especially in the southeast. here in georgia, the state has identified up to 50 other small-town hospitals in danger of closing their doors. jim? >> thank you, nick. and thanks for joining us tonight. i'm jim sciutto. "ac 360" starts right now. good evening. if you wore were youed that the president of the united states, the most powerful in the world, might go a morning without lashing out at a morning talk show host, you can rest easy. they accused him of trying to use the power of his office on the national enquirer to get them to back off unflattering coverage of him. they did not present evidence, but say they have phone records and text messages and kept msnbc aware of what was going on at the time. the president claims it was joe scarborough who sought out his help with the national enquirer.

if it sounds something like a president should not be getting involved in, let alone launching tweets about it, plenty lawmakers agree. lawmakers from the president's own party. >> that's a tweet not even becoming of a city councilmen. >> it's underneath the president and it's a distraction. we should be talking about north korea. >> it causes members of the house and senate to talk about something and their focus on something other than what i think is so important in people's lives. >> this is maddeningly frustrating, because this is beneath the dignity of the president of the united states, or it should be, and it's a distraction. >> a distraction from important things, health care legislation, the north korean nuclear threat, the revised travel ban, staffing the state department, how to hand it will russians. just a few of the issues confronting the president. like any president, his time and attention are limited. with all that, he chose to devote some of it to face-lifts,

supermarket tabloids and who called whom. more from our jessica schneider. >> reporter: a new allegation from the msnbc hosts engaged in a war with the white house. me they claimed they were threatened by the white house this spring. >> we got a call that the "national enquirer" is going to run a negative story against you guys. they said if you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story. for people at the very top of the administration calling me. >> reporter: they first lobbed the accusation in "washington post" column friday morning. >> he appears to have a fragile, child-like ego we've seen over and over again. especially with women. he can't take it. >> reporter: this was the story the "national enquirer" ran in

june, accusing the couple of cheating on their spouses. they said the tabloid hounded the stochildren to get the stor. the president has close ties with the national enquirer, which has attacked his political adversa adversaries. president trump and the publisher david pecker are friends and allies. dilan howard issued this statement, in june, we reported a statement that recounted the relationship between joe scarborough and mika. the truth of which is not in dispute. at no time did we threaten joe or mika or their children in connection with our reporting. we have no knowledge of any discussions between the white house and joe and mika about our story and no involvement in those discussions. after the explosive accusation from the couple on air, the president responded, tweeting, watch low-rated morning joe.

fake news. he called me to stop a national enquirer article. i said no. bad show. scarborough called him out. yet another lie, i have texts from your top aides and phone records. i haven't spoken with you in many months. msnbc confirmed that scarborough told nbc news executives about the threats and calls from the white house as they were happening. but the white house is putting out a different spin. an official says it was joe scarborough who called jared kushner about the upcoming national enquirer story. kushner told him to call the president, but there was no indication the president would help kill the story. >> jessica, to your reporting that joe scarborough tweeted he has texts and call logs to prove this, do they plan on releasing them? >> reporter: so far joe scarborough has not released the texts or the call logs that he says proves the white house contacted him multiple times.

in addition, he's not responded to cnn's request for him to detail and expound upon his version of events, and as for nbc, so far today, anderson, they have not issued any official comment. anderson? >> jessica, thanks. more now from the white house. and a very brief press briefing today, joe johns is there for us. so in that off-camera briefing with sarah huckabee sanders, was she asked about -- i'm guessing she must have been asked about the whole dust-up. >> reporter: there was one substantive question on it, a reporter for news max, a conservative website, did ask her if the president had read an article in "new york" magazine alleging that the president had used his connections with the "national enquirer" to aid an attack on brzezinski and scarborough. she said she simply did not know if the president had read that article. by the way, in a pool spray in the oval office today with the

