and february on record. the wars in iraq and afghanistan claimed 17,000 and 16,000 lives respectively while violence in yemen resulted in 7,000 deaths last year. the good news is the number of conflict fatalities around the world dropped for a second year in a row with 10,000 fewer deaths in 2016 than the preceding year. thanks for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. hey, happy mother's day and welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. i'm brian stelter and this is a look at "reliable sources." a look at how the media works and how the news gets made. five days since the firing of james comey. this is the lowpoint in donald trump's young presidency. it also feels to some in the media like a tipping point. we have carl bernstein standing by with perspective you need to here. plus michael sheerer who

interviewed trump at the white house. also this hour we'll examine where the leaks in the trump white house are coming from, plus conservative media denialism and from early morning tweets to late night punch lines how snl is reacting to the news. right now there is so much news there are complaints about the contradictory stories, obstruction of justice, concerns about trump's media consumption and his emotional state. from the left we are hearing fears in democratic norms and from the right complaints that this is the media's fault. let's begin with the two best guests on the subject, jeffrey toobin, a staff writer for the new yorker and the aforementioned carl bernstein, award winning journalist, one half of the woodward and bernstein team. tuesday, 5:45 p.m. you were here in new york and find out comey was canned. you immediately speak to wolf blitzer on the air. it was a defining moment in the

coverage. you said it was a grotesque abuse of power. some criticize you for going over the top. do you stand by it? >> i do. i can't say i don't have mixed feelings about the experience. i have worked with cnn since 2002. i have been on television a lot. i try to be more analytic than polym polymecal. i have to be honest. you know, i did come of age watching watergate. i was a teenager during those years. my heroes were not the politicians. my heroes were woodward and bernstein. i know the story well. i didn't have to look up the date october 20, 1973, the day of the saturday night massacre. as i write in the new yorker this week, june 23, 1972, the famous smoking gun tape of richard nixon in the oval office

talking to h.r. haldeman. what they are talking about is getting the fbi to stop investigating watergate. it's the same thing that trump was doing by firing comey as he more or less admitted to lester holt. i stand by everything i say. it's not usually the way i express myself but i think i was right. >> you said this is not what happens in democracies. we see it in other forms of government. is it that serious still five days later? >> i do think -- what occurred to me is what's going on in turkey. you have the government purging thousands of people who at least according to the government are unreliable from the police, the press, the teaching professions. obviously things aren't that bad here. but that's the kind of thing that resonates for me. and, you know, i'm not going to pretend it isn't troubling.

it is. >> let's go to carl. he's traveling. i'm grateful he can join us and talk through this. watergate was brought up, carl. how do you assess the situation versus the story that you helped share with the world in the 1970s? >> this is a potentially more dangerous situation than watergate. we are at a dangerous moment. that's because we are looking at the possibility that the president of the united states and those around him during an election campaign colluded with a hostile foreign power to undermine the basis of our democracy -- free elections. we don't know the facts, but what we do know is the president of the united states seems to be doing everything in his power to keep us from knowing the facts including firing the director of the fbi because, says the president of the united states, of, quote, this russia thing. so the question of a cover-up seems to me to have been

answered a while ago. there is a cover-up going on to keep us from knowing what happened here. whether that means the president of the united states obstructed justice or not or those around him did, we don't know. but what we see is that at every turn this president is impeding the ability of those who were chosen to investigate to do so. including the house and senate committees. so it is truly a dangerous moment. it is different than watergate. >> if i could just elaborate on one point carl is making, one difference from watergate is that, you know, nixon was obstructing the fbi in private, in secret, in meetings in the oval office that it took a supreme court fight to get access to the tapes. trump is obstructing the fbi in plain view by firing the director. it changes the story somehow in perception. but the intent seems to be exactly the same. >> andrew mccabe said this

week -- >> there is another much more dangerous -- andrew mccabe might say that but in practical terms i'm not talking about obstruction of justice and people around and in the fbi that i have talked to would say there has been every effort made to impede the investigation. but more important than this, we are hearing from conservative and republican commentators in the press, jonah goldberg, charles krauthammer and others questioning the stability of the president of the united states. this is unheard of. that's an element of this. because republicans on capitol hill, the republicans during watergate were heroic. they are the ones who said, what did the president know and when did he know it? they investigated and investigated and voted for his impeachment because they were willing to see the truth served.

