>> sean: we start this week the hundred day countdown to the most important midterm in our history. that's tomorrow night. that's all the time we have left. we are always fair, balanced, not the destroy-trump media. let not your heart be troubled. there she is, laura ingraham, hi. >> laura: when i see bernie sanders, i have to smile. what were those grandparent muppets? what were they called? no one in my studio knows. >> sean: i've been doing this 23 years. i am thinking laura is going to get in trouble again. nobody knows you are kidding. >> laura: i like the muppets. but there's something about the way -- i like it. >> sean: i can't hear you. you're going to get in trouble again. stop getting in trouble. i am trying to help you. >> laura: i promise. you are much older and wiser. thank you so much. great show as always. good evening, i am laura ingraham. this is "the ingraham angle."

has devin nunes been vindicated by the release of those fisa application documents? of course they authorized the surveillance of carter page. the house intel chairman is here exclusively to react. in a major twist in the case of maria butina, the obama administration is being swept up in the saga of the alleged russian agent. butina's attorney will join us. plus the escalating war of words between president trump and iran. will rising tensions lead to an actual military conflict? first the benefits and risks of trump, the disruptor. that is the focus of tonight's angle. whether he's dealing with foreign relations or our own int intel agencies, donald trump is living up to the promise made on the campaign trail. he's a disruptor. he's not afraid to challenge old

alliances. and sometimes he will opt toward building bridges to old adversaries for the greater good. as he has on so many issues, trump has ditched the playbook of the bipartisan establishment and the conventional wisdom that goes along with it. let's face it. this has driven the old guard and their cheerleaders positively bonkers. >> i personally think it's an incredibly depressing moment in our time coming in our history. >> when your home is burglarized, you don't invite the burglar over to dinner to put in a home security system. we should not be inviting president putin to dinner at the white house. >> when the leadership of a country like iran seems more stable and rational than the president of the united states. >> u.s. influence is diminishing and the overriding thing that that connects all of this is diplomatic malpractice by the president of the united states. >> laura: diplomatic malpractice? diplomatic norms. what are those?

are those the norms that allow china to go virtually unchecked for almost two decades or the diplomatic norms that thought iraq was an essential war or when we looked into putin's eyes and saw his soul. the fact is many of the same people all trashing trump's disruptive approach were the same ones who advocated the most disastrous policies the post-cold war era. of course, as long as they hit the president, they are still going to get cushy gigs at "the new york times" or the amazon paper. and pundits at cable outlets. in other words, they get total immunity for being perpetually wrong. on critical issue. the good thing is americans on the left and right continue to reject the old norms that lead to job losses, flatlining paychecks, offshoring our manufacturing and disastrous military intervention. president trump has stood up to

china with tough tariffs while slapping severe sanctions on putin and kim jong un. and now he is standing up at a moment of social and economic instability for the regime in iran. typically the tweet advising the iranian president to never, ever threaten the united states again. i was coming back from a trip yesterday, whoa, it's all caps. it was greeted with the same snark and skepticism of so many of his global initiatives. the difference this time is there seems to be coordinated communication in play, a strategy, something the white house has long needed. secretary of state mike pompeo and national security advisor john bolton each sent messages echoing the president's iranian stance. this is a radically different approach following the mixed messaging following the helsinki summit. we talked about that last week. while he shakes the old global order, trump is also rattling the cages of the intel

community. cages that no one has ever dared to rattle. remember during the campaign when trump spoke about reforming and ending the corruption of the fbi and cia? even his political nemesis sounded a warning. >> you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from sunday of getting back at you. so even for a practical supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this. >> laura: and boy, have they worked to get back. we know the unverified research used to secure the fisa warrant to spy on americans. and the fisa judges weren't told hillary specifically funded it. then of course we know rogue fbi investigators used their powers as an insurance policy should trump actually be elected. meanwhile, some obama era intel officials responsible for so much of the deep state mischief have become the critics in chief.

and today the white house announced the president's intention to strip them of their security clearances. including former cia chief john brennan. last week he called the president's helsinki comments oh so subtly treasonous. >> not only is the president looking to take away brennan's security clearance, he is looking into the clearances of comey, clapper, rice, and mccabe. the president is exploring the mechanisms to remove security clearance because they politicized and in some cases monetized their public service and security clearances. >> laura: okay, well, a couple of them don't have their security clearances any longer. it's good to check out. this disturbing episode requires more than security clearance revocation. it's bigger than that. it's about the credibility of the people who are heading up our intelligence agencies and their inherent political biases.

