fastest 1,000 point victory thanks to a strong economy, big corporate profits and tax cuts. today the labor department releases the last jobs report of 2017. right now global markets and u.s. futures are higher. wow. that's quite a set of records. thanks for joining us. i'm christine romans. >> i'm dave briggs. have a wonderful weekend. see you monday. >> the "new york times" published a blockbuster story about president trump's efforts to keep control of the russia investigation. >> white house counsel going to tell the attorney general not to recuse himself on the order of the president. >> it speaks to the very depths of the gravity on this white house. >> sending someone from the justice department to find dirt on comey. i've never heard of anything like that. >> it is actually his pri prerogative if he wanted to fire the fbi director.

>> this author is quite frankly a crackpot fake news fantasy fiction writer. >> we have serious stuff to deal with. instead, we're caught up debating the mental health of the president. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. this is your "new day". it's friday, january 5th, 6:00 here in new york. here's our starting line. a brand-new "new york times" report bringing to light a case for potential obstruction of justice in the russia investigation. and it goes all the way up to the president of the united states. the "new york times" reporting that president trump ordered a white house lawyer to stop attorney general jeff is sessions from recusing himself in the justice department russia probe. the "times" says special counsel bob mueller is aware of the president's unsuccessful attempt to lobby sessions, that there may even be written notes from reince priebus about the same. would that, if true, be obstruction of justice?

that is not a simple question. we will get deep into it for you this morning. a new excerpt from journalist michael wolff's bombshell book obtained by cnn reveals president trump crafted a misleading statement about the 2016 trump tower meeting between russians and members of the trump team, including don jr. and jared kushner. the book claims trump insisted on an incorrect narrative. >> so the book paints a picture of chaos in the west wing and it begs a lot of questions about president trump's mental stability and competence. wolff calls him aerratic, unsur about the basics of his job. press secretary sarah sanders called those suggestions disgraceful and laughable. cnn obtained the book. we have read through it. we have not yet independently confirmed michael wolff's assertions. president trump is tweeting that it is full of lies and the author had zero access.

he's come up with a pet name for his old top adviser steve bannon who he now calls sloppy steve. live to joe johns live at the white house. what's the latest, joe? >> reporter: good morning, alisyn. a lot to unpack here. there are new allegations raising questions about attempts by the president to exert control over the russia investigation. that new book "fire and fury" goes on sale today, four days early, despite attempts by the president's lawyers to block publication. the president himself stepping up attacks on the book. president trump attacking the new tell-all book claiming chaos inside his white house, calling it phony and full of lies, before lashing out at former chief strategist steve bannon, nicknaming him sloppy steve. >> did steve bannon betray you, mr. president?

>> i don't know. he called me a great man last night. >> reporter: the book contains stunning new allegations about the president's firsthand involvement in crafting a misleading statement about the now infamous june 26th meeting between top trump staffers and russians. wolff writes that the meeting in trump tower was purely and simply about russian adoption policy. that's what was discussed, period, period. even though it was likely, if not certain, that the "times" had the incriminating e-mail chain. in fact, it was quite possible that jared and ivanka and the lawyers knew the "times" had this e-mail chain. wolfef goes on to write that the president's lawyers thought it was an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation's gears and a spokesman quit afterwards because he felt it was obstruction of justice. special counsel robert mueller

is now examining the statement. >> the president weighed in, as any father would, based on the limit said information he had. >> reporter: the "times" reports mueller is also aware of unsuccessful attempts by the president to stop jeff sessions from recusing himself. >> i am disappointed in the attorney general. he should not have recused himself. >> reporter: according to the "times", mr. trump ordered white house counsel don mcgann to lobby sessions against recusing. when mcgann was unsuccessful, mr. trump erupted in anger saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. the president lashing out at sessions after then fbi director james comey's may 3rd congressional testimony. >> is there an investigation of any leaks of classified information relating to mr. trump or his associates? >> i don't want to answer that question. >> reporter: two days after comey's testimony, the "new york times" reports that an aide to

mr. sessions approached a capitol hill staff member asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the fbi director. the justice department denies this account. according to "fire and fury" author michael wolff, he called him jarvanka. a nickname kind by bannon. the first family shared a contentious relationship stkraoeubgd as a death match due in part to the conviction that bannon had played a part in many of the reports of kushner's interactions with the russians. wolff writes they exhibited an increasingly panicked sense that the fbi and doj were moving beyond russian election interference and into family finances. ivanka is testified, said a satisfied bannon.

