everything that we've heard. >> kelly seems to have had a steadying feel and force in the white house. krb think it's good news for people who want to see the white house become more professionalized and this is people concerned that executive branch is out of control. he seems to be strengthening h.r. mcmaster's hand. in just a short period of time, kelly seems to have exerted calm and control which may lead to operational success. >> it's ultimately the man at the top and can he control him and that's the open question. >> as anthony scaramucci taught us the head of the fish stinks first. we didn't get to talk to anthony scaramucci. we have a write up on his big media event on friday where he's going to talk to the american people directly thanks to john

avlon and david axalrod. thanks for watching. in for don lemon. i'm going to see you tomorrow morning to start your new day and tomorrow night again hopefully. take care. good evening. we begin with yet another instance of the president making a claim that turns out to be not true and the white house pret d pretending it never happened. two phone calls the president said he took from people who wanted to praise him. phone calls that never happened. let's start with a phone call monday. >> even the president of mexico called me. they said their southern border, very few people are coming. >> that same day the office of the president of mexico issued the statement saying he has not been in recent communication via

telephone with president donald trump. why the president said the mexican president called him when he didn't. >> on mexico he was referencing the conversation he had at the g 20 summit where they specifically talked about the issues he referenced. >> the other fake phone call was by the head of the boy scouts. and apologized for, in case anyone was -- and last week he gave an interview to the wall street journal. he mentioned reaction seemed mixed at which point the presidents there was a standing ovation from the time he walked out. also he said i got a call from the head of the boy scouts and they were very thankful. today an official with the boy scouts said they were not aware of any phone calls between the group's leadership and the

policy. they admitted the boy scout call didn't happen either. >> multiple members of the boy scout leadership following his speech there that day congratulated him, praised him and offered -- i'm looking for the word. quite powerful compliments following the speech. >> when she was pressed on this, she insisted it was a matter of sim antics. >> they were direct conversations, not phone calls. i wouldn't say it was a lie. that's pretty bold accusation. the conversations took place, they just simply didn't take place over a phone call, he had them in person. >> whether it was a lie, an embellishment, a mistake. everyone who works for this president knows never, ever admit the boss is wrong.

two nonexistent phone calls in which adoring people heaped praise on the president. these are mainer things but that's sort of the point. if the president so casually says things that aren't true, if he makes up stuff so easily, whooi should anyone believe him on the big stuff, the things that really do matter? remember those extremely credible sources who told him president obama wasn't born in the united states and the investigator he supposedly sent to hawaii who couldn't believe what they were finding. the bragging about his the size of his inaugural crowd, the number of people who voted illegally. his friend who won't go to paris anymore. there is no evidence any of that isn't real. he's admitted to using a pseudonm to pose as his own publicist. he routinely called reporters

under the name john miller or john bearing. this is some of the audio of so-called john miller talking to a people magazine reporter about trump around the time he was getting his first divorce. >> he's coming out of a marriage and he's starting to do tremendously well financially. there's a real estate depression in the united states and he's probably doing as well as he treated his wife well and he treated -- he will treat marla well. you know, he got lots of options. and frankly he gets called by everybody. he gets called by everybody. >> last may when confront would the recordings, mr. trump said he didn't think it sounded like that was him. maybe his base doesn't believe he makes things up all the time. maybe they do and they don't

care. but at some point therers are going to be a real crisis and the president will have to look in the camera and speak to all americans. let's hope he chooses words carefully so all of us can, in that moment, believe what's coming out of his mouth. joining me in person, kirsten powers and michael dantonio. i don't understand why they can't just say yeah, it's a mistake and move on. >> because the president would disapprove of that. you know he doesn't admit mistakes. it would be very easy and smart for somebody to say the president misremembered. these were conversations. these were not phone calls. but the president himself, i believe and you have biographers who will be able to tell you more, but the president i believe believes this after a while. and that he says it because he believes it so when you confront

