and now, get a $200 prepaid card when you buy an iphone. it's a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit, or go to xfnitymobile.com. welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. thank you for sharing your day with us. president trump calls it fake news, but a source tells cnn the president wants to fire the russia special counsel, but the white house counsel refused. plus the white house immigration plan angers the left and the right. they call it amnesty betrayal. they say the president, quote, wants to make america white

again. nikki haley denying rumors of an affair with the president. >> it is absolutely not true. it is highly offensive. and it's disgusting. this isn't something that just happened as a cabinet member. i saw this as a legislator, i saw this when i was governor, i see it now. people see lies for what it is. do i like it? no. is it right? no. is it going to slow me down? not at all. any time this has happened it only makes me fight harder. it only makes me work harder. and i do it for the sake of other women that are behind me. >> just wow there. we'll be back to that in a few moments. we begin the hour with blockbuster news and is a denial from the president saying no, he did not call for the firing of the white house special counsel robert mueller last june. the "new york times" which broke this story last night cites four sources. if you're a conservative shaking

your head, oh, it's cnn and the "new york times," fox said it, too, saying the president talked of firing mueller. mcgahn refused to, threatening to quit if he did so. >> did you try to fire robert mueller? >> fake news, folks, fake news. >> did you try to fire robert mueller? >> fake news. >> now if you track this story, you know it isn't the first time trump and his team have denied there was talk of firing the special counsel. a half dozen examples there on your screen. but there is a very important distinction this time. trump attorney ty cobb told us back in december emphatically that this was also a baseless rumor. when cnn reached out to the white house lawyer last night, he said, no comment, citing

respect for the office of the special counsel and its process. with us reporting insights, dana bash, cnn's jenny lee. if the president's attorneys could say flatly this is not true, they would say so. they know the special counsel has talked to don mcgahn, the white house counsel. they know they've talked to several deputies in the white house counsel office. they also know if you tell a lie to the white house counsel in an investigation, you lose your license. they say it did not happen, despite the president's denial. >> in addition to what you said, they also know because they helped turn over to robert mueller and his team that the special counsel's office has documents, a lot of documentation from the white house counsel's office across

the board that very well could substantiate the notion that is the president of the united states was ranting and raving about firing his -- the special counsel and did so at a time when it was very transparent that he wanted him to be fired. i say transparent because we're talking about seven months ago, in june of 2017. if you look at the president's twitter feed, he was making it very clear back then that he was not having it with robert mueller. and so the question now is why now? why do people want this information out there now? is it because the president of the united states is ranting and raving again about robert mueller despite the fact that this time publicly he's saying that he believes the investigation is fair, he's okay with going and speaking to robert mueller and his team. that's what we're trying to suss

out, that this is a seven-month-old story but clearly relevant to a dynamic that's going on now and what is it? >> the president said at this moment he's absolutely willing to sit down under oath. his attorney said, whoa, whoa, whoa, we'll negotiate that. john dowd, another one of the president's private attorneys, saying this to cnn. you heard the president, absolutely, under oath, nothing to fear. i will make the decision on whether the president talks to the special counsel. i have not nad decision ymade a yet. the president sometimes goes off the rail saying, i'm the boss. but timing is essential here, because if the president is going to sit down, they say that framework is two or three weeks from now. meaning we're at the crossroads. >> the two big differences between now and seven months ago -- remember, this sort of percolated up seven months ago, around that time -- >> we were talking about it on the show. >> but the differences are two

things. one, then it was sort of a vague sense, vague reports that the president might have thought about this. now we have very specifics from people who were briefed about this and who, let's face it, are giving us detailed specifics about the reasoning the president had for the kind of conflict of interest that he thought meant that mueller had to go. and the second thing is the water under the bridge of the last seven months of the investigation of robert mueller where he has talked to people, person after person after person in the white house, and that is very different. because now -- perhaps then the white house aides that told us, hey, this is all bunk, they might not have actually known or thought about the fact they could be contradicting actual testimony. now they know that robert mueller and his investigators have asked this question and know what the real answer is, so they're not going to get out there and say it's not true. >> in some cases if you go back, we were looking at them this morning among the staff, forgive

