how'd dyao? player: we won! tech: nice! that's another safelite advantage. mom: thank you so much! (team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace. hello, everyone. i'm ari melber. welcome to "the point," our special coverage of the first 100 days of the trump administration. accusations against obama and what's really important about the russia investigation. >> i never heard that before and i have no evidence or no one has ever presented anything to me. >> i've seen no evidence of the allegations we've seen in the media. >> at this point, i've seen no evidence of what he has alleged. >> republicans not backing up those trump accusations that president obama personally wiretapped trump tower. today, the white house backtracking on the charge, even as it calls, oddly, for a

congressional investigation. on the ground in selma, 52 years since the bloody sunday march. a special report for the news you might have missed on jeff sessions' justice department and how civil rights activists say they are taking him on. plus, a panel of comedians on satire in the age of trump as snl finds its mark. >> i went to bed, i got 800 messages on phone alerts saying i was a sneaky little liar. i didn't know what to do. so my lawyer said, run, jeffrey, run! and i started running and running. >> but we begin with the top story this whole weekend and there are two ways to report it. here is one way. trump made unfounded accusations that obama wiretapped him. and that's part of the story. but here is the larger context. the ongoing questions about trump's ties to russia continue to consume his presidency, even as he tries to change the subject from why his associates

are under investigation to whether they were somehow wrongly wiretapped. consider that on saturday trump made this explosive allegation about wiretapping but by today the white house walking it back to say an investigation is needed to even see if what trump said is true. this new white house statement, oddly, includes language saying they'll not talk about this topic any further. that silent treatment may be hard to pull off. other republicans, like marco rubio, also dismiss it. >> i have no basis, i've never heard that allegation made before by anybody, i've never seen anything like that before. the president put that out there and now the white house will have to answer to exactly what he was referring to. if that were true, there's no doubt it would be a very newsworthy item with a lot of discussion about it. and if it's not true, one would ask themselves why did you put that out there to begin with? >> some democrats have laughed off trump's attempt to change the subject.

others stressing the obvious lack of proof. quote, as a member of the committee on to which you've dumped this mess, i look forward to seeing your evidence, says a democratic member of the intel committee. it's possible there has been wiretapping though it wouldn't normally be ordered by a president. former director of national intelligence said there was no such wiretap on trump tower. >> for the part of the national security apparatus that i oversaw as dni, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. >> if the fbi, for instance, had it by court order for surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know? >> yes. >> you would be told this? >> i would know that. >> at this point you can't confirm or deny whether that exists? >> i can deny it. >> there is no fifsa court order? >> not to my knowledge. >> of anything at trump tower? >> no.

>> breaking moments ago, "the new york times" reporting fbi director james comey is asking the justice department this weekend to reject publicly trump's claim that president obama ordered the wiretap. that is a huge piece of news we'll dig into. the justice department obviously hasn't done that yet. key issues here are broader than just trump tower, the building, as the attorney general recuses himself as president trump says he discovered his own watergate how will the investigation get to the bottom of it all? former fbi official sean henry, mad miller and jeremy bash, former cia official. let's start with the fbi here and james comey basically saying, according to the "new york times," that he wanted to get to the bottom of this with regard to whether a president would order this kind of wiretap. you or a senior fbi official. how do you see this? >> i don't see that the president would make that order.

if, in fact, the fbi was engaged in some investigation related to national security, the fbi may have gone forward seeking a fifsa order with regard to that national security threat. that wouldn't be ordered by the president. the statements made by president obama's former -- spokesperson for president obama, they clearly said that the president didn't order that. i don't know that anybody has clearly denied that it ever happened. it's unclear what happened here. we've got -- >> right. let's pause on that point here, especially for folks watching, trying to keep up with it. just on what director comey is trying to do here. let me read from "the new york times." statement by the justice department or comey refuting trump's allegations would be, quote, a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation's top law enforcement officials in the position of questioning the truthfulness of the government's top leader. what do you think of that piece of it, comey v. trump?

