confidence in his attorney general jeff sessions? >> of course he does. >> it's extremely unfair. how do you take a job and then recuse yourself? >> it's one thing to hear about private conversations. it's another thing to throw jeff sessions under the bus in the "new york times." >> he wants mueller to know that he retains the right to get rid of him, too, if he crosses a red line. >> worried about this investigation and what they can find. >> he constantly steps on whatever his message his white house is actually trying to get out there. >> senator john mccain has been diagnosed with brain cancer. >> this is a man who is not going to just sort of throw in the towel. >> there aren't that many giants left in the united states senate. john mccain is a giant. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> we'll get an update on senator mcjane as soon as possible. good morning, welcome to "new day." the presidency is at six months at this point. six months into the trump presidency and this morning there's a new revealing "new york times" interview that sheds

light on his mindset. in a nearly hour-long discussion, the "new york times" reporters sat down with president trump, and he aired his grievances ripping the russia probe and breaking with attorney general jeff sessions. >> for one, the president clearly is still upset with jeff sessions, specifically his decision to recuse himself from the russian probe. the president saying he regrets appointing sessions as attorney general. the president also taking aim at a favored target, fired fbi director james comey. you're going to hear about how he thinks comey may have been trying to get leverage against him, and he made a very bold statement about the special counsel and something that's going to raise a lot of concerns going forward. cnn political analyst and "new york times" white house correspondent maggie haberman was in the oval office to conduct the interview yesterday. she joins us now. you were joined with two of your colleagues. maggie, just as important as the substance is the style and the setting. what did you find when you

walked into the oval office? how was the president and how did that translate into his posture in the interview? >> contrary to the last time i was in the oval office for an interview where there was sort of a garage band full of aides sitting around. this was just hope hicks who has been with the president since the beginning of the 2016 campaign and then me, peter baker, my colleague and michael schmidt, another colleague. the president was in a very good and chatty mood, you know. a couple of times people tried pulling the plug on him talking. he wanted to continue talking. this is much how he was on air force week on the way to paris. he likes doing these kinds of interviews and likes speaking his mind and i think he also believes, and you guys have seen this before, that nobody defends him or represents him as well as he does himself and when he has things on his mind he wants to talk about them. this issue with jeff sessions has clearly been eating at him for some time. peter baker and i reported

several weeks ago now that the president basically, you know, remained very frustrated with jeff sessions, that all roads in his mind related to the russia probes lead back to the moment when jeff -- under the current presidency, lead back to the moment when jeff sessions recused himself from anything russia-related after he had botched his answers, and it was disclose that had he had done that in his senate confirmation about his own contacts with the russian ambassador. the president is very frustrated and the president i think is not going to directly fire jeff sessions for a number of reasons, not the least of which, though i think he might not always be so swayed by this, but not the least of which that rod rosenstein who appointed the special counsel that is now looking in all of these issues would then become the acting attorney general, so there are a lot of complicated issues here. but the president other than at those moments when he was talking about russia was in a very, very good mood. >> okay. let's dive into what i think is certainly one of the headlines and that is what you're referring to with the jeff

sessions opinion of the attorney general now, how the president feels, so let's listen to him in his own words. >> sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job, and i would have picked somebody else. >> he gave you no heads up. >> zero. so jeff sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. i then have -- which frankly i think is very unfair to the president. how do you take a job and then recuse yourself? if he would have recused himself before the job, i would have said, thanks, jeff, but i'm not going to take you. >> the logic there, it doesn't work, by the way. >> the time line is that you would recuse yourself before you take the job. >> he didn't know -- he obviously didn't know how jeff sessions -- he didn't know how

he was going to answer those questions because if he had thought it through before he probably wouldn't have botched, as you say, those questions, but regardless of the logic, the president's emotions are where they are, he's gone south on jeff sessions. >> and he's been going south for quite some time. i mean, if you remember, it's funny, a lot of what happens with this president, especially with the things that he does that become self-inflicted wounds, a lot of them are chain reactions, right? i mean, there's just sort of one event that plays off of another. remember the weekend when he first sent out that tweet about president obama tapping trump tower, wiretapping trump tower. the day before the president had been fuming at aides in oval office right before he departed for mar-a-lago, and the focus of his ire really was that jeff sessions had recused himself a day earlier from the russian probe with no heads up to the president so there's often a pretty clear creation story on a lot of this sufficient with the

president and that's one in this case. >> and you also asked him, at least he volunteered, information about james comey and we know this story when he was the fbi director, he pulled president trump aside and shared with him or maybe it was even during the transition when he was president-elect, shared with him that there was this dossier that exited out there of salacious details but uncorroborated details. >> some things have been corroborated in the dossier, some have not. >> fair. >> so he felt that president-elect trump should know about it. here president trump tells you what he thinks when he, james comb de, brought it, the dossier, to me, i said this is really made-up junk. i didn't think about it. i just thought about, map, this is such a phony deal. so anyway, in my opinion he shared it so that i would think he had it out there. your reporter asks as leverage? mr. trump says, yeah, i think so. in retrospect. tell us about that moment.