me, the definition of "is." there is no conversation doesn't mean there was no conversation about firing bob mueller. the witnesses coming out of the special counsel's office are stunned about the level of detail, stunned that he can recreate the meetings almost to the minute. if you're an attorney in the white house counsel's office or involved in these conversations, you're not going to lie. the white house counsel's office can springboard to a great job in law. not if you lose your law license. >> this isn't a great story if you're donald trump, but i do believe for conservatives saying it can't be true, there are heartening aspects to this story, which is it does appear that the president is relatively well staffed. his white house counsel, don mcgahn, was ordered to fire bob mueller and knew it was cloolosl bad judgment and threatened to

resign. this president is well staffed, at least in his white house counsel's office. don mcgahn did the right thing and actually suck sealed in pce keeping the president from a very bad blow. >> look what the reaction would be in the press. i want to get at this conversation again. the president was talking, this is back in june, about firing bob mueller. his white house counsel says, no way. not going to do that. if you're bob mueller and the question is, did the president try to actively obstruct an investigation? now you have, he tried to fire me on the table, or thought about firing me on the table. he asked comey for a loyalty pledge to drop the flynn probe. fired flynn, but only have flynn's lying was made public. kept him on staft whf when he k he lied. then fired comey. wanted mueller fired.

asked his intelligence chiefs, could you push them to shut down the investigation and could you say i'm not under investigation? called it a witch hunt over and over. wanted to fire and publicly berated the deputy attorney general. akd r that's a long list to say this man has repeatedly tried to throw roadblocks in this investigation. >> that's right, and i think it's really important for us to keep in mind that with the new reporting coming out that president trump asked someone to actually fire mueller, that actually doesn't change the course of the investigation. i think you can safely make the argument that of course the investigation will continue to focus on issues like obstruction, questions around collusion, and i think the exercise that we're doing now, sort of going back, dana, you were talking about the tweets that we saw that were so public last summer, you can sort of get a glimpse into the mindset that the president had. but maybe more importantly that

some of the people around the president were actually kind of successful in talking him off the ledge, telling him, look, this is not the kind of thing that is smart for you to be talking about. for you to go on twitter and say this investigation is a witch hunt and to openly show your anger, that's not the smartest thing to do, because we do know that after that certain point when he was openly showing his anger, he then sort of walked it back and didn't talk about that issue as much, didn't show his emotions as much, and i think clearly there was some kind of effort within his inner circle to get him to stop talking about it. >> that was about the time they brought john dowd and they brought ty cobb, people who have been on the legal team now for the past six months, on board and things started to change a little bit with how the president himself was managed. but i just also want to make one broader point, which is -- and i'm sure you guys hear this at the white house as well. this is the president's m.o. robert mueller is in a category

of his own because he's making the president's life absolutely miserable as far as the president is concerned. but he is very well known to, before noon, tell various senior staffers that he wants cabinet member or staffer x, y or z fired and make it happen, because that's what he does. he does rant and rave about people. most times, i am told, they are able to kind of put him off and he kind of forgets about it. again, mueller is in a very specific category, but this is very much in keeping with his behavior. >> that's mueller's challenge, is it just ranting and raving or is it part of a deliberate effort to strike the administration. this was also around the time he was learning, because the president knows more than we do about what the special counsel is doing, that his trump organization financial records were being called. this is exactly the same time he was learning that his personal finances and his family finances were of great interest to the

special counsel which tells you quite a bit. everybody sit tight. the president has left davos after selling, or trying to sell, anyway, america first. >> i just came out and some really wonderful people said davis has never been like this. this is like walking into the academy awards except we have more photographers.

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the america first president on his way home now after spending time abroad and among the globalists. his message to the world: everything is awesome. >> we have succeeded beyond our highest expectations. america is roaring back. all of a sudden it became like a big waterfall, a big, beautiful waterfall where so many companies are doing it. we've set 84 records since my election, record stock market prices. i think you have a brand new

united states. >> a brand new united states. you heard it there from the president. he is very upbeat talking about what he sees as a great big turnaround and he thinks it's all because of his election. no in-your-face populism, no looming russia cloud over his administration. >> we have a tremendous crowd and a crowd like they've never had before. >> had oethe opposing party to won, some of you who backed, instead of being up almost 50%, the stock is up since my election almost 50%. rather than that, i believe the stock market from that level, the initial level, would have been down close to 50%. it wasn't until i became a politician that i realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious and how fake the press can be as the cameras start going off in the