the president should be encouraged to continue disrupting on behalf of the american people at home and abroad. contrary to the media narrative, a new poll shows voters are with trump. a new "wall street journal" nbc news poll taken before and after the russian summit reveals the president's job approval rating is up a point since last month to 45%. a high for his presidency. imagine if we had a fair media. among republicans, trump has an 88% approval rating. other than george w. bush after 9/11, that's a higher interparty rating than every president since world war ii. president trump is on the right path, but he must proceed cautiously and react deliberately. always keeping the focus on the american people. they are the ones who elected him. the resistance will seize on missteps and communication or

approach in foreign policy as proof that they were right all along. you've got to leave it to the experts, mr. trump. by all means, continue exposing washington corruption and those who profit handsomely from it. that's the most enjoyable disruption of all. that is the angle. joining me for a reaction is congressman jim jordan, republican from ohio. byron york with the "washington examiner." also a fox news contributor. jan ronis, democratic strategist and attorney. congressman, he has kind of turned the table over in this town which i have lived in for far too long. boy, the reaction from the opposition. both in the intel community as we've seen with the dossier, fisa application release, and in the pundit class and media class, it has gotten more personal. it has gotten more vicious and they are intent upon ripping him out of office any way they can.

your reaction to what you just heard? >> he is fighting back. brennan leaked the information to harry reid. rice goes on tv on five different networks about the catalyst of the attack in benghazi. clapper lied under oath. comey leaked information. through a friend to create momentum for a special counsel. mccabe lied under oath. we know peter strzok isn't telling the truth because he couldn't admit there was bias in his statements in the text messages to lisa page. in the committee hearing two weeks ago. the president is fighting back like he should. what we also know is this past weekend everything that we saw in this fisa application confirms what we've all been saying for seven months. >> laura: they say it's the opposite. >> not at all. byron did a great piece. he took devin nunes' memo and outlined it. that was so good. we know the dossier wasn't validated. we know that they didn't tell the court who paid for it. and we know they didn't tell the court that christopher steele was out leaking information. >> laura: byron, they are

focusing on journalists who go through the facts and account for what happened and what was predicted. i think they might've been referring to you here. let's watch. >> there is a whole amen chorus out there arguing with donald trump, and that's what's fueling this. it's not just trump and his tweets. his fox news, "the daily caller," there's a whole cadre of journalists. who are essentially -- >> don't use that term. they're not journalists if they're doing that. >> laura: byron. they're even even going after people like you and andy mccarthy. even if they don't name you. >> i just want to stress here that what i did here is, the nunes memo came out in february and there was a lot of argument about whether it misrepresented what was in the fisa warrant application. now we have the application. a lot of redacted parts. we can't talk about it but we can compare it to what the nunes memo said.

nunes memo was not very long. it was 13 paragraphs long. you can look at it and see is this right, is this right. the most contentious point, the point about whether the fbi told the court that the hillary clinton campaign and the dnc were behind the dossier and the nunes memo said they didn't do that. now we can see that in fact they did not. so it -- the release of the fisa warrant has been very good because it's helped settle an argument that has been going on for months now. >> laura: jan, i'm sure you have a different view of that. democrats have been adamant over the weekend that this release was great for them. it's great for all of what the left has been saying about the need to surveil this one guy, carter page, because he's been a problem for a long time. >> keep in mind the attachment to the fisa warrant containing the steele document was only a

attachment, a very small part of it. these warrants contain a lot of information. this was only a very small part of it. the fact of the matter is, there were multiple extensions. we don't have all the information but these judges, i would like to emphasize, they were republicans, found there was probable cause to believe there was some criminal activity afoot. they had to go to this extraordinary remedy of authorizing -- >> laura: if carter page is the guy they've been watching for years, two years later, jan, he was willing to cooperate on every front. that wasn't also in the fisa application, i believe. they did mention the fact that carter page was like, what questions do you want answered. >> these warrants were issued long before carter page was aware there was a criminal investigation targeting, among other people, him. that part is inaccurate. the fact of the matter is the federal government in these criminal investigations, witnessed by the fact of this russian inquiry, these things take a long time. it's very complicated. >> laura: just happened to happen in the fall of 2016 and

