in the meantime, we hope you have a great weekend. let not your heart be troubled. your news continues. laura ingraham is next. see you monday. >> good evening from washington. i'm laura ingraham. this is the "the ingraham angle." what a way to wrap up the week. it has been wild. we'll tell you why the fbi version of the events in the russia probe don't seem to add up. my exclusive primetime interview with the inside story, but what it's like to be politically targeted by obama's prosecutors. and how trump's pardon of desouza exposes the government's out-of-control prosecutors. and we'll tell you who samantha bee really blames for the insults of ivanka trump. her private outrageous comments. also, ann coulter is here with details on how msnbc's joy reid

came after her, and someone else you might know. larry cud low is here to respond to critics on trump's bold trade moves. but first, let's try to unlock a mystery. why doesn't the russia investigation time line seem to add up? investigative reporter john solomon's latest piece on the hill points out key discrepancies. let's just look at a few facts and dates. one, the fbi's most senior counterintelligence agents visited london in the first week of may 2016. days later, on may 10th, australian diplomat alexander downer met in london at a bar with george papa dap louse who revealed that russia had dirt on hillary clinton. then drump campaign adviser carter page was contacted by an associate of an apparent informant in june. but not until july 31st did the

fbi launch its counterintel investigation. john solomon discovered that the fbi violated its own rule by using informants before the investigation was ever launched. so why were fbi informants contacting trump figures about russia long before the russia probe was open? something else that doesn't add up. whether a key player was an fbi informant, or somewhere closer to a russian spy. reporter lee smith who wrote an important piece on that, in real clear investigation, titled the maltese phantom of russiagate. lee is here to describe how russiagate began. and we're joined by kevin brock who supervised the rewriting of bureau rules governing sources. that was a decade ago, under then director bob mueller. it is great to see both of you. kevin, i've got to start with you here, because we listen to

all these key figures, intel chiefps over the last week or so. they was all done by the book. the informants, normal course of business. i want to play for you something that both clapper and brennan said this week. let's watch. >> the informant is the most benign form of intelligence collection you can do. >> to label someone as a spy i think is doing a disservice to these individuals, but also to the fbi. >> having a confidential human source who is able then to talk to individuals who may be consorting, or collaborating, or colluding with russians and others, this is what the fbi absolutely needs. >> well, it's true using a confidential source is a routine technique. the attorney general guidelines that govern. >> laura: and you helped to rewrite. >> well, we reengineered all of that a decade ago and we had to

coordinate with doj to make sure the reengineering of the source program was going to comport with the attorney general guidelines. they're that important. and an fbi agent can't go out and open up the source and gather information willy-nilly, they've got to abide by the guidelines. the guidelines are very specific, specifically counterintelligence investigations. and even more particularly when you are directing your source towards an american citizens. >> laura: what has to be in place? >> well, here's where the importance of john solomon's article comes into play. if the fbi opened a source, or tasked a source to gather information, particularly from a u.s. person, before opening a formal investigation, then that would be in violation of the guidelines. i'm not saying that that's what happened here. we don't know all the facts. but that is a clear bright line in the attorney general guidelines. >> laura: if you had to guess, though, you're being very

judicious and diplomatic, so what's your gut here? you've seen a lot in your career and in your history. we're missing a lot of documents, a lot of keep months seem to be missing with the document trail here. >> right. so to get to the source documents is going to be important for congress. these are the questions they should be asking. they should be asking the fbi, not so much for the identity of the source, but when did you open the source, and how did you task the source and what was the timing of your investigation to make sure you were in the -- >> laura: you've been on this, writing really important stuff. >> thank you. >> laura: we're going to get into this character, another oddity in all of this. but what about this? the timing of this investigation. the process can be boring, but it matters here why? >> well, because of the fbi's supposedly officially opening up the investigation, july 31st, and we're seeing a lot of other things, a lot of dates that seem to predate july 31st. and one of the things that i've been looking at in fact, not

