topping this hour of 360 breaking news, breaking news, president trump's choice to replace michael flynn turning down the offer. retired vice admiral, former navy seal saying he was reluctant to take the job because the white house seems so chaotic and the friend telling cnn admiral called the offer quote an unmentigtionable sandw. he used another word i can't mention. in any event. this follow as q and a session in the white house. here are some of the key

moments. >> to be honest, i inherited a mess. it's a mess. at home and abroad a mess. jobs are pouring out of the country. see what's going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to mexico and other places. low pay, low wages, mass instbltinstblt bilitity overseas. north korea. we'll take care of it all. i want to let you know, i inherited a mess. they spread like cancer. isis has spread like cancer. what a mess i inherited. i open the newspapers and see stories of chaos, chaos but it's the exact opposite but this administration is running like a

fine-tuned machine despite the fact that i can't get my cabinet approved. the people get it. much of the media doesn't get it. they actually get it but they don't write it. let's put it that way. we begun preparing to repeal and replace obamacare. obamacare is a disaster, folks. it's a disaster. you can say, oh, obamacare and they fill up our allies with people that you wonder how they get there, but they are not the republican people that remember sen ti -- representatives are representing. this is fake news. mike flynn is a fine person, and i asked for his resignation. he respectfully gave it. he is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to vice president pence with us today and i was not happy with the way that information was given.

he didn't have to do that because it wasn't wrong, what he did in terms of the information. he saw what was wrong was the way that other people including yourselves in this room when given that information. and reported him. the leaks are real. you know what they say, you saw it. the leaks absolutely and so much of the news is fake. you know what it is? the public -- they read newspapers and see. they don't know it's true or false. they are not involved. i'm involved. i've been involved so i know, and i see many, many, upward

tone, and the tone, i do get good ratings. such hatred. this isn't donald trump that divided a nation. he went eight years with president obama and we went many years. we live in a divided nation. i will do everything within my power to fix that. >> let's bring in the panel for this hour, brian fallon and trump supporter jeffrey board. the point of saying appealing to people outside of new york, los angeles. what reaction are you getting about how this press conference went over? >> anderson, thanks for having me. this was a pretty epic press

conference. it was everything trump's base obviously wanted to see. this is -- i'm going to bring this tug boat to shore. everybody remembers that movie ""a christmas story" ralphy and ralphy had it and attacked scott and started whaling on him. that's what trump represents to a lot of people in america and farcus represents a lot of people in the media and people just want to wail. that's what they want to do. we're in that face of this post election season and this is what they wanted. they voted for someone to -- what they see as take on the media head on and that's what they got. that's what this press conference is about. from people i know describe themselves as never trump. they actually liked how this press conference went along. so that was pretty surprising. >> brian, i think dana raises an interesting point. this is how president trump campaigned during the election. he was elected. why would people be shocked he

would have a press conference like this and continue the same stuff he did during the campaign? >> i agree. they shouldn't be shocked at all. the real news that came out of today's press conference is trump's inability to give a definitive answer to rule out any associates had contact with russian officials. it took three reporters pressing him with follow ups to get him to engage and he didn't definitively rule out. the rest was a side show intended and a narrative of his articlated by steve bannon when he said the media is the opposition party. trump likes to pick a fight with the media. it does animate his base but i don't think it comes with his approval, despite him siting this, his approval hoovers around 40%. that's a pretty historically low number. if it stakes around that level for a long time, i think you'll see congressional republicans holding out hope that through

trump they will get tax reform on their terms. i think after awhile they will start to worry that the midterms will be a referendum on a popular incumbent and days like today don't do anything to grow support beyond 40% of his base. >> david gur garrigagarrigan, p strategy, i give the president credit. there are a lot of folks in the last couple days criticizing the president for not taking a wide variety of questions. you can give the president credit for that. if part of the strategy, though, was to kind of district from the russia stuff and, you know, go after the media and get that being the conversation tonight in the coming days, was it successful in that? because we really don't have any more answers. for a press conference that went on for some 70 minutes or so, we're really not that much closer to learning anything about any possible connections or did people in the campaign have connections? the president didn't say he's going to look into it or asking staff. he just said he didn't know