back. >> call that the trump tr tri fecta. how is the trump team describing this? you're there for the reception. sdt preside does the president and his team think despite a little bit of pushback it was a success? >> i think they do think it was a success. i think we've seen president trump in many places really a cheerleader, being like a commercial saying why people should come and invest in the u.s. he talked about the stock market, of course taking credit for absolutely everything, as though things suddenly changed on his watch. never mind the fact that unemployment has been rising in the final years of the obama administration. never mind the fact that the stock market has been doing well. but no question under his first year in office, it has been soaring. but this is a global conference, and boy, this didn't sound like the donald trump we heard on the campaign trail when he was running for office. this is not the steve bannon

donald trump who is really against davos. he wanted, it seemed to me, to be accepted by this group, and he certainly was. it was a polite reception. a large crowd, not as much applause as he's used to hearing at rallies, but the bottom line is his advisers believe this was a success. one more win for the side of his administration and white house who would like for him to do this more often. the gary cohens of the world who wrote this speech, who is now the president's top economic adviser. the president flies home right now, arrives by dinnertime. all that controversy over the russia investigation is still waiting for him, of course. >> indeed it is, jeff zeleny, but i'll just say if the president can have conversations with people, that's not a bad thing. you have the america first president. he's in this crowd which is mostly anti-trump.

they listen to his tone on some of his policies, yet they're interested in the tax cuts. it was interesting. what did we learn? >> jeff zeleny was saying the advisers around president trump saw this as a success. the bar is actually pretty low right now for what would be a successful event for the president. the fact that he, you know, stuck with the teleprompter speech, yes, that was a successful speech in that sense, but i think we got a glimpse of sort of where he is right now in his head at the moment when he was not actually scripted and was not on that stage, right, when he walked by reporters and was asked about this "new york times" reporting and he called it fake news. when there was a little q and a after the speech and he was asked about the lessons that he learned during the presidency, i believe that was the question that was asked, he then, as you said, talked about hillary clinton, though not mentioning her by name, talked about the media being fake news. i think all those things kind of give you a sense that he's frustrated and is angry, because otherwise i think his head would not necessarily go there. i think you made a really good

point that those are the things he tends to talk about when he is especially frustrated. >> frustrated and angry in a general sense, but also reflireg that he is in this club finally. this is a guy that has been part of the billionaires' club for a while but never came into these exclusive gatherings. davos is like that, these are rich people from all over the world, ceos, world leaders and the like. so the fact there has been some worry about protests and things, there was none of that. he was sort of warmly received. maybe they don't really embrace his agenda but they at least embrace the office that he olds. >> if they disagree on some things, so what, people disagree on things. if they have a better understanding of each other, if they respect each other a little bit more, at least you can have conversations. the president is on air force i. he's on wait home. he tweeted, heading back home from an exciting two days in

davos. many of my ideas were well received. the president is upbeat, he's cheerleading the american economy. here's christine jensen. it was a speech about how america has done. i miss america on the international scene. they said, certainly he was very successful in presenting his successes. i would have wished to hear more about international multilateral aspects. again, this is not a group of people who are going to hug the president because they're free traders and they're globalists. but i would mark it down as a good thing, they heard from the president in a respectful way and most of it was good. >> when you talk about trump and when he talks to these audiences, a lot of the it will be about himself, naturally. someone told me a story after the victory of his presentation, he was called a billionaire and

was sheepishly asked if he would have dinner with him. but i think in these davos-type environments, he still sort of feels like he can't believe he is really being embraced by this crowd or that he's accepted by this crowd. i think his remarks convey that sense that he's still trying to prove himself to this crowd. and i don't think this president will ever really get over the sense of being an outsider who is trying to prove himself in these crowds. >> it's a great point. the president saying, yes, i'm here as your america first president, but i'm not as isolated as you all would like to think. >> i believe in america, as president of the united states, i will always put america first just like the leaders of other countries should put their country first also.

but america first does not mean america alone. when the united states grows, so does the world. >> he's right about the last part. he's absolutely right about the last part, when the world's biggest economy grows. there's a lot of other talk there, agencies saying, look, we're moving ahead with the regional and multilateral trade deals. the united states doesn't want to be a part of it? too bad. >> he also had the treat, as one example, to sit next to laura hemans. he said we are going to build the united states. since they have not sold the tax cut domestically, i'm surprised they were able to put that together. do you all remember mitt romney,

john kerry, those who went to places like davos, they got annihilated as elitists, and we can't believe you're going to the swiss alps and hang out with all these fancy people? here we have the guy who rose as the champion of the working man going to the highest conference that exists on the planet. he is loving that and trump defies the political norms at every turn. >> jeff, the president is coming home to russia. he's coming back to something else, too. people are wondering, why did we elect this president? as the white house reveals, the new i new immigration plan. stopping for more pills right now. the new immigration plan. to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill.

