just when you thought a week for the president couldn't get worse, it did. he was taped by his own lawyer about a payment to karen macdougal. the president's strikeout after doing damage control with his helsinki. president trump may have made things worse when he deviated from the script. overlooked by many, the seven words he refused to say. which i think provide great insight into his view of the russian cyberattack. and after his performance was panned, the president renewed his charge that the media is the real enemy of the people. this week when sarah sanders tried to ignore a question that she doesn't like, a reporter stood up for his colleague. he's here. movies adopted by birth, they didn't know ab each other until

they met at 19, the story took a dark turn. i'll talk about the director of "three identical strangers." but first a bad week for the president ended even worse, reporting friday by the "new york times" the president's lawyer michael cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with trump two months before the election, in which they discussed payments to a former playboy model karen macdougcduacdougal, she had an affair with trump. this conversation was about a month after the parent company of the national enquirer ami paid mcdougal $150,000 for her story, and did not publish it in a practice known as catch and kill. today "the washington post" says in the 90-second conversation, cohen can be heard trying to consider buying the rights to mcdougal's story. trump tells one person with only in of the recording, the post

also reports that trump was largely silent in the conversation. the recording was a part of the evidence seized by the fbi when it raided cohen's homes and offices in april. according to "times" prosecutors want to know if the conversation is any evidence of any campaign finance laws and it would seem to contradict the trump campaign denials of any knowledge about the affair and payment to karen mcdougal when the "wall street journal" first reported the story four days before the election. at that time hope hicks said at the time that we have no knowledge of any of this. she said the claims were totally untrue. according to report i by gloria borger and evan perez, the president has waived privilege. trump's lawyers have sent a letter asking to withdraw the privilege. from the perspective of

prosecutors, perhaps the biggest questions is whether any payments were made to protect the family than affect the electi election. the last time the president's voice was heard on an embarrassing tape, the subject matter was more carnal. in that case, he emerged unscathed. while the person who whom he was speaking lost his job. whether this ends the same way? join will the contents of michael cohen's recordings hurt or help? i'll give you the results at the end of this hour, joining me now a trial lawyer, named by the national law journal as a top ten litigators in pennsylvania. he teaches at hastings, stanford, berkeley and the penn law schools. full disclosure, i'm affiliated with his firm of klein and

spector. i need to show you a remarkable tweet from president trump from earlier this morning. put it on the screen inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer's office early in the morning almost unheard of, each more inconceivable they would take a client, totally unheard of, perhaps illegal. the good news is your favorite president did nothing wrong. this brings it to a new level. we have a president publicly warring with his former counsel. >> yes, mike, it's a new level. it's shocking that a former lawyer would -- shocking in two days. the president knows better, because apparently the conversation occurred in new york state, where only one party needs to consent. that of course would be cohen. secondly, even more shocking, he may have the goods on donald trump, and the position doubtlessly knows that. for the president to be accusing michael cohen of committing a crime seems to me to be senseless.

>> michael cohen is maybe not represented in a legal sense, because lanny is a crisis expert, but lanny, on behalf of michael cohen tweeted the following -- the strategy of real donald trump and rodrigo y gabriela -- rudy giuliani. rudy claims the tape is exculpatory. why so angry? your thoughts on that. the tape demonstrates that then bigman and candidates for president donald trump in september of 2016 had knowledge of a claim again him by karen macdougal, and he was involved in some manner in seeking to

keep that claim quiet. there is a question whether this tach indicates possible missuggest on the part of the president or mr. cohen. yes, there's been a report that the president waived privilege. that's not been confirmed. if privilege was not waived by the president, then it would seem this tape would have been found to have been privileged by the special mast er concluded that. so there's -- >> right. let me ask you a question that's not legal in nature, but practice in nature. is it possible that the president had such a bad week

would he rather have people talking about macdougal than putin? >> if you're asking me he would rather have the hammer switched to his right knee -- both topics are very bad for him. the putin summit was a debacle be all reports, and this topic about the -- and efforts at hushing her in the fall of 2016 is also a bad topic for him. i'm not sure he would want to discuss either one. >> how about michael cohen. does he have motivation that you can think of where he wants this in the public domain beyond just embarrassing the president? >> michael cohen does have motivations to get this conversation in the public domain, for at least two

reasons. first, it demonstrates hi cooperation with the federal prosecutors. he is potential facing charges and potentially featsing sentencing, so he wants to lessen charges and sentencing. secondly, he may still entertain the thought that the president might pardon him. it seems unlikely, but to the extent he with poke the president, and show maybe -- perhaps cohen may feel he can motivate to pardon him. is this all noise? is this all business of only the southern district, or do you think there are aspects that relate to mueller's probe? >> that's a great question. this investigation concern

macdougal is in new york and not in washington with robert mueller but in terms of an overall gestalt of what cohen knows about trump and what cohen can add to mueller's investigation of trump, it seems to be important to that aspect of the investigation. so to the extent that there is a fissure between the president and his former lawyer, that may assist the mueller investigation. shanin, thank you for your expertise. >> yes, sir. i want to know what you think. go to smerconish.com this hour, and answer the survey question. will the contents of this recording help or hurt president trump? what are your thoughts? tweet me, or go to my facebook page, my twitter account, i will read some responses. what do we got?