anything about it. >> i think it was intended to be a total distraction and he's very good at this and i think he succeeded to a degree by getting us distracted. we've been spending time here naturally enough talking about his attacks on the press, goes so far beyond reality, you know, everybody is sort of -- i don't think the press is angry by incredulous. otherwise, we would be talking again about the russian story. we would be talking about a story in the washington post that flynn told the fbi. he never talked about sanctions, which potentially could be a -- if the tapes show otherwise, that's a felony to a lot of the fbi and very importantly, the nse. i'd give credit to president trump for reaching out to harwood because it showed he looked for a real heavy weight and i think with had he been in place working with madison, working with tillerson, the

president would have a strong national security team out there. the fact that he turned it down in anything amounts because he couldn't -- he saw dysfunction and couldn't choose his own team. huge in a white house with so many internal conflicts. >> does that concern you, somebody obviously wants as most americans want to see this white house succeed, does this concern you that the president's next pick for national security advisor turned the job down for a career military, you know, member who served his country so extraordinary like he has -- >> yeah, it's -- >> turned down the opportunity to serve the country and the president. it's a big deal. >> it's too bad, anderson. again, i'm not sure we know the behind the scenes of this and i just -- as david well remembers, president regan went through six of these people and fired two of them. the first one and fifth one and controversy over another one that was judge william clark who had been a california supreme

court justice and wound up as the president's national security advisor. you can believe there is continue ver controversy over that. the long term effect is how the presidency of that individual turns out and ronald reagan is with lot of us one of the great american presidents and these kind of continue verse roversie gone. >> coming up next, a closer look at president trump's climb thait russia as he puts it a ruse. how president trump thinks, acts and reacts. has becoming president changed any of that? we'll speak to two biographers that have known him for decades. can i keep the walnuts? yes. but i get to pick your movie. can i pick the genre? nope. with the blue cash everyday card you get cash back on purchases with no annual fee. backed by the service and security of american express.

you get cash back on purchases with no annual fee. today, unlimited gets the netwverizon.eserves. (mic thuds)

uh, sorry. it's unlimited without compromising reliability, on the largest, most advanced 4g lte network in america. (thud) uh... sorry, last thing. it's just $45 per line. forty... five. (cheering and applause) and that is all the microphones that i have. (vo) not just unlimited. verizon unlimited. on mattress firmness? fortunately there's a bed where you both get what you want every night. enter sleep number and the ultimate sleep number event, going on now. sleepiq technology tells you how well you slept and what adjustments you can make. she likes the bed soft. he's more hardcore. so your sleep goes from good to great to wow!

only at a sleep number store. for 5 days only, save 50% on the ultimate limited edition bed, plus 24-month financing. go to sleepnumber.com for a store near you. more breaking news. we got the white house's take on president trump's performance today. sean spicer saying very good a direct conversation with the american people. president trump spent a good deal of it today fielding questions about russia including

cnn's reporting that during the campaign, senior advisors were in constant communication with moscow. he said it was a joke. he wasn't aware of advisors doing that but u.s. officials said he and president obama were briefed after communications between operatives. when pressed on that, he did not answer directly saying instead, he himself had nothing to do with it. russia he said is a ruse, if you recall, during the campaign it was not a ruse. efforts to get closer to russia were a weapon used against his opponent. >> we have an administration where the democrats are making it very difficult. the only thing they can do is delay because they screwed things up royally. believe me. this is pure delay tactics. does anybody really think hillary clinton would be tougher on russia than donald trump? hillary clinton tries to reset it fails. nobody mentions that hillary received the questions to the