>> president trump making an allegation that he made over social media, without putting it in any context that, in and of itself, is outrageous, taking the attention away from serious national security issues. there are a number of congressional committees that are talking about these hearings. those hearings originally started to look at what russia did as it relates to our democratic process and what the obama administration's response was. how did the intelligence services going back to last year of 2016 before the election deal with those. >> right. >> that now has started to take on, in the recent month or so now, a different color. you have allegations that there may be certain officials in the current administration who were engaged in somehow -- >> matt miller, the color is red. there are a lot of serious concerns -- not proven yet but serious concerns about these investigations. i want to read to you also regarding president trump's top lawyer over the weekend. according to the times, senior

white house official said mcgann, the president's chief council, was working to what mcgann believed to be an order issued by the foreign intelligence surveillance court. >> the white house, people potentially in the white house, certainly people from the campaign are what the fbi is looking at, trying to figure out whether people from trump's campaign were colluding with the russians to swing the election for now president trump. for them to pressure the fbi, justice department to turn over that if it exists, even to go and ask whether it exists is completely inappropriate and i would hope that people at the department of justice -- let me put it this way. the career people i worked with when i was at the department of justice would strongly push back

on that type of behavior. i think the political people i worked with at the department of justice felt very strongly about the independence of doj and the separation between doj and the white house and would have pushed back and i hope the people running the justice department now, jeff sessions and the other people that came in with president trump, will feel the same way. of course, sessions would be recused in this instance and, presumably, would have nothing to do with deciding whether to turn that information over to the white house or not. >> jeremy and/or howard? >> a federal judge would have to order a wiretap of anybody suspected of being a foreign agent inside the united states. let's get one thing straight which is one of the aspects of president trump's tweet over the weekend was demonstrably false. it would have to be done with the say-so and approval of a federal judge who would find

there sufficient evidence, probable cause that there was either criminality or foreign espionage activity emanating out of trump's inner circle. >> howard? >> you mentioned the big picture at the top, ari. let me give you the big picture on this from the viewpoint of donald trump's inner circle. they think that they're in a battle with what they refer to as the deep state in washington and particularly in the intelligence communities and investigative arms to deny their legitimacy. that is, of the trump administration, the trump white house. and donald trump is a control freak. and he's in a situation where there may be investigations of russia's influence that bear on donald trump, that obviously bear on his campaign, bear on the people around him. but he can't get at them. he can't control them because we have a tradition in this country

of police investigations and intelligence investigations, at least nominalily separating politics. this is infuriating donald trump. what led him to tweeting the way he did yesterday morning. this is a tweet shot, if you will, by donald trump across the bow of the intelligence and investigative communities saying i'm coming after you. >> do you think he believes it? >> i have no idea. i have no clue. but the practical effect of it, politically and administratively, is donald trump declaring almost, you know, beating his chest or roaring like a wounded lion, saying i'm coming after you and we're going to get you people, because you're trying to get me. that is the mentality that he has. that is the danger of this situation. and james comey, with the action

that he just took, is basically saying, you know, i dare you. don't come after us because we're going to fight back. and this is an almost unprecedented -- i think it's an unprecedented situation. at the beginning of the administration. we saw this -- if you read the history books, you know this is how the nixon administration ended, open war between the investigative arms of government and the presidency. donald trump is beginning his presidency that way. and a lot of his people, lot of his supporters, they view it as a conspiracy against him. he's going to play right into that. and james comey can try to be the voice of reason all he wants. trump, this is open war now between comey and trump. that's how i view this statement. >> he puts it very well and speaks to the way that donald

trump, whether it's clever on purpose or just a lot of noise that works, he is basically leading his supporters to look at this and say if there is a wiretap, that's dodgy. if something was under investigation, that's problematic. which is not true. if you're a normal citizen and find out a judge in any context, foreign or domestic, has approved a tap. that's usually a bad sign for you. you don't usually get to flip that around and say i'm going to call out the judge or the fbi. former attorney general and former federal judge knows of what he speaks. he said today he thinks there might be some kind of wiretap even if president obama wasn't the one who ordered it. take a listen. >> if a wiretap did exist it would have had to have been approved by a fifsa court based on real evidence. so if there was a wiretap, does that mean there were suspicious things going on between the trump administration and the russians? >> it means there was some basis to believe that somebody in trump tower may have been acting as an agent of the russians for

some purpose. not necessarily the election but for some purpose. >> he was careful but also said he thinks there may have been a tap. >> i think that's absolutely right. >> you think there was a wiretap? >> i don't know whether there was or not but when there's a discussion about a wiretap, and we're talking about a broad issue here with the russian government influencing the democratic election by breaching the dnc and leaking strategically certain documentation to change or influence people and then we've got concerns about certain people in the administration talking to russian officials, that creates a specter of some type of collusion. it certainly does not eliminate the concern that there may have been this ongoing coordination. i think what donald trump has done, though, has hijacked the narrative. he has put this out. he's looking to change the way people are thinking. we're talking about the senate,

