that's all the time we have for tonight. thank you very much for watching 360. i'll see you again tomorrow night at 8:00. a special edition of "the lead" with jake tapper starts now. have a good night. so how did the first day of the white house's american dream week go? "the lead" starts right now. president trump says there is no chaos in his white house right before more chaos erupts. anthony scaramucci is out before he even started officially, the white house communications director. what in the blank blank happened? a bombshell was the initial leading response to the russians. white house officials pumped by an e-mail prankster. do the e-mails expose a much bigger security risk that could eventually impact you?

good evening, everyone. welcome to this special edition of "the lead." i'm jake tapper. we begin tonight with breaking news in the politics lead, and just like that, poof, he was gone. anthony scaramucci doing his best kaiser impression before he could even begin in his role. a week and change before walking into the west wing. moments after general john kelly was sworn in as the white house chief of staff, and sources tell us scaramucci offered to resign. but sources tell us general kelly wanted him out and scaramucci was escorted out of the white house. the retired attorney general thought scaramucci undisciplined and without credibility after his profanity-laced tirade. since fired after an interview with the new yorker magazine on thursday. this is what the white house had to say about why he was ousted. >> the president certainly felt that anthony's comments were

inappropriate for a person in that position, and he didn't want to burden general kelly also with that line of succession. as i think we've made clear a few times. >> so president trump thought that some vulgar comments were inappropriate. >> grab him by the [ bleep ]. >> this evening a senior administration official told me that even before general kelly made his move this morning, president trump had soured on scaramucci. the president loved him as a fighter in the first few days of his tenure, i'm told, but the president came to dislike how the son of long island in the president's view portrayed their relationship as closer than it was. the president didn't like how scaramucci loved the limelight, i'm told. after the new yorker interview, the president was fielding calls all weekend from friends and advisers recommending that scaramucci did the fandango out

the door. the president was happy when kelly told him what he wanted to do, sources said, since that's what the president wanted to do as well. that brings to "the lead's" favorite installment of a game called, "is there a tweet for that?" is there a tweet in which the president criticizes a rival for something the president just did. the answer is yes. wow was ted cruz disloyal to his very capable director of communication. he used him as a scapegoat -- fired like a dog. ted panicked. it is certainly not the first high-pro fill exfile exit from e house. in fact, on friday murdoch showed the president as survivor

with two more ousted from the white house. jim, showing scaramucci was high on the to-do list for kellyanne conley as the newly minted chief of staff, apparently. >> he was essentially given the big kiss-off by this white house, apparently part of another white house shake-up, something that has become a regular occurrence here, but this time orchestrated by staffer john kelly who wanted more order in a disorderly white house. >> we just swore in john kelly. he will do a spectacular job, i have no doubt. >> reporter: white house chaos found itself spinning around in another round of staff turmoil. moments after the president welcomed general kelly to the

white house, his communications director was suddenly out the door. >> john kelly has the right to operate within the white house and all staff will report to him. >> reporter: just days after the man nicknamed the mooch approwa welcomed to the staff. >> his attitude is if anthony is coming in, let's clear the slate for anthony. i appreciate that with sean and i love him for it. i don't have any friction with sean, i don't have any friction with reince. >> reporter: he made a profanity-laced rant to the new yorker, suggesting he might be the source of white house leaks. >> as you know from the italian expression, the fish stinks from the head down. but i can tell you two fish tho don't stink, okay, and that's me and the president. >> reporter: the white house said the president was bothered by scaramucci's comments.

>> the president certainly felt that anthony's comments were inappropriate for a person in that position. and he didn't want to burden general kelly also with that line of succession. >> reporter: the white house said in a statement mr. scaramucci felt it was best to give the chief of staff a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. but sources tell us john kelly had lost confidence in scaramucci. it was a meeting to bring order to a staff in turmoil. >> you look at the border, you look at the tremendous results we've had and you look at the spirit. and with a very controversial situation, there's been very little controversy, which is pretty amazing by itself. so i want to congratulate you on having done a fantastic job, general, and we look forward to, if it's possible, an even better job as chief of staff. >> reporter: but earlier in the

