♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we begin this evening with developments following james comey's testimony yesterday. earlier today, the president responded to questions during a press conference with the visiting romanian president. the president accused comey of lying under oath to congress and insisted he failed to prove collusion or obstruction of justice. in a tense exchange, president trump said he would be willing to offer his version of events under oath. president trump: go ahead, john.

remember how nice you used to be before i ran? such a nice man. >> mr. president, i want to get back to james comey's testimony. you suggested he did not tell the truth in everything he said. he did say under oath that you told him -- you hoped the flynn investigation -- president trump: i did not say that. >> he lied about it? president trump: i did not say that. there would be nothing wrong if i did say that, but i did not say that. >> did he ask for a pledge of loyalty? president trump: no, he did not. >> would you be willing to speak under oath to give your version? president trump: 100%. i hardly know the man. i'm not going to say i want you to pledge allegiance. who would ask a man to pledge allegiance under oath? i hardly know the man. it does not make sense. no, i did not say that and i did

not say the other. >> robert mueller? president trump: i would be glad to tell him that. >> you seem to be hinting there were recordings. charlie: he said there was no evidence of collusion and no obstruction. president trump: no collusion, no obstruction. we want to get back to running our great country. charlie: for the latest on this developing story, here is the report from the cbs evening news. >> today, the president volunteered to testify to the special counsel investigating russia's tampering with the u.s. election. in a rose garden news conference, president trump denied yesterday's testimony by james comey, the f.b.i. director he fired last month. comey told the senate intelligence committee the president directed him to drop the f.b.i.'s investigation of former national security advisor michael flynn.

today, he said he lied under oath but his testimony proved there was no collusion between anyone in his campaign and russia and the president himself did not obstruct justice. our coverage begins with margaret brennan. >> president trump said he would be happy to speak with special counsel robert mueller about his conversations with james comey. it would be a significant moment in an investigation that has gone from examining the trump campaign's ties to russia to whether the president -- he denied the accusation he pressured the f.b.i. director. he also said he did not ask for his loyalty. president trump: there would be nothing wrong if i did say that, but i did not say that. >> the president attacked comey for leaking details of their conversation to the press.

comey testified yesterday shortly after he was fired he gave memos documenting his conversations with the president to a friend who gave them to a reporter. >> i thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. >> now the president's lawyer plans to file a complaint with the justice department inspector general and senate judiciary committee. he argues comey released sensitive information. threatening legal action is a tactic often used by mr. trump. mr. trump promised to file at least 24 lawsuits during the course of the campaign. >> the president suggested he might have recorded tapes of their conversation. today, the president would not confirm the recordings but said he will discuss the tapes in the near future.

charlie: joining me is jonathan karl. i just listened to what you said. the viewers at home saw what you said. give me a recap of what was in your mind and what you think you heard from him and what he intends to do. >> his lawyer responded to the comey testimony and said point blank that comey lied on two critical points. it struck me comey was under oath when he said that before the senate intelligence committee. i wanted to see if the president would also accuse comey of lying. and if so, with the president be willing to sit down under oath and give his version of what happened in those conversations he had with comey. i was quite struck when he said he would 100% be willing to testify under oath, even to the special counsel, robert mueller.

i also thought his lawyers did not like the fact he came out and said he would be willing to testify. charlie: it seemed it was something he had thought about and was not so much a surprise because he said it with such emphasis. it seemed like something he wanted to make clear. whether he has some nuance to this i did not appreciate, i don't know. >> it seemed to be blunt and straightforward in terms of his accusations that comey lied about those conversations and that he is willing to go under oath and tell his version of events. and then there is the question that was first raised about a month ago when he tweeted about whether there are recordings of his conversations with comey. in the question before mine, he said at some point you will have an answer to the question about whether the recordings exist.