we have not seen something similar from the republicans thus far. maybe we will. but what we are hearing in private from many people on capitol hill, congressmen, senators. they doubt the stability, honesty and fitness for office of this president of the united states. that's become part of the story for the press. i think, brian, you can see this from where you sit. we would have a different kind of dynamic. richard nixon was a criminal president. donald trump is a president with whom there is grave question about his fitness and ability to conduct the office of the presidency. that's going hand in hand with the possible cover-up into collusion with a foreign power. >> but fitness for office -- >> there will be no evidence of collusion -- >> his emotional state. very difficult to journalists to address. your paper the washington post today quotes a trump ally saying is he in the grip of some kind

of paranoid delusion? it is an anonymous quote on the front page of the washington post. is that appropriate, carl? >> it's not only appropriate. i think look at the conservative commentators whether you talk about jonah goldberg, others, krauthammer, who are questioning the very stability of the president of the united states. we have many reporters, myself included, who have talked to numerous people, republicans on capitol hill who in private will tell you they doubt the stability of this president and that in the last week it has really been demonstrated. it's part of the story and it is very hard to cover. it's a different dynamic than we have ever had to deal with before. but the tweets that tpresident f the united states have been making are a roadmap of his mind. that roadmap takes very crooked corners. >> you are talking about what republicans might be saying in private. in public, we haven't heard so

much of this. jeffrey, let me put on screen part of your column from the new yorker. you said it is a certainty that history will look unkindly upon the moral blindness of contemporary republicans. you say there's been relative silence from gop leaders. >> that's right. carl is correctly pointing out that a few conservative columnists have been skeptical. what's striking is that not with standing how obviously inappropriate this firing was, you have close to complete silence or support from mitch mcconnell, chuck grassley, paul ryan. you know, people who are very smart and very savvy. i think they are so ideologically blinded they can't be candid about how wrong and dangerous it is. whether it was barry goldwater, hugh scott and john rhoads on august 7, 1974, going to the white house and saying you have

to go, that kind of patriotism as opposed to partisanship has not been evident at all. >> are you saying necessary today the republicans should go to trump -- >> to resign, no. i'm just saying. but just to say this is wrong and you have to respect the law. i'm not saying he has to resign or be impeached. i'm saying that the propriety of firing comey was so obviously wrong that it seems like it's more than incumbent upon republicans to recognize it. >> and these gop leaders are mostly not on television. they are avoiding interviews. one last question for you, carl. i was rewatching "all the presidents men" with my wife. >> what a great movie. can we discuss it? i'm sorry. >> you have ben bradley's character at the end of the film says to you and bob on the lawn, half the country has never heard

of watergate. nobody cares about this. of course for another year or two you keep working on the story. is there something similar happening right now? many americans are tuned out of this. they may not care about these alleged improprieties? they are tuning it out? >> no. i think it's different. we have a very divided country now in a way that breaks down along ideological lines. fewer people are interested in the best obtainable version of the truth but rather look for information on both sides to buttress what they already believe. i think the most important thing to recognize here is the need for a real investigation that goes to the bottom of what occurred with the russians, with our elections, whether or not people around president trump or president trump himself colluded with a hostile foreign power. we need a real investigation with more resources than are available to either the house or senate committees. comey was looking for more

resources for the fbi and what especially we need to think about is the president of the united states publically threatened the outgoing director of the fbi the other day saying he might have tapes that he secretly recorded of their conversations. it is absolutely incumbent on the house, the senate, the fbi, the u.s. attorney to subpoena any tapes that the president of the united states has with comey, with those in his campaign who may or may not have colluded with a foreign power, including his campaign manager paul manafort, including roger stone, general flynn. those tapes, if they exist, need to be subpoenaed immediately. that's part of what we are going to see whether or not there is a really serious investigation because that will be one of the first things we see in the next few days. what the president has tried to