day, the president took to twitter to insist all was well, touting the nation's stock market and unemployment rate before insisting no white house chaos, a message echoed by press secretary sarah huckabee sanders. >> if you want to see chaos, come to my house with three preschoolers. this doesn't hold a candle to that. >> reporter: the new chief of staff will find rival factions still in place. even with scaramucci gone, there are still sharp elbows being thrown by steve bannon, kellyanne conway and even the president's family all competing for the president's attention. ivanka trump held john kelly as a true american hero. kelly was able to observe another source of white house tension, the damaged relationship with attorney jeff sessions who has gone from being publicly trashed by the president last week to sitting across the room silently today. >> the president apparently had more problems with scaramucci than just what we've heard. i spoke to a source close to the president earlier today who said

the president simply did not like anthony scaramucci getting more publicity than he was getting. jake? >> jim acosta, thank you so much. i'm joined by my panel we have with us, mary katherine hamm, senior writer and author of a book "end of discussion." joshua green of bloomberg business week, author of another great week, "devils bargain," about the trump-bannon relationship. we also have with us the source of all this problem, ryan lizza, the washington correspondent at the new yorker, her interview with anthony scaramucci, and we're told that was the tipping point. let's remind our viewers of what scaramucci told mr. lizza. quote, i'm not steve bannon, i'm not trying to suck my own [ bleep ], i'm not trying to build my own brand off the [ bleep ]ing strength of the president. i'm here to serve the country.

he also called bannon a [ bleep ]ing paranoid schizophrenic and a paranoic. do you think he thault he could get away with this? >> after we went off the air, i thought he'll either get fired or promoted, you just never know about trump. it seems like he was on the promotion track when he summarily was dismissed. like you, jake, i had also heard something very similar before i published that piece. i did have an understanding efrs -- he was a little bit on thin ice with trump and was the reason he was pushing back to me not to publish. it was already before the piece came out a bit of friction between scaramucci and the

president. but, you know, there was sort of a complicated set of moving pieces here, right? scaramucci wanted reince priebus out, bannon wanted scaramucci out. kelly comes in and pushes him out, so i think one of the things that's not being noted today as much is steve bannon right now is in a very interesting position where he sort of got what he wanted, was sort of the survivor at the top of that cast of characters in the west wing. >> let's turn to our resident expert on bannonology, jeremy green. he came in gunning for priebus, bunning for bannon. priebus is gone, bannon still standing, scaramucci gone. he's a much more effective infighter than scaramucci anticipated. >> he didn't actually have to do a whole lot besides hold his tongue and keep quiet.

i don't know any reporters who managed to get bannon on the phone. he's smart enough to step back and recognize that scaramucci is blowing himself up and setting a land speed record for political self-em la self-emulation and just stepping back and letting him do it. >> the white house could learn a few things from that. >> i'm going to support anthony scaramucci. he comes in, he is passionate about the president, he loves the president, he says he's going to improve relationships with the press. he does. he actually does improve relationships with the press. and, you know, yes, he cursed, and yes, his elbows were sharp, but is that really something that you wouldn't think would be acceptable in a trump office? >> i will say something in support of him as well in terms of this white house. i thought he was a more sincere representation of donald trump than sean spicer was or mike

dubke was. if you want someone to represent the president's values and represent his personality, i thought scaramucci was very effective at that, and i thought he could be an effective discreet fighter for trump, and trump is going to need that as mueller day by day gets closer to whatever his final report is going to say. so it is remarkable, though, the one person who always survives is steve bannon. he has been in this world for almost a year now, which is a record in and of itself. >> for a non-relative. >> for a non-relative, came in in the late summer, and we were very dismayed about the clinton campaign. got the president relatively disciplined for the last two months of the campaign, and i think while everyone focused on russia and rightly so, and on health care and rightly so, bannon and his team have done a lot of damage when it comes to immigration, getting ready to support things he's doing, and

bannon survived. >> he tried to enact the trump agenda all at once. i think after he was sort of cast out there in march and april, he learned to survive, you need to fall back a little bit. maybe you get embarrassed by scaramucci coming in and not being on the cover of "time" magazine, not on the cover of a book. >> there is this notion that president trump only values loyalty to him, and there actually is no loyalty two ways other than, obviously, to his children. and you look at that tweet that the president sent out in our daily game of "is there a tweet for it?" and there was. trump faulting ted cruz for getting rid of his communications director right after an event. i can't even remember what it was, it was certainly nothing scaramucci did. is he a disloyal man, president trump? >> i think trump sees different rules for himself than he sees for everyone else. i think we've seen that throughout all of this. i wrote a column a year and a

half ago with the grizzly metaphor saying, look, you can go camping -- i was trying to align with trump and make this work. look, you can go camping with a grizzly bear for a while. you can even think you understand the grizzly bear and that he likes you. eventually the grizzly bear is going to maul you. he is the grizzly bear, he is volatile and he decides what he decides at the end of the day. the question is, is he the guy that can go up against the grizzly bear? is general kelly that guy? >> we'll come back to you. we have more breaking news. a new report on donald trump's involvement intending to draft that initial statement of his son's meeting with that russian attorney. that's up next. stay with us.

