>> will he be there tomorrow? >> he's been there from the beginning. >> reporter: for now, "snl" fans are waiting for mccarthy's masterful impression. brian stelter, cnn, new york. i can tell you today on the streets of new york, i saw the stunt double, which means there could be some really cool action shots. and good evening, thank you for joining us, so what would you call a day in which the president of the united states issues a thinly veiled threat against the man he just fired while that man was investigating improper russia ties? what would you say of the day that he says he -- what would you call a day like that? around here, we call it friday. it began with the president tweeting about his dinner with the then-acting director james

comey. the president tweeting, quote, james comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press. the implication, i the president do have tapes. now at issue is whether the president demanded comey's loyalty. >> did you ask that question? >> no, no, i don't. but i don't think it would be a bad question to ask. i think loyalty to the country, loyalty to the united states is important. it depends on how you define loyal loyalty. >> what about the idea in a tweet you said that there might be tape recordings. >> that i can't talk about. i won't talk about that. all i want is for comey to be honest. and i'm sure he will be, i hope. >> the president not denying

that he records white house conversations and his press secretary didn't deny it. and his surrogates, including vice president pence -- yesterday the president himself offered a completely different account. here's how he addressed it today. >> are you moving so quickly that your communications department cannot keep with with it. >> we don't have press conferences. >> you don't need that. >> just don't have them. unless i have themer two weeks and i do it myself. first of all you have a level of certainty. you know sean spicer, he's a wonderful human being. he's a nice man. >> today that nice man as the president called him, tried to say why and how he got caught up

in his own spin cycle. >> we come out here and try to provide you and the american people, what he's doing on their behalf, what he's doing to keep the nation safe, and we try to parse every single word and maker it a game of gotcha, as opposed to really figure out what the policies are, why someone's being per sued and what the update is on this. >> keep in mind, it is a little rich, just generally that the president's chief spokesman is complaining about being held accountable about something that president trump said. more specifically, it is really quite something to hear just hours after sean spicer and so many others including as we said, the president of the united states, spent nearly two days putting out what we -- i should say the vice president, phony talking points on why

comey was fired. >> the president made the right decision at the right time, and to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general. >> the president accepted the recommendation of his deputy attorney general. >> he took the recommendation of rob rosenstein. >> when you receive a report that's so clear in a recommendation from somebody like the deputy attorney general, you have to act. >> he is taking the recommendation of his deputy attorney general. >> and i penalrsona personally that we have a president that's taken the strong and decisive action against the fbi director.

>> the white house even gave us a timeline on paper pushing the phony narrative. so as you can see, there was no game of gotcha, then the president said it was something else entirely and we reported that. we and so many others, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist noticed the difference between the two and reported that. jeff, you have been following all the day's twists and turns, what is the latest right now? >> well, anderson, as we end the week here, there are so many questions hanging over the white house, one is a question of credibility, of course, one is a question of who the next fbi director is going to be. but we're doing some new reporting tonight and talking to so many people here on the west wing, a top advisor to the vice president said that he was a little rattled by what happened this week, was taken unaware by the president's change in story line here, but now the question tonight is does the president have a recording system in the

oval office, is he recording some phone calls he's making. this is what sean spicer said about that today. >> did president trump record his conversations with former fbi director comey? >> i assume you're referring to the tweet, and i have talked to the president and the president has nothing further to say. >> why did he tweet that? and how should we interpret that. >> the president has no further comment on that. >> does he think it's appropriate to threaten someone like mr. comey not to speak? >> i don't think that's -- that's not a threat, he's simply stating a fact, the tweet speaks for itself. i'm moving on. >> reporter: there is reason to believe tonight that the president intentionally sent that message out this morning to sort of create a bit of diversion as he has done before,

several times over these last four months or so to try and change the story line. we do not know tonight if he has a recording system. he has talked about before in previous sort of stations in his life approximate where he liked to record phone calls, back when he was at trump tower, et cetera. but this was an entirely different matter. this is actually nixonian if he's recording phone calls. house democrats, senate democrademocrat s sent a note over and said if there are recordings, we need to know that. we don't know if he just put this out as a diversion or if he actually has reportedings he said, look i have nothing to hide here. the reality, will the white house release those tapes, if it