going into december 2016. just the timing is very curious. didn't have anything to do with the trump situation. congressman, you were mentioned today on another network. and again the usual thing it's kind of like the personal invective. you don't care what the truth is. it's all about propping up trump. >> i saw a tweet from representative jim jordan today who said, sort of backing up the nunes memo, essentially this was a product to mislead the fisa courts because they never informed the fisa courts about the bias inherent in this dossier. and it's right there in black and white in this footnote. you have to assume they suggest you haven't read the documents or perhaps you don't know what you're talking about or you don't care what they say. >> they said candidate a, campaign b. nfl team 26. the most convoluted way. why not say the document was

paid for by the clinton campaign. just come out with it straight and tell the court. they didn't do that. the third round of questioning, peter strzok, i was asking about the dossier. he confirmed, the fbi confirmed they were getting parts of the dossier from bruce ohr. bruce ohr, whose wife nellie worked for fusion. it is coming to bruce ohr, going to the fbi. was that what they used? when they took to the fisa court? this is as scary as it gets. that's why the nunes memo was right on target. byron's column lays it out on the fact that they are saying this is just wrong. if the dossier wasn't important, why did you lead with it? why didn't you go -- >> laura: i'm going to ask nunes about this too, if you're going to reference it, why not go all in and reference -- this is from hillary clinton. she paid for it. they did say they parted ways however it is curious, if they're going to mention it, why not go with it?

it's kind of like covering your you-know-what kind of reference. oblique enough that maybe the judges -- >> it was the essential part of the application. >> laura: how do we know that? >> when you look at it, they talk about carter page's past. he had had run-ins with the fbi because the russians tried to recruit him. that was in the past. so for them to get a warrant in october of 2016 there had to be something new. the new material with the allegations in the dossier. they could easily have named the clinton campaign. they referred to donald trump as candidate number one in the application and hillary clinton as candidate number two. and they refer to the gop as political party number one. they could have referred to the democrats as party number two. the final thing, they say in the famous footnote that there was a u.s. person who wanted -- they speculate -- who wanted to discredit the trump campaign.

that could have been a democratic donor, a progressive activist. that could have been a never trumper, an angry business associate, and ex-wife, could have been anyone. they never give you an idea of who it was. >> it was hillary clinton. >> laura: trump the disruptor, the topic of "the angle," i think he is turning over the applecart in this city much to the consternation of the old bipartisan establishment. set aside the obsession with russia and all that, he got elected because most people think that the clintons, not so much the obamas but at least the clintons and that whole crowd were so steeped in corruption they were willing to take a flier on trump. looking at that poll, 45%. my goodness. if the press were 40% less biased, his numbers would probably be at 60%. do you disagree with that? he is at 45% with all this stuff. >> with respect to your point that he got elected because of the corruption in the democratic party, the fact of the matter is he got elected because of the

assistance from the russian government. that is undisputed at this point. >> laura: oh, my god. really? he got elected because of -- a single vote was changed because of russia's involvement? okay. i missed that great evidentiary treasure trove. >> in addition to the assistance he got from russia, hillary clinton did win by a margin of 3 million in the popular vote. >> laura: so you want to go pure democracy, okay, well, work on amending the constitution and i will have you back on the show. god bless you but i don't understand why that's the argument. congressman jordan, this ohio wrestling deal. are they hounding you? where are we on this? you were an assistant coach, 21 years old? >> hundreds of coaches and administrators. >> laura: 100 people came out? >> if any type of abuse had been reported to me, i would have dealt with it. what reason wouldn't you? you want the best for your athletes. want them to compete. you care about them. you work and train with them every day. the investigation is going on. we will see.

we've been clear about it that every single assistant coach and wrestlers have come forward and said the same thing i have. you know why they say that? because it's true. >> laura: how much does it hurt? >> those guys you spent so much time with, trying to help them achieve their goals and then to have this.

>> laura: we've had our problems in the catholic church. thank you a much. we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> laura: and democrats insist that the fbi fisa application makes devin nuance less credible and his supporters say the opposite is true. the congress joins us next. phones have made our lives effortless.