>> it was pretty breathtaking. he has said a number of things about james comey since he fired hi. remember that he, you know, essentially was said by people who had spoken with him to describe james comey as having something wrong with him but this was a whole new wrinkle where he essentially appeared to be saying that comey wanted to let the president know that he had something on him, whether real or not, whether it was substantiated and the president said that it wasn't, but in the interest of keeping his own job he wanted to suggest and sort of dangle out there this potentially damaging document. >> look, often, i interpret the president's words, and i -- and i understate them because i think that he speaks in the moment sometimes. >> you should. i think that's wise, and stick as closely to what he says as possible without interpretation. >> but there was something in this interview that i think is a really big deal. i think it was portentious and it points at the direction of

what is to come that should be troubling the people. let me play this piece of sound about the special counsel and what happens if the special counsel investigates certain things. >> mueller is looking at your finances and your family's finances unrelated to russia. is that a red line? >> would that be a breach of what his actual authority is? >> i would say yes. >> now, here's why this is troubling, at least to me. maybe it's just the legal mind part of it. but if he were to move on mueller and, of course, it's a constipated process, have to go through the a.g., and that would be rosenstein, and he could get there if he wanted to. that would be a political nightmare and the fact that the his mind is even looking at that possibility shows what his fundamental issue is with this entire investigation. he can't get himself out of crosshairs, maggie. every time he hears russia investigation he thinks about himself and that has to be the motivation for even considering a move on mueller because if

mueller looks at his finances and if the president is right that there's nothing there, that's the best validation he could get, but if he were to move on mirl, maggie, that would be huge. >> something that david chalian said in the earlier hour about the fact that this president has been pretty resent it since mueller was appoint that had he wants to leave that option open of getting rid of him had. i think that's correct. i agree would you it's been explosive and that has been relayed to the president by some of his aides and some of his counsel. that said, this is a president, as you know, that likes to keep options on the table. he tends to view everything as a deal. the motivations that we might ascribe to people as to why they would do this, and it -- certainly there is an issue with appearances when something like this arises, i'm not sure exactly what is in his headaged, again, to be clear, when we asked him repeatedly is this going to be something where you would fire him, where you would remove him? he wouldn't say.

he was very careful not to say. >> meg, stay with us, if you would. we want to bring in the rest of our political panel. we have cnn political commentator david chalian and david gregory, cnn political director. what do you think of maggie's interview? >> off the tons, the president who spends so much time trying to discredit the news media to convince his supporters not to believe outlets like the "new york times," in the end cannot quit maggie haberman and that's just the bottom line. >> there were three of us. >> he wants legitimacy and he knows you have to go to maggie and her colleagues that are really the journalists of record on this trump presidency. it's illuminating about what he thinks about and what he cares about. the other thing that strikes me is, look, the president has been determined to undermine the independence of the justice department, to undermine the independence of the phone and now the special counsel. he's threatening the special counsel in terms of the breadth

of his investigation. he's upset that the attorney general saw a duty to the country to recuse himself rather than just being loyal to the president. that's actually what the attorney general should do, and apparently the president sun aware that a lot of this problem that he maces is because, oh, wait for it, oh, yeah, he fired the guy who was investigating him at the fbi which was -- and the way he did it and the things he said was why he was the special counsel in all of this. in all of this he may have an effective strategy because the president's given russia a pass. republicans seem to be giving him, the president, a parks and he's going to -- he's just going to keep on doing it without a real feeling and -- and duty to the larger presidency and everything that's at work here. >> just to add to david's point. >> please, david. >> it's also interesting in the interview to seem -- it seems that the president is so consumed by the investigation and the russia investigation that he doesn't think about all

the other things that jeff sessions is not recused from as his attorney general, big-ticket items whether it's immigration or investigate, all the other things that donald trump wants to accomplish that jeff sessions is fully on board with, but he -- it seems to me that he thinks jeff sessions made himself completely inoperable by recusing on the russia investigation causing this cascading of events, that everything else doesn't matter, and i find that mass nating to me it shows us the insight into trump's mind that the entire justice department would be him and the russia investigation. >> he would not be wrong if the president were working on an assumption that the russia investigation is the biggest thing he has to worry about. >> certainly. >> i can see why he would be focused on jeff sessions looking at him through this lens, but there was something else in the interview that proves that this isn't a fishing expedition, this isn't just a speculation exercise when it comes to