house, congress authorizing an investigation to determine what happened and people are focusing their attention on this other issue. as you said quite well, if there was a tap, that means they had suspicion of someone doing something wrong. >> should that give people pause or cause for concern about whether the authorities are getting close to something that donald trump doesn't want people to know? >> whatever a president says should be based on evidence. he has access to the entirety of the government. he shouldn't spread a falsehood. i do think it's important, ari, to note on "meet the press" this morning, former director of national intelligence jim clapper said two things that changed the vector of the conversation here. he said to his knowledge, and he would know, there was no fisa order against trump tower or that circle of people. that doesn't exclude every

possibility of surveillance against trump associates. but that's pretty sweeping. >> is it sweeping? a lot of people could be linked to donald trump who aren't in the building. >> for certain and it could have been overseas collection targeted against russians overseas that swept up people. i think clapper's statement was a little broader. we can go back and look at the tape. here is the thing. i think the administration and justice department didn't focus until very late in 2016 on this issue of potential collusion. the intelligence community's assessment only came out in early january. i think this is just really being looked at now, which is why the congressional oversight committee investigations are so very important. >> thank you very much for all of you being here. matt, we'll see you in a moment. we are just getting started here. on "the point" ahead, what jeff sessions is doing now that may have some concern. selma, alabama, marks the anniversary of bloody sunday and

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attorney general jeff sessions is in the news this week from stepping aside from those investigations in the trump campaign. what about what he is doing with his new power at doj day-to-day? many civil rights activists are focusing on that, as they celebrate the anniversary of bloody sunday, the march against the bridge in selma, alabama. this, in the wake of trump saying black voters have nothing to lose. >> look how much african-american communities have suffered under democratic control. to those, i say the following -- what do you have to lose by

trying something new, like trump? >> well, it turns out one thing they may have to lose is their vote. that is according to some civil rights experts. much political attention on russia this week. meanwhile, attorney general sessions backed out of a key part of the challenge to voter i.d. laws, which judges had held discriminate against black vetters that have some concerned that sessions may not apply some laws on the books like the voting rights act, which is part of the job of the acting attorney general. lehigh professor james peterson, university of baltimore professor michael higgenbothom, author of "the ghosts of gym crow," and back with us again matt miller. what does this mean on the votivot voting rights act? >> jeff sessions as attorney general has directed the justice

department to take a different position that it did under eric holder. there's a texas case that's going on now, being litigated. and the federal court has said there's discriminatory effect and intent in this texas voter i.d. law. and what attorney general sessions did was to instruct the justice department to take a different argument. prior to this, the justice department was arguing that there was discriminatory effect and intent. now they've taken the position that there's no discriminatory intent and that a new texas law would n. llify any discriminatory intent that existed in the previous law. that is really inconsistent with what attorney general sessions said the last day of black history month a few days ago, when he talked about how important the justice department has been in guaranteeing the

cornerstone of american democracy, the right to vote. he talked about that history. he's really talking out of two sides of his mouth in the sense of saying the justice department is important in protecting voting rights and then instructing the justice department to take a different position on this texas voter inc i.d. law. >> that's behind the scenes in court, to some extent. >> jeff sessions was in the senate before he went to the ag's office. in the senate, he was part of those people like ryan and mcconnell who, for 1349 days today refused to fix the voting rights act. that's like a 1349-day filibuster, 1349 strom thurman filibuster act. he is an adversary to voter rights, makes the justice department adversarial to voting rights rather than an advocate for voting rights.

he is not standing up. we have a letter we sent to him over 4,000 faith leaders and activists, said stand up, call for the full restoration of the voting rights act. that is what the justice department is supposed to be about. we had 22 states that have passed -- many since the shelby position in north carolina, strict photo incht d. was unconstitutional, trying to roll back same day registration, early vote was unconstitutional. lastly in those states that passed voter suppression, 54% of african-americans live in those states and almost 250 electoral votes. this is dangerous to our democracy when we are going backwards across the bridge rather than forward. >> professor peterson, you look at this and in the trump tape, what do black voters have to lose, what's the answer to that?