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for those of you seeking legal status, they will have one route and one route only. to return home and apply for reentry like everybody else. we will break the cycle of amnesty and illegal immigration. we will break the cycle. people will know they can't just hunker down and wait to be legalized. not going to work that way. those days are are ovover. >> a lot of conservatives are looking for that guy. conservatives call it amnesty. they will now say yes to a pathway of citizenship for daca citizens, the called d.r.e.a.m.ers. they have some demands. 25 billion for a border wall,

family-based immigration would end and reallocates the diversity visa program. they see it as surnd. >> you've given them, on the numbers side, more than they could have ever expected pr barack obama. you started at 1.8 million for amnesty? why would you start with 1.8 million? why would you start with people who never even applied for daca? 1 million people over the 700,000 to 800,000 who never even applied for daca. why would you do that. and it's going to be spun that this is absolute genius. no, it's not. this is absolutely pathetic. >> republicans have said we'd like to hear from the president on what to tell the legislation. democrats won't move on anything until they know what the president is for. does this advance the debate or does this explode the debate? >> remember that it was very recently that the president said

at a meeting at the white house, anything that you all send over to me, i will sign it. that's clearly not the case. i think you're seeing the president sort of be pulled back and forth in a couple directions. one, of course, is his great desire to make a deal. that's why in a setting like that he's inclined to sign anything they send his way, but then i think there is sort of the dynamic of listening to the last person in his ear, so whether that's the more moderate republicans who say we have to find a solution on daca, or others who are more conservative who will say absolutely not, we have to go in a more conservative direction. i will say this plan doesn't seem to have the fingerprints of stephen miller, and i do wonder if at some point, especially when the president is back in the u.s., whether he actually comes out and says this is the white house deal and i am putting my full weight behind it. we haven't really seen him talk about it yet. >> when they presented it yesterday, it was, we'll give you the 1.8 but it's take it or leave it on the rest of it. >> i think the reason this is,

to answer the question, more blows up the deal than it helps proceed it is that conservatives, like the one you just played, are going to ignore the fine print and only look at that big headline they consider to be amnesty. where on the other side, the democrats and republicans who are more apt to look for a more moderate solution are going to ignore that headline and look at the fine print. and the fine print is literally policy after policy after policy that really hardline conservative immigration advocates have been trying to push through for decades, and it's cracking down on immigration enforcement. all other immigrants would feel the sting of way more enforcement, and you would be shutting the borders of the united states to a lot of people that have been coming in, you know, through sort of different means for literally, you know, 50, 60, 70 years you would be shutting that down. both sides have reason, different reasons, but reasons to hate it. >> everybody is mad, and the

question is when air force i hits the ground, will we ever see -- we're now into the beginning of a second year -- will we ever see the great deal maker. will he say, here's my proposal. you bring yours, you bring yours, you bring yours and we're going to hash it out together. here's one of the reporters on "fox & friends" getting heady about, hey, conservatives don't like this part. >> you would acknowledge that 1 million folks with a pathway to citizenship is a hiccup for conservative conservatives? >> this is part of the deal that clearly needs to happen. if we had 60 votes for republicans that would support this, it would be easier. the republicans are not in that position. that's why you need a compromise on immigration. >> except no one views it as a compromise. >> that's true, but i also think the fact that you're saying, which is true, and both of you are, that the left -- for lack of a better way to say it -- the left and the right are are angry

about this means it is sort of a compromise. what surprises me, given the fact the president has gone back and forth with such intensity about what he wants over the past two months, what surprises me is that if this is the end deal, which the way it had been described to me ultimately it probably was some version of this, why are they putting this out there now? why don't they just keep quiet, explain that this is what they wanted quietly behind the scenes, let the senate pass it by 70 votes, which is what i'm told the house speaker wants, a very, very big vote so that he -- >> but the president's camp has to pass it by 70 votes. >> you're right, but a version of that particularly on the daca side, the fact that he is saying not only can the people who have already come out of the shadows and said that, you know, they're here illegally stay but about a million more can, that is exactly what immigration