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warrant damaged nunes' credible. try to sort it all out? let's bring in congressman devin nunes himself. thanks for being here. >> good to be here. >> laura: first interview since this came out. what do you think? >> we are happy it came out. we have been fighting for this for months. the fisa application and the renewals put out for the public to see. there are still a lot of redactions. we would like for those to be unredacted so that the american public has a chance to see this in full transparency. >> laura: let's watch some -- this is just a sliver of the criticism you've received -- it's nothing new for you but -- over the weekend, this was released. let's watch. >> wrote this entire memo to mislead the american public without having read the fisa application. >> they were lying when they said that the fisa judges were fooled because they were not told that part of the base of the application. >> devin nunes i think is a useful idiot for the russian

government. >> laura: your reaction. >> i enjoy it. bring it on. the more they do, the more the attack, the more we know we are over the target. they cannot deny, the major point of the memo was to say the dossier was used in this application. it made up the bulk of the fisa. even with the redactions, you can see that's the case. >> laura: i want to ask you about that particular part. let's quote from david kris on the warrant application on the website. he said "we can see the footnote disclosing steele's possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications. there is literally no way the fisa court could have missed it. the fbi gave the court enough information to evaluate steele's credibility." and that basic point is being repeated quite often. >> by the left. one of the things you have to realize now with the press.

realize now with all the press is the certain members of the press work for the democratic party. and the law fair blog is one of them. every day there's a new attack. i don't put a lot of credibility into what they say. the fact of the matter is you have to present verified information to the court. let's not forget, to open up a counterintelligence investigation into a campaign, unprecedented. but then to use these invasive types of capabilities on an american citizen that should be very, very seldom used. in this case, not only did they use it, but they used it with information from the other candidate's campaign, and it wasn't verified. >> laura: what they said about steele, what they put in the application is that there was reason to trust him. they don't refer to him by name. source number one. there's reason -- he's credible because other information source number one had given us led to criminal convictions. is that not good enough? >> that is not.

>> laura: why? >> it's absolutely not the case. if we are going to go to secret courts and first of all, i believe it doesn't follow the rules and regulations. just because the source was good in one case doesn't mean the next time they're going to bring information forward that it's not going to be, that it doesn't have to be verified. it's a secret court. that information must be vetted and verified. >> laura: but they didn't name a number of other people and we have a full page of the application that we'll put up on the screen. but there's a lot of people who weren't named. candidate number 1, candidate number 2. source number 1, source number 2. you can see it in the actual application. what -- >> that's why -- they really had to use word puzzles to get into how they described in the footnote where they supposedly told the court it was paid for by the democrats and possibly they speculate -- >> laura: they didn't say that specifically. they said in opposition to the president. >> that's correct. they could've easily said it was paid for by candidate 2.

>> laura: and they did not say that why? >> i believe because that's crazy. can you imagine? do we live in a country today, i guess we do actually live in a country because this actually did happen where we can go hire private former contractors to go out and in this case, a former british agent, to go dig up dirt on your opponent, take it in the fbi and doj that you control, feed it into them so they can open up a counterintelligence investigation without any defense there, without any grand jury, and go get your communications. look, that's why they wanted to have carter page. that's why they wanted all of his electronic communications. i keep hearing the argument that it wasn't until after he was off the campaign. in the fisa application itself it says they believe he is a guy who's running this collusion effort. clearly they think he is still involved in the campaign and clearly this guy had his rights abused. >> laura: marco rubio made the point. let's watch.

>> i don't think they did anything wrong. they went to the court and got the judges to approve it. they laid out all the information and there was a lot of reasons unrelated to the dossier for why they wanted to look at carter page, and carter page was not a key member of the trump campaign. the trump campaign said that. >> laura: it was one element. he said the fbi didn't do anything wrong, russia did something wrong. >> we are entitled to our opinions, and i am a fan of the senator, but we followed this closely. >> laura: you are suggesting he hasn't. >> i'm not saying that. i'm just saying that -- >> he's clear. he said they didn't do anything wrong. >> if this is the way the fisa court is going to behave, if you can take political dirt, open up investigations into how a democratic republic falls apart. it's unacceptable. nobody in their right mind. if the shoe was on the other foot, you would have protests in the street, cars being blocked, fires in the street, tires being burned and i guarantee you the