that seemed to me to be at least a hint these tapes are out there, that he was recording the conversation. when i followed up with him, he did not answer. he said you will see shortly. at the very end, he said you will be disappointed in the answer. i guess that means there are not recordings, but i don't know. that is such a big question. i have been unable to get an answer from anybody at the white house. that is why i asked the president himself. charlie: you will be disappointed he was right and you were wrong? >> right. can you imagine if there are recordings? charlie: just think about watergate for one moment. >> what is interesting is the conversations he had with comey took place in a number of different venues. there was the conversation at trump tower during the

transition. there was the conversation over dinner in the green room of the white house. there was the conversation that took place on february 14 in the oval office. there were several phone conversations. with the watergate tapes, those were oval office conversations because the oval office was wired. if there are conversations, if he was recording these conversations, what kind of system does he have? charlie: interesting question. what kind of system did he have to record conversations? is his phone the way he can record conversations or is the green room wired for that kind of thing? where do you think this is right now being as close as you are to covering the investigation? >> i will tell you my sense from the president's team, his legal team and the team at the white house is they did genuinely seem to be relieved by comey's testimony.

i think there was fear it would be worse for them. i think the president in the way he was answering my questions, in the way he was today at the department of transportation and even in the speech towards the end of comey's testimony, he seems to have more of a pounce in his step. like he thought there would be something worse. he seems to believe there is some vindication. i think there is a question about whether there is vindication at all. of course, he is taking part of comey's testimony and saying it is true and claiming vindication. and the rest of it he is portraying as a lie. he is cherry picking facts from comey's testimony. my sense is they feel they dodged a bullet.

overall, this is very early in this process. i think the comey testimony and the president's response shows we are in for a long, protracted investigation and legal battle. charlie: it has been a long day for you. thank you for joining us. jonathan karl, chief white house correspondent, abc news. back in a moment. stay with us. joining me from washington is michael schmidt. he is a new york times reporter and msnbc contributor. i'm pleased to have him back on the program. let me begin with how you assess the comey testimony and what the president said in his press conference and declaration he is prepared to go under oath to confirm what he has been saying recently and i assume all along. >> what we saw from comey yesterday was a thorough laying out of the facts of his relationship with trump and how truly uncomfortable comey says he felt during that time.

we learned about how uneasy he was from the beginning with trump, how even after the first meeting at trump tower he starts pounding out a memo to memorialize it and how you memorialized all the meetings. i think a lot of the senators left that meeting yesterday on capitol hill fairly convinced by what they heard from comey. today was the first time we really heard from trump. he sort of picked and chose what he wanted to believe from what comey said. he said some things he said were accurate and some of them like how he said he wanted to drop the investigation into michael flynn were not true. then he went so far to say he was willing to go under oath and testify to provide what would be contradictory testimony and give his side of the story. that sets up an incredible thing. if you are bob mueller and you

interviewed trump or put him before a grand jury, you would have opposing stories about this and it would mean someone was lying. as a recovering sports reporter, i can only think of roger clemens versus brian mcnamee, his accuser many years ago, when they went before congress and told completely different stories about whether roger clemens used drugs. charlie: suppose the president is determined to be lying, what then? >> if the president were to go under oath and bob mueller were to look at the evidence and conclude comey was telling the truth and the president was not, that would set up a perjury investigation into whether false statements were made under oath. you cannot lie in an f.b.i. interview or before a grand jury. those are things the government takes very seriously. the f.b.i. in particular, when they get lied to in an

investigation, tend to turn over every rock in your life and look at everything. charlie: explain to me as much as you can about the fact the trump response was delighted about the notion the retired -- the fired former f.b.i. director, james comey, had taken these memorandum and sent them to a friend. and the friend released them to the "new york times." it is unclear whether he read them and gave some of the others. what can you help us understand about that and what the "new york times" response is to the accusations by the trump administration? >> what comey said yesterday was his friend who he told to put out this information had a copy of one of the memos.

from comey's understanding of it, those memos were not classified. they were simply his recollections of his interactions with trump. we have never had copies of the memo. as we pointed out in our stories about the memos, parts of them were read to us. the contents were read to us and we cited parts of them in our story. most prominently the story in may about how trump asked comey to end the flynn investigation which led to a day later bob mueller being appointed. we ourselves do not have any of the memos. there was an incorrect accusation yesterday from trump's lawyer that said we had the memos before trump tweeted accusing us of colluding with comey. but that was not true. charlie: the only thing you had was a reading of the memos by the friend of james comey who is at columbia university.