just the investigation, but also looking -- there was a press campaign as well. the press campaign preceded july 31st but at least a month. >> laura: what do you mean a press campaign? >> this is the way the obama administration typically worked. they did it with the iran deal. there was always an intelligence component, and there was always a press campaign as well. that's how the obama administration worked. these two things happened. they were political operations. i think that what happened here, i think we're making a little bit of a mistake by looking simply at the spying part of this, so when clapper and brennan get on tv, and they say, spying is the highest form of patriotism, i think we're paying a little too much attention to the spying. there's a larger political operation to dirty the trump campaign. >> laura: the text messages that we've seen thus far, and more seem to be trickling out every now and then, indicate that there was a lot of interest in the white house as to how this was proceeding. now, defining what this was,

still remains to be seen. >> right. >> laura: but you have the strzok-page texts, they want to be kept apprised of what was going on. what was the likelihood that susan rice, or obama, or ben rosen, or any of these people had no idea this stuff was going on, what are the chances of that, in your mind? >> i think it's highly unlikely. my experience in looking at the obama administration is mostly through the iran deal. so when russiagate popped up, i said, i know what this looks like. it goes up very high, a lot of significant people are looking at this. this is not simply in the fbi or doj. >> laura: this could have been cross-intelligence agencies, dia, cia, fbi, military -- who knows at this point. >> i don't think we know exactly who yet, but there seems to be a lot of prominent figures who come in and are involved. the one thing that i come back to, which i've written about, is when john brennan is screaming at james comey through harry

reid, telling him to look at the trump-russia connections, i think that points to the fact that brennan may have a hand in this. >> laura: we find out that the initial reporting, about george papadopoulos and the first contact he had with alexander downer where he said the australian diplomat, where it was initially reported that he said, there are thousands of e-mails, that russia has from the clinton campaign. it turns out after he gave an interview recently to an australian media outlet, he said, no, they have dirt. the trump campaign official said he knew before this was released, before the e-mails came to the public domain, he means, that sounds really bad. that's not what he said. he said, they have some dirt. who knows what he was talking about there, if that's the case. >> damaging information to the clintons. this is all very interesting. you asked earlier about what my gut feeling is.

what doesn't sit well in the gut of a retired fbi executive and many agents right now is this investigation was initiated and run as well as the clinton e-mail investigation, out of headquarters. by headquarters, management personnel. >> laura: what does that mean to the people watching right now, out of headquarters versus a field office? >> i can't find words sufficient enough to explain what an anomaly that is. in my professional experience, i don't remember that ever occurring. the fbi by design puts its investigations out in field offices away from the heat of washington politics. for a good reason. to have the case run out of headquarters by a cadre who are in both investigations, is incredibly unusual. and so it starts to raise questions about did they conduct the investigation in accordance with the attorney general guidelines which would have been done routinely in the field. >> laura: final thoughts

quickly? >> i think what we're seeing with a whole bunch of reporting, john solomon's excellent piece, strasel's excellent piece, there are a lot more questions that remain to be answered. >> laura: that means documents have to be turned over, and perhaps things need to be declassified in a more transparent and fast fashion than they are. guys, thanks so much. what is it like to be targeted for your political beliefs by the full force of the federal government? we'll ask the man, desouza. thanks for being with us tonight. this pardon has set off a firestorm of freakouts among people on the left. and today we had an especially big freakout from a former obama u.s. attorney on msnbc this morning. let's watch. >> it concerns me not only is he violating the norms of not going through that normal process, but is he painting a narrative that

sensitizes the public that the government is often unfair to people. which i think has long-term damaging consequences to the criminal justice system. >> the left has freaked out more over my pardon than maybe any other. i was watching something on cnn, i think it was earlier today, or yesterday, these things become a blur, and they were saying how dangerous it is that i got this pardon. and i was thinking about it, and it occurred to me, i think i know what they're getting at. it's dangerous to them. it's dangerous to their ideology, and dangerous in a way that other pardons -- think of the clinton pardon of mark rich. you've got a guy here who's an international arms trader and possibly a tax fraud, involved in all kinds of rackets. but he's not dangerous to the ideology at cnn. in fact, he helps to support progressive causes, he gives money to the clinton foundation.