debates. you know, they say i'm close to russia. hillary clinton gave away 20% of the uranium in the united states. she's close to russia. >> back with the panel. dana, do you think president trump did -- do you think part of the strategy was to distract from the russian issue and do you think he did a good job of that essentially because we don't have much more clarity than we did before this press conference. >> well, i mean, no, not really. the fbi, the same fbi that cleared hillary clinton also was able to clear general michael flynn. i think that puts that issue to rest, whether or not and why he misled visit president pence is an issue i'd like to hear more about and the investigation as to where the weaks caleaks came. there is so much thrown out at this press conference, one of the reasons why the trump administration is incredibly open about literally everything they do down to somebody sneezing to that point.

it's because the more that you put out there, if something else a little bit unpopular comes down the way, people pay less attention to that including the base because there was a lot said in that press conference. there were regulations thrown out there. in addition to that, i mean, he wants to keep the momentum going because this delay tactic that he's talking about in congress and i said this under former president obama and i'll say it still, that's not a bug in the system but a feature and they have to get along and figure out how to work with that and get around it and they will have to continue dealing with. i think press conferences like this and the rally he has coming up in florida, i believe. to keep people's energy going while it -- some things look like they are stalling out. conservatives are wondering where the tax cuts are and how quickly is the wall going to be built and will it be a fence or wall? those questions having rallies and press conferences like this sort of stretches the energy out a bit. >> brian, i heard you say donald

trump is president full stop not dissputdiputing that. the white house argues that's an effort to undermine him and delegitimize his victory. >> no, i think there has been enough serious questions raised that it deserves a bipartisan investigation to get to the bottom of it and the fact that trump was making such a clear effort to distract from that issue is proof that he's worried about what any serious level of scrutiny on these set of facts might produce. and to the extent that people are wondering and debating, is donald trump really this out of touch with reality and insecure he talks about hillary clinton and the sail of his victory or crazy like a fox and this is an intentional effort to distract? both are true. he's truly insecure about his victory and worried to the extent that may delegitimize his victory but the youthfulness of picking fights with the media

and once they realize this is an attempt to district and the russia investigation and true things to put distance between h himself and supporters, the better off they will be. >> jeffrey, do you think this is an attempt to district? >> well, i will say this, anderson, donald trump came -- i mean, this say new yorker is new yorker. he came up -- he grew up both personally and professionally in the new york media environment. he knows this thing. i think he's probably the most media savvy president we've had in the oval office period. so he understands when he's watching the cable shows and he's seeing the headlines that are going in one direction into a lapse inside the beltway seeing the narrative quote unquote being formed that he needs to come out and do something like this to break up the narrative and then address his critics and look the american people right in the eye

and stand there in an unhurried fashion for an hour and a half or 15 minutes to do it because he does understand how this works. he's not going to be a president that goes into the bunker. >> we've certainly seen that before. the president tried to make the argument he isn't responding to aggressive russian posterring reportedly off the coast of connecticut in international waters because he wants to get along with russia and blamed the media for complicating with vladimir putin and said he wouldn't tell people if he was going to do something about it because that's obviously part of his strategy. did that make sense to you? >> no, i just couldn't believe it. he said -- he could blow that ship up. give us a break. but i think -- i think by telling us what he's going to do, he won't deal with -- how will redeal with this uranium problem and isis, which we don't

know anything more than we do. i want to go back to the distraction point. he clearly is creating a distraction and doing himself from the hard work and buckled in and appropriate and wired how create jobs and where are we going on these others and america completely in a different direction and by creating distractions and not of serious work. >> we got to take another break. that hard work and the world reality behind what president trump and fareed zakaria joins us and cia top operations.