>> amongst many things, clearly voting rights is one thing that african-americans have to lose. we tiek a lock at texas, strict voter i.d. laws, license or gun license. you can't use student i.d. voters who normally vote democratic, it affects some 600,000 texans, about 4% of the electorate. given how elections have gone, 4% is a tremendous advantage for those trying to suppress votes. listen, democracy is pretty simple, ari. either we're expanding our democracy and allowing more citizens to vote, encouraging more of our citizens to vote or we're not. until we restore preclearance, that clause that was already mentioned by reverend barber by this supreme court, we're moving in the wrong direction in terms of democracy. >> you talk about preclearance or matt miller, you talk about the federal role here, these are things that are basically

different for the attorney sw n general than any other member of the cabinet. he has to enforce the laws on the books. matt and then reverend barber on that piece of it, what do you want to see from jeff sessions on what his obligation is, even if as a senator he may have disagreed with some of these things? >> you would love to see him enforce the lawson the books, not just voting rights but across the board on civil rights. the civil rights division is closed for business. it's not just what jeff sessions has done in the texas case. it's the guidance he has withdrawn saying vulnerable kids across the country ought to be able to use the bathrooms of their choice. he went out and gave his first public remarks as attorney general, the government is going to pull back from overseeing police departments that abuse civil rights, the communities he serve. it's hostile to the civil rights law. he always has been. and now he is as attorney general. there are some things that people, private plaintiffs can do, lawsuits they can bring. but there is no substitute for

the role of the federal government in enforcing civil rights laws. i'm afraid we're not going to see that over the next four years, as long as he's attorney general. >> reverend barber, final word? >> we won in north carolina over voter suppression. with preclearance they would have never been able to pass it on the books. congress is the culprit here. since shelby 2013, they've had the power to fix the voting rights act. that's where we have to put our focus. we talked about this today we'll have to take selma to washington, d.c. and sit in the offs of ryan and mcconnell and get inside congress and demand they fix the voting rights act. we'll have to challenge sessions and continue to fight in the courts, even though it may take us a long time. what we cannot do is give up on voting rights because too much blood has been shed. one of the narratives we have to say in america is that long before the russians hacked our system, our political system was hacked by racism and voter

suppression and many people have been elected through unconstitutional means. they are not winning. they are cheating. and that's the narrative that has to go forward. voter suppression is alive and well. voter fraud is alive and we have to fight just as they fought 52 years ago. >> a lot of important context there. reverend barber, professor peterson, matt miller, thank you for joining us. we dig into more of trump's attacks into president obama. may be nothing more than angry tweets but this time did he put himself in legal trouble? did he legally defame president obama? we'll dive into that, in our segment "normal or not" next. more "doing chores for dad" per roll more "earning something you love" per roll bounty is more absorbent,

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dizziness or confusion. ask your health care provider if you're tresiba® ready. covered by most insurance and medicare plans. ♪ tresiba® ready ♪ welcome back to "the point" and a series we call "normal or not. accusing obama of a watergate level conspiracy to wiretap trump tower. he may have done more than distract. president trump may have put himself in legal trouble. there's nothing abnormal about politicians attacking each other, to be sure. and our laws give great

protection to political speech, meaning you can say all kinds of things in america without legal consequences, but not everything. today legal experts say because of the particular way trump leveled his accusations this weekend he may have libeled barack obama. it is hard for political figures to win libel cases. they choose to be public so people can talk about them. that's the idea. but the supreme court has held some false attacks on a public figure are so terrible, they can be grounds for libel. the basic standard is that the statement must be false and the person making it either knew it was false or was reckless about whether it was false, which could be hard to prove. but there's evidence trump may have crossed that legal line. first, the notion that president obama personally ordered a wiretap to target opponents appears false. trump afored no evidence and current and former government officials deny it. seco, trump made the charge without even checking with h n administration to see if it

was true. he didn't consult with the people inside the government who might know before making his claims, sources tell nbc news. and today the white house says a congressional investigation is needed to resolve this. that means saturday, trump claims these charges and by sunday his staff says they need an inquiry to see whether if what he said was true. believe me, that's not good. and it provides support about meeting that libel standard, about whether that statement was false. benjamin zipursky, a fordham university professor said it would be viewed as defamatory in its content. the question is, is there enough evidence of serious recklessness disregard to send that case to a jury? he wasn't speaking on a minor topic. it falls into the most serious category of defamation, as legal