do, make no mistake, is to impede these legitimate investigations and as he said, i fired comey because of this russia thing. it is a dangerous moment. >> carl bernstein -- >> "all the presidents men" isn't just a great movie. it is a great book by carl and bob. everyone should read it, especially now. >> cinemax, amazon, itunes, lots of ways to watch it. jeffrey, carl, thank you very much. just getting started here. two washington correspondents standing by talking about the leaks out of the white house and why you should consider believing them. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, isn't it time to let the real you shine through?

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the one constant of the trump administration -- leaks. leaks, leaks. the president's sudden decision to fire fbi director james comey left the white house leaking like a sieve. you see a few examples here. seems it is every staffer for him or herself. this is the president doubling down on the suggestion to do away with a white house tradition of the past hundred

years -- that is, press briefings. >> are you using so quickly that your communications department cannot keep up with you? >> yes. that's true. >> so what do we do about that? >> we don't have press conferences. >> you don't mean that. >> well, just don't have them. unless i have them every two weeks and do them myself. we don't have them. i think it's a good idea. >> let's bring in two well sourced reporters to talk about this. olivia nuzzi from new york magazine and michael shearer from "time." how seriously should we take this suggestion that there will be no more white house press briefings? >> we should take it seriously. the president has a long pattern of raising ideas like this that seem outlandish and then a couple weeks carrying through with them. there is a thing he threatened during the campaign of not going to a debate unless cnn or some of the other networks paid money to a charity of his choosing. he actually went forward and

carried through with it. i don't think this is something his staff would recommend. i don't think this is something the press operation wants. but if the president continues to feel the sense of grievance he feels now that motivated a lot of decisions he made this week and last week i wouldn't be surprised to see it happen at least on a temporary basis. >> on friday when he first tweeted this i thought he was just trolling the press. olivia, what was your reaction? >> i thought it was very frightening. we are lied to a lot at the press briefings as acknowledged this week they say inaccurate things. we don't have that many opportunities to press this administration on the record. that's very important. it is frankly a story if the administration cannot get their story straight or if they are lying. we need to see it every day. we don't want to be relying on them to respond to e-mails for comment. we want to do it in person, on camera where they are held accountable. they are public servants with a public service to carry out and this is part of it. >> i have heard a lot of talk on television about a crisis of

credibility with this white house. olivia, what's the state of the white house's credibility? >> not great. the state of the union isn't great in that respect. they have a lot of problems and i think part of the problem is because they say so many inaccurate things on the record to us at briefings, it's much more easy for us to believe the leaks coming out on background. the white house doesn't really have a leg to stand on when they deny leaks on the record. >> that's interesting. i want to ask more about the leaks. one of the themes i have heard from conservative media outlets this week is all of the leaks are being contradicted by people on the record denying them. michael, why should people watching this program believe anonymous sources saying trump's furious, he did this because of the russia investigation, et cetera. >> you know, trump has not created a coherent white house structure. so what you have is several different teams operating around him and him often choosing to reach outside the white house or to a small circle of advisers to

make ambiguobig decisions. there isn't a coherent master strategy. the roll out of the comey news is the latest example of that. i would say you should always be skeptical of anonymous sources. when there are lots of anonymous sources and multiple outlets saying similar things i can attest to having been in the oval office with him for much of monday night. this emotional grievance, this feeling that he's been wronged by the press, by the way the white house has been covered, by his own communication, inability to get out information. these are not things i would doubt. >> is it a situation where sometimes sources tell the truth privately when they are not being quoted and mislead you on the record? is what's going on here that journalists are trusting anonymous sources more than public denials? >> it's possible. i think the problem is this white house has been so dishonest. from day one we remember sean