him with it, he'll say, yeah, they did say that to me, maybe not in a phone call. we don't know whether in fact any of these exchanges ever took place and that's the next part of the story that we have to work on. >> has he always been like this sh. >> donald trump is 71 years old and been in the public stage for 50 or so of those years and i've been watching him 25 of those years and he's been a prevaricator, fabulous liar, whatever you want to use, flagrantly and almost pathologically for a good porshz portion of that time. his self agrandizement is who he is. he believes some of this is true. i think he lives in his own private idaho and a constant narrative in his head about who he is and what he's accomplished and if reality doesn't

correspond, he will force it to be thus. >> i spoke to a fellow who went to new york military academy with donald. so at 13 donald hits a bloop single. the fielder muffs it. everybody comes home. donald finishes the game, goes to sandy and says i hit the out of the park, didn't i and he said no, you didn't. and he said no, i hit it out of the park. so even then he's not only lying but forcing someone to swear to it and i think that's what he's doing with the staff in the white house. he's lying because he can't help but lie and the reality in his head is more valuable and important than what is real factualy and he's forcing all these people to sacrifice their credibility and building. their reputations. >> you think sean spicer coming

out the first time as a spokesperson in the white house and blasting about the crowd size. >> but the real question to what you said is it lying or is it a destorted are eality? it's always seemed a destorted reality. i find much more troubling actually. and my firs experience when i interviewed him and he said to somebody else afterwards why did she say i said x, y, and z, he wasn't angry. he was mystified. he really seemed to believe he hadn't said it and that was the first time i thought there's something going on here where he doesn't bleevl he said it but he did actually say it. >> there's the difference between the kim jung-il 13-holes in one story. and the sort of it's not a lie if you believe it.

and there might be some of that going on with trump. but what strikes me is it's such an incredible waste of time and talent and resources that the white house press shop probably on a daily basis has to furenzically put whatever he has said together. so you can imagine sarah huckabee sanders saying gosh, can we find a time where he would have been with the boy scout leaders that we could plauzably make this true somehow? and this is not the way to use your press shop? i mean these are people meant to be staffing the president, prepping the president, spreading the president's message on policy and instead they're having to figure out how to make what he just said somehow sort of true. >> and have to do it on a daily basis. yesterday in the middle of a routine white house meeting he

drops in this little note that the ceo of fox con has committed 30 billion but that was off the record and he says it in a public forum and i have to believe it's probably not true but he's put it out there and i'm sure everyone in the white house had to get on the phone today to say should you support us? >> he used to do this all the time in business and tony schwartz, when he wrote the art of the deal for donald trump, invented the phrase truthful hyperbole because he had to come up with a way donald trump lies without saying he lies in business and so he came up with this meaningless phrase he now admits is meaningless and he presented to donald trump saying i had to come up with some way and trump looked at it and say i love it. i think it's fabulous. >> one thing as citizen, as a businessperson to be spinning a

yarn. it's another thing as president of the united states when all of the stuff is checkable. the president in mexico is going to come out and say -- >> refute this. >> yes. >> i think it's important we determined whether the president of the united states is to be believed or not and i think it's fair to say he's not to be believed. but if you're looking at his base, i'm not sure this is the metric by which they are judging him. we've learned a lot of lessons from thomas franks what's the matter with kansas where he basically told half the country that voting based on their economic interests is stupid. i don't think we should judge his base for maybe judging trump differently on some different set of values than whether -- >> or the thought that all politicians lie and on the big issues they agree with hymn and that's fine. >> they want him to do what he says is just less important.