unfortunately, nothing is going to hurt him. >> you can't make that statement for the southern district. remember there are two distinctly different investigations, both problematic for the president, playing themselves out. one is the mueller probe. the other is the southern district of new york. this is not whether he could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and get away it, the other is the evidence being amassed by mueller. cohen recorded trump, because he knew who he was dealing with, michael cohen had a practice, or so it's been reported, that he had a practice of recording people regularly. was the president's caught by surprise, as he suggested was the case? up ahead, the president received a lot of criticism for what he

said in helsinki, but what i think is more interesting is what he refused to say. and one journali stand up for another. why did he do it? and triplets reunited years later by pure chance. the astonishing story has been made into a documentary. i will soon sit down with the director. greatness of an suv? is it to carry cargo... or to carry on a legacy? its show of strength... or its sign of intelligence? in crossing harsh terrain... or breaking new ground? this is the time to get an exceptional offer on the mercedes of your midsummer dreams at the mercedes-benz summer event, going on now. receive up to a $1,250 summer event bonus on select suvs. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing.

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with the stroke of a sharpie, and the striking of seven words, the president might have told us everything we need to know about his interpretations relative to the investigation of the russian meddling in the 2016 election. as a result, his post-summit efforts at damage control after helsinki and the meeting with vladimir putin only made matters worse. that was before he invited putin to the white house. where to begin? first there was the timing.

the president had ample opportunity to clear up any discrepancy before leaving finland on monday, especially where he did interviews with two fox news personalities after the meeting ended but before departing for home, instead, there was no effort to say he had misspoken before air force one took off, probably because he said exactly what he meant to say. second the scripted claim he later made he had meant to say wouldn't instead of would is belied by the totality of that context. that one sentence was an outlier. wasn't an outlier, it was in keeping with his overall preparation while addressing the media in putin's question, it would have been odd to call him extremely powerful to then say i don't see any reason why it wouldn't be rush. russia. third, when he read scripted remarks to try to get the world to recognize russia's

culpability, he couldn't stop going off script, it could have been others also, when he wondered if the hack was the work of a 400 pound man. here's the checker. here's the kicker that many have missed. it's what he refused to say aloud that had been spelled out in front of him. when the president welcomed the media into a meeting with congressionally leaders, he sat at the conference call with four pages of notes, of course members of the media took pictures, including tom brenner's, whose perhaps captured the scripted words, including his handwritten notations allowing easy comparison between what was intended and what was delivered. a comparison of the two is remarkable. on the top of page 2, these words appear, quote -- in saying, as i have had said before, that i accept our intelligence community's conclusions about russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

the president read those words versus bait and then he added what he had written in his own hand, there was no collusion. the misspelling is his. he then continued to follow the script. >> in a key sentence in my remarks, i said "would" 2347d of "wouldn't." the sent should have been i don't see any reason why it wouldn't be russia, sort of a double negative. i have on numerous occasions noted our intelligence findings that russians attempt to do interfere in our elections. >> okay. so far so good, but then came a deletion, quote -- anyone involved in that meddling, to justice, stricken, presumably by his own hand. clearly he was supposed to say anybody involved in that meddling either will be or should be brought to justice, but he just couldn't do it. probably because he doesn't believe it. his deviation from the script is

an admission he has no desire to see anybody involved in the meddling brought to justice. it's just that simple. the stricken words are a trial lawyer's dream. reminiscent of when charles manson's prosecutor if famously lamented that o.j. simpson, quote, made sufficiently incriminating statements in his interview with police that alone could have convicted him. mueller could spepd an afternoon questioning trump on this deletion alone. for starters, did you strike those words, plump? do you not believe those words, plump? what did you have in mind when you struck those words, mr. president? to the extent it's proven that russia meddled in our elections, would you not like to see thor perpetrators brought to justice? who do you believe should be spared justice for the russia attack?