mueller. he took time to maggie, schmidt and baker to talk about this specter of conflicts that guys don't even know about, and he was using mueller's name when he was doing it, maggie, when he was talking about bob mueller, he brought up this suggestion of conflicts about this guy. >> but that he's not going to talk about or mention right now. >> he did say he was sitting right in that chair. >> pointing to me. >> and mueller was there and he wanted the fbi job and we were here talking to him. they called mueller in. he didn't call them and say i want the job but that's beside the job. he took the meeting and let say the president is right. this specter of conflicts, meg, why do you think the president was talking about this open-ended vague suggestion of something that would be a besmirchment of mueller? >> i think it's something they have been looking at for some time. this issue of mueller coming in to interview for the fbi job is something if you recall chris rid, who has known the president for many, many years, was in the white house a couple of weeks

ago, and he later went on a tv show and said they were seriously looking at firing mueller. one of the things that came up that day in my reporting is that the white house and people in the west wing wanted it known that mule her been in for this interview. the president had not said it himself, but i think that, look, they -- this white house, this president have often looked at people who they very at adversaries and look at ways to pick apart their standing and this is completely in keeping with that and i don't know what he's talking about in conflicts beyond their sentiment for mueller coming in to interview that job, for interim fbi director was a conflict. >> david gregory, what do you think it means? >> look, the president as i said before, has been determined and has used a great deal of political capital to discredit anyone associated with this process, with jim comb defor leaking that material, which ultimately triggered the special counsel which is a fair criticism on the part of the

president by raising questions about mueller. it's all part of what the president does with a great deal of discipline and the way he goes after the news media, to try to reach a narrow band of supporters that simply will not believe what's right in front of him. he don't use any of this capital or discipline to actually get to the bottom what happened with russia trying to get him in the election. he seems to give russia a pass and will focus on all of these things. here's the troubling part. you can agree with the president and find fault with this whole process or this investigation or the media that maybe it's overblown in your mind. the president sees the presidency about him, he doesn't see that he's a cuss stowedian of the presidency, that's the through line in this interview. he doesn't respect the independence of other institutions. he doesn't really protect his supporters early on of a guy like sessions, anything that

triggers his insecurity he lashes out without regards to the consequences. republicans won't call him out. now, they were willing to call him out and face up to him on health care because they thought he was weak. on this they apparently don't think he's as weak and i think that's telling. >> they have made a calculation that it's better to have, you know, someone from their party in there than not, and -- and it is, therefore, ironic that the president has been separating himself from other republicans, but, you know, all of this is speculative in terms of what will the president do and when. we may not have to wait that long, david chalian, there's testimony from paul manafort who is very eager to get in there. he feels he's really been tarred on all of this speculation. wants to get out tlpd and he believes he'd be absolutely cleared, but based on what he says and donald junior says in open testimony, we could see the president act on the heels of

that, could we not? >> no doubt. the president does tend to take action in response to big events like that, especially events that are going to get outsized media attention like those events will. it will be a big week next week. obviously with the manafort and don junior testimony, that meeting which still has a done of questions hanging over the actual content of the meeting, now we know who the players are and the players invite more questions, this is not going to get smaller next week. this will continue to grow and no doubt we'll see how the president responds to it, but we can pretty much guarantee he's going to respond to it. >> the president did suggest in his meeting with senators, people were saying to him everybody would have taken that meeting, and maggie said or one of her colleagues, who, who? a couple of the guys, a couple of the guys. >> can i just make a point. since it's '80s day on o.j.

simpson parole hearing, if you go back and look at the clintons and how they treated the independent counsel. it was a runaway independent counsel in many ways, right, and poem would view it on both sides that way, even if they opposed president clinton, and i think that trump is learning from that and saying, look, he's broken the seal on everything else. i'm going to work this really hard and i'm going to work it differently and work to undermine these guys all the time and wage a campaign against them. >> and it will be instructive to the president. remember how that started. clinton appointed the first counsel and then he got replaced by starr who ended up being a runaway. >> very fascinating interview. panel, thank you. break news right now. senator john mccain has been diagnosed with brain cancer. the will 0-year-old is recovering at home in arizona after having surgery last week to remove a malignant tumor. the senator's doctors at the mayo clinic spoke essex conclusively to cnn's chief