advocates have wanted and is what is making his base mad. so is he putting this out there so his base puts the kibos hrh it? i don't know. >> the 1.8 will come out of the senate and the rest of the stuff won't. if you're nancy pelosi, you're worried if your progressives blink in the senate, you get some of that, this is serious changes to immigration policy, very serious changes to immigration policy. here's how nancy pelosi put it this morning. >> the plan is a campaign to make america white again. it's a plan that says over 50% of the current legal immigration will be cut back, that many people will be sent out of the country. if you read through it, you're thinking, do they not understand that immigration has been the constant reinv vreinvigoration

america? >> maybe the strategic move here is to first send people back to their corners. but this has sent everybody back to their corners. >> that's definitely true, but i think it's hard for democrats to argue that this is a campaign to make america whiter when they're offering amnesty for 200 daca recipients. for republicans in particular, the realisticing point is not going to be amnesty. i honestly think immigration hawks would be fine. amnesty, meaning giving citizenship to the 700,000 or 800,000 daca recipients, people who have already gotten daca work permits. the issue is now the white house is saying, okay, let's do a million more. people who haven't received daca work permits yet, that's going to be a huge sticking point for particularly house conservatives and for people like tom cotton and david perdue in the senate, they're going to push back hard against that and i don't think

that's a bill tom cotton and david perdue would support. >> i don't know if he's willing to somehow extend that deadline, but that's the conversation the president is returning to when he gets off air force i. up next, the allegation that hillary clinton refused to fire a campaign aide despite reports of sexual harrassment. le sympto. crohn's, you've tried to own us. but now it's our turn to take control with stelara® stelara® works differently for adults with moderately to severely active crohn's disease. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower the ability of your immune system to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tuberculosis.

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topping today's political radar, a "new york times" report says hillary clinton went against the advice of her 2008 campaign manager and decided not to fire an adviser accused of sexually harassing a

subordinate. vern stider was reportedly kissing her shoulders and sending her inappropriate e-mails. when the allegations came to hillary clinton, she decided to dock his pay and assign a woman to his job instead of firing him. a spokeswoman from the law firm had this statement that represented the campaign. to ensure a safe working environment, the campaign had a process to address complaints of misconduct of harassment. when matters wearose, they were reviewed in accordance with these policies, and appropriate action was taken. this complaint was no exception. the gop representative leaves congress amid growing

sexual harrassment controversies. representative kennedy to deliver a state of the union response. and president trump addressing his retweet of three on-line videos of a hate group in great britain, telling pie e srs that he still doesn't know. >> they are a bunch of racist, fascist -- >> that i don't know. >> that's what i wanted to clarify with you. >> i knew nothing about them, and i know nothing about them today. here's what's fair. if you're telling me there are horrible, racist people, i would certainly apologize if you would like me to do that. i know nothing about them. up next nikki haley goes on the record to defend herself

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nikki haley went on the air to deny a vicious rumor going around after michael wolff's book, "fire and fury" suggest that go nikki haley was having an affair with the president. >> it is absolutely not true. it is highly offensive. and it's disgusting. at every point in my life, i've noticed that if you speak your mind and you're strong about it, and you say what you believe, there is a small percentage of people that resent that. and the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows, lies or not, to diminish you. >> wow. explain. wow. >> yeah, so i've been pushing to get an interview with master haley for a while and golt tt t green light on monday and took the opportunity to let her clear

the air about a rumor that had been instigated by michael wolff in an interview with bill maher. he said nikki haley and the president were having an affair and close readers of the book would be able to figure out who the president was having an affair with. people started focusing on a line in the book where it said nikki haley had begun spending a lot of time on air force i with president trump and that he was grooming her for a political future. i asked her just for her response to the rumor that had been going around, and you all heard her response. but she also pointed out that she has only taken one air force i trip with the president. that was in july. it was the day that john kelly was announced as the new chief of staff, and said she was never alone with him, and also said she's never discussed her future with president trump. so she pretty definitively, i