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♪ never stop ♪ never ( ♪ ) ♪ over your head... she needs to go to college. i don't know how we'll do it. ♪ never stop ( ♪ ) ♪ 'til we get there ♪ ( ♪ ) ♪ 'til we get there ♪

welcome back to our special edition of snoot le"the lead."

president trump himself personally dictated the initial leading misstatement about his elder son's meeting with the russian lawyer. the statement was apparently worked out on air force i from the g 8 summit. at first the president said he only discussed russian adoptions with the lawyer. later his lawyer said he accepted the meeting because he was promised dirt on hillary clinton from the russian government. "washington post" tom hamburger helped break the story. tom, from your reporting, senior advisers wanted to take on a different strategy to don jr.'s meeting. >> that's right, senior advisers to white house advisers and advisers to the president's inner circle recommended in the early going what they described to us as a more wholesome disclosure about what that meeting was like. in other words, it was just to be described initially as a meeting about adoption of

russian children in the united states, it would, in fact, be more of a disclosure of what that meeting was actually about. early on our reporting shows that advisers to the president and the president's inner circle recommended, because there were documents, these e-mails you just spoke about that were coming out, that it made much more sense to be transparent, to be forthcoming, because later on if you issue a misleading statement, it could come back to hurt you. >> but the president overruled. >> that's what we're reporting tonight. we have from multiple sources that it was the president who in effect overruled the recommendations from these group of advisers and from his inner circle. what don trump jr.'s lawyer told us is initially they were inclined toward this more fullsome statement and ultimately he declined to confirm and told us he had no evidence that the president was the one who dictated this statement, but he said it was worked out by what he called a

communal group of lawyers and advisers. >> the president repeatedly responded to questions about the meeting. take a listen. >> has president trump had any communication with his son donald trump jr. over the last several days and was he involved with helping the president craft his statement? >> i'm not sure about specific communications and the nature of those conversations. i know they've spoken at some point in the last few days, but beyond that i don't have any further details. >> so is that not true? >> i'm telling you, i'm just not sure. i don't know the answer. i'll have to check and let you know. >> now, president trump's lawyer jay sekulow, went further and he denied that president trump had anything to do with that initial misleading statement from don trump jr. take a listen. >> i wasn't involved in the statement drafting at all, nor was the president. i'm assuming that was between

mr. donald trump jr., between don jr. and his lawyer. i'm sure his lawyer was involved, that's how you do it. >> that's him saying the president was not involved. this evening sekulow said, besidbapart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate and not pertinent. >> what you may not know is that we actually sent multiple, detailed questions to mr. sekulow asking him to respond in some detail. instead what we got was the rather broad denial. i understand others at the white house and the white house team may have already described our story as fake news. we have multiple sources and are confident in our reporting. >> it's interesting when they don't specifically say what their issue is with the story, they just say it's inaccurate and we're not talking about it anymore. great scoop, great conversation. let's go tower panel.

as somebody who has issued statements, apart from being no consequence, the characterizations are inaccurate, misinformed and not pertinent, that is not specific to anything in the report. >> that is not saying the report is not true. that in no way says the president didn't dictate the statement. that just says there are things in the story that aren't true and we don't think the story matters. that's not saying that donald trump didn't actually dictate the statement. and it makes sense to me that trump would be the person who dictated the statement because it's a transparently stupid thing to do. so the only person who would have the means of overruling everyone else is the president himself. >> because lawyers wouldn't be that stupid. >> lawyers wouldn't be that stupid, because everyone would understand "the times" isn't telling you everything they have. you have to assume they actually have the e-mails. you have to play a few steps ahead and assume that "the times" are going to come back to you and have all this information. so it's a very dangerous thing to do. it makes sense that the only