heads would've rolled already at fbi and doj. you'd have all the major newspapers in the major media saying what a crime this was that this happened. >> laura: was the footnote a cya footnote so they can say look, we've referenced this. this was someone who didn't like candidate number 1. we referenced it. they did go out of the way to put it in the footnote. >> and that's why -- i think you make a very good point. i was trying to say earlier, you have to desperately try to put the words together the way they did instead of just having a simple definition which could have been candidate 2 hired fusion gps or u.s. person 1 to hire source 1 to get the information. really simple to explain. the courts would've understood it easily and i think the courts would have -- at that point -- they should have rejected it. i'm not sure they would have, but they should have rejected it. it and i think the courts would

>> laura: four republican judges. >> i don't blame the judges. i think the judges were misled. >> laura: you don't think they should have asked more questions? if i saw that was a prominent -- forget saying it was the majority of the case. to open up this warrant, but if i saw political opposition, i would have asked more questions. who is this political opposition? >> sadly -- you should have asked that, but sadly, we don't have any transcripts, so we don't believe there any transcripts from those hearings. >> laura: the left is saying -- and some neoconservatives are saying that you and your committee have done an enormous amount of damage to the fisa process. putting all this out there, pushing this issue as it is will ultimately compromise our national security because people are not going to be willing to put themselves out to give information to keep america safe. >> they have been saying that

forever. we have to call it how it is. when we first were writing a memo, they said oh, my god, it's going to destroy the whole process. he's going to disclose sources and methods. that's the end of the whole process. did that happen? no. we released the memo and they said he took 400 pages and took it down to three pages. yeah, because it was a memo and we were under strict confines to keep it as short as possible. >> laura: by the way, the redactions in this document, documents, they are significant. it does discuss prior investigations into carter page, they had been watching him for some time. doesn't that indicate there was information on page. he was meeting -- he had these conferences -- some contact with government officials. they had ample reason along with along with papadopoulos to open an investigation. that's what your critics are saying. >> carter page was not a foreign agent. what did the fbi due in 2014 and '15? they interviewed the guy. that would've placed this to

start. you don't open up an investigation into a campaign and then turn around and get a fisa warrant so you can go and grab a lot of information that had to have come from the campaign. this is, back in '13 and '14, they ran an investigation the way it was supposed to be run. and don't forget, another thing that wasn't told to the court, they did not want to tell the court that carter page had actually cooperated with the fbi in the past and the russians didn't want to recruit him because they thought he was an idiot. those with the russians' words, not anybody else's. the russians said that. there were lots of reasons to believe carter page wasn't acting as a foreign agent. >> laura: what is next? >> we want the president to take care of the rest of these redactions so there is full transparency. for everyone to see. we have sent 42 names to chairman gowdy and chairman goodlatte and we believe those interviews will be starting soon. >> laura: thank you for stopping by. really appreciate it. >> thank you.

>> laura: directly ahead, the mysterious case of an alleged russian spy currently being held by u.s. authorities. up next, a lawyer for maria butina reveals what you have not heard. heard.

the case of the accused russian operative maria butina. according to reuters, butina has far more extensive contact with washington officials than previously known, including meetings back in 2015 with obama treasury department officials and at the federal reserve. robert driscoll, maria butina's laywer, joins us now to tell us what else the media may be missing here in the story. i know that you met with your client today. how is she? >> i did. he's in protective custody in d.c. jail. overall, the baseline fact that she's in jail, she's doing pretty well. >> laura: how did she find you to represent her? >> i had a previous client

through a friend of a friend recommended me when she got a letter from congress. >> laura: she told congress last year that she received some funding from a russian oligarch. >> she said that in april. >> laura: okay. why was he funding her? >> she founded a gun rights group in russia. she grew up in siberia. she moved from moscow. she founded a gun rights group. it's different in russia than it is here. you don't go with the "fight the tyranny with guns" approach. it was more of a self-defense and other gun group. but it was her issue and she founded the group and ended up finding supporters and this guy was a big supporter. >> laura: to explain that, coming to the united states and working with the nra. i'm not a member of the nra but i support the nra on a lot of things. you go on twitter and you're like, maria butina helped funnel millions of dollars for the

