today. today you can sense the chant coming from the trump people. listen closely and you can pick up a slightly different rhythm right now of don t lock me up, don t lock me up! yesterday it was reported first by the wall street journal that trump s former national security adviser michael flynn, the guy saw there going after hillary, his lauer is looking to get flynn immunity in order to testify about what he knows. according to his lawyer trump s former national security adviser certainly has a story to tell. this morning president trump tweeted that mike flynn should ask for immunity in is that this is a witch hunt an excuse for a big election lost by the democrats and the media of historic proportion. at the meeting today sean spicer conexplained the president was trying to convey his desire to see flynn testify. if you actually stop for a second and realize what the president is doing he is saying do whatever to do to go up and make it clear what happened, take whatever precaution you want or however your legal counsel advises you. general flynn s attorney says he has a story to tell. is the white house concerned that the white house has damaging information about the president, his aides, his associates, about what occurred during the campaign with respect to russia? nope. nope. we ll see. nbc reported today that the senate intelligence committee turned down general flynn s request for immunity. his lawyer was told it was wildly preliminary to discuss such a thing. joining me is the wall street journal s carol lee who broke the story of the attempted immunity deal, and howard feynman, an msnbc political analyst. carol, thank you for joining us. what is the king thinking tonight. what is trump worried about for michael flynn? what has he got on him? from the white house s perspective, their posture is he doesn t have anything on him. if we step back, we don t know. this is somebody, mike flynn was with the president almost every day during the campaign. well he says he has a story to tell. yes. what s the that s another question, we don t know what the story is. michael flynn has his time spent with donald trump and the trump campaign and the transition into the white house. mike flynn has another he has had contacts with russia, not just with the ambassador here in washington, but he has been paid tens of thousands of dollars by entities that are arms of the russian government, and he sat at a dinner in december of 2015 with vladimir putin. and so he there are a number of stories that he could tell. howard, look at this. we ve been here before. you see a guy not far down the tree from the president. right there, national security adviser. he knows a lot. the more he is afraid, the more he is going to talk. the more he is looking at 20 years for not disclosing money he got from the russia. not being honest when he was under oath when he was talking to an ambassador about russian sanctions. he says i m damn damn not going to prison for this guy, i want to talk. first of all, he wants to talk at time when he would be most useful. the committee wants to learn everything it can about what flynn has to say from people other than flynn so they don t have to give him much, if anything. so they are saying wait a minute, wait a minute b. but if you are the attorney for flynn you want to get him in there right away so he gets credit for whatever he says from them. and also you have another reason, which is you want to give yourself what they call in the trade here in washington an immunity bath. you want to cover yourself with as much immunity as the committee is willing to give you. not just use, not just what you say, but anything. anything. in order the make it more difficult for the feds and the fbi and the justice department to try to prosecute you. those are the twin things going on. first of all he filled out financial disclosure forms, what he said to the russians, how much he got what he said to the russians. what else? what he said to the russian ambassador. he spoke with the fbi. if you look at his track record, there has been two thing he was not forthcoming on, obviously, his the nature of what the conversations with the russian ambassador were. kislyak. kislyak, and he did not report being an agent of a foreign government with some of his work he had done with turkey. turkey. those are two examples. not only that, but going back to when he was a top intelligence official in the government he would have to report certain contacts that he had, there is a whole array. let s talk human nature. your paper has been covering chris christie. the other day we saw chris christie s top person, deputy in a government relations person, bridget kelly, the other guy, what s his name? i know he got two years in the slammer ahead of him. wait a minute, sometimes the guy who work for the guy get in trouble we u.s.a. see it a lot. with scooter libby, dick cheney getting in trouble. they are the ones that swing and the big guys get away. he doesn t want to swain. to get an old refrain from the watergate days the question is what did the president know and when did he know it? when did candidate trump go and when did he know it. baroni is the name. bill baroniy. to me, the most vulnerable thing ises that flynn has is not registering as a foreign agent. that s a serious crime. the lawyer happens to be an expert in that field. they want to protect him on that. he wants that bath? he wants whatever he can get by way of the battle against the prosecution they have got him on. donald trump and michael flynn addressed the issue of immunity in the past let s listen to then candidate trump last september discussing hillary clinton s associates. her aides took the fifth amendment, and her ring leaders were given immunity. and if you are not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for? how it all comes around. what goes around comes around in d.c. here s that flynn sai on meet the press in september. five people around her have been given immune to include her former chief of staff. when you are given immune that means you have probably committed a crime. he just said he just said if you on the wad immunity you probably committed a crime. there he is talking about somebody else. and everybody is hearing him now talking about himself. now the white house s position as we ve seen them do before is well that was then and this is now and this doesn t mean anything now. i have been watching spicer. i think he reached the point of incredibility. did you watch today? were you there. yes. what did you make of it howard. he was just saying things that he was denying all of this. i think he s only performing for an audience of one chris. he s not performing for glen thrush or carol or any of the reporters in the room. he s doing his shtick for the president of the united states. so for sean spicer to get out there and say only only interest is to get to the bottom of this whole thing. that s why we want him to testify. that s why we want him to testify. everybody in the room isn t taking that seriously but donald trump is presumably back there in the oval office watching him and saying the way to give it to them, sean. the better he prosecutes it the more the president likes it. until the president decides like a kleenex tsh you sean is done, then he will pull out somebody else to do it. more like a pez dispenser. sean spicer is trying to do the bidding of the president. it s tough. amy klobuchar joins us now. we are chuckling about the irony. not the tragedy. it is a tragedy. we have a president with people around him who are beginning to rat on him and offering themselves up if they will get protection themselves under the law. a bath of immunity is how he phrased it, he is an attorney, like yourself, senator. what do you think as a former prosecutor? what s going on with trump? how dangerous are his waters right now? okay. i was pretty stunned he did this tweet this morning saying first of all that flynn should get the immunity. which they themselves said it was an implicati- i m not saying it is tt a crime was committed. then saying it was a witch hunt. it is a truth hunt. we have to get to the bottom of what happened here. now we have a situation where the president s former national security adviser, literally was just appointed the national security adviser, lies to the vice president and then has to step down. we are now talking about immunity. i think as a prosecutor i can tell you you have got to be really careful with this congressional what is called derivative use immunity, what we saw in the case of oliver north who was convicted of three felony counts but then they were reversed because it was found that during the congressional investigation the witnesses were so tainted that the conviction, the actual conviction didn t stand up. i know that senator warner and the senator burr and the intelligence committee in the senate is going to be very careful here. and it is just way too early, as adam schiff said today, to be talking about anything like this. and i i know they won t be doing anything about it without talking to the justice department if this is an ongoing investigation, as we believe it is. senator, let s talk about political irony here. you have not been around here as long as i have, there is an old phrase, what goes around comes around. here are the people that were trucking in the business of saying we are going to put people in jail like it s south korea or pakistan where if you lose an election we put you away. they were talking like that just a few months ago. now we are talking immunity. i want to know what you thought of the phrase lock her up when they were throwing that line out in cleveland. listen, as a former prosecutor and someone who has had to be very careful before you jump to those conclusions, i can t tell you when i had that job for eight years how many times i would say, we are still looking at the evidence. this is what is out there publicly. this is what is in the complaint. you simply can t jump to conclusions like that as a leader. sure you can when you are sitting around a bar talking to your friend. bee when you are a leader and on national television you have an obligation to be careful with those kinds of words and there is some irony in the fact that they are now coming back to haunt them. what do you make of the long progression of incidences where there was connections between the trump campaign, his people, from manafort to carter page, to roger stone, himself, all these people, including flynn, having these regular encounters with russians at the time that we were dealing with the sanctions issue, where the republicans were rewriting their platform, including the plank on how we should deal with ukraine in a far more lean yen manner than ever before, when money was being passed to flynn and people like that. what do you make of the connection? does it look like a two-way connection or just a one-way connection? you know, i think this is getting seedier and seedier and seedier. i read that intelligence report, the 17 intelligence agencies, the one that was public. and i thought to myself, this is our united states intelligence agencies saying that this is actually going on and having been in ukraine with john mccain and lindsey graham, having seen the influence of russia and with a they ve done, the invasions, the killings of 10,000 people, this isn t just games and some kind of fun little thing of cloak and dagger. this is actually something happening. when you go from manafort, the campaign chair, to the national security adviser, to the fact that he talked to the russian ambassador on the exact same day that president obama announced expanded sanction. and then you have the attorney general of the united states having met with that same ambassador only three days after president obama and putin met and president obama made clear he wasn t taking away the sanctions it s just one person in power after another. and that s why not only is this intelligence investigation important. it s why we have to have an independent commission. and that s something that on january 4th i called for with ben cardin and elijah cummings and adam schiff. the four of us stood together stood together and said yes go on with your investigation but let s hav an independent commission. you can t have a bipartisan investigation, can you. i called for his recusal. but i do think we want to allow the senate process to continue. both warner and burr did a good job this week. there is no reason at the same time you can have an independent commission. they would be looking at it from a different angle, that s a panel of experts just like after 9/11 that would be coming forward with ways to prevent this from happening again. this is not just an assault on one candidate, one election, one country, it is really an assault on all democracys. we have had problems in our history, joe mccarthy back in the 50s, republicans put him away. in watergate it was democrats and republicans putting him away. when we are bipartisan and work together, this country is so much better off. thank you senator for coming on tonight. there has been a theme by the way in sean spicer s briefing today, at least on questions on russia, flynn, and devin nunes. see if you can pick up on it, watch? i don t know what he knows. do you know if that is the case? i don t, if i start commenting on every one of these stories, i can t that s not our practice. i don t know the answer to that. i don t know the answer to that question. i don t know the answer to that. some of it i don t know. i don t know. you should i m not aware of that. if you could just find out. you can call the fbi. do you have any new information about how the chairman did get onto the campus? as i said the last two days i m not going to discuss that. will you release any respectfully, the counsel s office is working with them. i don t want to get in front of how they go back and forth and make a decision. the white house counsel s office sent that letter. they are the uns ones it s not my decision, major. i don t know what they will or won t do going forward and i don t want to prejudge that. reminds me of hogan s heros. i don t know. the lovable sherman. it s his job. i don t know nothing. nunes goes there the next day, picks up a pile of christmas presents. the next day goes to the president, here are some presents, i don t know where i t the from, he got them from his crowd the night before. it is a mask raid. there are times when sean spicer said he does know, on this very issue, it doesn t make sense that nunes would come here and go back and then come back here. doesn t pass the smell test. he keeps getting tripped up on this. it used to be press secretaries would say i ll take the question and get back to you. he comes the question and said who let him in the door. and then the next day he says i agreed the take the question, i didn t agree to give you an answer. what they are trying is trying to shift the question from what russia did to who leaked what about this. i know, it is a sideshow. and sean spicer today was desperately trying to quote change the narrative. that s the favorite word in the briefing room it s narrative. it s not answering questions. it s who can construct the narrative. he can do it. he is trying. trying to impress the boss but he is not able to do it. the history books will be written with the word russia in them. it s not going to be nunes, who is going to be forgotten, carol lee great reporting. congrats. thank you. always good to get the scoop on the front page. howard feynman. coming up, devin nunes attempted a caper to keep secrets from the white house. his sly attempts to take the heat off president trump all seem to be unraveling. don t you think? a member of the house intelligence committee is going to join us after the break with more. apart from college basketball there is real march madness at the white house. everything trump warned us about when he warned us about hillary clinton becoming president is pretty much what is going on right now. the worst case scenario. plus joe biden is back. and he has words for donald trump. here s a hint, it s advice on the president s tweeting habits. let me finish tonight with trump watch. you won t like it. this is hard ball. flonase allergy relief delivers more complete relief. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances that cause all your symptoms, including nasal congestion and itchy, watery eyes. flonase is an allergy nasal spray that works even beyond the nose. so you can enjoy every beautiful moment to the fullest. flonase. 6>1 changes everything. not just the automobile, f tomorrow will transform but mobility itself. an autonomous-thinking vehicle protecting those inside and out. and it s the mercedes-benz of today that will help us get there. the 2017 e-class, with innovations no car has offered before. and that will change driving forever after. lease the e300 for $549 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. former vice president joe biden offered donald trump advice during an appearance thursday at the university of pennsylvania. take a listen. if you could give president trump one piece of advice, what would it be? grow up. i would literally, you know, stop tweeting. and start focusing. the words of a president matter. they have enormous, enormous, enormous reverberating sounds around the world. by the way, that s amy gutman there. at the launch of the penn biden center for diplomacy and global engage men. we ll be right back. when you re close to the people you love, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. with taltz, up to 90% of patients had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. in fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. do not use if you are allergic to taltz. before starting you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you are being treated for an infection or have symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz. including worsening of symptoms. serious allergic reactions can occur. now s your chance at completely clear skin. just ask your doctor about taltz. for intelligence was one of the sources and began gathering evidence shortly after president trump s wiretapping tweet. when flynn s replacement tried to oust him, source say president trump saved him his job reportedly at the urging of his advisors kushner and bannon. mike ellis a lawyer in the counsel office who previously worked with nunes was the second white house official according to the new york times. today the washington post reported a third official, top lawyer for the nsc john eisenberg was also involved in the handling of those reports that went to nunes. we caught up with two of the three, ellis and eisenberg early this morning. did you provide nunes intelligence? i m not talking about anything. did you see what devin nunes shared with president trump? i have got get to work. can you tell us anything about which trump officials were mentioned in the documents given to chairman nunes? nothing. can you tell us anything if there were any corroboration with russian officials by the obama administration? i have no idea. can you tell us anything, any information about the current investigation going on by chairman nunes? nothing to say. can you give us any information, sir? couple more guys that don t know nothg. congressman mike quickly is a democratroilliis sits on the intelligence committee. and greg miller correspondent from the washington post. gentlemen, welcome. i m thinking i m trump, i woke up on a saturday and i tweeted that the former president wiretapped me during the trump campaign at trump tower. then i realized i made a mistake and i consult my advisors and we go what do we have and who can we feed it to? they say we have got cohen and ellis who used to work for nunes. put this thing together. congressman, it looks like it was an alley-oop play. i like to use that phrase. dick cheney used to do it. give it to somebody else to deliver. and then you can say, as i was saying. they have got this guy, nunes, pegged. they used him. they fed him stuff out of the white house. one night. the next morning he came back and announced it with the president with alarming he had just gotten from the president s people the night before. how do you see it yourself? i m listening to the three stooges theme in the background unfortunately. it s extraordinarily troubling and frustrating. and at this point in time, the only thing we have is the opportunity to go forward. i m not giving up on the house investigation. there s a lot of good people over there. clearly, we have had an extraordinarily tough week. and you know, you know that there have been calls for mr. nunes to step aside. that s not going to happen, unfortunately. so we are going to work together, hopefully, and pivot and go back to regular order this week. do you trust him? i think he s made it difficult for the investigation to go forward, but given that there are very few options, i don t have any choice. i ll tell you this. he was a very fair chairman under the obama administration. it s been difficult this last week or so, especially since obviously president trump took office. at this point in time, i wish i could say more. we have no choice. the speaker isn t going to knock him off. he s not going to recuse himself in the final analysis we are going to be reading the same documents. and we have been. we are going to be interviewing the same witnesses. i do believe we are going to have that open hearing. and i do believe we are going back to meetings with admiral rogers and mr. comey to find out exactly what took place. greg, it seems to me that when this thing is fully aired by the press and by the committee to some extent but more by the press we are going to see the materials give to mr. nunes on tuesday night last week are basically the ones they are going to be giving out. but when they gave them to him in a special bay, almost like giving an exclusive to a reporter, build it up and make it seem alarming and exculpatory for the president, make the president look good on his dawn patrol tweets. i get the feeling it s not going to be that useful once it comes out in a normal fashion. what do you make of it? what s there? i think that s true, the more we ve learned