good evening. there's breaking news tonight, the white house saying they may defy a congressional subpoena for the testimony former white house counsel don mcgahn, the attorney who kept notes and already talked to mueller. they are already resisting a second subpoena for another former aide. the treasury department is ignoring another deadline for handing over the president's tax returns, and the trump organization is battling a demand to produce financial records. essentially, the administration is trying to put up road blocks wherever they can. we'll talk tonight about those cases and others and whether they amount to contempt on the president's part, not just for congress, but also for institutions and standards of behavior dating back to the founders. whether or not this is the case is, of course, an open question. it is debatable, and we'll certainly debate it tonight, including with a nobel laureate who believes we're on the edge of no longer being a functioning democracy. we begin, keeping them honest with something beyond almost any dispute, namely, the administration's contempt for the truth to the point of trying to convince the public not to believe their ears and eyes. the word for it, of course, is

gaslighting. we saw a new example of it today, but just to refresh your memory, here's an earlier example. >> what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. >> so, the president -- that was him last july -- and as you heard, he just is straight up saying it out loud -- don't believe what you read and what you see. that is sort of direct brute-force gaslighting. his son-in-law, jared kushner, on the other hand, barely says anything out loud in public, is usually a bit more subtle than that. not today, though. today, now that people have read the mueller report, he tried to suggest that there really wasn't anything to it. he's saying that what you and i and anyone can read on page after page amounts, in fact, to nothing at all, apparently even the parts about russia interfering in our elections and in our democracy. >> the whole thing's just a big distraction for the country. and you look at, you know, what russia did, buying some facebook ads to try to sew dissent, and do it, and it's a terrible thing, but i think all the allegations and speculation that's happened over the last two years has had a much harsher

impact on our democracy than a couple of facebook ads. >> just a couple facebook ads, he says, which earned him a digital pat on the head from his father-in-law. "great interview by jared," he tweeted. "nice to have extraordinarily smart people serving our country." so smart. who else other than maybe that cliff guy could sum up such a long document so concisely? who else could take the lead sentence in the mueller report and interpret it so smartly? i'm quoting from the mueller report -- "the russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion." or as jared kushner so brilliantly put it, a couple of facebook ads. there's also this passage from the opening page of the mueller report -- "first, a russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate donald j. trump and disparaged presidential candidate hillary clinton. second, a russian intelligence service conducted computer intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the clinton campaign and then released stolen documents." look, the mueller report's long, nearly what, 400 pages?

448, to be exact. and who's got time to read all that? luckily, here's the kushner's notes version. a couple of facebook ads. see? so easy. it works just as well for all items in the table of contents of the mueller report. section two -- russian active measures, social media campaign. items one through four, the i.r.a., the russian internet research agency, ramps up u.s. operations as early as 2014. or facebook ads -- just a couple -- u.s. operations through i.r.a.-controlled social media accounts, the same. u.s. operations from facebook. exactly. u.s. operations through twitter. all right, not a couple of facebook ads. but look, who's counting? not kushner. also, u.s. operations involving political rallies, targeting and recruitment of u.s. persons, interactions and contacts with the trump campaign. trump campaign promotion of i.r.a. political materials. now, that is a lot of stuff to slog through, 48 pages of russian interference in all, but look, it probably won't be on the test. all you really need to know is this, according to the president's son-in-law, all russia did was buy a couple of facebook ads, which keeping you

from looking at page 31 of volume one of the mueller report, which reads in total, campaign affiliates promoted tweets and other political content created by the i.r.a. funny how you can get all that from just a couple facebook posts. or maybe it just looks that way by gaslight, which also lends a certain glow to days like today. our jim acosta is at the white house basking in the gaslight with more on tonight's breaking news. so, the white house trying to block don mcgahn from testifying. >> reporter: right. >> where are they at on this? >> reporter: well, anderson, i've talked to a senior white house official earlier this evening who said at this point they are likely to block don mcgahn, the former white house counsel, from testifying in front of the house judiciary committee. the judiciary committee, as you know, would like to have mcgahn sit there in front of the cam a cameras and confirm what was said in the mueller report and he was instructed by the president to go and fire special counsel robert mueller. you know, the white house over here and their allies outside of the white house have been taking issue with some of that, and i