person who had the standing to do that was trump himself. >> mary katherine, the only thing about the russian thing, the scandal, whatever you want to talk about it is they're sure acting guilty. i don't know if there is any "there" there. we'll see what the fbi and mueller and the house senate committee comes up with. >> clearly the right thing to do would have been to be up front about this. it's a shame that they were overruled. this also points to the ability of the president to let the lawyers deal with this, particularly since his children are involved and he's probably emotional and protective of them. and also to keep staffers protected, by keeping them out of the room when this happens. if that keeps happening, they will get themselves in trouble even if there is no "there" there. >> josh? >> i think this partly stems from the way donald trump has dealt with the media in the past. if you're talking about a real estate deal to the new york post, if you're talking about

some divorced mistress scandal to "the daily news," you can say no, you can lie, you can obfiscate, you can mislead without any real political consequences. i'm not sure donald trump and his family, those around him in his inner circle understand the difference. if they did, they would let the attorneys do their job. >> we keep being told the president is 71, he's not going to change. this is from people around him who are trying to tell people stop trying to change him. but by letting him do things like this, they are allowing him to hurt himself. >> yeah. i mean, there are two questions about the way this white house is set up. one is the staffing issues we've been talking about all day, all week, and just indicate the cha place where trump is the

micromanager. trump reaches down and has his hand in every minor issue at that white house, and he doesn't have a staff that understands the legal consequences of something like this. he's probably being investigated for obstruction of justice, at the very least mueller is looking at that, right? how can he have staff around him and lawyers around him who would allow him to get involved in crafting a statement, especially one that contradicts what his son was doing. that's just sort of jaw-dropping and another example of the staff being unable to control him the way you might control a normal president. the other thing, though, is just the fact that he has his children so involved. now, donald jr. is not involved in the administration but was involved in the campaign. that obviously creates a certain incentive to want to be deeply involved and deeply protective of his kids. it's why people don't bring their children into the white house, because you can't treat them like normal staffers. it's why you don't bring them

into politics the way that he has, because you might make a mistake like this. maybe he was trying to protect them. but i saw jeff toobin and the other legal analysts tonight saying this could be a piece of evidence. if you're looking at an obstruction of justice case, this is something a prosecutor might look at and say, wait a second, what's going on here? >> thank you very much. great panel, appreciate it. coming up, the prankster who pretended to be jared kushner and reince priebus and got actual officials at the white house to believe him. he's got e-mails to prove it. plus, governor chris christie joining us with his insights into all the latest shake-ups at the white house. stick around.

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welcome back to "the lead." sticking with politics and a story that we're breaking for you tonight right now. hook, line and sinker. a self-described e-mail

prankster in the u.k. fooled a number of senior white house officials into thinking efhe wa other white house officials, including an episode where the prankster convinced a white house staff with cyber security that he was jared kushner and he received bossart's private e-mail address. tom, we are arranging a bit of a soiree towards the end of august. quote, it would be great if you could make it. i promise food of at least comparable quality to that which we ate in iraq. should be a great evening. bossert wrote back to the fake jared kushner, thanks, jared. with a promise like that i can't refuse. also if you ever need it, my personal e-mail is redacted. we take all cyber related issues

very seriously and are looking into these incidents further. cyber experts consulted by cnn is illustrative of how vulnerable americans, even those within the highest reaches of power at the trump white house, remains in the potential threat called spearfishing. that's the process in which they are duped by hackers and exposed to various cyber threats. you might recall this happened to john podesta. no one in any of these white house situations clicked any links making their computers vulnerable and the prankster appears motivated by mischief, not anything terrible. he said, i try to keep it on the humorous side of things. i'm not looking for the keys to the vault. the severity shouldn't be overlooked but he poses as a white house official. it possibly played a role in the te

tensions between anthony scaramucci and reince priebus. massacre aiding as priebus, he e mailed a white on us account, saying, quote, at no stage have you acted in a way that's even remotely classy. general kelly will do a fine job. i'll even admit he will do a better job. but the way in which that tran kigs has come about has been die bol cal and hurtful. scaramucci wrote back, saying, i can't believe you are questioning my ethics. the so-called mooch who can't even manage his first week in the white house without leaving upset in his wake. i have nothing to apologize for. anthony scaramucci said, i know what you did.