about the documents, and we are still a long way from learning everything about them, it sounds less and less alarming, right? you peel back where nunes started, which was very uncomfortable, boy, the american public wouldn t like to see this stuff. then he has a conversation with adam schiff, and schiff says boy based on what nunes told me when i press him on this issue is this was sort of standard operating procedure for intelligence agencies. i mean there is a legitimate issue here on the unmasking of american officials who show up in the surveillance of foreign governments. but it s just so odd how the white house in this case has sort of used nunes and damaged his credibility over such a seemingly minuscule matter, this tweet. you just sort of wonder whether nunes is such an important ally for the administration, whether they might have wanted to preserve his credibility for more important developments later on in this russia story. mr. quickly, a couple i think there is three cases in the last week where the white house s people basically told us the story. first of all sean spicer whose job is to speak for the president saying it doesn t pass as the smell test if he got the stuff at the white house one night and shows up the next day to bring it back. then this congressman from florida, works for the president. said quigley, one of the members of your intelligence committee works for the president. what do you make about the claims, about the constitution, they seem to admit i said they sound like their own worst witnesses. at this point, mr. spicer is channelling his inner ron ziegler. i think there is something beyond this that s more troubling. how this information was passed back and forth. unfortunately, what s taking place here besides the distraction is the very real possibility that there are going to be investigations of what s happened during the investigation. and is that a distraction to the american public? it absolutely is. there s a lot of serious work to do on this. not the least of which is how do we prevent this sort of russian involvement again. but we re not going to get there if we are playing these sort of crazy games. do you think nunes wants to find out the trump role in cooperating with the russians, if there was one? does he want to know what hand they played in encouraging the russians to hack the democratic national committee, podesta and palmieri and all the rhett of that that seemed to droi hillary clinton s campaign? do you think nunes wants to find out the truth of trump s role in all of that? i would think every american would like to fine out the truth how far the russian involvement what took place, who played a role in that, who if anyone was helping on side of the united states. how far did this go? how do we prevent it in the future? and what about these leaks? that s the four levels of this investigation i have to assume that they are going to work in good faith. obviously, my doubts have been raised. we are going to keep a good eye on it and alert the american public. we have got a job to do. i can t let them succeed on the distractions. otherwise we are rewarding bad behavior. i have to make this investigation work. well said. ank u u. congressman mike quigley of illinois and greg miller. up next, talk about march madness for the trump administration. we will tell you why this has not ban good month for this president. has hard ball, where the action is. allergies with nasal congestion? find fast relief behind the counter 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. had not. sessions recused himself from the investigation into collusion a day later. then on the 4th of the month, trump dropped his explosive tweets falsely accusing the prior administration of wiretapping him during the campaign. on march 6th, republicans unveiled the american health care act but one week later the cbo said t bill would cost would cause 24 million americans to lose coverage. two days later on the 159:a federal judge blocked the president s second travel ban. on march 20th, fbi director james comey publicly confirmed that the bureau is investigating alleged ties between the trump campaign and russia. two days later devin nunes said he had seen reports showing intelligence on surveillance of the trump transition team who was provided by the white house. the president ignites a war within his party against the freedom caucus. on the 25th he promotes a segment on fox news that calls for house speaker paul ryan to step down. on the 29dth of this month a judge in hawaii extended the block of the president s travel ban. just yesterday, three white house officials are outed for showing intelligence reports to chairman nunes. former national security adviser michael flynn asks for legal immunity from investigators in exchange for his testimony. today the president tweets his support for flynn and it s revealed the senate has turned down that request for immunity. we ll discuss president trump s bad month with the hard ball panel coming up here next. you are watching hard ball. mom gets breakfast in bed. you get to do the dishes. bring em on. dawn ultra has 3 times more grease-cleaning power. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. hey, ready foyeah. big meeting? uh, hello!? a meeting? it s a big one. too bad. we are double booked: diarrhea and abdominal pain. why don t you start without me? 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. welcome back to hard ball. we re not even 1-days in and president trump s administration pab plagued by chaos and controversy. actionio is reporting that the president is frustrated because he realized his approach has failed. months ago candidate trump warned voters about hillary clinton and promised that he would fix things. we need a government that can go to work on day one for the american people. that will be impossible with hillary clinton. the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation. her current skamgdss and controversies will continue throughout scandals and controversies will continue throughout her presidency and will make it virtually impossible for her to govern. if hillary clinton were to be elected, it would create an unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis. the investigation will last for years. the trial will probably start. nothing will get done. i alone can fix it. for more, i m joined by jonathan cape hard, opinion writer for the washington post. ruth, and how is he doing? let s get perspective. remember the first term of the clintons, first 100 days. disaster, hillary care. people getting ousted. people thought he would never get reelected. he was reelected. i m thinking about the last couple of weeks and i m perplexed why we are not talking about the real scandal. was there a misuse of government surveillance? were there raw intelligence reports that made it into the hounds of white house senior officials? my thing is i want to get to the bottom this, i think talk to republicans who say let s get to the bottom, let s have flynn and everybody in front of the committees but also let sursue what actually happened. ruth, that s a legitimate newe hear it from sean spicer every day, the line, that the real story here is leaks. it s been my experience for a long time that people in power tend to care about leaks and nobody else does. well, the real story here is a bunch of different stories. the real story here is what director comey told us he was investigate, right? what did russia to do influence the election and was there any improper coordination, collusion, between members of the trump campaign and you know, associates, and the russians to influence the election? that s the main story. there are also totally legitimate pieces to that story. were there improper leaks? how did these leaks occur? it seems to me that the trump campaign the trump administration has sort of created its own circular reality here. that doesn t mean that there might not have been improper unmasking. but the fundamental issue is the fundamental issue, which is the russians, and what trump did or didn t do with them. i think the big story is what you said, the symbiotic partnership to it. the most aggressive print press coverage i ve seen since watergate. the washington post, the new york times fighting it out with a huge contingency of reporters, incredible enterprise all over the front page, two or three stories a day. i ve never seen such aggressiveness. i think that s the other en of leaks. they are getting the story out faster than trump s people are, that s for sure. when you ve got the media environment that s so rapid fire, once you got up to speed on the story that broke at 1:00 there is a new one at 1:30. michael flynn is going to go for immunity, it blew everything else out of the saddle around 7:00 last night. it s also because it is a target rich environment. you have an administration that raises more questions every time they attempt to either answer one or on few skate answering another question. d you know, the longer the president and his senior advisors continue to get around answering questions saying i don t know, i don t know, i don t know as you said earlier the more this story is going to along. in washington we have seen this happen, an administration that refuses to just own up to whatever it is they no. the longer the story goes on, and the more damage it cause. let me ask you, do you think this travel the travel office story was a pain in the butt that the clintons they wanted to give their cousin a job in the travel office. it handled travel office for the press, not the travel for the country. can you figure out who is in the white house with the president? here we are 70 days. i m trying to fig you out who is sitting next to him. i think s lonely guy, personally, doesn t have a lot of buds. jared kushner, and his wife, the praez s daughter, he identifies this guy, cohen, the head of intelligence at nsc, he hooks up with this guy, ellis, who hooks up with nunes, nunes heads over in the middle of the night. you are laughing. it is a mickey mouse operation. it is all come to light their plan to skip this thing around and get it laundered at the white house and have a republican chairman of the committee say this is damage alarming information. it was their own information. it is a beginning to look mickey mouse, i m sorry. it s funny that nunes a week ago was lauded by the press by calling out trump on his tweets. calling him out on his tweets. that s what they reacted to. i think nunes got heat for that. again, i will go back to ultimately at the ends of the day the conversation i don t think there will be any evidence. we have seen brennan, clapper, others saying there is no proof, there is no information that shows collusion with russia. what does michael flynn want immunity for? what does he want to get what is the story he wants to tl? his lawyers thinking he has a story to tell. in a witch hundred. there is no witch if you listen to the narrative you could have sworn there were russians agents in voting booths in wisconsin. here s a good way to disrupt the narrative, have the president come out and tell everything. i m going to agree with you. on this i don t think the white house has been as good at driving the narrative. i think they could be better. i think there will be a hard look at what took place over these weeks. i don t believe in witches. i believe in witch-hunts. but i look at a picture and i see the guy that was going to be national security adviser to the president sitting at dinner with putin and getting paid $30,000. three weeks. i know, what s it say? what carter page over to russia all the time. what s that back and forth about? meetings kislyak. all these meetings with flynn covered up. if there was nothing wrong with the meeting, why did they deny them. jonathan, you haven t said anything. i just had an outburse. [ overlapping speakers ] if the white house driving, not doing a good job driving the narrative, they are like the democrats best friend. they started with the tweet, and then they keep digging deeper and deeper. you talked about the first 100 days of the clinton administration. i was a white house reporter during that. tell me what bill clinton s numbers were after his first 100 days and you would swap them for donald trump s. 4% in. they committed some of the mistakes because they didn t have experienced people around them. let me ask you about learning curves. all the different points of view here, opinion writers you are allowed to have them, of course you have an opinion. what have you seen of a lerveing curve from trump? where has he shown week by week the pick up on people who to trust, ways of doing things. you are getting quiet on me. i don t see it either. show me some learning where has he improved. 18 months ago people thought this guy is is a joke. quick study. he is the president of the united states. i think he let sebody else drive his agenda. i think he is goio learn from that. who is that? paul ryan on hill. i think there were mistakes in how the agenda and the agenda calendar has run out. do you think paul ryan has talent. he has some talent but not as much talent as speakers in the past. learning term in terms of monitoring policies, more extreme policies have turned out to be more moderate but not on presidential behavior like tweeting. i think the presidential cabinet there are interesting people on the cabinet, better than him. i look to them to protect this country more than him. that is scary. coming up this is hard ball, where the action is. a heart attack doesn t care what you eat 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. the discredited notion of separate but equal. and through a long career in the law and in public service, bill coleman played a role in republican administrations from president eisenhower through president ford for whom he served as the first african-american cabinet member in a republican administration. president bill clinton awarded secretary coleman the presidential medal of freedom. william t. coleman jr. he was 97. anything else to talk about. but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. if you re still just managing your symptoms, talk with your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. a big payment is due on october 2nd. if they don t raise the debt ceiling, that would be the day. it s going to be about the mexican wall. you watch because the democrats are not going to pay for that wall. ruth. we ve been talking a lot about devin nunes. he was not the original choice of then house speaker john boehner to be the chairman of the intelligence committee. it was another member of that committee, mike conaway, who boehner went for. nunes was not happy about that, lobbied the speaker, got the job. some people development that was. ned? i love this guy yoho who said his job is to work for the president. trump s going to have to make a decision, outsider/insider, it was his outsider instincts that got him to the white house. he s got to trust his instincts. at some point there s going to be a changeup with the white house staff. i m not sure if sean spicer and rice make it. how does he get anything done with his attitude? how do you get 216 votes in the house? how do you pass anything? i think you re going to bring the freedom caucus guys back to the table. i feel pretty positive you re going to get something done and you go on to tax reform. thank you. when we return, let me finish with trump watch. you re watching hardball. whe o the people you love, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. with taltz, up to 90% of patients had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. in fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. do not use if you are allergic to taltz. before starting you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you are being treated for an infection or have symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz. including worsening of symptoms. serious allergic reactions can occur. now s your chance at completely clear skin. just ask your doctor about taltz. now s your chance at completely clear skin. customer service!d. ma am. this isn t a computer. wait. you re real? 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yes or no as a principle? the answer is that there has to be some form of punishment. for the woman? yeah, there has to be some form. now, there are other questions to which candidate trump gave unsettling answers in the campaign. in that same interview, for example, trump refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in europe, and one has to wonder what scenario would put that option, as trump said, on the table. so think back to franklin roosevelt in 1933, soothing us with the line, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. but this time with this president, don t take fear off
time you re not aware of him actually taking any calls? no. he s not taken any calls at this time since june 1st. secretary shulkin, thank you for being with me tonight. thank you. obviously not taking the place of twitter yet. don t forget, you can watch outfront any time anywhere on cnn go. anderson is next. thanks for joining us tonight. the last man in the room before the president spoke alone with fbi director james comey testified under oath, attorney general jeff sessions is seen and heard a lot as one of donald trump s closest complain advisers and is accused of being untruthful and went before the senate intelligence committee in part he said to set the record straight about a number of things, including in his words, secret innuendo being leaked about himself, the president and his whole affair. he had plenty to say about that. he had less to say to the considerable irritation of some committee members. we ll talk about this over the next two hours and hear from a senator who was involved in a contentious exchange. but first some of the key moments from today s testimony. i did not have any private meetings, nor do i recall any conversations with any russian officials at the mayflower hotel. has the president invoked executive privilege in the case of your testimony here today? he has not. then what is the basis of your refusal to answer these questions? senator kaiing, the presiden has a constitutional but the president hasn t asserted it. you said you don t have the power to exert the power of executive privilege, so what is the legal basis for your refusal to answer these questions? i m protecting the right of the president to assert it if he chooses. to the best of your knowledge, sir, did any of these following individuals meet with russian officials at any point during the campaign, and you can say yes or no on this. paul manafort? i don t have any information that he had done so. he served as campaign chairman for a few months. steve bannon? i have no information that he did. general michael flynn? i don t recall it. reince priebus? i don t recall. steve miller? i don t recall him ever having such a conversation. corey lewandowski? i do not recall any of those individuals having any meeting with russian officials. carter page? i don t know. have you ever, in any of these fantastical situations, heard of a plot line so ridiculous that a sitting united states senator and an ambassador of a foreign government colluded at an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history? thank you for saying that, senator cotton. it s just like through the looking glass. i mean, what is this? were problematic and he couldn t talk about them. what are they? why don t you tell me. there are none, senator wyden. there are none, i can tell you that for absolute certainty. you tell this is a secret innuendo being leaked out there about me, and i don t appreciate it. that was senator ron wyden of oregon. i spoke with him shortly before we went on air. senator, you accused attorney general sessions of stonewalling. do you have any evidence that shows that he wasn t, in fact, following proper procedure? he claims he was following long-held policies at the department of justice. he refused, anderson, to address the most basic issues today, why didn t he recuse himself sooner, what did the president say to him about firing director comey. look, the bottom line is that we have had one of these trump into it in public. so i asked jeff sessions what was meant by that, and jeff sessions just got all riled up and started hollering about innuendos, but he didn t answer the question. the question was, why would the former fbi director find this so problematic he couldn t talk about it in public. here s my bottom line, anderson. what we learned today is the country s top legal official doesn t have much of a grasp of the law, and he certainly doesn t understand what recusal is all about. do you think you ll actually be able to find out whose account was accurate? was director comey accurate when he said he knew the attorney general was going to have to recuse himself based on some things which he didn t go into? when you have a situation like that, you know, he said/he said, examine the relevant facts. director comey responded to questions for several hours and didn t pass on any of them. what jeff sessions did was, in effect, pass on all of them. so when you have two officials and one of them is straight forward and lays out a lot of details and the other one just seems to duck and weave and try to figure out how to escape accountability, i think the american people are going to say, we re going with the people who offered the facts. today also the attorney general fortunately declared that any accusation that he had anything to do with collusion between the trump campaign and russia is a, quote, appalling and detestable lie. do you believe him? do you believe he had no hand in any possible collusion? well, what i can tell you is when you have someone who violates the terms of his recusal, you certainly have grounds to question other matters. so the point you are asking about i intend to follow up on. the attorney general also said that he would not participate in any effort to remove robert mueller. does hearing that give you confidence that the integrity of the independent investigation is going to be upheld? under normal circumstances you would say yes, but certainly when you look at the trump