think that is something that the white house is trying to avoid at this point, seeing mcgahn in front of those cameras testifying under oath and saying, basically, what he told the special counsel, robert mueller. i will tell you that this official i spoke with earlier this evening said the president is in a fighting mood, is the way this official described it, when it comes to all of these requests that are coming in across this, you know, range of investigations that we're seeing come from the house democrats up on capitol hill, anderson. >> yeah, and as we mentioned, there's another aide that they're trying to stop him from testifying, is that right? i mean, this is not the only testimony the white house is trying to block. >> reporter: that's right. they don't want carl klein, who is a former white house official who had some oversight over white house security clearances -- they don't want him testifying. they're trying to block that testimony as well. and of course, he would be asked about some of these security clearances that were provided to jared kushner, ivanka trump and other officials, top officials inside the white house, where there were some security clearance issues back in the early days of the administration. and as you were just saying a

few moments ago, you know, these tax returns that house democrats, richard neil, the chairman of the house ways and means committee, that he would also like to get his hands on that, also has been something they're having a tug-of-war over. the treasury secretary, steve mnuchin, said in a letter to chairman neal this evening, basically saying, listen, there's no legal timetable for us to get back to you on all of this, but they're saying at this point there should be an answer on this on may 6th. but anderson, i talked to an official earlier this evening at the white house who said don't hold your breath for the president's tax returns. he is in no mood to provide that. and as i said, the way this official described it, the president is in a fighting mood, is the way they described it a fighting mood to push back on all of these efforts on capitol hill. >> jim acosta, thanks very much. more now on how this is all being received by one of the committees the president is defying. democrat ro khanna sits on the committee. thanks for being with us. i want first of all your reaction to the breaking news that the white house may seek to prevent don mcgahn from

complying with the judiciary committee's subpoena. >> it's just a delay tactic. don mcgahn has waived his executive privilege by giving this information to mueller. and the executive privilege doesn't apply when there are issues of possible fraud or obstruction. the irony here is that donald trump should be thanking mr. mcgahn. mr. mcgahn is the one who saved him from firing bob mueller and saved him from a far worse scandal. >> the president, as you know, is now claiming that everybody there follows his orders, that he doesn't have people who are defying him or ignoring him. >> well, it's very ironic, because the reason he's still president of the united states is because people did defy him. i mean, he had these crazy schemes for folks to blatantly break the law, and the only reason mueller didn't have a more damning conclusion and left some ambiguity in terms of the obstruction issue is that it was a clumsy and inept attempt because he had people who were willing to defy him and not carry out blatantly illegal

orders. >> yeah. your committee has had to push back its deadline for subpoena of the president's financial records due to the suit the president filed yesterday against your committee's chairman, elijah cummings. is this delay a victory for the president and is this a strategy you expect them to use to block other requests going forward? >> this is the strategy the president has used his whole life, to file lawsuits against whoever he's opposed to. of course, the lawsuit wasn't in his official capacity as president. it was in his personal capacity, and that's because he knows there's no expectation of privacy in the same way when you're president of the united states. i mean, i don't have an expectation of privacy in my financial records. he has disclosure requirements for his finances, and the congress has every right to see whether those disclosures were accurate or not and whether there are conflicts of interest. so, he will lose in a court of law. the problem is that he's delaying, and he knows that by taking this to court, he is kicking the can down the road