experts explain, some types of false statements are considered so damaging they're deemed defamatory on their face, falsely accusing someone of a crime is an untrue statement presumed to be harmful to one's reputation. as we would say in the law, no duh. so even if a public figure has the grounds to sue for libel, it isn't, to be clear, something that most public figures choose to do. right? >> but one of the things i'm going to do if i win, and i hope i do, and we're certainly leading -- is i'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposefully negative and horrible and false articles we can sue them and win lots of money. >> i'll sue them if he doesn't pay the money. absolutely. i have a great lawyer. >> he has started seven different lawsuits over claims that he was libeled or defamed, bill maher, miss pennsylvania even a journalist who wrote the

biography "trump nation." he lost six of those seven suits and might fair just as bad as a defendant now. of course, to be clear, there's no indication that president obama would sue trump for libel, even if he has a case. the tradition runs in the opposite direction. former presidents give their successors room and don't usually take them to court. presidents can claim immunity for official acts taken in office. tradition has also taken a hit lately. to answer the question, when it comes to president trump's potentially libelous attack on the previous president, we find it's not normal. there's your answer. now up next, we'll dig into the story president trump may have been trying to distract people away from. what is the status of the russian inquiry? did his attorney general go far enough in recusal? what are the political implications in this divided congress? our super panel ready to chop it up after the break. eak through . introducing flonase sensimist.

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welcome back to "the point." mark twain once said if you don't like the weather in new england now, just wait a few minutes. keep that in mind if president trump does finally sign that revised immigration travel ban tomorrow. trump said the ban was urgent because of many very bad and dangerous people pouring into our country. then he repeatedly delayed introducing it. and all of this now coming after that criticism of attorney general jeff sessions for misleading congress about meeting with the russian ambassador, recusing himself from the investigation after all that criticism. and there's no policy reason that link the russian inquiry with the travel ban. there may be political reason, though, that news stomped on his good press from the tuesday night speech. cameras did catch steve bannon

in an animated exchange. this is friday footage from the oval. his tweet suggested he wanted to add some other topic besides russia even before we got to monday's travel ban rollout. here is the thing about distraction. it doesn't work as well if you do it every day and everyone knows you're doing it. and it may backfire if the topics kick up as much negative press as the thing you were trying to distract from. joined now, political reporter from the daily beast, william cohan and professor christina greer. hello, everyone. erin, what do you think about the distraction here? >> what do i think about the distraction? i'm of two minds. first of all, i think that the media is on to trump if he is this kind of mad political genius, who is kind of puppet mastering the way people are talking about him or gods must be crazy situation where we're

reading way more intelligence into what he's doing as to what's actually there. >> a coke bottle falls out of an airplane into a rural village. >> and the tweets are the coke bottle. >> for folks that haven't seen the movie and the rural villa r villagers are giving too much credence to the meaning of the coke bottle. >> right. there's a lot of randomness and rage and just noneffort in terms of trump. i think it's what comes naturally. >> the flip side of that, william, is a toddler may not be able to describe some strategy of game theory of working over their parents and yet a toddler can, through emotion of trial and error try to achieve outcomes. is it possible that he's very emotional and getting new outcomes and has the fbi working overtime over the weekend trying to deal with this, which means, to some degree, they're on the defensive. if there are wiretaps, the people who should be on the defensive are, according to a

federal swrunlg, should be the people that needed the wiretaps. >> and he is very child like as you alluded to. one thing people have truly underestimated since the election, now it's march, the stock market has been on a tear. i have a suspicion if the stock market were not closing in on 22,000, instead if it had gone the other direction, was now 13,000, the money class, the class that sort of hangs out, that is barely -- can deal with him but is hanging out in new york, new england, california and all those people who are basically against him have given him a free pass in the last 3 1/2 months because of the stock market, which has increased their wealth. >> so you're saying he has a wall street pass. is that the opposite of a hood pass? >> he is getting -- if this market were going down instead of up, there would be outrage on

the two coasts and the media would be filled with this. and i think his days would be even more numbered and tolerance for this child-like behavior with the tweets and distracting behavior would be a lot worse. >> you have a political science pass. enlighten us. >> well, i mean, to go beyond just trump as the toddler who sits in the chair and throws the cheerios on the ground to see how quickly his parents pick them up i think we need to make sure we're not distracted. he doesn't fully understand the constitution or the role of the executive office in which he fills. he does not have a strong relationship with congress and doesn't really understand the role of the judiciary in relation to the president and congress. sometimes we get distracted with all these stories that seem to come out every single day. as i said before, what happens in the morning is not what we're discussing over lunch and certainly not what we're discussing at dinner and clearly not what we're discussing when we go to sleep. we have to make sure we move beyond the white house