>> i will leave it at what comey said yesterday. he said he asked his friend to put out this information and that friend had done so. i don't really want to get into the particulars of all the sourcing on our stories beyond that. i feel we have a duty to try and talk about this as much as possible and be as transparent as possible about it. we ask people we cover to talk about it, but there are some things we cannot get into. charlie: i am not asking you to tell sources. i'm asking about "the times" response to what the lawyer said and what donald trump said about leaking today. "the times" essentially says the story we have reported we stand by. >> there were accusations about another story of ours, the february 14 story, that comey said has been mainly false. today in the paper we wrote a full story about why we were

standing by our story and why we believe it was true. this was a story we wrote about contacts between trump associates and russian intelligence officials. we laid out why we believed the story to be true, the information we have learned since then about contacts between russian officials and trump associates, including statements on the record by the former c.i.a. director. and we pointed out what others have reported on it, how other reporting has backed up what we said. in regards to that, we stand by that story. we stand by all of our stories we have written. charlie: bob woodward complimented "the new york times" for their coverage of the story. bob pointed out in terms of the russian probe, we are hardly 10% in understanding what happened.

do you share that? >> i think that is true. i think that is something the public has to keep in mind. last week, mark warner, the ranking member on the senate intelligence committee, went on tv and said there is a lot of smoke here but we do not really have fire. here we are essentially a year into the investigation, and this leading democrat who is leaving one of the investigations into it says there is a lot of smoke but we have not found actual collusion. that is something to keep in mind as we go forward. a collision investigation is very difficult. it would require the f.b.i. and the department of justice the on the ground in russia doing interviews. we know that is certainly not going to happen. even in the public sphere, there has been an enormous amount of reporting about trump and his associates in russia. none of that public reporting has shown any type of collusion either. that is the interesting thing here about what happened with trump. as we know from comey's statements, trump was not under

investigation as part of the russian meddling in the election. the question now is whether mueller is looking at the obstruction, the cover-up, how he tried to influence comey. that is something we have to remember, how we got to this place in the story. charlie: you are listening to these people come forward. who is it you most want to hear from? >> who would i most want to hear from? i think i would most want to hear from michael flynn who had these contacts with the russian ambassador during the transition. those conversations were picked up by the f.b.i. then he was interviewed at the white house by the f.b.i. comey said yesterday there was an investigation into whether flynn made false statements. flynn was fired for misleading

the vice president, at least that was the story the white house put out about it. and then we learned it was the flynn investigation that led trump to ask comey to end that. i would really want to hear from flynn because what was it trump was so concerned about. was he concerned about being loyal to one of his lieutenants and say he was fired, he should not be investigated? is there something more michael flynn knows? he has had this relationship with russia that dates back some time. he went there to speak a few years ago, sat next to vladimir putin. this is also someone we have rarely heard a lot from when he was in the white house and certainly we have not heard from since. my guess is at some point in the congressional investigations, he will testify. i think that will be particularly dramatic and insightful. charlie: someone said earlier on this program they are confident

bob mueller in his investigation will get donald trump's tax returns. >> i guess that is the question of how much mueller will look at trump. as we know, comey said trump was not under investigation. if he was not under investigation it is hard to believe the f.b.i. would be looking directly at his taxes. they cannot just rummage around in your files and look for different things, look into your taxes. i am not sure this is something that would become the focus. if mueller starts looking at financial ties between trump and russia, the tax returns would probably be part of that. even if it was just an obstruction investigation into trump, i am not sure how his taxes would relate to that. i think the federal government, especially mueller who will have a lot of scrutiny, will not go after documents he does not have

a reason to have a subpoena to have them. i am not sure about that. charlie: they might be relevant if there is some case to be made that because of financial transactions the russians had some leverage to use against the president. >> correct. but that would mean the facts would have to have changed since one comey was running the f.b.i. that would mean there are new facts about trump's relationship with russia. we know the f.b.i. has a dossier compiled by a former british spy that had a lot of allegations about what the russians may have on trump. we know that itself was not enough to prompt an investigation of trump. if that were to happen, it would mean there would have to be new information that would lead f.b.i. investigators to believe there was more there on what the russians have on trump. charlie: is it your impression the dossier is hardly relevant because of its questions about its origins?