and preventing people from getting to the truth. >> about the testimony of the former white house security director, carl klein, that jim acosta was talking about, your committee wants to question him about the white house security clearance process. chairman cummings is moving towards holding klein in contempt for refusing to comply with the subpoena. if cummings does hold klein in contempt, would that be some kind of a tipping point between this congress and the white house? >> i do think so. let's be clear here, the white house has not given us a single document or a single person to testify on the issue of why people got security clearances when career officials had said not to give them those clearances. and we have bent over backwards to try to get this information. and now they're not allowing white house officials to testify. this is unprecedented. it will go to a court. a court will rule for us, because congress' power to subpoena is at its maximum when you have misconduct in the white house or allegations of misconduct. but again, the problem,

anderson, is a court process could take months, and the president knows this. he knows that he has a 2020 re-election coming up. and he just wants to delay as much as possible. >> is your committee, are other committees prepared for that kind of protracted and bitter fights with this white house? because the message from the white house very clearly seems to be they're not going to comply, they're not going to back down, and it's going to be lawsuits and delays as long as possible. you talked about months. i mean, with the court system, these things could drag on for a very, very long time, more than just a couple months. >> they could. i mean, in george bush's case with harriet miers, when there was a conflict with congress, it was resolved when president bush was leaving office. and so, it can take months. we are prepared to fight. but anderson, here's the problem with our constitutional democracy. i mean, madison in federalist 51 when he talked about separation of powers and a check on the system, he assumed that people would be loyal to the branch they serve in, that ambition would counteract ambition, that

congress would check the executive branch because it's in our self-interest. what's happened now is people are more loyal to their party than to the institution. and that's why the checks and balances system has not been working the way the founders intended. >> finally, there is certainly a lot of talk about impeachment of the president, and if your party's going to go that route, are you in favor of moving towards impeachment proceedings? >> not at this point. i'm where nancy pelosi is. we need to have a deliberate, methodical process. we need to have bob mueller testify. there's something different about having the american people hear from bob mueller. there are not many people who have read a 450, 480-page report. we need to hear from don mcgahn. and then we need to have the committees do their work and then see where we're at. >> congressman ro khanna, thank you so much. appreciate it. >> thank you, anderson. next, more on jared kushner's pretty remarkable take on the russia probe as well as a fuller discussion of the breaking news, namely, president trump's willingness to challenge congress and where that might lead. we'll talk to nobel laureate

paul krugman about that as well. later with former vice president biden expected to get into the presidential race this week, we'll ask the question, has he waited too long? and what are voters going to make of his message when he's just 1 of 20 out there. >> announcer: "anderson cooper 360" brought to you by nondrowsy 24-hour claritan. feel the clarity of non-drowsy claritin and relief from symptoms caused by over 200 indoor and outdoor allergens. like those from buddy. because stuffed animals are clearly no substitute for real ones. feel the clarity. and live claritin clear. ♪ pardon the interruption but this is big!

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ten detailed acts of obstruction of justice. robert mueller's report lays out a roadmap for impeachment proceedings against this president and challenges congress to do its job. i'm tom steyer and we can't let this president destroy the public trust, break his oath of office and get away with it. congress has to do its job and hold him accountable. please call them at this number. tell them to get going.

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cordero who joins us now, and former republican senator and presidential candidate rick santorum with us as well as cnn legal analyst jeffrey toobin. just in terms of stopping mcgahn from testifying, how much of a case does the white house have for that? >> i think it's a very weak case because of a legal doctrine called waiver. you know, he has told this story to mueller. the white house did not object to the public disclosure of that story. >> they didn't exert executive privilege. >> they didn't cite executive privilege. you can't pick and choose about the public disclosure of issues -- of subject matter that you say is privileged. once they allowed that to become public, i think they've forfeited the chance to stop it again. >> senator santorum, a, do you agree with that? and i guess, what is the point of trying to stop someone after the damage is arguably done, other than the president doesn't want him on tv repeating it? >> yeah, because this is, i

think in the white house, this is harassment. jeffrey said it, don mcgahn's already said everything. they just want to have him say it in public and say it in a dramatic fashion and play politics with it. and so, if they're going to play politics with it and harass the president, then the president's going to play politics and harass right back. i mean, i think this is where this goes when you really aren't looking for more information. what you're doing is you're looking for political advantage in this, and the white house is just going to play politics just like the democrats are. >> but wait a second, rick. there are laws about when you can testify and when you can refuse to testify. and i think you'd agree that political advantage is a traditional reason to hold a hearing. and just because you think there's a political -- doesn't mean you can just refuse to testify. >> the white house can do what white houses have done and this white house i think will do a