inner circle, they have a long track record here based on the first few months of this administration to take steps that honor the one principle above everything else, which is protect the president. finally, the attorney general was asked about his meeting with kislyak in his office, and he seemed unable to go into much detail of what he actually did discuss. he said it wasn t anything to do with the campaign, that it had to do with his role as a senator at the time, and yet, some of the major issues, as john mccain pointed out, it didn t seem like he went into them or just didn t remember. normally in a meeting like that, would there be staff sitting in taking notes? would there be any kind of account at the time of what was actually discussed? what i indicated at the hearing is some of these answers, anderson, just don t pass the smell test. if you re talking about meetings with a prominent russian official and he says he doesn t really remember much, he doesn t know if there are any records, this kind of thing, it just cries out for those of us who are charged with oversight to insist that we get more facts and we re going to stay at it. senator wyden, i appreciate your time. thank you. thanks for having me. i want to bring in the panel. ryan, matt, gloria, jeffrey, matthew and glen. you said that the attorney general s testimony was the white house basically having its cake and eating it too. i thought so. what does that mean? he said he didn t answer any questions about what donald trump said or did. but he did not cite executive privilege. he just said confidentiality which is basically a made-up legal kept that has no basis in law. he said long-standing justice department policy. that he couldn t identify in writing and is not known to me and apparently not known to many people in that hearing. so the white house got the secrecy they wanted. they got the nondisclosure of conversations involving the president, but they didn t have to take the political heat of citing executive privilege. gloria, executive privilege came up a lot. i want to show some of the moments where the term was thrown around. has the president invoked executive privilege in the case of your testimony here today? he has not. then what is the basis of your refusal to answer these questions? i am protecting the right of the president to exert it assert it if he chooses. senator feinstein, that would call for a communication between the attorney general and the president and i m not able to comment on that. can you tell me, what are these long-standing d.o.j. rules that protect conversations made in the executive without invoking executive privilege? senator, i m protecting the president s constitutional right. mr. chairman, i m not able to comment on conversations with high officials within the white house. stonewalling of any kind of unacceptable, and general sessions has acknowledged that there is no legal basis for this stonewalling. i am not stonewalled. i am following the historic policies of the department of justice. it s the same thing, gloria, that we heard from dni coats, admiral rogers. rogers went in later to classify testimony, but no indication that sessions is going to do that. right. in fact, sessions was asked about that today and he didn t indicate that he was willing to do that. our laura jarrett asked the justice department what is the precedent that jeffrey is questioning, and they pointed to two memos from 1982. one from president reagan and the other from ted olson who was then the a.g. for the office of legal counsel, and so they set this precedent up. but it was not something that sessions could cite in the hearing. and i think that you have this pattern here of sessions, according to our reporting, jim acosta s reporting, did not go to the white house and ask whether he should assert executive privilege. the other two gentlemen said they tried to contact the white house and never got a response, if you ll recall from their testimony. so what the white house is getting is people who are just saying i m not going to testify about these conversations because it makes it look like they could be damaging to the president. matt, if it s not executive privilege, what is it? well, i think what all the lawyers in the room believe it is, it feels a lot like attorney/client privilege but the president isn t the attorney general s client. so they re thinking we re having confidential communications when their tingly sense tells them they shouldn t talk about it. dni coats and admiral rogers. riekght. you see they ve come up with a strategy to not answer these questions. congress has a constitutional right to participate and to investigate, and a tingly sense, with all due respect, is not a legal concept. but the thing is, they don t in the absence of contempt or some sort of coercion there s nothing they can do. right. would it have made the attorney general s argument stronger if he had brought with him and read aloud the d.o.j. policy he was referring to? of course. look at his opening statement. he was specific in the opening statement, but you expect more specificity in the opening statement than in the back and forth with senators. so there is some give and take on that, but unless the d.o.j. comes up with that kind of specificity for the tradition he cited, other than the memos that gloria mentioned, then it looks like a weak part of today s testimony. i will say though, it was all cabined around the same thing, and that was conversations with the president where you would expect them to potentially exercise executive privilege, and the tingly sense, as it s now being described, is leading somebody like general sessions who obviously is a lawyer to have that instinct. i would note that a lot of the you look at ron wyden today, and boy, he just looked like he was huffing and puffing and couldn t stand it and this was outrageous and of course this was all missing for 8 years for people like ron wyden. so there is a lot of partisanship. if this hearing like the comey hearing were structured to be purely substantive, each side would have their counsel asking the questions and it wouldn t be going from senator to senator so they can have their time shouting into the camera, and we saw some of that again today like we did with comey. this is not the ideal structure for an oversight committee to get the most information out of a hearing. general sessions did well in his opening statement, and then there was a lot to fight about after that. matt lewis, was today a good day for the trump administration? again, no real details came out about those conversations that obviously a lot of the democrats wanted to hear. yeah, i think it probably was. if you re looking at it from a political standpoint, it s probably a good day for trump, for the trump administration. by the way, i thought that senator heinrich had the best questions today and he made the point that said either you take executive privilege or if it s classified information you don t have to talk about it. otherwise, if you pledge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then you have no excuse for not answering these questions. having said that, i think that most in terms of the news value and the possibility that down the road if sessions, if attorney general sessions had answered questions with more specificity, more specifically today and he had gotten something wrong, even if he had misremembered, down the road it might have come down to haunt him. he answered very few questions, so i think politically it doesn t hurt him and it also shields him down the road. also, a lot of his answers were, well, i don t remember or, not to my knowledge, which are classic answers when it sounded like he got cornered in a hallway by some cameras. he knew he was coming, the president knew he was coming. what he kept saying was that he was trying to preserve trump s future executive privilege as if they couldn t have had a conversation about it before he came to actually testify. so it seemed like a game. it seemed like something, and he can only play this card one time but he did play it and i think that it actually harmed his credibility because it didn t really make sense to people. you re listening to this and think forgive me for interrupting, they can play it as many times as they like, as long as they have republican control of these committees. the only thing that s going to stop them from essentially stonewalling is coercion, force. you re not going to get that from republicans. another thing hanging over the hearing today was whether then senator sessions intentionally misled the judiciary committee during his confirmation hearings. i want to play a portion in question from back in january and what was said today. if it s true, it s obviously extremely serious, and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the trump campaign communicated with the russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do? senator franken, i m not aware of any of those activities. i have been called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign and i did not have communications with the russians. i m unable to comment on it. he was asked about that today by vice chairman warner. let s play what he said. this is what happened. senator franken asked me a rambling question after some six hours of testimony that included dramatic new allegations that the united states intelligence community, the u.s. intelligence community, had advised president-elect trump, quote, that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between trump s surrogates and intermediaries for the russian government, close quote. i was taken aback by that explosive allegation, which he said was being reported as breaking news that very day and which i had not heard. i wanted to refute that immediately. any suggestion that i was part of such an activity. i replied quote, i replied to senator franken this way, quote, senator franken, i m not aware of any of those activities. i have been called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign, and i didn t have communications with the russians and i m unable to comment on it, close quote. that was the context in which i was asked the question, and in that context, my answer was a fair and correct response to the charge as i understood it. ryan, senator franken s put out a statement saying he doesn t buy the attorney general s explanation. just look at the language of the question. franken asked him about intermediaries for the russian government which is exactly what the russian ambassador is, and surrogates for the trump campaign which is exactly what jeff sessions is. even by his own explanation of the context of that question, i don t quite understand what attorney general sessions is getting at. the question was about exactly the kind of contacts that we now know he had. now, he may think they were just innocent contacts, his contacts with the russian ambassador were about issues that were totally innocent, but the question was indeed about surrogates and intermediaries. he has said that he wasn t meeting with the russian ambassador as a surrogate in the time. john mccain kind of got into that take off your surrogate hat. john mccain said i don t remember you really being that interested in foreign policy. and quizzed him on what specific foreign policies issued were discussed and he didn t know many. there was a story today in yahoo! that based on the department accounting sessions had zero meetings with foreign ambassadors up until the point he was appointed to the campaign in march and then in april he had almost 30. i understand that he could theoretically do that as a senator or as a surrogate but he said he was doing it as a senator and he previously did not do that. what s clear is what kislyak was doing is trying to find out about the trump campaign and its views on russia. we ll have the latest from the white house next and later the man who would have to make the call to fire special counsel robert mueller. rod rosenstein was asked about it and we ll see what he said when 360 continues. she switched to the best deal in america: total wireless. she gets the largest, most dependable 4g lte network, and 5 gigs of high speed data for $35 a month. make it rain, beth. for blue moon is brewed mwith valencia orange peel, for a taste that shines brighter. how if guests book direct ater, choicehotels.com and stay twice they ll get a $50 gift card? summertime. badda book. badda boom. got you a shirt! .i kept the receipt. book now at choicehotels.com on the subject earlier today. quote, fake news is at an all-time high. where is their apology to me for all the incorrect stories. we re joined from the white house for the latest. the president was traveling in wisconsin during attorney general sessions testimony. do you know if he watched it? he was talking about workforce development, about health care, but a source does say the president spent most of his flight to wisconsin which is 90 minutes watching attorney general jeff sessions getting peppered with questions about russia and about his conversations with the president. as much as trump may want to escape the fray here in washington, even he is style dialed in on the russia investigation. has the white house or anyone in the administration had any comment about the hearing today? no official response. there s been no official white house statement. i sfoek with a spokesperson for the president s personal lawyer earlier today who said his personal lawyer would not be putting out a statement today. it s possible we could still hear from the white house on this. they are still on their way back from wisconsin now. sarah huckabee sanders is with reporters. we have asked for more of a readout but so far the white house has been mum on this. back for a second to the attorney general s alleged meeting back in april of last year at the mayflower in washington. the key moment, if it ever occurred, some sort of exchange at a v.i.p. gathering before then sunday trump s speech. we did find this, video from a few minutes after the v.i.p. reception. in it you see the ambassador making his way to a seat down there in the front. less than a minute later you see senator sessions walk in across the front row, walk past the ambassador, saying nothing, eventually just sitting behind him. so that s the video. back with the panel. jeffrey lord, i know you appreciate the tradition of people saying they don t recall certain things. it does seem like the russian ambassador though was very forgettable to a lot of people who met with him. he was apparently forgettable to nancy pelosi too who said she never met him and then a picture shows up of the two of them at a table with other folks. seeing that video there, right before i came on the air i talked to someone who was there in the room who, along with frank buckley, had helped write that speech. so they were there sitting right behind jeff sessions. mr. buckley has a piece on another network in which he says, if i saw this, i d say so. i saw no indication he had any conversation with the russian ambassador and he left alone. i talked with mr. terrell who says the same thing. so in other words, i mean, this is such a mr. buckley points out that bob woodward was there, there were reporters. this was a very public place, so to have some sort of private conversation in a conspiracy that would hardly be the place to do it. it makes no sense on the face of it. brian, after the sessions testified today, he clearly does not seem eager to go into a classified briefing to answer more questions about this. is there anything more the senators can do? if i were the democrats on this committee, mark warner who is the ranking democrat on the intelligence committee, i d have two things i d be following up on. i d go to my republican counterpart, senator burr, and saying we need to change the process in which we re bringing witnesses to capitol hill. up until now they have been voluntary appearances to come up to the hill and testify. i think they need to think about issuing subpoenas. if you have a subpoena issued you have a possibility of contempt of congress situation hanging over the heads of these witnesses. you re saying if executive privilege isn t invoked and yet they re not answering. correct. if the underlying material is classified, there s no reason for them to be refusing questions. members of both parties should be taking this issue seriously. if you issue subpoenas, you can dangle the threat of contempt of congress charge. it s a criminal matter. if that s dangling over their head they ll think twice about refusing to answer questions. the second thing i would be doing is getting ready a legislative proposal to revisit an independent counsel law. that was in the clinton administration in the late 90s. both sides agree that that ken starr investigation ran amok and that statute elapsed in the late 90s. now you have a situation where the president can basically fire, albeit through the acting attorney general, in this case rod rosenstein, bob mueller. you have surrogates for donald trump going around floating that possibility. if that happens and mueller is gotten rid of by donald trump, we re left without any independent conducting of that investigation, we need to at least have the back-up option of an independent counsel. jason, what about the idea of subpoenas? if people are willing to come voluntarily, is that fair? that s what attorney general sessions did today, he came voluntarily in front of the committee. you ve seen a number of people step forward and say we would like to come and testify to knock down the silliness of this entire right but they re testifying but not quite they re saying the national review in a very well written piece tonight writes, preserving privilege is not obstructing justice. i think it s clearly what attorney general sessions was doing here. anderson, take a step back for a second. coming into today really there were two things, two potential outcomes. number one, they would kill general sessions there in that hearing, knock him down politically and he wouldn t make it out, or he would still be standing at the end. i think across the board he is still standing. in fact, he came out with a surprising amount of vinegar and fire in his belly with his answers. he knocked away the hysteria from ka mall la harris and others who wanted to make this a partisan show. the single biggest takeaway, this is the end of the so-called russia hysteria that we re seeing because we re this far into it and there s still not one shred of evidence that there s been any coordinating between the campaign and a foreign entity. the biggest piece of news is the fact that we re finding out that there are investigations into multiple leaks which is a very big deal. so reality winner might get him out of the wood shed with the president? the president wasn t happy with sessions before today. today sessions didn t speculate at all about whether the president was appropriate in his conversations. he didn t discuss their conversations, so you think he s now back in the good graces of donald trump? i think the attorney general today was strong, decisive and gave a very clear opinion of not answering. i m not going to speak for the president. i know not to speak for him unless i have permission to. but i would say watching this, as any trump supporter, i would say the attorney general did a very good job. senator manchin asked attorney general sessions about russian interference, similar to what he was asked last week. i want to play both of those clips. you were part of the national security team so if he would have heard something about russia and with their capabilities and our concern about what they could do to our election process, was there any conversations concerning that whatsoever? i don t recall it, senator manchin. i don t remember any conversations with the president about the russia election interference. did he ever ask you any questions concerning this? there was an initial briefing of our findings and i think there was conversation there, i don t remember it exactly, where he asked questions about what we found and what our sources were and what our confidence level. after that i don t remember anything. now we have two people from who were in the administration well, former fbi director and the attorney general both saying they ve not heard the president expressing concern or much concern about russian interference in the election which the entire u.s. intelligence community is on agreement on. does that concern you? well, it does concern me because what our intelligence community has said uniformly and anonymously is that we had russian interference in this election and it s not going to stop. they re going to do it again. i do think that the ball that the needle didn t move one direction or another today or democrats or republicans, but i will say that whether or not you re talking about russia interference and attorney general sessions literally said if it occurred. we all agree it did occur, but he said if it occurred. whether or not we re talking about russian interference, talking about the ukraine, he was reminiscent about roberto gonzalez, former attorney general in 2007 with his i don t recalls. but more importantly, he looked relatively incompetent and had a huge dosage of willful ignorance. he was literally sticking his head in the staand. this is our top legal mind in the united states of america, and today he looked befuddled and incompetent. there s still the outstanding question of whether or not the president taped james comey in the oval office, which senator rubio asked the attorney general about that so let s play that. duo you know if the presiden records conversations in the oval office or anywhere in the white house? i do not. let me ask you this. if in fact any president was to record conversations in their official duties in the white house or the like, would there be an obligation to preserve those records? i don t know, senator rubio. probably so. it s just such an easy question to have answered. i don t know, i mean clearly nobody wants to ask the president or they have asked and haven t gotten an answer. i just think that s a question they probably don t want the answer to, especially the attorney general. can i