i, on the other hand, is a nonwhite immigrant who came to america with $500 in my pocket. and i've been exposing the whole progressive ideology. so i'm dangerous in that way. they're right about that. >> laura: john avalon on cnn today was, again, the media, the democrats, the never-trumpers, they're all questioning why this occurred. and let's watch. >> what do you think about this? >> i think you see this as the power of the presidency means a get out of jail free card. this is also who's been a self-styled conservative intellectual who has been a twitter troll for a long period of time right now, appealing to all the worst instincts and conspiracy theories. >> i've never alleged any conspiracy of anyone. what i've done is exposed the sordid history of the democratic party, a history that actually continues to the present. i've also exposed a lot about obama. obama would not have indicted me if i didn't make a film that

deeply upset him. i didn't just go against his ideology, i kind of got into his head. and sometimes when i speak on campus, people go, well, gee, din esh, what makes you think obama saw your dumb movie or cares about what you have to say. the reason i think that is because he was attacking me on his personal website barackobama.com. there you go. this is a narcissistic president who recruited eric holder to carry his water for him, to go after me. >> laura: cnn subscribed to the liberal ideology, dinesh. their point is people like you, and people like me, we're alt-right. you're not a conservative and you're not winning in the arena of ideas, you're alt-right, or you're xenophobic, and i love it when they call you racist, that's always fun. it's a way to avoid an argument,

a debate. we saw this going back to college, dinesh and i went to dartmouth college together, way back before they called it political correctness. they were trying to avoid the fundamental debate about the greatness of western civilization, how off-track they have been on so many issues, the decline of true intellectual thought and diversity of thought. they didn't want that debate, they want to shut down the debate in line with, frankly, wanting to shut you down, or this show. >> here's a tiny detail about my case that's so revealing. this clinton appointee judge who adjudicated the case, saying there's no political targeting here, as part of my sentence he sentences me to mandatory psychiatric counseling. let's think about this for a minute. what about my case? here i've given too much money, my own money, to a candidate, a college friend of mine running for office, i'm not jeffrey dahmer. i didn't put bodies in the refrigerator. why do i need psychiatric

counseling? if not that it's the progressive view that i'm not just wrong, but i'm somehow crazy? that people who disagree with them require not persuasion, but therapy. and so this is the kind of reeducation project that was attempted on me, and finally the judge became super frustrated and threw up his hands and basically said the reeducation has failed, this man cannot be psychologically rehabilitated, which i took as a great compliment. >> laura: maybe they should have put you up on the rack, and waterboarded you. that would have been an enhanced interrogation they would have supported on the left. i also want to get your thoughts on comments made tonight by steve bannon, featured tonight on cnn. he seems to be reentering the public arena, he's been over there in italy, maybe working on that populous movement over there. he said this about the muller investigation. >> i've been a big proponent -- i said, don't fire comey. i've said, he's a combat pla

rein. that ought to play out as it's going to play out. >> i just don't know what to make of it. i will say that actually mueller was the head of the fbi when my case first surfaced. and the congressional oversight committee has been trying for a while to get my fbi file, and couldn't. and then finally they got it redacted, but in it, it identifies me as a prominent critic of obama. and i think that's very interesting, because why is that in my file? if this is a case of lady justice being blind, investigating a campaign violation, why highlight my politics. i think it's because the mueller fbi is signaling to the justice department, the holder justice department, here is a guy who's one of your political enemies, here is a guy you may want to go after. this is what the left is doing behind closed doors. this is what makes people like me dangerous to them. this is why i'm not an ordinary conservative, but somebody who

ultimately they would like to see locked up. >> laura: well, they've seen, and they've tried to silence conservatives before. again, going all the way back to college campuses. they shut down speakers. you've had problems on college campuses. obviously ann coulter, we'll talk to her in a short while, she's had problems. even being able to speak, physically being allowed to speak and participate. now in the obama era, dinesh, that was used as a tactic, intimidation, following fox news reporter cheryl atkinson, her computer was broken into. these are intimidation tactics that go beyond the stuff that we'd normally think of. we talk about russia, but they're adopting the tactics of the old soviet union. >> there's a deep level of lying and deception that goes on here. you know that both obama and hillary were the disciples of

solynnsky. >> laura: what happens to the democratic party as it's moving farther and farther leftward? >> to me, the party is in many respects rotten to the core. and what's really holding it up is not the democratic party itself, but but its own weight it would collapse. it's sustained by a kind of outside alliance involving people in academia, the left in the media, and the left in the entertainment industry. the left controls these three megaphones of our culture, and they can put out lies and disinformation as long as that continues. they're what's holding up the democratic party right now. they're the cover-up artists for this party. >> laura: dinesh, thank you for giving us your first primetime interview after the pardon from president trump. and how politics drove prosecutors in the obama administration. now, this is critical to

understanding what the swamp is trying to do to trump with that russia probe. so stay there.