south korean president, i did ask the president more generally a question about what he had any regrets on the tweet involving mika brzezinski. >> kellyanne conway hose spoke out. what did she say? >> reporter: she did. her argument is that attacks on the president like this are counterproductive, because his policies don't get covered, but that sort of ignores the fact that it's the president's own tweets that create the media storm. but listen to part of what she had to say. >> if you go back and you look at what is said about this president, a lack of policy coverage, there are personal attacks about his physicalities, about his fitness for office. he's called a goon, thug, armchair psychologists all over television every day talking about dementia. >> reporter: the significance of all of this is this was a very important day at the white house when the south korean president

was here, and all of the focus could have been on the global challenges that come out of the korean peninsula right now, including north korea. there's also a major health care issue that the country has unresolved. and instead, we spent a couple of days talking about the president's tweets. >> joe johns, thank you very much. the story broke after jeffrey toobin published a profile of the "national enquirer" and the publisher, david pecker, who is close friends with donald trump. the article is titled "the national enquirer's fervor for trump." jeff, we could spend the next two hours talking about your article about the national enquirer, which the timing could not be more kind of amazing. it's fascinating on multiple levels. just explain the relationship between president trump and the publication.

>> david pecker is the chief executive of american media, the parent company of "the national enquirer." and pecker and trump have been very close friends for decades, going back to when pecker ran a sort of a publication for trump called "trump style." and in a very open way, pecker told me when i was reporting my story that he believes "the national enquirer" is going to support trump because trump is a close friend of his, and because he thinks that's what his readers want. >> the fact that it's now merged as a flashpoint between trump and mika brzezinski and joe scarborough, does that surprise you? >> well, everything surprises me, anderson. but it does not surprise me that when "the national enquirer" was

getting ready to write a critical story about someone trump regards as an adversary, trump might be recruited as someone who could slow that down. and that appears to be what at least some people thought was going to happen here. because the trump/pecker alliance is really a really strong one. and among people who follow these things, it's actually pretty well known. >> you were in a meeting at "the national enquirer" where they were discussing stories that happened that week and brought up the idea of reporting on melania trump slapping donald trump's hand away and pecker, who was on a conference call at the time, just said oh, i didn't see that, i didn't see that, and everyone got the message, just keep moving along, this is not a story they're going to run with. >> right. i think all of us who follow the news were quite aware of that viral video where melania trump slapped her husband's hand away.

but at this meeting, david pecker said he wasn't aware of it. he said it twice. and his subordinates got the message that this was not going to be in "the enquirer." that is completely consistent how "the enquirer" has covered trump for the last two years. sit always heroic and bathing him in this glow of success. and similarly, his coverage of trump's rivals, especially hillary clinton, has been totally savage. >> just be clear, based on your reporting, does president trump have the ability to kill a story in "the national enquirer?" in the president's own tweet today responding to this, he did seem to say or imply that he could have gotten it killed but chose not to. >> well, my experience has been

in david pecker killing stories that are possibly damaging to trump. going so far as to pay the playboy playmate of the year from 1998 $150,000 to stay silent about a relationship that she had alleged she had with donald trump. i have not seen evidence of trump acting to create or suppress stories. but given the relationship, it is entirely within the realm of possibility. >> can you go into more detail, david pecker played a playmate to stay silent? >> right. this is a woman named karen macdougal, playboy's playmate of the year in 1998. a little more than a year ago, she was starting to shop a story to tabloids and anyone who might pay her regarding what she says

was an affair she had with donald trump after he was married to melania. now, let me emphasize that i don't know if any such affair took place. but what david pecker did was he required macdougal as a columnist for his fitness magazines. he also runs fitness magazines and he paid her $150,000 on the condition that she say nothing about any relationship she may have had with donald trump. and i said -- and i said to pecker when i interviewed with him, you know, why did you do that? and he said because trump is a personal friend of mine. and i think that tells you much of what you need to know about pecker's agenda for his publications, which is to help trump by running positive stories, and if possible, as with the macdougal matter,

suppressing those stories that might be damaging to him. >> jeff toobin, fascinating piece. thanks so much. just ahead, we'll be joined by the panel, including a presidential historian. and later, what we're learning about how he doctored and tried to turn this place into a killing ground. that's ahead on "360."