serves their interests? at this point they're not saying, but i can tell you, anderson, at the end of this week, an exhaustion at the west wing and simply how they change the subject and move forward. >> the president said in this interview, that this subject is so tags moving that nobody can keep up. and the idea is that's why there's inaccurate statements made by his own people, he's like the fastest moving president in history. and he does have an awful lot of time on his hands to watch a lot of tv, probably more than any president than tv was invented. >>. >> reporter: no doubt about it. >> this idea that he's so fast moving, they can't even pin him down to get their facts straight

with him. >> reporter: it's not fast moving as much as changing his mind. there's not a long-term strategy for any of this. if there was a long-term strategy to replace jim comey, they would have had a replacement immediately. they would have announced someone the next day, and that would have changed all of this. but people here do, one white house advisor speaking confidently, said this was the hurry up president, and it has risk and reward. well today we saw the risk in that, because they did not have a strategy going forward. at the end of the day, was he throwing his staff under the bus, if you will, or offering them a lifeline. some people saw it differently. but you're right, it's hard to be accurate because he's constantly changing his mind and a lot of staffers here, the morale is very low, he actually

talked to people individually tonight, i have heard them say, to try and talk the morale back up. but not discussed this week, afghanistan, his legislative agenda, always of that, all of that is bogged down in this james comey firing. >> just moments ago, you heard sean spicer trying to parse every word, rather than he believes get at the truth. you can make the case that boetz he and the president did just that, suggesting that former fbi director james clapper has cleared trump of misconduct with moscow. the president wrote, when james clapper himself and virtually everyone else acknowledged said there's no collusion, where it does it end? but that is not true, that's not what james clapper said? >> reporter: it's not what james clapper said, not only in an interview today, but in testimony before and i have

spoken with him directly about this morning once. he has chbts said there's no evidence of collusion, he's said there's no conclusive evidence and he made it clear he would not see the whole range of evidences, because he was head of the intelligence agencies, because he left law enforcement, criminal matters to the fbi, particularly when it involves u.s. citizens, because that's the way the law works, listen to james clapper today. >> so i left it to the judgment of the fbi and that was certainly the practice i followed here, but that was consistent to what i did the whole 6 1/2 years. so it's not surprising or abnormal that i would not have known about the investigation or even more importantly, the content of that investigation. so i don't know if there was collusion or not. i don't know if there's evidence of collusion or not, nor should i have, in this particular context. >> and you were not intending to clear, to convict or to clear any one of collusion, it just

was outside of your scope? >> that's correct. >>. >> reporter: the white house in effect is cherry picking a misunderstanding of clapper's comments and keep in mind, anderson, you afbds i have talked about this before, you have the fbi director, he testified under oath in march, that collusion is still being investigated, not to mention the house and senate intelligence committees and democrats on both those committees say this is still an open question, something they are investigating. >> and the wall street journal, i saw just before we went on air, published a story that the treasury department story -- to aid in the investigation into possible ties between the trump campaign and russia. what are the implications of something like that. >> reporter: it's potentially significant, we reported earlier that the senate intelligence committee had asked this department of the department of treasury for this information. and it's key here their specialty is money laundering,

they are expert at tracking the money, they do it in terrorism cases, they do it in money laundering cases, so if there is a there there, in terms of unseemly financial interactions between trump associates, trumps himself and russia, this is the group that can find it. they will turn over the records from the different committees and we'll find out where that evidence please. >> this just means this would be the accident to help them find it if there is a there there. >> reporter: and they will provide documents if there is documents that point to that. and later what salliates is saying to the white house about director comey just hours after she repeated there were concerns.