medical correspondent dr. sanjay gupta who reviewed mccain's medical records back in 2008 when the senator was a republican presidential nominee. what do you know today, sanjay? >> reporter: well, we've got a lot more details. obviously i think everyone has heard that he had this operation this past friday, but it was a little unclear exactly what the operation was for or what caused the problem in the first place or how to reconcile that with how he had been acting a over the past several weeks. some of those details now becoming much more clear. senator john mccain is recovering well after an operation last friday to remove a malignant brain tumor known as glioblastoma. with senator mccain's permission i spoke exclusively to two of his mayo clinic doctors about the details of his care. mccain had come in for a scheduled annual physical early friday morning with no complaints except intermittent double vision and fatigue which he attributed to an intense international travel schedule over the last several months. his doctors ordered a cat scan to check for anything from a

possible blood collection to a stroke. upon review of the scan, doctors called mccain who had left the hospital and asked him to immediately return for an mri. the scans revealed a five centimeter blood clot above the senator's left eye which appeared to have been there for up to a week. the decision was made to perform an urgent operation. by 3:00 p.m. mccain was in the operating room undergoing a craniotomy to remove a tumor. doctors made an incision above his left eyebrow to gain access to his skull where they bore a two-centimeter hole to remove the clot and the tumor. a pathology report revealed a primary brain tumor known as glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain cancer, the same type of cancer that beau biden and ted kennedy had. the median survival is 14 survivors but can be ten years or longer. this is not senator mccain's first health care. in 2000 he was diagnosed with

invasive melanoma. >> have having a lot of exposure to the sun when i was a kid and having fair skin. >> doctors removed a tumor from his left temple. when mccain was campaigning for president in 2008 i had a chance to review all of his medical records. details of his health since then have remained private until just now. his doctors at the mayo clinic who have been treating him for several years say it was mccain's gut instinct knowing that something just wasn't right. i'll tell you, you know, this is happening realtime, chris. he's had this diagnosis. the family, senator mccain and his family is having discussions with his doctors about how to proceed. chemotherapy and radiation, going to be a few weeks, has to recover from the operation. he's recovering well. went home the next day after the operation which is fast for anybody. he's 80 years old, keep in mind so he's recovering well but it's going to be some decisions now about how to proceed with his therapy.

my guess is over the next three to four weeks, chris. >> and you're handling it with great sensitive as would be expected, sanjay, and if we know one thing about mccain this man can fight and we will see how he decides to take this battle and we'll follow it very closely. thank you, sanjay. appreciate the reporting. all right. so, president trump just slammed the fired fbi director jim comey. he slammed the attorney general and he gave an none too subtle hint to the special counsel robert mueller, all in the same interview. we're going to get perspective from a man who understands these issues so well, the former secretary of homeland security jeh johnson. what's his take on this interview and the issues facing this country's security?

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all right. this the new "new york times" interview understanding where the president is on big issues, specifically the russian investigation. he's clearly frustrated. he slams his own attorney general jeff suggestions and he says if i knew he was going to recuse himself i wouldn't have picked him and in short it's doesn't investigate me. our next guest testified before

congress last month and he's the former homeland security secretary jeh johnson. thanks for having you with us. couldn't think of a better guest. first of all, your perspective on the comments of the president about the attorney general jeff sessions in this recent interview? >> well, i'm actually going to defend jeff sessions a little bit here. he recused himself because he was involved in the campaign, at least that's why he said he was recusing himself. it was not because of his senate testimony about contacts with russian government officials, and basically jeff sessions had no chase. the aspects of the campaign under investigation so he had to recuse himself and president trump frankly knew going him he could be the attorney general going into the campaign so he brought that risk.

>> you have a different take. this is good to figure out. >> the president then by your analysis would be somewhat justified in his feelings because if the decision to recuse is as you suggest jeff sessions saying i was part of the campaign, not because of the botched answers he gave during his confirmation hearings then the president would be right to be upset at him for not telling him in advance because i'm in the campaign i'm going to recuse myself from any investigation of the campaign. >> the president knew that he was hiring somebody to be the chief law enforcement officer who had been involved in his campaign, and so there's a certain level of risk that you assume by doing that, and -- and so my recollection from the attorney general's statement was that he was going to recuse himself anyway separate and apart from his testimony because he had been involved in the campaign, and so we are where we are, and -- and, look, there are all kinds of ways to express