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the idea that a president could be annoyed with a member of the press is not new, nor even is it novel if presidents have axes to grind or obsessions with people. that said, what happens when all those things seem to come together in a vortex that sucks all the oxygen out of public life, and what happens instead of reigning it in, the president's spokes people blame the press for reporting on it. >> it doesn't help the american people to have the president covered in this light. >> joined now by my panel. maggie, we were on last night talking about the misogyny of the tweet of mika brzezinski with alleged bleeding about face-lifts. it gets weirder today. >> there are a bunch of different threads coming together and you need to pick

them apart. "the national enquirer" issue where joe scarborough and mika brzezinski claim that the white house threatened them with publication of a story unless they gave them more favorable kompbl a coverage, this is the downside to the white house constantly saying things that are not true, that they don't get the benefit of the doubt, because nothing has been shown to prove this. but it does shed some light on how this president, because of his history in business, he had a pen chant for sort of back room avs. he was said to use private investigators. he had all kinds of different ties in new york city and news outlets. so that's one window. i do think that we are at the point now where i think that the swe tweet, what the president did in that tweet was condemnable and

not presidential, but i also think that everyone has a habit with trump in particular of, a, trying to act as if he's not been this way the whole time. this is nothing different than we've seen. i remember in november of 2015 when he mocked my colleague, appeared to do it physically over a movement restriction that serge was born with. i saw that video aired on "morning joe," and i don't think that joe scarborough knew there was a physical impairment, but joe scarborough was laughing at that video of trump mocking somebody. so everybody finds this funny until it's aimed at them. that is a bit of a problem here. >> kirsten, the other question is, if this happened months ago, just from a journalistic standpoint, if they felt they were being blackmailed, should they have mentioned it at the time? and they allegedly were informing msnbc people, but what

was the decision process in not talking about that alleged pressure from the white house? >> well, i mean, i think in their defense, it would have been a little awkward because of the content of what the story was going to be about. it was about their relationship. so i'm not sure how they would have disclosed that without raising all sorts of questions about their relationship at that time. so i don't know that you're obligated necessarily to disclose every single thing that happens. in this case, i could understand why they might be uncomfortable. i think the person who has behaved badly here is the president. if this is true, the idea that you would be trying to extort good coverage out of people by threatening, you know, a story about their personal lives is reprehensible. >> jason, it does seem like the president, in his tweet today, responding to this did seem to acknowledge that he has some leverage to get a story pulled from "the national enquirer," because he tweeted out about joe scarborough, he called me to stop a "national enquirer"

article and said no. which implied he could have said yes and stopped it. >> my enter printerpretation ise scarborough was reaching out and trying to contact the president. i have no idea about that. i worked for the president for six or serve months and never once was there an indication that the president or anyone surrounding him on his team had any influence with this organization. >> you don't think the president has any influence with his old friend david pecker, who has run very favorable stories and negative stories about other republicans running against him? >> i never got that sense and i was never given any direct inference or anything to make me think that was at all the case. >> so when he was running stories about ted cruz, about carson, about even i think katrina pierson, women who were

involved with campaigns of other republicans, "the national enquirer" was running stories about them, you didn't hear any negative stories about donald trump. does that seem like a coincidence? >> i can't speak for them. but the point i was talking to is the fact that i never saw or was -- got any sense that there was any influence there. yesterday, i made the comment when i was on tv and we were talking about the tweet storm that started up here, and i said that mika missed an opportunity to take a high road. i would also say to the president today, there was a real opportunity for him to take the high road and let this go. i think we've seen the back and forth now for two days. i don't think it's been productive. i think that most americans are just glad that it's the fourth of july weekend or the weekend leading into the fourth of july. frankly, i think it's absurd that we're spending so much time talking about this. but i understand this is where it is when we have such high

profile and high spirited folks. but i think this is the time where we need to let this go and start moving ahead talking about the agenda and other things. >> tim, you used to run the nixon library. nixon certainly had an enemy's list, obviously felt attacked by the press constantly, so did his vice president. how do you see all this, given your experience? >> well, every president is exasperated with the press. but few presidents grow to hate the press. and what we see with donald trump is that he's putting his hatred of the press and making it public. richard nixon fumed about the press all the time. john f. kennedy fumed about the press, though he didn't hate them. but he didn't like them all the time. nixon acted on his hatred, he used the fbi to try to humiliate members of the press. he had some of them wire happen -- wiretapped.

