. and she served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for russia, ukraine, and eurasia until 2015. something else she said now has conservative media blaming her for leaking classified intelligence. here s what she said about wanting to inform lawmakers on capitol hill. so i became very worried, because not enough was coming out into the open. and i knew that there was more. we have very good intelligence on russia. so, then i had talked to some of my former colleagues and i knew that they were trying to also help get information to the hill. reporter: even though she says her comments were based on media reports, those on the right suggest that farkas basically admitted she was responsible for leaking information that the obama administration had collected on then president-elect donald trump. conservative media has run with it. suggesting her comments prove there was surveillance on trump. farkas is referring to surveilled information on the trump transition team. listen next, as she admits that there was an unmasking, in other words, revealing the identity of those trump team members. reporter: earlier this morning, farkas defended her original rarkz. we were having now transition of power from the obama administration to the trump administration. and if, indeed, there was an investigation ongoing, if, indeed, there was information that the obama administration had about russian interference and possible american involvement, i wanted to make sure that congress knew about it. i do not, absolutely, do not condone leaking. you know, it s against the law. reporter: white house chief of staff, reince priebus, reacted on conservative talk radio this morning. this is an incredible statement. you know, and what it means and what she meant by that and whether that has anything to do with the issues in regard to surveillance of trump transition team members is something that we need to figure out. by midafternoon, white house press mid-afternoon, white house press secretary sean spicer was laying blame. if you look at, there s the obama deputy assistant secretary of defense that is out there, evelyn farkas. that they went around and did this. and she said, quote, that s why there s so many leaks. they have admitted on the record that this was their goal. randi joins us now. you spoke to evelyn farkas tonight. what more did she say? by phone, she told us once again she had nothing to do with leaking intelligence. that she had no access to this intelligence information anymore, because she was out of government. she said she was trying to make sure that congress was being notified correctly if there was, indeed, any information to know about. she also said, whoever started this whole thing took her words out of context. she said it was to make it seem like she was some part of a big conspiracy. she said that the white house is now spreading fake news. that was her words. and picking on her. she called it obnoxious. i also asked her if she thinks she might be called to testify before the intelligence committee, and she says she doesn t think they ll make her testify, because she doesn t know anything, anderson. randi, thanks very much. back now with the panel. kerstin, do you see substance claims by allies of the president that this person evelyn farkas is relevant to anything being investigated by congress? no. and noskt in fact snoepz that has debunked this. and she s talking about information that was already reported in the new york times at length, and in fact, i think she might have been even been referencing that. that the obama administration has been basically preserving intelligence and disseminating it, because they were concerned that if there was an investigation down the road, that it wouldn t be available. and that s exactly what she was talking about. so i really am struggling to even understand where they re getting the idea that she is in any way confirming that there was surveillance of donald trump. jeffrey, i know you gave evelyn farkas the way to comment in her own words in the american spectator, which is obviously commendable. i read what she said. she left government in september of 2015. she s now, i guess, a pundit on cable news. you know, nothing wrong with that. and no one has presented any evidence that she s done anything wrong nor do her comments really indicate that, do they? well, i mean, she believes i spoke with her this afternoon, and just for the record, it turns out that we are both graduates of franklin and marshal college, which i did not know. i did not know her. she contacted me based on hearing me mention her name last night on your show. she i thought it was only fair to let her get it out there, as i did with carter page at the american spectator in her own words. she believes she s been wildly misinterpreted. that the videos were, you know, cut and pasted in essence to make her say something that she didn t say. now, i and i said directly to her that my view was that whoever leaked classified information has broken the law and should pay a price for it. so this is why you have investigations. and she was from her perspective, i m sure, very forthright. and i can tell you as you played clips there, that sean hannity, mark levin, and rush limbaugh have been very tough on her in the conservative media. they believe that this is some degree of a smoking gun. this is why you have an investigation. and i think, you know, go to it. let s find out what is the story. what is going on here. but, what is surprising or controversial about a former pentagon expert on russia saying that there were people in the outgoing administration concerned the incoming administration, you know, allies of which are under federal investigation for possibly colluding with russia, would try to bury relevant intelligence? i mean, doesn t that actually make sense? and by the way, she s not in the government anymore. what s controversial what s controversial is that whatever went on in the administration and the obama administration turned up in the new york times and the washington post, repeatedly. you know, anonymously leaked, which they, quite frankly, said. so somebody was leaking classified information within the obama administration. and that s the point. it may well not be miss farkas. i just want to know who it is. but jeffrey, i just saw sean hannity claiming that it proved that president obama was having donald trump surveilled. i mean, where does she say that? well, clearly, clearly donald trump was being surveilled. accidentally, incidentally, however you want to phrase it no, that s not surveillance. incidental collection is not surveillance. isn t that the crux of the smoking gun, is that you believe that she s saying that there was surveillance? kerstin, kerstin, if you are picked up on tape by the government of the united states, accidentally, that information is supposed to disappear into the depths, never to be i m just asking you, where did she confirm where did she confirm that president obama had donald trump under surveillance? well, what she says she says in there that the people in the administration were concerned. the new york times says but that s not anything about surveillance. what? well, where she doesn t say anything about surveillance. if it s not from surveillance, how did they get the information? she s talking about incidental collection! i mean, i feel like we ve had this conversation so many times! that is surveillance! all right. paul beglal, do you think the white house or its allies will be able to distract from all of this by continually bringing up evelyn farkas? not just by that, but by everything. it s not a smoking gun, it s a smoke screen. and donald trump is not very good at being president. he s only had ten weeks, but he s driven himself to the lowest percent of approval in american history for an incoming president. but what he s great at, great, and i mean this, the best i ve ever seen, is distraction. he uses weapons of mass distraction. that s what the farkas fracas is, it s just a way to distract us. by the way, today! ten minutes before the senate intelligence committee convened a really interesting, informative hearing. ten minutes before, what did donald trump do? he tweeted out an attack on the house freedom caucus for primary elections that are 20 months away. he didn t do that because he really has a strategy to unseat republicans in primaries. he did it because he wanted to distract attention from the senate intelligence committee. we will see this every single day well, matt, to that point matt, to that point, he also was tweeting about, you know, bringing back or changing libell laws against the papers like the new york times, which is, that s an old chestnut from back in the campaign. it just seems, again, we re not even reporting on it, because it just seems like such a distraction. yeah, we re not, but i tell you what, there was a time when he really could drive the media narrative with a tweet. and the media would just chase after that story and he would get a news cycle or two out of it. that s why i think this is different. i think things have shifted. i m it feels like there is now i think it s the flynn story. you know, we ve had there have been, you know, this has been a developing story for weeks and months now. i feel like the flynn news has the potential to take this into a game-changer, where there s a feeding frenzy, and then i just don t think he can distract. and that s when you re in danger of having a presidency that is inundated day in and day out by questions. once if you finally get people under oath to testify, that opens up all sorts of cans of worms. we ve got to wrap it up. free advice? very quickly, paul. the way to handle these scandals, and i ve handled a lot of them, is not distracting with other things. it s actually to tell the american people, i know other people that are worried about general flynn and his testimony. i m here to create jobs and do my job as president. he never seems to get back to the core reasons that 62 million americans voted for him. reasons that are mysterious to me, but i suspect they have a lot too with jobs and the economy, not with evelyn farkas. we have discovered a new connection between trump and russia, it pertains a russian billionaire that s already connected to paul manafort. more details ahead. adviser michael flynn offering to testify in exchange for immunity. his lawyers reach out to the fbi, the house and senate intelligence committees. the house and intelligence committee, the senate investigators held their first public hearings today on the russian meddling in the u.s. elections. we laid out facts about seven trump associates and their connections to russia. we ended up with a flow chart you see there. looks a lot like a busy subway map. one connects paul manafort to a russian billionaire named oleg deripaska. vladimir putin was asked about the possibility of him appearing before the senate intelligence committee to discuss his relationship with mr. manafort. putin said, that s his right, let him do it. we don t know if the senate committee wants to talk to deripaska. tonight, though, there s another connection you should know about. drew griffin tonight has the latest. reporter: his name is oleg deripaska, a russian billionaire many call an oligarch. typical of russian billionaires, he s well-known to vladimir putin and given awards by the russian government. there s no indication donald trump has ever met him, but turns out the two men do have connections. cnn has learned