lot of, which is say no -- >> but they have to have the law. >> they have to have the law to ultimately win, but they don't have to have the law to protract and delay and do what politically they think is to their advantage to do, fight. >> so, carrie, a, how long a protracted fight could this be? and ultimately, would a court, do you think, rule on the side of congress? >> i think congress has a real strong argument here for the reasons that jeffrey described, which is that don mcgahn has already been interviewed by the special counsel's office and the white house waived the privilege in that circumstance as well as when the report came out. so, i think -- i agree with rick to the extent that this is a political strategy on the part of the white house, and i think it's a part of a broader strategy. it's not just about mcgahn's testimony. it's about the security official who the white house is not wanting to go before congress. it's about the challenge on the release of the president's taxes. this is just a across-the-board

no, and they're going to fight every opportunity that they have. >> and could this go all the way to the supreme court, the argument about mcgahn? >> they could challenge on executive privilege. i mean, it would go through the courts, and i suppose it eventually could, but it will work its way through if they decide to challenge. but it's not clear that they actually are going to challenge it. i think the white house lawyers will know they have a pretty weak argument here. >> jeff, in terms of what jared kushner was saying today, were you surprised at his characterization of -- >> well, it was false, but i wasn't surprised. you know, the son-in-law didn't fall far from the tree. i mean, this is what the president has been saying. i mean, the idea that the entire russia investigation was just a few facebook ads, you know, putting aside the hacking of the dnc e-mails and john podesta's e-mails, putting aside the trump tower meeting. i mean, it was an egregious distortion of the facts, but he was serving his father-in-law, and you saw his father-in-law made a nice tweet about what a

wonderful job jared kushner did. >> senator santorum, just in terms of what russia did, do you fear that the president's, you know, what hope hicks described as his achilles' heel, the fear he has, according to hope hicks, that looking into what russia did and saying what russia did somehow tarnishes his victory -- is that going to hurt the united states, just in terms of the willingness of the u.s. or this administration to actually make sure it doesn't happen again? >> well, i think the mueller report actually disposes of that concern, because it's clear that mueller said that the president wasn't involved and that there was certainly no determination that russian interference had any determinative effect on the election. i think that the danger that jared kushner entered into -- i understand the frustration that jared and the trump administration has with this whole russia investigation, the

fact that, you know, there really was no there there when it came to trump and any kind of working with the russians, but you have to separate russian interference with the issue of trump and the trump campaign working with or coordinating with the russians. and to blow off the one i think is appropriate because it certainly was no evidence of that. but to blow off the interference and just sort of make light of the interference i think was not a wise thing for jared to do. i think you can make fun of the travesty, in my opinion, that has taken place over the last two years of investigating this president because of some potential, you know, wrongdoing when there wasn't one, but you don't make fun or you don't take lightly a foreign government trying to influence our election. >> so, this is right, because here's the thing -- the special counsel's report is not actually the entire story when it comes to the national security side of the russian influence effort. the senate intelligence committee is also doing an

entire review, and they commissioned a couple of reports, two of which came out at the end of last year. those reports documented -- these were outside reviews that the committee commissioned. those reports documented in extensive detail -- and so, these were independent, non-partisan, academic reports -- extensive detail the activities of the internet research agency, the russian agency that was involved in the activities. and one of the reports said that in terms of the social media impact, the i.r.a. created a, quote, manipulation ecosystem. this was not a couple of facebook posts. these reviews that were commissioned by the senate intelligence committee under the chairmanship of senator burr, a republican, have documented -- they've reviewed much of the data, not all the data, because the companies did not cooperate fully -- but they reviewed a lot of data from the social media companies. and what they found is that there was a pervasive effort over a course of years -- these reports go back 2014 to 2017.