donald trump is poisoning the atmosphere between the presidency and the press in a way that richard nixon did it behind the scenes, donald trump does it in front of everyone and gleefully. that's the difference. there's a shamelessness to the behavior. to suggest that he believes he's bigger than the job. most presidents recognize the job is bigger than them. that they're carrying a burden that is historic and important. one gets the sense with him that his id is so strong, he can do what he wants. >> we've got to take a quick break. we'll be right back.

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we're now into the allegations being made by joe scarborough and mika brzezinski about the president and "the national enquirer." they addressed on their morning show today. here's the aldwalegation they m. >> we got a call that hey, "the national enquirer" is going to run a negative story about you guys. if you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone

and basically spike the story. three people at the very top of the administration calling me. >> shortly after that, president trump called it fake news in a tweak. he said that scarborough called me to stop an article, i said no. just the idea of a president, again, we don't know if -- whose version is correct, but the president's tweet, he does seem to acknowledge he called me to stop an article, i said no. if he said yes, would the article have been stopped? would the president using a tabloid like "the national enquirer," the reach is pretty incredible. >> we are living in extraordinary times. during the campaign when "the national enquirer" ran a story that seemed to insinuate that ted cruz's father was linked to the kennedy assassination, ted

cruz said this is david pecker doing something for his friend, donald trump. donald trump is now in the white house. we have a president who is very used to a certain kind of media coverage. this comes from the realm that he was part of. he sees everything in terms of good/bad. it is all transactional. he does not look at anything as an objective piece of news. so when he felt like he was getting quote unquote nice treatment from "morning joe," he was fine with them. they have been very personable with their criticism, particularly of kellyanne conway, but then the president got upset. so you see this sliding scale with him, where it is of concern the idea that, first of all, that the president could exert that kind of influence with what is supposed to be a news outlet is disconcerting. but it also goes to his penchntt that he had a history of hiring private investigators in new

york city or looking at the back room aspect of things. that becomes a very concerning thing when you talk about somebody who has the power of the federal government at their did posal. >> tim, to you, it's about judgment. >> yes. this morning i looked back to see what ronald reagan was doing june 30th, 1981. in the morning he was having breakfast with nancy reagan, and then a full day. the idea that ronald reagan would be watching television to note what people were saying about him so he could make an immediate attack sun heais unhe. what happened this morning, i didn't expect president trump to apologize. but he doubled down. after republicans had criticized him, he decided that he didn't care about the tweet storm that he had created. and so that raises questions about his judgment. he forgot that what was most important was the credibility of his word as president of the

united states. a credibility that is important not just at home, but with north korea, for example right now. and he didn't care. what he wanted to do was to keep playing the small bore game with people who were on msnbc, and he forgot about the larger purposes of his administration. >> jason, you talked earlier about it's time to move on. you wish the president hadn't responded in this way. but it's harder, because on the one hand, the white house keeps staying how great the president's tweets are, that it's a way to directly connect with people to bypass the media, which they clearly don't like. and then when we actually do report on what the president is tweeting about, then they say oh, you shouldn't pay attention to his tweets. >> well, i think it's important to keep in mind the context with his tweeting. if you look at his tweets for the month of june, less than 20% of them had anything to do with criticizing the media or going after the media. so most of the -- the vast majority of the president's tweets are specific to policy

items or initiatives that he wants to push ahead. >> there's also things hike "make america great again." it's not all substance. it's not like as if every one is a policy issue. >> they don't have to all be talking about h.r. 1922, the legislation going through. they don't have to be that specific every time. but i think there's a misperception out there what the percentage of tweets the president is criticizing the media. the fact that he has the ability to chat with folks directly is central to his brand and makes a lot of who he is. people like the fact that he's not controlled by a bunch of suits and people in d.c. who are trying to guide him in one direction. does that mean that trump supporters agree with or endorse every single tweet that he does? no, not at all. but i do think that his ability to communicate with people is part of what makes him unique