>> laura: you just heard dinesh d'souza tell us about the horrors of the obama

administration, which i asked mike about a short while ago. we just heard my interview with dinesh d'souza about the horrors of the political prosecutions, what he believes, by the obama administration. and his experience certainly has some implication, i think, for the russia investigation, as we might look at this unholy alliance of the fbi director jim comey and doj prosecutors. what do you think about, for lack of a better term, this runaway prosecution that a lot of us are concerned about? >> i think that in the normal course, that sort of case would have been prosecuted with the outcome being a fine. it's not one of the brighter chapters that he participated in prosecuting this in the way that he did. we've had a couple of other dings and dents. but that was, i think, a pretty substantial one. >> laura: judge mukasey, adam

schiff said the pardon of dinesh d'souza is basically an apparent signal by the president to signal others, look, if you do right by me, i'll do right by you. >> it's further evidence of a corrupt intent on the president's part. further evidence he may have violated the law by obstructing justice, in the firing of comey, but in other efforts as well. it looks a lot like a message to michael cullen who may also be implicated in exceeding campaign limits with that stormy daniels payment. you have the further announcement by the president that he may pardon martha student, another tv personality who was convicted of, guess what, obstruction of justice and lying to authorities. nothing about transparent. >> they said the same thing every time he either issues a pardon or makes a statement, that it's a signal, a dog whistle, so on, so forth.

i think the prosecution of d'souza, and the way it was done, is unjustified. i think the prosecution of martha stewart was dubious. now, the president commuted blagojevich's sentence. he served six years. and that's a judgment call. he was certainly not pardoned. >> laura: let's talk about what john brennan has been up to. he's now a commentator on another xhetwork. of course, former top intel official, u.s. government. he has been on a tear with president trump. >> i think mr. trump has demonstrated a paranoia in his security, as well as a real concern about the investigation that is under way. certainly his tweets do not seem like they're coming from a person of innocence and confidence. >> my reaction is, ordinarily, would be that john brennan was director of the cia, maybe

should be told to stick to his day job. the trouble is, given what we're finding out about the way he did his day job, including his participation in putting an informant into the trump campaign, maybe we're better off with him as kind of an amateur pundit. i think he may be projecting his own views, if i may be an amateur psychiatrist for a moment, onto the president. because he is going to have a lot to answer for. i believe when the entire story gets told about what the cia was doing in connection with the running of the investigation, and what it was doing with regard to what had been its informant, and his being put into the trump campaign. >> laura: we talked about -- a little about this on radio this morning, judge. you asked this question which is why you're so smart, who paid this inform mapt, was he just doing this pro bono, the work for the clinton campaign?

or for the u.s. government? who paid? >> understand, his history was as a cia asset. being put into an fbi investigation is very odd. understand, these two agencies, numbers one, don't share their toys very well. and aren't supposed to. the cia is supposed to operate in an outward looking, foreign directed fashion. they're not supposed to be doing anything in the united states. there's a statute that restricts that. the fbi conducts intelligence investigations in the united states. and for him to be put into essentially an fbi investigation, i kind of would like to know how that happened, who coordinated it, who paid him, and how that was arranged. >> laura: barbara mcquaid is a former u.s. attorney appointed by barack obama, and she said the following today. >> i think today's news about michael cohen really shows you