the president has no events on his schedule today. the only time we expect to see him is when he heads out to camp david. he is spending today and tomorrow huddling with the vice president and congressional leaders. chris and alisyn. >> thank you, joe. appreciate it. a lot to discuss. not just the book, but this "new york times" report. john avlon is the head of "the daily beast". and we have carrie cordero. we get names right on the second time all the time. let me apologize by starting with you. i want to start with this excerpt from the "times" that goes to the meat of their suggestion this could have been obstruction up to the president. president trump gave firm instructions in march to the white house's top lawyer, stop the attorney general, jeff sessions, from recusing himself in the justice department's investigation into whether mr.

trump's associates had helped a russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. okay. professor, if true, do you believe that that would constitute obstruction on of justice by a sitting president? >> i think -- first of all, good morning. >> good morning and welcome. >> i think it indicates that this is probably one more notch in the belt that creates obstruction. so in other words, i don't think this one fact if taken in isolation necessarily would create a case of obstruction. i think it is one more indicator, one more fact that has been revealed over this long stretch of period of time that we know dates back to late winter when the president was first meeting with the fbi director asking him to shut down certain investigations, asking him for loyalty up until the time that he then fired the director. there's been a long path of activities by the president to try to shut down the

investigation. >> great point. we have a timeline of all the different things. so there's many pieces to this puzzle between asking comey for loyalty, asking comey to publicly disclose that the president wasn't somehow involved or under investigation. here's another thing from the book we want to read to everybody, john, before we get to you. this is from the "new york times". says. it says, special counsel has received handwritten notes from mr. trump's former chief of staff, rhines bree bus, showing that mr. trump talked to mr. priebus how he had called mr. comey, then head of the fbi, to urge him to say publicly he that he was not under investigation. the president's determination to fire mr. comey even led one white house lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading mr. trump about whether he had the authority to remove him. >> he took this extraordinary step of trying to convince the president that he couldn't fire james comey as head of the fbi

because he felt that would set off a chain reaction that would lead to obstruction of justice the accusations against president trump. it is one of the fascinating things. it really does paint a broader portrait. the professor is correct. this is about a larger pattern. a tick-tock we're seeing. there are lots of little incidents, the time on air force one, the firing of comey, this information that starts to create a larger picture of a problem for the president. >> the professor, though, i always put the brakes on this conversation, and here's why. feel free to take my foot off the brake if you think it's appropriate. all of these things don't constitute a crime even if you take them in totality. the president has the ability to fire comey. he has the ability to stop any investigation he wants. he wasn't a target of the investigation. he was told that by comey. if he didn't want comey to recuse himself, he was free to say so, free to lobby against him using his white house staff.

so it wouldn't amount to a crime. that is what mueller is looking at, being able to indict on crimes. what is your take on that analysis? >> here's what i would say. there's a variety -- there's different buckets down the avenue that special counsel is likely looking at. just on the obstruction piece, nobody is above the law, not even the president. and obstruction is getting in the way of an investigation. the president knew that there was an ongoing investigation just as everybody in his inner circle did. so if he actively took steps, and let's take the example of firing the fbi director. you're correct that the president has under executive order the ability to fire the fbi director. but the fbi director is a unique position. it had a 10-year statutory term to insulate it from political influence. so obviously this is sort of an out of the usual and historical event where an fbi director would be fired three years into

that 10-year term. fbi directors can be removed if there is some substantive reason, they did something in their job where they weren't performing effectively. we're learning the explanation for firing the director really was most likely about tamping down or derailing the investigation. >> the president said that himself completely undercutting white house talking points in the interview with lester holt, the last objective interview he gave. >> he said even if i hadn't had the memo from rosenstein, i was working on firing him anyway. >> and it was about russia, right? which completely blew up the talking points from the white house. out of his own mouth we know that. the presser was a smackdown to your theory, chris. >> the job is to test the supposition. you'll get professors on here, as you know, professor, who said you couldn't indict a sitting president. you have to impeach him and then indict him so there is no chance