go back to something that jason said. how was senator harris hysterical? i don t understand that. she was asking some tough questions. completely partisan s creed. how was that his cystericahy? from my perspective, i would say objective perspective, it didn t seem like there was any effort to try to get to a real question or get to the bottom i think she asked a lot of questions actually. she was dogged but i wouldn t say she was any more dogged than ron wyden was, would you say that? i have my opinion. i think she was hysterical. i don t think senator wyden was really trying to get to the bottom of answers either. but he wasn t hysterical and she was. i wanted to clear that up. i thought it was way out of bounds. this is the second hearing in a row. she didn t shout but even if she did, they both were asking a lot of tough questions and i think calling her hysterical is probably a little hysteria is a quality. what s that? it s just women who are usually called hysterical. you re being hysterical. yes, i m hysterical now for example. she was asking a lot of questions and he wasn t forthcoming and there was a lot of frustration on the part of the senators there and it wasn t all democrats. in your opinion she was making a legitimate effort to get answers to questions and to hear what the attorney general was saying? yeah. you might not like the questions she was asking. you didn t view it as her talking overtop of him? i think he was talking over her to answer her questions. i don t think it was any more than any other senator was doing. like i said, i think senator wyden s was by far the most aggressive questioning and there isn t anything wrong with that. one thing that attorney general sessions does very well is, looking if your shtick is to be super polished and confident, that s a burden. you sort of have to bring it every night and deliver. if your shtick is a character of a southerner and a good old boy, then you can just be like i don t recollect that, i don t recall, and i think that benefits him. i think he comes across as pretty likable. it s thehysterical, it s like, i don t know, tell me. he was outraged today. he was fired up. you re not going to do this to me. i came here voluntarily because i want to clear my name and i recused myself from the russia investigation but not from clearing my name. it could also just be his i mean, you know, as someone whose father comes from people have southern accents and it s not shtick. it s actually how they talk [ talking over one another ] i will not be able to go to the cooper family reunion if he did not speak up. for him it s entertainment. exactly. one thing we ve lost sight of, the most important thing, whether this was good for sessions or not, whether he performed well, the most important thing that has happened in the last week is that james comey laid out a case that a lot of former federal prosecutors argue is obstruction of justice. the thing i was looking for today is how much damage did that case get today from sessions who was a witness to a number of the things in the comey testimony last week. and i would say no damage at all. in fact, he corroborated overwhelmingly corroborated the parts of comey s testimony that he was involved with, did not contradict in any significant way any piece of it, and that is the thing to watch. far more important than the senate investigation is mueller s is the fbi investigation for trump. we re going to talk more shortly about the story that brian mentioned a moment ago, a friend of the president saying he s considering firing special counsel robert mueller. pretty much everyone has something to say about that including the deputy attorney general. we ll get into that next. great savings. and a whole lot more. for my constipation, i switch laxatives.ed stimulant laxatives make your body go by forcefully stimulating the nerves in your colon. miralax is different. it works with the water in your body to hydrate and soften. unblocking your system naturally. miralax. the right to, he has no intention to do so. deputy attorney general rod rosenstein would be the one to do it if it order came. he was in hearings on capitol hill today. brianna keilar joins us now from capitol hill with more. what did the deputy attorney general say about mueller in the special counsel today? anderson, rosenstein said that he would not fire mueller unless there was cause. he said there would have to be good cause, and he said it s not an action that he would take unless it was lawful and unless it was appropriate. this was something that a number of senators, including republican senator lindsey graham, pressed him on. do you know of any reason or cause to fire mr. mueller as of this date? no, i do not, sir. and that would be your decision if that ever happened, right? that s correct. and you re going to make it, nobody else? as long as i m in this position, senator, it would be my responsibility to make that decision. and rosenstein also explained the process by which that would happen. he said that if it were to happen, he would be the one to put it in writing. so this is something that he would have to sign his name onto, anderson, and he said that if there was not good cause, that it would not matter to him what anybody says, so he really seemed to be saying that the buck stopped with him and he wasn t going to bend to any influence on this. did he say anything about his memo about then director of the fbi, comey? he did. because that was the memo that excoriated comey that he sent on to jeff sessions and that white house officials used to justify the firing of jim comey, of course until president trump mentioned that russia was on his mind what he fired james comey. rosenstein did say he was very careful not to associate himself with anything that pertained to russia. he said that when he wrote that memo, he stands by what he wrote by those criticisms, but he said the memo is about what it is about, and he said that any questions about what clearly he seemed to be referring to questions of obstruction of justice, anything pertaining to russia, that was going to fall under bob mueller s purview. it was very interesting, anderson, he would not say when he was told to write that memo and rosenstein would not say who told him to write the memo. thank you. a friend of president trump s was back yesterday with clarification. chris ruddy said the president was considering firing mueller. today on new day , ruddy said he noeever spoke with the president about it but saying his attorney said over the weekend the option was there. i never said that the president told me. i never said i had a conversation. i never implied. as you know, i have been on cnn many times and i always speak for myself and not the president. he has his own spokesman, although i think they re in need of help from time to time. so the president s spokesman issued what i d call a bids czar press release last night saying that i had not spoken to the president about it, and i said, hey, i never said i spoke to the president. interestingly enough, they never denied my underlying report. back with the panel. joining the conversation, cnn legal analyst paul kellen. it is true that they never denied outright that the president was considering it or thinking about it. what they said last night, sarah huckabee sanders put out a statement saying chris ruddy speaks for himself and even today that quote we just read from air force one, the question was, is potus considering whether he ll fire mueller and she answered, he has no intention to do so. she didn t say, no, he wasn t considering it. i think you can file this under a trial balloon that sank quickly and i think rod rosenstein really underlined today how difficult it will be to fire mueller if the president wants to do it because it is quite clear that rosenstein is the person who has to do it, and he said i won t do it if i don t find good cause. in other words, you re going to have to fire me and have someone else come into this job and do it, which is precisely what happened in 1973 in the saturday night massacre where elliott richardson resigned rather than fire arch bald cox. it raises the stakes if the president wants to get rid of mueller at this point it will be world war 3 and i think no one, even in the republican party, wants that. ken, it is interesting that the three people that we ve heard from the white house or the three times we heard from the white house, they have never said, no, the president was never considering it. well, you know, so what? this is not a place they can go as a practical matter, and i don t think they want to try , o jeff s point. i think it s a good one to stay away from for them. mueller has a great reputation. there s no one i can think of in law enforcement who has worked with him who doesn t hold a high opinion of him. he s an ideal person to flesh this all out, and as long as he doesn t run amok in the ken starr mold, then i think that america is going to be better for clearing this issue up and having whatever the outcome is put before the american people on a clear basis. roa rosenstein made it clear today, he s not firing this guy unless the regulatory standard of good cause is met. look, good cause for robert mueller is a very high bar, is a very high bar, and i would say that i understand their concerns when you see the kind of smearing going on of the attorney general in light of what he had to say today and the incomplete reporting. for instance, people who say, for instance, that in the franken exchange it was about contacts with russia and it was about this, but they never mentioned collusion, right, ryan? are you listening, ryan? it was about collusion, and the attorney general made that about as clear as he can be, so we justreproach, he needs to what have you could be a combination, will have greater credibility. the interview for the to take on the fbi director role again doesn t concern me. because of his reputation, he was a natural person to have on that list to maybe bring back. i frankly think that the fact that he was on trump s list to even interview adds to his credibility. thanks, everybody. appreciate it. attorney general jeff sessions in the hot seat. what he said about russia s meddling in the election. what he can t recall about his meetings with russians, what he refused to talk about. plus all the things he did say plus reaction from capitol hill when we continue. .intelligent. .explosive. but the true secret to his perfection. was a heart, twice the size of an average horse. 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stop breathing during sleep. recent studies show two and a half hours of moderate exercise a week, along with two days of weight training, put diagnosed insomniacs back to sleep. improves apnea symptoms. they used to think only early morning workouts improved the snooze. listen to the internal body clock. if you re a night owl, evening workouts can be just as good. what s important, get up and go to catch better zs. jared kushner, proposed setting up a secret means of communicating with the kremlin. white house declined comment. that sounds like colluding with an adversary. doesn t make sense for me. talk to anybody in the russian embassy, get back to moscow very securely. this is jared kushner going rogue. you have a pattern of senior trump officials concealing conversations with russian spies. why are all these guys doing this, are they doing it to protect themselves or to protect trump? i have a feeling that jared is going to do a great job. he is going to do a great job. well, up and at them on saturday morning. i am christi paul. victor blackwell. new reporting in the washington post, that jared kushner proposed setting up a secret means of communicating with the kremlin. post reports requests came from intercepts of conversations between the russian ambassador to the united states and moscow. but three people with knowledge of the discussion tell new york times that the line was meant to be used to discuss strategy in syria and on policy issues. the post reports he made a proposal to kislyak during a december meeting at trump tower to use russian diplomatic facilities to shield preinauguration discussions, according to u.s. officials. here s what the washington post reporter that broke the story is telling cnn. basically you had a meeting in new york, kislyak comes up to see jared kushner and to see mike flynn. jared is the one that sets up the meeting, flynn is invited a few days later. during that discussion according to dislee kislyak s account, yo jared kushner proposing the idea of having a secure, private communications channel and jared proposes doing so at a russian facility, specifically the russian embassy in washington, which kislyak according to reporting home, he was taken aback by that. he thought that was a bizarre suggestion. the white house has not commented on the report from the post. at this point kushner is not a target of the probe. no allegations of wrongdoing. want to be clear about that. all of this as president trump s overseas trip draws to a close today. he spent this morning attending a g7 round table. in a few hours will speak to u.s. troops at an air ba base in cicely. the on-going investigation hanging over the white house as he returns. cnn correspondent jeff zeleny live in cicely. what are you hearing about the headlines we re seeing here in the u.s.? reporter: christi, there s no question that the headlines you re seeing in the u.s. are indeed reverberating here. i am told the president has been following it moment by moment, every incremental detail. it is stacking up and waiting for him when he returns to washington. he is having meetings as you said this morning. he is going through the motions here. one thing about the russia investigation, his reluctance to talk about the country at all the russians would disclose how they have secret communications to the president s senior adviser, and that the fbi would not see kushner or whomever the designee was to have the conversations may expose some of that naivity. lynn sweet, thank you. we will continue the conversation through the day. thank you, victor. more breaking news to talk about. new revelations that fired fbi director james comey acted on russian intel he knew to be false while investigating hillary clinton s e-mail during the 2016 campaign. cnn chief political correspondent dana bash has details. reporter: victor, christi, cnn learned that then fbi director james comey knew a critical piece of information related to the hillary clinton e-mail investigation was fake, but felt he needed to take action anyway because he was concerned that if the information became public, it official in classified briefings, comey told lawmakers he was afraid that the information would, quote, drop and undermine the investigation, but comey didn t tell lawmakers he doubted the accuracy of the information, even in a classified setting a few months ago. according to sources close to comey, the fbi director felt validity of the information didn t matter because if it became public, they had no way to discredit it without burning sources and methods. think about the chain of events all of this helps fend off. when comey had a press conference in july, 2016 announcing no charges against clinton, he took an extraordinary and many say inappropriate step of calling her extremely careless. clinton aides are convinced her reputation was damaged with voters and she never recovered. that probably wouldn t have happened without russian interference. also, talking to many officials on capitol hill and elsewhere, dissemination of fake information is still a major issue. multiple sources tell us russia is trying to spread false information to cloud and confuse on-going investigations. victor, christi? again, thank you so much. three big headlines this morning. all three involving russia. we will take you live to moscow and see what their reaction is this morning. also, two men have been stabbed to death after trying to stop an anti-muslim rant. you ll see the cell phone video recorded in the aftermath. also we know so many of you are hitting the road for memorial day holiday weekend. the trump administration is considering tightening security in the skies. how new regulations regarding that electronics ban may effect what happens in the next few days. stay close. 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. whether you re after supreme performance. advanced intelligence. or breathtaking style. there s a c-class just for you. decisions, decisions, decisions. lease the c300 sedan for $399 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. this morning, russia is watching headlines regarding president trump s son-in-law and senior adviser. jared kushner contacts with russian ambassador sergei kislyak. the washington post is reporting kushner wanted to establish a secret means of communication with the kremlin. cnn clare sebastian is live from moscow this hour. what are you hearing from russian leaders there? reporter: well, christi, reemphasize that political chaos in washington. the russian foreign ministry spoke this morning, calling the report by the washington post mccarthyism or simply internal political squabbles. we followed up with a question on whether the foreign minister was aware jared kushner had made this request for secret communication channel, secure communication channel as reported by the post. we have seen that the ministry was since the original report came from an intercept of communications between the russian ambassador and superiors in moscow, she would not be drown on that. we re seeing increasing rhetoric in moscow as stream of russian related news comes out of washington. the same foreign ministry spokesperson warning that the u.s. media should stop spreading lies about the russian ambassador to the u.s. had from president putin the previous week called allegations that president trump had revealed classified intel to russian officials in the oval office, called that political schizophrenia. and all the while, the russians are closely watching to see any coherent strategy or policy as relates to russia come out of washington. we know president trump is wrapping up his first overseas trip at the g7, they ll be closely watching that for any comments as relates to russia, be it syria, ukraine, or the issue of sanctions. while they continue to dismiss reports of this, they re watching for how the politics and policy behind the situation will develop. no doubt. clare sebastian, thank you so much. lynwood michael cane, son of nominee tim kaine is facing several misdemeanor charges, charged with fleeing on foot, concealing identity in a public place, obstructing the legal process interfering with a peace officer. the obstruction charge carries possible sentence up to a year in prison and fine as much as $3,000. this all comes out of his arrest in march after an incident at a pro-trump rally. some in the group used smoke bombs and mays. police said they were trooid trying to run, caught a block away. now declining to press charges against kaine and others. st. paul charge came yesterday following investigation. former u.s. national security adviser, zbigniew brzezinski, has died. served under jimmy carter during the iran hostage crisis. president carter described brzezinski as a superb public servant. was dedicated and royal and remained a close adviser to my work at carter center. i will miss her. his daughter calls him the most inspiring, loving father a girl could have. he was 89 years old. thoughts and prayers go out to mika. president trump wrapping up his first international trip abroad, will return to a white house many say is in crisis. can he right the ship and stay focused? the newest challenges facing his administration are next. and world leaders team up to pressure president trump when it comes to climate change. can they convince him to change his mind? take 5, guys. tired of your bladder always cutting into your day? you may have overactive bladder, or oab. that s it! we really need to get with the program and see the doctor. take charge and ask your doctor about myrbetriq (mirabegron) for oab symptoms of urgency, frequency and leakage. it s the first and only oab treatment in its class. myrbetriq may cause serious allergic reactions. if you experience swelling of the face, lips, throat or tongue, or difficulty breathing, stop taking myrbetriq and tell your doctor right away. myrbetriq may increase blood pressure. tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or have a weak urine stream. myrbetriq may affect or be affected by other medications. before taking myrbetriq, tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. common side effects include increased blood pressure, common cold symptoms, urinary tract infection, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness and headache. okay, time to do this! don t let your bladder always take the lead. ask your doctor if myrbetriq is right for you. and visit myrbetriq.com to learn more. i m leaving you, wesley. but why? you haven t noticed me in two years. i was in a coma. well, i still deserve appreciation. who was there for you when you had amnesia? you know i can t remember that. stop this madness. if it s appreciation you want you should both get snapshot from progressive. it rewards good drivers with big discounts on car insurance. i have news. i ve used most of our cellular data. come on, susan lucci! former national security adviser michael flynn and russian ambassador sergei kislyak. listen to what cnn national security analyst juliette kayyem told us this could mean last hour. this is not a back channel as people in law enforcement and national security came to sort of understand back channel. back channel is actually a president or president-elect uses the resources of government to sort of secretly start a communication with a country, let s say cuba or burma to begin to lay ground work for more public diplomacy. this is jared going rogue. but the idea the russians were going to open up their own apparatus, intelligence apparatus to a 30 something son-in-law of a president-elect is just it so defies any sort of good explanation, that the best explanation for kushner at this stage is he is incredibly naive. the fbi investigation into president trump s russia ties has been inching closer to the white house as you know. at this point, kushner is not a target of the probe. there are no allegations that he committed any wrongdoing, want to be very clear about that. but the latest report could serve as yet another distraction as the president meets with world leaders at the g7 summit in italy. last hour sat down for a working lunch, pictures from that. before the president heads back to the u.s., he will speak to american soldiers stationed nearby later today. cnn international editor nic robertson is in cicely. any reaction to reporting on jared kushner from the post and times? reporter: as you know, president trump isn t giving a press conference here, his national security adviser did give an on the record briefing, hr mcmaster when he was asked about jared kushner s connections with the russian ambassador in washington, he declined to answer that. he said we are here at the g7, focusing on that. indeed shut down that question. we know, however, that reuters is reporting from their sources which are seven former and current u.s. officials that they say between april last year and november last year that jared kushner had undisclosed contacts, yes, undisclosed contacts with the russian ambassador, sergei kislyak in washington that included at least two phone calls. his lawyer has said, jamie gorelick, said that at this time he had thousands of communications with many, many different people at that particular time. again, reuters is concluding this new round of reporting that this doesn t indicate kushner has done anything wrong at this stage, it is another detail layering upon information that the washington post has already published. as i say from here, hr mcmaster shutting down a question on that last night. same thing from gary kohn. nic robertson interest sit lee. thanks very much. world leaders looking for change on the climate change accord. the president tweeted about the issue. we will talk about that. and two men stabbed to death trying to stop an anti-muslim ranl rant. what the suspect yelled at officers when they tracked him down. you ll see the video. 