♪ ♪ when you find something worth waiting for, we'll help you invest to protect it for the future. financial guidance while you're mastering life. from chase, so you can.

don't pay hundreds more for taxes and fees on your wireless bill. introducing t-mobile one. now with taxes and fees included. get 4 lines of unlimited lte data for 40 bucks each. all unlimited. all in! switch to t-mobile today. i wanti did my ancestrydna and where i came from. and i couldn't wait to get my pie chart. the most shocking result was that i'm 26% native american. i had no idea. just to know this is what i'm made of, this is where my ancestors came from. and i absolutely want to know more about my native american heritage. it's opened up a whole new world for me. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. i mwell, what are youe to take care odoing tomorrow -10am? staff meeting.

noon? eating. 3:45? uh, compliance training. 6:30? sam's baseball practice. 8:30? tai chi. yeah, so sounds relaxing. alright, 9:53? i usually make their lunches then, and i have a little vegan so wow, you are busy. wouldn't it be great if you had investments that worked as hard as you do? yeah. introducing essential portfolios. the automated investing solution that lets you focus on your life.

well, president trump blamed the media for a lot today including making it harder to deal with russia. listen. >> the false reporting by the

media by you people, the false, horrible, fake reporting makes it much harder to make a deal with russia, and probably putin said you know, he's sitting behind his desk saying you know, i see what is going on in the united states. i follow it closely. it's going to be impossible for president trump to ever get along with russia because of all the pressure he's got with this fake story. >> you mentioned the vessel, the spy ves l off the coast of the united states. >> not good. >> there was a ballistic -- >> not good. >> between the two countries and are russian plane buzzed -- >> not good. >> i listened to you -- >> excuse me. when did it happen? it happened when -- if you were putin right now, you would say a, we're back to the old games with the united states. there is no way trump can ever do a deal with us. >> joining me now is fareed zakaria host of "gps" and former

cia russians officer. what do you think donald trump blaming the media saying it's the media making it much harder and vladimir putin is saying donald trump is not going to be able to do anything to get better relationships with russia because of the media. >> i would certainly agree there is obviously a lot of chaft throwing and the idea of putin sitting back. putin is probably pretty pleased with what he's thinking and seeing in the united states right now. remember that the intelligence community in a rare display of unanimity indicated their assessment was the russians had indeed tried to tip the scales of the election towards trump. so he's got to be happy about that and now what he sees is one of his primary goals for the united states and the west in general, the fracturing and weakening of democracies wherever that can happen. he's beginning to see, i think,

the beginnings of cracks in the american democracy with the questioning of the presses we've seen and questioning of the security services, intelligence services, national security infrastructure and united states and all those bode well from moscow and vladimir putin. >> in terms of a russian ship, excuse me, connecticut, obviously, the other moves by russia recently how do you interpret that? is that business as normal or testing at this stage of the trump administration? >> i think that putin has always had this view that russia needs to be the other great power in the world, that it was denied that role by the united states starting with the clinton administration, you know, then the bush administration, then obama and he has been trying to reassert that role and every time he's tried, he's gotten a lot of push back from the united states and nato and from japan.

so russia's efforts here are not unusual. what is unusual is, you know, frankly the way that donald trump is responding to it. when russia does all the things you're describing, what does donald trump's response is to say to the media it's all your fault. we need a serious policy and strategy to deal with precisely this challenge russia is presenting at the geopolitical level and strategic level. >> the national security into structure is not in place yet. >> that's part of the problem. they push the big decisions to the cabinet office. guess what? there is no deputy secretary of state. there is no deputy sec retary o

defense. "the washington post" calculate there are 700 key positions that require commission. donald trump has not named 660 of the posts. forget about the senate delays. he hasn't named the vast majority of the people that need to come up with this. >> the president was asked repeatedly i want to get his words right about whether anybody in his staff communicated with russians during the campaign. i think it took three different reporters to get him to answer. the closest he came was saying nobody that i know of. do you think he was trying to leave himself wiggle room? >> it's certainly -- it certainly sounded that way to me and i think it's because he understands the gravity of the situation. i think the whole thing with flynn, i think was a little bit of a tempest in a teapot because in terms of his conversations with russia ambassador, the importance of that pails to what could have happened or what some