so, for a white house official to stand up in public, separate from the president who so many people discount what he says -- for another white house official to stand up and say it was just a couple facebook posts? that is contrary to everything that's in america's security interests going forward. >> i just want to make one point. you do talk about the voluminous amount of activity, but again, compared to everything else, all of the other information that was blowing out there, it was still a very, very small part, and i think that's what jared kushner was trying to say, which is, hey, yeah, they may have done all this, but it really was insignificant in the larger flow of information that was going through the campaign. >> that is not -- >> i understand why he's saying that, but it's not the right approach to take. >> right. >> he left out the most important thing the russians did, which was the hacking of -- >> the dnc, yeah. >> -- the e-mails, which was enormously important in the election and repeatedly referred to by candidate donald trump, to

say nothing of the extensive evidence that the president of the united states committed obstruction of justice. that's relevant, too. >> all right. carrie cordero, jeff toobin, rick santorum, to be continued. up next, what nobel prize winner paul krugman said about all this and the prediction of the president in a dark democracy itself. ow the peninsula trail? you won't find that on a map. i'll take you there. take this left. if you listen real hard you can hear the whales. oop. you hear that? (vo) our subaru outback lets us see the world. sometimes in ways we never imagined. forget about vacuuming for weeks. the (new) roomba i7+ with clean base automatic dirt disposal

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"the great republican abdication, a party that no longer believes in american values." the president for his part respond ed on twitter -- "paul krugman of the fake news "the new york times" has lost all credibility, as has the "times" itself with his false and highly inaccurate writings on me. he's obsessed with hatred, just as others are obsessed with how stupid he is." fortunately, you don't have to take the president's word. you can judge the strength of professor krugman's argument tonight. >> you talked about the republicans abdicating. what are they abdicating? >> the way i think about it is, suppose we had something like the mueller report about a president 40 or 50 years ago, when there was actual bipartisanship. everybody in congress, or at least the vast majority of senators would be saying this is terrible, we need to at least know more. we would have had howard baker types saying what did the president know, what did he do, when did he do it? and instead, we had a complete -- this was a horrifying story about a presidency, and not one important republican figure has

spoken out saying this is something wrong. >> even in watergate, though, it took time for republicans to start to raise those questions. >> yes, but they raised them as information came out. now, a lot of information is out. and this is, let's face it, this is much worse than watergate. this is a foreign power is involved. it's a vast pattern. it's not some one event. >> it's also always interesting to do the flip test, that if this was a democrat who had done this, the republicans would be, if not moving to impeachment, calling for it. >> of course. well, it really wouldn't matter. we know if hillary clinton had gotten that extra 100,000 votes in the three swing states, there would have been attempts to impeach her within months. >> if hillary clinton had hired chelsea clinton to work in the white house and sent her overseas to meet with saudi arabia or wherever -- >> it's hardly worth saying, but yes, imagine what republicans would be saying about the same information if it was a democrat. >> you've talked about they've abdicated this, essentially, the deep-pocketed republicans have embraced trump in a way in they

didn't in 2016. you think it's all about the tax cut? >> yeah. there was some explicit stuff. some of the big donors were saying if you don't give us this tax cut, then we're going to give up. you know, don't expect anything from us. but he got the tax cut through. it's the only major piece of legislation he got through, but he got a big tax cut for the wealthy, and that's really all that -- that's what the party, the true base, the base -- you know, not the base out there in the countryside, but the base, the moneymen, that's what they care about. >> one of the things that i talked with former cia director general michael hayden a lot about, and he sort of uses this term, is the thin veneer of civilization, that we like to think democratic institutions are so deeply embedded in bedrock that, you know, any change would come slowly and would be thwarted ultimately by the institutions of democracy. but you write that it's very much up in the air whether america as we know it will survive. >> sure. the institutions are in the end people, you know? institutions depend upon the