>> because all of this was revealed during the campaign. it's not as if it's new information. just interesting that it continues in the oval office. >> it is effecting him because if members of congress say you're not telling the truth, and then they don't believe him, they're not going to be with him. and the whole don jr. thing. he wautzant involved in the don jr. press release that kept changing every day. well, now we know that he was and eventually you -- >> the establishment going to bat for him, i don't know that this erodes -- >> let's not forget robert mueller has an active investigation and trump has prevaricated around that issue. so there are going to be consequences to his lying. i imagine robert muraler is there each night with a little notebook checking off boxes and

whatever the white house press core is doing or spokes people are doing, the reality is he is mislead investigators. >> we got to take a break. coming up the white house back as plan for legal immigration and a senior advisor went after acosta. we'll play that for you and later i'll speak with republican senator jeff blake who is so anti-trump he wrote a book about it. if you've been diagnosed with cancer,

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the president is pushing a plan giving priority to highly skilled immigrants who speak english. and while steven miller spoke about the plan. first of all, jim, what is the new plan? >> reporter: it's a very sweeping plan. it would totally remake the american immigration system and put in a merit based or points based system for people immigrating to the country illegally which runs contrary to everything we thought about when we thought about what it means to be an american. they would award points to people as they're applying to become a u.s. citizen and applying for legal immigration status, a green card to get status in this country and we can show you snof things they're talking about in terms of the point system. your age, education, english

ability. for example if you're over the age of 50, you get zero points. whereas if you're in your 20s you get between 6 to 10 points. if your profishancy is below 50%, you get zero points. so they're trying to come up with a point system for people coming into this country and over the eryoos people coming into the united states whether it was through ellis island or coming across the straights of florida from cuba to miami or acrasis the southern border from mexico and latin america, not aervbody coming into the united states have that kind of points system working to their advantage. there's been lots of people who didn't speak english very well. who may have been older or younger and they have gone on to lead very productive lives and

have children who are highly successful and that's why the points system is they're go having to a tough time pushing through congress. >> what happened? >> right. i essentially asked what about the statue of liberty and read to him what is inscribed on the statue of liberty. >> what you're proposing or the president's proposing does not sound like it's in keeping with american tradition with immigration. "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." it doesn't say anything about speaking english or be a computer programmer. aren't you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them you have to speak english? kaents they learn to speak english when they get here? >> it's a requirement to be

naturalized to speak english. second lae, i don't want to get into a whole thing about history. but the statue of liberty is a symbol of american liberty lighting the world. the poem added later is not part of the original statue of liberty. >> so you're saying that does not represent what the country has always thought of as immigration -- i'm sorry. >> let me ask you a question. >> that sounds like national park revision. the statue of liberty has always been a symbol of hope for the world and they're not always going to speak english, steven. they're not always going to be highly skilled. >> jim, i appreciate your speech. let's talk about this. jim, let's talk to about this. in 1970 when we let in 300,000 people a year is that violating or not violating the statue of

law liberty of the land. in the '90s when it it was half a million, was it violating the statue of liberty law of the land? tell me what years -- tell me what years meet jim acosta's definition of the statue of liberty's poem, law of the land. 900,000 violates it. >> you're sort of bringing a plus one for english philosophy and that's never been what the united states has been about. >> and your speech is shockingly a historical. it's ebed and flowed. we've had periods of large waves and less immigration and more immigration. >> you want to bring about a sweeping change -- >> surely you don't actually think a wall effects green card policy. you couldn't bleevl that, do

you? the notion that you actually think immigration is at historic low -- jim -- >> talking about how border crossing -- >> do you really at cnn not know the difference between green card policy and illegal immigration. >> came in this country in 1962 and obtained a green card. yes, people who immigrate to this country through -- not through ellis island -- >> as a factual question -- >> do obtain a green card at some point. they do it through a laurt of hard work and they may learn english as a second language later on in life, but are we just going to bring in people from great britain and australia? >> i can honestly say i am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from great britain and australia

would know english. it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree that in your mind -- this is an amazing moment. this is an amazing moment that you think only people from great britain or australia would speak english is so insulting to millions of hard working immigrants who do speak english from all over the world. have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks english outside of great britain and australia? >> there are reports -- >> that's not what you said. it shows your cosmopolitan bias sdplp it sounds like you're trying engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into the iscount rae. >> that is one of the most ignorant things you have ever said and the notion that you think this is a racist bill is so wrong -- >> and just a point of