no more replies from me. he pretended to be john huntsman, quote, whose head should roll first, the bogus huntsman asked from a bogus e-mail on friday. maybe i can help things along somewhat. responded the very real scaramucci, both of them, an apparent reference to priebus and steve bannon. huntsman was also tricked by a prankster pretending to be trump's son. eric trump also posed as his older brother. eric realized it and said he was notifying the authorities. the prankster has previously fooled major bank ceos from goldman sachs and citigroup. he's long been a supporter of president trump and he's even experienced trump's management style when he was forced out of the transition. governor chris christie will give his opinion on the shake-up next, and here's sno"the timesh

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my abwill i have pain andating made daibloating today?ing game. my doctor recommended ibgard to manage my ibs. take control. ask your doctor about nonprescription ibgard. general kelly has the full authority to operate within the white house and all staff will report to him. >> you said earlier all staff will report to the new chief of staff. does that include jared kushner, steve bannon, everyone reports to kelly? >> that includes everyone in the

white house. >> that was sarah huckabee sanders earlier today outlining the white house chain of command now that chief of staff general kelly has sworn in and anthony scaramucci has left his post. but might that new flow chart be easier said than done? will the president's son-in-law and chief adviser really take a demotion? quote, the actions taken by the president and general kelly will professionalize the communications operation in a way that will serve the president and the nation very well. i spoke to governor christie a while ago about the white house tumult. so you're confident that general kelly can turn things around? >> ic think if the president appropriately empowers him and they can work together, he can.

he's run large organizations and put discipline to them, so i think he does. again, this is a team effort. this is the first show i came on very early in february where i said i thought there were problems with the way the president was being served by staff. i was very candid with you about that, and i'm hopeful now. i think general clkelly has the background and experience to do that, but they all have to work as a team and the country has to work better to get better with a trump presidency. >> so there really have been three chiefs of staff. in addition to priebus and kelly, there is the bannon chief of staff and the jared kushner chief of staff with the ivanka ancillary chief of staff there, and people who work in the white house say that's very confusing and it makes it difficult to get things done. when you say as long as kelly has the tools he needs, or whatever you said, i assume you mean as long as everybody reports to kelly instead of there being this spread-out

power structure? >> that's what i have suggested from the beginning, what we suggested in our initial transition report. and that's why i said at the time, if you remember, jake, that it's the structure that was the biggest problem, not the people. having a structure where three people are in charge means no one is in charge. i heard the president loud and clear. he said general kelly is in charge. so if that, in fact, is the case and the president enforces that with the rest of the people that general kelly is in charge, he has a much better chance of success. >> so you fault the structure, the wall street journal editorial board has a different take. they wrote, after general kelly was selected and reince priebus was deposed, quote, the shuffling of the staff furniture won't matter unless mr. trump accepts that the white house problem isn't mr. priebus, it's him. do you agree that president trump in how disciplined he's been or not been is part of the problem? >> i think that's part of who he is, so i think if you're the chief of staff you need to understand the style of the principal, the approach of the

principal, and you have to make a structure that works for that. what i said before was the three-person structure doesn't work. and that's not just an aside, that's the key to it. now you have one person the president has said who is in charge from a staff perspective, and i think the big key for general kelly is not only to have that empowerment from the president, which he seems to now have, and also jim baker said it very well, he said this to me during the transition when i interviewed him and he said it recently. the chief of staff has to remember to be staff and not chief. ufr you have to work with your staff, make them feel comfortable and let them know we're rowing in the same direction. >> you're saying this will work potentially if bannon and jared report to kelly. >> everyone must report to the chief of staff other than the president of the united states. >> because that's not how it works. we still don't know if that's how it's going to work. >> i read a comment this morning

where the president said general kelly has full authority. now, i read that comment, jake, to mean that everyone has to report to the chief of staff. i think that's what should have happened from the beginning, i think it would have helped reince priebus to be more successful in that job than it turned out he was, and i've said all along i thought reince was a bit of a victim of the structure that got set up. in the end what people have to be focused on in the white house is how to best make the president most effective. and you can't change your principal except around the edges. he's now 70 years old, he's had enormous success -- >> 71. >> he's 71 now? thank you. i'm trying to help you, mr. president. the fact is that what we need is to have a structure and an attitude in the white house that says, we are here not for ourselves, we are here for the country and this president. >> but when he does things like announces the transgender ban on

the military, which would remove 4,000 currently serving service members and members of the reserves which the "new york times" reports when general mattis found out about it, he was appalled. when he does that seemingly impulsively, announce ing it on twitter, very little idea how this would be implemented, are there really going to be 4,000 po people kicked out of the military? does that outline his agenda? >> i only have a sense of this having worked with the president and known him for 15 years, my guess is there is disagreement about the policy. it tells you about the structure. the president probably had enough of this disagreement. he had made his decision, whether you agree or disagree with it, and he wasn't going through the process again.