aren'tly it's what the president says that raises questions. this time it's the other way around, what he would not utter. this week "new york times" broke the stories that weeks before his inauguration, trump was given definitive proof that russia had -- and the new book "the perfect weapon." david, you know the big story today. it's michael cohen presumably having taped trump. what is robert mueller's interest in that issue, if any? >> it's not clear how interested he is in that, but clearly, if you look at what mueller has done, michael, over the past couple months, he did an indictment of the people who ran the internet research agency. they're the ones in russia who put out all of those ads and other commentary on facebook and

other social media. then ten days ago he indicted 12 officers testify the gru, the russian military intelligence unit, that broke into the democratic national committee, and that then worked with wikileaks, created false personas. when you read the indictments together, what's missing from it is whether or not they got any help from any americans, and the people who clearly the mueller is trying to press for information on that is paul manafort, goes to trial pretty soon. rick gates, his associate. of course general michael flynn, who was the national security adviser briefly under president trump. and you have to also add michael cohen into that in case he heard any of that along the way. so this question of the

deletions you were referring to gets to what's really the central intrigue that we just don't know the answer to in the muell mueller material, which is were there americans? and were there americans linked to the campaign or close to president trump who somehow interacted with either the gru, the internet research agency, or other russians. that takes to our story this weekend. >> something that occurs to me after reading your book is that mueller is operating largely on a cyber-evidentiary trail, as he attempts to answer those questions. >> he certainly is. if you go into that indictment of the 12 gru officers, what is remarkable about it is he has transcripts of texts, e-mails, other conversations. i've been told by people in the intelligence community he

actually didn't get that from u.s. intelligence, but that instead he was able to put it together from foreign intelligence agencies that cooperated and from legal process here in the united states. that raises an interesting question. so many internet communications go through the infrastructure set up in the u.s., servers in the u.s., at&t, verizon, aol, or, you know, any number of internet service providers. google, of course, and apple, that it's very possible the gru didn't realize some of these conversations were running through u.s. servers, which ultimately mueller may have been able to get access to. >> david, i hear a criticism from supporters of the president often from radio callers, who saying say to me, yeah, but our hands aren't clean. there is an academic at carnegie

mellon, who did a study that between world war ii's end, 81 times in 61 nations we have meddled. what thoughts do you have on that? >> that's certainly true. the united states has interfered particularly through the cold wars in election in italy in the late 1940s. latin america in the '50s and '60s, in japan, we staged a coup in iran in the 1960s, so certainly the question, or interfering in election, the united states does not at all have clean hands. you know, when you go through the perfect weapon, as you were and i were discussing earlier this week, michael, we also don't have clean hands on the question of cyber-intrusions into other countries. the only way that our cyber-defenses and cyberoffenses work is by getting inside the networks of foreign countries,

and that's a violation of law in those countries. while you could come after the russians and say what were you doing inside the networks of the dnc, they could easily turn around and say clearly you are inside the networks of russian intelligence and so forth. this is one -- >> that's why i bring it up. >> this is one of the essential problems with cyber, which is we have wrapped so much secrecy as a government in our cyber-operations, offensive and defensive, that we haven't been able to publicly debate any ground rules about what's off-limits and what's not. >> i learned that from the book it's totally uncharted territory as we're book makes clear. david, thank you for being here. we appreciate it. go and visit that weather behind you. >> it's not so rough out here. great to be with you. the greatest jess terr,

hallie jackson cut off by sarah sanders, "the hill's" jordan fabian comes to her defense. is this the sign of new alliances in the media? he'll tell us next.

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the others? nope! get internet on our gig-speed network and add voice and tv for $34.90 more per month. call or go on line today. an allyiiance developed thi week, or so it seemed. first, some background. you'll remember during the president's visit to checkers, the country home of theresa may, he ignored questions from cnn's own jim acosta and chose to call on john roberts, fox news. >> that's such dishonest --

>> since you attacked it cnn. >> john roberts, go ahead. >> reporter: can i ask -- >> cnn is fake news. i don't take questions from -- cnn is fake news. john roberts of fox. >> so roberts asked his question, he was criticized for not calling out the president, but arguably shall shown loyalty to his employer first. then came in moment on wednesday, nbc's hallie jackson was quizzing sarah sanders about the white house claim when the president said know about putin's spore phoenix, he was just saying no to more questions. here's the end of the back-and-forth. majority up go ahead, just to follow up on my second question. >> you asked two.