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i hope he keeps his promise. you played that clip of what he said on the campaign trail. heard him say it dozens of times when i traveled with him. i think it is an important promise to keep. the american people want jobs first, high wages, want to rebuild the economy. this is a climate change deal. we have done some analysis at the heritage foundation that finds it would dramatically increase cost of energy in america. american consumers and families would pay thousands a year more for electricity prices. it would put at risk potentially millions of jobs. we become an energy powerhouse with respect to shale oil and gas, don t want those jobs at risk. if this is going to hurt jobs, then no, we should not do this deal. i think the american people agree with that. elizabeth, something you wrote for the new yorker not too long ago, you wrote that this administration has already passed up the chance to make the right decision on paris. the only choices that remain are different shades of wrong. explain. well, the administration has already taken steps to roll back some of the changes of the obama administration put in place. greater efficiency standards for cars that were part of the u.s. s commitments under paris. it will be difficult for the u.s. to meet obligations under paris, even if it stays in the agreement, which i think would be a good idea, and i have to beg to differ in that it would cost a lot of jobs, in fact the president s own economic adviser apparently on the plane back from cicely made the same point, we are already in an energy transition now. transition to natural gas is part of the paris accord. let me come to you with the question about jobs. i want to play what the director of the office of management and budget nick mulvaney said a few months ago about the priorities of this administration. let s watch. regarding the question as to climate change, i think the president was straightforward, we re not spending money on that any more. we consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that. that s a specific tie to his campaign. and the white house set up this dichotomy between policies relating to climate and job growth. there are clean energy jobs and that sector is growing, is it not? is that to me? that s to you, steven. on the jobs being created, they re in fossil fuel industry, we re seeing massive increases of people working in oil and gas industry. by the way, donald trump fulfilled one of his promises where he said he would rebuild the coal industry in america. we have seen 45,000 increased jobs since donald trump took office. i traveled around to a lot of coal towns in america that were decimated by obama s regulations that just destroyed communities and families. this is the kind of cost that we would see throughout the economy with this kind of climate change fan at sichl that the left is propagating on america. you look at the opinion polls, it is clear. top two concerns of americans are jobs and the economy and wages. climate change is somewhere around 20, 25 on the list of what people are concerned about. we shouldn t pay $100 billion, there s essentially a payment america has to make of $100 billion. can you think of how many jobs we could create with $100 billion? elizabeth, i didn t get an answer from steven on the clean energy jobs. i did see, we put on the screen to be fair the numbers of the mining industry, 31,000 since inauguration, about 46,000 since the election. elizabeth, to you, what do you make of that job growth in the mining sector and what s your degree of confidence that the president will withdraw or stay in the paris accord? look, everyone agrees, this includes high level members of executives in the fossil fuel industry that we need a transition to clean energy and coal is the energy of the past, and renewable is the energy of the future. if we want to prop up jobs, that s precisely what the trump administration vowed not to do, to sort of go backwards. we want to go forwards and propping up coal is just according to all economic analyses the wrong way to go. in terms of what the trump administration is going to do, that is anybody s guess. they have very mixed signals on that. can i say one quick thing. we have to wrap it there. there s a resolution. let the senate ratify this as a treaty. thank you both. police say two men have been stabbed to death after trying to stop an anti-muslim rant. next as public rants seem to be on the rise, one group says the president could help stop them. i guess i was born with a crayon in my hand. i decided to see if there was a way for design to play a. .positive role in what was going on in the world. there s a jacket that s reflective for visibility. .a sleeping bag jacket, jackets that turn into tents. i usually do my fashion sketches on the computer. i love drawing on the screen. there s no lag time at all. it feels just like my markers. with fashion, you can dress people and help people. it s really cool to see your work come to life. again, it happened so fast. it looked like every punch that i saw was actually a stab. chase robertson thought he was watching a fist fight, but in fact the witness saw two men getting stabbed to death on a commuter train in portland, oregon. this happened after they tried to confront a passenger who was yelling anti-muslim slurs at two other passengers. the suspect, 35-year-old jeremy joseph christian, is facing two charges of aggravated murder and several other charges this morning. police say he may have been targeting two young women, one wearing a hi jab, when several tried to intervene and they were stabbed. one man died at the scene, the other died at the hospital. a third man was also stabbed after he tried to help. he is expected to survive. the suspect was caught after he left the train and yelled at officers to shoot him. police say they re considering his remarks to be hate speech. adrian hooper is with us now. he is with the national communications director for council on american islamic relations. mr. hooper, we appreciate you being here. thank you. what is your reaction, first of all, to this? i think this is just representative unfortunately of the overall rise in bigotry in our nation within the last months and a year, particularly during the presidential campaign and since the election in november. we ve seen minorities increasing increasing increasingly targeted with violence, american muslims targeted, mosques targeted, african americans, refugees, immigrants, overall rise in bigotry unfortunately provoked to a large degree by president trump s rhetoric, his appointments, his policy proposals, these things have led to an atmosphere in our society in which it seems to be acceptable to target minorities. mr. hooper, what would you say to the president if you could sit down with him? do you think he could help alleviate some of these problems here? yes. he needs to speak out directly and forcefully against this rising tide of bigotry. when the person at the top sets the tone either in a negative or positive way, it makes a difference, and he really needs to speak out against particularly anti-muslim bigotry as we saw in this case. so often you see american muslim women who wear head scarves or islamic attire targeted in this way. it wasn t just muslims that were targeted, this person was apparently ranting about different groups as well. and attacked people that tried to intervene to help. we re seeing more minority groups being targeted and particularly american muslims at this time when the president and his administration is really focusing on islam and muslims. ibrahim hooper with council on american-islamic relations. thank you for sharing perspective with us this morning. we appreciate it. sort of a physical violence, maybe you ve seen videos on commuter train or airport or grocery store, more and more of these racist rants seem to be happening in public. not only in public, but then recorded on smart phones and uploaded online. you might be wondering what s driving this, and could in some way it spark a positive change? here is polo sandoval. reporter: a series of racist rants in public. and on camera. a woman in a virginia sprint store hurled a racial slur at a fellow customer. in arkansas. i said excuse me. reporter: go back to mexico is what this walmart shopper told another. we re in america. reporter: she then fired the n word at a woman looking to interject. stop being ignorant. reporter: then what orlando resident hector torres caught on his phone at the airport last week. shut up. shut up! that is sad. glad to document it. reporter: he was speaking spanish to his puerto rican mother on the phone when things got heated. explain. talking to that stupid spanish [bleep], english speaking american. reporter: racist rants aren t new says the director of institute for the study of race and difference at emory university. these videos remind us that race has been a constant, persistent problem in the united states. reporter: been a spike in the number of racist rants posted on social media, experts say. as technology becomes even more and more main streamed and more and more people are having smart phone devices and video capability, it is just going to be exploding more and more. reporter: recording these kinds of confrontations may empower people to expose the racism, says gillespie. there could also be a trump factor behind it all. people perhaps feel more embolden to express politically incorrect points of view as a result of president trump s ability to use that as a tool to be elected president. i think it is important to know these people held these points of view long before donald trump emerged as a political figure. reporter: videos may be ugly. but gillespie calls them a launching point for a larger conversation about race. polo sandoval, cnn, atlanta. with roundup precision gel®, you can finally banish garden weeds without harming precious plants nearby. so draw the line. just give the stick one click, touch the leaves and the gel stays put killing garden weeds to the root with pinpoint precision. draw the line with roundup precision gel®. and be sure to check out roundup® with sure shot wand. another good-for-the-garden product from roundup. we have switched back over and we feel like we re back home now. the process through usaa is so effortless, that you feel like you re a part of the family. i love that i can pass the membership to my children, and that they can be protected. we re the williams family, and we re usaa members for life. call usaa today to talk about your insurance needs. sugar, we re letting you go. what? 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much of the world. one thing has worried me over these months, these he two super power egos would get into a test of whose is big we are the world itself is the stakes. none of that today. none of it, let s pray, ever. that s hardball. all in with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on all in president putin and i have been discussing thank you, thank you. russia says the american president he accepted a full denial of election interference. both sides have agreed to put it behind them. there was not a lot of relitigating of the past. what we know about everything that happened. vladimir putin met the donald trump behind closed doors. it is a forgery. the trump/russia for russia, the united states. it is an honor to be with you. the two leaders appeared chummy throughout the day. president trump even sharing a laugh with putin who has been accused of having journalists killed about, the american reporters covering their meeting. thank you. the two met behind closed doors for more than two hours. afterward, the only other american, secretary of state tillerson, claimed putin was pressed. the president opened the meeting with president putin by raising concerns of the american people regarding russian interference in the 2016 election. they had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject. the president pressed president putin on more than one occasion involving russian involvement. president putin denied such involvement as i think he has in the past. but tillerson s counter part emerged from the meeting with a very different story. translator: president trump has said that he has heard clear declarations from mr. trump that russian involvement has not interfered in the elections and he accepts the things that mr. putin has said. he semis this. they said lavrov s comments were not accurate. an unnamed official. while we have no way of saying what was said in private, we can he what president trump said in public. i think it was russia but i think it was probably other people and/or countries, and i see nothing wrong with that statement. nobody really knows. nobody really knows for sure. that was yesterday. this is giving the russian award. i think what the two presidents i think rightly focused on is how do we move forward? how do we move forward from here sf it s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations. many accounts indicate that russian election interference hasn t stopped here or abroad and it doesn t appear to be just elections. we learned yesterday, for example, that russians are suspected of hacking the nuclear sites in the u.s. a top pick did not even come up. joining me now from iraq, christopher hill. your reaction to the news that came out of today s meeting. well, first of all, i think it was a pretty successful meeting by all accounts. i was not very astonished that president trump talked about the hacking and putin denied and it president trump said okay, let s move ahead. what i thought was interesting, it appears that rex tillerson had a good day. he showed that he was able to put his imprint on some of the work they re doing. especially that deal and how it works out in syria. the big takeaway, they are announcing the cease fire had southwest syria, if i ll not mistaken. in some ways, that has been a big thing trump has signaled for a long time. working with isis and fundamentally being fine with assad staying. i think ultimately, that is the idea. the problem is the trump administration hasn t told us, what is the goal in syria? they don t seem to indicate, what do we want? do we want a unity state? do we want a parliament system? when they can define that, and maybe harmonize that with other players, including russia, then we have a chance of making the cease fire hold. i think it was small step in a small area in southwestern syria and i think they re trying to see if they can start process there. it was a fairly deafening silence on the issue of north korea. i don t think russia gave us anything at all. if someone pointed a nuclear missile at them, they would know what to do about it. i ll a little disappointed at how that conversation is turning out. the other issue i have, and i would be curious to your response. it seems there s not a particularly reliable narrator for what happened in that room. we have contrasting versions of what happened. the and there is a sort of grain of salt that it appears you have to take all accounts with. you ve got it. and it is not unusual to get two different readings of a meeting, lavrov and his customary charlieing way, that was quite at odds with what secretary of state tillerson said. that s why there are note takers. they sit on the side of the room and they take notes. apparently president trump didn t want anyone else in the room. i guess he looks at every note taker and thinks of that person as being a leaker. but there are reasons you have note takers. there was a moment i wbr id= wbr4621 /> want to play jumped out at me. take a listen. thank you. that s putin leaning over and saying to president wbr id= wbr4721 /> trump, these are the ones that insulted you. pointing to the press core. given that numerous journal the /b> i haves in russia have been murdered in cold blood, and often thought to be partly at the hands of putin or his surrogates, what did you make of that moment? to be frank, these two leaders have raised tastelessness to an art form. it is kinds of appalling that putin would do that. i think our president needs to be reminded now and again that there is a little dignity of this business and he d better lay off the press. it doesn t play well overseas or this country either. in this country, it is a mosh pit on everything. overseas, i don t think he should be playing game. the posture from tillerson and the president, and it seems to be what the russians want as well. let s just cabin that whole unpleasantness around the election. who is to say what really happened. and work together on mutual areas of shared interest. again, fine for the latter part. you do wonder what that means for what other future operations the russians may undertake. well, fair enough. there s an old adage that lawyers look backwards and diplomats look forward. and i think tillerson is trying to figure out what can be done as he looks forward. it is pretty appalling issue. where if it is true, if foreign minister lavrov s comment that president trump semied putin s explanation, then you kind of wonder, is he putting more faith in the kgb than the cia? there are big problems here. and i don t think we can let this go. now, tillerson was suggesting we come up with something and i think he was hinting at the fact we re all a little concerned about what would happen in the 2018th elections, if the russians were just warming up in 2016. i think this is quite an assault on russia s part on our process. and i think we have to be not only extremely vigilant but really, really pushing back the russians. and president obama did that with a few sanctions at the he believed there. frankly, this is a lot more serious than whether or not they get to use a weekend house if new york. ambassador christopher hill, thank you for being with me tonight. thank you. joining me now, moscow journalist, and the former cbs moscow correspondent, jonathan sanders. i ll start with you as someone who covered russian politics and putin specifically. what do you think he was looking for out of this meeting? he got everything he was looking for. first of all, the sentence, the two presidents. so he looked presidential. he was on the national, international stage as an equal to the most powerful man in the world. his probe to do something in syria has turned out to be quite been official for him. when they sent the russian earl into syria, president obama said it will be a quagmire. that quagmire is leading to a de-escalation and a peace process, and the very steps being taken have three routes. one is a city in kazakhstan where they started negotiating deconflictization. two is what john kerry was doing in the last days of the obama administration. and three is the dialogue after the shootdown of the syrian plane that went on between the american military and the russian military. that s leading to the beginning of the end of the war in spoir has gone on for seven years exclaimed 400,000 lives. that s a significant step forward. putin didn t get everything he wanted. we didn t hear putin saying anything to mr. trump about american exercises, military exercises in the baltic states. something that has ignored a lot of russians. so wasn t a perfect day for both sides bust it was a big plus for mr. trump, mr. putin, mr. tillerson, and always for sergei lavrov. and this does sflog fierce cold war atmosphere that has been whipping around us for so long. especially whipping around us on cable news programs. the idea of meddling, which is this word that keeps coming up. there is an interesting statement that tillerson said, we sort of agreed not to meddle in each other s internal affairs. and this has been something both the chinese and the russians have been laser focused on. the u.s. should keep its mouth shut about anything happening internalfully russia. and that seemed to me like a takeaway for putin. something that he has long sought. i feel like that is a pretty standard response when it comes to russian politics. they like to point to what the united states has done. whether it be meddling and other countries. electoral processes, regime change, things