what he expects in an attorney general. his experience with a lawyer is someone like michael cohen, a pit bull, someone who will protect him, someone who will be very aggressive in defending his interests, no matter what. being loyal to president trump, as opposed to loyal to the mission. and if that is his motivation, that is a crime. >> for her to comment on what president trump's expectations are and his attorney general when the attorney general who served in the obama administration, eric holder, referred to himself as the president's wingman, strikes me as pretty rich. >> laura: yeah, you were attorney general. talk about the relationship between a president and the attorney general. people are making this out to be such a crime, that president trump wanted an attorney general whose first instinct it was not to recuse himself. the recusal issue is something we've talked about before. but that has stuck in the president's craw. if i was the president, i would not be tweeting, i wish i hadn't

selected jeff sessions. i don't know what he thinks that gets him. i don't think that's particularly wise to do. but nevertheless, that's how he feels. he thought, why am i appointing you attorney general, if the first thing you do is recuse yourself. >> well, the circumstances kind of caught up with jeff sessions, and with the president. and at the time that jeff sessions recused himself, it may be that he technically didn't have to, because the investigation at that point was a foreign intelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. but then due in large measure the things that the president said and did, it became a criminal investigation. and at that point, regulations required that jeff sessions recuse himself. for the president to suggest somehow jeff sessions should have had the gift of prophecy and the situation would develop that way was ridiculous, and for him to start claiming he should have appointed somebody else is

inane. it doesn't, as you point out, it doesn't serve his interest, particularly when he's got an ag in place in a person in jeff sessions who is pursuing his agenda, and very effectively, bringing in m-13 cases, concluding a huge antitrust settlement, effectively running the justice department. so i think he ought to quit complaining about that. >> laura: former attorney general of the united states mr. mukasey, thank you very much. >> good to be with you. >> laura: you may have suspected samantha bee's apology to ivanka trump -- what she said behind closed doors when the press wasn't invited. don't move. ♪ with expedia you could book a flight, hotel, car and activity all in one place. ♪

>> laura: time for friday follies.

is that really follies? >> the follies looks a little beaten up. a little beaten up. >> laura: that's okay. samantha bee's apology to ivanka trump seems fake. here's what she said, "the new york times" best selling author, raymond is going to tell us, raymond, this was a television awards ceremony. what great timing. >> this is from the television academy, that grants the emmys. they gave samantha a special award, samantha bee, for her social activism. this is a woman who told ivanka trump, you're a feckless "c" word and you should wear something tight and low-cut so your father will change your immigration policies. she had to apologize for that. but the ceremony in which the media wasn't allowed into, we don't have the audio, but we have the transcript.

here's what she said. we spent the day wresling with the repercussions of one bad word when we should have all spent the day as a nation that we are wrenching children from their parents. now, it wasn't one word, it was also the context that somehow ivanka trump should tart up to get her father's attention. that was never addressed at all either in the apology or here. >> laura: the fact that ivanka trump was holding up her infant son, like that was an affront to samantha bee. she's trashed me -- let me hold it up. it actually works against vampires, samantha. she's trashed me for that. actual l actually, do we want to play the clip? that's all right. we don't want to give it the light of day. so she continues to be present, claiming she's sorry, move it to the political conversation.

who died and made her head of amnesty international? >> here she is, calling a woman, reducing a woman to genital yeah with this horrible word. now the president started tweeting. naturally, his daughter was attacked here. here's what he said. why aren't they firing no-talent samantha bee for the low-rating skill. a total double standard. that's okay. we're winning. and we'll be doing so for a long time. >> laura: i like how winning is capitalized. not clear why, but i'll like it. >> brian jumped into this and said the president has gone too far. let's watch. >> it seems, brian, like the president's following a lot of conservative pundits jumping on the double standard bandwagon. >> something we hear almost every day on the president's favorite fox news tox shows,

tapping into the victimhood, conservatives are treated in the worst way than liberals. in this case roseanne barr treated worse than samantha bee. >> they're making it sound like the president is blamed for the foul-mouthed comediennes. they existed before trump, they'll exist after trump. samantha bee's ratings are down by almost half. >> laura: he's winning on economy, on trade, focus on the substance, who cares what -- >> but can he match obama's "the final year" the hbo documentary, like an extended west wing portrayed the national security apparatus. here's a little clip of that documentary. >> we've got to make sure it will be harder to dismantle in the event we take a different turn.