he was going to announce it and work to put the process in place. it's his style. >> it's chaotic, though. >> i think it's as a result in large part the structure that existed in the white house. if you have a chief of staff who is in charge and the president trusts that chief of staff and he's fully empowered, then all this stuff will go through the chief of staff. i think part of it was the president wasn't appropriately briefed beforehand, before he became president, about the diffuse structure being a real problem. now, we're going to see, though. that's been my theory, as you know, since february. now we're going to see if i'm right. >> the attorney general, jeff sessions, has been having an unpleasant time, i think it's fair to say -- >> that's fair to say. >> -- with the president publicly shaming him, humiliating him to recuse

himself. do you think it was the right decision? >> i don't think i've ever commented on that publicly. >> do you think it was the right decision? >> i think it depends why he really recused himself. i think if he recused himself because he gave confusing and inconsistent answers at his hearing regarding his contact with russia and russian officials, that then to be in charge of the russia investigation is problematic for him. but if it was because of association with the campaign, well, he could have recused himself and told the president elect and everybody right then that that was a reason to recuse. i don't believe that was a reason to recuse. lots of people have been involved in campaigns at some level and then gone on to serve as attorney general. we've seen that in any number of instances. general holder was very involved in the obama campaign and then became attorney general. he didn't recuse himself of anything even though a lot of political things came up. >> but there was nothing to recuse himself in the obama campaign.

>> this goes well beyond just the campaign. so i don't think there was a need for him to recuse him based on the association with the campaign. now, if he believed that once he gave answers that at best were confusing regarding his interaction with russia, at that point i think, you know, it was much more defensible to recuse. but i want to be clear about what i think needed to be done here. i don't think he needed to recuse over his involvement in the campaign, but i do think that once he gave misleading or confusing answers about russia that that became more of a problem. >> what do you think about the way president trump has been treating him? really, it seems like berating him until he quits although he has not quit? >> it wouldn't be my style as an conditioni executive. if i have a problem with a member of my staff, i call them in and tell them, and if i think they need to go, i fire them. the president has a different approach with general sessions and we're going to see if that approach works or it doesn't work depending on what the

president's real end is here. i haven't talked to him about that so i don't know. in the end, i understand the president's upset about the fact that he appointed an attorney general, and even if there was going to be a special council, that his attorney general should manage that special council's investigation. the special council is not independent of the attorney general, they report to the attorney general. to not have an attorney general that can oversee that, i understand why the president would be frustrated by that, but it's the situation we're in. >> we're going to take a quick break. stick around, we have more to talk about. up next, the opioid connection, and we'll talk about getting in the face of that heckling chicago cubs fan. stay with us..

we're back with more on our politics lead. late today, the trump administration announced it will immediately begin reviewing an

interim report on the opioid crisis in this country prepared by a white house anti-drug commission led by chris christie. his state new jersey has been hit hard by the epidemic. earlier i asked him what more needs to be done about this crisis. >> what we found is 142 americans are dying every day of drug overdose. every day, which means we have a 9/11 scale loss every three weeks in america. so the first recommendation we said to the president is you must declare a national emergency, a public health emergency that will empower your cabinet and executive branch and motivate congressional folks to fund this and get on top of it because we have a crisis every three weeks, the number of people who die are the number of people who died on snooimpb mostly from opioids? s. >> three-quarts from opioids. >> is the pattern that they have some sort of health problem, they get opioids and can't afford to stay on it or the

doctors won't continue prescribing so they turn to heroin. >> four out of every new heroin addicts in country today started on prescription opioids. this problem is not starting on our street corners. it's starting in doctor's offices and hospitals. we prescribe enough opioids in this country in 2015 to have every adult in america fully med indicated for three weeks. it's out of control. so one of the recommendations we're making is increased education for our doctors at medical schools and dental schools and mandatory continuing medical chakts if you want the dea license to write these prescrippss. we don't have that now and need it across the country. >> do big pharmaceutical firms need to be penalized if they're pushing these too much? do doctors who prescribe need to be punished? >> doctors definitely need to be punished. the farm acute sal companies there's lawsuits going on regarding this and i don't want to say too much because new