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al to a lot to talk got with the panel, that the vice president was rattled by the events of this week, also that staff morale at the white house is low. and breaking news from the much mispronounced attorney general rob rosenstein, he says he doesn't yet see a need for a special prosecutor in the russia

probe. one source says she's not inclined to make a change unless t t the -- the whole notion of tapes in the white house, obviously we have been down this road before, is that legal now? >> it's certainly legal, and i think as a matter of course, every president takes phone calls from foreign leaders, i think it would be irresponsible not to do that. the question is what about everyday conversations. this is is something that could be cleared up very easily, and it would by think a test of how serious these investigations are. have the house and senate committees write a letter, send a subpoena, have the fbi in their investigation send a subpoena for any tapes that exist that are relevant to the investigation. the supreme court in 1974, 9-0

said the president would have to answer a subpoena like that. this can be answered, it doesn't have to be a mystery. but the committees have to show they're serious to find out that answer. >> at the end of this week, how do you -- where are things in your mind? >> here's what i'm reflecting on. the president asked jim comey about loyalty. and everybody should be asking if they're loyal to the president as a figure, or the oath of office all public figures take to uphold the constitution. because wei're no longer in a binary world of clinton versus donald trump. they can't defend donald trump on these merits, so they blame liberals, they blame the media. they say you can't explain -- you have to believe the best about what might be in his heart rather than what he says on twitter every single day.

this is ridiculous, it's not tenable. and republicans, if they just speak politically, this cannot last. is go ahead and start holding the president accountable. the boogy man is not going to come out from under your bed if you stay mr. president please respect the three branches of government, please respect the american institution the way it's supposed to work and you'll be much better off. >> the president saying this was not a threat against comey, saying, you know, you better watch what you say because there may be tapes, because i don't have the exact wording of his tweet about this. but, you know, there's two people who know what happened in that thing and clearly, information of things comey had stayed to other associates, was leaking out and the president was reacting to that. how was that not a threat? >> well, since i don't work in the white house and i haven't spoken to the president about this, i can't speak to a

conversation i wasn't a part of. >> the detail itself, how can the white house say that's not a threat. >> comey ran a pretty leaky shop, it was pretty evident that there were leaks, and cats wede are question crying the leaks during the election. nobody cares that comey got fired, i haven't heard anybody out on tv saying that jim comey was doing a good job. >> it was mostly the timing of it. the white house could have had a tighter job in announcing that. i wish the president would have fired comey when he took office on january 20th. >> a tighter job, that's one ware to describe it. it was a pretty discombobulated job, with outright falsehoods being said. >> in fact i think the white house probably misses jason,

because the white house is pretty much in shambles. i want someone to tell me what donald trump did by asking the fbi director, i believe it was three days after the fisher interviewed flynn, it was a day after sally yates came over and warned him that his national security advisor could be blackmailed. i'm trying to figure out how that is not obstruction of justice. republican after republican after republican, they had their moments of pearl clutching when they had loretta lynch on the tarmac meeting with president clinton. how can they say that's not an obstruction of justice and then firing him, how is that not outrageous to every sensibility? >> it goes to the poichbtd about comey, you can't have it both ways, democrats wanted comey fired last year, and now he's

fired. >> i can be deeply concerned over how jim comey handled the hillary situation, but it goes against all my sensibilities that you cannot fire the person who's investigating you. >> but comey told him they weren't investigating him. >> allegedly. >> he hasn't denied it. comey hasn't denied it. >> highly improper if they did that. they don't even acknowledge that they're doing an investigation let alone tell somebody they're not under investigation. probably donald trump heard something, maybe comey was broadly speaking, that it was not an investigation only focused on donald trump, it's broadly focused on his campaign. but there were plenty of improper things that he has said even by his own words that we can look at the interview with lester holt, but hot the investigation should go longer,

it should be shorter, that comey never should have exonerated her. that's not something to be opining on and then firing him. >> he really didn't like the job he was doing. >> phil, you were on cnn earlier, i just want to read something that you said about the president's tweet storm today, you feel like you have to give the president a pacifier and a rattle and then put him in a crib. >> you have to take the president seriously, he disru disrupted the american political cycle in a remarkalabble way, h won states he never should have won. he said outrageous things on the campaign trail that were obviously effective. so he comes in office and if

you're sitting in my old seat, you got to say what is this guy going to do? we're 1 hu00 plus days later, a he's evidently had a conversation with the fbi director what involved whether the fbi director was loyal and allegedly whether he was under investigation. what would you think if you were the fbi director and you had that conversation, that it had nothing to do with whether you're going to drop the russia investigation? i don't buy it. i think people at the fbi saw that statement, they didn't cringe, they weren't concerned, i think a lot of them were angry and some of them laughed. the president is losing credibility by the day for comments that undercut his ability to have traction as president. bottom line. >> coming up, we'll learn how the dinner that the president had with james comey, coincides