donald trump and oleg deripaska s company have over the years shared the same attorney. on his website, kasawits prominently lists donald trump as a client. who he s represented in a wide range of litigation matters for over 15 years. oleg deripaska isn t on his list of clients. but records show he is the attorney in a federal lawsuit where he represents an investment vehicle wholly owned by deripaska. one attorney with two billionaire clients? perhaps. but consider this. oleg deripaska has another shoestring connection to donald trump and it s tied to this man. donald trump s former campaign chief paul manafort. they re former business partners. republican strategist who ran trump s campaign for five months also started several offshore companies with oleg deripaska. legal filings show the russian billionaire entrusted nearly $19 million to manafort in 2018, the money to be invested in a ukrainian telecom business. it was part of a major deal to make long-term capital. the investment and relationship fell apart. for several years deripaska tried to contact manafort and get answers about the missing money. court papers showed the attorneys had not been able to reach manafort. and determined that paul manafort had simply disappeared. then, paul manafort began running donald trump s campaign in 2016. and deripaska s legal claims against him appear to have gone away. manafort spokesman tells cnn believes the matter is dormant and not be pursued further. ethics expert and cnn contributor larry nobel said while there may be nothing inherently wrong in representing them in unrelated matters it raises questions, just in the larger context of what s been going on with manafort. every time you see something like this, you wonder whether this is perfectly legitimate, an isolated issue where a lawyer who is involved representing various clients, or whether or not it fits into just a larger narrative of involvement with russia. paul manafort confirmed he did work for oleg deripaska but rejects the allegation he was pushing the political interests of vladimir putin. that denial came after the associated press reported on a 2005 memo, the memo according to the a.p. was from manafort to deripaska, pitching a business plan that could greatly benefit the putin government and influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the united states. cnn has been unable to verify the memo and oleg deripaska has since taken out advertisements in american newspapers to deny this malicious assertion, adding context often creates an illusion of might be true information. though it s based on complete and full lies. as for the fact donald trump and oleg deripaska share the same attorney, there is no proof of anything nefarious. in the greater context of russian investigations, it is at the very least curious. do we know how it ended up that donald trump and this russian billionaire s company had the same attorney? well, the white house and oleg deripaska did not respond at all to us, anderson. but the attorney did. mark kasawits said their firm don t represent deripaska. they never have. they represent the company battle run, which is wholly owned by deripaska. in a statement, it said, our representation had nothing to do with the representation of any trump personnel or entities, and we have never relayed information or facilitated communication between mr. deripaska and his representatives and president trump and his representatives. a lot of legalese there, anderson, to say this may just be a coincidence. drew, thanks very much. and we ll be right back. more news ahead. if you have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn s, and your symptoms have left you with the same view, it may be time for a different perspective. if other treatments haven t worked well enough, ask your doctor about entyvio, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohn s. entyvio works by focusing right in the gi-tract to help control damaging inflammation and is clinically proven to begin helping many patients achieve both symptom relief as well as remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. while not reported with entyvio, pml, a rare, serious brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections, or have flu-like symptoms, or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn s medication isn t working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach.
. if you want to list things to worry about, he said his father the president is surrounded by 37 appeasers. yes, he means people who just tell trump what they think he wants to hear, where the family gives him the right direction. what a perfect definition of a country run by a royal family, again, on the russian model, the romanovs, a bad example of having it all and blowing it. and that s hardball for now. thanks for being with us. all in with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on all in. you had a, you know, someone as despicable as hitler, who didn t even sink to the to using chemical weapons. communication breakdown. to draw any comparison to the hol oh cost was inappropriate. from foreign policy to the basics of governing, new signs of confusion and chaos in an understaffed white house. then donald trump, as part of an investigation into potential links between russian intelligence and the trump campaign. more on this story coming up. but this comes as the trump administration is reeling from yet another self-inflicted wound tonight. you know it s bad when the president s press secretary is standing in front of the white house apologizing for what he said about hitler earlier in the day. this episode just the latest evidence of an administration that does not appear at a very basic level to know what it s doing. and as the president has been inserting himself into some of the most high-stakes global issues, launching an attack on syrian government forces and tweeting about the solving the problem of a nuclear north korea, trump s administration is having trouble getting out of its own way. the sean spicer fiasco began with comments he made at today s press briefing about syrian dictator bashar al assad s use of chemical weapons. we didn t use chemical weapons in world war ii. you know, you had a you know, people to festivities on the south lawn. this year, according to the new york times, the white house is struggling to pull it off. the event is this coming monday. but according to the times, washington area public schools that normally receive blocks of tickets for as many as 4,000 children have yet to hear from the white house. likewise, several groups representing military families who have also accounted for as many as 3,000 guests in recent years, the same group of people doing a shoddy job of running the administration, it is those same people that are conducting foreign policy in overseeing the most powerful military in the history of the world. today the kmantder in chief took to twitter to address north korea s nuclear program. quote, i explained to the president of china that a trade deal with the u.s. would be far better for them if they solved the north korea problem. north korea is looking for trouble. if china decides to help, that would be great. if not, we will solve the problem without them. usa. this comes as north korean state media warn the nation would carry out a nuclear strike if pro-voekzed by the u.s. meanwhile secretary of state rex tillerson was at a foreign ministers where he asked a question that left his colleagues befuddled. quote, why should u.s. taxpayers be interested in ukraine? i m joined by colonel wilkerson. colonel, let s start with the hitler comment, which we don t have to talk about the sort of trajectory of the historical clumsiness and apology. but, to me, what was striking is that this was pretty clearly a talking point. the president himself in interviews talking about the worst mass murderers haven t used chemical weapons in this way, which is the kind of rhetoric you normally association with justifications for escalation into a military conflict. i m very concerned by that very aspect of it. let me just say that i think scott spicer is kept around because he makes donald trump look good. i wouldn t expect him to depart on that basis alone. the white house is looking so bad that scott spicer actually makes our president look good. with regard to some of the remarks about the more visible threats in the world, north korea being preeminent perhaps right now, from what secretary tillerson has said, from what the president has said, from what allegedly transpired in florida with president xi, i see so much rank amateurism at work here, just your remarks about the easter ceremony and no one being notified, it s clearly indicative of a white house that not only is low on people, it s low on experience and talent. they can t seem to even manage the grounds of the white house let alone such significant issues as russia and syria and north korea and on and on. one challenge has been just simple coordination on what acy the syria policy is, and it does seem today that they approached something closer to a consensus. you had secretary of state mattis saying this was about chemical weapons and reinforcing the sort of taboo and norm and international law against them. the president sort of basically saying something like that as well. do you feel like they ve arrived at some coherent policy on syria? i certainly hope so. but let s just look at some of the things they ve been saying, chris. they ve been trying to blame russia, for example, for irresponsibility in the disruption of syria s chemical weapons stocks. i m sorry. the united states army and its contractors destroyed 600 metric tons in 42 days of cw stocks. the opcw and the united nations were responsible for that. as far as i can tell, they did a pretty thorough job. so why blame russia? they don t even know their facts. now, syria might have kept some sarin, some vx, or some other chemicals aside. there s no doubt they could have done that. but this is ridiculous. the inexpertise, the amateurism, i remember very vividly how this happened with the bush administration in the first term when dick cheney was more or less running everything, and no one knew what was going to come out until dick had made up his mind. this was very disconcerting for our allies. well, at least mr. cheney was competent, experienced, and an extremely good bureau craft. this is amateurism, and amateurism looks to the world just like what it is amateurism. colonel, do you think that there s any danger now of escalation in syria if, for instance, there s evidence of more chemical weapons attacks, that essentially a line s been drawn that has to now be backed up no matter what? i think we can take mr. putin at his word. there are going to be, i think he said, more fake chemical attacks. i don t take that as disingenuously as maybe other americans do because i have seen no intelligence that convinces me that the provenance of those attacks in idlib province was in fact the syrian government. so i m really worried about this. and i know, chris, that we re already committing forces in syria that the we weren t committing before. the rules of engagement have changed. you may have seen above the faux left side, washington post front page this morning, you had active duty army actually saying that the changed rules of engagement are killing more civilians around mosul and other places. again, i don t see any coherence developing here even though i understand the military is in charge of the