like that. so this was an opportunity for russia to say the same thing. i m surprised that trump brought up the election tracking issue on. one hand, you have to realize that no matter what he would have done, people here are going to be skeptical of him because there have been so many questions around this administration. so what would have been enough to bring it up in a more forceful manner rather than just saying, okay, we discussed it. my other question, other point that i want to make, we need to come up with a way of being tough on that issue. sanctions just don t work. and jonathan, you would know this. you spent a lot of time in moscow. the way the russians respond to pressure or childing from the international community, to keep doing it. to turn inward. that may be true with public perception. but the sanctions, after crimea have created significant hardship and upper rungs. it has been clear the russian state wants them lifted. and chris, they re on their way to being lifted. if the very smart way we saw tillerson trot out just before the meeting, that they ve appointed a special representative to deal with ukraine on the eastern regions, to begin to negotiate that and the man is supposed to be in moscow coming up, that s a very cher way to push this forward. i don t see how i don t 19 interrupt you. i don t see how that s possible given the political dynamics that president trump is dealing with at homes. russians went in going that was a nonstarter. not today, not tomorrow. but in six months, perhaps. that s the question, right? they re sort of concrete things the administration can do that putin would like to see they will do. give back as a starting point, the two compounds were seized as kind of retribution for the election activities. and then eventually lifting sanctions. there s tremendous pressure. at the corner of all this is this very big unresolved issue. that there was a sustained and sophisticated effort to criminally sabotage a campaign in the u.s. and one that has not been resolved or foresworn in any way. it seems hard to move on to other issues to a degree it is left hanging out there. chris, when the hearings began, senator warner said, oh, my. this is like propaganda on steroids. what s the surprise? propaganda? or steroids? the russians have been interested in doing things in american elections since 1920. it was ham handed before. now digital technology has changed things. we have to ask the basic question underlying this. why are they so good at hacking? why are they so good at cyber warfare? and why are we not particularly up to snuff and up to speed? the scary answer may be, their math education system far superior to ours. i think you have a good point in terms of human resources and people who are skilled at this. russia is very rich that way. true. that sounds uncomfortably close to blaming the bank for being ronald. we know that these things can happen. you can penetrate all sorts of inboxes and people get good at this. but there s a violation here that remains massively unresolved. and back to your point, from the context of any political situation that will move forward in this relationship, it can t just hang around as an unresolved thing and expect the politics to change. thank you both for your time tonight. thank you. ahead, can president trump agree to disagree? the conflicting reports and the reaction from capitol hill. ount. because each day she chooses to take the stairs. at work, at home. even on the escalator. that can be hard on her lower body, so now she does it with dr. scholl s orthotics clinically proven to relieve and prevent foot, knee or lower back pain, by reducing the shock and stress that travel up her body with every step she takes. so keep on climbing, sarah. you re killing it. dr. scholl s. born to move. yeah, and i can watch thee bgame with directv now.? oh, sorry, most broadcast and sports channels aren t included. and you can only stream on two devices at once. this is fun, we re having fun. yeah, we are. no, you re not jimmy. don t let directv now limit your entertainment. xfinity gives you more to stream to more wbr id= wbr11777 /> screens. meddling in another election process, we know about russia is trying to meddle with democracies. even house speaker wbr id= wbr11910 /> paul ryan can admit that what has been so hard, that russia interfered in /b> the 2016 election, according to the russian version he with what happened today, the president accepted putin s denial of any involvement in the election. giving equal credence to the u.s. intel xhublt s findings is a grave dereliction. the two countri first your response to this idea of a working group between the united states and russia to explore election interference or cyber security. well, you know, i hope that the american people won t fall for that kind of putting together of some kind of commission to deal with hacking and that s what they re describing. as a matter of fact, i think americans should be very, very concerned that this president sat down with putin who we know hacked into our election system to the dnc, and to many of the states that are now coming forward with this information. and to sit down with him and not have a real discussion. to delve into real concerns about what s happening and get a commitment from putin that they would never do it again americans want to hear that conversation. obviously, this president brought it into the room. there was. so pressure, from the media and everybody else, he could not afford to go into that room and not pretend he was dealing with the issue. he didn t deal with it. he took it up first. it was dismissed. it was intractable. now let s move on. and this thing about a commission and also, what they re going to do with syria and having some kind of cessation of the war there. i don t know if putin was in a position to negotiate and make all the differences for syria. not that i care about assad. but i would assume that he would have something to say about it. i think we re getting played by our president and certainly by putin. i don t like the idea that our president, again, would go into a room without any note takers, without any staff, without others who should be in the room who really understand foreign policy and who really understand putin, and come out of it saying how honored he is to meet with him and how in fact they re going to start meeting together. this is ball sanctions. of course, tillerson was in the room because that s at the top of his agenda. to lift the sanctions so they can drill into the arctic. you have trump who is agreeing to lift the sanctions and aboutt the dnc did. but them they fully cooperated with the requests that the filibuster made. so this guy is unhinged. and i think he is under so much pressure from this russian are investigation that when he is in the corner, all he does is he strikes back and he doesn t care about whether anything is true or not true. what did you make of that statement from the president? well, he doesn t know the difference between what podes podesta s role was with the dnc and clinton. what he thought he was setting up was this proof that we have no proof. that s what putin has said. that s what he continues to say. it is almost in your face, you can say what you want but you don t have any proof. i think this president, trump was playing into that and trying to say, well, you know, they have proof if they wanted to share it but they wouldn t let us see it so they must not have any proof. he thought when he did that, that he was nailing podesta. because he had control of the dnc and the server so we can dismiss that as another trump not knowing what he s talking about, not knowing what he s doing, and trying to give some cover to putin. that s what that is all about. people, we must keep our eye on these sanctions. first of all, the united states senate has passed legislation. very strong lotion sanctions. we must support that. because putin didn t just the want trump elected because he didn t like hillary. it is because he knew that trump would be a part of helping to lift those sanctions. and i call the kremlin klan all of those allies of the president who will benefit from it. who have indicated their connections to russia and to putin and the oligarchs. so they re trying to play us. we should not buy into anything that we ve heard happened. because we don t really know. and he does not want us to know. he wants us to be in that position where we re trying to figure out what they said and we can t be certain. it is not substantive and we have to keep our eyes on sanctions. thank you for joining me tonight. you re welcome. the ethics office is stepping down. i ll ask him why he is leaving now. mom, i have to tell you something. dad, one second i was driving and then the next. they just didn t stop and then. i m really sorry. i wrecked the subaru. i wrecked it. you re ok. that s all that matters. (vo) a lifetime commitment to getting them home safely. love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. why? we can t stay here! terrible toilet paper! i ll never get clean! way ahead of you. charmin ultra strong. it cleans better. it s four times stronger and. .you can use less. enjoy the go with charmin. i could actually run my business. i could run my business and run government at the same time. i don t like the way that looks but i would be able to do it if i wanted to. i could run the trump organization. great, great company. and could i run the company the country. i would do a great job but i don t want to do that. the big question was how donald trump, the country s first real estate mogul president who to this day has not released the tax returns works resolve the vast potential conflicts of interest. they tweeted to then president-elect, it is good for you, very good for america. oge applauds the decision. bravo. og empbl is delighted that you have decided to divest your businesses. of course, he really hadn t decided to do and it the man goading him to do so would become the lone voice in the federal government publicly taking a stand against corruption in the administration and risking his job to do it. after the president announced he would not divest from his business, instead turning over control to his sons, he condemned it in his speech. stepping back from running his positions is meaningless from a conflicts of interest perspective. this is not a blind trust. not even close. the only thing it has in common is the label, trust. nothing short of divestiture will resolve these conflicts. that prompted had chaffetz. it drew a warning from the incoming white house chief of staff. the head of the government ethics ought to be careful. he is becoming extremely political. apparently may have publicly supported hillary clinton. so i m not so sure what this person in government ethics, what sort of standing he has anymore in giving these opinions. but schaub continues to take on the administration. and forcing the white house to disclose numerous ethics waivers they granted to senior staff. now six months before the end of the term, he is stepping down and he joins me right here for an exclusive live interview, next. just like the people who own them, every business is different. but every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. whether it be help starting your business, vendor contracts or employment agreements. legalzoom s network of attorneys can help you every step of the way so you can focus on what you do. we ll handle the legal stuff that comes up along the way. legalzoom. legal help is here. introducing the new sleep number 360™ smart bed. the only bed smart enough to change sleep as we know it. it senses your every move and automatically adjusts on both sides to keep you comfortable. and snoring.. does your bed do that? right now save on sleep number 360™ smart beds. plus, it s the lowest prices of the season with savings of $500 on our most popular p5 bed. ends sunday. to be ethical. i don t see that. i see him taking positions that he has not even looked at. he seems to be in the spin room from the democratic side of the aisle. joining me now, that person. now the outgoing director of the office of government ethics. let me start with this. i think it is important to lay this down. what is your job? what are you tasked with doing at oge? well, hi, chris, it s nice to be here. the office of government ethics is the prevention part of the government west work the administration, not only presidential appointees but also rank and file employees. we help then disclose their financial conflicts of interest. we re there to solve problems in advance. that s what i ve been doing under three presseses now and i ve really enjoyed the job. my understanding is this grows out of watergate. you are there because there are criminal statutes, conflict of interest laws, that people might violate and you re there to protect them from doing that. essentially. that s right. as i said, we re the prevention mechanism so we re really helping to set people twoe steps back from the line. hopefully, only inadvertent. these are extremely complicated laws. they re nuanced and always past after the last crisis. our job is to serve as the translator and to help find ways to make they will work together. and we have a really big education foundation ensure that federal employees, or political appointees, understand the rules. and we often work very closely to prevent those problems. you said you served under three presseses. how different was this than the other two? well, i have only got really good things to say about the ethics program that president bush ran and the ethic program that president obama ran. we got off to kind of a good start initial when i this administration because he had picked an the excellent transition team and we worked an outside nonprofit group to bring the two campaigns transition teams together and work them and help make sure they were ready for the transition. and i have to say a great respect for both teams. i saenlt congratulations e-mail to the winning team and i sincerely told them i was looking forward to working with they will i got a very nice message back saying they felt supported by oge and were looking forward to getting down to the task at handled. and then they were replaced about our current council of the president. since then i would stay ethics program has been a very serious disappointment in the white house. what do you mean by that? the ethics program, is a compliance based program in many ways. we have very basic bare bones criminal laws, civil laws, administrative regulations, that say here s the absolute minimum you re going to do. that s just the skeleton. and the meet of the program has been the ethical traditions and the norms that has evolved over 40 years. and we re able to say, in most cases, that we have the gold standard of ethics programs internationally. and that federal employees are not just merely not criminals. that appointees are not just avoiding violating laws but they go further and come apply with those traditions. an example is that with presidential nominees, the primary criminal conflict of interest statute says you can t participate in something where you have a conflict of interest. so you can come into government and keep all of your could not financial interests and not run afoul of that law if you were will to put your feet up on that zpeks read your newspaper all day and do your job. that s unworkable. we take a risk management approach. we set up other mechanisms to prevent conflicts of interest and we are two steps back from the line. the consistent approach that i m running into has been, if it is not illegal, we re going to do it. if there s an argument, we re going to do it. that has undermined the program that has existed for four decades. what i m hearing is they have taken an aggressive posture in terms of where they can set up with respect to the line on conflicts, particularly. this is a really important question. your job is to certify that there s no conflicts. i want to talk about, i want to you give me this. can you definitively say that everyone in the white house including the president, free of conflicts of interest? well no. we ve received very little information about what the individuals in the white house do on a day-to-day basis for a living. they ve negotiated ethics agreements and they ve refused to even let the office of government ethics see it. we ve asked for information. it is like pulling teeth. weeks go by before we get answers in many cases. after i issued a data call for all the waivers and notifications that were issued at the end of april, they refused to anxious any questions from my staff whether any individuals had received waivers. so i want to be really clear. there are criminal conflict status. there are people who retain, they have to recuse themselves. can you differeefinitively stat they have gdone that? to be fair, i would have to rework that question a little bit. i m not trying to dodge but it is a little more nuanced than. that i would like to say there is no basis for any specific violations. i don t have enough information to say definitively there could not be that. the bigger concern is because this is a risk management program, it has become clear that they have a much higher tolerance for risk than we do. we have a lot more concern over presidential no, ma am nieces. they have to get our sign-off before they can get a hearing to come into government. white house appointees are in government long before we get their reports and we re almost doing a post mortem to see if there was a conflict of interest. with nominees, we work to prevent them in advance. so documenting a higher level of risk is inconsistent with how we ve run this program. people have said, is there definitely a violation. or can you definitively say that? once the violation has happened, we have failed. it is incumbent upon the office of government ethics to object before we reach that point. we re supposed to prevent that from happening. thanks for making time tonight. thanks. the weaponizing of fake news. plus, t plus, thing one and thing two next. pain isn t always fair. i m not going to let it change my life. aleve is proven stronger on pain than tylenol 8 hour. and only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just 1 pill. this is my pain, but i am stronger. aleve. all day strong. .as it affects how well brilinta works. brilinta helps keep platelets from sticking together and forming a clot. in a clinical study brilinta worked better than plavix®. brilinta reduced the chance of another heart attack. or dying from one. 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. slow heart rhythm has been reported. tell your doctor about bleeding,. .new or unexpected shortness of breath, any planned surgery, and all medicines you take. if you recently had a heart attack, ask your doctor about brilinta. my heart is worth brilinta. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca. .may be able to help. in our house, we go through a lot of mom!et paper. so we switched to new charmin super mega roll. get six regular rolls in one with charmin super mega roll our longest lasting roll. guaranteed to fit. enjoy the go with charmin. thing one tonight, this young administration has shown it is really into space. like really into space. the vice president cares very deeply about space policy. vice president pence promise that had our administration, because mike is 57 into space, would revive the national space council. buzz aldrin didn t seem equally enthusiastic on everything that happened that day. keep an eye on his expression. everybody wants to be on this board. people that you wouldn t have believed loved what we re doing so much. they want to be some of the most successful people on this board. i feel very strongly about it. i felt very strongly about it for a long time. i used to say before doing what i did, i used to say, what happened. why aren t we moving forward. a some point in the future we ll look back and say how did we do it without space? yesterday, while president trump was in germany, vice president pence got to visit the kennedy space center where the moment happened. he announced, we might be invading mars. that s thing two in 60 seconds. showing off my arms? that s cool. being comfortable without a shirt? that s cool. getting the body you want without surgery, needles, or downtime? that s coolsculpting. coolsculpting is the only fda-cleared non-invasive treatment that targets and freezes away stubborn fat cells. visit coolsculpting.com today and register for a chance to win a free treatment. you give us comfort. and we give you bare feet. i love you, couch. .backsweat and gordo s everything. i love you, but sometimes you stink. new febreze fabric refresher with odorclear technology. .cleans away odors like never before. because the things you love the most can stink. and plug in febreze to keep your whole room fresh for up. .to 45 days. breathe happy with new febreze. mike pence sound pretty excited about the future of space exploration while speaking at the kennedy space center yesterday. here from this bridge to space, our nation will return to the moon and we will put american boots on the face of mars. boots on the ground on mars. it was during the tour though that pence really showed off his space fandom. when he saw this sign, you bet wasn t going to stop him from slapping a hand on that piece of critical space flight hardware despite the sign that said, do not touch. pence embraced the moment saying marco rubio, if you re going to do it. nasa had its blessing saying it was okay to touch the surface. those are day to day reminder signs. we were going to clean it anyway. liberty did what? liberty mutual paid to replace all of our property that was damaged. and we didn t have to touch our savings. yeah, our insurance won t do that. well, there goes my boat. you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. and our firefighters safe. together, we re building a better california. did you watch rachel s show last night? she led with an exclusive report about what appeared to be a top secret nsa document that purported to show that a member of the trump campaign team was working with the russians on hacking last year. but after maddow and her staff consulted experts who have worked with documents like this, the conclusion was the document they received was a fake. the big red flag for us is that the document we were given this is part of what made it seem so red hot it names on american citizen. even if the typos and the weird spacing and the other odd stuff had snuck through for some reason, an american citizen s name would not have snuck through. not at this level of an nsa report. that our document contains an american name spelled out, that says to experienced people who ve worked with this stuff that what we got is forged. it s fake. now news organizations can pay a stiff price for running with things they get from questionable tips and sources. as rachel reminded us it was in 2004 that dan rather and cbs news got hold of documents that purported to highlight details of george w. bush s national guard business. the comes whose origin was murky. they blew up ending rather s career and damaging that news organization. it also killed any further reporting into george w. bush s military service during that election year. now someone is shopping fake trump collusion documents perhaps with a similar goal in mind. whether or not the trump campaign did it, one way to stab in the heart aggressive american reporting on that subject is to lay traps for american journalists reporting on it. trick news organizations to report what appears to be evidence of what happened and then after the fact blow that reporting up. you hurt the credibility of that news organization. you also cast a shadow over any similar reporting in the future. whether or not it s true. right? even if it s true you plant a permanent question. a permanent asterisk. a permanent who knows. as to whether that too might be falts like that other story. whether that too might be based on fake evidence. so head s up, everybody. part of the defense against this trump-russia story includes somebody presenting a classified report and shopping it to other news authorities. david k. johnson, next. award winning interface. award winning design. award winning engine. the volvo xc90. the most awarded luxury suv of the century. visit your volvo dealer today and get up to $4,500 in allowances. i .prilosec otc 7 years ago,my doctor recommended. 