willingness of people to obey norms, and occasionally to say, okay, this is not how we do things in our country. and this didn't start with trump. there's been a steady erosion of those norms. you know, it wasn't trump who basically decided to steal a supreme court seat. it wasn't trump who, you know, basically turned the legitimate investigative powers of congress into a way to harass the other party. so, this has been building for a long time, and we're very close to the edge right now. >> when you say close to the edge, what does that mean to you? >> i think we'll -- you know, on paper, we'll stay a democracy, but i worry very much about us sort of hungary type situation where you have on paper the institutions of democracy. you even hold votes, but the system is rigged, and in fact, it's become effectively you have one-party rule. >> you actually really believe that? >> oh, we could have this conversation two years from now and say that it happened, or maybe we couldn't have this conversation because the media would demuzzle it. but we're very close. if trump is re-elected, if the republicans retake control of

the house, what are the odds that we will really have a functioning democracy after that? >> i mean, that's a pretty terrifying idea. >> if you're not terrified, you're not paying attention. >> in terms of the president paying attention now to what you wrote, any response to what he tweeted out? >> first of all, it's, if you're in the media, you always wonder is anybody paying attention. so, hey, somebody's paying attention, so that's a good thing. he got it wrong. he said i'm stupid. it's not wrong. i'm evil. he should know that. >> just lastly, herman cain is no longer in the running now for the fed. do you think stephen moore will actually move forward? >> there's a pretty good chance that stephen moore will move forward. again, under any normal criteria, not a chance. i mean, this is a guy who is basically a hack. he's known to be a hack. they couldn't get any well-established republican economist to endorse him, although very few are willing to say that this guy is not appropriate. but he has been a republican

party favorite because he tells them what they want to hear. and if he does fail, it probably won't be because he has disastrous, ludicrous ideas about economics. it will probably be because it turns out he's got personal problems, too. >> paul krugman, i appreciate it. thank you. >> thank you. the already jam-packed democratic presidential field is about to get even larger with a heavyweight addition coming up with the announcement by former vice president biden will mean for the catalog of democratic candidates. cooper! did you eat all of your treats? ♪ help! i need somebody ♪ help! not just anybody ♪ help! you know i need someone wenit gave me a leafput in the names almost right away. first. within a few days,

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well, last night's series of cnn town halls showcased many of the top-tier democratic presidential candidates, but that top tier is about to expand, at least if the latest polling is accurate. cnn is reporting that former vice president joe biden will finally make it official with an online video the day after tomorrow. biden's entry would add him to this field of 19 declared candidates, bringing the entire democratic field to 20. each scrambling for influence, positioning, and, of course, money. here now to help me unscrabble the politics of it all is david axelrod, former senior advisor to president obama, gloria powers and gloria borger. david, what do you think it's going to do to this race, biden throwing his hat in? >> well, look, he has been the

front-runner in the polls from the beginning, and he continues to be the front-runner. he's holding somewhere around 30% of the vote. and so, he has to be treated seriously, and he occupies a very big plain. there are several candidates who are thinking of running who didn't run because of the prospect -- >> mike bloomberg being one. >> bloomberg being a big one. so, you know, i think that he is going to change the race. the question everybody -- i mean, what's interesting about him is there are many reasons to believe he should be a very competitive candidate. many people believe he's the most competitive against donald trump. and yet, there is this uncertainty because he's run several times before, he hasn't gotten out of iowa. and so, he is the front-runner, but he's not really being treated that way. >> gloria, it obviously is not the first time he's tried to get this. he ran in '98, he ran in '08. does he enter with more of an advantage, more of a disadvantage this time around? >> well, as david was saying, you know, he goes to the top