>> i think the dossier was initially dismissed as a very salacious document that had pretty off-the-wall accusations in it. my sense from talking to folks at the f.b.i. since then is that they did not necessarily dismiss it and they actually were able to corroborate significant portions of it right off the bat based on intelligence they had. these were not the most salacious parts of the report. it was more basic stuff about things going on inside of russia and russia's attempts to meddle in the election. a certain part of it was corroborated. the more headline grabbing things had not been corroborated. i have always thought the f.b.i. was taking it more seriously than the media was. charlie: that is an interesting point. when you look at comey's testimony, other than those people within the white house and surrounding the president,

have you seen people who have risen up to say off the record or on the record they have doubts about james comey's testimony? we don't know what he said behind closed doors. >> the only statements about the accuracy of comey's testimony have come from the white house and from trump's very close supporters. even the speaker of the house yesterday sort of try to explain donald trump's behavior saying he was new to being president and may not have understood the lanes of the road and the unique place the f.b.i. has in the executive branch, and the independence of the f.b.i. you have not had folks at the department of justice or f.b.i. folks or other folks in town calling us and saying we think jim comey made all of that up. there does not seem to be a lot

of accusations about that except from the most ardent trump supporters. charlie: i have had people on the program i work on, interviewing the former head of special operations, basically saying he has known jim comey and he would believe anything james comey told him. >> yeah. charlie: a lot of character testimony for comey. >> the problem comey had in washington was his extreme independence and willingness to be transparent in public. it was that he may be told the truth a little too much. he holds the press conference about hillary clinton last july and not only says we are not recommending charges, but also lays out a series of facts the bureau found in the course of their investigations. those facts were never in question. the question was, did comey disclose too much? charlie: michael schmidt, thank you so much. back in a moment.

stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: we turn now to mike allen. the pros conference, the president said no instruction. he basically said he was prepared, as i suggested, under mueller andert mothe

investigators, what he said before, so this seems to be a declaration by the president that he is prepared to meet this head on. ,> it is a declaration of war charlie, in both words and manner. what you quoted the president saying is fitting with their strategy and their posture. after yesterday's back and forth, the amazing cinematic testimony by former fbi director comey, somebody sent me a text and said i think aaron sargon wrote his opening statement. you have this mesmerizing testimony where people were watching it on their phones and everybody catching up with the amazing detail. he is such a great storyteller, down to the grandfather clock that was in the room when he was meeting with the president. and then after that, you have

the president's lawyer out saying that comey had said something that was untrue and accusing him of being a leaker, so what i said after that is, game on. both sides want to have a war. this is so surprising for us because in washington, we are used to people rounding the edges. we are used to people backing away from confrontation, but here, you have two sides going at it. jim comey making it plain that he is bitter about being fired. he has a motive for really inflicting pain on this white house, and he is not afraid to twist the knife. he is not holding things back. he is piling on the detail that could be damaging to this president. the white house on the other hand is saying -- comey is saying he is a leaker himself, and we are going to fight him. we saw that continued today with the president's willingness to go under oath.