mueller will hand down an indictment without it. >> it is important to drill down on this. >> go ahead, carrie. >> sure. there is a legal debate about whether or not a sitting president can be indicted. it doesn't mean that special counsel, it can't conduct the investigation. >> sure. >> that doesn't mean that he can't decide -- i'm sure he has people on his team looking at this specific legal issue of whether they can launch an indictment against the president. is and there can be a couple different ways it could go. he could take that step if he has the facts that would support bringing that indictment. because the special counsel has to adhere to normal justice department guidelines. they can't bring a case unless they believe there is a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits. >> right. >> he could do that. or he could have his findings, write them in a prosecution memo. and then there would have to be

a mechanism to deliver that to congress. there are different ways this could play out. >> this is from michael wolff's book. this is another piece in terms on of how the president tried to intervene in some damning moments or damning evidence. this was about the trump tower meeting with don jr. and the russian lawyer. on air force one, michael wolff goes a little farther than we had known. the meeting at trump power was purely and simply about russian adoption policy. that's what was discussed, period. period. even though it was likely, if not certain, that the "times" had the incriminating e-mail chain -- in fact, it was quite possible that jared and ivanka and the lawyers knew the "times" had this e-mail chain -- the president ordered that no one should let on to the more problematic discussion about

hillary clinton. >> that is one thing it alleged. the president is not an expert in russian adoption policy. this is the russian talking point. this is the magnitsky act, russian adoption. if this tick-tock is correct and the president is explicitly saying to lie from air force one to the american people about an ongoing investigation against the advice of counsel. that is the implication. it's a fascinating detail and yet another significant notch in this tell tail sign of potential obstruction of justice. >> professor, you have been involved in these kinds of investigations. your take? >> what i would say on that particular point, my work, when i was in the justice department, had to do with counterterrorism and counterintelligence. the investigation on the russian meddling and the potential cooperation that is being conducted by special counsel as well as by the senate intelligence committee is why? why would the president try to

give a different impression of what took place in that meeting other than what it actually was. in other words, if he created a scenario with others about what the meeting was about, why were they trying to hide whatever else was discussed at that meeting? >> yes. >> okay. interesting insights from both of you. thank you very much. >> welcome, professor. good to have you. >> great to have you. all right. so michael wolff's explosive new book raises questions about the president's competence and mental fitness for office. the white house is pushing back on any of those questions. we discuss all of that next.

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michael wolff's tell-all book about the president and the white house suggest that mr. trump is mentally unstable and of course it raises questions about his fitness for office. this as the white house defends the president. so let's talk about all of this. we're back with john avlon. and associate editor of real clear politics, a.b. stoddard. we talk a lot with you on this program about is the president strategic or is he impulsive. when you read through this, it's so much more disturbing than that. he's neither. he's not strategic. yeah, okay, he's impulsive, but it's actually worse than that. the picture michael wolff paints is complete --

>> michael wolff, who was defending the president early on in his report and saying the media was too negative about him. remember the source matters as well. >> we will get to that, how he explains his reporting. if you take this book at face value, it paints such a disturbing picture of how the president is behaving and the people around him know it. and they're trying to manage around it. here is one -- this is a reporter's note from michael wolff about some of his process. and what the people around the president told michael wolff. hoping for the best with their personal futures as well as the country's future depending on it. my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency is that they all -- 100 percent -- came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job. >> remember, wolff was saying the media was being hard. this was not a man who went into this assignment trying to take the president down. >> a.b., what do you make of

that? >> well, several things. i think that all of the criticism of michael wolff's reporting, and there's a lot of it and probably a lot of it is founded from someone like trump's close friend thomas barrett to tony blair saying that these conversations that appear in the book with them are fictional. there are obviously concerns about the way this was put together. the problem with the white house is this still in sum affirms what has already been reported throughout, starting to june of 2015. that donald trump doesn't like to read and consume information, doesn't have any interest in doing so, has a very short attention span, is not strategic, sayeth maggie haberm haberman, who i think is the best authority on the president. it is five seconds and there is never a master chess game going