spicer saying it was the biggest inauguration day crowd ever. from day one they started out misleading us and lying to us. now i think they are paying for it. in the fact that we are inclined to not believe them when they say a story is wrong or they give us their version of events. why would we? >> michael, go ahead. >> many of the inaccuracies are because the president tells people to say these things. they are not inaccuracies on the part of sean spicer. he was instructed to go out and say false things about the inaugural crowds. the communication shop was told the reason for the comey firing only a day and a half later to say the president said the things he told them to say, they had letters released to the press weren't true and the president had a different motivation in hiring jim comey. there is a huge credibility problem. it is the case that the people around the president are responding to the president are literally carrying his message and it keeps changing day to day. >> this brings us to the idea he

may replace spicer, pribring in new press secretary. how much does it matter? >> it doesn't. >> if they are in the dark. >> it's not a question of sean spicer himself as a human being lacking credibility. er oh anybody else in the white house. they are working on behalf of someone whose story changes minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. there is not going to be a change in that no matter who is at the lectern. >> you mentioned interviewing president trump on monday. let's flash the cover on screen. you have the cover of the issue talking about what it's like with the president late at night, watching television. how does the television fixation factor in to what happened? >> the president has been an enormously sophisticated consumer of media. if you go back to the campaign when he called jeb bush low energy or marco rubio little marco he was commenting on how they came across on television. he still consumes his own presidency very much as a

television show. it is the television -- in the last couple of weeks the testimony last week or two weeks ago with james comey on the hill. this week with sally yates and jim clapper. >> he dvr'd us and he was watching it. >> he said come on, i want to show you something. he cued it up and wanted to show it to us and do color commentary on it which was vicious. he was saying they were choking like dogs in the hearing. exaggerating the reactions of the crowds. he was trying to get some emotional satisfaction from what he felt was the story of the hearings whiches a view that most people don't agree with. the press doesn't agree with it. a lot of the staff don't agree with it. he feels he's been deeply wronged. he's been wronged on television. he's responding to television. >> he called your magazine dishonest right in front of you. he said it to you. how did that feel? >> he often does that.

there is a weird dichotomy here. he's a gracious and charming host when you are in his company. very often he'll flip and, i think the last three or four times i talked to him he's put in a dig at some point about me as a reporter and the quality of my reporting, the quality of "time" magazine. but he's talking to me at the moment. i'm invited back. i think he thinks for the most part what i report is exactly what he's saying and is accurate. but it all comes back to the idea that he can't get a fair shake. what's fundamental to the president and is a motivating force that helps explain a lot of decisions he's making. >> two very honest reporters, michael and olivia, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> up next, melissa mccarthy and alec baldwin returning to snl. >> mr. trump, i need to talk to you. have you ever told me to say things that aren't true? >> only since you started working here. what powers the digital world. communication.

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welcome back to "reliable sources." lester holt nbc had the interview of the week with president trump. in it trump essentially admitted that the russia investigation played a role in his decision to fire fbi director james comey. a blockbuster admission. so snl was at it again last night paying attention to how much that revelation did or didn't matter. >> your staff has been insisting all week you didn't fire him because of his russian investigation. >> no, i did. >> wait. what? >> i fired him because of russia. i thought he's investigating russia, i don't like that, i

should fire him. >> then you're just admitting that? >> uh-huh. >> but that's obstruction of justice. >> sure. okay. >> wait. so -- did i get him? is this over? oh, no, i didn't? nothing matters? absolutely nothing matters anymore? >> laughing might be the best way to deal with this week. joining me to discuss is the media critic for the baltimore sun. did snl get it right? >> they got it right in a bunch of places -- in the opening, in the sean spicer segment, and best of all, brian, and i think this has been under estimated "weekend update" has been brilliant. i thought they were great in 2008 when they took apart sarah palin. but now we are not talking about a candidate. we are talking about someone in the white house who is erratic and probably in a lot of ways