alleged happened, notably "the new york times" between the trump campaign and the russian government. if that happened, then that really does cast very, very serious doubts on the la gegitiy of the election where as if it was a russian propaganda operation, that simply caused american voters to vote differently, that's kind of not administration's fault. unlike the collusion, which would be their foult. >> yeah, steven hall, fareed zakaria. claims the president's mess he says hi inherited and he he's standing up to them. keeping them honest, next. and turn it into medical discoveries, diagnostic breakthroughs... ...proof that black holes collapse into one singularity. i don't know what that is. but yes. innovation runs on supercomputers... ...and supercomputers run on intel. you are super smart. and super busy. ♪

ooh! ufo! false alarm, eyelash!

president trump said multiple times today when he took office he inherited a mess. >> i inherited a mess. it's a mess. at home and abroad. a mess. jobs are pouring out of the country. you see what's going on with all of the companies leaving our country going to mexico and other places. low pay, low pages, mass instability overseas no matter where you look. the middle east a disaster, north korea, we'll take care of it, folks, we'll take care of it all. i just want to let you know, i inherited a mess. >> keeping them honest. let's look at the numbers on the economy. what president trump inherited versus what president obama inherited. in the month before president obama took office unemployment was 7.3% complained to 4.7 and after 524,000 jobs were lost

versus the 156,000 added going into the trump presidency. president trump inherited a 1.9% growing gdp. those are some numbers. joining us are former clinton labor secretary robert rice for the many, not the few and cnn senior economic analyst steven moore. secretary rice, the thing is, certainly the big numbers are positive for donald trump but there are indicators that are not so great. workers withless th less than ae degree and factories are disappearing. isn't it understandable some people feel like the economy is a mess but fair donald trump said it's a mess? >> a lot of people still feel that the economy is a mess and those are due to long term structural changes and problems that have been in place unfortunately for about 30 years. wages have stagnated. we have a lot of peopleless secure about jobs but if you

look at the obama administration and where we are right now, almost every undindicator is ve very high. the longest period of job formation and creation in history under president obama. and the deficit, i mean, compared to what he started with and where he is now, deficit down by two-thirds and you've got overall, the best economy transferred to the next president any president has transferred to the next president with the possible exception of bill clinton. i don't know what donald trump is getting at. i think that he -- if there is any possibility of blaming somebody else for the mess in the white house and i'm talking about obviously, michael pence and the travel ban and conflicts of interest, if there is anybody -- >> flynn. >> if you put that responsibility on the courts or previous administration or anybody, he will find somebody else. >> steven, do you agree with that assessment or i take it no?

>> the simple truth is, bob, if the economy was as strong as you said it was, then hillary clinton would be president today but the truth is when you go out around the country, people didn't buy into this notion that it was a good economy. i think some of those statistics, anderson, frankly are a little bit unfair because it is true. i mean, look, obama came in when the economy hit the bottom of a terrible recession. the economy isn't in a recession now but we've got slow, very slow stagnant growth for a long time and the problem is, bob is right. we haven't -- when you ask the middle class worker what is going on and say gee, what do you think of the recovery? anderson, a lot of places will say what recovery are you talking about? i don't agree at all. this has been a flimsy economy. you're right, bob, there are signs of economic recovery. look at the wall street journal today front page consumer confidence is up. investor confidence is up.

