can intimidate south korea. >> he's not going to get kim jong-un have the last word on what it means to have nuclear weapons. >> this is not a game. we're talking about nuclear war here. >> you have a president just tweeting out utter madness. >> in a tweet the president blasting the doj for what he calls the deep state. >> his tweets will be taken as official policy. >> it's not good to address international engagement issues on twitter. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> it's january 3rd, 8:00 in the east. turns out north and south korea are talking on a border hotline. it has happened twice. this will be the first time in nearly two years the two sides

have been talking. kim jong-un reopening the communication line after offering to send the delegation to the olympics that will be in south korea. >> president trump raises the prospect of nuclear war and talked to kim jong-un in a sort of juvenile fashion tweeting that his nuclear button is much bigger and powerful than kim jong-un's and it works. raising questions about his mental and mind-set. paula, what is the latest from seoul? >> reporter: alisyn, we know north and south korea have spoken in the demilitarized zone, and the dialogue was limited but the fact they spoke is significant. we understand the first phone call was at 1:30 a.m. eastern

time. this call lasted about 20 minutes. the transcript we were giving was effectively north korea called and the south korean official identified himself and the north korean official identified himself. it's the first time they have used that phone since february of 2016. it's significant. we also know it was almost like a technical test, we understand from the south korean side. the olympics was not mentioned, and this is what kim jong-un said that he was willing to send a delegation to the olympics, and they suggested next tuesday for high-level talks to have that north korea delegation here, and then there was a second phone call where the north koreans said let's call it a day, as if they did not want

the south koreans to sit by the phone and wait for them, and what we know is the south koreans will try to phone them at 7:00 p.m. eastern tonight, and 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and they have been phoning them twice every single day since february 16th when the hotline started to become dormant. and the governor where the olympics will be held is already making accommodations for the north korean delegation. >> the idea they have been calling that hotline every day twice a day and it went unanswered until today. that diplomatic announcement coming after donald trump launched a new tweet bragging his nuclear button is bigger than kim jong-un's and that was just one of the eyebrow raising

tweets. what is new, joe? >> reporter: the war of words reduced to a measuring contest between the president of the united states and the leader of korea getting off to a robust start. >> president trump taunting north korean dictator, kim jong-un, over the size of america's nuclear arsenal. before threatening the u.s. button works. mr. trump lashing out after kim jong-un bragged the u.s. is within range of a north korean strike, asserting a nuclear button is always on his desk. the ratcheting up of tensions raising alarm. >> there are potentially millions of lives at stake, an untold death and destruction here, and to me it's very disturbing. nobody in the white house knows what is kim jong-un's ignition

point, where one of these tweets is going to set him off and he's going to hit that button. >> reporter: hours earlier trump began mocking kim jong-un with the name rocket man. >> rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself. >> reporter: the president responding after south korea showed an eagerness to open talks with their north korean neighbor. >> the u.s. will not recognize or acknowledge it until they agree to ban the north korean nuclear weapons. >> reporter: the president tweeting after the holiday break. mr. trump began the day attacking his own justice department, referencing a conspiracy theory. >> obviously he doesn't believe the entire justice department is part of that. >> reporter: and going after huma abedin saying she should be

jailed, and she has not been charged with a crime, and he urged them to take action. >> when i decided to do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. >> reporter: other targets of the twitter attacks, pakistan, iran, barack obama, and the palestinians. president trump also taking credit for a record year of safety and commercial aviation without siding any measures his administration implemented. >> it doesn't matter what the president of the united states says anymore because it's so bizarre, strange, not true, infantile. >> reporter: the president meets

for lunch today with the secretary of state and the vice president, and it has the potential for added drama given the back and forth. >> let's bring in david gregory and chris scillizza. >> what do you make about the opening lines of the communication and the big button tweet that got everybody's attention? >> the positive part about this is any sign that sanctions have worked and any sign of u.s. strategy with south korea that is keeping the north talking and keeping the north opening up, i think that is significant. i think that's the only play here. you have somebody who we know for sure is unstable and unpredictable in the north and repressive and oppressive, so anything that can be done to achieve the goal of dismantling