displeasure with one of your cabinet officers. this was really throwing your own attorney general under the bus which is obviously not good for his morale and when the rest of the cabinet, the rest of the president's administration, people who were involved in this campaign, who believed in his candidacy see what happens to jeff sessions it's obviously not a morale booster for them. >> what do you do? >> this is a none too subtle suggestion. >> it definitely wasn't subtle and that's going to be up to attorney general sessions as to what he does. i don't think i've ever seen a president throw under the bus one of his own cabinet overs so publicly. >> and how about bob mueller, a none too subtle suggestion there also which is if you're looking at me, my finances, my family, i think that oversteps your bounds

and then he said in the interview later on, a lot of conflicts you don't know about, conflicts with mueller. sat right now where you are right now, maggie haberman, wanted a job with the fbi and there's a conflict interest so what do you make if the special counsel investigates the president's finances that goes too far? >> my advice to the president is this. we really do need to get this russia investigation behind us. i'm not one of these people who are rooting for the president to fail. this is the person we hired to fly the airplane for the next three and a half years and we're all the passengers, and there are a lot of problems out there, including, frankly, fixing the aspects of obamacare that are not working right now and so we really do need to get this russia investigation behind us. i have a lot of confidence in bob mueller to go where the facts lead him and to do the right thing and to reach the right conclusions. he's got no stake in this other than reaching the right

conclusions, and he's obviously going to conduct a very thorough investigation and if the president and others are exonerated they are entitled to talk about that but bob mueller is going to reach the right conclusions. i'm sure about that. i've known him for a long time and he's the right man for this job, and it's difficult obviously for the president to the have to endure this investigation day to day where various people close to him are being questioned, but we've just got to get this behind us. it's not going away, and -- and whether it's bob mueller or some other special investigator, it's not going away. >> well, one of the reasons that i was so emphatic in trying to get you to come on the show and you're always welcome. we want our best minds on the issues that matter to come to people so you're always welcome to new "new day" you know what is knowable about the russian meddling and the interference. we know that "time" magazine is now reporting that the administration had a 12 or

15-page document about what should have been done in response, how much of it was carried out. a lot of criticism about the administration for not doing enough. what do people need to know about what russia did and what needs to be addressed? >> well, first, we made public on october 7th what we knew at the time about what the russians were doing. jim clapper and i issued a public statement declassifying the intelligence and informing the american public before the election what we knew what was happening. we knew what was happening and we felt we had to do that. any tough national security decision, somebody is going to say why did you do that and then others are going to say why didn't you do it soon enough? now, after that statement, after the steps we took on january 6th, after i designated election infrastructure to be critical infrastructure. >> what does that mean? >> it means that election infrastructure should be among the most vital infrastructure we

have in this country, and the department of homeland security and other aspects of the u.s. government should prioritize giving them assistance. now it's up to the current administration to follow through on that. as we speak i'm worried that our election infrastructure is as vulnerable now as it was six months ago. we're very preoccupied with the usual washington inquiries about what knew what when and what did you know when you knew it? and we still have a vulnerable critical infrastructure, election infrastructure system that needs to be hardened, and so my hope is that our president and our congress do the things that are necessary to harden the cyber security around our election infrastructure. >> so the real issues there that need to be addressed. there is vulnerability going forward, and it remains in place until we see further actions and we come back to you and we know what this administration is going to do, and you tell us if it's okay rat.

another issue that homeland security is involved in is immigration. that's been put on the back burner but that's going to come back. when it does, what's of paramount importance in your mind? >> i believe that we have to enforce our immigration laws consistent with our values and consistent with humanity. when i was in office and i had the responsibility to enforce our immigration laws will, we arrested and deported lots of people, including, frankly, a lot of desperate men, women and children from central america and i spent hours with these people. a lot of women and children, and at the end of the day when had you enforce immigration laws, you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror, look your own family in the eye, recall the women and children who are desperate to say i did my best to enforce the law consistent with our priorities and consistent with our values, and i hope that the current administration does not lose sight of that. think about the next meeting

you're going to have with the next catholic bishop or priest who is going to implore you to do the right thing, and that's what we're about in this country. we've got to protect our borders. we've got to enforce the law, but we've got to do it in a humane way. illegal migration on our southern border has gone down since this president has been in office basically because through his rhetoric he scared off a lot of women and children in central america who would rather stay in their desperate circumstances or just migrate to mexico and stop there, but these are really desperate women and children, women with babies in their arms who are trying to me the poverty and violence in the countries they left, and so we've got to enforce the law, and we've got to do it a humane matter consistent with our priorities. our priorities in the prior administration were public safety so i told our immigration enforcement personnel to go