and unlike anything we've ever seen. and that's a good thing. >> kirsten, is it hypocritical for the white house to say these tweets are great and it's a great communication, yet you shouldn't report on them? >> of course we have to report on them. i mean, they are straight out of the horse's mouth. this idea also that reporters want him to stop tweeting, it's absurd. people like having access to what he's thinking about. but some of the tweets cross the line. jason, you just said less than 20% are about the press. so i'm going to say it's around 20%. that's pretty high, to be tweeting about reporters, to be tweeting about people covering you. i think anything above 1% is probably a little too high for the 39 of the united states. and the personal way he makes these attacks against individual reporters, and then also news organizations that he's obsessed with, you know, it does seem like somebody who is unable to

handle criticism. everything he's complaining about is not a personal attack. he's just complaining about bad coverage. you have to understand -- the problem is, i don't understand, and i don't think anybody understands why he cares so much. most presidents don't like the media. they find them nuisance, but they're not obsessed with them to the point that they would try to extort someone to get good coverage. >> jason? >> and i would say this is where we'll have to agree to disagree when we talk about the president pushing back. i personally like the fact when the president is pushing back on erroneous news reports or biased coverage, and a lot of time trump supporters do. that's something where supporter see his pushback and like it. i don't think that most of us as trump supporters see it as too much and we're going to have to agree to disagree with that. when we come back, is

president trump undermining his gop leaders to make an attempt on health care by tweeting he's considering just repealing obamacare and figuring out the rest later. and a shooting at a new york city hospital leaving multiple people wounded. the latest on what we know when we come back. how if guests book direct ater, choicehotels.com and stay twice they'll get a $50 gift card? summertime. badda book. badda boom. got you a shirt! ...i kept the receipt... book now at choicehotels.com

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breaking news tonight from the bronx here in new york, where a doctor went on a shooting rampage at a hospital, killing one person, wounding six others before killing himself. he had previously worked at the hospital according to law enforcement officials. so what is the latest how all this happened? >> reporter: anderson, it's incredible. almost six hours after the sound of gunfire echoed through the halls, this facility is open again, taking those patients after what investigators describe as a disgruntled former emmoployee at this hospital, arrived here, went to the 16th

and 17th floors and opened fire. this individual used to practice medicine here before he came here and shot and wounded several people, before turning the gun on himself. practiced medicine here between 2014 and 2015 before he resigned under unknown circumstances. after being here this afternoon, it was a fairly chaotic scene. i saw at least one patient still in his hospital gown fleeing the area. i spoke to one family who was here trying to get their newborn after a followup visit, followed by a happy reunion there. but as one doctor put it for me, anderson, this is a place usually of peace, a place people come for shelter or treatment, that turned into how he described it, as a war zone. >> there was a woman that was killed. do we know much about her? >> reporter: all we know is she practiced family medicine at this facility. six people are still at this

point wounded. five of those are doctors. most of them are young medical students. people just starting their medical career. and then the sixth individual we're told, the only patient who was zwrinjured was shot in the . that patient is expected to pull through. so that is the focus right now, on this hospital community that came together amid the chaos to save people's lives. there was one incredible story, a wounded doctor that was put into an elevator, and the staff upstairs, as the active gunfire was still happening, they pushed the elevator button and sent that doctor down for treatment. that is the focus now, not on what appears to be a disgruntled employee here at bronx-lebanon hospital. so prayer is what this hospital community is asking for. >> thank you very much. after gop leaders spent the