that nuclear program is something that we have to pursue. i think the trump administration has done that, thought flfully times, and the rest of it, the trump piece of it is what is so confounding. the easy thing to say is what is he doing? i can't believe secretary mattis is saying this is a good idea and it will have certain results if you are tweeting about the north leader this way. american leadership to me is about going big. it's big, it's strong, and it's inclusive. president trump is going small and trashy, and i don't see that working over the longer term. you may not see it right away, but i think that countries around the world are seeing that

and the preprrepercussions are felt. >> a man that wrote a book on it, he said the sanctions are working and they have teeth and that's a success story, and yet president trump by tweeting out the more juvenile tweet steps on that and that's what we are always confuounded by. instead of saying kim jong-un is answering that south korean call for the first time in two years, that's monumental. but it ends up -- i don't know if itself destructive or what, but it's by all accounts not helpful to add the tweets to the equation that appears to be working. >> let's imagine, alisyn, he only sent 15 tweets yesterday and left off the tweet about the big red button, and this morning

he could very credibly tweet, great news, north korea and south korea talking about, sanctions are working, exclamation point. that's a good story for him. whether or not his sort of stuff stance is a direct result of that or not, still that's a good news story for him and for the world. but because he sent that 16th tweet, he always sends that one extra tweet, it is now colored by this sort of measuring contest debate and whether or not -- and i think the answer is not -- this is a good way to deal with somebody, as david points out, who we know is a unstable dictator pursuing a nuclear arsenal. donald trump, one of the stories in the first year as president, he is his worst enemy, and i think this shows 2018 is a lot

like 2017. >> he has been strategic about how they approached north korea as an administration, to give them credit, but i don't think trump is strategic. i think he goes from punch to punch, and very much like he did in the '80s, full page ad complaining to reagan about america looking bad, and it's important america not getting separated from south korea because that could hurt the overall effort. >> this is a metaphor, and we have a picture of the desk, the red button that is actually on the president's desk, and it's to call the valet, which is what the president uses to get whatever he wants, and president trump uses it because he drinks a lot of diet coke.

>> that is not the nuclear button? >> no, it's not. one of the things that we know whether people like it or not is president trump's tendency, his inclination is to think about himself. he does not surrender the me to the we. isn't that, david, the threading of -- are his white tweets policy? yes, because he's the president. is his mind on policy when he tweets? very often the answer is no. >> i also thought maggie had good insight about a hour ago, he said he is outside of the bubble of being president where he operates a lot of the time, and one said there's no

trumpism, and there's not of an administration as there is him, and that's something to consider. so when he, as president, separates himself from a tradition of american leadership, again, i say he goes small and he goes trashy and he goes cranky. i don't think that's effective. i think it can really hurt the united states over the longer term, and we are not going to see that immediately. if you look at the new yorker piece about how china has handled trump, there's a migration away from the concept of u.s. leadership to other powers who are asserting themselves in the world, like china. >> chris, isn't this lunch with rex tillerson, the secretary of state, going to be interesting today? you could also say who knows what his back channels were producing, were the by-product of whatever he's been working on while the president was undermining him in tweets saying don't deal with north korea, but

here we are, something shifted and worked in terms of the north korean peninsula talking, and we know rex tillerson is a short timer, so what's going to happen at this lunch? >> every rex tillerson story, is he leaving or not and going to be fired or not? there has to be for somebody like rex tillerson that was a long-time exxon man, and with trump's lack of strategy -- nikki haley, the u.n. ambassador must feel similarly, there's a concerted effort to, yes, be tougher on north korea and send a clear and tough signal, but then the president, who is the person everybody really listens to goes off and does his own thing that is kind of tough and also odd and speaks to some insecurities about how he's the best and the biggest and et cetera, et cetera. there has to be a level of

frustration that exist within that upper echelon of government officials that they are trying to execute a actual strategy, and the way we have seen top administrations execute strategies in the past but the president of the united states is not close to onboard. >> they are lonely decisions. we are talking about all the bluster right now, and absent an acute crisis, that's something to be thinking about and frightened about. >> that's true. all the tweets have been on the sides of things. >> thank you both very much. some democratic lawmakers suggest that the chairman of the house intel committee is actively sabotaging the russia probe. we will speak to a democrat on that panel and see what he thinks, next.