on with what he does with the tweets. he acts recklessly and impulseively. it doesn't take a psychiatrist or a leadership member in congress who has been with him privately to tell me or any other american that when he tweets about mika's face or when he tweets, this is something imprudent and he acts on impulse, emotion and anger most of the time. so the problem for this, no matter how much they dump on michael wolff, it confirms a narrative that is two years old and incredibly damaging. it doesn't matter if it leads to indictment or impeachment, by the way. they will make a conclusion about this no matter what happens in congress or the mueller probe. >> john, go to the next point and then we will move on. >> his fitness for office is different from what we are

seeing from the people closest to him, which is you've got someone with major impulse control who is the mind of a child on a throne built for the powers of a president. and that is a real problem. because we assume prudence. our basic documents that a responsible person will be in office, who will think before they speak. that appears to be not what we have. but i think people get ahead of themselves for partisan and other reasons, and escape to a fantasy about invoking the 25th amendment that i think is unwise. that is a different standard, as contemplated when the amendment was issued. >> it comes down just like impeachment, to numbers. it is a political process. you just have to read the 25th amendment. it will take you literally three minutes. it sounds enticing to people who are critical of the president. but as a practicality, it is very he remote. a.b., to your point, this is not new about what we are hearing. it is new about its depth

context. michael wolff was not amenable to the president. he was going after the media in the beginning saying you're too negative about the president. >> maybe. >> he was doing it and he's never been an outspoken trump critic to my knowledge back to his reporting days. also, bannon has denied none of the stuff in this book and he has had plenty of opportunity to do so. put up what michael wolff said. this was an unusual situation. it is worth noting some of the journalistic conundrums that i faced when dealing with the trump administration, many of them the result of the white house's absence of official procedures and the lack of experience of its principles. they were shared widely as liberated by their utterances a frequent in a tension to setting

any parameters on the use of a conversation. >> i agree with the chuckling. it is like rookies. there are certain rules you're supposed to be following if you don't want a book like this to come out. >> we saw squicaramucci month g caught up in this. he said i have experienced firsthand myself. you're told something. you keep it to yourself. then you hear the same person told the story two, three times to other reporters. interestingly, he uses a word in this that we didn't put in that. sonis dot. it is a russian term for how things were put out even in nonintentional terms. why use that term? that is a gotcha term given all the russian context. >> i love that term. incident was communicating among the resistance of the dissidents who were resisting the soviet

imperialist state. they would pass things around in note form. it would take on a life and mythology on its own. so it is a dig with russia but it's really evoke active phrase. >> the way things are passed around among the aides at the white house, there is an open whisper campaign. you never know what's on the record and off the record because everyone is whispering. >> the truth is being told but under the subrosa. >> he could have said a lot of things. but using that term, a.b., seems like an intentional thing by wolff. do you have problems with the reporting technique? >> again, i'm not sticking up for michael wolff's reporting because there are too many people that are credible critics of it to ignore. it doesn't mean, as i said before, that all of this is not true. it affirms and confirms what we have already heard both from senators i have spoken to him

who have been with him in private or congressmen and things that made it into the "new york times" and other mainstream publications. the problem is that all the staffers and all the things they have said to michael wolff they have said to other reporters, like michael lessen. they are basically saying they don't appreciate everyone's scorn at them serving the president while leaking on him and talking behind their back. they see themselves as patriots trying to hold back some kind of disaster. this is something, as i said, a narrative that's already been preset. that's why it is so damaging. >> stick around. john avlon, a.b. stoddard, thank you very much. that book also details rampant in-fighting and dysfunction inside the white house. how is all the chaos actually impacting the country? that's the big question. so we tackle that next. no, i picked the wrong insurance company. with liberty mutual new car replacement™, you won't have to worry about replacing your car because you'll get the full value back including depreciation.