clarification, we should point out on the immigration page on my smart phone right now it says you do taken a english and civics test. they don't have to pass that english test. there are certain situations where they can learn english later on. but, anderson, as you can tell from that exchange the white house still has more explaining to do on this issue. >> appreciate it. with me charles blow, jeffrey lord and whitker. he said this bill is designed to help african american workers, unemployed workers of all backgrounds. you buy that? >> that is a problematic part for me. just because they pitch barack obama as a racial divider and what trump has done again and again and again is to try to pit one minority group against the other. he told lgbt people i'm going to keep you safe because we're

going to have a muslim ban. he kept telling african americans i'm going to keep the hispanic immigrants out. that is really problematic for me. because what you should be saying is not that we're pitting one against the other but that we're growing the pie instead of narrow and divide it. i do believe i'm a big proponent of highly skills immigration to this country. i believe we have to increase that. but what this proposal does is cutting down on the other parts of legal immigration. and there was no talk that i saw about increasing the pool of highly skilled people. so i want to see more people coming in because we need it to be competitive in the world. >> the president gave an interview the economist in may and he was asked do you want to curb legal immigration. he said quote sure i want to stop legal immigration.

he was then asked what about legal immigration? do you want to cut the number of immigrants to which he replied no, i want people to come can in legally, no i want people to come in legally? no. >> i think this is opening an over do debate on legal immigration. one of the things i worry in listening to the conversation is that we've moved from a country where we're assimilating to a country that is almost the fulfillment of george wallace's old thing about segregation tomorrow, and forever and you get people to come in here and immediately decide to self seg reigate and it's more tribalism than folks that -- >> where are you seeing that? immigrants traditionally in the united states -- >> you listen to jorge ramos.

i've read some of his stuff and he makes it abundantly plain he wants a latino section as opposed to an american section. >> i think that's misrepresentation. >> i'm always curious when people say assimilate. assimilate to what? a set of believes? there's a lot of different american cultures. if you want to assimilate to a set of believes and ideals. i understand that part of it but it always rings to me as if it people are saying that you need to abandoned your ethnicity and become more like the kind of white america and so please explain to me what it is. because i'm very confused by this always. >> it's america, period. >> yeah, but you just said -- >> let's just talk music. >> no, i don't want to.

>> is motown about black music or america? >> let me say this. i'm not opposed to the idea that people will enjoy their own cultures in america and i think that makes america strong. so if people want to enjoy a culture that is native to wherever they're from and they bring that to america, that makes america more dynamic and diverse to me. so when people say you need to be willing to assimilate. i don't know what it means. >> anna, what do you make of this proposal and discussion about assimilation? >> i think this is one more wedge issue being fabricated for the purpose of keeping his base happy. it is absolutely racist to award a point system. i like to award points to people i like and to people who don't wedge and pit americans against each other. i live in a community full of

people who came here without speaking english, including myself, including marco rubio's parents and grandparents, including people like emilio and gloria estefan. people seeking a better opportunity for their children. they now own businesses, banks. they contribute. they are university presidents. they are brilliant doctors and surgeons in our hospitals. so this idea that you give a points system, that this white house will be giving a point system and not allowing folks in who speak english and giving them the opportunity to learn english is unamerican. it is not what we have done for 241 years. and it is unrealistic because i can think of at least three u.s. senators who have parents that didn't speak english. two of them being republicans, ted cruz and marco rubio.

i know there is no way in the world this proposal will see the light of day in the u.s. senate. it will not pass. there's nothing but another red herring by the trumped a mip stragz. >> you said the devil's in the details. >> yeah as someone that's enforced the immigration laws i know how difficult these choices are and we elect our politicians to make these difficult choices. there is no doubt in my mind having enforced these laws for illegal and legal, including going after people who commit marriage fraud that these laws and rules need to be updated and somebody needs make the choices as to who does or doesn't come in the country. immigrants recent immigrants and long-term immigrants have made this country great. >> we're going to continue this discussion. what president trump said today and i'll get everyone's take on it. we come into this world needing others. ♪

then we are told it's braver to go it alone. ♪ but there is another way to live. ♪ a way that sees the only path to fulfillment- is through others. ♪