5 years ago, last week. just 1 pill each morning, 24 hours and zero heartburn. it s been the number 1 doctor recommended brand for 10. .straight years, and it s still recommended today. use as directed. my hands that if i run with it and it is a fake i m blown up. right. and in that case the white house authenticated the document. but there is a real serious problem we re going to see more of in the future, chris, with fabricating documents to mislead news organizations. it s not entirely new. you may recall in the george w. bush documents case that affected dan rather and cbs that while the documents were shown to be fakes, kate and another reporter at the the new york times interviewed the general s secretary who said well, you know, that s exactly what he was saying at the time in the office and he did have documents though i didn t type them. in that case and others that i m aware of, there have been cases where you take a document you know is real, and we recreate what will be exposed as a fabrication to discredit the issue. so the broader thing to me at this moment is, governor paul lepage in maine, a big trump supporters with tells the media something. let s flood the tip lines with fake tips and times saying the that the white house tried to do this. i know people who have said the white house has attempted to shop them fake story to get them to run it so they can rebut them because it is a valuable, particularly in the moment in this white house to call this fake news. wh what do you about that? you have to be extremely careful with documents that don t come out of a public report. if you copy it out of the courthouse record, that s one thing. and if it s too good to be true it probably is. when i was exposing the lapd s massive worldwide spying, i got a document one day that was unbelievably juicy and i looked at it and said this is too good, it s too new. and when i i came to learn years later from a senior officer that in fact it was planted in an effort to discredit me. you have to be careful when handling documents to authenticate them and you have to show them to the people you re going to write about or broadcast about and get their responses to it. and there is at this point this sort of ratcheting up of the stakes, because of this idea of fake news that if you there s a real incentive on the part of the white house to kind of get people to get stuff wrong, even on sort of easy stuff, not big cloak and dagger stuff with documents being fabricated but easy stuff. because at this point it s such a kind of core narrative that they re telling the country about basically them against a duplicitous press. let s remember that vladimir
wrongdoing by president obama contradicting president trump s allegations that susan rice broke the law. plus, more info about the investigation into trump team connections to russia. details about surveillance warrants against one of the president s campaign managers and why the fbi thought that adviser could be acting as a foreign agent. plus, it s the first rule of politics. don t compare anybody to hitler. i guess nobody told sean spicer. we didn t use chemical weapons in world war ii. you know? you had a you know, someone when s despicable as hitler who didn t sink to the to using chemical weapons. we ve got the latest on the attempts to clean that up and whether that will be enough for president trump. we want do get started with the breaking news on the trump administration charges of improper surveillance by the obama administration. cnn is learning now about the claims of chairman devin nunes that members of the obama administration improperly requested the identities of americans appearing in intelligence reports. now, just to refresh your memory, here s what congressman nunes has said previously. there s some information in those documents that concern me and the reports that i read that i don t think belong there. it would make me uncomfortable. some of it i think it bothered me enough i went over to the white house because i think the president needs to see these reports for himself. i was concerned about americans identities being either not masked properly for in fact unmasked in intelligence reports. so, congressman nunes also said that he would share what he saw with other committee members. well, he has. and cnn s senior congressional correspondent is learning more about that. manu, what are you hearing? don, tonight both democratic and republican lawmakers and aides casting doubt on the claims made that obama administration officials improperly requested the names of u.s. individuals who had been redacted in intelligence documents. cnn sources say these lawmakers have seen the same intelligence documents that nunes reviewed and tell us that they see no evidence that the obama administration officials did anything out of the ordinary and certainly nothing illegal as the president alleged. a congressional source described the request as, quote, normal and appropriate, don. so, you and jim schuto talked to sources who have seen the documents. what are they telling you about their contents? well congressional source tells me, quote, there s absolutely no smoking gun in these reports. as nunes suggested and in fact the person saying the white house to declassify the reports to make it clear there s nothing alarming in it and currently classified documents but a lot of questions have been raised, don, around the role of susan rice that former obama national security adviser and whether she acted legally in requesting the names of trump officials who are incidentally collected in these intelligence reports. now, president trump himself said last week she may have broken the law. but, don, multiple sources have reviewed the documents that nunes timely say they do not back the president s claims she may have broken the law. they re saying that they re routine requests she may have made. now, the president himself, don, has not yet revealed what intelligence he has been relying on to make that assertion, that rice broke the law and the white house not yet provided that either. manu, even if the obama rope explain to us, what are the rules for actually making and granting these unmasking requests. well, they were set by the intelligence community, certain senior national security officials can make these requests. the intelligence agencies principally the national security agency, decides whether to grant these unmasking requests but we are told that typically the requests of senior officials are rarely denied and now despite in the judgment of the people looking at the reports that these obama officials requests were within the law and appear to be common practice, some members of congress do have concerns about the justifications that were given to unmask these individuals and the standards for the intelligence agencies to grant these requests so expect the both and senate intelligence committees to look into this matter as part of their broader investigation into russia, don. manu, as you know and reporting, nunes forced to temporarily recuse himself from the investigation and investigated by the house ethics committee because of his handling of the documents. what s the status now of that investigation? it appears to be moving forward, don. right now the house on a two-week recess and behind the scenes an agreement on the list of witnesses but even though there s a they do know who to interview going forward, there s a clear divide. sources are telling us that the republicans mostly want to interview people who have leaked classified information believing that that is where the real crime is and democrats are looking to hear testimony about any of those ties between russia and those trump associates and they do want to talk to those key trump associates, expect that committee to try to interview all of those folks that democrats want to talk to and republicans including susan rice who will have to defend what she did and requesting the identity of those american citizens and she ll have to do that not just before the house panel, don, but also the senate intelligence committee which wants to hear from her as part of their own russia probe. manu, thank you very much. want to bring in jeff zeleny. hello to you, jeff. this is not good news for the white house, of course. everyone up to the president made a big deal of susan rice s role in unmasking the names of americans whose names came up in incidental complexion. the president told the new york times what she did is one of the big, big stories of our time. reporter: he did, don. good evening. and the president also told the new york times in that interview about susan rice she was guilty of some type of a crime and not for him to necessarily decide. this is something that the white house has been trying to not talk about this week, actually. they have the syria strikes, other things. the russia investigation is still hanging over this administration. still hanging over the white house here. and manu s reporting about the house intelligence committee, the republicans and democrats, looking at this. i mean, that is very significant here. because the white house is repeatedly said, look, this is in the hands of the house and senate the committees here and activities? there was an earlier case in which page came to the attention of the fbi. i believe it was 2013. and in which he was basically engaging with what he thought apparently was a russian diplomat who, in fact, was a russian intelligence officer. this is in new york. and there was an exchange of information where he provided, page provided to this russian operative documents related to the energy field that he was working on. and so, this is one of the items that s listed in the application that the fbi filed with the fisa court to get the warrant up on the communications. so in other words, there s a history of contact there that the fbi was able to cite and then, of course, you know, when you look at carter page s history, he s he spent several years in russia, working for merrill lynch and has frequently returned, you know, and that is obviously something that doesn t necessarily mean anything because a lot of american business men, investment bankers and so on, have dealings in russia but this also added to the suspicions on the part of the fbi which then they had to present to convince an fisa judge to allow them to monitor his communications. adam is a national security correspondent for the washington post. thank you. can you stay with us on the phone? because i want to bring our own people in here and then you can check and may need to get you to put a final button on this. i want to bring jeff zeleny back and joining us is laura coates and nia malika henderson. the 90-day warrant is renewed more than once. what does it tell you that the fbi would have to prove if they were getting somewhere to get it renewed? why would they do that? well, it could mean one of two things. either, one, they did not acquire enough information to go forward with actual criminal charges and they needed to have more time to do so. the other explanation is they have not gotten enough but received some. enough to warrant additional causes for probable cause. probable cause, of course, the courts are saying, is there some basis? is there a reason to believe there s a national security risk at our at the core of your request to investigate an american citizen? and if there s continuing information that is coming in that encourages the fisa court, this is an appropriate invasion, and they ll continue to grant continuance and extensions. it s very important what we just talked about in that you have somebody on the radar at the fbi their failed foreign policy. it will be interesting to see when it s more fully disclosed including the dodgey dossier, a document that clearly is false evidence which could represent yet another potential crime. now, i m sure, you know, there are going to be many, many more questions of page and other trump associates. what do you take from his response there? yeah. it s fairly nonsensical. i mean, it s this sort of allegation about the deep state and clinton and obama as the bad guys who are somehow pursuing him illegally. i mean, the point of the matter here is that the fbi is looking in to trump associates, obviously we heard comey say that in his testimony before the senate intel committee a couple of weeks ago but, you know, carter page is out there on any number of occasions talking about this and you had trump with the washington post some point name carter page as a foreign policy adviser. it is unclear as adam was saying how close he was to the campaign, how much he was in the inner circle in terms of foreign policy. but i think, again, this puts this investigation about russia front and center at a time i think when we had the trump administration for the first time from this administration really talk tough on russia and really basically try to get russia to do something different and called them out in terms of syria. but again, this constant sort of trickling out of information about this investigation not helpful to this administration. jeff, i want you to take a listen to this. we heard you might be announcing your foreign policy advisory team soon. we are going to be doing that, in fact, very soon. i d say during the week we ll be announcing some names. it will always grow. anything you can start off this morning with us? i hadn t thought in terms of doing it. if you want, i can give you some of the names. i d be delighted. i wouldn t mind. walid phares who you probably know. ph.d. adviser to the house of representatives caucus and counterterrorism expert. carter page, ph.d. so that was march 21 of 2016, jeff, of the washington post. both adam with the washington post and nia-malika, both mentioned that exchange. has the white house explained how carter page ended up on the list? they haven t extensively. that s back when mr. trump was emerging as the likely or potential republican nominee. just a little over a year or so ago and quite frankly he didn t have much of a big apparatus of advisers around him. he was a very lean campaign but he was sitting down with the editorial board there of washington post, that was the publisher of the washington post asking him questions there and he did say that carter page was an adviser. now he was never a central player in the rest of the campaign. certainly like a paul manofort and sean spicer from the podium at the white house said, oh, basically not involved in the campaign. that s not true. but carter page does fit into more along the lines of those descriptions here. he was never a central player in terms of the campaign apparatus. but did have meetings and he was, you know, in the inner circle and the president there, you know, was saying that he was one of his advisers here so look. as this plays out, it is getting closer and closer to the inner circle here and this fisa warrant, you know, that the washington post is reporting tonight is something that trump team and campaign will have a hard time blaming that on susan rice or others. i mean, this is a court of law, a judge that decides this here. so still a lot of questions about the exact involvement of carter page, how close he was to the inside of the trump campaign but it doesn t necessarily matter because he was an adviser to this president. we heard him say it right there. so if he was sort of number one or number ten, sort of irrelevant at this point, i think. jeff, nia, laura, adam and manu, i appreciate it. we have more on the russia investigation heating up again tonight. sean spicer made a few blunders at white house press secretary but this one is big. how he s facing the fallout from the shocking hitler comparison. you don t let anything we believe in real food. whole foods market. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, isn t it time to let the real you shine through? introducing otezla, apremilast. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it s a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. some people who took otezla saw 75% clearer skin after 4 months. and otezla s prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don t take otezla if you are allergic to any of its ingredients. otezla may increase the risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts, or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. side effects may include diarrhea, nausea, upper respiratory tract infection, and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, and if you re pregnant or planning to be. ask your dermatologist about otezla today. otezla. show more of you. we re joined now by cnn political analyst april ryan and commentators and former congressman jack kingston, a former senior advise tore the trump campaign. we re talking russia again, jack kingston. welcome, everyone. thank you for coming on tonight. russia back in the front and center tonight with more questions about the investigation and about an fisa warrant against carter page. does the white house have some explaining to do? you know, i really don t think so. jeff, i was just watching that excuse me, i was just watching jeff saying it doesn t really matter if carter page was the tenth adviser or third down. he wasn t close to it. that is guy that never went to the headquarters. he did not have a pass to go to the headquarters. he had never met donald trump. nor had he met people like jason miller and those of us in the communications side. he did not know the strategy people. and so, for the fbi to even be investigating him is odd to me but i can tell you in terms of his proximity to donald trump or his proximity to the decision makers or the inner circle, there was absolutely none. david, does that matter, whether he met someone or not, or because the president did mention him? yeah. look. at that point in time, as jeff pointed out in the last segment, i think president trump then candidate trump was throwing out names. he had an assortment of people in there who really are not key figures and someone he didn t name, same clovis and the fact that carter page on the radar, the fact that carter page continues to come up, i do think that this is something that the administration they have to have a better way of explaining what the contacts were all about. as we move forward and shift away from maybe the syria story and back toward this investigation in the coming weeks. david, quickly, again, the president and the white house throw up a smoke screen with the issue of unmasking and susan rice? our reporting is she did nothing wrong and at least now from the reporting there s there was nothing illegal about it. no illegal activity here. did that smoke screen work do you think? two things, don. with regard to ambassador rice, she gave that interview to andrea mitchell last week. she didn t stutter or hesitate. she said i leaked nothing to no one acting as national security adviser for a sitting president to look at that material and at least internally have some of that as i understand it but that those names unmasked i will say, obviously, there are going to be people who don t believe ambassador rice. i don t think there s any way to interpret her response a second guessing on her part. and, don, this idea that, look, whatever else happened, the four tweets that president trump sent five or six saturdays ago, doesn t seem to me that he was aiming at susan rice at that time. it was sort of like they found something to pin this broad allegation on as they dug into the material that was available. this is not a justification for the president, none of it, if it wasn t just a smoke screen. alan, we have reporting from the washington post that the administration got this fisa warrant against carter page believing he was acting as an agent of a foreign government, russia. what is your reaction? it is easy to get an fisa warrant. they accept almost every request and the presumption of innocence not just in the courtroom but the court of public opinion. each party prepared to forget the