>> i just came outside to try to process all this. i can't put it into words. i don't know what the words are. >> ben rhodes can't find the word. they all thought hillary was going to win. the "boston globe" wrote this team's pragmatic idealism are enough to make you weep with all that has gone missing. >> laura: samantha powers was unmasking individuals every day, somehow over at the u.n. she said, we have to make it harder to dismantle, meaning the foreign policy apparatus, iran deal's gone, what else? >> climate change. >> >> laura: gone. >> and cuba. those are the three benchmark things they celebrate in the documentary, on a day when donald trump has brought north korea to the white house, this is a hard documentary to swallow. how time has devoured what was supposed to be the ultimate narrative. >> laura: i would have been loving to sit next to ben rhodes on the sidewalk.

>> i can't speak. >> laura: i've got to take a moment. >> i'm going to take a moment now. >> laura: raymond, on a rival network, there's an anchor who seems to stand there, no matter what she says, ann coulter has wild new info on joy reid's nasty blog, next. as a control enthusiast, i'm all-business when i travel... even when i travel... for leisure. so i go national, where i can choose any available upgrade in the aisle - without starting any conversations- -or paying any upcharges. what can i say? control suits me. go national. go like a pro.

>> laura: wouldn't you know, comedienne samantha bee is suffering pretty much no consequences at all for her

repugnant attack on ivanka trump. and joy reid, over the last few weeks, hateful nasty blog posts by reid have all surfaced. she's repeatly apologized for the posts. the network said she has evolved. and her show remains on the air. joining me now, one of reid's targets, ann coulter. ann, great to see you. i'm sure none of this surprises you. this is what you and i have become accustomed to. the liberals can say whatever they want about minorities, jews, and get away with it. but you found interesting nuggets from her past. >> it actually went up on daily caller today. she was wishing for you and me to be left in the public square in iraq, which i think is interesting, because i agree, i wouldn't want to go to a majority muslim country. i don't know why liberals want to turn this country into those

countries. but you consider that really, you know, the worst thing you can do to us. in a separate post, i guess she liked or retweeted someone suggesting that, i don't know if it was just me or both of us, kill ourselves. and the always popular calling me a man for having a beautiful swan-like neck. liberal women as long as we're being frank here are not used to that, because they have rolls of fat on their neck, taken aback by my beautiful swan-like neck. but these nasty things that get posted by liberals, it shows they just want to get rid of roseanne. i've been told my entire life, oh, no, newspapers, tv stations, are just trying to make money. it's whatever the public wants. no, it isn't. it has never been that. liberals say much, much worse things. but they're part of the political agenda.

the reason they wanted to fire roseanne was, i mean, she used to be kind of a left-wing loon. she became a trump supporting still kind of a loon. but she had a wildly popular program, and apparently was popular with trump supporters who enjoy calling racists. >> laura: can you see they're maybe trying to reboot the show without her, with just her daughter, who is obviously the more liberal character, which john goodman said, i would be up for that. half of the country who voted, voted for trump, roughly. all of these people are looking for something that just doesn't offend them on a minute-by-minute basis. this show kind of had funny moments, for someone who liked trump wasn't ridiculed every five seconds. it wasn't even all that political of a show. but i bet the producers, people behind the show, they were tired of having to answer for it at various social events in l.a. or malibu. this is a nice kind of ugly way of saying, oh, this is off the air, we can go back to doing

business as normal, ann. >> right. right. i mean, i never saw the old show, or the new show, but when she was getting ratings like we haven't even heard of, for 20 years, to be dumping that show because of crazy tweets she was sending? she has always sent crazy tweets. this is nothing new. i mean, you know, i don't want to be sent to a concentration camp. yes, i condemn her tweet, but she's always sent crazy tweets that deserved condemnation. if they really cared about offensive tweets, and so on, obviously samantha bee and joy reid wouldn't be on air. >> laura: ann, i want to talk about where this party is going. i talked earlier to dinesh about this, and how everything has become radicalized. they claim trump is a radical, where he's pretty mainstream and wants to work with democrats on trade and other issues. yet we see the democrats