i continue the question is, are there tapes? i can tell you there is a lot of speculation that the fact that both in the statement yesterday by the president's lawyer, when he denied saying something that comey said the president said, asking for his loyalty, there is a suspicion that there are not tapes. does the president really want to get into a fight with the former fbi director if there are tapes? where is comey is saying "i hope , there are tapes." and if so, i give my permission to release them. charlie: why would the president dangle the idea that there are tapes out there if there are no tapes? mike: who knows, charlie. right? are, from some parts of the white house, it's not surprising given how they have been doing things, but it is illuminating and it instructive that from the podium, the white

house press office is not willing to say whether or not there are tapes. you think that would be fairly easy to clear out. you would think they would want to clear it up. this is part of the president's strategy. he watched this with his own staff. he likes to keep people off balance. it is part of his thing. year, i think he might be paying a big price for that. some people wonder if he is playing checkers and jim comey and bob mueller, the independent counsel, are playing chess, because we had a fascinating revelation this week that the reason that jim comey leaked the account of his memos and his conversation with the president was after the president had put out his tweet threatening him and asking -- raising this idea of tapes. and so the president has brought a lot of this on it. think of all the information we know now that we would not if he had not canned jim comey.

and look at what is coming next week. next week, as you pointed out, the attorney general jeff sessions is going to be on the senate side of the capital in what was going to be a budget hearing for the justice department, a pretty routine and not exciting stuff, but now of course, jeff sessions being questioned by senators? that is going to be high drama. charlie: because he is a former senator among other things. >> great point, and a member of the club who is coming back and who has questions about him, including -- so, during the testimony this week, both the intelligence officials on wednesday and director comey on thursday, so many times, they tantalizingly said, "i cannot say that in public session." they are inviting conversation in a private session. yesterday, director comey, after his gripping, amazing testimony in front of the cameras, he goes

behind closed doors, and we very quickly learned, quickly a leak, that he said there was yet another contract with russian officials that the attorney general had not disclosed, so now, the attorney general has his own issues. we had the surprise this week, the news that the president was not happy with jeff sessions and that he had apparently been yelling at him about recusing himself on this russia probe. the attorney general, so unhappy that he -- depending on the telling -- either threatened or offered to resign. now, more problematic information about himself. the new york times reporting this morning that one of the things that the independent counsel, bob mueller, is looking at, is whether just the conversations that the president had with comey -- could those be obstruction of justice? so, it is like we have a big sweater, and the president has been pulling all of the threads,

and now, investigators both on the hill and the feds are going back and looking at each of those threats. charlie: bob woodruff told us that in terms of the whole investigation, we probably only know 5% to 10% of what is out there to determine exactly what happened between the russians and their hacking and the contacts they may have had with americans. mike: coming from bob, that is so fascinating. as you know, bob woodward's theory of journalism, both of the washington post, pulling off the story of the century, and in the amazing books he has written. by the way, crazy stat that bob woodward told me is that he has written books about 20% of the presidents who have ever served. that is how long he has been on the public seat. his theory is the mosaic theory. that you have to get the tiles.

you fill in the tiles, and eventually, you see the picture. that is why we only know the 10%. we have some of the tiles. so many more to come. a report this week that jared kushner, the president's son-in-law, a west wing official meeting also behind closed doors with some staff on the hill. so there is so much more to know. and one theory of this is that during the transition, they just were not used the government. they were not used to public life. you know, charlie, they did not expect to win. so they were maybe having some of these conversations during the transition the way that they would do in their business, and donald trump had never had a board. he is not used to public scrutiny, and now he is in the most scrutinized job in the world. and that is why maybe some of this they did not account for. i can do something that our reporting, including by jonathan swann, is that comey was inside the white house, processed much

more as a nuisance or as a distraction that is a grave threat to the office. they are worried about bob mueller. they know that that could be a huge problem for them. the view in the white house about the james comey testimony is that yes, it was a devastating visual, but it had no cataclysmic effect on the president's hold on the office. i think we thought maybe jim comey would hold back a few cards. charlie: yeah, exactly. tina: but if you agree with his impression that what he said in the hearing, and this is probably due to a lot of great reporting that has gone on, what he said in the hearing was basically what we expected. charlie: exactly. >> it was a lot more gripping and colorful, but the problem for the white house was optics, not substance.