after the really bad guys, go after the convicted felons and they did that. they were doing that, so an increasing percentage of those we arrested and detained were convicted felons and that's where i think the focus needs to be with the resources that we have in immigration enforcement. >> we've heard a lot about that in terms of sanctuary cities, what it will mean and how it will manifest if overall policy remains to be seen. jeh johnson, you're a great mind on these. >> chris, good discussion. >> look forward to having you back on "new day. ". >> ailsin'. >> okay, chris. president trump making a lot of news in a "new york times" interview out this morning. the president breaking with attorney general jeff sessions. listen to this. >> sessions gets the job. right after he gets the job he recuses himself. was that hada mistake? >> well, sessions never should have recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he

pick the job and i would have picked somebody else. >> that to discuss and more we have cnn's political commentator david axelrod. good morning, david. >> good morning, alisyn. >> we heard this report before from maggie haberman but not out of his mouth that attorney general sessions should have known before he ever took the job that he was going to recuse himself. >> you know, alisyn, most presidents would mark the six-month anniversary of taking office by looking back at their accomplishments over the last six months. the president instead called reporters in to issue a series of grievances, and the first and most notable grievance was his own attorney general, his own appointee. it was really remarkable. we haven't seen anything like this since watergate, a president essentially at war with his justice department.

he not only dissed sessions who did the right thing by recusing himself to protect the integrity of the justice department but also rosenstein, his deputy, who he suggested was not objective because he came from baltimore and there aren't a lot of republicans in baltimore. well, you know what, there aren't a lot of republicans in manhattan either which is where the president comes from so it was a crazy kind of suggestion, and then, of course, going after comey and mueller. i remember when mueller was appointed a few months ago and so do you and republicans and democrats hailed that appointment because they said he was a man of impeccable integrity so here you have the president of the united states essentially questioning the integrity of his own justice department and by extension the justice system. this is what's so concerning about the president because he seems to have no regard for the institutions of our democracy

and the independence of those institutions. he thinks they should all be subjugated to his needs, his ego and we're not an information of men. we're a nation of laws. that's one of the strengths of this country. he doesn't seem to grasp that. >> you know, we just had jeh johnson on. i don't know if you were able to hear it, certainly a far better mind than mine. >> yeah. >> he sees the situation with sessions differently than i did. i thought it was about the testimony and sessions had to recuse himself after what he said in botching the answers in the testimony. jeh johnson says, no, sessions was always going to recuse himself, that the president knew that and should have known that as a member of his campaign, if that came up he would have to recuse himself. he would have no choice so he puts it on the president and says this isn't about jeff sessions doing you wrong. this is about you doing yourself wrong by picking somebody who you knew had contacts in the cape and you knew there was an ongoing investigation that would touch the campaign, and the suggestion is if you put someone in to stymie the investigation,

are you put in the wrong guy. >> yeah, but the fact is the president doesn't think in those terms and we know that. he doesn't think that any of these things matter. this is a guy who has spent a lifetime essentially flouting laws, norms, pushing laws to the limit. i don't think he believes that the attorney general that he appointed should be doing anything other than serving him and his interests, and so i'm not even sure he went through that thought process. the i think jeh is imposing a sort of rational construct on what doesn't really reflect the way the president thinks. >> david, i wanted to switch gears entirely because, of course, you know and have worked with senator john mccain when you were in the white house. >> yes. >> and this is bad news. this is a very sobering diagnosis of this brain cancer. >> devastating. >> all of us know of john mccain's spirit and his history of being a fighter. what are your thoughts on the

senator this morning? >> well, look, i ran a campaign against john mccain in 2008 and yet i never stopped respecting him, and i did one of my axe files tv show on cnn and just to hear him talk about his experiences in that hanoi hilton as a prisoner of war and when he endured, you know, the fact that he refused to be released ahead of the people who were imprisoned with him and so on and just endured the torture instead, you know, he is an american hero, and he's also one of the last of a breed. he's a giant in the senate, a real strong personality, willing to work across party lines, willing to take political risks on issues like immigration and climate change and others that didn't endear him to his -- hasn't endeared him to his base, and so this is really such sad news, and we, you know,

everybody is relying on that same fighting spirit that allowed him to survive all those years in prison. but it's a tough -- it's a tough fight ahead of him, and we're all thinking of him and his family and all those folks who love him, and it is a -- it's just devastating news. >> yeah. he's so funny. obviously we all know that he's a great storyteller. he would always tell jokes on the campaign trail, sometimes the same joke over and over, and it was still funny because he's -- just he has such a personality. >> he is. >> he's got a wonderful spirit. >> yes, he's 80 years old. yes, he's got a tough battle in front of him. this is not a normal 80-year-old man. >> no. >> and he very much want to be here. he's got a lot of work left to do, and his his family need him and we know that. we witch him well and thanks for the perspective on this and everything that matters. >> all right, guys. have a good day. >> you, too. >> have a update for you on the story out of minnesota. the bride-to-be who called 911