week on health care, president trump said if republican senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately repeal and then replace at a later date. now, for the record, president trump has said over and over that the repeal and replace would happen at almost the same time. a promise he repeated on the campaign trail. >> we're going do it simultaneously. we're not going to have a two-day period or a two-year period where there's nothing. it will be repealed and replaced. repeal it and replace it. repeal and replace. repeal and replace. repeal it, replace it, get something great. it will be repiece aeal and rep essentially simultaneously. it will most likely be the same day or same week. could be the same hour. so we're going to do repeal and replace. >> ryan nobles joins us from capitol hill. how did the president go from repeal and replace, to repeal

and replace at a later date? >> reporter: an about face for this president, as you illustrate there. this idea was hatched by senator ben brass, as republicans are trying to come one that teal that would repeal and replace simultaneously. he encouraged the republicans in the senate to repeal now and replace later. this tweeted about it this morning, and sass talked about it this morning. but it's important to point out, even though the president has 234r0 floated this out there, not too many senators are buying it. >> do we know what kind of a timeline they would be looking at for this idea of repealing and replacing later? >> reporter: that's a key part. ben sass' idea would be to pass

the repeal immediately and set a one-year deadline for the congress to come one a replacement plan. almost forcing them into a portion where they would have to come up with something. this is something republicans had an opportunity to do sortly after they took office and they rejected that proposal. so it's just complicating their efforts to come together and come up with a repeal and replacement to do immediately. >> thank you very much. coming up, just how much tv does the president watch every day? you might be surprised to find out and how it reflects his focus on his own image. that's next. and give proven protection against fading and aging. he won't use those copycat wipes. hi...doing anything later? ooh, the quiet type. i like that. armor all original protectant. it's easy to look good. ♪ the sun'll come out for people with heart failure, tomorrow is not a given. but entresto is a medicine that helps make more tomorrows possible.

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we find ourselves here at the end of the week is with the president of the united states in a fight with two cable news hosts. it's surreal you could say,

strange, just the latest symptom of a largest issue, the president's concern of his image and what people are saying about it. it predates his time at the white house, and despite the pressures of the job as president, his eagerness to watch what people are saying about him on television has lessened at aul eed at all. randi kaye has more. >> reporter: you could say president donald trump is always plugged in. tv comes first in the morning, notably fox and friends, and one of the last things he does before bed. >> i watched this morning a couple of the networks, and "fox and friends" in the morning, they're very honorable people. >> reporter: trump loves seeing himself on tv, too. he's been known to shush others so he could hear taped interviews of what he did and what's being said about him on tv. it's a television obsession like no other president before him. nurtured by his own experience in television, as a reality tv

star on "the apprentice." >> we've they have had a team lose so badly. you're all fired. all four are fired. >> reporter: it's a useful tool for him, too. early on during the campaign, he turned to tv to brush up on the military. >> who do you talk to for military advice right now sp >> well, i watch the shows. i see a lot of great, you know, when you watch your show and all of the other shows and you have the generals. >> reporter: according to "the washington post," the president is known to hate watch, tuning in to networks and shows that are anything but complementary of him. >> every network you see hits me on every topic, made up stories like russia. >> reporter: the president watches so much tv, reportedly hours a day, that some members of congress have started using it to get his attention. >> i know you're watching. >> reporter: representative cummings appealed to the president on "morning joe."

a day or so later, "the washington post" reports trump called cummings to talk about prescription drugs. donald trump comes to the white house with a sophisticated understanding of how the power of television, the power of imagery, the power of message all work together. randi kaye, cnn, new york. >> joining the conversation is join stelter and michael dantonio. do you have a sense how many hours a day he watches? you mentioned last night he has an enormous tv in a room right next to the oval office. >> in the dining room. i don't want to put a hard number on it but that five-hour number in aggregate doesn't sound wildly off. you look at his tweets and the time he's clearly watching television. >> he also tivos stuff. >> he records it and plays it back later. there was an issue around the comey where a staff member was trying to get him to not watch it if in real time. then they were concerned if he