strategy. i really don t see coherence yet. conel lawrence wilkerson, thank you. thank you. joining me now, katrina vander hooven, and former congressman david jolly. katrina, you know, there s this line that eric trump said, and i ve now seen conservatives repeat it, which is, well, look, the syria strike proves that trump is not tied or overly sympathetic to russia. and one wonders whether they now perceive that there s political upside in increasing escalation with russia as a sort of means of producing some sort of domestic political effect with regards to the ongoing investigation there. let me flip that if i could. colonel wilkerson made a very important point about the importance of the 2013 diplomatic agreement to dismantle chemical weapons in syria, chris. you ve been tweeting about that. i think it s important because president obama spoke of the playbook in washington among the foreign policy establishment. that playbook assigns credibility to use of military force. president obama pushed back against a discredited foreign policy establishment. but now that diplomatic agreement is being castigated, dismissed, by even obama supporters. i think it s unhealthy. i think lawrence wilkerson also made a good point that what was the rush? we ve seen horrific, heinous chemical weapons attacks in syria before. why not an independent investigation of the source of those attacks? why not a present to congress or the united nations? in terms of russia let me stop you there because lawrence wilkerson said this. i have seen people calling into the question whether the chemical weapons were in fact from the assad regime. afp was on the scene fairly quickly after the first reporters that i saw get there who had pretty consistent eyewitness accounts of an airplane flying over. i m saying there should have been an independent investigation before the rush because what you re witnessing is and put aside what the trump sons are saying. i do think there could have been a targeting of domestic critics. what we re faced with tonight is that we are probably closer to war than we have been since the cuban missile crisis. the prime minister, who is the most pro-western in that putin government, said after the syrian strikes, we are on the verge of military clashes. i think this country needs to wake up. we re talking about sean spicer factionalization in this administration, which is surfacing and is very difficult to understand. we re witnessing an escalation in yemen, in somalia, an escalation of counterterrorism strikes, an escalation of killing of civilians, and i m worried about a catastrophic collision course this administration. and think of those who are applauding the syria strike, chris. to me, a disastrous presidency, one of its worst acts possibly was syria strikes and you heard these pundits applauding. sanity is needed. common sense. david, that brings me to this question. one of the things in the republican party, there was a central civil war about this posture towards foreign intervention, particularly along the lines of, say, enforcing a chemical weapons ban. and donald trump won by repudiating the bush legacy. he did. very explicitly. i think and you tell me. i think that s still where the base of the republican party is in their heart. i think they re conflicted, yes. look, the president has zero credibility. nobody is suggesting that he has credibility on this issue. but the question as to whether or not he made the right dis, i would push back a little bit on katrina. it did receive both affirmation of both democrats and republicans. chris, i went down to the syrian border. i visited a refugee camp from the children to the adults. families wanted to go home. there was a father before i left who said, how are you going to help? how are you going to help? chris, i didn t have an answer. but, david, it s not through bombs. think of the hypocrisy of a president saying he s anguished looking at those civilian casualties when he won t even let those listen to the father who had to bury his twins. explain to the father who had to bury his twins why we shouldn t intervene and try to prevent that from happening. i mean let me just say this. two things. one, there is no answer to that father, whether that airfield is struck or not. so let s be clear about there s no incremental progress made for that father. and as for answering that question, which is a very difficult moral one, there are a lot of fathers in a lot of other places including in yemen right now who would like to see the u.s. play a role different than the one it is. katrina and david, thank you. you got it. still ahead, more on that breaking news i mentioned earlier. the fbi was granted a fisa warrant to monitor the communications of trump adviser carter page last summer as part of an investigation into possible ties to russian agents. more on that development after this two-minute break. i would always answer hispanic. so when i got my ancestry dna results it was a shocker. i everything. i m from all nations. i would look at forms now and wonder what do i mark? because i m everything. and i marked other. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. a heart attack doesn t or how healthy you look. no matter who you are, a heart attack can happen without warning. a bayer aspirin regimen can help prevent another heart attack. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. bayer aspirin. is to always keep track of your employees.r micromanage them. make sure they re producing. woo! employee of the month! you really shouldn t leave their side. vita coco coconut water, hydration comes naturally. but we ve got the get tdigital tools to help. now with xfinity s my account, you can figure things out easily, so you won t even have to call us. change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. add that premium channel, and watch the show everyone s talking about, tonight. and the bill you need to pay? do it in seconds. because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. go to xfinity.com/myaccount breaking news tonight. the washington post is reporting that the fbi obtained a fisa warrant last year to monitor former trump adviser carter page. quote, the fbi and the justice department obtained the warrant targeting carter page s communications after convincing a foreign intelligence surveillance court judge there was probable cause to believe this is the key part page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case russia, according to officials. this appears to be the first confirmation that a fisa warrant was in fact approved to investigate contacts between russian intelligence and trump associates. joining me now, phillip rucker and julian sanchez, a senior fellow at the kaddo institute. julian, let me start with you and then i ll come to you, phillip. fisa is intended to spy on or surveil foreign intelligence? so there s supposed to be a fairly high bar to actually target an american citizen and not just incidentally sweep them up, that right? there s actually two different sets of standards for getting a warrant that depend on whether the target is a u.s. person or not. if it s a foreigner, essentially if they re working for a foreign government, that s more or less enough. for a u.s. person, it s not enough to show that they re in the employ of a foreign government. you have to show they re engaged in clandestine intelligence activities and doing so knowingly. so it wouldn t be enough even if he had been unwittingly recruited as an asset. so the obvious question is what is the evidence they had that he was engaged in that kind of conduct and then how did someone who might have been engaged in that conduct end up as one of a relatively small number of foreign policy advisers to the trump campaign? that s key here. phillip, the reason this reporting is so important is we ve had stories floating around about possible fisas, and two different british outlets have both had the story. this is the first sort of big american outlet to nail down this story and nail down a target for it. that s right, and it only nails down one target. it s this gentleman carter page who was an adviser for some time on the trump campaign. the trump officials would contest that and say he wasn t a formal adviser but he did play a role in helping shape the foreign policy. i should also note that when he sat down with your fine paper and the now president of the united states was asked to name foreign policy advisers, out of his lips came the name carter page, comma, phd. that s correct. and the significance here is carter page is somebody who has a long history in russia. he lived in moscow. he worked in business in russia, and the u.s. government felt strongly enough that there was some suspicions there that they were worried he was acting on behalf of russia in dealing with the trump campaign and dealing his communications back and forth, that it was enough to warrant this warrant. this is also the individual, we should note, who recently was revealed in fbi charging documents in the southern district of new york had contact with foreign intelligence officials who were being charged in that court. exactly right. julian, the second part of this, right, so it s not just that because part of the thing that s hard about evaluating the evidence on this story is how should i be thinking about what has been shown here? and to me what s striking here is that they were able to get this fisa warrant and that wasn t just a unilateral decision. that does have to go before a judge, again with this relatively high standard in the context of fisa. that s right. i mean there are in a way two different ways to read this, either of which is sort of a big deal. one is they had in fact had probable cause to believe this guy was acting as a foreign agent and in ways that either do or may involve violations of u.s. criminal law. the narrative i m sure that page would prefer is, the alternative is that this is an adviser to a presidential campaign and, you know, the other possibility is that there wasn t very strong evidence. then wow hayou would have quest about how scrupulous the fisa court is being in evaluating evidence. sort of two sharply contrasting possibilities but it s a big deal either way. i saw a writer for breitbart saying, see, surveillance on trump campaign officials although i then saw another trump associated person say, well, he was never an adviser even though he was talked about. this will now i mean this now, talk about fuel on the bonfire of this story. exactly. it makes it a bigger story. we have so many more questions here that need to be answered. one thing that s important, though, is this is not evidence of what donald trump accused president obama of having done back then, which was personally authorizing wiretapping of trump tower. this is just a carter page situation. right. and also julian, it comes from the federal bureau of investigation. you ve probably heard of it. it s called the fbi. it s run by a guy named james comey, who we now know was supervisoring fisa warrants on this possible investigation, which he has now confirmed in open congress when he wrote the letter about hillary clinton s e-mails. yeah, i know. it is striking. i think what comey would probably say is, well, that was a closed investigation although then the question is what were they continuing to look at, and this was an open one. so there s a weird irony there in that the more genuine suspicion they continued to have or the extent to which they hadn t resolved the question of whether