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today is the deadline for the department of justice to turn over documents to devin nunez, and the man that started the information behind the dossier gave us more information in a opt ed out today. and congressman, good morning. >> good morning, alisyn. >> we know so much more about the timeline and the motivation of the dossier and how it came to pass and what was happening with george papadopoulos, and i don't know if you had the time to read the opt ed. here's what they say. we don't believe the sealed dossier was the trigger for the investigation into the russian meddling, as we told the senate

judiciary committee the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports including one inside the trump camp, and they are referring to the george papadopoulos information whereby in april he was in london and he was reported drunk and he was loose-lipped and talking to an a australian diplomat that was so concerned about learning that russia has dirt on hillary clinton and they shared it with their counterparts and they shared it with the fbi. you know your republican counterparts is trying to say that's the basis for the russia investigation, and as of today we now know, no, it wasn't. >> well, that's right. let me state the obvious. the federal bureau of investigation is a careful organization, very focused on abiding by the law, and they

know whatever they produce is likely to appear before a judge and receive all kinds of scrutiny, and this is what sadly republicans are trying to promote and right-wing defenders are trying to promote, the fbi was picking on the dossier and chose it for the basis of an investigation, that we now know and recall "the new york times" story of last week where george papadopoulos was talking to an australian seems to know about russian interception or stealing, i should say, of compromising e-mails for hillary clinton. the whole case, which was never much of a case falls apart when you add facts to it. >> so the question is, what does your chairman, devin nunez, do with all of this? >> my hope is he sets it aside. this is the third round of chairman nunez dedicated himself to a defense of the president. it started with his midnight run

to the white house to apparently elicit information that trump was being wiretapped and of course we got that famous tweet, and that turned out not to be true, and then there were improper unmasking, and you know, i was in the interviews in which we examined that and there's zero evidence that sam powers or susan rice or anybody else improperly unmasked, and now we are on the war that chairman nunez initiated with the department of justice and the fbi all around the idea that the dossier -- which, by the way, there could be errors in the dossier, and it's a collection of information that would not pass muster with the cia or fbi, but there are still open questions in the dossier,

and of course the fbi did not rely exclusively on that dossier in order to open the investigation. this is just a third installment of attempts to distract and delegitimize those working on trying to understand what russia did to us in the election and whether there was any u.s. person participation in that attack. >> is chairman nunez blocking your efforts and others' efforts in trying to get information on the russia probe and interview people? >> i don't want to go that far. i have no personal an phus against chairman nunez, i like the guy, and i hope he drops the third installment of distraction, and i hope we can go back to washington and say it's in everybody's interest, including donald trump's interest, that we get one report finished.

it's very much certainly in the american peoples' interests, but in everybody else's interests to get a solid comprehensive report where the congress is speaking with one voice on what russia did to us. this is serious business, and what we can do to prevent it happening in the future. i don't want to go so far as to say he's blocking us, but we do have a list of people we still believe we need to interview and work that needs to be done and this investigation should not be ended when there are still very many and significant open questions. >> you keep saying it's in everybody's interest to have one comprehensive report that everybody can read and i think that's because you know there are reports that there will have to be a democratic report and a republican report because there's, you know, never the twain shall meet, the republicans on the committee see it one way and they have one set of facts they want to use and the democrats see it quite differently and you will have to issue two reports. what is the likelihood of that?

>> shame on us if that's the outcome, shame on congress, right? this has become very politicized and the chairman bears his part of the shame on that, and this was a russian attack on the core of our democracy. if congress can't produce and speak with one very clear voice -- it's not just republicans and democrats, but it's the house and senate, and if this evolves into -- can you imagine if there were two different views given when pearl harbor was attacked. >> do you sense there are talks it's going in that direction?

>> a week before christmas the house intelligence investigation did eight interviews in one week, and we all feared and the press reported there would be an attempt to end the investigation by the end of the year, and let me compliment mike conaway, he said, no, let's do it right. i don't want people to think it's ruined. the reality is there are good republicans and democrats that want to see it done comprehensively, and hopefully we can agree on a way forward so we have one report on one of the most serious things that has happened. >> are you comfortable with nunez when he went to the white house and shared the information, and i know the ethics committee cleared him, but are you comfortable with his

involvement today? >> so far he has not been involved. in other words, i think i have been in just about all of our witness interviews and what not, and the chairman has not been involved. what has happened he is operating parallel investigations off to the side into the dossier, in which he doesn't inform us. what needs to happen, he needs to stop that and rejoin the investigation now that he has been cleared and see beyond the defense of the president in favor of all of us coming together to produce a report that is rooted in the facts and that will tell the american people what happened and how we can prevent it from happening again. >> we look forward to seeing what happens when congress is back from break. thank you for being here. >> thanks, alisyn. >> chris? president trump went on a tweet storm on his first day back at work. what does it say about where his head is and this idea that he insists there's a deep state