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now that we know president trump in the early days of his presidency had dinner with now fired fbi director james comey, we need to look another what happened on that same day. randy kaye tonight looks back. >> reporter: the warn came january 26, from then acting attorney general sally yates to white house counsel don mcgahn. >> i called don mcgahn first thing that morning and told him i had a very sensitive matter that i needed to discuss with him. >> a sensitive matter concerning then national security advisor michael flynn who had just been interviewed at the white house two days before. yates warned that flynn hadn't been forthcoming with about conversations he had with russian ambassador sergey kislayak. >> it set up a situation where

the national security advisor could be blackmailed by the russian. >> reporter: on january 27, the day after her warning, yates testified she returned to the white house for a second meeting with mcgahn. during that meeting, yates said mcgahn asked her if he could look at the evidence that had her cso concerned about general flynn. the date of january 27 is key, and here's why, donald trump has now admitted that he had dinner with fbi director james comey that very evening, january 27 at the white house. a private dinner soon after the president learned that his nsa director was being investigated for ties to russia. in his interview with nbc, the president said he can't remember who called the dinner. but new cnn reporting says comey says it was at the president's request. so was the timing of this dinner just a coincidence? what exactly had the president been told that the department of justice and fbi had learned?

and would it have been enough to trigg trigger a dinner at the white house and a test of loyalty. trump apparently had a few questions of his own for the man leading the russia investigation. >> i said, if it's possible, will you let me know, am i under investigation? he said, you are not under investigation. >> reporter: randy kaye, cnn, new york. >> the president admitted in an interview with lester holt -- >> did the president ask the white house counsel whether it it would be appropriate to ask such a question given that it was against generally justice department guidelines to indicate whether or not investigations are ongoing against any individual, let alone one at the white house. >> i don't know, i will tell you several legal scholars said there was nothing inappropriate

about that. >> if only we could find legal scholar allan dershowi show witr show witsz. do you believe the president has been completely appropriate in his dealing with james comey? >> everybody wans to know if they're under investigation. i try every ware to figure out whether they a're under investigation. i know they're not going to tell me, but that doesn't mean i don't try. sometimes they do give me hints, they say well, if you haven't gotten a target legislature, then you know he's not a target. so you do get information. but the president's different. >> also at a dinner where james comey is saying he wants to stay on. so i guess that adds to the dinner, of i would like to stay on the job, are you loyal to me,

am i under investigation? >> if he's under investigation, he's not going to stay no, you're not under investigation and i want to keep my job. i suspect what happened is that comey did say something like, you haven't gotten a target letter, you're not a target, and the president then interprets that as i'm not being investigated. if we had a tape of this, and i don't think there's a tape, i think the president's bluffing. buff if we had a tape of this, i think you would hear words like loyalty, i think you would hear words like investigation, but you would hear words that each side could easily interpret in a different way. >> i don't know what was said. but it was inappropriate for the president of the united states to ask the director of the fbi whether he, the president was under investigation, period. it is just an inappropriate -- first of all, there is an established policy going back to

the days of jimmy carter, about how much a president or any white house official is allowed to know about pending criminal investigations, that is -- i mean that's been followed by presidents as a matter of course for decades. but just think about it, this is not some defense attorney asking about his client, he's the boss of the justice department for which jim comey works. >> for you, that's not inappropriate? >> no, it's relevant, it doesn't turn it into a crime. it doesn't turn it into a specific ethical violation. should he have done it? if he had asked my advice, i would have said have your lawyer ask about it, have white house counsel ask about it. have your personal lawyer ask about it. it's better that you not have this conversation. >> when you saw the tweet today from the president, that some

interpreted as a threat against comey, that james comey better hope there are no tapes of our conversation before he starts leaking to the press. >> let's go back to the blackmail thing, i think the whole blackmail thing is us never nonsense. sally yates go to flynn and says by the way, we know that you had this phone call with the russians, no more blackmail, it's over. why are they putting the responsibility on other people, it's easy to end the blackmail. just tell him, then the russians have nothing over him. >> it's something we would have seen as completely outrageous by any other president. i don't think you would call it a threat. it's certainly a taunt. it's inappropriate for a president to behave that way towards what 24 hours ago was a