there was wrongdoing involved, they were less able to speak publicly about it. that is a great point, right? like, well, this was quite serious. we didn t want to say anything. the other thing that we publicly announced, that was basically case closed, hence writing that letter. thanks for joining us. coming up, town halls are back, and the resistance is as strong as ever. lawmakers getting some face time with some very unhappy constituents ahead. in kansas s forth district to replace former congressman mike pompeo, who is now the cia director. it is the first congressional election since donald trump became president of the united states. with less than 1% of the votes tallied, the democrat is leading. it may be a while before the full results are in. what we do know is that it never should have been this hard for republicans to defend this seat. it s a district that has not gone democratic in more than two de deca decades. the president recorded this robocall for gop candidate ron estes. on tuesday, republican ron estes needs your vote and needs it badly. ron is a conservative leader whose going to work with me to make america great again. we re going to do things really great for our country. our country needs help. ron is going to be helping us big league. but i need republicans like ron estes to help me get the job done. this is an important election. there s really few very much more important, and i need your vote for ron estes on tuesday. not a whole lot of clues about what ron estes stands for or would fight for in congress although the president attempted to raise some actual issues with today s tweet. ron estes is running today for congress in the great state of kansas. i need his help on held care and tax cuts. a victory for the democratic candidate, james thompson, is a very long shot. the level of enthusiasm among democrats is clear, both in kansas in that district and across the nation. for instance, at a town hall in south carolina, congressman joe wilson, infamous for his you lie outburst at president obama s 2009 address to congress found himself on the receiving end of that same charge. [ audience chanting you lie ] what that crowd and others were so riled up about next. (burke) at farmers, we ve seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything. even a coupe soup. [woman] so beautiful. [man] beautiful just like you. [woman] oh, why thank you. [burke] and we covered it, november sixth, two-thousand-nine. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis like me, and you re talking to your rheumatologist about a medication. .this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain. .and protect my joints from further damage. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira works by targeting and helping to. .block a specific source. .of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. it s proven to help relieve pain and. .stop further joint damage in many adults. 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 flulike symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. talk to your doctor and visit humira.com this is humira at work. so that [ audience booing ] obamacare is denying services, delaying services. [ audience booing ] [ audience chanting you lie ] it s not just town hall meetings getting flooded by outraged voters. the wall street journal described a surging wave of activists who are pouring money and energy into anti-trump causes wherever they can find them. town hall crowds are still vocal in support of the affordable care act act and a range of issues as congressman ted yoho of florida discovered at his town hall meeting in gainesville. i am not going to support planned parenthood. [ audience booing ] my fight s not with planned parenthood. my fight is with no taxpayers money going to any organization that does abortions. [ audience booing ] i don t believe the federal government should have a role in providing health care for everybody. [ audience booing ] i stand with the second amendment. my job is to defend the second amendment. [ audience booing ] joining me now, msnbc contributor who has recently traveled toeveral red states and discussed ideas about resifltance and reconciliation. i was thinking about you because a lot of what we re seeing, whether it s in this kansas district, the georgia district, or even those town halls, those are hard core republican districts this stuff is happening in. it s a reminder that it s a big enough country that when you ve got hundreds of thousands of people in a place, a congressional district, there s going to be some critical mass of people even if they re not the majority, who don t support theme the president. that s true. i think for someone like me, frankly, who finds this president to be profoundly dangerous, there s something thrilling about the videos you just showed. people are stepping up. people are getting activated. people are resisting. let me say i also find something a little disturbing about those videos and the thousands of others you could have played, which is that we re not talking to each other. it s very helpful to resist dangerous power, which is what i think this president represents. but i think we re doing less of a good job at being mindful of the circumstances in our unhealthy body politic that allowed someone like this to win. and i think the resistance is actually doing much better than the reconciliation. you know, i think that s interesting although i also think that it s a question of how much you learn from the tea party, right, because the tea party was not real into reconciliation. they were into activation, mobilization, strenuously protesting and saying, no, no, no. and it was politically effective, at least in aort of sht termtical sense, and it seems to me that she model right now for the folks on the other side. do you think that model is incomplete? i don t think it was a brilliant long-term strategy. i don t think they won the future. i don t think the america of the next 50 years is the america they wanted. so i actually think they re probably not a great example to follow, but they are parallel in that i think movements like this have a choice about whether they want to be kind of purist and exclusionary or whether they want to be inclusive. i think, you know, i am probably as strident as you can get about this president being dangerous. but when i m in a lot of these conversations and circles about what to do, i find there s an exclusionary tone, and there s actually a lack of interest in poaching 5% of the other side. i think there s probably less of that, though? don t you think there s less of that in places like the kansas fourth district where folks are living and working and hanging out all the time with folks that did vote for trump. i think the way that got sculpted there is different. totally. that s what i learned going out to these play places. western michigan, i was in an area that s betsy devos country. the interesting thing is people s lives and families and communities are much more divided and mixed politically than ours are here in new york. it s very common to go to dinners in new york and washington and it s going to be all anti-trump people or maybe all trump people. but out there, people don t have the luxury of being so purist. and i think we can actually learn from them because this resistance will fail if it is a movement of the already woke. and it s not interested in expanding and poaching and drawing people in who may be on the fence. yeah. thanks so much for your time. still to come, meet sebastian gorka, a counterterrorism adviser to the president, who recently garnered praise from a group with nazi ties because of something in this picture. plus, everybody needs a hobby. that s tonight s thing 1, thing 2 after the break. hey, ready for the big meeting? yeah. uh, hello!? a meeting? it s a big one. too bad. we are double booked: diarrhea and abdominal pain. why don t you start without me? oh. yeah. if you re living with frequent, unpredictable diarrhea and abdominal pain, you may have. .irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d. a condition that can be really frustrating. talk to your doctor about viberzi, a different way to treat ibs-d. viberzi is a prescription medication you take every day that helps proactively manage both diarrhea and abdominal pain at the same time. so you stay ahead of your symptoms. viberzi can cause new or worsening abdominal pain. do not take viberzi if you have or may have had: pancreas or severe liver problems, problems with alcohol abuse, long-lasting or severe constipation, or a blockage of your bowel or gallbladder. if you are taking viberzi, you should not take medicines that cause constipation. the most common side effects of viberzi include constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain. stay ahead of ibs-d. .with viberzi. find fast relief behind the counter allergies with nasal congestion? with claritin-d. [ upbeat music ] strut past that aisle for the allergy relief that starts working in as little as 30 minutes and contains the best oral decongestant. live claritin clear, with claritin-d. president was. he wasn t very far away. maybe he was playing golf. obama, it was reported today, played 250 rounds of golf. obama went golfing every day. did obama go play golf every day? obama plays more golf than professional players on the pga tour. he s played more than most pga touring professionals. more than a guy who plays on the pga tour plays. plays more golf. pga tour. pga tour. i mean this guy, golf, golf, golf, golf. more, more. learning how to chip, learning how to hit the drive, learning how to putt. oh, i want more. if you become president and you go to the white house, why would you want to leave the white house? when you re in the white house, who the hell wants to play golf? who wants to leave the white house? how the hell do you leave for three weeks to play golf? if i get elected president, i m going to be in the white house a lot. i m not leaving. i m going to be working for you. i m not going to have time togo play gov, believe me. i think you know what thing 2 is going to be. that s in 60 seconds. medicine. i talked to my doctor and found a missing piece in my asthma treatment with breo. once-daily breo prevents asthma symptoms. breo is for adults with asthma not well controlled on a long-termsthma controlmed, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo is specifically designed to open up airways to improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems and may increase the risk of hospitalization in children and adolescents. breo is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop breo and prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. learn more about better breathing at mybreo.com. well, this weekend president trump is heading back to his luxury golf resort in florida at considerable cost to his neighbors. according to the orlando sentinel, the county is debating a special tax on mar-a-lago to offset the cost of the presidential presence. right now palm beach county spends more than $60,000 a day when the president visits, mostly for law enforcement overtime or almost $2 million since january. this will be the president s seventh trip to mar-a-lago since he took office. according to the new york times, trump has spent half of his weekends at mar-a-lago, and he has spent 17 days, over 20% of his presidency, on a golf course. breaking a key campaign promise. if i get elected president, i m going to be in the white house a lot. i