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so the president says the justice department is part of a deep state conspiracy against him. fact, we have never heard a president in modern times undermine a major institution of this democracy this way. the question becomes does he have any proof to support this. let's discuss jason miller and ana navarro. happy new year to you both, and it's always good to see you even with a question as silly as this. jason miller, is there a deep state and a conspiracy that includes the justice department in a conspiracy against trump. >> when the president talks about the deep state he's talking about a permanent class of unelected officials that fundamentally believe they know more than our elected officials and know more about the president about the direction of

the country, and we saw it in the campaign trail and we it in this year, and you see it all the time with the leaks constantly coming out. if you go to any top shelf journalist, they will tell you it's from the career officials -- >> those leaks always come, so that would not make president trump unique, and the question is still different than what you are responding to right now, jason. he says the justice department is part of a deep state conspiracy against me. let's put it to the side. he obviously is not defining deep state the way it traditionally is, and let's put it to the side. he's saying the justice department is part of this. do you think it's right for the president of the united states to indict the justice department as being against him? >> you keep saying conspiracy as -- >> because that's what he said. >> but you are trying to make it

sound like it's the x-files -- >> that's what he said. >> very clearly what the president is referring to are the pwaobureaucrats that think know more than the president of the united states, and i think it's okay for him to call out leakers, and there are different things with the previous administration, with the way, again, with the leaks and the different things and we can get into that later and the president is in his right to -- >> nobody is not saying it's not within his right. ana, let's go to you. it's not the argument if he has the right to say it, but the question is is it right to say it? >> of course not. he's indictment the department of justice. there are so many good men and women who spent their --

>> sarah huckabee sanders says he doesn't mean everybody. >> it sounds like he is talking about everybody, and you can imagine what it does for the morale when the commander-in-chief says those things about the justice department, that works for him. he's in a deep state of paranoia and a deep state of distract and distort because what he's do something laying the ground work so whenever mueller finishes the investigation, it has no credibility. he's trying to drum up all the outside noise, and regardless of all this mueller is going to continue to do his job and focus on this, and has to drown out all of this around him and focus on the task at hand. trump is going to distract and try to inflame his base and make it so he subtracts credibility because he's afraid of what may

come out. >> do you think the justice department is compromised and can't be trusted by the american people? >> the way you set up that question, well, i agree with ana, probably 99% of the people in fbi and law enforcement check their political inclinations at the door when they show up to do their job, and i think much in the same way many reporters to go and check their biases at the door and want to cover just the facts and the same thing is with most of our law enforcement, but there are things that have come to light recently, and fbi officials going to hillary clinton's election night party -- >> a life long gop member that served both types of administrations and interviewed for a job at president trump who is running as special counsel,

running the whole investigation. why doesn't that bother you? >> that's not where we have seen the overt activity. when mueller found out there were people texting in his unit saying negative things about president trump, he removed them. >> supporters of president trump, including a congressman, says -- i am trying to put it in a more dignified way, they are saying he's flawed and conflicted to the point that mueller has to go. do you think that's right? >> i don't think that is right, and the bar has been set higher and we need to go further and say people that maxed out to campaigns in previous cycles should not be part of this investigation, and chris if you maxed out to secretary clinton or to president trump and then you are hosting the show, of course every single time one of the two came up, people will bring that up. >> if you found out i gave money

to trump would you have a problem with that? >> of course, i would like it because that's my guy. >> that's my point about all of this. it's about leaks. you guys love them when they are in your favor and hate them when they are not. >> chris, that's not -- >> jason, gave money to nancy pelosi. >> you are missing my point. we shouldn't have the politics, and people involved in the vest coutury process should not be the people that maxed out in campai campaigns -- >> i know you are dabbling out there that these guys had the political activity. remember what the clinton people said about the investigation, these people hate her and are out to get her and they were having their own examples of how it was being taken more seriously than it deserved, and many did not say this is too political. you liked it to your advantage. >> there's a higher threshold

whether it's somebody in the investigation unit or somebody in law enforcement, just the same way the folks in the media are scrutinized, and there's a reason journalist can't max out -- >> of course, nobody is quibbling with that point. jason, i am not here to disagree with you, but just to keep it straight. ana, when this investigation is done if anything that comes out that is negative about the president, it's -- >> it's because it's a political vendetta. >> what is the republican party to do then? >> they have to watch over mueller. this country is not going to stand for not accepting what mueller does and it's certainly not going to stand for trump getting mueller.