lurching towards perhaps an elizabeth warren, maybe corey booker in 2020. and then you have the old establishment figures like john boehner, a couple of days ago, he came out and he's still sniffing and ha rumfing clearly about donald trump. let's watch. >> i want to talk to you but what's happening with the republican party. >> there isn't a republican party. there's a trump party. republican party has kind of taken a nap somewhere. >> laura: what do you think about old boehner's comment? >> i hope it's not a nap. i hope it's dead. i want the republican party to be the trump party. we might start winning again. but i thought john boehner was off promoting marijuana or something. >> laura: he joined the marijuana board. he was always against marijuana, until he just became an advisory board member of -- in other words, kind of informal lobbyist for legalizing pot across the

united states. >> and you wonder why i want the republican party dead. just move it aside. i mean, it should go the way of the wiigs. this is a great turning point as it was when lincoln took over. that party has served its purpose. all it did was lose elections, serve corporate interests. now, trump has to actually do what he ran on. >> laura: he has a long road to hoe there. ann coulter, thanks so much. while the left slashes at the president, the economy is setting records and making history. up next, the inside story from larry cudlow from the white house.

economy is red-hot. when even "the new york times" has to admit it. check out this reporting. it's headlined, we ran out of words to describe how good the jobs numbers are. and it also went on to say, the economy is in a sweet spot with steady growth and broad improvement in the labor market. just look at these numbers. the unemployment rate fell to an 18-year low at 3.8% in may, as the economy added 223,000 jobs. black unemployment fell to a new record low at 5.9%. down sharply from the 6.6% in april.

average hourly earnings, i love this, increased 2.7% from a year earlier. meanwhile, trump is draining the swamp by slashing 3,000 federal government jobs in may, for a total of 24,000 since he took office. here now, the man charged with keeping the trump boom going, larry kudlow, the head of the national economic council. larry, thanks for joining us. we appreciate it tonight. i was thinking back on, you know, november 10th, 2016, all these -- oh, my, global markets are going to collapse, the stock market's going to catecait kra . t"the new york times" had to admit today that things are crazy good. >> wow. because i remember my great friend paul krugman thrashing all of us and saying that the

economy was going to go into a deep recession, and the stock market was going to crash. i guess the day after the election. so it's a little bit different, the reality. today was another great day for jobs, up 223,000. wages are rising. unemployment is falling. >> laura: we went through it all. >> small business numbers did very well again today. manufacturing reports did very well again today. it's never perfect, but we're on the right track. and you know what, the big issue for my critics and the president's critics and the economic area, you'll never get to 3%, you can't beat 2%. well, right now, we're running four quarters, 2.9%, and the second quarter, according to the atlanta model gdp now, 4.7%, that's their estimate. i'll be happy with 3%. >> laura: when was the last time the economy had a quarter at 4%?

>> i probably can't even remember that. i'll say the 1990s. >> laura: yeah, probably '94. >> '4, '5, '6, '7. >> laura: "new york times," trump touts job report before official release, breaking protocol. this is what they seized on. because all the other stuff was really good. so trump tweeted out this morning, you know, looking for those jobs reports. >> that's all he said. like the rest of america, looking for the jobs report. listen, by law and custom, all right, i get the jobs data the night before. i get it from my pal at the caa. we take a look at it. i called it, to let him know, because it was a great number. it was a private number, a secret number, you can't put it out. i got hold of him on air force one. >> laura: he's about to tweet it out, though, excited like a kid, excited about the news. he wants america to win.

he wants to win. >> he does want to win. you know what? i figured, i didn't want to bother him coming home from a long trip. i thought he needed some good news, he got good news. the tax cuts, the rollback of regulations, the opening of energy, the protection of some of our own trading rights. >> laura: oh, but this is what set everyone off, they said trump would back off on this deal, on the tariffs, it was all a ploy. but now, looks like he means business. all these people criticizing him. they don't know how to predict what trump is going to do. trump's trade war is bad for business. this is a weird self defeating way to allies. the trump trade slump may yet happen. >> may yet happen. >> laura: how a trump trade war could slow down the global economy. trump's trade war would be very bad for many americans. and that just -- that's just a