not new substance. that is important. charlie: this is not only an issue of questions of legality and criminality, but it is also issues of questions of public opinion, because public opinion -- if you cannot hold the public in terms of support for your position, then you begin to lose at every level. mike: for your viewers, this is an important insight you do not necessarily pick up from the daily coverage. that is when this white house ands back at the campaign, when they got in trouble, and goodness knows, this campaign has plenty of low spots, what did they do? they doubled down. they were aggressive, and they went after their base, their supporters. they kept those people with them, and so that is why you see the white house on the permanent war footing. that is why you see the president being so aggressive and basically saying "you want a piece of me? i will talk to you under oath." that is 100% aimed at his

voters. charlie, i know you agree that so little has been done by this white house to talk to or support the 54% of people who did not vote for the president. i can tell you, the mood in the west wing is that they absolutely have to keep those core voters, and if they get impatient or that gets soft, that is when you can lose the hold on the office. right now, republicans on the hill, including speaker ryan yesterday continue with a firmness that was surprising to me. the reason republican lawmakers are still very much with this president, i guarantee you it is not because they love the idea of trump or everything that he has done, but at the moment, he is not hurting them in their states or districts, and he is or he is strong back home for many of them. as long as he is strong that home, he's going to keep old on that hold on these legislators with all the other things going

on, and just probably frustrated or unhappy by how little is getting done. like still the possibility, do , you have theall supreme court justice gorsuch, but after that, no signature piece of legislation. there is a lot of frustration about that, but they are going to stay with trump until he starts to fall in their districts. that is why you are going to hear him going after even more of the media. i get the emails the campaign sends to their supporters, going after the media, going after comey as a leaker is big. that is all to talk to their people. charlie: as i said, public opinion is crucial in this. let me go through who will be up the committees next week. the attorney general will clearly be there. he is coming before the senate intelligence committee. right? i am asking. mike: yeah, he is going to be going before a budget and appropriations subcommittee. so that it is why it is a funny,

even boring ministerial topic, but now high drama because he absolutely will be asked about the russian probe. charlie: and when will jared kushner be called? mike: nbc news reported that soon, within the month, we are told the timing may not be worked out. at the moment, the agreement is just to talk to staff. so this is not even a closed hearing. there is no guarantee we will see him in public. these conversations are continuing. next week, soon, we may also see the intelligence officials that we saw last week. so here is the thing, charlie, this is why for months, even years, the president is going to be living with this. because if you look at past scandals, if you look at past independent prosecutors, if you look at the timeline for them, nothing is rushed, and the real peril for the president is the one thing we know about federal investigations -- and charlie, you have covered so many of them

over the years -- one thing we know about them, they take time. they do not rush. here is the thing people in the white house worry about and why they worry about mueller so much more than comey. a federal investigation never ends where it starts. they start with the topic and that gives them license to look at your email. in this case we are told they are even looking at the president's business. i bet they wind up with his tax returns, and your viewers know how much effort he has gone to, how much of a price he is willing to pay, to avoid that. charlie: mueller is most likely to end up with the tax returns, is he not? mike: i would be shocked if he doesn't. he might already have them. [laughter] charlie: you are great. thank you, mike. perfect to have you here. mike: happy weekend, charlie. thank you. charlie: back in a moment. ♪ [ mooing sound ] [ laughing ]

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they want wifi out here. but behind that door, i need a private connection for my business. wifi pro from comcast business. public wifi for your customers. private wifi for your business. strong and secure. good for a door. and a network. comcast business. built for security. built for business. ♪ charlie: early elections took place thursday night in the united kingdom. in a surprising political upset, theresa may and her conservative party lost their governing majority. the result is a major setback for may, who called for early elections to strengthen her mandate ahead of brexit negotiations. the prime minister announced this morning that conservatives would remain in power by forming a minority government with a democratic unionist party of northern ireland. >> what the country needs more than ever is certainty. and having secured the largest