government official. he is essentially challenging all of us to ask about whether these tapes economist. it's just inappropriate for a president to behave. >> it's also foolish, because it opens the door for subpoenas. there are so many foolish things he has done. if the president had called comey in and said you know how much i admire you, you were in a terrible position, either way you did the clinton thing, would you please submit your resignation. comey would have done it. there would have been no story. >> if you were advising the president, would use advise him to stop talking about the russian investigation? >> i would take away his twitter account. he won't listen. >> other past presidents would simply say, there's an ongoing fbi investigation, we're cooperating fully, we want justice to run its course, and that would be the end of it.

>> it wouldn't be the end of it. they would do that publicly and then they would have their people try to figure out what's going on. >> if you were donald trump, you were going to say to yourself, you know what? i got elected president of the united states by behaving this way, where everyone told me that you can't say this stuff about megyn kelly, you can't say this stuff about john mccain and i am who i am and i'm not going to change. it's worked out pretty well for him so far. coming up the president's threat about the possibility of taped conversations, this is the first time we have heart about white house recording, of course. but take a look at how the white house has ran those recordings and why that was shut down. and we came up with a plan to help reduce my risk of progression, including preservision areds 2. my doctor said preservision areds 2 has the exact nutrient formula the national eye institute recommends

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♪ whatever it is that floats your boat... ...or tickles your tastebuds... ...or brightens your day... ...even if you've never tried it before... ♪ ...just know that... you can, in portland. as we have been reporting, the president of the united states fired fbi director james comey. as you know, this is not the first time secret recordings have been a part of presidential history. it certainly goes beyond nixon's

tapes. >> reporter: former white house -- to tape phone conversations, but that's different from a built in white house taping system. president kennedy used one, as did president johnson, here trying to convince someone to be his campaign manager. >> do it any way you want to do it. but i want you to do it. >> reporter: a 1972 oval office conversation on how to push back on the water gate investigation. this one is often referred to as the smoking gun tape. that white house taping system was shut down in the summer of 1973, at the height of the watergate scandal. >> the american people, the press or the media, they didn't know about the taping systems until alexander butterfield, a white house aid in 1973, told the senate watergate committee,

told the staff that there was a taping system. at that time, nixon had an opportunity to destroy the tapes and he eelected not to. >> are you sorry you didn't burn the tapes? >> interestingly enough, everybody in europe that i talked to said why didn't you burn the tapes? and the answer is, i probably should have. >> reporter: as for the one-on-one dinner between trump and comey in the white house, white house aides tell us they don't know of any recording device in the dining room. could comey have taped the phone conversations on his end? we got no comment from the fbi. former top bureau officials said that would only be allowed if the president himself was under investigation, which trump says he's not. and he got a warrant to tape him. >> i can't imagine that could happen. the fbi director does not tape

conversations with the president or members of the hill or staff members, i cannot see what happening. >> reporter: if there are any tapes of president trump and james comey at the white house, there is pressure on him to release them. two top house oversight committees are calling on the white house to turn over copies of any recordings, emails, any communications between president trump and james comey in this matter, so far no comment from the white house on this letter. anderson? >> brian todd, thanks very much. joining me now is history professor, douglas brinkley. obviously there's been taping systems in the white house before, it would be unique to have not only a sitting president tape their fbi director over dinner, but then to kind of, it's already raising the spector of it in a tweet. >> it's said that president trump developed a voice activated system.