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immigration by half. here's what president trump said about it this morning. >> the act ends chain migration and replaces our low skilled system with a new points based system for receiving a green card. this competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak english, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy. >> back now with the panel. wonder if you'll be able to respond to anna kbhoo said this is unmarecon. >> i totally disagree. i want to address as well, my friend charles here on what is assimilation. my mother is irish on her side of the family. so what on st. patrick's day i have corn beef and cabbage and maybe a green beer. i'm not irish. i'm an american. there's no one in america who's

an american citizen. >> they the racism against irish people was overwhelming. >> which is why we have to move past this and not do a thing where we are reseg reigating the country. thats rar bad thing. >> jeff, it must be so nice to be a white male. >> what does that have to do with it? >> you just completely missed the point of what makes us wonderful here in america is that i can go celebrate st. patrick's day and you can celebrate sinko demyoor the 15th of december and that does not define being american. go to any of the memorials. arlington and take a look at all of the polish, italian, hispanic names you will see on those. they wled and died for this country. but many are the children or

they themselves came here without speaking english and became american. you know what's beautiful about america is that there's not one single label of americanism. america means loving your country. america means sacrificing for your country, putting your country first. it does not mean what language you came here speaking. it does not mean what holiday you came to celebrate. it means patriotism and shared values. it has nothing to do with culture. >> i more or less 100% agree with everything you just said. my concern is that we have, with all the business of identifying communities, this community, that community, etc., etc., with all the emphasis on that, that it keeps people from assimilating into the larger american culture. >> nobody does more identity politics than donald trump. the guy who came down, announced

he was running for president and called mexican's rapists. the guy who calls for the muslim ban. nobody does more identity politics than the guy who tweets against transgender. so my request to you is to start by telling the president you support regardless of what he does to stop doing it himself. >> i just -- i love the convenience of the flip-flopping, the historical flip-flopping. not the contemp rainious flip-flopping. white people literally invented racial class systems. there's a whole statement about this. literally invented it to advantage themselves. >> and then they became democrats. >> you can go there if you want but i'm going to finish my point. and it succeeded so well that people were isolated and forced to enjoy and luxuriate in their

own cultures and now as america browns and there are more brown babies born in america than white babies, then it becomes we now need to look at discrimination against white kids in college. now we need have everybody assimilated. now we need everybody to speak english. jason miller talked down the poem on statue of liberty because it was added later. but the idea it's added later and all that but when it was more white faces showing up, huddled masses, we were embracing that. the historical flip-flopping, it's really fasnarting to me. when crack was ravaging the ghettos as we put it, we couldn't wait to have stronger laws and they're making bad decisions and they're horrible people and now that it's a bunch

of white kids in the suburbs hung out on pain killers, now they're all sick and we need to put billions into budgets to fix their sickness. they're not bad, they're just sick. do you not see this historical flip-flopping and how problem problematic it is? >> i do and when dr. king said he wanted america where his children were judged by the content of their karkts and not the color of their skin. now we have liberals saying that's racist and that's wrong. >> we have liberals saying what? >> to judge people in a color blind society is racist. we all had have to identify by race. >> what people are actually saying is the structures of racism were in place for so long, so many centuries that the benefit of that system of oppression redounded to people

today and once you get stuck in one part of society, whether you're wealthy or poor or whatever, is so sticky and how do we fix the system that we created? the system of repression is a designed system. we create this system. how do we fix it? what are our best mec nmps to undue the do sng. >> the law has to be color blind. >> it's cute now to say colorer blind. but it didn't need to be color blind when it was helpling people opress other people. what people are trying to do is figure out is there something we can do to rectify a historical imbalan imbalanceance? and i think the idea of asking that question and attempting to answer it is a noble thing. >> well, i agree with that. >> these issues you're all talking about have been through decades of american history and