think, knocked down this rumor but said that the idea that women -- that successful, strong, outspoken women have slept their way to the top is a particularly sort of vicious rumor that attaches itself to ambitious women. i should note it was a 40-minute interview, it was wide-ranging. this sound bite is getting the most attention, but she talked about everything from the way she grew up in small-town south carolina to, you know, a curfuffle yesterday with the president saying jerusalem was off the table, and she took pains that he was talking about relocating the american embassy, but i don't recall that being a negotiating point between the americans and the palestinians. i would encourage people to list ton the entire interview rather than focus on that one quote. >> you had a rising star not on

the trump campaign during the campaign, and whether you agree or disagree with trump policies, she has forcefully represented the views of the united states and the united nations, is clearly a rising star in the republican party and she chose to address this on the record and forcefully, and good for her. if you have proof of something, say something. if you don't, shut up. >> can i say how disgusting it is for women to have to face this kind of thing, it's just disgusting journalism, too. for michael wolff, you either know something as a journalist and you are solid with your sources and you say i know this to be the case. but you don't hint in a book. that's terrible. >> there are other people he says he can't connect the dots on, he undermines his own work by being reckless and personal on this. >> i was going to say this is an administration where there is so

much intrigue, so much behind-the-scenes stories, you could easily fill 400 pages or however long michael wolff's book was with interesting stories. but i think unfortunately, and very sadly, he decided to actually put out the 400 pages and include stories that were proven to be factually not accurate of tak accurate. >> i think at the end of the day this is about a woman in a very important position being distracted by this silly stuff from the issues that you were talking about, but knowing that she needs to do this to stand up for herself and, frankly, other women. and i think frankly the more women who are in positions like that, the less we're going to have to deal with this. >> i asked about the me too

movement and if she thought there would be backlash. she said, every sort of rumor isn't substantiated hurts people who actually do suffer at the hands of these things, and i think she's a case in point. it's a slightly different situation but it is a case in point. up next, sources tell us there is new tension between the president and chief of staff john kelly. is this perhaps an attempt to make peace? >> gary, robert, even my general and my various other generals. ...made with carbsteady... ...to help minimize blood sugar spikes... ...you can really feel it. now with 30% less carbs and sugars. glucerna.

new sides of tension in the west wing. sources telling cnn the president growing increasingly frustrated with and by his chief of staff john kelly. earlier this week president trump walked into kelly's office interrupting a briefing the chief of staff was giving to reporters about immigration policy. the president decided he was going to talk on the record and

he made headlines, about immigration and the russia investigation. one source described the move as a, quote, warning shot to kelly in order to show who's boss. this is your reporting. part of a team of reporters here. is this real or is this just kelly's turn because the president always needs someone to be mad at? feels real. >> i think they're one and the same often. but you mentioned the fact that it was a very deliberate, we are told, move for the president to go into this meeting with reporters, take over. it wasn't just a hey, how are you, it was, i'm going to talk for 15 minutes and upend the policy measures you are trying to do, chief of staff. the other thing that i and my colleagues who worked on this have heard from multiple sources is concern about -- maybe concern is the wrong word -- noting the fact that this -- we've seen this movie before. a chief of staff who is trying very hard to kind of work things the right way slowly moves away

from the president, stops going on every trip, hears about a very angry president about one or two things that he does. in this case it was kelly going on fox news last week saying the president was uninformed during the campaign and being in the doghouse. so the question now is will the movie play out the way it did with reince priebus where even though the president was saying wonderful things publicly about him, a month after he left him behind at the g-20, he fired him, who knows. but it is certainly interesting that the president has had many a ruffled feather with regard to kelly according to multiple, multiple sources. >> two very high powers. the question is can it last? >> all staff serve the pleasure of the president, and when the president feels they are not serving his interest, they get rid of him. the thing that's so interesting is normally we don't hear about the daily ups and downs and the

weekly and maybe hourly ups and downs, we hear it at the end. >> i thought i heard in your story, dana, that kelly is determined to sort of make it not obvious that he is managing the president, but i think we all know that if you are close to the president or working under him, you're always managing the president. >> all right. more on this drama as the day goes out. see you tomorrow. wolf blitzer starts right now. hello, i'm wolf blitzer. it's 1:0 p.m. here in washington, 7:300 p.m. in davos switzerland. 8:00 p.m. in jerusalem or where you're watching around the world. bombshell. donald trump tried to have special counsel robert mueller fired. why his plan didn't work. plus, a growing divide between