m not leaving. i m going to be working for you. i m not going to have time to go play golf, believe me. woooh! it s not how fast you mow. it s how well you mow fast! it s not how fast you mow. it s how well you mow fast. they re not just words to mow by, they re words to live by. the john deere ztrak z345r with the accel deep deck to mow faster, better. take a test drive and save up to 250 dollars on select john deere residential ztrak mowers. can make any occasion feel more special.ie so she makes her pie crust from scratch. and sprinkles on brown sugar streusel. so that you can spend more time making special moments with your family. marie callender s it s time to savor ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. also in kids chewables. you know, the message i have, it s a very simple one. it s a bumper sticker, shaep. the era of the pajama boy is over january 20th, and the alpha males are back. meet sebastian gorka, top trump counterterrorism adviser and former breitbart editor, a naturalized american citizen born in london too hungarian parents. gorka is an ally of steve bannon who, before coming to the white house, showed up regularly on fox news to argue the threat of terrorism is fundamentally tie to the religious offis islam. here he is talking about president obama s refusal to use the phrase, radical islamic terrorism. is he an imam? is he an islamic theoloejen? what are his credentials for saying whether or not what isis does is islamic or not? he says it s a perversion of islam. based upon what? gorka isn t just a run of the mill anti-islamist. gorka wore the honorary medal of a hungarian nationalist organization to trump s inauguration. now, the organization was previously listed by the state department as, and i quote here, under the direction of the nazi government of germany, its founder once said, i have always been an anti-semite throughout my life. a spokesman told them the group was proud gorka had worn his medal and he was a well-known member of vitezi. an investigation by the jewish newspaper found that gorka workedith the openly racist groups and public figures in hungary. gorka s involvement includes co-founding a political party with former members of jobbik, known for anti-semitism, repeatedly publishing articles in newspapers known for anti-semitic content. gorka says he was unaware of his former ally s connection to the far right and only wore the medal to trump s inauguration to honor his father. gorka continues to work in a trump administration that has, let s say, struggled a bit on jewish issues from president trump s apparent reluctance to denounce threats on jewish centers, to the white house not mentioning jews in its holocaust remembrance tribute to today s bizarre, astounding comments from sean spicer about holocaust centers. we ll look more closely at what is going on when it comes to the trump white house and judaism. that s next. a complete multi-vitamin with 100% daily value of more than 15 key nutrients. one a day 50+. so we know how to cover almost alanything.ything, even a coupe soup. [woman] so beautiful. [man] beautiful just like you. [woman] oh, why thank you. [burke] and we covered it, november sixth, two-thousand-nine. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum the uncertainties of hep c. wondering, what if? i let go of all those feelings. because i am cured with harvoni. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it s been prescribed to more than a quarter million people. and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni, your doctor will test to see if you ve ever had hepatitis b, which may flare up and cause serious liver problems during and after harvoni treatment. tell your doctor if you ve ever had hepatitis b, a liver transplant, other liver or kidney problems, hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. ready to let go of hep c? ask your hep c specialist about harvoni. a 401(k) is the most sound way to go. let s talk asset allocation. -sure. you seem knowledgeable, professional. would you trust me as your financial advisor? -i would. -i would indeed. well, let s be clear, here. i m actually a deejay. [ laughing ] no way! i have no financial experience at all. that really is you? if they re not a cfp pro, you just don t know. find a certified financial planner professional who s thoroughly vetted at letsmakeaplan.org. cfp. work with the highest standard. we didn t use chemical weapons in world war ii. you had a someone as despicable as hitler who didn t even sink to using chemical weapons. it was a mistake to make any comparison. assad has done bad things. i m absolutely sorry, especially during a week like this. joining me to discuss the trump administration s strange struggles with judaism, michelle goldberg and david k. johnson. michelle, i don t what do you make of all of this? i don t think the president is anti-sitic. famously, his daughter converted to judaism, but it just seems this constant thing he can t get this thing totally, perfectly correct. don t wear nazi collabist medals to the inauguration. i agree with you. i also think it s unlikely that donald trump is a vicious anti-semite. i think that he and certainly parts of his administration get their ideas from the gutters of the old anti-semitic and kind of unabashedly racist far right. sometimes what you see them doing is repeating classic anti-semitic language and classic anti-semitic tropes, just not talking about jews per se. particularly when they talk about the global financiers that are the globalists. bleeding the working class people of this country dry. so when you see an administration with a lot of people who have clearly been influenced by anti-semitic thinkers and anti-semitic world views, and i think this thing with sean spicer, i think, is not that. this was just buffoonish, accidental holocaust denial. but this is why nobody wants to give them the benefit of the doubt because they haven t earned it. david, spicer today called up sheldon adeleson to apologize. i love this as a designated jewish person to whom one apologizes. spicer reached out to adelson s office and apologized for the offensive, per adelson s spokesman. something weird about that, too. let s keep in mind, donald trump is a man who has a long and well documented history of discriminating against various people. not jews but blacks, women, asians, in employment, in housing. earlier today, trump himself made some comments that were consistent with sean spicer s awful comments. let s give spicer credit for one thing. unlike the politicians and business leaders who come out and say if i offended, i apologize. spicer demonstrated that he has good manners. he just apologized. yes, he did. and michelle, to me, the it gets back to the idea of the sort of, when you, at the sort of when you move out from the center of the actual administration, you get to a very strange and dark place on the far right pretty kwuk quickly. and you don t have to play that many dot connecting which is why you end up in this place. it s not six degrees of separation. it s one degree of separation. sebastian gorka. when you have this person who his exact connection to this nazi-aligned group is disputed but he admits that he wears their medal. he s adopted members of his group adopt a lower case v as a middle initial, which he has done. he said he inherited his membership from his father and didn t actually pledge a lifetime oath of loyalty as members of the group claim he did. i m old enough to remember 12 weeks ago when even just kind ofof that degree of association with nazism would be enough to get you drummed out of the white house. you wonder whether we ll see that. gorka is a part of a wing of the white house that has not been faring particularly well including mcfarland and flynn and others in the orbit. donald will keep him around as long as he thinks it s useful to him. he demand s 100% loyalty from everybody. the luminosity of white skin on the people who work in this white house blinds them to many, many things. yeah, and that s a good point. it has not been a particularly diverse place generally in the early days here. and it does we see it all the time in every institution whether it s the media, whether it s politics. it does matter who is in the
protection from the law. a good country, right? we will be watching him monday. have a good weekend, everybody. bill o reilly of next life. see you monday bill o reilly up next life. see you monday. bill: the o reilly factor is on tonight. we can confirm now that the u.s. has lost tomahawk missiles at syria. the action by president trump has caused worldwide reaction. did the usa did the right thing by attacking the brutal dictator assad? we will have multiple tonight. it doesn t make sense for assad to make these decisions. bill: there is some on the friends you will not support american military action the matter what. we will take a look at that situation. the nomination of neil m. neil m. gorsuch to be an associate justice of the supreme court of the united states is confirmed. also ahead, the usa has a brand-new supreme court justice. is that a good thing for you? caution. you are about to enter into the no spin zone. that the factor begins now. hi max, i m bill o reilly. thank you for watching the sniper the usa attack syria, that is around nine eastern time, 50 missiles were launched from american warships in the eastern mediterranean sea. 59 missiles hit their targets. the goal is to destroy an air base from which syrian planes recently dropped sarin gas on civilians, killing 30 children. 30. and 20 women, according to the syrian observatory for human rights. according to reporting based on a variety of cities, this is the fifth time, at least, the fifth time, syrian dictator assad has violated the geneva conventions and use poison gas to go civilians get back in 2012, president obama threatened assad. the use of chemical weapons is and would be totally on acceptable. and if you make a tragic mistake of using these weapons, they will be consequences and you will be held accountable. bill: but assad is not held accountable. but instead, , the obama administration did what it always did, talk, and announced a deal with the dictator. a fascinating footnote to that is susan rice was on point alongside john kerry. we were able to find a solution that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known in syria in the way that use of wars would never accomplish. with respect to syria, we struck a deal where he got 100% the new president on the ascending a message to the worl world, the united states will not tolerate war crimes from syria. the action is a reaction, so security has tightened here in the usa as we become a bigger target for evildoers. summing up, america was justified in destroying the syrian air force. the lone superpower has a responsibility. even most of the trump haters in congress agree that if we can stop children from being gassed to death, we should do so. and that is the memo. the top story reaction at this hour, joining us from palm beach florida where he s covering president trump s meeting with the chinese leader, john roberts. understanding that president in china has departed from mar-a-lago. what s going on there now? he left this afternoon, just having a typical friday night. he s having the rest of the week and here. the president, bill, i m told is feeling pretty good about what happened last night. he thinks that the military did a terrific job while one cruise missile fell into the sea, 59 of the 59 remaining