factory orders in january as high as they have been in a long time. i think that's a little bit -- wouldn't you agree, bob, the trumpfe effect? >> i disagree. the stock market has been going gang busters for a very long time now and we have also seen. >> but it did jump a lot of president trump got elected. >> because people anticipated in terms of the stock market, we anticipate a big cut in taxes and infrastructure project both calculated to improve profits but profits don't mean individuals will be better off. look, i've been saying for years there are structural changes in economy. people did not say they were better off under george w bush and i remember people complaining wages were going nowhere. the fact of the matter is, it's not a mess he inherited. donald trump did not inherit a mess. donald trump inherited a gift in terms of an economy -- >> how can you say a $500

billion a year deficit is some kind of gift? >> that's less than 2009, steve. it's two-thirds less -- >> that is not true. the first thing obama came and did when he came in office was pass an $800 billion debt bill -- >> the spending. wait a minute. wait a minute. this is ridiculous. spending is increasing by the lowest since eisenhower. don't give me this bologna -- >> david, i got to give you the final thought and we got to go. >> the reason the deficit is so high because the economy hasn't grown. donald trump did something very important today, anderson, that hasn't gotten any attention on the networks and maybe most important. he signed an executive order to restrain regulations against the coal industry to put coal workers back into the jobs -- >> wait, coal is our future? >> all-time high. >> we continue. steven moore, robert rice, the news president trump made about the upcoming rewritten travel

ban. re 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.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ sfx: engine revving ♪ (silence) ♪

but with my back pain i couldn't sleep or get up in time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. and now. i'm back! aleve pm for a better am. today, unlimited gets the netwverizon.eserves. (mic thuds) uh, sorry. it's unlimited without compromising reliability, on the largest, most advanced 4g lte network in america. (thud) uh... sorry, last thing. it's just $45 per line. forty... five. (cheering and applause) and that is all the microphones that i have. (vo) not just unlimited. verizon unlimited.

yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more. add one a day women's complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women's in gummies and tablets. the president's executive order chaos in the nation's airport before it was suspended

vm today the president characterized it as a new executive order was written based on the court's ruling. pamela brown joins us with the latest. this new executive order, which will i guess supersede the original one, do we know any details about it? >> so the government today, anderson said it's going to issue a superseding executive order to quote protect the nation security. this was happening as president trump was reeling his plans to roll out a new travel ban during his press conference today. he defended the old one, though, pinning the blame on the ninth circuit court's decision to keep the travel ban on hold but said the new executive order would be tailored based on the ninth circuit court decision. he said the rollout of the original ban as you pointed out was very smooth but people within the department of homeland security in charge of implementing it say it was not smooth at all. the details of the original travel ban were closely held and as a result, there was chaos at airports across the country after the president signed that executive order and there were

green card holders, as you recall, that were detained at airports and key people involved in the implantation were trying to figure out what the order meant. with the new executive order, we're told by sources it will include clarifying language that legal permanent residents will not be impacted by this travel ban. we'll have to see what else is in the order, anderson? >> to say it was a smooth rollout is factually unbelievable and the white house had to come out and say oh, this executive order doesn't apply to green card holders, which it did apply to and they didn't consider. >> they came out two days after the president signed the executive order to say, by the way, this doesn't apply to green card holders. apparently there was mass confusion the weekend it was being rolled out. >> what's the latest on the original order? where does that stand? >> the trump administration today says it will not pursue further litigation, which means the ninth circuit decision stands and the original travel

ban will remain on hold. the filing says at this time it does not seek review of the merits of the panel's ruling which means a bigger panel of the ninth circuit looking at the case and called the panel's opinion seriously flawed and in the preliminary form, it should not remain circuit president but because administration is appealing -- is not appealing the ninth circuit of ruling, that will remain on the books and as we heard president trump say today, next week he is expected to unveil a new executive order. we'll have to wait and see what happens. >> yeah, pamela brown thanks for that. washington state attorney general bob ferguson brought the case that led to the travel ban being blocked and noah purcell argued the case and i spoke with them both shortly before air. >> mr. attorney general, when you heard that the white house was going to essentially resend the executive order and write a new one, what did you think? did you see that as a victory? >> yes, completely.