tivo'd it, it would be even worse. his staff is projecting out a lot of what he is seeing and feeling. what happens when people get very close to this president in his circle is they start to just take on certainly some of his characteristics but his sense of grievance. and that's what's happening here. i don't think -- i can't think of another president who has watched this much tv himself. i think we've had presidents whose staff members have watched tv. certainly president obama's team was attuned to the morning shows. but this is a different level of it, and it is it is true that if he comes into office with the knowledge "the apprentice" did help get him elected. the number of people i spoke to in iowa before the caucuses who would talk about him in huge, grand terms as if he was one of the great business leaders in history. and it was really the image of him in the show. that was real for him. >> brian, it's interesting because he mentions nbc and cbs and abc but it's really cable news that seems to be the focus

of much of his attention whether it's "fox and friends," "morning joe," cnn, that seems to be what he's watching mostly. >> it's true. it's reflective of broader media trends. he cares deeply. he loves a lot of what he sees as long as it's positive. we know that from "fox and friends" to "hannity" at night. he is tuning in like an average american. average american watches 4.5 a day. the average american his age watches seven or eight hours a day. it is a relatable quality. that's one thing he has going for him. his fans, his base, they're watching right along with him, and there is something that's connective about that. >> to it a point except he's now the president. if everything is a permanent campaign and that is certainly true and that is what his supporters will say regular people understand that and i do think that is part of why he won. he does have other things to do,

and there is this strange quality where the white house keeps yelling at reporters for covering the tweets. why are you covering this? well, he's saying it. >> most people are not watching stuff about themselves for hours. the effect of that is hard to fathom watching stuff only about yourself, and that's why he's tuning in. michael, it's well known he's always been extraordinarily interested in any coverage of him is self to even the point where according to reports he would pretend to be like a pr person for himself and call up reporters, you know, and pretend to give leaks about himself. >> well, what you just mentioned, anderson, about the fact that he's looking at himself in the morning is very true. i think it's almost as if he's dwazing in the mirror when he examines what's going on on television, and that's an extraordinary thing, but it is a

habit that he's had for his entire life. prior to the advent of high capacity video recording at home he would have videotapes at hand for him to review. he would review the daily press clippings. now this goes back to the 1970s and '80s. so this habit is very well ingrained. the other thing that i think is really fascinating about mr. trump is that he's really a child of television. he was born in the late 1940s, grew up with tv. i think even more than twitter this is his medium and so he pays close attention. he believes he can master it, and in many ways he has. >> there's a reason other presidents have avoided watching or reading endless stuff about themselves. the affect it has on a person is hard to measure. >> i thought about it this week in light of the mika and joe

story. what's it like to turn on the television and hear all the time he's the biggest loser? i'm borrowing a different show other than "the apprentice." he's hearing low poll ratings, a country that does not seem to support him except for the 38% to 40% that's been studied, that continues to support him. in some ways he's coming across like this loser on a reality tv show. you could make the case, of course, he's a huge winner and he won the country's affection. i do wonder what that's like psych l psychologically every day, every night to hear all had this bad news about yourself. >> thanks. coming up at 10:00 p.m. eastern here on cnn a special report called "the pulse of orlando -- terror at a nightclub." 44 people were murdered in the deadly mass shooting in u.s. history. what was supposed to be a fun night on the town turned into it terror. we went back to the pulse nightclub. i spoke to the owner. here's a preview.

♪ all these walls were blown out? >> yes, they were all blown out. >> so this is where s.w.a.t. teams entered? >> mm-hmm, yes. this is where they entered. this is my first time back here, too. >> it is? >> mm-hmm, yep. >> to see this up close is very -- >> powerful. >> our special report "the pulse of orlando: terror at the nightclub" airs after 360. the controversy surrounding the president from washington to his weekend getaway in new jersey. we'll get late details on the flap over his feud with two cable news anchors. 'saved money on motorcycle insurance with geico! goin' up the country. love mom and dad'

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the president arrived tonight in new jersey for a holiday weekend at his golf club in bed minister having provided the fireworks in washington. his feud with msnbc's joe scarborough and mika brzezinski and rage over their criticism of him lit the capital sky and sparked condemnation from republicans about what a d distraction it's been from the agenda. for more on next, sara murray is traveling with the