i'm going to move on to two -- one again, hallie, eye movie on. jordan, go ahead. >> so she was trying to call on jordan fabian of "the hill." here is what happened next. >> sorry, hallie, go ahead if you want. >> i'm going to take a question from jordan. >> i just want to know when. at least i don't remember when a time -- >> i think by stating the fact that the president said that russia interfered with our election that's a pretty bold call-out. >> jordan gutsy on your part, when you defer that make sarah is not coming back. >> yeah, michael. that thought entered my mind after i had done that, but in the moment, i viewed it as a professional courtesy to hallie. all of us in that room are trying to get our questions in,

and follow-up questions are an important part trying to get to the bottom of some of these answers. hallie hadn't finished yet. i had been covered the white house for 3 1/2 years, reporters have always had the chance to ask follow-up questions, and i thought it was important for her to finish her line of questioning before the questioning moved to me of course i was thinking about jim acosta and john roberts. were you thinking about the way that had gone down? >> i wasn't, michael. when you're sitting in a chair in a briefs room, you're just trying to make sure you don't sound like a moran on television, quite frankly. i was trying to get myself in the mind-set to ask mea question, and then this interaction happened. i'm not going to lie. we have talked a lot behind the scenes about press corps unity, make sure we can all do our

jobs, and in that moment i thought deferring to hallie was the right thing to do. >> the bigger question -- do you think this may unfold in subsequent, in press conferences to come? >> i hope so, in the sense that all of us in the white house press corps have respect for one another and do our best to make sure we can all do our jobs. i view it in a bit of a different light. there's this dynamic now, partially because of how the president treats the media, that the media is the opposition party and we are tasked with defeating him. that's not how we view it. we are just trying to do our jobs, to report on the president and the white house and tell readers what's going on, and really what i tried to do a make sure one of my colleagues had a chance to do her job, and hopefully in the future if it happened to me or someone else, we would pay it forward.

>> final question. there's something on my mind as to whom you owe a duty. i would like to think you owe a duty to the american people, but you actually owe a duty to "the hill." so if you defer to hallie, and now sarah angry at you doesn't come back to, and i'm if i'm your editor, i'm going to say, way to take a bullet, but you never got your question and we want on you record. thoughts? >> you hit the nail on the head. it's a tough balancing act when you're in a ma'am. will youyly for me, i think sarah did the right thing and called on me afterwards, and i got my question in, but i think that's the dynamic that a lot of viewers don't get. when sawyer ra goes to somebody else and they ask a different question, it's not a slight to the other reporter in the room.

it's that we're all covering different stories and we're trying to get that in it's a tough balancing act, but i'm glad it worked out last week. >> you know when a guest goes on all the sunday morning shows, they called it a ginsburg, bag, if somebody should defer yex week, maybe they'll be calling it a fabian. they just decided to surrender their time. we'll have to watch. thank you, jordan. >> thanks, michael. let's check in on your social media -- joan, you get my point. sarah sanders is finished now with hallie, they goes on to jordan, he says i'll surrender my time. sarah, to her credit, gave jordan back his time b. but she doesn't have to, if he gets cut out of that loop, you wonder,

has he provided his employer with what they're owed? one more if we have time. would love to see reporters support each other when sarah sander is trying to shut one down, they should all repeat the same question until she answers. wouldn't that be interesting, patti. i think there will be more. i have a suspicion that there's more to come in this regard. don't forget to answer today's survey question. will the contents of michael cohen's recording hurt or help president trump? still to come, triplets, separated at birth then reunited at age 19 by sheer coincidence. thai their astonishing story is a critically acclaimed documentary, but the story is a troubling one. i'm about to talk to the director. you like them. they always remember everyone's names.

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bobby shaft ren, ellie galen, and eddie all adopted. then at age 19, the three boys finally met through a crazy set of circumstances and quickly realized they were identical triplets. is it started off as a heartwarming tale that attracted media interest, but then a much bigger and darker story started to unfold, a story told in a new documentary that has earned rave

reviews. three identical strangers, which is a hit in theaters will air on cnn in the future. the rights have been sold for a scripted feature film. the director joins me now, hey, tim, i don't know if the scale is to four or five stars, but i'm giving you the max. i thought it was terrific. i have to say, i laughed and i cried. i mean, you really take us on an emotional roller coaster. thank you. yeah, that's what i'm hoping the film does. it encompasses a wide range of emotions. the people any theater are laughing at the start, then they gasp, they start crying and by the end they're pretty angry. >> i'm knoll going to give it all away, but bobby goes off to college, driving an old beatup volvo. if you had asked him, he would have said he had one sibling. he gets to school, a number of people address him by a