hit their marks and he is facing praising the military to his staff and his friends that they performed marvelously here. and he s happy to see you in the most part with the international reaction is, he does know there are a couple of numbers in congress saying he should ve come today, but he feels like he s an absolute firm ground here because as he pointed out last night this was a matter of urgent national security for the united states because i m told the president believes that if bashar al-assad was able to do this and not suffer some consequent support this, that would normalize, at least in the area of the world, the use of chemical weapons and therefore might come back to bite the united states at one point if somebody decided, well, if bashar al-assad can use weber chemical weapons, will use the weapons. bill: i.d. rapid fired answers. the chinese foreign minister said they shouldn t have done it. everyone should come down. was there anything coming outside of the president talking with mr. trump today on the missile attacks? anything at all? any utterance? spent well, there wasn t any public utterance, but i m told, bill, that the white house believes it was pretty impressive show of force that the president went out last night to his chinese counterpar counterpart. and that will be taken back to beijing and sort of turned into that whole pot with north korea where it might give them something else about leaving mara longo and president trump s request to lean on north korea. if they do it in syria, but they do it in north korea? bill: did we get anything in north korea, any pr better cooperation in china? did they say anything? bill: they didn t say anything there was an agreement to deal with. it was discussed. bill: but we don t have any joint statements? no concrete joint statement on that. no. but the secretary of state rex tillerson he s very disappointed with the russian response to all of this. according to rex tillerson, he said that this means russia is still in the camp of bashar al-assad. he says he s disappointing, but he s not surprised to hear what he s heard out of russia. he look, this is how we ll deal with these guys in syria. if you want to deal with bashar al-assad, it s going to put you on the wrong side of history. bill: john, we appreciate it very much. let s bring in catherine harris joining us for washington. doesn t seem to be any chinese reaction in the sense that sometimes after a meeting, a day and a half meeting, there is a joint statement that we didn t get any joint statements. putin postures behind the scenes. is there any serious, serious reaction tonight? i wouldn t say serious reaction, but i would say the leading edge of this investigation right now is into whether russia had some kind of role, bill, in this chemical attack earlier this week, and whether a second strike on that town in syria was really an effort to destroy evidence and be part of a larger cover-up of that crime. and that is really where military intelligence is focused tonight. bill: they had a drone, i understand! correct. bill: russian drone over the area where the chemicals dropped and killed children. and a russian bomber bombed the hospital where civilians were taken. is that what we are talking about tonight? that s right. there was a drone immediately over the site where the sarin gas was released. and then about 4-5 hours later when the victims have been taken to the hospital, another drone showed up. shortly after that, there was a military strike on that hospital. the people i m talking to tonight say that fits a patent that they have seen before with the syrians especially and possibly this case the russians that they wanted to destroy evidence at that hospital compound. bill: we can i.d. drones anyway, so they were russian drones in that area. is that correct? that is correct. bill: okay, now. the ron pauls of the world say, oh, no. how solid is the evidence that assad killed these 20 kids with sarin gas? i was told by my contacts that we have very high confidence and there were multiple streams of information from overhead imagery to radar, from information gathered by our partners in the region. and today they release a graphic that showed radar information. and you can see the syrian government chats over the site of the attak twice within a nine minute time slot which is exactly when the sarin gas was released. there is really no doubt. bill: okay. there was always doubt among those who will not believe, no matter what you present, through them. i iran has been strangely signed about this. i haven t heard any saber rattling. have you? that s a little bit more worrying. what you don t know. bill: right. one of the possible plans for retaliation that they considered when they were planning this whole thing out is that syria and iran would use their proxy hezbollah to launch an attack, that third party retaliation. we have not seen that yet, but that is an idea that was on the table, bella. bill: do we have any information on the swedish attacks, again, president trump made that a centerpiece that sweden was destabilized by all of these muslim refugees pouring into the country. the country reacted vehemently against president trump, but we now have it will take a terror attack in stockholm, right? that s right. a truck was hijacked and then it was driven right into this department store in central stockholm. really, at the height of rush hour, people were getting ready for the weekend. this sadly fits a profile that we ve seen mostly with isis or self radicalized al qaeda followers. and they are using trucks and cars bill: to kill people speak . today, they took one cost suspect into custody, but we have not been able to verify his claims is accurate. but these are the types of plots as you know, bill, that are almost impossible to disrupt. and they go right to the heart of the economy and also people s sense of morality what is right. i mean, it s so offensive. bill: we appreciated as always, thank you. next on the run down from a senior u.s. military officials effective? it was effective in two ways. number one, punishing bashar al-assad for the use of chemical weapons and reestablishing u.s. military credibility in the region. a lot of people talk about political solutions, they talk about the poetic solutions. there is never been at the poetic solution or political solution in the absence of military credibility. we can t predict where president trump is going from here, but in the narrow entrance for punishing bashar al-assad for using chemical weapons, and setting an effective deterrence for future use of chemical weapons, this attack was a success. bill: you heard of the talking points memo that the obama administration trotted out susan rice and john kerry a few years back to say, no, we negotiated with assad and he gave up all of his chemical weapons. of course, that turned out to be false. do you see this as mr. harmer does as an effective use of military power that will inhibit future chemical attacks? um, i think it was a very effective attack. i think it was smart to uses with cruise missiles. there are still russians at the base to attest the accuracies of the weapon systems. i do not think it will guarantee it won t be used again. i think there is a very limited message being sent to assad, a very powerful message, overwhelming force. it was as our friend already said, a narrow message well delivered. but no. i don t see this guaranteeing. i think assad will trot this out again. and if we got the russians involved bill: why would he do that though? if you trotted out again, that doesn t make any sense to me. he knows that trump is going to up it, because trump is not going to say, okay, i m not going to do anything after you spit in my eye after i give you a warning. the next time instead of it being 50, it will be 150. it will devastate the whole infrastructure of syria. don t you believe that? don t you think donald trump is going to back away from a punk like assad if he uses gas again? i didn t say anything about the president of united states backing up. you asked me if it s going to stop it bill: why would he risk his own neck? okay. we are dealing with a crazy man in the middle of a war with a thousand different factions, and he still has, i believe, he destroyed 1300 tons of that stuff back in 2012-2013 and he still got it. i think you could use it again in a few months. in small doses. i wouldn t be surprised at all if he uses it again. bill: mr. harmer, would you be surprised if this guy because it again knowing that the next time, going going to be ten times worse? i would be surprised if basher assad uses chemical weapons again for two reasons. number one, he cannot afford direct conflict with the united states. he can survive with al qaeda and isis. what he cannot do is cross a redline that has been firmly established and a penalty is being affixed to that. second of that, bashar al-assad s military is on the narrow margins of survivability. the air force and all practical purposes barely exist anymore. the syrian air army no longer desists. that is why they need conscripts and mercenaries from afghanistan, he the syrian people will not fight on the behalf of bashar al-assad. he does not have the bandwidth to risk conflict. bill: doesn t he have the iranians he didn t have it before, guys! bill: let s not allocate our coverage. doesn t he have the iranians helping him out, though? absolutely. he s got the full support of the iranian government, the islamic revolutionary guard, the full support of hezbollah and russia. with that said, bashar al-assad has a very narrow definition of success right now and that staying alive. there is no fallback option. those under to bill: you mentioned this last night. it russia. is russia stupid enough to get involved with poison gas? bad drones, as you talk about with catherine. i don t think i don t think, i know. assad is not doing anything without russian approval and russian involvement. this country was gone and lost until the russians showed up. assad is absolutely dependent on bill: if you were putin and you knew the world is horrified at poison gas killing 20 children. why would you i mean, why? i m not sure, bill. look. why would a former kgb lieutenant colonel say okay to use sarin gas? bill: this kind of attention to syria because i think this hurts assad. his survivability rate just went down. of course it does. the russians the russian involvement in this, they haven t stopped. again, i say this. they have been in syria, assad killing his own people. which got everyone obviously upset about this is the 20 kids, babies, that were killed. bill: yeah, the gas. i get it. but he s been doing this for 5-6 years. i don t see any reason that they gave him gas. putin would say, don t do that. bill: do you think putin would okay a gas attack, mr. harmer? i think it s a dispute that the russians weren t aware that syria was resuming its chemical weapons capacity. i don t think the russians suggested this for there s a big difference between assad being dependent on russian help, which he is, and assad functioning as a mercenary for the russians, which is a stretch. bill: the warships that putin is moving into the mediterranean sea, is that just for show? yes, that s part of the counteraction package. they send their ships in close proximity edge, it s is an easy way to show that they are viable, they can still stand up to us without risking escalation. it happens in the pacific, atlantic, mediterranean, it s not a big deal. it s just a show