there is no other way to read that anderson. they are acknowledging the obvious and it's been obvious for awhile suffering defeat after defeat and not going to change any time soon. >> the white house says the new executive order would be tailored based on the court decision for the original order. do you know what tailored means? >> i think that's hard to predict but the courts have made it abundantly clear, we're likely to bring on the hemerits. the executive order in the current form is fatally flaw in many respects. administration has to go back to the drawing board and do a substantial rewrite to have a chance of passing constitutional scrutiny by the courts. >> seems like the most obvious thing would be -- in their reply filing last week, the department of justice seemed to offer a compromise writing the ban could exclude what they call

previously admitted aliens temporarily abroad now or who wish to travel and return to the united states in the future. so basically, the ban would focus, i guess, on, you know, somebody living overseas who has not been to the united states and wants to come to the united states for the first time. is that the most obvious shape of the new executive order. >> i think probably so. it's shocking in a way they didn't exclude those people in the first place from the coverage of this executive order. that would be a huge step in the right direction to make the changes. >> and mr. attorney general, i probably can't answer this but when the new executive order is signed sometime next week, do you know -- i guess it's -- i was going to ask what your response would be. can you say whether you would expect to challenge that, as well? or you have to wait and see? >> what i can say, anderson is that noah, myself and our team are ready for that new executive order and i can assure you that

we'll be scrutinizing every word and line of it very carefully as soon as it comes out and within a matter of hours from the new executive order coming out, i think we'll be in a better position to say what the next move will be. >> to challenge a new executive order, would you also need what you had the last time, which was i guess briefs from companies in your state and others or the old ones that you have, can you use those to take the new executive order to court if you wanted to? >> i think a lot depends how similar it is to the existing order. one thing we had for example was decoloration,s from the state universities about faculty who they have sponsored to come semester. some of those people may never have been here before, and they've gone through the process to get visas, gone through the

vetting. so there would still be some harm, at least, if the editor blocked those sorts of things. we would have to look at that very carefully. >> that said, anderson, i think it's fair to say that many businesses in our state, universities that we represent feel very strongly that this executive order has done great harm to them, to their employees, to their students. and i hope that the president and his administration is taking away a very hard-earned lesson from this experience. which is, if you're going to draft an executive order, do it with care, do it with scrutiny, and make sure it's constitutional. if it's not, noah and i and our team will be watching closely and, frankly, making sure the president upholds the constitution in his further actions. >> thank you both very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. and just ahead, i'll talk to two trump biographers about the president's news conference today. what did they make of it? and were they surprised by what they saw and heard?

i'm vern, the orange money retirement rabbit, from voya. i'm the money you save for retirement. who's he? he's green money, for spending today. makes it easy to tell you apart. that, and i am better looking. i heard that. when it's time to get organized for retirement, it's time to get voya. with advil, you'll ask what sinus headache? what stiff joints?

what time of the month cramps? what nighttime pain? make all your pains a distant memory with advil the world's #1 choice what pain? advil.

we said at the beginning of tonight's program, it's worth mentioning here toward the end, if you needed another example that this president is unlike any other, today was certainly it. today's press conference hit on some of mr. trump's well-worn themes, polls, margins of victory, media bashing, and at times, self-congratulation, among other things. but it's the first time we've seen them in plain view, since mr. trump became president trump. so we want to take some time tonight talking to two men who have been basically studying and writing about mr. trump for decades. joining me is michael deantonio and timothy o'brien. michael is the author of "the truth about trump." tim is executive editor of

bloomberg news. tim was sued unsuccessfully by mr. trump by claiming that mr. trump's net worth was not as much as mr. trump claimed it was. michael, you wrote a book about donald trump, spent time with him. what did you see in that press conference? >> well, it was classic trump. all confidence, all attitude. >> everything's a finely tuned machined and is going great. >> well, yeah, everything is always as he would have it, rather than assist the world observes. and that's the strange thing about this. i think it does work with his base. these are people who appreciate the attitude. they see the confidence as commanding and dynamic. >> and the media bashing plays well among the base. >> sure, sure, gives him somebody to fight against. the factual basis of much of what he said left a lot to be desired, but i don't think that was the purpose. the purpose was to appear commanding and i think for his base, he did just that. >> tim? i mean, you know him as well.