fundamentally this immigration bill is just changing who can legally get in our country and on what basis and it's not going to solve any of these chal mpgs. >> it is a drastic reduction of the number of people who could come in legally. >> right. >> from last year but not from the '90s, the 70 -- at some point in time somebody has to decide how to balance the needs of our economy together with what we have available. we can't just keep forcing people into the work force if there aren't jobs and the economy's not dramatically improved and chuging along at 3 plus gdp. >> you think it's more about dividing people and creating wedges to appeal to a base? >> absolutely. if donald trump wants to start having a points system, i think he could start by setting the example himself. maybe he starts employing

foreign workers for his resorts because they are cheaper than american workers. >> steven miller was asked about that today. >> right. he's right. we need to revamp the immigration system. the immigration system should be revamped every now and then because it needs be modernized, it needs to meet the requirement of america's modern economy today. but you don't do it in a peace meal system where you put in all these other requirements and don't address anything like the dream act children making incredible contributions. that's never going to fly in congress and i am telling you my senator, marco rubio, his father was a bar tender who came here without speaking english. his mother was a made, a house keeper who came here without speaking english. his grandfather was a reader in a cigar company in cuba who

spoke no english. so there is just no way that marco rubio among others in the republican party could look at themselves in the mirror and vote for something like this. t is going nowhere. it is nothing but another propaganda wedge issue by the trump administration. >> when we come back, i'm going to speak to republican senator jeff blake and hear how the. (hard exhalation) honey? can we do this tomorrow? (grunts of effort) can we do this tomorrow? if you have heart failure symptoms, your risk of hospitalization could increase, making tomorrow uncertain. but entresto is a medicine that was proven, in the largest heart failure study ever, to help more people stay alive

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nchts with a growing number of gop senators breaking ranks with the president, one is kick off his reelection campaign with a book criticizing the president. kaungs ngs of a conservative, a return to principal. when asked about the book today, sarah huckabee sanders said this. >> i think senator flake would serve his constituents better if he was less focussed on writing a book and more on passing legislation. >> those comments from am white house, i wanted to give you a chance to respond to that. it's a tough thing you've done to write this book before

reelection. >> in 1960 felt the republican party had been compromised by the new deal and today we have different things that are of concern to republicans and conservatives. poppialism and nationalism and protectionism and those things i think are a danger to the party and really i think don't bode well for the future if we stick to them. >> in the book you said -- excuse me. you talk about the sugar high of poppialism and that the crash is going to be severe. >> this didn't start with his administration. i was in the congress and the house 20s 1 to 2012 and around 2002, 3, 4, 5, we republicans didn't comport ourselves very well. we spent far too much and

because we couldn't brag about being a party of limited government anymore, then we started to talk about things like flag burning and got off on message and we were drummed out in the house and senate and lost the white house in 2008 and i have similar concerns now. poppialism is not a governing philosophy. it's popular and you can win a few elections here or there but it's not a governingophy. >> you call his tweeting all noise, no signal. his embrace of fake news, his simple answers to complex issues. are you the only republicans in congress who believe this? it seems you're bouts the only one speaking out so forcefully. >> one to bleechb in limited government, free trade, those kind of pall ess but the other part is in your demeanor.

a conservative is nothing if not, with foreign policy particularly, deliberal. i think our allies need that. certainly our adversaries need to hear that. and i'm concerned we don't have that >> how big do you think the credibility problem is? >> i have a chapter in the book, information, fake news and how we deal with it. it is a problem. exacerbated by social media and 24-hour news. it's tough to believe some of what we see. it used to be, there were truths that were self-evident, that we all believe in. now, that seems to be fleeting.

>> i remember going back to the convention in '96, with a big tent. and you talked about how the party needs to appeal to nonwhite voters. do you think that expands the tent? >> no. i do believe that we can do a merit-based system somewhat. the sb-744, the last bipartisan immigration bill that i was a part of, we moved on legal immigration partly to a merit-based system. there was still a family-based side but there was a merit-based system. we didn't cut the number of immigrants in half. i don't think that we should do that. i think we need to look out for the needs of the economy and i don't think the economy will be well served by cutting the number of immigrants in half. >> senator lindsey graham spoke about president trump and his reaction to the russia sanctions bill. i just want to play that.