trump campaign through the nra through a russian billionaire. they are painting a picture that is wild. she seemed to get around. she knew a lot of people in washington. how did she get to know so many people? so fast? just 29 years old. >> when she founded the group, she invited people to moscow to support the group. the nra sent a small delegation and met her and then there were some exchanges back and forth where she went to nra meetings and hosted a couple meetings in russia. she met some senior people in the nra, and when she came to the u.s. to go to school, she met her boyfriend who was active in republican politics. she went around to the different events. she had her picture taken a lot of places which is not really consistent with being a spy. all the pictures you see on tv are from her facebook page which is open. >> laura: one of the accusations would be also that she's an

unregistered foreign agent, which is not a spy. but if you're essentially doing lobbying of some sort for the russian government or trying to influence america through other groups or associations, you must register as a foreign agent as our people have to register. paul manafort, they are charging him with that as well. >> no one is ever really charged, the foreign agent registration act. the whole point of fara is to avoid unwitting propaganda. so if you hire a senator to write an op ed that malta is great, former senators being paid. it's not to prevent russian citizens who are obviously russian and identify as russian, from talking about, again. >> laura: she talked about the clinton treasury people? >> she acted as a translator. torsion is, himself, a big gun guy. and so he joined her group a year after she formed it. a great ally for her to have.

>> laura: what kind of visa was she on? >> i think she was on a tourist visa or because she was giving a speech to the nra, i'm not sure. >> laura: how many years? did she have to go back and forth? >> she went back and forth for a couple years. more recently she had a student visa when she was getting her masters at american university. >> laura: they made a big deal over it over the weekend. they want her released. caught up in this hysteria over russia. >> good and bad. obviously, people in russia are concerned for her. the foreign ministry has a "free maria butina" hashtag going. with her picture as their avatar on their twitter page. i would like to separate her from the rest of the problems. she has nothing to do. she is a student, an ambitious young woman active in the nra and active in conservative circles, who has nothing to do with the mueller probe, has nothing to do with any of these things. but it comes up at this time so it's very difficult. >> laura: robert, thank you for giving us the update. we appreciate it. it's no secret the obama administration officials --

come on. they were asleep at the switch over russian meddling and as our next guest writes in a new column for "the hill," they are placing the blame squarely on president trump. joining us now, monica crowley. from the london center for policy research. monica, great to see you. something about this maria butina thing. i want to get into your column. something seems odd about this. again, it's just my intuition. robert gave us his take on the case. doesn't -- it seems a little too convenient? >> cute? >> laura: you know what i mean? just your instinct on things. russian people come over. apparently if you did any business in russia or spent any time there and brushed elbows with any government official, you are probably a russian operative. that's how it is -- talk about the red scare. my goodness. >> these are early days and all these investigations, so we shall see. it does seem a little convenient. >> laura: let's talk about your column. you wrote a fascinating piece

everybody has to read it. about how the obama administration basically just sat on this issue of russian meddling until oops. donald trump won. >> long before the 2016 election, russia was engaged in widespread cyber aggression against the united states. the president at the time, barack obama, and all of his intelligence chiefs, john brenan at the cia, james clapper at national intelligence, james comey and his predecessor robert mueller, at the fbi, they were all well aware that russian-state-backed hacking groups, cozy bear, fancy bear and others were engaged in this cyberespionage and yet they didn't do anything about it. what i read about in the column is the reason why. they didn't move on this even though they had full knowledge of it for years leading into the campaign. it's because what was paramount to them was getting and implementing the iranian nuclear deal. therefore they didn't want to

rock the boat with moscow and that appeasement extended well beyond ignoring their cyber espionage. it extended into canceling plans for defense systems in eastern europe, disclosing specifics of our nuclear arsenal, negotiating away u.s. advantages on arms control, and of course looking the other way when russia annexed crimea, invaded eastern ukraine and reentered the middle east. loucks do we ever really determine what the flexibility was? obama and medvedev. there was an aggressive lack of curiosity on the part of the press when he said that in 2012. did we figure that out? >> i think he meant we will let you go to town as long as you give us the iranian nuclear deal. that was paramount to that administration. what we now know, laura, is that they are masters of projection. they have been accusing donald trump of what they themselves

were guilty of, including through their inaction and their excuse making and blame shifting on russia, actual collusion with moscow. now to deflect attention away from their own misdeeds, potential crimes, and their own policy failures, loss of the presidential election, they are trying to smear the sitting president. >> laura: the finger is always pointing back at you. monica, thank you so much. if you need more proof that the democratic party is having an identity crisis, either jim comey or charismatic socialists could soon become their new face. we will explain next. comey or charismatic socialists could soon become the