of force. bill: do you agree with that? yeah. this ship has been coming in the mediterranean a lot. bill: check out colonel hunt s new book without mercy about nukes in the hands of terrorists. directly ahead, security tightened all over the world after the attack and another alleged terrorist incident in sweden, as we mention. now judge neil gorsuch shea supreme court s to justice. what does that mean for you? those reports after these messages. white house security council under presidents bush and obama. do you see any unintended consequences from this attack in syria? um, there s always a possibility for unintended consequences. i feel like the demonstration would not do this if they had not gamed out the potential side effects here. there s always a risk wherever the united states undertake military action abroad, whether or not we have come under direct attack or not, there will be risks here. this is not offensive action, as you know. that the united states was very have taken. the russians shows a side in the syrian conflict a few years ago when they decided to insert themselves under it under the false pretense of fighting isis. this is a smart move and a brave, bold move on the part of the u.s. but really defensive. bill: you were in the obama white house, i will play two sound bites with kerry and susan rice. we didn t negotiate it, we didn t need to go to war, that was the mantra of president obama eight years, we can negotiate anything. and we saw, he probably destroyed some stuff, but he did destroy all stops, and that is when babies are dead. when you are in the obama white house, did you notice there was a reluctance to do what donald trump did? well. i don t think you had to be at the white house to notice the reluctance to do it. bill: you are on the outside looking out. did you notice that when you were there that reluctance? i will go with yes. i think it would be hard to not see, you know the decisions that the folks made in the administration in 2013 when i was already gone from the white house, i did not see firsthand. but the results of the conversations they had were seen all around the world. and the effects are felt up until today. so it s obvious there was rekay. colonel wood, when you saw the missiles hit the airfield in syria, did anything pop in your mind like a ron is doing this and put in is going to do that? that s what we mean by unintended consequences. i think there will be unintended horizontal consequences where putin will not see whole opportunity to up the game in syria, especially if he doesn t want to go to war in the united states. but he can do that in other theaters, ukraine continues, dismembering that country. much more provocative action against the baltic states. very concerned about what they are doing in the baltics and the are tics. there are a lot of other places where putin can play a strong hand to stymie u.s. efforts, dismember alliances, and certainly with a veto power on the u.n. security council, they can create all kinds of havoc. anything to do with israel or u.s. efforts to get sanctions against north korea. reactions in the south china sea and against china i think it s a pretty broad playing board and putin will move his checkers where he thinks he can get an upper hand in other areas. bill: but i can t imagine that val ida between you and cares about assad on a personal novel or any other the chinese were interesting because the foreign minister came out and he didn t really condemn the action. he just said that everyone should calm down. that s why i was looking for a joint statement of any kind by the chinese president and donald trump, but today we didn t get anything. all they did is they had snacks at mar-a-lago i guess. i don t know what else they did there. they sidestepped out of the resort. got on the plane. bill: there wasn t any we will settle on out of here. it was strange. i can t imagine how awkward, like, you know on the protocol level that must ve been for these two leaders the first time they ve ever met face-to-face? so many issues between them and meanwhile there is this huge elephant in the room, which is that the president is going back to his room at night and, you know, dropping bombs in syria. it s a little bit i don t think it was awkward for max trump at all. he saw this as a big advantage. comes in big and bold, taking military action against a bunch of vile people, dropping sarin gas on davies at all. it came from a competitive advantage in any bill: the chinese never show their hand. they never let you know what they are thinking. the chinese bureaucrats i m talking about. sure. bill: so you don t know, you know. there is a s face they put on. i was looking for something out of president xi, we don t even know if you like the food or anything. is that what you want to know, bill? how were the burgers ? it was very aggressive, no warning, he just acted. and ten hours later, the chinese government is trying to figure out with that. i m not surprised by the silence or having to recalculate their interest in north korea. keeping mom was probably the best course of action for the chinese. bill: they would do that anyway on american soil. but it was fascinating to see donald trump oh, resident xi past the pipe. by the way, in 3 minutes, 60 tomahawk s launched into syria. would you like a little bit more tv? during the dinner, that s where they all went. i thought they would wait until factor would finish. we will talk to the white house advisor, dr. sebastian gorka about the world reaction from the missile attack. now the judge gorsuch is on the court and liberal americans are not happy! stay tuned for those reports. gorsuch is is this good for the folks? professor, cut through the nuclear option and all the stuff. the regular people, the regular americans, many of them who don t even know who judge gorsuch is or what he does. is this man going to improve the country for the folks? i think he s going to improve the court. i think this country is better off when you have people who are intellectual leaders. too often we select nominees because they have never had an interesting thought in their lives. we really need people who see a horizon that can describe where the law should go. this is a conservative president that has the right to nominate a conservative bill: but how conservative is mr. gorsuch? he is conservative. he is a textualst.t she s very conservative when looking at the original content. none of those things should bar him from the court. a lot of people share those views. bill: you ve testified for judge gorsuch. i did. bill: what did he say? what did you see. i sense that gorsuch is something of a departure, welcome departure in that he has a long record. he s not a blank slate. we know what type of justice he will be. he will be a very good one for people might not like his conclusions always, but i think he s an honest intellectual and that honesty may take him across the ideological spectrum. bill: that s what i said last night. there is a chance in some of these rulings that conservatives will be angry if it is not like scalia. scalia was a i ve never seen gorsuch promote that. that s the key people conservatives, i ve said for months, you should be not trying to replace a conservative with a conservative, but an intellectual with an intellectual. that is what gorsuch is and that is what scalia was. bill: okay. do you believe that judge gorsuch will be sworn in monday morning got caught up in the trump hate campaign! honestly i don t see a basis to oppose gorsuch, so i hope he doesn t carry a lot of baggage into this. a lot of democratic senators didn t feel they could vote for him, which i think is a terrible shame. bill: why? why didn t they think they could vote for him? three did. but why do the other things they couldn t? what you are saying is true. honest man, very smart, forward-looking, respects the constitution above all. why couldn t our democratic elected senators vote for him? i think it s an incredible of the ploys of to we can no longer separate people from the politics. yet in honest good faith jurist that judge neil gorsuch is. bill: senator feinstein said she couldn t vote for gorsuch because she didn t believe the constitution was a living document that evolves as society evolves. i guess it s a living document. you have to feed it, walk it. that s why she couldn t vote for him, no matter how brilliant or honest, it had to be a justice who believes in evolution of the constitution. you your head must ve blown off. i thought that was a particularly sad moment, because i have great reservations about the cause of a living constitution because i don t know how it s been defined and i ll tell you bill: is defined by your ideology, whatever you think is the right policy. there is this broad spectrum that includes now with justice gorsuch on monday that people often separate originalists from living constitutions. there is this medal, good faith jurist that try to get it right. in the case of judge gorsuch, he starts with this original sense of the to present that move out of the main screen is the czar. bill: you see two more things really quick. second amendment is now bolstered by judge gorsuch. i think he would agree with that. second 11 religious people. they bill if there is a major case that he s going to hit the court just in time to hear the trinity lutheran church case. it has a huge case. bill: tell me what that case is quick to make this was a church that was denied funds to a repay their playground because they are a religious organization. other nonfor profits that were given their funding. the church said that is not fair. just because we are religious groups, we are still nonfor profit. this is a case that could have far-reaching implications for how they handle the religion clauses of the first amendment. bill: i think religious people should be celebrating over the weekend, it s palm sunday and everything. that was a good discussion there, professor. thank you. bill: you didn t come across as a pinhead. [laughs] bill: i even understood it. you did a great job. we appreciate it. thanks, bella. bill: when we come back, missile attack defense. some people think president trump s actions were flat-out wrong. we will go to white house advisor to find out what could come next as president trump sending messages to the world. we will be right back. dr. nick gillespie, , and emma ashford who works the cato institute. you know, a lot of people say if you are going to kill babies with poison gas, somebody s got to take care of you. and that somebody was president trump and the united states. you oppose it. why? well, i think that is frankly a false argument. i think that the attacks that president trump undertook does nothing to resolve the syrian civil war. it does nothing to prevent the further killing of syrian civilians. it makes the isis campaign more difficult, and it risks dragging us a larger conflict in syria. those are big negatives that we should be paying more attention. bill: that s why we have you on the air. so let s walk through and we will get to talk to gillespie. he uses poison gas, assad. that s against the geneva convention. the united nations is not doing anything because i never do. so donald trump, i am personally going to write this wrong and i m going to hit him, and if he doesn t again i m going to hit him and take them out completely. you don t think that is an inhibitor? you don t think that s going to stop assad from using the gases? i don t think these tracks we undertook will