smattering of some of the headlines. >> one thing i'll say. people looking at this stuff should understand when president trump says something, they should believe it. because he's going to follow through on it. so, look, i don't want to see a world trade war, tariff war, we don't have anything remotely like that. from day one, we've gone after china. they deserve it. they're unfair and illegal trading practices have to be dealt with. they're stealing our technology. that has to be dealt with. >> laura: what about our allies, canada, the eu? >> the president has talked to them. in the announcements yesterday we spent a line or two saying we're still in discussion. particularly singling out canada and europe. we're still in that discussion. but look, we've asked them to help us on this steel production and overcapacity. we've asked them to help us on what the president calls reciprocity. so if we sell an american car in

germany, we pay a 10% tariff. if they sell a car in america, it's 2.5%. why doesn't the rest of europe understand that we have to have a level playing field. look, i'm not a big tariff guy. i'm known as a free trader. >> laura: the president said he's a free trader. >> that's right. >> laura: he wants a fair trade. >> the see, look it. free trade will help the economic growth. okay? but, you can't have free trade if all these countries, most particularly china, are engaging in unfair and illegal trading. >> laura: they're subsidizing their country. canada dumped $200 million in toyota production in canada. they're subsidizing, not to the tune of what china's done -- so people get why the president believes we have to right the ship here with these tariffs.

china, the trade deficit for last year, $375 billion in goods and services. canada, $18 billion. mexico, $71 billion. japan, $69 billion. germany, $65 billion. in deficits. "the wall street journal" and the free trader friends, that doesn't matter. that doesn't matter. but then they wonder why people turned out to vote for trump. manufacturing jobs, blue collar jobs, used to have 18 of the 20 steel manufacturers in the world, now we have two. and none of the steel companies in the top ten today, larry. >> look, we actually run a surplus all in with canada. >> laura: you're doing the timber thing, right? >> the services thing. >> laura: goods and services, it's $18 billion. >> the issue here, i don't really think it's trade deficit, that's not my favorite metric, the issue here is tariffs and non-tariff barriers. so they won't let us sell to

them, they won't let us export to them, we are the most competitive economy in the world. a recent poll just said we bolted back into first place. the oecd said we're the fastest growing economy. >> laura: but the tariffs are going to ruin it all, that's what the friends at the journal are saying. >> i would like to see a level playing field. president trump is in his heart a level playing field guy. he's a free trade guy. let's clear away -- the whole world trading system, by the way, has been broken for years and needs to be fixed. a lot of presidents have gone down this road and have never done anything. he's gone down this road and won't stop. >> laura: 1990's china economy is small as the size of italy. now i believe it's ten times the size of canada. japan, excuse me. >> fair trading, and free market capitalism will beat the chinese. i give the president a lot of high marks for sticking to it. and he is not going to let go.

folks, listen to him and come -- we're in a family squabble with our allies in europe. >> laura: japan couldn't keep going. >> we'll have plenty of talks. they've got to do their part. otherwise, the president has laid out the sanctions. he'll do it. >> laura: larry kudlow, thanks so much. >> appreciate it. >> laura: we'll be right back. show me used trucks with one owner. pretty cool. [laughs] ah... ahem... show me the carfax. start your used car search at the all-new carfax.com.

and we got to know the friends of our friends.r the friends. and we found others just like us. and just like that we felt a little less alone. but then something happened. we had to deal with spam, fake news, and data misuse. that's going to change. from now on, facebook will do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy. because when this place does what it was built for, then we all get a little closer.

>> laura: this has been a great week. soaring economy. the north korean summit back on track. the left-wing media covering for

their own hate speech. that's been further exposed. all in all, pretty good. remember to tell us how you think we're doing on twitter, facebook. we love to get your feedback. have a wonderful weekend with your family. fly your flag. time for shannon bream. >> shannon: this is a fox news alert, major developments at this hour on north korea, and china. breaking news from secretary of defense jim matis. plus the singapore summit is back on. we're monitoring berkeley, california, scene of anti-free speech protests. tonight taking aim at christian evangelicals and the reverend franklin graham. the events just getting started. joy reid breaking her silence tonight, after controversial blog post surfaced as claimed she was hacked apparently are crumbling. welcome to "fox news @ night," i'm shannon bream in washington. ending a week of uncertainty, high s