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all right. so the new book on the trump administration gives a glimpse into the tense rivalries in the white house. you have steve bannon's allies, the president's children. they're all waging a civil war in the west wing for the president's attention. let's bring back john avlon and a.b. stoddard. and we go with exhibit a. part of the by now deep enmity between the first family couple and their allies and bannon and his team was the jarvanka conviction that bannon had played a part in many of the reports of kushner's

interactions with the russians. this was not, in other words, merely an internal policy war. it was a death match for bannon to live, kushner would have to be wholly discredited -- pilloried, investigated, possibly even jailed. john? >> i mean "game of thrones" got nothing on this. for bannon to live, kushner must die, politically. it is globalist or nationalist. but the personal qualities of this fight. the deep bitter feelings reported in the past, this explores them in a new level. and there was an enormous amount of leaking, enormous amounts of bad blood. what is truly stupid is this. you never win a political fight with a family. you don't. >> how does steve bannon not know that? >> a.b., i'm interested in what was behind the charlottesville stuff. remember that exploded and

became so in familiar tore when the president said there are good people on both sides and. e this is why he seemed sympathetic privately. the president kept trying to rationalize why someone would be a member of the kkk. they may not on actually believe what the kkk believed and that the kkk probably does not believe what it used to to believe. and, anyway, who really knows what the kkk believes now? >> why join? do they have good benefits? an insurance plan or something that goes along with it? why else where you join? >> this is insightful, a.b. he wanted to be able to say there are good people on both sides. he is ruminating surely they're not as bad as we all hard. maybe there's something in it for everybody. >> dah! >> go ahead.

>> the kkk hands out really good swags. >> you're just too good, a.b. we remember this famous moment with jake tapper when he didn't remember who david duke was or what white supremacists want and the kkk. he does this all the time on these topics. he tries to take both sides. he tries to ask questions about what it really means and tries to muddy the waters. the interesting thing in the wolff is we all remember chief of staff general kelly's face in that unbelievable -- the sort of spontaneous eruption at a press conference, and the elevator hall when gary cohn, who is jewish, and steve enema mnuchin, who is jewish, stood beside the president when he was talking in an angry and exciting way about charlottesville. the people who everyone was

talking about prevailed on the president like his daughter ivanka and son-in-law jared to calm him down and moderate him don't have any power. this an ebg he dote reveals that. he wanted him to come out with a full-throated response rejecting all hate groups and white supremacists and everyone else in a formal and forceful way. instead, he got on the phone with steve bannon. steve bannon very much urged him at the time to sort of hang in with the people who were good on the wrong side of this. >> which accepts the ckop conflatation. he was acting presidential. it's an office of moral leadership. this is not a tough call. this background rumination, well, some of them i assume are nice people, that was his announcement reference to the mexican-american. but that reaching for

equivalence, reaching for rationalization is deeply outside our best standards as a nation and as a president. it is absolutely insane that the president is apparently ruminating this way in private about trying to find a silver lining. >> look, you don't need any of the excerpts of the book to make the case of this level of dysfunction. you only need to know what the president has said himself. he said i never gave this guy access. i never talked to him about it. well, how did he get in the white house? how did he get so much access? that would never happen in another administration if a person at the top didn't want it. steve bannon, he says look what happens to sloppy steve now. why was he so close? if family matters so much. , a b., i grew up in this business. if you went against someone named cuomo around my father, up-to-date a big problem on your hands. you better be right. unless it was andrew. andrew had his own place and had to fight his own battles.

for bannon, as controversial as he is, as tied to the alt-right as he said he wants to be with breitbart, it tells you everything you need to know. trump does what's good for trump. and he plays it as long as he can that way. >> trump and bannon really had a strong connection because trump really saw him as, a, a goldman sachs alumni who was a naval officer educated at harvard. all things mattered to president trump. and at the same time made a lot of money and wasn't like these scrubs around him, these political hacks desperate for the next government paycheck. so he was at a different level. but bannon played this so shrewdly. he was the trump whisperer that he and he alone understood that it was part of a historic movement. he was not only changing the country but perhaps the world. that is something jared, ivanka, gary and others were not telling the president. he was always saying look at

these people around you. they just don't understand the forgotten man and woman. i do. i understand your message to them and how much it resonated. and this is why you're such a great leader. and president trump loves that kind of thing. it is exactly why bannon hung around so long. >> of course. now totally kicked to the curb. dismissed as sloppy steve, who i thought was the bass player for the doobie brothers. the mercers. bannon's benefactors for years kicking him to the curb in the wake of president trump's denouncement. only so much. >> a.b., john, thank you both very much. all right. another big story this morning is what's going on with north and south korea. the north accepting the invitation for peace negotiations. there is how did this come to be question. we'll take you inside with a live report next.