do much to dissuade assad. bill: you expect assad to drop more poison gas on the civilian people? it s a distinct possibility. and even if he doesn t use chemical weapons, we have done nothing from this waiting him using barrel bomb s and other very nasty weapons to kill the people he s killed. bill: i want to wrap up the first round with you. so if you were the president, you would not have taken any action against assad for what he did? i wouldn t have taken military action like president trump did. i would have tried to restart diplomatic negotiations bill: like the obama administration and you her john kerry and susan wright say we got it all out there, but they did not. let s go to dr. gillespie. the emotional you are the president, and you do nothing to assad after he does that? first off, it s not up to the united states to enforce the geneva conventions. bill: cool would that be bill: who would that be? we are coming out of 15 years in the middle east where we have accomplished very little other than destabilizing the entire region and creating a iran bill: say on this no. bill: whose responsibility is this? the united states could start to build a coalition in the area. it s up to them to deal bill: if saudi arabia launched a few tomahawk s, you would be okay with a? it wouldn t be the united states. as a citizen of the united states, it s not our business to police what syria is doing in its civil war. if that carries forth to other countries, you have a water barbarity so nobody is going to support the geneva convention that is a leap of you know, a leap of judgment that is not borne out by the facts. bill: weight. we all see what s happening in north korea, iran, do is what s happening in libya, after we dropped bombs in the name of humanitarian intervention, bill: you would hope that this is not an occupying situation. it s the beginning of one. bill: i m going to go to dr. ashford. 30 seconds each. how would you deal with assad. specifically, dr. ashford? i would try and push for a diplomatic solution. i know what you are saying, but the obama administration try to do this, but president trump is in a much better situation for far better relations with the russians, taking a harder line on iran bill: so you say diplomacy? i do say diplomacy because it s the only way civil war ends. bill: dr. gillespie, how do you deal with assad? we do not have to dealassad. our interest in iran right now or in the middle east has to do with islamic terrorism, not the assad regime which is a disgusting regime. you go after the terrorists. we are not in the business of policing what the assad does. bill: we are going after terrorists. we are doing two things here. very good discussion, appreciate it. sebastian gorka on next. we will get the white house. it what severity as it stands tonight. that as the factor continues around the usa and all the worl world. bill: let s go back to washington and bring in sebastian gorka, deputy assistant to mr. trump. we assume that you are happy the missile attack was successful. you are a strategist, dr. gorka. we heard a lot tonight that this is not going to dissuade assad from using gas, he will use it again. number one, i don t believe that what i could be wrong. if he does do it again, have you guys been game planning for that? oh, absolutely. there are people inside the of the pentagon, people on the national security council, my good friends, they have gamed out the possible scenarios. unfortunately, i don t want to disappoint you, mr. o reilly. unlike the last administration, we are not going to give those away in advance because that is very, very unwise. bill: sure. i think everyone understands that. except penn had a journalist who except pinheaded journalist who goad you into doing that. you will have a plan, there are other things that may happen. am i correct on both of those? absolutely. bill: here s a key question. would you, you being the white house represent in the white house, tell assad if you use poison gas again, something worse will befall you. will that message be delivered personally to you? that message, i think, there are many ways to communicate strategic narratives. what you have seen in the last 48 hours is president trump being more decisive than obama was in the last eight years. messages can be given directly or indirectly. again, we are not going to give away how we communicate it. bill: would you give it directly because you could if you wanted to? yes. it s completely within the mandate of the president, secretary to listen, or even secretary mattis to do that. bill: you don t love assad, you want to be on this planet, you better not do it again because it s not going to be pleasant. iran, we haven t heard much from them. usually, they ve got a lot of people in syria doing bad things. can you tell us anything about their reaction? yes. i think is very interesting in the past eight years, they have been very, very loud, they have been very offensive in their comments even after events such as the hostage taking of our naval personnel and other other very dangerous things that they have done. i think their silence is a very positive sign because as the sponsor of the regime in damascus, they have to draw conclusions as well. this is about messages that are sent to nations like russia, china, and iran. bill: let s take russia. if putin condemns the act and sends a warship into the mediterranean, saber rattling a little bit. you take that seriously or do you think that is where short? that is a classic standard operating procedure. we are the most powerful nation in the world has ever seen. this is just classic classic showmanship. it s not even brickman ship. they don t have the capacity to do something with our naval basil. it standard kgb kind of tactics coming out of moscow. bill: as he mentioned we did not get any chinese reaction at mar-a-lago. we did get a statement from the foreign minister that he wants everyone to calm down. that channel, do we know anything about how china processed the attack? if i did, i wouldn t be talking about it in front of your huge audience, i m afraid, mr. o reilly. bill: can you give me, again [site] looks, we are all americans. we want safety for this country. we don t want to tea them off. do you think they were upset that we did this to syria or they don t care? i think they are incredibly strategic. they play for the long game. if there is one nation out there that understands the long game, it s china. look at history, look at sun tzu, look at everything they publish and classify domain. i think they understand. i think the bigger part of this is a new, really, this is proof that we have a new president and they are going to have to draw the right conclusions with regards to countries like north korea. i think it will have a positive effect because they are not irrational, bill. they are not irrational. bill: so you can reason with the chinese food that s what you re saying. yes. bill: what s the deputy assistant do, what do you do? whatever the president, whatever jared kushner wants me to do. bill: would you read that and give us analysis, is that what you do? it can be. i meet with delegation with our allies, our partners. i work with counterterrorism issues, i was asked for my opinion on the first eos, including the immigration ones. i am your general player in the national security field within the white house. bill: you are the utility player. i am. bill: you play every position in the infield. that s it. bill: is a pleasure to have you on tonight, doc. factor tip today. would you like to meet jesse watters? if so, why? the tip moments away. number one, killing the rising sun right behind number three after seven months in the marketplace we believe that the first ever in the american publishing world. but you remain remember that killing kennedy s number one, while killing lincoln was number two in 2012. i know some of you won t believe me but there was a time when i wanted to a bookstore saying i won t never get a book published, it s true. but i persevered, the key to life. thank you all for supporting the books. prior to pearl harbor, the world atrocities all over the globe. are we going to sit idle while iran, russia, china, and north korea plan our demise? nuclear weapons have changed war strategy, countries cannot launch a large scale attacks anymore, war is now. if the liberal democrats are decrying the syrian bombing are condoning the use of chemical weapons on babies which is why the liberal community really isn t decrying it, a few, not many. the attack is justifiable on a human rights basis the liberal community is on human rights, that their dilemma. if missoula, montana, where is the u.n. help on that syria, where it always is, being discussed in meetings. mr. oh, you let lois lerner off too easy, what she did at the irs was criminal and she should have gone to prison. this may come as a shock to you but i do not have the power to incarcerate. if i did, prison overcrowding would be a far worse problem that it is now, i would open alcatraz, i would get to devils back from france. am i rambling here? i believe i am. dan kaiser omaha, nebraska, what makes people think that even if susan rice is guilty, if director called me will not prosecute clint and he will not go after miss rice. i am so tired of congressional hearings that go nowhere, me too. if roger ellis, north hampton england, your interview with ambassador bolton was just brilliant, certain questions and excellent responses, the segment should be used as a teaching tool for college courses. i appreciate that. if killing the rising sun is amazing, although today s american warriors are just as brave, the jodi s home and on campus don t have the necessary love of country to win a war is brutal against the japanese. i ve thought about that a lot and you are most likely correct. america s kids raised during the great depression during the 1930s, much tougher than modern young people. here s the thing, future wars as i mentioned will not need millions of infantry, there will be high-tech driven. the weapons today make world war ii tactics obsolete. after reading old school, i am rooting for global warming, it will melt the snow flakes. read old-school, you and bruce fiercely and had me rolling with laughter. we have loads of snow flakes down here, it s a white out. old-school life in the same lane is a great combination of wit and wisdom, i think you and if you re staying for running it. finally tonight factor tip of the day, i want to thank everybody who is purchase tickets to the spin the stops here live shows. your humble correspondent will see everybody in baltimore, maryland, at the royal farms arena friday, september 22nd. the next night we scurry on down to tampa, florida, a nice venue down there. december 15th, friday will be at caesar s palace, always be a great time, waters will be parted. finally, saturday december 16th, great early christmas gift. we ll be at the honda center in anaheim, california, that show almost 40% sold out after one day. waters does most of our show in the audience you might get a close look at his world. ticket info on info on billoreilly.com, shows will sell out so we hope you check it out, make great gifts for all occasions. factor tip of the day, that is it for us tonight please check out fox news factor website which is different from billoreilly.com. if we would like you to spout off about the factor, name in town if you wish to opine, word of the day, do not be s holisti holistic. that s it for us tonight on this