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a couple of important headlines for you. u.s. intelligence indicates north korea may be forging ahead with another missile test.

two administration officials tell cnn an intercontinental ballistic missile or intermediate range missile, a launch could happen sometime within the neck couple of weeks. time is running out for north korea to agree to military talks floated by south korea proposed for tomorrow at the demilitarized zone. >> officials releasing the 911 transcripts from the calls made by a bride-to-be who was shot and killed by police just moments after reporting a possible crime. the transcripts show that the bride-to-be called for help twice, okay? so why were there two calls in the first was to report a possible rape which she felt was going on behind her home. then, eight minutes later she called asking when officers would arrive? two officers got to the scene just minutes later. according to one of those officers, the police officer o

fired, mohamed noor, was startled by a loud sound in the alley and ended up shooting the victim right after. her family is saying they want the investigation to come it a conclusion as soon as possible obviously because they want to take her body home to australia and get closure, but why does this second call matter? it matters because at a minimum it shows that in that period of delay her concern may well have heightened and caused her to take an action, to go outside, to look for herself, to see if the police were there and in so doing it may have created conditions, i'm not saying in terms of -- obviously it's not her fault to get shot, but we now know a little bit more about how she came into the field of vision of the police officer on this situation? now how he responded, what he perceived, where he was, all remains unknown. >> yeah. i mean, i think as we get more information about this, it only gets cloud ier. the questions about why he would fire that shot certainly have not been -- >> that remains the question. what was it about her and in

those circumstances that made him think that was reasonable. >> meanwhile, a heat wave is gripping much of the east coast as a line of strong storms tear through the midwest. cnn meteorologist chad myers has our forecast. how is it looking in. >> hot. it's going to feel like 99 in new york city today. storms rolling through chicago right now. over 300 flights were delayed yesterday. i suspect you're not going to get out of chicago on time this morning, but here's the heat wave right through the central part of the country, right in the northern part of the country. philadelphia will feel like 105, somewhere in that ballpark. it's the day you cannot let pets or kids in cars at all, anywhere across the country. it will be 107, 108 in kansas city for that feels-like temperature. it will be hot all across the midwest. chris, when you were a kid they used to say write on your notebook or yearbook stay cool. i thought i was already cool and i was always a cool guy. it was a temperature thing. stay cool today.

>> i don't know about that, chad everett, you are cool and that map looks hot. that's for sure. >> it does. >> keep us fully informed. so, president trump downplaying his second meeting with vladimir putin. he called it a little more than brief pleasantries, just a few minutes, maybe 15, but was it more than, that not just in terms of duration but in terms of importance? we'll tell you the different factors next. where are we? about to see progressive's new home quote explorer. where you can compare multiple quote options online and choose what's right for you. woah. flo and jamie here to see hqx. flo and jamie request entry. slovakia. triceratops. tapioca. racquetball. staccato. me llamo jamie. pumpernickel. pudding. employee: hey, guys! home quote explorer.

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"the new york times" about his second undisclosed meeting with vladimir putin. well, the second one was undisclosed for ten days. what do world leaders think of the two men's relationship and president trump's leadership? joining us now is the head of the council on foreign relations, richard haas. mr. haas and his new book are featured in a new vice special report, "a world in disarray." it premieres tomorrow at 10:00 p.m. on hbo. great to see you. >> good morning. >> i know you've read with great interest this long, wide-ranging interview that the president just gave to "the new york times." he speaks about domestic things, about international things. what jumped out at you. >> he speaks about napoleon and the role of cold weather in european history. >> they touched on a lot of things.

>> it's actually, if you read it separately, it's almost like a screen play or the text of a broadway play. it is one of the most rambli rambling -- you almost sense that the president finds it's easier to talk to journalists than it does for anybody who works for him. >> one of the things that he did is he added a little bit more meat on the bone of what happened with vladimir putin. so, there was this meeting, a second meeting, that we didn't know about. we in the public or the press. and at a dinner that angela merkel held, and president trump ewe went over and approached vladimir putin and he says that the two men spoke for 15 minutes. pa people -- other reports in the room said it was closer to an hour. here's what he said. i said hello to putin, really pleasantries more than anything else. it was not a long conversation, but it could be, you know, 15 minutes. just talked about things. actually, it was very interesting. we talked about adoption. just your talk on that? >> an awful lot about adoption at this white house. one wonders at times whether adoption has become the new