>> laura: don't you love a good identity crisis? the democrats are having one. practically every day. case in point, jim comey now in the democrats' corner, providing campaign advice. did such a great job as an intel leader, tweeting "democrats,

please, please don't lose your minds and rush to the socialist left." good luck with that. a new report by the a.p. claiming that democratic socialism is surging in the age of trump. you cannot make this up. which way is the party going to go as we race towards the midterms? here to analyze is democratic pollster doug schoen along with former arkansas governor, fox news contributor mike huckabee. doug, you have to speak to the democrats because when jim comey is your avatar or alexandria ocasio-cortez, i don't know what to say but take it away. >> i guess i would say to jim comey, you screwed up the last election in a multiplicity of ways. why don't you just keep your opinions to yourself? we democrats have enough problems with you interposing yourself. as for the democratic party, my goodness. it has moved so far to the left. as a free-market capitalist myself who believes in a mixed economy and a strong national

defense, i have nothing in common with ocasio-cortez and the democratic socialists nor do the mass of moderate voters that decide midterm and indeed most elections. i am just sick to my stomach, sick at heart that my party has left me in ways that i find difficult to understand. >> laura: governor huckabee, arkansas roots, bill clinton. whatever you say about clinton, he understood the heartland and he had a sensibility. i was going to say he had a touch. i don't want to say. he had a sensibility. okay? sorry, it's late-night tv. all right, it's late night tv. he had a sensibility, governor. some of these new faces, you don't see it. >> no, you don't see it. by the way, i'm very tempted just to not say anything and say let my friend doug schoen continue to talk because he's making more sense than the rest of the democratic party put together. bill clinton did understand middle america. he campaigned on the third way. he got elected because he wasn't

way out to the far left. they would do well to listen to bill clinton and to understand why he won twice for the presidency. unfortunately they are not listening to people like bill clinton, at least the way bill clinton believed in the '90s. they are listening to the girl wonder from new york and they are listening to bernie sanders, and they are listening to people who oppose dianne feinstein in san francisco because she wasn't left enough for them. that's really amazing. >> laura: this is all borne out with the dccc chairman today. you've got to watch. >> do you think the democratic socialist party of america, do you think they will have a place in the democratic caucus? >> when you see the work senator sanders is doing and the work alexandria is doing, they are driving conversations about how policies impact people. >> do you think that conversation helps you win back the house or hurt your efforts? >> any time we're having a

conversation about how you can make people's lives better, that's a positive conversation. >> laura: if the republicans are at a seven-point deficit, what karl rove said earlier tonight on fox, seven-point deficit with independents, are those independents going to swing toward ocasio-cortez and everything is free? you are going to get everything free. lollipops are going to fall from the sky. or are they going to move back to trump and say we don't like everything he tweets but i like what's in my pocketbook. >> well, i would say this. if the president is able to pivot away from inevitable and ongoing discussions about russia and talk about the economy and his plans for the future, he will do better. his numbers in "the wall street journal" poll went up, not down. given everything that's happened and certainly his ratings, because of the economy, are fueling an increase in the republican vote. i think this socialist swaying in the democratic party, i agree

with my friend governor huckabee, it's only going to hurt the party. i worked for bill clinton. i am proud of that. i am proud of the balanced budget, the crime bill, welfare reform. this is a different democratic party. people in the heartland haven't changed. they voted for donald trump, for goodness sake. i think the governor would agree with me that this democratic party can only do badly, not well, given what's happened in the country. >> laura: governor, we've got to show you the cover of "new york magazine" which is showing the front runner to be, let's say, no moderate democratic. clinton type. elizabeth warren as the front runner. she seems to be running in a spectacular pantsuit. so that's a -- i like that. she is pretty fit. elizabeth warren is a favorite, so is bernie sanders. they get the crowds, the juice, they get the excitement. you have to go where the excitement is. they went with obama. obama could fill a stadium. is joe biden going to fill a stadium? i don't think so. i don't think kamala harris will fill a stadium but maybe them