correspondents' dinner and arnold schwarzenegger and focus on why is this man tweeting at 6:00 am about president barack obama when he has no founded facts and is reading breit dallas bart as opposed to real policy because he skips those meetings? we need to push congress to find answers and quickly in their various committees. this is a sinking ship and it would be funny if we weren't all on the ship. this particular president, because he is so in over his head, because he spent eight years harassing president barack obama because he could not understand that a man could actually do this job and do it well, he thought it was an easy walk in the park. he's realizing that he's completely -- he has never even been mayor of poughkeepsie. he is completely out of his depth and has so many stories that he's throwing out there. we need to make sure we don't get wrapped up in his twitter rants and hissy fits. if the travel ban is so important, why do you delay it and want to make it on monday? well, maybe not. if these are real policy

practices, this man has to be held accountable. right now, we're sort of at his whims and the congress, media and the american public need to be on the offensive as opposed to the defensive with him. >> here is leon panetta on the distraction factor. >> what i see here is that this president is making the same mistake past presidents made when they face scandals. that he's trying to divert attention. they're trying to cover up, they're trying to somehow raise other issues. and in the end, it's going to be the truth that will determine what's involved here. and not tweets but the truth. >> that's optimistic, right? because this is a battle over the truth, erin. but the way that democrats are dealing with this, noticed something interesting this weekend. basically everyone decided to skip the, quote, firestorm part and wait for the inevitable

conclusion. things are going according to that script, documenting a lot of members of congress not getting into the rebuttal tweet game. >> two worlds are reacting to this, right? political media world, which we're a part. and this does seem like a -- >> speak for yourself. >> and then there's like real america. there are people from the middle of the country that swung the election. i think it's been interesting. reality is that we're living in some sort of confirmation by asimulation, that everybody clings to the version of truth that they want to exist rather than the version of truth that is. >> people, if they believe the facts and it comes out that there was a deeper link with a

foreign adversary to undermine our democracy, i do think plenty of people would care about that, whatever they feel about donald trump and hillary clinton personally. >> absolutely. first, we were wondering, many years ago, in the early '70s, what's the significance of a break-in at the dnc headquarters. >> right. >> once you start pulling on this thread -- >> right. >> -- who knows where it's going to lead. >> 18 months to actually -- >> it didn't and had much -- it seemed like a third-rate burglary, as we heard many, many times. this seems much more substantive than that. the other thing that i worry about sort of while he's busy deflecting, there are pieces of legislation winding their way through congress that are actually very dangerous, that need to get the attention they're not getting. for instance, this business of being able to take a concealed weapon into new york city if you happen to be allowed to have that weapon, concealed weapon

from your state where you're visiting. if it's okay in new mexico to have a concealed weapon, you can come to new york city and it's perfectly legal. that piece of legislation is windingity way through congress now. and through all this deflection, no one is talking about it. and trump is probably prepared to sign it. >> thank you all for joining me today. another weekend of protests around the country, surrounding the trump administration. why are some democratic leaders nervous about that energy? well, you could blame it on the words "outrage fatigue," growing mantra that may undermine the resistance. but there is a strong rebuttal. we'll explain after the break. this is not a screensaver. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body's own immune system, thanks to medicine that didn't exist until now. and today can save your life. ♪

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governing priorities. the onion once noted, the epidemic of outrage fatigue hit liberals in 2004, one activist saying it is simply too daubting for the average left leaning citizen to maintain a sense of anger. that was a joke. today outrage looks sturdy on the left. millions at the women's march spontaneous protests at airports after the travel ban, and it may be working. the times reporting trump feels under siege from protests in historically low approval. now in some democratic leaders worry this would mean they're a party of no. the seattle mayor saying he doesn't want democratic outrage to become background noise. no way to know who is right about all of this. political analysts get forecasts wrong all the time. our next guest, though, argues history is instructive, pointing to the success of outraged democratic opposition in 1982, a peace movement that gathered a million people in central park to protest ronald reagan's foreign policy.