dangerous. they're taking that on. i'll tell you something brilliant they did last night. they took apart his language. they had, for example, the case where his lawyers said there was no problem with his tax returns for the last ten years except for a few exceptions. and colin jost said that's like saying all the children came back safely from the field trip with a few exceptions. they did that. that's the key to this. the key to everything i think you have been talking about today in the really great segments with the earlier guests is that this is an administration that pumps disinformation into the eco-system, into the information eco-system. i don't think we have ever been faced with anything like that. if they were just making fun of sean spicer and sarah huckabee i would say, come on, they are press reps. but they are brilliantly satirizing the way the

information -- that's the source of information from the white house. it's the information a democracy needs to function. we know we cannot function as a democracy because some reliable information. we expect some of that from our leaders. we are getting none of it. instead we are getting confusion, lies, contradictions. and so to satirize that you almost -- you have to go to the level of the surreal. you have to go to melissa mccarthy on the podium which, seeing the video of it friday afternoon when it leaked out saved my week. it was a killer week. seeing her made me smile. it made me love doing this. this is the best job. >> there is the serious and then the funny. on the serious side earlier today on cnn james clapper told jake tapper that u.s. institutions are under assault. a few minutes later fareed zakaria said the task of the media and the courts is to, quote, quite simply keep alive

the spirit of american democracy. from everything you have seen and read are journalists exceeding and doing that? >> journalists are trying. this is a mighty challenge. i think journalists are doing it because they are attacking it at several points. you know, lester holt did it. on the right they wanted to say, oh, lester holt was interrupting the president. he was badgering him. no, he wasn't. again, he was pushing for clarification for exact language. did comey tell you you are not under investigation. every time you push trump that way he starts fudging. he starts obfuscating. that's the problem. we are living in this environment and the -- with the white house doing this, journalists are trying. i think lester holt did great work. look at the headlines that came out of it. the reason for the firing contradicted. you know, some said, oh, he didn't fact check enough. you could have 57 people sitting

across from trump and you couldn't fact check him in real time in that interview. we are trying. we are really trying. the discussions that we had today, the two washington correspondents you had on in a previous segment, both doing fantastic work. but this is a big challenge. you know what, i'm so glad i got to hear carl bernstein put it in perspective about what a tremendous danger we are in as a republic. i think we are. so you say, oh, well, "saturday night live" trivializes that. no, it is another layer. you get people to laugh about it. you laugh about the joke about children not coming back from the field trip but you understand how crooked trump is in these kinds of announcements. why would you release -- you didn't release anything. why would i believe his lawyers? remember during the debates when he was insisting that he had said we should never go into

iraq and people said, hey, there is no record of it. he said, hey, i told sean hannity. just ask sean hannity. he kept saying it. i thought, who would believe sean hannity? what good is that? he's on a new universe of information, disinformation. >> i'm glad you said that. i'm short on time, so i have to say thanks, david. but after the break, i have two others standing by to talk about this. about conservative media, the sean hannitys of the world having a hard time coming to grips with trump's shifting story lines. what are behind the denials. we'll talk about it after the break. y286oy ywty it'that can make a worldces, of difference.

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when they thought they should westart saving for retirement.le then we asked some older people when they actually did start saving. this gap between when we should start saving and when we actually do is one of the reasons why too many of us aren't prepared for retirement. just start as early as you can. it's going to pay off in the future. if we all start saving a little more today, we'll all be better prepared tomorrow. prudential. bring your challenges. welcome back. when president trump watches fox news or scrolls through his own twitter feed he's being told the comey firing is not a crisis, but merely a media creation, a total pile-on. >> the level of ignorance here is breathtaking. >> these people are

schizophrenic. >> the spread of dumbness. >> pretending to be reporters. >> liberal crack pots unhinged. >> the press melted down, the media. >> other conservative publications have been taking so-called main stream media to task. here's a headline. liberal media went into full panic mode. another saying the firing was only capturing the attention of journalists, not the american people. do these headlines have a point? joining me two conservative critics of president trump. bruce bartlett aides to reagan and george h.w. bush. david, what are we to make of the denialism saying there isn't really a scandal or crisis here? >> a lot of this is business as usual. deflection and denial. but there is something important happening that's truly new and dangerous. in order to defend president trump, conservatives are called upon to ascent to things they