the leadership has to send trump a message, do not mess with mueller and keep him where he is, and they will have to pay hell for it in 2018 should that happen. at this point it should be country over party. we're talking about the integrity of our democracy and elections. that is more than your loyalty to a president or to a party, and our loyalty to the country should count more. >> sad fact that both of you would agree on now. this was supposed to be about how russia did it and how to stop it next time, and we are light on that part of the discussion no matter who we talk. always respect both of you being on the show. no big winner from last night's mega millions drawing. how high will the jackpot go now? that's next.

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time for the five things to know for your new day. a diplomatic break through for the kaoreas. they are expected to discuss sending a north korean delegation to the olympics in south korea next month. president trump taunting north korea, bragging on twitter his nuclear button is bigger than kim jong-un's after the

dictator said he had a nuclear button on his desk and is ready to use it against the u.s. and then a counter movement to the anti-government demonstrations spreading across iran, and at least 21 people died in clashes during the protest that lasted nearly a week. orrin hatch announcing he will not seek re-election next year, and he's 83 and that makes him the longest serving republican in the senate, and meantime doug jones and tina smith will be sworn into the senate today. nobody matched last night's numbers in the mega millions drawings, and it's expected to rise to $418 million, and if you can't wait for all the millions, just get one for tonight. >> and remember, take the lump payment. >> why isn't phil getting on this? >> phil is the "new day" accountant when it comes to the

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interests in so many places, particularly in the middle east, is an effective thing to do on the part of the president and doing it with enough subtlety and creating enough questions that there's room to maneuver, and that's important. to me it's less important whether i know what the right time is, is that he is retaining enough flexibility for a u.s. response when that time is right. >> first, aaron david miller a. cnn contributor, genius on these issues, has a good piece and you should read about it, and one of the points, david, is this is tricky. it's about iran, not about the united states of america and how much support you show can negatively influence the protest and draw the ire of the united states -- >> that's what obama thought.

>> but what is iranians want to flee after that and coming here? what about them being on the travel ban list? >> yeah, there's a lot of questions the president would have to answer. again, the best we can do is say there's enough subtlety in this kind of pronouncement he's not committing himself one way or the other. this is really difficult. we have a major agreement with iran about its nuclear program that is at the very least buying time for the united states to, you know, to eradicate that program completely over time without going to war. yeah, these are hard questions. >> i know you guys are not as fixated with the big button tweet as i am, but let's go there. so do you think north korean leader kim jong-un just stated the nuclear button is on his desk at all times and somebody

inform him i, too, have a nuclear button but it's much bigger and more powerful than his -- >> the way you read it by the way, is highly suggestive. >> suggestive of what? >> you know. >> do you think the button will come up at lunch with secretary of state, rex tillerson? this is a serious question because i am wondering if the head diplomat will say, what was that, or do they gloss over things like this? >> i don't know. i think this is the crank part of president trump where he thinks he can one-off these things that is absent from the rest of the strategy. i am frankly more interested in what secretary mattis of the defense department says how it

furthers or doesn't further their aims. i just think a couple things. i said this earlier this morning, american leadership is about going big and not going small or trashy or cranky, and i think that's what this is. i also think that we have to remember, as i said before, that we are not in an acute crisis moment right now, but when a crisis moment comes, a presidential statement or decision or calculation or miscalculation is a matter of life and death. that's the bottom line. you want to talk about the history of korea? look how president truman overruled general macarthur about how to take on the chinese, and think of president kennedy and the cuban missile crisis. that's what we have to think about when we see the president shoot off like this, what does it say about temperament and about american leadership and

that's the factor there. >> david gregory, thank you for "the bottom line."

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good morning, everyone. i am poppy harlow. >> i am john berman this morning. one question haunting the white house, who is going to tell the president he doesn't have an actual button, not to launch a nuclear war at least, and that's one question, and the more important question is bragging about button size and performance. >> that's a good question. the president wrote somebody should tell kim jong-un that tr