number of votes, and the greatest number of seats in the general election, it is clear that only the conservative and unionist party has the legitimacy and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority in the house of commons. we will continue to work with our friends and allies in the democratic unionist party in particular. charlie: joining me now is roger cohen and gillian tett. i am pleased to have them both here. tell me what happened? essentially theresa may scored an extraordinary own goal. what you had really is three things happening. firstly, millennials came out in force and had a howl of protest very similar to what happened with bernie sanders last year. secondly, you had a lot of the professional people who are against brexit, who indicated

their unhappiness as well because they wanted to vote for a much more open form of brexit. one of the most telling moments of the whole boat was in a conservative bastion, where it was so close to call because so many people voted for labor that we do not know the result of that. it has gone to labor, has it? >> first time ever. >> right. absolutely extraordinary. that is basically international people who are wealthy saying we want to remain very much part of the european union. and in addition to that, you had the antiestablishment freedom party, the people who wanted to have more independence, not go for theresa may, splitting between labour and the conservatives. charlie: interestingly, some people that we know in british politics lost their seat. net clegg lost his seat. a couple of others who don't come to mind right now. millennial vote about

brexit? did you think manchester and london made a difference? >> i don't think they made a huge amount of different in the in, charlie. traditionally, they would favor the incumbent and prime minister may could say enough is enough and, over as tough in a time of crisis. do you really want change? she had been home secretary for secures and she had done nothing to reinforce the police. if anything, the opposite. i think those two things balanced out and did not really have very much impact in the end, but this is a huge setback, really a human relation, for prime minister way. the blithe way she said britain needs continuity, she does not have a lot of credibility, and i think she is vulnerable. certainly she does not have any kind of mandate for the negotiations on the hard brexit that she seems to have envisaged.

charlie: do you think she will be challenged by her own party? >> there could. i think there was a moment of vulnerability. she had a disastrous campaign. it was inept, it was flat. all she could go on saying was "britain needs a strong and stable government." she repeated it like a mantra until people were mocking her. she refused to debate the other candidates. people saw her as brittle and ineffective, so that is the image she is going to carry forward, and she could at some point become vulnerable. gillian: i could see a lot of parallels in the campaign theresa may ran and that of hillary clinton last year. her mantra was strong and stable. hillary clinton's slogan was "stronger together." in theory, they both sound great. in practice, they are about the status quo, and let's stay with the status quo." if there's one thing we have learned in the last year or two,

it is that trying to sell yourself on the basis of being the status quo simply does not work. , weo use gillian's phrase have had two own goals right now. david cameron and theresa may, from the conservative party, and seems intill, it government, but it is a very weak government. it is buttressed only by the democratic unionist party from northern island, and even there, it is a majority of two, i think. gillian: you went back a couple of years to 2015 and remember that the conservative party won an unexpectedly strong victory it waslast election, and only two years ago that they seemed unassailable. as a lesson in how to mess things up, with extraordinary speed, frankly, future political historians are going to be looking back at this period and going, "how on earth were they so stupid?" charlie: they were expecting a 100 vote majority. roger: huge majority.

that's why they have the snap election. she is a flip-flopper. she said she was for remaining in the european union. now she is leading the budget negotiations. she said she would not call a snap election, and then she did. the conservative party was completely unable to benefit from the collapse of ukip, the far right party, and a big setback for the scottish national party in scotland, because that was completely offset by a tidal wave of young people, millennials, who want change, who want disruption, and were prepared to vote for the radical leftist that jeremy corbyn is, and it has to be said that he ran a pretty good campaign. he really made no mistakes. his slogan, "for the many, not the few," which he barred from paul rhoads from tony blair, captured something. why is there this disruption at any cost movement? it is because people believe the

systems are rigged in favor of a small group of people who are able to get very rich and make society more unequal. charlie: jeremy corbyn wasn't even popular in his own party. roger: no, he wasn't. a lot of people were expecting the humiliation of jeremy corbyn. the left could have replaced him and tried to create some more centrist left-wing alternative. dislodge him at this point. corbyn, i think, it will be pretty hard to dislodge him at this point. gillian: if the millennials stay involved. one of the things students of politics across the western world need to look at when they look at the british experience, is what is happening to the millennial vote. i have gone around colleges in the last year asking kids, " "are you political?" "yeah, we tweet." if you say to them, "do actually