would never have ascented to before. this week they are called to ascent to that the director of the fbi is a member of the president's team and the president has a right to fire the director of the fbi for any reason. this is a new idea in american history. it is incredibly dangerous. it is not true in democracies that the head of the national police force answers to the head of democracy. it's never been true here. conservatives in order to come up with a semblance of logic are being backed into a position that had they been asked about it in advance they would have said, no, that's the way to a police state. >> you have warned about creeping authoritarianism. you had a cover story in the atlantic about it. are we closer this week than we were last week or are liberals being hysterical? >> until this week one of the most powerful criticisms in the article came from friends who would say the president isn't dangerous. he's a doofus. he's not achieving anything. that argument can't be sustained after this week. if donald trump succeeds in inscribing into the american

system the idea that the head of the national police force answers to the president, is a political creature of the presidency, something that's never been accepted before, yes, that's a big step toward an authoritarian american system. >> this is a new poll from nbc and the "wall street journal" asking americans if they approve or disapprove of trump's decision. 32% say they don't yet know enough to have an opinion. only 29% approve of the decision. is that 32% a reflection of the conservative media reaction to this story in the past week trying to muddy it up, say it's not that big of a deal? >> perhaps. it may also include people who are reluctant to express an opinion, even to a reporter or a pollster, rather. >> right. >> i think there are a lot of republicans out there who have serious misgivings about trump but are loathe to appear disloyal to the party. a lot of those people may be in the 32%.

>> is this divide you have written about between the conservative entertainment media complex, folks that are entertainers above all else versus conservative intellectuals in the press? i have seen a lot of conservative intellectuals raising alarms but they are drowned out by entertainers. >> i don't think there is a question about that. you have one of the smarter conservative commentators i have seen is david french in national review. but you have to understand virtually all republicans are reactionary. they react to whatever liberals are doing. that's what sets their agenda. when they see an institution that they believe is overwhelmingly liberal which they believe the major media is despite the existence of sinclair, fox and other conservative outlets. their initial reaction is negative, to do the opposite, to believe the opposite. every time the media draw a parallel between trump and nixon

and watergate, i think it just stokes fears or hatred that this is just a trumped up -- no pun intended -- trumped up charges and i think they believe nixon was unfairly driven out of office by the liberal media. >> distrust of the media is rooted in the 1970s. david? >> it is not a fair contest between the conservative entertainment complex and conservative intellectuals. if you are a young conservative rising in the world, trying to make your way it is clear. if you agree to defend whatever the president says, even if it is different from what he said yesterday, obviously not to the facts there is glamour, fame, success, enormous amounts of money. the big winners are making multiple millions of dollars a year. to fight the lonely battle on line you get $25 a freelance column. people respond to incentives.

the conservative world which already is governed by a high degree of conformity. that sort of natural, inherent in the system of ideas now confronts material incentives that pull people to becoming mouthpieces for the vacillating unpredictable prevaricating presidency. >> david, how does it end? >> how does this end? i don't know. i would like to tell you optimistically. a couple of days after the inauguration, a friend of mine approached me in a coffee shop, put a hand on my arm and said, tell me we are going to be okay. i thought, i can't assure you of that. we are going to test the endurance and strength of american institutions. by the way, thus far the institutions are failing the test. >> including the press, the media? >> the media is doing great -- most of it or much of it. but, look, the president just fired the head of the fbi in

order to cover allegations of his own wrongdoing. the president has acknowledged it. his party in congress is completely backing him. willing to take at face value his nominee to replace the fired fbi director. if this works the system, when it's done, will be a permanently different political system, not just because of the president but because of his support in congress. one of the most important institutions in the country will be broken. >> i'm out of time. bruce, david, thank you very much. we heard some references to watergate. we have a nixon biographer standing by to react. don't go away. let's see,

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this week, watergate and former president nixon have been on the tip of many media tongues. >> first of all, there's something very nixonian about all of this. >> it does ring our watergate bell. >> nixonian abuse of power.