steyer: the president's national security adviser -- guilty. his campaign chairman -- under indictment. his son-in-law -- secret talks with russians. the director of the fbi -- fired. special counsel robert mueller's criminal investigation has already shown why the president should be impeached. you can send a message to your representatives at needtoimpeach.com and demand they finally take a stand. this president is not above the law.

pretty big development. north korea accepting an invitation from the south to start formal peace talks. it will be the first high-level contact between the two on countries in more than two years. we have will ripley live in seoul, south korea with the latest. will? >> reporter: hi, chris. these talks will be happening. this is the area where the north korean soldier ran across the border. the talks will be happening close to where that high-profile defection happened. north korean officials will be walking over, sitting down and talking for the first time since december 2015. at the top of their agenda, logistics to get a north korean delegation here to south korea for the winter olympic games in pyeongchang. kim jong-un wants to show his athletes marching on a global stage. and the south korean government wants to show they can engage with the north. in order to bring about this, president moon and president trump agreed to postpone joint

military exercises that were scheduled to kick off during the olympics. those will happen at a later date. so far north korea has been quiet despite early reports of impending ballistic missile test. everyone is hoping for a peaceful olympics. the question moving forward, will the initial discussions lead to something bigger, bigger talks, perhaps a meeting between kim jong-un and south korea's president and what will they be discussing after the olympics? talking about divided families in the north and south. and the big bullet item, the missile program. they want kim jong-un to give up nukes but the north koreans said that won't happen. after these talks and after the olympics, do we go back to the tensions and the military escalations or is this a positive diplomatic development, alisyn? we'll have to wait and see. >> you laid it out perfectly, will. thank you for all the reporting from the region. so after a massive snowstorm the east coast faces bone-chilling

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the northeast is digging out after an intense snowstorm that hammered the reason with blinding snow. look at your screen. hurricane-force winds and a record storm surge. this severe weather killed at least 17 people this week.

now new records are being broken today. let's get to cnn meteorologist jennifer gray live in the weather center. the temperature is crazy as well. >> it really is. the very cold behind this system, now that the storm has pushed out, we are left with very, very cold temperatures. in fact, nearly 140 million people under some sort of windchill alert this morning. and you can see these are the alerts just for the east and the midwest. we are feeling like 19 below zero in pittsburgh this morning. new york feels like 10 below zero. new york, 1 below. and temperatures are going to stay very cold. these are high temperatures the next couple of days. new york only getting to 11 on saturday. 18 on sunday. as far as the snowfall totals that we had during the storm, impressive. 14 inches across portions of connecticut, new york, and terriville. 16 inches. some areas close to 20. very cold temperatures through the weekend. 1,000 more flight cancellations today, chris, added to the more

than 4,000 yesterday. >> all right, jen, thank you very much. we'll keep checking with you and see how things are getting back on on track. full disclosure, i'm a new york jets fan so i like bad news about the patriots. but this could be a big headline, coy wire. their coach, bill belichick, he's putting out some signals there. some of it is about the weather. some of it isn't. what's going on? >> yeah. let's talk about the weather first. jennifer talking about this, the blizzard hitting the boston area. those conditions would pale in comparison to the fury unleashed if any patriots player would miss a practice. let's listen. >> pretty tough. everything is tough this time of year. especially in the cold. everyone in new england is probably having a crappy day today. >> the coach has mentioned that several times to the team. so i wouldn't want to be the guy

who is late. >> the patriots aren't even playing in this weekend's round of playoff games. they have a bye. they are still scared to be late to one of belichick's meetings. two years ago four players showed up a little late because of a snowstorm and coach sent is them home. also up there in the boston area, the celtics. they had a snow day. and practice was canceled. that didn't stop jalen brown from getting some shots off inside. >> no days off, team! >> braving the elements like a kid off from school. he tweeted with the favorite hashtag, no days off. sports world feeling the effects of bomb cyclone. >> having fun in it, like my children. that was very heart warming. thank you, coy, for all that. we have been talking about michael wolff's bombshell book about the white house.