euphemism for -- look, you know, i've worked at the white house for president bush wit, the fat. 15 minutes, half an hour, that's not a pull-aside, that's a meeting. usually nicety go on 45 seconds, a minute. and the fact that the president would have an extended conversation with any world leader, especially ukraine, syria. it shouldn't happen that way. it should be planned, there should be no takers there. there should be staff there for follow up and so forth. it's too important to lead to that kind of freelancing. >> so how do you explain their relationship? >> i can't. and i think that's one of the mysteriries. look, for more than two years now, mr. trump as candidate and now as candidate as had what i would call a relatively benign or sanguine view of russia's role in the world. the reality is russia's a spoiler. i think mr. putin gets up every morning, essentially looking to oppose us, to counter us. so i can't, geopolitically, give him my business, in the foreign policy business. i can't explain why an american

president would stake out such a positive, relaxed view about what russia is up to in the world. >> the kremlin just put out a statement. their spokesperson says, about this meeting, yes, i can confirm this topic was discussed. i can't say anything else. i assume he's talking about adoption. >> supposedly, that's not going to exactly reassure people. you're not going to want to rely on russian translators or russian readouts. in the earlier meetings, you wanted to have nfc staffers. and it raises real questions about how the administration is conducting their foreign policy meetings, how the meetings are prepared, how there's follow-up. it's just unsettling. again, it would be one thing if it were george bush the father, even richard nixon, but the fact that this is all taking place against the backdrop of the campaign and all the unanswered questions, that's why people are so unsettled. >> how do you define american leadership in the world right now? i know that you think that the u.s. -- there's a void of leadership, but how you seeing that play out? >> i think the president's

raised major questions about it, because leadership, in large part, depends upon applica predictability, on reliability, on allies that have basically staked their security on what it is the united states is going to do for them. they can't have questions about it. deterrence is based, again, on the likelihood that we're going to do certain things, if other things were to happen. but mr. trump has a whole approach, which is fundamentally different. he wants to challenge and question all these things. he wants people to be off guard. he wants to destabilize many things, rather than preserve them. so i actually think he's in some ways the greatest outlier when it comes to american foreign policy of any american president since harry truman. this is a big deal. this is someone who's basically departed from the main themes and main lines of american foreign policy, from free trade to support to allies to opposition to russian. it's the greatest departure since harry truman. >> let's talk about the vice special that you are featured in coming up on hbo tomorrow night. world in disarray, based upon

your book. let's watch a clip of this. >> order has been upended. weak states threaten global stability as easy as strong ones. and america's role in determining the future is far from certain. >> okay, that's basically the premise. the world order has been upended. what causes you to stay awake at night? what's your biggest concern? >> well, just that. there's no alternative to the united states. the world doesn't organize itself by itself. and there's no one who's willing and able to step into our shoes in a stabilizing, reassuring way. and if things go bad out there, they're not going to stay out there. we can't build a giant mote around the united states. if things go bad out there in terms of security tor the economy, they're going to find their way here. we are going to pay an enormous price for the world in disarray. if you're not worried about the direction of history, you ought to be. >> i know in your book, you have some prescriptions for all of that. so again, people can watch this special. it debuts on hbo, friday, 10:00 p.m. richard haas, great to have you here.

>> thanks, allison, than. >> thanks so much for coming in. sessions should have never recused himself. he should have told me and i would have picked somebody else. >> most people would quit their job if their boss did this. >> this is a president who believes that everybody is out to get him. >> we talked about adoption. >> it seems a bit hard to believe that that was really the topic of conversation. >> he is obsessed with russia. >> this is a battle between an outsider and a whole city full of insiders. >> that operation that he had on friday revealed that he has an aggressive type of brain cancer. >> there is nobody who is the kind of fighter that john mccain is. >> this disease has never had a more worthy opponent. this is "new day" with chris cuomo and allison camarata. >> good morning. welcome to your "new day." it is thursday, july 20th, 8:00 in the east. we begin with "the new york times" extraordinary interview with president donald trump.

you really get a sense of where his head is on the issues that matter. the cloud of russia, clearly weighing on his mind at this six-month park of the presidency. the president doing something that we have not heard in recent history. he throws his own attorney general, jeff sessions, under the bus, saying if he had known that sessions was going to recuse himself, which he should have known, he wouldn't have picked him. >> the president also accuses fired fbi director, james comey, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising information in order to keep his job. president trump then goes on to issue a warning to special counsel robert mueller about that investigation and he once again insists that he is not under investigation. now, earlier, we spoke with one of the reporters who conducted this wide-ranging interview. it's our cnn political analyst and "new york times" white house correspondent, maggie haberman. here's a piece.