different name, and very quickly the pieces fall together. it turns out he had a twin brother, whohood on the same campus a year prior. >> then the two brothers find each other. they celebrate, they're on the front of a lot of newspapers, particularly in the new york area. the very next day they get a call from someone who says i'm real you about you guys, and i look just like you. i think i'm the third, i think we're triplets, and they were, and this was not by happenstance, this was all by design, that they would grow up in very different environments. >> yeah. the film kind of explores what happens both after the three of them are united, they become famous in new york, around the world, but also looks at the circumstances behind the separation. as you say, it wasn't just the random event. ings. >> may i always say despite

aural your work and labor bringing it to the screen, there's a big piece we still don't know, locked away at yale university is the real story, the full story. >> absolutely. there's a treasure trove of documents relating to the brothers, and other twins that were also separated that are locked away in a vault there until 2065 now, we believe. >> is there any prospect that because of your movie those records will be released sooner than 2065? >> the brothers, because of the film and some of the work my producer did, the brothers have got access to some materials related to them, heavily redacted photocopies. it's very hard to know exactly what they've got, but i'm hopeful that the organizations involved, and who can grant access will be much more transparent in talking about this study. >> again, not trying to give

away too much, but because this was all by virtue of some experiment, for lack of a better description, is there any argument that can be made that the ends justified the means? did anything come of this? did we learn anything about three identical twins, raced in different socioeconomic backgrounds? >> i think that's the question at the heart of the film. various people make the argument that this experiment was justified in the era it occurred in and was started, in the '50s and '60s where there were a lot of rogue psychology experiment, it was kind of the wild west of psychological experiments, some which would not pass any ethical question today. but as far as it -- it remains in my eyes pretty unjustifiable.

let's call it five, i'm giving you five stars. well done. >> thank you. we're at 96 on rotten tomatoes. thank you for having me on. and you deserve it. still to come, your best and worst social media comments. we have a tweet. let's see it -- i'm adopted, discovered my mother and two brothers live in the same city as me. i've known my brother unbeknownst since 1984, my mother lives three blocks from my kids. hey, bruce, you got to see this movie. it begins as a heartwarming tale and then takes a more sinister direction, and there's a lot we still don't now. but thumbs up. your last chance to vote before the final results of the survey question -- will the contents of michael cohen's reporting harm or help president trump? go vote. into booking a hotel.

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hey, time to see how you responded to the survey question at smerconish.com. will the contents of michael cohen's recording help or hurt president trump? survey says 9,879 votes cast. 82% say hurt. 18% said help. rudy giuliani in his capacity as the president's attorney said this would exculpate, that this would benefit the president when all was said and done. and i would point out that "the washington post" today said you

really hear michael cohen's voice and not much from the president. so time will tell. social media reaction to today's program, put it up on the screen. maybe trump struck that line because it had grammatical errors. hey, bosscat, so much has been said about helsinki and appropriately so. and of course the president then on tuesday tried to get a mulligan by speaking to the media and launched the whole semantic "would" versus "wouldn't." the seven words he would not say are a trial lawyer's dream and great fodder for the president. he says he wants to see brought to justice anybody involved in that russian meddle and he needs to explain why he didn't say it. he crossed out the sentence because he is afraid of an indictment against himself. i guess, ellen, what you're saying is he didn't want to say he wants them brought to justice

because that would mean he would be because to justice, at least that's your interpretation. given another one. what do we got? smerconish, if the press corps unit unites, the white house will end the press corps briefings. true, but what if more follow jordan's lead at other events, like when you saw acosta and john roberts? what if john roberts in the backyard of chequers said i want to give my colleague at cnn, he used to work here, time to ask another question. smerconish, what does the tape matter? his supporters could see him shoot someone on fifth avenue and still would not abandon him. might be true but the question is not what his supporters will do or think. that pertains to what happens in 2020. it's what the southern district of new york will think when they evaluate that evidence. you can catch up with us any

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tonight on "the axe files," former new orleans mayor mitch landrieu takes on president trump's performance on the world stage. >> he weakened us in a way we've never been weakened before and he should be ashamed of himself. >> his fight to remove confederate monuments. >> it became really, really

clear that this was wrong and it needed to be corrected. >> race in america. >> do you think the president is a racist? >> in the south, if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's usually a duck. >> and whether he will run for president in 2020. >> mitch, i want to ask you this, how seriously are you thinking about the? >> welcome to "the axe files." >> mitch landrieu, good to see you. we're here in your hometown of new orleans, in the cafe reconcile. tell me why this is such a special place to you. >> well, when i grew up, there was a jesuit priest, father harry thompson, who became the pastor of a downtown inner city church, and started talking about ways to help kids and to connect people with money with people who needed money. and he wanted to start a place where kids could have a better future. and he said, look,