tier of the polling immediately. he's either number one or number two -- >> which can be a disadvantage. >> exactly. exactly! i mean, look at hillary clinton. that was a bit of a problem. he's got a lot of name recognition. people know him. and if you loved barack obama and you hear joe biden talk about carrying on the legacy of barack obama, then you're going to like that. on the other hand, if you know him pretty well, you're also going to remember his gaffes, you're also going to remember those races that he didn't win, and you're going to wonder whether he can beat donald trump. and of course, that's what every democrat in the end is going to look for, somebody who can beat the president. >> and kirsten, in terms of the lane biden will be in -- david was referencing that -- who do you think he would be competing most directly with or who would compete with him most directly? >> well, i mean, i think that he is kind of -- you know, he's definitely the big dog in that lane. i don't see anybody who's really on the same level as he is in

terms of having the sort of working-class connection, you know, where i think that he has a history of that, and i think that that's something that does make him sort of unique, and i think that's why a lot of people look at him and think that he could be formidable. but he does, as gloria just said, come with, you know, his gaffs and he comes with baggage and is somewhat out of step or, i guess the question is, is he out of step with the democratic party today? how is he going to handle the areas that people are going to want to relitigate, that they're going to want to talk about -- the crime bill. they're probably going to want to go back and talk about anita hill. how is he going to handle these different issues? and i think that's going to be his biggest problem. >> also, i mean, david, if he couldn't beat candidates in the past -- i mean, he's done this now twice before -- he's now going to be, if he becomes the candidate, up against a

candidate, president trump, unlike any. and nobody so far has seemed to figure out how do you campaign against donald trump. >> yeah. the interesting thing is the trump people and republicans will tell you that he is the guy they fear the most, and they fear him because he has a reach into those white, older, working-class voters who are part of the trump base, particularly in the upper midwest. and remember, trump has to win pennsylvania, wisconsin, and michigan again. there really isn't another state where he's likely to pick up electoral votes, so he has to pull the same inside strait. biden has a lock on that, but the paradox is the very qualities that cause biden to be an appealing candidate to those particular voters may make him a little bit, as kirsten was saying, out of step with the contemporary democratic party. so the question isn't whether he'd be competitive against trump so much as will he be competitive in this democratic party? >> gloria, when you think about the town hall last night, and

you know, to me it was fascinating to see five candidates back to back, one after the other. and a, you got to kind of compare them easily to each other. >> sure. >> which was very striking. but just looking at the five from last night, is biden out of step with where the five were last night? >> well, he's out of step with elizabeth warren, for example. i think he's out of step with bernie sanders. i think he and amy klobuchar could come to terms on a lot of things since she portrays herself as more of a moderate candidate in the race. i mean, you know, don't forget, biden is somebody who's always prided himself on working across the aisle. that's not what a lot of liberal democrats say they want. they don't want anyone to work across the aisle. they want somebody -- some of these folks want somebody who will support impeaching the president, and that will be an interesting question that's going to be asked to joe biden, i would think, on day one. and he's also older than a lot of these younger voters that we saw last night at the town halls

you were doing, anderson, and how will he appeal to young voters? will they just say, you know, he's not part of the new generation, we want somebody who speaks more to us? >> although what's interesting is bernie sanders is older than joe biden -- >> sure. >> -- and his base is among the young. >> yeah. >> last night, one of the most interesting moments to me was when elizabeth warren talked about her ten-year battle against a bankruptcy bill that favored the credit card companies. >> yep. >> and she said half the democrats were on the wrong side of this. and what she left unspoken was that the chief proponent on the democratic side for that bill was joe biden, who represents delaware, which is home to a lot of the credit card companies. so, once he becomes a candidate, these issues now will become live issues. he's no longer going to have the status that he had when he was an elder or a senior statesman. he's going to be on the field and he's going to be fair game. >> and kirsten, you know, i keep thinking about the fact that in 2016, at this point in the race, president trump had not even announced his candidacy yet. >> yeah, right.

right. so, i think that we obviously can get ahead of ourselves in trying to figure out what's going to happen, because it's, you know, it's almost impossible to predict. and i think that it's becoming less and less possible to predict, because the parties have become so much more volatile and unpredictable. and i think that if you look at the democratic party right now, what they remind me a lot of is what the republican party used to -- when we started watching them sort of moving with the tea party and, you know, they're not perfect parallels, but you have a lot of this anger coming up, what david was just talking about, talking about what elizabeth warren said about the credit card companies, where the democratic party is going to be held accountable for a lot of things that they've done over the last many decades, and that's what is so perilous for biden, is that he really is a stand-in for all of those things that were done since he has been there the entire time. >> kirsten, thank you.