vote?" "no, but we tweet." celebrities came out and rallied the vote. it was remarkable. what americans should be asking themselves right now is what if wasd happen if that happening in america right now, if all those millennials who had not been voting properly actually get to the ballot box? roger: there is a lot of idealism about jeremy corbyn. we with our experience of the 20th century and what marxism and socialism, extreme socialism reduced, might find that strange, but you have to respect the idealism of the young people. when you think that all these old people with 10 years to live on the actuarial tables, voted britain out of the european union, and thereby condemned people with 70 years to live to accept a britain that they do

not want, i think that was terrible. charlie: they could have prevented it if they voted? roger: they could have tried to. they could have helped. charlie: let me read what roger wrote. [laughter] roger: this is always a delicate moment. [laughter] charlie: i just like corbyn's anti-americanism, his long flirtation with hamas, his left over marxism and anti-zionism, his nato bashing, his unworkable tax and spend promises. he is of that awful cold world left that believes soviet moscow was probably not as bad as washington. roger: and i concluded that column by saying he was the better alternative. elections in place in the real world. that was an agonizing choice for me because a lot of what corbyn has done and what a lot of the people around him -- their attitudes toward israel, their flirtation with hamas -- troubles me deeply.

i do not like it. i do not like it at all. but i really felt that theresa may and what the conservative party had done in this british exit from the european union, their responsibility to that, the campaign she had run. the fact that young people were behind corbin and power would temper the extremes, at least i hope so, i felt that he was marginally the better choice. i took a lot of heat from my friends back in britain on that. charlie: one thing he said -- the next line was something like , "still, he has not been coddling donald trump." roger: really, the fact that theresa may -- of course britain -- theresa may said she wants global britain. is the first step for global britain really to take britain out of the single market of the

european, the huge single market? and to offset that lull, she comes here and she coddles donald trump, invites them to a state visit which is supposed to happen in october, and i found all that shameful. and why after president trump withdrew the united states from the paris climate accord, why was there scarcely a british whimper from the government? even though people like foreign secretary boris johnson, if anybody believes a word he says, claims to believe strongly in the need to combat climate change, why was there not a whimper? because the british, under theresa may, the british government, is falling over itself to coddle the u.s. president as a possible alternative to the european union, hoping for some kind of trade accord with the u.s. charlie: where are the negotiations? gillian: frankly, a complete mess. this morning, a tweet from

donald, who is not donald trump, but donald tusk, head of the european commission, summed it up very nicely. he said there is basically a two-year deadline. people know when the clock will run out of time for the negotiations for britain's relationship with the european union. no one knows when they are actually going to start. they were supposed to be starting on june 19. in the current confused mess, it is not clear whether that can happen. it is going to be very hard for theresa may to have a clear stance. the one thing we do know is that if she is indeed relying on them dup to keep control of parliament, they have made it clear they want to keep borders open with the rest of ireland, and that means essentially many of the ideas of having a hard , hard, hard brexit are going to have to be revisited. roger: i saw that her chief negotiator, mr. davis, has conceded after what has happened that we may have to stay in a single market after all. which then raises the question,

if you want to be in the single market, what do you do about the free movement of people that is supposed to go with that? charlie: right. on that note, roger, thank you. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

alisa: i am alisa parenti from washington and you are watching "bloomberg technology." president trump today held his first full cabinet meeting in the white house with various members offering praise to mr. trump and his legislative agenda. the president listed trade deals completed during his recent international trip. "the wall street journal" reports they do not have tapes that may have been recorded with former f.b.i. director james comey. the white house says the president would address the possibility the tapes exist when he is ready. the administration's revised travel ban has been blocked by a second federal appeals court. the ninth ciruit in san francisco backed up the previous ruling that the president's