>> i have not seen anything like this since october 20th, 1973, when president nixon fired archibald cox, the watergate special prosecutor. >> to people my age, it conjures up images of richard nixon. >> there were also nixonian echoes in this tweet from president trump, saying he might be somehow taping his conversations inside the white house, but are these analogies appropriate or are they perhaps turning off some viewers as our prior guest said? i have the perfect guest to ask, the author of a biography of nixon, john farrell. the new book is titled "richard nixon: a life." john, thanks for being here. >> thank you, brian. thanks for having me on. >> just now, a couple minutes ago we were hearing about the watergate analogies and how perhaps they turn off trump supporters. trump loyalists here say that's bogus and they don't listen to any of the media coverage about this current crisis. what do you say to that? >> i think that in this 24/7 news climate that we're in, there's an impatience. we want to get to the end of the

story really fast, and i think that we need to understand that there is going to be a core of trump supporters that's going to stay with him for a very long time and that the republicans, both the house and the senate, if history proves true, are going to back up their guy for a very long time as well. so, i think that's -- we have not reached the point, as we did in watergate, where you're going to see republican congressional leaders go down to the white house and ask the president to step down. we are far, far away from that kind of happening. >> how do you assess the news media's approach to the comey firing and the five days since? >> i think it's absolutely a fair comparison. any time you have the president of the united states firing the chief -- a chief law enforcement officer who happens to be investigating the president's associates, that's a big, big story. now, richard nixon always used to say, events matter, meaning that the kind of chatter that happens in washington is not digested out in the countryside. this is an event, the firing of the fbi director. people know about the g-men,

about the fbi. his departure is a big event. and those who are a little bit more sophisticated in following politics know that this was a guy who helped donald trump get elected by his decisions on what to do with hillary clinton and the e-mail story. so, the firing raises a lot of questions. on the other hand, sometimes i think the subtitle of my whole book about nixon should be "and yet." in the watergate case, in the saturday night massacre case, you had had six months of steady drip, drip, drip. you had the white house staff shake-up. you had haldeman and ehrlichman being fired. you had senate watergate hearings all summer and john dean testifying. we knew what the crime was. we knew there were tapes that would prove whether nixon was guilty or not. and so, when he fired the guy who was trying to get the tapes, it was a big deal. in this case, we don't know what the crime is, we don't know what exactly comey is looking for, we don't know if there's any presidential involvement at all. trump seems to be getting himself in more and more trouble

by himself. and the whole thing could just be trump being trump. >> so many whistleblowers then, also whistleblowers now. so many media attacks then, also media attacks now. poking through your book at the book store the other day, nixon's hatred of the press was notable, but he didn't share it as publicly as trump does. >> no, and he made a crucial distinction. even in the middle of the bombing campaigns against north vietnam, nixon would be stopping and he would be telling his aides, henry kissinger and others, the press is the enemy, the press is the enemy. remember that henry, the press is the enemy. but it was the enemy of nixon. he never went as far as trump has, which is to say the press is the enemy of the american people. >> john, thank you for being here. >> my pleasure. thank you, brian. >> we're out of time here on tv, but sign up for our nightly newsletter, reliablesources.com. all the latest on that reporter in west virginia who was arrested earlier this week. we'll be following that case. also, more on the sinclair/tribune deal, mega merger announced earlier this week.

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-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com you're fired! a political earthquake as president trump cans fbi director james comey. >> he wasn't doing a good job, very simply. >> and threatens to leak secret tapes of his conversations with comey. >> he's a showboat. >> with comey out, who will take over the fbi leading the investigation into the trump team's potential collusion with russia? >> were those investigations getting too close to home for the president? >> democratic leader senator chuck schumer joins me in moments. plus, warm welcome. top russian officials pose for private photographs inside the oval office as president trump insists the russia investigation is a witch hunt. >> i'm not under investigation. >> where do things stand