jersey is a party to one of those. there's a lot of responsibility to go around here. the good news is we think the president and congress have tools available to them in working with the tats to be able to lessen this crisisnistly. we have a long way to go. we have a number of recommendations we'll announce later today with the president and hope the president declares a public health emergency in this country which will allow us to be very, very aggressive about this problem. >> you've worked with law enforcement as a prosecutor, obviously as a governor. do you share the concern of some police chiefs and police organizations that president trump was too flip rant when describing how suspects should be treated by police when he spoke on friday. >> i don't think that's what the president believes. when he starts to riff as i call it, he's having fun. because i'm from the same area of the country he is, i can tell when the president's being a little bit sarcastic and flippant. i think he's still getting used to how people will take that from him as president of the united states versus a real estate developer. i don't think the president really believes that.

i don't believe he thinks that police should rough people up. but i think that he makes jokes and is sarcastic and still getting used to how that's going to be received when you're president. >> speaking of a certain northeastern style, you had an exchange with a cubs fan at a brewers game yesterday. let's take a quick look. >> appreciate that. >> what did he say to you? >> there's the secret service right there. >> what did he say? >> i'm acting like a big shot. >> the tail end of the exchange, obviously. what happened and do you ever think twice about things like that? >> no, listen, jake, when somebody swears at you publicly and says some really awful things with a lot of children sitting around and my own son with me, i took it the first time he said it and yelled from about 15 yards and said some really lousy awful stuff and i came back after having ignored

him the first time. he went in for seconds. well, if you're going for seconds, i've always said this whether it was my town hall meetings or any place else, if you give it, you're going to get it back. that was a mellow reaction from a new jersey governor to say you're a real big shot. most folks think they can say anything they want. public officials are not meant to be public punching bags and i'm at a ball game with my son enjoying the game having no interaction with anybody on public policy issues or anything else. i don't think it's the right of anybody to stand up and swear at you and curse you out. i've gone through this on the boardwalk and other places and always had the same response. i'll ignore it when it first happens. if you persist, you're going to get a reaction. >> thank you for being here. good luck with the opioid crisis. >> thank you. >> before we say good-bye tonight, there was a moving it ceremony at the white house, vietnam war veteran james mcclune begame the first person

to receive the med it will of honor by president trump. the young army medic risked his life nine times to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. >> it has been nearly 50 years since the actions that earned veteran james mcclune this medal of honor. for the former army medic and men he saved in battle, the days are forever seared in memory. between may 13th and 15th 1969, his team charlie company was attacked three separate times. according to the army, both platoons were ambushed two, helicopters were shot down, grenades landed within meters of the troop's positions and there were heavy casualties. >> second day, we lose our only other medic we've got and that's dan shea and i got him and got his body. now i'm the only medic. >> then 23-year-old mccloughan was left to care for his company by himself. according to his company he repeated by ran into the fray to

pull the injured to safety and returned for more without hesitation. >> i'm weaving and literally could hear and see the bullets skipping off the ground. they're firing at me. >> he sustained injuries from a grenade explosion but pushed through his wounds to save the lives of others. when he was given a direct order to evacuate for safety, he refused. according to the army he knocked out an enemy position with a grenade. is he credit ied with saving the lives of ten men in vietnam. as the nation shows gratitude for his valor today, he says he's thankful to the army for building his character. >> before today, olympic mccloughan earned the bronze star and the purple heart. we send him our gratitude today from everyone here at "the lead." be sure to follow me @jake

tapper or tweet the show at the lead cnn. we read them. i'm jake tapper. have a great night. we'll see you tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. eastern. good evening. thanks for joining us. we keep them honest with another claim by the president of the united states and the white house it's hard to believe. hard to believe because it stands in stark contrast to what all of us can see with our own eyes. on this day on which anthony scar mewchy was escorted off white house property after being let go just 11 days after he starred, the president tweeted to take credit for the stock market and other things insisting there is "no white house chaos." no chaos whatsoever. nothing to see here, folks. that is the message that sara huckabee sanders continued to parrot this afternoon. >> the president announced on twitter that there's no chaos