but how much of it is true? we discuss with maggie haberman, our favorite journalist who has extensive coverage of the white house. that's next. ♪ when heartburn hits... fight back fast with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue... and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum tum tum tum... smoothies... only from tums

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haberman. maggie interviewed the president many times. her reporting is mentioned in the book. you contributed to a new report about the trump administration and the russia inquiry, but we will get to all of that at the top of the order if you stick around. if we don't scare you away. >> one drama at a time. >> it's very early. >> listen, you are a reporter with great sources in the white house and great access. so when you read michael wolff's book, do you believe it? >> i believe parts of it. and then there are other parts that are factually wrong. the thing about michael wolff and his style, which apparently nobody in the white house appears to have done a cursory google search, he believes in larger truths. he creates a narrative that is notion alley true, conceptionally true. the details are off wrong fpici wrong. he describes a report in the "new york times". he inaccurately characterizes a

couple of incidents that took place early on in the administration. he gets basic details. >> he in quartly reported that we reported about the dossier. >> and rupert murdoch's idiot. and then the next day it was moron. >> that's sloppy. that is one fact check away from getting it right, but he doesn't do it. >> he doesn't do it and he doesn't care. michael wolff and donald trump are not dissimilar people. there's a reason they knew each other before the president became the president. wolff refers to him as donald, not president trump. so there is a similar style there. >> the president says i don't know the guy. i never let him in. i nephew talked to him. that's not 100% true. certainly shame on husband team for letting him get the axe. >> it's a lot false. what they are hanging it on is this thing on of -- they are

frustrated, and i understand why, that wolff is overstating the access he had to the president. that is true. he spoke to the president by phone early on. the president called to complain about the president being in the bathrobe, which he was very upset about. there was another time, and the folks in the white house kept saying that's all that happened. but yesterday i learned that wolff was in the oval office and walked in by one of trump's aides. the question was that was not in the book. when you are writing a book it is all for the book. and they did the thing that world always does, try to have it both ways. they didn't give him trump repeatedly. but advisers close to the president made clear to other aides in the west wing, we want to play ball with him to a certain degree. so they did.

there are a couple of things like that that are weird. there are quotes that he puts in quote marks where he was, you know, told these things secondhand in many cases, yet he went with it anyway. he didn't go check with the original source. that's how he chooses to do his

reporting. that is fine. that's his prerogative. >> that breaks standard protocol of journalism. that's how he chooses to do it but that is not how reporters do it. >> it depends. these type of books, access-driven books is not the same when we're calling -- >> i agree. >> where he violates journalistic protocol is he has a history of telling people they're off the record. not just with this book, but going back to murdoch and other books and disregarding that. >> he flips it the other way. he has a very long statement about this. you can read it for yourself. >> that's right. >> where he explains any irregularities in sourcing on the trump people. they didn't have protocols. they didn't have rules. they would say something is off the record and then repeat it to others. they would say it was confidential but then it would be widely known. somisdot is a russian protocol of how dissidents got out information during the war years. i don't know why he used that term. it is the only inflammatory

thing i saw in there. that will sound like a cheap shot by the trump people. he explains it as being their fault not his. >> that's okay. i wasn't present. it is certainly clear that this white house, many of the aides there are just lacking in sort of basic professionalism in dealing with reporters and the way this normally works. but -- >> do they want to get the story out? >> some of them do and some of them don't. but, i mean, i guess the point is -- look, they would certainly not be the first person in history to say i want something to be on the record and then say it was taken out of context. that's the easiest way to do it on the planet. all i know is i'm hearing it from their end i wasn't hearing it from him. i guess my thing about the book, books do something different than news stories can. they tie things together in a different way. the people who are acting as if they are learning something new about donald trump, this is the same donald trump