>> it makes one wonder why the trump administration is so different than everybody else on russia. >> i'm wondering what you make of the president's statements on the russia sanctions. you wrote in your book that any president will grab any authority they're given, but it's congress' job to push back. do you think the president understands the separation of powers? >> well, i was glad to see the president sign the russia bill today. i think he was kind of pushed into it but i was glad to see him sign it. for those of us who were raised during the cold war where the soviet union was the existential threat and now the successor, russia, i think it is a little jarring sometimes to see the attitude toward russia. so it is tough to understand. i'm glad that the president signed the bill. >> what about the -- any bipartisan effort in the senate to work on health care. the plan is to hold hearings and how to repair the individual market. in theory, is this something that you could support as a conservative? >> you bet, you bet.

i think that we've reached the limits of what we can do as republicans. we tried. we obviously need to reform and repeal whatever obamacare. it's not working in arizona on the exchange, i can tell you that. 200,000 arizonans will wake up tomorrow without insurance. it's too expensive. they're paying the fine, but they don't have insurance. so it desperately needs reform. i would have liked to have kept that reform alive. but now we're going to move in the committee process and do a bipartisan bill. that's the choice that we have now. >> i asked you about this a little bit before, but you are going to be running for re-election. this was a book you could have written -- i mean you could have won and then written this book and not taken the heat from the white house, but you chose not to do that. >> yeah, it probably would have been politically safer to wait. but, you know, once you wait, then you find an excuse not to. for me, i think it means more

because i have something at risk. i think this book needed to be written. i think we are facing a crisis of conservatism. we've got to get back to the principles of limited government, economic freedom, free trade, if we want to be a governing party. i think i just felt compelled to do it. i didn't tell my staff, i didn't tell my political advisers, i didn't want to be talked out of it. but i felt it was important. >> i talked to general michael hayden a while back and he talked about the thin veneer of civilization and we all think that it's thicker than it actually is. do you worry about that, given the assault on truth, the assault on facts, the lack of credibility that we talked about coming out of the white house? >> i'm concerned overall about that. and the information that people are exposed to, and you hear some of the things that people believe, you know. during the campaign -- well, going back eight years, this absurd theory that barack obama wasn't born in the country. the currency that that received and the people who believed it

for that long. >> and donald trump was a big proponent of that, obviously. >> yeah. that was just -- just wrong and just hurtful and terrible. but people still clung to it. and so i -- yeah, i am concerned. that's just one conspiracy theory out there. there are many. and i talk about it in the book. i hope that there's a marked response. we certainly don't want to move in and try to censor what is printed or what is broadcast, that's not who we are, but i hope we can be more discerning. i think it's our responsibility as elected officials when we see things that are simply erroneous to call it out and not to let it go simply because it might benefit us politically. >> senator flake, i appreciate your time. thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. up next, more questions about the credibility of the white house. the president talks about two calls that he received, one from the president of the mexico and the other from the boy scouts,

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accepting glowing praise from the president of mexico and the head of the boy scouts never happened. the white house today said it was just a matter of semantics. whether that's true, we have no idea. but the majority of american trouble believing him on much of anything according to the latest quinnipiac poll which found only 34% think the president is honest. 62% do not believe that. president's approval rating also hit a new low, just 33%. jim acosta joins us now from the white house. did they give any explanation why the president was citing phone calls that never happened? >> anderson, they were essentially saying that that he was just sort of mixing up his stories here. let's just give a little context. the president earlier this week when he was sitting with his new chief of staff, john kelly, was talking about some of the work down at the border, talking about how the border was a tremendous problem and now close to 80% stoppage, he said, and even the president of the mexico called me and then the mexican government earlier today put out a statement saying the president there had not been in recent