those protests weren't just about policy proposals, about outrage and democrats went on it pick up 27 house seats. a focus on opposition over collaboration helped the gop, which blocked bill clinton's entire domestic agenda when it could, including denying a single vote for his first budget. and what republicans did get for their early '90s outrage, well, they got control of congress for the first time in 40 years. so if history suggests outrage unity is potent, what should democrats do? that's part of the argument of che komen doury, joined by the daily beast michael tomaski. che, this is your idea here. how does the opposition towards reagan apply today? >> well, it is very instructive. if you look at the nuclear freeze movement, they put together what was the largest protest in american history. actually coming up on the 35th anniversary of it. one million people gathered in

central park in the summer of 1982 to demand a freeze of nuclear armaments. now, democratic leaders of the time were very ambivalent about this. tip o'neill embraced the nuclear freeze movement. then senate majority leader, however, robert byrd, did not. it didn't matter, however. democrats want 27 house seats in the fall of 1982. it was the largest such gain opposition party to a first term president had achieved since -- for 50 years since herbert hoover. now, thinking about that, the nuclear freeze movement did successfully place in the minds of voters a skepticism about ronald reagan. even if they did not fully agree with the ultimate motive ofs of the nuclear freeze movement, they agreed that president reagan was perhaps too hawkish. it is probably a good idea to send democrats to washington as a check on its power. >> and, michael, you look at this from all the history you worked on, there is an old enough tradition, democratic

politics, that is worried that strong liberal opposition can curdle away from the party like '68 and today democrats are looking at the street protests and saying, gosh, where were the people during the general election? >> yeah. they certainly are. look, i mean, i think the democrats just need as much outrage from people as they can get. thinking about the midterm elections. what they want to accomplish in the midterm elections if they possibly can is to try to win back the house of representatives, i don't think they can win back the senate, but the house, they need about 25 seats. we have seen those kind of flips, historically, not just 82 in '94, but also 2006. and you get that kind of flip by getting your people, your base voters who on the democratic side as we all know don't normally vote in large numbers in midterm elections to come out and vote. and like they do in presidential elections or even bigger than

they did in this last presidential election. and then if you control the house of congress it is a whole different ball game. >> in your view, does that work even if it cuts against the kind of the cliche of well, you can't just be against something? >> well, look, the dynamics of a presidential election is very different from midterms. midterms are simply referendums on the existing president. and what matters in those referendums is for the opposition party to place skepticism in the minds of voters. and make voters think it is a good idea to send them to washington as a check on the existing power of the president. that has occurred repeatedly throughout history. and currently now, if you look at 2002, in that midterm, democrats did the opposite. they actually worked very heavily with george w. bush. 12 voted for the bush tax cuts, something john mccain did not even do. then it culminated in the vote

for the iraq war. as a result, george w. bush became the first president to actually pick up seats in his first term during a midterm. that is a precedent that democrats do not want to repeat. >> and so, michael, final thought, does that message get through to sort of the democratic establishment, you know some of those folks. they always seem more dubious about the base than sometimes republicans do. >> they have historically. i think that's changed a little bit this time around. just look at chuck schumer, for example, the senate majority -- or minority lead erk ter, who i has a liberal voting record, but an establishment figure. what did he do? he endorsed keith ellison to be the democrati nional committee chair, keith as wl to chuck's left, ellison didn't win obviously, but that's a signal of how the democrats in general, the establishment democrats are acting and they're much quicker this cycle to

embrace party activists more to left where as they would have kept them at arm's length in the past. >> michael and che, looking at our discussion of the dissent out there, thanks for your time. stay with us as our number two of the point continues. we have more on president trump's explosive allegations of wiretapping by president obama, even though he's offered it with no proof and breaking last hour, fbi director comey pushing back. we'll explain. i also have on two former federal prosecutors to drill down on the law and how wiretapping warrants actually work and our special as promised on comedy evolving in the trump era. stay with us. tech: at safelite, we know how busy your life can be. mom: oh no... tech: this mom didn't have time to worry about a cracked windshield. so she scheduled at safelite.com and with safelite's exclusive "on my way text" she knew exactly when i'd be there, so she didn't miss a single shot. i replaced her windshield giving her more time for what matters most. tech: how'd ya do? player: we won! tech: nice!

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hello. welcome back to "the point," our special coverage for the first 100 days of the trump administration and point now, we know president trump was dead serious about at least one thing when he spoke to congress. >> the time for