>> so anywhere oval office -- >> you also hear drinks being stird. and it was that you bick wit to us in the white house. >> winston churchill wrote a multiple volume, maybe i'll do the richard nixon tapes for the world. and ammunition against somebody he didn't like, somebody would say he said something, he would say i have the transcript, he wanted it as ammunition against people that met him. so it's plausible that donald trump had bugged that dinner, knowing that the stakes were high as head of the fbi, but i think it seems to me like a bluff. he would have had to put a taping system in very, very quickly and meat it a pr priori here. >> it's not a two-party consent

state. florida, if he was recording stuff in florida, he would have to have the concept of the person he's recording, but in washington and new york, you can record. >> all presidents take some a.m. of calls, in the package of the cuban missile crisis, but the phone is different, if you're calling donald trump, you got to think somebody's listening in on the white house phone burks a private dinner, one-on-one, what an intrusion of comey's privacy if he had done that. >> and there's a letter asking for information on the taping, and unless it's a subpoena, the white house doesn't have to go along with it. and it was nixon's refusal to hand them over after the subpoena is what led to his downfall. >> but the big difference, nixon didn't want anybody to know he had a taping system. not henry kissinger, not

haldeman. so wasn't a nixon stunt in that regard, nixon wanted to squelch anybody knowing that he had those tapes. >> what do you make of the last week. >> it just gets stranger and stranger all the time. one can't understand why there's so much obstruction going on in the white house, why they're afraid to talk cleanly and openly about russia, this has to be put behind donald trump, but he seems to feed the story with tweets and firing comey, it's not going to go away, he has no strategy in mind, except to have war with the press over it. >> it's also interesting to have h have as they he's too fast, he's too quick of a leader to be pinned down and get all of the

details out of. that doesn't seem to hold water. >> obviously somebody might story tell once in a while, and we do the pinocchio game with him. but there are something like 405 out and out lies. but now we're starting to understand that he doesn't know when he's lying, if you're a compulsive liar or inventer of things, you don't even know you're doing it. so we might have to live it with for a while. town halls across the country as constituents confront house republicans. and outrage over the republican health care bill.

the extraordinary events have been unfolding in washington while the house has been in recess. the break began after it passed by a whisker the bill to repeal and replace bank. some republican lawmakers have been holding town halls in home districts where the reception has not been warm. here's more. >> reporter: donald trump said during the campaign he would be a great unifier for the country.

there's been no evidence of that this week at town halls. >> will the rich benefit -- >> shut your mouth. >> reporter: many republican congressmen who held town halls have heard the wrath of many of their constituents. in new jersey, congressman tom macarthur got an earful. his amendment helped push the health care act over the line. >> is rape considered a pre-existing condition under your amendment? yes or no? [ cheers and applause ] >> yes or no? one word, please. one word. >> folks, you get to ask the questions. i get to answer them. >> so answer them. so answer them. >> i will not describe a violent act against a woman as a pre-existing condition. that, to me -- but what i will say is that this bill does not allow discrimination in health insurance based on that. >> at this point you can say

what you want. we all know the truth here. thank you. >> reporter: kevin kramer heard from a woman with a disabled child in north dakota. she asked him not to repeal obamacare with her family facing bankruptcy. >> this is what $5 million looks like. she's 2 years old. >> a man upset for the woman started walking toward the congressman. >> shut your mouth. >> another town hall participant grabbed his neck. >> take my money and the billionaires money and give it to that woman. here you go. take it. >> that's too far. >> both he and the man who grabbed his neck were taken out by police. there was a woman asking a question to republican congressman rod blum in iowa about how he could support president trump. >> how come bill clinton could be impeached over a [ bleep ] and this thing that's in the white house now brings the russians into the oval office with their news cameras.

why is he not being impeached? >> reporter: the answer didn't satisfy most in the audience. >> there is no proof of collusion between the trump campaign and russia. >> reporter: the representative held three other town halls this week and ended up leaving this mostly combative one without telling the audience good-bye. gary tuckman, cnn. >> much more ahead on a day that left heads spinning. the white house struggling to get the story straight about why james comey was fired even as mr. trump threatens mr. comey in on twitter and won't rule out that he has tapes of the conversations. is data that can make the difference between winning and losing. the microsoft cloud helps the pga tour turn countless points of data into insights that transform their business and will enhance the game

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there's more breaking news tonight from the president's conversation with loester holt. he revisits the idea. he seems more concerned that director comey exonerated her and in reconciling the opposing thoughts the president may have revealed something of how he sees his responsibilities as a candidate and a president to the truth. >> justification he shouldn't be doing that or you didn't like that the investigation didn't lead to indictment? >> when i'm a candidate that's a lot different from being president. i will tell you what he did, what comey did had good moments for me as a