david and gloria as well, thanks. >> sure. well, the president haas now spoken out on tonight's breaking news. this is new. next, what he told the "washington post" about current and former aides talking to congress about the mueller report. feel the clarity of non-drowsy claritin and relief from symptoms caused by over 200 indoor and outdoor allergens. like those from buddy. because stuffed animals are clearly no substitute for real ones. feel the clarity. and live claritin clear. ♪ ahhhh! ♪ we're here. ♪ ♪

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reporting the "washington post" on tonight's breaking news. the president's resistance of former white house trump said that complying with congressional requests was unnecessary after the white house cooperated with robert mueller's probe of russian interference and the president's own conduct in office. the post quoting the president saying there is no reason to go any further and especially congress where it's very partisan. josh it's pretty remarkable. what more did the president say? >> the president wanted to make

clear that he was deeply resis tent to cooperating more in the probe of the white house. and against the cooperation and that they should work for him and those that worked for him should not worry about complying with the subpoenas that have been produced. chair of the judiciary committee or elijah cummings. unless someone backs out you're going to see a continued escalation here. >> is the president planning to claim executive privilege? because they already waved that for the mueller team. >> that's correct. and they have astutley pointed out, the white house is

contending that they always have a right to exert privilege. and i think they'll have to make a judgment on that. i don't think we know which way that will show up yet. >> did the president say they're going to try to stop him from testifying or does he leave himself wiggle room like he normally does. >> the folks around the president made clear to us they don't want to let don mcgahn testify. the president himself said he did not want to participate in it. and any of the folks are not

planning to. >> is this -- obviously the president believes it's partisan. it's an understandable argument that plenty of people can make but is it also the president just doesn't want to see don mcgahn on television repeating what he told robert mueller because he's a creature of television and believes that will have power. >> frustration since thursday on don mcgahn and that fact that he handed over such vivid accounts and it's clear from doing reporting the last couple of days that the president would not want to see him on tv doing that publicly. it's one thing to read about something in a report. it's another thing to see it live for hours. >> what kind of a move did you

find him? >> helped him stay on the phone. he wanted to make clear he called about a different story but also wanted to talk about this and the president wants it known far and wide he didn't plan to give into congressional inquiries. and there was some cooperation. most told us it's getting zero documents. they're getting very little responses to their letters. this is their agencies. the president made it pretty clear he does not want compliance with this oversight from the hill. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. i want to check in with chris and see what he's working on. >> so we have the former ag here. what does he see about executive

privilege versus just not listening to his subpoena and the jeopardy it puts these men and potentially women in and also his take on ag barr. he knows him well. he worked with him. he knows the man so we'll test what he sees in the actions of the ag so far and thanks to you and the funny looking good last night we got a lot out of these democratic candidates. we put in some of the big shots. we got pfeffer and simone sanders. they put together big machines. what did they see on the stage last night? who do they think did best. >> look forward to that. take a look at this. it's a coal miner and labeled miners for trump. coming up the real story of the man in that poster and the secret organization that was behind this so-called group miners for trump. drivers just wont put their phones down.

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in the poster died back in 1987 with complications from black lung disease. tomorrow you're going to meet the man's son to whom the image and it's inclusion in the report were a complete shock. i hope you watch. >> thank you, anderson. i am chris cuomo and welcome to primetime. more democratic candidates are pushing for impeachment proceedings. they have helped shape some of the biggest political machines their party has had. did they see a winner on the stage last night? and did they see the same winner? we'll see about that. and jared kushner weighing in on mueller and what the real threat is to our democracy. this was a wow moment and we'll take it up in a great debate. plus president trump says no. no to his aids testifying to