bernie or elizabeth warren will. >> let's not forget when obama ran in 2008 he was not a leftist candidate. he believed in traditional marriage. he believed in bringing the country together. he talked about there wasn't two states, red and blue, he was as sent resist in his message as he could have been. he didn't govern that way once he got there. let me say something that will surprise you. i don't want to see the democrats go this far left because is not good for the country. >> i agree. >> we need two good, strong parties, both of whom represent the mainstream america with some differences. that's not what we are getting, i called her the girl wonder from new york. >> i couldn't agree more. we are patriots before we are partisans. >> laura: i've got to go unfortunately but you are making great points. whatever is best for the country going forward, that's where we all should be. thank you so much. president trump issuing a major

warning to the iranian regime. general wesley clark will be here next to react. regime. general wesley clark will be here next to

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>> laura: they don't call president trump the counterpuncher for nothing. on sunday, iran's president

warned the united states against pursuing a hard line against the mullahs going so far as to, quote, war with iran is the mother of all wars. president trump didn't like that. trump wrote back "never, ever, threaten the united states again." or you will suffer consequences the likes few throughout history have ever suffered before. joining me to make sense of it, general wesley clark, former supreme allied commander of nato. general, pompeo comes out over the weekend, john bolton, president trump. this was a coordinated triumvirate, correct? messaging to iran and your reaction? >> i think it's good to have the coordination. i am a little worried about what president trump said because when you say never again, it's like a redline. i thought we learned from the experience of president obama had in syria, don't do redlines. don't say "never again." what does that mean?

the next time rouhani says something, we are going to bomb him? look, you have to use diplomacy. i like to use diplomacy at the lowest possible level. i think it's great mike pompeo spoke out. i think the president would've been stronger if he hadn't responded. let the secretary of state take the lead. >> laura: i get that. i did my monologue tonight, general, on the old order. he is disrupting those old norms. let's face it. whatever the diplomatic niceties of yesterday, what those were, for now, those are gone. let me -- let me -- >> it's not about niceties. it's about being effective. when the president of the united states speaks he has to mean it. >> laura: unlike obama, he does mean it. did you criticize him for north korea? >> i said when he got there, the preparatory work hadn't been done.

and therefore you don't know whether he got anything or not. >> laura: i'm not talking about that. no, no. what i'm talking about, general, stay with me. he was criticized relentlessly for the tweeting of little rocket man and i get it. it's not the way things are done. i understand we want real results and we will see what happens with north korea. he was slammed when he moved the embassy to jerusalem from tel aviv. all hell would break loose. we had problems but all hell had not broken loose. it's going to work out. -- half of this i think is the old experts didn't accomplish much. we didn't accomplish much with our diplomacy with iran. i know you probably loved the iran deal. he didn't. he won the presidency, and he got us out of it. now we're trying to work with russia. it might not work at all. >> let me just say something here. the old experts, starting from the end of world war ii, maintained peace for the united states -- >> post-cold war, general. post-cold war. stay in the present. post cold war.

>> what happened in the cold war is there was a failure in the george w. bush first-term to take seriously the terrorist threat. that's all on the record. if condoleezza rice had really done the serious work, we might not have had 9/11. 9/11 unleashed a wave of fear in this country. >> laura: you are not going to -- >> we are still trying to recover. >> laura: i was for the iraq war. we're not going to relitigate it. president trump saw the old way didn't work. he is trying a new way. general clark -- we have to have a longer conversation. great to have you on any any case. all right, we will have you back on radio. we will take a break and be right back. makes it hard to br. so to breathe better, i go with anoro. ♪ go your own way copd tries to say, "go this way." i say, "i'll go my own way, with anoro." ♪ go your own way once-daily anoro

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>> tomorrow night we will have a talk with one who talks to trump

been the answer. -- answer trump hysteria resistance, alan dershowitz, that is it for me tonight. follow me on twitter. i would like to read your tonight. follow me on twitter. i would like to read your tweets, even the mean ones, shannon bream and the fox news at night team. thehe news button is one ofngbr best inventions twitter ever came up with. thank you so much. we begin with a fox news alert. suing the cia over john brennan and links to top democrat harry reid. it is in the wake of the trump administration threatening to pool brennan and other security clearances. they have a case? catherine herridge is here tonight with new analysis from