>> well, i think you had a president who looked very untethered from reality. he was defending some things by not telling the truth. he talked about his electoral win. it was the biggest electoral -- >> relitigating the campaign. he won. it was a great victory. >> right, and then he puts himself in this hole where his information is wrong. and when he's challenged on the information, he has to say, well, i don't know, this is the information i was given. and he did it on national security, he did it on russia. he did it on the management to have the federal bureaucracy. and it was very divorced from what's really going on right now. and it was pure trump. he loves crowds. he loves banter with journalists. he was in his element, but when you get outside of that bubble, i think it will be very interesting to see how that continues to play nationwide, because his other spoexpeople who have come out and done this over time now, kellyanne conway, stephen miller, sean spicer, their credibility has gotten a

little bit ravaged, to say the least. >> right. they've sort of, in ways small or large, depending on how you look at it, they've imploded at times keeping up with it. donald trump is in some ways his best spokesperson, because he's sort of able to keep juggling everything -- >> and he creates the universe in which this behavior exists, because he -- he's a fairly fragrant liar at times. he misrepresents stuff with great frequency. and it enables the people around him to sort of roll that way. but the problem is, long-term, what's the impact of that? people can have different ideological or partisan values, but everyone should deal in fact. and you can prioritize different facts, but you should start with facts. and what he has done is essentially waged this war on the truth. and i think, i think at some point, a certain segment of the american public is going to get very tired the of that. >> it is interesting that he's going to have one of these rallies over the weekend, almost like kind of going back to the campaign and kind of reliving

that. and i think he -- it seems like he needs that. he wants that -- just like he likes the give -- he seems to be enjoying himself later on during the press conference. he likes that, you know, give and take, that rough and tumble. he likes that -- an auditorium full of people chanting, you know, whatever he wants them to chant. >> it may be, and i've always felt this way, that chaos is his set point. he dwells in chaos and has dwelled in chaos his entire life. >> really? you feel that's true? >> oh, yes. he's frenetic in his activities. i think his mind is rarely shut off. this is why he's up at 3:00 in the morning tweeting. so for him, it's almost as if he gets calm amid chaos. and so, this is what we're all experiencing. >> there's an old dorothy parker quote my mom used to quote to me, those born to the storm find the calm very boring. >> i think that's true. >> part of his appeal to voters is he's anti-institutional and voters want washington to get shaken up.

>> the fact that people are freaked out for a lot of voters may be a good thing. >> but there's some point at which you have to stop being anti-institutional and can just ma manage a process. >> for people listening to that, he's, you know, he says $10 billion, forbes says less, you know, others say less. whatever -- he's worth billions of dollars. he's run corporations and employed, he said, tens of thousands of people. >> the thing is, he hasn't run a big corporation. he's actually run a big organization. >> the biggest thing he's ever run was his casino and he ran it into the ground. that did deploy thousands of people and it was a complex operation and he essentially gutted it. he took cash out of it for himself and gutted it and left it behind as a mess. he's never other than that run anything that was big. >> and he's directing now the largest bureaucracy in the history of the world. this does not bode well when we're talking about someone who's failed at managing large enterprises. and he doesn't seem to be

willing to enlist and trust the people who know how to do it. who are his friends in the bureaucracy? i'm not sure he has a single one. >> tim o'brien, thanks very much. michael d'antonio, thank you. thanks for watching. the cnn original series, "the history of comedy" starts now. remember when comedy meant males doing jokes about females the? like wives and mothers-in-law. well, the tables have turned. >> the idea that chicks aren't funny, i hate to tell you, it's still very much a thing. >> there are some people that can't get their heads around what they don't know. >> i said i wanted to be a comedian. she said, or maybe it's better if you just die. >> i think they thought of women as a different species. >> very few ladies are capable of being comedian. so every writer, here's somebody who thinks she can do it.