presumption of innocence when they accuse the other party and then somebody on their side accused they suddenly, oh my god, presumption of innocence. let s keep it for both parties. we have a little bit of smoke but certainly nothing coming close to a fire. we also know that michael flynn had to retroactively declare himself an agent of a foreign government, turkey, during the campaign. what was going on with the campaign that they had people working for president trump but also for foreign countries? i think part of what was going on is frankly, that the best brains and most experienced veterans, seasoned foreign policy heads of the republican party refusing to work for president trump. and i think part of the problem the administration has is drip, drip, drip. right? michael flynn. you have carter page. you have got paul manafort. maybe, maybe, maybe. you know? at the beginning they hadn t stood there on the podium saying to us paul manafort, who? we know that he s the campaign manager. ran the republican convention. maybe then we could, you know, this idea that carter page, who would be believable. the story is too overused, too old, too stale. april, how do you expect the white house to handle the developments? secretary tillerson is in moscow as we speak. well, they re going to have to go step by step as everything seems to be going step by step. i want to go back to something and this is kind of poignant and pulls in also from the issue of susan rice into today. i talked to former homeland security head jay johnson and said it s typical trying to find intelligence. and he stands by susan rice for one. but when you go into the new age, this trump era, just within 82 days, they are playing defense, they re trying to, again, look like the fine-tuned machine that the president said that this administration was during the first press conference. but at the same time, they re on the defense. but they have to answer these questions, again, focusing back on russia. it s not smoke and mirrors anymore. everything is in the open and we are seeing when s going on. i don t think so anymore. i think that the break between russia and the united states caused by syria is going to make this story go away. what people were afraid of is president trump may be beholden to russia. he s demonstrated that is not the case and an old story. not a current or future story. you don t think that no, no, in. hold on. hold on. april first. go ahead, april. because of the elections. i believe this story will not go away because of the ramifications of what could have happened in or what is thought to have happened in this past presidential election and what it could lead to in the next elections to come. 2018 and 2020. so there are very serious issues on table. it is not going away. nia, button this up for us, please. won t go away because there are investigations going on right now. there s a senate intelligence committee investigation. the house and the fbi. so as a story, and as a sort of news topic, perhaps it will come and go. but as an investigation, it will go on until they reach any sort of conclusion. i have to go. i have to go. i have to take a break. sorry about that. we ll continue to discuss russia and we ll talk about sean spicer s blunder today and apology. april was in the briefing room when it happened. we ll be right back. i was thinking around 70. to and before that?re? you mean after that? no, i m talking before that. do you have things you want to do before you retire? i d really like to run with the bulls. wow. hope you re fast. i am. get a portfolio that works for you now and as your needs change with investment management services. i didn t do it. match did it! check out new missed connections on match. start for free today! reaction is going to be unbelievable. april, you were there in the room. big backlash for the comments of sean spicer comparing hitler and assad. let s listen to the full clip. first he makes a statement and then he tries to clarify it. we didn t use chemical weapons in world war ii. you know? you had a you know, someone as despicable as hitler who didn t even sink to the level of using chemical weapons. so you have to if you re russia, is this a country and regime to align yourself with. quote, hitler didn t sink to the level of using chemical weapons. what did you mean by that? i think when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that assad is doing. i mean, there s clearly i understand your point. thank you. i thank you. i appreciate that. there was not in the he brought them into the holocaust center. i understand that. i m saying in the way assad used them going into towns, dropped them down to innocent into the middle of towns. you were in the room. what was your reaction? i was actually writing and i was listening, and when he started making the statements, i was it was it was an impacting statement. something that you re not he touched a third rail. and i quickly lifted my head and i heard audible gasps in the room. i heard people saying things and turning and looking. people were very upset, particularly many of the jewish american reporters that were in the room. it was it was not a shining moment for him to make that statement. you never compare hitler with anyone. you don t even bring hitler up. it was a very bad moment. nia, holocaust centers. it was you know? yeah. no. i never, ever heard that phrase i guess in that particular moment he meant gas chambers. what i was looking at sean spicer up there and we know sean spicer, obviously. he is in the job now 82 days now. and you could tell that he was getting into territory and comparisons that might not exactly be helpful and you can sort of see in the room there, april was obviously there, seems like the reporters trying to help him out to get to a place where he can clarify and make good and make some sense with this statement. but he he was never really able to do that and released the third statement. let me read that statement. didn t help either. he said i in no way trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the holocaust. i was trying to draw a distinct of a tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers. any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable. anna, as mistakes go, i mean, this was a pretty big one. so much so that sean spicer i think the word you re looking for is huge. yeah. he apologized to wolf blitzer. here it is. i was obviously trying to make a point about the heinous acts of assad against his own people last week using chemical weapons and gas. and, frankly, i mistakenly used an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the holocaust and there is no comparison. and for that, i apologize. it was a mistake to do that. so he s add an adversarial relationship since he s been in that role. and usually he goes on fox news and friendly territory. and this time cnn with a reporter who with an anchor who has connections to the holocaust. is this a big enough blunder for that? why did he have to go with wolf blitzer? i m glad he did and says something not going to fox news. let me say this. i knew sean spicer before he overdosed on orange kool-aid and he is not an anti-semite. he is not a bad guy. he is a decent guy who is trying to do his job. i don t think it s said with malicious intent. he is not a holocaust denier. that being said, you never, ever make comparisons with hitler or rape. not in politics or anywhere or on tv. i think sean realizes he made a very big mistake. the problem sean has is he s been on the job 82 days and it s about time he starts getting his footing. i think he s, you know, developed an adversarial relationship with the press. he s become a running joke on late-night comedy shows. that is a problem for the white house press secretary who speaks on behalf of an administration and who s supposed to have a level of credibility. and let me tell you, i think april ryan, man, girl, you should have been shaking your head at this point. okay. listen. anna alan is biding his time and i want your perspective on this. steven goldstein, executive director of the anne frank center issued this statement. sean spicer engaged in holocaust denial. the most offensive form of fake news imaginable. spicer s statement is the most evil slur upon a group of people we have ever heard from a white house press secretary. do you think he was engaging in holocaust denial? no. of course, what this guy who claims to be the head of the frank center who s a total phony, no such thing, it s a minor institution, no credibility. within the jewish community. he s constantly trying to get headlines overblowing everything. what happened here is the guy screwed up. he apologized. apologized from his heart. i m prepared to give a pass on this. i ll tell you who i m not prepared to give a pass on this, the democratic national committee, that is immediately decided to politicize this and send out media tweet saying we can t tolerate anti-semitism. this is the democratic national chairman and keith ellenson who didn t let me finish. who didn t recognize the fact he was working for an anti-semite, farrakhan. this is hypocrisy. very emotional to you because when there s an issue and poll politics you bring that up and threatened to you said you were going to leave the democratic party. i would have. if they elected keith. that s right. i understand. maybe they have issues and this is something different. ought not to be politicized. it was a mistake. you don t make analogies to hitler. profusely apologized and let s not let the anne frank people take advantage of this. let s understand that it was it s a mistake. apologized and let s move on. okay. hang on. shouldn t the person when s speaking for the highest person in the land have a grasp of history? of course. everyone makes mistakes and i have heard people make excuses. yes, we all do. not everybody is speaking for the president of the united states. i agree but let s remember, too, this is one of the rare occasions anybody in the trump administration made a full throated, complete apology. let s praise that when it happens to encourage it more and more. go ahead, jack. is this a liability for that s not true. that s not true. it is not. ben carson made an apology for something, too. those of us who have known sean for many, many years know there s not an anti-semitic bone in his body. he s a decent, honorable guy in an extremely difficult job. how would you like two-hour pop quiz every single day with a bunch of people who say, i gotcha you on the slightest mistake and not saying that s this case and anything he slips on, he s got to walk on a tightrope every single day. but those of us know him know that it was an aberration. this is not there s no intent here. he wasn t trying to be clever, trying to be sarcastic. i think that, jack, people are not i don t think that people are saying that. that sean spicer is an anti-semite but the deflection and the lack of grasp on basic history. after all, i think most people in the even a grade schooler can tell you about the holocaust and say it was gas chambers. sure. which is a chemical weapon. and if you re the person, again, when s speaking from the podium in the white house briefing room, and you say that hitler didn t gas people or use chemical weapons, that is just that s a complete blunder and listen. well okay. he apologized but still you cannot say that this was not a blunder. of course it was a blunder. it was a blunder an i m giving all that. i would say as i listen to it, my interpretation, and i would i agree with all of the above, by the way. well, he said didn t use chemical weapons in that manner meaning use it in barrel bombs or, you know, whatever from the sky. and, you know, it was a stupid thing to say and everybody acknowledged that and if he had tried to defend the statement or you know now you re sitting trying to defend the indefensible. but now you re trying to defend it, jack. no. i m saying that i agree with the no. i m saying that i agree with the above. if i was going to defend it, that s what i would have said. to me, i understand for perhaps what he was trying to get to. and, you know listen. but, jack, he doesn t understand what he s trying to get to. he s saying there s no excuse for what he said. go ahead, david. congressman, i too want to say that i think sean spicer deserves credit for coming out before the cameras and apologizing. right away today. and it seemed sincere and full throated. that being said, though, congressman kingston, you were talking about this idea that he s got a tough job and he s getting his footing and how would people like to go out there. he knew what he signed up for when he became the press secretary for president trump. exactly. president trump is a shoot from the hip guy and sean spicer knew full well what they were getting into. and you know what? they have a war of words between us and the russians. and he let his rhetoric get ahead of what s going on in the world which is not and the democrats criticize him response to the question. let the democrats criticize him for making a mistake. but this is a democrats criticizing. i m criticizing him for the way can i why does it have to be political? everybody, one at a time. april, go ahead. okay. why does this have to be political? as someone who sits in that room exactly right. asks sean questions and i have known him for a while, he was given a question and he stepped in to his own hole. right. no one gave him that hole. he stepped in more than a hell of a lot more than a hole. not what the democrats accused him of. they said we don t tolerate a but this is not can we no. people aren t taking a partisan tone on the panel, alan. you re doing that. i m doing that because april s talking about the press people in the room and how the country has right. i m talking about i m just talking i m just trying to get to the issue of what happened in that room. i m not bringing politics in it. i m talking about this statement happened during passover. a holy time for a community that was the butt of an atrocity. a community, 6 million people. this is it s not about politics but people who were hurt. okay. let s say it s not about politics, anna. let s say that s april. above politics but you re not this is april. i m sorry. i m sorry. i can t see who s talking. not all colored girls are the same, jack. i m sorry. they re both wearing yellow. quickly. here s the point. you might not be criticizing him because you re a democrat. you re criticizing him because you don t like trump. i never said i was a democrat or a republican. you don t know my politics. she is a journalist. i got to run. i got to run. let me say this. i got to run. i m a democrat. i have to run. he just went to a whole another i m a democrat because i m black? no. no, no. you re a democrat because he thinks you re me. that s the problem. i tried, producer. jack, quit while you re behind. let s just not politicize the holocaust on either side. don, will you wrap this? alan, i understand what you re saying. no one should be politicizing this but when i heard this today, i thought about all of my jewish friends like you and i was i shouldn t say i was offended but it was hurtful. especially to have someone apologized. seeing wolf interviewing him, i had to congratulate him on wolf s show and he did a good job. absolutely. giving an apology, accept it. but but criticize. know what you re doing when you re the white house press secretary. thank you, everyone. thank you. we ll be right back. let me talk to you about retirement. 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. listen up, heart disease.) you too, unnecessary er visits. and hey, unmanaged depression, don t get too comfortable. we re talking to you, cost inefficiencies and data without insights. and fragmented care- stop getting in the way of patient recovery and pay attention. every single one of you is on our list. for those who won t rest until the world is healthier, neither will we. optum. how well gets done. like @pigskinsusan15, who writes, now my boyfriend wants to talk on sundays. just so many words. your boyfriend s got it bad. maybe think about being single until the start of the season. pg&e learned a tragic lesson we can never forget. this gas pipeline ruptured in san bruno. the explosion and fire killed eight people. pg&e was convicted of six felony charges including five violations of the u.s. pipeline safety act and obstructing an ntsb investigation. pg&e was fined, placed under an outside monitor, given five years of probation, and required to perform 10,000 hours of community service. we are deeply sorry. we failed our customers in san bruno. while an apology alone will never be enough, actions can make pg&e safer. and that s why we ve replaced hundreds of miles of gas pipeline, adopted new leak detection technology that is one-thousand times more sensitive, and built a state-of-the-art gas operations center. we can never forget what happened in san bruno. that s why we re working every day to make pg&e the safest energy company in the nation. we re back now and sources are telling cnn that there s no evidence that susan rice broke the law by requesting the unmasking of u.s. individuals identities. let s discuss now. a host of gps here on cnn. before we start discussing that can we talk about sean spicer and the hitler comparison today? you had you have a you think you know the reason why? it s not that the reason i think sean spicer made a mistake. it was absolutely clear as he said it. it was a foolish thing to have said. he tried to deflect it and defend it and realized it was too stupid to defend. but what does this come out of? this comes out of the fact that sean spicer has to spend two hours every day defending the series of outlandish accusations, crazy talk, lies that the president has been putting forward for, you know, for the 75 days that he s been president. everything that, you know, the president says, sean spicer has to find some justification, some rationale and the orders he s been given are it s that old intelligence line, deny, everything, admit nothing and counter punch. that s the atmosphere in which he s been told, attack attack, attack, get them on the defensive. in that contest you could tell he was clearly just making things up as he was going along to make his point in a white house in which quite frankly facts don t matter. and if he didn t have to worry about all that and deflecting, he could be clear minded about what the actual truth is and what the policy is coming from the white house and they would all be in one word. but if he worked for a president who made it very clear, if you get something factually wrong, if you tell something that s untrue, i will be mad as hell, i don t think spa sean spicer would have done this. i don t think he works for that president. i want to get your reaction talking about the infighting between steve bannon and jared kushner. he says i like steve but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. i had already beaten all the senators and the governors an i didn t know steve. i m my own stat gist and it wasn t like i was going to change strategies. steve is a good guy but i told them to straighten it out or i will. is he throwing bannon under the bus there? it certainly sounds like this. i have never seen anything like this. an add min where the president of the united states reveals his white house personal strategy to the new york post. you couldn t make this up. you think he s on the outs? i think bannon is clearly on the outs. especially if you re dealing with a clannish real estate mogul whose family is everything, don t mess with the family. he should have watched the so pranos or something. there are obvious places not to go. ivanka trump is the blue eyed daughter and jared kushner is her husband. there are two definite clan with a c not clan with a k. there are different meanings. so this is about bloomberg reporting that tillerson asked foreign minister why should u.s. taxpayers being interested in eucaine. ukraine? i don t think u.s. taxpayers have it but i think u.s. taxpayers have to be led by leaders. you could have made that argument throughout the cold war. why is the united states defending europe? why is the united states defending all these countries around the world? you need leadership. leaders that explain to americans that part of what the united states has done ever since the 1940s is try to construct a peaceful world order in which the united states can survive, where trade thrives, u.s. economy grows. it is something that presidents from roes veosevelt have explaio the american people and they ve supported and gone on with it for decades. but if leaders start questioning the value of this and start saying maybe america needs to be isolationists, maybe america needs to narrow itself, yeah, americans on foreign policy i find follow the lead of the president, the secretary of state. they don t lead. they understand it s a complicated world. if you tell them this is important, i mean, people say americans don t have stamina because we re kind of a fickle democracy. we have been on the banks of the rufr defending germany for eight decades. weave been in korea, in japan. americans are willing to do this but you have to be led. is it some sort of justification about whether they re hey, let s just give ukraine to russia i hope not because that would be a terrible bargain. ukraine is the center piece of keeping europe united. ukraine is not that important as ukraine. what s important here is that western countries have made a commitment that on their borders you cannot have a land grab like this. that really does remind one of the 30s and of hitler. that is you know, somebody going in, snatching a piece of another country without any justification, europe has stood up to that, the u.s. has stood up to that. they ve president sanctions in place to really start weakening that. really questions the unity of the west. it would be a foolish thing for tillerson to have said. thank you, fareed. we ll be right back. you re in the match app. now tap on the new missed connections feature. it says i ve crossed paths with kate six times this week. that is a lot of times. she s cute too! yea! how did i miss her? 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